The Newspaper of Claremont Street (4 page)

‘I see. And?'

‘I like the Bible very much,' Weekly said, ‘I say a bit before I go to sleep of a night.'

‘Oh? And what parts do you say,' Miss Jessop said. ‘Can you tell me one of the things you say?'

‘Before Abraham was, I am.' Weekly looked at the floor.

‘Indeed!' Miss Jessop said, ‘And why do you like that?'

Weekly, keeping her head down, muttered, ‘It reminds me that this school and all the people in it are just nothing.'

Miss Jessop turned pale and twitched her dress.

‘Margarite Morris you may sit down,' she said.

Weekly missed her mother so much, and Victor. She
hated life at the Remand. Miss Jessop seemed to find fault with her all the time. And then there were the dreadful washings in cold water down to the waist every morning and always the placed smelled of greasy food cooking and, at table, the cutlery was greasy and smelled too. She longed for Victor's voice, even if he would just be calling her rude names. She thought about her mother and wondered how she was in the gaol, and kept worrying about Victor.

She ran away from the Remand. She hitched her brown overall in at the waist with a piece of blind cord to make it look more like a dress and she threw her apron away. Years later she regretted wasting the good calico, but this was only when she embarked on her life of thrift where she wasted nothing.

She stood at the side of the gravel track, the heat was unendurable, it was something she had not had time to get used to then. Dry grasses trembled and the voices of the crows made her surroundings desolate. Her father had longed for the country always: all through his years stoking at the steam laundry he had talked of the country. He remembered woodpigeons near a house where he worked when he was a boy, the gentle peaceful sound filled the morning. He talked of the fragrance of new-mown hay, but this country which he knew was very different from the place where Weekly was now.

Sometimes her father and mother argued about the country, their voices rose and then, in the little pause that followed, Weekly's father said, ‘We'd have a pig licence if we moved out.'

‘What good's a pig licence these days,' her mother replied. ‘Yo' couldn't make a living out of pigs these days, they're done all modern in big sheds now.'

‘It's wrong,' her father said, ‘for pigs never to see the light of day,' there was another pause. ‘There's nothing so beautiful as the sun shining through a happy pig's ears.' And as there was no answer to this, the only sound in the kitchen was Aunt Heppie banging away with the iron.

Weekly longed then to hear the sound of their voices, as she stood at the side of the track hoping some cart would come along and give her a lift. She cried a bit for the old kitchen and for the childhood which had gone for ever.

‘Yor Dad'll be here in a minute,' her mother often said, ‘yo' better look out!' He was on shift in those days at the steam laundry and sometimes he made as if to take off his belt to give anyone who was around a taste of the strap. When Weekly heard his step in the entry she ran in and hid behind the mangle. Aunt Heppie too worked in the steam laundry and ironed at home. Every night she ironed white starched things, gophering with a special iron. The kitchen range was covered with different kinds of flat
irons. Aunt Heppie held them up to the side of her face to see if the heat was right; sometimes she spat on one and her spit sizzled and flew off across the kitchen. Weekly longed to hear the steady bang bang of the iron as Aunt Heppie ironed, grim lipped, her face grey with fatigue and later it must have been pain, for she had cancer and sat on alone in the night by the small fire in the scullery poulticing herself with hot rags, and it seemed to Weekly she could hear Aunt Heppie wincing quietly to herself when everyone else in the world was fast asleep. It was soon after her death that her father received the fatal kick from the dray horse.

No amount of wishing could bring this childhood and its sense of comfort back, so Weekly dried her eyes and stood waiting hopefully. A long black hearse drawn by four horses came in a slow cloud of red dust. The manes and tails of the horses were tightly plaited with black braid, fine shudders rippled, one after the other, through their smooth well-cared for sides as they tried to rid themselves of flies. A second cart rumbled by following the hearse; a third cart stopped.

‘Dear child come up beside me,' an elderly woman so flamboyantly dressed that she seemed quite out of place at a funeral helped her into the cart. She peered closely as if she could hardly see.

‘Poor dear child!' And as she drew Weekly to her she
said, ‘There! Sit close, I'm all bones, but sit close or else you might fall. The road is rough.'

The procession of carts with the black horses turned into a little, lonely cemetery of the kind that were scattered all over the place then. The old graves were almost hidden by wild oats. The cemetery was fringed with long-leaved peppermint and trailing eucalyptus. And the yellow-flowered acacias and other flowering trees made curtains between the graves. And among the headstones and crosses, all over the mounds, tiny four-o'clocks flowered.

A heap of earth startled Weekly and beside the heap was a deep hole with pieces of wood laid across it. High above, white clouds flocked without concern across a clear blue sky. Looking up it was as if she saw the sky and the freedom of it for the first time in her life.

‘Poor dear child!' the old woman dressed in black and orange feathers guided her towards the grave, pressing her bony fingers into her shoulders. She had tried to get a lift to run away from the Remand and was at someone's funeral. Whatever could she do now?

