by Nick Earls
I don’t really know anything about her bees.
She gives me that look, that look that says she knows she’s onto something and that I won’t find myself anywhere near a bee until I tell her quite a bit more.
Okay. She’s just a girl. I met her on the beach a couple of days ago. No big deal.
She lifts her eyebrows, a sign that I am to elaborate, a sign that she suspects I have given her only a dull subset of the story.
She lives near here, Little Mountain, with her family. They make things. That’s just about all I know.
So exactly how did you meet her?
She had a problem with her car. I offered to help.
You can help people with car problems?
No.
It’s a bold sort of offer then, isn’t it?
It was all I had. There she was with her bonnet up. I had to do something.
So what did you do?
I brought her here to use the phone.
I can feel a nervous smile starting to take control of the corners of my mouth.
Really? That’s very clever.
I gave her breakfast.
Breakfast? She ate a meal here days ago? Why are you smiling? So I begin to grin almost uncontrollably, one of those tight unmanageable desperate grins that is only muscular and recalls no happiness at all. What did you do? What’s that smile for? What have you been doing in this house while I’ve been asleep?
Don’t get excited, I tell her, trying to restore calm.
You haven’t . . .
I haven’t done anything. Okay? I have done nothing that would interest you. I have done nothing that would be worth telling people. We’ve gone to Kings Beach a couple of times because of the better surf, but that’s all. Now, I think you’re a bit too interested at the moment, and I think we’re going to have to get you a cup of tea and calm you down, and we won’t talk any more about this now.
She laughs at me treating her like the mad person.
All right, all right. Not another word.
Good.
What’s her name?
We’re not talking any more about this, remember?
Her name, just her name.
Okay, this is what we’ll do. I’ll give you the first letter of her name and if you behave appropriately, there’ll be more later. And that includes being out when she arrives to pick me up.
In her car. I can’t believe I notice so little. Here I am thinking you’re sitting around doing almost nothing, and all the time you’re involved with a girl with a car.
Look, it’s not much of a car, I only met her a few days ago and I am not involved. Okay? Not involved. Helping her with issues concerning bee-keeping this afternoon. That’s all. So will you be out when she comes to pick me up at two?
If it’s what you want.
It’s definitely what I want. What I would like is for you to go out and be out for quite a while. That is what I would like most.
All right. If it’s what you really want.
I nod.
Why do you want to hide her from me?
That’s not quite it. What I want to do is to hide you from her.
That doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to say to your mother.
Just think about it. Look at it from my perspective.
What do you mean?
Does the name Juliet mean anything to you?
That was a beautiful story. A wonderful, sensitive story. I had to show people.
Exactly. There’ll be no more of that. Okay?
Okay. It’s okay if I get the first letter of her name.
F.
F. Fiona?
Not even close.
nineteen
Are you sure you really have a mother? she says when she arrives.
I’m sure enough. She just happens not to be here this afternoon. She’s probably shopping.
We drive out along Sugarbag Road to Little Mountain, past the cemetery and the high school and over the Nicklin Way, through bush and past the new developments.
My family’ll be home, she tells me. Some of them at least.
We turn down a smaller road and through a gateway onto a path that looks as though it has been cut out of the bush. The Moke bucks around, but F makes little concession to the unmade road and I try to be subtle about gripping onto the sides of the seat. We pull up in a cleared area in front of a rambling wooden house.
A girl appears in the doorway. She is wearing a dress that looks tie-dyed and she has F’s hair.
Hi, Skye. Come and meet my friend Alex.
Hi, Alex, she says, with a coy smile. I’ve got a problem with my car.
Skye, F says sternly.
What have you told her?
Nothing.
Nothing? Nothing? Am I dressed like a mechanic?
Skye is laughing. He’s better looking than you told us, Big. We thought he’d be pretty ugly, the way you described him. And she runs off down the hall laughing and shouting, Big’s brought the boy home, Storm. Come and see.
Did I tell you about my sisters? F says. No self-control, none at all. I think you should know that.
Thank you. Earlier might have been better, but thank you.
She was kidding with all of that. I might have mentioned the car, but she was kidding with the rest.
I bet she was. What did she call you?
Big.
Big? Why Big? I’ve got to be honest. You’re a very reasonable size but you aren’t big.
I am to her. It’s short for Big Sister. When Skye and Storm were young they found it hard to say the F name, so they called me Big. You know the way families are. Someone does something like that and it sticks. They all call me that now, my whole family.
They never call you the F name?
Never.
So the whole time I’m here today no one is going to come up to you and call you by your name.
It’s very unlikely.
I came here and I was sure someone would call you by your name.
I don’t think they will. I’d quite like you to call me by my name. Almost nobody does, so I’d like that.
So are you going to tell me what it is?
Yes. She pauses, as though she’s trying to remember it. Come and meet my dad.
