Patrick White - The Hanging Garden

Just then, Phoebe started calling from the house, ‘Where have you girls got to? There are young men here waiting to be entertained.’

We went up to the chicken à la king and fruit salad with ice cream for the shy GI’s on leave who had been hand-picked for her by the club. Trish kept looking at me as though wanting to share a secret we didn’t have. I must have looked as blank as any of the hand-picked GI’s. Phoebe noticed it at last. ‘Go on Ireen,’ she sounded rather angry. ‘You’ve got a card trick or something up your sleeve.’

I heard her discussing me one evening with Maxwell, who was grumbling back through his cigar. ‘She’s no responsibility of mine. She’s Trish’s friend and your performing monkey. It’s too bad if you didn’t pick a winner.’ He was sloshing the ice around at the bottom of his gin sling and I couldn’t hear too distinctly after that. I only knew Maxwell had dismissed me from a life which revolved round a protected job which he shares with similar men. He had handed me over to women who wear attractive clothes, take lessons in French and Italian, and read library books …

* * *

Your families — your would-be adoptive one at Wahroonga, and your real Lockhart one at ramshackle old Neutral Bay. If anything is real in these years when we are shooting in all directions — or wrinkling and drying up. Phoebe asks, while putting on the moisturiser, ‘What is that aunt of yours doing down there?’ Ally at the ironing board only refers to ‘Those people…’ voice tilted upwards, expecting information. At least the Fermor-Joneses haven’t access to the diary. If the Lockharts haven’t either, they know about it, their eyes bore through locked drawers, it is a family joke.

Shan’t write any more diary. My memory is more vivid and safer. Trish says she doesn’t remember much of what happened before the age of eight. I can’t believe it. Sometimes I think I remember Mamma throwing me out of her womb. Much of what sticks in my mind is trivial, some of it beautiful — that kingfisher clinging to the giant sunflower, weighing it down, that will stay with me for ever like some enamelled plaque. But nastiness clings to the mind more easily than beauty — those corpses of little grey mice a cat spewed on the veranda board. Bruce’s hairy arm brushing mine. At least I can honestly say Bruce’s arm reminds me of Gil’s. Then my shudder needn’t be one of disgust. Or is that dishonest? Do I wait for it to happen again? All these trivial memories are in a way more real than for instance the night the Jap submarine came inside the Harbour. Like a not too bad dream. The greatest part of it old Mrs Hetherington down the street woken by the noise falling off her bed and breaking her hip.

Phoebe sometimes puts on her religious voice to talk about historic occasions like ‘… the Jap submarines inside the Harbour, and the Battle of the Coral Sea. I hope you girls will remember what you’ve lived through!’ After the Battle of the Coral Sea she gives us corals to make sure. Mine is a necklet of little dark red jagged teeth, but Trish got a string of smooth beads almost white. I heard Trish complaining to her mother that they hardly looked like coral at all and Phoebe said, ‘You shouldn’t complain white corals are more distinguished — more valuable.’ Then she added, ‘I don’t advise you to tell Irene. She’s perfectly happy with that little necklet.’ Trish has never exactly told though she did once let out that dark corals are considered somewhat common — something for tourists. Perhaps that is what I am. I don’t feel I shall ever belong anywhere.

* * *

No more diary, even when my fingers itch. Thinking is bad enough without perving on what you’ve written down.

You are feeling virtuous this afternoon. Miss Babington has given you an Alpha for the History essay. The only other Alpha is Jinny Forster. In the beginning she wanted to be your friend. But Trish appealed, with her blonde hair and clear skin. Jinny is thin and dark, bites her nails, has spots. Angela Fallon said you were both so clever, did you use the same crib? Jinny thinks we are twin minds. You shouldn’t shudder but do. At least you don’t bite your nails. Trish is up against it today. She hasn’t produced a history essay. Old Babs is cutting up rough, asks what her excuse is this time. Her parents insisted she go to visit friends across the Bridge. Babs’s moustache has never looked spikier. Telling Trish she isn’t interested in the social life of spoilt young women. She is here to educate them. Patricia will report to the head when school is out. Patricia looks more beautiful than ever, but the bones are visible inside the apple. She sits beside you slightly smiling, lids lowered. She has the confidence in her own worth you will always lack. On your other side, Jinny is muttering and fuming biting farther into her nails from hate and disapproval. You are caught between two opposite climates.

When school is out you hang around in front on the tessellated veranda waiting for Trish to be finished with Miss Hammersley. Jinny hangs around too, bashing her leg with her battered old case. Jinny says why don’t we catch the same train. Like Lockharts the Forsters live down the wrong end of the line. You try to sound pardonable explaining that Mrs Fermor-Jones is expecting you to spend the night with them. Jinny is muttering something about everybody crawling to the rich. Then without warning, ‘Are you in love with Trish, Ireen?’ You can feel the spots multiplying under your burning skin. You say you don’t know what she means. If she had gone off there and then, she might have started you biting your nails. Oh God, life isn’t easy. You hate Trish as much as Jinny.

Trish appears at the same moment as the sun bursts through the sycamores to touch her up. Her hair has never looked a heavier gold above her forehead. Her lips are smiling contemptuously — for us? for Miss Hammersley? for what?

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that in a serious world the triviality of my mind ought to be punishment enough.’

Jinny spits. ‘Perhaps Hammersley’s palm can be greased like any other!’

She stamps off, bashing the shrubs with her old case all the way to the gate.

Trish laughs, and you see her fury. ‘Bitches will be bitches. She smells too. Come on, let’s go.’

‘What about homework?’

‘You can do that with us if you’re feeling so bloody virtuous.’

Walking back to their place she tells what happened the evening before.

‘They’re not exactly friends of the parents, more sort of acquaintances. Phoebe warned me they’re awful bores and I’d be silly to go. They wouldn’t dream of driving all that way for a pot of tea and a few dry biscuits — and she’s practically mental. But I had this idea. And after all, Fiona’s my friend.’

‘Fiona?’

‘Yes, Fiona Cutlack. She’s the niece.’

Trish’s voice is growing dreamier.

‘There was this dreamy boy. I’d heard enough to whet my appetite. So I put on the white corals and borrowed the Rolls — not the sacred one, but the one for the beach, that the rust’s got into. Gil Horsfall was better than I could have imagined — English — his father a high ranking staff officer in India — Gil evacuated out from Home when war began. He has grey eyes.’

No blue, nothing so honest as grey.

‘Actually I think they’re what you call hazel. And a body. I don’t know why Fiona hasn’t got him under lock and key. When it was time to leave he asked if he couldn’t drive the Rolls round a block or two. We started off, careering round the whole of Vaucluse, Fiona wouldn’t come, said she wasn’t well. I never ever was so thankful for the bloods. To have him to myself…’