For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  “No? Then ‘ow’s that?”

  “I ran away.”

  He raised his thick greying eyebrows to his wife, and in one glance, the old pair had conversed with each other. He merely said: “Bad weather for the orchards”, and shook his head seriously. “The old Narara Valley is covered with windfalls, the orchards are rotting underfoot. Men are going out everywhere getting sacks of windfalls for a shilling.”

  “Every morning, the tugs tow out barges of fruit past our place and dump them out at sea,” said Teresa. This called up all the splendour of the spring and summer mornings when, just before she set out for school, down the harbour roads, so still and shimmering, came one or two portly little tugs, sometimes three, with lighters behind them, the dipping towline visible as they turned. Those rafts carried the unsold good fruit from just such districts as this; in the bottom of each, two doors which opened when the lighter was out at sea and let the freight of oranges, apples, and the like fall among the fishes. Joey the newsboy knew where the barges lay up and went there to get the rejected melons, bananas, oranges, of the markets, those that were thrown out when the price fell too low, fruit sacrificed because it was too cheap. Joey, at midnight, skimming from dump heap to dump heap, hazardously on the back ends of trams, buses, and cars, collected a few of these and sometimes had brought her one.

  “Jones, in Gosford, sent a load in by the agent and all ‘e got was ‘e had to pay ninepence excess freight for the return of ‘is unsold fruit. I don’t know why they didn’t dump it,” said Uncle Edward, laughing. “I ’ad to pay twopence, two weeks ago, that was my profit.”

  “Working all the day there,” said Aunt Teresa. “I don’t like to see poor Ned, at ‘is age, working down there in the ‘ot sun, weeding, ‘oeing.”

  Edward laughed. “You work a whole year, I don’t know what you don’t spend, sacking against the codlin moth and spraying, picking, and packing, and then you’ve got to pay twopence excess freight to get it sent out to sea.” He laughed again good-naturedly, slapped his spoon down and drank a whole cupful of black tea. He wiped his whiskers on his hand and looked gaily at Teresa. Then he became ashamed, calmed down and said: “It’s all for ’er, after all, if it makes ’er ’appy.” He turned and nodded at his daughter’s room.

  “I don’t know if we’ve done any good, bringing ’er out ’ere where she meets no nice fellers,” said Aunt Terry, restlessly, picking up the cup and taking it to the stove.

  “Well, if she was to get settled, you know, your Aunt and I would pack up traps tomorrow.” He broke off with a glance at her door, as he took the cup of black tea. “Is she still hupset, Mother ?”

  Edward Paton and his wife misplaced their h’s; he said “hupset” and “ ‘ard work”; he had a gentle, caressing way of speaking and never scolded in his household more than to say firmly: “Now, Teresa”, and “Now, Ellen”.

  Ellen, hearing her father’s voice, came out of her room, dressed now in a soft blue dress.

  “My darling,” said Edward, “‘ow do you feel now, a little more cheerful ? To ‘ave Tess ’ere will cheer us hup a bit, p’raps.”

  “Don’t say ‘aye, Father,” cried Ellen nervously. “Have is easy to say.”

  “I’m sorry, daughter,” said the man. “Come ’ere, my dear, sit on my knee.”

  “You should be ashamed to speak to your father that way,” said Aunt Teresa. She went over with the teapot, filled the cup to the top, and kissed her husband on the head.

  “It suited ’er,” said Edward with a laugh, looking up at her with sea-blue eyes. “It suited your Mother ’er life long.”

  “It doesn’t suit me,” cried the daughter, kissing his cheek petulantly, “and I think you and Mother ought to learn for my sake. What do you think people think when they hear you? They think we’re ignorant.” Uncle Ned laughed heartily and kissed his daughter. “Your young men are ashamed of us, is that it?” He looked at her as he cradled her in his lap, then reached behind her long back to drink his tea.

  “Ouch, Father, do be careful, you spilled some.”

  “But,” said he, “Ellen, I won’t ‘ave you speaking that way to your mother, you see?”

  She put her arms round his neck and kissed his ear, saying babyishly: “Do you love your poor girly?”

  Aunt Teresa looked impatiently at them. “Don’t baby ’er Father, she’s old enough to know better. If we ‘adn’t spoiled your cousin Ellen,” she explained gloomily to Teresa, “she would’ve been married and settled down long ago, but she thought she could always pick and choose.”

