Careful, He Might Hear You

by Sumner Locke Elliott

He kissed her quickly on the cheek and she looked at him with her wide green eyes, seemed to be thinking about something, seemed disappointed because she rose quickly and clicked down the hall to the bathroom and turned on taps; came back and helped him to undress. He didn’t like to tell her that he was quite able to do this for himself, all except ties and shoelaces.

  ‘Who gave you this tie?’

  ‘Vere. It’s a Mickey Mouse tie.’

  ‘Yes, that’s evident.’

  She took the tie from him, holding it from the end like a snake, undid his shirt and panties. He felt funny with no clothes on in front of her, which he never did with Lila. She put him in a little blue bathrobe and led him to the big green bathroom, turned off the taps and lifted the toilet seat.

  ‘Can you manage that by yourself?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Goodness, he’d been doing that by himself for ages, but not with people standing by and watching.

  So he said, ‘I don’t want to now.’

  ‘After your bath then. Now here’s some Morny soap from London.’ She helped him into the bath, took a glass jar from the cupboard and poured a few little pink stones into the water. ‘To make you smell nice.’

  The tub felt smooth under his bottom, nicer than the old tin one at home. But he had forgotten to bring his boat.

  ‘I don’t have my boat.’

  ‘Sorry. Couldn’t think of everything. I’ll get one for next time.’

  Next time?

  She soaped his back for him, was particular about his ears and eyes, using a big sponge instead of a washrag. A very strange sponge which swelled up giant in the water, brown and full of holes, reminding him of jellyfish.

  She dried him rapidly in a huge towel, big enough to cover two children, then poured powder all over him and watched while he brushed his teeth with the very hard new toothbrush, put on his robe again and said, ‘Now, do the other thing.’ Went out while he did.

  Back in his bedroom, pale-blue pyjamas lay on the bed.

  He said, ‘I brought my own pyjamas; they’re in the suitcase.’

  She frowned at this, crossed the room and snapped open his suitcase. ‘Flannel!’ She laughed and said, ‘I think mine will be cooler, PS.’

  When he was settled into bed, she sat down in a chair beside him and opened a book.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘We’ll have the first chapter of Peter Pan.’

  She read very well, better than Lila and certainly better than George, who stumbled over words sometimes, and she stopped now and then to explain things. Like English nannies. They were not goats, no, they were women who looked after little boys and girls who came from ‘good’ families.

  The daylight had gone now and he could scarcely see her face when she bent over to kiss him goodnight.

  ‘I haven’t said “Gentle Jesus”.’

  ‘Oh. Well, you can say that to yourself, PS. Goodnight.’

  ‘Don’t shut the door.’

  ‘Now, PS, you’re too old for that. There’s nothing whatever to be afraid of in the dark.’

  ‘But I always have—’

  ‘No, you may not. Go to sleep now.’

  She went out, closing the door, shutting the room into darkness. He waited until he heard her footsteps going away downstairs, then climbed out of bed and tried to open the door, but the slippery glass handle would not turn. He stood listening to the unfamiliar sounds: leaves against the windowpanes and the swoosh swoosh of distant cars, a big dog barking somewhere in the shadows. He knocked on the door a few times but the only reply was the low chime of a clock in the hall outside. He said, ‘I want Lila. I want to go home,’ to nobody and whimpering a little, crept across the room, found his suitcase in the dark and felt for his own pyjamas. He tried to take off the new ones, but Vanessa had tied the knot too hard, so after struggling for a few minutes with the cord, he put on his own pyjamas over the new ones.

  He climbed on to the wide window sill and looked out the window. He saw through the moving treetops the harbour in the distance, the lights of the big Harbour Bridge, the twinkling of moving ferryboats and beyond, the paler glistening of faraway houses. But which was his? Which was his kitchen window and were Lila and George looking out as they promised and waving? He waved a couple of times in case they were and felt a strange lump in his throat as though he had swallowed a rainbow ball whole. He said, ‘I’m going home on Sunday,’ and watched the distant lights moisten and run together into hot tears, and slowly, gradually, into nothing but mixed-up dreams in which he was running from something which reached for him with long rubber arms and it caught him, lifted him in the air and across darkness into bed, where the arms were all around him at once, and fighting them, he awoke for an instant and saw Vanessa’s face.

