“Don’t follow him,” said Mrs Blount. “When a young man goes nutty, you’ve got to let him go. But take my tip, he’d be better if he were married and settled down. All that stuff he talks only means one thing, he needs the responsibility of a wife and kiddies. He’d make a lovely father.”
“I suppose so,” answered Catherine, “but it’s hard and he’s rather queer.”
“You’re both very queer,” responded Mrs Blount, laughing fondly.
Catherine, cut to the heart, said:
“He’s never been unkind to me before these last few months.”
“He didn’t like your friendship with—er—er—your friend, you know, dear! Brothers are so foolish; they look after their sisters like little girls.”
“You’re a nice woman but an idiot,” said Catherine. “At any rate, good-bye. I won’t go home. He won’t, certainly, and I can’t go and lie in a comfortable bed, with mother bringing hot soup to make sure I sleep, while Michael’s gadding in all sorts of corners.”
“Sleep here!”
“No, rather in the park!” She laughed in her high voice and banged the gate. Her footsteps resounded in the silent street.
But Catherine was wrong. Michael left Withers at the railway station and went straight home and went to bed. His mother came in several times during the night with shaded lamp to be sure he was still there. Balm was laid on her heart at each sight of his face. She thought:
“It’s so unusual; perhaps at last he’s come home, my wandering boy.” She went back to bed murmuring to herself, with tears clotting the ragged lashes of her old eyes. “So much trouble,” she whispered to herself, as she lay awake through the night, “a good boy, all the same.”
But Catherine walked by street, lane, lamp-post, policeman, picket fence, suburban church, dark shut factory and green graveyard, passing through several sleeping suburbs until she had lost herself. Her heavy-soled flat shoes clapped on the asphalt under dead windows and closed doors. She had come out without money, having quitted her job in the laundry the day before without being paid. She had spent her last penny on the fare at the launch-picnic and had counted on having Michael take her home or lend her something. She got her bearings at last, and after walking another half-hour came to a shelter in a very poor section, where benches were provided, on which one can sit, stand, lie, or do anything one wishes. There was a dirty lavatory on a landing, a wash-basin, and a bench with a gas-ring on which the vagrant women there could cook anything they liked, if they had anything to cook. In the morning they could work for the charitable institution and thus earn their breakfast; there was no reason for them to starve. Lying on the bench, at rest, because with the lowest and lost, with the degraded, unambitious and debauched, Catherine reviewed her life. But there is no need to go over all that, with her. It had always been the same, though the scenery had been different. She remembered a strange scene she had seen from Baruch’s window the evening she had been there. A Chinaman was rolling in the dirt of the backyard with a filthily dressed middle-aged woman. Was it this afternoon she had seen the same woman walking in the street down by the quays, accompanied by a sailor, and carrying a black bag, a bottle of milk, a bottle of beer, and with a large, round maternal belly? Thinking of this, tears began to course down Catherine’s face and she murmured to herself:
“In the lowest places I find my answers: I’ve fought all my life for male objectives in men’s terms. I am neither man nor woman, rich nor poor, elegant nor worker, philistine nor artist. That’s why I fight so hard and suffer so much and get nowhere. And how vain ambition seems when you look at it, unambitious.” She looked round the room, lighted by moonlight filtering through a faint mist, and saw strange attitudes, a large hip bulging through black clothing, a bag, a bonneted head, a cadaverous young face with disordered hair. A baby’s faint wail began and one of the women rose. She sat directly between Catherine and the window. Catherine saw her bent head, straggling hair and full blouse. She gave her breast, grey in the gloom, to the crying infant. The women stirred and protested at the noise, which ceased again. Catherine sat up on her bench and looked at the young woman, until she had finished.
8
Michael recalls his adventures, lets out a secret or two, goes to
church, is advised to marry, visits his relatives, sees the early-
morning fishing in Fisherman’s Bay, and brings the chapter
solemnly to an end.
