by Olga Masters
He was as startled to hear her speak as to hear him addressed that way. Hardly anyone called him Mister.
“Thank you,” he said his voice coming out in a croak and went back inside. It was time for him to shower for work.
He couldn’t see any clean shirts so he wore the one from yesterday, pushing his tie up under the collar hoping to disguise the dark line from his neck.
He heard some tinkling and knew his wife was in the kitchen.
The door of the little girls’ bedroom was shut and he felt relief that they were still asleep.
Should he waken and feed and dress them, he said to the growing fear in his eyes reflected in the mirror. He laid down the hairbrush and went and gently opened their door.
They were there, thank God! At first he thought the little one’s cot was empty. But she was curled in a bottom corner with a large rag doll across her rump. He worried that the older one lying half on top of the bedclothes might be cold but he resisted the temptation to cover her and closed the door almost without a sound.
His wife passed him then in her old skimpy dress and cardigan.
Her thongs slap slapped into the bedroom and she shut the door. He felt over himself and yes he had his wallet. But no car keys.
He tapped the door gently with a knuckle and almost at once there was the noise of a lumpy body flung against it and the key turned in the lock.
I’ll go in the bus he thought, staring at the little girls’ door and willing them to safety behind it.
He went out the back again feeling that he should be carrying something but it was months since she had packed him a lunch.
Over the fence now clearly seen, Mrs Lake was bringing her milk in. Her face was more yellow in the reflected light from the cassia bush and her strange hair had patches of custard yellow showing through the grey.
“I’m locked out,” Chris said. “My wife’s in the shower and can’t hear. I don’t want to wake the girls.” He was pleased with himself for lying so well.
Mrs Lake saw him skinny and fair in his trousers flared out from the knees covering most of his strange shoes round as tennis balls in front.
“Come in and ring up,” she said. “She might hear that.”
“Thank you,” he said only glad because of something to do.
But her phone rang as she entered her front room.
“Excuse me,” she said trying not to look important.
With the receiver to her ear she motioned him on to the kitchen.
There was a pan on the stove with some grease in it and some brown fragments from fried eggs. A pot on the stove bore the homely marks of dribbled coffee. Every home in the world is sane but mine, he thought.
Mrs Lake came in.
“It was my daughter. She got a bedspread off layby and wants me to go across and see it on the bed this morning.” She simpered a little with embarrassment giving him such details. But her yellowy face was full of pride while her eyes avoided his. He thought she might be making a secret and satisfactory comparison between her daughter and his wife.
“Would you like to ring?” she said bustling about clearing the table as if a trifle ashamed she was not further advanced in her day’s work.
She put her hands around the coffee pot. “I’ll pour you out a cup,” she said.
He didn’t move and thought about not going to work but sitting down and asking her for help.
The hot coffee made his eyes water.
“Those little girls,” she said with her back to him wiping down the sink. “The little one. She doesn’t say anything but when she sees me she points her finger. Just points her finger.” Holding the dishcloth Mrs Lake pointed her finger the way the child did.
“That’s Heather,” he said although Mrs Lake would have known because when they first came to live next door she and his wife talked to each other.
“What’s the other one’s name?” Mrs Lake said. He got the impression she didn’t like the older girl so much.
“Trudy,” he said.
He longed for her to say into the silence that she would take them with her to her daughter’s who lived on the other side of the reserve.
The little one would point her finger at interesting objects in the bush like a horse that strayed there and half tame magpies. He pictured the peaceful scene of Mrs Lake and the little girls bobbing along the bush track and smiled as he set down his cup.
“Thank you. I’ll go and get the bus,” he said and screwed his wrist to look at the time but hadn’t put his watch on.
“You’ll get it,” Mrs Lake said bustling ahead of him to the front having noticed his wrists blue with cold and that he was without a jacket.
“My car keys are inside unfortunately,” he said to her back.
“The bus’ll do only the damn thing doesn’t always come,” Mrs Lake said, “But it’ll be here this morning.”
It was as if she couldn’t believe his bad luck could extend that far.
“Thanks, Mrs Lake,” he said running down the steps.
“Goodbye, son,” she called after him.
On the bus he dreamed he took the little girls in to her every day. He imagined her scooping them up in her arms loving them equally. He pictured them at the table with her bustling about talking to them while they ate. He moved himself and the girls into the Lakes’ house. Mr Lake died he thought with no callous intent as he believed him to be more than sixty. The bus bumped on and the woman next to him glancing at his bony wrists on his kness pulled her mouth down when he sniffed deeply. I hope there is no drip he thought because he had no handkerchief. He put a hand to his nose and felt there was. The woman got up and took another seat.
It allowed him a window seat. He would leave the suburb (too far out) and he and Mrs Lake and the little girls would live in one of the houses flying past the bus. That one, he thought getting a good view of it because it was close by the last bus stop before the railway station. It had a yard at the side sloping down to a little creek. There was a low thick tree half way up the slope blobbed with ripe oranges. Perfect, he thought looking back when the bus moved on.
