Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  ‘But Mr Kennedy!’ Miss Appleby’s voice has risen as well. ‘Shouldn’t we at least try?’

  Miss Appleby comes back into the room and sits at her desk. She looks sad and happy at the same time, as if she wants something from Pansy but doesn’t know how to ask. Well, Pansy would do anything to please Miss Appleby, anything at all to make her happy.

  ‘Do you understand, Pansy, that you are a very clever girl reading the way you do?’

  She doesn’t know how to answer so she stays quiet trying to work out what Miss Appleby wants from her.

  ‘You have a special gift.’ Then Miss Appleby sighs as if the special gift isn’t meant for Pansy at all. She’s silent again, before she says, ‘If you continue to work hard at school, you may very well be eligible to go on to the District High School in Greymouth.’

  The District High School in Greymouth? Miss Appleby’s face is flushed and now her voice is coming at her fast and high-pitched, idea after idea: The Proficiency, two years’ free high-school education, perhaps a scholarship, morning train to Greymouth . . .

  The District High School in Greymouth? There’s a strange feeling of fright and excitement bubbling up inside her. The District High School in Greymouth. And so she hardly has taken notice of the words Miss Appleby is saying, perhaps a scholarship, perhaps a scholarship. And now what is Miss Appleby telling her?

  ‘I want to come to your house, Pansy, to explain to your parents there are excellent scholarships for children who do well in the Proficiency. Even though that may seem a long way off, it will come round soon enough, and it’s best to plan for these things. When the time comes, we — myself and Mr Kennedy — are willing to prepare you for it.’

  ‘Can I go now, Miss?’

  Miss Appleby stops talking, looks at her and frowns. ‘A gift such as yours, Pansy, should not be wasted. You’re a lucky girl to have been given it. I want you to think on that.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  Outside it’s raining hard and she pulls her hat down over her head almost covering her eyes and runs under the trees and jumps across the potholes already filled up. While she was reading to Mr Kennedy she’d seen Otto and Clem hanging about outside the fence, waiting for her, but they’re gone now. Anyway, she has no time left for them. She has her jobs waiting for her, filling the coal buckets, finding the eggs, getting the spuds in and peeling them.

  Miss Appleby coming to their house. Miss Appleby stepping through the coal and the chook shit and the mud. Miss Appleby with her shining boots all mucky and the hem of her clean, pretty skirt sodden and dirtied?

  She loves Miss Appleby, she thought she could do anything she asked, but she can’t do this. Miss Appleby coming to their house. Because what if Daddy was the worse for drink when she came, his face red and his eyes and his voice scornful and angry at what Miss Appleby asked? Or what if he looked at Miss Appleby the way Pansy has seen him look at the girls in the streets, running his eyes all over them with that funny smile he has?

  And Ma with her stringy hair and worn dress and the kitchen a mess of boots and washing and pots? Where could Miss Appleby sit?

  Even though she loves her, she feels angry with Miss Appleby for making her read to Mr Kennedy and drawing his attention to her. You have a special gift. She’s a good reader, she knows that well enough, but there are others in the class good as well. Otto, for one. Why has Miss Appleby singled her out? And why has she talked about her good reading as something separated from Pansy herself, something she has to look after properly, though she never asked for it in the first place? She wants to tell Miss Appleby she already has her own plans for when she grows up, the plans she’s made with Otto and Clem. But she can’t give up their secret. Nor can she be ungrateful to Miss Appleby.

  You have a special gift. You have a special gift. You’re a lucky girl to have been given it.

  What if she could go to the District High School in Greymouth like Miss Appleby said? What if she could get away from the grey in Ma’s face and her hard eyes and the mutton and the stink of cabbage and the kitchen steamy-wet and washing dripping dripping and the stick swishing stinging around her legs I’ll teach you to mind me, missy and the whisky on Daddy’s breath and in his eyes and his voice, the veins that run criss-cross purple through Daddy’s cheeks and the black from the coal in his fingernails and his hands? What if she could?

  Home free.

