Down in the City (2 page)

It is three miles and as many worlds from the peaceful high-walled streets, the tennis courts and golf course of Rose Bay to the hill of glamour and fostered disreputability that is Kings Cross. One holds the white-brick, blue-roofed mansions and landscaped gardens of the managing directors and senior partners; the other, the craggy hotels and flats, the furnished rooms and cement courtyards of the ambitious and the seekers of anonymity.

Kings Cross is a world of milk bars and jukeboxes, plane trees, coffee shops and cults; a place where delicatessens with names like Muller and Schultz give twenty-four-hour service and stuff their small windows with sausages, olives and gherkins; with sausages, shrimps, cheeses and jars labelled ‘Imported', implying superiority, guaranteeing perfection. There, in open shops under the trees, fruiterers called de Sica, Angeli and Strano conjure up cornucopias of pawpaw, passionfruit and pineapple, of loquat, peach, nectarine and fig.

It is a haven for the foreigner and racketeer; a beacon for the long-haired boys, mascaraed women and powdered men. It is Montmartre: it is bright and wicked.

Of necessity, the commuters of the various bay suburbs must pass through the interesting vice of the Cross, and leaving there, skirt squalor on the downhill run into town as they cut alongside the streets of ancient, flat-faced terraces where poverty reigns. But the trams are busy, the traffic is heavy and they see little of either. Only on reaching the familiar city centre do they look round and feel at home.

Here, in this block, a hat shop, a penny amusement arcade, a bank and a cream-tiled hotel stand side by side: the hotel is on the corner. On the upper half of its wall a hectic glass-covered advertisement shows a long-legged girl and a muscular lifesaver smiling at each other past outsize glasses of beer.

The dust in the gutter is caught in a hot swirling wind. It lifts, jets fifty yards along the street and drops. It has driven sharp grit into ten eyes and smutted more noses.

A steady hum that rises to a roar each time the doors swing open comes from the hotel—a hum stabbed now and then with a shout and a curse, or a laugh.

A man and his wife sit in their car waiting for the traffic lights to change. A boat in the harbour, a house at Palm Beach, a car for the kids—what next? They wonder.

‘How about a trip to the old country? Everyone's going and it makes you look ignorant if you can't say you've seen all those places. You know, London and Paris and so on—all those places.'

‘And I could go to Paris for the new season's clothes. Wouldn't that make them green? Just wait till I get back. I'll show them who's the best-dressed woman in Sydney, or it won't be my fault.'

‘As long as we're not too showy about it, it might be a good idea.'

Oh, let me be the newest of the new!

The lights change and they are gone.

In the street, propped against the hotel walls, yellow newspaper placards tell, in heavy black type, of a European crisis, a country flood, a murder. The paperboy, his cap on the back of his head, yodels, ‘Pi-yup! Pi-yup! Read all about it!'

Trams rattle past and he spits in the gutter. Two bank clerks wait at the stop. They buy papers and turn to the back page.

‘What does the
Mystic
tip for Saturday? Little Jonah? Never heard of it, have you? Who's on it? Roderick. Well, there could be something in it. Might risk a quid; what do you reckon?' They ponder, while nearby, three golden debutantes pause for a second to scan the social page.

‘Quick! See if they say anything about the party. Paula—you know she's the “Little Bird”—she said she'd get it in for us. Oh yes! She did, too. Listen! “Mr and Mrs Rupert Darley-Banks gave a party last night for their youngest daughter, Miss Arabella Darley-Banks…” Masses of it. Oh, and listen to this! This is one for Rose Breckenworth-Forster! “A certain Miss R…B…F… must like the white lace dress she brought back with her from abroad—we've seen her in it four times!”'

‘Good for Paula! Tear it out and put it in your handbag. Throw the rest away. You can't carry an old newspaper in the street.'

On the beaches and cliffs of the coast the breakers crash. The Pacific, white-flecked, stretches out to hazy infinity. The dark, dusty bush waves in the sea breeze. South, the irrigated orchards, long miles of fruit trees, flourish, and in the north, the tropical plantations, the sugar cane. Beyond the mountains to the west great plains of yellow wheat bend and rise acre on acre under a gentle wind, under the deep blue sky, unmarred by hill or cloud, wide as the continent.

