Loving Daughters (19 page)

36

The wedding went off smoothly until the end when Small Henry's temperature rose and there was a foolish attempt to keep it from Una.

‘Put him in a room and tell her he's asleep and not to be disturbed,' Rachel said, and Violet, holding him against her shoulder where his head was burrowed and his legs hung slack, snorted her scorn and turned him sharply from someone so naive.

Enid came up in her dark blue morrocain with a beaded collar and looked into Small Henry's face, telling herself he was merely tired after all the excitement. ‘They are almost ready to go,' she whispered, for she had seen Alex take the luggage from the verandah and strap it to the rack at the back of the Austin. They were to have a week's honeymoon in Pambula, the suggestion of a room at Uncle Percy's hotel in Merimbula scorned by Una, who foresaw bedlam among the six cousins at the presence of a bridegroom.

Una had seen that all was not well with Small Henry. Dragged by Jinny Turbett to inspect and praise more liberally a china butter dish given for a wedding present, she had her head in its new blue hat raised so high she seemed the tallest in the room and her creased brow, turned from the table of gifts, asked questions of Violet and Enid. In a moment she was attempting to pluck Small Henry from Violet who swung him away, and Enid said not to disturb him, they would put him down presently.

‘Down where?' Una cried, her eyes flashing towards a remote bedroom door where she pictured him shut away and left to fret and weep for her.

‘Let me have him please, Violet,' she said, as if her married state had increased her rights to him.

And taking him she sat on a chair, her blue hat sinking down over Small Henry like an umbrella. The guests craned their heads and their talk died to a murmur, although their new lowered tones failed to blur the edge of excitement that was there.

Something going on here! Just when things were winding down and thoughts had to turn to cows and bails, and manure slapped on stone floors, and flies buzzing around heads and no hands free to wave them off, and some dropping into the froth of milk and crawling there to the despair of the milker, who saw them then as enemies they would never conquer.

Just when this had to be the train of thought a crisis developed, and my goodness, supposing she wouldn't go off with him and leave Small Henry, or better still take Small Henry on the honeymoon!

The way her arms were bound to him now it looked as if she would never free them. Ah, this is interesting, said eyebrows raised high enough to move wedding hats, and eyes looking for Edwards so as not to miss his expression when he saw what was going on.

He came settling his coat after taking it off to wash, and he brushed the front now with his well-shaped hands, the women admiring, some of them wondering how hands like that would feel on their bodies after the calloused groping ones of their husbands. One of the fine hands now drew the blanket back from Small Henry's face, and then Una raised her face to his and there was less than an inch between the profiles, making them look like a poster for a romantic and passionate moving picture. Many of the onlookers blushed and felt uncomfortable as if they were watching them undress.

Edwards put his hands under Small Henry on Una's lap and put him in Violet's arms. He took Una's arm and folded it over his own arm and it quivered there, half intending to pull away. But Una rose and the guests fell back, making a path for them.

‘He's just a little hot,' Enid murmured. Her eyes sought Edwards and he nodded in a way she knew and gave a small smile that said you are the wise one, I leave you in charge. He took Una with him to the door, her face over her shoulder, clinging to Small Henry rocked in Violet's arms.

‘He'll be alright,' Edwards said soothingly.

‘Right as rain!' called a bold voice from a stout frame that had borne many children, not all of whom survived the rigours of childhood ills, but whose optimism remained unshaken.

The cry was caught up by the others. ‘Go off and enjoy yourselves, have a good time by the sea! Don't worry about a thing! Goodbye, goodbye!'

Alex had the back door of the car open for them and Una did not look back, for she could not bear to see faces that were not Small Henry's. All she could manage was a wan smile when she settled in the back seat. She dropped her head so that her hat became a blue mushroom and all an anxious Edwards could see was a piece of jawline which looked rebellious in spite of the anxiety occupying the remainder of her face. He put a hand on a fold of her dress on the seat, a blue silk she had made for the going away, not brave enough to take her hand seeing the tense curling of her fingers.

