No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

  ‘WHOSE SON ARE YOU?’

  She cringed at the enlistment poster showing a proud mother bidding goodbye to her soldier son, while her opposite number comforted a young cry-baby stay-at-home lad and knew the barb stung Tom exactly as intended.

  Deep in the bowels of the underground grotto the temperature dropped and a chill iced up her neck. No warm hand offered her comfort this time and while she struggled for a word or idea to recapture their earlier lightness, both knew the frost went deeper than any eight-minute ride. Or missed kiss.

  Neither spoke until after the boat glided out of the darkness and into the sunshine. Tom held the craft and her elbow steady, sending a pulse of pleasure up her arm, while she stepped out onto the boarding.

  It wasn’t either of them that spoke first, but a pair of women alighting the boat behind. Animated in discussion, their voices began to rise and carry until with disbelief Mary could not mistake the word, ‘Shirker!’

  Tom’s hand gripped tighter under her elbow and he quick marched her down the steps of the exit to the concrete paving below.

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the two women descending behind them, sniffing and poking their noses up like Tom were a piece of muck on their boots.

  Mary fought the urge to poke her tongue out at the stuck-up pair of witches. Who did they think they were?

  But Tom led her on, unblinking, and she’d no chance to do anything, but fling an evil look at the women over her shoulder.

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing the King’s uniform?’

  The shout from the younger woman struck Tom like a bayonet in the back. All purpose went out of his stride.

  Both women scurried around in front of him like busybody beavers on a mission. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ the older one shouted. ‘You don’t look sickly or infirmed to me. Are you a shirker?’

  ‘Our brothers are dying on the front while you gad about with your sweetheart. How can you not go to their aid?’ The younger woman shrilled in her mealy-mouth voice.

  ‘You know nothing about me, woman.’ Tom’s mouth distorted like he was fighting to hold back an onslaught – the gentleman in him won. His mouth closed and set hard.

  When Mary opened hers to add her two-penneth, Tom gripped her arm tighter, hissing in her ear, ‘If I can keep my bloody temper and mouth shut, so can you.’

  He tried to guide her around Miss Prissy Britches standing with her arms folded, waiting on an answer. Behind her, a small crowd began to gather, including young men. Most of them only boys, but they jostled in close, before one took off his cap and jacket, shouting, ‘Yeah, you layabout spiv, why don’t you go and fight? Are you a yellow-bellied coward? I’ll fight you right here.’

  ‘Sign up, why don’t ya, ya chicken?’ shouted a new heckler from the back of the crowd.

  A hand knocked off Tom’s hat from behind.

  Tom spun around, raising his fists to the source. ‘Okay, come on then. Who’s first? Make a line.’

  The raw fury in his face scaring Mary stupid.

  Then a fist flashed out of nowhere and caught him under his eyebrow, drawing blood. He staggered sideways.

  ‘Come on, Tom. Let’s go – now.’ Mary dragged on his arm, trying to keep the hysterical note out of her voice.

  ‘See, folks,’ shouted an old man leaning on a walking stick. ‘Poor fellow can’t go to the front because he can’t take the young girly along to fight for him.’

  ‘Shut up, all of you,’ Mary shouted, but she never got further.

  Tom gripped her elbow, steering her a rough path through the crowd. ‘Quiet,’ he rasped in her ear. ‘Or do you think I need a woman to fight for me too?’

  Clear of the throng, the young woman who’d started it all rushed at him and shoved a folded slip of paper into the breast pocket of his suit coat, slapping it hard. ‘Our boys are dying in France while you do nothing. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’

  The crowd cheered and she curtsied, making Mary want to reach out and slap her pretty face red. Only, in the same second, a lemonade bottle smashed at her feet. A slash of pain stung up the side of her leg.

  A policeman’s whistle scattered the mob, sending them off along with their smug smirks.

  ‘Are you okay, son?’

  ‘We both are.’ Tom nodded. In spite of her mopping blood from the cut bleeding down her stockinged leg right in front of him. Not that the policeman appeared remotely moved by their plight.

  She guessed the unanswered question of why Tom was not in uniform burned on his lips too.

