Lilian's Story (15 page)

There were new faces on the lawns now. Duncan was someone's cousin from the west, learning something at the university. His vagueness about his studies was pathological when the urbane young men, secure in their well-fitting striped blazers, asked him jovial questions. He was the kind of victim to whom fathers could hold forth as the ice in the whisky melted, but they did not respect him for that.
A feeble kind of a lad
, they would say impatiently later, tipping back the glass for a last drop.
Not much get up
and go.

Duncan's smile reminded me of the country. It was probably so many freckles. Even his lips were freckled, and his mouth was a wide one. Duncan was tolerated on these lawns because of all the cows his father owned.
A big man
in beef
, I had heard someone say of his father. Duncan had been to one of the right schools, although it did not show, and wore the right kind of blazer, but was as awkward and sandy as if fresh from the bush. His hair was the colour of the dust of a dry river. When Ursula asked him for a lemonade or Rick joked about tennis with him, Duncan brushed the hair back from where it hung, and exposed a forehead so pale and bare of freckles it was like something shocking and private. I saw that he hated the lawns and lemonade as much as I did, and was no better at banter than I was, but he hated it all with the recklessness of someone who would come into beef in a big way one day.

In the meantime, the girls pointed at the way his wrists showed below the cuffs of his blazer. He was the only young man to slip and come up with a green bottom during the desultory cricket game. He did not run languidly like the others, but panted as if he really cared, and pelted up and down the pitch, losing his cap as he ran, becoming red in the face, sweating visibly under the arms. When he spilled the pink ice over a section of Ursula's new daffodil-yellow dress, it was easy to see he would have liked to be dead. But he had to stand and dab hopelessly with a napkin until someone stopped him. Later, Ursula could laugh it off and speak to Duncan again, but it was the first time she had worn the daffodil yellow that everyone agreed did so much for her, and she could not forgive straight away.

We were paired off together at croquet more than once, Duncan and I, but we did not take to each other any better for knowing that we were together in failing to meet standards. On the wide sloping lawns, lace fluttered in the afternoon breezes, shoulders were very straight in stripes, and pools of light gathered around each mallet. When Duncan picked up one of those clumsy tools and took a crooked swing at a ball, he struck a hoop instead, somehow caught his thumb painfully, and stood holding his thumb and swearing. Ursula, who had smiled and approached, preparing to be gracious, changed her mind. I heard a clucking noise from someone.
Pardon the French
, Duncan said to me, as being the closest.
But it hurts like buggery.

But Duncan was the one who spoke to me when I dropped my slice of cream pie on the flagstones. Someone's mother tinkled the bell for someone to come and clean up the mess I had made, and everyone looked away and made a circle of silence around me and the shameful spatter at my feet in which shards of expensive plate could be seen. But Duncan stood beside me and said,
Where would you like
to be, Lil?
I tried not to shout as I answered,
Up a tree
, and felt my nose beginning to run, and remembered that I had no hankie. Would I ever be invited back if I wiped my nose on the hem of the white dress that made me look like a badly wrapped parcel?

The maid cleaned cream pie off stone and put shards of plate into her dustpan as if gawky girls did this every day. She was no older than I was, but pretty, like some small night creature with tidy habits and paws.
Here you are, miss
, she said, and handed me another slice on another plate, and in the moment that she took me by surprise and I fumbled for the plate, it was easy to imagine how tight my hostess's mouth would become at the sight of another slice of cream pie and another plate lying on the stones. I could not eat it now, although cream pie was one of my favourites, and stood holding the plate tightly by its edge. Duncan took it out of my hand while the mothers watched, frowning for their daughters who were unwilling to overlook enough for the sake of prosperity in beef.
Then we will do that
, he said, and ran with my hand across the lawn. His feet came down heavily on the grass, loose on their ankles, his knees seemed about to poke through his flannels. He was all awkward corners like a hard problem in geometry, but he urged me up into the silky oak.

