The Frangipani Gardens

by Barbara Hanrahan

  Tom ran towards the smell of sausages and chops. It was lunchtime and the Boy Scouts were hungry; they squatted round the campfire and sang a song about a kookaburra, and waited for the billy to boil. But Tom belonged to no club, he ran on … and here is a Scout lost in dreaming, still arranging sticks into arrows; and here is a Christian Brother, walking along very stealthy … They didn’t see Tom, they were coming together, and the Boy Scout had better watch it, for Swells was a worst beast than Charlie.

  4

  And Doll Strawbridge was real, she existed. Each morning she climbed from bed, and next thing her nightdress was a tent with her head sticking out, and inside the tent her hands dressed her body, they helped her legs step into the parts that weren’t mentioned. It was all done so modest, and at last the undies were on, and ditto a Queen Mary dress.

  And she kept her head steady, she didn’t jut or strut, or throw her arms out as if she was flying. And her eyes behaved, too. They didn’t wink or cast about, but stayed reserved. And so she reached the dining room and for a while the others were there (but she only saw them as shadows). And she sat at the table and used her spoon right (Mother said Good girl as Doll took porridge from the side of her spoon). And if you ate fruit tart you used a fork as well, and the spoon was raised to the mouth for the purpose of receiving fruit stones. Though strawberries might be taken up by the stalks in the fingers. Though pears, apples, peaches and nectarines were eaten with a fruit knife and fork.

  Fruit was a good subject to think on. Doll thought on it all day and into the night. Now and then the shadows moved about her, but she didn’t much care. She only heeded Mother’s voice talking in her head, telling how grape pips weren’t ejected direct from mouth to plate; how oranges were divided into quarters, and each quarter was peeled separately as required.

  And if fruit didn’t suit, you could consider the etiquette of introductions or visiting cards. There was so much to ponder, and now Doll was in the drawing room, sitting on her spindle-leg chair. Sometimes the big girl dusted round her, but she wasn’t here today. Doll was free of her, and of the staring boy, too.

  She used to sit in the garden. But on the quince tree was an insect. It had twitchy legs and a St Andrew’s cross on its back. And it was nervous, all quivering, it was scared worse than Doll. For the nasturtium leaves were big and the butterfly skipped; daisies flapped and zinnias blazed. And didn’t the lawn grow fast, and there was so much grass in the lane. Oh dear, grass and the lane meant Cockroach. His eye was in every daisy, his blood in each fuchsia bud that begged to be popped.

  So she sat with the Chippendale clock and the gate-legged table of fumed oak. Perfectly still she sat, perfectly ladylike, and she was as thin as a whipping post; she should be fed on mutton pies and German sausage. Care had forcibly written its lines on her face; she looked cold and blue, pinched and pecked. She was a lost lady from another age; she should be put to bed with a bag of hot sand and a sip of wine negus.

  Poor Doll. The curtains hung by rings on a brass rod, the table was daintily occasional; there was a parlour palm and a crested ribbon fern. And on the wall was a floral frieze and the water-colour paintings were ornamental, and Doll did them, but she doesn’t paint now. She just sits. She is the deadest thing in that room where good taste is a guiding spirit.

  She was like a frozen person. She was benumbed with cold, she was terribly nipped. It was as if her blood was so cold it formed a solid clot; as if all the little blood vessels were choked and swollen, and the circulation was quite stopped.

  But suddenly she started to change. She thought of fruit in a different way — she thought of how diarrhoea was said to come in with the plum season, and she thought of the cherry plum tree at Flower Hill and how Mother used to tie her cherry plums in muslin bags (but the birds still got them). And Doll was a child again, and it stopped being the sleep of death. Suddenly it felt as if someone started to rub her alive with a teaspoonful of dry mustard and an ounce of lard, which was Mother’s favourite cure for chilblains. And it always used to work, and Doll felt so strong, and nothing could make her afraid. Not even the occasional table and the escritoire.

