The Aunts’ House Read online

  It had been difficult. It seemed to Angel to be a long time since her grandfather had died of grief and she expected it would be a long time before the aunts began to love her, in their way, with their games and tricks. But in Angel’s crowded mind it was difficult for time to find a space to pass or stand still. She had no music for it. There were days when Angel could not possibly have had an answer to a question of time …

  The Sunday aunts pretended to not be at home when she arrived at their gate, but she knew it was just a game. They would have known it was Sunday and Angel always came on Sundays. Angel imagined they would watch her from the harbour side of the house, running from the tram and through the park, and hide. At first there would be silence behind the locked gate – suddenly the music from Aunt Clara’s upstairs gramophone would stop, perhaps a window would close quiet as a whisper and shoes would be exchanged for soft feet or slippers. But Angel wasn’t fooled. It was a game of ‘lost and found’ and it made her laugh. It was Sunday at the aunts’ house and it was the day to be happy.

  ‘I know you’re in there. I can see you hiding.’

  Angel climbed the gate, sneaked around the side and climbed in through the downstairs bathroom window. Once, she slipped and broke the glass and there was blood all over the toilet with its seat and lid always up as though they had a man.

  ‘What do we have to do to keep you out?’ The downstairs aunt, Elsa, pretended she was not pleased but she bandaged Angel’s arm with an old tea towel. ‘Clara said next time we’ll have to get the police!’

  It was all part of the game they played. After all, it was Sunday and Angel could smell baked mutton and tomatoes topped with onion and breadcrumbs, which was usual for Sundays. Elsa would have cooked that specially for her. Sunday baked dinner! She was sorry about the window.

  ‘I’m sorry about the window,’ said Angel, grinning with her lipsticked lips and getting the grease on her teeth. ‘Where’s Aunt Clara?’

  ‘Upstairs! We’re at the end of our tether with you, Angel. Don’t come anymore, do you hear me? Don’t come anymore or we really will have to call the police.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday. I have to come. You’re the best cook in the world, Aunt Elsa. I tell everyone. Can I have some Sunday dinner?’

  ‘There’s not enough!’ But in the end, she gave Angel a tomato and a sliver of mutton and six peas, scraped onto a plate like a dog’s dinner. ‘When you’ve finished you must go! Go and play in the Bay – down on the rocks – anywhere but here.’

  ‘Don’t you love me yet? How long will it take do you think?’

  ‘We can’t cope with someone not right in the head, Angel.’

  ‘Missus Potts said that too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Scarred for life. That’s what she said. She said I was not right in the head and scarred for life.’

  ‘She could be right. And get that red muck off your face. Fancy, at your age! Why! Where did you get it?’

  ‘One of the boarders.’

  ‘You’ve left lipstick all over the fork. And get that hair out of your mouth – it makes me feel sick!’

  ‘Anyway, I think your tomatoes are the best in the world – can I have some more?’

  ‘No, you cannot. Please …’

  ‘Please?’

  And Elsa said no more for if the truth was known she liked praise for her cooking even from a child not right in the head. Elsa was glad that Clara had stayed upstairs with her ballet music playing. She could feel her misery even from downstairs.

  Angel had only vague memories of younger days, the beginning of days at the Bay. The exact timing of everything was lost. She knew there were forgotten days and their terrible nights but there were others that made themselves known to her, like the touch of sand and the salty taste of her hair, the rock pools and hot paths. The Bay village shopfront had become a blur of shattered glass, smudged white with a bath cleaner and stored so far away in her mind that the image was almost impossible to reach. There were those days, but Angel thought she must have died a little with the memories of those days and the madness of the boarding house and only breathed again on Sundays.

  Angel knew it could not have been a Sunday when her mother died of pills and certainly not a Sunday when her father was killed in the accident. Those days couldn’t have been Sundays because on those days the world was a shadow and everywhere she looked people were howling their eyes out or having rows and she was like a dead thing herself. But then, it was 1942. So many things happened in 1942. It was a ‘headline’ year everywhere – even the sea nation outside the monumental sandstone cliffs of Sydney Heads that she had named Mariana had to put up with metal, guns and oil and the burning bodies of men.

