Snake (8 page)

Girlie arrived home from school to find her mother in a cold fury. ‘You want to end up like them?' Irene asked. Her hand swept in an arc and took in Progress and environs. ‘You want to end up a
pygmy
?'

Girlie said she was sorry. Very sorry. Irene told her how to make reparations. Girlie should go to the top of a hill – she pointed in the direction of a protuberance to the west of Progress, hardly a hill, really, but it pleased the locals to think they had at least one distinctive geographical feature – and scatter a bag of feathers. When she had retrieved every last feather, Irene would accept her apology.

48

The Little Bearded Governess Gazed
Sadly at Her Basket of Tulips

G
IRLIE HAD A
new English teacher, an untidy, pimply young woman named Miss Boatwright, whom she couldn't stand. She became as impatient as her mother, shooting up her hand to point out the teacher's errors, creating disturbances, generally being delinquent. At recess, she made fun of the half-moons of sweat that stained the armpits of Miss Boatwright's frocks. Miss Boatwright was ‘common,' Girlie said, and everyone agreed.

Miss Boatwright's efforts at salvaging her dignity only made Girlie more scornful. In her mind, she played out scenarios in which Miss Boatwright came to harm. She had done this sort of thing before, imagining her mother's death, the funeral, the reactions of people. She felt guilty, but Irene always said nobody could read thoughts; they were the only things that were truly your own.

49

One Candle Is Enough

A
RCHDEACON
P
OTTS, IN
the pulpit, was asking for money to buy new Easter vestments. For a country priest, Archdeacon Potts had expensive tastes: lace, linen, chased metal.

Irene, sitting with Girlie and Boy, had closed her ears. She was thinking about Nick Pasquale, who had taken over from old Mr. Smith as the town's photographer. Freddie had introduced her to him. Nick was a loner: sloping, wolfish, withdrawn. Needless to say, Irene viewed him much as a safe-cracker might a safe.

Girlie wasn't listening to the priest, either. She was mentally ticking off the causes of the First World War in preparation for a history test the next day. For his part, Boy was already eating the roast dinner they would have when they returned home: lamb, potatoes, plenty of gravy.

‘Hymn number ninety-three.'

The congregation shuffled to their feet, shook their limbs free of pins and needles, coughed, rustled hymnals. Irene nudged Boy and smiled. It was a well-known hymn; they could all have ‘a good bellow,' as Irene liked to put it:

…
Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;
Forward into battle
See, his banners go!

One by one, they heard it: a snorting, snuffling sound. It was coming from the direction of the choir loft. A few people gamely kept singing; everyone else craned their necks. The snuffling became a keening, which was abruptly terminated by several loud thumps, followed by scuffling, then silence.

After the service, the congregation gathered on the church steps. The disturbance, it was soon learned, had been caused by Miss Boatwright, Girlie's English teacher. Miss Boatwright had been taken to the hospital. A fit, said a woman who had been in the choir loft. Heads bent toward each other, voices softened, turned sibilant.

Irene hurried the children past the gossiping parishioners. As soon as they were settled in the car, Irene said, ‘Ungodly noise, wasn't it?' She was pleased with her pun. Girlie, who had begun the day wishing a plague of boils on Miss Boatwright, wondered at her own powers.

50

‘Hello? Hello Out There?'

T
HE CONGREGATION WAS
again gathered in knots on the steps of St. Clement's, this time discussing Mrs. Edgar. Only the day before, around three in the afternoon, after drinking a cup of tea and eating a Sao biscuit spread with butter, Mrs. Edgar – they could see her house from where they stood, her husband was a layman at the church – had gone into the garage and hanged herself. She threw a rope over a beam, kicked out the chair. She had cancer, although what kind wasn't specified, out of delicacy. The funeral was on Tuesday.

In the car, Irene pondered Mrs. Edgar's courage. She had been a quiet woman, mousy, given to wearing nylon dresses. ‘Goes to show,' said Irene. Through the back window of the car, Girlie had a view of the garage. She expected it somehow to be transformed by the monstrous event, but it remained resolutely itself: a yellow fibro structure with wooden doors and a corrugated iron roof.

