The Frangipani Gardens Page 5

  The old man alighted, too. He grasped a shabby valise and a queer twisted walking-stick. As the charabanc started off, he strode away up the Gully Road.

  They watched him grow smaller — swinging his bag, shaking his stick at the wind. Tom thought he looked like a mad old bird.

  4

  And the Duke and Duchess of York were coming, to open the first Parliament at Canberra, and there was to be a special postage stamp and a commemorative florin. H.M.S. Renown would bring them (which was the ship that brought the Prince of Smiles in 1920), and it was victualled with a ton of Cambridge sausages, six thousand eggs, two hundred cases of game and poultry, and a quantity of venison from the royal parks. Pheasants had been sent by the King from Sandringham; New Zealand butter would be used throughout the tour. The bed linen was from the royal yacht, and the Duke sent a quantity of silver plate from his London house (the royal party at table would consist of twelve persons; once the tropics were reached all meals would be served cold). There was a squad of marine buglers and a naval hairdresser.

  The Renown, being of shining silver-grey on the outside (though mostly of blue cretonne within) was known as the Silver Ship. Fittingly, a silver ship sailing on a silver sea would be the centrepiece of Their Highness’s dining table, someone having had the inspiration to position there a beautifully wrought model of H.M.S. Endeavour, the vessel in which Captain Cook first visited Australia.

  The Duchess’s prettiness was of the Irish type, and no doubt there’d be an outbreak of fringes, like measles, because she had one. All the evening dresses she’d bring would be of uncrushable velvet, and her favourite colour was cornflower blue (now called Betty blue in her honour). Always, she wore a distinctive fluffy feature, such as a feathery plume in her hat or a soft filmy scarf. And she was married at Glamis Castle in 1923, and then Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born and christened with water from the River Jordan.

  And one day, after a last hug, the Duchess laid the infant princess down, and whispered ‘God bless my baby’, and then the Renown steamed out of Portsmouth in a drizzle. The Duke wore naval uniform, the Duchess a dainty costume of dove grey with hat to match. The Earl of Cavan, who was Chief of Staff, had sustained a slight crack of the ankle bone while hunting, and thus had to be carried aboard. He was not expected to regain the full use of his legs till he crossed the line.

  They were coming; they’d actually started: ‘Today the royal ship dropped anchor punctually outside Las Palmas, where a tanker was waiting to oil her for her long Atlantic trip …’ And the Duchess wore a collar of snow leopard when she landed, and there were worries about the terrors of hand-shaking the Duke must endure (hand-shaking jarred the nervous system of the entire body).

  It was all right living at Aunt Doll’s. It wasn’t Flower Hill, but it would do. ‘Sorrento’ as a house name sounded tasteful, you felt travelled. The newspaper came each morning, so Lou could keep tabs on the royal tour.

  Flower Hill had been sold after Granpa died. Auntie had tried to tell Ella it would have to go, but she wouldn’t listen. Ella had always believed what she’d wanted to — she had this unshakeable idea that Granpa had died with cash in hand. Times changed. Now Flower Hill was The Frangipani Gardens. And the old de Mole place — that had suffered a change of fortune, too. After the demise of the last de Mole, Gladwish House had been a Methodist rest home; now it was a Roman Catholic school for boys (regularly you saw the scholars in their straw boaters walking in crocodile down the Gully Road). But the jam factory still flourished — had Ella told them about Teakle’s? The tea table wouldn’t be the same without its pot of choice Teakle plum or fig.

  Lou liked Aunt Doll. She was nothing like Ella. She was a small woman, speckly; she made you think of a bantam rooster. Her hair was red — it was a pity she wore it in a bun; her eyes were a pretty blue behind the glasses.

  Auntie wasn’t anything like an artist should be. She wore the same sort of dresses as Queen Mary; usually in shades of dust or slate. Instead of being wispy, with wooden beads, she was neat as a pin. Disorder annoyed her. The tubes of Windsor & Newton in her studio were laid out in rows, and Auntie got distressed if a screw top came loose. The tips of her sable-hairs were kept licked to exact points — she needed them like that for all her little brush strokes. Dabbing on water-colour, Aunt Doll had a talent for making a subject look embalmed. Her animals appeared to have come straight from the taxidermist; you knew her flowers had never borne relationship to mere dirt. But Auntie’s favourite subject was landscape. She was always off roaming the Gully, seeking out bits of England.

