Girl with a Monkey (11 page)

“Another?” she asked, indicating the half-emptied bottle. Elsie, to whom this unaccustomed quantity of liquor was remarkably potent, just laughed and nodded and lay back on the bed. Her thoughts had a spastic quality. They shot unguardedly in any direction.

“I am too full of the milk of human kindness. Should I? Should I really take another? Gentle Falernian or Hippocrene, Laura.
Nunc est bibendum
. Fill 'er up.”

She took her thrice-replenished glass, sipped and let out a huge sigh.

“I feel sweetly sad tonight and filled with poetic urgency. A sort of ‘what was left of soul I wonder when the kissing had to stop' feeling. Only this time it's drinking. Browning.” She belched slightly. “Sorry, darling. Do you like Browning? So passionate, without a word of sex, too, just like the Bronte sisters. I bet they would have made a hot old singing combination had they been alive today. Just imagine them doing ‘Hold tight'.”

She hummed a little, waving her glass in time, then broke into, “Hold tight, hold tight! Ickyacky acky! Sea food momma!”

Laura, who had been learning the labels of bottles practically since she could first spell, rolled back on the bed and laughed weakly.

“Don't let no man ever get you tight, honey chile. You'd be a pushover.”

“Would I?”

Elsie clung to the iron bedhead and pulled herself upright. She gazed at herself in the dressing-table mirror opposite with a wonderful introspection.

“You're right. I would. Actually this is a good thing I'm doing, Laura, proving to myself with complete finality what I have long debated. Women shouldn't mix men in their liquor.”

“You mean have them hanging on the side of the glass like a split slice of lemon or a cherry?” said Laura.

“No, you fool. Anyway, hold everything. I have to go to the bathroom now.”

She had trouble enunciating properly, for no matter how hard she tried to pull her lips into the correct vowel and consonant positions, with a rubber-like mobility the lips seemed continually to pull to one side of her face, and every utterance came out thickened and over-precise. Her knees wavered beneath her as she lurched to the door, and after great difficulty with the knob she reeled into the corridor where, by creeping along one side and clutching at the wall, she made a slow dream-like pilgrimage to the bathroom.

When she returned Laura had turned her bed back and placed the tooth-tumbler with a last inch of sherry in it upon the chair at the bedside. She changed, hardly aware of her actions, into her blue spotted pyjamas and more or less fell into bed, whereupon Laura with the warmth of an ageing, penitent procuress tucked her in and held the tumbler for her.

“You or me?” she questioned. “Can do, little one?”

But Elsie was soundly asleep, so she raised the glass to her own lips instead.

At two o'clock Elsie found herself shuddering against the veranda rail, with the palm-trees crashing and creaking and lashing the star-white heavens with their black whips. She was not aware of having run out there, though she could hear the bedroom doors banging open and closed behind her; and feeling her naked toes twisting upon the timbered veranda she realized that she must have left bed almost involuntarily. Laura had one arm about her shoulders and one hand stroked the perspiration-damp hair back from her eyes.

She was very, very sick.

Even as she leant in agony across the rail she was conscious of the intense magic of the setting, the thunder of waves along the beach fifty yards away, over and over again the Pacific's basic motif, the darkness of the trees and the palms in windy outline. She was even pleased with the incongruity, knowing she
would be able to describe it humorously in letters later. Therein lay her shallowness.

There was Mass the next morning at eight, said by a visiting Franciscan in the local dance hall. Elsie was present with five or six others, her head filled with beating tides that stormed in the caverns of her ears and temples. Her mouth was a battleground of flavours.

As she knelt on the bare boards, a scarf tied about her head, she felt acutely unworthy to be present after a night of somewhat mild degradation which was constantly brought to her attention by the throbbing of her head. She saw the old pensioner who was acting as server light two candlesticks with a borrowed match, she looked at the long school forms on which they were to sit during the sermon and sought in vain the splendour of a Corvo cathedral.

