Lilian's Story (33 page)

Love at Last

There was a morning when Frank startled me by leaping up crookedly so he nearly fell, waving the bottle by its neck, yelling,
Hey Johnny, Johnny! Got your sister here! Worth a few
bob to you?
He was preparing to chase my brother through the jammed cars, but I caught the edge of his coat in time. In my grip, the hem tore loose in a long ribbon and one shoulder seam cracked open like an egg.
Me coat!
Frank shrieked so that two secretaries in shocking pink looked, shocked, and snickered.
Me coat!
Frank continued to wail, and my brother, his face pink from its morning shave, and hidden behind his glasses, vanished among the bobbing heads along the pavement without seeing anything.

It was too late now for Frank. It had never been the right time, but now under our bush, or down in my storm-water channel, or on the beach by the park, we could offer each other the touch of our skins by night. A hand in one's own can be a great comfort, and the feel of a warm chest pressed against one's own.
If I loved women, Lil, it would
be you I loved
, Frank told me, who was now beyond love of anyone, boy or man or woman. But we lay in our blanket on the beach, and watched those friendly stars, which had been my companions for so many years. Frank's hand was soft in mine, and warm, and we exchanged the small messages of our blood through the skin. When we embraced and my face was lost in the leathery skin of his neck and the cold strings of his hair, our bodies lay tightly together. There were times when we seemed one flesh, separated only by the accident of bodies. In the dark his voice in my ear was moist and intimate and when his lips found my cheek, and pressed it for a moment, I melted in my body and floated away into the night sky, into the spaces between those smiling stars.
I am passionate, too
,
I
whispered into his hair, and felt his arms tighten around me:
I am passionate, too
, I admitted at last,
and this is more than
I ever hoped for.
Frank kissed me again on that spot on my cheek, and with a sigh fell asleep in my arms, and until dawn I held him, and felt his life against mine, beating and flickering together in love.

History

History is not the past, but the present made flesh. I saw more, as I became older, fatter, more easily tired.
Look
, I told myself, moving up William Street, and when I looked around I saw the window of an abandoned brothel, that was broken in the shape of a map of Australia.
Look
, I said later when I had forgotten, and was looking only at my feet, shuffling along a path in the Gardens.
Look
, I reminded myself, and surprised a woman who happened to be passing. When I looked up I could watch a paper bag full of wind that was chasing a cloud across the sky.
Listen
, I told myself, and heard the waves against the harbour-wall, a gull being peevish, the white tapping stick of a blind man against the stones.
Listen
, I told myself,
this is history.

It was important that others should see what I, from my increasing age and slowness, was able to see. Passing women, blind men, gulls, would give ear only to speeches, not to a few words they could dismiss as an old woman muttering to herself. I took myself, then, down to the Domain again, that place of speeches under the indifferent trees, and found myself a box to stand on among the wild-eyed Reds. The Domain of a Sunday was the place where the history and meaning of the world was being resolved, and I knew that I had a contribution to make. History belonged to me, even more than it belonged to the passionate young men leaning forward on their boxes and ladders in the way they knew Lenin did. But although history was mine, I stood on my soap-box waiting for words, and this time none came. Pugnacious men had gathered, and tourists arm-in-arm, but everyone became bored in the end, because the fat woman had nothing to say after all, but could only stand there and keep making a beginning.
Look
, she kept saying, or,
Listen
, and they all wandered off at last and left me with a small audience of those yellow-eyed sceptical gulls, and a bulky man readying himself to speak.
I am history, and so are you
, I yelled finally, so that the gulls took fright and wheeled into the air, and the bulky man's words were released from him, and he began to shout.
The running dogs of imperialism
, he was shouting, so hard I felt a fleck of his spit land on my cheek.
Jackals and capitalist
lackeys on the body of the proletariat.
I did not know what he was talking about, or why he was so angry, but watched how the muscles around his mouth forced the words out like bullets, and how his eyes saw nothing but his own visions. I forgot mine, for the moment, and stepped down off my box, because I recognised that this angry man, with his mouthful of rhetoric, was Rick. I had last seen him in a morning coat of perfect fit, becoming Ursula's husband and bearing her off on his arm to a future of roses and smiles. Now he had become this angry man in a shabby brown suit, and was almost bald, so that I had to look again, to make sure.

He was not surprised when I told him who I was, but glanced at me briefly and said
Yes yes
as if it did not matter that Lil, who had been invited to be a bridesmaid at his wedding, but had relieved everyone by declining, was here now in front of him. Rick's eyes had always been green and distant, but now they flicked from side to side as he spoke, as if he was reading the grass.
The
international ground swell is mobilising, Lil
, he told me urgently.
We will be the spearhead of history.
He grasped my forearm like a prophet.
It is destiny, Lil, we will all be men of destiny.
I could see it would have made no difference whose arm he grasped.
But I am my own destiny
, I told him loudly, for I could not be trumped, even after so many years, by Rick with his cold bottle-glass eyes.
I have always been my
own destiny, and loved my inventions of myself.
Rick nodded, but he was not listening. He smoothed the baldness of his head, an untidy worn patch of grey scalp, and said:
Lil, I will be receiving a sum tomorrow.
His hand touched my arm again.
It is just a temporary embarrassment.
The words ran out of his mouth too easily:
Small pecuniary difficulties
of a strictly temporary nature
, he said, and smiled a smile of strong stained teeth that was meant to convince me.
I am
not convinced
, I told him. I could not stop myself speaking loudly to him, although I had no reason to think he was deaf.
I am not convinced by you
, I shouted, and saw him flinch and look at me again, using his eyes this time, and he was beginning to turn away so I could see his sad stooping shoulders and the thin cloth over them, flecked with dandruff, and he was any other pitiable old crank.
People
have been kind to me
, I said, and stopped him, and emptied my purse into his dirty palm. He took on flesh again then and his shoulders became manly.
Tomorrow, Lil
, he repeated, and was still calling out,
I never forget a loan, Lil
, as I walked away from him in sadness and satisfaction.

