The Seamstress Read online

  An aunt was sick in the bath, unable to make it to the toilet outside, down the back. One of the girls (from that peculiar branch of the family) made such a cutting remark to Hal that he stopped singing ‘Mother McCrea’. The girl started to sob and fell into a state of incurable hiccups while helpers pushed her head between her legs and told her to drink water from the wrong side of a glass.

  Hal took Daphne out to the vegetable patch to push her against the wall and give her one. Daphne was desperate to get it but looked nonchalant, as though she had no interest whatever. But he’d no sooner got her skirt well up and his member out when he realised he had to urinate first. He did so, copiously, all over Jock’s strawberries, then stumbled and fell into the beans, breaking the light bamboo stalks, so carefully placed. He lay inert, mumbling, Daphne forgotten.

  Desecration and insult ruled. The uncle with the accordion insisted that his daughter, who was a genius, should play for them. The girl had to be coaxed, and Eve, who had been calling for ‘La Golondrina’, was crying, ‘And swing it!’ But the child’s reluctance to play got on Eve’s nerves and she told her brother the kid could shove her accordion up her arse. It was an unforgivable thing to say to your brother, and that contingent looked around for their hats and coats.

  Ben and Eve met by chance out in the lower hall. But chance, nothing; they knew. Had been eyeing each other off, had been seen eyeing each other off. Down the back lane they reeled, clutching a bottle of gin between them. After a few tries they found the path that led to the graveyard. Their joy ride, as Ben called it, was unplanned and wordless. The party’s two most talkative people, he who had the gift of words, she with the unstoppable mouth—they didn’t have time for a syllable between them. In a patch of dry grass beside a headstone they tumbled, clawed and panted and rooted until exhaustion took over. He passed out after a while and she careened back to the party through the dark.

  Once back, Eve looked around for another drink. Jock silently passed her one, which she snatched.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  ‘Be careful, Eve. There are kiddies here. Bubs is over there.’

  ‘Be careful Eve! The hell with you. Telling me about the kiddies. What are you really thinking?’

  Disgust made his low voice quiver.

  ‘Take a hold of yourself.’

  With a swift toss, she emptied her glass of beer full in his face. It stopped everyone. An appalled silence fell.

  Jock wiped his face and she went to strike him but he caught her hand in mid-air and, with an open palm, swiftly slapped her defiant face.

  ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’ she said to Willa, incredulous.

  ‘Come on, Sis. You started it.’

  And in turn, Eve let fly with a slap to Willa’s face—a smack that rang through the room. Willa stood her ground, straight-backed, and steadily looked at her older sister. She did not put her hand to her stinging cheek. Her gaze was sombre and without anger as the red finger marks spread across her cheek. Eve whimpered and fell in a heap. She might have been the one chastised.

  His face was an uncomplicated one. Round, even cherubic, eyes that easily creased into laughter, auburn hair that flopped over to one side in a cowlick when long. A schoolboyish look and antics to match.

  The feeling in his gut and his head, even his balls, was something he couldn’t lay a name to. Everything about him and in him was hurt and hot. He felt buggered, that was it. He’d go and swallow some pills. Couldn’t remember when he’d last had a couple.

  ‘You’ll have to take these for the rest of your life, Ben,’ his mother had said when he was a lad.

  ‘They won’t make me better?’

  ‘They’ll keep your condition under control.’

  The boy had obediently taken them but mumbled, ‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’

  And his mother nodded. ‘No, I wouldn’t, I certainly won’t.’

  This made him think again, his mother’s circumspection, or was it shame?

  ‘Why, is it catching?’

  ‘People imagine it is. They don’t understand. But it’s best to keep it to yourself,’ said the woman, already fretting for him and for the years in front of him. Gratuitous secrecy on the old diseases, born out of fear.

  Ben was popular, one of the blokes; sickness didn’t become him. Ill health was the last thing you’d connect with his ruddy aspect and strong frame. But he hadn’t gone to the war.

