Lilian's Story (11 page)

Brave at last behind lattice, I looked out and listened, and did not shrink when I saw Miss Gash walk out over the lawn with a sheet of damp painted paper held in front of her. She had to put it down to clear the weeds from the tap that stood on its pipe beside a hydrangea. At last it gushed out a ropy strand of water and she held the painting under it. For a moment I could see the vague circle of a face filling the page before the water washed the colours into the grass. It had grown thick around the tap, fed by so many paintings. On hands and knees she scrubbed at the painting and smoothed the paper like a sick-bed sheet. When she scrubbed too hard, conscientiously going into a corner, the paper tore with a wet rotten sound and she laughed in surprise. She stood for a long time when she had turned off the tap, holding the dripping paper as patiently as a clothes-line.

Later, when she had gone back into the house at last, and I had heard her footsteps and singing go to some far room, I began to creep out from behind my lattice and emboldened myself with thoughts of Rick for the climb up the verandah steps and along the boards. Miss Gash had pinned paintings to the railing to make a kind of exhibition for me alone. I did not resist, confident that she was deep in the house, and took my time looking. There were faces, crooked trees, staggering lines of bush against water. There were the washed ones whose colours had bled to death under the tap. At the end of the row of paintings, Miss Gash sat behind a post, watching me in her postage stamps. An iron bucket threw itself at my feet and clashed out in a terrifying way, and the tabby that had been watching me squealed and fled. My pinafore could hardly contain my bursting chest. Although Miss Gash smiled and was about to speak, I ran away heavily into the bushes.

It was only when I was safe under my plumbago again that I remembered I had not stolen a tile for Ursula. Safe behind my blue flowers, I was glad. I was not in a mood for stealing from Miss Gash, but wanted to watch her painting, or see her smoke her pipe again, and enjoy that rich smell.

The True Story

Alma brought in the blancmange so hastily that it palpitated in its dish.
Parer's horse
, she said, red-faced and important,
it's gone and got itself in up at the Gash place.
Mother quietened the blancmange with a stare.
Thank you, Alma
, she said, and Alma put the blancmange on the table and struck at its heart with a spoon.
Parer can manage
, Mother said, watching a bead of rainbow from her water glass.
And
will deal with the old lady.

Mother could not have dreamed that I had seen Miss Gash at close quarters on her verandah, or that I planned to keep going back there until I understood. Father would also never have believed, and would have laughed his short laugh at the mere idea, but did not have to believe anything, lying quietly upstairs and eating strengthening gruel. Nor would I have tried to make them believe, but I was curious.
Oh
, Mother said through a mouthful of white froth,
she is a
bit odd, Lilian, that is all.
I stopped eating in the hope that she would go on, and felt John watching me from across the table.
There is some story
, Mother went on at last,
that she was
jilted early on, and went a little odd.
She frowned with her fine eyebrows.
Lilian, you are spilling your white-eat
, she said.
And
goggling.
She finished her blancmange and tossed the wide sleeves of her robe further up her arms with a gesture like a man preparing to chop something down.
It is hard for jilted
women
, she explained.
Oddness is to be expected, poor thing.

Meeting a Madness

Miss Gash came up to me where I crouched behind a hibiscus.
I thought you were a dog
, she said.
In the bush there.
Her lips had been drawn in vermilion on the withered skin around her mouth, but her voice was that of a reasonable person. I would have liked to finger those silk postage stamps, now that I was so close, but I did not.
So you had
better have a dish of water
, she said, and led me up onto her verandah.
I am not a dog
, I said, and wondered what she could make me believe. I glanced at my hand and smoothed the wrinkled pinafore where a tiny spider laboured through stitching.

The water was not in a dish, but in a teacup of the kind that Alma dusted daily while Mother watched with a finger to the side of her neck. The water tasted of rust but was as cool as the sea. Perhaps it is poisoned, I thought, and met her eyes, which were dark with something applied more to one eye than the other so one side of her face seemed to recede. There was no fur on the backs of my hands, but I could hear my breath panting.

