Nine Days (21 page)

‘Take your shoes off, Connie,’ I say, and she does. I put them in the corner out of the way. They’re good shoes. Wouldn’t do to have them stepped on.

‘Your stockings.’

I stand behind her while she takes them off and I fold them up and put them in my handbag to take home.

‘Up on the bench now.’ She wriggles up and sits there, facing forward, hands over her belly.

‘Ma,’ she says, as I lay her down. ‘It’s all I have of him.’

‘You’ll have others. Bend your knees, there’s a good girl,’ I say. ‘Feet flat on the bench. And best take off your knickers. Don’t want them ruined.’

She grips my hand like she’ll pull it off at the wrist. I’d like to tell her there’s nothing to be worried about. That half the married ladies of Richmond have lain on that little bench at one time or another, that it’s just something to be got through.
Part of being a woman. Mrs Ottley hasn’t built up a business like this by letting things go wrong. She must do two or three a day, no trouble, things how they are these days.

The door opens: it’s the old woman who was darning the denim. She’s replaced her floral apron with a leather one and she is carrying a bucket full of steaming water.

‘Don’t get settled,’ she says to me. ‘It’s not the MCG. We got no room for spectators.’

‘Ma, please.’

‘Give her this,’ she says, and she opens the little cupboard under the sink and pulls out a bottle of brown liquid that might be whisky, and a small glass. She pours some for Connie, a healthy inch and a half.

I take the glass and lift it to her lips. She looks at me and I’m struck again by the memory of giving her the cod liver oil, those big eyes trusting me to do right by her. Now, as then, she takes it without a murmur and only after she swallows does her face screw up with the bitterness of it and one hand goes to her throat, which must be burning and she coughs a little. She’s not used to strong liquor. At least there’s that to be thankful for.

‘If you’re scared of this little thing, how would you ever have had a baby?’ I say.

‘Babies are worse,’ says the old woman. ‘No comparison.’

My fingers are starting to hurt from her squeezing. I look down: our hands are white and so close together, for a moment I lose sight of which fingers are hers and which are mine. The skin is stretched tight over the knuckles and they’re pale and smooth like raw bone and still she won’t let go. On
the back of her hand, I can see the web of blue veins like tiny rivers. There’s nothing for it. I can’t stand here all day. I use my other hand to peel off her clinging grip.

There’s no point hanging around at Mrs Ottley’s, nicking back every two minutes to see how things are going, being ignored by those sewing women, pacing uselessly like a man outside a maternity ward. Bedside manner, like the doctors do it. Crueller, kinder. Sometimes these things take hours to pass so I pop home to do the housework: Connie’ll be off her feet for a few days at least and she’ll rest easier if everything’s done. I can’t remember the last time I was in the house alone.

It’s a luxury I’d long forgotten. I doubt I’ve had a minute to myself since I was pregnant with her. That first quickening, you never forget it. The first time you feel it, a cross between a squirming and a kicking, and you realise there’s another whole body enclosed within yours, and it’s made out of your very own flesh. While there’s a child of yours alive in the world, you never really die. They’re a part of your body living on without you. Connie kept me up at night and made me uncomfortable all day with her wriggling. I’d be walking to the shops and boof! A tiny wee knee in the kidney or a heel wedged between two of my ribs. She was my first to term so I thought it was normal. Now I know she was a restless child. The boys were both squeezed in there together and they were lazy as badgers.

Doing housework for yourself is different from doing
someone else’s although it’s the same work exactly. The same sweep of the broom, the same scrubbing of the laundry. There’s a pleasure to it, when it’s all your own. A sweetness. When I’m mopping the kitchen floor with the water from the washing I look out the window at the Hustings’; curtains still drawn as though there weren’t a soul alive in there. Losing a son would be worse than a husband, I grant you. Husbands, you expect them to look out for themselves. And if they do something so stupid as to get themselves too drunk to hold on to a moving tram, with no consideration for the lives of their dependents, what could a wife be expected to do? They brought him home, the police that picked him up off the road. They said it was best he lie here though we had no room for it. In the end, the undertaker sent over some men with a pair of trestles and we took the door off the laundry and they set it up in the sitting room and washed his face and changed his clothes before we sent him on his way. If I had my time again, I wouldn’t of let them lay him out here. I’d of made them take him away. He stank of rum and he’d wet himself. It was no way for the children to remember him.

At the Hustings’, there’s no body to lay out. Losing a child. The grief would only be the half of it. It’s your job to look after them, to make sure things go in the natural order: that’s you first, them second. I can see the upstairs windows. There’s movement in the curtain then it settles back as it was. Perhaps it was the wind. Today will be the worst of it. To be in that house, alone, adrift, childless.

Tonight will be busy at our place. Connie will be resting, but all the neighbourhood women will visit to talk about
the telegram and what it said and how it happened exactly and where he was and how the Hustings were taking it. It’s not gossip, exactly. It’s keeping tabs, making sure everyone knows what’s what before they knock on the door to pay their respects. I move away from the window and look at the clock. Time to get Connie.

