Chapter 21
Settling In
Claire has met her fiancée’s parents, who are more excited about Clive’s Porsche 911 than her, and the way Hal runs his hands caressingly over the car’s flanks, she’s glad.
She’s Clive’s ‘new’ fiancée. One of a long line. Were her predecessors tried and found wanting? Or, did they flee, wanting different in-laws? Claire supposes it’s fair that the olds withhold enthusiasm if she’s just another fiancée. Even she can hardly believe in the engagement.
Cynthia calls Bertie, the outdoorsman. Bertie has been working on a nearby holly hedge all along, judging by heaped prunings lying on the terrace; he’s so thin and dark, he blends with the shrubbery. Bertie acknowledges Clive with a curt nod, picks up their bags from the car’s luggage rack and takes them inside.
“You have separate bedrooms,” Mama says, her mouth set in a straight line. Claire tenses up, fearing this will enrage Clive, a worshipper at the altar of ‘free love’. She steadies herself for stormy weather. Clive’s emotional barometer has recently concertinaed his fair and fine settings thereby enlarging his scope for bracing moods.
But Clive still plays adoring swain to his rather coquettish mama. “Three hours in a sardine can but worthwhile to see your profile,” he says, holding Cynthia’s chin aloft and turning it so he can examine her face from every angle, except full-on, from whence she looks like a pug dog with an overbite. “You’re still the beauty in the Florentine cameo,” he says.
Is this the oedipal relationship Alex has hinted at? Claire wonders.
“Hush, Clive. If you wanted to see my ageing visage, you’d visit oftener.”
“Mama! It’s hard establishing oneself in a profession.”
“I saw the hoops your father had to jump through to succeed in town. But he had a name down here already. We fixed you, Hal, didn’t we?” She smiles fondly at her man.
“You sure finished my career off!” says Hal. He can fight his own battles, Claire decides.
Hal was a scientist with an engineering company, Clive explains. The olds met at a house party down here. Mama was from Camperdown originally. One thing led to another.
“Dada was hired by Ma’s family firm. He still wonders if he got the best of it, don’t you, Da?”
“Cynthia was part of a package deal,” Hal says, placing his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“I’ve yet to exhaust all her charms!” he says, diplomatic in the extreme.
“Ma, we’re sharing a room like we do at home,” Clive announces, late in replying to his mother’s announcement. It’s like he’s in a movie whose sound track has gone out of sync.
But once he’s extracted himself from the Porsche’s fuselage he stops grumbling. It seems his protest was a reflex; he carries the file of medical papers up the steps, apparently resigned to the arrangements.
Mama and Dada follow climbing slowly. At the top Cynthia pushes her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and examines Claire. She is looking for suspension failures. Subtly, Claire wriggles her bra straps higher so they pull their weight. She draws her shoulders back, tucks her bottom in, tries smiling like a film star who’s sure she’s universally admired.
Cynthia smiles sceptically. She’s onto Claire. “You’re tall, but you don’t inhabit your body,” is her diagnosis. She studies Claire as if her eagle eyes might render her a heap of carrion.
Claire wills herself taller, stronger, prouder.
Cynthia raising her hand to shield her eyes, looks away across the expanse of paddocks. “I hear you’re from a mixed farmlet, dear. We’re graziers. At least we were. Our southern boundary lies along that creek,” she tells Claire, pointing; the other boundary’s out of sight. She’s saying something, but what? Claire wonders. That the ownership of vast acreages is a matter for pride? That money is the measure of a man?
“Mama, you haven’t yet welcomed Claire.”
“Friends of Clive are always welcome,” she enunciates, careful not to seem too welcoming.
“How are you Laydee Saint John Smith?”
“How am I? It’s nice to be asked, sincerely, for a change. ‘Howdy do’ down here means, don’t tell the truth even at death’s door. But since you asked me, I’ve dicky hips, swollen ankles, arthritic knees, palsy, dropsy.”
“Dropsy platey,” says Hal, and they all laugh.
“We’re the Sn Jns. Call me Cynthia, I can’t abide Cyn.”
“Sin’s unforgiveable,” says Clive, bursting to laugh aloud.
