Loving Daughters (4 page)

7

Edwards decided to punish himself for looking forward too eagerly to the funeral by allowing himself only an occasional glance at Una. He tried to be stern with his face in the mirror when he saw it so lively, and turned away to brush his cassock. When he laid his surplice over his shoulders, the white caused such a flash from the mirror he turned to almost purr in appreciation of his shape and Mrs Watt's excellent ironing.

I will give of my very best to the service, he told himself, groping for a humble attitude but overruled by the thought of ‘Abide With Me' and his voice raised about the others (for Una's ears).

His eyes did keep fairly clear of Una up until the graveside service when a wind came up suddenly and flung itself among the ladies gowns. Most pressed black gloves to their thighs but Una used both hands to hold a little hat with upturned brim. A tweed cape, pale blue to match the trimming on her dress, lifted and came over her hat so that she had to shake it back, keeping a grip on her handbag and prayer book.

Edwards, saying the last prayers, had to keep his eyes on the tipping edge of the coffin, taking earth with it as it grazed the edges of the cavity, and he had to fight an urge to smooth Una's cape back in place. In spite of the chilly midwinter day, he felt a film of cold sweat at his collar and a moisture on his hands which he hoped Una would not feel through her gloves, for he was looking forward to shaking hands with her, although this was still some time off.

It being his first funeral, he had not thought of an invitation back to Honeysuckle for refreshments until it came from Enid, and he forgot himself to look hastily Una's way and see her with her gaze on a bank of distant oak trees and her fingers like scissors holding her cape to her waist, even narrower than Edwards thought at first.

The older one asks naturally, he thought, noting that even this gave him a small shiver of pleasure. He thought of his mother's mouth approving and her anxious eyes on his father begging his approval but ready to go neutral if he didn't. Why am I thinking of Mother now, he wondered, hurrying to his horse and sulky, then having to loiter to allow the Herberts' Austin to get away to avoid the humiliation of it passing him.

There was an air of urgency about it, due perhaps to Enid, who sat forward in her seat ready to leap out and fly into the house when the car pulled up. She mentally ticked off the order of jobs to be done, eyeing the dreamy Una and deciding not to rely too heavily on her for help, and grateful she had made extra scones and jellied brawn, in the event of a buggyload of Turbetts, distant cousins who lived six miles the other side of Burragete.

But only May Turbett and her daughter Jinny came by sulky, Jinny at twenty-two being closest in age of the unattached Turbett females to the newly arrived Reverend Colin Edwards.

The Turbetts pulled over now to let the Austin have the middle of the road, Alex in his peaked tweed cap raising a free hand. The startled horse tipped the sulky backwards when it jumped with all four feet together, and looked wildly back beyond its blinkers wondering whether to step out and try and keep up with the odd contraption or take to the side of the road and shiver there with head down until the strange and frightening noise died away in the distance.

Inside the Austin the Herberts were quiet. Alex very privately was grateful to his late sister-in-law for this opportunity of showing the car to a fairly representative gathering of Wyndham people. George, between his sisters in the back seat, felt a sense of inferiority at his inability to drive, and the way Alex was in full possession it seemed unlikely he would have a chance to learn. He sided with his father that a new silo should have priority, but Alex, of whom Jack was a little frightened, got his way, and the car was one of only three or four in Wyndham. He talked so much about it the others wondered what he found to discuss before it came.

Jack next to him sat with a fold of purple jowl over his collar. The boys wore shirts with soft attached collars, but Jack clung to the stiff ones over which Enid toiled to get the shine he liked. Jack's eyes were on the road and his hands on both knees, pressing them hard, expecting the car to stop any moment. He tended to lean forward as if urging it to keep going, and Alex leaned back to show his confidence in the motor, and the more Alex leaned back the more Jack leaned forward until Alex shouted in anger.

‘Sit back against the seat! That's what it's there for!'

Jack, infrequently receiving a command, obeyed in shock.

‘Some people can't move with the times,' Alex said, changing gears with no more than one or two quite mild jerks.

