Lilian's Story (23 page)

Finally I left that track and plunged down through cut grass and prickles until I reached the beach. From there I could look back and see the dark blob of Rosecroft across the water, where a light burned until late in Father's room. I sat on the flat rock with the buttock-shaped depression and watched that feeble light flickering on all night, until at last it winked out. Then I could sigh and lie back, feeling cool sand in my hair, and watch the stars swinging low over me, until finally I was released from my flesh into dreams.

My broad feet and thick ankles carried me many miles at night, and in the end so much shoe leather drew attention to itself.
It is the way I walk
, I had to say when Father shook the bill from the shoemaker in his hand.
I walk heavily.
Father savaged the leg of lamb with the carving knife until the blade struck bone.
I cannot be expected
, he began, but lost interest.

I could not be sure whether Father knew that I escaped at night, and did not want to be betrayed by the worn soles of my shoes. I could not put an end to those long walks by moonlight, either. Nature, which I watched so closely suggested what should be done.

My feet hardened quickly. Father said no more about shoe bills, and although I could never be some slim and glossy black person, eyes alone shining in the moonlight or my teeth gleaming in a grin, my feet could pad as silently as theirs over stones and spikes. My feet renewed themselves endlessly. Such hide was enviable. I wondered if it could be encouraged to form all over a body such as mine, that had such need of armour.

The Invention of the Wheel

Rob with the thick ugly horse that knew where to stop, dropping a steaming pile while Rob jingled from house to house with his cans, Rob had seen me walking miles.
Why,
Miss Singer
, he said calmly when in the pearly dawn his horse clattered along the same road that brought me back from my beach.
Fine morning, Miss Singer.
His milk was not more placid than his brown face.
Saving your shoe leather, are you?
he said, and then I knew that he had spoken to Alma. Alma would have stood, red hands twisted in her apron, and listened to Father fling the bill across the room, smack the new soles of my shoes together so hard that dust flew out from between them, and shout until even John would hear and begin to blink. Rob's horse stopped and lowered its head to the dust, tickling its muzzle hairs against the fine powder of the road, while I realised that Rob had spoken to Alma. Rob stared at me, but I could frame no way to say,
Keep my secret.
I would have preferred no one to know anything.

The horse relieved itself with a loud liquid sound. Yellow urine balled in the dust, ran and shone in drops like escaped mercury.
All right
, Rob finally said when all the noises had stopped. A bird warbled in a liquid way from a tree.
She'll be right as rain.
He jerked the reins and the horse moved forward joint by joint and I had not been able to say,
Keep my secret.

Next time he passed me, on some other pearly morning, he made a noise to the horse that made it stop, and I stopped, too, and watched while he moved milk cans and tugged at something in his cart.

The bicycle had been black before it had been painted white and the effect now was like the bark of a gum. A wheel was twisted, a pedal gone, the saddle a skeleton of metal.
Might be too far gone
, Rob said,
but you could give her a burl.
He wiped his big hand over his face, tweaked at his nose, coughed.
Just between you and me
, he said, and slapped the reins over the horse's back.

Finally the bicycle rolled. I had hit the wheel with a hammer until it was close to round again, had stolen from Mother's purse for tyres. The blue felt hat that Mother had always told me had a
softening effect
on my unpromising face made an adequate saddle. The blue felt became warm as I pedalled slowly mile after mile. Father did not know that it was now in my power to go where I pleased, and Mother would only have nodded and nodded if I had told her. John had no envy, but when I had cried for lack of a pedal, he had brought me one the next day.
That Rick
, he said in his adenoidal way.
That Rick
has everything he needs.

The Wildness of John

John also ran barefoot in the dew across the lawn while the sun rose. But we did not run wild together.

John had abandoned his glasses after breaking so many pairs, and had become a purblind, blank-faced boy. He was a boy who could be heard breathing when everyone was quiet, but no one could guess his thoughts.
Now that you are
a man
, Father often began by saying, John stared with large dim eyes, smiling a dim smile, and Father would shift on his chair like something on a leash.
Now that you are a man
you will understand me
, Father said loudly, but John seemed to understand nothing.

