The Mothers

by Rod Jones

  One afternoon on her way home, a man in a cloth cap rode slowly past on his bicycle. The face under the cap turned to look at her. Over the next few days, she saw the man again. The following week he was with a lady, parked in a dark green car across the road from school. The man smiled at her.

  Molly kept it a secret. It seemed to belong to the imaginary world of her other secrets.

  At three in the morning, she felt herself roar back from sleep and there was the man’s face again, in her bedroom, waiting for her in the dark. Terrified, she pulled the blankets over her head. She tried to make him vanish through an effort of will. The trick worked, for a while. But the harder she tried to erase the face, the more firmly it became imprinted in her mind. Of course, he must be the Murderer! Why else would a stranger be interested in her?

  This man, who had not yet spoken a word to her, who rode silently past on his bicycle, or parked in his car and stared at her, came to occupy her thoughts more and more. Those thoughts must have made their way into her face, because Mum had seen them. ‘What’s the matter, lamb?’ Mum asked. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  The next Monday after school, as she walked home along her usual route, the motorcar appeared, the man by himself this time. His head was round with nearly no hair. He gave her a little wave, barely moving his hand from the steering wheel, as if to reassure her. Molly walked on. When she turned again, she was startled to see how close the car was. The man made no attempt to disguise what he was doing. The Murderer was smiling at her, as though he knew who she was.

  Molly started running, not stopping until she was at Ballarat Road, where Mum was waiting for her on the other side, in front of Kinnears. Molly ran wildly across the road, causing a truck to brake and swerve. ‘Molly!’ Mum yelled at her. Molly pushed her face into the fabric of Mum’s coat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked. ‘What’s got into my little lamb, today?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied. Molly thought that if she didn’t tell anyone, the man might go away.

  When they got home, Molly rushed to her room and lay on her bed. She put her hands over her eyes, still trying to make the man’s face go away. The blind was drawn, but the face was still there.

  She got up and went to find Mum, who was stirring a pot on the wood stove. Without even turning to look at her, Mum told her to go and refill the wood box. She had a cake in the oven and she didn’t want it to go flat.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Yes, lamb.’

  ‘Why do men go bald and not ladies?’

  ‘It’s because they have a lot of worries.’

  ‘How do worries make them bald?’

  ‘Sometimes a man worries so much his hair falls out.’

  ‘Don’t ladies have worries too?’

  ‘Yes, but we have different worries.’

  ‘And our hair doesn’t fall out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never ever?’

  ‘Hardly ever.’

  Molly went off to play under the ironing board, her favourite place to be, the starched white sheets hanging down around her, the two flatirons Mum heated on the stove, the way the iron hissed as it hit the damp sheet and made the parlour smell safe and clean.

  Mum often told Molly that she loved her. The feeling they both still had from her Sunday visits to the Melbourne Orphanage made their bond a special one. The years at Brighton had shaped Molly. There was something tentative and fearful in her expression, as though she was never sure when she might have to go back.

  Molly had the chooks to talk to. She went down the back next to the lane above the quarry and imitated their clucking sounds, talking to them in their own language, telling them her secret about the man on the bicycle in the cloth cap, the man and the lady parked in the car after school, watching her. The intelligent eyes of the chooks seemed to understand. They clucked at her impatiently—they had heard it all before, those humans and their stories!—and returned to their grain.

  The world had eyes now. At Sunday school at the orphanage, they had told her about God up in the sky looking down on all the little children. But this was different. Whoever it was watching her was inside things, like the objects themselves had minds and were having thoughts, and those thoughts were all about her. And even as she hid down the back in the chook house, she felt that the all-seeing eyes were the Murderer’s.

  It was her habit in the afternoons to walk down to the corner of Kinnears and meet her sister coming home from the bottle works. As soon as she saw Olive, the childish part of her wanted to run, but the grown-up part continued to stand there, just a shy wave, as though there was something to be ashamed of in displaying too much happiness. If she showed her love, then something bad might happen.

  But this afternoon, Molly began to run blindly. She couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted. Olive had a surprised look on her face, half laughing, half worried. What was young Molly up to this afternoon? Molly’s body met her with a force that nearly knocked the older girl over. Molly didn’t even know why she was crying.

  Olive took her hand and they began to walk together towards Eldridge Street. Molly told her sister that she was frightened of the Murderer. She felt a wild excitement ripping through her: she felt light, dizzy, almost crazy.

  ‘Whatever are you talking about?’ her sister asked her. ‘You shouldn’t be frightened by Teddy and his talk. There isn’t really a murderer, silly!’

  ‘But there is a Murderer, there is, I know, I’ve seen him. I’ve seen the Murderer and his wife!’

