Among the brochures by the library door was a stack of programs for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Christabel thought of Pippa at once. But at home, on checking the list of writers, she discovered that Pippa wasn’t there. She read the list all the way through again, and this time she paused at a name. Not long after Bunty had gone to Waratah Lodge, Christabel was coming home from visiting her when Pippa and a man came out of Pippa’s door. ‘Christabel!’ called Pippa, running lightly down the steps, smiling at Christabel across the sloping garden wall. ‘I came around to see you earlier but you weren’t there.’ She was dressed for going out into the scented summer evening, in a wafty frock and fragile golden shoes. ‘It’s about Christmas,’ said Pippa. ‘The good news is we’ve managed to dodge Matt’s family this year, so we thought we’d do what we’ve always fantasised about and just have a few friends over for a quiet lunch.’
There were the damp smells of gardens, and a wave lifting under Christabel’s heart.
‘The only thing is, is Hank,’ went on Pippa. ‘My agent’s coming and she’s allergic to dogs.’ She looked at the man and said, ‘You got over that allergy, didn’t you? But Gloria passes out, or chokes or something, if she’s around a dog. Also her lips swell if she eats blue cheese.’ Turning back to Christabel, Pippa continued, ‘So I was wondering, lovey, if you’d be able to have Hank on Christmas Day? I know it’ll be the first time you’ve minded him on your own, so if you think you won’t be able to manage it without Bunty, no probs. We can always board him at the vet’s.’
Christabel’s smile was stuck in her cheeks. A glance at the man waiting beside Pippa showed that he knew what Christabel had thought. Christabel’s spine had been replaced by an icicle, and a reddish mist was fuzzing the lemon gum across the street. The mist swelled and made the top of her head hot. All she wanted to do was to lie down on the path, close her eyes and burn with shame. The flames would melt the icicle and consume her, and she would disappear.
‘Hi,’ said the man.
‘Oh, Christabel, this is George. The famous George Meshaw.’
The famous George Meshaw shook Christabel’s hand. She directed what was left of her awful smile at his chest.
‘So do you want to have a think about Christmas, lovey? If you could let me know by the weekend…?’
Christabel said, ‘Hank’s no trouble at all.’
‘Very good to meet you,’ said the man.
Finding his name now, in the festival line-up, sent Christabel to the soft room. She retrieved The Kitchen Diaries from the cupboard where it was hidden so that she could try to forget what it said. She had remembered correctly: George Meshaw described it on its cover as ‘An unforgettable novel’. Christabel looked around as if the room might instruct her on where to hide. It had the drained feeling of all unused spaces. The window reflected a square of meaningless light onto a wall. George Meshaw, who had spoken kindly to Christabel, despite having looked into her and seen that she was a fool, approved of Pippa’s book. The book contained a character called Eileen. Eileen, Margot’s elderly Sri Lankan neighbour, was introduced on page thirty-one as ‘a closet lesbian with a mannish face’. These words, when Christabel first encountered them, had simply not entered her brain. She read on to the end of the novel, and what it had to say about Eileen, as if drugged. Days later, while cleaning the bathroom basin, she realised that something had happened. She searched her mind and found new things in it, solid and plain.
Standing in front of the fridge on the morning of the writers’ festival, Christabel ate three spoons of jam. It was apricot jam, the clear, deep gold of the cairngorm brooch she intended to wear to the festival—she had pinned it to her jacket before going to bed. The cairngorm had belonged to Bunty’s grandmother, and Bunty had lent it to Christabel one day. ‘Keep it,’ she said when Christabel tried to return the brooch. It was summer: Bunty was in the yard, lying on a recliner with bright plastic webbing that made a red rectangle on the concrete. She had spread a towel over her shoulders and was drying her hair. The cairngorm, round and golden, shone in Christabel’s hand. Time made a loop, hauling back the years: Christabel was offering a barley sugar to the schoolgirl peering from Bunty’s face.
