No Small Shame Read online

  Mary shrugged away from him, but the squeak of the screen door opening interrupted. She waited until it banged shut before saying, ‘Good night then. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Night, lass. And,’ his hand touched her arm, ‘I am glad you’re here.’

  She ducked back along the path and inside the tent flaps without giving him the pleasure of hearing her voice crack. She only hoped he might think better of her, when her hair grew back.

  MAID WANTED

  APRIL 1914

  Wanted – A Maid – Apply to the Misses Beatrice and Celia Trafford Trafford Boarding House, Graham Street Wonthaggi.

  The early weeks in Wonthaggi passed quickly. While her sisters settled into the school at St Joseph’s, Mary trudged the town looking for work. Until one morning, she stood gazing at an advertisement she’d torn from the Sentinel and up at the Trafford Boarding House’s front door, giving off a whiff of fresh paint. She raised her hand to the knocker, rapped twice and swallowed back down her breakfast threatening to escape – same as she was longing to do. And not just because Maw had shouted her out the door that morning.

  ‘And don’t come home without one.’

  Did Maw think she’d not been trying?

  Of course there’d been no discussion on any such thing as teacher training or nursing aboard the ship. And she’d not dared risk Maw’s further wrath or grief by broaching the subject since.

  Rereading the advertisement in her hand, already she could imagine Liam’s derision. Though perhaps if she got a job, the dafty might see her as an equal again, instead of lumping her in a child with her sisters, as if they’d never been friends. Blood friends.

  Not that she, or anyone, had much choice in the way of jobs in a town teeming with newcomers and immigrants – Scots, Irish and Welsh – all looking for work and she always the one to miss out. She guessed, at nearly sixteen, folks expected her to have the experience and must wonder what was wrong with her that she did not. She folded the scrap of newspaper into smaller and smaller squares, pressing each crease with a prayer that the Misses Trafford would approve of her.

  Lord knows she needed to do something to get away from Maw. Beyond sweeping the little canvas house and shaking out the bedding each day, there was not much else in housework for either of them to do. Maw was up to inventing things to keep herself busy, if only to stop from murdering Da. When she wasn’t crying, she was cursing, ‘I’ll never forgive you, Seamus O’Donnell, for bringing me to live in a tent.’

  Some days Mary wondered if Da regretted the day he’d nominated Nellie O’Donnell for a cheap passage to join him on the far side of the world. But last night she’d grown hopeful Maw might find some joy yet, Da whispering that George Merrilees was threatening to take his family north to the pits in Newcastle before winter, after more talk of the Wonthaggi mine closing.

  Da needn’t have whispered.

  Joe raged all through tea about the ‘betrayal’. After his brother nominating the Merrilees family and the O’Donnells too, bringing them out with all his bloody boasts about Wonthaggi, and now, the minute they arrived, he talked of leaving.

  Joe might be furious, but, to Mary’s mind, it could be a prayer answered. The O’Donnells might move into the cottage and have some semblance of peace return. She pushed away the thought – it wouldn’t upset her to be nearer to Liam either.

  She gulped at footsteps approaching on the far side of the boarding house door and quickly crossed herself. Please, please Lord, bless me with this job.

  The door opened and a fine lady in a navy gore skirt and white lawn blouse tilted her head to one side, eyeing Mary up and down as if she was checking some prize piece of horseflesh.

  Mary squirmed under the woman’s gaze and fluffed out her worn skirts to hide her scuffed up shoes. She kept her bonnet pulled down low on her head, unwilling to show that her hair was still not long enough to put up.

  ‘Come in, girl. Are you calling about the position?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. If you please.’

  ‘Miss,’ said the woman, ushering her inside. ‘It may be gone already. We haven’t decided yet.’ She turned then and thrust her head around the banister, calling up the stairs, ‘Sister, come and meet one last applicant. A sweet little Irish girl, I think. Or are you Scottish, dear?’

  Mary hesitated, unsure how to explain the hotchpotch of her accent, but she’d no need when the floorboards vibrated at a heavy tread on the stairs.

