Lilian's Story (26 page)

I will persuade him, Lil
, she said, and for a moment in her red face full of cunning and dislike I saw Father's face.
Albion was always a bully
, Aunt Kitty said, and nodded as if she knew that I was seeing her brother in her face.
And
for you, Lil, I will prick his little bubble.
Father faded from her face then and she looked haggard.
I am as dry as a pebble
, she complained,
and you have nothing here.
Her eyes were vague now and she began to gather her clothes around herself and stand up.
No, Aunt Kitty
, I tried.
Stay longer.
But Aunt Kitty was in a hurry now and her eyes slid past mine, looking for something other than her fat niece.
I am as dry
as an old sock now
, she said,
and as parched for a drop as the backside
of a chair.
Her laugh was like the cry of a bird and was enough to bring Riser to open the door. I watched her back leaving through the door, and felt swallowed up by my own despairing flesh, but she turned and over Riser's white shoulder called,
Albion will be routed, so do not worry,
Lilian dear.

Out of the Shell

When they came for me, to send me back into the other world, I cried to leave Jewel and Esther and Ruby.
I will miss
you all
, I called, and waved, and was making something of this farewell, but Riser shouted,
Come off it, Lil, no good trying
your bullshit now
, and gripped my elbow in the way he knew, so that I was outside the door before I could properly savour the sad pleasures of leaving.

I will not forget you, none of you
, I screeched, but knew that it was not true even as I heard myself shape the words. Riser shook my arm so that I could feel the fat jiggle.
What
is your game, Lil? No one is ever sad to leave a loony-bin, and here you
are, blubbering.
I was afraid he would turn me around then and put me back in the ward with all those I was crying to leave, and I gulped down my tears, and he picked up the hem of my skirt and wiped at my face with it. I was afraid to leave now. I had forgotten what the other world was like out there, but I was afraid to stay, too, and had to be inserted clumsily into the waiting taxi limb by large limb.
Good on you, Lil
, Riser called and slammed the door at last, and my new life began in the back seat of a taxi that smelled of tobacco and other people's lives.

A Woman of Means

Aunt Kitty winked an unsteady wink at me and gave me a purse full of pounds:
Your father will support you
, she said.
There will be an allowance for you, for all your life.
I probably did not look surprised, because everything was too surprising out here beyond the walls, and surprise had exhausted itself in me.
Lilian
, Aunt Kitty shrilled, so that the taxi driver turned to stare,
you are a cool customer and no mistake!
I could feel her watching me, but I looked out of the window of the taxi, dazed by so much movement, and was too overwhelmed to wonder at anything.

Aunt Kitty took me up flights of stairs, past doors with visiting cards stuck to them crookedly with drawing-pins. At the top of the last flight of stairs there was the room she called mine, and it was an empty enough space to allow me in. I sat on the creaking bed and looked at the way the light fell on the bare white walls, and felt myself within my body, filling up some of this foreign space.
It is
your room,
Aunt Kitty was shrilling.
Lilian, snap out of it and
pay attention, you can live here now, do you understand?

There was a window, and the sky was that calming blue, and other people's roofs could be seen there, and other people's windows, and other people's underwear drying on window sills. The streets below were full of women of the night, I had seen them as we arrived, and I could hear them all now, life going on raucously in the street below, where people bought and sold whatever they had, and boys from the country came to be corrupted.

Aunt Kitty could wait no longer for me to ask what had brought all this about, this room with its dry sounds, this purse full of pounds, and she shrieked into my face, so that I could not stop myself flinching:
I have blackmailed your
rotten father!
She was excited almost beyond bearing.
My
brother has been beaten!
A knocking began on the floor, as of a broomstick being hit against the ceiling below. Aunt Kitty began to whisper then, in a hiss that was uncomfortable to listen to.
I told him I would spread stories about his mad wife
and daughter.
Aunt Kitty winked so that her whole face swallowed itself and re-formed.
I told him I would spread
stories about his women and he gave in
. She took my hand and opened the fingers, and closed them around the purse.
It is
an allowance, Lil, there will be more every month.
My hand closed around the purse, but it had been nearly ten years since I had had money in my hand, and it felt like nothing more significant than a small weight in my palm. Aunt Kitty shook me, but I could not respond, but could only sit feeling my body, the way it made the bed sag, the way it enclosed me in its powerful embrace. I could not move just yet, although I knew that when Aunt Kitty had gone I would be able to send my being out beyond my flesh into the empty space of this room, and begin to fill it. Finally, I knew, I would be able to take a place in this larger world beyond the walls, but just now I had mislaid all my words, and all the movements I could make, and was not used to having money in my hand, and a room all my own.

A New Life

In the beginning I was afraid of so much space and silence and afraid of the way I was free to come and go, or lie in my narrow bed all day if I chose. Choosing was not something that years in the loony-bin had given me much practice at. I sat in my small room, making the side of the bed sag, and stared for hours out the window at the blue and the roofs that lay out there. I sat stiffly, fully dressed as if for another journey, my shoes planted solidly in front of me as if I was about to stand up between two men in white coats and be taken somewhere. When the hollow rumblings of my stomach forced me out of the room and down into the street, I was afraid, and hardly breathed until I was back sitting on the side of the bed with a corned-beef sandwich in my hand.

A summer and a winter had to pass. Like a plant in a new pot I had to watch each season from the window of my room before I had a grip on my new life. My window calmed me at last, though, with the way it was steadily the same each day, and the roofs and chimneys stayed where they had been on that first day, and as time passed I was reassured. I took off my shoes and sprawled on a pillow on the floor then, and did not allow myself to be alarmed by the shops where I bought my food, but became bold. I dared at last to speak to the people behind the counters in the shops, and they were kind, and shouted at me in their faulty English as if I was deaf or moronic, but they smiled. I discovered good things to eat and drink, which I took back to my room like a squirrel, and sated myself, lying on the floor watching clouds sail past.

