The extras nodded, still stroking.
‘I’m not kidding you. I would have to be mad to cut these prices, but I am, so I will. But only at my massive end-of-winter sale, where reductions are as much as sixty per cent.’
I stood eating cereal, leaning over the breakfast bar in the communal kitchen area, watching the ad.
The cameras followed her outside her showroom where she was joined by a cross-section of the Australian public in the forecourt.
‘What’s the name?’ she shouted.
The camera panned up high above them all, she stood at the front, and they all waved.
‘JOYCE CANE!’ they shouted.
‘You’d better believe it,’ said her voice, before 101 Parramatta Road flashed up on the screen.
Joyce Cane was a warm, bubbly, tanned, trusting-looking woman, with big highlighted curly hair, frosted lipstick and lots of sparkly jewellery. She seemed to be constantly selling all her carpets at half price in a furniture showroom on the Parramatta Road. I wanted Joyce Cane to be my mother. She was perfect. I imagined Christmas day in the Cane household, bursting with lively family, drunken wheezy uncles with Brylcreemed hair, cuddly aunties constantly bringing over food, cute children running around. I would sit next to Joyce at the table – I was her first born on Australian soil, only nine months after she arrived in the mid-sixties. I imagined a happy life as the daughter of a carpet mogul, working contentedly away in the family business for many years before inheriting the entire empire for my own family.
In comparison, I thought about my own family Christmases back home and how bleak they were. How unhappy my mother and father were, and how my father’s mood swings overshadowed our lives. How he and my brother would shout and fight, how my mother would drink heavily to cope with it all. I had spent last Christmas in the nursing home with my grandfather, in an attempt to avoid my father. A small thin man, who was husband to one of the nurses, dressed up as Santa Claus and gave out presents to the old people, who were mostly stroke victims or disorientated through dementia. I dressed my grandfather in a suit and shirt and tie and sat at the table with him, pulling crackers and wearing these pointless paper hats. When I left him at the end of the day, he held my face close to his when we hugged. He pulled me in with his working hand until our foreheads pressed firmly together. The stroke had left him unable to speak, but he didn’t have to. I understood what he was thinking and feeling, and I wanted to help him leave his overheated hell, but it wouldn’t be right.
After my grandfather was admitted to the home, there was no reason for me to stay. He would have wanted me to come here, to find what I’m looking for, and perhaps carve out a better life for myself. And become the only one in my family to escape.
My trance was interrupted by the Danish about to hang out their hand-washing.
‘Hey there, Kerry, how’s it going?’ said Karin, always the more talkative of the two.
‘Yeah, all right, what are you up to?’ I was glad of their arrival in the kitchen, for I was entering a massive slump brought on by my thoughts of back home. I pushed them away. They would lead me nowhere.
‘Hey there,’ said Andrea, which was almost all I had ever heard her say. But at least Andrea had admitted to letting Bengy the dog lick her, which made her marginally more interesting.
They pulled open the sliding patio door and began arranging their washing in the yard.
‘Yeah, Andrea and I are going to the botanical gardens, I think. Have you ever been there?’
Fucking botanical gardens, who gives a shit? I thought. ‘No, but it’s supposed to be beautiful,’ I said.
The Danish were the perfect tourists. In the short time I had known them, they had taken a day trip to the Blue Mountains, climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge, visited Taronga Zoo, done a guided tour of the opera house and been to see an art exhibition. They had taken hundreds of photos, written millions of letters back home, which they seemed to be constantly posting, and kept a journal each day of what they’d been up to. I, in comparison, had been to several bars and the pawnshop twice.
I envied the Danish. I didn’t really know them, but I envied them. Although they were boring and weak, they had happy lives without darkness. They were the only ones in the happy troupe of sellers that were like this. People always say everybody has got their problems, skeletons in the closet, nobody’s perfect, etc., but that’s bullshit. There are also many people who have had an easy life, with a happy mother and father who loved one another, and a happy schooling, and a life they feel relatively comfortable in; these people inevitably glide through life effortlessly as a result. And Andrea and Karin of Denmark were a prime example.
