Lilian's Story (13 page)

She smiled like a sage through the steam of her tea as she read every word on every folded page, from the date on the top to the printer's name at the bottom. The glasses she wore for reading had rims of an unpleasant flesh colour like a false leg. When John and I came down for breakfast, tiptoeing so as not to disturb Father, who had become a late riser, she was waiting for us, one hand warming its palm against the bulge of the teapot, with the news.
Ninety-five
dead
, she crowed in a whisper and shook the newspaper at us. There had been an earthquake somewhere, or a volcano.
Two hundred dead in that epidemic already,
she hissed, and her flesh-coloured rims danced with delight. She brushed her hands together with a dusty sound.
Two hundred
dead, just like that.
She was becoming robust on all those she was outliving.

By the time Father came down, the sun was high above the trees and Mother was fortified by all those deaths.
Good
morning, Albion
, she said, and hid her glasses in her pocket. Father frowned at the morning and rang for fresh tea while Mother traced a finger around and around the plate under which a page of the newspaper was hiding.
What is the point
of getting up, Norah, if you have nothing to say?
Father demanded in his irritable morning way, but Mother remained tongue-tied with so much news, and smoothed the silver blade of her butter knife, and smiled to herself, but did not share her dead with him.

Narrow escapes excited her, when Father came down the stairs in the silent way he sometimes did.
He nearly
caught me red-handed
, she would tell me, and her eyes would shine.
I was caught up in that fire, seventy-seven dead and ten missing.
Her smile stretched her lips so that they became colourless and showed the darkness of a missing tooth at the side.

The dead could have her full attention only in those pearly hours just after dawn. For the rest of the day she had taken to timing the ferries as they steamed across the bay from one jetty to the next. She sat back against the cushions of her favourite wicker chair, the smooth silver stop-watch in one hand, and on the table beside her, the little gilt book where she recorded pages of figures.
Seventy-two,
she would announce triumphantly to anyone who was near, or to the air if she was alone.
Seventy-two
seconds with a head wind.
It was unwise to interrupt Mother as she sat with her thumb on the watch, ready to record the ferry. I would stand behind her, looking at the secretive way her hair grew in a whorl on the crown of her head, and heard the boom as the ferry's engines shook into reverse, and the tinny ping of the captain's bell carrying clearly over the water to us. The gangplank was shot out onto the ferry and a few seconds later we heard the rattle it made.

He thinks it is my diary
, Mother said and giggled, holding up the tiny gilt book.
He has no idea of its real meaning.
I nodded, because what she said was no doubt true. Not since she had stood trying not to giggle, with a hand on the gritty back of a stuffed donkey, had she looked so happy.

Mother had become a woman who lived behind a curtain drawn across her face, and she spoke most happily when she thought no one was listening. Between the dead, the stop-watch and the pleasures of narrow escapes, she spent serene days in her chair on the flagstones.

My Golden Future

It was impossible to believe that nothing would come of all those hours I had spent dreaming out at rain on the harbour. I would have liked to be Wilberforce, anxious about slaves, or Dickens, bringing tears to everyone's eyes. I would have liked to be Socrates, and was certainly better at asking questions than at answering them. I, too, could have quelled Cossacks in an astrakhan cap. I also could have called the distance from the tip of my nose to my thumb a yard. I was sure I would not find it hard to be great.

Women do not need education
, Father pronounced regularly over the leg of lamb.
Women's aptitudes lie in other directions.
But it was easy to convince Father that I was not much of a woman.
You will need something behind you,
he agreed, holding the newspaper where my name appeared towards the top of a list, between Huggett, J.P., and Stroud, F.J. He shook the newspaper and peered at Singer, L.U., as closely as if he found it hard to read, and perhaps he did, since it was the first newspaper he had been allowed to see for a long time. When he looked at me, I could feel him inspecting my shiny forehead, my wide nose, the chin that was beginning to look pointed above a roll or two of fat. My forearms were freckled, my hands scaly from so much sea water and exertion. I had looked long into the mirror and knew what he was seeing. My teeth were white and straight, fine teeth. But teeth are visible only in a smile or snarl, and with Father I neither smiled nor snarled.
You
will need resources
, said Father, and between us over the rose-patterned carpet a string of young men approached, looked at me, and moved on.
Otherwise you will be left high and dry
.

