‘He’s wandered off somewhere, Miss Varnham. He’ll be all right.’
‘I hope so. He is a little strange.’
‘Where on earth have you lot been? No disrespect to you, Miss Varnham, but in those clothes I thought you might have tripped.’
‘It wasn’t a fire, Missus Potts. It was a man having a smoke under a tree,’ said Angel. ‘Has Mister Grange come back?’
‘He’s in his room. What man?’
‘A tramp, Missus Potts. He wanted some bread and dripping.’ Angel glanced at Winifred Varnham, whose finger tapped lips that were bowed in a ssshhh position.
‘I’ll give him bread and dripping! No-gooders wandering around, never done a day’s work and eating other people’s rations! I’d give him bread and dripping and a clip over the ear with it. Haven’t seen a tramp for a while because I never give them anything. Crooks, most of them, creeping around waiting for the lights to go out. They come up from the city, most. Hope you ticked him off for smoking in the gully in the middle of summer. What yarn did this one spin? I hope you didn’t give him anything. What sob story did this one tell you?’
‘He mentioned Brazil,’ Winifred’s ssshhh’d lips couldn’t stand it another minute. The words exploded out of control. ‘Said his name was Harry Potts.’ Angel thought it was unusual for her duchess to let the cat out of the bag like that. All of a sudden. Unexpected.
‘But he’s been in Queensland for a long time,’ said Angel. ‘Can I take him something to eat, Missus Potts?’
There was no reply for Missus Potts, who’d turned very pale around the gills, had plonked herself heavily, legs all over the place, onto the nearest chair, and with a terrible groan sat with her apron pulled up over her head.
A Mariana picnic
It was Sunday, the Bay and trams.
‘Thank goodness for Sundays, Angel. I imagine that’s what you’re thinking? Are you going to the aunts’ house?’ Winifred Varnham had dressed herself in a gown the colour of Jersey cream and a long scarf of pale yellow with poppies all over it. The gown and the scarf did not quite touch the floor. If it hadn’t been for the poppy-red chopstick through her bun, she would have looked as though she might have been about to conduct a wedding ceremony in a chapel.
‘You look beautiful, Miss Varnham,’ said Angel.
‘And so do you, dearest girl. Aren’t you proud to be wearing a blouse and skirt you made all by yourself from collar to hem? We must learn to make a new bag to go with everything.’ The blouse and skirt were pale green cotton, V neckline with tiny pearl buttons.
‘You taught me how to sew, Miss Varnham, and I love my clothes and I’m grateful, but—’
‘What?’
‘Well, see, it’s Sunday trams and I like my old rag bag. It’s for tram fares and things and they know it’s me. The drivers won’t know who I am if I have a new bag and proper clothes. I like being ordinary – I want to be me for the trams.’ In her head she felt the faintest click. It didn’t last.
‘I’m taking a maidenhair fern for my aunts to grow but I don’t know if it will like the salt wind and I don’t want anything else new, thanks.’
‘Well, darling, never mind. I haven’t the slightest idea how to make bags anyway so just as well. Would you mind terribly if I came with you, Angel? There’s a rumour that huge naval ships will be coming out of the Heads and onto Mariana. I would love to watch them. I heard it on the radio.’
‘I’d love it! Can we ask Mister Grange if he’d like to come too?’
‘I expect he’d be hurt if we didn’t. You like Barnaby very much, don’t you?’
‘I love you both. We’re like a family.’
‘Duchess Colour, Miss Music and Mister Numbers. The great arts,’ said Winifred. ‘I suppose we are a sort of family.’
‘How is your sister today?’
‘She says everything twice and her eyelid keeps dropping. The sanitarium thinks she should stay a little longer.’
‘Good!’
