Careful, He Might Hear You

by Sumner Locke Elliott

  Above them in the white haze of sky, the rainbirds cried and mourned.

  Lila said, ‘Hear the rainbirds?’

  Vanessa said, ‘Yes, I hate them. Mournful things.’

  ‘So do I. They’ve always seemed to me to be—an omen of something.’

  ‘Rain.’

  ‘Well, rain, yes, but—Sinden used to say they were the town criers of the damned. She was always very superstitious of them.’

  Lila leaned forward and tapped Vanessa’s knee.

  ‘On that last day at The Laurels, she heard them cry outside the window.’

  Lila felt that she had brought the point up rather neatly.

  But Vanessa was staring into the distance as though she had detected something incorrect about the horizon.

  Lila went on, ‘All through the pains she heard the rainbirds, poor little darling. She said to me, “Lila, will you tell those damned birds that I’m not holding a wake, I’m having a baby!” I said, “Darling, it only means later on we’ll have a lovely cool rain.” She said, “If Logan were only here, I wouldn’t care if they perched on the end of the bed and sang ‘Waltzing Matilda.’ ” Then they took her away and, Ness, everything was all right. The baby came at seven o’clock and the doctor told us everything was fine, he said the boy was fine and she was resting comfortably and no need for us to stay any longer that night. I remember we sent a cable to you and one to Agnes on the way home. Well, later a tremendous thunderstorm broke and I thought of the rainbirds and, Ness—I knew, I don’t know how but I just knew something had gone wrong. I said to George, “I’ve just got to ring the hospital.” We didn’t have the phone on then and, my dear, I was just going up the street to Miss Gulf’s house to ask if I could use her telephone and there she was running to meet me with a message from the hospital for us to come at once. When we got there the doctor said, “Mrs Marriott is dying.” She didn’t know us, Ness. She held on to my hand and kept saying, “Where is he?” and I didn’t know if she meant the baby or Logan so I said, “He’s coming, dearest,” but she slipped away—just slipped away.’

  Lila got up and poured tea.

  ‘More tea, Ness?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Lila sat down, stirring her tea.

  She said, ‘You know, don’t you, that he never came back for the funeral. He’s never even been to see the Little Garden.’

  ‘What little garden?’

  ‘The grave. We call it Dear One’s Little Garden.’

  Vanessa crossed her legs, regarded her shoes for a minute.

  She said, ‘I don’t think she would have liked that very much.’

  Lila said, ‘We think it’s nicer for PS. To make it a glad place with pretty flowers and not a sorrowful thing. He doesn’t really understand, you see.’

  ‘No, of course not. And he never knew her, so why should it be sorrowful for him in any case?’ Vanessa laughed suddenly. ‘Really, Lila. “Dear One’s Little Garden.” It sounds like something out of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Besides, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think it’s wrong to feed him all this Mary Pickford fantasy about his mother.’

  Lila, corrected, pursed her mouth. Annoyance lent her courage. ‘Vanessa,’ she said in her formal voice, used only for weddings, funerals and the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Vanessa, I was very surprised at your letter and so was George.’

  Vanessa looked directly at her and the green eyes seemed to flicker with the dim amusement of someone dealing with an obstreperous child. Lila, seeing herself reflected clearly in Vanessa’s pupils, thought:

  No, you aren’t going to bamboozle me with your big innocent eyes, my dear, and we’re going to have this out now!

  She drew up her chair, declaring the meeting open, and said, ‘Furthermore, I’m shocked that Ernest Huxley, Sinden’s greatest friend, should let her down.’

  ‘Let her down?’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s trampling on her memory to pass his guardianship over to you. It was Sinden’s wish that Ernest and I should be co-guardians but that the child should live with George and me. And I don’t think the arrangement should have been interfered with by you or anyone.’

  Vanessa sighed, looked at her nails, and Lila said, ‘It took a great deal of trouble and correspondence to draw up the dead of guardianship so that it would be exactly what Sin would have wanted, and Ernest agreed.’

  There was a short pause while both of them listened to squawking locusts and then Vanessa said, ‘Would you hand me my bag?’

