Gilgamesh

by Joan London

  Ronnie seemed to seek out Edith. She sensed that he didn’t judge her, no shade crossed his eyes when he spoke to her, to remind her that she was a fallen woman. He seemed rather intrigued by her. She felt excited by his interest. She tried to imagine briefly what it would be like to love him, to feel his small muscly arms around her, and his smooth cheek against hers, but she could not. The excitement was for something else, the old travelling dreams, the sense of the world lying wide open before you.

  ‘You say you can go anywhere you want,’ she said. ‘How would you get to Armenia?’

  ‘Armenia?’ said Ronnie, smoothly as a ticket seller, ‘From here? For yourself? Single or return?’ He winked.

  ‘Oh, just in theory.’

  ‘In theory, nobody wants to go to Armenia. You do know it’s a territory of the Soviet Socialist Republic? Lord knows how one would ever acquire a visa.’

  ‘Can you get in without a visa?’

  ‘In theory no. In practice, my dear Edith, as we both know, you can get in anywhere.’ A little later he said: ‘But you’d have to have a passport of course.’

  Armenia had become a landscape superimposed over the hills and valleys around her. Armenia was certain marked glowing places, like the path down the escarpment where she had first seen Aram. The full moon was Armenian, and so were the Honeymoon Gardens when no one else was there. The look-out was a citadel to Armenianness. The spire of the Anglican church on the outskirts of Torville was very Armenian, because as you saw it from the bus it seemed to promise something ancient and spiritual, not Torville’s flat municipal streets. The delicate morning light was Armenian, and when Ronnie Tehoe made them all laugh at the kitchen table, that was Armenian. Spirits were higher in Armenia. The people were proud and reserved but they had generous, hospitable hearts.

  Ronnie popped his head out of the Sitting Room and beckoned Edith. He was waiting for her with the big old atlas opened at the World, Political. He traced a route with his finger, from Fremantle to Southampton, from London overland to Istanbul, across the Black Sea to Georgia and down through the Caucasus mountains into Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. Armenia was so small that its name overran its borders. Australia was one of the pink patches on the map, while Armenia was Soviet green.

  ‘The first step would be to find out when a cargo ship was going to England,’ Ronnie said. ‘Announcements are in the shipping news at the back of The West.’

  ‘How much money would you need?’ If she could get to London, there would be Leopold. He would come with her to find Aram. He’d promised Ada to be at her service.

  ‘Fifty pounds for starters,’ Ronnie said. His eyes challenged her.

  If it hadn’t been for the twenty pound note left stuffed into a pocket of a guest’s tweed coat, Edith most likely would never have seriously considered making the journey. The coat was left hanging in the back hall to dry from a sudden shower of rain while its owner rushed late into the Dining Room for lunch. It was still hanging there at the end of the day as Edith put on her old cape. She saw the tip of the note peeping out with a shovedin handkerchief—the owner must be careless, she thought. It was still there next morning. The coat belonged to the large man with the reddish beard who drove the Armstrong Siddeley that everyone admired. And then the car left and the coat was still there. The yardsman who had cleaned the car for him reported a generous farewell tip. The big man was going back to Scotland, he said. So he was generous and careless and rich, and not coming back. The sort of person who could afford to forget his coat, afford to forget twenty pounds, afford to lose it. Moreover, if he should write, the coat was left downstairs, and the upstairs maid would not be under particular suspicion. Edith told herself that if the coat was still there at the beginning of next week, it would be a sign.

  She took the twenty pounds. She hid it in her childish hiding place, a toffee tin tucked into the stumps of the verandah.

  She sent off for passport forms.

  Of course she had more need of the money than the man with the red beard. She had a son to save.

  Did all thieves think they had a special need?

  She wasn’t a real thief, she told herself. She would give it up as soon as she had fifty pounds.

  Do all people cheat when there is something they must have?

  No. Not Frances. Not her father. But look what had happened to him.

  It became, so quickly, a habit of mind. It was like a sport. She enjoyed it. She found out she was good at it.