  At three in the morning, her face still hot, Willa was washing dishes she had taken to her own flat. Ben appeared in the doorway, swayed a little and made to move on to the bedroom.

  ‘Where were you?’ she asked, without turning around.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  The tone enraged him and he stepped towards her at the sink. ‘I was fucking your sister in the cemetery, by your father’s grave.’

  Willa looked at him, drying her hands. She threw the towel on the sink. ‘You’re not fit to lick the dirt around my father’s grave. You’ve grown vile,’ she said.

  He moved towards her, fast for a big man. ‘Ill-begotten, low-born Scotch bastard, talk to me like that.’ And slapped her so hard her head was knocked against the dresser. The crack could not be heard down the passage.

  In bed, she lay awake. The blow hadn’t knocked her out; she was stunned. Seeing stars, it was called. He got in beside her, his underpants gaping. She turned away.

  ‘See this?’ He had a long butcher’s knife, a boning knife, which he tapped on her shoulder. ‘Just watch your bloody mouth,’ he advised.

  She was still. Very calm. He placed the knife under the pillow, then took it out to try the blade with his thumb, put it back again. Then he took some pills, which he said were for his nerves, with a swig of whisky. Willa closed her eyes and made herself breathe evenly. Calm and even, calm and even. Until he, too, seemed hypnotised by the rhythm of it and sank into a snoring, snorting sleep. The gleaming tool of his trade, turned weapon, was loose in his hand and she carefully eased it under the pillow. He stirred and reached for it, then fell into sleep again. She lay awake, unmoving, and the hours ticked by so slowly that the dawn would possibly never happen again.

  Joanna woke up early in the morning. Something was wrong on her side of the passage. Muffled noises came from next door and she thought she heard Dad’s voice and Mum’s, but it was not like the times when they were friends and having intercourse with each other. She’d seen them once, it seemed long ago, and would have put a stop to it: Dad on top of her and them both making swimming actions. But she soon realised that Mum was in on it, so she withdrew.

  This was something else, but she couldn’t hear it clearly, as each room was like a large chamber, separate. She was dead tired and not feeling well, as an uncle had given her her first glass of sherry. Instead of going to see what the noise was about, she fell into an unhappy sleep and had dreams of long needles hanging above her head about to come down and pierce her. And she was powerless to stop their descent.

  Eve was in her kitchen, washing dishes. She glanced out the window at the vegetable garden; the strawberries were in ruins, and the beans, but parts of the neatly tilled soil still went unviolated. How is it that we let down the people closest to us, systematically, regularly, deliberately? She rattled the soap in its wire holder through the hot water.

  Bathed, her hair brushed and shiny, and tied up with a pretty scarf, she looked like an advertisement for good living in a women’s magazine. A blue, belted dressing-gown enclosed her slight figure and reached to the floor. It swirled around gracefully in tune with her light movements. No, more than New Idea, or House & Garden, she could have been a player in a current Hollywood musical.

  Willa appeared at her door, with face bruised, demeanour calm, and her hand, which she placed on the table, shaking so badly that it beat a spasmodic tattoo as though she were trying to play her part of some complicated percussion.

  Eve put down the glass she was holding and went to her, ta
king the younger woman’s face between her hands.

  ‘Ah!’ Willa cried in new pain as Eve’s hand touched her head where the lump had come up.

  Eve examined it, both efficient and tender. ‘Dear God. What did I do?’

  Willa sat down slowly at the kitchen table.

  ‘And what has he done to you?’ Eve said in a low voice.

  ‘Different from what he did to you.’

  Eve looked away, then sat down opposite. Willa recounted her night, mechanically. The shaking continued, more like jumping. It overtook her. Eve fetched a small shot of brandy and held it to her lips, holding her head steady with the other hand.

  ‘Hair of the dog,’ she said, with a wan look, then cradled Willa in her fine, generous, unhappy arms, the way she used to when they were children.