  Thank goodness she was home when they’d called. After the old man had stalked away, they’d spied a lady outside the Post Office. She’d shaken her head when they’d enquired after Miss Strawbridge of Flower Hill, and directed them to Sorrento.

  When she opened the door Auntie seemed to know them — it was almost as if she’d expected them. She listened to Lou’s story sympathetically; she wasn’t put off by Tom. Fits, doubtful paternity, Ella’s image — Aunt Doll could handle them all.

  She made their coming seem like a godsend. Lou would help in the house, which meant she’d have more time to paint … Tom and school — well, that was a problem they’d face later. Doll took up her writing case, and set about penning a letter to Alfred and Vi.

  Sorrento was vaguely Queen Anne; it had terracotta tiles and false gables and rough-cast walls above the bay window. After her childhood home with its ponderous Victoriana, Auntie had wanted something picturesque. Heavy furniture was banished, everything was artistic, with an air of daintiness and grace. Auntie’s chairs had spindle legs; her drawing room clock was in the refined Chippendale style.

  It was a relief to be with someone calm. Aunt Doll didn’t listen to the wireless or entertain gentlemen callers. And after dummies in the attic and sand in your shoe, surely Sorrento was perfect? Flower Hill would have been draughty; Tom might have fallen in the nymphea pond. Lou kept rationalizing as she admired Auntie’s gate-legged table of fumed oak, her milk jug cover edged with beads. But that first day she couldn’t help it: she felt disappointed. After the drapery’s electric light it was back to candles and oil lamps again. And though Auntie’s Aladdin lamp was a beauty, with its incandescent mantle providing a powerful white light — safe and durable and economical — everything about Sorrento was so ordinary; neatness could get on your nerves. Once past that front door inset with a porthole window, nothing was unexpected.

  Yet the lavatory swathed in bridesmaid’s fern was cosy, with its dangling fly-papers and hessian bag of newspaper squares. You could sit there and see blue sky over the top of the door, and listen to the throaty clucks from the fowl house nearby.

  And Sorrento was surrounded by a coprosma hedge, which was also a squeaker hedge (a folded leaf made a whistle if you blew hard). And there was a bush like a lace tablecloth, and a grapevine with a stem as thick as a lady’s waist. A crazy-paved path went across the lawn and past the nasturtiums. Beside the quince tree was Auntie’s studio.

  It had plenty of windows, and some of the panes were coloured. Lou went in, and the sun cast rainbow patterns on the floor. But Auntie’s picture on the easel was boring, and the door in the corner, that might lead to something interesting, was locked.

  Ella had been right — Aunt Doll was nice, but insipid. She squirmed when she saw a dog cock its leg; she was constantly washing her hands. And the undies went on the clothesline folded, so you shouldn’t see their private parts.

  5

  Autumn, winter, spring — Australia was home. Though there was a desert somewhere in the centre, it was nothing to do with you. Blackfellows were there; and kanga and emu, too, escaped off the coin to run wild. Some explorers went in after history-book fame, but you didn’t give them much thought. King Billy was only a ghost; those Abos drinking pinky in Victoria Square — sitting cross-legged on the lawn with the bronze queen looking down, and the GPO and Saving
s Bank so near — were no relation to the noble savage who could pick things up with his toes.

  Your land was tame and safe. Glenelg, where the pioneers sailed in, had become the antipodean Deauville. Chic people strolled the silver sands in pyjamas; there were donkey rides, striped tents. You spread out your Onkaparinga rug and paddled in your Palm Beach bathers. The shark alarm bell rang regularly, you kept applying freckle cream.

  But summer could mean a season when you suspected the country to be foreign. For sometimes, out of the blue, a bad time came and the beach was taboo before dark. Grown men fell down sunstruck, geography maps were blistered on backs. The explorers whose fingernails splintered like glass didn’t seem so far away. It was a strange land, savage. Heatwave: and nothing could bring relief.

  In January of 1927, the temperature was over the century for six successive days. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Adelaide seemed deserted — people ventured outdoors only when absolutely necessary.

