Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Page 3

  Pearl chose potatoes from a basket. ‘Did you ask about her horses?’

  ‘I forgot. I ran right into her. Smack! She landed flat on her back. It wasn’t funny. Well, it was funny. She’s such a vain little thing. There she was staring up at me like, well, I don’t know, an underdressed baby rabbit I’d shot in the head. It was funny.’

  Adelaide continued to prattle as Pearl peeled the potatoes then chopped onions and carrots and meat. ‘You wouldn’t believe the tickets she has on herself. Like Mrs Mayberry. The pride of that woman!’

  ‘I’d like to hear what she has to say,’ Pearl said, smiling to show she meant it.

  ‘She’s so dull,’ said Adelaide. ‘It’d be such a waste of time.’

  Pearl laughed. ‘But I haven’t had a night off since I got here. It might be an outing.’

  Adelaide clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Of course you need a night off. By all means have a night off. If we can get the baby to sleep before we go, Marcus can mind him and we can both have an outing.’ She pushed herself to her feet. ‘In that case I’d better do the books while I can. Oh Lord, I hate sums.’

  Maggie O’Connell did not hate sums because her life depended on them and she, hurrying down Hope Street after a not very gruelling day at work, calculated and recalculated and came to the very conclusion Adelaide had reached months ago.

  What Adelaide thought she knew for sure, Maggie now definitely suspected. She’d bought the pickles as well as the cheese. She could afford neither but shopping at Nightingales gave her as much pleasure as a heartbreaking novel. Mr Stokes had totted up the bill. One and threepence, he’d said, and Maggie had handed him two shillings. He’d given her change, not the nine pence she’d been expecting but threepence, and when she’d smiled and told him he owed her sixpence, he’d said, ‘No, girlie, don’t argue with Mr Stokes. He never makes a mistake.’ So she’d left the store, counted her change and after a few minutes’ deliberation gone back in to confront him.

  ‘I know what was in my purse,’ she’d said.

  He’d sighed. ‘I suppose you want me to take everything from the till and count it and check the whole day’s dockets to see which of us is handier with numbers.’ He’d winked at Theresa Fellows next to Maggie at the counter. That was what she’d wanted but Theresa Fellows had said shame on her, Mr Stokes was as honest as the day was long. Maggie had been tempted to ask, would that be any old day in bush week? But she’d thought better of it because she needed Theresa Fellows to feed Al and Ed once a week.

  Now she stopped outside the Arts and Crafts Hall to examine the meagre contents of her purse one more time in case he had given her the right change after all. She tipped the coins into her hand and counted them again. But there had been no mistake. She knew how much money she had to the farthing. Florence Mayberry staring down at her from her poster wore an expression that said louder than any words she might have uttered, Beggars can’t be choosers. This was the trouble. All of those ladies were light on for choice, not because they were feeble but because times were against them. And they were a little bit feeble.

  Chapter Two

  The entire country was enfeebled, having emptied its coffers defending the King. Australia was so stony broke that people were asking if the stupid war had actually been worth it. Traitors, obviously. Of course it had been worth it. The King was safe and so was his Empire, which was all that mattered. This was the view of right-thinking people, and even as valiant ships disgorged sung and unsung heroes to their native shore and families counted their losses, these very people were shaking their heads in rural towns right across New South Wales.

  As towns went, Prospect might have been lucky to have escaped the flu that had despatched so many but it was, in other respects, no luckier than anywhere else. Men who’d disappeared from the landscape for four years were coming home without the foggiest notion of what was in store for them. Letters to the Front had been brave and optimistic, in recognition of their own bravery and optimism. We’re doing fine, they’d said. The Murphys sold their pigs. We have loads of pumpkins.

  The returning soldiers had no way of knowing that home had changed forever and the women at home were in no way prepared for the horrors their brave men brought back with them. There were exceptions, of course, but by and large nothing was what it had been. Everything was in a state of flux. Not chaos, flux, and amid the flux, subversive elements were suspected of taking advantage, which scared the living daylights out of the right-thinking people. In the general clamour to fend them off, unexpected voices rose with astonishing vehemence. In Prospect, Florence Mayberry’s. Florence Mayberry!

