Authors: Fiona McGregor
Marie poked a flamingo swizzle into each drink and handed Blanche hers. ‘You can take the Campari home with you. In fact, you can take the whole liquor cabinet.’
‘I’ll take the Campari, but the liquor cabinet won’t go at our place. You’ve got dirt on your trousers, Mum. From the garden or something.’
‘Bloody hell. I only put them on a couple of hours ago.’
A cuckoo crowed across the room, and Marie went to her handbag. She extracted a slim red phone and looked at the screen with satisfaction. ‘Good.’
‘So you did get a mobile, after all that.’
‘Yes, I succumbed. What should I put on?’
‘The ochre pants.’
‘Which?’
‘The linen ones. The shirt and sandals are good. Leave them,’ Blanche said encouragingly, watching her mother ascend the stairs.
‘What are those things on your ankles?’ she asked when Marie came back down.
Marie fetched her drink and took a big mouthful. ‘Tattoos.’
‘Yeah, right. Are they those wire things? That sit flat against your skin?’
‘They’re tattoos, Blanche. Let’s go onto the deck. It’s a lovely day.’
Outside, Blanche looked more closely and was surprised by the delicacy of her mother’s feet. In an unusual flourish, her toenails had been painted. It was true that the thick ankles, which
were also Blanche’s resented inheritance, had never looked finer, but the bracelets that encircled them were unmistakably tattooed on. ‘God, Mum, are they real? Where did you get them?
Were you drunk or something?’
‘At a place on William Street. They were a birthday present to myself. I got one here as well.’ Marie patted her shoulder blade.
‘
God
. I mean the real-estate agent’s coming. With a buyer.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t take them off.’
‘Why don’t you put on shoes and socks instead of those sandals?’
‘Let’s be rational, Blanche. What do my ankles have to do with selling property?’
‘There’s nothing rational about selling property, Mum.’
‘
There
’
s
Mopoke,’ said Marie.
Marie picked up the cat and began to drag a brush through her fur. ‘We’re going to make you beautiful for Aftershave, aren’t we?’ she crooned. ‘Not that he’ll
notice.’ She pressed her cheek against the rumbling purr for brief sanctuary. Aftershave was an unctuous man whose odour lingered in the passages of house and head for hours afterwards.
It
’
s a strong house, it
’
s a wonderful house, and you
’
ve just got to believe in it
. Those agents got, what, two percent? Objectively, Marie could
imagine Hugh earnt his commissions but the thought of him pocketing tens of thousands of dollars from the sale of her house made her feel ill. The thought of Aftershave doing the same made her feel
suicidal. Anger rose in her like a hot geyser, and she drank down a large mouthful of Campari. She wasn’t going to let her daughter make her feel bad. She was going through one of the
greatest traumas of her life, and as far as she was concerned she had a right to do anything she liked. How stupid to worry about some little squiggles when there was a war going on, people were
being tortured, and children were dying of hunger.
Marie knew she should make friends with the real-estate agents: partners in profit was the logical approach. But she couldn’t separate her soul from the place. So many years here, so many
memories, the shift was so much more than corporeal. And it seemed as well that the more valuable the body, the more evil its undertaker.
‘Where is Macquarie Fields anyway?’ she asked Blanche out of the blue.
‘I don’t know,’ Blanche said sulkily. ‘Why?’
‘I just wondered. And what are you working on now, Blanchie?’
God help us, Blanche thought, she must be getting pissed. Never asks about my work otherwise. ‘Miele. Domestic appliances with industrial features.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘It’s fun. Loads of animation ... I don’t suppose you’d want a washing machine and dryer set would you? Can’t get rid of them. Everybody in the office has
one.’
Blanche was looking at the cat on Marie’s lap with longing. Marie rubbed her hand over Mopoke’s face; Mopoke shut her eyes and returned the pressure.
‘Is she well?’ Blanche asked.
‘She’s picked up a bit, yes.’
‘What time does Aftershave get here?’
Marie checked her phone. ‘He’s due right now.’
‘So. Are you going to give me your mobile number?’ Blanche spoke in a constricted voice, and looking into her daughter’s eyes Marie realised with shock that she had hurt
her.
‘Of course I am,’ she said light-heartedly, trying to make it all go away.