  Lila reached for the black crocodile bag and said, ‘Now if Ernest had no intention of sticking to a bargain he should not have agreed to it in the first place—’

  ‘Just one moment, Lila.’

  Vanessa reached into the bag and drawing out a letter, scanned it while Lila waited. Then, with startling suddenness, she thrust the letter into Lila’s hands with a dazzling smile.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Ernest’s aristocratic handwriting:

  ‘My dear Vanessa. You have asked me to put my feelings into writing and that is, I find, difficult to do. Many of them are untranslatable even to myself. However, since talking to you last night and learning of your proposed return to Australia, I am more than ever convinced that you are the only right and proper person to take over my part of the guardianship and also to relieve Lila and George of some of the burden they have been carrying alone for six years. You have the means to do a lot of good for the little boy whereas I can do nothing. The arrangement was totally unworkable from the beginning as Sinden knew of my plans to settle permanently in the United States. I should never have agreed to be one of the guardians but her letter to me came a month after the news of her death and therefore was a posthumous appeal to me. How could I refuse her? However, my consent was based upon certain emotions I felt at that time. Now it is the future that matters. If Logan Marriott can be located in Australia, then I think that a deed of disposal of my guardianship to you should be drawn up without delay, if possible while I am still here in London. I leave it to your superior and more eclectic knowledge of the situation to persuade Mr Marriott and also Lila that this rearrangement would be beneficial to all concerned and especially to the child. My kind regards to Ettie Bult and, as always, I remain yours most sincerely, Ernest.’

  Lila, looking up from the letter, saw Ernest momentarily smoking his pipe under the pear tree and Sinden, in khaki shorts and a man’s shirt, climbing through the hole in Mrs Grindel’s fence and running through the shimmering heat, shouting to him and being lifted up like a child, laughing and protesting as he carried her towards the house and vanishing as Vanessa said:

  ‘I think it’s a very honest letter.’

  ‘Dry as dust,’ Lila said. ‘Just like Ernest. He doesn’t even say how he felt about Sinden or even if he’d forgiven her.’

  ‘I think that’s implicit in the letter.’

  ‘Do you!’

  ‘Would you have preferred that it were written in verse?’

  ‘Sinden worshipped Ernest.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vanessa. ‘She probably did.’

  ‘She loved him. She loved everybody.’

  ‘Yes, that was her trouble.’

  Lila said, going up an octave, ‘There’ll never be anyone like her again.’

  ‘Actually, Lila, there are millions of people just like her and just as emotionally untidy.’

  ‘I must ask you not to speak of her that way in my house.’

  ‘Lila, you’re wheezing again. Be calm now. I adored her too. You know that. But you must also admit she led a wildly impractical life hunting for bluebirds and impossibilities.’

  ‘Well, and she achieved something too and all on her own. She became a famous writer, didn’t she?’

  ‘Well known, I think, would be more accurate, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how she had to get close to people and snuggle up.’

  Yes, thought Lila, that’s true, but I’m not going to agree with you about it.

  ‘In a c
urious way,’ Vanessa went on, lighting a cigarette and watching the match burn down to her fingers, ‘Sinden never considered what other people were thinking. The fact that she loved them was enough for her. She didn’t want to be aware of their shortcomings so she put on blinders and led a very happy and inaccurate life. Ettie does the same thing. She never looks at faces and so everyone is a “dear”. Everyone has to have their method of getting through life, Lila. Vere borrows her life from other people. Agnes can’t stand hers so she’s decided to put an end to everyone’s with the help of God and Dr Whateverhisnameis. Sinden simply put her own emotions into other people and convinced herself that that was how they felt.’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is that a waratah bush over there?’

  ‘Yes, but it hasn’t produced any waratahs for a long while.’

  ‘Probably something in the soil.’

  ‘We brought it from the old house; I don’t think it liked being transplanted.’

  ‘Lila, let me ask you this. Why do you think Sinden wrote and asked Ernest to be a guardian?’

  ‘Well, because, for one thing, she had great ideas about having a book published in America and—’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Wait, let me finish, please. You see, she already had it plotted out and she had an idea of going to New York and taking PS.’

  Vanessa pinned Lila with a look.

