by Rodney Hall
– I wouldn’t care if he did. Because I’m shut away anyhow, aren’t I? I’d like it. Yes I’d like to go to jail for a change and talk to the policeman.
They all stared hopelessly at the dusty picture of freedom offered by the window.
– I might do that myself I dare say, the boy’s mother replied irritably. But who would cook the dinner or clean up or serve in the shop?
– Why not me?
– Why not you when it comes to behaving yourself and doing what you are told and being some comfort to your mother?
It was stiflingly familiar, these incompatible personalities distressed into a dance of love, their most characteristic shapes offending each other’s sense of decorum, ugly when most rhapsodic, their suppressed injuries crying out to be revenged, discordant bells in the night.
– False teeth, said Sebastian pronouncing the words in the powerful distinct voice of a strategist.
– I knew we could rely on you for a topic my dear. Does the tea want freshing up? she asked right away to leave herself free for the pleasures of conversation.
– False teeth is a subject genteel enough for the Queen Mother’s garden party.
– I’m sick of that bloody mountain looking in, Fido whined as he stole a glance at the sideboard mirror, afraid he might have been blushing, his mind filled with flames and the delicious screams of harmless victims suffering the fate of the harmless, also animal hoofs lashing out at Sir Edgar trying to save the poor stupid dangerous things, the smoke massing, smothering the scene, blank as that dusty view of escape down an unreachable mountain road.
– Why hasn’t there been more gold found in the world? Fido asked.
– If there were more gold than there is, said his mother promptly, all our societies would collapse, great nations would be in ruins. Something has to be precious. Too much gold is a plague. Ruin.
– What if we had so much here in Whitey’s Fall that we could use it to destroy the world?
– What if you ate up your corned beef!
– What if the whole mountain was really solid gold inside, Fido shouted. Would that ruin them? Would it, Mother? Would it change everything? Uncle Sebastian, would it be enough, a whole mountain of gold?
– I’m sure I don’t know, replied the saint giving the matter his earnest attention.
– Somebody must know.
– Perhaps it would, Miss Brinsmead decided past the obstruction of an unswallowable boulder of meat.
– Then I hope it is gold right through, that’s what I hope.
– At last, the saint mused contentedly, they make teeth you can eat with. It’s a triumph of technology that one no longer need slip them out at mealtimes. You bite on them and they stay firm.
– My first false teeth, said his sister dislodging the boulder with a gulp of tea, were made of whalebone you know. Or was it hippopotamus? They clipped on to the ones that belonged. Oddly enough I have the impression they enhanced my beauty. Was I beautiful, Sebastian?
– Appalling.
– I thought so, she primped endearingly.
– But that didn’t compensate you for never being happy I’d suppose?
– Happy! she shrieked.
A hen nodded into the room from the backyard, advancing with nervous stateliness, paused, listening, sizing up any possible risk, stabbed at a flake of breadcrust on the lino. She flapped away fussily discommoded when the old man nudged her with his shoe. But Felicia so loved a compliment she could forgive her brother his moralizing.
– You must have been going to say something about teeth yourself, she suggested obligingly.
– Only that I once knew a man who carried his wealth in his mouth for safety, everywhere he went. A digger, he was, no sooner had he got enough gold than he was off to have it fashioned into teeth. He ended up with a whole pound of solid gold in his mouth made up as a full double plate faced with bone.
– Just imagine, Sebastian, imagine those teeth discovered a thousand years from now by an archaeologist. She’d call it religious, she’d be on her knees. They’d be precious as Tutankh-Amun’s chamberpot. Do you know, an acquaintance of mine once stole Louis XIV’s chamberpot, solid silver he said it was.
– You understand as well as I do Felicia that there will be no such thing as a thousand years from now, at least not for this civilization or anything like it.
The sister recoiled as if hit in the face. Her lump of hair patted her on the back. She glared reproachfully, so the offender felt bound to mumble an apology.
