Lilian's Story (4 page)

I cannot keep up with you, Lilian
, Mother said and tried to slide her fingers behind my waistband.
It is not three months
since Haddon let this out.
Haddon, that rouged woman with lipfuls of pins, was pleased as she exclaimed over her tape measure.
A full two inches, Mrs Singer
, she said, and made Mother look.
Look, Mrs Singer, she'll have to have a new one.

Now I was fat.
I am a fat girl
, I whispered in bed, and did not mind being left behind in the playground when everyone ran to get the good place under the best tree, or to escape from Rick, who had threatened to kiss the first girl he caught, and had to kiss me, so that I smelled his private ant smell and saw a patch of freckles close to my eyes. I was the one called on to jump up and down if anyone needed a stick snapped. I could hold two or three other girls shrilling in the air on the other end of the seesaw. I had grown big and could knock people down if I took a run at them, and block doorways, and there was too much flesh now for Father.

The brass knob of Father's study had become familiar to me. It became warm in my hand as I stood holding it for as long as possible. It was like keeping an egg warm,
Well, come in, Lilian
, Father said.
Do not add dawdling to your
crimes.
It would have pleased me to think that he was joking, but he was not.
In, Lilian, for God's sake
, he said, and I would at last have to let go of the doorknob and shuffle forward to stand in front of the desk, where a square of carpet had been cleared of newspapers. I carried the feel of the knob in the palm of my clenched hand and promised that I would soon return and hold it again on the way out, even though I knew that on the way out I would forget.
Over
, Father said. He had had to stop commanding
Your
ankles
because I was no longer in a position to reach them.
Over
, Father ordered.
Down and over
, and I pulled down my bloomers, held up my skirt, and bent over the desk.
It is
just skin
,
I
whispered to myself every time.
And there is too
much f lesh for him now
. The sound of Mother's old belt had become very resonant against so much flesh.

A Tougher Nut

John had a way with sand-castles I never had. He frowned and did not hear when I yelled at him, his eyes on the horizon and a hand deep in the secret heart of his heap of sand. His smile was maddening, but I had to fall silent, too, and watch for the finger that would curl like a caterpillar out of the side of the sand-castle.
Right through
, John whispered and patted the sand smooth.
See?
And when I lay with a cheek on the sand to make sure, I could see his eye, and a patch of skin, through his tunnel.
It will
be washed away
, I tried to discourage him.
It is pointless.
But he squinted into the sun at me, showing wet teeth, waiting for a better reason.
It is sissy
, I hissed, but he was still too young to mind. I had never thought of flags, drawbridges, windows, people on parapets, but John had them all. The gum leaf turned loosely in its socket on the highest point of the castle.
Like a real f lag
, John said, and squinted again in pride.

From where I climbed up the rough cliff of the headland, the waves looked flat and leisurely.
If I fell, I would
break my back
, I told the air.
What I am doing is very dangerous.
Below, I could see John's blue play-suit crawling with the yellow bucket between the sea and the castle, endlessly filling the moat.
It is silly
, I yelled, and felt the words scatter into the breeze.
It will never be finished.
From this height it seemed I could have crushed my brother with one strong leap. But Father, who strolled out from under the umbrella to check on his son, and whose red bathing-suit had faded to the same shade as his burned skin so that for a moment I thought he was naked: Father would be a tougher nut to crack.

Three Types of Crustacean

What is a fact, Lil?
John wanted to know.
It is all the things Father
knows
, I said, and wished I had a better answer, but tried John with a few facts of my own.
I can see germs
, I told him.
Only sisters can see germs.
He wanted to know:
What is a germ,
Lil?
and went on blinking until I pinched him.

Over the mutton we heard all about the length of the Amazon and the number of hairs on the average head. Our meals were bushels of facts and John nodded when he saw Mother nod. I did not nod, but ate under the cover of so many facts. But Father was no fool.
Alma, give Lilian no more
, Father said, and Alma's spoon stopped so suddenly on the way to my plate with another spoonful of trifle that a daub of cream flew onto the chest of my pinafore. Father leaned over to stop me catching it on my finger and licking, but was too late.
No more, Alma
, he said and stared at me, but I knew there was too much flesh for Father now, trifle or no trifle.

It is a fact
, Father said, and his voice bounced off the walls and made the Japanese ladies sneer,
it is a fact that Eskimos
never eat ice cream. And here is another fact: in France, the French,
the French eat snails and have invented implements for extracting them
from their shells. Here is a fact: the French eat four million and several
thousand snails each year
. Father's voice did not rise into the shadows of the ceiling but chose to rebound from wall to wall, looking for a window and not finding one. The sound of the bay bided its time and waited until he had finished speaking before filling the space again.
Snails
, Father went on after swallowing the last of his trifle,
snails have an average
life span of seventy-two days, barring accidents. This is a scientific fact.

Across the table from me, John ate and ate. He did not eat trifle, however, or cold pikelets under the plumbago, or potatoes from last night. Across the table he refused meat, Cook's soggy cabbage, anything silent. He had grown dangerously thin before Father had agreed to his demands, but now while we all became greasy from mutton, John crunched his way through entire bunches of celery, heads of lettuce, raw green beans, apples that sprayed juice, anything loud.
John!
Father would exclaim,
I cannot hear
myself think!
and John would stop chewing, staring at the tablecloth with a mouthful of carrot until Father began to speak again or left the room.

