Lilian's Story (22 page)

I had planned to wait until night would hide me completely, but by now I was hungry and looking forward to the publican's wife's corned beef and cabbage, and thick yellow custard over jam roll. In addition to being hungry, I was too angry now to wait for darkness on this unpleasant bank of slippery clay.

It was a beautiful walk in the gathering mauve dusk. Cockatoos screeched and flapped laboriously across the sunset and Venus twinkled for me alone above a sapling. Crickets became agitated in grass stems but fell silent as I passed. Under my feet the dust at the side of the road was velvet.

I entered the town at nightfall. On the verandah of the CALEDONIAN, men sat on the steps or perched their bottoms on the railing. Yellow light lit up a patch of man here and there, and somewhere inside many men were laughing. When I appeared and stepped up onto the verandah, the silence spread out from me in ripples. As I entered the hallway, someone snickered uncontrollably behind me. It was a young sound which could have belonged to the man with the blush. Perhaps he had seen the large dark mole, like a beauty spot on the cheek of a beauty, on my buttock. I accepted the snicker as a tribute and began to climb the stairs towards my room.

The publican's daughter had swung around the knob of the banister and was half a dozen steps down before she saw me. Her momentum carried her down further before she could stop so that she was close to me when the smile stiffened on her face. Perhaps she had not seen breasts before, or a tuft of springy hair between thighs. Or perhaps it was just the way the angry thieving faces behind me were staring up in lust and outrage.
You will
always remember this
, I told her, to fill the silence as I passed, but her eyes were appalled and it was hard to know if she heard or whether she would remember.

I retreated further after that, and walked for days in bush no one else wanted, comparing gum trees. Is any tree like any other? I was finally soothed by the infinite variety of trunks and leaves. On my back I carried a blanket, a billy, bush tucker. It was enough each morning to watch the way the leaves hung like hair from their twigs while the blue smoke of my fire drifted down to the creek and hung there. I hoped for Aborigines, undiscovered perhaps, or at least a secret painted cave, but I found the skeletons of birds, termite mounds, shed snakeskins, and I made do with those. There was a hollow log that could have been a didgeridoo, but although I blew until I saw stars and was nearly sick, I could not create any sound except my own breath whistling through a hollow log.

How I loved so much dry prickle. How I loved all that raucous noise, shrill birds, cicadas that made my head ring when a treeful of them vibrated together, and the heady smell of eucalyptus leaf mould under dew. How full of blue and gold promise those dawns were, when some insistent bird on a branch overhead woke me, or a hot ray of light between leaves that warmed my eyelids. Mornings then were so good I cried, so that goannas and birds blinked at me and tried to drink my tears where they fell. The blue smoke of the breakfast fire floated over the grass between smooth trunks, and the tea in the billy glinted gold. I spent hours reading the scribbles on gum-trunks, and was sometimes within a dream of understanding everything.

The Value of Words

You are no daughter of mine
, Father shouted when I came back, thinner and browner from so much bush tucker and tramping over stones.
No daughter of mine.
So many kookaburras so early every morning had taught me how to laugh, so many nights under the stars that became as familiar as wallpaper had emboldened me.
Then you are a
cuckold
, I told Father, and laughed.
And Mother is a whore.
It was not a word I had ever heard said, and it did not sound quite right as I said it, but I did not care. Father's study was very silent when I had spoken.

Father picked up that belt of Mother's which had not been used for years, and smacked it lightly on his palm.
You
are a disgrace to me
, he said,
and to your sex.
He stammered on the last word and repeated it in a loud clear way,
Sex, sex.
The belt flapped against his trousers as he tried to make it snap like a whip.
There is sand on your skin
, he said, and raised the belt suddenly as if to strike my face. When his arm was raised, and his cheeks were flushed with rage, it was suddenly clear that he was on tiptoe to reach me.
You are
reprehensible
, he said, making me sound like a reptile, but his words did not conceal his fear.
Bend over, Lilian,
he said quickly, as if afraid of changing his mind.

Days of watching the sun melt along horizons as it rose, flattening through the atmosphere before it pulled itself up and burst free, made it hard to move quickly, and I did not move quickly, but was gathering myself to move when Father startled me by flinging the belt down between us.
Intolerable
, he shouted.
Vile, vile!
I was turning in my slow way to present my behind to Father at last, planting my fat legs apart to balance, when I saw that he had left the room. The belt lay on the floor in a great silence.

