by Glenda Adams
“I don’t think Donna Bird is too keen on the idea.”
The door burst open and Donna Bird walked in. Tom had not locked the door behind them when they came in. Donna merely raised her eyebrows and her visor when she saw Lark, then said to Tom, “Do you want me to go through the speech with you?”
The lecture theater was packed. Lark crept to a seat in the back row. Tom was sitting at a long table on the podium next to an important Australian novelist. Donna Bird, at one end of the table, was taking notes.
“People here are afraid,” the novelist said, “that if we let brown people into our country we will find ourselves sitting next to someone who has just eaten his grandmother for breakfast.” Tom laughed loudly, the audience followed. Donna Bird smiled and scribbled.
Then it was Tom’s turn. “While the people of the developing world continue to struggle for independence from their European masters, neocolonialists are gaining strength; while the neo-Nazi movement grows in Europe, Australia supports uncritically American neocolonialism and commits its own barbarism, its own form of Nazism, by not admitting anyone who is not white, white, white. You’ve all heard of Italians, those well-known Europeans, excluded from Australia because their eyebrows are too dark and thick, of Chinese who are given dictation in Swedish so that they fail the literacy test and are excluded. Because they are not bianco, bán, putih, weiss, wit, blanco, blanc.”
Blanc. Blank. And for a moment, Lark thought of Solomon.
“If you toe the line drawn by America, you will always lose the race,” Tom said.
Lark recognized the line from her letter and was happy. After a while she had the courage to get up and stand at the front, to one side, and she began taking photos of the speakers.
Lark carried in beer from the bathtub and emptied potato chips into a roasting pan. She bore the pan into the room full of gesturing, drinking guests, placing it on top of the mass of papers and clippings on the table. She went into the kitchen alcove and hoisted herself onto the counter in order to observe the party. She felt very useful. It seemed that every prominent student from the university was in that room, students she had previously watched from afar, in addition to the barefoot Perce, the fornicating architecture student, F.X., the young conservative in the navy blue suit, and End of Tether. This was the group that had formed around Donna Bird and Tom, and by default around Lark, whom Tom now seemed to expect to accompany him everywhere. She had never imagined she would find herself in such company, but here she was, swinging her legs against the kitchen cabinets in Tom’s flat, in the middle of things.
Suddenly F.X., his cup of beer held aloft, came over to Lark on the counter. He leant into the porcelain sink.
Lark guessed he was going to vomit—it always happened at parties, she should have known better than to sit near the sink—and went to jump off the counter. F.X. placed his hand on her knee. “Just inspecting the faucets and fixtures,” he said. “These faucets, as I guessed, were manufactured in nineteen fifteen. Of course, it was an informed guess, since all these terraces were put up long before the First World War, with kitchens at the back, and when they were broken up into these little moozels, new fixtures were installed, naturally.” He stood up. “Show me a tap or a toilet and I’ll tell you when it was manufactured, to within five years.” He swung around and pointed his finger at Lark. “Give me two synonyms for the word ‘tap’.”
“Faucet, spigot.” said Lark. “The words survive in American English but have almost disappeared from English English.”
“Ah-ha,” said F.X. He tapped his forehead and wandered off.
Through the archway Lark could see Perce standing next to Donna Bird, his arm around her waist. Tom came out of the bathroom flourishing the new photographs. “Mother kills mate, eats babies,” he called, holding up Lark’s pictures, and everyone gathered around him while he gave a presentation of stories and pictures destined for Strange but True.
“You’ve got to hand it to Tom, he’s innovative,” said F.X. “Even though he is deceiving the press, mocking the establishment and private enterprise, and challenging the very base of capitalism. Here’s to Tom,” and everyone drank some more.
“It’s called pressing the press into the service of the powerless people, us,” said Tom.
