The Italian Romance, page 19
Her feet slapped quicker on the dirt. There was nobody about. She came to the house, climbed up the wide stone steps. The verandah was tiled in black and white squares, overhung by the slant of a white wooden roof. It was cool. Her feet had been burning; she hadn’t known it until they touched the relief of the stone.
She dropped her sandals beside the coir mat and she opened the screen door. The hallway was empty, quiet. A splinter of sunlight glossed a few feet of the dark-stained wooden floor. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Anyone home?’ The screen banged after her. The hall was wide. Doors were shut on both sides, and this made her uncomfortable.
‘Mae,’ she called. ‘Are you there?’ She began to tiptoe. The hallway led through two glass doors into an inner room. She turned the handle of one of them and looked in. The heat was awful in there. The ceiling was high, squared off, and a large square skylight was cut into it. There were no other windows. Smaller rooms ran off, and at the back it opened onto the kitchen. Mae grew ferns in the airless room, and a palm. It was meant to be beautiful, white-wickerwork chairs, a mirror-clear rosewood dining table, and it was, but a dreadful summer panted in it. On a normal day all doors and windows would be open to it, every breeze directed towards it.
She almost whispered, ‘Mae!’, as she stood at the threshold.
There was a sound behind her. Lilian closed the glass door again in fright.
Mae stood in her bedroom doorway. The toes of one foot were still pointing their way into a slipper. Her dress was open at the bodice; her hand held the two flaps together.
‘Sorry, Mae,’ Lilian said. She looked down the hallway to the sunlight beyond the verandah.
‘Is something wrong?’ Mae said. The right side of her face was creased from where she had been lying on it, and the grey curls were flatter against her head there, too.
‘No. Nothing wrong.’ She looked at her handbag, dangling now from her wrist. ‘Just I got a letter, that’s all. I thought you might like to know.’
Mae seemed to wake up. ‘Oh, good, love. Let’s go out to the kitchen.’ She fiddled with her dress as she walked towards her daughter-in-law, and the buttons slipped into their holes. She pushed at her hair. She looked almost herself.
‘Are you all right, Mae?’ Lilian said.
‘Oh, yes, love, of course I am. I was just having a little lie down, that’s all. Oh, Lordie, feel the heat in here. Leave those doors open, will you, sweetheart. Aren’t you a good girl to come down?’
They walked through the damp swelter. Lilian rushed the last steps to open the kitchen door. Mae came through after her and closed it over behind them. ‘Don’t want that getting in here,’ she said.
Lilian, who did not understand the intricacies of domestic battle against heat and light, easily relinquished the logic of her own need to open it up again.
Mae opened the icebox. She brought out a crystal jug, draped by an embroidered muslin cloth which dropped four heavy beads from its angled edges. ‘I made some lemon squash last night.’
‘That’s good,’ Lilian said. She put her bag down on the table and walked quickly over to the dresser. She took out two glasses, brought them to the table.
Lilian watched with horror as Mae poured. The older woman’s hands were shaking. She struggled with the weight of the jug, held it underneath with the flat of her other hand. A puddle grew against the base of one glass.
Lilian pulled a chair out, its feet scraping on the flagstones. She snapped open her handbag and spent overlong in plucking out the folded letter which lay staring at her. ‘Ah,’ she said at last. ‘Here it is.’
Mae was dragging her own glass across the table. She sat down heavily on a stool.
Lilian said, ‘Oh, thanks, Mae,’ and picked up hers, sipped at its cold bitterness. ‘Oh, that’s really good.’ She held the glass up against her forehead.
‘You should wear a hat, Lilian. You’ll give yourself sunstroke,’ Mae said.
‘I left without it. I will the next time.’
Mae held her hands clasped together on the tabletop. She leaned slightly forward. ‘What does he say?’
Lilian opened out the sheets. ‘He says, they’re back in Moresby, having a nice rest. They can swim and he says they just laze about on the beach. Here.’ She counted off the first three pages, and kept the fourth to herself. ‘You read it.’
