The Aunt's Story (9 page)

‘What is it, Theodora?' Father asked, coming out of his room, which was close to the mirror.

‘Nothing, nothing, nothing,' she almost cried.

She did not want to look at his face.

‘I was just dreaming,' she said.

‘It's broken now,' Father said. ‘Go back to sleep.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘it's broken.'

But this did not obliterate the dream. Although she could
not see its shape, it continued to live its life in a state of vague misgiving in her mind.

‘And you?' she said.

‘It's thundery. I couldn't sleep.'

‘Do you remember,' she said, ‘it was my twelfth birthday, and I was thrown down when lightning struck the tree?'

‘I had forgotten,' Father said.

‘And the man came. We gave him his dinner round at the side. He said he would come again, but he didn't.'

‘I had forgotten all about that. Go back to sleep, Theodora.'

Father was going back into his room, and she wanted to stop him, because all the sadness of the world was in the house. There was the possibility that when the door closed, he would suffer the fate of the Man who was Given his Dinner, she might never see him again. But there are occasions on which you cannot stop the closing of the door. It closed. It closed on Father. She was alone in the passage. It would happen. It would be like this in time.

Summer closed in. It was hot and palpable, gathering in the passages, even under the trees, where the cows stood, sculptural in the evening, after they had been milked.

‘I saw that Tom Wilcocks who used to milk the cows,' Fanny said, taking off her hat. ‘I wonder what happened to Pearl.'

But nobody knew what had happened to Pearl. She had left the district. She had gone to Sydney perhaps. And Fanny stuck the pins in her hat, and laughed, and reddened.

‘Tom Wilcocks waved to me,' she said. ‘He was in that paddock across from Bloomfields'. He was lying in a patch of buttercups. He was wearing blue dungarees.'

‘And what did you do?' asked Theodora through her pins, for she was fixing a hem on a petticoat.

‘Nothing, of course,' Fanny said. ‘They say that Tom is no good. And you know what happened to Pearl.'

‘I liked him,' said Theodora slowly. ‘I liked his hands.'

‘Really, Theodora!' Fanny said.

She picked at her hair in the mirror. Theodora had made her quite red. Or the drive from town. It was hot. It was stifling already, at that time of year. That evening Mrs Goodman sat about and fanned herself with the leaf of a palm. You could
hear the dry motion of the palm, which only accentuated heat, and dry, dry, like Mrs Goodman's lips.

Only under the apricot tree it was cool, the old apricot tree at the back, which was now beyond the age for bearing, but which stood deep in grass and docks and still produced shade. Sometimes, and tonight, Theodora went and sat beneath the apricot tree. She took a book that she would not read. She marked her page with a dock and sat. And as she sat, there seemed to be no beginning or end. Meroë was eternity, and she was the keeper of it.

Before Mother broke in, ‘Theodora, Theodora, where is my little silver paper-knife?'

Mother's voice made the hot air quiver.

‘What should I do with it?' Theodora called back over her shoulder. ‘I haven't seen your paper-knife.'

But Mother's voice implied that she had. The little silver paper-knife still rapped knuckles playing a scale. Mother was afraid she was no longer Mother. It gave her indigestion, not to find a proof, as she sat and fanned herself with a palm on a hot evening at Meroë.

That night it was hotter, it was the hottest, the evening of the silver paper-knife. There were little insects in the air. And the moon was red. It hung in the branches of the apricot tree, big, and swollen red, close, you could almost touch its veins.

‘It must surely rain soon in this country,' the voice of Mrs Goodman complained.

But it seemed unlikely. On hot evenings all the extremes of unlikelihood conspired, felt Theodora Goodman, and for that reason you waited, you waited for the red moon to crash like a thunderous gong through the leaves. The intermediate minutes were so many flying ants, their suggestion of motion, that the hand brushed the cheek.

Then the drum beat down across the flat. You heard the horse's feet, beating the planks of the bridge. They beat deep, and more metallic, scattered and sauntered on the road, dropped and gathered, dropped and gathered, spurted as you heard the horse shy at a shadow. You could hear the fear protesting from his nose.

