The Heaven I Swallowed Read online

She gave a murmur. It reminded me of a mumble I had given the Sisters when they demanded proof of my obedience.

  ‘In this house, Mary, we reply “yes” or “no” when asked a question.’

  This was what the Sisters would have said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we say the person’s name.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Smith.’

  I stood looking at the girl. Should Mary really call me this? I could neither think of having the girl call me ‘mother’ nor give her licence to gather up my first name and use it at will. But ‘Mrs Smith’? It sounded too distant.

  ‘I think you should call me Auntie Grace.’

  There had been one auntie in my childhood, a woman not related to my parents but who tried to provide a few good memories for me. It seemed the best compromise.

  ‘Yes, Auntie Grace,’ Mary replied.

  Her tone was flat. The words had the same feeling of dull repetition of a response in Mass from the unfaithful. This did not bother me. I had spent so many years insisting on the fervent passion of ‘Amen’ to Fred, I had little doubt I would succeed in doing the same with Mary. She was just a young child and I had the entire world to give her.

  †

  The next morning we went to buy new shoes, catching the tram into the city because I was still reluctant to drive Fred’s father’s Holden. I kept it sheltered in the carport, away from envious, disapproving eyes. Although petrol rationing was over, it was still seen by many in Wayville Street as an extravagance.

  I was uncomfortable, too, with the threads the car held of my father-in-law, a small-town wool classer. He had come to the city on the insistence of his wife, was given a house by his wife’s over-friendly uncle—the house I now live in—and promptly sunk into the Depression and unemployment. The car had contained samples of dirty grey wool, covering the rear window shelf and the dash. Fred had laughed about it when he inherited the vehicle but I had seen it as rather pathetic, a man clinging to the remnants of a job he could no longer do. Yet neither of us had been willing to throw the wool away and so it stayed, giving the interior a greasy patina.

  For once, I would have liked the cocoon of the car instead of the looks Mary and I received. The neighbourhood glances as we made our way to the tram had been bad enough, but walking down Elizabeth Street with her hand in mine it seemed the world was made of sideward glares, thin-lipped disapproval, openly hostile stares.

  Mary wore the blue dress she had arrived in, the stains slightly less prominent from the sponging I had given it, but it still highlighted her dark limbs and there was no disguising her difference from the primly hatted children I saw following their mothers, all blonde curls and sweet eyes. How black Mary’s hand was next to my skin. It implied a certain kind of dirtiness, even though I had washed her myself in the bath the night before, scrubbing hard with the pumice stone to ensure no layers of the Girls’ Home remained. She had raised no objection, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, tipping her head back when told to, perhaps grateful for the chance to be truly clean. I would just have to keep her out of the sun, try to get her to fade a little.

  As we walked, I worried we would run into someone I knew. Would Mr Roper materialise to add his look of disbelief to the strangers who marched past us? I kept my eyes down, mimicking Mary. I felt a burning in my cheeks. It had been a long time since I had received such attention.

  I have never been the kind of woman who men look at, fall madly in love with, long for and cannot imagine living without. Not ugly, but not beautiful. Just a middling woman, sitting straight-backed in a chair on the edge of the dance floor while all the true beauties were escorted away by dashing, handsome men. At least I was not often left to last; some plump young man would eventually ask me, as clumsy with his words as he would prove to be in dancing. I offered an alternative to the fat girls or ones with glasses. My face was described by one of the Sisters as ‘angelic’, but I knew from an early age that angels would have ensured themselves more striking cheekbones, less insipid eyes and a nose smaller and straighter.

  Fred had not been one of the boys who asked me to dance, though we met for the first time at a local ball not long after I came to the city to begin teaching at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope High School. Fred did not recall meeting me when, seven years later, he returned to the neighbourhood after attending Oxford. I saw him at church. I would like to tell a romantic story of us moving, our very first time, to the centre of the dance floor and knowing we would twirl together for the rest of our lives. The harsher fact was he had failed university and returned a bundle of disappointment and desperation. Perhaps he would not have looked twice at me if he had become a successful don. But I was what he needed: an acolyte who confirmed his superiority to the rest of mankind. And at twenty-eight, I was staring down the barrel of spinsterhood and adored him enough to help him reclaim his confidence. We needed one another to survive.

