The Frangipani Gardens

  But Auntie didn’t say that. She was shaking her head, her mouth was woeful. She was saying that she had never asked for the responsibility. Other boys went to school and why not Tom? Oh dear, oh what should she do?

  Then, like an answer, Lou appeared. Tom ran to meet her. She had saved him from Alfred and Vi; he knew she would defend him now.

  But Lou wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by her friend, Miss O’Brien. Tom didn’t trust Girlie. He scowled as she ruffled his hair, as she playfully pinched his ear.

  Auntie went on with her lamenting. Tom listened with interest. There was this boy, and he’d grow up a savage. The letter reckoned he was bad enough as it was, being strange and abnormal, lacking a fixed place in the scheme of things. A regular boy cared for marbles and Meccano, but not this one. Aunt Doll should be ashamed that he did nothing but read, or stare at the sky, or go walking with a dirty old man.

  Lou didn’t say anything, it was Girlie who spoke. ‘Don’t fret, Miss Strawbridge,’ she said, ‘I’ve thought of the very thing.’

  Tom could go up to The Frangipani Gardens and Girlie would give him lessons — Girlie doted on little boys. And there was Granma, who’d relate Irish history; and Boy, who was a hero, to provide a manly example … and Brother Wells, who was always popping in, would delight to have a go at Tom, too.

  10

  The frangipani trees clustered about the house. It was the Hills, where you built your summer residence to escape the city’s heat, but they were here — jungle trees, trunks twining, boughs branching in clumsy lattice. Strange branches, grotesque. Blunt fingers, marked with notches like mouths. But it was only where the old leaves had been. The branches kept growing, the leaves were always at their tips. The old ones, left behind, turned crinkled — they were banana-blotched with brown, then they fell off. The new leaves were a fresh bright green. They were green fish, wagging stiffly about the flowers. Frangipani: five petals of creamy white, deepening to yellow in the centre. Tight-clustered, with a wedding-day smell.

  It was a scent you put on your hanky — it was hair oil sticky, sickly. And the flowers were so fleshy, but the branches were so dead (they were like reindeer antlers decked with posies); and if you reached up and broke off a leaf, the tree bled milk. It was horrid. The milky tree-blood was all over Tom’s fingers. He rubbed his hand on his shirt, but the stickiness wouldn’t come off. And there were so many of them. Twining together, blocking out Granpa’s house. They were monsters that flourished on the frosts and temperate summers that should have killed them.

  But Girlie wiped his hands on her hanky, and led him further down the garden. And here was the yucca that was Adam’s needle with its waxy bells and bayonet leaves. And bird of paradise, hibiscus, gardenia — and in Tahiti, Girlie said, gardenia grew out on the coral reef. Tom couldn’t help it: he liked her. She held his hand and it was Granpa’s house not hers, but she made him laugh. Cherry pie, she said. And: Jockey’s cap lily, baboon flower. The datura’s dangling blooms were angels’ trumpets; cassia was scrambled eggs.

  She knew as much as Charlie; she wasn’t Tom’s enemy at all. They were children together — brother and sister, laughing at the grown-up world. If it were learning, Tom wouldn’t mind school. The sacred lily of Egypt poked up pink from the pond; the American tulip tree was sixty feet high.

  But Girlie was little. She smiled at him and Tom grew taller and saw she was minute. It was curious, but for a moment he felt like someone else. Tom was another boy and he looked at Girlie and wondered if she might be blown away like a Father Christmas thistle by the wind. She was small enough to fit in the horse’s ear, the snail’s shell.

  Tom was charmed by Girlie. He sat down at the drawing room table and crossed his ankles and she told him a tale about proper boys.

  It was school, and there was no end of larks and holly leaves in your pillowcase and an apple pie bed. And you said Friends, Romans, countrymen and had midnight feasts with pork pie and oranges, sausage rolls, raspberry three-corners, shrimps, ginger beer, sardines and she would go on with the story tomorrow, about what happened when the house master surprised them in the dorm. But now Tom must start on his learning, and each day it was the same — the walk in the enchanted garden holding her hand, and another chapter of The Boys of Barminster, and then Tom learned that the rainbow wasn’t God’s promise, but just the sun’s level rays shining past you towards a cloud. And the stars were huge boiling suns; there was no man in the moon — not even a lady. ‘The moon is a dead world … The sun is composed of fiery gasses.’

