Lilian's Story (10 page)

But it could be noticed that Gwen was circling towards me across the bitumen and between the trees at lunchtime. Even when she finally sat beside me on another knob of the unfriendly palm tree, her hair still hid her eyes. I watched her mouth, that I could not remember ever seeing speak. At last she said,
I could be your friend
, and I saw her tongue flicker and lick her lips as if they were already dry from too much talking.
If you like
, she added. I did not refuse or accept, and after a while she took my wrist and led me to the corner of the yard where paspalum grew long and rank and no one went because of the snakes. Her hand around my wrist was as bony as a bird's claw and she kept her head down as if fearing trouble.

My secret
, Gwen said, and for a moment I thought she had guessed and was mocking me. The paspalum waved around our knees in a sticky way and I would have liked to go home and lie under the plumbago. That was a blue I liked. I did not like the way the paspalum clung.
No, look
, Gwen said, and stopped me from going back to where the shouts of the playground already seemed far away. At the base of a young gum, a hole had been grubbed. The thin soil was grey in the sun.
Treasure
, Gwen explained.
Like
Troy
. There were two nails thick with rust.
Convict nails
, she whispered, and in my confusion I saw them hammered through palms. Gwen's eyes blinked quickly under the hair as if her treasure dazzled. There was a shard of pale mauve glass.
We will find the rest and put it back together
, she said, and panted at so many words. She showed me a fragment of porcelain and was now so excited her words were hardly audible.
Probably Wedgwood.

After that, I made it obvious that I did not care about Ursula or Rick or the silences that pooled around me, and made a point of offering my pumpkin scones to Gwen in front of Ursula. I might have invited her to Rosecroft to go out in the boat if I had been sure that Ursula would know. For Ursula, though, it was easy to appear not to care. With Anne she watched as Gwen and I walked purposefully, secretively, to the shabby corner of the schoolyard, but she never asked what was there. As Gwen and I scraped at the dirt, I glanced behind us, waiting to see everyone finally inquisitive, but the stringy saplings hid no one.

Gwen was in love with holes. She scratched away at our hole with a piece of stick and scrabbled out the loose earth. When we found treasures, she cleaned them with spit and pinafore and hid them in another hole at the base of a wattle.
They are safe there
, she said, and considered.
Is
anywhere safer than a hole?

Lilian!
Miss Vine, bending over my isosceles triangle, was appalled.
Class, I want you all to see.
My hands with their dark crescents of nails were held up for everyone to see and someone clicked a tongue in disgust. I had never thought of myself as anything worse than fat, but was now displayed as frankly dirty.
Ingrained
, Miss Vine said, and let my hands go suddenly.
Go and wash your hands, Lilian. Do not return until
they are clean.
As I filled the aisle between the desks, leaving the room, and caromed painfully off the corner of one, I saw the way Ursula drew in her chair as if I was contagious, and the way her mouth had gone prim.

It would have been easy then to betray Gwen.
It is buried
treasure
, I could have said in front of everyone, and Gwen would have slid further down in her seat. I could have mentioned her by name.
Gwen and I are digging up treasures like
Troy
, I could have said, but both of us were saved that.
It is
the colour of my skin
, I told Miss Vine, but it is hard to be fat and dignified.

Public Pride

Found a mate, have you, then?
Rick said, and I tried not to be alarmed at being Gwen's mate, or too ashamed.
We have a project
together, that is all
, I said with dignity. I was excited, though, that he was speaking to me. He seemed excited, too, and bumped his satchel against his knees while he examined my face.
A
project, eh?
Rick said, and I wished I could think his grin was a friendly one.
You're two of a kind, you two.
There was something more behind his grin that I could not read. If Kevin had been with him, or loose-lipped Gary, I might have been able to read in their faces what the joke was. But Rick and I were alone together beside the taps, and although we were both late for school and would be in trouble, we lingered. I allowed myself the pleasure of imagining how everyone would see us walk into class together. They would all know we had been late because we had been talking beside the taps. There would be no way, though, to tell them it was Rick who continued to linger and spin out the minutes while his grin widened. I could see a fleck of spit slide down a tooth. I was as close to him as that, and could feel my heart beat as he continued to watch me.

