Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

by Maureen McCarthy

  Jude was waiting for me in the kitchen. She pulled me into the bathroom, shut the door and cornered me with those blazing brown eyes. My legs felt weak. I desperately wanted to go to the toilet and I couldn’t stop giggling.

  ‘He’s married,’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh, Jude, how do you know?’ I burst out.

  ‘I saw pictures of his kids in his wallet. Three. A boy of about twelve and two younger girls.’

  ‘So?’ It was no surprise to me. Someone that age was sure to be married.

  ‘What do you mean, so?’

  ‘So, it’s none of our business,’ I said sternly.

  She stopped at that, closing her eyes for a few brief moments. ‘It is our business. I think we should sabotage it,’ she said.

  ‘Please go out, Jude,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve just got to go to the toilet.’ At the door she stopped and turned to me, her back very straight and both arms at her sides.

  ‘We must sabotage it. We should align ourselves with the wife and kids who are waiting for him at home.’

  ‘Jude! Get a grip on yourself!’ But I couldn’t stop giggling. She looked as if she was preparing for war standing to attention like that. But when the door was shut and I was sitting on the toilet a shiver of apprehension went through me.

  ‘Besides, I know him,’ she whispered venomously into the keyhole.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, not personally, but I recognise the company name. He employs a lot of South Americans and Vietnamese people. The ones that can’t speak English. Women that can’t get work anywhere else. Pays them nothing. Makes me sick to see that big car out there . . .’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘I went and checked it out. It’s a bloody brand-new silver Jag!’ ‘Jude,’ I whispered back, ‘he is none of our business. I don’t want to get into any kind of thing with Katerina.’ Jude gave a furious impatient snort.

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ I went on. ‘I’ve got no inclination to delve into her private life. Besides, what’s the point?’ On the other side of the door Jude was quiet. I could almost hear the cogs of her brain turning over, brooding and churning.

  When I flushed the toilet and opened the door she met me with this look of absolute determination as she stepped into the bathroom with me.

  ‘Listen,’ I said as calmly as I could, washing my hands, ‘it’s her business.’

  ‘No,’ she replied angrily, ‘it’s ours. We have to be in solidarity with those workers!’

  ‘But what can we do?’ I sighed. ‘They’re probably in there smooching all over the floor by now . . .’

  ‘We could pour water over them,’ she hissed.

  ‘What?’

  To my relief I saw a grin beginning at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Boiling water!’ she said loudly. ‘That’d sort them out.’ I began to get the giggles again. My legs became weak. I sank back against the bath and tried to stop, but I just couldn’t. It was built-up tension, I suppose, and nervousness. The idea of crossing Katerina sent shivers up my cowardly spine.

  ‘Or we could go out and put a few nice, deep scratches in his Jag . . .’ She was semi-serious again.

  ‘Oh Jude,’ I spluttered. ‘We can’t . . . we can’t do anything!’

  ‘You go in and keep them occupied,’ she said, ‘and I’ll ring his wife.’

  ‘You don’t even know his number,’ I groaned.

  ‘I’ve got his number.’ She pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and brandished it under my nose.

  ‘How . . . did you get that?’ I asked. But before I’d even finished the sentence I caught sight of the navy linen coat lying across the chair he’d been sitting on.

  ‘God!’ I said. ‘Have you been rifling through his pockets?’

  ‘So?’ she said defensively.

  ‘Jude,’ I took her arm, ‘his wife might be horrible! We don’t know. . . anything about him.’

  ‘Wives are never horrible in these situations,’ she countered stubbornly. We were both quiet for a few moments. I made the mistake of thinking that I’d managed to make her see sense, that I’d calmed her down. But she suddenly leapt away from where we were both standing, her eyes blazing, and, before I could stop her, dashed into the lounge room.

  ‘So, where does your wife think you are now, dickhead?’ I heard her yell. I groaned and shut my eyes. The door between the two rooms suddenly slammed shut. There was a burst of yelling. The man’s voice and Jude’s too. Somewhere among it all I could make out Katerina’s as well, high-pitched and frantic, coming in over the others every now and again.

