Loving Daughters (25 page)

49

Inside the rectory, Una had changed her dress and shoes and put on her hat with the cherries, announcing they would go to Honeysuckle for tea.

‘But I have evensong!' Edwards said.

‘Ring the bell and put a light there and no one will know the difference!' Una said.

‘I'll do nothing of the sort!' he said. ‘Evensong is at seven and seven it will be!

‘Besides it would be a terrible waste of kerosene.'

He folded the mosquito net that had covered the table, gaining pleasure in spite of the day's trauma at the fresh sight of their cruet and sugar bowl.

‘As well,' he said, ‘the horse, I should think, would be hard pressed to raise the strength to pull us to Honeysuckle!'

‘The fat useless thing!' she said. ‘The exercise would do it good!'

He pulled the linen cloth from the table (did she set it or did Enid?) and folding it put it in an empty sideboard drawer. The very place for it, he thought.

‘By the way what do we call him from now on?' He could not resist giving the little brass handle shaped like a large fat tear drop a waggle as he closed the drawer.

He did not expect an answer and she gave none. She sat now on the couch, a heel on the edge and her chin on her knee.

He thought of his mother in her full-skirted mulberry-coloured silk dress sitting in their drawing room on a Sunday afternoon with her Bible on her knee and her thumb between two pages. It had worried him as a child that it was not what she wanted to be doing, and he had wanted to ask her if she was having a game of ‘pretend' as she sometimes did when they played together.

He moved about putting the room in order, hoping he did not look too foolish, and looking often at her slender arms about her legs and hardly able to believe them capable of throwing that great stone. Going to the kitchen with some things from the table he wondered what his mother would think of her. I believe she would like her, he said to himself surprised and convinced.

But, dear me, I'm not deciding on any immediate course of action which I must do!

He went back to the living room to suggest they go to Honeysuckle, returning in time for evensong.

‘Perhaps Enid will give us a five o'clock tea,' he said. He told himself he was not giving in to her totally. There might be an opportunity of letting Enid know he had no part in the composition of that picture. She knows! said part of his heart. And he began to smile with warm eyes, knowing she did.

‘Or we could eat a large afternoon tea, then have a bite of supper here before bed!' he said. The thought of bed did not cheer him. Her lovely body like a young white gum, still not moving there on the couch, was every bit as impregnable.

But the thought of eating heartily at Enid's table raised his spirit and he went to harness his horse, a little afraid she might see into his mind and perversely decide not to accompany him.

Dear me, he said to himself, to think there was a time when I thought wives simply did what husbands proposed! He coaxed the horse into the shafts, telling it soothingly it was in a good position to know the difficulties of dealing with women following the experience at Violet's gate.

Una ran out of the house as he ran in to put his coat on and wish there was more time to spruce himself up. But he couldn't leave her too long with the horse, who shook the harness and lowered its backside at the sight of her, and he feared it might give a repeat performance of the paddock gallop if he didn't hurry.

Women and horses, Edwards thought climbing into his seat, flighty and unpredictable. And here he was caught between them.

Enid, back in the Honeysuckle kitchen after her walk to the creek, found the kettle singing on the fire Jack had thoughtfully stoked before riding off to help George bring in the cows. The ginger cat leapt from the chair as if inviting her to sit there. Kettles and cats, Enid thought. Are they to be my lot in life? And a long empty stretch like the creek she had just left? I could go to my room and lie on my bed and cry for an hour or two. There is nothing in the world to stop me, really, since I could serve everything cold for tea! I will not look at the garden, she told herself almost with her back to the side window, for if I do I might go there and work. And to cry is better.

But the side of her face directed towards the road caught sight of the sulky bearing Edwards and Una to Honeysuckle. She flung off the apron she had just put on and ran to the bedroom, wondering if there were loose floorboards to set the furniture dancing like that! She combed her hair and brushed her dress and stockings free of twigs and leaves. She laughed at her bright eyes in the mirror so far from tears. She slapped at her little collar to make it sit properly before running to fling open the front door.

She waved gaily to them climbing out of the sulky and ran to the kitchen to bring a jug of water and a newly opened bottle of her lemon cordial essence, and when she had poured two glasses she set the bottle on the sideboard for them to take home and finish.

‘Be sure and keep it in the cool safe,' she said, for his benefit. She didn't want him drinking it lukewarm.

Una made a small face. It may be a little tart for her, Edwards thought charitably. Enid refilled his glass without asking.