  There was a pair of silk stockings left at the bottom of a wardrobe. They were dirty, with a hole in one toe, not likely to be reclaimed. Edith mended and washed them and hung them to dry out of Frances’s sight behind a bush. She gained a white cambric blouse, good as new after bleaching in the sun, in the same way. The knickers, pink and ivory satin, pale-blue cotton, she took out of various suitcases. Nobody was likely to report the theft of a pair of knickers to the office. She kept her eye out for a woollen bodice and a suspender belt.

  Madge herself gave Edith a pair of unclaimed walking shoes that had been left on the porch.

  She kept these things in her father’s old Globite case.

  Tipping was not official at the Sea House, but often enough money was slipped into a hand, left on a table or beside a bed. These tips were supposed to be taken to the kitchen to be pooled. Edith, who was quick and never had to be asked twice and looked, with her plaits and stick-thin legs in black stockings, urchin young and touching, received her fair share of tips, more than the more-deserving Gwen. She made sure that Ronnie or Mrs Staines were around when she dutifully deposited her coins in the jar in the kitchen, and that they fell with a convincing ring. Most of the coins she kept, silenced in her handkerchief.

  She’d never noticed how much money people left lying around before. Not only tips, which, swift and efficient, she hunted down as soon as guests booked out. But pennies, threepences, little mounds of shilling pieces, rolled around in chair backs, drawers, under cushions, in the dust beneath the beds. Small change was the flotsam of the world. Edith made sure at least twice a day that she walked past the telephone in the hall, where there was often a few coins. She handed some of them in of course, in case Madge had set a trap. It kept her very busy, all the calculations she had to make. Would that gentleman miss a shilling from his bedside pile of small change? Did that lady know there was a sixpence floating free at the bottom of her evening bag?

  Once a five pound note was left in a hatbox in a vacated room, but she suspected the woman, and took it down to Madge. Just as she had handed it over Madge was called out to register a guest, and she left the note sitting on the desk. As Edith walked out the draught blew it to the floor. Edith took it and left the door open. If Madge remembered it she would think it had blown down the hall. She could hardly challenge Edith, who had brought it to her in the first place. But she would have to be careful after this. Madge was shrewd. In her new sharpness, Edith judged Madge and Ronnie to have, like her, the criminal cast of mind. They would soon sense a thief in the house.

  Madge paid her in coin. At home she put her pay, along with Frances’s egg money, in the old crock on the mantelpiece. When she or Frances needed to buy anything they stood tiptoe and delved their hands in for what they wanted. Each week she put fewer and fewer coins in the jar.

  By the time Jim had cut three teeth, she had saved up thirty-five pounds.

  Growing reckless, she took a little navy blue topper coat and a pair of woollen leggings from a tiny girl called Lavinia with Shirley Temple curls. Lavinia wouldn’t miss them, sitting like a princess in the special highchair in the Dining Room, everyone cooing over her. Besides her mother had never even taken the coat and leggings out of the bottom of the suitcase, it was far too warm. Now they had a new home in the Globite case.

  She spent two pounds sending off to Perth for her and Jim’s birth certificates, and another ten shillings taking Jim into Bunbury, to a stuffy little photographic studio.

  ‘Mr Tehoe is a Justice of th
e Peace, isn’t he?’ Edith asked Ronnie.

  ‘He is. Why?’

  ‘I have some forms that a JP must sign.’

  ‘Show ’em here. A passport application, eh? Nice photo. Going somewhere?’

  ‘It’s just in case,’ Edith mumbled.

  ‘Good idea. Everyone should have a passport. What if Australia is invaded by Hitler and you all have to run away?’

  ‘They say there isn’t going to be war now.’

  ‘There is, my darling, believe me.’ His face tried to be serious. Perhaps Ronnie felt a pang of responsibility for her. Perhaps he’d never thought his seeds would fall on such fertile ground. ‘And in case of war, you know, Nunderup would be the safest place of all.’

  Edith stared stubbornly at the floor. I will have to hurry, she thought, if there’s to be a war.

  ‘Still, what is war when you are young and in love! I’ll pop these under Reggie’s nose after the fourth whisky. Mum’s the word, eh Edith? Leave it to me.’

