Lilian's Story (2 page)

Yes, Lilian
, he agreed when I badgered him.
I am writing
a book, but first I am gathering my material.
Father's book kept him out of sight in his study, but I could hear newspapers being read and shears slicing through paper when I tiptoed close to listen.

In the chilly dining room in the depths of the house, sounds echoed in startling ways from the cedar chiffonier with the decanters, from the sideboard with the thick carved legs, from the floor that Alma, on hands and knees, polished, panting, until she could make out a murky threatening shape that she knew must be her face. The legs of mutton stiffened in their fat, potatoes shrivelled as they cooked, and Alma's breathing was loud as she tiptoed from Mother to Father to me with the mint sauce. Mother ate slowly, chewing thirty-two times as someone had recommended, refusing mint sauce. Father's knife sliced vigorously across his meat and his voice ricocheted off the walls.

I waited until he had forked such quantities of meat into his mouth that he had fallen silent, chewing hard, staring at the salt-cellar, before I spoke.
Will
your
book have pictures,
Father?
I asked, and Mother shook her head warningly at me from the end of the table. But Father laughed a thin laugh:
Ha! Ha!
and Mother pressed her fingertips into a headache.
No, Lilian, no pictures will be necessary. Norah, leave the
room if you are suffering.

I was slow for my age, bad at hints, and perhaps shouted in my excitement,
But, Father, what is your book about? Is it about
pirates or burglars? Or adventures in balloons?
I had not finished, had hardly begun my list of all the things a book might be about, when Father began to shout back at me,
No, no, no,
no, no!
until I was silent, showing egg in my open mouth, and Mother with a hand over her face had pushed her plate away.
Swallow that egg
, Father commanded,
and do not be
dreadful, Lilian.

Alma stood at the sideboard and her breathing was loud. She looked hard at the bowl in her hand as Father glanced around the room and I swallowed egg.
Alma, how
many times must I tell you not to dust?
Father asked suddenly, as if he wanted an answer, and waited for one as Alma stood with her bowl of peas in butter and looked congested.
How
many times?
If I had been able to count so far, I would have tried to give him the answer he was waiting for.
Alma, do not
dust
, he said at last, when the silence had wrinkled around us all, and went back to his mutton, and Mother had to say,
Not in the study, that is, Alma
, and Alma nodded over her puckered peas.

The Treasures of Albion

That study of Father's was a silent and dusty place. Sun leaned in between the curtains and travelled slowly across the piles of newspapers on the floor. Dust hung in a nervous way in the beam of sun and there was not enough air, so that I panted and saw the dust motes dance. Stairs creaked outside although I knew Father could not be home, something rattled somewhere, a branch scraped along stone, and I knew I should hurry out and not come here again. But the pile of newspapers on the floor was a good height to climb and sit on, swinging my legs, and I hummed into the silence in a brave way.

It was a while before I had hummed enough to go over to the desk and look at the papers there, clippings from the newspaper pinned together in heaps. I picked them up and read with a slow finger underlining each word: “Rising Eggs a Menace,” one said, and the next, “Brick Man Fondles Nephew.” I looked at the handwritten notes, too, that spoke with Father's voice:
Norway has seventy
thousand miles of coast and a population of ten million
, and
This year
I have smiled seven hundred and four times.
In the end, I could not keep up my humming in the face of these facts and was frightened at the way the silence roared in my ears when I stopped. I could not remember just how the clippings had been arranged on the desk, whether
Dew falls faster
in summer
had been on top or not, and when in my fear I knocked against the pile of newspapers and sent so many old headlines sprawling, I could not arrange the pile just as it had been.