  I held my head up again. How silly to be walking with Mary like a meek sheep. This tiny thing beside me, gripping my hand in terror at losing hold, was the epitome of my goodness, the difference I was making to the bustling boulevard, an affirmation of all that could be done, even without beauty. How dare these other women judge me? I had always been separate from them and I would remain so now. Not only would I buy Mary new shoes, I would buy her a new dress and show off my benevolence in something pink, ostentatious and lacy.

  Inside the department store Mary forgot her timidity and gazed in amazement at the glass counters glistening with perfume bottles, the rows of polished heads displaying fashionable hats, the suited man at the grand piano playing ‘Greensleeves’. She stood uncertainly at the bottom of the escalator and I had to pull her hand to ensure she got on the moving wooden step.

  How miraculous this escalator had seemed to me at first, to move without moving, like floating upward towards God. Sacrilegious, really, to think of one’s soul needing such man-made help but still, it appealed to me and I would have shared the thought with Mary except we were already at the top. I stepped confidently onto the solid floor and Mary jumped nervously off beside me, her hand breaking apart from mine. She did not attempt to regain my grip, following a short distance behind.

  The shoe department smelt of leather, the vinyl floor dented with holes, the marks of heels strolling back and forth while customers tested comfort and size. Behind the counter a saleswoman with charcoal hair, pulled back in the same low-neck bun as mine, stared openly at Mary.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The woman’s voice had little help in it.

  ‘I need to buy my …’ How to describe what Mary was to me? ‘I need to buy her new shoes. You can see these ones are too big.’ I was trying to be friendly.

  ‘What size is she?’ the saleswoman asked, no longer looking at Mary.

  ‘What size are you, Mary?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘What was that, Mary?’ I admonished.

  ‘Don’t know, Auntie Grace. Never had shoes bought for me.’

  ‘How can she not know?’ the saleswoman asked me, as if the girl was not there, as if she hadn’t heard Mary’s answer herself.

  ‘You’ll have to measure her,’ I insisted and the saleswoman looked at me sharply, eyes narrowed. I held her gaze.

  ‘Of course.’ Her tone spoke of her opposite inclination. ‘Mary-Janes?’

  I nodded and she disappeared into a backroom without having gone anywhere near Mary’s feet. We waited. I felt hot and strangely conspicuous, as if our presence in the store was being reported via clandestine whispers. Mary moved over to stand near a large brown, box-shaped machine. Three long metal tubes stuck out of its top like tentacles.

  ‘What’s this, Auntie Grace?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mary.’

  ‘That,’ said the saleswoman, who had reappeared with two shoeboxes in her hand, ‘is the latest thing.’

  Her enthusiasm for her job had returned with the shift to this ‘latest thing’. A fluoroscope, she explained, and all one
had to do was place one’s foot inside to see whether the shoe fitted. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘It takes an X-ray,’ the saleswoman continued in a patronising tone. This did not help. ‘Put on the shoes and place your foot in here.’ She pointed to a hole in the bottom of the box, which appeared to have a metal plate with a rubber imprint of a foot glued onto it. Mary did not move.

  ‘Do as she says,’ I told her. I was aware of an elderly couple not too far from us, shoulders hunched together, watching closely. Mary slipped off her old shoes, easy enough given their misfit, and put on the brown leather pair the woman had brought her. She placed her foot inside the machine and the saleswoman bent over the left of the three tubes.

  ‘Do you want to see?’ she asked, pointing to the right tube. The centre one was, I assumed, for the customer. Mary did not lower her head to look.

  I bent over and, for a minute, saw only blackness. I shifted the position of my face and suddenly stared at the illuminated lines of Mary’s foot. Here were her bones, glowing a greenish white. I let out a soft ‘oh’. To see all the way through the skin seemed almost obscene. I lifted my head without checking whether the shoes did or did not fit.

  ‘Too small,’ the saleswoman declared and bustled over to one of the other shoeboxes.