It was Sunday, his mother’s favourite day; she had been up since five o’clock pottering in the garden. Convinced that Michael had come back to the fold, she smiled at him all through breakfast and began to congratulate him on being home again. The Mayor had given her a hint that week about the dangers of subversive company, and the iniquity of the striking seamen. Michael was known to frequent the Folliots’, prominent in the strike. Mrs Baguenault took her son into the garden, and when they reached the well, said:
“Are you better now, Michael, more settled?”
“It seems so, sensibly improved, there is no comparison. When I first came home from France, I was at odds with everyone: even last night, I was with a crowd of young frauds, frothing at the mouth with heavy sententiousness and sensuality. I realised that I could get nowhere with them. So I came home. Perhaps you can get me out of a mess, Mother?”
“Michael dear, Mother will help you: you’re a big man, aren’t you? but only my little poppet to me. Poppet, mother could die of joy to see you here again, and not with that worried face you usually have.”
“Well, don’t die. What am I going to do?”
“My baby! Well, perhaps if you would do something at home a little while each day in the daytime. If the Returned Soldiers’ League can’t do much, you can always have preference over other men by saying you’ve been to the front and been wounded. There’s the Education Department—they’re glad to get returned soldiers.”
“H’m! with my record; the brutes crawl all over me.”
“I don’t worry about your future: you’ll get on. Don’t you remember, Poppet, how you were always studying and drawing too? You used to do beautiful designs, too. You remember the time you went to the Technical College for a competitive entrance examination: you all had to draw a fret pattern, and yours was the best? There are lots of things you can do. Oh dear, I always used to say to Father, when he wanted you to go out and play football, Don’t worry Michael, he is immersed in his books.” She looked brightly and amorously up into his eyes and rubbed her cheek against his sleeve. “Such a rough sleeve: my little Poppet used to wear velvet suits, think of that!”
Michael frowned pettishly at the baby-name. “For the love of Mike, that’s myself, don’t call me Poppet: I’ll brain you, Mother, if you do. But I remember the rest. Well, what suggestions have you, Mother?”
“The girls are both going to America to study. And Catherine . . .” she sighed. “But if you are with us Father and I could be at rest in our old age, even if everything doesn’t go well and we aren’t able to leave you much money. You know, Father lost a great deal in this amusement pier company. You could live with us and look after the financial end, the mortgages, the rents, and so on. Later, when you feel like it, you could find a nice quiet girl, a home girl, and get married. Father and I have been looking over the girls we know. There’s Pauline, Mrs Astrid’s girl; she’s young yet, but you wouldn’t get married for a couple of years. There’s no hurry about that. But your father is not a young man. We were talking about you last night. You can imagine that it seemed like a message from God when you came home unexpectedly. I said to Father, God has answered us. Then, we don’t insist, of course. If you have some girl in mind, a good woman who would make you a good wife, bring her home, dear, and you can settle down right away. You could stay with us. Father and I would give you the top floor, or half of it, and have a wall put in. It would warm my old heart. A new daughter. I am an old woman. I may die any day; I would like to hold my grandchild on my knee.”
“Well, I don
’t want a kid. Why should I bring a kid into the world to live through sixty years of troubles, when he can avoid it all and never know what he’s missed?”
“That’s childish, Michael. You were always so insensitive to others’ feelings when a boy, although sensitive in other respects. At any rate, a man like you wants a good wife to settle him, to soften him.”
“Bad women do it quick enough.”
“What’s that I hear?”
“Mother, be a realist. Don’t try to satisfy your grandmotherly cravings through me, I don’t want it. I am making my way slowly out of a mess. I was never too strong in the upper storey; they muddled me completely on the other side. You know one lung is baddish, and I am restless and feverish because of it. Leave me alone, there’s a good girl; you always want to settle people. It’s so stupid. And you have always been so unquiet about me, fluttering about me like an anxious hen. Even when you say nothing I know you are sitting there, fearing, hoping, brooding on things I know nothing of, talking to yourself in your bedroom and kitchen. It’s too queer, it’s upsetting. Women when they get old are frightening—no wonder men believed in witches. Even a young woman like Cath—if a young woman curses a man or hates him, she does it like a witch and her face is drawn like a harpy’s: there is something in their sharp, transparent faces and bright eyes: queer breed—bad company for a man . . . Listen . . . did you love my father?”
