A Few Days in the Country (4 page)

‘They impose. They're imposing on her. I can stand anything but imposition,' Alice would say, damped down.

Letters poured out of her, smoking, in terms she would have been afraid to use face to face with her mother. She called her loving names. She called herself her mother's loving daughter. She advised her mother not to give in to the boys' demands. They were mean and nasty. They were insatiable. She hated them (though she didn't say that).

The letters she received in return were slow to come, short, predictable. Still her hopes lifted daily: a letter would arrive from her mother that would mend her life. If Alice had a fault, dangerous to her survival, it was that she was inordinately reluctant to learn from experience. She would not. Because the lesson would be so sad. And she had spent so much of her life going in the opposite direction from the lesson. And still the lesson pursued her, like a monster through the forest. Of course, it was a hard lesson that not everyone has to learn.

The mother visited from time to time. She and Eric jollied each other along. Alice planned for weeks beforehand—everything had to be perfect. Then she could do nothing right. Her ways were different from her mother's, and therefore to be scorned. Sharp laughter, sharper comments, news of the boys rapped out with some exultation. Alice suffered. Her mother laughed. Eric wondered what was going on, and tried a few wisecracks. Then, ‘It'll all blow over,' he would say to one or the other. ‘She's probably under the weather. Happens in the best of families. Bit of a flare-up, then it's all over.'

No one took any notice of Eric. He was like a gnat, talking his own language to two large creatures who were enemies, but enemies concerned with each other as they were not with him.

Even yet there were days when Alice's looks and ways were pleasing to others. And she would cling to the gift of their willingness to approve of her. All she would allow herself to think was: I wish there were someone I could tell. Not mentioning any names. Artlessly, she marvelled that people thought they could reach her. They were so separate from her. Why couldn't they understand this?

Years went by. The road where Alice had stopped now stretched far in either direction. She didn't want to follow it. Occasionally, she looked along its length. She stood there with a little crowd of girls and women, all with ravishing red-gold curls. There had been this accident, so long ago that none of them could remember quite what it was. A horrible accident. They couldn't get over it. And, unluckily, no one had ever passed by who understood this, or explained that you could walk away, sometimes, from bad accidents.

Once again, Eric's work took him into the country. He didn't want to go, but he had no choice. While he was there, he slept with another girl, and this time there was a divorce. It didn't really matter, though, because the mother had found another man for Alice, a man who might make more money. He was much older than she was, and very different from Eric—demanding, critical, sarcastic, powerful, brutal. He was like Alice's mother in strength, except that he never laughed. Next to him, Alice's mother seemed better.

Now Alice's life was truly hard. No one would have believed how hard it was, but, anyway, no one knew. Now there were two who could never be pleased, two who believed that anything could be bought. This did not prevent her, Alice being Alice, from restoring their images nightly with fresh paint and plaster and rearranging their robes in ever more becoming folds.

The dreadful boys went from bad to worse, persecuting her wonderful mother. The man had a lot to put up with, too, with the world not appreciating him as it should. But occasionally Alice still ventured to wish, when a stranger put a field flower in her hand, that there were someone she could tell.

Nothing changed. Neither the mother nor the man nor Alice. The boys deteriorated slightly, receiving one shock after another, when the rest of the population proved less indulgent than their mother. Everyone grew much older. They had all worked hard.

One of the strangers who sometimes talked to Alice now was a girl, a neighbour. Alice's hair was grey. The girl had no mother or father. For five minutes at a time, Alice would listen to stories of the girl's life, and each thought of small helpful things to do for the other. When the man was ill, as he often was now, being quite old, the girl took the trouble to fetch and carry for Alice. Alice returned the goodwill in more than equal measure: she would never be in someone's debt.

Just the same, this activity was no more pleasing to her than the chirp of a small canary. It was pitiful, in its way, because the girl thought, as had others in the past, that she was really talking to Alice, was friendly with Alice. She didn't realise that Alice had received no sanction for any such behaviour from her mother or from the man. What a strange little girl to think that she mattered, when Alice's mother was frail and ill, and the boys were bleeding her of every penny, and she still thought them ideal in their greed and insincerity.

