The Aunts’ House

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘What?’

  ‘When we’re in your room, Angel,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want others listening.’

  Angel opened her broom cupboard door and Uncle George closed it.

  ‘Do you want me to put a bandage on your leg for the night? I know what to do.’

  ‘Yes, Angel. I would like that but let me talk to you first.’

  ‘I don’t want to buy anything and I fixed my sandal with a tack.’ She searched through her mess of a cupboard for the roll of bandage she knew was there.

  ‘Angel – can you keep still for a moment and listen to me – here, sit next to me on the bed and be still.’

  ‘I have to find the bandage. What’s the matter, Uncle George?’

  ‘Nothing – nothing is the matter. I spoke to your Aunt Clara yesterday, not just about your grandfather’s fishing tackle. I spoke to her about you moving from this place. It’s not good for you here. She said she’d speak to your Aunt Elsa about you moving from here and living in Brooklyn Street—’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Of course, it’s up to you, Angel, but Clara said she wouldn’t mind if you had the room at the back of the aunts’ house, near the street. Your grandfather used it for his office.’

  ‘What are you telling me? Are you tricking?’ Angel held her fists hard against her cheeks.

  ‘No, Angel. I would pay for your keep, of course, and that would help your aunts and you’d be a great help to Elsa. I thought it was only fair when I considered what you have been through all this time – and your poor mother of course. Keep and any expenses, Angel, seems only fair to me, but it’s up to you.’

  Angel Martin’s thoughts were in chaos. Colours flashed and her music tried to keep pace with it all. She clawed through the cupboard.

  ‘I know it’s here – I know – I don’t believe it!’ Then, not really knowing it was there, she held the roll of bandage tight in her hand.

  ‘Angel – stop it! You’ll have a fit. Would you like to live in the aunts’ house or stay here?’

  ‘O, the aunts’ house! Of course, the aunts’ house. Is it really true?’

  ‘Yes. Now calm yourself – you’ve gone all red and brown. You look like a mud pie.’

  ‘O, thank you – thank you. But what about Miss Varnham and Barnaby?’

  ‘You can’t all move into a room that used to be an office, Angel. They will have to visit you. Is that a bandage in your hand?’ And Uncle George pulled up his trouser leg. ‘Be gentle, Angel. You’re in such a state.’

  Angel knelt on the floor and wound the bandage around the scrape on Uncle George’s leg and was very good at it. She tried very hard to be steady and gentle but Uncle George saw Angel’s tremble of excitement while he watched a small, quivering breast inside a blouse that had lost its buttons.

  ‘I feel better already,’ said Uncle George as he slid his hand beneath her clothing and held the breast and stroked. ‘You are a beautiful girl, Angel.’ He slid his hand over the other breast and stroked that one. ‘You don’t mind this, do you? Do you mind?’

  ‘No,’ said Angel. ‘I’m experienced!’ Click click. She strapped her uncle’s leg tight and stood up, silent in front of him still sitting on the bed.

  ‘Would you like to sit on my lap?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Polite. ‘I have my monthly and I’m bleeding.’ Good excuse at any time but Angel made it sound like a threat.

  ‘Then just let me kiss those little rosebuds of yours. It’s been such a long time for me – can you understand? And it’s not every day an uncle has a pretty niece to play with.’ And he slipped her blouse away from her breasts and kissed each one like a baby suckling. Angel stood perfectly still and thought of the baby shop lady and the gully creek and the birds and wondered if the possum was looking in and listened to her music and watched its colours and tried not to be sick until it was all over.

  ‘We’ll keep this a secret, Angel, won’t we?’ Like Mister Daisyfield and old Canning. Men with fingers must have enough secrets to fill their graves. Here lies Mister Daisyfield and his secrets!

  ‘Yes – why?’ Click.

  ‘It wasn’t wrong what I did, was it? It was love, Angel. Some people might see it another way, but it was love. I don’t think anyone here would believe I’d do anything to hurt you, but best keep it to ourselves. There’s so much for you to look forward to, Angel.’