Had I had those ringlets and peach-like cheeks, those dimples, all that daintiness, there would have been no danger of my being left high and dry, but as it was I planted my feet further apart in their thick shoes and was glad of my trunk-like legs.
Then I will be going to the university
, I said. I did not want there to be any misunderstandings.
Yes,
Father said like a kettle going off the boil.
Yes, I suppose
you must.

Mother would have protested if she had been able to concentrate for long enough.
Oh, but, Lilian
, she began.
Before
you do this, let me have my say
. There was silence while she timed the ferry, slow today because of waves.
Ninety-six
, she said.
And fifty-five dead. That makes forty-three.
She did not have to think to arrive at this figure, but nodded and made a note in the little gilt book. Her head continued to nod for a long time after she had closed the book and slipped the stop-watch into her pocket. Her grey dress shone in the sun, her hair was beginning to slither out of its combs. Her vague eyes, shaded by her hand, stared out into the bay and the sky without blinking quite enough. Your
Aunt Kitty and I did nothing of the sort
, she said with sudden indignant animation.
But you were pretty
, I said, and she smiled, remembering.
That is true
, she said, and said nothing more, but smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded, at the silky oak and the bay.

You will be a bluestocking
, John said.
Will you, Lil?
He was not sure of the implications of any of this, and squinted at me, showing his teeth.
What about nursing,
Father had asked without hope,
or teaching?
I answered John the same way I had answered Father.
I will be a doctor
, I said with pride,
or a
philosopher. Perhaps some kind of scientist.

Poor John had got all the looks but after a rashly promising start he had gradually turned into a dunce. Father was already wondering who he could
have a word with
about his son's future.
You are too clever
, John said, and spat out the apple pip he had been sucking for an hour.
You
are brilliant but unstable, Sir said.
John did not know whether to be proud of his sister or ashamed.
Brilliant but unstable
, he said again, and I pictured myself as a spluttering green firework.

Photographs now showed a fat girl who took herself seriously. It began to be important to list twenty-seven reasons for happiness, fifteen prerequisites for wisdom. When Jimmo finished building another set of shelves in my room, I arranged my books on them alphabetically, and had ambitions to possess the complete works of everyone.

Lilian
, Father said, while I stood with heavy new textbooks under my arm.
You are about to start a new phase.
From where we stood at the top of the terrace, we could watch Alma toiling up the hill from the ferry.
Success comes
in many forms, Lilian
, he said, and crushed a snail underfoot.
There is no need to excel in your studies, other things are important.
His hand was rough and smelled powerfully of citronella when he brushed the hair away from my forehead. He thought better of this and brushed it back down.
A few
new dresses, perhaps
, he said without faith.
And a hairdresser.
I could have told him none of that would make a difference, but I did not.

Choices I Have Made

The admiration of strangers must be a stimulus like no other. Sometimes I was allowed to walk beside Ursula like a friend, down our street to the bus, or to the shop that had spawned on the corner. I would see the way strangers glanced admiringly. Ursula's hair had never been as sleek and as casually ringleted, as gleaming in the sun, as it was that summer.
I am helping Mother out for a short time
, she said, but I knew, and she knew, that when she had finished
helping
Mother out
she would be married. Her hems were straight, and even the bag-like dresses of that year, and the hats that made us sweat and look bulbous, did not make her any less beautiful.
You are like a cat
, I said, impulsively, and she slapped me with her newspaper.
Oh, Lil, what kind of compliment is that
supposed to be?
But she knew me well enough to recognise a compliment.
And you?
she asked, smoothing the golden fuzz on her forearm.
What are you?
On my own forearms, which never tanned, but went the colour of clay, the hair was dark and stubbly. Oh,
I am a dog
, I said, and barked to prove it.

