‘Are we on the dole?’
Lila looked away a moment. Saw George digging a new vegetable bed on the wrong side of the yard where the plants would get no sun.
‘No, we’re not on the dole and we never will be.’ But what will happen? I can’t think about it now. Get him straightened out first.
‘Now listen,’ she said. ‘Now listen, dear. You are our little boy and you belong to us just as much as if we were your real mother and father and it doesn’t matter what happens, this is your home. The other place is where you stay during the week because it’s near the school but—now pay attention, sweetheart, listen to Lila. We don’t want Vanessa to know George is out of work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she might—well, I mean—it might upset her. So remember not to say anything about it. Try to remember.’
‘What if she asks me?’
‘Well—we’ll just say George is working at home.’
‘But that’s a fib. She said if I ever told a fib she’d know.’
‘But, goodness—’ Oh, God, how to explain? ‘Well—look; he’s working in the garden, isn’t he? So it’s not really a fib. Just don’t say he got the sack.’
‘Well, but—if she asks—’
‘You don’t have to tell her everything! It isn’t lying, it’s—well—you have to learn not to tell everything.’ I haven’t explained it well at all. ‘Just remember not to tell her that George is out of work.’
First the picnic and now this. The web of lies weaving between two houses, she thought. She wondered again how many things Vanessa had forbidden him to carry back to her, as though each of them were selecting what part of her life must go back and forth in his suitcase. She seemed again to feel a crack widen under her feet, and with her instinct for knowing what must surely come, knew the crack would widen gradually until it reached across the harbour all the way to the other house; until it became a chasm, with Vanessa on one side and her on the other and then—and then what monstrous things would happen!
She sighed and said uselessly, ‘Don’t worry; it’ll all come out in the wash. Now go and get your blocks and build me a lovely house and after tea you must take Winnie over a nice piece of cake and say that you’re sorry.’
He trundled off to the house and she turned, saw George leaning on the spade, dreaming. Dreaming of what? Of jobs? Of money? Of Parliament and things that never came to them?
‘Why there?’ she called.
‘What?’ He turned.
‘Why are you digging it there? Can’t you see it’ll never get any sun? Any fool can see that.’
He gaped at her, amazed. More amazed when she ran suddenly to him, put her arms around his neck.
‘I’m sorry. I just want—’ She paused a minute, then said into his neck, ‘I just want something to go right.’
When the phone tinkled uncertainly, George put down the newspaper and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
A pause.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that—do I have Y2892?’
‘Yes.’
‘George?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Vanessa.’
‘Oh, hello. How are you?’
‘I thought for a minute I must have the wrong number. I didn’t expect you to answer. Is Lila there?’
‘Yes, just a minute.’ He called to Lila and she came quickly with floury hands and a questioning look.
‘It’s Vanessa,’ he said.
‘Oh, you picked it up,’ Lila whispered. ‘I said not to pick up the phone just in case—’
‘Well, it’s my phone. It’s my house.’
‘Shhhh. Shhhh. Hello, Ness.’
‘Lila? How are you?’
‘Oh, splendid, tiptop. Are you all well over there? Is Ettie well?’
‘Lila, please don’t launder the shirts.’
‘What?’
‘You laundered his shirts. It isn’t necessary. I have an excellent laundress who comes in twice a week.’
‘Ness, I don’t like sending back the dirty—’
‘There’s a mother-of-pearl button missing from the blue stripe.’
‘Oh, it may have come off when I was ironing. I’ll—’
‘Do you mind awfully leaving his laundry to me?’
‘Well, really! I mean—ha ha—goodness, if I can’t wash a shirt without being hauled over the coals. I’ve always looked after his laundry.’
‘What you buy for him it’s your right to wash any way you please, but I must ask you not to wash my shirts.’
‘Well, if that’s the way you want it.’
‘Anything the matter with George?’
‘No, why?’
‘I just wondered why he’s at home on Monday afternoon.’
‘Oh. Well, he got a cold so he took the day off.’
‘You seem upset.’
‘I don’t like to be bossed about and questioned, that’s all. I don’t boss or question you about everything you do.’
‘No need to get upset about it; I was only curious.’
‘Well, then, if that’s all you phoned about—’
‘Lila, I understand that picnic was a farce.’
Pause and breathing.