In the bustle of everyone getting out and the hiss of the train pulling in he was able to sniff deeply without detection and waggle his nose dry on his sleeve.
Passing through to his office he swooped an arm over a glass partition and plucked up some tissues from someone’s box grateful for the feel of them on his nostrils.
A clerk named Gail was at his cabinet looking for a file, a paper cup of coffee in one hand and the fingers of the other sprayed out holding a cigarette.
“Hi there,” she said. “Tim Thomas wants to cancel and I think Jack wants you to go and see him and see if you can change his mind.” She shut the cabinet with a twist of her hip. “The best of British.”
“I should ring home first,” he said. But he only stared at the phone.
Gail stood looking at him, her face and slightly prominent teeth pushed forwards between the peaks of her heavy hair.
“Oh God, I forgot!” he said.
“What?” she said very interested.
“I came in the train. I got no car today. I couldn’t—I mean it wouldn’t—”
“You can take mine,” she said taking keys from a deep skirt pocket and laying them on his blotter.
“Oh thanks,” he said putting his hand over the keys as if they were her hand.
“Love,” he said inside his throat not sure if she should hear.
She turned and went out with lowered lashes carrying her coffee with care.
He watched her back and thought of her moving in with him and the girls. He stripped her of her black jumper with the high collar touching her ears and put her in a flowered apron. He saw her putting the living room in order clearing the floor of toys with the little girls swooped on top of her.
She was laughing and trying to get free. The dinner table was set with table napkins at jaunty angles on bread and butter plates and silver winking and every now and again there w
as a gentle spit from meat roasting in the oven.
He saw them together putting the girls to bed and smelled the girls’ clean hair and clean sheets. Later he closed the bedroom door on Gail and himself. Watching her while she tossed her hair back and sat down to work his eyes pulled her jumper down over her naked shoulders. His thighs strained inside his pants. Oh my God my God, he said inside him.
We would keep the two cars he thought driving hers towards Tim Thomas, New and Used Vehicles. No, we would sell one and have no debts. He steered his mind from the bills piled under and around the clock on the kitchen shelf.
Tim Thomas left him standing holding his plastic folder (there was nothing in it relating to this visit but he usually carried it) while he finished a conversation with another caller. He took his time staring at the tips of his shoes, waggling his hands inside his pockets and looking past the boy’s cheek at the car posters on the wall.
Chris looked at the stairs going up to a flat over the premises. The door had a brass knocker and he pictured Gail again in her apron with a finger covered by a rag polishing away at the knocker. The little girls were pressed against her legs watching. Tim Thomas had given them the flat rent free in return for a little bit of caretaking at the weekend. The girls went to a nearby nursery school.
He and Gail took turns at delivering and collecting them. They kept both cars he decided now. Of course. The sale of the house at a very good price took care of all his outstanding debts.
Tim Thomas was ready for him.
“I told them I cancelled for this week. I got nothing new to advertise. I told ’em.” He fiddled with papers on his desk and twisted about.
“I know,” Chris said his eyes travelling up and down the stairs before returning to Thomas’s putty coloured chin.
“It’s OK, Mr Thomas,” Chris said his voice gentle as a girl’s. “I just called to see if we could help in any way at all.”
“Well—” Thomas was unable to look into the boy’s blue eyes. Suddenly he threw a pencil across his desk. “Damn it! I don’t want to lose the space—”
Chris moved to go his eyes back on the brass knocker.
“I’ll tell ’em. Thanks, Mr Thomas.” He slipped out aware that Thomas was watching his back with dissatisfied eyes.
Back in his office he looked about wildly for telephone messages. There was nothing. But the phone looked as if its creamy ear could hold some dark and terrible secret.
It rang. He took it up, listened a while, said it was OK and laid it down.
Gail came in then and saw his large swimming eyes.
“That was Thomas,” he said. “He told me down there he was taking the ad then rang to say he wouldn’t.”
“What a bastard!” Gail said putting a file back in his cabinet.
“Gail!” he said and her hair swung round followed by her face.
He looked at her without speaking straining his eyes against the tears.
A slow red ran into her face.
“Oh, the keys,” she said picking them up from his blotter and going slowly out.
“Don’t look now,” she said to Karen the girl at the next desk. “But I just got the come on.”
Karen did look. She was currently without a boyfriend.
“Not for me,” Gail said. “A fruitcake for a wife and two kids!”
But when the red dye left her face her eyes were brighter.
He caught the train at five o’clock and then the bus which dropped him at a corner store three blocks from home.
He went in and picked a pack of sausages from a refrigerator and laid them with a carton of eggs on the counter.
A door behind the counter opened into the rear of the shop where the owners lived. They were a man and wife named Franks.
There was no light on but flames from a fire licked at a black grate. A fat ginger cat sat on an easy chair which sat on a hand hooked rug on linoleum. There was a table covered with an old-fashioned green fringed cloth.
He saw the little girls kneeling by the chair, each with a hand on the cat their tangled hair smooth with brush and comb.
