Girl with a Monkey (3 page)

Dust rose from powder-dry roads, forcing its way under the chattering glass and onto the seats. She sneezed once or twice and shook the loose folds of her skirt. In the morning light her dress looked stale and she too felt grimy and prickly from the dust. Near the little foot-bridge that spanned the creek at the foot of the home road, two dogs chased them for fifty yards and then fell back barking hopelessly. She turned to watch them as they leapt upon each other, mouth
scuffling with mouth. Soon they were nothing but a whirling dust-cloud in the road.

For some time the driver had been observing her in the mirror.

“Goin' the wrong way?” he queried affably when he saw her face front again. “Wotyer doin' out here at this hour?”

He grinned into the glass, forgetting she couldn't see him. Elsie's eyes rested on the tanned skinniness of his neck.

“I'm only in Townsville for the day.”

“Wot? No work? You're a schoolie, ain't you?”

“Yes. But I'm on transfer. I'm going south again. Back to the coolness.”

They were passing Joe Seaniger's house now, a white cube of heat under the August sun. On the lawn near the side steps a rug was spread and lying on it, extravagantly browned and lethargic, Joe's wife sacrificed herself to the blazing sky.

“Glad to be goin'?”

“Very glad.” She laughed. Her relief was depthless. “Another summer and another ‘wet' would have killed me.”

The driver grunted and changed gears with sweaty hand. She was an odd one, all right! He'd seen her often in the mornings on the way to work; unhappy most times, he thought. And read! Geez! She never had her head out of a book. Now that was funny,
too, because he'd seen her tarted up of a night, going in early or coming home late. Once he remembered passing her one evening when he was on his last run, and there she was with some bloke, right in the pool of the headlights; arms all round each other, too, and singing flat out in the darkness. Funny face. Not pretty. Thin and a bit miserable till she laughed. He'd seen her laughing up at that fellow as she sang. It was the sort of face you wanted to keep looking at, though. He took another glance into the driving-mirror and saw her gazing into the distance with a kind of early-morning ecstasy. If he had thought longer on it, he would have called it a sense of freedom, of escape; but he was already automatically slowing in towards the grassy marge at the corner opposite Fong's store, and the girl had already risen automatically to alight.

“When's the next bus?” she asked.

“I'll be round again a bit after ten.”

He took a dirty piece of paper from a pocket of the bus and thumbed awkwardly down it.

“Dead right! Ten fifteen. Don't miss it. There's only one an hour till three.”

Elsie stepped carefully onto the stony road, afraid of jarring her leg, and waited until the bus with a coughing and spluttering pulled off and vanished up the long stretch of road by the pipes and diggings. The men were working half a mile away now, farther along the road towards Hermit Park. She could see the
big orange-coloured excavator lumbering backwards from a group of diggers who were dwarfed by distance against the red earth. Perhaps Harry was there today, digging with the rest, saying, “Pahss me that spaide, Gus, will you?” or “Ai've nearly finished mai drain!” Or not saying. Just digging sullenly into the dry ground and rubbing the sweat streams from the side of his nose with the back of his hand.

“Look at me, Else,” he had said, laughing, one night, as they sat in a poky beach-front cafe. She looked into the big square face, brick-red from sun, and, discerning a certain diffidence in his tone, sought and found embarrassment in his eyes.

“The boys are giving me hell because of you.”

“Because of me? How can that be?”

Wind and salt and darkness blew in from the beach; the hanging light swung crazily, sending huge shadow doubles flying up the wall. Harry moved his thick neck inside the stiff collar and ran one massive finger round the inside.

“Because of you. Like I said. I'm trying to speak better, see. So I say, ‘Put down that shovel, son. You're doing it wrong.'”

He rounded his vowels with grotesque care and they wore their inordinate perfection more falsely than his normal speech its own inaccuracies. The compassion Elsie should have felt became compound of annoyance and despair.

“You don't really do that for me, do you?”

“For a whole week. Maybe it will come natural soon. How can I meet your folks if I don't talk proper?”

Reaching across the table—passionately, she thought, above the sugar bowl, above the buttered scones, the idioms of their conformity—he gripped her hand so tightly she had to laugh to cover an involuntary cry of pain.