“We’ll even forgive him for being a Yank,” said Perce, swaying against Donna as he downed his beer. Donna set him upright again, then slipped out of his grasp and went to the bathroom. Perce, slowly looking around the room for his next inspiration, caught sight of Lark sitting on the counter, apart and happy. He lurched toward her. “Can you iron a good shirt? Can you bake a cherry pie?” He put his arms around Lark’s waist and rested his head in her lap, mumbling and slurping into her skirt, “Can you...” He looked up for a moment. “I say, may I?” And he buried his face in her lap.
Lark looked anxiously at Tom, waiting for him to save her from this assault. She tried to pry Perce loose, but he was pressed against her and holding on with all his might.
“You have a real fan there,” said Tom. He picked up his camera and took a picture.
“Take one of me?” Donna Bird was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, one hand above her head pressed against the jamb, one hip pushed out to one side, as if she were a torch singer. But she was now wearing a navy blue serge school tunic, a white blouse with a maroon and silver striped tie in a Windsor knot, navy blue stockings and black lace-up shoes. She had braided her hair into two thick schoolgirl plaits and crammed a school Panama on her head. She wore spectacles and carried a Globite school case.
“Wonderful,” cried Tom and snapped her picture. “Just wonderful.”
Everyone applauded. Perce, plastered against Lark’s lap, merely groaned and grumbled as Lark continued to try to get him off her. Tom went up to Donna and inspected her closely, turning her around and whistling. “Perfect, brilliant, superb,” he said, as if he had sculpted her himself. “Tomorrow’s the big day,” he announced. “Be there, the Wynyard ramp, four o’clock.”
Lark seemed to be the only one who had no idea what Tom was talking about. Tom had grabbed Donna Bird around the waist and was jitterbugging with her, knocking people aside, carving out a space in the throng.
Perce lifted his head, saw Donna in her school uniform and Tom whirling around, groaned, said “Statutory rape,” and vomited in the sink. Lark leapt down from the counter. She could push Tom and Donna aside, fling open the door and leave the flat, escaping down the stairs onto Glebe Point Road. Another fifty pounds, she needed, perhaps only twenty would do, and then she would really be able to leave. She did not need Strange but True. These people did not need her, and she did not need them.
She edged her way toward the door, quietly. Tom threw himself against the door, Donna Bird still in tow. “Don’t leave me,” he said, pressing his free hand to his heart. And then Donna Bird was whirled off in F.X.’s arms. “I don’t want you to go,” Tom said quietly, putting his arms around Lark and doing a little shuffling dance on the spot, his cheek against her hair. “You’re needed for tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?” she asked.
“The Big Joke,” Tom mouthed back. “You’ll have to photograph it. You’ll stay the night with me here, then we’ll mail off the pictures and stuff to Strange but True, then you’ll photograph Donna Bird getting kidnapped by a carload of perverts.”
“What did you say?” Lark asked. She was not sure he had actually invited her to stay the night.
Tom looked up at the ceiling. “Are you deaf? You have to photograph the kidnapping of Donna Bird by perverts, all supplied by us. This,” he spun her around so that her skirt went right out, “Is Your Life, Lark Watter.”
“But you said something about tonight?”
“Tonight you stay, tomorrow we work.” He let go her hand, leaving her spinning, and went back into the crowd, where several of the young men and women had hoisted Perce, who had passed out, into their arms and were bearing him to Tom’s bed in the co
rner.
Lark steadied herself against the door, then slipped back to the kitchen alcove, and turned on the tap to get rid of Perce’s mess. She cleaned the sink and the counter and collected the rubbish, then leant against the counter, waiting for the party to be over.
“Be a pet,” said F.X. to Donna, “and drive me home. We can take Perce’s car, he won’t be needing it.”
Donna was still in her school uniform. “I’m going to help Tom clean up?” said Donna. “And we have to finish putting together the stories for Strange but True.”
Tom, Donna, and F.X. were sitting on the floor. Perce was stretched out on the bed. Lark was sitting on the counter. Everyone else had left.
Tom stood up and started looking through the papers on the table, many of them now wet from beer and greasy from the potato chips. Lark jumped down and started removing the party clutter.
