Again I was brought up short by a rush of mucus to my throat. I remembered the French mystic demonstrating her piety and self-abnegation by picking up from the street a gobbet of beggar’s spittle and forcing herself to swallow it. Could I come at swallowing my Mystic’s spittle if I managed to assemble Patrick and Hilda at the same time to witness my self-mortification and acknowledge my sanctity?
Or would the big, black, bounding Dog save me by forestalling the act?
‘Dog has many purposes,’ I tell my audience of one.
He replies, ‘I think you are over-excited, Alex, and I must catch my bus.’
Fortunately for him, Hilda returns at just this moment. ‘Have you enjoyed your talk?’ she asks, smiling that little watery smile which masquerades as sincerity in a dutiful daughter.
As Patrick is in a hurry they go out together into the porch.
She comes back so quickly they can’t have had time to collaborate against their schizophrenic’s mystic and dog.
I continue sitting by the tray because I am too apathetic to move from the position, or the role Patrick at his deadliest had forced me to play. I imagine him on the bus, trying to impress his neighbour (provided he is personable) before reaching his destination. I forget where Patrick lives today with that growing stack of foolscap which he hopes will bring him fulfilment.
Hilda is starting to fuss – the tray, the slops. If she knew how to produce one, she would offer me a baked custard tout de suite, and hustle Mummy off to bed.
But tonight I am not to be hustled. I sit on in the contracting light planning a future dominated by the Mystic and Dog.
‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ Hilda calls from the distance.
Little does she know.
‘I am OK,’ I call back in the vernacular, to irritate us both.
*
I intended to act immediately, but Patrick must have got into me. I debate endlessly with myself in deciding which time of day or night to carry out my plan. Crims and missionaries and little old ladies would go ahead in broad daylight. Schizophrenics and fellow mystics would no doubt favour the hours of darkness. Should I consider Hilda’s whereabouts – and those others who haunt our house? The telephone could ring (Patrick out of malice) alerting Hilda before I can muffle the call. Then I am held up by the minor considerations of dress and make-up. Should I wear white to convey my bona fides to the Mystic? When Dog would surely destroy the effect by dragging muddy paws from waist to hemline. Eyeliner and a touch of shadow might bring the Mystic on, but alarm a dog into barking its head off.
So I had, and still have what the radio calls ‘problems’. Anxiety creases a whole wardrobe of pretty and foolish frocks, and makes me break out in perspiration at the armpits. (Snuffle, snuffle, Dog might appreciate the sweat.)
Several times I have been to the Park searching for the objects of what has become an obsession. I have not yet been rewarded. Once I thought I saw the Mystic in the distance, and hurried panting towards this figure, scattering a flock of galahs feasting on a patch of nutgrass, only to find a disgusting derro rummaging through an overflow of week-end garbage. He shouted at me, I could not hear what. I retreated, and on returning home, found shoes scuffed by drought-ravaged earth, shoulders blistered by summer heat. Once in the night a huge black bird slid towards me across the waters of the lake beside which I was walking, and at the same time a flasher accosted me from under a paperback. At such moments I would like my little girl to take me by the hand, but as I have been aware for years, Hilda is never around when needed.
I don’t know whether to feel relieved or resentful when I hear my latch-key crunching in the lock. Would I get my own back on H. if she ever finds my brains littering the porch? I very much doubt it. Much as she detests the look and smell of brains.
In my writing-book I write cross out write cross out again again can I believe that I AM II must find the Mystic I must find DOG his big spatulate slavering tongue which may obliterate and redeem
end of passage
It is a Friday when I come across the Mystic. I don’t know where Hilda has gone – to Mrs McDermott her agnostic friend? to deliver a bundle of clothes to Lifeline, which not even the desperate destitute would mould to their existential bodies – or to buy a packet of dried apricots or split peas? Anyway, on leaving the house, I cannot sense Hilda’s presence above the ticking of clocks and white ant.
And there he is, only a stone’s throw from the house which is ours, and which I intend to offer him as his, if he will obey certain desirable rules. The Mystic is picking through the overspill of garbage left by human beings from their week-end picnics, beside the lake, with its scum of plastic, corpses of ducks, and live, vengeful swans.
