by Janet Lee
Then, several days later, I saw my friend Mary. I sought her out at the hotel on the pretence of repaying her for the drink she had bought me. I asked after Michael and she said she had not seen him since that night and she did not think he was in the area, as he had not found the work he was seeking.
I remember my heart dropping, but I thought, It is just as well as I am a married woman and I need to be happy with my lot. Yet I found that the more I thought of Michael, the more disappointed I became in my life with Charles, but it was only a whim, and I thought it would pass.
The Saturday next I spent some time with Mary, but had only had the couple of drinks and was preparing to head home when Michael came into the bar and began to talk with another man.
I did not want to appear eager to see him, although I was so. I sat talking with Mary and before long he came over to our table and asked if he might sit.
Well, I said, he might.
He enquired after the health of my children and I told him they were much improved, thank you very much.
He said I looked well myself and I blushed.
He told me he was late arriving to the hotel as he had been to Randwick and playing the horses that day.
He said he sometimes worked for a bookie, because the bookie thought he was pleasant on the eye for the ladies, and with that he looked at me and winked.
I asked what sort of racetrack it was that ladies attended, and he said there were many women who went, hanging off the fellas, and picking out the horses for them to bet upon, and always picking the horse because it was a pretty colour or flicked its tail at her.
Then the toffs would try to act like big men and place their own bets and ‘throw in a bob’ on the horse the lady had liked. That was when Michael’s role came in, and the bookie would nod and Michael would smile at the woman and say she was a good judge of horse flesh and make no mistake, and surely the lady’s selection was worth a few more coins?
He tried those words on me as he said them and we laughed at how convincing he would be. He said the ladies would flutter their eyelashes and the toffs, wanting to appear rich, and being jealous of this young man, would bring out a few more coins. Some would end up spending pounds on the bet, and more often than not the horse was a dumb nag with no hope in the race and so the bookie would collect more profit. On a good day he would give plenty of this to Michael.
Mary and I laughed at the nature of it.
We have often thought we could clean up even better, Michael said. How so? Mary asked. Well, by entering a pretty pony into the race, one with no hope of winning, he said. All the women love a pretty pony.
Mary and I laughed and though I knew I were being played like one of the ladies at the races, I blushed at the thought of it.
He went on to more talk. Of course, he himself would have the tip on what was the best nag in the race, and if he placed a bet he would often clean up, as they say, with a profit from the venture.
With that he took from his pocket a wad of notes, round and fat, and told us that it had been a good day and he had taken over twenty pounds.
I tried to contain my expression, but I had not seen so much money in a good long while.
He said this meant he would not need to work for some time, and now all he needed to do was to find a place to stay, for he had a likening to stay in Frog’s Hollow.
Mary said she was sure she did not know why he would stay in a rat’s hole such as this, what with the smell of the fellmongers and the noise of the brickworks. And he said granted this was perhaps not the most scenic of places, but there were other delights which he chose to look at instead.
He looked at me as he said it.
And though I was a married woman, I did not lower my head or blush, and I saw Mary’s smile upon her face.
35.
I tell the chaplain, when we next visit together, that I began to go to the hotel more often as it was no fun at home with Charles. He and I argued more than ever, for he said I was drinking too much and that he would be off working and I would do nothing and he did not like coming home with no dinner prepared and the children being cared for by the neighbour and me off at the hotel. I thought this most unfair and said so to him as, I said, I was cook and cleaner and mother to everyone in the house – child, husband and boarder alike.
I said I liked to have a few drinks with people who enjoyed my company and be myself for a time and he would say what about the children and that might have been well when I was a young girl, but I was a grown woman now, with a family and responsibilities, and I should behave better.
We would try to argue without the boarders hearing, for we did not want them to move out. We had whispered arguments in our bedroom, and the words would become spiteful as they grew softer, I am ashamed to say. For if you are screaming, you will be mindful of the words everyone can hear, but if you are quieter you will say such vicious things. And when we argued like this, we were very unkind to each other.
I liked to pretend that the boarders could not hear the arguments but I know they could, for the walls were none too thick, and we could hear all the comings and goings in the other houses and so I understood that they would be able to hear ours as well. But we did try to keep our voices low for decorum’s sake.
One of the neighbours, although I will not say which one, sir, who lived up the road, would throw things at her husband and scream like her throat was being cut, and this for all the world to hear. Often a crowd would gather to listen to the row, and you could stand upon the street as though it were a penny sideshow – one of the Punch and Judys which you would see up town for tuppence, for there might be windows smashing and pots hurling and goodness knows what else. Someone would end up going for the constable and then he would come and quieten them down by threatening to arrest one or the other, and it was funny to watch because then the couple would nearly always turn on him and say he had no right to interfere in their marriage.
