by Olga Masters
Then stopped.
Across the slope lay a snake, a long shining soft and slippery snake taking the midday sun.
It reminded me of a thick brown line nicely curved drawn on the blackboard by Sister Francis under words for spelling. The line moved showing an underneath creamy pink like a strawberry flavoured custard I’d seen once on the convent table. A deadly red bellied snake! The shock stopped my crying, and I heard a noise that was my breath drawn upwards from my ribs. The snake heard too. It raised its head and flashed out a forked tongue.
This is my side, said the eyes above the straight little mouth.
Come across here and see what happens.
I saw the creek wind on behind it, remote as another world. Perhaps I was to stand there forever, frozen into a still shape. I began to whimper with a hand across my mouth.
“Shoo,” I said. “Go away! I’ll poke you with a stick!” The snake did not move and neither did I because our eyes were rivetted together. I started to sob.
“I’ve got a gun in my bag back at school to shoot you!” I cried. Holy Mother, I lied. It was a bad time to lie. Our Father who art in heaven. Go away. Go away! It raised its head a little more. Now it looked like a badly drawn question mark. I stood not crying now, just breathing in and out. I moved. My boots caused it. The iron clips put on the soles by Pa to make them last slipped and scraped the rock. Oh my God, don’t let me fall! Don’t let me slide down the slope with the snake coming down on top of me, the two of us tangled together. I screamed at the thought, and the snake as if the sound came to it from a long way off, put its head down calmly and with a beautiful grace, began to half slither half roll, down the slope towards the bottom.
I screamed again. “It’s coming after me!”
But at the bottom it pulled itself along, barely rippling its back, moving smoothly and swiftly towards the bushes on the bank. I heard a gentle whispering rustle; I saw its tail barely flick and it was gone.
The stillness lasted only a second without a little sound breaking it. “It’s back!” I yelled.
But it was only a small brown bird landing on the twig of a tea tree and it fluttered off in fright. I stood holding onto the quiet too afraid yet to jump where the snake had been. Then from somewhere up the creek came a bellow. A bull! Patterson’s bull! A great sturdy fellow with a neck as wide as a chimney and ferocious horns. I was saved from a snake but a bull would gore me to death! Holy Mother help me. Our Father which art in heaven. You don’t say which! The Protestants say which! Say who. If Hetty Black heard me! I began to weep again with a shrill squealing noise I hadn’t made so far. It did not drown out the bull’s roar. Was it coming closer, or was it my fancy? The sound seemed just around the next bend of the creek and I imagined the bull breaking out of the saplings and charging at me with its head down ready to toss me high in the air then stab me with its horns while I rolled under the shadow of its great chest.
Was I going to die today? Holy Mother, would I be in heaven before nightfall? No, no. Please no! Pa, Grammar, help me! I turned and fled towards the creek bank, the one opposite to the direction the snake took, and closest to the road. I would have to take the road now for the last mile, at the mercy of the Motbeys or the Cullens or the Whitbys who might be getting home in time for the afternoon milking. They would offer me a lift to find out what I was up to. Then when their young came home from school the kitchens would be filled with the buzz of tongues.
Nellie Wright went home from school at eleven o’clock without telling Ssta! It would take a lot of bucket rattling by fathers and big brothers to get them outside to help at the dairy with news like that to chew over with bread and melon jam!
I plunged ahead running on the road only when the bush beside it was impassable. When I heard a noise I imagined was a car or sulky I fled for a gully. It was a miracle my tunic wasn’t torn to shreds because I was stabbed with dead stalks of ferns and scratched with blackberries. But I ran and wept, stumbled, sniffed and cried, heaved and sobbed. Sometimes away from the road and unable to see it because the fence was bent over and hidden by tussocks I would stand and scream, “I’m lost! I’m lost!”
But I wasn’t. Cawley’s old place, long abandoned since they built a new house on the hill, told me I had two more bends to round before I was in sight of home. Tears of relief ran down my face and I sniffed at them trotting along the road now.
