The Frangipani Gardens

by Barbara Hanrahan

  But he had a nice smile and a toothbrush moustache: he would win through. He was Mr French, the curator — a cultured gentleman, lately arrived from Capetown, and snakecraft had always been his hobby. There was nothing sinister, nothing to fear. The wire netting was close-mesh; pot plants made the cages homey, and a printed card listed their occupants’ names. The snakes would help in Adelaide’s fight against vermin; already, five hundred rats and mice had been devoured.

  Girlie listened, entranced, while Mr French explained that there was no danger, really. The snakes treated him like a tree, a mere place of abode. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I always touch the snake before I pick him up. That is to let him know that it is I who am near.’ Even the more savage specimens appeared to know their keeper. He felt sure that — in some instinctive fashion — they realized he loved them.

  The taxi back to town took them past Rundle Street again. After a while things began to be familiar. It was Hyde Park Road; it wasn’t a surprise when they drew up outside the Bon Marché.

  The drapery’s shattered plate glass had been replaced; the shop windows featured everything correct and most favoured in smart wear for the coming royal functions. There were georgettes powdered with sequins, tulles encrusted with crystals; feather fans and half-moon shawls.

  No one could mistake Girlie O’Brien. Alfred came rushing over from the cash desk at her entrance. When he saw who was with her, his smirk faltered. But he recovered to play big bro’ to perfection, as he crushed Lou to his pin-stripes and playfully punched Tom in the chest. How could they have done it? he cried — how creep away to the Hills without a word of farewell? Till Doll’s letter had come, Vi had been anguished; horrid fears had flooded her mind. There was always a larrikin type out waiting to molest you.

  Vi still seemed to think they’d had lucky escapes (though not from the Bon Marché). When Alfred ushered them into the drawing room she was startled enough to switch off the serial story. She had to be helped to the sofa, their reappearance gave her such a turn. When Girlie explained they’d come to purchase Tom’s suit for school, Alfred escorted him off to Men’s Wear. Vi recovered a bit then.

  Because of Girlie, it was best cups for morning tea, and Vi cocked her little finger and talked as if she had marbles in her mouth. ‘We had lovely times together, didn’t we, Louise?’ she said wistfully. ‘… Didn’t we, dear?’ she said threateningly, when Lou didn’t reply.

  Adolescence was a trying time, and families should stick together — not that Vi wasn’t sure Lou and Tom were perfectly happy with Auntie. Ah yes, the world was a terrible place … Vi took a jammy bite of sponge sandwich and reflected happily that kiddies didn’t seem to smile anymore, and the Government kept letting in foreigners, and the Duchess hadn’t included a single black dress in her wardrobe. There were all these men walking round Adelaide who didn’t wear hats, and in Bucharest King Ferdinand was dying, and in America the suicide epidemic among students raged on (the latest had done it with iodine after amateur theatricals in the school auditorium, where he’d received great applause).

  But Girlie said she had a tragedy to tell that would easily better that. What did Vi think of dirty old men? What if there was this girl, an innocent, and she was in your care, and this creature touched her with his monster hands?

  Then Girlie and Vi were talking low; then Vi winced and suggested Lou should take a look round downstairs.

  The wooden balls of the cash railway trundled backwards and forwards. The bad penny was still nailed up by the cash till as an awful warning; the shop girls still had their shingles. There were some lovely lines in tabby silks … here was the Bon Ton and the Royal Worcester.

  Fish had the same nostrils, the same celluloid collar. They’d sack him, of course.

  She dodged behind longcloth nightgowns; he pinned her by stockinette bloomers. ‘Pretty pussy,’ he crooned, and he winked as if they were old friends. It was queer — she didn’t hate him. Girlie had got him, too.

  His mouth was watery, it had an eager look. He was rubbing his hand against his leg. ‘Naughty girl,’ he said, baby-voiced. ‘I been so lonely without you.’ And where did she go, what did she get up to? Did she let fellows monkey or treat her to intoxicants? Fish was holding the front of his pants, now, he was bobbing down as if he was in pain. ‘The hot blood which courses through the veins of youth is stimulant enough,’ he said. His voice sounded like a groan.

  And another good Bon Marché line was Australian emblems. You could sew them to cushion covers, table centres, runners. You chose from rosella, magpie, emu, kanga … Lou was safe, for Tom was beside her. And Girlie and Vi had come into the shop, and Alfred was with them.