“Before you go away for the holidays, do somethink for me, will you?”

Elsie nodded, her eyes fascinated by his small grey ones.

“Give us a big list of books you think I oughter read. I'll get right inside 'em the whole fortnight. You won't know your Uncle Harry when you come back.”

It was then that Elsie felt her first real fear.

A plank footway led across the storm-channel to the front gate still hanging askew. Behind, the square unimaginative house, the delight of councils the country over, stood among the rank grass with its face turned to the sun. How close seemed that February arrival now to this August departure; time telescoped into one long day that had begun in the beating monsoon rains at the front door, the taxi meter ticking on neurotically in the roadway. The stinking morass of mud and water had hardened through April and
May into a fertile paspalum patch, rich with sticky ergot that stained the bare legs; then during the dry months it had lain sadly, limp whips of green yellowing.

As she moved round the side of the house the roar of Mrs Buttling's electric sewing-machine splashed and sprayed the hot air, and behind it the harsh Scottish burr of straw-headed Jean who, all the time she worked at buttonholes and plackets, kept remembering how much she liked the stocky workman who used to hang round after her employer's boarder.

Elsie smiled as she passed below the fountain of sound. They would be astonished at her going.

Mrs Buttling's fuzzy blonde head thrust out the window and she gave a little squeal. Her face flowed chinlessly into a plump neck which in turn moved down to a pensile bosom. Although her features were lambent with good nature they still retained a natural acuteness that sharpened into understanding as she saw Elsie come round to the door. They looked at each other a long, long moment.

“Why, hullo, lovey! Shouldn't you be at work? Have you had a move?” asked Mrs Buttling at last, her eyes so well aware they rejected any notion of a negative. Elsie offered a smile of assent.

“I had a feeling all morning you might be round. Come on in. I've got a telegram for you.”

Across the surf of printed fabrics, across the thread-littered
floor, Elsie smiled again, smiled at Jean sitting with one hand guiding the hipline seam of some shapeless suburban matron into symmetry. Her knee pressed the arm of the machine and then relaxed. She drew the material away from the machine's foot and with a quick snap she broke the thread. Watching her complacent, soothed by purely mechanical labour, Elsie envied her not only her work but her personality with its stoical confrontation of each twenty-four hours.

“Open your telegram,” Mrs Buttling reminded Elsie. “It might be important.”

“It won't be important,” said Elsie.

She turned it over and, looking at her name with a sense of detachment, slit the envelope. The printed slip mocked her. It said, “Happy birthday from Home.” Did the majuscule imply dear sweet haven, fireplace glowing with a loving of faces, she wondered? Am I meant to assume it is from parents burning with affection when all this signifies that it is the very embodiment of a conventional duty? Why, she thought, I haven't had a happy birthday for years. The conventions must press heavily upon the consciences of people who have instructed their child not to bother writing, who have awaited her departure with unconcealed impatience and irritation. She crumpled the paper bitterly, thrusting it into her pocket.

Mrs Buttling watched her quietly and then said, “It's your birthday, too. What a day to be travelling.”

Elsie said nothing, but sat on one of the blue kitchen chairs. Mantel radio, fruit bowl, clock were all in their places, holding no significance now she was leaving. There was some hardness in her that made her feel no emotion at all towards things she left, only to those she came back to. So many people and undertakings had abandoned her, or alternatively she had been forced to abandon so many, that a parting was no difficult thing. The very emptiness of the future gave a sorrowful pleasure. It was akin to travelling continually in space, tacking briefly towards some unattainable astral beach only to be swept away before anchoring safely. Mrs Buttling moved back into the sewing-room and began sweeping up the scraps.

“I made you a cake, too, Elsie, for your birthday. You'll just have to take it with you now, I suppose. Where are you going?”

“South of Gympie,” replied Elsie feeling vaguely unsure of whether she was doing the right thing by telling her. “Only a little place. Three-teacher, I think. Or two. One more or less couldn't ruin the system. I'm leaving on the mail-train tonight.”

