Terry Feldman, the lobbyist, the third time this week. Laurel has never been sure what being a lobbyist means, but she’s noticed that he can walk round the restaurant and know everyone, with an intimacy that she is almost sure irritates people, but that somehow they value. Clay Brent, who runs a firm called Travelations; Travel with a Difference, he says with a wink and a leer like a bad actor in old-time music hall. His hands hover, never touching her, but the possibility manifest. Yet he never brings a woman who is a friend. If you could choose who you had in your restaurant, thinks Laurel, you wouldn’t have him. But of course you can’t. He is a good customer, coming often, bringing several business colleagues, usually Asian, ordering French champagne.
There’s an interesting booking, made with much fuss by a personal assistant: the Italian ambassador, the Italian minister for culture and a director of the gallery. Something afoot there.
And there’s a booking for two, in the name of C. Sturgeon. Laurel knows that Cherry Sturgeon is the alias the local restaurant critic uses, not when she writes but to book. So it’s their turn again. She closes the book, and goes to tell Flora, who won’t care but will want to know.
The light over the lake is low, with that silvery intensity that draws brightness into itself and leaves the world dim. The restaurant is shadowed, with an occasional glimmer on a glass or a piece of cutlery. It is a stage waiting to come to life when the actors step on to it.
Jerome Glancy often comes to The Point to eat. It isn’t far from his house in Barton, which is also his office; he can walk. He always sits at the same table, and mostly alone. He brings a book, and the light for just that spot is turned up a little so he can see to read, which he does while waiting for the food, not eating it. Sometimes he dines with someone, usually a woman, sometimes the same one several times running, but more often he is alone. He usually knows a number of the other diners, mostly because they are clients of his. His computer consultancy is very highly regarded.
Hello Jerry, murmurs Terry Feldman, and to his companion, I don’t think you know Jerry Glancy. Willy Morecombe, he says. Jerome has never heard the treasurer called Willy before. If you need a genius with a computer Jerry’s your man, says Terry. His voice is so soft you have to strain to hear, lean forward, pay attention.
Oh, I think we’ve got a few of those of our own, says Morecombe in a cool voice.
Wait’ll you try Jerry, says Terry.
Jerome might appear to be reading his book but often it’s just his eyes resting on the page. His seat in the restaurant is like a whispering gallery; quite soft conversations can be heard from across the room. And of course nobody realises this – or maybe they do, maybe this table is in demand for its eavesdropping qualities. A couple of times Jerome has dropped in for a drink at the bar, which is a scattering of thirties leather tub chairs, not so comfortable you’d want to sit in them for too long, and looked to see if anybody else is appreciating the acoustics, but it’s always been a couple in animated conversation, two gay men with ears only for themselves, a man and woman young and starry enough for honeymooners, two middle-aged women with a lot to laugh about, Morecombe with someone he recognised as a new backbencher. Maybe you had to sit there on your own and be still to overhear. And not many people dine on their own, nobody does, really.
Tonight he can hear Godblot, the magistrate, talking to a young woman, tall and slim, glamorously dressed and restless, as well she might be since he is famous for collecting pretty women. She seems to be called Titania.
The problem is the public service, Godblot is saying. It’s in the shape of a mushroom. Big bulge at the top, skinny stalk underneath.
Jerome hears the girl mutter, Like a mushroom cloud, but Godblot takes no notice, or more like doesn’t hear, he’s a great selflistener.
Whereas it should be in the shape of a Christmas tree. Leave it to me, I’d pretty soon get it into the shape of a Christmas tree.
With coloured lights, and a star on top?
Why not. You want a star, and you want him on top.
All pronouns carefully intended, says Titania.
It occurs to Jerome that this woman is considerably brighter than the magistrate’s usual candidates, and that a Christmas tree is supported on quite a thin stalk too.
Of course, Godblot goes on, the best thing would be to give someone like Lindsay Fox however many squillions and let him get on with running the country.
But the country isn’t a business …
There you go. That’s the mistake everyone makes. That’s what’s wrong with it, not running it like a business. Making a profit.
