Lilian's Story (27 page)

You, Lil, you have been around
, they said, and I felt wise, a mature woman, for many of the girls were younger than I was, but I did not try to explain that they had already lived more life than I had.
Oh, I am too old to change now,
I cried when they wanted to pluck my eyebrows for me, or decorate my face with paints and powders and beauty spots out of a tin. I knew I was not too old for anything I wished, but knew I was no girl any longer, but a woman in her prime.

See, Lil here is looking for love
, Zara would tell Marge, who did not know what to think of such an idea, but thought it was probably safe to laugh. We were all looking for love, and like the rest of the people in this part of the city, I was willing to try anything.
I can be anything I wish
, I told Zara.
I am the smooth white pages of a blank book.
Zara laughed her parrot laugh then, and wrinkled up her kohl-rimmed eyes at me, so she looked more than ever like a big ginger tomcat with fur on end from a fight.
Well, you are a nice
thick read, anyway
, Zara shrilled, and we had to stop a few friends and tell them the joke, because, in the absence of love, a laugh was not bad to be going on with.

Brothers Look for Love, Too

My brother had grown into a tall dark man with a hat, but I knew he could not be the one I knew was waiting for me somewhere. He lived in some small house with a lawn and a driveway, somewhere or other, but there were plenty of evenings when I saw him walking up my tinsel street like a man who knew what he wanted. When I saw him there, his face turning green in the neon, I did not speak to him. Each time I saw him I turned my back, or slipped into a doorway, or simply became blind, because as well as being my brother, John was a man entitled to a life, and was looking for love, too.

So I turned into a doorway, and the bouncer there, a man who had lost his ears in some mishap, so his shaven bullet head was obscene, said
Hello, Lil, come for a stripper's job,
eh?
and laughed for a long time, even stepping out into the street to find someone to share the joke with. I could not move on just yet, because John was prowling up the street, taking his time about choosing, and I had to bear this earless man's beery laugh, and try to maintain my dignity when he nudged me in my fat and shouted as if I was deaf or stupid,
I tell you what, Lil, if I was a female I would not sit on
it and let it go mouldy
, and he laughed again in a desperate hooting way, and John finally passed, and I could leave.

I was an inquisitive person, though, and did not resist following John once, to see what kind of girl or boy he wanted, and was surprised when he chose Angelique, who was haughty and when on the job did her best to pretend to be French. I watched from a distance and saw how the corners of her mouth turned down disdainfully, and her eyes with the false lashes flickered up and down my brother's body, and spoke to his left lapel. They set off down the street together, and she on her high heels seemed to tower over him, and stalked ahead of him, not glancing back to check that he was following. My brother was not a small man, not stooped, not shabby, but in her tall elegant wake he seemed a little shambling man who would have holes in his socks. I waited, and later when she returned to her corner I saw how John was happy behind his glasses now, although only a sister would have been able to recognise it on his face.

Angelique, who when not on the job was Angela from Cobar, and whose love affair was with a pug with sinus problems, was not one of the girls I knew well or liked especially, for she was reserved with us all, and kept her smiles and enthusiasms for Pug. But she was of a kind heart, and when I saw her with Pug, feeding him morsels from her plate and smiling, full of love, I was pleased that John had chosen well, had chosen someone whose love had not all dried up.

Audiences

There was no headland to walk to here, and not even any Allambie Crescent to scandalise. No one much could be scandalised here, only a few innocents visiting from the suburbs or the country, waiting to be shocked, and rewarded to see the fat woman shouting hello to everyone on the streets.

When I caught sight of myself in shop windows I had to remind myself that I had been briefly beautiful. I knew that a photograph with a crease across it still recorded that moment, although I myself, now fat, stringy-haired, shining of face, puffy, refused cameras. The tourists and the visitors from the suburbs were sometimes intrigued by me and the William I shared with the street, and wanted to carry a part of me back to Toongabbie or Bulli.
Crazy as a two-bob watch
, they told each other, and tried to remember what I had said or recited to them, but if they had a photograph at all, it was of a fat woman in a black coat with both palms spread in front of her face.

