Lilian's Story (19 page)

Joan did not impress Father as she impressed me, when I invited her home.
A skinny sort of girl
, he said,
with not much
in the way of womanly graces.
His hand began the sketch of something in the air.

Joan and I went out in the boat as Ursula and I had, but Joan was less afraid of everything than anyone I had ever known.
It is too nice not to be in
, Joan cried one blue morning when the water was like a living jewel.
It is a scandal not to be
wet
, Joan said, and was naked, diving off the stern, before I could gather thoughts or words.
Come on, Lil
, she called, looking like a seal with her dark hair streaming over her skull. The water ran off the sheen of her skin as I had always imagined it would. Of course I would not budge, and certainly would not remove my clothes.
I will watch
, I called primly.
Someone should watch for sharks.
The truth was that I thought the sun might fall out of the sky if I removed my clothes.

In the struggle I was afraid the boat would tip us out and sink. Joan was as strong and slippery as a hooked fish as she pinned me to the boards of the boat and began ripping at my buttons and hooks. My own bulk held me spreadeagled under her and finally it seemed easier not to resist. My eye was filled with puckered nipple as Joan reached over my shoulder for a fastening, and I smelled a sharp animal smell from that hair-filled armpit. When my breasts lolled out in the sun, Joan sat back so that the boat rocked sickeningly.
Now, Lil, I will not ask again
, she said, panting, and I watched her pink tongue lick the salt from the corners of her mouth. I heard my voice say,
I
cannot, Joan, I cannot
, even as I was standing up to remove my skirt. I outraged myself, standing naked in the sun with the boat rocking beneath my soles, but Joan was not outraged. She leaned back so that her sallow breasts became as flat as a boy's, and admired me.
You are a fine
figure of a woman, Lil
, she said sincerely.
I like the way there is so
much of you.
I had not thought about myself in such a way before. My bulk had always been an appendage, but now, looking down at my smooth pale breasts in the sun, I was prepared to reconsider.
Your skin is as smooth as rabbit's fur
, Joan admired, and leaned forward to touch.
Mine is more
like suede
, she said, and laughed so loudly that I imagined the sound ringing across the water until it reached the shore and entered windows.
You feel, Lil,
she said, and put my hand on her shoulder. Her skin against mine was foreign but not at all unpleasant. I could not tell what was happening, but knew that there had never been anyone like Joan before.

Bringing Home the Bacon

There is the Milton lad
, Father said dismissively over roast chook, meaning Duncan.
He does not look as if he knows which
way is up.
Father laughed his angry laugh and hit the table with his palm, because he had already finished several glasses of wine.
You would wait a long time for enlightenment with
that Milton boy
, he cried, and winked at me from each eye in turn. I did not say anything about the enlightenment Duncan had already given me, but watched the way Father's eyes had grown small and hard, like olives in their sockets.
What about a real man, Lilian, who can show you what is
what?
He leaned forward at me.
You would be the better for it,
take it from me.
He laughed again and repeated,
A real man,
and Mother pushed back her chair with a terrible scraping noise and left the room.

F.J. Stroud was not what Father, or perhaps anyone, would have called a real man. But it was F.J. Stroud whom I brought home to meet Father, and he promised me that he would enjoy meeting the man he called
my sire.

Yes, sir, I am in Law, and think I will have a good chance at the
Medal
, F.J. Stroud said sincerely and with modesty. Sitting down, with a glass of Father's sherry in his hand, he looked taller, looked like someone in Law who had a good chance at the Medal. Father took another glass and was not sure whether to be impressed or not.
Splendid
, he said vaguely, and we could both hear him swallow a mouthful. F.J. Stroud met my eye, but neither of us needed to wink.
One
can never be sure, of course
, F.J. Stroud said with even deeper modesty, and added with inspiration only a fraction too late,
as my father always used to say.