  ‘Shhhh,’ she said, or something about sheep, seeming to ask him a question, but he was already safely asleep.

  He awoke, surprised not to find himself in his own bed, not to hear Lila rattling cups in the kitchen, but in this strange, much too blue room with the sun coming in on the wrong side. The house was silent. He saw that the door was now ajar so it must have been Vanessa who came in in the night. He slipped out of bed and peeped out. The hall was silent and deserted, all doors closed. Had Vanessa and Cousin Ettie escaped during the night? The stairs beyond beckoned invitingly to come down and escape too before anyone changed her mind and came back.

  He tugged at his pyjama-cord knot but it would not come undone. Oh, well, he’d put his clothes on over his pyjamas. But where were they? Everything had been put away in that wardrobe and he couldn’t reach the handle. Then he’d go home in his pyjamas like Wee Willie Winkie. It was a thwart, as Vere would say, but he wouldn’t care if people stared at him on the tram as long as he was going home and what fun to walk into the kitchen and surprise Lila and George who would jump for joy.

  He looked in his suitcase but there was nothing in it but his school ruler and his pocket money (sixpence and two pennies). Thank goodness he still had that. That would be enough money to take the tram to the Quay and once in Neutral Bay he could walk. He snapped his suitcase shut, and putting on the new slippers, went into the hall. He had just taken one step down the creaky stairs when a door opened suddenly behind him.

  ‘Good morning, PS.’

  She hadn’t escaped after all. She was wearing a pink, trailing coat and her dark-red hair was hanging over her shoulder in a long pigtail.

  ‘It’s only seven o’clock,’ she said. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiled. ‘Going shopping?’ she asked, looking at his suitcase, and he laughed. She was really very nice and funny too. He suddenly couldn’t think why he’d wanted to run away; began liking her again.

  She said, ‘Look here, I don’t think it’s an awfully good idea to sleep on window sills, do you? Suppose one rolled out? Quite a drop unless one has wings like Peter Pan.’

  While she dressed him in a new sand-coloured suit and hard new sandals, she said, ‘Who cuts your hair?’ The barber, he told her. ‘Does he use a knife and fork?’ she asked, and he laughed again. She said, ‘Now go downstairs to the dining room and Diana will give you your breakfast.’

  He had breakfast alone, sitting plumb in the middle of the long table while Diana set the things in front of him and stuck his serviette in his collar where it ought to be. There was a grapefruit instead of the usual porridge and a brown boiled egg, very gooey, not nice and almost hard the way Lila knew he liked eggs, but lots of toast and orange marmalade and milk. Diana, wearing a starchy blue uniform, chatted away to him. They would be chums, she said. Told him she was from the country. ’Way up in Bunderberg where she used to milk twenty cows a day and cook for a dozen farm hands. But her dadda had fallen off a dray and hurt his back so they’d come down to the city to get jobs, only there weren’t any and she’d had to go out and char and do laundry work when she could get it and then her dadda got put in the hospital and was still very crook so wasn’t it lucky she’d got this nice job as housemaid
in this posh house and the money was bosker and one night off a week into the bargain and old Mrs Bult was lovely to her and so was his aunty, although you had to mind your p’s and q’s with her!

  Ellen, the cook, came bursting in to say that Miss Scott’s bell had been ringing and that Diana had better get upstairs with the tray on the double and Diana rushed off on her huge feet.

  After breakfast, Diana helped him carry the shiny red cart downstairs and into the garden. He trundled it up and down the drive for a while but it wasn’t much fun without someone to pull him around in it. He wandered across the wide lawns and stared at the roses and hibiscus bushes, looked into the quiet grape arbour and peered through the door of the glasshouse at the rows and rows of pots and hanging maidenhair fern; worked his way slowly around the side of the big house past the wisteria vines where a window in the drawing room shot up and Diana waved a dust rag at him.

