‘Onouphrios?’
‘He was the monk at Ayia Ekaterini. However he disgusted me, I liked to think that by serving him patiently it was a kind of penance which might in time lead to salvation. I wore the habit. I was Cassianí in those days.’
‘Try to sleep. Shall I bring you a cup of warm milk with some honey in it?’
‘No. You must have been reading the Cartland woman. I’ll try to think of my friend Bernadette. A dear soul. I was Benedict then.’
‘Aren’t you getting your Churches mixed?’
‘Oh, I’ve had my Roman interlude too. I’ve had to try everything.’
Her torch fades.
‘Everything. Do you hear? Of course you don’t want to listen to reason. Hilda Gray – a nail in one’s coffin.’
We meet next morning in the kitchen. I have got there before her.
‘I feel so refreshed.’ I could tell my cheeks were glowing like one of those apples in an expensive fruit shop.
‘Then you must have slept in spite of your determination not to.’
‘I must have. Yes, I did. I meditated on the Dormition, until I was uplifted.’
I had fixed myself a pot of porridge. Seeing it, Hilda made herself as narrow as possible before indulging in her tea and toast.
She has lowered her eyes. Is porridge dribbling down my chin? I try to explore with my tongue, to suck the stuff back, to avoid causing Hilda further distress.
I tell her – only on the spur of the moment, ‘I’m going into the city this morning – to do the shops, to see my lawyers, to …’
‘Do you think you’re up to it?’
The lawyers must have frightened her.
‘Why not? I’ve never felt healthier.’
She stands scuffling the crockery in the sink.
I set out. She watches me leave. Hilda would like to think she is my banker, but I have a little money put away, and take some of this in a chamois bag round my neck, under my simple frock – grey for a pilgrimage.
I swing along. On the bus everybody is looking at me. As I am a great observer of people we meet half-way. I smile at them, some, if not all, smile back. The disbelievers make me wonder whether my face looks naked because of its natural glow of health. I decide my first port of call must be a store where I can buy myself a lipstick.
The great store is humming with activity. Even with so many people to distract attention from eccentricity, it would have embarrassed me to dive down inside my dress and wrest a note from the chamois leather bag. Far simpler to help oneself to a lipstick in passing: so many of them, and practically unattended by the languid girls made up to promote their wares. No one is interested in my performance. I pass on with the lipstick in my hand and head for what is called the LADIES.
Nobody inside. I can let my imagination loose. I begin to sing, I shook the flowering almond tree … in honour of my Greek origins and attack my mouth with the new lipstick. It is of the bloodiest tone, far up the scale from the almond blossom of the song. Not incongruous really, when you think that blood may run from any Greek at any moment. As I smooth my parted lips against each other with the expertise of the professional actress, I notice written on the white tiles beside the glass, let a woman tell you most women are cunts, I prickle at first, then write underneath it, let another woman add, the same hole can be found in the majority of men. I twirl. I feel so free. I have a great desire to dance. Anyone who witnessed my performance at the charity ball in the Adolf Hitler Hotel, Washington DC, in whatever the year, will know that I am no mean danseuse. A few more twirls and I dash off another piece of advice in lippie on the virgin wall opposite, If men are pricks don’t lie down miz grow a prick of your own.
After this I return to the busy world of the store proper. The door of the LADIES gasps as I leave, the glass of the outside world dazzles, the escalators threaten to throw me.
I must have been more noticeable than before thanks to my lipstuck mouth. It was to some extent unfortunate because I had to accomplish another mission: something in which to carry my newly acquired lippie. In the circumstances I could only snatch clumsily in passing, and my hand came away with a glaring patent-leather handbag (not at all my style).
After drawing breath I opened it and put my lipstick inside. Then as I snapped the clasp shut I heard the voice, ‘That’s the one. A real professional.’ It was a hard-faced female, corseted inside regulation black, on top of all, a black parting through yellow hair.
A male grabbed me by the elbow.
