The Red Shoe (10 page)

He’s rich because he doesn’t have any children, their father said. Of course he doesn’t have any children, said Matilda, he’s not married. It’s not natural, said their father, a man should be married and have children. Oh, I’m unnatural all right, Uncle Paul agreed, quite happily.

When at last it was time to get off the bus, Matilda and Frances nearly didn’t make it. They weren’t quick enough coming down the winding little staircase.

“Wait!” cried Matilda. “Wait for us!”

She could not see Uncle Paul or her mother’s pink dress or Elizabeth’s plaited hair. Wait, please wait, don’t leave us behind, and she remembered little Karen with her wooden feet and her eyes filled with tears. They were going to be left behind! But the bus waited and Uncle Paul and their mother and Elizabeth were all there on the pavement as Frances and Matilda tumbled off the last step.

“What a sausage you are, Mattie,” said Uncle Paul, tugging her hair. “What’s there to cry about? Look at Frances, she’s not crying.” He took out a big blue man’s handkerchief and wiped her face dry.

“I need to go to the toilet,” said Matilda.

“There’s a Ladies at the cinema,” suggested their mother. “Let’s get there first, shall we?”

Matilda scrunched up the handkerchief and gave it back to Uncle Paul.

“Keep it,” he grinned, shaking his head. “In case you want to cry in the film.”

“Is it a sad story?” she asked, running to stay next to him, he was walking so fast with such big strides.

“Films are always sad,” replied Uncle Paul gravely, his hair flopping over his forehead. “That’s what they’re for. To make you cry, like songs.”

The girls hardly ever came to town. Town had its own smell, sweet and rich, and there was such a sound of footsteps, of heels on the pavements. Town was made of glass and stone and it shone. Town was hot.

“Here we are,” said Uncle Paul, stopping short.

“Is this it?” breathed Matilda, gazing up. “Is that really it?”

“They’ve never been to the State before,” said their mother to Uncle Paul.

She meant the State Theatre, that’s what it was called. Even Elizabeth stared. It was a palace. It had golden gates and inside they saw chandeliers and golden-robed statues nestling in the walls, lit from behind by an orange glow like a dying fire. In large letters on the front awning they read, R
OMAN
H
OLIDAY
.

“Don’t just stand there, ducklings,” said Uncle Paul. “Come on in.”

“Are we allowed?” asked Matilda doubtfully.

They stepped through the wide doorway. People were gathered in little groups about the room as though they were at a party. Uncle Paul marched off confidently to the queue for tickets. The girls and their mother huddled together, next to a statue of a Roman senator with a sharp nose and blank eyes. Their mother took out a lipstick and a tiny mirror from her handbag and rubbed it over her lips.

Matilda looked nervously at the shiny tiled floor. Children shouldn’t be allowed in a place like this. It was too good for children. There was too much gold, too many nice chairs to sit on, it was too beautiful for them. Up high above them hung a huge chandelier, hundreds of drops of glass. It made her dizzy, just looking at it. It’s like a spell, she thought, like a magic mirror broken up into pieces. It looks like ice that never melts.

Uncle Paul came back with the tickets. He gave one each to Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda.

“All in a row,” he said. “Right at the front, that’s all that was left.”

“But what about you?” asked Elizabeth, frowning. “Where will you sit?”

“No room for us,” said Uncle Paul lightly. “That’s all right. I’ll take your mother for a drink.”

Matilda didn’t understand.

“Aren’t you going to see the film?”

“We’ll come along afterwards,” said Uncle Paul. “You’ll be all right, just go in and sit down.”

He reached into his pocket, took out a coin and pressed it into Elizabeth’s hand.

“Buy yourselves an icecream,” he said. “And don’t cry too much. It’s only a paper moon.”

Then he and their mother were gone. It happened as instantly as a magic trick. They disappeared out of the cool golden palace, into the heat and mystery of town.

A
LADY IN A RED UNIFORM
stood beckoning with a torch at the curtained entrance to the stalls. Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda followed her bobbing light, down into the dark carpeted theatre. Everyone was standing up because the National Anthem was playing, “God Save the Queen”.