– I should be sorry, I dare say. And I am.
– I believe in it, she replied with dignity. I’ve always believed in our ways. We might be miserable, greedy people but the one thing we hold to is the present. That’s why it’s worth reliving the past. I’ve never stopped hating our ways because I’ve never stopped believing in them. They’re the seed of the future. And we do stick together, you mustn’t despise that. If we’re wicked let’s admit it and live with it. I’ve always said wickedness is full of life if nothing else. At least you can’t accuse me of saintliness.
– You cannot.
– What if I ran outside and called for help, Fido suggested getting up and going to the door to put to the test this taste for wickedness.
– And be seen? Sebastian challenged him in alarm.
– Let him do as he wishes, cooed Felicia with composure. Who are we to bother if the policeman comes to get him? Master Wilful Will-do brings it on his own head, he’ll have no one but himself to thank.
An indecisive silence followed. Then Fido could be heard tiptoeing to his den. It was a mystery what he did in there, but that was the arrangement; nobody intruded on his sanctuary, poor boy.
Five
Only that morning there had been no tensing for a crisis. The wind blew a bright warm sky over the town. And Vivien sang. She sang in English, in German, in mock-Italian and in near-Russian. She enjoyed playing with her voice and pulling faces like an opera singer. Her singing was the marvel of three small children who crawled through the long grass on their bellies to be close enough to hear. She hammered and painted, swept, scrubbed and repaired, while pouring out Nun beut die Flur das frische Grün dem Auge zur Ergötzung dar. Den anmutsvollen Blick erhöht der Blumen … something … Schmuck. The children gazed into each other’s astonished, delighted eyes.
– Schmuck, whispered one of them. The dirty word a talisman. The blooming schmuck.
– Kräuter Balsam aus, hier … something… Wunden Heil…
The children crouched closer to the ground as she looked up, unseeing, in their direction. Of course she saw them: bright eyes through the rotting pickets, busy fingers among the kangaroo grass and blackberries. The delicacy of them, the charm of their conspiracy. So she carried her morning tea out on to the porch, together with a heap of chocolate biscuits, for her campaign had been planned. She smiled as her teeth snapped the first biscuit through. She laughed to herself and hummed while she poured the tea. She breathed the scent of the hillside, the wild raspberry, the cattle. Quarter of a mile away she sent crows clustering along her neighbour’s fence, picking at the line of raw sheepskins hung there to dry.
– You’re welcome, she applied her invitation to the crows and the children. A slim black snake edged out of the rockery, so that she was a little unnerved by her power. Close at hand some person’s cow again began bellowing with pain, as it had through the night. Then Vivien stood. She walked firmly down the path straight for the picket fence. They were caught: no hiding now, no escape and not seen.
– Fee Fi Fo Fum, she called so that the three small heads bobbed up to their different heights. I smell biscuit-watchers, she fixed them to the spot with unreal guilt. Biscuit-watchers, she said now quite close. Who are you? she pointed to the tallest one.
– …
– I see. And you? she pointed.
– …
– Hm. And you? she pointed.
– Fred.
– Fred. I once had a goldfish call
ed Fred and he lived to be a hundred.
– How do you know? croaked Fred in panic.
– Because he was ninety-nine when I bought him. Here … she offered the plate of biscuits. One each, if you promise to answer three questions.
Fred held back, but the girl reached out and accepted a biscuit.
– I’m Susie, she said. I’m oldest.
– How about the others? said Vivien.
The middle one sidled towards the plate, fatalistically accepting the world’s corruption.
– Merv.
The bellowing cow caught a sobbing breath.
– That Alice! Susie complained in exasperation.
– Fred, said Fred, he and Merv each taking a biscuit in turn.
– Question number one, Vivien began. Who am I?
– Dunno, said Merv.
– ’no, agreed Fred.
– The lady in the haunted house, Susie burst out with maniac laughter.
