Authors: Fiona McGregor
‘Thank you.’ Marie got into the lift with the heat of his eyes upon her. They rode up to Level 41.
The restaurant wasn’t how she remembered it. Surprisingly, it resembled a boardroom. Plain, functional, almost austere. A young woman in black was sitting on one of the couches, drinking a
mini-bottle of Moët through a straw. But the room was irrelevant. What mattered was the panorama of night harbour wrapped around the steel and glass cylinder like a black scarf shot with
diamonds. They walked to a window table and Marie handed her shawl to the waiter with a thin moustache. David ordered champagne and antipasto. It arrived almost immediately.
‘I’d like to propose a toast for the sale.’ David lifted his glass. ‘Everything ready for the big day?’
‘Yes. My son-in-law is handling it. They’re auctioning on site, and I’ll be on a bushwalk.’
‘In the lap of the gods, hey? You aren’t in the least bit curious?’
‘Morbidly. That’s why I’m keeping away.’
‘And where are you going to buy?’
‘I’ve decided to cross the bridge. I’m not sure where to exactly.’
‘Good idea. The eastern suburbs is just about the only place that’s going to survive this downturn.’
‘You don’t think things will get better?’
‘Oh, sure. It’s only a matter of time.’
He was pretending not to look at her breasts. She sat with her shoulders back, looking straight at him, enjoying his tortured avidity. The champagne had immediately penetrated the walls of her
stomach and was fizzing along her arteries straight to her head. She ate some prosciutto and rockmelon. The waiter reappeared, elegant in his charcoal jacket with his vintage moustache and bottle
opener angled rakishly into the wide pocket of his apron. His attentive hovering was directed towards Marie, even as he stood beside David.
I think I’ll have the spatchcock. Marie?’
‘I’ll have the skate.’
‘Excellent choice, madam.’
‘And a bottle of the Wirra Wirra.’ David slid his glasses to the end of his nose and looked up. ‘It is the 2004, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’
‘I think things will only get worse,’ Marie said, when the waiter had gone. ‘We’re running out of oil. The war has sucked the American economy dry. We’re addicted
to fossil fuels. The evidence of climate change is irrefutable and we’re not doing much about it.’
‘Well, the Chinese dragon is certainly going to torch us. And when it comes to the environment, they make us look like
saints
.’
‘And we’re mortgaged and indebted to the eyeballs. Just like the Americans.’
‘I’m not. I think it’s irresponsible.’ David rested on his elbows and contemplated Marie over his fingertips. ‘Did you know that the Dutch economy is one of the
strongest in the world because of individual savings? The stingy Dutch! Saviours of the national economy.’
‘Well,
I
’
m
indebted to my eyeballs.’ It occurred to Marie that it might be her turn to pay tonight, which would set her up for another public shaming. Then again,
it was David who had invited her. ‘But I’ll be bailed out on Saturday.’
‘Be careful.’ David wagged his finger.
‘What about your business? How will you survive?’
‘I really don’t care. I’m not a materialistic person, Marie. I have my little flat and a house down the coast. I don’t own many shares. I have my
objets
d
’
art
, but I’m not fanatically attached to them as such. They all pass through my hands at one stage or another. I’m a highly adaptable, frugal person. I might even
retire to New Zealand. Buy a little farm. You didn’t know I was a good bushman, did you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll have to show you some time.’
‘What about twenty years from now? What do you think our grandchildren will have to contend with?’
‘I’m not worried about my Rosie. She’s a genius. She’s going to save the world.’
They leant back for the arrival of their perfectly manicured meals. The waiter filled their wineglasses then settled the bottle into its bucket with a snug, wet crunching. A boat strung with
lights in the shape of a dragon glided beneath the harbour bridge. David was watching her with a cheeky, slightly lascivious grin. ‘So,’ he said, ‘Lady Randolph Churchill.
Show
me.
’
Feeling slightly uncomfortable, Marie unbuttoned her cuff, revealing the dark green end of a vine on her wrist. Further back, on her forearm, bloomed a passionflower.
David reared away and glanced around the room. ‘How far up does it go?’
‘All the way.’
‘Show me later, show me later,’ he said, waving his hand. He lowered his voice and pincered his wrist. ‘I thought it was just a small thing here …’
Hopelessness began to fill Marie like cement. She set her face and picked up her glass. ‘Tell me about your overseas trip, David. Where did you go?’
