Authors: Fiona McGregor
He ushered her into the living room at the back of the house, a forest-dark place of antique furniture, rugs, a dimmed chandelier, and paintings crammed across the walls. He stopped before one.
‘Look at what my dealer picked up the other day.’
The painting was smaller than Marie expected, not so different to how it looked in reproduction, its smallness accentuated by a wide gilt frame. The swirl of scrub, ochre outback and black slit
mask of the bushranger moved through her eyes with the ease of old habits. She couldn’t say why she loved the picture so much; it was like birthplace or blood, something undetachable. Yet
now, domesticated, its haunting effect receded. The eyes of the policemen all seemed the same, and Ned Kelly less authoritative. It was awkward in conversation with the English hunting scenes
either side, the frame the loudest voice of all. She also found herself thinking about the painting in terms of her body and its evolving language. Different people were marked out for different
stories: her tattoos would all be organic; her arms would be next. Jonesy loomed over her, breathing. She could see the network of capillaries across his cheeks. ‘Well?’
‘Is it from the original series?’
‘Ross has had his eye on this for years.’
‘I love the Ned Kelly paintings. You must be thrilled.’
Jonesy rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. ‘I gazumped Ross for it. He’s seething!’
‘The frame’s very impressive. Did it come with the frame?’
‘A bloke in Double Bay did that for me. Four and a half grand. Bewt, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely.’
Seventeen years earlier, on that first day in Quakers Hat Bay, Jonesy had avowed, ‘This has nothing to do with them.’
They were in the boatshed. Marie had come here for a cutting of the bush lemon that grew on the slope behind it. Having only ever seen the boatshed from the water, taking the track from the road
was a new adventure. She had stumbled down the gully after Jonesy, enjoying how the lantana tore at her ankles. Jonesy went into the boatshed for secateurs, beckoning her to follow. Nothing visible
in there but a glowing window of pearly sky, she almost tripped in the sudden dimness. Then the dark shape of him, his erection pushing against her belly. No need to undress, just him moving over
her with rough precision on the old couch. He scratched her breast with his watch when pushing up her bra. She would feel this in bed later that night while Ross slept. And the ache in her
buttocks, the lantana scratches. The satisfying physical evidence of living, change and effort.
‘Of course not,’ Marie had agreed. ‘It’s just about us.’
They were whispering though the nearest house was over the lip of the hill. It was that dead time of afternoon before children finished school, when workers were comatose with boredom or liquid
lunches. In the boatshed, blurred shapes had clarified into a table and chair, sails, a coil of rope. They were side by side on the couch, hands touching, clothes rearranged. Marie added:
‘It’s been on the cards for a while.’
‘Don’t forget your cutting.’ Jonesy handed her the secateurs as they left the building.
She was surprised when she heard the gushing behind her, as she clipped off a branch of the tree that yielded famously sweet, thin-skinned fruit. It was the sound of him urinating and the hairs
on the back of her neck prickled as though she had stumbled on a secret rite, even though they had been fucking only fifteen minutes earlier. She turned to find him looking directly at her. She
felt impaled.
‘Nitrate.’ He winked. ‘It’s good for it.’
Jonesy rang a week later and another meeting in the boatshed was arranged. In that diesel-and-bait-scented capsule, Marie was distilled to nothing but hunger, nerve endings, an animal nosing at
the crack. She left as she arrived, in a state of desperate excitement. It sparked a febrile reconnection with Ross, fuelled as time went on by a fear of loss. Everything that Ross had done was
forgiven now she was doing it as well. She became extra attentive, cooked special meals, bought him a silk tie, gave him blow jobs. She was forty-two years old and had never been with another man,
and the sense of herself as a skilled, desirable lover was a gift for which she felt the need to thank the entire world. Maybe marriage needed treachery — bushfire cleansing — who could
stop all those bodies real or imagined slipping between the sheets with you and your spouse? That sweet violation, to walk through flames and survive. And after every boatshed meeting, Jonesy
emptying his bladder beneath the tree, both of them taking its fruit home. Eating a harvest nourished by corpses, Marie thought one night, watching a documentary about trench warfare. She was
filled with a reckless joy and power, kicking the house of cards she had so painstakingly built.
Then storms struck, the Pacific driving straight into Middle Harbour, and for two weeks Marie and Jonesy didn’t see each other, until Jonesy suggested another meeting place.
