The Frangipani Gardens Read online

  In the beginning the lagoon belonged only to Lou and Tom and the birds, and the blackfellow whose name was King Billy. Lou had never seen him, but Tom had. Tom saw him standing at the end of the tunnel … and the ducks ran out like a stream of bullets from a machine gun — straight into Billy’s net.

  Probably, though, Tom made Billy up. He told whoppers sometimes, and would talk to crusader bugs and jewel beetles, for his own world was better than school. Ella didn’t care when he said he wouldn’t go. One day the Inspector came to the house. His boots sank into the sand, they trampled the noon-flowers by the gate. But their mother made it all right. She told of Tom’s fits and how she dosed him with Trench’s remedy. Her dress was low cut, she showed the tip of her tongue when she talked. Tom was saved. He went on reading in the encyclopedia about the rufous fantail, the pallid cuckoo. Tom didn’t talk much, but he was clever. He was only eight, but he seemed an old man.

  But you didn’t see so many birds, now. Not since the man started coming with his gun. It had a double barrel and when he fired a million birds rose; they shadowed the sun, they darkened the day. It was the man with the moustache who visited Ella: he smiled as he picked up dead ducks. But the Cape Barren geese still came to the lagoon in May, on their way to Lakes Alexandrina and Albert; at early morning the swamp was blue with bald coot. Though it wasn’t so good anymore. People took away the tea-tree for fencing and firewood; the man was always there.

  His car was a Hudson Super Six. He had Zig-zag cigarette papers and sat with his legs apart. Shall I love him? thought Lou, lying awake in the dark. Tom made a noise breathing … no, he was their mother’s, and someone else’s, too. When they saw him in town he looked away.

  A man smelled different, you felt strange … but it would be nice to have a father; Dad had died so long ago he didn’t seem true. And he hadn’t been an Anzac, Violet Day was nothing to do with him. They just let him get up too soon after the operation for appendicitis. It happened ages ago … really, Lou couldn’t remember. Who was Tom’s dad, then? — Ella only smiled.

  Tom watched the birds; he talked to the beetles and King Billy; other times he dug in the sand. His favourite place was on the cliff. Up there, beneath soursobs and quaking grass you found treasure. Tom sat under the she-oak, and counted how many he had. You dug them up, often the wind helped by blowing off sand. They were magic things — shivery-edged blades and scrapers, so smooth; Tom’s favourite was the weeny one of milky quartz. King Billy told him what you did. The lagoon in summer, then, used to shrink; you squatted in the mud and spread out your possum and kangaroo skins and rubbed them smooth with your piece of slate. You speared fish off the reef and had a canoe and painted your skin with ochre.

  Lou’s dreams were different. She wanted knife pleats and satin de soie. Oh, Ronald Colman would link her arm, for it was a romance of misunderstood girlhood and the trains came into town, they didn’t stop long, as they went on to Melbourne or Adelaide. Well, the former was as far away as heaven, Lou knew there was no chance she’d make it, but the Queen City of the South seemed a cert. Big brother Alfred was there, and the Floating Palais, the recherché river rendezvous, too. Also the York, the Wondergraph and West’s, where it was your once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear Madame Elsa Stralia sing dramatic soprano from the stage. The Advertiser came daily, with mention of the promised land. Anything could happen in Adelaide, the miscellaneous column provided examples: ‘Young lady in red, dress circle, row F near stairway, Star, Saturday night, care communicate with “Grey Suit” ’ … ‘A female corrective pill — quick results guaranteed — letters confidential — Sister Rose’. In Adelaide there were famous people, you read the same names over and over again: Miss Betty Chenoweth was charming in tinsel pearlette … Miss Girlie O’Brien and her boy-hero brother foxtrotted at Maison Glenelg … High society was thrilling, Lou savoured the lovely names, and Tom’s breathing faded away: Girlie and Boy, the Misses Cynthia and Kittie Hack … She always finished off with royalty, though — that way she was sure to sleep sound.

  And Queen Mary had daffodil-picking parties at Windsor for the hospitals, but she didn’t like the shingle so Princess Arthur of Connaught might have to grow her hair. And the King got a sixteen pound all-Empire cake from the Australian dried fruit growers for his birthday. And Prince George shared the Prince of Wales’s penchant for the Florida Club, Prince Henry was tallest, Princess Mary had two little boys. And Princess Betty passed through Kensington Gardens attired in white woollies, but it was sad, for the Duke and Duchess of York would have to leave her. But it was wonderful, too, for they were coming — they were to visit this island continent. The Duchess had a golden Labrador dog called Glen, and did her hair in a Burne-Jones bun.

