The Newspaper of Claremont Street (7 page)

And sometimes, when she went alone, she sat for hours in the scrub in a partly cleared area in the bush and stared at the few remaining tall trees, wondering about their age, and at the surviving yellow tufts of Prickly Moses.

The Newspaper of Claremont Street knew everything and talked all the time in the places where she worked. She even knew how often the people changed their sheets and underwear. She could not help knowing things like that. It was not for nothing that she was called Newspaper or Weekly. But all the time she was talking she never complained about Nastasya and she never spoke about the land. Secretly she cared for Nastasya and secretly she read her advertisements and secretly she went off to look.

Weekly first went to the valley on the Tuesday afternoon after work.

‘Tell me about Sophie Whiteman.' Diana Lacey was bored with her chicken pox. Mrs Lacey was late home but Weekly made ready to leave, she did not want to be too late starting out. She paused in Diana's doorway.

‘Well as I've already told you, she ate that much sweet stuff, chocolates and toffees,' Weekly rested on the door post, ‘that she got a chocolate lining to her stomick and I'm sorry to say you can't live with a chocolate lining in yor stomick.'

‘Did she die?'

‘I'm afraid she did and so would any of us!' Weekly
said and she left Diana contemplating the enviable death of this girl Sophie Whiteman.

Weekly knew she had to cross the Medulla brook and turn left at the twenty-nine mile peg. She found the valley all right. After the turn-off the road bends and climbs and then there it is, lush pasture on either side of the road with cattle grazing, straying towards a three-cornered dam. Each hour of the day is different because of the ever-changing position of the sun and no day is exactly as the day which has gone before, and Weekly never saw the valley again in quite the same enchanted light of the afternoon as she did on the first day. And, on that first day, there was a newly born calf which was struggling to get up on its little legs.

She saw the weatherboard house. The yard and the paddock were taken over by castor oil plants and the fences and sheds were grey and crazy with old age but Weekly trembled with the delight of being able to find out about it.

she sang to herself in her strange hoarse voice as she strolled up the track to the house.

Singing gave her strength. She knocked.

‘Excuse me, but can yo' tell me what part of the land's for sale?' her voice shook.

The young woman, the tenant's wife, came out.

‘It's all for sale,' she said. They walked side by side.

‘All up there,' the young woman pointed to the hillside where it was steep and covered with dead trees and rocks and pigsties made from old railway sleepers and blistered corrugated iron. Beyond was the light and shade of the sun shining through the jarrah trees.

‘And down there,' she flung her plump arm, mottled from being too near the stove, towards the meadow which lay smiling below.

‘There's a few orange trees all neglected,' she explained. ‘That in the middle is an apricot. You should have seen the boxes of fruit from that one tree. That one over there in the swamp is a pear tree. And where you see them white lilies, that's where there's an old well. Seventeen acres this side.'

They walked back towards the house.

‘The pasture's leased just now,' the young woman explained. ‘But it's all for sale, thirty acres and there's another eighteen, uncleared in the scrub.'

Weekly wanted to look inside the shabby house but she felt it would be an intrusion. This was a new feeling for her. Her presence and personality had a value all their own and she knew that when she stepped into a house she had a place there and was welcome. She knew her very presence seemed to tidy and clean a house even before she had taken the broom or picked up the pail and scrubbing brush. The feeling of intruding upon this house, which was really meant to be looked at, was something unexpected, and so Weekly did not ask to see it. She would have liked to stay looking at the valley, but dressed in her faded working clothes, she was afraid that the young woman would not believe she really wanted to buy some of it. She drove home in a golden tranquillity, dreaming of her land bulging with plump apricots, fragrant with these glowing golden fruits, and embroidered with pear blossom, the flowers already cascading about her in white showers. Her crooked feet were wet from the long grass and yellow-daisied capeweed of the damp meadow.