He unclipped his gold Rolex and placed it carefully on the bedside table. ‘I’m going to have to make a decision about this pastry chef by the end of the week.’
‘Doesn’t the manager decide things like that?’
From the bed Marie watched him pull clingwrap off desserts. Spit Road hummed below the window. They had come to a motel because the outlet of Quakers Hat Bay had overflowed and Middle Harbour,
said Jonesy, stank like a public toilet. The motel room smelt of cleaning fluids and a faint plastic tang that Marie realised was emanating from the new telephones beside the bed. She wasn’t
hungry. She missed the boatshed, the calm of Middle Harbour, its river feel. She would have rather been down near the water in a cesspit of sewage than up in this neon and cement block. She checked
the switch for a dimmer dial, but there was none. Jonesy’s foreskin was enormous, like an elephant’s nozzle dangling as he brought the desserts over. She thought of it in her mouth,
pissy, granular, and revulsion surged through her. And wetness into her cunt.
‘You’re going to help me decide now,’ he instructed.
‘Jonesy, darling, we’ve only got an hour.’
‘Well, you never need much warming up, do you? I thought restaurants would be a breeze after advertising. By Christ, I’ve learnt my lesson.’ He settled on the bed beside her,
grumbling. ‘Everybody wants the same old thing. Innovation is punished.’
Marie ate a spoonful of each dessert in quick succession and told Jonesy that she thought the chef was a marvel and to leave everything at Bel Mer exactly as it was. She didn’t want to
hear about Jonesy’s life, she just wanted a quick orgasm, but the yield of kapok didn’t compensate the absence of water slapping pylons, brine and birdsong. She had to fantasise about
the boatshed man: knees grazing canvas as she knelt before him, his silky hardness between her thighs.
There they lay in the motel light, a middle-aged man and woman in all their ordinary disgrace. Jonesy was watching her over a spoonful of crème brûlée and she saw a look in
his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before: a glint of victory, crafty self-satisfaction, and the motive of diversion her conscience had incanted for the three months of their affair shrivelled
in the hot truth of her own vengeful heart. The realisation that this was all it was swung into her chest like a hammer. She had sworn she wouldn’t so much as mention their names, but she
couldn’t help it. ‘How’s Susan?’
‘I believe she’s playing tennis with Gina today.’
‘Really? I should call her. I haven’t played in ages.’
‘Maybe you should take up another sport for a while.’
In that instant Marie knew that she and Jonesy would never touch each other again. She said, ‘Did you leave King Jones because of her and Ross?’
‘I can’t believe you’re asking me this.’ Jonesy tossed the desserts into the bin, and began to dress. He shovelled the coins he had left on the dresser into his pocket.
‘Ross and I always kept business separate.’
‘Bullshit.’ Marie laughed. It echoed around the room, a witch’s cackle, black and knowing. ‘Did you fuck his secretary as well to get back at him?’
Jonesy’s head snapped around. ‘Well, aren’t you the little saint.’ He put on his jacket then left.
Now, standing before his new acquisition in his cluttered living room, he pressed her arm for emphasis. Marie had only seen him twice since the divorce, both times in company. Alone with her for
the first time in years, he donned the mantle of their meagre sexual history and Marie realised the power of her singleness. She began to feel suffocated by his attention; the need to draw a circle
around herself grew inside her like a balloon. She couldn’t believe how much Jonesy’s touch had once thrilled her. He stood there with the door open to the competitive lair he still
shared with Ross, the bets laid casually as napkins on tables, the payment usually a carton of Moët, all that flourish on crotchety parade like an old general. As Ross had been the creative in
King Jones, an artistic acquisition was a particular coup for Jonesy. Marie glanced into the lair with contempt, nostalgia and impatience to wrest herself back to the present. But this was the
present, and it was still happening. What she really wanted was the future.
‘It really is the quintessential Australian story, isn’t it. The outlaw, the larrikin. Did you read the book? Susan has a signed first edition of everything he’s written.
She’s in love with him!’
Somebody had come into the room behind them: a tall man with an acute and slightly mischievous gaze. ‘And how’s our outlaw?’
‘You know my great-great-grandfather was transported for art theft?’
‘Well, he’d be proud of you.’ The man found an aperture as Jonesy turned back to the painting, sending Marie a wink through it. ‘Now, I’ve been sent in here to
corral you both.’
Marie caught the wink and followed the man into the hall, hung with etchings of French cathedrals. Susan met them. ‘He’s been glued to that painting for
weeks
. He’d
sleep with it if I let him. You remember David Rosenthal, don’t you, Marie?’