Father asked, as he was supposed to, about the father, and F.J. Stroud, with the promptings a modest person required, told about his father, his brilliant record at Oxford, his glittering rise in the diplomatic, his tragic early death.
So it has been a struggle,
F.J. Stroud said modestly.
Mother is frail,
but we have done our best.
His modesty and lies were beginning to nauseate me, but Father was looking grave.
Just you and
your mother,
he said, and could not stop himself winking at F.J. Stroud.
Just you and her.
As we watched, he winked again and a corner of his mouth jumped uncontrollably.

Shocking Joan

Joan's back was pasty and pimpled, but she did not care, and showed as much skin as she liked. In the quadrangle people stared and clucked, but Joan swung her book bag at them or made a face like a rabbit, and they steered well clear. She knew more swear words that Duncan had ever taught me.
Oh, how droll!
she exclaimed when I told her what I knew, and she taught me another.
Lil, what an innocent you are
, she said, but her smile did not make innocence contemptible. She took my hand in both of hers and squeezed it. Do you
speak French, Lil?
she asked, and I was surprised, but said,
Well, we learned at school, “La plume de ma tante est dans le jardin,”
and her laugh made birds take off in fright from the grass, but I was not displeased.
I enjoy you, Lil
, she said, and was not like anyone I had known. She pulled me close to her so that she was near enough to fill my ear with her tongue.
You are good
enough to eat
, she said after I had first squirmed, then enjoyed the feel of that outrageous tongue, and she nudged me as if it was all a good joke I had not grasped.

How about a cheap Chow feed, Lil
, she shouted then,
and
a bottle of plonk, eh?
A boy with four fountain pens in the breast pocket of his suit stared at us, smear of ink on his cheek.
He would like to join us
, Joan giggled into my ear so that her voice was huge and moist.
But he is not invited.

Few people had dared to encircle my wide waist, but Joan did. Her arm was hot and heavy around me and I could feel her hip jostling against mine at each step we took down the hill towards our cheap Chow feed. Men came to the doorways of pubs and stared at us, whistled, made comments that were too thick with beer and bashfulness to be understood.
You are only jealous
, Joan turned and called, and a man with a large red nose snatched the hat off his head and flung it at us in rage, but could not seem to find words. With the sad countryman's hat lying on the pavement I would have liked to separate from Joan and hurry away with my head down, and let them laugh at the way my bottom looked in haste. But Joan took another handful of my waist and made me slow down.
Between
us, Lil, we could launch every ship in the world
, she said, and the man with the red nose heard, and his eyes changed in fear, thinking she was mad.

And what do you think of boys, Lil?
Joan asked later, refilling our glasses with the urine-coloured wine they had brought us.
Boys
, she said again, making it sound ridiculous, and laughed. Behind her a Chinese waiter stared at her bare back and seemed to be waiting for the scarf she had tied around her chest to slip down.
Boys
, I said, and tried to concentrate, but under the table Joan's leg was warm against mine.
Some are thin
, I heard myself saying solemnly,
and some are more robust.
Joan did not laugh, but winked at me.
Yes
, she said.
Go on.
I thought and finished my glass of wine.
Some of them smell chalky
, I said,
and some of them are mates.
There is Duncan, he is a boy and a mate
, but I did not add that F.J. Stroud, up close, had the chalky smell of cotton washed too many times. I had seen Joan speaking to Duncan, and knew that she knew him, and now she nodded and showed her vampire teeth.
Duncan
, she said.
Duncan is a mate
of mine, too. He is good at being a mate, eh?
Her smile was asking something I did not understand, but I nodded. It was a miracle that the world now was full of mates, of women in trousers and scarves tied around their chests, of men who were mates. I looked back with pity at the tennis parties and the hated croquet, the filmy dresses, the long afternoons full of wet cucumber sandwiches, when the dew condensed on the tall jugs of lemonade and my hands sweated against my dress.

I belched and did not even think of excusing myself, while Joan picked her teeth behind her hand in an experienced way, and I was happy that life could provide such riches.
It will be you and me together
, Joan promised and leaned forward across the greasy plates and kissed me on the mouth. When she sat back in her seat the scarf over her breast was spotted with rice grains, and I reached across and brushed them away. The watching Chinese faces did not reveal what they thought.

