For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  The sky was now getting clear, but light sinewy airs were nosing about and the air had thickened. Back in the bay behind the two points, the Martins’ outboard motor started, muffled. Presently they came sweeping round the point. A man standing up, sang—

  “A life on the ocean wave,

  A home on the rolling deep,

  Where the scattered waters rave

  And the winds their revels keep.

  So now good-bye to land

  To the dull unchanging shore—”

  and they were out of earshot. It was stoutly sung; the singer strangely glided and bobbed over the choppy water, with the three hearers at his feet, one Leo, singing seconds. The boat headed outwards.

  The ground was moist and the mosquitoes singing round within the shelter of the rock. The girl turned home. She was worn out and went to sleep when she got home.

  8

  It Was the Hot Intolerable Hour

  The infant breeze died after sunrise, though the swell continued. Inside the house and out, the merry bay jigged. The egg-beater rang in the basin, they were sawing in the shed and Andrew Hawkins was singing—

  “Ye mariners of England

  That guard our native seas . . .”

  —above the rhythmic hee-haw. They were launching a fishing-boat in the bay, a ferry could be heard coming in to the wharf. Seagulls flew overhead with their queer-queer! increasing in number as the surf increased and darting at the basins of scraps thrown overboard by sea-cooks before entering the harbour. Neighbours up the street were talking on their front verandas, the warm rich air was full of eleven o’clock smells, an iron tool fell in the paved yard, clink!

  “As ye sweep through the deep;

  While the stormy winds do blo-oh-oh-oh-ow!”

  A boy laughed. The strong smell of drying fish-nets came in. When the beans were cut, the potatoes scrubbed and the roast ready, Kitty sat down in the kitchen to hem some dish-towels and Teresa skipped to the empty upstairs to “do the rooms”, as she said. She made the three beds, shook the mats and then was free to prepare the lessons for the next day. She had made six dozen little cards on which she had written simple problems for the weak intellects of her class. Besides this, she was learning basket-making out of a book and had half-wound a mending basket. But as she sat with the raffia in a bundle on her table she imagined a new dress for herself. She had on her green dress. She took it and all her clothes off. “If anyone comes, I’ll say I’m going swimming,” she thought. She did nothing but sat down on the sun-heated iron-bound sewing-box again, twisting a piece of raffia in her hands.

  “I am beautiful, why can’t I be photographed like this?” She put the piece of raffia, red, round her waist and drew it tight. “I am sure I look beautiful like this. The weather’s hot—” She laughed aloud and looked hastily to the door. She had just thought that tonight, when all were asleep, she would walk out naked, in the garden. Who would be about? Some lovesick boy? And he’d think he was having hallucinations. He’d think, “I’m going mad,” and would hurry past, run home. Or he might come into the garden, “What are you? Are you real?” She would say: “Is this real? Is this flesh? No dream of yours is as solid as this.” She laughed again. One such daring act and she, the boy—several daring acts and they would all be free. She came back to the idea, “But how can we all suffer when none of us wants it?” She stood up beside the open window, behind the light curtain and looked out at the ragged grassy slope. A pink shadow fell from the shutter, strapped across her arm and body. “Who knows under our clothes what we are like? Why do they imprison Venus? I am Venus, too. If Venus is a goddess, I am a goddess. The poor old schoolteachers in the teachers’ room worship Greek culture. They know nothing about Greek culture. But they love it. Why? They don’t know. I know. The naked Venus. Now Kitty leans out of the window looking under her lashes at the boy next door. Her olive skin as a little girl; how beautiful she was! Feminine race, woman’s beauty, and then the boy next door. Oh, no, it’s just the result of prison life. ‘Young desire—’ They don’t mean it though. Get married first and see! Then after all, any man wouldn’t do. I want to be adored. If I showed myself at the window, what would happen? ‘Breasts that bore at men’s eyes.’ The young men in the Bay round here, who are half-mad with desire this hot damp morning, would fall down at my feet, worship me, kiss my waist, knees, hips, clinging round like vines, snakes—what a shame it is! I want them and they want me! There’s something I don’t understand in the whole arrangement. No, I’m not mad, they are.”