‘Just look at it! You'd think it had a brain of its own,' Alex said as the Austin sailed sedately on.

‘I wouldn't mind a go at driving,' George called out.

‘Then sit in the front and watch me!' Alex said. ‘I don't make the seating arrangements!'

Enid as much to protect Jack as for any other reason put her face near his rapidly reddening neck.

‘Please remember where we've been!'

They all remembered. Una remembered Edwards in the wind, it tearing his cassock backwards so that his thighs were clearly outlined. Enid was troubled at the memory of Henry climbing in the hearse, a converted Ford with a coat of new black paint. He should not have taken a seat beside Cecil Grant, but should have travelled home with them in the family car. She only saw his back and thought it rebuked them for all their aloofness to his dead wife. Enid moved her shoulders under her moire silk, but this did not shake off the guilt which stuck and rubbed at her skin as if the seams were weighted. Jack's good Chesterfield overcoat was weighted too, as if the dead girl sat there. He saw her again, wistful of eye when brave enough to meet his, which blinked intolerance and found something else more worthy of his gaze.

‘I do not feel it has gone off all that well so far,' Enid said in the kitchen, stacking extra china on a tray to almost race with it to the living room.

Una raised questioning eyebrows above the scones she was buttering, keeping the rest of her face dreamy.

‘For one thing, Henry should have ridden home with us! The chief mourner!' Enid was back unstacking the big meat dishes which would take the boiled fowls, their greyish white sweating skins to be scattered with parsley she had picked from the garden soon after dawn that morning.

Una rushed to the stove flinging her apron over her head, pretending she was overcome by smoke, when in fact she was overcome by uncontrolled giggling.

The chief mourner! Oh, dear me, I'll explode, she thought. Enid saw the crossed straps of her white apron shaking over her black back.

‘I also thought your blue cape was wrong,' Enid said. ‘Blowing about like it did.'

Una smoothed her apron down and tipped her chin up, a snap in her brown eyes.

‘I'll pin it to my waist for the next funeral!' she said.

‘Curb your disrespectful tongue!' Enid said. ‘The Turbetts are here already!' Their horse, rough bred and rough coated, had outpaced the sleeker animals, and Enid had to show them to the bedroom to wash at the china basin. They slid their eyes from left to right to take in the details of the room, sniffing both in appreciation and disdain at the French soap Enid had set out for the visitors.

Back in the kitchen Enid peeled off her apron.

‘Henry and Cecil Grant are drinking rum as you would expect!' Cecil had noted the apron with a hungry eye. No one else would see it!

‘Nothing seems to be going right!'

Una took off her apron too. She found joy in the fresh sight of her dress gathered gently across her bust, fastened with jet buttons. He would see it without the cape!

There were many more in the front room now and their voices reached the kitchen as the door slapped to and fro with the girls going in and out.

Like the creek after rain, Una thought of the babble. She saw it brown with scattered foam, flattening the reeds as it rushed along. Had he seen it?

She saw them together on a high bank looking down with the bush all around them fresh with wetness, their sides nearly touching.

Enid put the two big teapots on a tray, the signal that this was the last job, and looking the kitchen over for defects, for there would be eyes looking for them when the washing-up was on, told Una to bring the milk and follow her.

He was standing with Jack, holding his hat, with his face a little ruddy from the cold or the fire George had got going, leaping and crackling as if it was another person adding to the talk. Una suspected he saw her for he turned quite abruptly, giving more of his attention to Jack, and moved his hat further up his chest. Una and Enid saw the hat at the one time, Una lowering the milk jug and Enid the teapot, excusing herself to May Turbett and her raised teacup, and going to Edwards she took his hat to lay it on a music stand, giving it a distinction above the others piled on a table inside the front door.

Una, pouring too much milk in May Turbett's teacup, splashed some on the table when Mrs Turbett jerked her cup away, and Edwards, surrendering his hat to Enid, saw Una move the tray to cover the splash and was torn between a desire to smile at the little face she pulled and to pay closer attention to Enid's eyes, thoughtful and grey-green in colour.

