She was walking back towards the station, trying to keep her balance, when a girl in a blue and white uniform approached her. ‘Don’t worry. They are such losers. Watch this.’ And the girl walked up behind James, who was still surrounded by a crowd of laughing mates. ‘Hi, James.’
‘Hi, Julia.’
‘I saw what you did just now and I thought you deserved this.’
With one swift movement of her right hand she grabbed the waistband of his jocks, yanked and gave James a wedgie. Then she calmly walked back to Lizzie, brushing her hands together as she did. All the girls stood up and cheered.
‘Let’s ditch this place and get something to eat.’
‘Bitch!’ yelled James, trying to extricate his jocks from his crack.
Jules turned and gave him the finger. ‘Sit and twist, you loser.’ Then she turned back to Lizzie. ‘Call me Jules. What’s your name?’
‘Lizzie.’
And that was how Lizzie met Jules.
CHAPTER 13
Before they could head home to London on the day after the wedding, Tom and Lizzie made an appearance at the opening of the presents, held over luncheon at the estate. In the daylight the grounds didn’t look magical at all. Cold and imposing were the words that came to Lizzie’s mind. Everyone was feeling rather seedy so there was a lot of quiet small talk and strong cups of tea.
Ned was worse for wear and drove them slowly back to the city wearing sunglasses and a tinge of green. When they arrived home, Ned handed Lizzie her bag and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Lizzie. You never know, maybe we’ll see you again sometime,’ before speeding off. Lizzie felt like someone had punched her in the guts but Tom didn’t seem to notice. He just wanted to chill out, roll a spliff and read the papers. Lizzie was tense and aggro all afternoon and finally went for a long walk to put her head straight. She walked until it was dark and ended up at the edge of the Thames, looking up at the stars. There was no one around.
‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.’ And then she picked a star and said, ‘My wish is that Tom and I stay together.’
As she turned to make her way home she found a 20p coin on the ground. She picked it up and said to the universe, ‘Heads we’ll stay together.’ Then she tossed it.
It was tails.
Tom and Lizzie’s bed had white sheets and a crocheted blanket at the end. They never used the blanket. They kept each other warm. They spent as much time there as they could, trading stories about their childhoods, travel exploits and all the usual drivel that falls out of your head when you are post-coital and in your twenties. They spoke as though they had finished life and these were the things that had happened to them and the conclusions they had drawn. And they were at an ending of sorts – the end of their second adolescence.
One night, with a velvet blue sky peeking through the open window and the light of the full moon flooding the room, they lay next to each other, running their fingertips up and down one another’s body and kissing gently. For hours, it seemed. Finally Tom’s voice broke the stillness.
‘You’re amazing, Lizzie. The way you are so light but so deep at the same time.’ He held her face in his hands and kissed her. Then he pinned her knees back with his legs and slid inside her. They moved together like a tide, their mouths joined. There was a current running through them, a pulse, and it felt as if they might explode. And eventually they did. Lizzie let out such a moan that Tom put his hand over her mouth. She bit his finger so hard she almost drew blood.
Tom fell asleep almost immediately as Lizzie played with his hair. When she heard his breathing change, and after he had made those little jerky movements he always made before he fell asleep, she buried her face in his neck and said, ‘I love you, Tom.’ It hung in the air and Lizzie never knew if he’d heard it or not.
He hadn’t. He was asleep. But he loved her too. And had told her so the night before as she slept.
So why did it end? Well, Jules called Lizzie two days later and told Lizzie to call home immediately. Her mother had had a stroke, was in hospital and now had a nasty case of pneumonia. Things didn’t look great. So Lizzie got the first available flight home and thought she would stay until her mother got back on her feet.
Meanwhile, a law firm offered Tom a job and he was transferred to their Boston office a month later. The crazy time difference made for late-night phone calls and regular misunderstandings. Lizzie would call Tom at 11 p.m. after a few wines, either worked up and edgy or down and melancholy, while Tom was having his morning tea. Tom would call her after a night out drinking with his new colleagues, hard and horny and ready to talk dirty, while she was having lunch and her mum was in the next room yelling, ‘Get off that bloody phone, I’ve got a blood test at 2.30.’
