The Home Girls (4 page)

It may seem strange but that, the most violent of all the rages of Mrs Torrens, was not generally discussed in Tantello.

Mill wives standing on verandahs and at windows saw her walk the fence and saw she spoke but the husbands evaded the questions on what was said.

Some repeated her words but kept them inside their throats in the darkness of their bedrooms and seizing their wives for lovemaking held onto the vision of Mrs Torrens with her still face under her black hat and her strong thighs moving under her black dress as she walked the fence.

Even Thomas Cleary couldn't be persuaded to repeat what Mrs Torrens said.

Young Thomas tried from the kitchen floor where he was doing his homework.

“What did Rager say, Dad?” said young Thomas. “What was she saying when she walked the fence top?”

“Don't you get ideas about walking the fence top,” said Mrs Cleary from the table where she was sullenly making Thomas senior's lunch for the morrow. “Don't you go copying that crazy woman!”

Thomas senior jerked his head up and opened his mouth but closed it before a denial escaped his lips.

“Go on Dad! You musta heard Rager!” said young Thomas.

But Thomas senior staring into the scarlet stove fire saw only the flaming red of Mrs Torrens's hair and when a coal broke it seemed like the petals of red geraniums scattering into the ashes. He opened and closed his two good hands on his knees but even that did not ease the hunger inside him.

The Torrenses left Tantello soon after the accident. The townspeople let the family go without ceremony fearful that an appearance of support might jeopardize others' jobs at the mill.

The Torrenses left their furniture to sell for the rent they owed (for they never caught up from the week Kathleen threw Harold's pay into the creek) and took their clothing and what else could be stowed in the car besides the five children.

Mrs Torrens drove with Harold's useless heavily bandaged hand beside her.

She did in effect become his right hand.

The work they ultimately found in the city was cleaning a factory in two shifts a day, early morning and late afternoon.

Harold learned to wield a broom holding the handle in the crook of his right arm and Kathleen worked beside him picking up the rubbish he missed.

After some practice he was proficient and she could work independently so that they sometimes had time to sit on an upturned box and eat their sandwiches together Harold laying his on his knee between bites and holding his mug of tea with his left hand.

The rages of Mrs Torrens subsided with the help of medication from a public hospital not far from where they lived.

During these times Mrs Torrens's blue eyes dulled and her beautiful red hair straightened and she moved slowly and heavily with no life in her step or on her face.

She looked like a lot of the women in Tantello.

The little Torrenses did very well which would have amazed the people of Tantello if they had followed their fortunes in professions and trades.

Mrs Torrens was in her fifties when she died from a heart attack and Harold made his home with the second daughter Rachel who was a nurse educator in a big hospital with a flat of her own.

It was Aileen who won some modest fame in the rag trade.

She started sweeping floors and picking up pins and scraps of cloth then graduated to more important things.

When she was a beautiful young woman nearing thirty she was designing her own materials and having them made up into styles she created.

Long pursued by a colleague who designed and cut clothes for men she eventually married him and he agreed to her whim to drive through Tantello while on their honeymoon.

“Did you live here?” he said standing with her near the little grey house with the small square verandah now with all the railings missing and the roof on one side dipping dangerously over a tank tilted dangerously too from the half rotted tank stand.

She stood near a clump of red geraniums cold and proud and still as Kathleen stood outside the mill the day Harold lost his fingers.

“I lived here,” she said and looked down on Tantello with the mill shut down now and only a few of the houses occupied mostly by Aboriginal families.

“Is that bridge safe to cross?” her husband asked looking at her profile with her lashes lying soft as brown bracken fern on her apricot cheeks.

She stretched her mouth in a smile he didn't understand and began to walk with Kathleen's walk light and casual towards the car.

He was a little ahead and his heart leapt when her heard her speak.

“My beautiful, beautiful mannikin,” she said low and passionate.

He turned swiftly to take her hand.

Then he saw her face and felt he shouldn't.

ON THE TRAIN

The young woman not more than twenty-seven slammed the gate on herself and the two children both girls.

She did not move off at once but looked up and down the street as if deciding which way to go.

The older girl looked up at her through her hair which was whipped by the wind to read the decision the moment she made it.

Finally the woman took a hand of each child and turned in the direction of the railway station.

“Oh goody!” cried Sara who was nearly five.

“The sun's out,” the woman murmured lifting her face up for a second towards it.

Sara looked again into her mother's face noticing two or three of her teeth pinning down her bottom lip and the glint in her eyes perhaps from the sun? She felt inadequate that she seldom noticed such things as sun and wind, barely bothering about the rain as well, being quite content to stay out and play in it. The weather appeared to figure largely in the lives of adults. Sara hoped this would work out for her when she was older.

The mother bent forward as she hurried the younger child Lisa having difficulty keeping up. Her face Sara saw looked strained like the mother's. Sara hoped she wouldn't complain. The glint in the mother's eyes was like a spark that could ignite and involve them all.

She saw with relief the roof of the station jutting above the street but flashed her eyes away from the buildings still to be passed before they reached it.

The ticket office was protected by the jutting roof.

Sara was glad of the rest while her mother had her head inside the window and laid her cheek lightly against her rump clad in a blue demin skirt.

The business of buying tickets went on for a long time. Sara's eyes conveyed to Lisa her fear that the mother's top half had disappeared forever inside the window. She clutched her skirt to drag her out and opened her mouth to scream. Lisa saw and screamed for her.

The mother flung both arms down brushing a child off with each. They dared not touch her when she turned around and separated the tickets from change in her purse.

She snapped it shut and looked up and around in a distracted way as if to establish where she was.

It was Sara who went in front taking the narrow path squeezed between a high fence on one side and the station wall on the other. She swung her head around to see that her mother and Lisa were following her bouncy confident step.

