The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt

by Tracy Farr

  Cath and I climbed the stairs to the north tower. The windows and floor shone. My belongings were clustered neatly against the wall where before a pile of broken furniture had been. Across the floor of the clean new room we unfurled an oriental rug in deep burgundy silk picked out in cerulean. ‘I’m sure it was your mother’s, darling; you must take it,’ Uncle Valentine had told me. I drew my hands over its surface, wondering if I remembered its colours from long ago.

  Cath helped me arrange the furniture in the room. We placed the wide bed against the wall opposite the windows, so that I could lie and look out on two sides, have two ways of looking at the world.

  I grew larger and larger in that bed. I would lie there until I heard Eric leave each morning, then waddle down the stairs to slump myself in the warm kitchen with Cath. She’d knit, fragments of wool left over from a hundred different garments forming a rainbow rug for my Grace. She tried to teach me – I had never learned to knit, although I could sew, the Misses Murray had seen to that long ago – but I never got the knack. The metal needles slipped in my hands so that I held them, somehow, in a cello bow grip that could make no sense of the strings of yarn, forming a tight tangle I couldn’t be bothered loosening. So while Cath knitted, I’d sit and read, or talk with her, or just look through the windows at the darkening, wintering ocean, rubbing my taut belly with restless hands.

  Cath and I were warm, enclosed, in the kitchen. Eric drifted in and out, always quiet, sometimes smelling of beer a little earlier in the day than he ought. A little rain came as the months progressed. I stopped my morning walks when I moved into the north tower – I was bigger, the rain stopped me – all these were excuses, but really I felt the restlessness slip away from me once I came to the tower. I inhabited it; the tower room around me, me around Grace.

  Every Sunday, I waddled up the street for tea at Uncle Valentine’s, as promised. Sometimes I persuaded Cath to join us, but Eric wouldn’t come. Mrs Anderson would make us cakes and sandwiches, too much to eat in a sitting, and send us home to the Pav with a not quite approving look and a basket of food.

  It was on one such Sunday that Gracie decided to arrive. I felt a pain start from somewhere far away, saw it approach out of the corner of my eye as Uncle Valentine offered me a plate of lamingtons. I stood up as the pain got closer. It reached my core, and started to radiate out from my centre to all the parts of my body all at once, like a sonic radiation, or like starlight. I remember Uncle Valentine calling for the car, still holding the lamingtons. My uncle drove us away from the ocean, across the railway track, and over towards the river, and in no time at all I was installed in a high-ceilinged room in the little maternity hospital called Devonleigh. Uncle was waved away by the busy women who bustled around me, hushing me, stripping me, shaving me, shushing me. But I would not be shushed, I who had always made sound. And when our time finally came, it came with a roar, and I – making sounds like keening and lowing all at once, like the cattle on the boat so long ago up the coast – pushed Gracie out of me, all slick and new.

  Holding her to me, I felt as if all the pain in the world had been funnelled through my body and made good, turned into light.

  FIRST WINTER

  Grace lay in Mrs Anderson’s old rattan washing basket, sunlight through the windows warming the white sheet covering her. The blanket that Cath had knitted was folded down to the bottom of the basket; the late autumn sun was warm, most days, after cool nights. I sat by her side, my hand on the basket, near but not touching my little dark-haired daughter, and watched her sleep and breathe while my body healed and flowed back to its former shape, but softer, fuller.

  We kept ourselves in the tower for most of that first winter, once Grace was in the world. Rain threw itself against the windows. The ocean swelled up close to the footings of the pavilion building, big wintry waves thrown up high and hard by storms far out at sea. When the rain stopped, I would open the window and lean out over the high thrashing waves eating at the limestone that formed the base of the building, the limestone made of long-dead sea creatures, the waves taking them back to the deep. Salt saturated the air; a light crust would form on my face. Running my tongue around my lips, I could taste it.

  *

  Grace was three months old before I swam in the ocean again. It was a beautiful calm late winter day – not spring, that wouldn’t come for a month. But a taste of it. Midmorning, milk-full, Grace slept in the washing basket, pushing out to its edges, only just fitting within it. She was a big bonny baby, pale skin under dark hair, eyes like dark steel; or like coal, sharp and shining. In the kitchen, I could hear Cath clattering cups, humming.