I had never met anyone from Denmark before and knew nothing of the country itself. I thought it might make bacon, but I couldn’t be sure. I should really make an effort to ask them things about it, I thought, finishing off my Kellogg’s Multigrain, the cereal of athletes.
‘Morning, girls.’ Jim was in his shorts and vest, covered in a post-jog sweat.
‘Morning, sir,’ I joked.
‘What’s happening here then?’
‘The Dan— Karin and Andrea are going to the botanical gardens, and I’m not sure what I’m doing yet.’
It was ten o’clock, which was late for the rest of Australia to get up, but early for me. The night before I had been hot, and slept badly. I was constantly dehydrated from drinking, and the intensity of the weather was starting to give me what I feared were my first hangovers, which would be a major blow.
‘You should come out on a run with me,’ said Jim, stretching out, making it possible to see under his vest to the scar that ran from the middle of his stomach right round to the side of his abdomen.
‘I know I should.’ I gulped some apple juice from the fridge.
‘Right, then.’ He clapped his hands together twice. ‘Anyone fancy Bondi? It’s a bloody boiling-hot day out there.’
‘What time? We’re going to the botanical gardens,’ said Karin, hanging out the last of their perfect whites.
‘Well, to hell with that, grab your togs all of you, I’ll see you out the front in ten.’
Bondi is Sydney’s most famous beach. It is the busy, brightblue metropolitan seascape always used in holiday brochures, or adverts for Australia. It was an easy bus ride from town, and was always full of surfers. The beach was quite small, but the water could get really wild and choppy, full of treacherous rips and curls that could drag the most accomplished, experienced surfer out to sea. Consequently, it was manned by muscular lifeguards who sat on high chairs positioned between flags that indicated safe areas to swim and surf. Bondi had its own pavilion at the back of the sand, a large white fifties building, with a café seating area and changing-room facilities. Behind it lay a parade of restaurants, bars and shops. This was where all Sydney’s teenagers did their first dating, which if you were a girl, consisted of watching surfing, and if you were boy consisted of showing off your surfing to the watching girls.
Everybody in Sydney looked like they had a modelling contract. The boys were so good-looking it was ridiculous. They had blond wiry hair from surfing and enormous golden shoulders, with tiny hips and waists to die for. It was such a shock coming from Scotland where most people were fat and white, with faces broken up with red veins, due to the cold or excessive alcohol consumption, and where nearly all men were bald before thirty.
Jim was in good condition, tall and broad and solidly built.
We all took off our clothes and settled down on the sand. Jim wore fairly baggy shorts, while the Danes and I wore our bikinis. Karin and Andrea had matching bodies, with long lean legs and small tits. They too were broad and healthy in their frame. I was shorter than them by about two inches and my tits were bigger, but my frame was petite, and without paying much attention to what I ate or drank I never seemed to put on weight, which is why I knew I would never venture out jogging with Jim, and had no plans to exercise until I was in my thirties. The Danes wore baseball hats to pr
otect their pretty little pale faces and fair hair from the sun. I, on the other hand, was blessed with good skin, which was almost Mediterranean in its ability to turn brown without getting burnt. I covered myself with olive oil that I’d taken from the kitchen in an effort to get even browner. After a while I got bored and became curious about Jim’s scar, now that it was in full view.
‘How did you get this, then, Jim?’ I asked, tracing it with my finger.
‘Got involved with some stupid big Yorkshire men, back home, in a long-running feud.’ He spoke from behind his sunglasses.
‘Who came out worse, then?’
‘My little brother did.’
‘What happened?’
He began filling his hands with sand by his side and emptying them again.
‘Life deals you blows, terrible blows, and it changes everything, and then you become someone different.’ Jim spoke slowly in a monotone. ‘It can all change, in a matter of minutes.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Madness.’
‘What happened?’ I fixed on his scar.
‘Aw. It’s too much for now.’ He sighed, and tipped sand out his hands again.
