Indelible Ink (16 page)

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And they’re named after the Passion of Christ.’

David turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘I’m not a Christian. I abhor religion.’

‘Neither am I, so do I,’ Marie hastily reassured him.

‘Each to his own,’ said Totti.

‘Well, Marie,’ David said decisively, ‘I’m going to take your advice.’

Jonesy pushed back his chair clumsily. ‘Let’s struggle on through the cellar, shall we?’

David began to clear. ‘Come on, Totti, our turn.’

Totti followed, sheepish, baffled.

‘I won’t have you men messing up my kitchen.’ Susan quickly rose. ‘Marie?’

‘Well, I’m the last man sitting,’ Gina said to the abandoned table. ‘Are we going into the lounge now?’

‘Yes please,’ said Susan.

‘Fireworks!’ Totti exclaimed. ‘What’s the time?’

‘The witching hour approaches!’ David did an excited swivel.

‘Darling, they’re not having fireworks here.’ Gina took her husband’s arm.

‘Well, they bloody well should.’

‘It isn’t fair, is it?’

‘It’s an outrage.’

‘I know someone who lives in the Toaster. She says that Circular Quay is like a
war
zone at midnight.’

‘Oh yes, the ground literally shakes when you’re that near.’

‘She can’t stand it. She spends New Year at Noosa.’

‘I don’t care! I want fireworks on
this
harbour, right below our house! Now!’

Their laughter faded. Marie whispered to Susan in the kitchen: ‘Did you kick me under the table before?’

‘It was a prod, not a kick. I didn’t want you to speak about cancer. It’s what David’s wife died of, you know.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to apologise.’ Susan looked at Marie shrewdly. ‘He didn’t seem to mind.’

A tendril of Arabic music curled into the room.

‘Look at him, will you?’ Susan whispered admiringly as they crossed back through the dining room. ‘He’s not afraid to stand out, is he?’

She smiled at David, perched over the Bang & Olufsen, a flat silver box on a Chinese chest. It was a giant beige cocoon of a room with a triple-seater lounge suite and salmon-coloured rugs.
On the mantlepiece was a pair of ormolu vases stuffed with tea roses. Through the French doors drifted miniature voices from parties on Middle Harbour. David turned up the music. Watching him click
his fingers and yell to Jonesy, Marie wondered if Susan had slept with David as well. The shrine of marital fidelity seemed so petty now, an inanimate object whose meaning was all externally
imposed, and with regulations arbitrary as the marketplace. Leaving the boathouse the final time with Jonesy, Marie had gone ahead and lifted her skirt beneath the bush lemon. He looked at her
affronted then walked straight up to the car. It was suddenly clear that the ritual had nothing to do with the tree nor minerals nor even bladder function, but everything to do with territory and
gender. Had Jonesy brought others here? His private tree of conquest. The cutting had died in Marie’s garden. And why cling so resolutely to that as well? The negatives in her bank statements
seemed just marks on paper, her house a mere structure that if lifted away would leave her, this body, intact as ever. She felt so glad in this moment to be alone and released.

‘Come on, Susan!’ David plucked a scarf off the back of a chair and twirled it over his head. ‘It’s the Raindance!’ He hooked the scarf around her neck and pulled
her into the living room. Susan shuffled obediently, rolling her eyes at her husband who sat on the couch drinking Sauternes, stomach protruding.

‘You dance like a woman, Dave.’ Totti laughed.

‘They all dance like this over there. Come on, boys.’ He flourished the scarf. ‘Get in touch with your feminine side!’

‘That’s my scarf,’ said Gina.

‘Well, get up then!’ He swished it in her face.

‘I can’t
move
.’

So David danced over to Marie, and Marie stepped into the next arabesque with him. She danced with glide of silk over her hips, as David pressed her face against his shoulder, the room swirling
all around her.

‘Marie’s certainly kicking up her heels,’ Jonesy chuckled to his wife.

‘That’s putting it mildly, Harold.’

‘I REMEMBER YOUR HOUSE,’ David said to Marie, one week later in a restaurant in Woollahra. ‘There were some beautiful rugs. I
can’t remember what I was there for. It was summer, a drinks party, but for some reason I see it all as a daytime event.’

