The Home Girls (16 page)

Oh my goodness, said the breaths jerking from Mother, Grace, Letty and Fred. Father would hear this time!

Father did. His head snapped back as he reared up. He swung the strap around the table like a stockwhip, flicking Rosie's cheek and missing Fred who was skilful at ducking. The strap wrapped itself with stinging force around Tom's neck. Without a sound he leaped from the stool, sailed across the corner of the table and out through the kitchen door leaving it swinging behind him. Even before Rosie started to scream they heard the rustling of the corn as Tom fled through it.

“Oooh, aah,” cried Letty and Grace scuttling back to their places on either side of the shrieking Rosie.

Rosie had flung her head over the back of her chair.

Her eyes were screwed tight and tears ran down her face over the three cornered white mark rapidly cutting into the pink of her cheek.

“Fred should go after Tom, shouldn't he Father?” Letty shouted above the noise.

“Father only meant to hit Tom, didn't you Father?” shouted Grace.

Father took up his knife and fork again. This uncaring gesture caused Rosie to shriek louder.

Father cut savagely into his meat. Rosie leaned towards Grace for comfort but Grace frightened at Father's profile jerked away from her. The pitch of Rosie's scream increased. Mother got up and filled the teapot at the stove.

“Your tea's coming Lou,” she shouted.

The cruelly unloved Rosie stretched both arms across the tray of her highchair. Father dropped his knife and fork, seized the strap and slapped it hard across her arms.

She bellowed now like a young calf and flung the wounded arms towards Fred. But Fred pulled himself away from her and made chewing motions without swallowing, keeping his eyes on his plate. “Take her outside,” said Mother to Letty and Grace.

Grace lifted a stiffened Rosie from her chair and bore her out with Letty trotting alongside. Rosie's arms now marked identically to her cheek, stretched piteously over Grace's shoulder towards Mother.

“Go after that animal,” said Father to Fred. “And bring him back for me to belt the daylights out of him.”

“Yes, Father,” said Fred and left the table. He began to run before he reached the kitchen door.

Father's eyes bored into Mother's plate with so little of her food eaten. She began at once sawing into her meat.

“I baked a batch of brownies this morning, Lou,” she said. “I'll get you one while they're all away.”

But Letty and Grace were in the doorway, Rosie in Grace's arms. Rosie's hair was damp with sweat, her face scarlet. Hiccuping she looked pathetically towards Father. Grace set her down on the floor.

“Rosie has something to tell Father,” Grace said.

“Go on Rosie,” Letty said, giving her a little push.

Rosie stuck half a hand in her mouth and stared at the floor. After a moment she removed the hand and cried out “I hate Tom!”

Father stopped chewing and snapped his head back staring ahead. Then without turning his face he put an arm out in Rosie's direction. She raced for him, climbing onto his knee and laying her head against his flannel she began to sob again.

“See! Father loves you, Rosie,” Grace cried.

“Stop crying now Rosie!” said Letty.

Mother fixed her dull eyes on Grace and Letty. “You two finish your dinner,” she said.

“What about Fred's dinner?” Letty asked, sitting down.

“Pass it up and I'll put it on the saucepan,” Mother said.

“We'll put Tom's in the pig bucket,” Grace said importantly.

“Tom might get bitten by a snake if he's hiding in the corn,” said Letty.

Rosie lifted her face from Father's chest.

“Yes, a big black snake might bite bad Tom,” she said.

Mother reached for Fred's dinner. She saw Father in a sideways glance. He stretched and snapped his head back at the sound of Tom's name. His swallow moved his red throat running down inside his flannel and turning brown at his chest.

His jaws snapped shut and his hard brown eyes darted at Tom's place.

He made a hissing noise under his tongue.

Mother had a vision of Tom flying through the green corn.

She blinked the dullness from her eyes.

One corner of her mouth twitched.

A POOR WINNER

Mrs Halliday a heavy woman climbed the stairs to her flat with her side to side walk, her shopping bag slung over an arm as she used both hands to cling to the banisters rather like someone climbing a rope.