  We tried numerous pairs of shoes using this method. I did not look into the machine again, leaving the saleswoman to make the decisions, the glow of Mary’s foot imprinted on my mind’s eye.

  I decided the new dress I’d planned to buy would have to wait. The shoe department had almost done me in, with its fancy gadget and tiresome saleswoman. I wanted a cup of tea but could only imagine the looks Mary would get in the cafeteria. Even without the girl, I had only ever gone there surrounded by the confident War Widows’ Group under the control and guidance of Marjorie Bishop, whose orders, sharp as a sergeant major’s, tended to make the snobbish waitresses cower and ensured our receipt of the best chocolate éclairs. Alone, I had no such power. We walked, instead, to Hyde Park.

  We sat on one of the benches opposite the Archibald fountain. The sun was out and Mary swung her feet in their new, snug-fitting shoes. It had taken some time to convince Mary they were really hers, and I had not seen gratitude on her face, only suspicion. Now the trickling of the fountain’s water and the calls and laughter and cries of families having lunch were a relief after the struggles and muffled obsequiousness inside the store. Struck by the sweetness of the moment I dug into my purse to find a penny.

  ‘Here, Mary, go and make a wish in the fountain.’

  She held the penny in the palm of her hand and frowned.

  ‘Make a wish, Auntie Grace?’

  ‘Yes, you throw it into the water and make a wish.’

  ‘Throw the money into the water, Auntie Grace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why, Auntie Grace?’

  The sweetness of the moment was leaking away.

  ‘Because I said you could.’

  ‘Wish for what, Auntie Grace?’

  ‘Anything you want.’

  ‘Anything, Auntie Grace?’

  I repressed my sigh of exasperation, reminding myself that she would, of course, be ignorant of such matters.

  ‘Give the penny back to me if you don’t want it.’

  Her palm closed and she walked toward the fountain. She stood at the lip of the six-sided pond with a statue of Apollo in its centre, turtles spurting water up to his face. Two young boys were throwing rocks, trying to hit the water arcs. Mary watched them for a moment. What would she wish for?

  The night before Fred left I wished on a shooting star. I should not have—such beliefs could be blasphemous—but I clung to every superstition after Fred and I were married, the year the war began. I insisted he throw salt over his shoulder and leave his boots outside the house.

  We had courted for two years and been married for four before he was posted overseas. It was not one of the fly-by-night marriages happening all around us, couples thrown together by their fear of death. We knew one another well, had found the crook in each other’s arms perfect for being held in bed. I’d got used to his coughing at night and the strong, masculine tobacco smell that clung to his skin; he smoked a packet of Country Life a day. He called me Gracie.

  On our last night together, he fell asleep in the living room after promising we would stay up and dance until dawn. I stood on the back step, the sky alive with stars, and saw a streak, a tiny line of light. ‘Please let him come home,’ I wished. I could make myself believe there was an element of God in that falling piece of fire and I had sealed a deal. Naïve, like a little girl.

  ‘Mary! Come away from there now,’ I called.

  She still stood next to the fountain, in full sunlight and with no hat to protect her, rays bouncing off the water straight into her face; surely she had already gone a shade darker.

  She turned and walked towards me. Her head was tilted slightly to the left, her eyes averted. I followed her line of sight and saw, over on the grass, a group of drifters sitting cross-legged. Four of them, in grubby checked shirts and torn trousers, barefoot, grey blankets rolled into swags beside them. They were smoking, one with a pipe, and all were as black as the ace of spades.

  ‘Hurry up, Mary,’ I said, although she was already next to me. I gave her the box with her old pair of shoes inside. She held it against her chest, both arms wrapped around it. Her hands were wet.

  ‘What did you wish for?’

  The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t ask, that she wouldn’t know not to tell me.

  ‘To stay with you, Auntie Grace,’ she replied.