  Shortly, the second Miss Trafford appeared, a rather mannish woman who stood ramrod straight alongside her sister. Both women wore their blouses buttoned up to their throats in the fashion of some years past.

  Mary pulled her shoulders back and stood upright to match them, so self-conscious she scarcely heard the introductions, only that the taller one wished to be addressed as Miss Beatrice and her sister, Miss Celia.

  Not a hair on either sister’s head strayed out of place and a quick glance around the elegant room showed the fireplace grate shone bright with blacking and the chiffonier gleamed a high polish. Of course the paint and fitted carpets were new, not a single building in the whole town was more than five years old.

  ‘And why should we give you the position, young woman? What is your name, if you have one?

  Mary moistened her lips and fixed her eyes to meet the all-penetrating gaze of Miss Beatrice with what she hoped would be seen as an honest and hardworking face. She blinked with fright instead, because the words she wanted were jammed in her throat along with her breakfast porridge and the fear she might just get the job and have to look into that all-seeing gaze every day of the week.

  ‘Mary, miss. If you please. Mary O’Donnell.’

  ‘Well,’ laughed the younger sister, Miss Celia. ‘She’s got the manners for the position. Pull up your sleeves for me, dear, and show us your elbows. Have you got the elbows for it?’

  Mary didn’t know if she should run, but she needed the job so she started to unbutton her cuffs.

  ‘Goodness, girl, have you never been teased?’ Miss Celia clapped her hands over her tinkling laugh. ‘I swear she’s delightful, sister. And so pretty. I think we should give her a try.’

  ‘What about references?’ interjected Miss Beatrice. ‘Has she brought any references?’

  As one, the sisters peered down their noses, waiting for Mary to produce the all-important references, but she could only shake her head and tug out the grubby folds of her school report from her pocket. ‘My maw can give you a reference as to my cooking and … looking after children. Mrs Merrilees … I mean Mr Merrilees could tell you how well I can read.’

  Miss Celia smothered a giggle behind her handkerchief. ‘I don’t think you’ll need to do much reading as our housemaid, Mary, but,’ she turned to her sister, ‘if she can read as she says, she could take a list and run for the messages to the Co-operative store sometimes.’

  Miss Beatrice raised her eyebrows, suggesting she’d not trust Mary with any such task. ‘Perhaps, sister.’ She turned her glare on Mary. ‘Now, tell me, are you a good, hard worker, girl? Will you do your work and mind your own business?’

  When Mary blushed uncertainly, she added, ‘We have a lot of guests come through this house. None of them want the maid sniffing through their drawers. You make the beds and sweep the floors. You shut the drawers without looking inside, if you take my meaning?’

  Mary nodded. She hadn’t a gillhooley clue what the woman was talking about, but she’d stand on her head if the Misses Trafford gave her the job.

  Together, the sisters glided out to the hallway.

  Mary could hear them whispering. Apart from the odd words, God and manners and reading, she couldn’t know if they were arguing or agreeing over her. She inched forwards, then almost knocked over a vase trying to jump backwards when, without warning, the sisters swished back into the parlour.

  ‘You can start tomorrow morning, Miss O’Donnell. Six-thirty sharp. We serve breakfast to the boarders at seven. You’ll have a monthly half-Satur
day off and the Sabbath free, of course.’ Miss Celia ran her gaze over Mary, wrinkling her nose somewhat distastefully. ‘Could you wear your Sunday best for work please, Mary? We’re trying to establish a better class of guest here and strive to present the right impression.’

  Mary nodded, praying silently. Lord, forgive me the lie I’m telling. This is me Sunday best. And Lord, please drop a bolt of good cloth on me head on the way home.

  WORKING GIRL

  MAY 1914

  Life and weeks moved on for Mary to the strict routine of the Trafford sisters. The mine whistle blew one long and three short blasts each weekday morning at six. She’d lie in her bed as the sun beat on the tent canvas, listening to the cackles of the stumpy birds laughing in the nearby trees, then rush to the washhouse in an effort to beat Maw and the line-up of Merrilees banging on the door for her to hurry up. She’d leave the house grateful to be going and more often than not have to run the ten minutes to Graham Street.

