The Mothers Read online

  ‘I’ll say! Come over here, love, I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘I’ve got something bigger!’ the first man said.

  ‘Oh, have a heart! Don’t you know how to treat a lady?’

  They turned and stared at her rudely as she passed.

  She stopped to read the faded and torn posters glued to walls and lampposts. Some dated back to Empire Day in May, advertising talks against the war by Adela Pankhurst and Vida Goldstein. On other posters there were lists of the fallen. She read that of the two hundred and fifty men of E Company who had landed at Gallipoli, two hundred and twenty had been wounded or were dead. It was not just Gallipoli and the Anzacs. The Western Front. The Middle East. Most of Footscray had voted against conscription in Mr Hughes’s referendum last year.

  Walking the children home from school, Alma heard the first factory whistle of the afternoon, and already she felt nerves knotting in her belly. Soon Alfred would be locking up the harness shop and getting on his bicycle to come home. Her nerves had nothing to do with Alfred—why should they? It was, she told herself, just part of the excitement of being in a stranger’s home, finding out where everything was kept, learning the rhythms of another household.

  At home, the children waited at the front gate to greet him. Alfred rang the bell on his bicycle as he swept around the corner, taking one hand off the handlebars to lift his hat to them. He had taught Teddy how to shake hands with him like a grown-up. Alma went to greet him too, though she was more reserved. Still, Alfred’s return from work in the afternoons had become a compass point in her day.

  Alfred played with the children in the backyard while Alma went to the kitchen. She peeled the potatoes and put them in a pot of salted water to boil. There was no meat until payday. As she reached for a sheet of newspaper to wrap the potato peelings, her eye happened to catch an article reporting a speech by the Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. The paper was a couple of weeks old.

  This is Empire Day, and we, in whose veins leaps the blood of our race, are glad and rejoice in being privileged to call ourselves British citizens under the banner of the Empire.

  Alma finished reading. ‘What a lot of nonsense,’ she thought, then wrapped the potato peel in a neat parcel and dropped it in the rubbish tin.

  They ate at six o’clock. The children enjoyed mealtimes with Alfred. He told them stories, made jokes and pulled frightening faces. Their mouths stretched into smiles and the trouble left their eyes when they were with Alfred.

  He told them the story of the sleeping princess. Mrs Lovett was out the back at the time, and the three of them had Alfred all to themselves.

  ‘Was she a real princess?’ Teddy asked.

  ‘Oh yes, a real princess. Now there are ugly princesses, of course, but this was a pretty sort of princess—in fact, she was almost as pretty as your mother.’

  Alma got up from the table, went to the sink and began to wash the dishes. With her back turned, she listened.

  ‘Now this princess lived in France, which is probably a place you’ve never heard of, but it is far across the ocean, so far away that they even speak another language. Soldiers from all over the world have gone there to fight Kaiser Bill.’

  ‘Have you ever been to France, Alfred?’ Teddy asked.

  ‘Of course I have, my boy,’ Alfred told him. ‘I sailed the seven seas when I was with the pirates.’

  ‘You were a pirate?’ Teddy asked.

  Alma bit her tongue: she felt that it wasn’t quite fair of him to tease the boy like that. Later, Alfred sat showing them his collection of cigarette cards, which he had pasted into scrapbooks. He had the complete set of cricketers from Murray’s tobacco, but he also had stage stars and circus performers, as well as a set from Ogden’s cigarettes called ‘How to Hold Pets’. Alfred said that some cards had been sent to him by relatives, others he had collected from his own tins of cigarettes.

  Alma wondered—but did not ask—whether Alfred had a sweetheart. He sometimes mentioned this or that shopgirl in conversation about his working day, but casually, without self-consciousness, so Alma thought he was probably not interested in those girls.

  Having married young, Alma never had a job, but now she realised she would have to look for work. All the locals knew that since the war began there were more than two thousand people working at the Colonial Ammunition Company at the end of Empire Street. If the war went on much longer, they would need even more workers. She could see the high brick wall of the factory from Mrs Lovett’s front gate. Many of the workers were girls or widowed or deserted wives. Alma had seen and heard them filing out the turnstile at the factory gates at knock-off time, excited by the moment of freedom, walking in groups of two or three, arms joined, chattering at the tops of their voices.

  After work, men from the factory went to drink at the pub on the corner of Ballarat Road and Gordon Street. She could hear the roar of voices in there as she walked past. Groups of men stood in the open windows with pots of beer and called out to her. At least there was six o’clock closing now, brought in last year, after a campaign by the temperance movement. But after the pubs closed, the footpaths were still crowded with drunken men.

  Alfred was not like those men. He came home straight after work and, anyway, his mother was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. True, on Saturday nights he did go into Footscray with his mates, and he told Alma that they bought beer from a sly-grog shop, after the pubs had closed. Alma read an article in the newspaper about the Dingoes getting into fights with other larrikins outside the Trocadero Theatre. She hoped Alfred was not involved in that.

