Swords and Crowns and Rings (26 page)

But her mother had thought of her and Jackie behaving like that. Cushie pulled her mind away from the memory of her mother lying collapsed in the kitchen chair, and undressed quickly.

‘I won't think of it. I won't think of it.'

As she put on her dressing-gown she heard a key in the front door. Aunt Claudie's face and its probable expression flashed before her like a vision. Scared, but impudent, putting a good front on things. And Auntie Iris, with her fierce blind look, so different from her usual impersonal calm.

Auntie Claudie must have seen Iris waiting for her, for there was a small silence before Claudie spoke:

‘Ay don't see why you are staring at may in that tone of voice, Ayris.'

‘You tart. You absolute, stinking, unmitigated tart!'

‘Oh, what a mood we're in, to be sure.'

Cushie heard one of Claudie's shoes hit the floor. The other, thrown by an erratic hand, broke glass or china.

‘Oooh, sorry, Ayris. Ay'm a teeny bit tiddly.'

‘He got his bit, I've no doubt, that swine.'

‘Maind your own business. You're so common and vulgar, Ayris, a maind like a drain.'

‘I can smell him, all over you!'

‘Oh, rats.'

There was the sound of glasses being knocked over, a slammed cupboard door, and Claudie's petulant voice: ‘Haven't we anything in this bloody house to drink?'

‘You might be interested to know that—she, upstairs—saw you in the church doorway with your tomcat.'

‘Oh, fency! And Ay suppose she doesn't know more than her prayers?'

‘You'll be less cocky when she writes and tells that smug brother of yours, and he takes her away. You'll miss your fifteen smackers!'

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up, you awful bitch, Iris! She's a naice kid, she's not a mean-minded perv like you. Kindly get out of mai way. Ay'm going to bed.'

There was a sound of a scuffle, hoarse cries, weeping, a blow.

‘Now you've done it, you beast. That will be black tomorrow.'

Claudie exploded into genuine sobs, and charged unimpeded up the stairs, Iris following, agitatedly weeping. Cushie could not believe it. Iris weeping?

‘Oh, Bubby, I didn't mean it; it was an accident. Bubby, say you know I didn't mean it.'

A door slammed, cut off the rest. Cushie crept out onto the landing. The quarrel broke out again behind the bedroom door. There were thumps; something tipped over with a frightful crash.

An intermittent banging on the front of the house began. Cushie ran back into her room and looked out the window. A man was leaning across from the neighbouring dormer, belting whatever he could reach with a broom.

‘Let a man sleep, willya? Oughta be ashamed this hour of the night. I'm on early shift—you hear, you drunken cows?'

Cushie hesitated a moment, and then went to knock timorously on the door of her aunt's bedroom. She called, ‘Auntie, there's a man...swearing...the man next door. What shall I do?'

Claudie uttered a short muffled squeal.

‘Ay'll fix the old baboon. Hang on, dear. Let me go, Ayris.'

The bedroom door flew open. Claudie barged out, clad in knickers and an embroidered camisole badly torn at its square neck. One of her earphones was off, and the other hanging by a hair or two.

‘False hair!' thought Cushie, amazed.

Her aunt's black eye was already puffed to closing point. She shoved past Cushie and into the other bedroom. Hanging perilously out the window, she seized the broomhead from the protestor's unwary hand, and heaved on it.

‘Why don't you fall on your bloody empty head!'

The neighbour let go the broom just in time. Cushie heard him yelp to someone behind him, ‘The damned bint tried to pull me out! Tried to murder me!'

Victoriously Claudie slammed down the window, turned to the awed Cushie, and said in a queenly tone, ‘Go to bed. You're supposed to be sick. Never mind him next door, he'll be quaiet for the naight, you'll see.'

She weaved away to bed.

Cushie tried to sleep, but she could not. Shocked giggles escaped from her involuntarily, so that she hid her face in the pillow to stifle them.

The unaccustomed activity had renewed the bleeding. With aversion, she rose to attend to it, as though her body were a stranger's. It did not like what she had agreed to have done to it, so it bled. Remembering Jackie's admiration for her body, she looked at it wonderingly. The belly seemed slack, her breasts were still sore. The texture of her flesh was different, yielding, ready to expand and enfold. But there was nothing to enfold, and perhaps never would be again.

