The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  In amongst the grey-green salt-bushes they lay close together. Trilby had waited to pay her debt of remorse and self-loathing, but this time there had been no payment to make. Instead, knowledge had come to her that Phyllix had taken from her no more than she had taken from him. And with this knowledge had come tenderness for him, and a pity which included herself.

  ‘Better I tell Nipper I don’t go with him on that train tomorrow,’ Phyllix whispered.

  Trilby made no sound. There was a peace about them that she would not disturb.

  ‘You know, I had girls before,’ Phyllix said dreamily. ‘Not like you, Trilby. You get in a chap’s head, keep him remembering.’ She felt his intensity as he struggled for words. ‘That’s why I think we better get married. I want you with me always. All the time.’

  ‘I will marry you,’ Trilby said vehemently. And she knew she spoke so because what she said was not the truth. She did want to be with him always. In one short hour he had become dearer to her than anyone had ever been—his strong hard body to which her own had submitted so joyfully, his warm dry hands which were so gentle, the rough feel of his hair—he was her own. Sadness was deep within her because she knew she would let him go, must let him go, or she could not fulfil the promise she had made to herself.

  ‘You could come with me,’ Phyllix told her. ‘They got good quarters on Mirrabilli.’

  Trilby was glad of the dark. ‘No! Not yet.’

  ‘Not me neither well,’ she knew he was smiling. She kept herself still so that he would not rouse to kiss her. So that she could think.

  ‘Phyllix, you know I don’t want to live like they do in those awful humpies. I want a house, a good house. And stuff to put in it.’

  ‘You got a house. Room fa one more, isn’t there?’

  ‘Not there.’ Trilby was patient. ‘I want my own place. Like other people.’

  ‘You want to live like white people live, that it?’

  Trilby was ready to stiffen in case he should laugh, but Phyllix did not laugh.

  ‘And I want a garden with roses and things in it.’ Trilby’s voice was vehement.

  Phyllix did laugh then, but tenderly. ‘You got some funny ideas in ya head, haven’t ya?’

  ‘They’re not funny.’

  ‘Ya want a whole house to yaself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I dunno! I suppose I could save me cheques. Work a few more sheds if I wanted to.’ He turned suddenly, caught her hands and pressed them down, one each side of her head. His face was close and she could imagine the golden eyes holding her own. ‘You better be here when I get back,’ he told her, his voice thickening again. ‘An don’t you let no one else touch ya, see?’

  Trilby’s lips parted. Relief mingled with shame. It had been too easy to fool him into believing she would wait for him. She knew coldly that she would not.

  Mr Comeaway leaned his arms on the table-top and focused his benevolent gaze on his friends. It had been a good night, and he was mellowed through and through with good will towards men.

  ‘You still thinkin a comin down ere, Charlie?’ he enquired with kindly condescension.

  ‘Yeah, we still thinkin,’ his brother returned comfortably. ‘Only thing, that damn money pretty hard ta get. That deposit ya gotta pay.’

  Mr Comeaway turned out his bottom lip, nodded understandingly.

  ‘The truth bein,’ Charlie added in a burst of frankness. ‘We gone an spent the damn lot. Gunna start again soon’s I get a week or two down the wharf.’

  Mr Comeaway’s expression was sphinx-like. He wanted to express his good will in some magnificent and overwhelming manner. Because he liked old Charlie as well as he liked anyone, he decided his brother might as well be the one to benefit.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said, banging a fist on the table. ‘You can put that money right out ya head. I got a better idea.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Mr Comeaway took a breath. ‘Ya can come down ere an live in this house.’

  Charlie took him up swiftly. ‘Ya mean the lot of us? The whole four an the kid too?’

  Only for a second did caution overtake Mr Comeaway’s generosity. Then his fine independent spirit took charge. ‘My place, ain’t it?’ he asked, with a hint of belligerence. ‘Anyone say it ain’t my place? You lot can come ere soon’s ya ready. Eh, Mollie, I jus said Charlie an is mob can come down ere an live stead a wastin a lotta money. Ya think that’s all right?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind stayin ere meself, ya say the word,’ Stoney Broke grinned. ‘She ain’t a bad sorta camp.’

