The Mothers

by Rod Jones

  Alma and her children sweated through the heat of January but there was no school in February. The commencement of the new school year had been postponed. The Spanish influenza was rapidly spreading and Victoria was declared an ‘infected area’. All places of public entertainment were closed. The Emergency Influenza Hospital was set up at Footscray Technical School in Ballarat Road, under direction of the school principal, Mr Hoadley.

  ‘The state is in the grip of a deadly plague,’ Alma read in the Advertiser. They stayed away from places where there were likely to be lots of people. Alma still went to the grocer and the butcher but she tried not to breathe the same air as the other customers. On one of his visits, Alfred reported that several people were down with the flu at the iron foundry. Mr McCracken, a foreman, had been admitted to hospital and there were grave fears for him. On Sunday morning, they walked past a service being conducted in the open air in front of a church. Many in the congregation were wearing masks against infection.

  ‘You must wash your hands when you come inside,’ Alma told her children, ‘and gargle. I’ve bought a bottle of permanganate of potash and I’ll keep it next to the sink. I’ve made some camphor bags and I want all of us to wear one around our necks.’ She showed them the small woollen pouches with white tapes to tie around their necks, into each of which she had inserted a camphor lozenge. ‘I’ll put a few drops of eucalyptus oil on your handkerchiefs, and I want you to inhale often. There’s nothing better than inhalation.’

  On Wednesday the 5th of March, eight inches of rain fell in a single day. The cloudburst came in the afternoon. The day went dull, then dark. When the first raindrops arrived, the sound was like a handful of nails against the corrugated roof. The rain grew louder, and soon it was all Alma could hear. Gutters overflowed and rivulets of water leaked down the walls. For two hours, the deluge continued. How would the children get home from school?

  Leaving Molly in the bedroom, Alma put on her rubber coat and made her way to the street corner. The force of the rain stung her face and the back of her neck. There was no traffic. People were inside their houses, or taking shelter wherever they could. Whitehall Street had become a river. She saw a motorcar sail calmly past.

  She could go no further. She had to trust that the teachers would keep the children at school until it was safe to dismiss them.

  At six o’clock, Teddy and Olive turned up, full of excitement. The drains leading down to the Maribyrnong River had failed, Teddy told her, and a raging torrent was roaring down Gordon Street. The children were drenched; Alma quickly got them into dry clothes.

  ‘The ammunition works is closed because of the flood,’ Moira told her. ‘Mrs Paton says her husband won’t be going back to work until next Monday at the earliest. The shops and businesses in Barkly Street and Nicholson Street are flooded.’

  It wasn’t until Friday that Alma realised the extent of the damage. When she carried her shopping basket to Nicholson Street, she found many shops still closed. Furniture was piled up on the footpaths outside offices and people were still sweeping water and mud through their doorways.

  Alfred came to the afternoon tea she prepared to celebrate Molly’s first birthday on the 10th of April. Alma used her last three eggs to make the cake. There were no gifts. Alfred made the excuse that the child was too young for presents. He promised to save up and buy her a doll next year. ‘There might be something for this young fellow, too,’ he added. She watched him slurp his tea and wink at Teddy.

  Molly took her first few tottering steps that day. Alfred picked her up and swung her through the air. ‘Aren’t you clever?’ he kept saying. Alma could see how much Alfred loved Molly. But his pride in his daughter was short-lived: he could forget his shame only for a moment; stung anew by the returning realisation of his humiliation, he set the child down, saying, ‘Well, I’d best be off.’ He tucked the cuffs of his trousers into his socks, climbed on his bicycle and sailed off into the evening without looking back.

  Alma knew that Moira must have followed these comings and goings, which might have been comical had they not left her feeling so desolate. Once or twice Alma was on the point of pouring out her feelings to her friend, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to face up to those feelings, her secret hopes and fears, let alone talk about them.

  One gloomy May afternoon, Alfred stayed later than usual. He made a show of warming his hands by the stove. She thought he must have wanted to talk about money. She feared he would tell her she had to wait until next payday.

  The children had finished their mashed potatoes and gravy. It was already dusk; the wind was bitter and the darkening sky shrill with flitting birds, but she sent the children outside to play, anyway. Olive carried Molly in her arms. Alma heard the neighbouring children calling to Teddy to join their game.

  She was full of nerves, and, she realised, desire. Usually, Alma wouldn’t let Alfred kiss her, or even touch her hand, fearing what it might lead to. Each of them hoarded a stubborn resentment that had grown stronger than their needs. Now, suddenly alone together, Alfred looked uneasy. He wanted to talk; he couldn’t talk. She recognised that imploring look men get.

  He slid his braces from his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘It’s cold.’ She tried to laugh.

  ‘Do you need a warm up?’

  ‘I need to feel safe.’

  ‘We’ll be careful,’ he promised.

