‘Poppy!’ Boyd commanded. Poppy, chastened, ran back to stand by him, waiting, head slanted, eyes quizzing.
Susan seemed slightly embarrassed, waiting too, lips parted. Boyd, tongue-tied, looked away towards the river, desperate for inspiration. Susan looked there too, hands behind her back. Neither of them spoke. There was a tension, a creeping suspense, a loud silence pounding the air. Still looking towards the river, Susan sat down on the crimson carpet in the way that girls do, carefully, arranging her dress beneath her in a choreographed movement. Poppy sat down too, paws out, head up, eyes inquisitive. And the steam from the factory went Shh! Shh! Shh!
‘It was the same at Monymusk,’ Susan said softly, sitting so that the inner part of her elbows turned out, as girls do. She observed Boyd with full, dedicated eyes.
Boyd turned to face her, bracing himself, squeezing his toes together in his shoes, managing a wan smile. But he looked past her eyes. It was not the same as on that day in the classroom when she had been just a few desks away. To look into her eyes now, close up, would mean seeing everything – and she would see everything too, his naked thoughts. He very much wanted to ask if she was going away again. But he said nothing. He wanted to touch and play with her as he did with Poppy but he did nothing.
‘Do you like the sound of it?’ Susan’s smile was sympathetic, reassuring.
‘Yes,’ Boyd said. ‘It comes out of pipes. The steam can’t get out and it’s trying as hard as it can, very hard. And the pipes would burst if it couldn’t get out.’
‘It’s talking. It’s saying Shh! Shh! Shh! Silence! Silence! Just like at school.’ And Susan laughed.
Boyd laughed too. ‘And when it gets out it makes a big noise. That’s when the men go for their lunch.’
‘The noise used to frighten me. When I was little. Before I was used to it.’
‘It’s very loud. Louder than an aeroplane.’
‘It’s like a big dog barking.’
‘No, like cows mooing.’ Boyd’s brows wrinkled, correcting her.
‘Like big cows mooing.’
‘Like big cows mooing and mooing because their baby calf drowned. They turned their backs and the baby calf fell into the river.’
Susan hesitated. ‘Sad mooing.’
‘Moaning mooing,’ Boyd replied in acknowledgement. He felt warmth moving from his toes to his fingertips. The sluggish muscovado sugar was turning to runny honey. He felt the lovely heat radiating from Susan. He saw the poinciana-pink on the ground all around, the buffed pinkness of her, and even Poppy, sitting still on the ground, reflected shades of pink. It was a special moment, emboldening Boyd, making him draw closer, not be afraid. But still the right words would not come. In his hurry he had forgotten the new note of thirteen special words, secreted away in the chest of drawers in his room. But he knew, at that moment, how difficult it would be to present such a thing as a note. How would he do it? It wasn’t simply a matter of handing it over.
‘Mummy sometimes puts her fingers in her ears when it’s very loud. Evadne says it’s a siren.’ Susan lifted her dress and crossed her legs on the ground, making a space for Boyd as he moved closer, pretending to fuss about with Poppy, who backed away playfully.
‘It’s a cauchee,’ Boyd said.
‘What?’
‘A cauchee. It’s what Vincent and Mavis call it. And Perlita, our maid, called it cauchee too. Papa fired her.’
‘Did she steal money?’
‘No, only fish. And Papa fired Agatha and Adassa and Melvyna too. Mama didn’t like it.’
‘Oh,’ Susan said.
There was a pause. After a time, Boyd asked. ‘When you were sick in Mandeville, did they wash you down with Bay Rum?’
‘Sick?’ Susan seemed puzzled.
‘Poorly,’ Boyd said. ‘When you were very, very poorly.’
‘No.’ Susan drew out the word. ‘I wasn’t sick. Mummy sent me up there but I wanted to come home.’
‘Oh,’ Boyd said.
Moments passed again, no one said anything. It was a wonderful silence broken finally by Susan.
‘I watch the moon, and the moon watches me,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ Boyd replied, excited, having always thought that only he had a relationship with the moon. It looked at him between the pillow and the bedclothes at night. The face of the moon was soft and friendly and it knew his secrets and his thoughts.
‘It follows me around at night.’
‘And me too,’ Boyd said, unbelieving.
‘I look at it from behind my bed,’ Susan told him.
‘And I watch it hiding behind the curtains,’ Boyd replied.