On the platform waiting for the train the few other passengers looked at them.

Sara's dress was long and her hair was long and she was not dressed warmly enough.

The people especially a couple of elderly women noted Sara's light cotton dress with a deep flounce at the hem and Lisa's skimpy skirt and fawn tights. They looked at the mother's hands to see if there was a bag hanging from them with cardigans or jumpers in. But the mother carried nothing but a leather shoulder bag about as large as a large envelope and quite flat.

“She's warm enough herself,” one of the women murmured to her companion with a sniff.

They watched them board the train noticing the mother did not turn her head when she stepped onto the platform. It was Sara who grasped the hand of Lisa and saw her safely on.

“Tsk, tisk,” said the watching woman wishing she could meet the mother's eyes and glare her disapproval.

The mother took a single seat near the aisle and let Sara and Lisa find one together across from her.

Dear little soul, thought the passenger on the seat facing them seeing Sara's face suffused with pleasure at her small victory. Lisa had to wriggle her bony little rump with legs stuck out stiffly to get onto the seat.

Sara read the passenger's thoughts.

“She doesn't like you helping,” she said.

This was almost too much for the passenger whose glance leapt towards the mother to share with her this piece of childish wisdom.

But the mother had her profile raised and her eyes slanted away towards the window. The skin spread over her cheekbones made the passenger think of pale honey spread on a slice of bread.

She's beautiful. The woman was surprised at herself for not having noticed it at once.

She returned her attention rather reluctantly to Sara and Lisa.

She searched their faces for some resemblance to the mother. Sara's was round with blue worried eyes under faint eyebrows. Lisa's was pale with a pinched look and blue veins at the edges of her eyebrows disappearing under a woollen cap with a ragged tassel that looked as if a kitten had wrestled with it.

The passenger thought they might look like their father putting him into a category unworthy of the handsome mother.

For the next twenty minutes the train alternated between a rocking tearing speed and dawdling within sight of one of the half dozen stations on the way to the city and the passenger alternated her attention between the girls and the mother although at times she indulged in a fancy that she was not their mother but someone minding them.

“I can move and your mummy sit here,” she said to Sara with sudden inspiration.

I'll find out for sure.

Sara put her head against the seat back, tipping her face and closing her eyes with pink coming into her cheeks.

The passenger looked to Lisa for an answer and Lisa turned her eyes towards her mother seeing only her profile and the long peaked collar of her blouse lying on her honey coloured sweater.

Lisa looked into the passenger's face and gave her head the smallest shake.

Poor little soul.

The passenger stared at the mother knowing in the end she would look back.

The mother did her eyes widening for a second under bluish lids with only a little of her brow visible under a thick bang of fair hair. There was nothing friendly in her face.

The passenger reddened and looked at the girls.

“Your mummy's so pretty,” she said.

Sara swung her head around to look at the mother and Lisa allowed herself a tiny smile as if it didn't need verification.

“Do you like having a pretty mummy?” the passenger asked.

The mother had turned her attention to the window again and her eyes had narrowed.

The passenger felt as if a door had been shut in her face.

“Are you going into the city for the day?” she said to the girls.

Sara pressed her lips together as if she shouldn't answer if she wanted to. Lisa's mouth opened losing its prettiness and turning into an uneven hole.

There's nothing attractive about either of them, thought the passenger deciding that Lisa might be slightly cross-eyed.

She sat with her handbag gripped on her knees and her red face flushed a deeper red and her brown eyes with flecks of red in the whites were flint-hard when they darted between the mother and the girls and vacant when they looked away.

After a moment the mother turned her head and stared into the passenger's face. The girls raised their eyes and looked too. The train swayed and rushed and all the eyes locked together. The mother's eyes although large and blue and without light were the snake's eyes mesmerizing those of the passenger. Sara swung her eyes from the passenger to the mother as if trying to protect one from the other. Lisa's face grew tight and white and she opened her small hole of a mouth but no sound came out.

The mother keeping her eyes on the passenger got up suddenly and checked the location through the window. Sara and Lisa stumbled into the aisle holding out frantic fingers but afraid to touch her.

Sara stood under her mother's rump as close as she dared her eyes turned back to see Lisa holding the seat end. The train swayed and clanged the last hundred yards slowing and sliding like a skier at the bottom of a snow peak stopping with a suddeness that flung Sara and Lisa together across the seat end.

This was fortunate.

The mother level with the passenger now leaned down and sparks from her eyes flew off the hard flat stones of the passenger's eyes.

“I'm going to kill them,” the mother said.

LEAVING HOME

There was a practice at Berrigo to gather at the Post Office in the afternoon to wait for the mail.

The doors closed while it was sorted and by the time they were ready to open a crowd swelled by children from both the public and Catholic school had filled the porch.

Weeks before Sylvia McMahon was to leave for Sydney to find a job she was singled out for attention when she arrived with the others to wait for the mail.

“Won't be long now,” said Mrs Percy Parnell (there was also Mrs Henry and Mrs Horace) who as the youngest of the trio felt she had a licence to use current slang terms of which this was one.

Sylvia smiled, pleased at the attention focused on her.

“Three weeks,” she said, feeling the old familiar tingle.

“And three and a half days,” said her small sister Esme who blushed and hid her face in her sister's skirt when everyone laughed.

Esme aged ten amid the flock of schoolchildren could have collected the mail but Sylvia sixteen and waiting for departure day dressed herself like the adult women of Berrigo and went daily to the Post Office, probably to collect no more than a
Farmer and Settler
and a doctor's bill which Mrs McMahon would throw in the fire since she had not paid for the confinement resulting in Sylvia much less Frank, Lennie, Esme, Rose, Yvonne and Jackie.