Thee rolled her eyes.
‘Wow,’ Hine said. ‘Want your cab now?’
‘Hi, Hine,’ said Thee. ‘Hi, Eloise.’
‘Perfection,’ Scott said. His phone beeped. ‘A feast for … Roysmith. Hi, Chad.’
Eloise and Thee went ahead.
‘Iris was up all night, puking,’ Thee said. She rummaged in her bag.
‘Oh?’
‘She’s got some bug. Now I’m feeling a bit delicate, too. But I had to come, I’m taking photos.’ She had her big camera slung over her shoulder.
Scott bounced down the steps. ‘That was Loafer.’ He winked. ‘With demands. Mr Hartmann wants previews, discussions, editorial control. Sure. Like hell. Where’s the cab? Here it is. Off we go. I didn’t say to him, our emails have been quite slow lately. Is that because your boss has hacked his way in there? Getting a preview at his leisure?’
They rode through town.
‘Put the window down,’ Thee said, her hand over her mouth. They waited. She sighed. ‘No, it’s passed.’
‘My poor darling.’
Eloise looked out at the crawling traffic. ‘My email and internet at home is really slow now.’
‘Assume everything’s being read. Emails, Facebook, texts.’
‘Right. No fat jokes.’
‘From now on it’s either encryption or by hand. Face to face. And your iPhone’s a bloody bug, don’t forget. It’s a listening device. If you want privacy, put it in the fridge.’
‘Window!’
They waited.
‘Poor love.’
Thee slumped back in her seat. Her face had a faintly yellow sheen. ‘God,’ she said in a weak voice.
‘Here we are, quite a crowd already. By the way, E, I got a tip-off: management’s assembling a panel of experts to review the shocks. And the great thing is Selena quit today. She’s going to sue …’
They threaded through the crowd outside the theatre, Scott and Thee pausing at the entrance for a photographer. They were early. Scott made his way, was laughingly stopped, nabbed, buttonholed: he was from TV, everyone wanted to be close.
Eloise and Thee peeled off, and found seats in the bar.
‘How’s Sean?’ Thee pressed her glass to her forehead. The ice cubes gave off tiny cracks.
‘He’s … working.’
‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’
Eloise looked away. It was such a burden. It wasn’t easy to lie to Thee: Thee with her sharp cheekbones, her wide mouth and clever eyes. Her permanent expression of irony and exasperated humour. Apart from Carina and Scott, Thee was Eloise’s favourite person. Like Carina, Thee had opinions, got into arguments, fearlessly said her piece. Afterwards she shrugged her shoulders, despaired, laughed, wound her dark hair into a bun and secured it with a chopstick, pushed up her sleeves, waded into whatever mess her children had created. She didn’t have Eloise’s problem, which was increasingly (it seemed) the inability to see people clearly. Carina and Thee: they saw things straight away.
Thee was forthright and frank; Scott was cautious and circumspect — he was, despite his admiration for Pilger, studiously balanced. (Because he was on TV.) He was devoted to his wife, and admired her, and whatever she said went. ‘Ask Thee,’ he’d say. ‘No, Thee’s the brains.’
‘I used to think I was observant,’ Eloise said.
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘Well, I didn’t notice anything was wrong. And now … Sean and I, we’ve separated. I’m going to have to sell the house, leave the peninsula.’
‘Oh, God, sorry.’
‘Thanks. It’s not so bad. I’m enjoying the freedom really. The Me time.’
Thee fanned herself with a programme. ‘He’s mad. She’s a complete drip.’
‘Who?’
‘Danni Whatsername. Wannabe actress, long chin. She’s into self-help seminars.’
‘How d’you know about her?’
‘Not sure. Just a guess.’
‘A guess. Right. I suppose everyone knows.’
‘Well, not everyone.’
Eloise wished for a second large glass of chardonnay, followed by a tankard of gin and tonic. Topped up with a mountain of Valium.
‘Unbelievable,’ she said.
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘What else do you know?’
‘Nothing. Just that she was on some kids’ TV programme once, and looks like a Barbie doll.’
‘A complete drip, you said?’
‘Sort of New Ageish. Humourlessly into self-help.’