  In the centre of Sydney there was one sad day among so many in 1942 when a tram conductor slipped off his running board in the rain. It was city peak hour when he hit his head so badly he died of brains and bone all over the slippery road and traffic was held up for ages. It was not Angel’s tram but it was in all the newspapers and it meant something to her because of her father’s accident a long time before that. There was blood then, too, but it wasn’t her father’s brains all over the place. And that traffic was held up for ages as well.

  Angel would have liked to have seen the tram conductor’s accident. She would have liked to have seen the bones and scattered parts and run her fingers through the blood. Then she would have known what her father might have felt when he died. It was difficult for her to remember her father alive. A face like hers, perhaps. Pretty. People said she was pretty. She remembers a leather jacket, faded black leather and the smell of it and his motorcycle’s racing fuel. ‘But he was too young to go, wasn’t he?’ people said to her later. ‘So young, tsk tsk tsk.’ So many facets of death and not one the same as the other. Angel often thought about it. She wondered if she could possibly write a sort of directory for the many aspects of death.

  There were no scattered parts or blood when her mother died, either. All in one piece, she was, on the sanitarium sheet, tightly drawn under hospital corners and nothing out of place, the whole thing like something made of plaster in a crypt. But in the end, it’s the same thing. Dead is dead, Angel whispered to Angel.

  She remembered standing by her mother and clutching her skirt while her mother screamed and howled as the policemen told her everything in that special ‘matter of fact’ way.

  ‘After the collision, Madam, the motorcycle rider’s vehicle spun out of control throwing the rider of the vehicle onto the road – the vehicle then finished up in the doorway of a dress shop that was empty at the time so no one else was hurt and for that we’re thankful but we are very sorry.’

  The policeman who gave the terrible news, straight up and down like an actor doing a monologue, was taller and older than his associate who’d removed his cap and looked sad. Angel could not possibly have noted at the time that policemen bearing bad news travelled in pairs for support, like nuns. But she wondered if her mother took it all in because she held a tea towel over her face, as sopping tears leaked like a tap all over the place, and shook while the younger policeman held her steady on the front step while she went on and on screaming, ‘What am I supposed to do now!’

  The rocks below the aunts’ house were at the tip of the Bay where it meets the ocean currents and the orchestra in Angel’s head was more or less conducted by the swell of the harbour or the sea. She loved the rocks. She was allowed to play on the rocks. No splash of the harbour was ever the same. Nothing was ever the same. She loved the wind and the taste of salt on her face and hair, crescendo waves when the tides were high, and when the tide was low there were splashed lullabies soft enough for babies and nestlings under the wings of gulls.

  Angel could play around the rocks for ages, jumping from one to the other but there was an occasion when, because she had eaten, Angel fell asleep. It was Aunt Clara who shouted from the upstairs balcony. C
lara and Elsa, the two of them sat on the upstairs balcony with a cup of tea to watch the end of the day. They wore wide-brimmed hats to protect them from the moon.

  ‘Where are you, Angel? Are you still down there?’ And even with Clara’s music playing in the background her cocky screech was loud enough to wake the Bay. It was unusual for Aunt Clara to speak to Angel at all.

  ‘I’m down here! I fell asleep – sorry.’

  ‘You’ve missed the last tram, you stupid child!’

  Angel panicked for a moment. She was afraid the tram driver would be worried.

  ‘Where will I stay tonight?’

  ‘Stay on the rocks as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Clara! She’s only a child,’ Elsa said, remembering praise for her tomatoes. ‘She can sleep here, on the balcony.’

  ‘You’ll have to sleep on the balcony!’ Clara shouted as though it was her idea. ‘But this will be the first and last time you stay here. Do you understand?’

