The Women in Black (17 page)

53

Magda was lying in wait at the entrance to the Staff Locker Room.

‘Lisa!’ she cried, ‘I hope your name is also Lesley as your mother called you on the telephone. My young friend, this is a most happy day!’ And she kissed her exuberantly on each cheek and held her hands, beaming with pleasure. ‘Now your future shines like the sun above you!’ she exclaimed.

At this moment Fay entered, running rather late. She stopped however on hearing these words.

‘What?’ she said. ‘Is she engaged?’

‘Oh tush!’ cried Magda. ‘At her age? God forbid. No—have you not seen the newspaper? She has obtained magnificent results in the Leaving Certificate.
Mon Dieu
! First class honours, four As, a B, not to be too horribly clever—she is such a good girl! How pleased Stefan and I were—he sends his love of course—we are to have a dinner party for all you clever young people, Michael Foldes had done very well too, did you look? And another girl we also know, so there will be a small celebration soon, I hope next weekend. We will discuss the details later.’

‘Gosh,’ said Fay. ‘Gee, Lisa, that’s terrific. Congratulations, I mean it!’

Lisa began to be self-conscious because all those standing near by were now taking note and adding their voices. ‘Passed the Leaving have you? Good-oh!’

Within a minute of her arrival at Ladies’ Cocktail Miss Cartright appeared, and Mr Ryder followed shortly after.

‘The world is your oyster,’ said the latter, ‘mind you don’t swallow it whole!’

Lisa laughed, but her apprehensions about the approaching encounter with her intransigent father were severe. She was suspended between elation and dread, an almost dreamlike condition.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ she kept saying, smiling and smiling. How nice everyone was. Finally the fuss abated and she turned to find something to do so that she might at last efface herself.

‘Fay’s just told me you’ve done very well in the examinations,’ said Miss Jacobs in a matter of fact tone. ‘Is that right? Well, that’s no surprise to me at all. I don’t expect it’s a surprise to you either.

You’re a clever girl, I could see that. It’s a pleasure to work with you and I’ll be sorry when you leave us. You’ll be going to the university, won’t you, of course you will. A clever girl is the most wonderful thing in all Creation you know; you must never forget that. People expect men to be clever. They expect girls to be stupid or at least silly, which very few girls really are, but most girls oblige them by acting like it. So you just go away and be as clever as ever you can; put their noses out of joint for them. It’s the best thing you could possibly do, you and all the clever girls in this city and the world.

Now, then. We’d better get on and sell some Cocktail Frocks, hadn’t we? Yes indeed.’

Lisa wandered about for a while in the half-empty city after leaving Goode’s. The afternoon sun lay along the pavements like a benediction: she felt herself still to be in that suspended state and she was dawdling because she did not want to get home before her father awoke. She realised as she walked along George Street that a great barrier had truly been crossed in her life, a barrier greater even than those she had lately crossed, and she felt extremely strange. But to feel strange, she thought, has lately begun to be almost ordinary. Would strangeness increasingly from now on become normality?

Her parents were sitting in the kitchen when she pushed open the back door. Her father rose.

‘Well, Lesley,’ he said, ‘I believe congratulations are in order.

Everyone at work sends you theirs too. I’ve got the night editor and all of them on my back. I can’t see what you want with exams and first-class honours and universities and all that when you’re a girl.

But still. Congratulations. You’ve done very well.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Lisa.

‘So what do you reckon you’ll do now?’ said her father. ‘You’ve got to make your own decisions now. You’re almost grown up.’

‘You know what I want to do now,’ said Lisa. ‘But you said I couldn’t. So I don’t know yet.’

‘Oh, I suppose you mean the uni,’ said her father. ‘Yes, well. I’ll think about it. That’s all. I’ll
think
about it. We’ll see if you get that scholarship—you won’t be going there if you don’t. I’m not paying your fees. It’s bad enough that I’d have to keep you as long as you’re there. So I’ll think about it,
if
you get that scholarship. I’ll give it careful thought. You needn’t celebrate yet. But I’ll tell you one thing: if I decide you can go, and you do go, if I ever hear of you being mixed up with any of those libertarians they have there, you’re out of this house like a shot and I never want to see you again, is that understood? Right then. If you go, no libertarians, not even
one.

’ Lisa was at last able to catch her mother’s eye. They gleamed at each other in secret. The telephone rang.

