But it struck her as dramatic and shattering that Patty’s world could have crumbled so easily; that Renshaw should have stood by her wrapping bench, watching her as she rolled the cloth in its heavy sheetings of brown paper; that he should have singled her out for his special attention. It was so simple that it reminded her of the Bible. And the man looked upon the woman. It reminded her, too, of the hundreds of stories she had seen on the films. Her mind spun around the drama and the swiftness with which Renshaw had moved. And all the time she had been working with her fawn’s head bent over the rolls and her eyes cloudy with the dreams she was dreaming, Renshaw had been watching her. And when the time came he had sent for her. She thought of Patty suddenly with a pang of pity.
‘I’d like to go home,’ Patty said.
She was standing in Miss Merton’s office looking white and strained. Miss Merton had heard the rumours. She was not altogether surprised. Patty had been tense and nervous for days, and Renshaw had pointedly avoided the office. It began like that, Miss Merton thought. And soon there would be nothing left but bitterness to show for the gay weeks and times they had spent together. She wondered briefly if this was the end. The sum total of loving, the wanting and taking. And if she and Stephen…She put the thought far away. There were other endings.
At the door Patty turned. She looked quickly at Miss Merton. At her thin, sterile body, at the grey wispy hair pulled back from her face. You couldn’t win anyway, Patty thought. I wonder if she ever really loved anyone. If she ever loved a man. The thought brought her back to her own misery.
‘You heard the news?’ Patty asked. Miss Merton took a step forward and placed her arm round her shoulder. Patty, looking suddenly into her face, was surprised at the look of understanding. For a moment their eyes held.
‘It’s a hard thing when you’re young, Patty.’
There was nothing else to say.
Patty opened the door. Miss Merton thought of platitudes. In time Patty would forget. The young always forgot, or nearly always. But she said nothing.
For Patty it was no better on the street. There was nowhere to go. The room at Barrington Terrace offered no solace or privacy. She began walking. At first slowly, turning over in her mind all that Renshaw had said. Then her pace quickened. She walked steadily down the street, out along the main road, to a spot where the streets and traffic converged into a narrow bottleneck.
She began following the tram tracks, scarcely aware of where she was, or why she was going. She had a gaudy women’s paper in her hand. She had picked it up in her flight from the office.
Suddenly the tram tracks swung out, and she was at the top of the hill. The streets plunged sharply into a valley. In some of the shops the lights were on already. She had walked a long way, wrapped in her misery. But it was no good. The tram tracks led on, but not for her.
She turned her face to Macdonaldtown.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The streets were shadowed as Patty passed the church, the air thick with the sound of children playing in the alleyways.
And suddenly she was on the steps. The door yielded to the pressure of her hand. She knelt in the half-dark looking at the small red light as it flickered before the altar. Here at least was peace and privacy. The tears overflowed. She bent her head upon her hands and began to cry.
She moved suddenly to the little side altar, where the calm waxen face of the Virgin looked out into the dim church.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ Patty said.
She got up, wiping her face with her handkerchief, and made her way into the street. The door closed gently behind her. Outside the church a man was loitering, exercising a dog in circles. It was Oliver. He had seen Patty’s frantic dash up the church steps and he had waited quietly in the dim light for her to emerge.
He fell in beside her, holding the dog on a leash and suiting his pace to hers.
‘Why don’t you let me alone?’ Patty said.
‘Are you sure you want to be left alone? Right now I think you could do with a friend.’
‘A friend?’ Patty said.
She looked up, expecting to find the half-sexy leer that he usually assumed in her company.
But he was looking ahead, his face expressionless.
They began walking down towards the park. Oliver took off his coat and wrapped it around the dog. He heaped dry leaves together under the trees and bedded him down.
‘Sit down, Patty?’
He indicated a seat in the glow thrown from the electric lights. He picked up Patty’s magazine and turned a page.
‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ he said laconically.
