‘It couldn’t be worse than that,’ she said.
The aunts’ house
Angel Martin had memories, somewhat fragmented, of another, earlier time, another place almost lost when the earth spinning in reverse subtracted her years with no one being particularly interested in how many. It was the time between her birth and the death of her father. And the memories, if she could not prevent them showing their tears at that time, were sometimes as shadowed as night and some were stronger than her heartbeat.
Angel thought her life at the Bay was like one of her tattered books: stolen, even at her age. She was not quite eight years old when she and her mother moved to the Bay but was sharp as a tack and quick. There was even an imaginary book she composed in her symphony of a mind and she could turn the scribbled pages to try to learn something of herself. She could only read the book in her dreams at night when her eyes were closed. But it was a troubled book, the Book of the Bay, and in her dreams it was difficult to turn pages wet with tears.
It was a sad book.
The empty shopfront that housed Angel and her mother was even sadder. It was on the main road running down to the Bay, near the bus stop, and Angel was shamed when she squatted on the doorstep waving to passers-by and no one waved back – even then, she felt shame and anger.
‘Why don’t we live in the aunts’ house?’
‘They’re angry with me. Your grandfather is too angry.’
‘I’ll make them love us … the aunts and the grandfather.’
‘I wish they would – they blame me but it wasn’t my fault,’ said Angel’s mother and she swallowed another pill.
Still, Angel ran across the park every morning to Brooklyn Street and the aunts’ house and sat on the path outside the locked gate until the grandfather padded down the drive on his wide, bare feet to get the mail. Once again, when Angel asked if she could go in, he said, ‘No! Go away – goodbye, child’ and slammed the letterbox lid down as he always did, and padded back, this old man, a lover of the sea, its fish and its mermaids, up the drive, bare-chested, wearing his sarong with a branch of kelp stuck into the waist. But Angel, despite everything, was mad for the love of the old man.
‘Go where? Goodbye where?’ Angel had shouted, straight up and down, even then, with her hands on her hips and a look in her eyes. ‘Why don’t you love me – you’re my grandfather. You’re supposed to love me!’
‘Your mother killed my son.’
‘A truck killed Daddy. My mum is not a bloody truck!’ Even then.
And the grandfather stood still and glared at her, one side of his mouth wet and drooling and she shook the gate and glared right back. Angel could tell there was a hopelessness about him but no more was said and the grandfather turned his back and continued up the drive. From behind, he looked like an old, spent bull with a hide dry as salted air. Angel knew then that was how terrible sadness must look. And when, halfway to the house, he turned and shouted to her, ‘Stop shaking the gate! I don’t want you here!’ she hung her own head low, sat on the kerb outside the house and howled.
Much later, Angel tried hard not to think it was the end of a love and she never stopped trying. But it was another three days before she could leave her mother in one of her nervous states. All Angel could do was squat outside the shop door where people passing by tried not to notice her.
When her mother had recovered sufficiently to be left alone, Angel ran across the park to the aunts’ house, but there was a sadness in the air dense enough to cut. She could feel it. She waited for the postman to leave the mail then shook the locked gate. One of the aunts walked slowly down the drive. They were not the plods of the old man’s bare pads but quiet steps in soft leather. Not a pebble disturbed. Toes pointed in her sandals, like a dancer’s. The aunt’s eyes were red and dry. Her hair, still damp from its dip in the harbour, was grey at the tips but her body was slim in its cotton dress. There was a terrible sadness about her. Different.
‘No use you coming here again – ever again!’
‘Why?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘That’s not true – you’d be crying …’
‘He had a stroke last night and he’s dead. Do you know what a stroke is? His brain died and dragged his body after it. He died of grief – tell your mother that! He died of the grief of losing a son – our brother – now, go away and tell your mother that!’ And she turned and walked up the drive, shoulders slumped, and Angel, knowing that must be the sign of grief as well as sadness, did the same thing and sat on the kerb of Brooklyn Street and howled all over again.