She turned large accusing eyes on him. ‘I left him sick,' she said. ‘He won't get better without me.'

Edwards looked away to the swiftly flying trees beside the road. All through the ceremony he had wanted to have his mother there.

God is wisest after all, he told himself. It is just as well she wasn't.

37

They were in a guesthouse high above the sea where they were taken to their room by the owner, Mrs Chance, who modestly lowered her eyes at the sight of the bed covered with a counterpane so white and crisply laundered it seemed a sacrilege to disturb it. But Una threw her hat on it and went to the window to gaze at the sea. Edwards saw with relief her hands linked behind her were no longer tense. Mrs Chance waited in vain for compliments on the room, for she had brought in a small table and covered it with a white cloth for them to have breakfast in private if they wanted it and she had two bowls of flowers on the mantelpiece, although heaven knows they were hard enough to come by in the January heat. She went off in a huff resolving not to put herself out further.

The moment she was gone Una flung herself around, her small face brighter than the yellow daisies.

‘Did you see it?' she cried. Edwards didn't know what, except that she was happy again. ‘The telephone in the hall when we came in! A telephone! We can telephone Rachel and she can go across to Violet's and see how Small Henry is!' He hoped his face did not give away his instant thought on the cost.

‘Jack gave me some money before we left,' she cried, having read him correctly. ‘Don't worry about that part!'

‘I wasn't worried about that part,' said Edwards with dignity. ‘I'm pleased to have you set your mind at rest.' He sat on the one chair, looking at his thighs, hoping she would come and sit on his knee.

A woman had never sat on his knees.

He felt his flesh creep a little now, ready to leap into contact with those round little buttocks in the slippery, flowered silk. He could put a hand up under it and move the hand around her underthings. He could do that if he wanted to!

He stood, hands on the chair arms, and saw her sink onto the window seat cupping a glum face in her hands. She raised her knees wrapped in her skirt and laid her chin on them, an untouchable figure rocking herself there with the blue sea, triangular shaped, seeming to sit on one shoulder.

‘After tea we'll telephone,' he said.

She looked at her feet in their new brown shows rubbed carelessly together. She was casual with her fine things. He was ashamed of the thought that followed of Enid, taking scrupulous care of hers. ‘They will just say he is better,' she said. ‘They will keep the truth from me.'

‘The truth most likely is he is better,' Edwards said, fighting an urge to be short with her. This was his honeymoon, for heaven's sake!

‘Come for a walk by the sea before teatime,' he said. He did not say before bed although he looked at it. Una creased her eyes towards it too, then rose with a sigh and smoothed her skirt.

‘That's a good girl,' he said, putting a hand out to her.

‘Should I put different clothes on?' she said. He dropped his hands. He had barely felt the stuff of her silk dress. She lifted her case to the bed and opening it began to take things out in little heaps. There was a shower of ribbons falling from the first heap and then a larger garment, white and lacy, which she tossed on the pillow.

‘We unpack,' she said. ‘That's what we do first.'

His case was older and shabbier than hers and he was acutely aware of its lightness. He put it across the chair and with his back to her took out the shirts and vests Mrs Watts had ironed for him. He should have put his woollen jumper in. It would have taken up some of the space. He saw her hang her things in the wardrobe leaving a half for him. He did not need it. But how to tell her?

‘Spread your things out so they won't crush,' he said, opening a drawer in a big chest. ‘I'll lay my things out in here.' The drawer made a hollow noise when he shut it and he felt she could not fail to notice it was almost empty.

But I am a man of God, he told himself. It is only right I live more frugally.

But he remembered Alex's back in the tweed motoring coat, the crisp edge of his shirt and his jaunty cap. I haven't a motor, so those things would not be of any use to me, he thought. But he was not comforted.

