Loving Daughters (22 page)

42

‘Alright,' Violet said grudgingly. ‘But only for a little while. He has a bottle at five o'clock.' She looked at the clock as if it had some way of confirming this.

Una wrapped her arms around Small Henry and peered into his face. It was already alerted to something going on for his benefit and involving the doorway, towards which he screwed his head and stuck out a hand.

‘He knows so much!' Una cried. ‘He knows he's going somewhere!'

‘Well, make sure he's back from somewhere in time for his feed and bed!' Violet did not see them off but took up the fowl buckets and went off on that errand, glancing into the bush for signs of Ned, her conscience troubled more than usual since he had gathered up extra eggs and the last of his war souvenirs when he found Small Henry back at Albert Lane.

‘Oh, stay away, stay away, stay away!' she cried, able to shout as loud as she liked, the words drowned by the squawking of the fowls. Out of the corner of her eye she allowed herself a glimpse of the shrinking backs of Edwards and Una, with Small Henry's head like a small round sun between them.

She went into his room and remade his cot, turning the covers back ready for his body, and returning to the kitchen looked hard at the clock, doubting the slow moving hands.

Una took Small Henry straight into the room they had set in order and laid him on Edwards's former bed, loosening his clothing, and to Edwards's surprise she unpinned Small Henry's napkin and pinned it on him again.

‘Just as well she didn't have you all wet!' she said, gathering him up. ‘We'll show him everything, shall we?'

Edwards felt she was addressing Small Henry not him. She took Small Henry's hand and placed it on the foot and head of the bed and on the washstand, letting it run over the jug and wash basin and towel rail which he gripped and pulled at.

‘That's where we hang his towel that wipes his beautiful face!' she cried. She took him to the window and tickled his face with the tassel of the blind. He laughed so loud Edwards found himself smiling and Una darted to his side and with what arm she could spare wrapped it around him, and Small Henry, not having paid much attention to him up to now, became shy and lowered his lashes to turn them into tiny fans on his cheeks and lowered the corners of his mouth as well.

Edwards took his foot and shook it. ‘I'll go and open up the church and air it,' he said.

Una took a hand of Small Henry and wagged it at Edwards's back. ‘Ta-ta Papa! Ta-ta Papa!' she called.

There was just the slightest pause in his step, the smallest stiffening of the back of his neck, and Una might not have noticed for she found a peak of hair growing downwards at the back of Small Henry's neck which she could blow about with her kisses.

When Edwards returned to the rectory he heard voices raised in the kitchen. Violet was there telling Una it was nearly a quarter past five.

‘We haven't wound and set the new clock yet!' Una was saying. He came inside to see Una making no signs of passing Small Henry over.

‘That's something he can watch us do!' she said. ‘Come on, we'll fix up the clock since Auntie Violet has told us what time it is!'

She went off to the front room and Violet found a chair as if her frustrations were too much for her. Edwards looked at the stove as if surprised it was not burning since someone else was in the house now beside himself. ‘I should get that going, I suppose,' he said.

Violet with a hand on each of her large knees snorted. ‘You'll be the one to get it going if there's any hope of you eating tonight!' she said.

‘Enid gave us cold meat for our tea,' Edwards said, cold too.

‘May she keep it up! That's all I can say!'

Una's voice floated in to them explaining the workings of the clock, and in spite of himself Edwards's mouth and eyes began to smile. Violet stood and shoved her chair under the table.

‘If she stays there much longer he'll be old enough to tell the time himself!' Then in a louder voice: ‘Come on, come on! Enough is enough! He'll be looking for this every afternoon!'

Una sauntered into the kitchen with him, her arms wedged to his gown, her face pressed to his face and her eyes hidden from them. Violet clapped her hands together and held them out but Una swung Small Henry in the opposite direction and went through the back door saying she would carry him. Violet with an angry mouth followed, and Edwards went as far as the woodheap, kicking some chips together, then gathering them up to take to the kitchen.

Opening the stove door he found that Enid had laid a fire and all he had to do was put a match to it. It leaped to life in a way that he could never achieve and he was sitting watching it when the kettle, which Enid had filled, began to sing and Una came in.

He sprang up as if she had caught him out, but she kept her face averted and went to their bedroom and closed the door with a finality that made the house seem in two parts. When the kettle boiled he made tea and served himself a plate of meat and pickles and cut a round of bread and ate at the kitchen table.

‘Like old times,' he said aloud, picking up his knife and fork.

Una appeared before he was finished and he sliced her some meat too, noticing she had not bothered to comb her hair, used her fork only to pick at her food and shook her head at the round of bread he cut her which turned out more ill shaped than his own.