In Sydney, six girls from a clothing factory stand on Central Station. They sew tulle, sequin-covered evening dresses from eight till five as an adjunct to their more important task of competing with the American crooners whose records, interspersed with commercials, play all day long. Their ages range from fifteen to twenty. Four of them have full sets of false teeth. Daphne chews a caramel and glances at the train indicator. She opens the evening paper that she buys to take home to her father. Him and his horses!

‘Say! Listen to this, Lola. Gloria Delamore—remember, she's that new one we saw at the Galaxy, that singing one in
The Lost Lover
—well, she's married Rock Truton. Gee, she's lucky. It says they're gonna star in a picture together.'

They all listen. Their eyes are shining. One says: ‘Hey! Who's goin' dancin' tonight?' They all want to go dancing. ‘Me and Al's goin' to the Palais. Hoop-de-doo!'

They catch eyes and start to sing softly, grinning, standing in a circle. On beat, off beat, pause, snap your fingers. And here's the train. About time!

At the entrance to the suburban cricket ground grows a weird grey tree, ghostly grey and leafless; its flowers carve a scarlet arc across the sky. A coral tree, stark and glorious.

The surf pounds on the sand at the bottom of the hill, and just along the street the milk bar is crowded, the counter lined with typists, office boys and clerks, who have finished work and want a drink before they go to the pictures, before they go dancing and skating.

The girls behind the counter move with smouldering, sullen speed, their make-up melting with the heat. Stella has four tin beakers in a row. She glares into four pairs of eyes.

‘Yes?'

‘Chocolate malted. Chocolate malted. Plain strawberry. Caramel malted.' They are meek.

Her face pretends that she has not heard, but her hands work at lightning speed. Half a pint of milk to each beaker, a ladle of flavouring, over to the malt dispenser, a scoop of ice-cream to each, and the first two are under the whirring mixers. She jiggles them impatiently, then, jerking them from the machines, the beaker in one hand thrown high above her head, she tosses a long line of frothing milk into a glass like a cardsharper spreading the pack, and stabs the foam with two straws.

This humidity would get anyone down. Stella has had three jobs already this summer and she won't be in this one much longer. The trouble is they all expect a girl to give up her private life to her work. But not Stella. If Jacko has a day off and says, ‘Come on!' she goes. There are other jobs, and she's young this year.

Night comes swiftly. The sun falls with perceptible speed and blackness follows immediately. Away from the city and the glimmer of neon lights the vast black heavens overawe the earth with incandescent stars.

CHAPTER ONE

What was never known for certain was
why
David Prescott acted as he did. Certainly, although it seemed to his sons and his acquaintances a deplorably reactionary, un-Australian attitude to have adopted, it would not have been possible for them to criticise him. And by the time he married again, by the time he persuaded Marion Hervey to marry him, it was too late. As far as Esther was concerned the damage was done, irreparable.

Unwilling, at first, to realise this, Marion, with an urgency that was not entirely disinterested, questioned him on the subject.
She
was not gagged by the blighting tolerance, by the cold ideal that froze spontaneity, which he had passed on to his family. And she wanted affection from David's daughter. She had no thought of playing mother to a girl who had never known a mother, but she hoped at least for warmth and affection.

The boys—David, Hector and Clem—had, with thoughtful responsibility, decided on university, chosen their professions and absolved their watchful father from the necessity of what could only be for him distasteful interference.

They had memories of their mother: they could, and occasionally did, talk with one another, but Esther was alone from the first. She was hovered over, she was observed, but she was not approached. In pursuance of an extraordinary plan which it is only to be supposed was carried out with the intention of securing for her an unusually high degree of self-reliance, she was shackled from childhood with completest freedom. All guidance was determinedly withheld.

