The Aunts’ House

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘She’s selling everything. She sold my mirror, Angel. She sold it because she said I didn’t own it because it was in the house before I came here. She took it out of this room and sold it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Elsa, please don’t cry. Was it Clara?’

  ‘No! Jessie, of course, and she sold the old Chinese umbrella stand near the laundry. It was very old. Your grandfather brought it back from the East when he was young.’

  ‘O, Elsa, I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to do. You should have stopped her.’

  ‘How? She says she owns everything.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t own you. Do you want me to make a pot of tea?’

  ‘The mirror was so old. Victorian. I was told it was dated mid-eighteen hundreds. I loved it, Angel. That mirror was the only truly beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.’ Elsa had used an old tea towel on her rough red nose and her tear drops and it was wet enough to be wrung out. ‘Make tea if you want to. Heaven knows what she’ll do next. What’s that you’re holding?’

  ‘It’s a moon hat. I made it. I was going to show you but it doesn’t matter now. You own everything else in your room, don’t you?’

  ‘That chair and the dressing table and the cut glass set on it are mine! I told her. And the wardrobe. I told her everything else in the room and the sitting room was mine and you know what she said? She said she wouldn’t get ten bob for the lot anyway! That dressing table is silky oak and not just on the outside – it was a wedding present. I could have throttled her! I don’t think Jessie is a very nice person. Where’s Clara?’

  ‘Sitting at the bottom of her stairs, miserable. Maybe she got something sold, too – and if you want to know what I think – well, I think that Jessie is an old bitch!’

  ‘Angel!’

  ‘And next time I see her I’ll say it to her face.’

  ‘A child shouldn’t be using words like that.’

  ‘I’m not a child, Aunt Elsa, how many times do I have to say it? I have never been a child. I tried to be a child like the others at school but it didn’t work. And you should hear the words in the boarding house – much worse than bitch – every day, much worse than that.’

  When Elsa’s tears began to dry Angel went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. There was half a loaf in the bread bin and in the ice chest she found cheese slices and, the gods be praised, some mustard pickle. She called up to the bedroom.

  ‘Would you like a sandwich, Elsa?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly eat anything at all.’

  ‘Can I make one for me?’

  ‘Yes. And don’t put milk in my tea – I’ll have it black.’

  When Angel took Elsa’s tea and her sandwich back to the bedroom, hardly a sip or a bite was taken before Clara stood at the hall door shaking with anger.

  ‘What did the girl mean when she said she knew why I don’t like children?’

  ‘I … I don’t know, Clara. Don’t upset me any more today. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘There’s something fishy about her,’ pointing at Angel, ‘saying that. What have you been telling her, Elsa? As if I haven’t had enough of everything!’

  ‘Clara, Angel just asked why you were so unhappy and I told her you’d had a hard life. Now, stop this. I’m worried about the house.’ But Elsa’s cup rattled on its saucer.

  ‘How dare you!’ Clara made it to the chair and sat in a clutched ball, relaxed as steel wool. ‘How dare you, telling things to strangers!’

  Elsa began to cry again and put the wet tea towel to her face.

  ‘Clara, please don’t do this now. Angel is my friend and whether you like it or not she is not a stranger. She is part of the family.’

  ‘She’s not part of mine! Get out of the house, girl!’

  But Angel took the spilt tea from Elsa, faced Clara and stood straight up and down in her way.

  ‘I will not get out, Clara. Elsa told me why you’re so sad because she loves you and wants to help – and I love you, too, even when I know you don’t love me, and now Elsa’s sad because that Jessie woman sold her mirror and the umbrella stand near the laundry, and someone has to stop her from leaving you with nothing at all, and now I’m going to make another pot of tea because you made Elsa spill hers, and Clara, do you still like milk and two sugars?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clara, after an astonished pause, in a daze, her steel wool unravelling slightly at the edges. ‘Two sugars – heaped.’

  In the kitchen again and after lighting the gas under the kettle, Angel noticed four Golden Syrup tins on the bench to the left of the sink. After making tea and handing a cup to Clara she asked why they were there.