When they boarded the tram in George Street the driver, who had known Angel for a very long time, adjusted his cap in salute, ran his fingers over the lever and ding ding dinged without looking – like a blind man knowing exactly where he was going. The tram was crowded even for a Sunday and Angel was disappointed that her usual seats had been taken. Everything seemed different. The three friends had to sit up the back with every head turned towards them but this time the eyes were for the Duchess of Nullabri. Winifred Varnham in her gown and a scarf, which looked as though they had something to do with prayers, led the way. She left a trail of whispers all the way up the aisle. She knew it and held her head up and smiled like an old bride gliding between packed pews. Barnaby Grange, pale as sand, bowed his head and held his sketchbook painfully close to his chest.
‘Ssshhh and don’t point, it’s rude,’ a passenger whispered.
‘She could be a druid in that get up.’
‘What about him?’
‘Dry as a parson’s nose – At least their kid looks normal.’
‘Ssshhh.’
Everything was different. Angel noticed that as she grew older everything had become different and she was not sure if that was what she wanted.
The driver said to her, ‘You look very nice, today – a proper young lady, like something out of a window.’
‘I’m just the same! I don’t care if you want to laugh at me like you always did.’ She held the old drawstring bag of rags to her chest to remind him.
‘I’m leaving the job next month,’ said the driver. ‘Retiring.’
‘I don’t want you to. You’re Sundays.’
‘Nothing stays the same, Angel. You’re growing up. I’m growing old. Nothing stays the same.’ And Angel was not sure if the mist in the tram driver’s eyes was making her own eyes misty.
‘Ask him if he can let us off near the lighthouse,’ Winifred Varnham called to her. ‘The view will be good from there.’
‘Me, too – me, too …’ From the hoi polloi. All over the tram they were wanting to see the Navy parading on Mariana, Winifred imagined.
When the old tram dinged and slid along its familiar rails, a boy cried ‘Hooray!’ and while shillings and pennies were fished out of purses and offered to the conductor, someone in the Sunday tram congregation began to sing hymn number one – Row row row your boat gently down the stream … and others joined in. In the end, Angel felt lighter and didn’t mind being something nice out of a window and she sang along with the rest of the Sunday worshippers with the driver humming under his cap and the conductor who didn’t know the words and for a short time the dramatic symphony that had begun to pound inside her was silent. It was a happy Sunday chapel that slid its way towards the sandstone cliffs, the end of the line, the Bay and the great sea nation, Mariana.
Mariana, under the blue, white-gulled sky was perfectly well-mannered, the wind just right for sleek grey vessels with bows sharp as knife points, with the sun glinting on gun barrels and men in white. She shivered with anticipation and in celebration of what might be coming. Excited fish would dance on their tails.
Further out, towards Mariana’s horizon, were ocean swells in a stronger wind, high and curling and tickling the backs of Mariana’s white horses, their foaming heads in the air like the sea paintings in the gallery.
‘What a glorious sight,’ said Winifred Varnham, her long scarf flying behind her. ‘If we hurry we’ll get that seat near the fence.’
‘I like the grass,’ said Barnaby in words. ‘Mother liked grass for regattas.’ And he tucked his sketchpad under his arm and simply watched a sea nation as big as Asia.
‘I wish I had a camera,’ said Angel. ‘And I wish I could paint. I don’t think I’d be afraid to go on a Navy ship – they look so in charge, but respectful – I don’t think I would be so scared of Mariana.’
‘I can’t imagine you being s
cared of anything, darling.’ Winifred had been too late for the seat and chose a decent patch of grass big enough for three.
‘We were going to sit there!’ a tram woman with two big boys and a small man shouted and when Winifred said they had a perfectly good patch of grass where they were, the woman held up a shoe with a messy sole.
‘A dog’s been!’
‘Well,’ said Winifred, ‘we won’t be here for very long and when we go you can have this patch.’ It was very crowded near the lighthouse, which looked out over Mariana from the highest point of the sandstone cliffs. ‘Quite soon we’re off to visit the aunts.’
There were no ships after all but still the view of Mariana was a wondrous thing and the picnicking crowds seemed not to be in the least disappointed. ‘You simply cannot rely on information about the movement of shipping anymore. Let’s be off to see the aunts.’