Blind Ambition

John was pale and frog-like in his glasses.
It is a sign of brains
, Father told everyone.
He promises to be bright, and of course his
sister is bright, it is in the family.
I was proud to hear Father say I was bright, and decided then and there to learn the works of Shakespeare by heart, or perhaps the Bible. John stared through his glasses and poked them further up his nose. They seemed too big for his peaked face, with the rabbit-coloured hair that fell over his forehead and hid the top of the frames.
They have to be kept clean
, John told me under our plumbago. I chewed the heel of the loaf, which was the best Alma could do for me, and had to treat John with respect. When I looked through his glasses, my eyes felt as if they were trying to turn themselves inside out, and John laughed so hard at the sight of me that he had to beat the ground with his fist and point.
Your face is too big for them
, he said.
You have a big face.
He tweaked them off my face and breathed deeply on them before polishing them with the special cloth.
They get dirty
, he explained, and finally put them on, but took them off again immediately and polished some more.
Is it fun?
I asked, and John thought, then nodded.
When I take them off I cannot see
, he said, and put them on, took them off, to demonstrate.
I am as blind as a bat
without them.
He had heard them talking about him. I had heard them, too, Father and Mother discussing us, and had craned over the banister until the blood pounded in my temples, and heard Father say,
And she is as fat as a sausage
, and laugh. John and I had nodded at each other in the dark and went to bed happy, hearing Father's laugh drift up from the parlour and Mother laughing with him.

Quite the little professor
, the ladies exclaimed, and John blushed and steamed up his glasses so that he had to take them off and clean them.
Quite the intellectual
, the lady of the astrakhan muff maintained, but it was I who recited passages of Shakespeare, pausing at the end of every line as Miss Vine taught, and hurrying through the parts that made no sense.
Bravo
, the ladies cried, and Mother said,
Thank you, Lilian, and more tea, May?

In his room, John sat for hours staring at Mother's picture catalogues and folding the lobes of his ears inwards.
What are you doing?
I asked, but had to shake him before he would hear.
Mother says you are to have fresh air
, I lied, but John would not leave the catalogues.
It is the feet and hands I like
, he said and tried to explain, but I needed someone to be an explorer with. In the end, when he agreed to come with me as far as the old swing, I was willing to accept that.
Real feet
, I said and pulled off the boots that were always too tight.
Real
feet, not just pictures
, but John sat on the swing, not swinging, and shook his head. His silences were a trial to me.
What are
your ambitions?
I asked, and hoped he would ask me mine. I had many ambitions and would have listed some of the less private ones. I would not have told him about my ambition to have the long oval eyes of the Japanese ladies above the sideboard, and knew that would never be possible. Life was tragic as I stared at my face in the mirror and knew that long oval eyes were forever beyond me.

John did not ask me my ambitions, however, or undertake one of his long silences, but answered suddenly.
I will be a deaf man
, he said, and fingered his gums where the new teeth would come.
I will be completely deaf.
He took off his glasses and held them tightly. I was also silenced and rubbed two stones together in envy.
How will you get deaf?
I wondered at last.
I am praying for it
, he said.
One morning I
will wake up deaf.

Correspondence

Where a row of snowdrops indicated a border that implied a path, I was a beauty in velvet with a hat like a cake. It had been necessary to use Chinese burns and pinches on John to get him to leave the hands and feet.
Don't wanna,
Lil
, he whined, but as Marco Polo or Captain Cook it was important for me to have an expedition to lead.
We'll get
into strife
, he warned and whined, but I remained four years older than he would ever be.
Only three and a bit
, he claimed after he had learned about months, but in any case I was much bigger than John and would stop at nothing.
Father
will give you a hiding
, John said, and lagged behind as I led the way into Miss Gash's jungle.
I would not want to be you
.

Along that path towards the swing, John pretended not to know me, but pointed out how Mother's velvet was brushing the ground.
She will tell Father
, he said, and breathed on his glasses.
And Father will give you a hiding.
Now that he was seven, he knew how things worked.

Snails crunched under my sandal while John sat on the cracked seat of the swing and I pushed further into the wilderness. Mother's velvet impeded my progress through the grove of bamboo, and I could no longer hear the creaking ropes of the swing. The knuckles of the bamboo seemed about to erupt out of the cool green skin and the leaves shivered against each other in a foreign way. It was easy to imagine snakes coiled in here, and I made haste. When I crept up the stone stairs on all fours I felt John down below watching my velvet back. It seemed a long way down when I looked back, and John on the motionless swing looked like an invention.

Ahead of me, Miss Gash's house sat waiting behind its trees like a face behind hair. Shutters were clenched over some windows in the shadow of the verandah and hung askew from others. A curtain frightened me by puffing out from an open window and sucking back suddenly.

My run across the lawn was watched in shock by every window, and the verandah drew back horrified as I ran under it behind a screen of lattice. There were rakes there, clogged with old grass, and piles of wooden crates that leaked straw. It smelled of the decay of everything and the cats that had squatted every where. In the crates among straw I could see heavy slabs of tiles with pictures on them, and mouse droppings, but I was not afraid of pictures or mice.

I was as brave as Richard the Lionhearted until there were slow footsteps above my head and I wished I was a mouse, and crouched in my velvet behind a crate. Through the lattice I watched Miss Gash, in a dress covered with a pattern of postage stamps, walk out over her lawn to a banana tree. She slapped its trunk and ripped a leaf or two, shading her eyes from the glare as she looked up into the tree. The big green hat hid her face but she walked as cautiously as anyone old. When she looked back at the house, at the lattice where I crouched among mouse dirt, I glared back and made myself invisible. She walked back to the house as slowly as if modelling the dress, the rip down the back showing skin, and the hat that did not hide a neck like a tortoise. Her steps sounded overhead on the verandah and faded into the house. When I heard her begin to sing, I took one of the tiles from the nearest crate. It seemed part of a larger picture, there was half a thumb and a quarter of a very pink peach. Then I ran back across the lawn. Rick would be impressed. He would at last believe that Lil Singer was worth something.