Babicca: Metafisico estáis.
Rocinante: Es que no como.
PROLOGUE, DON QUIXOTE
Sea People
THE ISLAND CONTINENT
1. Brown Seaweed and Old Fish Nets
2. The Countless Flaming Eyes of the Flesh
3. Malfi’s Wedding
4. She Had—
5. It Was High Tide at Nine-thirty
6. Lance with His Head in His Hand
7. Leo Was Lost in Roaring Slumber
8. It Was the Hot Intolerable Hour
9. The Deed Was Extreme
10. Mr Jonathan Crow Who Coached in Latin
11. Coming Along in the Blowy Dark
12. A Train for Narara, Fifty Miles North
13. Air of Pride, Fire, and Water
14. There Are Many Abandoned Orchards in the Valley
15. At No Cost to Himself
16. A Girl without a Coat and with Smooth Bare Head
17. This Embarkation for Life
18. Innuendoes of Love
19. Property Is Everything
20. The Infernal Compact with Herself
21. Love Is Feared: It Dissolves Society
22. Still Three Years to Go
23. A Photograph from the Tyrol
24. “So Haggard and So Woebegone”
PORT OF REGISTRY: LONDON
25. After Two Days of Yachting Weather
26. I Sit Around in Teashops
27. Five or Six Unopened Letters
28. You Do Not Stand Anywhere
29. Regular Nights
30. James Quick Lived in a Flat in Mayfair
31. Modern Is as Modern Does
32. Several Off-colour Stories
33. A Deserted Sawmill
34. Aurea Mediocritas
35. The Signs of the Misogynist
36. A Fury of Only Half-spent Words
37. At the Altars of Antique Churches
38. Down the Flowering Lanes
39. Many Men Came to See Them in Fleet Street
40. "Today Put on Perfection"
41. I Am Thinking I Am Free
IN THE PART OF the world Teresa came from, winter is in July, spring brides marry in September, and Christmas is consummated with roast beef, suckling pig, and brandy-laced plum pudding at 100 degrees in the shade, near the tall pine-tree loaded with gifts and tinsel as in the old country, and old carols have rung out all through the night.
This island continent lies in the water hemisphere. On the eastern coast, the neighbouring nation is Chile, though it is far, far east, Valparaiso being more than six thousand miles away in a straight line; her northern neighbours are those of the Timor Sea, the Yellow Sea; to the south is that cold, stormy sea full of earth-wide rollers, which stretches from there without land, south to the Pole.
The other world—the old world, the land hemisphere—is far above her as it is shown on maps drawn upside-down by old-world cartographers. From that world and particularly from a scarcely noticeable island up toward the North Pole the people came, all by steam; or their parents, all by sail. And there they live round the many thousand miles of seaboard, hugging the water and the coastal rim. Inside, over the Blue Mountains, are the plains heavy with wheat, then the endless dust, and after outcrops of silver, opal, and gold, Sahara, the salt-crusted bed of a prehistoric sea, and leafless mountain ranges. There is nothing in the interior; so people look toward the water, and above to the fixed stars and constellations which first guided men there.
Overhead, the other part of the Milky Way, with its great stars and nebulæ, spouts thick as cow’s milk from the udder, from side to side, broader and whiter than in the north; in the centre the curdle of the Coalsack, that black hole through which they look out into space. The skies are sub-tropical, crusted with suns and spirals, as if a reflection of the crowded Pacific Ocean, with its reefs, atolls, and archipelagos.
It is a fruitful island of the sea-world, a great Ithaca, there parched and stony and here trodden by flocks and curly-headed bulls and heavy with thick-set grain. To this race can be put the famous question: “Oh, Australian, have you just come from the harbour? Is your ship in the roadstead? Men of what nation put you down—for I am sure you did not get here on foot?”
NAKED, EXCEPT FOR A white towel rolled into a loincloth, he stood in the door-way, laughing and shouting, a tall man with powerful chest and thick hair of pale burning gold and a skin still pale under many summers’ tan. He seemed to thrust back the walls with his muscular arms; thick tufts of red hair stood out from his armpits. The air was full of the stench of brown seaweed and old fish nets. Through the window you could see the water of the bay and the sand specked with flotsam and scalloped with yellow foam, left by the last wave. The man, Andrew Hawkins, though straight and muscular, was covered with flaccid yellow-white flesh and his waist and abdomen were too broad and full. He had a broad throat and chest and from them came a clear tenor voice.
“…she was sitting on the ground nursing her black baby, and she herself was black as a hat, with a strong, supple oily skin, finer than white women’s skins: her heavy breasts were naked, she was not ashamed of that, but with natural modesty, which is in even the most primitive of women, she covered her legs with a piece of cloth lying on the ground and tittered behind her hand exactly like one of you”—he was saying to the two women sitting at the table. “Then she said something to her husband and he, a thin spindle-shanked fellow, translated for me, grinning from ear to ear: she asked how it was possible for a man to have such beautiful white feet as mine.”
He looked down at his long blond feet and the two women looked from their sewing quickly at his feet, as if to confirm the story.
“I have always been admired for my beautiful white skin,” said the golden-haired man, reminiscently. “Women love it in a man, it surprises them to see him so much fairer in colour than they are. Especially the darkies,” and he looked frankly at Kitty Hawkins, who was a nut-brown brunette with drooping black hair. “But not only the dark ones,” he went on softly. He kept on coaxing.
