Lilian's Story (20 page)

Alone Together

It was the year Mother was bullied into her cruise.
You are
a bad example
, Father shouted at her, and snatched her stopwatch away.
Your daughter is full of womanliness
, he roared at her so that, upstairs, I blushed for myself.
And you cannot see what
is under your nose!
I could imagine Mother looking at what was under her nose, sinking her chin further and further into her chest under Father's voice. When the doctors were called, Father stood over them all like a revenge.

Rest, complete rest, and a change of scene
, the doctor said mournfully and pulled at a nostril.
A cruise, for example.
Mother's headaches and indispositions were squeezing her face inwards as if it was straining to turn inside out. The furrow between her eyebrows grew deeper and deeper as the plans were laid.
Pago Pago
, Father said with authority.
You'll love it.

Well, Lil
, Father said when the taxi had borne Mother away among boxes that made it hard for her to wave goodbye.
Well, Lil
, he said, although John was there too. Behind us we heard Alma sniffling. All goodbyes are sad, but Mother among her boxes and trunks might have guessed that Alma was taking advantage of the occasion to allow her nose to become red, her eyes to disappear into damp puffy flesh. No one would ask,
Why are you crying, Alma?
and she would not have to make up any stories about a dead cousin or aunt, and try to pretend it was not because Rob the milkman stood passing the time of day with her among the dustbins but would not offer her anything more.

Well, Lil.
It seemed that Father could not stop himself from saying this, and John slid off to his room.
It is just us,
now.
We watched the ferry glide across the bay and puff black smoke from its funnel. Mother's stop-watch had been packed carefully away somewhere, but the gilt book lay forgotten in the sun, its cover arching like something in agony.
We still have to see how we manage, Lil
, Father said, and above us a lugubrious note with a head cold wobbled out of John's window.
The food of love
, Father said, and laughed. I noticed again how long and grooved his teeth were.

Mother's postcards reminded us that on other beaches, with water the blue of glass, brown people smiled and put flowers in unlikely places.
Having a wonderful time
, the cards said.
Wish you were here
was written with a different pen, a paler afterthought. Father smiled more than necessary as he propped each one carefully on the mantelpiece.
We are
managing nicely, considering
, he would say.

From behind the door of his study I could hear the whirr of the globe spinning and the thwack of Father's palm on America or Turkey as he gave it more speed. Sometimes he wrote fast with a squeaky nib and snickered to himself. At other times the silence was profound and nothing was visible when I looked through the keyhole.
The creative life, Lilian
, he would say through a mouthful of lamb.
We who are creative.
He would chew and swallow.
We
artists
, he would say at last, and smile greasily.

I was twenty-one that year and did not know what to expect.
Do not let anyone take advantage of you
, Mother's letters told me.
You are a woman now
, Father said like a threat.

All My Futures

That summer, nights at Rosecroft became harder and harder to bear. Father sat turning the pages of one of his thick books, or was shut in his study with his squeaky nib. Even shut behind his door he filled the house like a smell.
What are you up to, Lilian?
he would demand, appearing suddenly in a doorway if I began to leave the house. When at last he fell asleep in an armchair, sitting up on guard, or in his bed, his snores followed me as I crept out.

Yellow moons rose into the window of my bedroom and lured me out into the night. Grass stuck to my feet in the dew as I made my way down to our beach. The water drew me like a promise and I rowed and rowed through the soft darkness, thinking of Duncan's freckles and F.J. Stroud's flecked eyes, and wondering just how far Chile was, and what my future held. It became harder and harder each night to turn the old boat and head back to the beach, away from Chile and the future.

