Authors: Fiona McGregor
‘I ordered a skinny cap as well,’ Beth told the waiter.
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s coming.’
‘Look, why don’t you join us? Quick, so the Christians don’t sit here ...’
Blanche laughed, and she and Hugh sat down.
‘No offence,’ said Beth. ‘I mean nobody here’s a Christian, are they? I mean there’s nothing
wrong
with being a Christian.
Aaarghh ...
’
‘I believe in God,’ said Hugh.
‘Hu-ugh. He doesn’t go to church or anything,’ Blanche explained.
James nodded. ‘I go to midnight mass at Christmas. The singing’s beautiful.’
Beth waved her hands. ‘Each to their own. I’m totally fine with it. I mean we just bought a house in the block behind them so I’m hardly allergic.’
‘Really?’ said Hugh.
Blanche examined her menu although all she wanted was exactly what Beth and James were having. She considered the buttermilk pancakes with blueberries and ricotta but they would be too
fattening. Maybe if she got hash browns with her eggs it would seem different to Beth and James’s. But then it would be too much food. Hugh could help her eat it, but she didn’t want
him getting fat any more than herself. Beth was one of those skinny women who could eat what she liked, judging by the way her eggs were disappearing into her size-10 figure. At college Beth had
seemed frivolous. She had had a lot of boyfriends and missed a lot of classes and was always hungover. She failed sculpture, which she had done with Blanche, who had topped the class. Beth’s
real talent lay with theory: she wrote her thesis on Arte Povera and went to every art opening in Sydney and every conference overseas as a postgrad. And now she was an assistant curator at the
Museum of Contemporary Art. Just goes to show, thought Blanche, better to be a pisshead networking slut than a hardworking talent. Then again, Tait had been a conscientious nerd. Well, obviously
you couldn’t get by just being
normal.
Blanche wondered what they earnt at the MCA. The heads of the major theatre and dance companies were on six figures these days: the top museum
administrators must be on par. Again, Blanche rued her decision not to stick with art, but she had to admit that advertising had given her greater independence and greater security at an earlier
age. She could still smell the sour cockroach kitchen of the Chippendale house she had lived in at nineteen while at art college, then fled to return home a year later. Nobody who wanted anything
to do with art, it seemed at that time, would rise above that. But Beth and Tait had.
Anyway, who said that advertising wasn’t art? The same people who claimed to ignore the divide between high and low art, who lauded ironic commentary on popular culture, and kept
‘art’ books of Australiana — most of which was old advertising designs — on their coffee tables. Blanche knew in her heart that she was a better artist than Tait Green and
had said more with her Dulux ad than he had with a dozen pairs of Blu-Tack Adidas. Oh, how she loved being creative. Because while she sat here looking at the menu, maintaining a conversation and
reminiscing about Beth and art college, deep in the mud of her exhausted mind the seed of an idea was cracking open. Diet Coke.
Better than sex.
A rumpled bed, sleepy hornbag of a bloke, the
sheets tented by a bottle. She shut out the voice that told her how unsatisfying her sex life with Hugh was. She let the idea alone, watching it out of the corner of her eye, careful not to
frighten it away.
She looked up the street and liked what she saw. A large furniture store across the road, another bistro and a landscape gardening place with huge agaves in pots along the footpath. Amazing how
nice it was here in the heart of Redfern, Sydney’s biggest slum just ten years ago. Only a handful of the Christians had stopped in the bistro, and they were so well-dressed that pretty soon
you forgot they were Christians. A truck rolled into the drive of the whitegoods warehouse ten metres away and opened its back doors to accept a load of fridges. Blanche imagined moving into this
neighbourhood and it didn’t feel like such a bad idea. Even Marie had mentioned looking here. Not that she’d want to live in the same suburb as her mother.
‘So this is your local!’ Hugh said.
‘We love it,’ said James. ‘We were in Woollahra before, and it just got too much.’
‘Twelve dollars for a jar of cream at Jones the Grocer,’ said Beth. ‘We called it Jones the Grosser, as in, you know, with two s’s.
