Tirra Lirra by the River (7 page)

Colin came in as he was leaving. After Lewie shut the door behind him, Colin continued to stand and stare at it, as if Lewie’s image was imprinted there.

‘You had that fellow in here? Alone?’

I was warned by his goggle eyes, his hollow tone of wonderment. ‘Only for two or three minutes. He came to borrow some butter, but I don’t see why we should lend him things.’

Colin was still staring at the door. ‘Do you know what?’

‘No. What?’

‘I reckon he’s a poofter.’

‘Oh, Colin, he is not. He’s engaged to a lovely girl in Adelaide. He showed me her photograph.’

‘Anyone can have a
photo
of a girl.’

‘Oh, but it had on the back of it, “To my darling Lewie, with all my love”.’

‘I don’t care, I don’t want him in here again.’

How quickly I became sly. After that, when Colin came home, and kissed me, and asked what I had done that day, I would say in an offhand way, ‘Ah … mm … went and helped Ida for a bit. And, let’s see … what else? Goodness, I do hope I have a baby soon. I’m sick of not having enough to do. But never mind, it won’t be for much longer.’

‘It’s been too long already. It’s because you’re frigid.’

‘Perhaps it’s you.’

‘Perhaps. Only, I happen to know it isn’t.’

‘How?’

‘I just happen to know, that’s all.’

‘But Colin, how?’

But Colin would say nothing more, and at that time I was afraid to encroach further on those silences of his, which I still hoped were charged with masculine mystery, and deep suggestion.

There comes back to me the smell of the downstairs hall of the city library. Was it malt? Or vinegar? But though I ascended so often in the wrought-iron cage, and though I sat so often reading in the deep window embrasures, I continued to discriminate in favour of the books lent to me by the artists at Bomera, first because they were crisp and fresh while those in the library were furred with use, and then because they had the approval of people I liked. The gentle watercolourist lent me his favourites: Saki, Chekhov, and Katherine Mansfield, and among the novels I borrowed from others were
Chrome Yellow, Sons and Lovers
, and
The Rainbow
. But it was from furred paper, in the old navy blue covers, that I read
Madame Bovary
.

The ignorance I still pretended of Colin now contended with a tide of theoretical knowledge. One day in the garden of Bomera, when we had been swimming, I watched two of the artists, a young man and woman, playing in the long grass below the timber walk of the pool. They were of a size, and both wore black wool costumes, and they rolled about like little bears, biting each other and laughing. I felt tears rising to my eyes. I had been married for more than two years. I left the pool and walked slowly through the garden to the house, past the rank shrubs, the dirty statues, and the summer-house with the stork on its peaked roof, dragging my towel behind me and hanging my head to hide my tears. I found Ida alone.

‘Oh, Ida, why don’t I have a baby?’

‘Is
that
all you’ve got to cry about?’

‘All!’

‘Well, look, while you’re waiting for this famous baby, why not take a job with me? I’ll pay you well, and what’s more, I’ll teach you to
cut
. You’ve got original ideas, Nora, and your finish is lovely. But you can’t
cut
.’

I said to Colin, ‘Ida Mayo has offered me a job.’

‘No wife of mine is going to work.’

‘Colin won’t let me,’ I said to Ida.

‘Oh, one of those.’

‘It’s his pride,’ I said proudly.

‘Is it? Well, I don’t feel right about you helping me so often for nothing. He can’t object if we make you a dress now and again. Or can he?’

‘No,’ said Colin, very slowly, ‘that will be all right.’

Ida bought the materials and cut the dresses, and I made
them under her direction. I had begun to affect the gypsy sort of clothes the artists’ girls wore, but as she fitted these new dresses on me Ida would say, ‘Now, see how wrong you were about those arty things? These are your style.’

‘Except for those clumpy shoes,’ said Lewie.

‘When he sees you in this dress,’ said Ida, with pins in her mouth, ‘he will want to buy you some new shoes.’

‘I love these shoes,’ I said.

Ida and Lewie said nothing. You could hear them saying it.

Every warm Saturday, Colin took me to the beach, every cool Saturday to the pictures, and every Sunday, whatever the weather, we went to see his mother and Les. We never saw Les’s wife because on Sundays she took the children and went to see
her
mother, with whom Les had been feuding for eight years. It was feuding territory out there.

‘Ooo,’ said Una Porteous, ‘another new frock.’