Miss Gash drank her own water in one long swallow and sat watching me and hiccupping.
I wear postage stamps
, she said at last, after we had watched a small spider let itself down jerkily between us from the rafters.
I would have liked
to travel, but this is the best I can do.
She picked at a fold of cloth on her knee and held it up close to her face.
British Guinea
, she said.
Where is British Guinea?
I did not know.
Africa
, I said with more authority than I intended. The rusty water had made my voice loud.
It is in Africa.
Miss Gash stretched her arms above her head, showing me pale hairy armpits through the rent in her dress.
You modern girls
, she said.
You
know everything.

I had never seen armpits like those before. I had seen Alma's armpits, dark and matted, once when I had come across her in the laundry in bloomers and camisole, her hair a pile of lather on her head, her face mottled with steam. Mother had no armpits that I had ever seen. The hair in Miss Gash's armpits was a tiny head of well-brushed hair. She saw me staring and said,
You see, it is cooler this way
, and I began to sweat under my clothes.
Men are proud of theirs,
Miss Gash said, and winked at me like an uncle.
Hair is
supposed to be virile.

After a long silence she said,
You do pictures too
, and nodded many times.
I saw them
, she said, and pointed down towards the summer-house that I had covered with rude words. She held out a hand with the fingers framing a piece of garden in front of us.
I do a picture every day
. The postage stamps were fraying into long fringes that swayed around her arms as she gestured.
Then I wash them away
, she said.
It
is the only thing to do.

The spider had begun to build a web in a corner of Miss Gash's wicker chair, and a cicada shrilled once from a tree and thought better of it. Miss Gash stared out at her jungle, her vermilion lips smiling, but it could have been just the way they were drawn. One hand smoothed and smoothed at the cloth over her knee and she nodded now and again in agreement with someone.
Well, you have
had your water, and can go now
, she said, and smiled with those savage lips.
But you are welcome any time.

Bombast

Where is it, then, the tile you were going to get?
Ursula taunted.
The old
witch scared you.
I yelled into the playground,
No, I am not scared
, but I did not even convince myself.
I just have not had time yet.
But Ursula did not care what reason I might think of. And I would rather her think I was scared than for her to guess that I did not want to steal any more of Miss Gash's tiles, and did not want to hear about her being a witch. I had enjoyed Miss Gash's postage stamps, and could still feel the taste of that interesting water.
Next time I will
, I shouted unhappily.
I will get you the best tile there is.
Ursula stared from her cool blank eyes. She had eaten all her date slices herself today, and had rejected pumpkin scones. Behind her, almost hidden by a tree, I could see Gwen watching me. She had seen me offer my scones to Ursula, had watched Ursula refuse them. Now I knew that she was watching as Ursula left me and joined Anne and Judith at skipping. I moved away too, although I had never got the knack of skipping, and came down so hard my fat shuddered. But Gwen followed me and was by my side before I could get away. She said nothing, but watched my face as closely as if I was speaking, and at last the silence was too much, and I had to speak.
You have the
ringworm
, I told her, but then I could not believe I had said the words aloud. Gwen showed no sign of having heard, but stood tossing a pebble in her hand. When she dropped it at last and bent to pick it up, I saw the hair part at the back of her neck and expose the pale secret tendon there, and said it again, louder,
You have the ringworm, and you smell.
This time there could not be any doubts that I had spoken aloud. I did not watch Gwen's back as she walked away, but counted the revolutions of the skipping rope in the sun, until I was dazed by the numbers.

A Vanquished One

Gwen, you are very green
, Miss Vine said, and everyone turned to look, Gwen's pale lips opened, but she said nothing.
Gwen, go at once to Matron if you are feeling sick
, Miss Vine ordered, but Gwen had never stood up in front of the whole class and would not start now. By the time the lesson was over, the afternoon blowflies buzzing against the window, Gwen could not move from her desk, but sat shivering and twitching with a face that was grey and puffy. One finger was swollen to three times its normal size and the hand itself was swollen tightly like a sock full of sand.