He would not mention Small Henry, he decided. There was something else to say surely! What would they do tomorrow? He would take the sulky and visit the Robertsons and the Grubbs. He thought with pleasure of her body falling gently against his as they sped along the flat part of the road.

They would take Small Henry. Yes, that would make her happy. She would have it to look forward to all morning until they set out after dinner. He would show Small Henry to the little Grubb girl. That was something he had always wanted to do.

He stole a look at Una's tight little face and wished it could have the innocence and peace of the Grubb child's. He put out a hand and closed it over the arm that supported her chin.

‘We shall go and make a few visits tomorrow, shall we?' he said.

‘A few visits! That would take us practically to Sydney, wouldn't it?'

‘We wouldn't want to travel too far,' he said. ‘With Small Henry.' She moved her arm and allowed her hand to slip into his. When she spoke her voice wobbled just slightly.

‘That woman drove her own husband from home with her bossiness!'

She rose with a sudden show of energy and took their plates and cups to the washing-up dish, shutting the stove door with her foot after putting more wood on and looking through the window at Violet's house as if she had resumed ties with it. He came to her side and together they watched the smoke rise from the chimney, curl and spread out and in a little while it could not be distinguished from the transparent clouds.

‘What did you do in the church?' she said. She cares, she cares. Thank God she cares!

‘Gathered up a few leaves that had blown in, otherwise it was alright,' he said.

Una fixed her gaze on the tips of his horse's ears under the bough of the big gum it had rubbed smooth. ‘The dead flowers removed, the vases polished, and the altar cloths washed and starched?'

Yes, that's the way it was. He turned from the window and took up the kettle and poured water in the dish over their tea things, and thought this was foolish of him, she would want to do it perhaps.

But she sauntered off to the bedroom and when he hung up the tea towel she was passing the window with a spade that he had failed to notice in the shed.

From the living room window he saw her attack a strip of ground parallel with the front verandah. He saw her bobbing head with its long stream of hair falling over her face then down her back and the rise of her thigh under the thin stuff of her dress, then the rise of her breasts and he watched for her to tire soon, ashamed at the thought that he would have.

He saw someone in a buggy on the road slowing it down to watch too, and withdrew from the window, feeling his manhood in jeopardy.

Sarah Hart, who kept a small herd and a lazy husband six miles the other side of Wyndham, was pleased at the sight. That's what she had said to Albert, the young one was not as flighty as people said. She could settle down and do everything the older one did. Still on her honeymoon and making a garden. Beat that! He had made the wisest choice after all.

Sarah whipped up her horse to get home to her delayed chores. He had chosen the prettiest and the best. The cunning bastard.

Edwards was saying much the same in a letter he was writing to his mother.

‘Dear Mother', he wrote, ‘I have certainly chosen wisely. My little bride of a week, where others might be fiddling with ribbons and laces and such fripperies, is out in the hot Australian afternoon making us a garden. We had a wonderful honeymoon. Bathing and long walks mostly. The guesthouse was very comfortable and the owner quite motherly. We got back today.'

(He crossed out the date at the top of the letter and made it the seventh day after the wedding.)

‘Tomorrow we go to make some visits neglected somewhat in the rush of the wedding and setting up the rectory. You should see the transformation. Everything fits in so well. Most generous wedding presents. Guess what we did as soon as we arrived? Fixed up the second bedroom. I live for the day when you will come.'

(He spread a hand across the words with his head raised checking that the digging continued.)

‘We just had tea, delicious cold meat we brought from Honeysuckle. You will be so happy that I no longer have to find my own meals. I will slip into the church before bed and thank God for his great blessings.'

Tears came to Edwards's eyes when he wrote this and he put down his pen and hurried out.

When he returned it was almost dark and she was sitting on the couch with her eyes swallowed by the shadows.

‘In that letter you wrote to your mother you did not mention Small Henry once. Not once did you say his name. Do you hate him?'

43

He tried his best to persuade Violet to allow them to have Small Henry for the afternoon, but Violet insisted the sun was too hot for him in the exposed sulky. He went back to the rectory to tell this to a mutinous Una.

‘We could try her again when it is cooler,' Edwards said.

‘Then it will be his bedtime according to her! Did you suggest she go off and find Ned, which is what she should be doing!

‘Those are the kind of things you should be doing I would think!' She slapped the new cushions she had made while they were engaged, tossing them back on the couch where they arranged themselves, Edwards saw, with the stencilled emus looking guardedly at each other.

‘Well, what do you say?' she said when he did not speak. He went and straightened the pad and ink where his letter was still exposed. He should finish writing it. But it seemed, since she had read it, not to be his any more.

He folded the pages back and on the first blank one wrote the date of Sunday when he would give his next sermon. She saw with eyes like pieces of brown glass slanted suddenly towards the sun.