“I can’t find the copy for three of the stories,” Tom said to Donna.
“They’re at my place, or the office, I think?” Donna said.
“They have to go off first thing in the morning,” said Tom. “As long as you’ve got Perce’s car, why don’t you go and get them now. Then we can get everything licked and stamped.”
“I can get them tomorrow morning.”
“Come on,” said F.X. “I’ll escort you, protect you.”
Tom rifled through Perce’s pockets to get his keys. Perce stirred slightly, mumbled something, then went on breathing deeply. Donna hesitated, then noting Lark in the kitchen busy washing glasses and Perce prominently spread out on the bed, she held out her hand to F.X., who pulled her to her feet.
“I’ll be back,” Donna said. Then to Lark, “Can’t we drop you off?”
“It’s all right,” said Lark, “I can get home all right. I’ll just clean up first.”
Tom tossed the keys to Donna Bird. “See you around the block.” He looked through the papers on his desk, seized a handful and slid down onto the floor, his back against the bed.
As soon as they had closed the door Lark stopped washing the glasses and sat beside Tom, her knees drawn up under her chin. She rested her cheek on her knees, her face turned toward Tom, watching him read. When he looked up and smiled at her she said, “So this is my life?” She touched his arm. He made a kissing sound at her, and she leant over and kissed him.
“Hey,” he said, holding onto his papers, which were in danger of sliding off his knees.
“Can’t you take a break?” Lark asked.
“Sure,” said Tom “Why not?”
He put his papers neatly on the floor and leant back against the bed, his arm around Lark, gazing at the ceiling. “Some party.”
“Do you mind if I lock the door?” Lark was thinking of Donna Bird’s surprise entry earlier. She quickly locked the door and returned to Tom, who had begun to pick up his papers again. Lark took his hands in hers and they lay down on the carpet.
“I predict,” said Tom, “that one day in the not-too-distant, someone, America probably, will try to put a dome of lasers or something over the whole continent, a shield against attack.” Lark closed her eyes and snuggled into Tom’s shoulder, caressing his chest. Tom kissed her absently. “It’s all part of the drive to reattain the state of the single cell, don’t you see? Politicians don’t understand that this is what’s driving them. They think it’s strategy. But it won’t work, of course. Just as the sperm can, every now and then, wriggle around the edge of the diaphragm and penetrate and impregnate the uterus, so one person, wheeling a nuclear bomb in a wheelbarrow, will slip under the edge of the shield.”
Lark sighed and opened her eyes. Perce’s foot was right above her, and she examined for a moment the sole of a foot that had not worn shoes for many months, maybe years. It was tough and hard and cracked, like an old rubber tire. He could probably walk on fire. She closed her eyes and went back to kissing Tom.
“What about Rigoletto?” Lark murmured.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The single cell. Rigoletto sets up this protective shield around his daughter in the form of a high wall, to isolate her, and as a result everyone, well, the Duke who stands for everyone, tries to get through the wall. The urge to penetrate. Osmosis, wouldn’t you say?”
“What are you talking about?” Tom now lay on his back, Lark beside him, her face over his, smiling down at him. His eyes roamed past her, then he, too, saw the foot. He smiled and tapped Lark on the shoulder.
“Look at that foot,” he said.
“I know,” said Lark.
“You’re not looking.”
Lark looked up. “I saw it already.”
“You’ve got to admire Perce’s feet.” Tom reached up and took a pencil from the table, then drew it across the foot. The foot did not move, Perce had felt nothing. “They’re like a pair of dirty old boots. Magritte must have known about Perce’s feet. He has a painting of them.”
Although Lark did not say “Magritte?” it did not seem to make any difference. Tom said, “You don’t know anything, do you? As we lie here, at this very moment, Magritte is in Belgium painting his heart out. There’s a whole world out there waiting for you, Larkie.”
“And I’m going very, very soon,” said Lark. She craned her neck to make sure Perce was still sleeping. “I’m going to be a vagabond, too.”
