Lilian's Story (3 page)

Birth, the Slippery Adventure

My brother was a small triumph. He lay in state, everything around him brand-new and pale blue. Father spent a week in the study before he could decide on a name for his son. I made one or two suggestions, but although Mother arched her eyebrows and nodded, Father seemed not to hear. When I caught him alone, staring at an ant on the verandah, he said with loud bogus enthusiasm.
Oh, good idea.
I'll make a note.
He went so far as to scribble something in his little notebook, but it did not look like
Ivanhoe
or
Gideon
, but more like
I will not ape snails.
In the end,
John Thomas
was disappointing.

On the lawn I was enormous, bending over my brother's crib, the shadow of my head covering his whole body. One foot had freed itself from its wrapping and waved at the sun, and at the gulls floating overhead, watching. Salt was thick in the air, the tide was coming in strongly against our beach, and every branch tugged up and down, waving back at that pale foot. Above us the palm tree was a dutiful umbrella, but I could imagine how my brother's tiny face would congest if it was peppered from above by those berries. He would cry and everyone would come running. Veins of his skull were fragile as he blinked and made small frantic movements of his fists like someone inventing boxing, but we both knew he could not get away. When it grasped the finger I poked at him, his hand felt like the tentacles of a sea anemone, but his grip was strong. This pale blue bundle would soon be strong enough to do more than grip fingers.
You're fat
, I whispered in despair, and his fist clenched weakly, striking nothing, a thread of blue caught in a nail.
Fat.
From his open mouth a rapid dribble ran down his chin like an explorer.
Fatty fat.
When he yawned I could see his tongue as pink as salmon and the strong swallowing muscles of his throat, and knew that nothing could be done. I had to remind myself that I would always be four years older than my brother.

Mother saw us from the verandah and ran across the lawn towards us crookedly, like someone in an egg-and-spoon race, panting over me while a hand hid the freckled skin at the top of her dress.
Your brother, Lilian
, she gasped, and we watched the words evaporate between us.
I know,
Mother.
I was all ugly whine.
Sisters love their brothers, Lilian
, Mother said.
A brother is a very precious thing.
She brushed away a fly and glanced up into the palm tree.
Is he safe here?

Upstairs a shutter banged once like a command and Father's head appeared at the window of his study. He gestured and called at us and Mother picked the baby up, put him down, opened his smock, closed it, pulled at his blankets, saying,
that's right, that's good, that's better, yes, yes,
yes.
Father appeared on the verandah and strode towards us until he stood erect beside the crib. His son popped a loud wet bubble and looked startled, gesturing up at Father in an exclaiming way. Father thrust his chest out and clenched his buttocks, setting an example, but the baby scratched peevishly at the sky.
Needs changing
, Mother apologised, and Father unbent to permit his son to grasp a proffered pinkie. Mother smiled at the baby, at Father, at me. No one smiled back.
If he needs changing, Norah, he must be
changed
, Father said, and stared down a gull trying to strut on the grass. Mother bundled the baby up and was calling for Alma even before she reached the verandah.

A berry fell into the empty crib, onto the shawl crocheted by Aunt Kitty, and Father was beginning to turn away towards the house.
Father
, I yelled, running to a patch of sun and attempting to stand on my head.
Father,
look!
I shrieked when he did not, and ran to the low branch of the jacaranda, where I tried and failed to hang by my legs.
It was this
, I shouted and tore at the impeding pinafore.
Other times I can do it.
Father smiled and waved in a general way but by the time I had tucked the pinafore in and tried again, succeeding this time, hanging red-faced while the lawn swung to and fro, he had gone into the house, and I had to go behind a bush and be sick from swinging too fast for no one.
Bravo
, I heard Alma call out from the kitchen door, and she clapped, but although I knew she meant well, her applause was hollow.

