The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  Audrena was always watching for a chance to get under Trilby’s guard. Her tongue shot venom wherever she knew it would sting most.

  ‘Better not set ya heart on no office job,’ she said now. ‘You could be the best typewriter in the world an not get a job here.’

  ‘Typiste!’ Trilby flicked back.

  ‘All I’m saying, ya want one a them jobs you’ll have ta go some other place where they don’t know ya got colour in ya.’ Her glance went spitefully to Trilby’s dark gold skin.

  ‘That’s what I’m going to do,’ Trilby said proudly. And in that second decided to do just this. Of course! She should have thought of it for herself. What she must do must be to leave everyone behind her; begin a new fresh life of her own. The thought of it excited her. With a sudden uprush of spirits she sprinted up the beach, turned a somersault and landed laughing and breathless in the odoriferous scratchy seaweed where a group of boys waited for them.

  She had chosen this spot herself, because it was far from the popular beaches and usually deserted. Nearly every morning a crowd of youngsters swam and played about on the beach. There were dozens of tight-packed seaweed balls to throw at each other. Sometimes they formed a circle and played a regular game. The boys wrestled and fought and showed off their strength, and when everyone was tired they could lie on the warm, wet seaweed and talk, with the suffocating smell of it deep in their nostrils. When the sun became too hot there was the sea.

  This morning they made straight for the water. Audrena and Blanchie shrieked with pleasure, dived deep and came up with seaweed in their hair. Trilby swam out a little way and turned on her back. Through half-shut eyes she watched Phyllix follow her. She smiled, satisfied. She waited until he was within a couple of feet of her then dived cleanly beneath him. The two raced for the beach.

  Argosy Bell and his brother Nipper, who were staying with the Beemans, threw themselves enthusiastically amongst the laughing girls, upsetting them, grabbing their ankles, ducking them unmercifully. Two more young girls who ran down to the water’s edge and stood there pretending fear were seized and dragged in by their feet. Like young animals they kicked and fought, giggled and splashed; smooth-skinned, lithe, their eyelashes sticking together in wet points, their round pink tongues showing between their square white teeth.

  Phyllix fitted his hands to Trilby’s waist and pulled her slowly, deliciously, through the coolness. In the water the feel of someone’s hands on your body was nothing. It was when Phyllix stopped pulling and let Trilby’s body drift close to his, when he bent his head so that his cheek brushed wetly against hers, when she felt the intimate warmth of his breath, that Trilby was suddenly shaken. Her own breath caught in her throat. She liked the feeling even as she grew wary. But those golden eyes so near her own—under their level look Trilby found she had no power to drop her own gaze. Each gazed deep, and there was no holding back.

  Blanchie called, and obediently they left the water for the warmth of the piled seaweed.

  ‘You nearly broke my leg.’ Audrena pouted, watching Nipper from the corner of her eye whilst she stroked and smoothed her outstretched leg.

  ‘Want me ta do that?’ Nipper said slyly, reaching out a hand.

  Audrena whisked the leg beneath her haunches. ‘No, I do not. See?’

  Nipper slid his hand further towards her leg. ‘I can fix that leg easy.’

  Audrena threw her head back and her voice husked over with sweetness. ‘You’d like to, wouldn’t ya? If I let ya.’

  Seated a few feet away Trilby watched the little scene with calm eyes. This was a sort of play-acting to which she was new. Nipper was a great one for touching—running his hand over your leg, slipping an arm high up round your waist. With other girls—not with her. Trilby could not let him. His hands were hot and wet, his breath smelled bad and sometimes his body smelled bad too, as if it were never washed clean.

  This was one of the things about which Audrena teased her most; what Audrena called her stupid hands-off attitude to boys. But Audrena could inflict no hurt here. Never, never would she let anyone touch her if the touch brought her no pleasure but only loathing. Not for any amount of experience. Yet she was curious. If it were only half so good as the girls said…She turned her head away from the goings-on, caught Phyllix’s gaze fixed squarely upon her and was again unable to look away.

