Lilian's Story (7 page)

Running in the Family

Father liked to return home in the evenings to an embroidering wife. From under the plumbago I could see the ferry dock at the wharf and guess which dark figure was Father striding up the hill. There was a patch of the road where trees hid him from sight and I settled deeper into the mauve dusk under the plumbago, beside the hundred empty snail shells I had collected. I sat very still and watched Father stride up the last part of the hill, jabbing his furled umbrella in front of him at each step as if poking someone along, and swing into the gate. Some evenings he strode up the path and rattled at the front door until Alma let him in and took the umbrella. On other evenings he tiptoed across the lawn to the french windows and peered inside at Mother making another stitch in her parrot or rose. He watched for a long time as Mother stitched and yawned and rubbed the camphor into her temples, and at last he tiptoed around to the front door and rattled for Alma as if he had just arrived.
I didn't come down in the last
shower
, Father was fond of saying.

Father liked to come home to an embroidering wife but was sometimes early, and was angry then.
Seeing Kitty?
I heard him exclaim.
You expect me to believe that?
and would shout so loudly then that I would not be able to hear the words. Later I would hear him again,
Norah, you must forgive
, and Mother would murmur, and I would hear the clinks as they took a sherry together, and the trumpeting as Father blew his nose.

We had visited Aunt Kitty and her hair had been undone and her cheeks red, as if she had been running for hours in high wind.
Come in, in, in,
she had cried at me and Mother, and gave us a deep curtsy like the one Ursula had made to Lady Goodwin.
Honour my humble.
I had asked,
Where is your
barrel, Aunt Kitty?
and she had laughed, showing the muscles in her throat, and called out,
That is my secret, darling!

Aunt Kitty brought the barley water and a plate of broken biscuits, and dusted the bursting sofa before Mother's bottom touched it. She sat and slurped at her barley water, then said with slyness,
You are my sister-in-law,
Norah.
Mother nodded, but this did not stop Aunt Kitty giving a laugh like a shout and going on,
My brother Albion
services you.
Mother peered inside the glove she had just taken off and her face contracted as if she saw a spider inside.
Kitty, I am unwell
, she said, and her voice had never sounded punier.
We will have to come again another time.
But Aunt Kitty shouted so that her voice cracked,
He was such
a skinny boy, and inept. Is he heavy now?
A silence slipped down from the ceiling and settled over us all.

When a bird gave a tiny panicked squawk and flew in the open window, blundered up to the bunches of fruit on the ceiling, and fluttered in fear, the silence was broken. I laughed to see my aunt, bursting the buttons on her dress, galloping around the room with a prawn net, her red face turned up to the ceiling, gasping. Mother stood on the piano stool and made hopeless shooing gestures while she called out,
No! No! No! No!
over and over. It was finally at my feet that the bird dropped when it dashed itself into a mirror.
Pick, pick
, Aunt Kitty yelled, making scooping gestures, and I picked up the bird, frightened of its warmth in my hands. When I let it go outside the window, the bird dropped and swooped away.

From that day, Mother postponed the visit to Aunt Kitty.
Next week, Lilian
, she said, until I stopped asking.

The fact is, Kitty is the work of the devil
, Father called down the table to Mother.
It is a long-established fact that women are the
familiars of Satan. John, do not gnaw like that.
I watched Father, who was becoming excited about facts again, and wondered how heavy he was. I had lifted his arm once or twice to make him pay attention, and it had been ponderous, but that could have been Father resisting. I did not think anyone would be able to lift Father.

Fifty-one percent of births are female
, Father trumpeted.
That
is why there are old maids. But one female child out of four is dead by
the age of three. The fact is they lack will.
Mother nodded and nodded at the end of the table and stared at her congealing mutton and John gnawed on a carrot with his eyes shut.
The
population of this country will reach ten million in the year 1993. Then
there will be five million ten thousand women here.
So many facts were overwhelming Father and he was becoming agitated.
Lilian
, he shouted over the pumpkin.
Are you paying attention
to me?
Mother made a noise like a parrot as Father's hand began to hit the tablecloth and the wineglasses danced.
Albion, Albion
, she called, but Father would not stop, the Japanese ladies shook on the wall in the storm of facts, Alma came in with junket and stood shivering against the wall, and finally it was Cook with her red face and mottled arms who ran in heavy-footed and flung water in Father's face while everyone screamed.