  Rapidly, Tom slid into Girlie’s power. He was as much hers, now, as Lou.

  Tom’s encyclopedia stayed shut because its pages were only good for a laugh. How could he have believed its nonsense about the lark’s song of hope at heaven’s gate, the nightingale’s magic trill that has thrilled poet, prince and peasant in all ages?

  Birds formed Class Two of the vertebrates. They ranked next in importance to mammals and were warmblooded, with both skeleton and backbone.

  He wasn’t the same boy. He begged pardon and never picked his nose. Girlie combed his hair back and said a gentleman didn’t smile too wide.

  And their young came out of an egg. They had horn-covered beaks instead of teeth, and a special apparatus called a gizzard. And they sang when their voice muscles were rocked to and fro by air — but Tom didn’t hear them.

  He was walking through the orchard, and there was a bird on every twig. They watched him with round staring eyes. But no song, not a sound, came from their beaks. Something was wrong. Only his feet seemed to know what to do, as they tramped through the grass. And then he looked up — he didn’t know why. And they were over his head: they might be the geese that used to come to the lagoon. Flying across the sky, making alphabet letters. He came alive again. He clapped his hands at the unlikely overhead wonder. And then the birds on the apple trees moved their ruffled throats and sound came pouring out.

  When he reached the model nursery, when she held his hand and led him about the garden, the exotics had lost their appeal. He wanted those drab bushes that looked like weeds, and Charlie’s cloak moving amongst them, its folds full of their smell. And the bees would be round the big gum tree. They had a nest there, and in time Charlie would put the honeycomb in a chaff bag and hang it over a kerosene tin. The honey would drip-drip down … Charlie might get almost a tinful.

  Girlie shook him. Cow’s udder plant, she said and he was meant to laugh. Poison lily, she said and her voice was bitter. He was himself again. That was Ella’s rustic bridge … the house had belonged to Granpa.

  They went inside, and he slouched in his chair and scowled. She closed the textbook and introduced some people.

  They were a rum lot, the O’Briens. Besides Girlie there were three others. Mister was a mechanical doll who never stopped grinning; Boy was a smooth-faced dandy; Granma was a painted ancient confined to a chair.

  Only they weren’t like that at all. Charlie had spoken of seeing with magic spectacles — Tom felt that he had them on, now, as he looked at them one by one.

  Mr O’Brien wasn’t just a Molly of a man. Buried inside his weak-hearted body was a fiend who yearned to escape. Sometimes, for an instant, the captive fought free, and a hateful look overwhelmed the old man’s placid eyes, the smile was struck off his mouth. The red in his face worsened to an alarming shade of lobster, he flexed his great helpless hands. Then, a tremor crept over him; he clutched his heart as if it was worn to a silken thread, and the stranger disappeared from his eyes.

  And Boy wasn’t handsome as a filmstar. That perfect complexion masked a hopeless condition. Behind it, the boy-hero was a monster with a skin that resembled flaky pie crust. His face was cauliflower-pitted, and by his temple was a mortal wound. It was deep enough for your thumb to fit in; it throbbed and ached ceaselessly. Under his smooth-skin disguise, Boy O’Brien was a walking deadman, he should wear a tinkling leper’s bel
l. The war had done unspeakable things to him. Ypres and Bullecourt were terrible names.

  And Granma wasn’t crippled, but — still talking — rose light-legged from her chair and did a scoot with you across the world. She pushed back generations till it seemed like the Middle Ages, and Tom was in a charnel house where the bodies were the colour of blackberries and so swollen the coffin lids wouldn’t fit.

  Gran was a cranky horror. Tom had to sit in her room and even the pot plants could scare you. There was crown of thorns; also blood-leaf plant and tear-drops. But Gran didn’t cry as she drilled you in history. She was jolly as a sandboy as she related Ireland’s woes. Now she was up to the convict ships, which meant traversing the deep under bayonet point to be shot out like rubbish on a bare foreign strand.