Those Trousers of Father's

Father was beginning to object to it all.
Too much gadding,
he said excitedly.
And who knows what you are getting up to
with those lads of yours?
His ponderous reminders of the money he was spending on my education, the price of each book he thwacked down on my desk, did not reform me.
But Father, you said other things mattered, too
, I ventured to remind him.
And my gadding is other things.
But Father became red and loud.
With those feeble lads!
he exclaimed.
Midgets! Wordless oafs! Are there no real men these days, Lilian, or
are you trying to taunt me?
He stood over me as I sat at my boring desk, with the wood grain that was the pattern of boredom for me, and gripped my shoulder.
You are a
tight little vixen
, Father said as if his teeth were clenched on the words.
A tight and seamy vixen.
I sat staring at the wood grain and at my hand lying on it, hearing Father breathe above my head and feeling the heat of his body against the side of my arm as he stood over me. His nearness for such a long time made me itch but I could not move, and sat feeling the blood pound in my face, and a great heat and congestion radiating from Father with his dark hidden trousers at eye level.

A Foreign Prospect

Since we are such friends, Lil, you had better come home and meet my
parents
, Joan said with her arm around my waist. I did not wish to meet anyone's parents, and sit being fat and drinking tea on some alien parental brocade, but could not refuse Joan, and in any case she had run the gauntlet of Father, and had seen tremulous Mother with her stop-watch, so I agreed to meet Joan's parents.

Joan's house was not a house, but a flat in a boxlike building of liver-coloured bricks. I walked up stairs through a sweet smell of cabbage, past doors behind which dishes clattered and babies cried. Joan had not told me any of this and I felt brave, reckless, to be climbing stairs to see someone else's home. I did not know anyone who lived in a building full of flats. There were polished brass bells and knockers on the doors I passed. When I stopped to read a name beside a bell, I had to peer closely: “Zbynski”, it said, and the next one was in green ink, in a script I could not read, with letters back to front. I walked up more quickly then and tried to be silent as I moved so none of these people would guess I was here. There were no names here like the ones I was used to, no Greenwoods or Abercrombies.

Joan's mother smiled and showed gold teeth and it shortly became clear that she did not speak any more English than,
Yes, please
, which got me as far as the living room and into a deep chair that made me feel sleepy. Then Joan's father came out from somewhere and closed a door carefully behind him.
She is not yet ready
, said this completely hairless man in a thick accent.
But soon she will be ready.
In the depths of my chair I smiled and nodded, confused by such accents and foreign furniture. Joan's father said
Drink?
with his back turned, clinking bottles, and I found myself holding a glass too big for my hand, full of whisky and water such as Father drank.
Smoke?
Joan's father asked, and I found that a cigarette was in my hand and I was obliged to light it from the flame that he held too close to my nose. Joan's father smiled like a smiling egg and finally sat down opposite me. His skull was good enough to toss from hand to hand. The ears were the only decorations on his head, and like tastefully concealed machinery his eyes moved smoothly in their sockets.
You are studying what?
Joan's father asked from his mouth that ate English words as though they were something tough. The cigarette had mercifully gone out and I leaned forward, making the chair creak symphonically under me, and put it in the ashtray. Oh, I said, and stammered through a list of what I was studying.
And you will become what?
he persisted, and did not smile when I shrugged with difficulty, for the leather chair was as hard to shrug in as a bed, and spoke vaguely of seeing the world.
But your career
, he said, and the surprise in my face made him elaborate and chew a few more bits of English.
Your future. Your livelihood. Your prospects.
F.J. Stroud had responded better than I. The glass tipped in my hand, I held it with both hands, felt then as though praying, and experienced a sudden pang for lemonade and yellow dresses.
I will teach
, I said wildly, randomly, and he nodded. The light glanced off his head in a way that was fascinating.
What does that pay, now?
he asked, and there was no escaping his well-oiled eyes. When Joan came in I was on my knees, wiping at the whisky I had finally been able to release onto the table and down the front of my dress.