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  The man takes off his hat.

  ‘Sorry to hear that. He never owed me a penny, Louis was a fine mate. Had some adventures together, we did.’

  ‘None I should wish to hear of, I imagine.’

  Rebecca can tell that her mother is looking to shut the door on him; a lady is visiting that afternoon for measurements. But the man is persistent. He wants to hear how Louis died. Lizzie sighs and her shoulders sink, but even with lines on her face and grey in her hair she is fine-boned and pretty. Rebecca grew out of her mother’s dresses and shoes the year she turned thirteen.

  ‘Come in, sit down,’ Lizzie says to the man, who introduces himself as Fred. ‘Becca will make you a cup of tea.’

  Lizzie motions for Fred to sit on the couch. She speaks to him for an hour nearly while Rebecca and Amy finish a silk taffeta underskirt for a burnished orange mantua. Lizzie is doing the outwork more and more and giving her daughters the finer jobs, the ones for the ladies. On account of her eyes, she says. She is more likely to drop a stitch.

  The girls stay in the back room, though the light is better in the front. They listen to the rise and fall of voices.

  ‘I hope he leaves,’ Amy whispers, ‘before any lady comes calling.’

  Rebecca nods. Amy has blue eyes from their father, a small nose and unblemished skin. A handsome man named John Wiley courts her and she says when she turns eighteen they will marry. Rebecca sits for hours listening to her worry over John—whether he likes her hair curled or straight, with a fringe or without, whether he will come on Sunday to take her for a stroll. Then there are the linens she is making for her glory box—tablecloth and sheet, napkin and lacework. Amy never pauses to notice whether or not she is listening. Rebecca feels ugly and plain beside her sister. Brown-haired and brown-eyed, dull as a puddle of mud. She snaps a length of thread between her teeth. The way it squeaks gives her goose pimples.

  Ruby plays with her little bits of glass and stone at the corner table, humming to herself and rocking back and forth. Finally the front door shuts, and Lizzie draws the curtain aside to look in. Her cheeks are high with colour and her eyes, though still watery and unfocused, seem brighter too.

  ‘He wasn’t a bad fellow,’ she says. ‘Kind about your father’s character.’

  ‘What was his business?’ Amy asks. Rebecca pretends to be absorbed in her work.

  ‘Nothing. Just wishing to have a yarn, to remember Louis. He might have work for Lou. That would be fine.’

  Amy sighs and jams her needle into the pincushion. ‘Yes, if Lou were inclined to take it up.’

  Fred makes their mother lighter with his visits, but he scratches against Amy and Rebecca like a rock on glass. ‘Where did he find these, in the horse trough?’ they whisper to one another, as he bestows a basket of wrinkled apples, or a loaf of bread they have to soak because it is hard as stone. Still, they eat what he brings. And then hate him even more. ‘We were right on our own.’

  Lizzie speaks of it one night, when the lamps are out, as Ruby’s breath comes steady and shallow. Lizzie lies on the other side of the room, on a narrow pallet that Louis used to sleep on. Now when he stays the night he sleeps in the front room.

  ‘You know how hard it has been for me, ever since your father died.’

  ‘We’ve done all right.’

  ‘We’re lucky to be alive.’

  ‘So what do we need another mouth to feed for?’

  ‘That’s not him. He’s got his own money, Amy. And he doesn’t spend it all at the pubs. You don’t understand what it’s like for me. You’re still a child.’

  ‘In one month I’ll be eighteen.’ Amy huffs and turns in the bed. Rebecca buries her head in the mattress and pulls the quilt towards her. It is made from remnants of her father’s clothes—an old wagga her mother stitched years ago. It is not the memory of her father that weighs her down—she can hardly remember him at all. It is the sense of being stuck, forever sewing slops in these dark rooms, the same newsprint turning yellow on the same walls. She has a desire to just put on her shoes and dress and run, as far and fast as she can go. But there is nowhere to go. It eats at her as she lies there, listening to the late-night rattle of the pie-man’s cart on the street outside.

  ‘You girls have always been a help to me. I don’t know what I should have done without you,’ Lizzie says in the dark, her voice thin. Her words are met with silence.