‘It’s a funky little phone.’
‘Really?’ Marie looked pleased. She tilted her glass to her mouth. Go away, she thought.
Go away
.
Appearance was everything. Aftershave alighted from his Prussian blue Audi with a pip of the remote car lock, his violently white shirt screaming down the path at them. He entered the house with
topographical ease, as though all its dimensions from the one previous visit had been physically imprinted upon his senses. Marie introduced him to Blanche and he shook her hand with a
politician’s fervour.
His trousers, Blanche noticed, were Armani. Or, more likely, a copy. She didn’t care about copies anymore. Let whatever charlatan who wanted to wear them wear them and be damned by their
own crassness. It was true you couldn’t necessarily tell these days without looking at the tag (though tags could be faked as well), so in a way it had become a question of conscience. Good.
The other problem was with people like Aftershave — legion — whose real suits may as well have been fake for the lack of style with which they wore them. Blanche hated that Australian
casualness — the entire country sometimes seemed a gross replica of her little nouveau riche family. She imagined with disapproval Aftershave’s suit jacket crumpled on the passenger
seat of his car. Sure it was a hot day, but why get an Armani (even a fake) when you weren’t prepared to wear the whole thing. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the man’s looks
— he was tall, broad-shouldered and evenly proportioned — but something about his soft, barely whiskered face or floppy blonde fringe belied authority. The cologne was Calvin Klein,
pure Oxford Street kitsch, an excess of cinnamon like a grandmother’s kitchen. His eyes were evasive, watery. In a minute Blanche took all this in and measured it, seated at the table on the
deck in a casual posture, leaning to one side, chin propped on hand. Yes. There were the men who were Armani through to their marrow, and the men who weren’t. It was that simple.
‘This is my daughter Blanche,’ said Marie.
‘Oh yes, I could tell straightaway. She looks so much like you.’ Aftershave looked from Blanche to Marie. ‘Yes, it’s in the mouth.’
‘The King women are renowned for their mouths,’ said Marie.
Blanche sat there smiling.
‘So you grew up here?’ Aftershave asked her.
‘Yes, the family’s been here more than thirty years.’
‘Well, if everybody was like you, people like me wouldn’t have a job. What a fabulous childhood you must have had!’
‘Yes.’
Aftershave leant up against the railing with his back to the view. ‘Well, we thought we had a buyer, but unfortunately they’ve gone over to the eastern suburbs.’
‘It’s early days yet.’ Blanche smiled.
‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ said Marie, finishing hers.
‘No, thank you. Christmas is in a month. It is a slightly awkward time.’
‘I think it’s the perfect time for a house to go on the market,’ Marie said. ‘People come and look now, then they have their holidays to think about it. I can
wait.’
‘You’re right.’ Aftershave nodded. ‘You’re absolutely
right
.’
‘What about that cabbage tree palm? Have you factored that into the price? It’s older than the house by decades.’
‘We’ve factored in everything, Mrs King.’
For a while Blanche watched this routine of indulgence, caution and coercion. It was the oldest pantomime in history — the whole world was a marketplace — but again a feeling of
unease moved through her. This transaction in the temple of her childhood was absurd, even obscene, and her mother was being predictably hopeless. The cabbage tree palm! Yeah, right. Blanche
assumed a warrior attitude. ‘I imagine people would be clamouring to buy here.’
‘We’re doing our best, but I have to be honest. Interest rates may rise any day and we won’t get the sort of price we might have twelve months ago.’
‘This is harbourside property. This market’s never going to fail.’
‘Of course it won’t
fail
. It’s a unique house, a wonderful house!’
‘My daughter knows all about the market. Her husband works for Coustas and Stevens.’
‘Really?’ Aftershave’s eyes lit up, then retreated. He stepped away from the rail. ‘I brought a camera with me today. I thought I’d take some photographs if
that’s alright.’
Blanche needed to move before she strangled her mother. ‘I have some ideas. I’ll show you around.’
‘One last piece of advice, if I may?’ Aftershave said to Marie. ‘You might consider installing surveillance cameras to monitor the front gate. There’s absolutely no
security here. I came right in. I could have been anyone.’
‘But you’re just Roger. And we left the gate open for you on purpose.’
