Amy's Children (13 page)

“I have to go,” Amy said abruptly, and only partly conscious of the glowering expression on the teacher's face, made swiftly for the school gate.

She trembled through the afternoon's work, not even grateful that an obliging railway timetable had got her to Newtown with several minutes to spare.

She drank a glass of water for her lunch.

A drink of water, Amy thought, putting the glass with her other things that used to be under the counter in the outer office, but now occupied a paper lined drawer with the addition of a tiny bottle of Evening in Paris perfume John gave her for her birthday.

I won't let her see that perfume, she will want it. And Amy slammed the drawer shut and shut out the angry picture of Kathleen eating a sandwich she didn't want, while Amy's throat craved for one. She saw herself drinking water for the rest of her life while Kathleen ate.

Lance came into the office in mid-afternoon with details of a big order for Air Force overalls worn by mechanics doing maintenance work on aeroplanes. His eyes shone.

“The next thing will be the uniforms, the real thing!” he said. Amy in her troubled mood had the impression that Lance wanted the war extended in the interests of business. She lifted her eyes from the typewriter just enough to see his yellowish fingers curled around the invoice, clinging to the triumph.

Oh, I feel so terrible about that furniture, Amy thought. Every time I see him I feel I should say something about it. The velvet is beautifully smooth, Mr Yates! The carpet never sheds fluff, the doors of the cabinet never squeak. Now I'll never get anything to put behind the glass. Never, never!

Miss Ross had transferred her toadying to Amy since Miss Sheldon left. Miss Ross expressed her loyalty and dedication by being the last of the girls to leave. On two occasions she had brought gifts of oranges from the Rosses' garden with the promise of marmalade when sugar became plentiful after the war. Miss Ross looked up, surprised to see Amy starting to tidy her desk a minute before five o'clock.

Victor lingered back for another reason. He travelled part of the way home with Bonnie, but earned her wrath if he arrived early at the shop and hung about too long waiting for her to close up.

Today Amy ran down the stairs ahead of both, dismissing the idea of taking the train. I will walk if it kills me, she said, nearly crying. Nearing Crystal Street she began to worry about Kathleen. Perhaps she would find her huddled in a heap weeping, perhaps with her things in her case expecting Amy to take her to the train and send her off to Nowra, or perhaps she was already gone.

Amy's throat felt tight, her ankles wobbled, breaking into a run.

But Kathleen was by the side of the house where the concrete path was at its widest, and had it marked out for hopscotch. Crouched down nearby with her tunic hem scraping the ground was a girl about Kathleen's age, intent on watching Kathleen hop with large confident steps from square to square.

Kathleen did not appear to pay much attention to Amy's arrival, except to hook a thick bunch of hair over an ear so that the nearest eye could see more clearly.

The thin little girl with straight black bobbed hair, brown eyes and cheeks dusted with freckles, stood up, biting her bottom lip, too afraid to look into Amy's face.

“I got into a good class,” Kathleen said, making a great jump, both legs flying outwards, stretching her dress to its limits.

“Tina knows where I can get my tunic!” Kathleen called to Amy, flinging herself around with a mighty hop. Tina with such credentials felt bold enough to look at Amy's waist.

“We're getting it after school tomorrow!” Kathleen then flopped down on the step with exaggerated sighing and blowing out of her cheeks.

Tina began to hop sedately, a little self-consciously, her black hair flying out like a crow's wing.

“Do you like skipping?” Kathleen called to her. “We can skip here if Amy has a rope!”

Months later, in bed one night, Amy asked Kathleen if Tina was still her best friend.

“Sort of,” Kathleen said. “She's leaving after the Inter.” The “Inter” was the Intermediate Certificate which children sat for after three years at high school. They left then for jobs in business and trades if these were available. Others with parents able to afford it and with the mental ability to cope, went on for two more years to take the Leaving Certificate, aiming at professional careers in teaching, medicine, and engineering. Amy never heard reference to careers and examinations without thinking of Peter. Always she had to stifle a notion that efforts like his, resulting only in death, were a waste.

It appeared Kathleen was bent on taking her Leaving Certificate. “Aunty Daph said I could have Peter's books if they still use those at college.”