You will be just like her
, Rick said and I smiled, but wondered if he meant I would become silent like Gwen. It was hard to imagine that. Now I was beginning to become anxious at the way Rick was delaying me. I watched the water ooze from the broken tap with the clot of rust growing on its lip, and wanted to make a triumphal entry with Rick while he was still grinning. As long as the class saw it, I did not care what was behind that grin. But around us the empty playground listened and stared, and the sun was beginning to heat the bitumen, and a dog limped quickly across it, turning his head to make sure he was not being chased.

Rick was losing his temper.
You're just the same
, he said more loudly, and I felt my smile stiffening as he watched it and became angry.
Yes
, I tried to agree. I knew that if I could keep him smiling until we had made our entrance into class together, everyone would speak to me again.
No
, he yelled suddenly, and the limping dog leaped as if kicked, and ran sideways behind a tree.
No, I mean you will be
a batty old maid like that Miss Gash and dirty and loony.
His words hung in the silence of the playground as if they would be there for ever and I watched Rick run with his satchel hitting the back of his knees. Just before he pushed at the big blue door into the building, he turned and under cover of the seven-times table that had suddenly started up, he called,
I would not even touch you, you make me that sick.
He looked pleased with himself, and as smooth as a peach.

Still, I ran to be in the classroom just behind him and tried to look as though we were accomplices. Miss Vine did not notice us, drawing laborious lines on the blackboard with the chalk shrieking along the side of the big ruler. I had squeezed in behind my desk before she turned and dusted herself off with her hankie. Seeing me there, where I had not been before, she frowned and began to say,
Lilian
, when a bee caused a sensation, coming in at a window and making everyone cringe. Miss Vine cowered with her hands over her face and on their side of the room the girls tried to put their heads under the desks. But Rick, waving his geometry book around his head, was taking command of the situation, and I wanted to be by his side. But by the time I had struggled out from behind my desk, not made for people of my size, and disentangled the hem of my pinafore from where it was wedged somewhere, the bee found the window again and the room was suddenly silent. There was a sigh like disappointment.
Thank you, Richard
, Miss Vine said and smiled.
Lilian, may I ask why you are standing?

I loved my country, with its bees and sea, I loved Rick, but I could not persuade myself to love Miss Vine, with her French roll and small tidy mouth. And I could not have asked Rick how he knew about Miss Gash, and would not ask. In any case I knew that I knew already, although I would not allow myself to admit it.

Killing the Cat

Is it true she is dirty?
Ursula asked me.
Is her dress really all torn?
Is she really a witch with a black cat?
I could not be haughty for long.
It is a tabby
, I said coldly, trying to be haughty. Ursula offered me a date slice; pale Anne nibbled at a pale arrowroot biscuit and watched my mouth as I chewed.
It
is a tabby. And she is not dirty.
Ursula did not look at me and continued to sit sideways, as if next to me by accident, and asked her questions out of the side of her mouth as if it was not fat Lil she was talking to. Anne stood in front of us nibbling and watching nothing happen on the ground at her feet.

Gwen watched, too, but from the other side of the playground, behind a tree and behind her hair.
She talk
funny?
Ursula asked, and could have been asking anyone but me, might have denied speaking at all if she had been challenged, and I decided to ignore her. But I did not go so far as to join Gwen, who was trying to attract my attention by scratching at a tree with a stick. I sat and tried to guess what had made John talk at last, and waited for what Ursula would offer next.
There's two left
, she said of her date slices.
One for me.
She popped it whole into her mouth and chewed puffily. Pale Anne, whose mother did not believe in anything but arrowroot biscuits, looked up.
Close your
eyes and open your mouth
, Ursula cried to no one in particular, and I saw Anne's eyes close in the moment before I shut my own, and saw her small square teeth. I felt saliva gush into my mouth and the doughy date slice between my lips. I chewed with closed eyes, loving Ursula's present, and when I opened my eyes, Anne had moved away into the sun and her broken arrowroot biscuit lay in front of me. Ursula turned a little towards me.
That Gwen
, she said crisply,
she's got the ringworm. And she smells.
Her eyes had never been more aloof as they flickered over my face. I was the same fat girl she had farted and laughed with, but she would deny everything. I saw Gwen drop her stick and sit down, and I picked a crumb of date slice off my pinafore and savoured it.