  There was something about the set of Alfred’s mouth that Alma liked, the furrow of determination in his upper lip. When he was splitting logs, his sleeves rolled above his elbows, he studied the place where the axe would hit. Mrs Lovett noticed her watching him split the wood. ‘There are not too many boys who have Alfred’s willpower,’ Mrs Lovett said. ‘Alfred’s a good egg.’

  When she had arrived at Empire Street that Saturday, Alma had only two pennies in her purse. Now Alfred had begun calling her ‘Tuppence’. Perhaps he meant no harm, but she felt there was something aggressive about the nickname. It made her even more acutely aware that she was a burden.

  As well as the children’s expenses, their clothes and food, there was the shame of living on Mrs Lovett’s charity, especially since she knew that Mrs Lovett was hardly in a financial position to support them. She had not received a reply to the letter she wrote to her husband with Mrs Lovett’s help, requesting that he send money to support his children. She didn’t know what else she could do. Alma imagined him opening the post after his morning glass of brandy, reading the letter with a contemptuous smile and setting it on fire with the tip of his cigar. One day, when anger at her situation made her suddenly decisive, she put on her coat and walked to her old home to have it out with him.

  It felt strange, walking up the path to the house like that. She knocked loudly, determined to fight for her rights. The fact that she had dithered for so long made it all the more urgent that she bring her husband to justice now.

  The door was opened by a stranger. He was an Irishman, to judge by his accent. ‘Fairweather, you say? Never heard of him.’ The man seemed puzzled. ‘You’re his wife?’ He seemed not to understand what she was asking. No, he told her conclusively. He knew nothing about Frederick Fairweather—or Mrs Leicester either,
for that matter.

  On Saturday afternoons, as he now refused to attend the drill hall, Alfred organised a game of tip-and-run on the road in front of the house. All the boys in the street came to play. Teddy joined in the games, happy for the company, while Olive sat with her mother. Alfred would drive the leather ball hard with the homemade bat. The lad retrieved the ball from wherever Alfred hit it—over the neighbours’ fences, even as far as the next street. After playing each stroke, Alfred held his heroic pose for a few moments with the bat above his head, his body angled. Alfred taught Teddy how to bowl, let the little fellow take his turn with the bat and praised him with a ‘Well played, sir!’ or ‘Nicely struck!’ Teddy broke into a smile that lit up his whole face.

  Alma sat on the verandah with her little girl, watching the game and listening to the piano inside. Winter sunshine sucked the sour smell of damp timber from the house and, for a few minutes, Alma felt almost peaceful.

  On Sunday mornings the children now went to Sunday school and Alma sat next to Mrs Lovett in church. This terrible war in Europe, Pastor Goble told his congregation, was only for the benefit of profiteers. He preached of the need for solidarity among workers against the war-mongering capitalist class.

  Alma liked listening to Mr Goble. But the way some of the women at church looked at her made Alma feel that she was being judged. Even people she did not know must have heard something about her, the way they gawked. A part of Alma was still back in the park with the valise, ashamed, nowhere to go. The following Sunday, she let Mrs Lovett take the children by herself.

  Those first weeks when she was learning to play the piano, it was as if there were some intelligence hidden in the music that knew more about Alma than she did. As she held her hands poised above the keys, she was filled with anticipation, as though something extraordinary were about to happen.

  Alma’s mother had kept her home from the age of twelve like a servant, a domestic drudge. Alma had not been allowed to play with other children because there were always more chores. If Alma complained, her mother slapped her, and even kicked her. Other girls in her street had stayed on at school and taken music classes and learned to sing. Alma used to stop what she was doing at the trough and, hands still in the soapy water, she would listen to the sound of a piano or a girl’s lovely voice drifting to her on the evening air. When Mrs Lovett offered to teach her to play, it was the memory of her unhappy childhood that drove Alma to grasp the opportunity. She spent every free moment during the day practising in the gloomy parlour.

  Before long she could play ‘Abide with Me’ well enough—or so she thought. One afternoon, however, when she went outside for a breath of air after she had been playing the piano and singing the hymn, she spied Mrs Thomas’s ruddy face peering at her over the side fence. ‘Was someone skinning a cat in there?’ Mrs Thomas asked.

  ‘I’ve only been at it for a few weeks. Does it really distress you so very much?’

  ‘Well, that kind of noise can grate. I admit I do have sensitive nerves.’

  But, Alma reasoned, Mrs Thomas must have had to listen to far worse, with all those students coming here for lessons. Why does she pick on my playing in particular?

  Alma said, ‘I am sorry that my noise disturbs you. I hope that soon you might be telling me how nice my playing sounds.’

  ‘Don’t they have pianos up where you come from? Up at—where was it—near Bendigo?’ Mrs Thomas looked at Alma mischievously.

