Amy's Children (26 page)

The nuns left and Gus came in and took Lebby on his knee on the rocker, and May, impressed by the whiteness of the nuns' wimples and the high polish on their shoes, felt the need to clean the kitchen as a belated mark of respect, and to help eradicate her shame that they had witnessed her housekeeping at its worst.

She swept the small deal table under the window clear of its cut pumpkin, dripping tin, flour, sugar and tea bins and scrubbed it clean, her hands like two restless row boats in a foamy grey sea.

Gus lifted the curls from the back of Lebby's neck and blew on her skin as he had done since she was a few months old.

“It'll cost me that paddock of steers and the old sow and her next litter,” Gus said, giving Lebby's neck a few little bites, causing her to giggle and shriek as she had done since she was one.

The presence of the nuns still invaded the kitchen, infecting May with the disturbing thought that they were able to witness the spectacle of Gus and Lebby.

She sent the bins and pumpkin skittering back onto the damp table.

“Now cut that out! She's gettin' a bit big for that caper!”

Lebby stood with a serious face and smoothed her dress down to sit sedately on the sofa. Gus got up to look for his tobacco on the shelf.

“They'll not be askin' for the full fee by the way they were talkin',” May said to make amends for the reprimand and bring joy back to Lebby's face.

“So long as they don't get her into a black hood and on her knees from mornin' till night.”

“Oh Pa!” Lebby laughed with a big shake of her head.

 

Amy did not like Lebby. She was irritated by her giggle and the way she clung onto Gus, rushing to him when he came inside and walking in the paddocks pressed to his side.

She did little or no work in the house, and May appeared to overlook this while constantly complaining of the chaos.

Amy had dreaded a meeting with Ted, but he was gone by the time she got to Diggers Creek.

“I might as well tell you right off he's shot through again,” May said brutally, then repented at Amy's rush of tears, mistakenly believing Amy had been depending on Ted's support.

Amy picked up her case and took it to the room she would share with Lebby until Lebby left for the convent in a few weeks' time.

“I will be by myself, thank goodness,” she whispered to the mantlepiece where she would put her treasured vases and china cats.

She marked out a space with her eyes where she would put a cot, the iron one she had slept in herself, roped to the rafters of the shed. She would paint it white and hang it with mosquito net.

I mean I'll be by myself only until he comes, she corrected her thoughts, feeling the need to apologize. She thought of waking early and watching for him to wake and snuffle and move his hard little head, butting at the pillow.

I wonder who he will look like, she thought. Me, perhaps. I hope.

 

She did not see Lance again, although she nearly chanced to. He had a new car which she did not recognize when he passed the house on his way down the south coast taking Eileen and Allan and Allan's new girlfriend Marjorie.

Lance thought from Amy's description of the Scriveners' place it was somewhere hereabouts. But instead of slowing down to try and pick it out, he pressed the accelerator and shot ahead, in sudden fear that Allan, given a similar description by Kathleen, might become suspicious.

But Allan was totally engrossed in Marjorie, an arm along the back of the seat holding her shoulder, his other hand holding hers in her lap.

Marjorie's free hand was arranging and rearranging her hat, a green one with flying yellow ribbons, and the bobbing green and yellow hat was all that Amy saw, lifting her eyes briefly from her baby son sleeping on her knee.

The car made her remember, though, sitting on the veranda long ago with the other children, dreaming of being carried away to a better life.

She did not have those children any more.

Miss Parks had Kathleen, Daphne had Patricia, and May and Gus or perhaps the nuns at St Margaret's had Lebby.

But this one was hers to keep forever. She crushed him so hard against her he squirmed and whimpered, and she had to rock him quiet again.

 

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