“There you go, girls,” said the lady, briefly lighting up their three seats, then she stepped away into shadows.

B
ANG BANG BANG BANG
. The anthem was coming to an end. How loud the drum is, thought Matilda, as they felt for their seats, it must be as big as a house. Imagine the headache she must get listening to that all the time.

Because they were right in the front row, they had to lean backwards to see the screen properly. Matilda was glad the Queen was in her crown and a fur cape. She had been disappointed when the Queen came to Sydney because she’d expected her to ride the streets sidesaddle on a beautiful white horse, but instead she had sat in a big black car, waving her tiny hands wrapped up in white gloves. Nobody was allowed to touch her or she might crumble into dust.

The anthem was over now, they could sit down. The chairs were soft and springy, it was like sitting on darkness. Elizabeth bought some icecreams from a boy with a basket standing in the aisle and she passed a brick of vanilla to each of them.

Matilda started to lick hers up with noisy slurps. On came the newsreel, flashing black and white.

“When does the movie start?” asked Matilda, through a mouthful of snowy icecream. She wished the newsreel man would not speak so loudly.

“Shhh!” said Frances, embarrassed.

“W
ILL SHE STAY OR WILL SHE GO
? T
HE QUESTION EVERYONE IN
A
USTRALIA IS ASKING
,” shouted the newsreel man.

A face shot up on the screen, smiling, round, black and white. Matilda stared at it, startled. She swallowed a large mouthful of icecream in one go, and her throat tightened with cold.

That man, he looked just like her man, her tennis-ball man, the man in the house next door! But how could a man next door be on a newsreel? She wanted to turn and say something to Elizabeth or Frances, but of course they didn’t know about her man, only she knew.

Then the newsreel stopped and the man’s face disappeared. The cartoons began and Matilda forgot all about the man, she was too busy laughing. Frances and Elizabeth both told her to be quiet again and again. “It’s not even funny,” Elizabeth said, but that made Matilda laugh even more. She couldn’t help it. Once she had laughed so much at a cartoon that she swallowed a tooth. It was loose, hanging on a thread of pink gum, and down her throat it went. Then she cried because she wouldn’t get a penny from the Tooth Fairy, but their mother rang the Tooth Fairy to explain what had happened, and there was a penny in the glass of water the next morning.

Finally it was time for
Roman Holiday
. Everybody in the theatre clapped and whistled.

“This is more news,” said Matilda crossly. “When does the film start?”

“This is the film, silly,” said Elizabeth. “It’s just pretend news.”

A lady in a long white dress and a tiny little crown was standing in the middle of a grand ballroom.

“That’s the Queen!” said Matilda, excited.

“No it’s not,” said Elizabeth. “It’s a story.”

“It is so the Queen,” retorted Matilda but Elizabeth kicked her in the ankle and told her to shut up.

It wasn’t the Queen after all, it was a princess, who looked a bit like the photograph of their mother’s friend Yvonne a thousand miles away, except Yvonne had sunglasses. This princess looked far away too, and when she smiled it was like someone from another country who couldn’t understand English.

“How do you do,” said the princess, “so glad you could come, I am delighted, you may sit down. You may sit down, so glad you could come.”

The princess had to stand up for such a long, long time and her feet were sore and she kept taking them out of her shoes to rub them until one shoe fell off, but nobody could bend down and pick it up because she was a princess and it would be rude. Matilda wriggled in her seat.

“Is this going to be a long film?” she asked Elizabeth.

“Shhh,” said Elizabeth.

After the party was over, the princess went to bed, but she was cross with her mother and had a nervous breakdown, just like Elizabeth. And a doctor came and gave her an injection with a big needle to make her get better, but it didn’t work. So the princess crept out of the palace in the middle of the night, and fell asleep on the street till a man came along and found her.

How strange people sounded in films! Of course, they had American accents but it wasn’t only that. They weren’t like people to Matilda, they were like giant dolls. The air around her smelt of sugar and salt and was thick with whispering and the sound of kisses. On the screen the man and the princess were in a cave, and there was a face in the rock with an open mouth.

“If you put your hand in the mouth, and you are a liar, it will eat your hand up,” someone in the film said.

