Charades (11 page)
Authors: Janette Turner Hospital
“Yes,” Charade muses. “I think that's true. They knew they would find a Great South Land for all the wrong reasons. But they found Australia just the same.”
“The weird and wonderful routes to truth,” he laughs. “The marvellous routes.”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes. Aunt Kay's for instance. Summoning Nicholas and Verity up from â¦Â And you don't even remember her.”
“You keep saying that. I wish you'd tell me what you mean.”
“It'll take nights and nights.”
“Mmm.”
“And how can I â¦Â ? I'll have to go back to the beginning.”
PART II
K: The Variorum Edition
1
In the Beginning
In the beginning, Charade says, when Kay was a child in Melbourne, she was taken Sunday after Sunday to a church where the pastor spoke lightning and thunder â¦
In the beginning,
thundered the pastor, and the child watched the Word skipping and sliding up ladders of sunlight, watched it wink at her from high up in the cave of the church before it slipped through an air vent and escaped. She heard it rumbling about, baying above the trams and trains of Melbourne, that wicked city, and demanding repentance: a barker for God. It called to her: not
Katherine!
but
Kay, Kay!
it whispered, enticing. She closed her eyes and saw it on the carousel in the Fitzroy Gardens, going round and round in the eucalypt air, skipping higher and higher until it was with God again.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God.
It
was
God
, said the pastor,
and the same was in the beginning with God.
The beautiful shimmering Word: round and round and higher and higher it went, in the beginning and world without end, amen.
In the beginning Katherine was surrounded by the Word and by pastors and preachers and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and God and the Powers of Darkness. The air through which she moved was thick with presences,
for we are at all times surrounded,
said the preacher,
by a great cloud of witnesses.
What else, therefore, could she do but walk with them and talk with them and know them all by name and by shape, even the Noisome Pestilence, whom she thought of as long-legged with a leer and bad teeth and fingernails curling like black smoke. When the Noisome Pestilence passed overhead there was a roaring in the air and flames fell.
He had passed over Darwin. He had dropped bombs. He flew in Japanese planes.
So thick, so dense with threat was the air, that the windows of the house (it was in Ringwood, on the outskirts of Melbourne) were painted black, for the terrors that stalked about at night battened onto lighted windows. In the mornings, however, as the trains rumbled by the house on their way into Flinders Street station, the blackened casements were thrown open to the sun and Katherine watched to see who would come riding on the shafts of light. Once a funnel of soot came twisting and dancing in, pointing its toes, lifting its long graceful legs and baring its teeth.
Katherine screamed.
“It's the Noisome Pestilence,” she sobbed into her grandmother's bosom.
“We're not afraid of the noisome pestilence,” Grandma Llewellyn comforted. “The noisome pestilence can't hurt us.” This was because they lived under the shadow of the Almighty. “He shall cover you with his feathers,” Grandma Llewellyn said, “and under his wings shalt thou trust.”
Katherine looked up into the downy feather-breasted air. It smelled of warmth and pillows and of the Velvet soap her grandmother used. A dash of lavender drifted by, a twisting falling feather of fragrance, the smell of sachets kept between clothes in a wardrobe. As it fell it cast a purple haze, the shadow of the Almighty.
Out of the shadow on a mauve day came Katherine's father, riding home from Point Cook in his RAAF uniform. He's got
his wings! the older boy cousins said, excited. Her father came on a dragon that belched sparks and smoke but she had never seen its wings. She hid under the golden-leafed hedge.
“Katherine!” they called, laughing, unable to find her. “Kay, Kay! It's your daddy on his motorbike. Don't you have a big hug for your daddy? Don't you want a ride in the sidecar?”
Katherine watched her mother climb into the motorcycle's side pocket. She watched her father kick at its flank. It snarled, it spat sparks, it roared down the street and under the railway bridge, breathing smoke. The long white aviator scarf around her father's neck ribboned back in the wind like a pennant, the sun touched her mother's copper hair, there were tongues of fire above her mother's head.
“Oh I want to! I want to!” cried Katherine, crawling out from under the hedge. The sun swallowed her parents up. She shaded her eyes and squinted into the brightness until they flew out of it again. “I want to, I want to,” she cried, jumping up and down.
Her father scooped her up and kissed her. “Well now,” he teased, “and who might this little girl be?”
“I'm Kay,” she said, “and I want to.” She wanted to right up until the moment her father set her down in the motorbike's pocket, until she felt how it trembled and hammered at her bones. She screamed.
