The Major met me at the door. I knew he would. I was prepared for that. I tried to stay calm. I stayed calm. He didn’t rape her. He didn’t crucify her. He didn’t mutilate her. He just arranged it, not just arranged it. He arranged it. Was told to arrange it. Told by Prouse. Arranged it as Prouse flew home.
I wore a flat face. So did he. He said ‘Reading Room’. I knew where it was. I went there.
Prouse sat in an armchair. It was in front of bow windows. His back was to the door. I could see his head over the top of the chair. I wanted to hit it. To Trotsky him. Hit him with an ice-pick. There was none to be seen.
There were no other chairs. There was nowhere to sit. It was a game. A control game. A game of ‘disinterest’. A game of power. He liked those. He was good at those. They turned-him-on.
I tried to stay calm.
I was the outsider. I didn’t belong. I didn’t matter. I could stand, would stand. Stand like a schoolboy. Say what I came to say, then go.
He played his game well. I knew he would. I would stand in front of him. I would say what I came to say. I would be a schoolboy. A schoolboy in the headmaster’s study. Dr Wolfe all over again. I would be there to be punished. I would be there to be caned. It was clever. Fifteen–love to Prouse.
I was anxious. More than a bit. I knew I would be anxious. So I was. Quite a lot.
I came prepared. I prepared on the train. The ‘down-train’. It didn’t help.
Before I met Annie, this couldn’t work. I couldn’t talk, so, it wouldn’t work. Before I met Annie, even when I could talk, it came out wrong. It came out jerky, it came out jumbled, it came out wrong. But now, if I tried to talk, I could talk, so I would talk, and it wouldn’t come out wrong. Not always come out wrong. Not like it used to. Not like it did when I was young.
So, I managed to talk. It didn’t come out wrong. She was good for me.
I stood in front of him. He was reading The Telegraph. I couldn’t see his face. The Telegraph didn’t move. Thirty–love.
“I want you to have the Melancholy. The Telegraph didn’t move. Forty–love.
“Then give it to me,” it said.
“I want something in return.” I spoke to the front and back pages.
“And what might that be?” it said.
“Peace.” The Telegraph said nothing. I knew it was thinking.
The Telegraph lowered. Slowly the face appeared. The face I hated appeared. Nothing was changed. Perhaps in a subtle way. The skin drawn tighter. The death’s-head more a fixed grimace. The shoulders held higher.
He was reading the soccer pages. I looked at them. He looked at me, as I looked at them. I wanted him to look at me, as I looked at them. I wanted him to know that I knew what he read. I was happy with that.
Sir Peter Prouse, billionaire City magnate, icon of refinement, patron of the arts, reading the soccer page? Forty–fifteen.
“You look older,” he said.
“I am.”
“But no wiser.”
“Perhaps… I want peace.”
“I want my Munch.”
“You can have it.”
“I want Dr Rinsler.” That was unexpected. I swallowed.
“You can’t, she’s mine.” A pause. Then he smiled. A ‘sort-of’ smile. I knew that smile. I knew it as a boy. From when he told me he wanted my Melancholy. I was a boy then. A lot of things happened since then. He mutilated Annie since then.
“My dear Tarquin, I thought you would have grown up more by now. ‘Can’t’ and ‘peace’ are funny words. They are both relative terms… They don’t bind you, you see.” The paper rose and the game was over. Sir Peter-fucking-Prouse, one game to love.
I spoke to The Telegraph again. “I will give you the Munch. Then it’s peace. Annie is mine. Get used to it.”
There was no sign of the Major as I left.
Fuck, what a disaster.
I didn’t tell Annie. Not about all of it. Not all of what he said. Not about her. I hid that away, in my deep places. They were crowded places now.
Eight
I’d never been this happy before. When Mama died and Dada sold the hotel, I never expected to be happy again, but then I met Annie and she changed my life. She changed all the things I expected to have in my life, and I knew my life would never be the same again.
Annie was beautiful, but only if you looked at all of her at the same time. Her body was as beautiful as any body anybody has ever seen, but her face was only beautiful in an unusual way, in a funny way, and you had to look at her face in a certain way, so that you could see that it was beautiful in the funny way that it was beautiful in. Every bit of her face was unusual and parts of it were all wrong, but it was the whole of her face that was beautiful, because it was the whole of her face that mattered. I knew her before all the bad things happened and I knew her before all the scars she got from all the bad things that happened. Even with all the scars, she’s still beautiful to me, and I know she’ll always be beautiful to Tom too.
I’d never met anyone who made me feel the way Annie made me feel, because she made me feel happy about me being me.
Before I met Annie, I didn’t think good things about myself. I thought I was a stupid person and a bad person. I thought I was a stupid person, because I never thought smart thoughts, not like the thoughts I knew other people thought. I only thought silly thoughts.
I thought I was a bad person too, because when I did think, my thoughts were all about, and only about, sex and about how much I liked it and about how much I wanted it. But I knew it was bad to think about that, and to think that a nice person would want to have sex with a bad person, and a stupid person, like me. But after I met Annie, that all changed.