He saw Gail come in (in the apron) with a basin of steaming soup and the girls leave the floor and stand by her peering into the basin.
He removed Mr Franks to hospital with a terminal illness. Mrs Franks unable to run the shop alone sold out cheaply and gratefully.
Gail was busy and happy all day. He saw the four of them while the shop was closed on a Sunday afternoon walking on the reserve linked by their outstretched arms.
He turned surprised to see the dying Mr Franks looking quite robust come through the front door stamping wet leaves from his feet. At the same time Mrs Franks came through the living room shadows up to the counter.
“I thought you’d be back,” she said with irritation.
“I chased the siren down Cook Road and around into Regent Street . . .”
Regent Street. That was the boy’s street. He laid his hand on the eggs and held them.
“Well, was it police, fire brigade, ambulance or what?” Still testy she dropped the boy’s money in the till with a little clatter.
“It got away from me,” said Mr Franks and he went with head down to stir some oranges in a wire basket and straighten the sign that said they were locally grown and cheap and moved from there to fuss with the magazine stand.
Chris took up his things and ran. She had burned the house down, he thought. My little girls are dead. He saw them outlined in flames beating at a window.
He pulled up panting at his gate and they were at the window. He saw their ecstasy when they saw him. The little one threw back her head and laughed and pointed. The older one’s smile made her turned up nose turn up more. They jigged about as if they wanted to break through the glass to reach him.
They raced into the kitchen to meet him there, wrapping their arms around his trouser legs while he peeled the wrapping from the sausages and turned on the stove.
“The stove’s a clock!” the little one screamed with laughter when the element began to tick.
He gave them a nurse on each hip moving to the doorway to steal a look into the living room. His wife was on the couch under a rug, her eyes on the television screen. Her heavy body was hidden and her hair spread on a cushion golden in the half light. Her face was turned from his but he saw her cheek fair and smooth as butter.
Moving back to the stove he set the girls gently down.
They brought her to the table while he served the eggs and sausages onto their plates.
They chewed in silence and he moved his eyes over her once or twice then back to his food.
He stripped her of the excess flesh and the old cardigan half falling off her shoulders.
He put her into a white blouse he always liked with a frill that brushed the points of her ears when she moved her neck.
He smoothed her hair and swept it into a knot on top of her head the way she always used to wear it.
He saw the backyard through the window not gloomy and barren but filled with flowerbeds and little waterfalls and stepping stones the way she planned to do it.
He saw a hose playing gently and a light shining through hanging ferns.
It was the water that did it. He had to excuse himself and leave the table and go and look for a handkerchief.
THE LANG WOMEN
Lucy was a thin, wistful wispy child who lived with her mother and grandmother and had few moments in her life except a bedtime ritual which she started to think about straggling home from school at four o’clock.
Sometimes she would start to feel cheerful even with her hands still burning from contact with Miss Kelly’s ruler, and puzzle over this sudden lifting of her spirits then remember there was only a short while left to bedtime.
She was like a human alarm clock which had been set to go off when she reached the gate leading to the farm and purr away until she fell asleep lying against her grandmother’s back with her thighs tucked under her grandmother’s rump and her face not min
ding at all being squashed against the ridge of little knobs at the back of her grandmother’s neck.
Her grandmother and her mother would talk for hours after they were all in bed. Sometimes it would seem they had all drowsed off and the mother or the grandmother would say “Hey, listen!” and Lucy would shoot her head up too to hear. Her grandmother would dig her with an elbow and say: “Get back down there and go to sleep!” Lucy was not really part of the talk just close to the edges of it.
It was as if the grandmother and the mother were frolicking together in the sea, but Lucy unable to swim had to stand at the edge and be satisfied with the wash from their bodies.
Lucy made sure she was in bed before her mother and grandmother in order to watch.
It was as if she were seeing two separate plays on the one stage. Carrie the mother performed the longest. She was twenty-six and it was the only time in the day when she could enjoy her body. Not more than cleansing and admiring it since Lucy’s father had died five years earlier. Carrie was like a ripe cherry with thick black hair cut level with her ears and in a fringe across her forehead. She was squarish in shape not dumpy or overweight and with rounded limbs brown from exposure to the sun because she and the grandmother Jess also a widow and the mother of Carrie’s dead husband worked almost constantly in the open on their small farm which returned them a meagre living.
Carrie was nicknamed Boxy since she was once described in the village as good looking but a bit on the boxy side in reference to her shape. When this got back to Carrie she worried about it although it was early in the days of her widowhood and her mind was not totally on her face and figure.
Some time later at night with all her clothes off and before the mirror in the bedroom she would frown on herself turning from side to side trying to decide if she fitted the description. She thought her forehead and ears were two of her good points and she would lift her fringe and study her face without it and lift her hair from her ears and look long at her naked jawline then take her hands away and swing her head to allow her hair to fall back into place. She would place a hand on her hip, dent a knee forward, throw her shoulders back and think what a shame people could not see her like this.