Neither of them was much for writing and after a few months it all started to seem too hard. They weren’t connecting. Lizzie fell into a bit of a heap until one day she was at the milk bar and bumped into her old mate Jim. They’d shared a house in Fitzroy years before. Jim was doing some labouring work at a house around the corner and started coming around after work on Fridays for fish and chips with Lizzie’s parents. Before long it was lunch, too.
Lizzie was lost and with Jim she felt found. He was laconic and relaxed and it was all so easy and uncomplicated. He understood where she came from and there were so many things she didn’t have to explain. She still didn’t have a car, so Jim drove her to her stand-up gigs and stood up the back, drinking VBs and rolling Log Cabins. Afterwards she’d find him in the front bar and he would introduce her to some visiting Polish film-maker, broken-hearted Irish poet or geologist from Bahrain with whom he’d struck up a conversation. Jim had this knack of befriending people. Occasionally he’d be chatting with a woman, who would look startled and guilty when Lizzie appeared. ‘Don’t worry, darl,’ Lizzie would say, slugging on a stubbie. ‘He’s all yours. We’re just mates. Go for gold. But you’ll have to drop me home on the way.’
And then things changed. There was a shift.
One night Jim took Lizzie to the Coburg drive-in to see The Life of Brian and halfway through they ditched the movie and had it off in the back of the car and that was it. They moved in together and twelve months later Reuben was born. Lizzie had no regrets. She still thought of Tom from time to time, but those times became fewer and further between. What she and Jim had was special. She felt a peace she’d never known before and people kept commenting on how well she looked. Jim made her feel cared for. He cooked for her, he gave her foot massages and occasionally he even wrote her funny little love poems. And she loved his hands. They were always rough and battered from labouring or working on his sculptures. There was paint splattered on the backs of them, his fingernails were dirty and one of his fingers always had a grubby bandaid wrapped around it.
She loved his manliness, his dignity and his loyalty. Jim felt like home. Perhaps she’d just reached an age when she was ready to settle down. She slipped into life with him so easily that sometimes she wondered if she’d actually chosen it – or had she ended up with Mr That’ll-do? But she knew that she could walk the length and breadth of the world and never find anyone much better than Jim.
Jim loved Lizzie because she was Lizzie. Smart but not stuck up, caring but no wimp. He loved her strength and her unpretentiousness. Jim wasn’t after perfection; he had fallen into that trap before. He was just after someone he could do stuff with and someone he could love. Jim wasn’t settling for less with Lizzie; he just had very realistic expectations and she fulfilled them. He wasn’t looking for a trophy wife or a sex nymph, just someone he could make happy. He was fairly confident that he could make Lizzie happy, just by loving her. And that was enough.
Lizzie never told Jim about Tom. It seemed pointless and hurtful to bang on about some bloke in England she’d had a fling with. She didn’t think o
f it as a fling and it hadn’t felt like a fling at the time; it had felt like they were in love. But in the harsh November light of Sunshine, a five-week travel relationship seemed most accurately described as a fling. Besides, a part of her wanted to keep Tom to herself. She would bring the memories out and wallow on a Saturday night, when Jim was out drinking with his mates after the footy. There was something perversely soothing about sinking into melancholy with the stereo on full blast, a family-size block of Dairy Milk at her side.
She did try to reach Tom one more time. They’d had no contact for about six weeks when she called his Boston office late one night after watching Truly Madly Deeply and necking half a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream. They told her he was back in London and no, they didn’t have a number for him; he’d been head-hunted by another firm. She was gutted but resigned herself to waiting for him to call. He never did.
*
Tom was back in Britain, but his luggage wasn’t. It never turned up. He was glad he’d taken the Leica in his carry-on bag but devastated to have lost his address book with Lizzie’s phone number in it. He even went down to the Hog’s Breath, hoping to track down Jules, but she was long gone. You might wonder why he didn’t just call international directory assistance. How many Quealys could there be in Victoria, let alone in Sunshine? But you know what? Tom didn’t even think of it. He just kept banking on his luggage turning up.
