Lilian's Story (28 page)

His sign was unmistakable. I met him at the Quay, as I did on many mornings, and prepared to accompany him up the streets to his bank. He passed through the turnstile, swinging the oxblood briefcase, and passed me, as he always did, with only the most quiet of signals that he treasured my being there. But as he passed, a square of newsprint fluttered down from him, a square cut from the advertisement page, and it was a sign no one could have denied. I read it, and my knees turned to water under me, and the world became dark for a moment, because it had never been a necessary part of the story of my love for him to give me such a sign.

I held the newsprint between my fingers until it was limp from my heat. Then I panted up that hill, hating the snarling buses that morning because their noise made it hard for me to catch up to my love, who strode on in front of me, a gleaming dark head in the crowd. But at the bank I was near him, hearing myself wheeze from so much haste uphill, and he glanced around, and saw me. I held up his message, and nodded at him, might even have winked, and my smile was tender with triumph. He looked back as people crossed to and fro between us, and I knew that he saw how faithfully I had followed him, and that in my hand I held the talisman he had left for me. Of course he did not smile back. He did not need to. The look he gave me was full of astonishment and joy, and it sealed our promise.

Across the street I nodded three times and winked. He knew that I understood. He spoke again to the man with the gun and disappeared inside.

When the two young policemen took my arms I denied everything.
Harassing members of the public
, one of them said importantly.
Causing affront and alarm.
I remained dignified.
I harass no members
, I protested, and a woman in lilac shantung turned and stared. My bag of books fell, my William dropped out, someone tittered at my huge black behind as I bent for it, a policeman shook my elbow, the scrap of paper flew out of my hand, nearly lost.
Now, now
, the policeman said.
Come along now.

There had been other betrayals, but none as bad as this. The smell of hard-working blue serge and peaked caps full of hair was the smell of Lord Kitchener's cowardice.
There
is some mistake here
, I cried, and they laughed as they stopped a taxi and pushed me in.

We had only gone a block when everything in front of my eyes cracked and wavered into tears. The tufts of the cabbie's hair, Queen Victoria standing black in the sun, girls in yellow dresses, all ran and shattered into prisms of wet light. With me in this taxi, whose smell of other people's lives was not enough to comfort me, was a broken machine that was beginning to wheeze and groan and make wrenched jerky cries of grief.
Steady on, love
, the cabbie kept saying.
Steady on. Easy on there, love.
Beside me a huge truck roared along as if trying to drown me out. We stopped at lights and my eyes cleared long enough to see a girl stare at me as she crossed the street with a long pink bun held up to her open mouth like a finger. Next time I opened my eyes I saw a bald man with a cello. It all seemed hopeless.

He stopped outside the white castle near the water.
No,
no
, I tried to say.
Not here.
But groans and bleats were all that came out of my face as he opened my door. Come on, he said.
A bit of a sit-down.
When he held the door open, a soprano in pain suddenly began a scale.
Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah!
she sang up, and
Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah!
down again. When she began again on a higher note, it was in desperation. A violin wavered the same three shrill screams over and over, and from every window came the empty tinkle of pianos.

He took me down the stairs into the Gardens. At a bench under a tree he sat down and patted the seat beside him.
A bit of a sit-down
, he said again, and took a bottle in a brown paper bag out of his pocket. He swallowed deeply and his eyes filled with tears.
Tell me all about it
, he said.
It
was a man in a bank
, I said, and when the cabbie began to laugh, showing long yellow teeth, I saw that he knew what I meant.
Who are you?
I asked, and licked my lips, which tasted bitterly of salt. He shook his head and pulled down the cuffs of his tight checked jacket.
I'm Frank to my friends
, he said.
Call me Frank.
Together we watched as a man with a sharp stick speared pieces of paper beside the path.
Blokes in
banks are bad news
, Frank said.
Take it from me. I've known a few.

