by Hugh Mackay
The truth is, Freya is neither settled nor stable. Probably never will be. Her soul is restless by nature. I get that. Music is a balm, not a cure.
Anyway, this particular conversation trundled along its well-worn track, leading inexorably to the moment when her mother asked Freya: ‘Do you think music is really the right thing for you? I mean, long term? I mean, as a career?’ Meaning, of course, that Richard would be quite capable of supporting you and a baby if you decided to stop work for a while; that this fragile so-called career is absorbing too much of your energy and distracting you from the prospect of motherhood; that such an uncertain and erratic professional life is quite unsuited to a baby’s demands for routine, reliability, predictability. (Ironic, really, that Freya was so resentful of her mother’s cajoling on the subject of babies way back then, yet she is cajoling me in almost precisely the same terms now.)
The argument came to an end quite abruptly when Freya smiled at her mother in a way that conveyed unspoken messages of love, understanding, sympathy, generosity, kindness . . . and please shut up. And that’s what her mother did.
Daniel, of course, is a different kettle of fish entirely. I may never know the full story. They were lovers, obviously, when they were very young. He and Freya somehow remained friends – I’ve never been able to do that with an ex: when it’s done, it’s done. That’s my style; I think I get it from my mother. Freya says she has never felt a flicker of desire for Daniel in all the years since then, and I desperately need to believe her because the alternative would be a shortcut to madness. She doesn’t even appear to esteem him very highly as a musician as far as I can tell. I hear her on the phone talking to Olivia, their viola player, and she seems to speak rather disparagingly of his musicianship, though he’s obviously reliable. I wouldn’t know about any of that, one way or the other: he seems to do a perfectly adequate job, playing his cello and gazing adoringly at my wife. She’s the leader, she says, and he needs to look to her for cues. Maybe.
Her version is that they have major differences of opinion over interpretation, and Daniel is often offended by her insistence on doing it her way. I know how he feels, though I have no sympathy for him.
I’ve seen his theatrics when they have occasionally rehearsed at our place. I’ve seen him sulking. Moody. Surly. Unresponsive. And I’ve seen his spirits lift in an instant when Freya has turned and smiled at him. Right at him. Full on.
Those bright white teeth, perfectly shaped, perfectly spaced; those full lips, generously parted; sparkling eyes, crinkled nose; the single dimple in her right cheek; chin raised, as if she’s expecting to be kissed. (But not by Daniel; please, not by Daniel.)
12
A New Client
The new client had sounded impressive on the phone. Strong. Rational. Realistic. Articulate. Clear about what was wanted. Richard loved the challenge of renovations. Creation was every architect’s chief passion, but Richard saw renovation as a kind of transformation – just as creative, in its way, as starting from scratch. And, in any case, we never really start from scratch, he often told his colleagues: there’s always a streetscape, or a landscape, or a plot of land with its own character, its own demands. We always start with something.
This project sounded both challenging and lucrative: getting some character into what sounded like a pretty charmless house. It could hardly have been further from Richard’s real passion – creating stylish low-cost housing – but he was realistic enough to know that the domestic side of Urbanski depended on its high-end clients.
As he usually did when he was making his first visit to a prospective job, he parked well away from the site and strolled up and down the street to get a feel for the context. It was a leafy street, typical of the affluent Upper North Shore, about as far as you could get from Richard’s comfort zone in the trendy Inner West. Bush could be glimpsed through the gap between some of the houses – they apparently backed on to some kind of nature reserve – and he had to admit there was an air of gentility about the homes themselves, mostly two storey.
Except number twenty-four. Single storey. Hard to think of any way to describe it except as a stock-standard triple-fronted brick bungalow. It was in good enough nick, but somehow managed to look as if it were in the wrong street. Expensive, but dreary. Almost neglected. The few straggly shrubs in the front garden contrasted with the lush, well-tended gardens on either side.
There was, improbably, an Aston Martin parked in the driveway, as if on show.
Richard returned to his car and drove back to the house. He grabbed his duffel bag containing notebook, tape measure and iPad, walked up the drive – on closer inspection, the Aston was far from new – and knocked on the door.