Deep in his heart, he worried that what he’d had with Lizzie could only exist on the road. It was too wild, too amazing, too good for the real world. He decided to leave Lizzie preserved in his mind, like a doll in a glass box. That way he could never lose her and no one could ever take her away.
Then Tom met Felicity. She was a gun lawyer at the firm that had head-hunted him, Crowley Tolhurst and Associates. Tom, Felicity and Harry, his future partner, formed a little gang. They called themselves TSL, The Single Losers, and the three of them went to the pub, caught movies together and sat around moaning about people in relationships. Felicity loved a drink and, as all the blokes kept reminding him, was quite a catch. Sure, she was funny and pretty and he could see theoretically that she was sexy, particularly in the stockings and high heels she wore to work. But she just didn’t get his blood boiling the way Lizzie Quealy did. Felicity had grown up only ten minutes away from Tom and had studied at his school’s sister college. They didn’t remember each other but Felicity had a vague recollection of Ned playing one of the leads in the joint school production of South Pacific.
Then one drunken work Christmas party Harry photocopied his arse and left it on the boss’s desk and Felicity and Tom had a festive snog in the stationery cabinet and that was it. He still thought about Lizzie – but as he got into the swing of things with Felicity, his time with Lizzie began to seem like a bit of a dream. And the next thing he knew the real estate agent was saying, ‘Going once, going twice … Sold to the man in the brown suede jacket with the pregnant wife.’
CHAPTER 14
When Jules and Lizzie pulled up, it was almost dark. The front and back doors were open, waiting for the coming storm to cool the place down, and Lizzie could see right through their little bungalow to the fig tree out the back. Suddenly it hit her how many things could have gone wrong while she was away. The house was still there, the kids were still there, Jim was still there and she realised she was very excited to be home.
Lizzie lugged her backpack down the path to the front door, leaving Jules at the car. She dropped her luggage to the ground and tried to open the screen door, but it was locked. She went around the back and as soon as she was inside, she could smell the stench of sickness. It was the odour of burnt toast, rubbish not taken out and two open bottles of flat lemonade on the kitchen bench. She could hear Toy Story playing in the lounge room and made her way up the hall.
Somebody had decorated the Christmas tree. She had completely forgotten about the holiday. Jim and Scarlet were asleep on the couch next to a couple of old bath towels and a bucket. Reuben was on the ground playing Lego, naked.
‘So this is what goes on when I’m not here,’ Lizzie said.
Reuben looked up from his construction. ‘Mum!’ Lizzie crouched down and he ran into her arms. ‘I missed you so much what did you bring me?’ he cried in one breath.
‘You’ll have to wait and see. Have you been good?’
‘I’ve been great! Ask Dad or Jules or Nana Myrna.’
Jim and Scarlet stirred from their sticky sick sleep.
‘See that lady over there?’ said Jim to Scarlet in a croaky voice. ‘That’s your mother.’
‘Hello, my poor sick darlings.’ Lizzie sat down on the couch. The two of them reeked of gastro. It wasn’t just diarrhoea and vomit. A primal scent seeped out of their skin, signalling other animals to keep away. Scarlet looked at her with groggy eyes, a blanket mark down one cheek.
‘I’d kiss you but I’m fairly sure you don’t want this bug,’ said Jim, blowing her a kiss. Scarlet kept staring at her like she was trying to place Lizzie’s face. Suddenly there was a violent noise from up the hall.
‘Oi! Who do I have to root around here to get this door open?’
‘Sorry, Jules!’ Lizzie raced to the front door and fumbled in the bowl of keys for the right one. ‘Hold your horses.’
‘Well, that’s a nice how do you do. Look after your kids and your husband and pick you up from the airport and you lock me out. That’d be right.’
‘Well,’ said Lizzie, opening the screen, ‘serves you right for barracking for Hawthorn.’
‘Ha, ha. Shall I put the kettle on?’
