Out of the Silence

by Wendy James

  Mr Stratford called after lunch, though he hadn’t been invited. James threatened to retire to his study, he really cannot bear Edward, but Harriet (who has a fondness for him – & indeed he is a very likeable fellow) will not tolerate such churlish behaviour, so James stayed and endured the company of the ‘d——d mooncalf’, though through teeth so firmly gritted it is a wonder he did not do damage to his jaw!

  Salon No. 2

  James

  Really, Vida, if you feel that we men are all such brutes, I don’t see how you can bear to have us here. Why not simply kill all male children at birth?

  Vida

  Oh don’t be silly, James. Of course all individual men aren’t tyrants. But you men have the power, and those with the power allow these things to occur.

  James

  But you must admit, there are some of you who really despise men with a vengeance; who would like to see us as the oppressed sex.

  Dr Sexton

  So you agree we are oppressed, then, Dr Hawkins?

  James

  Well, perhaps ‘subject’ would be a more appropriate term.

  Vida

  So we women are ruled over – this you admit?

  James

  Well, yes, but if you look into it further it’s certainly a benevolent rule, much like that of a parent. You women are lucky, always able to rely on those who have your best wishes at heart—

  Vida

  Oh, James, we’re not children – we’re as intelligent and in many cases as well-educated and as able to make decisions about our own lives as any man. More able than some.

  James

  But what we let you do is get on with your real, your true calling, your glorious vocation … Imagine trying to rear infants and maintain a household and in addition, having to go out and work as a man does.

  Dr Sexton

  But, Dr Hawkins, there are so many women who are doing that anyway.

  James

  But not of our class.

  Stratford

  I think the ladies have got it right, Hawkins: however benevolent it seems, we men are still preventing women from reaching their full adult potential, and really for no good reason. It is principally men’s economic superiority that prevents women from being equal – and it’s losing this superiority that men fear most. If this economic disparity could be overcome – if we gave women the opportunity to be employed and educated as we are, the capacity to provide their own income – then surely the differences would be largely redundant.

  Dr Sexton

  I think that, too, is a little simple, Mr Stratford. What of all those poor women who work themselves to a shadow supporting their drunkard husbands? They are still not equal. That drunkard husband still has more rights in law – to property, to children, to make decisions about how we should be governed – than that woman. But to go back to what Dr Hawkins was initially asking – yes, I think I can see how it would be satisfying to let women have a turn at running the world, to reverse things, as it were; to see if we could do a better job of it than men have. Call it revenge if you wish, but I would prefer to call it fairness.

  Harriet

  But what of the babies? There’s still the question of babies. I support women voting, as you know, and working, but men lack our biological capacity. However will we perpetuate the race?

  Vida

  Oh Harriet, you are playing into their hands: men like that dreadful colleague of James’s – Dr Barrett – who claims that the emancipation of women will lead to a decline in the birthrate, and ultimately to the demise of the human race. It’s a bogey. Dr Barrett’s bogey!

  Harriet

  Vida, you may call it a bogey, but surely Dr Barrett has a point. However much we wish for equality in a legal sense, there is no denying that women are different to men; that we have a particular softness that men lack …

  Dr Sexton

  I think Mr Stratford would agree with me when I say that much of women’s so-called softness is a product of their upbringing. If men were brought up to feel that raising babies was a great and glorious act, then they too would develop the necessary softness.

  James

  And I suppose women could go out and fight the wars, while the men stay at home and rear the children!

  Dr Sexton

  I don’t see why not. Although you might find that there would be no more wars …

  Harriet

  Oh, but my dear, you’re forgetting the biological aspect – men simply can’t bear or feed babies.

  Dr Sexton

  Oh, but Mrs Hawkins, science is making such progress, I have no doubt that one hundred years hence there will be scientifically constituted foods superior to those that the human body can produce. And if a woman is healthy there’s no reason why expecting a child should preclude her from employment, or indeed make any difference to her until the final weeks.

  James

  Good heavens, Dr Sexton, I’ve seen very few women who are able to maintain their health as well as the health of the babe throughout the pregnancy if their duties are too many or too rigorous.

  Dr Sexton

  If a woman has adequate nutrition, if she maintains some physical activity, the outcome for both mother and child is better. It’s my opinion that doing too little is far worse than doing too much, both physically and mentally. This lying about waiting for the great event can only produce a melancholic state of mind and a weakened physical condition after the confinement. Working women very rarely suffer from the ‘nervous complaints’ that are so common amongst their more leisured sisters. Something I’m sure you’ll have noticed, Dr Hawkins.

  Vida

  Yes, it’s almost as if work is necessary – good for the body and the soul – for men and women.

