Silent Parts Page 7

  After going three days without a headache Harry returned to school, but with a careful step, determined to fend off further assaults on his worth and equilibrium. No one’s opinion, favourable or unfavourable, would ever get inside him again. Mr Saunders could think what he liked, say what he liked; the boys could admire or despise him, and Harry would remain unmoved. The danger was letting the outside penetrate.

  His parents recognised his tension. There was nothing they could put a finger on. He smiled his old smile and climbed the stairs two at a time with his familiar grandfatherly roll – so endearing when he was younger! Sometimes, even now, he laughed so hard he showed his tonsils. But Sarah in particular saw that it was a performance. He was part-closed, even in his own home. When neighbouring boys made fresh attempts to involve him in their games, coming to the back gate on a Saturday morning, Harry was indifferent. Sometimes he agreed to go netting yabbies or panning for gold in the Five Mile Creek, sometimes not. He revealed no eagerness to resume his place. And how callous in his remarks he’d suddenly grown – like any other boy. Once she caught him butting Tim McInnley against the shed, a test of strength that would have ended in tears if she hadn’t intervened. She feared she was witnessing her own imperious nature at last manifesting in her son. Sweet Harry, gentle Harry, had vanished.

  Contemplating this, he sees that he had come to his own imperfect solution, and with little or no intervention from his parents. Certainly at boarding school he was his own creation, this aloof and sometimes callous individual whose beginnings his mother had seen and lamented. But he likes to think that a certain softness has persisted within him, along with a weak faith in the truth of his early perceptions. For this, even if it is not a blessing, he must thank his parents, particularly his mother. She is the paragon who encouraged him to look to a magical woman to lift him from difficulty and set him down, safe and exultant, in wonderland. It occurs to him that his presence here in a stranger’s bed, a fugitive in a foreign country, is a consequence of old, infantile yearnings. Yet this precious refuge is real and undeniable. How long it will hold against the weight of external force, he can’t guess. Rather than try to map all the threats to his calm, it seems easier to surrender to memory.

  For a long time he didn’t guess at how purposefully his mother had worked to save his self-esteem. Foremost in her mind, perhaps, was a desire to redirect his sexual energy. He imagines he must have had a doughy soul, infinitely pliable. What he remembers, what excites him even now, is the thought of thirteen-year-old Maggie spreading against him in her scratchy nightdress. They lay top-to-toe in the dark annex beside his parents’ suite at the Doutta Gala Hotel in Flemington, an arrangement that Aunt Mary, her mother, would not have countenanced, but a small matter to Harry’s mother, who maintained, perhaps archly, that they were still children. Just two months after his ‘troubles’, they had come to the Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne – a two-day journey on Sammy’s crunching wagon – to see the treasures of the globe. Yet anticipation of the morrow’s wonders was swamped by new sensations in the hotel bed: the firm koala grip of Maggie’s short legs, her gentle rocking against the protuberance of his knee. Despite his inexperience, he sensed that this went beyond a simple wriggling for comfort. Her rocking continued for many minutes, always restrained, easing back almost to stillness when the springs began to squeak, but then reviving. He was conscious of the heat of her foot against his side. There was also the greater heat of her thighs. Her breathing was like that of a person holding back tears. She did not touch his hard penis, though she must have been aware of the eagerness in his pyjama trousers. Along with his excitement, along with his astonishment, there was undoubtedly fear, because he whispered her name, posing it as a question, a plea for reassurance: ‘Maggie?’ She sighed and murmured as if he’d woken her. He wasn’t convinced. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said, and nestled again, squirming and pushing then settling, as before, flush against his knee. In the strange silence of the hotel they lay feigning sleep.