  How extraordinary that this mouse of a quite large woman should find passion so close to her voice box. She’d been silent so long she’d occasionally been mistaken for a mute. But as Maggie had explained to Louisa, she’d been to Melbourne the minute quarantine was lifted and come back transformed. The light she’d seen shone not only on The Threat Within as described by powerful city voices, but on her hitherto unsuspected gift for oratory.

  So inspired had she been by the horror as described by a marvellous woman from a convention in South Yarra, she’d known it was her Bounden Duty to bring the message to the masses, to speak out as that woman had done. And this is what she was doing to the packed Arts and Crafts Hall on the freezing September evening that followed our heroines’ nerve-racking day. She was speaking out to such great effect that Pearl and Adelaide, sitting together, and Louisa and Maggie in different rows on opposite sides of the hall, found themselves transfixed. Everyone was transfixed.

  Who was this unrecognisable and faintly insane-looking firebrand on the stage? They marvelled at her voice, so unbelievably penetrating with its exceptionally high-pitched nasal quality and occasionally remembered lisp. What kind of woman, Louisa asked herself, who was fifty if she was a day, had a voice like that? It wasn’t even a voice Maggie recognised, though in fairness, Florence Mayberry communicated with her mostly in writing and the lisp was newly acquired. Mrs Mayberry was intrigued by its potential to command attention.

  Tonight, it was only too clear she was determined to be heard. Not just in the Arts and Crafts Hall but by the whole of the shire. Her message was as bewildering to some as it was beguiling to others, punctuated by many, many words with Capital Letters, which she indicated with the crafty employment of extra volume. She was undeniably and staggeringly fluent, as well she might have been when most of what she had to say was word for word what the inspirational Melbourne woman had said. Not entirely, but as best she could remember, and she’d practised her delivery for long hours in front of the bedroom mirror Maggie polished when she felt like it. She had timed every gesture for maximum impact.

  ‘I’m talking to you, you, you and you,’ she advised loudly from the podium, aiming a plump index finger at individual women in the front rows who, startled, looked behind them to see who could possibly have merited the attention. ‘I’m addressing the entire female population of this great town because it ith,’ she lisped, ‘My Duty. My Duty is,’ she didn’t lisp, ‘to remind you of your Patriotic Obligation To Our Noble Nation.’ She might have been the vicar’s wife with a speech impediment.

  What she was urging was that Australia’s Men Should Be Men and Australia’s Women Should Be Women. ‘Dear Lord,’ muttered Adelaide to Pearl. It was their great nation’s only chance of survival. Women, Mrs Mayberry insisted, must return to the hearth and allow their menfolk to run the community in the time-honoured way. If they didn’t, the natural order upon which All Of Human Life Depended would collapse, and from the rubble God alone knew what kind of socialist terror would arise. She spoke, she thought they should know, on behalf of The Country Women’s Campaign For The Restoration of Family Life, an unofficial branch of something similar which was famous in Melbourne

  ‘Our nation, our state, our cities, our towns, this town, is threatened by Subversive Elements whose Fearful Aim is no less than the Destruction of Tho-ciety. Sothiety,’ she cried, thoug
h her voice was giving out, ‘has been fractured by Unnatural Circumstances dictated by Foreign Malevolence and so we must rebuild it along the lines ordained by God the Father in Heaven and Mother Nature here on Earth.’

  Mrs Mayberry was beside herself at the notion of the creeping socialism Melbourne had said would be the nation’s ruin. ‘I will Not Allow Ruin, and I’ll say it one more time, Not Allow Ruin, to enter Prospect, which it might well do with the arrival of the railway next month and those bushrangers murdering families in Myrtle Grove.’

  ‘What bushrangers?’ Maggie asked those about her, but no one answered.

  ‘Men must be given back the jobs to which they are entitled and women must man the domestic barricades against the –’ Florence couldn’t remember how best to describe what was on the other side of the barricades. ‘The train line and the bushrangers.’

  ‘Which bushrangers?’ Maggie asked her neighbour again but the neighbour put a finger to her lips impatiently.

