George said, ‘How about this, old chap? Ever see a boat as big as this?’
Agnes said, ‘Big boats are nothing new to me. I have sailed on a big boat, PS. I sailed to San Francisco on the Sierra Leone.’ There was a sharp scream behind them and they all turned to see Vere scrambling through the crowd, pushing people right and left, not caring whom she stepped on. She was wearing a yellow dress of Opal’s, a huge green straw hat too big for her, and had a red bag with a silver K on it and she came prancing towards them like the Pied Piper and right off did a funny thing—frowning at George and saying, ‘Where’s PS? Why didn’t you bring PS?’ so that he giggled and ran to her.
‘Vere, I’m here.’
‘Is that you? Is that my child?’ Screams and kisses.
‘Vere, not in front of everyone.’
‘Oh, Lila, don’t be such a thwart. Hello, Agnes. Phew, what a scorcher. Aren’t you dying in that wool dress?’
‘We are all dying in a sense, Vere.’
‘Oh, don’t start that, dear. It’s too early.’
‘It is later than we think.’
‘There’s a nice sailor. Hello.’
‘Vere, don’t wave. He might think you’re serious.’
‘Girl, I am.’
Then Vere, dancing ahead of them, pointed and shrieked, ‘Look, there’s Ettie.’
‘Where? Where?’
They pushed forward in a knot, all staring up.
‘There by that lifeboat. She’s seen us.’
A dot in a big black hat was waving a handkerchief.
‘Coo-ee,’ they cried, waving back. ‘Coo-ee, Ettie. Wave to Cousin Ettie, PS. George, lift him up so she can see him. Ettie, this is PS!’
The dot blew kisses.
Lila said, ‘Where’s Vanessa?’
He thought he could see Vanessa then. A black shadow half hidden behind the lifeboat so that she could spy on him without being seen. Yes, there she was, ugly as sin, gaunt and bony; little beady red eyes staring out from under a witch hat, wisps of hair, snaggle teeth, a broomstick and cackling now, licking her thin lips. ‘Aha, wait till I get my claws on you!’
But Lila said, ‘She’s not there. Isn’t that funny? Wouldn’t you think she’d be looking out for us?’
Vere cupped her hands and yelled up, ‘Where’s Ness?’ and the dot that was Cousin Ettie waved again.
‘She can’t hear you, Vere.’
But where could Vanessa be, they asked. Why was Ettie up there alone?
He suddenly felt hopeful. Maybe Vanessa had drowned. She had leaned too far over that high railing and fallen into the sea and now he would never have to meet her, never have to go on a holiday with her.
‘Vanessa fell off,’ he said, but no one heard him because someone had yelled that the gangway was up and they were being pushed and shoved along in a stream of people going up the steps and up on to the deck.
Vere said, ‘I feel like a salmon going upstream to breed.’ Lila said that she hoped that gangway was safe. He was enclosed now by the crowd, sealed into an envelope of hot people, his nose pressed into the fat lady in front who kept saying, ‘Don’t shove, sonny,’ and packed together, they pushed and were pushed forward, tripping, stumbling and gasping for air, breaking through the bottleneck until suddenly they broke into the open and were going up the gangway in twos, up and up with the dirty water far below, a terrifying dizzy drop down the side of the ship and then over a high brass step on to the deck and he was lifted up by George into the arms of a little, chubby, silver-haired lady in black. A tiny, glittering heart swung from her neck on a golden chain and when she reached out her little hands to him he saw flashes of sparkling lights. She folded him to her. She smelled fresh as early morning and just a little bit of violets.
‘I knew your mother,’ she said. ‘I knew your dear little mother.’
A warm tear dropped on him and so he stepped out of the way of it, looking up at her, and saw that she was giving him that sorry, sad look they all did and which he hated. Her face was pink and all withered up like an apple left too long uneaten but shining with tears which she brushed away with her little hands that glistened and burned in the sunlight from her rings. So many jewels that if Winnie’s father heard about it, he would want to shoot Cousin Ettie like they were going to do the King. Cousin Ettie kissed Lila and Vere, then Agnes and George, dabbing at her eyes and laughing now and saying, ‘Oh, you poor dears, standing all that time in the hot sun. Oh, you poor mites, you must be so hot and thirsty.’
