For Love Alone Read Online Free PDF

bushfires drifted along the hills and the red glare and combs of flame could be seen even at midday.
    The ferry trip to Circular Quay took nearly an hour. The girls sat outside and stared at the water.
    â€œYour dress simply shrieks at mine,” Kitty said.
    Teresa looked down at herself complacently and said: “Not at all.”
    She went on thinking about married women and old maids. Even the frowsiest, most ridiculous old maid on the boat, trying to shoulder her way into the inner circle of scandalmongers, getting in her drop of poison, just to show that she knew what was what, was yet more innocent looking than even a young married woman. They, of course, hushed their voices when such a person butted her way in. She might talk coarsely and laugh at smut but they saw to it that she missed the choicest things; and of course, when they talked about childbed and breast-feeding, she had to sit with downcast eyes, ashamed. As for the secret lore that they passed round, about their husbands, she could never know that. The unmarried were foolish, round-eyed, even in old age with a round-cheeked look (or was that just her Aunt Di?) and even when withered, with pursed lips as if about to swallow a large juicy tropical fruit. That was the way they looked when they talked about the sexes! Poor wretches! Teresa would never endure the shame of being unmarried; but she would never take what her cousins were taking either, some schoolfellow gone into long trousers. Teresa gave Kitty a dissatisfied look. She was dreaming away there, with her fine shortsighted eyes, wearing that dress that ruined her lovely nut-brown skin. If she didn’t change, she would never get married.
    Kitty looked at Teresa.
    â€œWe’re gadding lately, aren’t we? Tina’s engagement and now Malfi!” She had a fresh laugh, delicious, disquieted.
    â€œThey’re all getting married, it seems.”
    â€œExcept us—and Anne, and Anne’s been a bridesmaid three times,” said Kitty. “That was unlucky.”
    Teresa was silent, thinking: “And they never even asked Kitty once. It’s a shame, they ought to give her a chance.” She stole a glance at her sister, thinking: “She ought to have someone to dress her.”
    â€œMaids of honour often marry the best man,” said Kitty. “I suppose it gives them the idea.”
    The step between being an unattached girl and getting married is so enormous, thought Teresa, how does anyone get over it? How is it done? Not by kindness. What about Malfi? She always had chances, though she was ill-tempered and now she is marrying young Bedloe, though at the engagement party she stumbled over his high boot with an oath, “Take your bloody legs out of my way”, and he answered nothing, just looked, fair and flushed and timid and loving. Incomprehensible. Her first fiancé, Alec, was there, holding her thin arm, kissing one of her sharp shoulder-blades standing out above the low-backed evening dress. “Oh, leave me alone, can’t you!” Malfi cried, pulling away gracelessly, standing round-shouldered and with a sly, angry, trapped expression. She was no longer pretty, her seventeen-year-old bloom gone, but the suburban boys milled round her; she was never at home alone. Malfi wasn’t satisfied, though she had led a golden youth, thought Teresa, had everything and never had to work. Teresa saw in a sketchy way in her mind’s eye the faces of the boys and girls who went to work with her on the ferry. As the burning sun bored into her and the reflections from the water dazzled her, she saw insistently, with the countless flaming eyes of her flesh, the inner life of these unfortunate women and girls, her acquaintance, a miserable mass writhing with desire and shame, grovelling before men, silent about the stew in which they boiled and bubbled, discontented, browbeaten, flouted, ridiculous and getting uglier each year.
    Tina Hawkins, their