The Women in Black (5 page)

9

Patty Williams and Fay Baines were sitting at a table in the Staff Canteen at Goode’s on the second Monday in December. They did not usually have their luncheon break at the same time, but with Lisa on the strength it was now felt to be a convenient arrangement as far as the manning of Ladies’ Cocktail was concerned, because in fact this section tended not to be too busy during the lunch hour, Ladies, it seemed, who bought Cocktail Frocks preferring to do so earlier in the day or else, in a rush, much later. So here they were.

But it was more convenient for Patty than for Fay as any intelligent person might have observed, for such a one would have noted that Fay’s make-up today covered a very wan reality: her eyelids indicated sleeplessness and her pallor dejection.

‘Is that a new face powder you’re trying?’ said Patty. ‘It looks paler than your usual. I always use the same one, myself. Never changed since I left school. I don’t suppose Frank’d notice even if I did,’ she added, with a modulation of tone which promised worse.

Here it came.

‘I could paint my face green and he wouldn’t notice, not him. Oh well.’

And she pursed her lips, because she suddenly thought to herself, I don’t want to be saying things like that to
Fay.

‘The trouble with Frank is,’ she went on, more brightly, ‘he’s got this new boss who he doesn’t get on with. He says he’s too full of himself.’

Ah yes, that was indeed the trouble: it was so much trouble that Frank had disburdened himself of no less than three whole sentences at the Williams steakfest on the previous Friday night, at the conclusion of his first week under the new regime in the Wonda Tiles Sales Department.

‘The new boss is a slimy bastard,’ said Frank. ‘He thinks he owns the place. I don’t know who he thinks he is.’

There was something more specific about his new chief which got on Frank’s nerves and which he didn’t mention to Patty at all, partly because he had not in fact properly acknowledged it to himself: it was something which irritated and in due course infuriated him without his being able to face it squarely and in its entirety. It was that the new boss had placed a large framed photograph of his two sons—a pair of grisly little tykes, eight and ten or thereabouts, Frank would have said if asked—on his desk, his desk at Wonda

Tiles! And as soon as the opportunity had arisen, he’d pointed them out to his subordinates.

‘Those are my two sons,’ he had said, bursting with fatuous pride, ‘Kevin and Brian.’ And he grinned broadly.

‘Eh, very nice,’ said Frank’s workmates.

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Frank.

And then as if all this weren’t quite bad enough, in the pub on Friday night the bastard had re-introduced the topic: and stone me if all the others hadn’t joined in with remarks about their own sons and even their daughters. On it went. Suddenly everyone was boasting about their kiddies; and it was all the fault of this smarmy bastard of a new boss. Frank slunk off home to Randwick in a fine sulk, and when he played golf on the Saturday his handicap went to hell.

‘Well anyway,’ said Patty, ‘he doesn’t like him. I don’t know. We can’t always have what we want, can we? He should try working under Miss Cartright for a week, I told him! Then he’d see.’

And having thus returned the conversation to their common ground, she looked again at Fay.

‘Is it the new powder or is it you?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit peaky. Are you feeling okay?’ And an exciting and horrible notion sprang into her mind: could Fay be under the weather?
Could Fay be pregnant
? She wasn’t eating much: she had a salad in front of her which had hardly been touched. Fay looked up, slightly distractedly.

Her deepest thoughts had been elsewhere.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I was out late last night, that’s all. Not enough sleep.’

Oh, really, thought Patty.

Patty’s speculations were as grotesque a version of reality as usual. The fact was that Fay had had a dislocating experience on Saturday night. She had been at a party given by one of Myra’s cronies in a flat at Potts Point and she had suddenly, for no reason, become aware just before midnight that she was wasting her time: that she had in a sense met every one of the men there before, at every other party she had ever attended, and that she was tired of the whole futile merry-go-round. And what was worse than this, much, much worse, was that there was no other merry-go-round she could step onto; it was this one to which she was apparently condemned, whether she liked it or not, and suddenly now she did not, and there was not a damned thing she could do about it: try, try, try again, and die, she had thought despairingly, as she had travelled homewards in the back of someone’s Holden. And despite all that she had met a man who’d been at the party for a few drinks at the Rex Hotel last night as she had agreed to do, and had spent another inglorious evening making conversation with Mr Wrong, and now, today, she felt entirely washed out, that was all.

