by Carmel Bird
I told Jean about me and Jack. When we split up I came to live here in the apartment. This is no dream house. It’s a million miles from the Bungalow at Esher, Surrey. It is cold and lonely and dark and ugly and the landlord won’t fix the tap. I don’t suffer from any of the things Jean suffers from; I could leave. I don’t. Where would I go? Nobody cleans out the gutters here. If I liked I could scatter packets of seed in the silt along the edges of the roof. I could grow blue and purple and scarlet and yellow flowers, like eyebrows. I could climb onto the roof and lie there reading love comics.
Sometimes I dream that I am living in the house where I grew up. Not long ago: I’m living in the house with my young son and another woman and her baby. It is night. A man wearing glasses and a green felt hat comes scratching at the back door. I bolt the door against him, but I forget the front door is wide open. He comes in, hides behind the door of the big bedroom where my parents sleep. I know he’s there. With the other woman and the children I run from the house leaving the man behind. I have the comfort of the woman and the children, but I can never go back to the house.
I wished long ago to be P. D. Hepworth, Architect. There were times when I almost was. And times, just a few rare, sweet times when, lost in an ecstasy of inspiration and belief, I was P. D. Hepworth. I imagine and I remember the drawings I did.
I drew also in a book called The Book of Families. One summer there was an eclipse of the sun and my father said I could look at it through some smoky glass. We were standing on the brick path in the back garden and my father explained to me that it was very special to be able to look at the eclipse. The glass was precious. I dropped it and it shattered on the bricks. I don’t remember what my father did, or what he said to me, but I know I went inside the house at once. I went into my bedroom and I took out P. D. Hepworth’s book and another book. In the second book I drew the families that would go into the houses. Different kinds of families, but nearly all huge and complex with grandparents and great-grandparents and many aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone had interesting names. One of the surnames was von de Kaponpah. Some families were distinguished by multiple births or physical peculiarities. A few of the families were related to other families. I kept notes on the children’s health and development and school results. They all had hobbies and pastimes and favourite colours and songs. They had birthdays and lucky numbers. I designed dresses for the girls. One of the families was Dutch and they started a tulip farm.
I grew tulips, the petals shiny like satin, the centres black and powerful. I pressed the petals in a heavy book, crushing the juicy colours up against the Great Wall of China. The heavy book belonged to my father; I still have my father’s books.
The Book of Families is gone. I turn over in my mind the image of my feverish self as I sketched and labelled the people who lived in houses beneath roofs of flowers.
There were details of the colours of the rooms; the sorts of carpets, curtains, furniture. I designed the gardens, taking suggestions from one of my father’s books. I marked the book with indelible pencil and the purple marks are still there: ‘Suggestions for planting a kitchen garden measuring 148 ft by 96 ft, showing rotation of crops in three plots.’ One family grew ‘strawberries and two rows of rhubarb and early peas followed by autumn cauliflower’. People called the Roses grew all kinds of roses troubled by leaf lice that would ‘suck the sap, blocking the functions with a substance known as honeydew’.
I spent hours alone in my room inventing houses and people and lives and problems, right down to diseases and insect pests. I saw less and less of Patricia. A girl from one of my families presented a bouquet of white lilies to the Queen. Another girl accidentally ate seeds from a laburnum and she died in agony. Patricia and I drifted far apart.
I lost the photograph her father took of us together, me and Patricia by the hole in the front fence, the gaps between our teeth mirrored by the spaces where the palings were missing.
The last big thing I remember properly about the Bonneys was when some of the tiles on their roof blew off in a storm and the rain poured in on Mrs Bonney in the bath.
I can tell these things to Jean when she is feeling down, and sometimes she smiles, sometimes she stares at me in a puzzled way, sad. ‘You must find the P. D. Hepworth book for architects.’ I tell her it’s gone forever, and The Book of Families too. Jean asks did P. D. Hepworth have a house and family, but I say I never got round to that.