  We walked down the path towards the ANZAC memorial. The Hill’s figs along the avenue were not tall enough to block out the harsh midday sun and I pulled my hat down lower to protect myself from the light. I strode without acknowledging Mary beside me. I knew her reply about the wish was a lie, her inflection as false as the schoolgirls’ whispers about ‘female problems’ in order to escape morning callisthenics. ‘You understand don’t you, Mrs Smith?’ they had said, as if I wanted to share their monthly secrets.

  We approached the granite cenotaph. I had come here often over the years, drawn to the memorial statue inside it. This bronze statue, depicting a fallen soldier lying on a shield held up by three women, had not a chance of being damaged. I would not take Mary to see him, though. The soldier was naked, and while I had grown used to the detailed flesh of the fallen youth, it was not suitable for a young girl, no matter what her upbringing might have been. Instead, I stopped outside the cenotaph at the corner of the rectangular memorial pool reflecting tree trunks and stone columns. No one had thrown coins into this water.

  ‘This is for the men who died in the war, Mary,’ I said.

  She was staring at the steps leading up into the tomb, as if she knew there was something inside she should not see.

  ‘The poplar trees are grown from seeds brought all the way from France. To commemorate the soldiers who went off to fight. Men who died for their country.’

  ‘Died for their country’ had such force when spoken out loud. Was Mary able to feel the pride, the honour of their sacrifice? A six-year-old at the end of the war, how much could she really understand? I had taught older girls, knew how to inspire them.

  ‘The war awaits, as do I,’ I started to intone. ‘The fevered pitch, the savage cry, I stand upon the glorious brink, And try most vainly, not to think.’

  The beginning of one of Fred’s poems. Out loud, the rhymes sounded clumsy and trite. Mary said nothing.

  ‘We should be heading home.’

  The shoebox, wet from Mary’s hands, slipped through her arms and her old shoes fell with a loud thud onto the ground.

  †

  My dear Gracie,

  I am finally able to send word, although I am not sure when this letter will get to you. The boat trip was, as expected, awful but I will not offend you with revolting details, my sweet
ness. I have arrived safely in Port Moresby, that is all you probably want to know and I cannot give you any particulars of the plans ahead. If I did, you would find your letter blackened with the censor’s pen. I am as well as I can be and I think of you often.

  My time at Randwick has me used to all the waiting, the drills and the tedium of army life. I am not impatient to get to the real fighting. Some of the younger boys keep talking of the adventure ahead. I am not so naïve as to see it like that. I remember Dad’s tales of the Great War, they were enough to make me understand what battle will be really like and I am not sorry Dad passed away before this new threat, never hearing of the Japs on our doorstep. ‘We’ll show ’em’ the boys keep saying and make me feel like an alien. They are so sure of their bravery.

  Often, I feel guilty about the years I sat on home soil, still able to see you, when now I am reminded that men were dying for the Empire every one of those moments. (I talk of guilt and wonder what really made me transfer to active duty? Not love of Empire, or the chance to defend my homeland, but the simple fact that I would not be able to look the church congregation in the eye, for fear they would see my cowardice. Perhaps we cowards will go to any lengths to prove we are not.)

  I pass the time writing poems again like I did in England. I never showed you them because I was afraid of their mediocrity. Maybe I will send you some in the days ahead. I am terrified, of course, of the other men finding out. Already I have erased my university days from my history and have demoted myself from Bank Manager to Clerk for the sake of much needed camaraderie. Thankfully, I am not the only religious man here, besides the Chaplain, and I have a few men with whom to discuss the moral dilemma of taking life. Many times Private L. has quoted a headline from the Catholic Weekly at me: ‘Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.’ It has become somewhat of a personal mantra for him—to the point, I have to say, of driving me a little mad, but I suppose it gives him solace.

  I have to believe the defence of my family is a Christian duty, though there are some here who would not agree with my leaving you in your condition. The boys tell stories of their brothers and uncles who have stayed at home for the sake of their expecting wives. They do not seem to be resentful. Sometimes they even appear to be grateful they can give themselves up to the war with the reassurance there is someone at home to continue their line. It is a comfort to me, also, to know if I do not return, I will leave my trace upon the earth. Coming from no family tradition yourself, Gracie, you might not understand how knowing my home will continue in the hands of my son, or daughter, means so much.