Dark Places (25 page)

Norah argued less these days. She had perfected a sort of grey neutrality and a mild way of turning away that I could not challenge. She was not convinced, never convinced, but she was too cowardly to have it out with me. ‘Very well, Albion,' she had said. ‘As you wish, Albion,' and when I had added, ‘That goes for tatting too, Norah, and that thing you do with knots,' she had nodded, ‘Yes, Albion, I understand.' But I had known in my heart even then that she was only biding her time.

‘Lilian,' I said now in my quietest voice, in which fury lay concealed like a spider under a stone, ‘this is terribly interesting. Moreover, you are obviously a terribly talented knitter. But Lilian, let me ask you this: if you are well enough to sit here turning good wool into rubbish, why are you not well enough to go to school and learn something that matters?' My voice had risen, although my control over a sentence remained perfect, and I watched the blood drain now out of Lilian's face. She sat stricken, with the knitting clutched in her fist.

But now Norah was coming to her rescue: I was forever being undermined. ‘Lilian has stayed home from school today for a reason, Albion,' she said with mysterious meaningfulness. ‘A good reason. A very good reason.'

I saw her face radiant with smugness: she coddled a secret. Almost visibly she swelled with satisfaction in knowing something her husband did not. She looked at me, and I saw her face convulse into a huge unpractised wink; she sat nodding and winking as if she had been stricken with palsy, and jerking her head in the direction of our daughter.

‘Do you not notice anything different about Lilian today, Albion?' she asked with a simper. I could see—Blind Freddy could have seen—that Norah was longing for me to make further enquiries, to be puzzled, to press her, to implore so that she could resist.
Lilian? Different? Whatever do you mean
,
Norah?

How dare she try to fan up a bit of a mystery at my expense? This was a person with hardly even a shadow to her name, and yet here she was, attempting to put me at a disadvantage in front of these women. Out of the corner of my eye I inspected Lilian; she was sitting beside me with half a pilch still dangling from her needles. She was as huge as ever, and she still seemed to have more knees than anyone else: nothing about her looked any different from any other day.

I was not going to walk into Norah's little trap, so I began to inspect the stitching on a pair of leggings. I set my inner being into a state so hard and stony that, if necessary, I could spend the rest of the day examining seams and stitches, and resist the slightest betrayal of interest in Norah's secret.

Poor old Norah! She had never learned to drive a hard bargain: even a waiting game was beyond her. I had only to sit for a few moments picking at a flaw on a pilch, and she was beaten: she hastened to squander her tiny coin of power, did not know how to hold out for any profit at all. She announced to the room at large, as ringingly as if to a public meeting, ‘I have something very important to tell you, Albion. This morning our little girl became a woman,' and sat back smugly.

I felt a pang like a cold blade. Only yesterday Lilian had been my own clean girl, who could make her father's blood warm with pride at what a brain she had, almost as good as a boy's. Only yesterday her mere flesh had not mattered: she had warmed me with her smile, had turned her face, the twin of my own, towards me, soaking in all that I had to share with her.

Now she was one of theirs, sliding away into the foreign country of femaleness. At this very moment, even as I watched her, she was doing that secretive dirty thing of bleeding into rags. I knew now that they really did that: Morrison had not been making it up. I knew it not from any woman, of course, but from men: I had heard enough jokes over the years in the bar at the Club, to piece together some kind of theory of it. But it was not something I could actually imagine, in its mechanics, and it was certainly not something I had any wish to be reminded of.

It was happening: she was actually doing it. Furthermore, she and Norah must have had a conversation about it. She would have known not to come to me about it. For the first time, she would have seen that it was her mother, not her father, who could answer her questions about this particular thing. To Norah she would have looked for explanation, instructions, perhaps even reassurance; and Norah would have explained, instructed, and congratulated: an intimacy would have happened between them, murmuring behind a closed door, from which I had been utterly excluded.

Moreover, this was only the beginning. From now on, my daughter would turn more and more to Norah for the things she knew, would be privy to more and more revolting secrets of female flesh. It was only a matter of time before she would be initiated into the ugliest mysteries of all. Sooner or later, she too would puff up with a gross distended belly, would make those noises that the female of the species makes while giving birth to its young, and would have something suck milk out of her
titty-bags.

