Loving Daughters (23 page)

44

Violet refused outright to allow it.

‘I've got him into a good routine now,' she said to them both in her kitchen next day.

Her chair partly blocked off Small Henry's doorway, enabling her to guard it and keep an eye on the bush through the back door.

At the end of the table there was a mound of bread which gave off an appetizing, if slightly sour smell. It seemed to be waiting also for Ned.

Edwards began to think of their bread. They had brought some from Honeysuckle, but it would run out soon. Would she set a bread-making pattern, baking on certain days as other Wyndham women appeared to? He saw her hands lightly holding her elbows. He could not visualize them buried in flour, and to his own surprise he did not care for the thought.

‘When he's older, perhaps,' Violet said.

Una lifted her chin with one of her small elegant snorts. Her long fingers tapped in agitated fashion her upper arms. She stood with a sweep of her hands on her skirt.

‘I do like your hat,' Violet said.

‘It's quite my favourite too,' Edwards said, fixing his eyes on the cherries.

Una went quite fast through the back door and Edwards, though he was unhappy about it, had only time to make a large nod in Violet's direction and follow.

‘Come, walk a little slower and enjoy the scenery,' he said. At that moment his horse, tossing his mane to wave off flies, parted his back legs, raised his tail and from the dark wrinkled lips of his anus there flopped a pile of green dung moulding itself into a steaming heap on the ground.

Una stood like a tourist giving the scene rapt attention. Edwards looking for distraction saw their lavatory. Those wretched things! They seemed always to bend a little to one side like someone with a physical handicap of which they were ashamed. He would need to empty the can inside more frequently now. There is no end to my woes, he said to himself, seeing her little bottom quivering under her skirt in her hurry to keep ahead of him.

She went straight to their bedroom when they reached the rectory, and he to the church to say evening prayers.

He had dreamed of her kneeling in one of the pews, he at the altar exquisitely distracted, the moment coming closer all the time when he would turn and find her. He had to fight a feeling now that God had let him down as he knelt on the thin strip of carpet and averted his eyes from the abandoned birds' nests where the roof did not quite meet the wall.

When he stood and dusted off his knees she was there. She had made no sound coming in. Her face was bowed to such an angle he saw all the cherries on her hat at once. Her eyes were shut so he could allow the joy to wash over his face uninhibited.

The lovely thing! If only his mother could see this.

He tiptoed down the aisle until level with her, but she did not open her eyes or cease the rapid movement of her lips. He saw the passion in her trembling shoulders.

Outside beckoned him. It was a relief to be there. The sunlight was more honest.

As if he had no wife he set about getting the evening meal himself.

She gave the briefest glance at the dining table, which he was setting, on her way to the bedroom, and he wondered if she would go to bed without eating. Nothing would surprise me, he thought, putting their new cruet to the centre of the table, reminded of Enid. He studied the edges of the white damask cloth to see if it was level. Thank heavens I'm getting something right, he told himself, loving the shine on the cutlery and serviette rings. Elegance has returned to my life, even if I am in charge of it. He cocked his head on one side, seeing that the knives and forks were straight.

He looked in the pantry for some food. He opened a jar of preserved quinces and tipped them into a dish and found some tomatoes ripening on the window sill. They seemed too beautiful to cut, the skin smooth as a girl's, and in the end he arranged them on a plate and took them in with some cheese and the last half load of bread.

She came out of the bedroom then, shutting the door with a snap as if to lock her private thoughts from him. He waited, listening to her making noises in the kitchen, realizing after a while she was stoking the fire and getting the kettle to boil, something that had escaped him entirely. Dear me, dear me, he said to himself waving off the flies, remembering the sprigs of mint Enid scattered on the Honeysuckle table to deter those penetrating the back screen door.

When they began to eat, he suggested to Una that they grow some mint. No doubt there would be some to be dug up at Honeysuckle for transplanting.

‘No doubt my sister will provide you with all the mint you require,' she said, taking small bites of her quinces, obviously deciding this was all she would have.

