Loving Daughters (12 page)

22

Una put on her tussore dress and cape and came into the kitchen to find the breakfast crockery piled by the washing-up dish on the table and Enid on a chair by the stove with the big ginger cat Thomas on her lap, one hand buried in its fur. The warm skin sent comfort up her arm stopping short of her heart.

‘Shall I help you wash up before I go?' Una said.

Enid raised Thomas to her shoulder almost totally obscuring her face. Thomas flashed slate blue eyes on Una. Rescue me, they said, with alarmed legs pushed at Enid's breast. This is most unusual.

‘Father said to go after breakfast,' Enid said.

‘I know! But I must know what to get!'

Enid stared at the fire for several moments, loosening her hold of Thomas. He flung his tail up and leapt from her, racing for the back door, sliding through the opening, flying across the yard, scaling the fence and making for the sheds. Una wished she could escape so easily.

‘Very well,' Enid said, going to the dresser and taking a pad and pencil from a drawer. She sat at the table very straight and Una stood at the other end, both hands holding her small leather bag, resting it on the table. Enid stared at the bag very hard for a while then lowered her eyes and began to write. Una had to crane her neck to see. She drew back sharply at the first item but said nothing. Enid had written twelve pounds of sugar. Una looked into the pantry where adequate sugar supplies sat on the shelf. Enid looked into the pantry too for inspiration.

‘Yes, dates,' she said. ‘I haven't made a date cake in quite a while. I could make one for Mr Edwards too. It would keep well, wouldn't it?'

‘That depends,' Una said gravely.

‘Depends?'

‘Yes, on where it is listed.' Una inclined her head towards an exercise book hanging from a peg in the pantry. Enid followed her gaze.

‘Do you have it listed under cakes that keep for three days, cakes that keep for a week, three weeks, a month or until doomsday?'

Enid lowered her blushing cheeks over her writing, filling the page with washing soap, caustic soda, olive oil, sago, pearl barley, canned herrings, oatmeal and two rat traps.

‘There!' she said, tearing off the page and handing it to Una who made a crisp edge to the fold and slipped it into her bag.

‘And if Ena has new bacon in, get me half a side as well,' Enid said. ‘Then I can make soup with the ends we have.'

‘Are you sure that is all?' Una said, slipping her bag over her arm and sauntering off through the living room and out the front door.

Enid followed and drew the curtain stealthily to one side just as Una, on the road hunched under her cape, turned and waved. Enid withdrew and fled to the kitchen, pouring boiling water onto the crockery in the washing-up dish, and having to curb an urge to fly into the other rooms and set them in order.

‘I'll have this place looking like a new pin when she gets back!' she said. ‘I'll show her!'

Thomas, who was back in the kitchen having decided to explore further this fireside sitting, and hopeful that it might be extended to food scraps from the larder, twitched his nose and ears. ‘Get out!' Enid cried. ‘Out!' She flung the back door to its widest. Thomas fled, tearing like an orange flame across the yard. ‘If the wretched thing scratches at my pansies, I'll murder it!'

She was giving her berries and ferns arrangement an extra jug of water when a noise outside on the road disturbed her. There were Edwards, his sulky and Una at the front gate, Edwards leaping down and running around the horse's head to help her. She made an arc in the air with her cape flying and he had to settle it at her waist, for her gloved hands were on his shoulders. Together they took parcels from the floor of the sulky and piled them on the roadside.

Enid fled to the bedroom where she tore off her apron. She tore off her dress as well and found a skirt that had been Nellie's. Una had altered it but there was no time to look for another. She put on a blouse that unfortunately had been made by Una too.

‘She'll tell him she makes all my clothes!' Enid cried, close to tears and brushing her hair wildly.

By the time she reached the kitchen she had settled her face and arranged a smile. Edwards and Una were there, unwrapping the parcels, he following her example and folding carefully each sheet of brown paper.

‘Now I have plenty of paper to cut the pattern for Small Henry's christening dress!' Una cried.

‘I told you, dear, where the brown paper was kept,' Enid said extending a hand to Edwards, who dusted some fragments of oatmeal from his before shaking hers.

