Careful, He Might Hear You

by Sumner Locke Elliott

  ‘Ai would laike a naice peeeece of keeeek on a naice plate.’

  ‘I would like—’

  ‘Not loike. Laike. Laike. Watch my lips and my tongue. Laike, caike, peeeece. See how I open my lips and my tongue is lying rahther flat. Do you see my tongue? Now watch. Peece of caike. See it? Good. Now say, “Did you see the bee in the green tree.”’

  This is what Winnie and Mrs Grindel would have called ‘talking with a bloody prune in your mouth’ but he went on playing the game with Miss Pile until she grew tired of it and wrote out some lines of a’s and b’s for him to copy. He leaned over the exercise book, his tongue working inside his cheek to help him round out the letters, his head burrowing into the new exercise book, which was the only place to hide.

  Cynthia blew the whistle for play time and they all ran out into the bright autumn sea morning on to the lawn beside the harbour wall beyond which moored launches and yachts pulled and worried at their buoys. The children grouped around him while he stared at the boats. There was a good deal of whispering and then one of the older boys came up and said:

  ‘What’s a boat do when it comes into port?’

  He said he didn’t know.

  ‘Ties up and anchors down.’

  At this the boy flipped up his tie and stamped heavily on his foot. He gave a little cry of surprise and pain and the children rocked with glee.

  Cynthia said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘PS.’

  ‘What’s that stand for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I know.’

  He said, ‘You don’t.’

  She said, ‘I do and don’t be cheeky with me because I’m prefect. I know what PS stands for. Pretty Silly.’ Cynthia was a tremendous success. Three of the children rolled on the lawn, holding their sides and repeating, ‘Pretty Silly. Pretty Silly,’ until the rest of them took up the chant. PS is pretty silly. PS is pretty sil-ly.’

  Cynthia, swollen by now with importance, turned on the others and said in her prefect-for-the-week voice:

  ‘Shut up. You heard what Miss Pile said. He’s new and we have to be nice to him.’

  She smiled at PS.

  ‘What’s your mother call you?’

  (Oh, why do they always bring her up?)

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing!’ More giggles.

  The freckled boy who was Cynthia’s young brother said:

  ‘Oh, hello, Nothing. How are you, Nothing? Come here, Nothing.’

  Cynthia said, ‘Shut up, Ian. I’m asking the questions. Come on,’ she said to PS. ‘Don’t be frightened of him. What’s your mother call you?’

  He said, ‘I don’t have a mother.’

  Cynthia toyed with her whistle. ‘Who was the lady who brought you to school this morning?’

  ‘Vanessa.’

  ‘Who’s she then?’

  ‘My aunt.’

  ‘Do you live with your aunt?’

  ‘No, I live with Lila and George.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘My aunt and uncle.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘Neutral Bay.’

  ‘Why are you coming to our school then?’

  ‘Because.’

  He wasn’t going to start explaining all that to Cynthia. She was nosy, he could see that, and he wasn’t going to explain why he was now living all week with Vanessa and only going home on Fridays for the weekend. He didn’t understand it himself. There had been that funny day at his own school, when sitting with his class under the gum tree, he had looked up and seen Vanessa standing in the distance watching them and then speaking to the teacher but never to him, and then going away with the teacher while he felt suddenly sick because he knew something strange was going to happen, and then all the whispering in the kitchen that night and Lila having trouble with her breath all next day and talking to Mr Hamilton, the lawyer, on the telephone. Then a week later, suddenly, he wasn’t to go to his own school any more and Lila saying, ‘Oh, you lucky boy, you’re going to a nice new school, won’t that be fun?’ He had said that he would not go, they would have to get a policeman to make him go, but in the end Lila had taken him in the ferryboat on a Sunday evening to the Big House and left him with Vanessa for the whole week so there didn’t seem to be anything to do but come down here to something called the Point Piper Yacht Club where Miss Pile had classes in the morning for girls and boys who had English nannies like in Peter Pan and were little ladies and gentlemen, but Lila had said, ‘It won’t be for very long, darling, but be good just to please me and don’t make Vanessa angry, please.’

  Cynthia was smiling at him and so he smiled back.

  ‘All right,’ said Cynthia. ‘Do you want to join our secret club?’

  Ian said, ‘If you don’t join you can’t play with us and no one talks to you ever.’