  If his parents had expected Melbourne to rejuvenate him they were immediately vindicated. The days were almost as marvellous as the nights. He had never before seen the city, never ridden on a tram, never seen a cathedral or such a multitude of unknown faces. They stepped down onto dusty Rathdowne Street and gazed up at what seemed to be a cream-coloured palace on the hill of Carlton Gardens. Maggie took his arm so they walked like grown-up people, yet skittish with anticipation. They joined the crush of stout elegance and old-man dignity beside a small lake and a monstrous four-tiered sculptural fountain (pagan sea gods with tousled beards, a bare-breasted nymph whose promising nakedness terminated – disappointingly, to Harry’s awakened eye – in a coil of fishy scales). But this oddity was nothing beside the towering mass and facade of the Exhibition Building. A great faceted dome floated above the masonry, surmounted by a gleaming cupola and a flagpole flapping with the Union Jack. ‘Solid gold,’ said Sammy, eyes upward and teetering back in admiration, his spade beard horizontal to the ground. He was referring to the cupola. Harry had read in The Age that this was not the case, that it was merely plated with gold leaf, but held his tongue. His father was right in principle: such an extravagance was entirely possible. They were all wealthy beyond imagining – a truth reinforced as they entered through the great portals and witnessed a symbolic mountain of counterfeit gold. A plaque stated that this pyramid of gilded timber, rising up monumentally into the bunting-furled heights, signified the quantity of gold mined in Victoria since settlement. Sammy’s murmurings of reverent pride were absorbed into the general din of the Main Hall, where the swell of voices and laughter and clattering feet vied with the rumble of the machinery courts and an unmusical blaring of a pipe organ and orchestra concealed at the end of the eastern transept by a vast yellow sailcloth.

  They were drawn down the Grand Avenue of Nations where all the industry, enterprise and ingenuity of mankind was concentrated for their convenience and edification. They circled glass-sided cabinets of English porcelain, Irish linen, silver cutlery and musical instruments with a pellucid onyx sheen. They goggled at a cut-glass Belgian punch-bowl, at engraved emu eggs that depicted bush idylls, at a gem-encrusted cruet stand. They admired, and counted, eighty-five German pianos. They passed under the wool-bale arches and stuffed sheep of their New South Welsh neighbours and wove between benches of mineral specimens and unprocessed ore. They were deafened by the thump of a quartz crusher identical to those that operated at home. They gawped at the cork chasm of Jenolan Caves, and at the wax-work representation of Captain James Cook and company landing at Botany Bay. Then it was on through the industrial courts, where his father was awed by the whirring clattering thumping energy of the working machines – lathes, saws, ringers, millers, threshers, dehullers, huskers, brick presses . . . Among the bright festoons overhead were inspiring banners: ‘Ability Is A Poor Man’s Wealth’ and ‘The Wheels Of Progress Do Not Stop’. His mother, however, had eyes for domestic machinery. Out front of the American court a dozen seamstresses demonstrated the inventions of the Singer Company. They smiled like music-hall performers while their elegant boots rocked the treadles and their fine fingers guided the fabric under the dancing needles. Despite her grown-up dress – there was a mound of velveteen riding on her false behind – and the fashionable top-knot of clematis in her hair, Maggie’s attention wasn’t long held by womanly pursuits, especially when they spied another American booth nearby.

  There were clots of children and indulgent parents, and a few sceptical young couples, all intrigued by the novelty of a gum that one chewed for its flavour and medicinal benefits but refrained from swallowing. It strengthened the jaws, said a winning young man, and in stimulating the saliva glands, promoted good digestion. He distributed samples with written endorsements from medical practitioners. And since Harry and Maggie had separated themselves from his parents, there was no one to dissuade them or advise caution. His gum had a sweet citrus tang; Maggie announced that hers
was somewhere between Turkish delight, with its hint of rosewater, and toffee. She reached into her mock-pearl purse and outlaid four shillings for the complete range of flavoured gums. When Harry’s mother arrived to see them chewing like cows, Maggie, accustomed to the censoriousness of her own mother, was apprehensive. She needn’t have been. Sarah examined the box, sniffed the contents then asked leave to try one for herself. By the time they began their climb to the upstairs galleries to look at paintings even Sammy was chomping enthusiastically.

  ‘This one you give me, Maggie . . . ’

  ‘Oranges of Grenada.’

