Im going to say my prayers in bed to-night.
No, you cant, Lottie. Isabel was very firm. God only excuses you saying your prayers in bed if youve got a temperature. So Lottie yielded:
Gentle Jesus meek anmile,
Look pon a little chile.
Pity me, simple Lizzie,
Suffer me to come to thee.
And then they lay down back to back, their little behinds just touching, and fell asleep.
Standing in a pool of moonlight Beryl Fairfield undressed herself. She was tired, but she pretended to be more tired than she really wasletting her clothes fall, pushing back with a languid gesture her warm, heavy hair.
Oh, how tired I amvery tired.
She shut her eyes a moment, but her lips smiled. Her breath rose and fell in her breast like two fanning wings. The window was wide open; it was warm, and somewhere out there in the garden a young man, dark and slender, with mocking eyes, tiptoed among the bushes, and gathered the flowers into a big bouquet, and slipped under her window and held it up to her. She saw herself bending forward. He thrust his head among the bright waxy flowers, sly and laughing. No, no, said Beryl. She turned from the window and dropped her nightgown over her head.
How frightfully unreasonable Stanley is sometimes, she thought, buttoning. And then as she lay down, there came the old thought, the cruel thoughtah, if only she had money of her own.
A young man, immensely rich, has just arrived from England. He meets her quite by chance The new governor is unmarried There is a ball at Government house Who is that exquisite creature in eau de nil satin? Beryl Fairfield
The thing that pleases me, said Stanley, leaning against the side of the bed and giving himself a good scratch on his shoulders and back before turning in, is that Ive got the place dirt cheap, Linda. I was talking about it to little Wally Bell to-day and he said he simply could not understand why they had accepted my figure. You see land about here is bound to become more and more valuable in about ten years time of course we shall have to go very slow and cut down expenses as fine as possible. Not asleepare you?
No, dear, Ive heard every word, said Linda.
He sprang into bed, leaned over her and blew out the candle. Good night, Mr. Business Man, said she, and she took hold of his head by the ears and gave him a quick kiss. Her faint far-away voice seemed to come from a deep well.
Good night, darling. He slipped his arm under her neck and drew her to him.
Yes, clasp me, said the faint voice from the deep well.
Pat the handy-man sprawled in his little room behind the kitchen. His sponge-bag, coat and trousers hung from the door-peg like a hanged man. From the edge of the blanket his twisted toes protruded, and on the floor beside him there was an empty cane bird-cage. He looked like a comic picture.
Honk, honk, came from the servant girl. She had adenoids.
Last to go to bed was the grandmother.
What. Not asleep yet?
No, Im waiting for you, said Kezia. The old woman sighed and lay down beside her. Kezia thrust her head under her grandmothers arm and gave a little squeak. But the old woman only pressed her faintly, and sighed again, took out her teeth, and put them in a glass of water beside her on the floor.
In the garden some tiny owls, perched on the branches of a lace-bark tree, called: More pork; more pork. And far away in the bush there sounded a harsh rapid chatter: Ha-ha-ha Ha-ha-ha.
V
Dawn came sharp and chill with red clouds on a faint green sky and drops of water on every leaf and blade. A breeze blew over the garden, dropping dew and dropping petals, shivered over the drenched paddocks, and was lost in the sombre bush. In the sky some tiny stars floated for a moment and then they were gonethey were dissolved like bubbles. And plain to be heard in the early quiet was the sound of the creek in the paddock running over the brown stones, running in and out of the sandy hollows, hiding under clumps of dark berry bushes, spilling into a swamp of yellow water flowers and cresses.
And then at the first beam of sun the birds began. Big cheeky birds, starlings and mynahs, whistled on the lawns, the little birds, the goldfinches and linnets and fan-tails, flicked from bough to bough. A lovely kingfisher perched on the paddock fence preening his rich beauty, and a tui sang his three notes and laughed and sang them again.
How loud the birds are, said Linda in her dream. She was walking with her father through a green paddock sprinkled with daisies. Suddenly he bent down and parted the grasses and showed her a tiny ball of fluff just at her feet. Oh, Papa, the darling. She made a cup of her hands and caught the tiny bird and stroked its head with her finger. It was quite tame. But a funny thing happened. As she stroked it began to swell, it ruffled and pouched, it grew bigger and bigger and its round eyes seemed to smile knowingly at her. Now her arms were hardly wide enough to hold it and she dropped it into her apron. It had become a baby with a big naked head and a gaping bird-mouth, opening and shutting. Her father broke into a loud clattering laugh and she woke to see Burnell standing by the windows rattling the Venetian blind up to the very top.