Then it came into view. Our place. It was on a little fat hill close to the road and looked like a face with a hat drawn down over its eyes. I stared and cried some more. It seemed to be all roof with no fence or trees to hide its shameful smallness.
“Your house looks like Humpty Dumpty on a wall,” Rose had said once, and all the girls had laughed because it was true.
There was no gate or ramp leading to it, just rough steps cut into the clay bank by Pa, and now worn so much they ran into each other, so that you slipped and clawed your way to the top. Why did we have to live here? Why were we so poor? I think I’ll walk past. I’ll walk on and on to the top of the mountain and down the other side. I’ll walk till I fall down and die. I wept some more.
Then level with the house I looked up and on top of the bank where other people would have a garden were Pa and Ma, Grammar, Bernard and Arnold lined up and staring down at me.
“It is our Nellie!” Arnold said.
“Was there a half holidee?” Grammar asked.
“That damn clock’s slow,” Ma said glancing back at the farm as if she expected to see the cows streaming home as they sometimes did around three o’clock.
“Slow be damned!” Pa said. “That clocks runs like a waterfall since I gave it that good oiling.”
“Trouble is you can’t see the numbers on the face for the oil,” Arnold said.
“You’re right, Arnie,” Ma said with a laugh like a fox’s bark.
Arnie not Arnold, but Bernard not Bernie. Of course. Hetty and Rose and Lilian and all the world knew he was different.
I looked up at him. The sun was behind his head which seemed larger than ever, like a great round pumpkin I saw once caught on a fence post and hanging by its slender vine, wobbling away there and refusing to fall.
I felt a fresh rush of tears.
“She’s crying,” Grammar said hopping like a small grey bird to the edge of the bank. “Help me help her up, one of youse.”
“Arnie,” Pa said, “You and me’ll have to put some logs in here and make some proper steps ’fore too long. I know just the tree for it.”
Ma gave her little bark again. “That tree needn’t worry about losing its head. It’s safe I reckon for another twenty years!”
“Come on girl,” Grammar said, pulling me up.
“Look at the scratches on her legs,” Arnold said, “Who took to you with a briar stick?”
Leaning against Grammar’s skirt I sobbed out, “Hetty Black and them!”
“The varmints!” Ma cried, “Hear that, Pa? You go straight to that nunnery after milking and give them a tongue lashing. Getting around dangling those beads and not looking sideways because of those fool hoods! They see nothing! Hear me, Pa?”
Ma was the only one in the family not really a Catholic.
“Let’s git to the bottom of it,” Pa said. “Did you say something to Hetty Black to rile her, girl?”
“I said nothing, Pa. Nothing at all!” I cried, fists burrowed into my eyes as we crossed the verandah and went through the front room into the kitchen.
“Hetty Black!” Ma said with scorn. “Ask her has she seen her birth certificate, and her Ma and Pa’s marriage certificate. Ask her which one came first.”
“You’d never find either of them in Nora Black’s dresser drawers,” Grammar said, “She hasn’t cleaned them out since Hetty was in napkins.”
“Always shitty too,” Ma said.
“Never mind the Blacks,” Pa said, “Sit the girl by the stove there. Has she had any dinner?”
Tears flowed again with the pangs of hunger tearing at my inside
s. The remains of midday dinner were still on the table.
“Snakes alive!” Grammar said wildly snatching at cups and plates. “We been out there staring at the road wondering what was coming, and the washing up not started!”
“Where’s your school bag?” Ma asked staring at my legs, around which it usually hung.
I wept louder.
“I went to the lavatory and then came home,” I sobbed.
“Didn’t you get your bag?” Ma said, “Where’s your beetroot sandwiches?”
“Hetty Black came after me with this big stick,” I cried.
“Couldn’t you’ve gone back for your bag?” Ma said. “You should’ve got your bag.”
“Give her something to eat then,” Pa said, “Cut her a slice of bread.”
Ma held onto the loaf before it was swept into the tin by Grammar. She cut off an uneven slice. “It riles me to the core to think of them wasted beetroot sandwiches,” she said.
“Have ’em tomorrow,” Arnold said. At the thought I began to sob.
