Loving Daughters Read Free Page B

squawking, perhaps reminding him of French farmhouses at the other Albert Lane, sent him scurrying into the bush where he would remain for hours.
    In the early days when the Herberts were pioneers of Wyndham, an old Herbert woman named Phoebe had been found dead in a hollow tree after she had been missing for weeks. Violet, fearing a similar fate for Ned, would stand on the edge of the bush, only her beating heart breaking the silence.
    Later she grew less patient and less fearful, talking aloud to her angry footsteps in the otherwise silent house, saying he could finish up like old Phoebe for all she cared.
    But she was not yet brave enough to openly announce her plans about the hospital, warning Enid and Una, who were in her confidence, not to say anything in front of the ‘boys’ in case word got back to Ned.
    â€˜He’ll come round in the end,’ Violet said on this particular occasion, about two months before the birth of Small Henry, visiting Honeysuckle and gossiping with Enid and Una in the living room.
    The annual Wyndham picnic races had been held the week before, so the projected hospital had to be shared with that major event as a talking point. Priority was given to the food tent operated by Wyndham’s meanest woman, Mrs Ena Grant, wife of the Wyndham storekeeper.
    Una flung away the petticoat she was sewing and pantomimed, with exaggerated movements of her slender body and long arms, Mrs Grant removing portions of food from plates filled by other helpers. Then Una became the helpers and put the food back, and Mrs Grant removed it again, and after a while Una’s body became a flurry of movement and her head rapidly swung from left to right in pursuit of her opposition, until she was jerking and spinning like a mechanical toy.
    Enid with twitching lips got up and straightened the tablecloth after Una had flung herself back in her chair, and Violet used the inside hem of the dress she was altering to wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes.
    â€˜You should take it on,’ Violet said to Enid, as she had been saying for the past two or three years, referring to the operation of the food tent.
    What followed each picnic races was equally predictable.
    A few days after the event the workers gathered for their meeting, ranged on a wooden plank in the public hall, sharing the Herbert women’s view that Ena Grant should be removed permanently from the food tent. They waited for Ena’s arrival, stern of expression and resolute of mind.
    â€˜If anyone feels they can do a better job, they have only to speak up!’ Ena said, opening the exercise book containing her figures, one damaged in transit from the warehouse, but charged to the committee at full price.
    No one spoke up although Enid, proud of her skill for management, wanted to. But leaders of charity work in Wyndham were matrons or established spinsters, and Enid at twenty-one might have been verging on spinsterhood but was not yet ready to draw attention to it.
    Now Violet, Enid and Una each lifted their chins, like birds anticipating a scattering of seed, something with a taste they knew and favoured.
    The food tent! Who gave what and who cunningly covered their donation to take it home untouched? Who dodged the job of stoking the fire under the tins boiling the water for tea, and spent their time flirting with the men leaning on the counter between races?
    But there was no time for a burst of words from lips hastily moistened for an easy passage. At that moment Henry’s wife drifted into the room, light and ghost-like in spite of her bulk. She took a straight-backed chair near the piano, folding her hands one above the other on her thighs and looked down on them past her stomach under the stretched cloth of her dress.
    She had not been included in the outing to the races, but left to drift about the big, cool, empty house where she did no more than wipe a few dishes left by the washing-up dish, not putting them away in