  For the furniture took frightful shapes. Instead of being inlaid and smooth, the wood was shaggily patchwork: it was bark, it was the trunk of a tree. And how funny the jardiniere and the standard lamp looked, stranded among them … but then they were gone, as well. Then it was only the Hills and gum trees were everywhere and was it a picnic? For Mother spread the tablecloth, and you peeled the hard-boiled egg, you nibbled the chicken leg, but then Doll must wander on. She must go where there were apple trees and she saw the pink people like Adam and Eve and she saw the child in the old man’s arms. And he was struggling, and at first Doll was just watching him, but next thing she started to be him. She was a boy not a girl: she had got into his body, she was fighting for his life. And the boy screamed and ran wildly, and he led her where there were soldiers. But it wasn’t the Bush Contingent, off to South Africa in ostrich plumes; it wasn’t a battalion of Anzacs. These soldiers were only pretending as they wiped up sausage grease with bread. And then Tom Mundy was nowhere near, and Doll Strawbridge painted as never before.

  She was in among the gum trees, but she was also in her studio. And the secret room was unlocked, but she wasn’t painting inside it. The door of that room was open and the pictures spilled out: love pictures, where Doll was a wanton with tumbled hair and blue-faced baboons chattered, love birds soared, the poetic Englishman conjured up his flowers.

  It is daytime and Doll has come alive. She escaped from the drawing room and seized a new canvas and took up the paints — the sticky ones that smell excited, the ones she must squeeze on in worms and mould with her hand. And the pink girl and boy twine together, and in the bushes crouches Cockroach and Tom Mundy is captive in his arms, but the eagle plunges and Tom gets away and next Doll paints in the Scouts and the sausages sizzling nicely and the kookaburra song they sing. But then Doll doesn’t want to paint it, but she must. Oh why is this Boy Scout so innocent, oh why is he little and trusting? Jesus winks silver and the rosary beads jingle and the Christian Brother’s fingers keep moving. Swells is quite as gentle as a woman in his touch, quite as thoughtful about little wants — yes, really far more tender and considerate than any woman. It is a nice thing he does to the Boy Scout. A man’s strength is a great advantage. And Doll cannot do anything but paint. This is a boy she cannot help. But it was over very soon.

  Lou and Garnet were two people, now. The big animal they made in the grass came apart, and Lou threw on her clothes and ran up the slope. Instead of Russian Violets there was an onion smell from under her arms. She could smell her body as she ran. She was shameless, she had let him do it.

  The thing had happened as it had always been meant to, for Lou had never been free. From the start she’d been an outcast; she was a poor girl with Ella for a mother. It was like being born a mechanical doll — she’d smiled and nodded on cue, as invisible hands wound her up. She was sure to be in the duff, up the spout. Those ladies in town had said it all along — it happened to girls like Lou Mundy.

  She’d been another Ella from the day she was born. She’d never been anyone else. She had Ella’s body and her face, and she went to town and had her hair cut and just when she thought she was proper, she was Ella worse than ever, more and more.

  And she was at the gate that said FLOWER HILL. But it was The Frangipani Gardens, now, where exotics grew and probably it was the only place to go.

  Then something made her turn round, and she saw Garnet at the bottom of the slope. The apple trees were round him like a cage; he was a schoolboy, and Lou couldn’t help but love him. And she knew her life was ruined and that his father wasn’t anything flash, and that Garnet would never be, either. Lou would never have romance or a Grand Rapids carpet sweeper. There’d always be dirt and babies crying.

  Doll’s hand holds the paint brush and it is like riding
a bike with no hands. Once you get started it is easy. No hands — and the wheels spin along, spinning you with them. Painting, Doll’s style, is similar. Though her hands hold the brush she doesn’t have to look. It is as if someone else does the painting for her. The brush knows where it must go; it knows what story it must tell.

  And so Lou is made to turn back, and now Garnet and she are together. It is a good bit to paint, so Doll is happy, but the picture is nowhere near finished. There are so many bodies swirling out their patterns, it is such a muddle that Doll wonders if the picture will ever be done.

  Now she is painting faster and faster; now she smears on paint with her fingers. The paint is like mud, like blood. And it is a new picture Doll paints, and this time she doesn’t want to look. For by the creek lies a little dead soldier.