‘Syrupy and cloying,’ Eloise suggested.
‘Looks like a mite or poppet in a painting on a motel wall. Big eyes, long eyelashes, babydoll fringe.’
They sat back, thinking about this.
‘Quite a problem then, isn’t she,’ Eloise said eventually.
Thee sat up. ‘Ah, forget Sean. He’ll be regretting it already. We need to find you someone new.’
‘There you are,’ Scott said, emerging from the crush. ‘How are you, my love?’
‘Moderately better thanks. We’re just talking about Sean.’
‘Oh. Sorry!’
Eloise threw up her hands. ‘God, so you know, too, do you? You could have said.’
‘Everyone— Anyway, let me just get a beer. Another wine, E?’
He headed for the bar. The crowd parted around him, approving and soft-eyed.
Eloise said dully, ‘It must be weird being stared at all the time.’
‘He used to find it strange. We both did, seeing him on billboards, his face driving by on buses.’
‘He’s frighteningly popular.’
‘Anyway, Eloise, are you living by yourself? Is it okay?’
‘It’s fine. Great. Loving the freedom. You don’t have to cook. The … uh … spontaneity. No planning. Long rambling walks. Nature and that.’
‘Oh, good,’ Thee said.
‘I’m trying out seeing a shrink, too.’
Scott emerged — was reluctantly released by the crowd. Thee pointed at him. ‘His sister’s a clinical psychologist.’
Eloise reached for (snatched) her glass of wine and said intently to Scott, ‘You were talking about Pilger and balance the other night. So I started thinking about balance with the shrink. When your sister’s treating a patient, how does she know she’s getting a balanced report? What if it’s false, and she ends up basing her assumptions on lies?’
‘She works to sort out the distortions,’ Scott said.
‘I went to a shrink once,’ Thee said. ‘I felt I was telling him a series of stories. He wanted to talk about my childhood, and I wouldn’t do that.’
‘I suppose she reads between the lines,’ Scott went on. ‘She gets the patient to call a spade a spade.’
Eloise said, ‘At the beginning my main problem was I felt like a bore at a party. After a whole hour talking about myself, I went away feeling incredibly sorry for the shrink.’
‘But has it helped?’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking about this when we were talking about Pilger. The therapist’s office has glass doors onto a garden, right. One day I was talking and I looked out and saw a rat. First it balanced on a stick, then it started walking around on the bricks outside. I didn’t even pause. I carried on talking, but at the same time I was deciding what to do about the rat, whether I should I mention it. I decided no, it wasn’t relevant.’
Scott let out a big laugh. People glanced over with tender, indulgent smiles.
‘I edited out the rat,’ Eloise said. ‘So if I was editing, could I say there was balance?’
‘You don’t have to discuss everything,’ Thee said. ‘You can leave out the odd rat.’
‘I wanted to mention the rat in the next session. But I wondered whether it would be rude. To say, actually, the whole time I was talking to you, I was looking at a rat.’
‘And not telling you about it,’ Scott said.
‘Secretly looking at a rat,’ Thee said.
‘Would it seem somehow hostile?’ Eloise said. ‘Maybe she’d think, How sly to spring this rat on me now!’
Thee rattled the ice in her glass, ‘She’d think you were making up the rat.’
‘But to what end?’
‘To raise your concerns about balance.’
‘What’s balanced about Pilger,’ Scott said, ‘is that he calls a spade a spade.’
‘He confronts the elephant in the room.’
‘He would have mentioned the rat.’
‘Or would he have edited out the rat as irrelevant? Because he’s only concerned with truth.’
‘The rat was true. It was real.’
‘But it wasn’t relevant to the truth you were discussing.’
‘Pilger would certainly have smelled a rat.’
Eloise said, ‘Anyway, this shrink. I can’t work out how I feel about her. It’s possible I find her incredibly frightening. The other day she started talking about pilots who deliberately crash their planes. She sort of clenched her fists and said, They’re entrusted with people’s safety. And they turn round and kill them. So I said, Maybe they feel burdened by all those patients they’ve been saddled with. All that pressure to perform, and no one caring about them.’
‘Patients?’ Thee said.