  ‘You better join,’ said Cynthia quietly.

  ‘Everyone else belongs,’ said Ian.

  ‘I’m the president,’ said Cynthia. ‘And if you don’t join you don’t get asked to our house when there’s a party. Do you want to join the club?’

  He supposed he should. ‘All right.’

  Cynthia held out her hand. ‘Give me your pocket money then.’

  He felt in his pocket. Vanessa never gave him pocket money but he had ninepence from Lila. He kept it tied in his hanky in case he should ever have to escape by tram. He handed it over reluctantly.

  ‘Is that all?’ Cynthia looked at the shiny sixpence and threepenny bit. ‘How much does your father give you a week?’

  He said, ‘I haven’t got a father.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he then?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a gold digger.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know but that’s what he does. He’s away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Cynthia’s eyes were very wide with inner knowledge. ‘Haven’t you ever seen him?’ she asked in a very kind voice.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Cynthia turned and whispered to Ian. ‘Pass it on,’ she said. Ian turned to another boy and whispered. ‘Pass it on,’ he said, and went into fits of sniggering laughter.

  Each one in turn passed it on and the information seemed to grow in importance and hilarity until it reached a small knot of four heads together. The four leaped with joy and excitement.

  They had to let it out. ‘PS is a bastard,’ they screamed.

  Everyone except Cynthia took up the chant.

  ‘PS is a bastard. PS is a bastard.’

  How could he be a bastard? Vere had said that Mr Jacoby, for whom she made the vases, was a bastard. But then so was the saucepan on her stove because once she had said to it, ‘Boil, you bastard.’

  Well, anyway, he had pleased them about something. He smiled and accepted the praise.

  Cynthia said, ‘Now listen. If you don’t join the club we’ll tell everyone you’re a barstard.’ She pronounced it in a very Pommy accent as though she had been listening behind doors to Vanessa. ‘Come on,’ she said, and took his hand. ‘You have to be initiated.’

  She tugged him forward and the others followed, laughing and shouting, prodding him from behind.

  Scrambling and pushing, they dived into the low, dark space between the cement pylons supporting the building. It was littered with empty beer bottles and dead crabs. It smelled of stale seaweed.

  ‘Now where’s the stick?’ asked Cynthia.

  One of them reached behind a butter box and brought out a long switch cut from a rosebush. It had several fairly long thorns.

  Cynthia made a swishing noise with the switch and said:

  ‘Now take down your trousers.’

  In front of all these little girls?

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘All right then, you can’t join the club and we’ll tell everyone.’

  ‘You’re custard,
’ said Ian.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘PS is cowardy custard. PS is—’

  ‘All right,’ he said. He turned around and let down his short new grey trousers.

  ‘And your underpanties,’ said Cynthia.

  After he had done so, she said, ‘Now bend over. And listen, don’t call out. If you cry or call out, I’ll do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next until you don’t.’ She hit him hard across his bare bottom and it was like pepper or fire or both. He wanted to scream out, but he bit his lip hard and smothered it to a gasp. The second and third times were not so bad but the fourth time made his ears sing. His eyes smart and now his whole body seemed to be roasting over a gas jet and at the sixth time he moaned and whispered, ‘Stop.’

  The whipping stopped, but Cynthia said, ‘Stay there.’

  He remained bent over while they clustered around him and Ian said, ‘He’s scratched all right.’

  Cynthia said, ‘Now turn around and say, “I promise on my sacred oath to tell no one.”

  He mumbled the oath. It was hurting so much that he didn’t even care about them all staring at him without his trousers.

  ‘And I promise to keep all the secrets of the club.’

  He repeated it.

  Cynthia said, ‘All right. Now you can be my friend and belong to my club.’

  Somewhere a bell was ringing, but it was real, not in his head like the singing and buzzing. The children scrambled out into the sunshine and he heard Miss Pile calling to them.

  He pulled on his trousers and followed them out. Miss Pile, smiling and putting them through the door, turned to him.

  ‘Now, Marriott,’ she said. ‘When you hear the bell—playtime is over.’

  Vanessa was sitting in the den with a strange lady dressed like a Scotsman all in tartan and wearing a little tartan cap. Her hair was cut very short like a boy’s.

