Authors: Fiona McGregor
‘That’s what they pay in Dubai!’ said Totti.
‘If the global economy was properly managed,’ said Jonesy, ‘nobody would have to pay that much, and everybody would have enough to drink.’
‘I’m sick of that word
economy
,’ said Marie. ‘It rules our life. Every election is run on it. We’re not people in a society anymore. We’re just numbers
in an economy.’
‘You’ve got a point there,’ said David.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Totti, ‘I missed the connection between sneakers and water.’
‘Running makes you thirsty, Totts.’ Jonesy grinned.
‘Go to Mario’s,’ said Gina. ‘You’ll pay more than five dollars for San Pellegrino, believe me.’
‘Mario’s is finished.’ Totti waved his hand.
‘I hate seeing my shower water go down the drain knowing it won’t be recycled,’ said Marie.
‘We don’t need to recycle,’ said Jonesy. ‘Within the next few years there’ll be desalination plants servicing every major city in Australia.’
‘But Sydney’s desalination plant is going to burn enormous amounts of fossil fuels to power itself,’ said David. ‘And it’s going to run whether we need it or not,
because of the contract, to the tune of around thirty-three billion taxpayer dollars a year.’
‘
No,
’ said Marie.
David seemed to be leaning towards her, sending her a subtle signal. ‘Oh yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘Did you know that nose jobs are popular in Iran?’ said Susan to Gina.
Gina widened her eyes.
‘I read an article about it in
Good Weekend
.’
‘We should all have rainwater tanks,’ said Marie, looking at David. He didn’t seem to hear. She wanted him to know that she didn’t have one because Ross hadn’t
allowed it, even if that didn’t account for the past year.
‘The rebates they’re offering for those are a joke,’ said Totti. ‘And how are we expected to suddenly fit such big lumps next to our houses? Nuclear. It’s the
cleanest power source.’
‘But we’re too beholden to the green movement to exploit it,’ said Totti.
‘Well, I know they have a Prada fetish,’ Gina said to Susan.
‘God, no, that sort of thing is not allowed in Muslim cultures.’ Jonesy shook his head at her.
‘Middle Eastern women spend a huge amount on cosmetics and fashion,’ Gina replied coolly. ‘It’s an ancient tradition that goes back to the Egyptians. It’s part of
the decorative tradition you see in their architecture, their rugs.’
‘That’s right that’s right,’ David said.
‘No,’ Jonesy insisted. ‘I think you’ll find them very restrictive. The women aren’t allowed to do
anything
.’
Susan sent Gina an indulgent smile and asked her husband to get another bottle of wine. Jonesy appeared not to have heard her. He was buttering his bread and listening to Totti describe nuclear
fission to David. Susan inclined her head to Gina, who was telling her about the similarities between Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures. Marie tried to listen to both conversations at once.
She wanted more wine. She dipped her bread into the dish of olive oil. It tasted fresh as grass and she revelled in the luxury of all this good food. The desire for wine was maddening, though: wine
went with everything, even its own solo self, and not for the first time, Marie regretted the removal of alcohol from her house. She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been so drunk.
It made her all the more determined to drink her fill tonight.
Susan announced, ‘Marie’s selling Sirius Cove.’
Everybody looked at her. Marie said, ‘So this is my last New Year’s Eve in Mosman.’
‘Nooo.’
‘But you’re going to buy locally,’ Susan said decisively, then projected her voice the length of the table to her husband. ‘Harold, can we have that wine now,
please?’
‘You’ll make a mint selling that property,’ said Totti.
Jonesy nodded. ‘The market here is very strong even though it’s beginning to hurt elsewhere.’
‘Harold,’ Susan shouted. ‘
Wine
.’
‘Stop shouting at me, darling,’ Jonesy shouted back.
‘It’s this bloody room. The acoustics. We were supposed to do something about it
twenty
years ago.’
‘Well, I’m not stopping you!’ Jonesy got up.
‘All this panic about one drought,’ Totti was winding up his polemic, ‘when Australia has had them since the beginning of time. Ask my grandparents about water shortages in
Sardinia. Honestly, the
panic
in this country when the tiniest thing goes wrong.’