‘I wasn’t overseas. I was in the desert.’
‘In this heat?’
‘Yes. Mad dogs and Englishmen and overworked dealers. It couldn’t be helped.’ David ate with his head down, not looking at her, carefully placing a portion of each vegetable
onto the meat on his fork before placing the combination into his mouth.
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Balgo. Off the Tanami Track. An obscure place that hardly anyone’s heard of.’ He put down his cutlery. Again that look of dread and excitement crossed his features. ‘All
the way to the top?’
‘Yes. Was it a buying trip?’
‘I don’t call them
buying trips
per se. There’s more to it than that.’ His eyes roamed the room, bright, conspiratorial, then came back to rest on Marie’s
breasts. ‘And here? It is, isn’t it. My god.’
Marie wanted to do up all her buttons. ‘It must be beautiful out there,’ she said in a clipped voice.
David looked at her cagily. ‘Actually, it’s a mess. Alcoholism, petrol sniffing, domestic violence. The communities are completely dysfunctional. It may as well be overseas. It is
another world. A third world.’
He was trying to impress her with his brush with misery. She was supposed to act girlish and naïve while he dealt with life’s harsh realities. Next thing she knew, she’d be
keeping his dinner warm. At least he could still take her out and not have her make a scene. Marie sawed at her skate, hating her politeness as much as his rudeness. Deep in her blood, deeper than
tattoos, the program to obey. She tried to scoop up the celeriac purée but most of it drooled through the prongs of her fork. Her posture was gradually closing in on itself, shoulders
drawing towards one another protectively. At the table adjacent was a woman with pale pink lips outlined in maroon, giving her mouth a pushed-forward look. Her legs were angled in this direction,
through the split in her skirt. David’s eyes flicked over, took them in, flicked back onto Marie’s breasts, then her face. A new expression was growing on his, like a weed sprung after
a day’s rain. He continued in a tone that was something between pleading and threat, ‘There is nothing beautiful about women walking around with black eyes and children stoned out of
their minds at midday, and raped babies.’
‘No, there isn’t.’
‘Did you know that petrol sniffing now costs our health and justice systems almost eighty million dollars a year?’
A hot prickle ran over Marie’s skin. Shame bloomed deep inside her. She looked around at this five-star corporate diner, remembering it was a client of Ross’s who had brought them
here in thanks for a successful campaign. They had sat in a large private room. Glaxo Wellcome, someone like that. A monumental Western Desert diptych stretched across the wall. There was a table
of half-a-dozen or so men, two or three women. She would usually end up talking about gardening at these lunches, if she talked at all. The private room was still there, the door to it opened by a
passing waiter, showing it to be empty tonight. At the table behind, another couple had just been seated. Marie noticed that almost every table in the restaurant was for two — everywhere were
sleek couples in suits and pearls; at night it was clearly a place for romancing. A fog of disappointment had descended over her and David’s table. She couldn’t tell if she disgusted or
attracted him. He was acting as if she did both. I’m going to get through this dinner, she thought with resolve. I’m going to eat and drink my fill, and hold my own. She remembered the
curve of his arm when they danced at the Joneses’. The piercing eyes and amused mouth — mischievous, yes. And opportunistic. Predatory even. And she had wanted to be taken by him. So
this was what it felt like. David flicked at his sleeve. There was something of the wounded child in his expression as well; she fought off the instinct to comfort. ‘I meant the
place
,
David. The art. I thought you would have been looking at art.’
‘I bought some prints. When they’re not drunk, some of them are very fine printmakers.’ He lifted the wineglass to his pursed lips.
‘Well, that’s saying something. I was a bit of a drunk not so long ago but I couldn’t print to save my life, drunk or sober.’
David sank his head between his shoulders and glared out from the trenches at her. ‘I did Anthropology at university, you know, Marie. And I’ve travelled to almost every country on
this planet, not to mention Aboriginal communities around Australia, and I refuse to buy this romance about indigenous cultures.’
‘I’m not selling romance, David. I’m not even giving it away.’
A couple walked past, the man and David exchanging brief nods.
‘That was the head of the Commonwealth Bank,’ David said when the man was out of earshot. ‘God, if only he knew!’ He smiled owlishly at Marie. ‘You are a feisty
one, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. I
like
it!’
