by Joan Lindsay
At last the clock on the mantelpiece proclaimed a reasonable hour for departure and Irma rose to go. ‘You look a little fatigued,’ Mrs Fitzhubert said. ‘You must drink plenty of milk.’ The girl had pretty manners and quite an air for seventeen. Michael was twenty – exactly right. She accompanied the visitor to the hall door – unfailing sign of social approval – and hoped, for reasons too complicated to be entered upon here, that Irma would visit them in Toorak. ‘I don’t know if our nephew has told you that we intend giving a ball for him after Easter. He knows so few young people in Australia, poor boy!’
After the suffocating warmth of the drawing-room the damp pine-scented air of the garden was blessedly cool. A sudden flurry of wind sent a long shiver through the Virginia creeper, scattering its crimson leaves on the gravel before the house, bowing the heads of the prim standard roses in the circular flower bed. Then stillness again and the distant striking of the stable clock echoing across the lake. Gone now the misty transparencies of the morning. Opaque saffron clouds piling up on a muddy sky; the pine forest an iron crown encircling the mountain’s crest with stiff spikes. On the other side of the forest, far below, the unseen plains forever shimmering in waves of honey-coloured light, and rising out of them the dark reality of the Hanging Rock. Doctor McKenzie was right: ‘Don’t think about the Rock, dear child. The Rock is a nightmare, and nightmares belong to the Past.’ Try to follow the old man’s advice and concentrate on the Present, so beautiful here at Lake View with the white peacock spreading its tail on the lawn, fat grey pigeons waddling on little pink feet, the stable clock striking again, bees going home in the fading light. A few drops of rain plopped on the Leghorn hat. Mrs Cutler was coming out of the Lodge with an umbrella. ‘Mr Michael reckons there’s a storm coming up. My corns are shooting something cruel.’
‘Michael? You’ve seen him?’
‘A few minutes ago. He called in with a letter for you, Miss. If ever a young man had lovely manners it’s him – oh, my! your pretty hat!’ The Leghorn was tossed aside on Mrs Cutler’s shining linoleum. ‘Don’t bother – I shall never wear it again – the letter, please.’ The door of her best bedroom closed disappointingly on the cosy chat Mrs Cutler had been looking forward to all day. The hat, however, was presently retrieved, its ribbons tenderly ironed, to appear for many a year at church on Mrs Cutler’s devoted head.
In Irma’s room the venetian blinds were closed against the heat of the day. She had just thrown up the window and was about to open Mike’s letter when a streak of lightning zig-zagged across the pane. In a flash of blue light the weeping elm stood out with not a leaf stirring. Suddenly a mighty wind rose up from nowhere, strangely warm, the elm began to shiver and shake, the curtains billowed out into the room. To drum rolls of thunder, the storm broke, with full bellied clouds exploding in the heaviest rain the Macedon people could remember on the Mount, within minutes washing the gravel from the carriage drives and swelling the mountain streams. In the Lake View pool the muddied water came swirling down over the head of the stone frog. Out on the lake, the punt, torn from its moorings, rocked wildly on the lily pads. Driven by the gale, half-drowned birds fell to the ground from the tossing trees and a dead dove went sailing past the window like a mechanical toy. At last the wind and rain lost their initial fury. A pallid sun came out; the sodden lawns and ravaged flower beds took on a theatrical glow. It was over, and ‘Irma, still at the window, opened the stiff square envelope.
Formally addressed and strictly impersonal, it might have been an invitation card or a bill, except for the oddly childish handwriting with neat copy book loops and a sprinkling of spiky verticals painfully acquired during a brief encounter with the classics at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge or no, for Mike the very act of taking up a pen put his head in a whirl and made him forget what he was trying to say. Whereas Irma, who spelled by the light of nature and confined her punctuation to the impulsive dash or exclamation mark, was entirely herself in the briefest of notes. The letter began with apologies for having stayed too long in the pine forest this morning and for having forgotten to look at his watch until it was too late to be on time for the trout (‘all the more for you’). With a mounting sense of irritation she turned the page: I had a letter from home this morning asking me to call on our banker immediately. A bore, but there it is. I am up to the eyes in packing and will have to be off by the early train tomorrow. Long before you are awake! As Lake View will be closed for the winter in a few days now, I’ve decided not to come back here, which means I’m afraid that I won’t be seeing you to say good-bye. It’s rotten luck but I’m sure you’ll understand. So if we don’t meet again in Australia thank you for having been so nice to me, Irma dear. The last few weeks would have been impossible without you.