‘The bottom of the property is also very open. National Park down there, isn’t it. Public access? You know how picky buyers in this market can be.’
‘Shall we?’ Blanche led Aftershave into the living room.
‘Photograph the garden,’ Marie called from her seat, swirling the ice around her glass, thinking she should take Aftershave through but a lassitude pressed her to the chair: it would
be so much easier just to sit here and watch the trees and water.
Like blood flowing into her benumbed body, the Campari inflamed Marie. When they had gone upstairs, she plucked Blanche’s drink from its little pool of sweat. The indigestion she expected
from her first dose of alcohol hadn’t come: energised, she went into the kitchen to mix more drinks. Just as she was beginning her second (third really, counting Blanche’s), the little
teeth in her belly began to nip. That old chestnut: the indigestion got worse when she drank, but if she drank a certain amount, she ceased feeling it. She ceased feeling anything. That certain
amount was about ten more drinks: almost total obliteration.
She had to stop drinking.
Aftershave followed Blanche through the house, scattering pleasantries. He photographed the living room and view from an angle that Blanche hadn’t considered but saw at once would be
striking. Was it to her that Terry’s rant about innovation at today’s meeting had been directed? Blanche worried her vision had succumbed to cliché as she followed Aftershave
through the rooms now, not the other way around. You could get complacent about the beauty of this place. From your position of comfort all you had to do was lazily lift the frame and something
dazzling would be captured. Had Aftershave thought of the bedrooms? Probably not. Blanche waited for him at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come up,’ she said, then took off, aware of her
arse moving at his eye level.
She took Aftershave into her old bedroom, which had been added during the second renovation, when Blanche was twelve. It was her magical retreat, with its bay window; the realm in which she had
come of age, gossiping over TimTams with her girlfriends; throwing up a cocktail of Mateus Rosé and No-Doz after an INXS concert. She remembered the summer her father had given her a Sony
Walkman, the wonder of the rich, stereophonic sound spreading from the headphones like flowers from seed. Dripfed aural romance, she fantasised about John Reid, a Shore boy who lived in a big house
on Raglan Street and soon materialised in this room in the flesh. They had clumsy, virginal sex, John crying afterwards while Blanche stroked his hair and felt weirdly empty. And all of these
memories were twenty or more years old, she reflected, as Aftershave moved around the room looking for an appropriate angle to take a photograph from, crouching beneath the television on its clunky
bracket in the corner. She was embarrassed by this: she used to think it was the height of sophistication but now it reminded her of a hospital room. And the view was the least special in the
house, she realised with a jolt, just a pathetic inch of Athol Wharf poking across the middle distance. You could see the Hendersons’ garden, most of it now the just-finished swimming pool, a
pale glinting bowl awaiting megalitres. Blanche wondered if the next twenty years of her life would pass as quickly as the previous, and how many more special things would suddenly appear ordinary,
even crass, in the company of a stranger. She felt choked by loss.
‘Nope,’ said Aftershave, jammed into the corner, the camera hiding his soft blonde face. ‘I can’t get a decent shot in here.’
‘I’ll show you the master bedroom,’ Blanche conceded, knowing from his tone that he had already decided something. Most likely it was decided the second her mother had spilt
the beans about her husband, his rival.
Aftershave would not be so easily manipulated after all. He would not be used as a bargaining chip.
Blanche let him out of the house feeling meek and miserable, then went to join her mother on the deck. ‘You shouldn’t have told him about Hugh.’
‘I know.’ Marie stirred her drink with its flamingo and sent Blanche a look of drunken cunning. ‘We’re not very good at this, are we? I made you another one,
darling.’
‘I didn’t finish the first one.’
Blanche drank in silence. She couldn’t wait for Christmas in Aspen. Just her and Hugh, skiing every day, not a family member in sight. The three weeks before departure seemed an age; she
longed for a cold white drift to smother this heat and loss and obligation. She sipped the Campari, stronger than the first, and her mouth turned at the bitterness. She stared at the water through
the trees while her mother sucked up her red drink like a vampire. And yet she believed Marie’s claim of a break from alcohol, leaving no excuse for the revolting tattoos. Just an endemic
vulgarity, just like Aftershave. She felt a combination of despair and surrender, on her island in the rising sea. There seemed no middle ground.