  All the way home, first on the tram, then the train, she tried to talk to Tom. But after he snatched the woman’s note from his pocket and read it stone-faced, he scrunched it up to match his scowl and threw it up onto the wire parcel shelf above Mary’s head.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Tom, I understand your pride. It’s not a sin to tell about your chest. You don’t have to be so reckless and try to take on a whole damn mob.’

  ‘Would you rather I stand there and take it like I deserve their scorn? Get my bloody head knocked in?’ Tom scowled.

  ‘Course not. But you can’t take a swing at every lamppost that looks sideways at you. And I’m not trying to fight your bloody battles or protect you. I’m only terrified of folk gone giddy at the scent of blood? What’s wrong with the world?’

  Mary flung herself back in her seat. To her mind, the war put the devil in peoples’ hearts. It wasn’t about being Christian or loving anyone’s neighbour anymore, because if your neighbour wasn’t abroad killing the European neighbours, it seemed he most certainly deserved killing himself.

  Tom refused to answer, so it was a guiltless hand that swiped the balled-up note.

  To ‘The Shirker’

  Is it that you are fearful of the bayonet’s stabbing bite?

  Is it that you are shrinking from shells that shriek in the night?

  Shells that shriek their triumph through bodies bloody and torn

  Does the shriek of shrapnel scare you?

  Better you never born.

  Those who are God’s true mothers, those who are worthy wives,

  Think you they value their honour, or only sloth-stained lives?

  Will she who is worth the winning,

  She who is yet to be won,

  Take to her marble bosom, one who has turned from the gun?

  Mary’s eyes blurred to read the horrible words penned by stupid women who knew nothing of a man bereft at not being able or allowed to fight, but who’d give an arm to bribe an enlistment officer if only it held any sway.

  To think she’d imagined Tom wanting a kiss one short hour ago. A kiss, when he stared at her now more like he wanted to spit in her eye at her suggestion he apply for one of them badges they give volunteers who get rejected on medical grounds.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve got one of the bloody things already? After two beatings and three white feathers, can you imagine Pearl and my mother not pestering me to get one? Do you think I want to go around advertising I’m not man enough to fight?’

  He waited then, as if daring her to answer; like he wanted her to give him reason to turn away from her too. As if she’d give him the pleasure – though she was sorely tempted. True, he deserved as much, but not from her.

  A kiss. What a stupid thought. Nearly as stupid as herself.

  DOWN AND DESTITUTE

  DECEMBER 1916

  Mary wasn’t surprised when a fortnight passed and Tom’s stubborn-self not once crossed the threshold in Egan Street. So if Mohammed wouldn’t come to the mountain …

  Her hand closed tight around the jar of freshly-made soup wrapped in newspaper, while she juggled the handle of her umbrella and debated putting it up or leaving it down. Mist hung heavy in the air, dampening her clothes and settling on her eyelashes, more annoying than actual rain.

  She hurried along the footpath from the North Melbourne Station, wary of the stagnant water swimming in the cracks in the cobblestones in the road. So
me gleamed iridescent oily. Others, alongside the Railway Hotel, steamed with the stench of urine in the gutter, not even filtered by the downpour of earlier in the afternoon.

  She glanced for the umpteenth time at the address scrawled on the back of the envelope in her hand, knowing it wasn’t the weather or Tom’s health that hurried her feet, but her need to be sure it was his chest and not disgust with her that kept him from Egan Street. She’d not have Pearl deprived of her nephew’s company due to her inability to keep her big mouth shut.

  Yesterday, when Tom’s note came in the morning post to say he wouldn’t be coming for Sunday tea due to his chest flaring up again, Pearl had flown into a panic, it being the second week in a row he’d ducked out on account of his ‘chest’.

  ‘He must be really ill. I’ll bet he’s not eating or taking care of himself. Probably he hasn’t been to the doctor either. He’ll end up in the hospital again if he’s not careful. The poor man refuses to accept he has limitations.’

  Mary breathed a sigh of relief to turn into Adderley Street and find herself gazing up at the stained facade of Carpenter’s Boarding House; her eyes scanning the windows on the second floor to find the one on the right.

  ‘He’s gone out.’

