Indelible Ink

by Fiona McGregor

  ‘God, no, that sort of thing is not allowed in Muslim cultures.’ Jonesy shook his head at her.

  ‘Middle Eastern women spend a huge amount on cosmetics and fashion,’ Gina replied coolly. ‘It’s an ancient tradition that goes back to the Egyptians. It’s part of the decorative tradition you see in their architecture, their rugs.’

  ‘That’s right that’s right,’ David said.

  ‘No,’ Jonesy insisted. ‘I think you’ll find them very restrictive. The women aren’t allowed to do anything.’

  Susan sent Gina an indulgent smile and asked her husband to get another bottle of wine. Jonesy appeared not to have heard her. He was buttering his bread and listening to Totti describe nuclear fission to David. Susan inclined her head to Gina, who was telling her about the similarities between Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures. Marie tried to listen to both conversations at once. She wanted more wine. She dipped her bread into the dish of olive oil. It tasted fresh as grass and she revelled in the luxury of all this good food. The desire for wine was maddening, though: wine went with everything, even its own solo self, and not for the first time, Marie regretted the removal of alcohol from her house. She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been so drunk. It made her all the more determined to drink her fill tonight.

  Susan announced, ‘Marie’s selling Sirius Cove.’

  Everybody looked at her. Marie said, ‘So this is my last New Year’s Eve in Mosman.’

  ‘Nooo.’

  ‘But you’re going to buy locally,’ Susan said decisively, then projected her voice the length of the table to her husband. ‘Harold, can we have that wine now, please?’

  ‘You’ll make a mint selling that property,’ said Totti.

  Jonesy nodded. ‘The market here is very strong even though it’s beginning to hurt elsewhere.’

  ‘Harold,’ Susan shouted. ‘Wine.’

  ‘Stop shouting at me, darling,’ Jonesy shouted back.

  ‘It’s this bloody room. The acoustics. We were supposed to do something about it twenty years ago.’

  ‘Well, I’m not stopping you!’ Jonesy got up.

  ‘All this panic about one drought,’ Totti was winding up his polemic, ‘when Australia has had them since the beginning of time. Ask my grandparents about water shortages in Sardinia. Honestly, the panic in this country when the tiniest thing goes wrong.’

  ‘It’s a global problem, John,’ said David. ‘The Japanese have as many people in Tokyo as we have in this entire country and they recycle their sewage for drinking water and use the waste to irrigate. Why can’t we do that?’ He leant back as Susan cleared his plate. Again, Marie felt he was inclined towards her, although he was on the other side of the table and not even looking at her. She watched a Hardy Brothers 1999 Merlot pour into her glass from Jonesy’s freckled hand.

  ‘I refuse to drink sewage,’ said Susan, and left the room.

  ‘I’m going to help you,’ said Gina.

  ‘We’re never going to agree on this, David. Where are you going to buy, Marie?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m in debt so until the house is sold I don’t really know what I can afford.’ She took a deep draught of wine.

  A hush fell over the table and Marie felt its weight double beneath the suddenly unanimous masculine and attentive presence. She couldn’t lower her voice in time and unintentionally boomed, ‘But I’ve begun to hate Mosman and the belt’s tightening so probably not here.’ She laughed and addressed her plate, ‘I mean I love the bush and harbour ...’

  Totti began to fold his napkin. Jonesy watched her from beneath his brow. Marie wished she could remove the words debt, afford and hate Mosman from what she had said, but then she wouldn’t have said anything.

  Eventually, David broke the silence. ‘I’d get a tank if I didn’t live in a townhouse.’

  ‘Oh!’ Jonesy exclaimed as Susan entered carrying a rack of lamb. ‘Look at this! Isn’t she marvellous!’

  ‘She’s been watching Jamie Oliver.’ Gina followed with a dish of flageolets.

  ‘I did ask David to bring someone,’ Susan said to Marie later in the kitchen, when she helped clear main course. ‘I think he’s got someone, but he’s being a bit coy. God knows I don’t want you to think I’m trying to set you up with him or anything like that.’

  ‘He’s a very nice man.’

  ‘He’s really come out of his shell since his wife died. I know that’s a very politically incorrect thing to say, but it happens to be true.’