“I have been much loved; I didn’t always know it—I was always such an idealist. When girls and, yes, even women older than myself, wanted to come and talk to me, I thought it was a thing of the brain. One poor girl, Paula Brown, wrote to me for years, discussing things. I never dreamed that it was not an interest in speculative thought. I used to tell her all my dreams and longings. I could have married a rich girl. In the Movement there was a quiet, pale girl called Annie Milson. Her father, though I didn’t think about it at the time, was Commissioner for Railways and was quite the capitalist.
“They had properties all around here, dairy-farms down the south coast. I could have been a wealthy man if I had become Milson’s son-in-law, and I believe he would have been delighted. He seemed to approve of me. I spent the afternoon at their Lindfield house two or three times—and spent the afternoon talking to Milson! I never suspected the girl liked me.
“I believe she loved the good-looking, sincere young idealist—but I had no interest in earthly things at the time and I never suspected it. Poor Annie! She used to send me books. Yes, I believe I was loved by many women but I was so pure that I had no temptations. ‘My mind to me a kingdom was.’ I suppose, now, when I look back, that I was a mystery to them, poor girls, such a handsome young man, who didn’t dance, didn’t take them to the theatre, and worried only about the social organism.”
He laughed, his brilliant oval blue eyes, their whites slightly bloodshot, looking gaily at the two girls. He sighed, “I didn’t know that I was a handsome lad. I didn’t know then what a woman, a married woman, said to me much later, a fine, motherly soul she was, Mrs Kurzon, but she said it with a sigh, ‘Mr Hawkins, how many women have wanted to put their hands in your wonderful hair?’ She said it with a twinkle but she said it with longing too; and then she asked me if she could, laughing all the time and sweetly too, in a womanly sweet way. I let her, and she plunged them in and took them out with a sigh of gratification, ‘Oh, Mr Hawkins, how wonderful it is!’ And how many women have told me it was a shame to waste such hair on a man, they would give anything to have it.”
One of the girls, the younger one, who was blond, looked up at the marvellous hair of the man.
Andrew Hawkins ran his hand through it, feeling it himself. A thought seemed to strike him; he brought down his hand and looked at the back, then the palm. It was a large, pale, muscular hand, an artisan’s hand, hairless, diseased-looking because streaked and spotted with fresh cement. “Not a bad hand either,” he said. He had something on the tip of his tongue but couldn’t get it out, he went on about his legs instead. “Poor Mrs Slops said I had legs like a ‘dook’. And I have seen ‘dooks’, at that, and not half so well-calved, I’ll take my affidavit. But do you know, Kit,” he said, lowering his voice, and his eyes darkening with modesty or wonder. “You see this hand, my good right hand, do you see it, Kit?”
Kitty laughed in her throat, a troubled, sunny laugh. “I’ve felt it, too, in my time.”
He said mysteriously, lowering his voice again: “Women have kissed this hand.” They both turned and looked at him, startled. “Yes, Kit, yes, you disbeliever,” he said, turning to the younger girl. “Teresa won’t believe me perhaps, for she doesn’t want to love me, but women, several women have kissed this hand. Do you know how women kiss men’s hands? They take it in both their hands, and kiss it first on the back, and then each finger separately, and they hate to let go.” He burst out suddenly into a rough ringing laugh. “You would not believe that has happened—not once, but several times—to your Andrew!”
“Handy Andy,” said Teresa, in her soft, unresonant voice. She did not glance up but went on sewing. Each of the girls had before her on the table the wide sleeve of a summer dress; it was a greyish lavender voile sprinkled with pink roses and they were sewing roses made of the material in rows along the sleeves.
“Ah, you think you know a lot about love,” went on Andrew, coming into the room, and throwing himself full length on the old settee underneath the window that looked upon the beach. “Yes, Trees is always moaning about love, but you don’t know, Trees, that love is warmth, heat. The sun is love and love also is fleshly, in this best sense that a beautiful woman gladdens the heart of man and a handsome man brightens the eyes of the ladies. One blessed circle, perpetual motion.” He laughed. “Many women have loved your Andrew, but not you two frozen women.” He continued teasing, waiting for an answer,
“Orpheus with his lute made T’rees
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing.”
“We will never be finished,” said Teresa.
“And there are the beans to do, I must do them,” said Kitty, throwing the long sleeve on the table. “When they’re done, I’ll call to you and you put away the sewing. You must have some lunch, the wedding breakfast won’t be till late.”
“Beauty,” mused Andrew, looking at them. “What a strange thing that I didn’t have lovely daughters, I who worship beauty so much! Yes, Fate plays strange tricks, especially on her favourites. My dream as a lad was to find a stunning mate, and different from most youths, I dreamed of the time when I would have beautiful little women around me. How proud I was in prospect! But of course,” he said confidingly to Teresa, “I knew nothing of a thing more sacred than beauty—human love. My dear Margaret attracted me by her truth-loving face, serious, almost stern—as sea-biscuit! ha-ha—but soft, womanly dark eyes, like Kitty’s. I don’t know where you got your face of a little tramp, Trees, a ragamuffin. If I had had three beautiful bouncing maidens like old Harkness! I saw the three of them coming down an alley in their rose garden last Saturday and I went up and pretended I couldn’t see them. I said: ‘Where are the Harknesses? Here I see nothing but prize roses!’ They burst out laughing and Mina, she has a silvery, rippling laugh, said: ‘Oh, Mr Hawkins, how very nice!’”
