It worried her how much she minded that this time it had been Tom.
BLACK BORDERS
EARLY 1917
All through the early months of 1917 the war dragged on with no real gains. The western front ran with the blood of allies and enemies alike. Unlike London, under siege from German aeroplane raids, life on the Australian home-front continued with little disruption. It was with a guilty hand Mary placed groceries on the shop counter, knowing her friends in Scotland would not be doing the same.
In the April, she, along with churchgoers and the not, prayed it a hopeful sign when America declared war on Germany in response to the sinking of U.S. ships, and that their added efforts might finally bring the war to an end.
Talk of a second Conscription Referendum followed on the heels of Billy Hughes’ re-election in the newly formed National Labour Party. Passions flared fierce, opinions divided, often on religious grounds. Mary and Tom had to agree to disagree on the subject. She guessed Tom’s support more about his desperate wish that the acceptance criteria be lowered and him allowed finally to go to the front, rather than anything to do with the influence of religion. Each letter from Nate, shared among them, brought a bitterness to Tom’s tone that worried Mary and Pearl both. Especially on the Sundays he failed to come to tea, insisting it due to his newly acquired second job at the docks – a necessity now, he said, with so many fellows gone to enlist. She and Pearl both suspected he was ill and hiding it from them, as if unspoken the problem did not exist.
With every spare moment of Mary’s own time taken up knitting for the war effort or working overtime herself, outings were few and moments alone between her and Tom rare. All to the good, she told herself, though she often wondered if Tom and his aunt had had words on the subject – if she were imagining the faint strain between the pair.
She couldn’t deny she waited as avidly as her son for Tom’s footsteps on the back step. Conor would toddle to the door and stretch for the high handle like this time he might have grown big enough to reach it. The laddie would squeal with glee when his idol stepped over the threshold, hurling himself onto Tom’s leg. As if a springboard, Tom would fling the boy up and catch him, swinging the little fellow over his head to shrieks of delight.
Of course, she had no right or reason to look for anything more than friendship from Tom. Anything more would spell trouble between him and Pearl and likely between Pearl and herself too. Not to mention Maw and Da. As if it would ever come to that!
She of all people should know better than to trust her foolish feelings in that regard. Look what had happened last time. She was lonely, was all. The war was getting to everyone.
Waiting to cross Bridge Road, one evening late in June, Mary sighed at the sombre faces staring blindly through the windows of a passing tram and wondered if she wasn’t the only one missing a good laugh or good news. Or certain company.
The night air was down already when she stepped into Egan Street, fighting the breeze nipping up the back of her stockinged legs and holding tight to the felt toque trying to tear loose from its hat pin in the wind. She buttoned her coat as she hurried along the footpath when, out of the shadows ahead, to her delight, she recognised Tom’s long-legged lope coming towards her, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out what he had perched on his shoulders, until he came closer and a giggly shriek revealed her son.
‘Jings, man! What are you doing with the wean out in the damp? He’ll catch his death.’ She reached up and snatched the child to her, tipping him up and turning him over, checking his person intact while the chubby cheeks laughed at what he thought a great game. ‘Where’s your Aunty Pearl then?’
Under the light of the street-lamp, Tom’s forehead creased with concern.
‘I’ve been asking the same thing. I found this little bloke in the gutter, bawling his eyes out. No doubt he got lost coming to meet you.’
‘Meet me!’ Mary’s voice rose hysterically. ‘Pearl would never let him trip about on his own.’
‘Calm down. I’m joking,’ soothed Tom. ‘The young monkey probably escaped while she was bringing in the wash. By now she’ll no doubt be searching the streets for him and out of her mind with worry. Come on, we’ll get him home fast.’
He hoisted the little fellow back onto his shoulders and jogged the both of them the last fifty yards to the house. There, it seemed Tom was right. Pearl must have gone in search of the wee runaway for all the windows were blotted in darkness.
They let themselves in through the open side gate and pushed past the shrubberies around to the back door. Mary took her key from her purse, but the door, too, hung open. Startled, she turned to Tom.