I thought of all the breasts I had tweaked, all the thighs I had pinched, all the mouths I had crushed under mine; I thought of all those orifices, slimy or dry, tight or flaccid, and I saw them in a sudden blazing new light. My own daughter, the child whose brain I had nurtured, whose tempers I had punished, whose quickness with a fact had brought a flush of pride to my heart, had, overnight, joined them. One day some man would tweak her breasts, pinch her thighs, crush her mouth, and force his way into her flesh. In his mind, and perhaps with a few friends at the Club later, he would compare her with others, laugh at her enthusiasm or her modesty, advise his friends to
give her a whirl
or not to bother: he would describe her as
a good handful of a woman
,
know what I mean
, or
a big fat cow like a tub of lard
, depending on which he thought would raise the best laugh. And it would by my flesh and blood he would be talking about!

It was all a shattering sort of thing to land on a father in the middle of a sunny afternoon; but my sorrow was for the privacy of my own heart alone. Norah, obviously, expected a satisfying display of astonishment, bewilderment, whatever she thought was appropriate. She was sitting up alertly now: the colour was back in her face, her spine was straight, her eye unflinching as she met mine. She was reminding me—and not for the first time—that no matter how many facts my daughter and I might share, and no matter how little my daughter respected her mother, they were united in their femaleness, which I could never penetrate. Lilian might bear my own face and my own brain, but Norah loved to rub my nose in the fact that a daughter was a foreign language to me, which my wife could speak, and I could not.

On the other hand, was she quite as innocent as she appeared? Was she trying to make me blush in front of everyone? Was she hoping for an Albion all flustered and embarrassed? After all, was this quite the sort of bodily fact that was spoken of in mixed company, even when the only male involved was the actual father? Did she hope to see me flinch?

Be that as it may, I made sure my voice was as silky as it had ever been. I was a study in scientific detachment as I told my wife, ‘Norah, may I remind you that a gentleman's wife does not trumpet her daughter's intimate particulars from the rooftops. Lilian is biologically ready to mate now, like any dog or monkey coming on heat. That is simply all there is to it.'

A certain kind of silence settled around our little tableau at this point. Norah sat glassily, Kristabel stared into her empty cup, Mother put a hand up to her cheek as if to make sure it was still there. The room was so quiet we could hear a flurry of wind in the jacaranda outside, and a bird somewhere letting out a cry like a cat.

Then Kristabel raised her head, and I saw Mother's hand come down from her cheek. They were about to claim the moment for their own, so I rose quickly. I cleared my throat to cover a half-formed word from Mother, tapped the table where the pathetic pilches were lying half-made and neglected, and spoke over Kristabel as she started to say something, ‘You have dropped a stitch here, Norah,' I said. ‘It will all have to be unpicked.' Norah snatched up the knitting and began to throttle the life out of the ball of wool, winding it tight, and I turned on my heel and walked back down the room.

But as I reached the door I heard one of those light woman's voices say something, and there was a blurt of half-stifled laughter. Were they still laughing at some silly women's joke? Or was it possible—was it conceivable?—that they were at this moment winking at each other, and laughing not at some frilly little schoolgirl joke, but at me, the man, the one who did not know things that they knew? Were they all watching my back, exchanging glances, winking, waiting for me to close the door so they could laugh out loud? Pride forbade me to turn around and squint into the light, but the air in front of my face grew dark and the muscles of my face froze. I closed the door on them with loathing: a loathing born of despair.

Twenty-Four

THE SINGER Christmas Picnic was becoming something of a legend. Each year it had become more opulent: it was now so extravagant that it verged on the vulgar. As far as Singer himself was concerned, the Singer Picnic was a bargain. I would not have wished my employees to know this, but I got it all very cheap from Baldwin's, who owed me a favour over a certain little business to do with manila envelopes. Whatever the reason, there was no doubt that
Singer Enterprises
was the only establishment in Sydney to have smoked salmon at its picnic, and ham all round.

