by Wendy James
If I have to work late, say past ten o’clock, which luckily is a rare event, I find that my legs swell up to a gigantic size that would be shocking for anyone else to see. But, apart from that and the tiredness and some trouble with my motions, which I am able to remedy easily enough with a few spoons of castor oil, I have none of the complaints most women get and do not even get so big as to cause any comment. I have heard that if a woman is stout enough to start with, it is sometimes possible to hide until the last (Jenny Hibbard, who is a big lady, always maintained that her fourth came as a complete surprise – though it’s true she’s not got too much up top), but even though I am only short, it is easy enough to conceal: my belly stays quite small and tight and can be kept hidden under aprons and skirts.
Lily and I have been doing the laundry, as we do on Mondays. It is always a silent day, wash day – it is hard work, hot and heavy – and Lil is not what you would call friendly, but she has never been as unkind to me as I have seen her with some of the other girls, and because she does not chatter it is never an effort to work with her – there is no expectation of me being bright and cheery and joining in. I am about to pick up the basket and carry it to the lines, but she takes it out of my hands. ‘I’ll take that for you, Maggie. You shouldn’t be lifting such heavy loads in your condition.’ She doesn’t look at me when she says this, but takes the basket and walks outside. I am too shocked to know what to do. I have been so certain that I have managed to keep my secret from everyone here and am rattled to think that anyone has guessed.
Eventually, when I have calmed myself down a bit, I follow her out to the line and take up one end of a sheet she is hanging. But I still don’t know what response I should make, as even to deny my condition would mean acknowledging that I know what it is she is referring to. ‘It’s all right, Maggie,’ she says, before I can think of anything to say. ‘I won’t be telling anyone. I was in the very same position once myself, though I was a widow – not that that makes much difference in the long run. That’s the only reason I noticed. Nobody else has guessed.’ I still can’t say anything, I just keep pegging away without meeting her eyes.
Later, I am amazed at the relief I feel, knowing that there’s at least one person around me who knows. And suddenly it’s all the more real and, with only a few months to go, all the more close.
Harry is always talking. He is almost as bad as Jack with his head full of silly ideas for sure ways to make his fortune. One day it is his own tailor shop that he is determined to set up: ‘In some country town, Maggie – that would be the thing. I’d specialise in men’s suits, like this one. There’d be no one else in some of those little places.’ I don’t have the heart to tell him that there’d be no one – country or city – who’d buy suits from a tailor who dresses as he does, that he’d be run out of a town like Yackandandah. Instead I say that there’s probably not much of a need for a tailor shop in little towns; that most country fellows aren’t too particular about their dress and are happy to buy out of catalogues, when they have to. That farmers like my father have one good coat that they keep for fifty years and drag out for every wedding and dance and funeral that they attend, including their own.
Next he tells me that he’s decided to go into photography. ‘I reckon this’d be the life, Maggie,’ he says. ‘A photographer going here and there, making people happy with pictures of themselves.’
Next he gets a bug in his head that farming is a sure way to make his fortune. He starts buying all the country papers, looking at land prices, and reading up on farming techniques and equipment. ‘Now look here Maggie, I could scrape up enough money for this place in Wangaratta,’ he tells me. ‘All I’d need, Mags, is some sort of partner to tell me what to do.’ And there’s the rub, I tell him. ‘You’re a soft city fella Harry Harrison – there’s no way you’d be able to do it. Look at those hands of yours. How’d you stand being up all night, in the rain, waiting for some old cow to calf, and then the beast dying and having to hand rear the poddy and already you’ve lost money. Or, even worse, waiting for rain, and your land worthless and your equipment rusting and the seed and grain cheating you at every turn. It’s a life you have to be born to Harry,’ I say. ‘Or at least have a go working for someone else first; find out the hard way.’
He has been full of so many ideas, sometimes three in the one conversation, that I am taken completely by surprise when Harry walks in one day with a fortune’s worth of photographic equipment. Mrs Ralph, as is only to be expected, goes wild at him. ‘You don’t even know how to use this, you silly boy! You’ve wasted your inheritance. I always thought you was a bit odd, Harry Harrison, but I never really thought you were a fool. You could’ve set yourself up nicely in some little business or other – and you know that Ralph and me would’ve been happy to give you a hand – but this!’ Harry, being Harry, just shrugs and smiles and ignores her.
He takes the free lessons that come with the equipment and in no time at all he has taken pictures of all the staff and the regulars and the hotel itself which pleases Mrs Ralph no end. In only a few weeks he has set up a little room at the back of the hotel as what he calls a studio, and is offering discount photographs to all the hotel customers, who are surprisingly keen. Soon Mrs Ralph is offering his service to the families who are staying, too. When Mr Ralph, who has been away for more than a month and so knows nothing of Harry’s latest scheme, arrives home one Saturday morning, he’s surprised to find a queue of people waiting to have Harry take their picture. ‘Who’d a thought it?’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘The boy’s come good.’ We are all a little astonished, it must be said. Only Harry himself is quite calm about the whole thing. ‘Told you I’d find a way to make my fortune,’ he says with a little smile. ‘And even if I don’t, well – this isn’t a bad way to make a living.’
