The Broken Book

by Susan Johnson

  Mr Griffith was pleased to be seen this way, being otherwise inoffensive and ineffectual. The Griffith family is the richest in town, rivalled only by the landed Hewitt-Piggots, who own half the countryside around the place. They are graziers, whose sons are educated in England and whose daughters go to London with their mother for the season.

  The Hewitt-Piggot land goes right down to the sea, to the cliffs and bays and sandy scalloped edges of the Pacific, to the place where we live all our days. Our edge of the country falls away down the hill from the steel town further up the road: if you stand on the very top of the cliff you can see the blue of the Pacific with its cuff of frilly waves, the green swaying hills, once thickly forested with Red Cedar. The sand is white in the Blowhole, there is the East Beach and the Main Beach and Booby’s Beach and of course the angry spume of the blowhole. The Aboriginals around here call it the place where the sea speaks, although I think the sea speaks everywhere. The sea speaks and is prone to moods, sometimes it shouts, hurling its thunder into my ears, filling every part of me with its rage. It hurls me about then, throwing me down, so hard my shoulder scrapes the sand. When I emerge sand is coating my scalp—it is in my hair, my eyelashes, my crack—and the skin on my shoulder is scraped and bleeding as if I have skinned it on cement.

  Look! The line of the sea’s horizon is curly where the water leaps and falls. A frill of lace lies about the surface of the sand after a wave breaks. A girl leaps up from a wave, tossing her head back, sending a whip of silver water like mercury flashing through the air. ‘Over!’ scream the girls, jumping high into the air. ‘Under!’ scream the boys, going under into currents and salty blindness, the dishevelment of sand. Dig your toes into the sand and let the sea pull you, drag you with its great net across the sea floor. Sink your shoulders beneath the green glistening water so that your eyes are level with the surface of the curly sea and you are part of the whole, a creature of salt, a silver flash of girl upon the sea.

  This is what the sea is capable of: it can grab me like a fist and drag me down, shaking my life out. It grabbed me once while I was fishing on the rocks; the hand of the sea rose up and claimed me. I was standing and then I was under, froth and gasp and sand, the wash and blur of green airless existence. From somewhere my father saved me, fist against fist, knuckle and bone. My father heaved me up, gashed and bleeding on the rocks, and all the while the hand of the sea pounded against our backs, our legs, still trying. This is what the sea is capable of: it provides me with a sandy rug, a safe place to rest my feet and in a split second it whips the rug out. The rug is gone, the floor, the sand: I am drowning in the winning fist of the sea. Where is land, safety, the sandy bucket which once held me up? Tricked you!

  Sometimes the sea speaks quietly, turning its back, and then I have to woo it to me. I try to coax the lap of its salty tongue, in my ears, my mouth, my nose; I dive down, filling myself up, willing it to open wide its arms. Deep down inside it, I find the sea alive and pulsing, always moving, always speaking, a rolling carpet of tongues, talking, talking. Listen! Hear the slap of sea words, a liquid vocabulary, speaking low, murmuring fluently.

  My name is Cressida Morley and when I am fifteen and talking to boys I will have a lot of difficulty paying attention to whatever it is they are saying.

  All the time their lips are moving I will be wondering about that curled stalk in their pants and what it is doing at that very moment. I have only recently held one in my palm and I was immediately struck by the strangeness of it, the way it felt in my hand, unfurling, surprisingly weighty. And then it suddenly changed, and was seemingly constructed of bone.

  I like the way Gavin Hunt presses the length of it up against me, so large and long it reaches my bellybutton. A quivering bow. A slender branch. A telegraph pole built for me! I like the way it presses up against my secret lips, the fragrant warmth it creates in the privacy of my pants.

  My best friend is Pamela Crockett, whose mother is half Aboriginal. Pam lives out at the Aboriginal housing estate with her seven brothers and sisters. Pam’s dad was a blow-in from Sydney, a sailor or a forester, anyway, some Irish fellow who got her mum pregnant and then shot through. There are a lot of half-Irish, half-Aboriginal people on the estate. Pam reckons the Irish are very similar to the Aboriginals and that’s why they get on—they both love myths and stories, music and drinking. All Pam’s brothers and sisters have different fathers, except for the first three, Clarrie and Arthur and George, whose dad was Mr Ryan, who was Irish too but died young of drink. Pam’s mum drinks too, till her blue eyes turn marbled and opaque, otherworldly like a woman of visions.

