Sailor, Sailor
Once upon a Melbourne day, Charade says, after Hiroshima but before all the Yanks had gone home, a man came up to Bea and Kay while they played in the buttercup patch.
“Hi, little girls,” he said.
It was a funny word: hi. Not a word they had heard before. They said hello, and then they stuffed their fists into their mouths and rolled in the grass and giggled. “Ah’ve got a present,” he said, “for a pretty litty girl.” It was a strange way to talk, as though he had fruitcake in his mouth. “M’name’s Gene,” he said, and they shrieked and bit on their fists to think of a man named Jean. “Ah’m a sailor. And ah’ve got a present all the way from Tennessee for the prettiest girl in Australia.”
“That’s Bea,” Kay said. Her voice came through between her fingers, mixed in with the bubbles of laughter. “Bea’s the prettiest girl in the world. Mr Bedford said.”
“Yes,” said Bea. “I am.” She had a face that was shaped like an almond. “I’ve got cow’s eyes.” She liked to open and close them and feel the lashes brush against her cheek. She liked to pull on the dark curls that grew around her face like tendrils, and let them spring back again. She pulled one across her forehead and stretched it down to her chin. She smiled at the man from behind it.
“Oh,” the man said. “Yes, sir. You are definitely the prettiest girl in the world.”
“I know. Mr Bedford said.”
Gene picked a buttercup and stuck it behind Bea’s ear. “And who might Mr Bedford be?”
“He’s a man at our shop, he gave me a present, he bought me a pineapple iceblock. But it’s a secret.”
“Aha, but you told it,” the man said. “A little girl who can’t keep a secret.”
“I can so, I can so,” Bea chanted. She did a somersault in the buttercups so the man could see the little pink flowers on her panties. The man lay down on his stomach in the grass and took off his white hat. The hat looked like a dog dish. It was the silliest hat they had seen. He set it on Kay’s head and she bit her knuckles very hard and nearly choked with nervous mirth.
“Guess ah’m just going to have to give my present to your cute little friend,” he told Bea. “ ‘Cause ah can’t trust a little girl who can’t keep a secret.”
“I can so, I can so,” Bea said, and she pulled the hat off Kay’s head and put it on her own.
Kay asked: “Are you in the R-Double A-F?”
Bea said: “My father was in Egypt, but Kay’s father wouldn’t fight, he only made parachutes.”
Kay said: “Are you in the RAAF too?”
“No ma’am,” he said. “Ah most certainly am not in the RAAF. Ah already told you, ah’m a sailor, a sailor. Ah got me a bee-ootiful battleship for my home. And ah’m going to take one lucky little girl to see that ship if she can keep a secret.” He picked up Kay’s foot and unbuckled her sandal and began to play with
her toes. “This little piggy went to market,” he sang. “And this little piggy ate roast beef.” And when he got to the little piggy who ran all the way home, his fingers began skittering up Kay’s leg, past her knee, past —
“Don’t! Don’t!” she shrieked, giggling, and rolling away in the grass. She didn’t know whether she liked it or not. She wanted to whisper to Bea: “Is he one of the Powers of Darkness?”
But Bea was turning cartwheels now, and the man was watching her. She cartwheeled in a circle around him and then she sat in the buttercups and unbuckled her sandals and began throwing them into the air and catching them. “Who wants to see a baddleship, a baddleship?” she sang. “Mr Bedford gives better things. But I’m not telling what, ’cause it’s a secret.”
“On my ship,” Gene told Bea, “you can sit on the big guns, va-voom.” He made a circle with a thumb and one finger, and poked another finger through it. Then he put the circle up to one eye. “The windows are round and you can put your face up against them and say howdoody to a fish. But ah guess ah’m gonna take your friend here,” and he reached for Kay’s foot again. He played the piano on her ankle, he hummed songs up and down her leg. Kay squirmed and giggled and tried to pull away. She thought perhaps she didn’t like it. Then she thought perhaps she did. The man sat up and lifted her foot to his mouth and blew between her toes.
“Stop! Stop!” she shrieked. “It tickles.” Bea went on playing catch with her sandals, the shoes flying higher and higher. “It tickles, it tickles!” Kay cried.
“I’ve got a present for a tickly little girl,” Gene said. “But first you have to tell me your name.”
“Katherine,” she gasped, twisting and laughing. “It’s Katherine Sussex, but I’m Kay. Stop! Stop!”