Someone sneaky has been in my study
, Father said at dinner that night.
Someone sly. And has interfered with my research.
I had to say to myself,
I am sneaky
, and felt hot with shame. I could think of no excuses, but refused more pudding in penance.
But since you are so interested, Lilian, I will tell you.
Father's research was so many facts that Alma had cleared away every plate and fork, and Cook could be heard distantly above the sounds of washing up, and Father was still going. There were the lengths of rivers and frontiers, the populations of cities, why bats were blind, the distance all the eggs in the world would go if laid end to end. I watched the jabbing finger and counted as he ticked off so many facts on his fingers that I thought he might have to start on his toes.
The fact of the matter is this
, he said.
In point of actual
fact, the facts are these.
I regretted having been sly.
Take for a
moment the following fact
, he demanded, and lifted a finger into the air as if testing for a breeze.
Consider this fact.

There could be nothing secretive about so many facts. My fingers read the smooth starched patterns of the tablecloth, I sucked at a grape seed caught in a tooth, watched a morsel of something dangle in Father's moustache, lost count of facts, and Mother nodded and nodded and squinted at another headache approaching her across the room.

In my room later, I put the bloomers on my head and played nurse or cook or milkman and talked to my patients or saucepans or cows.
The fact is this
, I whispered sternly, but could not think of any facts.
I want you to consider the following
facts.
At last it occurred to me that I could invent my facts, but even with the authoritative white bloomers on my head, I knew I lacked Father's talent.

I was a child of unpromising lank hair and small eyes. In photographs I was caught looking sideways, looking sly, in fact, and unhappy at standing in frills while a man shouted,
Don't move.
In those photographs my hands were too large for me, as if I was trying on someone else's. But Father photographed well. His moustache came out nicely, the knob of his cane gleamed, his boots were planted on the rug in a masterful way. His moustache was the model of moustaches for me, thick and drooping, giving his face a look of manly melancholy. I saw other moustaches on other fathers, but they looked like nothing more important than hair. Above his moustache, Father's eyes were sleepy in the photographs and his hair lay slicked down against his skull so that the flatness of his head was apparent. In my early paintings, I drew his head as a square brown box on his shoulders, and drew the facts coming out of his mouth.
What are those lines, Lilian?
Miss Vine asked at school.
Has he
been speared, dear?
and I would have to try to explain,
Those are
Father's facts, Miss Vine.

There Is Everyone Else to Consider

Mother believed in conversation.
A lost art, Lilian, you must sit
and learn.
She sat in the parlour on breezy afternoons when everything in the garden shook and swung in the wind from the bay, and poured tea, and I sat but did not learn. Ladies arrived and removed their gloves, smoothing them on their knees, and withdrew long pins from their hats as they watched Alma breathe too loudly. Mother did not have headaches on the days the ladies visited. She laughed and talked quickly as if there was not enough time for everything but she would like to try to fit it all in, just the same.

Lilian, how old are you now, dear?
a lady with a big black bust asked me.
And are you enjoying school?
I thought she should know how old I was, since she asked my age each time she came, but perhaps she was absent-minded. She had a silver watch pinned to her heart, where she could not forget it.
I am going on five
, I said for the sake of a change, although I was only just four,
and school is good.
School was naps on mats in the blowfly afternoons, and cutting out coloured paper. It was painting in a smock and learning about King Arthur.
I have only been at school a little while
, I admitted.
But
Mother taught me to read.
I was proud of that, and pleased when the lady with the black bust made her mouth an O and gave a surprised sound, and several other ladies looked.
She is already reading
, the lady with the black bust said, and all the ladies smiled without showing their teeth.

I wanted to astonish them further and brought out of my pinafore pocket the pebble with a vein in it like rainbow cake.
What I found
, I explained.
I had to get wet for it.
In fact, I had had to wade into the bay up to my thighs, and then a wave had taken me by surprise and drenched me. Now that it was dry, the pebble was boring and I could see that the ladies were about to lose interest, so I popped it into my mouth and then held it out, shining like a jewel in my palm.
Look, it is very valuable
, I crowed. The lady with the bust did not make an O again, but smiled without showing her teeth and said,
Norah, what a little tomboy you have
, and the other ladies nodded, and they began to comment on May's hat, and the pebble dried.

I asked Mother later,
What is a tomboy?
but she was fatigued by so many ladies and said,
I will explain later, Lilian,
but now I will rest
, and lay back on her couch.

