Lilian's Story Read Free Page A

brass button. Why, my dears! Aunt Kitty cried out at us as if amazed, come along, come along , and hurried us down the hall to the parlour. There was a tinkling and a continual tiny chiming around her from so many necklaces and shivering earrings, so that I had to tell her, You are like a chandelier, Aunt Kitty , and she laughed on a high note. Try how it feels, she shouted, and began to drape me with her necklaces, but I was shy. Her hair at the back was slithering out of its combs, but her face was pink, her eyes shone, and everything made her laugh and hurry. Come on, quickly now , she said, and hurried Mother onto the couch, hurried a doll into my hands, hurried to fetch barley water and biscuits.
    I am a happy widow , Aunt Kitty said, and whenever I asked she told me how Uncle Forbes had passed away in thirty seconds of anguish, clutching the shirt over his chest so that it came away in a long shred. It was quick , Aunt Kitty finished by saying, and he was a serene corpse. She poured more barley water and said comfortably, It was a long time ago. I watched her swallow a mouthful of barley water and say, And now I am a happy widow, and a philosopher.
    Mother sat on the couch and laughed at the kapok that puffed from a rip when she moved. Aunt Kitty shook her jewellery at her. It will come to all of us , she said, and I will try not to mind. Mother laughed again and laid her glove over the rip in the couch. Her laugh in Aunt Kitty’s house was louder and longer than her laugh at home, and it was easier to imagine her with the stuffed donkey when she sat with her glove over the rip in Aunt Kitty’s couch. Here it was easier to imagine her being sillier. When Aunt Kitty exclaimed from nowhere, I’d like to eat my past , Mother nodded and smiled and waited for more. Just spread it on thin bread and butter and pop it in my mouth. They laughed till they spluttered, but I was restless, the doll Aunt Kitty had given me was stiff and boring, I did not like barley water. Then go and play with a pup , Aunt Kitty cried, gesturing at the back verandah, and let us ladies be important.
    Kitty is my cross to bear , I heard Father saying downstairs at times. I hung further over the banister but could not hear if Mother answered. A teacup fell against a saucer and I imagined Father dabbing his moustache with his napkin and lining up the spoon in the saucer. She is my trial , he sighed. And error , he added, and laughed his jerky laugh. Blood rushed to my head from hanging so far over the banister and the stairs came up at me in an odd way, but although I wanted to hear more, no more was said.
    Listening Japanese Ladies
    Sounds carried well in this house, from room to room and up the stairs. The fact of the matter is that doors are a waste of time , Father maintained, so sound was free to slide from one room to the next. Father’s research was an exception to the fact about doors. My research will blow about , he explained, and the door of the study was always closed. But whispers carried down the stairs from Mother’s and Father’s bedroom upstairs, past the curved banister and over the stair carpet that was worn to brown on the treads. Laughs and the tinkle of cups floated up from the parlour when the ladies visited, and Cook could be heard shouting at spinach when Alma opened the door that led down to the kitchen. On the verandah upstairs I could hear every rustle of Mother’s silk as she took her constitutional on the flagstones of the terrace, pausing every few yards to look at a sea-gull dive for a fish, or watch a bit of flotsam that was trying to escape from the beach. In every room, on every verandah, the lapping of the bay at our beach could be heard and, however often Alma swept, there was always sand gritty underfoot in the hallway. In the dining room, the Japanese ladies on their scrolls above the sideboard looked askance at our mutton, and the sound of the waves ebbed and flowed with Father’s