Allegra in Three Parts, page 15
‘Kind of,’ I say at the same time as Patricia says, ‘No.’
‘Well, they want better pay so they’ve all stopped work at the factory . . . they’re trying to negotiate with Bolton’s to give them more money. But if Matilde and the other outworkers keep up their sewing at home, that means Bolton’s can still get the work done and their orders filled and then they don’t need the women at the factory after all. The strike is broken.’
‘Is it bad to be a strike breaker?’
‘That depends on your perspective, Al.’
‘But Matilde is just doing what she’s always done – her piecework from home – and if she doesn’t work then she doesn’t get paid, not a red cent.’
‘Yeah, that’s exactly right.’
‘And if she doesn’t get paid she can’t pay for everything we need.’
‘Well, she doesn’t pay for everything we need, Al. I work too.’
‘I know . . . but you’ve got that sickness.’
‘What sickness?’
‘The Játszik sickness . . .’
‘The what sickness?’
Rick and Patricia both turn towards me so that I feel flanked, and now I’m wishing I hadn’t taken the conversation from strike breaking to the Játszik sickness. I lean forward and turn up ‘Good Vibrations’. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘What are you talking about, Al? Come on, don’t you fob me off now.’ Rick turns the music down again.
He’s not going to let me off the hook, I can tell, so I explain reluctantly, ‘I heard Matilde telling that Polish lady, the one who came around for tea, that you had a sickness and she called it the Játszik sickness. She said it’s why you can’t contribute much money.’
‘Jeeeez,’ Rick mutters under his breath, and turns up ‘Good Vibrations’ louder than before. He doesn’t tap his fingers on the steering wheel this time; he just stares straight ahead.
‘She wasn’t really mad about it, Rick, she was just explaining why she needs the money from the piecework. But . . . well . . . maybe . . . maybe I didn’t hear her properly.’ I don’t think Rick is hearing me now.
We don’t speak again until we pull up in the car park at the beach. Rick gets his board out of the back and hovers there for a while before he sticks his head in the side window of the van.
‘I’m going to catch a few waves. You two can wait here or down on the sand.’ Rick’s obviously changed his mind about taking us for a paddle and wants the waves to wash his stuff away all on his own.
‘And Al . . . by the way . . . sometimes your grandmother can be a bitter old woman. I don’t have that sickness, not like her husband had. I just like to place a bet every now and again. It gives me something to be hopeful about.’
I’m relieved about that, in a worried-guilty sort of way.
‘Looks like we didn’t need our swimmers after all,’ I say to Patricia.
‘That’s okay, Ally, I can’t actually swim,’ she says, watching Rick walking towards the water. ‘Well, at least your dad hasn’t got that sickness.’
‘Yeah, but now he’s mad with Matilde all because of me,’ I say, and I start to feel a sickness of my own rise up in that part of my heart that gets congested when my dad and grandmothers press hard and cold against each other.
Patricia and I arrive home from the beach bone dry. Coming up the back porch I hear Matilde on the phone at the end of the hall. She doesn’t normally speak much on the phone, especially in the middle of a rush job.
‘Of course I understand, I need the work just like you do, Nora, but this could be our only opportunity to change things for good, to make things better for all of us, the pieceworkers. We are the ones treated worse than all.’ She sees us come in, turns to the wall and lowers her voice. Only it’s a Matilde-style lowered voice and still just loud enough for me to hear every word.
‘With this strike at the factory, Bolton’s needs us now more than ever and so we have this small window of power. We should seize this opportunity to be paid fairly and to be paid on time. It could be our only chance.’
Matilde goes quiet. She is listening. She is nodding. She is pleased: ‘Good. This is good, Nora. Can you speak with your sister also? I will call Katia and Irena.’
She hangs up and walks back to the front room, looking like something important has been settled. I follow her in, hoping it’s a good moment to ask if Patricia can stay for a sleepover. ‘Yes, yes, she can stay,’ says Matilde, sitting back down at her machine. ‘Your friend Patricia is a good no-nonsense girl. She is welcome here.’