At the police station my instincts prompted me to try a cry: no woman will throw away recklessly the traditional advantages her sex gives, ‘… but I can pay for the things – I promise!’ I moaned, as I rummaged in my breasts for the chamois leather bag.
‘You oughter know better at your age. And what’s yer family up to – letting you out? No sense of responsibility towards their granny.’
‘Officer, please! You don’t know what you’re doing to me. No one is old. It’s only their bodies. And then not always. My body has never let me down.’
This great, blue-eyed, moustachioed booby turned aside as though he had been offered a basinful of sick. I saw that eyelashes, tears, would not help in my defence.
‘What’s your number?’ he asked.
‘My number? Am I a prisoner? Or a hospital case?’
‘Yer family must have a telephone number.’
‘I was never any good at figures.’
‘You must know your own name, don’t yer?’
‘Dolor.’
‘But yer family name – and where you live.’
‘My family name is Gray, and we are scattered throughout the world.’
The Great Booby cannot restrain a belch.
He disappeared behind the scenes, where I could hear him, ‘A real nut. Says ’er name is Gray. Pages of ’em in the book. Any’ow, the old bitch doesn’t want to remember the number.’
At the same instant I saw my chance. I floated free, outside the police station, down a lane, up another, corners away I was relieved to find I had escaped the Law.
I began walking seriously. I walked and walked. My lipstuck mouth worried me a lot. I shot inside the great cathedral opposite and scrubbed myself with holy water from the stoup, not without twinges for what I might be contracting from so much holy slime (my daughter’s face appeared to me). I dried myself on a pamphlet advertising a retreat, then I sat for a moment to give thanks to Whomsoever it is in this gloomy Irish sanctuary. From the glances of various custodians I realised the Holy Spirit would have wished me to move on.
Again I flitted. I walked and walked. My feet were hurting dreadfully. From time to time I rested on benches. Sliding my hand between the slats of one of these, I realised my foot might have got caught between them if I had been a little girl, and there I might have stuck till the paddy-wagon arrived. So I limped on hurriedly. Better septic blisters than the Great Booby with the tartar moustache and the belly swelling over his belt.
Oh dear, if only it were possible to pause indefinitely to absorb the beauty of life instead of escape from its ugliness. But necessity drove me on. I began to worry too, about my manuscript, locked in its case, and in one of its many hiding places. Hilda might organise a search, call in Patrick, even Hal and his friend the priest the Jewish convert to Catholicism. Their treachery apart, my hand itched to record the events of a memorable day. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that my memory never lets me down. Even so my right hand twitched as I ticked off the names of the bays I passed: Rushcutters, Double, Rose, Parsley (wasn’t it Parsley where I lost my bra on a moonlight night to an American?) and ever onward.
That evening I might have ended in the sea if I hadn’t been led to a little white weatherboard cottage looking out over an inlet. An elderly couple seated on a homemade wooden bench, surrounded by a forest of giant dahlias, could have been admiring the sunset. I knew at once this was my destination, there was such inherent goodness in these old people, they could only welco
me me as parents welcome a long lost child.
However, a prodigal never has it all that easy. I began to babble, ‘Do you realise this is almost exactly like Abukir? The houses are in the same style.’
The woman made a sound like a goose’s warning.
‘Or Cranz. The Russians used to go to Cranz before the Revolution. The wealthy ones of course. There’s amber buried in the sand dunes. The Germans still find amber in them.’
It was the man this time who cleared his throat at the mention of Russians and Germans.
I must say something to convince these ‘parents’ I am worthy of a welcome.
‘Do you know that you can tell genuine amber from false by rubbing it on tissue paper. If the paper sticks …’
The sunset was waning. Tardy gulls in the foreground sailed against an opalescence.
In desperation I said to the female parent, ‘May I rest a little? I’ve walked so far.’
Without giving permission, she moved closer to her husband, making room on her side.
I was so grateful. I must have sounded as desperate as I felt, for the man unstuck his lips.
‘Out late, aren’t yer? An elderly person might run inter trouble.’
‘That might happen at any time of day.’