  At the thought of this injustice, how they would fly to each other, she felt as if she would burst from a fierce pain. “Last night, those fallen on the grass, unable to stand up, they were ugly, coarse, but in full life. In art courses, we see women’s bodies, not men’s; we’re shown how to admire our own beauty, but when it comes, then we must hide it. And it’s wrong, too, we can’t see naked men, we’re robbed of our pleasures.” Her head whirled with confusion and frustration. “It isn’t anything to do with me. Malfi was pretty, wealthy, clever—she, too.”

  She walked out of her room to the head of the stairs. The light airs came from every door, window, and chink, up the staircase, down from the turrets at her, feeling thoughtfully over her body, giving her caresses that could never come otherwise. The softly haired wood was like a beast under her feet. Circe? The men-tamers? What had they? She looked down the staircase, to the shaded hallways covered with worn oilcloth, the oilcloth strewn with sand carried in. She regretted her youth, like an old woman, “At fourteen, I was—” and “At fifteen, already I—” and so forth. “I remember that cornflower blue voile, all the men stared at me—why didn’t I know then? Are the old people jealous? Those fishermen now wouldn’t mind at all. They’d like to see me walking down the beach, say, through the salt water, or at night, a night like tonight will be, at moonrise. They might faint at the sight! And then open his eyes, rouse himself, come through the foam like a sea animal, with his mouth full of salt water and kiss, kiss, embrace, like a vine coming up the calf, the knee, his mouth salt and stinging, but always hungry till he would either get drowned with salt water or pull me down into the waves with him—to roll for hours in the foam! And it’s more misery for the men who make the laws than for me who never made a law, for women are outside the law; they make nothing, they say yes or no, to some collection of whereases. Why do men make the laws, say, about marriage, decency and the like, to shackle themselves? It’s all incomprehensible.”

  She leaned against the head of the stair, pressing the smooth greased wood into her side. It was getting hotter.

  The most curious thing is, thought Teresa, that men like undressed women better than dressed, they have places where they can enjoy them, but we can’t see naked women. I should like to be one of the hetaerae, thought she, that’s different from a harlot, it’s a mistress harlot; govern my own household, do as I liked, have no one say no to me. How would I get the money, that’s the question. Poor men can’t give you money and rich men want another sort of woman. But will I begin with men like those down at the Bay, or at work, poor beachcombers, so to speak, schoolboys, failures, that lop-eared doctor on the boat, ugly men, broken-backed child-whackers trembling before a Mr Prentiss, a headmaster? No, no. Never venture, never win. I’ll have to go out and look for a man. The hands, dark, passionate, clawlike but beautiful, firm, long and muscular that move over my body, like a crab moving over the sand, a big spider and his shadow moving over a whitewashed wall, are no schoolmaster’s, no fisherman’s hands. She heard the oven door clang; Kitty had put in the roast. Leo’s joyous shout came from the beach path, “Look at our catch!”

  She came away from the stairhead and went towards the back and climbed quite naked into the little open tower. “If I show myself at the opening here, only breasts, only belly, or only thighs, what a joke! What we all want and what we don’t take. What cowards. It’s a naked woman, just the same, not a schoolteacher in a skirt that is the ideal of beauty; not a m
an, a woman, and not a married woman, a naked young virgin, like me. Oh, Aphrodite, I wish you were a goddess, I wish you were the real thing and I could pray to you and dedicate myself to you. What words would I say? You would know everything. I would say, Venus, or Aphrodite Pandemos, mother of all living, listen to my troubles. When I was fourteen, I was sick with love, when I was fifteen I was so round and red-cheeked and burning with love that everyone knew it, I was ashamed myself to walk down the street, because I knew they knew it. It wasn’t only my body, it was everything, the sleek eyes, the long silk hair, the walking, the legs and arms; the boys called after me and I was ashamed then. At sixteen I was tired with putting my arms round thin air at night, at seventeen I drooped, my face got sad. Venus, what am I to do? Yes, what am I to do? No one will help me.”

