Angel’s duchess held her hand as they strolled down to the gully. Angel had begun to think of her as her protector. A mother, almost.
‘You remind me of Joan of Arc. When I’m rich, I’ll buy you a horse.’
‘No school today?’ Winifred had laughed.
‘I’m sick today.’
‘No, darling, you’re not sick. Elsa told me what happened and she told me she explained it all to you. What a nice woman she is.’
‘I didn’t know what was happening to me.’
‘Had you not heard of the dreaded “monthlies”? Too young, I expect. In my memory, I was a little older but I thought I was bleeding to death because Father disapproved of me. But it can happen at an early age. It’s not uncommon. You are well and beautifully developed, Angel.’
‘There was one girl in my class at school. I remember. Poor Valerie – she was terrified. I sat with her at lunchtime but she smelled like dead fish – I had to move.’
‘So, now you are a woman. Don’t let a man know this.’
‘Have you ever loved a man, Miss Varnham? Did you ever get married?’
‘No, Angel. I have never been interested in men. I have had other interests. I will explain it all to you one day.’
They walked along the creek shore, drank a little of its pure water and sat for a moment on moss cushions.
‘This reminds me of Swan Lake except the swans are yabbies,’ said Angel. ‘I think Aunt Clara would like it.’
‘What a strange house it is at the Bay,’ said Winifred, as though she and the others were not already living in a strange house. ‘I found that Jessie woman very difficult to understand.’
‘The trouble is, Jessie owns the house. My grandfather left everything to her. My aunts have been in that house almost all of their lives and Jessie charges rent they can’t afford and expects them to mend things and do the garden but they can’t and she wants to sell it.’
‘And she, an academic. She should know better. Jessie gives the impression she thinks she’s above us all, Angel – your aunts especially. But it is my opinion that academics know little of the real world beyond the stone walls of their universities. Jessies have lessons to be learned, Angel, and it’s up to us to teach them, what say you?’
‘O, yes, Miss Varnham. You could do it.’
The two friends strolled hand-in-hand through the lush gully and came to a tramp leaning against the trunk of a blue gum tree.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Mister Potts?’
‘Well, Miss Varnham, where else would I be, under the present circumstances, in the predicament I be finding myself? Not a halfpenny to scratch my bum with—’
‘Mister Potts! You are no longer homeless, or hungry. You’re back in the bosom of your family – your wife – and you have a roof over your head.’
‘This be better. Tree and a sky and a gully …’
‘Why?’ asked Angel, although she was inclined to agree.
‘Well, if you be wanting to know the truth, I like being a tramp – I prefer it. Shocked are you? No work to do, to speak of. I like the hand out for tucker, and let me tell you a starving tramp at the back door gets more than he can eat if there’s a tear in his eye! And I can cry poor with the best of them. I be sleeping out if I want to – a bed if I need one. Beds all over the place if something comes up of a sudden, wink wink. And now, here I be and there’s you-know-who, not changed a bit – same nag, same crook food, same stains, same pinny over that stomach of hers but when I be turning up stony broke there’s a way ’round it. I’m handy with the saw and hammer and she throws me a bob or two but later – later, when the light’s out and the moon comes through leaves at the window, I be closing my eyes and she could be a girl from a dance hall and in her bed she tickles my feet and rubs my belly like the kid she never had and I’m back up there again.’
‘I don’t think we want to know the details. You, Harry, have abandoned your responsibilities as a householder and a breadwinner. How on earth did you think Missus Potts was going to manage when you left her?’
‘I didn’t fret. I knew she be okay. The toughest old bird on the run, she be. She’s the Amazon in the stories she be telling – not me. I be the barnacle on the rock of her and that’s that. I like it that way and I think she likes it too – coddling she calls it. She likes to coddle.’
‘How very sad,’ said Winifred.
‘Don’t you have other relatives, Mister Potts?’ asked Angel.
‘Not that I be knowing about.’
‘I do wish you’d stop speaking like a lost pirate, Mister Potts.’
‘England. Way back. Always be talking like this. Can’t help it.’