‘I’m sorry if you’re upset about it, Vanessa—’
‘He was very upset about having to meet those terrible people. I’m hoping he will forget about it very soon. I certainly shan’t.’
Click.
He heard the click of the phone being put down and then Vanessa’s high heels hard on the hall floor, soft on the rug, then hard again outside the door of the study, where he was doing scales with Miss Colden.
Vanessa opened the door and Miss Colden jumped.
‘Oh. We’re not quite finished, Miss Scott.’
‘I think that’ll be enough for today, though.’
‘Oh, certainly, certainly.’ Miss Colden folding the music, darting up in her tartan skirt, ready to toss a caper. ‘Practise, practise, PS,’ said Miss Colden, but her eyes were eating up Vanessa. ‘What a pretty dress! How turquoise flatters your eyes. Poor me. Can’t wear turquoise. Sallow. Jolly nice of you to send tea in. None of the others do. Love my days here.’
Miss Colden was gone. Vanessa sat on the music stool beside him. She gave him the lightest suggestion of a hug.
‘I want to ask you something, PS.’
He started a scale. She gently closed the piano.
‘How are Lila and George?’
‘All right.’
‘Does George have a bad cold?’
‘No. George is working in the garden.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. He can’t be sick then.’
‘No. He’s working in the garden.’
‘So you said. What’s that frown for? I don’t like frowns.’
He stared at the piano, wished that it wasn’t Monday. Wished that it was Friday already. On Fridays at five o’clock you take your suitcase and you walk down the drive to the gate and then—
Vanessa said sharply, ‘Ever since you came home last night you’ve been upset about something. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I don’t like secrets between us, PS.’
He didn’t like the way she said us. Always us, us, us. As though he belonged to her.
‘I want to know what’s the matter.’
He knew from past experience he’d better tell her something or she’d go on and on right up to bedtime.
‘I made Winnie cry.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘I said she was common.’
‘Well, actually you’re absolutely right. She is. But one doesn’t tell someone they’re common, even if one thinks it.’
‘But she said—’
‘What?’
‘I forget.’
‘It must have been something very, very nasty.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, then you do remember.’
‘No.’
&nbs
p; ‘Well, that means you’d rather not tell me. I see. Did you tell Lila?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course.’
He saw now that she had that sad look she got sometimes.
She said, ‘I’m sure Lila was nice about it. Sided with you, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
Her arm went around him.
‘I’m sure I’d side with you too if I knew what it was this stupid little girl said to upset you.’
‘She said a fib.’
‘What?’
‘She said we were on the dole.’
‘Oh? Do you know what the dole is?’
‘Yes, it’s like when they give you food and things when you don’t have any money.’
‘It’s for very, very poor people who are out of work.’
‘I know.’
‘Then you had a right to be angry with Winnie because that isn’t true. Only it would have been more tactful to have said like a little gentleman, “I’m sorry, Winnie, but you’re wrong. My uncle George has a good job.” ’
He thought now that he must be extremely careful because her eyes had that bright, excited look.
She said, ‘Perhaps Winnie thought George had lost his job.’
‘He hasn’t!’
‘Pianissimo, please. I’m not deaf.’
‘He didn’t get the sack. He didn’t.’
‘Is that what Lila told you to say?’
‘No.’
All right, so she was stroking his head and being very nice but she wouldn’t get it out of him.
‘Remember what I said to you the other day about lies between friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look at me, PS. Has George lost his job?’
‘No! George is working in the garden!’
She sighed, got up quickly then and walked into the hall, leaving the study door open, her heels clicking again to the telephone table. She looked up a number in the book and dialled, then said, ‘Trades Hall? Mr Baines, please.’ A pause and then she said, ‘I see, thank you.’ She hung up, beckoned him to her with a long finger.
‘PS, you mustn’t hide things from me. It’s very wrong of Lila to make you, but it’s wrong of you to obey her. It’s time for you to learn that. Now I want you to go upstairs to your room and think about that until dinnertime. I know you’re very fond of Lila but it is very wrong of her to make you tell lies to me because I am also your legal guardian and just as good to you as she is. I want you to think carefully about that and then if there are things you still don’t understand, I will try to explain them to you. Up you go now.’
Blast! Blow! Thwart! Bastard! Navel! All the worst words he could think of. Bosh and balls. He’d given everything away again, just like the picnic.
He went slowly up the stairs and met Cousin Ettie coming down, leaning heavily on the banister.