‘Your mother was a lovely person,' the old lady whispered and Weekly woke up howling aloud and was sick in the long dry grasses at the edge of the track. She had fallen asleep. No one had come by to give her a lift. It was only a dream and her mother was not dead, only in
gaol. She ran all the way back to the Remand home and was inside the fence in time for the greasy food at tea time.

Now because she was sleeping badly these memories came back to her as vividly as if she was looking at an old photograph album and seeing pictures of the places and of the people.

Nothing had come along the track to take her anywhere.

Carefully Weekly moved her thin old body under the bedclothes. She did not want to smother the kitten. She would have to pull herself out of sleep, which had come too late, and get up and sweep and then go off to work, whether she wanted to or not. She must work and get paid. She wanted the money to add that day to the money she had worked for the day before. She rested a little while longer, lingering on the shiny slopes of her money mountain, seeing all that the money, in its power, promised her.

The morning sky filling the narrow window was changing. A light, as if from pearls, came into the ugly room. Crazy was busy in a corner with the kittens; the first
and largest one, still neglected, cried from the end of the bed. Stiffly Weekly got up from the bed and, taking the kitten in her large rough hands, she hobbled across the linoleum on her bare heels and gently put the kitten with the rest of Crazy's family. But she might have saved herself the trouble for, while she sat taking up the space on the side of the bed trying to draw on her stockings, Crazy stood patiently with the kitten in her mouth waiting and waiting for Weekly to get up from the bed so that she could put the kitten back where she thought it ought to be.

Slowly Weekly attacked her linoleum with a rag soaked in kerosene and polish, then put the kittens on some newspaper and, after sweeping the verandahs and hosing out the toilet, she made her way to the Chathams' where she would be cleaning that morning.

Claremont Street was a very long street, lined on both sides with long-leaved peppermints, very old trees with gnarled and bulging trunks. In the very hot weather each tree made a little pool of shade, and people like Weekly, who walked, hurried from one fragrant canopy to the next. The long leaves trembled and seemed to whisper with a faint rustling, even on days when there was no breeze. Some of these trees were being removed, one after the other, at the top end, as building alterations were taking place. Though the street was quite flat it had a top
end and a bottom end in the minds of the people who lived there. The shop was at the bottom end and so were the remaining old houses including the large old house where Weekly lived. Opposite was the block of flats, it towered quite out of place and design. Its presence however had brought a great deal of custom to the shop and so, after the first shock of seeing the ugly building rise in its gaunt stages of construction, the people paid no attention to it being there.

Looking towards the so-called top end, it was possible to see beyond the suburb and the outer edge of the city to the range of hills, a scrub-covered, low escarpment, half-hidden in a bluish haze in the mornings, a horizon of mystery and promise. It was to this promise Weekly looked every morning as she walked, leaning forwards, her nose leading the way, to the place where she would be working.

Some boys in a passing car hailed her and, turning the car, they drove up close to the kerb slowly alongside her as she walked. Cheekily one of them opened the door and gave a whistle and made as if to draw her into the car as if she was a young girl hoping to be picked up.

Weekly turned sharply.

‘Don't you know nothin' about age?' she said. ‘Can't yo' tell the difference?'

The boys shrank and the car drove on.

‘How are you Weekly?' Mrs Chatham had a cup of tea ready for her.

‘A ball o' dash terday,' Weekly replied. ‘How's yerself?'

Mrs Chatham was never very well. She needed to lose weight. She had tummy troubles, ‘My International problems.' She liked to joke about them, but at the same time seriously attended to her diet. She liked suggestions about diet. Weekly had pleased her last week by suggesting she sieved some prunes.

‘Have you tired any of them little tins and jars, you know: baby spinidge and baby chicken dinner, all strained?'

‘What a good idea Weekly!'

‘Put yerself to bed straight after yer tea,' Weekly leaned on the broom before attacking the laundry floor. ‘When the babbies and the birds go to bed, tuck yerself in, get to bed really early for once. There's nothin' like a early bed. Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.'

Mrs Chatham listened carefully. Weekly found that quite middle-aged women liked the suggestion that they treat themselves like babies, even to the extent of bone and vegetable broth and being put to bed at seven o'clock as they had once put their own children to bed.

‘Terrible fire they've had at the Bakery.' Weekly rested on the conversation. Though she knew of accidents and
weddings, births and deaths, and told the news from one house to another, she never spoke of things that really mattered. About these things Weekly held her tongue. She noticed everything about people. She saw women spending lavishly on their clothes and holidays and on having their homes rebuilt and redecorated and refurnished; and she saw these women, at the same time, worrying, beyond measure, about the price of the meat they were cooking; she saw them almost count out the grains of coffee before making it, and she saw them wear themselves out trudging from one supermarket to another to get eggs or cereals a few cents cheaper.

Weekly understood thrift for she cultivated thrift herself, but what she was unable to grasp was the contradiction of thrift. It was stupid and small-minded to care about these few cents unless all cents were cared about.