  Fish’s face was tender, his eyes were dreamy. He was a gentleman-assistant with revers to his waistcoat and a tape measure round his neck. He had scented hair and fastidious grooming, and tonight, after washing his smalls, he’d tuck himself in early with Dr Ricordi’s Interesting Book for Men. Life was good. He smiled as he moved forward importantly in answer to Alfred’s summons.

  Lou had a new dress and fairytales were true. For the looking glass reflected a princess and it was a dress that shone like the sun and came out of a nut shell. Nonsense. It was white tulle, and came from one of the big shops. It was perfect. There should be turtle doves and three drops of blood falling from a pricked finger on to snow. It clung up top and there was a little floating cape edged with crystal beads and beneath it her arms were bare and, despite the cape, did she show too much arm, too much chest? But Girlie said thinking like that was suburban. ‘We’ll take it,’ she told the shop lady and opened her purse.

  How kind Girlie had been. After leaving the Bon Marché, they’d lunched at the Arcadia, then gone on to more shopping. Now, back at The Frangipani Gardens, Lou anticipated the Lord Mayor’s Ball and dressed up in Girlie’s presents.

  She had all-silk stockings and satin slippers, and she sat at the dressing table and shut her eyes while Girlie did things to her face. There was powder on a swansdown puff and scent from a bottle with a stopper like Napoleon’s hat. It was lovely sitting there, submissive to Girlie’s soft fingers. Lou felt lazy, she felt shivery with pleasure. Now Girlie was combing her hair; she was coaxing, teasing, making waterfall waves and ringlets.

  It was a fairytale, a dream, and to suit it there must be candles instead of gas light. Lou looked in the mirror and Girlie held the candlesticks high, and there were stars glimmering in the glass — one of them was caught in Lou’s hair.

  And Girlie glittered like an idol in gold-sequinned lace; Tom wore his new suit; Boy and Mr O’Brien had carnations in the lapels of their dinner jackets. For the evening was a celebration (though Girlie didn’t let on for what): Lou was allowed a cocktail.

  By candle light the dining room was transformed. The crimson wallpaper and curtains had turned exotic; the sideboard was alive with mahogany gleams; even the catch-crumb drugget seemed a thing of mystery. But the table was best of all. Its ice-smooth damask surface was set with sparkling crystal and silver; its centrepiece was a trumpet-shaped vase of frosted glass. At its base were piled peaches and grapes; above them, was a mass of frangipani.

  And the candles had pink silk shades, the napkins were folded into water lilies. There were chocolates in silver shell-dishes and it was a game — working out what to do with the knives, forks and spoons. And there were so many glasses: a wine glass for each sort of wine that was served. Tom stuck to lemonade, and Boy raised his eyebrows, but Girlie insisted — so soup meant sherry and first entree, champagne … by the time Lou reached dessert it was sherry again.

  Then they were somewhere else, drinking coffee, and the liqueurs stood ready on a tray. Lou’s head felt fuzzy, and there was moss over the floor, and a new friend sitting opposite — oh, she was pretty with wedding flowers in her hair. But it was Lou in the looking glass; it was the drawing room carpet, and Girlie had tucked the frangipani behind her ear. It smelled so sw
eet and oh, Lou felt dizzy, perhaps she was even tipsy, for she felt so happy and she started to laugh. For how comic it was: Tom and Lou, visitors in Granpa Strawbridge’s drawing room, despite having Ella for a mother. If only Tom wasn’t such a spoilsport. Why did he ruin it? — sitting on Granpa’s over-stuffed ottoman, with a miserable expression on his face.

  Then Tom rose, he left the room, and Lou forgot him. Probably he was going up to bed.

  It was what he meant to do — climb the stairs to Granma O’Brien’s room where he was to spend the night on her couch. He couldn’t bear to stay in the drawing room. Their voices grew louder, until they seemed to be screaming, and Lou sat among them, as pink and white and innocent as the Christmas tree fairy, with her big arms bare and her hair as yellow as straw. She was a doll, with her silken legs sprawled wide and her dress ridden up to show her garters. She was shameless, but at the same time so innocent.

  The door shut off the brightness; he groped his way towards the nigger-boy newel posts, and then the Christian Brother’s hand gripped his wrist.