Other Endings

I had not been away long, but my men had changed. Everyone seemed to feel there was not much time left.
Lil
, Duncan said on the beach,
I do not know how to say this.
I did not know how to listen to whatever
this
was. The sand between my toes was still hot from the day, Venus was sliding up into the sky, birds had given up for the day and had handed over to mosquitos.
It is about marriage
, Duncan blurted and I nearly cried out,
But we are mates!
It was what I wanted to say, but I knew that nothing could prevent me hearing what he was about to say, no appeal to mateship would do.

We have been mates a long time
, Duncan said.
Haven't we, Lil?
I did not bother to nod, as he was not looking towards me, but at a bobbing shape that was probably a gull asleep on the bay.
We have had a lot of good times.
Duncan held his own ankle tightly, preventing escape.
My mate Lil.
The waves were mocking me, the sand had become sharp. If we could manage without skin, I wondered, would we be happier? I thought about being flayed and tried not to hear Duncan.
Marriage, Lil, we all come to it, it is part of growing
up.
Venus twinkled at my despair.
I do not want anything but a
mate
, I practised saying to myself while Duncan continued to speak.
A mate is all I want.
Duncan laughed suddenly at his ankle and said,
Joan and I were lucky for a long time, but we have
been caught now.
I was staring at that gull, feeling my eyeballs dry in astonishment, and heard him go on calmly,
But we
want you to be the bridesmaid, Lil.

Moments to Remember

I did not want to see Joan again, and see her pointed teeth flash at me, thinking about beef and Duncan and some wild life smelling of horses and half-tamed dogs. I did not wish to see anyone again. Duncan was a stranger now, with his new responsibilities, and a life mapped out. The stone quadrangles were oppressive with so many individual futures and plans. I had no future, no plans, I had nothing but the present and a memory of the smell of eucalyptus leaf mould under dew. The weight of so many individuals was unbearable, their eyes monstrous as they watched me walk towards them, their voices the assertive cries of alien creatures. I did not go back to those buttresses of stone and the men in tweed, and I hoped to escape a future, but Duncan found me, and F.J. Stroud did at last, too.

I waited for him, as he had made me agree, in the black shade of a Moreton Bay fig that had sent out deep spines of dusty bark over the grass. It was a tree that drank light like a pocket. In the sun at a distance three small girls with dirty faces threw sand at each other beneath the monkey bars and around my feet ants ran drunkenly from one squashed fig to another. I went on waiting for F.J. Stroud although I did not want to see him, but there was no point in leaving either, or in doing anything in particular.

Desperate convicts ate them
, F.J. Stroud said, suddenly appearing, and tripping over a root, holding out a fig to me.
Are you that desperate?
When I did not reply, but only shifted my bulk on the grass, he smacked his hands together with a noise that made me jump, and held them out to show me the squashed fig that covered his palms like a birthmark.

And now
, he said, and sat beside me. It was hard to remember how his face had been hideous with tears and pleas. Today he was as smooth as butter.
You had something to
say?
he asked in a chilling way.
Something you wished to impart?
The effort of making my thick lips and tongue move was almost too great but I brought out at last.
No, it was you
, and then, as silence fell again, continued in a rush.
Who had
something to say. To me. You said.
F.J. Stroud smiled neatly to himself, swinging a foot to and fro and watching it.
Did I?
Perhaps, my dear, you are mistaken.
His foot stopped swinging and he cracked his knuckles one by one in the silence between us.

I am going to tell the truth now
, he said suddenly, in an unsteady high voice.
This time it is the truth.
There was a long silence in which I watched the three little girls, who were sitting on the grass now, picking at the scabs on their knees. F.J. Stroud said suddenly, and rather loudly,
I have nothing.
He coughed and picked a fleck of fig off his palm.
That is
not true either, you see
, he said crossly.
I have some things.
There was another long silence in which I began to be bored. The three little girls were moving closer to us across the grass. After a large sigh, F.J. Stroud held up his stained hand and bent down the fingers one by one as he spoke.
My father is not in diamonds
, he said.
Or anything. He is just dead,
that is all, and I have never been on a horse.
He was going on and I was interested at last, but the three little girls were in front of us now and one said in a plain conversational voice,
Ask her to marry you
. Behind her the other giggled, and she slapped at one without looking.
Go on
, she said bossily,
ask
her to marry you.
Her bare feet were planted in the grass as if she was prepared to wait for hours. F.J. Stroud was staring away past the palm trees and the grass, to where blue water twinkled, like a man alone with his thoughts. Finally, he said,
This isle is full of noise
, and a fig fell loudly through the leaves above us. He said again,
I said, this isle is full of noise, or
noises. Go away, little girl.