One night, I came home from the hotel and Charles and I had one of our arguments and one of our boarders came and told us to stop our quarrelling or he would be off and go down the road to board at number five. Well, as you can imagine I did not take kindly to being told off by a boarder in my own house, and I told this man so, and the boarder said some rude words to me, and Charles said – and I thank him for this – he said the man should not speak to me in this way and unless he apologised, he could leave. The boarder said he would leave that very night, and Charles said good riddance to him and all, and would he like Charles to help him pack, and the man stormed off and out the door. I thought that would be the end of our quarrel for the night, but when the boarder left, Charles turned on me. He shouted at me that I needed to stop drinking and I needed to be a better mother and wife, and I said things in return which were hurtful and unkind and which I now regret sadly on account of Charles being dead.
Towards the end of the argument, when we had both run out of being bothered, Charles said we must find a new boarder to take the place of the one we had just lost, and I said I already had someone in mind.
And that was how Michael came to live in our home.
36.
The words came out of my mouth before I had really thought them through, for it was one thing to have some drinks and fun with a handsome charmer who was a bit of a rogue, and another to have him move into your home and live under the same roof as you and your husband.
Michael was so different to Charles, and I couldn’t help myself but to want to have more time with him, especially after Charles told me off for needing to grow up and be a better wife and mother.
You see, sir, Michael liked me for being Louisa, but I felt I was always a wife or mother or shopgirl or landlady to Charles, and not good enough at any of these jobs. I suppose in meeting Michael I saw the glimpse of the woman I might have been if I had not married young and had so many children.
It took me about a
week to find Michael for even though I went the few doors up to the hotel several times a day, he did not ever seem to be there. And that whole week I was asking myself whether it was a good idea to have this man under my roof and whether he would still think of me as fun if he lived in my house, or if he too would think I should be a better wife and mother.
During the week I was looking for him, I gave the cottage a good clean so as to have it nice for when he came. I got to and washed the fly mess off the windows, and banged the mats out upon the road, and I moved the couch and swept floors and put the curtains aside to be washed on the following Monday. I cleaned the kitchen and Charles saw me cleaning and commented how tidy the house was. He was never one to apologise, but I took his compliment by way of apology, and we came to some sort of truce for our bad words to each other. He offered to help me and so he cleaned the cooker, for it had an opinion of its own and would like to spit out at me when I used it. He chopped wood and stacked it neatly, and so all in all the cottage and the backyard had a fine box of kindling, split nice and fine for starting the fire. There was always plenty of kindling, for the swamp tea trees out the back had ample bark.
It was at this time that I saw the damage the rats had done to the stuffing in our mattress. There was stuffing on the floor and rat droppings under the bed.
I went to the corner store and bought a roll of brown paper and I already had some Rough on Rats. It was what we had used in the butcher shops as Cook had recommended it, although she was very careful and did not keep it anywhere near her sugar, for she told the story of the wife who put it in her husband’s milksops instead of sugar and when he tasted it and asked why it was so bitter, he fell down dead. Though we mainly used block sugar, it being cheaper, I was always careful, mindful of Cook’s story.
There are always rats where there is industry and butchering, for it is the blood which will attract them, make no mistake, and though we had them as a problem in the butcher shops, I have never got used to them; they are sly creatures. And they say there are some big rats’ nests in Botany and there are certainly plenty of rats, and we always saw them at night when we walked out on the street, but when I realised that the rats were coming into the house I was fearful for my babies. So I spread the Rough on Rats around, and placed the box where the children could not reach, and was careful that I kept it well away from the sugar.
I did not ever sprinkle the powder about on the floor or under the bed when we still had babes crawling on the floor. They might get it upon their hands, and babies are always putting their hands into their mouths.
I put some of the powder in a piece of brown paper and tucked this up under the bed between the frame and the mattress, in a similar fashion to how I had used it in the days when we were first married and we had such problems with rats in the butcher shop and our hut. The brown paper was wedged up behind the mattress and close to the wall, where a crawling baby might not find it. Later that day, when Charles came home from work, I showed him where I had put the packet of powder and what it was and I told him of the rats in the mattress, and he agreed with me that the baby was not likely to find it there. He would tell you this himself, sir, if he was able.
I put some of the powder high upon the beam in the privy and then I stored the box away, so as to have some should I need more.
If the judges at the trials had asked me, I could have said why I kept Rough on Rats, and why most of the good wives of Sydney would have it in their houses.
The chaplain reads a few passages from the Bible and then I walk back to my cell with the warders.
While I walk back, I am thinking how I was cleaning the house extra because of Michael, and how it took me nearly a week to find him. I had almost given up hope, as I had even taken the tram a few stops along and went to a different pub up the road, enquiring after Michael Collins, and they had scoffed at me and said surely every second Irishman was called Michael Collins and the others were called Robert Emmet and how many did I want? Just the one, I said, and we had a laugh.