She leads me through the house to the kitchen and then down another corridor where she opens a door. In the centre of the room is a potter’s wheel and next to it, working the clay, stands a man with crazed feral hair and a wild beard with clay wiped through it. He appears to be wearing only a grubby singlet.
He turns to face us and he is wearing only a grubby singlet, and his turn swings his dick perilously close to the wheel. I open my mouth to say something, but I just can’t.
Hi, he says with a very normal human smile. You’re . . . um. Clicking spludgy fingers together and making no sound, cracking the drying clay on his brow with the furrows of thought.
Alex, F says.
Alex, he says, as though agreeing. Nice to meet you, Alex.
He stands there saying normal things and looking like a very cheery near-nude maniac with dirt mittens. A shiny, wet, unfinished pot wobbles around the middle of the wheel.
You too, I say. I hope not too slowly.
Cliff.
Cliff.
I think I’m nodding. I think I’m nodding in a ponderous mesmerised way and my mouth is probably open. So what do I say now? Nice pot? Do a lot of this do you? That’s an enormous penis you’ve got there, Cliff? Well thank you, Alex? So I just stand there nodding, hoping the slow-swinging fleshy pendulum will not come to harm.
Oh, yeah, mate. I’m just airing a bit of a rash, he says, as though it’s an explanation. Potter’s itch, you know.<
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F laughs and shakes her head. Dad, you say that to everyone. Don’t listen to him, Alex. This is what he always wears when he’s potting.
Even in winter?
Well, no, maybe not in winter. But potter’s itch is just a joke for visiting yuppies. Don’t say it to Alex, Dad.
Not a day for jokes, hey Big?
Not for yours, Cliffie.
Sorry. Sorry Alex. I think this must be one of those first impression things, and obviously Big wants me to create a good one. How am I going?
Great. I’d be lying if I said you weren’t creating quite an impression.
Dad, I think he’s hating you. He’s got this sense of humour and I think he’s hating you and that’s the closest he can go to saying it. And I think it was the potter’s itch thing. You treated him like yuppie scum and he knows it. I think he liked you till then.
That’s not true, is it Alex? You didn’t take it personally, did you?
No. No, not at all.
He likes me Big. I can tell. I like him, he likes me. It’s one of those things, mutual. Pull up a seat, mate.
It is a room entirely without seats, so I take this to be a symbolic gesture.
You’re meant to sit on that box now, Alex, F says, pointing. Then he talks to you.
I sit on the box, and I assume that the clay will wash out of my shorts.
So what about this place, eh? Cliff says, his eyes on his pot again as he works it back into shape.
It’s great, I tell him. Great.
Yeah, but what about all the development going on? What about that?
Oh, that, yeah. Well, to be honest I could probably do without it.
Good on you, mate. There’s only one thing worse than developers and that’s people who think they’re hippies. What do you reckon, mate?
What?
This strikes me as dangerous ground indeed.
People who think they’re hippies. Live in the bloody hinterland and pretend they’re dropping out. There’s not one of them wouldn’t shrivel up and die without town water. To them an alternative lifestyle means another way of making money. Maleny, Montville, all that. They’re not hippies, they’re wankers. What do you say, mate?
Well some of them seem a bit sus. Like they’re only in it for the tourist dollar.
Exactly. Exactly. He’s good this boy, Big. He’s got a clue. A lot of people don’t, you know.
Yeah Dad, I know. Is he boring you, Alex?
No, not at all. This is fine, really good.
Are you going to help me with the jars then?
Sure.
Perhaps I jump to my feet too quickly but Cliff still seems to like me when I leave the room. In the corridor F looks at me and laughs.
You’re very funny, Alex, she says.
We go to another room where Skye is working at a table.
The bottle washer, she says, and smiles, then shakes her head knowingly. My big sister, always bringing home boys and making them wash bottles for her.
I’m sorry, F says to me. You don’t know Skye well enough to know that she lies all the time.
Skye laughs. All the time, she says.
She has a sheet of labels which have been stamped with a black ink logo saying Big Buzz Honey, and her job seems to be to fill in two yellow stripes on the back of each bee. Mine is to deal with the sink full of jars soaking in the corner, to peel off their labels and clean them. I can’t help thinking I would be unlikely to do this for my mother. F leaves to attend to bee-keeper things outside. Skye watches her go and then turns to me.
Big likes you, you know.
Aren’t you the one who lies all the time?
Not all the time. That was a lie.
So what’s her name? Big, what’s her real name?
You’d be pretty stupid if you don’t know that, she says. Pretty stupid if you’d come to someone’s house and wash things for them if you didn’t even know their name.
Yeah. Right.
She laughs.
I keep washing, flicking the labels into another sink and washing.
twenty
That was a big help, F says as we drive home. That’s a pretty dull job and I was glad I didn’t have to do it.
That’s fine. It was interesting meeting Skye and your father.
