The Home Girls (26 page)

Bertha thought of the blue sea gently lapping the white sands of Short Point which was the name of the beach and the little Turners running and squealing on the edge.

Horrie sank down into the corner of the couch with his eyes on the fire and his cigarette burning between his fingers on a raised knee in old grey serge pants.

She wanted to say “Never mind, love,” but did not quite know what he should not be minding.

Then there was a shriek from the verandah that another car was coming but Bertha called out that she had her hands in flour.

“Them kids shouldn't be out there on that verandah Sunday after Sunday!” said Horrie.

Bertha preferred them there to under her feet and rather enjoying the variety that Sunday brought tried without success to think of something to distract Horrie and get him back to his moody smoking.

Her heart sank when he got up and used a match again to re-light his cigarette.

“A man should put a stop to it!” he said.

“It's like cheerin' them on at a football match!”

He was not going to sit down again it appeared.

“It's just like they're winnin' something! Winning!” cried Horrie.

He went through the house to lean in the front doorway and contemplate the backs of the young Wents on the verandah. Seven faces turned to look at him. All of them were happy.

“Hullo, Dad,” most of them said although they had sat with him at breakfast.

No car was coming then and the Wents were threshing their feet about among the geraniums rather like cooling and splashing them in the sea.

“Youse are breaking them plants doin' that!” Horrie said and the young Wents stilled their feet.

Mrs Went heard Horrie's raised voice and called from the kitchen. “Are any of them sittin' on the beds?” No greater Sunday morning crime was known to Bertha than sitting on the verandah beds.

She trotted out evidently done with the flour to join Horrie in the doorway and look to the left for the sight or sound of a car on its way to the sea.

The eldest Went child a girl named Katie brought Bertha up to date.

“The Skinners just went,” she said.

“Was Granny Skinner there?” asked Bertha.

“Granny Skinner!” cried Horrie walking to the end of the verandah where Bertha had trained a grape vine to cut off the heat from the western sun.

The eyes of the seven young Wents were on the back of his neck.

“What I could tell you about Granny Skinner!” said Horrie and the young Wents waited.

Horrie stared into the grape vine assembling his words for the best effect.

Then he turned around as if ready and rocking himself on his working boots stared into the verandah ceiling where rust was spreading along a join in the iron.

But there was a spurt of noise in the distance and every young Went head swung to the left and every pair of feet with Horrie's warning forgotten beat the geraniums and every pair of ears were strained and the squealing held back to come out of seven throats in a thin excited pipe.

“One's coming!” cried Errol the second youngest glad to be the first to say it.

“Who do you say it is?” cried Jimmy the second eldest. “Everyone have a guess!”

They called out the Grants, the Gillespies, the Boxalls (forgetting the Boxalls had already gone) and the Henrys and then there was an argument because Jimmy said the Henrys and Katie said he meant the Percy Henrys but it turned out to be the Hector Henrys.

“I just said Henrys and its Henrys!” cried Jimmy.

“You meant the Percy Henrys because the Hector Henrys never go to the sea on a Sunday!” said Katie.

Bertha hushed them because the car was bumping through the belt of gums and she wanted to concentrate on the unusual spectecle of the Hector Henrys on the way to the sea in their old navy blue Buick.

The car had obviously been successfully tinkered with by the oldest Henry boys Mickey and Joe who had been working on it since the summer started and here it was returning thanks for their labours by actually going, not at any breakneck speed but toiling along with Joe at the wheel holding it so hard his face paled as if this was a way of pumping life into the laconic engine.

The car was level with the corner of the Went's front yard when it slowed down and hopped like a wounded animal trying valiantly to make the distance. With each hop Mrs Henry and the three daughters in the back seat swooped from the waist up as if they had performed on the stage and the show was now over. Joe was clinging so hard to the wheel it appeared that it would take more than human effort to extract him.

The Wents on the verandah were utterly silenced.

