The Home Girls (23 page)

“I can skip a few,” she said, “Quite a few.”

The doorbell rang and they sprang apart.

“Jeez!” Ted said. “We are scared of them!”

Joan wiped her eyes. “You see who it is. It's probably a doorknock collection.”

She heard him cry out, “Jeez! Wal! Hallo, old son. This's a surprise. Come in!”

Ted appeared in the bedroom doorway with a man, smaller than he was, rather shrivelled looking with a too-red nose. He had a shabby overnight bag in one hand and cradled in the other arm were some cans of beer in a paper bag.

Ted was beaming with pride. Joan did not know if it was in her or Wally. “This is Joan, Wally,” Ted said, “That's her!”

Joan gathered her loose hair with one hand and held the other out to Wally.

“Jeez!” Ted said, “You two have met at last!”

Wally's shy look followed his bag which he had dropped on the floor.

“Jeez!” Ted said, “What's up, old son? Is something wrong?”

Wally was silent and Joan pushed a chair forward for him to sit.

Ted and Joan waited for him to speak. “The worst happened, Ted. Bella kicked me out!”

“Bella did!” Ted was astounded.

“Not really Bella. Bella's rotten bludger of a son. He turned up last night out of the blue and said I had to go.”

“He can't do that!” Ted said.

“Bella didn't stop him,” Wally said with a shaking mouth looking at the window then down at his bag. “I grabbed a few things and went. I got me cans out of the fridge. I wasn't leaving them for him. He said I'd sponged on his mother long enough.”

“He can't do that,” Ted said “You're married to Bella.”

“We been together ten years,” Wally said, “Not married. I should've said. I didn't.”

“Forget it, old son,” Ted said, “What's a slip of paper?”

“That's what Bella and I used to say.”

“Jeez Wal, I'm sorry old son,” Ted said, “I'd like to say stay here. But our girl Lois is coming home for a bit. Isn't she Joan?”

“Wally can stay for lunch,” Joan said.

“Jeez, so he can!” said Ted. “The kids are coming. You can meet them, Wal!”

“Oh jeez, Ted,” Wally said wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Half your luck! A great missus and all those beaut kids! I don't think I could stay, Ted!”

“Of course you can!” Ted said, “You can have my steak. A few scraggy ends'll do me!” He took the beer from Wally's lap and handed it to Joan. “Put those in the fridge for Wal, Joan. And bring the brandy bottle and a glass. Poor old Wal. He's had a shock!”

A GOOD MARRIAGE

My Father sat at the kitchen table much longer than he should have talking about Clarice Carmody coming to Berrigo.

My mother got restless because of the cigarettes my father was rolling and smoking. She worked extra fast glancing several times pointedly through the doorway at the waving corn paddock which my father had come from earlier than he need have for morning tea.

He creaked the kitchen chair as he talked especially when he said her name.

“Clarice Carmody! Sounds like one of them Tivoli dancers!”

My mother put another piece of wood in the stove.

“God help Jack Patterson, that's all I can say,” my father said. My mother's face wore an expression that said she wished it was.

“A mail order marriage!” my father said putting his tobacco tin in his hip pocket. Suddenly he laughed so loud my mother turned around at the dresser.

“That's a good one!” he said, slapping his tongue on his cigarette paper with is brown eyes shining.

My mother strutted to the stove on her short fat legs to put the big kettle over the heat.

“It might be too,” she said.

“Might be what too?” my father said, almost but not quite mocking her.

“A good marriage,” my mother said, emptying the teapot into the scrap bucket which seemed another way of saying morning tea time was over.

“They've never set eyes on each other!” my father said. “They wouldn't know each other's faults . . .”

“They'll soon learn them,” my mother said dumping the biscuit tin on the dresser top after clamping the lid on.

The next sound was a clamping noise too. My father crossed the floor on the way out almost treading on me sitting on the doorstep.

“Out of the damn way!” he said, quite angry.

My mother sat on a chair for a few moments after he'd gone watching through the doorway with the hint of a smile which vanished when her eyes fell on me.