‘Here! What’s going on?’ asked a man as old as the grandfather, smelling of fish and bait, on his way back from the Bay with a very big octopus in a bucket doing all it could to get out. ‘Why all the screaming? Getting a bit sick of it. How old are you?’
‘Nearly nine.’
‘Nine going on fifty from what I see, girlie. And why aren’t you in school? I seen you before, girlie, shaking the gate and not in school. What’s happened this time?’
‘The grandfather’s dead.’
‘Is that right? Not before time if you want to know what I think! Couldn’t stand the old bastard.’
‘I loved him but he didn’t love me – none of them do.’
‘That old know-it-all loved himself. Don’t know about the others. You mustn’t fret. Where’s your mother?’
‘In the village. Behind the shopfront with the white all over the glass.’
‘So, that’s you I see on the street. Why aren’t you here in this house?’
‘They said there’s no room.’
‘That place is a barn,’ said the old man, pushing the octopus back into the bucket. ‘What does your mum do?’
‘Nothing much. She takes pills.’
‘What for?’
‘They’re for her nerves.’
‘Well, now. If you want anything you come and see me. See the old house over there on the other side – the green gate with the fish net over it?’
‘Yes – okay.’
‘You can come to see me, girlie – and bring your mum if she wants a feed of something. Haven’t got much but you make do, don’t you? Have to.’ The octopus had climbed out of the bucket and was halfway up the old man’s arm, leaving terrible red sucker marks.
‘Is it trying to kill you?’
‘Probably,’ the old man laughed. ‘But I never seen one big enough to do it yet.’
And it was such a terrible sight that Angel ran as fast as her grief allowed back to the shopfront and her mother.
‘The grandfather’s dead!’
‘Mmmmm?’ Half asleep, already mid-morning.
‘They said you did it but I told them you weren’t a truck.’
‘O, o, it’s too much, my baby.’ Her words coming slowly and as thick as treacle from a jar. ‘It’s all – too – much.’ Angel’s mother, even in the purple world of her medication, ran one of her long nails under her lip to clear a smudge of lipstick. Angel hated her mother’s long nails but she could not possibly have said why.
The aunts’ house at the Bay had been her father’s birth house and his domain, whenever he wanted, even after Angel’s birth and up until his death. His wife was never welcome.
Long before experience made Angel hard and wise there were things she couldn’t understand, such as why the people in the aunts’ house hated her simply because her mother had their brother’s baby too soon. And that they said it was all right for him to join a motorcycle club and be murdered by a truck. Angel could not understand any of it but she knew there must be a lot of pages in her imaginary book stuck together by tears that would have mostly been her mother’s. She would have loved the grandfather and in the end he would have loved her. She added more tears and pretended they were the grandfather’s.
Angel’s clearest and worst memory was of her mo
ther screaming while two policemen told her about the accident and how her young husband had left one leg on the road and the other under the truck – her mother crying and howling what was she supposed to do now and fleeing from their room in Red Hills to the Bay for help, comfort and shelter, but instead of being taken in by the aunts and the grandfather they were put into the vacant shopfront in the Bay village and given a whole tin of Bon Ami bath cleaner to paste over the window so no one could see in to the two mattresses on the floor, a basin, a gas ring, a toilet out the back and nothing else. It was very cold in the shop. Angel and her mother seemed to be there for a very long time.
‘It’s like being buried in a very clean bath.’ And Angel’s mother laughed. She could still laugh from time to time, but it was a rare thing in that place.
Hundreds of book pages are stuck together in this shop, let me tell you! Angel whispered to Angel. I’ll start another one. And for that moment all in her young world was darkness and fright. But then, when the sun shone on the harbour and there were swings and a see-saw in the park, a sandy cove close by and rock pools at the end of Brooklyn Street, in Angel’s mind not all of the pages were blank or black or wet – they couldn’t possibly be. There were those precious times when Angel could see, below the storms, the beauty of rainbows and moons. She did not know the meaning of hatred.