We study each other.
I am wearing a little pleated knee-length frock in pale grey which should do justice to the Mystic, and on which the marks of Dog’s paws will not be so noticeable should he turn up.
Over lips which are pale, but fleshy, the Mystic calls, ‘Waddayerknow, I found a whole tin uv opened bully, not a maggot in it.’
I reply, ‘Can you be absolutely sure? I’d say there’s a maggot lurking anywhere – even in the best-intentioned Fray Bentos or Swift’s.’
We look at each other, can I believe with understanding?
He laughs. ‘You got something there – lady.’
‘I am not a lady. I am Alexandra Xenophon Demirjian Gray of anywhere you like to name.’
After a pause he delivers a message, over those pale but fleshy lips, ‘I’ll buy that. You can call me Joe.’
Joe Jojo Joyo I am overjoyed it is the first time someone has confirmed that life can exist for the condemned.
We laugh together. It doesn’t matter that his teeth are rotten brown stumps. I take him by what many would see as his repulsive hand. I hope I’m not wearing too many rings. I only wear all this Byzantine clobber because thieves may break in while I am abroad. Fortunately he doesn’t seem to notice. It makes me ashamed of the shudder which ran through my body on first taking hold of fingers as stiff as a turtle’s neck, every wrinkle ingrained with black. Madame Guyon would have approved of my mystic. She would have lapped him up. Unlike myself, Madame G. was experienced in all the techniques of piety.
(A strange admission: I could never admit to a friend, let alone my writing-books, that I am an amateur in any sphere of art, life, or spiritual practice. Alas, it seems I am a hypocrite – perhaps at this early stage only half of one. Hand in hand with Joe I shall persevere.)
Just as he doesn’t seem to notice the Byzantine rings Grandfather Gray looted from the Middle East, and which I am wearing on every finger, I would say he is unimpressed by the house – by most standards an ‘important’ one – to which I have brought him. Perhaps he is distracted by the itch. As I lead him across the threshold he sticks a hand down his back and starts scratching with a frenzy greater than psoriasis or the lice diagnosed by Hilda demands. He scratches and scratches. I almost shed tact and ask what is wrong, but luckily, am guided in a safer direction by an unseen power.
‘Can’t I bring you anything to eat?’ I ask.
He sighs before replying, ‘Thanks, but I done pretty well outer the garbage in the last few days. It’s always that much tastier when a bloke’s gotter fossick for it.’
Again the hypocrite, I agree. (Oh dear am I perhaps not a half but a whole?)
‘What I’d like more than anythun is ter rest me carcase for a bit before I take off on the next lap.’
Without waiting for permission he flops down on a sofa in what we have been calling the living room. I am racked by a dread that Hilda might return and see him there, if she isn’t already spying on us through a peephole known only to herself.
I come out with appropriate noises, from which emerges the suggestion, ‘Surely you won’t be leaving us so soon? I was hoping you might think of making this your home. As far as one has a home, of course, in the lives we lead.’
He seemed to be pondering over what I had said
, then actually hawked up some phlegm on Hilda’s cherished Afghan rug.
‘That’s spot-on!’ he said. ‘You’re lucky if they let you in again at sundown – not enough beds with the population explodun’ every minute.’
I never consider myself spot-on. I’m happy if I’m anywhere near the target. In fact I was thinking how can I deal with this phlegm on the Afghan. Madame Guyon would not have hesitated.
I am nerving myself when Hilda comes in and discovers me on all fours.
‘What on earth …? Mother!’
‘I’ve been wondering whether the moth …’
‘You know I make a point of spraying regularly. Get up at once. It’s not a position for old joints to get locked in.’
Mercifully the Mystic seems to have vanished.
She helps me up in spite of my attempts to shake her off. ‘You forget how supple I am after years of yoga and dancing. They’re what have kept me mentally and physically in tune.’