  Without meaning to, Molly began to speak those thoughts that had been dammed up in her mind all these weeks, the man on the bicycle, the man and lady in the car outside the school, those thoughts which always returned, no matter how hard she tried to squeeze them out.

  Olive looked thoughtful and hugged her, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ Molly implored. Olive often told her that Mum had been through a lot, and that she didn’t need any more problems in her life.

  When they got home, Molly hid herself away down the back. When Mum called from the back step, her voice sounded normal. Perhaps Olive had kept her secret. Or perhaps it was just that Olive had not told her yet.

  The door of the classroom opened and the headmaster appeared. As one, the children leaped to their feet and stood to attention beside their desks. They looked straight ahead, arms pressed to their sides, not daring to meet the headmaster’s eyes.

  ‘Mr Bates. Do you mind if I borrow young Molly for a moment?’ The headmaster crooked his finger in her direction and she felt sick. This was the phrase he used when he came to collect a boy to be punished.

  She had been writing in her ruled Vana exercise book, her nib following the lines in blue-black ink. The school ink was mixed by the monitors and poured from a bottle with a rubber spout into the inkwell in the corner of the wooden desk. The pen felt dry in her fingers. Some of the boys chewed the ends of their pens. Sometimes the steel nib broke and Mr Bates took out the box of nibs from his desk drawer. He took a long time, as if reluctant to part with a new nib. You could make the ink run in the grain of the wood in the desk lid. The wood felt smooth and waxy where the elbows of so many had rested and rubbed. Boys rolled up pellets of blotting paper and watched them sink to the bottom of the inkwell. When the ink was low, the bits of blotting paper in the ink clogged the nib.
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  Mr Bates was still looking at her, waiting for her to follow the headmaster.

  She had never been to the headmaster’s office. The oak door was usually closed. Now that she had been admitted to the room she saw a desk, a bookcase, the headmaster’s overcoat hanging on a hook. And there, sitting in the armchair, was Mum! She was wearing her cherry-red coat. The room smelled of cigarettes and methylated spirits. The headmaster gave her a smirk, as if to say, ‘Ha ha! Tricked you!’

  Mum had come to take her home. Why? Molly stood there feeling frightened and foolish while Mum and the headmaster talked. If only she could stand straight enough, she might still be able to avoid the fate that awaited her. The hardest thing to know was where to put her hands. If they hung at her sides, her shoulders ached. Behind her back was not right either. That was for ‘at ease’, when the school was at assembly on the asphalt, and that came before the headmaster called the school to attention. Then, everybody had to stand up very straight and the boys saluted the flag and they all chanted together, I love God and my Country, I will serve the King…They had to form twos and march around the white line painted on the asphalt while one of the big boys beat the bass drum.

  All Molly wanted was for Mum not to be here at school today. She wanted things to be normal. She wanted to go to her corner of the yard and eat her sandwich by herself.

  ‘Your mother and I have just been having a little chat. Do you know what we were talking about, Molly?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No, Mr Curry,’ he corrected her, and smiled. He nodded at Mum, as if to say to her, ‘See? I was right.’ At that moment, Molly knew that Olive must have told Mum about the man on the bicycle, the man and lady in the car.

  And so she left school early that day with Mum, while everyone else was still in the classroom. The ordinary school day was going on without her. From the far end of the corridor came the sound of a piano being played.

  It felt odd, walking home through the empty streets in the middle of the day. Still, she felt happy. As long as she was with Mum, no one could hurt her. All those things she had imagined were going to happen to her—that the man on the bike was going to steal her away and murder her—it all seemed silly now she was with Mum. And yet the fact that Mum was walking her home before it was home time told her that things weren’t right.

  She followed Mum around the house while she did her sweeping, but Mum was in a bad mood. ‘Do you know why we don’t talk to strangers?’ she asked Molly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t we talk to strangers?’

  ‘If the stranger was a murderer, he might try to kill you.’

  ‘Or he might try to steal you from your family and keep you as his own little girl. Sometimes a girl is taken a long way away and she is given a new name and she grows up with the strangers as though they are her mother and father.’

  Molly stared at Mum, her eyes wide. She could understand them wanting to kill her, because that’s what murderers do, but why would they want to steal her away from Mum and Bill?

  Mum said that she should never speak to that man and lady, even if they came up and spoke to her first, even if they were nice to her or offered her lollies.

  Mum must have talked to Bill about it because he was particularly kind to Molly that afternoon when he came home from the meatworks. He was wearing his undershirt and grey worsted trousers held up by braces. He hadn’t had a shave yet, but his black hair was glossy with hair oil. She sat on the back step with him, the smell of dead animals still on him, flecks of dried blood on his forearms. He carried deep in his skin the smell of his trade, the confidence of death-dealing mingled with fear. There were crimson patches on his hands where Mum had painted his sores with Mercurochrome.