‘Could we go that way tomorrow?' he said amiably.

‘What about the Grubbs and the Robertsons? I thought they topped the list of those in need of spiritual guidance.'

He took a nectarine from their bowl of fruit, running his thumb over some hard green patches, relieving the soft pinky red. You take the sweet with the sour, he thought, dragging it apart under her watching eyes.

‘You will come with me, whichever way I go?' he said.

‘I shall see,' she said, getting up and taking up the silver teapot snapped the lid open and shut as she went to the kitchen.

When he woke next morning he heard her moving about in what he thought was the room she made ready for Small Henry. When he got up he discovered her in the room beyond, where she had put her sewing machine, a table from the lumber room at Honeysuckle and her easel. There were other odds and ends there and she was sorting these and obviously getting the room in order to work in. She had a sketching pad and pencils on the table. Working with energy, she seemed capable of, and indeed planning to, use physical strength to get Small Henry to pose for his picture.

But to his relief she said she was going to make sketches of him at Violet's and paint from those.

‘I'll suggest she nurses him while I draw,' she said.

He stepped over the suitcases she had taken on their honeymoon and put his arms around her.

‘To hear you say that makes me so proud,' he said. She dug her chin so deeply in his shoulder he marvelled at her strength and needed all his to avoid sagging under the force.

She went passive soon afterwards and he released her body, waiting to leap back into its former activity.

He went out, trying to decide whether to go to the church for morning prayers or light the kitchen stove. ‘I'll do both!' he said aloud, reverting to his old habit. ‘And for the first time in my life I might make porridge without lumps! By George, I feel I can do it!'

He went alone to Honeysuckle. He fought a sense of uneasiness when they were parting, she with her sketch pad and pencils and he with his Bible. He was determined not to see it as a pointer to their future life. But it was best for her to adjust to visiting Small Henry, and who knows, she may come to be satisfied with that.

It was a sunny optimistic sort of day, and Edwards whipped up his horse, who ducked its head deeply and gave a great snort to say things are back to the old way, are they? And it's no surprise to him and glad he was to leave her behind. He threw out his knuckly knees and paced away with spirits akin to those of Edwards.

There were no Anglican families to visit between St Jude's and Honeysuckle, causing Edwards pangs of guilt. When I return though, I might persuade her to come with me to see the Grubbs, he thought. He could not face the little Grubb girl without Una to show her. He slapped his horse with the reins to race away from a vision of Small Henry placed tenderly in the little Grubb girl's arms.

Enid came down the steps at Honeysuckle with an expression on her face which he read as concern for the absence of Una.

‘I have been banished while she does some little jobs on her own!' Edwards said, believing it to be the truth.

She swung the gate open to admit him. ‘But you won't be able to stay to dinner!' she said, running up the steps ahead of him and hurrying to the kitchen for she must have left her cooking pots at a crucial time.

He stopped in the living room, feeling a lesser right now to invade her kitchen. She was back with him almost immediately, with her apron off and her hair smoothed down, and he could see she was not unhappy with her appearance. Her dress was a fine striped cambric with a deep organdie collar which Una had made, but he was not to know this. She may have been expecting me, he thought. I mean us.

‘We do thank you most sincerely for arranging the furniture and everything else you did,' he said, crossing his legs and noticing her glance on his thighs. Then he saw her lifted brows asking a question.

‘She was quite happy with it,' he said.

The smoothing of the stuff of her dress on her knee was another question.

‘We are settling in quite satisfactorily,' he said, dusting off his knees unnecessarily. ‘There are no real difficulties. Except to grow some mint. For the flies, you know.'

He saw her little smile in the cool and flyless room. ‘In fact I had thought about starting a garden quite some time before –' he said. ‘I remember planning to come and see you one day for three reasons.'

She looked down surprised to see no movement of the cambric over her rapidly beating heart.

‘One was a cat to drink my spare milk.' She smiled, loving this.

‘Another was your advice on digging and planting.'

He stood and she took in all his face, disguising nothing on her own.