  The advent of the iceman was an outstanding occurrence, but even he was bathed in perspiration. The head of the house, in some instances, derived consolation from being able to get hot shaving water direct from the tap. Wise confectioners took perishable wares from their windows, but even so they suffered considerably. Bars of soap and boxes of candles wilted in grocery establishments. The surface of the asphalt highways was often of the consistency of porridge.

  Even the delightful zephyrs of a Marelli electric fan couldn’t stop you sweltering. Doctors were called to the cots of fretful infants. There were several deaths at the Old Folks’ Home and the Salvation Army Sunset Lodge.

  Horses showed symptoms of heatstroke; the bird that led in the egg-laying competition conducted by the National Poultry Breeders’ Utility Association died. At the Zoological Gardens the carnivorous animals turned up their noses at their usual meat diet. Lions and tigers were affected most, and Miss Siam, the elephant, had a heatwave drink of a hundred gallons, though the polar bears were not greatly perturbed.

  In the Hills, the heat had a serious effect on orchards and fruit gardens. There’d been a fair crop of Cleopatra apples, but the greater portion was now burned. Plums were prematurely softened, green figs were scorched; the apricot crop was finished somewhat abruptly by the fruit being more or less melted. Peaches had not fared so badly, as the trees carried dense foliage.

  Most of the gardeners had their own water supplies, obtained from wells, bores and creeks. The water shortage, felt acutely in the suburbs, did not affect them. Sprinklers played on cabbages, turnips, potatoes and peas. In the moister parts of Fern Gully, rapid growth was made by sun-loving plants, particularly melons, tomatoes and sweet-corn.

  Beyond the blind, Aunt Doll’s garden blazed in the sun. Everything was tipped with points of light. The garden had become a danger zone by day: you must keep inside Sorrento while the sun did its worst. You sat in your singlet, your petticoat; you flapped with Fiji fan and stuck cucumber peel to your forehead. The garden was forbidden until the sun plummeted earthward and the hard blue sky was softened by night.

  But it was tiresome to be confined indoors while light beckoned from under the blind, and you knew that outside was shimmering brilliance and the challenge of furnace heat. Sorrento had taken on the aspects of a dim underworld place, as it did battle with the blinds, the lowered windows. Yet summer still filtered in. Tom longed for the garden. Auntie’s house reduced the dashing sun to something as smally irksome as the itch in your flannel underwear, the pinch in your Sunday boots. Housebound, the summer was a thick cocoon and you were lost in it; it wrapped you in mummy bandages, you would never get out.

  Lou was content, stitching at the fancy dress she must have — then abandoning her lapful of tulle to stare pensively into the mirror (staring in mirrors, dreaming, seemed Lou’s favourite occupation since she’d made her new friend); Auntie was engrossed before her easel. But Tom would go crazy if he didn’t escape. Outside were rock pebbler parrots and finches, plumed pigeons and Alexandra parakeets …

  It was an adventure from the start. The magpies gurgled, gargled; and there was another bird — a stranger Tom couldn’t place — that trilled invitingly; that seemed always hidden somewhere ahead.

  It was the unknown bird’s teasing tra-la that lured him on. Past the intensities of marigold and lobelia and the deep purples of Auntie’s lantana. By the lantana bush Tom was encircled by a host of amber-winged butterflies, and then he was out of the light; the bird led him on under Auntie’s snaking grapevine and he was dappled with shade. The grapes hung like pendant marbles; the zigzag leaves moved languidly, and a series of fragmented shadow leaves moved, too. There were corkscrew tendrils and the dotted remnants of last year’s Lady’s Fingers. And then the sun pounced again, and here was Auntie’s prize hydrangea, hidden from the sun inside a little house of sacking. And then Tom was even past the squeaker hedge, now he was out in the lane.

  Bleached grass leaned forward stilly, as if bewitched by the heat; there were pussy-tails, dandelions. It was strange what summer could do. The earth was pelted in creamy plumes and stubble; the gum trees came alive with shiny new leaves and nuts and blossom … some leaves were blunt and pale; others resembled dusky sickle moons … But you grew tired of screwing your eyes at the sun, so Tom looked down and let his eyes tag his feet. It was surprising how much you saw from a blinkered viewpoint. The weeds and fallen leaves; occasionally an ancient dog turd, whitened and crumbly.

  Tom had been walking for ages, now; he’d gone so far he’d walked the lane away: it petered out before a high grassy bank. And Tom clambered up it, and then he was going down — slithering, sliding over a tangle of brambles and ivy.

