Maisy came to the station on the Wednesday prior to the wedding. Had Norman known why she was there he would not have greeted her with a smile.
‘Could you see your way clear to take her for the weekend?’ she said.
‘We have no spare beds.’
‘Sissy said Jenny could sleep with her and Amber could have Jenny’s room.’
‘I believe her mother has offered her a bed.’
‘You know as well as me that she won’t go near that place. I’m sorry to do this to you, but it’s happened. I didn’t invite her, Norman, and I didn’t think she’d stay this long. Not that I mind having her. She’s doing most of the cooking and cleaning for me. If it was anyone other than the Ogdens, I’d find room somewhere, but I can’t have her there with Mary and Ernie. They know everything. It would be too uncomfortable for her and for them.’
‘She will be at the wedding?’
‘Lord, no! That’s another thing I feel bad about. She’s been my best friend for thirty years and I can’t even invite her to my daughter’s wedding. It’s a terrible mess all around.’
Did he feel a mere hiss, a whisper of pity — pity for his wife, the whore — or perhaps for his neighbour, his girls’ surrogate mother? He could not have managed without her these past years. Now she was asking something of him.
‘No,’ he said.
‘It would only be for the weekend.’
‘I’ll pay for her accommodation at the hotel.’
‘It will be full of the Ogdens and their relatives on Friday night. I wouldn’t ask you, but I’ve already asked Jean White and . . . and she’s as bad as the Ogdens. Just Friday and maybe the hotel can take her on Saturday and Sunday. She’ll clean the house up for you.’
His house did not require her cleaning. He did not require her to touch one grain of his dust.
Maisy wouldn’t leave; the station lad was listening.
‘If I tell her to stay out of your way, she will, Norman. You wouldn’t need to see her. George isn’t putting off his poker night. Come over straight from the station.’
He had missed his Friday-night poker. He looked towards the house denied him this September, and Maisy, seeing him waver, pressed her advantage.
He capitulated. ‘Friday night,’ he said.
He stayed well clear of his house that Friday, stayed clear of it until ten minutes before six, until the smell of her beef and onion stew began wafting across the station yard. He followed it home, where he found his girls setting the table for four. The woman spoke to him. He acknowledged her with a nod. At six, she served the meal, then placed the fourth meal into the oven and left the room. Norman ate hurriedly, collected his pouch of small change he put aside for poker nights, then he left the house.
She kept to her room on Saturday morning. He and his girls left at ten thirty for the wedding and didn’t return until the train, loaded with wedding guests and the honeymooners, had gone on its way. Mary and Ernie Ogden were not on it. They and their four youngest would return to Melbourne on Tuesday’s train.
‘All I’m saying, Norman, is it would cause less talk in town if she was to stay where she is for the weekend,’ Maisy said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He roused his girls early on Sunday morning and by nine thirty they were on their way to spend the day with Gertrude. On their return, in the late afternoon, they found the woman up a ladder cleaning windows that had not seen a cleaning cloth in seven years.
Her egg and bacon pie that night was a work of art. He watched her cut it, serve it.
‘Take your meal with us, Mrs Morrison,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to overstep —’
‘The girls will appreciate your company.’
On Monday night, the girls gone to their shared bed, Norman was seated on his front verandah smoking a final cigarette when Amber returned from her evening walk. She did not immediately enter the house. Perhaps the lack of light lent her confidence to raise what was in her mind.
‘You need a housekeeper, Norman. I need . . . need a home.’
He expelled smoke, considered several replies but could not find an apt one, or perhaps found it but couldn’t speak it.
‘I’ve stayed out of your way,’ she said. ‘It’s worked out all right, hasn’t it?’
She had stayed out of his way. His house was clean, his laundry flapping on the clothes line in the morning, ironed and put away by evening. His girls were happy.
‘Could I stay a few days more, a week — and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go. I’ll just be the housekeeper, Norman.’
‘The girls will soon become disenchanted with their shared bed, Mrs Morrison.’
‘If they do, I’ll go.’
‘Decisions are best slept on,’ he said.
Norman did not make decisions lightly. He slept two nights on this one, then, while the girls were at school on the Wednesday, he spoke to Amber of a week’s trial, then perhaps a week-by-week business arrangement. ‘You will be paid a small wage, from which I shall deduct board and lodgings —’
‘You don’t have to pay me, Norman.’
‘If the arrangement continues past the week, you will receive a wage, Mrs Morrison. I have drawn up an agreement, which we shall each sign.’
Perhaps she glanced at his agreement before signing. He retained the original and offered her the carbon copy. Perhaps she read what she’d signed, or burned it. It stated that he would make no demands on her, over and above her housekeeping duties; that he would accept no interference from her in the handling of his daughters; that he would require the kitchen between seven and eight from Monday to Thursday, at which time she would absent herself; that after the deduction of bed and keep, he would, each Friday, pay her seven shillings and sixpence.
So the last of Jenny’s belongings were moved into Cecelia’s bedroom, and Norman’s moved into the nursery, a wall away from the girls. His housekeeper was given the front bedroom, somewhat separated from his little family.
He was ever watchful. He did not trust her. She was subdued, had come to his house armed with two bottles of her blood-strengthening tablets, which she kept in her room. He did not venture there. At times, while he tutored his girls between seven and eight she came to the kitchen to wash a tablet down, then stood on at the door listening to his lesson. Occasionally, he caught her staring at him, and twice she’d attempted to apologise.
‘I’m sorry, Norman.’
‘We are all sorry for many things, Mrs Morrison. Our aim perhaps should be to do nothing more that may in the future require apology.’
Trust may grow in time, but, like damaged nerve endings once crushed, trust is slow in making a recovery. During daylight hours, when he listened to his daughters’ laughter, when he saw their smiling faces, their well-ironed frocks, he sometimes felt the first feeble tingle of trust’s growth, but as night came down around his house and he lay in his narrow bed, that feeble tingle became an ache. His shoulder would not allow him to trust.
Jean White shared his shoulder’s distrust.
‘She’s as fake as a two-sided penny,’ she said to Charlie midway through October.
‘Coming in here giving me the leftovers of her fake hospital manners, that’s what she’s done — and looking at my hair roots while she’s doing it. Have you noticed how she won’t look you in the eye?’
‘You wouldn’t either if you’d done what she’s done.’
‘It’s more than a guilty conscience. There’s something in her eyes that she doesn’t want you to see. She’s like a snake, hiding her venom until she’s ready to strike.’
‘When have you seen a snake getting ready to strike?’
‘I don’t have to. I know what one would look like.’
‘Gertrude says she’s better.’
‘That’s something else too. Gertrude hasn’t been to Norman’s since Amber moved back home.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I watch her, that’s how. She drops her eggs off here, then takes a basket down to the station.’
‘How do you know she doesn’t go in through his side gate?’
‘Because she always went in through the front gate, that’s how I know.’
‘You’re getting to be a gossip in your old age, Jeanny.’
‘Only to you, Charlie, and you don’t count.’
A smart businesswoman, Jean White, not a hard woman, but one not easy to take down. She knew everyone in town, knew who was in work and who wasn’t, knew who she could trust to pay their bill when things picked up, and who’d take what they could get and run. She trusted Norman, couldn’t say that she liked him, but trust was enough at times.
‘You mark my words, Charlie. She’ll turn. A leopard can’t change its spots.’