Love in the Years of Lunacy (6 page)

4

B
y the morning of her birthday, Pearl still hadn't heard from him. When her father asked what time her guest was arriving she just shrugged. Days before, she'd explained to her parents that their bridge-playing friend, James, had mentioned how lonely he was—being so far from home, and that she and Martin had invited him over for a home-cooked meal.

While Pearl's love affair had faltered, Martin's romance with Roma seemed to be progressing well, but Roma had made it clear that she was in no hurry to meet her beau's parents. She'd grown up in the bush, wary of white people. ‘It's not that I don't like them,' she'd explained to Martin. ‘I just don't know how to act when I'm around them.'

Pearl realised it was probably just as well. Their father wouldn't say much about his son dating an Aborigine—in fact, the man was so easygoing he probably wouldn't mind if Martin brought home Siamese twins and announced that he was in love with them both. Their mother, however, was a different matter: far more religious, and more conscious of the family's reputation in the local community. Clara wouldn't deliberately offend Roma, Pearl knew, but she'd probably embarrass the girl without even trying.

Towards lunchtime, the twins' favourite orchestra, Artie Shaw's Navy Band, was playing on the radio, and Pearl drifted in to join the others. Father Jim, an old family friend, was sitting in the parlour with Lulu, the twins' deaf grandmother. Mr Bones was warming himself by the fire, while Mikey Michaels sat on the floor, playing with wooden blocks. When no one was looking Pearl took a half-bottle of brandy she kept stashed behind the bathroom cistern and added its contents to her mother's fruit punch. She downed two glasses in quick succession to quell her disappointment.

Martin was already sitting at the dining room table, drumming his fingers in time with Artie Shaw's ‘Airmail Special'. A headache began to crawl up Pearl's left temple. She could smell the heavy aroma of overcooked meat. When her father handed her another glass of punch she downed it in one gulp. Surely she couldn't be that thirsty, said her mother.

‘I'm not dying of thirst,' Pearl replied. ‘I'm dying of sobriety.'

Father Jim was on to his fourth glass of punch. His face was red and swollen and the ash on his cigarette became a crooked grey finger pointing to the floor, until it dropped without him noticing and landed on the bearskin rug.

As the smell of burning chicken filled the kitchen, Pearl pulled her father into the dining room.

‘Serve the lunch, Dad,' she said. ‘James must have been held up.' She turned her attention to lighting the three candles in the centre of the table.

When they were all finally seated—the family, Mr Bones and Mikey—Father Jim said grace and thanked the Lord for the miracle that was Pearl and Martin. He also expressed his gratitude for the fine meal before them during these times of hardship, death and destruction. Lastly, he prayed for peace and protection, and they all echoed his ‘Amen'. Aubrey carved the chooks up. Martin passed the vegetables. The doorbell chimed.

Aubrey pushed back his chair but Pearl leapt to her feet. ‘No, let me.'

She forced herself to walk slowly through the dining room and into the parlour, between the scattered chairs, past the fire. For a moment she was giddy with anticipation, before telling herself it was probably a neighbour who'd run out of sugar or eggs. Turning into the hallway, she saw a tall figure on the other side of the door, silhouetted against its stained-glass window. She checked her appearance briefly in the mirror hanging on the wall, and turned the door handle.

James was on the doorstep wearing a clean and pressed military uniform. He smiled nervously, but couldn't look at her directly, and instead stared down at his polished black boots. ‘Sorry 'bout the other night,' he murmured. ‘Captain put me on laundry duty.'

He glanced up the street, as if he were lost and was now planning to retrace his steps along the footpath.

‘Happy birthday,' he said, proffering his gift. It was a square, thin package, obviously a record.

She smiled and with her free hand took his arm and walked him through the foyer. When he bristled at the sight of the stuffed emu, Pearl laughed and said, ‘Don't worry, that's just Cedric,' and led him towards the dining room. As they appeared in the doorway, everyone at the table paused in their serving and talking to stare at Martin and Pearl's new friend.

James gave a little salute. ‘Hi folks.' His Southern accent echoed through the dining room. Everyone was still staring as Pearl guided him towards the seat next to her own.

