Rose Leopard (11 page)

He let her go then. She didn't even raise a hand to her reddened cheek before she swivelled and went inside. Moments later I heard the front door slam shut. Terrence, who hadn't moved, turned slowly, stared at the smouldering bar-beque, walked across and poured himself more wine, cradled the glass but did not drink. Francesca stood over the filled plates, head bowed and face distorting as she began to cry. I sat stock-still but it was Kaz who was most decisive, standing and striding towards the sliding screen door.

‘I'll get the children,' she said quickly. ‘It's time to eat.'

Amelia has taken up residence in the guest room and transformed it into a studio of finished canvases, paintings in progress, scrawled plans, tubes of aquamarine and cadmium, brushes standing in pots like burned trees, old cloths, sticky cover sheets that billow across the floor, scissors, glue, a stained easel. Most evenings she retires to her studio and paints to the pulsating beat of various heavy-metal acolytes.

‘Who pays for all this?' I asked once.

‘Mum.' She splashed black on grey on crimson, formed dribs-and-drabs. ‘She thinks it's good for me because it keeps me off the streets.'

I laughed at that. Typical Frannie-rationalisation: better encourage your daughter's artistic desires, otherwise she might end up a whore.

I indicated the splashed canvas, stared at achromatic limb-shapes and an explosion of silver, sharp-edged like shards of metal.

‘What's this one about?'

She looked across. ‘It's called
Sepulchre,'
she said. ‘Actually, you told me that word years ago. It means —'

She stopped, blushed quickly.

‘I know what it means,' I told her. ‘A sepulchre is a burial tomb.'

‘Sorry,' she whispered. ‘I should've hidden it.'

I shrugged, pretended to be unconcerned.

‘Hide it if you like,' I told her. ‘But make sure you finish it first.'

And then, last week: ‘Amelia,' I said to her, ‘you're an adolescent — right?'

She nodded.

‘Well, look around.' My arms scoped the room. ‘Shouldn't there be cut-out photos of bedraggled pop-stars? Blown-up portraits of all-boy singing groups? Tables filled with hair clips and bobby pins and those coloured, elasticised thingummies.'

‘Scrunchies.'

‘Them too. I mean, maybe I'm out of touch with the post-pubescent female world, but this … this cornucopia of art is … well, it's not what I'd expect'

She shrugged, twirled a brush absently.

‘You use some amazing words,' she told me sincerely. ‘Corn-u-copia — wow! How come you know so many?'

I didn't know the answer to that. A lifetime of reading, I supposed. An insatiable curiosity. A better-than-average memory. All of the aforementioned.

‘Words are my obsession,' I warbled proudly.

She offered me a grin that made me feel strangely good inside.

‘That's pretty cool,' she said. ‘Obsessions are good. I love painting. I work stuff out by painting it. I guess that's why you write, hey?'

Ah-hah, I thought later: then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. I'll hazard a guess; BIG Stu has been running the creativity-is-therapy line in your sweet little lobe. ‘Help me to get him writing; it'll help the grieving process. He needs to write a story, if not
about
Kaz then at least
for
her.'

B
IG
bastard, what would he know?

Nothing, because it's everything suddenly belonging to the past tense that I can't get used to. It's thinking of and beginning sentences with phrases like these: ‘When Kaz was alive ...'or ‘Before Kaz left us …' It's seeing her long, sharp figure everywhere, smelling her unique musk when I open the wardrobe, finding myself occupying a space or a place that was once hers, hearing or saying a word that she regularly used or responded to.

It's not writing, too. I haven't been inside my study for two and a half months now. I haven't been to the grave and I haven't been inside my study. The only time I've lifted a pen has been to sign the myriad of forms with which the government kindly reminds you that your partner, your rock, your fire and core, is now deceased.

That's how I cope, baby. Okay?