  As long as she was at the stove cooking the porridge and toasting the bread in time for the breakfast hour and remembered to put her strong elbows and sharp eyes to work dealing with the dust, there were smiles from Miss Celia and a, ‘Well done, Mary.’ Miss Beatrice, however, remained the po-faced tartar from her interview. One there was no pleasing. The woman criticised the butter was lashing the bread too thickly, the tea too generously poured, the caddy emptied too quick. It was always something.

  Just thinking of the woman’s ire sent Mary shuffling forwards on her knees to better reach the back bars of the fire grate she’d been blacking for a full hour, going by the chimes on the clock in the hallway.

  Well, at least she had a job. With wages. In a fine, clean house. And she wasn’t looking down her nose at it, like some. Her cheeks smarted recalling Liam’s scoffing put-down, her not two minutes inside the cottage door with her news.

  ‘Carting other dirty buggers’ slops, Mary. Cleaning after the toffs. Have you no damn pride at all?’

  What did Liam Merrilees know anyway? Trafford’s was a start, not her stopping place. Besides, she liked the busyness and learning, and time spent away from Maw in a house where clean was not only demanded but possible.

  No miner trekked his boots into the Trafford house, mainly because miners’ boots weren’t welcome to cross the mat. The sisters held a firm policy allowing only businessmen and gentlewomen; the lowliest lodgers permitted were farmers of a better ilk (whatever that meant), and strictly no unmarried females. Running water upstairs and a plumbed-in bath, a smooth wooden seat on the out-door privy with not a splinter or spider in sight.

  Everything and everyone at Trafford’s was beyond reproach and guaranteed pristine.

  Except …

  ‘What are you doing down there, girl? Do you call that fireplace polished?’

  Mary scrutinised every inch of the bars on the grate, all of them shining like polished coal, but from the tone rising in Miss Beatrice’s voice, clearly the woman did not agree.

  A swish of black skirts at her cheek forced Mary to look up at Miss Beatrice looming over her, wearing her characteristic scowl and wagging a finger in accusation. Mary dropped her eyes to where the roses on the newly fitted carpet began to swim out of focus. She couldn’t think what step she’d forgotten this time. She’d been about to set the fire-screen back in place to finish. Now she reached out a hand to it to steady herself, only claw-like fingers gripped around her shoulder and shoved her almost bodily into the grate.

  ‘Are you blind, girl? Look at the patch you missed. Didn’t your mother teach you to rub the bars over with a bit of lemon first?’

  ‘No, Miss Beatrice.’

  The hand shrugged off her but not without a pinch of malice. Mary breathed deeply to stop the tears flooding into her eyes, more from anger at the insult to Maw than the bruise rising on her back. She could see no missed spot.

  ‘You’d better do it again, quickly now, girl.’

  Mary nodded, blinking back tears. She reopened the tin of grate polish, but there was no quick about it. She redid the entire front rungs just to be sure she wasn’t going blind or mad and missing a bit.

  Later, standing under the wash-line, she searched the window spaces for the telltale silhouette of the tyrant. Finding no such terror she closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the sun. Behind her eyelids a kaleidoscope of coloured patterns blazed and the thought came clear in her mind – she’d been born into the wrong hemisphere. The autumn rays caressing her skin were as warm as a beau’s sweet kiss.

  Not that she’d had any beaus or kisses to tell. Or ever come close, when the one boy she’d consider out more often than home. Served him right if she smiled back at that shop boy in the Co-operative store making goo-goo eyes at her last week. Howie, was it, or Harold?

  Two short blasts of the mine whistle interrupted her thoughts. Squawks from the henhouse reminded her that she ought to be collecting the eggs, but a sudden shout from the washhouse sent her feet racing instead. What did the blasted woman want now?

  THE PASSBOOK

  MAY 1914

  Mary marched off home on the dot of six without a word of goodbye. The sting in her shoulder hiked her indignation, but there was no point crying. No sympathy would she get at home, only told to get on.

