Vere said, ‘God! No wonder Pony went off the track with so many men; she can’t even stick with a sentence.’
Lila said, ‘I’m rather touched with it.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘Vere, I never approved of Pony—having that child and all the publicity about free love—but she was one of Sin’s great friends and I think I should take PS to the picnic.’
‘But you’ve always said they were a lot of pseudo-Bohemian hangers-on, has-beens and never-weres.’
‘Ah, but they were her friends.’ Lila wheezed slightly, looked at Sinden’s fly-spotted face on the wall. ‘Besides, I’m not going to be bossed around by Vanessa.’
‘Aha. So that’s it!’
‘We’ve had a go-in over it. She doesn’t want PS to go.’
‘She loathes Pony. You know that.’
‘Just the same, she is not going to give me orders! It’s getting to the point where I have to ask her permission about everything. We had a really terrible stand-up fight about it in front of PS. Oh, I shouldn’t ever have brought it up but I thought maybe she would like to go. I should have just taken PS and said nothing about it to her. He’s mine at weekends anyway but I was trying to be fair, Vere. Well, she drew herself up in that way she has and she said, “He’s not to go. Those are my instructions!” Instructions! As if I were the maid or something. I said, “Ness, kindly don’t speak to me that way in front of the child,” and she said, “If he goes to that picnic, you’ll be sorry, Lila, because I’ll take some very strong action,” and then she went upstairs and banged her door. PS was standing there listening to it all and poor Ettie shaking and trembling all over. By the way, Vere, have you noticed a change in Ettie lately?’
‘No. I haven’t seen them. I hate that big morgue of a house. Don’t wander off the point, Lila.’
‘Well, anyway, it was dreadful. I was ill all night. Poor George with no sleep, giving me inhalations, and—’
‘Lila, why declare war over some footling picnic?’
‘Because it’s the principle. It’s the principle of the thing. Now you know that George and I had to give in over the school business. We just couldn’t fight it any longer. Not when she said, “Do you want to go to court over it?” I went to Sam Hamilton about it and you know we don’t pay him a sou. You know he only gives me advice because he was fond of Sin, but even he advised against fighting it. He said Ness might even try to get full custody. We couldn’t risk it. But at least I thought—and George thought too—that now she’s won her victory over that, she’d be satisfied and we’d have some peace, but now I’m going to be interfered with over my weekends and that I’m going to put a stop to, Vere. I’m not going to be told what to do on Saturdays and Sundays, Vere. I’ll put my foot down. If I give in over the picnic, I’ll have to give in over everything.’
Vere said, ‘I know it’s very thwarting.’
‘Don’t you think I’m right?’
‘I suppose so, Lila. I think in a way Ness is right too. I wouldn’t want to go. Sin’s dead so why turn over the sods? My God, isn’t life undoing enough as it is without people forcing us to remember her all the time?’
Vere suddenly and surprisingly burst into tears and Lila bit her lip, thinking, I shouldn’t have brought it up. The pain’s still there, how funny. You never can tell with Vere.
Vere’s sleepy voice coming through the phone to Lila standing, half falling, in the neighbour’s house that dawn.
‘Hello? Who’s this?’
‘Vere, we’ve been trying to get you since eleven o’clock last night.’
‘Lila? I’ve been at a party.’
‘Vere—’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘There’s terrible news.’
‘What?’
‘Dear, she’s gone.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you understand? She’s gone. She went very suddenly about eleven o’clock last night.’
Tick tick of a clock through the phone.
‘Vere?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so sorry, dear.’
‘Lila. You told me—you said it was all right to go out.’
‘I know, dear, we didn’t know ourselves—’
‘You said it was all right to go out.’
‘Oh, Vere, I’m sorry—’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘Vere, there’s a little boy. The little boy is here. Did you hear me?’
‘Oh, my God. I was at a party!’
Clouds of orange-scented face powder and Vere a clown face peering in the cracked mirror, putting on a deep-red lipstick. Lila finding specks of powder in her tea and thinking, she hasn’t forgiven me. She thinks she has but I know better!
Vere got up from her three-legged dressing table, slopped tea into her cup and said:
‘Lila, I’ve always kept out of it, but you and Ness between you are doing a first-class job of making him hate Sin.’
‘Vere!’ Lila, all sympathy vanishing, felt the hot tea spill on her knee. ‘Why, I never heard such an unfair—’
‘Forcing him to worship—’
‘Never. I have never forced him to—’
‘Pushing her down his throat. Wait and see what happens.’
‘I have never—’
‘If he’d been left to me—’ But Vere trailed off, seemed to be staring at the dusty piles of kept letters and perhaps of one that she never received (‘Dearest Vere, If anything should happen to me, I want you to …’).
And they were close, thought Lila. Closer than I was to Sin. Vere, the first at the wedding, collapsing at the grave. Now with what? Leftovers. From the kind of life she always lived with Sinden, but now trying to live it alone without the guiding spirit of fun that motivated it when Sin was alive, but trying to keep it going just the same.