‘Ahhhh, what a long face! What’s the matter, lamb?’
‘Ettie,’ said Vanessa, and then, as he reached the top, ‘George has lost his job.’
‘No! Oh, the poor, poor dear, and with hundreds and hundreds out of work. Oh, what rotten luck. Poor Lila. What should we do, Ness? Should I send them a cheque?’
He hung over the banister, trying to hear what Vanessa said, but heard only murmuring and then their footsteps going away towards the drawing room and a door shutting.
Vanessa shut the door and said to Ettie:
‘Lila didn’t want me to know. I can’t imagine how long she thought it would be before I’d be bound to find out. What angers me is that she uses these things to make a gulf between the child and me.’
‘Oh, Ness, I don’t think—’
‘Allow me to know better. She’s adept at using misfortune to get her own way about something.’
Vanessa crossed the darkening room and went through an invisible door to the old house at Waverly, smelling of sickroom, death and flowers; saw Lila already in black, outside the door to Pater’s quiet bedroom.
‘I want to see Pater.’
‘Not now, Ness.’
‘Why?’
‘Mater said not until after the undertaker has been.’
‘You mean you said.’
‘Ness, why do you always think I’m against you?’
‘The other girls have been in. Agnes told me.’
‘Oh, dear, I told Agnes—’
‘Not to wake me up. Yes, you did, didn’t you? I’d only lain down for five minutes—’
‘Ness, there wasn’t time.’
‘To call out?’
‘Almost no time.’
‘What happened? Agnes says there’s a bruise on his head.’
‘Oh. Oh, isn’t Agnes wicked! I told her not to tell you. He bumped his head against the bedpost. Oh, Ness, it was a struggle at the end. It wasn’t peaceful and that’s why I thought—Mater thought it would be better—because you’re so much more attached to him than the others—’ For the thousandth time in memory she was pushing past Lila to Pater’s door and finding it locked.
‘May I have the key, please?’
‘Ah, Ness, not now. Wait.’
‘The key, please.’
‘We’re going to put on his blue shirt and comb his hair so it won’t show where the little bruise is and I’m going to put Grandfather’s prayer book in his hands. Oh, it’ll be lovely when you see him, Ness. I want you to see him at peace.’
‘You. You. Always what you want.’
‘Ness, think of your nightmares!’
‘Give me the key, Lila.’
‘Shhhh. Shhhh. I’ve just got Mater to lie down. Oh, Ness, do be reasonable; don’t make a scene, dear. It’ll be so lovely when you see him, you’ll be so happy you waited, dear. You’ll be grateful all your life that—’
Now she was struggling with Lila, trying to force open Lila’s strong housework hand.
‘Vanessa, how can you? Outside his door like this—Stop it. Oh, it’s terrible!’
‘You’re terrible.’
‘I’m only trying to save you shock and hurt. Oh, I don’t understand you; I thought you’d be grateful to me.’
Lila, crying now, throwing down the key on the floor and walking away down the hall and up over a dry grass slope behind pallbearers with Mater leaning on her arm and the rest of them following behind; Agnes, Vere, Sinden and herself, but Lila in front because she was the eldest; and now standing around the open grave and noticing that her own yellow roses were not on the coffin; Lila’s ugly phallic lilies, yes, of course, but not her yellow roses. Then gazing across the hollow earth to where Lila stood on the other side, catching Lila’s eye, and Lila smiling back at her, the grave watery smile of the co-bereaved.
Fraud!
‘Fraud!’ she said aloud.
‘Ah, Ness—they’re in such trouble,’ said Ettie.
Vanessa switched on the lamp, sent demons flying into the shadowing corners of the great drawing room.
‘Indeed they are,’ she said, and laughed. Now her brain felt fresh and clear and in it she began writing a letter.
Since then, everything had seemed to go faster, even the days hurrying through winter. It had felt to him as if he was being got ready for something. Coming home from Miss Pile’s to lunch one day, he had come upon Vanessa reading a letter to Cousin Ettie. She had put it away quickly and said to Ettie, ‘Next month.’
New things had happened. At Vanessa’s he had riding and dancing lessons added to his afternoons and people talked a lot in undertones. At Lila’s, the silver spoons disappeared, George stopped smoking and people talked a lot in undertones.
‘Where are the spoons?’ he had asked.
‘We lent them to a nice kind man,’ said Lila.
