In the Shade of the Verandah

I see myself there, playing among the balls of coloured wool. The knitters tug at the wool and the balls make little skips along the dark polished floor. Reds and blues, greens and yellows, bright planets in my universe. Creams and whites I never touch. They are sacred, wrapped in big white handkerchiefs and pushed down at the bottom of knitting bags. On my mother's verandah the women talked of small events, the infection in a child's eye, the price of food, dental caries, rationing. Particularly rationing. During the war sewing fabrics were rationed, wool was not. So women's skirts became shorter, cuffs disappeared from men's trousers, sheets and collars were turned, clothes made over. But wool was boundless, an infinite resource.

I hear again the click of needles and the sounds of women's voices rising and falling. They speak to me clearly now of the strong companionship of women, and of my mother…

My mother was an expert knitter. As a schoolgirl she'd learnt how to knit socks and balaclavas for Australian soldiers serving on the battlefields of France. It was a knack she never lost. Women would come to our door with half-finished socks hanging from four crossed needles, gaping holes with nowhere to go until my mother turned the heels. At those times I felt proud of my mother.

The balls of wool had to be rolled from skeins. My mother would sit me on a wooden chair and spread my hands wide apart in front of me. She slipped the skein around my hands telling me to keep my thumbs up. Then she'd roll, rapidly flicking the wool off one of my hands and then the other.

'Well done,' she'd say and lift me down. I felt important.

My mother spent hours making decisions about her knitting. What colour would go with what, the width of that stripe, would the turn of that collar be too showy, the hang of this skirt. Her deliberations would spill over into talk at the dinner table and, I suspect, into her dreams. Usually she would come down on the side of that restraint she considered the mark of good taste.

Patterns in knitting books are a cross between secret code and cryptic crosswords. My mother entered into combat with patterns. She would never accept them as they were but would make her own variations in style and measurement. She did this with the concentration of a general planned a major campaign. As she bent over the pattern book she'd draw the point of a knitting needle through her hair. Then she'd make a sucking sound between her lips and pick up her knitting again. She'd triumphed.

The women on the verandah were aware of the war and its costs. Their houses as ours, had metal plaques commending our contributions to war bonds. They knew something had happened in Darwin. Convoys of trucks carrying khaki clad American soldiers passed through our town. Some of the women wore brooches with stars on bars. My mother told me that each star meant a son or husband the woman had in the war. War was all around them but on the verandah the women talked of other things.

Occasionally the calm of the knitters was shaken by the terror of unravelling. When 'picking up stitches' failed, unravelling was the only option. 'There's nothing for it, it'll have to be undone,' the unfortunate woman said. I felt the other women stiffen. The woman pulled and pulled, undoing row upon row of knitted wool. It fell to the floor in a curly mass. Then she'd rewind the crimpled wool into a tight ball. It would never be the same, even if you steamed it. Or so the women said.

My mother had perfect tension running unfalteringly throughout her garments. She knitted me into her patterns. I was compliant, a happy child standing against the wall, having my jumper measured from waistband to armpit. Even now I can feel the angora collar soft against my cheek, the clasp of garter-stitch around my wrists. It was only later that I resisted the constraints her patterns imposed.

My mother knitted garments for her family but the knitting, the clicking of stitch from needle to needle was for herself. I believe that in her knitting my mother managed to achieve periods of equilibrium, interludes in which she felt she was in control. She knitted herself into oases of calm where she was able to escape temporarily, the invasions of her turbulent psyche.

At nine o'clock on the morning of Saturday, 15 August 1945, Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley announced that the war with Japan was over. By that time our family had left the old family home with its gracious verandahs. My Victory Day was celebrated in Queen Street, Brisbane. From the vantage- point of an uncle's shoulders, I saw crowds of adults going mad with joy. I knew then, the world had changed.

Looking back to the verandah of my childhood I see the women in its shade, knitting.
And my mother there…She is bending over and smiling at me as she unwinds wool from my eager, outstretched, four-year-old hands.

© Ann Nugent

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Horizons

Outside her window trees stand bare against an empty sky.
Winter in Canberra.
‘The future will bring us joy if we do not interrupt it with predictions.’
That is what she had said three years ago. And now her prophecy had come to pass.
‘Mon petit amour, mon petit amour…’
All is gone, dissolved…
Time to turn again,
Turn again…
Her memory stretches to the plain, 4000 kilometres away. The geometry of cityscapes puzzles the soul; only in the desert or at sea is the horizon uncompromisingly straight. But even the desert’s equilibrium can buckle and dip.
On the edge of the plain the man is resting. Composing.
‘The girls are dreaming in Barcaldine…’
‘And the women of Winton weep.’
The sun prickles the backs of her knees. Silt-fine, red dust powders her feet, seeps between her toes.
She squints at her mother’s grave. ‘Annie’, a lopsided cross, black tar on peeling white tells all.
She places her hand on the spiked iron fence, a rusty rectangle no larger than a single bed.
The wind has swept the sand into little peaks rising between the iron stakes and ranged along the bottom rail of the fence.
She pushes against the gate. It will not open. The ridges of sand hold it fast.
Iron fence, obstinate barrier.
No matter. Ghosts, like memories, know no boundaries.
She feels the sun piercing into her head. She grips the rail with both her hands. In that instant she knows she stands alone in the whole world.
She squats on her haunches, stretches her arm between the iron bars and takes a broken flint from the grave. She curves her hand into a fist around the stone – hard and sharp. Annie, hard and sharp.
Later she will place the stone on the green enamelled window ledge of the hotel bedroom where once more it will catch the light.
She lies beside her lover. She feels his arms around her.
‘Mon amour, mon petit amour.’
For the first time since her mother’s death, she cries.
Straight lines tilt. Lovers leave.
Cities falsify horizons.
And the silence shattered has become the silent present.
Drops of water slide down the icy window glass, form into trickles and dissolve in the pool beneath the tap. She searches the steely sky for the sunlight that will not come.
Today, alone she knows –
Winter in Canberra and no consolation.

© Ann Nugent
(first published in ‘Canberra Arts Supplement’ page 19 in National Library of Australia News, Vol.VII No. 6 March 1997)

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