The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

  ‘I know a better place,’ Andy told Alberto.

  ‘I know a better place too, but you were having trouble walking my friend.’

  Andy sat back nursing a whisky, and tried to block out his surroundings.

  Day 204, Sunday, May 3

  The air was still and cold and the grass was wet with dew in All Nations Park. An Airedale bounded across the oval towards Saskia and Randa, followed by a Scotty dog trotting purposefully with a stick in his mouth. Saskia dug her right hand deep into the left pocket of Randa’s pea coat and exhaled a cloud of woe into the air.

  ‘He had a Harlot stamp on his wrist,’ she said. ‘You know, that strip club on King Street? He washed it off this morning, then acted innocent. He thinks I didn’t see it, but I did.’

  Andy had gotten in at 2 a.m. Saskia had feigned sleep, unwilling to engage in another showdown.

  Randa sipped her takeaway coffee. ‘Lots of men go to strip clubs.’

  ‘I don’t care that he went, I care that he tried to hide it.’

  ‘So he went to a club. Maybe he was dragged there.’

  ‘He was supposed to come to see the Tombolas with me.’

  ‘The band your ex-fiancé plays in?’

  ‘My brother’s band.’

  ‘Your brother, whose bass player is your ex-fiancé?’

  ‘I thought you’d be on my side.’ She nudged Randa.

  ‘I am on your side.’

  ‘We’ve been bickering a lot.’

  ‘All couples bicker.’

  ‘No, it’s more than that. We should be still firmly in the honeymoon phase.’

  ‘You are. Believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You got married fast. Now every little problem is magnified by sixty years. You said it yourself, stuff you didn’t bat an eyelid over with Seth has become a major issue.’

  ‘You think it was too fast?’

  ‘No, I just think you have to allow for some time to adjust.’

  She didn’t tell Randa what was at the root of her worry. He’d broken the pact, again, and she was beginning to wonder whether their daily commitment was too much to expect of any couple – or if it was just them.

  They found a bench and sat. Saskia leaned forward, hugging her stomach. ‘I just don’t know what he’s thinking. At least Seth would always talk to me.’ She paused. ‘It has made me think of how I planned my entire future around Seth, and when it fell apart I had to start over. I don’t want that to happen again.’

  ‘Andy is not Seth.’

  Saskia nodded and squeezed Randa’s hand. She stuck her index fingers into the corners of her eyes to catch the tears gathering. ‘Fuck,’ she whispered. ‘I just didn’t expect it to be this hard.’

  ‘You’re working long hours. He’s out of a job. It’s a hard time for him, not working. Men like Andy measure themselves by their success. It’s tough.’

  Saskia scraped her hair back and sniffed. ‘The business needs so much time and attention right now. He needs me but I wonder if, in a month, when he’s back to forgetting gallery openings because he’s got business dinners at his new firm, I’ll resent letting this chance pass me by.’ She leaned back on the park bench. ‘I used to bang on at him so much about not making time for our marriage. I said he worked too much. Now look at us.’

  Randa clapped her hands on her friend’s shoulders. ‘You know a strip club is no big deal. You’ve been to them — they’re about as sexy as a root canal. I know Andy, winding up in some grimy basement club only would have made him feel worse. Talk to him.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Maybe I should do something special for him tonight.’

  ‘Good idea. Remind him he’s valued and he’ll open up.’

  After saying goodbye to Randa, Saskia drove back across town and whizzed around the Prahran market buying salmon, cured meats, pate, brie, and all of Andy’s favourite things. She reached for a bottle of champagne, but then thought better of it, instead choosing a nice staid red. This wasn’t a celebration, after all.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Andy asked when he arrived home from the pool to find a re-creation of Babette’s feast in progress.

  ‘I’m cooking us a special meal.’

  ‘I thought you’d be at the studio tonight.’

  ‘I was going to, but then I realised how much time I had been spending there and decided to take the night off.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me you were going to do this. I made plans with Rhino.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I assumed you’d be out. And I thought he’d have some information on who’s looking for senior staff at the moment. I can cancel,’ he added. ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I can make salmon tomorrow night.’