“Then the bedroom situation will suit you. Claire’s near us. You’re in the annexe to Bonnie’s room. You’ll be attending the Uniting Church tomorrow, shriven?”
“Uniting, not united,” says Clive, winning him a wry smile from Hal. “Shrivelled not shriven.”
“Claire is Catholic. All’s up for grabs. I may convert,” he stirs.
“Ooo!” Cynthia looks dismayed.
“Mama, can we go in? We’re starving,” Clive says.
“Arriving at 1.30 pm, I thought you’d have eaten.”
“We don’t eat the rubber sandwiches at servos. Surely, you’ve bread and ham.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something edible.” Cyn wheels her arm expansively as if they had the whole property from which to go a-foraging.
“Thanks,” says Clive. “Now the bedroom sit…”
“There’s no situation. Not since your Cuban fiancée hooted all night long…”
Clive looks down at his loafers but he goes quiet. Claire’s sad to see him so humbled.
Clive’s father is looking off into the distance, stocktaking. He’s an extinct bird – an affable dodo perhaps, though the way his neck emerges questing from its collar, he seems like a tortoise testing the ambient emotional temperature before laying his neck on the line.
They head toward to the oak and metal door. It takes some effort opening it. They file through. Clive, keen to see where Claire’s been tucked away, dumps his baggage on the flagstone floor and follows them through a grand hall bigger than Claire’s entire home. It funnels guests from out to in and separates entertaining rooms from workrooms, Claire supposes.
Its array of ancestors’ portraits, poorly lit by low-wattage wall sconces, proclaims that here is a family that can afford to import crates of old portraits. The panelling shouts substance; twin stairways curve right and left, duplicating the building’s impressive features, as if waste didn’t matter. The left side’s been roped off. A dome allows light to filter through. It’s odd finding classical features in a building looking like neo-gothic Montsalvat. It’s a bit of this slapped up against a bit of that, according to which architectural style was in the ascendant when additions were done, Claire guesses. The dome is held up by colonnades that support a mezzanine gallery upstairs.
They shuffle to up Claire’s room via the right staircase.
“I hope we’ll get to know you, Claire,” says Mama, “although one weekend’s all we usually get with Clive’s girls, before poof,” she mimes a dandelion’s filaments being blown away.
At this botanical image, a sneeze almost undoes Claire. Does Mama emit toxins?
“Mama, I’m serious about Claire,” says Clive, catching up with Cyn on the landing. He hooks his arm through her elbow crook. “Do treat Claire well. I’m no longer single.”
Claire’s heart swells.
“Oh, it’s all relative, we’re all relatives, said Oppenheimer or was it whatsisname?” Cynthia asks her husband.
“Einstein, you mean,” Hal says, and they both laugh as if pre-scripted wrangling were a crucial part of their daily ritual. Dicky hip or not, Dada’s determined to make the most of moments of family conviviality.
Reaching the top, Cyn says, “What about wee Fiona from the Border Country?”
“Claire’s from our border country, Wangaratta, Mama.”
“But from a mixed farm! Fiona was of solid Scottish stock.”
“Like lamb soup,” says Clive.
Claire hears a gargling so
und. She hopes Hal doesn’t choke on his laughter.
Chapter 22
Cold Collations
They eat in the conservatory, whose dusty glazing obscures the view. The room resembles a Salvos Store; it’s furnished with chintz sofas, wicker, an Australian Blackwood sideboard, grandfather clocks, and enough walking frames to furnish a nursing home.
There’s an open fireplace; it’s well alight and crackling. Claire is drawn to it; she wishes she had the cheek to warm her bum – both bum cheeks, actually. She smiles at how shocked Clive’s mama would be. Greedily, she eyes off a nearby armchair but forces herself to wait until invited to sit.
Garden views are obscured by dirty windows. A Virginia creeper has grafted itself onto the outer wall. Claire feels imprisoned in a novelty snow dome that’s being crushed by a futuristic plant oozing malice. Some shoots have entered via a cracked window that’s been inexpertly taped up. Apparently, a decision’s been made to leave it be. Does this room possess its own microclimate, she wonders. Some leaves are clinging on well into June.