‘O!’ Angel, suddenly disturbed and anxious, felt her brain click. ‘I’d have to warn them. There isn’t time today. I think Elsa might not mind but I don’t think Aunt Clara will like that, Miss Varnham.’ Angel was very nervous. ‘Wouldn’t you like to stay here and watch Mariana while I go to the aunts’ house?’
‘Certainly not. It’s about time we met your aunts – don’t you agree, Barnaby?’
‘Yes.’ In words. ‘Mother would have been afraid for the Navy.’
‘I’ll buy something nice for your aunts, Angel. What do you think they’d like?’
‘Everything’s closed. It’s Sunday.’
‘I know there’s a cafe down there, near the baths. It’s bound to be open. You seem very anxious, darling.’
‘Elsa and Clara are not used to people all of a sudden, that’s all. And I already have something for them. There’s the maidenhair fern, remember?’
But like the gully wildflowers on another occasion the fern was fighting death from thirst and travel. There was a time when Angel couldn’t wait for the aunts to meet her new friends but now she was not so sure. She felt strange, different, things were different – like the tram crowds and the singing, and nobody telling her she was not right in the head, and the driver leaving to retire to be ordinary, and Angel not wanting to be very nice like something out of a window in her green top. She imagined each disturbing change a crumbling slab of sandstone cliff falling, big as the front of a building, into Mariana.
‘If you have to buy something they like tomatoes and onions and bread, then!’ In a fit she tore a handful of damp grass out by its roots and rubbed the dirt into her face and arms and crumbs of earth fell onto her new clothes.
‘What on earth did you do that for, Angel? Why on earth would you do such a thing?’
‘I want to be me again,’ said Angel, chewing a strand of salty hair. A requiem crammed inside her head, orchestra, choir and all, and played loud enough for the whole dying world to hear.
‘Angel, you’re acting very strangely. That was not a normal thing to do.’
‘Good! I’ve got a headache, that’s all.’ Click.
‘You’ve been through a lot, darling. Memories have a habit of popping out when you don’t want them to.’
‘If it’s memories, they don’t pop out, they stay in. That’s the trouble. There’s no more room in my head. My brain never sleeps, Miss Varnham. Never!’
‘I think we’d better go. Barnaby – close your sketchbook. We’ll have a cup of tea – and, Angel, there will be a tap somewhere for you to wash yourself.’
‘I don’t want to wash myself. I’ll stay like this. It’s too hard to be normal – I don’t want to be ordinary.’
‘O, Angel.’
‘You should know that, Miss Varnham.’
‘O, Angel,’ Winifred said, thinking of her mother – and herself. A fresh wind made her long scarf flap and when it strengthened the poppies on it could have flown to China. When Winifred Varnham stood, her gown was stained by the grass but nobody said.
The aunts’ house
The three visitors strolled to the park and the few small shops around its edges. It was quite a long walk from the lighthouse, down a very steep hill to the main road. Barnaby trailed along behind, head down and counting cracks.
‘I think I’ll take my shoes off, Angel. My feet hurt.’
‘They’ll burn on the path.’
‘Best not, then. You used to live near here, Angel? When you were tiny? I’m sure you told me that – or it could have been someone else who told me.’
‘It might have been Missus Potts.’ Angel hoped she had not gone into too much detail. ‘Anyway, where we lived has all gone now – pulled down to make way for flats so I can’t show you. Our house was very old and it was a beautiful house – you would have loved it. There was a huge front window and roses,’ Angel said without a flicker of an eyelid – even though at that moment they stood directly outside what used to be a shopfront named Bon Ami and old memories, blurred and far away, forced themselves into her head. Angel remembered her pretending book, the Book of the Bay, with its leaves all stuck together from crying. She was relieved to see the door of the baby shop closed with Back in an hour hanging from the doorknob. She would have been devastated if her friends met the lady and the truth was revealed. Angel still wore the sandals she’d been given and had made no effort to reimburse the baby shop lady.
‘O, look, Angel,’ said Winifred, her nose pressed to the window like a child. ‘Look at all these lovely baby clothes. And a carousel – look, a carousel to wind up and a little hot air balloon—’
‘Yes, lovely.’ Angel was anxious to move away.
