Cold Light (64 page)

‘Please,’ she said.

George slowly stood up and Osborne followed. George held a piece of Meccano in his hand.

She had decided to make it a general lesson, not to be seen just as a rebuke of Osborne.

‘I saw Osborne picking his nose and I wanted to simply point out to you – George, you probably know this – that it is considered, well, bad form to pick your nose.’

They said nothing.

She said, ‘It’s not what gentlemen do in public.’

George said that Osborne wasn’t in public.

‘Anywhere that you are likely to be seen is public, which includes this room – this house.’

She then worried about what to say about picking of the nose in private, and that George might be technically correct, that their playroom might have a status different to a public place – it was their own place, a place to be alone. She might be wrong about that. Too bad.

‘You have probably been told by your mother before she died about what you should and should not do with your bodies in public – when others might be watching. Have you?’

‘I suppose so. No. Yes and no,’ George said.

‘Yes and no,’ Osborne said.

‘Let me give you some simple rules – starting from the top of your head.’

George said, ‘You’re not our mother.’

She had been waiting for this. Amelia had warned her about this inevitable, ultimate defiance.

She crouched down. ‘I can never be your mother, that’s true. You have lost your mother and that is a very sad thing. But from now on in your lives, I will try to take on some of the jobs she would have done. To fill in. And I know I will never be as good or as important to you as your mother, but I will try to be your friend and tell you things that a friend would tell another friend. I will try to be a grown-up friend.’

They had no reply to this.

She stood up and tousled their hair. ‘Beginning with the top of the head: you do not scratch your head in public. You should not comb your hair in public – you should go to the bathroom or dressing room to brush or comb your hair. Moving down to your face –’ she touched both their ears – ‘you do not clean your ears or blow your nose in front of people –’ she touched their noses – ‘nor pick your nose. You do wash behind your ears otherwise your ears will smell. You leave the table to blow your nose. You do not pick at your skin. You do not spit. You do not pick at your teeth at table . . .’ She hesitated. What about France? And she had heard that in China and Japan it was acceptable. Better to be on the safe side. ‘If you need to remove something from your teeth during a meal, take the toothpick and go to the . . .’ She hesitated again. What did the boys call the lavatory? The toilet? Arthur Circle had toilets separate from the bathrooms. The boys were staring at her. ‘Oh, you go to where you wash your hands – the bathroom or the toilet. Sometimes you can remove whatever it is that is bothering you with your tongue, but do not be obvious.’ How many times had she more or less broken this rule? ‘You brush your teeth after every meal. Moving down your body –’ She took their hands, examining them back and front – ‘You make sure your nails are cut and clean and your hands clean – washed before and after every meal. You do not bite your knuckles or your nails. Dry yourself in the shower, not outside the shower.’ That was somewhat off the subject.

She stopped. She realised that there were things boys should not do with their privates and anus, but she thought that was not perhaps stepmother business. Best left to their father. Or was she dodging the hard things?

‘And, George, take off your cub top – uniforms are worn for the appropriate occasion, not for play or as clothing for playing sport. Nor do you wear school sports clothing when playing in the garden. The cub uniform is an honourable uniform, to be worn only on cub business. Alright, that’s enough of life lessons today.’ She smiled at them and patted them.

She was no good at this.

‘Did you know my mother when she was alive?’ George asked.

That could be a searching question.

He added, ‘Did you know my dad when my mother was alive?’

‘I got to know your father because we are . . . work friends. I met your mother once – at a dinner party at the Lodge, which is where the Prime Minister lives.’

‘You are not our mother,’ George repeated. ‘We do not have to do what you say.’

‘But you would be foolish not to listen to what I say. And you would be foolish to disregard good advice from a good friend.’

They had no response and she left them to their play, feeling that she had made a serious contribution to their lives.

That evening, when their father came home, they rushed to him and held on to him. He ruffled their hair and asked how their day had been.

She went off to leave them alone, rather touched by the affectionate tableau, although, as yet, there had been no hugs for her.

Later, as she had a whisky with Richard while the boys were listening to a serial on the wireless, he said that the boys had said that there had been a scene during the day.

‘How did they mean – a scene?’

‘About noses.’

She laughed. ‘I gave them a lesson in grooming.’

He did not look at her, but said, ‘I think that sort of thing is best left to me.’

‘Simple matters – things they might or might not have been told. And deportment. I agree, though, there were a few things only a father could tell them about their public demeanour and the lower body.’ She laughed and touched his arm.

‘I think there are things the boys would rather hear from me.’

‘I agree, and I have left those things for you.’