‘I’ve told you, when we go on this bloody trip we’ll learn lots about one another, don’t you worry.’ He dusted sand off his forearms and started tidying around him, even though there was nothing to tidy. He moved a Coke can and flattened out the beach towel he was lying on.
All the time the Danish had been listening to Jim, they never said a word in response to his story. How could they? This was way out of their league.
‘Christ’s sake, listen to me going on, what a miserable bastard.’ Jim stood up, took off his glasses and stretched. ‘Pull yourself together, Crown.’ Jim was always telling himself off in the third person. ‘Come on, let’s get in. I’ll race ye, ye daft Scottish bastard!’ He sprinted off.
I ran screaming towards the giant foamy waves, Jim already waist-deep punching the water and roaring with laughter before I’d reached the edge.
Greg and Anaya called a group meeting back at the flat, half an hour before we left for the suburbs.
Jim and I sat drained and sunbeaten on the sofa waiting for Scotty to arrive. Anaya and the Danish drank herbal teas in the kitchen, while Greg paced up and down smoking. We all laughed at Scotty’s car screeching to a halt outside, for he drove all the time like it was an emergency. His stereo stopped and he burst in.
‘Guys, guys, how you doin’?’
Despite what a see-through dick he was, I had to admire him for his constant attempts at humour and friendliness.
‘Yeah, in your own time, Scotty, mate,’ said Greg, who, despite his casual, relaxed, constantly stoned persona, was always keen that we maximised our selling time and rarely allowed any excuse for lateness. Scotty winked at me and sat down on the floor. I noticed that he had two different shoes on.
‘Right then, guys.’ Greg brought out some envelopes from his pocket. ‘First of all, I’ve got some money cleared from various people’s credit-card transactions. Scotty.’ He gave one out to him.
‘Cheers, mate.’ Scotty gave him the thumbs-up.
‘Karin, here you go. Kerry.’
‘Thank you.’ I took the money and counted it before putting it in my pocket.
‘Finally, Andrea.’ She smiled sheepishly taking the money; I was mystified as to how she sold anything. Perhaps they just found her look trustworthy and honest and her pretty little pale face spoke for itself.
Anaya took over. ‘Yeah, guys, I know you know this but do try to get cash. I know it’s hard but try. It’s better for all of us, especially when you go up the coast.’
‘Yeah, the coast. Looks like we’re all set for next week,’ said Greg, handing Jim an envelope which I took to be his percentage of our credit-card sales. ‘Basically, we think the middle of next week would be a good time to go. You’ll all take the Kingswood. We’ll load it up and off you go.’
‘How long?’ asked Andrea.
I couldn’t have cared where we went or how long we went for. I could call Hank from wherever if I wanted to. I had no interest where we would be staying when we did, happy to go with the flow. I didn’t bother with the usual questions; I left that to Karin and Andrea.
‘Two weeks is what we usually do. You stay in caravan parks and motels.’
‘Yeah. Watch out for redbacks,’ said Scotty.
‘What is redback?’ asked Karin.
‘It’s a spider with a lethal bite and if it’s miles to the nearest serum store you’re fucked.’
‘Scotty! Enough now!’ shouted Frau Anaya.
‘Yeah, yeah, there’s spiders, and snakes and sharks, but none of them will get you because you lot will be in the houses of the lovely people of the Gold Coast, OK?’ Jim scrunched up his envelope paper, threw it at Scotty and said jokingly, ‘I’ll bite your flamin’ arse if you don’t shut up.’
‘Really, you’ll be doing the same thing as you do here except you’ll get to see some of the coast and countryside, which is wonderful.’ Greg lit up. ‘Jim and I will go through the maps and routes before you go and sort you out some good areas, and that’s pretty much it. You will seriously love it, guys.’
‘What will you guys be up to when we’ve cleared off up north?’ asked Scotty, which I suppose we had all wondered about, for there was a part of all of us that was suspicious of Greg and Anaya’s true intentions.
‘We will be here dealing with stock and things,’ said Anaya.