The princess put her hand out, a little white hand, just like the Queen’s but without a glove. She was shaking. She put it closer, closer – but then she pulled it back.

“I don’t want to,” the princess said.

She’s afraid, thought Matilda.

“Go on!” shouted a boy sitting behind them.

“I can’t!” said the princess. “I’m afraid!”

But the man in the film was not afraid. He put his hand up to the stone mouth. “If I am a liar, it will eat me,” he said. He put his hand right inside it. Suddenly he fell forward, as though he was being pulled down into the dark cave. The princess screamed. So did Matilda.

“Shhh!” said Elizabeth and Frances together.

Matilda looked around the dark theatre. Across from where they were sitting was a statue of someone in a funny hat, hidden behind a gate, like a prison. Matilda didn’t like it. She didn’t like any of the statues. There were too many of them, everywhere you turned someone made of stone was looking at you with empty pale eyes. There were heads as well as whole bodies and they made her feel sick, like the taste of dark chocolate.

“I have to go to the toilet,” she said to her sisters and she didn’t wait for an answer, she got up and went by herself, up to the back of the theatre where there was a sign lit up: L
ADIES
. Matilda slid up on the furry red-carpeted floor to the swinging door, and pushed it open with both hands.

Matilda stepped into the middle of the room, astonished. This Ladies was the most beautiful bathroom she had ever seen. It was like opening a door and walking into fairyland. All about her was gold and red and shiny and the walls were covered with painted butterflies, everywhere there were butterflies. There were even butterflies on the ceiling, and above the basin where you washed your hands there was a golden-edged mirror in the shape of a butterfly.

Then, to one side of the mirror, she saw a little sofa with red velvet cushions and curly golden legs. Matilda tossed off her sandals and lay down on the sofa in her socks.

“This is the life,” she thought dreamily.

That was something people said in films. “This is the life.” She could hear the dim sounds of the film now through the bathroom door. She didn’t want to go back out there. She stood up and padded over to the basin with the beautiful golden taps, then up on her tiptoes she looked at herself inside the mirror, inside the butterfly wings, frosted and sparkling, spread flat.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Matilda,” said Matilda in the mirror.

She shivered. Mirrors can’t talk, she reminded herself, only in stories. Like little Karen’s mirror in the fairytale, “You are more than pretty – you are beautiful.” Then she remembered the little oblong mirror in the shiny black car from the house next door, and the driver looking at her and winking. But not really looking at her, because it was only the mirror.

“They’re spies.” That’s what Floreal had said about the men next door. Maybe that was why the tennis-ball man was on the newsreel, thought Matilda suddenly. Spies could be in films, they weren’t like real people.

Clapping and whistling and shouting came under the door. The film must have ended. Matilda spun around on her socked feet as the door of the bathroom swung open.

“M
ATILDA, THERE YOU ARE
!” said Elizabeth, stepping inside the most beautiful bathroom in the world. She did not even seem to notice all the butterflies. “Come on, it’s over. We’re leaving.”

A line of women were following after her. Matilda put her sandals back on and went with Elizabeth out to the theatre. The heavy red curtain had closed over the screen and the lights were coming on, like sunrise. There were so many people, crowding up the sloping aisles – where was Frances? When Matilda saw a space, she stopped and tried to stand on her hands, but it turned into a lopsided cartwheel.

“Hey, you, none of that!” came a voice from the wide, grand balcony above them. A man in a bow tie tapped sharply on the edge of the railing with his torch, clink. “Behave yourself.”

There was Frances, waiting for them at the E
XIT
. Elizabeth seized a hand of each sister, and dragged them out through all the bodies into the glare of the open street.

“Where’s Mummy?” asked Matilda, squinting to shield her eyes from the sudden daylight. She felt strange, as though while she was in the theatre she had forgotten that the world was still there, waiting for them outside.

There was a long queue of people for the next showing of the film, stretching up along the footpath. They couldn’t see their mother and Uncle Paul anywhere.

“We’ll just have to wait,” said Elizabeth. “Let’s go up here, out of the way.”

She pointed across the road at a big department store. It was closed now, it was the afternoon.