The girl sat on the lavatory seat, as one of them might have done. — What are they called?—
— Oh there’s Doreen, she comes after Shirley, there’s only eleven months between them (my pa was a lively old devil). People think they’re twins, but they’re very different personalities, very different …—
— Still at school? — In the cloudy blur of the bathroom, the taboo subject lost its embarrassing reference as the woman’s body lost any embarrassment of exposure.
— Doreen couldn’t take it. She’s doing hairdressing. Shirley’s the ambitious one. She’s Scorpio. She’ll go for an advertising job, you need A-levels to get a foot in there. Or maybe a travel agency. Oh she’s always moaning how lucky her old sister is, living out here. But they’re both full of fun. A pity you don’t have any sisters … and it’s a bit late for Len and me to make one for you!—
They laughed together; like the sisters. — Oh have a baby, Billie, it doesn’t matter; have a baby. Even if it’s a boy—
— Will you come and mind it for me? Change its smelly napkins? Oooh, I’m not sure I like the idea, don’t talk me into it — In her bedroom Billie offered the loan of anything ‘you have a yen for’ in her wardrobe; like the cardboard doll on which Hillela had tabbed paper dresses when she was a small child, she held up against herself successive images of Billie, in her splendid female confidence either never naked or never dressed, advancing down the aisles of the restaurant.
Len must have cancelled his usual long-distance sales trip that kept him away from home up in Northern Rhodesia, Lusaka and the Copper Belt, from Tuesdays to Fridays. Bewilderment took the form of tact in what was — Hillela had caught the resonance of Olga’s tone in bland remarks—‘a simple soul’; he seemed to have fallen back on regarding the girl’s presence as if it were that of a normal half-term break. He did a little business round about, and kept Hillela with him. She smoked a cigarette from the pack in the glove-box and he made no remark. When she had put out the stub he turned his head away from the road, without looking at her. — My little sweetheart. — Both knew, not seeing each other, that both smiled. Balancing rocks were passing; he did not see them, either, the routes he took were worn to grooves that rose over his head and enclosed him. The moments balanced, for her, rock by rock.
— Hillela, the best thing’ll be to go back, now, you know that.—
He felt her attention all down the side of his body.
— Not to the school. Of course, you can’t … that’s over. Back to Johannesburg. It’s decided that’s the best thing. Olga knows the good schools, somewhere you’ll like. I’ve discussed it all with Olga.—
The rocks, passing, passing, were still balanced. They leaned out far, they held, sometimes on a single precarious point of contact, in tension against the pull of the earth that wanted to bring them crashing down.
— It wouldn’t be fair to Billie. She’s on her feet for long hours and she’s very tired when she gets home — you know that. And with me out of town all week. The flat is small … it really would be too much for her if we found a bigger place. Billie’s young, and she’s right … she can’t be expected to take on …—
He slowed to turn a corner. His face came round full upon her. — The two of us.—
*
Arthur, Olga’s husband, acknowledged her presence while taking off his glasses and cleaning the inner corners of his eyes between thumb and forefinger; when he replaced the glasses she was a closed subject. The elder cousins had the reined air of being under constraint not to question her about what had happened. The innocents, the servant Jethro and little Brian, surrounded her with pleasure at her unexpected arrival. In the kitchen, grinning and chewing the Italian salami left on plates cleared from the diningroom: —Is very, very good you come to us in Jo’burg now. — Moving back and forth about his mother like a cat turning against table legs: —Is Hillela staying for always? In school-time, too? Is she going to boarding-school, is she going to be home every afternoon with Clive and Mark and me?—
Olga had a series of bright and authoritative prepared statements. — She’s going to live in Johannesburg. We don’t know yet if she’ll board.—
The rose was in its vase and the guest sweet-dish filled. Olga came in and closed the door behind her. She was the one who had explained menstruation as natural and sexual intercourse as beautiful, when the right time had come for information about these. Olga was the one who had paid for her teeth to be brought into conformation, bought her clothes chosen in good taste, and cared for her hair and skin so that she should grow up pleasing in the way Olga herself was and knew to be valued.
Olga’s lips pressed together until the flesh whitened to a cleft on either side of her nose and she began to cry. She became even more distressed when she saw the girl was afraid of this amazing evidence of disorder in an adult who knew how to arrange everything comfortably and safely. She drew Hillela to sit down beside her on that bed with its little heart-shaped cushions, quilted satin coverlet and posy-printed muslin skirts, and gripped her hands.
— I wish I knew what I did wrong — what I didn’t do for you, darling Hilly. But I never understood Ruthie — I adored her but I couldn’t … I just never … And now I’ve let my sister down again, I know it. It’s not your fault, I don’t blame you for anything, please believe that, I blame myself, you are like my own child, but sometimes you can’t do the right thing even for your own — you see that with lots of parents. There must be something I should have done, something I didn’t understand. But I just have to face the fact that maybe we’re not right for you … You know your Aunt Pauline and I don’t have much to do with each other — not because we don’t love each other, we do, we do! — and anyway we both still love our sister whatever anyone says about her — but maybe, well, we agree perhaps you’ll fit in better with Pauline’s family. Pauline doesn’t like Arthur, or our kind of friends or this house — you must have sensed it, even in the few times the whole family has been brought together. She thinks (a cough of laughter among the tears) — she says what you need is ‘a breath of air’, the kind we don’t breathe here. So you see how it is. Maybe you’ll have more to occupy your interests. Keep your mind busy. Pauline leads a more varied life — oh yes, I’m the first to admit it. My temperament is different. In that way, she and Ruthie were alike — adventurous. But of course with Pauline, I mean Pauline’s serious-minded … Anyway — it’s out of the question you should be in the care of someone like Billie.—
Adults go on talking, all through childhood the monologue never stops.
When she who people say was once Hillela thinks of that time — and no-one who knew her then knows whether she ever does — that is all she retains of it. The tantrum that blew up inside her so bewilderingly that morning has long since been transformed, as electricity goes through pylons from voltage to voltage astride space and in time, and merged as the energy of other passions. Only those who never grow up take childhood events unchanged and definitive, through their lives. It is only in the memory of someone who claims to be her Aunt Olga that the actual tantrum exists, in static anecdotal repetition, in its form of a mysterious defence of Billie, Billie of all people! — poor Len’s tarty second wife.