  ‘Here you are!’ said Vanessa. ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘First day’s always a bit frightening, isn’t it? Were the children nice to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Feeling the soreness, hating them.

  ‘This is Miss Colden,’ said Vanessa. ‘Say, “How do you do, Miss Colden.”’

  ‘Do, Miss Colden.’

  ‘What a nice, nice boy,’ said Miss Colden. She never took her eyes off Vanessa.

  ‘Sing something for Miss Colden,’ said Vanessa unexpectedly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything. Don’t be shy. Don’t you know a song? Lila says you sing a song for people. What is it?’

  ‘Don’t look at the Hole in the Doughnut.’

  ‘All right.’

  He didn’t want to sing anything. He wanted to run upstairs and lie on his bed and cry. He wanted to escape, find a tram to Circular Quay, but Cynthia had taken all his pocket money. He stared at the carpet.

  ‘We’re waiting,’ said Vanessa.

  He cleared his throat and began uncertainly.

  ‘When skies don’t seem so blue—’

  ‘Louder, PS. Miss Colden wants to hear.’

  ‘There’s one thing you can always do,

  Find a rainbow smiling thru’

  ‘So, don’t look for the hole in the doughnut.

  Don’t count all the raindrops that fall.

  Don’t cry at the fly in the ointment.

  Tomorrow a bluebird will call.’

  ‘That’s very nice,’ said Miss Colden to Vanessa. ‘He has pitch.’

  She seemed delighted as though she were about to dance a Highland fling.

  Vanessa said, ‘Miss Colden’s going to give you piano lessons. She’s going to come every Monday afternoon.’

  ‘We’ll have great fun,’ said Miss Colden, laughing. ‘We’ll play games with scales and we’ll do ever such amusing things with arpeggios. My children have a ripping time, Miss Scott. Ripping. Cynthia and Ian Lawson are up to little duets—oh, and they’re lovely children. Such manners.’

  ‘Did you meet the Lawson children?’ Vanessa asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, they’re such nice, nice children,’ said Miss Colden, eagerly handing an ashtray to Vanessa, who was burning a match down and watching PS.

  ‘But then,’ Miss Colden went on, ‘one would expect them to be. Their mother was a MacArthur and their father’s president of the English, Scottish and Australian Bank.’

  Vanessa nodded. Put out the match.

  ‘Do you play piano, Miss Scott?’ She pronounced it piarno.

  ‘No,’ said Vanessa. ‘I have no talent for anything. It was my sister who was talented.’

  ‘Well, I was noticing your hands,’ said Miss Colden. ‘If I may say so, a pianist’s hands. Strong and very beautiful.’ Miss Colden was staring at Vanessa’s hands as though they were the first she had ever seen.

  ‘Darling,’ said Vanessa, ‘you look a bit peaky. Go up and have a little rest before luncheon.’

  ‘We’ll have ripping fun, PS,’ said Miss Colden, staring at Vanessa, not looking at him.

  As he went out into the hall, Miss Colden was saying:

  ‘It’s like a breath of England, meeting you.’

  At the top of the stairs he paused. Cousin Ettie’s door was open and she was standing with her back to him, holding something up to her mouth. After a little while she turned, and seeing him, gave a gasp. He saw that she was holding a little glass with something the colour of honey in it. She put the glass down quickly and fluttered to the door, her diamond heart glistening.

  ‘Little lamb,’ she said. Her eyes were very red and she was sniffing. ‘Give Ettie a hug,’ she said.

  He put his arms around her and smelled lavender and something sweet.

  ‘Blessed angel,’ she said. ‘Hug poor Ettie tight, oh, tighter than that, lamb. Poor Ettie’s sad today. Oh, Ettie’s terribly sad today and what she needs most of all in the whole world is for her little lamb to hug her and hold her tight.’

  He was almost smothering.

  Then she laughed, drew back and said, ‘Have a peppermint.’

  In her little hand she held two white peppermints. He took one and thanked her.

  ‘Blessed angel,’ she said, and bent to kiss him. ‘Don’t tell,’ she said. ‘Don’t say a word, precious angel.’

  Undressing him for his bath that evening, Vanessa said:

  ‘Turn around. How on earth did you get those scratches?’

  He said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course you know. How did it happen?’

  He was remembering his sacred oath. He said, ‘I had to go in the bushes.’

