Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

by Maureen McCarthy

  So I swallowed my pride and rang up a couple of old boyfriends. Conner first. The conversation only lasted about two minutes. Two long, humiliating minutes. He hardly even remembered me, much less Jules. Who else could I call on? Glen. I knew he had plenty of money.

  ‘Oh, sweetie, it’s nice to hear from you. What have you been up to? Who? Oh really? No, I don’t remember him. My spare cash is tied up at the moment. It’s too bad, isn’t it? Listen, pet, last time I saw Jordan he seemed a little miffed with you. What’s going on?’ I put the phone down and took a few deep breaths to calm myself.

  Stuff the lawyer’s advice. I decided to go and see Jules for myself. I applied to the authorities, went through all the necessary red tape, and received permission. I went down to the remand centre one cold Wednesday afternoon.

  He smiled when he was shown through to the visitors’ area and saw me waiting for him, pecked my cheek, and generally acted pleased that I’d come. We were shown out into the central recreation yard where there were some other groups of inmates and visitors and told we had three-quarters of an hour. He seemed a little thinner and paler, and his hair had been cut short, but otherwise he looked well.

  I was dreading telling him. But I wanted to get it over with. ‘Jules, I told them those drugs were yours . . .’

  ‘Well, I thought you might have.’ He shrugged and smiled.

  ‘I tried not to. I didn’t want to give you away, but they threatened me. Said I wouldn’t ever be able to be a lawyer if I didn’t tell where they’d come from . . .’ It all came bursting out in a flood.

  ‘Don’t worry, Queenie,’ was all he said.

  ‘You mean that?’ I reached for his hand. He gave me a brief squeeze and then pulled away, folded both arms across his chest, and looked at his feet.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I would have done the same.’

  I felt more depressed than ever when he said that.

  ‘Is it terrible here?’

  ‘No . . . well. You know. I get by . . .’

  We chatted about different things. He liked his lawyer. He was young and nice-looking and brought him cigarettes. He’d suggested that if Jules pleaded guilty he could reduce his sentence to only a few years. And Jules had agreed.

  When there was a lull in the conversation he asked me about a few people, but when I said I’d dropped out from the scene he looked disappointed and didn’t ask any more questions. In desperation I told him that I was trying to raise bail for him, but wasn’t having much luck.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey. This time will be taken into account when I’m sentenced.’

  ‘Oh, I see . . . So do you want me to keep trying?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What are the other . . . guys . . . in here like?’ I whispered, wanting to reach him in some way before our time was up.

  ‘It was a bit rough for a start,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘But now . . . I ’ve met someone nice.’ He flashed me a grin straight from the past – wild and carefree, the old Jules – but it disappeared before I had time to respond. ‘So I’m basically left alone.’

  I sensed that an important part of him wasn’t even there. He answered my questions, smiled and even joked, but in a distant way, as if he’d already left the world – the world I knew anyway.

  ‘Can I bring you anything?’ I asked. ‘Next time I come?’

  Jules bent his face to my ear and put both arms around me in a tight embrace.

  ‘Bring in some lollies, Queenie,’ he whispered. ‘Anything. Pack it into some book or the bottom of your shoe or bra or somewhere safe, eh? You’re too classy to get pinched.’ I nodded, thinking that my looks hadn’t stopped me being pinched last time.

  ‘I’ll do my best, Jules,’ I said, trying not to let his fake hug offend me.

  ‘Good.’ He smiled and left with the warder who was waiting for him. As I watched him go I tried to summon up a memory. Just one clear memory from all the good times we’d had. A smoke, a laugh, an admiring look. Where had they gone? Where did all our minutes, our hours, and our days go? He didn’t turn at the door, didn’t even hesitate, certainly didn’t wave. He just disappeared inside and I was left feeling that I could have been anybody. Or nobody.

