Lila drew back at the entrance of the tottering summerhouse. It was filled with an odd collection of people, all drinking beer and talking loudly. Arguments were flashing around the wooden table and a woman wearing a leopard-skin dress, and a bunch of false grapes in her hennaed hair, was kissing a man in the corner.
Lila said, ‘I don’t think there’s room—’
Pony said, ‘Move over, Dot. Here’s Lila Baines and PS. Listen, everyone, here’s PS.’
Flushed faces looked up and there were greetings. Two men rose unsteadily and offered a seat to Lila.
‘Give Lila a beer.’
‘Oh, no, thank you. I never touch it.’
‘Oh, go on, love. You’ll be a long time dead. Have a shandy then. It’s a bosker thirst-quencher. Musette, give Lila a shandy, darling. Lila, you remember Musette Munson, don’t you? Otherwise known as the Constant Nymph.’
Musette, a horse-faced woman wearing a playsuit, extended a blue cold arm.
‘Hello. Didn’t I meet you when you and Sin were living in that madhouse at the Cross?’
‘That was my sister Vere.’
Pony said, ‘How’s the mad Vere? How’s that crazy Agnes? Where’s Vanessa? Are they coming?’
Lila began a family history but no one was listening. Someone pushed a glass in front of her. She said, ‘What’s in this?’
‘Just a shandy, love. Lemonade and stuff.’
‘Get the blue-sky gentleman some lemonade.’
‘Holy cow, is this Sin’s kid?’
‘Of course, you idiot.’
‘How are you, kid? Shake hands.’ A man pushed a large red hand out as PS drew back.
‘S-h-y,’ said Lila. She had begun to wheeze. The man laughed.
‘He’ll be fine,’ said the man. ‘That kid’s going to be fine.’
Lila gave a nervous laugh and said, ‘I wonder how often the boats run back? Do you know, Pony?’
‘Now, Lila, what are you worrying about the boats for?’
‘We can’t stay too long. George hasn’t been too well and—’
‘Oh, you can’t go for ages yet. They’re going to give PS a boomerang later.’
‘A boomerang?’
‘For Sin. Bloody silly if you ask me, but old Champion, on the awards committee, likes to make speeches, and this year they’re giving boomerangs out. Memento morti or whatever the hell you call it. He’s written a poem to Sin. Oh, he’d go crackers if you weren’t here. I said you were coming. Drink up, love.’
Lila sipped her shandy.
(Well, it certainly is a pleasant drink and I suppose they mean well. Can’t offend them.)
They were talking now about Sinden. Good old Sin, poor little Sin, angelic, crazy, gutsy, delightful, bad-tempered Sinden Scott. Each claimed to have known her better than the others. It seemed to Lila that the anecdotes served mostly to point up their own virtues and wit. ‘I said to her –’ ‘My point was—’ ‘Yes, but she told me in deepest confidence—’ Beer slopped and Sinden arose from the grave and went through a series of unlikely episodes, flickered in and out of an old, badly patched film that they were projecting while Pony commented loudly, ‘Bull. You’re all ding-bats. Bosh and balls, she never did.’
Someone touched Lila’s arm and she turned to look at a man with a lined handsome face.
‘She’d have a good laugh if she were here, don’t you reckon?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Lila was glad to agree with someone.
‘You don’t remember me.’
‘I know the face but—’
‘Charlie Seay.’
‘Oh, Mr Seay, of course. She had so many friends—’
‘Mind if I ask you something?’ He lowered his voice, seemed anxious. ‘Did she ever mention me to you?’
‘I’m sure she must have,’ Lila’s social voice said.
‘I mean, when she was ill—towards the end. Did she ever ask where Charlie was?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Now he seemed crestfallen, the handsome eyes insulted.
‘I was away,’ he said. ‘I read about it in the papers.’
‘It was so sudden.’
‘But I was away.’ He jerked his head towards the storytellers.
‘Did any of them come to see her?’
‘Only Pony,’ said Lila.
‘Yes, Pony’s true blue,’ said Charlie Seay. ‘The others wouldn’t bother. Left her all alone. Now listen to them. Or rather, don’t.’