  ‘Having a nice play, lovey?’

  He nodded and picking up some little stones, threw them at the fence to show her he was enjoying himself. Then he wandered on, found a lattice gate and stood on tiptoe to look through. Beyond lay a vegetable garden where a man in a grey shirt was digging around the tomato plants. He waved and the man came over and opened the lattice gate.

  ‘Hello, nipper,’ said the man. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘PS.’

  ‘Pee Ess, eh? That’s a funny kind of name. What’s that short for?’

  ‘I forget,’ he said, not wishing to bring up Dear One and all that stuff in case the man got the look they always got on their faces; sad and sorry.

  ‘Mine’s Jocko,’ said the man, leaning on the gate and rolling a cigarette. He was very perspiry; his chest was like a door mat.

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘No, in Neutral Bay.’

  ‘Whatcha doin’ here then?’

  ‘I’m having a holiday.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m going home tomorrow though.’

  ‘Yeah? Whatcha been doin’?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing, eh? That’s no good on a bonza day like this. That’s not much of a bloody holiday, is it? Can’t you find no kids to play with?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone.’

  The man said, ‘Oh, there’s lots of kids around here. Don’t you know the Lawson kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Big white house over there.’ Jocko pointed a dirty black finger.

  ‘I work for them on Mondays. They got a crokay lawn and a coupla nice dogs. Why don’t you walk over there and interduce yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know them.’

  ‘You are a shy coot, aren’t you? All dressed up and nowhere to go, eh? That’s no flamin’ good, is it? I tell you what. You slip outa that swank suit and I’ll hose you down like you was on the beach. Good-oh?’

  ‘Good-oh,’ he said, and smiled at Jocko.

  But Ellen came suddenly out of the kitchen door and called out:

  ‘Jocko, Miss Scott says would you kindly get on with your work and not talk to the little boy.’

  Jocko spat. ‘Tell her I’m havin’ me smoko.’

  ‘Tell her yourself. It’s your job.’

  Ellen turned towards him then and said:

  ‘She says you’re to play in the front garden, Master Marriott,’ and made shooing signs. ‘Go on now, lovey, don’t make trouble for us.’

  Jocko winked at him.

  ‘Got our orders, eh, nipper? Ta-ta then. See you later.’

  Jocko closed the gate, and picking up his spade, went back to the tomatoes.

  The morning dragged on endlessly. He wandered down the driveway again, found a fat green locust, turned it on its back and watched it wave its legs in the air helplessly. Bored with this, he walked down to the big front gate and stuck his head through. The long street stretched away in the shimmering heat, quivering in time to the locusts, the gum trees standing very still and sad and no leaves moving anywhere, no cats, no children on bikes or scooters; just an empty street where everything had come to a full stop.

  How long till Sunday now?

  Suddenly someone was banging a gong and he heard Diana call:

  ‘Lunch. Lunch!’

  Vanessa, in a black dress and wearing a black hat with a gold ball on it, was sitting at her end of the dining room table.

  ‘Well, how’d you do?’ she said brightly as though they had never met before. ‘Have a jolly morning?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Vanessa,’ she said, her head to one side and her eyes flicking on and off. He repeated it, remembered where to put the napkin. She patted his hand. ‘We’re having luncheon earlier today because we’re going for a drive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ She seemed to like being mysterious. ‘Bread, Diana.’

  After ‘luncheon’, he and Vanessa walked down to the gate where a big black car was waiting and Vanessa said to the tall man in the uniform with silver buttons, ‘Good afternoon, Galbraith,’ and he saluted her and they got in and drove into the city. In Pitt Street, Vanessa got out and bought red roses and they went on, out of the city and through suburbs that seemed faintly familiar until crossing a bridge, he saw a river crowded with yellow jellyfish and he said:

  ‘Oh, I know. We’re going to Dear One’s Little Garden.’

  But Vanessa only frowned, crossed her long legs and looked for a long time at her narrow black shoes.

  When they drove through the big iron gates he said:

  ‘I’ll show you where it is.’