Hullo, he said. Didnt wake you, did I? Nothing much wrong with the weather this morning.
He was enormously pleased. Weather like this set a final seal on his bargain. He felt, somehow, that he had bought the lovely day, toogot it chucked in dirt cheap with the house and ground. He dashed off to his bath and Linda turned over and raised herself on one elbow to see the room by daylight. All the furniture had found a placeall the old paraphernalia, as she expressed it. Even the photographs were on the mantelpiece and the medicine bottles on the shelf above the washstand. Her clothes lay across a chairher outdoor things, a purple cape and a round hat with a plume in it. Looking at them she wished that she was going away from this house, too. And she saw herself driving away from them all in a little buggy, driving away from everybody and not even waving.
Back came Stanley girt with a towel, glowing and slapping his thighs. He pitched the wet towel on top of her hat and cape, and standing firm in the exact centre of a square of sunlight he began to do his exercises. Deep breathing, bending and squatting like a frog and shooting out his legs. He was so delighted with his firm, obedient body that he hit himself on the chest and gave a loud Ah. But this amazing vigour seemed to set him worlds away from Linda. She lay on the white tumbled bed and watched him as if from the clouds.
Oh, damn! Oh, blast! said Stanley, who had butted into a crisp white shirt only to find that some idiot had fastened the neck-band and he was caught. He stalked over to Linda waving his arms.
You look like a big fat turkey, said she.
Fat. I like that, said Stanley. I havent a square inch of fat on me. Feel that.
Its rockits iron, mocked she.
Youd be surprised, said Stanley, as though this were intensely interesting, at the number of chaps at the club who have got a corporation. Young chaps, you knowmen of my age. He began parting his bushy ginger hair, his blue eyes fixed and round in the glass, his knees bent, because the dressing-table was alwaysconfound ita bit too low for him. Little Wally Bell, for instance, and he straightened, describing upon himself an enormous curve with the hairbrush. I must say Ive a perfect horror
My dear, dont worry. Youll never be fat. You are far too energetic.
Yes, yes, I suppose thats true, said he, comforted for the hundredth time, and taking a pearl penknife out of his pocket he began to pare his nails.
Breakfast, Stanley. Beryl was at the door. Oh, Linda, mother says you are not to get up yet. She popped her head in at the door. She had a big piece of syringa stuck through her hair.
Everything we left on the veranda last night is simply sopping this morning. You should see poor dear mother wringing out the tables and the chairs. However, there is no harm done this with the faintest glance at Stanley.
Have you told Pat to have the buggy round in time? Its a good six and a half miles to the office.
I can imagine what this early start for the office will be like, thought Linda. It will be very high pressure indeed.
Pat, Pat. She heard the servant girl calling. But Pat was evidently hard to find; the silly voice went baa-baaing through the garden. Linda did not rest again until the final slam of the front door told her that Stanley was really gone.
Later she heard her children playing in the garden. Lotties stolid, compact little voice cried: Ke-zia. Isa-bel. She was always getting lost or losing people only to find them again, to her great surprise, round the next tree or the next corner. Oh, there you are after all. They had been turned out after breakfast and told not to come back to the house until they were called. Isabel wheeled a neat pramload of prim dolls and Lottie was allowed for a great treat to walk beside her holding the dolls parasol over the face of the wax one.
Where are you going to, Kezia? asked Isabel, who longed to find some light and menial duty that Kezia might perform and so be roped in under her government.
Oh, just away, said Kezia
Then she did not hear them any more. What a glare there was in the room. She hated blinds pulled up to the top at any time, but in the morning it was intolerable. She turned over to the wall and idly, with one finger, she traced a poppy on the wall-paper with a leaf and a stem and a fat bursting bud. In the quiet, and under her tracing finger, the poppy seemed to come alive. She could feel the sticky, silky petals, the stem, hairy like a gooseberry skin, the rough leaf and the tight glazed bud. Things had a habit of coming alive like that. Not only large substantial things like furniture but curtains and the patterns of stuffs and the fringes of quilts and cushions. How often she had seen the tassel fringe of her quilt change into a funny procession of dancers with priests attending For there were some tassels that did not dance at all but walked stately, bent forward as if praying or chanting. How often the medicine bottles had turned into a row of little men with brown top-hats on; and the washstand jug had a way of sitting in the basin like a fat bird in a round nest.
