Love in the Years of Lunacy (11 page)

And so Pearl sat alone with her parents, quietly sipping tea as the band finally struck up and couples rushed to the diamond-shaped dance floor. The roof was decorated with ceramic pots holding tall ferns and window boxes of flowering geraniums; the tables were covered with heavy linen cloths fringed with lace. It was a kind and thoughtful birthday treat, but Pearl couldn't stop comparing it to her birthday of the year before, when James had been with her and she'd unwrapped her saxophone and all her dreams had seemed within her grasp.

She nibbled at a sandwich as the band played their first number. It had been months since she had played any music herself, but still she recognised that the band wasn't very good: the trombonist's tone was painfully thin, the trumpet was out of tune and the tempo kept speeding up during the chorus. She abandoned the sandwich and stood up, weaving her way between tables, trying to find the ladies' powder room. When she found it, she bludged a cigarette off one of the waitresses and sat smoking it on one of the stools, staring at her sad twin in the mirror.

After pinning wisps of hair back into her pompadour bun, she returned to the rooftop. As she made her way back to the table she gazed at the slate-coloured ocean and swooping seagulls and then something to her right caught her eye—a ship on the horizon—and before she knew it she was walking straight into one of the potted palms. She reeled back, spun on the ball of one foot and fell into the lap of a man, knocking over his ice bucket and bottle of champagne.

‘I'm so sorry!' she exclaimed, springing to her feet.

The man was dressed in a black suit and wore a charcoal-grey hat that shaded his face. He was pale and clean-shaven, a spot of blood on his left cheek where he'd cut himself shaving. He still wore his glasses but in the sleek black suit and white tie he looked curiously transformed, more debonair. He stood up, and she took the hand he held out to her.

‘Miss Willis,' he said, peering into her eyes. ‘You're looking so much better.' He crooked his arm and held it out to her. ‘Would you care to join me on the dance floor?'

The band was into the second chorus of ‘Tea for Two'. She didn't know how to dance but for the first time in her life she didn't care. She hooked her arm through his and allowed the Master of Lunacy to lead her onto the polished wood, to take her into his loose embrace. As she rested her cheek on the lapel of his jacket Pearl glimpsed her mother beaming at her as if she'd performed some heroic deed or miracle. Her father, however, was stony-faced.

During the winter of 1943, at Clara's invitation, Hector Best visited the house twice a week. He joined the family for their traditional Sunday roast, and on Saturdays escorted Pearl to whatever recreation or amusement she desired. Her health was gradually improving, and the Master of Lunacy was an attentive companion, who tried very hard to please Pearl. Sometimes he seemed more like a close, adoring uncle than a beau, and to be sure, he was no longer the young sportsman who had once thrown javelins and discuses in state competitions. He was still tall and slim but his limbs had grown stiff over the years and now his only daily exercise was walking from his home in Millers Point to his Office of Lunacy at Hyde Park Barracks, or from the Barracks to Reception House. He wore expensive tailored suits and crisp starched shirts with grandfather collars and neckties the colour of dishwater. His skin was so pale he often looked as if he were recovering from an illness himself. The Master's most attractive feature was his eyes—wide and gentle, the colour of honey. He was almost thirty-six and had never been married.

Aubrey did nothing to encourage the relationship, believing that Hector was taking advantage of Pearl, particularly since she hadn't fully recovered. Clara, however, was thrilled that a professional man, especially a doctor, was romancing her—even if he was nearly twice her age. The Master was a refreshing change from all the vaudevillians and musicians in the family. Clara told Pearl that he was the type who would always have a good and regular salary, and in the delicate way he guided Pearl down a flight of stairs or wrapped his coat around her shivering shoulders, Clara recognised a man who would take care of the girl, who would always cherish her.

The companionship that the Master provided each week was a welcome diversion from the monotony of sewing shirt pockets in the factory. Each Saturday, he brought her bouquets of lilies and dewy violets cultivated in a small greenhouse that he'd built in his backyard. They often strolled through Hyde Park, and he would point to plants and flowers, reciting their various popular names and then the Latin monikers. Sometimes they walked as far as Circular Quay and caught a ferry across to Manly, where they picnicked in an area of the beach that wasn't sectioned off by fencing and barbed wire. If Pearl wished to see a particular film, they both saw it immediately. If she had a craving for sausages, the Master promptly found a café or restaurant that served them.

Hector was intimate with all Pearl's weaknesses, yet they didn't seem to deter him; if anything, they seemed to make him care for her even more, as if her flaws were something to be admired. They occasionally enjoyed a chaste kiss now and then, but the doctor had never ventured further.