  Lou loved her. There had to be someone. There was Tom, of course, she had him — but Tom was attached to a world of his own. There was Ella, too, but she didn’t let you call her Mother. It was more like they were sisters, like Lillian and Dorothy Gish. And: ‘Ah, it hurts,’ said Ella. ‘You never want to have a baby.’ And you couldn’t sleep for worrying about it, but a sister for a mother was good. Lou got a read of the new True Romance, and there were feasts of peanut bars and Caramello chocolate. It was a perfect life — you didn’t want to lay it on about being like an orphan of the storm. No, for it was a fairytale, with Ella smelling of violet talcum, and her leg cocked up interestingly, so you could see all she’d got. Yes, it was good how she lolled on the bed. And if your pillow was dirty — so what? — you could turn it over. Lou knew the trick of rubbing hair off the leg with an emery-paper mitt, and that your lipstick must be the red of your dress, and how a spider weaving downwards meant money to come. And Ella’s toe was itchy so it was going to rain, saucer eyes denoted someone selfish, to dream of elephants signified wedlock.

  Telling dreams and divining by tea leaves, Ella was nice. And she told secrets, too. About living in the Hills; about running away with Dad and Granpa saying Never come to me for money. But if you tried to tell her a worry, if you said ‘What will become of me?’ and told how you wanted something more — not just the sand and the lagoon forever — she changed. It was like talking to a stranger; you felt that Ella hated you, then. So usually they were girlfriends together; they giggled, they ate the Caramello. When it was time for a visitor, Ella shared the excitement and said ‘Shall it be the lace or would the crepe be better?’ and then Lou and Tom must hurry away. In winter Ella was considerate: he didn’t stay long … in any case, a walk on the cliff was bracing; you came back with roses in your cheeks.

  Alfred was Lou’s other brother. He married Vi and went to live in the city. Vi’s dad was someone and now Alf was, too. He had a draper’s shop in the Hyde Park Road and the sheets came on the White Star Line from England. Alfred had made himself respectable: Ella reckoned he took after Granpa. Though, really, since Alfred got married he’d stopped being part of the family, even though the card he sent at Christmas said ‘your loving son’. But Ella smirked and said the bugger was too big for his boots. Alfred was having the cash railway put in; he wore French grey trousers, beautifully creased.

  Alf wasn’t much chop, but when Lou thought of him she felt wistful. She wished he would send for her, take her away from the sand and the town’s judging eyes. She saw the other Lou clearly, with a water-wave in her short hair, her shameful body turned boyish. Her bodice wouldn’t move immodestly up and down, she’d wear stockings every day … anything could happen, anyone might come. There’d be no Tom to spoil her chances (you never knew when he might take a fit, when he’d fall in the road and make the idiot noises). Even better, there’d be no Ella. In Adelaide, Lou would never remember; she’d never even send a card like Alf. It would be as if Ella and her cream-puff body — the crease like a cut between her breasts, the pale blue veins that marbled her legs — had never existed. Lou would never look in the mirror.

  But once Ella had been someone else. The little girl who grew up in the Hills was meant for a lady;
Gentle Jesus fancied her and Father did, too. She sat on his knee and he plaited her hair, she had lovely hair down to her waist. Remember, remember … how you lived in a grand house called Flower Hill, and Mercury stood on one leg in the hall, bronze nigger-boys guarded the stairs. And you went up and up, on and on, till you came to a little wicket gate, and behind it was the nursery, which was where Ella lived … her grown-up voice was dreamy as it recalled the rosebud wallpaper and pictureboy Bubbles in green velvet. But, safe upstairs, you longed to be down: Ella played in the garden … her voice showed you the lily pond and the frangipani trees with their creamy blooms. But winter always came. The flowers fell like perfumed snow; the creek turned into a river, and one day Ella stood on the rustic bridge and dead animals went by underneath … And now her voice told the story so well that, though the child watching the flood was Ella, it was also Lou: and Mother was a tall woman who stood behind you, her embroidery scissors in her hand, and she bent forward, she said: ‘Ella, you have nits in your hair,’ and you saw your shiny plaits tied with satin ribbon float after the bloated cow …

  ‘I hated Mother,’ said Ella, dully. Hated her, hated … so much, that Mother caught consumption and Ella turned into a bad girl, the sort that featured as Depravity in the game of Snakes and Ladders. Dolly always took the part of Faith and Obedience, of course; when Doll rattled the dice at parlour games she always had luck.