‘This is splendid, Una, I see you have everything!' Enid said carrying the hefty bacon to hang in the meatsafe.

Edwards sprang forward but Enid had the new bacon swinging from the hook and the old piece into a saucepan and on the back of the stove before he found tongue to beg to help.

‘We shall make soup, and see that Mr Edwards get some!' Enid cried.

‘Will that be quite soon?' said Edwards, his eyes on the large pot.

‘Two days away!' said Enid. ‘Una, take Mr Edwards to the front room and give him a seat by the fire.'

‘I wouldn't mind staying to watch what happens next with that soup!' Edwards said.

‘I'll set an extra place at the table,' Una said, lifting her sharp little chin and flashing her eyes on Edwards, bidding him to follow her.

He did and was sitting up very straight in Jack's chair by the fire when Jack came in.

23

Jack had an armful of wood and looked over it on Edwards, his large face appearing to grow larger. Edwards sprang to his feet and extended both arms, whether for Jack or the wood was not quite clear.

At that moment Enid came from the kitchen and Una from the bedroom. Enid moved wood swiftly in the brass fireside box to make way for the new lot. Why couldn't I have done that? Edwards thought, scurrying for a seat on the couch, where he viewed Jack's solid, unrelenting back. Una took a seat beside him. How cruel that he could not put out a hand and hold hers, lying with palm upturned in her fawn silk lap.

Enid made her way around the table, putting the cruet to the centre, smoothing the cloth here and there. Then she sat, quite abruptly for her, on the other side of Edwards, murmuring to the room generally that dinner was only minutes away.

The two of them, the two of them! He should have gone on with that letter to his mother. He wrote on in his mind. Both these beautiful girls are mine for the asking. He saw Jack suddenly a lonely, sorrowful figure by the fire. He can see us, he's trying not to. Imagine flinging out his arms and crushing each to his side! (I did an extraordinary thing today, Mother. I held them both.)

Una tilted her chin towards the kitchen. ‘Is there something burning out there?' she said.

‘Thank you, dear, if you'd go and look!'

Una did not move.

‘Perhaps I –' Edwards said. Jack turned an astonished face on him, eyes bulging, jaws working, and snatched up his pipe from the mantel as if he had forgotten dinner was yet to be eaten.

Enid stood and made some more adjustments to the table.

‘We're only waiting for Alex and George,' she said, and as she spoke there were noises in the hall indicating that they need wait no longer.

‘Come, Una!' Enid said, ‘and we'll bring dinner in.'

Una, with her gaze caught between the back of Enid's neck and Jack's jaw line, rose and followed.

Alex, with the briefest nod in Edwards's direction, sought a magazine from the mail on the chiffonier and took it with him to the table. Edwards addressed a mournful George standing by the mantel on the coldness of the day outside, and George's answer was to turn and face the fire.

These rude, unfriendly, sullen men, thought Edwards, straightening his back as if a physical duel was not to be discounted. But wait! These girls coming in with downcast eyes, bearing hot and fragrant food, were biding their time, merely playing a part, performing on a stage, beyond the wings a real life waiting. With him, with him! (Dear Mother, if you could see your son now.) He stood sweeping back the chairs for them, then attending to his own.

He made the necessary effort to revert to meekness to say Grace, not missing Alex's sigh as he stroked the magazine beside his plate. Enid fixed cold eyes on it, fingering her knife and fork, and Alex in a little while moved it to a small table within reach.

Authoritative! He would use that word to describe her next time he wrote to his mother. Strong, capable and authoritative. And I can have her!

A hand edged with a silk cuff moved the plate of bread towards him and he lifted thankful eyes. There were the pink cheeks, brown lashes and little creasing frown. Adorable creature! Tapping on his door and asking with girlish wistfulness if he would carry those parcels home for her sister. Loving, obedient, adoring younger sister. One for him, the other the adored sister-in-law.

Bravely, he ran an eye over Jack, eating bread with the last of his meat, George waiting for his pudding, and Alex with his eyes on every part of the room, except on him, reminding him of the bulls of which he was terrified, who blinked their eyes on every other object but the one they planned to paw to death. He would return their hostility with a kindness that would surprise them. He would talk if they wouldn't.

