Amy's Children Read Online Free Page B

getting away was terrible.
    Kathleen was very white and Patricia buried herself in the corner of the couch and cried quietly like a grown-up. Lebby had a fever and May had put her into the double bed under the speckled eiderdown. It was ironic that May should spare Lebby from witnessing the departure, since she was the one least troubled by it.
    When Amy came into the kitchen with her luggage, Patricia made for the corner of the couch and Kathleen ran to Gus and clung to his leg. He lifted her up, with a brief look of hate towards Amy, across Kathleen’s tangled head for it was quite early in the morning, and May had not found time so far to comb Kathleen’s and Patricia’s hair and wipe their faces with a damp cloth. Kathleen thought how strange it was to see Amy dressed up with a hat on at that hour and a thick coating of lipstick. Beside her the kitchen seemed in even worse confusion. The teacups from the first pot, made when the boys and Gus had got up for the milking, waited beside the stack of porridge plates and rounds of bread, ready for what the farming community called second breakfast, taken in more leisurely fashion when the chores were done.
    Amy took a piece of bread and ate it dry, pushing it through her red lips, eyes very round.
    â€œIf Fred is finished I’ll get him to carry my port down,” Amy said, laying the bread on the tablecloth.
    â€œCome on,” Gus said to Kathleen and hitched her higher, to carry her nearly at a run towards the dairy.
    May scooped Patricia up and ran after them. “We’ll see the poddies fed!” she cried.
    Amy set off for the gate, bent sideways with the weight of her case. Fred saw, and ran to catch her up and take it, while she ran ahead to stop the car, wobbling down the rough track on her high heels. The car made a great deal of dust stopping suddenly. Climbing in, Amy got a showering on her navy skirt. Since she had not said any formal goodbyes to the others, she was too embarrassed to say goodbye to Fred and fussed with her handbag, looking inside it and snapping it shut and slapping at some imaginary dust on it. Only once did she lift her head to see Fred’s round hungry face under his round felt hat, and beyond him Patricia running screaming towards the road (she couldn’t hear the screaming but she saw it)—and Kathleen standing stiff like a small stone statue, and May with her fist raised shaking it in the air.
    Some of the passengers in the centre of the rear seat, with others obscuring their view, thought the driver was receiving a reprimand. The driver, who had known May from childhood, thought so too. He lifted his hands from the wheel and raised them palms upwards and swung around to look for an explanation from Amy. But Amy had shrunk in her shame and misery between a small boy bearing signs of car sickness and a man bearing signs of a traveller in tea, for his attaché case was across his knee and he was utilizing travelling time by going through papers.
    In spite of herself Amy was impressed by an illustrated spill of tea from one corner of a sheet of paper, the leaves growing fainter as they crossed the page. She wondered if she might get to know the man, perhaps he would find her a job at the place where he worked. There would be jobs for a lot of people surely, because of all the tea sold. She had a swift vision of the big brown enamel teapot in May’s kitchen, nearly always full and hot, and felt her chest and throat begin to tighten. She decided to imagine a handsome tin of tea which she would send home as a gift. She saw Kathleen and Patricia bent over it, only their backs showing. Lebby was in May’s arms looking down on it too, her eyelids lowered.
    Amy and the man exchanged one glance. His eyes were cold and a pale grey with very pale lashes and sandy brows that grew in a little tuft near the bridge of his nose and didn’t bother going further. Amy looked again to make sure she wasn’t