The Aloe (6 page)

“You know as well I do that I am
never
going to marry,” said Linda. “How can you be such a
traitor,
Papa –”

A social given by the Liberal Ladies Political League ripened matters a little. Linda and her Papa attended. She wore a green sprigged muslin with little capes on the shoulders that stood up like wings and he wore a frock coat and a wired buttonhole as big as a soup plate. The social began with a very “painful” concert. “She wore a wreath of roses” – “They played in the Beautiful Garden” “A Mother sat Watching” – “Flee Like a Bird to the Fountain” sang the political ladies with forlorn and awful vigour – The gentlemen sang with far greater vigour and a kind of defiant cheerfulness which was almost terrifying. They looked very furious, too. Their cuffs shot over their hands, or their trousers were far too long . . . Comic recitations about flies on bald heads and engaged couples sitting on porch steps spread with glue were contributed by the chemist. Followed an extraordinary meal called upon the hand printed programme Tea and Coffee and consisting of ham-beef-or-tongue, tinned salmon oyster patties, sanwiches, col’ meat, jellies, huge cakes, fruit salad in wash hand bowls, trifles bristling with almonds and large cups of tea, dark brown in colour, tasting faintly of rust. Helping Linda to a horrible-looking pink blanc-mange which Mr Fairfield said was made of strangled baby’s head, he whispered – “the ginger whale is here. I’ve just spotted him blushing at a sanwich. Look out, my lass. He’ll sandbag you with one of old Ma Warren’s rock cakes.” Away went the plates – away went the table. Young Mr Fantail, in evening clothes with brown button boots sat down at the piano – and crashed into the “Lancers”.

Diddle dee dum tee tum te tum

Diddle dee um te tum te tum

. . .

Diddle dee tum tee diddle tee tum!

And half way through the “evening” it actually came to pass – Smoothing his cotton gloves, a beetroot was
pale
compared to him a pillar box was a tender pink. Burnell asked Linda for the pleasure and before she realised what had happened his arm was round her waist and they were turning round and round to the air of “Three Blind Mice” (arranged by Mr Fantail même). He did not talk while he danced, but Linda liked that. She felt a “silly” – When the dance was over they sat on a bench against the wall. Linda hummed the waltz tune and beat time with her glove – She felt dreadfully shy and she was terrified of her father’s merry eye – At last Burnell turned to her. “Did you ever hear the story of the shy young man who went to his first ball. He danced with a girl and then they sat on the stairs – and they could not think of a thing to say – And after he’d picked up everything she dropped from time to time – after the silence was simply unbearable he turned round and stammered ‘d-do you always w-wear fl-f-flannel next to the skin?’ I feel rather like that chap,” said Burnell.

Then she did not hear them anymore. What a glare there was in the room. She hated blinds pulled up to the top at any time – but in the morning, in the morning especially! She turned over to the wall and idly, with one finger, she traced a poppy on the wallpaper with a leaf and a stem and a fat bursting bud. In the quiet, under her tracing finger, the poppy seemed to come alive. She could feel the sticky, silky petals, the stem, hairy like a gooseberry skin, the rough leaf and the tight glazed bud. Things had a habit of coming alive in the quiet; she had often noticed it. Not only large, substantial things, like furniture, but curtains and the patterns of stuffs and fringes of quilts and cushions. How often she had seen the tassel fringe of her quilt change into a funny procession of dancers, with priests attending . . . For there
were
some tassels that did not dance at all but walked stately, bent forward as if praying or chanting. . . How often the medicine bottles had turned into a row of little men with brown top hats on; and often the wash stand jug sat in the basin like a fat bird in a round nest “I dreamed about birds last night” thought Linda. What was it? No, she’d forgotten . . . But the strangest part about this coming alive of things was what they did. They listened; they seemed to swell out with some mysterious important content and when they were full she felt that they smiled – Not for her (although she knew they “recognised” her) their sly meaning smile; they were members of a secret order and they smiled among themselves. Sometimes, when she had fallen asleep in the day time, she woke and could not lift a finger, could not even turn her eyes to left or right . . .
they
were so strong; sometimes when she went out of a room and left it empty she knew as she clicked the door to that
they
were coming to life. And Ah, there were times, especially in the evenings when she was upstairs, perhaps, and everybody else was down when she could hardly tear herself away from “them” – when she could not hurry, when she tried to hum a tune to show them she did not care, when she tried to say ever so carelessly – “Bother that old thimble! Where ever have I put it!” but she never never deceived
them. They
knew how frightened she was; “they” saw how she turned her head away as she passed the mirror. For all their patience they wanted something of her. Half unconsciously she knew that if she gave herself up and was quiet – more than quiet, silent, motionless, something would happen . . . “It’s very very quiet now,” thought Linda. She opened her eyes wide; she heard the stillness spinning its soft endless web. How lightly she breathed – She scarcely had to breathe at all . . . Yes, everything had come alive down to the minutest, tiniest particle and she did not feel her bed – She floated, held up in the air. Only she seemed to be listening with her wide open watchful eyes, waiting for someone to come who just did not come, watching for something to happen that just did not happen.