The pictures Harry takes of us all – mostly portraits – he hangs about the place as advertising. There is one of Mr and Mrs Ralph that takes pride of place above the front desk – and it gives everyone a bit of a giggle, it is so like them. Mr Ralph, his long moustache carefully waxed, is seated, legs crossed, important and pleased as punch with himself, almost as if he is gazing into a mirror; Mrs Ralph stands behind him stiff as a poker, looking not at the camera but glaring straight at her husband as if she’d rather he was anywhere else. There is one of Mrs Neal, who could be mistook for the kindliest soul as ever lived, and of the housemaids – Lucy and Sarah and Kathleen – all in their Sunday best, hair up and hats on, posing with books or flowers, and not like housemaids at all. And of Lil, dressed in her work clothes and looking – as she generally does – haughty and impatient and angry all at once. There is one of Ling dressed in his apron, holding his knife and smiling, which I have never seen him do in real life. He has told Harry that he will send the picture to his family in China, who will use it to find him a wife. Personally I think the photograph will do more harm than good – the smile makes him look even more of a madman – but Harry says things might be different over there – who are we to know? To a girl of his own sort he might look like a prince.
Eventually Harry talks me into having my picture taken too, but not in my Sunday best and all dollied up like the other girls. Instead he has me stand out at the clothes line, or in the kitchen, down on my hands and knees blacking the oven, or in the laundry with the copper steaming away. He wants some real-life pictures – they’re all the rage, he says. Try to look natural, he says, which is just about impossible since these real life pictures take twice as long as any posed shot. When I complain that I can hardly send these pictures to my fiancé, that they’re not exactly showing me at my best, Harry just laughs and says that that’s not the point, and promises he will take a ‘proper’ portrait one day, but that these are far more valuable really.
When he develops the plates and shows me the pictures I am shocked at how fat in the face I have got – not noticing any change at all when I look in the mirror. But the photos satisfy me in one way, showing me th
at I look like a plump commonplace girl and not at all like one who is expecting.
I worry that people might talk about me and Harry, seeings as we are getting to be quite good chums, but Mr Ralph is the only one to say anything. He calls me Harry’s girl, but as I am quick to set him straight he only says it once or twice, and it seems there is no one else to care or notice.
And anyway, it has to be said that Harry is hardly anyone’s idea of a beau.
One Sunday afternoon I decide that it is time to bite the bullet and write and tell Ma how it is with me. I tell her the honest truth, hard and bitter though it is, and I think, as I write, that the words in this letter are probably the last words that will ever be between us. It is not this thought that makes me tearful, not this thought that makes my heart tight as a clenched fist inside my chest. No. It’s not the thought of my mother – there has been nothing soft or tender between us as far back as I can remember. I know for certain that my news will only be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to the pair of us, and I’m not so unhappy about that, though l know I should be. What hurts me most is the thought of my poor old dad – of his confusion and his sadness, and the disappointment and pain I know that my words will bring him. And then when I think of Doll and Tom and even Bill and realise that Ma will do her best to make sure that none of them ever comes near me again, it is almost too much to bear. It’s the simplest thing in the world to imagine her telling them of my disgrace. I can see her, in her clean white pinny, speaking so calmly, my letter in her hand, but her eyes fair crackling and spitting with fury – oh, the vision is so clear that I quake – telling them that if they dare ever to contact me they will join me in my disgrace and would not be welcome at her home and that goes for dear old Dad too, who will always do as she says, for he could not bear the consequences.
So this letter that I write is a terrible thing, and I sob and my hand trembles as I do it. For it is a letter that will orphan me, that will mark me out as truly alone, without friends or family at the time of my greatest need. I am not so careful about what goes in it, and do not spend the time on it that I spent on my letter to Jack, for what’s the use? This letter is an end, not a beginning.
Dear Mother and Father,
I have left May Heaney’s and am in Melbourne working at the Junction Hotel in Richmond. It is run by a Mrs Ralph and her husband. I am paid well and they treat me very kindly. The food is good and the establishment is a respectable one and is not as rough as you might think. I will finish up here in the New Year and do not know yet what I will do after, as I am expecting a baby at that time. I am sorry if this news causes you grief. I will be here up until the day if I’m not taken early. They say things always work out for the best so I suppose this will too. I am well so far.
I Am Always Your Most Affectionate Daughter,
Margaret Cecilia Heffernan (Maggie)
While I am not so careful about what I say in the letter, knowing that I am unlikely to receive any reply and with no hope of any comfort, I am careful that I do not send it. I keep it with me always. While I am at work in the kitchen it is held in the pocket of my pinafore, and at night it is kept safe under my pillow. Instead, I send cards with pictures of some society beauty or other to May Heaney, because I know they will tickle her fancy, these ladies with their painted-on faces and twelve-inch waists, along with the cards she posts on to Doll and Ma: these with baskets of kittens tangled up in knitting, lovehearts and roses entwined and the like, with a cheery line or two scrawled on the back – never letting out where I am or that I am in any sort of trouble. Only Doll writes back. In my whole time away only one letter comes from Ma, which is a note telling me that my father’s cousin Bridie O’Hara’s eldest girl Ethel has died from measles, but that I needn’t come home for the funeral.
