The Home Girls Read Online Free Page A

at school with the group on the bridge.
    Aileen left the picnic then and moved with head down towards the water.
    â€œOnly mad people make up words,” called a daring voice from the bridge.
    Aileen lowered her head further in the silence following.
    Mrs Torrens jumped to her feet to herd the little Torrenses to the water to join their sister.
    â€œWe’ll gather our stones and hold them under the water!” she cried and the little Torrenses with the exception of Aileen dispersed to hunt for flat round stones that changed colour on contact with the running water.
    The little Torrenses watched spellbound when the stones emerged wet and glistening and streaked with oche red, rich browns, soft blues and greys and sometimes pale gold.
    â€œOh don’t go dull!” screamed the little Torrenses hoping for a miracle to save the colours from merging into a dull stone colour when the water dried.
    Aileen some distance away dug her toes into the sand and stared down at them. Her lashes lay soft as brown bracken fern on her apricot cheeks.
    â€œCome on Snobbie Dobbie!” called Mrs Torrens.
    â€œCome and wash the beautiful stones and see the colours!
    â€œThey’re brown and beautiful as your eyes, Snobbie Dobbie!”
    â€œCome on, come on!” called the other little Torrenses.
    In the end Aileen came and the high voices and peals of laughter from the creek bed had the effect of sending the walking Tantello mooching home across the bridge.
    There came the rage that ended all the rages of Mrs Torrens in Tantello and drove the family from the town.
    Harold lost the fingers of his right hand in a mill accident.
    Holding a length of timber against a screaming saw, a drift of smoke blew across his eyes and the saw made a raw and ugly stump of his hand and the blood rushed over the saw teeth and down the arm of his old striped shirt and the yelling of the mill hands brought the work to a halt and for a moment all was still except the damaging drift of smoke from a sawdust fire.
    A foreman with a knowledge of first aid (for many fingers were lost at the mill although Harold was the first to lose all four) stopped the flow of blood and drove Harold twenty miles to the nearest hospital.
    When the mill was silenced an hour before the midday break the townspeople sensed something was wrong and Mrs Torrens came running too.
    A chain of faces turned and passed the word along that it was Harold. Mrs Torrens stood still and erect strangely dressed in a black dress with a scarf-like trimming from one shoulder trailing to her waist. On the end she had pinned clusters of red geraniums and on her head she wore a large brimmed black hat with more geraniums tucked into the band of faded ribbon. On her feet she wore old sandshoes with the laces gone.
    All the eyes of the watching Tantello were fixed on Mrs Torrens who stood a little apart. She stared back with a tilted chin and wide and cold blue eyes until they turned away and one by one left the scene. When the last had gone she walked into the mill to the cluster of men around the door of the small detached office.
    â€œWe’re sorry, Mrs Torrens,” said one of them.
    Behind the men was a table with cups on it for the bosses’ dinner and a kettle set on a primus stove. Mrs Torrens looked from the cups to the men’s hands and back to the cups and a strange, small smile lit on her face.
    Then she stalked to the timber stacked against the fence and climbed with amazing lightness and agility for a big woman onto it stepping up until her waist was level with the top of the fence. The men watched in fascination while she hauled herself onto the fence top and stood there balancing like a great black bird.
    Her old sandshoes clinging to the fence top were like scruffy grey birds.
    â€œCome down! We don’t want no more accidents,” called the mill owner.
    But Mrs Torrens walked one panel with her arms out to balance herself. Then satisfied she was at