‘Exactly. I said patients when I meant passengers!’
‘Maybe I should go to a shrink,’ Scott said. ‘The pressures of fame …’
‘Darling, you love fame. You’re made for fame.’
Eloise said, ‘Have you read The Information by Martin Amis? The hero writes a novel; agents, publishers, editors enthusiastically set to work reading it, but as soon as they get to about page nine they can’t go on. One has a stroke, another has a catastrophic migraine, another has a breakdown. The novel is simply … unreadable.’
‘Relevance?’ Scott said.
‘I fear I am that novel.’
Scott laughed and the crowd turned and stole a look, and warmly smiled. A group of women edged nearer to them, beaming secretively, as though contemplating a pile of gold.
‘You should run for office,’ Eloise said.
Thee said, ‘Mr Popular. It reminds me of another novel actually — The Swimming Pool Library, where the gay guys are crowded in the showers at the gym, and when one gets a hard-on it creates a wave of hard-ons in response.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ Scott said, taking her hand with a fond glare, a little mime of reproach. He eyed the women, who eyed him back.
‘You laugh, they laugh.’
‘You’re a snake charmer.’
But Scott’s expression altered. He lowered his voice, ‘Here’s a real snake charmer for you, ladies.’
And the crowd followed his gaze …
There was a pause, and then a rapid shifting and regrouping, women craned and stood on tip-toe, there was some subtle shoving, an excited laugh among the group standing near.
‘She’s really tall. Is she taller than him?’
‘He looks the same. Only a bit more grey.’
‘Look at her dress.’
‘Could she be six feet tall?’
‘They don’t pay tax. They keep their money offshore.’
‘She’s had a boob job. A facelift. A derma-peel. She’s had work.’
‘You know it when you see it.’
Eloise stood; she, too, craned to see. The Hallwrights were heading for the entrance to the stalls, the crowd parting ahead of them. He walked with a slight limp, she had a hand on his arm. They looked the same only more so: they used to look like money, now they looked like more money. Both tall, expensively dressed, she in a tight-fitting dress, he in a costly suit, they moved with stately slowness through the crowd. The ex-PM and the kids’ book writer … Which one was meant to be the brains?
‘Which one’s the brains?’
‘Her.’
‘Him.’
‘Her.’
‘They’re good-looking.’
‘That suit,’ Scott said, ‘is definitely one of Ronald’s.’
‘I hope it’s not the same. One of you would have to go home.’
‘My wife mocks me,’ Scott said.
‘Christ, someone has to. Let’s go in.’
The bells had started to ring.
‘We’ll try and catch them after,’ Scott said. ‘Come on.’ He drew their arms through his and blinked, and said, ‘Look how lucky I am, with the two most beautiful women in the room.’
‘Oh shut up, Scott.’
‘The two cleverest—’
‘Look, is that the madwoman who stalked Jack Anthony?’
‘No! Is she wearing an electronic ankle bracelet?’
‘She’s got pants on. Let’s get closer.’
‘The cleverest and most beautiful—’
‘Um, The Marriage of Figaro. There’s Figaro and Susanna and the Countess — but what happens in it again?’
‘Here, read the programme.’
Arm in arm, they followed the Hallwrights in a procession towards the auditorium. A crush developed at the door and they slowed, waited, Eloise’s mind wandering in a haze of wine and pleasure: Scott’s random jokes, Thee’s laugh, Scott’s arm holding her, the heat of bodies. See, Arthur, we’re dogs. We’re pack animals. Wanting to be held close like this, hard up against the people we love.
In the stalls there was shuffling along and making way and squinting at programmes, and a dicey moment when Thee leaned forward with a hand over her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut, and Scott laid his big hand on her forehead and whispered, We can go home if you can’t manage, and then the curtain went up and the day of madness, la folle journée, began in the household of Count Almaviva.
‘I feel better actually,’ Thee said, as they made their way out at the interval. ‘It’s good. Sitting in the dark with my eyes closed. Beautiful music. No bickering kids.’
Eloise was in two minds: the music was beautiful, Susanna’s voice was sensational, but there was something about the Countess… She checked the programme. The singer, a visiting star, hailed originally from Lancashire. The voice, the face …
‘The man next to me — his nose keeps whistling.’