‘I’ll take my shoes off in the park, Angel. That should be safe enough.’
‘Much better on the grass, Miss Varnham. Just two more shops and ’round the corner.’
‘I know where the park is, Angel.’
‘I’m sorry I yelled up at the lighthouse.’
‘It’s all right. Good to let off steam. Come along, Barnaby, step up. I need a cup of tea.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ said Barnaby in a fog of counting, calculating and measuring, and not being entirely sure where he was.
‘O, for goodness sake, Barnaby, do look up at the world – you’re missing everything.’ And Winifred Varnham led them directly to a cafe called ‘The Baths Kiosk’, close to the beach and the eighteen-footer club. They sat outside at a picnic table and on ancient benches under an old and tattered canvas umbrella.
A girl carrying a notepad and a number on a stick, as if she needed it, took their order.
Winifred Varnham asked for ‘Tea, please. Milk and sugar and sandwiches and cupcakes if you have any.’
‘In a tick,’ said the girl. ‘And I reckon you could use a wet towel, poor thing.’ To Angel. ‘Did you have a fall?’
‘No.’
‘Yes! Thank you, a towel would be helpful. You’re very kind – and I have another favour to ask.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Can you sell me three tomatoes? I’ll pay anything you ask.’
‘This isn’t a green grocer.’
‘And an onion and some bread?’
‘I don’t know – I’ll have to ask Missus Mitchell.’
‘Then, do please ask her. They are for very special friends.’
‘I’ll ask. Can’t promise. Three teas, sandwiches and cakes. In a tick.’ And she left having written nothing at all on her pad that had never had anything written on it and left the number with gravy stains like Missus Potts’s table sheet on its stick, upside down.
‘I wish you hadn’t,’ said Angel.
‘I can’t meet your aunts empty-handed, darling, I would feel uncomfortable.’
And Angel was thinking, while she wiped herself with the warm, wet towel that was provided in a tick, just before everything else arrived in a tick and the wrong number was removed, I don’t want you to buy my aunts things I can’t. I give them lit
tle things. The aunts’ house is mine! But she was able, after a moment, to recognise kindness and managed to keep her mouth shut.
The Baths Kiosk girl served tea, sandwiches and cake and a paper bag containing two wrinkled tomatoes, a brown onion with green sprouting out the top, and half a loaf of yesterday’s bread.
‘Missus Mitchell said you’re welcome to the produce as a favour but it’ll cost, being Sunday.’ And she gave Winifred a Sunday bill for everything, which raised the Duchess of Nullabri’s eyebrows.
‘Thank Missus Mitchell for me, dear girl, and tell her we think she is a very good business woman – hats off!’ Winifred laughed and for that moment, still thinking she was his mother, Barnaby laughed too and Angel grinned and the waitress said, knowing, ‘Well, she’s got to make a living.’
Brooklyn Street was used to strangers, especially on Sundays, and on that Sunday there were a few strolling along the hot, white path. The corner shop was open for the afternoon and old, quaint fishermen’s cottages draped with nets and drying kelp clung to one side of Brooklyn Street. On the other side was the harbour and, at the top, a small park not far from the aunts’ house that guarded the entrance to Mariana and where picnic baskets had a choice of rocks or grass and a view of moored, naked yachts not doing anything at all, as ordered.
Sunday anglers in good clothes with proper tackle were feeding fish with bait on fancy hooks until the fish were full as googs and sank. Harbour swells splashed rocks until everything got wet and on that clear, breezy day, Brooklyn Street was a nice place to be.
‘Which is your aunts’ house, Angel?’
‘The old wooden one at the top – with the stone wall.’ Angel hoped the gate would be locked. She hoped they had gone out and she nervously walked with the others until they were outside the house.
‘I can hear music,’ Winifred said. ‘How lovely.’
‘That’s Aunt Clara’s music. She lives upstairs. She plays ballet music and she hates to be disturbed.’
The Aunts’ House Page 14