And
the biggest carbon
footprint in the whole of Australia, after Mosman.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Hugh. ‘Blanche and I were just talking about how much it’s changed around here. Can I ask how much you paid?’
‘Hugh’s in the business,’ Blanche said peremptorily.
‘Oh
right
,’ said James. ‘Well, Redfern is going
off.
’
‘You too?’
‘I’m an architect.’
‘We’ll have to show you our house. James did everything. We’ve got solar panels, a tank. Skylights.’
‘An absolute wreck when we bought it.’
‘Really?’ said Blanche. ‘How do you find room for a tank in a terrace?’
‘We built a deck out the back and put in a native garden. The tank is a bladder and fits under the deck. I don’t know how anyone lives with themselves these days who
doesn
’
t
have one. We
love
it. We’re going to die there.’
Hugh’s leg was jiggling up and down. He looked from Beth to James and back again. ‘Can I ask how much you paid?’ he said again.
‘One point seven five. It’s three storeys.’
‘Whoa.’
‘But eighty K on renos.’
‘Still.’
‘Last exchanged for two thousand pounds in 1963,’ Beth said proudly.
Blanche and Hugh made noises of amazement.
Hugh went inside to order and Blanche listened to Beth and James describe their new house. They asked her about hers. She told them about the heritage sandstone cottage in Lavender Bay they had
bought five years ago after marrying and as she spoke she regretted how rarely she and Hugh had people over. Yet they loved their house and had bought a seven-thousand-dollar teak dining room table
and kitted out their kitchen with the express purpose of having dinner parties. But there was never enough time. Blanche wanted to change this. She wanted her and Hugh to be like they were today
every Saturday, out together enjoying the world, in the company of friends.
Hugh came back out. The stormclouds were receding. Far off in the distance thunder rumbled and overhead the sun pushed through cloud, turning the light a purple green. Blanche felt as though she
were sitting inside a giant bruise: painful, tender, healing.
It was raining in Mexico for the fourteenth day in a row and millions of people were being evacuated. Towns were flooded to the rooflines, humans and animals alike were
drowning, more rain was predicted. But all across the eastern states of Australia, skies remained blue, and in Sydney the temperature continued to rise.
Marie spent Saturday going through her finances. Six months earlier she had stopped her health insurance, saving about two thousand dollars a year. Stopping her car insurance had lost her
thousands, as the gouge had begun to rust. She was late with her rates and water bills. She still hadn’t paid the tree surgeon and her credit cards were almost at their limit. A letter
arrived with the Visa bill:
Dear Mrs King,
Enjoy 2.99% p.a. for 6 months on a single purchase over $500.
Why not treat yourself to something you
’
d really like with an ANZ
Great Rate?
None of the buyers had made an offer on the house and Hugh had counselled an auction. She refused to be worried by these lowered expectations, the price still enormous in her eyes.
Each night on the news she watched the stockmarket fall. She held shares in half the major companies with red downward arrows beside their names and supposed it boded badly but she still
couldn’t feel real danger. She was like a drunken teenager driving down a dark country road.
Yet to be without money was a frightening thing. Money brought a sort of peace. It was the access it gave you, the broadened world, to walk into any place and know that whatever you wanted was
just a signature away. To leave big tips and luxuriate in your benevolence. Even back from explicit display, money was a cushion. It didn’t matter if the washing machine broke: a new one was
just a phone call away. Marie knew she was sliding. Her spending had reduced over the past year and the boundaries of necessity kept shrinking. The orchids could do without food and she could do
without fancy restaurants. She knew where she had gone wrong. She could have seen it coming with the mandate for reduction in Ross’s settlement. She was also aware, subliminally if nothing
else, that there remained an impulse in her to spend because she didn’t quite believe this asset was truly her entitlement; her treasure was also her albatross and the impulse to destroy was
all bound up with the impulse to preserve. The sadness of losing it contained also relief. Therein seemed to lie the possibility of feeling.
And then what would happen? Becoming dependent on her children horrified her and would in any case be impossible with her sons. Leon didn’t care about money, which was part of the problem,
the way he had so carelessly spent so much. Clark was prudish to the point of parsimony. It was Blanche alone who was comfortable with money, as skilled at making it as she was at spending it.