He forgot for the moment the third one and when he remembered it was Small Henry's christening he could not find the words.

He decided to keep the image of her face to return to throughout the rest of his life.

45

Una was digging some ground by their tankstand to plant the mint when he got back. ‘By George, I'm glad I remembered it,' he said, hauling it from the sulky with some new baked bread, plums and peaches, some round oatmeal biscuits Edwards was dying to get his teeth into and a dressed chicken.

Una flung the spade down and planted the trailing roots of the mint to catch the drip from the tap, and inside, in a housewifely manner Edwards admired greatly, put the food away. She had made the place neat in his absence, and he inquired of her face, on which there was no trace of discontent, what had happened about the sketching.

‘I made the drawings and she cooperated remarkably well,' Una said, lifting a ring of the stove to put the kettle on the heat and hurry their dinner along. Things were taking an upward turn he thought, enjoying the sight of her back with her crossed apron strings and the tie at her slim waist, all remaining amazingly neat while she bent and stretched at stove and dresser.

‘But you can't see, I must warn you,' she said, closing the dresser doors with her tipped back head, for her arms were full of their new plates and cups. He did not mind.

‘I will go again tomorrow and the day after to sketch some more, then do the painting,' she said.

He stood and took the china from her hand and kissed her mouth. ‘I couldn't be more proud,' he said tremulously.

One afternoon a week later he found her frowning in the kitchen as she washed her hands in a bowl with her brushes lined up on the table to be washed too. The painting was obviously done. He was relieved, but all things considered, the week had not been intolerable. Only one bad patch and that was about midweek when they had chairs on their verandah and Violet came out of her gate wheeling Small Henry in a new perambulator.

Edwards saw the stiffening of Una's body and heard her breath being stifled in her throat while she wrapped her arms about her chest as if to stop herself leaping forward.

They watched Violet steering the pram carefully over the ruts on the roadside, not looking their way.

‘She said nothing yesterday about getting that!' Una cried. Edwards said he had seen the mail car stop and the driver drop something over Violet's gate that morning. Dear me, he thought, I'm as bad as the rest of them! He watched Una biting her thumb then squeezing it with the other hand, narrowing her eyes on Violet's receding back. She rose abruptly and went to the room she was now openly calling her studio and closed the door with a sound that clearly said don't follow. She may well tear that painting to shreds, Edwards said to his distressed self.

But she didn't. In a couple of hours she was out of the artist's smock she had kept from schooldays and into the apron he liked and doing something different with their eggs for tea.

‘By Saturday I will be done,' she said, and he had to acknowledge a small chill of fear. How would she occupy herself then? He took up a magazine on loan from Honeysuckle to read while she set the table, deciding he would not worry about it until after Saturday.

‘I will be the first to see it then?' he said, surprised at the surge of jealousy he felt should she say no. The congregation had improved on the Sundays following the honeymoon, which did not surprise Edwards or excite him. Perhaps they are thinking of seeing a consummation on the front pew, he told himself. When it was no longer a novelty to see Una at the rectory the numbers would revert, he felt sure, to the few of pre-marriage days.

The door of the studio was not closed on the painting on the Sunday morning after it was finished.

But taking a look inside, passing through the little hall, he saw she had thrown a cloth over the easel.

‘Patience, patience!' she said gaily to him in good humour, anticipating the attention of the congregation at the morning service, dressed for it in a frock of biscuit coloured fabric matching the hat with the cherries. Both were on show in church for the first time and she was giving the hat several little shakes, practising the wobbling of the cherries to raise envy among the plain Robertson girls in the pew behind hers.

George brought Enid in the sulky a good half-hour before the service was to start, Enid with flowers for both the church and the house, spreading them out on the kitchen table with Una running for church vases and those given for wedding presents.

‘Look, Colin!' she called. ‘She has brought us half her garden!' He paused and smiled, dressed in his surplice ironed even more carefully than Mrs Watts's effort, liking the look of himself too and the approval in Enid's eyes, raised briefly from the roses and maidenhair fern. It took her hands a little while to get working again, affected as they were at hearing Una's free use of his Christian name.

