For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  “That was funny,” said Teresa.

  “Yes,” breathed Kitty. After a few minutes, her curiosity unloosed her stiff tongue and she timidly asked: “What do you think he was feeling right down her back like that for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  After another silence, Kitty pondered.

  “Why do all the men and boys like that tomboy? She’s so dirty, and so awful.”

  “You mean her figure? Yes, I know.”

  “Not that, but the way she behaves. She’s so rough.”

  “They don’t all.”

  “Well, Mr Manoel—”

  “You wouldn’t want him to kiss you?”

  Kitty burst out laughing, and blushed, “Oh, no.” But she began to ponder again and said almost in a whisper:

  “But he’s married!”

  “I know.”

  “But he has no right, then—”

  “He has a right.”

  “A married man?”

  “If he loves her.”

  “But he’s married.”

  “If he loves her,” said Teresa.

  Kitty looked at her in astonishment. “Love ?”

  “It’s love,” said Teresa.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know.”

  Kitty looked at her fascinated and for a moment, suspicious, but at her sister’s expression, red face, grey eyes turned black with anger, she smiled slightly, and murmured:

  “Oh, of course, you know everything.”

  Teresa, flattered, said nothing more and cooled off.

  When the ferry docked, a few boys with private school caps stood jostling near the gangplank on which Mr Manoel rested his hand and then, in a spurt, they all leaped, the boys, Gladys, some more boys, over the thinning lane of water; and after them came the rope, the gangplank, and the two sisters walked off followed by the other citizens.

  At the Quay, the girls had to pass along the waterfront to reach the Neutral Bay ferry. Kitty, watching Gladys flouncing along with two of the boys, some distance in front, awoke from this obsession, to see another sort of vision—Teresa sailing out in front of her, her lavender skirts swelling gracefully over the fatly wrinkled asphalt, her head tilted, her whole attitude vigorous and excited. A dark axe-faced, starved young man, with spectacles and a black felt hat cocked, was smiling at her and stopping to chat. Kitty approached quickly and was introduced—Mr Crow.

  “Nice weather for fried fish,” said Mr Crow.

  Kitty giggled. Mr Crow gave Kitty all his attention.

  “Where are you going all so gay?”

  “To a wedding.”

  Mr Crow gave a horse-laugh.

  “Just like you girls!”

  “Where are you going, Mr Crow?”

  “Launch-picnic up the Lane Cove.” He swung out a parcel from under his arm. “My bathers. A wedding, phew! Imagine long tails in this weather—or don’t they wear that any more?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “Some people got married in bathing suits, in the paper,” said Teresa.

  “Rather frank, isn’t it?” he grinned.

  The girls looked puzzled. “There was a scandal, didn’t you see it?” Teresa asked.

  “All that fuss and feathers, put on to take off,” pursued the young man.

  Teresa laughed, “You don’t want them to live in them?”

  He grinned. “Well, better shove off. I never saw you look so much of a toff,” he said to Teresa, “didn’t know you went in for that.”

  “Sometimes.” Teresa seemed confused.

  “Good-bye,” said Kitty.

  “Keep your powder dry,” Mr Crow warned them.

  “Good-bye!”

  “Ta ta!”

  He lunged past them, carrying his parcel, and without raising his hat.

  “Teresa, who was that?”

  “He’s the one who coaches me in Latin at night.”

  “He’s quite young.”

  “Oh, he’s not so young,” said Teresa, “and very poor, that’s why he has to teach at night. He has no one to help him, all the other graduates have, but—”

  “There’s the boat,” said Kitty.

  They ran.

  3

  Malfi’s Wedding

  Malfi’s husband stooped and picked up the long veil, running behind her like a woman catching chicks. By the time they reached the festal door, he had gathered up the gauze and had it frothing on his arm. Malfi was delicate, small and thin.