There was no question: Marie would have to get a job.
Adapt or perish
was the headline in Saturday’s paper. The article stated that if Australia didn’t implement a carbon-trading scheme within the next two years, the cost would
be the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, the demise of the Murray–Darling, up to 9500 heatwave deaths per year, GDP collapse, inland migration to escape rising sea levels and severe storms,
Pacific atoll refugees and political instability in neighbouring countries. Marie still hadn’t grasped exactly what a carbon-trading scheme was. She read every word of the article, depressed
and confused.
She turned to
Domain.
The feature was about swimming pools.
I know that Bondi Beach is only a stone’s throw away, but a swimming pool adds that element of privacy and luxury
that’s very important to people in this market
, said a real-estate agent, next to a photo of a pool by the ocean. The shot made the pool look as though it were bleeding straight into the
Pacific. Clark never mentioned people like this: he had nothing but praise for Bondi. The prices for semis were around two million. What would it be like living near her eldest son? She might get
to see Nell more often. Nell might even stay for a weekend. Marie went back to the feature article where a couple were interviewed who had renovated their Surry Hills terrace to include a swimming
pool, but not moved in when the wife fell pregnant as they feared the pool would be dangerous for their child. The house was priced at two and a half million. Hardly her sort of place with all that
glass and metal. The ad for her house was reduced to a quarter page this week. She thought immediately of the lawyer couple, whom Hugh had advised her to meet on their second visit. The woman so
pale you could see the veins on her forearms. The bluff man in his high-waisted chinos and ironed polo shirt was the talker but clearly, also, obedient to his wife. The grumpy boy and girl. Marie
took comfort in the family’s froideur, interpreting it as respect, and realised she had mentally passed the house to them already. She threw the paper into the recycling bin.
When the sun began to recede, she put on a load of washing and went into the garden. The coconut ice grevilleas were clustered with honey-eaters. The callistemon looked as though it had thrips.
It was too hot to turn the compost. Just unravelling the bailing hose took all her effort. Ming and Tang snarled along the fence each time she went into the laundry. ‘Shut up, you little
shits,’ Marie muttered. She went inside for an iced cordial and in the afternoon switched on the tennis.
Fifty minutes into the third set when they were back on deuce, David rang. Taken aback, Marie began to pace around the living room with the phone. A luxury liner was steaming towards the Quay,
its windows lit up like opals. As the sun sank, the harbour caught fire. Drawn by the strange light, Marie walked onto the deck. Her mind, on hearing David’s voice, went immediately to Susan.
Had he heard about their fight? He sounded friendly in a tentative way. He said he had been overseas. He didn’t seem to offer this an excuse for his silence, and his lack of guile eased
Marie. It was the twenty-first century after all, so her own silence might have had explanation due as well. She thought back to the beginning of the year and it seemed an age away, the weeks since filled
with irrevocable changes, but David spoke as though they had only seen each other recently and nothing untoward had happened. He said he had been catching up on his journal reading since returning
to Sydney.
‘And I thought about you,’ he said warmly.
‘Oh?’ Marie was flattered, but she wasn’t going to succumb. She checked her reflection in the glass doors: pretty good, but she could do with a hair cut. Christ, her hands
looked terrible, though. Wrinkly old-lady hands.
‘I’m a subscription junkie and a closet anthropologist. Everything worth reading on the subject comes through my letterbox. Did you know that Joseph Banks had himself tattooed?
Isn’t that extraordinary?’
Marie didn’t know that, and felt a bit miffed that he had beaten her to the information. She said, ‘Another specimen for his collection?’
‘I knew he
wrote
about them, but not that he had one done on himself. He said he couldn’t understand how the Tahitians put themselves through such an ordeal. I wonder why he
finally succumbed.’
‘Maybe it was something for himself.’ Marie sat in a recliner and stretched out her legs. They needed waxing. God, Marie, stop it will you. She left the light off and listened to
David talk about Banks. Metallic orange drained from the body of water before her, the outlines of trees sank into gloom. The beauty of this view still astonished her and she wished for someone to
share it with. Every night, the opera of sunset, like bathing in champagne.