Other people’s houses, looming beyond the park railings, reminded her that her father, the least of clowns, would be wearing the clown’s mouth which the toothpaste gave him, and that the cheek on which her mother had been lying last would still be crumpled. The row of unfamiliar houses looked so blameless it increased the sense of guilt in anyone susceptible. She slunk along the pavement aware of strangers already aiming accusations at her from inside curtained rooms. Some of these once pretentious houses had been converted from residences into residentials, with bits added on in weatherboard, and balconies enclosed in warped asbestos. Others in the row of mansions could only be classed as derelict. In one instance, she noticed, the shutters were sagging on their hinges; scrolls of ornamental woodwork had either rotted, or been torn off for fuel; glass was glittering on tiles and flagging like splinters of permanently frozen ice.
Her vanity was moved to remember her own superior techniques in destruction as she dawdled up the path of the abandoned house, snapping obstructive branches of woodbine and laurustinus, skirting a starling’s corpse on the once tesselated veranda.
A smell of cold mould from out of the window she looked inside took away her breath at first. Other smells began to reach her, from rags, sacking, finally, she realized, as her eyes grappled with the tortoiseshell gloom, aged human flesh.
It might have been wiser to have resisted looking deeper; but she had to look.
‘What are you doing there?’ she asked as soon as she could stop herself feeling disgusted.
‘Living. Or at any rate, this is where I what they call live.’
She was so horrified she went inside the house, and after blundering through its emptiness, found her way to the mingled smells of the room where the old man lay stretched out on a stained mattress.
‘You’re not very well covered,’ she said, looking for something with which to hide his nakedness.
‘I left off clothes some time back. It’s less trouble without. If you want to scratch yourself, for instance. Or pee. Or if somebody comes to the door, they go away; they leave you alone.’
She might have taken the hint if it hadn’t been for his age. He would probably have looked unbearable at an earlier stage in life, but by living long enough, had been admitted to time’s museum: an objective intelligence could accept the scrotum equably enough, along with sharks’ eggs and Egyptiana.
‘That may be so. But surely you must have somebody – somebody who comes – somebody you want to see you at your best?’
Half-remembered precepts from a code of popular morality made her feel she ought to bully him back into a proper frame of mind.
‘This is my best,’ he said. ‘And there isn’t anybody now – not since they got what they wanted. I gave that away about the same time as the clothes and the prostate.’
She looked around desperately. If only she could lay hands on – alcohol, say, she might find bedsores to rub. Unlike the old man, she badly needed to justify her existence. But the bottles in one corner of the room all looked empty.
‘Not even grog,’ he confirmed. ‘Never would have thought. The grog was my most faithful enemy in a lifetime.’
‘Oh, come! A lifetime!’ The bright nurse she had discovered in herself was making her bare her teeth in a professionally encouraging smile. ‘You, with so much life in you still! Wouldn’t you like me to give you a wash?’
She would too, without a tremor, but as she knelt on the boards beside him, anxious for his approval, the old man closed his eyes and drew down his mouth, and answered with a waking snore; so the most she could do was attempt to comfort the fetid skin, with its crust and semi-cancerous moles.
The old man lay smiling, but not in the present, she suspected.
‘At least you have your memories,’ she dared hope.
He opened his eyes. ‘I was thinking of the days when I could still enjoy an easy piss. And stools came easy. That’s the two most important things, you find out.’
Oh no, she mustn’t allow him to drag her down to his own level of negation and squalor; she needed him more than any of the others who had eluded her.
‘Trouble is,’ he continued, ‘you find out too late to appreciate the advantages.’
She would wrestle with him. ‘But you must have something. Everybody – or almost everybody – eventually finds somebody or something, whether it’s another human being – or cat – or plant. Don’t they? Or some great idea. To believe in.’ She was as desperate as that.