Grandma Llewellyn came running. “Really!” she said to her son-in-law. “Terrifying the child like that.”
Katherine's father looked sheepish. Through dinner he sat silent, as though all the aunts and cousins left no room at the table for his voice. He played with his fork and made his fingers gallop on the tablecloth, tan-ta-rum tan-ta-rum, and his eyes kept waiting for Katherine's mother to look at him. He whispered something in her mother's ear.
“Why are you whispering?” Katherine clamoured, and one of the aunts said in a low voice: “You can have our room for a while,” and the other aunts all said: “Shhh! Little donkeys have big ears.”
“I've
got big ears,” Kay told her father, climbing onto his lap and pushing back her hair to show. “I can write my name.”
She showed him with her new crayons. K, she wrote.
“No,” he said, “it's not finished. Like this, see? K-A-Y.”
But before she learned A and Y it was time already to go. So there were hugs and kisses and Kay promised to practise with the new crayons and he was gone. She saw his motorcycle disappear under the railway bridge and after that she saw it spread its wings, passing clouds, heading back to Point Cook.
“My father
flies
,” she told Bea.
Bea stuck out her tongue.
“My
father was in Egypt,” she said. “But your father won't fight. If the Japs get us, it's your father's fault. If the Japs get us, they'll cut off our fingers and kill our dads and rape our mothers.”
“What's
rape
?” Kay asked with round eyes.
“Like grate,” Bea said. “Like with cheese.”
Kay thought of her mother's cream skin being shredded by Japanese graters. Into her sleep that night fell flakes of her mother, a bloody rain, and she woke in terror, crying out.
“Why won't Daddy fight the Japs?” she sobbed.
Her mother and Grandma Llewellyn came running in the dark. They stroked her hair. The
Japanese,
they corrected, are God's children. We are all God's children, they said. And your daddy
is
fighting. It is simply that he cannot kill. It is right to defend your country, but it is wrong to kill. So your daddy looks after the planes and he makes parachutes and things like that.
“I don't want you to play with Bea again,” her mother said.
“Oh, Bea's all right.” Grandma Llewellyn blew out the hurricane lamp and opened the blackened window so that Katherine could see the moon. “You can't shield the child from talk. We are not afraid of what people say, Kay. And we are not afraid of the Japanese. We are not afraid of the terror that walketh by night, nor the destruction that wasteth at noonday. They shall not come nigh us. Because we live under the shadow of the Almighty.”
Nevertheless, nevertheless, they prowled about, the great cloud of pestilences, and at nights, when it was necessary to make the long trek through the garden to the outhouse at the back of the yard, Kay looked up in vain for the umbrella of lavender feathers, for the wings of the Almighty. At night the Powers of Darkness stalked unchecked. They were twelve feet tall, she could hear them rustling the leaves, whispering to each other, plotting felonies.
Bea had told her what they did to little girls: they took off all your clothes and tossed you about like a ball, playing Devil's Catch; you could feel their claws in all your softest places; and then they made you drink blood. Bea said it had happened to her.
Katherine would hold tightly to Grandpa Llewellyn's hand, watching the long dark toes of the Terror that Walketh by Night, watching those toes flirt with the edge of the path. She was grateful, then, that her grandfather was taller than the Noisome Pestilence, that he was as safe as the shadow of the Almighty, that he dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. As she sat on the wooden outhouse seat in the darkness, listening to the tinkle of her own water, Grandpa would whistle to keep the presences at bay.
Rock of Ages,
he would whistle. Or
Men of Harlech
perhaps. Or
Jesu, lover of my soul.
And beyond the circle of his breath Kay could hear the night powers gnashing their teeth. Kay, Kay, she could hear them calling.
“They'll never catch me,” she told Bea.
“Oh yes they will,” Bea said. “They can get through cracks in the house. They'll suck you out one night when nobody's looking.”
Bea was older and went to kindergarten already. She lived round the corner, but their two back fences made an L around a paddock of long grass and thistles and buttercups. Every day, when Bea came home from school, they slipped through the fence railings and met in the buttercup patch.
“This is what they do,” said Bea, sliding her hand under Katherine's dress and tickling her secret places.
“Don't! Don't!” Katherine shrieked in a pleasurable terror. “They'll never catch me, they'll
never
!
”
“Oh yes they will,” promised Bea.
2
Sailor, Sailor
Once upon a Melbourne day, Charade says, after Hiroshima but before all the Yanks had gone home, a man came up to Bea and Kay while they played in the buttercup patch.
“Hi, little girls,” he said.
It was a funny word:
hi.
