Amy's Children (14 page)

Kathleen was in the bedroom at her desk, copying from a text book into an exercise book. She had left the light on in the kitchen.

“Two lights, Kathleen, when you're only using one!” Amy cried, coming down the hall. Kathleen sprang from her seat and stood in sentry pose holding the cord that controlled the bedroom light, switching it off the moment Amy had shed her coat and put her bag away. Then she hooped an arm around Amy's waist and kept in step with her to the kitchen, laughing and throwing her young leg against Amy's thigh.

“Oh, get off!” Amy cried, laughing too. “And let me get the tea!”

Next morning at Lincolns there was a sealed envelope with Amy's name on it under the cover of her typewriter. She read it on her lap.
Dear Miss Fowler
(the note said)
I meant it about making a little occasion of ending the furniture agreement with dinner as my guest.

There was a good space after the last word, as if Lance was considering adding another sentence.
Bring your sister
, he had written.

Amy stuffed the note back in its envelope and put it in her handbag with her savings, little as they were, but the letter seemed to make them more. Yes, I'll keep that, she said to herself, smoothing it out against the side of the compartment. My goodness me, I feel I own not only the furniture but the whole of Sydney! Her typewriter rattled so hard Miss Ross felt quite despondent. She would never match that.

At tea in the Petersham kitchen Amy waited for her chance to tell Kathleen about the dinner. Amy was coming home at the normal time the following Friday evening and they were both to be dressed for Lance to pick them up and take them to Romano's, a high-class restaurant where important people dined and sometimes got their pictures in the newspapers. Amy stole frequent looks at Kathleen's face, nursing the secret, anticipating the joy of revealing it.

Kathleen shook the tablecloth free of crumbs and put it back for breakfast with the salt and pepper shakers in the centre, alongside the cruet and sugar bowl. She felt a sense of pleasure when this was done. At home in Diggers Creek, the table was used after meals for May's ironing, Gus's farm catalogues, spread out to get the best of the lamplight, and sometimes a game of cards, played with a greasy pack until Norman and Fred yawned away to bed to read paperback novels about ranch life in America, and dream of girls.

“Doing anything with Tina this weekend?” Amy asked.

Kathleen sometimes spent Saturday afternoon at Tina's place. Tina's mother was Greek, and allowed Tina and Kathleen to help make cabbage rolls and slabs of sweets and eat some on upturned boxes in the backyard. Tina's father, Greek too, was a partner in a fruit and vegetable shop and brought the boxes home with the bottoms covered with speckled fruit which the family ate, after which they turned the boxes into firewood.

Other times she went to Coxes with Amy, and once or twice she had been taken along in the truck John now owned for a short ride somewhere, mostly with Helen, the girl next door, as well, for she and John were courting seriously now. Amy was saddened by this. John changed towards me, she thought, from the time I got the furniture, or it might have been Kathleen coming. This amused her a little, for John, a bit slow mentally, might not have quite believed Amy had children until he saw Kathleen.

Amy gave the window ledges a good wipe with the dishcloth, then hung it on the little wire line John had fixed to the corner between stove and window.

“John used to be always doing little things for me,” she murmured, putting off the pleasure of the announcement about the dinner still further.

“That was BH,” said Kathleen.

“BH?” Amy wrinkled her nose and forehead towards the ceiling.

“Before Helen!” Kathleen swung the tea-towel like a stockwhip then stretched it across another line John had attached to the wall.

“Oh, you're crazy!” Amy cried, loving her for it.

The kitchen was neat, Amy had made out her shopping list for Saturday morning and propped it against the tea caddy on the mantlepiece, turning it to a different angle to invite Kathleen's comment on such advanced attention to this small chore, but none was forthcoming.

“Come and we'll sit in the sitting room and talk about what we'll do!” Amy said, leading the way.

“I should take my
King Lear
, I suppose,” Kathleen said.

“Oh, bother that old has-been! Let's live for tomorrow!” Amy was a little jealous of Kathleen's familiarity with Shakespeare. She had only learned the Seven Ages of Man in sixth class at Diggers Creek.