  ‘I’m going ta sleep,’ Blanchie yawned, burrowing her head into her arms. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Out late last night?’ Albany teased. ‘With Tom?’

  ‘Not Tom,’ Blanchie said innocently, and was just as innocently surprised at the laughter this brought forth from the boys.

  Trilby clasped her hands tightly round her knees and let her own head droop forward. Behind the screen of her gold-tipped hair she watched Phyllix and tried to understand her feeling for him.

  She liked him, but why? He was not so good to look upon as most of the others. He had a thin delicate frame. When he walked there was a touch of the stalker in him. A soft-footed easy lope. His features were not well formed. The gravity of his expression was carried to sternness by the dark thick slant of his eyebrows and his wide, thin-lipped, unsmiling mouth. His eyes were like the eyes of a cat, tilted at the corners, tawny, the pupils mere pin-points. Perhaps it was those strange eyes that drew her. Phyllix did not laugh easily, or play the fool like the others. He seemed a little apart from them always. Almost, Trilby thought irritably, as if he would not bother himself with their foolishness.

  Nobody knew who was his father, least of all Phyllix’s mother. Older folk remembered much about his mother. A happy one, that. Certainly not the kind to sit on the outskirts if there was any fun to be had. It was likely that Phyllix’s father had been a sailor or a deck-hand off a boat. Enough of them berthed here. His thin nose with its narrow nostrils was more Indian than aboriginal. But there was his skin, the smooth brownness of it blotched with tawny freckles.

  He was still watching her, Trilby saw through her hair. She lay back, pretending to sleep, and was conscious of a sudden deep wish that these others would go away, all of them, and leave her alone with Phyllix.

  Egoline Barclay squealed. Someone had thrown a seaweed ball at her. She picked it up, ready to throw it back. There was a scatter of sand and seaweed. Someone tripped over Blanchie’s hot sunburned body, and she came to her feet with a yell of anguish. She caught Nipper by an ankle as he rose and he went sprawling. Instantly, he was upon her, manhandling her into the water, seizing his chance to lay hands on a female body. And the game was on.

  Trilby looked after them, pretending absorption in their flying figures, conscious only of Phyllix.

  Blanchie screamed madly until water closed her mouth.

  Trilby knew when Phyllix changed his position. She peeped through her lashes and the yellow eyes looked straight into hers.

  ‘You coming down town tonight?’ Phyllix asked softly.

  ‘What d’you want to know for?’

  ‘You and me might go for a bit of a walk. It’s nice walking along the beach at night. Nobody about.’

  ‘What do I want to go for a walk with you for?’

  She dragged a ribbon of seaweed from the tangled mass of it. It was almost the colour of Phyllix’s eyes.

  ‘All right!’ she answered his demanding silence. ‘I’ll come down for a little while.’

  ‘People fishing,’ Blanchie called breathlessly. ‘Come and see, you two.’

  The beach was not deserted any more. Looking along it, Trilby saw the figures of three people, a woman and two men, busy about a net.

  ‘Let’s come and see how many they get,’ Audrena said eagerly. ‘Might give us a few if they can’t carry them all.’ She laughed wildly and fled up the beach.

  The rest trailed after her. They might as well have a look. Nobody could stop you from looking. The net was half out now. The men were completing a half circle with it, their steps slowed, the pull of its weight showing in their down-bent heads and straining backs.


  ‘They won’t get anything,’ Phyllix murmured. ‘Too early! When the sun goes down, that’s the time.’

  But they had caught something. Trilby saw. There was a sudden threshing in the net. The men waded faster, hurrying to reach the beach before their catch escaped. The woman there waited, tense and excited, her clenched fists beneath her chin, her back to the coloured youngsters. Audrena grinned, made a wicked gesture, and walked over to her. She was close behind the woman before she asked: ‘D’you think I an my friends could have some of your fish if you catch a lot?’

  The woman’s back stiffened. She did not turn her head. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’

  ‘We’d pay for them, if you wanted to sell some.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak to my husband about that.’

