The Frangipani Gardens

by Barbara Hanrahan

  Sweat trickled down, the dunny was thick with flies, the sun felt as if it would burn you up. But the leaves of the pepper tree shone silver in the light, and the gallahs were pink ghosts in the sky. He longed to go back, but he was scared Dad didn’t want him. He was a lost boy, and he longed to tell Lou that his stories were lies, but she went on walking, talking about how she should start her glory box and how perhaps he might work in a bank. It didn’t make sense; Garnet didn’t bother to listen. Once she’d been gentle; he used to play with her old-fashioned hair and rest against her soft body. Now he wasn’t allowed to touch her. Now she was hard and modern and he didn’t know her. He didn’t want to hurt her, to imagine her as a bit of all right. Why had she changed, why must he have those thoughts?

  To Doll Strawbridge, Lou seemed just like Ella. Instead of being now it was then: the past got in the way of the present, as Lou grew bigger while Doll, who was older, shrank smaller. Lou, who was Ella, took over her life; she was going to live it for her. Even Sorrento belonged to Lou now, as she played a game of housewife with a vengeance. Doll went down the crazy-paved path to the studio, but she even felt an interloper there. She was an imposter as she dabbed on water-colour; it was day, but night-time kept intruding — she’d stopped being able to divide herself neatly in two. There was confusion in her head, now. Things had never been right since the storm.

  It had been one of those sessions in the room off the studio, when Doll’s brush escaped her control. On a night like that, it wasn’t the past that was pictured on canvas, not even Doll’s yearning for the poetic Englishman or her fear of Cockroach and his glassy eye. Instead, she’d paint a present that was being lived out by others, or a future that would eventually impinge on a present of her own.

  One night the story of Ella’s dying went down on to canvas; not long after that, Lou and Tom announced their coming. So that when they appeared at Sorrento, Doll recognized their faces — though how she knew them, why she’d expected them to come, she didn’t exactly remember … Once that door in the studio was locked, when it was day and Doll was Mother’s good girl again, she recalled her night-time familiars only faintly.

  It was like that till the storm. For that night, while the elements assaulted the Gully, Doll commenced a new picture, but when she’d finished she couldn’t forget it. It was crammed with stories, but she remembered them all — a jungle and a boy escaping; a snake inching closer to a goose-girl … and they were running through the orchard and it was Tom, it was Lou — they were safe, and somehow Doll had helped save them, but she must hurry, for soon they’d be behind the hedge. So she flung down her brushes, she took up her lamp; the pictures disappeared in darkness, and it seemed the night would end as usual, with Doll turned into Miss Strawbridge (even though, this time, she couldn’t forget), with all those risky stories locked away.

  But she couldn’t do it. Her fingers fell back from the door knob, for that door must stay open. And it was the same with the lamp: that lamp must be left to signal its message, to summon Lou to come.

  And then Doll was back in her room, and she hadn’t felt so happy for years. For once, the hesitations and lost chances of logical thinking had been swept away — she’d known she must leave the lamp; she knew Lou would see those paintings.

  And in the morning she went on remembering — how last night she’d been someone possessed; how, now, she was merely Auntie. And she should feel utterly muddled, hopelessly divided — but she didn’t. She was two people, still, but she knew she had a chance to be one.

  Doll waited for Lou to come to breakfast. On the surface it was an ordinary morning, as she stirred porridge and toasted bread. Yet her heart beat so fast and she couldn’t stop smiling. It was thrilling to realize that she’d given herself away.

  But Doll Strawbridge didn’t matter in the least, as Lou Mundy brushed toast crumbs from her mouth that refused to say anything that counted; that even laughed away the fact that Tom and Lou hadn’t stayed at The Frangipani Gardens overnight.

  Doll waited humbly to be acknowledged, and felt she couldn’t bear it: the waiting going on, and the feeling that each minute she grew smaller, more colourless. But when, at last, the big girl deigned to notice her, Doll felt even worse. For, instead of being Lou, she was Ella.