Kathleen sprawled on a chair and Amy wedged herself into the corner of the lounge, and after a moment reached down for the sewing, which was rolled up and tucked under a cushion.

“That's where I'll put
King Lear
next time!” Kathleen cried. “Cheat!”

Amy had made a blouse on Daphne's machine, and was now doing the buttonholes and sewing on small pearl buttons. She would wear it to the dinner. It's worked out so well, Amy thought, Kathleen coming. I wouldn't like it on my own, and I don't even need to remind her that we are supposed to be sisters, for it seems we really are.

She bit off a thread of cotton, slipped it into the eye of her needle and held her work close to her face to make the first stitches.

“In case I haven't mentioned it already,” Amy said, “tomorrow night you and I are dining out!”

“Whoopee!” Kathleen yelled and flung her feet to the floor and whirled in a dance, an old pleated skirt of Amy's flying out around her.

She had few clothes, keeping her schoolwear in meticulous order, and looking out for letters from Fred, now in the Northern Territory, who often sent a pound note, which Kathleen usually spent on such things as shorts for school sports, or an extra blouse.

“Oh, goody!” she would cry, kissing it before waving it above her head. Amy was pleased too, Kathleen managed the money carefully, although Amy felt disappointed that she seldom shared any small luxury item with her, like a chocolate bar or ice-cream cone. She sees me as the provider, and I suppose she is right, Amy decided.

“Now sit down in ladylike fashion,” Amy said, stitching with great care. “And listen while I tell you.”

“Certainly, Granma!” Kathleen cried, with straight back and straight face and arms folded. She moved them down below the ridge of her breasts and Amy slipped the point of her needle into her skin and flung the blouse away to save it from a bloody stain.

“Oh, watch out!” she cried. Watch out, I'm sounding like a grandmother! Watch out, she's growing up too fast with those breasts! Amy sucked her finger silently.

After it was safe to stitch again she said: “My boss Mr Yates is taking us both to dinner in a posh restaurant.”

“Mr Yates! I've never met him. Is he a married man?”

“Of course he's a married man!” Amy said. “He has a son a bit older than you.”

“Keep him away then. I don't like goony boys!”

“The boy is not coming,” Amy said.

“Is the wife?” Kathleen asked.

Amy studied the buttonhole smoothed out on her knee. “It's not that sort of an evening out. It's a kind of thank you to me for extra work.” She looked down on the lounge seat as if it might speak in support of this.

“Oh,” Kathleen said, with her mouth shaped like the letter similarly named.

There was silence while Amy put her pink face close to her sewing.

“He's not doing a line for you, is he?” Kathleen asked.

“Of course he's not doing a line for me! He's asking you too.”

“Very nice of him! Very nice indeed!” Kathleen slumped back in her chair, hooked a leg over the arm and swung it.

“You can wear your brown dress,” Amy said. “We'll be warm in the car.”

The brown dress, also made on Daphne's machine, was of cinnamon-coloured wool with a lace collar and cuffs, a row of buttons from neck to waist covered with the material, and a belt drawing in Kathleen's slender waist.

For several moments Kathleen knocked a heel against the side of her chair.

“What will you wear?” she asked, so abruptly that Amy felt slapped. She folded the blouse with great care, sleeve to sleeve, Kathleen watching.

You're wearing that, said the accusing eyes. You made it especially for going out with him.

She got up and left the room and Amy watched the door almost in disbelief. In a little while she came back with
King Lear.

Amy went to Brennans in Newtown in her lunch hour next day and bought two pairs of silk stockings at three and elevenpence each. It is stupid the way I am sucking up to her, Amy thought, but all the time imagining handing the stockings to Kathleen when she got home to Petersham.

Kathleen had never had silk stockings, and if Amy hadn't become friendly with a girl in underwear and hosiery she would never have been allowed two pairs. Silk stockings had all but disappeared with wartime rationing. A dye to paint legs was hailed with great enthusiasm until it was discovered that perspiring feet sent the dye running into shoes and it was abandoned. Legs were bared, except in the event of gifts of stockings from American servicemen, repaying households for their hospitality during Rest and Recreation leave.