At night I saw his shadow on the lawn. Crossing from the shadow of the roof into moonlit grass, I could see something beside a chimney that was not a chimney.
Are you planning to
fly?
I asked one day when something had made me cruel.
Are you planning to be Icarus, or God?
But cruelty did not interest John.
No
, he said, and said no more, but if I remembered to glance up at the roof when I left the house, leaving another shred of nightdress on the sharp corner of the gutter, I would see him standing, face to the moon as it tanned his cheeks, swaying, one hand on the chimney, the other conducting an orchestra of thousands. Those weak eyes, even if they had not been closed in the rush of music, would not have been able to make out the foreshortened stubby figure of his sister trudging over moonlight into the bush.

At other times on those pale summer nights, when the sky had no colour at all, or the colour of wood-smoke, John ran in the opposite direction from me, towards the train line, where powerful black metal made loud noises.
It is the future
, he explained, and could not wait.
It will be quite
different, then.
He bided his time, and began to shave his downy upper lip in secret so that he would be able to hide behind a moustache as soon as possible. At dawn when I crept into the house I heard sneeze after muffled sneeze from his room, and saw how serene and spent he was over breakfast.

Many a girl on early death has been praised into an angel, but that was not my problem. There was never any possibility of early death for me. Plain health ran out of every pore. So much walking, so many heavy-pedalled miles through moonlight, seemed to make me immune to death.
Have you ever wished you were dead?
John asked, and I could not say
Yes.
His face was just beginning to look like a man's, and he had grown tall, but stopped.
I would like to be
dead
, he said once.
Or at least short.
But I could not wish for anything so definite. I carried my bulk around with me like someone else's suitcase full of unknown things, and I did not want to die just yet. To John I could say only,
It will
not always be like this.

Threats

Only those of us who know dawns know the thick fug of houses before anyone is awake. From every room come stale smells of sleep and warm sheets, grease that has gone cold in the kitchen, a tap that has been dripping sadly all night. Things creak in a bored way and there is not enough air.

Father bided his time. He was listening now when I crept into the house. Sometimes I tiptoed past his room and knew that he was lying there awake, his hands folded over his stomach as if keeping something in. At other times he stood at the top of the stairs in his striped pyjamas and shouted,
Lilian, I will not have it.
I was running wild, but I was too much for him.
You are a slut, Lilian. And you are running
wild, and I will not have it.
He shouted, and went on shouting until everyone was awake and staring.

I did not bother to laugh, but I did not stop running wild. Dogs barked steadily as I squeaked along bitumen towards my headland. In each house that I passed, another animal began to warn me off.
Vile mongrels!
I yelled sometimes, or,
Curs! Reprehensible curs!
When I stopped the bicycle to hurl a stone or two they became hysterical. Men in shirtsleeves and women with curling pins in their hair came to their doors and windows, sometimes to the gate, to stare. But the sight of the fat girl forcing a creaking bicycle along their street was enough to silence them all.

Lilian, you do not understand. If you will not stop this—there are
complaints—I will have to take action.
I did not ask,
What action?
but Father, playing with the acorn on the blind, seemed to hear the question.
There are appropriate actions
, he said, and it was a threat.

I did not send you to the university to have you run wild
, he shouted when everyone was listening at dinner.
I am
sick and tired of it, I have paid good money and I am nauseated.
Those heavy, shiny books, for which he had paid so much good money, sat on my table unopened now from week to week. I knew that the men in tweed and the thick books had nothing to teach me that I wanted to know. The pencils in the pencil case that Mother had embroidered were still sharp and new. There had never been much that seemed worth making a note of.
I know
what you are up to at night, Lilian.
Father's moustache twinkled where he had been sucking at it.
And I am warning you I will
not tolerate it.

The End of One Life

There was no point now in even pretending that I was going each day to listen to the men in tweed. Those stone quadrangles made me cry, too, in unexpected places, and I did not like the way people stopped, stared, sometimes laughed aloud at the sight of the fat girl running her hand over a block of stone in the wall and crying. Too many corners of the university brought tears to my eyes, and I seemed to see them everywhere. Duncan and Joan and F.J. Stroud, and my tongue became thick in my mouth, trying to talk to them. They all seemed very far away as I stood waiting for them to stop talking to me and leave. I could not meet their eyes, and they seemed all eyes. Their hands reached out for me and I drew back, and even their hands seemed all eyes. I knew how truly F.J. Stroud loved me when I saw him, in his shabby black, speaking seriously to Duncan. F.J. Stroud's fist beat into his palm as he made a point, and when he jabbed Duncan in the chest, asking something over and over, Duncan pulled back, but F.J. Stroud followed. I watched Duncan shaking his head and denying, but he did not become angry although F.J. Stroud came closer and closer, until from where I stood watching it seemed that they were hugging each other. I left them and cried more, knowing how truly I had been loved.