Deadlier Than the Male

Miss Vine held her hankie to the face and Mr. Pinnock shone glassily as he poked at the spider in the jar.
You see,
children, how aggressive he is. He is attacking the ruler, children,
because he thinks it is my finger.
The funnel-web gleamed in a big hairy way. Rearing on its back legs, it struck and struck at the ruler. The classroom had never been so silent as when we waited for the spider to swarm up the ruler onto Mr. Pinnock's hairy hand. We would see him scream, probably. We strained to see the venom shining on the ruler, did not blink for fear of missing something. There was no cure for the bite of a funnel-web, we had been told, but someone would have to try sucking out the venom. Miss Vine's white lace hankie would be of little use to anyone.

The girls' lavatory in the basement had been found to be aswarm with these spiders.
They like damp and cool,
Mr. Pinnock said.
Under the seat especially.
Some boy guffawed.

Other People's Magic

Rick's father was rich from those rubber bands, his mother fatter even than I was, and his birthday cake had two layers, held up by tiny columns like those at the library. There was a conjurer who drew endless streams of ribbon out of his mouth, his sleeve, his ear.

Rick's father knew our father. His cheeks, rubbery themselves, shook when he asked.
And how is your clever
father?
His glance at John's hair standing on end, and at my fat forearms, left bare this year by the cardigan with the cherries embroidered on it, was a comment on our clever father.
Still writing his books?
His bulk, which to my nose smelled of perished rubber, massed over us and prevented us from sidling into the room where the chocolate cake was. It was Rick's mother who rescued us at last, and with too many smiles told us that
Mr. Palmer
likes to have his little joke.

Even smiling at the head of the table, or eating another slice of cake, Rick looked sharp. I adored from afar. John and I had not been able to fit at the main table, and along with wordless Gwen, who rocked backwards and forwards on her chair and hummed through her cake, and George with the webbed fingers and toes, John and I sat at a small table so low we could not fit our knees underneath. Rick's mother was attentive with jellies quivering in strange shapes, and sugar sandwiches, but it was obvious that Father's brains and Mother's manners—
A lady's gloves
are always buttoned before she leaves the house—
were not enough. John and I ate our way through the tableful of food in silence, our paper hats askew.

The thought of our clever father preyed on me throughout our cake and jelly, throughout the singing and the blowing out of candles. Rick's face was like a surprised angel's as he blew into the golden light. Jelly and cake sat heavily on my stomach. There was something shameful about Father that made me frightened of this noisy room, its tables littered with bright icing. Too much was hidden. When the conjurer began to draw the pale yellow streamers out of his mouth, I was afraid. With a sleeve to my mouth I had to wail,
Don't like magic
, and they took me outside. Later, in the tram with John, I wiped tears and snot onto the embroidered cherries.
The magic made me
seasick
, John said, and leaned forward to bring up his cake on the floor between us.

Alma shook me until my teeth chattered and my eyeballs rolled. There seemed no particular reason why the shaking should ever stop.
It is me
, she hissed.
Me that
has got to do the cleaning up
. The cardigan with the cherries lay in a damp ball on the floor and in the tub John stood crying from where Alma had rubbed him too hard with the flannel.
It is me who has to deal with you and your smells
, Alma said, and threw water at John to rinse the soap off. I crouched in the corner waiting for my turn and wished for once I was smaller.
If I was to have children they would not be like
you two
, Alma cried.
Oh my very word no.
The thought made her angrier with the flannel in John's ears, because Rob the milkman had not shown interest after all. But next day Alma pressed me into her smell of soap and sweat and gave me a wooden brooch made of good things to eat.
That'll
cheer you up
, Alma said, and watched, smiling with her bad teeth as I fingered the wooden cherries, a slice of bright pink melon, a tiny shiny apple.
Look, Mother, how beautiful
, I called, and ran in to Mother's shaded silence, making her lift the cold cloth from her forehead and blink out.
You
should not have done it
, she told Alma, and seemed to mean what she said. She did not wish to touch the gift and her smile was tight.
Did you say thank you nicely to Alma, Lilian?