‘You get that, Lisa,’ said her mother. ‘It’s probably that Michael Foldes, he called you earlier.’ Lisa returned a few minutes later.

‘What did he want?’ asked her father suspiciously.

Mrs Miles was putting the luncheon on the table: bread, cheese, tomatoes, and a jar of pickles; and some salami which she had indeed managed to find.

‘Oh nothing,’ said Lisa very calmly. ‘He just wanted to know if I was doing anything tonight.’

‘Of course you are,’ said her father. ‘We’re all going out to celebrate, aren’t we? A slap-up meal at King’s Cross or somewhere like that.’

‘Yes, that’s what I told him,’ said Lisa. ‘Oh, and he’s asked me to go to a dance with him next Saturday week.’

‘A dance?’ said her mother. ‘Where?’

‘Oh, the Yacht Squadron,’ said Lisa with extreme sangfroid.

‘It’s being given by the parents of some of his friends at school. It’s to celebrate the exam results. They were going to cancel if anyone had failed but no one did, so it’s on. Can I go?’

‘Well of course,’ said her astounded mother. ‘But what will you wear?’ She felt slightly desperate: a frock suitable for a dance of that kind—well!

‘Oh that’s all right,’ said Lisa. ‘There’s a frock in the sale at Goode’s that will do. I’ll buy that.’

‘Whatever next?’ said her father. ‘And who is this bloke? Do I know him?’

His wife and daughter reassured him. Mr Miles suddenly felt sad. Lesley had always been there, a kid, not the son he’d wanted, and now suddenly she was going out into the world; now suddenly it was almost all over, and he’d hardly noticed it as it fl ashed past him.

‘Well, enjoy yourself while you can,’ he said. ‘And what’s this?’

He picked up a slice of salami.

‘That’s salami,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘I got it for Lesley.’

‘There’s no keeping up with you, Lesley,’ said her father. And, he thought, it’s true. She’s even beginning to look pretty. Filling out.

Quite the young lady. Well, what a day it had been.

‘Salami, eh,’ said Mr Miles, tasting it. ‘I suppose I could get used to it. Let me try another piece. Quite tasty. What’s it made of?’

54

Fay stood outside the Staff Entrance at closing time on Saturday waiting for Rudi. He was going to keep driving around the block until they coincided; she looked out anxiously to see his elderly Wolseley. There he was. She ran to the kerb and jumped in when he opened the passenger door.

‘Full steam ahead!’ he said. He was looking pleased with himself, but not insufferably so.

‘But where are we going?’ asked Fay.

‘It’s a surprise,’ cried Rudi. ‘Eat these sandwiches if you’re hungry—we haven’t time to stop for lunch.’

‘Give me a clue,’ Fay pleaded. She really hadn’t the least idea what might be afoot.

‘Here’s a clue,’ said Rudi, as he turned left. Soon they were driving up William Street, and at last along New South Head Road.

‘Oh,’ said Fay, as Rushcutter’s Bay twinkled beside her, ‘I’ve got it: you’ve found a flat!’

‘Yep,’ said Rudi. ‘I think I’ve found one that might do. I want your expert opinion.’

‘Me?’ said Fay. ‘Expert?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Rudi. ‘Now watch out.’ They drove through Double Bay and Fay gazed at the Harbour still glittering beside her, past Point Piper, and then a little further along New South Head Road, but at last Rudi turned right into a side street. The car came to a stop outside a pre-war block of fl ats.

‘Now then,’ said Rudi. They entered the building and he led the way to the top, which was the third floor. He took out a key and opened a door, and they walked into the flat.

It was quite empty except for the wallpaper and an ‘Early Kooka’ gas stove, the old-fashioned kind with a picture of a kookaburra on the oven door.

‘It’s this which really decided me,’ said Rudi, indicating the kookaburra.

‘Oh, we used to have one exactly the same at home!’ said Fay.

‘So,’ said Rudi, ‘didn’t I say you were an expert? Come and look at the rest.’

There was a sitting room from which one could just see the Harbour, and two smallish bedrooms. The bathroom was all done in green tiles with a mottled pattern. They went back into the sitting room and looked out of the window.

‘See,’ said Rudi. ‘We could watch the fl ying boats taking off and landing.’

Fay’s heart thumped. We?

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely.’

She dared not ask about whether it might be expensive, or indeed anything else.

‘And so handy for the Wintergarden!’ said Rudi. ‘Not to mention various other amenities. What do you think?’

