Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

The next thing she did was knock on Miss Tinsdale’s door with a tray set up with a little pot of tea and milk and sugar and a piece of apple-cake, still warm from the oven. ‘Miss Tinsdale? I thought you might like this.’

  ‘What a lovely treat. Thank you.’

  There was the Singer sewing machine set beside the window, the long table beside it spread over with green, shiny stuff and the screen for the ladies to get changed behind. Miss Tinsdale was sitting in her chair sewing little black beads onto a bodice. Pansy put the tray on the little table beside her.

  ‘This is very thoughtful of you.’ Miss Tinsdale put down her sewing, poured tea into the cup, added the milk and two teaspoons of sugar, then looked up at Pansy as if wondering why she was still there.

  ‘Miss Tinsdale, I need your help.’

  Miss Tinsdale’s pale blue eyes were worried and uncertain. ‘Oh dear, I don’t think—’

  ‘It’s my dresses.’

  Miss Tinsdale looked more closely at Pansy. Her eyes running up and down seemed to be pausing and noting the details of what she was wearing. It was one of two dresses Mrs Smithson had given her that she didn’t want any more, they’re very good quality, Pansy, mind how you look after them, both too wide around the waist and bodice and too long for her by far so she had to bunch them up and tie her apron tight so she didn’t trip on the hems. They were all she had to wear since nothing else fitted her but they were old ladies’ dresses, brown and faded yellow.

  ‘They don’t fit.’

  ‘Well,’ Miss Tinsdale put down her cup of tea, ‘I can see that. That dress most certainly doesn’t fit, nor does it suit you.’

  ‘I have to learn to sew,’ Pansy said. ‘I’d pick it up quick. I’m a fast learner, Miss Tinsdale. If you’d show me, on just the one dress, I’d be all right after that. I wouldn’t bother you again.’

  ‘Of course I’ll help you.’ Miss Tinsdale was smiling. ‘First of all there’s the fabric to buy. Perhaps four yards? Four and a half, just to make sure? It’s important to select good fabric. That’s most important. You can’t make a frock that hangs properly and wears well out of inferior fabric. I will make out a list of what is most suitable.’

  Pansy slipped into Currans next day when she ran out for butter. The bolts of fabric were displayed on the shelves beside the counter: stripes and checks, shining jewel-coloured stuff beside soft muslins and fine white cambric. Miss Tinsdale had shown her how to feel for the quality and she tested the weave and heaviness of the cloth in her fingers. In the end, she chose a slippery cotton, pink flowers on a deep blue background. She bought the matching cotton thread and Miss Jones, who came to help her, found buttons the same colour as the flowers and shaped like little shells. Then she took up the scissors, sliced across the fabric, folded it, wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string. ‘It’s a lovely blue.’

  After she had finished clearing up after dinner, Pansy went up to Miss Tinsdale’s room. They laid the cotton flat on the table and oh, the smell of it, so fresh and so new. Miss Tinsdale showed Pansy how to place then pin the slivers of tissue for the bodice, skirt, facings and sleeves onto the fabric. Miss Tinsdale handed her the scissors. ‘Now, take your time,’ she said.

  Pansy’s hands were shaking. She put the scissors down again and flexed her fingers. Then she began to cut. The scissors were razor sharp, slicing through the cotton with a satisfying shlip-shlip-shlip sound. They worked together throughout the week. There was the pinning and tacking of pieces together, the sewing of the darts, the fitting of the bodice, the seams which had to be just so, the insertion of the sleeves, the meticulous attachment of the skirt to the bodice. Then the buttonholes, the hem, the sleeves.

  But oh, the glorious smell of that crisp, new cotton, the sheen of it, the cool slippery feel of it against her skin as Miss Tinsdale slipped it over her head and fastened the row of buttons at the back. She felt Miss Tinsdale’s fingers examining the seams, ensuring that it sat trimly across her shoulders, then she came around and stood in front of Pansy, looking critically up and down.

  ‘Yes, indeed. That will do very nicely.’ She gestured towards the full-length mirror. ‘Take a look at yourself.’

