‘Yeah, I’ll … yeah, sleep.’ She laughed, rubbed one eye, spooned up muesli. ‘Can’t even talk. Can’t even think.’
Feet descended the stairs and Chloe’s mother Joy came in in her ‘lecturer’s clothes’—clean jeans, an ironed cotton top and a crisp linen jacket. ‘Oh, the fair Rosamund.’ She kissed Chloe on the way to the fridge. ‘You smell a bit. You have a certain air about you. What is on that coat?’
‘Rust. It’ll all brush off.’
‘You look like a derro,’ said Joy. She started mixing herself the drink Chloe’s brothers called Weird Green Juice. ‘Where’s the young lord? Still abed?’
‘It’s a school day, isn’t it?’ said Dane.
‘Been out all night?’ said Joy. Chloe nodded, chewing. ‘Ah. How’s Janey?’
‘Tired.’ Chloe chewed. ‘Tireder than me, even.’ Joy bit her lower lip, swirling her glass of Juice. ‘But okay,’ added Chloe.
Beside Chloe, Dane shuddered and stood up. ‘I’d better get going. The architect’s bringing the client on site today—huh! As if he’s got a say.’
‘Don’t worry about that bowl,’ Joy called after him. ‘It’ll walk to the sink by itself.’ She winked at Chloe.
‘You’ve trained ’em well, darls.’ They heard him sprint upstairs.
‘He’s sick, that dude,’ said Joy.
‘Sick is good, Mum. And nobody says dude any more.’
Joy slapped her forehead. ‘I will never learn.’
Pete stumbled in, dressed but not quite straight. ‘Wow, you look wasted,’ he said to Chloe enviously, thrusting an arm up to the elbow into the bread bag.
‘Of course she does,’ said Joy, licking away her green moustache and putting an arm around his shoulders. ‘She’s a youth. That’s what you get youth for—to waste it.’
‘Yeah? Why do we have to spend all this time at school, then?’ He pushed the toaster lever down with gloomy force.
‘Oh, when you’re fourteen, we want to know you’re safe while you’re wasting it,’ said Joy.
‘That’d be right. Not so it’d be useful or anything.’
Chloe got up to put her bowl in the sink. ‘Is that a photo of Isaac? When did that get here?’
Pete unpinned it from the corkboard and passed it to her—a photograph, glued to a postcard, of Isaac in front of a strange, tiered, grassed-over landform. Chloe turned it over.
Dear Hunters,
Nick should be able to tell you where this is—if he can’t, cut off his … Austudy.
There’s too much to see over here, too much of everything—art, arch., scenery. And having your mind blown every day is exhausting after the first few months. But I soldier on. Thursday I fly across to do the Finns (lucky them). Then over to the US to fly FLW country.
People here are nice. Weather’s stuffed—see how I’m dressed for mid-summer in Scotland? Hands numb as I write, in bedroom of Stately Home. Very plush, but cold!
Missing you guys when I get a minute to myself. See you in a few weeks—Isaac.
‘So where is it?’ said Chloe.
‘Scotland,’ said Pete. ‘Some wanky landscape architect, Nick says. And FLW is Frank … someone.’
‘Lloyd Wright,’ supplied Joy at the dishwasher.
‘Isaac’ll be in pig heaven,’ said Chloe. ‘Look, he’s lost his spots. All that haggis must be very cleansing.’
‘Yer, now there’s nothing to distract from his nose.’ Pete and Chloe both cackled.
‘Isaac’s got a nice nose. Very distinguished,’ said Joy.
‘Monumental, you might say,’ said Chloe quite affectionately, squinting at it in the photo.
On her way out Joy kissed them both on the tops of their heads. ‘We can’t all look like we stepped straight out of Marie Claire.’
‘True, true.’ Chloe preened, milk dripping down her chin.
‘I’ll bet it’s that horrible block up there,’ said Chloe. ‘The sunburnt-brick one.’
It was, and the room inside was dank and blank and looked out on a concrete yard full of Hills Hoists and wheely bins.
‘The only way,’ mused Janey, standing in the middle of the lino floor, ‘would be to go the full Gothic-slash-Aladdin’s-Cave thing—drape everything, cover the windows. Red and purple cloth, I reckon, shiny, and with gold bits. Little lamps and stuff, huge cushions everywhere, a little low table to eat off. Rugs, vessels …’
‘You know, I think there’s actual blood on this wall,’ said Chloe in the bathroom.
