Nine Days (8 page)

I can see both sides. I’m not like these boys who think it’s a jape, who are busting to go. I’ve seen death at close quarters. A stockman crushed against the rail of the holding yard by
an unbroken horse. That shearer who drank himself blind on turps and walked into the fire, camp women dead in childbirth or kicked to death by husbands. I’ve listened to the sound of dry clods hitting a thin wooden box and I’ve seen the ever after coming for me, too. I’ve known that split second where everything stops and you think:
this is it.
There’s a scar on my forehead at the hairline where a pick-head flew off and nearly lifted my scalp. It’s only luck I’m still here.

All the same I can see why young blokes are more excited than scared by the thought of war. That mob standing under the tree; they’re making plans to farewell mothers and fathers and girls. Nudging each other, laughing. I can see through their eyes the wonder in it, the thrill, pitting your luck against the horizon and never believing you could fall out the loser. Their big chance to see European stars.

The short hairs at the back of my neck tell me there’s a bloke close behind me, maybe more than one. I don’t turn. Then I feel a jostle, the bump of a shoulder against my arm. Two old men, one behind the other. The front one mutters something. There are flecks of white spittle in his beard. His hair is plastered flat with sweat. You can’t find a pub open on a Sunday but I can smell his breath: malty and sour, old beer.

‘I said, “And you, boyo”.’ His voice is a low bellow. ‘Why are you still in civvies?’

The men around me waiting for pies hush as he speaks.

‘Against the law, is it?’

‘Against my law,’ says the old timer. He puts his shoulders back and speaks like he’s doing me a favour at great personal expense. ‘I was at Pozières, young man.’

If I had any sense I’d turn and head home. Instead I say, ‘And you’d wish that on another living soul.’

The man behind him has wet eyes peering out of speckled white skin. ‘I’m half deaf, they say. I’ve been down the drill hall twice and they sent me home both times.’ He cups his ear for effect. ‘The question my old friend asked was: what’s the matter with you?’

‘He looks fit enough, doesn’t he?’ says the old timer. He walks around me in a circle. ‘Tall. Broad. Nothing wrong with him, I’d say.’

‘Strong as an ox and almost as smart,’ says the second man.

If I had nothing to be ashamed of, I’d tell them about my parents getting older and worrying and how I have to help them. The look in my mother’s eyes when she hears about another boy from the neighbourhood signing up. That if I was going anywhere it’d be back out west to the station, back where I can breathe. I’d tell them I haven’t made up my mind to go. Not yet. But I say nothing.

‘First soldiers are already there. Saw it in the
Herald
,’ the first man says.

‘Perhaps you think you’re too good to go,’ says the other.

‘Perhaps I think my reasons are my business.’

‘Now, now,’ he says. ‘Don’t be like that. We’re just offering a little encouragement to blokes who might be lacking in the spine department.’

‘Them spineless blokes,’ says the old timer.

‘Hard to tell which blokes have nothing but jelly where their spine should be.’ He waves a fly off the front of his face.

I take off my hat and hit it against my thigh to shake
the dust off it. ‘I’ll be sure and tell them, if I see any. Blokes without spines. I’ll tell them you’re looking for them.’

‘You do that,’ the younger one says. Neither of them moves. They just watch me go.

At home, Mum’s picking up a load of fabric scraps from the kitchen table, red and white check against the polished timber. She sorts the bits that are big enough for patches from those to be thrown away, she gathers up her threads and needles. Then she starts bustling around the kitchen and I see the good cups being wiped with a tea towel and cake plates and forks out on the sideboard.

‘Jack,’ she says, when she sees me in the doorway. ‘Why are you wearing that old thing? I’ve ironed your new shirt. How about putting it on?’

She wants me to wear the new shirt she bought from the Myer Emporium for Christmas. Now, for afternoon tea with her and Dad. This from my mother who, after twenty-odd years of marriage, takes the linen from her glory box twice a year to replace the mothballs. I don’t say anything. I go up to my bedroom where the blue shirt is hanging on the door and I put it on.

When I get back to the kitchen she adjusts my collar. ‘Look at the state of you. Did you shave this morning? We’re not out in the sticks now, you know. How about running a wet washer around your neck? There’s a cake of Sunlight in the trough. Go on.’

