Free The Home Girls by Olga Masters Page B

be saved,” she said going to pick up the baby and taking him to the window to see his father.
    â€œSee Daddy coming?” she said making Louisa feel even more foolish because she was a stranger to babies.
    She thought the child unattractive with large very red cheeks. It amazed her further that the parents considered this a redeeming feature and pointed them out in case Louisa and Jim didn’t notice which appeared an impossibility.
    Even now Annie couldn’t resist plucking one of the cheeks.
    â€œOld Poppy Cheeks,” she said.
    Oh God, we’re going to be here for hours yet, Louisa thought gazing at the table.
    The men came in. Louisa looked up expecting an apology but their faces wore a sort of self congratulatory look for leaving the women together.
    â€œThis is nice,” said Peter seeing the table set.
    They ate some canned soup, a salad with ham from a tin and the apricots with cream.
    My bread is the best part of the meal, Louisa thought and began to plan a menu to serve them when the visit was returned.
    I’ll show her, she thought watching Peter eat the uninspiring salad with obvious relish.
    They were more than half way home before they spoke. He is waiting for me to say something about them (her) she thought.
    Out of habit because it was always she who started a conversation no matter what the occasion, she fished around in her mind for something to say.
    Then she thought: By hell, I won’t mention them! I won’t say anything at all about them!
    She glanced out of the car window passing a cottage near the road with a side wall thickly crusted with a kind of ivy studded with small creamy flowers.
    â€œSee that!” she said and he jerked with the suddeness of her speech.
    â€œIt’s gone now, but it was a climbing plant. I’ll get some slips of it from somewhere and plant it by the garage to cover that ugly side near the house.”
    He drove a way before answering.
    â€œYou’re the gardener,” he said.
    It became easier and easier as the evening ended not to talk about the visit or Annie and Peter.
    â€œDo you want coffee?” she said when she was in her dressing gown and he had finished listening to a news commentary on the radio.
    To herself she said: “It will be better than the stuff they gave us.”
    She made the coffee as she usually did stirring a little cream in at the end and dusting it lightly with cinnamon.
    â€œSoon be time to light a fire,” she said. “I’m dying to try out the fireplace.”
    They have one too, she thought and saw in her mind the child sitting looking at it from the floor with its big red cheeks getting redder.
    I wonder what he thought of the baby, she thought.
    She stood up sharply and rinsed her cup at the sink.
    â€œDo you have anything planned for tomorrow?” she asked.
    In the silence before he answered she wondered if a free agent that he was in his job he would drop in on them without mentioning it.
    Before she fell asleep she thought: The whole night passed without a word about them. Remarkable.
    Even more remarkable was the weeks that passed after that without a word about them.
    By then Louisa had put them quite a distance from her mind and ceased to look out for the truck when shopping in the town.
    On a sunny, windy Wednesday she went off to post four letters she had written that morning.
    They were long owed and she had written at length with some of her phrases still going round and round in her mind. Frosts are beginning to breathe on us , she wrote to her Aunt Cissie. Little knife blades are coming up in the lawn. I can’t wait to see what prize will be spiked on the end .
    Aunt Cissie would enjoy that. Louisa saw her showing the letter around and saying that Louisa had a way with words. “It’s her way of describing her bulbs coming out.” Aunt Cissie would say.
    Louisa in her oldish overcoat with the belt swinging ran up the Post Office steps and stopped