  I wasn’t sure then what made me want to swim, that day. I ran down to Cath in the kitchen before I could change my mind; of course, Cath was happy to watch Grace. I ran back to the tower, then carried the basket back down to the kitchen. Grace seemed to settle deeper into sleep with the jigging of the basket down the stairs, along the passage, into the kitchen and onto the table in the sun. Sun was good for babies, they said.

  From the drawer of my dresser I took my black swimsuit, laid it on the bed. Grace and I had pushed it out of shape, stretched it, as we swam into the late summer, bigger and bigger. I removed all my clothes and stood naked by the bed. My emptied breasts drooped, dark blue veins running through pale flesh to long dark nipples. My stomach bulged, soft. I missed the taut containment of pregnancy.

  I stepped into the swimsuit, pulled its straps over my shoulders. It sagged on my soft, changed body, pouched at the belly and over the crotch. I shivered, grabbed my towelling gown from the hook behind the door, eased my feet into moccasins, and stepped towards the stairs and down, out onto the beach.

  The tide was high. I dropped the dressing gown off my shoulders and draped it on a limestone wall where the water wouldn’t reach it, slipped my shoes off and placed them on the wall. Before I could think about it, I ran into the water.

  The cold took my breath away. A pain shot through my crotch as the water hit. I dived under the water, and my head felt as if it would burst. My teeth screamed in my skull. Salt water filled my nose, ballooned my swimsuit; I felt my breasts float free from the slack wool, as if they were trying to escape from me. I felt the wool of the swimsuit pull up between my legs, still Grace-sore. Salt water eased into every corner of my body, every empty crevice and cranny. As water flowed in, so sound came from my mouth, a deep guttural sound that changed to something high and yet from the back of the nose, from the sinus cavity. I shouted, something that sounded like yes!, but that wasn’t quite a word. I thought of Trix. Finally, now, I let myself think of Trix, a year to the day in the cold, damp ground overlooking the beach by Tomahawk Road.

  SEA STAR

  Spring gave in to summer, and the pavilion uncurled itself in the warmth. Cath and I would take turns at the turnstile, Grace gurgling in her basket, sitting up smiling at everyone as they filed through. Eric prowled the grounds, leaning on his broom more than he swept with it, dragging his gammy leg, propping himself against the wall to roll a smoke and watch the women, the winterwhite bodies that started to appear on the beach and baste themselves in sunshine. The weather grew warm, then hot, then – after Christmas – too hot. By then we were dark brown from mornings on the beach, slimmed down from the appetite-sapping heat. Grace was brown all over, golden brown apart from the white depths of all her folds and creases. She was quick to smile, to laugh. She dribbled as her teeth appeared, and the sand collected and dried in the streaks and runnels of spit around her mouth and down her chin, and in the fat white creases under her fat little face. I’d dip her in the sea – one, two, threeeeeee! – and she’d burble like the waves, matching their pitch and the shape of their sound. Then I’d bundle her up in a sun-warmed towel, cuddle her to me and we’d roll on the sand, giggling, tickling.

  Afternoons were for sleeping, still and quiet, staying away from the sun. Thick velvet, blood red curtains hung from the windows of my room, a gift from Uncle Valentine. I’d close
them each morning when we woke, as the sun rose and the early morning cool remained in the room. When Grace and I returned to our room after lunch, we walked into a deep violet darkness, trapped cool behind the curtains and the thick limestone walls of the building.

  I’d lay Grace on the bed and lie beside her. She spread her arms like a little fat sea star, always gravitating to the middle of the bed. I arced my body around her, crescent moon to her star. We hummed to each other, call and response light with fatigue in the dark of the room, until we fell asleep. We’d sleep the afternoons into evening, drawing back the curtains only once the sun had dropped behind the ocean, orange piercing blue.

  Nights were not for sleeping. Nights were for walking, while others slept.

