In Her Mothers' Shoes (28 page)

‘That’s kind of you. I should help too.’ Rose shifted her heavy basket laden with groceries into her other hand.

‘You do plenty, Rose. You’ve taken her so much baking. She told me she’s lucky to have friends like us. I said we were making the most of it while we could, before we’re burdened with babies too.’

Rose laughed without enthusiasm. ‘That’s true.’

‘I certainly hope it doesn’t happen too soon. Seeing Sally struggling like that, with William running rings around her and her too tired to stop him, I’m not looking forward to it.’

‘I don’t believe you. You know you’d love having children.’

‘Well, maybe a little. I keep expecting it to happen. Maybe …’ Bea stopped to let a noisy goods train trundle past on the Main Trunk Line across the main road. When the noise finally died down, she turned back to Rose and continued. ‘Do you think you’ll be in the family way soon?’

Rose wished she could escape on the goods train. Anything rather than face such a question. What could she say?

‘I hope so.’

‘You’ve been waiting such a long time. I hope so too, for your sake.’

Rose looked down at her low-heeled brogues and attempted a smile. ‘Thank you.’

They walked along the pavement towards their homes, just a street apart.

‘I know, let’s treat ourselves,’ Bea said, taking her arm as they waited for a farm truck to pass before they crossed Carroll Street. ‘Let’s go back to Paton’s tea shop and share a piece of tea cake over a cuppa. I love going there.’

It was tempting. It was over a week since she’d had the chance to have a gossip with Bea. ‘I’d love to, Bea. As long as you promise not to talk babies.’

Bea had been as good as her word. The subject wasn’t mentioned once, not even when a large perambulator blocked the aisle in the tea shop while women gathered around to coo at the contents. But all the way home afterwards, Rose had been haunted by the sound of the baby’s cries – somehow they’d remained in her head, taunting her, reminding her she wasn’t like other women.

~   ~  ~

All through the beef stew, and then the strawberry tart with fresh farm cream for George, she talked about the baby – what he or she would look like, would they be lucky enough to be given a baby with blue eyes like them, would she be dark or fair, would she be healthy in every way? In the end, they agreed, nothing mattered as much as the simple fact of having a baby at last.

‘What I really want is to be able to go out and buy what the baby will need,’ Rose said. ‘But everyone will start asking questions. They’ll want to know who I’m buying baby things for, since I clearly don’t need them for myself.’

‘But we can tell people, surely?’ George said.

‘I don’t think I can. People might laugh at me.’

‘You sound like your mother, worrying about what other people think.’

‘But it’s important. I don’t want to be gossiped about.’

‘Surely not the people here? They’re so kind.’

‘To your face, yes. But they talk behind your back. I can just imagine what they will say.’

She recalled the time when Beatrice had suffered a miscarriage, how other women looked at her in the street, as if she had done it deliberately. Bea had been almost as distraught about that as she’d been about losing the baby. The next time it happened when Rose was with her, she’d poked out her tongue at the offending old bats that had been staring. The two of them had giggled all the way home about such unladylike behaviour and she knew it had helped Bea feel a lot better. 

‘Surely your friends Beatrice and Sally would stick up for you? They wouldn’t let people say anything bad.’

‘I just don’t think I can, George.’

‘But you can’t put it off forever. What about when the baby comes? You’ll have to have the baby’s things ready by then.’

‘I know. I don’t know what to do.’

‘I’ll start by making the baby’s room ready. The little room next to ours with the window over the back garden, that’s where we always thought our baby would go.’

‘Would you?’ She smiled; it was starting to feel like it was really happening.

He nodded.

‘I can choose a pretty wallpaper without everyone knowing, I suppose,’ Rose said. ‘And I can make some curtains. Trouble is I don’t know whether to get pink or blue.’

‘Then choose another colour.’

‘And how will I buy cloth nappies and nappy pins? If I ask for them in the general store, everyone will start asking questions.’

‘If only we were down in Christchurch, your mother would take you into Ballantynes and help you pick out everything you need.’

‘If only. I’d like very much to have Mother here when the baby arrives.’

‘Maybe we can persuade her to travel up and stay.’

‘I’ll try. But you know how much she hates the sea. She refuses to go anywhere near the Wellington ferry.’

‘She could come up by aeroplane to Paraparaumu and catch the train.’

‘She’s scared enough of the ferry. I can’t imagine her trying out something as new-fangled as an aeroplane.’

‘If it means seeing her first grandchild, I’m sure she’ll make the effort to at least try the ferry. You’d better write and tell her at once. She’ll be thrilled to bits.’

‘I have already. And I wrote to Joan too. She’s the only other person I know who’s been through this. I posted both letters this afternoon so they’ll know in a week or so.’ Joan had adopted a baby a couple of years ago. Her letters made it sound a breeze.

‘You should treat yourself to a trunk call to your mother. And hang the expense!’