‘What shall it be?' she said. Her amiable voice did not deceive him. He thought of eating a soft, sweet fruit, foolishly biting at the seed and filling his mouth with a bitter acid taste.

‘I could make some suggestions,' she said.

‘Yes, I believe you could,' he said. He stared at the white paper and felt his inside had the same emptiness. She slipped behind his chair and imprisoned his neck with her arms. He wanted to bite through the cotton of her dress and taste the flesh. She put her mouth on his forehead and flung her hair forward to cover his face.

‘Love Small Henry,' she said. ‘That's all I ask.'

He stood and held her, kissing her through her hair, holding it so that it remained a shield for her face. It shielded his face also. In a little while she broke away and rearranged her hair swiftly with her fingers.

‘Finish your letter,' she said. ‘It's quite a nice letter.' He sat again and turned the pages back to read his last sentence.

‘This is a shorter letter than usual,' he wrote, ‘but you will understand. Much love from us both.'

He saw where the corner of the table dented her skirt and he noticed it pushing at her crotch as she slid gently back and forth.

‘PS,' he wrote, ‘Small Henry is growing nicely and has a tooth.'

She straightened her clothes and caught up her little bag on a chair back. ‘We'll go for a little walk and post it, shall we?' she said. ‘I'll go and put my hat on.'

She returned in her hat with the cherries and he as a token of respect brushed his alpaca jacket down with his fingers. He worried about the letter. It was very short for the cost of sending it, but to leave it and write a longer one would mean wasting the envelope. These things did not appear to bother her, he thought with envy. He expected that sometime in the future it would have to be a subject for discussion.

In the Post Office Rachel looked them over to try and gauge from their bodies the activity of them in the privacy of their room. Dear me, Edwards thought, perhaps we should tell them right off.

They crossed the road on the way home to come directly to Violet's gate. The ruffle at the neck of Una's dress, the brim of her hat narrow at the back, her bunch of hair all said she was trying. He caught her waist, not caring that Rachel was watching them from the Post Office window. ‘We can call in if you like,' he said.

She shook her head so violently the cherries wobbled. ‘No!' she said, throwing the words behind her. ‘Five minutes with him is no use to me!'

What is it you want then? he said silently to her angry shoulder. Don't answer me? Don't tell me! Don't say it!

Inside he sat at the table and pulled the writing pad to him. After a while he raised his eyes to her hat. ‘Please take it off,' he said. ‘It disturbs me.' She was on the couch with her arms arranged as if she were in a drawing room full of guests.

Around them the house creaked in the stillness. The wind blew the curtain at the window so that for a moment there was a patch of bare road visible. She seemed, sitting there in her limp state, not to belong and he looked for some sign that she did, hastily past the vase of roses lest they bring Enid too forcibly into the room, to the outside where the spade lay slanted across the dug ground. It would be wonderful, he thought, if she would go out and take it up again and set up some sort of rhythm, as winding up a clock or lighting a fire brings a house to life. He looked about for something he might do, and would have liked to lay their new tapestry cloth on the dining table as was the practice at Honeysuckle between meals.

But he was not certain of the right side and it was sure to go on unevenly. He remembered the horror he experienced once when, turning back to the altar after the congregation had left the church, he saw the altar cloth barely touching one edge and hanging so generously on the other the hem scraped the floor. He righted it but imagined with a hot face the people tittering as they climbed into their buggies and Una looking for somewhere to collapse and laugh herself out.

He looked now at her face, so little of it showing below the brim of her hat, yet all that hunger and rebellion in the curve of her chin and mouth.

Would she never laugh again? Was it he who had wiped the joy from her face, like jerking a blind down on a sunny window?

He leaned across her and raised the blind for the day was fading. It emphasized the hollowness of the room and the blank walls, and at that moment a fading rose sent a scatter of petals to the table like a shower of tears. In one corner there was a little stack of her paintings.

‘Let's hang those,' he said, hoping she would have nails and things or knew their whereabouts.

It seemed minutes before the words registered. He saw the cherries duck then rise. ‘That is what I planned to do,' she said, terribly mournful.

He waited. ‘Paint him,' she said.

‘Well you still can!'

She stood and lifted the hat from her head. He looked her down, foolishly believing she might be naked.

‘Will you help me get him to paint him?' she said.

‘Of course I will!'

She put both arms around him. ‘You are beautiful, kind and good,' she said.

He gripped her shoulders quite hard to still the rocking motion she had set up.

The brim of her hat sawed gently at his forehead.

It isn't me she's holding, he thought, wondering if the chill of his body reached the flesh of her hands.

He released himself as politely as he could.