  In the entrance, and climbing the tall wooden stairs, it was a constant hello’ing and calling out of names, rapid introductions lost in a confusion of smiles and crackling new suits and dresses, a phewing and oufing over the heat, jokes about the champagne, words and phrases, family words known to them and strange jokes in the family jargon of the Bedloes and of other strangers drifted into their harbour, floating through the air like confetti, startlingly clever, with a hundred sights of old faces refurbished and new faces varnished. The girls felt happy. They allowed themselves to drift upstairs through the carnival, surreptitiously, in the crush, picking their dresses from their wet breasts and streaming thighs. “How about a nice shower! We ought to have brought our bathers! I’m sorry for the men with their collars”, rang on every side. Every word was a joke, every joke successful. They were breathless in the hall, breathless on the threshold of the hall, which was to rent for “banquets, receptions, smoke concerts, etc.” The church, with its wilted flowers and tangled ribbons, had been disappointing but here there was a large if shabby splendour. From the roof hung the red and green streamers of a past fête. A few white ribands hung from the walls and a white bell with silver tinsel was suspended over the centrepiece of the long banqueting table. Trestle tables covered with white cloths ran round three sides of a large square. The room was spacious, with a dais for a small orchestra, a balustrade, a piano, music-stands. To everyone’s surprise, a few musicians in black were actually there, a violinist with a cloth in his hand, a pianist, a cellist, all looking very off-hand. What expense! Trust Aunt Eliza and Uncle Don for the real thing, at the wedding of their only and beloved child. And then, why not?

  There was Anne Broderick, their first cousin, Aunt Bea’s only child. The two girls rushed forward, “Anne, oh, Anne!” They had lived together as children. There was Aunt Bea herself, the Venerable Bede of the great Hawkins family, as she called herself, rushing up to them, again in her old serge suit, borrowed hat, cheap high heels and wrinkled stockings, all smiles and love.

  “How are you doing in this heat, my chick, my cherub?” said she to Anne, whom she had not seen since the church, seven minutes away. “Did you ever see my diddums look so plump and pretty, like a spring chicken? Kiss me, my duck. How do you think my baby of twenty-four is looking, chicks?” she enquired. “My two favourite nieces! And how’s your dear father, my dear brother Andrew? We are all broken up that everyone couldn’t have been included, but Croesus himself would think twice about asking our tribe in its entirety and you don’t know how disappointed Eliza was that Malfi insisted upon a relatively quiet wedding. Malfi herself cut down the list of guests by half. She was always thoughtful of her parents, and of course, to them, she is the pearl of great price. How very nifty, Teresa! But look, a rose is hanging by a single thread! So here we are, my chicks, in the fullness of time, at Malfi’s wedding. Everything comes to her who waits, including Mr Right. Of course,” Aunt Bea bent closer, “I understand that he simply adores her, he worships the ground she walks on and the love is more on his side than hers, but we never know. Malfi is settling down at last, poor child, and all is for the best in this best of possible worlds.”

  “Oh, Mother,” said Anne. They all laughed. Aunt Bea, excited by the wedding, said: “Of course, a good many people are surprised, between you, we, and us, that Malfi with all her chances is marrying Harry—but Harry is a dear. I’ve met him three or four times and he calls me his Aunt Bea, the Venerable Bede, not so Venerable, he calls me, for t
hey, no doubt, told him about Bea and her peculiar, reprehensible no doubt, but my own qualities, peculiar to myself, I don’t mean strange. And though the boy, or man, I should say! is rather a simple soul, he’s a good soul and after all, handsome is as handsome does, if Malfiis happy with him, we ought to ask no more questions. And it really is time our little Malfi had a home of her own with things of her own, for we all know a time comes when a girl, however much she loves her parents, yearns for her own nest. And so it is with Malfi. And if it is love she wants, loyalty and all that, she has it, I say. I was quite won over by Harry the first time I met him and I said at once to Malfi—enigmatic as Malfi is, she has a great affection for her Nana Bea—‘If you want him, he’s the man, he certainly has a good heart’, and after all, who knows if she’d really be happier with Clark or Errol?”

  “Oh, Mother,” said Anne, “don’t be stupid.” She laughed.

  “Diddums!” exclaimed Aunt Bea. She kissed her daughter passionately twice and darted off to one of her sisters-in-law. Her navy suit was frayed, and had shrunk, a tail of her blouse hung down behind the coat. Anne rushed after her to straighten it for her and (while the women formed a circle around her) pull up her stockings. When her stockings were tightened, the swollen veins in her thin legs and feet could be seen. But Aunt Bea came back, tugging at her coat and looking over her shoulder at their great-aunt, Aunt Esmay, a pleasant fat woman who had been a general servant when she married, was now a widow, and kept winning prizes at bridge parties. She had on a black voile dotted with indescribable flowers, through which her red neck and arms glowed.