Modesty

My brother's first word was
astrakhan.
The lady with the large black bust, who was also the lady with the astrakhan muff, exclaimed,
Norah! He said astrakhan!
and all the ladies laughed. John stamped into the lady's lap and showed his gums to the room.
It is his very first word
, Mother cried,
perhaps it means he will be a traveller.
The lady of the bust caught at John's hand, which was plucking at her silver watch, and held it as she said importantly,
It means he is bright, Norah.
All the ladies nodded at each other and said,
Brains.
But in spite of coaching, and coaxing and mouthing
astrakhan
at him, John did not repeat his triumph, and when the ladies lost interest in the way his mouth puckered and pouted at them and I was allowed to hold him, he began to cry and smell of a full nappy.

Later I asked Mother,
What was my first word?
and she thought it was
Mama
or perhaps
Daddy.
When she saw how this disappointed me she said,
It is not important, Lilian, it does
not mean anything.
Father became all chest, though, when she told him.
Astrakhan
, he repeated.
Astrakhan, eh?
and tickled John's stomach until Mother warned him he would make his son bring up his puree of plum. It was enough to make me risk Father's study again, and when I had watched him leave for the ferry and the office, I lay on the floor there with the big dictionary, sneezing and learning words.

Crenellations
, I tried on the lady with the bust.
Peripatetic.
The ladies looked at me and said,
Pardon, dear?
and I tried again.
Osmosis
, I said, and
ventricular
, but there were a few minutes of tea-sipping in silence until one of them thought to ask,
Will you recite for us, Lilian?
and I had never refused to recite. I stood with my feet at an angle, the way Miss Vine taught, and readied myself for appropriate gestures. The ladies all watched and smiled, listening closely. I loved to watch them watching, and I projected my voice so that everyone in the room would be able to hear.
Never mumble,
children
, Miss Vine had told us.
Great poetry must be spoken out
proudly.
They all applauded when I finished, and although I did not hear them comment on my brains, I knew that I had never forgotten my lines, and always remembered the appropriate gestures.
Lilian, when they ask you, you should refuse
once or twice
, Mother had said.
It is called modesty.
But when it came to the moment each time, I could not bear to run the risk.
They will ask you more than once
, Mother had assured, but I was never sure enough.

Albion in Love

Mother's ankles were thick these days. She liked her feet to be in mustard or up on a cushion, and her smile was becoming vague. Her room was darkened, the baby lying in the crib in the corner and Mother forever putting a finger to her lips. She sighed and fluttered now among headache powders and tisanes.
I am unwell, Albion
, I heard her tell Father from her prostration on the couch.
Too unwell. Later,
please, Albion.
In her curtained room the brocade of the chaise longue gleamed secretively. Her room smelled of moth-balls and perfume and the smell of her fur when the wardrobe was open, and it was a room of whispers now.
Lilian, less vigour if you please
, she sighed when I ran into her darkened room too quickly, to share a leaf or shell with her.
Think of my head, Lilian
, she said, or,
A lady does not hurtle,
Lilian dear.

The Fruits of the Sly

I was under the sideboard at the end of an empty afternoon when Father and Mother came into the room and Father said,
Kitty is constantly pickled.
I heard Mother sigh twice. There was a long silence in which I began to suck at a splinter in my hand, but silently. The place under the sideboard smelled of silver polish and varnish, and was hung with cobwebs and dust, and was an interesting place to sit and pretend to be invisible.
Pickled constantly
, Father said. I knew that Aunt Kitty did not live in a barrel, but in a small house with blood-red stained glass beside the front door, but pickled things came in barrels, and I was willing to believe that there was a barrel in Aunt Kitty's house for her to climb into after we had gone.

