Outside, the frost was beginning to thaw. The morning sun began to filter into the kitchen.
Aunt Maggie went on. ‘You were never hysterical in that sense — it was never like you were mentally defective. No one would’ve put you away just because you were grief-stricken — I wouldn’t have let them, but no one really meant to. The psychologists and do-gooders just wanted to get to the bottom of it. For a while it seemed like every charlatan and soothsayer crossed that threshold but in the end no one could make it out. You were so small — a wee bird of a thing.’ Maggie’s face softened like melted butter.
‘Are you still talking about the break-up?’ said Gilda drolly, although she knew her aunt wasn’t. ‘Fixing Gilda’ seemed to be Maggie’s sole purpose in life. But then Gilda knew that wasn’t quite true. Nevertheless, she was annoyed.
‘Oh no, you took it hard, ending before it had begun, I’ll grant you, but show me a woman with a broken heart who doesn’t fall apart — one arm under the bed, leg on the bench and heart gone to the chooks. And people who had never really loved in the passionate way you did, or who could not take the rawness of your sadness, saying, “Pull yourself together!”’
Maggie thumped the table, furiously protective, and the sugar bowl jumped. ‘It’s not that easy, and I know. People don’t understand it’s not that simple to just pull yourself together. It’s like a broken triple strand of pearls that must be rethreaded one by one. Like your poor mum — and yes, I am going to talk about her, because the past must be purged. I’ve always maintained that grief needs to be done on the spot, and be damned if others can cope or not. Grief is good. We should have had an official mourning period. Hired some wailing women and done it all proper, instead of making out nothing awful had happened. But there was no corpse, was there, Ginger? No body to bathe and balm and send off to heaven. No body of your mother — and none for Allan, either, for that matter.’
She sat back and nodded at her niece, drumming her fingers on the table as she thought. Then she leant forward. ‘I think you’ve come home to sort out the past. It’s a plain fact it’s time to face it head on.’ She reached out and clutched Gilda’s hand, and when Gilda removed it Maggie toyed with some spilt sugar.
‘I know,’ said Gilda, draining the last of her coffee. She stood and fetched the coffee pot, poured some more for Maggie, resting her hand on her aunt’s shoulder as she did. She knew it was true: the dreams and the tangle of the past had pulled her back like a magnet. But it was all a puzzle. Gilda looked up at the ceiling and thought of all the Page women who had lived in the old house. She knew the clues to the past were in there somewhere.
‘You were just a wee tot,’ whispered Maggie.
Martha entered, wrapped in a robe and with a towel about her head. She kissed her mother on the forehead, gave Gilda’s grey streak a tug and slouched in a chair.
Gilda poured her cousin a coffee and started to laugh when she looked at her. Martha had drawn a beauty spot above her lip just like Gilda’s, just like she used to when they were little. Martha had always coveted the mark, and Gilda had always wanted straight black hair like Martha’s instead of being a gingernut with an odd, skunk-like grey streak in a cowlick that had been there since she was born.
Martha sat there with a poker face. ‘I’ve decided to get a beauty spot tattooed on, then everyone will know we truly are sisters.’
‘You’ll look like a gang moll. That’s what women in prison get — you’ve seen them with the dots on their faces. It would go green, anyway. Don’t do it,’ Gilda warned, but her eyes sparkled as she turned to put more coffee on.
Martha was aghast. ‘Thanks for telling me — and in the nick of time: I was about to make an appointment. So what were you guys talking about?’
Something in Martha’s voice made Gilda glance sharply at her, just in time to see the look exchanged between her cousin and her aunt. It made her uneasy.
‘Oh, nothing; just catching up,’ said Gilda.
Gilda leant on the empty bar at the Qualm’s like a jaded war veteran. But she was determined to take it all on and treat it like one of life’s great adventures. She felt a lift at the decision and noticed, with joy, the absence of lovesickness. She did a wee jig.
The mirror behind the bar reflected the room. In the mid-afternoon light the place could have passed for swanky, although the crystal chandelier done up with roses and feathers was as dusty and cobwebbed as if it belonged to Miss Havisham. But the wooden tables were well polished over their dents, the red of the walls set off the floral colours of the carpet, and the black cigarette holes were barely visible under the sunlight that speckled the room in rainbows.