‘You must have a leftover relative somewhere,’ said Angel. ‘I’ve got an uncle. He’s coming up from Melbourne to meet me. So that will be three – two aunts and an uncle.’
‘You want to look out for uncles, girlie. Has he got any money?’
‘I won’t know until I meet him. His name is George and he’s my mother’s brother and I’ll meet him next Sunday at the aunts’ house. Miss Varnham and Mister Grange are coming too.’
‘Well then, girlie, that will be something. A bit nervous, are you?’
‘Not really – he’ll be mine – he’s family!’
‘And I’ll be with her every step of the way,’ said Winifred. ‘And by the way, we were very sad to see the liquidambar tree cut down, Mister Potts, and so low. It was a beautiful tree.’
‘Two axes and a saw. She’s selling the wood for fires. I be leaving the stump nice and even for you to sit on and—’
‘You do realise that it will sprout again in spring, Mister Potts, if the stump is left? But it was kind of you to make it flat – then you’ll have to do it all over again.’
‘A tree will do what a tree needs to do, Miss Varnham. I’ll not be getting in the way of the tree world.’
‘You’ll just have to come back again,’ said Angel. ‘And again and again, Mister Potts, for the liquidambar – when it grows again. That was a good idea. Is that what you planned?’
‘You’ve got your head screwed on, girlie. I reckon that uncle of yours is going to have to look out for you.’
Uncle George
How many Sundays had there been? Angel wondered about that. She knew that if she could work out the months of Sundays and sit down with Barnaby Grange, he would have the answer in a flash. Sundays were literally sunny days for Angel – even the ones that rained and were cold or the ones when the sky over Mariana was heavy and black with storm clouds that coloured the water a very dark green. Angel considered that if the clocks of the world were only set to Sundays, the world would be a better place. How she would always love the Sunday trams and their drivers, who were her friends. How she never tired of the Sunday change in the air when the trams snaked along their rails to the east of Sydney and the Bay and the ocean and the breeze that brought a little salt with it and the breath of it excited her because it was Sunday and trams and Mariana and the aunts’ house.
Summer Sundays were popular with visitors dying to gaze at the ocean from the high cliffs near the tram stop, ready with picnic baskets for lunch by the lighthouse or below it in the park where there were swings and see-saws and squadrons of gulls with a taste for anything, but preferring chips, and Sunday visitors sleepy after lunch, ready to lie sunburnt and skin-peeled on the drying kelped and grubby sand of the Bay. Children with their clothes tucked into their bloomers splashed, paddling along the shallows, frightening their mothers with corpses of bluebottles. On Summer Sundays the trams were packed like tins of fish, with everyone sitting up straight and with everything they needed on their laps.
Angel sat with Winifred. The Duchess of Nullabri wore flowing red. It was the colour of power, she explained, in case that academic was in the house. Angel wore a dress she’d had for ages, the pale yellow one with flower
s that looked like spring on a rag. Despite Miss Varnham’s disapproval she’d put on a swipe of lipstick and had rubbed some of it onto her cheeks for rouge, because, as she explained, the tram driver was new and she needed him to like her and she needed Uncle George to see she was older and experienced. Winifred had thought it best not to argue. Barnaby had found a seat next to a woman with a baby who cried all the way, simply because it felt like it, and her older boy who travelled with his fingers in his ears and a dripping nose. Angel glanced at Barnaby from time to time and remarked to Winifred that he had not once raised his eyes from his sketchbook.
‘I don’t think we’ll have time to get off at the lighthouse stop, Miss Varnham. I don’t want to be late. I think Elsa’s making lunch.’
‘Don’t be nervous, darling. Barnaby and I will be with you all the time. And Elsa will like the basket of produce I bought for her this time.’
‘She’ll love it – but I don’t know about the rabbits … Their heads are off and there’s blood.’
‘Angel, I tried, but they kept staring over the edge of the basket and I didn’t know what else to do. Harry Potts caught them for me.’