  ‘Why are there Golden Syrup tins lined up in the kitchen, Elsa?’

  ‘None of your business!’ said Clara trying to pull her normal self together. ‘What goes on in this house is none of your business.’

  ‘Clara, stop it! I mix the syrup with butter, Angel, and we send it off to London through the Red Cross. We address them to Peggy in London, poor thing. She has nothing at all, she says, and writes how thin and poor she is. She cuts up little scraps of meat with her nail scissors to make it last but we send things through the Red Cross and we hope Peggy gets them but we’re never sure.’

  ‘Can you tell me about Peggy? I’d like to know about her.’

  ‘Peggy’s a half-sister, you know. She’s the oldest of us all. Your grandfather was Peggy’s father but her mother died before Peggy could barely walk. She had lots of visiting mothers afterwards, but she hated the one he married – she was your grandmother. Her name was Ada. Peggy hated her and would say she always felt like an orphan – and as she grew older she was a nursemaid for the rest of the family – including your father. Peggy was very unhappy. She was very unhappy, wasn’t she, Clara? She couldn’t wait to get away from the Bay.’

  There was silence from Clara’s chair, save for a slight rattle of cup and saucer. Elsa continued, pleased, Angel thought, that she had someone to talk about who was possibly worse off than herself.

  ‘Peggy writes books.’

  ‘Is she famous?’ asked Angel.

  ‘They think she’s the cat’s whiskers over there. She’s met an Austrian banker and she says she’s going to marry him, as if he’ll save her, but I don’t think he has two coins to rub together – isn’t that right, Clara?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mind you, I never really knew her but Clara did – didn’t you, Clara? She looked after you.’

  Clara very carefully and quietly placed her cup on the saucer and slowly stood from the chair as though she was on a stage.

  ‘I do not wish to discuss private matters with strangers, even if, as you tell me, they are family members. I have things to do.’ And she walked towards the door leaving a few strands of steel wool on the lace chair protector. ‘But know this! I want you both to know this – no one looked after me. No one even cared about me. Father didn’t care about his own children – he just thought everyone else’s children were the bee’s knees. Make no mistake about it! But I do remember her and I’m glad she escaped – I wish I had escaped and don’t think I won’t one day – I’ll save like Peggy and leave here.’ And she left the room and walked up the squeaking stairs to ‘up’. In a split minute the music for Giselle drifted down to Elsa and Angel.

  ‘That’s betrayal music. Poor Clara.’

  ‘Clara was very pretty when she was young, Angel. She could have had anyone but she had no confidence. It’s been a sad family.’

  ‘I know about sad families, Elsa, but I’m glad – I’m glad we love each other.’

  ‘Well, you know, I think I am, too, Angel.’

  ‘Can I go down and play around the rocks? I’ll try and find something nice for your dinner.’

  ‘If you do, Angel, you’ll miss your tram.’

  ‘Please can I stay
the night? I won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Just this once! I’ll make up a bed for you in the sitting room. It’s too windy for the balcony but just this once! Clara will have one of her fits. Now, go down to the rocks before the sun sets.’

  O, the joy of it. The sheer joy of belonging – the security, faults and all, like every family she’d ever heard of. Fighting her way to a life better than her own but in the end finding just as bad or worse – but it didn’t matter. It was true family and she’d begun to feel acceptance and a sense of belonging – and love? Well, Angel knew by then that love was easily disguised beneath all manner of expressions. She took her moon hat and went out through the kitchen door.

  The rocks, a million years old, were pink and grey from the colours of the setting sun. The rocks she loved as she loved the gully were splashed higher by the tide that curled, curious, around the point of the Bay from Mariana, bringing with it a flotsam of strangeries from distant places. Husks of this and that, broken crates that could have come from China, metal turned green with age, a rainbowed oil slick. Every splash on every rock had something floating on its crest, but most were alien to her. Angel tucked her skirt into her pants and was ready to catch anything that was offered but there was nothing on the surface of Mariana’s current suitable for a meal for Elsa and Clara. Its current had sent nothing suitable for humans to eat.