Gilda was reflected too, her auburn hair ablaze and the stains on her jeans barely visible. She struck the pose of a 1950s Hollywood starlet for the mirror, all boobs and pout, one hand splayed on her neck, her mouth open a little, the other hand on her jutted hip. She turned and the sun caught her like a stage spotlight.
‘A bit more shimmying like that will make the cream rise in the punters! I’ll put a clause in your contract that you’ll be bound to by law,’ boomed her boss. Sophia Rose was not entirely kidding. ‘You’ve always been fascinated with mirrors,’ she mused, drawing on her habitual cigar and picking tobacco off her lip.
Gilda laughed. ‘I’ve started collecting compacts.’
‘Speaking of reflections, have you managed to make any sense of those dreams of yours?’ asked Sophia. She still wore safety pins for earrings and coveted Vivienne Westwood designs.
‘Gosh, that was subtle. Why is everyone pouncing on me about the dreams? We haven’t talked about them in years. Can’t we just leave it be? I’m over the past, Sophia. You know what they say — one day spent in the past is two lost from the present. I just want to live from here on.’ She twirled to show her new attitude.
‘What? You’re the one who’s been blabbing on about them since you could talk! In fact I remember only one brief period of silence and that was only because you had an invisible gobstopper in your mouth!’
‘I was a child.’ Gilda stopped twirling.
‘I could probably recite your dreams back to you. You were so sure of them — I wish you’d be as sure of yourself as you were about those damned dreams. You’d sit us all down with our toy teacups and rattle off these stories, and your mother and I, we’d sit there bloody nearly entranced because you spoke with such feeling. Anyway, what are you all deflated about? Why have you gone all saggy? Straighten up there, you — tummy in, tits out. The real question is: Have you got to the bottom of it?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘But that’s why you’ve come home, isn’t it? I’m right about that, and I don’t need you to confirm it. What about the blackouts? I kept imagining you unconscious in all sorts of dangerous places.’ Sophia watched Gilda bristle, saw her brow set, the shift of gear that preceded one of Gilda’s feisty outbursts. She chose to let it slide rather than have the lass get her knickers in a twist — when Gilda got angry it was as impressive as a stampeding horse.
Some men watched out for her outbursts, for when Gilda’s anger took control her skin flushed, her breast heaved, her hair seemed to spring wantonly and they all wondered what she would be like in bed. But only one man had ever witnessed Gilda truly making love. Sophia pondered that in another time she could have put Gilda to work and made a filthy profit. She watched Gilda’s cheeks redden.
‘Well, all right then. I can tell by your face you’re all uptight and ready to have one of your tanties, but right now I’ve got something for you.’ She darted out the back, her tattoo peeking out from her velvet waistband: two triangles, one laid over the other, with the words ‘Holy Harlot’.
Gilda felt a wave of love for the woman and told herself that everyone was suddenly interested in her dreams only because she was fresh back in town. Old news could present itself like new news. She also knew that her resistance to talk about it now was to do with what she might find. Madness. For she knew she could not
enter the past without encountering the shadow; she only hoped it wouldn’t stick to her. She was different now.
Gilda shook her head. No, she would never be mad again; surely they could all see the difference in her?
Sophia, light on her feet despite being rotund, trotted back in and heaved a box onto the counter. ‘I got it a while ago and rooted it out the moment I heard you had returned to the fold. You’ve been missed, sugar. Enjoy.’
Gilda looked at Sophia and it struck her: She knows something I don’t.
‘Now, if you don’t act excited you’ll ruin it for me and I’ll want to put it back where it came from.’ The cigar in her fingers reminded Gilda of Groucho Marx.
‘A present? For me?’ Gilda ripped away the brown paper to reveal a vacuum cleaner box. ‘You got me a Hoover?’
‘Don’t be daft — that’s just the box. Open it!’