  The others are all leaving. Her mother needs her. It is her lot to grow grey here, wrinkled and sour, like one of Fred’s apples—to stay and help. Rebecca closes her eyes and listens for the rhythm of Ruby’s breath, wishing that her mind would be so empty.

  Amy is right about John Wiley: the day she turns eighteen they are off to the registry office to marry. John is broad-shouldered with a strong chin and blonde, curly hair. He wears a suit and a bowler hat pulled low over his too-small eyes. Amy looks like something from a catalogue in the dress they sew her—two yards of lace and four of ivory satin. She will move into his parents’ house in Randwick while they save enough to set out on their own.

  Afterwards, they all go to the pub to celebrate, and for the first time in her seventeen years Rebecca has more than a few sips of beer. They squeeze onto benches facing one another across a long wooden table, and as the lamps are turned on and the sky darkens their party grows loud and gay. The barmaid brings jug after jug and no one notices when Rebecca refills her glass. Bladder full, she excuses herself from the table and goes to the back of the pub to find the dunny. Her head feels light and her vision wobbles as the barmaid points her outside down a dark, narrow laneway. She locates the washroom—a small kerosene lamp burns inside—and lifts her skirts above her waist, holding her breath and trying not to lose her balance over the grubby hole. There is a noise outside the dunny door and someone tries to pull it open; she holds the handle firm while fixing her dress.

  It is just John, and he laughs when he sees it is her coming out, and her cheeks burn for he has caught her in the midst of a private thing.

  ‘My new sister! Come now Becca, give your brother a kiss.’

  She shrugs and nearly trips trying to squeeze past him, but he grabs her by the shoulders and pushes his lips against hers, taking the breath whole from her chest. She freezes. His hands slide down her back to grasp her buttocks and squeeze. There is a strange rush of pleasure from this, a warmth that makes her want to push back against him, and then horror as she realises: her sister’s husband. She pulls away and tries to step backwards, but he has her by the wrist and holds it fast.

  ‘Aren’t you a keen little whore,’ he whispers, as the door to the pub swings open and light shines down the narrow lane. ‘I’ve heard it runs in the family.’

  It is Louis in the doorway and she stumbles towards him while John scurries into the dunny. ‘What is it, Becca? Are you right? Who was that?’ Louis looks at her.

  ‘Nothing. No one,’ she shakes her head. Amy would never forgive her. She belches and covers her mouth with her hand, surprised at the sound, like that of a man twice her age. Louis laughs. ‘Ma sent me to find you. She thinks you’ve had too much ale. I’d say she’s right. Come, Bec, I’ll take you home.’

  Rebecca wakes the next morning with the bright sun slicing through the window and falling across the bed, burning her eyes. Her mouth is dry and awful tasting, her head feels as though she’s been dropped on it. She kissed her sister’s husband and liked it. She is worse than Violet. She is a traitor and a whore. She groans and pulls the quilt above her head, biting her hand.

  Now that Violet and Amy are gone, Lizzie is always rushing off with Ruby somewhere, Ruby who never left home. She was a perfect baby when she was born but she never grew from that. Or she grew in body, for she is the size of a normal fifteen-year-old, but not her mind. Lizzie blames their father getting sick and dying, says that all the sadness stopped Ruby from growing up proper. Which is nonsense—the rest of them are fine.

  Ruby might not help, but she is not such a burden. She is happy just sitting playing with her rocks and threads, watching the others and humming to herself. Fred does not like it though. He sits at the kitchen table across from her with his bottle of beer and says, ‘Why you keep staring at me like that, Ruby? Wipe the drool from your lip, girl. What’s wrong with her?’

  He thinks she is bad luck, but she is just Ruby. At night she lies curled, a solid weight of flesh, beside Rebecca, and snores, sometimes waking with a start and reaching to feel that her sister is still there. She does not talk, but Rebecca can tell from the sounds she makes whether she is happy, frightened or ready to eat her tea.

  Rebecca boils potatoes on the stove one afternoon when Lizzie comes in with Ruby from the street. Lizzie and Ruby sit at the table and Lizzie sighs.