‘I can honestly say I never believed in or expected anything of anyone. I never loved, not even myself – which is more than can be said of most people.’ When he laughed he showed his gums; they were a milky mauve. ‘I always saw myself as a shit. I am nothing. I believe in nothing. And nothing’s a noble faith. Nobody can hurt nothing. So you’ve no reason for being afraid.’
‘I am afraid,’ she admitted.
But she was as much distressed for this old man she had on her hands. She would have liked to remind him of something miraculous. From out of her limited experience she tried to remember. As her mind blundered and lumbered around, all she could think of was a double-yolked egg they had shown her in her infancy: the egg had been broken into a basin, the twin perfections in gold gold. How to convey it, though? She was so incapable.
In her helplessness she began blurting words in the shape of colourless bubbles, till at last she was able to give them substance. ‘I could stay here with you and help you, if you’d let me. I could show you then, perhaps.’
‘What?’
Not love: that had already been proved far too arrogant a word.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she cried; she was literally weeping: her tears fell amongst the scabs and cancerous moles, and on the perished nipples of this old man who was slipping from her, she could sense. ‘This light, for instance.’ She was almost physically clutching at it. ‘Look! Do you see how it’s changing?’
In fact the masses of hitherto colourless, or at most dust-coloured wall, were illuminated: the tributaries of decay had begun to flow with rose; the barren continents were heaped with gold.
But as the old man kept his eyes shut, she couldn’t show him.
‘Light don’t do away with the rats,’ he suddenly said. ‘Or only for the time being.’
‘The rats?’
‘At night the rats come. They sit here looking at you in the dark. They put the wind up you at times.’
‘Not if I stay.’ She took his hand and held it as though she had got possession of all knowledge. ‘At least I can keep the rats at bay, and you needn’t expect more of me than of anyone else.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
In his relief he slightly jogged a tea chest on which his teeth were standing.
‘No rats,’ he sighed. ‘And an easy pee.’
For he had begun to urinate; and as she watched it trickle over the withered thighs, her own being was flooded with pity.
‘That’s something, isn’t it?’ She was so grateful for their common release from the myths to which they had been enslaved, she only slowly realized the hand she was holding in hers had died.
When she had put it down, and her face had tightened sufficiently, she went out through the garden to the street. None of those engaged in their business of opening up houses, delivering bread, running scooters at the pavement, appeared to find her presence in any way questionable. Between two of the concrete paving-slabs, a colony of ants wove without end, through a navel of sand, into the body of the earth. So she continued up the hill to report the death of an old man she had discovered a few moments before, but knew as intimately as she knew herself, in solitariness, in desolation, as well as in what would seem to be the dizzy course of perpetual becoming.
Five-Twenty
MOST EVENINGS, WEATHER permitting, the Natwicks sat on the front veranda to watch the traffic. During the day the stream flowed, but towards five it began to thicken, it sometimes jammed solid like: the semi-trailers and refrigeration units, the decen
t old-style sedans, the mini-cars, the bombs, the Holdens and the Holdens. She didn’t know most of the names. Royal did, he was a man, though never ever mechanical himself. She liked him to tell her about the vehicles, or listen to him take part in conversation with anyone who stopped at the fence. He could hold his own, on account of he was more educated, and an invalid has time to think.
They used to sit side by side on the tiled veranda, him in his wheelchair she had got him after the artheritis took over, her in the old cane. The old cane chair wasn’t hardly presentable any more; she had torn her winter cardy on a nail and laddered several pair of stockings. You hadn’t the heart to get rid of it, though. They brought it with them from Sarsaparilla after they sold the business. And now they could sit in comfort to watch the traffic, the big steel insects of nowadays, which put the wind up her at times.
Royal said, ‘I reckon we’re a shingle short to’uv ended up on the Parramatta Road.’
‘You said we’d still see life,’ she reminded, ‘even if we lost the use of our legs.’
‘But look at the traffic! Worse every year. And air. Rot a man’s lungs quicker than the cigarettes. You should’uv headed me off. You who’s supposed to be practical!’