The girl leaned back in a gilt chair. The fire glowed on the pink velvet of her frock. The man was bending over her. He looked clean, smooth and well dressed. On the mantelpiece a heavy old clock gleamed in the firelight. The carpet was rich and expensive.
Patty looked at the picture too.
Suddenly Oliver threw the magazine onto the ground. He took her by the shoulders and turned her so that they both stood facing Wentworth Parade.
‘Take a good look at that, Patty.’
Night had closed in. The Parade was a dark alley; the tall terraces almost met overhead. The damp air was settling, heavy with its burden of dust and dirt.
‘Look at it, Patty. It’s ours. The sort of thing you might call our heritage. D’you reckon we can afford to get softened up with pictures of easy living, and stories of dukes marrying pantrymaids? We got to kick along in this. Somehow we got to get topside of it. And we got to know what to do about it.’
He put his arm on her shoulder and Patty looked up again, expecting to see the familiar jeering smile. But he was looking over her head into the dark, shadowy outlines of the Parade.
‘We got to learn to be tough, you and I. How you think that dame in the pink velvet dress sitting in front of the fire got that way? You can bet she doesn’t live in Barrington Terrace. You can bet she just turns on a tap, and the hot water flows into the bath. You can just bet she’s never filled a kerosene tin with water and waited while it boiled, and then tipped it into a zinc tub. And you can bet she doesn’t think much of people like you and me.’
‘It is funny when you come to think of it,’ Patty said suddenly. ‘All the different things we get just because we’re born.’
‘Oh,’ Oliver said, ‘some blokes work for it. Get a bit. Make some lucky gamble. Some blokes are born with it. Some blokes get a break and marry a rich bitch. And people like us,’ Oliver said bitterly, ‘well—they just take out the bridle and ride us into the ground.’
‘Do you want to change the world?’ Patty said slowly.
Did he want to change the world? Well, what would you think, mug? But you wouldn’t want to be a fool, would you?
‘Christ. Break it up, Patty. The world’s a pretty big place.’
It was dark. The belt of gums planted to the east of the park was dense and shapeless. Under the lights the few shrubs made patterns on the freshly mown grass. The deciduous trees were bare, their dark arms arcs against the darker sky. There was no moon. Above, the night was studded with stars. They looked remote, calm and peaceful. Patty thought of the distant stars, the factories, the railway-yards, and Barrington Terrace. But her mind swung back to herself and her own problem. She wished suddenly that she could be free of Oliver, of her mother, of the mean little room that was her home. She leaned her head on the back of the seat and began to cry.
Oliver moved up close to her. He put his face gently against hers. They sat so until Patty ceased her crying.
‘You got a problem about Renshaw?’ he asked.
She looked up, bewildered and tongue-tied. Did she have a problem? She sensed the sudden hardening of his voice.
‘You weren’t all that big a fool, Patty?’
No, you weren’t that big a fool. You should have foreseen this. Yes, you should have seen this coming. You were pretty quick at summing things up, weren’t you? You could have passed the tip-off on to someone el
se. Were you too dumb to look after yourself? Were you all that big a fool? Just as Oliver said. All that big a fool?
There was no helping it. She began to cry again.
The dog rose, shook the leaves from his back and nosed up to the seat. A chill wind whipped up the Parade, lifting discarded papers and bowling tins along the gutter. Cars hurried along, stabbing the darkness with sharp beams of light.
Someone was singing in the pub. The yellow light streamed onto the pavement.
A goods train was pulling out. It came panting slowly past Macdonaldtown on its long run west. Patty sat up, listening, as the trucks ran in along the station and headed out to Strathfield. It could be going anywhere, she thought. Sometimes, she knew, men clambered aboard as the train slowed down, and were carried far from the jungle of the streets, to the open plains.
‘It would be nice if you could just go away,’ Patty said.
‘What you want to run from?’ Oliver said suddenly.
He bent over her.
