Two minutes of silence will come four years later, but for now it’s a dotted-quarter-note rest broken by the boy on stage, who springs to his feet con spirito, hurls three cheers into the air followed by a handful of petals. The Sydney Symphonette strikes up “God Save The King”. The audience sings. James reaches for the lip of the stage to steady it, for it’s suddenly gone a little lopsided.
Late that night, twelve hours into The War, Kathleen sits at her vanity, brushing her hair before the big oval looking-glass. She is not sleepy, how could she be? Tonight she sang. The world will never be the same.
Who is that in the glass? She sees herself for the first time. She doesn’t require soft light, not at her age, not with her looks, so the effect of three candles is excessively ravishing. Her hair sparks at every brush stroke. The candlelight carves a grotto in the gloom around her. The mirror is a sacred pool, in it she sees the future: her lips swollen with kissing, eyes caressing, come with me to my home beneath the sea and I will love you.
She unbuttons her nightgown. My beautiful throat. Bares a white shoulder, ohh. Parts the fabric to reveal her breasts, sailor take warning. Her image floating just beneath the twilight surface, tempting herself overboard.
She hovers her hand above a nipple that gathers and pleats to a point seeking heat. Kisses her palm with one eye on the mirror. Again, this time with her tongue. Experiments with the creation of cleavage. Arranges her hair: Gibson girl, milkmaid, madwoman, dryad. And leaves it there, spilling over her shoulders.
It’s a self-portrait and the artist is in love.
Her mother has warned her against gazing too long into a mirror. If you like too well what you see there, the devil will appear behind you. This has always worried Kathleen in spite of the fact she knows it to be nonsense, so she has never lingered. But tonight she feels brazen. Prepared to test the theory.
She smiles at herself. And gets stuck. Can’t move. Can’t look away or break the smile tightening to a grin on her face until she seems to be mocking herself. That’s when she sees him. Pete. In the shadows behind her. His smooth stuffed head. His hat. His no ears. His no face. She whimpers. Pete watches, Hello there. She can’t find her voice, is this a dream? In a wistful tone, Hello little girl. His no mouth, Hello.
She explodes from the sateen stool with a cry, flies blindly through the room, through Pete for all she knows, crashes out her door, across the hall, screaming like an incoming shell to the room where her father sleeps alone. She lands heavily on his bed sobbing, “I want to sleep with you tonight!”
He’s bolt upright, prepared to kill an intruder, but his fists turn to hands just in time to seize her shoulders. She’s shaking.
“Shshsh,” he says.
Carefully, through the darkness, he strokes her face. His thumb grazes her lips. “Hush now.” His hand slips round the warm back of her neck, “Hush my darling.” He kisses her cheek, the warm scent of her — he gets out of bed. Takes her briskly by the hand, “Come on, me old son,” quick march down to the kitchen, on with the electric light. In her cot, Materia is already awake. “A bad dream, that’s all, go back to sleep, missus.” Hot milk with honey, “That’ll fix you up, old buddy.”
Kathleen sips and calms down while he reads the paper and Materia stares at the yellowing linoleum. She’ll strip the wax tomorrow.
Back upstairs, he drags her mattress into the nursery room, where Frances and Mercedes sleep curled in their crib. Kathleen looks down at her sisters and feels her first rush of love for them, sweet bundles of babies’ breath and milky dreams. She leans down to kiss them. When she rises, a lock of her hair is twined in Frances’s fist. Gently she opens the tiny hand and tucks it under the covers.
Kathleen snuggles into her own bed on the floor and says to her father, “Don’t go.”
James says, “I’ll be right here,” and places his chair near the door, where he watches her till she falls asleep. Then he goes back to his own room and locks the door.
The next day, James outsmarts the demon for the second time. He enlists.
When James tells Materia that he has enlisted, she makes the sign of the cross. Oh no, he thinks, and tells her firmly, “It’s no good asking me not to go, I’ve already joined up.” She goes straight to church. James shakes his head. She might as well pray to the Kaiser for all the good it’ll do. He’s going, it’s done.
Materia arrives at Mount Carmel and hurries over to Mary’s grotto. There she prostrates herself as best she can, what with her unborn cargo, and gives thanks to Our Lady for sending The War.
Moving Picture
James decides it can’t do any harm to carry a photo of Kathleen with him to the war. He gets one of Wheeler’s boys to come out to New Waterford. He wants to remember her in her own home setting, not in a corpse-like tableau against a backdrop of faux antiquity. Lifelike. Like her.
After school on August 7, Wheeler’s assistant arrives with his contraption piled in Leo Taylor’s buggy, between himself and Kathleen.
“Set ’er up out here,” says James, “in front of the house, it’s such a beautiful day.”
The photographer peers through the circle of his thumb and forefinger at Kathleen standing motionless on the veranda with her hands folded and her feet in fifth position.
“That’s lovely, Miss Piper, just lovely.”
As Taylor unloads the buggy, James comes up and tells him quietly, “From now on, Taylor, any male passengers ride up front with you.”
“Yes sir.”
Taylor carries the boxy camera across the yard, its long hood trailing “like the severed head of a nun,” thinks Kathleen, pleased with her own ghoulishness. The photographer arcs around her, finding just the right angle, as Taylor follows with the equipment. Kathleen is still in her Holy Angels uniform. James has told her not to bother changing.
“Beautiful, now just hold that pose, Miss Piper.”
The photographer spears the tripod into the earth and disappears under the camera skirts. Taylor tilts a large black card above the lens. Everyone waits. Kathleen doesn’t move a muscle until snap.
“Miss Piper, I’m afraid I must ask you to remain still.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were going to take it.”
“Do you need to stretch again?”
“No.”
Kathleen folds her hands once more and smiles. The photographer cranks the lens for what seems like for ever. Kathleen mutters out the corner of her mouth, “Take the picture,” just as snap —
“Miss Piper, please.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t move this time.”
Demure smile, eyes turning glassy, an eternity passes; her mind wanders, she pictures the geography teacher, Sister Saint Monica, without her veil, is she bald underneath? Do nuns go to the toilet? Kathleen scratches her nose just as snap.
The photographer pops his head out from under the hood, “It’s not a motion camera, Miss Piper.”
James catches Kathleen’s eye and winks. She grins. The photographer huddles once more behind the camera, “That’s nice, Miss Piper, that’s lovely, one … two … three….”
James sneaks up behind the camera and pulls a cross-eyed face at Kathleen. She flops forward, hands on her knees, laughing into the camera, “Daddy!” — while at the same instant Materia appears in the window behind her and waves — snap. Through the lens, Materia’s hand fractures into light, framing Kathleen’s blur of hair. Materia must be holding something shiny.