Pants on Fire

by Maggie Alderson

  “So you don’t remember seeing me in a lane in Darlinghurst, or Surry Hills or wherever it was, yesterday morning?”

  “What? Yesterday? Where was I yesterday morning? Oh, I was at the More-di Gras after party. It was a riot. Were you there? Did I tell you to fuck off? How hysterical. Sorry, Pussy darling. I was really off my tree. Anyway, Betty got to the party and he—”

  I couldn’t believe he could just brush it aside like that. I’d hardly slept a wink worrying about him and I wasn’t ready to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “Antony, I’m sorry, but I have rather a lot on this morning—we’re just clearing the issue and I have to read all the proofs. I can’t make lunch today. I’ll call you.”

  He slammed the phone down. I didn’t care—let him be pissed off. I had been deeply wounded by what he’d said to me the day before. I didn’t care how off his tree he was, I was shocked that Antony could be so horrible to anyone.

  The phone rang again.

  “Fuck off,” I said down the receiver.

  “Pinkie?”

  “Jasper! I’m so sorry. I thought it was someone else . . . Oh dear.” I got the giggles.

  “Well, someone must have done you wrong for you to answer the phone like that. Want me to go round and rearrange their features for you?”

  “No, I think the person in question is quite capable of doing that by himself. How are you, anyway?”

  “I’m perfect. Shame you didn’t make it to the Blue Room on Saturday night—it would have been much better if you’d been there.”

  “Oh, you silver-tongued persuader. You’re full of shit, but I do find it cheering.”

  “What’s uncheered you? Who was that ‘eff off’ aimed at?”

  “It’s a bit of a long story.”

  “Is it a long, romantic story?”

  “No, just a long, sordid one.”

  “Pinkie, you’re not helping me here—I’m trying to find out by subtle means if there’s a love interest in your life.”

  I couldn’t help liking Jasper. There was all that puff and bluster and then he would just lay himself bare.

  “Well, there was a bit of love interest,” I said. “But it lost interest. OK?”

  “Good, that means you can come and have a drink with me.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Really? Great. When?”

  “Let me look in my diary. Oh, yesterday was St. David’s Day and I didn’t even know. Mmm . . . what about Wednesday? Where?”

  “Wednesday is great. My house. It’s in Elizabeth Bay Road. You just have to walk around the corner from your place. I’ll be waiting outside. Is seven OK? See you then, Pinkie.”

  After I put the phone down I realized I had never told Jasper where I lived.

  “SERAPHIMA, GO AND GET DEBBIE FOR ME. WE’VE GOT TO GO TO THE BIG ESTEE LAUDER LUNCH.”

  Maxine was having one of her loud days. Instead of going round to Debbie’s room, I heard Seraphima go straight into Maxine’s office.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE’S NOT HERE? WE’VE GOT TO BE AT ROCKPOOL IN FIVE MINUTES.”

  Then something was hurled across the room. I got up and went to my office door. Seraphima scuttled past rolling her eyes at me as she went by. I watched her dial Debbie’s mobile number. There was no reply. Then she tried her home number. Machine. Now I was starting to feel really worried. Should I say something to Maxine? But I still wasn’t sure what I’d seen in that alley, and I didn’t want Maxine to go into hard love overdrive if it was nothing. Maybe she’d just been having a rest. Walking around in those platform shoes would have worn out Elton John. Of course, the best person to ask would have been Antony, but if he couldn’t remember what he’d done himself, what use would he be about Debbie?

  I went round to see Liinda. She had one unlit cigarette behind her ear, another between her lips and the packet open on her desk. This meant she was writing.

  “Seen Debbie today at all?” I asked casually.

  “No. And I don’t expect we’ll see her until Wednesday. She’s probably still at a recovery party somewhere. Then she’ll have Ecstasy Tuesday to get through tomorrow and she might grace us with her presence on Wednesday.”

  “Ecstasy Tuesday?”

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth and looked at me strangely.