  The child’s body is so small, and only a brute could have done it: it was Cockroach who did it, of course. The Christian Brothers cross themselves; they are united, now — the Irish sweaty ones, the ones with Spanish-saint faces. Brother Wells’s fingers flicker gracefully — he has beautiful hands, so white. Swells says more prayers than anyone. He takes it hard, for he liked that Boy Scout.

  And after the praying they start off down the Gully Road. As well as the Brothers and the Scout leader who found him, there are all these Gully mothers and fathers. It is teatime, but the tablecloths stay folded away, as people approach the orchards from town. They make an army. Now they have left the road. Their sticks swish briskly as they stride through the grass.

  They hate him so much; they have been waiting so long for this day. It was Cockroach who was to blame when the milk went sour and the Iceland poppies were taken by the frost. He was at the back of everything bad and he kept a black sheep with curly horns that would jump on any lady at her time of the month. And his thumbs were turned in, which was Satan’s sign, and of course none of it was true — they were just stories, just part of your childhood. But surely he knew what you felt when you saw him? Surely he knew how little you were under your grown-up disguise? And you hated him for doing it — for making you feel naked and no one at all — and you loved him, too, and would see him thrashed raw. And once a dove came out of his mouth, and his house was made of bread with windows of sparkling sugar. And his house was a handsome structure in late Gothic style. And his house was a blackfellow’s wurley. And they would find him, they would hunt him. The Christian Brothers hitched up their skirts; they got down low, for now they were up to the tunnels.

  But they were nothing much, you needn’t crouch long, for the tunnels were mostly trampled away and there was no dead baby snared on the thorn bush. Every twist and tangle had been clawed from the undergrowth; there was nothing to frighten you, not even a swarm of wild bees. Someone had driven them off; they throbbed with anxiety high above your head — they were as scattered as fern seed and soon it would be the dark cold months and the queen would doze away, comatose as a hibernating bat. And the herb garden was plundered, it was a sad broken place, but they were almost there: they fell silent. You heard the sigh of skirts and the silvery sounds of beads and smelled, mingled with the stench of dying herbs, a stink of fear.

  For he had a face like a dissected puzzle and a glass ball for an eye and yellow leaves fluttered down, there was a storm of veined petals. Someone had stirred up a wind to shake away the last dregs of summery autumn and he was the devil and his beard was snapdragon, stinkhorn was his member, and Brother Wells was brave, he was first at the door.

  But the house was a cheat. There were no gingerbread shingles, no Gothic gables, no woven wattle twig walls. It was merely a wooden hut and the door wasn’t locked. They didn’t have to knock it off its hinges, they weren’t allowed dramatic gestures. Brother Wells just turned the knob and they followed him in, and found they’d been cheated worse.

  They raised their sticks, but he wasn’t there to bring them down on. Cockroach had scuttled off; he’d only left their sticks the bottles of stimulants and sudorifics, tonics, diuretics, astringents, vermifuges, nervines, purgatives, expectorants and demulcents. It was poor reward for their coming, but the tinkles were lovely, and they went mad and smashed the Nondescript and the Jap Mermaid, too. But it wasn’t enough, and it was Swells who struck matches and made a bonfire of the paper soldiers. Pips and polished boots, spurs and medals blazed and a goliath beetle ran across the room and the devil’s coach horse galloped after it, and that beetle would lead you to whoever you sought (it was another childhood story, and one you believed). So they threw themselves at it, they all rushed out and Swells, who was first in — he came last. And somehow he tripped. His gargoyle face smashed on slivers of glass, he fell in a small stream of carminative tincture that was useful for female debility. And dill seeds got up his nose, angelica root slipped in at his mouth, he had sprigs of motherwort in his hair. And the fire fed on books and dried herbs, and it leapt at his priest’s dress and he lay there with his dog lips smiling and his white hands spread wide.

  Now Brother Wells is burning. His eyes are open, they look astonished, as his body is wrapped in a fiery cocoon.

  5

  It was night, and white flowers were open in Doll’s garden. They scented the air; their white petals beckoned.

  Moths were everywhere. They circled, they flew swiftly as birds. Their wings made a humming noise, as they hovered over the bed of evening primrose.