  Marie deposited plates on the sink. She ran water over her hands, cracked with fish emulsion that had settled around the cuticles like brown dye. ‘I wouldn’t mind being set up. I’m not fussy.’

  ‘Really?’ Susan unwrapped a piece of dark chocolate and began to grate it over a pear tart.

  ‘Can I help with anything?’

  ‘No, no.’

  Marie sat at the table. ‘I’m thinking of going back to uni to finish my psychology degree.’

  ‘Can you, after all this time?’

  ‘I’m going to look into it in the new year, when I’ve sold the house.’

  Susan flapped a hand towards the floor. ‘What about them ... are they still there?’

  ‘Of course. Susan, nobody notices them any more than they notice the straps of your shoes.’

  ‘Gina would. She’d notice a speck of dust between your toes.’

  The hubbub in the dining room was getting louder.

  ‘That looks fabulous. You really are cooking up a storm tonight.’

  Susan continued grating, eyebrows raised, elbows like wings. ‘When Robert was a teenager he wanted a tattoo, you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Jonesy told him he’d be thrown out of the family.’

  Marie said nothing.

  Susan picked up a lemon. ‘A little lemon zest,’ she said, then began to grate it, adding: ‘He grew out of it of course.’

  They could hear David’s voice rising. Gina came into the kitchen. Susan sent Marie a fierce hiding look. ‘They’re arguing about politics now,’ said Gina. ‘David’s on his Arabic bent.’

  ‘It’s Jewish guilt, that’s what it is,’ Susan muttered.

  Gina laughed. ‘I think he’s just a very good businessman, Susan. He’s importing some beautiful stuff. Beautiful. And he’s quite right about Morocco.’

  ‘What about Morocco?’ said Marie.

  ‘If you haven’t been already then go now. All the Peter Mayles will be down there in a flash and it’ll be over.’

  Susan pushed back her hair to show long earrings encrusted with stones. ‘Did you see these? He brought them back for me.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Gina.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Marie. ‘Can I borrow some hand cream, Susan?’

  ‘Of course, in the bathroom. They’re prophylactics, traditionally, for the Berber.’

  ‘Will they stop you getting the flu this year?’ Gina left a waft of perfume behind her as she walked out of the kitchen.

  ‘She’s had a boob job!’ Susan hissed to Marie.

  ‘Do you think so?!’

  Marie walked after Gina, who had left the bathroom door open.

  ‘Come in, Marie. I’m only doing my lipstick.’

  ‘I’ll just get some hand cream.’ Marie tried to get a look at Gina’s face while rummaging through the drawer but saw only erasure in Gina’s sucked-in cheeks, her polished cleavage. She stared at Gina’s breasts, then looking up saw Gina staring at her and she quickly looked away, mortified. Her ankles twisted and turned, trying to hide behind each other. She found the cream and focused on it. ‘So tell me about Morocco.’

  ‘’eelll.’ Gina’s mouth stretched to receive a coat of lipstick. ‘It’s hot. It has everything really — desert, mountains, sea. The food is superb. I suppose it’s like anywhere — you have to know where to stay.’

  Marie wondered why she had begun this conversation. It was another case of can-I-af
ford-it. Everything seemed to go back to money and money now spelt restriction. And nobody here had the faintest idea what that meant. She simmered with resentment. And here she was trying to perve at fake lips, fake tits. As if that mattered. ‘It sounds lovely.’ She smiled.

  Gina fixed her large eyes on Marie’s mirror image. ‘You could go on a tour! There are some very good ones these days. Not the dregs you’d think would go on them, but lots of people like us.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Very educational is what I’m told.’ Gina lipsticked her mouth with a second, darker colour, then dabbed it with a tissue. ‘The guides are Oxford scholars. You know, they speak about a thousand languages.’

  ‘And how are you, Gina? How’s the shop going?’

  ‘I love it, but it’s exhausting. The clientele are changing. All the new money coming into the area. They’re so rude.’

  ‘I hate the thought of selling my house to somebody like that.’

