Amy's Children

by Olga Masters

  She is telling me I can’t stay permanently, Amy thought, not discouraged. She removed her shoes and tucked them under the chair in the corner, one with a leg bent right under, unsafe for sitting on but handy for her clothes when she took them off. Daphne flicked the light off then on, to indicate where the switch was and the necessity to use only a minimum of electricity.

  When Amy’s head was on the pillow she whispered to herself. “Thank you God. Please don’t punish me too much for leaving my little girls.”

  6

  Finding work at Amy’s age with no skills apart from domestic ones proved very difficult.

  Daphne was up early to get John off to work and she brought the newspaper from the front veranda to Amy in bed. Amy had to scan the employment columns and note any suitable vacancies, write down the addresses and have the paper refolded to leave by Dudley’s porridge plate.

  “He’s that fussy,” Daphne said.

  Dudley did not want Amy in the house, but everyone else did.

  “Where is she?” John would ask when he got in, taking his old felt hat from his sweaty head.

  Peter was studying for his Leaving Certificate and talked shyly to her about the poetry.

  “I don’t understand what it all means, but I love the sounds. Like music,” Amy said.

  “Me too,” Peter said.

  Daphne to her surprise loved having another woman in the house. As if her conscience demanded an explanation, she told it she supposed she had missed having a daughter of her own.

  “I been wanting to move that couch to under the window for ages,” Daphne said one day when she was mopping the kitchen floor and Amy was scrubbing down the pine dresser.

  “Come on then,” Amy said, and with a couple of swoops of her young body had a small cane octagonal table astride the window sill and had hold of one end of the couch.

  When it was in place she took the cane table under her arm and looked about for a new place for it.

  “There!” she cried, setting it down in a corner of the hall near the door into the kitchen. “As soon as you open the front door you see it, and we could put a vase of flowers there. Looks real welcoming!”

  “Look at that!” Peter cried when he saw the table. “Just the place to put the books I have to take to school next day!”

  “We’ll leave it bare then, Aunty Daph,” Amy said.

  Peter flopped full length on the couch. The sun gave the brown leather the richness of blood, and the brass studs fastening the beautiful little pleats on the headrest shone bright as gold. Peter’s thick fair hair shone too. The girls will like him, Amy thought.

  The woman next door, the mother of the girl in labels, asked about Amy’s children.

  “I could never go off and leave mine, young like that.” She drew down her eyebrows and the corners of her thin mouth.

  Daphne tossed her head and splashed some water onto a starched pillowslip, rolling it up so tightly it looked no bigger than a handkerchief.

  “It would be too cruel to take the little things from May.”

  Mrs Cousins’s eyes swept the top of Daphne’s head and rested on the top shelf of the dresser where the brown jug sat, the one exchanged for the tea labels, for which she felt part ownership. The eyes neither agreed nor disagreed with this sentiment.

  “She misses them, she cries herself to sleep some nights.” Daphne’s eyes were steel arrows piercing those of Mrs Cousins, who began nervously to pleat her skirt across a thigh.

  Daphne hoisted a basket of clothes to one end of the table to leave space for the ironing blanket. She had the pleasant prospect of Amy sharing the job. Amy liked doing Dudley’s shirts and those Peter wore to school. Starched collars were a novelty to her since at home in Diggers Creek there were only rough farm clothes to iron. Dudley was a tailor who went to work dressed as an advertisement for his trade.

  “I suppose no job don’t help much either,” Mrs Cousins said, mournful on the outside, but cheered within thinking of her Helen. Mrs Cousins had just laundered her uniforms, orange coloured with dark blue trimmings matching the tea labels. Her ironing was all done so she could sit in comfort and watch Daphne.

  “There she is now,” Daphne said, speeding up the iron in time with the hurry of Amy’s feet coming down the hall. That speed might mean good luck at last.

  But her face said otherwise. There was strain, even fright in her eyes, very large, a shine on her pale skin for the day was unusually warm for early spring. Her pert little nose shone too and perspiration had darkened her hair.