When the sun shone outside the shopfront on the big park a few doors away, there were clear images of families, picnic baskets, castles of sand and salt on the small beach below it, another small park on the ocean side with giant fig trees making a purple mess, skies blue as topaz with white cloud balls playing, rotting weed on rocks, tiny pools of starfish, kelp sunbaking on the shore and gulls arguing.
Angel imagined the joy of paddling through wavelets. There were beds for sunbaking bodies with pillows of sand and towels for their cases, the slippery feel of kelp before it dries, the skin of Bay humans – even that – harder than other skin and tough and smelling of putty and bait. Above the cove, hot paths on both sides of the road burned the soles of feet and glinted in an eastern sun hotter than no other.
Brooklyn Street, old as the hills, was a narrow road with weatherboard hovels along the Bay side strung with wet lines and dry bait and a dinghy or two ready to slip down to where the fish danced. At the end of the road, a corner shop was full to its beams with musk sticks, penny chocolates, sherbets and two-in-ones, and a bell above the door. Skinny waifs with bare feet played in the middle of the road to save money and of course there was the aunts’ house at the other end, the dead end on the harbour side, where the tip of Brooklyn Street met the harbour rocks.
The aunts’ house, a weatherboard up-and-down with a balcony and flaking timber, teetered over rocks splashed by the tides. All of it, house and all, wet and sharp-shelled and close enough to the harbour to slip through the wild grass of the yard like a fishing boat and float away.
These were the dry pages in Angel’s imaginary Book of the Bay, made clear with the warmth of the sun. Her hair, always stiff with salt, tasted like the Bay and she later chewed it to remember.
Angel was often hungry and her head hurt. She began to have nightmares and sometimes felt there was no point to anything at all.
Her mother managed to get a job knitting baby clothes for a shop across the road from their shopfront that she named, in one of her calmer, more cheerful moments, Bon Ami. Every now and then her sense of humour managed to fight its way through the cloud of chemicals she consumed. Sometimes she could be quite funny.
Angel thought it was very brave of her mother to make an effort to find employment but one day from the street door she watched her mother crossing the road with a delivery and hesitating as though she was lost and terribly frightened, and when the bus blew its horn she almost fell under it. Angel’s mother had not screamed.
Angel had to confess that she didn’t think that would have been such a terrible thing to happen, things being as they were. But of course it was terrible! Funny in a way, but terrible. Almost squashed under a bus and holding up her parcel of matinee jackets so they would be safe. Angel thought that was very brave of her and in her mind she scribbled the details of her mother’s bravery into her imaginary book. Those pages would be dry forever.
She could see the baby shop lady sitting her shocked mother in a chair. She told Angel they’d keep her on because she was such a good knitter. Angel squatted by the door until her mother came back and tried to open her pill bottle, but she was nervous and knocked it onto the floor. Angel helped to pick up her mother’s pills and put one in her mouth to try but it was purple and bitter and she spat it out. Her mother swallowed more than one.
Their shopfront home was below an escarpment of sandstone upon which the tram terminus sat. On its right it was close enough to the ocean for Angel to hear waves crashing against the cliffs. A narrow lane behind the shop and a boundary of enormous fig trees, parks, beaches, gulls, kiosks and the pub clearly marked the line between the harbour and the ocean, but Angel did not doubt that if the ocean was in a fury nothing would stop it. In the quiet of darkness it sounded as though it was trying to break its way through the high cliffs and drown everything in its path. This sound frightened Angel so much that once she took half of one of her mother’s pills and dreamed only of wavelets gently splashing the shore at the end of Brooklyn Street. Angel slept for a long time and later wondered how her mother could stay awake at all.