  ‘Would you please leave this room . . . now!’

  ‘Not until he leaves this house!’

  But I didn’t hear exactly what transpired. I didn’t want to. I think I covered both ears with my hands and slipped backwards into the bathroom and closed the door. I was trembling. Jude had gone too far.

  I heard the door from the lounge to the kitchen open and then slam again. Someone was out in the kitchen flouncing around, banging things. I opened the door tentatively. As I expected it was Jude. She slumped down into a chair and crossed her feet on the kitchen table, something I hadn’t seen anyone do in that house before. I looked at her and then over at the kettle that she’d set to boil on the stove.

  ‘Where’s Katerina?’ I said nervously.

  ‘Saying goodbye to old lover-boy, I suppose,’ Jude said. But I could see from the colour in her cheeks and the flashing in her eyes that she was gearing up for round two. The idea that we’d somehow driven him from the house appalled me.

  ‘Shit, Jude, has he really gone?’

  ‘Yep,’ she said with a small victorious grin. She picked up a couple of soup spoons and began playing a tune on the tabletop, beating out a loud rap rhythm.

  ‘Gone, gone, gone,’ she breathed in time with her tune, ‘thank the Lord!’

  ‘Ah, shut up, Jude!’ I said loudly. I was actually wringing my hands as I stood there. She looked up at me in surprise.

  ‘What’s eating you? We got . . .’

  ‘Nothing is eating me,’ I snapped, ‘it’s just that . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I hope Katerina has left with him . . . for the night,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘I don’t want to get embroiled in a real fight with her, Jude! I mean, she might kick us out . . .’ My heart gave a dive. I could hear swift, clipped footsteps coming down the hallway towards us. I gulped as the door opened and Katerina came in. She stood in the doorway. Magnificent. Her face was dazzling, lit from within with the pure flame of anger. I took one glance and had to look away. It was like staring down into the coals of a very hot fire. Feigning nonchalance, Jude picked up her spoons again and began drumming them loudly on the table.

  ‘So what was that all about?’ Katerina spat out in her high, cold, top-private-school voice. I looked back at her. Why was she fixing those incredible green eyes on me? I hadn’t told her boyfriend to leave. I took a panicky look at Jude, who had suddenly stopped drumming. She was now glowering down at the table. A bolt of fear hit my stomach then broke into a thousand pieces, fluttering around my guts. Both of them were so strong. Something terrible might happen.

  ‘Katerina,’ I gulped, making myself look right at her. ‘I’m so sorry! I think Jude is, too . . .’

  ‘I’m not sorry at all!’ Jude yelled, looking up from where she was sitting, her bare feet crossed on the table.

  ‘Would you mind getting your feet off that table!’ Katerina hissed, walking right into the room. A pause. I could see Katerina was stunned not to be obeyed immediately, but the feet didn’t move. Not one inch. I waited on the sidelines, my heart in my mouth.

  ‘That obnoxious, exploitative, rich old pathetic jerk is married,’ she said calmly. Katerina gave a small snort. Her hands were clenching and unclenching, as if any minute she was going to strike out with a punch or a slap.

  ‘So what?’ she fumed. ‘What’s that to you?’

  Jude shrugged and said n
othing.

  ‘How dare you insult a friend of mine in my house . . .’ Katerina went on. ‘I invite you to dinner and you behave like a cretin, a hick idiot, sitting down the end of the table and . . . glowering into your soup! I was so embarrassed, so . . .’

  ‘So you should be embarrassed!’ Jude cut in. ‘You should be ashamed. That creep has got a wife and kids. You’re the hick, the fool. He’s using you . . . the way he uses those poor old ducks who do the piece work for him! Do you think he gives them a fair deal? No way! They’re all desperate so he gives them about fifty cents an hour. What he’s doing is against the law! Did you know he’s being scrutinised by the labour department?’

  Katerina reeled a little. Jude spoke so confidently. I had no way of telling if she was speaking the truth or not. Nor did Katerina, but that didn’t deter her from making her feelings obvious.

