The Sparrows of Edward Street

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Eleven o’clock at the school if you’re a parent, and they’re giving him and the Mrs lunch afterwards in the kindergarten.’

  ‘Hope he likes bloody rabbit pies! Do we have to give posies to the Mrs?’

  ‘Nothing’s been ordered. Last time it was a bunch of tea roses with the thorns left on. It could be that again, but Mrs “Up Herself” Glass can work it out. After lunch he’s going to wander around his kingdom and meet the peasants. How’s your mum’s arm, Aria?’

  ‘Much better. She’s on a course of pills.’

  ‘Aren’t we all, dear.’

  *

  Back inside 19B Edward, I apologised to Rosy. I gave her the undies I’d rinsed out for her to hang in the bathroom.

  ‘You worry about me too much, Aria. And he’s not the first boy I’ve met. I know what I’m doing.’

  I doubted that.

  ‘The pie’s been ready for a while, love. I took it out of the oven, but it’s still warm.’

  When our food needed careful eating with a knife and fork, we adjusted the height of the ironing board and used it as a table. Otherwise we mostly sat where we could and used our laps. We’d had a small table in the flat, but it had belonged to Mr Kellog. Rabbit pie night was ironing board with a candle if we had one, two chairs and a stool, and paper napkins.

  While we ate our familiar meal – and when I tell you that our rabbit pies were familiar to us, let me say that the carrots winked and the capers called Hello again – we talked about the Royal Visit, the lemon-scented gum, the Gardiners, the weather, and what I was ‘loving’ at the moment. I hadn’t forgotten about the painter’s offer. I thought I’d save the news for a better time. We listened to the music of Chopin, and commented upon the slight scar left by the possum on Hanora’s arm. But we did not talk about Rosy.

  ‘Lovely! Isn’t this fun, loves?’

  ‘Lovely!’

  There was nothing more to say. What could there be?

  *

  Mr Sparkle’s produce, raw and cooked, had become so popular that he rarely had time to pop in for tea. He’d even stopped pestering the Housing Commission for accommodation, in case he was moved from the source of his income. His kids were delighted he had to make regular rabbiting trips, and helped him flush the bunnies out. Mrs Sparkle, he said, wasn’t too sure, as she’d hoped he’d be a bank officer, or at least an insurance clerk by now, instead of a ‘rabbitoh’ and a common pie maker.

  ‘I wonder what kind of tree they’ll plant?’

  ‘But we already have one, love.’ Hanora was spacey. Her eyelids fluttered like a child’s past its bedtime. I wondered if the arm pills were mixing with her head pills.

  ‘I mean the Minister for Housing. I mean the tree he’s going to plant in the school’s playground, and you realise we’re all supposed to go and cheer, don’t you? Mrs “Up Herself” Glass is going to wear her white gloves to the elbow and maybe give him or the Mrs a posy or something, and after their lunch in the kindergarten they’re going to walk around the camp and chat to the lower classes.’

  ‘Isn’t that nice of him?’ said Hanora.

  ‘Oh, God! Never mind. I’ll do the washing up – or Rosy. You sit and listen to music.’ I then told them about the painter and his offer.

  ‘Will you have to take your clothes off?’

  ‘It’s possible, Rosy.’

  ‘You mean right off?!’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘And you’re worried about me?’

  ‘I’m half naked every day, Rosy, being a housewife and “loving” things I swear I’ll never own. That’s nothing.’

  ‘Is he handsome?’ asked Hanora.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will he pay you, love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it all sounds lovely.’ Hanora had not eaten very much. I put the leftovers in the ice box. She wafted over to the record player and changed the record. ‘Mendelssohn’s “Hymn of Praise”, I think,’ she said. ‘I feel like something sacred tonight.’

  I thought she was working against her principles then, but I must say I loved that piece too.

  ‘You know that one’s scratched in the middle. Get ready to move the needle.’

  ‘What about next door?’ said Rosy.

  ‘Gone, love. They left this morning. The hillbilly said to say “Ta ta”. She said her husband’s mother had at last had the decency to die. Poor thing.’