It was only when the child reached school age that her father revoked his rule of conduct to make one decision for her. Having succeeded so far with his plan, it was apparently unbearable that by contact with, and inevitably contamination from, the outside world, she should be spoilt. He hired a governess—a Miss Barker, a colourless Englishwoman who spoke well and sewed beautifully.

As far as could be seen by onlookers, this act was the most remarkable of a series which had with reason been called eccentric. If only
now
the term appeared inadequate it was because this was a positive action, the consequences of which might be conjectured: what was past was tenuous, the effect impossible to gauge.

Later, when it was too late, when Marion came, she said what had till then been merely thought by Esther's brothers and her father's friends—that such isolation was unhealthy, even cruel, that she thought, with the best intentions, he had been wrong.

Unperturbed—for when he looked at Esther he was well satisfied by her gentleness and calm—her husband pointed out that the girl was happy. He went so far as to call her in from the garden to ask her, so that she might reassure Marion, and yes, she said, she was quite happy. And, rendered less than happy herself by the expression in the unawakened eyes, Marion turned away, turned back to the piano where she sat, and with one finger slowly tapped a single key until she was alone again with David. She loved him, so she said no more about the past; she simply asked what plans there were for Esther's future.

To signify that this discussion, since it was her will, should certainly continue, that he would answer now but not again, David Prescott went to stand behind his wife, and touched her shoulder lightly.

‘We have a good library, my dear, though you have probably noticed that Esther never uses it. We have a pleasant house and garden. Financially she is secure. She has no need of a career. If she decides to choose one for herself, she most certainly has my approval. If she does not, she has it still.'

Marion looked up at him with a gravity that made him smile. ‘You, of course, had something more than a career,' he said, referring to the fact that Marion was a musician, had given recitals, ‘but I'm afraid we should have known by this time if Esther had had a talent like yours—unfortunately, not. And so,' he finished kindly, ‘no more of this—except to say thank you, and I do thank you, Marion, for your concern.'

It was left at that.

Checked, but not deterred, Marion cast about for other means of providing stimuli long lacking from her stepdaughter's life, and very soon the two were regularly attending concerts and plays. They read, shopped, discussed careers and social problems. The first parties for years—and possibly the only parties the old house ever knew—were held at this time. There had never been so much company.

At first some of her brothers' friends were attracted by the enigma of Esther's thin tanned face and light eyes. They were pleasant young men, but polite, and therefore as ill equipped as Marion to penetrate her personality. When they were abashed by her unawareness of them, only her brothers noticed and were disappointed. Even to the girls her unselfconsciousness was daunting, and suspecting that it masked some unnamed superiority, they were correspondingly stiff and unnatural.

Esther moved through these eventful days with willing obedience, for she liked Marion and would have been pleased to oblige her, but, raised in her father's house, enthusiasm was alien to her, real warmth beyond her capacity.

‘Did you like that? Were you interested?' Marion would ask, when she had finished a book she had been advised to read.

‘Yes,' the girl would say. ‘Of course.' And they would look at one another doubtfully, with bafflement, and, on Marion's part, despair.

Quite often her kindness would be met with blank surprise, or perhaps alarm; enough, in any case, to convince the older woman gradually that she was not doing well, that what was done was done, and that she must desist from her efforts. This was, after all, not to be the way that Esther might be led to sudden awareness of life and herself.

The empty days, the months and years that followed this one period of activity, passed with placid, dreamlike heaviness for Esther. For hour after hour, summer after summer, she lay alone in the sun in the garden of the old stone house overlooking Rose Bay. This was, in fact, her greatest pleasure—to be hot, to be alone in the sun, to notice the gradual deepening of her tan.

It was only when she grew older that a new interest came, independent of sponsors, to take a high place in the scale of her enjoyments. It was a feeling for the city; a feeling for the tall, light buildings, the narrow streets and crowded pavements; a feeling for the sea and sun in it, the wealth and glamour, the strength and fierceness of it.

The city, to her, meant a few particular blocks—the best blocks—lying together in a neat rectangle, linked by arcades and department stores; three streets one way, cut by four at right angles, bounded at the top by gardens, self-enclosed at the bottom and either end.