  The landlady bailed Mary up the moment her foot crossed the first squeaky board in the foyer, demanding to know who she’d called to see and insisting, ‘You’d best not wait by yourself in the street, dearie. Some blokes around here aren’t to be trusted with a pretty one like you.’ The woman peered left and right and up the stairwell. ‘I shouldn’t take the liberty, but I’ll let you into Mr Robbins’ flat to wait. Don’t touch anything … His cousin, you say you are?’

  Mary nodded, sure that she’d said no such thing, but was grateful to wait out of the weather and the path of any overeager fellows. She followed Mrs Carpenter, as the woman introduced herself, up the stairs, stepping carefully on the lopsided risers.

  The woman plucked a bunch of keys out of her large apron pocket and sorted through them with practised haste, making Mary wonder if the woman took the liberty of opening the locks at other times too, without permission from her lodgers.

  No skin off my Irish ancestor’s backside if she wants to be a nosey beggar. Aloud, she said, ‘I won’t keep you,’ and stopped just inside the door to thank the woman kindly, if not sincerely, then closed it on the woman’s attempt to step across the threshold. ‘I’ll tell my cousin of your kindness.’

  Once the door closed, the room sank into gloom. Mary searched the wall nearest the door until her hand found the cold brass of the light switch. The weak light thrown by a bare bulb hanging from a long, frayed cord betrayed the empty coal scuttle. The room was chill in spite of the season, as if no fire had been laid in the miserly hearth in a dog’s age, despite Tom being so poorly. Wasn’t much else to see really: a bed – unmade and dishevelled – a small dressing table stacked high with books, paper, paints, brushes, ink bottles and pens, but not a chair to sit on. So Mary perched gingerly on the edge of the bed instead.

  She took off her hat but soon rose, uncomfortable to be sitting on a man’s bed uninvited, whether seen to be doing so or not.

  A single primus burner on a card table topped by a battered saucepan told her Tom didn’t eat home many nights. She placed the jar of soup inside the pot, hopeful he might find it if he thought to cook up a meal any time soon.

  The large, mostly empty room didn’t invite exploration. Wallpaper hung crooked on the walls, the floral pattern dark and mismatched. Overhead mildew peppered the ceiling, spreading in a widening arc that to Mary’s mind was destined to disease the entire roof.

  Tom’s Sunday suit and shirt hung on hooks on the wall, his good shoes polished and waiting on the floor beneath. Oddly, with no shoelaces.

  She picked up the shoes and turned them over. Though polished and presentable enough on top, the soles had evidently lived a much harder life, worn through to the inners. Poor man. Tom hid the truth of his situation well, even from his aunt. Mary doubted Pearl had any inkling how down and destitute her nephew was living.

  A woman’s sudden laughter echoed from across the hall, before the slam of a door made Mary jump. Where was Tom? Wasn’t the dafty supposed to be sick? He should be home in bed.

  She crossed the room to peer beyond the ratty, faded drape to the street. Just past five, rain clouds darkened the sky as if a summer storm was coming. She began to hope Tom would come home soon. She’d no wish to cross the city after the new early pub closing, men throwing down as many drinks as an elbow could bend in the last half-hour.

  She released the curtain and it was then she noticed the easel and stack of canvas boards lined up against the small side wall, half hidden by paint-blotched sheeting. She gently pulled the closest canvas back from the wall. A portrait of an infant, with recognisable curls and his thumb stuck in his mouth, stared back at her.

  The painting might have been a photograph of her son and she didn’t doubt the artist extremely talented. She couldn’t resist a quick peep at the next canvas too. Another portrait. The woman pictured stood by the side of a bed gazing down into it with her hand outstretched towards the sleeping child’s head, an image she’d seen reflected nightly in her own looking-glass mirror. Tom had captured her likeness with an uncanny accuracy, all except the wistful dreaminess in the woman’s eyes.

  If she had her way, she’d make him repaint those eyes. But she’d no time to ponder further when a key rattling in the lock made her race across the room and plonk herself on the side of the bed, perching ladylike and proper, as if she’d been sitting there all afternoon – not touching anything.