Always the cars had appeared to speed up passing the house with the unspoken cry of look-where-we're-going-and-you're-not and the excited shrieks of the Wents pleading to slow down had been lost in the roar of the engine.

Here was silence and a car actually stopped.

They all looked to Horrie for instructions on what to do and Bertha stepped back and stopped herself in time from sitting on one of the verandah beds and looked at Horrie too and waited.

Not for long:

Horrie as if injected with the life that left the engine of the Henry's car ran down the verandah steps and let himself out of the gate leaving it swinging in his haste to reach Hector's side with a hand extended.

He shook Hector's hand vigorously and laid his free hand on Hector's shoulder.

Hector had his chin dropped onto his collar and Mrs Henry and the girls were in a little group as if assembled to be photographed although wearing expressions of doom.

Mickey and Joe were staring into the engine of the Buick.

“I knew it! I knew!” said Hector.

“The old bastard!” muttered Mickey to Joe. “He wouldn't know a big end from the axle!”

“Hit him over the head with the jack,” Joe muttered back.

They had their dark rather handsome heads together under the bonnet.

“We'll find a place to sit in the shade,” called Mrs Henry moving towards the bank opposite the Went's house.

“Indeed you won't!” said Horrie looking to the verandah and Bertha.

“Come up onto the verandah! Make room there you kids!”

The puzzled young Wents rose from the verandah edge as if the Henrys were expected to sit there.

“Run into the kitchen for chairs,” said Bertha unable to bear the thought of the Henrys ranging themselves on the beds.

Katie and Jimmy brought the chairs at once aware of the urgency crashing through the doorway with them—only two as the children sat on stools to have their meals.

Horrie still had his hand on Hector's shoulder.

“Come in too, old son,” he said as if Hector had suffered a bereavement, which in a sense was true looking at the Buick.

Horrie just about bounded up the steps with Hector following. He took one of the chairs and Mrs Henry the other and the daughters stood about not sitting on the beds to Bertha's relief.

“Is the kettle on the boil Bertha?” said Horrie and when she trotted past Hector he lifted mournful eyes to her and nodded.

In the kitchen Bertha paled as she stood by the table and nervously rubbed the surface wiped clean after she had finished her bread mixing. She looked at the shelf above the stove to a canister marked biscuits but it held only, as she well knew, a half empty packet of lettuce seed and some loose pumpkin seeds saved from a pumpkin Horrie liked which she intended planting, There was also the last letter from her sister Myrtle in Queensland.

“Bertha!” called Horrie from the verandah.

“Coming!” said Bertha although she stood quite still pressing her hands to her waist.

In a moment she went out and stood shyly in the doorway avoiding Horrie's accusing eyes.

He sat with his back to a verandah post and his legs stretched in relaxed fashion along the edge.

Out on the roadside the Henry boys had parts of the engine spread out and they were already well covered in grease particularly their white shirts which appeared to be the chosen dress by poor farmers for the sea on a Sunday.

“Look at their shirts,” said the elder Henry girl wise in domestic matters although only fifteen.

“I told them, didn't I tell them?” said Mr Henry to Mrs Henry who flung a fly away from her face with her hand and might have been flinging Hector off too.

“You can't tell young ones anything these days,” said Horrie.

He laid his cigarette carefully on the verandah. “Not a thing can you tell 'em.”

“I could be havin' me rest like I always do,” said Hector with a glance at one of the beds which Mrs Went saw and resisted an impulse to move up and guard it.

“We been up since four,” said Hector.

“Half past three,” said one of the younger Henry girls called Isabel.

“We got up at ha' past three for this! I knew it!” said Hector so loud the boys heard and rose like two young trees newly sprouted and looked across to the verandah.

“You wouldn't want us to have any fun, would you?” Mickey called.

“Call that fun?” Hector called back. “Not my idea of fun!”

“What's your idea of fun?” called Mickey.

“Workin's his idea of fun,” said Joe holding a spanner against his trousers and leaving a long greasy mark which caused Mrs Henry to flinch and the Henry girl to sorrowfully shake her head of dark brown curls.