Henry Lawson’s Chromosome
Jean had a breakdown and they put her in hospital. I went to see her. I remember going up some stairs behind a nun in black, and looking at a coloured window above the turn of the stairs. It was late afternoon and sunlight shone through the glass. A woman in a dressing-gown came up the stairs beside me. She took my hand as if she knew me or as if she had an urgent message. She linked her arm with mine.
‘I had my breakdown in the henhouse,’ the woman whispered in my ear. I had never been in a mental hospital before and I was frightened. The woman raised her voice. ‘Of course I did. What else? I was living in the lap of luxury, you understand. For some reason we had chooks. My husband was a two-minute-egg man every morning, with fresh-squeezed orange juice. I was the doctor’s wife. I had four children.’ She stopped there and she corrected herself. ‘I am the doctor’s wife. I have four children. Five really, if you count Bianca. I count Bianca. She was only two and a half when she drowned in the pool.’ The woman, her arm in mine, was standing still on the stairs and gazing into space. Her voice became soft and conversational. The nun was gone. ‘One minute Bianca was there and then she was gone. I had just turned away to flick the crumbs from the tablecloth and in the twinkling of an eye Bianca left us. One minute she was there and then she was gone. Going, going, gone into the water. On your marks, ready, set, go. Slipped in without a sound.’
I fancied I heard a sharp and startled little ‘O’ made by the child’s breath, formed by the perfect circle of her lips. I imagined the wide round opening of her wide blue opening eyes, saw the sunlight on her lashes, the bloom like peaches on her cheeks.
‘We called her Anka, short for Bianca. And she drowned without a splash. Slipped into the water arms up, eyes open, mouth saying “O” before the end. One minute five children. Then only four. Water does that to children.’
The woman’s eyes were filled with tears. The nun came back, came swiftly towards us down the stairs. Gently she took the woman by the hand and said to me, ‘Mrs Moran is such a one for telling stories.’ The woman dropped her voice back into a whisper and began again. ‘I had my breakdown in the henhouse.’ The nun led her away. I kept on going up the stairs. I came to an open area where people were sitting in old armchairs. One of the people was Jean. I sat down beside her but she didn’t seem to know me. ‘She’s had shock treatment,’ another woman told me. ‘She won’t know who you are. Won’t remember things. I’ll tell you something though. When I’m coming out of it like she is I like people to read me the paper. Why don’t you read her the paper. She’ll love the paper.’
Jean’s face was pale and her eyes were vacant. I looked away, looked up and saw above Jean’s head a picture of a purple tree beside an orange river. Underneath the picture it said: ‘The Northern Territory’. Jean was very quiet and still except she fidgeted all the time with the cord of her dressing-gown. She stared at the cord, blinking, as if she was trying to make sense of it. I watched as she turned and rolled and plaited the blue silk. Suddenly she said, ‘They won’t let you smoke.’ I said, ‘I brought you some butterscotch.’ And I handed her the box. She smiled and fiddled with it, too clumsy to get it open. Nearby a woman was holding two small packets of Corn Flakes, one packet in each hand. The woman was clapping the packets rhythmically together and muttering, ‘Round and round the garden like a teddy bear; round and round the garden like a teddy bear.’ Jean said, ‘I found a little bathroom.’ She whispered so that I had to lean forward to hear what she was saying. Her hair had a sour smell. She spoke slowly as if searc
hing for the right word. Now and then she rubbed the middle finger of her right hand across the skin between her eyebrows. ‘It had a big old bath,’ she said. ‘A white one with claws, lion’s claws. I shut the door and put a chair against it for privacy, and then I put the plug in. I turned the tap on and the whole room started filling up with steam. There were great big clouds of steam with shadows floating through. I got into the water and I couldn’t feel it but it must have been boiling hot. Look at my legs.’
