The Home Girls by Olga Masters

Author:Olga Masters [Masters, Olga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction classics
ISBN: 9781921961748
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

THE SNAKE AND BAD TOM

Mother and the five children were around the table for midday dinner one Saturday in the spring of 1930.

Mother had passed out the plates of potato and pumpkin and corned beef except Father’s, and the children anxious to start kept looking at the kitchen door.

“Now everyone behave when Father comes,” Mother said, her dull blue eyes skimming over them all without resting on anyone, even Tom.

But the children’s eyes, from twelve year old Fred to Rosie the baby swung towards Tom next in age to Fred. Tom lifted a shoulder and rubbed it around his ear.

“Tom’s doing it, Mother,” said Letty.

Mother was about to tell Tom not to, because the habit irritated Father, and Lord knows what it might lead to when the door opened and Father was there.

“There you are, Lou,” said Mother bustling to the old black stove and taking his dinner from the top of a saucepan she set it in his place.

Father hooked his old tweed cap on the back of his chair and fixed his eyes on Rosie, who was in her highchair with her head tipped back and her blue eyes glittering with the brilliance of her smile for him that showed every one of her pearly teeth.

“That cheeky one will get a hiding before the day is out,” said Father sitting down.

Fred, Letty and Grace laughed because it was wise to laugh when Father joked and the idea of Father’s favourite, beautiful innocent four year old Rosie being belted with the leather strap was quite laughable.

Mother sent a small smile Father’s way thanking him for his good humour. Tom was opposite Father and Father fixed his brown eyes suddenly gone hard on him, because Tom, lifting a shoulder again and rubbing it around his ear, hadn’t laughed.

Tom had stolen a look at the strap hanging behind the kitchen door. It surprised him the way things were always being lost in and around the house but the strap, long and broad and shining and curled a little at one end, never strayed from its nail except when it was flaying the air and marking the children’s legs, nearly always Tom’s, with pink and purple stripes.

Tom felt his legs prickle at the sight of it. The old clock on the dresser with a stain in its face where Mother had poured separator oil into the works to get it going showed one o’clock. Tom dropped his knife and fork and counted on his fingers under the table. Two, three, four and up to eight o’clock when everyone was sent to bed.

Could he stay out of trouble that long? There were once ten Saturdays in a row when Tom got a hiding. As soon as Saturday dawned the topic was whether Tom would get a hiding before the day was out. Tom ashamed and fearful would lift his shoulder to his ear and wish for time to race away as fast as old Henry the cattle dog fled for the safety of the corn paddock from Father’s blucher boot.

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