Lilian's Story (17 page)

Her face was hidden behind its curtain of frown and it was hard to see the face of the smiling young woman who had married Father. I had pored over those old photographs until the breath wheezed through my nose from crouching on the floor so long, trying to see something more. She had married in Valenciennes lace that curved behind her in a train like a whirlpool, and her flowers had wilted in her hands. But although I could see every bud and trace every fold of the lace, I could not see what had happened to Mother.

I was willing to blame myself. No one had warned Mother that a daughter might grow into a fat watchful girl with thick red cheeks and tiny triangular eyes. She could not have imagined that her own daughter would be so clearly unsuitable to wear the Valenciennes, now packed away somewhere in tissue paper and lavender. She would not have thought any daughter of hers could sweat so profusely, would so often have morsels of food on her clothing, would have hair the colour of buried bones and as lank as grass.

But Mother was not a shirker, and she loved me enough to try to warn me. In her thin papery cheeks a terrible flush had risen and her fingers were turning the stop-watch over and over.
Lilian, when a woman becomes a woman, there are
changes.
I could not think of the words to tell her that she did not need to go on. We sat listening to a blowfly drone between us and away, and I tried to forget the way Miss Vine's face had been full of disgust, those years ago, when she had suddenly snatched at me as I ran out into the playground, and hissed,
Go to Matron at once.
She had been so close to me that spittle had landed on my face, and she had been so disturbed that she had brushed it off with the side of her hand, and said
Sorry
as if she had forgotten who I was.
The back of your skirt, Lilian
, she had whispered at me with horror, and when I looked and saw the ugly blob of purple on the back of the green skirt, I had been horrified, too, and afraid.

I am twenty
, I told Mother, and saw her flinch as if I had shouted. Had I shouted? She twisted her wedding ring as if to unscrew her finger.
That is why it is time, Lilian.
I watched her stare out over the bay. The ferry had disappeared around the headland, leaving a dirty thumb-print on the sky, and a gull was wheeling and plummeting into the water. From a bush near us a bird sang the same three notes over and over like a practising soprano. Mother's eyes glanced quickly backwards and forwards across the bay and the sky as if reading an interesting page. Her lips moved silently and her right hand sketched tiny gestures. When she turned to me again, the furrow between her eyebrows was smooth and I saw a canine catch on her lip as she smiled.
You see,
she said happily,
it is all very simple.
I nodded and said,
Yes
, thinking of the hopeless feeling, standing behind the screen in the sick bay, shivering in camisole and bloomers with a thick wad of cloth between my legs. When Matron had returned with the sponged green uniform, she had stared rudely at my thighs beneath the bottle-green bloomers and I had been conscious of how mottled and dimpled they were.
Next time, Lilian, be more careful
, she had said, and watched me as a I struggled with buttons.

Mother had fallen into a doze, her knuckles pink as she gripped the stop-watch even in sleep, and I left her there. Later the breeze would come across the water and blow wisps of her fine hair across her face and into her nose, until she would wake up with a jerk and the curtain would be drawn tightly back across her face. But in sleep, with her duty done by her daughter, she could be recognised as the young girl proud of her husband and her Valenciennes.

Being Conspicuous

I had looked forward to reading all the wisdom ever written and to thinking deeply about important things. I had planned serene hours with fearless minds who would help me resolve problems of good and evil, and what everything might mean. I had been excited by my future.

In the lecture hall, I watched the men in tweed mouthing, smothering a yawn before turning to the next page in their notes. F.J. Stroud and I stared down at so many heads bowed over tricky considerations of philosophy, so many pens flying across lined paper. In the first row, right in front of the man in tweed, was the deaf boy who was going to go far in philosophy in spite of his handicap, and the pretty girl who did not know that she did not have to work so hard at understanding. She pressed hard, putting words into her book, pressing each word into the paper as if otherwise it might run away.

