Home time, p.1
Home Time, page 1
BEVERLEY FARMER
HOME TIME
About Untapped
Most Australian books ever written have fallen out of print and become unavailable for purchase or loan from libraries. This includes important local and national histories, biographies and memoirs, beloved children’s titles, and even winners of glittering literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Supported by funding from state and territory libraries, philanthropists and the Australian Research Council, Untapped is identifying Australia’s culturally important lost books, digitising them, and promoting them to new generations of readers. As well as providing access to lost books and a new source of revenue for their writers, the Untapped collaboration is supporting new research into the economic value of authors’ reversion rights and book promotion by libraries, and the relationship between library lending and digital book sales. The results will feed into public policy discussions about how we can better support Australian authors, readers and culture.
See untapped.org.au for more information, including a full list of project partners and rediscovered books.
Readers are reminded that these books are products of their time. Some may contain language or reflect views that might now be found offensive or inappropriate.
For Taki
Φτενὸ στὰ πόδια σου τὸ χῶμα
γιὰ νὰ μὴν ἔχεις ποῦ ν’ ἁπλώσεις ρίζα
καὶ νὰ τραβᾶς τοῦ βάθους ὁλοένα
let the soil at your feet be thin
so that you will have nowhere to spread roots
and have to delve in the depths continually
Odysseus Elytis, To Axion Esti from Genesis
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement is made to the publications in which these stories first appeared: ‘Caffe Veneto’ in Follow Me; ‘The Harem’ in Australian Short Stories; ‘A Woman with Black Hair’ in Social Alternatives; ‘Market Day’ in Australian Short Stories; ‘White Friday’ in Outrider; ‘A Man in the Laundrette’ in The Australian Literary Supplement; ‘Marina’ in Tabloid Story; ‘Pomegranates’ in The Canberra Times; ‘Our Lady of the Beehives’ in Meanjin.
Contents
Place Of Birth
Caffe Veneto
The Harem
A Woman With Black Hair
Market Day
Home Time
White Friday
A Man In The Laundrette
Fire And Flood
Marina
A Girl On The Sand
Matrimonial Home
Pomegranates
Our Lady Of The Beehives
About The Author
Copyright
Place Of Birth
On the last day Bell will remember before the snow, on a blue-grey morning of high cloud, the old woman brings out a tapsi rolling with walnuts that she has cracked for the Christmas baklava. ‘We’ll be shut in soon enough,’ she sighs, perching on a plaited stool under the grapevine with the tapsi on her lap. Bell, her son Grigori’s wife, pulls up stools for herself and Chloe, the other daughter-in-law, the Greek one who has come to the village for Christmas; her husband’s ship is at sea. The women huddle over the tapsi picking out and dropping curled walnuts here, shells there. Chloe’s little girl, Sophoula, leans on her mother.
‘Me too?’ she murmurs.
‘Go ahead.’
Sophoula, biting her lips, scowls over her slow fingers. With a trill of laughter Chloe pops a walnut into the child’s mouth. ‘My darling! Eat,’ she says.
‘Don’t tell me she has nuts at her age?’ the old woman says. ‘You’ll choke the child.’
‘Mama, she’s three.’ Chloe’s face and neck turn red.
‘Just the same-’
‘Oh, I don’t like it!’ Sophoula spits and dribbles specks of walnut. The shelling goes on; under their bent heads Chloe and the old woman put on a fierce burst of speed. Suddenly all of them flare bright with sunlight and are printed over with black branches and coils of the grapevine as a gap opens in the cloud. Bell leaps to her feet and lumbers inside.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Chloe frowns.
‘Nothing. I’m getting my camera.’
‘Aman. Always photographs,’ her mother-in-law sighs.
‘It’s too cold to sit out here,’ Chloe says.
‘Oh, please,’ Bell wails from the window. ‘All stay where you are!’
But the gap in the cloud has closed over by the time she gets back, so that what she will always have is a photograph all cold blues, whites, greys and browns: brittle twigs and branches against walls and clouds, the washing hung along the wire, a white hen pricking holes in mud that mirrors her, and the three heads, black, brown and bone-white, suspended over the tapsi of walnuts.