Christabel drank her first cup of tea for the day while it was still dark outside. Birds were talking to one another: tuneful, scratchy or liquid conversations, all coiled through with energetic chatter and throaty shrieks. She closed her eyes and ticked off the contents of her bag: purse, reading glasses, keys, Panadol Osteo, festival program; also The Kitchen Diaries. Should she add an umbrella? wondered Christabel. A scarf?
The oven was on, door open against the early morning chill. It was an old oven with a hoarse flame. Christabel ate two spoonfuls of eggplant pickle and another of jam. At the end of each day, a collection of teaspoons marked out her meals: strawberry yoghurt, soft-boiled egg, half an avocado pear. She ate a third spoonful of pickle and reboiled the electric jug.
After she had showered and dressed, Christabel went out into the yard. A few succulents persisted in Bunty’s eskies. They had been joined by tufts of grass, and weeds with delicate pink and yellow flowers. Christabel held out her hands, palms up, trying to assess the weather. It was going to be one of those shapeless days that knocked about between seasons. Would she be warm enough at the festival? Or too hot? She was wearing her smart navy trousers—they had a waistband, not elastic—and a long-sleeved blouse under the jacket with the cairngorm brooch.
Below the reproachful blue saint, the back door carried a bolt on a chain. Christabel fastened the bolt and looked at her watch. It was too early to set out; she sat at the table to wait. A debate that had been going on all week started up again: should she make herself a sandwich to take along for lunch? What if people glanced away smiling when she produced food from her bag? A bowl on the table contained mouldy lemons; Christabel had felt obliged to harvest them, and now they were turning into soft green brains. She looked away and straightened the tea towel on the handle of the oven door. Her reflection confronted her: the sour muscles around her mouth. They drove her out of the house.
A flyer protruded from the letterbox. It showed four undertakers in sharp black suits—why were they smiling? Then Christabel realised that they were real estate agents. As she slipped them into her bag, she remembered that she hadn’t checked the phone; someone might have called while she was in the shower. She unlocked the front door, went inside and dialled *10#: ‘No unanswered call is registered. You have not been charged for this call.’ No sooner had she hung up than the phone rang. That would be Pippa—it had to be. Reaching for the receiver, Christabel heard, Let’s have lunch at the festival. I have so much to tell you. A stranger spoke distinctly: ‘There’s no one here to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone and we will get back to you as soon as possible.’
‘One of the things Bunty and I shared was a mistrust of disclosure.’ Christabel was composing a letter to Pippa while waiting for her train. ‘When we were growing up, silence was considered mannerly. Later I came to think of it as the outward sign of a fear that struck to the heart: the same fear I saw in Fa in the dining room that morning. It was a fear I came to associate with the English. I thought of it as one of the dreadful consequences of their war—the one we had stopped calling “Great”. When I discovered the poetry of that war, I recognised the anger and reined-in terror of Englishmen. By “Englishmen”, I mean Bunty’s father. I saw him in the street now and then, with his hat and his hurt, angry face. The only strong feeling that men like that could display was rage. Once Mr Sedgwick was sitting near me at the cinema. The film was a comedy, and I wish I could describe the way he laughed—I want to say with delighted fury. He had no idea that we were neighbours. If I had been brought to his attention, it would never have occurred to him that we had anything in common. But we had both been raised to believe that there were simply things of which no one spoke, emotions no one showed; if you did, everything would fall apart. What was “everything”? It was the
world arranged for the benefit of gentlemen.
‘Do you feel that there are hidden ties between people, not always readily explained? At school, I always linked Bunty with a teacher we called the Old Fowl. They shared a feeling for music, but their true connection ran deeper. They were two people of great dignity and little importance. The day I saw Mr Sedgwick at the cinema, I thought, If we were shut up together in a darkened room, you would take me for one of your own. We would be silent together. His hands were narrow and as white as tripe. Suddenly the notion of finding myself in the dark with Mr Sedgwick made me want to giggle like a madwoman. Then it made me afraid.
‘One of the wonderful things about living with Bunty was that she changed the nature of silence. It was no longer rooted in fear, but in an important courtesy. In our house, silence was gentle and grave. Now that I’m on my own, silence is different again.’