He saw more of the eyes for they came closer to his own when she moved him and Jack to a tapestry-covered lovers' seat near a chiffonier and seconds later was back with plates of meat and buttered bread and tea expertly handled.

‘Thank you, Miss Herbert,' Edwards said. ‘But you shouldn't be waiting on us with so many to look after.'

Jack gave a small but telling snort. ‘Bring the pickles, Enid,' he said a trifle tersely.

‘Of course, Father,' Enid said, finding them on the table and after spooning some on Jack's plate, held the spoon, a question mark like her eyes, above Edwards's plate.

‘Thank you,' he said, although he didn't know whether he wanted them.

Her face looked a little sad, he thought. Of course it would be. A family death! Although you would hardly believe it, scanning the faces in the room. The people's throats, unclogged after a rapid intake of meat and Enid's good bread, were sending forth a spatter of words, and sometimes a sharp cackle of laughter which caused Enid to stretch her quite long neck until it appeared to rise above everyone else, simmering the noise down, like a boiling pot removed from high heat.

Mrs Ena Grant, still in a glow of satisfaction on being asked back to the house, was making a good meal to save on tea, and should Cecil Grant call in before returning to Bega (he was a cousin on her husband's side) there would be no need to offer food after this. Violet wasn't here, she noticed, although she was at the church. What would become of the child? Henry, by the mantelpiece, seemed to be handling his grief well, talking to a former girlfriend Lila Johnstone, now bethrothed to one of the Power boys. Henry seemed already to have shaken off responsibility for the child, judging by his habit of lifting his shoulders now and again, and giving a lot of attention to the cigarette between his fingers. Ena could not see him taking the child back to Sydney to his mother's relatives, even if Jack supplied an escort in Enid, Una or Violet.

As soon as she decently could she would ask, but it seemed safe to assume the child would stay with Violet. If passed over to Enid and Una that would put a spoke in their wheel, dressing to kill as they did and off to the Bega races and the Sydney Show and anything worthwhile at Candelo and Pambula. Ena with her hand temporarily empty of food picked like a small brown dusty bird at the crumbs in her saucer, and inhaled a new smell from the kitchen which was doubtless another cake, slipped into the oven since the meal started. They were a capable pair, the Herbert girls, no denying it, but she wouldn't want their grocery bill, thank you very much! She put her feet out from under her chair admiring her new shoes of brown leather and looked at other women's feet. Jinny Turbett was in large clumsy lace-ups. She would never catch a man in footwear like that! When Ena had the chance she would mention to May Turbett the new stock in for spring, beige and light tan, slender with narrow straps at the instep, in Jinny's size.

‘I don't mind if I do!' she said when Enid came by with the new cake. Trying not to eat too fast she looked the company over. The men were bright eyed with their talk of spring crops and new cows coming in, for it looked like a good season. The flowers at the burial showed that frosts had not been too heavy. There would be money around and Ena would get her share across the counter of the store.

You can say what you like, she said to herself, accepting more tea from the pot Una held. I quite enjoy a good funeral.

Edwards was the last to leave, having hoped for another chance to speak to Una, and wanting the cars and superior buggies and sulkies out of the way before he set off. He was troubled by this pattern of behaviour, feeling the day would come when he would have no choice but to depart with a gathering of faces staring at the wobbling wheels and peeling paint of his sulky and his horse's rump, resembling coarse dark sandpaper worn thin in places.

‘Wherever and whenever it is I pray for a good sharp bend to get me out of sight as quickly as possible,' he told himself (speaking aloud too) on numerous occasions.

Had he been aware of Una at the kitchen window, he would have been grateful there were no early bends on the road back to St Jude's.

Una was at the end of the small table with her face between the window frame and the edge of the blind, not causing even a flutter of the curtain. She smiled to herself at the comical picture he presented, for he was still new to handling a horse and sulky and did not hold the reins confidently on his knee but had them raised in the air and his head inclined to one side in the listening pose that was becoming familiar to her.

She dreamed on for a moment when the road was empty then turned and found Enid, who had slipped into the kitchen for the broom to brush crumbs from the precious living room linoleum.