I sniff under my arms. Nothing I can detect. It’s the first time she’s asked me to do this in six weeks but if that’s what she wants. When I get back, the kitchen is empty. I hear a murmur from the front room, Mum’s company voice, higher pitched, with tighter vowels. I wander down the hall and she’s sitting there with Dad and a woman and a girl, a brown-haired girl. The girl is wearing a red suit and a white shirt and her face is shiny and her hair is done up with a red ribbon. They all stand when I come in. Her teeth are straight and friendly. Good, strong teeth. There’s not one thing wrong with the look of her.

‘Jack,’ says Mum. ‘There you are. We wondered where you’d got to. This is Mrs Stewart and her Emily.’

Mrs Stewart nods. Emily steps forward and I shake her hand. Her grip is cool and firm. A proper handshake, not a ladylike drape of the fingertips.

‘The Stewarts go to St Stephen’s,’ Mum says.

‘Don’t see you there, Jack,’ says Mrs Stewart.

‘He’s still settling in,’ Mum says. ‘They do things different in the country.’

‘Men do things different you mean. My Albert. Like pulling teeth, church is,’ says Mrs Stewart.

‘Dad says the good Lord knows where he is if He wants him,’ says Emily.

‘Still, good to know who shares a pew, isn’t it, Jack? I’m not one of those prejudiced people. We’ve a family of Catholics right next door and we let their lad help around the yard. Not that I’ve ever been inside their house. Not that they’ve ever invited me. Probably wall to wall with statues of the Virgin
and no room for visitors at all.’ She giggles. ‘Emily’s father has the hardware shop on Swan Street.’

‘I’m forever down there getting new screws, paint for touching up, bits and bobs,’ says Dad. ‘What Albert doesn’t know about varnish is nobody’s business.’

‘Not just varnish, Mr Husting. Nails too,’ says Emily.

When they all sit I see there’s an empty chair next to Emily. Mum looks at me. I stare at the chair, then I look at the front door. It’s closed but the bolt isn’t drawn. It’s not far away. Half a dozen strides.

‘Jack,’ Mum says.

Parents raise and feed and clothe and educate us. A good education in my case. Ballarat Grammar, as befits the only nephew of a childless station owner. Geography and Latin and history. Sitting is not too much to ask. Come on, Jack. Knees, they’re not made for decoration. They bend, given the right encouragement. There’s cake, I see, with apricots and jam on top. Mum’s got her hat on, the one she bought for my cousin Sarah’s wedding. If they had given me a bit of notice I could have been prepared. Although, to be fair, if I’d known in advance I might be out the other side of Sunbury by now. I pull the chair out. I sit.

‘There’s an outdoor part where they stack the timber,’ Mum says. ‘A decent-sized yard. I’ve often wished our shop had a yard like that.’

I look up. First I’ve heard about that particular ambition.

‘Half the work is outside, looking after the timber and whatnot,’ says Mrs Stewart. ‘My Albert really knows his timber.’

‘Good storage, that’s the trick,’ says Emily. ‘Warping, splitting. It’s the damp that does it.’

She is sitting with her back straight, knees and feet together. Her gloved hands are folded in her lap and little dark circles of sweat are blooming between the fingers. Her legs are still, her waist is still, her ankles are still.

‘Our Jack’s very fond of timber,’ says Mum. ‘Well. Trees, at any rate. Knows one kind from another. Not just the normal ones, oaks and elms and so forth. The scrubby ones too. Gums and whatnot. And birds. Jack’s fond of being outdoors. Aren’t you, Jack? Fond of being outdoors? And of timber.’

‘We have hoop pine and bunyah, mostly. From Queensland. For floors,’ says Emily. ‘And ash. Local, of course. Not New Zealand kauri. Can’t get kauri anymore.’

‘That so?’ says Dad.

‘Runned out,’ says Emily.

My mother cuts the cake: large slabs for Dad and me, slender pieces for the ladies. Emily balances her plate on her lap in a delicate manner that’s impossible to fault. She and her mother compliment the cake, the little forks, the napkins.

