The Aunt's Story (4 page)

Then Father's voice bore in. ‘A pretty kind of idiocy,' it said. ‘A man goes walking with a gun, and presents his vanity with the dead body of a rabbit.'

After the moment of exaltation, and the warm shining fur, she was puzzled, and it hurt. Father was moody, Gertie said, he had had more education than was good. So perhaps that explained.

‘It must have died quickly,' she said.

Barely offering the words.

‘Yes,' laughed Father. ‘But death lasts for a long time.'

And then, by the sound of his voice, she knew that they should be going.

After this, Theodora sometimes walked in the paddocks alone. Once the hawk flew down, straight and sure, out of the skeleton forest. He was a little hawk, with a reddish-golden eye, that looked at her as he stood on the sheep's carcass, and coldly tore through the dead wool. The little hawk tore and paused, tore and paused. Soon he would tear through the wool and the maggots and reach the offal in the belly of the sheep. Theodora looked at the hawk. She could not judge his act, because her eye had contracted, it was reddish-gold, and her curved face cut the wind. Death, said Father, lasts for a long time. Like the bones of the sheep that would lie, and dry, and whiten and clatter under horses. But the act of the hawk, which she watched, hawk-like, was a moment of shrill beauty that rose above the endlessness of bones. The red eye spoke of worlds that were brief and fierce.

Theodora Goodman's face often burned with what could not
be expressed. She felt the sweat on the palms of her hands.

‘You've got a fever,' said Gertie Stepper, her own dry, wondering hand on a forehead.

‘No,' said Theodora. ‘Leave me.'

The face of Gertie Stepper was perpetually wondering, behind the tin-rimmed spectacles, under the distracted hair. She groaned beneath the weight of practical things. On her upturned hands she held the roof of Meroë. She waited for something unfortunate to happen. As it had, it did, and would. As it had happened to the late Mr Ernie Stepper, coal miner, of Newcastle, in an accident in a mine. Under marble they put Ernie Stepper, and the marble said:
The bowels of the earth revolted and claimed him for their own
. This saying was made up by a Mr Barney Halloran, bookmaker's clerk, poet, and friend.

‘Yes, it's terrible what happens,' Gertie Stepper used to say.

It happened, or something, to Pearl Brawne.

Pearl Brawne helped Gertie Stepper in the house. She was that Mrs Brawne's eldest girl. That Mrs Brawne did washing, and got drunk, and Mr Brawne had gone. Pearl was about sixteen, and big. Theodora and Fanny used to look and look at Pearl, at the overflowing mystery of a big girl.

‘You will find life slow at Meroë,' said Mrs Goodman. ‘But it is up to you, Pearl, to see what you can make of it.'

‘Yes, Mrs Goodman,' said Pearl.

She looked down.

In spite of her age, Pearl Brawne looked down a lot, because she was still shy, and you looked up through Pearl, and it was like looking through a golden forest in which the sun shone. Pearl was beautiful. Pearl was big and gold. Her hair was thick heavy stuff, as coarse as a mare's plaited tail. It hung and swung, golden and heavy, when she let it down.

‘Oh, Pearl,' they sometimes said, ‘let us swing on your long fair hair.'

‘Go on!' giggled Pearl. ‘Yous!'

She laughed and reddened. In Pearl the blood ran close to the surface and often flooded under the skin. But when she was undisturbed, Pearl was white, and especially her neck, in the opening of her blouse. Pearl swelled inside her blouse, and was white and big. She rose and overflowed. There was no containing Pearl
in common bounds. She was meant to swell, and ripen, and burst. And it distracted Gertie Stepper's forehead, who always looked for the end before it came.

About this time Tom Wilcocks was working on the place. Tom Wilcocks milked the cows. He fed the pigs and fowls. On Saturday he drove the spring cart into town. Tom Wilcocks smelt of milk. He was a boy from another district. From another state, they said. He had come looking for work, and the clothes that he wore were a size too big. But Tom Wilcocks knew how to carve things out of wood. He could carve a rose and a crown on the lid of a box, and Jesus Christ in mahogany.

‘It is beautiful,' Fanny said. ‘I shall keep it, may I? Among my things? Look, Pearl, what Tom has done.'

Because Pearl was always near. Now she scrabbled in water the potatoes that she scraped for dinner. Her red hands plunged, and glistened, and plunged.