‘All togged up again,’ said Les.

‘She got those dresses free, gratis, and for nothing,’ said Colin.

‘She’ll have to let them out when the babies begin to come,’ said Una Porteous.

‘If they ever do,’ said Les. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.’

Colin did not speak to me for four days. Then he reconciled himself to me in bed, and afterwards, I wept storms of tears.

‘Oh, stop it,’ he said wearily.

‘It isn’t as if I can help it.’

‘Nobody’s blaming you. I expect you’ll fall one day.’

But I continued to weep because at last I had begun to admit the truth—that my greatest need was not for a baby. Indeed, there were times when I thought that all I wanted in the world was to be left alone in my beautiful room, close to people who never asked, audibly or otherwise, who I thought
I
was, but who nevertheless were interested in the answer to that question.

Then, suddenly, I was no longer frigid. I threw my arms about Colin. ‘Oh, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you glad?’

‘Yes, but I’m reading this.’

I felt that I wanted a baby after all. My night of wild tears seemed a temporary madness.

‘Now we can have a baby,’ I said.

‘Yes, there’s that.’

‘God, you look lovely, Nora,’ said the artists.

‘My dear,’ said the watercolourist sadly, ‘you look as if a light has come on inside you.’

‘God, you look healthy,’ said Lewie with disgust.

‘Ignore him, love,’ said Ida.

Although I still thought, every day, ‘I must show Lewie this,’ or ‘I must tell Lewie that,’ I went less often to Bomera. I bought provisions at Kings Cross or in Macleay Street, and as I carried my basket home, under plane trees full of cicadas, I was proudly conscious of my status of housewife. I cut recipes from newspapers, and every night cooked as splendid a meal as our means would allow. I looked into prams, not with my former speculation, but with an expression of mindless doting, having cozened myself beforehand into liking what I saw. I told Colin that our baby would be a blond boy. I set my lips among the hairs on his sweating chest.

‘I wanted to marry a dark man, but oh, I’m glad now I married a fair one.’

Empty cicada cases lay under the plane trees in Macleay Street. The trees shed their leaves, I read
Women in Love
, and Colin started to take me to football games. I stood with a hand tucked in the crook of his arm, while the cold entered my shoes, sent branches up my legs, and grew through my body like a tree of stone. I clung to his arm and was bewildered when he made an excited forward lunge and forgot that I was there. I was jealous of his absorption in the game, and estranged by
the savagery of his shouting mouth. At home I was hurt when he read the newspaper at the dinner table, and I sulked when he took my arms from about his neck and absently put me to one side. I was unhappier than I had been before. My budget book, with its additions of halfpennies and pennies, threepences and sixpences, and its checked and disputed weekly balances, seemed to degrade my new and passionate love.

‘An extra two-and-six? What for?’

‘My shoes need mending.’

Colin examined one of them. ‘They’ll do for a while yet.’

And still, there was no baby.

‘If you ask my opinion,’ said Una Porteous, ‘you’re leaving it a bit on the late side.’

‘I’ll say!’ said Les.

‘A woman’s figure has got to be ruined sooner or later,’ said Una Porteous, ‘no matter how good.’

I burst into tears.

‘Unless,’ cried Una in a powerful voice, ‘you can’t have any?’

‘Boo-hoo!’

‘Oh, sorry. If I had of known I would of cut my tongue out first. But I was not informed.’

Les spoke in a low but manly voice. ‘I want you both to accept my sympathy.’

Colin looked out of the window.

‘All the same,’ said Una, ‘what a tragedy for Col.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ snapped Colin.

How clear all three of them looked through my tears—as clear and shining as fish in a fishmonger’s streaming window.

Then, one day, I got a daring idea. I ran over to Bomera.

‘Ida, I’ll take that job.’

Ida dropped both hands to her lap. ‘Oh, Nora, I offered it over a year ago. I’m not getting the work now. Haven’t you noticed? It’s this slump. People like me are the first affected.’

‘Ida, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t you worry about me, love. I’ll get by. What’s this about you? I thought he didn’t want you to work.’

‘I’m not asking him. I want to be independent.’

‘Try the big places, I’ll give you a reference.’

I tried the big places. ‘Sorry,’ they said, ‘not just now.’

‘Try the alteration rooms of the big stores,’ said Ida.