  “Now, Bea, I know,” she said, “I’m too wide in the hips, there isn’t a dress that sits well on my hips.”

  “You’re not so very wide there, May,” said Aunt Bea. “Look—there are Andrew’s two girls looking like the babes in the woods, their get-up’s a bit sketchy, they’d look worlds better with a bit of rouge, but I suppose my brother is still as old-fashioned as ever—you know you should wear the princess-type, that’s all, May. The tight waist you have and that frill round the sitdown make you tubby, and then there should be shoulder interest, don’t you see, you lift the eye away from the avoirdupois. If you have a frill round your shoulders and—”

  “I like a plain dress with a couple of frills,” said the old woman placidly, “and I never heard men didn’t like hips on a woman.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ll find, or you would find, that the style has changed, May. The slinky is more the thing now, not that I don’t think a woman should be a woman.”

  “I am as God made me,” said May, complacently smoothing down the ill-cut material over her belly. “I was a thin slip of a thing once, but I don’t mind how I am now, Bea. A woman my age should have a little flesh! I don’t want to look like a skinny old maid.”

  “Well, grandmothers look like young girls now, walk behind and you can’t tell the difference. A woman I know was hit on the head by a man and knocked down on the pavement. She walked nicely and dyed her hair. When he stooped down and looked at her he saw her wrinkles and he left her lying there. She got up and didn’t dare tell the policeman, he would have seen her face and laughed at her.”

  “No one will give me a knockdown,” said Esmay. “I’m off! There’s that woman!”

  There was Aunt Di herself, the family’s only elderly spinster, a golden woman, a school-teacher, who loved her young nieces before their weddings. Aunt Di was gallant about her misfortune. “I am Miss Hawkins,” she roared at people, “my nieces are Miss Teresa Hawkins, and so forth, but I am the only Miss Hawkins.”

  It did no good. They laughed at her in public and in private, to her face and behind her back. At the name of Di’s crusades, once the misery was over, one roar of laughter rocked the family. Say what you would, she was just a battling old maid and did not know what man was like, whether Mr Wrong or Mr Right. Meanwhile, her nieces, reaping their wild oats, knew, provoked new scandals which flung Aunt Di into new tempers. Aunt Di cut off each of her favourite nieces as they reached the age of sin and fell; but no matter whether babies came untimely, or girls were mysteriously ill, or babies came “beyond the pale”, no matter who was deserted and betrayed, her roaring was in a desert; the more she raved, the more the matrons, the virgins and the seduced laughed at her or hated her. She was utterly a brute or jollily ridiculous, it all meant nothing: she was an old maid.

  Each girl had made up her mind to risk anything to avoid being the next “Miss Hawkins”. Yet she sat in the front row at all the family weddings and gave bolts of silk, silver teapots, embroidered tray-cloths.

  Teresa shrank from her rather more than the others, because she resembled her. She had the same bright hair and keen grey eyes. What an omen! She pretended not to see Aunt Di coming near and turned away, but Aunt Di bounded up, and seized her by the arm.

  “Terry, don’t you want to see your Aunt Di? The lavender suits you, Terry, I used to wear shades like that when I was your age, but I can’t any more. I had a complexion like you too then.”

  “Why can’t you any more?” Terry demanded.

  “It doesn’t suit my weatherbeaten skin, my dear, and my age! I’m not young any more like you. I’d be ridiculous.”

  Terry said: “Why give up?”

  Aunt Di gave a kindly snort.

  Terry heard it vaguely. She was steaming. Another Aunt, Maggie, bored, had drawn close.

  “If you give up, make the faintest compromise, it’s all over with you,” said Teresa. “I hate Bernard Shaw because he says that life is compromise. It isn’t. I’ll never give in.”

  “What’s the trouble about?” asked Maggie.

  Di let out a hoot. “I used to be like that, just like that!”

