Pants on Fire

by Maggie Alderson

  The restaurant was a large oblong space with a bold black and white mural of people having dinner all along one wall. The waiters wore long aprons and all the diners looked polished and well fed.

  Antony kissed the maitre d’ on both cheeks. “Hello, darling. We’ll need a table for eight.”

  As we sat at the bar waiting for a table to become available, Trudy, Betty, Norma and Mary came in, with two new fellows I hadn’t met before—Joanna and Ingrid.

  “So,” said Ingrid, once we were introduced, “how is your spanking ex doing without you? Still with your friend, is he?” I turned to glare at Antony, but he was telling Joanna all the Chic gossip.

  “No, I believe Rick has decided to join an order of gay Franciscan monks,” I told Ingrid, straight-faced. “In Iceland.” Right Antony, thanks for the tip, I’ll just wait to see how long it takes before that little pigeon flies home.

  The dinner was riotous. A lot of the talk was about the Mardi Gras—who was in the parade, who was having liposuction to get into their costume, who had the most reliable source of good ecstasy, who didn’t have tickets and who the surprise performers were going to be.

  “I heard Madonna,” said Betty.

  “Yeah, right,” said Antony. “She’ll probably do a duet with Barbra Streisand. And Elvis. I heard Cher is coming but I don’t believe it.”

  “Yeah—and Tom Cruise, Prince Edward and Richard Gere are the go-go dancers,” said Norma.

  They were screaming with laughter. So was I.

  “So, are you going to come to the party?” asked Antony. I’d noticed they all called it that.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Well, don’t think too long. I’d have to make you an outfit. Probably something topless.” He looked me up and down. “You’d look good in one of those outfits the women wear at the Rio carnival. You have just the right body shape—little perky tits and a big round bottom. I’d like to see you in a G-string and a feather headdress. A sparkly G-string. Fuschia. Lots of fake tan. Mmm . . .”

  After dinner there was much hugging and kissing and lots of see-you-soons and gorgeous-to-meet-you-darlings. Then we all jumped into cabs and went our separate ways, except that Antony insisted on dropping me off first “on his way,” which it wasn’t.

  “I want to see where you live,” he admitted.

  “I should warn you I have no possessions,” I told him. “I thought I’d be living in furnished digs and I brought hardly anything with me apart from some clothes and handbags, and a few books and CDs I can’t live without. Actually, that was all I really had anyway. I’ve had to buy things like kettles. So boring.”

  “I’ve got a load of stuff like that you can have—I’ve got all my own gear and then I inherited all Lee’s things, so now I’ve got two of everything. My place is like Noah’s ark . . . I see what you mean about bare,” he said, wrinkling his nose when we got inside. He marched straight into my bedroom and opened the wardrobe doors.

  “Where do you keep the handbag collection then?”

  “Well, I only brought a few with me. They’re in this hat box.”

  “Divine. I love hat boxes. Mmm, I like this little one shaped like a pot of violets. That’s very sweet. This is cute—is it vintage?”

  He looked at every one, then he commented on my bed linen, which he approved of because it was old and embroidered. Then, after looking through all my CDs and thrusting Frank Sinatra at me to put on, he sat on the floor and asked if I had any photo albums with me.

  “Yes I do, actually.”

  “Oh, good. I love photo albums.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Antony looked through all my albums, demanding a running commentary on every picture. After some initial embarrassment I happily went into all the details of who was who. He got the hang of it all very quickly.

  “Oh, look at your brother Hamish. He’s gorgeous. I love that high colour in his cheeks. Very Scottish. He looks like a handsome version of James Hewitt.”

  I hit him with a cushion. “He does not look like that cad.”

  “Does he play polo? Look at his shoulders. All polo players have those gorgeous shoulders. Even Prince Charles. Oh look, there’s Real Pussy.”

  “Real Pussy?”

  “Yes, you’re Pussy now, so your mum is Real Pussy, otherwise it gets too confusing.”

  “Right . . .”

  “Why is she called Pussy, by the way?”