“Do you mean that fat one?” asked Teresa, spitefully.
“Ah, jocund, rubious, nods and becks and wreathed smiles,” said Andrew, writhing on the settee in ecstasy, a broad smile on his face. “I peered in among the roses and then I pretended to see them and I said: ‘I was looking for Mina, Teen and Violet, but all I see are the Three Graces!’”
“You should be ashamed,” said Teresa, morosely.
“That just shows you don’t understand the world and your Andrew,” he retorted comfortably, leaning back and flexing and stretching his legs. “The girls were delighted! They went off into happy peals of golden laughter, like peals of bells. Mrs Harkness came running up and said: ‘What have you been saying to my girls, Mr Hawkins? I must know the joke too.’ We all laughed again. Mrs Harkness—I wish you could meet her—is a wonderful woman, motherly, but full of womanly charm and grace too. In her forties, plump, round, but not ungraceful, the hearthside Grace. And she too told me how beautiful my hair is. They can’t help it, the desire to run their fingers through it is almost irresistible.”
“Did she kiss your hand? Mrs Harkness, I mean,” enquired Teresa in a low voice.
Hawkins looked at her sharply. “Don’t jest at things that are sacred to me, Teresa. I have suffered much through love and when you come to know human love, instead of self-love—”
“The beans are done,” called Kitty. Teresa gathered up her sewing.
“If you ever love! For I verily believe that inward and outward beauty strike one chord.”
“You do,” said the girl, “do you? Well, I don’t. How simple that would be.”
“An ugly face is usually the dried crust of a turbid, ugly soul. I personally,” he said in a low, vibrant voice, “cannot stand ugliness, Trees. I worship beauty,” he said, throwing his limbs about in a frenzy of enthusiasm, “and all my life I have served her, truth and beauty.”
Teresa took the worn damask cloth out of the sideboard drawer and set five places.
“I want to be loved in my own home,” said Hawkins, contemplating his long legs and speaking in a fine drawn silken murmur. “Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine what this place would be like if it were a Palace of Love! All your ideas of decorating the walls with fifteenth-century designs, peepholes, twisted vines, naked-bottomed fat and indecent infants on the ceiling—that’s dry, meaningless, dull work, but if this house were peopled with our love, murmurous with all the undertones, unspoken understanding of united affection—a-ah!” He opened his beautiful blue eyes and looked across at her. “And yet, in a way, you’re like my dear Margaret, but without her loving nature. How tender she was! I was her whole life, I and you babies. She knew that I had something precious in my head, like the whale with ambergris.”
“A sick whale has ambergris,” said Teresa. “A whale that’s half rotting while it swims is the sort they go after, because they hope it has ambergris in its head. And you know how they bring in every soapy thing from the beach, everything that’s greasy and pale, for ambergris.”
“And she was modest,” said the beautiful man, joining his hands, and looking down at them. “She had a curious thing she used to say: ‘Andrew, how did a mouse like me get a man like you?’ What charm there is in a modest woman! If you could learn that, Teresa, you would have charm for men, for they can forgive a lot in a woman who is truly devoted to them. What do we look for in women—understanding! In the rough and tumble of man’s world, the law of the jungle is often the only law observed, but in the peace and sanctity of the man’s home, he feels the love that is close to angels! A pretty face, a lovely form, cannot give that—or not those alone. No, it is because he knows he is loved…Don’t forget, Kitty, to clean my boots,” he said, sitting up. “I’m going into town this afternoon.”
“On the same boat with us?”
“No, later. And ask Trees if she sewed the buttons on my white shirt. Trees! Buttons—shirt?”
“Well, you could have gone to Malfi’s wedding, you’re going into town,” objected Teresa, bringing in a vase of flowers.
“Ha—I don’t approve of that hocus-pocus. You know that, Teresa. Love alone unites adult humans.”
“We’re not illegitimate,” Teresa grinned.
He had risen to his feet and half turned to the window; now he partly turned to her, and she could see the flush on his face and neck. “Teresa,” he said gently, “your mother and I were united by a great love, by a passion higher than earthly thoughts, and I should have kept to my principles, and she too was willing to live with me, bound only by the ties of our affection, but—I had already rescued her from the tyranny of that hard old man and we were too young and weak, we could not harden ourselves to hurt her mother’s feelings as well.”
The young girl went on smiling unpleasantly, “And if you loved someone else?”
The man looked out over the beach and bay for a moment and the girl flushed, thinking she had gone too far. He said, sotto voce: “My girl, since you bring it up, I am in love again, with a young woman, a woman of thirty, a—” His voice dropped. He came towards her, seized her arms and looked into her face without bending. “A wonderful, proud, fine-looking woman, pure in soul. My whole life is wrapping itself around her, so I’m glad you brought it up for you will understand later on—”
She angrily shook her arms free. “Don’t touch me, I don’t like it.”
He sighed and turned his shoulder to her. “This is no way to treat men, men don’t like an unbending woman.”
“I am unbending.”
“You will be sorry for it.”
“You ordered us never to kiss or coax or put our arms around you or one another.”
