The Home Girls (17 page)

Mrs Halliday saw not so much Josie's bed but her own.

She saw it as flat and smooth as a table top with the quilt on and not a lump or dip in sight.

Even staring into the cup of tea Josie placed near her elbow Mrs Halliday held onto the vision of her bed.

It's got years and years of wear in it yet, she told herself with a lifting of her spirits.

She lifted her cup too feeling Josie's watching eyes and waiting ears.

I'll have to say something or she'll wonder why I came, thought Mrs Halliday.

She broke the silence at last.

“What I really came for,” said Mrs Halliday, “Was to ask you to give me a hand to turn my mattress over.

“There's no hurry,” she said when Josie did not speak.

“Any old time will do.”

CALL ME PINKIE

The house was perched on the side of a hill with a verandah in front.

A few May bushes, one or two scraggy geraniums and a wild pink rose grew level with the verandah boards so the outlook to the road was unimpaired.

I had come home from school and found Mother on the verandah staring dreamily at the road. It was 1932 and a fairly steady stream of tramps went by but not many cars.

At school that day Sister Alfreda had seen a family on the road, a mother and father and three children. The mother and father walking together had packs on their backs and the spindly legged children were spread out with old rag hats pulled down to their eyes.

“A family on the road,” said Sister, “God help them.”

I looked at the picture on the classroom wall of Jesus with his fingers pointing to his bleeding heart, half expecting Him to step down and perform some miracle.

All the class rose like a flock of sparrows to crane through the window.

“Sit down!” Sister Alfreda said sharply. “You weren't told to stare like a herd of cattle!”

Mother did not watch the road for tramps.

She would leave whatever she was doing or when she was doing nothing and go out and look when she heard the noise of a motor that was not Creamy Ryan's lorry on its way to the butter factory or Father Slattery on his way to see some parishioner who hadn't been attending Mass regularly.

I had seen her snap Clem off her breast with the suddenness of a gun going off and fling him down roaring on the couch while she dashed out.

Now she was standing leaning against the verandah post, her eyes on the flat where a car was twinkling between the gums and the dog bush that lined the road.

The engine hummed with the noise of a droning bee, then took deep groaning breaths as it climbed the hill where the road had been cut through one side. I always wished the road was on our side of the hill. Then Mother could watch the cars for longer, and the dreamy shine would not fade so quickly from her eyes.

“I saw a woman in the front seat with a big black hat on,” she said her voice just above a whisper. “There was a big pink rose under the brim.”

How could she? It must have been that she was so tall with wonderful sight in her large blue eyes that made her see so well. I saw only a glint of sun on transparent side curtains, and a spare wheel at the rear almost hidden in a puff of blue smoke.

Mother wrapped her arms around the post as if it were someone she loved.

There was a crash in the kitchen. I knew by the sound one of the little boys had emptied the contents of the saucepan cupboard with the swipe of an arm.

“I'll see, Mother,” I said.

In a little while she came down the hall into the kitchen so quietly I turned and found her. She mostly moved this way. In her spotty muslin dress she walked as I imagined a lithe mountain cat would. She stood staring at Eric aged three and Clem one and a half surrounded by pans on the floor. Eric stretched out an arm to her with his starfish fingers sprayed out. A little absent smile settled on her mouth then vanished when she looked at Clem standing up with a fly in the corner of his eye, one nostril running and only a singlet on.

“I'll get him some pants from the line,” I said. Mother appearing not to hear me went to the stove, looked in the fire box then snapped the door shut. I had time to see a bed of ashes with one or two little pink points. She turned and leaned against a chair back looking over the kitchen table through the window into the peach tree. All over the table were the plates and cups from breakfast, the butter run to oil and the loaf of bread with the cut edge dry and curled like an old leaf.

“I'll get some wood for the stove,” I said quite loud because I was never sure if she heard or not.

