When the Mahmouds had saved enough, they had opened their Sydney shop, which thrived. Mr Mahmoud had bought his wife this splendid house and told her to stop working and enjoy her family. And yet James never saw a sign of the family. Her children were all at school, and the big boys were at the shop with her husband. Mrs Mahmoud missed her Gaelic friends in the country and looked forward to grandchildren. She never spoke of her homeland.
On this New Year’s Eve day, Mrs Mahmoud greeted James with Bliadhna Mhath Ūr but didn’t show him into the front room, remaining in the kitchen to work alongside the hired Irish girl, who had a lot to learn. He proceeded there by himself, quite comfortable now in this house, took off his jacket and got to work.
He had already removed a few ivory keys and was bent under the lid behind the piano’s gap-toothed smile, so he didn’t see Materia when she stepped into the archway.
But she had seen him. She had spied him from her upstairs bedroom window when he came knocking at the kitchen door below, toting his earnest bag of tools — a blond boy so carefully combed. She had peeked at him through the mahogany railings carved with grapes as he entered the front hall and hung his coat in the closet beneath the stairs — his eyes so blue, his skin so fair. Taut and trim, collar, tie and cufflink. Like a china figurine. Imagine touching his hair. Imagine if he blushed. She watched him cross the hall and disappear through the high arch of the big front room. She followed him.
She paused in the archway, her weight on one foot, and considered him a moment. Thought of plucking his suspenders. Grinned to herself, crept over to the piano and hit C sharp. He sprang back with a cry — immediately Materia feared she’d gone too far, he must be really hurt, he’s going to be really mad, she bit her lip — he clapped a hand over one eye, and beheld the culprit with the other.
The darkest eyes he’d ever seen, wet with light. Coal-black curls escaping from two long braids. Summer skin the colour of sand stroked by the tide. Slim in her green and navy Holy Angels pinafore. His right eye wept while his left eye rejoiced. His lips parted silently. He wanted to say, “I know you,” but none of the facts of his life backed this up so he merely stared, smitten and unsurprised.
She smiled and said, “I’m going to marry a dentist.”
She had an accent that she never did outgrow. A softening of consonants, a slightly liquid “r,” a tendency to clip not with the lips but with the throat itself. What she did for the English language was pure music.
“I’m not a dentist,” he said, then rushed pink to his ears.
She smiled. And looked at the loose piano teeth scattered at his feet.
She was twelve going on thirteen.
Had she hit E flat things might never have progressed so far, but she hit C sharp and neither of them had any reason to suspect misfortune. They arranged to meet. He wanted to ask permission of her mother but she said, “Don’t worry.” So he waited for her, shivering on the steps of the Lyceum until he saw her come out the big front doors of Holy Angels Convent School across the street. The other girls spilled down the steps in giggling groups or private pairs, but she was alone. When she caught sight of him she started running. She ran right into his arms and he swung her around like a little kid, laughing, and then they hugged. He thought his heart would kill him, he’d had no clue what it was capable of. His lips brushed her cheek, her hair smelled sweet and strange, an evil enchantment slid from him. The salt mist coming off Sydney Harbour crystallized in the fuzz above his lip and alighted on his lashes; he was Aladdin in an orchard dripping diamonds.
She said, “I got five cents, how ’bout you, mister?”
“I have seventy-eight dollars and four cents in the bank, and a dollar in my pocket, but I’m going to be rich someday.”
“Then give me the dollar, Rockefeller.”
He did and she led him to Wheeler’s Photographic on Charlotte Street, where they had their picture taken in front of a painted Roman arch with potted wax ferns. He felt, before he learned anything about where she came from, that the photograph had made them one.
They continued on to Crown Bakery, where they shared a dish of Neapolitan ice-cream and melted their initials onto the window. He said, “I love you, Materia.”
She laughed and said, “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“No, my name.”
“Materia.”
She laughed again and he said, “Am I saying it right?”
She said, “Yes, but it’s cute, it’s nice how you say it.”
“Materia.”
And she laughed and said, “James.”
“Say it again.”
“James.”
It was when she said his name in her soft buzzy way that his desire first became positively carnal — he blushed, convinced everyone could tell. She touched his hair, and he said, “Do you want to go home now?”
“No. I want to go with you.”
They walked to the end of the Old Pier off the Esplanade, and looked at the ships from all over. He pointed. “There’s the Red Cross Line. Someday I’m going to get on her, b’y, and go.”
“Where?”
“New York City.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Sure.”
She really was betrothed to a dentist, promised when she was four. The dentist was still in the Old Country but was coming to marry her when she turned sixteen.
“That’s barbaric,” said James.
“It’s old-fashioned, eh?”
“Do you like him?”
“I never met him.”
“That’s so … backward, that’s savage.”
“It’s the custom.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s old.”
“For God’s sake!”
They walked back up the Old Pier hand in hand. To the right of them sank the tepid sun, while to their left the blast furnaces of Dominion Iron and Steel erupted into a new day’s work. A light orange snow began to fall.
Sydney is only small. By then several people had seen them together and word reached Mrs Mahmoud, who kept it from Mr Mahmoud. Materia was forbidden to have anything to do with the piano tuner. She was cross-examined. “Did he touch you? Are you sure?” And the nuns were alerted. She was never alone, and at night her mother locked Materia’s bedroom door.
Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, “Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.” She’d been too young to realize that he was talking to her brothers. On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Materia climbed out her window and left the Old Country for ever.
Come with me from Lebanon, O my sister. February 17 1899, a moonless night, I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. They set out before dawn on a hired horse and got married that day at Irish Cove, in a Protestant ceremony performed by an ex-navy chaplain who asked no questions in exchange for a quart of rum. Thy lips, O my bride, drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue. They snowshoed in to a hunting cabin on Great Bras d’Or Lake that was used by rich Americans in the fall, thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. It was all boarded up but he set to work — thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes — prying planks off windows, healing the blind. Inside, he wouldn’t let her open her eyes till he’d swept, lit a fire and laid the table. He’d thought of everything; there was rosehip wine, new linen sheets, and the moth-bally tartan from his late mother’s hope chest, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. He sang her a Gaelic lullaby which made him cry because, if such a thing was possible, he loved her more in his mother tongue, a garden inclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. He kissed her so gently, didn’t want to frighten her, he’d mail-ordered What Every Husband Should Know but decided never to touch her in that way if necessary, he’d rather die than frighten or hurt — she reached up and stroked the back of his head, “Habibi,” she whispered, “BeHebak.” With my own hands I opened to my love.