The priest was extremely tall and thin with a sickly asceticism of feature revealed when he lifted back his cowl at the Introibo. His toes were projecting from his sandals and were grimy and peculiarly splayed, while one nail on the left foot was blackened and about to come off. How even the tired eye absorbed all this detail. It was part of the process that even now the priest was mentioning . . .
qui laetificat juventutem meam
. To God who gives joy to my youth. The server, too, was handicapped with a stiff leg, and although unable to genuflect each time he crossed from
epistle to gospel side, he managed nevertheless a rheumatic bob from the waist, which in its own hampered simplicity seemed to Elsie an infinitely moving thing. Above them fly-speckled Chinese lanterns still befruited the ceiling, and festooning rivulets of scarlet, orange and lime, the paper streamers veined stage and walls. Here, where the sweaty boys in shorts danced with their girls on the roughly polished floor, the eternal mystery was taking place before the seven of them; where on a Saturday night the young were accustomed to worship and offer to Terpsichore the fearful harmonies of saxophonist, pianist, and drummer bent in votive gesture above their tortured instruments.

How concentrate on the beauty of ritual when treacherously the eyes were seduced into a half-world of futurist motif on the broad linen-covered back in front, cross-sections of anemone and shell, starfish and coral mulcted in browns, beiges, and unreal pinks, transported into the ribbed under-water world of weed moving in the tide currents, and the fish shadowy beneath ledge; or sunlight striking sea-bottom? One heard as through walls of water the soft voice repeating
qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem
. Above all,
dona nobis pacem
. Setting into motion the widening circles of sound,
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi
, like windhover words dropped into the still pool that was each soul.

The clanging of parakeets came through the open doorway contrapuntally to this ancient language that flowed peacefully, rhythmically, and logically above the movement of wrist with chalice, sunlight on wine, chill morning wind on wheaten bread. The server bent knobbled fingers above the bell and seven heads bowed, knees ceased their restless search after comfort on wood, and in this tiny and silent corner of the world the miracle was complete.

Elsie, realizing fully what Belloc had described in
The Path to Rome
, savoured the morning as it hung blue and green banners across windows with piercing sensitivity, a species of satisfaction in the material and natural things round her heightened to exquisite perception by this tantalizingly brief union with the spiritual. She was like Stephen Dedalus, released from sin, shriven of her own drunkenness in this morning sacrifice, and like him, too, on leaving the hollow wooden hall she would see as if never had these things been seen before, the salt flowers of water tangled among rock in creamy foam, grass forests still dew-lit, birds arcs of colour and sound between the trees, and herself suspended in sunlight like a moth new-moist. So it was.

Elate with the essence of daylight, she walked after breakfast along the beach crescent as far as the point and spent half an hour or more tickling the crabs beneath the pool ledges and splashing her feet in the
channels left by the peak of the tide. She turned back to the pool after a while and slipping out of the beach coat that covered her swimming costume, waded in. The water had a giant and compelling swell. Even though it was May it was not unpleasant and, coming to the surface through a wall of green water, she shook back her head like a desperate little animal and struck out for the diving platform.

There was one other bather only.

A man had reached the platform ahead of her and she had not noticed him on first entering the water. The great surging movement kept swinging her back towards the beach and it took all her strength to fight out past the first breaking waves. This little combat was being watched with a lazy interest by the other who was now lying face-down, hands playing in the sea, and looking up now and then at her efforts in tolerant good humour. Feeling challenged, Elsie gave her body to the embrace of the next outgoing wave and was rewarded by being thrown roughly up against one of the platform's piers which smeared her hands with green slime and barnacle-grazed the surface of her knees. It was high tide just on the turn and the water was washing a mere twelve inches below the platform level. Raising her hands to the wet boards, Elsie clung panting, incapable of speech until the water should depart from her lungs and the air return.

Above her face a general impression of sunburnt
flesh resolved into detail—nose coarse, wide-nostrilled above a thick mouth with projecting lower lip and eyes small, grey, and politely malicious.

The mouth moved into the shape of a politeness. Elsie, shrinking and advancing with the tide, trod water and raised the flap of her cap from one ear.

“What's that?” she asked, and laughed. “I couldn't hear a word.”

“I said it's good in.”

“Yes, it is.”