‘I’ve preordered drinks and snacks,’ Scott said, ushering them forward. ‘All taken care of.’
‘Scott, can we swap after? So you have a turn with the nose-whistler.’
‘Of course, love.’
‘Do you think the Countess is singing in a Northern English accent?’ Eloise said.
Thee frowned. ‘Is that even possible?’
Eloise said vaguely, ‘A sort of eh oop delivery. And the way she laughs dismissively, and combs her hair in quick movements with the ends of her fingers.’
Remember, Arthur? Next she’ll be singing, I don’t eat foreign muck. Oh no, chuck. Does it contain garlic?
‘Anyway, who do you think’s the father?’
‘Minister O’Keefe? I reckon sperm donor. Cos she’s a workaholic.’
‘She’s secretly gay. So, a gay friend.’
‘Who needs to be secretly gay? No one’s secretly gay these days.’
‘Wasn’t she a Mormon?’
‘Can Mormons be gay?’
‘She’s not gay!’
‘She’s pretty hot.’
‘Every time Bradley Kirk gets near her he looks misty.’
‘So do they all.’
‘Not any more. Now they look shifty.’
‘Here comes trouble,’ Scott boomed.
A change in atmosphere (one of the Sinister Doormat’s high-pressure systems, approaching from the west) made the crowd turn, faces shining like a row of little suns. And the two television stars came together and collided, with soft kisses. Beyond, everywhere you looked, a constellation of shining eyes.
‘Mariel, darling.’
‘Hi, guys! Thee, you look amazing.’
They were used to this: talking as though no one was looking. And they were being doubly scrutinised, now that there were two television people on display. Marie
l Hartfield was all smooth brown flesh and striking eyes: she was media glamour, fashion, money. She wore a parody of a tuxedo, with a tight, revealing white shirt. She was almost too thin yet sexily curvy, and her heels were wickedly high.
Eloise found herself next to Mariel’s husband, Hamish Dark.
‘Hi,’ she said.
He was tall, lean and sarcastic, rumoured to be depressive. He was a journalist, but he didn’t disguise his allegiance to the National Party; in fact he had a sideline as the MC at National Party functions. Eloise had seen him jogging in the Domain, fully clad in lycra, his teeth bared as if he were in an agony beyond the physical.
‘Hello, Eloise.’ His tone was knowing: he was too cool for all this.
Arthur would have had a take on Hamish and Mariel: he resents her fame, but also likes it. He’s cleverer than she is, but she’s more successful, because he’s thin-skinned and she’s not. Her lack of subtlety is her armour, his complexity predisposes him to the Black Dog.
Or something like that.
Hamish said, ‘Amazing how everyone loves opera all of a sudden. Even ZB DJs. Even weather girls, celebrity chefs.’
‘Well it’s for child cancer, right.’
‘Exactly. They turn up because it’s a charity event. Not because they love Mozart.’
Eloise felt vaguely that this was kind of a redundant thing to say. Hamish Dark: keeping it real. Behind the pretension, with Hamish Dark. The master of the scathing quip, the guy who ‘sees through things’. And here comes another brilliant statement of the obvious. She had a sudden yearning to say something earnest, impassioned (and therefore uncool). Sure, life is absurd. All is bullshit. Quite a few of us can see that. But what do you love, Hamish? Is there anything that you love? That’s what’ll save you from the Dog.
But what did she know? Hamish had a partner and kids; all she had was an empty stone house. Not exactly qualified to give advice, then. Who do I love — whom? Carina, the Sparkler, Scott and Thee. It’s not a very long list. Well, you have to start somewhere …
The Sinister Doormat walked by in witchy red shoes, and winked.
And the bells rang, and they trooped back in.
After the hysterics and the high jinks, after the drama in the garden, after the celestial singing … Tinsel floated down onto the stage in jubilant celebration. The audience erupted in applause and eventually rose in a ragged wave to its feet; there were hoarse and ironic cries of bravo from the high-spirited invited guests, some of whom had whispered and checked their cell phones throughout.
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