  As summer came on Edith helped out in the beer garden and discovered that when people had been drinking they didn’t count their change. And if you were quick you could run your hands under the tables when you collected glasses. Coins fell out of loose beach-coat pockets into the grass. Her riskiest coup, however, was reaching inside the window of a car parked in the driveway by the beer garden. It was dark, she was on her way home. There were seven pounds ten in the glove-box. This time there was a hue and cry at the Sea House, but the gardens were full of strangers. By then the money was safely stowed in Edith’s toffee tin.

  ‘Armenia,’ she said to Jim in the darkness of their room. ‘Armenia.’ There was no one else she could say the word to. She liked the symmetry of the word, the way it started as it ended, with an ‘a’. She thought it had an optimistic sound.

  ‘Mumma,’ she said to Ada one day when they were sitting peacefully on the verandah, ‘what do you do if you have one thought that won’t go away?’

  ‘Catch the horse,’ said Ada. ‘Rein it in, lead it to the home paddock.’ Did Ada, with her hat permanently on her head, have a place she too thought of night and day?

  Armenia. Edith dared herself to write it on frosty windows, on steamy mirrors, on the crisp sand high on the beach. She left a trail of clues if anyone had been interested. Armenia. Whispered, it sounded like the end of a prayer.

  ‘The Touchpole is due the second of February’, Ronnie read out from The West at morning tea. ‘Let’s see, this paper’s three days’ old. That means the good old ship is here now, berthed in Fremantle. She’s docked for repairs.’

  ‘What sort of ship?’ Edith asked.

  ‘Cargo. About twenty years old. 5,000 tons. Registered in Colombo. Makes the Indian Ocean run. Colombo, Fremantle, Capetown. Then on to the Canaries and Southampton.’

  ‘The First Mate,’ Ronnie drawled on loudly, as if this was of interest for the whole kitchen, ‘is a very good friend of mine. Natty Crawford. Natty would do anything for me. Just have to mention my name. Any friend of mine is a friend of Natty’s.

  ‘Matter of fact I owe old Nat a letter. I’ll drop him a line in the next few days. I’ll ask him about places for passengers, just in case any of you lot are interested. I’d take off myself except I promised to stay for the Easter rush. Maybe next time round.’ Ronnie drained his tea and closed the paper. ‘Shabby old bumboat, the Touchpole. I’d say she’ll be in dock for a couple of weeks.’

  In the district it was said that Edith had left a note on the kitchen table for her sister, telling her that she had taken Jim to Perth for a few days. At least that was what Frances told Madge. Madge carried on as best she could, but after two weeks had to hire another maid. Ronnie swore to himself that he wouldn’t tell but one night when Madge needed to be entertained and he was sure that the Touchpole had well and truly sailed, he told her that Edith had gone to Armenia.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Madge said. ‘Where is Armenia again?’ All the same she checked out her jewellery before she went to bed. Her brown velour hat had gone missing, but she thought she must have mislaid it. Word got around, but nobody really believed that Edith had gone to Armenia. Wherever on earth that was. More likely she had taken up with some fancy man she’d met in the hotel. She was a ruined girl. They supposed she would never come back. It was as if she were dead.

  FLIGHT

  The track had never seemed so long. She had to swap Jim and the suitcase from arm to arm. Jim hadn’t had breakfast but was not crying, enchanted at the novelty of the journey and the singing of the magpies. She saw nothing, heard nothing, just plodded on. It was as if she was dragging them all behind her, the two sleeping women in the dark bedroom, the dog chained so it wouldn’t follow, even her father buried in the earth.

  There was a woman waiting among the school kids on the steps of the Hall, with a sun hat and shopping basket and a goodnatured ruddy face. The type who couldn’t resist a baby. Edith stood by the road and pretended to be preoccupied with Jim.

  Sure enough the woman called out. ‘Peek-a-boo! Who’s a big boy?’ Jim jiggled disloyally over Edith’s shoulder. ‘How old is he?’ the woman called.

  ‘Nearly a year.’ But the bus was rounding the corner, Edith picked up her suitcase and didn’t look around. She spread out on the bus seat so the friendly woman would not sit next to them, and looked steadily out the window. Yes I saw her, the little Clark girl, the one with the baby. Come to think of it she did have a suitcase, but I never dreamt …

  The countryside had the shimmering emptiness of mid summer.