Patricia is fascinated that Lucinda Lister is preggers, I told her when we were chatting in bed last night. And now after breakfast she wants to talk about it again, this time fishing for more details: ‘Do you know who the father is?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I say, and the truth is I hadn’t even thought to think about that.
‘We should visit her, Ally, we could take her some Twisties. I’d like to meet her.’
‘Matilde would be livid if I went anywhere near the Listers’ place. She told me to keep well away from there, and from Lucinda.’
‘It’s not like the mumps, Ally, you can’t catch preggers.’
‘I know that . . . but I don’t want to make Matilde mad, especially in the middle of this rush job with all the other stuff that’s going on.’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ says Patricia, but then she comes up with an idea. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you write Lucinda a note and I can drop it off at her place, that way you won’t be going there, you’ll be staying away like Matilde told you to, but you can still send her your sympathies. Don’t you feel sorry for her?’
Lucinda isn’t the sort of girl anyone normally feels sorry for. She’s always been the girl across the road that has everything: A blonde ponytail, a pool, a dragster, cool parents, a mixed party with eighteen friends, and Alpine Lights. But now that I think about it, there’s no one hanging around in the garage anymore, her pool has gone murky, and it seems like her dad and his station wagon aren’t coming back. I’m not sure where a baby fits in . . . whether that counts as more of everything or if it is actually something to feel sorry about.
Patricia seems pretty sure it’s something to feel sorry about, and she’s usually spot on, so I write Lucinda a note on my Holly Hobbie stationary: Sorry you’re preggers. I hope these Twisties make you feel better, from Ally. Patricia slips out the back door and down Joy’s side path to deliver it across the road to the Lucky Listers’ house. I play both hands of Go Fish by myself on my bedroom floor, using two different voices out loud so Matilde is none the wiser.
For three days now Matilde has pedalled hard, despite the angry women holding up their signs – and calling out her name – and the growing crowd of neighbours staring at what’s become quite a sight outside Number 23. The man with the grey Plasticine face has arrived at the same time each night, branded with dripping egg yolk and bringing more bags of fabric and a fresh round of barked instructions for Matilde. She agrees each afternoon to Patricia staying another night, I think mostly to keep me distracted.
And now some of the women are shouting Arulo . . . Arulo . . . Arulo.
I’m thinking that word must be Hungarian so Patricia and I sneak a look in the dictionary Matilde keeps on the bookshelf. And there it is . . . Arulo in Hungarian means Traitor in English. My birthmark warms up and starts to pulsate.
I take a tray of tea and honey toast in to Matilde. I make the tea extra warm, sweet and milky and spread the honey extra thick. Once I’ve set the tray down on the table next to the Singer my arms surprise me by moving forward and wrapping themselves around Matilde’s bony shoulders. My face nuzzles into the back of her head. She smells brave. She smells able. She smells really tired. Matilde actually stops sewing. She exhales and reaches her left hand up to my forearm, which I turn upwards . . . slowly . . . deliberately . . . so that my special mark lines up with the texta numbers written on her wrist.
And suddenly there is Kimberly Linton’s father, standing large and looking menacing in the doorway of Matilde’s front room.
‘Sorry to disturb such a tender scene but I have come to let you know that it’s you who is dragging the chain, and now that I’m here I can see all too clearly why.’
Mr Linton moves forward and stands over Matilde at her machine. It’s easy to trace the origin of every festering feature of Kimberly Linton. He has that same cruel expression Kimberly gets when she’s about to lash out.
So this time I decide to strike first.
‘My grandmother is not dragging any chain,’ I say, picturing Mr Linton as a scrunched-up essay in my pocket. ‘She’s hardly had any breaks in more than three days.’
‘Is that right, little miss,’ he says without looking at me. Then, stepping in closer to Matilde, he sprays: ‘Well, how is it then that your work is so slow and the quality is so poor? And as if that’s not bad enough, I hear you’re stirring up trouble with my other outworkers. If you want to be paid anything – anything at all – for this job or any other, you’d better pick up the pace and keep your mouth firmly shut!’ Mr Linton’s spittle is going straight into Matilde’s face.