  ‘Good riddance to the lot of them,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ And Rosy and I clinked our water glasses together. One of the glasses broke. ‘Oh, bloody hell!’

  Then, before we knew it, it was.

  The Camp – the Royal Saturday

  Lay it all out! The dust red carpet,

  Old white gloves and ancient posies!

  Grease the oily heads of posers

  For the shutter buggers’ flashes

  When we all bow down!

  It was as though someone had cut holes in the corrugated iron with tin openers. Inmates poured out of their huts and into their grand streets with dusters, brooms and rakes, and buckets and mops. They swept, dusted and shook dust onto dust, until the Camp had formed its very own cloud cover. Hanora washed dust from the leaves of the lemon-scented gum, and wiped the whitewashed stones.

  The days after Christmas, mild enough for the outdoors, had been full of screeching galahs dressed as holiday children. They were everywhere, as though their own cans had been opened. Bare feet kicking balls and tin cans. Stones thrown against iron. Cricket stumps from old broomsticks and garbage-can wickets and fence-paling bats. Bored galahs with no interest or motivation created their own dust balls and spit balls of restlessness. Hanora was nervous about the safety of the lemon gum tree.

  The whitewashed rocks around her garden looked good enough for a bored kid to pee on. She had put the old deck chair close to the tree. She said she would protect it by reclining upon the chair and reading a book in its minimal shade, if only for the duration of ‘the Royal Visit’– and, as a bonus, possibly earn good points by demonstrating to the Minister how well she cared for her environment, should he happen to wander along Edward Street.

  Hanora thought she would emphasise this during the Minister’s tour by wearing a fetching dirndl skirt over her bathing suit under a short jacket. She thought there might be roaming press photographers, and like a true sparrow she was prepared to peck a crumb if it passed her way.

  ‘And you wear something pretty, love,’ she told me. ‘And tell Rosy.’

  But the forecast according to Rosy was for an obviously dark and menacing day with the possibility of press photographers revealing the terrible secret of her address to Madame. There was no need for her to wear something pretty, because she did not intend to be seen. She intended to stay locked in her cell until the whole frightful thing was over.

  The Royal Visit

  I saw the ‘Royal Visit’ as a light to heavy musical theatre, presented in four acts.

  The program, as I imagined it, would be as follows, with apologies and commiserations to other producers of musical theatre whose misfortune it has been to work with less interesting material:

  Act 1: When the dust has settled in the body of the theatre, the curtain rises to a fine and sunny morning with a light breeze strong enough only to move the edges of pinafores and rattle pegs in their pockets. The peasants are active. They dance and sing in joyful chorus as they sweep their steps and hang the Australian flag in the form of embroidered tea towels from their windows. Suddenly they gather and gossip amid flowers and shrubs in the grounds, manufactured for the occasion. White doves on strings spin above the heads of pretty children. Around and about, everyone prepares for the Royal Visit, a joyous event, to be sure . . .

  Then, stage left, a peasant chucks a bucket of water over the dust outside her hut, the lights dim and the joyful scene suddenly takes on all the excitement of an undertaker’s picnic.

  ‘I’m buggered if I
know why I’m doing this,’ said Iris Feather. ‘They say he might be making spot visits to huts. I haven’t done the washing up yet. And I’m buggered if I know why I should worry about that either!’

  ‘I’m sure you’re making everything look very nice.’ Hanora, wearing a fresh bandage on her arm, was up and down her own steps with the deck chair and a pile of books. ‘But it’s only a little past nine-thirty. Between now and eleven everything could look dirty again, couldn’t it? Especially if a wind comes up.’

  ‘Well, he takes this or he leaves it! And her too. I’ve got to get up to the school. All the parents have to be there. You’re lucky.’

  I had intended to be at the school too. I did not want to miss one scene of this play, and I thought I could easily pass as a parent. I’d planned my outfit: black and white with cleavage, short white gloves, white shoes and brown limbs. I didn’t think I’d look too bad.

  ‘Do you think that will look okay, Hanora?’