  But it wasn’t easy to be careful. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union had been campaigning to prevent the manufacture of prophylactics at Barnet Glass’s rubber factory. She let him push her to the bed and pull up her skirt. He was rough with her, more confident. She suspected he had been with other women. Prostitutes, perhaps. Or some woman laid off from the ammunition works now the war was over. Alma was afraid of venereal disease which, the newspapers claimed, had been brought back by soldiers returning from Europe.

  Ten minutes, they went at it. No words. Just the creaking bed, insistent, rhythmic, like the sound of someone sweeping a path.

  He pulled out and finished over her with his hand. He got up and dressed, not even turning to look at her. When he left, Alma was able to breathe more freely.

  A week passed and she did not see him. Did he feel guilty perhaps, or was he afraid of what their relapse might have signified to her? When he did turn up again to give her the five shillings, seeing how much he resented it, she asked, ‘Do you remember that day you found us in the park?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Do you wish you’d left me there?’

  ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ he said.

  Alfred had spoken without thinking, but it hurt her nevertheless. Is that what her life was? Spilt milk? A matter of regret? An accident?

  ‘Don’t you think I want a real life?’ she cried at him. She wanted to strike him. ‘A husband, a home for my children?’

  ‘You always bring out the sob story,’ Alfred said. ‘Look. We met through my doing you a good deed.’

  ‘Yes! And then you did me another good deed.’

  So it went, on and on, every time Alfred came around. Since talking was a waste of time, they decided instead to save it. One day, a few weeks later, Alma heard that he was sweet on the Winch girl, who worked behind the counter at Griffiths Coffee Palace
.

  It was a miserable winter in Melbourne. The war might have been over, but in May seamen all over Australia went on strike; it lasted until August. Coal and food were in short supply. The foundry had to close through lack of orders and Alfred again joined the ranks of the unemployed. He had no money to give them. ‘You’ll have to go and line up at the Town Hall,’ he told her.

  Every day at the Town Hall, the Footscray Distress Committee distributed coupons for food and rent. When Alma arrived, there was already a long queue; everyone looked drawn and exhausted. She saw that Mr Goble was in charge. He was the same as ever, cheerful and resolute in a crisis. ‘This must be Molly. My, how you’ve grown, young lady!’

  Alma felt Mr Goble watching her, trying perhaps to gauge how she was coping with life. She was grateful for his kindness to her in the past, but equally she had never forgotten the first time they had met, when he said she had got herself into trouble.

  The coupons allowed her to get through the next weeks, although Mr Gilbertson’s butcher shop closed and Moran & Cato’s rationed butter and eggs. Moira mentioned they had run out of coal and could not keep warm at night. Alma had enough to last a few weeks, so Moira’s eldest, Paul, came in with their coal-scuttle. There was no side gate and he had to carry the coal from the shed back through Alma’s house.

  Alma was looking forward to the new year. A new decade. Some good luck, for a change. But 1920 passed, then another year. Children’s birthdays came and went. She realised one day that they had been living in the house for three years. They hardly saw Alfred now.

  One spring morning in 1921, there was a knock on the door. Molly ran down the hallway to answer it. Alma heard a man’s voice and rose from her chair.

  It was Mr Shepherd, the real estate agent. ‘The rent is two weeks late,’ he complained.

  ‘But Mr Lovett pays our rent.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him this past month. I don’t care who’s at fault. If the arrears aren’t paid without delay, you’ll have to pack your things.’

  Alma’s stomach lurched. Pack your things. Homeless. The Plough. All her worst fears were coming to pass.

  ‘I’ll go and find out what’s happened. The rent will be paid. I promise.’

  ‘One week, not a day longer,’ Mr Shepherd said. He looked at her warily. Alma knew she was just one of many tenants who got behind.

  When she walked all the way to Empire Street, the house was locked up. The grass in the front was overgrown. Mrs Thomas next door had come out to the front fence to see who was standing there. She looked at Alma with surprising friendliness. ‘Well, look who it is,’ she said. ‘The niece from Bendigo. Or thereabouts.’

  Alma felt the same loathing she had felt when Mrs Thomas had mocked her piano playing. She frowned and asked when the Lovetts might be home.

  ‘They moved away,’ Mrs Thomas said. That was all. She wasn’t going to give away any more than she had to.

  ‘How can they just move away? Has the house been sold?’

  Mrs Thomas let out a mirthless laugh. ‘You’d have to ask their landlord.’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘You thought they owned the place? You poor thing. So many things you didn’t know. That Alfred—he’s quite a lad! He has an eye for the girls. But I suppose you already knew that.’

  Mrs Thomas said she didn’t have their forwarding address. ‘I think they went back to Tasmania,’ she added, unhelpfully.

  Alma was facing eviction. She went to see the real estate agent in his office. ‘So the bugger just disappeared?’ Mr Shepherd asked. ‘You should apply to the courts to make him support his child.’