  Pam is very pretty, with large round blue eyes like her mum, heavily lashed, and malt-coloured skin. She gets a lot of stick from the other kids (especially Stephen Asmus who calls her Chockie Bickie or Vegemite Features or the Boong). Mum doesn’t like me going out to see her at home, believing all Aboriginals are drunks and/or have loose morals (actually I have seen a lot of drunk people out there but I would never tell her, and Pam’s sister Jenny is only fourteen and she’s pregnant).

  Anyway, Pam and I spend hours talking about penises, both of us crammed into the dark of the cupboard at the back of the classroom, hidden by a curtain. The room is never locked and we go there every lunchtime, hidden, alone. She calls me Ressidacay and I call her Ampay or just plain Amp (we speak igpay atinlay—Pig Latin—and it’s the first part of our names in igpay atinlay).

  Amp likes them too, penises I mean, their ever-changing properties, their scientific mastery over matter. ‘Roger’s is very fat,’ she tells me, ‘ittlelay utbay ickthay.’

  Amp is going with Roger Price, the school captain. This has given her a certain cachet among the other kids, and even Stephen Asmus has to watch his mouth around Roger. It seems to me that if you are pretty, people are more likely to forgive you for being Aboriginal—Amp says it is a well-known fact that the light-skinned, prettier kids from the settlement are the first to be picked for fostering.

  Roger Price shaves and already looks like a man; Amp says his pubic hair is thick as sheep’s wool.

  ‘He likes it when I kiss his chest,’ Amp says, which we both consider daring. To touch a live penis, as both of us recently have, is so wildly implausible, so dangerous, so against every law, that it is barely within the realm of imagination. Girls simply do not do such things; as far as we know, besides Amp’s sister Jenny, we are the only girls in the school to have seen one. It is boys who own the kingdom of sex, who are free to roam its furthest boundaries. Girls are barred from its glorious gates and any girl who dares to venture inside will come to a Bad End, like Jenny Crockett. Jenny is going to a single mother’s home in the country, but only because the welfare are making her.

  So far for us, though, there is no anticipatory mistake in sight and Amp and I suffer our sins gladly: we know the might of watching a previously powerless finger reduce nascent men to blood and water. We feel the exhilarating charge of our hands, our lips, our tongues; we understand ourselves to be sources of influence. We love, too, the heat of our own skins, the heavy, swollen feel of our secret lips, the sweet trance of kissing on and on.

  While Amp is talking in the half-black of the cupboard, her foot is sliding slowly towards me; we are facing each other, backs to either side of the cupboard wall, our knees drawn up hard. I can feel Amp’s foot creeping, inching, falling, along the floor, coming towards me. Can’t Amp keep her knees up? Is the floor slippery? Does she even know? Does she realise her foot in its gym shoe is creeping towards the dark of my legs, towards my bottom, my secret lips, that her shoe is headed directly for my most private centre?

  Heartbeat like a bat; I cannot move; Amp’s shoe makes a squeaking sound on the wood. Flooded with blood, desire, refusal, panic: both want the meeting and do not.

  Steps coming; Miss Petersen opens the curtains, we are discovered.

  ‘What are you girls doing?’

  But we are her favourite students, her girls full of promise, her angelhe
arts of paint and words.

  ‘Come on, out. You know you’re not supposed to be in here. Quick, before someone else finds you. Shoo!’

  And we are out the door, into the light; the cupboard, the foot, the slide gone.

  We do not speak of it but at night I think about that slow creep towards my centre and I know this: I am christened sex, I am a miracle of light and desire, the world is a tender, soft place of boys and girls, and I am home.

  I have taken to this flushed, blood-filled thriving place as if I was born to it, which I am, I am.

  Not long after, I am getting ready for school, folding up a clean handkerchief to put in my pocket, when my father comes into the kitchen. I have written a love letter to Gavin Hunt and I suddenly see it there on the bench, folded up, next to my lunch, plain for everyone to see.

