Loving Daughters (15 page)

29

Violet's gaping mouth and angry brow were seen by Edwards when he passed the house, dolling his hat and raising the reins in salute. Guilt invaded him and he sent his horse faster as if he could leave the feeling behind this way. He should have called on Mrs Violet and asked if he could do any errand for her, a custom he knew to be practised in Wyndham when neighbours made a trip to a larger town. Well, what was done was done, and he hoped the farther he left Violet's accusing shape behind, the less troubled he would feel.

He could not bear another day spent without some positive step towards a future with Enid or Una. Una or Enid! He must have it out with the archdeacon. Marriage was normal and necessary. He wanted it! He could have either of those girls with a snap of his fingers. Snap his fingers he did, holding a hand high as he raced along, the crisp air chilling his face and deepening the ruddy colour.

‘I can have either!' he shouted to the sky, a clear blue with only one puffy cloud racing with him. A pillow of cloud! He laughed up at it. He saw a streaming vapour like a girl's hair trailing the cloud pillow, and would have stood in the sulky and whooped except that he would lose his balance.

He slowed his horse. He could not wear him out this way. Bega was too far off to make the return trip in the one day. Where he would spend the night he did not know. The sky was his roof though, look at it up there! He felt he should be shouting to the sky as if the world was his house, and he could behave as he liked in it.

He was surprised to see Candelo come up so soon. The Anglican church and rectory set back from the road was several hundred yards past the first cluster of houses.

The Minister's wife, Mrs Palmer, had made a garden around the front steps, and bright cushions were tilted on chairs on the verandah.

Edwards having tied his horse to the front fence went up the steps, pleased at the sight of the front door open, a shine on the floor covering, a bowl of bright yellow flowers on the piano. He was staring at them thinking of Enid when Mrs Palmer answered his knock. She was fair, sturdy and strong looking, unlike many ministers' wives who were small with a cringing air, going about with downcast eyes, as if a reticent and humble front made their husbands appear powerful and authoritative, which Edwards knew, in many cases, they were not.

Mrs Palmer seemed pleased to have a visitor and offered Edwards a chair and tea. She kept up a conversation while in the kitchen, which was next to the dining room, through an archway separating it from the front room. A superior dwelling to his, Edwards had to concede with lowering spirits.

‘Gordon is visiting the school this morning,' Mrs Palmer said while her hands, visible to Edwards, buttered bread at a table.

Surprised at himself, he didn't mind. When he stopped (this was a day he was doing everything on impulse) he had vague thoughts of sharing his problem with Palmer, whom he considered approachable, though not as forthright as he would be, given a parish of this size.

He believed he saw now the reason for his hesitant manner.

Mrs Palmer was the stronger of the two, and he imagined now as she brought in the tea tray that it was her husband who lurked in her shadow. He hoped he did not come in soon. The Palmers had only two children, he remembered, and he wondered how they managed this (or she did) and looked foolishly for a solution in the vicinity of her hips and thighs, as if there would be something there to give her secret away.

I'll need to pray pardon for these kinds of thoughts, he told himself, blushing towards his teacup. She put hers down on the small table between them and asked about the health of Small Henry.

‘A christening there quite soon,' Edwards said.

‘A sad affair,' Mrs Palmer said, and Edwards, thinking of Enid as he swallowed his sultana cake, and of Una when he looked at the piano where he had seen her reflection in the shining wood of the one at Honeysuckle, and wondering where any sadness could be, was some time remembering the circumstances of Small Henry's birth.

‘The young mother's death, yes,' he said, making his voice sound pious.

He saw by Mrs Palmer's expression that it was not to be totally regretted. The mother had sinned and sin was for punishment.

‘He's in the care of an aunt?' she asked next. (She gained this information from Rachel Holmes with whom she had occasional telephone conversations, the two having sung together in the same church choir as schoolgirls.)

‘At the moment, yes,' said Edwards, and felt her sharpish look upon him, allowing her to interpret a family intimacy, involving him.

‘Is the father likely to return for him?' Mrs Palmer said.