Out there in the private night with water making sucking noises at the boat, my body was transformed. I became an envelope of sensation, nothing but skin, as I thought about those men I loved. The boards of the boat were hardly enough to contain so much passion, which seemed about to turn the whole world into a mist of bliss. Finally in my ecstasy, and remembering how Joan's skin repelled water like a feather, I could not resist lowering myself over the stern while the boat lay quietly on the black water. My feet felt the depths as I hung there and the water became an extension of my skin. My body was terribly white and flickered in the black water like a flame. Something began to throb through me and finally it was hard not to let go of the boat and allow any current to toy with my tremulous white body. When I dragged myself back into the boat at last, weak-kneed, mouth ajar on breathlessness, I lay for a long time feeling the salt dry on my skin.

Penetrating Secrets

It was the year of the eclipse, and the prize rams were bigger than they had ever been and some hen had laid an egg of record weight. Father made me look at a photograph of this egg, filling some man's bumpy hand.
The lay of the
year
, Father cried.
Can you imagine, Lilian, laying such an egg?

At the Show these wonders waited to be seen. Father was looking forward to it. Animals were beginning to fascinate him:
The beasts of the field
, he expounded at the table to John and me.
Geldings grow muscles as thick as trees,
he told us,
and a pig has an organ of generation that is curved, and as
sharp as a knife.
All these wonders waited at the Show and it was arranged for us to
make up a party
. Father said,
and
remember the animal in us.

But I did not want to see all those congested bulls. Instead, I stayed out on the beach for a whole night and was not in the house in the morning. I had often crept into the house at dawn, feeling my skin glow from another sunrise, but I had never before stayed on the beach until the sun was hot in the sky and the birds became quiet. I was becoming a bold girl, and full of defiance.

I watched from beneath the plumbago, a cramped space now but enough to hide me, as the house awoke and found me gone.
Lilian!
I heard Father roar from room to room, then heard my name sound different as he shouted it from every window, and finally stood on the terrace where Mother's wicker chair stood forgotten. He kicked that mild old chair so that it staggered across the flagstones as if trying to walk, and finally fell, ridiculous, onto its back.
Lilian!
Father bellowed across the water, so I could imagine the commuters on the ferry looking at the lawns and the azaleas, and the houses hidden among trees, and wonder who could be so angry at such an early hour. John was sent to look, too, and I saw Father point around the garden, and straight at my plumbago. When John peered in at me his face was blue in the shade of the flowers, and although he blinked a few times, and licked his lips, he said nothing.

Father was a splendid black figure, as solid as onyx in the sun, in his dark suit, when at last they left. Beside him John seemed shadowy, as though the sunlight almost penetrated him. I was powerful, watching Father stride in his darkness and rage, because for all his darkness and rage he could not find me, could not make me admire the swinging tassels of bulls, or the jars of honey arranged in the shape of a map of Australia.

Someone less cunning might have come out from under the bush then, but no one was more cunning than I. I swelled with the feeling of having made Father foolish, and continued to be cunning, waiting for what I knew would happen next. I heard bees drone and felt the blood stagnate in my legs, but at last I saw Rob come to the back door for Alma. Her boots shone painfully under her white skirt and Rob's smile was as stiff as cheese. I could have told her that this would not last.

When Rob and Alma had left, I continued to squat under my plumbago. The house had never been mine to explore before. It was not something to be done lightly. There was power waiting for me when I took the house into my own hands, and I did not wish to rush or fumble such a delicate matter.

On the hall table a note from Father lay accusingly.
Lilian, I will deal with you on my return. Ensure you are here.
It was signed,
Your father.
I screwed up his note and hid it in the drawer and tried to forget that it existed.

The house was nervous when I went into its shadows at last, still tremulous from all the situations it had held. I took my time and spent as long as necessary in each room. In each one I had to still the frightened air that thundered in my ears by breathing long loud breaths that began to sound like groans. My droning filled each of the downstairs rooms in turn and calmed the envelope of air that clung to each object. When the air relaxed and hung loosely under the moulded ceilings, I sat for a long time on the stair carpet, listening to silence like a symphony. When the house breathed quietly along with my own breaths I climbed the stairs to all the private rooms above.