‘It’s all very nice of you, Miss Varnham. All of it. I think you’re a beautiful lady.’
‘Come along, Barnaby,’ Winifred called when the tram stopped at the wooden cross.
‘Coming.’ In a word. But he revealed later, briefly as was his way, that he’d had an interesting time calculating the measurements of the backs of heads in the tram.
At the fence by the cliff top they paid their respects to Mariana. On her was a very large naval vessel, cutting through the water cool as a skater on ice.
‘Isn’t it beautiful, Miss Varnham? That ship’s not a bit scared. So in charge. See the bow waves curling? Mariana doesn’t mind that ship – and I wouldn’t mind being on it.’
‘O, darling. You are going to be such a beauty. I suspect there’ll be yachts and boats and ships of all kinds lining up for the touch of your feet.’
‘Ha! Lovely to think that might happen. What do you think, Barnaby?’
Silence.
‘O, never mind. Dreams are dreams.’
Mariana was hard to leave on that summer day, with her deep sea all glassy as far as the horizon, and white seahorses, all thrashing manes and tails and bored with a sea smooth as a rink, raged at the cliff’s bottom and climbed, one at a time, all seven of them, onto the rocks where fishermen were not allowed.
They walked to Brooklyn Street via the picnicking park. The Sunday park was very noisy – mothers shouting to their little darlings to ‘Get down off that!’ and fathers with their faces under sleeping hats growling, ‘Don’t nag, Mother’ and grandmothers wanting to go to the toilet, and patches of dusty grass protected by rugs like battlefields under giant fig trees. There were spilt ice creams and tears, a burst balloon and howls, and through it all were gulls fighting among themselves for the sake of a chip. Angel and her friends stepped carefully through it all.
‘No more than an hour or two from the gully and the creek, Angel, and we could be in another country,’ said Winifred. ‘I don’t know which I prefer because I have to say I love them both.’
‘I wonder what Uncle George will be like.’
‘I imagine Uncle George will be on his very best behaviour, as will be all of us,’ said Winifred, very tall and grand in her robe of red. ‘Don’t be nervous, darling girl.’
‘O, I’m not – not one bit,’ Angel lied.
Brooklyn Street was a red-hot summer carpet with a stream of Sunday bests strolling back and forth and some stepping into the gutter to make room for others to pass. Barnaby had taken his jacket off but had it perfectly draped across an arm as his mother would have wanted. Angel glanced at the green gate where the old man with the bucket lived but it looked vacant. No nets were drying on the fence and there wasn’t a sniff of kelp drying. Angel wondered if he’d died with his bad hips and octopus and she hoped that one or the other had not got the better of him. She never did know his name. She was sorry about that.
The gate to the aunts’ house had been left unlocked and through it Angel could see that Elsa – and it could only have been Elsa – had somehow spared the time to weed the gravel drive. There was a nervous neatness to the entrance – shrubs had had their twigs cut and trimmed and the buds of a pussy willow that grew behind the letterbox stood up like antennas, ready for anything. Winifred brushed a speck of a leaf from Angel’s cheek with her handkerchief and smoothed her hair with her hands.
‘I can remember my mother doing that but she always used spit on a hanky,’ said Angel. She was perspiring a little and some lipstick had greased into the corner of her mouth.
‘I wish you’d let me wipe some of that off, darling. Uncle George will not think less of you.’
‘Just a little bit, then.’
And while Winifred dabbed with the hem of her red robe she asked Barnaby to put his jacket back on.
‘I know it’s warm, Barnaby, but your shirt is a little worn.’
‘I think I’d like to go up here to Elsa’s door, Miss Varnham, and knock and be proper Sunday visitors.’ Angel led the way. ‘Poor Aunt Elsa must be exhausted.’
And Sunday visitors they were, strolling up the polished drive, noses in the air and whispering in their Sunday visitor voices. From downstairs the aromas of the baked leg of something with onions and good suet and roasting tomatoes streamed through the air and under their noses, like the spirits of the ghosts of ovens. From upstairs came the music of dance – something Spanish – with a passion that Angel had not heard before. She hoped the library of sounds inside her would file it away for later. Winifred Varnham turned on the path and clicked her heels to the rhythm and Barnaby laughed.