To please him, she pressed and dried the flowers he picked, mounted them on white cardboard and framed them behind glass. She loved to see his face brighten when she presented him with a gift. Even though his name was Hector Best, Pearl preferred to call him the Master or, when she was in a whimsical mood, Mr Lunatic, which always made him smile with embarrassment. His hands were gentle and warm, and when he traced the curve of her jaw or dusted her hair with his fingers, she often felt more relaxed and secure than after drinking the quinine sulphate or undergoing her hydrotherapy.

One day in early August Clara announced that she could hear the telephone ringing and suddenly left the parlour. Before Pearl could say she couldn't hear a thing, the Master fell to his knees and, with a magician's deft sleight of hand, suddenly produced a ruby-studded ring. Pearl had sensed this would happen eventually, but she hadn't been expecting it so soon after her illness. She was uncertain of her feelings for Hector. She didn't know whether she felt affection or love or something else that she couldn't name. Perhaps it was merely gratitude—gratitude for his friendship, his tenderness. All she knew for sure was that she wasn't obsessed with Hector as she had been, and still was, with James. She took the ring between her thumb and forefinger and turned it in the sunlight. She then placed the ring over her right eye and looked through it, as if it were a tiny monocle. ‘It's pretty, Mr Lunatic.'

Hector chewed on his bottom lip. ‘Will you, Pearl?'

Stalling for time, she tried to slip the ring onto the third finger of her left hand, but it was too small and she couldn't push it over her second knuckle.

Hector's face dropped
.
‘I'll get it enlarged.'

Pearl turned the band of gold around the first knuckle of her finger. She was desperate not to hurt his feelings.

‘You think I'm too old,' he said.

‘No, I don't.' Her reply came a little too fast and he wilted a little before lowering himself from his kneeling position to sit directly on the floor. ‘I was your doctor once. Does that make a difference?'

She considered lying, agreeing with the suggestion and letting him down easily, when she noticed Hector had begun to tremble. She reached out and touched his shoulder but he whimpered like a young boy. And she realised that she no longer felt like that carefree young girl who had frequented the sly grog joints in the Cross and made love in a fairground, in the Botanic Gardens, in an abandoned mansion. She had thought of herself as a woman of the world, but now her younger self seemed immature and childish, never thinking about the consequences of her actions, or how many people she hurt. Perhaps marriage would mature her, would make her more responsible.

9

H
er engagement to a doctor redeemed Pearl's reputation in the neighbourhood. The Willis girl was now no longer considered a reckless teenager, but a beautiful young woman who was about to be married. Of course, there were still a few cynics who thought it was entirely appropriate that someone as mad as Pearl should wed a psychiatrist. For the most part, however, friends of the family were happy for the couple and began dropping off gifts for her glory box.

There were invitation lists to draw up, bouquets to design. Nora Barnes, who had given birth to a baby boy, was to be the one and only bridesmaid. Aubrey's five-year-old great-niece, Lavinia, would be the flower girl (Clara decided the girl could wear her polio brace at the wedding, but not her thick round glasses). Hector didn't have any close friends so his father was appointed to be the best man, which made a good joke when anyone asked about it—the best man really
was
a Best man: Hector Best, Senior.

War rations made it difficult to find any decent materials for a wedding dress, and after weeks of scouring the tables of department stores, Pearl had to settle for one of her mother's old theatre gowns made from ivory magnolia satin. Clara would alter the dress, while Lulu would stitch the pattern of teardrop crystals around the bodice. They decided on a net veil crowned with a garland of fresh camellias.

On the weekends Hector brought her bouquets of tiger lilies from his greenhouse. And it was this behaviour that continued to draw Pearl to Hector—his thoughtfulness and generosity—when many men as accomplished as he was would find it easy to be narrow-minded and demanding. These qualities didn't make her want to rip the buttons off his shirt or tongue his ear all night; theirs was a quieter, gentler connection. She was fairly certain she wasn't in love with him, but she knew now that she'd never hear from James again, and she couldn't bear to hurt Hector and cause him unhappiness. And even if she did have the occasional reservation about spending the rest of her life with him, she figured that her feelings were a normal response to such a serious commitment—and anyway, they were engaged now and it was too late to change her mind. She was also aware that she would never lose Hector to the war effort, as his position as Master of Lunacy was a protected occupation. Marrying him was the right thing to do.

One bright Saturday morning in September, a fortnight before their wedding day, Hector and Pearl bought matching gold bands from a jeweller on King Street, the same one who'd enlarged her engagement ring. Hector's fingers were so long and narrow his ring was only a half-size bigger than Pearl's, and she joked that if she ever lost hers, she could always borrow his. They walked back to Potts Point arm in arm through the Botanic Gardens. As they strolled through the shadows of tall trees, beneath a colony of dozing fruit bats, Pearl was struck by the fact that she and James used to walk exactly the same paths during the days of their courtship—though never arm in arm, of course. For a moment she found herself fantasising that the arm crooked around hers was James's, that it was his citrus aftershave she could smell above the loamy odour of the duck pond. She smiled guiltily at Hector for her momentary betrayal, before they walked through the gates and down the staircase that led to the wharves of Woolloomooloo. Sagging streamers and shrinking balloons still hung from awnings of milk bars and grocery stores, remnants from the post-election parties the week before, when Prime Minister Curtin had been voted back in.