George spent the half-hour at Violet's, given grumblingly a cup of tea and a wedge of her orange peel cake, the dryness of which escaped him.

Ned was home, having established a new routine of spending three days at Halloween, then returning to Albert Lane for food supplies. This time he brought sheets and towels, dumping them on the washhouse floor. She was torn between annoyance at the extra work and some small pleasure that Ned's hygiene was improving.

‘It might occur to him to bring the water as well!' she said. ‘The tanks are low with the baby's washing –' Then she pulled herself up, fearing the complaint might reach Una's ears. George read her thoughts in part.

‘Is she,' he said, inclining his head in the direction of the rectory, ‘takin' him off your hands now and again?'

Violet's chair creaked with the stiffening of her body. ‘I'm not having him wondering where his home is!' she said.

George acknowledged the wisdom of this with a sweep of his eyes around the kitchen and a small and secret dream that it was his too. He asked a question of the closed door and it answered that Small Henry was down for his long morning sleep. He wouldn't have minded a game with the little tyke since Alex wasn't around to take over as soon as he got him laughing. Violet and him and the little bloke!

Ned came through the hall from the front verandah carrying a chair from the pile of discarded furniture.

‘I see!' Violet said. ‘Just the thing for watching the night life from the verandah of Halloween!'

An arm of the chair swung downwards as Ned set it down, and George was shown wordlessly how a connecting piece of wood had broken in a socket leaving a portion embedded there.

Violet took up Small Henry's bathtub from the table and flung the contents on the roots of the lemon tree, causing the fowls to frantically throw themselves against the wire.

‘Nothing coming your way that I know of!' she said, dumping the tub in the washhouse. ‘But you exercise your vocal chords, I'll say that for you!

‘I'll tell you!' Violet said, back in the kitchen where Ned had the chair under one arm and George was standing too in mournful observation of it. ‘If it wasn't for the yelling of Small Henry I'd be taking myself off to Bega to get tested for deafness!'

‘I'll fix it after church,' George said. Violet was calmer. Ned would take himself and the chair off to Halloween and she and Small Henry could go to Honeysuckle with George and Enid in the sulky. That would be a way of filling in the afternoon. Una would not be there for this was the one Sunday in four that Edwards took a service directly following the one at St Jude's in the Burragate school several miles away. Una would accompany him. Good riddance to her too. Nursing Small Henry for half an hour to get what she called ‘a feel of his little body'.

‘I'll do the nursing and you do the drawing,' Violet had told her, letting his legs sprawl on her own thighs while she sat near the back door, able to keep an eye out for Ned should he emerge from the bush.

But she did not go to Honeysuckle, nor did Una go with Edwards to Burragate.

George in the end took Edwards in his sulky to save the time Edwards would have to spend in harnessing up his horse. This turn of events caused Dolly to snort with a backward swing of her head towards Edwards's horse, placidly sniffing at grass under his tree with nothing more arduous to do but switch flies from his tail and mane.

What happened in Violet's kitchen sparked off the change in plans.

After the service in St Jude's, Edwards and Una walked with George and Enid to Violet's with the picture in a temporary frame, wrapped in a piece of old sheeting Enid had thoughtfully added to the linen cupboard in the rectory.

Edwards carried the picture and Una held his other arm, her red lips smiling under the cherries.

Enid was not quite in line with the others, back a pace or two so that she could study undetected Edwards's strong jaw and thick dark hair. She thought of it lying on one of the pillowslips she had made fragrant with lavender. She saw Una with her chin raised to see better under the brim of her hat and marvelled that she seemed unconcerned with what was hers.

They trooped into Violet's kitchen with the exception of George, who went to work on the chair on the back verandah. His hang dog air temporarily banished, he walked with a spring in his step to collect tools from the washhouse. Then he gouged at the wood in the socket, blowing out the fragments with puffed out cheeks. He would have the job done in no time. The pity of it was Ned would carry the chair off to Halloween and have it disintegrate in the weather beating onto the exposed verandah. He would like Violet in it, her round arms on the chair arms and her hands hanging loose as he liked to see them.

