Part 2 (1/2)

She has these lines down her face. Like the ventriloquist's doll at the Zappeion.

*Well, soon-at once-because they have offered me return pa.s.sage in this boat. I can't lose the opportunity, can I? To go back to where I am needed.' The way she swallows on what she is saying.

*Aunt Alison will come to fetch me-Take me to the boat. Alison will always be here-and kind Mrs Bulpit. You will not be alone.' She is staring at the light as it was on the window, or the curve of a branch knocking on the gla.s.s-or nothing. *And soon we shall be together again.'

For the time being everyone seemed to have forgotten about her though Mrs Bulpit offered a bowl of what she called *porridge.' It was as convenient to forget as it was to be forgotten. The house was buzzing with the thoughts and actions of those separately in it. As she went outside leaving Mamma to tissues and the bathroom, Mrs Bulpit was attacking the kitchen. Her gloves had changed from asbestos to rubber, her curls hidden in a scarf, the ears of which trembled as she scrubbed, poked, and sang. She had just finished Two Sleepy People, and was starting on Red Sails in the Sunset.

Light lay heavy-it made the paths look substantial where the concrete had not crumbled, tree trunks and the branches of trees had knotted like the muscles in men's bodies. Wherever rust had broken out it glowered like blood in the act of drying.

At a moment when they least expected each other the boy came down into the yard. Perhaps for this reason the half-rotten terrible steps ahead threw him and the things in the half-empty case he was carrying rattled round inside it.

He was forced by the situation to grunt something about *... school...'

*Mmh...?' she answered.

*When you commin?' There was menace in his voice, forced on him by school or the light or Australia or something.

*I haven't been told,' she replied with as much precision as she could muster.

She took a sideways look at the blond legs but could not face the pale blue eyes.

Though it wasn't called for, she informed him, *My aunt-Mrs Lockhart-is coming for my mother.'

He muttered again, something about *Bruce and Kevin...' to convey contempt, before turning his back. As he mounted the slope to reach the street he was grinding his soles into the concrete. His socks were down around his ankles. She knew enough to sense he was wearing them that way deliberately.

He had scarcely gone when she ran back quickly inside. Mrs Bulpit had started on Yours. It seemed quite natural that Mrs Bulpit and Mamma should be so irrelevant, not in control of the house. What she most feared, that Gilbert Horsfall might dispute her owners.h.i.+p, no longer troubled her. Certainly he was temporarily absent; but his presence would not have mattered now that she felt mastery was within her reach.

Skipping, almost, inside the room where he had spent the night, and which still had the smell of what she supposed was a boy's sleep, she did not even bother to glance at the warrant-officer's blown-up portrait. That too was irrelevant. She only slightly hesitated before approaching the chest-of-drawers with the dried-out wishbone of some large bird, goose or turkey, lying where she had noticed it the night before. With a confidence she would have found odious in anyone else, she hummed a little of the tune the woman was singing in the kitchen. She gave her imitation a tinny edge reaching a crescendo as she dragged on the sticky k.n.o.b of that same upper drawer. Again it shot out and hit her where women don't like to be hit. There she had the advantage even over Mamma, even over boys, who might hit but can't hurt if you are strong. And she felt strong. She felt her thoughts were leaner than Gilbert Horsfall's. Inside the drawer the same tangle of used string, the roughed up dirty handkerchief lying on top of the laundered ones. She held her breath then slid her hand under the clean handkerchiefs, where women hide the valuables Turks and brigands are looking for, and precious secrets like love letters. Some of the letters had made her feel guilty. The jewels she had slipped on her fingers and round her neck, her flesh growing inside them. She had felt silly finally.

Now, under Gilbert Horsfall's handkerchiefs she came across the secret he had hidden. It was a jewel, rather a lumpy one, golden in colour, set in a brooch. Was it valuable? Had he stolen it? She shoved it back in its hiding place. She slammed the drawer. She might have reached the peak of power over this pale, threatening boy.

She did a few twirls in the centre of the room stretching out her plait as far as it would reach. Dropped the plait. Would it make her look foreign in Australia? It ought not to matter, now that she was strong-if she was. Mamma was leaving, the boy would return when school was out.

His used bed was still unmade. It looked very narrow against the wall. She shuffled towards and lay down on it raising her arms above her head in defiance of the bed's rightful owner. The mattress was thin and hard. She whimpered slightly, before turning on her side, taking the shape Mamma had rejected the night before. She lay listening. Now that Mrs Bulpit had shut up, she could hear her own heart jumping round inside her like a caught fish. Otherwise silence. She had the day to fill. She did not fit in. She lay snuffling, whimpering, rubbing her cheek against the single cold pillow to warm them both.