‘And the windowsill. And it still watches me.’
‘And from in the trees when you think it’s not there anymore.’
‘Sometimes I run round the house and back again, and still it’s there,’ Susan said, quite animated.
‘It looks at me through the window!’ Boyd exclaimed.
‘And at me too!’ Susan grew quiet, breathing rapidly.
Again there was the silence, broken again by Susan, eyes bright.
‘I see the flowers wake at night,’ she said.
‘And I watch the roses open. The pink ones, the red ones and the white ones.’
‘So do I.’ Susan clapped her hands, breathless.
‘I lick the flowers,’ Boyd said, head turned to one side, ‘when they’re all wet with the dew.’
‘Lick the flowers with your tongue.’ Susan smiled at him, impressed.
Boyd smiled back. He felt as if he’d spoken a million words and that there was no need to say more.
They were sitting close together now, almost touching, and Susan’s scent was strong and good, like lawn grass in afternoon heat. Boyd could see the scene as from a distance and found himself looking at her brown hair, the hair he had witnessed shining in the sun that first day. It was fine, straight hair that moved easily, sometimes flying up across her face at the slightest puff of wind. He saw her arms and the tiny, downy hairs there, the shape of her body upright on the ground, and returned his gaze to her hair. He could not bring himself to look at her lips or her eyes, paths to the inner secrets, to the music place, the place of revelation. His gaze went to the ground and moved along it till Susan’s shoes, brown and buckled, came into view. His eyes moved upward to the hem of her dress then stopped. All the while, fresh streams of scent came off her, lollipops, Paradise Plums, a sweet drug in the heat. Feelings of distress taking hold, Boyd got up suddenly and ran to the hedgerows where the bougainvillea blazed. He was going to do it at last, without the words. A posy of pretty petals, fresh and bright, filled his hand, their sap wetting his fingers, foretelling delights to come. He approached Susan, her peachy neck reaching up, bent down and gave it to her.
Only he knew the taste and the feeling. Only he knew the ever-present hunger that words could never describe. Only he knew about the licking and the sucking. It was like weeping when the music spoke to him in every secret place. Showing Susan was easier than talking. He did not want to think of Mavis and Barry, Miss Hutchinson and Mr Moodie. Their troubling images threatened to bear down upon him. But Susan was pretty music and lollipops and she prevailed.
The initiation lasted as long as it took the shadows to creep beyond the hedgerows. There was no protestation, only supplication, like taking Holy Communion for the first time. White birds called out on their way down to the river, their shadows passing swiftly on the ground. Some craned their necks to look at the small boy and girl and dog, heads together in the grass. And they heard the Shh! Shh! Shh! from the factory.
‘Shh!’ Susan whispered, showing burgundy lips, fingers dark from the feast.
Boyd, the close contact giving him enormous confidence, fixed his gaze upon Susan’s lips now. Lovely music filled his ears. Susan’s lips were dark red, in sharp contrast to the speckled pink of her cheeks. Now that, at last, he had reached her lips, he cast stealthy, oblique glances in the direction of her eyes, the final, vit
al spot. A river wind came up and enveloped them. His hand went down, her hands went out, Poppy barked, and Susan fell, laughing, sideways into the grass. He saw the back of her knees, the crumpled part of her dress, leaves in her hair, and inhaled the sweet heat smell.
Shh! Shh! Shh! said the steam, and in that moment he saw her eyes, appealing just like the prized marbles in his bureau drawer, sheltered under lowered lids, speaking to him, a voice of music, caressing his heart. Boyd, frightened and elated at the boldness of the music, suddenly grew weak and fell forward into the grass, into the poinciana-pink.
* * *
That Saturday, they sat still on the verandah of the pink house, legs dangling from the chairs. Flame-coloured butterflies pestered the forget-me-nots at the base of the verandah. Susan had a crimson hibiscus, like a motionless flame, in her hair. They hadn’t spoken for most of the time they’d been sitting there, and Yvonne, eager to intrude, had been banished to the pantry after several unsuccessful attempts; banished in the face of total silence. She could not understand the silence, why they didn’t speak to her, why they didn’t speak to each other. On her way to the kitchen, she heard Mavis singing: One, Two, Three, heh! Look at Mr Lee, Three, Four, Five, heh! Look at him jive. Mr Lee, Mr Lee, Oh Mr Lee, Mr Lee, Mr Lee!