  Ella’s eyes looked at Doll in the old unforgettable manner (they were sneering eyes, dismissive), and now Doll wasn’t anyone. She wasn’t artist or Auntie; she was no one at all.

  And she’d cared so much; she’d felt wonderfully brave, so sure of Lou’s understanding. Doll couldn’t bear her rejection. Greyness fell, it turned darker each day, till she couldn’t do anything, not even see clear to paint as Miss Strawbridge.

  She supposed it was like being mad in a passionless way: the greyness, the feeling of dread; the days passing and Lou, who was Ella, looking at her, sneering, with eyes that knew her secret and called it shameful, obscene. Each day Doll grew smaller; now she was nearly invisible.

  And, sitting in the wicker chair, she was terrible. By the bush like a lace tablecloth she was, with her hands hanging loose in her lap. But she was Auntie, she ought to be working; her hands shouldn’t be idle, they ought to be guiding the paint brush, and her tongue should be sticking out (you always saw the tip of Auntie’s tongue when she painted). But somehow all the life had gone out of her. She sat with her head bent; crouched small, she was more lifeless than the wicker chair.

  Tom didn’t know what to do. She hardly ate, and when the fly walked on her face she didn’t bother to brush it away. Now he saw she was crying. And she was Auntie, so the hanky was up her sleeve for sure, but she didn’t bother to use it. She looked pale and ill. She was as much a fright as the snails on the lavatory wall or the ghost girl who’d surprised Tom by the jam factory.

  It wasn’t right Auntie should look like that. Apart from being out of character, the bad time was supposed to be passed. Lou was all lovey over Garnet (Lou was so much in love she hardly noticed Tom and Auntie existed); Tom had escaped school and being a Catholic. He was himself again; he could visit Charlie’s hut as often as he pleased. Which was where he was off to, now. Which was why, as he went past the bush and the chair and its terrible burden, he began to feel better. Charlie would know what to do when Tom told him of Auntie’s condition.

  Charlie had been sent an envelope. Inside it were soldiers, all sorts. Death’s Head Hussars in spiked helmets, Dragoon Guards with their drooping plumes. And there were cocked hats and scarlet tunics; shiny boots and upturned moustaches; medals and aiguillettes and braided chevrons. And he saw a plain strewn with bodies and the carcasses of horses; he heard noble fellows’ death cries as the carnage went on. There were murderous volleys of grape and canister, clouds of smoke and flashing sabres, as the infantry was scattered like chaff.

  It was war in all its pride and splendour. He threw the pictures down, so that the soldiers lay scattered. But they were wily, they were tigers at the spring as they stared up at him from the floor. So he must get down low, he must hunt them under the table, the chair. One by one he routed them; he ripped their grinning faces to shreds.

  Yet it was he who was hunted, not they. The old man whimpered as he grovelled on the floor, for now it was another wartime, and for an instant longer the face that begged for mercy was a man’s. Then the blows rained down and Charlie Roche was a monster; in the end he was so hideous he frightened them off. But someone stayed — she wore black, she was singing a hymn. Pearl Reed aimed a last kick, then left him for dead.

  It had been all he wanted to do — to die, to go underground where no one could get him again. But the earth was armed with grass; and Charlie was noseless, he was eyeless, his face was lost in a veil of blood, but the grass blades kept needling, as if his face was still there. Instead of a swooning fall into oblivion, Charlie twisted tormented in the grass …

  … twisted tormented on the floor, for the harpy in black kept kicking him, and each kick
seemed to plant a fresh seed of hate in his mind. For how cruel Charlie’s life had been. All through it, human fury had attacked him shamefully; all his life he’d been spited and mocked. And he was tired of counting his troubles as joys; of shambling through life as God’s fool. He’d lost everything: Mama and the child and the applause, the acclaim, as mystic roses bloomed from his fingers. He was unknown, a nobody only fit to brew simpleton’s cough cures; his sole companions were a dog and a boy who took fits. And now the hate was a flower growing inside him; now the harpy was a fair woman promising rewards. If Charlie hated enough he might have anything: roses and violets; even the child.

