Authors: Fiona McGregor
Poofs
. The word sounded suddenly cute and fluffy. It had a spring in its step. Marie said uncertainly, ‘It sounds like fun.’
‘What’d you get, Marie?’ Rob asked.
‘We extended the vine across my chest and put some passionflowers on it.’
‘Oohh, bewdiful.’
Stew came and stood on the other side of Rhys. ‘You’re gonna need somewhere to show those off.’
Marie tucked the flyer into her bag and left the studio with images of bronzed musclemen striding around a stage in hard hats, waggling their bulging g-strings over her face at a chintzy table
in a chintzy bar. A not-altogether-unpleasant fantasy except she didn’t want to be like one of those screeching desperadoes on hens’ nights. Let alone a post-menopausal tragic. Then
again, she couldn’t imagine Rhys inside such a chintzy bar either, though Rhys was clearly going to
FAST
.
On the streets of Surry Hills, Marie could never predict who she might see. Tradesmen outside the electrical supplier. The smart lady who tended the vintage shop on Crown Street. Youths in jeans
outside the acting school. She didn’t cover herself up here and it was a second liberation, after tattooing sessions, to walk these streets with the air on her bare skin. Nobody looked twice.
You
’
re gonna need somewhere to show those off …
it was the first time anyone apart from the tattooists had responded to her work in celebratory terms.
She had to walk all the way to Marlborough Street today. She passed two skinny men in eccentric clothing, wheeling around a warehouse on their bicycles. ‘Hallo!’ They waved to her.
‘Hallo!’ She waved back. Further down the alley an old man was retching into the gutter. There was a couple on the corner, the man chopping the air, saying, ‘She has absolutely
no
idea.’
She crossed the road. Walking ahead was a woman in a singlet with silver-grey hair. Closer, Marie saw flowers beneath the white cotton. She hastened her steps, saw a waratah on one shoulder,
crimson rich. Beautiful, prolific tattoos floated down the woman’s right arm. She was in good shape, and middle-aged by the look of that silver-grey hair. Marie was excited, gaining on her
fast.
She came abreast and looked over eagerly and when the woman turned to her, Marie saw a tear tattooed on her cheek. She saw a worn, damaged face, the eyes like closed shutters, wary and hostile.
They ran down Marie’s arms, then lit up. Marie hurried onwards.
The woman called out in a cigarette voice, ‘Nice tatts!’
Marie turned and said politely, ‘You too.’
Nice tatts.
‘Oh,’ said Edwina, as she tucked the cape into Marie’s collar.
It wasn’t a surprised vowel, more affirmative, as though she was just checking up on something. At the sink adjacent, Colette and her client turned to look. Marie leant her head back into
the crevice of the basin and shut her eyes as Edwina’s fingers rummaged across her scalp.
Edwina seated Marie in front of the long gilt mirror then went to greet a customer. Marie picked up a copy of
Vogue
and opened it at an article on the history of the bikini. Colette
wheeled her customer over and installed her next to Marie. When Marie raised her eyes she found Colette again staring at her nape. She caught her eye and smiled. Colette quickly looked away. Her
customer, a dark-haired woman that Marie didn’t know, leant towards the mirror to inspect her face from a variety of angles while Colette waited, comb in hand. Marie lowered her eyes again
and read the same paragraph over and over. Edwina returned and swiftly and silently cut Marie’s hair. Then she mixed up Marie’s hair dye.
After a while, Marie said, ‘And how are you, Edwina? How’s business?’
‘Oh, you know, ticking along. Can’t complain.’
‘And your children?’
‘They’re very well. Exhausting me as usual.’
‘That’s children for you.’
Edwina was wearing a peach-coloured v-necked t-shirt. A fine gold chain hung down her tanned chest, with a pendant that disappeared into her cleavage. Marie tried not to dwell on this pendant:
she tried to look Edwina in the eye. Edwina raised her eyebrows and smiled with bright, professional solicitude as she poked the dye brush into Marie’s roots. Marie looked back at
Vogue
, which was quoting from a 1951 edition: O
ur readers dislike the bikini, which has transformed the coastlines into the backstage of music halls and which does not embellish women
…
She read on in the sticky silence.
Ten minutes later Edwina said, ‘There we are, Marie. I’ll just leave that to set.’
‘Thank you.’