There were other things too, intangible and touching in that they belonged to the mess made by the living, but unlike bread crumbs and ashes and dirty fingermarks and dust they could not be cleaned up or smoothed out like crumpled cushions and bedspreads. Weekly knew which wives didn't want their husbands to come home for lunch; she heard sons snarling at their mothers and ungrateful daughters banging bedroom doors. She heard the insincere voices and laughter in telephone conversations and she
wondered how friends could be so treacherous to one another, so watchful over the successes and failures of each other's children. Though they had lots of people round them, and saw each other all the time, it was as if they were all really alone, and worse than this, though they rode horses, played golf, read books, looked at pottery and paintings, perhaps even made pots and pictures as well as dresses, they had not found out what they really wanted to do or to be. They all desperately wanted to do something. But what that something was remained to be discovered.

Weekly found great mental ease in the physical labour of scouring Chathams' bath. In the afternoon she would be going to the Kingstons' and she was about to take a step in the direction she wanted to take in her life. She almost lost her breath over the bath as she thought about the event of the afternoon. She had waited some time, deciding to put off the suggestion she wanted to make till she felt the right moment had come. The excitement of acquisition was upon her. She had to make an effort not to dwell on it for too long. She did not want all her energy to disappear in her excitement, because she knew there was a heap of ironing waiting for her when the cleaning was done.

Victor, had he been able to know, would have approved her method though he would never, for a moment, have understood or tolerated her thrift. Her
method now, like his, involved understanding human nature. Quite early in his life Victor understood human needs and motives. He quickly knew how to excel at school. He saw what was needed and supplied it.

‘Don't show me how to do the sum,' he said to Weekly once, years ago, when slowly with her thoroughness she was explaining long division to him. His impatient clean fingers held his pencil poised. ‘I don't want to know all that part, just give me the answer.'

He had hardly the patience to wait while his older sister covered the page with crooked figures, muttering to herself, counted on her fingers, crossed out and started again. As soon as she had arrived at the answer and was carefully ruling a double line under it he had grabbed it and rushed off to sell it to the highest bidder in the playground before the bell rang for morning prayers.

Later with his clients in expensive rooms Victor had employed methods which included a complete knowledge of human behaviour and reaction. Having expensive tastes himself he knew how to tempt and satisfy these in his clients. And this was how, in refined accents and comfortable chairs, he carried out his business. He discarded the unnecessary and kept his vision and his rapture on chance and on other people's money. His was a thrift of a different kind.

Weekly, keeping in touch with Victor, had no idea
what his business was and for what reasons people consulted him. That money was concerned she was certain, because it was the one thing Victor had shown a true affection for.

Sometimes, when he was ill, he suffered from a delicate chest, she visited him at his request, going timidly to the expensive apartment, taking with her, from the kitchens where she worked, delicacies she never touched herself. She watched him eat an avocado pear.

‘I won't be here much longer,' he told her, helping himself to the breast of duck, orange-glazed and succulent. ‘I've got plans for better things.' Weekly looked shyly at the deep pile of the carpet and at the leather armchairs and the white and gold dining table which had light graceful chairs to match.

Weekly wondered how people could eat and like avocado pears and oysters. She often watched Victor swallow two dozen oysters as if nothing was happening to him at all. The first time, when she carefully gathered up the shells, he asked her what she was doing.

‘To wash 'em o'course.'

‘Wash them? Why in God's name?'

‘To use next time.'

He had laughed so much he had to change the laugh into a groan, his chest hurt him.

Her mother had liked avocado pears. She said they
were refined and elegant and she never sat down to eat one without a starched white table napkin across her lap. Sometimes she was offered one at the places where she worked, and at other times she helped herself.

Perhaps it was a good thing her mother had died like she did. She simply refused to understand that motor traffic could not always stop for the pedestrian. No one saw or heard anything, least of all Weekly, who had been about to cross the road with her. It was a shock all the same and she had missed her mother terribly. Perhaps Victor understood something of this for he had come to visit her, looking uneasily around the room she had shared in those days with her mother. He must have been, Weekly realised later, counting up the value of the possessions because it was soon after that that he had wanted to sell the piano. But Weekly had never forgotten that visit, it was the only time he had ever come to see her.

It was hard work cleaning. Margarite—Morris—Weekly made three faces at herself in the Chathams' master bathroom mirrors. She made a fourth face for being Newspaper.

Victor, in spite of his ways with her, had never been false to her and he had never let her down as she had him. The pain of thinking about him was too much for her.

She went to the Chathams' unmade beds. When people open their doors for their houses to be cleaned,
they open themselves. Every house has its own secret atmosphere which is exposed. Weekly, in the fragrance of the Chathams' clothes scattered by the unmade beds, was grateful to be drawn intimately into the household, so that for the time being she need not think of Victor or his so-called friends. It was all such a long time ago now and so far away.

It was time to go on to the Kingstons'. She could hardly wait to get here because of the thing that was on her mind. She tore off a piece of paper and scrawled a note to Mrs Chatham.

It was the promise of a treat, something to please Mrs Chatham, to make her feel her things were being well cared for. It was like the promise of something nice; she liked to give them treats. Weekly let herself out carefully by the side door and hurried as fast as she could to the Kingstons' place.