Amy's Children Read Online Free Page A

boys’ things in the pile, and changed the vision to all of them walking, spread out from one side of the road to the other. Tears came into her eyes at the thought that she might not be carried when her legs grew tired because Patricia and Lebby would be taken up first. She pressed herself against her mother to communicate this fear to her and seek reassurance through the warm flesh of Amy’s side.
    Amy, seeking reassurance herself, clung to Kathleen and Patricia, one on either side of her, and looked at her big case, dropped inside the kitchen door, to gain comfort from that. It was packed with almost everything she owned and she planned not to unpack most of it since she would leave for Sydney in two days’ time.
    She watched May toss each ironed garment onto the pile. Lebby, in her chair at the corner of the table, bent towards May, eyes lowered. May murmured small soothing words every now and again.
    â€œI’ll get myself a better job there,” Amy pleaded, and loosened her hold on the girls to slide her hands over her knees and look at them, telling herself they were capable of better things than making beds and sweeping floors.
    Kathleen pressed harder against her, feeling the change in Amy’s body as if it had been a warm and friendly tree trunk until she spoke. Now it was cold, and she felt that she was out in the paddocks alone with a storm coming and that the tree, afraid for itself, was no longer concerned with sheltering her. She picked up her doll from the floor and wrapped her arms around it. Amy stood up and with a little frown inspected some wrinkles on her sleeves and concentrated for a moment on stroking them away.
    May gave her one brief, sharp look, ironing on with her free hand on Lebby’s shoulder. The look said Damn your dress! Is that all you care about? Amy picked up her case and all eyes, even Lebby’s, watched her as she carried it into the bedroom.
    May finished the ironing. Kathleen was surprised to see the basket empty. Nearly always there was something left in the bottom, some of the boys’ old shirts, too tattered to stand up to the rigours of May’s thrusting iron. Emptiness took hold of her too. Something is changing, she thought, seeing the late afternoon sun had moved to the edge of the veranda boards and was clinging there, growing paler as she watched. That chilled her too, and she didn’t know where to look for comfort.
    Then May called from the end of the table, where she was rolling the ironing blanket into a fat little log, with the scorched part of the sheet hanging some tattered tongues out one end.
    â€œFeed the fowls, Kathleen. Any minute they’ll start up a squawk to deafen us all!”
    Bent low like a runner starting a big race, Kathleen flew to the end of the veranda to scoop a jam tin of corn from an open bag there. She had to grapple with the legs of a chair to get to the corn, for the boys had thrown Amy’s furniture there when they brought it from her place, and were paying no heed to May’s constant pleas to take it to the shed where it belonged.
    Kathleen ran with the corn to fling it over the wire netting into the pens. Setting up a squawking and fluttering of wings, the fowls threw themselves against the wire, scrambling on each other’s backs and pecking at the air.
    â€œStop your noise!” she said, throwing the corn over their backs to the far side of the pen, causing them to turn and run in that direction, gobbling wildly under the shower of grain.
    The mass of backs, Kathleen thought, looked like the grey patterned eiderdown on her grandmother’s bed.
    â€œEat and be quiet!” she called. “Or my granma will be very angry with you!”
    Running back with the empty tin she saw May hook her hair behind her ear in the old way, setting the table for tea.
    We’re not going, no one’s going, we’re not going, I know we’re not going, she sang inside her head.

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