‘From the last tenant slitting her wrists, probably.’ Janey’s voice boomed in the emptiness. ‘Let’s get out of here before we pick up some deadly germ.’
‘Face it,’ said Chloe when they were out on the street again. She had to shout over the noise of a passing train on the embankment opposite. ‘You’ll get something that’s either very small or very grotty, mostly both, for the amount you’re talking about.’
‘I know. I just don’t want a place that depresses me as soon as I walk in. Like when I’m on my own. Where do we go next? Oh, here.’ Janey slapped a charity bin in passing as they rounded the corner. ‘I’ll just hop into one of these every night. Run power from the overhead lines for my little teeve.’
‘Oh, come on, you can do better than that,’ said Chloe. ‘Like this, for instance.’ She rattled a hand-lettered Room-to-Let sign hanging off some fence railings and peered into the overgrown yard.
‘That looks pretty ancient,’ said Janey doubtfully.
‘Let’s give it a go.’
Janey moaned and dragged her feet. ‘I’m sick of looking at these dreary places. Let’s get something to eat.’
‘Just one last one before lunch.’ Chloe was already at the veranda steps.
An elderly man in a singlet and work shorts answered the door. ‘You’ll want Her-around-the-back,’ he said. They went out by the garden-choked path and in again at the driveway. In the high side wall were a few narrow, oddly placed windows, and many paint jobs had peeled back and worn through in a complicated, sun-bleached map. In the back yard a woman was pegging out washing. Her shape reminded Chloe of a potato.
‘Grass,’ Chloe whispered pointedly to Janey. ‘Excuse me, is that room still going?’
The woman squinted at them. ‘Yes, it is. It’ll only fit one of you, though, unless you get another bed.’
‘It’s just for me,’ said Janey.
The woman looked her up and down. If she thought anything it didn’t show. She nodded towards the house. ‘First on the left in there.’
The room was bigger than any they’d seen, and carpeted. Chloe switched on the light to show faded, leaf-patterned wallpaper, an intricate ceiling rose and French windows with mauve and dark blue glass panels. There were curtains already; there was a single bed covered with cream chenille.
‘Before I get my hopes up …’ Janey went to the windows and opened them to the back veranda and yard. ‘How much were you wanting for this?’ she called out to the woman.
‘Seventy-five.’
Janey looked at Chloe. It was five dollars over her limit.
‘It’s worth it,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s worth the money and it’s worth stopping looking.’
‘It is. I’ll take it,’ said Janey to the woman.
Joy came out onto the balcony when Chloe opened the front gate. She emptied a hole-punch onto her on the path.
‘Ah, the first snow. What’s this in aid of?’
‘Twyla just rang.’
‘Oh, bum. So I’m the princess.’
‘Yes, my darling. First rehearsal and fitting next Tuesday. Come in and have a goblet of mead-or-are-you-abstaining.’
‘I’ll have one, just to make you happy.’
She was scrabbling for her key when the door opened and Nick and Dane, in shorts, T-shirts and running shoes, came out. Dane bent to kiss her hello and Nick did flamboyant warm-up movements on the porch. ‘You better get going,’ Chloe said, ‘before he falls apart like a Crash-Dummy doll.’
‘Huh. Yo
u wish.’ Nick jumped off the veranda and vaulted over the spikes of the front fence.
‘You want to watch it, Nick—you’re going to impale yourself one day, doing that,’ said Dane, sedately opening the gate.
‘Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s move. Been sitting on my bum all day …’
Chloe watched them jog away down the street, Nick just slightly taller than Dane now, his short blond hair gleaming under the streetlights, as did the streak of silver in her father’s. Then she stepped into the warm house, into the smells of wood fire and roasting lamb.
‘Isaac’s coming back next week.’ Chloe put the top shelf in place on the bricks and crossed the room for the book boxes.
‘Yeah?’ Janey was making up the bed with old red sheets borrowed from the Hunters. She had a cobweb caught in her hair—it looked like part of her hair, or an adornment to it. ‘D’you think he’ll have turned into a pain, with all the jet-setting?’
‘Wasn’t he one already?’
‘I guess Nick’ll emerge to greet him, at least.’
‘Maybe. Maybe he’ll just suck him into the vacuum of study he’s been in for the last six months. They can sit and be eggs together.’ Chloe sat on an upturned milk-crate and began to shelve handfuls of worn paperbacks.
