The Home Girls Read Online Free

can’t go to work with your innards as dry as the scales on a goanna’s back!”
    She stood in the glow of the stove fire which Harold had got going among the little Torrenses all crouched over it. Her nightgown slipped from her shoulders showing her white neck threaded with blue veins. Her red hair wet from her wet hands was strewn about and her blue eyes welled with tears. Harold stood staring long at her and the little Torrenses looked from him to their mother and back into the heart of the glowing stove. In a little while without anyone speaking they scurried off to bed.
    Kathleen rubbed one icy foot upon the other clutching a threadbare towel about her waist under her nightie to rub dry her icy thighs and buttocks.
    â€œLie down on the floor close to the fire,” whispered Harold. “And afterwards I’ll rub you warm again.”
    â€œOf course,” she whispered back and sinking down reached up both arms to him.
    When the pain of the loss of Harold’s pay had eased it actually became a subject for discussion. Gathered around the meal table the Torrenses talked about what the two pounds would have bought.
    â€œPounds and pounds of butter!” cried a little Torrens whose teeth marks were embedded in a slice of bread spread with grey dripping.
    â€œHow many pounds then?” asked Harold. “How much is butter? One and threepence? How many pounds in two pounds? Come on, work it out! Thomas Cleary could!”
    â€œWhat else would it have bought Mumma and Dadda?” cried the seven year old Torrens.
    â€œTinned peaches, jelly, fried sausages!” screeched her sister.
    â€œBlankets! One for each of our beds!” cried Mrs Torrens unable to contain herself.
    Then she dropped her face on her hand and shook her hair down to cover her lowered eyes and dripping tears.
    â€œA new coat with fur on it for Mumma!” said an observing little Torrens.
    Kathleen lifted her head and shook back her hair.
    â€œI like my old coat best!” she said.
    â€œSee,” said Harold clasping his wife’s hands. “Mumma doesn’t want a new coat. So the money was no use to us after all!”
    Although this deduction puzzled some of the little Torrenses they were happy to see their mother smiling and ecstatic when she flung her head towards Harold and fitted it into the curve of his neck and shoulder.
    They trooped outside to play soon after.
    The creek figured in many of the rages of Mrs Torrens particularly her milder ones.
    When in one of these she took the children to picnic just below the bridge on a Sunday afternoon.
    The normal Tantello people considered this the height of eccentricity, the place for Sunday picnics being the beach twenty-five miles away available to those with reliable cars, and for the others there was the annual outing with the townspeople packed into three timber trucks.
    Tantello Creek was a wide bed of sand with only a trickle of water in most parts, but there was a sandbank a few yards upstream from the bridge with a miniature waterfall and a chain of water holes, most of them small and shallow petering out as they moved towards the main stream.
    This is where Mrs Torrens took the children for a picnic in full view of Tantello taking Sunday afternoon walks across the bridge.
    Mrs Torrens spread out the bread and jam and watercress gathered by the children and they ate on the green slope below the road with an occasional car passing in line with their heads and the walking Tantello staring from the bridge.
    â€œGo home you little parlingtons and stop staring!” cried Mrs Torrens waving a thick wedge of bread towards the bridge.
    â€œAre you swearing at us, Mrs Torrens?” said one of the starers.
    â€œYou know swearing when you hear it! Or do you plug your ears after closing times on Saturday when your Pa comes home?”
    â€œOh, Mumma,” breathed an agonized Torrens named Aileen, the eldest of the family.
    She shared a seat