The Home Girls (2 page)

 

For Alice

THE HOME GIRLS

“It's today,” the fat child said and rolled over in bed landed on her feet on the floor and held the window sill, looking back at her sister, the thin one who had been jerked awake.

“Today!” the fat one said.

The thin one half raised herself on her elbows in bed. Her straight hair fell over her face. The fat one had curly hair in corkscrews over her head.

“Should be the other way round,” a visitor said once, looking at them with a stretched mouth and blank eyes.

The visitor meant that straight hair would have taken away from the fat one's rounded look and curls might have made the thin one look rounder.

The foster mother looked at them not bothering to stretch her mouth.

The fat one and the thin one looked away not knowing how to apologize for being the way they were.

“Go and play,” the foster mother said, but they were already going.

The fat one picked up a brush now and pressed it down her curls which sprang back in the wake of the bristles.

When she put the brush down she saw in the mirror her hair was the same as before.

The thin one screwed her body so that she could see the fat one's reflection. “Are you?” she said.

“Am I what?” the fat one answered.

“You know.” The thin one moved a foot which need not have belonged to her body so flat were the bedclothes. “Excited about it,” the thin one said.

“Yes!” said the fat one, too loud and too sudden.

Tears came into the thin one's eyes. “Don't shout!” she said.

The fat one picked up the brush and began to drag at her curls again. The thin one's watery eyes met her sister's in the mirror. They looked like portraits on a mantlepiece, the subjects photographed while the tension was still in their expression.

The foster mother came into the room then. She made the third portrait on the mantlepiece.

The thin one started to get out of bed rather quickly. Her ears were ready for the orders so she began to pull blankets off for the bedmaking.

But the foster mother said, “Leave that.”

The thin one didn't know what to do then. She thrust a finger up her nose and screwed it round.

The foster mother covered her face with both hands. After a while she took them away showing a stretched mouth.

“Now!” she said quite brightly looking between them.

Now what? thought the fat one and the thin one.

Their mouths hung a little open.

The foster mother squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them the fat one and the thin one were in the same pose.

She crossed to the window and raised the blind quite violently.

“Have you had your bath?” she said.

They knew she knew they hadn't because it was there on the back of her neck.

She turned abruptly and went out of the room.

They heard her angry heels on the stairs.

The fat one bent down and opened a drawer. It was empty.

“Our clothes?” she said.

The thin one stared at a suitcase fastened and strapped standing upright in a corner.

“They're all in there,” the fat one said, pointing.

“Take something out to wear,” the thin one said making a space on the bed for the case.

Inside the clothes were in perfect order, a line of dresses folded with the tops showing, a stack of pants, a corner filled with rolled up socks, nightgowns with the lace ironed, cardigans carefully buttoned.

The fat one's hands hovered over them.

“Which?” she said.

She touched the pants and they were soon screwed and tossed under her fingers.

“Stop!” said the thin one and slapped her sister's hand away.

She plucked up two pairs of pants and then put them back.

“Fold them the way she did!” the fat one said.

The thin one tried but couldn't.

“Let me!” said the fat one, but digging in she tossed a dress so that the folded underneath came to the top.

They looked around at a noise and the foster mother was there.

“Look what you've done!” she screamed and the fat one and the thin one flung themselves together away from the case on the bed.

They blinked as if blows were descending on them.

The foster mother turned her head towards the stairs.

“Hilda!” she cried, squashing her face against the door jamb.

The body of Hilda the foster mother's sister who came to the house every day jerked into sight, coming from the bottom of the stairs like an open mouthed fish swimming to the surface.

The foster mother now had both hands pressed to her face.

Shutting the fat one and the thin one out of her vision, Hilda went to the case and began to lift little bundles of clothes onto the bed.

“You go down and pour yourself a cup of tea,” she said.

The foster mother's heels went down again, thudding dully this time.

“Go and have your bath,” Hilda said, her eyes on the folding and the packing.

They went into the bathroom off the landing.

There hanging on the shower rail were the clothes they were to wear. The dresses were on hangers, pants and vests and socks were folded over the rail.

Shoes polished to a high gloss were on a bathroom chair.

“She told us last night,” the thin one said.

The fat one's face remembered.

Very slow and deliberate she turned the water on.

She stared at it rushing away without the plug in.

The thin one sat on the toilet seat and began to pull on her socks.

The fat one too dressed slowly.

Before she put her pants on she turned around flicked up her skirt and urinated in the bath.

It trickled down to join the rushing water.

Thoughtfully she turned the tap off.

They stood in the silence staring about them.

The hard white shining walls stared back.

“Look!” said the thin one suddenly taking a lipstick from a little ceramic bowlful on a ledge below a cabinet. The foster mother kept them there sometimes using the bathroom to freshen up after housecleaning.

The thin one uncapped and screwed the metal holder sending the scarlet worm out like a living thing.

The fat one also took a lipstick out of the bowl.

She laughed when hers was longer and a shade more scarlet.

They looked in the mirror and saw not their own reflection but that of the foster mother bracing her jaws and pulling her lips back her cold watery eyes shutting out everything but her own image.