Una took two dresses from the wardrobe and looked critically at each, then threw one on the bed and jabbed the other back. She crossed her arms and lifted the blue silk over her head and he saw her white neck and shoulders and the little crushed ribbons at the top of her breasts. So that's where they went!

He smiled at them but she got into her other dress quickly, new too, white dotted closely with navy blue and with a big white collar, a sort of sailor dress, suitable he supposed for the seaside.

The people were right. She was a fashion plate but he loved her for it, and it was too early to start worrying about where future clothes would come from. She had made herself enough, he supposed, to last a long time.

She snapped a small purse shut now, one on a long chain he hadn't seen before and this disturbed him too. The bag of creamy-coloured leather shaped like a large envelope which she carried with her from the house after the wedding sat on the dressing table with some pots and jars. Goodness, he had thought it would be one bag for one woman.

He had a lot to learn, he could see, and felt terribly inadequate that all he could do in preparation was to brush at his coat with his fingertips and smooth down his hair with his hands.

She went out of the room ahead of him, sauntering down the wide hall filled with the smell of the evening meal cooking, something savoury, Edwards could detect with rising spirits.

Mrs Chance put her head out of one of the doors and her bold eyes asked if they had spent the time in the bedroom at you-know-what.

No, we didn't, said Edwards's bold eyes in reply.

And if you ask me, said his back passing through the front door and crossing the verandah to meet the sparkling sea, it's quite a way off yet.

Una had her small chin raised as they walked through the town which was a cluster of shops just past the wharf where the fishing boats came in. There was the smell of fish, tempered by the sharp salt smell of the water. A rough bank ran between the wharf and the first shop, which had a narrow front and backed over the water at high tide. It sold among other things sweets and fruit, the latter displayed in a glass dish in the centre of the window, wrinkled oranges and speckled bananas that did not look inviting and from which rose a cloud of little insects. There was a handwritten notice behind the fruit that said the shop also sold teas.

Next door was a shop with a similar front that sold harness and the smell of new leather wafted out as they passed it. Edwards was glad to reach it. He feared Una might have wanted to go into the other and have tea at one of the little tables.

His mother had sent him money for a wedding present, and he had saved only some of it to meet honeymoon expenses, having been tempted to buy a bathing costume while in Bega to arrange for the marriage and receive gratefully the modest increase in his stipend.

He looked forward to wearing the costume, a plain black wool, deciding something untrimmed was more suitable to his calling in life.

He had seen Una in her green one when they went to the seaside in the Austin for a picnic soon after the engagement. Enid had not changed but sat with him on a sandy shelf made by a jutting rock and watched the sea run eagerly up into the channels and back again, leaving foam like a long white moustache stained with coffee.

Una, embarrassed at giving him his first view of her long and creamy legs and arms and quite a bit of back too, stood dipping a foot into the water. Edwards was beginning to think the costume a waste of money when she took a sudden plunge in, splashing Enid's stockings and his clerical trousers, for the excursion had followed a Sunday morning service.

‘Dear me, that was sudden,' said Edwards, noting that Una did not call out an apology but went swimming off, turning her face from side to side, her hair streaming out like a mermaid's.

‘She is given to doing things suddenly,' Enid said.

‘Of course,' Edwards said. ‘It's part of her charm.'

‘Of course,' Enid said, lifting her chin and looking not at Una but out to sea.

Now Una was up to her suddenness again. She stopped and he found himself a few paces ahead before he realized it. Turning he saw her staring at the Post Office, legs apart, hands on hips, her bag dangling carelessly from one.

‘Look!' she said, frowning towards a recess in the porch front. He was a little slow but he saw eventually a telephone behind a glass door. She gave him a brilliant smile.