Mae reached out with both shaking hands. She put the pages down in front of her, smoothed them, over and over. ‘Oh, love, my glasses. Where did I leave them?’ She looked behind her, to the bench beside the sink.
‘Would they be in your room?’
‘Oh, they might be. What am I doing, leaving them in there? Unless...’ She patted the side of her dress. ‘Oh, here the blessed things are. Must have stuck them in my pocket without thinking.’ She perched them on her nose and wound the wires behind her ears. She peered at the letter; her mouth worked at the words, and her tongue and lips made little, sibilant sounds until she quietened. She picked the pages up, held them close to her face. She placed the first one face down on the table. ‘Hotter than up in the mountains,’ she said as she read.
Lilian nodded.
Mae finished the second page. ‘Doesn’t say a word about the Japs.’
‘Maybe they’re not allowed to,’ Lilian said.
‘Maybe.’
‘Did you get to the bit about the mozzies?’
‘Yes, just ... I hope they give them out nets for their beds. They’d be foolish not to.’
Mae was finishing the third page when Vince Malone’s large frame filled the kitchen doorway. He was wiping his boots. ‘G’day, love. You should have told us you were coming over. I would’ve got one of them to give you a lift. How’d you get out here?’
‘Vince, she’s got a letter from Bernie.’
‘That’s good.’ He walked slowly over to them. His sweat smell was strong. Lilian could see the glisten on his bare arms and legs.
‘Get yourself a glass, Vince.’
‘I’ll get it.’ Lilian jumped up from her seat.
‘No, I’ll get it, love. Stay where you are.’ Vince was taller than the wooden dresser. The door he opened, with its panel of coloured glass, seemed insubstantial. A trickle of sweat suddenly wormed down his thigh from under his shorts and caught in the hollow at the back of his knee. ‘So. What’s the story?’ he said as returned to the table.
Lilian stood again, and poured lemon squash into her father-in-law’s glass. Vince lifted it straight to his lips and drank the entire contents. He wiped his hand across his mouth and coughed a throaty cough. ‘Give me another drop, love, there’s a good girl.’ And Lilian poured in the last of it. It filled his glass almost to the top.
She hooked her foot around a rung of her chair, and pulled it closer to her. She was lowering herself into it when Vince said quietly to Mae, ‘You all right?’ He settled his big, sun-browned hand on her wrist. Mae flashed an embarrassed look at Lilian.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. Her husband slid his hand away, aware too of Lilian.
‘So how’s the boy?’ he said. ‘Good, is he?’
‘You’d think he was on a holiday camp up there, wouldn’t you, Lil?’ Mae said. She rubbed the spot where her husband’s hand had been. Her arms were thin, splotched with large freckles.
‘He’s not letting on much,’ Lilian said, in agreement with the other woman.
‘Oh, well,’ Vince said. He held the letter up in his hand and it, too, became insubstantial. ‘Give us your glasses, will you, love?’ He laid open his hand.
‘Bit more news than we got from Frankie,’ Mae said as she carefully lifted the spectacles from her face.
‘Oh?’ Lilian said. ‘How’s he?’
‘Still in training up in Queensland, love,’ Vince said. ‘It’ll all be over by the time he gets there.’ He jerked his head quickly towards his wife, his eyes on Lilian.
Lilian said immediately, ‘Oh, yes. Probably will be.’
‘Far too young,’ Mae said, almost to herself.
‘Swimming in the lagoon!’ Vince read. He laughed loudly. ‘I should have joined up myself.’
‘I’d drive you back, but I got a lot of work on my plate today. These Eyetie blokes are good, but you gotta train ’em up,’ Vince said to her. ‘They’ll be sweet in a couple of months, then I can sit back and relax.’
She laughed as she was supposed to.
He said, his voice low, ‘She’s sick with worry about the boys.’
‘Yes,’ Lilian said.