There’s nothing to indicate there are extensive pastures outside. Some imbecile has let bamboo run wild. It has colonised whatever garden once existed beyond the glazing. Claire shakes her head in disbelief.
She goes to the window-wall. As expected, farm views are obscured. She understands the Sins’ reluctance to bring the outdoors inside. Farmers love/ hate their land. It’s a sinkhole in which funds glug away. The hardiest crop their asset grows is weeds. And disappointment.
But this much overgrowth reveals a pathological hopelessness. With a Whipper Snipper, she could save this gothic ruin, endear herself to Clive’s parents, who’d then allow her to sleep with her beloved. She so dreads sleeping alone in this spooky spidery dump. But, no, she tells herself: behave, Claire. Don’t interfere.
The salad’s lettuce leaves are limp, the quartered thick-skinned tomatoes are accompanied by ham that’s grey at the edges, pink in the middle. Could she carve out a slice comprising just the pink bits? No. Best tell them she’s vegan. She should be anyway. Logically, it’s the only ethical way to go with population pressures on finite pastures. She’s vowed to become vegan the minute her bacon sandwich cravings fade.
Claire passes the plate to Clive saying, “It’s all yours, darling, remember, we said we would become vegan from the end of the financial year.”
“We did?” He shoots her a puzzled look.
“Yes,” she says, sticking her tongue firmly in her right cheek so the olds can’t see, and hoping Clive will take the hint.
He sighs. “Good, at least as a vegan, you’ll be cheap to feed.” He fills his plate with seething micro-life. “You wouldn’t believe my fiancée’s appetite, Mama.”
The conversation turns to Clive’s exams; a sensitive subject as he failed one recently but hadn’t told Claire. She expects he’ll be discomfited at this public exposure. He’s not.
“Didn’t want to worry you with hospital stuff, darling,” he explains, with a blithe wave of his arm.
“What about the ten K you owe us?” Hal asks.
“Can’t bleed a stone, Da,” says Clive. “If I were you, I’d fix that window for starters. Then you can stop heating the outdoors.”
“We’ve far more extensive repairs to make, Clive,” says Hal. “Lose that idiotic car. Look around you. Your inheritance going to rack and ruin,” he indicates places where the grout is crumbling its way out of the bluestone walls.
Clive crosses and re-crosses his legs. He rubs his temples. “That car is everything to me,” he says, anguished.
“Then it’s no time to embark on a wedding,” says Cynthia.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Claire pipes up. “Mum sews. We’ll host the wedding at the farm. We have a veranda with a view of the dam and a Weber for the roast. Sulphur crested cockatoos…” her sentence tails off. Even to Claire’s mind, the image isn’t appealing.
The expression on Mama’s face is thunderous. “Not even when hell freezes over will I let an amateur to sew me a Butterick frock for my son’s wedding celebration with tomato sauce, flies around a barbeque, stagnant water and bird poop to contend with!”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t work,” Claire admits, her eyes lowered, studying her sneakers. “I haven’t mentioned the engagement to my family yet. They’ll be thrilled, once they know…” Oops!
She’s said too much.
Cyn and Hal give each other significant glances saying: what sort of girl who’s snaffled the scion of an important family wouldn’t boast about her coup? Even Clive looks hurt that Claire hasn’t told her parents of her marital success.
She’d promised her parents she’d qualify before marrying, she says, but she succeeds in sounding shifty. “I phoned,” she adds, “but my youngest brother took the call. Maybe he forgot…”
This is a white lie. Claire’s five-year-old brother would forget anything told him that hadn’t to do with insects, or toys. Her fib soothes Clive’s hurt feelings hardly at all. Claire feels bad. She would rather imagine the invisible God she no longer quite believes in cross with her for lying than see her boyfriend hurt.
“Your parents don’t know?” Clive is aghast. “So that’s why they’ve never phoned to con…”
“I guess…”
“A damned good guess, seeing you kept it from them. Ashamed of me?”
“I need a trousseau first,” Claire retreats to the bride-to-be’s catch-all excuse. A blatant lie.
Clive glares darkly, but Cyn, getting the importance of trousseaux to gels, nods vigorously.