  “I honestly don’t know. She does like cats, but she’s been called Pussy since she was a little girl.”

  “Oh, is that one of your father’s water features? Marvellous lion’s head. Look at you here—how old are you? Eight? Is that needlepoint you’re holding? How sweet. Oh, look at Real Pussy in a straw hat and espadrilles, she was glamorous, wasn’t she? Is that in Provence? Thought so. Got any pictures of your grandparents? Look, they’re both in tartan skirts, how funny! Yes, I know his is a kilt, but you know what I mean. Dear little dogs. Look at Gaston’s ears sticking up. OK, now I want to see pictures of Rick.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes. Give me that. Ah! He is heaven. Look at those long legs. Leather pants. He’s a major spunk. Darling, I can see why your friends thought you were mad to leave him. All that and money too. And there he is in a suit. Got any pictures of where you lived?”

  And so it went on until Antony had worked his way through my entire life—and a fair amount of my whisky—like termites going through a house. He seemed as interested in the physical and material details of my previous life as Liinda was in the emotional ones. I felt validated and violated at the same time—but at least Antony wasn’t going to be in a coverlines meeting with me in the near future.

  “He may have gone too far, though from what you’ve told me, that Rick is going to be hard to replace. Shame Nick Pollock came along when he did, but you’re over him, aren’t you? I’ll have to get you out as much as possible meeting people. What are you doing this weekend?”

  “I’m going to Debbie’s parents’ farm.”

  He turned and stared at me with his mouth open.

  “What? I’ve never been there. I’m furious. Debbie knows I long to go to Bundaburra, the bitch. I want a complete report. Will you take lots of photos please? Just think, you’ll be spending nearly forty-eight hours with Johnny Brent. Of course, you’ll have to be with that ghastly Jenny Kelly as well, but it’ll be worth it.”

  “Why are you so horrible about Debbie’s mother?” I asked.

  “Oh, she’s such a social climber. She got pregnant deliberately, you know—she only wanted to marry Johnny Brent because he was handsome and gorgeous and rich.”

  “You were just telling me I was mad to leave Rick for exactly the same reasons.”

  Antony made a noise that can only be described as “humph.”

  “What have you really got against Jenny Brent?” I used her married name just to annoy him.

  “I don’t think she’s good enough for him.”

  “Well, if Debbie is the result she can’t be all bad.”

  “Oh, she was beautiful—that’s how she got him—but her father was a labourer, for God’s sake.”

  “Ah, so you think she wasn’t posh enough for him? That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? And I thought there wasn’t supposed to be a class system in Australia. Well, I promise to take lots of photos and give you a full report, but I do not promise to dislike Jenny Brent because her father lifted bricks for a living. I bet she’s lovely.”

  And I was right. Jenny Brent was lovely. From the moment she picked Debbie and me up from the airport at Tamworth I adored her. She kissed me straightaway even though we’d only just met, and then asked me to hold her dachshund, Choccie, while she threw our bags into the back of a beaten-up old ute. Next to French bulldogs, my favourite dogs in the whole world are dachshunds, partly because I was never allowed to have one as a child—my father always said they were deformed. Choccie sat on my lap for the entire drive to the homestead, which took over an
hour.

  “Oh, I see Choccie has a new friend,” said Jenny, smiling at me in the rear-view mirror. “He doesn’t love everybody, you know, but when he does it’s for life. I hope you won’t find his devotion a pain.”

  “No, I’ll just love him back,” I said.

  I watched her as she chatted to Debbie about our journey and the preparations for the rodeo. She was still beautiful. Tall and slim like Debbie, and although her face was deeply lined it added character—they were happy lines, not frowny ones. Her hair was an unassisted mixture of warm blonde and grey, simply pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed in khaki pants, RM Williams boots (just like mine, I’d been thrilled to notice), and a white singlet, with a khaki shirt open over the top. I could see where Debbie got her style from. For the finishing touch Jenny had a pair of diamond stud earrings the size of peanuts.