But at the big stores they said, ‘Nothing now. Perhaps later.’ Months went by. Whenever I quarrelled with Colin, I rushed out and tried the big places and the big stores. But now they both said the same thing.

‘Not a hope. We’re even putting people off.’

No new magazines were arriving at Ida’s rooms, and Lewie made truth of fiction by coming over to Crecy to borrow butter. Sometimes he stayed for an hour or two, and we sat in a patch of sunlight on the floor, moving as it moved, and made up Ogden Nash verses. People no longer spoke of ‘the slump’, but of ‘the Depression’. At last Lewie became so poor that he was forced to move to a very small room in Bayswater Road.

We sat at his window, looking out. ‘So many people,’ he said. ‘And all those trams. Isn’t it lovely?’

But I was sad. ‘Do you ever feel like being a child again, Lewie?’

‘Not if I had to go back to Wagga to be it.’

One day Colin came home from work looking pleased. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s happened at last.’

“What?”

‘Les is transferred to Forbes. We can go to Mum’s.’

‘What? But not to live?’

‘And why not? Ah yes,’ he said, looking into my face, ‘I well remember you saying you would die if you had to live there. But we will see whether you die or not.’

‘Of course I won’t. I didn’t mean
die
. But why must we go?’

‘Nora, sit down.’

Because, whenever Colin wanted to talk to me ‘seriously’, we had to sit down. We sat down.

‘Nora, haven’t you heard of this Depression?’

‘But you still have your job.’

‘In the meantime.’

‘You mean, you are threatened …?’

‘We are all threatened. For all I know, this week will be my last.’

‘But even so, you have more than a thousand pounds in the bank.’

‘So I’m to eat into my savings!’

‘Is there no alternative to going out there?’

‘I see none.’

‘I do.’

‘What?’

‘Staying here.’

But Colin was giving me his stare of wonderment. ‘Do you know something, Nora?’

‘No. What?’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I am not.’

‘You are. I notice you haven’t once considered Mum in all this. A widow. How is she going to get on without what Les kicked in for his keep?’

‘But you always say Les is a bludg—’

‘I’ll do the swearing round here! He’s a bludger, all right, but naturally, he had to kick in som
e
thing.’

‘Why can’t she make the place into flats, and live in one of them?’

‘Would you like to live in a flat, Nora, after having had your own home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Mum’s different.’

‘I know. That’s why I don’t want to go.’

‘Oh, come on, Nora, be reasonable. It won’t be for long.’

‘Oh. Won’t it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

‘You didn’t give me a chance.’

‘How long?’

‘Oh … just till we see how things work out.’

‘Oh. And after that, could we come back here? Or somewhere like it? Anyway, a place of our own?’

‘I don’t see why not. Come on, now—smile.
That’s
better. Kissie, kissie, kissie.’

I went to Bomera and told the artists. ‘Cheer up,’ they said. ‘It’s not Timbuctoo. Half an hour in the train. You can come to see us often.’

I went and told Ida Mayo. She kissed me. ‘Well, he’s not the only one that’s panicked. Come any time you like, Nora. I’m always here.’

I walked up to Bayswater Road and told Lewie. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you poor thing.’

‘Oh, cheer up,’ I said, ‘it’s not Timbuctoo. I’ll come to town quite often.’

‘Oh, good. And we can go for a walk, or to Ida’s. And if we’re terribly rich’—he raised his voice against the noise of a tram grinding up the hill to the Cross—‘we can go for a
tram ride
.’

Very early the next day, Betty Cust comes to attend to my morning needs and to make me a pot of tea, which she stays to share with me.

‘Do you remember the Depression, Betty?’ I have not slept well, and the question seems a natural extension of my night thoughts.

She replies that she remembers it very well. ‘But it must
have been worse in the south, because such a lot of men came up here. Or perhaps that was because it’s easier to be broke in a warm climate. They used to come to our place for hot water, or for tea or bread or anything else we could give them. Dad said we must have had a chalk mark on our gate, but I think it was only because we lived near the park. One afternoon I was coming home from school across the park, Nora, and a man suddenly sat up from where he had been lying in the long grass. Sat up and stared at me. And then lo and behold a woman sat up beside him. They were both still half asleep. They had been sleeping in the grass with their heads on rolls of blankets. Imagine in those days a woman humping a swag. There were hundreds of men, but that was the only time I saw a woman.’