The Aunts’ House

by Elizabeth Stead

  Angel ran to her wearing her usual Sunday clothes of worn and faded cotton, bare feet and her hair, by accident or design, in tangled disarray. Angel on that Sunday could have brought tears to the eyes of a marble bust.

  ‘O, darling girl, there you are. I’m so happy to see you. I’m so glad you came here before the aunts in Brooklyn Street.’

  ‘I wanted to. You’re the nicest person I know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, Angel, but I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘I’ve never had a surprise,’ said Angel with wide eyes and excited smiles and putting Mister Daisyfield and the stairwell and dead old Mister Canning on the back burner. ‘What is it? What is it?’

  ‘Come in, come in. You know I shouldn’t be open for business on Sundays, don’t you? But if I do, it’s my best day. It’s when all the families and their babies come here to the park and the beach.’

  ‘I think my mother told me that.’

  ‘Now, if a customer comes in I will have to leave you sitting for a while but right now I can show you what I have bought for you …’

  ‘How can I pay you? I don’t have enough.’

  ‘Don’t ever think about that. It’s given me so much pleasure. I think because of something you said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told me I’d be the best mother in the world – I will never forget that, Angel.’

  ‘Well, it’s true, I think.’

  The baby shop lady brought a parcel out from behind the counter and gave it to Angel. It was fluffy, as though it was full of feathers, but firm in a corner.

  ‘O, can I open it?’

  ‘Of course – and I hope you will be pleased.’

  Angel pulled the string away from the brown paper as gently as she was able and carefully unfolded the parcel, even though her instincts were to tear and scratch and rip the body of the surprise like something feral.

  Inside were two pairs of Roman sandals, sizes five and five-and-a-half, and a dress of fine cotton with a sash and short cap sleeves. The dress had a white background, illustrated with tiny bunches of flowers in rustic colours. Folded inside the dress was a pale-yellow hair band and a small brush.

  ‘Are you pleased, dear? I’m sure the dress will fit – I’m used to guessing sizes.’

  ‘O! O! It’s all so lovely. I can’t believe it. They won’t recognise me at the gallery.’ Angel had laid the dress on the floor with the hair band above it and below, the sandals in their right places. She walked a circle around it all and held her hands against her cheeks. ‘These will be my special gallery clothes.’

  ‘I’m so happy you like them, dear.’

  ‘I – I can’t tell you now. I can’t talk now. O, the dress is so beautiful – the colours – you’re the kindest person in the whole world.’ And Angel, though flowery pretties were not her taste, in the second living memory of her eleven years, burst into tears and hugged the baby shop lady so hard for her act of kindness she had to plead for release.

  ‘Your aunts will be pleased, I think.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to wear your new clothes for them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘One Sunday – not this Bay Sunday. There’s an art gallery to go to first and O, the colours! And a friend is going with me – Barnaby Grange. He’s going to be my friend forever, anyway I’m going to save all these beautiful things for them.’

  ‘I wish I understood you, Angel.’

  ‘I’ll explain one day. I know I’m hard to understand – I hardly understand myself.’

  Angel ran across the big park and up the hot path to Brooklyn Street holding the brown paper parcel close to her breast, close as one of the baby shop lady’s newborns. She would ask Elsa for some string to tie it up again. She was terrified of losing it – not in a tram, though – somehow, she knew it would be safe in a tram. No. Afraid of dropping it in another part of the world. The Bay? She had a brief vision of her parcel floating past the rocks at the bottom of the aunts’ house bloated and just out of reach like the drowning man. She held the parcel painfully close to her chest.

  The gate to the aunts’ house was not only unlocked but slightly open as though there was a shred of a welcome mat hanging from the top hinge. Angel, even from the driveway, could hear music and knew Clara must be at home but she wasn’t ready for Clara’s pokes and picks and questions and held the parcel even closer. Worse, she thought, would be Jessie, whom Angel had come to think of as the Missus Potts of the Bay. As she trod her way quietly over the gravel to the laundry door she wished the house belonged to Elsa – the one, Angel thought, who really deserved it – but despite the music from ‘up’, Clara was standing in the laundry shadows by the old zinc tubs with hand on her hips.