Everyone talked at once. No, nobody was tired or hot or thirsty. They were all just delighted to see Cousin Ettie looking so well and not a day older. No, they meant it. No, they were not just flattering her. Had she enjoyed the trip? Had the sea been calm and where on earth was Vanessa?
Now he expected Cousin Ettie to tell them that due to some carelessness, Vanessa had been allowed to fall overboard and that no one had noticed until it was much too late to go back and pick her up. But instead, she said that Ness was in the cabin. ‘Seeing to the luggage. You know how particular she is about hatboxes and, my dears, we’ve brought the earth with us, including most of the furniture.’
‘Where, Ettie? Cabin Twenty-six on A deck?’ Lila, as usual, was arranging them all, telling George and the others to stay there with Ettie and not to get lost while she took him to find Vanessa; pulled him firmly forward when he held back, asking to see the funnels first (to see anything, anything but Vanessa). They pushed down a stairway against people coming up and then on down endless white iron corridors that smelled of fishy oil and engines, peering into empty cabins while Lila asked the way, saying in her best-manners voice, ‘Steward, could you direct us to Cabin Twenty-six?’ as up and down they went, hoping never to find it, but knowing the moment was coming nearer every second, and he saw that Lila’s face was pale and that she was as shaky as he by the time they finally stopped outside a closed door and knocked.
A low voice said, ‘Come in.’
Lila opened the door and they went in. He felt very small and as light as paper.
Someone, bending over suitcases, straightened up and turned towards them, jangling keys. For a moment she was just a thin shadow against the glary porthole, standing in blue smoke from a cigarette.
The low voice said, ‘Hello, Lila,’ sounding calm and unsurprised as if they had just parted the day before, and Vanessa moved, came forward to kiss Lila lightly on the cheek, then turned slowly and as gracefully as water swirling to look at him and he felt the breath go out of him with surprise and sudden joy, not able to believe, for a minute or so, that this could be Vanessa or even a member of the family. Not like any of them, except for her dark-red hair; not aunt-like at all but tall and beautiful, made out of the best china, so special and delicate that he half expected Lila to cry out, ‘Don’t touch, darling, she’ll break.’
Vanessa? Or were they playing a joke on him and was this someone else, just a stranger they knew slightly? But then he heard Lila say, ‘Ness, you haven’t changed.’
Vanessa was looking at him with her strange green-coloured eyes that he knew saw right through him, right down to the very bottom of everything he had ever thought about her so wrongly. He wanted to say something. To explain something to her. But what?
So he stood there, lost in the moment of looking and being looked at until Vanessa smiled so that her eyes flicked on suddenly with light and she came forward to him, her soft grey dress moving around her like haze and her hands making little musical sounds of silver bracelets.
Then she said in that low English-sounding voice:
‘Are you PS by any chance?’
She did a strange thing. Instead of gushing over him like a baby as they all did, she held out a spotless white-gloved hand as if he were quite grown up. They shook hands politely.
Lila said, ‘Give Aunt Vanessa a nice kiss.’
Vanessa said, ‘Just “Vanessa” will do. I imagine you have enough aunts already.’
She bent a little closer and
lifting his chin with her glove, she kissed him on his mouth. Then she said:
‘Well, well, PS. At last.’
But before he could say anything, there was a little choking explosion behind them and turning, both at once, they saw that Lila’s face was as green as lettuce.
‘Ness, where’s the bathroom? I’m going to be sick.’
Lila said to herself, almost pleased, that wouldn’t you know something would have to go wrong?
To be frightfully sick all over the bathroom floor, stewards having to be called and Vanessa, always unruffled, calmly getting bismuth tablets and eau de cologne, attending to it all in the most matter-of-fact way.
(‘Something you ate, no doubt.’ ‘No, no, I’m always like this on a ship.’)
She had gone on and on about how she could be sick even on a ship that was in dry dock; all about her nightmare honeymoon trip by sea to Tasmania twenty years ago, while Vanessa had listened with that irritating, pitying smile.
It was simply galling to have been put at a disadvantage at the very moment of meeting; getting the whole thing off to a bad start before they’d even disembarked. Surely this was a bad sign, Lila said to herself; and nodded, knowing that it was.
