Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  Yeah. I’d forgotten about that. So are you okay there now? Is it at least safe?

  Like I’m an expert. I’ve been okay so far. There’s a room at one end that’s got tiles off the roof above it, so the rain’s come in there and some of the ceiling’s rotted through. And there are birds nesting in there.

  That doesn’t sound good.

  It’s a big house. I keep the door shut. Unless I want to talk to the birds, of course.

  Have you told the people who own it? Or your family?

  No. I can’t see the point. They’re going to pull it down anyway. I think I said in an email that it’s not in a really good way, but there’s no point in going into detail. I don’t want to worry them.

  You communicate with your family by email?

  Mainly, now that I’m set up. They wouldn’t let me leave home without a lap-top and a modem. Oh sorry, that’s right, that’d conflict with those strange, far-north sensibilities, wouldn’t it? she says, emphasising ‘sensibilities’ as though I’ve done her wrong and think them something she’s really not entitled to.

  I’m over that now. I realise that was just regionalism on my part. Some bad ‘ism’, anyway.

  Tableland hippy chick.

  Okay. Let me come clean. Never been to the Atherton Tableland. Don’t know what I’m talking about. I have seen a few hippies, though, and I’ve got to admit they tend to have much more hair. And a different approach to personal hygiene.

  Which leaves us with chick.

  Yeah. I hope it does. It’s going to spin me out if I’m wrong there.

  Okay, I might give you that one. Chick, she says, and shakes her head. And my family has its own home page, you know.

  Really?

  Halliday Tea.

  Halliday Tea? I don’t know that I buy a lot of tea, so . . .

  We’re a medium-sized operation, and for years we didn’t have our own brand. We just supplied to other people. We’re small enough to be well short of a household name, but big enough to have the occasional tour group come through.

  The occasional tour group?

  Yeah. I did tours. That was my weekend job. I never really got into the serious cultivation side of things. My father, you can see him rubbing the leaves between his thumb and his finger and you know he’s got it sussed. In a second he knows just how good the tea is. I’ve only got it covered at the tour-info level, really. But still, you wouldn’t believe the amount of crap I could tell you about tea, from the effects of soil type on the growth of Camellia sinensis to the best biscuits to have with it.

  There should be a particular biscuit preference?

  Depending on the tea type and how you have it, why not? With a reasonable-quality regular tea – if you simplify things and assume there is such a thing as a regular tea – and a mainstream tea drinker who is interested in putting some thought into the biscuit, we’d recommend something like a Gingernut. But that might be because of some minor sponsorship deal my father did, so I can’t tell you it’s completely straight. But, yeah, Gingernut. Not the most fashionable choice maybe, but if you’re interested in complementing the tea . . .

  Gingernut.

  Queensland Gingernut.

  Queensland Gingernut? You’re not saying there’s regional variation in Gingernuts, are you?

  I certainly am. It’s a historic thing. Arnott’s was formed by an amalgamation of state-based companies when you were just a youngster. They tried to enforce a standardised Gingernut. Miserable failure. National revolt. There are four different Gingernuts. Always will be. The Queensland Gingernut is, in my view, indisputably the finest. It’s the darkest. It’s the most brittle. New South Wales’s is the hardest. The Victorian Gingernut’s a bit disappointing when it comes to the ginger. But they’d argue that too much ginger overpowers the tea. Very sensitive people, Victorians.

  I always thought I was just getting old biscuits at interstate conferences.

  And it’s not that simple at all. Now you can see how I got interested in the psychology of retail.

  It’s scary, though, isn’t it? If something as friendly as the Gingernut biscuit is so complicated, what is there going on that we don’t know? How many times a day are we being subtly and painlessly manipulated?

  Go on. Be the first person to come up with a conspiracy theory based on the Gingernut biscuit.

  I’m completely socialised to the Queensland Gingernut. And so, I suspect, are you. We’ve been nobbled. And how could it end at biscuits?

  Would it have been better if I hadn’t told you?

  I think I needed to know.