  ‘O, yes, lots and lots.’ Covering her body as best she could. Play me a plan, Wagner. Something powerful with strong colours! ‘Lots and lots and lots, Uncle George.’ She grinned in her special way. She looked at his hands and the ten disgusting sins of their fingers.

  ‘There, that’s brought a smile to your face. Next time you visit your aunts you might move in with them. I’ll tell them tomorrow. Elsa will be very happy. I think you’ll be a great comfort to Elsa.’

  ‘What about Jessie?’

  ‘I’ll sort it all out, Angel. Don’t worry about Jessie. Are you excited?’

  ‘O, yes! I can’t wait, Uncle George. But I won’t go to school tomorrow, I’ll come down to the Bay with you and you can teach me fishing – or I can just watch.’

  ‘No Angel. I like to be alone and quiet when I fish and you must go to school.’

  ‘I’m too excited for school. I’m coming with you. I know the way to the fishing barge – you’d never get around to the point without me – it’s slippery – a bit dangerous with your leg and you know what? I won’t make a sound – I’ll sit on the barge or the rocks and I won’t move an inch, I’ll just watch.’

  ‘No, Angel. School!’

  ‘No! And no school for one special day,’ Angel said, sweetly. ‘Don’t spoil this for me, Uncle George.’

  ‘O, for God’s sake, Angel. You’re impossible.’ And he stood from the bed and adjusted the bump in his trousers, brushed himself down and opened the door. Before he left he put a finger to his lips, ssshhh’d and winked. ‘I’ve left an envelope in the cupboard, Angel. Watch it carefully until you use it. I suggest you bank it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m leaving after breakfast. I would really like you to go to school tomorrow, Angel. I have to talk to your aunts. Apart from the fishing there are things to be discussed, your future to be arranged – you do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, okay.’

  ‘Then, you’ll stay here?’

  ‘No. I’ll wait down on the beach if you don’t want me in the house.’

  ‘No arguments, Angel.’

  ‘You’ll never get around the point with a sore leg.’

  ‘Yes, I will!’

  ‘Okay.’ And she grinned her little, sharp-toothed grin but it was only with her teeth. Her eyes, when she looked at Uncle George, were dark and sharp as flints and if Uncle George had seen them at that moment he would have known he was being stabbed to death.

  ‘Then, Angel, I’ll see you in the morning before I go. There’s a lot to talk about. Aunt Clara or Elsa will contact you and tell you what to do. Off to bed now and have a good sleep, Angel. I love you.’ Uncle George had a limp in his voice.

  Angel observed that Uncle George’s leg pain had changed the colour of his skin – again she’d have to ask Barnaby the numbers – but the colour had changed from a certain grey to a certain grey. Angel hoped his pain was great. She hoped his pain was so great it would use all the numbers of every colour in the universe. She hoped Barnaby would not be able to find as many numbers as would be needed to describe her uncle’s pain.

  ‘There’s Aspro in the cupboard in the bathroom down,’ she said, sweet as shards.

  And Uncle George sneaked from the room in the very special silence of guilt.

  Angel took Uncle George’s envelope from her cupboard, opened it and found fifty pounds. A fortune. A windfall of perfect apples. Angel had never seen so much money. She put it and the enve
lope in her rag bag. It would be safe there because her rag bag would not, in anyone’s imagination, contain fifty pounds. She briefly wondered how she would spend or save it. One thing she knew she would ignore was what Uncle George had written on the back of the envelope – Use some of the money for a dentist!

  Angel had already mended the broken sandal strap with a tack, its point turned back to front with a hammer, and she had no desire for new clothes. She was disturbed and tired and thought no more about the money but she was intrigued by the protruding lump behind Uncle George’s trousers – the lower part of the trousers where he’d have to open to pee. One day, behind the toilet block at school, she had watched a sixth grader, whose name was Allen, who had his trousers down around his ankles and was rubbing that part of him and she’d stayed out of his sight and watched until a milky liquid spurted out and when he’d discovered he’d been seen he called Angel a slut and he said he’d kill her if she said anything, but Angel simply took it as part of her development and experience and just grinned. She wondered if Uncle George might have had to go out the back and do the same thing and if he did she would not hide and watch – the sight of it would make her sick.