“Michael, what makes you ask such a thing?”
“When I was a child you used to brood over me and suddenly clasp me to your breasts. It embarrassed me to feel the soft round flesh inside your blouse, it quite turned my stomach. I wanted to run away from you. But you did it so, crying sometimes, that I once or twice knew something was wrong. And I knew Jimmie Halland was adopted and his adoptive mother mushed over him because she was barren. I thought it must be that, but couldn’t make it out.”
She got out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Mother, please, please.”
He left her and began walking up and down in the back garden. She went slowly, with her slight stoop, to the veranda, and looked at him bitterly: “A hard boy.”
He knew her comment, having often heard it, and bit his lip. It was his habit to get momently dark or gay. He came to the steps of the veranda where she sat, and stood half in the red and blue light shot through a coloured-glass window, with his eyes cast down, fretting the boards with his boot-toe. He laughed; and became sombre again.
“Your family were a lousy lot, never knew their own minds; that’s what’s the matter with me. Look at Grandfather trotting round the world with a change of socks in a rucksack, leaving his wife every third spring to go prospecting, or just globetrotting—feather-brained, unreliable: what did he get out of it all? Nothing; but he thought himself no end of a character. And look at the others, running about to prayer-meeting with their noses in the air, showing the whites of their eyes and dressed in black, getting their wives with child with their hats on their heads and a prayer book in one hand. And the last generation, your brother a holy jo, preaching and praying, and the distant relative who is a philosopher never heard of outside his university town—an idealist, peuh! In general, idealists—you don’t know what that means: it means having enough money to pay the baker without having to earn it, and—no sense of touch, like me.
“If you could only get a good, steady job, Michael dear, and stick to it, you would be happy. You soon get into the way of working regular hours; there is happiness in routine. All these ideas don’t mean anything, they only mean you’re nervous and worried because you have nothing to think of and think all day of your troubles. I am a woman and know what I’m talking about. And don’t sneer at my relatives, please. If they gave their wives many children, it was honest. They believed in God, they supported the State, they paid their bills, they were respected. They wouldn’t have understood a man like you who makes his friends in public-houses.”
Michael guffawed. “Gosh, all you say is so unreal. Mother; where have you lived all your life? In cotton-wool? You don’t exist.”
“It’s all right, don’t worry; I exist all right. I’ve had plenty of troubles . . .”
“Don’t tell me about Father’s early struggles, and about Catherine’s running away from school, etc. I know all that: that doesn’t help.”
“An honest man earning his daily bread is happy and doesn’t worry about things that don’t enter his work. Running with journalists and strike-leaders, and immoral riff-raff . . .”
The old lady bridled, looked to see Michael watching the sky dreamily over the fruit trees, nodded her head to herself and once more wiped her eyes. Michael smiled benevolently over her head, passed her his own large handkerchief, and said:
“You want to know about my girls?”
“If it’s something you can tell me, Michael.”
“No side, Mumma: if you don’t listen now, you’ll never hear.”
An intense curiosity brightened her face. “A son can talk to his mother.”
He made an offhand gesture.
“Do you know the fate of an idealist? He has no sense of touch. He is in a solitary cell; he watches the country through the grille. The birds fly past, the people work, sow, harvest, bring their wives and sons to labour the fields, the harness jingles, the storms fly, they sleep at night. His hair gets yellow with never sleeping, and the gaoler—even his step never comes near. The spiders pattern his clothing with their webs, his footprints are only marked on the dust of the cell.”
His mother’s eye began to wander; she smoothed her dress.