  She’d come into his arms — his sweetie kid, his knock-about dolly, and he’d love her so much. His hands would clasp her dimpled body, and he’d rock her from side to side till she screamed her Mamas, her Papas; till her go-to-sleep eyes turned glassy, till her face was as ruined as his, and the angel child was reduced to cheap trash.

  But it was impossible. Hating, loving, Charlie came to his senses. Hell was about him, its spangled flames beckoned, but he turned his face from its glare.

  Evil wasn’t worth much. The bright blaze melted away to a pile of cold ash; His Satanic Majesty was merely Old Horny. Girlie O’Brien and Pearl Reed had been trying to spell him for years.

  They’d been clever, this time. Their wax dolls had failed to catch the man, but their paper war-lords had prised out the child. For, at sight of them, Charlie was helpless; he was something small and soft and he felt their cruel teeth sink into him. They were soldiers, they were tigers, they were Papa.

  … in India, his tunic had been scarlet, too; in India, Papa had been a hero. He wouldn’t let you forget: Delhi, and the dwindling British army occupied a ridge to the north of the city, despite the Sepoy’s efforts to dislodge them. And it was Mutiny, but in the end there was a turning point — Delhi fell, Lucknow was relieved. And, up to then, the story was bearable, but he had to go on; the trembling invalid in black must relive the reality of those hearts under the scarlet tunics being steeled for the work of revenge. Charlie Roche shuddered. He saw mutineers blown away from the mouth of cannon; he heard shrieks and low groans as sabres rose and fell as they went about their fearful hewing.

  But Papa had long been in his grave. And in India terrible deeds were memorialized by grass plots edged with solemn yew trees. And Charlie Roche was an old man, and the soldiers were in shreds: he was safe, invincible. He had Tom and Caesar; he must remember guardian angels and magic spectacles, and those clumsy caring fingers that had found him, that carried him away … Lizzie had got into their hands — their blundering fingers were soothing, and in time, against the odds, his torn face healed and the wound that had once been an eye was replaced by a smooth piece of glass.

  And, healed, Charlie Roche had chosen to stay in the Hills, for it was the place where he recalled the child best. Though he knew she no longer existed, that she’d turned into another, just as he had; though a time always came when he felt restless, when he must leave the Gully to wander strange roads. For he might chance upon the woman she’d grown into; he might find, in the woman, a trace of the child.

  Charlie had suffered, but his life had turned good. Lizzie had helped him to forget, to grow strong enough to become mystic and herbalist and Gully bogey-man; just as she helped him, now, to rise from the floor, to cast hate and the memory of old wartimes from his mind, as he welcomed Tom to the hermitage.

  2

  The funeral was over and the Tarot cards kept turning. Granma lay in the cemetery and the Black Magician leered from Girlie’s hand. Bat-winged, crocodile-headed, he was a denizen of the realm of darkness, yet Girlie’s hand lingered, she patted him fondly, before taking up another card.

  Granma was dead. She lay coffined under reddish earth that would soon be covered by a cold marble slab. The floral tributes would be withered by then — as yet they were still freshly fragrant. Pearl’s was a beauty. Tending to the spectacular. A heavenly harp, fashioned from dog’s-tooth violets and bloodroot, festooned with much purple ribbon.

  She was gone. Her voice had been silenced forever, but Boy went on being haunted. There were horrors worse than Irish phantoms and mustard gas; than even Jim’s dying.

  That war had been real enough — your boot sinking in mud and foul smells and banshee screams. Death, then, had meant flesh exploding and warm blood streaming down as wounds blossomed like scarlet flowers. Yet entangled with the horror were the little ridiculous things — meaningless, yet so human and, in retrospect, so big: football on a frozen ground strewn with barbed wire and fragments of shells, someone shouting ‘Buck up, George,’ as the King went past; chipped potato suppers in the YMCA hut, bully and biscuits for Christmas dinner.

  But here was Boy, all these years later, stranded in another wartime. And it was absurd, but it was worse than before. This time there were no ordinary interludes, no comforting snatches of warmth. Even though the drawing room table gleaming fetchingly, and Girlie and her cards were so decorative, and Brother Wells chortled fruitily as Magician and Reaper turned up.