And what about the community, the society … what about the people?
A good boss cares about his people. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against childcare, that kind of thing, paid holidays. A good boss knows happy workers are productive workers.
It would be a dictatorship.
You shouldn’t be scared of words, Titania my love. Any decent business is a dictatorship. That’s why it works.
What about freedom?
You work for Paddy Lyon. He’s a Labor man, he has his agendas. Are you free?
He’s not running a totalitarian state.
It’s all words, you know. Just words. Bogey words. Placebo words.
No, she says. We have to pay attention to the words, we have to know what they mean and make sure they mean what we mean them to mean. Otherwise we’re a doomed society.
Oh Tit-tit-tania, says Godblot. You can see him wanting to say, you are so pretty when you’re indignant; instead his beaming at her says it for him. The girl’s lips curl. Jerome wonders if she is finding the price of a Godblot meal rather high.
Bruno is their waiter tonight. He’s a muscular young man, not very tall, who’s trying to get into NIDA, and meanwhile making a good waiter. He knows that even if he does get into NIDA and become an actor waiting will still stand him in good stead. When he comes to take their order the magistrate says, in quite a sharp voice, Tania, have you decided? and Jerome guesses that Titania is his little joke. He’s famous for his little jokes on the bench, often to do with the young people who come up before him for petty crimes going out and getting real jobs.
I see Flora’s doing the black pudding tonight, says Godblot. Would that be the one she makes out of her own blood?
I’m afraid not, sir, says Bruno.
Oh, no point in having that then. The sweetbreads, I think. And the tripe for you?
Yes, I think so, I like the sound of it.
You Labor people. Working-class and never lose it.
I doubt there’s anything very working-class about the tripe at The Point, says Tania.
It’s peasant food, says Godblot. Not one of the ritzier parts of the animal.
Only to begin with, says Tania.
That’s right, says Bruno. And to begin?
The oysters, I think. Rockefeller, it’s with … ?
Spinach, says Bruno, and champagne.
Sixties revival, says Godblot. You should be here when she does chicken Kiev. Quite a little revelation.
When Will Morecombe goes to the lavatory Terry Feldman does a bit of working the room. He pauses by Jerry’s table, says, Might be worth keeping an eye, I hear there’s a bit of outsourcing going on.
The thing about Terry is he loves his job. Can’t help doing it, all the time.
When Bruno comes to take his order Jerome asks him about the tripe. On the menu, written by hand each day, it simply says tripe.
It’s a bit of a wonder, says Bruno. She starts off with that Lyonnais dish, fireman’s apron, but she does it in a very delicate batter, and there’s just a little touch of star anise in the flavouring. You have to forget anything you ever knew about tripe when you eat it.
Well, I’d better have it. I’m not usually a fan of tripe, but I do believe Flora can convert anybody to anything. Pity about the black pudding, but can’t have both.
There’s a consommé that’s pretty amazing, says Bruno, a litt
le broth of smoked salmon, and there’s saffron, and a wisp of pastry floating over it. Delicate but rich.
Bruno makes up for the taciturnity of the menu, but it’s all his own work.
The sommelier comes to discuss the wine choices, bringing a glass of champagne. The Point bought its cellar from a grand Melbourne restaurant that went out of business, and George keeps it going. There are plenty of decent old reds to have with the tripe. And with the consommé? A glass of sherry perhaps, he has an old one, very dry, very fine. Or an old Hunter riesling that has developed beautifully.
What’s with the blood pudding, Titania is asking Godblot.
There was a story, about a banquet that Flora did. That she saved her own blood and made black pudding out of it. Probably apocryphal, but who knows?
Wouldn’t it be illegal?
Hard to say, really. The question probably hasn’t come up. So no precedents. The law is all about precedents, you know.
And analogy. I’d imagine. What would be the analogy?
I’d have to give it some thought. And I’d rather consider the oysters. Very large and sizzling. As big and juicy as they look, I hope.
When Bruno brings the tiny bowl of consommé Jerome asks, What’s this about oysters Rockefeller and sixties revival?