  Tom could have escaped. He’d been strong enough to leave the drawing room — even Mr O’Brien’s devilish eyes and Boy’s leper face and Girlie’s savage mouth hadn’t been able to stop him (though perhaps they hadn’t wished to). But in the hall he turned weak. It was a worse sort of danger; it was evil compounded (and now Swells’s hand was trembling as it fondled his cheek), and Tom was two boys: and false Tom was strong, while real Tom was weak. It was false Tom — so passive, so perfectly obliging — who let Swells lead him into the kitchen.

  Nothing could happen. The hand that led him had manicured fingernails, but it belonged to someone under holy orders. No, nothing would happen to Tom.

  Yes, evil was all about him and he liked it. Real Tom saw — he cried a warning. But false Tom, so perfectly childish, walked blithely on.

  Saucepan stand and mincing machine were instruments of torture; Cook’s big knife had a dangerous edge. And the kitchen table was just as sinister, for it was strewn with the things from dinner and the shining plates were dirty and the wonderful fish in its mayonnaise blanket had dwindled to a skeleton backbone, the turkey with its frilled-paper legs was plundered as bad. The sherry-tasting trifle was reduced to a smear of whipped cream; the maid who’d served like an angel was snoring, with dribbles down her muslin apron.

  Then the kitchen lamp was a false moon bobbing over Tom’s head. It lit their way, but it made the dark about them seem blacker, and the antler branches of the frangipani trees look bigger, blunter than ever. For they were out in the garden, now. The stars were cold and uncaring as Brother Wells led Tom across the gravel. Under the tulip tree they went, past the humped shapes of exotics, till they came to a house of glass.

  And they walked in a wonderland where the plants of all climes and seasons bloomed together. Everything was marvellously muddled — the lamp showed you bits at a time. The glass walls were latticed with ivy; veiled with filmy sprays of fern. Doors kept opening and closing, for the model nursery’s greenhouses were linked. Now they walked through one where the flowers — hyacinths, cyclamen, lilies of the valley — represented every gradation of white. Then they were moving through a jungle. Instead of cloying bridal-wreath scents, there was the damp smell of moss. Slimy green stems were everywhere, there was a sound of running water. Tom had chosen to come here, he held Brother Wells’s hand, but he felt abandoned, afraid. The oil lamp left blackness behind them, and how did you know the glass house you’d left still existed, that you weren’t cut off forever from an everyday world?

  Past the next door it was a jungle world, still, but the familiar oiled-silk greenness, verging on black, was alive with rainbow colours. The lurching stems, the jagged leaves were starred and splintered with flowers. They were immaculately frilled, sticky-stalked; hung with fronded fringes and hairy dingle-danglers. Their petals were shiny as enamel, waxily opaque … some seemed freckled with gold dust, others appeared specked with brilliants.

  Tom walked through the orchid house and it was all right at first. It was so kind of Brother Wells to share the perfect place with him. There were orchids like butterflies, some were even comical (this one had a cockatoo profile, here was a parrot’s beak). There were snakes’ tongues and rats’ tails — but was it so funny anymore, was Brother Wells so kind? Tom shivered, he couldn’t help it. For it seemed the most frightening place in the world. Now he was surrounded by glistening eyes as bad as Mr O’Brien’s; by a host of pouting lips as treacherous as Girlie’s.

  Tom was captive, and the Christian Brother’s fingers were claws. They dug into the earth that anchored those glossy stems, to reveal a foul mass of roots. And some orchids had tubers that clustered in fingerlike lobes. They were black as sin, they signified Black Mary’s hand, and that tuber, chopped small and mixed with wine, made an amorous cup that was as good as nasturtium leaves for turning girls frisky. Brother Wells wouldn’t stop telling these things. Tom didn’t want to hear. Orchids didn’t mean just dogs’ stones and bulls’ bags … not merely Black Mary or the devil’s hoof. They were only plants — so many anthers and pistils, sepals and petals; remarkable for brilliancy of colour and grotesqueness of form. But Tom was caged by glass and outside was the night and the orchid eyes quizzed him, their bee-stung lips would gobble him up. Yes, orchids were eyes and lips; were daggers and spikes, spurs and clubs.

