Swords and Crowns and Rings (17 page)

‘What will we do, Cushie?' He couldn't help it; his voice came out as a groan.

‘We'll run away and get married. While Mama is at Ghinni!'

‘I haven't any money. I can't seem to get a job. It might always be like that because...because I'm a dwarf.'

He looked at her in anguish.

‘It was all just a kid's dream, wasn't it?'

‘No.' Cushie's voice was husky. ‘I love you, Jackie. Nothing matters but that.'

Something sweet, powerful and irrevocable filled both of them.

Cushie said, ‘It's time, isn't it?' She gave a gasp of fright and joy.

‘Are you sure?' said Jackie. He dared not look at her, but felt her nod.

It was like a dream, half-unreal, and yet more truly real than any other experience in life. Once Jackie, at the moment of climax, saw a small bird with a red crest alight on a bough outside Cushie's window, perch there with the sun shining through its crest, turning it to a small formless flame that was reflected as a gibbous pinkness upon the curtain. And it seemed to him inexplicably that he was the bird, the sun, the curtain, light itself.

And another time he heard a car-horn, far away, and instead of being just a car-horn it had become a long clarabella sound, like the wind amongst precipices. He was mesmerised by it, hearing it in his ear long after it had passed.

‘What is it?' asked Cushie, afloat in joy.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I feel...all changed.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘It's loving.'

It was as though the time of year, fortunate chance, Nature itself, conspired to make it easy for them to be lovers.

There were auditors at the Bank, and Mr Moy left home early and returned late. Mrs Moy had stood down the cleaning woman and the gardener for the short period of her absence and Cushie did the negligible household shopping herself. No one ever came to the house.

Sometimes Jackie was over there by eight o'clock, to leap into Cushie's tumbled bed before she'd cleared her father's breakfast dishes away. It was as if a madness had seized them; they forgot all prudence; the world scarcely existed. They frolicked like fishes, nothing between them but bliss.

The delight that Jackie had in the girl's body was extravagant. Upon the back of his closed eyelids he could see its whiteness, its tallness, the indescribable texture of the skin. Could this have been the fat little Cushie, roly-poly, smeared and weeping, he had brought down from the hills that day they had gone looking for the other dwarfs? Now she was a goddess.

Looking upon this perfection, he had been cruelly conscious of his own physical misshapenness, and had said, ‘Don't you mind? Don't you care that I'm like this?'

She said, ‘Yes, I do.'

It was like a knife stuck in his heart.

Then she said, ‘I care because you care, that's all. It has nothing to do with me, really. I love you, and you haven't anything to do with the way you look, any more than I have.'

But to Jackie Cushie was the way she looked. He was besotted with the way she looked. Once, lying in his arms, she opened those beautiful eyes suddenly and said, ‘We'll be separated again soon, and it will be much worse this time. I can't be apart from you now, never! What can we do? We'll have to plan—something.'

‘Not yet. Everything will come out all right. Anyway, you ought to be doing your piano practice. You'll fail.'

‘Nobody fails,' said Cushie contemptuously. ‘It's all rubbish. All pretence. It's disgusting. Still, I'd better do some practice, and you'd better listen. Isn't your mother suspicious about your coming over here so much?'

‘I've turned into a lying rat,' said Jackie. ‘She thinks I go off to sulk around the town, complaining of the Linzes to my old mates. Sometimes I say I'm coming here to listen to you practise, and she says she doesn't know how I can stand it, all that classical stuff.'

Cushie laughed. ‘I can't stand it myself. I'd rather cook Daddy's dinner. I've loved being here by myself, keeping house. Well, come on, I'll do my exam piece, and you can suffer through it.'

The shop had been more than usually busy that morning. The boom brought such brisk trade that Mrs MacNunn thought it would never end. She and Jerry were seriously considering putting on a boy, a steady young fellow old enough to do the grocery deliveries in the truck.

‘We got Jackie, you know,' said the Nun. ‘The lorry gears could be altered.'

Mrs MacNunn thrust out her lower lip in an Irish bulge of obstinacy. ‘He's going back to the orchard. You'll see,' she declared.