I'm pretty certain that I can handle my own grief because I'll stare it down belligerently. I'm strong enough to take it on, swear at it and rip it apart — but the children's feelings? Every so often, when they don't realise that I'm looking, I see their crumpled faces and a new, dreadful sense of disorder. I see their shattered vision and it leaves me with a feeling of betrayal that is not entirely foreign. I haven't spoken to them about Kaz yet because I don't know what to say or how to say it. I see them getting through each day, trying to keep busy, playing
p-shoo! p-shoo!
games without much zest, telling Amelia about cockroaches and Pokemons.

Me? I sit with a book open on my lap. I clean things incessantly. I water and fertilise her plants. I stare dumbly at the burbling television. I walk the perimeter of our property. I hose down the farmhouse. I brush spider-webs from the eaves. I prune, I mulch, I dig. I coax life from the new blooms. I lie on the couch and watch the fan spinning until it makes me feel dizzy. I avoid my study. I read the Letters to the Editor and silently complain about the monarchists, whingers, neoNazis and religio-nuts. I tinker with the car engine that doesn't need tinkering.

A few nights ago I crept out of bed at l.26 a.m. Couldn't sleep, head was mussed by too much thinking, memories swirling like widdershins. Clad only in shorts and clutching the car-keys, I snuck out of the house, relished the whip of the night-air. Everything was clear and clean; over me, the galaxies spread like vast puddles of phosphorescence. I picked my way through a labyrinth of shrubbery and darkness to the garage.

The car started first time, growled as I shoved it into gear. The farmhouse stayed dark as I emerged, crawled forward until I found the turn-off, then sped up. For the next hour I drove blindly along thin, gravelly country roads, ripping gear changes, spinning the wheels as I left a junction, cornering too fast, pushing too hard. I saw no other traffic, nothing but ribbons of white moonlight, cow-shapes and dark drooping trees that stood like dormant sentinels, veranda lights twinkling in the hills — parents reminding their lost children to come home. I drove more quickly, found long straights and hit l30, l40 k.p.h., listened to the car squeal in protest, felt the land and sea and sky rush headlong past me, became dimly aware of a sedentary unyielding world outside of my control. It was an exhilarating madness, an addictive drug that I never wanted to stop. I drove relentlessly and I wanted to keep driving, away from cities and familiar places, away from all that I had known, away from the agonies and responsibilities and the breadth of expectation, simply — away.

A kangaroo began to cross the road.

Despite everything, my instinct was to brake. I pressed hard, heard the whistling screech of the tyres, felt the car begin to turn and lift. I flew past the kangaroo, spun sideways, released the brakes, released the steering wheel, pulled the keys from the ignition, released everything, prepared myself, braced, closed my eyes, heard a clattering noise, registered the car bumping and grinding then eventually, impossibly, slowing, slowing, stopping, stopped … For once, an absence of noise that seemed absolute.

I opened my eyes.

Despite the darkness I could see that the road was at least fifty metres away. The kangaroo had gone. I was still in the car, which had come to rest on a flat grassless area between two forestry plantations. Beyond and behind, thousands of thick straight trees rose majestically.

Somehow I had missed them all.

Good luck?

A miracle?

Or perhaps a reminder, a signal, a push into the future?

I thought of the faces of my children: Otis, dark-eyed, a raven-haired gypsy with hollow cheeks and long serious lips; Milo, shorter and stocky, mousy, unkempt, soft jowls and the gentle eyes of a bird.

My watch indicated that it was 3.05 a.m.

I pushed the keys back into the ignition, restarted the car and chugged slowly towards the quiet grey road.

Four

‘I
t could be our
big
break,' Stu tells me over the phone. It is six o'clock in the morning; even the early tassels of cirrus look sleepily subdued.

A publisher wants to meet with me. Her name is Rosalie O'Shannon and she is employed as the fiction editor for DataPage Pty Ltd, an apparently large city firm.

‘You must've heard of DataPage?' Stu says it like:
Everyone else has! Even the Kalahari Bushmen buy their books from DataPage
.

‘No,' I tell him truthfully.

‘Jeez Vince — you've got to get more pro-active with your career. DataPage is mega, bigger than Ben Hur's balls. Heard of Elton Seeger, Caroly Karone? Both with DataPage since last year, both big-time sellers since they moved across.'