  ‘Is that okay?’

  Saskia stuck the point of her carving knife into the cutting board. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go to the studio. There’s always something to do there.’ She started re-wrapping the cheeses she’d laid out on a wooden board so they’d be soft and oozy by the time they were ready to eat them. She placed them in an airtight container and clipped on the lid.

  Day 234, Tuesday, June 2

  Saskia was in her studio blowing the steam off a bowl of instant porridge when a familiar sequence of digits flashed up on her phone.

  ‘Seth?’ she answered cautiously. After the night at the Leopold she had resolved to be nicer, but she wasn’t ready for casual gabbing on the phone.

  ‘Hi Sas. I’m at Aiden’s and he said you needed some gas bottles that are here. We just finished rehearsals and now I’m heading over to Collingwood. I told him I could drop them off but I thought I’d better check with you first.’

  She didn’t answer. She was a little annoyed Aiden had given Seth this excuse to make contact, and she was a lot annoyed Aiden hadn’t delivered the gas bottles a week ago after he borrowed them for a barbecue, like he had promised.

  ‘Sas?’

  She looked out the window at the advancing storm clouds. She needed the gas bottles for her soldering torch but she didn’t want to see Seth and she certainly didn’t want to owe him a favour.

  As if reading her mind, he said, ‘You won’t owe me one. I’m not under the impression that with each good deed I’m working off the thing I did to you. I’m offering because it’s on my way. I’ll just drop them and leave,’ he said, adding after a beat, ‘Remember when you thought I was decent?’

  ‘I don’t think I ever thought you were decent.’

  On their respective ends of the phone line they both smiled.

  ‘I’ll be there in about forty minutes,’ he said.

  Three-quarters of an hour later Saskia was downstairs waiting on the street. Winter had crept into Melbourne, bringing with it a sheet of cloud that turned the daylight grey. She hugged herself to guard against the wind.

  Seth pulled up in his ute with his arm hanging out the window. ‘Delivery for Mrs Saskia Hill.’

  He engaged the hand-brake and she climbed up onto the tray and lifted one of the bottles.

  ‘Careful,’ he said, scrambling out of the cab. He took the metal canister from her then lowered it gently to the ground. ‘Grab that one too, they’re both for you.’

  ‘Thanks for doing this, Seth,’ she said.

  ‘Glad to. Aiden said your label’s doing really well.’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose it is starting to.’

  ‘Here, I brought you a coffee.’ He reached into the car where two paper cups sat in the cup holder. ‘I needed one and figured I may as well get you one too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  He knocked his paper cup against hers as if for a toast. ‘To your jewellery label. I always knew you had talent. I’m proud of you. Am I allowed to be proud of you?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Saskia took an almost imperceptibly small step backwards. ‘I mean, thank you.’ His praise was making her uncomfortable. He leaned against the cab of his ute and sipped his latte.
r />   ‘I ran into Matthew Nash a few months ago,’ she said, veering away from subjects that resurrected memories of their time together.

  ‘Oh yeah, how is Nashy?’

  ‘I think he misses the band.’

  ‘Three hours on the road for a gig in Morwell that pays seventy dollars a head. What’s to miss?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s very pleased with his “Tears of an Angel” song.’ She couldn’t help but smile.

  Seth grinned too. ‘It’s the price you pay when you sell your soul to the devil.’

  ‘I think I’m starting to appreciate how he feels,’ she said. The demand generated by Dressage and Harem and Leila had left Saskia with no time to devote to the Herkimer diamond line she so badly wanted to finish. But she didn’t elaborate. Instead she drank her coffee in hurried gulps and said, ‘I’d better get back to work.’

  ‘I’ll help you get the gas bottles upstairs.’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine. I can manage. After being bent over that desk all day I’ll be glad of the exercise.’