She folded back the dressing-gown and showed me the dark pink marks of scaling on her skin. I stared in shock and then I looked away. Jean pulled her dressing-gown tightly shut and said, ‘I have to tell you about the man with the red face. When you’re up to your neck in hot water, be like the kettle and sing. He yelled at me. Did I ever tell you the red-faced man yelled at me and frightened me out of my wits and skin? Did I tell you?’ I shook my head. ‘I went past his house every day on my way to school. He was hiding in the bushes but I didn’t see him. A lovely flower as white as snow was hanging over his fence. Quick as lightning I reached up and tried to pick it but the stem wouldn’t break. Some petals fell on the footpath. White as snow. You understand this, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘He jumped up jack-in- the-box in the bushes and I started running. He was waving and shouting and his face was as red as blood. He seemed to have a gun. I thought he had a gun. Look out, he’s got a gun. “You touch that thing and I’ll catch you and I’ll ram it down your bloody throat.” I ran like the wind away. He stayed behind in his garden, yelling. I never stopped running.’ Her eyes were filled with tears.
I said, ‘I’ll read the paper to you.’ And I started to read the first thing that I saw. ‘Biomedical research in the United States,’ I read, and I was sorry it had begun like that. Jean didn’t seem to mind. ‘Biomedical research in the United States claims that the condition of manic depression can be linked to DNA markers on the tip of the short arm of chromosome eleven.’ Jean looked straight at me and laughed. She pulled her dressing-gown sleeve down over one hand and flapped the sleeve in the air. ‘Short arm,’ she said, and laughed again. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘what of it.’ ‘Abraham Lincoln and the Australian poet Henry Lawson are known to have carried such DNA markers on their eleventh chromosome. The manic depression of these great men can be traced to the presence of these markers.’ Jean’s face was bright and she said, ‘The Chromosome Eleven. The DNA markers at short leg operated in favour of the Chromosome Eleven during the fifth Test.’ She shrieked with laughter and she looked at me coldly and she said, ‘Who are you anyway?’
I told her who I was. I told her I am her neighbour back at the apartment. Me in twenty, her in twenty-one. She said she didn’t live in an apartment. She said she lived in a big pink house with huge round ornamental rocks in the front garden and a row of lamps resembling white balloons leading up to the front door. The woman sitting next to her in one of the old armchairs was very kind. She said Jean would come out of her confusion in the morning after a good night’s sleep. I said goodbye and left.
The air outside was cool and soothing and there were flowers all along the gravel path. I wished I hadn’t read out that thing about depression. When I got home I sat for a long time in the twilight thinking about the hospital and Jean, and the other people there. I thought about Jean’s pale skin, and the way she turned and twisted the blue silk cord. I was conscious of the thick silence of Jean’s apartment through the wall. When she was there I could always hear her television and a certain amount of movement—cupboard doors and bathwater. The silence unsettled me, and I imagined someone—Jack for instance—moving in to fill up the empty space and shift the furniture around.
I imagined Jack. Jack living in Jean’s apartment while Jean had more shock treatment at the hospital. I imagined everything—Jack borrowing Jean’s car, taking good care of it. He’s interested in cars. The old Toyota never looked so clean and shiny. Jack used a special kind of wax. One time he came to my door and said hello and asked did I want to go out for a drive? I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t spoken to him since we split up. I said yes, I’d like to go for a drive. He was going to the hills to buy a chainsaw. I asked him was he cutting down the trees and he said yes.
We went out along the highway past all the used-car yards and furniture displays. There’s a place that just sells imitation grass and another one for artificial sheepskin. As we went along I told Jack about Jean in the armchair in the hospital. As I was telling him it seemed to me he wasn’t very interested. I said if he was going to drive Jean’s car and live in her apartment he could at least take an interest in what was happening to her mental health. He said nothing, and he looked sideways at me the way he always used to do and I felt a familiar silence gathering around us. I wanted to scream at him, but instead of doing that I changed the subject. I couldn’t think of anything just then except the story in the paper I had read to Jean. So I started telling Jack about the chromosome, and when I got to the part about Abraham Lincoln Jack said, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I said I thought that it explained a lot. And Jack said he couldn’t really see why you should go poking around in the chromosomes of dead people. There was no such easy way, Jack said, to explain the course of history. ‘Next they’ll be telling us,’ Jack said, ‘that the bloke that shot Abraham Lincoln was only aiming at the marker on the short arm of the eleventh chromosome. And that’ll make it okay.’ So then I dropped the subject of Abraham Lincoln and started to talk about Henry Lawson. ‘He had this thing too,’ I said. ‘And he was a poet. He might have been a poet because of the chromosome.’ ‘So you reckon,’ Jack said, ‘if you could test the babies when they’re born you could pick out the poets and the presidents by the markers on their chromosomes.’