The road turned and dropped and below was the great plain. The neat ribs of the vineyards chased each other towards the vague outlines of the city. Beyond was a thin curving line, shining like the gilded rim of a china saucer. It was the sea, brimming, joining the earth to the sky.

Nastasya had not noticed at all that Weekly was so late
home. She was stripped naked, sponging her brownish leathery body with cold water.

‘You should take cold bath Veekly,' she said, her withered breasts hung over the enamel basin. She looked pathetic in the ugly room.

‘Help me Veekly!' she held out the facecloth dripping with water. ‘I cannot wash my neck.'

‘Just you mind my floor,' Weekly muttered. ‘Just you look at all that mess you've made!'

‘Veekly help me to wash myself, rub my back so. Veekly help me, I am not stronk any more.'

Weekly's cheeks were flushed from the fresh air of the valley and she was tired and hungry. Straight away she busied herself at the flyscreen cupboard searching for her bread and boiled carrots.

‘Oh! Oh!' Nastasya wailed. ‘My legs is all covered in hairs.'

‘Well be glad they're not all over yor face!'

‘Is all right for you Veekly your flesh just fit your bones so nice but I am getting old!' Nastasya began to cry, the water still dripping on the floor. ‘I am getting all old and wrinkled, look at my flabby thighs. Oh!'

Weekly was getting older too, every day she learned a great deal about getting older. And not only the aching, it was the speed with which time passed. The days went by so quickly it was like turning over the pages of a book
without reading any of them. If she did not make haste and buy her land it would soon be too late to buy any. She tried to keep her restlessness from coming back as she thought of the valley, and she tried to ignore Nastasya. It was a pity Nastasya no longer painted; it would have been something for her to do. Only destruction was in her mind now, and in her fingers, for she seemed deeply depressed, so that everything around her became lifeless. Even when Weekly polished her linoleum or stitched another row of herringbone it seemed to be a waste of time, so much did Nastasya give off an atmosphere of waste and uselessness. Weekly wished every day that there might be some opportunity to get rid of her unwanted guest. She couldn't bring herself to turn her out, for the hospital was the only place where she could go.

‘You ought to be pleased and grateful you are so much loved,' Nastasya reproached Weekly. ‘Only a few peoples is ever really loved,' she added.

‘Get dressed!' Weekly sat with her back to Nastasya and ate her food.

‘When I saw young,' Nastasya talked on and on, ‘I had long legs like a colt and I ran wild...'

‘Did you now!'

‘I loved horses and dogs, I loved all animals. Animals you know Veekly is better than peoples. Except for Torben all animals is better than peoples. On my marriage night
Veekly, Torben he beat me! Torben I say why you beat me so thump! thump! He was not Torben really, his name is too difficult for you stupid people to say so he change to Torben. Torben I say why you beat so stop! And he wake up then! Why my Dear he say I was sleepink what is wronk Darlink? You beat me so thump thump I say and he say oh I dream I have dream I am Hussar back with Cossack and I beat my lazy servant so thump thump get up you lazy good for nothing thump bring me my tea thump light the samovar—my Dear so sorry but I was sleepink.'

‘Did you now!' Weekly chewed her food. While Nastasya talked, distaste spread from Nastasya to the food. Weekly scratched her arms. She was forced to stop thinking about the valley. Whatever could she do with Nastasya. She had become an obstacle, a kind of wall which Weekly would have to climb over every day before she could do anything. As well as having to care for her and prepare her food—these things took time and Weekly had very little time—there was the burden of this endless talking, just when she wanted to be quietly with her own thoughts.

‘Veekly I really have no strength. I may faint!'

‘I'll be here Narsty if yo' faint.' Weekly sat on with her back to the leathery nakedness and the dripping sponge. She did not want to look at Nastasya. ‘Just you hurry up
and get washed and dressed. You won't faint, not from being clean any road.'

