Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

by Maureen McCarthy

  Then I saw Jude’s face peering down at me from near the stage. She was smiling at me, beckoning me with her arm. I breathed out furiously and began to walk through the crowd to the stage. This was over the top! She hadn’t asked me. Hadn’t even suggested this. Now she’d got me into this crazy situation. I was nearly crying by the time I reached her. I wanted to slap her face. The domineering, bossy little . . . wog! I could have killed her.

  She pretended not to notice my anger.

  ‘Why don’t you sing . . . ?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I retorted in a low hiss. ‘Jude, how could you? I don’t want to sing. You’re wrecking everything!’ My face was burning, but for once I didn’t care. I was beyond it. My outrage was cut off by a squeeze on the arm. I turned abruptly and looked into the eyes of someone I vaguely recognised. It was one of the musicians dressed in his dinner suit, but his eyes were a sort of glassy blue with lots of friendly wrinkles around them.

  ‘Don’t blame her, Carmel,’ he said indicating Jude, ‘it was me. I recognised you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I whispered.

  ‘Alan,’ he said simply. ‘Last time you saw me I was playing keyboard in that Fitzroy pub. You didn’t turn up that Saturday night, so I thought . . . well, Jude here said you were terrific . . .’ ‘But this isn’t your band,’ I said incredulously, ‘you had a girl singer and you were playing jazz . . .’

  ‘So what?’ he laughed. ‘I move in and out of different bands. Actually that girl singer is heading overseas next week and we’re looking for a replacement. Come on, show us what you can do.’ I gulped. Behind us the people were still clapping. I looked from Alan to Jude then straightened my shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ I said.

  ‘How about . . . “One Perfect Day”?’ Jude suggested. ‘She sings that really well.’

  ‘Nah.’ Alan’s face wrinkled up. ‘This is a pretty straight crowd. Give ’em a pleaser like “The Rose” or something.’

  ‘I don’t know that!’ I exclaimed angrily.

  ‘Well, what about that other Bette Midler tune? You know, that corny thing, “The Wind Beneath My Wings”.’

  I wavered then and looked at Jude. We’d learnt that one together back in town during one of our evenings of playing and singing. I actually liked that song a lot. I didn’t like it being described as corny. Okay, it wasn’t the best song ever written, and it was a bit corny, but there was something I liked about it. Jude pinched my elbow reassuringly.

  ‘You sing that well. Go on.’

  ‘Jude, I can’t sing here . . .’ I said.

  Alan shrugged and went over to the piano.

  ‘I’ll play through the first four lines, okay . . . give you the timing? Then you go for it, okay?’

  ‘But I.. . .’ I held up my hand to stop him.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘A crowd of country hicks. You can do it. What does it matter?’ He grinned. ‘Come on, I’m serious. I wanna see what you can do.’

  I suppose that must have done the trick. I gave a faint nod, and stepped up onto the stage.

  The clapping stopped and the room suddenly fell quiet. I stood alone by the piano, which had mysteriously been shifted forward. I turned to face the audience, saw them standing below me, so dressed up and made up, so expensive and frightening, looking up with expectant faces.

  ‘Come on. They’re just a pack of country hicks. Let’s see what you can do . . .’

  Alan ran through the first bars of the tune.

  I couldn’t believe that within a few moments I would be opening my mouth and singing in front of all these people. But another part of me was picking up on the pacing and getting ready to come in. His playing was good, strong and slow and delicate. I turned to him and he gave me a nod. I opened my mouth and sang.

  At first my voice was thin and tentative, but with each line I gained strength and confidence. By the end I was singing with passion, letting my voice feel out the words, through the notes, letting certain phrases hang in the air for a fraction longer than essential, giving weight and complexity to the ideas behind the lyrics. I fell back on what I’d been taught – to concentrate on what I was singing, and to believe in what I was singing.

  ‘You are the wind beneath my wings . . .’

  At the end the sea of people below me broke into loud applause. I could see Katerina standing next to her parents, and the three of them clapping warmly.