Rose felt momentary guilt at the call she’d made that afternoon to Wellington and confessed. George didn’t mind.

‘We might get a baby any day. Had you thought about that?’

She had. She would be ready.

He helped dry the dishes then settled into his chair with the paper – the bi-weekly King Country Chronicle. It was edited by their friend Dick Craig; his sister Ailsa covered all the local events.

‘Has Ailsa reported on the Bank Wives’ meeting?’ Rose asked.

‘Of course,’ George beamed. ‘It’s on page three. And you’ll never guess how she finishes…’

‘Don’t tell me, “A sumptuous supper was enjoyed by all”.’

‘A sumptuous supper was enjoyed by all,’ George said in unison with Rose; they laughed. Ailsa wrote that at the end of all her reports.

‘What’s on at the pictures on Saturday night?’

George flicked over the page. ‘
National Velvet.
With Elizabeth Taylor.’

‘Shall we go?’ She knew he’d say yes. They almost always went to the pictures on Saturdays, no matter what was showing, sitting upstairs with their friends while the Maoris sat down below. Rose had never felt comfortable about this arrangement, but it wasn’t her place to upset the order of things.

‘Elizabeth Taylor? Let’s go.’

‘You fancy her.’

‘Never. I’m only interested in the horse.’

~   ~   ~

Rose checked herself quickly in front of the bedroom mirror then, not happy with what she saw, sat on the cushioned stool to make amends. Across her face, paler than most in this farming community known for sun-browned and ruddy complexions, she brushed a trace of powder; on her lips, thinner than she would have liked, she dabbed lipstick the shade of ripe plums, then smiled half-heartedly at the result. Her hair was impossible. She pulled out the restraining pins but her curls, instead of remaining flat on her head, sprang up in joyful unison, untamed and frizzy, the exact opposite of what was in fashion. She sighed and fetched her hat from the box on top of the wardrobe. Thank heavens for hats, she thought as she jammed it down on the annoying curls, removing all but a few around her forehead from public view. Finally, she pulled her summer coat from its hanger in the wardrobe and slipped it on, covering her blue and cream iris-patterned dress. It was one of her favourites, that dress; she knew its hip-hugging skirt flattered her tiny waist without being too fancy for the country-folk she would be mixing with at the Te Kuiti Agricultural and Pastoral Show.

‘The car’s here,’ George called.

She gave herself one final check in the mirror, adjusted her hat again, and picked up her bag from the bed. ‘Coming,’ she called back.

The four of them – George, Rose, her friend Bea and Bea’s husband Maurice – drove across the bumpy pastureland of the show grounds car park with Rose and Bea carefully nursing the flowers and cream china vases.

George and Maurice paid for the tickets at the turnstiles and they entered the show grounds - a vast domain more familiar with hosting rugby and cricket matches but now filled with more than a dozen tents, large and small, hundreds of people and an array of sheep, cattle, pigs and horses of almost every known breed.

‘I’m off to see the show-jumping,’ Maurice said.

‘You girls won’t want us chaps hanging round.’ George followed him. ‘We’ll meet you after the judging and we can have lunch at the tea tent.’

The grass floor of the exhibition tent was lined with neat rows of trestle tables covered in long white starched linen cloths, which were fast filling up with home-made produce as, all around, men and women continued to pour in bearing jars of jam, relish, preserves, baskets of cakes, sponges, scones and biscuits, along with newspaper parcels containing a sizeable portion of the district’s vegetable gardens.

In the floral art corner, the bank manager’s wife Mary Smythe and several other ladies were already snipping and arranging.

‘Oh, there you are Rose. I didn’t think you were entering this year.’ Scary Mary, as Bea had nicknamed her, looked a bit put out. ‘What have you got this time?’ She examined the two arrangements Rose was taking carefully out of her large flat basket and sniffed. ‘Pink and cream? Just two colours? That’s unusual.’ With one eyebrow raised, Mary Smythe turned back, evidently unthreatened, to her own arrangement; Rose took a peek, while pretending to be occupied with her own flowers.

It was a tall, sweeping affair, juxtaposing red gerbera and roses with almost all the colours of the rainbow, a bright crescent-shaped splash that shocked Rose with its boldness. She could see why Mrs Smythe wasn’t worried about her own inferior pastel arrangement; not only was it pale by comparison, it was positively insipid.

Not that it mattered – it was fun creating it, Rose said to herself as she set about the finishing touches, fixing a few stray pieces that had dislodged in the car and setting the two creations together on the white cloth – the large one (representing the mother), reaching out through fronds and tendrils to embrace the more delicate bowl (the baby) – draping the gauze artfully between them. She placed the label, ‘Mother and Baby’ beside the pair, picked up her basket and quietly slipped away while Mrs Smythe was busy berating one of the organisers about the lack of space for her work of art.