“Now stop bawling,” Pa said, feeling along the shelf for his tobacco. “You gotta stop sometime.”
Grammar was making a great clatter with the tin dish full of crockery and her red hands rubbing soap into a soaked and steaming dish cloth. Ma put the slice of bread on the edge of the table for me. I chewed on it with only a few tears running into the rancid butter.
Pa made his smoke. He wet the edge of the paper and curled it into a neat and slender roll. He was proud of it.
“Look at that one,” he said to Arnold. “A machine couldn’t turn it out better.”
“When are you going to let me have a smoke, Pa? Arnold said. “I could roll a good one, too.”
“You’ll be rollin’ no smoke in this house,” Ma said. “Git out now and bring an armful of wood for the stove.”
Pa pinched some stray tobacco from the end of his smoke. “I might take the axe before milking and knock a few stumps in around them fence posts in the calf paddock,” he said. “They need straightenin’ up.”
“Look out for that brown hen if you’re down that way,” Ma said.
“If she’s let a fox git her I’ll kick her all the way to Brown Mountain and back.”
Arnold brought the wood and dropped it heavily into the wood box.
“Start the milking without me, Arnie!” Grammar said. “I’ve got to give Bernard his wash and sew some buttons on his clean shirt ’fore I dress him.”
On the couch Bernard wagged his head violently.
I stared into the stove. They had forgotten me already. I suffered because of them and they had forgotten me. Tomorrow would come and the cane from Sister Francis, and Hetty and Rose and Lilian under the pepper tree and me praying for the bell to go. Holy Mother, make it ring before they sày anything more. Holy Mother, don’t let me cry. Tears began to run again.
“Stop bawling!” Pa said. “I said to stop bawling!”
I drew both hands down my sodden face. “A snake nearly bit me and Patterson’s bull nearly got me!” I burst out.
They all stopped frozen still and open mouthed.
“Hear that!” Ma said. “She went the creek way!”
“That’s how she got them scratched legs!” Grammar said.
“It wasn’t Hetty Black at all. Haw, haw!” Arnold said.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Pa said.
“‘Hetty Black hit me with a briar stick’,” Grammar mocked. “As if them nuns would let her!”
“A pack o’ lies!” Ma said. “Is that all them nuns can teach her?”
“Hetty Black’s growin’ into a nice little thing,” Grammar said.
“She always says ‘Hullo, Mrs Wright’ when she sees me at Mass.”
“Goin’ the creek way!” Ma said, as if she still couldn’t believe it.
“Leavin’ school halfway through the day. She’ll catch it tomorrow!” Grammar said.
“She’ll catch it today,” Pa said. “She’ll git a beltin’ she won’t forget in a hurry.”
“Well give her one then,” Ma said.
Pa said nothing.
“Git on with it!” Ma said. “Standin’ there puffin’ on a rotten cigarette. Wallop her now.”
Pa smoked with his head down.
“Look at him!” Ma said. “All talk and no acshun as usual! She went the creek way and near ruined them good shoes. Look at them!”
All eyes were on my dangling legs and the scarred boots.
“Get off that chair at once and go with Arnie and help him put that separator together!” Pa said.
“Yes, Pa,” I said leaping off the chair.
“‘Yes, Pa,’” Ma mocked. “Where’s the wallopin’ she was supposed to git?”
“You give it to her,” Pa said.
“Listen to him! ‘You give it to her.’ He palms every job off he can on me. He’ll soon be doin’ nothin’ but walkin’ around rollin’ cigarettes.”
“Go on!” Pa said to me.
I went. I flew into the bedroom and peeled off my tunic and my boots and got into an old torn cambric dress. I went out the front way to avoid passing through the kitchen. Running past the window I heard Grammar cackle. “She’s going all right! She’s runnin’ faster ’an a stuck emu!”
Arnold was ahead. He slowed his pace and taking a stone bent sideways and threw it at a hen scratching in the beetroot patch. The stone spun cleanly, beautifully and the hen squawked and fluttered, racing away with wings almost level with the ground.