Nastasya said something angrily in her own language and Weekly went on with her meal, which she hardly wanted now. She could hear Nastasya grumbling and fidgeting about but refused to turn round. Usually she had to force Nastasya to wipe her face with a damp cloth and she had often struggled to drag a comb through her neglected hair. She felt threatened by this change in Nastasya's behaviour.

‘The Arabs you know Veekly...' Nastasya's voice went on as before. ‘The Arabs Veekly leave their old people and their sick peoples to die—they leave them outside their houses, in ditches or by the side of the road. They have to, there is no other way. It is bad but it is the only way for them. I like Arabs very much, Veekly, but this thing I do not like.'

Weekly tried to think of her land again and what she would grow there. The sheds too, she had never had sheds and all the things people put in them. She wondered about the house. She wished she had asked to see inside it. She wondered where the tenant's wife would go when she, Weekly, the Newspaper of Claremont Street, bought the land.

‘It is the music I miss so much.' Nastasya's voice penetrated the dream. ‘But what would someone ignorant
like you are Veekly know about Beethoven and the anguish of his last five quartets. What could you know about the caution and melancholy of the cello? Ah! cello, cello, cello! It is yet another terrible bereavement for me.' Nastasya began to wail aloud.

‘Hold yer noise,' Weekly muttered. ‘Narsty, hold yer noise.' Weekly felt more and more, in some strange way, claimed by Nastasya. It was as if Nastasya was regarding Weekly as the person next to and closest to her simply because she had no other person. And if one human being claims another then this other is, in a sense, bound by this claim to belong.

The end of Nastasya's proud life was bound to be a sad one, but of course it was not the end yet. Who could tell when the end would be. Nastasya somehow seemed as if she would live for ever, even though she sat saying she had no strength so that Weekly had to do everything for her.

Weekly felt she must not fail Nastasya. It seemed to her that not failing people was what counted in her life and in the lives of others. Sometimes Weekly was afraid she was on the brink of some tremendously revealing truth. She was afraid to come upon the truth, because after that there could be nothing else.

‘If yo' find out why youm livin',' her mother said once, ‘if yo' find out
why
about anything like living, then as soon as yo've found out, you drop dead.' ‘Shut up Margie!' her mother said. ‘Shut up Margie, stop arskin' so many questions. If yo' know too much yo' won't live long!' So Weekly did not search too deeply into the claim she felt from Nastasya.

‘Torben, he love music, he could not live without, but where in this beeg empty country, which has no soul, where is there any music!' Nastasya stopped wailing after a time. And when Weekly looked at Nastasya it was clear she had been at her wicker trunk again, for she was now dressed in an assortment of old clothes, some loose trousers and an embroidered blouse with a belt, things which belonged to another time and another country. And, like a dirty pancake on the side of her face and head, was a white beret.

‘Veekly,' Nastasya said, flourishing a long cigarette holder, ‘get me a drink please, I would like a drink with a gentle colour.' And as she walked towards Weekly, something about the way she walked increased the threat.

‘Chathams' girl's back.' Weekly sank onto the broken chair and leaned on the counter to rest. The shop at the end of Claremont Street was full, everyone turned from their contemplation of kerosene and biscuits and cornflakes; there was plenty of time for staring, for Val and Cheryl were the slowest shop assistants in the world. Often the people served themselves and the part behind the counter was as crowded as the shop. Too many people put things on scales at once, and they often found themselves blocking the narrow spaces in the storeroom, sometimes being unable to move in or out.

It was a very short time since Weekly had described the wedding, the food and the presents and the well-dressed
people who had travelled for miles for the occasion. She had been able to name all the expensive hotels where they had strayed.

‘I wouldn't stay in one of them places if yo' paid me,' Weekly said.

‘Oh go on Newspaper,' Valerie nudged Cheryl, ‘you would!'

‘I like to know what's in me food.'

‘Anyway what's wrong with Chathams' girl? Why is she back?'