  She pounded down Graham Street, taking none of her usual time to watch the changing shape of the new shops and businesses opening by the day, her eyes blind to the rich red and soft cream dwellings of the town, located far enough from the pits to not take on the settle of coal dust. So different from the Pailis where the grey of the sky met the grey staining of the buildings, but where she knew everyone and could stop and talk to umpteen people coming and going, up and down the road.

  Once inside the cottage on Hagelthorn Street, the dreary details of her day mattered not a jot – not to them in that mad house. She pushed open the door from the scullery into the kitchen to shouts from Da. Her shoes echoed on the bare floorboards, the new timbers already greying under the coal dust off the men’s boots.

  ‘Will you look here at what I’m showing you, Nellie?’ Da waved a large sheet of printed paper under Maw’s nose while she ignored him, baby Hughie grizzling on her knee and her keeping on scraping the carrots. Kate and Hannah huddled over their homework at one end of the scrubbed wood table while the twins argued at the other. Rosslyn threatened to skelp the lot of them while she set down the cutlery and tried to lay the cloth. Her own two toddlers sat busy on the floor in front of the stove, pulling each other’s hair and wailing like they didn’t expect it might hurt. The ruckus told Mary no-one was listening to anyone.

  ‘Won’t you at least look at the estate plan, woman?’ Da pleaded. ‘You can choose your very own block with no-one to tell you which house you have to live in.’

  ‘Mary, tell your father, if we can’t have one of them Government cottages, I don’t want anything.’ Maw waved a carrot in her direction. ‘And don’t disappear into your book after tea tonight. I want your help writing a letter.’

  Mary sighed, but nodded. She could guess who she’d be writing to – Mr Broome, the mine manager. Another letter begging his kind consideration of her mother’s newest application for one of the Government cottages.

  Maw made no secret that she hoped the land purchase never came about and, for once, Mary couldn’t help but wonder if Maw was right. To the best of her knowledge, Da had never built anything beyond a box bed for the babes and that was only adding some rickety rocking feet to a fruit crate to settle them. More often than not his efforts had jolted them awake rather than soothed them to sleep.

  But Da was showing an uncharacteristic stubbornness on the subject of building a house. He pressed her, with each edition of the Sentinel, to peel her eyes for the advertisements offering freehold blocks in North Wonthaggi on ten pounds deposit. Their savings started again from scratch and hidden in a battered tobacco tin had a way to go to make a tenner. But Da swore he was going up to the field after shift end on Saturday to talk to
the vendor about the easy terms in his advertisement, especially the free of interest clause.

  As the grumblings between her parents grew more heated, Mary wished herself out to the quiet of the tent but gave up the idea knowing such treason would lather Maw’s tongue. Instead she turned and found herself face-to-face in the living-room doorway with Liam. The cheeky beggar headed in the direction of the washhouse – the fresh shirt and trousers folded over his arm saying he was on his way out.

  Both shuffled to the right, then to the left in the tangle of an awkward dance. To her surprise, when neither could pass, a soft chuckle escaped Liam’s lips. He masked it by clearing his throat. ‘Move over, will ya?’

  ‘Yes, Your Lordship. Of course, Your Lordship. Begging your pardon.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  Again they stepped the same way. Only this time Liam reached out and grasped her by the elbows, as if to manoeuvre her to swap places with him. He did not immediately do so, but relaxed his fingers on her sleeves, squinting into her eyes. His mouth opening, then closing again as if he were in two minds to speak.

  The silence went on an age. Oh, Lord, please, please let him speak to me – normal. Ask me what’s for tea even.

  The softening in his usual frown gave her a moment of hope.

  Then the slap of something fallen out of the pocket of his trousers stole his attention.

  By reflex, her hand shot down to fetch it. Was it her fault the passbook came face up and open, the row of five-bob deposits glaring her bold in face?

  Surprise at the total registered not just in her stunned gasp but when Liam’s hand clamped hers harsh in warning.

  ‘I’ll take that, lass.’ The force of his grip tightened around her fingers and she caught the plea of old in his glare. ‘Don’t you tell.’ The familiarity of his closeness brought a wash of pain before his warm emerald irises darkened, cold as the winter Clyde.