At Circular Quay, Christabel went carefully down the station stairs. When had she started walking like that, watching her feet as if expecting a trap? She made her way up to the top of George Street, past the Harbour View Hotel. Bunty had taken Christabel there for lunch on Christabel’s sixty-fifth birthday. It had been a day as sharp and yellow as a lemon. Halfway up the hill, Bunty halted. Her lips had gone thin. She said, ‘My heart’s always with me now.’
At their table on the terrace, a waiter fetched wine that sparkled like the view. When their glasses were empty they were still full of golden light. Bunty had exchanged her tracksuit pants for stretchy trousers. Christabel’s fingernails were painted a festive pink. Her napkin, shaken loose, caught the wind like a sail. The harbour was so blue that if they looked at it too long it turned black. The waiter brought out potato wedges, baked tomatoes and fish cooked in banana leaves. When they couldn’t eat another thing, Bunty ate an Eton Mess.
It was a day that bulged into the present: Christabel could look across time and see the two of them perched there on that terrace, immortal in the afternoon, while another Christabel headed to the festival down an endless flight of steps. The water lifting in the harbour was the dull grey of a bloated tick, and the word beating in her brain was ‘gone’.
There were people all along the wharves where the festival was taking place, talking, queuing, clustered in cafes and along the blustery walkways. Against the sunless sea-glare, all that casual clothing had the technicolour appearance of a crowd in a film. Christabel moved through it, as historical as a fax. The cheery, fit-looking elderly, decently upbeat, seemed particularly remote from her: as staunch and twinkling as distant stars.
The young man at the information booth consulted a list, murmuring, ‘George Meshaw, George…OK, so that’s “Would I Lie to You?” It’ll be over on that pier, over there, and you go in that third door. See?’
What Christabel saw was a queue that stretched the length of the wharf and around the corner of a building. ‘I’ll never get in!’ she cried.
‘It’s OK. That’s the queue for Josh Kapoor.’
Christabel looked at him. He smiled back, nicely. ‘He’s a celebrity chef. He has a show on TV. Your guy’s just a writer, right? He won’t pull anything like that many punters. Get there fifteen, twenty minutes before it starts and you’ll be good.’
In the nearest cafe, Christabel lined up for a cup of tea. It cost four dollars fifty—four dollars fifty! For a teabag! The ham and cheese croissants were ten! She could have murdered a sandwich—egg and lettuce, or mustard and silverside—but there were only the croissants. Pippa’s voice rose behind her: ‘Hi. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ Christabel’s heart turned inside out. She looked around to see not-Pippa embracing a man with a soft ginger beard.
There was an empty table near a window. Christabel stirred sugar into her tea, in a crossfire of ringtones. Everyone in the cafe had the tense, resolute face of a shopper at a Boxing Day sale: they were faces that hadn’t renounced hope but were prepared for disappointment. Christabel’s lips, too, were pressed together—she patted them with the Kleenex she kept in her sleeve. She wondered, Did I bring my lipstick? She began to scrabble through the contents of her bag.
A girl carrying a cup approached; around her neck, like a penance, hung a string of weighty wooden beads. ‘Is this chair free?’ she asked, placing her hand on the back.
‘Yes!’ Christabel smiled her gratitude at this chance companion.
The girl picked up the chair and walked away.
The queue for the Ladies was even longer than the one for the celebrity chef. By the time Christabel had used the bathroom and crossed to the next pier, she was almost the last in line. A woman standing behind her sighed, ‘It’s always like this when it’s a free event.’ She asked her friend, ‘What’s this George Meshaw written?’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘Hang on: didn’t he write that memoir about running a restaurant in Paris? My book club did that one. He got food poisoning and almost died—we laughed so much!’
‘All I know is Ryan will be worth the wait.’
‘You know, I don’t think the restaurant man was called George. It was a name like that but a bit different. Tony. Or Rafael.’
Seated at last, Christabel found that her view of the stage was partially obscured by a pillar—still, she could see George Meshaw if she leaned to the left. He was fatter than the picture she had carried around in her mind. That would come from running a restaurant, she thought, seeing him in a white jacket, spooning up a creamy sauce. Then she remembered that that wasn’t George after all.