I was not so old as not to imagine futures for myself, although when I did so I ran the risk of a whiff of the old poison returning. Would I always be a person people stared at, but left alone? Would I never find that spirit with whom I could join my own? I was willing to hope it was not too late. When I allowed myself to imagine being that close to another being, I drew back in fear, but I still yearned for love. My body yearned, too, my passionate hidden body that was ripe now under all the layers of clothes, ripe for ecstasy. I was full of hot blood, my flesh sprang out at me full of life, when I bathed, not yet marked by age.
I am a woman in her prime
, I told myself, but knew my prime would be over before too long. I tried to imagine love, but could do no more than gaze and dream into imagined futures, and wait for love to come to me.

The Dribbling Dart of Love

It was Lord Kitchener I fell in love with, one evening as I waited at the Quay for love to come along. I saw him immediately, swinging through the barrier in his dark business man's suit and his oxblood briefcase. He might have looked like any other man whose wife had polished his shoes that morning, and whose underwear was strung white and clean on some suburban washing-line once a week, but I knew who he was from his moustache, and the way the muscles of his calves thrust against his trouser legs as he stood waiting.

I moved closer to him through the press of commuters and watched what he was watching, the way the green side of the ferry swung in and smashed against the piers, and the way the long rope snaked out around a bollard. When I stood beside him, Lord Kitchener took a step away from me. Of course he was afraid, and did not know that this was love. I was fat and I shone with excited sweat. I was a woman people could see was not like most women, they could see at a glance from the layers of shabby clothes I wore, and the way I looked them in the face, and sometimes I spoke to them in ways that took them by surprise, and made them fearful.
Mad,
I saw them think as they watched me looking into their faces,
there is something wrong with her.

I watched the way Lord Kitchener's moustache filled his face, and the way the hard muscles of his calves tensed as if he was about to spring across the water. I knew that this was the man destined for me, and destiny would have its own plans for the course of my love. I was full of happiness like warm egg, knowing that my tall dark man had come to me at last, and that even I would know love before it was too late.

I followed him onto the ferry, and felt him respond as I sat next to him. The finger of love was touching him, too, but he was a tease, and moved his thigh so that I had to move again, to touch it and feel the thrill up my side where it was so close to him. Although he looked away and did not speak, I knew him to be in love as I was. I knew, too, that he could not speak, because of the dark suit, the shining oxblood briefcase, the double knots on the laces of his shoes.

Side by side as if at a wedding we watched while the ferry drew out from the wharf, and I sat taking deep breaths from the proximity of my love. Was love always so easy?

In the centre of the harbour, in the last rays of the setting sun, our ferry was delayed by a liner being herded into dock. The white walls of the ship were hard to look at in the sun. Lord Kitchener shaded his eyes with a hand and stared up at where people in coloured clothes waved down, stared, took photographs. Next to me a woman pumped a little boy's arm up and down.
Wave, darling, wave.
He began to cry. Under my buttocks the ferry trembled as the engines were put into reverse to stop our drift across the water. Lord Kitchener stood, steadying himself against the movement with a hand on the railing. The gold band on his finger shot a ray of hot light into my eye.

The arrow of love had darted into my heart, and I did not need to follow Lord Kitchener as he got off the ferry at a suburban wharf, although I watched him striding away up the hill until the ferry moved on and hid him from sight. It did not worry me that he would unlock his own front door soon, and kiss some wife or other, and smell the perfume she had put on for his return. I sat on the ferry with the wind salty in my hair until the boat had emptied and filled, emptied and filled, many times in its course back and forth to the Quay. The sun set, the moon rose, stars could dimly be seen in the sky, and finally a big man in a singlet was brought to match my bulk and put me off the ferry at last. None of this was important, for I knew that the arrow of love had darted into my heart. It was not too late, and in its prime, my life would be made complete by a love of my own.