  Teresa gave Ellen a look and dropped her lashes; but Uncle Ned, not seeing it, beamed at her. He wiped his moustache with neatness and dexterity, pulled Ellen down (she was taller than he), kissed her forehead and said: “There, kitty, you know Mother and Father would do anything for you.” Then pushing her a little, he continued with gentle severity: “Get off my knee, Ellen. Go and play Father a piece.”

  Frowning, she got up. “A piece! What piece?”

  “‘Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms.’” He looked up at her and touched her hand. Frowning, superior, she stalked into the front room; in a moment they heard her thin voice and her firm touch; she was singing “The Holy City”.

  Uncle Edward beamed but there was a pathetic twist in his mouth. Aunt Teresa said: “We spent a lot of money on Ellen’s musical education, she has so much artistic talent, we thought she’d do something with it.”

  “She exhibited at the Narara show here this year and got first prize,” said the father.

  “She didn’t do nothing with what she had,” said the mother. She continued, looking at Uncle Edward: “Father, Tess isn’t on ‘oliday, she wants to go on a walking-trip to ‘Arper’s Ferry. She says she doesn’t mind the weather.”

  “Yes?” said the elderly man, looking steadily at Teresa while he stirred his tea. Stirring his tea was with Ned Paton a prolonged, restful occupation; it was something like chewing tobacco. Presently he poured himself a saucerful of tea, blew it gently, and lifted his moustaches expertly as he slid it into his mouth.

  “Good tea, Mother,” said he as always. “Have you got any more?”

  “Father!” exclaimed his wife. “All day long that tea is stewing there for him. You drink it too black, Father, it’ll ruin your stomach.” He laughed. “Been drinking it that way since I was a shaver,” he said and started off on the long anecdote of how he had lived in a village in the Isle of Thanet, and walked to work at a brick-kiln, four miles there and back with his father, a brickmaker, from five years old. At twelve he had run away to sea, like nearly all the local boys and had never seen his family since. “Nor ever ‘eard,” said he, bending his head to blow at his saucer. He began to tell the other story about his travelling up and down the coast of South America rounding the Horn several times in one of the last of the sailing-ships, and about his settling down in Sydney, “Where I met my fate, I met Mother.”

  “Tess is like her mother, my dear sister Emma,” said Aunt Teresa. “And I promised Emma I would look out for her, if need was.”

  Teresa meanwhile was lost in thought, that Ellen in her pale sterility, at twenty-nine, twitching like a filly, kissing like a girl on her father’s knee, was fit for the bone-yard. Of course, she would never get a man, for she smelled and looked like an old pancake.

  Ellen, white Sunday shoes, a high laugh and playing the organ at church! How could a marrying woman produce a daughter on the shelf? Teresa was sure that Jerome Carlin was not thinking of Ellen at all. She heard her name “Tess!” and looked up.

  “Tess was in one of ’er brown studies,” said Uncle Edward. “I said your cousin Lily Foster was out a couple of months back, she stayed ’ere a week.”

  “She primped herself up every time your uncle took her in town, powder all over the dressing-table and the floor, for me to clean up,” continued Aunt Tess, heavily. “My sister Anne’s girl, but always pretty much ’er own way.” She came to the table to say in a low vo
ice to Teresa: “When she ’ad her days, you know, she got worse than ever, very excited and red in the face, and she drenched ’erself in perfume—your uncle was quite ashamed driving ’er into town, every man in the street turned to look at ’er. A regular exhibition.”

  “Yes,” said Uncle Ned. “She is a dandy, your cousin Lily Foster, the men were all staring after ’er—” he looked slightly ashamed.

  “Because of ’er red face,” said the aunt. “Of course, poor Lily can’t ‘elp it, she takes fits—at that time—you know.”

  “About every two or three months, they say,” said Ned, comfortably. “She was kind and loving to your aunt but careless and lazy and your aunt got upset, your aunt got real upset.”

  The wife whispered: “Your cousin Ellen can’t stand ’er, they didn’t get on at all.” They showed her a photograph of her cousin Lily, whom she had never seen, a sturdy, middle-sized girl with a long, plump face and smiling eyes.