Because she takes all the photographs, she won’t find herself in any of them.
Six weeks ago, as soon as she knew for certain, Bell wrote to her parents that they would be grandparents some time in May. ‘You’re the first to know,’ she added, though by the time the letter got to Australia the whole village probably knew. There’s no hope now of an answer until after Christmas. But at noon the postman’s motorcycle roars past, a fountain of mud in his wake, and stops at the village office, so she wanders down just in case and is handed an Australian aerogram. It has taken a month to get here and is one she will mark with a cross and keep as long as she lives.
Grandma and Grand Pop, eh, scrawls her father. And about time too. Tell Greg to take that grin off his face.
‘Are they pleased, Bella?’ The old woman is kneading the pastry for the baklava. Her arms are floured to the shoulders.
‘Of course. Dad says, “And about time too.”’
‘No wonder! Considering that you’re thirty-one-’
‘Thirty-’
‘—or will be when it’s born.’
‘Hasten slowly.’ Bell reads her mother’s exclamatory, incoherent half-page, laboriously copied, then goes back to her father’s.
It’s been three years. You could leave it too late, you know, Bell. With a bub and all that you could find yourselves tied down before you know it. It’s hard to think we mightn’t live to see our only grandchild. Mum’s been having dizzy turns again lately. She’s had one stroke, as you know. If money’s the problem, I can help you there. Also book you into the Queen Vic or wherever you like.
‘What else, Bella?’
‘Oh, questions. Money, hospitals. All that.’
‘Surely you’re booked into the Kliniki?’ Chloe stares.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Well, you’d better do it soon! You don’t want to have it in the Public Hospital! They have women in labour two to a bed in the corridors, it’s so crowded.’
‘I think I want to have it at home,’ Bell hears herself say.
‘At home!’ Kyria Sophia is delighted. ‘Why not? I had all mine here. Grigori was born in the room you sleep in!’
‘It wouldn’t be safe.’ Chloe raises her eyebrows. ‘Not with a first child. Anything can go wrong.’
‘Thank you, Chloe.’
‘It’s the truth. Look what happened to the papas’s daughter!’
‘The papas’s daughter? You know why that happened? She got a craving for fried bananas in the middle of the night and her husband wouldn’t go and try to find her any. And sure enough—’
‘Mama, the cord got round her baby’s neck and strangled it.’
‘Mama, not because of the bananas!’
‘You’re both fools! Of course it was because of the bananas!’ The old woman rams a grey branch into the firebox of the somba. ‘Aman! How come I’m the only one who ever stokes the fire?’ She brushes a wisp of hair out of her eyes and flours her face. White like her hair and arms, it sags into its net of wrinkles.
Lunch, Bell’s chore today, isn’t ready when the old man comes in from the kafeneion and finds her alone in the kitchen. Kyria Sophia has taken Sophoula with her to the bakery to leave the baklava, Chloe is at a neighbour’s place with the baby. He sits by the somba, small and grey and muddy, rolling and smoking one fat cigarette after another. The makaronia have to be boiled to a mush, Bell knows, before she can toss them in oil and butter and crumble feta cheese over them. Kyria Sophia comes back exhausted hand-in-hand with Sophoula and as if the day’s work wasn’t enough, now she has her to spoonfeed.
They eat the makaronia in silence. At every mouthful a twinge, a jab of pain drills through Bell’s jaw. Not a toothache, please, she prays. Not now, not here.
Sophoula pushes the spoon and her grandmother’s hand away. ‘Yiayia! You have to tell a story!’
‘What story?’ sighs the old woman.
‘A story about princesses.’
‘Eat up and then I will.’
‘Now!’ Sophoula bats the spoon on to the floor. The old woman gets another one and shovels cold lumps into the child’s mouth, chanting a story by heart. Whenever she falters, the child clamps her mouth shut. Bell, stacking the dishes, isn’t really listening, but when the bowl is almost empty she exclaims aloud in English, ‘Snow White! No, Snow White and Rose Red!’