‘I told you, Stu — no more writing. I'm finished. That part of my working life is over.'

‘And I told you … this is nothing to do with more writing. This is
Pears.
I'm guessing, of course, but I'm pretty sure they want to pick up
Pears'
.

‘Pardon?'

I can sense his gathering frustration.

‘Look, I'll explain in the car. The meeting's scheduled for this afternoon, four o'clock. Can what's-her-name look after the kids?'

‘What's-her-name? Oh, you must mean Amelia, my beloved and benevolent niece?'

A moment's silence then, contritely: ‘Sorry'

‘Apology accepted, on behalf of what's-her-name. And yes, Stuart, I dare say she can.'

‘Bastard. But that's good, because we'll need to stay overnight. Rosalie, you know, she likes to talk. Could be a late finish.'

A night away from the farmhouse? But I haven't contemplated this. A night away from the children — away from their familiar background noises, their squeals and monkey-chatter, a night away from the Nintendo's repetitive melodies and play-time routines. A night away from their rise-and-fall.

A night away from Kaz.

After we were married, we were never apart. Early on we made a pact, as lovers do.

‘The nights are ours to keep,' she whispered to me in the long sweet darkness. ‘We should never be alone.'

Meetings, dinners, conferences, bucks' nights and hens' parties followed — but it didn't matter. We came home to each other every night. Once, after a particularly hectic badminton club presentation, I crept in a smidgeon after 4 a.m. Kaz was still awake. I stood in front of the bed, too drunk to even pretend to be anything else, awaited a much-deserved bollocking. Instead she just stared at me, dreamily, like I had drifted in from some ancient primitive nether-world.

‘You nearly ran out of night,' she murmured, waited until I flopped down beside her then rolled onto her stomach and slept.

‘It'll be fine,' Amelia tells me later. ‘Delphine said that she can get Alex and Sara from school anytime we need her to.'

‘School?'

She sighs but gently, without too much exasperation.

‘They went back to school,' she reminds me. ‘Remember?'

Of course I do … now. A few weeks ago: I remember alarm clocks ringing, more rush than usual. From the couch where I still sleep I spied two sky-blue shirts, two pairs of grey shorts, black shoes, bags with a zillion zippers. Fluoro-plastic lunch-boxes filled with muesli bars and Vegemite snack-packs. Milo and Otis; pale, edgy. Otis clamouring for a mug of tea (she never drinks tea); hysterical when she can't drink it. Milo throwing up in small dry heaves. Amelia consoling, Amelia patting, dry toast and water only for both of them. Amelia guiding two trembling children gently down the hallway. A half-wave, no kiss for me, the door closing on a green and fibrous sky. Back-to-school day.

‘It'll be fine,' my niece says again now. ‘Good luck.'

‘There's no such thing as luck,' I tell her acidly. ‘Good, bad or indifferent. Things just happen and it's nothing to do with luck or reason or anything else. That's the way things are.'

She turns away but not before I register the hurt in her eyes.

‘Sorry. That was … unnecessary.'

Amelia hesitates, looks up. She is red-faced, pinched around the mouth.

‘I hope they buy your book,' she says.

Late afternoon; I am in the rear seat of Stu's roadster. No leg room so I have to part my knees to see ahead. Stu is driving like he wants to arrive yesterday. Errol, my scatological neighbour, is the front passenger.

‘Got some business in town,' he explains casually. ‘Need to realign the share portfolio, lose some of those frigging dot-com stocks. Fuck, they're unpredictable! Costing me a fortune, the pricks. Anyway, it was just as easy to come along with you guys. Saves on petrol, for one thing'

Stu fixes his beady, traitorous eyes straight ahead.

‘I smell not just a single rat,' I hiss in his BIG left ear, ‘but an entire colony of rodents'

They exchange knowing grins.

‘Don't grin knowingly' I howl at them. ‘I hate that!'