Janey took her new bedside lamp out of its box and admired it, and read its guarantee ticket. ‘This is a bit flash, isn’t it?’
‘For a girl from the back streets, you mean?’
They looked at each other. It was exactly what Janey meant. She sparkled at Chloe, then looked anguished. ‘Ooh, if I can only—’ She held the ceramic lamp base in her hands like a crystal ball.
‘Of course you can,’ said Chloe, and was able to mean it. They’d got this far; pretty well anything should be achievable.
‘Oh, you think? I’ve got such a strong feeling, you know, that I just don’t deserve …’ This space, this comfort, her gaze finished, taking in the room like an intruder’s. ‘You know, that some Department will turn up, with some by-law, and make me go back.’
‘No such department. No such law.’ Chloe went on shelving, and after a while Janey put down the lamp and began hunting among the boxes and bags for a light bulb. She found one and fitted it with the intense care of someone defusing a landmine. ‘Now, this shade. Gawd, luxury, a little shade. You don’t think it looks too girly, do you?’
‘Janey, that is the plainest, most neutral, minimalist—’
‘Just checking.’ Janey, smiling, placed the lamp on the plastic storage box that was her bedside table, plugged it in, switched it on and sat back. Chloe felt a twinge of pain at the enchantment on her face. Janey glanced at her and laughed in amazement. ‘You see, you don’t buy new stuff for your room, at my place. Nathan would either pinch this or smash it. It’d be like an invitation for him to be revolting.’
‘Well, this is your place now.’
‘I know, I know. Isn’t it fab?’
Chloe smiled, enjoyed the glow of her, looked away from the nakedness of it at the books in her hand. ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I didn’t know you had this. Is it wildly sexy, like it’s supposed to be?’
‘Not really. Borrow it if you like.’ Janey stowed the lamp box under the bed.
‘Hmm—worth it?’
‘Oh, it’s a bit of a wank. He’s got no idea about orgasms—girls’, I mean. He sort of cuts to pounding waves and makes it all spiritual. The only bit I liked was at the end where the guy writes to her—and you think, “Oh gee, he can write!” because he’s, you know, the gardener or someone—’
‘Gamekeeper, it says,’ Chloe read off the back cover.
‘—and he writes—well, it’s really what’s-his-name writing, D. H. Lawrence, not the gamekeeper—he says, “We have fucked a small flame into being.” I kind of like that, don’t you?’
‘A small flame? Not a raging passion?’
‘Oh, I don’t know what they had, those two—I thought they were miserable. I don’t think they ended up in happy-ever-after land.’
‘Like The Piano, where you can’t quite see how it’ll work out, when they go off together—I mean, they show her, with her metal finger, but it’s all a bit Oh yeah, sure!’
‘Exactly.’ Janey picked up a plastic bag and started stuffing all the other bags into it. ‘But anyway, I liked the way he actually says “fucked” rather than “loved” or something sloppy. It’s got that much guts, at least. That’s probably why people were shocked way back when, because it called fucking fucking.’
‘People still are, a lot.’ Chloe shelved the book and went on shelving. ‘I mean, not many people do call it that—only old hippies like my parents who’re trying to sound cool.’
Janey paused in her prowling. ‘People—I’ve thought about this—’ She jabbed the air with a finger and they both laughed. ‘A lot of people, I reckon, don’t believe in fucking, in just sex. They want it always to be “making love”, you know. Lots of girls; it’s that romantic thing. They want, you know, their souls to be in communion or some garbage. Just only physical, the kind of fucking I do, they don’t like the idea of, they don’t want to know it even goes on. Whereas … I guess Theo was a making-love kinda guy, huh?’
‘He made love, to me.’
Janey laughed. ‘What, you slept? Read a book? Lay there with your eyes closed?’
‘Well, I did what I was supposed to. Responded, you know. I didn’t ever fake anything, but I never actually … went after anything for myself.’
Janey gazed at her in incomprehension. ‘I dunno, maybe you should take old Lawrence home. He might have something for you.’
‘I don’t miss it at all, the sex.’
‘What do you miss? Anything?’
Chloe began on the second box of books. ‘Not really. Funny how you can sleep with someone, do all that stuff, you know?, and still be so totally … unconnected.’
‘Yeah,’ said Janey, standing there with the bag of bags dangling from one hand.