The thing had become something of a sacred cow, and Norah waxed lyrical, not to say hysterical, on the benefits of a day communing with nature. Personally, I had no interest in picnics. What thrill could there be to sit among ants, eating gritty bread-and-butter, and scalding your lip on milkless tea out of a chipped enamel mug? All right-thinking people agreed that vegetation was simply one of the impediments nature had put in the way of civilisation, and should be ignored where it could not be subdued.

Be that as it may, one sultry morning the entire kit and kaboodle of
Singer Enterprises
, and all its employees and family, set off through the bush on carts, everyone cranky in the early sun and slapping at flies. These picnics brought out the absurd in Rundle. He was kitted out like some pioneer of old times—
It is only a picnic
,
we are not looking for the Inland Sea
,
you know
,
Rundle!—
in enormous boots and moleskins, and a cocky's hat that sat oddly above the mournful flaps of his face; he even had a Bowie-knife on his belt, and a compass on a string round his neck. He and I led the way in a cart with the marquee and a couple of muscular lads from Despatch, and in the spirit of goodwill towards all men I nodded and made noises of agreement as Rundle boomed on and on in my ear.

Rundle was a man with a systematic approach to conversation. He began by reminding me of all the spots he had chosen in previous years for the picnic, then went on to tell me about the spots he had considered choosing this year, ticking off on his fingers their various advantages and disadvantages; he wound up by speculating on the spots he might consider choosing for next year, and running through a few of their features. It was only nine o'clock in the morning, and already I was sick of the whole thing, straining to remain gracious with Rundle. A day of utter tedium lay ahead.

In spite of all Rundle's laborious decision-making, the place was simply the usual kind of place. There were large red trees of irregular shape and inadequate shade, there was a patch of tufty grass, no doubt home to snakes, there was a small brown creek, and there were clouds of flies: all was according to tradition. I sat myself on a fallen log and watched dourly as the marquee was unpacked. Rundle pointed and perspired, and the muscular youths from Despatch, ant-like under the enormous lumpy trees, pulled and pushed, and shouted
up a bit your end
,
mate
, until the thing was perched on its poles, and then they stood back scratching their heads under their caps and batting away at flies.

Next to arrive was the Singer entourage. Norah sat up at the front of the cart, staring around at leaves as if they were interesting, with a slight superior smile on her face, as of one who considers herself in harmony with nature. Crouched behind her, hanging on grimly as if he thought he might soon be sick, was John, on whose face anxiety looked like bad temper. Lilian was leaning over the back of the cart with her bottom in the air, watching the dirt pass between the wheels.

Looking at her now, as the young men from Despatch were doing, I could see that Lilian was turning into something embarrassing. Norah dressed her nicely in sprigged this and spotted that, trying to minimise the balloons on her chest and the vast rump on her. But all the carefully chosen lace collars and smocking, all the discreet blues and muted pinks, all the expensive pin-tucking and darts, had a look of the grotesque on the great hot undeniable fleshiness of my daughter. She was like a piglet in a lace nightdress. Norah's daintiness could make you forget the seamy femaleness beneath, but Lilian was a coarse parody of the feminine, a mocking reminder of what really lay under all the laces and lavender-water.

Now she was sitting in the cart with her legs wide apart, easing her flesh like some old slattern, without a thought for how she looked. She did not seem to realise that she should make an attempt to control, or at least conceal, her flesh. Had Norah taught her nothing about being a woman, that she was so entirely without shame?

Moreover, in spite of her lack of womanly charms, she was cultivating none of the shy attractive ways, none of the eagerness to please, none of the fluster and blushes that a plain woman does well to learn. She did not even seem to realise that incompetence is one of a woman's essential graces. ‘Oh no, Father, I can get down myself !' she called out when I offered her my arm, and jumped down so heavily that the trees rocked in their very sockets. She stood beside me, exuding animal warmth, and gawped at the young men from Despatch, wrestling now with trestle-tables, tripping over guy-ropes, and swearing audibly. I felt her take a huge chestful of air and suddenly hoot a
Coo-ee!—
‘to see if there is an echo, Father,' she said—that made everyone turn to stare at Mr Singer's large and surprising daughter, and I caught a smirk exchanged between two of the lads.