  From an early age, Grace would wake at night, unable to be fed or otherwise persuaded back to sleep. One hot night, my head nodding with sweat and tiredness, I scooped her up in my silk robe, tied the sleeves to fasten at my back and, Grace cocooned as I remembered Balinese babies in batik cocooned, we stepped out of our room in the tower and onto the squeaking white sand to walk ourselves towards sleep. I hummed as we walked, my voice in my throat low under the roll and phizzle of the waves and foam. I walked on the edge of the ocean, on the cool sand angling down to water that sucked at my toes, kissed my ankles. Lulled by the jogging action my walking made, Grace’s head would loll, her humming fade to a gentle snore. I’d walk under the jetty’s wooden uprights, feel it cooler, smell wooden must. While Grace slept I’d sit on the jetty’s edge, rocking her gently against me, my whole torso moving with her. No lights showed from the pavilion, and few from the houses beyond. Looking to the north, up the curve of the coast, only occasional pinpoints of light pitted the dark. I felt alone, yet no longer alone: I had Grace.

  I started writing my story, that summer – this story; writing it for Grace. The story of us. I’d been alone, then I’d had Trix; Trix had left me, but I was no longer alone. I had Grace. I wanted to tell her my story, the story of before her, of how she’d come to be. There was no one to tell her but me. I bought a typewriter – a big black Underwood – and set it up on a table in the corner of the north tower of the Pav. I’d never used one before. I was slow, my fingers not used to the heavy hand they needed to make the keys shift the levers, the hammers with their little metal letters, like the hammers of a piano, nothing like a theremin.

  I started with my first memories. Would Grace’s first memories be of sounds, of water? My fingers stabbed the story out, made hard imprints on the thin paper, sometimes ripped it in my enthusiasm. I tapped out the story of Uncle Valentine before he got too fat to swim at the beach, of the Misses Murray, of ships and sound and light; I tapped monkeys and snakes; butterflies, dolls and bees. I tapped the story of the Professor. I tapped out Trix, how she came and went. I typed it for Grace, a few pages each day, while she slept. As the pile of paper grew, I kept it in a box, kept it safe with a lid. I was no longer alone; we had each other. And I would write our story for Grace, so she’d have it when I was gone.

  BLOODY BUGGERY

  Grace didn’t walk until she was sixteen months old. A fat healthy baby, she was passed from me to Cath, from Cath to whoever happened to be with us – and there were many people with us in Grace’s first summer as we worked and lazed by turns at the beach. Grace would go to anyone, her arms outstretched, sticky spitty face ready to press into any shirt front or chest. She was everybody’s baby, beloved. She rolled and crawled where she needed to on the sand, and had only to put her fat arms out to be picked up, whizzed from here to there with a kiss on her fat brown cheek. And so, summer turned to autumn and Grace turned one; and autumn turned to winter, and still Grace crawled and slithered and demanded, raised her arms to be lifted, relied on others to move her. She had no need to walk.

  If Grace didn’t walk, I too had my lacks; I hadn’t played my theremin since before Grace’s birth – indeed, not since some time before her conception. The theremin – dragged with me across the oceans – now rested in the corner of the room in the north tower, covered with one of Uncle’s old sheets; not neglected, not abandoned – just not played. There was some sense in which I needed to make music with my body – just my body – without the electronics intervening.

  So, I hummed.

  It had started when I was pregnant with Grace, when I would send vibrations down from my mouth and my tongue and my throat to her, the growing Grace inside me. I closed my lips, felt them relax against each other, felt my soft palate relax and engorge, the drone swell from my throat, inside my head, through my sinuses and down into the depth of my belly to my darling girl.

  I hummed for Grace tunes I didn’t remember remembering until she was there to prompt them, lullabies my mother had hummed and sung to me. French words, remembered phonetically, half understood from lessons with the Misses Murray, bubbled out of me; Malay words from my earliest memories, the sound of bees, of paper on comb; and sounds I pulled from the air, assonant, feathersoft.

  I hummed to Grace, the vibrations in my lips and my throat. As I hummed to her, I moved my hands, close to her body but not touching her. She began to sigh, aaah ah aaah, in time with me, in response to me. Later her response would gain a consonant, maah maa maaaah. Her sounds echoed mine, responded to my voice climbing up and down the register, my rhythms quickening and slowing. We developed it into a game, Grace and I. Our humming game.