  He had brought out the treacle tin and he used a teaspoon to prise open the lid. He watched her licking the spoon even when there was no treacle left. ‘So what’s the matter?’ Bill asked her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I know when my little fox is thinking chickens.’

  ‘No chickens in my pocket.’ Molly smiled at him.

  Bill put his hat on her head so that she looked like a little man and walked her as far as the corner. He liked to take her with him and stop to talk to their neighbours, this happy blonde girl without much meat on her bones but a goodness in her heart that radiated out of her. Molly felt the same love for Bill that she felt for Mum, except that her love was mixed with something else: the fear of it being taken away.

  Mum kept her home from school all that week. They went to the shops together. At Moran & Cato’s the grocer gave Molly some broken biscuits and asked why she wasn’t at school. On the other days, she helped with the housework, and in the afternoons she waited at the front gate for the others to come home from work. Mum found fault with the way Molly did everything. She could not even sweep the floor to Mum’s satisfaction, it seemed. Since Olive had told her about the man and lady in the car watching Molly, something in Mum had changed.

  Molly asked, ‘Mum, do you know the Murderer?’

  ‘Whatever are you talking about now? Has Teddy been putting that nonsense into your head? You wait until he comes home, I’ll be having words with him!’

  Mum wore thunder in her face, in the dark bruises around her eyes, in the way her mouth set hard, and Molly waited for the storm to pass. Mum sometimes needed to lie down with a cold compress over her eyes, she got so angry.

  As Molly lay awake in bed at night, the smell of tobacco smoke came to her from the parlour and she could hear Mum and Bill talking. She heard their words—but then something happened that kept her stupid and she couldn’t understand what the words meant. There was something in herself that wouldn’t let her hear the words. There was a secret she wanted to know, yet didn’t really want to know. She heard Bill say, ‘It’s only natural for the girl to be curious. She might even remember him from when she was little.’

  They were only voices. There were always voices in the house at night, especially when Teddy and Olive stayed up late. Molly only really paid attention when they were shouting, which didn’t happen often. But now Bill’s words remained stubbornly in her mind. She might even remember him from when she was little.

  Remember who? Was it someone she was supposed to know? Was it someone Molly had been keeping a secret from herself?

  Mum was saying, ‘I’m going to the police if he doesn’t stop.’

  ‘The police can’t do much, seeing as he has a legal right.’

  ‘A legal right to what?’ Mum howled. ‘A legal right to follow her around the streets and frighten her half to death?’

  She now understood that Mum and Bill did know the man and lady who were following her. She felt relieved, but then a sense of disappointment, as though it was the Murderer she had wanted after all.

  She heard Mum say, ‘Well, if him and his floozy think they’re going to get their hands on her, they’ve got another think coming.’

  ‘We could go to court and ask the judge to give Molly to us once and for all. You could ask the judge to have Alfred completely ruled out of it.’

  Alfred? Who was Alfred?

  ‘But would they rule him out of it? He might have some claim on her that we don’t know about. Just because he didn’t pay me a penny when I needed it most doesn’t mean anything. What if the magistrate comes down on Alfred’s side of the fence?
Or what if he sends a man to look into aspects of my life and things come out in public I would rather keep to myself?’

  ‘How much does she know, do you reckon?’

  ‘Not much. But she has been asking questions.’ Mum made a noise like a sigh or a moan. ‘I suppose I have always known at the back of my mind that something like this could happen one day.’ Then there was the sound of Mum sobbing. She said, ‘Oh, Bill, what am I going to do?’

  ‘She can’t stay home from school forever.’

  But Mum still wouldn’t let Molly go back to school. She wasn’t allowed to go out into the street by herself now, even to meet Olive after work. She was afraid that everything in her life was about to change again. Perhaps Mum was going to send her back to the orphanage? Alone in her room, she opened her Bible and stared at the first page, Miss Ormond’s autograph and ‘Remember us, Brighton, 1928’. She felt sad that Bonnie had not replied to her last letter. ‘She doesn’t remember me,’ Molly thought. ‘None of them do, not even Miss Ormond. As far as they’re concerned, I no longer exist. I am no one.’

  That Friday she sat and played with her doll and tea set on the front verandah. Mum brought out a plate of sugar sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Molly poured a cup of tea for dolly, and one for herself. There was only her and the quiet weekday street. The sun was bright on the grass and it was cold in the shade. The sound of Mum washing the dishes came to her. From the way she was banging the pots and pans, she must have been furious. Molly felt a knot tightening inside her. It was her fault for causing Mum all these worries.

  A shiver passed through her body. It looked like it was about to rain.

  ‘Put on your coat,’ Mum said. ‘We’re going out.’ She was already wearing her own coat and carrying an umbrella.

  ‘Where to?’

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Mum looked like she was choking with anger. ‘We’re going to get this settled once and for all.’