  Teresa had a vivid picture of her driving through town in white organdy (they went on to describe her), smelling of Houbigant, with a scarlet face covered with powder and all the men looking, Uncle Edward alongside.

  “All the men looked?” she asked.

  “Because she was so red and ’er eyes were shining,” said the aunt.

  “She was something to see in our town,” said Uncle Ned. “She was so fussed up.”

  “Is it because she takes fits she is like that?” asked Teresa.

  “Oh, of course, poor girl, she can’t ‘elp it, I’m not blaming ’er, but she went out of ’er way, just the same, to catch the eye. A big, bouncing girl like that—she should ‘ave tried to tone it down a bit.”

  “Tone down what, do you mean?”

  “Her colour and her fat, but she didn’t even wear a corset.”

  The young girl was puzzled; the married women of the family kept speaking of girls who went without corsets, or who wore garters, or rolled their stockings, as if they were evil.

  “But why should she wear corsets?”

  “A decent girl doesn’t walk up and down town without corsets.”

  Good: it was one of those moral laws she did not yet understand. She asked no more, but continued:

  “Is that hereditary, those fits, I mean?”

  Lily was her first cousin. She herself as a child had been noticed everywhere for the great red flags in her cheeks, surprising in such a tan-skinned country. It was for this reason that the young flop-eared medical student on the ferry had spoken to her one day. Since then he had sought her out, a peculiar creature with the figure of an angleworm, tall, slobbering too, lonely; interested in her colour. She hated him because the girls laughed at him, but now she thought she saw why he ran after her—it was perhaps the hereditary red face.

  The uncle and aunt were looking at each other, thinking something out in concert.

  “Is epilepsy a kind of family disease? Might I have it?” she asked pleasantly.

  Her uncle and aunt looked at her; then Aunt Terry said shortly:

  “Some say. But you ‘aven’t got it, if you mean that.”

  “What is it like?”

  Her aunt seemed embarrassed and murmured a few words. Teresa became absorbed again, while the adults went on quickly talking. She was putting the jigsaw together again. There was nothing really serious to it, then; a red face that men looked at, gaiety, charm, people “waiting on you” as Aunt Terry had said, self-confidence, a fall—what harm was there in it? At school they taught that genius is to madness near akin, and she had already remarked that men were attracted by a little madness. Of course she had not her cousin’s talents, she had never done those things that Aunt Teresa had murmured so quickly, but it might be cultivated. She stirred uneasily, wondering if she really could become a Lily, when she noticed that her uncle and aunt had left her and gone into the front room, while Ellen’s drink-of-water figure was moving lengthily up and down the front veranda. Her cousin stopped and looked over the wide valley full of storm rain. The elderly couple were talking earnestly about something and soon Uncle Ned went off through the timbered lot towards the station. No doubt it was some family conspiracy about Jerry Carlin or the Townshends. There was no help for her here. There was nothing for it but to set out exactly as she had planned, and when she got back to Sydney, she would go on with her night-classes, get a job and go abroad. That was all she could see ahead of her.

  13

  Air of Pride, Fire, and Water

  It was time to go to the Carlins’ and Ellen was sulking in her room, dressed, her long fair hair carefully braided round her head, but marching up and down behind a closed door.

  “You go in,” said Aunt Teresa to Teresa, “and tell her she must go.” Teresa arose, knocked at the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Tess.”

  “Come in.”

  Her cousin was standing near the bed. She could be pretty, thought Teresa, seeing her oval eyes, teeth gleaming in her parted lips and the air of pride, fire, and water with which she looked at the intruder for an instant. She doubted; perhaps Jerry Carlin really liked her. She certainly did not look twenty-nine.

  “It’s time to go to Rhoda’s,” said Teresa.

  “I hate Rhoda, she’s common.”

  “Don’t you want to see Jerry and Tom?” went on Teresa, indifferently.

  “Get out, you little idiot, you don’t know what you’re meddling in,” cried Ellen.

  “You come along, you know you want to go,” said Teresa, laying hold of her cousin’s arm.

  The tall girl freed herself in a kind of spasm and between tears and cries of fury and gentle slaps, drove her young cousin to the door.

  “Get out of here, I don’t want you. I hate you,” shrieked poor Ellen.

  Teresa stood looking at her.

