Swords and Crowns and Rings (21 page)

Jackie leapt monkey-like to the platform, ran after the train as it gathered speed. Amongst the faces that stared from the carriage windows, he could not see Cushie's.

He yelled, ‘Where are you? Where are you?'

As Hof and the dark brother caught up with him, he thought he heard her voice calling his name, but it was lost in the brattling roar of the train.

He stood at the end of the platform, his head bent. Tears fell down his damaged face. Hof picked him up like a child and carried him to the truck. Like a melancholy cry sounded the whistle of the express as it rounded the curve, a cry that lingered, mourned, wept in his ears, long after they had returned to High Valley.

3

Cushie Moy 1924–1925

Cushie Moy awakened one morning and knew she was pregnant. Though she had listened to so many whispered discussions on the theme after lights-out in the dormitory, Cushie had never contributed anything; she felt she had nothing to say. And nothing was expected of her, for at Mount Rosa she was looked upon as a mild-tempered nonentity. Yet the conversations themselves left her uneasy, as if there were a world outside herself and Jackie and their love for each other—a world harsh and ribald.

A large number of the girls in Cushie's dormitory believed that one could get pregnant only after marriage. They were dismayed and outraged when others, who knew without possibility of error that wretched servants in their family households had, whilst still unmarried, got into trouble, informed them snubbingly that they'd better sharpen up.

Until she turned fifteen, Cushie had been one of this ignoramus group, and had been jeered at by the more sophisticated pupils. But where could she have found out? It was unthinkable that she should ask her mother. Once, when small, Cushie had inquired, ‘Where did Olwyn come from?' and the answer had been, ‘God sent her to be a darling little playmate for you.'

The mistresses at Mount Rosa shied like frightened horses from any mention of the body or its functions. In all the college's venerable history no girl, as far as was known, had dared ask for an elucidation of the facts of life.

‘If you do,' was the legend, ‘you are expelled at once, and taken away in a black van.'

As each pupil neared her time of maturation, she was called to the matron's office to listen to a terrifying speech full of incomprehensible phrases about the sacred burdens of womanhood. She was then given a small blue-wrapped parcel which contained a packet of sanitary pads and a copy of a booklet entitled
Jane's Twelfth Birthday.
After that she was allowed at regular intervals to skip physical education on the grounds of having a headache, known amongst the girls as ‘visiting Jane'.

There was, in fact, no way of finding out the truth about anything except by listening to the girls, who were obsessed with guilty curiosity and fear. Some, bolder by temperament, or blessed with parents more broadminded than the rest, spoke out indignantly:

‘What a lot of utter rot it all is! All these filthy things have to happen to us, and we can't even talk about them!'

Cushie said, ‘Having a baby can't be filthy.'

‘Oh, shut up, Moy! What do you know about anything, Dotty-Dot? Go on, Valerie, tell us about your sister having a baby.'

‘My sister says having a baby is beyond description. She said she'd jump over South Head before she had another one. Not only the pain and everything, but all the blood and stuff.'

Stuff? The blood of the younger listeners ran cold. Yet, their hideous curiosity remained unsatisfied, their panic unsoothed, as Valerie dropped her voice, spoke only to the girls on either side of her, so that the darkness remained fraught with secrecy, shame, and dread.

None of this had ever worried Cushie. Her animal innocence remained undisturbed. Even when she knew what could be the consequence of making love with a boy, she found it impossible to believe that it could happen to her. It was something that belonged to grown-up people, like money troubles, or dying, or having superfluous hair grow on your top lip.

For Cushie still thought of herself and Jackie as children. Almost imperceptibly they had passed out of playing childish games under the willows or in the treehouse to lying in each other's arms. The contented joy of one was no less continuous than the rapture of the other. What was between her and Jackie was something suspended in time, unrelated to any other fact of existence, part of her private world, where all was natural, and secure, and cherishable.

So when she awakened and recognised that something had happened to her she was thunderstruck. Yet never for a moment did she doubt it; the change in the way she felt was too novel. She went around in a daze, constantly in trouble for absentmindedness and carelessness. In a fortnight there was the first confirmation of her belief, in six weeks another. It was incredible.

