F-L-O-R-A spelt out makes you feel more real hard to believe you’re free at last to roam around lie on the park grass if you want not at night when they murder people who are on their own but under the sun the weight of the sun as much as the warmth is what you crave for.
In the sun’s absence, she began walking smartly down the street. She didn’t depend on the sun, no more than on any man. And Mrs Hunter dead. You would never go back. Not for the uniform. Not for the plastic bag either. Or the box of tissues opened only this afternoon.
She walked faster, to throw off the thought of her pretty bag. Through her dress, the air was playing on, if not between, her ribs. She shivered. She had forgotten it was winter.
Till she was simply walking. For the sake of it. Down Anzac towards Kingsford. Within sight of the neon sign she loitered on the kerb before turning into Gladys Street, but doubled back along the opposite pavement on reaching Vidlers’ front divide; she could not have faced giving Vid and Viddie an account. She shot down streets she had never ever heard of Hardcastle Trent Dahlia Corella Cumberlong Dobbs re-crossing the Parade nearly at a run then shied off just short of Snow’s the blue light still spitting on its pole pointing up the tuck pointing. Received again into the Parade, she was panting for all that is hectic, to match her own hectically flickering condition.
If you had been wise to yourself at the time you might have joined in Lottie’s dance for Mrs Hunter.
Outside the Bellevue in a patch of light shed by a couple of milky globes a human object had been planted: a third globe, or turnip, or face of a woman who has reached the hazed phase, of coloured memories and dribbled resentments, was occupied in staring up.
‘Doncher know me, Florrie?’ The voice struggling to get out through the rubber hole of a mouth sloshed the self-pity around. ‘One thing nobody can ever say’s I never took the trouble to know a person who was down on ut.’
Here the weight attached to her was too great for this person: wrists flopping over a bulge of knees, head tumbling on the end of a telescoped fibrous neck, the body almost rolled sideways into the gutter. But saved itself, as a headlight flashing past washed the eyelids whiter, the mouth a wetter, more slippery rubber.
‘Why — Snow!’ It could be the night of worst moments. ‘Is anything wrong with you?’
‘Chrise, Florrie, thought you was the big wake-up. Camtcher see I’m stoned blue?’
‘But in the gutter!’
‘If you can’t get yerself out of ut.’ Snow was in fact lolling worse.
Bent over her only living relative so that the draught from behind shot up her mini, Flora Manhood could not have felt more foolish or less competent. By rights she should have got down on her knees, but she did not want to spoil her hose. The hose was no real excuse: instead of inventing pet-names (‘Butchikins’ ‘Snowlo’ ‘Pore Youse’) she could have grabbed hold of the hands from where she was, and yanked her cousin into the upright. She didn’t.
‘Are you on your own, Snowy?’
‘I’m on me own.’
‘What about your friend?’
‘Which friend? Carla?’
‘The one I met. Wasn’t it Alix?’
‘That one. Alix left.’
‘Carla, then?’
‘Not Carla. Carla went the way. Kay’s the one. Walked out on me this evenun. That’s why I got me load up.’
Snow Tunks began, not to cry, to trickle or dribble, gin or tears. With one hand she made a swipe at the silver sickle swinging from her mouth. Or nose.
‘Wait on, Snowy. I’ll fetch someone,’ nurses have wrecked their backs hoisting the patient, ‘somebody to help you up.’
‘I can get up — if I wanter.’
‘Call a taxi, then — to take you to your home.’
‘I don’t wanter. Not alone. Florrie?’ Snow Tunks put out a hand, but only caught hold of the dark: Flora Manhood had stepped back.
The truth was: you could not bear her to touch you; Snow might stick for ever.
‘The taxi’s the best shot, love. There’ll be a phone I can use in the pub. Call the Red de Luxe.’ Too high, too bright, heels too busy across the pavement.
From where she was sitting on the kerb Snow heaved round to holler, ‘Only if you’ll come, Floie. You’re the one it should have been. I reckon I sorter realized as far back as Banana Town you an’ me couldn’t do better than shack up.’
‘Okay, Snow. Wait, Snowy.’
The bar door took some opening: the fug inside must have gummed it up. Snatches of men s beery laughter seemed to make the frosted glass balloon outward against the cheek of anyone, specially a woman, pushing in.
‘Won’t let me down, will yer, Florrie?’ Snow was still calling from the kerb. ‘It’s you an’ me an’ bugger the rest.’
‘Yairs yairs.’
Florrie (Sister Manhood!) managed to force the door open. On the other side men were standing watching an infringement of their rights. Whether pursy, beery-eyed blokes, of the type which crooks a finger at its schooner to establish this delicate relationship, or lean smoothies who show they know better by nursing a glass of pallid spirits, all were of the superior sex. Nobody ever said you can do without a woman; who can even become a permanent asset: to throw the steak on the grill, iron the shirts and keep the home nice and neat. Wives are economic like; that’s a different matter. As for this girl, showing too much of herself in the doorway, she didn’t rate much above a back-seat fuck.
Lucky for Flora Manhood’s pride that the Bellevue stood on a corner. She could cut across this corner, jibbering apologies for the mistake she had made, and was already out the opposite door, in the other street, wiping her hands on such skirt as she could muster, to dry her embarrassment, not to say shame: for blokey men, for her drunken dyke cousin, and worst of all, HERSELF.
She was again faced with this delirious neon nightscape her life had become since Mrs Hunter’s death. Won’t let me down will yer Florrie? Like hell. If Snow herself had more or less put the idea in your head she couldn’t complain. Any more than you explain.
Farther up, a police car was slowing down to take a squint. No hope of explaining to the Great Dane police boy you were only running away from your shickered cousin you were not the pross he would have liked you to be you were not even any longer identifiable as a nurse you were nothing but a woman of no fixed intention recognized capabilities or positive hopes.
But the car cruised on.
It was not till the sidestreets, up to your ankles in sand, that you started running back, out of this dead end. The sand was what handicapped: all the streets on this side were deep in it. As you squelched and lumbered you were sandpapered.
It seemed to Flora Manhood she would never get there: the paling fences, the shifting sands of the cross streets, were against it. Once she had lost a shoe running to catch a bus. She would lose a shoe now for sure, and the police car pick up Snow. You would have let down practically everybody you could think of.
Lying in this narrow bed knowing every spring and non-spring like you know the bumps the boobs the grain the tufts the funnels and tunnels the whinges of your own body what would you have done if you found the car pulled up door open alongside the Bellevue it wasn’t but could have come and gone Snow had gone like everybody you are the one who is left and Elizabeth Hunter she has leaked out in a brown stream from under the handkerchief the sheet to mingle with the dark around you are a twit because E. Hunter is well and truly laid not a loophole left the cotton wool won’t allow it.
Crossing the Parade, probably for the fifteenth time, Flora Manhood heard the traffic screech. Elizabeth Hunter herself, determined that nothing should prevent her having her way, could not have stalled it more effectively. Flora tripped, lurched against the plate glass, which at first buckled, but settled down by tremors against her flattened nose. Mrs Hunter’s fingers always trembled if she won; if she didn’t, they stiffened into claws. Considering the dead woman was not present even in a spirit nightie, only a nut would believe there was any question of influence.