Good-looking girls crossing long silken legs in trams and trains were given long hard stares and it was whispered more than once: “A Yank's ground sheet, bet your money on that!”

The stockings quivered from their wrapping, shimmering as they dropped fold after fold from Kathleen's hands. She was on a chair in the sitting room, ready in her brown dress. She whipped off her white socks with one hand and drew the stockings on up to her thighs, after a moment raising agonized eyes to Amy.

“Garters!” she cried. Amy ran for her chocolate box of cottons where a roll of elastic and scissors was tucked into a corner.

“Good and beautiful Amy!” Kathleen cried, throwing out a leg to bind the elastic around her thigh, snip the length off, then begin a matching one, moistening the end of the cotton with a dart of her little tongue before threading the needle.

Amy went to the bedroom and sat on the bed and closed her eyes. “Thank heavens,” she said aloud. “Thank, thank heavens!” She caught up her blouse and ran to the kitchen to heat the iron.

Amy had to restrain Kathleen from opening the front door and waiting in the doorway or on the step.

“In the sitting room! We'll wait there,” she said, brushing her skirt, although it was spotless, newly dry cleaned at Lincoln's shop.

“I know why that place is called Maytime Dry Cleaning,” Kathleen said.

“Of course. Because May is a nice fresh white flower,” Amy answered.

“No!” And Kathleen's hair swung back and forth like a branch in a gale. “It's the letters of your name.”

“Oh, rubbish!” Amy said.

“You've gone red.”

“I have not!” Amy spoke too soon, before she opened her little powder compact and studied her face.

The doorbell rang and Amy's body jerked and Kathleen raised a cool hand. “The reason I'm going tonight is to watch out for you, Amy.”

She slipped past her to open the door, speaking over her shoulder with her hand on the knob. “Someone has to.”

Amy was so quiet throughout the dinner that Lance gave up after a while and concentrated on Kathleen.

“What do you do at school?” Lance asked, digging his spoon into his lemon souffle, wondering if it might sweeten Amy up. She was sitting there very stiff about the face, not eating with the gusto he expected. Having sneaked a look at her occasionally at Lincolns, tucking into what looked like ordinary sandwiches, he had looked forward to watching her at work on something more exotic. He rather hoped to see a childish bulge in her cheeks, gone very pink both with pleasure and embarrassment at the show of greed.

Here she was, eating with ladylike bites, tipping half back on her plate from each forkful and taking the food between her teeth as if she didn't want her lips to go near it.

Lance felt the evening was so far a failure, and that to save it he had better turn his attention to Kathleen, the sister. She was a pretty little thing, older looking than a schoolgirl, more of the elder sister look he thought, seeing her eyes flash from Amy's plate to Amy's face from time to time.

Kathleen emptied her mouth, dabbed it with her serviette and swept her hair away in her effort to give her attention to Lance's question.

“We do all the subjects. Biology I like. It would be wonderful to be a doctor.”

Lance straightened with respect. Amy straightened too, but to avoid a slump of neck and shoulders. It was going to be an effort to finish her souffle.

“I got a boy your age, a bit older,” he said, thinking of Allan in a white coat. He was getting on better with his son now. Allan had grown taller, lost some of his pimples and his fat and wasn't hanging around his mother so much.

Lance began to think of an outing—himself, Allan, Amy and this girl—on one of the Sundays Eileen spent with her parents, who hung on in their old house in Lewisham. Eileen went there as often as she could to cook, clean and wash for the old pair, sighing a good deal of the time and making frequent reference to the selfishness of other members of the family, who left the task almost entirely to her. She would probably be glad to be dropped off and then Lance could wheel the car around and go back for Amy and Kathleen. If the boy was with them, Eileen would see no harm in it. Better still he could make an excuse of seeing to something at Lincolns, taking the boy with him. He glanced at Amy taking little sips of her coffee. She might be happier on a picnic, sitting on the grass near a spread tablecloth with the breeze blowing about her fair hair. Maybe crowds of people upset her.

On the other hand they did not seem to upset the younger one. She screwed her head around to watch the dancers on a square of floorboards fitted into the carpet. The space was not much bigger than the supper table in the Diggers Creek hall, Kathleen was thinking.