‘I just need a good night’s sleep, that’s all,’ she told Patty.

‘Yes, well,’ said Patty, and she looked around the room, and she saw Paula Price, who she used to work with in Children’s, who had done well for herself at Goode’s, having now risen to a position of seniority in Ladies’ Lingerie.

‘If you can spare me,’ she said to Fay, ‘I’ll just go over and chat to Paula; I haven’t seen her for quite a while.’

The upshot of this chat was that Patty returned to her Ladies’

Cocktail post via the Lingerie Department on the first floor, because Paula wanted her to see some
divine
nightdresses which had only just come in: an order which had arrived late but which Goode’s had accepted nonetheless because the stock was so exceptional.

Made in a new improved kind of English nylon which, Paula assured Patty,
breathed
, the nightdresses came in three different styles, in three different colours, but for some reason—perhaps, simply, because the time had come—Patty, against all the odds, had fallen straightaway for one particular model out of all the permutations on offer. When Patty—thin, straw-coloured and unloved Patty—saw the black improved nylon nightdress with the gently gathered skirt edged in a black ruffle, its cross-over bodice and cap sleeves edged in black lace through which was threaded pale pink satin ribbon, her heart was lost, and without a second’s hesitation her hand went, figuratively, into her pocket.

‘Put it on lay-by for me,’ she told Paula, ‘and I’ll settle up next pay-day.’

Well, it wasn’t all that dear, with the staff discount, after all, and she needed a new nightie; I mean, she thought, when did I last buy a nightie? And she looked at the swimming costumes as well, on the way back upstairs to Ladies’ Cocktail, but she left that for another day: I don’t want to go mad, she thought.

10

Fay Baines and her friend Myra Parker were sitting in a booth in Repin’s eating toasted sandwiches, because they were going to a five o’clock, and since it would not finish until after their usual dinner time they ought to have, as Myra pointed out, some proper food to keep themselves going instead of ruining their figures by stuffing themselves with ice-creams and chocolates to stave off their hunger half-way through the film. This was the sort of forward-planning for which Myra was always to be trusted.

Myra’s head was much better screwed down than Fay’s; Myra had a knack for managing the affairs of life. She was now a hostess-cum-receptionist in a nightclub, with a considerable dress allowance, but she did not take advantage of Fay’s discount privileges at

Goode’s, because the evening frocks at Goode’s, she said, were not the type of thing.

‘I need something more glamorous,’ she told Fay. ‘I’ll try the Strand Arcade, or maybe the Piccadilly.’

It was the Saturday following that wan Monday when Fay had sat in front of a salad in the canteen and made such a poor (but interesting) impression on Patty Williams, and she still wasn’t looking her best even though she’d now clocked up several good nights’ sleep. Myra poured herself a second cup of tea from the heavy little silver-plated teapot; she leaned back comfortably in her seat and lit a cigarette, and peered at Fay as she exhaled the smoke.

‘Honey,’ she said—Myra tended to meet quite a few Americans in the line of her duties—‘honey, I don’t like the looks of you today: you don’t look your usual lovely self. Is anything up?’

Fay looked at her plate. What could she say?

‘It’s probably just this new face powder,’ she improvised, ‘I think maybe it makes me look pale.’

‘Then you’d better not use it,’ said Myra, ‘you don’t want to look
pale.
You can use some of mine when we go to the Ladies’. You want to look your best later on, don’t you?’

Myra smiled slyly, and blew out more smoke. She was referring to a dinner engagement with two men she had met at the night club.

‘I’ll bring my friend,’ she had said when the date was suggested to her, ‘she’s game for anything—but a really nice girl: you needn’t get any funny ideas, youse. Fay’s a
nice
girl. And so am I, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘That’s exactly why we want you to go out with us,’ said the more extrovert of the two men, ‘don’t we, eh?’ and he nudged his friend in the arm.

‘Oh yeah, right you are!’ said he.

‘We’ll meet you at the Cross, then, eight-thirty, at Lindy’s,’ said Myra. ‘And don’t keep us waiting.’

‘As if we would,’ they said. ‘Eight-thirty sharp!’