  In the sky the stars were so thick they looked tangled. Some were clustered to make silver arrows, and there were wisps and tassels making a ragged scarf. The stars looked so close together, yet Charlie had said there were great gulfs between them; and that between them and us lay a dark abyss of space.

  Charlie was lost to Tom, now, he was as far away as the stars. Out in the garden, tears pricked Tom’s eyes. He was alone. Behind him, the windows of Sorrento glowed, and Garnet and Lou were together. In the studio Auntie painted on.

  Some stars made a river that spread itself in shallows, that narrowed and were almost lost. Sometimes the sky was knotted and streaked; dark channels appeared in it, and holes of blackness. Tom stared and stared — he felt safest doing that — but the tears kept coming, they made everything strange. It seemed that his crying eyes looked through stars into the space beyond them. It seemed he looked on the beginning and end of space, and the black hole of nothingness came nearer, and the night sky started to whirl.

  He was alone and he always would be. He was different from everyone, he didn’t fit in. Once he’d been happy with King Billy and birds, but now they weren’t enough. Tom wanted something more. Once he’d had Charlie for a friend; now that he’d lost him all his old contentment was ruined.

  Tom had ceased being a boy safe inside a world of his own. For so long he’d been snug as he leafed through the encyclopedias and dug on the cliff top for pieces of quartz. And though he left the lagoon, in the Hills he still had birds. It had been a bird that led him to Charlie; a bird that delivered him from Cockroach. But with Charlie become Cockroach, everything had changed. It was as if the glass dome of content that had settled on Tom’s life — that had kept him immune from the town’s taunting boys and the matrons who’d whispered behind their gloves; from Alf and Vi; from his days at The Frangipani Gardens and that night in the orchid house with Swells — had lifted. Now Tom stood exposed in a world that was foreign.

  Inside Sorrento, Lou sat close against Garnet, and they were making plans for going away. In the studio Auntie kept painting, and now Tom was past the quince tree with its swag of clumsy fruit, and furry moths blundered against him. Yet nothing was real — not quinces or moths or the daffodil moon. Not Auntie applying paint with her fingers.

  She painted in a dream. Tom stood in the doorway and thought she’d never stop. But suddenly she threw down the paints and ran past him. Her eyes were blind, she didn’t see him.

  The stars shone brightly, and the moon somehow swooped, and the quinces hung like dusty yellow lanterns. There was l
ight all about her, and Tom saw she wasn’t Auntie but a stranger. She wasn’t timid and ladylike; she was still the bold artist who’d painted in the dark without a fumble, as if she was guided by God. Her blind eyes were shining, she’d left off her spectacles, her hair shed its pins to float loose. She had paint all over her fingers and it was smeared on her face — she was a painted queen jumped free of a portrait, though her dress swirled as Queen Mary’s never would. Tom ran down the crazy path behind her. Where was she going, what did she seek?

  And Charlie had heard the army, he’d seen their sticks as he crouched low in the grass. He was nothing, now; his body felt dead and he couldn’t remember what it was he’d done wrong. There’d been a child, he thought — but who it was, but what he’d done, he couldn’t remember. But their cries had been terrible, and they were out on a hunt; there were black skirts striding and it seemed like a witch hunt. And now it was his mind that was dead; it was his body that started to come alive. Charlie’s body remembered and dragged him along. It crouched and crawled and took him out of the orchard. Now he was in the lane and he didn’t know how he’d got there. For a long time he rested; he lay hidden in the grass with his body almost as uncaring as his mind. But then his nostrils smelled smoke, and their sticks made a memory, and fear prodded him on.

  Tom stood at the gate beside her and watched the figure coming towards them. It came slow, all bent and jerky. It swayed, it stopped, it started again. Its erratic dot-and-carry-one walk seemed to suggest a peg-legged fate.

  Tom shivered. A stranger approached and it was the bogey-man, for sure, but Doll Strawbridge leaned forward in welcome. Instead of staying safely hidden behind the squeaker hedge, they were silhouetted, out in the lane. The man stumped closer. Tom knew he’d have a cruel face; that there’d be a dangling butcher’s knife, keen-edged, at his belt.