‘I thought it was what you wanted,’ she said, keeping it soft; she had never been one to crow.
‘Anyway, I already lost the use of me legs.’
As if she was to blame for that too. She was so shocked the chair sort of jumped. It made her blood run cold to hear the metal feet screak against the little draught-board tiles.
‘Well, I ’aven’t!’ she protested. ‘I got me legs, and will be able to get from ’ere to anywhere and bring ’ome the shopping. While I got me strength.’
She tried never to upset him by any show of emotion, but now she was so upset herself.
They watched the traffic in the evenings, as the orange light was stacked up in thick slabs, and the neon signs were coming on.
‘See that bloke down there in the parti-coloured Holden?’
‘Which?’ she asked.
‘The one level with our own gate.’
‘The pink and brown?’ She couldn’t take all that interest tonight, only you must never stop humouring a sick man.
‘Yairs. Pink. Fancy a man in a pink car!’
‘Dusty pink is fashionable.’ She knew that for sure.
‘But a man!’
‘Perhaps his wife chose it. Perhaps he’s got a domineering wife.’
Royal laughed low. ‘Looks the sort of coot who might like to be domineered, and if that’s what he wants, it’s none of our business, is it?’
She laughed to keep him company. They were such mates, everybody said. And it was true. She didn’t know what she would do if Royal passed on first.
That evening the traffic had jammed. Some of the drivers began tooting. Some of them stuck their heads out, and yarned to one another. But the man in the pink-and-brown Holden just sat. He didn’t look to either side.
Come to think of it, she had noticed him pass before. Yes. Though he wasn’t in no way a noticeable man. Yes. She looked at her watch.
‘Five-twenty,’ she said. ‘I seen that man in the pink-and-brown before. He’s pretty regular. Looks like a business executive.’
Royal cleared his throat and spat. It didn’t make the edge of the veranda. Better not to notice it, because he’d only create if she did. She’d get out the watering-can after she had pushed him inside.
‘Business executives!’ she heard. ‘They’re afraid people are gunner think they’re poor class without they execute. In our day nobody was ashamed to do. Isn’t that about right, eh?’ She didn’t answer because she knew she wasn’t meant to. ‘Funny sort of head that cove’s got. Like it was half squashed. Silly-lookun bloody head!’
‘Could have been born with it,’ she suggested. ‘Can’t help what you’re born with. Like your religion.’
There was the evening the Chev got crushed, only a young fellow too. Ahhh, it had stuck in her throat, thinking of the wife and kiddies. She ran in, and out again as quick as she could, with a couple of blankets, and the rug that was a present from Hazel. She had grabbed a pillow off their own bed.
She only faintly heard Royal shouting from the wheel-chair.
She arranged the blankets and the pillow on the pavement, under the orange sky. The young fellow was looking pretty sick, kept on turning his head as though he recognized and wanted to tell her something. Then the photographer from the Mirror took his picture, said she ought to be in it to add a touch of human interest, but she wouldn’t. A priest came, the Mirror took his picture, administering what Mrs Dolan said they call Extreme Unkshun. Well, you couldn’t poke fun at a person’s religion any more than the shape of their head, and Mrs Dolan was a decent neighbour, the whole family, and clean.
When she got back to the veranda, Royal, a big man, had slipped down in his wheel-chair.
He said, or gasped, ‘Wotcher wanter do that for, Ella? How are we gunner get the blood off?’
She hadn’t thought about the blood, when of course she was all smeared with it, and the blankets, and Hazel’s good Onkaparinka. Anyway, it was her who would get the blood off.
‘You soak it in milk or something,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask. Don’t you worry.’
Then she did something. She bent down and kissed Royal on the forehead in front of the whole Parramatta Road. She regretted it at once, because he looked that powerless in his invalid chair, and his forehead felt cold and sweaty.
But you can’t undo things that are done.
