Careful, He Might Hear You

by Sumner Locke Elliott

  ‘Girl, guess who was on the train with me coming back from Melbourne?’

  She spelled out a name and Vere put down her glass very suddenly.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Almost sure. When we changed trains at Albury he was standing on the platform. I’d swear.’

  ‘You only met him once, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but, girl, you don’t forget him.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Suppose Lila and Vanessa know?’

  Know what? Now he suddenly didn’t want any more cake, because they had looked at him and then away. Did it have something to do with the day that Agnes said was coming? With what Diana said was cooking?

  It must be.

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What? Tell me.’

  He thought for a minute that Vere had burst into laughter until he saw the tears and Opal holding on to her while she shook and shook and it was just like the way she laughed only the noise was different and he pulled at her dress.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Opal said, ‘PS, the happiest day of your life will be when you’re no longer a kid. Take it from one who knows.’

  Vere blew her nose loudly, turned to him with one of her gay screams.

  ‘Gorgeous thing. Oh, you gorgeous thing. I could eat you up, eatyouup.’

  With another scream, she noticed the time on Opal’s fob watch, grabbed him, his overcoat, her hat and purse and in a moment they were running helter-skelter up the now dark street to the tram like two escaped convicts with the bloodhounds behind them.

  On the tram he said, ‘Vere, who was on the train? Who did Opal see on the train?’

  ‘Oh, just a man she knew.’

  ‘Does Lila know him? Does Vanessa?’

  ‘No.’

  An out-and-out fib. Even Vere!

  The big house was staring at them angrily with all its lights on, as they went up the long driveway. You’re late, it said.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Vanessa. ‘It’s nearly seven o’clock. I’ve been frantic. I thought something had happened.’

  ‘Sorry, Ness.’

  ‘I made it very clear you were to have him home by six.’

  Vere asked Vanessa something in an undertone, there were quick whispers, and then they went into the study and closed the door. From inside came angry voices. He waited, fearful now, knowing it was not about them being late. After a few minutes, Vanessa opened the door, saying:

  ‘Kindly stay out of this. It’s to do with Lila and me and you have no say whatever, for which I thank God!’

  Vere said, ‘Thank Ernest and thank Ettie’s money.’

  ‘That’ll be enough, Vere.’

  ‘Listen, I’ll see him. I’ll tell him what I think of both you and Lila.’

  ‘Please leave my house.’

  ‘Your house! Must be nice never having to worry your guts out about paying the rent. What a bloody parasite you are, bleeding Ettie dry all these years, forcing her back here where she’s lonely and miserable—no wonder she’s on the grog again.’

  Vanessa took a step towards Vere and he ran forward and pushed in between them, yelling, ‘Don’t hurt Vere,’ saw Vanessa look at him amazed and then at Ettie suddenly appearing in the drawing room door waving her little hands and saying, ‘Shhhhh. Shhhhh, the maids. Think of the maids, lovely Vere, precious Vere,’ and both he and Ettie were clinging to Vere and soothing her and Ettie was pressing something into Vere’s hand, saying in a whisper, ‘Buy yourself something nice, lovely Vere,’ and Vere kissed both of them and waved and went, slamming the front door at Vanessa, who now stood apart watching them.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Vanessa. ‘Thank you both very much.’

  Over dinner a dreadful silence broken only by knives and forks and Diana slumping in and out with the dishes until at length Vanessa said, ‘Where did you get that appalling tie? I’ve never seen anything so vulgar.’ ‘It’s not,’ he said. ‘Vere made it for me.’ Vanessa said sharply, ‘You certainly seem to be very fond of Vere, PS,’ and he looked down at his plate and Ettie said, ‘Ah, poor Vere. Poor Vere,’ and Vanessa threw down her napkin and said loudly, ‘Logic is no part of this ménage,’ and surprisingly left the table and went out of the room and he thought for one moment she was crying, but then Vanessa never cried except perhaps when there was a thunderstorm, and upstairs she was as businesslike as ever with toothbrush, soap and pyjamas, hurrying him in and out of the bathroom and into bed.

  ‘We saw Maurice Chevalier,’ he offered her as a pipe of peace but she merely pulled down the window blind as though it had offended her by remaining up, snapped off the light as if to murder it and went huffily to the door, where she turned in the streak of light and said:

  ‘Has Vere ever given you a train like mine?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has Vere ever given you books and clothes and riding lessons?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Did Vere ever give up everything she liked and come thousands of miles to look after you?’

  ‘Well, but—’ ‘But what? I don’t see that there can be any “buts”, PS. Goodnight.’

  Not an angry voice but worse. That one that sounded swollen and sad. Much later she came softly back into the room, turned him from one side of sleep to the other, stirring his dreams for a moment. Or was he in the other house? Was it Lila turning him over and saying softly, ‘Don’t worry, PS. Don’t worry.’

  The Day came. It was the very next day, a black and raining day very suitable for whatever it was that had been cooking and bubbling and straining away at the Big House for weeks and making people speak in undertones. He knew at once when just after playtime Diana came for him at Miss Pile’s wearing a mackintosh over her uniform and tiptoed into the classroom and whispered to Miss Pile who then looked at him over her glasses and said:

  ‘Marriott, get your raincoat and galoshes; you’re excused early today.’

