A Descant for Gossips (25 page)

‘Did you enjoy the dance?'

Vinny was still in the long avenue of her fancy and she stared back at her questioner through the leaves of worry and hope.

‘It was all right,' she answered carelessly.

‘Only all right?'

‘Well … pretty nice, I s'pose.'

Helen smiled kindly. She was grateful to Vinny for involving her thoughts.

‘I think you had a good time, Vinny,' she joked pleasantly. ‘I saw you dancing.'

Vinny said nothing. A memory struck at Helen's mind of Vinny awkward in Saturday morning sunlight, grinning past her in the gardens.

‘That photograph,' she said. ‘Remember the one you had taken in Brisbane? We never did anything about that ticket, did we?'

‘No,' Vinny said, thinking. That will be the last time anyone will see me as thin as that. ‘No,' she said again. ‘And I don't want to either.'

Helen was startled. As far as her emotional state would allow her to notice such things, she had thought that the girl had seemed upset and withdrawn for the last few days, but sullen rudeness was most unlike her. She put out a tentative hand and patted Vinny's arm.

‘Tell me,' she said, ‘is something the matter?'

Vinny turned her head away to conceal her agony. Now at this very point of help she felt her resolution fail in floods of tears of wretchedness that ran unchecked down her face. She gulped and rubbed the back of her hand across her streaming eyes and fumbled uselessly in the front of her tunic for a handkerchief.

‘Here,' Helen smiled kindly. ‘Take mine.'

She laid her hand once more on Vinny's arm and perhaps it was the happiest moment the child ever had. After a while her sobs were less shaken, her eyes glanced shyly from under their red puffed lids at Mrs. Striebel, and gathering all her courage like a diver, feeling the warmth of the hand on her arm and the warmth in the eyes watching her, she said, ‘Please, Mrs. Striebel –' then she stopped.

‘Yes?' Helen questioned gently.

‘I – I don't know how to ask this, but …'

‘But what?'

‘Have you any books you could lend me about babies?' The plunge taken, the body striking water that was not terrifying after all, to vanish into depths of release.

The puppet that was Helen's mind jerked convulsively at the end of the verbal string. She knew she must be careful or she would frighten whatever shy gazelle of fear lurked in Vinny's mind by her next question. One thing she was quite sure about and that was that here was not the moment for asking why. So she said, as casually as she could, ‘You mean about having them?'

The answer came faintly and effortfully: ‘Yes.'

Helen hesitated for a minute. Vinny was staring down at her lap, at her freckled fingers knotted across her tunic. Putting forward words was delicate as web-spinning. Remembering her own adolescence Helen felt certain that what Vinny really wanted to know was the origin of the baby, how it came to the mother's womb, not how it grew in that nine months of confinement. But she was discreet enough not to ask further.

‘Being thirteen can be very difficult,' she said. ‘I didn't like it much myself, I remember. All sorts of ups and downs and feeling out of everything. I think I can get you a book or two you might like to read. I know they'll help. Only I'll have to ring my sister and get her to send them if she can get hold of them.'

Vinny raised her eyes for a moment.

‘Thank you, Mrs. Striebel,' she said. But more than ‘thank you' was in her heart.

Helen patted Vinny reassuringly. ‘Don't worry. How about coming down to the hotel on Saturday morning? I might have them by then. Anyway,' she added, ‘we can have a little talk.'

The tears had stopped flowing, and Vinny's face shone mildly, redly, but less unhappily. Here was the plank for the tired swimmer. Her friend, her last, only, dearest and best, had promised her help. Today was Thursday, and tomorrow would be Friday, and Saturday was so close it was almost here. Once and for all her worry would be solved like a problem in algebra. She smiled her gratitude.

The staff-room door flung open after the most perfunctory of knocks, the sound and the opening of the door coming in the same movement and Findlay cast his importance before him like a shadow.

He looked at them both curiously and then said, ‘One moment, Mrs. Striebel, if you'll excuse me. I'd be glad if you'd come to the office for a moment.'

Helen's face twisted wryly and she rose. ‘Don't forget,' she said softly to Vinny.

Findlay fidgeted in an embarrassed way. Since he had met Vinny over the notices he was always conscious of the moral lapses of those who should be in authority; it undermined all the things he taught the children to believe about the importance of adults.

‘Not well, girlie?'

