Eli was looking anything but a junkie. He was spruce, shaved, over-the-moon in love. Eyes closed, he locked his knees around Phoebe and rocked her from side to side while she talked. ‘In the West we’ve only seen citified Afghans and Pakistanis, the small educated elite and the chaps who drive buses in England. There are huge numbers of people – I mean millions – living rural or nomadic lives. They’ve never held a pen…’
‘Although,’ Eli interrupted, opening his eyes to beam at her, ‘they have seen television.’
‘Yeah. TV’s like opium there. They watch the soapies and the cricket. If you turn on the news, all you hear about’s the cricket.’
‘And beating the Indians.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot. Beating the Indians, that’s a national sport. On the radio in Peshawar you can get Voice of Afghanistan, Radio Free Afghanistan and Voice of Unity. The Voice of Unity is the station of the Afghan mujahedeen; the Pakis think it’s sponsored by the CIA and maybe India. Won’t go down well in Pakistan if the warlords take over and the Indians are backing them. They’ll hate that more than they hated the communists. They’re so scared of being encircled by the Indians.’
And Eli did a war cry. Phoebe said, ‘Cockhead!’ and they rolled over on the floor like a pair of children.
Eli wanted the wedding to happen at Bowradale on the east coast, where I used to take him on holidays when he was a child. I’d also take Nin there from the New South Wales side of the border when we were living at Reg’s. It’s just north of Victoria, beside the sea – a place where a wide blue river meets the ocean, a place of colour, light and soothing sounds, a heart-lifting, soul-immersing place that takes you in its arms and adores you. Or at least, that’s how I always think of it.
After much deliberation and with guilty consciences, we left Stella to sit out the wedding under the watchful eye of Cousin Audra. She might have come with us, but, feeling upstaged by a bride, she was on her most button-pushing dignity when we took Phoebe around to the Rats’ Nest to introduce her. The remainder of the Motte crockery was out in unmatching array and tea dribbled down the Doulton spout alarmingly. Stella never liked a female to be better looking than the women in our family and said so at length to Phoebe in as roundabout and aristocrat-including way as she possibly could. Phoebe listened respectfully with head bent and hands devotionally clasped while Allegra’s wonderful, curling, light-trapping mane was alluded to, as were her eyes of miraculous turquoise. On examination, Phoebe’s hair was found to be straight and her eyes of a ‘fairly common blue’. ‘Like Eli’s,’ teased Nin.
Nin and I had bought Eli a beautiful suit and two gold wedding rings, he having sent the sizes on before arrival. Shoes were a thing he decided he could do without, possibly following my father in his contempt for highly polished feet and their fascist connotations. Phoebe wore no shoes, either, although I learned later that she had a pair of Manolo Blahnik’s in her luggage. Quite why I’d had to buy the rings rather than their buying them on the spot in London was a mystery – until Nin showed me a book on wedding etiquette that Cousin Audra had given her against the day – it seems that the groom’s family pays for the rings. They also, the book suggested, pay for the honeymoon. These things were news to me.
After Pakistan and then winter in London, Eli and Phoebe wanted to walk on fine sand, to paddle in froth, feel the sun’s rays on their skin. They were married on the beach under a marquee with champagne and strawberries (I understand that was the bit Phoebe’s parents paid for as it was the only bit of the bill, apart from the drinks, that I never saw). They played music they weren’t allowed to play in Pakistan and danced. The honey-coloured Phoebe – in defiance of the Princess Diana, full regalia times – wore a short yellow dress and carried a bunch of bright daffodils (extraordinarily cheap for a wedding bouquet, I discovered when I paid the florist).
Under Phoebe’s influence, I’d splashed out on a Dead Sea mud pack and fingernail brightening apparatus pressed on me by some Israeli backpackers who’d set up a stall in our local mall and were ripping off passers-by by buffing one fingernail on a customer’s hand to a blinding shine. ‘Oh,’ Phoebe had cried, ‘brilliant! Must have!’ At ninety dollars for two packs. On the day of the wedding, I had shiny fingernails that were all different lengths when I compared them with the individually illustrated, long white talons of Phoebe’s mother, Fridlinda, who obviously hadn’t pulled a garden weed in her life.