  He will not pick it up. He will not pick it up.

  But he does. He picks it up while I am still standing there folding my handkerchief.

  There is a loud silence while he reads my words. A swollen, ringing silence in which I hear the ticking of the clock, the sound of the sea, or the hosing sound of my own blood.

  I know every word in the note because I have re-written it seventeen times. I used special black ink, my finest arts, the throb, throb, throb of my blood.

  DON’T SHOW THIS TO ANYONE!

  Dear Gavin,

  I’m sorry about saying that I didn’t care if you went out with Shirley Mainwaring. I do care, but sometimes I say the opposite of what I really feel. I don’t know why I do it and now you’ll probably cut me because of it. I love you, Gavin Hunt. I love the way you’ve got pointy eye teeth and amazing brown eyes and I especially love the way that P thing in your pants springs to attention as if I was its captain. Please don’t go out with Shirley Mainwaring, pretty please with sugar on top? Don’t go out with Shirley Mainwaring, marry me! (Joke) Can you speak igpay atinlay (Pig Latin)—or is it only girls? Ampay (Pam) and I speak it all the time—I’ll teach you if you like. (It’s words with the first letter taken off and put at the end—with ‘ay’ added on. Some words don’t change, they just have ‘ay’ tacked on, like ‘anday’ for ‘and’ and ‘ayay’ for ‘a’.)

  Iay ovelay ouyay (easyay isntay itay?).

  Ovelay, Ressidacay

  XXXXXXXX OOOOOOOOO

  EMEMBERAY—ONTDAY HOWSAY HISTAY OTAY ANYONEAY!

  For a long time now my father has not touched me, not in caresses, not in hugs, not with his hands. When I grew breasts and hair and my beautiful face I became sulphurous to him, something destructive and dangerous. It was as though I had sprouted fangs and a tail; he flinched when I touched him, as if burned. His temper has grown even worse around me; he cannot seem to bear looking into my eyes.

  ‘Get to your room,’ he says now in a low, mean voice. ‘Now!’

  I walk fast, I have to walk right past him, and when I do I instinctively raise my arm in self-protection.

  ‘Dorothy!’ he shouts to my mother as I pass. ‘Dorothy! Bring me the strap!’

  I am going to get strapped! I am going to be belted with his long black leather belt. I am fifteen years old, brim full of sex and beauty, and I am going down at the hands of my father.

  I am in my room, waiting for him to open the door, my fifteen-year-old heart thrashing in its bony cave.

  As he opens the door and comes towards me I vow that I will not cry.

  I will escape.

  I will be free.

  I will spread my bounty far and wide.

  Watch: I will arise.

  Sydney, 1941

  You are not going to believe this—SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES HAVE MOVED IN NEXT DOOR!! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came home—I literally stopped in my tracks and my jaw must have been nearly hanging to the floor because the sight on the landing outside my room was unbelievable—dwarves or midgets, very small men all different ages, dozens of them, swarming all over the corridor, and this woman with a basket over her arm, opening the door to the big flat opposite mine.

  ‘You’ll catch flies like that,’ said this tall woman in a long red skirt and a tiny apron and black hair done up like Snow White. I shut my mouth.

  ‘Hello, young lady,’ came a voice from the floor and I looked down to see the sweetest old man’s face on a body the size of a six-year-old. ‘Jack Delaney, otherwise known as Sleepy,’ he said, extending his hand.

  I put down my shopping (bread, the newspaper for the job ads) and shook his hand. ‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘We are your new neighbours and we promise to be models of propriety.’

  ‘If you can keep them away from the drink,’ said Snow White, opening the door. Several of the dwarves rushed inside; Sleepy stood to one side and gave a gracious bow. ‘Drunken dwarves are not a pretty sight. I’m Beryl Markham, sweetheart, of Beryl And Her Marvellous Midgets.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,’ I said, following Sleepy and Beryl inside.

  ‘We did a special show for some boys out at Ingleburn,’ she said. ‘Care for a cuppa? This wig is hot as Hades and I’m dying for a wee.’

  She disappeared before I could answer. ‘Let me take those,’ said Jack, taking the bags I was still holding.