  On the tours – just so you understand how other people handle the information – the tourists generally find the Gingernut story mildly interesting. You know, quirky. Not stressful.

  Yes, well, they’re obviously not thinking it through.

  We take our empty bowls into the kitchen and Elvis jogs out of the Bean’s room. He stares at me, makes the familiar initial grumbling overture for Bonios. This, perhaps, is not the time to play the entire Bonio game.

  He stares, grumbles. He trots across the room and tries the same with Ash. Something’s going on, she says. He’s expecting something. More grumbling. Elvis thinks it’s the perfect time for the Bonio game. What does he want?

  Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you ask him what he wants? Just try ‘What do you want, Elvis?’

  What do you want, Elvis?

  Some pawing of the ground, more grumbling.

  Again, louder, like you really mean it, I tell her.

  What do you want, Elvis?

  More pawing, louder grumbling, sounding like one of those spooky reincarnated mummy voices from a Scooby Doo cartoon. And, if Ash knew what she was listening for, at this point she would start to hear the word ‘Bonio’.

  Say it again. Say it again.

  What do you want, Elvis? Louder, more enthusiastic, like she knows the game already.

  And Elvis comes back louder, too, just as he knows he’s supposed to.

  Okay, you have to go with me on this one. The next line is, ‘Do you want a cheeseburger, Elvis?’

  She laughs, bends forward to get closer to his face, brushes hair away from her eyes as it falls forward. Do you want a cheeseburger, Elvis?

  And Elvis moans like the Scooby Doo mummy venting its spleen at the far end of a long tunnel, lifts his front paws from the floor, then drops back down again.

  And now, ‘Do you want a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Elvis?’

  You are insane, Ash says, still bending forward, her hands on her knees. Okay, here we go. She takes a breath in, musters up a huge amount of pretend enthusiasm for the offer she’s about to make. Do you want a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Elvis?

  Elvis goes down low to the floor, moans Bonio long and mournfully and several times.

  Okay, here’s the big one. And you’ve got to do this one sort of innocently, as though you’ve just worked it out. ‘Do you want a’ – and I mouth the next word very carefully – ‘Bonio, Elvis?’

  Ah, she says. I’ve got it now. She pauses. He looks at her. Stares. She holds the pause and then, just as he’s about to get very confused, says briskly, Do you want a Bonio, Elvis?

  He dances around on his back legs, says Bonio like someone who knows he’s close to the prize, nudges his shoulder into Ash’s calf to urge her in the right direction, pushes her over to the corner of the room where the Bonio jar is waiting.

  And now?

  Now you give him one. And don’t worry, he’ll be completely polite, even though he’s pretty excited. And he won’t eat it. He’ll take it away somewhere for later. The treat is having the Bonio. Eating it is a separate treat. It’s surprising how much joy a small-brained creature can get out of a dense, wheaty biscuit. But I guess you know all about tea drinkers and Gingernuts, so . . .

  Don’t be rude.

  It’s all right. I come from a long line of tea drinkers. I can say that.

  She takes the Bonio out of
the jar, Elvis reaches up and it clunks into his mouth. He jogs out of the kitchen. Ash follows.

  We’re going down a hall now, I hear her say. Looking in a door. Not going in. Looking in another door. Going in there. It’s a bedroom, double bed. Pushing the Bonio under a pillow with our nose . . .

  She says a few more things that are too muffled to hear, then Elvis’s toenails are back on the wooden floor of the hall, moving at jogging speed, and he reappears in the kitchen. Ash is behind him. Wearing a slim green silver-and-black swirly tie.

  You must have been Mister Trendy in the eighties, she says, treating the discovery like a victory. And someone’s done them all up too.

  It’s just easier that way.

  Oh no, you’re defending it.

  Well, what choice have I got? You’ve found them now. Besides, it makes sense.

  And it makes sense to keep every tie you’ve ever had?