‘Frankie just came home one day and said he’d enlisted. If he’d waited to be called up, the bloody war could be over. I don’t know. Can’t wait to get into it. Ah, well, that’s his education gone. He’ll never go back. She wanted him to go on. He could’ve been a solicitor, or anything.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said. She had never really spoken like this with her father-in-law or, more accurately, he spoken to her. She was self-conscious. She folded her arms. Her bag bounced against her.
‘Anyway,’ he sighed. ‘They seem to have pushed them back in New Guinea. Terrific boys. Saved our bacon. Terrific boys.’
Her head was bent. She watched her sandals making prints in the dust. He blew his nose beside her, trumpet-like, and she looked up, surprised. He dabbed his red and white handkerchief, grimed with the dust of the day, at his eyes. She looked away. She sensed him as he burrowed the handkerchief back down into his shorts’ pocket.
‘She doesn’t know how bad it is up there. I don’t want her to know.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Sorry, love,’ he said. He stood still, and she stopped too, though she didn’t know why. ‘I’m a silly old bugger. Talking to you like that.’
Lilian looked at his shoulder, the khaki green shirt soiled with sweat. She didn’t know what he was talking about. But she said, ‘That’s all right.’
He started off again and she fell into step. ‘I suppose you hear it all, anyway. You reporters know all about it. You’re different, see, love. You’re not like Mae.’
‘No,’ she said.
They walked in silence, neither having anything left to say to the other. They came to the men’s quarters. Wooden posts supported the overhang of the red tin roof. The grass there was in shade, worn in spots but green, and soothing to the eye. An old rusted tin pot sprouted nasturtium; someone had placed it near the drainpipe. The buildings were very quiet. Vince pushed a red door. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Anyone there?’ Lilian saw a bunk bed, the grey blanket folded neatly at its base. A fly buzzed by her face, making a beeline for the empty room.
‘Nice and tidy,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, well they’re army men. They keep the place spic and span, all right. Never had any trouble with ’em. No. Nobody here. Thought they might be back by now. Never mind, I’ll take you in myself.’
And it was then that the Italian came. He was strolling, his hands in his pockets, and he whistled a tune she thought she might have heard somewhere before. He had appeared from behind the barracks; they saw him before he noticed them. He halted, and just stood there. Vince walked towards him. Lilian couldn’t get her feet to move. Or her eyes. Until Vince cut across, she looked right into his eyes. Her heart seemed to wait a beat, the gong of a bell swinging in unbearable slowness.
‘G’day, Tony,’ Vince said. ‘Where are the others?’
‘They’re behind me. Any problem?’
‘No, no. Just looking for you. I need someone to drive into town. Mrs Malone has a package coming in on the train at five o’clock. And you might give my daughter-in-law a lift in.’
‘Certainly,’ he said.
‘Lil,’ Vince said. ‘Tony will drive you. I think he’s got used to driving on the right side of the road, haven’t you, mate.’ He laughed an old laugh.
‘The wrong side,’ the Italian said, an old joke.
Vince put his arm around Lilian’s shoulder and squeezed her. He wasn’t looking at her. ‘Take good care of our girl,’ he said.
‘With pleasure,’ the Italian said. He bowed his head.
‘You see, Lil, Tony’s an aristo. We don’t get many of those around here.’
‘Well-trained, well-trained,’ the Italian said. Both men laughed. They had practised.
‘Ah, well,’ Vince said. ‘Look, I got a lot to do. Bobby Gleeson, the station-master, will have the parcel for you, Tone. Tell him I sent you to collect it.’
‘Very well.’
‘The keys should be in the ignition. All right, love, don’t leave it so long the next time. I know you’re busy, but Mae loves to see you.’
‘I will.’ Lilian had not said a word until then. ‘I just got today off because I’ve worked a lot of overtime.’
‘Yeah. And thanks for bringing that out.’ He seemed to want to keep the business of the letter, of the sons perhaps, private from the Italian. ‘That was real good of you.’ He tapped her elbow.
The Italian turned and walked away, towards the open-walled hay barn where the black Ford was sitting in the shade of a high roof. She walked after him. She looked down at the footprints he’d made. They were sharp. She tried to step exactly beside them, though for what reason she had no idea. She felt as full of concentration as a child.