  “Sit down there on the couch,” Daphne said. She badly wanted to offer Amy a cup of tea but it would mean including Mrs Cousins and if her ten-year-old wandered in, as school was out, between them they were capable of emptying her biscuit tin.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water,” Daphne said.

  Mrs Cousins looked at Amy’s seated body, marvelling at its youthfulness. You’d never know, she thought.

  “Don’t say your age,” Mrs Cousins said.

  “How old?” asked the man at Amy’s next interview.

  It was a knitwear factory in Newtown and the advertisement sought a young girl for general duties, mainly typing labels describing packaged goods for retail outlets.

  The man was short with a skin that looked lightly smeared with grease. You could see hairs sprouting from little pockets of oil. There were some holes without hairs, and Amy thought of a cheese coloured a yellowish grey marked with the feet of mice.

  The man’s hair was lightly greased too and he had what was called a cowlick in front and yellowy green eyes, a colour Amy had not seen before. I am always finding new things on faces, Amy thought. What will I see next?

  A woman about thirty came into the office and opened a steel cabinet and took some papers from it. Amusement, though very guarded, ran across the man’s face. He threw a pencil about a desk pad. The redhaired woman left the room without looking at Amy. She saw me alright, Amy thought.

  “I’m eighteen,” she said.

  She was to start work the following Monday. The pay was twenty-five shillings a week and the hours were from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. Amy saved her tram fare by walking home after the interview. She crossed the park adjoining Sydney University, passing some students with books and dragging feet. She smiled into their faces, she couldn’t help it. A job, a job, I’ve got a job, she wanted to cry out. Twenty-five shillings a week! Only a pound at some of the other places. She dismissed the reason, her real age, for failing to get employment earlier. She started to run down the gravel footpath as if she really had shed the extra years and was only eighteen. A child whose mother sat with outstretched legs ran in front of her to scoop up a handful of little stones.

  “Keep that away from your dress!” the mother called.

  Amy saw the dress was pink organdie, a bit big on the thin little girl, it was handed down from an older sister, Amy guessed, seeing it stand out stiffly, making the thin little legs look even thinner.

  About Lebby’s age. Amy slowed her pace and concentrated on the trams shrieking along Broadway, dismissing the look the child had given her: the watery depths of her eyes asking what right she had to run like a happy boy. Amy walked with grown-up dignity until she turned into Wattle Street, then ran along the footpath past the houses crushed together, some semidetached, and two or three big old family homes of the past converted to flats and bed-sitting rooms. The verandas were turned into bedrooms, or sometimes a kitchenette with the main room opening into it. Canvas blinds were hung against the railings. The slightly sloping floor was usually covered with linoleum, a tattered edge often visible from the street below.

  Amy looked up at these buildings with affection. She might get a little place like one of them if the rent was not too high. She knew from the newspapers that rents started at around twelve and sixpence a week. It might be possible to pay a little more for a better place and share it. She ran her mind over the faces of the girls looking her over while she waited t
o see Mr Yates. Perhaps one of them was looking for somewhere to live.

  I will work hard, I’ll be neat and particular and I won’t daydream. I’ll dress nicely and always clean my shoes. She looked down at them flying along the footpath and realized she was running hard now. I’ll be the best worker in the place. I know I will.

  7

  She was as good as any. She had the small front office to herself, reached by a short flight of stairs from a door opening onto the footpath.

  The job was a newly created one in the Lincoln Knitwear factory which was owned by Lance Yates and his brother Tom. They bought yarn, dyed it, and cutters and machinists turned it into clothing. The business had grown sufficiently in the past few months for Amy to be added to the staff of half a dozen clerks and typists. She would receive callers whom she would direct to a chair discarded from Lance Yates’s office, while she went importantly through the main office to tell him who was there. A rack of clothing samples from the factory was against one wall and separated from this a rack of garments with small flaws sold to the public. A counter served as a desk with a heavy old typewriter at one end.