Love from Mike.
P.S. I forgot to say I intend taking a fairly long look at Australia beginning with Northern Queensland, do you know it at all?
For a person who found difficulty in expressing himself on paper, the writer had conveyed his meaning remarkably well.
Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads. What, for instance, is the plump little Empress of India planning in bed in a flannel nightgown at Balmoral, on this night in March in the year nineteen hundred, that makes her smile and purse her small obstinate mouth? Who knows?
So, too, in stillness and silence do the obscure individuals who figure in these pages plot, suffer and dream. In Mrs Appleyard’s heavily curtained bedroom the suet-grey mask of the woman on the bed is literally bloated and blotched by evil vapours invisible by the light of day. A few doors away the child Sara’s little peaked face is illumined, even in sleep, by a dream of Miranda so filled with love and joy that she carries it about with her all next day, earning countless order marks for inattention in class, and at the instigation of Miss Lumley, half an hour strapped to a backboard in the gymnasium for ‘slouching’ with drooping, dream-heavy head. At Lake View, the stable clock striking five awakens the cook who rises yawning to set the oatmeal for Mr Michael’s early breakfast. Mike is awake after a restless night, productive mainly of dreams of banking and packing and procuring a seat on the Melbourne Express this morning. Once he dreams of Irma hurrying towards him down the corridor of a swaying train. ‘Here, Mike, there’s a seat here beside me,’ and pushes her away with his umbrella.
Down at the Lodge, Irma too has heard the clock strike five; only half awake and staring out at the garden slowly taking on colour and outline for the coming day. At the Hanging Rock the first grey light is carving out the slabs and pinnacles of its Eastern face – or perhaps it is sunset. . . . It is the afternoon of the picnic and the four girls are approaching the pool. Again she sees the flash of the creek, the wagonette under the blackwood trees and a fair-haired young man sitting on the grass reading a newspaper. As soon as she sees him she turns her head away and doesn’t look at him again. ‘Why? Why? . . .’ ‘Why?’ screeches the peacock on the lawn. Because I knew, even then . . . I have always known, that Mike is my beloved.
12
At two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday the nineteenth of March, Appleyard College was cold, silent and smelling of roast mutton and cabbage. The boarders’ midday dinner was just over, the maids off duty. Afternoon classes had not yet begun. Dora Lumley lay on her bed sucking her eternal peppermints and Mademoiselle, seated at a window overlooking the front drive, was re-reading a letter from Irma received in this morning’s mail.
The Lodge. Lake View.
Dearest Dianne,
In haste – Mrs C. and I up to our eyes in tissue paper – can’t find a pen. Mrs C. says why isn’t the lovely French lady here to show her how to fold the dresses? This is to tell you the WONDERFUL news – my darling parents arrive fro
m India this week. I am going to Melbourne to wait for them in our suite at the Menzies Hotel!! It all feels like the end of a long long storey and now suddenly it is the LAST chapter and nothing more to read. So dearest Dianne I will be calling in at the College on my way to the station probably Thursday afternoon – my last chance to say good-bye to you – and the dear girls – it makes my heart ache to think of them still there at school – and of course Minnie and Tom but I hope NOT Mrs A. if it can possibly be AVOIDED! Oh, what a hateful thing to say but the thought of having to talk to her is MISERY! Dianne I haven’t had a chance to buy your wedding present – Manassa’s Store has nothing but boots and jam darling and tin billy cans – so please accept my emmerald bracelet with my love – the one my Grandmother in Brazil gave me the one I told you about with the green parrot – remember? anyway now dead so she won’t know or mind. Mrs C. wants to know about the blue chiffon you used to like I must go.
Love Irma.
P.S. – I shall come straight up to your room when I arrive – or to the schoolroom if you are in class whether Mrs A. approves or not.