‘How will we fit all of us and the paintings in the Kingswood?’ was Andrea’s contribution to the questions.
‘You won’t take much stuff of your own,’ replied Greg, without hesitation.
‘Yeah, the girls will have to leave their make-up. That takes up far too much room.’ Scotty looked round the room for the recognition he felt his joke deserved. Karin delivered him a mock slap on the back of the head.
‘Seriously, doin’ all the way up to Brisbane, yeah?’ asked Scotty.
Suddenly I was very interested. ‘Brisbo? Brisbane, yeah? Is that where we’ll be staying?’ My stomach turned over.
‘That’s the plan,’ said Greg.
‘Right, guys, let’s get going,’ said Lady Macbeth. ‘Make good sales, you guys. Later tonight, we’re gonna cook for you a proper Aussie barbie. Well, Greg is, he’s the cook.’ She laughed.
‘Yeah, we’re going to enjoy ourselves. It’s been a good month for us and it’s going to get even better,’ said Greg. Anaya winked at him.
I sank down into the sofa, trying to get my head around the prospect of perhaps some kind of showdown very soon.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
THE EVENING DRAGGED. I wanted it over so we could go back to William Street and party. I had been in three houses so far, all of them on Ocean Drive in Diamond Bay. Two of them were time-wasters, and the third were time-wasters who at least offered me a drink. Three female friends sat around drinking cocktails and were more than happy to let me in almost immediately, always a bad sign. They talked about the paintings, laughed at the unicorn, and got me to bring various ones over to each of them so they could examine them at close range. They asked me plenty of questions about the paintings, and even more about myself and where I was from. But they didn’t buy. It would be a rare occurrence to have women buying any paintings without their male partners. They fell into the ‘things for the house’ category, and that was usually a joint decision, I had found. I knew all this but it was hard to get away from them. I was washed out from the sun and the beach, and they offered to make me a strawberry daiquiri, which I couldn’t refuse as I had never tasted one before. Afterwards I thanked them and left, preoccupied by the notion of joint decisions, wondering whether I’d ever experience such a thing.
I quit Ocean Drive, and took the next left into Leamington Terrace. I was immediately drawn to the corner house, where from the street I could see into the lounge, which was packed full of children in what seemed to be a meeting of the largest family known to m
an. I suppose it was wrong of me to interrupt a ‘family’ occasion, but you do what you have to do to get by.
I wasn’t sure where they were from; their English was very limited. The man who answered the door was old, with a short beard and yellow teeth. Most of the men had thick dark stubble or moustaches. I took them to be Arab but I wasn’t sure; I’d had no experience of any countries other than the one I had escaped from. Children weaved in and out around us as I attempted to explain what I was doing.
‘Paintings,’ I said, opening up the folder.
‘You show,’ he said.
‘Do you like the paintings?’ I said, bringing out the Stuger.
‘No, you come, you show.’ He indicated for me to stop showing him and to follow him into the lounge.
There were about thirty people packed into the room, which was full of heavy ornate furniture laden with an enormous buffet, with food on it I didn’t recognise. They all spoke very fast and smiled at me, while the men smoked and drank from strange little glasses with a fancy design round them. The women wore baggy sheet-like dresses and had material covering their heads.
‘Hello.’ I smiled at the whole room. The women seemed friendlier than the men.
Most people nodded back.
‘How are you today?’ I asked, not knowing where to start.
‘Hello, how are you? Welcome,’ said a chubby man in a white shirt, with a chest as hairy as a rug.
‘Good. Good.’ I wondered if I should open the folder and get my paintings out or wait a while. Most of the people broke out into chat of their own again, which I didn’t sense was about me, so I thought it would do me no harm to light up and join the rest of the smokers. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a soft pack of Marlboro Lights, the brand I had now switched to, influenced by my visit to Robin’s house in Neutral Bay.
‘No, please. You take, welcome.’ Six moustached men leant forward with their cigarettes. I took one from the man next to me, the same one who answered the door. I felt stupid taking his cigarette because it too was a Marlboro.
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