3. Aug, 2020

'Walks on Water'

Cora lay on her front in the wild barley grass above the rockery.  She had with her the ‘twitcher’ field glasses, their leather case heavy about her child neck.  Once Great Uncle Rodney’s binoculars, along with the bird books on one of the bookshelves, they were now part of many passed on inheritance items dotted about the house, which was a fulcrum for belongings from both sides of the family’s departed, settling with the last relatives down the line, Mother and Pa, both of them having been only children.  

Cora, although not looking at birds, had a birds-eye view of the garden stretching out below in a series of terraces, the flat lawn one beside the house occupied by Mother, legs elegantly stretched out to the side of her deckchair in stockings and heels.  Her face was concealed by a sunhat but would be powdered and lipsticked.  Mother never dressed down at weekends in case of callers and there were, always, callers.  Even now the doctor, his Van Dyke beard neatly trimmed, was coming through the gate waving to her.  He wore a light coloured linen jacket which made him look younger and more carefree than usual.  Cora, through the glasses, could see that he was smiling in glad anticipation of his visit.  There was an empty deckchair next to Mother.  He was expected, then.

On the right, below her, Tilly and Ned were cuddled up like possums on the viewing bench looking over the river.  Cora had been reading American stories and so she thought of possums rather than cats, a more sensual sounding word for their entwinement, although this was not how she defined the choice, it just seemed right for it somehow.  Cora approved of Tilly and Ned but somehow not of Mother and the doctor, familiar in the household as he was.  The doctor appropriated her mother’s company as if he had a right to it and when he did, Mother would send Cora, if she were about too, off on little tasks,.

Pa, on the other hand, didn’t approve of Ned.  He displayed as being protective of his daughters, which if you weren’t one of them, was seen as something to be admired, and if you were, as something to be dismissed.

“Let’s just say,” he had said of Ned earlier over the midday meal, “if you were to put him to the test, he wouldn’t walk on water.”

This was Pa’s oblique way of suggesting that he thought Ned was not aligned to Jesus, and in his view, not quite up to snuff.  It also meant that, having been a thundering rogue for most of his life himself, he recognised a kindred spirit.  Pa would call himself wayward rather than being someone sailing so close to the wind that he was virtually capsized, as Cora had heard Mother say more than once.  Luck, rather than business finesse, meant that so far he had not been.  When mother said now,

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, George,” he went further, losing his temper as instantly as ever and banging the table.

“People in town say the man’s a blow in, everyone knows that!”

Pa’s outbursts never remained oblique for long.

“People said that about us for long enough” Mother reminded Pa, while everybody else continued with eating their dinners unperturbed.  “Your grandparents changed their name when they arrived here, you saw that when we got all their papers from your father.”

“Beside the point!” said Pa, who could never be accused of being consistent, at least.  “We have standing.  I’m not about to have my own child cutting it out from under our feet.”  

He jutted his chin aggressively and stared hard at the offending daughter, who remarked,

“As usual, Pa, you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.  There’s no point in ranting on.  I’m engaged to Ned and as far as I’m concerned, he does walk on water.”

“That doesn’t last, my dear,” said Mother, “so I should make the most of it.”

Pa unjutted his whiskers, looked injured and returned to his potatoes.  There wasn’t a lot he could say to that, to be fair, without seeming to have noticed it, so he didn’t, in case he was in bad odour about something that hadn’t been mentioned yet.  Pa was a man of multiple indiscretions and any one of them might have come to light at any time.

Ned arrived soon after Sunday lunch, a breezy presence who, according to himself, was always doing marvellously.  He was also quite funny and didn’t stand on ceremony, being happy to muck in and play games with Cora, even if all dressed up for going out, which not everybody was.  Cora appreciated this.

Cora’s field glasses showed Pa striding back across the river bridge.  He made a striking figure, tall and thin in plus fours and golfing shoes.  There was no mistaking Pa, always a larger than life presence.  Behind him walked a woman holding a child by the hand.  Cora knew who this girl was; she was one of several rumoured to be among Pa’s other children in the locality.  The rumours and the alleged children only seemed to add to Pa’s mystique in the neighbourhood and certainly intrigued Cora, who scoured the faces of these young people for any resemblances she could make out.  Everyone else in the family, including Mother, simply ignored it.  Mother was beautiful and aloof and would therefore never become pitied, even if she were to be discussed.

Cora had overheard both Mother and Pa being discussed - in the teashop, in the haberdashery, and at what Cora thought of as ‘bread and butter’ parties but other people called afternoon tea.  There were one or two phrases which, only semi comprehended, had stuck in Cora’s mind.

“If it weren’t for George, there’d be an awful lot of knuckle draggers in the district” and, more graphically,

“I don’t know how she puts up with it.  After my husband went, I swore I’d never have another one if his arse hung with diamonds.”

Cora wasn’t entirely sure quite how much Mother cared about what Pa got up to, since her grown sisters had long taken the line of being amused by him and ignoring his strictures on their own circumstances and Mother seemed to pay more attention to what the doctor had to say than anything Pa declaimed about.

Her field glasses, trained on Pa, showed him leading the woman and child behind him into the garden and up towards Mother and the doctor.  They carried small suitcases.  Cora hastened down from her place above them all.

“Ah, there you are, Cora,” said Mother.  “This is Pauline, who will keep house for us, and this is Pattie, who will be living in, too.”  Mother looked superb with hauteur, while Pa was slightly shifty and, far from triumphant, appeared to feel chastised in some way, from his expression.  “Show them into the kitchen, would you, Cora?  So, we’ll be hearing no more about Tilly and Ned, will we, doctor?” she remarked, turning to the man at her side.

“I should say not,” said the doctor, exchanging one of those man to man glances with Pa that Cora never did understand.

Now at close quarters, she examined Pattie, who was younger than she, but Cora could see nothing about her that looked like Pa, or her sisters, or even herself.  She wondered if there would ever be any way of knowing about all these other supposed children of Pa’s and if, like Pattie, they would come and live in the house too and also, if so, what difference it would make to all of them.

“Come on, then,” she said to the woman and child with the classic family arrogance.  “It’s this way,” and she showed them into the house, less with interest than with simple curiosity.