Then there had been one of those moments of tall whispering and nudging far above him and he had seen Lila take a postcard out of her bag and give it to Vere, saying, ‘Vanessa from Colombo—only a few weeks now.’ Lila had waved and said she would pick him up at five o’clock and gone off, moving her sore feet gently on the hot pavement where the tar was melting in soft puddles, and he and Vere had climbed on a tram (Vere being very funny with the conductor and pretending she had lost her bag) and they had gone to the cheap seats at the pictures, feeling their way in the sudden dark of the Regent Theatre, nearly empty at that time of the morning, but with the giant grey faces on the screen that he loved so much. Vere said that the picture was The Gold Diggers of 1933 and that the girl wearing nothing but a big gold coin was Ginger Rogers. When the picture was over, a man came up out of nowhere playing the big Wurlitzer organ in a bright pink light and then sank out of sight again; they sat through the newsreel and a cartoon and Coming Attractions and through The Gold Diggers again until after Ginger had sung ‘We’re in the Money’, which is where they had come in, and groped their way out, blinking into the hot sunlight to find it was afternoon already. While they were sitting in Sargent’s having a meat pie each, he had asked Vere was it a good thing to be a gold digger and she had laughed and said, ‘Oh, yes—my God, yes, pet; get anything you can in this damn life; you’ll be a long time dead.’ He thought this was a bit strange because Logan was a gold digger; he’d heard them say so. Yet Logan was one of the things you didn’t mention out loud.
Now they were back in Vere’s room at Kings’ Cross, which was best of all because it was so full of Things. Vere collected things from everybody and her little narrow room was crammed with them. Whenever anybody was about to throw something away, Vere would snatch it from them saying, ‘Oh, I know a poor woman who’d love to have that,’ only the things were all for her and she herself never threw out anything so that there was hardly room to sit down, let alone move, and every time she opened her wardrobe door out would fall cardboard boxes, handbags with broken clasps, shoes that were not her size, musty old furs, galoshes, umbrellas, newspapers and old magazines. The wardrobe was so packed tight with other people’s dresses and coats that Vere often had to tug and pull for minutes to get at the one she wanted. There were mountains of dusty letters lying around everywhere; Vere never tore up a letter and he’d heard them joke about her even keeping notes from the milkman saying, ‘Sorry, no cream today.’ Stuck on the pink walls with pins were hundreds of pictures and he liked to stand on a chair and look at them and pick out the people he knew like Lila and George being married in front of a waterfall (George sitting down in a wicker chair and Lila in a white lace dress standing with her hand on George’s shoulder as if to stop him from getting up) and Vere all dressed up in costume when she was on the stage in The Student Prince, and old Mater Scott all buttoned up to the neck in black and looking not pleased at all with anyone and Pater Scott with his white beard, and another one of them all together, the five girls all grouped around Mater and Pater with Lila and Agnes standing at the back, Dear One (as he was told to call his mother) all by herself at the side as if she didn’t quite belong to them, and two little girls with long curls and in fluffy white dresses, sitting in front.
‘Me,’ said Vere today, pointing to herself.
And the other?
‘That’s Vanessa,’ said Vere, and he leaned forward to see Vanessa long ago. She was a very pretty little girl with hair ribbons and a misty face, and she leaned her little arm along Pater Scott’s knee and rested her head against his waistcoat, curled against him like a white kitten. Now, today, they all stared at him curiously as much as to say, ‘Well, for goodness’ sake, who are you? Which one of us had you for a little boy?’ but Vanessa, curled against her father, seemed to stare harder than all the others.
What was she coming back for? What was this little girl in a white dress with a big silk sash going to do to him? He was just about to ask Vere when there was a tap at the door and Vere’s friend, Opal, came in. Opal was the most beautiful girl in the world and wore soft, shining dresses; always a new one every time he saw her, always pretty shoes to match, always great big hats piled with roses.
Opal said, ‘And who is this handsome man?’ bending to kiss him and smelling of honeysuckle.
Vere said, ‘Girl, how are you?’