Pause for reflection. We are flying along the coastal highway, fringed on one side by a rolling periwinkle sea and on the other by small communities made up of beach-coloured pole-houses and sassy take-aways. This is the new Queensland coast, I think: it is a haven for the superannuated, city escapees living in trendy ply architecture and strolling over sands that have been guttered by dangerous tides and ecological mismanagement. It is a thoughtless and appalling triumph of style over nature.

I mention this notion to my companions. They glance at each other then look away. The car continues to zoom.

‘Relax,' shouts Stu above the squeal of the straining engine.

‘Go with the flow,' says Errol wisely.

People say that Brisbane, despite its size and continuing urban sprawl, is still like a big country-town. This is Bullshit Myth Number l. Brisbane is hot, noisy, aggressive, frustrating. There are constant roadworks. The city centre swarms with mover-shaker types in career-casual suits, and teen-preens with matchbox-sized mobiles and Daddy's credit card clasped firmly in their sweaty paws. Wild-eyed people drive as if their '88 Corollas are Formula 500 front-runners. The rush is endemic; everyone wants to be elsewhere. The inner city streets smell like discarded fruit, diesel fumes and urine. Further out, the suburbs are characterised by an ugly blend of decrepit fibro shacks with lumpy verandas, and brick mausoleums with double-security grills and a herd of rabid Bull Mastiffs patrolling the grounds. Driving across the Gateway, you can see vast plumes of mauve-coloured pollution seeping into the atmosphere.

Brisbane people will tell you that it's great to be a Queenslander because they're laid-back and life is slower, more casual up here. This is Bullshit Myth Number 2. Life in Brisbane is just as selfish and frenetic as life in any other large city. There are just as many odd-bods, their weirdness normalised by the sheer size of the population and the resultant probability of other, like-minded odd-bods. That aside, most Brisbanites are ex-pat from somewhere — usually a Southern state or a Northern country. They enjoy the ambit claim of being a Queenslander because it's a large, comfortable grouping that is tagged with being eternally relaxed and splendidly rum-soaked — a far more desirable proposition than telling the truth and admitting to a birth-place such as Dubbo or Launceston.

DataPage Pty Ltd consists of a set of yuppie offices in Toowong. Rosalie O'Shannon consists of a set of humungous breasts atop a heaving, caftan-clad body. She is, she tells us almost immediately, interested in purchasing the rights to
Pears Amid Paradisio
. Well, she qualifies, we might be. It all depends. She says that a lot — it all depends. We're thinking of listing it for Easter next year — it all depends. Then she raises her thick eyebrows and gives us one of those benign smiles that sighs: I am but a tiny cog in the giant mechanism of decision-making.

I ask her why she is interested in a work that has, thus far, attracted a readership of somewhere between five and eight.

‘New-Agers,' she answers promptly, reaching for a cigarette. ‘They represent a promising niche in the market, and it's a niche we're anxious to fill. You know the type: inner-city spiritualists who burn candles, house-plan according to Feng Shui, sponsor a Somalian child. Your book seems to be an allegory for Christianity. Is that right?'

‘I … suppose so. Yes'

She blows a series of impressive smoke-rings.

‘I think they'll go for it,' she says. ‘Of course, it all depends. The right sort of marketing is crucial. Presuming we go ahead, we might have to give you a personal history makeover. Ever been a priest?'

‘No.'

‘Lay preacher?'

‘No.'

‘Studied religious history?'

‘No. I was a choirboy in Grade Four.'

‘No matter. We'll invent something, keep the punters happy. Should be a lot of fun.'

‘Stu,' I ask him in the elevator later, ‘was she for real?'

His face creases with disbelief.

‘Vince, DataPage are international. They publish in both print and electronic. Your work could be plastered all over bookshops and across the Internet — depending on circumstances, of course. Look, this could be huge. It could set you up for life!'

I must look odd then because he says quickly, ‘What? What is it? What'd I say?'

What life? He has sliced open my skin, exposed the raw sewage, let all the rottenness seep then flow, gush from me; clots, syrup, the plasma of loneliness and failure.