It was the first time I’d met Phoebe’s parents – I hadn’t even spoken to them on the phone. Eli had been sprung on them out of the blue. ‘Always thought she’d marry a diplomat or an exiled princeling of some sort,’ George Green said. He was sixty-ish, stocky, affable, champagne-pouring; he wore punter’s pants, had a big double chin and it wasn’t hard to envisage binoculars slung around his neck.
Whatever he thought of Eli, he spared no shekels on Phoebe’s wedding present – a large drop pendant of high quality Brazilian citrine on a handsome gold chain, ‘Here you are, darling,’ he said, clasping it around her neck, ‘not pregnant, are we?’
Phoebe sprayed him with daughterly contempt.
‘Oh good,’ he said, ‘didn’t like to think you threw yourself into wedlock for that kind of reason.’
‘Don’t be silly, Dad!’ but he just gave a smiling hmph and turned his attentions to Fridlinda, under whose belt Phoebe had been sitting for eight months on the day of their nuptials.
Fridlinda slid her highly manicured hand under Phoebe’s jewel and said, ‘You know, Daddy went all the way to the Iguaçú Falls for that citrine. We were going to have it cut into a pendant for me, but anyway, it suits you so much better, darling. Citrines ward off the evil eye, did you know?’ Two of Phoebe’s four brothers were at the wedding and the one who’d arrived on time, Charles Green (a replica of his father), reeled away from the cluster around Phoebe in good-natured contempt.
‘Charles?’ his father chided.
And Charles said quietly, ‘Well, what a thing to say to a bride. I think I remember you giving Fridlinda diamonds when you married her.’ He was looking at me, or rather through me – I just happened to be where his gaze landed – and pinched his bottom lip to stop his head from going its own way and shaking its disapproval.
‘Gawd,’ said Nin at my side. And then, in a whisper, ‘I hope Phoebe doesn’t turn out to be like her!’
‘More likely wants to get away from her, darling,’ I whispered back: reason told me Phoebe had already done that by working abroad.
Eli hadn’t met Fridlinda before either. He kept winking at us and clasping Phoebe’s hands as if at any moment she’d vanish. I would have liked him to be surer of himself, but, although he was nervous and his hands trembled every now and again, he was glowing with happiness. Phoebe also seemed in a state of bliss, although I thought I detected a slight hesitancy beneath the glow – perhaps her victory in bagging Eli hadn’t been a victory in the place where she’d most intended it to be.
The second brother, Ned, slimmer and younger than Charles and nifty in a smart suit, arrived in his Porsche at the lunch in the old pub over the road, having missed the ceremony because he’d been held up at a business conference in Sydney. Eli’s grasp on Phoebe became noticeably tighter in the sharpening atmosphere. He’d cover her arms with his as if warning off other males. Ned was clearly contemptuous and started to support Fridlinda in mocking the menu, while Charles again threw his constrained exasperation around in his seat, coming out at last with, ‘Just because you were late for the wedding, Ned, doesn’t mean you can cover up by criticising the occasion.’
‘More champagne, anyone?’ George wafted around like a stallion showing off the goods to a group of horse traders. ‘Jolly nice champers, this Bollinger. Do you have enough there, Isobel? Coretti…Coretti…you any relation to that painter chap?’
‘Aunty Bel’s his daughter,’ piped up Nin. ‘And she’s a painter, too. A better painter than he was in my opinion.’
George chuckled somewhere around the tonsil le
vel. ‘The young today are all tremendously opinionated,’ he said. ‘Suppose it’s a good thing, really. Can’t have faint hearts in this world. Now tell me, Eli, old chap, where did you come by a name like that – Eli? Biblical, isn’t it?’
Eli looked queryingly at me. ‘Well actually it was my father’s choice,’ I said. ‘He found some scrabble letters on the street on his way to see me after Eli was born and he pulled them out of his sock where he’d put them and they spelt Eli.’
‘You’re kidding!’ George smiled thinly.
‘Not at all. It’s what he did. My father had a sense of humour.’
‘You can see that in his paintings.’
‘You know them then?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen them in auctions.’
