Amy's Children (12 page)

“School tomorrow, don't forget,” Kathleen said.

Amy waited.

“I went to that school we passed.” Kathleen dipped her head with the effort of clearing her mouth of her chewed food. Her cheeks were pink and her lashes were down. Amy saw she was pretty. She's clever and she's pretty, Amy thought, frightened, fingering her hair, thinking of her looks, looking about for a reflection of them, partly glad there was nothing to provide one.

“I saw a teacher there and he told me where the high school was and I went there and looked at it.

“It sounded like millions of kids there,” Kathleen said.

She was now at the end of her plate of food. Amy worried that she might still be hungry. There was some jam in the cupboard, some bread too, but it was needed for breakfast. If Kathleen went to school Amy would have to pack her lunch. She had saved some money from her wages, looking to the time when she and Daphne might shop together for some curtains for her sitting room. In spite of her low wage and frugal life style, Amy always had a few pounds in a compartment of her handbag, in case she should fall ill and be unable to work for a week or maybe longer. She could see the money going now on extra food and perhaps clothes and books for school. She felt defeated, cheated. She wanted her old life back. Kathleen stood and lifting her skirt drew a little roll of pound notes from under the elastic of her bloomer leg.

“Fred gave it to me. For school, he said.”

She sat again on her chair swinging a leg, lightly dragging the toe of her shoe across the floor. Amy was able to control her irritation because of the money.

“You have to go with me, the teacher said.” Kathleen pulled her sock up tight. It seemed a habit for moments of tension.

That would result in Amy being an hour or more late for work, the office girls speculating on why, their work suffering, Victor's long face poked out his office door staring from time to time at her desk, expecting it to give out some explanation. She could telephone first from a box she supposed, but she would be better employed getting the business of enrolling Kathleen in high school over as quickly as possible, then taking the first available train to Newtown. She would make an excuse for being late, say she had to go to a dentist to have a tooth stopped, or make a long-distance telephone call to relatives because of family illness.

 

Amy had made only one such a call in her life. She had gone with the Misses Wheatley to the post office one Saturday morning after they had received a letter about their brother Henry in hospital with a badly cut leg, a mattock having taken a bite at it while Henry was fencing. The Misses Wheatley, greatly agitated since they were brought up to place their brother's health and welfare above their own, almost tumbled down the stairs in their haste to seek Amy's help.

She whipped off her headscarf and apron while she suggested they telephone the farm and speak to Henry's wife. Amy said she would book the call for them.

“Then all you have to do is to ask how he is,” Amy said soothingly.

The Misses Wheatley, looking doubtful of their ability to do this, trotted one on either side of Amy to Petersham Post Office. Heather was able to interpret through a conversation with Henry's stepdaughter that Henry was coming home from hospital that morning, and in fact her mother had taken the farm truck to collect him.

The spirits and appetites of the Misses Wheatley returned with their enormous relief, and when Grace turned pale and moist of skin on passing a baker's shop, Amy, feeling young and strong and capable, and grateful for these qualities, bought half a dozen little jam tarts.

She sat the Misses Wheatley in her sitting room and made tea for them all. The eyes of the Misses Wheatley shone behind their glasses, particularly those of Miss Heather. She had spoken on the telephone over all those hundreds of miles for the first time in her life, and if she had to do it again, she would know how. And the tea and tarts would do them until their five o'clock tea, if they took a few good drinks of water between now and then. That would help make up for the cost of the telephone call.

“Anything we can do for Miss Fowler in return we will be only too glad to, won't we Grace?” Miss Heather said around the pastry crumbs.

Amy stood suddenly and swept her plate and knife and fork to the bench where she washed up. She would ask the Misses Wheatley to go with Kathleen to the school. She would write a note for Kathleen to give to the headmaster and tell her to introduce the Misses Wheatley, saying they lived with her mother who was unable to bring her to school. The Misses Wheatley would act as temporary guardians of Kathleen. There would be plenty of schoolchildren placed in similar circumstances, Amy decided. Soldier fathers away fighting, mothers having babies, unable to accompany children to start new schools. There was nothing at all unusual about the idea.

