by Joy Dettman
‘It would be half an hour out of your life, Jen,’ Georgie said.
‘Half an hour would be more than enough to make a fool of myself. I was listening to a writer on the ABC a few weeks back and he sounded like a university professor.’
‘Anyone who has read your books knows that you’re not a university professor, Jen,’ Jim said.
‘Thank you, Jim.’
‘You’ve been standing on stage singing since you were knee high to a grasshopper,’ he said.
‘Truly?’ Katie asked.
‘Once upon a time,’ Jenny said.
‘When I was a kid she played Snow White in a pantomime,’ Georgie said.
‘Were you famous, Nanny?’
‘No I wasn’t, and I don’t want to be.’
‘It would be like going on stage again,’ Georgie said. ‘You’d be playing the role of Juliana. You looked nothing like yourself as Snow White. Jimmy kept pulling on my arm and asking, “Where’s Jenny?” and you had a ball doing it too.’
‘I made money doing it,’ Jenny said.
And she’d had a ball. She’d become Snow White once her wig had been pinned down and her costume laced up. She’d done three two-hour performances at the Hawthorn town hall and when the last show ended, she’d been Jenny King again and four months pregnant, and she’d wanted to howl. Maybe she could play Juliana for half an hour.
Then Georgie said the magic words. ‘We’re proud of you, Jen. Katie drags me into every bookshop to count your books.’
No one had ever said that they were proud of her, or not since little Jenny Morrison had sung about the lonely petunia in the onion patch. You make me proud, Norman had said that night.
And goddamn it all, what did a woman four years away from eighty have to lose?
‘Could you make me look like a Juliana?’
‘We can, Nanny. Papa will be pulling at Mum’s elbow asking, “Where’s Jen?”’ Katie said.
*
Papa didn’t go to Greensborough. The night before they were to leave, his hip crippling him, he couldn’t lie still, couldn’t sit in his chair, let alone sit in the car for three hours.
‘I’ll go by myself,’ she said.
He couldn’t walk as far as the letterbox and she couldn’t leave him without his car, which he was able to drive if he took a couple of painkillers half an hour before setting off.
She walked to the bus stop. Georgie picked her up at the Melbourne depot at one.
‘We found the perfect wig at an opportunity shop, and a choice of outfits. Katie has laid them out on your bed for a dress rehearsal after school.’
Their purchases hit Jenny in the eye when she carried her case into the spare room. A pink suit and matching platform-soled sandals and an emerald-green mother of the bride floating chiffon thing.
‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in either of them,’ Jenny said.
‘That’s the idea, Jen. If you’re going to pull it off, you need to think outside the square of you.’
They picked Katie up at three thirty. At ten days old, she’d asked for Jenny’s heart and it had been given. She gave her her dress rehearsal.
The pink sandals were too big. Had they not been, Jenny would have claimed that they were too small. She tried both outfits – and had no intention of wearing either. She’d packed her black slacksuit and a blue top, and who could tell one black suit from the next?
She’d never been overly busty and didn’t have a lot left of what she’d had in her youth. Georgie tossed a padded bra onto the bed. ‘Try it, Jen.’
She tried it, and it gave her a bustline equal to Lila’s marble breasts – before they’d gone lopsided. She played busty Lila for Katie; she did her voice, then did Juliana’s accent, and Katie laughed and Jenny laughed, then Georgie offered the wig, a dark brown neck-length bob with a long and heavy fringe.
It covered most of her face and felt like one of those head-hugging hats from the thirties. ‘It itches, Georgie.’
‘I checked it for lice.’
‘We sprayed its inside with Mortein fly spray, then shampooed it,’ Katie said, and Jenny looked at her image in the mirror. She didn’t look like herself. She felt the textured fabric of the pink suit which might have been expensive in its day.
‘No one wears pink suits now,’ she said.
‘Except Juliana. It looks good,’ Georgie said.
‘I haven’t worn pink since Sissy’s hand-me-down sixty years ago. It ripped while I was on stage and put me off pink for life.’