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s Sunday already!’ Clara said with her special look and knowing. ‘You sound sneaky. What are you sneaking around for?’

  ‘I’m not sneaking.’

  ‘What’s that parcel? What have you stolen?’

  ‘I don’t steal! It’s rubbish. I’m going to put it in the bin out the back. Where’s Elsa?’

  ‘What sort of rubbish?’

  ‘I bought some fish and chips on the way.’

  ‘Fish and chips come in newspaper. Here, let me look.’

  ‘No!’

  And something in Angel’s eyes made Clara briefly turn her own away.

  ‘Where’s Elsa?’

  ‘She’s in her bed with a bad cold so if it’s baked dinners and tomatoes you’ve come for, you can just get the next tram back.’

  ‘Can’t I stay for a while, Aunt Clara? I’ll make Elsa tea and look after her.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s what I’m doing, you wretched girl? As if I haven’t got enough to do and I’m here in the laundry scrubbing and no one making me tea.’

  ‘What is the music today, Clara?’

  ‘Chopin, and don’t think you’re coming upstairs.’

  ‘Aunt Clara, why are you always so unhappy?’

  And the woman turned abruptly, dripping from the elbows down and thumped into the house and up the stairs and Angel, shaking with relief, went to Elsa’s room.

  Aunt Elsa was a red-nosed head with a wheeze and a cough just visible above a sheet and a blanket in a darkened room. Beside her was a pile of toilet roll paper, rags and a steaming bowl of water and menthol. Aunt Elsa’s small head of greying hair, cut short as a man’s, sat atop her small frame. Angel thought she looked like a doll in the bed. Elsa’s room was closer to Brooklyn Street than the waterfront. It was always darker than the others – even the floorboards were painted black but Angel did not know why.

  ‘Aunt Elsa, it’s me. I’m sorry you’re sick.’

  ‘Angel? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like some tea or maybe a hot drink?’

  ‘Tea,’ coughed Elsa.

  ‘I’ll get it now. Do you have any string?’

  ‘What? What for?’

  ‘I just need some string. Would you like something to eat?’

  ‘No. Third drawer down on the right—’ And she coughed all over again.

  ‘Tea in a minute, Elsa.’

  The ball of string was exactly in its place and scissors were next to it. Nothing less would Angel have expected from Aunt Elsa. She quickly put the kettle on the stove then re-wrapped her parcel and with triple the length of string tied the parcel tightly around her waist. While the tea brewed in its pot, Angel searched for something to eat. There was bread, of course, and a scrap of butter and she found a sliced tomato. The sandwich eased the famished growl in her belly even though most of the tomato juice ran down her chin into a puddle between her small breasts. She took the tea to Elsa.

  ‘I made some bread and butter, Aunt Elsa, in case you got hungry but I have to g
o now.’

  ‘Why?’ sneezed the doll.

  ‘It’s late again and I have to go. Will you be all right?’

  ‘O, Angel,’ croaked poor Elsa. ‘Where is Clara?’

  ‘Upstairs. She’s done the washing.’

  ‘Tell her I need her. What’s that tied to your stomach?’

  ‘Nothing – just some old rubbish.’

  ‘That’s what she tells us. Something fallen off the back of a truck more like it,’ said Clara, suddenly at the door. ‘And she’s been sneaking around in the kitchen. There’s bread missing and half a tomato and crumbs all over the place—’

  ‘I made tea and bread and butter for Elsa and I made a sandwich. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘Well, we do! Every penny could be the last in this place.’

  ‘O, for goodness sakes! I won’t come close, Aunt Elsa. I don’t want to catch it.’

  ‘She’s not to be trusted!’

  ‘She’s only a child, Clara,’ Elsa wheezed through mucus and little breath.