Alongside Arnold I took hold of the pocket of his old alpaca jacket. Over the dairy roof the sky was pink as if someone had spread it with apricot jam.
I sniffed. A dry sniff. My face was stiff. But dry. My eyes were cold around the edges. But dry.
“You stopped bawling?” Arnold said.
I had. It seemed years since I started but I had stopped last.
Pa was right.
You’ve got to stop sometime.
THE CHILDREN ARE COMING
There was just enough light in the bedroom for Ted to pick Joan out over the foot of his bed.
She had on her old slacks and pullover and with her head tipped to one side was brushing her long grey and blonde hair as if she couldn’t wait to have done with it.
Ted snapped on the light at his bedhead. His round eyes in his round head sitting in a blue pyjama collar showed briefly before he snapped the light off and slipped down on his pillow again.
Joan began to pull the clothes from her bed.
“You needn’t get up right away,” she said.
“Shut the door when you go out and I’ll stay here for the rest of the day,” he said.
She smacked a pillow as if it were someone’s bottom.
“Oh Ted,” she said.
“Stop saying ‘oh Ted.’ Start saying ‘hey, you.’ That’s what I am when they’re around.”
“Oh Ted,” she said again before she could stop herself.
There was a little more light in the room when the bed was made showing the outline of Ted, humped a little forward staring ahead. Joan sat on a chair, hands between her knees.
“Who’s coming?” said Ted. He took his pipe from an ashtray near the bed and knocked it on the side of the table. Joan didn’t actually wince, just breathed in a little sharply.
“Everyone,” she said.
Ted sucked on the lighted pipe. “I see. Everyone.”
“Oh Ted. You know what I mean.”
“Yes Joan, I know who everyone is.”
“I just meant all the children are coming,” she said, slightly wistful.
She got up to take some clothes from the chair back and hang them in the wardrobes.
“Lois too,” she said.
“You said everyone,” Ted said, quite sharp.
“Ferdinand will be along,” said Ted after a pause in a needling voice.
“Of course. And call him Phillip. That’s his name.”
“Ferdinand. Full of bull,” said Ted.
“Annie�
��s man. Your daughter Annie’s man. Gentle and kind and honest. A good father, Ted.” The tremor in her voice was barely audible.
“They’ve got you well tutored, Joan.”
She took a jacket and a brush to the window and rubbed at the collar by the better light. “Are you going to do some things for me like giving the paths a good sweep?” she said in an amiable voice.
Ted didn’t seem to hear.
“One of the great pleasures of my life once was to talk about my kids. One by one I’ve had to drop them as subjects.”
“You’ve made the choice,” said Joan.
“I’ll never forget that day at the depot when I was telling Wally about Annie. I’d told him about Annie topping the secretarial class at college and now she had this great job. That night when I got home you brought out the brandy bottle and said ‘Drink this while I tell you about Annie. She’s three months gone and she doesn’t want to see the father any more. She’s keeping the baby.’” He ran a thumb around the cold bow of his pipe. “Wally still asks me how’s Annie going in that great job of hers.”
“That’s a long time ago now Ted.”
“Yes. Four kids ago.”
Joan swung the jacket on a hanger and jabbed it on the wardrobe rail. “You repeat that story over and over. You know when Annie went to live with Phillip she chose to have her second baby. She had this terrible guilt complex because the first was an accident. She’s a wonderful girl, Ted. Look how she took Phillip’s two, loving and caring for them when their own mother walked out on them.”
“Swam out on them.”
“Oh, Ted.” Joan shut the wardrobe door with a snap. “Stop harping about that boat. Some people like living on a boat.”
“Remember Clive and June Harris? I picked this fare up the other day and it turned out to be Clive. We only had Annie when we knew them, remember? He asked about Annie and I said she was married. I couldn’t say my daughter had four kids and wasn’t married. Clive asked me where she lived and I said ‘Gunnumatta Bay.’ He was impressed. He said ‘Close to the water?’ and I said ‘Couldn’t be closer mate. In fact she’s right on top of it.’”
Joan sat on the chair again. “So they’re not married. What’s a slip of paper?”