  ‘I don’t care what you think about any of that,’ she was almost screaming, ‘think what you like! Your petty moral concerns don’t interest me at all. Do . . . you . . . understand? The fact is, this is my house!’

  ‘No it’s not!’ Jude shouted, jumping up suddenly and heaving the chair into the table noisily. Katerina took a step backwards, taken by surprise. Then they became like a couple of wild dogs circling each other. Both sure of themselves, each looking for the other’s weak point, a crack in the other’s armour.

  Now Jude was on the attack again.

  ‘You manipulative little snob! It’s your parents’ house! Your father and your mother are my landlords! Not you! So get off your friggin’ high horse about that! Until I get kicked out by them, it’s my house – and Carmel’s house – as much as it is yours! We pay rent in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I only have to ring them and they’ll agree,’ Katerina flew back with an icy smile.

  ‘So do it, you little prig! Ring them now!’ Jude’s arm flew up, pointing to the phone on the wall. Katerina didn’t move.

  ‘Actually they’re away at the moment,’ she said.

  ‘Actually they’re away at the moment!’ Jude mimicked, as if she thought Katerina was making it up. ‘Just remember that we’ve got to have one month’s notice, in writing! Or we’ll take them to the tenants’ union!’

  This took the wind out of Katerina’s sails. She obviously had no idea whether what Jude was saying was true or not. She wasn’t used to these kinds of arguments. I could tell by the way her hands were shaking. But nor was she used to being contradicted or shouted at by anyone. Much less by people she considered her inferiors.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Katerina said at last. ‘What gives you the right to interfere like this? He is . . . my friend . . .’

  ‘He’s using you,’ Jude sneered mercilessly, ‘don’t you realise that? And he’s got kids and everything . . .’

  ‘For your information I’ve been seeing Glen for some time now,’ Katerina said. It was her strongest bow, that ability to hold herself absolutely erect, to turn up the corners of her mouth and narrow her eyes; combined with her beauty, it gave her an air of superiority that seemed to exude from her every pore. It was hard not to be taken in by it. ‘We’re very close. And, also for your information,’ she took a deep breath, stepped towards Jude and lowered her voice, ‘yes, I know he’s married and that he has young children. I also happen to know that these are the 1990s. A fact that seems to have passed you two by . . .’ Her eyes swept around to me for an instant and then refocused on Jude. I gulped, completely dumbfounded. Even if I’d known what to say, the cold sureness of her was astounding.

  ‘You’re just a slut to him,’ Jude countered, ‘because you’re young and good-looking . . .’

  Katerina winced at the word ‘slut’. I could tell that she had never in a million years thought of herself as even within a mile’s radius of such a word. It was a horrible word. I wished Jude would stop. Katerina would have us both kicked out for sure. And that would probably mean back to Manella for me. My heart did a ghastly nose-dive and crashed on the bottom of my stomach. Manella would mean having to face up to my parents and to Vince. Oh, God, no! I realised then that I had been excited about having a job to go to the next week. I panicked as I watched them, buoyed up with fury and indignation, each waiting for the other to speak.

  ‘Why do you care?’ Katerina asked. The anger was still simmering, but she was slightly calmer now and I could see she was genuinely curious.

  ‘I’m on the side of the underdog,’ Jude said simply. ‘My mother told me what it’s like having to bring up a kid on her own . . .’

  ‘But I have no intention of taking him away from her . . . or from them. I have no intention of marrying him!’ Katerina shook her head and half smiled at the thought. ‘In fact, I couldn’t think of anything worse. You really do have a very simplistic view of things . . .’

  ‘But it’s still wrong,’ Jude said doggedly. ‘How do you think she feels?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His wife, of course.’

  ‘Why should I care what . . . ?’ Katerina’s sentence petered out, but as we stared at her beautiful face we both understood her meaning. She must have seen this because she immediately tried to cover up. She managed a funny grimace of exasperation that told me she was actually flummoxed, by Jude especially.

  ‘She hasn’t anything to do with me,’ she said softly. ‘Can’t you see that? Nor do any of the women who sew for him . . . What has any of it got to do with me? I really don’t understand you . . .’ At that point I wanted to leave the room. I couldn’t see the point of talking about anything. She had never had to consider anyone else because for her life was just fine. She took whoever and whatever came along. Anything she wanted was hers for the taking. And she had been adored, pampered and praised while she did it.