‘It’s a global problem, John,’ said David. ‘The Japanese have as many people in Tokyo as we have in this entire country and they recycle their sewage for drinking water
and use the waste to irrigate. Why can’t we do that?’ He leant back as Susan cleared his plate. Again, Marie felt he was inclined towards her, although he was on the other side of the
table and not even looking at her. She watched a Hardy Brothers 1999 Merlot pour into her glass from Jonesy’s freckled hand.
‘I refuse to drink sewage,’ said Susan, and left the room.
‘I’m going to help you,’ said Gina.
‘We’re never going to agree on this, David. Where are you going to buy, Marie?’
‘I don’t know. I’m in debt so until the house is sold I don’t really know what I can afford.’ She took a deep draught of wine.
A hush fell over the table and Marie felt its weight double beneath the suddenly unanimous masculine and attentive presence. She couldn’t lower her voice in time and unintentionally
boomed, ‘But I’ve begun to hate Mosman and the belt’s tightening so probably not here.’ She laughed and addressed her plate, ‘I mean I love the bush and harbour
...’
Totti began to fold his napkin. Jonesy watched her from beneath his brow. Marie wished she could remove the words
debt
,
afford
and
hate Mosman
from what she had said, but
then she wouldn’t have said anything.
Eventually, David broke the silence. ‘I’d get a tank if I didn’t live in a townhouse.’
‘Oh!’ Jonesy exclaimed as Susan entered carrying a rack of lamb. ‘Look at this! Isn’t she marvellous!’
‘She’s been watching Jamie Oliver.’ Gina followed with a dish of flageolets.
‘I did ask David to bring someone,’ Susan said to Marie later in the kitchen, when she helped clear main course. ‘I
think
he’s got someone, but he’s being a
bit coy. God knows I don’t want you to think I’m trying to set you up with him or anything like that.’
‘He’s a very nice man.’
‘He’s really come out of his shell since his wife died. I know that’s a very politically incorrect thing to say, but it happens to be true.’
Marie deposited plates on the sink. She ran water over her hands, cracked with fish emulsion that had settled around the cuticles like brown dye. ‘I wouldn’t mind being set up.
I’m not fussy.’
‘Really?’ Susan unwrapped a piece of dark chocolate and began to grate it over a pear tart.
‘Can I help with anything?’
‘No, no.’
Marie sat at the table. ‘I’m thinking of going back to uni to finish my psychology degree.’
‘Can you, after all this time?’
‘I’m going to look into it in the new year, when I’ve sold the house.’
Susan flapped a hand towards the floor. ‘What about them ... are they still there?’
‘Of course. Susan, nobody notices them any more than they notice the straps of your shoes.’
‘Gina would. She’d notice a speck of dust between your toes.’
The hubbub in the dining room was getting louder.
‘That looks fabulous. You really are cooking up a storm tonight.’
Susan continued grating, eyebrows raised, elbows like wings. ‘When Robert was a teenager he wanted a tattoo, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Jonesy told him he’d be thrown out of the family.’
Marie said nothing.
Susan picked up a lemon. ‘A little lemon zest,’ she said, then began to grate it, adding: ‘He grew out of it of course.’
They could hear David’s voice rising. Gina came into the kitchen. Susan sent Marie a fierce hiding look. ‘They’re arguing about politics now,’ said Gina.
‘David’s on his Arabic bent.’
‘It’s Jewish guilt, that’s what it is,’ Susan muttered.
Gina laughed. ‘I think he’s just a very good businessman, Susan. He’s importing some beautiful stuff.
Beautiful
. And he’s quite right about Morocco.’
‘What about Morocco?’ said Marie.
‘If you haven’t been already then go now. All the Peter Mayles will be down there in a flash and it’ll be over.’
Susan pushed back her hair to show long earrings encrusted with stones. ‘Did you see these? He brought them back for me.’
‘Beautiful,’ said Gina.
‘Lovely,’ said Marie. ‘Can I borrow some hand cream, Susan?’
‘Of course, in the bathroom. They’re prophylactics, traditionally, for the Berber.’
‘Will they stop you getting the flu this year?’ Gina left a waft of perfume behind her as she walked out of the kitchen.
‘She’s had a boob job!’ Susan hissed to Marie.
‘Do you think so?!’
Marie walked after Gina, who had left the bathroom door open.
‘Come in, Marie. I’m only doing my lipstick.’