I thought she looked pale before. In the feeble light from Mrs Ottley’s dirty louvres, she is white and light as a cloud. She’s still on the bench and there’s a pile of soiled linen in a corner. The shop is quiet and empty: all the sewing women have gone home. Mrs Ottley and Katie have gone home. Standing in the doorway is the old darning woman whose name I never thought to ask, who let me in when I knocked. She picks up Connie’s shoes from the floor and forces them on her splayed feet, hooks her fingers along the heel to make them sit right. Connie offers no resistance or help.

‘I gived her a belt and a towel. You’ll need to change it.’

I nod.

‘And no lifting anything heavy for a while.’

Connie’s eyes are half open but she looks at me. She can see me.

‘Ma. I want to go home.’

‘Yes, yes. Come on then. I’ve changed your sheets and made the bed. It’s all waiting.’

The old woman takes hold of the back of Connie’s shoulders and sits her up. She swings Connie’s legs around and
takes one arm around her neck and I take the other and we get her to the front door. She props Connie against the window while she gets her bag and hat, and then turns off the lights. We all go out together. Connie’s legs down the step one by one while the woman takes her weight.

‘Sweet tea. If she’s still bleeding by the weekend, a hot bath to bring on the rest of it. And no relations for a good two weeks.’

‘The very idea,’ I say.

Out on the street the old woman locks and bolts the door behind us. She adjusts her hat, nods at us, turns and walks the other way, her broad back winding down the street and crossing at the corner. That’s the last I see of her.

It seems hotter than when the sun was straight above and the wind is swirling leaves and papers in circles down the street. It’s the kind of night when young people catch a tram down to St Kilda and sleep on the beach. The paper tomorrow’ll be filled with pictures of them, pillows and all. I need to get Connie home before the boys, have her tucked up in her own bed with a nasty dose of flu so they’ll leave her alone and no nosy questions.

On the street, Connie’s no help at all but somehow she’s not as heavy as this morning. Passersby step around us, heads down, almost colliding with these women walking two abreast, shoulder to shoulder. Sometimes Connie goes over on her ankles and doesn’t fall, she’s that easy to carry. A tram comes along: we’re on it and she slips her hand through the straps and stands suspended. She’s woozy, as you’d expect.

There’s hardly any passengers. The next two trams are easy as well. At our stop I almost lift her down the stairs, no trouble.

Nearly there now. We’re in front of the London Tavern when she doubles up like she’s been kicked in the guts. I can’t keep hold of her, she bends over that fast and wriggles out of my grasp. I lean her against the wall to change my grip, lose hold of her altogether and she slides down until she’s sitting on the ground.

‘Connie.’ It must be close to five. There’s no one around now but it won’t be long. ‘We’ve got to get you up.’

No answer. I sit back on my haunches to think of the best way to move her and my knees ache like something’s going to pop. Then I see a dark stain along the bottom of her dress and think: just my luck for her to choose a puddle to sit down in. I’ll have to soak that as soon as we get home, maybe sponge it with some eucalyptus oil. She’s nothing else to wear to work next week if her good dress is ruined.

I reach for the hem to move it out of the way and find the bluestone underneath is dry. The stain is creeping along the bottom of the dress and spreading upwards. I touch it with my hand and even before I bring my hand to my nose, I can smell it: rich and metallic. A rusty iron roof after rain, baking in the sun.

I move the dress and I see the thin spreading tide of blood as it seeps down between her legs. You’d expect blood but there’s too much here to be right, I know that. I try to lift her again but I can’t manage it. She’s not light anymore. She’s a dead weight in my red hands.

‘Connie. You have to stay here while I get someone to help. Just don’t move.’

She opens one eye and says, ‘We’re moving out west. He’ll like that.’

‘Just stay here a minute,’ I say, and I straighten her against the wall and I wish I had my scarf or a coat so I could tuck her up like she was in bed. ‘There’ll be people down on Swan Street. I’ll be back before you know it.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, Ma.’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘I was going to have it,’ she says, clear as a bell, like she was sitting at the kitchen table and we were talking about what we had in the cupboard for the boys’ tea. ‘I decided. I wrote to him. He was going to come back to me and I’d be here and the baby’d be here and we’d both be waiting.’

‘Sshh.’

‘Ma, it’s down the side in a biscuit tin. Him and me.’

‘Wait one minute. I’m off to fetch someone. Someone to help.’

‘It’s all right, Ma,’ she says. ‘I won’t go anywhere.’

When Connie was a wee baby, I used to leave her in the laundry tub sometimes, having her bath. She’d kick her fat legs and try to grab the water in her fingers. Every mother knows the dangers and I don’t know how I trusted her to do as she was told. I’d never of done it with the boys but Connie, she was different. I’d tell her
I’m leaving for a bit
and
be good
now
and
be on your best behaviour
and
sit up nicely in the water and don’t drown,
and I’d hang the washing on the line or go out to check the letterbox and sure enough, she’d be right there where I left her, good as gold, still splashing away.