‘That’s correct,’ the man agreed, and the woman said, ‘Terrible what happens to people. Your family will be worrying.’
‘I don’t think so.’
They were shocked into silence for a while.
‘There must be someone we can notify,’ the man said at last.
‘We haven’t the phone. He could walk up to the public box, but it’s a stiff pull and he’s got the emphysema.’
‘I don’t want to put anybody out.’
The silence became more tormented.
The man broke it, ‘Any’ow, I’m Frank Dobbin – retired from the ferries. And this is Mollie, a assistant manageress at Kurrajong Heights in the old days.’
They waited for me to label myself.
I rooted around. ‘I’m Eleanor Shadbolt. I’ve done almost everything in my day.’
They laughed to cover their disbelief.
I would have liked to sit and just breathe beside them, unmolested. Insects were at work inside the great satiny cushions of the dahlias, their droppings landed in my salt cellars. A spider descended on a thread.
‘Had your tea?’ the woman asked.
‘I can’t remember. I don’t think so. No.’ I tried not to shock them unduly.
‘It’s late for most people. But we haven’t neether,’ said Frank. ‘We suit ourselves.’
He sounded proud. It was their contribution to unconventional living.
They must have accepted I should share their lives for the time being. All three of us rose from the bench and went inside. Their interior was as scrubbed and shipshape as you would have expected. Soon there was steak spitting in the pan and water boiling for the eggs waiting at room temperature. The steak was for the man, eggs with dripping veils draped over watery toast for the women.
My eyes clouded, then blurred with gratitude as we ate together at the yellow table.
‘Nothing like a juicy T-bone,’ Frank told us – somewhat insensitively it occurred to me.
I mumbled something appropriate. Mollie accepted in silence what she must have considered a man’s obvious privilege.
When Frank had lit his pipe and she and I were doing the dishes, she decided, ‘Reckon you’d better stay the night. We can ring your folks in the mornin’.’
‘Not too early. They don’t like being disturbed early. Anyway, I think they’ve gone away. Yes, I remember some talk of their going on a journey.’
Mollie was burrowing into the dark looking for linen.
She took me into a little room, really the glassed-in end of a veranda, no space for more than a bed and a commode. It was lit by a brass lamp, something from off a ship. She made the bed. There was a smell of slightly damp sheets.
‘You must be tired,’ she told me.
I couldn’t deny it. A big black green-eyed cat which had been observing me all the evening continued doing so. I could see that she, of all the household, was the only one who understood me.
‘I love cats,’ I told my hostess, then realised how sooky it must have sounded, so I added, ‘I was probably a cat myself in a former existence.’
Mollie considered it beneath an answer. She showed me how to switch off the adapted ship’s lamp.
‘You promise you won’t ring them too early. There’s a lot I’d like to tell you.’
‘No reason why we shouldn’t have a yarn.’
‘I’d like to dance for you, too.’
‘Waddayerknow! You were a dancer, were yer?’
‘Yes and no. I can do anything I put my mind to.’
The cat sat upright, positively Egyptian, watching my every thought.
‘Any’ow, night night,’ said Mollie.
‘What’s its name?’
‘That’s Mysie.’
‘A good homely name.’
Mollie lumbered on her way leaving me destitute. The cat’s tail brushed against me lightly, before, I imagined, going on the prowl. I could hear the Dobbins mumbling, yawning, doing things to their teeth, the springs of a bed answering their bodies.
I cry a little before realising I am not alone. You never are – are you really? Oh yes you are, desperately at times. But now the room is brilliantly lit. The ballroom of the Adolf Hitler Hotel, Washington DC. Hilary my husband and Henry his father have taken me with them on one of those mysterious business trips husbands and fathers-in-law indulge in. I send them down to the ballroom in advance because I have to prepare. They ask me what it is I have to do. ‘Considering it’s such an important occasion – this ball in aid of the needy – the unemployed – the persecuted – the whatever – I have to look my best, don’t I? Do your position justice, don’t I?’ They agree, and go down without me.