He thrust the toddler into her arms and pressed his fingers to his lips, bidding her wait with a wave of his hand. ‘Stay here. I’ll take a look inside.’
He tiptoed through the doorway and snapped on the light. ‘Oh, God, Pearl, no!’
Mary pushed her way inside, mindless to what she might find, to where Pearl sat at the small kitchen table illuminated only by the light shining in from the alcove; no warmth coming off the range or any sign of the tea on. The woman’s vacant eyes glanced up to meet Mary’s. For the briefest second, a flash of panic razed across them, but sighting Conor safe in Mary’s arms, the blank curtain dropped again. A single sheet of black-bordered writing paper shook in her hands; its tell-tale edging bringing a gasp to Mary’s lips.
Without a word, Tom took Conor from her and settled him in his perambulator chair, before picking up the coal scuttle and shovelling a few handfuls into the firebox to get the stove going and relieve the chill air.
Mary dragged a kitchen chair closer to the dazed woman and sat down, patting Pearl’s icy hand lying limp on the table. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Pearl. What can I do for you? Oh, your poor, dear husband.’
Pearl returned a confused gaze, shaking her head. ‘No, it’s … it’s not Charlie.’ Her face collapsed in a guilty mix of grief and relief. Her mouth contorted on the unutterable words. ‘It’s …’
‘No, Pearl, don’t say …’ Mary shook her head, glancing around at Tom, distraught.
He stepped up behind her and squeezed her shoulders, his grip paralysingly tight.
Pearl nodded. ‘Nathaniel.’
‘No!’ Mary echoed an anguished groan from Tom. One hand flew shaking to her mouth. ‘Oh, Pearl. I don’t want it to be your husband, only … Not Nate. He’s but a lad.’
Pearl nodded. ‘His blessed mother will never get over the shock.’ Her hands shook while she laid her sister’s letter on the table-top, smoothing it flat with a trembling palm, over and over, like she might rub away the words as if they’d never been.
Mary’s other hand sought Tom’s gripping her shoulder. His fingers cold, almost … lifeless. She rubbed them under her own, trying to put back the warmth, swallowing the sobs rising in her throat, guiltily aware it not her place to be grieving in front of Nate’s kin. But it was so unfair. Nate only wanted an adventure. To go on one of them big ships and see France or some faraway places.
He hadn’t been afraid to go to war. Not a bit. What did he say? He’d as soon ‘shoot over the buggers’ heads’.
It broke her heart to know his opposite had not been thinking the same.
Later, after she returned from tucking Pearl into bed, leaving the door ajar and a lamp burning in the hallway, she found Tom sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. His shoulders shaking so slightly, she wasn’t sure if he was merely breathing or sobbing. Or if she should leave him be.
Pearl had offered him a bed for the night and, grateful for the excuse, Mary slipped away to fetch blankets and a pillow from the closet to make up the settee in the living room. She tiptoed about the quiet stillness, fighting the urge to turn on every light in the house, overcome the ghosts in the shadows rather than herself. She held a hand to her throat to stem the ache threatening to choke her if she could not let tears come soon.
She’d have gladly done so already, bu
t the three of them had all sat around the dining-room table, after Conor fed and put to bed – their cobbled-together meals congealing on their plates. But for the occasional memory of Nate recounted, the room filled only with the ticking of the clock and the pain of their silent anguish.
Suddenly hands folded around her waist from behind, stalling both her bed-making and urge to sob. Those same hands tugged her around and, before she could reach up to wipe away the tears dripping off Tom’s cheeks, he pulled her tight to his chest.
With his arms wrapped around her, the world could’ve stopped. The pair of them locked in grief.
Then Tom’s chest began to heave. Spasm upon spasm. ‘I should … I should’ve been there with him. Maybe …’
‘It wouldn’t have changed things, Tom. You and I both know we don’t get to decide when we live or die. It’s not up to us.’
Tom shook his head, brusquely, as if ready to argue. But he found no voice.
Poor man. She could not take away the pain of his guilt either.
Instead, she pressed her hands firm to his back and held him close. When at last his convulsions eased, she drew back and her hand crept up to his wet cheeks. His eyes came over shame-filled and he made to pull away.