  Yes it does. They take up very little space, and that style will be back, you know. I’m quite attached to that tie, and I’d be depressed if I chucked it out and then it came back in. It got me through a lot, you know. Back in the dark Dickensian days when I was a resident and they’d work us sixteen hours on a Sunday. There were days when my fashion sense was all that got me through. I used to have these excellent black pointy shoes that went with that tie perfectly, but they got a bit fungoid so they had to go. They laced up at the side.

  Bet you got a lot of action in those.

  Well, maybe I did. But they were strange times. I also had an excellent skinny black leather tie, but it got fungoid as well. I think I got the idea from the Knack. Who also inspired me to learn guitar. You know the Knack?

  Do I know the Knack? How old do you think I am? Six? ‘My Sharona’ is a classic.

  A classic? ‘Smoke on the Water’ is a classic. The Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ is a classic. ‘My Sharona’, attached as I am to it, can’t have been around long enough to be a classic.

  It’s a classic. Live with it. And anyway, this is a cycle-time issue. Who knows when a song’s a classic? Soon a song’ll he a classic if two people talk about it after it drops out of the charts. That’s all it’ll take. And, by the way, before we move right along, that’s quite a game you’ve got going with the dog.

  Hey, you seemed happy to play it.

  How long have you lived alone, exactly? With your knotted-up ties and your dog rituals.

  Six months. But the dog rituals go back at least a few years, and the tie knotting about ten. Or so. I’ll have you know I haven’t developed a new eccentricity in ages. So I’m stable, at least. And I stand by the tie knotting.

  I know you do. And I bet you never trash emails.

  Why would you trash emails?

  I pour more wine and we sit down. I decide that tonight a glass and a half will be the limit. I don’t really know what’s happening here, but it wouldn’t be improved if I went to the toilet with Elvis and weed on him.

  ‘My Sharona’ has been around at least twenty years, she says.

  All right, it’s a classic.

  About 1977, I think.

  Surely not. It’s not even their best song anyway.

  No. ‘Good Girls Don’t’ was their best song.

  Okay, we agree on something.

  Elvis climbs onto the sofa next to Ash and stares at her again.

  A ‘My Sharona’ fan from way back, I tell her. Don’t worry. It’s a whippet thing. I spent years trying to work out if he was being really thoughtful or just intensely blank. Then someone pointed out to me that his brain is actually the size of a walnut. So I think it’s better to err on the side of not brilliant.

  I don’t know, she says, taking his face in her hands and pushing his ears back. He looks kind of smart.

  He looks like a seal if you do that, maybe, but I don’t think he looks terribly smart. Just one example – he blames me for rain.

  He blames you for rain? How do you know?

  It’s the way he stares when it rains.

  He’s got more than one way of staring?

  You get to work these things out after a while. You work out most about the mechanisms of the walnut brain if you take him for a walk. If you go along just behind him and imagine watching the world through whippet cam. Motoring along, with your ears back, all these instances of unexpected distractability, when one tuft of grass that looks just like any other tuft of grass compels you to sniff. And rub yourself in it. And then chug along like the smallest freight train in the world to catch up with your human again. It seems to be fun, but I don’t think it’s sophisticated.

  When Ash has finished her wine, I drive her back to her place.

  I’d better get going, she said as she drank the last mouthful and put the glass down on the coffee table. I’ve got a few things to look at for uni tomorrow.

  When I’m home again, and the Bean’s out of the car and back in her cot and I’m loading the dishwasher, I wish the evening wasn’t over. Over in the car outside Ash’s house with her calm, See you tomorrow. Over back here with the silence, the sleeping baby and the quiet, watching dog. The weight that had lifted all evening without me knowing is back on me.

  I couldn’t tell her about Mel tonight, even though it’s the one crucial thing about me that she doesn’t know. I could show off, I could go on at length about the dog, I could embarrass myself with the Bonio game and be embarrassed by my ancient pre-knotted ties, I could find myself sitting there listening to that biscuit story. But not just listening. Being drawn in by it and thinking, does she know how that kind of thing appeals to me? So could she please stop? But I couldn’t tell her about Mel.