  Willa was taken off to Eve’s own bed, and the older woman put the kettle on. It wasn’t too long before Ben’s footsteps were heard down the passage. He was washed and shaved and paused only briefly at Eve’s door, intending to say no more than hello. But she beckoned him in, silently. He came in, unsure of the look to put on his face, as he sat down in his usual way, legs apart, masculine, sizing her up.

  ‘I’ve seen Willa,’ said Eve quietly, as if not to wake her, though the bedroom was two doors down the hallway, well out of earshot.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He cleared his throat.

  The sober morning light had put a new complexion on them both as they faced each other.

  ‘Shame on us,’ said Eve.

  He nodded.

  ‘But you, you’re more than shameful. I know what you did to my sister.’

  ‘Ah, now, wait on, Eve.’

  ‘You wait.’

  She closed the door and quickly opened the drawer built into the table. She extracted a carving knife and held it to his throat. Then the virago was dancing around him in a fury, panting with another kind of passion. Her voice low-pitched and ferocious.

  ‘See this?’ And she brandished it in front of his frightened eyes. ‘Do anything like that to her again and I’ll slit your throat.’ Her hand was low on the handle, near the blade.

  ‘Eve, I wouldn’t touch a hair of that girl’s head! Honest, I was blotto.’

  ‘Listen carefully, and don’t ever forget this. I’ll sneak in one night when you’re asleep and I’ll do you in.’

  He took out a handkerchief. She kept her stance over him while he wiped his face. Jesus, she was like a bloody firecracker.

  ‘Do you realise that if I told Jock about it he’d kill you?’

  ‘Oh yeah? And if I told him about you? Saint Eve?’

  He tried to get his courage back, but could see she didn’t care what he might say, and he was running with sweat. He shifted his backside on the chair.

  ‘I swear. I swear I’ll be good to her.’ And finally he said: ‘I’ll make it up. I know, I know I’m a bastard.’ He was shaking his head and his voice was huskier than usual.

  She was still wielding the knife and he saw the muscles in her arm moving. Jock, trained to kill, was less than ten yards away, harvesting potatoes. He could be seen through the closed kitchen window.

  Eve backed off finally but, keeping the knife in her hand, didn’t turn away. She waited a while before saying in a normal voice, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  He was fanning his chest by pulling his shirt out with thumb and forefinger, in and out, and swallowing as he shook his head. He reached into a pocket to put back the handkerchief.

  ‘Christ all-bloody-mighty, no. Tea. I’ve got to go to work.’

  He walked off, looking wounded.

  There were rats here. They were attracted by the meat next door—and a grocer’s two doors down, where large bags of grain and flour were kept. The family had moved to a house of their own for a few months. It was not a new house, so old in fact the floorboards creaked everywhere and sash windows didn’t stay open without a piece of wood to prop them up. The narrow passage was a thoroughfare for not only Ben but his apprentice and the other butcher to walk through, bringing sawdust and sometimes pieces of rendered fat on the soles of their shoes. Willa scrubbed this passage and polished it regularly in a never-ending cycle of futility.

  The plumbing was Neanderthal, though there were taps in the kitchen and a washhouse outside the back door. But no waste; there weren’t pipes to take the used water away, so that it simply formed in a large, deep hollow outside the kitchen window. This had to be cleared away using buckets, which Joanna and her mother saw to because Ben didn’t. Otherwise, Willa said, the mosquitoes would carry them off, and the hole was becoming a pit. The dunny was right down the back, where a thunderbox ought to be, Ben said.

  Occasionally they saw a rat inside the house and Willa would grasp a broom and bang it one. She became very good, made a game of it.

  ‘Forty love!’ she’d cry to Joanna, as she smacked the rodent with her trusty broom, stunning the creature before she gave it a wallop to finish it off.

  But the place couldn’t be made to stay clean. They missed Murton Street and Joanna got sick with something that made her shiver and feel weak all over.

  Mother and daughter walked the distance to the doctor’s surgery, a mile away.

  ‘You’re a brave girl,’ Willa said, seeing the child’s fever. They’d get the train back, or a taxi, and to hell with the cost.