‘Of course. Hallo!’
‘Hallo!’
‘Now everyone.
À table.
David, you’re on my right.’
Marie remembered David from a party at Sirius Cove, a reticent man talking to the more serious guests. It must have been about ten years ago. He seemed different now. He still had a full head of
hair that sprang vigorously off his forehead, but he was looser in manner. Even his face seemed to have acquired mobility: inquisitive, sceptical, on the hunt for a joke. He sat opposite Marie in
the large echoey dining room with its parquet floor.
‘You bid for it, Dave?’ John Totti asked him.
‘Nope. He went through Sotheby’s.’
Totti drummed the edge of the table with his fingers. ‘And what do you think?’
‘Can’t go wrong with a Nolan.’
‘And where have you been, Marie?’ Gina was saying.
‘Buying petrol.’
‘Oh?’
‘I went all the way to Cremorne to a cheaper place, which is why I was late. Isn’t that stupid?’
‘I know the one.’ Totti nodded. ‘I go there.’
‘Actually,’ said Gina, ‘I meant in general.’
‘Marie,’ said Susan, ‘by the time you’ve gone to Cremorne for cheaper petrol, you’ve used up another litre anyway.’
Susan was looking at Gina, waiting for her opinion on the soup. Gina’s soufflés could stun a table of ten into silence. Gina carefully worked each mouthful, sucking in her cheeks,
watching the conversation with her habitual expression of faint astonishment. Her hair had been cut and a silver streak flared along the left part. Her black top had a sheen through it and an
off-centre décolletage. She looked exactly as she always had — luminescent.
‘I know,’ said Marie. ‘It’s stupid.’
‘They’re really taking advantage, aren’t they?’ said Totti, mainly to the men. ‘The price has risen thirty cents in a year.’
‘More,’ said David.
‘In general, I’ve just been at home,’ Marie went on, discreetly checking Gina’s face for Botox. She wasn’t sure if it was common knowledge she was selling: she
didn’t want to talk about it. ‘I’ve been fixing things up, having a big clean out.’
‘It’s such a good thing to do,’ said Susan. ‘It’s very Buddhist, getting rid of things.’
‘I can’t believe how much stuff I had.’
‘Well, you’re looking very well,’ said Gina. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight.’
‘Thank you.’
‘War makes the price of oil go up,’ David was saying.
‘In devastation is opportunity,’ Jonesy rejoined.
‘Oh yes, I can see those sheikhs in Dubai, rubbing their bejewelled hands together in glee,’ Susan said grimly. ‘They’ve organised everything very nicely.’
‘The Americans are controlling the oil, Susan,’ said David.
‘Du
bai
,’ said Totti. ‘It’s another planet. The things they’re doing there.’
‘We thought of going,’ said Susan.
Marie was stuck on Jonesy’s phrase. It sounded familiar, as though lifted from
The Corporation
, which had repeated on SBS last night, or from an article in the weekend papers. Or
maybe everything was just doubled by drunkenness. She drank some water as, either side of her, Totti and Jonesy began swapping figures for gold. She tried to ascertain what was in the soup.
Something fishy, something spicy, something gelatinous. She said to nobody in particular, ‘You know what I was thinking when I was filling up tonight? Maybe, all things considered,
we’re not paying enough.’
‘What things, Marie?’ said Jonesy.
Susan had put down her cutlery and was resting her chin on her fingertips, the vertical forearms striped with bracelet marks. ‘Come on, Gina, stop torturing me.’
‘It’s amazing, Susan. I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s so subtle.’
‘Depletion. We’re always complaining about how much things cost. I bought a pair of sneakers two years ago that I thought were expensive but they’re still going strong and I
garden in them. And considering they were made by child labour and the factory was damaging the environment, and the long-term cost of all that and how long the sneakers have lasted, they were
really quite cheap.’
Jonesy barked with laughter. Marie fiddled with her empty wineglass. She was glad to have amused someone but she wasn’t really trying to be funny. She always felt stupid in the company of
these people, even when it was them who were being stupid. She barged on. ‘What I mean is that from my end, as the purchaser, I wasn’t paying too much. It’s just that the money is
going to the wrong place. Does that make sense?’ Jonesy had refilled her glass. She gulped some down. ‘And considering the water crisis, maybe we should be paying five dollars for a
bottle of water.’