“A coaxing woman, a lying, wheedling woman is so abhorrent to men,” he said. “I have seen a woman sitting on a man’s lap, trying to coax things out of him. Isn’t that shameful to you? I hope it is. I was firm on that one point and your mother agreed with me. She never flattered in hope of gain, she never once lied—never once in our whole married life, Trees. Think of your dear mother if temptation ever comes your way—although you will never be tempted to lie, I know, but the other little things in women, the petty, wretched things, the great flaws in female character—flightiness—” He paused and forced himself to go on with a grimace. “Flirtatiousness—though,” he continued, looking round at her with a broad smile, “that is not likely to be your weakness, nor Kit’s. If, I say, you should ever be tempted to tricks like that, thinking to please some man, remember that they detest those tricks and see through them. They know they are traps, mean little chicane to bend them to woman’s purpose. I was at Random’s the other day. He let his little daughter climb over him and beg him for something he had refused. He gave in. It was a humiliating sight for me, and for the man. I could see her years later, because she is pretty, a warped, dishonest little creature, only thinking of making men do things for her.”
“Have you ever seen me coax or kiss?” asked Teresa, indignantly. “Have I ever begged for a single thing?”
“No,” he said, “and in a way it’s a pity, for you have no attraction for a man as you are now, and it might be better if you knew how to lure men.” He smiled at her, “Why can’t you be like me, Trees? I am known everywhere for my smile. I have melted the hearts of my enemies with my smile. You know Random Senior, the man who did me that great injury—we used to pass in the street, afterwards, every morning on the way to work. I always smiled and offered him my hand. After a month or so, he couldn’t bear it. He used to go round by a back way, to avoid me, he couldn’t bear the smile of the honest man. If you would smile more, men would look at you. Men have their burdens. How delightful it is to see a dear little woman, happy and smiling, eager to hear them, delighted to cheer them. No one can say why a woman’s bright face and intelligent eye mean so much to a man. Of course, the sexes are made to attract each other,” he said with an indulgent laugh. “Don’t think I’m so innocent as I seem, Teresa, but sex has its delicious aspects. Sex—what a convenient dispensation—yes, sex,” he said, changing his tone and coming close to her, ardently, intently, “I am not one to inveigh against sex! You don’t know the meaning, the beauty of that word, Teresa, to a loving man. On the other side of the barrier of sex is all the splendour of internal life, a garden full of roses, if you can try to understand my meaning, sweet-scented, fountains playing, the bluebird flying there and nesting there. There are temptations there but the man sure of himself and who knows himself can resist them and direct his steps into the perfumed, sunny, lovely paths of sex. Oh!” he cried, his fine voice breaking, “who can tell these things to another, especially to you, Trees? You are too cold, you have never responded to me, and my soul, yes, I will use that word, had such great need of understanding! I saw right away that Kitty, my dear girl, was a woman’s woman, a womanly little girl, pretty, humble, sweet, but in you I saw myself and I determined to lead you out of all the temptations of your sex, for there are many—many of which you are not aware—”
“There is simply nothing of which I am not aware,” said the girl.
“You don’t know what you are saying,” he said tenderly.
Her face became convulsed with anger. “How stupid you are,” she cried and rushed out, upstairs, in the breezy part of the house. All the doors were open. Her room at the back of the house, painted nile green, was an inviting cell, almost bare, neat, cool. She rushed in, flung herself on her bed, and stared upwards at the ceiling, mad with anger. In a short time, however, she cooled down, and thought once more that she would cover the walls, the ceiling, yes, the walls of the corridor, the walls of all the house, with designs. She got up and began to draw fresh designs on a large piece of white paper stretched by drawing-pins on her table. She had combined all sorts of strange things in it; patriotic things, the fantastic heads of prize merino rams, with their thick, parting, curly, silky wool and their double-curved corrugated horns, spikes of desert wheat, strange forms of xerophytic plants, pelicans, albatrosses, sea-eagles, passion-flowers, the wild things she most admired. She forgot all about her dress, which she had to wear at the wedding that afternoon, and which was not yet finished. She came downstairs reluctantly when Kitty called her.
Andrew, viewing her solemnly from the end of the table where he unfolded his worn damask serviette over his bulging naked belly, laughed and chanted as he banged his soup-spoon on the table: “Ants in her pants and bats in her belfry.” Teresa turned pale, half-rose from the table, looking at Andrew, and cried: “You offend my honour! I would kill anyone who offends my honour.” There was an instant of surprise, then a low, long laugh, rolling from one end of the table to the other. Andrew began it, Lance with his hollow laugh, Leo with his merry one, Kitty’s cackles joined in. It was far from spiteful, healthy, they had a character there in the simmering Teresa; she never paused for reflection, she rose just the same in defence of her “honour”.
“Your honour,” said Lance, her elder brother, low and sneering. He was a tall, pale, blond lad, chaste and impure.
“A woman’s honour means something else from what you imagine,” said her father, laughing secretively.
“A woman can have honour,” declared Leo, a dark, rosy boy. He turned serious in honour of his admired sister.
Lance muttered.
“You would not kill, you would not take human life,” said the handsome man, the family god, sitting at the head of the table. “Don’t say such things, Teresa.”
“Honour is more sacred than life,” said Teresa somberly. Andrew said abruptly: “What’s the delay? Where’s dinner?” Kitty brought in the soup.