Conversation in pause as the moments before a corrida when bull and matador sum each other up. What a peculiar situation, thought Elsie, that I should be here silently and desperately afloat two feet from a man who appears to be nothing but head and shoulders. There can be no body. What a refreshing change. The head gestured as if motioning her to join it, so, unwilling to clamber up beside him there, she let go and swam round the platform to the steps. As she stood above him the water ran in a steady stream from the skirt of her bathers, spread, coloured the grey wood black. The man rolled over so that he might the more easily look up at her, and revealed his own blurred outline on wood as he rested head on hands, blinking up in the salty glare.

“Didn't you come in last night?” he asked. “On the six-o'clock ferry, wasn't it? It must of been then, because you looked into the parlour after tea.”

“I don't remember you,” said Elsie.

“No? I was playing the old pianner. I just got a glimpse of you when you turned to go out the back. There was some big piece with you. All in white.”

Elsie winced.

“A friend of mine.” Suddenly she felt conscious that he was appraising her as she stood there vulnerable in the harsh light, and, embarrassed by her thin legs, she sat down hurriedly with them tucked for protection beneath her. They looked at each other and the man grinned.

“I like 'em thin.”

Elsie reddened deeply but said nothing. The water running from under her cap trickled across shoulder and breast and dried into sticky lines. She took off the cap, shaking out her hair stiff with salt water so that it stood out in wild tufts round the small face while the man continued inspecting her with insolent and amused eyes that blinked occasionally in the sun, but otherwise held her own steadily enough. She felt, unusually for her, that she was not in command of the situation, though it was one ready-made for intimate flirtation, the two of them marooned, as it were, upon a raft of isolation. There was nothing visible seawards but sea and still more sea, and behind them the quiet curve of the bay.

“What's your name?” he questioned without looking at her.

“Elsie. Elsie Ford.”

He rubbed one giant toe upon the other and raised his feet a little in order to inspect an oyster cut on the inside of one.

“You don't teach or somethink like that, do you?”—attempted incuriously as if there were no necessity for reply and all the time in the world for the response should it come.

“Yes. Why? Do I look typical?”

“Who? You? A brat in a pair of shrunk-up togs? I'll say not. No. I jus' thought I knew the name. A fellow where I board is always talking about some kid named Elsie. Says she teaches at the same place. God help her, I say. Ole Des is a walking sinus case. Snuffle, sniffle. Fair drive you crazy.”

“You don't mean Desmond Macarthy, do you? Why, of course I know him. That's the one. Oh!” She rolled over on her back with laughter. “I bet I know you, too.”

“Yeah?” He turned his head in a motion of unbelief. “Who am I?”

“Why, Harry! The Harry who made all that appalling racket two weeks ago at the rally at the oval. And made Des feel such a fool.”

“Was that you? I knew he was talking to some girl, but I couldn't get a proper look. With a bloke, weren't you? Big feller, all chin and curls and best supporting actor stuff. Well!” He drew a deep breath
and repeated “Well!” on a note of satisfaction. “I've been wanting to meet you ever since that night! ‘Borders,' you said, nice an' clear so I could hear it right under the mango-trees. ‘Boarders!' As if we was somethink strange and rare. So I made up me mind I'd pull you down a peg or two some day. And here you are!” He gave a great laugh and sat up. “Give us a look at you. ‘Boarders!' Why, there's nothing of you to be snooty. Jus' like a damn' kid.”

As his eyes inspected her in minutest detail Elsie wondered perplexedly why she was, if not outraged, at least confused or embarrassed; but she was none of these things, and had to admit to herself that she was rather pleased for once to be unable to direct the situation with a pressure on this button or that, displaying this little facet of charm or that one. Nor was he completely offensive. The very frankness of his insolence held a quality that was in itself without offence; his eyes absorbing the smear of lipstick on the cheek, the untidy hair, and the delicate limbs had a lack of criticism in their gaze and much of kindness. She bartered look with look and found him not greatly to her liking, for the eleven or twelve years' advantage he had of her had run to a flabbiness around the waistline and a certain sagging beneath eyes and chin. Sparsely the hair grew back from red and greasy temples, straight-slicked with water; the neck was thick and very strong. Strangely enough, his outsprawled legs
on the sodden platform were thin for his powerful barrel of chest and shoulders, yet they only gave to his appearance vulnerability that was physical rather than psychical.