A cry from Violet shocked him into dropping the chisel. Ned sitting on the verandah edge swung around with his good and bad eye and his mouth forming three expressionless circles.

George went to see.

Una was at the corner of the table with the picture balanced there, her long white arms supporting it. The others were in various poses of horror and disbelief.

Small Henry looked from the canvas with large eyes black and pleading. A hand was stretched forward spread out to become a quarter of the picture. Violet's chin and mouth showed at the top of the canvas. Her great arms and thighs held Small Henry like logs of wood. They were a pen locking him in, and Una had given the flesh a greyish colour like ageing timber, hard as granite.

‘The little bloke's eyes are blue,' was all George could find to say.

Una looked down on the picture rather like peering with curiosity into a deep well.

‘Paintings shouldn't be pretty,' Una said. ‘They should say something. You agree, don't you, Colin?'

Enid, wishing she didn't, raised her eyes to Edwards from her seat on the edge of a kitchen chair. He put a finger inside his collar as if it needed loosening and stretched his brown jaw and she knew nothing else but that she loved him. She pleated between thumb and forefinger the material of her dress on her knee.

Edwards swung his head to see the time on Violet's clock. There was barely time to reach Burragate in time for the service.

Then Small Henry gave a shout from his room and all heads were jerked up but Violet's. Una loosened her hold on the picture as if there was another use for her arms. Violet allowed the smallest smile to touch the corners of her mouth. George saw. That's better, that's better. She had been standing holding a chair back and now her fingers loosened and actually rippled up and down on the wood as if it were a piano keyboard.

‘Do excuse me,' she said and went to the dresser behind Edwards, forcing him to duck to avoid being slapped with the suddenly opened door.

She took out a bottle and dumped it firmly on the kitchen table. ‘If you don't mind,' she said, gesturing lightly with her elbow towards the painting. Edwards removed it swiftly and laid it against his trouser leg. That was a wonderful thing to do, Enid thought, and standing gave him the sheeting.

‘Thank you,' he murmured, placing it carefully across the frame. Una looked almost disinterested, as if it was something done so long ago she had forgotten it. She lifted her head higher with Small Henry's yelling.

Edwards watched in agony for the tears to fill her eyes and run over her cheeks. He saw how tightly she held her little bag at the corner of the table.

Violet held Small Henry's bottle in a basin of hot water, lifting it out to shake a little on her wrist, then dipping it back in again, swirling the milk almost lazily. She wore the smallest smile, listening to the shrieking from Small Henry's room as if it were a favoured piece played on a piano.

She decided the bottle was right and, holding it aloft, left the door into the hallway and that into Small Henry's room wide open after she passed through them. Small Henry stopped a yell, trailed it off and turned it into a crow. The kitchen heard the cot rattle as he flapped his arms and pumped his legs up and down.

Una rushed from the room to tear across the paddock to the rectory. Two families beside their buggies saw her billowing skirt and frantically bobbing hat. My goodness! The women, who had been hot and irritated by the continued talk between the men, saw compensations for the delay.

This was a turn of events if ever there was one. A minister's wife racing like a furious boy, throwing out her feet in their good shoes, not minding the clods and manure and dead pieces from the big gum under which Edwards's horse raised his head in surprise, and amazed further to see Edwards running behind George to the front, where Dolly in the Herbert sulky was hitched to a telegraph post.

Edwards carrying something in a white cloth stopped and turned and cut Enid off in her run to the rectory, although she straightened up and slowed down in dignified fashion when she saw the buggies moving off with such reluctance the horses began to step backwards, wondering if this was expected of them.

Edwards passed the thing in white to Enid with a plea in his brown eyes to do the best she could to console Una. I will, I will, Enid's eyes said back. Anything you ask. I am mad, mad!

With no one else in sight now she ran to the rectory, barely aware it was she who was left to carry the picture.