  Angel was nervous and excited. She’d never slept in the aunts’ house before and sleeping on their balcony upstairs would be a dream to remember always. At the boarding house she was able to look at the ceiling of her room no bigger than a broom cupboard and watch the memory of her night at the Bay – a sky with stars all over the place, the crash of an ocean not far away and the lap of the Bay, a night breeze pushing the scrub near the fence aside. So many sounds. Different sounds.

  Clara might play a ballet on her gramophone and then at dawn there would be the fishing boats stuttering their way to riches with their lines, nets and gaffs and the first hungry cloud of gulls. She was in heaven! She would lie on the balcony’s bare boards for it and not care if she froze to death. She wondered what Elsa would make for breakfast.

  ‘Can I come up now?’ Angel called. ‘Can I have some tea? I’ll be quiet.’

  ‘Come up,’ said Elsa. ‘Are you wet?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Come up.’

  The aunts, still wearing their straw hats, sat in old cane chairs on the north side of the balcony. Angel, in her wet dress and seaweed between her toes, sat cross-legged on another. She’d been given half a mug of hot tea and it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. A dinghy, on its way home to its mooring with its tired crew, shouted something and Angel waved.

  ‘You don’t think they’re going to see that, do you?’ Clara spoke in splinters. Her words thin and sharp enough to cause pain.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How dare you! Letting that tram go.’

  Elsa pushed herself out of her chair.

  ‘I’ll get more hot water. She’s only a child, Clara.’

  ‘Mmmmm! Still, the first and last time.’

  A late breeze came with a sliver of ice clinging to its tail. Two fishing boats, full of bait and beer and late for dinner, chugged past them and Clara, not smiling, raised her hand to the one she knew. The sky had become soft and sleepy and wisps of clouds had rings under their eyes. Gulls, mourning the end of a day, yawned on the masts of yachts. Harbour channel markers, one by one, softly played bells as though it was Christmas Eve and Angel thought she had never heard anything so wondrous in her life. She was convinced that missing the last tram was fate stepping in, forcing the aunts to have her overnight in Brooklyn Street. Angel hoped it was the beginning of something like acceptance and Angel whispered to Angel to be still, be quiet and make every minute count.

  Elsa came and topped the pot with hot water. She gave Angel a blanket and a pillow and two slices of bread and dripping.

  ‘Here – roll up in the blanket and we do wish you’d stop talking to yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m not right in the head,’ said Angel.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Elsa. ‘You can’t be the only one.’

  ‘Well, it’s not from our side and never get the idea that it is!’ said Clara.

  Angel followed her own orders and remained as still and as quiet as she could in case a breath out of place might upset the aunts. Clara particularly. And Elsa? Angel wondered if Elsa might have begun to love her – just a little.

  The aunts sat in their chairs with their moon hats on and gazed over a Bay they’d seen so many times. Clara had named the tides and their swells. ‘Here comes Orlando – every which way, Elsa. Never knows if it’s coming or going, and there’s Captain Cook, look at him, bumping into rocks and buoys like something blind …’

  ‘You’re so clever, Clara. I love your imaginings. Don’t you love the way she goes on, Angel?’

  ‘O, yes.’

  ‘Clara has even named the rocks below us, where you went to sleep. I think you were asleep on Humperdink, but don’t ask me where she gets these names.’

  ‘Don’t talk to her as though she’s normal, Elsa. We’ll never see the end of her!’ Clara sat up straight as a rusty nail and watched the water.

  They stayed there on the peeling, ancient balcony, the three of them, cool as cucumber, until the setting sun made late colours on the water and the breeze curled in and out of the balcony railings.

  ‘What’s that? Down there?’ asked Elsa, pointing.

  ‘Where?’ said Clara.

  Angel hung over her end of the balcony and looked but chose not to talk – in case, just in case, a word was wrong.

  ‘Coming ’round the rocks.’

  ‘Looks like a bag of rags to me.’ Clara pulled her hat down hard.

  ‘But it’s moving like a fish flapping its fins,’ said Elsa.