  Audrena made a face, then swaggered grinning back to the others. ‘Says we’ll have to ask her ole man,’ she called loudly.

  ‘Silly damn fool,’ Phyllix said coolly, though there was heat in his eyes. Some of the others laughed. There was a long wait, whilst the net was dragged up on to the beach. Then everyone ran to see the black threshing body it held. They saw a giant stingray, the curved tail long and forked at the end. A vicious tail it was, trying desperately to attack. The hooded eyes of the stingray rose and fell with its breathing. The big black body heaved helplessly in the meshes of the net and the black seal-smooth skin rippled like water.

  ‘Damn!’ one of the men said ruefully. ‘I thought we had a good haul there.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it? Throw it back, or leave it here?’ the woman asked nervously.

  ‘Better kill it. That’s a dangerous beast there. And it’s too close to the beach where the kiddies swim,’ the man answered. He took out a knife. The other man hooked the slippery tail. Once, twice, three times the man with the knife slashed before he cut right through it.

  ‘That’s the sting gone,’ he said with satisfaction, as he hacked at it.

  Trilby’s eyes were large. How did this Thing feel without its tail? Both portions of the body twisted in agony. The eyes sank despairingly down, only to rise again in a frenzy.

  ‘Perhaps if you push that stick through the eyes…,’ the man suggested.

  A heavy stick was thrust down through the rubbery mass of the creature’s eyes. But life was still there, and now blood poured from the cut portions of its body, gushing quicker with every flailing movement.

  ‘Oh!’ the woman cried, clasping her mouth with both hands. ‘Oh!’

  The man stabbed again and again. More blood poured out from the mutilated parts. The eyes continued to labour up and down, up and down, despite their wounds.

  The woman looked furiously at the group of coloured youngsters, and her eyes were hard and hurt. ‘These niggers,’ she shrilled, ‘you can never get away from them.’

  Trilby did not even hear her. She had had enough. She wheeled and skimmed off down the beach. She flung herself down on the seaweed again, hid her face in her arms and saw again the anguished eyes rising and falling, the blood gushing out to stain the white sand with red.

  The others drifted back and sank down beside her.

  ‘What ya want to run away for, old softie?’ Audrena asked, amusement in her voice.

  ‘If they leave that tail behind,’ Phyllix mused, ‘I might pick it up. Good meat in that—like whiting.’

  Trilby jerked upright. ‘No!’ she said tautly. ‘No!’ And her eyes, too, were hard and hurt.

  NINE

  A moon the colour of water sailed frigidly through the tenebrous sky, shedding no beam of light on the beach nor on the black moving water lapping insistently at the line of the shore.

  ‘You all right?’ Phyllix asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Trilby said shortly. She was finding no magic in the night. Instead, she felt like a fool. To be stalking along this beach alone with Phyllix, on guard against being caught up into something she might not want.

  Phyllix reached out and caught her hand. His own was warm and dry, and its grip was firm. After a while he slid his hand around so that his thumb was on her palm.

  Trilby’s loose thoughts, like dropped stitches, were knitted up into a single thrilling awareness of his touch.

  Gently and rhythmically, Phyllix stroked her palm. ‘Nice bein quiet for a change, isn’t it?’

  Like steel to a magnet, Trilby swayed closer to him. Here was the magic! It had been waiting, ready to leap to life at the touch of his hand. Yet there was shyness in her now. Wantonly, she dissipated the sweetness with words.

  ‘Did you take the tail of the stingray, Phyllix?’

  ‘You told me not to, didn’t you?’

  She sensed that he was smiling. ‘I thought they were awful, those people. I hate to see anything helpless. Specially something like that stingray that was so big and strong. They should have put it back in the water.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They don’t hurt anything—stingrays.’

  ‘Why do you think about it?’

  ‘I won’t, any more.’ For a moment she was lonely because he had not shared her pain. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Along here a way. Don’t you like walking?’

  ‘I don’t mind walking with you.’ The words came out unwillingly. Her shyness was back again.

  ‘You never gone for a walk with a feller before?’

  ‘Not just me.’

