The Home Girls Read online

  “Take something out to wear,” the thin one said making a space on the bed for the case.

  Inside the clothes were in perfect order, a line of dresses folded with the tops showing, a stack of pants, a corner filled with rolled up socks, nightgowns with the lace ironed, cardigans carefully buttoned.

  The fat one’s hands hovered over them.

  “Which?” she said.

  She touched the pants and they were soon screwed and tossed under her fingers.

  “Stop!” said the thin one and slapped her sister’s hand away.

  She plucked up two pairs of pants and then put them back.

  “Fold them the way she did!” the fat one said.

  The thin one tried but couldn’t.

  “Let me!” said the fat one, but digging in she tossed a dress so that the folded underneath came to the top.

  They looked around at a noise and the foster mother was there.

  “Look what you’ve done!” she screamed and the fat one and the thin one flung themselves together away from the case on the bed.

  They blinked as if blows were descending on them.

  The foster mother turned her head towards the stairs.

  “Hilda!” she cried, squashing her face against the door jamb.

  The body of Hilda the foster mother’s sister who came to the house every day jerked into sight, coming from the bottom of the stairs like an open mouthed fish swimming to the surface.

  The foster mother now had both hands pressed to her face.

  Shutting the fat one and the thin one out of her vision, Hilda went to the case and began to lift little bundles of clothes onto the bed.

  “You go down and pour yourself a cup of tea,” she said.

  The foster mother’s heels went down again, thudding dully this time.

  “Go and have your bath,” Hilda said, her eyes on the folding and the packing.

  They went into the bathroom off the landing.

  There hanging on the shower rail were the clothes they were to wear. The dresses were on hangers, pants and vests and socks were folded over the rail.

  Shoes polished to a high gloss were on a bathroom chair.

  “She told us last night,” the thin one said.

  The fat one’s face remembered.

  Very slow and deliberate she turned the water on.

  She stared at it rushing away without the plug in.

  The thin one sat on the toilet seat and began to pull on her socks.

  The fat one too dressed slowly.

  Before she put her pants on she turned around flicked up her skirt and urinated in the bath.

  It trickled down to join the rushing water.

  Thoughtfully she turned the tap off.

  They stood in the silence staring about them.

  The hard white shining walls stared back.

  “Look!” said the thin one suddenly taking a lipstick from a little ceramic bowlful on a ledge below a cabinet. The foster mother kept them there sometimes using the bathroom to freshen up after housecleaning.

  The thin one uncapped and screwed the metal holder sending the scarlet worm out like a living thing.

  The fat one also took a lipstick out of the bowl.

  She laughed when hers was longer and a shade more scarlet.

  They looked in the mirror and saw not their own reflection but that of the foster mother bracing her jaws and pulling her lips back her cold watery eyes shutting out everything but her own image.

  The fat one turned and leaned across the bath with the lipstick poised.

  Her eyes flashing briefly on the thin one said what she would do.

  Her pink tongue, shaped like the lipstick end, showed at the corner of her mouth.

  She braced herself against the wall with a spread plump hand.

  The lipstick cut deep into the wall sprinkling a few scarlet crumbs.

  The fat one wrote her word.

  Shithead.

  The thin one made a little noise of breathing. She leaned over beside her sister. She was slower and her tongue was out further.

  She wrote cock.

  The fat one made a small noise of scorn.

  She took a step level with a piece of virgin wall.

  She wrote fuck.

  The thin one wrote with the letters going downwards.

  Piss.

  She broke her lipstick when she dotted the i.

  The piece fell into the bath. The fat one laughed and ground it into the porcelain wiping her shoe on the side of the tub.

  Then she climbed onto the side of the bath. High above the words she began to draw.

  It was a penis so big she wore the lipstick down to the metal holder when she finished.

  The thin one climbed up beside her. She drew a cascade of little circles falling from the tip of the penis, the last unfinished because her lipstick stump gave out.

  They jumped down together, the fat one light like a pillow and the thin one bending her knees and creaking when she landed.

  They dropped the lipstick holders on the floor and watched them roll away.

  The door opened then and Hilda was there.

  All that moved was the hair sprouting from a mole at the corner of her mouth.

  “Oh my God,” she said at last.

  Then she breathed in raising her bosom and crossing both hands near her throat.

  The fat one and the thin one jerked their smeared hands away from their stiffly ironed dresses.

  “My God,” said Hilda, able to look at them now. “I’d kill you if I had you.”

  “Yes,” said the fat one and the thin one sounding as if they’d heard it before.

  Hilda flashed open a cabinet and took out a cake of grey gritty soap and dropped it in the basin.

  “Scrub your hands with that,” she said.

  They did standing back with spread out legs to keep splashes off their clothes.

  Hilda was ready with a soiled towel fished from the linen basket.

  “She did everything in her power for you,” she said in a deep and trembling voice. “Out of the goodness of her heart she did every single thing she could.”

  The fat one and the thin one didn’t know what to do with the towel when they had finished wiping, but Hilda seized it and flung it into the basket.

  “Carry your case down,” she said going ahead of them.

