Read Online Loving Daughters by Olga Masters - Free Book Online Page A

don’t dump the things on the ground now,’ Enid said, hoping the words would cause Una to turn her face and Enid to read her expression. A baffling girl! Una went without the basket and Enid opened the back door to call her, but she was walking swiftly under the clothesline and through the sliprails of the house paddock, up the short rise towards the dairy and soon would be out of sight.
    The wretched girl! thought Enid, angry enough to forget the sleeping Small Henry and make quite a clatter with the washing-up. She poured water on crockery almost without sound, though, when Violet slipped into the room, soundlessly, as large women often move, to set about mixing Small Henry’s bottle.
    Una will miss seeing him fed, that’s good! I’m glad! Enid decided she would leave the things to soak and find something to do in the living room if Violet fed him there. Violet was swirling milk inside the bottle now and Enid noted the bluish tinge, not full strength. How did she know these things, she wondered, feeling inadequate, a new experience for Enid. How did people know what to do with small babies? Given Violet was a nurse, she had never raised a child of her own, and here she was, eyes on the kitchen clock and the too-hot bottle on her morrocain knee cooling to the right temperature – what would that be? – for Small Henry’s mouth.
    â€˜Una’s gone wandering off,’ Enid said. (Surely the bottle was ready now!) ‘She’ll do it once too often and I’ll be speaking to Father!’
    â€˜Perhaps she’s taken the track to the rectory,’ Violet said. ‘Then there’ll be good reason to speak to Father!’ She had her back to Enid, sauntering off to Small Henry, leaving Enid to guess accurately the malicious smirk on her face.
    It took a while for Enid to gather her thoughts and when she did she was in front of the hall mirror, angry that her nose had gone red. She pinched and slapped at it and wished for a comb to do her hair. It might not be so noticeable then! She rebelled anew at Una, leaving her with all the afternoon work to do, and no time to wash and change her dress and shoes. You never know who might come!
    After a while she went into the living room to set a small table in case Jack wanted his afternoon tea by the fire.
    That done, she rearranged some daisies in a brass jardiniere that had arrived too late for the funeral. She didn’t have the kind growing so would save some for seed when they were ready to throw out. A peppery smell was in her nostrils – from the flowers or Smell Henry? He was finished feeding, spread out like a frog on her cushions, the navel of his egg-shaped belly moist and bloody, legs no thicker than pipe stems, feet too long for them. His genitals lay like a mound of used tissue paper and Enid thought they might detach themselves the way Violet was ruthlessly wiping around them as she put him in a dry napkin. Of course she had set him crying again! She was too rough with him, showing off perhaps, how dare she? The small innocent thing, the victim! She felt the beginning of a small ache somewhere around her wrists and elbows, and then dropped her arms to her sides quickly lest Violet see them partly outstretched. Violet bound him in his blanket and flung him over her shoulder to go to the kitchen and gather up anything left there. Enid saw Small Henry’s small squashed face on Violet’s shoulder sailing away from her. She turned back to stroke the creases from her cushions in an automatic way.
    A smell rose from them. Of warm flesh and urine and newness, that peppery smell again. And faintly of blood.
    And tenderness and terror.

11
    George put on his best trousers to take Violet home. Enid kept the smell of Small Henry close to her when she carried the bag with his wet napkins and bottle to hand it to Violet in the sulky. He was lost to her almost at once due to Violet’s bulk. She’s