The Long Prospect (12 page)

Max endeavoured, after his first error, to make Paula enjoy the day, for there was something pathetic in her air of youth, and age, and coldness and disillusion. But it was no good. He had exposed himself. She could see that under that nice-seeming manner he
thought
, and wanted to
talk
, and stir things up. It quite made her shake when people were like that. Only drunks were like that—but he wasn't a drunk. The only thing left for him to be was peculiar. He fitted no classification she knew. He was peculiar. The more she repeated the word, the more she gloomed over it, and was convinced of it. He was definitely peculiar. Mr Rosen shone in comparison. Up to a point he tried to keep to the rules. He knew that there
were
rules.

The blue and yellow-green of the day passed, and the white clouds and the white foam of the waves, and the rainbow. They drove away from the sea and the cliffs into the semi-bushland on the outskirts of the town where new houses by the hundred were being built.

Lilian extorted appreciation for everything—gum trees, houses, Chinese vegetable gardens, and dogs carrying sticks. Dotty glued her teeth together over a square, hard chocolate and sat entranced by the problem of keeping her knees out of the way of the gear handle. She read the number plates of the other cars. The others responded dutifully to Lilian's clamour.

If it had not been for the living presence next to her of Max, Emily would, she felt, have rolled up her eyes and died when her grandmother called yet again, ‘Look! Quick!'

The roads were so dusty that they had to keep the windows up, and the windows were so dusty that they could not see through them. It was a positive pleasure to get home away from the main roads and sightseers and petrol stations and dark gum trees. The house was cool and clean, the garden was quiet. That was the picnic over.

Now, barricaded in the bedroom, called in to sit beside Lilian and watch her mother pack, Emily sighed.

Paula folded her dressing-gown and put it in the case. ‘This is better without all the men, isn't it? Just the three of us. We've hardly had a chance to talk since I came up.'

Lilian stood up and began to comb her hair; she agreed that there was nothing like being with the family, even if it was only a small one. It was much nicer now, she said.

Silently, Emily listened. If to be bored, if to be isolated, if to be unnatural was better, then this was better.

Paula and Lilian could think of nothing to talk about but trains—a subject suggested by Paula's journey tonight—so they recounted to one another the details of all the train journeys they had made for the past several years. There was the time of the bush fire; the time a man pulled the communication cord; the time in the box carriage when the floor was so filthy; there was the time in the sleeper when the woman below snored all night.

Emily pulled a biscuit out of her pocket and stuffed her mouth full.

‘You'll have false teeth before you're fourteen,' Paula told her.

‘Don't care.'

Her gesture of disassociation made the conversation impossible. She was looked at with exasperation. She munched drily.

Turning back to the mirror Lilian screwed her face up, stretching the skin tight, now over her chin, now round her nose. She scraped off a smut.

At length Emily said, ‘Max is teaching me to play chess. And the other night I saw the moon through his telescope, and the stars. It looked—'

‘Your mother doesn't want to hear all that,' Lilian told her, but to Paula she said, ‘He keeps her amused though.'

‘You'd think he'd have other things to do.'

‘I'm going,' Emily said, and went.

‘The things that kept him busy when he was here before aren't here any more.' Lilian dragged a powder-puff over her face.

‘What do you mean?'

‘He used to be Thea's fancy man, you know.'

Paula's disapproving head came up from the suitcase, her face pink. ‘
He
was? Was that what you meant in your letter? How did you find out? You never told me. I didn't know she...'

‘What? That she had a boy friend? Didn't I? I thought you knew years ago,' Lilian lied. At that time, years ago, it was a touchy topic. There had been some awkwardness with Paula over Olly Porteous at the time and for mixed motives Lilian had kept her discovery to herself. ‘Yes, you wouldn't think it to look at him, would you? Though I don't know why. Just the same he had our Thea on a string for two years. Then off he went to Melbourne and off she went to Sydney.'

Standing, shaking her head slightly, Paula hardly knew whether she disliked most her mother's expression, her choice of words, or the fact that it was not possible in this house to condemn the existence of men who might be termed ‘fancy'.

