Swords and Crowns and Rings (31 page)

‘And your age?'

‘Eighteen.'

‘Got anyone to bail you out?'

Cushie looked at her uncomprehendingly. In her pleasant middle-aged face was no scorn or disapproval, nothing but slight impatience.

‘Better than staying in the tank all night, love,' put in the woman with the scar. ‘A kid like you gotta have someone, how about your Mum?'

‘There's Mrs Pauley whom I live with,' said Cushie. She gave the address in Strawberry Hills, and the police matron noted it.

‘I'll mention that you need clothes. Might be a little while,' she said, moving away. Virgie remained behind; her formidable shadow fell across Cushie.

‘Moy, you said your monicker was?'

Cushie made no answer, but lay down and pulled the blanket over her head. A large hand rolled her back to the light.

‘Let's have a gander at you.'

Fingers hard as wood forced up her chin.

‘There's a resemblance all right. Would you be Bede's kid?'

At the sound of her father's name tears filled Cushie's eyes. Instantly she knew she had given herself, and him, away. She could not look at the grotesque face bent above her, the eyes shadowed, the glossy little red mouth stuck amongst a wreath of cheeks and chins.

With one sweep of her arm, Virgie rolled the sleeping woman off the platform. She fell in a boneless heap on the floor. The scarred companion scuttered off hastily.

‘Where's your dad that he's letting you get into trouble like this?'

‘Kingsland,' whispered Cushie. ‘But he's sick, and I'm living here in Sydney with my Aunt Claudie, Mrs List.'

‘Claudie, eh?'

Cushie, hardly daring to look, was aware that the woman had pushed the tennis shade up on her head, revealing a tangle of dirty straw, and was mournfully rocking from side to side. Her neck was covered with scabs.

‘Claudie, eh? Chris'sake!' The woman blew a long breath, both sad and foul. She was silent, humped over like a collapsed haystack. Cushie stole sideways looks at her. Amazing to think that she was probably about the same age as Cushie's mother. She could see no signs in her of the girl in the saucy photograph. The creature was a travesty of any kind of woman.

At last she stirred. ‘I'm your father's sister. Virgie Moy's my name.'

‘Yes, I know now,' whispered Cushie. ‘But I never knew...I mean, Daddy never mentioned...'

‘Always was a mean bugger, Bede,' said the woman. She gave a startling bellow of laughter, shouting out: ‘Hey, what do you think, this kid here's my niece. And here we are, together in the same tank.'

‘We all go the same way home, Virgie,' cackled a voice.

Time passed. Virgie said things. Cushie tried not to hear. She wept helplessly. Then the police matron called Cushie to the door. Unsteadily she made her way there, aware of the Stone-Age faces that stared or glared at her, Virgie following after, dragging her broom.

The redoubtable woman seemed agitated.

‘No, you can't go yet, you ain't answered my questions. I got a right to know, haven't I? Graham, what about my young brother Graham?'

The door opened, and the matron took Cushie by the arm. She turned to say, ‘He got killed in the War. Gallipoli.'

She did not see Virgie's face. The matron took her into her own office. She had one of Cushie's own dresses, a pair of shoes and a jacket.

‘Put them on. There's a Mrs Pauley here to take you home.'

While the desk officer completed the formalities, Cushie did not look at Iris, but idly stared at the floor. She was stupid with fatigue. If Iris had turned on her with a torrent of furious words, she would just have gone on staring at the floor.

‘I've a taxi waiting outside,' said Iris. ‘Come on.'

Without a word between them, the two women were driven to the house in Strawberry Hills. Claudie, face swollen with tears, met them at the door.

‘Oh, Dorothy, how could you? If you knew what we've been through, Iris and me, hospitals, police stations...'

‘Just shut up, Claudie,' said Iris. ‘Go to bed. No use having kittens at this hour of the morning.'

‘Well,' said Claudie, shrilly, ‘she has to have a bath, with plenty of Lysol. She might have picked up crabs in that awful place.'

‘I'll attend to it,' said Iris.

At five, as dawn's raspberry red streaked the sky, Cushie fell into bed, subsiding into sleep as into a pool of oil.