Ursula was not a bad person and she had the generosity that sometimes goes with being beautiful. There was not much Ursula was uncertain of these days, but she was uncertain now, and looked at the ground as she said,
I could
advise, Lil.
Her kindness was almost more painful than the titters of the mothers, but she did not want that, and went on.
I could help, perhaps. A diet, and my dressmaker, she is a genius.
I imagined myself dieting and being measured by Ursula's dressmaker, and appearing at last on those lawns, radiant, graceful, a person who did not have to console herself with the thought of her brains. I imagined those boys in their blazers drawing around me, bringing me cakes which, like Ursula, I would squash with a fork but not eat. I could imagine the way Ursula would smile at me, and wink encouragingly if no one was looking, and the way she would teach me what to say, and how to laugh daintily, and how to encourage the boy you wanted. It frightened me to think that I could also have that kind of future. Ursula watched me as I thought, and she was also afraid, because fat Lil was someone she did not understand, and she could not imagine what it might be like to live in my flesh. She was afraid, but was kind enough to be brave.
You do not have to be
the way you are
, she said resolutely, and we walked a block in silence, and I watched her small feet taking step after step.

Ursula loved the admiration of those strangers who would go home and tell someone about the
ill-assorted couple
they had seen, and I, too, was beginning to love something like the admiration of strangers. At least if I did not have their admiration I had their attention. Clothed in my bulk, I was free to try for other kinds of admiration and other kinds of attention.
You are a good friend
, I said finally, and touched Ursula's arm, where the skin was so softly downy.
You are a good friend, but this is what I have chosen.
Ursula did not understand, but touched my hand as if she liked to feel our skins together, and I tried to explain.
I would be a mediocre
pretty girl
, I said.
And I am too arrogant to be mediocre.

We arrived at the gate of 7 Allambie Crescent, but I could not think quickly enough of something more to say that would stop Ursula going in. It was not often that I was able to speak like this with her. Ursula led a busy life now, of morning teas and those tennis parties, and fittings with the dressmaker, and trips in to Mark Foys for gloves. It seemed she was always with other people, who did not understand fat Lil even as much as she did, and who did not mind being cruel. She pushed the gate open suddenly enough to take me by surprise, and was standing on the other side, latching it carefully between us, when she said,
They say you are loony, some
of them.
The gate between us made her brave, and she leaned over and kissed me quickly on the cheek.
But I always tell them
you are simply a genius.
She waved as she ran up the path to the liver-coloured house and turned to call,
I tell them you will go far.

Pursuing Wisdom

That first morning I was made dizzy by the vertiginous lecture hall, and everyone was pushing from behind so that I nearly stumbled on the steep steps and went plummeting down towards the lectern. I sat down on the nearest bench and the boy there slid along it as if I needed the space of six people. I was still trying not to topple forward into the well of the hall, clinging to the cracked desk top in front of me, when he slid back towards me.
Good morning
, he said.
I am F.J.
Stroud,
and began to finger my brand-new textbooks and the book bag I had bought with pride the day before. I was still too frightened of this steep hall and the violently carved desks, and the knowledge of being at my first lecture, to look at him, and saw only a freckled hand sorting through my books. When I did not answer, he jogged my elbow and said,
I am F.J. Stroud, I am officially a genius.
On one of the words he sent a fleck of spit flying that landed unnoticed on the head below. I nodded and said,
Good morning
, and as I spoke into a sudden silence I saw that the lecturer had entered by a secret door and was standing behind the lectern. In my alarm at hearing my voice ring out, I dropped my pencil. From this height in the hall the lecturer looked as foreshortened and puny as a bad photo. In the silence he stood easily behind his notes, smoothing his sleek grey hair with a palm and glancing up with a pleased bright look, and in this silence my pencil slowly and methodically rolled from step to step down the hall. Its progress was as stately as a pavane. I reminded myself that no one could know it was my pencil, but under my new dress I could feel the trickle of sweat slide down from an armpit.