  ‘Did you finish the faggoting on the blouses?’ she asks, wiping the thin sheen of sweat from her forehead.

  ‘Let me just drain these.’ Rebecca spills the boiling water into the basin, careful not to lose any potatoes. Waving away the steam, she brings the pan to the table with bread.

  ‘Salt’s by the stove,’ Lizzie says, and Rebecca fetches it as well.

  ‘I finished the blouses.’ She sits beside Ruby and serves her some bread and potatoes from the pan. ‘I used up our last yard of lace as well. The leftover from Amy’s dress. Are we keeping tea for Fred?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Children’s Welfare,’ Lizzie says. She sighs again. ‘You won’t like what I’m going to say.’

  Rebecca puts her fork down. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fred’s coming to live with us. Help with things. I’ve said he may. But I can’t keep Ruby. There’s not space. He wants her to go to a home.’

  ‘A madhouse?’

  ‘An asylum. They’re not as bad as you think. I’ve been visiting these last weeks. They’ll look after Ruby. She’ll be happy there.’

  ‘She’s happy here. Look at her.’

  Ruby crumbles a potato between her fingers.

  ‘For how long? It’s more of a burden the older she gets. A woman is harder to mind than a child. And I’m half-blind, I can’t keep sewing forever. I don’t want this to fall on you or the others. Fred’s kind, he makes me laugh, he knew your father. I can’t make him take her on as well.’

  The food feels like gravel in Rebecca’s throat.

  Lizzie is up, reaching to the shelf, pulling down a dusty bottle and three chipped mugs that hang from hooks on the wall.

  ‘What’s that?’ Rebecca clears the plates, using a rag to wipe the food from Ruby’s hands.

  ‘A bottle of brandy. I forgot it was here til the other day, dusting the cupboards. It’s old but still smells as it should.’

  ‘I’ve sworn off drink.’ Rebecca wakes every morning with fresh dread since the encounter with John. She has not visited Amy once since her sister left home.

  Lizzie laughs. ‘A sip won’t make you drunk, love. Two pints is a different matter.’ Her face flushes trying to pull the cork out. Finally it budges and she pours all three of them a measure.

  Rebecca takes a swig and coughs, nearly spluttering her mouthful across the room. It is sweet, then burns, then warms the insides. Ruby smells the mug and swallows a tentative sip.

  Lizzie laughs at the face Ruby makes and Ruby begins to hum. That is how Rebecca will remember Ruby, holding the tin mug to her lips, humming. Her sweet broad face, eyes closed, framed by dark curls.

  It is a rare day that they ride an omnibus, but they do the day Ruby goes to the asylum. It’s an hour’s ride from Paddington—a place in Lilyfield called Callan Park Hospital for the Insane. The bus drops the three women at the park entrance and they walk only a few hundred yards, Lizzie holding Ruby by the arm, Rebecca carrying her leather satchel. The park is green and planted with saplings: stringybarks, ironbarks, banksias and wattle. There are the even rows of a vegetable garden and beds of flowering plants. The main iron gate leads them into a group of sandstone buildings. Above the entry arch is carved the year 1883, and though the hospital has been there for more than twenty years, the buildings still appear new. The main hospital has two sweeping staircases and pillars at the entryway. Beside it stands a belltower and behind, more dormitory-style buildings. They have brought the bits and bobs, Ruby’s stones and glass.

  Inside the main building they locate the room called Admissions and meet a nurse in a starched cap. She gives them a brisk introduction and leads them outside to Ruby’s dormitory. She is to have a small iron cot in a room of twenty others, and a few blankets to keep her warm. As a charity case she does not have one of the rooms that open to wide verandas. They expect Ruby to work and the nurse says that she will be put to service in the morning making mattresses.

  ‘We have inmates who work in the kitchen, washing, tailoring, blacksmithing, carpentry, mattress-making and gardening,’ she says, her mouth sagging a little on one side, ‘though naturally they are unable to do everything required of the tasks.

  ‘Every patient gets three meals a day but those who work get extra. Men who work get a half pint of beer with bread and cheese for lunch, and women get coffee with bread and cheese and tea in the afternoon.’