In Mother's room the shutters had been closed when she left, and the room was wary. My own reflection tried to startle me in a corner, but I was bold and went to her dresser. Her corset of pink satin would hardly have contained even one of my massive thighs, but I could not bear to put it back in its drawer, and hung it over my chest like a carapace. In Mother's mirror my face was shadowed and veiled with tenderness as I watched myself above her armour.

My fingers smoothed that pink satin like a pet as I walked bravely into Father's bedroom. It smelled of paper, and powerfully of starch, although everything in this room seemed limp as if exhausted: the curtains hung in a listless way from their rods, and the bed cover trailed on the floor like something dying. Near the window, a single dead rose seemed to have been in its wall bracket for years.

In this room I could not touch anything, and barely breathed. I had almost left when I remembered boldness, and strode to the wardrobe to jerk it open. Father's suits swung together in the disturbance and tried to frighten me by being alive, but I stared them down until they subsided. Their pockets were slippery and secretive when I slid my hand in. I could not breathe, and the air of the room roared at me, but I felt in every pocket, coming across handkerchiefs and coins, until I was sure those pockets were nothing but cloth. I was becoming reckless and breathing again, feeling Mother's corset swing on my chest as I bent and reached, when in the last pocket of a coat Father never wore I found a photograph. I stared at my own face, which smiled in a dazed way at the camera, caught for once in a moment of brief beauty. The photograph was heavily creased from being folded, so that my mouth was blurred in a way that made me look abandoned. This was a photograph in which the light had been kind for once. I looked like a woman with a future, and my eyes were full of mischief as I stared at where Father was holding the Brownie very steady, frowning hard, pressing the button. The start of a rip on one side of the photograph showed where someone had wanted to destroy it and thought better of it just in time. I slid it back into the darkness of Father's pocket and tiptoed out of the room as if the suits might chase me.

Alma's room did not frighten me, but I was ashamed. Large underwear hung drying from every projection and under the bed her other pair of boots sat side by side, prepared to wait for ever. The tiny mirror above her dresser gave back a pocked and leprous reflection that could have explained all her stony gawkiness. Alma could not have believed that she was less ugly than this glass made her. My face was too big for this scrap of mirror and I had to turn away from the one eye it reflected back at me.

At last I had penetrated every room except Father's study, which I left to last, wondering if the thoughts of violating it would be less frightening if I waited. I studied the door without touching it, standing in the hall, hearing a despairing fly buzz at a window. I could not imagine examining Father's secrets. My palms grew damp at the idea, and when at last I touched the knob I knew that the door was locked, and I was glad. Secure in knowing that, I could rattle the knob and push a shoulder against the door as if I really wanted to get in. The door did not open, of course, and did not even shake in its frame, as if held tight by a weight on the other side, and something dark obscured the keyhole. When I abandoned the room, I did my best to pretend it was not there, breathing quietly behind its door, listening to me, holding air between its walls, and the stiff silence which I had not been able to violate.

But in spite of that obstinate room, I could still enjoy the house. The luxury of an empty house cannot be exaggerated. A beach is very fine, and I have no objection to sharing my privacy with periwinkles and a few sleepy gulls, but a mirror in an empty house is a pleasure like no other.

There were so many things I wanted to do, I hardly knew where to start. Mother's corset had to come off first, but I laid it gently beside me on the floor, and saw in the long mirror how it lay beside me like a small incomplete person as I sat staring at my reflection. At last it became obvious where to start, and once I had started the rest was as easy as a smile. While my breasts eyed me from the mirror, I watched long enough to see the red marks of my underclothes fade from my flesh. Air was like water on my skin and the long mirror held beauty in its frame. Even my back smiled and dimpled.

When I sat on the floor in front of the mirror and spread my legs, the silence became frightened again and roared at me. It filled my ears with thick noise that ebbed and flowed like surf on a distant beach. When I met my own eyes in the mirror I thought I might be about to faint. Was this ecstasy? I filled the rooms with sounds like a storm in treetops, like rivers, like horses galloping, and was preparing for the moment when flesh would be transformed.