  ‘More! More!’

  I shook my head, bowed, and stepped down from the stage, elated and wiped out. I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking violently. There was no way I was going to sing anything else. People rushed forward to tell me how much they’d enjoyed it. People I hadn’t met at all during the night; surprise and delight on every face.

  ‘Where did you learn to sing?’

  ‘You ought to get a recording contract . . .’

  ‘You’re as good as anyone . . .’

  Then Peter and Andrew with their funny little formal comments of praise. Their pleasure in the surprise I’d given them. Even the beautiful girl in the white dress who’d passed me in the toilet only ten minutes before without so much as a nod in my direction.

  ‘That was so good,’ she purred, giving my upper arm a squeeze. I smiled shyly, amazed to see the envy in her eyes. And her so beautiful. I moved through the crowd accepting kisses and congratulatory comments. But it was only when I saw in front of me the black shirt with the two buttons missing that I realised what I’d been unconsciously looking for all along. From the moment I had finished the song and come down from the stage I’d been waiting for this. Now I could slow down. Everything was all right. He’d been here, he’d heard me sing.

  ‘Carmel,’ he said and held out his hand. I reached out with my own, excited and pleased, but I couldn’t speak. I could do nothing but wait for him to release my hand. Slowly he let my hand go. We were about the same height standing there, only inches apart. Perhaps I was a fraction taller. Anyway, I could stare straight into his face, into the ocean eyes that were smiling at me in that warm, hesitant way.

  ‘You’re wonderful,’ he said simply and I could feel his breath on my face. The crowd had thinned out around us. I was no longer the centre of attention. I nodded, but still couldn’t say anything. He laughed, delighted with my response, which he obviously took to be agreement. Ah. If only he knew. I laughed too and decided that I would let him think that. Parts of me could wait. Let him think I thought I was wonderful. Why not?

  Suddenly the band started up again. Some jerky, old-fashioned number. People appeared from an adjoining room; about ten older couples hit the dance floor with great aplomb. The younger crowd could only watch. It was some kind of complicated foxtrot and they didn’t know the steps. The oldies were very good. Crowds of young people stood by the sides and watched in reluctant admiration.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Anton said, taking my hand, ‘can you?’

  ‘No,’ I managed to whisper.

  ‘Will we dance anyway?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, as though in a dream. ‘Let’s dance anyway.’

  JUDE

  I WAKE WITH THE EARLY LIGHT. IT IS THE morning after the party and I can hear Carmel’s deep even breaths. She is lying on her back in the makeshift bed my mother had set up opposite me. A shaft of watery light has broken through the tear in the old blind and the breeze from the open window makes it flutter around the room occasionally, as if someone is outside with a tiny torch looking into the room. I turn on my side and gradually make out the features of her face: the calm brow, straight nose, innocent mouth. I think of her singing the night before. In front of all those people; how nervous she was and how angry with me for arranging it. Then, how wonderful she’d been as she felt her gift slowly rise within her – like a bird taking off – from her legs to her stomach, chest and throat – the way she’d calmed down and let herself fly. It was something. Really something to see and hear her do that.

  It had to be don
e. I’d seen the looks passing between them. That smile. She had to be pushed forward against her will for him to understand how wonderful she was. My body curls into a ball of delight as I lie in bed and remember watching them dance. She is in love in a way I will never be. Already she looks different. Even asleep she looks different.

  I am happy for her, but anxious, too. Who knows what pain is in store for her?