There was a long delay before he heard footsteps approaching and a short, stocky man clad in an immaculate suit, complete with silk tie, appeared at the door, holding two glasses of champagne.
‘You must be Richard,’ he said, holding out one of the glasses.
‘And you’re Lincoln, obviously.’ They smiled at each other, clinked glasses, and shook hands.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Lincoln. ‘Looks a bit of a hovel, but that’s precisely why you’re here. Dehovelisation. I’m told you’re the best there is.’
Richard glanced around dubiously. If they had the money for the sort of renovation Lincoln had been talking about on the phone, it wasn’t evident in the state of the interior. Perhaps they had bought cheaply with the intention of tearing the place apart. A more typical client might have preferred to knock it down completely and start again.
‘Living the dream, are you, bro?’ said Lincoln, exuding good cheer.
Richard wasn’t sure how best to respond, so he grinned and said, ‘I do my best.’
Moving briskly, almost excitedly, from room to room, Lincoln painted a vivid word picture of his own dream – shared, he said, by his wife, a doctor who could not join them today as she was working in the operating theatre of a nearby private hospital. Richard thought he said St Walburga’s. Not a saint he’d ever heard of. He’d have to google it. Could be a talking point.
‘You’ll meet Hermione at some stage,’ said Lincoln. ‘But I’m the point man for these preliminary skirmishes.’
‘You work from home?’ Richard asked, as they walked into a smallish room Lincoln described as his office. A glass and chrome desk stood against one wall, devoid of any sign of activity, save a MacBook Air, closed. A small bookcase was full of neatly arranged DVDs. Framed advertisements lined the walls.
‘Resting just now, in point of fact. I’m in the process of setting up on my own, but my previous employer’s contract prevents me from doing anything competitive for a month or two. Here’s my new card.’
Richard glanced at it. Lincoln the Hunter, it said, over a stylish coat of arms. There was an email address and a mobile phone number, and no other details.
‘Marketing,’ explained Lincoln. ‘You’d know my work.’
‘Oh?’ Richard was intrigued. Perhaps there had been a huge payout, and that’s where the money was coming from.
‘You’ll have seen the beautiful roses on BudJet aircraft?’
Richard dimly recalled a cut-price Asian airline that had attracted a brief flurry of publicity, but he had heard nothing more of it. He shook his head.
‘The Ripper?’
Richard looked mystified.
‘You’re hardly the target audience, of course. Most successful snack-food product launch in living memory. I thought you might have seen the YouTube clip. Man in a black cape disrupting some pollie’s press conference? It was all over the news for a day or two. Does that ring a bell?’
‘I do recall something on the news about a child who became seriously ill after eating a new –’
‘Storm in a teacup. You’d know Cocky Cocktails, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Richard, without conviction. ‘Shall we look at the kitchen?’
As soon as Richard began to outline the concept of a convivium, the
tone of the encounter changed radically. As if Richard had turned on a switch, Lincoln fell head over heels in love with the whole idea instantly.
‘Awesome, Richard. That’s simply awesome. No other word for it. I can already see it in my mind’s eye.’
‘A polished concrete floor, I think, Lincoln,’ Richard went on. ‘Travertine is a bit passé, don’t you think? A bit of a cliché? Perhaps parquet . . . but, no, I think polished concrete. Lightly tinted, perhaps with Hermione’s favourite colour. The merest hint, of course.’
Polished concrete? Parquet? Travertine? It was all the same to Lincoln. He was eager to welcome a convivium into his life, regardless of its flooring. But he saw larger possibilities as well.
‘This is a game-changer, Richard, no question. Convivium. Wow! Have you registered the name? I assume we got it from the ancient Romans, right? If you ever decide to promote the idea with your own name firmly affixed to it, I believe I could be of some help. Definitely. Today an airline, tomorrow a convivium. Why not? I’m a gun for hire, just like you. When can we start work?’
‘On a PR campaign?’
‘Well, that too. No, I meant when can we get to work on the creation of our very own convivium, right here?’