Old Friends

Life and its plots had made me able to believe anything of what could unfold, and when I met Jewel again I was not surprised.
I know what I know, Lil
, Jewel said mysteriously, and winked.
It said in my hand I would get out and become God's
mum, and here I am, out.

Like all of us, Jewel was much older now, and had grown wiser, in her own way. At first, when a woman had gestured and called to me from across the road, I had not recognised her, because her face was painted a streaky black, in which her eyes were bloodshot and wild. She was old enough now to have grown into her face, and it was pleasant to have her sit me down beside her at the edge of the fountain and take my hand in hers.
Lil, you have not
changed one bit
, she exclaimed.
Except now, look, it says you have
found love, like I always said you would.
I laughed my big laugh then, that knew how to make a lot of noise, from making people stare in the streets.

Jewel said,
What do you regret, Lil? Tell me, and take my mind
off my troubles, because they are after me again, Lil.
She crushed her palms together as if to press a new destiny onto the lines there. There was nothing much I could do to help her, but I could tell her what I regretted, and pass a little time.

She nodded seriously as I spoke, as if taking notes. I regretted almost nothing. There was a leather-bound copy of William that Father had given me long ago, before he knew that William was not just words. I regretted that, and it must have bubbled heavily, like a desperate drowning person, as he dropped it over the stern of the boat, but it had already been too late, I had already learned enough to keep me going. There were a few people I regretted not hitting. They might have thanked me for it in the end. I regretted not having said
yes
to F.J. Stroud, all those years ago. And of course I regretted the islands in the sun, the jungles, the gibber deserts, Niagara Falls, sleds drawn by reindeer, the feel of a whale lifting my boat into the air under me. Naturally I regretted all that.

Jewel had begun to leak tears as I waxed enthusiastic on all that I regretted.
By Jeeze, Lil
, she moaned,
I wish I
was you, and regretted what you do.
Not many people have ever been moved to envy me, and I was silent with surprise.
Those who tell you they regret nothing are lying
, I said at last,
or
lacking in imagination.
I wished someone was there to write it down, because this seemed wise enough to be worth a little immortality. And Jewel would not remember, and was hardly listening.
I have got me fate in me hands
, she said.
But they are after me, and want to stop me fate.
Jewel's face was starting to run with her tears. The black was coming off on her fingers and the tears were making pale streaks down her cheeks.
They are after me and will not let me be God's mum
, she said, and wiped sadly at her black fingers on the thigh of her dress.
Do you think they will recognise me and take me away?
she asked. What could I say?
No
, I said.
No.

Glory Boxes

Frank had stopped driving his taxi some time before. I think there was an accident, police, a great deal of meaningless noise. Now his room had arreared so far that he had been dislodged from it, and lived in the storm-water channel in the park. We found that the storm-water channel was as good a place for two as for one.
This is the life, Lil
, Frank said, and leaned back against the curve of the concrete.
I could live
here real well.

Frank was a tidy man, house-proud in our storm-water channel.
Everything in its place and a place for everything
, he said, and propped the bottle upright between two bricks.
Things
go missing, Lil, if you are not neat
, he said, and kept a hand on the neck of that bottle, even though propped between its bricks it could not go missing anywhere.

My room at the Cross was becoming smaller, meaner, stuffier, each time I went back to it, and Aunt Kitty's money was shrinking week by week. In any case, there is no wallpaper like stars, and no bed as soft as the sound of a sea breeze in leaves.
Come on, Lil
, Frank urged,
I will
even have a go at carrying you over the threshold.
And at last, with my book bag full of the few things I treasured, I joined Frank in the great room of the park.
There is plenty of wood
for fires, come the winter
, Frank said.
The abos did okay, and so
will we.

I loved my life with Frank. I had never set up house with anyone before, and loved the feeling of coming home at the end of the day to the place Frank and I shared. Frank had tried to carry me over the threshold, and we had clawed and grasped at each other, panting noisily and gasping, until we fell together on the grass. Frank had wheezed noisily for a few minutes and then said,
You cannot
say I did not try, Lil, but you are a bride and a half, and I am only half
a husband.

I enjoyed the way Frank rolled us into our newspapers for the night, and loved to wake up when the birds were being insistent in the trees overhead and the sun was sending yellow fingers along the wet grass. Frank snored on beside me and I heard the city wake slowly, and the birds take second place as hurrying men in suits and women in high heels began to clatter along the paths to the city, and everyone got ready to die another day away. When Frank woke up, gradually, nodding off again before he got up and tidied his newspapers into a pile under a stone, we had the pleasure of sharing our dreams. I had not often woken up in the company of others, and shared dreams while they were fresh, except in the loony-bin, and no one wants to share their dreams in a loony-bin. Most there do not know that there is a difference between a dream and a life.

The sleep of the chaste is full of dreams. Mine were of burning towers and seas sweeping in over strange lands, lapping at trees and castle walls.
I do not admire chastity
, I told Frank, nodding off again over his bottle.
I do not admire chastity,
although I am a virgin.
He woke from his stupor at that word and suddenly thrust his jacket sleeve up and flexed his skinny arm at me.
We will soon put that right
, he cried, and strained to make muscle appear, so that veins engorged along his arm and he began to cough.
I like my dreams
, I told him, and helped him pull his sleeve back down.
Deflowered, I might miss out on dreams.

Our bliss was not conjugal, but chaste, but I did not envy anyone, and told the people on the buses,
I am a
contented woman, and wish for nothing
, and they stared at me, and none could say the same for themselves.