51

Clicky Feet

S
ERENA
M
C
G
ARRY WAS
the sort of woman who wore high heels with slacks and her hair in a French twist, so when her husband, Ray, who had been trying to make a go of it on the old Leonard place, shot her and their two young children and then turned the gun on himself, no one was surprised. Boy, who had noticed Serena clicking down the main street of Progress and been rewarded for his attention with a sunny smile, pestered his father for the reason. ‘Debt,' said Rex. End of conversation.

52

Blind as Worms

N
ICK
P
ASQUALE WASN'T
interested in an affair, not with an unhappy farmer's wife, but he found he liked having Irene around. She began helping him with weddings on Saturday afternoons. Afterwards, they drank beer, played Nana Mouskouri records, and made jokes about the bridal party that had just departed.

As a way of saying thank you, Nick gave her a coral necklace he had bought on his travels – a lovely thing, from Lisbon – but Irene, playing at rectitude, decided that the gift was ‘inappropriate.' She put the necklace in a paper bag and on the next trip to town gave it to Girlie, saying, ‘Take this to Nick. Tell him I can't keep it.'

Girlie walked along the main street of Progress in her box-pleated serge uniform, heavy school shoes, past the post office, the library, the bank. She stopped at the jeweler's window to examine its array of fountain pens, lockets, identity bracelets, and friendship rings, covetousness rising in her. Catching sight of her reflection in the plate glass – forehead, nose, chin – she straightened her tie, pulled at her beret.

At Fosseys, she eyed a display of mohair wool, flannel nightdresses, and girdles. Seeing the girdles prompted her to say the word ‘lingerie' under her breath, practicing its pronunciation. For good measure, she followed it with ‘peignoir,' ‘boutique,' and ‘patio.' Heaven forbid she mispronounce these words in her mother's presence.

As she walked, she thought about Irene and Nick, the gift and why it was being returned. She was confused, lost in the woods, the birds eating up the trail of crumbs she was dropping behind her. In the end, she came to only one conclusion: her father was diminished by the transaction.

Nick was at the front desk.

‘Here's this. Mum says she can't keep it.' She handed him the paper bag, scrunched where she had been holding it.

Nick opened the bag, grunted. Then he went back to ticking off a list of names. Girlie took her cue and left without saying another word.

Once, while waiting for her mother and tiring of examining the photographs that lined the studio walls – it was said that if a girl were pregnant when she married, she was obligated to wear a pink underskirt – Girlie had gone exploring and come across the narrow room where Nick slept.

He had furnished it simply: a single bed, a bureau, and a chair. And he had hung on the wall a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's painting of his bedroom at Arles, similarly monastic; Nick was a self-conscious man. It was this room of which Girlie thought as she walked back down the main street of Progress to the car where her mother was waiting.

53

Is My Poem a Lion?

‘J
UST THE PERSON
I want to see,' said Nick, who was on a ladder fixing a light. Irene and Girlie had just come through the black curtains that separated the studio from the lobby. Girlie assumed that he meant Irene, but it became apparent it was herself when Nick scooted down the ladder and picked up a school magazine lying on a chair. He received a complimentary copy because he took the school photos once a year, lining the students up, class by class, team by team, and saying ‘cheese' until his jaw ached. Heck of a way to earn a living, as he summed it up.

Nick had marked a page in the school magazine. On the page was a poem by Girlie. It was titled ‘Grief.'

‘Good grief, Girlie,' he said, wagging the magazine in her face, laughing. When he calmed down, he said, ‘What do you know about grief? You're only fifteen, for heaven's sakes. Write about what you know!'

This was good advice, but Girlie, afire with shame, couldn't hear him. Nick proceeded to read the poem aloud, with great theatrical flourishes.

Girlie darted at him, grabbed at the magazine.

He held it above her reach and continued to read.

‘Stop, Nick,' said Irene. ‘Enough.'

54

My Mother Has Grown to an
Enormous Height

G
IRLIE WAS WRITING
an essay on the New Deal when Irene asked her if she wanted to go on an outing to the lake on the other side of Progress. It was Sunday, and Irene was at a loose end. The next day was a big one for her; she had been invited to a garden party at Government House in Canberra to meet the Queen. Freddie had arranged it.

