Jacquie looked up and I could see that she was making a big effort to pretend that everything was okay and that she was just about to offer to put the kettle on or something. But if they were upset about something then as a friend I should ask about it, so I put my bag down and asked what was wrong.
Belinda sort of groaned and ran her hand over her face as if she had to do that to stop herself hitting something, and Jacquie went over and picked up a book that was lying on the floor. That was odd in itself, because they were very careful about books. They certainly never left them on the floor. And there was something about the way this one was lying that gave the distinct impression that it had been thrown.
'What do you think of this?' she asked in a grim sort of voice.
It was a paperback with a sort of mediaeval-looking woodcut of four women dancing together on the cover, done in purple and green and with the two colours printed crookedly, so it was like seeing double. Pretty Maids All In A Row, it said, by Luisa Mayfield. And underneath, in smaller writing, "The book that lifts the lid on lesbian Sydney".
'Luisa's book,' I said, stupidly. 'She's finished it.'
I looked at the two of them, who glared back at me.
'But...' I persisted, dropping my eyes to the book again. The blurb on the back described it as a rollicking lesbian love story set in the pubs, clubs and back lanes of Paddinghurst. There was a black-and-white photo of Luisa sitting in a cafe wearing a grunge cardigan and smoking, which I had never seen her do, and underneath it said 'a witty, fast-paced tour de force'.
I looked back at the two of them. I didn't know what to say. I suppose I'd expected them to be pleased that Luisa had got her novel published, they were always pleased when their other friends had things published, but obviously there was something terribly wrong.
'Oh, Jane,' said Belinda. 'For heaven's sake. I know you're naive but you're not stupid. Can't you see how insulting it is? That girl is not a lesbian, she's got absolutely no understanding of what's important. How dare she write a book about it?'
'But,' I said, and then stopped, because I didn't know what to say next. Fortunately I had a bottle of wine in my bag, so I pulled it out, opened it, and poured us all a glass. We all drank and I thought they'd both calmed down. Jacquie certainly seemed happier; she got a bowl of olives and feta cheese out of the fridge and things started to feel almost normal again.
'Stupid girl,' she said in a dismissive sort of way, and I had the feeling that whatever it was about, was over. Boy, was I wrong.
'Explain it to me,' I persisted. They usually liked me asking dumb questions. 'Why shouldn't she write about lesbians? I mean, can't people write about whatever they like?'
Well, that was entirely the wrong thing to say. Or perhaps the right thing, I don't know. Belinda was still absolutely hopping mad, and I really set her off. The arrogation of the subjective experiences of an oppressed societal group by a member of the oppressors, a woman who spent her entire life chasing men while ridiculing other women, exploiting her few female friendships, using a false voice to give the wider public a distorted view of Luisa Mayfield and a distorted view of lesbian life.
'And the thing that really hurts,' added Jacquie, who had got steamed up again while she was listening to Belinda, 'is that there she is, right next door, and did she ever talk to us about it? Did she ever discuss her ideas with us? Did she ever tell us her plans? Did she even have the decency to show us a copy? Oh, no. This just turned up on my desk at work. In the recent-publications-from-rival-publishers heap. That's the first I knew that our precious Luisa was actually putting pen to paper instead of just talking about it.'
A few months ago I would have been really intimidated by the amount of anger that was flying around in that kitchen, but they were always telling me that society tried to control women by making them afraid of negative emotions and that one had to have the courage to face anger and learn to deal with it. So I gritted my teeth and kept right on going.
'Well,' I said. 'I can see you're both terribly upset.' Jacquie had told me that acknowledging another's negative feelings was often a good way of neutralising them, so I thought I'd give that a go too. 'And, I know you wouldn't be upset without good reason. But I don't understand. Isn't this what a writer does, taking what she sees and turning it into a story?'
'There's taking and then there's taking,' said Belinda. 'The thing is, lesbians, genuine lesbians, have fought for the right to have our voice heard. And now, here she is, never had to fight for anything in her life, calmly taking that voice and using it, not in solidarity, but to exploit an oppressed group of women, to use us to further her so-called career as a so-called writer.'