  *

  Andy arrived at his job interview with fifteen minutes to spare. The commercial juggernaut Dwight Cole & Kramer had its own building that rose above the skyline of the Yarra’s southern bank. The neon and steel DCK logo was visible for miles. He’d heard rumours that new technology recorded the arrival time of its hundreds of employees when they swiped their cards to pass through security each morning. Their daily output was monitored down to the second. It was exactly what he had been trying to avoid when he took the job at HM&L.

  But he had promised himself he would make an effort, and now he was sitting next to a water cooler on the twenty-third floor, contemplating the monogrammed carpet and wondering how much it had cost the company to customise the floorcoverings of this immense building, when his thoughts were interrupted.

  ‘Andrew Colbrook?’

  ‘Michael Chaugh.’ Andy stood and shook his old colleague’s hand.

  Last time Andy had seen Chaugh he had been coming out of the conference room where Harris was slashing jobs. He didn’t look much better now. The hollows of his cheeks were pronounced and he needed a haircut.

  ‘Are you here for a meeting?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Of sorts. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Job interview. I know what you’re thinking — I still haven’t found work?’ right? Let me tell you something for nothing, you should start organising meetings now and get out of HM&L while you still can. It’s not well regarded. I’ve got the stink of failure on me.’

  Andy smiled glumly. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  Chaugh laughed and pointed finger pistols at Andy. ‘Don’t you go taking my job now.’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘I’m not really worried.’ Chaugh straightened his tie and his face took on a more optimistic expression. ‘I think this one will be the answer for me.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Chaugh leaned toward Andy and lowered his voice. ‘My fiancée’s father is the CFO. He put me up for the job, so . . .’ He shot Andy more finger pistols.

  A woman in brown lipstick stuck her head out of a door and said, ‘They’re ready for you, Mr Chaugh.’

  Andy wished his old workmate good luck and loosened his tie.

  *

  About two minutes into Andy’s interview, it was clear that the advertised position had indeed been earmarked for Chaugh and they were going through the motions of interviewing candidates for the sake of appearances.

  Andy cut the meeting short, annoyed they had wasted his time, then drove over to the studio to see Saskia. She was on the street when he arrived, lifting a gas bottle.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Gas bottles for my torch. Seth dropped them around.’

  ‘Seth?’

  ‘Yes, I loaned them to Aiden. He refilled them and asked Seth to bring them back.’

  ‘Why didn’t Aiden do it?’

  ‘Seth was coming past so he brought them.’

  ‘Awfully chivalrous for someone who once said monogamy was a form of oppression. Was he here long?’

  ‘He just dropped them off. What difference does it make? It saved me driving out to Aiden’s to get them.’

  Andy’s mouth had become a thin line. His first decent interview in a month had been a disaster and instead of making him feel better, Saskia had greeted him with the news she had been visited by her ex. Her ex that he had watched her flirt with at a gig when Andy was feeling at his lowest. He pictured them laughing and felt betrayed.

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve seen Seth this month?’

  ‘Apart from our regular Monday night hair-braiding sessions, yes. I take it the interview didn’t go well?’

  ‘It wasn’t an interview, it was a farce, and you side-stepped the question.’

  ‘It was a stupid question. It sounds like you’re spoiling for a fight, but I’m sorry, I’ve got orders to fill. We’ll have to argue at home tonight when I’m not on the clock.’ She tried to keep her voice light but she could tell Andy was annoyed as he got back into his car and drove away.

  *

  Saskia packed up early and headed home. When she stepped inside the apartment Andy was on the couch in semi-darkness. His face was lit by his laptop, which was sitting open on the coffee table.

  ‘I saw you with Seth at the Leopold,’ he said.

  She sighed, tired. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Last month. I came to watch the Tombolas gig with you and the first thing I saw was you and Seth huddled in the corner.’

  ‘You were spying on me?’

  ‘I wasn’t spying. I came because I wanted to spend the night with you, but when I arrived you were buried in a corner whispering with your last fiancé.’

  ‘So you left?’

  ‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come in the first place?’