‘I’ll just get some hand cream.’ Marie tried to get a look at Gina’s face while rummaging through the drawer but saw only erasure in Gina’s sucked-in cheeks, her
polished cleavage. She stared at Gina’s breasts, then looking up saw Gina staring at her and she quickly looked away, mortified. Her ankles twisted and turned, trying to hide behind each
other. She found the cream and focused on it. ‘So tell me about Morocco.’
‘’eelll.’ Gina’s mouth stretched to receive a coat of lipstick. ‘It’s hot. It has everything really — desert, mountains, sea. The food is superb. I
suppose it’s like anywhere — you have to know where to stay.’
Marie wondered why she had begun this conversation. It was another case of can-I-afford-it. Everything seemed to go back to money and money now spelt restriction. And nobody here had the
faintest idea what that meant. She simmered with resentment. And here she was trying to perve at fake lips, fake tits. As if that mattered. ‘It sounds lovely.’ She smiled.
Gina fixed her large eyes on Marie’s mirror image. ‘You could go on a tour! There are some very good ones these days. Not the dregs you’d think would go on them, but lots of
people like us.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Very educational is what I’m told.’ Gina lipsticked her mouth with a second, darker colour, then dabbed it with a tissue. ‘The guides are Oxford scholars. You know,
they speak about a thousand languages.’
‘And how are you, Gina? How’s the shop going?’
‘I love it, but it’s exhausting. The clientele are changing. All the new money coming into the area. They’re so
rude
.’
‘I hate the thought of selling my house to somebody like that.’
‘Oh yes, it must be so hard.’ Gina capped her lipstick. ‘But you don’t have much choice, do you? You can’t sit there forever picking and choosing. You have to think
of yourself and the best outcome in the long term ... I think that’s a terrific idea, you know. You really should do it. A tour to Morocco, after you’ve sold your house. What an
adventure!’
When Gina left, Marie shut the door for a long, private scratch of her healing tattoo. Back in the dining room the seating had changed, and Gina was now in front of the light and Marie was
seated next to David Rosenthal. The Valkyries were storming from the stereo, Totti shouting, ‘What on earth are you waiting for? Book your tickets now. Subscribers get a discount. Fifteen
hundred dollars, it’s so cheap!’
Marie also subscribed to the opera. It was an effort to sit through all those hours of Stürm und Drang, but she felt somehow virtuous afterwards, as though she had fasted, or run a long
way. Maybe
The Ring Cycle
, being that much longer, would work like an extended stay at a health farm. Maybe, also, a live version might finally expunge the images of
Apocalypse Now
that charged through her philistine mind each time she heard ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Maybe she couldn’t afford it. Maybe she wasn’t invited. Maybe she wasn’t invited
because she couldn’t afford it.
‘Then it’s up to the Barossa for a few days,’ Gina added.
‘That’s the part I’m looking forward to,’ said Jonesy.
‘The entire
Ring Cycle
?’ David groaned. ‘I might just join you at the wineries.’
‘I agree, David.’
‘Oh, come on, Harold. Don’t be such a bore. I want to go.’ Susan then instructed David to talk to Marie. ‘She’ll know what to do.’
David told Marie he needed something semi-temporary to cover an ugly fence that he was battling with a neighbour to replace.
‘Passionfruit. They grow quickly and live for about six years.’
David looked disappointed. ‘I know what I’m like. The fruit will rot while I fill my bowl with peaches from Harris Farm. I was thinking of something more decorative.’
‘But they flower. Haven’t you ever seen a passionflower? They’re extraordinary and they go on virtually all summer.’
She described the flat petals, the stamen reaching up like dancers in their midst, the purple tendrils. She noticed sunspots on the whites of David’s eyes and a scrape of bristle on his
cheekbone that he had missed shaving. His gaze moved to the flare of her thigh when she crossed her legs, then he frowned slightly to show he was paying her serious attention. Marie talked about
the medicinal qualities of passionflowers, for anxiety, some said cancer. A foot poked her beneath the table, and Marie sent David a coquettish look before realising his legs were stretched in the
other direction. She could feel Susan’s eyes spearing her profile. She remembered her children sitting by the passionfruit vine eating all the fruit in one afternoon. They did the same with
the mandarin tree, strewing peels across the grass and returning to the house with their mouths swollen from citric acid. Later from the deck, the glint of peels in moonlight floating over the sea
of lawn. It was another time now, and Marie could feel herself coming back to life.
‘My son Leon used to call passionflowers “fairy stages”. They open out flat, like a podium for the tendrils and stamen.’