The old woman giggles. ‘Zno Quaeet,’ she mocks. ‘No Zno Quaeet End—’
‘Yiayia, pes!’
‘Aman, Sophoula!’
‘Pes.’ She spits into the bowl.
After lunch these days Bell sleeps until it’s dark. Now that she is into her fifth month she is sleepy most of the time. From under the white flokati she can hear Grigori’s voice (so he is back from Thessaloniki with the shopping) and then Kyria Sophia’s shrill one. When she wakes properly, ready for another long yellow evening by the somba, he is still there in the kitchen finishing a coffee. So is Chloe, red from her sleep, with the baby at her breast. ‘Hullo,’ Bell says, kissing Grigori’s woolly crown. She fumbles with the briki.
‘Coffee again?’ Chloe mutters.
‘Just one to wake me up.’
‘It’s so bad for the baby.’
‘One won’t hurt.’
‘Oh well, you’d know.’
Bell turns her back to light the gas. ‘Where are the old people?’ She touches Grigori’s shoulder.
‘Milking.’ His father’s grey head grins in at the window; he leaves the milk saucepans on the sill. ‘You got a letter, Mama said. Are Mum and Dad all right?’
‘Yes, they send their love and congratulations.’ Bell rubs her jaw. There’s a hollow ache in her back teeth. She empties the sizzling briki into a little cup and takes a furry sip of her hot coffee. The baklava is on the table, baked and brought home already, its pastry glossy with the syrup it’s soaking in. Grigori’s shopping is all around it: oranges in net bags, chestnuts, a blue can of olive oil, lemons and mandarines and—she can hardly believe it—six yellow-green crescent bananas blue-stamped Chiquita. ‘Oh, bananas! Oh, darling, thank you!’ she cries out. ‘We were just talking about bananas!’
‘I’m so extravagant,’ Chloe simpers, ‘but Sophoula simply loves them. So I gave Grigori the money to buy her some.’ Her eyes dare Bell to ask for one. A pregnant woman can ask even strangers in the street for food. Bell grins at Chloe, remembering her frying mussels one day in Thessaloniki when a pregnant neighbour squealed from a balcony, ‘Ach, Kyria Chloe! Mussels! I can smell them!’ and Chloe had to let her have a couple. ‘She never smells anything cheap,’ Chloe grumbled to Bell.
‘Is that so, Kyria Chloe?’ Bell contents herself with saying. ‘Ah, so much lovely food. We’ll never eat it.’
‘You won’t.’ The old woman comes in and lifts the milk saucepans inside. ‘Aman, the cold!’ She slams the window. ‘You won’t eat. You’re fading, look at you. White as snow.’
‘I will. That was when I had morning sickness.’
‘We don’t want a kitten, you know, we want a big strong baby.’
‘Believe you me,’ Chloe mutters, ‘the bigger it is, the harder it comes out.’
‘Ah, bravo, Chloe, bravo!’ The old woman clatters the saucepans, straining the warm milk. ‘Don’t you crave anything, Bella? You must crave something.’
‘Why must she?’
‘Well, to tell the truth, I’d love a banana,’ says Bell. ‘It seems like years! Can I buy one from you, Chloe?’
‘I’m sorry. There aren’t enough.’
‘We share in this house, Chloe! If you want a banana, Bella, you have one! Don’t even ask!’
‘No, no, it’s all right.’
Grigori stands up. ‘See you later,’ he says. He grabs a mandarine and saunters outside.
‘Not to the kafeneion already?’ his mother pleads. ‘You just got here.’ She stares bleakly after him. ‘And what would you expect?’ She rounds on her daughters-in-law. ‘Doesn’t a man have a right to peace and quiet?’
‘Auntie?’ Chloe has taught Sophoula this English word. ‘Auntie Bella? Do they have Christmas where you come from?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Did you go to church?’
‘No.’
‘You stayed home at Christmas!’
‘We went to the beach,’ Bell says.
‘At Christmas! You’re funny, Auntie!’