“You could be out there giving him a hand,” she said.

My toe began to smart a little where his big boots grazed it.

I bit at my kneecaps hoping my mother would say no more on the idea.

She didn't. She began to scrape new potatoes splashing them in a bowl of water.

Perhaps she was thinking about Clarice Carmody. I was. I was seeing her dancing on the stage of the old School of Arts. I thought of thistledown lifted off the ground and bowling along when you don't believe there is a wind. In my excitement I wrapped my arms around my knees and licked them.

“Stop that dirty habit,” my mother said. “Surely there is something you could be doing.”

“Will we visit Clarice Carmody?” I asked.

“She won't be Clarice Carmody,” my mother said, vigorously rinsing a potato. “She'll be Clarice Patterson.”

She sounded different already.

She came to Berrigo at the start of the September school holidays.

“The spring and I came together!” she said to me when at last I got to see her at home.

She and Jack Patterson moved into the empty place on the Patterson's farm where a farm hand and his family lived when the Patterson children were little. When the two boys left school they milked and ploughed and cleared the bush with old Bert Patterson the father. The girl Mary went to the city to work in an office which sounded a wonderful life to me. Cecil Patterson the younger son married Elsie Clark and brought her to the big old Patterson house to live. Young Mrs Patterson had plenty to do as old Mrs Patterson took to her bed when another woman came into the house saying her legs went.

My father was always planning means of tricking old Mrs Patterson into using her legs, like letting a fire get out of control on Berrigo sports day, or raising the alarm on Berrigo picture night.

For old Mrs Patterson's disability didn't prevent her from going to everything that was on in Berrigo carried from the Patterson's car by Jack and Cecil. Immediately she was set down, to make up for the time spent in isolation on the farm where Elsie took out her resentment with long sulky silences, she turned her fat, creamy face to left and right looking for people to talk to.

Right off she would say “not a peep out of the silly things” when asked about her legs.

My father who called her a parasite and a sponger would sit in the kitchen after meals and roll and smoke his cigarettes while he worked out plans for making her get up and run.

My mother sweeping his saucer away while his cup was in midair said more than once good luck to Gladdie Patterson, she was the smartest woman in Berrigo, and my father silenced would get up after a while and go back to work.

Jack Patterson went to the city and brought Clarice back. My father said how was anyone to know whether they were married or not and my mother said where was the great disadvantage in not being married? My father's glance fell on the old grey shirt of his she was mending and he got up very soon and clumped off to the corn paddock.

I tried to see now by looking at Clarice whether she was married to Jack Patterson. She wore a gold ring which looked a bit loose on her finger. My father having lost no time in getting a look at Clarice when she first arrived said it was one of Mrs Patterson's old rings or perhaps he said one of old Mrs Patterson's rings. He described Clarice as resembling “one of them long armed golliwog doils kids play with.” Then he added with one of his short quick laughs that she would be about as much use to Jack Patterson as a doll.

The wedding ring Clarice wore didn't seem to match her narrow hand. I saw it plainly when she dug her finger into the jar of jam I'd brought her.

Her mouth and eyes went round like three Os. She waggled her head and her heavy frizzy hair shook.

“Lovely, darlink,” she said. “You must have the cleverest, kindest mother in the whole of the world.”

I blushed at this inaccurate description of my mother and hoped the two would not meet up too soon for Clarice to be disappointed.

Sitting there on one of her kitchen chairs, which like all the other furniture were leftovers from the big house, I did not want ever to see Clarice disappointed.

My hopes were short-lived. Jack Patterson came in then and Clarice's face and all her body changed. She did look a little like a golliwog doll although her long arms were mostly gracefully loose. Now she seemed awkward putting her hand on the kettle handle, looking towards Jack as if asking should she be making tea. Both Jack and I looked at the table with several dirty cups and saucers on it. Jack looked over my head out the window. Clarice walked in a stiff-legged way to the table and picked up the jam.