  I’d have to dive down deep, Angel whispered to Angel. And I don’t mind telling you how scared I’d be – but one day … one day. As the sun began to close its eyes and Mariana splashed higher and chopped the crest of its waves at her feet … One day you’ll let me see what’s underneath. I just want to be your friend, she told the swell around her feet. And she pulled her moon hat down tighter for protection.

  Around the point came floating a tree top of sorts – small branches draped with weed, paper scraps and twigs waving like the man who’d drowned. There was a wind from somewhere that blew in gusts as though it might rain and a harbour bell rang a muffled warning. There was drama developing in the music inside her – it was Wagner who suddenly bellowed along with the late, greying chop of the sea. She tried to imagine that Mariana was communicating with her in its way.

  The waves splashed higher around her legs – their tops were sharp and the mood of the sea was disturbing. Angel wondered if it had something to do with the screams of war on Mariana’s surface. Had more ships on fire gone down with their guns exploding? Was burning oil cremating seamen? Were aircraft diving in flames like sea birds on fire? Were there men hanging from giant kelp branches deep, deep down?

  Angel had read about war on the oceans and imagined how terrible it must be. Was Mariana’s trench collecting its terrible wreckage? Were kelp forests torn away, and currents, peaceful and deep in their canyons, ruined? Would the shock of it all turn the coral white? Angel had wondered about Mariana’s reaction to ocean battles – burning metal and oil and men drowning, calling for their mothers. But whatever it was that late afternoon, there were definitely tempestuous vibrations to the tide at the bottom of Brooklyn Street that perfectly matched Wagner’s music, the wind and the rocks. She wished Mariana could hear her music – it would be a communication of sorts. And Angel had a feeling that the ocean nation, in its present mood, would enjoy the music of Wagner. When she thought about these things she became less afraid of the sea nation and more sorry for the peaceful place not understanding.

  But there were the tree branches and twigs still bobbing in the swell and Angel imagined, in the privacy of her mind, how satisfying it would be if twigs of the branches were the hands of a woman waving to her, and it was the woman’s black cloak caught on them, billowing and bubbling with a long plait of hair trawling behind with a crab clinging, like a fisher woman and all of it just out of reach of the Bay point at the end of Brooklyn Street. And she’d think, like Clara, that she didn’t tell the woman to jump into the harbour and get caught on a tree and she would not do a damn thing about it. But she would wave to the waving woman. Like her aunts, she would wave back, just to be polite.

  ‘For heaven’s sake come in before you’re swept away,’ a voice called through the wind from the balcony. ‘And make no mistake, it’s just this once!’

  ‘Okay, Elsa. Coming.’

  All Angel had to offer when she went back to the aunts’ house were a few pipis and a small yellowtail on its last fins that had suicided in her hand.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Elsa asked. ‘You’re sopping. You look as though you’ve been crying.’

  ‘I’m just a bit wet. The tide was high.’

  ‘Well, there’s tomato soup, but it’s out of a tin, and toast and cheese.’

  ‘Thanks, Elsa. I’m hungry. I hardly caught a thing.’ And she handed the pipis and the yellowtail to Elsa. ‘I came as soon as you called me from the balcony.’

  ‘I wasn’t on the balcony. That must have been Clara. She likes sitting out there if there’s a blow coming.’

  ‘But she said just this once. How did she know to say that?’

  ‘I told her you were staying the night. You’d better get those wet clothes off and dried. I’ll get a towel.’

  ‘She didn’t mind?’

  ‘She didn’t seem to mind too much. She had some tea and went back to her music.’

  ‘I wish I knew what she played. I can usually tell Clara’s mood from the music she plays.’

  ‘I think it was Sleeping Beauty – I could be wrong, the record had cracks all over the place but I’ve got to know some of them. Anyway, whatever it was wasn’t too much of a misery.’