  Halfway down the stairs they came in view of the heads.

  The foster mother and a man and a woman were standing around looking up.

  The foster mother’s mouth was stretched in one of her smiles.

  “Your new mother and father have come to collect you. Isn’t that nice?” she said in a gay voice.

  “We’re carrying you off before breakfast,” said the woman nearly as gay.

  “Hilda, whip out into the kitchen and get some apples to chew on the way,” said the foster mother.

  Hilda slipped past the group. The fat one and the thin one watched but the backs of her legs did not speak.

  The woman took a hand of each. She rubbed a thumb on each palm wondering briefly at the cool and gritty feel.

  “You’ll have four brothers and sisters at the cottage,” she said.

  “Cottage,” said the foster mother. “Doesn’t that sound cosy?”

  Hilda returned putting the apples into a paper bag.

  The man picked up the case and everyone moved to the car parked near the porch.

  The fat one and the thin one got in quickly and each sat in a corner of the back seat wriggling until the leather clutched them.

  The foster mother put her face to the half wound up window.

  “Write us a little letter about how you’re getting on,” she said.

  When the car moved off she kissed the tips of her fingers to them.

  Four brothers and sisters, the fat one and the thin one were thinking.

  At that moment the foster mother being shown the bathroom by Hilda was clutching her sister and saying Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, over an
d over.

  The fat one and the thin one weren’t remembering it at all.

  We lived in this beautiful house with our own bathroom, the fat one said to herself seeing in her mind four pairs of entranced eyes.

  The car swerved suddenly to miss an overtaking lorry.

  The man swore and the woman put a hand on his arm to restrain him turning her head to see if the back had heard.

  There was this terrible accident killing our father and mother, the thin one said silently to her imaginary audience.

  Lapsed into their dream the fat one pulled at her corkscrew curls and the thin one twisted the ends of her hair and they watched for the cottage to come into view.

  THE RAGES OF MRS TORRENS

  The rages of Mrs Torrens kept the town of Tantello constantly in gossip.

  Or more accurately in constant entertainment.

  It was a town with a sawmill, some clusters of grey unpainted weatherboard cottages, a hall and the required number of shops for a population of two hundred.

  Even while Mrs Torrens was having a temporary lull from one of her rages the subject was not similarly affected.

  “How’s the wife these days?” a mill worker would say to Harold while they shovelled a path through the sawdust for a lorry.

  The man’s eyes would not meet Harold’s but slide away.

  Remarks like this would be made when life was more than usually dull in Tantello, for example during the long spell between the sports day in midwinter and the Christmas tree in December.

  A mill wife having seen Mrs Torrens behaving like other mill wives in Tantello that day would suggest while chopping up her meat for stew or melon for jam that Kathleen may never have another of her rages.

  It was not said hopefully though just dutifully.

  It took some time for Tantello to settle down after the rage that sent Mrs Torrens and the five little Torrenses flying over the partly-built bridge across Tantello Creek.

  The barrier at the finished end was down so Mrs Torrens one of the few women in Tantello who drove a car ripped across towards the gaping workmen standing with crowbars and other tools.

  “Whee-eee-eee!” they called as they flung themselves out of her way clinging to the rails while she flung the old Ford across, sending the temporary wooden planks on the gaping floor sliding dangerously and landing the car on the gravel bridge approach.

  It paused a second with the workmen expecting it to dive backwards into the creek, then with a groan negotiated the little ridge with the back wheels spitting stones and dust.

  A little Torrens screamed in ecstasy (or relief) and standing behind her mother scooped up handfuls of Kathleen’s magnificent red hair and laid her face in it.

  “Stop that!” cried another little Torrens beside her. “Mumma can’t drive the car properly if you do that!”

  The little Torrenses told their father this and Harold although not often moved to do so repeated the remark to the mill hands and for weeks afterwards Tantello feasted on it.

  “Mumma can’t drive the car properly if you do that!” they chuckled over and over above the screams of the machinery cutting timber, not always seeing each other clearly through the smoke from the smouldering sawdust.

  “How many stories have you got Dad, on Raging Torrens?” asked a little Cleary one night from the floor where he was doing his homework.

  He was Thomas Cleary, aged eleven, and Thomas senior, when there were no fresh stories on the rages of Mrs Torrens to relate or repeat, boasted to the mill hands on the cleverness of his son and his promising future.

  “Head stuck in a book all day long,” Thomas senior would say disregarding the predictions of other workers that he would end up in the mill like most other youth of Tantello.

  Seated by the stove fire now Thomas senior burst into proud laughter at this fresh evidence of his son’s calculating mind and whispered the sentence to have it right to tell at the mill next day.

  “How many stories have you got on Raging Torrens?” he whispered into the fire averting his face so that his wife would not see.

  Thomas and Evelyn Cleary no longer shared anything. She was a stout plain woman with a lot of hair on her face who pulled her mouth down at most things Thomas said. The day before Thomas had brought home a gift of turnips from a fellow mill hand but Mrs Cleary threw them to the fowls declaring they gave her wind.