Her stockings were falling down too, but she didn't care. There was a cool dark peace on the stairs and in the hallway and these were the times she felt she owned 102 Park Road.

But she wasn't alone as she thought. Reaching the top of the stairs she saw a man and a woman standing near her door.

The woman she knew. It was Josie Servani whose flat was at the opposite end of the hall. Mrs Servani had two daughters and was deserted by her husband. The daughters were in school being ten and eight and the family lived on a deserted wife's pension. Josie stood now with a hand crunched against her mouth and her eyes both frightened and laughing.

The man had a paper in his hand and with flared fingers made a crisp little edge to the fold.

“It's her,” said Josie removing her hand and holding both prayer fashion to her lips.

“Mrs Rose Halliday?” said the man. She got the clear impression he was dismissing Josie who nevertheless removed her hands from her mouth and brought them together in a little clap.

The man frowned heavily.

“Inside?” he said to Mrs Halliday, holding out a hand palm upwards. He just about had his back to Josie.

Mrs Halliday unlocked the door, worried that she wasn't asking Josie in.

Immediately she was inside the lottery ticket sent to her by her son Tom for her sixty-fifth birthday appeared to spring at her from where it was propped against a coffee canister that held her rent receipts.

I'm being silly, Mrs Halliday said to herself turning from it and pulling out a chair for the man turning the cushion onto its better side.

But I know I'm not, thought Mrs Halliday creaking herself into a chair too and managing not to look into the man's face.

Josie was lingering not too far from Mrs Halliday's door when the man let himself out. On the second step he paused and stared so hard at Josie with his chin tipped up she turned and scurried in the direction of her flat.

The man was seething. Sometimes on occasions similar to this he was given champagne, sometimes he was cried over, sometimes he was promised money (though this seldom eventuated) and mostly he was asked back for a celebration party (which he wasn't allowed to attend under a rule of the lottery office) but never had he encountered a winner like Mrs Halliday.

He remembered her at the table with her arms around her old shopping bag saying nothing.

A waste, a waste a waste! cried the man to himself getting into the car which was shabby and old and in need of replacing.

Give me a rich winner any time.

He got a swift mental picture of Josie, laughing with her head back, her fattish neck hung with pearls and that hand she held to her mouth ringed with winking stones.

“I can just see the bitch!” he said, his words drowned out with the roar of the engine as the car to his amazement started at the first attempt.

Inside her flat Mrs Halliday stared at the closed door as if daring it to open or be knocked upon.

She began almost noiselessly to unpack her shopping bag. First the meat. Unwrapping it a wave of happiness washed over her. She had asked for a piece for a stew and the butcher trimmed it ruthlessly, leaving pieces of red meat clinging to the fat he was discarding. He heard Mrs Halliday's intake of breath and flicking his eyes in her direction he put the handful of discards with the portion she was paying for.

“For your cat,” he said wrapping it swiftly.

Mrs Halliday remembered his hands, so clean pale pink and smooth coming like a nice surprise at the end of his hairy arms.

“Such nice hands,” she whispered putting the meat into the coldest part of the refrigerator.

She usually smelled it for freshness but felt this would be an insult.

She moved about as quietly as she could keeping an eye on the door. She couldn't remember it looking menacing before.

You look different, door.

Don't look different.

She sat at the table and tipped the contents of her purse out trying too late to stop the clatter.

She always counted her money after shopping.

But her hands hovered above it now and in the end she picked it up silently and put it back in the purse.

I don't want to make a noise, she said to herself.

Her eyes were on the door when there was a tap, one knuckle striking once almost shyly.

Mrs Halliday held her body in with her breath and didn't move.

It's not Josie, she told herself. Josie always gives the door one bang and shouts out “It's me!”

But she knew it was Josie.

I will say I was having a rest and didn't hear.

She got up without allowing the chair a squeak and went into the bedroom.