‘We can’t run, Patty. Not us. You reckon we wouldn’t like to run like other people? We got to stop put.’
She shivered. The wind was increasing in strength. The mass of trees was agitated. Clouds spread and drifted over the sky.
‘So Renshaw made a decision,’ Oliver said suddenly. ‘And the answer’s no confetti.’
He unleashed the dog.
‘You better come clean,’ he said. ‘You going to have a baby?’
She shook her head.
‘Then what’s the trouble?’
‘You know…if you haven’t got much, and then one day you give someone just about all you have, and they throw it back at you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Laughing. As though it was no value at all.’
She wasn’t crying now. She was still and composed.
‘We ain’t got much,’ Oliver said. ‘But some of these bastards want to strip us down. Maybe after a while they get to feeling that we aren’t built like them either. Where they’ve got lungs and heart and guts, and blood in their veins, maybe we’ve got wheels and gears and cogs. Maybe they don’t mean to be that bad. We’re just not human. Not in the way they are. They’d strip us down, all right. And mainly we let them.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If Renshaw asked you to go out tomorrow, what would you say? If he came to you with some cock-and-bull story, what would you say to him? You’d go out with him. You’d be happy to go out with him. And I bet he’d have no trouble laying you on your back either.’
She thought over what he said.
‘Maybe.’
‘Right. Well, you better stop your whimpering. These blokes will strip you down as long as you take it. What do you reckon Renshaw’s thinking about right now? I got ten bob to say he’s got some new sheila in his car right at this very minute. You want to get a bit more inside, Patty. You’re not the first dame that’s been done over, not by a long shot. But you haven’t lost your legs. You’ve still got your eyes. You can see. For God’s sake, you’ve got a bit of guts left for yourself, haven’t you? You’ve got to put first things first. You’re still alive. Your back’s not broke, so you don’t have to crawl. See what I mean, Patty? We got a lot to learn, and you’ve got from here to Hell to get over Renshaw.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Patty said.
They began walking down the windy Parade. Patty’s skirt whipped against her legs; the wind caught her hair and blew it back in a soft, fair stream.
‘I’ve got plenty to learn,’ she said to Oliver. ‘I just suppose you’re learning all your life.’
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Autumn merged into winter with sullen skies.
The tempo was increasing at the Dyehouse. Rolls were being pulled out and sorted. All hands were bent towards the final effort. June–July stocktake came. The auditors were in, spot-checking, picking out occasional rolls, counting the rolls in the fixtures, checking chemical and dye stocks, calculating the weight of containers.
Then suddenly it was over. A breathing space until December when it would all happen again.
The spring came early with an almost imperceptible softening of the air. The tree outside Barrington Terrace was a tracery of soft, delicate green. Potted plants began to appear on the lower window sills.
At the Dyehouse the work flowed. Fixture, vat, hydro, dryer, press, wrapping bench, warehouse. There had been a build-up of orders and Renshaw was trying to push the work through. Mayers was busy on a new machine. For him, the annual boiler inspection came up towards the end of September.
Patty avoided Renshaw. He had made no further effort to seek her out. What was to be said had been said, and so it rested. And there had been nothing more between Gwennie and himself. There was a ripe time for everything, and he could wait. But he often worked near the wrapping table, using it as a vantage point to bawl out orders to the pressers and the girls sorting the rolls for the warehouse and orders. Nor did he spare Gwennie when the pressure was on.
The rolls were coming off the presses. They were bulky and heavy. Renshaw watched Gwennie as she dropped the rolls onto the bench. She had the paper cut and ready. With one movement the main fold was round the cloth, the ends were pushed into shape. She slapped on the gummed paper and carried the roll to the waiting trolley. ‘Twenty rolls for Newknit—and get a move on.’
The sweat gathered on her forehead and stood out in little beads. She wiped it with the back of her hand and caught up the gummed paper in the same movement. Renshaw sat on the bench and bawled to the pressers and the girls on the weighing-up tables.