Opal said, ‘Girl, I’m thwarted.’
She pronounced it to rhyme with ‘carted’.
Vere said, ‘We’re all thwarted.’ It was always a ‘thwart’, never a ‘thwort’. ‘Thworted’ meant having warts.
Vere said, ‘I thought you were going to the races with Archie.’
‘His wife’s in town.’
‘Wouldn’t that thwart you!’
‘It’s the supreme thwart. So is she. He’s lashed to the mast for days now.’
‘How sick-making, girl.’
‘Girl, it’s gall and wormwood. I am undone.’
‘Has he told her about you yet?’
‘Says he can’t until she’s in a less thwarting mood.’
‘Which means never.’
‘Girl, you are probably right about him. I always pick the ones with no guts. The whole thing undoes me to the point of stupor, but I am lashed to him, as to a mast. I must have a drink, pront.’
Vere fished a tall, cold bottle out of the shopping bag that Opal had brought with her, along with a black lace nightgown. When Vere saw the nightgown, she gave one of her shrieks. ‘Oh, girl, what’s this?’
Opal said, ‘Girl, I’m hurling it at you because it’s so full of evil memories of my other great mistake. Now wear it, don’t just put it away. You put everything away in that evil wardrobe.’
Opal had taken off her dress and shoes and was sitting on the bed in a yellow slip and lighting a cigarette. Vere poured the golden-coloured bubbles into two peanut butter glasses and handed one to Opal. They immediately forgot him and began talking about their friends who were all in a mess, thwarted, broke, maddened or suicidal, my dear. They had wonderful names like Dodo, Ukulele, Widget and Gussy. When they came to visit Vere they brought her old shoe buckles, brooches, half-used pots of cold cream, combs and long, cool bottles because they were always dying of thirst, just dying of thirst, my dear, and their voices would grow brighter as the daylight faded, would fly around the small room like birds let out of cages telling about gay-sounding things, about parties and dancing, full of mysterious words that had to be spelled out in Lila’s house and which made his heart jump for the time when he would understand and be a part of the things they told about with such laughter.
He heard Vere say, ‘I didn’t tell you about our thwart.’
‘Which is?’
‘Ness is coming back.’
‘My dear! What will they do without her at Hampton Court?’
‘They will be undone.’
‘Is Cousin Ettie coming too?’
‘But of course. They are lashed to each other, she and Ness.’
‘Is Cousin Ettie still in the money, Vere?’
‘Rolling.’
‘I thought no one was any more.’
‘Oh, girl, Ettie’s evil husband bought shares in everything in the year one—things like Broken Hill Mining and Dalgetty’s and wool and shipping and little unimportant stock like Woolworth’s!’
‘My dear! I suppose one day Ness will cop the lot.’
‘The lot! That’s why she has stayed lashed to Ettie all these years.’
‘Of course. She is Crafty Alice in the Fairy Palace. Well, we must get out our ostrich feather fans and practise our court curtseys.’ Opal reached for a cigarette. ‘But, girl, why is it a thwart?’
‘Because Vanessa wants the c-h-i-l-d.’
‘Jesus, no!’
‘Shhh. Yes. She has been up to some evilness with Ernest in London.’
‘Sinden’s Ernest?’
‘Yes, and it seems he’s relinquished his guardianship to her.’
‘But woul
dn’t L-o-g-a-n have had to agree?’
‘Apparently he did. By letter.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Over the hills and far away, gold digging.’
‘Mad, of course.’
‘Crazy as a cut snake, always was, but it’s most undoing.’
‘Does it mean Lila will have to give up le petit enfant?’
‘Qui. Part time, anyway.’
‘Is she thwarted?’
‘Thwarted to an absolute faretheewell, asthma and the lot, and poor sleepy George waked up out of his seven-year trance. PS? Where are you, darling?’
He said, ‘Under the bed.’
‘What are you doing there, dearest thing?’
‘Looking for Hester.’
‘Don’t let her scratch you, blessed angel.’