It was many years since anyone had held my hand and rubbed comfortingly at it. It was even longer since anyone had held a handkerchief to my nose and said,
Now blow.
I blew.
Again
, he said, and I blew again.
Good girl. Now open
your mouth and close your eyes.
The brandy was very cool in my mouth for an instant before it was very hot. I swallowed to get it out of my mouth and felt it searing down into my chest and I had to use the handkerchief again to wipe at the splutter around my mouth.

Close to us, on the edge of the lagoon, a huge black swan reared up on its legs and beat its wings towards us. I heard my voice cracked and adenoidal.
Bloody men.
The swan began to stretch its neck towards us as if about to go in for the kill and Frank stood up to make threatening gestures at it.
Can't
help its nature
, he apologised. I wiped my fingers across the tears on my cheeks.
But you are a man
, I said. Frank considered this and took another long swallow that demonstrated an agile Adam's apple.
I am not that swan
, he said at last.
I am not
any kind of swan. I am just a bloke
, he said.

We sat together on the bench while I watched the shadow of a flagpole inch across the grass towards me. From time to time, tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought about Lord Kitchener, but they were quiet tears and Frank did nothing more than pass me the bottle and wipe my wetness from where it had fallen on his sleeve.

Lord Kitchener's message had survived, had been snatched up and thrust into my pocket, and at last I felt able to take it out and read it again:
George will love you my
place or yours.
The words were becoming worn and blurred but they remained my message from my love. I was willing to see now that I had been telling the wrong story. It was painful, but there remained a Lord Kitchener in my heart, who loved me tenderly and who would always be mine in my heart. I could crumple up this square of shabby newsprint then, and drop it, so that the man with the sharp stick would spear it on his next round.

The bottle was empty now and the shadow of the flagpole lay across my lap. Before it could reach up my chest it would be overwhelmed by the mass of shadow coming across the grass from the west, where the white building was silhouetted against a sky the colour of a bruise.

Frank had fallen asleep, the empty bottle slipping out of his hand and slithering to the grass. When I thought of Lord Kitchener, now probably holding the shuddering green post in the ferry on his way home, watching the wharf approach, I felt sad and calm.
I misunderstood
, I told the sky.
He is the wrong man.
I would have liked to find him, and tell him that I forgave him, but could not bear to see that moustache again, or those thrusting calves.

Frank spoke loudly:
Green doors
, and woke up. He glanced at me, felt for the bottle, and belched. We sat in silence watching the swan burrowing into its underwing.
Royalty
, Frank said at last on a sigh, arriving at the end of some train of thought, and smiled dreamily at the lagoon where a cat's-paw of breeze shot across the water.
They are
not better than the rest of us.

Laughing and Love

Frank, or F.J. Stroud as I had known him before, liked sitting in a park with his bottle much better than driving his taxi. We sat together in the sun, and laughed at the way the pigeons knew it was lunchtime in the offices, and came down for pieces of bun.
Lil, you were always a good companion
, Frank told me, and I was glad that I had fallen in love with Lord Kitchener, for it had brought me back to Frank, and proved that no love is ever wasted.

Frank had a little room somewhere, as I did, but was
in arrears
, he said, and took a deep draught from the bottle.
I have a little
, I suggested, but Frank shouted,
I have never
wanted your little, Lil, and will not now.
People stared as we lolled on the grass, and there were days when we lolled all day, watching the people frown and pour into the offices in the mornings, frown and eat their sandwiches at lunchtime, frown and then hurry home.

Like me, Frank was a man in his prime, but visibly slipping now, sped on by his bottle.
We are all getting on,
Lil
, Frank sighed and swigged.
We are none of us young any
more
, and although I wanted to cry,
But, Frank, I am only
just starting!
I knew he was right, and that the great love of my life, Lord Kitchener, had swept past like a tide and left me different, not full of hope and imagined futures. There was a grey hair or two in my hair now, I saw with sadness, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in shop windows I saw there were the beginnings of lines around my eyes and mouth that made me look like a fat parody of Mother as she had sat over her stop-watch.

Love seemed a thing of the past, and youth was finished, but life remained to be explored, and I was not cast down.
I will spend my maturity enjoying life
, I announced to Frank.
I have spent too long locked up and alone, one way and another. I will
spend my life now being part of things.
Exhilarated, I was determined to love long, and with gusto.