No more was said, and they fell to in a gloomy, angry silence. The unappeased young girl, relentless, ferocious, was able to stir them all. They suddenly felt discontented, saw the smallness of their lives and wondered how to strike out into new ways of living. She did not know this: she brooded, considering her enemies under her brows and made plans to escape. She reconsidered the conversation; she had not said the right thing, but exploded into speech in the usual way. Her father meanwhile had been thinking it over. She supped her soup and without looking up, declared to him: “I am informed, on the moral side. You’re ignoble. You can’t understand me. Henceforth, everything between us is a misunderstanding. You have accepted compromise, you revel in it. Not me. I will never compromise.”
Lance and Andrew, from laughing up their sleeves, came out into the open and burst into joyous roars of laughter. Leo considered her seriously, from above his soup-spoon. Kitty looked from one to the other. Teresa sat up, with a stiff face and a stiff tongue, too, and tried to crush them with a glance. She buried her mouth in another spoonful of soup. Several of them threw themselves back against their chairs and laughed loudly; but the laugh was short.
“Eat your soup and don’t be a fool,” said Andrew.
Teresa flushed, hesitated, but said nothing. Andrew said: “She dares to say her own father is contemptible, her brothers and sister.”
Teresa looked ashamed. Hawkins pursued the subject. “Mooning and moaning to herself and it’s evident what it’s about—no one is good enough for her. She hates everything. I love everything. I love everyone. My one prayer, and I pray, though to no vulgar god, is for love.”
“You disgust me,” said Teresa, lifting her head and looking at him.
He began to laugh. “Look at her! Pale, haggard, a regular witch. She looks like a beggar. Who would want her! What pride! Pride in rags! Plain Jane on the high horse! When she is an old maid, she’ll still be proud, and noble. No one else will count!”
The nineteen-year-old said calmly: “I told you I would kill you if you insult me. I will do it with my bare hands. I am not so cowardly as to strike with anything. I know where to press though—I will kill you, father.” With terror, the table had become silent, only Kitty murmured: “Terry! Don’t be silly!”
The father turned pale and looked angrily at her.
“You don’t believe me,” said the girl, “but you should, it’s for your own good. Base coward, hitting your children when they’re small, insulting them when they’re big and saying you’re their father. Base coward—to think,” she said, suddenly rising, with an exalted expression, staring at him and at them all, “I have to live in the house with such a brutal lot, teasing, torturing, making small. I know what to do—keep your yellow blood, I’ll go away, you’ll never see me again and you can laugh and titter to your heart’s content, look over your shoulders at people, snigger and smirk. Do it, but let me live! I’ll go this afternoon and after the wedding, I’ll never come back.”
The answer to this was a terrifying roar from the father, who knew how to crush these hysterias, and the subdued, frightened girl sank into her place. Presently, she burst into tears, threw herself on the table and shook with sobs. “When we are all suffering so much,” she cried through her hair and folded arms, “you torture us.”
“Meanwhile,” said the beautiful man quietly, “you are letting Kitty do all the work.”
She rose and went ashamedly to work.
“Dry your eyes,” whispered Kitty hastily, “or you’ll look terrible when you go out.” “I have suffered too much,” said Teresa, “I have suffered too much.” But the storm was over.
Meanwhile, Hawkins sat on the stone seat in the wild front garden, whistling. They came down, their hands still red from washing dishes. He saw them running for the boat, burst into laughter, then suddenly: “How wonderful is marriage—the Song of Songs…makes the women leap like roes…”
THE GIRLS LOOKED SO STRANGELY different, tearing round the bay, that their father, who was quite proud of their talents, doubled up with laughter as he stood at the gate shouting good-bye and they could hear his ha-ha-ha pursuing them. Everyone that they had known for years turned out and stood up to see them pass, fishermen, shopkeepers, as well as school children and visitors to the bay.
Kitty, with her neat brown dress, wore brown walking shoes and a turned-up brown sailor hat. Teresa’s remarkable robe flared and floated on the ground and had medieval sleeves, narrow at the shoulder and eighteen inches wide at the wrist; the roses were affixed round this opening. She had high-heeled slippers and an immense palette-shaped hat in champagne colour. Their straight cropped hair, brown and blond, tossed wildly round their sunburnt faces, unpowdered and unrouged; sweat poured down their cheeks.
The day Malfi March was married, it was hot, past one hundred degrees in the shade at two and growing hotter. It was a brassy and livid day, come after a year of drought and fierce summer, at the end of February. The air was thick with dust, the smoke of bushfires drifted along the hills and the red glare and combs of flame could be seen even at midday.
The ferry trip to Circular Quay took nearly an hour. The girls sat outside and stared at the water.
“Your dress simply shrieks at mine,” Kitty said.
Teresa looked down at herself complacently and said: “Not at all.”
She went on thinking about married women and old maids. Even the frowsiest, most ridiculous old maid on the boat, trying to shoulder her way into the inner circle of scandalmongers, getting in her drop of poison, just to show that she knew what was what, was yet more innocent looking than even a young married woman. They, of course, hushed their voices when such a person butted her way in. She might talk coarsely and laugh at smut but they saw to it that she missed the choicest things; and of course, when they talked about childbed and breastfeeding, she had to sit with downcast eyes, ashamed. As for the secret lore that they passed round, about their husbands, she could never know that. The unmarried were foolish, round-eyed, even in old age with a round-cheeked look (or was that just her Aunt Di?) and even when withered, with pursed lips as if about to swallow a large juicy tropical fruit. That was the way they looked when they talked about the sexes! Poor wretches! Teresa would never endure the shame of being unmarried; but she would never take what her cousins were taking either, some schoolfellow gone into long trousers. Teresa gave Kitty a dissatisfied look. She was dreaming away there, with her fine shortsighted eyes, wearing that dress that ruined her lovely nut-brown skin. If she didn't change, she would never get married.