‘Well, I think it’s really lovely,’ said Fay. ‘Like I said. But it’s
you
who have to like it, it’s your flat. What do
you
think?’

‘Oh—I think—listen: will you marry me?’

‘I what?’ said Fay.

She could not believe her ears. What a fool I am, thought Rudi.

The question had not been scheduled in quite this way; it had slipped out somewhat before its imagined time.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’ve startled you. I’ve even startled myself.

Let me start—ha!—again, at the beginning. I love you, I adore you, you’re sweet, you make me feel happy, I want us to be married as soon as possible if you’ll have me—please give me your answer— but think about it for as long as you like: I give you five minutes at least. Shall I leave you alone while you think?’

‘No, don’t leave me,’ said Fay. ‘The answer is yes.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Rudi. ‘We’re going to be rich and have lots of children, at least four, is that all right with you?’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ said Fay. ‘I love kids. And money—that always comes in handy.’

‘Good,’ said Rudi. ‘Now—’ and he took her in his arms.

They had kissed several times but it is a fact that they had been very proper and circumspect and had never approached the margins of unbridled passion. They began now to kiss in a manner which suggested that propriety and circumspection had now had their day, as was quite certainly the case.

Stefan came into the bathroom where Magda was washing her hair.

‘That was Rudi on the telephone,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ said Magda.

‘He wants to borrow fifty pounds from me,’ said Stefan.

‘Why?’ Magda was very astonished.

‘Oh,’ said Stefan very casually, ‘he wants to buy a diamond ring. Or perhaps a sapphire.’

Magda stood up straight, her hair covered in foaming shampoo.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘Is he going into the jewellery business?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ said Stefan, ‘although it could come to that in due course. No, for the moment he wishes only to buy an engagement ring, for Fay.’

‘
What
?’ cried Magda. ‘Engagement ring? For
Fay
? What is he thinking of?’

‘He is not thinking,’ said Stefan. ‘He is doing. He and Fay are engaged to be married.’

‘This is preposterous,’ said Magda. ‘Let me rinse my hair.’

She did so. Then she wrapped a towel around her head.

‘Pour me a whisky,’ she said.

They went into the sitting room and sat down with their drinks. The sun was in fact just over the yard-arm: it was after five o’clock.

‘I suppose you said you would lend him the money,’ said Magda.

‘Naturally,’ said Stefan. ‘How could I stand in his way? Fay is a nice healthy Australian girl.’

‘Exactly,’ said Magda. ‘The whole thing is preposterous. How can they possibly be happy together? They have nothing at all in common.’

‘As if that were really a condition for a happy marriage!’ said Stefan. ‘You are talking like a woman’s magazine. The point is they are happy together now. It is the only possible beginning. The middle and end must take care of themselves as they always do. Or not, as the case may be.’

Magda thought to herself.

‘At least he hasn’t after all been trifling with her,’ she said. ‘At least he isn’t breaking her heart as I feared. Although he may do it in the future.’

‘Come now,’ said Stefan. ‘My belief is that he has too much pride to let such a thing occur. He will be a very conscientious husband, you’ll see. They both want many chil dren—that will keep them busy; they’ll have all that in common. It will be quite enough, you’ll see.’

Magda reflected.

‘Oh, I suppose so,’ she said. ‘What the hell. So long as I will not be blamed for anything.’

‘You?’ said Stefan. ‘For introducing them you mean? Don’t be idiotic. They are on their own. We can only wish them well. And lend Rudi fifty pounds. Rudi’s found a fl at, by the way—at Rose Bay. That’s why he’s short of cash—he has to pay a large deposit.’

‘When will they marry?’ asked Magda.

‘Very soon, as soon as they can arrange it, at the Registry Office probably.’

‘Well,’ said Magda, ‘I do wish them well. With all my heart. But it is still something of a shock.’

‘Yes, one’s friends can be shocking,’ said Stefan. ‘It’s one of their salient features.’

Magda suddenly had a bright idea.

‘We were going to have the young people here to dinner next Saturday,’ she said, ‘to celebrate their examination results. We could make it an engagement celebration as well—what do you think?’

‘Yes, why not,’ said Stefan. ‘A nice noisy dinner party is always a good idea, especially when one has had a shock. We’ll kill a pig!’

‘And we’ll order an ice-cream cake,’ said Magda, ‘with all their names on it!’

‘And ours too,’ said Stefan.

‘Certainly!’ said Magda. ‘Ours too!’