  And before anything else could be said Angel ran to the tram stop and waited for the safety of the next one.

  ‘Ho, ho,’ said the driver. ‘What have we got there, tied around so tight?’

  ‘Something beautiful. You’ll see it one day.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you can breathe. You’re early today. Did you see your aunts?’

  ‘Yes, but one is sick in bed and they still think I’m not right in the head.’

  Angel was suddenly very tired and the tram driver, glancing at the waif with the parcel and the string and red stains with pips all over the place, smiled at her.

  ‘You’re okay, love.’

  And they sat there in silence and waited for the stragglers while Angel gazed from the window at the ocean nation she had called Mariana and watched intently in case she missed the white horses racing over its swell on the horizon.

  Sea pictures #2

  It was not a Sunday. Skipping school was never a Sunday. What a waste of time truancy on a Sunday would be.

  ‘Mister Daisyfield’s been down asking about you,’ Missus Potts said in a tone that suggested Angel was under police surveillance. ‘He wants to know what you’re up to when you skip school.’

  ‘None of his business – ask him what he’s up to when he’s at school – but if he wants to know, I leave school to learn things.’

  ‘What sort of an answer is that? School’s for learning. He gave me a form to fill out but I didn’t have my readers on. I don’t want to even think about what you can learn out of school.’

  ‘School’s for words and how to write them and I know words enough to get books from the library. I’m glad about that, if they want to know. I know all the homework maps of New South Wales: where the bits of tin foil go for mines and the cotton wool for sheep, but what’s the use of that? What’s the good of learning about English kings and queens breeding with all the other royals all over the place? I don’t need to know that, Missus Potts – there’re more important things.’

  ‘You watch your tongue, my girl. I told Mister Daisyfield I had no control over you and never wanted to. I told him I’d tell you what he said and that’s all, and I told him I do not want truancy knocking at the boarding house door giving this fine establishment a bad name so you’d better get back to school where you belong.’

  ‘I’m there most days, Missus Potts. I’m there for the six times table and the Norman conquest of England and the Sun King of France and Sir Francis Drake and his bowls and the whole Spanish thing but there’s nothing about colours and music and the numbers of colours and the colours of numbers or the number of stars and planets in the sky and how old Australia is and why Australia is older than God took to make the world or how long a cicada is under the ground before it sings. Can someone tell me that?’

  ‘My Godfather! You’re eleven, my girl, and you learn what they teach because they know what they’re doing and I’m not paying any fines for you – I’m not your mother!’

  ‘You could never be my mother! Why don’t you get rid of me and send me down to the aunts’ house then?’

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t wanted to a hundred times … And what was that parcel you ran to your room with? You think I can’t see sneaky parcels?’

  ‘Something so beautiful, Missus Potts, you wouldn’t understand in a million years.’

  ‘Did you steal it?’

  ‘No! I don’t have to steal. Did Mister Daisyfield say he missed me a lot?’ And Angel grinned her little teeth.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Remember I told you what old Mister Canning did? Well, Mister Daisyfield was the first – you didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘Any more lies, Angel Martin, I’ll have to get advice!’

  ‘I’m not lying, Missus Potts, I’m not. Didn’t anything like that ever happen to you when you were at school?’

  ‘No! Indeed it did not, Angel Martin. Now, get into the kitchen where you belong. You’re giving me a headache!’ And Missus Potts waddled at speed from the room, holding a towel to her eyes and, unknown to Angel, briefly remembered an afternoon in late autumn when she was in fourth class, catching the eye of a teacher, Miss Spooner, a middle-aged teacher of third class, whose party trick it was to expose and scratch her enormous breasts in front of a group of children who couldn’t remember such things since they were born and not even then.