  James

  You don’t think perhaps you’re putting too romantic a gloss on the reality of work, Vida? It’s all very well for you, with your education and your income and the opportunities this gives you for some sort of satisfaction, but those women whose work is menial or physically exhausting or debilitating – a domestic, say, or a factory girl working in crowded, unsanitary conditions, sometimes for sixteen hours a day – I don’t think she would agree with you that work is good for the soul. I think she would say that your leisured life seems very attractive, and even that it gives scope for the development of the soul.

  Dr Sexton

  And on that point, Dr Hawkins, I think you and I can agree to agree …

  Elizabeth Hamilton’s diary

  8 December

  Took the girls on a natural-history outing. We walked to the creek behind Dewars with jars and nets, and paddled about collecting tadpoles and dragonflies and the occasional little fish. These Australian girls are not at all physically reserved, even the most ladylike thought nothing of pulling off boots and hitching up their skirts. We attracted some smiles and whistles from passers-by. I paddled in the creek myself. The girls were quite amused by the sight of my bare feet – so pale and narrow and soft when compared to their own, which are, almost without exception, broad and brown. There is, no doubt, some gloomy metaphor lurking in that observation, but I won’t even attempt to unravel it.

  18 December

  At school the children are made amazingly cheerful by this sublime weather and the proximity of Christmas and holidays, too, I suppose. Anyway, they are all gratifyingly receptive and attentive at the moment. Helena & Sarah are even considering taking the university matriculation exams. They are bright girls, undoubtedly brighter than many of the boys who attend university, but there seems little point to them working themselves in this way. Their parents are wealthy and probably not amenable to the idea of their lovely daughters choosing an occupation over marriage. And no doubt they look to their teachers as examples of what they don’t want for their daughters.

  It’s such a difficult, complex question. Of course, girls should be given every opportunity – how could I not believe that? – but what to do with such learning? To be occupied i
n the same way that men are is surely incompatible with the rearing of children, & surely the race must continue! I would always and for ever maintain that learning of any sort is beneficial, necessary, and that women are equal to any task. Men, however, are not equal to the task of bearing and rearing children, and therein lies the dilemma. Perhaps Vida is right – maybe there should be women who bear and those who, like her, choose not to. Oh, but what a choice! At any rate, I’ve no doubt we’ll lose our pupils at a fast rate if she fills too many heads with such ideas!

  19 December

  Vida has just announced, after what seems to me to be very little warning or discussion – I certainly wasn’t consulted –that the school will not be re-opening in the New Year. She claims that she is simply overwhelmed with UCWS work (letters for this cause, petitions for that, articles here, addresses there, etc.), and feels that she will be able to make do with the small salary they pay her. I am so very glad she feels she can ‘make do’ so righteously – she, of course, has a home and family to provide for her if her noble action is misguided. What a pity we are not all able to live up to our principles so strenuously.

  The senior girls are heartbroken. Isabel D. became quite hysterical in class and I was forced to throw a jug of water over her head to calm the silly girl. Would like to have fallen down and wailed myself.

  Christmas Day 1899

  A quiet day spent with just Harriet and James – Vida dining with her family.

  Most days I am too busy to reflect – and busy-ness is what I want – but on a day like today, with opportunity for reflection and recollection and regret, the loneliness creeps in.

  It is hard to believe that not so long ago I was at the centre of a bustling family – brother, sister, parents and lover; that I was certain of my place in the world, certain that I was beloved, and certain of my future. And it is impossible to believe that I, who so often craved time alone and some peace, am now quite, quite alone, despite the kindness of my cousins.

  Never again to be recipient of that special smile reserved for a daughter, or that sneaky grin from an amused sibling who cannot contain some illicit mirth, or that feeling of total belonging that comes with being part of a family. To now be on the edges of life, always excluded from real intimacy or warmth; to only observe it between others … Oh, but it is hard.

  Unjust, too, that the recollection of happiness past makes the present more difficult to bear …

  26 December

  Dreamt again of Davey’s death. And from this dream I awake shaking and crying and aching as if my heart has been torn from my body.

  Awake into this no-longer life.

  Maggie

  Preston, Melbourne

  December, 1899

  I don’t take too much notice of what that old so-and-so has said about my dates and am still expecting the baby in February, so I am taken by surprise when my pains start a few days after Christmas. I am not what you would call big, though I have filled out a bit all over and have begun to resemble Doll a little, which makes me laugh. I think how tickled Doll would be to see me like this – all round and puffy and half the time out of breath – a thought that makes me sad at the same time, as she is not likely to. Every now and then, and more often as time goes on, a terrible feeling of homesickness gets to me.