Gilda opened the box and carefully pulled out a tripod and an old Canon T-50 camera. She was speechless. She felt the weight of the machine in her hands. It was cool and heavy, well loved by somebody, the lens scratch-free. She turned the focus: nice precise clicks. Tears lumped in her throat. ‘Thank you. You always give the best presents.’
Sophia gave Gilda a thump on the back and started fussing about taking stools down off tables. ‘Got it off Tom from his collection, and for a song once he knew it was for you. Still, my girl, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I expect you tarted up and behind the bar Friday night. You can take that to mean lipstick and no gumboots, please. I have a business to run, and I intend to milk your return for all it’s worth. Careful, that thing is loaded.’
‘Surely you flatter me,’ said Gilda, framing Sophia in shot. It had been a long time since she had held her very own camera in her hands. Her last had been lost in her scramble to chase folly to the other side of the globe, and her ambition to be a photographer had been lost with it. Her mind could not shift off her fixation with Allan. Colours had seemed brighter.
‘I’ll flatten you if you point that contraption at me!’ said Sophia, but she stopped and stiffened for the camera. Click.
At this moment Tom came crashing in with a postcard, carrying it before him like a baton to be exchanged in a relay. He stopped, stunned, when he saw Gilda. He thrust his hands behind his back and Gilda thought he was being respectful, the way old men take off their hats for a lady or open a door.
‘Tom, thanks for the camera,’ Gilda said, and embraced him, planting a kiss on his long earlobe. Tom was one of those old men whose nose and ears don’t quite fit the face. He blushed strawberry red and half frowned, half smiled. His hands still behind his back, he did not hug her back.
‘End of the week — Friday night, then,’ yelled Gilda over her shoulder as she pushed through the doors.
Only when she had left, with them peering at her from behind the doorframe, apparently making sure she had really gone, did Tom, urged on by Sophia flapping her hands through her cigar smoke, show Sophia the postcard. She drew in her breath and Tom shoved a chair behind her knees. She sat staring at the card. Then they looked at each other, like actors in a murder-in-the-manor mystery.
Gilda wandered home blissfully taking photographs: the fish ‘n’ chip shop, the post office, two schoolgirls chatting, an old man pushing a pram, the river. She went down streets she had forgotten existed, and back to the wharf. Each photo helped her find her new place in the village: looking through the lens made the ordinary extraordinary. It was like seeing an old friend whose features had thickened with time and yet underneath were still there, the lines of their younger self.
When she reached the wide steps to the homestead she took snaps of the mosaic around the bottom of the first storey. Like the Chinese proverb that states: ‘House finished man finished’, the family had pressed their own art into the mosaic. Gilda as a child had made a flower out of broken plates. Maggie and Martha, when they moved back to the house to look after Gilda, had teamed up and used natural stones to make a circle of four women holding hands.
Most spectacular of all, seven feet tall and curved over the doorframe, was a mermaid so intricately designed that each piece was no larger than a fingernail. Her tail smooth and raised, like scales on a real fish; the colours a mix of purples and greens, vivid pinks, and every hue of the sunset and every fish in the sea. No one knew who had made it but everyone loved it. If there was an argument or a lull in life, or someone needed to think, they would come to the mermaid with a cheesecloth and soapy water and wipe away the sand and salt.
Gilda snuck up the stairs to catch Martha and Maggie unawares. The camera strap pulled pleasingly at the back of her neck as she entertained visions of reviving her darkroom. She tiptoed, wincing at the creaks in the floorboards, suppressing a rising giggle. Her hand on the banister felt the meld where the rimu gave way to beech, as if they had run out of rimu partway through. Warm sounds and cooking aromas came from the kitchen: pots steaming, vegetables on the chopping board … It would make a nice domestic shot. She could hear her own breath and tried to still it. Sneaking, sneaking.
Pausing at the door she heard Martha say, ‘Have you told her about that man yet?’
‘No, but I will. Let it be, and keep your voice down!’ Maggie hissed.
‘Gilda’s not here — but is it organised?’
Then Sophia’s voice. ‘No worries. He tells me it’s well on its way. Best not tell Gilda yet, though. She might not approve. She’ll get on her high horse.’
The women sniggered guiltily.