In the tree it was possible to feel better. The mothers shaded their eyes and made gestures up at us, but we looked away at where the shrubbery was like moss from this height. Behind bushes, invisible to everyone but us, John sat in the depths of the vegetation, picking his nose.
That is my brother
, I told Duncan, in case he did not know.
My brother John.
Duncan nodded and spurred his branch into a canter.
He is picking his nose
, he said, and the day had so far been so bad that it was no anguish to agree.
You and
me, we are the ringers
, Duncan said, and up on my branch I agreed. He was not ashamed of the truth.

He had let me climb further into the silky oak than he had, to leave all those giggles behind.
Lil
, he said when we were settled on our branches,
you are a real sport.
He was flushed with this declaration, and when he handed me up one perfect leaf as a gift, I realised I had an admirer.
By Jeeze, Lil, it is better up here.
The girls in white, in pink, in daffodil yellow, and so many straw boaters, seemed miles away. There was a breeze up here, and if Duncan cared to look up my skirt to the white bloomers, I could not have minded. He did not, however, but handed me perfect leaf after perfect leaf until I could hold no more.
Stop, Duncan
, I had to laugh.
I have too many now.
Duncan laughed, too, and was a happy person there on his branch.
I wanted to give you
, he exclaimed, and I held them all tightly, not having been given too many tokens before. His shoulders were very wide from my view above him, and the sandy hair grew up straight on the crown of his head so I could see pale scalp. His freckles, when he looked up and grinned, were the kind that are with a man for ever.
Duncan,
I said, teasing,
why are you not with one of the pretty ones,
eh?
Duncan spent a long time showing me the crown of his head, while below us the pinks and the whites strolled and tittered hand in hand.
You are pretty to me
, he said at last, looking up at me. He met my eyes fiercely, as if alarmed by my bloomers.
You are preferable.

The Stroud Diamonds

F.J. Stroud was officially a genius but, although he understood the logic of the distributed middle and I did not, he impressed the men in tweed no more than I did.
I am
a scholarship boy, I will go far, I am officially a genius
, he said, and I bought him another lunch. Watching the gravy run down his chin as he gobbled, forking food into his mouth desperately, cleaning every speck of food off the plate with a last crust, I was tender towards him.
If I was a real
man I would call you a mate,
he said, and wiped off his chin. After a good feed, his smile was not as pinched as usual.
Of course you would also have to be a real man.
At other tables in this chilly hall, girls in summer pink copied things from one book into another. Others filed their nails or looked serious with friends in powder blue. I saw familiar faces at times, faces I had seen at school, and they would smile at me because my name was up in gold now on a board somewhere in the school, but their smiles failed to charm me. Behind those smiles, too much thinking was going on. Words would be flowing too easily. I preferred something clogging.

My father is in diamonds
, F.J. Stroud said rather loudly, and the sallow boy clearing plates looked around in a frightened way.
He is a millionaire.
I did not try very hard to hide my scepticism, but F.J. Stroud was not put out.
You do
not believe me
, he said.
That is one more sign of your intelligence, Lil.
When he laughed he exposed long grooved teeth like an old dog's and a pale tongue, but in spite of those hungry teeth his smile was something I looked forward to.
I do not
often tell people, Lil, because they usually laugh. But I do not mind your
laugh, and you will believe me in the end.

In the end it was not quite that I believed him, but any tale is real if it is told well enough. F.J. Stroud drew lines and circles in the greasy film on the table between us, and told me about the diamond mine full of sweating black men.
They try to smuggle the stones out
, he said,
in orifices of their
sweating bodies.
He watched me until I blushed, then said,
One orifice in particular, of their sweating bodies.
He told me about the house with verandahs and bougainvillea and the way the neighbours rode over for gin rickeys, and about the pet monkey, and the black nanny who burned feathers when he was sick. He showed me evidence when he could.
My
pony threw me one day
, he said,
and Father had it put down. Perhaps
you have noticed the way my shoulder-blades protrude?
I had, but had thought it was just another part of him being a short skinny boy, the way his shoulder-blades moved like wings under the faded black shirt.
But they fought bitterly, Mother and
Father
, he said.
I would be under the table listening and wishing I was
not there.
I did not know what sweating black men looked like, and had never smelled burning feathers, but I, too, had been under furniture listening when I would have preferred to be somewhere else.
Mother sacrificed everything
when she left
, F.J. Stroud said, and stared into my face as if waiting for a sign. His eyes were almond-shaped, almost the eyes I had wished for as a child, and were the colour of certain flecked greenish stones under water.
F.J. Stroud,
I do not believe a word of it
, I exclaimed, and heard myself laugh, and F.J. Stroud laughed, too, so that I saw his long old dog's teeth. The girls in their yellow and tidy pinks paused in their copying and looked around at us laughing too loudly in this echoing refectory, and that made us laugh even more loudly, until the woman behind the tea urn looked as if she might come over and tell us to leave. But in spite of so much laughter I did not disbelieve F.J. Stroud, and watched the way his shoulder-blades moved. When I stopped laughing at last and said,
It is a sad story
, I had to wipe away a tear of laughter from my cheek, and watched F.J. Stroud do the same.
You need not believe me
, he said, and stared at me with his hands behind his head so I could see how bumpy and red his wrists were where they came out of the cuffs of his shirt.