‘I mean grooming.’

‘Oh? These were rather basic matters.’

‘I still think they are best left to me.’

‘How, then, should I know what is best left to you and what are those matters I should take in hand?’

‘I am sure it will become clear.’

She looked at him. He did not look at her, but stared into his whisky.

‘Should I not teach them manners?’

‘They will take their lessons more easily from me, for a time.’

She realised that she had jumped into another woman’s nest. He would be teaching them what he and their dead mother would have wanted. Her wishes, her standards, did not apply.

She felt hurt that he did not trust her in these matters, yet relieved also of what she saw stretching ahead – relentless disobedience by the children; the never-ending training of children; and the question of discipline.

She would find uncontentious things to teach them – things that were equally of value in their lives. She would like to think she could teach them whimsy, urbanity. But how did you do that? And had she, herself, forgotten how to do whimsy?

She agreed with Doctor Spock about the harshness of the old-style, detached, no-picking-up and no over-cuddling motherhood, which had been the way of her childhood. In her parents’ day, children were raised to be reliant, and parents did not seek physical love from their children. But she also knew that boys could become over-attached to their mothers. She sometimes thought that her mother would have said that to say ‘I love you’ in a family situation placed a demand on the other member of the family to echo this love. Her mother would probably have analysed this as requiring an obligatory echo, which could not be trusted and should not be forced. Had she now become her mother’s voice? There seemed to be no chance of that happening in her new family. The boys practised no-touch childhood with her.

With the children, time passed and their school routine took over. Emily had dropped her not-my-business attitude, and more and more handled the children after school while she was at work. She had them washed when Richard and she arrived home. She had a firm but comical way with them, which Edith could never imitate.

When she could find herself a perch as an observer, she was sometimes impressed by the will and the strength of the boys’ preferences and foolishness. When she was able to study them, she was able to enjoy them. But too many times she found it impossible to hold to the role of observer and was sucked into being emotionally combative. She found herself in a difficult emotional struggle with them. She could not always be the patient sociologist – she found herself reacting, willy-nilly, as a living human being who wanted them to behave in a certain way, to be more open to all she had to give them. But they were two wilful human beings determined to defy her as strongly as she wished, perhaps wilfully, to shape them.

Her absences on AAEC business in Coogee were a relief from the low-level combat of the household and its meals. That tension existed between Richard and the boys as well – he had his own struggle with wilfulness.

She sometimes artificially extended her absences to give herself a couple of days free of tension and to enjoy Sydney and its concerts and plays and movies and shops.

One Tuesday afternoon at Arthur Circle during the school holidays, preparing for Richard’s arrival after work, she was luxuriating in the bath with bath salts when the two boys burst in.

Led by George, they stood and stared, and she turned, taken in fright. She crossed her arms over her breasts, and said, rather too firmly – in fact, loudly, with an angry edge – ‘Out!’

They held their ground under her glare for a second or so, and then fled.

She stayed there in the bath, and thought,
No, no, no. I was wrong, that was the wrong tone. I should not have frightened them. They had to be banished, true, and that was unavoidable, but I should have found a softer way
. And they had, sooner or later, to see the naked female body, if they hadn’t already found images in books – art books – or the native women in
National Geographic
or had peeked at their mother. Though they certainly had never seen the naked body of a stepmother.

For God’s sake, why was she embarrassed, and why did she now pass this embarrassment about the human body on to them?

Her head drooped. She had sounded like a prude rather than a Bloomsbury sophisticate. Perhaps she had now left Bloomsbury and was simply what Frederick would call bourgeois.

Dripping, she left the bath, dried herself, and then wrapped a towel around her body from breasts to knees. Going to the door, she called to the boys. At first they didn’t come, and then, after repeated calling, softening her tone to something of a plea or a tone that promised that they were not in trouble, they appeared.

She apologised for shouting at them and then said, ‘We should not be ashamed of our bodies, or of our nakedness. Most of all, we should not be ashamed of our curiosity about life. I apologise for rousing on you about it. Would you like to see my body?’

George did not reply, but Osborne nodded.

‘George?’

Nervously, he said, ‘Yes.’

She undid the towel and showed them the front of her body. ‘You see I have breasts – when a girl becomes a woman her breasts grow. You will not have breasts like these, but you do have nipples. And you see I have no penis. Women have a vagina, which is inside here –’ She pointed to her pubic hair.

‘Why do boys have nipples?’ George asked.

‘That’s a very good question, George. I am afraid I’ve never read a satisfactory answer. They are left over in our evolution and have no use – say, like the appendix. But really, no one has an answer.’