A Few Days in the Country (2 page)

‘Here, hold these while we go on the Spider. Here's a hamburger to keep you busy.'

Spilling shredded lettuce and tomato sauce over her fingers, the warm roll was stuffed in her hand, and in no time Uncle Hector and Leila were suspended upside down. Janet ate and watched, standing guard over the red beach bag till Leila screamed. Then, till she saw that they were moving down again, she forgot to chew.

‘That's my uncle and Leila up there,' she wanted to tell the fat lady next to her. Chewing, she rehearsed it. Then she would say, ‘I was ten today. I went for a swim tonight.'

The fat lady turned and walked away with a young man. Disappointed, Janet saw the floral figure recede and vanish in the crowd. She licked her fingers.

‘Look at that!' said Uncle Hector, pointing to three short splashes of sauce down the front of her dress.

But Leila said, ‘Leave her alone! Pick on someone your own size!'

‘Yeah?'

Janet took her damp towel in both hands and scrubbed it ineffectually over her skirt. Undoubtedly Auntie would notice, and she—

They all rode on the Ferris wheel, the razzle-dazzle, and the horses. Then limply Janet waited while the other two threw rubber balls at ducks.

She watched the man behind the counter—arms crossed, striped shirt, bent cigarette—while he watched the balls and the ducks. He was so jolly at first, before they bought the balls.

A paralysing yawn overtook her and she leaned against the side of the booth, but at that moment Uncle Hector flung away down the path and she and Leila had to run after him.

Tossing her long dark hair over her shoulders, Leila winked at Janet and whispered, ‘Listen to this!' Then, when they caught him in the space between a tent and a flimsy black building, she said, ranging herself beside Janet, ‘Well, no prize, no—' And she jerked her head at the black cardboard building.

Janet read, Tunnel of Love.

Uncle Hector pushed both hands in his pockets and snorted through his nose with exasperation.

‘Once Uncle Hector won a prize for his friend Elaine,' she told Leila. ‘It was a dog. With spots. Not a real one. Glass.' There was another of those inexplicable silences. Janet added, ‘I didn't see it. She told me once.'

Uncle Hector, amazingly, seemed pleased. His grin extended even over her.

Leila snapped, ‘Well, what'll we do with
her
?'

‘She can look at the giant,' he grinned. ‘He's just next door. Here's sixpence, Jan. Get yourself a ticket and go in and see the giant for a while. We'll meet you later. If you're out first, just wait.'

‘The
giant
?'

But they had disappeared inside the doorway of the Tunnel. She felt deserted. A
giant
, she thought.

‘Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!' cried a man in a brown checked suit. ‘The show is about to begin. The greatest romance since Romeo and Juliet. Step up and buy your tickets now! See the greatest giant in the world and his lovely little bride.'

He'd said it. Giant. This was where she was supposed to go, all right. Vaguely, Janet shifted her towel to her other arm, and rubbed the cold patch it had made on her dress. Clutching a ticket she gazed at the man. He said, ‘Hurry up, there! In you go!'

She swallowed. ‘Yes, but is he? Is he?'

‘He's lovely, dear. Hurry! Hurry! The show—'

It was a small tent. About a quarter of its length was cut off by a curtain behind which, presumably, dwelt the giant and his bride. Overhead hung a battery of bare electric light globes.

In front of a low platform, nine or ten people stood waiting, talking in whispers. As if from a great distance they could hear the raucous cries to which they had recently contributed, the mechanical music. But now, by virtue of their dark-green tickets, they were set not only apart from but subtly above the crowd.

Janet drooped with weariness. There was nothing to see—a wooden pole, two wooden chairs—but she looked for a moment or so, and then yawned and buried her face in her towel. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack the Giant-killer, she thought.

When she opened her eyes she saw on the platform, close to her, straight in front of her, a very small woman. She was much smaller than Janet, but not so young, oh, not young at all. Under the pink make-up, the little face was hard and wrinkled.

On a level, their eyes met, and Janet went cold, then colder, transfixed by the look and by a sudden strange sensation in her chest. The dwarf had never seen her before. The dwarf did not like her.