  Angel yawned. The music inside her was confusing and its colours flashed shards too bright and startling. She stood at her window and watched the darkening sky fill with fruit bats on their way to the north orchards. Hundreds of them – click – maybe thousands and she watched the dark gully until the day went to sleep and only then did she lie on her bed – click. Angel closed her eyes and tried to sleep but there was too much in her head – a musical whirlpool of dismay and anger. A nightmare with its eyes wide open. She lay sleepless with the skin of her breasts crawling from the touch of Uncle George’s fingers and his tongue like a serpent born wrong. Click – click – click. Angel scrubbed her breasts with the sole of a sandal that had been treading dirt – she scratched through her hair until there was blood on her nails. She lay as still as a corpse and watched the dark but she did not cry – there was too much to think about. Even when she thought of her mother she did not cry. Betrayal! Clara would play Giselle. Don’t come back yet, Mummy – it isn’t all right – it isn’t finished.

  Tuesday

  The dining room was the dining room. Table sheeted and stained as usual but missing the gully ferns and wild things that Angel laid out. Tea urn, cups and saucers, a stack of plates and cutlery were set in a haphazard fashion around bowls of oatmeal, jam jars (without their labels so as not to spoil the surprise of their innards) and a pile of untoasted bread. It all looked terrible. Oliver Twist would not have asked for anything at all.

  ‘Ahhh! Here she is.’ Dear Uncle George beamed as though he’d arranged sunrise. Angel barely acknowledged him.

  ‘Where the hell have you been, Angel Martin?’ Missus Potts flew from the kitchen. ‘There’s no eggs cooked – no toast – no table set! I banged on your door early …’

  ‘I must have been asleep,’ she lied.

  ‘It’s not your job to be asleep, my girl, when there are things to be done!’

  ‘I think you should leave her alone, Missus Potts. She doesn’t look as though she’s been asleep,’ said Mister Joseph. ‘Do you agree, Miss Varnham, that she should be left alone because she doesn’t look as though she’s been asleep?’

  ‘Angel, what’s the matter? You do look tired.’ Miss Varnham was idly drinking a cup of tea with a slice of bread and looking through the ‘To Let’ advertisements in the morning paper. She had arranged to move her sister, Heather, from the sanitarium on Thursday.

  ‘Well, tired’s no good to me. Angel Martin is here to earn her keep and there’s plenty more where she came from. You don’t think I don’t get tired? Getting up at the crack of dawn day after day to get this lot done. Breakfasts don’t grow on trees!’

  ‘Where is Mister Potts?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it, Miss Varnham? He’s down the gully. It’s her job to get things started, not his.’ Pointing at Angel. ‘And if she’s going to sleep in like a Madam God Almighty, she’s no use to me.’

  ‘I will not have you speak to my niece like that, Missus Potts. And get me something decent to eat and my bill and I want a receipt! And I beg your pardon, Barnaby, good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, Daddy.’ In words and not a smile in sight.

  ‘He does that sometimes,’ Mister Joseph whispered to a puzzled casual. ‘Gets mixed up with here and England and memories he can’t express. He’s a mathematics genius.’

  ‘O, a strange man. Could you pass the jam?’

  Angel had been silent for that moment in the dining room. Then she topped up the tea urn, boiled a pot of eggs and toasted some bread. All through the unbearable noise of breakfast she had quietly worked in and out of the kitchen. She was sickened by the night before and when she finally settled at the table she was unable to eat.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing, Missus Potts.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with Angel,’ said Uncle George. ‘She simply has a lot to think about.’

  ‘O?’

  ‘And what would that be, Mister Wolf?’ Winifred Varnham was curious and raised her eyes from her newspaper. She observed Angel’s flints of eyes and hyperactive movements, as though she’d eaten peppers. ‘I hope it’s something pleasing – do I detect something pleasing, Mister Wolf?’

