The Home Girls (21 page)

Arnold brought the wood and dropped it heavily into the wood box.

“Start the milking without me, Arnie!” Grammar said. “I've got to give Bernard his wash and sew some buttons on his clean shirt 'fore I dress him.”

On the couch Bernard wagged his head violently.

I stared into the stove. They had forgotten me already. I suffered because of them and they had forgotten me. Tomorrow would come and the cane from Sister Francis, and Hetty and Rose and Lilian under the pepper tree and me praying for the bell to go. Holy Mother, make it ring before they sày anything more. Holy Mother, don't let me cry. Tears began to run again.

“Stop bawling!” Pa said. “I said to stop bawling!”

I drew both hands down my sodden face. “A snake nearly bit me and Patterson's bull nearly got me!” I burst out.

They all stopped frozen still and open mouthed.

“Hear that!” Ma said. “She went the creek way!”

“That's how she got them scratched legs!” Grammar said.

“It wasn't Hetty Black at all. Haw, haw!” Arnold said.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Pa said.

“‘Hetty Black hit me with a briar stick',” Grammar mocked. “As if them nuns would let her!”

“A pack o' lies!” Ma said. “Is that all them nuns can teach her?”

“Hetty Black's growin' into a nice little thing,” Grammar said.

“She always says ‘Hullo, Mrs Wright' when she sees me at Mass.”

“Goin' the creek way!” Ma said, as if she still couldn't believe it.

“Leavin' school halfway through the day. She'll catch it tomorrow!” Grammar said.

“She'll catch it today,” Pa said. “She'll git a beltin' she won't forget in a hurry.”

“Well give her one then,” Ma said.

Pa said nothing.

“Git on with it!” Ma said. “Standin' there puffin' on a rotten cigarette. Wallop her now.”

Pa smoked with his head down.

“Look at him!” Ma said. “All talk and no acshun as usual! She went the creek way and near ruined them good shoes. Look at them!”

All eyes were on my dangling legs and the scarred boots.

“Get off that chair at once and go with Arnie and help him put that separator together!” Pa said.

“Yes, Pa,” I said leaping off the chair.

“‘Yes, Pa,'” Ma mocked. “Where's the wallopin' she was supposed to git?”

“You give it to her,” Pa said.

“Listen to him! ‘You give it to her.' He palms every job off he can on me. He'll soon be doin' nothin' but walkin' around rollin' cigarettes.”

“Go on!” Pa said to me.

I went. I flew into the bedroom and peeled off my tunic and my boots and got into an old torn cambric dress. I went out the front way to avoid passing through the kitchen. Running past the window I heard Grammar cackle. “She's going all right! She's runnin' faster 'an a stuck emu!”

Arnold was ahead. He slowed his pace and taking a stone bent sideways and threw it at a hen scratching in the beetroot patch. The stone spun cleanly, beautifully and the hen squawked and fluttered, racing away with wings almost level with the ground.

Alongside Arnold I took hold of the pocket of his old alpaca jacket. Over the dairy roof the sky was pink as if someone had spread it with apricot jam.

I sniffed. A dry sniff. My face was stiff. But dry. My eyes were cold around the edges. But dry.

“You stopped bawling?” Arnold said.

I had. It seemed years since I started but I had stopped last.

Pa was right.

You've got to stop sometime.

THE CHILDREN ARE COMING

There was just enough light in the bedroom for Ted to pick Joan out over the foot of his bed.

She had on her old slacks and pullover and with her head tipped to one side was brushing her long grey and blonde hair as if she couldn't wait to have done with it.

Ted snapped on the light at his bedhead. His round eyes in his round head sitting in a blue pyjama collar showed briefly before he snapped the light off and slipped down on his pillow again.

Joan began to pull the clothes from her bed.

“You needn't get up right away,” she said.

“Shut the door when you go out and I'll stay here for the rest of the day,” he said.

She smacked a pillow as if it were someone's bottom.

“Oh Ted,” she said.

“Stop saying ‘oh Ted.' Start saying ‘hey, you.' That's what I am when they're around.”