Well. It was one of those nights when we drank and talked until two in the morning. I could sort of see what Belinda was getting at, although I still wasn't sure how it was different from her writing about a physio when she wasn't one. Although, of course, physios have never had to pretend to be something else, or been insulted in public. Belinda talked a lot about what it was like, how hard it was, how her parents didn't understand and that some of her oldest friends wouldn't bring their children to visit. I must say I had no idea; I mean, why would anyone care about what other people do at home in private?
Anyway, we wound up deciding that Luisa could do whatever she wanted, why should we care, and I slept the night on the couch. When I got home at about eight the next morning, Mark was hopping mad. He said he'd been really, really worried about me, and how was he to know where I'd been, and he'd been that close to calling the police. So I told him all about it. I suppose it was bad timing more than anything - he must have been really worried and upset and obviously he can't have slept properly - because he called them a couple of stupid bitches and said he thought they were just jealous that Luisa had written something good enough to get published. Then he grabbed his distressed leather jacket and said he'd be home late, and pushed off.
Well, that wasn't much help, but it had been a bit stupid of me not to call and let him know where I was, so of course he would have been worried. But I had to get to work, too, so there was no time to think about sorting things out with Mark till later.
And then later that day I heard the news on the radio in the hospital cafeteria. I don't usually bother too much about the news, but the name Luisa Mayfield caught my attention while I was having lunch.
Louise had won a prize: the Voices of Diversity Award for New Literature.
Well. At least I had some idea what to expect when I got round to Belinda and Jacquie's this time, but even so it was a bit of a shock. Luisa had dropped in to see them; she wanted to borrow Jacquie's 'Reclaim The Night' T-shirt for a television interview, and Belinda had screamed at her, and Luisa had screamed right back, and now Belinda was sobbing quietly in a corner and Jacquie was planning some horrid revenge.
I didn't stay long. I don't think I could ever get to like that sort of atmosphere, whatever Belinda says about how liberating it is; and anyway, I wanted to be home when Mark got in. Only he didn't get in until midnight, which meant I wound up seeing Luisa on the television. She was wearing a pink triangle t-shirt, and the interviewer was gushing about her wonderful book and the film rights and the overseas rights. Luisa didn't get a chance to say much but she was looking pretty pleased with herself.
The next few days I seemed to see Luisa everywhere I looked. The bookshop next to the bus stop had a huge window display of her books, with big photos of her and blow-ups of the cover, and there were articles in the newspapers about her novel, which everyone said was daring and fresh and exciting. I started wondering whether I ought to buy a copy, since it did sound rather good.
I hadn't seen much of Jacquie and Belinda because I was trying to get things back on a better footing with Mark. He really couldn't see what Jacquie and Belinda were so upset about. He just kept saying that Luisa could write about lesbians if she wanted to; it was only a novel after all. He actually had a copy of the book, though neither of us read it. It was hidden away i
n his underwear drawer, which I thought was pretty odd, but I supposed that it was just his way of avoiding even more conflict. And it did seem silly for us to be fighting over something that Luisa had done.
The next thing I knew, there was this huge feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald. 'Will the Real Luisa Mayfield Please Stand Up. Written by Belinda.' It was brilliant. All those things she'd said to me about betrayal and dishonesty and bad faith and so on, all turned into this really good argument about how outrageous it was and how nobody should buy the book because it exploited lesbians.
I read the article in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and I went straight over that night to the flat and told Belinda how good it was. She gave me a hug and said, 'I'm glad you're back on our side,' which I wasn't too sure how to take, but I hugged her back and she cracked some champagne. Quite like old times.
Anyway, as you know, things really heated up after that. Louise just disappeared. The papers said she had gone to the Blue Mountains but of course I found out later that she was still around.
But lots of other people jumped in to the argument. The people who had decided on the prize said that they didn't care whether she was a lesbian or not; they couldn't see that it changed the quality of the book, and they thought it was a good book. And a group called the Sydney Attack Lesbians said that this just showed that the judges were a bunch of doddery old heterosexual fools and that lesbian writing should be read only by lesbians. And, some other people said that a novel is fiction; Luisa had the right to write fiction about people who were different from herself if she wanted, and at least it wasn't a boring, thinly disguised autobiography like most first novels.