  And perhaps I tested her, at times – higher, lower, faster, slower. Three-four time, an arpeggio, a scale. Grace responded differently each time, sometimes in close harmony, sometimes shouting across and above me. Always though, I would see her eyes on mine, as if she could interpret the music through my eyes. Or perhaps she just saw the reflection of her own face, recognised herself through the mirror of my eyes.

  Perhaps there was electricity, machinery in the air, on the day that I drew the dust sheet from the theremin. I connected the wires from the machine to the wall, from the machine to its speaker. I heard the hum of valves warming. Grace said maaaah maaaaah behind me, from the rug in the middle of the room where she sat like a buddha, watching. I raised my arms into the old accustomed pose – ready to dance, right arm high, left arm at waist height. My old partner’s humming turned to harmonic keening. I twitched my finger and the keening sang vibrato. I played a scale, up then down, the timbre brittle, malformed. I adjusted the dials at the front of the machine to change the wave shape. I played again, the same scale, up then down – yes, that was better; sweeter. I played the scale again, faster. I remembered this; my arms and body fell into remembered patterns, my muscles settled. I felt the electricity surge in me, through my fingers and down through my belly.

  I felt wetness on the backs of my knees, a tight clasping.

  Fat dimpled hands were hanging on for dear life. Grace had walked to me.

  ‘Maaaaaaaaah. Ma-maaaaaaah!’

  I turned, bent and swept her into my arms, ‘Clever girl, Gracie! Walking girl!’ I showered kisses on her fat face. I twirled her around the room, both of us giggling and wheeeee-ing. Holding her up, kissing her face, I ran us downstairs to tell Cath.

  The kitchen was empty. I filled the kettle, put it onto the stove to boil for a cup of tea, to celebrate. While it heated, I knelt on the ground with Grace, urging her to walk to me again, across the room. She keened at me, a sound like the theremin, then walked, clapping her hands, before collapsing onto me, both of us giggling.

  The kitchen door jiggled then opened wide. Cath stood framed in the doorway, a string bag fat with groceries in her left hand, a bunch of boronia, green-brown and yellow, fragrant, an upside-down V in her right. I scooped Grace up in my arms and we stood, the table between Cath and me, the kettle steaming up to the boil on the stove behind me.

  ‘Cath! You’ll never guess! Grace walked! She walked to me!’

  Cath hefted the bag of groceries onto the table. The bag collapsed, limp, the contents shifting to their new arrangement.

  ‘Oh Princess. We’ve declared war on
Germany. We’ve declared bloody war. Bloody buggery bloody war.’

  Her face was shiny with tears. I stepped around the table, moved towards her and put my arms around her; we both supported Grace between us, held her there and cried on her until she cried too – like us, not understanding, but knowing the need to cry. The boronia had dropped from Cath’s hand and its scent rose as it crushed under our feet: dusty lemon, sharp with spice, a smell like bruised purple.

  THE STRONG ARM BOYS

  Lives are lived at a different speed in times of war. Grace’s childhood, like mine, was spent in the shadow of a distant war, her life inked in by the actions of men.

  But there are some things that war doesn’t stop. People will always make music. And people will always dance. There were dances everywhere in the city, but the dances at our beach were the best. Bands played in the rotunda, and people would dance up and down the pier. But the best dances were at the Pav.

  Don Armstrong and his Strong Arm Boys held dances at the Pav every Wednesday and Saturday night, from spring through to autumn, when the weather was forecast fine, which was most of the time. The dance floor had no roof, was open to the stars. It had as its ceiling a violet sky, picked out with starlight and a slice of moon. On rare nights when a rainstorm arced across the sky and dumped sudden big, hard, hot rain on the dancers, they’d run to huddle at the edges of the dance floor, under cover of the porticoes that lined it. Tables and chairs were set up there, for supper. The raised stage where the band played was under cover, so the band would keep on playing through the rain, playing louder to drown it out.