And now the Carlton Hotel!
She said to Vere in a low voice, ‘Why the Carlton?’
They were standing in the frayed elegance of the hotel lobby while a perspiring manager fussed and cooed over Ettie and Vanessa counted bags.
They had driven up from the pier in a hired limousine and when it had pulled up in front of the Carlton, Lila had thought, Oh, not the Carlton, please. It’s too much on an emotional day.
‘The Carlton,’ she went on, wheezing slightly. ‘It’s so peculiar.’
Vere said, fussing with beads, ‘Why? You know Ettie doesn’t like the Metropole or the Australia.’
‘But don’t you think it’s funny?’
‘Why?’
‘Vere! The Carlton.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lila, don’t be morbid. I often come here for drinks with people. I never think of that.’
Lila said, ‘Well, I’m not as cold-blooded as you.’
She glanced around the marble lobby with its brocade-and-pink-shaded lamps and sought out the maple-panelled telephone box.
(‘Sinden, where are you?’ ‘At the Carlton. I just got married to Logan Marriott.’)
‘So peculiar,’ she said. ‘All of us here together again. As though Vanessa did it on purpose. All right for her. She was far away in London then.’ Lila shook herself, feeling ghosts. ‘I don’t like being here. This is where everything started to go wrong and now here we all are again.’
Vere said, laughing, ‘Why don’t you look around and see if you can find “mene, mene” written on something?’
Lila said sharply, ‘PS, don’t wander. Stay with me.’
She saw that he was watching Vanessa raptly as she came up with a train of bellboys and said:
‘Sorry about this delay, but they don’t seem awfully efficient here. Ghastly accents. I’d forgotten. Well, en avant! We’re going up now.’
Vere gave a scream. ‘Where’s my child? PS, come here, dearest thing. We’re all going up now in a lift.’
Vanessa said, ‘Vere, pianissimo, please.’
They rose in a sedate lift and entered a large suite.
Vanessa looked around it appraisingly, said, ‘Oh, well, it’s not the Ritz but I suppose it will do. What do you think, Ettie?’
‘Oh, my love. Whatever you say.’ Ettie was fumbling for banknotes in her bag and, Lila thought, overtipping shockingly. ‘But do order something cool to drink. Order some iced champagne for the poor dears.’
‘What for PS?’
‘Orangeade, Ness.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Lila, bristling, ‘Lemonade.’
Vere said, ‘Well, he always has orangeade with me.’
‘I think—ha ha—that I should know what he likes, Vere.’
Vanessa said in her low voice, ‘Why don’t you both let him decide?’
PS, looking up at Vanessa, said, ‘Can I have a ginger beer?’
‘You may have a ginger beer.’
Vanessa gave orders in a tone that clearly said, ‘And don’t fail me in one iota,’ and Lila, watching her, thought, How good she is at all this, but then she always was assured and she’s been running a big house in England and used to being obeyed by underpaid and probably non-union servants. She’ll find it harder here; no class systems here, thank goodness, and with good people like George working at the Trades Hall for better arbitration. She’ll be out of her depth here. Poor Ness. Poor Ness, nothing! Look at her. Just the same. With her swank clothes and la-di-da manners. Must say she looks marvellous though. Doesn’t look thirty-six. A few lines here and there and her chin always was a little too pointed. Wonder if she dyes her hair. Still that pretty auburn, like Pater’s. All the rest of us were carrot. I’ve got this horrid mole in my eyebrow. Not Ness. Oh, no. Her little mole is like a beauty spot. God saw to her, all right. Not like any of us. Remote. Always was. Never could get close to her, even when we were girls. And woe betide you if you got on the wrong side of her. Like the time I made the mistake of locking the door to Pater’s room—the look in her eyes. Murder. Frightened me to death. But then she’s always frightened me a bit and I don’t know why.
‘Feeling better now, Lila?’
‘Oh, yes, Ness. Much, much better, thanks. I am sorry to have been a nuisance.’
She seems friendly. Should I bring it up now? Seize this chance while the others are talking? Now, while she’s all sunny smiles, might be a good time to say very calmly and in a most friendly way, ‘Why exactly have you come back, Ness? Just what do you have in mind, dear?’
