Amy's Children (25 page)

But you would rap me over the knuckles at the way I have changed course (as you used to say) without an eye to correct
structure.
I beg your tolerance, and will forthwith return to the point. After surviving the era of Amy-my-sister-and-not-my-mother I am now faced with the coming of an illegitimate child to the same person. Yes! This and some quite devastating personal experiences have turned me off men, motherhood and everything connected with it. I want to get an education, follow a career, travel and be happy in the companionship of someone with whom I'm intellectually matched. And that, dear Miss Parks, is someone of your
ilk.

Write to me here if you care to, but make haste if that is not asking too much, for there is another trauma in my life with Amy at the helm as you would expect, and that is we must leave here soon. She will soon be dismissed from her job and I cannot be expected to meet the rent and provide for myself and my sister as well. Then again, my younger sister was recklessly brought to Sydney and has this dreadful job behind a grocer's counter. Could you imagine such a life? There is another sister still to come. Our Amy is quite prolific as you can see.

Oh Miss Parks I need to be rescued. Most desperately I need to be
rescued.

Your former (and loving) pupil,

Kathleen Fowler.

 

In the days that followed Kathleen relieved the boredom of work by repeating under her breath some of the best lines from her letter.

“You have witnessed the diabolical behaviour of mothers,” she whispered, taking a copy of
Tom Brown's Schooldays
from a shelf and putting it between the shabby gloves of a woman who looked a lot like one of the Misses Wheatley. The gloves stroked it as if it were some rare first edition.

“A Christmas present for my grandson,” she said, bringing her watery glasses to life with the shine in her watery eyes.

She's been a mother then, thought Kathleen. What a fool. She swept a fine white hand over the brown paper she wrapped the book in, keeping her eyes on it, not changing her expression when Mr Benson padded up to express a wish that the customer would enjoy the book, and to compliment her on her wisdom in shopping at Anthony Horderns. Kathleen turned her back immediately to find another copy of
Tom Brown's Schooldays
to fill the gap, and Mr Benson, glaring at her back, decided that the Fowler women had failed to be the acquisition to Anthony Horderns he had once thought. Mrs Fowler would need to go as soon as the Christmas rush was over. He had got Mrs Benson to come in and confirm what was now common gossip on the floor. Easily four months, Mrs Benson had said, and he shut himself in the floor manager's office to share with him this scandalous revelation. But he was told coldly the matter was in hand, for the manager's wife was an embittered, harping, barren woman and the manager indulged in fantasies while he sneaked his eyes over Amy's changing figure, dreaming of sleeping beside her, his dry thin hand on her stomach, sliding down to the crevice where her thigh joined it, exploring there, the leap of his blood with hers when she turned and flung her leg across his.

Oh my God, he said to the blurred page in his open Daily Staff Record Book.

Amy saw Mr Benson leave Kathleen's counter and come towards hers, and to avoid him, bent down to straighten bolts of material, already in pin-neat order. She heard a button on her navy dress pop off and saw the gap, open-mouthed with relief.

That does it, she said to herself, I'll go and see Mr Henty at once. Whatever he says to me I'll just have to bear it, and say nothing in return.

But he said: “Sit down, Mrs Fowler.

“You're on your feet too much.”

Daphne planned to move with Patricia into the Petersham house in time for Christmas.

The Misses Wheatley planned to have moved out by then.

Amy's pregnancy decided them.

“See, Grace,” said Miss Heather, opening one of the dear little drawers that ran like silk in a circular cedar table.

She took out the cutting of Amy's advertisement seeking tenants for her rooms, the old maroon-coloured fingers plucking it from among Christmas cards from Henry, the obituaries in the Dubbo paper recording the deaths of their parents, and a recipe for a Dundee cake which they had not made for twenty years.

“‘Rooms in clean, respectable house',” Miss Heather read aloud in a voice mingling emotion with disgust. “‘Share conveniences with single lady.' Poor Mumma would turn in her grave.”

“Poor Papa would turn with her,” Miss Grace said.