Pearl had insisted on wearing her wedding ring until she arrived home; only then would she return it to its velvet box and give it back to Hector. Now she lifted her hand and saw the sunlight glint off the band, and stopped in the middle of the footpath to kiss Hector on the lips while the barefoot kids playing in the street whistled lewdly.

She was laughing at the whistling children when a man swept out of a pub and bumped into her.

‘Sorry, love!' he apologised, breathing cheap whisky fumes over her. She was about to brush him off when she recognised the thinning, slicked-back hair and pencil moustache: it was Lionel Bogwald, her former bandleader from the Trocadero. He recognised her at the same time, and suddenly he was throwing his arms around her and kissing her on the cheek. ‘How I've missed you, dear girl! We all have!'
Then he held her at arm's length. ‘My, you're looking well.'

Pearl was laughing self-consciously. ‘Well, I've missed you, too.'

‘It hasn't been the same since you and Martin left,' he added. ‘No practical jokes. No fun anymore!'
He opened a silver case and offered her a cigarette, which she accepted, took one for himself, and lit both with a lighter. As she was exhaling Pearl realised she'd forgotten to introduce her fiancé. He was standing beside her, frowning.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry!'
she said. ‘Hector, this is Lionel Bogwald, my old bandleader. Lionel, this is Hector.'

Bogwald uttered some pleasantries and offered him a cigarette, but Hector shook his head. The bandleader asked Pearl about Martin and the rest of her family and then reminisced about the night the twins had tied a dead fish to his trombone slide. When he'd picked up his instrument to play his solo, the cod flopped and swung about wildly until the string snapped and the fish went flying through the air and ended up in the lap of the Lord Mayor's wife.

Pearl and Bogwald laughed at the memory of it but Hector barely cracked a smile. She'd never seen him so serious and withdrawn, not even when he'd been her doctor.

She and Bogwald threw down their butts and stepped on them. They bade an affectionate goodbye and the bandleader shook Hector's hand again, even remembering his name.

‘And don't forget,'
Bogwald added, as he headed off towards the Domain, ‘don't be a stranger at the Troc, my dear girl. You come down and sit in with us any night you like.'

‘
I will,'
she promised, waving.

‘Fancy running into him,'
she remarked, as she and Hector crossed the road. ‘He's a great bandleader, you know—the best. He trained in England, with the London Philharmonic.'

Hector said nothing until, after what seemed like a long while, he cleared his throat and said, ‘I didn't know you smoked.'

Pearl shrugged. ‘Just now and again.'

Hector pursed his lips and looked away. She was expecting him to say that women shouldn't smoke, especially in public, or that it wasn't good for her health, but after a minute or so he asked, ‘So how long have you known this chap?'

‘
Who, Lionel?'
She thought for a moment. ‘Well, I auditioned for the Troc when I was seventeen, so I guess that'd be a couple of years.'

Hector kept his eyes fixed on the aircraft carrier to their left. ‘And how often did you go out with him?'

Pearl was so startled by the question she wasn't sure if she'd heard him correctly.
‘He was my bandleader, Hector. My boss.'

‘
Never your boyfriend?'

Pearl assured him that she and Lionel Bogwald were just friends—no, not even friends, merely former colleagues. She couldn't think of anything more ridiculous than a romance with Lionel Bogwald: his breath often smelled of gin and, when it rained, black hair dye ran down the side of his face. Hector was silent as they began to climb the steep McElhone Stairs to her house. She wasn't sure if she'd convinced him about the bandleader, but he asked no more questions.

When they arrived home, Pearl's unease about Hector's behaviour was forgotten when they walked into the parlour to find Lulu lying on the floor gasping for air. Her eyes were rolled back and she was shaking as if a thousand watts of electricity were bolting through her system. Clara was on her knees, crying, ‘Mum! Oh my God. I'm here!' The wedding dress Lulu had been beading was coiled around her body and, remarkably, she still had the needle between her thumb and forefinger, as if she intended to keep sewing once her seizure had passed. Hector fell to his knees, stuck his fingers in her mouth, and removed her false teeth.

By the time the ambulance arrived the spasms had receded and she'd fallen into a limp semi-consciousness. Clara rode with her in the back of the ambulance, while Aub, Pearl and Hector hurried up Victoria Street on foot, through the Kings Cross intersection and on into Darlinghurst to the emergency ward of St Vincent's Hospital. A team of doctors was now examining Lulu to determine what had happened. Aubrey took his distraught wife into his arms and rocked her, kissed her eyelids, and in a soft voice called her
Pigeon
.