Father laughed at F.J. Stroud when he came to ask for my hand.
She is unbalanced
, I heard Father say, and laugh. I continued to sit on the stairs and heard it all.
No one can
marry a mad girl
, Father said.
And she is unruly, she is running wild.
F.J. Stroud said something I did not hear, and Father exclaimed vigorously,
By Jove, boy, she is rutting every night like
a cat in heat
, and F.J. Stroud left soon after that. Although he held my wrist tight, and pulled at me as I sat on the stairs, I stiffened my ankles like an obstinate cow and would not go with him. When he was gone the hall was very silent. I knew I would not see him again.

It was a house full of tears. I heard Alma crying and saw how red-eyed she was, handling the potatoes. She would have refused any suitor now.

When I left the house in the mornings I did not bother to carry those shiny books under my arms, or only if I needed money. I became known to those men in shops where they gave me a pound or two in exchange for one of those books, and they laughed with me. I
know it all
, I explained while they waited, for the fat girl was often good for a laugh.
I do not need books
,
I
announced loudly so that other customers stared.
My brain is in direct communication
with a higher power.
They laughed, but it was true. I did not care if they believed me, and they did not. I liked their stares, liked the way they laughed. These men in grey dustcoats behind their counters, these other men with their hats on, thumbing through old books—these people stared and laughed and thought they were stronger than I was, but I knew better, knew that it was I who was making them laugh and giving them a story to tell their wives that night. I put my pound in my pocket and walked the streets, inventing things to say to keep them laughing. I tried them out on anyone in the street, and although they did not often laugh, it was satisfying to see the alarm on the faces, trying to remain polite while being alarmed, and visibly hoping I would not follow them home, or hug them to death in the middle of Elizabeth Street.

Pictures of Lives

In the darkness of the picture theatres I could live the rich life I had always had in mind. Men with swimming eyes and thin moustaches gestured and strode, and I could forget that I was Lil who had lost the knack of living, and for a while be a man with a thin moustache or someone on a horse, or even a tremulous girl in a hat with flowers and a mouth like a rose.

But before the lights went down I remained Lil and was beginning to love defiance and being the centre of almost any kind of attention. I swelled then so that my being filled every cell of my bulk. I was huge, colossal, magnificent, when all the heads had turned, everyone was staring, a few were shouting at me, and the manager was hurrying down the aisle towards me. I belonged to myself then, and I loved the glare of public life.

If it had not been someone else's National Anthem playing when the red plush curtain jerked apart, I might not have minded, but I did not fancy foreign bombast. Beside me a wooden old man levered himself out of his seat and stood shakily to attention. He glanced at me and, when it became obvious that I did not intend to stand for this music, he jabbed my shoulder with a bony old forefinger.
The Anthem, young lady
, he said in a hoarse whisper, but I sat on, huge in my seat and unmoving. The old man was remembering parade grounds now, where boots had trampled the dew and kookaburras did not dare to laugh.
Stand up, stand up, girl
, he cried so that people turned to stare.
Show some respect, girlie
, he cried, and grunted as he tried to raise his stick at me, but failed because it had become entangled in the legs of the seats, and he began to pant as all around us, people were sitting down again and putting patriotism behind them.
Down
in front
, someone began to call.
Down there!
The old man finally freed his stick with a jerk that made him stagger and in the darkness stumbled out between the seats. I sat on stolidly and laughed louder than anyone when a villain was unexpectedly hosed from behind. It gave me satisfaction to think of that old man taking his revenge home. He might spend the evening composing in quivery pale-blue ink, an indignant letter to some Editor or other:
Dear Sir
, and use his old tongue, pale like something overcooked, to stick on a stamp. In his rage he might even err so that His Majesty would stand on his head, and that would make him angrier still. He would open his paper so eagerly for the next few weeks that he would rip the Foreign News page one day, Rural Matters the next. His sad old letter, full of hollow fury, would never appear, but he would tell the story to his friends at the Mitre in such a way that this would not be apparent, so that when at last he would
pass on to the higher service
he would be remembered as
Old Jerry who wrote to the papers that time.
I sat on in the darkness, laughing and crying as it seemed appropriate, and could hardly bear to leave my seat and go home, it was so tight and warm there in the darkness.