“What a dreadful trip just to collect your bag! I could have railed it on to you.”

“I know. But there's a whole lot of gear up at the school and I'd travel much farther rather than ask Duffecy to send it.”

A fastidious honesty made her add, “In any case, it
means one, no, two less days' classroom grappling this week. That respite is worth any sacrifice.”

“Does Harry know?”

The three women paused, one might say, spiritually, startled by the words one of them had uttered, and their eyes turned in secretly to the hidden forests of their minds seeking answer and escape. Elsie's lips, to her, appeared to have shaped the answer quite some time before she actually heard words come.

“Last night he was at the air depot to meet me and I told him then. When he asked me where, I didn't dare tell the truth. You understand, don't you? I said I was going to a school in Rockhampton, but strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, he didn't seem really interested in the name. Just the fact of going. Enough somehow . . .”

Her voice trailed hopelessly. Her mind sorted over the permutations of another person's despair.

“He wasn't for you,” stated Mrs Buttling decisively. “I always said you wouldn't marry him. Still, I can't help feeling sorry for him. He's been over twice since you were away, and although I know you thought it would work, Elsie, tell me what in God's name would you have had in common? He was nice enough, but he just didn't have your education, did he, Jean?”

“I liked him,” hedged Jean. She had stopped sewing and was eating sandwiches from a crumpled brown paper. Mrs Buttling struck a match and extended
it to the gas. The delicate blue petals of flame flower sprang lotus-like round the kettle. Domestic ritual proceeded through the placing of chinaware, the slicing of pie; and without stratagem the older woman placed a cake-tin before the visitor.

“It's yours. You'd better take the tin, too.”

Elsie gazed at this gift sadly and with a little impatience. How strange that this first birthday kindness for many years should prove an unwanted burden on a day like this! The tiny seed of discontent germinated and became swiftly a branching tree of selfish annoyance. She masked her non-pleasure with a smile, and opened the tin.

“What a beautiful cake, Mrs Buttling! Thank you. The first I've had for—let me see . . .” She counted backwards, her memory plummeting into empty year after year. “Why, it must be five years at least.”

“No trouble,” said the other. “Better fetch your bag while you think of it. It's under the sewing table, and I'll pour tea. I don't think there was anything in the front room, but you had better have a look.”

The girl rose and went into the long bedroom which she had shared with landlady and landlady's five-year-old daughter for eight months. Drawers, cupboards, all were empty, and fresh newspaper had been placed in them in anticipation of the next tenant, for Mrs Buttling had known since the beginning of the vacation that she intended finishing off the year at a
city hotel. There seemed to be nothing of herself remaining in the room. She returned to the kitchen where she gazed perplexedly at the two women. Across the fence, next-door half-caste Lila slapped a squawling child under the grey washing; a fly drummed round and round the mantelpiece and windows; nothing was changed; only she would be gone in another half-hour, but even now the house was emptied of her personality. Unexpectedly, for the radio needle pointed magnetically to commercial stations, the room achieved a new magic as the monotone of announcer's voice yielded to the plagal cadences of Delius. The hot rapture of gardens filled with ballet impulses of summer trees and the greenness . . . oh, the greenness. Pausing on her journey to the sewing-room, rapt on the moment and seeing the long line of the weir up-river and the sweating horses cropping beneath the stubby trees: “Lord,” he had said, “Lord, your eyes are blue!” And the sky washing in wind-tides the sandbanks of white cloud. Just for one moment roll over on your side to glance at me, nibbling the sweet grass-stems.

The picture was transitory. Predictably, Mrs Buttling's hand snapped the station-control knob across—“Wrong station, somehow!”—and there it was plunging and rocking among the commercials and whispering crooners, the suitcase, name on label, destination decided pointing south.

The three women sat idly over their tea, breathing
temporarily a lily-like reserve, minds folded in gently as sea-anemones, and each anemone containing its private centre of tenderness or pain. Now and again Jean glanced at Elsie and opened her lips to speak, but dropped her eyes again and went on eating. Mrs Buttling remembered a man so far away he was transmuted to a weekly cheque and father-in-law visiting each fortnight to battle with the weeds.