‘Mr Edgar's farm is to be vacant soon, I understand,' Edwards said.

Jack's jaw stopped working on his meat, but stayed thrust out. That doesn't please him then, Edwards thought, looking to Enid for help. She gave it, of course!

‘There will be plenty of families glad to live there. The Hoopers are quite old, and it was a kindness to keep them on.'

‘I must call on them before they go,' Edwards said.

You bet he would, Jack thought, clattering his knife and fork together on his plate. Calling on people! What good does that do? He was overdoing the calling here, and he was lucky he wasn't told about it before he got his legs under the table today. Had Jack not come in cold and hungry smelling Enid's boiled beef it might have been a different story.

Enid had her eyes on the fellow's plate, anxious, you could see that he liked it. Here she was now with a tray of puddings, giving the fellow his first!

‘And yours, Father,' she said, following his plate with a jug of custard. She had made his custard then. That was a little better! He would like to find out how the fellow got here with his horse and sulky. He appeared to walk one day and drive the next. Still on that christening business, he supposed. It wasn't to be here!

‘Cream too, Enid,' he said. That fellow was flooding it on his plate and there would be none for anyone else.

‘Of course,' Enid said, passing the cream his way. ‘But you do tell us too many rich things are not good for us.'

‘My sentiments, too,' Edwards said. ‘The less we have of the good things, the more we relish the little we get.'

He stared for a moment at the heaped spoonful of pudding on its way to his mouth, aware that Una's eyes were on it, starting to fill with laughter above her quirking mouth. He put his spoon on his plate and shook off half its load, then put it back to his mouth nibbling gingerly.

Una put her spoon down and spread her hand on one side of her face, turning it away from the table with her shoulders shaking.

Enid from long habit felt a small ache in her throat and an involuntary twitching of her lips.

Stop it, stop it.

A creeping softness invaded Alex's face and he pushed his pudding about unsure that his throat was ready for it.

Una laughed silently on, twisting her body now until she was looking backwards at the couch.

Stupid, said George's bulging eyes, watching the point of one breast jumping lightly under the silk. She would go off in a moment with a serviette wrapped around her face and leave all that good pudding uneaten. She did, and Enid, arranging her features into primness, went on eating with downcast eyes. Edwards, looking after Una, used his serviette to restore his face to sobriety.

‘Dear me, I do apologize,' he said, with his face emerging more ruddy brown than usual and his eyes a very bright brown.

The laughter had been like sun on the table, going so swiftly you wondered, when the bleakness returned, whether it had been imagined.

Edwards's eyes were on the doorway through which Una had passed. Come back and warm it again, he was thinking.

Jack saw. The fellow and Una! The pair of them giggling together. Wandering about and giggling. All they were good for! The fellow and Una. Of course! That's why he was hanging around on feeble excuses. They made a good pair. She was a flibbertigibbet, and he was a fool!

Enid was on her feet now, looking as if she wanted no part in that silly laughing business, setting out the cups and turning the handles in line with the teaspoons as Nellie used to. There she was, lovingly handling the silver teapot that had belonged to Nellie's mother. Enid, his Enid! All the things in the house she loved and cared for like her children. Her garden she loved equally as well. This was her home, a kingdom to rule over.

She handed the fellow his tea first, but that was only manners. His was next with a little smile, anxious that it was right for him.

Una came back and slid into her place. She had done something to her hair and the fellow was noticing.

Jack took his first swallow of tea. Just the right strength. His jowls relaxed and his eyes blinked a few times, chasing away the hardness. He looked as if he might begin a conversation. Well, really! thought Edwards, his own body losing its tenseness, if this is what a good meal does to a man, bring on more of them, is all I can say. He sipped his tea with relish too, almost feeling the warmth of Una's body for she was close to him, and Enid within arm's reach. The two of them, the two of them! And one for him!

‘Did you have sugar?' Jack said, and held out the bowl. Edwards nearly dropped his cup.