  Amy had taught herself to type on a machine at the hotel. When Lance Yates got her to type a label describing the colour and size of a line of shirts, she rolled the paper into the machine, smoothed it out with a loving hand and poised her fingers over the keys with great confidence. Lance Yates admired her long supple hands, the loose joints of her fingers and deep narrow fingernails, clean and unpainted (he was dead against painted nails and would not allow them in the office). He did notice, but refrained from mentioning it, that Amy typed “grew-neck” instead of “crew-neck”, and when she realized the error a few days after she started work, she and Peter flung themselves back on the couch in mirth and Daphne indulged in a little smile cutting out biscuits at the kitchen table. She is like a sister to the boys, Daphne thought, glad that Dudley was listening to his silly old cricket and not sitting there at the table with a tight mean face.

  Amy helped Daphne and Peter make a vegetable garden by the back fence. Remembering Gus digging on her wedding day Amy said: “Our yard at home is no bigger than this you know.” She tore at a massive growth of vines wrapped around a pile of discarded pine boxes.

  “Dear me,” Daphne said, both shamefaced and admiring as Amy flung the boxes aside, bruised leaves and stalks clinging to them.

  Peter found a marble, a large one with colours swirled inside like the sweet known as a bull’s eye.

  He tossed it to Amy who wasn’t ready to catch it. It hit the little bone near her throat and rolled down the front of her dress. She shrieked and dived a hand for it, bursting open two buttons. Peter’s jaw dropped like the marble at the sight of a piece of breast, round and blue veined, tucked into her brassiere.

  “Stop that silly nonsense!” Daphne cried and raised her hoe as if to strike him. When she lowered the hoe she trailed her eyes down Amy’s front, very cold eyes, following Amy’s hands fastening her buttons.

  Peter went inside, returning with some books. He made a seat of an old apple tree stump.

  “That’s more like it!” Daphne called, hoeing hard.

  “We could plant a passion vine to fill the corner,” Amy said.

  “We’ll see,” Daphne said, tearing weeds from the teeth of the rake.

  Amy went past Peter’s bowed head to bring the wheelbarrow. He saw her ankles above her oldest shoes, passing each other like dainty, busy birds.

  He dared not look upwards to her dainty, busy bottom, feeling Daphne was watching.

  That night getting the tea, Daphne managed to allow everyone a view only of her back.

  She looks as if the rake is still stuck up there, Amy thought, setting the table. Aloud she said: “Perhaps I should start looking for somewhere to live.”

  John on the couch straightened his back, rounded his eyes and lost control of his mouth. Amy, hating herself, went to the window with a handful of forks, looking out at the debris, piled in a great heap to dry.

  “That’ll make some bonfire, Johnno,” she said. He got up and stumped across the back veranda and down the steps. Daphne put her head out the side window.

  “Tea’s on the table, can’t you see?” she yelled, and Dudley came in, his face asking sourly why the shouting. I have everything to put up with, grumbled Daphne to herself—the worry of the boy’s big exam, Dudley never saying a civil word, the extra on the bills. Her fifteen shillings goes nowhere (though when it was first offered Daphne told Amy it was more than she expected).

  “We’re making a vegetable garden down the back, Uncle Dudley,” Amy said cheerfully. Dudley pulled out his chair at the end of the table and sat, the noise and the movement Amy’s answer if she expected one.

  She went to her room as soon as the washing up was done. She knew the sight of her little cane chest of drawers would lift her spirits. It was the only piece added to the room since she had come.

  Amy had been out walking one Saturday afternoon when she came upon an auction sale at a house. The furniture was piled on the small front veranda. Some spilled into the garden and a few pieces were over the front fence on the footpath. The auctioneer was standing with one foot buried in the cushion on a seagrass chair and the other caught between the veranda railings.

  His assistant crouched like a monkey on the rail top. He looked a lot like a monkey too, dark and skinny, a breadboard in his little brown clawlike hands. The board against his bunched knees supported his writing pad to record the sales. The crowd expected him to lose his balance at any moment and this entertained them as much as the auction, since few of them could afford to buy anything.