‘He's gone after a coupla jobs here, you know,' said Jerry mildly.

‘Yes, and missed out on them, too,' pointed out his wife. ‘Gawd, there's that bell again!'

She took a last gulp of her scalding tea, clutched her throat with an expression of agony, and hurried into the shop, wiping her lips on her apron. Jerry emptied the teapot and sat down rubbing his leg, which seemed to be transfixed by a red-hot screw.

The faint sounds of ‘In a Monastery Garden' drifted across Edward Street. Jerry supposed, with some uneasiness, that Jackie was over there keeping Cushie company. He was sure that Mr Moy didn't know Jackie spent so much time with Cushie, and equally sure that he wouldn't care much for it if he knew.

It struck him that he should, in all humanity, say something to young Jack. But how could he put it.

‘Course, I know you aren't getting any lovey-dovey ideas about young Cushie; you're just chums like you always was; but you got to remember that any time now an upper-crust young sort like that is going to be took to Sydney and married off to some rich squatter's son, or a lawyer or something. I mean...'

It wouldn't do. And coming straight out with it wouldn't do, either.

‘Jackie, you got to remember you don't look like other fellows. The fact is, me old Jack...'

Not only did the Nun not know how to put it to Jack that romance for him might be a distant or unlikely thing, but there was too much compassion in him to do more than think about dropping a word in the boy's ear.

‘Can't shove me oar in, really, not without giving the kid a knock,' he pondered. ‘And what about them Linzes, eh? Maybe I should have written to old Eva and gone scone-hot about the way they treated the boy. But if I did, and young Jack goes back there, like Peg thinks, it might make things worse for him. Better keep me jaw clamped.'

He said that night to Jackie, ‘Cushie going off back to college soon, eh?'

‘Saturday,' said Jackie shortly. ‘Her Mum comes back tomorrow.'

Jackie had already said good-bye to Cushie, and it had almost killed him. He felt as though his blood were running out the end of his toes. At the same time he was impartially aware of his awe at the extent of his bereavement. It seemed to him that it was incontestable proof that he and Cushie were more in love than anyone ever had been before.

‘Which is bloody garbage,' said one side of his mind, sounding disagreeably like that of an adult making nonsense of a child's ideas.

The other side of him, the lover, the lingering child, wanted to go away and sob and scream. He even took to sleeping in the treehouse, that old shelter and fortress of his, curling up in his blankets, imagining that Cushie was with him, one with him in watching the ceaseless dapple of the moonlight on the floor, enjoying with him the faint oceanic movement of the tree.

But it was too cold out there, either to sleep or dream, and he had to scrabble back along the branch to his own bed, melancholy and resentful that childhood and its ability to bear hardship for the sake of romantic fancy was seeping away from him.

Half-heartedly he tried for another job or two. There were plenty of them, for in spite of immigration from Europe the work force had not recovered from its brutal depletion during the War. But he did not get work. This did not bother him, for privately he knew that he was going back to High Valley. He had boasted to Cushie that he was not afraid to return there, and he had lied.

‘If I was as big and heavy as they are, I wouldn't be,' he said to himself, and this was true. ‘But I'm not. I'm not full-sized. There's no changing that. I'd change it like a shot if I could, but I can't. But that doesn't mean I can't lead a full-sized life, and I will.'

So, after Cushie had been gone ten days or a fortnight, he said almost absent-mindedly to Jerry, ‘I think I'll get back to High Valley at the end of the week. I expect Hof needs a hand with the spraying.'

Jerry was nonplussed. But he had sense enough not to ask questions.

‘Right-e-oh, me old Jack.'

Peggy MacNunn asked guiltily, ‘You really have made up your mind yourself? Because I'm sorry I flew off the handle like that back there.'

‘No,' said Jackie. ‘I thought it over.'

Mrs MacNunn was certain that Cushie had had a word with him.

‘Good sensible little thing,' she said. ‘Not one of your flappers, that one. Kids listen to other kids more than their parents. I'll bet that's what happened, Jerry.'

So once again the Nun took his stepson to the station in the old lorry. Jackie's mother said she couldn't face it again; she'd stay home and scrub out the shop.