A memory vapour of Kimberly’s burning words is whirling around the room:
I have an alive mother to buy for, not a dead mother, not a dead mother, not a dead mother like you.
And now it’s mixing with the threatening words of her father: Pick up the pace . . . the quality is poor . . . keep your mouth firmly shut.
My solar plexus is pushing up something that surfaces with a burst of BATOR: ‘You leave my grandmother alone. You’re a bully just like your horrible mean daughter.’ I fly at him and pull at his arm with all my might.
Matilde flinches like something is coming her way but Mr Linton turns and pokes his thumb – hard – into the middle of my spine. His breath smells of meat and vinegar and he pushes me down with his other hand at the base of my neck towards the door: ‘Now settle down, little miss, you have quite a temper there.’
He must have hit a nerve. I can’t help but let out an echoing shriek as I land – thump – on my knees in the corridor. And now he’s above me looking down, but I don’t care if he hurts me, I will not let this bully from Bolton’s Fashion House see me cry.
Matilde jumps up and is breathing hard by my side. ‘You . . . you disgusting pig. Do not ever touch my granddaughter. Do you hear me . . . ever! How did you even get into my home? My front door is locked,’ she demands loudly from the floor next to me.
‘What . . . you want me to come to the front door with those mad women bellowing out there? Knock on your front door like a visitor!’ Mr Linton is snarling. ‘You work for me, remember, and I’ll use any entrance I like.’ He looks like he thinks he owns everyone and everything in the world.
Matilde, satisfied that I’m not injured, stands up and takes him in – head-on – but suddenly she seems paralysed.
Joy is here.
For the first time ever, Joy is here inside Number 23 – and she’s holding a shovel.
And now she is speaking: ‘I don’t think the police will care who works for whom, Mr Linton, when I tell them you have committed the crime of trespass by coming through my property, and worse than that, you have just assaulted my granddaughter.’ Joy beckons me towards her.
‘Christ, what is this, surrounded by bloody grandmothers!’
‘Yes. Yes you are,’ says Matilde, regaining movement. ‘Now leave immediately, through the front door.’
‘You’d better hot-foot it and finish that order,’ he snorts. ‘I employ you. I pay you good money. I’m the one who allows you to work from home. You need me.’
‘And we both know that with this strike at the factory you need me.’ Matilde is looking a whole lot of B words . . . Bold, Balanced, BATOR and Backed-up.
‘I will finish the work that you can’t get done by the women on strike if – and only if – you pay me for the last job.’ Matilde is most definitely a spirited woman; how did I even think that was a question? ‘And I want full payment for this next one, immediately when I hand it over. With an extra dollar per garment from now on. In fact, I want you to agree to that for all of the outworkers.’
Mr Linton looks what Rick would call snookered.
‘But before you go, Mr Linton,’ says Joy, quickly handing Matilde a pen and paper from next to the phone on the hall table, ‘Mrs Kaldor will write that agreement down and you will sign it.’ I’ve never seen this before: Joy and Matilde working together.
‘I’m not signing any such thing.’
Whisky Wendy has arrived looking every bit like another grandmother. ‘I’ve called the police and they’re on their way,’ she says.
‘Your choice, Mr Linton, father of dear little Kimberly and pillar of the church,’ says Joy. ‘You can leave through the front door into the path of those egg-throwing women, or through my place into the hands of the police. Signing the agreement sounds like the easiest way out to me.’ Annabel Renshaw would definitely classify Joy as a women’s libber.
Patricia, who’d gone up to get Rick, bursts in with a flushed face just ahead of my dad, who looks ready for action. He stops himself short when he takes in the scene. He beckons me towards him and I move from beside Joy to behind my dad. He says nothing but his ribcage is fully expanded and he seems taller than ever before.
I can’t believe my eyes.