  Aunt Doll was Ella’s sister but she was never a child. She was always this freckled creature with ginger hair shedding bobby pins and a tick-tock watch for a heart. ‘She was never anything to look at,’ said Ella. ‘She never got a man.’ Auntie had been an old maid from birth — always squinting at that fob watch with specs on her nose and a high collar cutting her neck. ‘Toffynosed bitch,’ said Ella, ‘looking at me like that — smiling smarmy, pitying me when I came back after Father died.’ What a laugh. Doll — a scarecrow with paint on her fingers, sticking her tongue out to spit on her sable brushes, hieing away to Dame Nature with sketching bag and roomy camp-stool.

  It was only wishy-washy stuff she painted, said Ella. No Spanish galleons on choppy seas or some well-built fellow stripped down. Not even a try at the Virgin in the meadow or St Francis blessing the birds. A realist — lady water-colourist variety, Auntie mostly did eucalypts at evening and early-morning yaccas with a trembly hand. Doll, poor soul, had always lacked imagination. It was only accident and a namby-pamby personality that caused the gum trees to resemble English elms and the yaccas, monster parsnips.

  But Ella had shown her what she could do with her pity. She didn’t want a penny of Father’s cash. She hated him, as much as she’d hated Mother. Auntie had kept insisting that Ella should have something. Very well then, said Ella, she’d take a few of the old boy’s books. What a laugh it was that, all these years after, Tom was the only one who touched them.

  And it was real: the sand and the soursobby cliffs, the lagoon with its nests of speckled eggs. But down fell the birds, it was the slaughter of the innocents, and blood dripped from the man’s horny hands. The bald coot ate the grass, the swans were torn to pieces, and the swamp and the scrub, the lagoon and the beach with snow bush and salt bush, and the sea that frilled in like a doiley for afternoon tea or spat at the patchwork of little cracked shells — one minute all these things were real, and Lou was emptying sand from her shoe and sweeping the verandah forever; the next, that world was gone and home became part of a dream.

  It started happening when Peg Fox came. Peg was a witch, it was true people said, cross my heart. She had squinty eyes and a droopy nose. She had this shawl darned with black and green spots that made frogs and snakes and jackdaws. But sometimes Peg was Nurse Fox and ladies sent for her, and this day it was for Ella she came — out of her cottage that no one had seen, but there was a hawthorn tree that groaned on Good Friday and arm bones from the churchyard arranged in a star.

  Ella was waiting. She’d been crying and the big man’s car didn’t stop, no buggies came down Parrot Road. Nurse Fox washed her hands and Ella lay on the bed. She had a stone in her belly and veins up her legs. She was ugly, now; Ella’s face was old, and Lou knew something terrible would happen.

  And, remembering, Ella’s blood merged with the birds’. She bled so red; the mattress was soaked. Tom mustn’t see, he began to shiver. It was he who went into town. Time ticked away and Lou lit the lamp. The doctor’s eyes were scornful. It was too late, he said. ‘Who did it?’ he asked. Hands swooped on Ella and took her away. Sand drifted into the marks of their shoes; soon there’d be no trace that they’d come.

  For a while no one told them what to do. Tom hummed as he turned the pages of the encyclopedia, his favourite one stamped B, and full of birds. Lou stirred the soup and they spooned it up. Ella wasn’t there to claim her share, but everything else was as usual. Lou said ‘Wipe your mouth, Tom. Don’t tip the bowl towards you.’

  But next day it seemed true. How Ella was going to have a baby but she didn’t want it, so Ella (or was it Baby?) bled away. That day the busybodies came — all the people who ignored them in town. The vicar’s wife had an awful taste in hats; Ella would have laughed. She was the one who’d sent the telegram to Alfred, telling that Miss Louise Mundy and Master Thomas would be arriving on the afternoon train.

  2

  Alfred didn’t smile when he met them at the station. But he had a car, and Lou and Tom had never been in one before, and it was the five o’clock rush and people were scurrying: your head kept swivelling, for girls in short skirts were everywhere, and stockings in the city were flesh-coloured not black or white.