  At home I always wake early. I love to watch everything come to life as the light gently seeps into the room. There is the old wooden cupboard in the corner that used to frighten me when I was younger. The scratched white-painted dresser. The bookcase. All my books and posters. Last year’s school texts piled on top of the desk, dusty and forgotten. The Mexican peasant’s hat pinned to the wall. A black-and-white photo of my father shaking Allende’s hand after the election in 1970 – the same one as I have in my room in Melbourne. My father is in profile, but Allende’s smile is full of warmth. Above Carmel’s bed I can just make out Pablo Neruda’s words, framed in cheap wood: a gift from my father to my mother on their wedding day. The words are scrawled in black-ink copperplate, written carefully but inexpertly. They are surrounded by pressed flower petals. Faded now. I remember my mother laughing when I’d asked about it, telling me that she could never in her wildest dreams imagine my father arranging flower petals! But he’d told her that on the day before their wedding he had gone out and picked the flowers and made the whole thing for her. I have grown up with those words. They are as familiar to me as my own toe-nails. They were seared into my brain with the flaming-hot branding-iron of death, before I could talk.

  And you will ask: Why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams

  and leaves and great volcanoes of his native land?

  Come and see the blood in the streets.

  Come and see the blood in the streets.

  Come and see the blood in the streets.

  The first time they had taken him away, he’d been on his way to work at the hospital. A green Fiat had pulled up alongside him and four well-dressed men in suits and sunglasses had got out and surrounded him with hardly a word. They bundled him into the car and sped off. His wrists were tied and he was blindfolded. When he’d asked where they were taking him one of them hit him in the face with the butt of a rifle, breaking his nose and dislodging two teeth; the sudden rush of blood from his nose and mouth soaked the front of his shirt. Then he was hit again. This time about the face and neck, still with no words of explanation. After a trip of over an hour he was pushed out of the car and made to walk up a rather long flight of beautiful marble steps towards an ornate wooden door. He told my mother that his blindfold had dislodged a little from the blows in the car, and although he didn’t dare raise his head to look about he was able to see that they’d led him onto the porch of a big white house – the kind owned by the very rich, aristocratic families up in the hills around the city. There was a wonderful smell of flowers: roses, honeysuckle and jasmine. Through the blindfold he could see a vast expanse of bright purple bougainvillea growing in two lovely porcelain jardinières around a row of pillars. Except for the faint buzz of bees all was quiet as they waited for the door to open. My father was aware of the drips of blood from his broken nose splattering onto the white marble of the doorstep and was on the point of asking for a handkerchief to stem the flow. But then the door opened and he was led inside.

  It is easy for me now, over twenty years later, to imagine it, to watch the blood dripping from his face into his hands onto the white marble. My father was held in that first place for over a month. My mother said he came out of there a different man. Quieter, older, more loving and more steadfast. He went straight back to work in the poor areas, even after this first dire warning. Did the blood form small crimson pools in the tiny pits and crevices of the marble, around where he stood waiting for that door to open? I wonder who hosed it down when he was taken inside. Or was it left to dry there, to get dark and sticky with flies? There was a time when I could talk quite naturally to my mother about such things. About the time, two years later, when she and her friend managed to talk the soldiers into letting her take the body and arrange a private burial. About her fear that he would end up in an unmarked grave along with so many of the other disappeared. About how they had fought and bribed and cursed their way into the general cemetery in Santiago and buried him properly. She is less inclined now, more cagey, less interested. Perhaps that is natural. Perhaps it is the only way for her.

  Sometimes I think that I see everything. Understand everything. When I was ten I remember my mother laughing and telling someone: ‘Jude’s ten going on thirty-five!’ I only half-understood then. Now that I’m nineteen I know exactly what she meant. Now it feels as if I’m going on seventy-five.

  A friend wrote last year to say that there are always fresh flowers on his grave. Still. After all this time. All through the years of oppression since the coup in 1973, someone has been brave enough to go and put flowers on my father’s grave. Maybe it’s one of the children he saved back then. My mother tells me that there were always calls in the night. Or perhaps it is one of the mothers or one of the babies now a grown man or woman.

  ‘Por favor, doctor!’ The anxious voice calling, the face barely lit by the streetlight. ‘My child . . . my husband . . . my mother. I have no money . . .’ And my father rubbing the sleep from his eyes, already dressed, grabbing his bag and rushing off into the night with some woman bundled up in various layers of rags against the cold, often with one or two children in tow. Solemn children with eyes so much older than their years. I wonder what her reaction will be when I tell her about Juan.