  But Tom couldn’t take anymore. He screamed, till Girlie came in and said she would teach him. The snake lady helped her, and they twisted his arm, and put him in a room, so dim. And Ireland was the Niobe of the nations and Tom was a doomed felon and on the mantel, on either side of the remember-me pansies, was a man. ‘My darling Jim’ it said underneath, and to the left he was ordinary in a Sunday suit; to the right they’d made him a soldier.

  This man was dead, Tom knew, and the door was locked and he’d never get out. The room smelled of pimple cream and the chamber pot under the bed; and there was a little animal, scurrying madly. But no, it was Tom’s heart — jumping with fear. He was alone, so afraid. Girlie turned the key and said he would learn. She hated him, and Tom crouched low and wasn’t sure who he was. For, again, he felt just like this other boy (Girlie had hated him, too). Seeds were rattling in Tom’s head, there was a hairy caterpillar crawling close. There didn’t seem any hope (this other boy had been scared so badly that he’d given up feeling), and then it was worse, for the soldier in the photo stepped out of the frame, he jumped off the mantelpiece and came towards Tom on the floor. Tom tried to hide, but the soldier wouldn’t let him — and then his face went different: then it wasn’t Jim, but Charlie.

  The room stopped being haunted, he was no longer afraid. He moved about calmly, inspecting Pearl’s things. The Bible on her bedside table was open at the worst bits in Revelations. Beside it was a pin-cushion, with the pins pricked in to spell TOM.

  But their evil couldn’t hurt him. Though Charlie was no longer visible, Tom sensed he was still there, guiding him, keeping him safe.

  When Girlie opened the door, she smirked over her shoulder at Pearl. It had worked, she said. The little beast was tamed, he’d cause them no more trouble. Really, it had been too easy — Girlie sounded almost regretful as she pushed him from the room.

  He was clever, he had them fooled. His real self was something like an earthworm, coiled deep in his decoying body. No one could get at him, no one even knew worm was there. Tom was wily. At Sorrento, at The Frangipani Gardens, he took the rôle of docile zany. It was simple to do — merely a case of smiling smarmy and wearing a soft expression in the eyes. Yes, Tom’s eyes were jelly-soft, so agreeing, as he pretended to be hooked on their baited words. It was easy, easy. Your head kept nid-nodding and after a while they believed in their robot creation. Fancy — such success, by just sticking in pins. Even Gran gave up trying to scare him. There was no joy in relating horror stories when you couldn’t count on reaction.

  They believed in their model waxwork boy, while the old Tom kept safe. He was still the misfit who picked his nose and rolled it, and had fits and heard birds. Tom stayed uncouth and ignorant, even as he sat with fingernails picked clean, feigning interest in the lying textbooks. All the time he was out of their reach. He went barefoot and threw himself down in tickling grass and chewed at the soursob’s tart stem.

  He was back on the cliffs. He walked past the shelter shed with its stale stink of urine; seagulls keened and it was good — so blue and gold — with the sun the poet’s orb, and the shot-silk waves. The jetty stalked forward on damp criss-cross legs, the fishermen were statues along its rail …

  Perhaps it was Charlie who helped Tom escape through his thoughts. Since that spell in Pearl’s room, the hermit was constantly with him. Their friendship was comforting … the marbled waves wallowed in, satiny, and curled and dashed and leapt at the cliff. Spray broke in icicles and waterfalls, and then the sea drew back with a hiss. And the sky went lilac, cold crept up on the air, the thorn bushes shivered — but Tom stayed cosy, he felt he was hugged by Charlie’s cloak …

  It was something he didn’t understand, and he was glad. For knowledge only took you so far, and some sort of knowing held you back. The textbooks told you all, they told you nothing. Charlie was nowhere near — it was a fact.

  Because Tom was such a lackbrain, they thought it safe to let him stray from the house. They put Granma in her Bath-chair, and it was his task to push her round the Gully. He didn’t mind. Now she kept quiet about famine and disaster, he bore her a grudging respect. She was wicked and so ancient she ought to be dead, yet she still got a kick out of life. Part of her stayed young and oddly innocent. She took Tom so much for granted, that she’d started confiding her secrets. The curls were a wig (beneath them, Gran was as bald as an egg); she liked pineapple pattern better than star pattern in crochet; she kept well, she would live forever, because she sucked on a barley-sugar lolly when she woke in the night.