‘Stone the crows!' exclaimed Clara finally, a spoonful of mashed potato suspended in the air. ‘Love, you didn't tell us he was so handsome!'

There was laughter then—a flutter of white serviettes—and, seventy minutes late, the birthday lunch finally began.

Clara passed James a plate of pumpkin so overcooked the pieces looked like a pile of black and orange rocks. ‘We understand you boys are starved for company and good food,' she said. ‘And believe me, we certainly appreciate the fine job you're doing here.'

Aub salted his food, picked up a single pea and ate it, then shook more salt over his plate.

‘I'm a song and dance girl!' Clara announced unexpectedly. Pearl realised her mother was swaying now. Clara rarely drank, and the punch must have gone straight to her head.

James glanced at Clara warily. His shoulders were taut as he leaned forward to spoon some cauliflower onto his plate.

‘I also play the drums and cornet,' she added.

James straightened in his chair and held his glass up to her. ‘A renaissance woman,' he said, his accent bending the vowels.

‘No, I'm a Catholic!' she chirped. ‘Father Jim here baptised me. And the kids, too.'

The priest gave a little self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders as he sawed away at his dry chicken leg.

‘I just hope he lives long enough to marry them,' Clara said. ‘Not to each other, of course.'

Aub cleared his throat and asked James where he hailed from.

‘The South!' Pearl volunteered eagerly.

‘Not far from New Orleans,' added James, pronouncing it
Noo Awlins
.

‘Mother comes from New Orleans,' chimed Clara.

Lulu smiled back serenely, as if she had heard every word. It was difficult to be sure how much she could still understand. Sometimes she nodded at a question or shook her head when she possibly disagreed with somebody's comment. However the doctor believed the head movements were coincidental rather than genuine responses to auditory stimuli.

Soon the punch and the wine were having the desired effect: the chicken didn't taste so burnt, the cabbage was not so soggy, and the peas didn't seem as dry. The gramophone crackled with Aubrey's favourite records from the vaudeville days.

Everyone was more than tipsy by the time the table was cleared. While the women scraped plates and placed leftovers in the icebox, the men sat in the parlour, sampling the Javanese cigarettes that Martin had bought on the black market. The room was soon filled with aromatic plumes of smoke, redolent of cloves and other spices.

Pearl, feeling that James was ignoring her, sashayed unsteadily across the room and dropped onto his lap. Father Jim, staring at them, began coughing. Aubrey let out a long whistle, pretending to be shocked.

‘Enough of that!' cried Clara.

James nudged Pearl off his lap and she suddenly felt silly. She had been trying to act worldly and had looked childish instead.

James picked up his gift from the sideboard and handed it to her. She pulled on the blue ribbon and unwrapped the plain brown paper. Pearl knew, of course, that it would be a record, but when she saw the label she was so thrilled she wanted to throw her arms around him, but merely squeezed his arm. It was a phonograph recording of Sonny Clay's Colored Idea.

She turned to her father. ‘Remember when you took us to see Sonny Clay at the Tiv?'

Aub nodded.

Martin took the record from Pearl. ‘That was a hot band. I mean, really hot.' He turned to James. ‘And Aub reckons that when they came onstage, Pearl burst into tears. She was terrified.'

‘Why?' asked James.

‘It was the first time we'd ever seen Negroes,' said Martin.

James shifted his gaze to Pearl, frowning.

‘I was only a little kid,' she said hurriedly. ‘Once they started playing, I stopped crying.'

James shook his head briefly, but said nothing. ‘They even had tap dancers in the troupe,' she added, to no one in particular.

Martin slipped the record from its camel-coloured sleeve and dropped it on the turntable. ‘For weeks after that,' she added, ‘Martin, Charlie Styles, and I nailed bottle tops to the soles of our shoes and tried to imitate them. Remember?'

After winding up the gramophone, Martin lifted the needle and dropped it onto the record's first grooves. The scratchy opening chorus of ‘Plantation Blues' filled the room.

A strumming banjo and the deep throb of a tuba, and what sounded like flutey clarinets, slightly out of tune, propelled the melody along.