Poor Vere. Trying to keep an old jig going and meanwhile letting chances go by, always hoping for something more promising the next evening, and so letting rich Gilbert slip through her fingers. At least I have George. And PS.
Lila said, ‘Well, to get back to the picnic—’
‘Must we?’
‘I was only going to say that I’m taking PS, no matter what Vanessa says. But I’m putting you on your honour not to tell her.’
‘Got more to worry about than that, my dear. Three weeks behind with the rent.’
‘Oh, Vere.’
‘Mind if I have a spot? Very undone today.’
Agnes led the way up the concrete tiers of the Temple of Everlasting Love and Vanessa followed, looking around at the weeds, the splitting concrete and the lantana vines creeping over it, thought, ‘What a wreck. She too. Two wrecks.’
Agnes said, ‘Now, Ness, if you were a bird and you flew on a direct line where I’m pointing you would come to Jerusalem.’
‘If I were a bird,’ said Vanessa, ‘you wouldn’t catch me flying to Jerusalem.’
She reached in her bag for a cigarette, but Agnes said sharply:
‘Oh, not here, please!’
‘Sorry. Forgot we were in church.’
‘Doesn’t it give you a feeling of presence?’
A lion roared nearby.
‘Very definitely,’ said Vanessa, and smiled.
‘I thought it would,’ Agnes said. ‘That’s why I was so anxious for you to come and see it. These seats with the name plaques entitle you to what we call the Joy of Identification when the night comes.’
Vanessa sat down and Agnes added in a low voice, ‘The night will be towards the end of October. Very likely the thirtieth.’
Vanessa said politely, ‘Really? As soon as that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Agnes launched into a recital of the Temple’s history but she could not be sure (remembering other times and other dim occasions) whether or not Vanessa was listening. The green eyes had a shuttered look, the beautifully shaped face unreceptive as stone, against which Agnes’ words splintered into glass fragments. As Sinden once put it
, ‘When Ness doesn’t want to hear something, it’s no use even trying to tell her that her dress has caught fire.’
Vanessa had indeed touched an inner switch and turned off the sound track; was watching a silent film of Agnes preaching; listening only to her own commentary: Oh, that tricorn hat. And that navy blue serge suit. Give her a horse and she could pass for Paul Revere. She’s mad, of course. Not Ophelia or Rochester’s wife, not straws-in-the-hair mad, just everyday carefully built-in mad. She’s made herself believe all this nonsense. But why? What has made her wander down crazy paths to become this ludicrous figure ranting about God and the end of the world? Isn’t hell fire awfully dated anyway? As dated as her hat. What is it? What? Something I remember.
Thunder and lightning. The old wooden house at Waverly, shaking and rattling in the wind that night and Mater as disapproving as Queen Victoria, saying, ‘Now, Vanessa, once and for all you are going to get over this ridiculous fear of lightning.’
‘Please, please—I want Lila to come and sleep with me.’
‘Lila is not coming. Now stop that screaming; you’ll wake up the others.’
Mater closing the midnight door on her. Alone now, and muffling the shrieks in her pillow as the dreadful doom broke over the roof again and again. Now the door opening softly and Agnes’ rag-doll face peeping in.
‘What’s the matter?’
Sobbing about Mater, hateful mean Mater.
Agnes snuggling up to her, the smell of her pink flannel nightie, thin little-girl arms holding her now.
‘Don’t be frightened, Ness. ‘I’ll sleep with you.’
‘Ag.’
‘What?’
‘She says you can’t get hurt but you can. You can!’
‘Shhh. She’ll hear you.’
‘I don’t care. I hate her.’
‘Ness.’
‘I don’t care, it’s true. I saw a picture of a little girl struck by lightning and she was all burned up and black all over and all her clothes burned off her. I saw it.’
Crack. Rumble. Crack. Roll. Rattle.
‘Hold me, Ag.’
‘I am, silly.’
‘Tighter.’
‘Gee whiz, I don’t know why you’re scared. I love it.’
Agnes darting out of bed, raising the blind an inch.
‘Don’t!’
‘But it’s lovely, Ness. It’s like the end of the world.’
‘Don’t want the end of the world.’
‘Why not? It’s lovely after the storm when Jesus comes and they all come up out of the sea.’
‘Who does?’
‘All the drowned people singing and all the people out of their graves—’
‘Stop it.’
‘But it’s not frightening. It’s lovely and peaceful and there’s a gorgeous pink light shining—’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw it once in a dream. Everyone was so happy and—’
Crack.
‘Ag! Come back into bed!’
Now with their heads under the blanket.
‘Hold me tight.’
‘I’m holding you, Ness and—Mr Pringle.’
Mr who?
‘Pringle,’ Agnes was saying, and wiping away seagull droppings. ‘Norman B. Pringle of Seattle, who broke away from the Theosophists and discovered the Seven Planes of Understanding …’
Vanessa looked away from the radiant rabbit face under the tricorn hat. The cement felt cold under her and she stood up.