‘Set me up for life,' I repeat bitterly. ‘Money, fame, fortune — and alone. Remember that word, Stu. Alone.'

We are silent as we leave the building.

Of course, the whole shebang has been orchestrated. The meeting with Madam Cleavage from DataPage was bona fide but we are finished at precisely 4.26 p.m. — plenty of time to negotiate the three-hour drive back to the farmhouse. Stu, however, has made other plans.

‘Face it, mate,' he tells me as we sit in the sluggish traffic that edges along Coronation Drive, ‘you need a break. We'll have a few beers, a meal, maybe catch a show. I'm keen, Errol's keen and it'll do you good.'

‘You're my agent, not my fucking therapist. And as for drinking with Errol — I'd rather be given an enema with hydrochloric acid. Take me home.'

‘No can do. We're committed now. Just sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.'

I scowl, I whinge, I curse, I threaten — but he is immovable and the car keeps rolling forward.

We dump it behind a motel in a sleazy Woolloongabba backstreet and take a cab to Stones Corner so Stu can drink too. Errol is sitting inside the recently revamped pub, short stumpy hands nursing a schooner of anaemic-looking beer.

‘Some trendy European crap,' he says, sipping cautiously. ‘Jeez, there's some poon around.'

‘Poon?'

‘Call yourself a writer! Poon — gash, snatch, fur-burger, pussy. Look — it's everywhere.'

We follow his lecherous gaze. It's true: the bar is awash with near-naked females. Stu grins and calls them ‘PYTs' — Pretty Young Things. I look again and see three giggling Greeks in the corner. A platinum blonde scans the crowd from her stool near the window. A gaggle of shoulder-pads and lip gloss occupies a table behind us, all chewing olive-laden foccacia, cradling creamy cocktails.

‘Man,' says Errol, fingering his own bulging crotch, ‘I'm feeling lucky tonight.' He slams his empty glass onto a stained coaster and signals for another.

We stay there, drinking different brands of beer and shots of butterscotch Schnapps, until some time after 9 p.m. I find out many things, some of which I am able to remember.

The platinum blonde is named Giselle, after the ballet.

Stu, who is nearly forty, still uses Brut 33. (‘You're such an old spice,' I tell him affectionately.)

Errol met Delphine in a cinema in Melbourne. They went to see
The Spy Who Loved Me
and afterwards she gave him a hand-job in an underground car-park. He ejaculated on the bonnet of ‘some bastard's BMW'.

Giselle hates her mother for naming her after a ballet. She wants to change her name by deed-poll, possibly to Anthea or Arabella. I suggest Greta, so she doesn't have to change her signature.

The giggling Greeks are sisters, celebrating an impending marriage. One of them is called Evelyn. I tell her that she has lips like crescents of liquid chocolate. She smiles in a patronising way and tells me that I should be a writer, using words like that. I tell her that I was once, but everything original has already been written by someone else. She says that's sad.

Stu thinks the Broncos have ruined Rugby League because the grass-roots no longer matter. I tell him that they might need a new groundsman.

Errol masturbates most days, usually when Delphine is gardening or asleep. He says that it stops him from making ‘a regular arse' of himself. Besides, he quite likes it. If he does it early enough, before the washing goes on, he can sniff her used undies at the same time. She wears only Calvin Klein.

The bar manager is called Kevin and he has a signed photograph of himself and the Pope in St Peter's Square. When I challenge him on this — ‘The Pope doesn't give autographs!' — he laughs and says, ‘No mate, I signed it, not the bloody Pope!' He thinks this is very funny.

Giselle has tried to commit suicide four times. The last attempt involved a piece of hose-pipe and her old '87 Laser, but the engine stalled and she lived.

Errol likes to do it doggy-style but Delphine won't let him. She says it is demeaning. She says that she is a woman, not a beagle. Errol says he doesn't want her to be a beagle, he just wants her to behave like one occasionally. But she prefers to be on her back, knees raised. Errol says that Delphine learned the comfort and convenience of this position during pre-natal classes. He now hates pre-natal classes. He says that they are a fascist institution.