‘I saw Thea last week.'

Lilian swung round. ‘No! Where? What was she like?'

‘Oh!' Paula frowned as if she was suffering some minor kind of anguish. ‘I just bumped into her in town. She was just the same.'

‘What did she say? How did she look?'

Hunting round for her possessions, Paula conveyed the unimportance, to her, of the meeting. ‘She asked about you and Emily. Nothing much. She was by herself. She looked the same.'

‘Married?'

‘No, I—oh, there's my brush—no, I don't think so. She still works for one of those big chemical companies. A different one.'

‘Well, did you get her address? Are you going to see her again? It'd be some company for you.'

‘I don't
need
more company, Mum. Yes, I've got her address and phone number but I'm not going to bother to ring her. If she wants to ring me—well, she can. But—I don't know—' Paula looked at her mother for help and concluded lamely, ‘She's a bit like him.'

‘Well, what if she is? You always got on all right.'

‘I know. She's nice enough.'

‘Well? Why not go along to see her if she wants you to?'

‘She's just not like us!' Paula said, seeming almost defiant.

Lilian took this with the downcast lids of a realist. One must not expect too much, she seemed to say.

‘I know what!' she said. ‘Bring her up here next time you come. They haven't seen each other for years. Don't tell her he's here, of course. Let it be a surprise.' She gave another short exclamation of amusement. ‘That'd put a spoke in Emily's wheel, wouldn't it?'

Paula stared at her. ‘Oh, Mum,' she said at last, her voice wobbling with reproach, ‘what a thing to say! I certainly wouldn't dream of bringing her here, and fancy saying that about Emily! She's only a little girl.'

‘Oh, you're too fussy! It was just a joke,' blustered Lilian. ‘You're getting as bad as them—no sense of humour. Anyway, I don't see what harm it'd do. She's not married and he's still mooning around like a lost soul. Maybe they'd have learnt some sense by now.'

‘But it's nothing to do with us. We can't start interfering. Besides'—Paula raised her brows—‘it's more than three years since she went away. They'll have forgotten, and he's still married, you said. And they're not all that young, even.'

Lilian was submerged in hostility. ‘Not young? They're not all that old, either! In their thirties and not young, she says!' At the door she added, ‘They're a good deal younger than me, but I think some of us dodderers've still got more life in us than a lot of you young ones.'

‘Oh, Mum, I didn't mean that. You're not old. I only meant...'

‘
You!
'

And Paula was left to take this to heart while her mother went to the kitchen and started to slash the rind from a pound of bacon.

When, very shortly, Paula went to help prepare the meal, they exchanged a glance of truce.

Through the open window Paula could see Max and Emily on the garden seat. With a sweep of his hand he drew a plan on the lawn, in explanation for Emily, who bent over her knees and stared at the grass with what seemed to Paula sycophantic attention. Then her daughter's face was raised, a sunburst of comprehension.

Thea's fancy man. Paula turned away and cracked an egg into a blue china bowl. Sometimes she wondered about her mother. She changed that. Sometimes she wondered about Emily, getting worked up about some stranger or school teacher, some stranger whom she would learn soon enough would not walk five yards to help her when she needed help. Call them strangers, call them friends, it all came to the same thing: only families mattered. But Emily was young. Paula had to keep reminding herself to excuse her on that account. Thea's fancy man, she thought.

In some way, Paula connected the danger of trusting strangers with her own unfortunate marriage. Harry Lawrence had, after all, been a stranger, and was so still: he was no blood relation. And he, like all the others, men and women, had let her down. Only her mother she
would
believe in, and Emily, too, when she was old enough to co-operate.

‘Would you like me to make some scones, Mum?'

Outside in the pink evening light, Emily resisted the knowledge that Max wanted her to go in to her mother. Nothing had been said. She looked down at an ant that was making off through the grass balancing a big crumb of biscuit. She looked up at Max.

‘I'm going,' she said, unresentfully, and started to drift across the lawn.