‘You go to auctions, then? Are you a collector?’
‘We’ve got one or two pieces, yes. But this name, Eli. It’s biblical, isn’t it?’
‘I haven’t much acquaintance with the bible, but I suppose it’s biblical,’ I said.
‘Old Testament?’
‘Old Testament.’
Fridlinda broke in here. ‘Jewish,’ she said swiftly.
‘Must be difficult, Eli,’ chuckled George, ‘travelling round a place like Pakistan with a Jewish name.’
Eli looked blank, holding his head enquiringly.
‘You didn’t have any trouble then?’
‘Sorry, have I missed something? Is my name Jewish? I never knew. They called me Elias in Pakistan.’
Intense chuckling from George. ‘Quite right, too. I never thought Jews were any different from Christians. Everyone was equal at my old school in Edled.’
‘Edled! Do you mean Adelaide?’ Nin exploded.
‘What a funny little family you’ve married into, Phoebe!’ George chuckled on, then turning back to me, ‘But Henry Coretti’s a name. Do his works bring much?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You should. Art market’s firming.’ And so it was, back then. ‘Prices are rocketing for his generation. Wasn’t he married to that woman who runs Siècle Gallery. Fine gallery, that…Now, wait a minute…Isn’t it her daughter who runs that place? She’d be your sister, then?’
‘My father had two families.’
‘What, both at the same time?’
‘Complicated. Artists’ lives are often complicated. You’ve got two families, too, George. So I guess complications aren’t restricted to artists.’
‘But I had mine in sequence. My first wife was Enid…’
Phoebe got up, leading Eli away from the table as Fridlinda put in her dollar’s worth. ‘Enid said I had cruel lips.’
‘She was right,’ said my forthright Nin.
Fridlinda looked at me. ‘Oh, I always thought my lips were rather mysterious. Artists have difficulty with them when they paint my portrait.’
George cackled like a man who pays to have his wife’s portrait painted every year or so.
‘Coming swimming, Nin?’ called Eli from where he and Phoebe were about to mount the hotel staircase to change for swimming. Nin pushed back her chair noisily and rushed, rudely eager, away.
‘I don’t like this place,’ rejoined Fridlinda as Nin was fleeing. ‘And I don’t like talking about families. People’s business is people’s business.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said I. ‘As for the place. I used to bring the children here when they were young. They loved it and Eli chose it as the place for his wedding.’
‘Have you paid for it in advance?’ asked Fridlinda.
‘Yes, it’s all paid for,’ I said.
‘Pity. I was going to offer to send them up to Sydney for a week; I don’t think they’ll have much fun here.’
‘Eli wanted to show Phoebe all his old haunts. We used to love coming here. Well, I’m going to take a walk and then have a swim myself,’ I said.
‘Oh, well, if you come back via the hotel, I’ll come swimming with you,’ Fridlinda said, ‘now we’re friends,’ and she smiled at me sideways, coyly. I didn’t think she had much of a mouth at all.
I haven’t spoken to Fridlinda since. I think the young enjoyed the wedding, if she didn’t. Charles Green thought Bowradale was a great place. The rocks there are Indian red, laced with purple and white sea wrack. I took Charles exploring and we collected spiralling cats’ eyes to take home with us. He and I swam together while Fridlinda sat in the hotel and sulked and George drank. Charles and I have remained occasional friends and I liaise with the rest of the family through him when I have to.
I feared that with those two people as parents, Phoebe didn’t stand much of a chance of turning out as lovely, intelligent and good-natured as she seemed. I hoped that she had in her what Charles Green had in him, a psychic spirit level that had a penchant for righting itself.
When we arrived home Cousin Audra was not in evidence and Stella was sitting up in the dark watching telly. She and Audra had fought and Stella had lost her temper and broken the light bulb in the sitting room with a broom handle because Audra said one of the shades was full of moths.
What is it with Stella and light fittings that she breaks them when she’s angry? Perhaps it is that along with not liking to hear what goes on in the world, she doesn’t want to see it, either. It’s not as if she watched news and current affairs on that telly of hers. She watched quiz shows and would have rung in whenever the contestants got things wrong because she knew better, but she was never fast enough to catch the numbers on the screen and sometimes they weren’t on the screen at all, so she just rang me to check with me that she was right and the people on telly were wrong.