It was your sissy brother
, Ursula hissed suddenly. As she spoke we saw Miss Vine come out onto the step, holding the brass bell. In the moment before it began to clang out, Ursula said,
He spilt the beans good and proper
. I heard her mother's satisfied voice in the words, and as Miss Vine clashed the bell up and down so that magpies scattered out of the trees, I saw the way Ursula smoothed the hair back smugly behind her ears, and knew that she must have told John who had thought of calling him Joan. Why else would John have betrayed me? Ursula waited until the last peal of the bell was dying through the air.
If I come to your
place tomorrow we can go out in your boat
, said Ursula, who loved our boat and Alma's pumpkin scones, and who might have started to find pale Anne dull, and too sluggish to boss.
All
right
, I said, and tried to be indifferent, but could not stop a smile.
And you can show me this witch of yours
, she said, and stared at my face, which suddenly felt stiff.
You have date
, she said primly.
All over your face.

Being Egged On

Ursula had caught only a single unsatisfying glimpse of Miss Gash and had become tired of crouching behind the bush waiting for more. Out in the bay later, she wanted to know everything, and with the sun on the water making me blink and bringing tears to my eyes, I told her.

She sings songs
, I said, and had to hold on to the side of the boat for laughing.
She sings songs about bananas!
Something happened to my voice on the last word so that I roared it out across the water, and had to repeat it so Ursula understood.
She's got bananas
, Ursula said, and had to hold her side from so much giggling.
She's got bananas for brains.
My cheeks were wet with tears, but I could stop laughing at last and go on.
And she's a witch
, I hissed as if the waves might hear.
She nearly killed me one day
, I improvised hastily. Ursula stopped giggling but was not convinced at this, so I tried another tack.
She's rude and nasty
, I said.
That tennis
shed thing, she's written rude words all over it
. I was so eager I spat on the words. I whispered into Ursula's coiled ear the words that I had written on the summer-house wall, and smelled the intimate smell of her hair in the sun.
She's an
evil old witch, she killed her husband.
I was drunk from the smell of Ursula and being with her in the middle of so much water, and the sun winked into my eyes from the waves, and my story was inspired.
She ate him. I saw her, she sat on the
step eating bits of him. Out of a basket. And wearing trousers.
As if this was the most shocking thing, Ursula gasped.
No! She
never!
She wanted to hear all about the trousers and the pipe and swore that she would never again go anywhere near Miss Gash or her house.

But, Lil
, she said, after scratching at flaking paint on the oar for a while,
I want a tile like that one you had. And you
say you are not scared. We
had stopped rowing, and the boat rocked on the water in a way I thought might be about to make me seasick. I was hot behind the ears and wondered if my breakfast was about to come up. In the silence, I was conscious of the air passing in and out of my nose.
I am not
scared at all
, I had to say, feeling flushed.
I will get as many tiles
as you like.

Now I wanted to stop talking about Miss Gash and her pipe and trousers, her tiles, the way she had eaten her husband. I wanted to be somewhere else, and in some other mood where I would not have to think about Miss Gash and feel Ursula watching me.

An Exhibition

I was beginning to dislike the way Miss Gash's lumpy lawn snatched at my feet, and the way the house seemed to withdraw as I ran over endless grass towards it. The steps up to the verandah were yawning away from each other, about to fall apart, and the shadow I saw under a leaf looked like a funnel-web. The house knew everything and was brittle in the mauve twilight. A pink cloud hung above a chimney in the shape of a puff of smoke. A pattern of postage stamps in the shadow of the verandah swayed towards me in the moment before it resolved itself into leaves and shadows, and the lace curtain in the window stirred as it always did, and fell back.