She draws in her chin in such a way I can tell she has been with her Scottish friend the Presbyterian agnostic. Sure enough, she starts telling me a long and totally uninteresting story about Mrs McD. and a cairngorm she found years ago in the Cairngorm Mountains on an expedition organised by a gemstone society she belonged to.
‘You’ve never told me your friend’s Christian name. Names give a clue to character.’
‘We’ve never been on first-name terms,’ Hilda replies quite primly. ‘Anyway, she found her cairngorm. She wears it today in a silver brooch surrounded by coloured pebbles. She was led, she is convinced, to the spot where the gem was hidden, and broke open the rock with the little hammer she always carried in her haversack.’
‘If Brenda was led to the cairngorm, I can’t believe she’s an agnostic.’
‘How do you know she’s a Brenda?’
‘She sounds like one. And she’s not a silly old agnostic. She can only be a mystic.’
‘I’m not going to have a religious argument, Mother, at this time of day.’
She is stalking towards the kitchen as virtuously as her friend. Her back is pure Brenda McDermott.
I do what I can to pacify my Hilda. ‘I’d give anything to see her old cairngorm.’
‘She lost it once, and it turned up in the oatmeal barrel.’
‘There, you see, not only a mystic, but an alcoholic as well.’
Hilda is too offended to answer.
I go off at a tangent. ‘Did you see anyone hanging round on your way in?’
‘Nobody.’
‘There wasn’t a man – a rather hairy one?’
‘No man – neither hairy not smooth.’
In some ways a relief, though it could mean the Mystic had hidden somewhere in the house without being shown where the refuge is. He could pounce out on Hilda from a dark corner and give her the fright of her life.
‘Or a dog, Hilda? You didn’t see a big black mongrel dog?’
‘A dog – yes – lifting his leg in the garden, killing the plants. I chased him back into the Park before he did too much damage.’
‘O-o-hh! But he’s mine. That’s Dog!’
‘You know you never liked dogs, Mother. If you did you wouldn’t have shot Danny with Father’s revolver.’
‘Oh, yes, I know I committed a murder. In fact I’ve committed several. I imagine it’s impossible to get through life without. And now – but you wouldn’t understand. Dog has been sent to atone for the evil I was born with – to lick me clean.’
As she rounds on me, I see Hilda at her sourest, ‘If the brute is so dedicated, no doubt he’ll turn up again and do his duty.’
Between the vanished Mystic and the runaway Dog, I am torn in opposite directions. I feel the screams start to mount inside me, till I catch sight of Professor Falkenberg holding out the seamless canvas jacket, its blind sleeves, its dangling tapes.
‘I will be good!’ I choke on my sobs, and quieten down.
It must have convinced Hilda because she has left me to my own pursuits.
What to do, though? I am too agitated to start recording the events of the day.
From the pantry I can hear her putting things away. Putting away is one of her favourite pastimes.
I suppose I could go upstairs and put away my rings – except I can feel that the rings, too, have forsaken me – all but the wedding ring which fits too tightly. More than once I thought of having it sawn off. Then I decided it would come in handy during chapters of my convent life.
I am alone in this house with a ring which has eaten into my flesh. More grace is shown to the birds of Heaven, flirting in the garden in their hundreds – finches, wrens, honey-eaters, bulbuls – tossing the spray from the sprinklers out of their feathers as they cleave the fern-fronds. If a bird flew into the room I might hold its rejuvenating form between my withered breasts …
No bird offers itself.
I am on my way upstairs. I hear a noise. It can only be a male. When a husband or lover has the upper hand over wife or mistress whose sensibility he no longer respects, he farts in her presence. I believe I recognise this sound.
On the half-landing I am seized by the wrist, by a steely, yet clammy, male hand. The force of obsession brings us close together, breast to breast, mouth to mouth. I am pervaded by the stench of cabbage, halitosis, and metho.
A voice whines, ‘What’uv yer brought me ’ere for? Waddayer expect a bloke ter do?’
I realise it is the Mystic with whom I am mouth to mouth in the dark, and that he is the one in need of resuscitation when I had expected so much of him.