Then, there was one day when her mother would not wake and hardly breathed. The man who owned the second-hand shop next door called the doctor who brought a nurse. They seemed to take a very long time to bring Angel’s mother back to life. Angel, having been told to leave the shop and run away and play somewhere – the park – anywhere – and not knowing what to do, squatted under the awning outside the shop door in a rain storm, with hair looking like burnt hay, dark eye rings, a running nose and a very grim view of the world.
She called to the nurse, who was rushing about. ‘What about my mother?’
‘She’ll be all right – just don’t come inside,’ said the nurse. Angel saw the purple vomit on the front of her. ‘Do you understand me, child?’
‘I’m not a child!’ Angel screamed. But she did not cry.
While she waited, the woman from the baby shop crossed the road holding a bright blue umbrella and gave Angel a cheese and pickle sandwich.
‘I thought you might be hungry.’
‘I am, a bit – thanks.’ Angel with expressionless dry eyes had already stuffed half the sandwich into her cheek. If Angel had known what a squirrel who’d found a nut looked like, that was how she looked.
‘You poor child.’
‘Why does everyone call me a child? I’ve never been a child!’
‘I’m sorry. You must be very frightened.’
The woman gave Angel some money. ‘Here’s what’s owed to your mother. Can you cross the road and buy some food by yourself?’
‘Yes, of course I can.’
‘I’ve just been told someone is coming to help your mum. There’s a place up on the north side – they’ll take her. She’s pretty sick but you mustn’t worry, darling. There’s an ambulance coming and you will go with her. It will be a nice place. Everything is packed and ready.’
‘Where is this place?’
‘North of here where there are lots of trees and everything is green.’
‘Will they look after me, too?’
‘They said they would.’
‘I don’t want to leave here.’
‘You can always come back to visit.’
‘Well, I’ll have to won’t I? There’s the aunts’ house.’
‘Your mother told me all about Brooklyn Street. It was your aunts who arranged for you to go to the place on the north shore.’
‘There was a grandfather but he died and the aunts told me not to go there anymore but I’ll make them love me, you’l
l see. I’ll make them.’
‘How old are you, dear?’
‘About a hundred, I think.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ said the baby shop lady and Angel thought it was a weird thing to say under the circumstances but she did not remark. After all, the baby shop lady was only used to babies in bunny rugs, all bootiful goo goos, loved and cuddled and not a worry in their bootiful little heads.
‘Come and see me before you go, Ang—’
‘It’s Bessy now, but I might change my name again. I want a colour. I want something red like anemones or starfish or even blue like your umbrella, maybe. Bluebottles. It’s all I can see in my head. Colours. Colours and their music.’
‘I’ll bring over soup. I’ll bring chicken soup. Would you like that?’
‘I don’t mind. Will it make my mother feel better?’
‘Chicken soup makes everything better.’
But Angel was so unhappy and felt so alone. She knew that her imaginary Book of the Bay must be sopping wet by now, even the rainbows.
The tram conductor
It was always a Sunday in Brooklyn Street when Angel visited the aunts’ house. It was Sunday all over the world when Angel left Missus Potts’s boarding house and the gully for the day and headed east in her beloved trams to the Bay and the aunts’ house. But those Sundays were not restful Sundays – never a church and hymnal Sunday, never, though spire bells made Angel laugh with the pleasure of their sounds. No. Sunday was adventure and trams and east winds and the eastern suburbs where the gardens were more blue than green. Sunday was glimpses of harbour swells between the harbourside houses, bejewelled by the sun-tipped roofs. Sunday was the day Angel became alive. She began to visit the aunts in the old house in Brooklyn Street when she was almost eleven – a quarter to, to be precise.
It was a long way from Missus Potts’s boarding house to the Bay but the trams from the city made up for everything. Angel worked hard for the fares. She ran errands for one of the permanent boarders who was old. Almost every penny she earned went into the rag bag she’d made for Sundays and the Bay.
The Aunts’ House Page 3