  ‘Why did I go at all? Why did you?’ His voice was cold. He got to his feet and went to the kitchen.

  ‘You know why I was there. Besides, even if you went to some fancy restaurant with Krystyn and drank wine together all night I wouldn’t leave in a huff, because I trust you.’

  Andy knew he had done that numerous times with Krystyn, and that there most certainly would have been moments that could have looked incriminating, from afar, if Saskia had happened to walk in at the wrong moment. But he brushed that thought aside.

  ‘And today, apropos of nothing, he decided to deliver your gas bottles?’

  ‘Apropos?’ Saskia glared at him. When Andy dropped Latin legalese into an argument it made her want to kick him in the shins. ‘Apropos?’

  ‘Yes A-PRO-POS.’

  She threw her hands up in the air. ‘You can be such an arse!’

  The fight metastasised and soon they were shouting about money. Andy rarely yelled, but Saskia was in a rage, and it felt liberating to shout back.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about it, do you?’ he said. ‘Mortgages, bills, making it all work.’

  She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘What do you think I did before you swooped in and saved the day?’ Her words were bitter. ‘I was doing perfectly fine before you came and . . . and saved me. I never asked for you to support me.’

  ‘And you resented that I tried to. I can’t do anything right! All I wanted to do was support you and you acted like I was oppressing you, or something.’

  ‘No I didn’t!’

  ‘Yes you did. You didn’t want to rely on my money. You insisted we sign a pre-nup.’

  ‘That was your mother!’

  ‘And you did her bidding. It’s like you didn’t even want to get married at all.’

  ‘Marriage isn’t about money!’ She was screaming now.

  The fight kicked up another notch as they blew into the bedroom, arms waving. They were yelling about the long hours each of them worked, her in her studio, him at HM&L.

  ‘I had to work long hours to provide for us!�
�� He yelled.

  ‘So you could buy these stupid six hundred dollar sheets?’ She took hold of the doona and ripped it from the bed. Beneath it, the sateen-stripe Sheridan sheets were stretched taut across the mattress. ‘Nobody needs six hundred dollar sheets!’ She grabbed the fitted sheet by the corner and yanked it free. She remembered the first time she’d slipped between Andy’s sheets. They’d been so silky and thick, they felt positively therapeutic. She balled the sheet now into a clump, threw open the window and tossed it outside into the early winter drizzle.

  ‘Saskia!’

  She picked up two pillows, one after the other, and heaved them out the window too. Then a third, which she dispatched with her foot in a perfect a drop-punt so that it joined its fluffy brothers on the lawn.

  She tore around the room, animated by rage. This had been building and building, and now every unsaid thing poured out of both of them in a hot, destructive lava of recrimination. They attacked each other over every tiny thing. How she left her clothes lying around. How he didn’t stand up for her when his family had dissected how she should have avoided a robbery at her studio.

  They fought until she couldn’t stand to be in his presence anymore. Saskia grabbed the doona and tried to force the puffy quilt through the window frame. But it was heavy and stiff, so she left it hanging half-in, half-out, feeling ineffectual and foolish. Thunder clapped and the rain grew heavier. She seethed, burning with embarrassment. Andy was staring at her, agape, and the anger fired in her stomach again. She turned and left the room.

  Andy contemplated the ruins of their bedroom in a daze. The slam of the front door shook him back to his senses.

  ‘Sas,’ he called, striding out to the hallway. ‘Saskia!’ He got no answer in return.

  *

  Rain was belting down as Saskia charged from the flat. Giant, heavy drops of water roared as they smashed against the red brick path, turning it shiny and slippery. They trickled into the grass that was bleeding mud across the walkway.

  Saskia had remembered to grab her car keys as she marched up the hall, but not her umbrella. Dashing the few metres from the apartment to her car was enough to saturate her. She slammed the door of her Datsun and jammed her key in the ignition so she could pump up the heater. ‘Fuck,’ she breathed, as she wiped her face with her sleeve, unable to tell whether it was rain or tears she was drying away.