  The fabric was so pretty and the frock fitted her well, the skirt curving out from her waist and hips and ending just above her ankles. She looked at her face, seeing how the blue brought out that of her eyes and the pink, the tawny colour of her skin.

  ‘You have an aptitude for sewing, Pansy,’ Miss Tinsdale said, ‘and I’ve seen how careful and tidy you are. You may use my sewing machine in the evenings when I have no use for it.’

  She made a blouse from cream cambric, a red-and-cream checked skirt and another dress, pale grey with narrow blue stripes that was for Mass and the dances. She told Ma they’d been left behind by Thelma Owens when she’d done a bunk with one of the miners and Mrs Smithson said Pansy may as well have the use of them.

  She’d do sandwiches for lunch today. There was the mutton left over; she’d slice it up and add a bit of pickle. She’d do egg as well, chop in a bit of parsley. Sandwiches and the scones.

  She wonders, now, if Ma believed her about the dresses. Ma. Ma and Daddy. The fights come regular as ever and when there aren’t the fights there’s the quiet like thick mud you have to force your way through. Ma puts Daddy’s dinner down in front of him and he eats it without a word. He hasn’t much to say to Pansy any more either. There’s no more about her being like the pretty girls he left behind nor about her hair being from the Welsh.

  Anyway, most nights she isn’t there when he comes in from his shift and when she is she keeps out of his way. Ma fills up the bath in the kitchen for him, hot water from the kettle, then she goes outside with the bucket for the cold water from the pump. Pansy hears Daddy’s breathing coming thick and wheezing and the slop of the water as Ma washes his back. Pansy can see in Ma’s eyes that she hates him, but still she picks up the washcloth, lathers it up and washes his back and neck and hair.

  Ma’d see that as her duty; it’s her duty to wash her husband’s back, her duty to cook his dinner and to get his crib ready every night for the next morning and to wash his clothes, and her duty and all to lie on her back with her legs open when he wants that. She hears it, still, through the wall, his grunting then a groan before he starts up with his coughing. She hears the bed creak as they turn over facing away from each other and then nothing until he starts to snore.

  Did Ma ever love Daddy? Did Daddy ever love Ma? Well, if that was ever so, she’s seen little enough sign of it. I was a miner’s daughter and I was to be a miner’s wife. Nothing fancy in that. Daddy eats his dinner, goes out and when he comes in most times he goes to sleep in his chair, worn down by the day’s work and the beer and maybe some woman he’s been after. She hears him shuffle around when he wakes, hears the floorboards shift and creak, his boots thudding onto the floor and the bedsprings whine and shudder under his weight as he gets into the bed.

  There’s a book here in the parlour left behind by one of the overnighters. Sweet Love’s Victory by Mrs Emily Worthill. Most of what happens is in this grand, big place, Banksfield Hall, with turrets and archways and ballrooms. Clarissa Evensdale is a penniless orphan her uncle has to take in and his daughter Annabelle thinks she’s better than her and leaves her out of everything. But then there’s a house party and the young lord, James Brixton, who Annabelle wants to marry is swept off his feet when he meets Clarissa by chance in the library. He worships Clarissa, he would lay down his life out of his love for her.

  Pansy has started to go to dances at the Miners’ Hall and she’s pulled up for dancing by the boys she used to go to school with, their faces all flushed up by the courage they’ve got out of the bottles stashed under the hedge. She smells it on their breath and feels the ridge of it against her belly as they pull her in tight and grind against her.

  ‘I’ll walk you home, eh Pansy?’

  C
ourse she’ll be easy. She’s only Dan Williams’ girl, that old boozer who goes after the women. Course she will.

  ‘I can see myself home, thanks very much.’

  If there’s any worshipping or laying down of life or anyone swept off their feet out of love, it’s not in Blackball. What she sees here is the women bringing in the coal to keep the stoves going, and cooking with what’s the cheapest they can buy, and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing the soot off the tables and the floors with the sandsoap taking the skin off their hands and when they get out for once in their lives it’s to the Miners’ Picnic or church or blackberrying. And there they are, them and their family, in the clothes made by them and washed clean despite the water from the tanks on the tar roof sometimes coming down so black you have to start the wash all over. Washed clean and starched and ironed.