  Discouraged, Teresa came down from the turret and went into her room. Opening her sewing-box she pulled out what she had there; some yards of lace, bits of velvet and silk, an old beaver hat, a pair of ruby gloves she had bought for the colour and never worn, a piece of chamois leather, a cord. She considered all these for a time. The sun increasing to midday beat into her brain and she moved slowly, almost stupefied. After a while she opened a box and got out a pair of scissors and some thread. She began making a pair of buskins. Feverishly, with a big needle, with ugly stitches, she sewed them up and pulled them on her naked feet. Then she put on the beaver hat and went into her father’s room to admire herself. It was a striking get-up. She returned to the room walking firmly, imagining herself some goddess athwart the woods; and now invented a new dress for herself. It was her custom on Sundays when she was free and the family were out roaming the bay and the cliffs, to invent these costumes, fantastic to the last degree, colourful, all had the same intention; they bound the thighs and showed the belly, or covered the face, neck, and arms with a hood and wimple which fell short of the breasts; they were all obscene. When she was tired of invention and sick of her gee-gaws, she would throw them aside, stuff them into her bottom drawer where they became more and more crumpled, and would throw herself on the bed, half asleep, while slowly, as she became hotter (for she became chilled in her parades in the empty upper floor, in which the wind always blew) a swarm of new inventions filled her mind, patterns which she put by for the next time, for too thick they came for her ever to make them up, they required a wardrobe mistress.

  First, now, she imagined a city-state with short walls of white and blue marble, with clear water running down the gutters and the people, in laced leather and metal sandals, taking these off to bathe their feet when it got too hot. There was no dust anywhere, the air sparkled. It was high up in the mountains, near the sun, so that it was both cold and hot at the same time, a wind blew but at certain hours of the day it was perfectly still. Each day at the same time, a soft rain fell and for this hour the people either went into their marble-floored houses or put on cloaks, all of the same style, but of different colours. At midday it was perfectly still and they all tanned themselves, but some of the men and women remained absolutely fair always. The children were naked except for wreaths of flowers and bunches of fruits round their arms, necks, ankles, or middles, just as they pleased. The adults were variously garbed; the men in tights of all colours, cloths, and cuts, showing their limbs, muscles, and sometimes split on the thighs or breast; sometimes a mere jerkin, or even a circlet round the breasts, a coating of paint over the rippling skins and never the loincloth or sporran. The women were clothed (in her city-state) more gorgeously, in fashions beyond description. Some hid their flesh, some showed it. Through a dress of lemon velvet the pouting breasts of a young mother stood out, bursting with their thick white wine; she suckled her child as she walked. They had a thousand ways of showing their breasts. She designed madly for them, but they moved about unconscious of her as if they really existed. It staled, her eyes shut. What had happened? She would dream no more, but got up dully. She went down languidly and softly. If only Kitty had not done everything without her!

  Lunch. First, the big kitchen ready, robust, steaming, with the oven, cupboards, dishes full of the food they had earned, a food grove that was their own; inside, the long table with Andrew Hawkins sitting sideways so that he could look out at the bay, Kitty at the bottom near the kitchen to serve, Teresa next to her, the boys on each side.

  Today, Kitty was happy but flustered and the father kept making remarks about “her boy”. Her two brothers eyed her with less than their usual disdain. Teresa saw them all only in a dream. Why couldn’t she cover the bare walls of the dining-room with designs? Andrew Hawkins never disapproved of handwork itself, only of bought painting. The entire wall and ceiling could be covered with leaves and flowers on vines, for instance, and in each wall a painted window or vignette, through which a painted scene would show. On the ceiling—

  It was time to change the plates. “The two girls are fast asleep,” said their father indulgently. Leo grunted. “They burned the potatoes in their sleep,” Lance remarked after some reflection. He had not spoken to his father for a year, for no particular reason; but to avoid scandal, he dropped remarks into the room when others were present. Leo added: “I’ll bet Terry is thinking of some teacher at school.” Teresa put the plates at her sister’s place and went out for the lemon sauce.