Among the Sisters of Albion

There were those ladies who visited, and there was Aunt Kitty who lived in a house with blood-red stained glass beside the front door. Mother and I walked to her house on the next bay and listened to the bell jangle inside when Mother pressed the brass button.
Why, my dears!
Aunt Kitty cried out at us as if amazed,
come along, come along
, and hurried us down the hall to the parlour. There was a tinkling and a continual tiny chiming around her from so many necklaces and shivering earrings, so that I had to tell her,
You are like
a chandelier, Aunt Kitty
, and she laughed on a high note. Try
how it feels,
she shouted, and began to drape me with her necklaces, but I was shy. Her hair at the back was slithering out of its combs, but her face was pink, her eyes shone, and everything made her laugh and hurry.
Come on, quickly now
, she said, and hurried Mother onto the couch, hurried a doll into my hands, hurried to fetch barley water and biscuits.

I am a happy widow
, Aunt Kitty said, and whenever I asked she told me how Uncle Forbes had passed away in thirty seconds of anguish, clutching the shirt over his chest so that it came away in a long shred.
It was quick
, Aunt Kitty finished by saying,
and he was a serene corpse.
She poured more barley water and said comfortably,
It was a long time ago.
I watched her swallow a mouthful of barley water and say,
And now I am
a
happy widow, and a philosopher.

Mother sat on the couch and laughed at the kapok that puffed from a rip when she moved. Aunt Kitty shook her jewellery at her.
It will come to all of us
, she said,
and I will try not
to mind.
Mother laughed again and laid her glove over the rip in the couch. Her laugh in Aunt Kitty's house was louder and longer than her laugh at home, and it was easier to imagine her with the stuffed donkey when she sat with her glove over the rip in Aunt Kitty's couch. Here it was easier to imagine her being sillier. When Aunt Kitty exclaimed from nowhere,
I'd like to eat my past
, Mother nodded and smiled and waited for more.
Just spread it on thin bread and butter
and pop it in my mouth.
They laughed till they spluttered, but I was restless, the doll Aunt Kitty had given me was stiff and boring, I did not like barley water.
Then go and play with a pup
, Aunt Kitty cried, gesturing at the back verandah,
and let us
ladies be important.

Kitty is my cross to bear
, I heard Father saying downstairs at times. I hung further over the banister but could not hear if Mother answered. A teacup fell against a saucer and I imagined Father dabbing his moustache with his napkin and lining up the spoon in the saucer.
She is my trial
, he sighed.
And error
, he added, and laughed his jerky laugh. Blood rushed to my head from hanging so far over the banister and the stairs came up at me in an odd way, but although I wanted to hear more, no more was said.

Listening Japanese Ladies

Sounds carried well in this house, from room to room and up the stairs.
The fact of the matter is that doors are a waste
of time
, Father maintained, so sound was free to slide from one room to the next. Father's research was an exception to the fact about doors.
My research will blow about
, he explained, and the door of the study was always closed. But whispers carried down the stairs from Mother's and Father's bedroom upstairs, past the curved banister and over the stair carpet that was worn to brown on the treads. Laughs and the tinkle of cups floated up from the parlour when the ladies visited, and Cook could be heard shouting at spinach when Alma opened the door that led down to the kitchen. On the verandah upstairs I could hear every rustle of Mother's silk as she took her constitutional on the flagstones of the terrace, pausing every few yards to look at a sea-gull dive for a fish, or watch a bit of flotsam that was trying to escape from the beach. In every room, on every verandah, the lapping of the bay at our beach could be heard and, however often Alma swept, there was always sand gritty underfoot in the hallway. In the dining room, the Japanese ladies on their scrolls above the sideboard looked askance at our mutton, and the sound of the waves ebbed and flowed with Father's voice, fading when he spoke, surging up to fill silences. In my bedroom underneath Mother's I could hear most things.
Oh, Albion
, Mother complained from her room at night.
Oh, Albion
, and was stopped in the middle of saying,
No.