  ‘Men must Protect and Provide. Women must be Protected and Provided For. It is their Entitlement.’ Mrs Mayberry dropped her voice. She wanted every woman there tonight, and those who were not, to grasp to their bosoms – she grasped her own quite substantial bosom – the horror on their doorsteps so they might recognise and repel it. She was improvising now because it was going so well. ‘It is your Duty and your Entitlement. Every woman here tonight must accept her responsibility to become a loyal wife and a devoted mother.’ She paused. ‘Or a caring spinster.’ She paused again. ‘Or a widow. I have two words for our widows. Grace and Humility. The same goes for our brave spinsters.’ She smiled at Adelaide and Pearl on whom her gaze had fallen and the applause was rapturous, shocking them to the core.

  Maybe it was what the hall wanted to hear. Maybe the women of the town loved the idea of entitlement to anything that meant freedom from worry. But more than likely they clapped so long and hard because Mrs Mayberry was a novelty act and her unusual delivery utterly compelling. She sounded holy.

  To Pearl and Louisa, who as far as they were concerned had only ever done their best by womanhood, she sounded demented. Worse. Dangerous. If the whole town thought she was right, then their predicaments were dire. They were Un-provided For and Unprotected and so, they inferred from the Mayor’s wife, dependent entirely on grace and humility.

  Adelaide, who, on the one hand, could hear sense in the notion of men being men and women being women, was, on the other, as discomforted as Louisa and Pearl. She might have had a husband in residence but what kind of man was he? She was as vulnerable as they when it came to lack of protection and provision, and who knew what that meant for the path her life was taking? It was so silly it should have meant nothing. But something in the rapture suggested that the silliness had taken root and that there would be consequences.

  Adelaide guessed it meant she could never take on Archie Stokes, who wasn’t a returned soldier but was a man beloved of the entire town. He’d held the fort and kept them all in Worcestershire sauce and nutmeg, even the families who neither wanted it nor could afford it. More importantly, he was revered by her husband’s family and she wasn’t.

  Louisa guessed that there could be no going back to Thomas at the bank for another interview in nicer clothes, no one would stop the arrival of the horses and she truly was destined for poverty. Pearl understood at once that a town full of Florence Mayberrys could complicate matters horribly for a woman on a desperate foray into the local underworld with nothing to assist her but a cloak of invisibility.

  All Maggie could think was that she didn’t have a gun. She didn’t have a gun because the boys couldn’t shoot straight, and now there were bushrangers on the doorstep. She was completely Unprotected and only as Provided For as Mrs Mayberry deemed reasonable. Mostly she was provided for by her chooks and her vegetables and anything neighbours were kind enough to give her from their table. Still, she said to herself, at least she wasn’t a widow and also far too young to be called a spinster. At least she wouldn’t have to have grace and humility.

  As the crowd spilled from the hall and headed in different directions, the four respectable women found themselves walking together because it would have been odd not to. None of them asked aloud what Mrs Mayberry could possibly know about Real Life when she’d only ever been well provided for by men with status if not looks.

  As they parted company at the turn-off to Maisie Jenkins’ place where baby Freddie was safely asleep (Marcus having made it clear he had no interest in minding him), Pearl did enquire, ‘Was the Mayor in the audience?’ And although Maggie replied, ‘I suppose he was,’ Louisa called over her shoulder, ‘Of course he wasn’t. All that limelight not on him.’

  ‘What did she mean about the bushrangers?’ Maggie asked before walking on. ‘No one’s told me about any family murdered in Myrtle Grove.’

  ‘Because there wasn’t one,’ Pearl said. ‘Someone took a shot at the driver of an army goods cart.’

  ‘And he lived,’ said Louisa.

  ‘Then why did she say a family?’

  ‘Because not everything she said was true,’ Pearl pointed out with magnificent calm and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, which turned out to be premature.

  Chapter Three

  In the days that followed, Florence Mayberry’s plea to the nation bounced off Prospect’s surrounding hills and swooped down Hope Street, up the side streets and into the outlying districts, fuelled by general amazement and frank admiration. If she’d taken a few liberties with the truth no one seemed to care much. She’d made sense, hadn’t she? Men needed jobs; women needed a break. Order needed to be restored.