She interviewed me for a job at her gallery. It wasn’t one of the big jobs, but it paid more than I was getting at Woolworths, so I thought I’d try for it. I had no qualifications, not for working in an art gallery. I knew nothing about art and wasn’t really interested in it. I thought paintings were things people with a lot of money bought so that they could hang them up on their walls and show off. When I was a girl, we had a painting in the living room at home. It hung on a nail that Dada hammered into the brick. It wasn’t a real painting, just one printed on paper so as to look like the real painting even though everyone knew it wasn’t. It was of a woman with a green face. The woman was pretty and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to paint her with a green face, but I just accepted that they had painted her with a green face, and knew that I would never understand anything about art, and it didn’t really interest me much.
When I was growing up, there were more interesting things to think about than paintings, or why men painted women with green faces. Mostly I thought about boys and about having sex with boys. I don’t think I was any different to all the other girls I grew up with. My closest friend was Melena Johnson and we talked about boys a lot. When we were alone, we showed one another our breasts. They were just coming and it was exciting to watch them grow. Melena’s were bigger than mine. One day she put her hand on my breast and kissed me on the mouth. I knew it was an evil thing to do, and I knew God would be making a note of it. I told her that what she just did was wrong, and that if she kept doing things like that, we would both go to hell. She laughed at me and said there was no such place as hell. Her family didn’t go to church. I knew that and wondered why anyone would want to upset God.
I didn’t let her kiss me again, not until we went swimming a week later. I liked it when she kissed me and I liked it when I kissed her back. I liked it when we put our hands in places where I knew we shouldn’t put them. We did things to ourselves that we knew were evil things to do and we watched one another as we did them. Then we did the things we were doing to ourselves to one another and that was the best feeling of all. I knew it was the most evil thing of all.
I knew what we were doing was wrong,
and what Dada would say was evil, but it felt so good when we did them. So we didn’t stop. Every time we did them, we did more than we did before. I knew I was going to hell anyway, so there was no reason to stop. If I’d stopped after the first kiss, I might have been saved, but after what we did later, and did over and over, there was no way we weren’t going to hell. Maybe Melena wouldn’t go to hell, because she didn’t believe in it. Maybe you can only go to hell if you believe in it. Maybe it’s the same with heaven too. But I didn’t think much about heaven anymore, because I knew I would never go there. Heaven was for people who were good, and didn’t do all the things that felt good when you did them. After I knew, for certain, I was going to hell, I let her do all sorts of things to me, anything she wanted to do to me, and then I did those things to her too.
It turned out that my imagination was better than Melena’s and I thought of all sorts of things we could do in all sorts of ways. She was the leader at the beginning, when she first kissed me, but now I was. So I found I had an imagination, but it only seemed to be an imagination about things I could do to Melena and ask Melena to do to me. It wasn’t an imagination about anything else. Not an imagination about nice things that God would think were good things.
I liked doing things with Melena, but I wanted to do them with boys too. When I was thirteen, Cousin Jared came to stay and I wanted him to do to me all the things Melena did to me. So, one day I asked him if he would do them to me and he did. I asked him when we were walking on a beach on the other side of the island. A beach he drove me to on his motorbike. I let him take my clothes off and then he took his clothes off. I’d never seen a man without clothes on before. I told him I was a virgin, but not a virgin the way God wanted me to be a virgin. I told him about Melena and the things we did together. I asked him to do to me all the things men did to women when they were together without their clothes on. I said ‘without their clothes on’, because I still found it hard to say the word ‘sex’. I could say the word to Melena, but Jared was different. Jared was a man and saying the word ‘sex’ to a man was different from saying it to Melena. Then I said he could do whatever he liked to me. We lay on the sand and he did whatever he liked to me. Some of the things were the things Melena did to me, but some of them weren’t. Some of them were more than the things Melena did to me. When he was finished doing them to me, he asked me to do things to him too. They were lovely and gentle things to do and we both liked it when I was doing them. Then he did the one big thing, the thing I was hoping he would do to me and the thing Melena and I talked about boys doing to us. It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever felt and while he was doing it to me, and I was feeling the wonderful feeling, I yelled out the word ‘fuck’. I’d never said that word before. Not even to Melena. Saying the word didn’t feel wrong, it felt right. Jared was ‘fucking’ me and it was the best thing to be happening in the whole wide world.
Afterwards, when he’d done it to me again, and when it was all over, we lay on the sand and went to sleep.
After that, I let him do whatever he liked to me and as often as he liked to do it. I didn’t worry about hell anymore. God had a place for me there, and I knew that.
Jared was older than me and he was kind to me. He had always been kind, even when I was a little girl. I used to look forward to him coming to stay when I was a little girl. He used to buy me ribbons to put in my dolly’s hair. He used to tickle me and call me ‘Brosie’. When I was older, no longer a little girl, after our day on the beach, I used to look forward to him coming to stay too, but it didn’t have anything to do with ribbons or tickling. But he still called me ‘Brosie’.
His mum was Dada’s sister and she married a white man from France. He ran a restaurant in George Town.