  ‘Was she going to leave Logan?’

  ‘Oh, no, but I think she’d already realised that she’d always have to be the breadwinner. I never knew really what was going on in her mind those last weeks. Except America. That was in her mind a lot. She had me buy a map and pin it on the wall by her bed and she made out routes. She wanted to go to a place in Arizona—Gravestone? No, Tombstone. She liked the sound of it, she said. She said, “I’ll hitch my way to Tombstone with PS on my back like a papoose.” I felt at the time it was a terrible sort of omen. That name, Tombstone …’

  ‘Lila, don’t wander.’

  ‘You asked me something, Ness, and I’m telling you.’ This time she let Vanessa wait, dangling, then went on. ‘Anyway, she wanted to get to New York, where of course Ernest would be able to help her sell her book and—Why is that funny?’

  ‘I’m laughing because it’s so typical of her.’

  ‘I don’t see that at all.’

  ‘To expect Ernest to turn the other cheek and open doors to her in New York.’

  ‘He’s in the publishing business.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And he did all that work on Marmon, pushing it with his publisher and—’

  ‘What has it all got to do with PS?’

  ‘Well, I personally think she found out about the BD.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Bright’s Disease.’

  ‘You don’t have to whisper, there’s no one around.’

  ‘I think at the end she knew she’d never get to America, poor little pet, but if she couldn’t, then perhaps PS would, when he was older, and in the meantime Ernest would act with me in an advisory capacity.’

  ‘Now you’ve got to admit that that is all nonsense and as foolish as anything she ever did in her life. Even Sinden couldn’t be so mad as to think that Ernest would want to look after Logan Marriott’s child.’

  Lila said, ‘Just the same, it’s what she wanted.’

  ‘Her blinders again.’

  ‘It’s what she wanted, Vanessa, and we had to do what she wanted.’

  ‘What did Logan think of this ridiculous arrangement?’

  ‘Oh, Logan!’ Lila lifted her hands, warding off visions. ‘Logan came to Sydney for one day—one day. He came with George and me to Sam Hamilton’s office and said, “What do I sign?” He didn’t even read it through. The whole thing took ten minutes and he was gone to catch a train. All we’ve had from him for two years was a postcard saying “Good luck”. How did you ever find him anyway?’

  ‘Wrote to his sister in Bacchus Marsh.’

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ said Lila. ‘Well, I’m surprised she didn’t write and tell me that you’d been trying to get in touch with Logan.’

  ‘Is she in the habit of writing to you?’

  ‘No, but it’s peculiar. But then I’ve always thought the Marriotts were a very peculiar family. Even though they do live in another state, they’ve never shown the slightest interest in PS.’

  ‘Let’s be grateful for small favours,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘And do you mean that Logan simply signed the papers you sent?’

  ‘Yes, and returned them with insufficient postage.’

  They both laughed at this, laughed in unison, saying, ‘My dear’, and ‘Typical’, until Lila, catching herself in a truce, said sternly:

  ‘It was very wrong of him to agree right off without even consulting me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Vanessa, smiling, ‘he was in a hurry to catch a train.’

  A rubber ball hit the wicker table, upsetting a cup, and they both turned to see a barefoot PS darting through the paspalum grass, pursued by a very grubby Winnie Grindel, wearing only underpants.

  ‘PS!’ Lila rose in the role of guardian. ‘PS, you nearly hit Aunt Vanessa. Come here and say you’re sorry. Now don’t do that, pet. Don’t roll in the grass. Winnie, don’t do that. Don’t twist his arm, he’s smaller than you.’

  ‘He pulled my hair.’

  ‘She’s a fibber.’

  ‘Now, children.’ Lila clapped her hands. ‘That’s enough. Where are your panamas? You know better than to run around in this sun without your hats.’

  They came towards the veranda, kicking up storms of dust and giggling.

  ‘Now who wants a piece of cake? Don’t grab! Winnie, this is Miss Scott.’

  ‘How’d you do, Winnie.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Lila cut and handed them each a piece of fruitcake.

  ‘What do you say?’

  ‘Ta,’ said Winnie.

  ‘Ta,’ said PS.