Weekly had washed up at the engagement party a whole year ago and then three weeks ago she had washed up for hours at the wedding. Mrs Chatham had wanted the wedding at their home and it had been a splendid affair with photographs in the paper and a long paragraph of description. Leila Chatham was a pale girl and she had come back paler than ever, hollow eyed and unable to eat. That morning she was sitting in the kitchen when Weekly stepped indoors. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown made for her trousseau by her mother.

‘Well 'ow are we?' Weekly called and the girl turned her pale sad face towards her; she tried to smile but her mouth trembled and tears hung on her lashes.

‘Well, well, this will never do!' Weekly began to tear the stove to pieces.

‘Either stop in bed or get dressed,' Mrs Chatham said
sharply to her daughter. She had no patience with nerves or hysteria, and she was desperately afraid her daughter couldn't manage married life and so had come home to mother.

‘She says she's got a sore throat,' Mrs Chatham explained with the impatience of fear to Weekly.

‘Pore girl!' Weekly crashed the enamel pieces into the steaming detergent. ‘There's a lot of that about. Now yo' should go back in bed, there's a good girl, and wrap an old stocking round yor neck. It's the best thing for a throat. A worn stocking not a washed one.'

‘Yes Leila you do what Weekly says.' Mrs Chatham felt comforted by Weekly's advice, the only trouble was there was never anything unwashed in her house. Leila trailed quietly out of the kitchen.

The people in the shop waited for Weekly.

‘Well, she's pick up this terrible germ up North and it's lodged in her body. She looks that sick!' Weekly shook her head. ‘She always was a delicate girl and pore Mrs Chatham's gone crazy with worry. There's no cure for some of them germs there is about up North.'

‘Is her husband with her?' they wanted to know.

‘No one's allowed near her,' Weekly said. ‘Can't even go to the 'orspital, too dangerous! It'll be a miracle if she gets over it. Pore girl and pore Mrs Chatham!'

There was a sad silence in the shop as everyone began
again to wonder what they had come for and Weekly sat on resting before giving out more intimate details of the Chatham household. Pauses now and then made each tiny piece of news more impressive, especially if Weekly hesitated as to whether she should tell it or not.

Every Sunday Weekly went out to look at the valley. And in the evenings Nastasya wept aloud, telling Weekly about a great river, ridged with swiftly flowing currents and foaming in flood, and how she had to cross it once with her father, in a boat, when she was a child.

‘I had such beautiful warm clothes, Veekly, and boots and soft furs to keep out the cold. I stood beside my Fazere and watched the brown waters gallopp-ing like horses without riders—you Veekly, can have no idea of such a river. And you can have no idea of the smell of the snow melting. If only I can see once more the little rivers shining like glass as the snow melts in spring. In this ugly country there is no spring, it is so ugly here!'

‘If it was all that wonderful there,' Weekly muttered to herself, ‘why don't yo'm go back where you belong.'

Weekly was sorry for Nastasya and she brought her some wildflowers stolen from the edge of the road. But Nastasya pushed aside the fragile little bunch. She was in a disagreeable mood.

‘Kangaroo paw, Veekly, is only beautiful when the sun is shining through the red and green velvet of it and you
see it all lit up among the trees and leaves in the bush. Don't bring me flowers!'

So then Weekly began to take Nastasya out to the valley, even though she would have preferred to go alone. As soon as Nastasya saw the valley she discovered a whole long hedge of wild, white roses. Sometimes she would notice things like this after being wrapped up in dismal memories for days on end. Another time it seemed as if sheep were on the hillside among the pigsties, but when they climbed up, they saw it was only the way the light came through the trees onto some greyish bushes, making them look like a quiet flock of sheep.

Suddenly Nastasya was happy in the fresh air and she kept telling Weekly, laughing and telling and enjoying, ‘I feel so free Veekly! You cannot know how good I feel!'