Mick and I – with uppityness and no sign of volunteer help – have started to move her out of Narrowlea, not without impressing upon Janelle, Tahlia and the management that we have found hostel level accommodation for Stella in spite of her age.
So there.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
When we turned up at Redeemer with some of her things, Kees had actually come up with a better room. Someone had died. I think it was the dried-flower lady I met on my first visit. She was quite perky when I met her. ‘Dead now,’ said Kees merrily as I plunked a load of Stella-alia in the base of the built-in cupboard.
As I sorted and stacked, I recounted the dried flower lady telling me how she did all the arrangements we could see in the vases in the sitting rooms and the plastic glads, zinnias, lupins, tulips and roses garlanding Mary in the vestibule. She lived in such a forest of figurines and devotional objects it no doubt attracted the eye of God to the room, so he took her to make way for an Anglican in need.
Stripped of the ornamentation, the room is of a cheery pinkish colour with a comfy bed and a proper recliner chair courtesy of Redeemer. There is a pressure mat on the floor to warn the staff when the frail aged rises in the night to perform his or her offices in the en suite. The wardrobe is adequate for Stella’s supply of clothing, but not for her books and writing things; there is space, however, to add a piece of furniture to accommodate those needs. Alas, none of the furniture from Narrowlea can be transported because it’s all the wrong shape, designed to make her comfortable in a long, narrow room whose writing table used to straddle the water heater. I bought her the writing table in the dim hope that it would accommodate her prolific card-sending, stamp-losing, yellow pages balancing, homemade gift receiving and endless arithmetical additions of the items on her phone bill. The table was chock-a-block in no time, the drawer was jammed shut and she was constantly losing her dentures on it in a tooth glass full of putrid water. I had wanted to buy her a pretty desk with nooks, shelves and drawers for her to keep her bits and pieces in, but it was too high for Narrowlea’s window and anyway, who knows what she would have kept festering in there – quite possibly friendly vermin. Now I’m glad that I didn’t buy that – it wouldn’t have fitted at Redeemer, either.
So…now Mick and I are in the Outer Circles of Ikea looking for a suitable piece of furniture and I am feeling less than capabl
e of making the terrifying journey through and down to the cashiers.
He doesn’t realise this but I’m getting frantic: Eli has been gone for weeks and I still haven’t heard from him. We’ve tried to work out a system over the years whereby we keep in regular contact but it’s always breaking down. Phoebe used to fill me in sometimes when he was off somewhere on a hair-raising adventure but now I just have to guess. I’ve no idea what he’s up to and that is a bad frame of mind for me to be in when I enter Ikea. I can only ever make it through Ikea when I’m perfectly sane and reconciled with the flat-packed, ready-made concept of life.
Mick, unaware of my phobia, whoomps along ten paces ahead, swinging the instore bag like a slingshot champion off to slay a titan. Virgil to my Dante, he is not. We pass Billy and Lack. And the stackable, rockable, transportable Gullhomen chair made from leftover banana leaves. And now Biom and Ektorp and Wilma; Kvart, Klubbo and Blad. Mick shows no signs of being out of his depth – whoomp, whoomp, whoomp! go his size-fourteen Reeboks on the unforgiving floor past enough tea light holders to fill every opportunity shop within a hundred-kilometre radius for decades. I must remember what we are looking for. We saw it together in the catalogue, the Leksvik workstation with its pulldown desk, ample book hutch and space for my mother’s treasures. I must stop thinking of the cruel clergyman in Fanny and Alexander and children being whipped in cold weather with birch rods. I must think instead of Greta Garbo, who, if she’d set foot in Ikea, would have worn large dark glasses and a fabulous long woolly coat pulled up to the cheekbones. She would have come on her own, bravely, on a foray, as a product of Sweden that could not be sat upon, switched on and off, converted, handily stored, crammed into a small space, or accommodated in a metre-square bathroom on the Vitaminer Bil rug in the shape of a Volkswagen, pampering her face in the Grundhall mirror hanging over the Godmorgen double sink solution.
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