  He went down the line of desks as the other children looked up from their work at him. Cynthia Lawson smirked and made the club sign that meant ‘Tell us later.’

  Plunging up the hill in the rain, he decided not to ask any questions because whatever it was, it was going to happen now, in a few minutes. But he felt a little dizzy, as if he had just got off a merry-go-round.

  They went through the back gate and through the kitchen garden into the house, passing through the green baize door into the hall, where he saw the drawing room shut and heard voices behind it.

  Diana said, ‘Upstairs, lovey,’ hurrying him up to his room, where his new grey flannel suit was laid out on the bed waiting for him to put on for whatever it was.

  Vanessa had talked until her voice sounded dry and unusual, but she had talked well, she felt, carefully avoiding rancour and overstatement, presenting her case with clarity and logic; above all being scrupulously fair to Lila and George. Her speech rolled out, planned and assured and yet (here she couldn’t help but congratulate herself) with clever little ad-lib touches that gave it an extemporaneous air and an objective tolerant humour so that she herself shone through her words at her best. She had expected interruptions but Logan merely nodded and occasionally laughed, a great belly laugh, throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling and all the time turning over and over in his hands the Royal Doulton shepherd which he had picked off the table beside him. Her instinct was to say, ‘Don’t fiddle with that, please; it’s fragile,’ and ask him please to sit up straight and not lean his somewhat oily hair against the brocade of Ettie’s wing chair. Instead, she continued her long oration, pausing only to light a cigarette from time to time, gaining confidence as she went along. After all her careful planning of the meeting on her terms, at the time to be chosen by her, he had, of course, in typical Logan fashion, thrown everything out of kilter by arriving without a prior telephone call. There he was, suddenly, at the front door, hatless and coatless in the rain, dripping over everything in the hall (‘Hello, Ness, how’s tricks?’ as if they had parted only last
week), unheralded in the middle of the morning after her three messages to the Hotel Waratah had been ignored. Thank God she had on a decent dress and by some cosmic miracle was in the drawing room arranging flowers so that she had been able to muffle some of her shock behind the tall Iceland poppies. Even her annoyance at being kept waiting for a whole day and night without word from him, the anxiety that he might have seen Lila first, was dissolved in the fierce surprise of seeing him actually standing there. It was ridiculous, but she was trembling and murmuring banalities about the rain, asking him had it been very cold in Bacchus Marsh, how was the train journey, how were Alice and his brothers? Bending, all thumbs, to put a match to the fire, thinking, How sad. He’s changed. The looks are going, getting a little bloated in the face, lines around the eyes, the eyes smaller and deep gold; I’d thought they were blue. His mum was dead. No, really? She hadn’t heard. She was so sorry. She would have sent flowers, a note of condolence to Alice. He had an ulcer and no longer smoked. Really? Really! Now he had disorganised her luncheon. Could Ellen manage a quick soufflé? Should people with ulcers smell faintly of whisky? Should anyone smell of whisky at eleven in the morning? A quick shot to give him nerve? Poor Logan. Yes, yes, yes. She was readily agreeing with him over nothing. In her most Belgravia voice. ‘Rather. I should jolly well think so.’ Until she caught him smiling at her impudently. Was he making fun of her? Thrusting her into the ridiculous role of a games mistress in a worthless comedy? He’d better not try, because she knew the lines; but careful, all the same—there was a lot at stake. Better get on with it. Drew herself a long breath, said:

  ‘Logan, I asked you to come for many reasons …’

  Plunged in. Her arrival. Lila’s health. George’s job. PS. Two houses. State school versus Miss Pile. Winnie Grindel versus Cynthia Lawson. Leftist labour unions versus Miss Colden and horseback riding. Vere. Agnes on street corners and in ruined temples. The writers’ picnic, and finally, subtly so as not to shoo the bird away, Sinden. Sin’s letter to her in London. Avoiding mention of Ernest Huxley but back to London. All the twists and turns of her tale led back to London.

  Now she was tiring but exultant, positive, almost positive, that she had won, that he would agree, that it would all be signed and sealed that day and they would sail in a month. How wise she had been to be patient all these months and wait. To let Lila be the one to make mistakes, let time and the Trades Hall turn the tide from Neutral Bay to the grander shores of Point Piper. Already she saw PS in a school uniform. Cheam, perhaps, but they could go into all that later. Later, later, long after the P and O boat had sailed down the harbour and through the heads, leaving Australia behind and Lila and what was left of Sinden. What was left of Logan too. Bury him too, at last, this dead man walking around audaciously, coming into her room, year after year, stealing through storms, through the shaking of thunder, into her bed when she was afraid because her empty life shook and rattled like a train bearing her through nothingness to nothing.

  Watching him, she took a toy gun, shot Logan through the head, screaming, ‘You’re dead, Logan. You’re dead.’

  Aloud, she said calmly:

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  She was finished. There was nothing more to say so she folded her hands neatly and waited.