It’s one of Flora’s interests. You know how so much of the food of that time has become a cliché, even a joke? Not to mention junk food, industrially produced, like chicken Kiev. She likes to take it up again and subvert it, or rather, subvert what it’s become, get beyond the kitsch to the real ingredients. She’s working on a prawn cocktail – you should keep an eye out for it. It’ll be pretty cool.
Hugh Todhunter is dining with his wife, who understands that he is not feeling chatty. He is thinking of the man he has been defending against the murder of a young woman, who disappeared early one morning after a night’s dancing at a club in Manuka, whose body was found naked, raped and mutilated in the bush near the sparkling little rocky creek called Paddy’s River, where he has been in the habit of taking his family for picnics. A legal aid case. It’s over now, and he’s won.
The man he was defending, forty-eight years old, his skin corded with muscle and brown from the sun and dirt too, works in the forest and camps there. He owns and seemed to live in a ute, of an acid-green colour, the colour of the seventies and dreams of hippies and rainforests, now battered and crumpled and the green ridged with rust like a contour map in three dimensions, a rough and mountainous landscape.
The girl was young and white-skinned, very smooth before she was dragged over rough earth and metal surfaces, probably drunk at the time and no virgin, Todhunter making much of this while he thought to himself, there are no young women I know of whom this could not be said at some moment and none of them are tarts and whores. My daughters are not virgins and yet they are virtuous. There were bits of rusted green paint found on the girl’s body. The barrister had argued that this was not conclusive. Now he says to his wife, Of course he did it. I didn’t expect to win. I don’t know what the prosecution was doing. I shouldn’t have won.
Terry Feldman on one of his tours stops at Hugh’s table. Celebrating your win, I see, he says.
The barrister raises his glass to eye level, but doesn’t say anything. Terry dips his glass and moves on.
A wordless salute, Hugh thinks. And is briefly pleased with this thought because he is a person whose work is words. But of course it is all words still. A wordless salute is the words he finds.
He lifts the wine up to his eye again to see the world stained red, but rather it is blotted out. The wine is not transparent.
I hear the black pudding is brilliant, says Fiona, a safe wifely steering away from guilt and murder and into food and the everyday, though of course it’s hardly everyday here.
I think I’d rather have fish.
But you’re drinking red wine.
So? I can have the swordfish. That’ll work okay. He lifts up his glass again, holds it tipped slightly sideways, looking at the colour of the wine against the white of the tablecloth. It’s a fine brownish red, as it should be, a Lake’s Folly of its age. He sips at it. They will need another bottle.
At the next table is the birthday party, of Candida and Cressida, twin daughters of Leo and Judy Prelec; they are nineteen years old. The birthday dessert is bombe Alaska, carried to the table by Martin, who doesn’t want to be an actor and isn’t going to university; he plans to be master of his own restaurant, whose chef will be his girlfriend, Kate, a third-year apprentice, who made the bombe, the cake a citrus-flavoured génoise, the ice-cream two kinds, cardamom and vanilla, with candied lemon and orange peel, under its many-peaked brown-grilled dome of white meringue. It is served on a heavy silver salver, and set into its point is a half eggshell in which brandy burns. Martin carries it in proudly, and the restaurant ripples with interest.
Bombe Alaska, murmurs Fiona Todhunter. I haven’t had one of those for decades. Can we come here for my birthday, and order bombe Alaska?
What is it, asks Hugh.
You remember. Baked ice-cream. We had it in the motel in Albury, that trip we did the year we were married. It came stuck full of sparklers, all fizzing away. We cackled our heads off.
I remember the fireworks.
You wouldn’t want to remember the bombe. Commercial ice-cream and sickly-sweet meringue. Nothing like Flora’s, you can depend on that.