“Into my cell three women came”—the old lady became as still as stone and lifted her bright eyes direct to his, which were cast aside—“the first undid the lock: I could have eaten the dirt she walked on; a girl like—I would have killed a man for her, and thought of doing it. The second—took me into the fields, but at night I slept in my cell; she was the nearest and the farthest away too. The third I met when I was far afield: it was a loveless adultery. I didn’t like it, I came back to the cell. I spoil everything I touch because I was born without hands—like poor Blount, for all practical purposes. To act is for me to do something awry, to stop the machinery, stick my heel through the scenery, gaff in the acting, forget my lines. What is the effect of all these desolatingly stupid dull acts on the mind of a man like me, do you think? You have no idea, a simple old woman: it is to alienate the spirit. You prefer to seek a world where these accidents don’t happen. Perhaps in an intrepid man even a crime is beautiful, deft, neat, and the most ghastly serves his purpose, but in an irresolute man like me the least thing goes astray and I am immediately surrounded by yelling faces of mockery. A little crime, like an adultery, grows apace once planted in the rich earthy world and mocks my barren soil with its majesty. It is fecund, worldly, better than me, it is something I feel too sick at heart to care about. I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to produce anything. My deeds and crimes—I have done some—are no more a part of me than things in the moon, but they do themselves through me and then destroy me, or having left me, leave a thin shell—you know, like the cast skin of the cicada crept from the earth. They cut me off from man and will not even leave me in my funambulism. I am too delicate, quiescent to benefit by my own fantasy. I have immense visions, and I can’t even be bothered looking at what is passing in my mind’s eye; I prefer to sleep. But one cannot sleep, so I swing like an empty bladder flapping in the air between this world and the netherlands.”
The old woman scrutinised him closely, as if he were a stranger sent by a friend.
“Why did I say that?” continued Michael, leaning his head on his hand. “When I was a boy I dreamed I was hung by the hair in space and swung over the earth in a sixty degrees arc. The earth swarmed with people who fought in a claypit and all fled from it when it became, a second later, a battlefield running with blood, a road or river ran by writhing with bodies and blood. But when I swung near, they were only penny ch
ina dolls with red cheeks like you put in the pudding. Nothing was real when I came near. And when I swung away, at the end of a pendulum, they came alive again in their blood and dirt. The wind blew on my body like a knife; they fought faster and faster and yet my body flew ever farther and farther away into unimaged space. It came from my heart; my life has been revealed to me in dreams. I remember hundreds of dreams, some of them dreamed in childhood. I would like to go on telling them all to you, it is such an ardent pleasure for me to talk about them; it is as if I were eating honey, and instead of clothes I wrapped myself in a vestment of sunlight. The veil is thin between me and the spinning chamber of the fates; when I die I will go there and dip my hands in the unwoven raw material of life, for once.”
He threw back his head and laughed; he took her by her hands and said:
“Really, Mother, I would love to do it. There is no joy I ever had like the joy I had this moment imagining it.”
“How foolishly you talk! There’s not a practical idea in your head.”
He bent over her and looked down at her, her grey hair, the wrinkles round the eyes and lips, the sunken temples. At the serious, tender look, she drew in her breath sharply but said nothing.
“Poor old Mother, poor old woman, with your cuckoo son, baffled that although he has no wits, he escapes your understanding, sorry you couldn’t have kept him always in your skirts. You understand nothing much, in an atheist age you still pray, you sit with a priest, you like to think of the time you will be underground with the termites, worms and unborn larvae, the roots of the exploring trees, the rivulets of rain seeking a bottom. You wander about cemeteries with a bunch of flowers, lovingly clearing gravestones, throwing flowers out of flowerpots, reading inscriptions, weeping over the memorials to wives and mothers, making your acquaintance with the dead so that you will have gossips there from the first day. You are happy; you have made yourself a hearth and home even amongst the dead. I must die soon and I hate it. You will be easily buried with a few shovelfuls of earth, because the cinders of all your years gone are on your head, but I—with my cold flame always replenished, I am sure I will walk at night.”
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 26