Papa, returning to the factory after an early lunch, paused to take in the scene on the verandah. He nodded to Susan, by now slouching in the chair, lashes low, and gave Boyd a hard look, for reasons only he knew.
‘I want you to behave yourself,’ Papa said, walking away, brown Nugget shoe polish and Royal Blend cigarette odours flowing from him.
‘Yes, Papa,’ Boyd said to Papa’s departing back, displeased at being reprimanded unnecessarily in Susan’s presence.
‘Why did your daddy say to behave yourself?’
‘He always says that.’
Susan laughed. Boyd giggled and watched the Land Rover take Papa away. When Yvonne returned to the verandah one last time, having sung Mr Lee ten times with Mavis, neither Susan nor Boyd was there. Susan’s crimson hibiscus lay discarded on the tiles. Yvonne looked across the lawns, far out beyond the periwinkle fence to the beginning of the orchard where all the trees came together. But she could not see them.
They were under the orange tree in the deepest part of the orchard, where Mavis’s voice could not be heard, nor Mama’s. It was quiet there except for their urgent breathing and Poppy’s impatient little barks.
‘This is like in the forest,’ Susan said, delighted, looking into his eyes, thinking of the Forest of Arden, Orlando and Rosalind.
‘In the garden,’ Boyd breathed, thinking of Estella in the garden at Miss Havisham’s house. He held her hand. A girl’s hand. He had never held one before. It was soft and warm and strange, a wonderful feeling. They laughed and Boyd ran off. He led her deep into the green closeness of the garden where the pink women were.
‘We’re in the Forest of Arden,’ Susan said. She wanted to let Boyd know that he was Orlando and that she was Rosalind. She wanted to tell him that they’d just found each other and would be friends forever. But she knew that there would be time enough for that in the days and weeks ahead.
They touched in the apple-green sunlight in the orange-warmth, where no one could see them, lips upon lips under the trees as yellow butterflies alighted and departed. Susan spluttered and laughed, her hair in her eyes, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
‘No, that’s not how they do it,’ she said. And she attempted to show Boyd how. She had seen ten times more films than Boyd, including Gone with the Wind, although she had fallen asleep because it was too long.
But Boyd was not interested in being shown how. He knew how to suck and lick flowers, how to seek out the soft, delicate heart of them. He was in the music now and her strawberry jam lips were within reach, their scent fruity, delicious. Susan, recoiling so that she stumbled backwards into the long grass, thought Boyd was quite taken with his playing. But she was getting used to him. And now that he was beginning to look directly into her eyes with that new look, the one that made her giggle, that look that made her see other worlds in his eyes and lose her bearings a little, she was willing to lie in the grass with him at her side looking up into the trees and into the sky. It was as fascinating and lovely as on that first afternoon in the open space under the poinciana trees when they first did it.
Yvonne, feeling perplexed from trying, after what seemed like ages, to fix Patsy’s hair, was singing, Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer. Turn to the east, turn to the west, turn to the one you love the best. Looking out the window into a patch of lime-green, she saw them. Quickly she put Patsy down on the bed, her pink legs in the air and her corn-coloured hair spread out on the pillow. She saw them rushing behind the house, Boyd grabbing at Susan’s hair as he often did at hers. Susan ran, arms thrashing about wildly, her light-brown hair shimmering and tossing, trying to get away. Yvonne knew that her only escape was to run to Mama. But poor Susan did not know. Boyd chased her into the deepest part of the garden. Yvonne skipped down the hall and out the back door, across the porch and out into the sun. Ride, Sally, ride. Turn to the east, turn to the west. Turn to the one you love the best. She knew of the inner reaches of the garden where Boyd and Poppy spent a lot of their time. But it was difficult to get to because it meant penetrating deep into the green foliage, behind the overhanging leaves and vines and twisting things. It meant crawling and twisting and squeezing and having scented blossoms brush against her hair and block her path. She saw them disappear into the greenery. Pink and purple flowers fell to the ground in front of her and fresh leaves, from their urgent scrambling, carpeted the ground. She heard them ahead of her, Susan’s little squeals, Poppy’s barks, Boyd’s Shhs. But she lost them and it suddenly got quiet. All about her were shadows of the deepest green. She felt afraid and turned back, saplings lashing at her as she ran out into the yellow sunlight where the sky was wide and open. Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer.