  Yet he was merely Swells, who’d lent Tom the book that told of the promise of the Holy Ghost and the temporal power of the Popes. But Swells’s legs were moving strangely under his skirt; under the black skirt his legs rubbed together as if they were itchy. And now Swells’s legs pressed against Tom and his body bent over him, his great face leered close. He was hideous, with his dog lips the colour of strawberries, and his cheeks flushed as if they were rouged. But he was Brother Wells who should be sitting safe at Fern Gully College on a fat chair of buttoned morocco, his white hands turning the pages of Pictorial Lives of the Saints. But his hands were on Tom. He was a Christian Brother, but he spoke harshly, yearningly, and shut his eyes.

  Tom felt a thrill of horror — he was Daniel and the lion would devour him. But he felt excited, too; he longed for the awful thing to happen. But Swells’s body pressed closer, Tom would be suffocated … Suddenly he was so frightened that he felt his identity slip away. Even false Tom disappeared. Tom was no one, now; he was helpless. He was just a threatened child — any child at all, in the grasp of evil.

  … but some tubers were called Christ’s hand. Charlie used them in a nerve tonic. The tincture smelled unpleasant, but when you held the bottle to the light it glowed a beautiful crimson.

  Tom was saved, for suddenly Charlie’s voice was in his head, cancelling the evil out.

  He was himself again. He bit at Swells’s hand, he kicked at his ankles, and then he was free. The orchids tried to catch him, but he hit at them, too. Glossy petals fluttered about him as he made his escape. The Christian Brother cursed and limped forward with the oil lamp, as Tom darted into the garden.

  13

  Lou lay on Girlie’s bed, but really she lay by the sea. She was back in the sandhills; she was dressed like a bride, and the glittering scarf of water lurched forward to break in shivering pieces on the rocks, to curdle spent on the sand. They were two bodies twined together with bridal creeper — Lou’s big body and Girlie’s small one. Now Lou’s body was jellyfish soft; now it was hard as coral, and Girlie’s fingers felt all over it, they were explorers finding secret places. Lou kept her eyes shut and saw the sea come scalloping in. She used to walk among the soursobs on the cliffs. Out on the reef foam dashed at the sky, as the sea cast up its shells, its fringed weed.

  Girlie’s nimble fingers practised sleight of hand; they were clever and made rippling waves, they tangled in tickling seaweed — it was strange, so pleasant: Lou lay in Girlie’s arms in her new tulle dress, and the skirt would be crushed, but she didn’t care. She was drunk, she was
spelled. Girlie had done wonders with animal mesmerism, aided by champagne and sherry.

  And at Fern Gully College, Garnet was dreaming. Lou and he were lost in the ranges. The sun beat down; they were perplexed and misled by mirages. Lou couldn’t keep going much longer. Her face was haggard, her person emaciated, her spirits wholly sunk … And in the studio beside the quince tree, Doll was taken with a sudden attack of the shivers, and ‘Evening Stillness’ went wrong — she couldn’t get the tender gum saplings right. Her paint brush went trembly; goosie walked over her grave. She knew she was meant to make a start on a different picture … And out of the simmering cauldron came a pungent smell of spearmint. It wouldn’t be long to winter, so Charlie was brewing cough syrup. He stirred and stirred and then he had to stop. For the child had need of his mind again — he was out of the orchid house, up with the old lady, but evil was still about. Caesar knew, too. The hair had risen on his back, a snarl started in his throat …

  And at The Frangipani Gardens, Eily Casey sat up in bed. She’d taken the wig off and her head shone bald through the baby fluff; her hands were liver-spotted, she had a cataract in one eye, her hearing was nearly gone. But it was still she — still Eily, though they called her Gran, though when she looked in the mirror she saw a face like a fig and there was a spit bowl and a chamber pot beside the bed. But a barley-sugar lolly did wonders: Eily won through. It wasn’t age that had got her, but the Irish phantoms. They wouldn’t leave her alone — she couldn’t do without them.

  And Tom wasn’t ready for sleep. He didn’t want to undress before her perving old eyes — that was one thing. Another was a worry that kept nagging his mind: Where was Lou? Gran was on again — about corpses and coffins and empty gruel spoons, but the words were mechanical, they didn’t count. When the change came, he was as much taken by surprise as she. For, suddenly, feeling got into her voice. It stopped being Gran’s voice, old; it was Eily’s voice, young.