The Person with the Pup

The person with the pup was called Joan and we had somehow become friends. Up close her hair was no longer a kind of green but more a kind of purple shot with light, and the roots were brown. It was cropped short at the back like a man's so that her neck shone with the clipped hairs and the strong pale tendon was exposed. Her bobbed hair was miraculous for me and her trousers a scandal. Joan was not like anyone I had ever known. Joan did not ask me what school I had been to, or show interest in Father's profession or Mother's family. She did not copy her lecture notes neatly into a bound black book, did not admire anyone's dress or exclaim how well blue suited them. It was not possible to imagine Joan knitting baby clothes for anyone's sister.

In the mornings, when Joan and I sometimes caught the same train, we walked together through the slums to the university. Grey-faced children wiped the snot off their upper lips and stared, or shouted at us in hoarse voices. I had been shouted at before, but it was different in company, and Joan made the quiet street ring when she shouted back, and exchanged banter with men who came to doorways to stare.
Smile and wave, Lil
, she said, and nudged me, and smiled and waved when women looked over the shoulders of the men, frowning.
Come on, Lil, smile and wave,
like royalty.

Joan's smile showed no dimples, but short pointed teeth. She showed me her teeth as we crossed the quadrangle.
I have vampire teeth
, she said.
My grandmother is from
Transylvania, do you believe me?
I would have believed anything of Joan, and admired the long sharp canines she was baring at me.
I had an ancestor who was burned as a witch
, I told her, but did not add,
Do you believe me?
in case she said,
No
, in her blunt way. But it did not seem to matter to Joan whether it was true or not.
Lil, there are women of destiny
, she cried,
and we are two of them!
She shouted at a man in tweed who had stared,
We are women of a different ilk!
The carillon tried to silence her, snarling out from the bell tower, but she did not wait for the din to stop before she shouted,
And fuck the lady with the lamp!
There had been no one like Joan before.

What Duncan Said

On the lawn below, everyone posed and sauntered. Sometimes, when there was nothing better to do, they would stand underneath our tree and try to coax us down.
Come on
, Ursula's thin voice floated up.
Be a sport, Lil.
At this height, Rick, beside her, looked as squat as she did while he echoed her.
Yes, be a sport, Lil.
Duncan and I found that they lost interest in the end, and we would continue what we had been discussing when those below had started to shout.

Well, Lil
, Duncan would say and flush, his neck mottling like marble. I watched the delicate skin of his ears fill with blood, like a soft wafer of something that would taste good. I waited as he thought of another word, more at home astride a branch chewing the end of a leaf than on a lawn. The blood glowed under his skin as he remembered another word.
What is it, Duncan?
I insisted each time, and explained each time that I would not be shocked, and that I would not think worse of him for knowing such words, but better.
Come on, Duncan
, I had to wheedle,
be a
sport.
He had begun by whispering when the words had not been too much for him. Now, when only the worst of the words remained unsaid, he was unable to utter them in cold blood.
Here, Lil
, he would say, and would hand me up a leaf on which he had scratched the word with a twig. Or he would hold out his hand for mine, and write the word letter by letter in my palm.
Now, Duncan
, I would have to say,
that is too fast
, and he would start again and spell the word out, letter by rude letter.