‘That suit was tailored for you.’
The jacket might have been. The skirt barely covered her knees and it had no hem to let down.
‘It’s too short.’
‘You’ve still got good legs. Flaunt them,’ Georgie said.
She slid the pink sandals off and put her black high heels on. She’d need to wear stockings if she was flashing her legs, but Georgie had thought of everything. She’d bought pantihose. It was just a game she was playing to amuse Katie, so Jenny played it. Played mother of the bride later in green chiffon, and at dinner she drank two glasses of wine so she might continue the charade. Made silly jokes for her beautiful girl, made up silly poems.
‘There was an old lady in pink, who had far too much to drink. When she rose from the table, she was quite unable, and down to the floor she did sink.’
‘There was an old lady in green, the funniest that ever was seen. When she went on the telly, she got a pain in the belly, and how that old lady did scream,’ Katie countered.
‘There once was a lady of law, who stood barricading the door . . .’
But eleven year olds have to go to school. At nine Katie went to bed and Jenny took her cigarettes from her case and walked out to the street to light up and blow smoke into the dark. She never smoked when Katie was around. Kids learned in school that smoking kills. As did living, but they didn’t learn that at school. She walked to the corner, hoping to trip over in the dark and break a minor bone, and when she returned to the darker dark of Georgie’s backyard she damn near got her wish. Stubbed her toe on a rock and almost went for a sixer.
It was eleven when she went to bed the first time. Rose at midnight and made a cup of tea she took outside. Lit a smoke. Lit two. She was out of bed again at three o’clock, and eventually fell asleep propped on the family room couch, the television silent but flashing its mind-numbing commercials. Paul woke her at seven when he turned her sleeping pill off. He didn’t ask why she’d slept on the couch.
‘It will be a breeze, Jen,’ he said.
‘I feel stretched to breaking point,’ she said.
‘You don’t break, mate,’ Georgie called from the bathroom. ‘You’ve got the recoil of a rubber band.’
Last night had been warm, but while they’d slept a cool change had blown through turning midsummer to winter. Jenny took her coffee to the glass door where she stood looking out at the yard, seeing nothing, her mind going over and over the hours ahead. She watched the morning show from time to time. The host had been on television for years. She knew his interview style. Jim had made a list of questions she might be asked. They’d rehearsed Jenny’s replies. She couldn’t remember the questions this morning.
Georgie’s foot now well in the door of Marino and Associates, she’d arranged her appointments so she might play literary agent cum taxi driver, and when Katie was at school, she slid into her literary agent role.
There was a poem about a wolf and a vain little pig, a kids’ poem Jenny had long ago memorised. She recalled it now as she dressed for her date with the big bad wolves . . . and when Georgie saw her blue top and black slack suit, she told her to get them off. Then she dropped her bombshell.
‘Your publicist arranged for a photographer to come to the house. Everyone and their dog will recognise you in that. Put the green on first – and that bra too.’
Other than a swipe of face cream and a dash of lipstick, Jenny rarely bothered with makeup. Georgie plastered it on her that morning, a sheet pr
otecting the flyaway green. She added eye shadow, eyebrow pencil, mascara and layers of pale pink lipstick, guaranteed not to kiss off. Then they pulled that crawling wig into place and when every fading tendril of gold had been tucked beneath it, they pinned the wig down with a multitude of bobby pins and slid long dangly green earrings through her lobes.
‘Where are your black-rimmed glasses, Jen?’
‘They’re my reading glasses.’
‘They’ll do for the photographs. Those frameless things look like you,’ she said.
They had trouble sliding the arms of the glasses beneath the too well pinned wig, but they covered much of her face and matched the wig. If she’d been wearing her black slacksuit, she might have looked like a writer.
‘Let me wear my slacksuit.’
‘Jennifer Hooper doesn’t wear green and pink, now behave yourself.’