  Alma went straight back inside and sat at the piano. Her fingers struck the keys with confidence; idea became sound. And when the piano was finally silent, the music—a feeling she could not put a name to—lived on inside her. There, she said silently to Mrs Thomas. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

  Life felt safe with the Lovett family, but it was as if Alma’s old life had been stolen. She knew it was unreasonable to feel this way. The Lovett family had stolen nothing and given her everything.

  In the evenings, after she had put the children to bed, Alma sat up by the wood stove in the kitchen while Alfred flicked through his albums of cards. His collection had once occupied all his free time, but he seemed bored now. Mrs Lovett sat with her knitting, but soon enough found herself nodding off, and went to bed.

  With his mother out of the way, Alfred came to life. He told Alma stories from the harness shop. Everything about Alfred was quick and excited as he spoke. He was a good mimic, imitating his customers’ mannerisms and their voices. Alma felt that she could see right into his character. Alfred needed to make himself look important to people. The hours he spent working in the great world, his expertise with horses, his popularity among his customers—without these, he might have felt that he was nothing.

  One afternoon when the baker’s cart had stopped in front of the house and housewives were coming out to buy their bread, Alma watched Alfred go instinctively over to the old draught horse and stroke his nose and talk to him.

  Charlie Cotton at the end of Empire Street owned a new Chevrolet motorcar that Alfred said cost £250. Alma noticed more and more cars in the streets of Footscray. She told Alfred that she thought the age of the horse and buggy was over.

  ‘Can you give a car an apple when you feel like it?’ Alfred asked her. ‘Can you slap a car’s mudguard and feel her warm flesh quivering? Can you brush a car and make her coat gleam in the sunlight?’ He waited for an answer. And when she said nothing, he cried, ‘Well? Of course you can’t!’

  Now, sitting by the wood stove late one night in bitter July, Alma suddenly asked him, ‘You don’t suppose your mother is getting sick of us staying here?’

  Alfred leaned forward in his chair, reached across and placed his forefinger against her lips. ‘Hush,’ he said. Alma was shocked. How dare he touch her in such a familiar way? And especially such an intimate part of her person—her mouth!

  She pinched his coat sleeve and gently removed the offending hand. Had she been guilty of anything in word or deed that might have encouraged him to assume such familiarity? Did he not believe she was a respectable woman? Did he privately think of her as a different kind of woman?

  Alma sighed deeply. She herself had come to feel that in a way she deserved what had happened to her. She might have tried harder in her marriage to Frederick. Perhaps if she had turned a blind eye to his failings, she would still have a husband to support her.

  ‘I wish your husband was dead,’ Alfred said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I could marry you.’

  She turned and slapped him full across his cheek. His hand instinctively leaped to the spot. ‘Jesus Christ! What did you do that for?’

  ‘It serves you right, too. Next time I’ll knock your block off.’

  But Alma felt afraid. She had known the moment she slapped him that it was a mistake. The physical contact would only provoke him. In fact, she couldn’t have done a more sexual thing.

  He had said he wanted to marry her in a light-hearted way. She knew he was teasing her. But she also knew that such talk, and such feelings, were dangerous.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said now.

  ‘No worries. She’ll be right,’ Alfred said, still rubbing his cheek.

  ‘Why do you sit up so late, after your mother goes to bed?’

  ‘Oh, have a heart! What are you having a go at me for now? I like to sit up and keep you company for a bit, that’s all.’

 
‘You make it sound like I am a patient sick in hospital.’

  ‘I know you have trouble sleeping.’

  ‘So you know, do you? How do you know?’

  ‘I just know.’ Alfred looked away: she knew he had been spying on her. ‘I love talking to you,’ he went on. ‘Just imagine, we could get married one day and we could be chums and live in the same house and I would never be bored.’

  ‘I am sure your mother wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that.’

  ‘I am not talking to my mother.’

  And when she said nothing in reply, he asked, ‘Well, shall I stay talking to you or shall I wake my mother and talk to her?’

  ‘Stay,’ she said. He made a lunge for her in her chair, but she neatly evaded him. Of course, she realised, this was just a game; if he tried, he would easily overpower her.

  He went over to Mrs Lovett’s single shelf of books and selected Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. ‘Will you read to me?’ he asked.

  ‘You can read perfectly well yourself,’ she laughed at him.

  ‘I only got to the eighth grade.’

  ‘And I only got to grade six! Anyway, you can read—I’ve seen you.’

  ‘I’d like to hear your voice reading.’

  ‘Do you have a favourite?’

  ‘I don’t mind. You choose.’

  He dragged his chair in close to her, as though it were poetry he wanted. Alma chose a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

  Theirs not to reason why,

  Theirs but to do and die…

  As she read to him, she felt his upper arm pressing against hers. How close he was sitting! Now his hand was touching hers, under the guise of helping her turn the page. Alfred listened to the poem gravely, ready to snatch back his trespassing hand.