‘No, sir.'

‘You should be quite all right there,' he said, ‘without Mrs. Striebel's ministrations. Come along, Mrs. Striebel. There's a little matter concerning the monthly return I must fix up.'

Eleven

‘I have never dreaded a day ending so much, nor longed for it to end so fiercely at the same time,' Helen said.

‘This isn't the end.'

‘But I go tomorrow. I have to go in the morning. I made a mistake about the train.'

‘That's ten hours yet.'

‘But, Robert, I can't see you in the dark.'

‘We'll write.'

‘And then we'll stop writing.'

‘I say you're wrong.'

‘As you like.'

‘Whatever you like,' Ruth Lunbeck said to the long unhappy body at her side. ‘But I say they deserved it.'

‘You judge like God,' her husband grunted into his pillow. ‘Judge me,' he reproved in a moment of compassion for the victims, ‘if you dare.'

‘December and June dey come along da bays, fat as figs and t'ousands of t'em. Absolutely t'ousands!' Szamos stirred salt into the supper coffee. ‘And vill I be glad, momma, to get avay from dis dirty little shop and town. Ven dey ask for a milk-shake today, I fill like saying all da time, ‘Vot flavour is it, lady? Moller or Striebel?'

‘Silly coots,' Sweeney said, cuddling Rose Jarman in the front of her father's car. ‘They were bound to get caught. It's crazy to fool around when you're married. That's one thing I'd never do, honey. You can be sure of that.'

‘Oh, Greg!'

‘Marry me, Rose.' It was more an order than a question.

‘Yes, I do dare judge you. Playing around for years and I've taken it. What do I get out of this rotten marriage?'

‘Clothes, cold creams, permanents. The lot,' Harold said.

‘Poppa, I can hardly vait, me also, to get that little house at the sea. Maybe next summer, eh?'

‘Helen, you know I love you more than anything on God's earth. Don't be so hopeless about it all.'

‘I'm going to be a realist, Robert. If it goes on – well, it goes on. But no matter what happens we've had our – forgive me – fun.'

‘You sound rather like me.'

‘You've been a good teacher.'

‘My dear, you've been the most apt of pupils.'

‘You've talked all through the Bach. Now what?'

‘I said she was rather an over-confident person, anyway. The jolt will do her ego good. I really cannot bear people who are so cocksure with so little basis.'

‘Really, Jess, be fair. She wasn't an unintelligent person, you know.'

‘I grant a certain text-book cleverness. But she had no sensibility. Alec, lower that just a little. And in addition, think of the benefit to the school.'

‘There is that, of course.'

‘Of course I was right to tell Findlay, Sam. You have no thought for our girls.'

‘You're a bloody interfering bitch,' Welch said. ‘And right now I lump the kids with you, see?'

‘You're drunk.'

‘Not as drunk as I'm going to be, Mary Ann. Not nearly as drunk. When I've pushed this bottle over I got a couple more lined up. Stick around and see me really tick.'

‘Allie can do her room out tomorrow afternoon after she's gone. I think I'll change the furniture round in there.'

‘Kind of superstition, is it?' Farrelly lay contented in sheets like bank-notes. ‘We'll keep it for C.T.s. if you like, instead of permanents. Make a bit more on it.'

‘Put that phone down, Cecily. It's time for the news.'

‘Just a minute, Freda. What was that, Garth?'

‘I said put the damn' phone down.'

‘Garth's getting mad, darling. I'll see you tomorrow. 'Bye.'

‘Happy?' he asked. ‘Busy spreading it round?'

‘Last patient, thank God.' Rankin closed the door between the surgery and the hall. He could see his wife in the living-room still reading one of the glossy magazines she seemed to need monthly. Like a shot, he reflected.

‘Who was it?'

‘Perce Westerman. Had a flint in his eye.'

‘Hear the news?'

‘You mean Helen Striebel's leaving?'

‘M'm.'

‘Vaguely. Where did you get it?'

‘Cecily Cantwell rang me a while back. She ran into Ma Findlay. It's all fearfully confidential till she goes.'

‘That means everybody knows, then.'

‘Did you say good-bye to anyone, Helen?'

‘I had to see Farrelly, of course. And just before I left school this afternoon I said good-bye to the few who were still around. Rowie and Rose and Millington, They were surprised, but you could see the zest for the situation all over their poor dear faces.'

