The Hanging Garden (16 page)

Dear Eirene (dear Gil)

I wonder how you are getting on since I left Neutral Bay. Isn’t that Neutral the biggest laugh in war or peace? I would love to see you but our ways lie apart in life and schools. I am starting term at this Churchy Grammar School for boys, and you I hear are bound for ‘Ambleside’ and Miss Hammersley. I can only say good luck to us, mate.

I often think about us Reen—and the tree-house, the bloody cubby—you sitting on the upright Arnotts biscuit tin like it was your inherited throne. Perhaps it was. From all this we can only meet again.

Sorry my typing isn’t all it ought to be. Fiona is letting me use her machine—so as Lockharts won’t swoop in and recognise my writing. Fiona (Cutlack) is Mrs Stally’s niece who lives here too. Vaucluse isn’t all that bad—if not our sort of country Reen. What is, I’d like to know, outside the big fig tree in Cameron Street. Old Stally is the silliest bugger you ever had to put up with. You wonder anyone’s accounts come right. Mrs S. is an invalid. Sundays we eat lunch at the Royal Sydney Golf Club. A lot of congealed custard and Stallybrasses galore. Fiona is the best of them. She’s learning touchtyping, so as she can take a job till she marries—if the war doesn’t last forever, if it does she’ll go into the WRANS, she reckons the hats will suit her best.

Oh Jesus, the fucking war. Perhaps I should skip the school bit and join up. My dad ought to approve, if they ever approve of anything. Get killed like poor old Nigel. Don’t think anything will kill Horsfall or if it does I’ll come back to haunt the places we’ve been together.

Fiona says that most of what I say is pure bullsh. Hope you don’t think the same, Reen, of what I sincerely feel

This FIONA is probably right …

Just a line from your fellow reffo

      
Gil

What to do with the letter? Stick it down your front with the key, if they won’t hear the key beating against the envelope, if their long distance eyes haven’t already read the message?

By the time you go in they have decided on their line of attack. Bruce gazing at the fly-specks on the ceiling, Keith his lids lowered, thick lips still greasy from breakfast trembling with amusement and the comb-and-paper tune he is humming. Ally has chosen a fit of busyness, scraping plates and jostling cups on saucers, to disguise her thoughts and intentions.

Only Harold expresses his disapproval in words. ‘Hope it was good news, Irene. Or perhaps it was only a business letter.’

The secret we share gives his interest a sting which the others cannot feel.

‘No. It’s a letter from a friend.’ My reply as flat as his enquiry.

‘Glad you have friends around.’ His low voice vibrates in a way which might reach deep inside someone who meets him for the first time at the Quay or on the ferry.

The ears of the others are pricking of course. To know who Reen’s friend could possibly be. Your nostrils are pinched as you enjoy a twinge of evil in yourself. You could have stuck a pin in any of them as Viva stuck the pin in your arm that first day at school and seemed to grow hypnotised by the pinprick of blood.

Unable to solve a mystery, they go their different ways, and you are left with the ballooning melancholy which comes with the prospect of this new important school. Even the ‘Ambleside’ uniform has a smell of importance which warns off a black reffo Greek.

Would like to have another read of the letter, only Alison Lockhart reappears. Her face tells that she would like to have an intimate talk now that you are alone in the house. She accepts you as a woman, no longer the unwanted child-niece, because she wants to unload some of her own unhappiness.

‘You will always be frank with me, dear—I hope —how can we trust each other if you aren’t?’

Poor old Alison makes you feel happy by comparison—not to say dishonest. Has she guessed perhaps, and only wants it confirmed. She ought to know. It takes a very short time to find out all there is to know about Harold. If you could tell her that you are her ally, that Gil is your friend, as pure a secret as Harold is a dirty one. But secrets, whether pure or dirty, are for some people difficult to share.

Her aunt is off at a tangent. ‘What I am afraid of,’ she tears out a tissue, a box of which she keeps handy in every room, ‘is that when you go to this school—up the line—other girls—their parents—will take you up, and from beginning to accept you as my own daughter, I shall—well, I shall never see you.’

It could be genuine, except that the sniffles and the Kleenex seemed to create a drama, an incestuous one at that, if Ally is my mother and Harold my would-be seducer.

You are trying not to laugh.

‘What is it?’

‘I was thinking of the Greek Tragedies.’

