Read The Newspaper of Claremont Street for Free Online Page B

mouth waiting and waiting for Weekly to get up from the bed so that she could put the kitten back where she thought it ought to be.
    Slowly Weekly attacked her linoleum with a rag soaked in kerosene and polish, then put the kittens on some newspaper and, after sweeping the verandahs and hosing out the toilet, she made her way to the Chathams’ where she would be cleaning that morning.
    Claremont Street was a very long street, lined on both sides with long-leaved peppermints, very old trees with gnarled and bulging trunks. In the very hot weather each tree made a little pool of shade, and people like Weekly, who walked, hurried from one fragrant canopy to the next. The long leaves trembled and seemed to whisper with a faint rustling, even on days when there was no breeze. Some of these trees were being removed, one after the other, at the top end, as building alterations were taking place. Though the street was quite flat it had a topend and a bottom end in the minds of the people who lived there. The shop was at the bottom end and so were the remaining old houses including the large old house where Weekly lived. Opposite was the block of flats, it towered quite out of place and design. Its presence however had brought a great deal of custom to the shop and so, after the first shock of seeing the ugly building rise in its gaunt stages of construction, the people paid no attention to it being there.
    Looking towards the so-called top end, it was possible to see beyond the suburb and the outer edge of the city to the range of hills, a scrub-covered, low escarpment, half-hidden in a bluish haze in the mornings, a horizon of mystery and promise. It was to this promise Weekly looked every morning as she walked, leaning forwards, her nose leading the way, to the place where she would be working.
    Some boys in a passing car hailed her and, turning the car, they drove up close to the kerb slowly alongside her as she walked. Cheekily one of them opened the door and gave a whistle and made as if to draw her into the car as if she was a young girl hoping to be picked up.
    Weekly turned sharply.
    â€˜Don’t you know nothin’ about age?’ she said. ‘Can’t yo’ tell the difference?’
    The boys shrank and the car drove on.
    â€˜How are you Weekly?’ Mrs Chatham had a cup of tea ready for her.
    â€˜A ball o’ dash terday,’ Weekly replied. ‘How’s yerself?’
    Mrs Chatham was never very well. She needed to lose weight. She had tummy troubles, ‘My International problems.’ She liked to joke about them, but at the same time seriously attended to her diet. She liked suggestions about diet. Weekly had pleased her last week by suggesting she sieved some prunes.
    â€˜Have you tired any of them little tins and jars, you know: baby spinidge and baby chicken dinner, all strained?’
    â€˜What a good idea Weekly!’
    â€˜Put yerself to bed straight after yer tea,’ Weekly leaned on the broom before attacking the laundry floor. ‘When the babbies and the birds go to bed, tuck yerself in, get to bed really early for once. There’s nothin’ like a early bed. Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’
    Mrs Chatham listened carefully. Weekly found that quite middle-aged women liked the suggestion that they treat themselves like babies, even to the extent of bone and vegetable broth and being put to bed at seven o’clock as they had once put their own children to bed.
    â€˜Terrible fire they’ve had at the Bakery.’ Weekly rested on the conversation. Though she knew of accidents andweddings, births and deaths, and told the news from one house to another, she never spoke of things that really mattered. About these things Weekly held her tongue. She noticed everything about people. She saw women spending lavishly on their clothes and holidays and on having their homes rebuilt and redecorated and refurnished; and she saw