  It is washday and I am pegging out sheets – baskets and baskets of them. After a morning spent in the laundry boiling and blueing and starching and mangling, this is a job I hate even at the best of times, and one that is even more of an effort in my condition. I can see now why May Heaney would do nothing but stand and chat, or occasionally hand me a peg, when she was near her time – a trick that drove me quite wild, but it really is a job that puts you out of breath and temper more than you can imagine, and especially in the heat. This grimy city heat which I will never get used to, not even if I were to live here for a hundred years.

  I think of what the weather would be like at home right now – how there are no real hot days till after the New Year, and then as likely as not a breeze from the mountains to make even the warmest days bearable – and suddenly my head is full of pictures of home, of what everyone would be doing about now – midday on a Monday morning at this time of year. Ma serving out lunch; Doll fussing about, trying hard to make setting the table a long drawn-out affair so she doesn’t have to help serve; Dad taking off his hat and calling out as he walks in the door, maybe Tom or even Bill with him – visiting, helping out – and the whole place going on the same as ever. The same as ever, but without me. The whole scene is so clear, so sharp, and all of a sudden I’m missing home so much I feel it all through me like I’ve been kicked. My eyes fill, and I have to swallow back a sob and tell myself that it’s the heat that’s making me feel wretched and weak.

  Harry, who is at a loose end, his business slowing down a little at this time of year, comes outside to pester me, so I get him to rig me up a stand for my baskets, which improves the task a little as I do not have to bend so far. He stays, intending to help, for which I would be grateful – if only he did. Instead he is blathering on, full of his latest plans. He has found the perfect place, he tells me, to set up a private photographic studio: the town of Bourke in western NSW, a boom town on the mighty Darling River. It is the place, he says, where he is certain to make his fortune and if only I would agree to marry him we could leave tomorrow, but if I am so stubborn and shortsighted as to persist in refusing him, he supposes that he will lose yet another opportunity.

  He tells me this with a sigh that I know from experience is half serious, half in fun, and usually I would make some clever reply, pour scorn all over his grand plans, laugh off his silly romantic ideas, but today I’m feeling that feeble it’s all I can do to smile in a half-hearted sort of way, which I’m glad to say does not appear to bother Harry in the least.

  I shut him up by getting him to help me lift the heavy counterpanes that we wash once a month and that seem to need more strength than I possess today. We lift and, one, two, three, we heave the first one over the line and, all at once, I’m aware that I’m feeling more than just a little out of sorts. The ache in my side is not homesickness at all, but is in fact a real pain. And it’s a pain that is hard and deep and hurts enough for me to gasp and cry out.

  And Harry quick as a flash is beside me. ‘Oh Mags,’ he says, ‘is it the baby? Is it coming?’ And I do not even have time to be surprised that he knows, when there is another pain, worse this time, so bad that I am doubled over with it. This is not something I have expected, Ma having told me and Doll more times than I care to remember how she went almost a week with Tom, and how Gran suffered even longer with Ma. I have thought that it would go that way with me, with the pains starting out as hardly more than a twinge, and coming only every so often for the first while, not so close together that there is barely time for a breath between.

  The pain itself is so terrible – the force of it – as if coming from every direction and striking in every part – pressing and pounding and tearing. It is an agony far, far worse than I have ever imagined. It is more than I can do to stay upright and I am clutching on to Harry for dear life, am moaning and sobbing and yelling like a madwoman, and then Harry is shouting, and in the next instant the missus is there, and Mr Ralph, and between the three of them they half walk, half carry me inside. I can hear Mrs Ralph muttering, ‘Oh dear, oh deary me,’ under her breath and Mr Ralph rumbling away, ‘A baby – whose baby?’ and Harry murmuring as if to himself, ‘Oh, my poor, poor girl.’

  And then I am on a bed in a downstairs room and there are people coming and going, and saying this and that, but I have no interest in seeing them or following their talk, I have only the pain to think of, to get through, and it makes no sense, any of it, not when Mrs Ralph says, ‘Now let him go, you should let Harry go, Maggie,’ nor when it is Lil telling me that, ‘It will be all right, you should try to breathe, Maggie, breathe,’ nor even when a pale, whiskery fellow tugs at my drawers and smiles at me from the foot of
the bed and says, ‘Well, this is an impatient baby, if ever I saw one. You can push whenever you’re ready, my dear.’ And then Lil is whispering in my ear that it is time for me to push, that the baby is ready to come, but there is no need for any of this, no need for any of these words, for there is nothing that can be done to stop this pushing, this force. It is as if some giant hand is squeezing me, just as I once saw Tom squeeze a sparrow until its eyes popped from their sockets, and all its insides burst out. And now it is me that is turning inside out, and I would stop if only I could, but there is nothing I can do but push and push and push and then there is a roaring in my head which is as loud as all the noise of the world at once and behind my eyes every colour bursting, and there, erupting from between my legs, cracking me in two – is the world itself.