I once cut my knee, Margaret said.
There was a mingled pleasure and pain in pain shared with Miss Browne. And again she wanted to touch the hand, and because she was rather afraid to, she reached out with her voice instead, in a way that the voice does when it acts as proxy for a more emphatic, an unequivocal gesture.
I was in the yard, she said, playing with the chopper by the meat block. And there was a turkey came into the yard and I got frightened. I wanted to frighten it away. It was blowing out its chest. It looked so fierce. And then I dropped the chopper and cut my knee.
She was out of breath. It sounded silly to tell Miss Browne something that wasn’t to the point, only it was, and Miss Browne did not know.
Don’t let’s talk about it. We mustn’t be morbid, Miss Browne said.
Margaret was not sure what morbid meant, only that Miss Browne objected, and it sounded like a hot day, the sounds in the yard after dinner, or a thunderstorm before it broke.
Look, I’ve brought you some bull’s-eyes, she said.
Bull’s-eyes? Margaret! said Miss Browne. When I was with Mrs Stopford-Champernowne…
There is a kind of past experience that always serves as a point for anecdotal departure, and for Alys Browne, Mrs Stopford-Champernowne was just such a past experience, a signpost pointing to a region in which Alys Browne was the heroine. And she liked to talk about herself. She liked to talk about the past, because it was something achieved and distinct, if only in small ways, like walking in Rushcutters Bay Park, or buying bull’s-eyes at a shop in Darlinghurst, and these events had crystallized, they were not like the future, formless and volatile. Margaret also liked Miss Browne to talk about herself, because in listening she became an inhabitant of that same corner in time, the recollected past, she knew the park, she knew the cupboard where they put away brown paper and string, she sat with Miss Browne in a window-seat and the Salvation Army played on Sunday evenings in the street below. Kneeling on the floor they became drunk with anecdote. The clock hung up its purpose in the sitting-room, did not exist.
We must get to work, sighed Alys Browne, because it needed an effort to extricate yourself from the past.
Then they sat at the piano, and Margaret did her scales, and Miss Browne was beating with her hand, and Margaret frowned as a note escaped control, and she wanted to play well. She was not naturally musical. Only the piano was Miss Browne. They were trying a Beethoven sonata. And Margaret frowned. Miss Browne bent over her shoulder and made a note on the sheet. The pencil quavered in the bandaged hand. And you played with feeling, you wanted the whole of what you felt to come rushing out in a sudden chord, because the hand was a note in music or a link with Beethoven, was Miss Browne.
Alys Browne sat with a bull’s-eye in her mouth, wondered why she had become a music teacher, because it was like leading somebody in the dark. It was a false pretence. She had said very glibly: I shall teach music. She did not know what it meant. Sometimes her audacity frightened her. But nobody knew what frightened her, there was that consolation at least, just as nobody knew she had wanted to cry when she cut her hand. The bull’s-eye was warm and soothing in her mouth. And the way the doctor had spoken, he was rude, she had almost cried as the iodine plunged down into the cut, he was watching her. She was watching Margaret Quong make a mess of a Beethoven sonata. She could not help her much. And Margaret sat receiving assistance that almost did not exist, only for Margaret she would be an endless well of experience, the child would not know how shallow this was. The doctor knew. He looked at her and knew there was nothing there, she had felt it, he made her feel inadequate and naïve. There was a hard efficiency in the doctor’s face, like the face of someone who does things well facing somebody who. She turned over a page.
It is beautiful, felt Margaret Quong, she is beautiful, if only my hair was not quite so straight. I am nothing at all, sighed Alys Browne, he made me feel I am nothing at all, and why did I think his eyes were grey, or look, but you had to look at somebody in the street, even if he meant nothing at all.
May I come in? he said.
He was standing there at the door. He had shaved. They turned round on the music stool, the two heads in the circle of light.
I don’t want to interrupt, he said. I was passing. I thought I’d see how your hand.
Oh, said Alys Browne. My hand. You’d better sit down. We shan’t be long, she said.
He was sitting down by the table, taking a book, or no, it was the Windsor Magazine. She knew it was this. She knew she wished it was not. And then she was ashamed. She could feel that her face was red. But she would have liked him to know that she read Tolstoi too, even if he thought it was affectation, he would surely think it that.
A little slower, Margaret, she said.
Margaret was taut, her back. She could not play. She would never play, with the doctor sitting behind.
Have a bull’s-eye, said Alys Browne, and she made her voice as nonchalant as she could.
I think I’ll go, said Margaret. I promised I wouldn’t be late.
She got down off the stool. Miss Browne was looking at the wall.
Oh, she said, and her voice was vague. There’s still a quarter of an hour. But of course we can always make it up.
Miss Browne was looking at the wall. Her hands lay in her lap. And there was a shadow on the wall, grotesque, where Margaret’s head hung down, her hair hanging straight and her body drawn out into the shape of a post.
I promised Mother, Margaret said.
Don’t let me interrupt.
You’re not interrupting, said Alys, and her shadow turned.
Miss Browne wore her hair drawn back, looking over at the doctor who sat in a chair, because he had spoken, looking at a magazine. And there was nothing to say, but go to the door, Margaret trailing her shadow like a post, heavy as a post.
Good night, she said.
Oh, good night, Margaret, said Miss Browne.
Margaret opened the door and went outside. He was sitting in the chair. She looked back and his jaw was swollen with a bull’s-eye, his shadow bunched on the wall. I shall come again, she said, and we shall make up the quarter, many quarters of an hour. Then she went slowly down the steps and her feet were stubborn on the frozen path. Withdrawing into distance the shape of door dimmed, out of focus as you looked back. Her throat was tight, cold.
That silly magazine! said Alys Browne.
He did not hear. She picked up the music sheet. She wished that he had not come. She did not think she would have very much to say. She felt about seventeen, or younger than that, because reading Tennyson at seventeen, they had said she was old for her age, and looking at herself in the glass she was very wise.
Why? he said.
She laughed.
Why not?
Somebody said she was enigmatic, which meant, she knew, that you made something of nothing, a word or a glance, helping out your own inadequacies, but the doctor saw through.
Because man must cater for his imperfections. After all, he said, there’s a reality about his imperfections it’d be a pity to deny.
She could interpret that how she liked. He threw down the magazine, conscious of his own pomposity. He looked at her, saw her floundering, and said:
Well now, what about your hand?
Oh, that’s all right, she said. That was nothing at all.
She was moving about the room. She was patting things. He had put her to flight, and now she was defending herself, moving about with uneasy grace, a hardness in her voice that perhaps he ought to soften somehow, allow her to play her part. Because after all if what he said about man and his imperfections, and it had been damnably pompous, he knew, she ought to be allowed to play her part, and he would sit with his hands on his paunch, acquired to match his pomposity, and listen and applaud. Then suddenly he realized it was difficult, and perhaps he could no longer make a contact, sitting at home and talking to Hilda. Other people don’t play much of a part in our lives, said Hilda, with the conviction of a knitting needle, we don’t need them, she said. So it was rather difficult. It made you sit on the edge of your chair.