At two o’clock the trucks were in. The pressure dropped. Gwennie wiped her forehead. She began cutting paper and Renshaw stood watching her. There was a right time for everything, and perhaps this was the right time for Gwennie. He bent over the table, fingering the stocks of gummed paper. But he was really watching her. She looked up and smiled shyly when she met his gaze. Then she thought of the morning in the stockroom, and the colour flooded suddenly into her face.
‘Go out much, Gwennie?’ he asked. He made it sound very matter-of-fact. A friendly inquiry.
She put down the scissors. She felt flushed and awkward. She’d never been out with a really strange man. Once or twice she had gone to a movie with her cousin, and one memorable day she had gone driving with a young man, as far afield as Tom Ugly’s bridge.
‘Not much.’ She said it shyly.
‘You miss a lot of fun.’
The elevator was not working. The men began carrying the bales of cloth down from the higher floors.
‘Look here,’ Renshaw said. ‘I could take you out one weekend. Saturday or Sunday. I could take you to places you’ve never seen. Lots of girls come to work here, Gwennie. It’s a long time since we’ve had a girl like you.’
She looked at him shyly. She was weary of standing beside the wrapping table, of lifting rolls that were almost beyond her strength, mechanically slapping on the gummed paper, pulling the tickets through, carrying the rolls to the trolley. But her morning alone with him in the stockroom had made her wary.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if you don’t want to come. Thought you’d enjoy it.’
He began walking away. He’d give her time. They all came good in time. He was almost to the presses when she called him.
‘Mr Renshaw.’
He came back slowly. His face was friendly.
‘Well? You’d like to come?’
She stood smiling awkwardly, the scissors in her hand. Her eyes were gentle and trusting.
‘You’ll have a lot of fun, Gwennie. I can promise you that. And you don’t have to call me Mr Renshaw when we’re alone.’
‘I see Renshaw’s dating that kid on the wrapping,’ Goodwin said. ‘He’s had his eye on her ever since he cornered her on the fourth floor. That Gwennie.’
‘Ugh.’ Barney was tired. Esther had been unwell again. His days were long and his night’s rest was often broken.
‘I think I’ll begin
taking the odds,’ Goodwin said.
‘There’s nothing too dirty for you to be in,’ Barney said shortly. ‘Bet you’re in more shady deals than most fellows a bloke would hope to meet.’
‘There’s no shady deals,’ Goodwin said. ‘What do we work for, you and me? Do we come into this flaming morgue every morning because we like it? You can bet we don’t. What do you work for? Money!’
‘Money.’
‘You put your head down and your behind up every day just to get it, you like it that much. Me too. That’s because we’ve got no other way of getting it. But I tell you, Barney, I’m not going to stay bogged down in this hole all my life. Not by a long shot. I’m going to branch out.’
‘What you intend doing?’
‘I’m getting ready to set up a clip joint. S.P. betting, and a few goodlooking girls.’
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
It was almost dark when the car topped the hill. The road ran down through the open parkland, thick with trees and scrub. Behind them was the dim little wayside dining room where they had eaten. Renshaw was in good form. At the arty little dining room, he had ordered strange food and a little wine. Gwennie had eaten shyly, holding her knife and fork rigidly correct and trying to act like a woman used to such afternoon outings.
Night came as they were driving along. Below them the road ran white, until it was lost in the dense darkness of the bush. Somewhere in the gully wattles were in bloom, and the sweetness of their perfume drifted up.
Renshaw stopped the car, then turned it. The gear slipped into reverse and they backed in under the canopy of drooping leaves. He switched off the ignition and reached for his cigarettes. The match spluttered in his fingers, revealing a glimpse of his fair hair and the angle of his face before it went out.
‘Like it?’
He exhaled, and the long plume of smoke shot into the air. Gwennie was searching about in her mind for something to say. Something grown-up. Something sophisticated. Something that might impress him.
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