And a couple of academics wrote articles saying that it was exactly the same issue as with B. Wongar, only since I'd never heard of B. Wongar, it didn't really shed much light on the situation for me. And, sales of Louise's book kept going up. They brought out a new edition with 'The most controversial book of the decade' across the front. I kept dropping in at Belinda and Jacquie's flat, which had become a sort of a nucleus for the anti-Luisa camp, and then going home to Mark, who kept saying that there was no such thing as bad publicity and that Luisa should dedicate her next book to Belinda, with thanks for all her help, and that Belinda was taking the whole thing far too personally. The book was being read by lots of people who didn't know Belinda from a bar of soap and didn't care whether Luisa was a lesbian or not, so what was she worried about. I was pretty confused.
In the mean time I actually read it, and I must say it was really good. Very funny, with lots of action. I didn't tell Jacquie or Belinda that. But of course that wasn't what they were upset about, anyway.
Well, after a bit, things started to die down. Novels aren't the most exciting thing in the world, and there was an election coming up and more stuff about police corruption, and it all sort of quietened down. Luisa's publisher sold the US rights to Pretty Maids All In A Row for some enormous amount of money but nobody except Luisa really cared.
Belinda still used to make comments about Luisa, but more out of habit than anything else. She was editing a book of poems to come out during the Mardi Gras, and that was taking up a lot of her time. Jacquie was busy, too. And I was worried about Mark, who hardly ever seemed to be home these days, and who always seemed really tired. I wanted him to ease off on the extra work but he said he was really starting to get somewhere with the sports physio and he didn't have time to ease off. He didn't seem happy, and I had this feeling that our marriage was going through a bad patch, so I was trying as hard as I could to be there as much as possible.
But tonight he was out, so I was cutting onions for a curry in Jacquie and Belinda's kitchen when Belinda walked in and handed me this magazine. There was a photo of Louise on the cover and the blurb said, 'Luisa Mayfield tells: My secret lesbian lover'.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
It was me.
There were two pictures. One was at that party where we'd met again, and there I was, looking pretty drunk, actually, with Luisa giving me a big hug, and some man dressed in feathers in the background. It was the other that really shocked me, though, because it was a photo of me at the beach, lying on my front with my bikini straps all undone and sort of laughing up at the camera. You could see about a mile of cleavage and I was looking awfully relaxed and happy. Of course, the implication was that I was looking at Luisa, only of course I hadn't been, I'd been looking at Mark.
I just saw red. How dare she? I didn't know what was worse, coming around and stealing my photos, or telling these terrible lies about me. I didn't even put the onion knife down, I just walked straight across the landing to her flat.
It's exactly the same as Jacquie and Belinda's flat, only mirror image. You walk straight in and turn left and there you are in the kitchen. She wasn't in the kitchen and I was so upset that for a moment I didn't even stop to wonder what Mark's distressed leather jacket was doing hanging over that chair; it was such a familiar jacket, and the kitchen was so familiar, that it seemed perfectly natural. In fact, it wasn't until I went down the passage and into the bedroom that I realised. A lot of things. Suddenly. Why Mark was always so tired, why he was out so late, why Luisa used to nip off as soon as I turned up anywhere, how she had got my photo for that filthy magazine article.
And now I've got blood all over my work clothes.
RIPE RED TOMATOES
Ronda Bird
It was so hot out, a real scorcher. What a relief it was to get home, to come back to the coolness and comfort of the house, away from the heat that seemed even more stifling in the city.
She'd had to go out that afternoon; her appointment had been made a month ago and she couldn't put it off. The heat hadn't been too bad when she went out, but she should have got a taxi home, she decided, too late. Even if the taxi wasn't air-conditioned, it would have saved her the walk from the tram stop, but she'd gone in by tram and had automatically headed for one when she was ready to come home.