  “Are you for real? It’s the day the come-down hits you. Take ecstasy on Saturday night and the full come-down doesn’t hit you until Tuesday. On Sunday you’re still in love with the entire world. On Monday you’re still a bit warm and fuzzy. On Tuesday you’re suicidal. What goes up, must come down. That’s how it works.”

  I thought about it a bit.

  “What forms can you get ecstasy in?” I asked her. “Is it just tabs?”

  She looked at me intensely again with her head on one side. “Why are you so interested in drugs all of a sudden, Pollyanna?”

  I ignored the jibe. “Is it possible to inject ecstasy?”

  “I suppose you could. There is that GBH stuff, which is supposed to be liquid ecstasy, and I suppose you could inject anything if you ground it up finely enough, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. The slow build as it comes on is all part of the ride. Are you thinking of trying it?”

  “Er . . . no. I just wondered.”

  I thought I’d better change the subject; she had put my mind at rest about Debbie’s absence and I didn’t want any further questions.

  “What are you working on?” I asked brightly.

  “Putting a Gloss on It—Beauty’s New Shine.”

  “Isn’t that Debbie’s story for the next issue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you writing it?”

  “It was due last Monday. I don’t want her to get into any more trouble with Maxine than she already is.”

  “So you’re going to pretend Debbie wrote it?”

  “Yep.”

  I just looked at her, with what I imagine was a stupid expression.

  “Look, I think Debbie is a spoiled little princess,” said Liinda. “She drives me mad with her snobbery, but she’s basically a good person. We’ve worked together a long time. She was very different before Drew was killed, you know. She had such a spark to her which has completely gone. It went out like a light. She tries to put it back with drink and drugs and sex, but I think eventually she’ll realise it’s not the answer. I just want to see her get that spark back.”

  “You are an extraordinary person,” I said.

  “And then I’m going to make her help me write an award-winning story called ‘My Lover Was Killed—One Woman’s Story of Surviving Heartbreak.’ ”

  That was more like it. I hooted with laughter.

  “You are stark-raving mad, Liinda Vidovic, but underneath it all you’re a good woman.”

  She grinned and I put her cigarette back in her mouth for her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I turned into Elizabeth Bay Road, Jasper was waiting outside his house as he’d promised. And what a place it was. The only old mansion left in a road of big apartment buildings looking over the harbour. It was enormous and, with a cupola on the roof, it looked like something out of a Hammer horror film.

  “I can’t believe you live here,” I said. “I’ve been looking at this house ever since I moved here, wondering who lived in it.”

  “Now you know. That’s why I said I’d meet you at the gate. I wanted to share the entire Caledonia experience with you.”

  “Is that what the house is called—Caledonia?”

  He pointed to a sign on the gate.

  “That means Scotland,” I said. “Hail Caledonia.”

  Jasper gave me the full tour. The interior had hardly been touched since it was built in 1905. It still had the servants’ bells in the scullery, with labels saying “Dining Room,” “Drawing Room and “Library,” and it was all falling to bits in a romantic way.

  “I’m so glad it hasn’t been done up,” I said. “So often people get hold of these lovely old houses
and renovate them to death, so they look like characterless hotel rooms. I love genteel decay. It reminds me of my family.”

  He laughed. There was a huge hall, with an old dinner gong in it, a library with worn-out leather club chairs, a dining room and an elegant drawing room, full of tatty junk-shop furniture. Then Jasper took me downstairs and showed me the big space he used as a photographic studio. Upstairs there were so many bedrooms I lost count, but I was thrilled to see two bathrooms with lovely old claw-foot baths and ancient loos with flower patterns in the bowls.

  Finally, we went up into the cupola, which was like four window seats joined together, with a 360-degree view of Sydney and the harbour, right over to the ocean.

  “You’ve done it again, Jasper,” I said, shaking my head in amazement. “You just keep taking my breath away.”

  He grinned, in his likeable boyish way.