She awoke in the early afternoon. She heard Iris or Claudie padding quietly around the house, the soft clink of china, a broom's whisper over the linoleum. She lay there for a while, forcing herself to think of the previous day. The memory of it made cold sweat come out on the palms of her hands. But she kept her attention fixed on what she could remember. It was shameful, abhorrent, squalid, but it had to be faced. Otherwise she would do it again, as those women in the concrete room did it again and again, and would continue to do it until they were found dead in a city gutter amongst the Mintie papers.

She was aware that there was a subterranean residuum from her experiences, shame, horror, disgust, something like hysterical amusement at the sheer unlikelihood of what had happened to her. These memories would grate like boulders in a dark stream, and every now and then, perhaps to the end of her life, their frightening sound would rise to humiliate her, even if it were only in dreams. But at the moment she was still numb, and able to think objectively.

Lying there, her body purged, feeble, cold, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the yellow flicker the breathing blind threw upon the wall, she surveyed as if from a height her behaviour since she discovered that she was pregnant. She had, in effect, co-operated in creating this misery and degradation. She had used neither ingenuity nor intelligence.

To be innocent and trusting was sheer stupidity, she could see that now. It was spiritual clodhopperism. Her mother's shocking statements returned to her: they had implied, in refined words, that relations between human beings were all deceit, cruelty, self-seeking; that all humans were lice, sucking each other's blood, and that the one who dropped off before he could be squashed was the smart one.

‘Iris and Claudie are like that, perhaps, and maybe my mother and father. But I'm not, and Jackie isn't, either.

‘The moment I got back to Kingsland from Mount Rosa I should have gone and told Mrs MacNunn how I felt. She would have had Jackie back there as fast as lightning, and she and Mr MacNunn would have helped us to get married.'

It seemed to Cushie now that the same kind of manipulation that had put her where she was had probably been used on Jackie. He had found himself doing things and agreeing to things that were not his choice at all.

Iris glanced into the bedroom. Finding Cushie awake, she entered and stood beside the bed. She was uneasy and gruff.

‘How do you feel?'

‘I'm all right now. I'll get up soon.'

‘You silly galoot, you had a real bun day, didn't you?'

Cushie nodded. She asked, ‘What's the procedure now? With the police, I mean.'

‘Nothing. Just forfeit your bail. My God, you're cool enough about it.'

‘Yes, I am now,' said Cushie.

Iris seized the hand mirror, thrust it into her hands. ‘Here, look at your face.'

Cushie looked. Her face was covered with a gravel rash, as though she'd been dragged along a pavement.

‘You might have been murdered as well as robbed,' said Iris. ‘You could have been raped even.'

Cushie looked at Iris, who quickly shook her head. ‘No, I'm sure you weren't. I had a good look at your underwear before I washed it. God, we've made a rotten job of looking after you, Claudie and I.'

She looked at Cushie forlornly, angrily.

Cushie said, ‘You tell me off if you want to, Mrs Pauley.'

Iris snorted. ‘I'll leave that to your Aunt Claudie—she's as mad as a meat-axe. She'll eat you, bones and beak.'

‘Well,' said the girl, ‘you were right, anyway. About drinking, I mean. That's the end. I'll never have another drink in my whole life.'

‘Ah, kid, I wish I thought you meant it.'

‘I mean it. You didn't see those women. Or –' she hesitated, ‘Virgie.'

Iris subsided on the bed. ‘Virgie was in the tank?'

Cushie told her. Iris's face was pale and glum.

At the end she said, ‘But still, even though she realised you were his niece, she doesn't know where you live.'

‘I mentioned Aunt Claudie's married name,' confessed Cushie, shamefaced.

‘Oh, God, why?' groaned Iris.

‘It just came out,' said Cushie, and, dreading the look she knew the words would bring to Iris's face, she said, ‘And she was standing next to the police matron when I had to give your address.'

‘Damn you!' yelled Iris, and she rushed out of the room.

Ten minutes later, as Cushie was creeping feebly into her clothes, she heard the front door slam. When she hobbled downstairs to make herself a cup of tea, she found a letter from her mother propped up on the sideboard.

Her mother said that because Daddy's condition had not improved, she had made up her mind to sell the house in Edward Street and accept Uncle Titus Jackaman's wonderful invitation to live indefinitely with him in London. Olwyn was so excited, was packing already, and looking forward to all the fun of the month's voyage. Cushie was to remain with her Aunt Claudie until the family came to Sydney.