Gwen never returned to school, although we were told she did not die. The girls' lavatory was boarded up and Mr. Pinnock warned us again about
venomous fauna.
When Ursula, in between two bounces of her ball, said,
You made
her do it
, I let
_.
out a terrible trumpeting that made everyone in the playground turn and stare.

Lazarus

When Father recovered, everyone was surprised and no one was pleased.
It is a miracle
, Mother said, and ripped the lace of the handkerchief she was twisting in joy. Her mouth shook and she smoothed her dress as if it was a bed.
We must give thuds
, she said, but I knew she meant
thanks.

In this crisis, John spoke to me.
Are you pleased he is better?
he asked me, and I thought of all the things I could say:
Yes
, or
No
, or,
I don't know.
He stared at my silence and said loudly:
I am not.
He sniffed.
Tell them if you like.
We sat under the plumbago in silence for a long time. It was cramped in there now, for John was getting taller each day.
By Jove but
you are filling out
, jovial shopkeepers exclaimed. As if telling the time, John said,
I wish he would die
, and tears began to roll down his face so that he had to put his glasses on the ground and smear his face with his sleeve.

I did not hold a grudge, and brought him hands and feet later for his collection. He sat on his bed staring at a blank piece of his bedcover.
These are Raleigh's feet
, I tried to cajole him.
He discovered potatoes. And here is King Henry's finger,
pointing at a wife.
John had gifts for me, too, and we did not mention Joan, or Miss Gash, or even Rick or Ursula.
Here,
Lil
, he said, and handed me a cigar box full of dead moths.
Here
, he said, and hurried away from me. From behind, his clothes seemed to be strangling him, and Father's voice was all around us in the house again.

There was no convalescence, only Father better, carving the leg of lamb at the table and being mean with the mint sauce. There were no more facts now, but many questions.
Lilian, I have a question to ask
, he would say, and pounce:
What
is the length of the Amazon?
Or,
John, pay attention and answer this:
what is the population of Somerset?
John, who had begun to eat meat while Father was ill, went back to carrots and celery, and the Japanese ladies were astonished at so much noise.

Fan Mail

I probed further and further into the chinks in Miss Gash's crumbling walls, looking for snail shells. Finally I arranged my collection carefully under the plumbago. Even John was impressed. He wanted to know what I would do with them.
I have done it
, I said.
I gather them.
But as I continued to sit under the plumbago and think about British Guinea, which I had discovered was not in Africa at all, I decided what the shells were for.

John watched from the doorway as I crept into the darkened room where Mother was sleeping silently on the chaise longue, her mouth ajar. A slipper hung from a toe and trembled with her pulse. When I pulled her tangle of silks out of the embroidery basket, yards of every colour in a beautiful bright clot, I found a skein at the bottom I could use, and a needle. In threading the snail shells into the silk, I shattered seven of them between my fingers, so it was a necklace of one hundred and thirteen shells that I finally held up for John's admiration.
A few more
, I decided, and John nodded and went away. He came back with a handful of snails and held them out to me. They crawled over each other, sent out eyes on nervous stalks, and one left a shining trail along John's sleeve as it made for his elbow.
They will soon
die
, he explained.
When they are threaded, they will die.
But I left John with his crawling handful and crossed the fence into Miss Gash's garden.

Another green shutter hung askew now on its hinge so that the side of Miss Gash's house had a rakish look, like someone who had been winking and got stuck. A kookaburra eyed me from the top of a chimney with a lizard in its mouth. As I crept across the lawn it began to caw and titter, and I made a dash to the verandah. The dry snail shells made a fine fragile sound as I ran. When I had coiled the string of shells on top of the wicker table I had to stand back and admire. It was a beautiful gift.