  “Vodka and cranberry?” he asked, gesturing towards a tray with two glasses, a plastic ice bucket shaped like a pineapple and a tall glass jug full of ruby liquid.

  I nodded and he poured the drinks while I walked round and round the cupola trying to take it all in.

  “I feel like I’m in the crow’s nest of an old schooner,” I said. “This place is unbelievable. It has such a welcoming atmosphere. How long have you lived here?”

  “Sixteen years. I moved in here when I was a callow young art student and now I’m the longest-standing resident. The place has been passed down through Sydney’s boho generations for over thirty years. The same family has owned it since it was built. There was six of us here. We pay $100 a week rent—in total.”

  I whistled. “That’s amazing.”

  “There are some house rules,” Jasper continued, passing me a drink. “You have to be involved in some form of creative endeavour to live here. I’m a photographer/filmmaker. We’ve got two artists, two writers and an animator. And if anyone’s income goes over a certain level, they have to move out. It’s always worked really well.”

  “It must be a great party house.”

  “It sure is, and we’ll be having a major one sometime soon.”

  “Yeah? What are you celebrating?”

  “The end of an era. The owners have sold the house.”

  “Oh, no! You must be heartbroken. Why did they decide to sell it after all this time?”

  “The property developers finally got to them,” he explained. “They’ve been trying to buy it for years, and this time they offered so much money the family just couldn’t say no. But I reckon I’m lucky to have lived here as long as I have.”

  “What are they going to do with it?”

  “It’s going to be a boutique hotel.”

  “Well, that’s better than knocking it down, I suppose.”

  We sipped our vodkas, Jasper rolled a joint, and I risked a couple of puffs because he assured me it was a mild one. Then we just sat and talked. I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much for ages. The wild hysteria of Antony’s gang was all very well, but this was what I enjoyed the most: chatting to someone and hearing about their views and experiences. No competitiveness or point scoring, just an exchange. Everybody had told me what a scumbag Jasper was, but they clearly hadn’t spent much time with him, I thought.

  I told him about the one-dimensional chit-chat on Saturday night and about telling brainless Ben he should go and see 100 Years of Sodom.

  “I think that’s why God invented dancing,” Jasper said, laughing. “So we don’t have to talk to each other at parties.”

  I felt so relaxed I lay back on the window seat and stared up through the glass roof of the cupola. Jasper did the same, so our heads were at right angles, as the sky grew darker.

  “That looked like a bat!” I said, as something black flew past.

  “It was a bat,” said Jasper. And then there were scores of them, flapping their leathery wings. “They do this every night. They leave the trees where they sleep during the day and fly over the house going about their batty business.”

  We carried on talking about this and that, but nothing really personal. No past relationships, or work, or why I had moved to Sydney, but rather what we felt about what was going on in the world. It was like a long, refreshing drink of water. I’d lost all track of time and deliberately didn’t look at my watch—I just wanted to go with the flow. The mood was finally broken by the sound of someone beating the dinner gong.

  “Great,” said Jasper, springing up.

  I must have looked surprised.

  “One of the girls works in a restaurant and she brings home all the excess food for the house. It’s good nosh. Come on.”

  When we got downstairs I could see candles on a big table outside with about ten people sitting round it. Jasper introduced me to the crowd, who were a pleasantly motley crew.

  The table was covered with an equally odd assortment of food on mismatched plates and several bottles of wine. I was feeling ravenous after Jasper’s pot and hoed into bread, paté and rocket salad, followed by a large helping of chocolate mousse.

  “Weren’t you at Danny Green’s hat party?” said a fat fellow, with a shiny bald head and a big silver ring through his nose like a bull. I recognised him as the one who’d been wearing bunny ears.

  “I never forget a face,” he said. “Which is pretty funny considering I’m in radio.” He had a girlish giggle that matched his hands, which were genteel and fluttery, but not the rest of him. I wondered if he knew Betty.