She got onto the bed the way she always did, kicking off her shoes and throwing her legs in the air, wriggling her bottom until it fitted into the centre of the bed. She blew strands of hair out of her eyes as she stared at the ceiling. She heard in her mind the tap of the door and tried to fit an expression to Josie's face.

I don't know how she was looking, she said to herself closing her eyes. But Josie's face kept floating before her and the doorknock repeating in her ears. She couldn't get comfortable and in the end sat up and pulled the covers back to look at the mattress. The pattern was gone, long melted into the thin dull grey fabric streaked here and there with rust. I should try and get that off worried Mrs Halliday. She rubbed a finger on a mark feeling a spring. She rubbed harder and the spring seemed on the point of bursting through the covering. She tried to lift a corner of the mattress thinking it was a long time since she had turned it over but the rolled edge was flattened with age and there was nothing to grip. She put the covers back and lay down again. But she couldn't rest. She put a hand underneath a buttock and rubbed again at the spot where the spring poked her. She moved like a hen settling into a nest and felt lumps around her thighs. Then she turned over and thought she smelled dust. It's old, she thought, older than Tom who was forty-five. I'll have to write and tell him. She wriggled and it was close to a writhe. I don't have to yet, she thought closing her eyes. A vision of Tom's wife rose before her. The wife's name was Mavis and she had sparse sandy hair and watery blue eyes without lashes and a nose that appeared to grow longer when she pulled her thin mouth in which she frequently did. Mrs Halliday turned away from the sight. She rubbed a leg against the mattress trying to smooth away a lump.

She appeared only to succeed in making larger lumps. It's just that I can't lie still, she said to herself. She willed herself to try but after a while gave up and sat up her hair in her eyes and both hands supporting her. A mirror was opposite and she looked long into it as if addressing another person.

“I will have a new one,” she said and waited almost expecting it to answer.

“Yes, a new one,” she said and lay back again. She imagined it richly coloured, smooth and firm and yielding gently to her body and smelling of newness.

She turned over and ran a hand down the side of the old one. I'll have to do something with you, she thought.

She judged the space under the bed but it would not fit there. She placed it with her eyes in different parts of the room but she saw it obscuring the window or making it impossible to open the door. Wherever it was it appeared to half fill the room with a bend in the middle like a drunken old woman struggling to stand upright.

That will be a problem, she thought.

Then she shot into an upright position again.

“Josie can have it!” she said aloud to the mirror daring it to argue.

She fished with her feet for her shoes beside the bed. Josie was forever talking about her need for a new mattress. She and one of the children slept on an old one bowed in the middle like the bottom half of a hoop. In the summer she packed spare blankets into the hollow and the bed when made up looked quite respectable.

Mrs Halliday raked her hair into some sort of order with her fingers and let herself out of her flat and hurried along to Josie's. She felt that fervent inner glow of someone about to do a good deed. The door was open and inside were the two girls leaning over the table where they took their meals and Josie had her back to the sink looking as if she had just imparted some news of great importance. She was startled when Mrs Halliday appeared and the girls drew back from the table as if attached to a length of string.

“Now behave yourselves both of you,” Josie said to them pulling out a chair for Mrs Halliday. Josie turned to take cups from a shelf and set them on the table. The girls sat on one chair, one was a large child and the other thin. They wriggled their rumps together giggling.

“Behave, I said,” said Josie sternly. “Behave in front of—” She lowered her eyes and set saucers under the cups.

I think she was going to call me Rose, Mrs Halliday said to herself astonished.

Josie addressed herself again to the girls.

“Remember you're only children!” she said.

They sobered while digesting this undeniable truth and pressed their chins to their chests allowing themselves a controlled titter now and again.

Mrs Halliday struggled in her mind to find something to say.

She thought of the meat but when the words started up she swallowed them back.

No, I won't tell her that, she said to herself averting her eyes so that she looked directly through the open doorway onto Josie's bed.

There was no build up of blankets in the middle and the dreadful sagging was emphasized because one of the children had obviously sat there when she came in from school. The head and foot seemed to bow towards each other but perhaps the pronounced dip gave this illusion.