The dwarf bride smiled at her and Janet shivered. She hugged her towel and bit a piece of the fringe. She stared down at the ground, at her dusty toes poking out of her sandals. To prove that she could, she made them wriggle. When she lifted her head, the little woman was gazing into space, blankly, looking bored, so bored…

Humbly, Janet moved her eyes from the small monkey face to the long, never-ending red-trousered legs that stood beside her. She followed them up. There was a navy-blue coat in the distance, above that a face, above that a red cap.

The face, apart from its distance from the ground, was supremely ordinary—pale, but ordinary. And this was the giant!

Like the woman, he stared without expression straight ahead. There was, from him, no look for Janet, no smile that was not a smile.

As they were meant to do, the audience watched them: no one spoke. But from the back of the tent into the silence came a snicker. Janet felt her arms go hot, and her shoulders and ears. She
wished
Uncle Hector hadn't sent her here.

The giant and the dwarf moved closer together. Then, with a simultaneous craning of necks, they exchanged their first public acknowledgment of each other's presence, a look that was empty yet completely familiar. With an almost audible ‘One, two, three…' they started.

‘The story of our love begins far away under the blue skies of Africa, where we met and fell in love…'

The giant went on alone, ‘I, a tall and shy young man, scarcely dared ask for the hand of the dainty young maiden…' When he had finished, the dwarf cleared her throat to take up the recital, and, shamefaced, the audience listened.

All Janet knew was that they didn't mean it. They didn't mean a word they said. She blinked at them.

And they don't care if we know it, she thought. They're saying all this and hating us. Love, they're saying.

‘Little lady,' the giant repeated. ‘Would you mind telling us your age?' He was looking straight at Janet.

‘Me?' she whispered.

‘Tell him, dear,' said a woman behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Ten,' she said, and the giant heard.

‘A very nice age to be!' he exclaimed. ‘Now, if you would step up onto the platform for a moment, all these ladies and gentlemen could see how tiny and dainty my bride appears beside a little lady of ten.'

Janet stared at him. She tried to grow into the ground. Someone gave her a gentle push and she resisted. But the giant reached down with his long, long arms and said, ‘Up here. That's the way!' and she was on the stage.

The giant was talking to the audience. He made her take the hand of the dwarf. He made them stand together while he measured the difference in height with a ruler produced from his pocket.

Mechanically, Janet obeyed him. She held the small horny hand. She turned around and felt the small warm back against her own, and the ruler on her head.

‘You can turn round again,' the giant said. ‘No, this way—so they can see you.'

There was a slight ungentle tug on her arm and she turned to receive from the silent dwarf, so close to her, another long professional smile. The dwarf did not like anyone.

Janet fell back a step and bumped into the giant. He said, ‘Well, now, may we both shake you by the hand, and wish you the very best of luck? We'd like you to accept our hearty thanks for your kindness in assisting at this demonstration for the benefit of our patrons.'

The giant bowed and shook her hand. Janet said, ‘How do you do?'

And then her hand closed like a giant's over the toy hand of the dwarf. Tremulously she looked down into the hazel eyes. What was it they said to her? Nothing nice. Nothing good.

‘How do you do?' said Janet. ‘Thank you. Good night.'

The audience clapped. She was on the ground again. The people began to file out of the tent, murmuring self-consciously. A backward glance showed the giant and his bride sitting on the chairs, smoking, looking at the roof of the tent, not talking, and oh so bored, so bored…

Janet looked at her hand.

Outside, it was very dark after the barrage of lights over the stage. Uncle Hector and Leila walked slowly up to the entrance as she came out. They seemed surprised to see her.

Uncle Hector said, ‘You got your money's worth, all right.' He and Leila had been through the Tunnel of Love twice.

Mute, Janet looked at their shadowy faces. She held her hand out, away from her. All at once, she was overwhelmed with heavy tearing sobs. She stood isolated in the night, sobbing uncontrollably.

Leila let out a groan, glanced at Uncle Hector and said to Janet, ‘What's the matter, Jan? Did the giant frighten you?'

They stood at the entrance of the tent, where the man in the checked suit was preparing to enlist the last audience of the night. He caught the sense of Leila's words and scowled down at her.