‘That is hardly likely,' Edwards replied, putting his cup down with a crisp little clink of china.

‘Perhaps the young sisters –?' Mrs Palmer said. The reputation of the well-dressed, gadding and unencumbered Herbert girls had spread far beyond the borders of Wyndham. Mrs Palmer, jealous of their freedom, and what appeared to be a generous clothes allowance, felt pleasure that here was something threatening to restrict them. Immediately she felt she should temper the thought with something more charitable.

‘They are both capable, from what I hear.'

Edwards needed to blink away the light suffusing his eyes and running down to tenderize his mouth. Capable! Indeed they were capable. And one of them his! He crossed his legs and Mrs Palmer's attention was caught and rivetted to his thighs, one squashing the other on the chair she had never thought so frail before. Ah, I see, thought Mrs Palmer. And I had thought this day as drab and empty as most of the others! Which one, I wonder?

She concentrated on a vision of the Herbert girls at a diocese garden party in Bega, so smartly turned out she was doubly conscious of her old navy serge suit, too hot for the warm spring day. Let it be Enid, the haughtier one. See how she manages on a miserable stipend. Edwards was smiling protectively, she thought, on someone envisioned. The younger one? She had looked shyly from under her hat trimmed with cornflowers and stood slightly behind her sister, with her half-smiling lips looking as if they had been coloured a deeper red. Paint on the face of a clergyman's wife!

Mrs Palmer now shifted her solid legs and raised a fair freckled face. This was interesting indeed! She refilled both their cups without asking, signalling a developing intimacy, aware that her breasts fell forward over his cup and rose and quivered when she leaned back in her chair. She sipped her tea with lowered eyes.

‘Both charming girls,' she murmured.

She saw his eyes bright as the gold rim on the cup.

‘Is it too early for felicitations then?' she said. ‘Or quite in order?' She put her head to one side in coquettish fashion which Edwards observed, in spite of the train of his own thoughts, did not suit her.

He moved his cup and saucer to one side of the table as if it would be an obstacle in the serious discussion to follow.

‘There are difficulties to overcome,' he said. ‘They may be minor.'

The father objects, said the pupils of her eyes, swimming in watery curiosity.

‘There is a condition of my appointment to Wyndham that I remain single,' Edwards said.

She remembered now. Gordon was at the diocese meeting and heard the matter discussed. When he mentioned it to her (mainly because he would no longer need to take a share of the responsibility of the Wyndham parish with other district clergy) she had snorted scornfully at this fresh evidence of the meanness of the church.

Not prepared to add even a few shillings to the already miserable stipend!

Her anger was heightened by the lean Christmas they were facing, her children unable to swap with schoolmates tales on the toys they would receive.

‘I need to have further talks with the archdeacon before approaching the father.' He took up his hat and laid it on his kneecap.

‘An engagement perhaps,' Mrs Palmer said, still using a murmuring voice.

This was not what she wanted either. She wanted, in a fresh surge of jealousy, one of the Herbert girls in dresses and hats seasons old, losing her looks to a brood of children, in constant torment that she couldn't feed and clothe them adequately.

She had been plain and freckled and gawky and only Gordon had wanted to marry her. His face had never worn that soft, protective look and his thighs had never strained under the cloth of his clerical trousers, but fell away feeble and bony.

She had sat up in bed on their honeymoon, watching him undress. She thought he would hurry through, flinging his clothes off to leap in bed beside her. But he took his time, folding his clothes as he removed them and sitting down to remove his boots, even studying them before putting them down, looking for any sign of wear, frowning over them for a long time.

It seemed like a lesson to her on the kind of life she would have. She had let the blankets fall away to show her daring sleeveless blue silk nightgown but he appeared not to notice.

He got up from his chair and put his collar studs and sleeve links carefully away, and all she saw was the back of his pyjamas, the cord so tight at his waist that the top bloused over, emphasizing his slightness.

She lay down then and closed her eyes, so she did not know if he looked her way, and when he had blown out the light she heard his hesitant steps to the bed, and was tipped slightly on the mattress when he got in, but moved swiftly back to her edge.