As the brief term ended, and she realised that she would soon be home under the critical gaze of her mother, the full horror of her circumstances rushed upon her. She had no desire to confide in any of the girls. Wrapped up within herself, she did not even think of Jackie and his part in this catastrophe. This extraordinary thing had happened to her, not to Jackie. Her one thought was to hide it—for a little time, while she thought out what to do. Beyond that her helpless imagination could not take her.

When she arrived home half of her went on as usual, tried to please her mother, played with and even quarrelled with Olwyn, went to afternoon-tea parties and docilely showed off her pretty Mount Rosa manners. The other half gibbered with terror and dismay. Her ignorance was terrible. She did not even know when her body would change so that her mother would notice. But there was one way she could postpone discovery: she could grow fat.

This solution seemed to Cushie to be very sensible. It would give her more time, perhaps even until Jackie returned from Ghinni Junction. And before then she would have found enough courage to speak about her predicament to Jackie's mother.

The one silver-framed photograph on Isobel Moy's dressing-table was of her sister Laetitia, Lady Broome—whom she disliked rather than otherwise—smiling a frail, imperialist's smile from beneath some rajah's spider-like fringed umbrella. Laetitia, Papa's ‘rogue', did more than anyone to keep alive in Isobel's heart her implacable contempt for her husband. And contemptuously she watched him now, as he methodically prepared for bed, keeping well away from the window.

Submissively, Mr Moy served a great many superstitions. He avoided sitting beside an open window in case someone shot him; he shunned the sea, whether below or around him; and he was convinced that the occasional Puss Moth that chugged above would fall on him, his house, or the Bank.

He was still handsome. But Isobel's Papa had been right. That was all there was to him. Under that gem-like exterior was a soul as big as a bean.

Perhaps he was considering a little dutiful dalliance tonight? For as he pulled on his pyjama trousers he gave her an arch look. Reflectively she stared at his belly, a firm melon of unreal white substance. Not flesh. Fish perhaps—one of those inedible river cod. No, she had it. It was nougat. She was spellbound by the likeness. The texture, colour, everything was perfect. What, no cherries, no almonds?

There, her fascinated gaze had put him off his stroke. Now he'd go and have an enema instead.

To think she had thrown herself away on this trash! She could scarcely believe she had once hated her father because of his opposition to the marriage. He, who had given her everything else her heart had ever desired, had irrevocably forbidden it, and rightly so. In six months she had become a creature of bitter precocity, fully aware of the trap into which she had so wilfully marched.

‘Mother should have locked me up, sent me over to Adela in India, disabled me in some way, rather than let me do what I did.'

Ah, she could have been great with a strong, dynamic husband to inspire her, as her sisters had been inspired! She knew she had within her volcanoes of energy like her elder sister Australia, to whom their diabolic grandfather, Joseph Jackaman, had left sole control of the emporium in Sydney. She knew that, like Australia, she was made of steel; better than that, of hard, hard diamond! She had the capacity to glitter, as Australia had never had. But her light was hidden by a bushel, this smug ninny, whose very limit of ambition was to be a Bank auditor.

Even her children were unsatisfactory, one of defective health and appearance, and the other gauche, flinching, often glum—and, what was more, getting fat. Cushie had always been a hearty eater, but these last two weeks she had become a gluttonous one as well. Two helpings of dessert, endless slices of bread and butter smuggled up to her room, and heaven knew how many chocolate wrappings secretly sneaked out to the rubbish tins. But the daily woman, inquisitive like all her class, had spied them and made it her business to remark that some lucky young ladies had more pocket-money for such tooth-rotting fiddle-faddle than honest working men had to feed their families on for a week.

She, Dorothy, had been so shy and awkward at her Grandpapa's obsequies that her mother had scarcely been able to bear it. Her lack of poise, after all those wickedly expensive years at Mount Rosa! And Olwyn had been little better, showing off, becoming ill, coughing and spluttering all through the service in the cathedral. She had seen the glances of her sisters, especially Britannia, or Anna, as they called her now, who had married a wealthy military bachelor late in life and had turned into an extremely thin, iridescent sort of woman like a mosquito.