He opened the passenger door for her without speaking. Her shoulder touched his arm as she slid down into the seat. She closed her eyes for just a moment. The leather was warm. He leaned and picked up a trail of her hem, tucking it in beside her leg, though he made sure not to touch her this time. He shut the door.
He started the engine, reversed out, turned the nose towards the avenue. They drove along in silence until they were in sight of the double gates. He said, ‘I didn’t realise. I should have. Malone.’
‘I knew you were there,’ she said.
He bumped the car over the cattle grid. The road into town was empty as he swung to the right. He didn’t say anything.
It took her a while to say, ‘Do you like it there?’
‘Anywhere is better than the camp,’ he said.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Vince is a good man.’
‘Yeah.’
He looked at the side of her face. ‘You don’t like him?’
‘Oh, no, I do. I don’t really know them; well, only in a way.’
‘A daughter-in-law way.’
‘Yes.’ She kept her eyes straight ahead on the road. It stretched for miles.
‘I’ve heard them mention Bernie. Is that him?’
‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Frank is the younger one.’
‘He hasn’t even finished school yet,’ she said.
‘It’s hard to be the ones left at home, too. Hard for mothers, and wives.’
‘What about your wife?’ Lilian hardly believed she’d asked.
‘What about her?’ he said.
She felt herself bristle. ‘Do you miss her?’
He put his hand up and lowered the sunshade. The western sun was burning low and big in the sky. He said, ‘No, I don’t. I don’t think about her.’
She said quietly, ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Would you prefer me to lie? Very well, yes, I write every day. I dream of her every night. Is that more acceptable?’
Though they sat still in their seats, looking ahead, eighteen inches between them, she felt them tangling. She wanted to push at his shoulders, to set him staggering backwards. She said, ‘I miss my husband.’
He rolled his window right down, hard. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘What an acceptable person you are.’
She crossed her arms and held her elbows. They didn’t speak until they arrived in town. He dropped speed and crawled along Main Street. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know where to leave you.’
‘At the corner. I just live down the road.’
He said, ‘I’ll take you to your door.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t. I’ll just have to explain.’
He pulled in. He barely had to brake. She opened her door immediately and swung her legs out. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She didn’t intend to look back at him. His dark eyes stared at her. She held the door handle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Her eyes welled with tears. She didn’t know where they’d sprung from.
He said, ‘Are you all right?’
She closed the door. ‘I’m fine,’ she said to the air. Then she bent to the open window. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said, and she pulled away. She did not hear the car move as she walked down the road towards her parents’ house. She tugged at a flowered twig of the Christmas bush as she came through the gateway.
I don’t know which of us is more embarrassed. He’s sitting on my bed this morning, where yesterday my daughter sat so near to me that I could have touched her. It’s almost noon. I slept, after all that. He’s brought up a cup of tea. He knocked, opened the door and sheepishly said, ‘Can I give you this, or should I just pack my bags and go?’
‘You might as well come in, now you’re here,’ I said.
And so he did. He passed me my cardigan, for decency’s sake. My glasses. Plumped up a second pillow that I had discarded to the floor during the night, settled me. He’s a trier. And finally picked up the cup and saucer from the bedside table and handed them to me. I sipped at the tea before I could look him in the eye.
The tea is hot. He must have heated the cup, even, desperate man. I say, ‘If I owe you an apology, I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no great mystery to it, Lilian. I haven’t lied to you.’
I sipped again. ‘Well, then I am sorry. I overreacted.’
‘I understand that you’re concerned for your daughter. I have a daughter myself.’
I am prickling with shame. My concern was for myself, I fear. I’m shamed that I have been caught out, interfering in others’ lives, pulling the strings, falling down steps. And that I want her to like me.
‘Yes, your daughter, Jane.’ I can see a pale reflection of a face, mine unless I’ve strayed into a fairy story, in the honey-coloured tea. I am not good at meeting gazes this morning. ‘Is there a problem there?’ I ask.