  Waited. Sitting now, suddenly, on a hard wooden bench in the naked pink electricity that lighted the Bacchus Marsh town hall as the little band on the stage struck up with ‘Three o’clock in the Morning’ and the farm boys were coming across the floor with their pomaded slicked-down hair, hard cheap best blue suits, and holding out great red beefy hands to the giggling girls in their homemade evening dresses of violent-coloured net, sateen and Chinese silk, their faces smothered with white powder, their cheeks put on lopsidedly with dry rouge, gold bangles on their arms and into each bangle tucked their best lace hanky. She felt out of place in her blue voile dress and her towny red satin shoes. She clutched the little bead evening bag that Cousin Ettie had bought her last week in Melbourne and stared straight ahead with the stern casualness of the wallflower. She was a failure and she knew it. She had just been returned to her seat after the most humiliating attempt at the one-step with a sweating oaf who had left the giant imprint of his paw on her back. They had stumbled and bumped through the dance, loathing each other, with apologetic mumbles of ‘Sorry … no, my fault,’ until at last it was over and the oaf had escorted her back to the line of girls, muttered something about ginger ale and escaped. She had heard the giggles of the girls and whispers about ‘Alice Marriott’s towny friend’. She thought again desperately of joining Alice’s mother, who was sitting with the older women across the other side of the room fanning themselves and waving to people, but she had tried this once and had been penalised for breaking the rules by having to drink a mug of scalding coffee with a disgusting skin of boiled milk in it, to force down a giant slab of marble cake, and accept their solicitude. ‘Don’t worry, lovey, you’ll get a dance soon. Always more girls than boys. There’s Alfie Watson. Hey, Alfie, come over here a minute, love. Come and meet Alice Marriott’s friend from Sydney.’ That was how she had got her oaf.

  She turned to Alice now, because eyes were on her, pitying eyes, and she must appear vivacious and sparkling as the other wallflowers were now doing, admiring each others’ dresses and crimped hair. But Alice was leaping up in her electric-blue lace dress and whirling off on to the floor with Jim Clark, leaving her destitute with nothing to do but again open her bag, again pretend to be searching in it for something. Where, oh, where was the good-looking brother? He had manoeuvred her once around the floor for the first foxtrot but shyness had overcome her so completely that after a few attempts at conversation he had given up and they had finished the dance in silence. Then he had gone off with a group of yokels, whom he obviously preferred, and she knew that they were having a forbidden beer outside on the veranda.

  She gave up the pretence of looking in her bag, stared instead at the band on the stage, appeared to be raptly interested in the cracked canvas drop behind it, which represented a vista of rolling lawns, cyprus trees and fountains leading to an ornate biscuit-coloured mansion. A group of young bucks strutted in from the veranda and stood laughing and making coarse remarks about the girls. Logan was among them, standing out from the group with his superior looks and insulting smile. Now, suddenly, he had broken from the group and was coming towards her, weaving in and out of the dancers, lazy and unhurried, as though the waltz would go on forever and she would wait, certainly wait for him, certainly accept him.

  He smiled down at her. ‘Want to?’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. Rescued at last, and breathless with relief and nervousness, she jumped up and they joined the dancers on the floor, got off to a bad start for she had become rigid, a ramrod.

  He said, ‘Relax and let me lead.’

  Now, at last, she was getting the knack of it and suddenly everything was going right. They were circling and swaying to the music, backward and forward in the river of faces and arms, and now Logan had started to sing along with the band and to her own amazement she found that she was joining in.

  ‘Three o’clock in the morning—

  We’ve danced the whole night through.’

  Alice whirled by with Jim Clark and called to her, ‘Having a good time, Vanessa?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she cried exultantly, smiling back at Logan. She wanted the dance never to end. The boys were now reaching up and pulling down the balloons that hung from the ceiling. Logan had looped a big red balloon over her arm and they skimmed on and on.

  When the waltz finished, she said, ‘Thank you,’ and turned, expecting him to walk her back to her seat, but Logan held on to her hand.

  ‘ “Jolly Miller”,’ announced the sweating MC.

  Girls one way, boys the other. Walk until the music stops, face your partner, dance again. She hated to part from him, join the inner circle of the girls passing the outer wheel of boys, yet every time the mus
ic stopped, miraculously he was there facing her, once snatching her from the eager embrace of a stout fourteen-year-old boy who had rushed at her with a football tackle, and now the other girls had noticed and there were looks of female resentment and snubbed partners were lifting outraged eyebrows but she didn’t care, it was fun to cheat and be selfish, it was delicious compensation for all the dances she had ever been to where, with her inability to unbend, to create the mystique of fun, she had sat mute and ridiculous through hours of torture. Now she was drunk and delirious on coffee and ginger beer. She had been shot out of a cannon and was sailing through the air to thunderous applause. She was dazzling and charming, the prettiest girl, the best dancer, her dress was lovely, so were her red shoes. Everything was perfect. She sang ‘Look for the Silver Lining’ and ‘Moonlight and Roses’, praying for someone to stop the clock, stop the earth from turning towards the morning. ‘Oh, no,’ she begged as the men stood to attention, the elderly watchers were helped to their feet and the band raced disloyally through ‘God Save’.