Jerome knew Flora only by sight, and this was because Terry Feldman always called for her as he was leaving. He’d be fingering the cigar he would smoke as soon as he got outside, and would wait in the bar until she came in from the kitchen. Then he would stand with his arms outstretched as though contemplating, or maybe even offering, one of the wonders of the world, and his voice would boom out, always the same words, his variations on the idea of her name. Ah Flora, ma fleur, ma belle fleurissante, he would say, florissima, bella bella bellissima. Flora would stand at the centre of this invocation, and Jerome thought how pale she looked, wan even, tired, her head bent, drooped, and a faint smile on her lips, an ironical smile, he described it to himself, but had to admit it might have been modestly pleased. If he could have seen her eyes he might have been able to tell.
Because of Terry he didn’t want to meet her himself, didn’t see how he could follow those roaring mangled shreds of French and Italian. And anyway he didn’t know her. Wasn’t it patronising to call for somebody you didn’t know, as though your admiration could make any difference to what she was doing here? He’d seen Godblot talking to her, slightly more quietly, kissing her hand, and once Marilyn Ferucci had given her a hug. Always Flora stood with a cool sort of stillness, and under the light of one of the octagonal lanterns, so her eyes were dark sockets, and her hair had the yellow droughty sheen of the hills in high summer. She didn’t say much, and he could tell that people spoke their fulsome praise and then were not sure what to say.
So Jerome loitered when this was happening, and waited until Flora had gone back into her offices before leaving. He knew her food was sublime, so why demean himself by failing to find words to do it justice. He imagined that the faint curve of irony about her lips recognised just that, the disparity between her work and their praise. He knew he was quite likely wrong about this, that she was grateful for the florissimas, and that what he took for irony was the tiredness at the end of long effort. A kind of exultant tiredness, he imagined. Inventing her still. Preferring it that way, not wanting to find out whether he was right or not.
You can admire an artist’s work without needing to tell him so. It was a bit like going up to Picasso and saying, Great paintings, mate, I love ya work.
Laurel was different, pretty Laurel, in her elegant black dress, she was there to be talked to. He was having a conversation with her like a serial, a new instalment each time he came, but as in a serial a lot was repeated.
How’s that lad of yours? Young Oscar.
She looked away, and smiled a bit. Oh, well, he’s being good. He
says. He’s turned over a new leaf. No more drugs … he says.
Excellent.
Mm. He did get a High Distinction for an essay. But it was to do with computers.
Why but?
Well, that’s his thing. What he’s good at. He doesn’t have to do any work. Well, he does I suppose, but he doesn’t see it like that.
Still, an HD.
You’re right, there could be worse things. Laurel gave a shudder, an elegant shudder, but evidently involuntary. She laughed. Someone walking over my grave, she said. As long as it’s my grave.
Computers are a useful thing to be good at, he said. I should know.
Oh yes. He’s supposed to be a genius, they say. One of the best in the world at … But I’m talking to you.
Please do, he said. Realising that wasn’t quite right.
Oh. She laughed. Did you enjoy your meal?
That’s not a question that needs asking, he said. You know I did.
She held his overcoat while he put it on, smoothing it over his shoulders in a faint final gesture. Laurel’s was the last delightful touch of the evening.
Laurel sometimes thought of touching his cheek, too, its lean brown hollows that crinkled when he smiled, his thin lips curving in a way both kind and sensual. He bent over her in his courtly manner and she looked up into his eyes which always surprised her, they were so deeply violet inside their fringe of black lashes, and thought of smoothing his hair which was grey and thick and always a bit tousled, but of course she did none of those things, just helped his coat into place.
5
Jerome
I wonder, you know, if perhaps the devil was a goldfish. Gold, we say, but actually the colour is red, that exquisite bright vermilion so highly prized as a colour in painting and in enamel work. And the fish a precious object itself, with its scales delineated in curving calligraphic lines, its tail furling. As it darts through the water or hangs motionless lip to lip with its companions. Why not a fish, since he took the form of a snake, and very beautiful this creature is too, especially if you can look at it with unfallen eyes, as Eve did, no knowledge of sin, so no fear. As children may sometimes, being innocent, but not entirely, I have heard babies cry with such a desolation of terror in their voices that it must be the sorrow of humanity and not their own pain. The curse of Eve, obliged to bear her children in sorrow and in tears.
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