  There was a damp circle on her knee where Jim was sitting, and wet circles beneath her arms. The shoes which Madge had given her were dusty and the white cambric blouse, so carefully laundered in readiness for this journey, was crumpled and smeared by Jim’s hands.

  On the rack above her was the small brown Globite suitcase. She had packed it late last night and placed it ready behind the wash tub on the verandah. In it were their garnered travel clothes and two bottles full of milk, and a paper bag of the Sea House biscuits she had saved. She couldn’t help feeling proud of the fifty-two pounds ten rolled into a pair of satin bloomers. It just went to show that there was money still around, Depression or not. There was also her brand new passport and her mother’s wedding ring and Leopold’s letter. And right at the top—it had been a last-minute decision in the back hall yesterday as she hung up her apron—Madge Tehoe’s brown velour hat.

  She could never come back.

  They had to wait all morning in the Bunbury station for the train to Perth that afternoon. On her own Edith would have liked to explore the streets of Bunbury, but Jim was too heavy for that. They sat side by side on a bench up the far end of the platform and ate biscuits, and Jim crowed as the trains came and went. Then he grew tired and bored and nothing would settle him. He even pushed away his bottle. Had the milk turned sour in the heat? Edith walked him up and down the platform. She hated him drawing attention like this. She left her suitcase with the stationmaster and set off up the road that ran alongside the tracks. The hot sun made Jim cry even louder. All at once Edith deposited him in the shade of a little thorny tree, and continued alone along the road. Oh how lightly she walked, into the cooling sea breezes of Bunbury! Lighter and lighter, as if she could never turn back. Jim gave a terrified scream. She wheeled around and ran to him. What had she been trying to do, test him? Test herself? Sorry, sorry, she cried as she held him and rubbed his wet cheek with hers. How could she have been so disloyal?

  Didn’t he always do the crying for both of them?

  She changed his nappy in the long yellow grass, the flies buzzing around them. She washed the nappy in the basin of the Ladies washroom and hung it to dry over an old fence. Jim slept on her lap on the platform bench, while she stared sombrely ahead. So this was how it was going to be. Nobody to leave him with, not even for a minute. Never to be one moment by herself.

  Just before the train rolled in there was a burst of music from the ticket office
. Edith saw that a young woman had started work and was swaying in time beside a big black wireless. In The Mood, a voice was singing, a male voice, smooth and happy, with a big slow happy band behind it, that made you want to dance. The music and the woman’s bolero dress and rolled-up hair and swaying padded shoulders made Edith feel happy. This was it, this was what it meant to be young and of your time. It was so much in the mood of her vision long ago with Aram and Leopold that she took it as an omen, and climbed aboard the train with a feeling bordering on elation, because her old life was coming to an end.

  They were both subdued as they took the train from Perth to Fremantle. The suburbs spread out in the twilight across the sandy plain. Each house had its gate and path, its dried-out lawn, its beds of rose bushes and canna lilies, its tidy umbrella tree beside the porch. Perth! How she and Frances had once longed to come here, to the fabled Royal Show.

  Edith took her passport out of the Globite in readiness. The photograph was dismaying. She had pinned her hair up for the occasion and, alas, a rogue strand fell down her young thin neck. She looked like a schoolgirl trying to be grown-up. While Jim, squeezed immobile at her shoulder, his chins belligerent, his black eyes distrustful, looked like a little old man. But the passport, in black and gold, was reassuring. The Governor-General himself declared that Edith May Clark and James Francis were British Subjects by birth, and requested that they be allowed to pass freely, and be afforded every assistance, in the name of His Britannic Majesty.

  They were rumbling across a bridge and suddenly before them was a great harbour with towering cranes and ships, and beyond it, the sparkle of the open sea.

  As she mounted the gangplank up the vast iron grey flank of the Touchpole, Edith’s straw hat blew off. She had no spare hand to grab it. She watched it circle slowly down onto the water between the ship and wharf.

  Time for the velour hat, she thought, stepping on deck, now that she had left Australia.