  ‘Careful you don’t steal the show, love.’

  ‘I don’t care if I do. If I’m lucky I’ll attract a few shots. Any press will be good for work. Where’s Rosy?’

  ‘She’s locked herself in our cell. She said she won’t come out until they’ve all gone. And if anyone asks, she does not live here.’

  My gloves weren’t as virgin white as I wanted them to be. I took them to the laundry for a quick dip. They had plenty of time to dry.

  The air in the laundry was clean and still. There was not a sud in sight. The floor had been swept and rude notices and jokes had been removed from the noticeboard. On the way back to 19B Edward I picked some railway flowers that had grown under the clothesline, to make a posy. The yellow would photograph very well with my black and white, I thought. I wished Leon could have been there to share the fun.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ asked the sharp woman with the cauliflower hair. She’d polished her spectacles with such precision she could have studied insects underground.

  ‘I’m going to the school.’

  ‘Got kids there, have you?’

  ‘You know I don’t. I just thought I might be able to help.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Anything they want.’

  ‘Yes! I can see you doing anything, Missy!’

  She was such a misery. She had battery acid for blood. How does a person get to be so sharp? I let her comment pass. She was at a loss, not me.

  Act 2: The scene is the interior of a kindergarten – the staff room – where preparations for a Royal luncheon are taking place. Peasants are still in their clean pinafores and have garlands of silk flowers in their hair, and the other sort of flour to their elbows, and they sing a happy summer song as they sweep and wash and dry the lino floor. Long trestle tables hold large rabbit pies, small rabbit pies, salad bowls, sausages on sticks, rissoles with extra carrot and a sprig of parsley on top, banana custard, mixed wafer biscuits, passionfruit cordial and blowflies, in no particular order. Cockroaches scuttle free for the day, snails cringe in the salads, flies with blue on their backs decorate the custard, and the happy, singing peasants wipe the sweat from their brows in unison. From outside the kindergarten high-pitched voices can be heard. There is an air of great expectation and terrible anxiety. The time is twenty to eleven.

  *

  Back in the real world of the Camp, I didn’t know that a man at the end of his tether had bolted down Edward Street to 19B. Hanora said she had been quite worried about him.

  ‘Aria! Aria! Where are you?!’

  Mr Sparkle ran like a demented chook from one end of Edward to the other and back again. I believe he looked as though he’d been stung by a wasp. When he came to 19B I was told he briefly admired Hanora’s handiwork and congratulated her.

  ‘Very nice, Mrs Sparrow – clean leaves, nice stone work – very nice . . .’ He was extremely flustered. ‘Where is Aria?’

  ‘She’s gone to the laundry or the school. What on earth is the matter, Mr Sparkle?’

  ‘It’s the lunch! Think she can lend a hand with the lunch? It’s all gone a bit wrong. I haven’t said anything to the women who’re helping, but I can see what they think of me.’ He panted like a spaniel and was very red in the face. ‘I need somebody like Aria. They’re used to the butcher doing this sort of thing – he did the last Royal Visit, see, but the butcher’s come down with shingles.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll help you, Mr Sparkle, but she’s not here. She might already be at the school. She dressed earlier.’

  ‘Then I must get to her quick. I’ll get something to cover up her dress or whatever, if it’s special. I need her! Something’s gone wrong!’

  ‘Mr Sparkle, if you don’t calm down you will need a doctor. I’m sure you will find her. Please don’t get into a state. The Minister is mortal, I am told. He is only a politician, after all.’ Hanora gave the deck chair a test run next to the lemon-scented gum, which had begun to look a bit like a big bunch of green flowers sticking out of a hessian vase with stakes. She was holding a book of modern American poetry. She must have looked awfully out of place.

  *

  Earlier, on the way to the school, I had passed Elsa Bentwick. She was busily planting chrysanthemums in the dirt around the steps to her cells. They were in full bloom.

  ‘Chrysanthemums? At this time of the year, Mrs Bentwick?’

  ‘They’re not real.’

  ‘I’m damned if I know why everyone is in such a state about this visit.’