They were getting ready to go and see Mrs Murray, the wife of the minister at the church they attended. Mrs Murray, who had been the matron's assistant at a church boarding school before her marriage, made herself available for counselling in crises other than those of a spiritual nature.

The Misses Wheatley were intending to explain their circumstances as delicately as possible.

“We are lucky to have Mrs Murray,” Miss Heather said. “You couldn't very well approach a man.”

“Mrs Murray will most likely know of somewhere for us,” Miss Grace said.

“God is so good to us,” said Miss Heather, putting on her round little shiny straw hat, getting a fresh thrill at the success she had made of turning the ribbon band to the other side, and folding the bow in such a way that only the best parts showed.

On the stairs they nearly turned back. Daphne and Amy were surveying the length of the hall, Daphne trying to decide if her hall runner would be long enough and annoyed that she hadn't measured it before leaving home.

Miss Heather's back told Miss Grace they might turn back. But the pause lasted hardly a second. We are not the guilty party, said Miss Heather's navy blue crepe shoulders and the rush of air up her nostrils. They continued on determined feet and were soon looking down into Daphne's upturned face, a pleased and amiable one.

“Just the two I wanted to see!” Daphne said. “You'll be payin' the rent to me from now on. I'm movin' in and we'll get on fine.”

The Misses Wheatley for the first time in weeks managed to keep their eyes from Amy's stomach. They held the bannisters in their gnarled, gloved hands and Daphne's bold brown eyes with theirs.

“I'll come up,” Daphne said with an upward movement of her arms as if she were urging two sheep up a ramp.

“My, you have it nice,” Daphne said, looking around the Misses Wheatleys' sitting room, thereby giving herself leave to stroke a rose-splashed china fruit bowl containing a single orange.

“We were going out for the messages,” Miss Heather said, daring Miss Grace with a frown to contradict her.

“Then I won't keep you,” Daphne said, moving to the edge of a round-bottomed tapestry-covered chair with arms like melting milk chocolate.

“One little thing,” said Daphne with earnest eyes on the Misses Wheatleys' glasses. “I'll be puttin' a little notice in the front window of the downstairs sittin' room where Mrs Fowler—”

“We never got used to saying Mrs Fowler—” murmured Miss Grace.

“Then you don't need to try any more,” Daphne said. “Because Mrs Fowler's goin' back to her 'ome town—”

The Misses Wheatleys' glasses were like a collision of wheels sending out shrieks and sparks as metal hit metal.

“I'm going to do 'ome dressmaking,” Daphne explained. “I'll do most of the work in the daytime, so's the machine won't bother you at night.”

“We never hear a sound once we're in bed,” Miss Heather said. And mindful suddenly of not hearing what might have been worth straining their ears for, she blushed and the pearl brooch shaped like a lily trembled on the crepe.

“My son John, the only one left, is takin' over my 'ouse.” Daphne decided to get it all said now and if she chose to, restrict future communication with the Misses Wheatley to a bidding of the time of day.

“It's too out of the way for me to 'ave me business there,” Daphne said, allowing a recurring dream to invade her thoughts—of someone's silk dress whispering against the wood of her machine and Patricia's brown head bowed over someone else's dress, while her hands made a neat job of turning up a raw hem. I don't see why not, she said to herself, getting up with energy and assuming a severe expression to impress on the Misses Wheatley the association of landlady and tenant and nothing more.

When Daphne had gone the Misses Wheatley took off their hats and put them away on the top shelf of their handsome rosewood wardrobe. They sat on their chairs on either side of the window overlooking Crystal Street. There was nothing unusual to see, only the baker's cart drawn by a brown horse with a woolly coat and a knotted mane, throwing its head wearily at the flies and moving the cart against the wishes of the delivery man, who called out “Woa!” and went around the front with his basket, clouting the side of the horse's head as he passed.

The Misses Wheatley usually winced at such a sight and thought of the beautiful proud animals at home on the farm, but looking at each other now, they each gave a gentle shake of their grey heads.

“I can only think of God's great goodness to us,” Miss Heather said.

“So can I,” said Miss Grace.

On the Saturday before Amy left for Diggers Creek, Kathleen told her she was going to live with Miss Parks.