Not a word they had heard before. They said hello, and then they stuffed their fists into their mouths and rolled in the grass and giggled. “Ah've got a present,” he said, “for a pretty litty girl.” It was a strange way to talk, as though he had fruitcake in his mouth. “M'name's Gene,” he said, and they shrieked and bit on their fists to think of a man named Jean. “Ah'm a sailor. And ah've got a present all the way from Tennessee for the prettiest girl in Australia.”
“That's Bea,” Kay said. Her voice came through between her fingers, mixed in with the bubbles of laughter. “Bea's the prettiest girl in the world. Mr Bedford said.”
“Yes,” said Bea. “I am.” She had a face that was shaped like an almond. “I've got cow's eyes.” She liked to open and close them and feel the lashes brush against her cheek. She liked to pull on the dark curls that grew around her face like tendrils, and let them spring back again. She pulled one across her forehead and stretched it down to her chin. She smiled at the man from behind it.
“Oh,” the man said. “Yes, sir. You are definitely the prettiest girl in the world.”
“I know. Mr Bedford said.”
Gene picked a buttercup and stuck it behind Bea's ear. “And who might Mr Bedford be?”
“He's a man at our shop, he gave me a present, he bought me a pineapple iceblock. But it's a secret.”
“Aha, but you told it,” the man said. “A little girl who can't keep a secret.”
“I can so, I can so,” Bea chanted. She did a somersault in the buttercups so the man could see the little pink flowers on her panties. The man lay down on his stomach in the grass and took off his white hat. The hat looked like a dog dish. It was the silliest hat they had seen. He set it on Kay's head and she bit her knuckles very hard and nearly choked with nervous mirth.
“Guess ah'm just going to have to give my present to your cute little friend,” he told Bea. “ âCause ah can't trust a little girl who can't keep a secret.”
“I can so, I can so,” Bea said, and she pulled the hat off Kay's head and put it on her own.
Kay asked: “Are you in the R-Double A-F?”
Bea said: “My father was in Egypt, but Kay's father wouldn't fight, he only made parachutes.”
Kay said: “Are you in the RAAF too?”
“No ma'am,” he said. “Ah most certainly am not in the RAAF. Ah already told you, ah'm a sailor, a sailor. Ah got me a bee-ootiful battleship for my home. And ah'm going to take one lucky little girl to see that ship if she can keep a secret.” He picked up Kay's foot and unbuckled her sandal and began to play with
her toes. “This little piggy went to market,” he sang. “And this little piggy ate roast beef.” And when he got to the little piggy who ran all the way home, his fingers began skittering up Kay's leg, past her knee, past â
“Don't! Don't!” she shrieked, giggling, and rolling away in the grass. She didn't know whether she liked it or not. She wanted to whisper to Bea: “Is he one of the Powers of Darkness?”
But Bea was turning cartwheels now, and the man was watching her. She cartwheeled in a circle around him and then she sat in the buttercups and unbuckled her sandals and began throwing them into the air and catching them. “Who wants to see a baddleship, a baddleship?” she sang. “Mr Bedford gives better things. But I'm not telling what, 'cause it's a secret.”
“On my ship,” Gene told Bea, “you can sit on the big guns, va-voom.” He made a circle with a thumb and one finger, and poked another finger through it. Then he put the circle up to one eye. “The windows are round and you can put your face up against them and say howdoody to a fish. But ah guess ah'm gonna take your friend here,” and he reached for Kay's foot again. He played the piano on her ankle, he hummed songs up and down her leg. Kay squirmed and giggled and tried to pull away. She thought perhaps she didn't like it. Then she thought perhaps she did. The man sat up and lifted her foot to his mouth and blew between her toes.
“Stop! Stop!” she shrieked. “It tickles.” Bea went on playing catch with her sandals, the shoes flying higher and higher. “It tickles, it tickles!” Kay cried.
“I've got a present for a tickly little girl,” Gene said. “But first you have to tell me your name.”
“Katherine,” she gasped, twisting and laughing. “It's Katherine Sussex, but I'm Kay. Stop! Stop!”