He had found comforting old Hester and dragged her, miaowing, from the shadows of luggage and strange things under Vere’s bed; hugged her to him, spitting and protesting and curling the feather of her tail around his face.
He listened to the conversation rumbling on above him, all about him and Vanessa and Logan and ‘custardy’; about who was going to have the ‘custardy’ of him. But what had desserts to do with Vanessa? He felt cold and funny inside and he wished Vere and Opal would stop.
Fortunately, Gussy knocked on the door, bringing a cool bottle and some old gramophone records for Vere to make into vases.
Vere shrieked, ‘PS, come and say hello to Gussy.’
He loved Gussy, who did funny things and right now was pretending to faint with surprise at the sight of him, fell back into a chair, closed his eyes, recovered, sprang up and seized two saucepan lids, clashed them together like cymbals, screaming, ‘PS is here. Slaves, bring grapes and dancing girls.’ Then he did a slave dance while Vere poured more golden stuff into peanut butter glasses and said, ‘Sing a song, PS’, so he sang ‘Painting the Clouds with Sunshine’, remembering all the words so that they clapped for him very hard. Then Dodo, very fat and funny, came rolling up the stairs, screaming to them that she was dying of thirst, my dear, and behind her came Ruby, bending to get in the door because he was so tall, and once in the room he seemed to be everywhere, like a tree that had sprouted up suddenly through the carpet, but mostly all around Vere with his long arms until she shrieked, ‘Stop it, you evil thing.’ They were all having a good time now because it was getting on towards evening when they did all sorts of delightful things and forgot that they were broke, maddened, thwarted and suicidal, my dear.
By the time Lila came to pick him up, the room was so smoky and noisy that only he noticed her at the door in her prune-coloured hat and her blue dress wet all around the middle with being so hot and having to walk so far from the tram down Vere’s long street.
Lila shook hands with Vere’s friends and gave them the look she sometimes gave the butcher when he tried to cheat her; then she hurried him into his coat with her mouth working because she had seen the long, cold bottles.
‘Really, Vere!’
‘Oh, God, Lila, it’s only beer, for heaven’s sake.’
‘What did the l-a-w-y-e-r say?’
‘Sam said it’s perfectly legal. Nothing we can do.’
Opal said, over the noise of the others, ‘Lila, Vere’s just told me about Vanessa. My dear, what a black thwart!’
Lila drew herself up, showing that she did not like Opal, saying in her very polite visitors’ voice, ‘It will be very nice to see her after all these years. Come along, PS, or we’ll miss the half past five boat.’
He went around kissing them all goodbye, sorry the lovely day was over. Vere gobbled him all over the face, saying, ‘Oh, I could eat you up. I could eatyouup!’ gave him a piece of chocolate cake in a greasy bag and Lila marched him out and down the stairs, past the nasty landlady’s door. In the street, a wild drunken man called out something to them twice which made Lila’s hot face even redder, made her say, pulling him along like the Red Queen, ‘Faster, PS, we’ll miss the boat.’ Sure enough, as they rushed from the tram to the turnstiles, they saw the half past five boat chugging away from the wharf, leaving them with half an hour to wait.
‘I knew we’d miss it,’ Lila said, and seemed pleased that she had turned out to be right.
The sign on the gate read: THE TEMPLE OF EVERLASTING LOVE. NO TRESPASSING.
Lila pushed open the gate and went in. Tiers of cracked concrete rose in a Greek amphitheatre, led down to ionic columns, standing high above the darkening bay and dwarfing the figure of Agnes, holding a broom and shielding her eyes against the dying sun to see who it was.
Lila called to her sister, ‘It’s only me,’ and waving little assurances that she was not an intruder, started down the steep steps between the tiers. Dotted here and there were metal plates bearing the names of the hundred or so disciples of Dr Pollack who would gather here to witness the Day of Judgement and presumably to watch the sea yield up its dead (which here in Balmoral Bay, thought Lila, couldn’t amount to more than half a dozen souls, considering the vigilance of the beach lifesaving clubs).