  ‘Well, look at you – you’re dressed to kill!’

  ‘That’s for a different reason, Mrs Bentwick. I couldn’t care less about His Lord Almighty and the Mrs. Honestly! I have to go.’

  ‘Why are you running? Where’s the fire?’

  ‘I’m frightened of missing the press. I’ll explain later.’

  Mr Sparkle found me in a spot outside the school grounds where I thought I might catch the eye of a photographer.

  ‘Aria! Aria!’ He was almost purple in the face, and had trouble getting his breath. He clutched my hands – his were hot and clammy. I was grateful that my gloves were in my purse.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?!’

  ‘Something’s gone wrong! Something’s gone very, very wrong!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The lunch! In the kindy. Can you come, quickly?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sakes, Mr Sparkle. What could possibly go wrong?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  ‘But you have the kindy ladies helping you.’

  ‘They think I’m a fool.’

  ‘You’ll be a dead one if you don’t calm down.’

  *

  Inside the kindergarten women with housecoats over their good dresses fussed about like disorganised ants. I was handed a cotton coat to tie around my dress. Mr Sparkle sat at the end of one of the tables with his head in his hands. One woman constantly waved flies away from the pies with a rolled-up newspaper.

  ‘Look who’s come to help us,’ said Mr Sparkle, looking up.

  ‘In those clothes?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve covered them up. What’s the trouble?’

  Mr Sparkle stood and took me aside, and spoke quietly. ‘See, the trouble is, Aria, that the butcher and his wife organised the last Royal Visit, and they’re not here because he’s come down with the shingles.’

  ‘Where is the butcher’s wife?’

  ‘He wished he knew. The butcher, that is.’

  ‘I see. What is the main trouble?’

  ‘The flies have blown the rissoles!’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Not sure. We only noticed when we turned one over.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  There were in fact three plates of rissoles that had been flyblown. The maggots were all under the meat. I picked up a rissole and scraped off its bottom. It seemed to be untouched inside. I scraped the rest, checked them, then asked Mr Sparkle to brown them again in a pan while I washed the plates. A blowfly hovered above my head
, unbelievingly watching its children being murdered and washed down a drain. I asked about the rabbit pies.

  ‘They’re okay so far, I think.’

  ‘I wonder if someone could go quickly and bring back two single bedsheets and cover the tables with them. They can easily be washed afterwards.’

  Someone I did not know ran out the door.

  ‘But, Aria, we can’t serve the Minister flyblown meat.’

  ‘Yes, you can, Mr Sparkle. He just won’t know about it. And may I say, Mr Sparkle, you have eaten flyblown meat many times and not known about it – we all have.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you she’s a fixer?’ he said to no one in particular.

  ‘In addition to the rissoles, you might like to scoop the ants out of the cordial jug and cover it with something. No one is going to believe they’re pips.’ I put my posy of railway flowers in a glass of water and left it on a table. I took the housecoat off and checked my face in a compact mirror and put on my gloves. ‘Very minor problems. It all looks very nice.’ And I left the kindergarten as the sheets were draped over the tables. One of them had a strange-looking stain on it, but it was too late to do anything about it.

  The time was ten fifty-seven.

  *

  ‘Are you a parent?’ The school was at the northern end of the Camp, and there were people milling about whom I’d not seen before. I was treated with suspicion.

  ‘Not exactly. I’m taking the place of my sister – she’s sick.’ And left it at that. Everyone was in too much of a nervous dither to ask more questions.

  All the women wore their best dresses, gloves and hats. They stood by the gate in a sort of straight-backed, nervous single file, according to rank. I imagined the plump one at the front was Mrs ‘Bloody Up Herself’ Glass. She looked very grand. Indeed, she wore white gloves to the elbow and flowers everywhere else, especially on her hat. At her side was a shy little girl of about six in princess clothes. I was told she was Mrs Glass’s niece. She did look very pretty – she reminded me of Rosy at that age. The man with the greased hair parted in the middle, standing right at the back of the line, I was told, was Mr Glass. He stood behind Father Beale.