  She’s so busy with her thoughts she doesn’t hear him, only feels the touch on her back and there he is running alongside her.

  ‘I have to get home.’

  Her voice sounds sulky and cross but he keeps running by her all the same.

  ‘Why did Miss Appleby keep you back?’

  ‘For nothing.’ She won’t tell him, she won’t tell anyone. The District High School in Greymouth, the District High School in Greymouth.

  ‘She wouldn’t keep you back for nothing.’

  ‘It was a mistake, Clem Bright. It was a mistake. Now leave me be, will you? I have to get home.’

  He backs off. ‘Well, aren’t you in a mood? We’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

  In the days after, it’s the same as ever with the numbers and the letters and the lists, but when she’s finished her tasks Miss Appleby calls her to her desk and gives her the book. And even though the story is a good one, with Ham and Little Emily and Mr Murdstone and Miss Murdstone, it’s spoiled for her. Because the worry of Miss Appleby coming is with her all the time, the shame and the upset and the meanness of everything. Oh, Miss Appleby, peering through the steam and the grime at Ma and Daddy and Pansy, her skirt and boots all mucky, her face startled and sad-looking, like it is when one of the children is bold or cheeky.

  In the end, she has to do it. She goes to Miss Appleby as she sits marking the day’s Mental Arithmetic test.

  ‘Yes, Pansy?’ Miss Appleby puts down her pencil.

  She clears her throat, but even so the words come out husky. ‘Miss, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Pansy, what is it? You don’t want to what?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the High School.’

  ‘Oh, but there’s a long time before you must decide that.’

  ‘You said you would come to talk to my ma and daddy, Miss.’

  ‘Yes and I will. You’ll do well in the Proficiency, I know you will, and by then you will be older and you’ll feel differently about going on.’

  ‘Miss, I won’t feel differently.’

  ‘Oh, but Pansy!’ Miss Appleby is looking impatient.

  She has to make her see it. ‘I’m needed, Miss. At home.’ Her voice has come out too loud now and her face is burning.

  Miss Appleby watches her silently for a moment and then nods. ‘I understand. It’s all right, Pansy. There’s no reason for you to worry. Go back to your desk and we’ll forget all about it for now.’

  For now. Still Miss Appleby gives her books to read and poetry to learn, still she pushes her forward on elocution days.

  Daddy likes the poetry. Most Sundays he’ll have her stand beside the table and recite his favourite while he sups his whisky. ‘Come on, girlie. Stand over here, eh? Right where I can see you. Now what’s your daddy’s favourite? Say it for me just like you’d say it in school.’

  She stands by the table near to him. ‘“Casabianca” by Mrs Felicia Dorothea Hemans.’

  Ma doesn’t like the poems. Pansy can see it in the way she makes herself busy, putting the dinner things away, wrapping the meat, putting it into the safe, never looking at them, never saying so much as a word.

  The flame that lit the battle’s wreck

  Shone round him o’er the dead.

  Ma’s back is turned to them. She doesn’t like Pansy or Daddy. It’s the boys she frets for, the boys she waits and looks out for. Perhaps, Pansy thinks, perhaps Ma believes the boys will come back, like the heroes on white horses in stories, gold
jangling in their pockets, ready to save them all.

  Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

  As born to rule the storm;

  She doesn’t like Pansy reciting the poetry to Daddy. Not that she gives away anything by what she says or shows on her face. Not like Daddy. You can see straight away in Daddy’s face whether he’s sad or angry or happy and Daddy is happy, sometimes. Sometimes Daddy laughs and he sings the songs from where he came from.

  If to me you can be true,

  Just as true as I to you,

  It’s one, two, three, four, five and six

  Sing the bells of Aberdovey.

  And sometimes he lifts Pansy off the ground and twirls her around and says she’s a Welsh beauty like the girls he left behind and sometimes Daddy snatches the brush off Ma and brushes Pansy’s hair, not the hard, hurting jerks like Ma does but long, smooth strokes, lifting her hair up gently, taking out the knots with his fingers and pretending to jump away at the crackles and the sparks that come from it.