After an hour or so Lulu was breathing regularly again and her heart rate had finally steadied. But she was still unconscious and was transferred to a bed in Intensive Care. The doctors believed she'd suffered a stroke, and warned the family that Lulu's chances of regaining consciousness were slim, especially since she was eighty-three years old. They suggested that any family or close friends should be summoned at once.

A vigil formed around her bed. Pearl, Hector, Aubrey and Clara took it in turns to talk to Lulu's impassive face. When Father Jim arrived he sprinkled her with holy water and uttered the last rites in a soft, faltering voice. Aubrey sent a telegram to Martin through the main army headquarters in Brisbane, urging him to return home immediately. Clara decided that the wedding should be postponed. Lulu could die at any time and no one wanted grief to taint a celebration. And then there was nothing left to do but pray.

Two days later, Pearl was returning from the ladies' when she saw a tall, suntanned man in uniform walking down the corridor towards her, weaving between a tea trolley, two nuns, a man on crutches and an empty wheelchair. His blond hair was cropped short. He had a bounce in his step, and she caught herself thinking that he was rather handsome.

Then the man cried out, ‘Burly!' He broke into a run and she was suddenly swept up into his arms and swung about in circles.

‘You're too skinny,' he chided, his big hands spanning her waist. ‘Didn't they feed you in the madhouse?'

Pearl was teary and laughing at the same time. ‘Just Mum's cooking,' she said. ‘That's enough to drive you crazy.'

He seemed taller, bigger somehow; the skin on his nose was peeling; his hair was sun-bleached; lines had formed above his eyebrows. He slung his arm around her and they walked down the hall together towards Lulu's ward.

Later, as Martin and Pearl strolled home from the hospital, Martin teased, ‘So you're almost an old married lady now? Can't wait to meet the bloke who's pulled that off.'

Hector arrived in the early evening, wearing a dark suit and bow tie. His light brown eyes seemed at once small and averted. Over dinner, he began to speak of Pearl in an unusually possessive way. ‘Pearl shouldn't drink, you know,' he told Martin. ‘It's not good for her complexion.' ‘Pearl doesn't miss playing the saxophone at all—it was just a phase she was going through.' ‘Pearl's not really clumsy—it's just a lack of focus. We're trying to train her to concentrate more.'

Pearl became increasingly irritated. Hector had only known her for a year or so while Martin had known her his whole life—no, longer than that: they'd once been part of the same single cell inside their mother's womb.

Hector left soon after the meal, giving Pearl a brief peck on the cheek and telling her to get some rest. In fact, the entire family was so exhausted that they all retired to their beds straight after the nine o'clock news. Near midnight, the phone rang; Lulu had taken a bad turn and might not make it through the night. They pulled their coats on over their pyjamas and made the pilgrimage on foot back through the darkness to St Vincent's.

Throughout the following day she seemed to waver between this world and the next, and no one could predict to which one she'd commit herself. Clara had by now planned and cancelled Lulu's funeral twice. It was hard to know what to do and when to do it. Merv Sent called Martin, wanting to know when he was returning to the band, but Martin told him he couldn't leave just yet and suggested he find a temporary replacement.

Eleven days after her initial stroke, Lulu suffered another seizure and fell into a deep sleep. The family linked hands, formed a circle around the bed and prayed. Sometimes the rise and fall of her chest would slow. Sometimes it stopped altogether. And those around the bed would lean over her and stop breathing too, in anticipation of her death.

The night passed in this way, but as dawn broke next morning, she unexpectedly opened her eyes. She blinked a few times, as if she didn't recognise the people around her. She swallowed; her lips began to quiver. And then, after years of sustained and utter silence, Lulu made a distinctive sound.

‘T—' she said.

Clara exchanged looks with Aub. Pearl raced into the hallway to find a nurse, who bustled up to the bed and checked Lulu's pulse.

‘T-ti' she said again. The nurse took her blood pressure as Lulu repeated the same syllable over and over.

‘You wanna cup of tea?' Clara asked finally.

Lulu's eyes brightened and she smiled.

Father Jim and Clara were convinced it was a miracle, a gift from God for their patience and prayers. But later on, when the doctors examined her, they were told the restored hearing and limited speech was a consequence of the second stroke, which had positively affected the damaged neurones in her brain. Apparently, sometimes this could happen through the electrical impulses of the stroke.

Lulu's condition was monitored for four days. The doctors were surprised to find she'd suffered no permanent physical damage, except limited mobility in two fingers of her left hand. She was released from hospital with a prescription for pills to regulate her blood pressure and returned to the house on Victoria Street in better condition than when she'd left it.