“Kay,” the man sang. “K-K-K-Katy, you're the one that I adore. Oh I love little Katies, I do.” Bea lay on her back in the buttercups and kicked her legs to keep time with the tossing of her sandals; she pointed her toes, and her dainty feet went up and down, up and down, like birds soaring, plummeting. Gene put Kay's toes in his mouth and sucked them, and waves of something ran right to the tops of her shoulders. He tickled her panties with his finger and she gasped with shock. Sounds came out of her mouth, but she couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. “Va-voom, va-voom,” laughed Gene, catching hold of her feet again. “This little piggy went to market,” he said, running his tongue around one toe. “And this little piggy stayed home. And this little piggy flew all the way ⦔
Right then one of Bea's sandals came sailing by and Gene lunged out and caught it, “Aha!” he cried. “Now ah've got you!” Bea squealed and catapulted herself against Gene, and he caught her with his left arm and waved the sandal high above her with his right. They rolled in the grass together. Bea gulped with laughter and kicked and squirmed until Gene knelt in the buttercups and pinned her between his legs. “If you keep still like a good little girl,” he said, “maybe you'll be the lucky one to come and see mah battleship.”
Kay thought: Bea's the one. It's her he wants to take.
The hammers inside her chest slowed down, she was glad it was Bea. Then again, she would have liked to be the one. Perhaps.
Bea, imperious, commanded: “First you have to put my sandals on.”
“Why, ma'am,” Gene said. “A pleasure.” He sat back on his heels, and pinned Bea's leg between his while he strapped and buckled. She wiggled her toes in the space between his thighs. “Oh, oh,” he said. “A regular little witch.” He tickled the sole of her foot. “Little witches need to have their bottoms spanked. Guess ah'm just gonna have to take you right on down to mah ship and take you back to Tennessee. We're gonna sail across â”
“Katherine! Bea!” came Grandma Llewellyn's voice. “Where are you?”
Kay and Bea and Gene all jumped as though they had been shot. They sat up still and straight. “Guess ah have to get on back to mah ship,” Gene said. He put his fingers over their lips and whispered: “Now ah sure hope you can keep a secret, because if anyone tells about the lollipop ship, the boogey man comes and eats her up.” And then he went jogging away through the buttercups till he came to the lane at the end of Bea's fence.
“Katherine! Katherine!” called Grandma Llewellyn.
Kay and Bea stared at each other.
“Katherine! Bea! Where are you?”
They somersaulted across the buttercups and crawled through the railings into Kay's back yard and ran up the path to the hen house. “We're here,” they called, “we're here.”
And then they said: “Nothing. We weren't doing anything. We were just playing in the paddock.”
Grandma Llewellyn went on putting eggs into her basket. “Don't get into any mischief,” she said, before she went back inside the house.
Kay and Bea looked at each other and then they put their fists in their mouths and rolled in the grass outside the hen house.
“Jean, Jean! Mah name is Jean!” spluttered Bea, catching hold of Kay's foot.
“Gonna take you to Tennis-y,” Kay mimicked.
“Ah'm a sailor, a sailor!”
“Ah'm gonna spank your bottom!”
They shrieked and struggled and tickled until they were exhausted. Then they climbed the plum tree and stared out over the paddock. Sometimes, if they sat very still, a bird came and pecked at a plum. Kay worried at a piece of bark with her fingernail, thinking, thinking. Bea sat hunched on her branch and stroked her ankles.
At length Kay announced soberly: “I didn't like him.”
“That's because you're a baby.” Bea hooked her knees over the branch and swung upside-down, her curls flying. “I told you that's what they do. When Mr Bedford buys you an iceblock, you'll see.”
“Do you like it?” Kay asked.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe I do too.”
“Not as much as me,” Bea said. She moved back and forth like molasses, her fingertips trailing through air. “I always like things more.”
Kay tried to decide: what she liked, what she didn't like. It was true, Bea always liked things more. Bea
liked.
What did Kay like? She liked to close her eyes and see things. She saw Bea's hair spreading and spreading, she saw it growing grape leaves that reached out and touched the grass. She saw Bea growing into the buttercup patch, she saw bunches of grapes, she saw stickiness and juice. She saw Jean the Baddleship Man: how he walked without seeing, how stickiness pulled him, how Bea's tendrils could wind themselves around him until he wouldn't be able to move.
“I didn't like him,” she said decisively.
“I didn't too,” Bea shrugged. “But that's what they do.
You'll see.”
Bea always knew more, so Kay told Bea: “I know what Tennis-y looks like.”
“I'm going to go there,” Bea said. “Jean's going to take me.”
Kay frowned. “I'm going to go there all by myself.”
Bea licked her finger and crossed her heart. “I'll go first,” she promised.
But Kay closed her eyes and saw that Bea's fingers and toes were sprouting little green pads, that her hair was green, that she was part of the plum tree and the buttercup patch, that she would never get away.
No, she thought. I'll go first. I'll be the one. By myself.