Read Online Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

sixpences, and its checked and disputed weekly balances, seemed to degrade my new and passionate love.
    ‘An extra two-and-six? What for?’
    ‘My shoes need mending.’
    Colin examined one of them. ‘They’ll do for a while yet.’
    And still, there was no baby.
    ‘If you ask my opinion,’ said Una Porteous, ‘you’re leaving it a bit on the late side.’
    ‘I’ll say!’ said Les.
    ‘A woman’s figure has got to be ruined sooner or later,’ said Una Porteous, ‘no matter how good.’
    I burst into tears.
    ‘Unless,’ cried Una in a powerful voice, ‘you can’t have any?’
    ‘Boo-hoo!’
    ‘Oh, sorry. If I had of known I would of cut my tongue out first. But I was not informed.’
    Les spoke in a low but manly voice. ‘I want you both to accept my sympathy.’
    Colin looked out of the window.
    ‘All the same,’ said Una, ‘what a tragedy for Col.’
    ‘Can’t be helped,’ snapped Colin.
    How clear all three of them looked through my tears—as clear and shining as fish in a fishmonger’s streaming window.
    Then, one day, I got a daring idea. I ran over to Bomera.
    ‘Ida, I’ll take that job.’
    Ida dropped both hands to her lap. ‘Oh, Nora, I offered it over a year ago. I’m not getting the work now. Haven’t you noticed? It’s this slump. People like me are the first affected.’
    ‘Ida, I’m sorry.’
    ‘Don’t you worry about me, love. I’ll get by. What’s this about you? I thought he didn’t want you to work.’
    ‘I’m not asking him. I want to be independent.’
    ‘Try the big places, I’ll give you a reference.’
    I tried the big places. ‘Sorry,’ they said, ‘not just now.’
    ‘Try the alteration rooms of the big stores,’ said Ida.
    But at the big stores they said, ‘Nothing now. Perhaps later.’ Months went by. Whenever I quarrelled with Colin, I rushed out and tried the big places and the big stores. But now they both said the same thing.
    ‘Not a hope. We’re even putting people off.’
    No new magazines were arriving at Ida’s rooms, and Lewie made truth of fiction by coming over to Crecy to borrow butter. Sometimes he stayed for an hour or two, and we sat in a patch of sunlight on the floor, moving as it moved, and made up Ogden Nash verses. People no longer spoke of ‘the slump’, but of ‘the Depression’. At last Lewie became so poor that he was forced to move to a very small room in Bayswater Road.
    We sat at his window, looking out. ‘So many people,’ he said. ‘And all those trams. Isn’t it lovely?’
    But I was sad. ‘Do you ever feel like being a child again, Lewie?’
    ‘Not if I had to go back to Wagga to be it.’
    One day Colin came home from work looking pleased. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s happened at last.’
    “What?”
    ‘Les is transferred to Forbes. We can go to Mum’s.’
    ‘What? But not to live?’
    ‘And why not? Ah yes,’ he said, looking into my face, ‘I well remember you saying you would die if you had to live there. But we will see whether you die or not.’
    ‘Of course I won’t. I didn’t mean
die
. But why must we go?’
    ‘Nora, sit down.’
    Because, whenever Colin wanted to talk to me ‘seriously’, we had to sit down. We sat down.
    ‘Nora, haven’t you heard of this Depression?’
    ‘But you still have your job.’
    ‘In the meantime.’
    ‘You mean, you are threatened …?’
    ‘We are all threatened. For all I know, this week will be my last.’
    ‘But even so, you have more than a thousand pounds in the bank.’
    ‘So I’m to eat into my savings!’
    ‘Is there no alternative to going out there?’
    ‘I see none.’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Staying here.’
    But Colin was giving me his stare of wonderment. ‘Do you know something, Nora?’
    ‘No. What?’
    ‘You’re mad.’
    ‘I am not.’
    ‘You are. I notice you haven’t once considered Mum in all this. A widow. How is she going to get on without what Les kicked in for his keep?’
    ‘But you always say Les is