‘I can’t see any connection,’ she says rolling the Kleenex into a ball, and throwing it in the waste paper basket. ‘This is Australia and although you are a Greek, we thought—wrong or right—you had started seeing yourself as an Australian.’

It is too much.

‘I don’t know what I am. I don’t want anyone to—
take me up
. I only want to be left alone—to be myself—when I find out what that is.’

Ally is embarrassed by turning on emotion in somebody else. But she asked for it.

‘How you exaggerate, Ireen. I do hope you won’t blow your top like this at “Ambleside”, and disgrace us all.’

Embarrassment gets rid of Alison. So at least you are alone, to think your own thoughts, if not to discover what you are.

The aunt can be heard driving off safe in her scungy old car, with its cigarettes and box of travelling tissues.

*   *   *

Alison had driven you up to the interview with Miss Hammersley. If you were accepted the ‘principal’ (Alison’s unexpected word) had made it clear she was doing it as a favour and because you were an ‘interesting proposition’. The waiting list for ‘Ambleside’ was long; parents of the best professional and grazier families put their girls down years ahead.

‘So I hope you’ll do your stuff and impress the old cow,’ says Ally without great expectations in her voice.

She has parked the vehicle out of sight of the school buildings. She has got herself up for the occasion in more than the usual lipstick, her
bois de rose
, and a pair of black glacé shoes which make her limp.

As she limps ahead she mutters panting, ‘Punctuality gives me the gripes, but on some occasions it pays off…’

The hem of the
bois de rose
is hanging. It would be unkind to tell her. Your relationship is very close this morning.

It is hard to decide which is the more melancholy, a humming school or a deserted one. A superior maid tries to make us feel inferior and does, because we are disturbing the holidays. ‘Miss Hammersley has gone swimming,’ she says, ‘but will be back soon.’

She shows us into the head’s study and leaves us to its silence, our breathing, and our fears.

It is a mellow room, paintings, books—more than you have seen since coming to Australia. Photographs of men in uniform, British to the last hair of their moustaches. Less mellow the school groups—of ‘Ambleside’ girls squeezed up together, with assorted teachers, and a nurse in a cap.

‘That’s matron,’ says Ally. ‘She’s been here for years, doling out the castor oil. You’ll miss that because you’re only day.’

There’s a group of girl cricketers. In the centre an elderly lady in trousers, exhibiting a bit.

‘That’s old Jinney in her favourite rôle.’ My aunt can’t resist a giggle. ‘I’ll laugh outright, darl, if you become a cricket star.’

Just then the maid returns, to investigate the noise, and find out whether you are lifting some of the ornaments.

She adjusts the blinds ‘… summer fades fabrics…’ she hisses, to make her appearance look less blatant. ‘Miss Hammersley will be here soon,’ she assures, with a sideways look at this somewhat unorthodox candidate.

Almost immediately Miss Hammersley is.

She is still slightly moist from her dip. Her hair has this damp frizz. Obviously Jinney doesn’t give a damn for hair. She is in a skirt today, askew round her bottom. Her large gold-rimmed spectacles radiate the superior virtues of the pure-bred Anglo-Saxon upper class. Actually, as a Pom, Jinney Hammersley has it over the pure-bred Anglo-Saxon Australians, who probably would not have it otherwise. Even Ally, for all her contempt, wears a slight cringe—along with the cracked glacé shoes and the
bois de rose
hem which has escaped its stitches.

She is on about her niece adapting herself to life in Australia. You suspect that Ally, if you hadn’t been there, would have liked to represent you as a kind of Greek tragedy. But since you are present it isn’t possible. And the Hammersley is determined to make it a jollier than jolly occasion.

She apologises for her ‘swimming togs’, wet and sandy, which she slings round the knob of a chair.

‘At least they smell of the sea,’ her glowing face splits as though for a discovery. ‘You, Irene,’ she pronounces the name English style as Harold does, ‘should appreciate that.
Thalassa, Thalassa
…’ cupping her chin and rather a dreamy smile, as she leans on this imposing desk.

You can’t help laughing. It sprays around you. And Alison’s horror reaching out towards her Greek tragedy of a niece, to protest, to protect us. If only Gil. Gil could have handled such a situation.