‘Kiss me.'

‘I'm not staying!' Marian shouted. ‘Not with you. If necessary I'll ring Cecily and ask can I spend the night with her. See how you like that.'

Welch smacked the table hard with his palm. ‘You'll do no such thing,' he roared. ‘Do you hear? No such bloody thing! There's been enough mischief done with all the yackety-yacketing in this joint. From now on you'll lay bloody well off.'

‘You dirty drunk! You couldn't stop me if you wanted.'

‘Couldn't I! Try that.' He lurched over to her, across the carpet on which their marriage was founded, and hit her hard, twice, on the face.

‘We'll be without a substitute for two days,' Findlay murmured, ‘but everything should be right by Wednesday. They're sending me a man this time. We've saved the ship, my dear.'

‘Have we?' his wife said with a rare scepticism, remembering ‘Sweetie' Russell. ‘How old?'

‘Well he's a one-one man, so he can't be too young.'

‘Mrs. Striebel did teach well. You often said so.'

‘Maybe. But other factors must be considered.'

‘I always like to feel, Alec, that where I can have acted for moral good, I have done so.'

‘Jess, please. I missed the announcement. What did the man say?'

‘A concerto in D major for ‘cello and piano by Vivaldi.'

‘How do you do it? Talk and listen at once?'

‘I'm brilliant, darling.'

‘Are you crying, Robert?'

‘A little. How did you know?'

‘Your face was all wet when I kissed you.'

‘This is all back to front, Helen. You're the one who should be weeping. Hard wench!'

‘I am inside. It rains in my heart …
il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans la ville.
Is that right?'

‘You know,' he said, ‘this will be all right. I feel it. Holidays soon. We'll have time together.'

‘The thing is complete in itself, though, isn't it? Like a wave breaking. Rise, sweep, fall, backwash.'

‘It's the after-effects that could matter, of course,' Findlay said, slipping into his pyjamas. ‘Even now I feel there's been something going on in the senior school. Poor tone, there, you know. Poor tone.'

‘You haven't had your bismuth,' his wife said.

‘Oh Greg!'

‘Will you? Will you marry me, Rose?'

‘Oh yes … oh, stop it, Greg!'

‘Why? We're engaged, aren't we?'

‘I suppose … oh no, Greg!'

Subsiding into the scuffling darks of acquiescence.

‘No more gingerbread, momma. I vil be op arf da night. Is lovely, t'ough. Yiss. I liked t'em real vell vot I knew, dat is to say. A nice lady. Always ‘allo. Not passing me as if I vos dirt. And ‘im, on okay fellow.'

‘Go on, Szammie. Joost a liddle piece. She sent me a big bonch of flowers, vunce, remember, the time I vos so ill. Sorry also, she is going.'

‘You're being very moral all of a sudden,' Cecily Cantwell said. She looked with near-hatred at the slumped, flabby figure of her husband.

The man glanced up quickly at the half-pretty, near-neurotic face.

‘Morals!' he said. ‘I've known about you and Lunbeck for weeks.'

Welch steadied himself against the table (genuine walnut veneer) and nodded slowly over his words. ‘Now get to bed. Leave me alone, see.'

‘You hit me,' Marian sobbed. ‘I'll never let you forget that. Never.'

‘I bet you won't. Go on. Beat it, before I do it again.'

‘How did you hear, Frank?'

‘Oh, Findlay dropped a hint yesterday. Asked me not to mention it.'

‘You beast! You might have told me!'

‘My dear, in that case I might as well have rigged up a loudspeaker system at the top of the hill and done the thing with
é
clat
.'

‘That's not kind.'

‘I know you women,' Rankin said contentedly, sure that he did.

‘Everything except what I got married for,' Ruth Lunbeck said bitterly.

‘But that's how you like it, isn't it?' Harold said. ‘I always thought that was how you liked it.'

‘I'll tell you something,' his wife said, propping her venom on one elbow. ‘It's the job, really. I married you for your job.'

‘There's no need to tell me that.'

‘And all I've got out of it is a stinking little country town brimful of fornication.'

‘That's a big word for you. You're full of philosophy tonight, darling.'

‘Don't darling me.'

‘When will it be?'

‘What?'

‘Come on. No kidding. The marriage. When will it be, eh?'