And then I found him. He returned to the Amos’s Pier Hotel. I walked in and he gave me a wave and my heart did skip a beat, for he looked so handsome. I walked over to him and he placed his hand upon my arm. Louie, he said. I hear you have been seeking me.
Well, my heart filled so I thought it might burst, for he called me by my own name, and a pet one he had made for me, and for a moment I was Louisa again, not Mrs Collins or Ma or the landlady.
But I will not tell Canon Rich those things.
37.
When I next see the chaplain, he starts with a prayer for me, and when he finishes he says he has written this out and would I like to have the piece of paper, so I can pray this particular prayer in my cell.
I say, Thank you, sir, I will place this in the Bible.
He is most attentive to me, and I wonder that he has the time, for there are hundreds of prisoners in this gaol.
But then I suppose they are not all condemned to die.
I begin to think upon this, and perhaps my face shows that I do.
The chaplain asks me to continue my story about Michael.
Well, sir, I say, I found him and I asked Michael if he was still seeking lodgings and he said he was, and I said I might have some which would be suitable and he gave a grin and made a remark, for that was his way, to speak in a cheeky manner.
We made arrangements for Michael to come to Pople’s Terrace the next day, around ten o’clock in the morning. I chose the time as Charles would be at work, and Michael could settle in.
I waited on my doorstep, looking to the road and checking as the time ran past ten o’clock. Mrs Law saw me upon my front step and wished me a good morning and I greeted her and she remarked how well I looked on that morning and I asked her, Do I? For, I said, I had done nothing of any consequence for my appearance to change. And she enquired after Herbert, for he had recently taken work away up north and I said he was doing very well, although I missed having him at home.
I said how it had been a fine crisp morning and would no doubt be a beautiful day. Then, over her shoulder, I could see Michael walking across the little footbridge which marks the entrance to Frog’s Hollow and he was wearing his suit and carrying a case.
Michael approached and dipped his hat and said, Good morning, Mrs Andrews, I have come about the room as I was told you have one available. And then he turned to Mrs Law and asked of me, Who is your charming friend? He said this, cool as you like.
Good morning, Mr Collins. This is Mrs Law, I said. My neighbour.
Michael turned on the charm to her.
He placed his small case on the ground and offered her his hand. Michael Collins, Mrs Law. My pleasure to meet you, he said. And it is a fine morning and lovely to see two neighbours enjoying the sunshine together.
Mrs Law then said, And a pleasure to meet you too, sir, and I am thinking you would be Irish with a name like Michael Collins, but I do not detect the brogue in your voice.
No, said Michael. I am a native of Victoria. Although perhaps one of my grandfathers – now there would be an Irish accent for you. They continued on in this manner with Michael giving all the charm and Mrs Law lapping it up, for he could be smooth, my Michael.
May came out from the cottage with young Charlie in her arms, saying he was fussing and so I must give him my attention, and though I was thinking that May just wanted to see what was happening and who this man was, I said excuse me to Michael and Mrs Law and turned to the children.
I did not want the neighbours gossiping that I would neglect my children for this new boarder or Charles hearing such tales before Michael even started in the house. So, I addressed the baby’s needs, and when I returned Mrs Law was laughing at something Michael was saying and tipping her head back as she did. I stood at the door of the cottage for a moment, with the baby upon my hip, and I watched the two of them chatting quite amiably as though they wer
e friends of long standing.
Michael was saying all the things Mrs Law wanted to hear.
Had I had any thoughts that way, I might have been jealous at his talk, but I was a married woman, sir, and so I did not. And besides, he saw me standing in the doorway and while she talked away and was pointing out some landmark down the street, he gave me a wink and so I knew he was just playing along.
Then he said he really must be getting on and seeing the room, and he hoped it would be suitable and he would see her soon. He dipped his hat and came into the parlour.
It was only myself and May and young Charlie home that morning. May would normally be in school but I had kept her home that day so that she might help me with the baby.
When Michael came into the cottage he spoke first to May and said what a pretty girl she was, and so good to be helping care for her younger brother, and I could see he was being a charmer to her just as he had done with Mrs Law.
Michael asked May if she might give him the tour of the house, and she was all talk telling him, And this is the dining table and the back door, and went about showing him through the cottage and yard.
I believe it was then, that first afternoon, that I began to imagine what life might be like if Michael were my husband and not Charles. But that was just a fancy of mine, sir; at the time, I never thought such a thing would happen.
Charles did not meet Michael that day, as Michael had already left by the time Charles got home from work. Michael said he needed to go and collect another suit from a former lodging. I thought it odd that he did not bring all his clothes with him as he knew he would be moving, but I later came to realise that Michael had his own particular ways about him.