  “Get out, get out of here, get out,” shrieked Ellen at the pitch of fury.

  Teresa went out and went to sit with her aunt and uncle after closing the door. They heard the drawers slamming in Ellen’s room. The three said nothing, but looked at each other.

  At last Aunt Teresa said: “It’s not your fault, Little Treasure.”

  Suddenly Ellen’s door opened and she marched out, dressed for walking in a storm-coat and hat, with overshoes and an umbrella. Her bright hair was already escaping in tendrils from her hat, and her eyes blazed.

  “Come along, then,” she shouted at Teresa.

  Teresa started up, after a doglike glance at the elders, and went out the door with her. When they reached the road, a matter of ten steps, Ellen was already quite calm. She seemed to be zig-zagging along the road, hopping from one rut to another.

  Teresa, absorbed, followed her, kept by her side.

  In her satirical voice, Ellen exclaimed: “You have no character at all, you are spineless.”

  “How’s that?” asked Teresa, surprised.

  “You follow me wherever I go,” said the young woman. Teresa said nothing.

  “You ought to cultivate character,” continued Ellen.

  “So I do,” said Teresa.

  “Well, you can’t have any if you dog my footsteps that way.”

  “I wasn’t dogging you, I was walking with you.”

  “There’s no need to shadow me, to walk with me!”

  Teresa fell behind a few steps, much annoyed.

  “What are you lagging for?” cried Ellen.

  Teresa moved to the other side of the road and kept abreast there.

  “You’re just on the opposite side, because of what I said. That isn’t showing character, to do the opposite,” called her cousin in a more cheerful tone of spite.

  “How can walking along a road show character?” Teresa replied at last.

  “Everything shows character, the smallest thing—handwriting,” said her cousin spitefully. “It plainly shows your character.”

  Teresa made no reply. She had for a long time thought Ellen resented her pet name, “Little Treasure”, with the Patons. Ellen had a long stride,
not ungraceful with her height.

  “I always lead,” said Ellen.

  “Well, that’s good,” remarked Teresa. “Good for you, I mean.”

  “Don’t tell me what you mean, you little fool,” cried her cousin. “Don’t you patronize me. What are you? You think you’re somebody. I know you, you don’t pull the wool over my eyes, I’ve always known you.”

  Teresa listened in surprise, almost with pleasure; perhaps Ellen really knew her. Ellen shouted:

  “You wrote home to ask about the flying foxes that time. I read your father’s letter.”

  The flying foxes of two summers ago! They descended from branch to branch over wide spaces, the membranes between their feet spread out like wings, wonderful creatures at nightfall, on the green sky. Teresa remembered her letter and did not reply; they had argued about whether they could really fly or only glide. She followed her cousin a few paces behind. A silence fell. She saw Ellen biting her lip; she was on the other side of the road. Suddenly Ellen said with an angry sparkle: “Sorry I lost my temper.”

  Teresa, thinking about that lost summer, made no reply. That summer, just after the picnic, Tom Carlin had got into trouble with a girl at the local agricultural show; he had been doing something with her behind the cages of the Rhode Island Reds. Now these were friends of Ellen’s, the prude’s.

  “Don’t sulk, now,” cried the young virago.

  They were coming down the hill. On one side was an old wood; in a small clearing stood a shuttered cottage. On the other side was a long close-shaved slope. At the bottom of this slope a road ran and beyond the road, under an immense wild fig-tree, ran a slate-roofed cottage with white-painted walls; five small rooms in a single row, with a number of doors to be entered from the yard. In front was a grassed strip; at one side about an acre of blackberry bushes and at the other side a wilderness of hardy pests, lantana, castor-oil plants. Beyond these were a neglected fowl-run, several pigpens, a barn, a car without its wheels, and a few tumbledown sheds. This house had been in the hands of poor farmers, city people, and country wanderers down on their luck for about twenty-five years. It was the oldest house in the district, built of large stone blocks by convict labour, and the story was that a convict had been flogged to death, tied by rope to this particular fig-tree, in its youth. In the most deserted hours of country night, some people said, cries were still heard, there was a “ghost”, but no one could describe the ghost. The Carlins, a good-natured, shiftless family, and the family before them, had been so weak in character that an air of mere folly and stupidity hung over the farm and the legend of loud cries was no longer interesting or popular.