He gave her a strained bitter look and said, ‘I should have been with her.’
(Why should you have?)
‘I wonder if you can tell me something.’ His voice so low now that she had to lean across the table to hear him above the noise. ‘Was there a big bunch of blue irises? Did it come?’
‘Do you mean at the hospital?’
‘No, after. No card. Just blue irises.’ It seemed as though his life depended on it.
‘I really don’t remember now. We were all so upset.’ Lila gave a sudden wheeze. ‘But it’s funny you should ask that, because the last time we were up at—at the Little Garden, someone had left some blue—’
He nodded. ‘I go up whenever I can.’
‘Oh! Well—it’s very thoughtful—’
‘We once had a little beach house together, down at Narrabeen. Just the one time. It had irises growing in the yard.’
(Oh, and now I remember; they used to come to the house sometimes in a box from Searl’s Florists. ‘Oh, Sin, how pretty. Did Ernest send those?’ And Sinden’s laugh, almost rude. ‘Oh, Lila! Ernest send flowers?’ ‘Who, then?’ ‘Oh, someone I know.’)
Lila said stiffly, ‘Well, it’s nice of you. She’d be pleased to think that one of her friends took the trouble.’
‘Trouble,’ said Charlie Seay, ‘doesn’t enter into it. Nor does friendship.’
He looked out over the picnic ground and seemed to be seeing something a great distance away.
Lila said, ‘Did you know her long?’ and had to repeat it over the noise.
‘No, not long,’ he said.
(A beach house together. One of those times she slipped away and no one knew where. No explanations. Just like her. One of those shades she pulled down.)
‘I just wondered if she’d ever asked for me.’
‘It’s over six years ago. She may have and I’ve forgotten.’
(No. Only for Logan those last days. Always for Logan. And you know it. I can tell by the look on your face. But why are you so hurt? What did she do to you?)
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but said it now for her sister.
‘It’s all right,’ he said.
Lila, suddenly uncorked with nervousness, began a swift recital of the last days—the hospital, what the doctor said. All right to go home, he said; young, and inexperienced—everyone had said so—but then who could tell with Bright’s Disease—
He stood up and said, ‘Well, cheerio. I have to go now.’
‘Oh, do you? Well, look—you must just say hello to her little boy—’
He said, ‘Look, I hope you don’t mind my saying this. I think all this is putrid.’ He indicated the rowdy group in the summerhouse, and the people milling around outside. ‘I think it’s the most God-awful vulgar thing I ever saw and if I were you I’d take him home on the next boat.’
He walked out of the summerhouse and across the picnic ground towards the gate.
Lila grabbed at Pony, who was sitting across the table with PS on her lap and engaged in some violent disagreement with the woman in the leopard-skin dress.
‘Pony, can you come here—I can’t shout.’
‘What, love?’
Pony edged into the space next to Lila and hugged PS to her.
He looked at Lila mournfully. ‘Are we going home soon?’
‘Yes, pet. Yes, we’re going soon. Oh, look, is that the ice cream man? Go and get a sixpenny cone. Don’t drop it, darling. Pony, who was that man?’
‘What man, love?’
‘Cha
rlie Seay.’
‘Oh, don’t you remember Charlie? You must have met Charlie. Didn’t you ever come to one of the poetry readings we used to give at the Blue Tea Room?’
‘He seems to have known Sin very well.’
‘Oh, my dear. He had a big thing about her. Poor old Charlie—bit of a no-hoper. Always was. Well, he used to moan around after Sin, mournful as a mopoke.’
‘When? When was this?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know. About the time she was engaged to Ernest.’
‘At the same time?’
‘Well—yes. We all thought it was a hell of a whoop.’
‘But he said they had a weekend cottage together.’
Pony went into a high-pitched little-girl giggle.
‘Yes. Sin called it “Wild Oats by the Sea”.’
Lila coughed. ‘Did it—did it go on for long?’
‘No! She never took Charlie seriously. He was serious, of course. Sincere Charlie, we called him, but he never saw the joke. That’s Charlie’s trouble, dear, always the bloody death’s head at the feast.’
‘He seems sad.’