She heard soft whimpers from her aunt's bedroom, a soothing murmur, and imagined Claudie woebegone, sorry she had drunk too much, and Iris sitting beside the bed, holding her hand forgivingly. Cushie felt an almost unbearable longing to have someone hold her hand until she went to sleep. The endless, wearing procession of thoughts began once more: Daddy ill...What were those men doing to Jackie?...What will become of me, what will become of me?...Mama loathes Auntie Claudie, and yet she wrote to her rather than write to me...

A sullen wrath filled her heart. How could Mama do such a thing? I would never do that to my daughter, never. Her rage was against the idolised mother, the adored father, life itself. She punched the pillow in a blind fury and all of a sudden fell into exhausted sleep, to dream of a baby, faceless, nameless, yet familiar.

She awoke with an uncanny sensation that the little creature was asleep next to her, its head on her pillow. The feeling grew stronger. She was afraid to look as she rose and dressed. Her unsettled mind had seized on the thought obsessively. She tried to recapture her feeling of anger, but it had gone. The baby stayed in her mind, crying, playing. She could hardly drive it away long enough to concentrate on what Iris was saying to her as she set off to work, glum, almost silent.

‘Take Auntie Claudie a cup of tea, will you? She's not the best this morning,' she tossed over her shoulder as she hurried out into the radiant heat.

Cushie had never seen beyond the door of her aunt's room, nor did she wish to. Reluctantly she knocked.

Claudie was sitting up in bed, smoking. She had a hangover and a black eye, and a puffy, satiated face. The room was thick with the smell of Turkish cigarettes, rosewater, and an unemptied chamber-pot under the bed.

‘Ta, dear. You're a good kid. Oh, gee whiz, my head feels like a hive of bees.'

Claudie had an extraordinary look of slyness and silliness that filled the girl with embarrassment. It occurred to her suddenly that she disliked her aunt profoundly.

‘Suppose you're wondering about last night.'

Dumbly, Cushie shook her head, dropping her gaze as she did so to avoid her aunt's sidelong glance. She saw that the carpet was patterned with big pink cabbage roses like babies' faces. They looked at her upside-down, sideways, right into her eyes. It was terrible. She began crying helplessly.

‘For God's sake don't, or I'll start, too. Stop it, will you?'

But Cushie couldn't stop, couldn't explain, and at last Claudie crawled from the bed, impatient, petulant, crying, ‘As though it's not enough to have the mother and father of a hangover, I've got to have a potty niece as well', and trailed downstairs to get a strong brandy for herself and a weaker one for Cushie.

‘Here, wrap yourself around this.'

Claudie toppled into bed, wreathed her head in smoke. Cushie gulped down a mouthful, choked.

‘You're not the only girl who's had hard luck, you know,' said her aunt. ‘Ever think what would have happened to you if you hadn't a good, kind father? What happened to me, that's what!' The expression of an older, drier, sourer woman flashed across her face. ‘Yeah, I had a baby, in a charity home, with the cruellest, most sanctimonious bitches in the world looking after me. A little boy, it was. I often wonder how he's grown up. He'd be nine now.'

‘Didn't his father...didn't he want him?' ventured Cushie.

Claudie shot her a narrowed glance. She said shortly, ‘No, 'course not. Well, this won't get the paddock ploughed.'

She sprang out of bed, winced, tottered to the glass to examine her eye. ‘That rotten Iris! One of these days she'll go too far. Go on, hop it, sweetie. I gotta get the glad-rags on.'

Cushie went. The brandy had made her feel better, harder. The anger against her mother rose in a steady and invigorating glow. She wouldn't have treated Olwyn like that; she'd have written to Olwyn. She'd be with Olwyn right here in Sydney, taking care of her. But anything does for me. All right, I promised I wouldn't write to Jackie, I gave my sacred word, but I'm going to break it. I love him and he loves me, and I'm going to write to him.

With uncharacteristic resolution she wrote to him, stamped the letter, took it to the pillar-box, and was not sorry. How long would it take the letter to be picked up by Jackie's employers, delivered to him, answered? She resolved to wait for ten days without fretting too much. She would be patient, try to be friendly to Claudie and Iris, she'd put herself out so that fate would reward her with a letter from Jackie, perhaps even a visit from Jackie himself.

Claudie, peevish, banging around in childish tantrums, disguised her black eye as best she could, and made her ostentatiously feeble way across the road to relieve Iris at lunch-time. Cushie was glad to have the excuse to accompany her. The baby was back in her head and she wanted to lose it.