Mademoiselle’s was the first of several heads at several windows to see Hussey’s cab coming up the drive. From it alighted Irma in a scarlet cloak and a little toque of scarlet feathers blowing this way and that. The Headmistress at her desk downstairs had seen her too and to Mademoiselle’s amazement – such a lapse of decorum was unknown at the College – had herself appeared at the hall door before the governess was half way down the staircase, and was sweeping the visitor into the study on a chill wave of formal greeting.
On the first floor landing one of the statues was permitted on dull afternoons to cast a feeble light. Now Dora Lumley came shuffling out of the shadows. ‘Mam’selle! Are you ready? We shall be late for the gymnasium class.’
‘That hateful gymnasium! I am coming down now.’
‘The girls are so seldom allowed in the fresh air nowadays – surely you agree they need exercise?’
‘Exercise! You mean those ridiculous tortures with bars and dumb-bells? At their age young girls should be strolling under the trees in light summer dresses with a young man’s arm around every waist.’
Dora Lumley was too deeply shocked to reply.
Irma Leopold’s visit as far as Mrs Appleyard was concerned could hardly have been worse timed. Only this morning the headmistress had received a highly disturbing letter from Mr Leopold, written immediately on his arrival in Sydney, and demanding a new and fuller inquiry on events leading up to the picnic. ‘Not only on behalf of my own daughter, miraculously spared, but for those unfortunate parents who have still learned nothing of their children’s fate.’ There was mention of a top-rank detective being brought out from Scotland Yard at Mr Leopold’s expense and other looming horrors impossible to thrust aside.
Somehow, to Irma’s surprise, the study was a good deal smaller than she had remembered. Otherwise nothing had changed. There was the same remembered smell of beeswax and fresh ink. The black marble clock on the mantelpiece ticked as loudly as ever. There was an endless moment of silence as Mrs Appleyard seated herself at her desk and the visitor by sheer force of habit dropped a perfunctory curtsey. The cameo brooch on the silk upholstered bosom rose and fell to the old inexorable rhythm.
‘Be seated, Irma. I hear you are completely restored to health.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Appleyard. I am perfectly well now.’
‘And yet you still recollect nothing of your experiences at the Hanging Rock?’
‘Nothing. Doctor McKenzie told me again only yesterday that I may never remember anything after we had begun to walk towards the upper slopes.’
‘Unfortunate. Very. For everyone concerned.’
‘You need hardly tell me that Mrs Appleyard.’
‘I understand you are leaving for Europe shortly?’
‘In a few days I hope. My parents think it is a good idea to get away from Australia for a time.’
‘I see. To be frank with you, Irma, I regret that your parents didn’t think fit for you to complete your education at Appleyard College before embarking on a purely social life abroad.’
‘I am seventeen Mrs Appleyard. Old enough to learn something of the world.’
‘If I may say so, now that you are no longer under my care, your teachers were continually complaining to me of your lack of application. Even a girl with your expectations should be able to spell.’ The words were hardly out of her mouth before she realized that she had made a strategic blunder. It was above all things necessary not to further antagonize the wealthy Leopolds. Money is power. Money is strength and safety. Even silence has to be paid for. The girl had gone alarmingly white in the face. ‘Spelling? Would spelling have saved me from whatever it was that happened on the day of the Picnic?’ The little gloved hand came down hard on the top of the desk. ‘Let me tell you this, Mrs Appleyard: anything of the slightest importance that I learned here at the College I learned from Miranda.’
‘It is a pity,’ the Headmistress said, ‘that you did not acquire something of Miranda’s admirable self-control.’ With an effort of her own will that contracted every nerve and muscle in her body she managed to rise from her chair and enquire, quite graciously, if Irma would care to spend tonight in her old room, on the way to Melbourne?
‘Thank you, no. Mr Hussey is waiting down there in the drive. But I should like to see the girls and Mademoiselle before I go.’
‘By all means! Mademoiselle and Miss Lumley will be taking the class in the gymnasium. For once I think discipline may be relaxed. It is irregular but you may go in and say good-bye. Tell Mademoiselle you have my permission.’