And Weekly felt even more she was caught looking after Nastasya and having to be with her. Nastasya, who had seemed so weak, now had more strength than Weekly. She could even run up the hill and all the way back down without getting out of breath and Weekly was afraid she would have to have her for ever. ‘What if she lives longer than me,' she thought grimly to herself. At all the places where she had worked everyone had someone else, but for some reason Nastasya had no one. While Torben was alive they had each other, and it must have been enough for them, and they never bothered about other people, either
to know them or to help them. And so, without Torben and the world they had fabricated between them, Nastasya really did have no one and nothing. Weekly had as many people as she wanted while she was working and then after her work she liked to be alone.

Even though Nastasya seemed better and stronger she never helped with anything and insisted that Weekly prepare food for her as she liked it, and she insisted on being waited on.

‘I am hongry Veekly,' Nastasya said on the way home from the valley. ‘It is the fresh air makes me so hongry.' So Weekly stopped beside the tottering verandah posts of a shabby shop.

‘I want a milkshakes please, strawberries flavour.' Weekly went inside and bought biscuits for Nastasya.

‘There's no strawberry,' she said coming out to the car patiently. ‘Will yo' have a lime? Lime's nice. I've brought you lime.'

‘No I do not like. I like only strawberries flavour! I will try raspberries, do they have raspberries flavour?'

Weekly never spent her money on things like this and she had to make such an effort to stop thinking of the black cavity such a purchase would make in the steep silvery side of the money mountain. Nastasya took the packet into her lap and tore off the coloured paper and began to eat the biscuits greedily, one after the other. And
then she said, ‘I am hongry Veekly, but not for biscuits!'

Wearily Weekly thought as she drove home at dusk that she would have to boil potatoes and onions and leeks and, as Nastasya didn't eat them just boiled as she did, she would have to stand pushing them through a sieve and make the soup which was Nastasya's favourite.

‘At home we had such a Cook!' Nastasya sat in the only comfortable chair while Weekly worked. ‘If you could only see how the soup was this Cook made for us you would see what it should really be like.' Nastasya stretched out her flabby legs. ‘See how sittink in the car makes for me the swollen feet. Oh my poor feet!' Weekly tried to take no notice of Nastasya's lamenting voice.

‘I would like some borscht,' Nastasya wailed. ‘You have no idea even what it is! Our Cooks Veekly had such wonderful recipes but they were never written down.' She lowered her voice. ‘No recipe Veekly for cake or soup, or any sauce or dish was ever written down in case someone steal it!' She paused. ‘Our Cooks Veekly,' Nastasya said, ‘made all food from their own heads!'

For some reason the smell of the potatoes boiling made Weekly remember the children, when she was a child herself, sliding down the stone balustrades of the bandstand in the East Park.

‘Margie yo'um not to play with any of those children,' her mother had called out after her when she went out to
play. She never said why the children shouldn't be played with.

‘Perhaps it's because they've got the fever,' Victor said to his sister. But Margie thought it was because they went about with no knickers on, but of course she couldn't say this to her brother. He was frightened of the fever hospital and always ran past the high walls holding his nose. They often tried to frighten each other at dusk saying a fever man was dangling over the wall to drop on them and give them the fever.

As she sieved the soup for Nastasya, Weekly thought she would go ahead and buy some land. She had enough money saved up. She would either have to put Nastasya into a hospital or nursing home or take her with her. She would have to decide quite soon what to do and she felt the burden of this.

In the night Nastasya was ill.

‘I am dyink Veekly fetch Doctor quick.'

‘What's wrong Narsty?' Weekly slowly and painfully got off her bed. She always began her aching during the night, it was not just a thing of the morning. Her body ached all over, it was hardly possible to move.

‘God moves in a mysterious way,' she sang, forcing herself to get up.

‘Do not, I implore you, make so much noise!' Nastasya clutched herself and rolled about, moaning, all her
bedclothes were on the floor. Slowly Weekly remade her bed.

