The Aloe (5 page)

“Oh hang! Oh damn!” said Stanley who had butted into a crisp shirt only to find that some idiot had fastened the neck band and he was caught – He stalked over to her waving his arms. “Now you look the image of a fat turkey,” said she – “Fat I like that” said Stanley – “why I haven’t got a square inch of fat on me. Feel that –” “My dear – hard as nails” mocked she –” You’d be surprised –” said Stanley as though this were intensely interesting, “at the number of chaps in the club who’ve got a corporation – young chaps, you know – about my own age –” He began parting and brushing his strong ginger hair, his blue eyes fixed and round in the glass – bent at the knees because the dressing table was always – confound it – a bit too low for him. “Little Teddy Dean for example” and he straightened, describing upon himself an enormous curve with the hair brush. “Of course they’re sitting on their hind quarters all day at the office and when they’re away from it – as far as I can make out they stodge and they snooze – I must say I’ve got a perfect horror.” “Yes my dear don’t worry you’ll never be fat – You’re far too energetic,” repeating the familiar formula that he never tired of hearing. “Yes. Yes I suppose that’s true,” and taking a mother of pearl pen knife out of his pocket he began to pare his nails – “Breakfast, Stanley” Beryl was at the door – “Oh Linda Mother says don’t get up – Stay where you are until after lunch won’t you?” She popped her head in at the door. She had a big piece of syringa stuck through a braid of her hair. “Everything we left on the verandah last night is simply sopping this morning. You should see poor dear Mother wringing out the sofa and chairs – however, no harm done – not a
pennorth’s
of harm” this with the faintest glance at Stanley – “Have you told Pat what time to have the buggy round – It’s a good six-and-a-half miles – from here to the office—” “I can imagine what his morning start off for the office will become” – thought Linda. Even when they lived in town – only half an hour away – the house had to slow down each morning – had to stop like a steamer – every soul on board summoned to the gangway to watch Burnell descending the ladder and into the little cockle shell – They must wave when he waved – give him good-bye for good-bye and lavish upon him unlimited loving sympathy as though they saw on the horizon’s brim the untamed land to which he curved his chest so proudly, the line of leaping savages ready to fall upon his valiant sword –

“Pat Pat,” she heard the servant girl calling – But Pat was evidently not to be found – the silly voice went baaing all over the garden. “It will be very high pressure indeed” – she decided – and did not rest again until the final slam of the front door sounded – and Stanley was gone.

Later she heard her children playing in the garden. Lottie’s stolid compact little voice cried “Kezia I
sa
bel” – Lottie was always getting lost or losing people and finding them again – astonished – round the next tree or the next corner – “Oh
there
you are” – They had been turned out to grass after breakfast with strict orders not to come near the house until they were called – Isabel wheeled a neat pram load of prim dolls and Lottie was allowed for a great treat to walk beside holding the doll parasols over the face of the wax one – “Where are you going Kezia,” asked Isabel, who longed to find some light and menial duty that Kezia might perform and so be roped in under her government. “Oh just away,” said Kezia.

“Come back, Kezia. Come back. You’re not to go on the wet grass until it’s dry. Grandma says,” called Isabel.

“Bossy! bossy!” Linda heard Kezia answer.

“Do the children’s voices annoy you, Linda,” asked old Mrs Fairfield, coming in at that moment with a breakfast tray. “Shall I tell them to go further away from the house?”

“No, don’t bother,” said Linda. “Oh, Mother I do
not
want any breakfast.”

“I have not brought you any,” said Mrs Fairfield, putting down the tray on the bed table. “A spot of porridge, a finger of toast . . .”

“The merest sensation of marmalade –” mocked Linda – But Mrs Fairfield remained serious. “Yes, dearie, and a little pot of fresh tea.”

She brought from the cupboard a white woolen jacket trimmed with red bows and buttoned it round her daughter.

“Must I?” pouted Linda, making a face at the porridge.