Kitty looked at Teresa.
“We’re gadding lately, aren’t we ? Tina’s engagement and now Malfi!” She had a fresh laugh, delicious, disquieted.
“They’re all getting married, it seems.”
“Except us—and Anne, and Anne’s been a bridesmaid three times,” said Kitty. “That was unlucky.”
Teresa was silent, thinking: “And they never even asked Kitty once. It’s a shame, they ought to give her a chance.” She stole a glance at her sister, thinking: “She ought to have someone to dress her.”
“Maids of honour often marry the best man,” said Kitty. “I suppose it gives them the idea.”
The step between being an unattached girl and getting married is so enormous, thought Teresa, how does anyone get over it? How is it done? Not by kindness. What about Malfi? She always had chances, though she was ill-tempered and now she is marrying young Bedloe, though at the engagement party she stumbled over his high boot with an oath, “Take your bloody legs out of my way”, and he answered nothing, just looked, fair and flushed and timid and loving. Incomprehensible. Her first fiancé, Alec, was there, holding her thin arm, kissing one of her sharp shoulder-blades standing out above the low-backed evening dress. “Oh, leave me alone, can’t you!” Malfi cried, pulling away gracelessly, standing round-shouldered and with a sly, angry, trapped expression. She was no longer pretty, her seventeen-year-old bloom gone, but the suburban boys milled round her; she was never at home alone. Malfi wasn’t satisfied, though she had led a golden youth, thought Teresa, had everything and never had to work. Teresa saw in a sketchy way in her mind’s eye the faces of the boys and girls who went to work with her on the ferry. As the burning sun bored into her and the reflections from the water dazzled her, she saw insistently, with the countless flaming eyes of her flesh, the inner life of these unfortunate women and girls, her acquaintance, a miserable mass writhing with desire and shame, grovelling before men, silent about the stew in which they boiled and bubbled, discontented, browbeaten, flouted, ridiculous and getting uglier each year.
Tina Hawkins, their cousin, a husky-voiced, long-legged brunette, had her engagement party in January, a cool day for summer and they had both gone out to the cottage at Roseville, to see the man, Tom Swann, to see how Tina took it. It was a blowy, sandy day. Tina, with thick dark brows and large eyes, was sullen, or timid—which? They helped to carry out tables into the back garden and there, shifting his feet, near a privet hedge was a starved little man with stiff black hair. “What do you say his name is?” “Tom Swann.” She’ll be Mrs Swann then, from Hawkins to Swann; not a bad exchange. “It’s a black Swann,” said Aunt Bea, who had already nine times offered the joke, “Her goose is a Swann.” Each girl met the groom-to-be, Tom, and to each he was very kind and modest, saying: “I’m your new cousin. How are you, cousin? Call me Tom.” Later Tina sat with him and Anne at one table, while the others looked at them; Tina, who knew what they were thinking, was awkward, flushed and dropped her eyes. He was counterman at a sandwich-shop where she worked.
It might have been Tina’s engagement that made Malfi March send her wedding invitations out so soon. Harry Bedloe was another of those small, underfed men. Teresa suffered for herself and for the other girls; each year now counted against them; nineteen, and has she a boy-friend? Twenty, and does she like anyone particularly? Twenty-one, now she has the key of the door; she ought to be looking round! Twenty-two already! Twenty-three and not engaged yet? Twenty-four and not even a nibble? I’ll never be one of those women on the boat, thought Teresa, never fail, never fail like Kitty, never fail like Malfi, never live the life of shame.
“Will you wear white when you get married?” asked Kitty. Teresa had never thought of getting married, however. Now, with a start, she saw herself in front of a staring crowd, with pressing bosoms and shoulders and staring, glad eyes. Some faceless, memberless heavy shadow stood somewhere near, keeping her company, a man yet unborn in her life.
“Would you wear orange-blossom, a veil and all that?” continued Kitty. “I don’t like brides to wear a coat and skirt, although I suppose it’s more practical.”
This was a burning question in their circle. If a girl wore a long satin gown, she had to have bridesmaids. Then came the questions, How many, whom to ask without heartburnings and without financial hurt, and how to have a pretty wedding without impudent display. Teresa thought over all these arguments without coming to any decision; at last, she said:
“Well, I’d have a bouquet of red rosebuds.”
“Then you couldn’t wear white satin, Terry,” concluded Kitty.
“No,” mused Teresa. After a pause she said: “Yellow satin would be marvellous, wouldn’t it, and you know, stiff heavy yellow lace.”
“For a wedding dress! What could you use it for, after?”
“Yes, you’d just have to keep it.”
“Or for an evening dress.”
“No, you know how they always giggle—she turned up in her wedding dress dyed.”
“I’d have something you could make over,” said Kitty virtuously. “I think it’s a silly waste when you need the money for other things.”
“You would look wonderful in eggshell satin, with old lace,” continued Teresa, looking her up and down, “with your dark skin and eyes.”
Her sister smiled and meditated.
“When you get married, I’ll give you fifty things,” Teresa said. “Fifty, don’t forget.”
