Flame red
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Sydney Smith
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Sydney Smith's biography and other articles by this writer
Dear Lance,
I am sitting on the back seat of the bus, heading for Melbourne. This morning, my father took me to the railway station and we waited in the shade of a stringybark tree for the bus to pull up and open its door. The train left for the city just as we arrived, blowing a sad message on its horn. I could have caught that but my parents thought the bus was cheaper and would still get me away from you. They said I was lowering their standing in the community. They said I had no pride, going to the pub and hanging around while you drank at the bar. They said I was like a little dog waiting for its master. Well, that is how I felt. I had to see you, Lance. There was no argument about it.
After my parents found out about me and you they tied me to my bed to keep me from wandering while they were at work. I explained that I only went to see you at the pub, that's the only place I was sure you would be, and that was in the evening. But they did not listen to me. Father said it was just a temporary measure, to give them time to consider what to do next. He apologised each afternoon when he came back from his mail rounds and untied me so I could make his lunch. Mother maintained a grim silence and would not be in the same room with me.
Then yesterday morning she came and stood outside my bedroom door while Father was tying me to the bedpost, and told me about the arrangement. I felt like a stranger who has come into the middle of a conversation and doesn't know what is going on. She said, ‘I'm sending her to the city to stay with my Aunty Ivy, who runs a hotel. I've told Aunty Ivy to set her the task of cleaning the hotel.'
So here I am on the bus to the city, Lance. I have never been to Melbourne before, or even outside Echuca. I am not sure such a place really exists. Maybe I am going to the place in Hell where bad daughters go. I keep my mind on the task that lies ahead. I understand cleaning – I have kept house for my parents since I was sixteen. But I feel strange, Lance, like I left my body behind. I have not eaten all day and I do not feel hungry. In my mind, I keep seeing my old body back there in my bedroom. I keep thinking she is waiting for Father to untie her.
DEAR LANCE,
Aunty Ivy picked me up from the bus terminal. She looks just like Mother except more wrinkled.
The evening air was stale and smelled of dirt and metal and petrol fumes. I tried to catch the scent of something living but there was none. All around us were buildings, and though there were some plane trees standing on the pavement, they had no odour. We drove down wide streets lined with buildings. Everything was dirt-coloured. There was a lot of traffic, even more than you see on the highway through Echuca. It honked and screeched and Aunty Ivy shook her fist at it. I sank low in my seat and covered my eyes with my hands. If the other cars were going to ram into us, I did not want to see it.
We passed under a bridge just as a train thundered across it. It was like driving under a dragon galloping to meet the knight.
Aunty Ivy turned and turned, nosing the car through narrow streets where all the houses were small and had peeling walls, no gardens. We parked behind a pub squeezed between factory hulks. Inside, it smelled of smoke, beer and disinfectant. She took me up here to the tower and showed me my room. It is hot and square and looks over a jumble of tin roofs all the way to the horizon. There is only one way out of this room, and that is down the stairs. You can't climb out the window because there is nothing below, not even a drainpipe. Just blank wall from me to the asphalt. I have a bed and a chair, that is all. I shall keep my clothes in my suitcase.
DEAR LANCE,
I am sorry I have not been able to write sooner. I expected to write to you every day but I have had so much to do I don't have a moment to myself. Aunty Ivy has got me working through lunch and dinner. Just when I think I can sit down for a minute she points out something else that needs doing. I work through meals with a sandwich in my hand. By the time I climb up to my tower, all I can do is fall into bed.
On my first day she told me I was going to serve behind the bar. I felt a thrill of fear. I told her I didn't know how – I said Mother had instructed her to make me clean. She said, ‘You're going to clean, too, don't you worry about that, but what I really want is bar staff.'
She set me to train during the mornings after I had cleaned. It is quiet then – hardly anyone comes in. She was impatient, snapped at me every mistake I made and called me stupid. ‘Not like that, stupid,' she said. When I had memorised the prices of all the popular drinks, she told me she wanted me to work lunchtimes and evenings. I trembled. Every morning, Bartlett puts a sign out the front advertising strip shows and topless barmaids. I said, ‘Why can't I work in the mornings?' She said, ‘Take off your top and leave your glasses upstairs.' I said I was blind without my glasses. ‘Don't be silly,' she said and shoved me toward the stairs.
I shivered in my room until I heard the hubbub of voices as the men gathered, then I scuttled downstairs wearing my longest T-shirt, no bra. She looked sideways at my chest, her lips clamped together. I have breasts like sparrows, and I can't imagine anybody buying beers just for the chance to look at them. I scurried behind the bar before she could say anything.