I make myself look glorious in my Fortuny, its silken pleats so fine it will pass through the eye of a wedding ring. My hands tremble with excitement. Although the silk, of faintest, almost imperceptible silver clings to the breasts, the skirt can be made to swirl. I slip my feet into silver, winged sandals. I perfume the lobes of my ears. I paint my lips as delicately as a debutante’s. Most important of all, I take up this basket, a common-or-garden affair used by peasant women in transporting their more precious wares, such as goat cheeses, or those big bruisable purple figs, to market. In my version of this crude basket I pile the deplorable mountain of my jewels. Their mineral splendours glower coldly back at me. Now I am ready.
I stand poised on the threshold of the ballroom. I can see Hilary and Henry seated on fragile gilt chairs beside a gilt table at the far end of the room. When I make my entrance the band leads the applause followed by all the diners who have bought tickets for this charity concern. I am superb. Moulded to my breasts, the dress streams out behind me in the draught. I might have flown in from Samothrace the moment before. I kick off my no longer necessary winged sandals. I rise on my painted toes and float out across the glassy ballroom under my own impetus. I dance, and as I dance I sing (it could have been I shook the flowering almond tree …) I can’t resist reassuring myself how superb I am. In my miraculous swirling dress. Everyone is enraptured – excepting my two men, Hilary as livid as the morgue, a congested Henry suggesting a misshapen hamburger, as I whirl past them, scattering handfuls of jewels in the name of charity.
As the frozen American women seated on the sidelines with their business and politician husbands get the idea and begin to thaw, they drag off their jewels and fling them into the arena before husbandly hands start restraining them. Rid of my basketful, I tear a couple of star sapphires from my ears. I am panting somewhat unaesthetically by now, and Hilary and Henry have started crawling on all fours, trying to retrieve a personal fortune from the Adolf Hitler boards. Stuffing their pockets. While from either side advances the American herd of businessmen and politicians,
snouts to the ground as though rootling after a rare crop of truffles.
I tread on what I see to be a diamond and sapphire spray (a birthday present from my father-in-law) and wound one of my heels quite severely. I am limping, blood trickling down the Fortuny corsage from my torn earlobes. I am led, always limping, away, to laughter and applause, the skitter of kettledrums diminishing, saxophones huffing, gulping, sighing for someone who can only be classed as a failure in the land of success.
Hanging back, I am dragged by Hilary and Henry, one each side of me.
I cry out, ‘Leave me! Leave me!’ But they won’t.
God-knows-who locks me up in our Adolf Hitler suite.
‘This is only a pill’, they tell me, ‘to sedate you.’
‘In the morning’, my men say, ‘we shall see.’
When I awoke I was crying for the misunderstandings, the injustice in life. I was drenched with furry tears.
Suddenly I realised a cat, it could only have been Egyptian Mysie, was pissing spreadeagle on my face. In the Dobbins’ glassed-in veranda room.
I flung her off. It was time to escape again.
I could tell where the worthy Dobbins might be found. In the distance there were snores, groans, the creaking of a bed.
I made my way, amongst furniture, finally arriving by touch at a great brass bedstead. I got down beside it, I lay there thankfully, for company, beside my dearest Dobbin parents. I subsided by degrees.
A noise of trees, sea, night and furniture, on the shores of almost sleep …
Till a horny foot trod down on ME. A man let out a snort, followed by a terrible fart.
Sheets were hissing off.
‘Hey Frank wotissittwot …?’
‘Arr, Moll – it’s – I bet it’s the one oo moved in – Mrs Nelly Wotnot!’
He trod forth farting worse then ever.
Lights.
Moll’s hair was frizzed around her face.
Frank in a nightshirt. ‘Gotter getter out of ’ere ter morrer. She’s unreal.’
Mollie shushed her Frank and said, ‘We both understand yer, Nell, but …’
The Egyptian cat sat looking at me. She might have been the guardian of Abu Simbel, not Dobbins’ Mysie of Watson’s Bay.
Memoirs of Many in One Page 4