  I walked out onto the city street and stood for a minute feeling as if I’d come across some new and strangely ominous landscape. Cars and semi-trailers and rattling trams lumbered past. So much noise and stink. People rushed out of office blocks towards the railway station, hopping off trams, across intersections, down subways. There for a minute and then gone. Yet there was a stillness all around me. A dead stillness. The lead-grey sky was suffocatingly close to my head. I felt as though it was closing in around me. And the concrete pushed up beneath my feet like bulging rock. There was something live and menacing in the gritty afternoon air. Jules had been my friend, hadn’t he? Or had I just imagined it?

  I felt I was moving back and forth on the brink of understanding something important, but each time I got close it eluded me at the last moment. The signs all around me, advertising beer and holidays and good times, cajoled and beckoned: come and laugh, throw off your shoes, gulp it down and widen your smile. Life’s a bitch and then you die. I began to hurry, clutching my coat across my chest against the bitter wind, knowing that I would never go back to see Jules. Ever. Our friendship was over. It had been tried and found wanting. Like me.

  See you in court, baby. They might as well have been my last words to him.

  I walked for a long way. Probably for more than an hour. Then I caught a bus for the last few blocks, let myself in to the house, and threw off my damp coat. No one else was home and the house was dark and cold. I turned on all the lights and both heaters, trying to ward off my disappointment and loneliness. All the way home I’d hoped like crazy that Jude would be there, that maybe we’d eat together and listen to music or whatever. I didn’t want to be alone. But she’d left a note on the table saying she was down at the cafe, and to come down if I wanted to join her. I was grateful for the note – it showed how things had changed between us – but I had no desire to go out again. It was too cold. Besides, I had lots of work to do. I’d wasted the afternoon.

  I tried to hit the books, but I couldn’t settle so I gave up. I mooched around the house, trying to find something to distract me.

  All the time I kept thinking of him: the wide trousers, the thin hands, the angel face. I wondered what he dreamed about inside that place. I wondered where he’d come from. Was he an only child? Where had he grown up? He’d mentioned his mother once, but the memory of what he’d said was vague. Something about her working in the post office in a country town. What was the name of the town? I couldn’t remember. It was somewhere small, somewhere hours away. There’d been a soft pride in his face when he’d spoken about her. Edi. That was her name. Edi, short for Edith. I wondered if Edi knew where her son was.

  Loneliness on a Saturday night is much worse than on any other night. At about ten I finally lay down on my bed. There were no messages on the machine or notes from anyone under the door. I’d had no invitations anywhere for about two weeks. I shut my eyes and thought of the small white block of coke wrapped in silver foil at the back of my drawer. It had been there on the periphery of my mind for the last couple of hours, waiting for its moment. The day before, when I’d been rummaging around for something, I had picked it up and felt completely uninterested; even thought about throwing it out. But I hadn’t.

  I jumped from the bed and fumbled through the debris in my drawer to find it.

  The small mirror and the razor blade. The thin glass tube Glen had given me months ago sitting innocuously in a jar with my pens on my desk. I pulled them all together and with dull, precise movements began to chop the stuff up into a fine line of powder. My mind was on hold. I was thinking of nothing at all. When everything was ready I picked up the glass tube and began to snort.

  I heard a key in the door, then muffled voices: Jude’s and a man’s. She poked her head around my
door with a big smile. ‘Hi, there. Still working?’ I’d snorted up one half and was in the middle of the other.

  Jude’s face contracted. She walked in and sat down on the bed, looking at me. I was so used to seeing people snorting and smoking, even injecting stuff, that I’d forgotten about how serious it would look to someone who didn’t have anything to do with it.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s just coke,’ I said sheepishly. I was high already.

  ‘Why are you . . . doing it?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Oh, Jude,’ I said, flopping back into the easy chair in the corner. How could I organise my thoughts to answer that? I began to giggle. The room in front of me was becoming soft and blurry. My muscles relaxed. I was flying, dipping and soaring around the room.