Mother had stored her tisanes behind glass and grown several inches. Her feet were brisk now on the polished floors and she did not bother with her
constitutional.
She said,
Lilian, slouch no more
, and poked her large stomach, and laughed to see me draw it in. It was easy now to believe that photograph of her with the donkey.

Under the plumbago I fingered the smooth garish fruit for hours, seeing heroism in my future, dreaming out at the garden.

Father Takes a Tumble

You are loony, Rick explained carefully, holding the wooden rifle in the crook of his shoulder, thinking of Huns,
and so is your dad.
Rick's father was being a hero in puttees now, and his fat mother had become a sock knitter.
My father is a general
, Rick yelled, thinking of the stripes on his father's sleeve, the powerful sweat of his khaki shirts, his hard hand on his son's shoulder.
My father is beating the
Hun at his own game.
John looked at me but I had nothing to say and we could only wait for the bell to put an end to lunchtime. Father lay in a darkened room, waiting to get better or die, and Mother had never been a knitter.

Father's illness could not be defined, no matter how many doctors walked up the stairs. For some weeks there had been talk of
nervous prostration.
There had been talk of hospital, but this was not kept up. Father continued to lie in his darkened room and doctors continued to arrive with square black bags.
There are no doors
, I heard one say in surprise, and Mother said,
No, there are not
, but thoughtfully. I had never seen her point with such authority as when the carpenter stood holding the door, wondering.
There
, she said, and pointed, and the door was hung on Father's room.

Behind that door, Father lay in his nightcap, silenced by facts. When Mother led John and me into the room, we tried not to look at the face on the pillow. In an excess of zeal one of the doctors had ordered Father's moustache shaved, and his face was frightening without it, his upper lip long and sallow.
Does he know we are here?
John asked in a hoarse whisper. Father stared, blinking, as if thinking too hard to be interrupted.
Of course, he knows
, Mother said briskly, but I was not sure. If I had dared to be in the room alone I would have pulled Father's ear, or stuck my tongue at where his moustache had been, but Mother herded us in once in a while,
to say hello
, and herded us out again, and I would not have opened that door at any other time.

In Father's study dust collected, and every so often a clipping would slide off the desk in a chink of sunlight between the curtains and join others on the floor. Dust puffed up in a small way, and the clipping settled in for a long spell. As Father lay month after month, the clippings yellowed and looked like rags.

Plots

Ursula loved wickedness in my company and longed to know my secret.
What is it, Lil?
she pestered.
And what do you
mean, historical?
But it was still my ambition to dazzle them with the whole picture, and I would not say.

Ursula loved wickedness in my company, although in the company of her neat widowed mother she agreed with everything and was a good girl. At Rick's birthday party she had laughed in all the right places in the magician's act, and had not disgraced herself by turning green from too much chocolate cake. I had seen her there, singing “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow” and leading the cheers, and she had been next to him in the seat of honour while he blew out the candles and crossed his eyes, making his wish. She had been pleased with his keepsake and had said Thank you nicely at the end. But the idea of the jam jars was her own.

I got a secret too
, she boasted to me as we rowed out in the old boat.
But it's not historic.
She giggled and had to lean on her oar until she could stop.
You got your silly secret, I think it's
just nothing, you and your secret, Lil Singer
, she said, and at last she told me her secret.
We could bottle our smells
, she said and burst saliva on the last word.
And let them go in Rick's fort.
She smoothed her pinafore.
He thinks he's Christmas
, she said, and that was enough reason for anything.
Boys are silly
, she said, and flicked her long shining plait over her shoulder.