Some of the name plates had become rusted and loose; their owners, weary of waiting for the millennium through several false alarms, had gone ahead on their own steam.
The Temple, built in a clumsy approximation to the Acropolis, had a run-down appearance and Lila, stepping on cracks that had burst between lantana weeds, heard Sinden laugh and say, ‘Agnes, I know what it says in the Bible, but why would He return through the Sydney Harbour Heads?’
Poor Agnes. Poor Agnes, they always said, laughing and shaking their heads as Lila found herself doing now and regretting it when she saw the disappointment on Agnes’ horse-like face. (Poor thing. She thought I might be a new disciple.)
‘I was near by—’ Lila said, reaching the bottom and sitting down on a concrete slab marked THOMPSON to get her breath, offering this feeble excuse for the whim that had brought her half a mile out of her way to the tram and up the steep hill to the Temple. ‘News,’ she added, fumbling in her worn handbag for Vanessa’s letter.
Agnes said unexpectedly, ‘Oh, those seagulls!’ darted forward with the broom to sweep seagull droppings off the seat next to thompson. Brushing away, Agnes said, ‘How did you know I would be here today?’
‘I don’t know. I just thought you might.’
Agnes, under her tricorn hat and looking more than ever like Lord Nelson, gave Lila a swift, triumphant glance.
‘But I’m never usually here on Tuesdays, Lila. Something brought you!’
‘Yes,’ said Lila. ‘News from Ness.’
‘No,’ said Agnes. ‘It’s a Sign,’ and Lila nodded, accepting the strange fact of her being here; reminded that when it came to signs and portents she and Agnes were alike; had searched through girlhood for secret clues in order to sustain their faltering hopes that in the end all would be well, money would be theirs, the sick would recover, lovers would return. (‘I dreamed of So-and-So last night, Agnes, and today I ran into her on the street, isn’t that funny?’ ‘Lila, I knew the doorbell was going to ring, isn’t that funny?’) Heads together, they had peered out through the windows of the dark, cramped manse in Waverly, looking for the silver lining; straining their eyes to see the first light of their brilliant futures.
The only difference, Lila was thinking, is that Agnes took it up professionally; and she saw, for an instant, Mater Scott rising black-bodiced and stern, saying to Agnes, ‘Necromancy! I will not have necromancy in this Church of England house, so you must choose between your father and the devil’; watched again while Agnes packed a cardboard suitcase, went down the front path to board a ship for Seattle and the glorious teachings of a Mr Norman B. Pringle.
Poor Agnes.
What had she found? A life of handing out pamphlets to scoffers who heckled her on street corners, and of trying to raise money to help sustain a temple going to rack and ruin with the financial uncertainty of Eternity when she could not even afford a new hat; trudged around in that old tricorn which s
he had worn proudly back from America.
Now, wearing her hat like a vow of poverty, she was often subjected to the cruel little singsong chant of ‘Where did you get-that-hat?’ when she spoke in Sydney Domain along with the Communists, Pacifists, Prohibitionists and the other soapbox orators screaming for attention from the listless Sunday strollers under the giant fig trees.
Lila watched her now, sitting down on UPDIKE FAMILY, searching for her imitation tortoiseshell glasses, the little navy-blue ribbon on the back of her hat fluttering like a tiny, brave pennant on a sinking ship, and jumped when Agnes said, before unfolding the letter:
‘Is Ness coming home?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
Agnes smiled. ‘I knew.’
What? A good guess? Even the most bogus prophets can hit the mark now and then.
Agnes said, ‘I had a revelation about it a few weeks ago.’
Lila said, ‘You might have warned me,’ and laughed, wondering at the same time about Agnes’ gift for signs, remembering that years ago Agnes had said, apropos of nothing in particular, ‘Sinden won’t live to be very old.’ Nonsense, nonsense, they had all said, all of them secretly loving Sinden the best, angry and frightened that Agnes might be right and hushing her instantly in case Sin might have been in the pantry and overheard.
Careful, He Might Hear You Page 3