‘I can make an early tea for us all,' Enid was saying. ‘Then go back with you for evensong. I can walk home for it isn't dark until nearly eight. I had a walk this afternoon, but it was only to the creek – and disappointing!'

She moved cushions on chairs to indicate that they should sit and went out to start tea. There was boiled beef and her new tomato chutney, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and some cold potatoes she would make into a salad. She would make pastry (she felt the temperature of the oven while her thoughts ran on) and fill it with ripe peach slices and serve it warm with thick cream. He would like that! She went to work glancing often towards the front room thinking he might come and join her. Of course he couldn't! He would never leave Una alone there in one of her huffs. Dear, good unselfish man that he was!

Edwards in the brown armchair he occupied in premarriage days listened hungrily to the noises from the kitchen. There was a refinement in the rattle of the dishes and crockery, not the banging and crashing that went on in some kitchens. He stood up as if sitting was unbearable. Una lifted her hat suddenly from her head and dumped it on the foot of the couch as if it too had become unbearable.

‘Perhaps there is something we could do to help,' he said, and opening a sideboard drawer he took out a white damask cloth feeling akin to Enid since he had found a similar place for theirs.

Selfconsciously he removed the bowl of roses from the dining table. She came in when he began to pull the green cover off. Wordlessly she took the other end. He held his end under his chin and she walked to him with hers, touching his shoulders when the two ends met. She caught the fold touching his knees and she touched them too. She brought it up to join the end still pinned by his chin. He lifted his chin and she slipped that fold in and her fingers touched the cushion of flesh on bone. For a second he pinned her fingers too. Deeply pink she took the cloth across her arm and flung it on the table to finish with two more rapid folds and, not knowing where Una's eyes were, laid it on a chair back.

When she turned back he had the white cloth in its folded state on the table and she opened it with revolving hands moving to one end of the table while he moved to the other. He took his end and she hers and they raised it above the table, then let it fall and she bent towards him and he towards her, his brown hands and her strong knuckly ones sweeping and smoothing towards each other, their bodies going backwards to smooth and stroke the table edges, then coming forward again with fingers dragging at tiny creases, then back to run eyes, never meeting along the hemline.

Faces turned from each other he took the cruet and set it in the centre, and she sorrowful and absent stroked a corner two or three times more then slipped away to the kitchen.

50

He did get there after all.

Una had jumped from the couch suddenly and before he had time to call her name ran down the back hall and he heard the door bang behind her.

He went to the kitchen to get a better view from a window there, pointing her out to Enid without words and an upturned hand.

Enid looked, gave no more than a shake of her head and returned to her pastry.

‘She is off to the old racecourse,' Enid said. ‘She hasn't been there for a while.'

He knew she didn't intend it, but he felt chastened. No doubt it was his fault Una was deprived of her recreation of walking the racecourse fence, at which she excelled, as he was led to believe. He had gone there only once with her and she had clung to his arm and his side and showed no inclination towards the tomboy practice or any regret that it now belonged to a youthful past.

Enid lowered her head over the lettuce she was shredding so fine it looked like a pale green bird's nest. He would sit and watch her. Blow the Herbert men. He thought about Una throwing the stone and Violet banging the tank as something to say but decided he did not want any such intrusion. No words from either but a drift of petals from a shrub outside the window, bearing flowers like pieces of velvet, settled on the tins on her little table. They both saw. Enid went and found a full flower still intact, a centre like a cluster of caterpillar feelers and a stem like a piece of brown darning wool. She twirled it between her fingers and he thought it so much like her head on its slender neck he foolishly expected it to twirl too.

She dropped it out the window.

‘There will most likely be some new growth I can dig up for your garden,' she said.

Very swiftly his face said it was not what he wanted. She went to the window and cleared it of the branch and he saw her waist, small and tight, aching for an arm.

When her face turned around his said he would go to the front room and hers agreed, and he slipped away, she watching his back thinking he walked more quickly than he need have.

He felt no shame at his relief that Una did not return for tea. Enid was in charge, seeing to everyone's needs, talking of neighbourhood affairs, nothing that involved him, he was swift to notice, without hurt. Jack had greeted him with tempered curtness, having prepared himself after seeing Una striding out towards the racecourse. The fellow would be around somewhere, primed up for Enid's tea!

But she was not bothering too much with him, Jack could see, talking away about the Candelo show six weeks off. Her cakes and flowers would take most of the prizes, as they usually did. She had been asked to judge but had declined, wanting to be free to exhibit for a few years yet. That was his Enid! He had bought a glass fronted cupboard to hold her silver cups and dishes inscribed with her name, and she had it tucked away in a corner of the living room, slipping out of the room when he opened the door to show visitors, modest about her achievements, blushing shyly at the praise.