Edwina clacked across the room to where a blonde woman with freshly washed hair awaited her. The reception desk, a white oblong table on an oblique angle near the door, was dominated by a large
vase of lilies whose scent was tangible even here, beneath her skullcap of hair dye. Marie inhaled gratefully. Outside, sunlight seared the paving.
‘It’s going to be forty-three degrees tomorrow,’ said the blonde as Edwina began to cut her hair.
‘Oh, I don’t believe it. They always get it wrong.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised — it’s almost that now.’
‘I wake up every day
dreading
the heat, you know.’
‘I can’t quite believe it, to be honest with you. I mean things
melt
when it’s that hot, don’t they?’
‘I was in the desert once, and it was forty-nine. You can’t move. You can’t do anything.’
‘I think it should be a public holiday,’ another customer pitched in.
‘You’re absolutely right!’
‘Edwina, get on the phone to the PM, will you?’
Gales of laughter.
Marie watched them in the mirror, smiling and trying to catch their eyes.
‘Why
me
?’
‘You’re upspoken!’
‘I’m not going to do your dirty work for you, Jane!’
‘Isn’t it
outspoken
?’
‘I’m not
dirty
.’
More laughter.
Marie left the salon and walked down Military Road in the direction of the deli. Everybody was moving slowly, seeking the shade. She passed a blonde in tennis clothes, wheeling a pram. Two
Queenwood girls came out of Country Road, each holding a mobile phone to her ear. The uniform had changed since Blanche’s school days. Hats were compulsory again, for health reasons, not
propriety. The girls wore theirs jammed beneath their elbows, and Marie could see the border of foundation around their jaws, the clotted eyelashes, the expertly applied tints in their hair.
They waved at a Mosman High boy in a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and an eyebrow piercing that looked infected. A middle-aged man in Tommy Hilfiger was walking up behind him. ‘Dylan! Hurry up.
Your mother’s expecting you at home right now.’
The deli was a cavern of relief, its wooden shelves stacked with beautifully labelled jars. Marie filled her basket with olive oil, mustard, marinated fetta, parmesan, a vat of Nice Cream and a
litre of organic apple juice. She took her purchases to the counter and handed over her Visa card. ‘Is there any wholemeal bread?’
‘No, sorry. There’s no wheat flour left in Australia because of the drought. Try spelt. The spelt’s excellent.’
Marie added a spelt loaf to her shopping.
‘Thirty-eight dollars and fifty-five cents, thanks.’ The cashier ran Marie’s card through the machine, plucked out the docket then bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry.
It’s been refused.’
‘But I just used it at the hairdresser’s!’
The girl’s head tilted with embarrassment. ‘Sorry. Maybe you just reached the limit now.’
The limit on that card was fifty thousand dollars. Marie was aware of someone behind her. She reached into her wallet for her Amex and passed it over, ears burning. The girl ran the card
through. Her mouth pulled to one side. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘That
too
?’ Marie’s voice sounded harsh in the dim, quiet shop. ‘The card gremlin’s really got me today, hasn’t he? There must be a mistake.
Can’t you ring them?’
‘It’s Saturday. There’s nothing I can do. You could ring customer service?’
Marie glanced around and saw that the woman behind her was Gina.
‘Well, hallo! How are you?’
‘Hallo, Marie.’ Gina smiled at her and the cashier in turn.
She gave Marie, in a reluctant manner as though fighting a compulsion, the quick once-over that Marie associated with men, desire, younger days. But there was nothing erotic in this scrutiny.
Marie’s heart began to accelerate. She opened her wallet for the third time. Inside was a twenty-dollar note. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to the cashier, ‘I’ll have
to go and sort this out with the bank. On a hot day like today! I’ll be back.’
Gina’s slim, tanned form moved aside. Marie stopped on her way out. ‘We must catch up, Gina. I’ll be gone soon.’
‘Oh yes, the sale! Yes, we must.’
Marie crossed the road and made her way towards the car park. Well, she thought, better to be coiffed than fed. She didn’t want to go to the bank in case she couldn’t get cash out as
well, nor to the supermarket to spend her fifty dollars. She had enough food for a few days. She wanted to run away and disappear. She thought thirstily of the cove. She had parked her car at the
end of the car park beneath a peppercorn, but the sun had swung around and was now sheering through her windscreen. She passed a woman shutting the door of a red Toyota with fragile determination,
carrying an old-fashioned basket. Pat Hammet. She fell upon her with relief. ‘Pat!’