  Boys do love to be in love,

  And girls do love to marry.

  It’s one, two, three, four, five and six,

  Sing the bells of Aberdovey.

  And it was Daddy chose her name, he’s said it often, how he saw her blue eyes and the dark patch of hair on her head. ‘A little pansy,’ I said. ‘It’s what she’s to be called. Pansy.’

  Why does Ma have to spoil everything? Why doesn’t she like her and Daddy and the songs and the poetry? Daddy says it’s the Welsh have music in their souls and music in their blood. Perhaps that’s it. Ma isn’t Welsh like Daddy and Pansy are.

  They’re at the part now that Daddy loves most and he’s slapping his hand on the table, in time with the sound of it:

  A creature of heroic blood,

  A proud, though childlike form.

  The flames roll’d on — he would not go

  Without his father’s word;

  ‘Ah,’ he says, sighing, ‘it’s a beautiful thing, loyalty, Pansy.’

  He called aloud — ‘Say, father, say,

  If yet my task is done?’

  She tries not to say the words too quickly but she’s worried because Daddy isn’t looking like loyalty is a beautiful thing at all, he’s looking over at Ma, clattering the pots, still with her back turned to them.

  ‘Pity there isn’t more of it in the world.’

  He knew not that the chieftain lay

  Unconscious of his son.

  ‘There’s your ma, there, Pansy. Wouldn’t know the first thing about it. Not the first thing at all about loyalty.’

  He takes his time over the word, drawing it out, loy-al-ty, and her own voice is coming thin, breathless and too quick, she can’t help it, is Otto down at the creek today building his dams or is he up in the hills? She wishes she’d never said this poem, but it’s never set him off before.

  And shouted but once more aloud,

  ‘My father! must I stay?’

  ‘My own sons,’ he says, ‘gone off without so much as a thank you and goodbye to their daddy and who’s to blame for that?’ He slams his hand down on the table and though she knows the answer he wants she shakes her head.

  ‘It’s her is to blame. Setting them against me. My own sons.’ He’s pointing now at Ma’s back and still she’s not turning around and facing them. He picks up his mug and drains it. ‘You’re the only one left, Pansy. Come and sit on your daddy’s knee.’

  She climbs onto his knee. Though she feels too big for that now with her legs hanging down and her head nearly up by his, it might make him forget about Ma and the boys and loyalty. She’s so close she can see the soot ingrained into his face and the little pustules with their black heads covering the bottom of his nose. His hands are on her hair stroking. She can smell the whisky on him.

  ‘Promise Daddy you’ll never cut your hair.’

  ‘I promise, Daddy.’

  She feels his fingers tugging as he drags them through her hair. ‘You’ve got the Welsh hair. Blue-black.’

  She feels his hands at the back of her neck.

  ‘That, and the fine skin and the blue eyes. Like the pretty girls I left behind.’

  Ma is beside the table now, her eyes on them and Daddy gives Pansy a bit of a shove. ‘You’re getting heavy, girlie. Now let a man have his drink and read his paper in peace.’

  His eyes are on Ma, but then he lurches up, heading for the door and slams his cap on his head as he goes out, the door walloping behind him. Pansy has her breath held in so tight that now it comes out in a whoop.

  ‘Can I go out now, Ma?’

  ‘Be off with you, then.’

  She goes out the back of the house, comes around the front and jumps over the ditch. She looks up and down the road. He’s gone.

  She’s running. Home free. Home free.

  5

  Every day Ma’s face is set colder and harder, like the statues at Mass. Is this the way of it in every house? Do they all snitch and bellow at each other? Does every daddy lash out? Does every ma have her words ready to tear and claw? Ma never cries out when he comes at her but she keeps her eyes on him, staring straight, saying it for her, come on now show us what an animal you are.

  ‘I knew what lay ahead of me.’ Is this all Ma ever looked for? Wasn’t she once a girl like Pansy, laughing and hiding and playing and wild, her hair down her back and a slab of bread in her pocket for her dinner? Didn’t she ever want more for herself than cooking and cleaning and praying? When she’s outside taking the washing in, don’t her eyes sometimes lift up to the hills with the froth of cloud at the top or the sun turning down at the end of a day and the bush turned blue from the light?