  ‘No, sitting on his bed’s not right either.’ She jumped up and smoothed the coverlet, then rumpled it again quickly to look slept-in like when she’d arrived.

  When the door flung open, she stood in the middle of the room open-mouthed and guilty, as if she’d stolen Tom’s shoelaces herself.

  ‘Told you, you have a visitor,’ puffed Mrs Carpenter, staggering onto the landing behind Tom. ‘See.’

  Mary sent Tom a conspiratorial smile at the woman’s brash attempt to barge into the room, but he shut the door on his landlady’s efforts with a firm, ‘Thanks very much for telling me.’

  When Tom broke into asthmatic coughing, Mary stepped forwards, all concern, but she pulled back in dismay when he turned on her, fury burning in his eyes as if he wanted to throttle her. He didn’t even bid her good day when he stopped choking. Instead he plonked her toque roughly on her head and dragged her out the door.

  ‘Why’d you have to come here? I told you I was sick.’

  Mary yanked out of his grasp and stopped on the landing, jamming her hands on her hips. ‘Sure. Sick enough to go gadding and leaving a caller waiting on you all afternoon.’

  He glared back at her over his shoulder, but didn’t slow his pace while he clomped down the stairs. ‘Did anyone invite you?’

  ‘No, but …’ She ran down the stairs after him.

  ‘No. And I don’t appreciate you invading my house unannounced. I’ll have to walk you back to the station now, sick or not sick. Though if you can find your way to where you’re not wanted, you should be able to find your own way back.’

  ‘You don’t have to take me anywhere,’ Mary huffed, following him out to the footpath. ‘Why are you being so horrid? I only came to bring some soup from your aunt who’s that worried about your ungrateful self. I might have saved myself the trouble. Do you think I want to get sick from your germs or traipse across the city on my day off?’

  She took secret pleasure that the beggar hung his head then, until she realised he was shivering and flushed with fever. She could almost feel sorry for him, but not without an apology first. Only the way the fool stood there grinning his sad dog smile at her, she might have to wait until God forgave Satan first. Without thinking, she poked her tongue out at him.

  Instantly, he reached out and started prodding her in the ribs, tickling her like it made no matter w
hat she said or how ungracious he was for her efforts. When he jabbed at the one spot sure to reduce to her to ridiculous giggles, she spied Mrs Carpenter peering around her net curtains, scowling superiorly.

  ‘Cut it out, you brat,’ she said, dragging him away. ‘You’ll be thrown out of your lodgings and serve you right. Go and eat your soup. I’ve left a jar in the pot for you. Not that I got any thanks for it. And what’s wrong with you anyway? Why aren’t you in your bed, if you’re so sick?’

  ‘Struth, woman,’ Tom said, shaking his head. ‘It’s Saturday. You know, I work at the pub three out of four. Only today I got sent off early. I know it’s not much of a job, but it keeps a roof over my head. My boss is funny that way – if I don’t go to work, he doesn’t pay me. Then I don’t eat or pay my rent.’

  He grimaced at the look of doubt on Mary’s face as to how well he was eating or living.

  ‘I’m not going to live like this forever. Just during the war. Men in the trenches aren’t toasting their toes in front of a fire or eating fancy meals.’

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ tears pricked Mary’s eyes, ‘you don’t need to punish yourself because the enlistment won’t take you. You can’t help being ill.’

  He shook off her arm. ‘I’m not ill, woman. I’ve got a bad chest. I could shoot Fritz as well as the rest, any day of the week. They ban me for the once a year I can’t get out of bed. How many of the blokes that go don’t get ill on occasion? From what they say in the paper, more of them spend time out of the battle sick rather than shot.’

  The rest of the walk to the station passed in silence, until they reached the booking office and Mary offered a truce. ‘I’m sorry, Tom. Truly, I am.’

  ‘Don’t be. And don’t give Aunt Pearl reason to worry. Tell her I’m okay. Not one word more.’ He prodded her in the direction of the platform ramp, before burying his face in his handkerchief and staggering back the way they had come, coughing ripe to hawk up his stomach.

  Mary felt the devil. You cannot help pushing in where you’re not welcome. And opening your big gob. Someone always gets hurt.