  ‘Oh yes, it must be so hard.’ Gina capped her lipstick. ‘But you don’t have much choice, do you? You can’t sit there forever picking and choosing. You have to think of yourself and the best outcome in the long term ... I think that’s a terrific idea, you know. You really should do it. A tour to Morocco, after you’ve sold your house. What an adventure!’

  When Gina left, Marie shut the door for a long, private scratch of her healing tattoo. Back in the dining room the seating had changed, and Gina was now in front of the light and Marie was seated next to David Rosenthal. The Valkyries were storming from the stereo, Totti shouting, ‘What on earth are you waiting for? Book your tickets now. Subscribers get a discount. Fifteen hundred dollars, it’s so cheap!’

  Marie also subscribed to the opera. It was an effort to sit through all those hours of Stürm und Drang, but she felt somehow virtuous afterwards, as though she had fasted, or run a long way. Maybe The Ring Cycle, being that much longer, would work like an extended stay at a health farm. Maybe, also, a live version might finally expunge the images of Apocalypse Now that charged through her philistine mind each time she heard ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Maybe she couldn’t afford it. Maybe she wasn’t invited. Maybe she wasn’t invited because she couldn’t afford it.

  ‘Then it’s up to the Barossa for a few days,’ Gina added.

  ‘That’s the part I’m looking forward to,’ said Jonesy.

  ‘The entire Ring Cycle?’ David groaned. ‘I might just join you at the wineries.’

  ‘I agree, David.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Harold. Don’t be such a bore. I want to go.’ Susan then instructed David to talk to Marie. ‘She’ll know what to do.’

  David told Marie he needed something semi-temporary to cover an ugly fence that he was battling with a neighbour to replace.

  ‘Passionfruit. They grow quickly and live for about six years.’

  David looked disappointed. ‘I know what I’m like. The fruit will rot while I fill my bowl with peaches from Harris Farm. I was thinking of something more decorative.’

  ‘But they flower. Haven’t you ever seen a passionflower? They’re extraordinary and they go on virtually all summer.’

  She described the flat petals, the stamen reaching up like dancers in their midst, the purple tendrils. She noticed sunspots on the whites of David’s eyes and a scrape of bristle on his cheekbone that he had missed shaving. His gaze moved to the flare of her thigh when she crossed her legs, then he frowned slightly to show he was paying her serious attention. Marie talked about the medicinal qualities of passionflowers, for anxiety, some said cancer. A foot poked her beneath the table, and Marie sent David a coquettish look before realising his legs were stretched in the other direction. She could feel Susan’s eyes spearing her profile. She remembered her children sitting by the passionfruit vine eating all the fruit in one afternoon. They did the same with the mandarin tree, strewing peels across the grass and returning to the house with their mouths swollen from citric acid. Later from the deck, the glint of peels in moonlight floating over the sea of lawn. It was another time now, and Marie could feel herself coming back to life.

  ‘My son Leon used to call passionflowers “fairy stages”. They open out flat, like a podium for the tendrils and stamen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And they’re named after the Passion of Christ.’

  David turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘I’m not a Christian. I abhor religion.’

  ‘Neither am I, so do I,’ Marie hastily reassured him.

  ‘Each to his own,’ said Totti.

  ‘Well, Marie,’ David said decisively, ‘I’m going to take your advice.’

  Jonesy pushed back his chair clumsily. ‘Let’s struggle on through the cellar, shall we?’

  David began to clear. ‘Come on, Totti, our turn.’

  Totti followed, sheepish, baffled.

  ‘I won’t have you men messing up my kitchen.’ Susan quickly rose. ‘Marie?’

  ‘Well, I’m the last man sitting,’ Gina said to the abandoned table. ‘Are we going into the lounge now?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Susan.

  ‘Fireworks!’ Totti exclaimed. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘The witching hour approaches!’ David did an excited swivel.

  ‘Darling, they’re not having fireworks here.’ Gina took her husband’s arm.

  ‘Well, they bloody well should.’

  ‘It isn’t fair, is it?’

  ‘It’s an outrage.’

  ‘I know someone who lives in the Toaster. She says that Circular Quay is like a war zone at midnight.’

  ‘Oh yes, the ground literally shakes when you’re that near.’