‘Funny, am I?’ Bell crosses her eyes. With a giggle, Sophoula sits in her lap.
‘Where’s your baby?’
‘You’re sitting on it. Oh, poor baby.’
‘What’s its name going to be?’
‘I don’t know. What’s your baby’s name going to be?’
‘We won’t know till he’s been christened.’
‘Oh, no, I forgot.’
‘If it’s a girl, they’ll call it after Yiayia,’ Chloe interposes. ‘The same as we did with you.’
‘Good idea. I’ll call my baby Yiayia.’
‘Auntie, you can’t!’
‘Why can’t I? Not if it’s a boy, you mean?’ Bell winks. ‘Then I’ll call it Pappou,’ and she is rewarded with a peal of laughter so loud that it wakes the old woman.
‘Let’s eat, Mama,’ Chloe says.
‘Is it late?’ She blinks, squinting in the light. ‘The men’ll be home any minute.’
‘No, they won’t.’ Bell lifts Sophoula down. ‘Can we cut the baklava now? I crave baklava.’
‘Oh. All right.’ Smiling in spite of herself, Kyria Sophia cuts her a dripping slice. As Bell bites into it, the ache that has been lying in wait all day drills through her tooth and she shrieks aloud, letting syrup and specks of walnut dribble down her chin. She swills water round her mouth. The women cluck and fluster. Sophoula clings to her mother in tears of fright. The old woman mixes Bell an aspirin and she gulps it. She is helped to bed, where she curls up moaning in the darkness under the flokati. The light flashes on once, twice. She lies still until the door quietly closes.
Grigori is undressing with the light on. Bell rubs her watery eyes. The ache is duller now.
‘Were you asleep? How’s the tooth?’
‘Bad.’ She probes with her tongue.
He turns off the light and lies on his back with one cold arm against her. ‘What’s all this about having the baby here at home?’
‘No! I’d be terrified.’
‘Mama said you said you wanted to.’
‘No. She misunderstood. I meant—I just feel—I want to go home and have it.’ She holds her breath. ‘Home to Australia.’
‘How come?’
‘Oh. Mum and Dad. You know. Mostly, I suppose. Yes.’
‘We can’t afford the fares.’
‘One way, we can. Dad said they’d help.’
‘Ah. One way? I see.’
The moon must have risen. In the hollow glow through the shutters the flokati looks like a fall of snow on rough ground. ‘I wonder if it’ll snow for Christmas?’ she says. ‘It didn’t the other times.’
He snorts. ‘You spring a thing like this on me. What I might feel—you couldn’t care less, could you! I wanted to stay in Australia three years ago, but no, you uprooted us, you—felt—you had to go and live in Greece. And now what? Come along, doggy, I want to go home. To Australia!’
She takes a shaky breath. ‘I feel guilty, I suppose. They’re old, they’re not well. “You could leave it too late,” Dad said.’
‘You know what a pessimist he is. You used to joke about it.’
‘Can we bank on it, though?’ She ploughs on. ‘It’s not as if it would be for ever.’
‘It might.’
‘We can always come back.’
‘Always, can we? Backwards and forwards.’ He turns his back to her. ‘I’ll need to think it over. I’m tired.’
‘There’s not much time. We’ve got till the end of February. That’s when my smallpox vaccination expires. I can’t have another one while I’m pregnant and I can’t enter Australia without it.’
Lying along his back, she feels him tightening against her. The nape of his neck is damp and has his hot smell. Once he pelted past her down a sand dune and was out of sight in the white waves when the hot smell from him buffeted her face. That was at Christmas.
We went to the beach at Christmas when I was little, she remembers. On Phillip Island we had dinner at the guesthouse and then Dad and I followed a track called Lovers’ Walk—there was a board nailed up, Lovers’ Walk—to look for koalas as they awoke in the trees. First we walked down the wooden pier where men and their sons were fishing. Red water winding and hollowing. Crickets fell silent when I walked in the tea-tree. After sunset the waves were grey and clear rolling and unrolling shadows on the sand. The trees, black now, still had their hot smell.