‘Pffh! I'm busy,' said Pearl. ‘Mrs Stepper ‘n' me, we got the dinner. All these showin' off things! I haven't time.'

She shook her heavy head of hair.

‘It's time as Tom took hisself off. Always standin' round the kitchen door.'

Her voice scraped like the potato knife, which was blunt and black. It was unlike Pearl. She held her head on one side, and scraped. Or she bit her mouth, and screwed out an eye, out of the potato's face.

‘What sort of things you got time for, Pearl?' asked Tom.

He lounged and laughed, in the old green coat that hung. Tom Wilcocks was rough as bags. His neck was red and strong. The pollard had caked hard on his hard hands.

‘Eh, Pearl?' laughed Tom.

‘You run off, Mr Cocky,' tossed Pearl.

It had begun to be a game that you watched, the game between Pearl and Tom, and it was fun, to watch for who might drop the ball, the red, glistening hand of Pearl, or Tom Wilcocks, whose dark face was laughing up.

‘'S none of your business,' Pearl said.

‘Won't you tell us, eh, Pearl?'

She was thick and gold above the angry knife.

‘What killed the cat?' she asked.

‘Bet it was Pearl Brawne.'

‘Tom is
funny
!' screamed Fanny.

And he was. You laughed, you laughed. But not Pearl.

‘You run along, Mr Clever,' she said. ‘'S none of your business. Anyways.'

‘What ain't?'

‘Nothink,' said Pearl.

And then it was strange. Pearl's face swelled. It was red and bursting. It was going to cry. This made it different, now that it was a matter of sides. There was no second thought on the kitchen steps, you were on the side of the Pearl.

Tom Wilcocks pulled an ugly, winking face.

Ah well, he said, he would go and clean the harness now.

His feet slopped loose inside his big boots.

‘Why did you cry, Pearl?' asked Fanny.

Pearl slapped the water in the tin basin.

‘Stop tormentin' me,' she said. ‘'S none of your business. That's why.'

Such things were important and mysterious. They happened, and you had to accept. The face of Pearl that just could not be read. Her thick face swelled and cried. She chewed the corner of her handkerchief, on damp afternoons, when windows sweated, and the dogs crouched in the yard, their thin tails tucked between their naked legs.

Oh, they were long, the long wet afternoons. They did not close till five, when Tom Wilcocks brought the pails of milk. He walked across the yard, and the rain had wet his hair. It was plastered black.

‘Let us go down to the flat and pick mushrooms, it is the weather,' Theodora said on a day of rain.

‘Yes, yes,' cried Fanny.

It was the weather, it was the time, when the long, sharp golden sword sliced the watery sky, and steam rose from cow dung. The air was heavy and gentle as the breath of cows. Their blue tongues licked, slapped at the brown rocks of salt.

‘Let us go behind the cow bails,' Fanny said. ‘That is a place we have not thought of before. And there are sure to be mushrooms. It is just what they like.'

Behind the bails where the nettles were, which the rain had
feathered, there was not so much a smell of cows as of nettles and of crushed earth. It was still and green behind the bails. Also a little frightening. The air began to choke the throat. The drops on the nettles hung suspended. And Tom Wilcocks and Pearl Brawne.

‘What do you want?' asked Pearl.

Or she hissed. She hissed like a white and golden goose disturbed on its eggs beside the creek.

‘We are looking for mushrooms,' said Theodora, right into Pearl's hissing face.

Sticks broke. Under Tom's feet. He was thinking where to put his hands.

‘You run along,' said Pearl. ‘There ain't no mushrooms here.'

And now you could see some strange and palpitating thing had taken place, unknown, or by accident, in Pearl's blouse. Pearl had burst, pinker than any split mushroom, white-cleft. Pearl's front was open. It was terrible and strange. And the terror and strangeness mounted. It took you. You had to laugh.

‘Oooh,' said Fanny's voice.

You began to point, you began to sing.

‘Tom Wilcocks and Pearl Brawne! Tom Wilcocks and Pearl Brawne!' the voices of the Goodmans sang, but thin, and changed, and metallic.

Tom Wilcocks laughed through his nose. He turned his face aside and spat.

‘You're a pair of bold little girls,' cried Pearl. ‘I hate you.'

You could see now that she really did. Hate was in the upstanding heads of nettles, and the wet, black, crushed earth.

It was time to go.