‘I was thinking beer, myself. I’ve got duty-free fags.’
‘You little ripper, Rita,’ said Jules, before disappearing into the kitchen for a long neck, a couple of glasses and an ashtray.
‘Lizzie,’ said Jim, handing her a bundle of Scarlet, ‘I really missed you.’
‘It’s great to be back,’ said Lizzie as she pressed her check against Scarlet’s cold, clammy skin.
‘And Lizzie,’ said Jim, ‘Scarlet’s got a dirty nappy.’
Lizzie peeled opened her backpack and dished out the goodies while they gave her the rundown on the last five days. A water-propelled rocket for Reuben, a little purple bag for Scarlet, a signed first edition of Culture and Imperialism for Jim and a pair of silver earrings for Jules.
‘Who’s that for?’ said Reuben as he reached into her bag and pulled out a snow dome containing Big Ben.
‘That’s mine, darling,’ said Lizzie, and she took it off him and put it on the mantelpiece. ‘That’s Mummy’s special thing.’
There was a lightning bolt, a thunder clap and then the rain bucketed down.
There was only one thing worse than a 40-degree Christmas and that was a dank, overcast 30-degree Christmas with almost 100 per cent humidity. As soon as you got out of the shower you felt grubby and revolting, even before your hair had dried.
Jim and the kids had recovered from the dreaded lurgy and the happy little tackers spent the morning wearing their brand-new Kmart clothes and fanging up and down on their brand-new Kmart bikes while Jim hung over the fence talking to the neighbours.
It was a picture-perfect Christmas morning but Lizzie didn’t care because she was as sick as a dog. She spent the day sitting in the bath spewing, sitting in bed spewing and sitting on their back deck spewing. Jetlag plus gastro – it reminded her of being ten weeks pregnant. She felt as if she needed an exorcism and thanked God Jim had had a vasectomy. She loved kids, but not enough to go through the first trimester again.
Eventually, pale, weak and woozy, she was transported to her parents’ place and installed in their backyard gazebo. Her mum sat on one side with her walking frame and her father on the other in his Smoky Dawson recliner. Suddenly she knew what it was like to be old.
‘Oh, gastro, don’t get me started. I remember one y
ear, good lord, we were all going both ends at once, weren’t we, Ron? I was pregnant with you, Lizzie. Couldn’t eat for days and I could have shat through the eye of a needle. Isn’t that right, Ron? It’s a miracle you came out in one piece.’ Lizzie’s mum gnawed on a chicken drumstick as she spoke. Lizzie could hear her dentures clicking.
‘Too right, Maureen, too right. Be a love, Lizzie, and get your old man a couple more spuds, would you?’ He handed her his plate as he hacked away with the cough he’d had for years. ‘And don’t be mean with the gravy.’
Donna and the Debbies hovered around with fags hanging out of their mouths, shooing flies off the pavlova and yelling at their kids. ‘Gavin, I told you, if you can’t play nice you’ll get a smack!’
‘Christian! Jesus you can be a little bastard sometimes. Give him back his remote control car.’
‘What are the Elfs up to now?’ asked Jim, handing Lizzie a glass of water. ‘The Elfs’ was Lizzie and Jim’s private nickname for Lizzie’s brothers’ kids. It stood for Evil Little Fuckers.
‘You don’t want to know, but I’ll tell you what, Jim,’ said Donna, taking a drag on her cigarette. ‘I understand why some mothers eat their young.’
‘Still feeling sick, Lizzie?’ asked one of the Debbies. ‘Look on the bright side: you won’t have to worry about working off Christmas lunch. You might even lose a few kilos.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lizzie. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ As if she gave a shit.
After the traditional Christmas punch-up between her brothers, Lizzie and Jim plucked the kids from the sea of wrapping paper and threw them into the car. Lizzie loved the drive home over the West Gate Bridge on Christmas night. ‘Mission accomplished,’ she always thought as she looked down at the twinkling lights of the oil refinery. They only ever had the one Christmas function to attend; Jim’s mum was kind enough to bugger off to Albury each year to spend the day with her sister.
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