“Kay,” the man sang. “K-K-K-Katy, you’re the one that I adore. Oh I love little Katies, I do.” Bea lay on her back in the buttercups and kicked her legs to keep time with the tossing of her sandals; she pointed her toes, and her dainty feet went up and down, up and down, like birds soaring, plummeting. Gene put Kay’s toes in his mouth and sucked them, and waves of something ran right to the tops of her shoulders. He tickled her panties with his finger and she gasped with shock. Sounds came out of her mouth, but she couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. “Va-voom, va-voom,” laughed Gene, catching hold of her feet again. “This little piggy went to market,” he said, running his tongue around one toe. “And this little piggy stayed home. And this little piggy flew all the way …”
Right then one of Bea’s sandals came sailing by and Gene lunged out and caught it, “Aha!” he cried. “Now ah’ve got you!” Bea squealed and catapulted herself against Gene, and he caught her with his left arm and waved the sandal high above her with his right. They rolled in the grass together. Bea gulped with laughter and kicked and squirmed until Gene knelt in the buttercups and pinned her between his legs. “If you keep still like a good little girl,” he said, “maybe you’ll be the lucky one to come and see mah battleship.”
Kay thought: Bea’s the one. It’s her he wants to take.
The hammers inside her chest slowed down, she was glad it was Bea. Then again, she would have liked to be the one. Perhaps.
Bea, imperious, commanded: “First you have to put my sandals on.”
“Why, ma’am,” Gene said. “A pleasure.” He sat back on his heels, and pinned Bea’s leg between his while he strapped and buckled. She wiggled her toes in the space between his thighs. “Oh, oh,” he said. “A regular little witch.” He tickled the sole of her foot. “Little witches need to have their bottoms spanked. Guess ah’m just gonna have to take you right on down to mah ship and take you back to Tennessee. We’re gonna sail across —”
“Katherine! Bea!” came Grandma Llewellyn’s voice. “Where are you?”
Kay and Bea and Gene all jumped as though they had been shot. They sat up still and straight. “Guess ah have to get on back to mah ship,” Gene said. He put his fingers over their lips and whispered: “Now ah sure hope you can keep a secret, because if anyone tells about the lollipop ship, the boogey man comes and eats her up.” And then he went jogging away through the buttercups till he came to the lane at the end of Bea’s fence.
“Katherine! Katherine!” called Grandma Llewellyn.
Kay and Bea stared at each other.
“Katherine! Bea! Where are you?”
They somersaulted across the buttercups and crawled through the railings into Kay’s back yard and ran up the path to the hen house. “We’re here,” they called, “we’re here.”
And then they said: “Nothing. We weren’t doing anything. We were just playing in the paddock.”
Grandma Llewellyn went on putting eggs into her basket. “Don’t get into any mischief,” she said, before she went back inside the house.
Kay and Bea looked at each other and then they put their fists in their mouths and rolled in the grass outside the hen house.
“Jean, Jean! Mah name is Jean!” spluttered Bea, catching hold of Kay’s foot.
“Gonna take you to Tennis-y,” Kay mimicked.
“Ah’m a sailor, a sailor!”
“Ah’m gonna spank your bottom!”
They shrieked and struggled and tickled until they were exhausted. Then they climbed the plum tree and stared out over the paddock. Sometimes, if they sat very still, a bird came and pecked at a plum. Kay worried at a piece of bark with her fingernail, thinking, thinking. Bea sat hunched on her branch and stroked her ankles.
At length Kay announced soberly: “I didn’t like him.”
“That’s because you’re a baby.” Bea hooked her knees over the branch and swung upside-down, her curls flying. “I told you that’s what they do. When Mr Bedford buys you an iceblock, you’ll see.”
“Do you like it?” Kay asked.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe I do too.”
“Not as much as me,” Bea said. She moved back and forth like molasses, her fingertips trailing through air. “I always like things more.”
Kay tried to decide: what she liked, what she didn’t like. It was true, Bea always liked things more. Bea liked. What did Kay like? She liked to close her eyes and see things. She saw Bea’s hair spreading and spreading, she saw it growing grape leaves that reached out and touched the grass. She saw Bea growing into the buttercup patch, she saw bunches of grapes, she saw stickiness and juice. She saw Jean the Baddleship Man: how he walked without seeing, how stickiness pulled him, how Bea’s tendrils could wind themselves around him until he wouldn’t be able to move.
“I didn’t like him,” she said decisively.
“I didn’t too,” Bea shrugged. “But that’s what they do.
You’ll see.”
Bea always knew more, so Kay told Bea: “I know what Tennis-y looks like.”
“I’m going to go there,” Bea said. “Jean’s going to take me.”
Kay frowned. “I’m going to go there all by myself.”
Bea licked her finger and crossed her heart. “I’ll go first,” she promised.
But Kay closed her eyes and saw that Bea’s fingers and toes were sprouting little green pads, that her hair was green, that she was part of the plum tree and the buttercup patch, that she would never get away.
No, she thought. I’ll go first. I’ll be the one. By myself.