Richard was simultaneously charmed and shocked by this unbridled effusiveness. He’d never known a client to embrace any idea with such naked enthusiasm. It felt almost as if Lincoln were trying to sell him the idea.
While Lincoln kept staring at his kitchen/dining area, already transformed in his mind’s eye, Richard was pondering two things. One was that the house barely felt lived in; it was too tidy; even the boys’ room showed no sign of boys. The other was the structural difficulties involved in getting rid of two load-bearing walls, moving the bedchamber – Lincoln loved ‘bedchamber’ – from the front to the back of the house where it would overlook the bush, gutting and redesigning both bathrooms, and creating two small bedrooms for the boys where the original master bedroom had been. He did some pacing, ran the tape measure over a couple of rooms, took some photos and promised to email some concept sketches and a preliminary quote, ‘a ballpark figure’.
As he was leaving, there was tentative talk of a second storey in a re-pitched roof with dormer windows. ‘We might stick the boys upstairs, out of the way,’ Lincoln said. ‘Hermione says they’ll be gone before you know it, although a former colleague of mine says this generation keeps coming back.’
Clearly, money was no object, after all.
They shook hands.
‘Live the dream, bro,’ said Lincoln.
The sight of his very own travertine-paved convivium gladdened Richard’s heart, as it always did when he returned home, though he sensed the travertine’s use-by date was fast approaching. Parquet was definitely having a revival. The dog might then become an issue, though. More of an issue. Perhaps polished concrete was the way to go.
‘Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the Hunter.’
‘What did you say?’ Freya swivelled around in her chair. She no longer heard the words, but the disrupted rhythm of Richard’s greeting was a surprise.
Richard plonked Lincoln’s card on the table in front of Freya.
She picked it up, looked at it, turned it over. ‘The hunter of what, precisely? Not big game, I hope.’
‘No, he’s some kind of marketing top gun, by the sound of it. Claims to have been the brains behind that airline that came and went. RamJet? Something like that?’
‘Oh, BudJet? How could you forget? Worst flight Fern has ever had. She took one of the kids to Melbourne. It was bumpy – well, you can’t blame the airline for the weather – and the service was non-existent. It seemed like quite an old plane. Cheap fare, of course. You get what you pay for. Anyway, to add insult to injury, when she got off the plane in Melbourne, she was handed a sad little rosebud that was clearly on its last legs, gasping for water. Never again, Fern said.’
‘What about some kids’ confectionery thing called the Ripper?’
Freya screwed up her nose. ‘Oh, you remember that poor child who was poisoned by a snack-food product? I think that was called the Ripper. I’m pretty sure the child survived, but there was a dreadful stink about it. Isn’t that an appalling name for a lolly! Is your hunter the brains behind that one, too?’
‘Just the promotion, I gather. Not the product.’
‘Gun for hire.’
‘That’s what he says. But that’s me, too, of course. And Continental Drift. We’re all guns for hire.’
‘Well, some of us are gunnier than others, I guess.’
‘Gunnier?’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Yes – well, no, not really. By the way, he loved the idea of a convivium. Wants me to patent it or something. Practically knocked me over in his enthusiasm to get started. I think he almost loved the name better than the concept.’
‘Great.’
Pause.
‘He’s keen on a polished concrete floor, too.’
Pause.
‘Could we please not start on that again?’
‘It’s just that –’
‘Please, Richard.’
‘I’ll go and change. How was your day?’
How was my day? Freya thought to herself, saying nothing, since Richard was already out of earshot. How was my day? When he comes back out here, I might just tell him.
She put some lasagne in the microwave and poured them both a drink.
13
Coming Home –
6th Variation – ‘Reverse Angle’
Freya is sitting at the French farmhouse table. She hears Richard arriving home from work. His footsteps pause at the entrance to the convivium. The convivium! Why does she put up with this shit? She knows he is smiling. She knows how important it is to him that the travertine pavers, like the dog, came from Turkey. Oh, don’t think we didn’t consider sourcing them from fucking Guidonia Montecelio, but, no, Italian would have been ‘boring’.
Wait, wait; he’s going to say it. Don’t say it, don’t say it don’tsayitdon’tsayitdon’t –
‘Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.’