  Mrs Comeaway had been nurturing a little good will on her own account. Her hesitation was even more fleeting than Mr Comeaway’s had been. Trilby’s objections, Noonah’s, Bartie’s—she dismissed them in the moment of considering them. Another woman right on tap, even though it was only Hannie, would do away with those long lonely periods when for some reason or other she was unable to get into town or up to the camps at the back of the hill.

  ‘Plenty a room,’ she declared. ‘Plenty. Dunno why we didn’t think of it before.’

  ‘Trilby don’t seem ta like peoples much,’ Hannie contributed nervously.

  ‘Ah, she won’t mind,’ Mrs Comeaway said largely. ‘Long as nobody pokes their nose in er room.’

  ‘Gawd!’ Hannie disclaimed, even more nervously. ‘Ya think I want ta go in there, with er waitin ta pounce? Not me!’

  ‘Fixed it all up erself,’ Mrs Comeaway told the others. ‘Cover-ups fa the beds, curtains, stuff on the floor. Cleans it out erself, too. Looks real nice.’

  Mr Comeaway chuckled. ‘Where is she, anyhow? An young Phyllix, too? They musta gone off somewhere.’

  ‘They was out on the veranda,’ Mrs Comeaway told him.

  ‘Down the Fun Fair, likely,’ Nipper said easily. ‘Ringin ashtrays an jugs. The lot of us went there last night.’

  He had no sooner spoken than the two were at the door.

  ‘Where you two been?’ Mrs Comeaway asked, looking from one face to the other.

  ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’ Trilby moved away from the doorway, and Phyllix stepped into the room.

  ‘Ow many ash-trays tonight?’ Stoney asked, grinning. ‘This is the boy to ring em,’ he told the Comeaways. ‘They was chasin im away last night. Woulda went broke if e’d stayed much longer.’

  ‘Eh, Trilby!’ Mrs Comeaway called. ‘Come back in ere. We gotta nice surprise for ya.’

  Trilby came slowly back to stand alongside Phyllix. She looked sulky.

  ‘How would ya like it if Blanchie an Audrena come down ta stay for a bit?’ Mrs Comeaway asked, over-heartily.

  Trilby gave her mother a straight glance from her silver-grey eyes. She did not speak.

  Mrs Comeaway stuck doggedly to heartiness. ‘Ya father an me, we thought it might be a good idea ta have Charlie an Hannie an the girls come down ere.’

  ‘I don’t call that a nice surprise,’ Trilby spoke clearly. She swept the group with a look which scorned them, then she swung round. They heard her bedroom door bang shut behind her.

  Phyllix leant against the wall, his face expressionless.

  Mrs Comeaway looked round uneasily. ‘Nice sorta thing ta say,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Some bark, eh?’ Stoney was impressed.

  Hannie quivered in her chair. ‘If it’s all the same ta yous, I think we stop up there by Mrs Green. It pretty comforble—an quiet like. We come down ere, I dunno—that Trilby, she just as well might break out on us.’

  Mr Comeaway sat back in his chair and roared with laughter.

  From the doorway Phyllix echoed it.

  ‘Be gee,’ Mr Comeaway gasped, casting a look of appreciation at the only member of the party to share his amusement. ‘Look at em all, will ya? An that Trilby! Ain’t any pleasin er. An she got ole Hannie shakin in er shoes thout even comin near er. Don’t you take too much notice a that one, Hannie. We gotta big chain jus outside that door. After you an Charlie get down ere, we gunna chain that Trilby up,
like a dog.’ He roared again.

  ‘Better we stay where we was,’ Hannie said primly, ‘then we ain’t under no compliments ta nobody.’

  ‘What gets into er, eh?’ Mr Comeaway asked Phyllix as one intimate to another. ‘Tramps over people like they was muck under er feet.’

  Phyllix grinned. ‘Ah! I dunno!’ He slid one hand higher up the door jamb, rested the other on a slim hip. ‘Maybe she thinks different than the rest of us round here.’ There was a glow in the depths of the yellow eyes.

  ‘She’s a young huzzy,’ her mother said, with an unwilling smile.

  FIFTEEN

  With hardly a discussion, the Comeaways dropped, for the time being, the idea of inviting their relatives to share their home. There had been no misunderstanding Trilby’s views on the matter, and neither of her parents felt strongly enough about it to risk their daughter’s continued dis-approval. Mrs Comeaway, in particular, in the few short months since her daughter had arrived back from the mission, had found that falling in with Trilby’s ideas paid off in a more or less peaceful atmosphere. Besides, Trilby always won in the end. Her mother was the first to admit that her daughter had a way with her, when she wanted something.