  Maggie murmured: “Yes, you were, Di, you were a fine-looking girl, with that high colour.”

  Teresa turned away with bursting heart. It was intolerable because it was true. She was like “the only Miss Hawkins”. Aunt Di was saying: “… but I waited for Mr Right—” Teresa went over to an isolated bentwood chair and stood beside it, thinking: “What do I care if I am? The little world of aunts has changed. All rights, all liberties, all loves! Let the last shreds of my impotence fall away, they will be right to laugh at me if I remain Miss Hawkins!”

  The tables were set, the crowd was thirsty, the air was red and dust flew up. The important persons stood about exchanging well-worn confidences and courtesies and a new embarrassment set in for the hundred mixed relations. Aunt Bea kept running about keeping up the good-will, while Malfi’s parents were continually shaking hands, kissing and greeting people. But the strangers brought together by Aunt Bea broke apart again at once, rendered indifferent by the heat of the extraordinary day which had now reached its maximum and was, as the men kept saying, one hundred and twelve, right outside now, the mercury frying. At first they created a little turbulency and gaiety by saying: “Have the bride and groom arrived yet?” “Were you at the church?” Many of the guests had not been invited to the church for the queer reason that Malfi, a party-giver and the showpiece of the family, wanted a very quiet ceremony. Presently these questions failed too, especially when it became certain that the newly married pair had already arrived but were staying in a small room, because Malfi was tired.

  Sylvia Hawkins, a dark cousin of twenty-eight, came bursting in with the news, creating a small unrest for a while by saying that Malfi was crying and her husband comforting her; and Aunt Bea rushed about at once saying the poor child was over-wrought, over-excited, the happiest day of a girl’s life often brought tears, even though they might be deep-down tears of joy, but happy is the bride the sun shines on, and it certainly was bursting a blood-vessel to blaze on Malfi, the sun never shone so yet on any Hawkins bride, and then a good-natured joke to cover the awkwardness: “How do you like that—a June bride in February? But if all brides were to get married only one month in the year, such procrastination might cause certain things to happen, for time, time waits for no man and sometimes the
Little Stranger comes out of the nowhere into the here rather sooner than he is expected.”

  “Oh, Mother,” said Anne, Aunt Bea’s daughter, blushing to the roots of her hair.

  “Don’t blush, my cherub,” said Aunt Bea, “though a day like today no one knows whether it’s blush or sunburn, but whatever anyone may say, I don’t think it’s out of place at a wedding to talk of babies. Babies do come, you know, and from weddings, and under some circumstances”, and here she giggled reminiscently, and lowered her voice, “you might almost say it is the baby who is being married.”

  “Mother!” cried Anne, mortified.

  “Fear not, my little darling,” said Aunt Bea, ashamed, but only of having hurt her child’s feelings. “Mother will shut up. I open my mouth and put my foot in it.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Bea,” said Aunt Esmay fatly. “My! my dress is sticking to me, they’ll think I came in a bathing suit if this goes on much longer. We do need an electric fan. Wouldn’t you think they’d have one? At the whist drive on Saturday they had one over each table.”

  “A ninon bathing suit is just right for today,” said Bea, giggling, “or Eve’s bathing suit.”

  “I’m just waiting to rip these rags off my back and step into a cold bath,” said Maggie.

  “Look at me in my old serge suit,” said Bea, with a poor smile. “Well, all I had, don’t think I wouldn’t prefer ninon.”

  “Ninon over none-on,” said Aunt Esmay, laughing at the old joke as if she had just made it up.

  “Ninon over none-on,” said Aunt Bea disconsolately. But she brightened at once. “Never say die, for my own precious cherub’s wedding I’ll wear purple and fine linen if I have to scrub floors for a six-month before. Anne will have whatever she wants, ivory satin, watered silk, Chantilly lace and of course, the family diamonds.” Aunt Bea lifted one foot and wrenched at her shoe with a grimace. “These were a bargain at Joe Gardiner’s, but you know I am so ashamed to keep the poor young man showing me samples that I just take anything. They seemed to fit in the shop, such a bargain, I couldn’t resist it, twelve-and-six, bronze kid, but now they fit me all over nowhere.”