But what did any of it have to do with me? Did any of it have to do with the stars that hung low near dawn, or the way the sun came up dripping out of the sea? The notes I took meant nothing: a few facts about enclosure laws, a list of the dates of battles. My notebook did not fill like other people's, and what was in it was largely illegible. Even when it could be read, there did not seem to be much sense in these lists of denuded facts, dates, names. Descartes was a man with a ball of wax, I knew that much and Philip of Spain had died an unmentionable death, but what else? Even Napoleon seemed boring.

Here up in the back of the hall, where the hot air gathered, and the smells of ink and feet, the fat girl with the red cheeks sat beside the thin ugly boy in black. The man in tweed had not wondered for many years what all this had to do with God, but he was annoyed by so much whispering in the back row.
He that has ears, let him hear
, he boomed out suddenly, to his surprise as much as his students'. The pretty girl dropped her pencil, the deaf boy showed his teeth with the pleasure of having heard for once, and the thin boy and the fat girl stopped their whispering to stare.

I often wanted to stand and yell down into the ring.
Where is size?
I would have liked to shout.
What have you done
with the grand and ineffable? Where is the life all around us?
I stood in my place, balancing against vertigo with a hand on the bench. The men in tweed stopped what they were saying and stared up, waiting. There would be a long silence which gradually filled up with shuffles, titters, things dropped with a bang or tinkle, during which I struggled to formulate one of my questions. The men in tweed became embarrassed. My formulations evaporated as I stood with my mouth trying to open on words, and watched them toss chalk from hand to hand. One pushed a long hand into his trouser pocket and drew out a gold watch on a chain. He laid it in front of him on the lectern as gently as a soufflé.
Yes?
They would ask, their faces turned up to me in a moonlike way.
Yes?
The silence would deepen and finally splinter with a snicker from somewhere. The men in tweed prided themselves on their poise and silver temples, and smoothly turned to the board when they had waited long enough.

On the board they enumerated a few more facts about the movements of centuries or battles or philosophies, and when they turned back to the class they continued speaking as if the tall girl was not still standing, her mouth ajar, blocking the view of those behind, but still full of undelivered questions. They would learn to expect her and would finally look around at the beginning of the lecture to see from which bench she would rise, and would recognise her in the quadrangle, and nod, and smile a watchful smile to show they knew but that they would not be impressed.

It is a shock to me
, I confessed to F.J. Stroud, who continued to be willing to be made conspicuous as the boy in black beside the standing girl.
I expected something
else.
F.J. Stroud sneered, but did not intend cruelty.
What
did you expect?
he wanted to know.
Wisdom?
The bedlam of the lunchtime bells strained after a melody—it might have been “Greensleeves” or just as well “Ye Banks and Braes”— but could only produce clamour.
Wisdom
, he said when we had passed out of the quadrangle.
You will not find it here.

I was not sure that anything as complete as wisdom, or an answer, was what I was after. Even one satisfying question would have done me.

Father and My Beaux

When Father was not cross these days, he was smiling too sweetly.
How are your beaux, Lilian?
he would ask.
When
will they start beating a path to the door?
His smile showed all his front teeth in a row like a fence. That long upper lip had not stopped frightening me, ever since it had been shaved clean, because of the way it exposed so much of Father's mouth. His lips were rosy, turgid, glowing with blood, as he showed his teeth and waited for an answer. But I pretended to be more mulish and unwanted than I really was.
You are a woman now, Lilian
, he told me, and laid an arm so suddenly along my shoulder that I staggered. He pressed me against him, but we had not much practice at this and I stood in an ungainly way in his arm, holding my breath.
You must tell me, Lilian, if anyone is forward with you
, he said, and gave me a final squeeze that made me gasp, before releasing me.
The world is full of bold forward men who
will try anything.
He ran a tongue over his teeth so that they glittered, and glanced over his shoulder at where Mother sat with the ribbons of her hat trying to whip her awake. Father's shadow on the grass reached out towards her in a dark way and the ribbons danced and fluttered urgently.
Fixated, Lilian, is the name for it.