The silence went on so long that I would have thought I was alone in the room, under the sideboard with only the chair legs and cobwebs for company, but I could see one of Father's glossy boots standing on a piece of floorboard. The leather of the boot seethed and wrinkled as if Father was clenching his feet like fists.
Is blood thicker than water?
he finally burst out in a way that made the room ring.
Is it,
Norah?
Mother said nothing, although I could have told him that the blood that came out of cuts when I trod on oyster shells was thicker than the sea water that stung, and that it floated through the rock pools in a sluggish way. Norah might have been shrugging, or staring at Father, or at her feet in the slippers embroidered by Aunt Kitty that I could see across the room. Aunt Kitty had made the slippers' roses green and the leaves purple.
Unusual
, Mother had said, and Aunt Kitty had cried out in a soprano,
My
word it is!
and laughed.

Father's boots suddenly came towards me across the polished floor. He stood against the sideboard while underneath I stopped sucking my splinter, stopped doing anything at all, tried even to stop breathing, and stared at his boots, side by side inches from my hand. Above my head, something was making groanings and wet moanings and cries thick with tears, and the boots were shifting hopelessly on the floor. A shiny drop fell down onto one polished toe, liquid that paused before sliding in a lingering way down the leather.
Why must she shame me? Why does
she hate me?
Mother's slippers approached silently across the floor towards the boots and placed themselves toe to toe against them.
Why? Why?
Father cried out in a honking tearful way.
Why?

In so many old cobwebs and such a smell of varnish it was hard to stifle a sneeze. It surprised me how big their faces looked, red with bending down, when they discovered me there at their feet.
You are spying
, Father shouted.
You are
secretive and sly. You are horrible.
I shook my head and began to cry with the shouting and the size of those faces looking in at me. I would have liked to stay under the sideboard, where I could see the rough wood that did not show, that no one had bothered to polish. But Father pulled at my arm and Mother prodded me with a finger, saying,
Gently,
Albion, she did not mean.
There were no traces of tears on Father's face now.

Father took hold of my wrist and led me upstairs to the study, opened the door violently with one hand but continuing to grip my wrist.
There
, he pointed, and I stood among the piles of newspapers, watched a rose of the carpet being squashed under my foot. I had not noticed Mother's old belt when I had been sneaky here before, but it was coiled on the desk now like something dormant.
Your
ankles?
Father said on a rising inflection like a question, and I looked at them.
Your ankles
, he repeated, and picked up the belt. Finally I understood and bent over. Holding my socks, I could feel blood rush to my face and my cheeks hanging, and could see Father's calves upside down, the tops of his trousers brushing against his boots. One boot was at a neat angle to the other and a little behind, like someone demonstrating a fine point of cricket. He brought the belt down on my pinafore with a muffled sound.
No
bloody good
, he said crossly, and pushed the pinafore up, pulled my bloomers down. When the belt came down again it cracked against skin. The top of his boot creased at each stroke as his weight came forward, and a deep wrinkle appeared in the leather.
It is only skin
, I told myself and heard a yelping from somewhere that made me want to laugh. Mother spoke from the doorway, but Father was in his stride now and did not stop to answer her. I was laughing to feel the belt singe my skin.

Leviathan

I ate in private as well as in public, and Alma was on my side.
Here, lovey
, she said, and slipped a piece of cake or a handful of date slices into my hand.
Alma
, I would whine at the kitchen door, and she would come from the pantry at last with a handful of raisins or four cold pikelets.
Alma,
I'm hungry
, I would pester her while she tried to polish the silver, and I would be silenced by a cold potato from last night, or a piece of pie. I crawled under the plumbago and did not let a single crumb escape for the ants there on the dry ground.
Mother
,
I
said, and knew how to make my voice nasty.
Mother.
Mother sighed from under her cold compress.
In the box, Lilian dear
, she said,
but quietly
, and for the sake of quiet continued to keep the box filled.

Chocolates were my favourites, the ones with soft centres that ran down my chin when I bit into them, the ones with hard centres that had to be sucked and chewed, or the ones with nuts that could be crunched. But cold potato would do, and even bread and dripping filled my mouth satisfyingly. I could feel the muscles of my face working to chew through the crust and swallow, but then it was time to want more.