Pat looked up from beneath her old sunhat. ‘Hallo, Marie. This is unexpected.’
Marie wasn’t sure what this meant. ‘You won’t believe,’ she said breathlessly, ‘my credit cards just got knocked back. Both of them, in the deli!’
Pat peered at her. Something flickered across her face. Embarrassment, perhaps pity. She put down her basket and opened her wallet. She had an elderly tremble in her hands, noded with arthritis.
She drew out a one-hundred-dollar note.
Marie was stricken. ‘No, Pat. Please. It’s just a mistake. In this weather!’
‘It’s alright. I understand.’
‘Thank you, really. It’s just a terrible inconvenience.’
Pat tilted her head to one side. ‘Now what’s this I hear about you and tattoos?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I thought you’d moved out of Mosman. You even mentioned Redfern or something. And then I heard that you were covered in tattoos!’ She checked Marie with the frank appraisal of
a schoolmistress checking a pupil’s uniform. It seemed to Marie, as a woman drew up in a silver Mercedes, that Pat was speaking extremely loudly. Booming. Like a deaf woman.
‘The auction is Saturday week but I’m getting a two-month settlement so you’ll still see me,’ Marie said. ‘You should come over before the house goes.’
‘Who are the agents?’
‘Hugh, my son-in-law. Coustas and Stevens.’
‘Right.’ Pat raised her eyebrows. ‘And are you interviewing your buyers?’
‘God, no. I escape when they come. You met all of yours, didn’t you.’
‘Oh yes. Gave them a thorough grilling. Fat lot of good that did me. That Celia was born in Mosman, you know.’ Pat put on a mincing voice: ‘She told me,
Oh, it’s a
lovely house, we won’t change a thing, we love the bush.
I can’t bear to go back there, Marie. I can’t even look at what they’ve done.’
Marie decided not to tell Pat about the swimming pool.
‘But you,’ Pat prompted.
‘I’m fine about it, Pat. I’ve let go.’
‘I couldn’t believe my ears. Tattooed! Then I thought, Well, Marie’s an original woman. But she’s not
stupid
.’ Pat stood back and let this compliment sink
in. The Mercedes woman smiled as she walked past with her lime green polyurethane eco shopping bags. Marie felt as though she were falling off a cliff. She could see every detail of the rock face,
feel every flicker of wind. The humming of cicadas morphed into a relentless pulse.
‘My car’s going to be a furnace. I have to go.’
Eyes like claws. Marie walked to the end of the car park and unlocked her car. The seat branded her thighs. In the rear-view mirror she saw her hairdo had collapsed in the heat. On arrival home
she stripped off her clothes, put on a costume, slung a towel over her shoulder and went down to the cove. It was high tide with jade depths for a good ten metres. Marie breast-stroked out with her
head above the water, cheeks burning. She swam over the mysterious low-lying kelp into cooler water. Then she lifted her arms and dove under for the full relief on face and scalp. Her foot spasmed
with cramp and she realised the tension that had gripped her for the past two hours was still in her body; but even in this state, raging and alone, her entire being surged with love for this
place. She floated for a long time facing the sky, every cell in her body singing to the water and trees.
She walked back to her house uncovered. In the Hendersons’ kitchen window, Rupert’s glowering face appeared. She stripped and showered. It was a new person in the mirrors of her
ensuite. Someone vibrant, expressive and particular. Someone radiating humour and life. She walked around her bedroom naked, exulting in her shouting, shrinking, wrinkling body. Fuck you, she
thought. Fuck. You.
Ten kilometres inland, fifteen minutes’ drive from Bondi, the mercury rose. Clark could feel his arms burning as he drove and he took his right hand off the wheel away
from the sun. The sunspots he’d had burnt off his forehead last year were itching again. It wasn’t a day to be out in, especially not in a car with dodgy air-conditioning. The streets
shimmered and were eerily empty as though a bomb had been dropped. It was inhuman. But he had arranged to meet Sylvia and, having Nell all weekend, this was the only time he would get to see his
lover. And Nell had been miserable in the heat this morning: an air-conditioned building would be better than the beach where they would only roast more. Yesterday the sand had actually burnt his
feet.
‘Is Gran coming?’
‘No, she can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s sick.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Nothing serious. She’s just got a cold. We can ring her when we get home if you like.’ He added, ‘We’re going to meet a friend of mine instead.’