‘Oh, he’d be sad if you gave him Government House and everything in it. He’s a professional mourner. When he asked her to marry him, she said—’
‘He asked her to marry—’
‘Oh, yes. She said to me, “Pony, he’s got beautiful hands and beautiful manners but for sheer unadulterated fun I’d sooner be married to the Archbishop of Canterbury.” We roared!’
(But irises all these years! What was it Vanessa had said about Sinden putting on blinders?)
Lila wheezed heavily.
‘What’s up, love?’
‘It’s my asthma. The wind must have changed.’
‘Have another shandy. That’ll buck you up. Musey, pour another shandy for Lila, dear.’
‘No, I don’t want—’
‘Oh, come on. Do you good.’
‘You’re sure there’s nothing in it?’
‘Nothing but lemonade and a drop of beer. Couldn’t get a baby drunk.’
‘Well, it is refreshing. Oh, dear. That poor sad man.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about Charlie, ducks.’
‘So funny that she never mentioned him; introduced him once in the street, just like a stranger.’
(Confide in you—oh, yes. Probably to Vere, but never to me.)
‘But, Lila, Charlie wasn’t anything to her. Just one of those times she was pinching herself to see if she was still alive.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s what she called it when she was on the outs with Ernest or he was neglecting her—’
‘Ernest never neglected her!’
‘Oh, Lila. Half the time! Mr Bloody Put Everything Off! That was Ernest Huxley. Every time she wanted to get married there was some piddling excuse. He’d have to go to Melbourne or New Zealand or he was editing a book or wouldn’t it be better to wait until the hot weather was over? She’d come up to my flat and cry her heart out. “What am I going to do, Pony?” Poor little wretch. “What am I going to do about Ernest? I’m going to be forty by the time he makes up his mind. When am I going to have my child?” But he’d go on making excuses and letting the months go by until it was another year. I knew in my pores something was going to happen. She was bubbling inside like a kettle whistling to be taken off the stove and used. Well, of course it happened.’
‘Yes,’ said Lila. ‘It happened all right.’
‘Just like I knew it would. Funny that it had to be through Charlie Seay. Slightly ironic.’
‘How? What?’
‘Charlie Seay introduced her to Logan.’
‘I thought—we always thought she met Logan at a party.’
‘Did. Charlie brought him.’
‘Were they friends?’
‘No. They’d only met that evening. In a pub.’
‘Pony!’
‘Too right. Having a beer in the Carlton.’
‘The Carlton!’
‘Yes. Belting down a beer.’
‘But the Carlton—how peculiar.’
‘Why? Charlie used to hang out there all the time. Charlie walked in one evening and there’s L. Marriott attached by an umbilical cord to the bar and telling stories in his own ineffable way and the boys there glued to every word as though he was the Oracle at Delphi; and when the joint closes at six o’clock, they go on up to Charlie’s place at the Cross and swap more stories until late in the evening and then apparently Charlie says he has to go to this fancy-dress party at Packy’s Club where a lot of cuckoo writers and artists hang out and says it’ll be a mad do and why don’t you come along and Logan says why not, anything for a free drink, and that’s how darkies are born.’
‘Did Sin tell you all this?’
‘Darling, I was there. I remember because I went as Jackie Coogan or something—a boy anyway. Ernest and Sin came as King Cophetua and the beggar maid. She didn’t have a brass razoo to her name at the time, so she tore an old blue chiffon dress into rags and came barefoot and with her hair down; and Ernest pinned up in an old red velvet curtain with white bunny fur she’d sewn around the neck and wearing a golden paper crown. God, how it comes back to me with a couple of beers and seeing you today—Ernest in that red velvet curtain with his sensible brogues on and sucking on that frightful pipe and she looking about sixteen! Anyway, the party’s beginning to get a bit rough and about midnight, in the door comes Charlie Seay and Logan, both a bit blotto. Oh, I thought, there’s a handsome devil! Wouldn’t say no to him on a wet cold night. Well, you know, Lila, how Logan could walk in a room and make every other man look like cold porridge. And he’s looking around the room and smiling with a faintly superior look—you know, my dear—the earl watching the peasants have fun.’