Amy, glimpsing under her closed eyes the years of struggle ahead, felt chilled in the warm bed, which now had an extra blanket.

She had got the blanket through Lance's liaison with woollen mills. A mill had sent him half a dozen left over from an Army order. Two made a wedding present for Victor, one went to Tom Yates, one to Lance and the other to Amy. “It's not the black market you hear about,” Amy explained to Kathleen. Their two heads (Amy's and Kathleen's) had bowed for a long time over the blanket, a creamy thing with a little fuzz of beautiful soft wool coating it and a binding in green thread, in what Kathleen told Amy was blanket stitch, top and bottom.

“Tina does it lovely,” Kathleen said.

Tina wanted to work somewhere as a seamstress. She couldn't wait to leave school.

“She's mad,” Kathleen said, turning over for sleep.

It did not always come so easily for Amy. She was managing from pay to pay, but only now and then was she able to put aside a few shillings apart from money for light and gas. She had to fight her resentment when she looked inside her handbag and saw the flatness of the compartment where she kept her savings.

Since Kathleen had come she had bought nothing for the house, until one Saturday morning when they went to a group of shops, reached by some back streets, where Amy had heard there were bargains in meat and fruit.

They came upon a dark little tavern of a shop with a sullen-eyed man, wearing a heavy overcoat in spite of the warm day, leaning in the doorway. Behind him were piled up goods—strips of carpet, commode cabinets, bed ends, fire tongs, fenders, pictures in heavy frames, kitchen dressers.

The man seemed determined to keep the stock intact. He looked past Amy and Kathleen up the street, a dark shadow on his chin for he had not shaved, then turned and sauntered along the narrow passage between the piles of furniture to disappear.

Amy and Kathleen took a few nervous steps inside and watched for someone to appear. A sign above the door said Quality Fruit and Vegetables, half the first word erased. Obviously the shop had just changed hands and the new owner, anxious to erase its past and promise much better for the future, was working on the old sign between other more pressing duties. Probably, thought Amy, it was the woman coming towards them, small and dark and anxious.

Kathleen's full attention was given to a student's desk astride a wire mattress, like a rider on an emaciated grey horse.

“Look!” Kathleen cried, lifting shining eyes. Pleading and apologetic, she looked at Amy who didn't want to nod but did.

“How much?” Kathleen asked, swinging back her hair.

“Jack!” the woman called to the back. “What do we want for the little table?”

“A desk! Oh, a desk!” Kathleen breathed to Amy, as if she feared it might turn into an ordinary table under their eyes. She stroked a wooden panel and it moved.

“Oh, look!” she cried, for the panel was one that lifted to make more desk space and behind it there were half a dozen little drawers.

“Look!” she cried again.

“Jack!” called the woman with her head turned to the back. The answer was a scrape of a cough, then silence and a shout: “Put it down or I'll murder you!” A child cried, and the woman, flashing frightened eyes first to the back then to Amy and Kathleen, told them seven shillings would be alright.

They carried the desk to Crystal Street, taking a longer route by using back streets to avoid crowds. Kathleen's spirits were so high she bounded along, her side of the desk held higher than Amy's. Amy, trying not to think of the mirror or little half table she would have liked for the hall, had to fight back resentment when her handbag, carried awkwardly on an arm, and now almost completely depleted of savings, reminded her of this by slapping into her side.

Kathleen eased the desk to the ground against a high paling fence. “I think I know why that man was so terrible!” she cried. Amy did not want a reason gasped out now. They did not have far to go, only half a dozen houses to pass, then a lane taking them into Crystal Street with a few hundred yards more. If they hurried they would miss three giggling girls coming towards them, arms bound around each other. Kathleen gave them one of her sharp blue stares and a toss of her head, which said they would not in their extreme stupidity have any use for a desk.

The subject of the shopkeeper was not raised until an hour later, after the desk was in place in the bedroom. Amy was pleased too at the way it took care of the empty space along one wall. They were eating their sandwiches of German sausage and tomato sauce, which they attacked with a ravenous hunger after the long walk loaded with the desk and string bag of shopping.

“That man,” Kathleen said, dipping her head sideways the way she did when she had something of importance to say. “That man didn't want that shop. It was the woman's idea.”

