by Paul Thomas
I wonder if it should be up to them but that battle was fought and lost some time ago. If push came to shove, Felicity thinks Josh would be on the first plane to Brisbane and, notwithstanding Bella’s vehement solidarity, she probably wouldn’t be far behind.
What about the other woman? I ask. Even for spoilt, insensitive, pathologically status-conscious teenagers, it’s one thing to like the idea of kicking back on the Sunshine Coast, quite another to live en famille with Dad’s new, home-wrecking squeeze.
Felicity’s shoulders slump. Josh has spoken to the new squeeze on the phone and thinks she sounds ‘cool’. Josh is a little turd but saying so won’t help matters. Felicity would find a reason why it’s all her fault.
As usual, I seem to be the only person with a bad word to say about anyone. Mum is endorsing Murray’s spin that skipping out on his family was ‘for the best’. She approves of the avoidance of bad blood, lawyers at ten paces, mutual friends lining up behind one or the other like pick-up teams, and the ongoing guerrilla war in which the children play various roles: hostages, peacekeepers, innocents in the firing line. When I complain that she’s lapped up Murray’s bullshit and banged her plate on the table demanding a second helping, she snaps back that she would have expected a little more tolerance from someone who has scuttled away from two marriages in similar circumstances. Having got that off her chest — how long has she been bottling it up? — she goes on to accuse me of hypocrisy in that, if I was honest, I’d admit I’m glad to see the back of him.
I don’t argue with her. That’s guaranteed to make me feel ashamed of myself. Neither of us is inclined to hold back but she can’t go the distance and would end up taking a browbeating. And, of course, she has a point.
But not the point. It would be hypocritical of me to be scandalised by Murray falling in love — for the sake of argument, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt — with another woman or to claim that I’m diminished by his leaving. But this isn’t about me, it’s about Felicity. And about Murray. He’s the hypocrite here; he’s the one who bullfrogged on about the joy and fulfilment and importance of family life.
I feel I ought to be outraged on Felicity’s behalf but perhaps there’s no need. Her heart appears to be intact. If there ever was love, it wasn’t the sort that poets harp on about. This was, at bottom, a marriage of convenience, appearances, convention. Now she contemplates the wreckage with an insurance assessor’s fishy eye, calculating the social and financial damage.
Josh and, to a lesser extent, Bella are at that age and stage where it’s uncool to make moral judgements because only God-botherers see things in black and white. And Felicity and Murray are essentially irrelevant to them now. They’ll take whatever’s on offer because they know their parents would be bereft if they refused. Lavishing love and treasure on their children is what parents do, that’s how they define themselves. But no matter how much Josh and Bella take, they’ll reserve the right to disengage. Because, when all’s said and done, they didn’t ask to be born.
Felicity drops by. A new Felicity: this isn’t Felicity Abandoned, or Felicity Domesticus whom I had to get used to when she became Mrs Murray, or the little sister I don’t expect to see again. This is Felicity Unbound, giddy with excitement, unable to believe her luck.
My immediate thought is that after years of paying tribute at the corner dairy, she’s been smiled upon by the Lotto God. That would make Murray choke on his Bundy ’n’ Coke. Benign fate has intervened but not in the form of little coloured balls. The local sugar daddy is at it again.
‘That man’s a saint,’ she gushes. ‘No two ways about it. You’re probably not surprised because you see this side of him all the time but I can’t believe he’d do this for someone he hardly knows. Okay, I know it’s because I’m your sister but even so. I always thought that thing about having to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming was just an expression but if I don’t keep doing it I start thinking, Oh my God, I’m going to wake up and it’ll all be just a dream.’
Stanley has had her around for a glass of wine and a chat about the financial predicament that, as Murray alluded to, many people would be only too happy to have.
This is what he proposes. The house is mortgaged for half its value. He’ll take over the mortgage, thereby becoming the joint owner. Felicity will receive a guarantee, with full legal trimmings, of sole occupancy for five years. If at any time within that period she decides she wants full ownership, she can buy Stanley out at the market rate as determined by an independent valuation. When the five years are up, Felicity will either buy Stanley out or the house will be sold, with the proceeds split fifty-fifty.
Having delivered her glad tidings, Felicity clasps her hands to her chest and awaits my hugs and hallelujahs.
‘So is it signed and sealed?’
‘God, no,’ she says. ‘I’ve just come from Stanley’s. He insisted that before I did anything else, I had to make sure you were okay with it.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘That’s what I said but he’s adamant he won’t do anything involving your family that you aren’t a hundred per cent happy with. I told him, look, I know Max is my only sibling and I love him to bits and all that and I know he’s a really good friend of yours but if I had to make a list of people I wouldn’t dream of asking for financial advice, he’d come in just behind that friend of Mum’s who’s gone bankrupt two or three times.’
‘Close but no cigar, eh? What did Stanley say to that?’
‘That it wasn’t a matter of getting advice from you — I should get that from my lawyer and my accountant. He’s doing this because of his friendship with you so if you’ve got a problem with it, for whatever reason, it kind of defeats the purpose. What it boils down to, Max, is that you’ve got the power of veto.’ She cocks her head, frowning. ‘And seeing you don’t look exactly overjoyed, I’m beginning to get nervous.’