“Oh Ted,” she said again before she could stop herself.

There was a little more light in the room when the bed was made showing the outline of Ted, humped a little forward staring ahead. Joan sat on a chair, hands between her knees.

“Who's coming?” said Ted. He took his pipe from an ashtray near the bed and knocked it on the side of the table. Joan didn't actually wince, just breathed in a little sharply.

“Everyone,” she said.

Ted sucked on the lighted pipe. “I see. Everyone.”

“Oh Ted. You know what I mean.”

“Yes Joan, I know who everyone is.”

“I just meant all the children are coming,” she said, slightly wistful.

She got up to take some clothes from the chair back and hang them in the wardrobes.

“Lois too,” she said.

“You said everyone,” Ted said, quite sharp.

“Ferdinand will be along,” said Ted after a pause in a needling voice.

“Of course. And call him Phillip. That's his name.”

“Ferdinand. Full of bull,” said Ted.

“Annie's man. Your daughter Annie's man. Gentle and kind and honest. A good father, Ted.” The tremor in her voice was barely audible.

“They've got you well tutored, Joan.”

She took a jacket and a brush to the window and rubbed at the collar by the better light. “Are you going to do some things for me like giving the paths a good sweep?” she said in an amiable voice.

Ted didn't seem to hear.

“One of the great pleasures of my life once was to talk about my kids. One by one I've had to drop them as subjects.”

“You've made the choice,” said Joan.

“I'll never forget that day at the depot when I was telling Wally about Annie. I'd told him about Annie topping the secretarial class at college and now she had this great job. That night when I got home you brought out the brandy bottle and said ‘Drink this while I tell you about Annie. She's three months gone and she doesn't want to see the father any more. She's keeping the baby.'” He ran a thumb around the cold bow of his pipe. “Wally still asks me how's Annie going in that great job of hers.”

“That's a long time ago now Ted.”

“Yes. Four kids ago.”

Joan swung the jacket on a hanger and jabbed it on the wardrobe rail. “You repeat that story over and over. You know when Annie went to live with Phillip she chose to have her second baby. She had this terrible guilt complex because the first was an accident. She's a wonderful girl, Ted. Look how she took Phillip's two, loving and caring for them when their own mother walked out on them.”

“Swam out on them.”

“Oh, Ted.” Joan shut the wardrobe door with a snap. “Stop harping about that boat. Some people like living on a boat.”

“Remember Clive and June Harris? I picked this fare up the other day and it turned out to be Clive. We only had Annie when we knew them, remember? He asked about Annie and I said she was married. I couldn't say my daughter had four kids and wasn't married. Clive asked me where she lived and I said ‘Gunnumatta Bay.' He was impressed. He said ‘Close to the water?' and I said ‘Couldn't be closer mate. In fact she's right on top of it.'”

Joan sat on the chair again. “So they're not married. What's a slip of paper?”

Ted's voice was sad. “Joan, you're starting to talk like them.”

“I do talk to them, Ted.”

“I can't talk to Ferdinand. I was away sick the day they had Italian at school.”

“You were in Italy during the war. And you look on Phillip as if he came from Mars.”

“I was in Italy fighting against Ferdinand's relatives in the war.”

“I always thought they were on our side,” Joan said.

Ted put his pipe on the tray. “Every day you get farther and farther away from me, Joan.”

She got up and raised the blind a few inches. “Your old war's got nothing to do with Phillip. He's a nice boy if you would try and get to know him. Look how he loves little Kerry.”

“Which one's little Kerry?”

“You're being silly and insulting. Your first grandchild. Phillip loves her like his own. Try and remember there's a lot of love in that little house.”

“Boat.”

“All right then, boat!” Joan looked at her feet, hands between her knees again.

“Joan!” Ted said so suddenly she jumped. “Let's get away from it all.” She looked at him but his eyes were on the doorway as if he was planning soon to pass through it.

“Do you remember how I wanted to do something different when we were young?” he said.

“I remember. You wanted to buy a fishing boat and we were supposed to live in a tent on the banks of the Hawkesbury. Then you wanted to go to Lightning Ridge and dig for opals.