  A young woman with bright blue hair was reminiscing about India with an attractive blonde of about forty-five, who was wearing a long purple velvet dress and a cheap tiara. Jasper was talking to Matt, a performance artist, about doing a joint project with him and the animators. I was happy just listening, as I gazed down at the boats in Elizabeth Bay and the reflection of the moon on the water.

  “Having fun, Pinkie?” Jasper murmured, squeezing my hand.

  I smiled at him and nodded. “Like a homecoming, Jasper.”

  “That’s the go.”

  Eventually the party started to break up and I told Jasper I had to be going too. My block of flats was only round the corner, but he insisted on walking me home. When we got there I kissed him on the cheek.

  “See you soon, Pinkie,” he said. “Just drop in on us any time you feel like it. We never lock the door. Even if I’m not there and you feel like sitting in the garden, just come in and help yourself. While we still have it, Caledonia is for everyone.”

  “That’s really sweet of you, Jazzie. I’ll see you soon.”

  I found it hard to settle when I got to bed—the cocktail of vodka, pot, wine and chocolate mousse was churning around in my stomach, and mixed thoughts about Jasper were churning around in my head. I’d never been warned off a man by so many different people, but I found his company so stimulating, and I felt totally at ease with him.

  I didn’t see Jasper as a potential husband, the way I had with Billy and Nick within about two seconds of meeting them, and the last thing I needed after Rick was another bohemian creative type, liable to spring unwelcome surprises. But I still felt there was a little more developing between us than friendship. He certainly made no secret of the fact that he found me attractive. After all the hidden agendas and dark secrets everyone else I’d met in Sydney seemed to have, I found that very appealing indeed.

  At eleven-thirty the next morning he rang me.

  “Pinkie darling, how are you?”

  “Hello, Jasper. I was just thinking about you. Well, I’m slightly hung-over, but it was worth it. Thank you so much for last night, I really enjoyed it.”

  “So did I, Pinkus. And I hope you’ll come over again very soon. I meant what I said about just dropping in.”

  “I’ll take you up on it—oh and Jasper, while we’re at it, can I have your phone number?”

  He proceeded to give me his home number, a separate number for the downstairs studio, plus numbers for his mobile and pager.

  “Now I am entirely at your service,” he said. I pr
omised to call him soon.

  I was just settling in to read the last few proofs for the issue when Seraphima came in with a cup of tea for me. She put it on my desk and sat down opposite me.

  “Georgia,” she said, top marks for that. “I think you should know that Debbie hasn’t been in all week and Maxine’s just told me she wants to see her after lunch. So I rang her at home and she told me to tell Maxine to ‘get fucked because it’s the week after Mardi Gras and how could anyone expect her to come in like it was a normal week . . .’ ”

  She paused for dramatic effect, then continued.

  “Anyway, Maxine’s already angry with her about missing that Lauder lunch on Monday, so I told her Debbie had rung in sick and I hadn’t seen the message until just now, and then I asked Zoe to ring Ben—he’s a doctor—to get him to write a sick note for her, and I’ve sent a courier over to collect it. OK?”

  I just looked at her in amazement. Nineteen years old and such a smooth operator. I was in awe.

  “Is that OK, Georgia?”

  “That’s very OK, Seraphima. You’ve definitely done the right thing—and thank you for letting me in on it. I won’t tell Maxine.”

  “That’s alright,” she said. “I knew you’d be cool.” She returned to her desk.

  I leaned back in my chair and pondered what she’d just told me. The way they all protected Debbie was extraordinary, but I was ready to go along with it until I found out exactly what had been going on in that lane on Sunday. I knew the only way to find out more about that was to swallow my pride and ring Antony. I was still furious with him, but he had given me an excellent excuse to call—that morning he’d sent me an enormous bouquet of pale mauve roses. The card had said:

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

  I’ve been to Sydney to meet an old queen.

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do there?

  I frightened a vile old degenerate from under the chair.

  Pussy Galore—please forgive me. I hate myself. I am your slave. Dolly.