  He came to a creek edged with willows, and he took his shoes off and started to paddle. The creek ran so clearly that every pebble and leaf beneath its surface might be seen. There were tadpoles and mysterious splashes, and still Tom heard the bird that had led him to the perfect place.

  But, soon, instead of willows there were eucalypts and the creek had shrunk to a mere trickle, the pebbles he trod had stopped being smooth. Yes, the pebbles were the first things that started to be odd — though Tom felt peculiar, too. For it was the strangest feeling, it was as if the creek tried to frighten him away. For, instead of being smooth and dead, the pebbles looked alive. Some stones had the faces of animals and the fox tried to get Tom with its tongue, the rat bared its teeth.

  And he knew he was meant to turn back, but he wouldn’t. No, for it was an adventure, but the animals kept nipping and nuzzling — they did it fiercer, now, and he looked down and saw, wedged between two of their muzzles, a little clay man. Tom knew he was meant to pick him up.

  The real world swirled back: smooth dead stone and silvery water and now and then a tadpole flickering. Tom held the clay man, and saw he was stabbed with pins. Without knowing why, he knew he must draw them out.

  After he did it, he felt afraid. The gum trees stretched up to reach leaves and wild winds and the mad mutter of flies, but there was only a terrible silence. Then out of it came the song of the strange bird that had teased him from Auntie’s garden. It sang louder and more taunting than ever, and Tom looked up and over his head it came swooping — the biggest bird he had ever seen.

  It was fantastic, a grim creature of night — stealthy, soft-flighted. It was a pair of wings threateningly drooped, two eyes glaring as with fire, a cruel lusty beak. Tom flinched as the great shadow fell upon him; he cried out, and even his cry was a cheat, for once free of his mouth it changed tune, it swelled on the air till it sounded as if every tree sang. The willows he’d left behind, the gums that had taken their place. And everything else. For the whole landscape — the creek and its banks and the sky — seemed to shout. There were shrieks and squawks, occasional warblings, sounds as of tearing calico. And still the strange bird hovered, it fanned him with its sinister wings. But Tom held the clay man, perhaps it was a charm that would help him; so h
e held it tighter, he looked at it: and it was awful. For the manikin had somehow become the bird in the sky. The bird had fallen down, it had got Tom at last, but it wasn’t giant-size at all. It was a tiny thing: a bird — but pink, featherless, defenceless. Cradled in Tom’s hand, on its back with its rubber legs jerking and its yellow beak gaping, gagging on air. It had eyes like jelly; its bald baby head was studded with specks — like blackheads, like little black pins stuck in.

  And then perhaps he died, for it was another world when he woke up. Instead of a bird, there was a dog. Big and soft and gentle; honey-coloured, with a stomach like a barrel … but it was mostly a mouth, that drooled and lapped and mourned. Poor Tom. Possibly it wasn’t death but a fit. A fit always meant birds. Though unlike the one he’d lately seen. And Tom shut his eyes, in case the horror might still be there. Somewhere, far off, the dog bewailed him.

  Then he was a lump of meat and the butcher had him. Hands, scratchy as fig leaves, lifted him high in the air, he was slung over someone’s smelly shoulder. There was a thumping in his head; he felt like a sacrifice to the sun. And then there was shadow, green shade. The old man from the charabanc set him down under the willows.

  They sat together on the grass and looked each other over. Again, the man made Tom feel different — stronger, somehow powerful, as if he wasn’t merely a child. For a while he tried to grapple with the feeling, to understand it … But thinking was too hard: Tom stopped, and the man sitting beside him relaxed. His beard ceased trembling, his little fierce eye gave up its blink.

  He didn’t seem ugly now. His face was wonderfully interesting. The large eye was certainly glass … how had he come by that scar?

  Gravely, they exchanged names. The man was Charlie Roche, and you didn’t have to call him Mister; the dog answered to Caesar.

  At the lagoon, there’d sometimes been tramps. They’d worn the same rag-bag assortment of clothes as Charlie; they’d had beards and a smell. But up close they were ordinary men, understandable, as they cadged tobacco or a bed for the night. There was a strangeness about Charlie. He reminded Tom of an Old Testament prophet who talked in tongues and flourished his staff at burning bushes.