Fay’s heart sank. She had been meeting these men, or others resembling them in every important particular, throughout her adult life. She had eaten their dinners, drunk gin-and-limes at their expense, and she had danced in their arms; she had fought off, and sometimes submitted to, their love-making. She had travelled this particular road to its bitter and now dusty end and her heart now failed her, but to decline this evening’s engagement had been a thing impossible: Myra would have thought she was mad.

‘Gee, yes,’ she told her friend. ‘You never know, do you? He might be the one I’ve been waiting for. Is he tall?’

Myra thought about the less attractive of the two men: the other she had bagged for herself.

‘Not very,’ she said, ‘but he’s not
short.
Just medium. Listen, though,’ she added, quickly, ‘I think he’s rich. I think I remember seeing a gold watch on his wrist. I reckon you’ll like him; I reckon he’s your type. Wait and see!’

‘Yes, okay,’ said Fay, a tiny flicker of hope and courage stirring within her sad heart. ‘I’ll wait and see.’

‘That’s the stuff,’ said Myra.

11

Lisa and her mother were going to the pictures this Saturday evening, too; it was what they usually did on Saturday evenings. Sometimes Lisa’s father came with them; it depended. ‘We’ll wait and see whether your dad wants to come,’ said Mrs Miles to her daughter about half an hour before he was due to come home from the races where he had spent the afternoon and God knew (Mrs Miles never would) how much of his salary. She wiped the working surfaces of the kitchen over once more with a sponge and rinsed it out. Lisa sat at the table.

‘I hope that job isn’t too much for you, Lesley,’ said her mother, looking at her carefully. ‘I was hoping to see you get a bit fatter, now your exams are over.’

‘I’m all right, Mum,’ said Lisa. ‘I’m fine. I’ll get fat in the New Year, after the job ends. I’ll stay home all day and read, and get fat.’

‘That’s a good girl,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘I’ll buy you some chocolate to eat, to help you along.’

‘Oh thanks, Mum,’ said Lisa.

Lisa and her mother had a secret which they had only shared by the fewest of words and looks: a secret and terrible plan had now begun to formulate itself whereby Lisa, should she actually gain the Commonwealth Scholarship which would pay her fees, would in fact, by one means or another and in defiance of her father’s
ukase
, enter the University of Sydney in the new term. The secret occasionally became present in both their minds at once: it then seemed to hover above their heads in the form of a pink invisible cloud which glowed at its margins, too beautiful to indicate, too frail to name. It hovered now, as each imagined Lesley, Lisa, fatter, stronger, and an undergraduate. First, though, they must each—again secretly, in private and alone—suffer the agony of waiting for the examination results upon which all else depended. Three more weeks of this agony remained.

‘There’s your Dad now,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘Let’s see what he wants to do.’

The paterfamilias came into the kitchen.

‘Hello there,’ he said.

He did not kiss them. He stood in the doorway, looking quite pleased with himself, as well he might: his pockets were full of five-pound notes.

‘Did you have a good day, Ed?’ asked Mrs Miles, meaning, did you enjoy the racing.

‘Not bad, not bad,’ said he, meaning, I won over a hundred quid, which begins to make up for the hundred and fifty I lost last week.

‘Will you come out to the pictures with us tonight, Dad?’ asked Lisa. ‘We can see—’ and she gave him an account of the alternative programmes which were showing in the neighbourhood.

‘Oh well, I don’t mind,’ said Mr Miles expansively, ‘I don’t mind.

You ladies choose. Maybe we’ll have a Chinese meal beforehand.

What do you reckon? Lesley can pay for it now she’s working.’

‘Get away with you,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘Lesley has to save that money. We’ll eat at home. I’ve got some lovely lamb chops.’

‘Keep your chops,’ said Mr Miles. ‘I’m only kidding. The treat’s on me. Go and get yourselves ready both of you and let’s be off.’

They ran to do his bidding, almost elated: these moods of good humour were rare enough to be entered into with as much alacrity as gratitude. Lisa put on her pink frock, and looking at herself in the full-length mirror in her mother’s wardrobe thought to herself, it’s not really—it’s not quite—I wish—and realised that without her noticing it at the time, her two weeks at Goode’s had somewhat altered her perception of the Good Frock. Oh well, she thought. I’m just going out with Mum and Dad, it’s not as if—and now realised that all manner of possibilities had started lately to crowd her mind, all manner: that life really was, in all manner of possibilities, truly now and almost tangibly beginning.