But the Hammersley has a forgiving smile. She does not appear to notice, or perhaps decides to interpret mirth as hysteria. She starts bringing out the snaps—Delphi, Olympia, Dodona, the Parthenon … ‘my tour of the ancient sites…’ and speaks some more of her hoi polloi English Greek. As she leans over you, the waves of
Thalassa
battle against a dew of armpits.

‘I don’t expect they introduced you to cricket’ she walks springily around as though making for the crease, ‘in our beloved Hellas,’ she says, ‘unless of course you have connections with Corfu. The British have left their stamp on Corfu.’

Seated again at her splendid desk, she promises ‘We’ll try you out. Cricket plays an important part—because, you see, at Ambleside we aim to function as a Team.’ She lowers her chin, making it three, ‘I don’t encourage specific girls, however gifted, to hog the show.’

Brief pause.

‘Scholastically,’ she booms, switching on her great round spectacles so that they flood the aunt with an electric glow and cause acute anxiety, ‘the curriculum aims at turning out girls with a broad humanistic view of life, through history, literature, the visual arts as well as encouraging the domestic virtues through a grounding in needlework and baking. Comprehensive in fact.’

Again Miss Hammersley pauses to contemplate her effects.

While the unfortunate Mrs Lockhart produces from a crumpled envelope a report on the candidate Irene Sklavos by her recent head Mr Warren Harbord.

Miss Hammersley’s outstretched arm, the scales of sea salt still trembling on its down, receives the document with appropriate benevolence. The spectacles are directed at it. The hand taps, the throat is cleared before tautening, the mouth is pursed, and the cheeks rather than the lips smile.

‘Irene is an individualist, it seems—according to Mr. Warren? Harbord. Well, we shall see. I expect she will correct our Greek.’

Mrs Lockhart quails. ‘Ireen is a very biddable girl’ she offers her superior out of another country.

But the principal has no time for the guardian aunt. Again elbowing the desk her spectacles are focused on what could at last be the ideal pupil inside the unpromising material.

Never were you subjected, all at the same instant, to battery by cricket balls, blinding by the flicker of leafed dictionaries, soothed by the scent of slightly scorched Australian sponge helped from hot baking tins. You can only lower your eyes against Miss Hammersley’s dreamy inspection, and hope for the best.

We are shown out by the snooty maid, while the principal remains behind, arranging paper-knives and blotters on her desk. Eating into a little finger is a ring with a dark green stone blotched as though with blood.

*   *   *

Several days later, Ally says with a mixture of relief and contempt, ‘Waddaya know. The old girl’s accepted you, Ireen. You must have something.’

Harold didn’t say anything.

Date?

Don’t know why I have started keeping this rotten old diary again. Always too dangerous on any count. Perhaps ‘Ambleside’ has given me courage—or wearing the key on a chain round my neck. Anyone interested enough could probably fiddle at the lock with a hairpin. But the older boys are so obsessed with turning themselves into super males their imagination is leaving them. Apart from eyeing me once or twice, Harold seems to have lost interest.

Once Miss Hammersley wondered aloud what I wore on the chain. I did not enlighten her and she did not pursue the subject. The great slogan of the parents and anyone who knows about the school, is:
The girls all adore Miss Hammersley
, when she is hated by many of those outside the cricketing set.

I find her excessively—aggressively kind. The other evening when I was kept back by Miss Charteris over an essay she found ‘original, but verging on the impertinent’ Miss Hammersley called me as I was going down the steps. She put an arm around me as we walked down the gravel towards the gate. The day had been oppressive. The evening smelled of Pittosporum. Our figures cast heavy shadows in a brassy light.

‘Are you happy, my dear,’ she asked as though hoping the answer might be no.

‘Oh yes, happy enough…’ I must have sounded a breathy idiot.

‘I wish you the greatest happiness’ she sighed, stroking the nape of my neck.

Then she turned. I went on towards the road. I did not look back, but my antennae told me Miss Hammersley did.

What happiness is, I can’t find out. Silences? Being left alone? That can become loneliness. Nearest with Gil in the arms of the great tree, in the garden which hangs above the water in Cameron Street.

Ally was right when she said people would take me up when I went to this school and she would lose contact with me. I have no intention of casting off Ally, but it’s easy to drift with the current. Everything is put down to the war. War is boredom to those who are not being killed in it. Anyway, says Ally, if you’re taken up by nice people—how she spits it out—you’re not taking up with the GIs.