  That was certainly the view of The Gazette, which thanked Mrs Mayberry the next day for her insight. Immediately alongside the jubilant headline ‘Railway Work Full Steam Ahead’, it announced ‘Common Sense Comes To Town’. The paper congratulated employers who’d already relieved exhausted females of jobs to which men were better suited. Womenfolk, it exhorted joyfully, we welcome you back to the hearth. Enter our exciting quest for the town’s most sparkling kitchen.

  There were people who laughed up their sleeves and a couple who didn’t even bother with sleeves. Baby Worthington, for instance – Louisa’s sister-in-law, properly called Mrs Larry Murdoch when anyone remembered – had never heard anything as comical as Mrs Mayberry addressing the nation. She’d announced as much as she stomped from the hall well before the bitter end. ‘There goes Baby,’ Louisa had mumbled to no one in particular. Another was Joe Fletcher, the grumpy tenant at Somerset Station, so rarely seen that almost no one recognised him and those who noticed him at all only did because he was heard to laugh out loud more often than anyone had ever heard him speak. Who cared about them? These were people unaffected by the message and of no real consequence to the town.

  Nearly everyone else took the message to heart one way or another, Adelaide, Louisa, Maggie and Pearl included. Had they been less burdened by circumstance, what Mrs Mayberry thought and said might not have made a scrap of difference to their wellbeing, but as things stood, what she thought and said somehow served only to underline the depth of their loneliness and the enormity of their plights. None could admit publicly what troubled them privately, let alone to each other, and so their predicaments ate away at them.

  Not two days after the speech, while Baby Worthington and Joe Fletcher continued to chuckle to themselves, the ladies floundered in their isolation. Adelaide might have become immediately dependent on Pearl, but she would never in her wildest dreams have given the slightest indication to her housekeeper that she was struggling financially, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, marital-ly – you name a ‘ly’ and it was in her struggle – because the store manager she’d been trusted to oversee was sending the family broke and the head of her household didn’t give a fig.

  She couldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all Louisa, who might have comforted her about the actual and metaphorical implications of a lost husband, because the past was ag
ainst them. In a small community where the tide of friendship ebbs and flows according to acknowledged favours and perceived slights, you can be alienated from the very person with whom you have most in common because something happened or didn’t happen years ago.

  Because they didn’t trust each other, Adelaide had no idea Louisa was being driven to the brink of madness, not by widowhood but by a ruthless creditor. She could never have guessed from the appearance of forty-three horses in the home paddock that Louisa was so short of funds she’d thrown herself one more time on the mercy of the cold-hearted mother she’d married Jimmy Worthington to escape, and that mother had once again turned her back. Would Adelaide have been surprised? Not by the mother. Louisa had never been the daughter that mother had wanted, or that any other mother would have wanted, was the general view.

  As Adelaide steeled herself to confront the once loving husband who now terrified the life out of her, Louisa was watching herself cry in her bedroom mirror. In her hand she held her mother’s heartless reply. You made your bed, Louisa, so now you can lie on it. Huge tears rolled down her face and every so often a dreadful sob escaped from her pretty mouth. If she’d believed there was any slight consolation to be had from across the road, nothing in her reflection encouraged her to think it was worth pursuing. Her beauty had come between them and there it had stayed. Jealousy, never pure and simple, sticks and with time hardens like boiled sugar. Louisa sighed noisily at the memory.

  She’d taken a shine to William Mayberry when he was supposed to have taken a shine to Adelaide. His own shine for Adelaide had been a very small one and had been wiped from his inclination the minute Louisa had informed him of hers to him. Unluckily, hers had faded to nothing when she’d met Jimmy Worthington weeks later. The alienation of young Mayberry’s affection had scandalised the town but the friendship with Adelaide might have been salvaged. All it had required was for everyone to pretend nothing had happened. In Prospect, the same as anywhere else, friendships that are knocked to the canvas one day can shake themselves off and recover the next, left to their own devices. But gossip’s prickly tentacles can poison the buds of any recovering friendship. Even within families, confidences that should be valued as highly as rubies are traded as cheaply as gravel in passing conversation. Adelaide’s mother had told Baby Worthington at the cricket that Adelaide thought Louisa was no better than a tramp and Baby Worthington had told her brother who had told Louisa and then Louisa had married the brother.