Theodora Goodman sat beneath the apricot tree and listened
to the horse approach. Now it was close. She could hear it acting flash in the darkness, tossing its metal; that she knew could only be Frank Parrott, yes, it could only be.

‘Who's that?' he called as the horse quivered.

But she would not answer. Because for Frank Parrott it was always easy, and sometimes it should be different.

‘Fanny, is it?' said Frank. ‘Come up, blast you!' He kicked bitterly at the belly of the horse.

And now the darkness in the neighbourhood of the tree was drenched with the smell of horse's sweat.

‘No,' she said, ‘it's not Fanny.'

‘Thought it was some ghost.' He laughed. ‘Christ,' he said, ‘it's hot.'

Frank Parrott dropped from the horse and lay beside her, with some suggestion of light along his flash Sunday boots. She listened to him settle himself, as the grass streamed out that the horse tore, his bridle trailing through the dark grass. There was an air of permanence about the position of Frank Parrott, which was at the same time false, she did not trust.

‘Thought I'd come over and have a talk,' he said, his voice broken into careless bits. ‘I was at a loose end. It's hot. A cove can't think in such heat. What's a cove to do?'

She drew down the corners of her mouth in the darkness.

‘Soon it will rain,' she said. ‘There will be a downpour, and then, Frank, you will be able to think.'

She looked through the branches at the close red moon which, in spite of its closeness, wore an expression of unlikelihood.

‘What do you think about, Frank?' she asked.

She smoothed her skirt.

‘Oh, I dunno,' he yawned. ‘Things. The future. I want to get out of this. I'm sick of cows. I want to go in for sheep in a big way. There's more money in sheep.'

She began to feel old and oracular listening to Frank Parrott's voice, as if she didn't belong. There was this on one side, the life of men keeping sheep and making money, and on the other, herself and Meroë. She was as remote as stone from the figures in the first landscape of which Frank Parrott spoke.

‘I am content,' she said. ‘I would like to die at Meroë.'

‘Yes,' said Frank, ‘but you are you.'

He spoke thoughtfully now, not with the criticism that other people's voices had for Theodora Goodman. So that she wanted him to speak more. The blood in her stone hands ran a little quicker, perhaps from fear also, that stone will crumble. Not even Father could hold up the walls of Meroë when it was time. So now she waited for Frank to speak.

‘You know, Theo,' Frank said, ‘I find I like to talk to you.'

The horse with the trailing bridle had drifted far now. Only faint swathes of grass fell to his teeth.

‘Why?' asked Theodora dully.

She had begun to suffocate. She could feel the pressure of the red moon.

‘Because you are all right. Because, I suppose, you are honest,' he said.

His voice groped. It had great difficulty in choosing words to express what, anyway, had no shape.

‘I never thought about myself as being honest or dishonest,' said Theodora. ‘I never thought about being anything in particular. One lives, and that is all.'

She said all this stiffly enough, because it was her way, but inside her she was touched. She unbent inside and stroked him as if he had been a dog's head offering itself out of the darkness. Her hand passed and repassed over the coat of the red dog. And altogether Frank was not unlike a dog, animal and unconscious, with bursts of nice affection.

‘I could tell you,' Frank began.

‘What could you tell?' she asked.

‘Nothing,' he said.

He stirred uneasily in the grass. And again the moon pressed through the branches of the old trees. He rolled over and looked at the house. And now he was different, the way the light struck his sharp spurs and glittered in the sockets of his eyes. He was no longer the nice affectionate dog. If she had touched him, touched his hands, the bones of her fingers would have wrestled with the bones in the palm of his hand.

‘There will be such a downpour,' she said thickly, biting a blade of grass.

He said that it was time the dam filled, looking still at the lighted house.

Oh, God, she would have said, go, go, or stay, let us throw aside words. Now she felt that only the hands tell. To take in her lap the palpitating moon.

She heard spurs.

‘I must go in and see the others,' Frank was saying.

But awkwardly, as if he would not leave her, as if he needed help, and she could only sit straight and impotent as the tree.

‘Very well,' she said. ‘You will find them. I shall stay a little longer. Until it rains.'