“I’m 19, Clive,” Claire pleads, wishing Cynthia and Hal weren’t providing such a keen audience for their ‘chat’. Two pairs of eyes flicker between the affianced most eagerly.
“You’re too young,” says Mama. Her smile is now so wide that all 32 teeth are getting an outing. Now that Cynthia has efficiently rid the family of Claire, the latter is extra keen to wed their heir.
“We’re engaged, Mama,” says Clive. “Get used to it.”
Happier, now that the veneer of family civility has been chipped away, Cynthia unclenches her jaw and relaxes into the sofa. Her tongue roams across her teeth as if a lateral movement over her personal Stonehenge mirrored the swathe her son may yet cut among ranks of debutantes.
She recovers sufficiently to start spooning up yesterday’s potato salad from the silver salver. It’s only mildly oxidised, thanks to the density of the mayonnaise in which it’s doused.
Meanwhile, she clanks her spoon loudly against the dish.
Why must she draw attention to herself? Claire wonders. Even silent, her seething nerve endings could power an electrical storm.
Cynthia hands Claire a poison chalice in the form of a limp salad. Under the lettuce, a reservoir of greyish liquid forms a lake.
Chapter 23
Conversation in Conservatory
They’re still in the conservatory. Finding common ground conversationally is like playing hopscotch leg-less. Ought they stick with Liberal Country Party matters, try duck shooting, point to point or will animal husbandry do the trick?
“About church tomorrow…” Mama recapitulates.
Clive, chastened over his loan repayments, says, “Okay, Ma. But Claire’s Catholic.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just about over my Catholicism,” Claire says.
“When will you have completely recovered?” asks Clive.
“Soon. Alex is curing me.”
“He’s bullying you, I suppose?”
“No. He says sensible things about religion being the opiate of the people.”
“He shouldn’t be influencing you,” says Clive, frowning.
“He talks, I decide,” Claire says. “But, honestly, Clive? Do you want me Catholic?”
“Yes. I quite like the idea of huge Catholic families. A broody wife. The whole disaster.”
“Really?” she whispers. “You said you were an atheist.”
“I’m a fairly half-hearted one, but now I’ve found
you, I’m rather keen on the idea of family and piety. Having a wife who’s a believer was part of your charm.”
“But I wasn’t a believer. I wish I’d known exactly what you wanted in a wife.” Claire’s shoulders heave. Clive hops out of the beanbag in a single leap, hurries to her, pats her shoulder. “Sorry, Hon. We fell too hard to check our spousal wish-lists and must-haves.”
“I feel as ambiguous about kids as I do about religion,” Claire says, tearily. “I’d have said so, if I’d known it mattered. There’s never time for us to talk. If there had been I’d have told you church-going was a habit in Wang. An outing. There were so many of us. We’d squash into the back of the old truck, not legal, really, but in Wang…”
Cyn and Hal shoot anguished looks at each other.
Claire is laying the yokel thing on thick. Despite her tears she’s enjoying her power to make Cynthia’s lip curl. “We got away with murder…Knowing the cops so well…” Her sentence peters out.
Cynthia’s eyes seek Hal’s, but he’s dabbing at his whisky-spattered tie with a hanky.
“We went to mass for the ritual of it. For friendship. Melbourne is different.”
“God’s not omnipresent in Melbourne?” says Mama, pleased with herself.
“I haven’t come across Him yet,” Claire says.
“Cynthia’s Uniting now,” says Hal. “Remember how I’d drive her to Warrney Continuing Pressies so she could ogle those bag-piping men in skirts? We’ve a Uniting Church in Smithfield these days. They all hug during services; there’s a goodly roster of godly gals for floral arrangements. Scones. Tea. The minister has a speech impediment. When all’s been said and nothing understood, Cynthia meditates. It’s cheaper than her Community Classes. There are few really avid Methodistical types to catch fervour from. Me? I like the way they belt out hymns. ‘Immortal, invisible…’” he warbles.
He’s shushed by a look from Cynthia.
“The intention counts with the Almighty, not the execution.”
“But you don’t believe in Him,” says Cynthia.
Falling into Place Page 9