‘Oh, Greg! Soon.'

‘I'll say soon.' He looked lovingly at the car and thought of the spanking big beach week-ender. ‘Soon as you like, kiddo.'

‘I just thought of something, Robert.'

‘What's that?'

‘Young Vinny. Remember I told you yesterday about her request. I haven't had a chance to see her. She was away today, and I'm going early tomorrow.'

‘What of it?'

‘Well, I asked her to come down to the hotel after lunch to see if the book I phoned Margaret to send me had come in the midday mail. It's one of those very good sex-instruction booklets we used to use at that private school I was at. Anyway, I wanted to have a talk to her.'

‘Think something's the matter?'

‘Certain. But I can't imagine what.'

Mrs. Farrelly sighed on the edge of sleep. ‘Has she left a sending address, dear?'

‘Yes. Everything's to go on to Camooweal, but Bert'll get it up at the post office before it reaches us.'

‘It's good to know in case.'

‘Wonder if Herc will come to badminton any more?' Freda pondered. She poured herself a brandy and settled back.

‘Probably. Hide enough for anything, that sort.'

‘Bet the Welches are tickled.'

‘Marian might be. Old Sam's a queer fish. Don't understand him, I'm afraid. Pour us a snifter, Freda.'

‘Fonny, poppa, ‘ow ve saw them that Sunday also, ven you took me for a run to the Bay. I ‘ope you never told ‘im.'

‘Vot you t'ink me, momma? Vot dey call'ere a no-good bastard? No so, my dear.'

‘Come on, Szammie. Vot talk for 'eaven's sake! Let's go to bed.'

‘You are brilliant, my dear. But you do talk through my music. You seem very pleased Helen Striebel is going?' Alec Talbot said.

‘Why? Aren't you?'

‘I'm glad the situation between Moller and her was brought to Findlay's notice. I suppose her going does solve everything.'

‘You don't sound certain.' Her jealousy nagged her.

‘Goodness, Jess,' mildly, ‘you seem suddenly annoyed. You must admit she was decorative.' He was punishing her in his own special way for interrupting his evening's culture.

‘All right, all right,' Findlay said testily. ‘You've made me lose track of what I wanted to say next … ah yes! It's the innocence of the other pupils that must be guarded. The freshness and the innocence.'

‘Whom are you thinking of particularly?' his wife asked acidly.

‘Why, all of them. They're all a nice lot of kids really.'

‘Don't forget that one of them was nice enough to scribble knowing and obscene messages all over the road.'

Findlay's speech stopped in its tracks. Sometimes he resented Marcia's criticism. In a wife he expected a bulwark of confirmation.

‘Where's that bottle?' he snapped. ‘I'll take the stuff now.'

‘You're probably imagining things, Helen.'

‘Probably. Anyway, do me a favour and collect any mail that comes to the pub. If that book comes after I've gone, give it to Vinny for me.'

‘Shall I give her the little talk, too?'

‘Oh, darling! Still, the poor kid! I feel someone needs to do something for her.'

‘We need to do something for us, too, you know.'

‘Yes. But she's so helpless. We're not. I've never seen anyone so alone.'

‘Haven't you, my dear? Wait until we're parted.'

‘Will we tell the others?' Rose Jarman asked hopefully, longing for the boasting, the flashing of the engagement ring.

‘Why not?' he agreed, thinking of the wedding gifts they would receive. His mind trickled through green valleys of acquisition, around islands of possession.

‘Oh, Greg! I can't believe it's true.'

‘Neither can I,' he said, looking at the car.

‘One thing about her,' Farrelly suggested charitably. ‘She always paid on the dot. Never had to wait.'

‘Wassmatter?' His wife rolled away from his voice.

‘I said one thing she always paid on the dot.'

‘Glad to see her go. Gives us a bad name having men up.'

‘She's got some pretty rude friends, too. I never told you …'

Lunbeck sighed. ‘Well, if you don't want to be darling'd please shut up and let me get to sleep.'

‘Now you won't even talk to me. I suppose you condone that pair.'

‘What if I do? Helen Striebel's a very good-looking woman.'

‘Yes, I'm sure you think she is, and I bet you wouldn't have minded being in Moller's shoes.'

‘Hardly his shoes, dear. And, seeing you mention it, no, I wouldn't have minded at all.'