‘Oh, it's you!' Paula gave her a long look and slapped at the dough vigorously. ‘Decided to come in, have you?'

‘What are you making?'

‘Scones. Do you want some dough to play with? You used to make scones, remember?'

Emily ate a piece of dough. ‘The rats used to get them all, you used to tell me. Did you throw them away?'

‘They were awful old things. You had them black as the ace of spades before they went in the oven.'

Brushing her floury hands together over the sink, Paula sneezed. It left her shattered, self-pitying, and in need of a handkerchief. Irresolute, she glanced at Emily but could not ask, as she wanted, that a handkerchief be fetched from her case.

Aggrieved to have no response to her unspoken question she went up the hall, Emily chasing her and then skipping ahead.

It was unbearable to say it, but pushing open the door of Max's room, Emily said, ‘Look at all the books! I can have as many as I like. It'll take me years to read them all.'

She was pierced by an instant antagonism in her mother and the forced liveliness of her tone abated. It was useless. She fell silent and watched while Paula, half irritable, half curious, turned to look into the square nondescript room where he slept and kept his belongings.

Books there were indeed—hundreds of books overflowing from the startled varnished shelves, books on the chairs, books on the floor.

Paula was unable to hide her reluctant admiration for their quantity, but she mistrusted the implications of their possession. They seemed excessive, and she loathed excess.

Emily absorbed her mother's reaction. She said, ‘He's going to get some more bookcases.'

‘So he should. The place looks like nothing on earth.'

Tears burned Emily's eyes. She leaned against the wall in the passage. Why all the hate in the air? she wondered dolefully.

Stumbling into the dark bedroom to find Rosen and Lilian in whispered conversation, Paula came out again more quickly: Emily was where she had been, a trembling hand was laid on her shoulder.

‘Ring and ask for a taxi at seven, please, Em,' Paula said shrilly. ‘And—oh—have you got a handkerchief?'

‘What's that?' said Lilian, coming up behind them. ‘The taxis'll all be busy.
He'll
take you to the station.'

Paula made an unseen gesture towards the kitchen, meaning that the scones must be thought of. ‘He's driven a lot today. Just ring for a taxi, Em.'

The visit had been an appalling failure. No one and nothing had been on her side. The situation between Lilian and Rosen had still to be endured; she would not believe that there was anything wrong in it, but it was offensive to see one's mother enamoured of a pompous fool who had deserted his wife and son. And Emily could scarcely spare five minutes from the company of a man whose reputation was such, according to Lilian, that one might have expected her to refuse to house him, to talk to her, Paula, her mother, whom she saw so seldom. The only one who had put himself out at all for her was that man, but she had seen through him. He wanted her to be friendly.

In the face of the obstinacy and cruelty of her mother and Emily she felt so helpless that she would have cried if she could. But Paula could only brood.

Amorphous, chill and cloud-like, her presence filled the house during the last hours of her stay. When she had finally gone, the two left behind who belonged to her were heavy with a sense of their own inadequacy, of their complete failure to be ideal.

Lilian had not the heart to torment Emily, nor would she have risen to provocation. They were at a loss—that is, for half an hour or so, and then Lilian cried to Rosen, ‘Get out the car. We'll go and see what's happening to old Olga from the Volga. Sunday night, she's sure to have something on.'

And during the same half-hour of recovery after Paula's going, Emily returned to herself as the tide returns to an empty beach, giving meaning to what was before an enigmatic waste. With the intruder's withdrawal the defensive camouflage—pertness, childishness, the
child
—was submerged, and there appeared the youthful human creature who had lately come to life through being known to be alive.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ALARM clock gouged the darkness of Lilian's room, but not the deeper darkness that enclosed her. It rang for Emily, who vaulted from bed, horrified by the noise, the boredom of sleep, and the overpowering musty airlessness her grandmother chose to sleep in.

Between the sheets, Lilian unconsciously expanded, adjusting to the greater freedom, perhaps as pleased to be alone as Emily was to stay no longer close to a body older than her own.