‘Lovely,’ she says. ‘Crown Derby, is it?’ Mum blushes parrot-pink, turns one plate over to show the maker’s mark, the part that tells women what’s what if they speak the language. I stare at the cake. The cake stares back, two apricot halves looking at me cross-eyed. I use my fork to break off a bit and force it down with a swig of tea.

‘Emily only has sisters,’ says Mum. ‘Girls are a blessing for mothers but it must be hard on your father, dear.’

‘Dad always says Mum shouldn’t feel bad. He says he’s sure she did as best she could.’ She lays a glove on her mother’s knee.

‘A good husband,’ Mrs Stewart says. ‘And so generous with us girls.’

‘For Christmas he bought us all stockings just like the Duchess of Kent’s,’ Emily says. ‘Two-thread sheer. Colour of orchid bronze.’

‘I’m sure you and our Jack would have a lot in common. Are you fond of the pictures? Our Jack loves going to the pictures, don’t you Jack. And animals, I’ll bet you’re fond of animals. Our Jack was shoeing horses until recently on my brother’s station, out west, near Darlington. Practically South Australia. Of course, that wasn’t all he was doing. A very responsible position, wasn’t it Jack, for so young a man? And,’ she pauses until it seems that inspiration strikes. ‘Very educational, shoeing horses. As far as nails.’ She bestows a triumphant smile on Emily, who clearly has no idea what to do with this insight.

‘You work as well,’ Dad says. ‘In the shop.’

‘We all do. My sisters and me. Dad can’t lift much, on account of his arm.’

‘Shame.’ Dad rubs both elbows. ‘Best mark in the under- 19s, Albert Stewart.’

‘The Great War. That’s where he lost it.’ Emily shakes her head. ‘In France, or somesuch.’

I have an image unbidden of the poor arm, wandering over foreign fields, trying to find its way home.

‘Can’t imagine him with two. That long ago,’ says Mrs Stewart.

‘He’s a wonder, your father,’ Mum says. ‘And never any trouble with the drink.’

‘He always says he’d rather be missing one arm than got gassed,’ Emily says.

‘Wicked, that gas,’ says Mum. ‘Credit to him that he never breathed it in.’

‘He can do most everything except wash his hand and roll his shirt sleeve up and pin it and cut his nails. We girls take it in turns to do that, have since we were little. In the shop I work mostly inside. I’m in charge of washing machines.’

‘Washing machines,’ says Dad. ‘That must be a good deal of responsibility for so young a lady. How old are you, Emily? Eighteen?’

‘Nearly. Do you have a washing machine yourself, Mrs Husting?’

‘I’m sure they’re wonderful for a certain type of family,’ Mum says, ‘but I have a girl every Monday.’

‘Our new vacuum washer, it has a copper plunger. The lightest silks and stockings can be washed in it. No boiling, no rubbing, no scrubbing.’

‘Fancy,’ says Mum.

There is more talk of washing machines but no further mention of stockings. There is talk about bicycles. Emily maintains they are the future of cheap transportation for working people. She believes it possible to cycle in a ladylike fashion and my mother’s expression betrays her politely withheld disagreement. Emily also believes that horses will soon live only in zoos and every good family will have a car and, if her washing machines are any example, there will be
so many labour-saving devices that women will have all day to practise drawing and needlework.

‘Is that so, Emily?’ says Mum. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if my labour were to be saved.’

After an hour or so, Emily’s mother says they must be getting back, and Mum says how nice it is that they’ve visited, and would she like to take some cake for her husband, bless him. They must come again.

I say goodbye and shake Emily’s hand again. After they’ve gone, Dad says what a beaut girl, that she’ll make some lad proud, and even with so many young men away a girl like Emily can have her pick of any fellow she likes. Then Mum says what a good little cook she is and what she can do with a bunny is nobody’s business. And how her father is so clever, running the shop instead of becoming a lift driver or going on the susso like most one-armed men you see. It’s a good job, though, lift driver, Dad says. A job for life. There’ll always be a need for lift drivers; every new building in the city’s taller than the last. Neither of Emily’s sisters is married yet—they’re plainer than she is and one has a trace of a moustache—and sure as eggs the first son-in-law will have his way with the shop. It’s no McConchie’s or Provan’s, not yet. Modest. But it could be. My mother’s eyes are shining.