  Carmel is beginning to stir. She stretches languidly into half-consciousness then settles back into her dreams, unaware that I am watching her closely, enjoying the faint smile on her mouth, the pulse on her white neck, all the tiny signs of her new life.

  There are clues at a first meeting that often do not surface again for a long time, so I try to remember what I saw in Anton’s face when we were first introduced. Gentleness. Yes. And a certain genuine artlessness too. Was there an arrogance as well? A kind of refined male carelessness that is easy to hide, but could turn into something deadly for anyone who decides to love him? He is only a boy. I must remember that. An oddly handsome, interesting, intelligent, rich young man. In spite of the careless way he was dressed, his wealth and breeding were obvious as soon as I saw him. Does he know he is cute? I think so although I couldn’t be sure. I get anxious just thinking about the power this stranger will have over my friend’s life. Part of me wants to get up right now and ring him. ‘Listen, Anton,’ I want to say. ‘Carmel’s sense of herself and what is possible is only just beginning to bloom. You mess her around and I swear you’ll have me to mess around with too! Just remember that, buddy.’ But I stay where I am. It is the part of myself I have to watch; the tendency to get too bossy and intervene in situations in which I don’t belong. My best traits are also my worst ones. I have noticed that it is often the case in other people too. For someone who has never had a child I am very maternal: I love protectively and generously. I am over-indulgent with love. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for certain people. Carmel is one of them. I am my father’s daughter after all.

  She must be allowed to make her own mistakes or in the end she will hate me. I know that much. Thank God.

  There were a couple of low knocks on the door. I knew it would be my mother with breakfast. I could smell the toast.

  ‘Are you awake?’ Her voice was soft, barely audible.

  ‘Yes,’ I called, only just loud enough for her to hear. ‘Come in, Mum.’

  The door slowly slid open and Mum and I began to laugh silently as she came over with the tray. She set it on the small table between us and bent down to pour steaming tea into two cups. The laughing was half nerves, fear really, of the way we had grown apart. Carmel and I had both been subdued in the car driving home from the party last night. Mum had asked questions, but we’d answered only
vaguely. I had been too tired and Carmel had been too overwhelmed and excited. My mother was hoping for more details this morning.

  ‘I don’t think Carmel’s awake yet,’ she whispered, disappointed. ‘Yes I am,’ came a sleepy murmur from the other bed. Mum and I looked over at her rumpled shape shifting around in the bed and laughed again.

  ‘Do you want to go back to sleep?’ Mum asked gently. But Carmel was already sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  ‘No. I’m awake.’

  Mum went over to the window and pulled the blind. We all stared at each other in the bright morning, blinking and smiling.

  ‘Tea, Carmel?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  It was a shock to see my mother through Carmel’s eyes. How beautiful she still was, standing there by my bed wearing her tatty green silk dressing-gown, pulled in at the waist with an old elastic belt. The silk hung around her hips and legs in elegant folds, giving only so much away. She might have been a movie star from the forties. Her natural grace and style were astounding. How my father must have been fascinated with her feminine hands and light body, the wiry fair hair. Everything. I suddenly wondered why she had never taken a lover since his death. What a waste, I found myself thinking, knowing how cruel and uncooperative I would have been if she’d even thought to do such a thing. Once when I was about twelve I’d heard someone tell her she should get married again.

  ‘Jude’s father was the best there was,’ she’d said. ‘After being married to him I don’t think I could live with anyone else.’ Of course that had pleased me. It was what I wanted to hear. I don’t think the subject had been broached since then.

  After she’d served us, Mum poured out a cup of tea for herself. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me all about it. What happened? I know something happened by the way you were both behaving last night!’ I looked across at Carmel and we both burst out laughing. ‘You begin, Carmel,’ I ordered. ‘After all, you were the star of the show!’