I went down the back steps to the little room that was both wash house and wood shed. Inside scattered about were several pairs of the boys' pants, most of them screwed into hard little lumpy heaps. A cloud of flies rose from a pair on the bottom of a dry wash tub. I found a bucket and put in all those I could see and poured on a flood of water. With a potstick I churned them round and round letting the muck rise to the top. Transferring the pants to a tub I flung the water deep into the May bush. Climbing on a stump of wood I balanced the old grey washboard against the tub and ground yellow soap into the stained parts of the pants, plunging them up and down in the fresh water.

I imagined myself saying to Mother, “I've washed all the boys' pants and hung them out, Mother,” and seeing the smile chase the strain from her face.

In a little while a shadow fell across the tub.

“Oh Father!” I said, as if he'd frightened me. As if gladness could frighten you.

My blinking smile and his beautiful one washing into his brown eyes made nothing of the distance between us.

“Hullo Pinkie!” he said. “Little washerwoman Pinkie!”

He sat down in the doorway to unlace his old reddish boots caked with clay from the roadworks where he had a job. I had this urge to say something that would please him.

“Mother's not sick,” I said to my red hands in the water. “She's getting tea.”

He said nothing and I stole a look at his back, past the day's last piece of sun laying some gentle fingers on the edge of the tub. The back of his neck was creased beautifully like a doll's pleated skirt. When he moved the pleats deepened. His hair grew in and out of his collar touching him lovingly. His shoulders moved under his old blue shirt with the rhythmic unlacing. He made some nice little gentle grunts. My blouse felt too tight for my skinny chest, my throat too tight to swallow.

Beautiful Father.

“How was school today?” he asked with his last boot coming off.

“Oh, good,” I said. “We saw a family of tramps. Sister Alfreda said to pray for them.” I wrung at some old serge pants of Eric's. “I'm going to pray for them.”

Father put his arms on his knees and let his hands hang down. Perhaps he hadn't heard.

“I saw a nest of robins,” he said. “We didn't have to cut the tree down.”

“Oh, I'm glad,” I said.

After a while he said into the stillness: “I'll have to go inside soon.”

“When I've washed the pants I'll come too,” I said seeing his troubled face with the back of my head.

“Well Pinkie,” he said stuffing his socks into his boots and standing up.

He went and I saw through the cut-out square above the tubs that evening had come. The clothesline stretched bleakly across the sky. The May bush was bent in the wind with the flowers parted like the hair of a white headed old woman. The road was quiet. No singing cars went by and there was no light in McTaggert's house on the other hill. The water in the tub, sloshy and lively before, grew still and chilly. I didn't want to wash any more. I took my arms out of the water and wiped them along the sides of my tunic and went to the bottom of the steps.

I heard Mother scream out: “Nancy said she was getting wood! It's not my fault the fire's out!”

The door opened and Father hurtled down the steps past me.

“You had to get wood for the stove!” he said.

“Oh Father I know!” I wailed.

Inside I saw the furniture had backed into the shadows taking Mother who was hard to pick out at first in the corner of the couch with both hands pressed flat against her face.

The little boys were staring at her in the shadows too except for their faces like pale discs.

With a moaning cry she dropped her head against the hard end of the couch and began to roll it from side to side.

Eric stood up with a scattering of pans and began to wail. A second later Clem started up so when Eric's wah—ahh—ahh—ah was dying away Clem's shrill scream cut across it. The three of them were like instruments of a human orchestra, someone was blowing unable to draw from them any sweet or hopeful sound.

Father was in the shed scrambling for wood that would burn quickly.

I had stopped on the middle step looking back and looking forward.

“Go inside!” he called to me.

Oh Father don't talk to me that way.

“Inside!” he said. “Clem's messed in a saucepan! The fire's dead out!”

I looked at him, nothing to see except the brown egg of his face tipped towards me. His mouth was jagged and ugly.

Oh Father you were so beautiful.

“Inside at once! Nancy! Get inside!”

Say Pinkie, Father. Please father, call me Pinkie. Oh Father, say Pinkie please.