  And what was it all for? For it all to start over was what, with their boys to go down the mine and their girls to marry a miner. If love’s behind it, she doesn’t want any of that for herself. Daddy’d been twenty when Pat was born and Ma eighteen. Joe turned up the next year, the twins the one after that and then she’d trailed in a few years later and now Ma and Daddy are old and they hate each other.

  Course she’ll be easy. She’s only Dan Williams’ girl, that old boozer who goes after the women. Course she will.

  Well, she’s not and she never will be, she’s never going to get caught out with all that. Not like Valmai Evans, getting herself in trouble with one of them living out the back. Pansy’d seen her slipping out the back door, her face all flushed up and smiling like a fool. Then, a couple of months later, she’d been back crying and looking for him after he’d packed his things and gone.

  She sees Clem at the dances. He’s different from the other young miners with their booze and their hands. Well, the Brights are different and all, their house is properly built for a start with the good big kitchen and bedrooms and the parlour and a proper veranda running along the front. Mr Bright’s brothers helped with the building and he helped them back, that was the way the Brights did things. Clem had his grannies and his grandpas and his aunties and uncles and his cousins all living close by.

  Mr and Mrs Bright were different as well. Back when they used to play together, some nights she and Otto’d been asked in to the Brights’ place for dinner and she’d heard Mr and Mrs Bright talking together and sometimes laughing. The table was nicely set with a cloth and the knives and forks laid out and all of them were sitting down together. Sometimes she danced with Clem at the hall. He was gentle how he held her. Clem was different because of Mr and Mrs Bright, she thought.

  She’d heard from Mrs Smithson that Mr Bright was asked to go into management in the mine but he’d turned it down. Why would he do that? Wouldn’t it be better telling people what to do than shovelling coal down there along with everyone else? Isn’t it better having more money in your pocket? What’s wrong with wanting better for yourself?

  Because while she’s happy enough for now getting this house shining and doing her little extras like the vases, she doesn’t mean to stay. In Mrs Smithson’s mind she’ll have her here until she’s wed and then she’ll be like every other girl in the town setting up home in a three-room shack with the miner she’s married and the kiddies to come.

  She slices the mutton and the bread nice and thin. She warms the butter so it will spread easy. She can’t have Latin, French, English, Geography, History and Arithmetic but she’ll have something else for herself. A lot of those poems she learned at school were silly with their bluebells and butterflies and dells but some of them had made her see things far away from here, bigger and more grand. Sometimes she goes back to them and says them over in her head.

  And with glorious triumph, they

  Rode through England proud and gay,

  O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea

  Imagine that. Starting at one coast with the waves washing up on the shingle and riding through towns and through cities and paddocks and bush and then coming out on another coast miles and miles from where you started off.

  The trick is to not mind the waiting too much. The trick is to be ready for when the right time comes along.

  9

  Like everyone else in town, Pansy has been watching the manager’s house going up down the end of Stafford Street. First there were the wooden posts set in the ground and then the joists put in and you couldn’t help but marvel at how wide and long it spread out and how almost any other house here in Blackball could sit inside it three or even four times. Then the frames went up and you could see how high it was to be as well: two storeys, then there were three and that bit, curving out at the front, everyone said was a turret.

  A turret. There was nothing else like it in the whole of Blackball. Every night, she walked the long way home so she could pass by and see what was going on. Even when it was almost too dark, she could make out the planks of wood that made up the frame of the house ashen against the bush and sky. Then it was the roof went on, not tar like the cottages, but iron.

  Mrs Smithson is full of it. Two reception rooms, a morning room, a dining room and a library, if you please. Four bedrooms, Ada Peterson said, but how would she know, though she seems mighty friendly with that carpenter working on it she’s got staying with her and her a widow only a year. There’s rooms upstairs for a maid and a cook and there’s to be a nursery with a room for a nanny, God love you, a nanny, what some of the ladies around here wouldn’t give for one of them let alone a maid and a cook into the bargain. There’ll be a gardener as well, probably two with the size of that piece of land, probably they’ll be wanting roses and arbours and all that lark, nothing but the best for them.