– Alright, how do you know the house is haunted?
– Because, said Fred his teeth flashing.
– Because nobody has lived in it, said Susie.
– … since the beginning, Fred added to make everything clear.
– Because, said Merv slowly so that the others looked at him with envy. Because I’ve been in there when it was dark and I heard him creeping about and I ran all the way down the hill home and only just slammed the door at our place before he got me.
Vivien turned toward her house disbelievingly.
– Liar, Susie accused him.
– I did so too.
– He did so too, said Fred and thought of something. That’s why his eyes went a different colour.
Merv squinted so they shouldn’t see. But you couldn’t help noticing the blue and the brown.
– Third question, Vivien put in hastily. Why doesn’t anyone come and call on me?
– Because you don’t call on them! Susie declared.
– On us neether. Easy! said Fred. You could, our mum’s always home when she’s not down at the dairy. Milking down there, he added helpfully pointing out the dairy.
– Another thing, Vivien asked …
– Three questions! shrieked Susie. You’ve asked all three.
– The wind’ll change, said Fred so that they licked their fingers and held them up, turning them, sensitive to the airflow, in the direction of that cow’s hopeless repeated monotone. Much as they hoped, it never did.
– What’s schmuck? Merv demanded sending the others into convulsions of suppressed laughter.
– Schmuck? Who said Schmuck?
– You did Miss. You sang it.
His sister and brother writhed about at this display of boldness.
– It’s German, she answered which made them suspicious. German, you know, the language.
An all-white cloud wheeled solidly along the skyline.
– People in Australia speak English and so do people in England. People in Germany speak German.
Plainly they did not believe.
– It’s another language, a foreign language.
– Schmuck, said Merv rudely. But this time his young audience was frightened.
– It means jewellery, ornament.
– No, Susie was quite definite about this feminine branch of knowledge. No.
– Yes it does Susie, I assure you it does.
But the girl shook her dark hair. It wasn’t right. Deep down you knew it wasn’t. The taste of chocolate biscuits lay poisonously gluey in their mouths.
– Please can we go now, Fred begged.
– I’m sorry, Vivien replied. I spoiled your game. But come up any time. I’m always here.
Fred ran away, cavorting downhill among granite boulders. His brother and sister walked slowly after. They couldn’t have any German-sayer thinking they were scared.
– What are you going to do? hissed Susie when she was sure she couldn’t be overheard.
– Tell somebody.
– Who?
– I dunno. Somebody, he threatened.
– But, Susie protested. She was nice to us.
– Boo! yelled Fred hurtling out from behind a rock and making them both jump.
– I’ll get you for that, snarled Merv. He grabbed at him and missed. And bounded after him down the slope with suicidal abandon.
– Schmuck, said Susie safely alone for a moment. Schmuck.
One golden hair hung on the fence. Vivien picked it off and ran it through her fingers, astonished at its brilliance in the sunlight. That was Fred, it had to be his. The hair glittered in her hand now seeming silver.
– What a fool I’ve been, she explained.
She walked back to the house with her biscuit-plate, not pleased at having frightened away some rare species of native fauna.
– The chance was there, she grumbled to herself.
The tail of the black snake still hung from its hole in the rockery. She stamped her foot, but it didn’t move. Mentally she kicked at him, but in fact she had no wish to do so. He’ll keep the mice down, Vivien thought, exercising her new Australian knowledge.