She couldn’t run from this, couldn’t hide from it. Couldn’t sit down on the floor and kick her heels. Couldn’t think of her list of questions but remembered every word of that poem and recited it in her mind while the photographer carried in half a ton of paraphernalia.
She preened in the mirror. She made herself neat . . .
He took umpteen dozen shots of her, first in her green with her green dangling earrings, then in her pink, with pink and gold ear studs. He shot her full length, head and shoulders, pink suit walking, pink suit sitting. Hair hanging forward, hair held back to show one earring. He took shots of her wearing Georgie’s maroon jacket, a few with one of Georgie’s scarves. Then he wanted her to remove her glasses. She clung to them and raised her hand at Georgie.
‘We’re out of time,’ Georgie said.
And she opened the door – to be swept off her feet . . .
Greensborough was a long way from the city but that morning the trip was too short. She saw no traffic on the road.
‘Where were you born?’ Georgie asked.
‘Halfway between Australia and Italy.’
‘What year was that, Juliana?’
‘I can’t give them Margot’s date of birth. She would have turned sixty this year.’
‘They’ll know you haven’t had a facelift – and they won’t ask anyway.’
‘They’ll bring up that plagiarism thing again.’
‘What will you say if they do?’
‘Rape is all too common, as were Sydney boarding houses during the forties. And until that coot started—’
‘Don’t call him a coot, Jen.’
‘Until that literary gentleman started his plagiarism thing, I had not read Angel at My Door.’
‘And?’
‘And I thought I was here to discuss The Winter Boomerang, much of which is also set in Sydney during wartime.’
‘Good enough. What are you currently working on, Juliana?’
‘Thanks to you, I’ll probably die of a heart attack before I finish it.’
‘Relax and be yourself – as much as you can,’ Georgie advised.
‘In pink, with a thirty-eight inch foam rubber bust and my knocking knees on show – and as blind as the proverbial bat in those reading glasses. With a bit of luck I’ll fall over and break my neck before I get in there.’
‘Try my glasses,’ Georgie said, offering them. They were black-rimmed but sunglasses.
‘You said I couldn’t wear sunglasses.’
‘They’re only tinted once you’re inside,’ Georgie said.
‘You’ve got a weak muscle. They’ll send me cross-eyed.’
‘Which could be a good thing this morning.’
*
Jenny had never ridden a roller-coaster. She rode one that Wednesday morning and all she could do was hang on until it stopped or she was flung off flat on her face. You can imagine an experience over and over, you can practise your replies until you’re word perfect, but all of that didn’t matter a damn. Once out of the car, her mind turned to baby mush and any second now she was going to spit up. She almost vomited when they ushered her away from Georgie – just as she and Sissy had been ushered away from Amber on the night of the talent quest, and just as Amber had attempted to follow Sissy, Georgie attempted to follow Jenny with the glasses she’d required for driving. Someone brought them in to the makeup room. Jenny slid her sunglasses from beneath her wig and put the other pair on, then the makeup woman asked her to take them off so she could powder her face.
‘I’ve already powdered it.’
The woman not satisfied, Georgie’s glasses came off and, Georgie’s eye makeup or not, the eyes looking back from the mirror were Jenny’s and they were petrified. She clung to her wig, refusing to allow the makeup woman to touch it then, when the glasses were poked and prodded back beneath it, she dared another look in the mirror. Maybe Juliana Conti looked back at her – a somewhat blurred Juliana.
They led her out, pointed her in the right direction, gave her a nod when it was time for her to make her entrance. Then she was on her own. She’d made a few entrances in a past life so, grasping at straws, she reached for the past and for Miss Rose’s final instructions before kid Jenny had made her entrance on stage: Head high. Give the audience a big smile, Jennifer.
Head high, stomach threatening to lose its two bites of breakfast toast, she fixed on her fake smile and walked across to the host – to applause. Maybe the applause helped. If the worst came to the worst she could stand up and sing ‘I’ll Walk With God’.
Georgie hadn’t told her there’d be a second guest. With too much else to see in the studio, Jenny didn’t notice the already seated stranger until the host introduced her to Ms Langhall.