  ‘Sounds like the life. Can I stay?’ Rebecca says, trying to make Ruby smile, but she is not listening, her eyes on the windows set with bars.

  ‘Your girl must be tired from the journey. We’ll let her rest and say goodbye now,’ the nurse says, taking Ruby by the arm. Rebecca kisses her sister on a soft, downy cheek. She wishes the nurse would use her name. But it is not the place that bothers her so much as the look in Ruby’s eyes when they shut the heavy iron dormitory door behind them. It’s a look like that of a cornered animal. There is no language to explain what they are doing or why she is being left.

  ‘Right,’ Lizzie says, ‘we’ll visit soon. And if we get home within the hour we can finish the hemming before tea.’

  With Ruby gone, Rebecca’s girlhood is over—though there has been little, besides the incident with John, to distinguish girlhood from womanhood in the first place. In both she is hunched beside a lamp, thread and needle in her hand. She has seen pictures in the papers of children’s toys: kites and dolls, hoops and spinning tops, but she remembers very little time spent playing in the street before a piece of work was pressed into her hand and she was made useful.

  One Christmas, the ladies from the Salvation Army gave them each a gift: the girls a rag doll, Louis a ball. She was six or seven and loved that doll until it was only a scrap, but she also recalled her mother muttering that something to fill their bellies would have been a more welcome charity.

  So she does not miss her girlhood, but she is not certain how to proceed with womanhood either. Perhaps it will be a procession of men grabbing at her in laneways until there is one she goes home with, or perhaps it will be as it is in the novels she reads: a wealthy man sweeping in on his carriage and taking her to his mansion of stone. She longs for the latter, for finer things, but life thus far has shown her that these are not to be expected. She dreams of silks and taffetas, creams for her rough hands, and ribbons for her wild hair. She dreams that a husband, when he finds her, will give her these things.

  But she also dreams of John, or of other men like him, pushing her against the wall. His fingers in her mouth, his breath against her ear. She dreams of her sister’s husband, or the postal clerk, or the neighbour’s boy with black hair and green eyes, and wakes hating herself more than ever. She knows what base things occur between a man and a woman, what Violet and Amy tell her, what she has seen of strays on the street. But she had not experienced it until now. Shame chases her through the days. Love, when it finds her, must be different. A man with money will marry her. It will lift her above this, this panting and pawing, these shadows of men that she loathes and is drawn to.

  If anyone understands her it is Louis. He looks at her strangely now, since that night, as though he knows there are secrets she keeps. But he keeps plenty of his own.

  Ah, Lou. How many times has she heard her mother sigh these words, with every year more disappointment in the way she speaks them. Each time Lizzie finds him work—delivering papers, on the docks, at a boot factory—he lets it slip. The reasons he loses work are as colourful as his clothes—slouch hats worn back on the head, velvet collars, short coats with wide lapels, bell trousers and shoes with pointed, capped toes. He is broad in the shoulders, tall, with hair as brown as a chestnut gelding. Handsome as and does what he pleases. Hours at the pub, or squandered on the street with packs of other young men, smoking and calling to passers-by. He stays at the houses of friends. Still, he comes home for a meal, sits with them for tea. Still he has the best cut of meat and the biggest plate of food. Still their mother talks Fred into finding him another job, convinced that this will be the one he keeps.

  Rebecca could hate Louis, easily, but he is the one who borrows or steals the books that she craves, and never laughs at her for asking. She has nine novels of her own and each has come from him. They are all books of the sort written for ladies, with a dire predicament, a dashing hero and a happy ending. If he fails to bring a new one she simply rereads one of the ones she owns, again and again, though she knows them off by heart. Louis also knows dozens of poems and is happy to oblige when she asks him to recite them.

  It is his idea to take her skating for her eighteenth birthday. He says that even a girl needs a bit of fun now and again.

  CHAPTER 3

  The morning of her eighteenth birthday she wakes with a weight across her feet. Sitting, she sees a dress that looks familiar. She sewed it, but not for herself. Blue silk, as light and fine as a breeze. It was an order for a lady who never finished paying. Lizzie said she was going to sell it elsewhere, or take it apart to use the fabric again.