Loving Daughters Read Free

showroom at Honeysuckle, up a step from the living room and on a level of its own. It had been Nellie’s sanctuary, furnished with mahogany pieces shining like dark brown silk. There were two chintz-covered chairs, thick hooked rugs on the floor and a double bed with a handsome crocheted quilt and pillow shams. Enid kept it immaculate, constantly straightening the clothes in the wardrobe, and wiping out the jug and basin on the marble washstand after every use. Lately she had emptied a drawer in the dressing table for the creams and powders Una had taken to using, to save a clutter and spillage on the unblemished surface. Enid saw three of Una in the dressing table mirrors for she now had a dress spread on the bed intended for the funeral. It was a black moire silk, plain except for a pale blue piping at the high neck and wrists of the long tight sleeves. She touched the trimming as if willing it to disappear. Enid glanced at it while she removed the pillow shams and turned the quilt back.
    â€˜Perhaps it could be unpicked,’ Enid said. She sewed but did not have Una’s talent with the needle.
    â€˜Tonight? Sunday!’ Una said with round scandalized eyes. ‘Mother would die!’
    Not Mother, Enid thought, taking out the black dress she wore to the last Bega races, thankfully untrimmed except for a large pale apricot floppy cotton rose which she now unpinned from a lapel.
    â€˜Wear your black suit then,’ Enid said, receiving her answer from Una’s face. Wear the same dress two days in a row? With him to see!
    â€˜I finished the wreath,’ Enid said. ‘There were more flowers than for Mother’s. But I made it smaller.’
    Una approved but both faces were washed briefly with shame at the discrimination.
    Una put her nightgown on, full below the bust with lace and tucks. She went to the mirror and brushed and coiled her hair.
    Enid in bed blew out the lamp so there was only a fluttering candle on the dressing table to turn Una into a bride.

4
    Violet’s dream of turning her house into a hospital was reinforced when she took Small Henry home. His wailing through Sunday afternoon and a greater part of the night did not worry her too much. It was rather like an orchestra playing in its rightful setting.
    It worried Ned a great deal. He had lost an eye in the Great War and had a glass one in its place, and he turned both, one ahead of the other, on the white bundle Violet carried about, then looked through a door or window as if directing her to take it there.
    This is a good way of breaking him into the idea, Violet said to herself, binding a screaming Small Henry into a napkin large enough for a young calf.
    Violet was a nurse when she married Ned, giving him that name in preference to Edgar, and being a woman of authority, the family followed suit.
    Since she and Ned remained childless, she continued to take cases, or home confinements in Wyndham and nearby.
    Lately there had been a dwindling of numbers, due to slightly improved roads and a growing trend to travel to Bega or Pambula to private hospitals there.
    Here there were certain disadvantages of which Violet was well aware.
    Few timed their trips to arrive with the imminent birth. Most went days or even weeks in advance, enjoying for a while the luxury of sleeping late and meals in bed. Then husbands at home with an added workload, and reluctant relatives caring for other children, soured on the arrangements. The women grew heavy with guilt as well as their unborn children, as hours stretched into days and they watched the arrival of other patients, moaning in labour as they staggered up the hospital steps.
    How they envied them, longing for their own pains to start, turning their cheating bodies in shame, even from the lowly maid who brought their food. Many tearfully begged to be taken home, adding to the trauma by returning almost immediately, narrowly escaping giving birth in the hired car or family