She shook her head and held his arms firm. ‘Let there be tears, Tom. It don’t mean you’re weak. It’s a blessing to grieve hard. It says you loved hard and were loved back.’ When he nodded, she smiled, relieved he’d not found her words silly in the face of such grief. Or allowed his hurt to turn to anger.
She smiled again when his fingers brushed aside a wayward curl and he kissed the middle of her forehead. So gentle and soothing, she wanted him to keep on. As if he read her mind, his lips travelled down her cheek until they met her own, pressing almost savage, before another sob escaped him and he slowed his kiss to a caress.
It was only then she realised her mouth had answered as hungrily as his own. Breaking all her supposed vows of mere friendship. For that second, Nate forgotten.
A kiss is not an obligation for more. Or about forgetting a friend.
No argument mattered less in that moment. Nor when her hands held Tom’s face again, wiping away fresh tears, her own eyes beginning to brim. ‘Nate will think someone pulled a mighty cruel joke on him, won’t he? A rotten trick. He won’t understand.’
Tom pulled away from her then, throwing his hands in the air as if distraught at himself all of a sudden. ‘I’m sorry, Mary. I wish I could blame only the grief. I’m not being fair to Nate’s memory. He had such a soft spot for you. He’s not gone a day that we’ve known and here I am jumping into his shoes.’
‘No. It was never like that between us.’ Mary shook her head, distress rising in her voice. ‘Nate was a good friend to me, but it weren’t in any way romantic. He only ever knew me huge with a wean on the way, then a misery mourning her dead husband and wanting to run away. Hardly a romantic affair, by any imagination. And Nate never suggested anything other. Not to me.’ She reached again for Tom’s face. Gently, she traced the scar over his eyebrow. ‘So you needn’t fear you’re jumping into his place or his shoes. You’re not second choice, Tom.’
In that moment she knew it true.
A second later, crushed in his embrace, her heart hammered at the mess of it. But it was not the proper time to talk of any feelings between them. Feelings that would open a Pandora’s Box for them both.
Lord, what are you thinking? It’s a sin. You should be running in the opposite direction.
But she couldn’t pull away. The warmth of Tom’s arms pinning her there and her unable or unwilling to resist. Sin or no sin.
LAZARUS
JULY 1917
In the weeks following, Mary had no chance to speak with Tom alone. She was not fooled that he was avoiding her, as much as she avoided him. The bittersweet agony of their shared kiss on the news of Nate’s death had both soothed her and scared her witless. But, as if an unspoken pact, they acted as strangers apart from exchanges of mutual concern for Pearl at Sunday tea, along with a shared delight in a certain wee boy. The same innocent binding them all in hope for the future.
The once slight creases framing Pearl’s lips deepened into runnels, distorting the bow of the older woman’s smile. Even Conor seemed knowing. He would nestle his small face into Aunty Pearl’s neck and lay his hand on her softening cheek, as if to comfort her. It nearly broke Mary’s heart to see.
So she contained her own grief, both for Nate and for the strain in the silence between herself and Tom. She was grateful for time to think, but not for nights spent thrashing the sheets, muttering the Rosary. The once reassuring refrain gave up no answers or comfort to her while she wondered what could be so wrong that two people could find each other at a time when there was so little love in the world. Tom was a good man. A kind man and caring. Not Catholic. Worse, Protestant. But then Sloy was a Catholic, wasn’t he? And a less Godly man could not be counted in her acquaintance. It didn’t bear thinking about. Any relationship, beyond friendship, between her and Tom was wrong. A sin. Besides, it was not about them, but Nate and Pearl for the time being.
When Charles’ scarce letters arrived, Pearl took an age to read what Mary knew for a fact was only a single page offering nothing more personal than a firm reassurance to his wife that he was ‘right as rain’ and ‘giving the Fritzes curry’.
‘Silly bugger.’ Pearl would fold the notes over and get on with the dusting or any such job requiring regimented action. Though Mary noticed, after the shock of Nate’s death, Pearl never answered the front door or fetched the post if she was home alone.