Kathleen dreamily scraped a foot on the floor and kept her eyes on the open kitchen door and the high fence against the back path, the division with the neighbouring house.

Bring your plate here to be washed, said the jerk of Amy's chin over her shoulder. Kathleen took it up and laid it with great gentleness by the dish and tray.

There is something quiet about her, Amy thought. She doesn't bang and clatter like May and Daphne. And Amy steadied the energy with which she worked.

Kathleen took a tea-towel and wiped up, her face tipped to one side and her eyes down.

The Misses Wheatley, on their chairs by the window, were in mourning, following the revelation of Kathleen's background.

“Oh, my goodness me!” Miss Grace said a dozen times.

“I still can't believe it!” Miss Heather said. Mostly they played a few hands of euchre after their tea, but tonight the cards were still in the little box their grandfather made from the first tree felled on their farm, which their sister-in-law had been glad to get out of the house. The box sat on one of the little tables, looking as if it would remain there unopened throughout the evening, indeed throughout the rest of the Misses Wheatleys' lives. It might have been part of a sinful past.

“Misses Wheatley,” said Amy, sitting down on one of the little chairs she had always admired. “I want to ask a favour of you.”

Both women stared at Amy's hips as if she had revealed them for the first time. Their expression said the hips had cheated, deceived them.

“I was wondering if you would walk with Kathleen to her new school tomorrow?”

Miss Heather came forward on her chair and Miss Grace moved back, Heather with a sliding movement, Grace with a jerk.

“I'm sure I don't know how we could,” murmured Miss Heather.

“You know how you pass the big school on your way to the station?” Amy said. A shaft of light from Miss Heather's glasses darted to Miss Grace's and back again.

“Well,” Amy went on, “you turn the first corner and the high school is right there. The back of it joins the other school.”

“There was no high school for us at Dubbo,” said Miss Grace Wheatley.

“Neither was there one for me at Diggers Creek,” Amy said. “But there is one for Kathleen.”

“Poor little thing,” said Miss Heather, looking at the hooked rug where Kathleen had sat.

Amy stood and the Misses Wheatley focused their attention again on Amy's hips. She smoothed them and they took their eyes away as if she had suddenly undressed.

“Well?” Amy put her head to one side, watching the flutter of the Misses Wheatley, like hens disturbed as they were settling on their roost. “If you will, Kathleen will be ready at a quarter to nine.” Amy heard her own steps brisk on the stairs, and as always thought of the carpet she would like there, but now would probably never have.

“If they don't go with you,” Amy said to Kathleen when they were in bed, “can you go by yourself—with a note?”

“We were going to Aunty Daphne's tonight, I thought you said.”

“Aunty Daphne can't take you to school at that hour!” The dark made Amy's voice sharper than she intended.

“Will I have to pretend the Wheatleys are my grandmother—one of them?”

“You don't have to pretend anything!”

“Goodnight Amy,” Kathleen said.

The Misses Wheatley did not take Kathleen to school.

Miss Heather came to the kitchen door while Amy and Kathleen were eating breakfast, and Amy knew at once there was a big change in their attitude.

Although the sisters had free access to Amy's kitchen, and they had never hesitated to enter before, Heather rapped lightly but firmly on the partly open door.

Amy did not smile at her.

“Grace is not well this morning,” Miss Heather said, avoiding the blue shaft from Kathleen's eyes. “I'm sorry we can't go to the school.” She fixed her gaze on Amy's saucepan on the stove, used for warming milk for Kathleen's cereal, a wheat-based biscuit from a packet, more enticing than May's porridge. Kathleen would have relished it more but for the anticipated trauma of starting a new school.

“Miss Wheatley would be alright by herself, I should think, for the short time you would be walking to Station Street,” Amy said, her cold eyes on Miss Heather as if she were the junior at Lincolns, asking to leave work ten minutes early to meet some cousins for a movie matinee, because one of them was a sailor with shore leave.