One day, the girl told Alice that she was soon to be married. Alice was dubious about boys, but she met this one and liked him—a country boy with honest eyes. Regularly now, she heard about the wedding. She always listened seriously, and gave excellent advice, much wiser on the girl's behalf than she could ever be on her own. She was invited to the ceremony and the reception, and would have been mildly pleased to go, but the man was ill. Everything was complicated, as it had always been.

On the wedding day, Alice brushed her hair and looked in the mirror at her sleepless eyes. The latest letters from her mother had complained about Alice and the man in violent terms. They sent presents when she wanted cash to pass on to the ever-hungry boys. Was this complaint fair? Attending to the house and the man, who was ill in bed, drugged, Alice sometimes noticed the clock and remembered what day it was.

At last, the man fed and sleeping again, Alice sat down alone. And then, from the top of the garden path, someone was calling her name, and through the greenery and the late-summer flowers the girl came in her wedding dress and shimmering veil, like a bird or an angel, on her way to the church.

Wonder almost lifted Alice off the ground. Stopping cars, leaving bridesmaids hovering by the gate, the girl floated down. She had thought of Alice, wanted Alice's blessing at this astonishing moment. Everything shone with light—the sky, the garden, the girl in white, and Alice. This was like nothing that had ever happened before. The girl and Alice smiled.

Even after the girl left, in clouds and drifts of white, nothing seemed substantial. A buoyancy, an airiness, something quite amazing surrounded Alice. She had no idea what it was called.

Oh, but she wished, she
wished
that there were someone she could tell. Then, in the middle of this tremendous wish, Alice paused: a great thing was beginning to happen to her. A new thought appeared in her mind, yet Alice recognised it as if it had always been there. The thought said, But
I
know.
I
know.

After this she looked the same, and her circumstances didn't alter, but she was a different person altogether.

3

The City at Night

The two tall girls walked along the busy Sydney street: the fair one, Leonie, with superb natural grace, looking neither to right nor left; the dark-haired girl, Janie, self-consciously in her first pair of high-heeled shoes. She turned now and then, when speaking, to look at Leonie, but Leonie's head never turned. The straightness of her gaze, the elegance of her bearing, seemed almost unnatural to Janie.

Janie was sixteen and a half, and had been at work in an office for exactly one day. This evening, saying ‘miracle of miracles', instead of going straight home to tell her mother of the intricacies of the switchboard and tea-making, she was going out with beautiful Leonie, sophisticated and seventeen- and-a-quarter and well-made-up Leonie. It was Janie's coming out into Sydney nightlife; it was her growing up.

This is the first time I've walked through the main streets at night, she thought.

‘I never knew the city had so many lights,' she said to Leonie, who smiled.

They passed an air-conditioned cinema, and the coolness cut a swathe through the soft night. The strong sweet perfume of frangipani blossoms was fanned through a florist's doorway and hung suspended, a subtle advertisement.

Janie sniffed appreciatively. She caught the tang of fresh-ground coffee, too, and felt hungry.

‘We're nearly there,' Leonie said in the round drawling accent she had acquired since leaving school, the shield for her self-consciousness.

‘That's good,' Janie breathed, dazzled by the brightness and the crowds of young people who looked as if they knew where they were going, and what they would do when they arrived; dazzled by their clothes, and doubtful for the first time about her new blue dress.

Sophistication and assurance everywhere: it was a relief to be inside at last, at a table for two with Leonie, and the waitress ready with her pad, gazing at herself in the mirror while they studied the menu. Until they had decided on grills and sundaes, and the waitress left, their manner was cold, serious, blasé.

Then they were alone, exposed, the eyes of the other unavoidable and uncomfortably close across the small table.