  Angel saw what she thought was a jacket, probably a man’s jacket, ballooning in the water. At the top of the jacket was a head. She thought it was a man’s head and it was moving from side to side in time with a splash of hands.

  ‘I think it’s a man fallen off a boat or something and he’s still alive,’ said Angel at great risk.

  ‘I don’t want to know what you think, my girl!’ said Clara. ‘It’s an old bag of rags someone’s thrown away.’

  ‘It’s a man, Clara. And he’s alive – see? His arm’s up and signalling to us,’ said Elsa.

  ‘Well, he’s not going to make it to the rocks that far out, is he?’ But the aunts had the good manners to wave back. Angel waved, too.

  ‘He’s alive, Clara. I can hear him. He saw us. Maybe we could throw a rope?’

  ‘We haven’t got a rope, Elsa. Let it be! I’m not letting my tea go cold for a man swimming in a jacket.’

  ‘I really don’t think he’s swimming, Clara, in his clothes.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t ask him to jump in the water, did we? Let him work it out for himself.’

  ‘I can swim that far, Aunt Clara. Maybe I can get him to the rocks.’

  ‘You’re wet enough as it is! I don’t want you dripping all over the balcony!’

  ‘Clara, we should try,’ said Elsa, knitting her anxious fingers together.

  ‘Why? Why should we?’

  ‘O, Clara.’

  So Angel, on a late spring afternoon, observed another death. It was different – for the arms disappeared and the head followed. A different death. A body cleansed by the sea and blood, and it sank out of sight to feed the fishes. So many deaths. So many different deaths. She slept in the aunts’ house for the first time, but at the end of the day it was not the sleep she’d dreamed about. There were no dreams and the sky was suddenly without its stars as though a switch had been turned off. And Angel whispered to Angel, Maybe there’re a lot of people not right in the head. Born to it. And not just because of grief. I’ll look it up.

  The next morning, unknown to the occupants of the aunts’ house but close enough to it, men fish-hooked the body out of the water.

  ‘Poor bugger,’ one said. ‘He was so close to the Brooklyn Street rocks. Pity the old girls didn’t see him.’

  ‘Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. They’re mad as cut sna
kes, both of them!’ said another.

  Sunday trams

  Angel loved the trams. She could ride in trams at any time and if ever she was offered a spare tram, she could live in one. But the best of the lot were the Sunday trams headed for the Bay and the aunts’ house. Trams to her were the harbingers of sand and salt and bare toes in rock pools and the tides with strange names. Trams were freedom with the driver and his cap at a jaunty angle and his lever skating over rails smooth as ice.

  Angel had two cotton dresses, a yellow cotton top worn thin, and a cardigan, no matter the season, which she wore with no shoes. She had never made an effort to own shoes, loving the feel on her bare feet of the earth and the Bay sand, and even the bush behind the boarding house, despite the dangers. Angel’s feet were an artwork of scrapes and grazes and bites and splinters and she was lucky that there was always someone at the boarding house armed with a pair of tweezers.

  There were many days that were not Sundays when Angel skipped school and changed in a split minute from her clothing-pool uniform into a dress, hiding her school clothes in a hollow log guarded by a possum behind the boarding house. Those days were not Sunday tram days but book days at the library and colour days at the art gallery. There was so much more to learn outside the school gate. Angel had also begun to wonder if the aunts had just as much to teach her in their unusual way – madness, for example, Bay madness. It was an interesting sort of madness, different to the kinds in the boarding house.

  Angel looked like a scarecrow for sparrows – all bones and joints. Passengers stared at her as she sat by the tram window, always alone, but she didn’t care. She had the Bay to look forward to. But Angel knew she drew attention. She imagined they’d be mostly men who thought she was older than she was because of the lipstick, but she could be wrong and she didn’t care about that either. She was experienced. She was now eleven and knew one look from another. There were dozens of looks in the eyes of tram faces … disgust, fair game, anger and occasionally sorrow.