  It was nice to know something Vanessa did not, and when they got out of the car, he led the way through the other gardens, pointing and saying, ‘Over here,’ ‘Now around here,’ and Vanessa followed him.

  ‘Here,’ he said, proud of their garden.

  She stood there, holding the roses, and seemed to be reading the words on the cross. He picked up one of the glass jars and threw out the withered flowers that Lila had brought the last time.

  ‘I’ll get the water for you,’ he said, and skipped off towards the tap.

  Vanessa read: ‘Beloved wife of Logan.’

  ‘Tell!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were about to Tell Something and stopped.’

  She was sitting in front of a mirror, wearing a white muslin slip, and Sinden was brushing her hair for her. They were in the box of a bedroom they shared in the old Waverly house and doubling up on a forbidden cigarette, keeping their voices low because of the thin pinewood walls.

  ‘Sin, did you ever meet Alice Marriott?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She used to do sewing for Cousin Ettie Bult. Nice, stocky country girl from Bacchus Marsh in Victoria. Well, while I was in Melbourne last month, Ettie wanted some sewing done and Alice couldn’t come up to town so we went down to the Marsh for a few days. Quite a good little hotel considering it’s only a dairy town but pretty, very moist and green the way I’ve always pictured England—’

  ‘Ness, don’t wander.’

  ‘Don’t hog the cigarette; let me have a puff. Thanks. Well, Alice Marriott took me to a dance with her brother.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Oh, just a barnyard hop with the local yokels.’

  ‘I mean the brother, idiot.’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘Good-looking?’

  ‘Mmmmmm, y-e-s, I suppose in a way; marvellous teeth and a sort of mocking smile.’

  ‘Mocking. Lovely. That’s so provocative and aphrodisiacal.’

  ‘Your turn for the cigarette.’

  ‘Go on, Ness.’

  ‘Well, he was quite the most marvellous dancer, most attentive all the time and with charming manners for a country boy. A quick mind too. Unexpected bursts of wit.’

  ‘My dear! Witty and good-looking. Any money?’

  ‘Not a sou.’

  ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t care, but knowing you—’

  ‘Will you let me tell?’
r />   ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So Logan took me out in—’

  ‘Logan? Nice name.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? Took me out in an old rattletrap car and showed me the countryside, took me to the local picture show and so forth and—well, it was sort of wonderful for a minute or two.’

  ‘Why just a minute or two?’

  ‘All the time we had.’

  ‘You can do a lot in a minute or two.’

  ‘One marvellous night we drove out and parked in a big dark field and talked for hours.’

  ‘Talked!’

  ‘Shhhh, you’ll wake Agnes and Vere.’

  ‘But you just talked?’

  ‘Yes. Anything strange about that?’

  ‘You mean nothing happened?’

  ‘Oh, well, we agreed there wasn’t any use getting in too deeply. We’d probably never see each other again.’

  ‘All the more reason.’

  ‘No. We discussed it, of course.’

  ‘But that’s fatal! You must never talk about it first.’

  ‘Sinden, please. You think everything has to be that. Well, let me tell you there can be far, far more. We were completely happy. He told me all about himself. Everything. He wants to find gold. Dreams of it all the time. Holds your hand and talks dreams.’

  ‘Ness, you fell in love.’

  ‘A minute or two, I said.’

  ‘And you didn’t—’

  ‘Oh, stop it. I’m sorry I told you now.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For one thing, his father’s a baker.’

  ‘God, you’re a snob.’

  ‘Can you see me as the baker’s son’s wife?’

  ‘Who said anything about marriage? Did he?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Well, then? What could you lose? Out in a lovely dark paddock and—’

  ‘Give me the brush. I’ll do my own hair.’

  ‘Yes, you better. It’s standing right on end with frustration.’

  ‘I should know better than to confide in you.’

  ‘But, Ness, you’re so pretty and I’d like to know who you’re saving it for? I wouldn’t have cared if Logan was the garbage man—’

  ‘Were the garbage man.’

  ‘… if I was in love with him.’

  ‘I don’t want it to happen all of a sudden like that.’