More Stories

Summer nights in my room were full of the yearning scents of jasmine and the keening of mosquitoes, and the shouts of other hot people abusing each other. On such nights the thought of another body next to mine was unbearable and I had no envy for all the couples in all the rooms, behind their walls, tangled hot and cross in sticky sheets.

On those nights I often left my room, excited as if going to meet a lover, perhaps even that tall man I felt must be waiting for me somewhere, and strolled down the hill. I walked through streets full of the sounds of lives that floated out so many open windows, down to my summer residence, the cool storm-water channel in the park, between the black trees.

The park on the bay was full of interest at nights, when every bush hid, or failed to hide, some urgent event or other. I enjoyed wandering until even my broad feet began to ache, watching so many individuals lusting, and crying, and sighing, and calling out profanities at the height of their passion. It was suggested that I might like to experience these thrills, but I refused all such hoarse offers, and if necessary William could be brought to warn off these hungry men, who could not stand having great poetry shouted at them, and would slink off in shame.

Down there, beside the water endlessly rippling its muscles, the night was enormous and the stars, those old friends, hung low and soft. The nights gradually grew darker and more quiet, as in all those small hot rooms around me men and women reached for light-switches and tried to sleep through their dreams. As I watched, one by one the yellow squares of window became black. There were always a few that burned on all night and into the dawn, and one that winked in code to me all night. I watched it, trying to interpret its message, but it winked on and on, its message for someone else.

The hollow clatter of metal shrouds against the masts of all those quiet boats was like music across the water, random, endless, soothing. Each boat had its own simple tune, which it played over and over all night with every variation, and if I listened hard, and left my body, and became only a listening spirit among the masts, I could follow each tune until it was overlaid by another, and I would follow that one then, until it in turn was overtaken, too. Like the lives of people, the music of the masts was something complicated and mysterious and composed of the clearest and most simple threads. I listened to one voice telling its story, then another, until I drifted away into the spaces between the stars, and left behind the body of the fat woman who lay among the debris of past storms, waiting for love.

At dawn the water shone grey like a blade. On such mornings I missed Rosecroft's old boat, and would have enjoyed sliding out across that metallic water, seeing the oars break the surface like puncturing skin. Down at the sea-wall I sat swinging my feet and watching the life of things resume. The rushes had all long since been cut from here, but the gulls screamed at the fish in just the way they must always have done.

Men with briefcases and dark suits strode off towards another day, with the taste of bacon still warm on their lips. I waved, and cheered at one man, who was almost running in his haste to get to some desk or other, and whose face was distorted by haste and anxiety, and already sweating even in this cool morning air.
Hip hip hooray
, I called, and the third time he realised it was for him, and looked around.
Yes
, I shouted,
I am cheering you
, but he put his head down and ran off down the path, showing that although he was dark and tall, he was not the hero I was waiting for.

Looking for Love

I was becoming intrepid now, and speaking to the new community of spirits I found myself among. I spent my days making small voyages of exploration.
It is better to travel
hopefully
, I told the shoemaker who, like Father, felt he had the right to comment on my worn soles. I followed the tall dark men who walked slowly along these shabby streets, although they were looking for love in another form than that of a fat woman in a black coat.
Are you looking for love?
I asked them sometimes, and on this street, where love was the currency, the question did not surprise them.
No
thanks, not tonight
, they said, or walked on pretending not to hear.

Here it was all tall buildings full of people with mysterious lives who came out at dusk to let their dogs relieve themselves in the gutter, and people who made me remember the mysterious mother and father of Joan, speaking fast in their mysterious language, and laughing their foreign kinds of laughter. I was shy at first, of so much life and bustle, and the way everyone shouted across the street at each other, and the way now and again one of them would stumble into the gutter and lie there snoring or groaning for a while. But soon I came to know these people, and began to join my life with theirs.

The men in sequins, and the women with men's hats on their heads, and cigars in their mouths, and the people of no sex at all with shaven heads, the people who yelled at the air in front of them, or suggested
good times
to anyone likely to listen: these people were my neighbours now, and were the kind of people I found I liked.
We are
all looking for love
, I told them as we sat over our coffees, or stood on the street corner. My time in the loony-bin had made me serious, but these people knew there was not much to be gained by being too serious.
Yes, Lil, but some
of us like to get paid for it
, Tommo shrieked, who made his living at night in the park, and spent his days exposing himself to anyone who was interested, and to many who were not.

A number of the girls had become my friends, I liked to think, and several of them straightened in their doorways and breathed out smoke in a smile when they saw me coming. When Zara suffered from a black eye, or Doreen's chin was bruised, or Shade looked sour, I did not linger to chat, because although they had not found love with their pimps, they had found something, and were doing their best to make the material at hand into a life.

On good days, when the sound of the traffic, and all those people looking for love, was like music, I stopped and passed the time of day with the girls. I liked to keep in touch with their lives, although I could not copy anything.
How are you going, Lil?
they all called, and introduced me to the new girls:
This is Marge, she is from Coffs Harbour
, they would say, and Zara would make a suggestive remark about bananas, and everyone would laugh. I was not exotic to them, except in the virginity I told them I had.
Are you really, Lil?
they asked, and touched me as if I was a holy relic.
You are having us on, Lil.
It amused me to shock them and hear their gasps:
I will show you my hymen if you
like
, I threatened.
It is rare, a collector's item
, and Shade would explain to Marge from Coffs Harbour, who was sharp enough, but new to the city, that I was talking about my
cherry
and how it was still
unpopped.