The Consummation of Love

I made discoveries, being in love, and found that love made me greedy for more. In the beginning proximity had been enough, but finally I began to hunger for a word from Lord Kitchener, or a sign. The greed of my love wished to be reflected and doubled: I hungered for a declaration from Lord Kitchener or at least loving banter.

I would fain die a dry death
, I said, and smiled at him in his dark suit, which was adorned this morning with a tiny gleaming medallion of bird dropping. He had showed no surprise at seeing me on his wharf at this hour of the morning, when the dew was still damp on the pilings, but had given me a glance that made words unnecessary. My heart beat faster as I watched him.

A dry death
, I said again, because he had not responded. The boy fishing off the wharf, his head shaven and purple from the ringworm and its cure, stared at me, and a drop of light slid down his line into the water. The harbour was sullen and glassy today.
Shall we try walking on it?
I asked, but I was beginning to think that Lord Kitchener was a trifle deaf.

What is love without the thrust and parry, the approach and retreat of the plumed male? Lord Kitchener sat, I sat beside him, he stood and strode away to another seat in the bow, I followed him again, and I had hardly reached his side before he was off again. I had never been one to worry about my own dignity, but could not prevent myself beginning to laugh as I followed my love from port to starboard, from bow to stern, upstairs and downstairs, and finally so much laughing forced me to do what Lord Kitchener's teasing could not, and I sat in the middle of the boat, near the hot throb of the engines, and laughed until there was a space around me on all the seats.

At the Quay I was lying in wait for him on the boat, and he did not see me as I took my place behind him. Around me all those experienced commuters took hold of something, and waited for the jolt as the side of the boat swung in and struck the pilings. Just in front of me, so close that one corner of the oxblood briefcase nudged my knee, so close that by pursing my lips I could make the hair on the back of his neck flutter—in front of me Lord Kitchener stood with his legs apart, holding nothing but the oxblood briefcase. When the boat met the wharf and everyone staggered, he staggered, too, and for a glorious moment I embraced him. His back was pressed against my breast and that silver medallion on his shoulder brushed my cheek. My nostrils were full of the hot animal smell of his hair. I was almost able to join my hands in front of his chest, and for several endless seconds he remained in my embrace.
Ah! I
whispered into his ear. Even I had no words for such ecstasy.

I could not bear to leave him, and walked by his side up the streets of the city, smiling and proud to be breasting the pavement with my love beside me. Lord Kitchener was shy, and perhaps overwhelmed by my proximity, as I always was by his, and kept his head turned away so I could see only his pink ear, and a corner of that moustache. He walked so fast my fat bounced and I panted, having to keep up with him, so that I could not speak, but in any case I had nothing to say, there were no words big enough for my joy.

My love strode up the streets until he came to the heart of the city, the avenue of colonnades where the post office clock stopped everyone in their tracks once an hour with its booming. Near these colonnades Lord Kitchener turned aside, so quickly I almost lost him, and strode between the red marble columns of a bank where a man stood with his legs apart and a gun on his hip. Lord Kitchener nodded to this man with the gun as if they were old friends, and swung in between the marble columns with such familiarity that I realised my love must spend his days among the red marble, and that his oxblood briefcase must be full of columns of figures, of percentages, of rates of interest. I did not venture in past the man with the gun, because I knew Lord Kitchener was mine when he straddled the ferry with his strong legs, but would not be mine when he was a man in a bank. I sat on a bench in the shaft of sun that fell between the buildings, snuffing up the air in great gulps so that people stared and visibly wondered if the fat woman was having an attack.
I am not sick
, I called when I had enough breath to speak.
There is nothing wrong with me but love, and I am ready
to die of that.

Destinies

Love made me patient, and my patience was at last rewarded the day Kitchener chose to give me a sign. I had always known he loved me, because I knew we were destined, that this was the love I had always been looking for, and that he was the dark man that Jewel had seen in my hand, but when he gave me his sign, my fat trembled with joy.