‘Asleep?' he said after a while.

‘Sound asleep!' she said. He appeared to be digesting this, then slipped under the covers. Her spirits rose with him when he sat up.

‘You told them we would have early morning tea, didn't you?' he said. The dark put a thin and querulous edge to his voice.

It gave hers strength and authority when she said: ‘I told them!'

She waited with a beating heart, feeling him stirring. ‘I forgot my prayers,' he said.

She had forgotten hers too, and considered punishing him by remaining in bed. But she got up and knelt on her side with her face in the cold stiff sheet.

He knelt with his face turned away from her. She pressed both hands to her face to shut out the sight of him and the sharp tarry smell of soap on the sheets – the cheapest boarding house for their honeymoon! – and could not bring herself to say a conventional prayer. She could only pray for the strength of mind not to hate him.

Edwards's thighs had brought this back to her and she lifted her eyes to his face to return to the present. His eyes were asking gently about her own unhappiness.

I'm alright, said the toss of her sandy head. Her hair made Edwards think of tufts of pale grass growing out of sand. He had a fresh vision of Enid and Una. Una's hair was the more abundant, but Enid wore hers dressed neatly. Yes, Enid's hair in its way was every bit as attractive as Una's.

Edwards rose, taking his hat from his knee. He avoided looking at Mrs Palmer's disappointed face, but she sat on, not uncrossing her legs.

‘I should go,' he said. ‘It's such a long drive for my horse.' He saw its mournful, drooped face through the open door.

‘Why go on to Bega?' she said, eyes washing over him, like water too deep to see the bottom. ‘Wait till Gordon comes. He could perhaps put your case to the next diocese meeting. Rushing in is not always a good thing.'

With me it wasn't. Stay the way you are a little longer! Visit me again like this!

Edwards sat. Here was a nice woman! Warm and kind, taking on the burden of another's problems, how wrong the gossips were that said she was hard and bossy.

A flush was on her cheeks and she had uncrossed her legs and was staring at the tips of her shoes close together on the floor. The toes of his boots were not too far from hers.

‘Stay and eat dinner with us,' she said.

‘I could not think of imposing,' he said, wondering about the state of their larder compared to his.

‘There would be no imposition,' Mrs Palmer said, seeing him part his legs and rub his thighs on the inside. A man is allowed so much, she thought, crossing her legs again, as if she needed to imprison a feeling there, and as a woman was denied the luxury of relief.

‘I should complete the errand I set out on,' he said. But looking towards the door, they both saw Palmer coming through the gate.

The men exchanged a greeting and Mrs Palmer left them to see to dinner.

Palmer had had a bad morning. He took a group of Anglican children for religious instruction, less than a third of whom had church-going parents. His eyes, when raised above the book of parables he read from, accused them of these failings and the bold eyes of the children dared him to interfere.

For most of them the morning meant relief from the rigours of regular schoolwork, and they utilized the time in holiday spirit.

Palmer's nickname was Small Balls, and a row of the class this morning had passed along a paper under their desks, each one drawing a scrotum as they saw his. They were reduced in size as they went along, the second last being two dots, smaller than pin heads.

The last child made no attempt at a drawing, but wrote the word ‘invisible'.

The others seeing this burst into laughter they failed to control, and Palmer asked for the paper. He looked at it and considered sending the group to the headmaster, but knew the large raw-boned man to wield the cane without mercy.

After a long sad look at the drawings, some done so well there was no mistaking the subject, Palmer dropped the paper in a waste basket.

Relief escaped the children in a sigh that settled their ribs after the tight and fearful pain they bore, aware of what might have been ahead of them. Palmer suggested they kneel and pray forgiveness for their wickedness, and they feel on their knees as one, grateful for the reprieve and grateful that the last few minutes before the bell clanged for dinner could be utilized in additional sly merriment.

‘Our Father which fart in heaven,' hissed the boy who wrote ‘invisible', and the others crushed their heads on the wooden desks, arms folded around faces, as if giving themselves up totally to piety.