“Will you really?”
The girls were silent for a while, until Kitty stirring and sighing, said: “Don’t you think we ought to go in out of the heat? My dress is sticking to me.”
“I’m spouting rivers,” said Teresa, “but I like it.”
She admitted that they could go to the covered end of the boat; there might be a faint movement of air there. They looked out at the glare, wondering if there would be any change that day. There was no wind, but the sky was an immense workshop of wind where they saw pipes, bottles and horns of vapours, spindles, inexplicable flares, tongues of steam, falls of purple and orange. It was a day without white light; at this hour the birds sang no more and even the cicadas skirled drowsily. The ferry scarcely broke the oil eddies and the soot, instead of drowning, merely scudded off over the slippery waves. Middle-aged people slept in the cabins. The voices of schoolboys going to a boat-race came down from the upper deck. A Portuguese deck hand who knew the Hawkins boys, Leo and Lance, stood in the gangway and looked at the sisters. When they glanced his way, he nodded gravely and his dull, long dark eyes gleamed. The water had a ruby light in the path of the sun, the milky waves sent out by the ferry hissed round the thickly weeded shore. The deck hand looked over the water but at last said nonchalantly, with a quick look at Kitty: “Are you Leo’s sister, too?”
“Yes, Mr Manoel.”
Manoel looked out at the water again, slowly turned, looked aft and went inside. He stopped, however, when half in, and lounging against the upright, said to Kitty: “See you were Leo’s sister anywhere.”
His severe face creased, caved in and was polluted by a black laughing mouth, revealing several decayed stumps. He nodded to them and dawdled round the outside deck aft. The girls were flattered. Even plump business men put a hand to the gangplank when it happened to slue under Manoel’s hand. The schoolboys came home bragging when old Joe Manoel favoured them with a joke. He would never allow the girls or the business men to call him Joe, however; he was Mr Manoel and would only answer if so addressed. He lived in the bay and owned two small cabins in a forgotten alley under the cliff. He had a wife, an old mother, and children, and when it was rumoured that he cuddled with the bay’s only wild girl, genteel married ladies who had melted at his agreeably sinister smile, doubted and hesitated. Could nice Mr Manoel do such a thing? Only the other day he had helped them with a parcel, or a valise. Kitty said: “When I went into the cabin, Gladys was sitting on the engineer’s bench.”
“She always sits near the men.”
“Do you think he really kisses her?”
“Oh, no; that’s slander. She lives in his street, that’s all,” said Teresa.
Gladys was fifteen. She ruffled the women and to young girls this Venus was taboo. She was a large, square-faced, ragged hoyden who knew all the boys, the fishermen and the deck hands. She tumbled about with them, not caring how she showed her legs, that was the story. Andrew Hawkins said: “We must not judge, she lost her mother when she was a little thing, just like you children.” The sisters still had confused notions of what her life could be. Teresa imagined that she slept in the boat sheds at night, near the fishermen who were waiting for an early start, amongst their old clothes, bottles, tackle and wading-boots. Kitty had seen two schoolboys in a cave on the beach, rolling, riding each other, giggling and shouting: “Gladys, Gladys.” She was puzzled by this obscure revelation. Teresa, seeing the wild girl rush shouting down the streets with boys and go bathing with them in lonely parts of the harbour, hearing that she had the freedom of all the sheds and boats, had a pang of jealousy. Girls wanted to take the road, but how could they, how could they? She would have liked to ask Gladys certain things.
They picked up their parcels, gloves, and bags and moved towards the sheltered back end of the double-ended ferry. Teresa held up her long skirt with casual elegance in one hand. They rounded the corner and came to a breathless stop. Gladys was sitting down, while the deck hand, bending over her, had his arm plunged down her back, up to his armpit. The girls stared. The deck hand began to withdraw his arm, they saw his hand bulging under the cloth on her loose breast. He squeezed the breast, gave the girls a look and withdrew his knotted claw. He shambled off to the other side, settling his dirty cap on his head. Gladys sprang to her feet and hurried after him, tossing her hair. The sisters looked at each other, looked about uncertainly, and sat down in the place.
“That was funny,” said Teresa.
“Yes,” breathed Kitty. After a few minutes, her curiosity unloosed her stiff tongue and she timidly asked: “What do you think he was feeling right down her back like that for?”
“I don’t know.”
After another silence, Kitty pondered.
“Why do all the men and boys like that tomboy? She’s so dirty, and so awful.”
“You mean her figure? Yes, I know.”
“Not that, but the way she behaves. She’s so rough.”
“They don’t all.”
“Well, Mr Manoel—”
“You wouldn’t want him to kiss you?”
Kitty burst out laughing, and blushed, “Oh, no.” But she began to ponder again and said almost in a whisper:
“But he’s married!”
“I know.”
“But he has no right, then”
“He has a right.”
“A married man?”
“If he loves her.”
“But he’s married.”
“If he loves her,” said Teresa.
Kitty looked at her in astonishment. “Love?”
“It’s love,” said Teresa.
“What do you know about it?”
“I know.”
Kitty looked at her fascinated and for a moment, suspicious, but at her sister’s expression, red face, grey eyes turned black with anger, she smiled slightly, and murmured:
“Oh, of course, you know everything.”
Teresa, flattered, said nothing more and cooled off.