Hid yourself most of the day. Mamma did not call or come to look. If Mrs Bulpit called she soon gave up, too intent on all she suffered: *... from morning to night-in Australia, madam.' For the benefit of anyone interested, she announced, *We only ever serve a light lunch.' She might have been talking to the air. Till Aunt Alison came.

*Oh yes, Mrs Lockhart, Madame Sklavos is in the lounge room. The little la.s.s. I-reenee? Your auntie! A little bit upset-and ent.i.tled to it-under the circs...'

No-one followed up this initial concern by coming in search of the *little la.s.s.' It left you free to investigate Mrs Lockhart-you could hardly think of her as aunt-by more satisfactory methods than those which adults use for children. Sisterly voices were already issuing by bursts and gusts out of the saloni window round the corner. Vines and a thicket of shrubs provided perfect cover for a listener if one of the sisters should look out the window.

Mrs Lockhart had an older, throatier, smokier voice than Mamma's. *Good Lord ... meeting after all these years makes you feel b.l.o.o.d.y idiotic.'

*... unnatural...' Mamma corrected in her more precise and foreign-sounding voice from years spent in making foreigners understand, whereas Aunt Alison swallowed her words or bit them off like thread after it had served its purpose. Miss Adams would have found it slovenly speech.

*... always a bombsh.e.l.l artist, Gerry, but never let off one like this...' trumpets of smoke accompanied the Lockhart voice through the window.

*How a bombsh.e.l.l to want to bring my child to safety? I am letting off nothing. A situation forced on me by fate.'

*... like marrying that Greek commo-if you did-Harold bets you didn't-not that it matters-I'd never blame anybody for not-if it wasn't for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of children...'

A cigarette b.u.t.t came flinging out the window to smoulder on a mattress of damp leaves.

Mamma's voice had never sounded so cold and pure.

*We married to baptise the child. Whatever a Greek believes or doesn't believe in, birth and death are reasons for Orthodoxy.'

*All very high-flown, the Orthodoxy bit. In between, the drudgery was left to you.'

*Petros loved-he adored his child. But had to be away most of the time.'

Couldn't help hating this aunt's smoky voice. When Papa loved. Adored. Fingers spilling seed from these little pods which fringe the sill do not hurt what they sow. If you could only hurt this hurtful Lockhart voice, bite it out from where the words came hurtling.

*... away when you changed the nappy and powdered the rash in her little crotch.'

*Petros was dedicated to a cause...'

*Handy enough.'

*... which I married into. Something that you, Ally, could never understand, living in a country which has always been causeless.'

*I like to think we have a sense of duty towards our children.'

*Would I have brought her here if I hadn't felt it my duty?'

*And do you love her, too?'

*What an inquisition! Of course I-love-her.'

Mamma's fury is so fierce you can almost feel it burning from the other side of the sill. But do you, oh, Mamma, do you?

*Do you, I wonder?' Mrs Lockhart asks of anyone who has the answer. *No-one ever went off at such a bat after dumping her dumpling.'

*The pa.s.sage, I tell you-could I-in these days-refuse the offer?'

Mamma is really suffering. She is suffering, has always suffered from anything she suffers. The lies people tell make her suffer, but she suffers most when she tells her own.

*That was up to you-and the cause, I expect.' The Lockhart voice is sucking on another cigarette.

What you can't see is hard to believe. To see is always better than to hear. If only to see them at it. There is this flowerpot lying collecting snails under the skirt of the sooty vine. Turned wrongside up you will have a footstool from which, if careful, you can see inside the room, from the back of the sill.

Mamma's sister looks old, older it seems than Great Aunt Cleone Tipaldou, from being too much in the sun like the peasants. Her skin is rough as bark, scaly as a hen's legs. Mamma's brown eyes, capable of keeping her own secrets are not related to this blue, accusing Lockhart stare blazing out of the burnt face, skin shrivelled most noticeably where it forks below the throat and sweeps away inside any old kind of crumpled cotton frock. Mountain slopes crack open like this at the height of summer. Above the cleavage she is wearing a blackhead like a brooch. Would love to give Aunt Ally's blackhead a squeeze.

She is stamping, and if smoke and drought had allowed her, would have been shouting at the top of her voice about what they had got on to *-expect there's a man involved in it. You never ran out of men Gerry...'

Anger and argument have filled the room with movement. Mamma consoling her smooth arms avoids her stamping sister. Mamma moves very beautifully.