Her house, like all the houses of Whitey’s Fall, was built on a steep hillside. It stood apart from the town under the mountain’s shadow. From her front door she could look across the rooftops of the general store, the pub and the butter factory to farms on the northerly horizon. Three miles away, off the road, the ruins of another settlement, Wit’s End, showed among cypress trees. Compared with the fortress-like cluster of Whitey’s Fall, Wit’s End could have been a sacred grove. Vivien stood on the steps, shading her eyes. She no longer felt like singing. She felt like, yes, action. Three small figures emerged below on to the dirt track. Now, I shall not let them out of my sight; when I know where they live I shall pay a call. At the main street they crossed to a path leading down the side of the welder’s shed. There’s only one place that could go to, Vivien told herself, gazing across to where the paddocks tipped on end tilting at a wild incline down to the valley: the small house by the creek there. Why wait? Who knows what stories the children might tell? Would they say she had bribed them with biscuits, that she’d asked questions, demanded to know why no one had called on her, that she sang in German? None of it looked good. Best to act immediately. She went inside, tugged a comb through her short hair, inspected her work clothes and decided they would have to do. So Vivien set off down the hill at a brisk walk into the future.
The children were nowhere to be seen around the house in the valley when she arrived, she had lost the expected introduction then. But she wasn’t the kind to lose heart. She walked un-hesitatingly to the door and rang the bell.
– Come in, called a female voice. Come in Elaine, the voice called again as she stepped into the hallway.
– It’s not Elaine, she apologized.
– Well come in anyhow, the older voice had a smile in it. Vivien walked through to the kitchen which to her surprise was large and filled with women. She stood, vulnerable, for the hostess to protect her. There were six women at the table smoking and sustaining the various gestures of a few moments ago, another stood at the sink, another supervised a kettle on the stove.
– So you’ve come at last! cried a broad elderly person, her brilliant blue eyes welcoming, her white hair standing up in anarchic tufts. I had the feeling somebody was travelling.
– Couldn’t you find us?
– You only had to stand still and listen, you’d have heard us. We’re real cacklers.
The broad lady, still seated, held up her hand to be shaken. Vivien took it, a comfortable, capable hand.
– Mrs Collins, said the lady. And Mrs Collins warmed her. Vivien smiled in return. Her hostess had a wide prominent jaw that thrust her lower teeth out in front of the upper set, but far from looking aggressive, her mouth rose generously at the corners and the deep creases blossomed up into high colourful cheeks. When she opened her mouth to laugh she showed a wide flat tongue of clear pink. Creekbeds wandered in towards her
eyes where the unfathomed water shone with sunlight. Single tufts of white grass flourished here and there on her cheek, her chin, at the side of her nose. This nose, bold but not firmly shaped, was expressive and would adapt to her mood.
– How you’ve kept us guessing, a little round woman admonished. We began to think you’d never come. A whole week since you arrived and not a peep out of you.
– We thought, the one with the kettle began to explain.
– Aren’t we ever to have that fresh cup a tea? a crone snapped to establish her originality.
– This is Miss McAloon, the hostess wheezed in a froggy voice. Mrs Buddall, Mrs Swan, Mrs Buddall (Mrs Mary Buddall), Mrs McTaggart and Mrs Collins (another Collins, like myself, by marriage), and Mrs McAloon (Mrs Jessie).
The ladies nodded and made mutters and sighs of delight.
– I’ll never remember, Vivien apologized.
– Now you tell us your name.
– Viv, said Vivien. And that’s simple enough.
– I knew she’d be alright, little Mrs Buddall decided waggling her head which bristled with hair-curlers like some rather fear-some creature that had forgotten what it was going to do. I saw her buying at Brinsmeads’ and I told you all along.
The younger ladies reintroduced themselves by their first names.
– Dolly.
– Mary.
An animated conversation then began while they explained that this house, close to the shop but away from the men, was where they usually gathered of a morning, besides you wouldn’t dare go anywhere but Mum Collins’s. They advised her not to jump to conclusions and think the town was peculiar, on the contrary she’d find good folks here. And not to get too confused by the different names of the family.
The two matriarchs Collins sat proudly together.
– We’re all more or less related by marriage.
– And so am I, said Vivien. My last name’s Lang.
This provoked an astonished hush. Mum’s huge nose took on the fine arched shape of having known all along.
– From Annie Lang who became a McTaggart?
– I told you something, declared the other Mrs Collins.