“He won’t wake up, don’t worry,” said Tom. He ran the pencil over the foot again, which this time twitched. “He’s alive, at least.”
“And Donna Bird? She said she was coming back.”
“She’s with F.X.” Tom sighed and put his hands under his head. “Abstinence, then, is the only way to build strength. Abstinence from weapons, and so on.”
A few moments later a croaking voice from the bed said, “Do you need help picking the little flower?” Perce’s face was now hanging over the edge of the bed. “Happy to be of service.” Lark sat up, turning away from Perce and Tom to straighten her blouse.
At the sound of a key in the door Lark leapt up and rushed to the bathroom.
“Here is the copy?” said Donna Bird, waving a folder in her hand. She stood at the door, taking in Tom flaked out on the floor with his shirt unbuttoned, and Perce on the bed mumbling. Lark opened the bathroom door.
“Jesus,” said Tom, sitting up, shaking his head. “This flat is the crossroads of Sydney, it seems.”
“The little man has had a busy day, hasn’t he?” said Donna.
“I was just going,” said Lark. Tom should have told her that Donna had the key to his flat.
“I’ll drive you home now. Then,” this was to Tom, “we’ll do that licking and stamping.”
“Licking and stamping,” cried Perce from the bed. “I’m good at that. So are they. You should have seen what I saw just now.”
And obediently Lark followed Donna Bird out of the flat.
It was daylight when Donna pulled up outside Lark’s house. The milkman had already been along Park Avenue. On the footpath, hidden from the Watters’ house by the hedge that ran along the front fence but in plain view of the street, were several hundred packets of laundry detergent, stacked to form a knee-high wall. A trail of white powder from a broken packet led from the front gate around the side of the house to the back.
“Colorful,” said Donna Bird. Then, noting that the sun was out, she reached into her handbag and pulled out her visor.
Lark was embarrassed by the packets of Persil, which had to mean that her father was engaged in some new project. Henry Watter, in his pajamas and dressing gown, came hurrying to the front, bent over, furtive, and lifted two packets in each arm, then scurried back. Lark was aware that while her father was thus engaged, the illustrious Professor Manfred Bird, father of Donna Bird, in his academic tweeds, was somewhere in North America thinking deeply original thoughts or lecturing to a class of eager students on the habits of primitives.
Donna pulled her visor down on her forehead and wrapped her scarf around her neck and chin. She watched Henr
y Watter disappear, then shrugged and drove off.
Lark waited by the front gate. Henry Watter, when he came back for more packets, was too preoccupied to reproach Lark for staying out all night. Perhaps he had not even noticed.
“Quick, help me get these out of sight before your mother gets up.”
Lark took a load of Persil around to the basement. Henry had opened the lid of his box and was filling it with the detergent packets. All the walls of the box had now been sanded, and one end had been stained. “Time is of the essence,” he said.
They ran back and forth for twenty minutes or so, until all the Persil was hidden. What did not fit in the box they hid in the far corner of the basement and covered with the French flag.
Henry Watter lowered the lid and sat on the box. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his dressing gown. “Thank you, thank you. And don’t even mention it to her.”
“Is it a surprise, a present?” Lark asked.
“You know I didn’t get anywhere with Jack Davey?”
Lark shook her head.
“The fiasco won’t be on the air for a while, luckily. They had it rigged. They knew I knew everything, so they asked me something I didn’t know.” He tapped the box, indicating its contents. “This is what I won. Persil. They delivered it just now. Your mother didn’t see it. I don’t need Persil.”
“But she’s always washing clothes,” said Lark. “She’ll appreciate it.”
“But I’m ashamed,” said Henry Watter, “to have tried so hard and to have failed. I’ll never get away.” He started to cry.
Mrs. Watter’s footsteps sounded in the kitchen above. “I’ll go and sweep away the spilled powder,” said Lark.
“So,” said Mrs. Watter at breakfast, “you were with those friends of yours?” She banged a saucepan of water on the stove.