One day, Freya thinks, I’ll tell him that the line he endlessly quotes is from a poem about a cemetery. They’re home, Richard, because they’re dead. Home for all eternity. I don’t wish you dead, Richard, of course I don’t. I love you, you oaf. Why can’t your words be as beautiful as your buildings? (I know, Mum. You can’t have everything.)
She turns and smiles at him, hoping he didn’t detect that little shiver. Not of revulsion, exactly. No, certainly not of revulsion. What, then? Just a little sign of . . . protest, resistance, weariness? Involuntary. Unkind. Unworthy.
‘You okay, Frey?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says, and means to say: I really am fine. That shiver was nothing. I know there are things about me that drive you to distraction, too. Like my friendship with Daniel. Like what a lousy, reluctant cook I am. Like how I fail to moan like a porn star when we’re making love. Like how seriously I take my work, when you think I’m merely in the entertainment game. The entertainment game! Well, yes. But, no, I’m fine.
How are you, my darling? How was your day? Why couldn’t she bring herself to say things like that? Her mother could do it, year after year, for her father. No wonder he died with a smile on his face. She knew it would feel like a blessing to Richard. She’d say it tomorrow, for sure. No, not tomorrow – she had a late rehearsal. Soon, then.
‘Have you eaten?’ There. Isn’t that a loving question? Even if reheated lasagne is all that’s on offer. But he knows the rules – we take it in turns to cook, and we only bother if we haven’t had a decent lunch. He’ll have had an excellent lunch. ‘Yes. Well, no, not really.’ Why does he do that? Yes – well, no, not really. It’s like when he can’t think how to round off what he’s saying to someone and there’s an awkward pause and he says, ‘So, yeah . . . no.’ Is the world going to end tomorrow, Ri
chard? ‘Well, no one knows, do they, so yeah, no, not really.’ It makes him sound like a fence-sitter, which he most assuredly is not. Nor an equivocator. Not Richard. Quite the reverse. So it’s just a verbal tic, and a really, really irritating one.
‘I suppose you ate at Beppi’s.’ It’s not a question. Of course he ate at Beppi’s. Does he love Beppi’s? The question doesn’t arise. He eats at Beppi’s. Daily. Unless he’s too far away to get there for lunch – like in Europe, for instance. He takes clients to Beppi’s. He takes prospects to Beppi’s. He sometimes takes colleagues to Beppi’s. He eats alone at Beppi’s. He takes Freya to Beppi’s and expects her to act as if it’s a special occasion even though he treats it like his staff canteen the rest of the time.
Freya waits for him to notice her skirt. Her little welcome-home treat. He notices it, strokes her shoulders, pulls her out of her chair, embraces her, runs his hands over her bottom, enjoying both the curves and the skirt. It is a beautiful skirt – quite sexy in its way – and very useful for distracting Richard, or softening him up, when that becomes necessary. Like when the Baby Question has to be raised. As it must be raised, with increasing urgency. For some couples – most couples – the Baby Question can be settled by natural means. We want to have a baby. I’ll go off the pill. We’ll make love as if we want a baby and, if we haven’t left it too late, there will be a baby. It was that easy for Fern and Mike. But it was certainly not that easy for Daniel and Lizzie. And it will never be that easy for Freya and Richard.
So the skirt is both beautiful and useful. Just like me, thinks Freya ironically, seeing herself through Richard’s eyes.
Freezing Richard’s sperm won’t be a problem. Finding an egg donor and a surrogate won’t be a problem. Getting Richard to agree to freeze his sperm – to agree to the entire strategy – that will be the problem. And time is of the essence. Even if they are not going to use her eggs, it’s her energy that is going to be needed to care for the baby. At thirty-nine, nature appears to have decreed that she’s too old, and Mother Nature is worth listening to, surely. Freya doesn’t want to be a figure of fun: a first-time mother in the body of a middle-aged woman. ‘Oh, is that your grandson?’ It would be a bit like those bizarre cosmetic surgery outcomes – the face of a forty-year-old perched on the neck of a sixty-year-old.