A MATCH
MADE IN HEAVEN
Sissy and Lila usually watched the morning show. It came on before Days of Our Lives. They knew the host well.
‘He wasn’t a bad-looking sort when he was young,’ Lila said.
‘All you ever talk about is men. If you’re going to watch it, shut up and let me listen.’
‘They’re writers. Who’s interested in what they say?’
Sissy was. She’d read about Juliana Conti in a magazine. ‘She had a grandmother who went missing in the war or something. She’s Italian.’
‘When I was young, blokes used to ask me if I was a dago,’ Lila said. ‘My hair was as dark as hers and long enough to sit on.’
‘So was mine,’ Sissy said.
‘You ought to dye it. Grey hair is aging.’
‘So is going bald. You’re so thin on top I can see your scalp shining through. A friend told me once that too much dying kills all the hair roots.’
Sissy had plenty of hair, the Hoopers’ steel grey. At eighty, she took up less of the couch than she had at seventy. Lila would wear the weight off anyone. Watching her incessant movement burned calories, as did sucking in her secondhand smoke.
She rose to get the remote, then to flip through the channels looking for something worth watching, and while her back was turned, Sissy helped herself to another Tim Tam. She’d almost got rid of it before Lila gave up flicking and settled for the writers. She caught her crunching.
‘We paid half each for those,’ Lila said, claiming the packet and placing it out of Sissy’s reach while the Conti woman spoke about her small country property.
‘She looks like a cat on hot bricks,’ Lila said.
‘Can you keep your mouth shut for five minutes?’
The camera swung to the other writer, clad in a silky beige shirt and brown slacks. I wrote the first drafts of Angel at My Door in longhand during my first year at college, she was saying. It began as a search for my own identity.
The Conti woman said she’d never considered writing a book until her son-in-law introduced her to a floppy disc that knew how to play cards.
‘She sounds familiar,’ Lila said.
‘She doesn’t sound Italian. That other one reminds me of someone.’
They sat forward as the camera moved in on Conti, who was speaking about being born on a boat halfway between Italy and Australia. It must h
ave been traumatic. I haven’t been on a boat since, she said, and the audience laughed.
‘She sounds like Jenny!’ Lila said. ‘Her and Jim and those up-themselves McPhersons used to make kids’ books years ago. I was in three of them.’
‘If you think I believe that, you’ve got rocks in your bald head.’
‘It’s true. I had a copy of one of them until the old mongrel I was married to burned it. Jenny’s still got copies of them. Ring her up and ask her.’
‘If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times not to mention her name in my house.’
‘She’s my best friend and I’ll talk about her if I want to, and I pay half the rent and half the bills.’
‘The bills come to me so it’s my house.’
You write directly to your computer, Miss Conti?
Why do it twice?
‘Close your eyes and listen to her. She sounds exactly like Jenny.’
‘As if I’d know what she sounds like. I haven’t seen her since . . . years.’ Conti had said something. The audience was laughing. ‘What did she say?’
‘Who cares? It probably wasn’t funny. They have a bloke on stage who holds up signs telling the audience when to laugh,’ Lila said. ‘I went to one of Tommy Hanlon’s shows once. I didn’t get picked to be on it, but one woman who did, she got a new washing machine and dryer.’
The camera was on the second writer, who had a lot more to say than the one in pink. She’d flown over from England yesterday and was flying up to Sydney tomorrow, then on Monday she was off to Perth.
‘They have a good life, jetsetting around all over the country. I wish I had the money to fly somewhere,’ Lila said.
‘I went on a boat to Tasmania once,’ Sissy said.
‘Tasmania’s not somewhere.’
I like your title, A Hand of Cards, the writer in pink said. I’ve always thought that we’re dealt a hand of cards at birth and good, bad or indifferent, we play the best game we can with what we’ve been dealt.
‘That’s Jenny, or I’ll eat my hat! Her legs look like Jenny’s.’