‘Steady on!’ I burble into the brown cavern of his mouth in what I hear as the voice of my father-in-law Henry Gray ordering a shickered friend to get a hold on himself.
It would have seemed a situation exclusively involving Edwardian, middle-aged males, one of them superior to the other through investments and class, if I hadn’t suddenly felt so lithe and youthful inside my snug-fitting made-to-measure suit. As for my partner, he was losing that bagginess of the park derro, and on a different level, the hairy image of the desert father, prophet, mystic I had hoped to instruct me in arcane knowledge.
Ambi-sex explains itself as my little glacé boots patter down the long curve of stairway towards the stage prepared for our performance. I hear, not far behind me, my partner’s soft-shoe slapdash. Sound and purpose are practically delirious as we reach the floor and whirl out across its black glass surface. My head beneath the little topper is bursting with song, which the daringly painted lips release. I strut and capriole, ‘Bert, Bert, I haven’t a shirt…’ the picture of exultant vanity, tossing the monocle skywards at the end of its moiré ribbon, then catching the frame in the socket of my knowing eye.
As for my partner, he is not yet resentful of partnership, he does his stuff meticulously, his own topper reflecting mine, as he soft-shoes around in his grey spats, a shadow to my substance. I look back lovingly, not to say longingly, to encourage his somewhat superfluous part in our act. Jojo is no Fred, but he has done his best to slick down his hair with brilliantine, his moustache no broader than an eyebrow. Nothing much can be done about the wrists, they are – well, hairy. What odds, girls? Doesn’t skin respond to the tingle of hair against skin? As we stroll down the Strand – at ten-thirty – every manjack Burlington Bertie from Bow …
Oh my God, Ella! Joe’s had it. Arches falling. It’s too long a trail. Sawdust underfoot by now, these six guys pounding out a grey number on the white-and-gold mini-pianos, ‘… Bert, Bert, I haven’t a shirt …. as I stroll down the Strand … gloves in my hand …’ No clap tonight for Little Ella Old Hat! Have to try out another on ’em. ‘We’re going back back back to Yarrawonga …’ A burnt-out case before we’re into it.
‘Yeah, I’m tired,’ I tell the mike, ‘what I’m really looking forward to is opening a family cocktail lounge back home in Melbourne. Enjoy a quiet Manhattan. Joe here will bear me out …’ Lead him forward – make it look warm – except here’s this goddam wedding ring
! And the wig is lobotomising my aspirinated skull. Joe my joyous husband looks less than enthusiastic as the kids and grand-kids line up behind us for the family show in St Kilda.
‘What ’uv yer brought me ’ere for? Waddaya expect a bloke ter do?’
Some something some act is finished.
We are standing confronting each other on my bedroom floor. We might never have gone through the dance routine in which the glass surface becomes the sawdust trail of ordinary life.
But haven’t I set out to rise above ordinariness? Isn’t this why I brought in my personal Mystic from the Park?
‘Listen,’ I appeal desperately, ‘you’ve got so much to tell me, but the time isn’t ripe for us to settle down to what I think the radio calls a seminar. Right? For one thing, my earthly daughter might come in. So I’ve got to keep you for what I see as the auspicious moment. In the meantime I can hide you safely. I shan’t say all that comfortably, but mystics, desert fathers, prophets, have never expected comfort, have they? In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to avoid it. So –I’ll hide you in the priest hole …’
‘Eh?’ he burps in my face.
‘You’ll be fed – modestly. Those of our belief don’t ask for more.’
I rummage in my handkerchief drawer and bring out the tin of bully with every word of the Fray Bentos gospel printed on the label. ‘See – darling? And if you cut your hands opening the tin you can remember Christ bleeding on the Cross.’
He is too bemused to murmur more than, ‘Oke.’
‘And now the priest hole …’ I open the door of the built-in cupboard (the door through which the pest inspector squeezes once a year, unwillingly if he is a stout person) and push the Mystic past the racks of dresses dangling listless till animated by my body, each one a ghost of past perfumes and performances, into the hideous space that smells of damp and possum.
Memoirs of Many in One Page 9