Amy recalled his bowed and sulky shoulders going to the back of the premises and the woman's anxious unhappy face coming forward.

“It would be awful if he got so angry one day he smashed everything up on her.

“I'm glad we got the desk first though.” Amy could see that the edges of Kathleen's appetite were sated and she would fly off any moment and set out her books on the desk.

“I'm never getting married myself,” she said.

Amy agreed to go out with Lance.

Victor was on his honeymoon and Lance used his office a lot of the time working on accounts and wages. Since Victor had come and the dry cleaning shop opened, normally Lance was not often upstairs. Amy was relieved at this, and glad that Victor and Bonnie were only able to have two weeks' stay at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains following their marriage. She wanted an opportunity to mention to Lance that she was no longer obligated to him in regard to the furniture since sufficient time had passed for her to have worked off the debt.

She watched for her chance and one afternoon, seeing Miss Ross make her way out at last after asking Amy three times if there was anything else to be done, Amy sat on the edge of the chair by Lance's desk. His smile oiled his eyes and she thought it was their colour, with more yellow in the hazel than grey, that gave them their moist look. Amy thought they were not bad eyes though, and if there were no Mrs Lance and she was truly Miss Fowler, she would not mind going out with him. But then if he were free Miss Sheldon would still be around and Amy would not want a contest with her, she reflected, growing a little fearful, as if in some way Miss Sheldon had left her presence behind to watch what was happening.

Amy cleared her throat and Lance made fists of both his hands and rested his chin on them.

“Are you satisfied Mr Yates that the furniture you bought for my house is cut out now?”

Lance appeared to be considering this, looking for and finding some humour in the statement. If he laughs I will die, Amy thought.

There was a ruler by Lance's blotting pad. He picked it up, and reaching across, laid it lightly on Amy's cheek. She blushed and jerked back.

“Why don't you and I go out for dinner? Then we can say the furniture is cut out.”

“Oh I couldn't Mr Yates!” Amy was blushing again. “I couldn't! I have my sister living with me now.”

She sounded to Lance like a little girl invited into a house to play but unable to because she was minding a baby sister.

Now it was said Amy felt a great relief, as people do when at last they know they are recovering from an illness. She actually put her chin up the way Kathleen did when a challenge was at hand. Amy's smile was for Kathleen although Lance thought it was for him.

She pulled her skirt tightly across her knees. “She's been with me most of the year going to school.” Now it didn't seem to matter whether Kathleen was daughter or sister.

They heard Tom's feet on the back stairs and Amy rose quickly, then attempted to disguise the action by leisurely tucking the chair under the desk.

“Alright, Miss Fowler!” Lance said. “Remind me again tomorrow!” He slid his eyes, from which the oil had now drained away, to meet Tom's.

Remind me again tomorrow! Remind me again tomorrow! She beat the words under the soles of her shoes along the darkened pavement. People were coming towards her on their way home, their faces washed white by the lighted windows, then greenish like painted clowns when struck by the lights from cars. None looked happy, or eager to be going home. Remind me again tomorrow! Go to hell, Lance Yates! I won't be reminding you. I'll be keeping out of your way! If taking me out for a meal is so innocent why do you have to dismiss me in front of your brother? I hate your oily skin and your slippery eyes! Don't slip them my way, if you please.

She trembled and breathed hard into a ham and beef shop, the corner of the high counter piercing her breasts until she felt the pain and moved back. The hanging light was bright as a moon, making the shop a cosy shell of a place with the blinds drawn on the front window for the blackout. It turned the window display into a great bountiful larder of grey-skinned fowls, pink Devon sausage, piled orange-skinned saveloys, rounds of cheese, pickled onions, rows of meat pies, trays of cakes, some with yellow custard between slabs of pastry, and another kind consisting of a black mess of cake and currants and raisins between pastry too. The latter were called Chester cakes. Kathleen loved them. Amy asked for two and two pieces of the fowl, trembling in its gelatine and parsley petticoat. She would warm it over a saucepan of hot water, and boil potatoes and a wedge of cabbage from the garden. She had to swallow away her hunger and resist clawing inside the paper bag for some chicken skin.