The Bully from Bolton’s is shaking his head but he’s signing the agreement, and he’s doing it on the ironing table with all of us watching. Matilde looks sideways at Rick and Joy and gives them both a pea-sized half-nod. Then Joy and her shovel lead Mr Linton out the back through the brown gate and down the side of Number 25 with Rick coming up behind like a cattle dog. Patricia and I move to the front window and watch as Mr Linton tries to turn left out of Joy’s house but Rick stands in his path and turns him around so that he has no choice but to walk through the middle of the angry ladies with their signs, and their name-calling, and an enthusiastic round of pitched eggs.
Chapter Nineteen
The Singer has stopped altogether and so has Matilde.
She has finished the rush job but now that it’s over she seems completely exhausted. The man with the grey Plasticine face comes first thing for her perfect pieces but Matilde can’t even go to the door. She asks me to check that he has brought an envelope containing two hundred and twenty-two dollars, which I bring to her bedroom and count out on her night stand. Then she asks that I help take the garments out to his car: while I put my head down on the bed, just for five minutes.
After lunch I check on Matilde, and she’s still lying down. Just before dinner I check her again. She is murmuring in a disturbed sleep. I leave her a tray of tea and honey toast, whispering softly that it’s on her bedside table, but when I go in after dinner, the tea and toast are untouched and cold, and Matilde’s face is blotchy and hot.
And now Matilde’s words are making no sense at all.
‘Do not let them see that you are weak, Elsa, never. Never let them see the slightest sign of weakness in you. They must think that you are strong. The strong ones are spared.’
I bend over Matilde, telling her it’s not Elsa, it’s actually me, her granddaughter, Allegra. She takes my hand and says with warm breathy words, ‘Here, have this corner of my bread. Take it. Quickly, do what I say. Eat it to keep up your strength.’
Matilde is holding out her empty left palm, which hangs limply from her texta-writing wrist. I obey her instructions and move my hand, taking the not-there bread, and afterwards I loosen the buttons at the top of her blouse. Her words change to Hungarian so now I don’t understand anything she is saying.
But then Matilde uses one word that has recently opened a door inside of me.
Belinda.
‘Belinda,’ she says again. And then switching back to English, ‘I survived hell to give you life and still you were taken from me.’
I hold Matilde’s hand in mine and lay my head gently down onto her chest.
‘But I am here with you, Matilde. I am here,’ I say. ‘Belinda’s daughter. Her alive daughter.’
Rick is seeing Dr Scully off at the door.
I hear the doctor tell Rick that Matilde needs to have complete bed rest for at least a week: ‘She’s suffering from fever and quite possibly exhaustion. Just light meals for now and call me again if you have any concerns.’
A few hours later Joy appears on the back porch. That’s twice in two days that my grandmother has stepped through the brown gate and into Number 23.
‘Now, I’m no Margaret Fulton,’ she says, looking as proud as punch and swinging her tie-dyed silk scarf over her shoulder. ‘But I tried my hand at making a lasagne. With pineapple pieces!’
Not even Patricia can stomach Joy’s lasagne and I don’t think Matilde would go anywhere near it, even in full health. So the light meals are mine to prepare. I bring down Matilde’s cookbooks and Patricia and I decide to have a go at making a pot of spring vegetable soup. We pick carrots, beans and spinach from Matilde’s garden, chop them and simmer them in some chicken bone broth that Matilde keeps in her stockpot in the fridge. We add parsley and shallots, salt and pepper, more salt and a sprig of chopped mint – that’s Patricia’s idea, she says its freshness might cool Matilde down. The soup turns out a bit salty and looks kind of greasy but after I wipe Matilde’s face gently with a face washer, the way she does mine whenever I’m sick, and pop a few pillows under her head, she eventually swallows five small mouthfuls – then one more – which I feed to her slowly from her favourite dented silver spoon.
Patricia and I agree: that should keep the wolf on the other side of the door.
Rick tells us the next day that the house needs to be kept extra quiet so Matilde can rest and it’s time to take Patricia back to Glebe. He agrees that I can come for the drive in his van to drop her over there to her mum.