Mrs Fairfield walked about the room. She lowered the blinds, tidied away the evidences of Burnell’s toilet and gently she lifted the dampened plume of the little round hat. There was a charm and a grace in all her movements. It was not that she merely “set in order”; there seemed to be almost a positive quality in the obedience of things to her fine old hands. They found not only their proper but their perfect place. She wore a grey foulard dress patterned with white pansies, a white linen apron and one of those high caps shaped like a jelly mould of white tulle. At her throat a big silver brooch shaped like a crescent moon with five owls sitting on it and round her neck a black bead watch chain. If she had been a beauty in her youth and she had been a very great beauty – (Indeed, report had it that her miniature had been painted and sent to Queen Victoria as the belle of Australia) old age had touched her with exquisite gentleness. Her long curling hair was still black at her waist, grey between her shoulders and it framed her head in frosted silver. The late roses – the last roses – that frail pink kind, so reluctant to fall, such a wonder to find, still bloomed in her cheeks and behind big gold rimmed spectacles her blue eyes shone and smiled. And she still had dimples. On the backs of her hands, at her elbows – one in the left hand corner of her chin. Her body was the colour of old ivory. She bathed in cold water summer and winter and she could only bear linen next to her skin and suede gloves on her hands. Upon everything she used there lingered a trace of Cashmere bouquet perfume.

“How are you getting on downstairs,” asked Linda, playing with her breakfast.

“Beautifully. Pat has turned out a treasure – He has laid all the linoleum and the carpets and Alice seems to be taking a
real interest
in the kitchen and pantries.”

“Pantries! There’s grandeur, after that bird cage of a larder in that other cubby hole!”

“Yes, I must say the house is wonderfully convenient and
ample
in every way. You should have a good look round when you get up.”

Linda smiled, shaking her head.

“I don’t want to. I don’t
care.
The house can bulge cupboards and pantries, but other people will explore them. Not me.”

“But
why
not,” asked Mrs Fairfield, anxiously watching her.

“Because I don’t feel the slightest crumb of interest, my Mother.”

“But why don’t you, dear? You ought to try – to begin – even for Stanley’s sake. He’ll be so bitterly disappointed if ... “Linda’s laugh interrupted. “Oh, trust me – I’ll satisfy Stanley. Besides I can
rave
all the better over what I haven’t seen.” “Nobody asks you to
rave,
Linda,” said the old woman, sadly.

“Don’t they?” Linda screwed up her eyes. “I’m not so sure. If I were to
jump
out of bed now,
fling
on my clothes,
rush
downstairs,
tear
up a ladder, hang pictures, eat an enormous lunch, romp with the children in the garden this afternoon and be swinging on the gate, waving, when Stanley hove in sight this evening I believe you’d be delighted – A normal, healthy day for a young wife and mother – A—”

Mrs Fairfield began to smile. “How absurd you are – How you exaggerate! What a baby you are,” said she.

But Linda sat up suddenly and jerked off the “wooly”.

“I’m boiling, I’m roasting,” she declared. “I can’t think what I’m doing in this big, stuffy old bed – I’m going to get up.”

“Very well, dear,” said Mrs Fairfield –

Getting dressed never took her long. Her hands flew. She had beautiful hands, white and tiny. The only
trouble
with them was that they would not keep her rings on them. Happily she only had two rings, her wedding ring and a peculiarly hideous affair, a square slab with four pin opals in it that Stanley had “stolen from a cracker” said Linda, the day they were engaged. But it was her wedding ring that disappeared so. It fell down every possible place and into every possible corner. Once she even found it in the crown of her hat. It was a familiar cry in the house “Linda’s wedding ring has
gone again” –
Stanley Burnell could never hear that without a horrible sense of discomfort. Good Lord! he wasn’t superstitious – He left that kind of rot to people who had nothing better to think about – but all the same, it was
devilishly
annoying. Especially as Linda made so light of the affair and mocked him and said “are they as expensive as all that” and laughed at him and cried, holding up her bare hand – “Look, Stanley, it has all been a dream.” He was a fool to mind things like that, but they hurt him – they hurt like sin.

