Lilian's Story Read Free

you to consider the following facts. At last it occurred to me that I could invent my facts, but even with the authoritative white bloomers on my head, I knew I lacked Father’s talent.
    I was a child of unpromising lank hair and small eyes. In photographs I was caught looking sideways, looking sly, in fact, and unhappy at standing in frills while a man shouted, Don’t move. In those photographs my hands were too large for me, as if I was trying on someone else’s. But Father photographed well. His moustache came out nicely, the knob of his cane gleamed, his boots were planted on the rug in a masterful way. His moustache was the model of moustaches for me, thick and drooping, giving his face a look of manly melancholy. I saw other moustaches on other fathers, but they looked like nothing more important than hair. Above his moustache, Father’s eyes were sleepy in the photographs and his hair lay slicked down against his skull so that the flatness of his head was apparent. In my early paintings, I drew his head as a square brown box on his shoulders, and drew the facts coming out of his mouth. What are those lines, Lilian? Miss Vine asked at school. Has he been speared, dear? and I would have to try to explain, Those are Father’s facts, Miss Vine.
    There Is Everyone Else to Consider
    Mother believed in conversation. A lost art, Lilian, you must sit and learn. She sat in the parlour on breezy afternoons when everything in the garden shook and swung in the wind from the bay, and poured tea, and I sat but did not learn. Ladies arrived and removed their gloves, smoothing them on their knees, and withdrew long pins from their hats as they watched Alma breathe too loudly. Mother did not have headaches on the days the ladies visited. She laughed and talked quickly as if there was not enough time for everything but she would like to try to fit it all in, just the same.
    Lilian, how old are you now, dear? a lady with a big black bust asked me. And are you enjoying school? I thought she should know how old I was, since she asked my age each time she came, but perhaps she was absent-minded. She had a silver watch pinned to her heart, where she could not forget it. I am going on five , I said for the sake of a change, although I was only just four, and school is good. School was naps on mats in the blowfly afternoons, and cutting out coloured paper. It was painting in a smock and learning about King Arthur. I have only been at school a little while , I admitted. But Mother taught me to read. I was proud of that, and pleased when the lady with the black bust made her mouth an O and gave a surprised sound, and several other ladies looked. She is already reading , the lady with the black bust said, and all the ladies smiled without showing their teeth.
    I wanted to astonish them further and brought out of my pinafore pocket the pebble with a vein in it like rainbow cake. What I found , I explained. I had to get wet for it. In fact, I had had to wade into the bay up to my thighs, and then a wave had taken me by surprise and drenched me. Now that it was dry, the pebble was boring and I could see that the ladies were about to lose interest, so I popped it into my mouth and then held it out, shining like a jewel in my palm. Look, it is very valuable , I crowed. The lady with the bust did not make an O again, but smiled without showing her teeth and said, Norah, what a little tomboy you have , and the other ladies nodded, and they began to comment on May’s hat, and the pebble dried.
    I asked Mother later, What is a tomboy? but she was fatigued by so many ladies and said, I will explain later, Lilian, but now I will rest , and lay back on her couch.
    Among the Sisters of Albion
    There were those ladies who visited, and there was Aunt Kitty who lived in a house with blood-red stained glass beside the front door. Mother and I walked to her house on the next bay and listened to the bell jangle inside when Mother pressed the