  ‘So start,’ Jude growled slowly, her deep brown eyes boring into Katerina’s. ‘Start thinking of how it might feel to have him off screwing some little tart two or three nights a week. Start thinking what it might be like to work all day and half the night over a bloody machine and only make twenty-five bucks for it. Start thinking, Katerina. You don’t want to be a complete fuckwit all your life, do you?’

  Katerina gasped, her face moving through a quick series of expressions: shock, fury, and a kind of bewilderment. Then she shrugged again and I could see her trying to summon that deadly mocking smile onto her face. But it came up wrong, not half as sure or arrogant as before. I actually felt sorry for her. She suddenly trembled, all over, like a cat shaking off a few drops of water.

  ‘So what do you think, Carmel?’ she said, turning her shocked, brilliant eyes on me. She had nothing to say so she was daring me, it seemed, to think for even a minute that I could be anything more than what she’d pigeon-holed me as: a frumpy, uninteresting fat country girl, easily intimidated. Someone who knew nothing. I opened my mouth and began to stammer. I wanted out. Finito! I knew there was something else going on underneath their words, but I had only a vague idea what it was. Something was going on between those two, something about territory and power, which had nothing to do with me. They were working out who was the top dog. I was on the outside looking in.

  Then I remembered how I’d felt getting into bed after being up all night singing and talking with Jude. Had that been just a flash-in-the-pan feeling or had it meant something? I desperately wanted to be something else than what she had in mind for me. Jude was wrong. She’d gone off half-cocked. She had no business holding Katerina to account like this. But I knew where Jude was coming from. Too bad about being kicked out of the house, too bad about Manella, too bad about all this unpleasantness. Too bad about everything.

  ‘I’m with Jude,’ I said, looking her straight in the eyes, my voice sounding much more savage and assured than I had intended, ‘all the way. He’s a creep and what you’re doing stinks . . . and what is more, I refuse to consider this your house.’

  Instead of bursting into a vitriolic diatribe or fixing me with that cold stare, Katerina simply looked away.


  ‘Well, it looks like I’ve got myself holed up with a couple of members from the moral squad,’ she said, still not really looking at either of us. ‘I just wish I’d been warned before you moved in . . .’

  ‘Ah, well . . .’ Jude mumbled noncommittally, pulling a piece of duck off one of the plates and stuffing it into her mouth, ‘that’s the way it goes. This duck is really good.’ I stared at Jude. She was calmly chewing duck. No. She was sitting down, pulling a clean plate towards her and scraping bits and pieces onto it. Then she began picking the food up with her fingers and eating it with gusto. I looked over to Katerina and saw that her expression had suddenly relaxed a little too.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she asked in an intense, low voice.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Jude nodded enthusiastically. ‘The sauce is really tasty. I’ve never had it like that before.’

  ‘I love cooking,’ Katerina said. ‘It was a recipe that my grandmother used to make at Christmas. Duck orange . . .’ she stopped suddenly, embarrassed at herself.

  ‘It was great,’ I lied. I couldn’t even remember what it had tasted like. The kettle had been boiling unnoticed for a few minutes. We both watched Katerina move to turn it off.

  ‘Do you feel like a cup of coffee?’ she asked tentatively. We both nodded. I tried to catch Jude’s eye, but she was still eating, wiping up some of the sauce with bits of crusty bread and stuffing them into her mouth. Katerina put the steaming cups in front of us, and sat down to nibble some of the leftover duck herself. She smiled at me. The first genuine smile I’d ever had from her.

  ‘So it’s a truce, then, is it?’ she asked simply. I nodded and tried not to seem as nervous as I felt. I picked up my coffee.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’m happy with that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jude as though everything was now settled.

  ‘Are you both still coming Easter Sunday?’ Katerina asked. We looked up. ‘To the party . . . at home?’

  ‘Oh,’ Jude sounded fazed, ‘the party.’