It was funny to watch Jared’s white tummy banging against my black one. It wasn’t really a white tummy, but I was so black his seemed pale. I didn’t know why I was blacker than the other girls at school. Dada said it was because my blood was pure. I don’t know if he was right about that. He may have been, but he may have said it just to make me feel less ashamed of being so black, or perhaps more proud of being so black. I’ve never felt ashamed of being black. I’m proud of being black, and I know Annie and Tom are proud that I’m as black as I am, and like it that I am. I think they’re proud of me because I’m proud about being as black as I am. It’s good to be proud of the way you are, but it’s funny to think that other people can be proud of you being proud of the way you are.
I liked knowing that Jared was one of the family and that he wasn’t a stranger. I don’t think I would have liked having those things done to me by a stranger. I didn’t let strangers do them to me, not until later, after Mama died and I left home.
I missed Jared when he went back to George Town. He said he would try to come more often and I looked forward to that. He wrote letters to us and they were full of funny stories about George Town. The letters were addressed to the whole family, but I knew he was really writing just to me.
I went back to doing things with Melena. I told her all about Jared and about all the things he did to me. I know she was jealous. She got pregnant the next year and died having the baby.
Annie asked me where I’d been working and I told her. I wasn’t ashamed about having to work stacking shelves, but I thought she might think it a bit lowly for someone coming to work in an art gallery, and selling expensive pictures to rich people. She asked me what I’d been doing before that. I told her about being an air hostess for Jamaican Airways.
I told her about getting married, about getting pregnant when my husband didn’t want me to, about the abortion he made me have to kill the baby inside me, and about how he left me anyway. About having to leave the mining town where he was working and trying to earn enough money to get back home. I knew there was no point in lying to her. Lies always get found out and, anyway, Jesus doesn’t like it when we lie.
Jesus was an important part of my life when I was growing up. Mama and Dada were ‘Devouts’ and the whole family went to church every week.
I didn’t tell lies because I knew Jesus wouldn’t have liked it. I didn’t lie even when I was letting Jared do those things to me. I didn’t lie because God wouldn’t have liked it either. I was scared of God.
We were told that God-the-Father, God-the-Son and God-the-Holy Spirit were all one. Did that mean one person? One God? One thing? I couldn’t understand that bit of what they told me.
Jesus was my favourite; he was kind and understood me. He forgave me when I was naughty. He had long brown hair, a short beard and a halo. God was God-the-Father and he was scary. He lived above the clouds and was always watching me. He had a big white beard and was usually angry about something. He sent floods and plagues if you were bad. Sometimes he turned you into salt and believed in eyes-for-eyes and things like that. I was scared of him and wondered how his son turned out so nice.
I couldn’t understand The Holy Ghost. I knew it was important for the Catholics, so that they could have their Trinity. I don’t know what it would be like if it was only God and Jesus. What would Trinidad be called?
For me, The Holy Ghost was a man under a white sheet who didn’t do much except mysterious things that no one understood. I knew he couldn’t be as important as God or Jesus, whatever the Reverend Hopkins said.
Later, when I was working for Annie, she told me about her friend who knew lots of funny stuff. He told her they tried to sort it all out at a place called Nicaea, sometime, a long time back. It sounded as though they were having just as much trouble with The Holy Ghost as I was, and that was why Greek vicars wore black and had those funny-shaped hats. Why they made the sign-of-the-cross backwards.
The man who knew all those things was the man who took her to lunch every day in his fancy sports car.
I knew that telling the truth wouldn’t keep me out of hell, but I didn’t want to sin, not in every way. God was very close to me when I was gro
wing up. I closed my eyes when I felt Jared’s seed starting to come inside me. I’m not sure why I did that. I think I thought that if I couldn’t see what was happening, God couldn’t either. I liked Jesus. I knew he was kind and good. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I didn’t tell lies.
Annie showed me around the gallery and explained what my job would be. She took me into the storeroom and kissed me. I kissed her back. We took our clothes off and had sex. Later on we made love, but that first day it was sex. There’s nothing wrong with sex, but love makes it better.
I got the job and I was happy about that. I wouldn’t have to stack all those shelves anymore.
I enjoyed working with Annie, and the rest of the staff were kind to me. I had a lot to learn before I could be of much use. Annie said I should concentrate on the Australian art and gave me a lot to read. It felt like being back in school. I didn’t have a passion for art, but I did have a passion for Annie and I really wanted to please her. I didn’t want her to think she’d made a mistake by giving me the job.
Annie got me reading about the Australian artists we had on show. That was what she wanted me to concentrate on. She said there was no point in studying Tom Roberts if we weren’t selling any. Annie, I knew, liked Arthur Streeton and we had two of his pictures of Sydney Harbour for sale. They were being sold together. Annie said she’d found them separately, but now they were together, they should stay together. She had a passion for what she was doing, I could tell that. They were both nice to look at, but I couldn’t believe that anyone would pay more than a hundred thousand dollars for them. Annie said that was cheap for what they were, and said she expected them to go quickly. She said what she was doing was called a ‘loss-leader’. I’d never heard that term before. She said she would lose money by selling them, but doing it would make people come and look at the other things we had. She was so smart. I knew she was smart from the first time we met. Even before we took our clothes off.
A Judgement on a Life Page 4