Колин Маккалоу – Angel (страница 4)
Pappy says that David is a mass of repressions, which she blames on his Catholic upbringing—she even has a name for the Davids of this world—”constipated Catholic schoolboys”. But I didn’t want to talk about him, I wanted to know what living at Kings Cross is like. Like any other place, she says. But I don’t believe that, it’s too notorious. I’m
It’s David again. Why can’t he get it through his head that someone who works in a hospital does not want to see some turgid monstrosity of a Continental film? It’s all very well for him, up there in his sterile, autoclaved little world where the most exciting thing that ever happens is a bloody mouse growing a bloody lump, but I work in one of those places where people suffer pain and sometimes even die! I am surrounded by gruesome reality—I cry enough, I’m depressed enough! So when I go to the pictures I want to laugh, or at least have a good old sniffle when Deborah Kerr gives up the love of her life because she’s in a wheelchair. Whereas the sort of films David likes are so
I tried to tell him the above when he said he was taking me to see the new film at the Savoy Theatre. The word I used wasn’t depressing, it was sordid.
“Great literature and great films are not sordid,” he said.
I offered to let him harrow his soul in peace at the Savoy while I went to the Prince Edward to see a Western, but he gets this look on his face which long experience has taught me precedes a lecture that’s sort of a cross between a sermon and a harangue, so I gave in and went with him to the Savoy to see
David insisted on taking a taxi home, though I would far rather have walked briskly down to the Quay and grabbed the bus. He always lets the taxi go outside our place, then escorts me in up the side passage, where, in the dark, he puts a hand on either side of my waist and squishes my lip with three kisses so chaste that the Pope wouldn’t think it sinful to bestow them. After which he watches to see I’m safely in the back door, then walks the four blocks to his own house. He lives with his widowed mother, though he’s bought a roomy bungalow at Coogee Beach which he rents out to a family of New Australians from Holland—very clean, the Dutch, he told me. Oh, is there
My big Bros were inside, making a cup of tea and killing themselves laughing at what had gone on in the side passage.
My curiosity about Kings Cross is going to be gratified on Saturday, when I am to have dinner at Pappy’s place. However, I shan’t tell Mum and Dad exactly whereabouts Pappy lives. I’ll just say it’s on the fringe of Paddington.
Last night we had a bit of a crisis with Willie. It’s typical of Mum that she insisted on rescuing this baby cockatoo off the Mudgee road and rearing it. Willie was so scrawny and miserable that Mum started him off on a dropper of warm milk laced with the three-star hospital brandy we keep for Granny’s funny little turns. Then, because his beak wasn’t hard enough yet to crack seed, she switched to porridge laced with three-star hospital brandy. So Willie grew up into this gorgeous, fat white bird with a yellow comb and a daggy breast caked with dried porridge. Mum has always given him his porridge-and-brandy in the last of the Bunnyware saucers I had when I was a toddler. But yesterday she broke the Bunnyware saucer, so she put his dinner in a bilious green saucer instead. Willie took one look, flipped his uneaten dinner upside down and went bonkers—screeched high C without letting up until every dog in Bronte was howling and Dad had a visit from the Boys in Blue, who arrived in a paddy wagon.
I daresay it’s all those years of reading whodunits sharpened my deductive powers, because, after a hideous night of a screeching parrot and a thousand howling dogs, I realised two facts. One, that parrots are intelligent enough to discern a saucer with cute little bunnies running around its rim from a saucer of bilious green. Two, that Willie is an alcoholic. When he saw the wrong saucer, he concluded that his porridge-and-brandy had been withdrawn, and went into withdrawal himself—hence the racket.
Peace was finally restored to Bronte when I got home from work this afternoon. I’d grabbed a taxi at lunchtime and dashed into the city to buy a new Bunnyware saucer. Had to buy the cup as well—
Kings Cross is certainly not a let-down. I got off the bus at the stop before Taylor Square and walked the rest of the way with Pappy’s directions memorised. Apparently they don’t eat very early at Kings Cross, because I didn’t have to be there until eight, so by the time I got off the bus it was quite dark. Then as I passed Vinnie’s Hospital it began to rain—just a drizzle, nothing that my frilly pink brolly couldn’t handle. When I reached that huge intersection I believe is the actual Kings Cross, seeing it on foot with the streets wet and the dazzle of all those neons and car lights rippling across the water was completely different from whizzing through it in a taxi. It’s beautiful. I don’t know how the shopkeepers avoid the Sydney Blue Laws, because they were still open
I love the rows upon rows of old Victorian terraced houses inner Sydney has—not kept up these days, alas. All the lovely cast-iron lace has been ripped off and replaced by sheets of fibro to turn the balconies into extra rooms, and the plastered walls are dingy. Even so, they’re very mysterious. The windows are blanked out by Manchester lace curtains and brown-paper blinds, like closed eyes. They’ve seen so much. Our house at Bronte is only twenty-two years old; Dad built it after the worst of the Depression, when his shop started making money. So nothing’s happened in it except us, and we are boring. Our biggest crisis is Willie’s saucer—at least, that’s the only time the police have called on us.
The House was a long way down Victoria Street, and as I walked I noticed that at this far end some of the terraced houses still had their cast-iron lace, were painted and well kept-up. Right at the end beyond Challis Avenue the street widened into a semicircular dead end. Apparently the Council had run out of tar, because the road was cobbled with little wooden blocks, and I noticed that within the semicircle no cars were parked. This gave the crescent of five terraced houses which filled it an air of not belonging to the present. They were all numbered 17—17a, b, c, d and e. The one in the middle, 17c, was The House. It had a fabulous front door of ruby glass etched in a pattern of lilies down to the clear glass underneath, the bevels glittering amber and purple from the light inside. It wasn’t locked, so I pushed it open.
But the fairytale door led into a desert waste. A dingy hall painted dirty cream, a red cedar staircase leading upward, a couple of fly-dirt-speckled naked lightbulbs on long, twisted brown cords, awful old brown linoleum pitted from stiletto heels. From the skirting boards to a height of about four feet, every single bit of wall I could see was smothered in scribbles, aimless loops and whorls of many colours with the waxy look of crayon.
“Hello!” I yelled.
Pappy appeared from beyond the staircase, smiling a welcome. I think I stared quite rudely, she looked so different. Instead of that unflattering bright mauve uniform and hair-hiding cap, she wore a skin-tight tube of peacock blue satin embroidered in dragons, and it was split so far up her left leg that I could see the top of her stocking and a frilly lace suspender. Her hair cascaded down her back in a thick, straight, shining mass—why can’t I have hair like that? Mine is just as black, but it’s so curly that if I grew it long it’d stick out like a broom in an epileptic fit. So I hack mine really short with a pair of scissors.