  He reached down and caught up the dressing-table by one of its legs. The drawers tipped open and this caused the crowd to cry “Oops!” and the young man to slap the drawers back into place. The mirror sent silvery shafts right out onto the street, and when it jerked back and forth the reflected cars danced crazily. For a second Amy saw herself streaked to a great length, quivering crazily too before the mirror was tipped to lie flat, where it blinked and flashed at the sky, attempting to outshine the sun itself.

  “Here-we-have-a-lovely-piece-for-a-lady’s-room!” boomed the auctioneer, his eyes on Amy. She raised a hand in acknowledgment, and the auctioneer shot a finger at her.

  “Two shillings from the little lady!” he cried and everyone looked with respect and some with envy at Amy. She turned pink and ran a finger across the blue band holding back her hair, making it smooth above her forehead and bunching it up beautifully at the back. She had no more than five shillings in her purse and felt it nervously now in sudden fear that some coins might have escaped.

  “Here we have sixpence over there!” The auctioneer’s eyes swept beyond Amy for a moment then back to the top of her head. Amy’s hand went up with the purse in it.

  “Three shillings, any advance on three shillings, any advance on three shillings? Going, going, gone! This lovely little piece for a lady’s bood-wor! A place for her to store her bloomers and things!”

  His eyes for a moment stripped Amy to her underthings, while she blushed scarlet and looked inside her purse. The auctioneer, losing interest in Amy once the sale was made, slapped the chest, nearly upsetting both it and the skinny young man, who turned his threatened fall into a leap and handed the chest over by one leg, then took Amy’s money, leaping back on the rail to be ready for the sale of a rolling pin.

  Amy felt terrible making her way through the crowd. The chest was difficult for her to carry, and worst of all she could not avoid seeing her red embarrassed face in the mirror whatever way she turned it.

  “Muggins!” called a fat woman without teeth who wanted the chest but had an out-of-work husband. “There was no sixpenny bid! You paid an extra bob for it!”

  Amy put her face between the cane legs and ran. Oh, I do look a fool, she said to herself, avoiding the eyes of pedestrians. Oh, I shouldn’t’ve bought it. I shouldn’t’ve! Her purse felt terribly light, flat in her
hand, reproaching her. She would have to manage until next pay day, nearly a week away, on two shillings. She would have to walk home every night. If only someone would catch up with her and say, “Let me buy that from you, here’s five shillings!” She shifted the legs to straddle her hip and met eyes that asked whatever was going on. Oh, take the thing, Amy cried to herself. They will laugh at me when I get home, if ever I do!

  Peter was the first to see her and ran from the veranda to open the gate.

  “I saw this flashing!” he said. “It’s the mirror!” He took the chest from her and bound his long thin arms around it. She ran and opened the front door for him.

  “Whatever’s that?” Daphne cried, coming down the hall. The little drawers answered her, running eagerly out and back as Peter tipped them. He laughed and set the chest down and stood back to admire it.

  “Was it alright to buy it, Aunty Daph?” Amy asked, pleased with their faces.

  In her bedroom Amy set it against the wall opposite the foot of her bed. Admiring it she backed until she sat on the bed.

  Daphne was in the doorway. “More for a little girl’s room. But lovely.”

  Amy was about to tip the contents of her suitcase, in which she stored her underwear, onto her bed to transfer them to the drawers. Instead she went with bowed head and put her fingers into the open parts of the plaited cane that made a frame for the mirror. They did not easily fit but the fingers of Kathleen and Patricia would have. She turned away and smoothed the bed where she sat. Someday I’ll have them with me, she thought, and it’s a good idea to start getting some things together.

  She looked across at Daphne, half expecting she would be reading these thoughts, but Daphne, having heard Dudley come in after watching cricket in the park, was going out pulling at the door.

  “Keep this shut on it,” she said.

  8

  It wasn’t Dudley but Daphne who forced Amy to leave.

  She had been several months at Lincoln Knitwear, but it seemed like years.