“We were supposed to live in a galvanized iron tank turned upside down. Or sideways. I just forget.”

“We nearly made it too. Only you said ‘I'm pregnant again. Isn't it wonderful?'”

“So it was. It made four, two boys and two girls. Think of all the people who dream of having the perfect family.”

“My advice to them is to keep it a dream.”

Joan's voice was wistful. “I wish you wouldn't talk that way.”

Ted put a short arm towards her with a stubby hand at the end. “If you really love me Joan come away with me. We could buy a little run down motel on the coast and do it up. We'd get a good price for the house and the taxi. We could work together, be together all the time. The two of us like it was in the beginning.” He started off quite casual, then had to curb his eagerness.

“I'd love it, Ted,” she said dreamily.

“Then what are we waiting for?” He sat up straight as if he would start moving that instant.

“No, we can't go just yet.”

“No,” Ted, body and voice sinking down as if it were the bed that anchored him. “You'll never leave them, Joan.”

Joan turned her toes in and leaned forward, young looking except for her worried face. “I would if they didn't need us. But just take Annie. They're saving for a house. Annie's got to work for a while. Who else would mind the children?”

Anger took charge of Ted's voice. “Yes, who else? Who else would turn our happy home into a kindergarten. Nearly every day in the week, one of Annie's, two of Ferdinand's and one of Jerry's. I used to love calling in for a cup of tea when I had a fare out this way. Now it's like arriving behind the Pied Piper. I don't come any more. You probably haven't noticed.”

She had, so she was silent.

Pleading replaced Ted's anger. “Come away with me, Joan.” he said. “Let's tell them today we are going to sell out and go north. Too far away for them to find us. They don't have cars because they say cars pollute the air. They couldn't walk. Think of the condition of Tim's feet if they walked.”

She smiled to tell him she believed he was joking. “Tim likes to go barefoot. Lots of young people don't wear shoes all the time these days.”

“He's another one I don't talk about any more. Wally is always saying to me ‘Where is Tim teaching now?' I never told Wally Tim gave up teaching to live in a hole in the wall. I never told Wally Tim wears one earring and a skirt and lives on seaweed and herbal tea.”

“Ted! Just because Tim wore a caftan here once.”

“And I looked at him and thought ‘I couldn't introduce him to my best mate as my son.' I can just see the look on Wally's face.”

“Tim's an artist. You should be proud.”

Ted didn't snort but it was as if he had.

After a moment Joan said, “I should be out there in the kitchen doing things.” But she didn't go.

“Don't do them,” Ted said. “Come out for the day with me. Let them make their own lunch. We could go to a Sunday movie. Or we could sit by the harbour and talk about going away together. Why can't we?”

“Because we can't, Ted. Of course we can't.”

“Of course we can't,” Ted said in such a voice Joan got up and went to the dressing table and pulled the pins out of her hair.

“You've done your hair,” Ted said.

“I know,” Joan said.

He couldn't see her face, only her body crooked with the effort of brushing and pinning.

“Leave your hair down,” Ted said. “I just got a whiff of it. Honeysuckle. Come to bed with me.”

“Oh Ted,” she said with a crooked smile.

Their eyes met in the mirror. But she saw also the custards to be made for the babies, the steaks to be seasoned (leaving one without garlic for Tim), the table to be set, the vacuum run over the floors. It blotted out everything including Ted.

“I wish there was time,” she said.

“But there isn't,” he said.

She sat on the bed near his legs and noticed how swiftly he moved them. She looked with envy at the legs of the dressing table. Oh, lucky things. Nothing to do but hold up a set of drawers with claw feet sunk deep into the carpet.

“Come on,” he said putting his legs back and moving one against her rump. “I need something to bolster me for the ordeal ahead.”

She jumped as if she'd been hit.

“Don't!” she said.

“Don't what?”

“Talk that way. I don't like it.”

He stared at the quilt between his feet and Joan stole a look at his face.

She said gently, “It's OK for us to talk about selling out and going away. Something for the future. To talk about at least.”