  ‘And very nice too!’

  Sammy gave due respect to as many paintings in the British gallery as time would allow. He liked portraits of men and livestock. He liked vases of flowers. But most of all he liked a picture to have a good story, either historical (a clash of swords, a famous cavalry charge, unfortunate King Harold falling from his mount with the fated arrow in his eye) or dramatic (the humble sea-folk aghast with grief at the sight of their dead son’s sea-chest). Harry loved these stories too, but he loved the unclothed gods and goddesses more. He and Maggie searched these out with sly determination. Such sordid pictures were placed high up, often barely visible above five or six historicals and dramatics.

  They were not satisfied until they entered the French gallery, for which Sammy, admiring as he was of the high morality of his mother country, had been secretly hankering too. Here there was pink flesh in all directions, also brown and black flesh, flagrantly exposed. There were Diannas bounding after stags and boars; nymphs pursued by lusty goatmen; steamy bathhouses packed with languorous women.

  ‘What is an odalisque?’ Harry asked, having read the word. The unapologetic display of so much painted nudity had emboldened him. He was beguiled by the bottom-heavy shape of girls and women, and particularly by the closeness of Maggie, and accepted the evidence of art that there were places, far from disapproving Rushburn, where his new-born feelings were legitimate and celebrated.

  Sammy had no idea what an odalisque was.

  ‘A sort of lady,’ said Sarah, whose reading ranged to exotic climes.

  Jaw engaged in busy mastication, Sammy made a very slow sweep along the wall. He had a catalogue and a pencil and took frequent notes, constantly consulting Sarah, who stooped down from her giraffe-like height to offer attentiveness. For the entire month past Sammy had been speaking of a purchase – something small and affordable, but with the stamp of European excellence. He had prepared a space on their dining room wall. When the crowd became too constricting Sarah detached herself from his arm and walked behind like a governess trailing an excited boy. So protracted was their study of French art that Harry and Maggie slumped on an ottoman. He complained that his gum had lost its sugar. He was angling for more, but Maggie was determined to conserve what they had. They must bring gum back to Rushburn, an enterprise as grand and noble as towing icebergs to the equator.

  ‘If you’re going to spit it out,’ she said, ‘put it back in the paper.’

  Forty-five minutes later they were called on to offer their opinions on two paintings. Rather than odalisques, they had roses, two very similar compositions, both spilling over with blush and purplish blooms. By some magic they contained all the allure and sensuality of odalisques. In one there was a single flash of yellow.

  ‘Chromatella,’ Sammy confidently identified the cultivar.

  Harry was attracted to the less tidy picture, to the naturalness of dust and lint on polished timber, to flowers not only new and tight but blowzy and disintegrating.

  ‘Aye,’ said his father, ‘that’s the one.’

  Sarah concurred. She appealed to Maggie. Yes, the ‘messy one’ it was. Sammy roared laughing. ‘Ha! Ha! The messy one!’ Then with a nervous eagerness he left them, setting off to inquire after the price. They saw him conferring with a man in a swallow-tailed coat. He returned red-faced, flabbergasted. ‘Fifty-five pounds,’ he hissed to Sarah. They could see him agonising.

  ‘Perhaps if it’s still there come January they’ll be asking less,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Oh, Sarah,’ Sammy groaned, ‘we’re not talking old vegetables.’

  He agonised over a late afternoon tea. He gobbled apple-cinnamon cake but couldn’t for a moment forget roses, because their table sported a brass urn of stripy flowers. Sammy regarded them almost mournfully. Fifty-five pounds was a frightening sum. ‘We shall sleep on it,’ he said, but before they could leave, he felt compelled to scoot upstairs again to view his choice. He gazed with agitated longing, fretting that someone else would come along and take his prize. He dragged himself away.