‘Will he give them back to us?’
‘Yes, one day soon.’
Soon. Everything was soon. Vanessa was always saying, ‘Soon’, and ‘We’ll see.’
Diana said to him, ‘Something’s cooking, love.’
‘On the stove?’
She went back
to whispering with Ellen, the cook, and left him outside the baize door.
‘What’s cooking?’ he asked Vanessa.
‘Lamb,’ she said, but he wasn’t sure whether she meant him or what was for dinner.
Then one day Vanessa had taken him into the city and bought him a new grey flannel suit.
‘Next week,’ Vanessa had said to the man in the shop who was fitting him. What was going to happen next week? Coming out into the street and waiting for a taxi, they had spied his Aunt Agnes standing on a cold windy corner wearing her funny hat and handing out leaflets to the people hurrying by.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s Agnes.’
‘I know.’
‘Aren’t we going to speak to her?’
‘Not now. There isn’t time.’
‘The day is at hand,’ Agnes called to anyone who would listen.
Vanessa hailed a yellow cab and they got in. He waved to Agnes as they passed but she didn’t notice him.
‘The day is at hand,’ she called again.
‘What day is at hand?’
‘Darling, you know Agnes is peculiar. That’s why we don’t see her much.’
‘But what day?’
‘Nothing, PS.’
‘Is something going to happen?’
‘Not the way she means.’
‘Something nice?’
‘We’ll see.’
Only Vere seemed unchanged. Unexpectedly Vanessa let him go out with Vere for an afternoon when there were no extra lessons. She came for him after lunch wearing a bright purple dress a size too large for her and carrying a man’s umbrella and almost at once he was bent double laughing because she did a funny thing and pretended not to be able to find the gate and started climbing over the fence. They went off gaily to town on the tram and to the pictures to see Maurice Chevalier in A Bedtime Story; bought cream puffs and butterfly cakes; climbed the old stuffy staircase to Vere’s room singing, ‘In a park in Paree in the spring,’ and there was Hester curled up on the untidy bed, the room crammed full of marvellous things to look at. She had added a gramophone which didn’t play, an empty canary cage, a tortoiseshell clock with one hand missing and a big box full of men’s ties. Painting ties was Vere’s new job. While she made the tea, she showed him how she did it, dabbing the colours on with a little brush. She had painted a tie especially for him. It had a blurry koala bear on it and the letters PS. The P was a bit wobbly and the S had dribbled but he thought it was the loveliest tie he’d ever seen, admiring it in the cracked mirror as Vere knotted it around his neck, and he hoped that Vanessa would like it too and not lose it like she had carelessly lost his Mickey Mouse tie. Vanessa was always losing things that Vere and Lila bought for him. Vere squeezed him and said, ‘There you are, dearest thing.’ It was lovely, just lovely being with Vere again. She didn’t ask him a lot of questions or say, ‘Don’t tell Lila, don’t tell Vanessa.’ The littlest thing sent them both off into fits of laughter and when she served them big cups of tea and the cakes, she put on an apron and a lace doily on her head and pretended to be a deaf waitress bringing all the wrong things, salt instead of sugar and soap on a dish instead of butter and he laughed so much that he got hiccups and Vere had to pat him on the back. Then in came beautiful Opal wearing a sea-green dress and a great black velvet hat. Opal had been down to Melbourne with a man called Archibald who was an absolute out-and-out thwart and King of the Bores and the whole thing had been folly, folly, and the worst thwart of the century, and Opal said she was so thirsty she could expire right on the spot and fell on the bed to prove it. She handed Vere a golden-coloured bottle and Vere poured them both drinks and their voices flew around the room like excited birds as they told wonderful dirt about Dodo and Widget and Steamboat, all of whom were absolutely undone, my dear, and mostly because men were terrible, were pigs, were bores and pimps and idiots into the bargain. They laughed about all this and he laughed with them and Opal put her sweet-smelling arm around him and said, ‘How’s Queen Vanessa?’ and he said politely, ‘Very well, thank you,’ and Vere told Opal that Cousin Ettie wasn’t very well again and that Vanessa was having the old problem with her and Opal seemed to understand perfectly though he didn’t. He told Opal that he was going to Miss Pile’s now and Opal almost went into hysterics and said that only Queen Vanessa could find a school with a name like that. It seemed to remind Opal of something because she said to Vere:
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