It’s all right. You don’t have to be polite.
They were interesting. They really were. Trust me.
Really? She shakes her head.
My mother’s car is in the driveway when we arrive.
So she does exist.
I think you should know she’s not quite like your family.
My mother is waiting, trying not to look like a spider in a web, but failing.
Hello, she says with significant enthusiasm, sizing F up from head to toe quite unashamedly. I’m Alex’s mother.
Hello, I’m his friend, F says and smiles.
I’m Tessa.
And I’m Fortuna.
They both look at me, each glancing at me sideways but trying to appear to pay attention to the other.
Fortuna, my mother says. That’s a lovely name. Certainly not common though. It’s not the sort of name you could ever guess.
People tend not to.
They are both looking at me now, quite openly, as though each shares with me a deeply ironic joke that excludes the other. I can feel the smile freezing on my face.
Will you stay for a drink? my mother asks her. A cup of tea maybe?
Thank you. I’ll just have the one I had last time, Alex, if that’s all right.
This is becoming an afternoon of silly staring and my mother contributes once again, this time a withering knowing look referring to the breakfast I kept from her for days. We sit on the veranda with our tea.
So, my mother says, staring at the nose ring, do you like Frente!?
Yeah. Yeah I don’t mind some of their stuff.
Alex is a bit of a fan, aren’t you Alex? He’s been playing that CD, which one is it?
‘Lonely’.
He’ll wear it out if he plays it any more.
CDs don’t wear out, Mum.
Silly me. Trapped in the age of vinyl.
So my mother decides to make this a fairly painful experience. She can’t help herself. But Fortuna seems not to mind. She laughs at my mother’s jokes at my expense, and tells me, Your mother’s really interesting, when she goes. Of course, in the context of this afternoon that could mean anything. She gives me her phone number and she says she’ll be busy most of the day tomorrow, but I can call if I want to. Then she gives me a look that tells me I should want to.
When I’m back upstairs my mother has the good sense to apologise to me about the Frente! remark, but she negates the apology most of the evening by repeatedly making observations about nose rings. Why would you have a nose ring? Why? How does she blow her nose? What’s it like when she has a cold? What if it got caught on something? Etcetera, etcetera, and all of this with her face in various masks of discomfort, until I tell her she’s being very dull.
When I go to bed I play the CD again, and I listen to the name, the way she said it the first time, like a secret. Fortuna. It holds its own music; it’s the sort of name she should have.
twenty-one
So this is why you want to stay up here? my mother says as she packs. Fortuna? She’s why you don’t want to come back to Brisbane with me? She throws dirty clothes into a garbage bag and she breathes heavily. What are you going to do? Have you thought about it, all of it? Here by yourself. You would be here by yourself, wouldn’t you? I mean, she’s not going to move in, is she?
No. I’ll stay here; she might visit. Len’ll be next door if I have any problems.
And I’ll be back next weekend.
So it’s less than a week. I’ll be fine.
And you won’t do anything, will you? I mean, you’ll be sensible?
I’ll be as dull as I always am. Give me a break. It’s not like this was never going to happen. It’s like Schoolies’ Week, and I survived that okay.
I suppose so. She goes on packing, putting away a hair brush, face cream. What will I tell your grandparents at lunch tomorrow?
I can guess what you’ll tell them. That I’ve met a girl and that’s why I’m staying up here. That you think the girl is weird, mainly on account of the fact that she has a ring in her nose. But then, to avoid panicking them you’ll have to say that she seems very nice really.
That sounds likely.
My mother leaves for Brisbane after lunch.
I call Fortuna, and it’s strange hearing her voice on the phone, but it’s good too.
Tessa’s pretty cool, she says. It’s kind of nice that she likes Frente!. I liked that. What made her say it, do you think? Just the fact that you’d been playing the CD?
Probably.
We talk, even though there’s nothing to talk about. I really like her voice and I don’t want her to put down the phone. She tells me her father liked me a lot, and maybe Skye did too, from the unkind things she’s been saying. She laughs, and won’t tell me more. I ask if I’ll see her later and she says maybe, and then she says I hope so.
I watch the cricket. I lie low in a bean bag in front of the small TV and I watch the screen between my knees. It’s our innings and we’re chasing a reasonable total.
Len comes over with a couple of cold beers. I move the bean bag round and he pulls up a chair nearby and sits forward on it, peering at the TV through the lower lenses of his bifocals.
Shame the West Indies aren’t out here, he says. I’d love to see Lara. He’s good, isn’t he?
Yeah, he’s really good.
I saw Bradman bat a couple of times, and it’s not a comparison you like to make but . . . He shakes his head. I am aware of the enormity of the comparison. Sure his five-oh-one was against pretty ordinary opposition, but it’s still bloody five-oh-one, isn’t it? The highest test score and the highest first-class score within weeks of each other and by the same bloke. Who would have thought that’d ever happen?