  After returning to the Doutta Gala in the dark they ate a light supper in their suite. Maggie and Sarah washed and changed for bed in the larger room while father and son sat in the cramped annex playing rummy. ‘It’s a very fine picture,’ Sammy enthused. ‘Who’s to say this Guinoisseau fellow isn’t another Carot in the making? And fifty-five pounds a steal? We take a punt, don’t we? Your mother says, “Offer them forty and see how they bite!” But no, that wouldn’t be decent. It is a very fine picture. You all said so. I didn’t prompt you. The messy one! Ha!’

  By this Harry understood that the decision would be made and unmade many times before morning. Ordinarily he appreciated being let into his father’s dilemmas, helping to examine and tease out the pros and cons, but tonight, thinking only of Maggie, he was impatient to see his father retire to his room with Ma. As if to persuade him Maggie emerged in her nightdress to sit on their shared bed. Her bare feet smelt of perfumed talc. After brushing her hair she wriggled down beneath the tight-tucked sheet. She turned from the light, seemingly asleep at once. Sammy was for one more hand but Harry put him off, pleading exhaustion.

  Then he and Maggie were alone. He folded back the foot-end of the bed and snuffed out the lamp. He slid in beside her turned back. Within thirty seconds she flipped over and began her expansive squirming and stretching, accommodating herself to his pyjamaed legs. This time he did not distract her with silly words. She rocked sedately, her powdered heel pressed against his chest. Overpoweringly the scent was that of dusty roses, a cloying hot-summer smell, slightly irritating to the sinuses. He imagined he was facilitating her pushing, or at least participating, with a rhythmic flexing of his thigh. They had a silent compact. It was his first, and perhaps only, experience of mutuality. At one point she flinched, a quick withdrawal, when the bare sole of her foot brushed over his penis. But she soon resumed, avoiding the offending part. Sometimes her insistent heels hurt his chest or his lower ribs. It was a discomfort he was willing to endure all night. But gradually her enthusiasm waned. Her legs softened. Her movements became languid – brief episodes within a growing stillness.

  Next morning at the Exhibition Sammy paid fifty-five pounds for a flower painting by an unknown Frenchman. They wandered through the temporary pavilions for another three hours, viewing British armaments and pickled fish and towers of French champagne, but essentially their business was done. Returning over two days to Rushburn, they stayed overnight at another hotel in Kyneton. To Harry’s disappointment, there was no shortage of beds. Maggie had a little room to herself. He slept in the hallway outside his parents’ room. Nevertheless, when at last they saw the spires and boxlike buildings of tiny Rushburn through the blue-mallee scrub their mood was triumphal. Sammy brought home French booty, the female principle encapsulated in muted colour, to further civilise their dining room. Maggie brought two intact boxes of gum, which she would hoard for six months, hiding them from her sister and brothers and nephews and nieces in a secret nook in her mother’s creamery. Sarah had parcels of books and dress fabric. Harry’s hands were empty, but he felt equipped with a great disdain for the meanness of Rushburn. He carried a beautiful after-image in his heart, a fantastic belief in transcendental possibilities.

  It enabled him to return to his old life with
an appearance of ease. For Maggie the adjustments were harder. She feuded with her mother, taking every chance to escape Albion and visit her Aunt Sarah. She was an outdoor person, the first girl after three big brothers. But Harry was the one she cleaved to, doubtless because he was not a brother and had the precocious height and bulk of a man. They traipsed through the ironbark scrub behind the town. In their underclothes they took illicit dips in an old tailings dam and she pretended he could not see her breasts through the wet cloth nor the dark place between her legs. Often she told him to turn away – an honour system – while she pissed behind a sparse bush. Candidly, since he understood that she expected and condoned it, he looked at her white behind hovering above the prickly grass. He was fascinated by her protuberant tuft, and slightly repelled by the gush of urine.

  This was one of the secret images he took to boarding school. Having learnt from early mistakes, he adapted readily to the shambles of a third-class institution. He bowled a tight in-swinger and learnt a wry pretence of humour, though essentially he remained dour. At night he reworked and developed his experiences with Maggie and squirted semen on his bedsheets. The other boys boasted about such things, so he didn’t feel guilty or remorseful.