‘I think we should tell her, prepare her. She doesn’t like surprises.’ Martha was using the voice she used whenever Gilda needed protecting: tough and sharp.
‘Might scare her off,’ said Maggie. ‘Have you noticed she hasn’t unpacked yet? She’ll know soon enough. Keep an eye on that, and don’t let it boil dry. I just want to put a tarp over the sculpture. I think it’s going to rain and I haven’t polyurethaned it yet.’ She went out and the back door slammed.
‘Can I see it, then?’ Martha demanded of Sophia. ‘You’ve all seen it.’
‘Not here, not now. And we haven’t seen the real thing, just a picture of it.’
‘You’re not going to let me, are you? You all think I’ll tell Gilda.’
‘And you would. You’d take a bullet for her if you had to.’ Sophia laughed. There was the sound of bodies being squashed, and a kind of squeak from Martha. Sophia’s bear hugs squeezed the air out of people.
Gilda put the lens cap back on the camera and quietly moved away from the door. She went upstairs to her bedroom. The wind had come up and the tower swayed a little. She sat on her bed and stared at the yellow floor. The long red curtains pooled on the boards, and in the light they looked like blood. She heard the rev and farewell skid of Sophia’s old Harley, which looked like a cross between a bicycle and a motorbike, with a lamp that ran on the friction of the wheels. She could practically smell the blue smoke from its exhaust.
Gilda groaned and put her head in her hands. What man? What’s on its way? She had to take control, be ready, for something big was coming, she just knew it.
10.
Destiny Waltz
The Qualm’s Arms was full. Whalers literally swung from the rafters and spewed into the street. A piano winched from a ship played raucous jigs in the corner, with a lovely maiden perched on top, a man’s hand up her skirt. Harlots of every shape and size, every religion, every colour, danced and flirted and sat on the knees of men lucky enough to have a seat, a pint in one hand and a clutch of flesh in the other: a breast, a hip, a buttock.
Some of the women belonged to travelling gangs of prostitutes, in Jacob’s River for the season; some came with the ships as crew whores; others were local natives and ones banished from their tribes up north or sent away by the chief; still others belonged to the Rusty Rose next door. Its windows were draped with makeshift curtains made out of old tablecloths, petticoats and sheets. Grunts and moans and pantomime sounds of rapture coloured the night as sure
as streamers and confetti.
Inside the Qualm’s the air was musky, fogged with tobacco smoke and noise: the hoo-ha of drunken males telling tall tales. Grog flowed freely and cheaply out of the barrels and into the men, who belched up clouds, pissed and vomited on the floor. Pungent towels sodden with spit and snot hung from a rail above the bar, and tens of pairs of boots stomped to the tune of the piano.
Every evening was a carousel of debauchery.
It had been only a few days since Angelo’s outburst in Captain Angus’ cabin. Angus had tried hard to keep Angelo separate. He got him to row empty barrels to the beach and full ones back. Put him to less bloody jobs, like burying the skeletons in the sand, to be dug up later and sawed into lengths of rib or jaw, dipped in brine, scraped clean, carefully packed in wooden crates and much later turned into carriage frames, skirt hoops and corsets.
Both Davy and Angus had wordlessly stayed close to Angelo at all times. The rest of the men, like a pack of dogs, waited for the signal to attack from their self-appointed leader, Jake. Meanwhile they growled and barked at Angelo whenever they could.
Angus sent word around that any man who harmed Angelo would not be welcome on the Unicorn. Ten more whalers had drowned or been fatally wounded; every ship had its grievances. It was no longer about vindicating the death of a man no one had particularly cared for — now there was personal animosity towards Angelo. And yet no one had confronted him outright. They sensed that he was not quite the full quid and might respond unpredictably. Men who spent their lives fighting could smell the survivor on others; whoever holds the most power is king cock. And there were a few quietly for, not against, Angelo.
Angelo stood awkwardly with Davy just inside the door of the Qualm’s Arms, mug in hand.
‘Do you know how much money we’ve made?’ Davy shouted over the din, his breath spiced and fumed. ‘If you would only do the whole season and follow the whales like the rest of the ships you could set yourself up with whatever you wanted.’
Saltskin Page 8