  Elsa’s sitting room couch was small, lumpy and the springs were sharp in places, but to Angel it was a bed of feathers and the old pillow she’d been given a cloud. She was very tired.

  Elsa gave Angel a worn patchwork quilt as a cover, and its squares were made of all the colours she had known and some she had not. Barnaby would love it. She pressed it to her face. It was a wonderful thing to see and all the better for being old and a little worn – it was family. Her family had used it and she wished Miss Varnham and Barnaby Grange were there to see it.

  ‘I have two special friends in the boarding house, Elsa. I wish they could see the quilt. Can I bring them to visit one day?’

  ‘O, heavens, Angel. Strangers? Clara would have a fit! You know what she’s like.’

  ‘They’re nice – Barnaby Grange and Winifred Varnham. You’d like them, Elsa. I’ll ask Clara. My friends are very interesting and very clever. Miss Varnham looks like a duchess.’

  ‘I imagine any friends of yours would be “interesting”,’ said Elsa and she smiled and shared a quick look with the ceiling.

  The quilt had the smell of careful storage – lavender and a whiff of moth balls. The smell reminded Angel of something, but she couldn’t possibly have said what it was.

  ‘Peggy’s mother made that. It’s very old,’ said Elsa. ‘It hasn’t been used for ages.’

  ‘Then it must belong to Peggy?’

  ‘I suppose it does.’

  ‘Well, that Jessie’s not going to sell this!’

  Angel still held it to her face. The smell of lavender was dominant but she wondered, she just wondered how good it would be if every patch had its own smell and its own story to tell. It was a sweetly smelling quilt of comfort and she wrapped herself in it. Angel liked to think that she and Peggy might love each other. She hoped she was safe in London with her dirt-poor Austrian banker.

  Elsa left the room and closed the door. Angel was very sleepy but she remembered one Bay Sunday when she found a stain on Elsa’s spotless tap and Elsa had told her there was a tin of Bon Ami in the cupboard under the sink and when she opened the tin the not-so-sweet smell reminded her of her mother and the shopfront and before her eyelids closed for the night she murmured, ‘You should have waited, Mummy – everything’s all right now.’

  The Duchess of Nullab
ri

  A liquidambar tree, very large, grew to the right of the entrance to Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment. Its roots were strong and invasive and seemed to be hell-bent on lifting that side of the house off its foundations and chucking it into the gully. But so far it had only managed to move Winifred Varnham’s side of the porch so that her window jammed when it felt like it, a trellis to a design of its own making, and made the front door difficult to open unless it was raining.

  Angel loved the liquidambar tree with its explosion of seasonal colours in the way of such trees, but there was one special Saturday when she stood under its boughs, newly dressed in green leaves and buds, and hugged its trunk and crunched the last of the lost leaves of winter under her feet.

  She said to Winifred Varnham, who was with her, ‘Don’t you just love it?’

  Winifred was silent for a moment. She was dressed in one of her long, exotic robes – turquoise with gold braid. Through the bun on her head was a long pencil, sharpened, that Barnaby Grange had given her. She held Angel’s hand.

  ‘My sister and I used to jump into piles of autumn leaves when I was your age. All the reds and yellows and streaks of browns and green. We used to throw the leaves into the sun and my sister said she wished she had a dancing skirt that swirled in all the colours of the tree in autumn. I remember that.’

  ‘Did you live in a palace?’

  ‘O, my goodness, Angel – how wonderful that would have been – a palace!’ Winifred laughed and hugged Angel to her, and right there and then Angel would have given her life to Winifred Varnham. ‘Not a palace, Angel, no, I’m afraid not, but as I grew older and dressed in my robes, always in as many colours as I could find, a few local wags used to walk past me with their fingers holding up their nose tips and call me the Duchess of Nullabri.’

  ‘I would have been one of them. You look like a duchess.’

  ‘Well, then, I wonder if I should tell you that we lived on a small farm in the outback of New South Wales. Would you be very disappointed if I told you that, darling Angel?’