“Funny I should have dreamed about Papa last night” thought Linda, brushing her cropped hair that stood up all over her head in little bronzy rings. “What was it I dreamed?” No, she’d forgotten – “Something or other about a bird.” But Papa was very plain – his lazy ambling walk. And she laid down the brush and went over to the marble mantelpiece and leaned her arms along it, her chin in her hands, and looked at his photograph. In his photograph he showed severe and imposing – a high brow, a piercing eye, clean shaven except for long “piccadilly weepers” draping his bosom. He was taken in the fashion of that time, standing, one arm on the back of a tapestry chair, the other clenched upon a parchment roll. “Papa!” said Linda, she smiled. “There you are my dear,” she breathed, and then she shook her head quickly and frowned and went on with her dressing.

Her Father had died the year that she married Burnell, the year of her sixteenth birthday. All her childhood had been passed in a long white house perched on a hill overlooking Wellington harbour – a house with a wild garden full of bushes and fruit-trees, long, thick grass and nasturtiums. Nasturtiums grew everywhere – there was no fighting them down. They even fell in a shower over the paling fence on to the road. Red, yellow, white, every possible colour; they lighted the garden like swarms of butterflies. The Fairfields were a large family of boys and girls with their beautiful mother and their gay, fascinating father (for it was only in his photograph that he looked stern) they were quite a “show” family and immensely admired. Mr Fairfield managed a small insurance business that could not have been very profitable, yet they lived plentifully. He had a good voice; he liked to sing in public, he liked to dance and attend picnics – to put on his “bell topper” and walk out of Church if he disapproved of anything said in the sermon – and he had a passion for inventing highly unpracticable things, like collapsible umbrellas or folding lamps. He had one saying with which he met all difficulties. “Depend upon it, it will all come right after the Maori war.” Linda, his second to youngest child, was his darling, his pet, his playfellow. She was a wild thing, always trembling on the verge of laughter, ready for anything and eager. When he put his arm round her and held her he felt her thrilling with life. He understood her so beautifully and gave her so much love for love that he became a kind of daily miracle to her and all her faith centred in him – People barely touched her; she was regarded as a cold, heartless little creature, but she seemed to have an unlimited passion for that violent sweet thing called life – just being alive and able to run and climb and swim in the sea and lie in the grass. In the evenings she and her Father would sit on the verandah – she on his knees – and “plan”. “When I am grown up we shall travel everywhere – we shall see the whole world – won’t we Papa?”

“We shall, my dear.”

“One of your inventions will have been a great success – Bring you in a good round million yearly.”

“We can manage on that.”

“But one day we shall be rich and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we’ll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin . . . We shall have a little boat – we shall explore the interior of China on a raft – you will look sweet in one of those huge umbrella hats that Chinamen wear in pictures. We won’t leave a corner of anywhere unexplored – shall we?”

“We shall look under the beds and in all the cupboards and behind every curtain.”

“And we shan’t go as father and daughter,” she tugged at his “piccadilly weepers” and began kissing him. “We’ll just go as a couple of boys together – Papa.”

By the time Linda was fourteen the big family had vanished, only she and Beryl, who was two years younger, were left. The girls had married; the boys had gone faraway – Linda left off attending the Select Academy for Young Ladies presided over by Miss Clara Finetta Birch (From England) a lady whose black hair lay so flat on her head that
everybody said
it was only painted on, and she stayed at home to be a help to her mother. For three days she laid the table and took the mending basket on to the verandah in the afternoon but after that she “went mad-dog again” as her father expressed it and there was no holding her. “Oh, Mother, life is so
fearfully short,”
said Linda. That summer Burnell appeared. Every evening a stout young man in a striped shirt, with fiery red hair and a pair of immature mutton chop whiskers passed their house, quite slowly, four times. Twice up the hill he went and twice down he came. He walked with his hands behind his back and each time he glanced once at the verandah where they sat – Who was he? None of them knew, but he became a great joke. “Here she blows,” Mr Fairfield would whisper. The young man came to be called the “Ginger Whale” – Then he appeared at Church, in a pew facing theirs, very devout and serious. But he had that unfortunate complexion that goes with his colouring and every time he so much as glanced in Linda’s direction a crimson flush spread over his face to his ears. “Look out, my wench,” said Mr Fairfield. “Your clever Papa has solved the problem. That young fellow is after you.”

“Henry! What rubbish. How can you say such things,” said his wife.

“There are times,” said Linda, “when I simply doubt your
sanity
Papa.” But Beryl loved the idea. The ginger whale became “Linda’s beau”.