  They drove down King William Street; Alfred’s car smelled expensive, and imagine that he’d ever been Alf, with holes in the elbows of his V-neck. And now they were past the Town Hall; next came Victoria Square, with the dear old Queen on her pedestal. And: ‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘a man with a music box,’ and they saw a little monkey with a red Turk’s cap and a tassel. The monkey was dancing; his collar was studded with brass bells.

  In the draper’s, Lou dreamed. That Tom was the monkey and Alfred charged twopence for each tune. Alf turned the handle of the music box and ‘Dance,’ Vi cried, ‘You must dance.’ She had a strap, it came down on Tom’s back. ‘Dance,’ cried Vi, and then: ‘Bastard.’

  Adelaide was a swindle — the part where Lou lived, anyway. The cars that went along Hyde Park Road never stopped; that knock at the door was only a cripple selling shoe laces and boxes of matches.

  Though when Lou first saw the shop she felt hopeful. There were high plate glass windows and glittering fittings and an imposing gold-lettered sign. Decidedly, the Bon Marché was a superior establishment: it didn’t seem a come-down that Alfred and Vi should live above it.

  They didn’t enter the shop that day. Instead, Alfred led them through the side door and they climbed the stairs to a drawing room with stuffed furniture and a lady by the veined marble mantelpiece. Her lip stuck out; her pale face went dark when she looked at Tom. She was Vi, and she didn’t like them, you could tell straight away.

  Their room was bad, too. The stairs kept winding, till everything nice was left behind. Carpet petered out and they walked on scuds of fluff, a daddy-long-legs scuttled up the wall. Then Alfred opened a door and it was an attic; it was full of stuff they didn’t want in the shop. As well as the iron bed, there were boxes and show-stands and a group of tailor’s dummies with unfashionable bosoms and waists. Most of their heads had come off and stood in a row on a shelf. It was like Bluebeard’s chamber. Glassy eyes stared at you, rosebud lips smirked.

  Then there was Fish. His real name was Mr Fisher; he looked after Gents’ Outfitting and lived in. He was a stumpy man with hairy nostrils who liked to confide. He told Lou that he’d been meant for an academic career; that once he’d been married (the marriage didn’t last — it was the problem of sex). Fish rubbed his hands and lowered his voice, and his glasses slipped further down his nose. He wanted Lou to
come to his room so he might show her a book.

  Each day was the same. Tom must amuse himself in the garden, while Lou sat with Vi in the drawing room. The wireless was on, for Vi was a fiend when it came to listening in. She started with the GPO chimes at halfpast ten, then the Studio Orchestra played ‘Cobweb Castle’, and it was time for the serial story. Lou and Vi listened to the running description of the racing at Morphettville, and the ‘Shipping News’ and the ‘Official Weather Information’. There were tenor solos and harp solos and soprano solos. Eventually you reached another set of chimes and close down at eleven o’clock.

  While the wireless entertained, Vi liked to talk. She perked up by telling you the worst. Adelaide was ruined now. There were youthful burglars with six-chambered revolvers, and girls couldn’t go in for a swim on account of the bestial behaviour of males.

  Meals were a trial, too. Fish was always sitting opposite, flaring his nostrils.

  But in the shop you needn’t see him — as long as you stayed clear of Men’s Wear. For, at first Lou was allowed to go in, and she wandered entranced among honeycomb velvets and Fuji silks. But one day Alfred strolled over from Manchester and Lou was ordered out. Alf reckoned she put patrons off. Christmas was coming, the Bon Marché must keep up its style.

  But in the new year things would be different. They were going to thin Lou down and cut off her hair. She would like serving. The Bon Marché allowed its girls a discount, and a chair was provided for sit-downs so you didn’t get varicose veins.

  But Tom would have to go. He was a nuisance, a larrikin element. Boys like Tom did better put away. Instead of sitting in the garden quietly or making himself useful by collecting snails in a bucket, he’d begun to dig a tunnel. Under Alfred’s prize tomatoes it went; under the choko vine and the baby marrows. Why, Tom had nearly tunnelled under the garden wall — and what was he doing, was he trying to tunnel out, wasn’t he grateful to them for taking him in? Tom was a disgrace. They went in fear a customer might know of him. And didn’t he have a trouble? — wasn’t there some sort of ailment? It was then Vi said her ‘Bastard’. That night in the draper’s shop, Lou thought again of the little monkey.