  ‘PS!’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask Miss Pile where the bathroom is?’

  ‘I—didn’t know where she was.’

  ‘Then you should have asked one of the children. That’s very naughty.’ She bathed him gently, put talcum powder on his behind. ‘Better?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Do you like the school, PS?’

  ‘I like my own school better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘PS.’

  ‘I like my own school. Winnie goes there.’

  ‘That little girl from next door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s common.’

  Into bed. ‘Here’s a surprise. Doctor Dolittle. Nice?’

  ‘Hmmmmm.’

  ‘Shall we read a little bit of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please, Vanessa.’

  ‘Please, Vanessa.’

  ‘May I have a kiss then?’

  Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. That’s all they ever want. That, and secrets.

  ‘Call that a kiss? Oh, well.’ She sighed, looking deeply into his eyes a long while. ‘PS—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Never mind.
Look, this is the Pushmi-Pullyu. He has a head at both ends. Amuse you?’

  Lila sat in Vere’s room, wheezing slightly in the blue vapour of cigarette smoke. The room smelled of stale cooking fat, orange-blossom face powder and cat.

  She said, ‘Vere, could we have the window open just a crack?’

  ‘Lila, it’s chilly-bean outside today.’

  ‘Terribly stuffy in here.’

  ‘But I feel the cold, girl.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve got no flesh on your body. If you’d smoke less and eat something nourishing—’

  ‘OK, Mater!’

  Vere scrambled over the clutter and opened the window.

  From the back street below came the melancholy sound of a cornet playing ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’.

  Vere snatched two dusty pennies from a saucer, flung them into the street and screamed, ‘Go away. There’s someone very ill here. Go away!’

  ‘Vere, the poor man …’

  ‘Can’t stand cornets at twilight; they give me the heeby-jeebies and things are bad enough anyway. Do you know that bastard Jacoby I was making the vases and dishes for skipped without paying me? I’m stony.’

  ‘Oh, Vere. After all that work.’

  Vere said, ‘Do have a vase.’

  ‘I think I’ve got a bob I can spare.’

  ‘Oh, Lila, I didn’t mean that. Take it as a gift. I want to get rid of the bloody things. Oh, well, thanks. I can buy a packet of cigs with that.’

  Vere slipped the shilling Lila gave her into the pocket of the big man’s woollen dressing gown she was wearing. It was several sizes too large and gave her the appearance of an inmate in a woman’s house of detention. She handed Lila a chipped cup stamped with the legend kookaburra kafeteria and sat down beside her on the littered bed, dislodging an annoyed sleepy Hester on to the floor.

  ‘Now show me Pony’s letter,’ she said.

  Lila searched in her imitation-leather handbag and brought out several sheets of hysterical violet-ink handwriting on cheap ruled paper.

  ‘May 20th. Dear Lilah Baines. Where are the snows of yesteryear? Do you even remember Pony Wardrop who loved your gay little sister with all my battered heart? Well, my dear, none of her pals can ever forget Sinden. A light went out in the world when she laid down her sharp-witted pen and was called to the Great Editor.’

  ‘Great Editor,’ said Vere. ‘Holy Je—’

  ‘Go on, Vere.’

  Vere read on. ‘The reason I’m writing (excuse this awful notepaper, my dear) is that two weeks from Saturday some of us from the Pen and Ink Club are organising a picnic at Fairyland (boats leave Circular Quay from the Lane Cove River Wharf at eleven, twelve and one). Proceeds are to help destitute writers and artists who are given no assistance from the government and many of whom are on relief. Among the writers who will be honoured with in memoriams composed in their honour will be our own Sinden and we would so love to have any or all of her sisters there (is it true that Vanessa is back from Mother England?) But most of all we would love to have her little boy. He is, as Sin put it herself, her “PS” left to all of us. We want him to know he is one of us who all adored his gutsy little mum. There will be games and refreshments and Queenie Waters is putting on some choric dances with her eurythmic group. Give the little boy our love (can it be almost seven years?) and I remain, ever your constant friend, Pony Wardrop. PS. My own love child is now seven and has won a prize for a story. Perhaps someday the two lads will meet and exchange notes, but of the dreams and troubled wayfaring of their mothers that went into the making of them, how much will they ever know? PW.’