I dreamed about birds last night, thought Linda. What was it? She had forgotten. But the strangest part of this coming alive of things was what they did. They listened, they seemed to swell out with some mysterious important content, and when they were full she felt that they smiled. But it was not for her, only, their sly secret smile; they were members of a secret society and they smiled among themselves. Sometimes, when she had fallen asleep in the daytime, she woke and could not lift a finger, could not even turn her eyes to left or right because THEY were there; sometimes when she went out of a room and left it empty, she knew as she clicked the door to that THEY were filling it. And there were times in the evenings when she was upstairs, perhaps, and everybody else was down, when she could hardly escape from them. Then she could not hurry, she could not hum a tune; if she tried to say ever so carelesslyBother that old thimbleTHEY were not deceived. THEY knew how frightened she was; THEY saw how she turned her head away as she passed the mirror. What Linda always felt was that THEY wanted something of her, and she knew that if she gave herself up and was quiet, more than quiet, silent, motionless, something would really happen.
Its very quiet now, she thought. She opened her eyes wide, and she heard the silence spinning its soft endless web. How lightly she breathed; she scarcely had to breathe at all.
Yes, everything had come alive down to the minutest, tiniest particle, and she did not feel her bed, she floated, held up in the air. Only she seemed to be listening with her wide open watchful eyes, waiting for someone to come who just did not come, watching for something to happen that just did not happen.
VI
In the kitchen at the long deal table under the two windows old Mrs. Fairfield was washing the breakfast dishes. The kitchen window looked out on to a big grass patch that led down to the vegetable garden and the rhubarb beds. On one side the grass patch was bordered by the scullery and washhouse and over this whitewashed lean-to there grew a knotted vine. She had noticed yesterday that a few tiny corkscrew tendrils had come right through some cracks in the scullery ceiling and all the windows of the lean-to had a thick frill of ruffled green.
I am very fond of a grape vine, declared Mrs. Fairfield, but I do not think that the grapes will ripen here. It takes Australian sun. And she remembered how Beryl when she was a baby had been picking some white grapes from the vine on the back veranda of the Tasmanian house and she had been stung on the leg by a huge red ant. She saw Beryl in a little plaid dress with red ribbon tie-ups on the shoulders screaming so dreadfully that half the street rushed in. And how the childs leg had swelled! Tttt! Mrs. Fairfield caught her breath remembering. Poor child, how terrifying it was. And she set her lips tight and went over to the stove for some more hot water. The water frothed up in the big soapy bowl with pink and blue bubbles on top of the foam. Old Mrs. Fairfields arms were bare to the elbow and stained a bright pink. She wore a grey foulard dress patterned with large purple pansies, a white linen apron and a high cap shaped like a jelly mould of white muslin. At her throat there was a silver crescent moon with five little owls seated on it, and round her neck she wore a watch-guard made of black beads.
It was hard to believe that she had not been in that kitchen for years; she was so much a part of it. She put the crocks away with a sure, precise touch, moving leisurely and ample from the stove to the dresser, looking into the pantry and the larder as though there were not an unfamiliar corner. When she had finished, everything in the kitchen had become part of a series of patterns. She stood in the middle of the room wiping her hands on a check cloth; a smile beamed on her lips; she thought it looked very nice, very satisfactory.
Mother! Mother! Are you there? called Beryl.
Yes, dear. Do you want me?
No. Im coming, and Beryl rushed in, very flushed, dragging with her two big pictures.
Mother, whatever can I do with these awful hideous Chinese paintings that Chung Wah gave Stanley when he went bankrupt? Its absurd to say that they are valuable, because they were hanging in Chung Wahs fruit shop for months before. I cant make out why Stanley wants them kept. Im sure he thinks them just as hideous as we do, but its because of the frames, she said spitefully. I suppose he thinks the frames might fetch something some day or other.