  Once we got away from the town the countryside was beautiful. Rolling hills that reminded me of England a little, except they were more peaked and pointy than the high country around my parents’ house and, rather than thick green hedges and pastures, everything looked golden—the grass, the rock, the earth and the light all had a golden glow.

  After a while I became aware of something else my eye was missing—there were no church steeples—and I realised how used I was to there always being a steeple somewhere in the landscape. Here the only regular man-made features, apart from the roads and the fences, were windmills.

  After we’d driven for about forty-five minutes Jenny announced in a jokey voice that we were now driving through Brent Land. Ten minutes later we came to an elaborate wrought-iron sign over a cattle grid which said “Bundaburra.” It was another ten minutes up the drive, going steadily uphill until finally, after cresting a little ridge, we came to the homestead.

  “Oh look, isn’t it lovely!” I heard myself saying. Jenny stopped the car.

  “This is a good place to get a perspective on the property,” she said, clearly pleased that I liked it.

  It was a big square house with a corrugated-iron roof and verandahs all round it, with creepers growing up them. A covered walkway led to another smaller house and beyond that lay stables, forming three sides of a square. The place was huge, and although I could see a swimming pool and a tennis court, it still had a farming feel to it. There were a couple of smaller houses on the other side of the stables which looked lived in, and a big barn with bits of old farm machinery lying around outside it. Three cattle dogs were lying in the sun—working dogs, Jenny told me (apparently Choccie was the only hound with house privileges.).

  And then I saw the main attraction of the homestead. Leaning against the open double doors, with his arms folded, was the famous Johnny Brent. He was wearing polo gear. There were a couple of mallets lying on the ground by his feet. His breeches were dirty. He had floppy blond hair and he was smiling at us warmly. When he shook my hand his grip was ridiculously strong. His teeth were ridiculously white and his eyes were ridiculously blue and warm as they looked into mine. I couldn’t look back at him properly—I was too shy. He had all the separate elements I’d found attractive in Billy and Rory and Nick and Jasper, but more of them.

  OK, Antony, I thought. I take your point.

  “Aren’t I the lucky boy then?” he said, giving Debbie a big hug. “Three beautiful women all to myself. I reckon I’m going to be king of the rodeo dance tomorrow night, walking in with you three.”

  What dance? Debbie hadn’t told me anything about a dance. I had nothing to wear. But looking on the bright side, maybe I’d get to see Johnny Brent strut his stuff on the dance floor, because no doubt he would be a great dancer as well as everything else. I could just imagine him getting down to “Brown Sugar” . . . I’d certainly torture Antony about that.

  Debbie wanted to go out riding straightaway, but I stayed behind with Jenny, while she and her father went to saddle up. With Choccie trotting along beside us, Jenny showed me around the house and grounds. We visited the stables, which housed Johnny’s polo ponies and the work horses they still used to move the cattle around. I met the working dogs and Jenny showed me how high they could jump. They were good, I thought, but not as good as Rory’s dog, Scooby. That was when I realised that the Stewarts’ farm must be somewhere in the vicinity, although having an idea of how big the Brents’ property was, I didn’t think Rory would be popping over to borrow a cup of sugar.

  Then, most thrillingly for Pommy me, Jenny introduced me to her two tame kangaroos, Rocky and Chomp. They were so cute, with a funny way of moving slowly, using their tail like a third leg to ease themselves forward. I scratched them behind their ears and their little heads were so soft.

  “I found Rocky a couple of years ago,” Jenny explained. “He’s such a big boy now, but he was a tiny joey in his mother’s pouch than. She’d been knocked over by a car, but he was still alive. I brought him home and bottle-fed him, and I made him a pouch out of an old jumper with a hot-water bottle in it and strapped it to my front.”

  “Ooh. I’d love to do that. Did you have to hop?”

  She laughed. “No. He was very happy—he came shopping with me and everything. Didn’t you, Rocky? I found Chomp this spring.”

  “Did you have them in the house while you were rearing them?” Getting animals into the house had been one of the primary obsessions of my childhood.

  “Oh yes. They’d come hopping along the hallway; it was so funny. I know a lot of farmers hate kangaroos, but I just can’t leave them to die by the road.”