The chair of the panel, a birdy woman dressed more or less entirely in scarves, introduced the three speakers. ‘I thought it would be fun to get going by asking each of our guests to share a lie they’ve told,’ she concluded. ‘Would you like to start us off, Ryan?’
An Irish comedian who had written a memoir sprang to his feet. He strolled about the stage for the next quarter of an hour, telling hilarious tales about alcoholism and child abuse in his quilted Irish voice. Christabel wept tears of laughter with the rest.
‘Thank you so much, Ryan,’ said the bird woman when he paused. ‘That was really, really insightful. And now…’
‘Just one wee minute more,’ wheedled Ryan, running a hand through his charming curls.
A black-haired woman rose from her seat on the stage, strode forward and announced, ‘You are sitting down, Ryan.’ Then she addressed the audience: ‘Hi, you will know I am Marta. For Australia I perform my cross-genre work narrated by a cell phone. It is called “Death of a Young Child”. Unhappily, the English translation is no good at all. It gives insufficient sense of the smallness of the child and the very horror of her trauma. So you will know the authentic dread of my work, I am reading the Estonian original.’
Christabel drifted into a private conversation with George Meshaw. They were sitting in the cafe; he had insisted on buying her a croissant. He said, ‘Very understandable,’ and ‘You’re quite right.’ He would do all he could to explain everything to Pippa, he assured Christabel. ‘It’s pretty clear to me that she’s avoiding you because you remind her she’s been hurtful. But have you never thought of simply going to see her and talking it all over face to face?’
Christabel told him that she had planned out the route to Glebe. ‘I know which bus to take from Central. The light rail is also an option. But then I see myself opening Pippa’s gate and going up to the front door. There are two portly shrubs there, the kind Bunty used to call ever-yellows. Matt inherited them along with the house. Pippa calls them Awful and Cheerful. Pippa’s car is in the street, so I know that she’s at home. But she doesn’t answer the bell. Hank barks and barks. He makes his Hank the Tank noises: strange, harsh cockatoo squawks. They’re his way of pleading. The curtains hang down, solid as wood. And then it’s impossible to go on believing that Pippa wants anything more to do with me.’ All the time she was talking, Christabel kept finger-writing the word ‘Please’ on her knee.
George said that he could see the difficulty. Rubbing his
chin, he told her, ‘I spend half the year in Paris now. Why don’t you visit me there? You would meet my friends: poets, scholars, artists, chefs…’
A voice from the stage broke in. The chair was saying, ‘Really, I’m very sorry, but I really feel I must intervene. Marta, we have twenty minutes left and—’
Marta said, ‘That is very sufficient. I need only eighteen.’
The chair said, ‘But—’
Marta resumed her reading.
Christabel stood at the prow of a boat skippered by George Meshaw and was carried down the Seine. Hank was there, too, barking at French seagulls. But it wasn’t Hank at all, it was Bunty—she smiled on all fours in her bright fur. People riding their bicycles beside the river waved. In the cabin of the boat, preparations were under way for a party: a waiter hurrying past with a tray of glasses balanced on his palm winked at Christabel. The boat drew level with a palace where Moth and Fa leaned from a round window under a silvery roof. That kind of thing went on very pleasantly for a while. Then something strange happened, and the scene went quiet and froze.
Marta had fallen silent. George Meshaw cleared his throat. He leaned over and murmured something to the chair. But the chair had changed strategies and was gazing out over the room with a serene, yogic smile. It announced that she had found herself in this world by chance—its earthbound strife couldn’t touch her.
A man with a goatee rose from his seat in the front row. ‘Brava!’ he shouted. ‘Encore! Encore!’ He stamped his feet and applauded.
‘Thank you,’ blushed Marta. A five-year-old had taken her place on the stage. The audience saw the face under Marta’s face. The black spikes had given way to yellow pigtails, the black leather sheath to a frilly skirt that stuck out. Above the apple cheeks, the round eyes begged, Please be kind. Marta shoved the child behind her. She spoke with simple dignity: ‘Now I am available to sign my works.’
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