  I have always coveted the big flat—three bedrooms, a lovely black and white kitchen, but the best thing is the double bay windows at the front overlooking Rushcutters Bay. There was a young married couple here before and I only saw the view once—then I stood for a long time looking at the loop of the bay with its working boats, the dark mysterious green of the Moreton Bay figs in the park, and the palm trees dotted here and there. I thought it must be a bit like France.

  ‘Well, hello gorgeous,’ said a voice from behind me and I turned around. Standing there was a dwarf so handsome that if he had been six foot tall he would have been a movie star. He looked like Alan Ladd, all dark eyes and eyebrows and white flashing teeth. He had the most beautiful mouth. (What exactly is the difference between a dwarf and a midget anyway?)

  ‘Er, hello, who are you? I mean, how do you do?’ I said, flailing hopelessly, because I was really thrown—he was so good-looking it broke my heart. I don’t mean it was more sad he was a dwarf because he was good-looking, more than the others I mean, just that his good looks somehow made me see straight away his humanity. I saw that he was just like me, immediately. I saw that he was just like me, only smaller.

  ‘Ray Loosley,’ he said. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Kathy Elgin,’ I said, shaking his hand.

  Beryl Markham came back into the room, revealed as a bottle blonde of statuesque proportions. ‘Ah, that’s better. There was so much wee inside the old bladder I could have put out the Great Fire of London. Now, tea? Crumpets? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘This is Kathy, love,’ said Ray, walking over to Beryl and smacking her lightly on the bottom. ‘She’s going to give you a run for your money—she’s stealing my heart as we speak.’

  I blushed—were they lovers? My head was immediately filled with impossible scenes. She was SO tall!

  ‘Now, now, Miss Kathy, don’t you worry, I won’t pounce on you just yet.’ I smiled at him—he really was very good-looking—and sat down at the table in the chair that had been offered.

  ‘Where do you do your shows?’ I asked the old dwarf Jack, who had pulled up a chair to sit next to me.

  ‘We do the Tivoli circuit mainly,’ he said, ‘but with the war we are doing shows far and wide. War increases the appetite for lots of things.’

  There seemed to be people all over the place. ‘Do you all live here?’

  ‘Three bedrooms are all we need,’ Jack said.

  ‘And a spare couch for dalliances,’ added Ray, offering me a cigarette. ‘We’ve always lived around the Cross. The last place we stayed three years.’

  ‘Till that old crow tried to make a wartime profit,’ said someone else, who bowed his head at me and said,‘Clem Hogan, aka Grumpy.’

  ‘I’ll sa
y. You can’t speak to him before eleven,’ said someone else, and then they were all there, around the table, and Beryl came in with the crumpets and the tea. ‘A woman’s work, etcetera,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I do it.’

  ‘It’s because you love us,’ said Ray. ‘Milk, sugar?’

  They were all just ordinary men, some came from the country, one from a town just near us at Kurrajong Bay; most of them had gone into circuses at a young age. They were all fiercely patriotic and believed themselves to be doing war work, not fighting or giving their blood, but helping to keep spirits alive. After a while I even forgot that they were dwarves, or rather the knowledge of it moved right to the back of my mind—oh, it was SO interesting! Some of them had parents who had adopted them out, or else shunted them off to family somewhere else; others were kept at home but treated badly. Ray’s mum, though, had loved him from the first and told him that everybody was the same inside. She had taught him to be proud.

  ‘And look at me now. The star of a circus show, playing Happy,’ he said, his mouth twisted.

  ‘Now, now, chin up,’ said Beryl, ‘there are men out there who are dying.’

  ‘All six feet of them,’ he said.

  I could hardly sleep when I finally got back to my room. Beryl had cooked up a huge pan of something called spaghetti bolognaise which an Italian friend taught her to cook. He was a magician, from Milan, and now she knows all about Italian food. It was really delicious and I had two glasses of red Italian wine, called chianti, which was divine! I thought: if they could see me now! Katherine Elgin, resident of Kings Cross, sitting around a table with seven dwarves and a peroxide blonde. I am fascinated by Miss Beryl Markham, absolutely fascinated—what kind of woman ends up spending her life cooking and cleaning for all those men, even if they are small? Oh, I can’t wait to find out absolutely everything about her!!!