Agnes said coolly, ‘You might at least listen to me.’
Vanessa smiled, admired her pigskin gloves a moment and said unexpectedly:
‘How do you like being back?’
‘Back?’ Agnes, interrupted, pulled down from the Seventh Plane, looked blank.
‘Here. Home. If one can call it that.’
Agnes said, after a moment, ‘One cannot always choose where one would most like to be.’
‘Do you miss America?’
‘Sometimes. I missed it terribly at first. I thought all the accents here were so strange and I missed the enthusiasm of Americans and people saying “You’re welcome.” In Seattle I lectured to crowded halls. I was treated with respect! One of my pamphlets was quoted once in a Portland, Oregon, newspaper!’ Agnes looked up at the sky for quite a long while. ‘But I’ve been back so long it doesn’t matter any more.’ She smiled. ‘Nothing will matter very much longer.’
Kookaburras perched in the dusty gum trees burst into raucous laughter at her.
Vanessa said, ‘I hate kookaburras. I hate the rainbirds and people’s accents.’ Said very quietly, ‘I loathe being back.’
‘Then why did you come back, Ness?’
Vanessa stared away at the sad oldness of the bay, heard traffic in Trafalgar Square, remembered the hope she nourished and said:
‘PS.’
‘You didn’t have to bother with him.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘But why?’
‘I want him.’
Agnes looked at her very squarely for a moment, seemed to be peering into her as into a dark closet with a flashlight and finding the most extraordinary things.
Vanessa, slamming the door of the closet in Agnes’ face, turned away and started walking down the steps, signifying with the dignity of her back and the precision of her high heels on the concrete that the conversation was over.
Behind her, Agnes was saying, ‘Fancy that. I never wanted children. I never wanted a husband. I never could stand men. If any man had ever tried to touch me, I should have been sick on the spot. How did Mater stand it all those years? Seven children, counting the two she lost.’ Agnes shook herself, said, ‘But why do you want PS?’
Vanessa said, ‘I was alarmed by what was going on here, what I’d heard about the way things were going and that Ernest was not able to lend a hand… .’ She went on with her prescribed speech until she saw that Agnes was again peering into her; flushed when Agnes said:
‘You are two people, Ness, and one of you is not telling the truth.’
Vanessa looked down at her shoes, then again at her sister. The crackpot in a dreary, dated, navy blue serge suit cut all wrong. Crackpot! And yet—she could see into you, more than all the others.
Agnes continued looking at her unblinkingly and in the silence that fell between them, suddenly a ferry tooted warningly and as if in reply, Agnes said:
‘Oh, Ness, be careful!’
And Vanessa felt suddenly cold, heard distantly a bell of warning. But not for the end of the world. For something much nearer.
Lila heard it too, squinting into the earlymorning sky and listening for rainbirds, wondering nervously should they take umbrellas, raincoats? Should they go to the picnic at all? How foolish to arrange it so late in May when the weather was always uncertain and could turn cold and wet. Wasn’t it just like Pony and those writers to mismanage such an affair? But now, staring up at the could-be-treacherous blue sky, she felt something else—a quickening of the heart. One of her premonitions that disaster would sweep them all. She stood a moment, calming herself, remembering her vowed intentions. She would not be ruled over by Vanessa. Besides, she had made a box of sausage rolls.
‘We’ll go,’ she announced to the sky, and repeated it to sleepy George in the kitchen. ‘We’ll go,’ she said to PS, tying the serviette around his neck.
He pulled it away and laid it on his lap.
‘Put your serviette around your neck, darling.’
‘It’s a napkin.’
‘All right.’
Really! It happened over so many things now. Being corrected by PS as though Vanessa was prodding him with an invisible finger.
She said to George, pouring the tea, ‘Won’t you come, love?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Sure?’
‘I said no, didn’t I?’
‘I thought you’d be interested. There’s going to be a little speech about Dear One and—’
‘Saturday with that
bunch of ratbags!’
‘George!’
‘Going to do some digging and listen to the races.’
‘Whatever you say. PS, eat your egg, don’t just play with it.’
‘I don’t want to go, Lila.’
‘What? Not go to a lovely picnic at Fairyland?’
‘I’m not allowed.’
‘You are allowed. I said so.’
‘Vanessa said—’
‘I told you it’s all right. I’m the one who says, dear. Not Vanessa. I am.’
‘Lila, don’t confuse him.’
‘Well, I’m not going to have him think that she’s the only one with authority. My goodness—’
‘I’m not allowed,’ said PS.
‘You are. How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘But Vanessa said—’
‘I don’t care what Vanessa said. You are going to the picnic to meet Dear One’s friends.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Of course you want to go. There’ll be swings and slippery slides and all kinds of things. Ice cream too.’
‘What’ll I say if she asks me?’
Lila hesitated a moment and George looked at her over the top of the Labor Daily.
‘What will he say?’ asked George.
Careful, He Might Hear You Page 13