‘There might be a connection.’
And Jack said, ‘Bullshit.’
We stopped talking then. And after a while Jack asked me if I wanted a pizza and I said no. Then there was another silence.
Jack and me driving up the highway past the car yards full of second-hand Mazdas and four-wheel drives.
And the rain on the windscreen.
And the wipers going.
And a cassette playing something to the rhythm of the wipers.
And the place where we would buy the chainsaw getting closer.
And the world outside getting darker.
And the headlights of the cars.
And the gleam of the road.
And the rain.
Like a French film.
Soldier of the Round Valleys
The man at the apartment down the hall writes songs. He wrote a song called ‘Nothing Ever Stays The Same’ and Jean from the apartment next to mine said she wished it was true. The trouble is, Jean said, nothing ever changes. I agree with the song. Lives change all the time. I told Jean about my sister Geraldine. As far as Geraldine’s concerned, everything has changed.
Geraldine’s husband, Scot, rang me and he said, ‘I would like you to talk to Geraldine. I’m afraid your sister has gone mad.’ He said it as if Geraldine’s madness was related to my side of the family, not to his. Without any warning, as far as Scott could tell, Geraldine—a wife, a mother and a grandmother—rushed out of the house in the middle of the night, drove to the beach and was found the next day with her feet in a rock pool. She was, Scott said, babbling like an idiot, and the sand around her was soaked with whisky. The empty bottle was floating in the rock pool. Geraldine had slept, Scott said, on the beach all night, had used a piece of driftwood as a pillow. Everything he said turned out to be true, except Geraldine had not gone mad. ‘She’s at the beach house now,’ Scott said to me. ‘Please go down there and make her see reason. Talk to her. She listens to you.’ Scott has never made such a long speech to me before.
Geraldine is ten years older than me. These ten years make no difference now, but when Geraldine and Scott first met I was only a small child. I idolised Geraldine and fell in love with Scott. And I fell in love with the idea that Scott and Geraldine
were in love. I used to follow them around, down bush tracks, into parks, into swimming pools. They would pay me to go away.
When Geraldine was a deb Scott was her partner. In her white dress Geraldine was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I watched while my mother, her mouth full of pins, trimmed the bottom of the dress with nail scissors. Geraldine was standing on a chair in the spare room and I was watching from a branch of the pear tree outside the window. The sight of me in the tree infuriated Geraldine. ‘Something should be done about her,’ Geraldine said. ‘Why don’t you put her in boarding school?’
The whole family, grandparents as well, went to the ball when Geraldine made her debut. We sat on a balcony looking down onto the dancers. From time to time somebody would remark on how lovely Geraldine looked, how like this aunt or that cousin, or how happy she looked. I said nothing, but I was aware that Geraldine was not happy. Something about the way she held her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, warned me that Geraldine was not happy. She was beautiful, she was radiant, she was the belle of the ball. Geraldine resembled the ballerina on the lid of a jewellery box.
My grandmother leans down to me and says, ‘This is the foxtrot.’ I look down on the dancers below me, my forehead pressed against the fancy iron bars of the ballroom balcony. A huge ball of mirror fragments rotates in the centre of the ceiling, throwing out millions of little stars. I turn to my grandmother and I say, ‘Geraldine is not enjoying the foxtrot.’ But my grandmother takes no notice of me. She continues to gaze in rapture down onto the girls in white and their partners.