There was a hot northerly wind blowing, and the thunderstorm and rain forecast for later in the day were still a long way off. Her head was aching and her feet felt as though they were on fire. Wearily she made her way towards her house. She opened the front door and kicked off her shoes before she switched on the air-conditioning, wishing she'd left it on when she went out. She looked down at her feet. They were bright red and swollen, puffy round the ankles, and there was a red mark where they had bulged over the sides of her sensible court shoes.
She wanted to pull off her clothes and get under a cool shower; but first a cold drink - that's what she needed - straight from the fridge and with plenty of ice. A gust of cold air wafted out when she opened the fridge door, and for a moment she stood in front of it, revelling in the coolness against her hot and sweaty skin. She leaned down, her face thrust forward, feeling the chill against her cheeks and eyelids. She unbuttoned her dress to the waist and let the icy air wash over her scrawny breasts. Then, as she straightened up and stretched out a hand to pick up the bottle of mineral water, her eyes focused on the contents of the fridge. As she knew they would be, the shelves were laden with bright-red, ripe tomatoes.
'Mmm, that's what I'll have for tea,' she said aloud. 'Tomato sandwiches.'
Eunice didn't feel self-conscious talking to herself. Who was there to hear? There was no one else in the house, there had seldom been anyone but herself in it since Jack died. Come to think of it, there hadn't been anyone much but the two of them, even when Jack was alive. Dear Jack. Sometimes she missed him, but they'd only been married for eight years, and it was now more than five years since he'd died. She was the only child of elderly parents, who were both dead when, just before her 39th birthday, she married Jack Mitchell. She and Jack hadn't had any children, so she was used to being on her own.
'At least I don't have to worry about proper meals all the time, as I did when Jack was here,' she said as she shut the fridge door. 'Tomato sandwiches'll do me any day.'
She felt better after
she'd showered, but her head still felt heavy. If only the storm would come and clear the air. She put on a clean, loose-fitting dress, and went barefoot into the kitchen to get her meal. The fine-bladed, sharp knife cut easily through the firm red flesh as she sliced the tomatoes for her sandwiches. Fresh grainy bread, butter, and just the merest sprinkle of salt and white pepper to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes. She carried the plate of sandwiches and another ice-cold drink into the family room, setting them down on the coffee table beside a comfortable armchair.
'There really is nothing like home-grown tomatoes,' she said aloud, as she sat back and bit into a sandwich.
It wasn't a very original or earth-shattering thought, she reflected, but what did it matter? It didn't matter any more than it mattered that she also thought there was nothing quite like picking the ripe fruit still warm from the day's sun. She loved her garden. She loved digging in the soil with her hands to plant the young seedlings, almost as much as she loved picking the ripe crop.
How Jack had laughed when she told him she wanted to dig up the dahlias that were there when they bought the house, and turn the flower garden into a vegetable patch. 'Come off it, Eunice!' he'd said. 'I've got better things to do with my spare time than dig vegetable gardens.'
'Not you. Me! I'll do it. I want to.'
'You, a gardener? What about those hands you're always so careful of? And, growing vegetables? All you know about vegetables is picking them off the shelves at Safeways.'
But she'd gone ahead and done it. When she came home from work, and at the weekends, she'd dug up the dahlias, turned the soil over and fertilised it, and planted vegetables. She didn't know why, (she'd never done any gardening before), but she loved the work, although she didn't think of it as work. She put in a variety of crops: potatoes, climbing beans, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes. That first year she'd put in only a few plants, but when she found how much more flavour there was in her home-grown vegetables than any she'd ever bought before, she gradually put in more and more plants and varieties. She borrowed books from the library and avidly watched all the gardening programmes on television. She learned how important it was to rotate the crops in different parts of the garden each year. She discovered the benefits of mulch, and understood why it was best to water at night or in the early morning. She knew that certain plants needed particular types of fertiliser, but that you couldn't go wrong with blood and bone. She realised the advantages of growing early and late varieties and that her supply became much more manageable if she staggered their planting over three or four weeks.
The First Cut Page 24