Cushie put aside the last pages. She began at once a letter to her mother:

I don't want to go to London. For one thing I hated Uncle Titus, and for another, if Daddy is as ill as you say, I don't think he ought to be dragged off on such a long trip. I'm old enough now to have a say in these things and not be treated as if I were eight. So I won't be coming with you, and neither will I remain here with Aunt Claudie. I am going to Grandmama's house to see if she will allow me to stay with her. I am sure I can be useful to her, and I like her almost better than anyone. I know I promised you, Mama, but things have changed. And please don't call me Cushie any more. My name is Dorothy.

As she sealed and stamped the letter a strange cold pain seemed to strike her heart, as if she were her mother reading it. For a second her hands hovered over the envelope as though to tear it up. Then she thought, ‘She won't care. It's not as if I were Olwyn.'

She posted the letter. As she returned to the house, she glanced over at the salon. It was closed, though usually open until six on Saturday. Somewhere Iris and Claudie were talking things over.

They had been quarrelling. When they came in after seven, Iris's cheeks were blotchy and her light eyes fixed in a stare of distress. Claudie was blazing, pushing chairs around, kicking off one shoe to the ceiling. Cushie stood up, as though she expected her aunt to fly at her, punch her with both fists. She felt the old pang of horror at hostility, then said to herself, ‘She can't kill me.'

‘What did you have to tell Virgie my married name for, you rotten little beast?'

‘Oh, Claudie,' remonstrated Iris, ‘she was squiffy. I don't suppose she knew what she was saying.'

‘It just slipped out,' said Cushie. ‘I'm very sorry, truly.'

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, my eye!' shouted Claudie, hammering the table. She had bared her lower teeth like a fighting cat; her glassy eyes glittered. ‘You've meant nothing but trouble ever since you came here. Ohhhhh!' She gave a long wail. ‘I don't want Virgie to come here, I don't want to have anything to do with her. She reminds me of awful things I want to forget.'

‘Oh, Bubby, don't be so silly. She might not remember your name, or the address. And even if she did, why would she want to look you up?'

‘Because she used to love me,' said Claudie. ‘And she might love me again and I don't want to be loved by anyone, I just want to have fun. I keep telling you, Iris, but you won't listen.'

The older woman looked as though she had been stabbed.

‘If she comes here I'm going away,' shouted Claudie. ‘You've got to get it into your head, Iris, I'm not going to live anywhere where that great boozy wreck can come and pester me. I don't want anything to do with her, and I won't, either.'

‘You're only using Virgie for an excuse, aren't you?' said Iris huskily. She covered her face with her hands and began to weep, hackingly, like an old woman. Claudie glared accusation at Cushie.

‘This is all your fault, you stupid big lump.'

The sound and sight of her friend's tears brightened her at once. She put her arms around Iris, stroking her hair, making cooing noises. ‘Of course I won't go away and leave Ikey, not unless nasty Virgie comes. You keep Virgie away from me, and I'll stay, I promise, Ikey.'

Iris nodded, her hands clenching. For the first time she seemed to Cushie not strong at all—an uncertain lost person, in spite of all her brisk ways.

On the Sunday evening Cushie left her aunt's house in a taxi.

Iris carried out the last of her luggage. ‘Are you sure you have enough money? It's a long way to Balmain.'

Cushie nodded. Iris gave her hand a quick strong squeeze.

‘I hope everything's all right for you. Be sure to drop us a line and let us know.'

‘Yes, I shall.'

The cab moved away slowly down the narrow street, congested even on Sunday. The late sunset fell upon snail-grey slates and old brown bricks, turned them cinnabar and plum-coloured; the windows of a passing tram flashed like mirrors. Cushie put out her hand, and a rosy blob lit upon it for a moment, like a moth. It was like life returning to her hold.

Down near Central Railway she saw an immensely tall, immensely fat woman, drunk as a lord, shove a man out of her way. He stumbled a step or two, toppled like a falling log. Cushie saw other pedestrians scatter hastily. The woman's face was crimson, not only with the sunset but with glowering temper.