‘Come over here,' said Uncle Hector, and they wandered away along the emptying paths between the booths, Leila leading Janet by the hand.

Reluctantly Leila stopped again. ‘Did the giant frighten you? Was he awful or something?'

Janet shook her head, nodded, shook it again, and wept with such bitter abandon that the two in charge of her began to worry.

‘This is lovely!' said Uncle Hector, biting his nails. ‘What'll we do?'

‘She's
your
relation!'

Uncle Hector, regarding his relation, jerked forward. ‘Here! What's the matter with your hand? What've you done to it?

When he understood that it had been shaken by the giant he looked at it with a flattered half-smile, and forgot it.

‘What'll we do with her?' Leila said.

Janet sobbed, ‘I want to go home! I want to go home!'

‘I wish to heaven she
could
,' Leila said. ‘Couldn't we put her on a bus?'

While they stared at each other and wondered, Janet drew a little away from them. Amazed, she looked at the sky, and the fair, and her uncle and Leila. She looked at the people who passed. Roughly she wiped her eyes and took a backward step.

‘No, I
don't
want to go home,' she whispered.

She moved further down the path.

More loudly she said, ‘No, I
don't
want to go home.'

‘Where's she gone?' said Uncle Hector, screwing up his eyes in the darkness.

He saw her and started after her but was slowed, then stopped altogether, by the peculiar menace of her expression and the unexpectedness of her retreat. He couldn't imagine what she was up to.

‘I'm not coming!' she screamed at him. ‘You can't make me. I won't. I'll never go back to you and Auntie.'

She ran a few steps and turned. ‘I don't love any of you. I'll never go back.' Aimlessly, frantically, turning and twisting round caravans and tents, up and down the paths of trodden earth, pushing through the thinning crowds, she ran, not crying now, but brilliant-eyed.

2

Alice

She was a little girl with red-gold sausage curls, curls darker than red-gold. She did have this lovely hair. She also had thick creamy skin and grey-blue eyes that wondered. Very young, she read all the stories in which the fairies and the kindest mothers and fathers and the strangers in the woods who were benevolent to lost children said, if not in so many words, ‘It is good to be good.' But, even without the painted finger of the fables pointing in that direction, Alice would have been inclined to be good. Babies arrive with dispositions, and this was hers.

Her mother was Scottish born and bred—irrational, raucous, bony, quick-tempered, and noisy. She had no feelings. She was bright, like anything burning: a match, a firecracker, a tree. Alice was as watchful as a small herbivorous animal. Mother and child were unsatisfied. They looked at each other.

Luckily for the mother, she also had two sons, younger than the girl—golden, milky boys, not made entirely of wood and flames like their mother, nor of guileless life like their sister, but a mixture of both, and somehow not quite enough of either. They were extremely pretty children just the same. Like Alice, the brothers had remarkable hair and eyes, but their great triumph over her was that they were boys. She began to perceive that this, more than curls or thoughtful ways, was what pleased. The question was: could one terribly good girl ever, in her mother's eyes, equal one boy? And the answer was no.

Alice was a feminine, old-fashioned girl. She neither looked like, felt like, behaved like nor wanted to be like a boy. But she did want her mother to notice her, to be pleased with her, to affirm to everyone, ‘Alice is here.'

The family had come to Australia from the Old Country, bringing old ways. Alice was, for the century or so of her childhood, a nursemaid, nanny, and servant to her brothers. Knowing the weight the boys bore in her mother's mind, she was aged by the responsibility before she was ten years old. If they ran and fell over, dirtied their clothing, cried experimentally or out of bad humour, if they broke any household idols, or in any way irritated their mother, it was all, all Alice's fault. The child began to have doubts.

Sometimes, when Alice was walking down the street, one passerby would say to another, ‘Did you see that gorgeous hair? What a colour!' And she'd wish dreadfully that her mother had been there. The amazing thing, though, was that if her mother
was
there she never heard it. Or if she did hear she didn't understand. Or if she did understand she didn't care. Visitors learned to praise the boys, and not Alice. Even visitors liked to please her mother. It was safer.