I pull her into a hug. ‘Of course I don’t have a problem with it. Stanley’s dead right though — you need to get professional advice and make sure the agreement’s crystal clear. You don’t want to get down the track and find that you and he have very different ideas about what you actually agreed to.’
She rests her head on my shoulder. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. There’s really nothing that’s open to interpretation.’
‘Then it shouldn’t be hard to nail it down in black and white. And seeing you seem to need it, you have my blessing.’
Stanley didn’t want my blessing but he’s going to great lengths to stop me running interference on his Brigit play. Is it a case of a man who always gets his own way wanting to rub in the fact that what Stanley wants, Stanley gets, or is he getting a kick out of pulling the strings and watching us fall into line?
Or is just possible he’s fallen for her? Is Brigit his Daisy Buchanan?
Ah yes, Project Gatsby. You must be wondering how it’s travelling. Well, at this stage Project Gatsby resembles an aeroplane still bumping along the runway a hundred metres past the point at which it should have taken off. One of three things will happen. The plane may take off, better late than never, and climb smoothly to cruising altitude where any lingering white-knuckle anxiety can be treated with a little something from the drinks trolley. The pilot may abort the take-off. The plane may run out of runway, plough through a fence into a field and go up in a fireball, to the great misfortune of all on board and the herd of cows who happen to be grazing there. One doesn’t envy the pilot, who knows that if the third scenario comes to pass, he’ll be among the first obliterated or flash-fried in jet fuel.
Perhaps what it needs is a passionate but doomed love affair. Here I am mulishly opposed to a Stanley–Brigit liaison when it might in fact provide the surge of juice needed to get the thing off the ground. I’d just have to watch and listen and write it all down.
But while that could lend a documentary quality that might appeal to the critics (‘A bleakly gritty, all-too-convincing depiction of love gone
wrong’), reportage has never been my MO. I prefer to make things up. Besides, I wouldn’t want my friends to suffer for my art. Gatsby, of course, is the victim; Daisy goes back to her odious husband, leaving Jay adrift on his pneumatic mattress. I can’t see the equivalent happening here. Stanley would walk away without a scratch, like the driver of some precision-engineered Nordic tank involved in a head-on with a motorised shopping basket. It would be Brigit and/or Alan who’d have to be cut from the wreckage and put back together.
Unless he’s fallen for her. Unless she’s his Daisy.
Even though I can visualise my friends as casualties, I can do nothing to prevent it. Stanley has sidelined me. He’s bought my detachment.
A curious call from the books editor of our daily newspaper, who has forgiven my tantrum and readmitted me to the reviewers’ stable.
Assuming I must have seriously overshot a deadline for her to be ringing this early in the day, I tell her it’s practically in the mail: ‘I just have to tidy up a couple of things and hit send.’
When it comes to stalling for time, I find shifty evasions and half-truths are more trouble than they’re worth. Better to brazen it out. The bare-faced lie gets them off your back and puts you under pressure to deliver. This one should buy me twenty-four hours, enough to skim-read any novel ever written and crank out the generic on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand review.
‘No hurry,’ she says. ‘It’s not due for another week.’
‘So is this a social call?’
‘More or less,’ she says. ‘I like to keep in touch with the literati, see what everyone’s up to. So what are you working on?’
I waffle about Project Gatsby in such vague terms that it could be an east meets west cookbook or a self-help manual for vertigo sufferers. She expresses feverish anticipation, although the tone doesn’t quite match the sentiments. The whole conversation, in fact, creaks with the gritted-teeth bonhomie of a school reunion.
Then: ‘How’s your partner-in-crime Chas Harley?’
As mentioned, I like to ease my way into the day but I’m sufficiently with it to hear an alarm bell when a journalist casually drops that name into the conversation.
‘He’s okay. Why do you ask?’
‘His name came up the other day,’ she says. ‘I thought, gosh, it’s ages since I clapped eyes on the handsome Dr Harley. How about you?’
‘How about me what?’
‘Have you seen him lately?’
‘We were at the same party last Saturday night. Is that a recent enough sighting for you?’
‘How was he?’
Maybe I’ve read this wrong; maybe she hankers after becoming a notch on Chas’s heavily scarred bedpost. Notoriety has that effect on some people.
‘He seemed to be enjoying himself,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t say it was a vintage performance but there was still much to admire.’
‘Well, next time you see him give him my regards.’
‘Will do. Is there a message I can pass on?’
There’s a pause. ‘Just tell him life goes on in the real world,’ she says. ‘Nobody died; nobody went to El Paso.’
‘Now there was a writer. No one loaded up a simile like Ray Chandler.’
‘Yeah, but does anyone read him any more — apart from you and me?’
‘Of course not. He doesn’t do serial killers.’
I think about giving Chas a call to see what he makes of it but that can wait; coffee can’t. The phone rings as I lock the door. I let it ring.
Speak of the devil. What brings Dr Chas Harley, senior lecturer, to my café this bright morning? He looks out of sorts, as he often does these days. Humiliation, demotion and a pay-cut can do that to a man.
