Tirra Lirra by the River Read Free Page B

had marked the place with a twist of silkworm flops, a limp and elongated figure-of-eight. Many readings must have been necessary to drive it into my mind so that I still retain it, because I was—am—a person of undisciplined mind, and inspite of the passion I had for poetry, I could seldom hold more than a few consecutive lines in my head. The poetry in my head was like a jumble of broken jewellery. Couplets, fragments, bits of bright alliteration, and some dark assonance. These, like Sir Lancelot’s helmet and his helmet feather, burned like one burning flame together. Often, I used to walk by the river, the real river half a mile from the house. It was broad, brown, and strong, and as I walked beside it I hardly saw it, and never used it as a location for my dreams. Sometimes it overran its banks, and when the flood water receded, mud would be left in all the broad hollows and narrow clefts of the river flats. As soon as this mud became firm, short soft thick tender grass would appear on its surface, making on the green paddocks streaks and ovals of a richer green. One moonlit night, coming home across the paddocks from Olive Partridge’s house, I threw down my music case, dropped to the ground, and let myself roll into one of these clefts. I unbuttoned my blouse, unlaced my bodice, and rolled over and over in the sweet grass. I lay on my back and looked first at the moon, then down my cheeks at the peaks of my breasts. My breasts did not have (nor did they ever develop) obtrusive nipples, but the moon was so bright that I could clearly distinguish the two pink discs that surmounted them. I fell into a prolonged trance. I heard the sound of trampling and tearing, but it seemed to come from a long way off. I was astonished when I saw the horse moving along the edge of the cleft. I see him now, a big bay, walking slowly and pulling grass with thievish and desperate-looking jerks of his head. When he had passed I jumped to my feet and quickly laced my bodice. I buttoned my blouse and tucked it into my skirt. My brown hair ribbon lay shining on the grass where my head had been. It was before I put my hair up. I must have been less than sixteen.
    I wish I had recalled the incident earlier. I should have liked to have recounted it at number six. It would have had to be toldat a time when Fred was not there. Fred had that horror of what he called ‘fuggy female talk’, and although he made a great comedy of it, we all knew that those exaggerated sour mouths, and all that hissing and head-ducking, covered a real detestation, and so we were careful to spare him. No, I should never have recounted the incident in his presence. It would have been told when he was out, or downstairs, and we three were gossiping in Liza’s quarters, perhaps, before her new electric fire. And after I had finished, I know what Hilda and Liza would have said. I can hear Liza’s voice, with its touch of dogmatism.
    ‘Of course, Nora, you were looking for a lover.’
    And Hilda. ‘But of course! As girls did in those days, without even knowing it.’
    And I would probably have said, yes, of course, because in these times, when sexuality is so very fashionable, it is easy to believe that it underlies all our actions. But really, though I am quite aware of the sexual nature of the incident, I don’t believe I was looking for a lover. Or not only for a lover. I believe I was also trying to match that region of my mind, Camelot.
    If that sounds laughable, do consider that this was a long time ago, and that I was a backward and innocent girl, living in a backward and unworldly place. And consider, too, that the very repression of sex, though it produced so much that was warped and ugly and cruel, let loose for some natures, briefly, a luminosity, a glow, that I expect is unimaginable now, and that for those natures, it was possible to love and value that glow far beyond the fire that was its origin.
    I am going to put down a strange word. Beauty. I was