  ‘I don’t have to go to school today. Do you want to come with me to the gallery?’ And Barnaby Grange nodded and smiled and held up ten fingers to indicate when and Angel held up emphatically ten of her own in agreement. Missus Potts was currently stirring a boiling copper of sheets in the laundry and, like everything else in the boarding house, was giving the sheets no more than ‘a bit of a rinse off’ and would be finished rinsing and hanging in no time at all. They needed to make their escape before then. For Angel to be late for escape to the city would be, to say the least, a bad move, but in exactly ten minutes Barnaby emerged from his room looking very dapper in tweed, shirt, tie and his best trousers.

  ‘Don’t let Missus Potts see you or she’ll tell Daisyfield – not that that really matters.’

  ‘Ssshhh,’ Barnaby signalled. ‘Back door.’ In words.

  Angel, in her new dress with brushed hair, led the way.

  It was clear that the city made Barnaby Grange nervous. Angel walked beside him and noticed that he glanced quickly from one place to another like an animal lost and in unfamiliar territory and she thought, Poor thing – he’s afraid. She had never seen him outside the boarding house for any length of time except for during a morning walk, mumbling numbers and jotting in a notepad. She took his hand and led him.

  ‘We’ll have to take a bus to the gallery,’ she said, just by the way so as not to alarm him. ‘Pity there’s not a tram. Do you like trams?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ In words.

  ‘Well, it’s a bus.’ Angel paid the fares from her rag bag. In order to sit together they had to go right up to the back. Barnaby Grange sat straight and still like something sculptured.

  Angel continued to hold his hand, which was moist and tense with anxiety, until they reached the gallery stop. Once inside the gallery she could feel his hand loosen and she gradually let it go.

  When they were inside the palace of colour the guard came to her almost unbelieving. ‘Well, I never … Well, young lady. Is there something you’d especially like to see? Can I help you in some way?’

  The guard who’d told Angel she couldn’t come back to the gallery without shoes appeared to be genuinely delighted by her transformation. He tipped his cap.

  ‘We’ll let you know,’ she said with a grin and her nose in the air like visiting royalty. ‘This is Mister Barnaby Grange. He’s from England and he wants to make sure all your colour numbers are right.’

&n
bsp; Not even trying to understand, the guard said, ‘How do you do’ and went back to his post.

  When that happened, it was not a Sunday. Barnaby Grange said it was number three.

  ‘Beautiful.’ In a word. ‘Constable,’ he said, pointing. ‘Father has Constable.’ In words. ‘Hundreds of numbers in the colours of Constable – I did try to explain to Father …’ In words. ‘But Father did not like my numbers.’ Words, the most in a very long time.

  ‘Never mind that now, we’ll look all over the place …’ And Angel walked like a princess in her new dress and a dancer en pointe in her sandals but the real truth was the size five sandals gave her blisters.

  Rounding a corner they came to a group of art students, at least Angel assumed that was what they were, being lectured in front of a Renoir by a gallery expert who was telling them what it all meant and what was in Renoir’s mind at the time. Angel stopped behind the group and wished she understood what the expert meant, who, in her opinion, was talking a lot of rubbish. For one thing, she didn’t look old enough to know what was in Renoir’s mind at that time. Angel had taken Barnaby’s hand again for a moment but disengaged herself and held her fingers to her lips. Inside her whole body the music and its colours had questions, unsure what to play, unsure what colour to wear in that place.

  ‘But how do you know what was in his mind?’ Angel interrupted and heads with their mouths open turned to see a child not right in the head. ‘How can anyone know what’s in a person’s mind?’

  ‘Who are you? Hush up!’ said the expert. ‘I’ll call security.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ But Angel moved to Barnaby and took his hand.

  ‘You have to be quiet here. This is a private class,’ the expert said in a more sympathetic tone.

  ‘Sorry.’ Angel held her tongue as long as she could. ‘But it’s a vase of flowers, for goodness sake! It’s a beautiful vase of flowers and he wanted to paint it – isn’t that enough? That’d be what was in his mind.’ Debussy was playing in her head then and she knew Debussy was never wrong. A smattering of students smiled and applauded Angel’s simple interpretation of beauty.