In the kitchen at the long deal table under the two windows old Mrs Fairfield was washing the breakfast dishes. The kitchen windows looked out on to a big grass patch that led down to the vegetable garden and the rhubarb beds – On one side the grass patch was bordered by the scullery and wash house and over this long white washed “lean to” there grew a big knotted vine. She had noticed yesterday that some tiny corkscrew tendrils had come right through some cracks in the scullery ceiling and all the windows of the “lean to” had a thick frill of dancing green. “I am very fond of a grape vine,” decided Mrs Fairfield, “but I do not think that the grapes will ripen here. It takes Australian sun ...” and she suddenly remembered how when Beryl was a baby she had been picking some white grapes from the vine on the back verandah of their Tasmanian house and she had been stung on the leg by a huge red ant. She saw Beryl in a little plaid dress with red ribbon “tie ups” on the shoulders screaming so dreadfully that half the street had rushed in . . . and the child’s leg had swelled to an enormous size . . . “T-t-t-t” Mrs Fairfield caught her breath, remembering. “Poor child – how terrifying it was!” and she set her lips tight in a way she had and went over to the stove for some more hot water – The water frothed up in the big soapy bowl with pink and blue bubbles on top of the foam. Old Mrs Fairfield’s arms were bare to the elbow and stained a bright pink. She wore a grey foulard dress patterned with large purple pansies, a white linen apron and a high cap shaped like a jelly mould of white tulle. At her throat there was a silver crescent moon with five little owls seated on it and round her neck she wore a watch guard made of black beads. It was very hard to believe that they had only arrived yesterday and that she had not been in the kitchen for years – she was so much a part of it, putting away the clean crocks with so sure and precise a touch, moving, leisurely and ample from the stove to the dresser, looking into the pantry and the larder as though there were not an unfamiliar corner. When she had finished tidying everything in the kitchen had become part of a series of pattern. She stood in the middle of the room, wiping her hands on a check towel and looking about her, a tiny smile beamed on her lips; she thought it looked very nice, very satisfactory. If only servant girls could be taught to understand that it did not only matter how you put a thing away it mattered just as much
where
you put it – or was it the other way about. . . But at any rate they never would understand; she had never been able to train them . . . “Mother, Mother are you in the kitchen?” called Beryl. “Yes, dear. Do you want me?” “No, I’m coming,” and Beryl ran in, very flushed, dragging with her two big pictures. “Mother whatever can I do with these hideous awful Chinese paintings that Chung Wah gave Stanley when he went bankrupt. It’s absurd to say they were valuable because they were hanging in Chung Wah’s fruit shop for months before. I can’t understand why Stanley doesn’t want them to be thrown away – I’m sure he thinks they’re just as hideous as we do, but it’s because of the frames –” she said, spitefully. “I suppose he thinks the frames might fetch something one day. Ugh! What a weight they are.” “Why don’t you hang them in the passage” suggested Mrs Fairfield. “They would not be much seen there.” “I can’t. There isn’t room. I’ve hung all the photographs of his office before and after rebuilding there, and the signed photographs of his business friends and that awful enlargement of Isabel lying on a mat in her singlet. There isn’t an inch of room left there.” Her angry glance flew over the placid kitchen. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll hang them here – I’ll say they got a little damp in the moving and so I put them up here in the warm for the time being.” She dragged forward a chair, jumped up on it, took a hammer and a nail out of her deep apron pocket and banged away – “There! That’s high enough. Hand me up the picture, Mother.” “One moment, child –” she was wiping the carved ebony frame – “Oh, Mother,
really
you need not dust them. It would take years to dust all those winding little holes” and she frowned at the top of her Mother’s head and bit her lip with impatience. Mother’s deliberate way of doing things was simply maddening. It was old age, she supposed, loftily. At last the two pictures were hung, side by side. She jumped off the chair, stowing back the little hammer. “They don’t look so bad there, do they,” said she – “And at any rate nobody need ever see them except Pat and the servant girl – Have I got a spider’s web on my face, Mother? I’ve been poking my head into that cupboard under the stairs and now something keeps tickling me.” But before Mrs Fairfield had time to look Beryl had turned away again –” Is that clock right. Is it really as early as that? Good Heavens it seems years since breakfast?” “That reminds me,” said Mrs Fairfield. “I must go upstairs and fetch down Linda’s tray” . . . “There!” cried Beryl. “Isn’t that like the servant girl. Isn’t that exactly like her. I told her distinctly to tell you that I was too busy to take it up and would you please instead. I never dreamed she hadn’t told you!”