  ‘I think you never been with a feller—any way at all. Have you?’ His face was turned towards her, and though they kept on walking it was as if everything stood still, like a moment out of the wholeness of time to stay forever fixed in their memories.

  ‘No!’ Trilby breathed. ‘I never wanted to.’

  ‘I could tell,’ Phyllix said expressionlessly. ‘You can always tell.’

  Trilby thought of Audrena. A small surge of triumph gave her face gaiety. After tonight she would know all that Audrena knew. She need no longer feel like a silly kid when Audrena talked of fellers the way she did. Nor try to carry off her ignorance with a high hand. She dwelt with a little wonder on Blanchie. Even Blanchie knew what this was all about.

  Noonah came into her mind as well. And with Noonah came more uncertainty. At the mission, there had been strict supervision of the elder boys and girls. At night they had been locked into their dormitories, and there had always been someone from the staff to keep an eye on them. Even so, things had happened. There was that time, her thoughts roved back, when a lot of them had gone for a walk and come across a swimming-hole. First a boy had disappeared and emerged into view splashing and laughing, leaving his clothes on the muddy bank, and that had started them off. One by one the fellers and the girls had flung aside their clothes and gone slipping and sliding down into the pool. And that was where Mr Gordon had found them all—or nearly all. A couple had disappeared. And another couple had been about to sneak off when the panting and fuming superintendent of the mission had caught up with them. Crikey, what a row! And what fun it had been! But afterwards, she and Noonah had agreed that the two girls had been stupid fools to go off like that, getting themselves into all that fuss and bother, having to submit to being punished like kids. And Trilby had thought contemptuously that all that sort of thing could very well wait until there was no danger of someone tailing you up and making a fool of you in front of everyone.

  Well, and here it was, and she supposed she had a right to please herself what she did now she was home. She flicked the thought of Noonah from her mind. She felt as superior to Noonah as she had felt towards those two girls who had gone into this thing so greedily and unthinkingly. There was a time, and this was it.

  ‘I bet you have,’ she teased Phyllix, sure of herself now, feeling superior even to Phyllix.

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Gone with girls.’

  ‘It’s different,’ Phyllix frowned, ‘for fellers.’ He looked down at her again. ‘Wish I hadn’t, sometimes.’

  There was magic again. Their feet slowed. In an opening up of warmth and w
onder, Trilby claimed the night as her own. The moon, ripening slowly to pale gold. The blackness of the water, changing now to rippling velvet. The white beach lit by the pale moonlight. It was all for her, and it was all hers.

  To their left as they walked were the mounding bushes, etching themselves grey against the sky. ‘Let’s sit here for a while,’ Trilby begged, and pulled Phyllix over to their shelter.

  ‘This is good,’ Phyllix said, with a sigh, stretching himself out on the cool hard sand.

  Trilby sat alongside him, her ankles crossed, her chin in her hands, dreamily content. The air moved clean and tangy, gently cool against her hot face.

  ‘You like to be away from the others?’ Phyllix asked softly.

  ‘I like to be with the crowd better,’ Trilby teased him.

  ‘They talk too much,’ Phyllix said disinterestedly. ‘Noise—that’s all.’

  ‘Why do you go round with them if you don’t like them?’

  Phyllix moved his shoulders. ‘Have to have someone to go round with, I suppose. Besides, you’re there.’

  ‘What’s different about me?’ Trilby fished.

  ‘You don’t yap.’ Trilby laughed delightedly. ‘And besides…’

  ‘Besides—what?’

  ‘You damn well know. You’ve got em all beat. That Audrena, she’s jealous. They’re all a bit jealous.’

  Trilby’s heart lifted. Of course she knew it, but it was good to have Phyllix say it.

  A dark figure appeared, strolling close to the water’s edge on the hard wet sand. Trilby put out a hand, pressed Phyllix’s shoulder, warning him to be silent.

  It was fun to sit there, themselves unseen, and to watch as this man walked by. Everything was fun.

  Phyllix reached for her hand and held it, and she knew he was sharing something of what she felt. They watched the man out of sight.