Lilian's Story by Kate Grenville Page A

believe, but I was curious. Oh , Mother said through a mouthful of white froth, she is a bit odd, Lilian, that is all. I stopped eating in the hope that she would go on, and felt John watching me from across the table. There is some story , Mother went on at last, that she was jilted early on, and went a little odd. She frowned with her fine eyebrows. Lilian, you are spilling your white-eat , she said. And goggling. She finished her blancmange and tossed the wide sleeves of her robe further up her arms with a gesture like a man preparing to chop something down. It is hard for jilted women , she explained. Oddness is to be expected, poor thing.
    Meeting a Madness
    Miss Gash came up to me where I crouched behind a hibiscus. I thought you were a dog , she said. In the bush there. Her lips had been drawn in vermilion on the withered skin around her mouth, but her voice was that of a reasonable person. I would have liked to finger those silk postage stamps, now that I was so close, but I did not. So you had better have a dish of water , she said, and led me up onto her verandah. I am not a dog , I said, and wondered what she could make me believe. I glanced at my hand and smoothed the wrinkled pinafore where a tiny spider laboured through stitching.
    The water was not in a dish, but in a teacup of the kind that Alma dusted daily while Mother watched with a finger to the side of her neck. The water tasted of rust but was as cool as the sea. Perhaps it is poisoned, I thought, and met her eyes, which were dark with something applied more to one eye than the other so one side of her face seemed to recede. There was no fur on the backs of my hands, but I could hear my breath panting.
    Miss Gash drank her own water in one long swallow and sat watching me and hiccupping. I wear postage stamps , she said at last, after we had watched a small spider let itself down jerkily between us from the rafters. I would have liked to travel, but this is the best I can do. She picked at a fold of cloth on her knee and held it up close to her face. British Guinea , she said. Where is British Guinea? I did not know. Africa , I said with more authority than I intended. The rusty water had made my voice loud. It is in Africa. Miss Gash stretched her arms above her head, showing me pale hairy armpits through the rent in her dress. You modern girls , she said. You know everything.
    I had never seen armpits like those before. I had seen Alma’s armpits, dark and matted, once when I had come across her in the laundry in bloomers and camisole, her hair a pile of lather on her head, her face mottled with steam. Mother had no armpits that I had ever seen. The hair in Miss Gash’s armpits was a tiny head of well-brushed hair. She saw me staring and said, You see, it is cooler this way , and I began to sweat under my clothes. Men are proud of theirs, Miss Gash said, and winked at me like an uncle. Hair is supposed to be virile.
    After a long silence she said, You do pictures too , and nodded many times. I saw them , she said, and pointed down towards the summer-house that I had covered with rude words. She held out a hand with the fingers framing a piece of garden in front of us. I do a picture every day . The postage stamps were fraying into long fringes that swayed around her arms as she gestured. Then I wash them away , she said. It is the only thing to do.
    The spider had begun to build a web in a corner of Miss Gash’s wicker chair, and a cicada shrilled once from a tree and thought better of it. Miss Gash stared out at her jungle, her vermilion lips smiling, but it could have been just the way they were drawn. One hand smoothed and smoothed at the cloth over her knee and she nodded now and again in agreement with someone. Well, you have had your water, and can go now , she said, and smiled with those savage lips. But you are welcome any time.
    Bombast
    Where is it, then, the tile you were going to get? Ursula taunted. The old witch scared you. I