  It was nonsense, though. Why war? — what put it into Boy’s head? He stood on best quality Wilton in choice calf brogues. He was safe. He was dead, quite unfeeling.

  Even Gran’s demise meant nothing; even the fact that, motherless, Papa played little boy lost. His old face screwed plaintive, he sought attention from breakfast-time on. Girlie must slice his bacon fine; she must scold him when he dribbled egg yolk.

  Boy was haunted. The toast fingers were fed into that drooling baby mouth that had once been fierce and snapping, that had once belonged to a man. And then Pearl wiped off egg and stood the great child over the lavatory pan; then buttoned him up and saw he was fit to be let into the drawing room. Sometimes Mr O’Brien pedalled dreamily at the player piano; mostly he sat watching Girlie as she spread out cards, as she shuffled them away.

  Boy lit a cigarette. ‘Valencia’ started off again on the phonograph; Pearl mixed another batch of cocktails. It was harmless enough. He couldn’t care less; he didn’t feel a thing.

  Liar. He shivered inside. Despite his stylish suit he was naked, utterly devoid of protection. Silk socks and golf cuff-links were no good as charms against evil.

  And yet the Tarot cards made a swishing sound, peaceful, as she packed them away. And the old man fallen asleep on the ottoman was merely Papa. And it was Girlie, it was Pearl and Swells — a trio you so much despised, that they might as well not exist — who drew their chairs together; whose voices were tender, almost loving, as they said their words of hate.

  Yet he wouldn’t hear them — he couldn’t. They had their rôles, he had his. Life was a small thing, meaningless; the days slipped away easily, without much pain, so long as you kept to your part. Boy loathed them, but usually he didn’t see them. He was just as invisible to them.

  The boy-hero stood at the window and tapped ash from his cigarette, but they spoke gaily, unguardedly, as if he wasn’t in the room.

  … and Hazel Teakle must be got rid of. The farce had gone on too long. She’d stopped being entertaining. Now she was too tired-making for words … And Doll Strawbridge, poor old half-wit — but a start had been made on her already … And Lou Mundy, brazen hussy … And Cockroach … And Tom …

  Suddenly what they said mattered. They spoke of the child, the boy who used to visit. He used to walk in the garden with Girlie; he’d pushed Gran’s Bath-chair down the Gully Road.

  And she’d told him the Irish stories; she’d frightened him as much as she’d frightened Boy. He called out and they dragged him away; they locked him in Pearl’s dark room. But Jim had been there; Jim, who loved Boy, had saved Tom from harm.

  Boy’s hands were trembling and the cigarette had burnt itself away. Time had passed, but he didn’t know how. Their voices were still plotting, planning, and it didn’t make sense — how did he know about Tom?

  His bo
dy felt fuzzy, floating, and it felt as if Jim was with him. It was Jim who made Boy listen. He heard every word they said, and it was hideous. They spoke of Tom who didn’t seem any different from the child Boy O’Brien had been.

  Things began to happen.

  Hazel Teakle killed herself and Caesar died, too. Of course, all the Gully knew about Hazel — how she cut her throat with the meat-knife, though the butcher said it was her wrists, though the post office lady had to be awkward, and swear strychnine was involved. But however it was done, she did it, and the jam factory stopped work for a day.

  Caesar, though — only Tom knew about that. Charlie looked at him strangely, that day when he reached the hermitage. And the dog was just lying there, stiff, with the ball Charlie used to throw at him to jump for, stuck in his gullet. It had happened before — Caesar jumping for the ball so excited, with such violence, that it got stuck. But always before he’d put his head down and give a few heaves and out it would come. This time it hadn’t — he couldn’t bring it up. The ball stayed down and Caesar died. Tom watched, while Charlie had another go, and somehow got it free. But what came out, all foamy, wasn’t Caesar’s softish rubber ball. This ball was harder, heavier, though Charlie hadn’t noticed it when he made his throw. Tom felt uncomfortable, it was awful seeing Charlie like that: gathering Caesar in his arms, sobbing.