‘Oh, yes—yes. I know just—’
‘Well, he’s been in the room one minute and he sees Sin and he says to Charlie, “Who’s that?” and poor bloody Charlie takes him over and says, “Sinden, this is Logan Marriott.” She cocks her head on one side—you know the way she used to—and says, “Have you struck gold yet?” And Charlie says, “How would you know he’s been on the gold fields?” and Sin says, “There’s only one Logan Marriott in the world and he comes from Bacchus Marsh and he once met my sister Vanessa.” Logan never says a word, not a word, just keeps looking at her, and she says, “Well, Logan, have you found your gold?” And he looks at her and looks at her and then he says, “I have now.”
A clash of cymbals.
Lila jumped; turned to see six heavy girls in white mosquito netting dance clumsily on to the wooden platform while the loudspeaker ground out the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’. She said, ‘If only—’
‘If. If. If,’ said Pony, rolling a cigarette in her little tobacco-stained fingers. ‘They had to meet. Kismet. Cosmos. Appointment in Samarra.’
‘Do you believe in that?’
‘Listen, Lila, she knew it and he knew it too, and it was all settled that minute. Charlie knew it too. We all did.’
Pony giggled, struck a match. ‘I remember about two in the morning, Ernest wandering around in his red velvet asking everyone where was she? Had anyone seen Sinden? Then someone said, “Oh, she went off with the tall, good-looking bloke,” and Ernest said, “But she doesn’t have any shoes!” Typical Ernest remark, my dear. The sky falling in on him and all he can think of is that she’s gone off in her blue rags and bare feet. We screamed! Then he said, “But where could they go at this hour of the night?” and I thought, Over the moon, my boy, and you’ll never find her again, and of course I was right. Five days later I get a telegram: “Married Logan Marriott. Meet us Carlton drinks at once.” ’
(‘Lila, I just got married to Logan Marriott.’)
‘Oh, Pony—Ernest could have stopped her.’
‘Ernest couldn’t stop a taxi.’
‘They had so much in common.’
‘Books.’
‘Books were her life, Pony.’
�
�She was her own life and she didn’t want it edited by Ernest. All he ever did was edit her.’
‘He worshipped the ground she walked on.’
Pony giggled. ‘Provided he picked it out first.’
Lila held a damp handkerchief to her face. In spite of the coolness of the day she was sweating profusely.
She said, ‘I never knew—I always thought—they met at a dance.’
A formal dance, surely. Long white gloves and a waltz. Logan in tails. No wonder Ernest never forgave her. Running off barefoot into the night with a stranger and now, today, Pony still giggling about it.
She said, ‘I don’t think it’s funny, Pony.’
‘I do.’
‘I don’t. She could at least have said to Ernest, “Mr Marriott is going to see me home.” ’
This seemed to amuse Pony even more; her little high-pitched giggle rang out and was suddenly echoed by kookaburras in a tree. The picnic ground shook with bird laughter.
Against the noise, Lila said, ‘It was a cruel thing to do.’
‘Bosh and balls.’
‘It was. And it was cruel what she did to Charlie Seay. To laugh at him behind his back.’
‘She laughed at everything, Lila.’
‘I don’t understand her. I never did. I won’t treat it as a joke.’
(No, I won’t! I’m horrified by it. I’ve lived my life with jurisdiction because I believe rules are to be kept. You broke the rules, Sinden, and you suffered for it. Logan wasn’t even there at the end. You tipped everything over to run off with a stranger who had a smile for you and it serves you right, my dear. I’m sorry but it does. I know you’re dead and I’m not supposed to think ill of you but I can’t help it. I’m very angry with you… . Or am I angry because Vanessa knew you better?)
She was amazed at her own feelings. Resentment surged through her.
She stood up, wheezing badly now. She would be ill by tonight. Poor George would certainly be up all night.
‘PS. Come here.’ Here voice was strangely high.
He was watching the dancers, ice cream on his shirt. He didn’t move.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’
He turned, surprised. She rarely rapped out at him.
‘Come here. Look at you. Ice cream all over your good shirt. Here, spit on my hanky and I’ll wipe your face. We’re going home.’
Careful, He Might Hear You Page 15