What had happened was put away, turned over, and left. Only once, Fanny had begun to giggle.

‘What is it?' Theodora asked.

‘Pearl Brawne lost her buttons,' Fanny giggled and sang. ‘In the nettles. In the nettles.'

But Theodora did not wish to pursue this theme. She walked away. She would not think, or only a little. For the group behind the cow bails had a great spreading shadow, which grew and grew, it was difficult to ignore. On the lustier, gustier days, cloud and hill and the sinuous movement of the creek reminded. Tom
and Pearl were astride the world. Tom's laugh was thick and thoughtful, in the yard, behind the twisted hawthorn, or holding in his hands blunt eels that he had pulled struggling out of the creek. Tom's laugh would not come right out of his mouth, it lay just behind his lips, and his eyes were half closed. Sometimes Theodora saw Tom's face very clearly, right down to the dark, glistening hairs that sprouted from his nose. Or the face of Pearl, recoiling in disgust from young birds, that Theodora brought to touch. But Pearl stroked the swallows' eggs, and where her blouse dipped down there were two little speckles like the speckles on an egg.

Cloud bred cloud on heavy afternoons, where Theodora walked. The water in the creek was brown and warm. Frogs brooded, and magpies flew low. Light yawned out of the hins, and from the yellow thickets of the gorse, Theodora stood and let the water lip her legs. She could just hear. Now light and water lay smoothly together. She took off her clothes. She would lie in the water. And soon her thin brown body was the shallow, browner water. She would not think. She would drift. As still as a stick. And as thin. But on the water circles widen and cut. If Pearl Brawne took off her clothes, Theodora said, and lay in the water, the hills would move, she is fine as a big white rose, and I am a stick. If it is good to be a stick, said Theodora, it is better to be a big white rose.

Not long after this what happened, happened.

It was Sunday in the dining-room. The table blazed. And Father was carving mutton with the big knife. Sunday always filled the dining-room, and the dining-table never looked so shiny, nor so round. Week days were thin days, by comparison, thinly scattered with cold meat. Watching Father carve the mutton it was like somebody with music, someone with a 'cello in his hands. Father loved to carve the joint. It was his pride. Sunday was like this. It continued all along.

‘Take the joint to the kitchen, Pearl,' said Father, ‘and keep it warm for you girls.'

‘Yes, Mr Goodman,' Pearl said.

But this was where it happened. Pearl fell down. Between the table and the door Pearl Brawne fell, and there never was such a harvest, such a falling gold. Pearl lay on the carpet with the
leg of mutton, and gravy on her face. What had happened was immense.

‘Pearl, Pearl,' cried Fanny. ‘Dear Pearl! What has happened? Pearl is dead!'

And then Father was helping Pearl, who still had spots of gravy on her face.

‘It is nothing,' said Mother. ‘Fanny, sit in your place. Do not fuss over Pearl. It is nothing,' she repeated.

Mother was very calm and straight, even though Sunday lay in pieces in the dining-room. And when Pearl had gone to the kitchen, she looked at Father and said, ‘I thought as much.'

And her rings flashed.

You knew that Mother had decided, what Gertie Stepper would have called, the fate of Pearl. But it was deeper than this. Now whole mirrors rippled and walls stirred. There was a general throbbing. You could put in your hand and touch the heart.

So Pearl Brawne was to leave. She cried. She looked lumpy in her hat. She said, ‘Yous would never understand.'

Tom Wilcocks had already gone.

‘Where is Tom?' Fanny asked.

‘Tom has gone,' said Gertie Stepper.

‘Why?' asked Fanny.

But Gertie only said, ‘Because.'

Soon it was all over, even the last gust of Pearl in the kitchen before she left. She cried enough to burst her seams, and outside, the cart waited with her things.

Afterwards the house continued to stir with the great mystery that had taken place. There was always a great deal that never got explained.

‘I would like to know,' said Theodora, ‘I would like to know everything.'

Steam rose from the sheets, for it was ironing time.

‘There's a lot that isn't for little girls,' said Gertie Stepper.

She held the iron off her red cheek, which was even redder than it should have been.

‘But when I am old,' Theodora said. ‘Everything and everything.'

‘Ah, when you are old,' said Gertie, pressing heavy on the hot sheet. ‘When I am old all I shall want is a cup of tea, and die.'

It made Theodora laugh. As if it could ever happen this way.