Read Online The Women in Black by Madeleine St John - Free Book Online

sometimes into that of their many Hungarian friends who in Magda’s presence at least spoke English habitually. They all agreed sardonically that although the war—and more recently the revolution—and their own consequent fortunes had been a heavy price to pay for the privilege, they were and would remain grateful for the acquisition of ‘this wonderful language’ and they were still liable to laugh delightedly at a newly discovered idiom. ‘A pig in a poke!’ they might exclaim; and they would shout with pleasure, the way their Magyar ancestors might have done, as they rode their swift horses across the vast and fertile Hungarian plain.

13
    At nine in the morning on the third Monday in December the great glass and mahogany doors of Goode’s Department Store were opened to a large bevy of early-rising housewives all determined upon the prosecution of their Christmas shopping campaigns. From the wooded slopes of the salubrious North Shore to the stuccoed charm of the Eastern Suburbs, from the passé gentility of the Western ditto to the terra incognita of the Southern, had they travelled by train, bus, tram and even taxi cab to this scene of final frantic activity. There remained presents to be bought for sundry difficult relations, there remained clothes to be purchased for their gigantically growing children, there remained even frocks to be found for themselves, and then shoes to match these frocks: there remained almost everything to play for, and they were resolved to win.
    Miss Jacobs stood at her post, ready for anything whatsoever, her tape measure draped around her neck and her pins beside her. Let them come: she would be as a rock in the great storm.
    Mr Ryder walked past.
    ‘Everything shipshape, Miss Jacobs?’ he called. ‘Ready for the fracas?’
    ‘I don’t know about any “ fracas ”,’ said Miss Jacobs to Lisa. ‘We’re bound to be very busy in the last week before Christmas, aren’t we now? I don’t know about any “ fracas ”.’
    Christmas this year fell on the Tuesday of the following week.
    ‘And mind you tell them, Lisa,’ continued Miss Jacobs, ‘that if they want alterations doing before Christmas, we can only do hems by then, not seams, and we can’t do hems either after Wednesday, whatever they say. After Wednesday, with the holiday and everything, they can’t have their alterations until the New Year.’
    ‘Yes, I’ll tell them,’ said Lisa.
    ‘And I’ll just remind Miss Baines and Mrs Williams likewise,’ said Miss Jacobs.
    These were occupied with the display, Patty chattering to Fay about the deficiencies of her last-year’s-model swimming costume as they had been revealed the day before on Coogee Beach.
    ‘It’s got elastic around here,’ she said, drawing a line across part of her anatomy, ‘but the elastic’s going, and anyway it’s faded. So I think I’ll get a new one. Anyway you need two cossies, really. I need another one. I think I might get one of those satin lastex ones. I’ll see. I’ll spend my Christmas bonus on myself, for a change.’
    As if anyone had ever suggested she should do anything else.
    The coming Thursday was pay-day: she would have her fortnight’s wages plus the bonus, and she would pay for her nightdress, and she might get a new swimming costume as well, and never mind the Bank of New South Wales. She had already bought all her Christmas presents.
    ‘We’re going to Mum for Christmas Day, all of us,’ she told Fay, ‘as per usual. What will you do?’
    Ah, that was a sore point, even a sad one. There wasn’t time to go down to Melbourne to her brother’s, even if she wanted to. If Fay didn’t accept Myra’s invitation to go with her to Myra’s parents, who had retired to the Blue Mountains where they lived in a little fibro cottage at Blackheath, then she would be quite alone, and this being unthinkable, she realised, but did not want to admit, that she was bound for Blackheath.
    ‘It will be a nice break,’ said