  Pansy doesn’t know. Ma never answers her questions. All she knows is she has to help more with the cooking and the cleaning and the washing because Ma has a cough that never dries up and a new way of holding her hand against her side as she catches her breath. Every day after school now, it’s her and Ma and the mutton stew and the cabbage on the boil stinking up the place and fugging it up so that the windows are all steamed over and you can’t see out.

  Except for Mass, Ma hardly leaves the house so it’s up to Pansy to go to the shops for the messages, the meat and the flour and the butter and the sugar, and now Ma’s changed around washing day to Saturday instead of Monday so Pansy will be there to help her with that and all. She doesn’t have hardly any time left for outside. Otto and Clem sing out and wait for her but Ma says no: A great lump of an eleven-year-old girl traipsing the streets when there’s work to be done? I won’t have it, missy. Are you listening to me?

  The washing takes all of a morning and most of the afternoon as well. The fire is lit then the copper has to be filled, six bucketfuls it takes. Then it’s separating the whites from the coloureds and drawing out water, once it’s hot enough, into the tin bath for the coloured things to soak. And then measuring out the right amount of the soap and the soda for the whites and boiling them up. Then it’s the colours have to be rubbed up and down on the washboard to get out the dirt and the soap stinging her hands and the water that hot it burns her.

  Then it’s the rinsing and lifting out the hot, sopping cloth with the dolly, heaving it up, pushing, pulling it through the mangle, wringing, rinsing, wringing, rinsing and Ma has to have the blue bag and the starch added even though Pansy knows it’s not needed because nobody sees it and, any road, it all has to be done again the week after.

  It’s the way my mother showed me and it’s the way I do it and you’ll do it as well, missy.

  And then the whole dripping weight of it has to be hefted onto the clothes line and heaved up with the stick with the notch in it to keep it high enough so it catches the wind and the sun. And all the time she wants to be out of it and away to the bush, to the shadows of almost black and the yellowy green from the sun falling on it and the cheer
ful green like the earrings Miss Appleby wears swinging from her ears like little leaves and the smell of sweet and dark and rotting.

  Today there are rags floating in a bucket, spirals of red pluming out from the grey sodden centres. What are they? They look to Pansy like the sea creatures she saw in the picture in a book at school, The World of Nature. Portuguese man-of-wars, they were called, big jelly-like masses with long feathery tentacles spread out ready to clutch and sting.

  Her mother comes up behind her. ‘What’s this?’ Pansy says.

  Ma picks up the bucket and throws the pinkish water onto the patch where the carrots are beginning to push their fronds up out of the ground. She takes the bucket over to the pump. ‘Cold water’s best for blood,’ she says, driving water into the bucket.

  ‘But what is it? What’s happened, Ma?’

  ‘It’s the curse.’

  The curse. Satan and God and the martyrs and the saints and sin: venial or mortal? Who’s been cursed? Daddy? Or is it one of the boys come back like the boy in the Bible story living with the pigs? Cursed? And why is Ma looking at her as if there’s a secret so terrible she can keep it only for herself?

  ‘Ma?’ She whispers it, almost too frightened to say it out loud. ‘Is someone dead?’

  ‘Dead?’ Ma laughs. ‘The blood, you mean? Well, you’re old enough to know. It’s what happens with women. Grown-up women, Pansy.’

  ‘But. Where does the blood come from?’

  ‘Down there between your legs where you have to keep yourself clean.’

  She’s stuck in front of the bucket, staring at it brimming up with water and now one of the rags has washed itself up to the top of the bucket and falls out onto the dirt. Ma picks it up, wrings it out and puts it back.

  ‘Not to me,’ she whispers.

  Ma looks at her. ‘Course it’ll happen to you. Not too long away, neither.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘No use you getting yourself all het up about it. It’ll happen to you just like it happens to every woman. It’s the way God’s set things up and you have to get used to it.’