“Ignore him,” said Mickey to Joe and as if they were the ones with automation they dropped in the one motion onto their haunches and began to put the engine parts together.

“You're wasting your time like I told you in the first place!” Hector called out.

The Henry boys set their jaws and worked faster.

Horrie put his head back against the verandah post and smoked.

“When are we going to the sea?” piped up the smallest Henry girl.

“Never!” said Hector.

Mrs Henry fanned her face with her hand worrying now about the condition of the corned beef in the hamper strapped to the back of the car.

The Went children by this had dropped down onto the verandah edge so they were as before but because of the hour they did not expect to see any more cars on their way to the sea.

They thrust their feet among the geraniums and caught the leaves between their toes and in a little while Isabel and Elsie the youngest Henry slipped down and sat on spaces left.

“Take off your shoes and do this,” said Katie.

“Don't you!” said Mrs Henry. “We might be going any minute.”

Hector made a noise through his nose.

“Which way will we be goin'?” he said very loud for Mickey and Joe to hear. “We'll be headin' for home—walkin'.”

“I must say I like me Sundays at home too,” said Horrie careful to keep the end of his cigarette clear of his trouser knee.

The young Wents rustled the geraniums with a gentle whispering, slithering sound. They glanced at their father anticipating a reprimand but Horrie appeared to be smoking in utter content.

“What about dinner for us all, Bertha?” he said and Bertha put out a hand in time to stop herself from sinking onto a verandah bed.

“No, no,” said Mrs Henry. “Ours is in the hamper.”

“The butter will be running into everything,” said Mary the big Henry girl.

“We might get going any minute,” said Mrs Henry beating at the heat near her face.

“Weeks they spent on that damn thing,” said Hector. “Weeks and weeks and weeks.”

“We shoulda been grubbin' or fencin',” called Mickey who had stood for a moment and moved towards some shade. He drew a hand down the side of his face leaving a great grease streak. “He had to do a bit instead of sittin' on a log yellin' out his orders!”

Joe clamped the bonnet down.

“Now see what happens!” called Hector. “We all know what'll happen!”

“Leave them alone,” said Mrs Henry. “The poor things in all the heat!”

Mickey and Joe stood a little away from the car not attempting to get in or gather up the tools.

Mrs Henry stood too.

“Will we all get in in case it goes?” she called.

The younger Henry girls jumped to the ground and ran and climbed in the back.

They arranged their features into a look of smugness just in case.

Mrs Henry left the verandah and halted in the gateway prepared to go forward or back depending on the action of the Buick.

“Come and see the crop of tomatoes I got down the back,” said Horrie to Hector getting up and slapping the dust from the seat of his pants.

The young Wents looked towards their mother in astonishment. The vegetable garden was all her work.

Hector stood slowly but did not move.

The big Henry girl with a show of dignity walked down the verandah steps and stood between her mother and the car displaying a shade more optimism than Mrs Henry.

As if there was no need for a verbal agreement Joe wrapped the tools in a piece of hessian and flung them on the floor in the front and got in behind the wheel and Mickey went behind and gripped the rack holding the hamper.

Mrs Henry and Mary got in squeezing their arms to their sides and their legs together trying to shrink themselves to a lighter weight.

They strained forward, those on the back seat pushing at the front seat until Joe angrily flung them off with his shoulders.

The Buick moved but it was due to Mickey stretched almost horizontal grunting and straining sliding on the gravel.

“Come and help, you old bastard!” called Joe to the verandah.

“See the way they talk to me,” said Hector sorrowfully to Horrie.

“Terrible, terrible,” said Horrie. He tried but didn't succeed in being sorrowful too.

The Buick phut, phut, phutted then was silent, then phutted some more with a tinge of purpose. The phutting died away then started up again mixed with a roar. The Buick started to move hopped twice then charged forward and Mickey ran from behind, jumped on the running board and tore a door open nearly upsetting Joe's driving by falling half on top of him. The Henrys in the back helped straighten him up.