Cherie was there, serving and chatting nicely to the customers. She has a bouncy way of moving. I used to think she moved like that to make her flesh more appetising, until one day I saw her come in from the car park, dressed in a long skirt and a loose blouse, and I noticed she bounced then, too. She wears a black suspender belt decorated with pink rosettes, and black stockings that leave the tops of her thighs deliciously bare. When I first started working with her I didn't know how to manage my eyes – they seemed to put themselves on her no matter how I tried not to. It is better now but sometimes I get this rush of panic – Cherie is naked – and I blush red-hot. I can tell by her secret little smile that she knows how I feel.
Every lunchtime the strip show goes on in the backroom. The girls come into the pub carrying gym bags and wearing tight jeans and stiletto heels. Aunty Ivy has set aside a room for them close to the stage. A few minutes to dress and put coloured gloss on her eyelids and lips, then on comes the first one. Cherie and I work up and down the bar from the main room to the back room. As soon as the music starts the men crowd in, shouting and whistling. On my first day I thought they would climb over the counter and rape us, but Cherie said cheerily, ‘They'll do no such thing.' She and I work hard for the next two hours. I feel like I don't draw breath until the last strip show ends and the men pour out of the pub.
Once the men are gone Cherie empties her plate of tips on the bar and counts the money. I don't get any tips, although Aunty Ivy put a bowl down on the bar with a sign saying TIPS. Cherie passes me twenty dollars on the sly and says, ‘Don't tell Ivy or she'll snatch it out of your hand.' I wasn't sure what to do with the money. Aunty Ivy doesn't pay me a wage. She says I get free bed and free meals and that's all the wages I need.
Sunday is my day off. I was so worn out the first Sunday I slept through the day. Same thing happened on the second Sunday. I half woke up once and thought I was back in my bedroom at home. I felt Mother was outside the door. A board creaked. Then I remembered I was living with Aunty Ivy now and drifted off to sleep again.
On the third Sunday I made a real effort and managed to crawl out of bed in the afternoon and take a walk. I found a shop selling books with all kinds of pictures in them. It sold other kinds of books, too, but all I was interested in were the picture books. I went along the shelves, taking out books and leafing through them, until I found a book with scenes from fairytales. There was a dwarf throwing a tantrum, and a proud woman asking her looking glass who was the fairest one of all, and a sea witch with green seaweed hair. I laid the book down and looked at some others but I came back to it and went through it again. This time, I saw a lion wearing a burgundy smoking jacket. His mane hung on his shoulders in princely waves. I bought it with the money Cherie had given me.
When I got home, I went through the book, choosing the pictures I wanted to look at the most. I cut them out with a Stanley knife (borrowed from Bartlett) and stuck them to my bedroom walls.
The next day, Aunty Ivy walked in and looked around the room with her mouth pursed suspiciously. She comes upstairs some mornings to check on my room. She says, ‘I don't want you doing any damage to my property.' She used her foot to lift the lid of my suitcase and check inside. Her feet are bent at the joint of the big toe. The joint has swollen so big she has to wear over-sized shoes to fit over it. She put her finger on the picture of the Lion Prince and said, ‘Where did this come from?' I told her I brought it from home. She said, ‘Hmph! A likely story.'
She reached into my suitcase and took out all my T-shirts. ‘You won't be needing these,' she said, and marched out of the room. I was too stunned to move for a second. Then I ran after her. She turned on me and snapped, ‘What? What?' I wanted to grab them from her but I was too scared. She walked away with my clothes, shouting, ‘And you can get back to work. I don't pay you to sit on your bum all day.'
I crept into her room while she was on the phone and stole back my clothes. I keep them in the box labelled Disinfectant in the cleaning cupboard. Every time I appear in a fresh T-shirt Aunty Ivy scowls.
It is Sunday again and Ivy has gone visiting friends. Bartlett is in charge of the pub. He has a big moustache. His eyes are folded down at the corners and he reminds me of a bloodhound. Before she left, Aunty Ivy told me to make sandwiches for her Sunday regulars. But as soon as she had gone, wearing black high heels that made her press her lips together from the pain, Bartlett jerked his head over his shoulder, telling me to get going and leave it to him.
So here I am, wearing Bartlett's jumper because the autumn air is chilly and sitting in a dusty little park outside the railway station. The trains come and go every five minutes, even though it's Sunday.
I think about you coming here and taking me away. I yearn for it, Lance, though I know you won't come. Every morning when I clean I think myself back to the pub in our town. I see you leaning on the bar, fingers curled around your beer glass. Somebody whispers in your ear. You straighten up and look at me waiting for you by the door, and I turn to flames. Then you sag against the bar again and turn your head away. I go on waiting by the door, though you don't look at me again. Something in me keeps hoping, and writing you these letters.