Leonie's hands were smooth and creamy, the nails long and polished. She broke her roll and buttered a piece. Janie looked in her bag for a handkerchief, and blew her nose, although it didn't need it.

‘I think it's…'

‘How did you…'

They laughed awkwardly and pressed one another to speak first.

‘I was just going to ask if you'd enjoyed your first day,' Leonie said at last.

‘Well, it was all so new…' Janie's voice trailed off; remembering that she had met Leonie in the office, she added, ‘But I think I'll like it very much.'

‘I hate it,' Leonie said calmly. ‘The other girls don't like me and I don't like them. Did you see that today?'

Her straightforward manner made Janie feel abashed and enchanted and partisan.

‘Yes, I thought something was wrong,' she said.

She had mentally declared herself on Leonie's side even before her incredible invitation to go out after work: partly because the odds were three against one, partly because the other girls had frizzy hair and ingratiating manners.

Janie stared unseeingly at her plate, where a chop, a ring of pineapple, green peas, and Saratoga chips waited, while her intuition brought forth a judgment. ‘It's just that you're different,' she said, forgetting to feel embarrassed. ‘That's why it's like that at work.'

She was about to go on when Leonie cut in. ‘They told you I am Lithuanian?'

‘Yes, but that isn't what I mean.'

Her untrained mind struggled to define the difference she had felt. It was something more subtle, more elusive than Leonie's attractiveness, her cultivated accent, her foreign birth; something more fundamental.

Leonie was pleased and interested. ‘What
do
you mean?'

Janie floundered. ‘I don't know,' she said helplessly, ‘but I know I'm right.'

‘Are you different, too?' Leonie asked without malice.

‘Yes, I suppose I am,' she said, picking up her knife and fork.

‘That makes two of us then,' Leonie smiled, a wide unsophisticated smile, showing even white teeth.

Janie smiled back and felt immensely happy. Leonie was so friendly. She seemed really to like her. She must, or she wouldn't have asked her to come out. And, now that they were out, she was nicer than ever.

Leonie buttered another piece of roll, and asked, ‘Have you always lived in Sydney?'

The biographical question had come; the first step in the ritual of making a friendship, as when children say, half boldly, half shyly, ‘What's
your
name? Where's
your
house? What school do
you
go to?'

‘No,' Janie said. ‘I came from the country when I was thirteen. We've been living in Manly ever since. When did you come here?' she asked, interested in Leonie's foreign background, but doubtful about mentioning it. She wondered how it must feel to be foreign.

‘When I was one,' Leonie said, ‘so I don't know much about my own country. I can hardly speak the language.'

Janie listened as she ate, and registered the fact that Leonie wasn't shy about her nationality, so it was all right to talk about it sometimes.

They were both suddenly excited and eager, wanting to know, wanting to tell, but remembering still to tread warily, and trying to hide it.

The waitress cleared away their plates, and Leonie's manner changed. She seemed almost bored.

‘I suppose you know a lot of girls in Manly if you've been there for a few years,' she said, raising her finely arched eyebrows.

What's happened? Janie thought, chilled by the difference. What have I done? She hesitated before answering. It made her miserable. People hate people who haven't got friends, she thought. She won't want to come out with me again.

The return of the waitress with their caramel sundaes gave her time to cover her dismay to some extent. When the waitress had gone Janie said with a laugh, ‘Well, no, I don't know many.'

Leonie just said, ‘Oh?' on a note that demanded more explanation.

‘I was sent to school at Kingslake, you know it, miles out of Manly, and there weren't any other girls from my district there.' Her voice rose unconvincingly, and she laughed again. Afraid of a silence, she went on, ‘I just didn't seem to meet any until I went to business college a little while ago.'

Leonie was relentless. ‘So you're friendly with the girls from college now?' she said coldly, digging her spoon into her caramel sauce.

Tears pricked Janie's eyes, and she looked angrily at her ice-cream. She couldn't lie; she'd never been able to. Even at a moment like this, the weak, dull, sickly truth had to come.