  “Aren’t you, Terry?”

  “Do you think I’d marry a schoolteacher?”

  The men laughed. Kitty said, with a laugh:

  “Nobody asked you, sir, she said, sir, she said.

  If he should ask me to marry him,

  What shall I, what shall I say?”

  “Say yes, Tess,” said the father.

  “I’ll ask him if I like,” said Teresa.

  Lance enquired: “Who’d marry you?”

  “Who’d marry you?” asked Teresa.

  Kitty laughed as she sat down.

  “You’re sickening,” Lance flung at her. “Going on a moonlight excursion and”—he was unable to bring himself to say the word “kissing” so he growled instead, “Look at you, with paint and powder on you now. As soon as they see a man, they put on cold cream.”

  They all looked at her keenly; she had blotted the lipstick clumsily.

  “Well, Kit!” said her father.

  Smiling with embarrassment, but without an apology, she got up and went into the kitchen where she scrubbed her lips with a duster.

  “You’re all the same,” said Lance. “As soon as a man comes within half a mile, it’s giggling and flirting and lipstick, spending your money on clothes, fussing yourselves up, brazeers to look beautiful—”

  “Lance,” cried Teresa, leaping from her chair.

  He paused disdainfully; the father smiled slightly.

  “That’s all you think about the whole morning,” he said evilly.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Never mind. I know what I know. You lie on your bed reading, your eyes are all red, you don’t do your schoolwork.” He snickered. “When they go to a wedding, the girls go boy-crazy. There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

  Kitty came in with the steamed pudding and put it in her place, to cut it up.

  “It’s like wet flannel,” said Lance. “Why can’t you learn to cook? You’ve been at it long enough. Why don’t you go to cooking school?”

  Kitty cast down her eyes and began to divide the pudding.

  “Your Malfi now,” said Lance.

  “What’s the matter with Malfi?” enquired Leo with lazy interest. “She’s all right.”

  “She runs around with her dress cut down to the small of her back, with her bones sticking out and salt-cellars in her neck. She thinks the boys are sick over her.”

  Leo laughed shortly. “She’s got enough boys.”

  Lance nagged: “She’d better look out, she’d better not try anything on now.” Kitty was looking into her plate. Teresa gulped down the sweet wet pudding. There was a pause until she finished and she then said to Lance: “What a pity you’re so jealous!” />
  “Jealous! Of that flirt!”

  “Yes. Of that flirt!”

  Lance folded his napkin and got up from the table, turning away to hide the irresistible grin stealing over his face. Kitty, unnoticed, messed with her pudding and said stormily: “Do you want a second helping?”

  “Not of that rubber,” said Lance.

  “Well, now, we can live without the critic,” said Kitty.

  The father remarked: “You shouldn’t torment him. Pass my plate, Terry. You know poor Lance is overworking and probably has his private worries.”

  “Why is he so mean?” asked Kitty.

  “Born mean,” remarked Leo, getting up without ceremony and stretching himself. “Going down to the men.”

  “You’re always with the fishermen,” said his father. “I don’t mind you being with your mates, but I’d like to see you stay at home and try to read a bit, improve your mind. Lance does that, that you’ve got to say for your brother.”

  Leo’s face darkened. Teresa said: “Leo’s the fastest workman in the shop, they had to tell him not to go so fast, he was speeding up. All the men like him and when they walked out the other day, it was Leo made them walk out. He got up on a stone at the gate, the stone that holds the gate back. He got up on it and made them a speech and they walked out afterwards.”

  Leo came back into the room. “I told them to down tools till the boss got rid of the foreman, the foreman’s his son-in-law. They just started to stroll out the gate, nothing wrong, it looked like. Then they locked us out.”

  Kitty, incredulous, said: “You, a boy of seventeen, told men what to do?”

  “A man of seventeen,” said Teresa.

  The father, balancing between admiration and disapproval, said: “Leo’s a hothead, he ought to have looked before he leaped. Now they’re all out of work.”