Lila smiled and patted the sofa next to her invitingly, but Vanessa had already turned away and was saying that she thought they’d ruined the harbour by putting up that monstrous bridge, just ruined it. Was it an American design? It looked American. ‘Not that I have any prejudice against Americans, Agnes. Some that we’ve met on the Continent have been jolly nice and well behaved.’
Agnes rose to the defence of Seattle and the conversations overlapped, crossed and looped, knitting the divided years together. Knit the year Mater died, purl the year George campaigned for the Labour party in the state election, cast off the year Agnes returned from Seattle, the year Sinden’s book was published, purl the summer Vere nearly married Gilbert whatwashisname, knit PS and cast off Ness.
Hats and shoes were off now and they lolled on sofas and little hard gilt chairs and opened their presents. French gloves and Italian scarves for Lila and Agnes. (‘Oh, thank you, Ness, just what I needed.’) A Florentine wallet for George (and not a pound note to put in it, poor love). For Vere, a vain bottle of perfume from Coty in a turquoise bottle (and while only Lila was watching, two hand towels and an ashtray from the Carlton Hotel). For PS, a little French sailor’s cap with a red pompon (‘Oh, how lovely, pet’) and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Vanessa sat down by him as he turned the pages.
She said, ‘By the way, I hope you like books.’
Lila, trying on her gloves and finding them (wouldn’t you know) a size too small, said, ‘Oh, yes, he loves books, Ness, and he loved the Beatrix Potters you sent him.’
Vanessa said quietly, ‘I was asking him, Lila.’
She put an arm around him, lightly.
‘Never had Pooh and Piglet? Glad I thought of it. Like Peter Pan?’
‘Who’s Peter Pan?’
‘The boy who never grew up. One day you shall go to London and see his statue in Kensington Gardens, but meanwhile I’ll get you the book and we’ll read it together. Would you like that?’
‘Yes.’
Lila said, ‘Say yes, thank you. Ha ha, we’re a bit s-h-y.’
‘Well,’ said Vanessa to him, ‘that makes two of us.’
He smiled downward.
‘We have to get to know each other, don’t we, PS?’
Nod.
>
‘What kind of games do you like?’
Long pause. ‘Make-up games.’
‘So do I. Look here, would you care to come and stay with Cousin Ettie and me sometime?’
Nod. Nod. Nod. So eagerly that Lila felt a little spasm of jealousy heat her already overheated face.
Vanessa kissed him lightly on the forehead; got up to admit the waiter, smiling and saying, ‘About time. What did you have to do—trample the grapes?’
Her cool, unfamiliar voice rode through Vere’s sharp chatter and Ettie’s giggling. ‘Shall I order luncheon, Ettie? Cold lobster all right for everyone? Some chicken? Do you have any foie gras? Chopped liver! Is that what one calls it here? Makes it sound so disagreeable. George, would you mind pouring? Well, I know you don’t, but today’s sort of an occasion, isn’t it? Will they run you out of the Temperance League if you have one glass of champagne? Well, cheers, everybody.’
Cheers, they all said. Welcome home, Ettie. Welcome home, Ness. But instead of conviviality the champagne brought an ugly constraint to settle on them. They fell back on forced compliments, withdrew behind screens of politeness. Because, Lila decided, being all together again has reminded us that someone is missing.
What a difference if she were here. They wouldn’t be just sitting around, meekly allowing Vanessa to rule the roost and show off. Not a bit of it. If Sin came bursting in the door now, why, they’d be roaring at some ridiculous thing she would say and Vanessa’s solemn importance would be punctured in five minutes.
Lila sipped her warmish champagne and stared down at the carpet, seeing through the pattern of roses and ferns to another room below them; to the pink-lit room with its frescoes of fat plaster cupids: ‘Mrs Marriott’s party is in the small annex, madam.’ Mrs Marriott’s party? Was she having to pay for it herself then? But George said, ‘Don’t ask, Lila, don’t spoil today for her. It isn’t our business.’ My sister is not our business?’ A pianist thumping out ‘Avalon’ and the hot little hatbox of a room full of Sinden’s strangers multiplied by the tarnished mirrors into a crowd from which she came flying, arms outstretched.
‘Lila, you good thing. George!’
Careful, He Might Hear You Page 6