  What am I doing? How do I get to be playing this game without thinking it through?

  11

  I didn’t expect to be here, playing anything. I didn’t think my life would be like this. As naive as it seems, when I was at uni I think I assumed that everything would be sorted out long before I was thirty. And by thirty-four I’d be years into marriage, I’d have two children, all would be going well and we’d be happy that two was enough.

  I suppose I thought my big stresses would be how long the grass got between Saturday mowings, and people not turning the light off when they left the room. That’s how much it looks like an uncontested assumption that I’d be replicating my parents’ lives.

  So it was wrong from the outset. But even if it hadn’t been, it would be far too simplistic to say that it was Melissa’s death that stopped it. The whole situation was much more complicated.

  In so many ways, it just wasn’t working. I don’t know if I can say that it never worked, but it stopped working. I think it was in England that we decided we’d be together, share the pursuit of the lives we expected, and bad jobs and a shitty winter that got us thinking that way. But maybe that’s too dissected, too clinical. Maybe I should be remembering something properly passionate, but it’s long ago and there’s too much in between. I can remember days and things we did and things I said, but when I try to remember how I felt, I can’t quite get there.

  Mel was doing a year of her dermatology training in Cambridge. She’d always planned that, since before we started going out. We’d talked about it as though it gave us the safety of something finite, a relationship with an end point. We weren’t committing. We were clear on that with each other. We were filling in time. Six months. I kept telling myself not to get attached. But at the three-month mark, when she said something like, What are your plans for next year, really? You don’t seem to he making any, I realised she was right. I’d gone into general practice, doing locums. I’d decided I wouldn’t do that forever. That was the extent of my plan.

  I suppose I could come over to England for a while, I said. It’s been a few years since I’ve been back there.

  I think I even called it a change of scene.

  I went with her. I stayed. I did GP locums, so it wasn’t much of a change of scene. Then a non-accredited laser surgical position came up at the hospital. Temporary Clinical Assis
tant to the Director of Dermatology. There were weeks when I did more laser work than Mel did. Those also tended to be the weeks when she’d tell me about rare diseases that she’d seen (and that I’d never even heard of), or some small technical point she’d discussed with someone important. While you’re doing the hack work, she never actually said.

  But I liked the work. I’d found a kind of work that I liked and, surprisingly, it was the focused practical challenge of it that I liked best. And I knew I’d never care that I didn’t know the three-word Latin name for yet another skin rash, so I was happy for her to put me in my place. I even recast it as a plus, being with someone who had that kind of ambition. I decided to see her as assertive, positive, a more positive person than me. I told myself it was a good thing, and that I respected it. And that it wasn’t a competition.

  And any time it really shitted me off, all I had to do was wait until she’d finished the last long Latin word of the disease name and then say something like, Doesn’t it just respond to steroids? as if, for the veteran locum GP, it was all everyday stuff.

  But it wasn’t like that all the time, and it’s wrong to remember it that way.

  There were times when we were on the same side, like the morning when the heating had gone out and I was outside long before dawn, shovelling coal and thinking, Why the fuck am I here? and wanting to kiss my father’s balding head for accepting that job in Australia in the early seventies. I went back into the house to find that Mel had got up as well, and made hot chocolate. She had woken with the cold, as I had not long before. She had heard me outside, my vigorous swearing and my almost as vigorous shovelling. And she had decided, at a time when it would have been more than reasonable to roll over, close her eyes and wait for the heat to kick back in, that she’d get up and heat milk on the gas and have hot chocolate ready for me. And we’d share the moment of acute homesickness.

  It snowed that same day, and we ran around in it like kids, built a dirty knee-high snowman and laughed at how shitty I’d been just hours earlier. There are photos somewhere. Mel, rosy-cheeked in the beanie she’d bought for skiing, poking an old, discoloured potato into the snowman, round about mid-face. There’s his nose, she said. He’s that actor, that actor from the forties, with the voice. She meant WC Fields. She was wearing her entire ski wardrobe and making a grubby mini-WC Fields.