Irene and Girlie set off. Conversation was fitful. Irene remarked on how bad the caterpillars were that year: sacks of them hung from boree trees like grotesque Christmas ornaments. From time to time she slowed down to avoid hitting the galahs that had gathered to eat grain spilled on the verges of the road. In the distance, a thunder-storm quickstepped across the Hay plain.

The route to the lake took them through the middle of Progress, deserted except for a car doing desultory laps on the main street. The couple in the car were sitting so close they would both fall out if you opened the driver's door.

‘Bodgies,' said Irene.

Girlie knew the girl in the car. Her name was Christine, and she was a classmate of Girlie's. She was envied for having a steady boyfriend.

‘She'll be married at eighteen, a hag by the time she's thirty,' continued Irene. ‘Don't let it happen to you.' Privately, she believed that the likelihood of Girlie – shy, gawky, homely Girlie – marrying early was low, but a warning never hurt. Boy was another matter.

Girlie glanced across at her mother and noticed that Irene was wearing the coral necklace. She turned away, studied the war memorial. Irene caught the look, saw her daughter's face grow puffy with suppressed emotion, and thought, not for the first time, what a starchy little miss her daughter was. And so unforgiving.

At the lake, they parked and wound down the windows, letting in air that smelled of exhaust from speedboats. The lake, dirty green in color, was artificial, filled with run-off water from the farms. The town council had installed picnic benches on its foreshores; saplings guarded with netting struggled to survive. Cumbungi grew just under the surface of the lake, a forest of it, thick and slimy. Weed was forever fouling the propellers of boats and grabbing at the legs of skiers. Still, there wasn't another stretch of recreational water within a hundred miles.

As they watched, a swan glided from the bulrushes, splashed into the air, swooped on a water-skier. At first Irene and Girlie thought it was attacking the skier; swans are territorial, quarrelsome. The skier must have thought so, too, because she put up an arm to shield her face. But that wasn't the case; the swan was flying next to the skier, keeping her company. They did several laps together before the swan tired of the game and returned to the bulrushes.

Irene told Girlie about some dolphins she had seen catching waves at the beach. ‘For the sheer hell of it,' she said. She turned to Girlie, her face lit with enthusiasm. Had Girlie ever seen crows playing? Lined up on a fence, swinging from it? She mimed their movements. Girlie hadn't.

They were only a mile away from home, passing through an intersection, when a utility driven by a workman from a nearby farm clipped the back mudguards of their car and caused it to become airborne. Girlie saw black, felt a rushing of wind. When she opened her eyes, she was still in her seat, but the car was balanced on the shoulder of a drainage ditch. She pushed at the door, scrambled down.

Irene was lying under the car, her head and torso protruding. She was unconscious, covered with blood and dust. The vehicle that had hit them was turned around in the road, facing the direction from which it had come. Its driver had a gash on his forehead; blood veiled his face. He stayed where he was and wailed.

Girlie walked in small circles in the middle of the road. Someone must have heard the collision. Then, unable to bear doing nothing, she dragged Irene from under the car. She squatted next to her mother, clearing clods of earth from under her head, making soothing noises, instructing her to wake up, tomorrow she had to meet the Queen.

The sun was setting. The injured man kept up his wailing, a thin, high sound such as a whistling kettle makes. Girlie was annoyed by it. Then she noticed that the coral necklace was biting into her mother's throat. She attempted to loosen the necklace by undoing the catch. It wouldn't budge. In her panic, she tugged at the necklace, pulling, twisting. At that moment, blood bubbled from her mother's mouth, purple, not red, or so it seemed in the inky light.

An idea detonated in Girlie's mind: she had killed her mother, choked her. Girlie's hands fell to her sides.

55

Dawn Comes Slowly and
Changes Nothing

I
RENE WAS IN
the hospital for three months. Whenever Girlie visited, her mother found fault, saying, ‘Get your hair out of your eyes,' or ‘Straighten your shoulders.' Girlie said nothing. Instead, she fingered the edge of the coverlet on the bed and took deep breaths of air cut with disinfectant.