  Tricking them was child’s play — Tom felt almost sorry for Girlie as his simpleton pose took her in (it was too easy: Tom was too clever).

  Then one day when he and Gran were setting out, Girlie drew him aside. How would he like to attend Fern Gully College and be made into a proper Catholic boy? It was a school of growing consequence. The Archbishop came for speech night, there was a resident Monsignor.

  And Tom’s real self laughed himself sick at the idea, but their Tom — false Tom (who was so convincing you’d think he was true) — thought it over as he pushed the Bath-chair. How there’d be the apple pie beds and soapsuds in place of whipped cream … and braided blazers, straw boaters, midnight feasts (The Boys of Barminster had featured such things).

  But it was a laugh, of course, and Charlie was nudging Tom’s mind. Saying Careful. Saying What about the birds and being free? Tom didn’t want to end up caught and tame — did he?

  Suddenly Tom felt a terrible anger. Why wouldn’t Charlie let him alone? He only wanted to be ordinary; he was tired of magic and nightmare.

  11

  Once he’d been Tom who lived by the sea; he’d had fits and counted birds as his friends. Those days were over. He’d chosen to become a boy who was going to school to learn a love for the Mass and the Sacraments, a devotion to Our Lady and the Rosary.

  But, the decision made and the day set for Girlie to take him to town to be measured for his grey serge suit, Tom wasn’t happy. The more everyone said how lucky he was, the worse he felt. For Charlie had deserted him. Tom thought wistfully of the perfect days they’d spent together — their walks through the orchards … the Nondescript, the wild bees. But those days were part of a past that was done with; Tom had lost the knack of vivid recall that had hustled them forward to be part of time present. He could no longer escape through his mind; he was alone, now — Charlie was nowhere near.

  He couldn’t depend on Lou, either. Though she often walked beside him while he pushed the Bath-chair, she seemed far away.

  She was there the day the College crocodile came into sight. Tom guided the chair to the side of the road, and Gran crossed herself as a Brother went past.

  There were two sorts. One lot was pale, with flowerstem necks and silky beards; they were Christian Brothers from the Spanish Inquisition, with John the Baptist eyes. Frankincense and myrrh floated about them in musky cloudlets; there was a constant jingle from their rosaries (they were the Lord’s annointed, for sure). You knew they had scourge marks on their backs, and could bear Chinese burns and scissors grip in wrestling. But they were so pale, so silky and scuttling, that they didn’t
seem like men at all; they were more like those soft grey scurrying things you surprised under stones in the garden. And the other lot was Irish, with washerwomen mothers. They relished taties and bacon rind and sang ‘The Dear Little Shamrock’; they had dented red faces, wax in their ear-holes, steel-rimmed specs, clumsy boots. And you knew they sweated as their money-box mouths groaned prayers (but they never saw visions), and cracked a joke as they raised the stick to swish you. They coached cricket and footy but missed out on a fresh-air odour. What teased your nose wasn’t exactly B.O. — it was a queer smell (fusty, furtive), as if, because there wasn’t a lady about, they’d been wearing the same singlet for months. Brother Keogh was an Irish one with that sort of smell. Brother Wells didn’t fit in either camp.

  His nickname was Swells, because he was such a swell in his dress. If he hadn’t been a Brother, he would have worn Oxford bags and swagger shoes. As it was, he had scent on his hanky, and Tom thought him rather a duffer (though Swells was kind enough, having lent Tom a copy of Bishop Gilmour’s Bible History that told of Heresies and Rome Destroyed). Lou didn’t appear to like him much, either. She drew back behind the Bath-chair, she looked the other way, as the crocodile edged on and brought Swells closer.

  And these boys were Roman Catholics. Holy medals hung from their lapels. But they had pimples and boils just like everyone else.

  Then Brother Wells had reached them, and for an instant the crocodile divided. One part kept moving forward, the other paused. Swells smiled at Tom, and said how nice it would be to have him at school. And it was flattering to be stared at by so many eyes — Tom felt important, he felt guilty for having judged Swells harshly. Though there was a queer hollow look about the Brother’s eyes (it gave him a hungry look) and, even as he spoke kindly to Tom, he spanked a small boy’s head.