‘It could have been Boxing Day. We used to have people over for champagne breakfast to watch the Sydney to Hobart.’

‘There was one rug with a beautiful dark blue,’ David said dreamily, ‘like a night sky. Did you know that children go blind making those rugs? The knots are that
small.’

David told Marie he had been invited to the party after procuring a desk for Ross, a colonial slab that needed three men to be moved. It was quietly thrilling to think of him moving through her
house all those years ago, barely noticed by her, then coming into her life so forcefully at this time. It had to mean something: like a flower pressed between the pages of a book she had had for
years but only now decided to open, David seemed to have been waiting for her all along. Destiny. David had furnished most of the Tottis’ and the Joneses’. His shop was two blocks away
on Queen Street. Marie noticed his posture lilted to one side as though he was partway through a shrug. Or leaning towards her. He was handsome, she thought, scanning the room, a smartly lit space
of right angles. She turned back to David in his pink polo shirt. Yes, definitely one of the best-looking men here, of his age. Someone who knew how to enjoy himself. She savoured the thick white
napkin on her lap, the white hats of kitchen staff bobbing behind the stainless-steel counter, her cosmopolitan, eastern-suburbs date.

‘What do you really think of the Ned Kelly painting?’ Marie asked him.

‘Honestly? They’re terrific paintings, even the third series, which is what Jonesy has although he’s loath to admit it.’ David steepled his hands. ‘But in my humble
opinion, he paid too much. He’d be better off collecting emerging artists, but Jonesy has a very conservative eye, bless his soul. He’s staunchly old school.’

‘They both are. They didn’t use to be.’

‘Jonesy and I argue all the time. We’re on opposite sides of the fence politically. He’s a climate-change sceptic, and he votes accordingly. I told him, “If polar bears
are rendered extinct by this fiasco, I’m holding you personally responsible.”’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He laughed.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘He’s a good bloke. Warm-hearted, hospitable. Kindness’ — David looked Marie in the eye — ‘I’ve come to realise in my old age how important this simple
quality is. You’ve known them a long time, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, we go way back.’

‘Do you want dessert?’ David put on his glasses and peered down at the menu.

Marie ordered the citrus crème caramel with chocolate puff pastry. An icy jet of air-conditioning streamed directly against the back of her neck, and she pulled her shawl tighter.

‘I met the little grub,’ David said. ‘Louise brought her over on New Year’s Day.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Wrinkly.’ David screwed up his face. ‘She looks like Jonesy!’

‘Isn’t it fabulous being a grandparent? I miss my Nell.’

‘Where is she?’

‘My son doesn’t have a very good custody arrangement.’

‘Oh dear. They’re a bit hard on us men in that respect. Here. Taste some of my fig soufflé.’

‘... Di
vine
.’

‘But that’s going to change.’

‘What?’

‘Custody. Everything. When women become equal. Not long now.’

‘You think?’

‘You should see my Rosie. She’s seven and the best in the soccer team. The boys are
terrified
of her. You should see her go! Fastest on the field, hardest kicker, tough as
nails. She wants to play for Australia and she’s furious that she’ll soon be playing with girls only.’

‘That’s a nice idea,’ said Marie. ‘Equality.’

As they came out of the restaurant, David said, ‘I don’t think Susan approves of us going out together. When I asked her for your number she said, “David I wasn’t trying
to set you up!”’

‘She said that to me as well.’

‘Are we going to tell her?’

‘Tell her what? That you’ve been consulting me about planting?’

They stood on Queen Street looking at one another shyly.

‘I have to get a taxi,’ Marie said. ‘I’m over the limit. Can I get one here?’

‘Of course. But what about your car? The parking inspectors will begin their rounds at nine a.m. sharp. They’re ruthless around here, you know, they’ll book you for looking in
a shop window. Terrible for business; we’ve actually mounted protests with the council.’ David checked the street, clearing his throat. ‘You’re going to have to come all the
way back into town at eight-thirty in the morning to avoid getting booked. You’ll have to buy over this side, won’t you. You can stay at my place tonight, I have a spare room. I’m
five minutes away in Darling Point.’

‘Okay then,’ said Marie without hesitation. ‘Let’s walk.’