From deep in my chest, under the flesh that imprisoned me, I felt welling up a gigantic yawn that twisted my face and brought tears to my eyes. Trying to keep the yawn in, I must have looked congested and strange, and the little girl hopped from one foot to the other.
Kiss her, then
, she shrieked.
Go on, kiss her.
F.J. Stroud stood up, rammed his hands into his pockets so hard I heard stitches give, and kicked at a fig on the ground. When he turned to me again I saw a large tear hanging under one eye. I began to gather myself to stand up, even touch him, perhaps, if I could, or at least help him walk away from this situation, but he brushed my hand away.
All things do conspire against me
, he said, then went on in a different voice,
That's not Shakespeare,
I just made it up
. He stared at me as closely as if counting my pores and I was frightened. The tear had been real, like those of my own that goannas had tried.

Creaking, F.J. Stroud knelt in front of me.
Will you marry
me?
he asked, and the little girls stared. His hand splayed towards mine and grasped it clumsily.
Will you marry me?
he asked again, and it sounded horribly sincere. I sat in my skin, watching, and it seemed that nothing could put an end to all this. At last F.J. Stroud dropped my hand and looked down at his knees.
There's fig on my pants
, he said, and cackled. When he stood up, pieces of fig fell around his feet and one of the little girls tittered. I was stuck to the ground and could not help anyone and as I watched I saw F.J. Stroud put himself back together again from the fragments into which he had broken.
Hell is empty
, he said to the park in general,
and all the devils are here. I'm going home.

The sight of a young woman releasing slippery tears held the interest of the little girls for a few minutes but when they had watched for a while and heard my ugly gulpings, they began to pick their noses, and after a while they went away and left me alone with my glorious past.

Running Wild

My feet have always been broad.
Nigger's feet
, Father said suddenly one day, seeing them up on a chair, and looked shocked. Later he felt it necessary to apologise.
It just slipped
out, Lilian. We are all human.
His smile was tortured.

Those feet became broader and stronger now, carrying me out of the house at night to find something I had lost. The weight of Rosecroft was too heavy on those summer nights, and I was impatient to escape from it, and had to pretend to be sleepy, and go to my room yawning. The route out the window, from ledge to vine, from verandah roof to drainpipe, was awkward. The size of my thighs left no room for mistakes; the crash I would have made, falling, left no margin for faintness of heart. Under moonlight the lawns looked like seas. Trees sailed from shadow to shadow and took strides when the moon slid behind a cloud. There were no owls, but many hoarse crickets.

As soon as Rosecroft's high fence was behind me I began to run. My shoes were loud on the stones of the road, and panting burned in and out of my chest. With each year that had passed since my birth, another rash of houses had encroached on the bush of the headland. Now it was necessary to pass endless neat lawns, red brick fences, windows with venetian blinds. Where the road ran out of bitumen and finally tapered away into a rough track through bush, there were old mattresses now, iron drums, wheels that would never roll again, beer bottles. I would have liked to close my eyes, but needed them to steer me through.
It is progress
, John said when I complained.
I welcome progress.
I did not, and forced my lumbering body at a run past so much progress, until at last only bush stood amazed and silent at my noisy breathing. The track became less and less certain as it wandered out along the headland, and I grew more and more comfortable as it became harder to imagine that anyone had been here before. Roads by moonlight unfolded like a dry snakeskin and the fine dust was damped by dew. There was a rock at a certain point, a rock like a face, with a fern sprouting from a nostril, and when this rock was behind me I felt safe enough to hum. There had never been anyone but myself here on this road between scrub. It wandered more and more like a tune someone was making up from moment to moment, and bulged with boulders and roots. Harbour teased in glimpses of shining water between bushes, moonlight misled with shadows, branches looked alive. I could have been someone slim and black, noiseless as water over stone, breathing the cool air. I could have been someone slim and glossy, in love, hurrying to my love.