The waiter glided in to pour the last of the wine. Again, he gave Marie that look. It was more than respect — it was warmer, filial but comradely. Marie wished she was eating dinner in the
kitchen tonight. David’s eyes were like wet tissues on her breasts. She hunched tighter, pressed her face to the view. Below her, like the languid leg of a woman, the long dark shape of
Bradleys Head stretched across the shining water. If she leant out further she could see a cluster of lights around the foreshore of her house and garden. How small and irrelevant it seemed from up
here.
‘You wouldn’t know that half the city had burnt, would you? Looking at it from up here.’
‘I had to go to Windsor today. You should have seen it. A lunar landscape, completely bleached.’
‘I feel like we’re living on the edge of an apocalypse.’
David laughed as though she were being silly. ‘The councils have already started replanting. How was your fish?’
‘Delicious. Aren’t most of the market gardens that supply Sydney out at Windsor?’
‘Oh yes, food prices will be going up. No doubt about it.’ David pushed away his half-finished meal. He sat back with his napkin still tucked into his collar, creating a warped
dickie.
The waiter came to clear. ‘Dessert, madam?’
‘I’ll have a look at the menu.’
‘Sir?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘None for me either, then.’
‘Go ahead, Marie, go ahead!’
When the waiter had left, David lowered his voice and said, ‘So, all over your arms now, are they? And where else did you say?’
Marie cringed and kept her eyes on the menu. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘I saw a bloke once who’d had himself tattooed all over, even his face. They were all blurred, ooh it was dreadful. He might as well have been
black
.’
Marie rose. ‘I won’t have dessert, thank you. I’m going to the bathroom.’
She was blooming, a dark flower, hot with colour. She walked past the diners feeling strange and raw and defiant, and into the palatial bathroom of granite and marble. The entire wall was a
panorama of the Finger Wharf and South Head. She pressed her face to the glass. She could make out the swoop of New South Head Road, the restaurants of Rose Bay, large white houses and square
apartment blocks. The whole headland sparkling and gay as a party. All that gravy. All that stew.
She washed her hands and touched up her lipstick. David was signing a credit card docket when she returned. She collected her shawl and waited for him by the lifts. He stepped in after her,
pressed the button and stood against the mirrored wall. The lift began its plunge.
Then David’s finger was running along her collar, his voice was in her ear, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to get you home and get a better look at you.’
Marie spun and slapped him across the face. David stood back with vacant eyes, hand on his cheek. The lift bumped to the ground and Marie walked out through the foyer. Behind her, David began to
laugh. It came to her then that their waiter had been the man with the moustache she had seen at Rhys and Rob’s studio. She kept walking, the sound of David’s laughter ringing in her
ears.
For three days before the auction, storms lashed Sydney. Seven-metre waves from cyclones up north pounded the coastline. Even Mosman beaches were heaving, the sand at Sirius
Cove thrown up across the reserve, and people surfing in the harbour. Marie loved it. She thought she should stay near the water in her move, close as possible to this wild weather.
Clark and Nell arrived at the house at eight o’clock. Marie was in the kitchen taking a pot of coffee off the stove. Fatima was already here, cleaning the upstairs bathroom. From the patio
where he came out with his mother to drink coffee, Clark admired Fatima’s gleaming hair and full high breasts as she flung open the window above the kitchen. She sent them a brief wave then
continued along the sill with her cloth. The sleeves of her starched pale pink shirt were turned up over pale pink rubber gloves. A gold chain slooped out of her cleavage and glinted in the
sun.
‘She’s so elegant,’ said Clark, aware he was looking at Fatima for the first time without imagining fucking her. Sylvia had obliterated every other woman, even the most tenuous
fantasy, from his mind.
‘Isn’t she,’ said Marie. ‘She brings her own gloves you know. It’s all part of the look.’
They went into the house. All the rooms gleamed, and when Blanche and Hugh arrived and Leon rang at the same time, Clark felt cheerful. It was the fact of family assembly as though there were a
celebration, the momentousness of the occasion giving him a feeling of tragic importance. It was his mother and daughter playing together for the first time since before Christmas, and everything
being okay. It was also his tryst with Sylvia the night before, the giddiness of love, himself as a giver and receiver of pleasure: occupying his body more fully than at any other time. He went out
to the deck to gaze at the harbour glittering in the morning sun, and his eyes prickled with tears.