‘We can ring Rachel!' she cried. She snapped open her purse and he heard coins tinkle as she dipped it to one side. He drew some from his pocket and stared at them. He was still holding them when she opened the door of the recess and stood waiting for the ring. She looked like a nervous boy in a sailor suit afraid he was not welcome at a party. After several minutes the postmaster, a rotund man with glasses well down on his nose, opened a door showing a small switchboard he was obviously tending and told Una there was no answer from the Wyndham Post Office. He looked Edwards over before closing the door as if undecided about connecting him with Una. Edwards was still gently shaking the money in his closed hand. Una heard the noise.

‘There is nothing to pay,' she said, running down the steps, sounding scornful. She walked rapidly off as if eager to get the Post Office away from her and appeared from the direction she was taking to intend returning the short way back to the guesthouse. He was blowed if he would follow like a chastened pup, he thought, stopping as she was about to plunge through a thicket of dogwood.

‘We made a slide once when we were here on holidays and slid down that hill!' she called, needing to shout, for the wind was humming around her and about to rise and sweep the slope with a tearing force.

‘Come!' he shouted, inclining his head towards the road. ‘We can walk up the hill another time, if you insist on being blown into the sea!' She reached down before joining him and pulled burrs and twigs from her ankles, as if to say she was in agreement only to protect her clothes.

They walked for a while nearly side by side, and then he reached forward and took her hand, which was slack in his for a while, then warmer, then the tips of her fingers scratched gently at his palm and he considered swinging it joyfully but didn't quite dare. He saw her mouth stretched to deepen the indent at the corners and the wide brim of her navy blue hat – how many did she own? – throwing a lacy pattern on her cheek. Her knees threw her skirt in and out, moving so fast there was this continual whoosh, following the tap of her feet on the gravel. They were speaking. Her skirt on her knees, her feet on the road, her sharp little breath, all saying something. She glanced back sometimes over her shoulder and it seemed to him she was running from the past into her new life, charging forward with some misgivings but in the main prepared to meet it head on.

About them there was nothing. Nothing, nothing. Some white sky relieved by trees that went on forever. Someone was here once! They made this road. Edwards scraped his foot on it to make sure. She had stopped, and he stopped too, wanting to stride up level with her, but not lest it draw attention to his always lagging behind.

Will she always be ahead, he thought, or I those few paces behind?

They rounded a bend and a cart came towards them pulled by a horse whose feet made clopping noises, the cart rattling and the wheels squeaking. A man was driving. He may have been young, but he was grey with dust, blending into the grey cart which held, apart from him, a heap of slack corn bags. There was a shine on his trousers, with grease, not with newness and even the bits of scrappy leather tying his boots resting on the shafts were greasy too.

He stopped the cart and a myriad flies rose in delight from the horse's rump and settled on the boots, running and darting, the sun twinkling on their wings and bringing a shine to the grease. Edwards put out his hand to shake the man's but the man gave his head a small shake and clung to the reins with his eyes clinging to Una. She had taken off her hat and swung it on her hand, the crown spinning so no flies came near her.

He ran his eyes over her hair as if it were food tempting him. She smiled and shook it, then moved her hat up so that her eyes shone just over the crown and she rocked her body just slightly like a shy actor about to perform from a stage.

‘Good afternoon,' Edwards said, raising his hat, and the man jerked his eyes back to him as if he needed to be reminded where he was, and the horse took the movement as a signal to walk on, which he did, Edwards needing to step back smartly to avoid being trampled on.

Una slapped the top of her hat onto her head.

‘Let's run!' she cried and took off, he following, straining to keep up, his black trousers and her brown stockings quickly covered with fine dust. At the gate of the guesthouse, which swung freely, for the earth beneath was hollowed by wheels and feet, they stopped, dusting themselves down and laughing.

But when Una raised her eyes and saw the house she frowned. It sat there like a man fallen asleep with a pipe in his mouth.

She is thinking about telephoning, he thought. Well there have been some good parts so far, and for those I must be grateful. Keep it up, God, and if it's not asking too much, spin it out a little. Thanks.