‘The last time I saw the runaway brother-in-law was right here,’ I say, ‘at this very table. He also showed up unannounced. Should I regard that as an omen?’
‘I tried to ring you,’ he says glumly.
‘What’s up?’
‘You know my recent troubles were meant to remain strictly confidential? Well, we didn’t factor in the feminazis who helped Naomi stitch me up. They narked me to a journalist.’
That explains the curious phone call from the literary editor. I pass on her message, prompting an equally curious response: ‘I think it was meant for both of us.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s actually not that big a deal for me,’ he says, either too preoccupied or just plain unwilling to answer a simple question. ‘The university will stick to their side of the bargain and publicity’s the last thing Naomi wants — understandably, given that she’d emerge as a vindictive, conniving little slut. It hasn’t got legs, as they say.’
‘But?’
He looks down, looks up, looks away. ‘I’m really fucking sorry about this, Max: I told Naomi about your dabble in porn; she told the feminazis; they told the journalist. Two birds with one stone.’
His face crumples into that blur of shame you see under shriek headlines: the father who left a toddler in a locked car in the casino carpark on the hottest day of the year while he gambled away his wife’s inheritance. I refrain from laughing out loud out of respect for the effort that has gone into his wretchedness.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here. A few years ago a writer that hardly anyone’s heard of wrote a few porn novels that no one in this country’s ever read. Now that’s what I call a scoop. Hold the front page and double the print run. You reckon your story hasn’t got legs — that fucker’s a double amputee.’
‘It’s all in the timing,’ he says stonily. ‘They’re doing a bloody great feature on porn and see this as a spicy companion piece. They want to look at what differentiates erotica from porn, with you and Tania giving the two sides of the argument.’
‘Well, they don’t need me; Tania will give them enough pseudo-intellectual wank to fill the paper twice over. Seriously, Chas, there’s nothing to worry about. They got the thing third hand; if I won’t talk to them, what are they going to do?’
Chas plumbs new depths of misery. ‘They got in touch with your ex-wife. She was only too happy to confirm it.’
‘How the fuck did they …’
‘From the same source: me, via the conniving little slut.’
I push my chair back. ‘I’ll say this for you, Chas: when you decide to be indiscreet, you don’t fuck around.’
He lowers his head and rubs his face as if trying to ease pain deep in the bones. ‘I’m sorry, Max.’
‘Ah, well, it’s not the end of the world. So I wrote porn, so what? Who cares?’
‘Lots of people,’ he says. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘You’re looking on the dark side because of what you’ve been though,’ I say. ‘This is different. It’ll be a complete non-event.’
Chas shakes his head. He seems almost miffed by my disinclination to shit myself. ‘You don’t get it, Max. You’re in your own little cocoon, you don’t realise what it’s like now. All these fucking people, they make out they’re so hip and broad-minded, but when the PC heat comes on they fall over themselves to join the lynch-mob. You know the feminist line on pornography. When this comes out, you’ll go on their shitlist, mate, and those bitches have long memories. They never fucking forget.’
‘I don’t know that it’s quite that bad,’ I say, ‘but even if it is, what are they going to do — picket every bookshop that sells my stuff?’
‘It’s way more subtle and sinister than that. You apply for a grant, someone will bring up the fact that you wrote porn; you apply for a residency, someone will bring it up. When arts festival committees are deciding who to invite, someone will bring it up. Every review, it’ll be there in the first few paragraphs. Is that how you want to be remembered: Max Napier, the novelist who wrote dirty books on the side?’
‘To be honest, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how — or, for that matter, if — I’ll be remembered. And as for this shit: I’ve made my bed, I’ll lie in it.’
The photographer is a tracksuited greybeard whose demeanour suggests he’s getting too old to be ambushing sex fiends. The reporter is an attractive young woman, Julie Something, whose cynical, almost certainly male boss obviously believes a pretty face and svelte figure are the way to a pornographer’s heart.
I adopt what I hope is an expression of amused, unflappable worldliness as Greybeard lurches around, snapping me from every angle. Julie asks if we could have a chat.
‘What about?’
‘Your porn career.’
This comes with a pleasingly ironic smile, presumably intended to convey that she, for one, isn’t taking it too seriously.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘it was a while ago now and hardly a career. More a busman’s holiday, really.’
‘Just to give you the background, we’re doing a major feature on the sort of creeping respectability of porn, how it’s becoming more and more mainstream …’
‘So I assume I’ll be portrayed as a visionary — as opposed to a creep?’
She smiles again. ‘You’ll be in a sidebar looking at the difference between pornography and erotica. We’ve already talked to Tania Sterling.’
‘I’m sure she said all there is to say. After all, it’s her pet subject.’
‘Yes, but she’s only written one book’ says Julie, polite but firm. ‘You …’ — she leafs through her notebook in search of information it doesn’t contain — ‘… wrote how many on your busman’s holiday?’
‘I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head,’ I say, ‘but I haven’t got into double figures.’
‘So,’ she says, ‘are you okay to do this?’