But I made many mistakes. I told him, for example about the short swarthy man who spoke to me each day in the park, a short man who left his bench each morning to walk towards me. The leather strap of my book bag squeaked conversationally as we approached each other. He was my Napoleon, his teeth shone like an animal's, and he was never properly shaved.
Good morning, miss,
he said every day, and showed his wet white teeth. His accent could have been Corsican. And he was clearly in exile, even though this was not Elba.

It had been a nasty mistake to say anything.
A man,
eh?
Father said, and got up and poured me a glass of wine.
Better start sometime
, he said, and I watched the wine in my glass shake a bead of pink light onto the tablecloth.
No
,
Albion, no,
Mother said in a general way and I saw how her fingers trembled as she held them spread over the top of her glass.
Please, Albion, no
. She laid her other hand over her fingers as if afraid he would pour the wine through them into the glass. Father watched me as I drank, and I saw his Adam's apple move energetically under the skin of his throat as he tilted his head back to empty his own glass.

Across the table, John's glass was still full of water and untouched as he watched Father and me drinking. His eyes receded further and further into his head as the wine in my glass disappeared and was refilled and my face became hot and happy. The Japanese ladies above the sideboard had flinched in a gust of my laughter when Mother got up, still holding her glass tight in both hands, and left the room, but John stayed to watch like a Buddha in glasses.

He is Napoleon
, I heard myself stutter and giggle.
He waits
for me every morning in the park
. Father's eyes grew small and cunning.
What Napoleon,
he said.
What park?
His voice was as smooth as a grape. I was old enough to know better, but I told him.

I think he told the police about my Napoleon.
Dissolute
and cunning,
he said with a hand in his trouser pocket, jingling something.
Corrupting my daughter. I will not have it.
He thrust the other hand into a pocket and glared at me.
I
will not have you corrupted by any dago in a park
,
Lilian.

The police, when they came, did not believe anything. They hardly bothered to conceal how sceptical they were that anyone would want to corrupt this fat, frowning girl.

Aunt Kitty Advises

Ah, your beaux,
Aunt Kitty said when I told her about Duncan and F.J. Stroud.
You see, you are like all of us, with
beaux.
She smiled dreamily at the memories of her beaux and straightened her spine in the chair.
It is not everything,
Lilian, but it is a lot.

I had never been closer to being ordinary, and lay back in the wicker chair, feeling another strand snap under me, to enjoy it. Aunt Kitty turned the rings on her knobbed fingers.
Forbes was not my favourite beau
, she said.
But he was the best husband.
I watched a leaf shudder.
Oh, husbands
, I said, and could picture nothing but frowns.
I am not sure about husbands.
Aunt Kitty finished her barley water in one gulp.
Neither was I
, she said and laughed.
It is all so grave.

But she brought out the wedding dress, packed like Mother's in tissue paper. The sleeves seemed big enough only for twigs, the shoulders so narrow it could have been a child's dress. I had not thought before how frail Aunt Kitty was. I had always been wide-shouldered, staunch-thighed, and my arms needed plenty of room to move.

A man likes a good listener
, Aunt Kitty advised.
A good listener
with a bad memory.
She sucked deeply at her barley water, which was a darker shade than mine.
A memory is unforgivable,
no one's jokes are infinite.
I asked,
And what does a woman like?
But even Aunt Kitty had no answers for that.
Fun
, she suggested at last, and slopped barley water on her knee.
Perhaps.
She smothered a belch that escaped through her fingers.
Forbes
was fun, but he died.

In Aunt Kitty's living room, curtained against the heat, we sat in armchairs in which mould had become personality. Crickets were loud on the verandah and a bird in some bush yelped like a hungry pup.
I would like to wear
an outfit like a cactus,
I said, and Aunt Kitty was immediately interested.
That ill green
, she said.
Paler points. Pale green lace,
perhaps.
I never wore lace, but the idea of having an outfit like a cactus was pleasing.
And one red f lower under an armpit
, I said. Aunt Kitty agreed.
You are right, Lilian, they do grow
their blooms in their armpits.
She had become dreamy.
And a hat
made of banksias.