  ‘She can’t stand it. She spends New Year at Noosa.’

  ‘I don’t care! I want fireworks on this harbour, right below our house! Now!’

  Their laughter faded. Marie whispered to Susan in the kitchen: ‘Did you kick me under the table before?’

  ‘It was a prod, not a kick. I didn’t want you to speak about cancer. It’s what David’s wife died of, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to apologise.’ Susan looked at Marie shrewdly. ‘He didn’t seem to mind.’

  A tendril of Arabic music curled into the room.

  ‘Look at him, will you?’ Susan whispered admiringly as they crossed back through the dining room. ‘He’s not afraid to stand out, is he?’

  She smiled at David, perched over the Bang & Olufsen, a flat silver box on a Chinese chest. It was a giant beige cocoon of a room with a triple-seater lounge suite and salmon-coloured rugs. On the mantlepiece was a pair of ormolu vases stuffed with tea roses. Through the French doors drifted miniature voices from parties on Middle Harbour. David turned up the music. Watching him click his fingers and yell to Jonesy, Marie wondered if Susan had slept with David as well. The shrine of marital fidelity seemed so petty now, an inanimate object whose meaning was all externally imposed, and with regulations arbitrary as the marketplace. Leaving the boathouse the final time with Jonesy, Marie had gone ahead and lifted her skirt beneath the bush lemon. He looked at her affronted then walked straight up to the car. It was suddenly clear that the ritual had nothing to do with the tree nor minerals nor even bladder function, but everything to do with territory and gender. Had Jonesy brought others here? His private tree of conquest. The cutting had died in Marie’s garden. And why cling so resolutely to that as well? The negatives in her bank statements seemed just marks on paper, her house a mere structure that if lifted away would leave her, this body, intact as ever. She felt so glad in this moment to be alone and released.

  ‘Come on, Susan!’ David plucked a scarf off the back of a chair and twirled it over his head. ‘It’s the Raindance!’ He hooked the scarf around her neck and pulled her into the living room. Susan shuffled obediently, rolling her eyes at her husband who sat on the couch drinking Sauternes, stomach protruding.

  ‘You dance like a woman, Dave.’ Totti laughed.

  ‘They all dance
like this over there. Come on, boys.’ He flourished the scarf. ‘Get in touch with your feminine side!’

  ‘That’s my scarf,’ said Gina.

  ‘Well, get up then!’ He swished it in her face.

  ‘I can’t move.’

  So David danced over to Marie, and Marie stepped into the next arabesque with him. She danced with glide of silk over her hips, as David pressed her face against his shoulder, the room swirling all around her.

  ‘Marie’s certainly kicking up her heels,’ Jonesy chuckled to his wife.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly, Harold.’

  BLOOD

  ‘I REMEMBER YOUR HOUSE,’ David said to Marie, one week later in a restaurant in Woollahra. ‘There were some beautiful rugs. I can’t remember what I was there for. It was summer, a drinks party, but for some reason I see it all as a daytime event.’

  ‘It could have been Boxing Day. We used to have people over for champagne breakfast to watch the Sydney to Hobart.’

  ‘There was one rug with a beautiful dark blue,’ David said dreamily, ‘like a night sky. Did you know that children go blind making those rugs? The knots are that small.’

  David told Marie he had been invited to the party after procuring a desk for Ross, a colonial slab that needed three men to be moved. It was quietly thrilling to think of him moving through her house all those years ago, barely noticed by her, then coming into her life so forcefully at this time. It had to mean something: like a flower pressed between the pages of a book she had had for years but only now decided to open, David seemed to have been waiting for her all along. Destiny. David had furnished most of the Tottis’ and the Joneses’. His shop was two blocks away on Queen Street. Marie noticed his posture lilted to one side as though he was partway through a shrug. Or leaning towards her. He was handsome, she thought, scanning the room, a smartly lit space of right angles. She turned back to David in his pink polo shirt. Yes, definitely one of the best-looking men here, of his age. Someone who knew how to enjoy himself. She savoured the thick white napkin on her lap, the white hats of kitchen staff bobbing behind the stainless-steel counter, her cosmopolitan, eastern-suburbs date.