  I’m your maid, Pansy wants to tell her, and I’m your cook, your skivvy as well; anything wants doing, it’s me that cleans out the fireplace and the oven, takes out the ash, runs out for more meat, more butter, then up and down those stairs.

  She stays silent, though. No use in upsetting the apple-cart. She’s doing well enough for now; the savings in her bank account are getting bigger every week, though its slower than she’d like. She wonders how much the maid at the new house will be getting. She’ll wait a bit then she’ll tell Mrs Smithson she’s heard around town they’re looking for a good girl for the place.

  She walks past every night and she watches the house growing: the roof, the weatherboards, the veranda, the windows, so many of them, some of them coloured and patterned. She creeps up close and peers through the windows, her face up against the glass. And then, finally, she can’t help but slip in past the board where the back door is to be hung. The rooms are so big. She climbs up the stairs, feeling the sheen of the timber beneath her hands. The biggest bedroom is set into the side of the house facing out to the bush and the hills. You would lie back against fat, white pillows in your bed in the morning with the sun coming through the open window and hear the birds calling. You’d be in your silk peignoir with your brocade slippers waiting by the bed and the maid would bring you tea in a thin china cup. And then you would choose the dress you wanted for that day. There’d be a whole row of them to choose from in the wardrobe, and then you would sit on the veranda or in the library or in the turret where the sun would catch all the colours from the windows and light everything up.

  If you wanted to read, the library would be filled with so many books there’d always be a new one ready for you. At night, the lamps would light up all the rooms and the fires would be crackling out heat and you’d be all dressed up in one of your swishy gowns coming down the stairs.

  She’s in the turret now, standing beside the windows and looking out onto the track that goes down to the mine. She’s seen miners passing by the house on their way to work, seen how they turn their heads away from it and how some of them spit on the ground. She can see, well enough, it’s their graft makes it possible for the owners and the managers to live in fine houses and she knows they earn
little enough for what they do and that their women back in the cottages are working hard as well. If a man is killed or gets hurt too badly to work again, there’s nothing for their families from the mine.

  She understands the wrong of it, but wouldn’t it be grand to live in such a house? Why is it bad to want better? Well, even if it is bad she’s going to find better for herself. She’ll never get as good as this, she’s not stupid enough to think of any such thing, but she wants somewhere bright and pretty and to have her own few nice things and to have a good job and to walk along a street with her head held up.

  She’s taking out the dishes from the dining room. It’s just the Smithsons left on their own and Mrs Smithson’s teaspoon clicks against the side of the cup as she stirs in her two teaspoons of sugar and she says it’s good getting the weight off her feet. Pansy hears her own name said as she goes through the door and she stops quiet on the other side, listening.

  ‘One thing you can say for Pansy is she can manage on her own.’

  Mr Smithson’s cup rattles on the saucer as he puts it down. ‘We pay her well enough.’

  ‘I trained the girl well and I don’t mind saying it. Ada Peterson’s got two girls working for her now and they don’t get near so much done.’

  ‘Make the most of it, then,’ Mr Smithson says. ‘She’ll be after some boy soon enough and then you’ll have to set about training the next one.’

  She hears the slurp as Mrs Smithson drinks her tea. ‘Our Pansy’s got her head stuck on her shoulders. She won’t be rushing into anything. We’ll be keeping her a while yet.’

  Pansy hears the match striking and the wet, bubbling sound as Mr Smithson sucks on his pipe. She edges away from the door. Our Pansy. Well, if Mrs Smithson thinks that way, maybe she’ll pay a bit more to keep her.

  She’s doing well enough with her bank account but she’d be doing better with a few more bob coming in every week. She’s careful, too, about keeping her savings book tucked in out of sight under her smalls at the bottom of the drawer and leaving in the mornings before Daddy sees her good new dresses and changing them for Mrs Smithson’s old ones soon as she gets in the door.