  ‘Brill’s disease,’ said the doctor. ‘Carried by vermin, m’ dear.’

  Willa bristled but knew the cause and suffered for it.

  ‘Can you give me something to treat her with at home? She won’t have to go into hospital?’

  ‘She should be in hospital.’

  ‘I’ll disinfect everything. Please.’

  ‘A few days might be all that’s needed. Come now, I’ll arrange it for you. And we’ll have to get that old house you’re in looked at.’

  He looked over his glasses at her, kindly enough.

  That was over with now. Weeks had gone by and Dad had got one of his mates to do a bit of plumbing at the back of the house in exchange for some goods he’d got hold of.

  ‘What sort of goods?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Some clothes that fell off the back of a truck.’

  ‘Gee! Where did that happen, Mum?’

  ‘Never mind, a long way away.’

  Willa had heard her prayers and gone back down the hall to the kitchen. Joanna lay wide awake, looking at shapes on top of the wardrobe: a narrow object became the snake hanging over the edge, and there was a lumbering wombat beside it, staring down at her. They only moved if she did.

  The picture of her patron saint, St Theresa the Little Flower, who Willa said was a kind of guardian angel, looked down on her charge with a serene, not to say smug expression. Could she rely on St Theresa to be of help, to intercede? This was the question.

  God bless Mum and Dad and don’t let him hit her tonight, please God. Let him come home sober. She reviewed this: If he comes home drunk and hits her, make her not do anything back, because that makes him worse. So make her not answer back.

  Our Lady might help. Joanna was in the habit of saying long prayers whose words she did not fully understand. The weight of poetry and passion behind them consoled her a little. She launched into a favourite, whispering with rhythmic cadences: ‘Remember oh most gracious Virgin Mary that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided.’ This should do it.

  The front door was pushed open, then shut by itself—not slammed behind him. He didn’t ever bother to close it properly, quietly, knowing the child should be asleep. His heavy steps strode, never staggered, along the passage to the kitchen.

  It only ever took one question to make him furious. Something like: Do you want your tea? Ah, but the tone—that was what he couldn’t bear. Before anyone knew it he was cursing, calling her names and taunting, roaring. And then her retorts.

  ‘You’ve got no sex appeal, no brains,’ he said.


  ‘That’s because I’ve been living with you too long.’

  Silence. Oh, why did you have to say that. Joanna waited, and told her beads, squeezing the five decades of the rosary between her fingers, eyes pressed shut, as if all this concentrated energy, these invocations on her part, would stave off the inevitable.

  She knew the first blow that was struck was not exactly what she heard; what resounded down the hall and into her bedroom like a thread of woe was the noise that followed it, its outcome: the father or mother falling against a chair and its crashing to the floor, or else a plate thrown in the sink. At Murton Street it hadn’t been this bad, because Auntie Eve was just down the hallway.

  It may have been only a few blows, but that was enough to blacken an eye, break a tooth, bruise an ear, make her mother’s head ache for two days afterwards. To Joanna it may as well have been a raining of blows upon herself. It was a matter of waiting it out: this was it. Nothing can go on forever; it would and did subside, finally.

  Jock, straight and dark, was dancing the waltz with Eve. Joanna with her two front teeth missing in the flower girl’s get-up—long white dress, flowers through her hair and a damp posy clutched in her sweaty hand—beamed and looked at the dancers and executed a cartwheel to everyone’s glee. She now did not want to marry Hal, since he was just getting married to someone else, but instead would spend the rest of her life perfecting her cartwheels and handstands and helping Uncle Jock in the garden. Last week there had been a storm so bad it was like something out of the Bible. It destroyed the two gnomes and even the spinach.

  ‘We’ll dig it over and start again, Bubs,’ said Jock.

  Jo looked over the trestle table of debris, the depleted plates and empty bottles of Barossa Pearl—poor man’s champagne. Her parents were standing for once side by side, instead of facing each other with chins up and eyes blazing or slitty or watery. Dad was drinking orange juice!