‘How on earth did poor dear Belle produce such a pair of goblins?'

Isobel's fine nostrils stiffened. She could hear Anna's high-bred whine in her very ear. Venomous creature! She had never liked her sisters very much, and had scarcely known her only surviving brother, Titus, who had been sent off to be educated in England when she was still young. But now! The thought of Titus was so disturbing, so darkly exciting that ever since her father's death she had been turning over and over like a pebble her memories of Titus's face, voice, his bad, bold eighteenth-century eyes.

Isobel sat up in bed. She could have sworn she had heard the stealthy opening of a door downstairs. If it was Cushie again, stuffing herself, she'd know the reason why!

Silently, the mother descended the stairs and stood outside the kitchen door. Through the crack she saw Cushie at the icebox, cramming into her mouth handfuls of cold potato. The girl gagged, her hands clenched; she looked as if she were going to vomit. Then, resolutely, she filled her mouth with the cold soggy stuff once more.

The strangest sensation of fright filled Mrs Moy. Was the girl insane? For while she was cramming this atrocious mess into her mouth, tears were spilling out of her eyes.

‘Dorothy! What on earth are you doing?'

Cushie's eyes flared; her face blanched. She jumped to the kitchen sink and vomited. Half-way between disgust and terror, her mother ran forward.

At the end of the paroxysm Cushie began to weep with panic. ‘I'm sorry, Mama; I'll clean it up. I'm so ashamed.'

She looked quite mad to Mrs Moy, off her head with terror, yellow as wax.

The mother's eyes were watery, dazzled, as though staring into a strong light. A preposterous thought had come into her head. In a moment it had become certainty.

She said, ‘You're in trouble.'

Cushie cringed against the evil-smelling sink. She wanted to say something, tell some tale, some lie. Nothing came out of her mouth. Only her big eyes fixed themselves on her mother's blanched face.

Mr Moy, thoroughly reamed-out as to body, and feeling in consequence absolved, lightsome, spiritual, strolled out of the bathroom just in time to hear from the darkened ground floor of his house a scream that chilled his blood. He thought instantly of burglars. His wife...attacked...some villain disturbed while rifling the silver-drawer...

He rushed back into the bathroom for a weapon. There was nothing but the lavatory brush. Wait, his cut-throat razor! Holding a weapon in each hand, he hurried down the stairs, hearing the screeches growing louder, more piercing. He burst into the kitchen, too alarmed to be cowardly. The place stank like a drain; his wife lay collapsed in a chair; his daughter Dorothy was screaming and running round and round the room, hammering her fists like a lunatic against the kitchen window and the cupboard door. She didn't see him standing there, petrified, with his lavatory brush in one hand and the razor clutched in the other. She just shrieked in as fearful an attack of hysterics as he had ever seen in his life.

At first he thought Isobel was dead; she was so pale, so limp. He roared at the girl to be quiet, think of the neighbours, get a grip on herself! He threatened her with the lavatory brush, and then, feeling ridiculous, dropped it.

His wife opened her eyes, gasped, ‘She's been seduced...Dorothy...somehow. She's expecting!'

Mr Moy's ears buzzed. He thought he had heard wrong through all the commotion. But the girl had to be stopped. She might well be heard as far as the main street. The Bank!

In self-preservative panic he caught Cushie as she charged past him, grabbed her by the front of the nightgown, and slapped her on the face with his open hand. The nightgown ripped, showing tiny pathetic breasts. Mr Moy almost fainted with horror.

‘Stop that noise, stop it this instant!'

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Olwyn at the door, ferret-eyed. A terrible dumb anger seized him. Scarcely knowing what he did, he cast Cushie from him, then chased after her, as though regretting his action. Accidentally his hand struck her face; her nose began to stream blood.

‘Oooh, Daddy, you punched Cushie!' squealed Olwyn, thrilled and outraged.

Cushie lurched through the door. He heard her running up the stairs, banging her head against the wall, still screaming.

‘Quick, quick!' urged Isobel. ‘She might try to kill herself. Anything!'