‘Don't leave me Veekly,' Nastasya implored. ‘Fetch Doctor or else I die in an hour'—this was a contradiction and a mixed threat.

Weekly set off slowly in the dark. Never mind if Nastasya had quarrelled with the doctors in Claremont Street; she couldn't go farther in the dark and her aching had not been cured by sweeping the verandah.

‘I'll get old Muttonhead,' she said to herself, groaning as she went. ‘And tomorrer I'll take her to the hospital!'

When at last she returned with the doctor, Nastasya behaved with great charm. She had put on a bedjacket and she stretched out her hand to the doctor as if she were a hostess at a party. Weekly fidgeted in the corners of her room, grumbling and muttering and glaring at Nastasya for what she had done.

‘Eet is nothing Doctor. I was sufferink from some bad cookink. I am quite all right now. Just someone cook very badly and I have terrible pain because of it. But I am perfectly well now. Thank you for comink out in the night, poor Doctor Darlink! Is quite unnecessary. Gut Night.'

‘Thank you, I will let myself out,' the doctor said coldly to Weekly.

‘That was wicked of you Narsty. Very wicked!' Weekly, tired and cross, sat heavily into her bed. She hadn't wanted
to call anyone out in the night least of all someone from Claremont Street. She could have shaken Nastasya, but what was the use.

‘It's no use,' she muttered. ‘It's no use at all.' Her face was very grim. She resolved to get rid of Nastasya the next day; there was no reason at all why she should keep her and look after her.

‘You know Veekly that Doctor is just like our coachmen back home, a kind of bear, quite good natured but stupid. Only in this country can he be doctor, back home just a coachman!' She laughed and she must have seen Weekly's expression for she stopped laughing at once and began crying. At first Weekly thought she was pretending to cry but her face was all wet with tears.

‘Oh I am so ashamed of myself Veekly,' she cried bitterly. ‘Oh I am so ashamed. You are so good to me and I am so bad!' She cried so much Weekly got off the bed and crossed over the room to comfort her.

‘Never mind Narsty,' she said at the bedside. ‘Just you hold yer noise now and try an' go to sleep,' and quite suddenly Nastasya fell asleep, touchingly like a little child with the tears still on her eyelashes. And Weekly went back to bed as quietly as she could.

In spite of being tired Weekly could not sleep; thoughts from times long ago came crowding into her mind.

Victor was unwell; he had sent a message asking her to come. She was used to such messages. She dreaded the appearance of the urchin at the backdoor with his declaration that he had a letter for M. Morris and not anybody else but her. This happened too often and Weekly lived in fear of her Lady in the Big House finding out and asking, ‘What is it Morris? Who has come to the house?'

Often while she washed the steps, Weekly tried to invent explanations to store in her head should any questions be asked when the boy, appearing from nowhere, asked for her.

‘What is it Morris? Who has come to see you? What is it Morris? A letter? Who from?'

‘It's the boy from the laundry Ma'am. I'm sorry I forgot the list Ma'am. It's a message from my sister Ma'am, 'er wants me to go over on me half day, Ma'am.'

Weekly's private life did not excite the household and no one, not even the other servants, ever questioned. The boy, however, on every occasion, slipped away with a small but precious coin tight in his dirty hand, paid by Weekly to keep his silence.

As soon as she could, after receiving such a message, she would set off walking to whichever place it was where Victor had an apartment. Because his address was always different he had to send a boy with a letter so that she would know where to come.

All through the years Weekly carried in her mind a picture of Victor which she had never seen. The picture was so vivid it was as though she knew exactly what happened every time Victor sent her one of his letters. She imagined him frail and coughing painfully, wrapped up, leaning out of an upstairs window desperately trying to attract the attention of an idle boy, to call him from the gutter to come up and carry a letter for him quick, ‘quick as you can boy take this letter...' And then, banging the window shut, he would disappear from sight. That was how she imagined him and she knew the reality was bronchitis.