Formally addressed and strictly impersonal, it might have been an invitation card or a bill, except for the oddly childish handwriting with neat copy book loops and a sprinkling of spiky verticals painfully acquired during a brief encounter with the classics at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge or no, for Mike the very act of taking up a pen put his head in a whirl and made him forget what he was trying to say. Whereas Irma, who spelled by the light of nature and confined her punctuation to the impulsive dash or exclamation mark, was entirely herself in the briefest of notes. The letter began with apologies for having stayed too long in the pine forest this morning and for having forgotten to look at his watch until it was too late to be on time for the trout (‘all the more for you’). With a mounting sense of irritation she turned the page: I had a letter from home this morning asking me to call on our banker immediately. A bore, but there it is. I am up to the eyes in packing and will have to be off by the early train tomorrow. Long before you are awake! As Lake View will be closed for the winter in a few days now, I’ve decided not to come back here, which means I’m afraid that I won’t be seeing you to say good-bye. It’s rotten luck but I’m sure you’ll understand. So if we don’t meet again in Australia thank you for having been so nice to me, Irma dear. The last few weeks would have been impossible without you.
Love from Mike.
P.S. I forgot to say I intend taking a fairly long look at Australia beginning with Northern Queensland, do you know it at all?
For a person who found difficulty in expressing himself on paper, the writer had conveyed his meaning remarkably well.
Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads. What, for instance, is the plump little Empress of India planning in bed in a flannel nightgown at Balmoral, on this night in March in the year nineteen hundred, that makes her smile and purse her small obstinate mouth? Who knows?
So, too, in stillness and silence do the obscure individuals who figure in these pages plot, suffer and dream. In Mrs Appleyard’s heavily curtained bedroom the suet-grey mask of the woman on the bed is literally bloated and blotched by evil vapours invisible by the light of day. A few doors away the child Sara’s little peaked face is illumined, even in sleep, by a dream of Miranda so filled with love and joy that she carries it about with her all next day, earning countless order marks for inattention in class, and at the instigation of Miss Lumley, half an hour strapped to a backboard in the gymnasium for ‘slouching’ with drooping, dream-heavy head. At Lake View, the stable clock striking five awakens the cook who rises yawning to set the oatmeal for Mr Michael’s early breakfast. Mike is awake after a restless night, productive mainly of dreams of banking and packing and procuring a seat on the Melbourne Express this morning. Once he dreams of Irma hurrying towards him down the corridor of a swaying train. ‘Here, Mike, there’s a seat here beside me,’ and pushes her away with his umbrella.
Down at the Lodge, Irma too has heard the clock strike five; only half awake and staring out at the garden slowly taking on colour and outline for the coming day. At the Hanging Rock the first grey light is carving out the slabs and pinnacles of its Eastern face – or perhaps it is sunset. . . . It is the afternoon of the picnic and the four girls are approaching the pool. Again she sees the flash of the creek, the wagonette under the blackwood trees and a fair-haired young man sitting on the grass reading a newspaper. As soon as she sees him she turns her head away and doesn’t look at him again. ‘Why? Why? . . .’ ‘Why?’ screeches the peacock on the lawn. Because I knew, even then . . . I have always known, that Mike is my beloved.
12
At two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday the nineteenth of March, Appleyard College was cold, silent and smelling of roast mutton and cabbage. The boarders’ midday dinner was just over, the maids off duty. Afternoon classes had not yet begun. Dora Lumley lay on her bed sucking her eternal peppermints and Mademoiselle, seated at a window overlooking the front drive, was re-reading a letter from Irma received in this morning’s mail.
The Lodge. Lake View.
Dearest Dianne,
In haste – Mrs C. and I up to our eyes in tissue paper – can’t find a pen. Mrs C. says why isn’t the lovely French lady here to show her how to fold the dresses? This is to tell you the WONDERFUL news – my darling parents arrive from India this week. I am going to Melbourne to wait for them in our suite at the Menzies Hotel!! It all feels like the end of a long long storey and now suddenly it is the LAST chapter and nothing more to read. So dearest Dianne I will be calling in at the College on my way to the station probably Thursday afternoon – my last chance to say good-bye to you – and the dear girls – it makes my heart ache to think of them still there at school – and of course Minnie and Tom but I hope NOT Mrs A. if it can possibly be AVOIDED! Oh, what a hateful thing to say but the thought of having to talk to her is MISERY! Dianne I haven’t had a chance to buy your wedding present – Manassa’s Store has nothing but boots and jam darling and tin billy cans – so please accept my emmerald bracelet with my love – the one my Grandmother in Brazil gave me the one I told you about with the green parrot – remember? anyway now dead so she won’t know or mind. Mrs C. wants to know about the blue chiffon you used to like I must go.
Love Irma.
P.S. – I shall come straight up to your room when I arrive – or to the schoolroom if you are in class whether Mrs A. approves or not.
Mademoiselle’s was the first of several heads at several windows to see Hussey’s cab coming up the drive. From it alighted Irma in a scarlet cloak and a little toque of scarlet feathers blowing this way and that. The Headmistress at her desk downstairs had seen her too and to Mademoiselle’s amazement – such a lapse of decorum was unknown at the College – had herself appeared at the hall door before the governess was half way down the staircase, and was sweeping the visitor into the study on a chill wave of formal greeting.
On the first floor landing one of the statues was permitted on dull afternoons to cast a feeble light. Now Dora Lumley came shuffling out of the shadows. ‘Mam’selle! Are you ready? We shall be late for the gymnasium class.’
‘That hateful gymnasium! I am coming down now.’
‘The girls are so seldom allowed in the fresh air nowadays – surely you agree they need exercise?’
‘Exercise! You mean those ridiculous tortures with bars and dumb-bells? At their age young girls should be strolling under the trees in light summer dresses with a young man’s arm around every waist.’
Dora Lumley was too deeply shocked to reply.