Hers was a happy face now, cutting her pie and serving them, his first – now the fellow was part of the family he no longer had priority which was something to be pleased about – and with the right amount of cream flavoured with vanilla and without sugar as he liked it.

She brought in the tea right after the pudding, and clearing her throat only slightly and glancing at the big clock said she was going to Wyndham with Edwards and Una for evensong, so if no one minded she would clear the table as quickly as possible.

Edwards sprang up first – the fellow would! – tea cup in hand while Enid took the things from the table that did not affect Jack. Off to church again! Well they had better make sure the other one was with them! A pretty sight, the two of them in the sulky and it getting towards dusk.

Enid, pinked over prettily as she gathered plates, said Una should be back from her walk by the time she was ready. The fellow with one of his endless excuse me's carried his cup to the kitchen too, and Jack bent an ear that way, not surprised at all if he heard him at the washing up. The fellow was more suited to women's work in his opinion!

Here was Enid back, taking the last of the things from the table, and the fellow springing forward as if about to help her fold the cloth but she did it on her own, thank you very much, and better and more efficiently that way!

She went to the bedroom returning with a hat on and buttoning her gloves and saying they would give Una five more minutes.

‘She may have walked up the creek and will be at the rectory by the time we get there,' she said.

We! Her and the fellow! This wasn't part of the bargain! He agreed to the fellow marrying the other one, he didn't give him access to Enid as well. If he couldn't tame that flibbertigibbet it was his lookout. Whoever heard of a wife wandering off like a schoolboy on holiday leaving her husband to a sister-in-law? And here was Enid dealing with a button that had sprung undone on her glove and that fellow looking ready to spring forward and help her.

Jack shook his jowls very red under a black scowl. The wonder of it was Enid, raising her face and looking full into Jack's, appearing to find nothing unusual in it and taking her handbag and prayer book from a small table saying George should drive Una to the rectory if she returned to Honeysuckle after they'd gone. George would be going to Violet's if she knew him, to squeeze out some words of thanks for the job he did on the chair.

The next thing she was climbing into the sulky helped by the fellow who raised his hat very high in farewell and slapped his horse into a smart pace under Jack's eyes, for Jack had gone to the verandah to stand wide of legs to glare after them.

When he went inside he could only believe it all seeing the cushion squashed by the fellow's shape and music not put away, for he appeared to have been looking through it.

Some Sunday evenings Enid played for him, as Nellie used to. She shook the rugs and swept away crumbs and made everything neat and the two of them sat through the twilight, her shape growing dimmer and the dark stealing her bundle of hair and deepening her brow so that she might have been Nellie. Nellie only left the room when Enid brought in the lamp to light it.

Now here was Alex hunting for his tobacco, dressed in his motoring coat, off to the Hickeys to play cards. Nellie never allowed them on Sunday nights. He was driving the car that short distance. A waste of petrol when he could have walked across the paddocks. Three paddocks to cross and he takes a car a mile up the road, then a mile along a cart track, more than anything to show it off to the Hickeys, and of course the girl Maggie, a schoolteacher home on holidays. Ladylike but too devout a Catholic, so devout Wyndham was surprised she didn't enter the convent.

Alex would need to marry someone though and get into the old house before it crumbled away. George was good for not much else than trailing after Violet, more so since he loaned her that money for the hospital. Just as well she didn't ask him, she would have been told right off her job was caring for Ned. Two patients in six months! Call that success! There was that row too this morning. It must have been something to get Ned talking! There were never rows in Nellie's time.

There was George coming to the front now with Dolly in the sulky and the other one still not back. She had better be back at the rectory where she belonged, and not start living between there and Honeysuckle. That would mean the fellow here more than before! He seemed to be getting the best deal. A wife and all that furniture, and here he was carrying Enid off as well. If the other one wasn't back there Enid would be alone with him in the church, watching his antics, swinging around in those ridiculous clothes, singing with a great roar, looking upwards, closing his eyes, swooping about, and she approving of it all. He had let her go without a protest. She hadn't seen his glare.

‘One look from you is enough for them!' Nellie used to say.

He strode in his agitated state to the kitchen. There he was freshly shocked.

Enid had the tea things stacked in a dish at one end of the table. At the other end the ginger cat was eating a dish of butter.