The fat one turned and leaned across the bath with the lipstick poised.

Her eyes flashing briefly on the thin one said what she would do.

Her pink tongue, shaped like the lipstick end, showed at the corner of her mouth.

She braced herself against the wall with a spread plump hand.

The lipstick cut deep into the wall sprinkling a few scarlet crumbs.

The fat one wrote her word.

Shithead
.

The thin one made a little noise of breathing. She leaned over beside her sister. She was slower and her tongue was out further.

She wrote
cock
.

The fat one made a small noise of scorn.

She took a step level with a piece of virgin wall.

She wrote
fuck.

The thin one wrote with the letters going downwards.

Piss.

She broke her lipstick when she dotted the
i
.

The piece fell into the bath. The fat one laughed and ground it into the porcelain wiping her shoe on the side of the tub.

Then she climbed onto the side of the bath. High above the words she began to draw.

It was a penis so big she wore the lipstick down to the metal holder when she finished.

The thin one climbed up beside her. She drew a cascade of little circles falling from the tip of the penis, the last unfinished because her lipstick stump gave out.

They jumped down together, the fat one light like a pillow and the thin one bending her knees and creaking when she landed.

They dropped the lipstick holders on the floor and watched them roll away.

The door opened then and Hilda was there.

All that moved was the hair sprouting from a mole at the corner of her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said at last.

Then she breathed in raising her bosom and crossing both hands near her throat.

The fat one and the thin one jerked their smeared hands away from their stiffly ironed dresses.

“My God,” said Hilda, able to look at them now. “I'd kill you if I had you.”

“Yes,” said the fat one and the thin one sounding as if they'd heard it before.

Hilda flashed open a cabinet and took out a cake of grey gritty soap and dropped it in the basin.

“Scrub your hands with that,” she said.

They did standing back with spread out legs to keep splashes off their clothes.

Hilda was ready with a soiled towel fished from the linen basket.

“She did everything in her power for you,” she said in a deep and trembling voice. “Out of the goodness of her heart she did every single thing she could.”

The fat one and the thin one didn't know what to do with the towel when they had finished wiping, but Hilda seized it and flung it into the basket.

“Carry your case down,” she said going ahead of them.

Halfway down the stairs they came in view of the heads.

The foster mother and a man and a woman were standing around looking up.

The foster mother's mouth was stretched in one of her smiles.

“Your new mother and father have come to collect you. Isn't that nice?” she said in a gay voice.

“We're carrying you off before breakfast,” said the woman nearly as gay.

“Hilda, whip out into the kitchen and get some apples to chew on the way,” said the foster mother.

Hilda slipped past the group. The fat one and the thin one watched but the backs of her legs did not speak.

The woman took a hand of each. She rubbed a thumb on each palm wondering briefly at the cool and gritty feel.

“You'll have four brothers and sisters at the cottage,” she said.

“Cottage,” said the foster mother. “Doesn't that sound cosy?”

Hilda returned putting the apples into a paper bag.

The man picked up the case and everyone moved to the car parked near the porch.

The fat one and the thin one got in quickly and each sat in a corner of the back seat wriggling until the leather clutched them.

The foster mother put her face to the half wound up window.

“Write us a little letter about how you're getting on,” she said.

When the car moved off she kissed the tips of her fingers to them.

Four brothers and sisters, the fat one and the thin one were thinking.

At that moment the foster mother being shown the bathroom by Hilda was clutching her sister and saying Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, over and over.

The fat one and the thin one weren't remembering it at all.

We lived in this beautiful house with our own bathroom, the fat one said to herself seeing in her mind four pairs of entranced eyes.

The car swerved suddenly to miss an overtaking lorry.

The man swore and the woman put a hand on his arm to restrain him turning her head to see if the back had heard.

There was this terrible accident killing our father and mother, the thin one said silently to her imaginary audience.

Lapsed into their dream the fat one pulled at her corkscrew curls and the thin one twisted the ends of her hair and they watched for the cottage to come into view.

THE RAGES OF MRS TORRENS

The rages of Mrs Torrens kept the town of Tantello constantly in gossip.

Or more accurately in constant entertainment.

It was a town with a sawmill, some clusters of grey unpainted weatherboard cottages, a hall and the required number of shops for a population of two hundred.

Even while Mrs Torrens was having a temporary lull from one of her rages the subject was not similarly affected.

“How's the wife these days?” a mill worker would say to Harold while they shovelled a path through the sawdust for a lorry.

The man's eyes would not meet Harold's but slide away.

Remarks like this would be made when life was more than usually dull in Tantello, for example during the long spell between the sports day in midwinter and the Christmas tree in December.

A mill wife having seen Mrs Torrens behaving like other mill wives in Tantello that day would suggest while chopping up her meat for stew or melon for jam that Kathleen may never have another of her rages.

It was not said hopefully though just dutifully.

It took some time for Tantello to settle down after the rage that sent Mrs Torrens and the five little Torrenses flying over the partly-built bridge across Tantello Creek.

The barrier at the finished end was down so Mrs Torrens one of the few women in Tantello who drove a car ripped across towards the gaping workmen standing with crowbars and other tools.