Some one tapped on the window. They turned away from the pictures. Linda was there, nodding and smiling. They heard the latch of the scullery door lift and she came in. She had no hat on; her hair stood up on her head in curling rings and she was all wrapped up in an old Kashmir shawl. “Please can I have something to eat,” said she. “Linnet dear I am so frightfully sorry. It’s my fault,” cried Beryl. “But I wasn’t hungry. I would have screamed if I had been,” said Linda “Mummy darling, make me a little pot of tea in the brown china teapot.” She went into the pantry and began lifting the lids off a row of tins. “What grandeur my dears,” she cried, coming back with a brown scone and a slice of gingerbread – “a pantry and a larder.” “Oh but you haven’t seen the outhouses yet” said Beryl. “There is a stable and a huge barn of a place that Pat calls the feed room and a woodshed and a tool house – all built round a square courtyard that has big white gates to it. Awfully grand!” “This is the first time I’ve even seen the kitchen” said Linda. “Mother has been here. Everything is in pairs.” “Sit down and drink your tea,” said Mrs Fairfield, spreading a clean table napkin over a corner of the table. “And Beryl have a cup with her. I’ll watch you both while I’m peeling the potatoes for dinner. I don’t know what has happened to the servant girl.” “I saw her on my way downstairs, Mummy. She’s lying practically at full length on the bathroom floor laying linoleum. And she is hammering it so frightfully hard that I am sure the pattern will come through on to the dining-room ceiling. I told her not to run any more tacks than she could help into herself but I am afraid that she will be studded for life all the same. Have half my piece of gingerbread, Beryl. Beryl, do you like the house now that we are
here
?” “Oh yes I like the house immensely and the garden is simply beautiful but it feels very far away from everything to me. I can’t imagine people coming out from town to see us in that dreadful rattling’ bus and I am sure there isn’t anybody here who will come and call . . . Of course it doesn’t matter to you particularly because you never liked living in town.” “But we’ve got the buggy,” said Linda. “Pat can drive you into town whenever you like. And after all it’s only six miles away.” That was a consolation certainly but there was something unspoken at the back of Beryl’s mind, something she did not even put into words for herself. “Oh, well at any rate it won’t kill us,” she said dryly, putting down her cup and standing up and stretching. “I am going to hang curtains.” And she ran away singing: “How many thousand birds I see, That sing aloft in every tree.” But when she reached the dining room she stopped singing. Her face changed – hardened, became gloomy and sullen. “One may as well rot here as anywhere else,” she said savagely digging the stiff brass safety pins into the red serge curtains . . .

The two left in the kitchen were quiet for a little. Linda leaned her cheek in her fingers and watched her Mother. She thought her Mother looked wonderfully beautiful standing with her back to the leafy window – There was something comforting in the sight of her Mother that Linda felt she could never do without – She knew everything about her – just what she kept in her pocket and the sweet smell of her flesh and the soft feel of her cheeks and her arms and shoulders, still softer – the way the breath rose and fell in her bosom and the way her hair curled silver round her forehead, lighter at her neck and bright brown still in the big coil under the tulle cap. Exquisite were her Mother’s hands and the colour of the two rings she wore seemed to melt into her warm white skin – her wedding ring and a large old fashioned ring with a dark red stone in it that had belonged to Linda’s father . . . And she was always so fresh so delicious. “Mother, you smell of cold water,” she had said – The old woman could bear nothing next to her skin but fine linen and she bathed in cold water summer and winter – even when she had to pour a kettle of boiling water over the frozen tap. “Isn’t there anything for me to do, Mother,” she asked. “No darling. Run and see what the garden is like. I wish you would give an eye to the children but that I know you will not do.” “Of course I will, but you know Isabel is much more grown up than any of us.” “Yes, but Kezia is not” said Mrs Fairfield. “Oh Kezia’s been tossed by a wild bull
hours
ago” said Linda, winding herself up in her shawl again.