Later that day, as she sat on her bed looking out the window, she saw them again. Ride, Sally, ride. Turn to the east, turn to the west. They still chased but had swopped places. Susan was now chasing Boyd and Yvonne could hear their laughter. They were heading straight behind the garage. Poppy galloped ahead of them, his tongue loose and floppy at the side of his mouth. Yvonne knew the spot behind the garage where they could be found. Boyd and Poppy were always there, just sitting and looking into the sky, something she didn’t understand. She sprang from the bed, into the hall and out the kitchen door before Mavis could say one word. She rounded the corner by the garage and didn’t immediately see anyone. Then she barely made out Susan’s pink gingham frock caught in the sun from under the shade of the jacaranda. Boyd was with her, and Poppy too. Poppy’s tail wagged. Neither Boyd nor Susan moved, but they were doing something. Susan was giggling. Yvonne could hear the playful, urgent giggling. Boyd was sucking her mouth just the way he sucked the flowers. She had seen him do it before and Mama had said he would be sick because some of the flowers were poisonous but Boyd never listened to Mama. She had seen him do it when he thought no one was looking. She would run and tell Mama. The mouth he licked the flowers with was the same mouth he was sucking Susan with. Just wait. Mama would know what to do about it. Boyd would have to wash out his mouth with Lifebuoy carbolic soap. As Yvonne turned, Boyd turned too. He saw Yvonne’s yellow dress vanishing round the corner of the garage, her white bloomers bright in the sunlight. Poppy barked.
‘Boyd’s sucking Susan, Mama,’ Yvonne said breathlessly to Mama in the bedroom.
‘What’s that, darling?’ Mama said, gently brushing pollen from Yvonne’s hair and drawing her towards the bed and into her arms.
‘Boyd,’ Yvonne said, swooning into Mama’s warm caress. Mama’s cuddles were so pleasurable that Yvonne often found herself falling rapidly into a doze. She sank deeper into the caress and, like a puppy, worked herself into the most comfortable position, stroking Mama’s arms and kissing her neck.
Baby Babs slept quietly nearby.
‘Did you comb Patsy’s hair?’ Mama asked, enjoying the cuddle herself, feeling the infant warmth of her little calf. She kissed Yvonne’s forehead and pulled her close, massaging her back with little rhythmic paddles of her hand.
After a slow, indulgent sigh, Yvonne said, ‘No, Mama. She’s a bad dolly, a very bad dolly.’ And she quite forgot about Boyd and Susan, who were by then no longer behind the garage or in her thoughts.
But Yvonne was not the only person to see Boyd and Susan. Vincent saw them arrive behind the garage from his lookout in the bushes. When he saw their puckered lips meet, he had rubbed his eye in disbelief. The things children got up to. His own mother would have taken the whip to him if she had ever caught him doing a thing like that at their age. It was all to do with that rock and roll music, and jive this and jive that, and see you later alligator business. Just look at Boyd and Mavis on the bed, and now just look at him with that little white girl. Foreign music and foreign people were responsible. He didn’t understand any of it, the modern world. Take the white woman, Mrs Mitchison. Adolphus, her gardener, told him, with his white rum breath, that she went to bed every night naked, with not even a nightgown to cover herself up with. Imagine that. Not even a slip or a long shirt. Not even the poorest, most ignorant Neaga people slept naked. She drank and smoked like any man, drove a jeep at breakneck speed and never spent any time during the day at home the way that the respectable women like Mrs Brookes did. But Mrs Mitchison wasn’t the only one. Young Neaga women, the hoity-toity ones, were just the same. They went to foreign and came back just like the white women. Just like the white women. But the maids, especially the younger ones, were worse than all the white women put together. They were as loose as whoring women, no shame, no self-respect. And yet they behaved as if they were not common people, as if they were better than him. It made his blood boil.
Vincent had seen Boyd and Susan run off towards the back fence where the meadow began and daisies lay like yellow stars against the lush green grass. He had taken that path to get to Adolphus when he didn’t want anyone from the house, especially Mavis, to notice. If they carried on along the fence, they would emerge into open ground below the paddocks where the poinciana trees were. From there it was a short walk up the slope to the Mitchison house. When he saw the children creep under the fence and run along it in the meadow, Boyd chasing hard behind Susan, he knew at once that they were taking the roundabout way to the Mitchison house.
The Pink House at Appleton Page 32