“But I bought you a single bed!” Amy cried.

Kathleen went on as if Amy hadn't spoken. “Miss Parks has a huge flat with a huge bedroom and a bed big enough for both of us.

“Put my old bed under your arm and take it as a present for Lebby. She was sleeping on the couch the last I heard!”

They were eating a lunch of bread and cheese at Amy's bare kitchen table. The tablecloths had been packed with her other linen and her kitchenware to go by rail to Nowra then by lorry to Moruya. Daphne had lent them a couple of saucepans and some crockery for the last few meals before Amy and her suitcase boarded the train at Central. Daphne urged Amy to take most of her household goods.

“May'll appreciate some new things. She wouldn't have had much for herself for a long time.”

No she wouldn't, Amy thought, startled by her guilt, and Daphne said quickly: “It'll seem more like 'ome to me if I have all me own things around me.”

She grumbled about Amy giving the lounge suite to John. “He did so many little things about the place for me,” Amy pleaded.

“I hate the thought of that great arse of hers squashin' the life out of it,” Daphne said. Amy gave the cane dressing-table to an ecstatic Patricia.

Just when it seemed there was some sort of future for them all, here was this new blow delivered by Kathleen.

“I'll take my desk!” she said. “Miss Parks has made me a space for it.” She had cleaned it out and rubbed it down with furniture polish, clicking her tongue at some freshly revealed scratches she made herself, but blamed on Amy. She polished the brass corner pieces, her deep frown suggesting that this should have been done regularly but had been carelessly overlooked (by Amy).

Amy had to make a visit to Annandale to inform Daphne of the new development.

“Good riddance to her Ladyship!” Daphne cried, using tissue paper lavishly to wrap her best cutlery and store it in a shoebox.

She had just come from the side veranda and had glimpsed Mrs Cousins, with whom she was no longer on speaking terms, watching through the latticed end of her back veranda.

Daphne had the presence of mind to shout out: “I measured up and all the curtains will fit the new windows!” which brought a curious Patricia from her bedroom and sent Mrs Cousins, with a face as red as the hibiscus she believed was concealing her, scuttling inside.

“I just fixed next door!” Daphne said, turning a kitchen chair on one leg from the table for Amy to sit down. “I'll make a bed for the cat out of me curtains before I'll leave them for her!”

“I'm worried,” Amy said, “that you might have been depending on some board money from Kathleen.”

“What you'd get from her she'd take back via the iron and the lights and the gas on sky high and butter spread inches thick on her bread.

“Trish can have a room to herself and her Ladyship's bed will come in handy if we can ever afford to bring Lebby up for a holiday. If my sewin' goes well we'll be doing that!”

 

But Lebby's mind was on matters other than Sydney and her relatives there.

She was going to become a boarder at Moruya convent and study under the nuns for her Intermediate Certificate.

For the past few months Lebby had joined a small class of girls taken by Sister Louise. She called it a business course with elementary instruction in bookkeeping (for she could keep only one lesson ahead of her pupils), and shorthand and typing, at which she was more proficient.

The class was looking towards work with banks, solicitors or grain merchants in Moruya, or perhaps Nowra or Bega.

But Sister Louise, with an ear for their chatter between lessons and an eye for their shortened skirts and stealthily painted lips and nails, shrewdly assumed the more prominent target was a husband.

Lesley Fowler was different.

One afternoon in the convent music room, where she could watch for the approach of the mail car to take her home to Diggers Creek, she picked up a violin, and putting it under her creamy chin, drew sounds from it that were nothing like a cat's wailing, and far superior to those made by the Potter sisters and Desmond O'Reilly, who had been learning for two years.

Sisters Louise and Anastasia, of the same mind, agreed to go and see May.

They praised Lebby's learning ability, her obvious appreciation of the arts, her ladylike manner and nice speaking voice, and said she would waste her life in an office. They looked carefully down May's hall over the wild front garden to the roadway, lest their eyes give away their hopes that Lebby be spared a future spent trying to keep ordered a dirty little house like this and a brood of dirty children.