A Friend Gone

You are as fat as ever
, Aunt Kitty told me,
but have a better colour.
She lay on the hospital bed in a very shrunken way, her cheeks fallen in and yellow now, her knees drawn up as if she was cold or afraid.
I am full of oysters, Aunt Kitty
, I said.
They are supposed to make you feel lustful.
I thought this might make her laugh, and she needed to, lying so tiny beneath the hospital covers, her eyes grown huge with what was happening to her. Aunt Kitty laughed so that the woman in the next bed turned her face in spite of the tubes in her nose and stared at us.
You have a lot of lust yet
, Aunt Kitty said,
but be careful of bad oysters.
Her laugh had come and gone in a moment and left her face more frightened.

Aunt Kitty, you have been my only friend
, I said, and took her cold hand in both of mine, and kissed it, feeling the skin cool like a lizard's against my lips, because she was dying.
Oh, Lil,
she said,
you are the person I would have liked to be.
Aunt Kitty plucked at the bedclothes as if it mattered. I would have liked to scoop her up from this cold bed and pop her into one of my pockets and take her somewhere warm.
But we have foxed Albion
, she said, and managed a wink, and although I knew Albion would never be beaten, I nodded and winked back.
You did everything
, I said, to comfort her, but the truth was I knew only that she had set me free, and was dying now. I sat there while she slept, her hand light in mine, and felt the woman with the faceful of tubes watching as warm tears ran down my cheeks and tickled, hanging from my chin, until they fell.

The serenity of the corpse was most delightful. In life Aunt Kitty had never appeared so rested and so placid. Over her serene corpse, Father and I watched each other and a cousin from somewhere, who was a stranger to me but who had hoped to be remembered in Aunt Kitty's will, snuffled into a hankie. Father was full of himself as he stood in his uniform and squared his shoulders. He was full of his own glory and was serene about his fat daughter standing mulishly by his sister's corpse. He did not speak to me.

It had come as a surprise at first to see Father looking military, but soon it appeared inevitable. I had not seen him with his gun, but knew that there must be one, somewhere in his study at Rosecroft, and did not need to see him do it, to know how he must posture and stride before the mirror, admiring himself in khaki.

Over Aunt Kitty's corpse he did not speak, but later, when she had been slid into the flames, and we wandered in the gardens, wondering just what had happened, he came up to me. Unlike that snivelling cousin, who was still hopeful, I knew that Aunt Kitty had left her all to me. There was not much, but it was enough that I need never need Father again. When in his sick khaki he approached me through the flowers, I stood my ground and tried not to be afraid. He looked at my face, glowing from so many oysters and so much freedom, and took me by surprise, jabbing my belly where my breakfast sat keeping me warm.
Lilian
, he said as if reminding me who I was.
Lilian, you are an example of the degeneracy of the white races.
I must have stood blinking in my surprise and Father hissed, so that the creeping cousin stared,
You are sterile and
degenerate, and as corrupt as a snake.
Father should have grown his moustache back, but never had, and his long upper lip moved in a strange way when he spoke, as if carrying on a conversation of its own. I could not help laughing, and saw Father congest, and ran to water at the knees in sudden fear. He thickened, his khaki collar appeared too tight, and his eyes filled his face. I thought he might wrestle me to the ground there among the tidy flowers, or hit my glowing face until it broke apart under his hand. He did none of these things, but seemed to remind himself of who he was, thrust his shoulders back so that the khaki over his chest became as taut as a well-made bed. He turned away.

John wandered among those neat flowers, too, my brother who would always be a stranger I would love, because we had given each other what we could, even when that was little enough.
You were good to me when I was in the
loony-bin
, I told John among the flowers that were meant to take the sting out of death, and could taste the cream and the cake that were the proof of my brother's love.
It
was nothing much, Lil
, John said, and we stood searching each other's faces for something, but we had little enough to offer each other, and had never had much in the way of words.