  “Now the eggs’ll give you wind,” said Thomas but the little Clearys did not laugh with him because they sided with the stronger of their parents in the uncanny way children have of defining where their fortunes lie.

  As far as the stories on Raging Torrens or Roaring Kathleen went there were too many to list here.

  There was the time when she charged out at midnight and flung Harold’s pay in the creek.

  It was an icy July night with a brilliant moon and when the catastrophe was discovered all the Torrenses went to the creek to try and recover the two pounds in two shilling pieces.

  “Oh, Harold I must be mad,” moaned Mrs Torrens thigh deep in water groping around a rock and coming up mostly with flat stones.

  (Harold did not tell the mill hands this.)

  “My little ones’ll die of pneumonia!” she cried, “Oh my little Dollikins, forgive your wicked Mumma!”

  Harold had to rise at four o’clock next morning for an early shift so it was he who said they should go home.

  “What will we eat now?” murmured a little Torrens old enough to understand the simple economics of life, like passing money across the counter of Bert Herbert’s store before goods were passed back.

  “Oh, Harold,” moaned Mrs Torrens, “We can’t even make a pot of tea. There’ll be none for tomorrow if we do!”

  “O, my poor mannikin! You can’t go to work with your innards as dry as the scales on a goanna’s back!”

  She stood in the glow of the stove fire which Harold had got going among the little Torrenses all crouched over it. Her nightgown slipped from her shoulders showing her white neck threaded with blue veins. Her red hair wet from her wet hands was strewn about and her blue eyes welled with tears. Harold stood staring long at her and the little Torrenses looked from him to their mother and back into the heart of the glowing stove. In a little while without anyone speaking they scurried off to bed.

  Kathleen rubbed one icy foot upon the other clutching a threadbare towel about her waist under her nightie to rub dry her icy thighs and buttocks.

  “Lie down on the floor close to the fire,” whispered Harold. “And afterwards I’ll rub you warm again.”

  “Of course,” she whispered back and sinking down reached up both arms to him.

  When the pain of the loss of Harold’s pay had eased it actually became a subject for discussion. Gathered around the meal table the Torrenses talked about what the two pounds would have bought.

  “Pounds and pounds of butter!” cried a little Torrens whose teeth marks were embedded in a slice of bread spread with grey dripping.

  “How many pounds then?” asked Harold. “How much is butter? One and threepence? How many pounds in two pounds? Come on, work it out! Thomas Cleary could!”

  “What else would it have bought Mumma and Dadda?” cried the seven year old Torrens.

  “Tinned peaches, jelly, fried sausages!” screeched her sister.

  “Blankets! One for each of our beds!” cried Mrs Torrens unable to contain herself.

  Then she dropped her face on her hand and shook her hair down to cover her lowered eyes and dripping tears.

  “A new coat with fur on it for Mumma!” said an observing little Torrens.

  Kathleen lifted her head and shook back her hair.

  “I like my old coat best!” she said.

  “See,” said Harold clasping his wife’s hands. “Mumma doesn’t want a new coat. So the money was no use to us after all!”

  Although this deduction puzzled some of the little Torrenses they were happy to see their mother smiling and ecstatic when she flung her head towards Ha
rold and fitted it into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

  They trooped outside to play soon after.

  The creek figured in many of the rages of Mrs Torrens particularly her milder ones.

  When in one of these she took the children to picnic just below the bridge on a Sunday afternoon.

  The normal Tantello people considered this the height of eccentricity, the place for Sunday picnics being the beach twenty-five miles away available to those with reliable cars, and for the others there was the annual outing with the townspeople packed into three timber trucks.

  Tantello Creek was a wide bed of sand with only a trickle of water in most parts, but there was a sandbank a few yards upstream from the bridge with a miniature waterfall and a chain of water holes, most of them small and shallow petering out as they moved towards the main stream.

  This is where Mrs Torrens took the children for a picnic in full view of Tantello taking Sunday afternoon walks across the bridge.

  Mrs Torrens spread out the bread and jam and watercress gathered by the children and they ate on the green slope below the road with an occasional car passing in line with their heads and the walking Tantello staring from the bridge.

  “Go home you little parlingtons and stop staring!” cried Mrs Torrens waving a thick wedge of bread towards the bridge.

  “Are you swearing at us, Mrs Torrens?” said one of the starers.

  “You know swearing when you hear it! Or do you plug your ears after closing times on Saturday when your Pa comes home?”

  “Oh, Mumma,” breathed an agonized Torrens named Aileen, the eldest of the family.

  She shared a seat at school with the group on the bridge.

  Aileen left the picnic then and moved with head down towards the water.

  “Only mad people make up words,” called a daring voice from the bridge.

  Aileen lowered her head further in the silence following.

  Mrs Torrens jumped to her feet to herd the little Torrenses to the water to join their sister.

  “We’ll gather our stones and hold them under the water!” she cried and the little Torrenses with the exception of Aileen dispersed to hunt for flat round stones that changed colour on contact with the running water.

  The little Torrenses watched spellbound when the stones emerged wet and glistening and streaked with oche red, rich browns, soft blues and greys and sometimes pale gold.