“Look!” she said holding it to the light. “The lovely colour! Jam red!” Jack Patterson had seen plenty of jam so you couldn't expect him to be impressed. He half hung his head and Clarice tried again.

“This is Ellen from across the creek! Oh, goodness me! I shouldn't go round introducing people! Everyone knows everyone in the country!”

Jack Patterson took his yard hat and went out.

“Oh, darlink!” Clarice said in a defeated way putting the jam on the shelf above the stove. I wanted to tell her that wasn't where you kept the jam but didn't dare.

She sat on a chair with her feet forward, the skirt of her dress reaching to her calves. She looked straight at me, smiling and crinkling her eyes.

“I think, darlink,” she said, “you and I are going to be really great friends.”

People said that in books. Here was Clarice saying it to me. She had mentioned introducing me too, which was something happening to me for the first time in my life. I was happy enough for my heart to burst through my skinny ribs.

But I had to get off the chair and go home. My mother said I was to give her the jam and go.

But she asked me about Clarice and Jack Patterson as if she expected me to observe things while I was there. “What's the place like?” she said.

I remembered the dark little hall and the open bedroom door showing the bed not made and clothes hanging from the brass knobs and the floor mat wrinkled. And Clarice with her halo of frizzy hair and her wide smile drawing me down the hall to her.

“She's got it fixed up pretty good,” I lied.

“The work all done?” my mother asked.

I said yes because I felt Clarice had done all the work she intended to do for that day anyway.

I felt unhappy for Clarice because the Berrigo women most looked up to were those who got their housework done early and kept their homes neat all the time.

I next saw Clarice two months later at Berrigo show.

She wore a dress of soft green material with a band of the same stuff holding her wild hair above her forehead.

“Look!” said Merle Adcock, who was eighteen and dressed from Winn's mail order catalogue. “She got her belt tied round her head!”

Clarice had her arm through Jack Patterson's, which also drew scornful looks from Berrigo people. When Jack Patterson talked to other men about the prize cows and bulls Clarice stayed there, and watching them I was pretty sure Jack would have liked to have shaken Clarice's arm off.

My mother worked all day in the food tent at the show but managed to get what Berrigo called “a good gander” at Clarice with Jack.

“A wife hasn't made a difference to Jack Patterson,” she said at home that afternoon. “He looks as hang dog as ever.”

My father, to my surprise and perhaps to hers too, got up at once and went off to the yard.

The sports day was the week after the show and that was when my father and Clarice met.

Clarice saw me and said “Hello, darlink” and laid a finger on my nose to flatten the turned up end. She laughed when she did it so my feelings wouldn't be hurt.

My father suddenly appeared behind us.

I was about to scuttle off thinking that was why he was there, but he stood in a kind of strutting pose looking at Clarice and putting a hand on the crown of my hat.

“I'm this little one's Dad,” he said, “She could introduce us.”

I was struck silent by his touch and by his voice with a teasing note in it, so I couldn't have introduced them even if practised at it.

“Everyone is staring at me,” Clarice said. “So they know who I am.”

“Berrigo always stares,” said my father taking out his tobacco tin and cigarette papers and staring at Clarice too.

She lifted her chin and looked at him with all her face in a way she had. “Like the cows,” she said and laughed.

Her glance fell on his hands rolling his smoke, so different from my mother's expression. I thought smoking was sinful but started to change my ideas seeing Clarice's lively interested eyes and smiling mouth.

“Your father was talking to Clarice Carmody,” my mother said at home after the sports as if it was my fault.

I noticed she said Clarice Carmody, not Clarice Patterson and perhaps she read my thoughts.

“I doubt very much that she's Clarice Patterson,” my mother said, hanging up the potholder with a jab.

I felt troubled. First it was my father who seemed opposed to Clarice. Now it was my mother. I wondered how I would get to see her.

My chance came when I least expected it. My mother sent me with the slide normally used to take the cans of cream to the roadside to be picked up by the cream lorry, to load with dry sticks to get the stove and copper fire going.