So the day Mary arrived home from work to a telegram boy standing on the front porch, Pearl shaking her head and refusing to take the missive from his hand, she broke into a run. She scooted through the front gate in time to hear the pair exchanging words, before both turned to stare at her. She barely glimpsed the packet in the boy’s hand until it was in her own and she read the print addressed to herself.
‘Who’s sending me a telegram?’
No-one she could think of. Unless something bad had happened at home. Something very bad. ‘Oh, God, not Da?’
Unfolding the sheet, every sound from the street ceased while the words within banged in her ears along with a rush of blood.
REGRET REPORTED PTE L.G. MERRILEES ADMITTED
READING WAR HOSPITAL ENGLAND APRIL 7 GUNSHOT
LEFT LEG SEVERE GAS POISONING MILD WILL ADVISE
IF ANYTHING FURTHER RECEIVED
BASE RECORDS
8/7/17.
Pearl caught her as she slumped against the wall and pushed her into the bent-top chair on the porch. ‘Those imbeciles have their facts more wrong than a beggar on Bourke Street,’ she soothed, reading the advice for herself. But Pearl could offer no explanation as to how such a report could come about, or to Mary.
‘Sweet Mother of God, for a moment …’ Mary turned the page over in her hands, shaking and reading it again, while Pearl ducked inside and returned to tuck a travelling rug tight around her knees.
She pressed a teacup between Mary’s shivering hands and up to her mouth. ‘Drink. It’ll warm you. Sip slowly now; that’s a hefty slosh of my best medicinal brandy.’
Mary barely heard the words, her mind awhirl and fevered. ‘Oh, God,’ she cried, clutching Pearl’s arm. ‘What if Joe got one of them telegrams too?’ The man might drop down dead from the shock. ‘I’ll have to go to the post office first thing in the morning and put in a call to the mine manager in Wonthaggi. He can tell Da to warn Joe, just in case.’
What a dreadful mistake to be made. She shuddered, trying to clear her head of mad thoughts tangling up in one another – pushing away the briefest fibre of wishful thinking cast there against all logic. Even knowing the advice in the telegram wrong, she couldn’t quell the tide of nausea rising in her stomach. God help those poor wives and mothers getting such news for real. Or worse.
She accepted her own upset born more of reading Liam’s name in print
like that – as if he were still alive. Had it been real, she’d’ve cried with relief to get such news, even of him seriously wounded. Pity the stupid beggar hadn’t gone away to war. He’d have been safer there than on the road to Melbourne. Damned canny Scotsman, trying to save the few shillings for a train ticket and ending up dead in a ditch. How much had it cost Joe to bury him? Stupid, stupid bugger!
She crossed herself quickly before slinging the brandy down her throat and gasping as it burned the shock out of her.
‘You didn’t swallow it all at once, silly!’ said Pearl, shaking her head and taking the empty cup from Mary’s now steady hands. ‘Guess there’s no point in telling you anything, except you’d better sit still awhile. You’ll be drunker than a drover’s dog and giving the neighbours something to … Now what’s he doing here on a Thursday?’
Mary’s gaze followed Pearl’s hurried steps to the front gate, a sob of relief catching in her throat – Tom’s tall figure reaching for the latch. Her legs refused to get her on her feet and all she could do was wait for him to come to her.
A moment later, his face came over shocked and she guessed Pearl must be telling him the news. When his stunned eyes searched to meet hers, she could scarcely raise her hand in a wave, but willed him to march through the gate, praying she’d find the strength not to fling herself into his arms in front of Pearl.
But no … Were he and Pearl arguing?
Tom made to push open the gate, only Pearl stood in his way – shaking her head.
A wail from inside the house announced Conor awake from his nap. But Mary could not get out of her chair to go to him, not even when Tom glanced her way before he shrugged helplessly and went away down the street.
The appalling thing was that, when contacted, the Australian Imperial Forces insisted the telegram true and correct. One had gone to Ivor Street first, the boy sent away again with Mary’s forwarding address and a tongue lashing from Maw for not handing over the telegram to her.
No Small Shame Page 21