  ‘I’m not addicted,’ this small, on-the-ground part of me said, looking at her seriously. ‘Believe me. And don’t worry, I can handle it. I just . . . like it every now and again.’ Her face was swaying in front of my eyes like a puppet’s; behind her the door seemed to be swinging open and shut of its own accord. ‘Honestly, Jude. You should try it some time. Very relaxing!’ With that I broke into a fresh gust of laughter.

  She nodded and walked out.

  I woke, cold, lying on my bed, about four hours later. My jaw was chattering, my mouth was dry, and I had a headache. I sat up shivering, and tried to pull a blanket around me. I’d fallen asleep without even a jumper on. The chilly night air had numbed my limbs. I heard again what had probably woken me. Noisy love-making from the next room. Panting and laughing and bouncing bedsprings. I slipped off my shoes and lay back on the bed, listening. I wanted to be glad for her. Truly. She’d talked a little about Eduardo. I hoped it was him in her bed now.

  But deep down I wasn’t glad. I felt sick, and those lively sexy noises made me feel more than desperate. I put both hands over my ears, screwed myself into a foetal position under the covers, and groaned.

  Later, when all was silent, I wandered down to the bathroom and got into the shower. My face in the mirror was pale and strained, a faint tinge of violet under my eyes. I’ve become ugly, horrible. No one wants to know me. Be careful. No, no. It’s just the coke. Everyone becomes paranoid on their way out.

  But I vowed to remember that image of myself, next time I felt like doing it.

  THE NEXT MORNING JUDE WAS ALONE IN THE kitchen eating toast when I surfaced.

  ‘So did you have a good time last night?’ I asked casually.

  ‘Yep.’ Jude took a sip of tea and sighed theatrically.

  ‘You don’t sound too sure,’ I said, pouring myself a cup of tea.

  ‘He’s still involved with Rosa,’ she said moodily, ‘so I told him to beat it until he can decide.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘I’m the jealous type,’ she said grimacing. ‘I can’t stand the idea of him with anyone else.’ I was about to say he’d sounded pretty decided last night, but there was a knock at the front door. We looked at each other warily.

  ‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Jude asked, getting up. I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of Jordan for days now. But Sunday morning was a strange time for someone to call.

  ‘Look through the keyhole, if it’s Jordan, don’t open it . . .’ I said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Jude ran up the hallway, calling out for me to look after the toast.

  She came back with Anton, who looked like death warmed up. He was dressed in jeans and an old jumper, a three-day beard on his face and his hair hanging in dishevelled blond knots around his face.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ I said brightly, coming forward to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Have you been up all night or something?’ He brushed my cheek with his own, slumped into a chair at the table and groaned darkly.

  ‘So you had a great night last night, I take it?’ Jude joked. ‘You want a cup of something?’

  ‘Got any coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Anton swivelled around to face me. My mood did a quick nose-dive. I had a feeling he was going to say something awful. Perhaps he’d heard about me going to see Jules in the remand centre. Oh God! A lecture was the last thing I needed.

  ‘Have you spoken to Carmel?’ he asked grimly.

  ‘No,’ I said, then looked at Jude, who had her back to us. ‘Ask Jude, she talks to her all the time.’ The high-pitched grinding noise suddenly erupted. Nobody said anything until Jude was pouring water over the ground coffee in the pot.

  ‘She won’t talk to me!’ Anton blurted out. He stared at Jude and then at me, a picture of pained confusion. ‘She won’t even say why,’ he went on, thumping the table with both palms. ‘I’ve just been up there and she wouldn’t even let me in the house.’

  ‘To Manella?’ I asked in surprise. He nodded.

  ‘Went all the way up there and she told me to go! Doesn’t want to see me any more. What can I do . . . ?’

  ‘Do you know why?’ Jude said. Anton slumped down a further few notches in his chair and shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said mournfully. ‘That’s just it. I have no . . . idea.’

  Jude gave me a swift, sharp look and began to pour out the coffee.

  ‘She saw you and Kara sleeping together,’ Jude said bluntly.