  But Molly had been born in secret. According to the law, she did not exist.

  Moira showed Alma a piece she had cut out of the Argus. The Lincoln Knitting and Spinning Mills in Gaffney’s Road in Coburg was expanding their operations and looking for women. Since opening in 1919, they had already employed more than eight hundred workers.

  Once again Alma had to ask for Mr Goble’s help. He arranged a grant of five guineas and helped her find a house in Eastwood Street, near Kensington railway station, that cost £1-3/- a week. There was no way to pay Mr Shepherd the arrears. They left Pilgrim Street one Saturday morning, their few pieces of furniture piled in the back of an open lorry. They had to rush, as the driver charged by the hour, and there wasn’t time even to say goodbye properly to Moira.

  Teddy and Olive were enrolled at the Kensington State School, and Alma travelled with Molly by train early each morning to Batman Station. At the Lincoln Mills, Alma worked in the knitting department. There was a team of women who folded the garments as they came off the machines and piled them on long tables. She earned £2-4/- per week, a portion of which went to the Lincoln Mills crèche.

  The men had the more important jobs, the machine supervisors and dyers and drivers. It was the women and girls who worked as sorters, inspectors, folders, finishers and menders. There were also the transfer girls and the loopers. The transfer girls brought the stocking tops to the knitting machines, where the loopers sewed together the foot of the stocking.

  Alma had to stand all day with the deafening roar of the looms and other machinery. When she emerged into the sunshine at lunchtime, her ears rang from the noise of the machines. She was exhausted by afternoon. Her feet ached. The passengers on the train home often fell asleep. It was infectious: Alma felt her chin sinking into her chest, and she leaned against the shoulder of her neighbour as the carriage swayed. When the train braked coming into a station, all the bodies sat up and came awake for a second, seeing if it was their station; if it was not, they closed their eyes and immediately resumed their former position.

  Alma made two friends at work, Lillian and Val, but she held back from men—she had learned in life that men cannot be relied on, that what they say is almost never what they mean; in every friendly remark from a man she got the whiff of Alfred.

  In the lunch room she sat at the same table with Val and Lillian; if the weather was fine, the three of them took their sandwiches and found a sunny spot in the yard. Lillian lived in East Brunswick with her parents. Val was married and lived in Kensington. Neither had children. Alma told them her husband had died. She never mentioned a word about what had happened with Alfred. She had managed to bury her past and she had no intention of digging it up again.

  The struggle to provide for her children, the privations her family had to endure, made Alma bitter. She had her hair cut short, the way women wore their hair since the end of the war. As her old skirts and blouses wore out, she bought a dress once in a blue moon, loose at the bust, with a lower waistline, the hem reaching to just below her knees. She did not wear make-up or jewellery, and felt like just another drab-looking worker on the train. She tried to eradicate any sign of gentleness lest it be seen by others as weakness.

  When he turned fourteen, Teddy left school and went to work in the great network of sewers being constructed by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. He earned twenty-five shillings a week. He came home from work a bit earlier than Alma, and when she got home she usually found him sitting in the kitchen in his filthy overalls, smoking a cigar. The smell reminded her of Alfred, and she shooed him out to the washhouse.

  Molly had started school at Kensington State School the previous year. She had to depend on her big sister for everything. Olive was the one who helped h
er get ready in the mornings, who walked her to school and came looking for her in the corner of the asphalt playground at lunchtime to make sure she was all right. In the afternoons, Olive minded Molly until Alma got home from work.

  In his absence, Alfred became a monster in Alma’s mind. She hoped Molly would forget all about him. It would be better that way: Molly had the surname Fairweather, like her brother and sister, so there was no cause for people to suspect she had a different father. She told Teddy and Olive that Alfred’s name was never again to be mentioned, and that they were not to tell Molly that she had a different father from them.

  Alma had fought for her children, and that was the story written into her face. The rod of iron will that had kept her alive in these difficult years now took the form of a private thought, a quietly burning determination that continued to fortify her—Alfred will never see his daughter again.

  One night in July 1925, there was a great fire at the Lincoln Mills. The smoking ruins covered three and a half acres. The knitting department was completely destroyed. More than three hundred workers, mostly women, were put out of work. Alma was one of them.

  It would take many months for the knitting mills to be rebuilt. Alma went without wages and once again they were behind with the rent. She looked for other work, to no avail. She couldn’t feed and clothe her children. Olive had just turned fourteen and left school to look for a job. But there were so many people looking for work; if there was a job going, it usually went to a man. The only money coming in was Teddy’s wages from the sewers.

  Alma sought out her friend Val in the ladies’ lounge of the pub in Macaulay Road, where she knew Val drank while her husband was in the public bar. The two women sat with their glasses of shandy. Alma had sixpence in her purse.

  ‘When my friend Milly’s husband died,’ Val told her, ‘there was an orphanage in Brighton where she sent her children to be looked after for a while.’