Free The Pink House at Appleton by Jonathan Braham Page A

on their coming and going and the type of visitors they entertain. At the first sign of trouble, too much
Bush
tea drinking, food missing, bedclothes, cutlery and worse, money, fire them on the spot!’
    These older women who advised Mama had spent an extraordinary amount of time on the subject of maids. It was the main topic of conversation at their dinner parties and at the club. Some of them, after many years at the estate, had still not found the right maid. A hardened group, the most serious of the concerned women, held committee meetings to discuss the maid problem, the one problem that completely bedevilled them. Mama listened politely and smiled a great deal, but she wanted to get away from their company.
    And Papa reassured Mama, saying that they were bound to find the right maid soon. Thieves and Bible-reading ignoramuses just wouldn’t do. And he made urgent enquiries at the factory through his dubious intermediaries.
    * * *
    Two maids came and went in quick succession, lasting only four days between them. The first, Edilyna, burnt through three of Papa’s shirts during the ironing and burnt breakfast, lunch and dinner. Papa fired her after dinner on the first day. The second, Lurlene, took two hours to prepare breakfast and seemed completely exhausted on her feet. She fell asleep at the kitchen sink on the second morning. ‘Sleeping sickness,’ Papa said. Lurlene was given her wages on the third day when she was found seriously nodding off in front of the red-hot cooker. And then there was Melvyna.
    Melvyna, the fifth maid, came up from Lacovia with all her belongings crammed in a large
bankra
on her head,
and
her face
drenched in perspiration from the long walk. Mama commented on the attractiveness of the
bankra
and said she had seen very attractive baskets at the Victoria Crafts Market in Kingston but none came close to Melvyna’s. Melvyna was well pleased and promised Mama a
bankra
of her own, as her brothers back in Lacovia made the baskets themselves to sell at the local markets. She was quick of eye and swift of motion, preparing breakfast, polishing the furniture and getting down to the washing before anyone was awake. Mama had to restrain her. She made a promising start.
    And so, on a Sunday evening with the scent of boiling sugar in the air, Melvyna pushed Yvonne’s pram along the paved roads, with the children all round her in their Sunday clothes. She wore a floral dress that Mama had given her, a wide-brimmed, black straw hat and white shoes. Yvonne’s big pink doll with the corn-yellow hair sat in the pram. Sometimes, when she got tired, Yvonne sat in the pram with the doll in her lap.
    Barrington wanted to walk by Geraldine Pinnock’s house. He didn’t say so himself, he just walked in that direction as if he had no particular interest in going there, and Melvyna followed. Geraldine Pinnock was only eleven years old but she was going to be a concert pianist like Winifred Atwell. That September she was off to the Hampton School for Girls, which was not far from Munro College, Barrington’s new school. All evening long she played the piano but didn’t appear on the verandah. Barrington had his hands in his pockets and observed the house from under uninterested brows, but Boyd knew where his heart was. He and Yvonne picked roseapples near Mr and Mrs Moore’s old house and paid no attention whatever to Melvyna’s entreaties to be orderly and to pick, if they had to pick, only the ripe apples. The roseapple smell and taste mesmerised them. They had never seen so many lovely roseapples hanging from a single tree before.
    They crossed the railway tracks to gaze down into the river, saw the strong current dragging long grass and reeds along the banks, and held Poppy tight to prevent him falling in. Poppy, excited to the full, made little darting movements between their legs as if he would rush headlong into the water but always pulled up at the last