She heard his spurs disappear slowly through the grass and into the house. Then a bird flew through the air. Then a dog barked. Then it was Frank's horse completing a circle as he cropped closer. But it was all motion subtracted from motive. Even when the rain fell, the heavy, spreading drops, covering her forehead and her hair.

‘This is what we have been waiting for,' she said: ‘The rain.'

But it did not convince.

‘You see, Theo?' Frank called. ‘The rain!'

He had come out of the house and was taking his horse. His voice was very loud through the soft, fleshy splashing of the big rain.

‘So long, Theo,' he called. ‘It's a soaker.'

And now he was a long streak of metal down the road.

Theodora went inside, under the sound of rain on the roof. She began to unstick her hair from her forehead, when Fanny came through the lamplight into the room.

‘Theo, darling,' Fanny said. ‘I have something to tell you, Theo. Frank Parrott has asked me to marry him, and I have said yes.'

Fanny sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Oh, yes, Fanny dear,' said Theodora. ‘Frank asked. Why, yes.'

No gong could have beat louder.

‘We shall take our time,' Fanny said. ‘I don't dislike long engagements.'

Theodora Goodman puffed out her hair that the rain had wet. In her left temple, in the rather yellow skin, there was a long blue vein. She had to look at this vein. For the moment it was the most significant detail of geography. She could not
stare enough. If only not at her own eyes.

‘Long engagements,' said Theodora, ‘give one an opportunity to collect.'

‘Of course,' said Fanny.

She was very lovely, soft, and thoughtful. You remembered the flesh of early roses, but under the skin you could read arithmetic.

‘Mother is very pleased,' said Fanny. ‘Because it is really quite an event. Something for the district, I mean.'

‘Why, here,' said Theodora, ‘is Mother's little silver paperknife.'

And it was. On the dressing table.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, as she took it in her hand to say good night. ‘You see. You were right.'

‘Yes,' said Mother, ‘I was right.'

She looked up. There was never any question. It could not have been otherwise. It was like this between mother and daughter. Mrs Goodman took up the paper-knife in her small hand on which the garnets shone.

‘I would be very sorry to lose that little paper-knife,' she said thoughtfully.

Theodora waited. She waited to see if there was anything else she would be expected to give. She had come for this purpose. To her mother.

‘Fanny told you?' asked Mrs Goodman.

‘Yes,' said Theodora, ‘she told me.'

‘I am glad. It is an excellent match,' said Mrs Goodman. ‘Our Fanny Parrott. You will have to keep my spirits up, Theo dear.'

Her lips were dry on Theodora's cheek.

Frank Parrott went away after that, to Victoria, to buy a bull. But it did not matter whether he stayed or went, after the accomplished fact, because Fanny had much to think about, to enjoy. Sitting late in her morning gown, she was big with the future, you would have said, she already felt its shape. So that Frank Parrott, the man who was responsible, was no longer so very significant. He was allowed to lapse after the act. Fanny wrote to Victoria, but it was not so much a letter to Frank Parrott as a kind of automatic writing which the future inspired.

‘Theodora,' Mrs Goodman said, ‘has grown thin and yellow.'

‘Yes,' said Theodora, ‘it has been a trying summer.'

The hills were burnt yellow. Thin yellow scurf lay on the black skin of the hills, which had worn into black pockmarks where the eruptions had taken place. And now the trees were more than ever like white bones. Out of all this exhaustion formed the clear expectant weather of autumn, smelling of chrysanthemums and first frost. Theodora filled the house with the gold chrysanthemums. Their stalks snapped and ran strong sap in her hands.

Father sat against the windowful of pines, with a plaid across his shoulders for the cold that had not yet arrived.

‘Theodora,' he said, ‘in the end I never saw Greece, because your mother would not come. She said it was a primitive country, full of bugs and damp sheets and dysentery. So we went to Vienna.'

Father's voice complaining was the voice of an old man, and, of course, because Father was old, his beard was white. Even so, it had just happened.

‘I have been nowhere,' Theodora said.

She bent and kissed him. She was kissing, she felt, not Father, but an old man. An old man complaining in a Greek play. And she felt sad. She was sad for Meroë. Because it was coming to an end. The play would finish, after the blaze of gold.