  ‘What?’ Anton sprang up in his chair like a jack-in-the-box.

  ‘She saw you,’ Jude continued, ‘the night before your birthday. She went around with a present. Snuck up the passage to surprise you and found you with Kara.’

  ‘Oh, jeeze!’ he groaned.

  ‘She wanted to kill you,’ Jude went on ruthlessly. ‘So I went with her and we threw that brick through your window.’ Anton was looking at Jude aghast.

  ‘You’re joking!’ he whispered, turning from Jude to me and then back to Jude again.

  ‘You’re joking,’ he said again.

  Jude and I looked at each other and then at Anton. Jude shrugged.

  ‘Sorry, but . . . it’s true.’

  I don’t know quite why or how, but we all started to laugh at exactly the same time. It was one of those magical moments. Anton got up from his chair and slumped against the bathroom door, pointing at Jude every now and again and shaking with silent laughter. Jude and I sat at the table spluttering into our cups, unable to stop. Then Anton began to walk around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down randomly, sighing and saying ‘I see . . .I see . . . now I understand . . .’ and then breaking out into fresh snorts of laughter.

  ‘Shut up!’ Jude yelled and threw an old wet dishcloth at his head. He rushed over, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her, still roaring with laughter.

  ‘You’re a pest, Jude! A bloody . . . pest. There should be a law against you!’ he yelled.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Jude protested. ‘Ask Carmel! Anyway, what would you know? You bloody wanker!’

  It was great to have a laugh. When we eventually stopped we were lying around on the lounge-room floor, the heater blazing, throwing insults at each other.

  ‘You’ve got the morals of a diseased rat!’

  ‘Bloody cockroach politician!’

  ‘You should talk.’

  ‘You both stink!’

  ‘Shut up, Katerina, or we’ll cover you in tar and cut all your hair off!’

  ‘I’ll cut your dick off!’

  After a while all of that petered out and we were silent for some time.

  ‘I really love Carmel, you know,’ Anton said softly. He was lying on his back, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed.

  I could see he was genuinely cut up at the idea of losing her. ‘I mean really . . .’ he said, half sitting up to look at us both, making sure we both understood he was serious. ‘Sleeping with Kara meant nothing.’ He turned towards me apologetically. ‘No offence, Katerina. I mean she’s your friend and everything; but . . . it was nothing.’

  ‘Well, tell Carmel that,’ Jude said impatiently. ‘It’s no use telling us.’

  He sigh
ed and lay down on the floor again.

  ‘She doesn’t want to know me, so what do I do?’

  Jude got up and went to the CD player.

  ‘Do something big,’ she said, looking down at us. ‘Something wild and grand to prove it.’ A fast South American dance tune suddenly blasted through the room.

  ‘Like what?’ Anton shouted above the music, looking over at her hopefully.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jude shrugged. ‘But something big. Hire a plane. Write her a message in the sky. I don’t know. The right thing will just occur to you.’

  Anton and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Jude was being . . . Jude. As crazy as usual.

  ‘I mean, I want to be there,’ Anton said miserably. ‘I want to help with her mother and everything.’

  ‘Then you have to prove it,’ Jude insisted. She turned to me. ‘Both of you,’ she said. ‘You’ve both got to prove it.’

  I nodded. Bloody Jude. How come she knows everything?

  JUDE AND I HAD BOTH ALMOST FINISHED OUR exams when the phone call came from Carmel, about seven one morning. We were both up, showered, and drinking cups of tea. Jude answered and I could tell from her face that it was serious. She spoke quietly into the phone, told Carmel she’d be there as soon as she could, then said goodbye.

  Jude put the receiver down slowly and turned to me.

  ‘Her mother’s dying now. She’s losing consciousness . . .’ she said quietly.

  ‘Are you going up there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jude nodded and then sighed in exasperation. ‘But the train leaves at four and my exam doesn’t finish until a quarter to . . . so I’ll have to wait till tomorrow . . . I f only I could bloody drive!’