Free Loving Daughters by Olga Masters Page B

her eyes shine and her face go soft. It would be terrible if someone else got in first with the news!
    He went off in a glow to measure the space in the lumber room where Enid wanted a closet to keep the place tidier. If it was started in the next day or so there would be an excuse to go to Wyndham for nails and screws.
    Enid came back to the table to sit with Jack and offer him freshly brewed tea. Una snapped the door shut on herself in the bedroom and Enid looked pointedly at it, so Jack had a fair idea that Una was the subject of discussion.
    What was coming now? Jack moved his bulky body in his chair. There had been enough lately. Couldn’t they settle down again, content with their full bellies? His thoughts swung to Mrs Skinner as he saw her on the woodheap rubbing her arms, for she seemed cold huddled there, but she got up when she noticed him and walked with a show of dignity into the house.
    Skinner said she was crook all the time now, sounding quite proud of himself. Jack had enough of full bellies with that girl dying and now the child whom he had avoided looking at so far. He didn’t want full bellies on these girls, wondering why he should be thinking this! Never Enid and not Una if they kept a close watch on her. What was this Enid was saying?
    â€˜She needs a little holiday, I think, Father.’
    Well, that was a relief. Nothing more than a little holiday! He would give them some money each before the spring, and they could have a week in Sydney or at the seaside.
    Violet and Ned would come as they usually did, although it would be awkward now with that baby. He wouldn’t tolerate a repeat of mealtimes like their dinner today. Nellie had always kept small babies out of his way until he was ready for them. He had quite liked walking about the farm with them occasionally, showing them flowers and animals, their fat little rumps jigging with pleasure on his arm.
    Nellie would hold his other arm, looking down on her skirt swishing about her ankles, glad her stomach was flat, he knew that!
    He thought of the women’s skirts at the funeral, getting higher and higher, showing legs that were once never seen out of bedrooms.
    Nellie would sometimes lie on their bed, behind the closed bedroom door, and raise her nightgown above her knees, then her white legs and ankles would be raised too. And she would laugh, not unkindly, teasing and joyful, at him, normally painstaking and ponderous, trying to shed his trousers with speed.
    He needed to drag himself away from all that, back to Enid saying something with closed eyes lowered onto her teacup.
    â€˜I couldn’t get away of course, now that Violet has the baby to care for, it would be too much for her here with Ned and you and the boys.’
    Here was a how-do-you-do! Suggesting Una go away on her own! But Jack’s jowls settled down with her next words.
    â€˜She could go to Merimbula and have a week there with the cousins!’
    Percy Herbert, a brother of Jack and Ned, owned and ran a hotel at the coastal town, less frequented by the family for holidays than the closer Pambula.
    Percy and his wife Alice had six daughters. Percy got out of farming and into the hotel trade. With all those girls, could you blame him? The eldest was Enid’s age and besides Sadie there was Clara, Sybil, Annie, Bridget and Linda. The hotel was full of holidaying guests in the summer and travelling salesmen and fishermen in the winter.
    Percy had land behind the hotel and kept cows and poultry and grew vegetables. He boasted about how well he was doing and what a better choice he had made than to remain tied to farming like Jack and Ned.
    His girls, a buxom lot, though not as refined looking as Enid and Una, were kept out of mischief with all the hotel work, and Percy considered them providential.
    After practically ignoring them as small children, he enjoyed making his morning rounds and watching them fling the clean sheets on the beds, one on either side,