‘I think your aunts have gone to a lot of trouble for your Uncle George.’ And she took the headless rabbits from her basket of offerings and buried them in leaves behind a flame tree on the harbourfront. ‘There! Perhaps it was not a good idea.’
Angel knocked on the door and almost immediately there were quick steps along Elsa’s polished-daily lino. When the door opened it was Winifred Varnham who bellowed, ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’
‘How dare you ask! I am, as you see, in my own property and have taken the trouble, and I may say the risk, of skating along this wretched floor to let you in – and believe me when I say I can let you all out just as quickly!’ Jessie, sharp as a pencil in her black cloak, black stockinged feet in sensible shoes that had never been anywhere, a face that could have come from a dig of ruins, and her long, grey plait, was, to the three visitors, a disturbing beginning to Angel’s introduction to Uncle George. Barnaby Grange, who rarely had ordinary, human, unmathematical ideas, salvaged the rabbits from their resting place and gave them to Jessie.
‘What on earth are these for, you stupid man? Are you mad?’
‘Yes.’ In a word.
‘Well, take the wretched things down to the rocks. Throw them into the harbour.’
‘They were to be a gift from Miss Varnham,’ said Angel. ‘It’s rude not to say thank you.’ She took a couple of steps back and stood behind Winifred, just in case.
‘How dare you!’
‘I’m here – I’m here,’ Elsa called from the kitchen end of the hall in a high, anxious voice. ‘I’m here. Everything is all right. I’m cooking your favourites. Everything is going to be lovely …’
‘You look very tired, Elsa,’ said Winifred. ‘I think you do too much. I brought a basket of vegetables and two rabbits but Jessie objected to the rabbits – and I must say that on this occasion I agreed. I think they were not suitable for this household. Mister Grange has thrown them in the harbour. They’ll be feeding the fishes by now, I imagine.’
‘But I love rabbit, Jessie. I would have liked them.’ Elsa rubbed her rough, red hands on her apron. ‘If you don’t like rabbits,
Jessie, you needn’t have come. They weren’t for you.’ Angel thought that was very brave of her. ‘We don’t get a lot of rabbits in the Bay, Miss Varnham. Fish or vegies weekdays and a baked dinner on Sundays. Everyone knows you can’t have what you want now and I would have loved the rabbits.’ Angel thought Elsa was too close to Jessie for safety and stood straight up and down in front of her aunt with her fists ready but Barnaby appeared, laughing, with seaweed in his hair and the darkening cloud lifted.
‘Where is Aunt Clara?’ Angel asked, avoiding the obvious question.
‘It’s flamenco today,’ said Jessie. ‘The floorboards – my Lord – the floorboards! But not a crack to be heard. She’ll be down for lunch. He’s in the sitting room.’
‘Then we’d better join him, Angel.’
‘Okay, Elsa.’ Angel was nervous.
‘I observed no family resemblance at all,’ said Jessie, who Elsa thought had been searching for something to say to make things as uncomfortable as possible. ‘Except for the teeth. Small, like the girl’s. Spaced and sharp … Why is your mouth red, child? O, never mind – I can imagine. Your mother always looked like a raspberry tart.’
‘Don’t you talk about my mother – you – you – Jessie!’
‘If Uncle George has teeth at all,’ said Winifred Varnham grandly, ‘it can only mean good health so that is indeed good news.’
‘You are a fool,’ said Jessie.
‘And you, my poor, dear, dried-up weed of a woman, need your roots watered and fed, your stem stroked and your stamen loved by bees not right in their heads!’
‘Everything’s all right,’ Elsa bleated like a frightened lamb. ‘Everything’s all right. Lunch will be ready in half an hour. You really must come and meet your Uncle George, now.’
‘Not all of us – not yet,’ Angel said quietly. ‘I want to sneak up and have a look at him first. Do you mind?’
The Aunts’ House Page 16