He would not have heard the words if I had said them, for he was splitting wood with hard quick blows, sending pieces flying about. There was a wind too, one of those winds that come with evening, a wind with a breath of warmth from the day just gone and a chilly edge warning of worse to come.

ADAMS AND BARKER

Cheryl and Dennis saw the house with both sets of parents one Saturday morning.

They went early before the influx of people to the estate the young women in their weekend jeans and their young husbands straddling babies on their hips very often like the young Barkers with parents along.

The three women and Dennis went into one of the houses and the elder Barker and Adams, Cheryl's father, stayed near a bed of petunias at the base of a gum tree.

The salesman rushed to help the women up the steps to the porch which was unnecessary since the house was almost flat on the ground.

He looked expectantly towards Adams and Barker but their backs said clearly they would have no part in any inspection.

“All these places are the bloody same,” Adams said licking the edge of his cigarette paper as he rolled a smoke.

“Gawd it's a long way out,” said Barker.

They each thought with a sense of cosiness of their own places (rented) half a dozen doors from each other in Parramatta. They were semi-detached with the roof sloping down in Barker's case almost touching the dusty little hedge in front. Adams's place had the front verandah closed in as a bedroom for the Adams boy born when Mrs Adams was forty-three, ten years after the last of the three daughters.

Mrs Adams sat in her dark little kitchen and wept for most of her pregnancy. She hoped the child would be born dead or so severely handicapped it would go into an institution. When he was normal and a relative the same age as Mrs Adams bore a sub-normal child Mrs Adams became very proud of her achievement and spoiled the boy rotten.

The verandah room of faded canvas blinds did not enhance the Adamses' place because their neighbour kept the exposed front and the cottages had the appearance of a face with one eye closed.

Not that the Adamses or the Barkers noticed this kind of thing.

When the Adamses' lawn mower broke down once, it stayed in the middle of the tiny lawn for the remainder of the summer and the grass grew high enough to cover it.

The Barkers had an old canvas chair on their lawn with a split in the seat through which the grass grew. Barker never bothered to move it when he cut the grass, grumbling and cursing and throwing old shoes and dogs' bones that got in his way into the hedge.

Adams and Barker were always in a hurry to get to the club. The wives were the same.

Making sure she had her cigarettes and money for the poker machines Mrs Adams (Mrs Barker too) would bang the front door shut and pick her way down the steps where missing tiles gave them a gap toothed look and make for the club leaning forward as she walked as if this would bring it closer.

The two couples formed a foursome when Cheryl and Dennis married. The women took great pleasure in comparing notes on what the two families were up to in pre-marriage days.

“Fancy that!” Mrs Adams said when she learned the Barkers were also in a rented cottage at The Entrance for a holiday in January 1960.

Both swore they remembered Cheryl and Dennis making up to each other on the sand.

“She used to talk about this little boy,” Mrs Adams said looking into her beer with eyes as moist.

Mrs Barker dreamily stroked her glass.

“I remember this little girl in red swimmers,” she said.

“Gawd,” said the men looking around to find the drink waiter again.

Cheryl and Dennis spent the first two years of their married life in a rented flat and were now ready for something better. Cheryl worked the switchboard of a glass factory by day and Dennis drove a delivery van for a grocery warehouse. At night both worked in clubs and hotels serving at the bar, washing glasses and waiting on tables.

A place of their own was their dream. They had saved enough for a deposit and were now deciding between a block of land and building to a plan they liked (“Gawd they'd be findin' fault with it inside a year,” said Adams or maybe it was Barker) or going into one of the places already built on estates like this one.

Adams and Barker showed little interest in either scheme beyond wondering how anyone could be bothered undertaking such a project.

“I couldn't take that movin,” Barker said over his Saturday beer.

“They'll be leavin' it to their kids to pay for,” said Adams gloomily taking up his glass.

Cheryl and Dennis had no car because all their money went into their home savings account and the senior Barkers with a beaten up old Holden were prevailed upon to drive to the estate this Saturday. Barker agreed to go only if Adams went.