A glacial handshake was exchanged as Irma left for the last time the room where she had so often stood – long, long ago, as a schoolgirl – awaiting commands and reprimands at the Headmistress’s pleasure. She was no longer afraid of the woman behind the closed door, whose hand, seized with an uncontrollable tremor, reached for the bottle of cognac under the desk.
Minnie ambushed in the shadowy regions behind the green baize door came running towards her with open arms. ‘Miss Irma, dear. Tom told me you was in there. Let me look at you. . . . My! a real grown-up young lady!’
Irma bent and kissed the warm soft neck reeking of cheap scent. ‘Dear Minnie. It’s so good to see you.’
‘And you, Miss. Is it true what we hear that you’re not coming back to us after Easter?’
‘Quite true. I’ve only called in today to say good-bye to you all.’ The housemaid sighed. ‘I don’t blame you, neither. Sorry as we all are to be losing you. You’ve no idea what it’s like here these days.’
‘I believe you,’ Irma said, glancing about her at the gloomy hall which Mr Whitehead’s late crimson dahlias in brass vases failed to lighten. Minnie had lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Talk about rules and regulations! The boarders aren’t hardly let open their mouths out of school hours! Well, thank Heaven me and Tom are out of it in a few days’ time.’
‘Oh, Minnie, I am so glad – you’re going to be married?’
‘Easter Monday. Same day as Mam’selle. I told her I reckoned Saint Valentine had pulled it off for both of us and she says, quite serious: “Minnie, you may be right.” Saint Valentine is the patron saint of lovers.’
The gymnasium, commonly known to the boarders as the Chamber of Horrors, was a long narrow room in the West wing, lit only by a row of barred skylights, and designed by the original owner for Heaven knows what domestic purposes: possibly the storage of extra foodstuffs, or unwanted furniture. Now on its bare limewashed walls various instruments for the promotion of female health and beauty had been set out, as well as a rope ladder suspended from the ceiling, a pair of metal rings and parallel bars. In one corner stood a padded horizontal board fitted with leather straps, on which the child Sara, continually in trouble for stooping, was to pass the gymnasium hour this afternoon. A pair of iron dumb-bells which only Tom had enough muscle to lift, weights for balancing on tender female sku
lls and piles of heavy Indian clubs, proclaimed Authority’s high-handed disregard of Nature’s basic laws.
At one end of the room, on a platform raised a few feet above floor level, Miss Lumley and Mademoiselle were already on duty; the former engaged on looking out for minor misdemeanours below, the latter seated at the upright piano hammering out the ‘March of the Men of Harlech’. One two, one two, one two. Three rows of girls in black serge bloomers, black cotton stockings and white rubber-soled canvas shoes listlessly dipped and rose in time to the martial strains. For Mademoiselle, the Gymnasium class was a recurring penance. Presently, when it was time for a five-minute break, she would give herself the pleasure of announcing that Irma Leopold was actually here in the building, and would shortly be coming to the gymnasium to say good-bye. One two, one two, one two . . . it was possible, she thought, dreaming and hammering, that they already knew on the College grapevine. One two, one two . . . ‘Fanny,’ she said, taking her hands off the keys for a moment, ‘you are badly out of step. Pay attention to the music, please!’ ‘Take an order mark, Fanny,’ Miss Lumley muttered, scribbling in her little book. The languid physical movements of arms and legs belied the expression of the fourteen pairs of eyes, sliding from side to side. One – two, one – two, alert and sly as the eyes of Normandy hares in their barred wooden cages. One two, one two, one two, one two . . . the monotonous thumping was inhuman, almost unendurable.
The door of the gymnasium was opening, very slowly, as if the person outside were reluctant to enter. Every head in the room turned as the ‘Men of Harlech’ halted in the middle of a bar. Mademoiselle rose smiling beside the piano and Irma Leopold, a radiant little figure in a scarlet cloak, stood on the threshold. ‘Come in Irma! Comme c’est une bonne surprise! Mes enfants, for ten minutes you may talk as you please. Voilà, the class is dismissed!’ Irma, who had taken a few steps towards the centre of the room, now paused uncertainly and smiled back.