  Right from the start, Trilby had done all of her own washing. And she spent hours pressing her cotton frocks and her school tunic with Mrs Comeaway’s old flat irons heated on top of the stove.

  There was a strong bond between Trilby and her father. Mr Comeaway saw nothing wrong in Trilby’s pertness or her sometimes cruel criticism of her bewildered and harassed mother. What other girls at school had, Trilby must have too. Whoever or whatever went short in consequence was no concern of hers.

  Not that she did not help with the rest of the house. Over week-ends especially she was ruthless about what she called ‘rubbish’, and many a time Mrs Comeaway was forced to sneak out to the rubbish bin to retrieve something she cherished. In lots of small ways, Mrs Comeaway’s life had become more complicated, but her pride in her smart daughter most often outweighed any resentment she felt.

  There were her other children, too, with whom to relax, and her friends who lived in the humpies at the back of the town.

  Only Noonah worried about things like rent. On Saturday mornings off she would bath both children and dress them in clean clothes, settle her mother into her blue silk frock and comb her greying hair back from her smooth cocoa forehead, cajole her father for money, when he had it, and start off for town with them all.

  That was the happy time that Noonah remembered most often in the years that followed. For a short time the Comeaways prospered. After harvest, the town was always busy, and wharf-work was easy to come by. In fact, if you were a wharfie you reported regularly if you knew what was good for you. The big boats must not be held up. Every hand was needed to fill the holds with wheat.

  Mrs Comeaway had her eye on an oak dining-room suite she had seen in a second-hand shop. Noonah thought it would be nice for her mother to have a really big cupboard for the kitchen. Bartie wanted genuine camel-hair brushes for his painting, Stella wanted a bride-doll, and Trilby found something else she needed every time she went to town.

  Noonah was business manager. Occasionally some need more pressing than mere signatures on tiny scraps of paper bobbed up and her calculations went astray but it was so good to be home she could never worry overmuch about rent. In town on Saturdays, it was milk-shakes and chocolates and cool drinks for the kids, and a whole heap of stuff from the grocer who delivered, and agreeable little gossips with Mrs Comeaway’s friends and perhaps a taxi trip up the hill to see Gramma Green.

  With the utmost good nature, the Comeaway family had exhausted Mrs Henwood’s attempts at rehabilitation, and the only contact they now had was when Mr Comeaway caught sight of her and strolled over to the dividing fence to advise her on her activities in her garden.

  In a secret corner of her mind Mrs Comeaway still cherished the idea of getting Charlie and Hannie down to live in the Wild-Oat Patch, but for the present she vanquished the bogey of loneliness by spending most of her day in the township where there was always a group of friends to join; at the corner by the barber-shop, sitting on hard garden seats outside the bank, or sheltering from the wind behind the stone wall where Horace held court.

  During the evening, if there were no visitors, she fed her husband the morsels of gossip she heard.

  ‘Knew well as anything ole Skippy’d got is talk of getting a house all mucked up,’ she told him one night. ‘Mattie up the camp tole me.’

  ‘An Horace tole me,’ Mr Comeaway added, ‘they gettin a lot a little houses up the camp stead a them camps. An Horace, he gunna be first gettin one.’

  ‘An that’s where ole Skippy’s house is gunna be built,’ Mrs Comeaway said. ‘Course it is.’

  ‘They all been trying ta make Skippy understand proper, but e sticks to it e’s gunna have is house built special, up where e comes from.’

  ‘Poor ole chap.’ Mrs Comeaway was sympathetic. ‘Gawd, what a time someone’s gunna have, gettin it clear to im.’

  ‘Should do something bout it. Someone should,’ Mr Comeaway said vaguely.

  ‘Maybe cost too much.’

  ‘Still, ole chap like e is. Wouldn’t hurt em.’

  ‘Nnnh!’ Mrs Comeaway sighed.