It was a blessing they could sit on the front veranda. Royal suffered a lot by now. He had his long-standing hernia, which they couldn’t have operated on, on account of he was afraid of his heart. And then the artheritis.
‘Arthritis.’
‘All right,’ she accepted the correction. ‘Arth-er-itis.’
It was all very well for men, they could manage more of the hard words.
‘What have we got for tea?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she said, fanning out her hands on the points of her elbows, and smiling, ‘it’s a surprise.’
She looked at her watch. It was five-twenty.
‘It’s a coupler nice little bits of fillet Mr Ballard let me have.’
‘Wotcher mean let you have? Didn’t you pay for them?’
She had to laugh. ‘Anything I have I pay for!’
‘Well? Think we’re in the fillet-eating class?’
‘It’s only a treat, Royal,’ she said. ‘I got a chump chop for myself. I like a nice chop.’
He stopped complaining, and she was relieved.
‘There’s that gentleman,’ she said, ‘in the Holden.’
They watched him pass, as sober as their own habits.
Royal – he had been his mother’s little king. Most of his mates called him ‘Roy’. Perhaps only her and Mrs Natwick had stuck to the christened name, they felt it suited.
She often wondered how Royal had ever fancied her: such a big man, with glossy hair, black, and a nose like on someone historical. She would never have said it, but she was proud of Royal’s nose. She was proud of the photo he had of the old family home in Kent, the thatch so lovely, and Grannie Natwick sitting in her apron on a rush-bottom chair in front, looking certainly not all that different from Mum, with the aunts gathered round in leggermutton sleeves, all big nosey women like Royal.
She had heard Mum telling Royal’s mother, ‘Ella’s a plain little thing, but what’s better than cheerful and willing?’ She had always been on the mousey side, she supposed, which didn’t mean she couldn’t chatter with the right person. She heard Mum telling Mrs Natwick, ‘My Ella can wash and bake against any comers. Clever with her needle too.’ She had never entered any of the competitions, like they told her she ought to, it would have made her nervous.
It was all the stranger that Royal had ever fancied her.
Once as they sat on the veranda watching the evening traffic, she said, ‘R
emember how you used to ride out in the old days from “Bugilbar” to Cootramundra?’
‘Cootamundra.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Cootramundra.’ (That’s why they’d called the house ‘Coota’ when they moved to the Parramatta Road.)
She had been so dazzled on one occasion by his parti-coloured forehead and his black hair, after he had got down from the saddle, after he had taken off his hat, she had run and fetched a duster, and dusted Royal Natwick’s boots. The pair of new elastic-sides was white with dust from the long ride. It only occurred to her as she polished she might be doing something shameful, but when she looked up, it seemed as though Royal Natwick saw nothing peculiar in Ella McWhirter dusting his boots. He might even have expected it. She was so glad she could have cried.
Old Mr Natwick had come out from Kent when a youth, and after working at several uncongenial jobs, and studying at night, had been taken on as book-keeper at ‘Bugilbar’. He was much valued in the end by the owners, and always made use of. The father would have liked his son to follow in his footsteps, and taught him how to keep the books, but Royal wasn’t going to hang around any family of purse-proud squatters, telling them the things they wanted to hear. He had ideas of his own for becoming rich and important.
So when he married Ella McWhirter, which nobody could ever understand, not even Ella herself, perhaps only Royal, who never bothered to explain (why should he?) they moved to Juggerawa, and took over the general store. It was in a bad way, and soon was in a worse, because Royal’s ideas were above those of his customers.
Fulbrook was the next stage. He found employment as book-keeper on a grazing property outside. She felt so humiliated on account of his humiliation. It didn’t matter about herself because she always expected less. She took a job in Fulbrook from the start, at the ‘Dixie Cafe’ in High Street. She worked there several years as waitress, helping out with the scrubbing for the sake of the extra money. She had never hated anything, but got to hate the flies trampling in the sugar and on the necks of the tomato sauce bottles.
The Cockatoos Page 16