Miss Heather shook her grey head, and Amy got up suddenly and moved her chair with an angry scrape of the legs on the floor.

“If you would like to move out of here Miss Wheatley you are free to do so,” Amy said.

“I didn't say anything about moving, Miss Fowler.”

“You can say Mrs Fowler if it makes you more comfortable,” Amy said.

“Oh dear me, I don't know what to think,” murmured Miss Heather, clinging to the doorknob and looking back into the hall as if for reassurance that it had not vanished. Amy was at the bench now, energetically stacking her cup and saucer and plate in the washing-up dish, and Kathleen was scraping her plate free of milk-soaked crumbs hoping the noise was not too loud. She took it to the dish and allowed her body to gently touch Amy's.

“I can go by myself,” Kathleen said, “if you write a note.” Amy swept the cloth from the table and flapped it not quite towards Miss Heather Wheatley but near enough to send her trotting towards the stairs.

 

At midday Amy decided she would not spend time eating but would take a train to Petersham, walk to the school and with luck be back by the time her lunch hour was up.

She walked very fast, pulling her green jacket on as she went, slapping her navy blue handbag, making sure her money was inside. I am spending more than I should, Amy thought. All these fares. But it can't be helped. All the morning she had carried in her mind a picture of Kathleen's small anxious face, quite pale, desperate for acceptance.

I just want to make sure she is alright, Amy said to herself, running down the steps at Petersham Station, grateful to see by the clock a good half hour to fit her errand in.

The school was out for midday too. There were children everywhere, all girls. They looked alike, all in navy blue box pleated tunics, blazers and black shoes. Amy felt a sense of panic that she would not be able to pick Kathleen out, then remembered she was wearing her violet printed dress and overcoat.

After a while she saw her on a stone step alone eating a sandwich, one that Amy had made that morning, fitting it into her coat pocket.

Amy saw the other girls' school cases sitting about the playground like brown birds resting in groups, some with a proprietary foot resting on them. Amy felt a pang for the isolation of Kathleen without school case or friend, and rushed towards her. The chatter trailed off as she passed the clumps of girls, their eyes linked her with Kathleen and a teacher dressed in a mannish suit and high-necked blouse grew more mannish, staring hard at Amy. It was plain now that she shouldn't have come, and she sank down on the step beside Kathleen feeling she might be less of an embarrassment there.

“You said Dear Headmaster on the note,” said Kathleen, accusing and mournful. “It's a girls' school and it's a headmistress.”

“You should have told me!” Amy cried.

“The man at the other school didn't say it was a woman!” Kathleen looked at her sandwich as if the last thing in the world she wanted to do was to finish it. “I wish I'd never come!”

Amy felt a jolt inside her. A swift vision of Kathleen with her suitcase at Central Station was sliced sharply away.

“It's just the first day,” Amy said. “I've thought of something. Tonight we'll go to Aunty Daphne's and ask if she will give you Peter's school case. I think she will.”

Kathleen was reminded of the money from Fred and took it from her coat pocket tied in a handkerchief, which she unknotted and counted the pound notes.

“They pinch things here,” she said retying the knot much tighter and looking up under her hair to see if anyone was watching.

“Then let me look after it!” Amy said.

Kathleen shook her head and crushed the last of her sandwich into her mouth. Amy too felt the money should stay with Kathleen, binding her to the course ahead. To pass it over, even temporarily, would be a pointer to defeat.

“I can't stay too long,” Amy said, standing and looking past the clusters of girls to the gate.

“You mightn't be supposed to come,” Kathleen said. She made the paper bag that had held her sandwich into a tight little ball and Amy put a hand out for it.

“I had to do this real hard work by myself at the end of a desk of awful kids,” Kathleen said. “They'll tell me this afternoon which class I go into.

“Probably with the duds.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Amy briskly, as if she were talking to a new girl at Lincolns who claimed she couldn't answer a telephone.

“You don't know anything about me,” Kathleen said and dropped her head close to her knees.