  Then she showed me the swimming pool and the rose garden and the vegetable and herb gardens she’d planted herself.

  We filled two baskets with vegetables for dinner and sat on the verandah podding peas together. I felt completely comfortable with Jenny. She wanted to know all about why I’d come to Australia (I gave her the censored version) and what I thought of it. And what’s more she called me Georgia, not Georgie.

  Then she asked me a question I’d rather been dreading.

  “How is Debbie getting on in Sydney, Georgia? I’m assuming you know that eighteen months ago we had a great sadness in the family . . .”

  “Yes. Someone told me about the plane crash. I was so sorry to hear about it. It’s a terrible thing.”

  “It was. We all loved Drew and nothing’s really been the same since that accident. We had known him all his life. His poor father, Andrew, had a stroke, and his mother, Margaret, has a terrible lot to deal with. I mean, it would be hard enough to lose three sons, but now she has to look after Andrew as well. At least they have their daughter and their youngest son, Rory. He’s so good to them.”

  She wiped away a tear.

  “Anyway, it happened, so we just have to deal with it. I do worry about Debbie in Sydney, though. I wanted her to stay here for a while—maybe a year or so, to really get over it and be around people who had known Drew—but she insisted on rushing back to Sydney. She said she needed to get straight back into her working life. I worry that she hasn’t really dealt with the grief, and I hear little bits and pieces from friends who have children down there. I think she’s got in with a bit of a fast crowd . . . What do you think, Georgia?”

  She looked so worried, I desperately wanted to say the right thing.

  “I don’t know Debbie that well yet, Jenny, although she’s been incredibly kind to me since I arrived . . .”

  I looked at her intelligent face, waiting so keenly for my answer.

  “She does go out quite a bit and there are a lot of late nights, but that’s true of most of the people I’ve met in Sydney. It seems to be a party town.”

  What was I supposed to say? Your stunningly beautiful daughter has a far-reaching reputation as a drug-fucked nymphomaniac?

  Jenny looked thoughtful.

  “Georgia,” she said. “I know you’ve only been here a minute, but I feel I can trust you and I’m going to ask you a favour: Would you keep an eye on Debbie for us? All I ask is that if you think she’s getting in trouble, you’ll ring me.
Will you do that?”

  How could I say no? I promised I would and was relieved to hear a distraction approaching, as Debbie and her father galloped into the garden on their horses.

  “Mum! Mum! He’s chasing me,” cried Debbie, as they disappeared around the side of the house.

  “Mind my roses!” called Jenny. She smoothed back her hair and appeared consciously to pull herself together. Then she turned and smiled at me.

  “Anyway, you didn’t come for a relaxing weekend in the country to hear about all our family dramas. Why don’t you go and have a nice long bath and a rest before dinner? We’ll have drinks out here at seven, so just do what you like and make yourself completely at home.”

  Dinner with the Brents was a lot of fun. When I joined them on the verandah, Johnny (with hair still wet from the shower, I noted for future Antony-baiting) already had the champagne open. We ate outside, with citronella candles burning to keep the mozzies at bay, and had steaks from cattle “grown on the property,” as Johnny put it, along with several bottles of red wine.

  Johnny regaled us with stories of his japes on the polo circuit as a young man and I told him about my brother’s equestrian exploits in England, Scotland and Argentina.

  “So, your brother’s a polo man, is he?” said Johnny, topping up my glass. “What’s his handicap?”

  “An overfondness for pretty girls and good champagne?” I suggested.

  Johnny roared with laughter. “Well, he definitely sounds like my kind of guy. Reckon if he’s worked on a cattle ranch in Argentina he could probably survive out here. Tell him if he’d like to come and spend some time working at Bundaburra he’d be more than welcome.”

  “That’s really kind of you. I will tell him—I think he’s finding it a bit hard to settle back down in England.”

  I was really enjoying dinner, but talking about dear old Horsehead suddenly made me feel very homesick. It must have shown on my face, because Jenny took my hand across the table.