Iris looked harried and fatigued. She was wearing oilskin gloves sooted over with dye. An elderly woman with hair as black as a bowler hat looked at her grotesque reflection and smiled doubtfully.

‘Ten years younger if you're a day,' said Iris, taking off the protective cape, brushing the woman down, accepting her money, all with a false, admiring smile.

‘Me old man will go scone-hot,' predicted the woman. ‘We don't care, do we?' But Cushie, expert in fear, knew that the poor fright was all a-quiver with trepidation.

Iris said brusquely to Claudie, ‘There's a shampoo waiting.'

Claudie made a pathetic face at her. ‘Oh, Iris, I'm not up to it, really. Bending over the basin, I'll heave, I know I will.'

‘'Ere,' said the shampoo customer, uneasily.

‘Only teasing,' said Claudie instantly, and Cushie was faintly ashamed to see that the potato-faced client got the same coquettish smile that Iris received when Claudie wanted something out of her.

‘This is my little niece from up country,' prattled Claudie, whipping off her blouse and putting on a pink overall. ‘She's going to help her poor overworked little auntie, aren't you, precious?'

‘I've something for her to do first,' said Iris firmly. She beckoned to Cushie.

‘How do you feel this morning?' she asked. ‘Not too shaky? Because if you feel you're up to it I'd like you to sit on this stool and dry this water-wave for me. You wouldn't mind, would you, madam? Dorothy is recovering from appendicitis. Now then, Dorothy, you hold the hand dryer like this, and move it over Madam's hair like this...'

Cushie timorously took the dryer, the customer emitted a sharp hoot, and Iris unostentatiously moved the blast of hot air from cheek to snail-curled head.

‘Call me at once, madam, if you're not comfortable,' she said, retreating to the next cubicle for a cigarette and a cup of tea. Gratefully, Cushie knew that Iris was keeping on eye on her. She uttered timid monosyllables in response to the woman's encyclopaedic recountal of all the appendicitis operations of which she had ever heard. Her arm ached unmercifully, she found the small job long and tedious. Before it was finished, Iris appeared, took the dryer, said, ‘Mrs List would like your assistance, please, Dorothy.'

Claudie had disposed of her client and was sitting on the lid of the lavatory puffing a cigarette between snivels.

‘Whatever's the matter, Aunt Claudie?' asked Cushie with dread.

Claudie made a loud tragic sound.

‘I'm just fed to the back teeth with washing these dirty old muffs! That one was chatty!'

‘My person talked a lot too,' offered Cushie.

‘You've sure led a sheltered life,' snapped her aunt. ‘Chats are lice. And I'm sick of them. God, am I sick of them!' She threw the cigarette in a nearby heap of hair cuttings. At once it began to smoulder.

‘Hell!' screamed Claudie, scooping up the stuff and jamming it down the WC. She dragged at the chain, but the cistern only hiccuped and groaned. Evil-smelling smoke seeped out around the lid. The two women looked at it in horror for a moment or two, when there was a subdued hiss. Cautiously Claudie looked into the bowl.

‘Uggh,' she said, bursting into laughter, at the same time wincing and holding her hand over her black eye.

‘Oh, bust it all,' she said. ‘I'm bloody down today, I can tell you, kid. I'd go down to the pub for a hair of the dog if it weren't for Iris.'

Iris appeared round the curtain. ‘If you want to sneak off to the pub, damned well do it, and don't bother coming back.'

Claudie sniffed dolorously. ‘You're holding a grudge, Iris. And how you can, when you know how miserable it makes me, I simply don't know!'

Iris sighed. ‘Go and have a spot, Claudie, go on.'

‘If that's the posish, then,' said Claudie in a trembling voice, ‘I'll go, as invited!' And she pulled on her hat, snatched up her fringed bag, and flounced out of the shop.

‘Hungover as a bedspread,' said Iris. She grinned at Cushie. ‘Poor little beast. She'll be back, all jam and kisses. But I'm sorry about banging her in the eye. It was an accident.'

She added: ‘You could be a bit more friendly to her without putting yourself out.'

Cushie said sulkily, ‘I don't really know her, do I?'

Iris shrugged. ‘Right!' She thrust the long holder between her teeth, spoke around it. ‘I must be off my chump trying to make an infant like you understand anything about an older woman.' She glanced around. ‘Now then, fancy dusting out the window, rearranging it? I've a perm due in a few minutes, so I've just time for a puff out back.'