  ‘O, yes.’ Angel in a flood of words, ‘I’m going with Uncle George to the Bay and I’m going to watch him catch fish from the barge on the point near Mariana and then we’re going to the aunts’ house to work things out and I’m going to move in and—’

  ‘She’s doing no such thing.’ Uncle George limped to his feet. ‘She is going to school!’

  ‘What are you saying, darling? Are you really moving into the aunts’ house?’

  ‘That’s not at all decided, Miss Varnham.’

  ‘O, sorry, Uncle George. Was that supposed to be a secret, too?’

  ‘What’s all this about? Was it you I heard in her room after tea last night? What’s going on? What other secrets are there?’

  ‘We had family matters to talk about, Missus Potts – and Angel’s future.’

  ‘And he gave me some money and I put a bandage on his sore leg and I am going with Uncle George this morning to the Bay because I’ll show him the way ’round the point to the fishing barge and I want to know everything and how to catch fish and I’m not going to say a word or move or anything because he likes it quiet.’ Click click. Angel could barely hear her voice. A tired voice that drifted away.

  ‘O, dear God,’ said Uncle George. ‘Angel, I’m leaving in a few minutes and look at you – no shoes, dirty old dress and your hair not brushed. I can’t take you out like that, you look like a scruff dug up.’

  ‘I won’t be a minute, then.’ And before Uncle George Wolf could draw breath she’d disappeared up the stairs. While she was away, Missus Potts saw the bandage lying limp around his ankle.

  ‘It’s come loose,’ she said. ‘Here, stick your leg up here and I’ll tie it up tight.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  And when it was done Barnaby said, ‘Do you feel better now, Daddy?’ In words, without expression of any kind.

  Angel had, in a split minute, even considering her confused and exhausted state, changed her dress into the one with the buttons done up and splashed water on her face and hair. She kept nothing on her feet except the tough skin she was used to and hoped one day to have all over her body – on her belly, her arms and her breasts, her breasts, still crawling as though tiny ants had found something sweet for their queen.

  ‘O, for God’s sake come along then, Angel. I will not waste this day.’

  The mismatched pair moved to the door, leaving a puzzled and angry Missus Potts to clear away and a wondering at the table. Winifred Varnham rose from her chair and kissed Angel’s cheek.
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  ‘Take care, darling,’ she said. A sudden, passing thought.

  The climb up Duffy Street was an agony of snail paces because of Uncle George’s leg and Angel, although she never wanted to touch him again, took his arm – his arm, not his hand – and helped. They only just made it in time for the tram. Not a word was spoken.

  The tram might well have been a hearse on its way to Mariana and the Bay, half-empty and quiet as a grave hole. Angel didn’t know the driver, who was a man of values, she thought, dedicated to the hearse he drove with a lever hardly moving and sitting so straight on his seat with his cap steady as a pie top, and his head never moving from the road ahead. Not even the sound of a tram’s ding broke the silence of the empty seats. She watched as Uncle George Wolf tried to open the window.

  ‘I can show you how to do that.’

  ‘No thank you, Angel, I can open it myself. Melbourne is full of trams.’

  ‘Did you love my mother?’

  ‘Do we have to bring up all that stuff again?’ In a voice that had altered, like an actor. ‘Yes, I probably loved her or at least liked her anyway. She was funny. She made us laugh, your mother, but she was a floosie, Angel Martin – a bit like you.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘You will, one day.’

  Silence. Silence, while Uncle George Wolf looked out and caught the first of the sea breezes. He wore yesterday’s clothes and the trousers were crushed and stained. Angel wondered how he’d catch a fish dressed like that.

  ‘Maybe Elsa can fix your trousers while you fish.’

  ‘I have spares in my suitcase in the pub.’

  Silence.

  ‘You loved your wife, didn’t you – Alma, wasn’t it? Did she love you, too?’

  ‘Yes! We did love each other for a while – Angel, I do not want to talk about this anymore!’

  ‘But what did you mean for a while?’

  ‘We were not together when she died. We had separated two years before she died. Now, will you please mind your own business! Why you’re asking me these questions and making things difficult when you probably have a new life ahead of you is beyond me.’