Once again the Nun shook hands with Jackie through the train window. He didn't feel easy. He didn't like the look Jackie was trying to keep off his face.

‘Ah, God,' he said. ‘I hope things will go all right.'

There were other people in the train compartment, so Jackie closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. He let his mind return to that day when Cushie, suddenly sitting up and thumping him lightly on the belly, exclaimed, ‘Granny!'

She had suddenly thought of Granny Jackaman, that loving, rather common old puss who was affectionately discounted by most of her distinguished family, and had taken such a fancy to her almost unknown granddaughter.

‘Granny will help us,' declared Cushie. The plan for their going to Granny Jackaman, explaining their love, asking her assistance to marry, sprang fully-fledged into her head.

Jackie listened incredulously.

‘When I have to go back to Mount Rosa,' said Cushie, flushed with daring and triumph, ‘I'll just continue straight on to Sydney. I'll go to Granny and explain everything...'

‘But you're under age,' protested Jackie. ‘Your parents wouldn't let you get married. Don't be mad, Cushie. You're dreaming.'

‘Aha,' said Cushie, ‘Granny holds the purse-strings now. Granny's wealthy as can be. She'd get around Mama and Daddy somehow. She'd be tickled to be mixed up in an elopement; she's as romantic as a flapper; she's gorgeous.'

Jackie thought Granny sounded as if she had bats in her belfry. He sprang out of bed and began to dress quickly. But Cushie was adamant. ‘Look, you don't understand. Granny was just a poor immigrant Irish girl who worked in my great-grandfather's workroom—sweatshop, more likely. And my grandfather James ran off with her, and old Joseph Jackaman cut him off without a penny. Granny knows what it's like to be young and in love. Granny...'

‘You've got to be practical, Cushie,' said Jackie. ‘You're going on like a kid of ten. What about me, what about a job? If you have ideas about you and me living on your Granny Jackaman, then put that out of your head.'

‘But there's the store!' cried Cushie. ‘And my Aunt Australia owns it! She's Granny's favourite daughter; she'll make a place for you. There must be thousands of things you could do at Jackaman's.'

They had argued about it interminably.

‘I won't have you saying that Granny's just a silly old lady,' she flashed. ‘And if you think that her family can argue her out of anything she's got her mind set on, then you're dotty. Even Uncle Titus—and he's the only living son—can't make her change her mind. Anyway, he's in England with Aunt Laetitia. Oh, please, Jackie, it's our only chance. Just let's try it!'

‘I haven't even enough money for the fare to Sydney,' said Jackie irascibly. ‘I couldn't turn up penniless. A man's got his self-respect: you don't understand that.'

‘I can give it to you,' cried Cushie excitedly. ‘I've got a savings account at the Bank. I can tell Daddy it's for new clothes before I go back to college...'

She saw at once she had made a tactical error. Jackie put on a display of affronted pride, half spontaneous and half theatrical because he thought she would expect it of him. But all she did was to blush miserably and gasp apologies, which he accepted after a while. ‘I wouldn't offend you for anything, Jackie,' she murmured humbly; ‘it's just that I don't know these things.'

But the next day she broached the subject again. She was desperate, Jackie could see. She had no idea how they could ever be together unless this romantic Granny helped. And they had to be together.

‘It's all right, for you, being a boy. You're free,' said Cushie. ‘But I'm dependent on everyone. I haven't really done anything I wanted to do since I was born. But this is different. I'll die if I can't be with you for the rest of my life; I just can't bear to think of it.'

At last they decided that Cushie's plan didn't have to be put into effect right away. Perhaps at the end of the term, in early November, Cushie could go to see her grandmother, even with her parents' permission.

‘And I'll go back to the Linz orchard and earn some money,' Jackie said.

Cushie was against that; terrified, obdurate. His protestations of lack of fear did not convince her.

‘I'm afraid for you,' she wailed.

It had seemed half a lifetime away to Cushie then, and so it seemed to Jackie now, as he sat in the racketing, jolting train on his way to Ghinni Junction.

‘Things will be different with the Linzes this time,' he thought. ‘They've all got the dirt off their livers; they'll be more settled down about me. And it'll only be for a couple of months.'