  There was no longer any doubt that a baby was coming. The knowledge overwhelmed Trilby at first. If he had been near, Trilby would have sought Phyllix out, flung hysterical accusations at him. All her resentment of him was back, multiplied into hatred. But he was gone from the town, and the only thing left to do was to try to hide her burning humiliating suffering from every eye. She hated herself, too. She, with her wonderful plans, to be such a fool. To know she had gone into this thing with her eyes wide open.

  In bed at night she beat her belly with clenched fists, hating the thing it enclosed.

  She told nobody because nobody could help her. She sickened when she thought of the future. Soon she would grow big, and everyone would know and laugh. She guessed how they would laugh, how glad her mother’s friends would be to see her beaten. The thought of their gladness drove her mad. She would not bear it.

  At school she stayed aloof from everyone, took a day off as often as she could without causing too much comment. Daytime was worst. Other people forever about, any one of them likely at any time to guess her secret. She had no clear plan except to meet each day and endure it until darkness came.

  During the evening she left the house to wander round the curving road that followed the line of the beach. Alone, she penetrated deep into the acres of marshy salt-bush, sought out deliberately, once, the place where she had lain with Phyllix—and departed from there with the ache of tears in her throat.

  Sometimes the older Comeaways would still be up when she reached her home. There would be lights glaring from the windows and the noise of voices and laughter on the air. Nobody noticed when she came in because she went straight to her room. Her room, which she would share with nobody, was her one blessing.

  On other nights the house would be dark and silent, every occupant in bed and asleep. Trilby walked for miles, but rarely enough to tire herself so that she slept straightway. There were always the hot, lumpy pillow, the tangled sheets—and weary half-closed eyes.

  She felt an overpowering need to confide in someone—her mother, or Noonah—and this feeling had to be fought and subdued, not once, but often. Mrs Comeaway would have been astonished and unbelieving if she could have known that there were days when Trilby would have given much to be in Bartie’s place, or little Stella’s, when Mrs Comeaway sat on the top step with a careless arm round each, or told them, with the object of keeping them amused and happy, some tale of her childhood, or, more rarely, when she gave each a quick hug or a kiss or a playful smack on the behind. Sometimes Trilby resented her mother simply because Mrs Comeaway did not guess her daughter’s need of her.

  The temptation to tell Noonah was even harder to resist, and Trilby did not truly und
erstand why she kept silent, unless it was that she wanted her sister’s regard for her to remain unaltered, not tinged with sympathy. When, in the long night hours, she worked things out, she knew she wanted sympathy from nobody—not even from her mother.

  One night, prowling along a back street, the glass window of a fire alarm caught her eye. She walked over to it, idly, not too interested, and bent to read the instructions. The thought came into her head that this glass must have been broken often, perhaps not always because there was a fire in its neighbourhood. There were boys—mischievous, unafraid of the consequences.

  And a girl!

  Glass shattered round her feet. She looked with unbelieving eyes at the stone she held in her hand. Her heart almost stopped beating as she dropped it and pressed hard against the bell in the little saucer-shaped container. She drew her finger away sharply, but the little bell remained depressed and Trilby knew why. In the fire station at the other end of the town, an alarm was sounding, right this minute. And it would continue to sound until someone switched off the mechanism. Any time now the fire-fighting truck would come clanging and shrilling down the street, waking everyone as it passed.

  Like a shadow, and as quietly, Trilby slipped down the dark length of the street. Her heart thumped and beat in her throat so that she felt choked. Why had she done such a thing? Could someone have been watching her? What happened to a girl who broke the glass of a fire alarm when there was no fire?

  Quietly—quietly, she crept into her bed that night, and lay trembling beneath her blankets.

  But that night she did not lie awake in bed, thinking. It was morning before she knew it. And nothing had happened to her.

  At the end of a week Trilby felt safe from consequences, but it was longer than a fortnight before she dared revisit the fire alarm. She hardly questioned that she must see it again.

  It had been mended. A new glass shone in the moonlight.

  Trilby looked to right and left this time, to make sure she was not being watched. Then she picked up a stone and hurled it satisfyingly straight at the little glass window. The tinkling of the glass as it fell was like music. Music that exhilarated and excited her. Her heart beat and thumped as she held her finger to the bell. She laughed. And suddenly, the future appeared free of worry. The suffering burning ache that had been with her since she had guessed about the baby—it was gone. Where it had been there was left only a tingling and fusing of all her senses.