When the ferry docked, a few boys with private school caps stood jostling near the gangplank on which Mr Manoel rested his hand and then, in a spurt, they all leaped, the boys, Gladys, some more boys, over the thinning lane of water; and after them came the rope, the gangplank, and the two sisters walked off followed by the other citizens.
At the Quay, the girls had to pass along the waterfront to reach the Neutral Bay ferry. Kitty, watching Gladys flouncing along with two of the boys, some distance in front, awoke from this obsession, to see another sort of vision—Teresa sailing out in front of her, her lavender skirts swelling gracefully over the fatly wrinkled asphalt, her head tilted, her whole attitude vigorous and excited. A dark axe-faced, starved young man, with spectacles and a black felt hat cocked, was smiling at her and stopping to chat. Kitty approached quickly and was introduced—Mr Crow.
“Nice weather for fried fish,” said Mr Crow.
Kitty giggled. Mr Crow gave Kitty all his attention.
“Where are you going all so gay?”
“To a wedding.”
Mr Crow gave a horse-laugh.
“Just like you girls!”
“Where are you going, Mr Crow?”
“Launch-picnic up the Lane Cove.” He swung out a parcel from under his arm. “My bathers. A wedding, phew! Imagine long tails in this weather—or don’t they wear that any more?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“Some people got married in bathing suits, in the paper,” said Teresa.
“Rather frank, isn’t it?” he grinned.
The girls looked puzzled. “There was a scandal, didn’t you see it?” Teresa asked.
“All that fuss and feathers, put on to take off,” pursued the young man.
Teresa laughed, “You don’t want them to live in them?”
He grinned. “Well, better shove off. I never saw you look so much of a toff,” he said to Teresa, “didn’t know you went in for that.”
“Sometimes.” Teresa seemed confused.
“Good-bye,” said Kitty.
“Keep your powder dry,” Mr Crow warned them.
“Good-bye!”
“Ta ta!”
He lunged past them, carrying his parcel, and without raising his hat.
“Teresa, who was that?”
“He’s the one who coaches me in Latin at night.”
“He’s quite young.”
“Oh, he’s not so young,” said Teresa, “and very poor, that’s why he has to teach at night. He has no one to help him, all the other graduates have, but”
“There’s the boat,” said Kitty.
They ran.
MALFI’S HUSBAND STOOPED AND picked up the long veil, running behind her like a woman catching chicks. By the time they reached the festal door, he had gathered up the gauze and had it frothing on his arm. Malfi was delicate, small and thin.
In the entrance, and climbing the tall wooden stairs, it was a constant hello’ing and calling out of names, rapid introductions lost in a confusion of smiles and crackling new suits and dresses, a phewing and oufing over the heat, jokes about the champagne, words and phrases, family words known to them and strange jokes in the family jargon of the Bedloes and of other strangers drifted into their harbour, floating through the air like confetti, startlingly clever, with a hundred sights of old faces refurbished and new faces varnished. The girls felt happy. They allowed themselves to drift upstairs through the carnival, surreptitiously, in the crush, picking their dresses from their wet breasts and streaming thighs. “How about a nice shower! We ought to have brought our bathers! I’m sorry for the men with their collars”, rang on every side. Every word was a joke, every joke successful. They were breathless in the hall, breathless on the threshold of the hall, which was to rent for “banquets, receptions, smoke concerts, etc.” The church, with its wilted flowers and tangled ribbons, had been disappointing but here there was a large if shabby splendour. From the roof hung the red and green streamers of a past fête. A few white ribands hung from the walls and a white bell with silver tinsel was suspended over the centrepiece of the long banqueting table. Trestle tables covered with white cloths ran round three sides of a large square. The room was spacious, with a dais for a small orchestra, a balustrade, a piano, music-stands. To everyone’s surprise, a few musicians in black were actually there, a violinist with a cloth in his hand, a pianist, a cellist, all looking very off-hand. What expense! Trust Aunt Eliza and Uncle Don for the real thing, at the wedding of their only and beloved child. And then, why not?
There was Anne Broderick, their first cousin, Aunt Bea’s only child. The two girls rushed forward, “Anne, oh, Anne!” They had lived together as children. There was Aunt Bea herself, the Venerable Bede of the great Hawkins family, as she called herself, rushing up to them, again in her old serge suit, borrowed hat, cheap high heels and wrinkled stockings, all smiles and love.
“How are you doing in this heat, my chick, my cherub?” said she to Anne, whom she had not seen since the church, seven minutes away. “Did you ever see my diddums look so plump and pretty, like a spring chicken? Kiss me, my duck. How do you think my baby of twenty-four is looking, chicks?” she enquired. “My two favourite nieces! And how’s your dear father, my dear brother Andrew? We are all broken up that everyone couldn’t have been included, but Croesus himself would think twice about asking our tribe in its entirety and you don’t know how disappointed Eliza was that Malfi insisted upon a relatively quiet wedding. Malfi herself cut down the list of guests by half. She was always thoughtful of her parents, and of course, to them, she is the pearl of great price. How very nifty, Teresa! But look, a rose is hanging by a single thread! So here we are, my chicks, in the fullness of time, at Malfi’s wedding. Everything comes to her who waits, including Mr Right. Of course,” Aunt Bea bent closer, “I understand that he simply adores her, he worships the ground she walks on and the love is more on his side than hers, but we never know. Malfi is settling down at last, poor child, and all is for the best in this best of possible worlds.”
———