Chloe shrugged. ‘Theo doesn’t count. Theo was a … an experiment.’ She met Janey’s gaze. ‘What are you realising about me?’
Janey looked surprised. ‘Oh, I’m not. Did I look like I was? I was more kind of wondering, about how different you are, and … how the things we want are so different.’
‘Why, what do I want?’ said Chloe, straightening books on the shelves.
Janey stared at her awhile. ‘Good question. I’m not just talking about, like, men.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not even talking about wanting, really. Or knowing what you want. It’s—I know what I’d like, and I’m pretty sure I won’t get it, long-term. You don’t know, but it’s pretty certain that once you decide, it’s yours—A to B, there you’ll be, with it.’
Chloe looked at her. ‘What is it that you want and won’t get?’
Janey thought, and then Chloe saw her give up trying to find a place to start. ‘Aargh, I dunno. A pile of stuff,’ she growled, and laughed unhappily.
‘Like what?’ Chloe insisted.
‘I don’t know—you know, a man—like, a man—and a baby I could keep—like, be capable of keeping—and a life, you know, an occupation, some kind of thing that goes on—huh!—all we’ve talked about, all that fantasy stuff. Work that you love, you know. All that.’
‘I didn’t think it was a fantasy,’ said Chloe, feeling a tiny bit staunch in saying it. ‘Anyway, where do you start, otherwise? What do you aim for?’
‘Well, you aren’t aiming for anything. But I know you’ll get it.’
‘You don’t know. How do you know?’ But watching Janey smile and shrug, Chloe had the weird feeling it was possible that she did know. ‘I could spend my whole life down here in the gutter with you,’ she went on loudly.
‘You could! That would be good!’ Janey stooped and swept up another bag. ‘Maybe I won’t get a man, but you can help me look after the baby!’ she finished brightly.
‘Coo-ool!’ said Chloe in exactly the same bright tone.
Chloe went upstairs, feeling chalky with the dust from Janey’s things.
‘So, she’s all settled?’ Joy was closing her wardrobe door, her long grey-blonde hair loose, her dressing-gown neatly tied.
‘Yep.’ Chloe hadn’t expected to meet anyone else tonight. Her face had already gone to sleep.
‘She happy?’
‘Glad to be out of that house. She should’ve done it two years ago.’
‘Ah, she never could’ve, then.’ Joy leaned against the stair-rail. Her eyes were an older version of Chloe’s light grey ones. ‘I guess that’s saying she’s made some progress.’
‘Maybe,’ said Chloe doubtfully.
‘You look tired, my love.’
Chloe nodded. ‘Dad got a meeting?’
‘Or another woman,’ said Joy cheerfully. ‘There’s some left over minestrone, if you’re hungry.’
‘I’ll have a shower first, I reckon.’ Chloe rubbed her dusty face with a dusty hand.
When she came downstairs her mother had heated a bowl of soup and cut bread to go with it. ‘Oh, wow, thanks.’
‘You wouldn’t’ve bothered, left to yourself.’
‘You’re right. I was thinking cereal. Is that another postcard from Isaac?’
‘His last. Boston. You don’t reckon he’s homesick, do you?’
‘I reckon he’s showing off fit to bust.’ Chloe pulled the card off the corkboard.
‘Isaac? Modesty itself.’
‘Maybe with grown-ups. I find him a bit arrogant, myself.’ She read the catalogue of things seen, places been.
‘He’s just shy with you,’ said Joy. She finished tidying and sat down opposite.
Looking forward to seeing you all Thursday, Isaac finished. Was that homesickness or just politeness? ‘Shy? Why would he be shy with me?’
‘Well, golly gosh, who knows?’ Joy had her chin in her hands and was twinkling.
Chloe snorted, let a few seconds pass. ‘Nice soup, Mum.’
‘Glad you like it.’
‘So that it forms a kind of gorgeous nest around you when you sit down.’
Chloe held her elbows out as the wardrobe woman moved around her, smoothing paper bodice panels against the stiff corset. She liked this time, the very beginning, when the first few pieces of the opera were being picked up and experimentally placed together, when there were only swatches of cloth and dashing little costume sketches and people’s brains whirring. The whole production was there like an invisible castle and, with every move, people made more stones appear, until a wall could be recognised, a tower, a turret, a drawbridge—and on opening night the entire structure would be complete, with pennants flying and processions passing, prisoners screaming in the cells and maidens waving handkerchiefs from the tower windows.
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