Clara's red lipstick was now smudged against her teeth and bleeding into the small creases around her mouth. ‘But don't you remember?' she said. ‘The whole band was deported from Melbourne.'

‘What, for playing jazz?' asked James.

Clara shook her head. ‘Loose morals—the police raided their rooms one night and found six of them in bed—with six white girls.' She sighed heavily. ‘All naked as the day they were born.
Nude
. Can you imagine?' She pursed her lips primly. ‘Or would you want to?'

James shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered.

‘Well,' said Pearl, trying to make light of the comment, ‘boys will be boys—no matter what colour they are.'

Clara lurched across the parlour towards the punch bowl. ‘It didn't look good in the papers, young lady.'

Pearl, standing by the fire, glanced at James and saw his eyes wandering towards the hallway that led to the front door. She wished her mother would shut up.

‘Ruined the girls' reputations,' added Clara. ‘Pity the poor parents. Who'd ever get over a thing like that?'

‘nude girls in jazz orgy, or something like that,' Aub recalled. ‘I think they used the White Australia policy on that one.'

The last strains of the song filled the room, the dying harmonies of a trumpet and clarinet.

James cleared his throat. ‘The White Australia policy?'

Aub waved a dismissive hand. ‘It was set up years ago.'

‘To keep coloureds out?'

Aub absently twirled the ginger hair sticking out of his nostrils, as if he were spit-curling a moustache. ‘Only the Chinese, really. To keep 'em out of the goldfields. But I remember back in '08, when they let in that Negro boxer, Jack Johnson—woo-hoo!' Aub, grinning, leaped up and began weaving and shadowboxing around the room. ‘Pummelled that white bloke—what was his name?—pummelled the guts out of him.' Aub ducked and punched his way out of the room and down the basement stairs to collect more wine.

James glanced at the clock.

Pearl, sensing that the mood of the party was going downhill at a cracking pace, asked her mother if there was any dessert.

But Clara was on a roll now and waved away Pearl's question, drunkenly declaring that the musicians from Sonny Clay's band had also been diagnosed with venereal diseases.

‘Syphilis?' murmured James.

‘It was there in the paper—in black and white.'

James pulled on the cuffs of his sleeve and stood up. ‘I didn't realise how late it is,' he said. ‘I've got to get back to the camp.'

‘No!' cried Pearl.

‘Good Lord, son—' Clara waved her empty glass in the air ‘—we haven't even served the tea.'

James looked pained; it was obvious he wanted to flee.

Aubrey suddenly burst into the parlour carrying a large rectangular box wrapped in gold paper, with a smaller one, covered in the same paper, balanced on top of it.

‘You can't leave yet,' he said, almost blocking James's way. ‘The twins haven't opened the rest of their presents!'

He handed the smaller gift to Martin, who opened it to find a hand-tailored tweed suit, with a double-breasted jacket and silk lining.

Aub handed the larger parcel to Pearl. ‘It's from Mum and me.'

Pearl put the present on the floor, kneeled, and tore back the wrapping to reveal a large cardboard box. Inside was a big black case in the shape of a thick question mark. Her heart was doing a fast tap dance in her chest as she flipped back the silver catches and opened the lid. Resting in recesses of plush red velvet was a gleaming saxophone.

Her hands flew up to her face in shock. ‘It's mine?'

‘Almost,' said her father. ‘We took out a loan.'

‘Downpayment of five quid,' said Clara.

‘Two bob a week,' finished Aub, prodding the fire with an iron poker.

‘Better not get the sack now,' joked Martin, putting the recording of Sonny Clay back into its sleeve.

Pearl fitted the instrument together and held it out to James. ‘Here,' she said, trying to cheer him up, to make him stay. ‘You get to play it first.'

He waved her away. ‘It's your birthday, Pearl.'

‘Then play for me,' she implored him, but he shook his head and stood up.

‘Thank you for your hospitality,' he said stiffly, looking at the carpet. ‘God bless.' Then he strode down the hallway and out the front door.

Pearl put down the sax and ran after him.

About halfway up the block, she finally caught up and slapped him on the back. He stopped and turned to face her.

They glared at one another. The street was empty except for some neighbours sticking black tar paper against their front windows in preparation for the night ahead.