  Vanessa said quietly, ‘Not “ta”. “Thank you”.’

  A gate slammed and Mrs Grindel materialised around the side of the house in her watermelon dress and bearing scones.

  ‘Hello, love. Thought you might like some scones.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ Lila gritted her teeth, seeing Vanessa’s sharp recoil from Mrs Grindel’s outstretched hand, covered in flour.

  ‘This is my sister, Miss Scott.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, dear.’

  ‘How’d you do.’

  ‘Hot enough for you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a little unused to it.’

  ‘I’ll bet. Cold in the old country, isn’t it?’

  ‘We do have summers.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘But it was midwinter when we left.’

  ‘They have winter while we have summer,’ Lila explained.

  ‘Tch, tch!’ Mrs Grindel was laughing at the whims of foreigners, trying to close the safety pin in her brassiere. ‘Well, I suppose you get used to it, but give me a nice hot Christmas so you can take the kiddies to the beach. Well, are you glad to be home?’

  Vanessa said that she supposed so and became absorbed in her shoes.

  ‘Oh, there’s no place like home, is there?’

  ‘Well …’ Vanessa shrugged politely, smoothed her flawless skirt.

  ‘I’ve never been out of my state,’ said Mrs Grindel, ‘and I’m proud of it.’

  Lila said quickly, ‘I’ll make some fresh tea.’

  Vanessa glanced at her watch and Lila thought, She mustn’t go yet, we’ve talked about nothing. I’ve got to have some hint of what’s up her sleeve or I’ll never sleep tonight. ‘Ness, have one of Mrs Grindel’s nice homemade scones?’

  ‘Just out of the oven, love.’

  ‘No, thanks. We’ve just had tea.’

  ‘This early?’

  ‘Vanessa means afternoon tea, Mrs Grindel.’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh. Your sister used to love my scones, didn’t she, Mrs Baines?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, I think—’

  ‘Dear One, I mean. When she was stopping here with Mr and Mrs Baines, every time I seen her in the backyard I’d sing out, “The scones are on, little mother.” She loved me calling her that. She’d hop over the fence like a kangaroo, even in her condition, and come and sit in my kitchen and gab away by the hour. Make you laugh, cheer you up no matter how blue she was feeling herself. Oh, there never was no one like her, was there? She was a real larrikin.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Tomboy,’ Lila translated. ‘Take a piece of cake home with you, Mrs Grindel.’

  ‘Ta. If it’ll save you throwing it out.’ Mrs Grindel stuffed cake into her mouth, said indistinctly, ‘Oh, we knew Dear One, Miss Scott. Every morning I’d hear her going hell for leather on that typewriter. Then in the arvo she’d sit out here and make hats, didn’t she, love? Oh, she loved making hats. Give her any old bit of stuff and she’d make a hat out of it. Everybody loved her. Didn’t they? The whole street went into mourning when she went over. You shoulda seen the big mob that turned out for the funeral. Have you been up to see the Little Garden yet?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been to the grave.’

  ‘Yes, well, you know we call it—’

  ‘Yes, yes, she knows,’ Lila said. And thought, Oh, go, just go!

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely. They got a lovely cross. My hubby knows someone in the business and got them a nice reduction. I woulda liked an angel but Mrs Baines reckoned a cross would be nicer and last longer and you want something that’ll last on a grave. I said you get something nice for her because she was a saint. That’s why God took her so young. Shut up, you bastards.’ Mrs Grindel addressed the last remark to the rainbirds and smiled at Vanessa. ‘Excuse my French, dear.’ She poked Vanessa on the knee with a fat red sausage of a finger.

  ‘Whaddyer think of him?’ She winked an eye towards PS. ‘How’s he for a bottle baby? Big for six, isn’t he?’

  Vanessa looked just to the left of Mrs Grindel, into nothing.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Miss Scott. He’s got a wonderful home here and a bosker mum and dad to boot; he’s been treated like he was their own. In fact he started to call them Mumma and Dadda until Mrs Baines says, “No, love. Dear One’s your mum but she’s away in heaven and your dad’s away too.” But Mr Baines has been a dad to him; he’d take the food out of his own mouth if he had to and give it to the kiddie—’