Over the hill where the shops abated and streetlights were obscured by large old fig trees, the road grew dark. It’s my first real date in about forty years, Marie thought. And nothing has
changed. We’re like teenagers, eager, naughty. She felt a prickle of renewal, the air heavy with low cloud, the scent of deadly nightshade filling the hot darkness. A splodge of moisture
landed on her shoulder and she twisted, thinking it was bats in the fig tree but her shoulder was unmarked and David caught her eye, then hand, and held it with warm insistence as they walked down
the hill to Edgecliff. She loosened her shawl and when they came out from beneath the figs felt another drop. A faint rumble passed over them. ‘I think your Raindance worked,
David.’

The rain began to fall more steadily and they hailed a taxi in front of the German embassy. Anxiety about what he would make of her tattoos lurked in Marie’s mind, though she
wouldn’t allow herself to think that anything more than a cup of tea would pass between them, but he reached for her hand again in the taxi and when she looked over he was smiling out the
window at the lights of Rushcutters Bay streaming past. He looked so happy. She smiled too. She leant forward as the taxi pulled up, elbowing her way past David to pay the driver.

‘I insist. You paid for dinner, I’m getting the cab.’

‘No, no!’

‘Equality, David,’ Marie said firmly.

He chuckled.

She felt him steal looks at her as they walked down the steps to his Darling Point townhouse, and expectation grew so heavy that she couldn’t speak, could barely hold her head up, could
only wait dry-mouthed while David got out his keys. He kissed her just inside the door and she drank him in. How long was it since the touch of a man — at least two years, because Ross had
been sleeping in the spare room by the end. Even then it was a bored, contemptuous, over-familiar husband, not this cocktail of new taste and smell, this never-before-felt, angular body. They
passed through a room full of exotic figurines and bark paintings. Polynesian-looking cloths were draped over the couch. There was something optimistic about being in the house of a man open to
other cultures.

‘These are beautiful.’ Marie touched one of the cloths.

‘Good for calling cards. A dime a dozen in Tonga. Shall we go to my bedroom?’

He indicated a chair on which she could place her clothes, then went into the ensuite.

She watched him from between the sheets as he went naked and unself-conscious from the wardrobe into the bathroom. He swallowed pills at the sink then climbed in beside her. She pushed against
him for the warmth of skin the length of her body, the comforting swell of genitals against her mound. He rested his head on the pillow and she opened her eyes to see him smiling at her. He kissed
her neck, her breasts, propped himself on his elbows, his mouth following his hand down.

‘Goodness, you shave down there? I find that so erotic,’ he whispered. He moved down her body then tensed. ‘What’s that?’

She couldn’t see his face, just the shape of his head between her legs. He moved to let the diffuse street light fall through the window across her belly. His voice came out confused and
wounded. ‘Is it real?’

‘Yes.’

‘My god. Can I ask why?’

He came back up to lie beside her. Fighting off a feeling of dread, Marie turned on her side in order to see his face. She remembered the moment of his head between her legs. Her memory could
wash a facial expression across that silhouette; it could imagine anything.

‘I wanted it. That’s all.’

The silence between them expanded, then into it trickled the sounds of the world — a rustling of Moreton Bay figs from New Beach Road, the swish of car tyres. A multitude of impulses
charged through Marie. To leave. To slap or to reassure him. Then there was the impulse to howl with frustation.

‘I’m sorry, Marie. I have trouble understanding why people do these things to themselves.’

‘I love my tattoos.’

‘You’ve got more?’

‘Yes, four.’

Marie felt like a blemish on these tasteful furnishings. The mushroom walls, scrolls of Chinese calligraphy, Egyptian cotton sheets. The long wooden body beside her, legs crossed at the ankles.
She felt humiliated, and in the slipstream of this humiliation began to grow a brittle defiance.

David’s voice came, thin and small. ‘Can I see them?’

Marie didn’t really want David to see the tattoos now his unease was so evident. She didn’t want to be judged or feared, but she had offered him her body and the tattoos were a part
of that, so she didn’t feel able or even willing to take them away. David stared, reaching out to touch. As he moved, the sheet fell away. He tried to hide his erection.

‘Well,’ Marie quipped, ‘they can’t be that bad,’ thinking what a nice dick he had, angry with him now, angry with herself for thinking yet another compliment, for
noticing this crucial factor and being unable to resist it.