It’s my deal. Two each then three and I turn up a black bower. I have a black hand: ace, king, queen, ten and the other bower. There is only one point between us – Harry winning as always – but this will put me in the lead for certain. I am about to announce my victory when Harry says out of the blue and in a voice that is suddenly and unusually for Harry quite solemn, ‘This fiancé of yours, Mags, he isn’t real is he?’
I am about to answer that of course he is, when he says: ‘No, don’t Maggie. I can always tell when you’re lying, your face goes all blank and innocent.’
‘What do you mean when I’m lying,’ I blurt out without thinking, ‘as if I’m always lying!’
‘Well,’ he says, smiling, ‘you do tell an awful lot of fibs, Maggie, you have to admit.’
I am not likely to admit anything of the sort, but stand up ready to leave the room in a rage, consider throwing my cards at him as a return for his boldness.
‘Now Maggie,’ he says ‘don’t go off in a huff. I don’t think anything of your tales—’
‘What tales are you talking about, Harry? How can you—’
‘Just yesterday, for instance, I heard you tell Mrs Neal that you’d already polished the teapots and you hadn’t, had you? Come on, admit it, old thing. I don’t really care – on the whole it’s given me a bit of a laugh. I can never work out why you’re telling them – why you even bother. They’re never over anything very important.’
He is looking so cheerful about it that I laugh too and sit back down.
‘I s’pose I do tell my share of fibs,’ I say. ‘My Ma’s sure I’ll go to hell, but you’re right, I don’t tell ’em about big things. Well, not usually.’ I am thinking of my fibs about meeting Jack, which were in fact terrible falsehoods and Ma is probably right.
‘So, this fiancé, Mag?’ Harry is still waiting
‘I’ve told you before that he’s working away. We write—’
‘I know for a fact you’ve had no letters from him,’ Harry says, looking hard at his cards. ‘The only letters you get are from a May Heaney.’
‘Harry – how do you know that? You shouldn’t be—’
‘I sort the mail for Flo.’
‘Oh.’ It is my first instinct to give him some cock-and-bull story about letters being hand-delivered or hidden inside Mrs Heaney’s, but in the end I decide to be straight about it. I tell him the truth – or some of it anyway. ‘I just thought it would look better, with me being alone in the city. I told your sister I was here to save money before we got married, and I didn’t want any of those other boys bothering me. And anyway there is a fella – it just hasn’t been made official …’
‘Come on, Maggie, cut it out.’
I can feel myself getting all hot in the face. ‘Harry – truly there is a boy. It just … it just isn’t working out the way I thought it would.’
‘Well I’m glad about that, anyway,’ he says after a bit.
‘About what?’
‘That it isn’t working out.’
‘Why? What do you mean?’
This time it is Harry’s face that goes red. ‘Well, if there’s no other fella, then I guess it means I’ve got some sort of a chance.’
He has spoken so quietly and in such a rush that it takes me a moment to take in what he means, but when I do it is all I can do not to fall off my chair laughing.
‘Oh, Harry – you and me … Oh, you’re a monkey, Harry Harrison.’
He looks up at me. ‘I’m serious, Maggie.’ He’s smiling, but somehow his smile has got very tight. ‘Oh, Harry,’ I put out my hand. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were joking. I wouldn’t have laughed otherwise. But you and me. We’re such good chums … We wouldn’t want to spoil that, would we?’
‘Chums can always grow into something else. It’s not always the way they tell it in books, Mags. It doesn’t always have to be like that. It doesn’t always have to be so … so big.’ He is not even pretending to be light-hearted now. He looks at me so sadly I cannot bear it and have to look away.
‘Oh, Harry,’ I say eventually, ‘it’s not just you. There’s someone else. We’re not engaged – that’s true – but there is a fella and I’m … I’m hoping. I c
an’t help it.’ He says nothing, looks down at the hand I have dealt him.
‘Harry,’ I say, ‘I’m really sorry.’
Suddenly he is smiling again. He splays out his cards, which are all under ten. ‘Gentleman’s hand,’ he says, pushing them back over to me.
‘Gentleman’s hand, Maggie. Redeal.’
I am not a born liar, though Ma would have it that I am. Lying has always been a matter of necessity; never have I lied but in order to avoid some unfairness or other, and that usually from Ma. And sometimes it is not precisely lying, but a half-telling or a not-telling, which is not quite the same.
I am in Sunday school when I first realise that telling a lie can sometimes be the lesser of two evils. Elsie Jeffries, who is the sister of Bert who sometimes works with Pa when the cows are calving, is running a Sunday School for the children. This is a new thing and can only be run in the summer, there being no hall in Dederang and no person willing to open their home to a dozen rowdy farm children. Elsie Jeffries is what Ma calls a do-gooder. She is as old as Ma but not married, a spinster like Dad’s sisters and like them is charged, by Ma, with having a liking for sticking her nose into other people’s business, which accounts I imagine for her having a nose that is so dreadfully sharp and runny, though none of my aunts have this problem.
