Indelible Ink

by Fiona McGregor

  She thought about age as she made her way up the stairs, how it manifested first and foremost on the skin. Then grey hair, arthritis, old injuries waking from the opiate of youth. Desire lessened with age but didn’t vanish. Inside your fifty- or sixty-something-year-old body, you continued lusting, your mind oblivious to the flesh crumbling around it.

  It was hard to believe Clark was the same age as Rhys. But why was she surprised by Rhys’s age when Rhys’s poise and wisdom had always held authority with her? Something about Clark’s adage that tattoos were for the young. Clark, Blanche and Hugh were so much more earnest than the people here. They had entered a No-Fun zone with adulthood. As their mother, Marie was supposed to be even deeper in this zone. Right up the back, just in front of the remedial chairs, with the retired professors and bingo players.

  But age changed throughout the ages, first-time mothers these days old enough to be grandmothers. Men had seniority, regardless of age. Marie’s father had been twelve years older than her mother, and that was normal. A mother twelve years older than a father would have been wrong. And back when Clark was playing the Magic Pudding, Marie and Ross were younger than the tattoo folk and her children were now, yet they already had two mortgages, three children and a twelve-year marriage. Somewhere, somebody was not acting their age.

  Age changed in other places. In Africa, women her age were still dancing in their hot village streets, like the folk in Buena Vista Social Club, shimmying and shaking to their sexy love songs. While in Sydney town, dancing remained the province of the young.

  You could take Viagra like David, or have Botox like Gina, get a new liver like Dennis Hopper. You could get new breasts like Nicole Kidman, who looked the same age now as she did ten years ago and probably would ten years hence. But we cannot buy immortality, said a doctor in a documentary on cryogenesis that Marie had watched recently. Our bodies simply aren’t designed to last that long.

  She didn’t think the tattoos would reverse the ageing process, nor even make it stand still. In some ways they would have the opposite effect. Like tidemarks, they would indicate forever what was happening now.

  Marie entered Rhys’s room with the frazzled air of a woman who had lugged her baggage all the way up the stairs only to find she didn’t need it here. She shut the door on her yapping thoughts and began to undress.

  ‘My faithful tattooed lady.’

  ‘I’m greedy, aren’t I.’

  ‘Yep. You’re on a mission.’

  Rhys lay the transfer across Marie’s back, and beneath its gentle adumbration Marie surrendered.

  There wasn’t much to do in a garden during a January that blazed near forty almost every day. All Marie needed now was to keep it looking good for the buyers. She watered twice a week and on washing days uncoiled the bailing hose from the laundry. She cut grevilleas for the living room. She tried not to go outside in the middle of the day and wore a thicker shirt to protect her healing back.

  The guttering man arrived just before lunch. Marie went out to greet him. ‘It’s going to be boiling up there,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve gotta go to Pymble next. This is the easy job. Harbour breezes, you know.’

  She watched him climb onto the roof from the patio. He wore sock guards and his legs were burnt brick red. He touched the gutter and swore, hands flicking away. He moved along in this fashion, clearing the gutter and burning himself in the process. He held up a nest with two eggs in it and called, ‘Want me to save these?’

  ‘What birds are they?’

  ‘Probably mynas? Might be a top knot?’

  ‘Destroy them.’

  He disappeared over the roofline.

  ‘Were there many?’ she said to him afterwards as she wrote out a cheque.

  ‘A couple operational. Couple others abandoned. They don’t look after their young very well,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Dunno how they’re such successful populators. Can I use your tap?’

  ‘Of course. But it’ll be hot too.’

  He turned it on anyway, then recoiled. Marie went into the kitchen for ice, and cut a chunk of aloe vera. ‘For those burns.’

  He refused the aloe. ‘Best just to leave ’em and toughen up.’

  She handed him the cheque. ‘And how’s business in the guttering world?’

  ‘Really busy. Everybody in Ku-ring-gai’s finally clearing their gutters in case of bushfires.’

  ‘Take it.’ Marie pressed the aloe on him. ‘It’s soothing.’

  He thanked her then walked up the path to his ute. Marie swept the perimeter of the house of its guttering refuse, scraping up a smashed egg with a handful of leaves. Inside the shell was a half-formed bird; Marie threw leaves over it, annoyed by her distress.

  Walking back up to the house, she heard the banksia groaning and thought as she turned how uncanny it sounded, like a creature crying for help, and as she stood there watching, the tree slowly fell. It was a surreal and frightening sight, the old man banksia falling towards the harbour with a groaning woody shriek, dropping dead before her eyes. It was over quickly. Vertical one minute, horizontal the next. She ran inside and rang Leon.

  ‘Must’ve had something eating its roots.’

  ‘I didn’t even notice it was sick.’

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily show. Which one was it?’

  ‘The one at the bottom. I planted it when we moved in.’ Marie was stricken.

  Leon sounded cool as ever. ‘That’s really sad. I don’t know ... Phytophthora? It moves in a line. Could’ve come up from the bush? Or else the roots’ve been weakening for a while then collapsed with the rain.’

  ‘We only had two days’ worth.’

  ‘That can be enough if it’s heavy. Sorry I’m not there to help you dispose of it.’

  After she rang off, Marie picked up Mopoke and went out to the deck. Through the angophora, she could see the banksia lying on its side, roots clodded with earth. A red wattlebird alighted onto a flower to drink his fill then threw his head back and clacked loudly at the sky.

  The next day Marie went down and cut a dozen mature cones off the tree.

  Blanche told him they had broadcast the full execution on cable. Shocked, Clark said nothing though his television had been switched on early in the hope of seeing more news on the matter. He muted it and settled into the phone call with his sister. Watching TV while it was still light outside made him feel like he was sick or on holiday or back in his childhood. Clark had refused to own a television for the first five years out of home, swearing he had already watched enough to last a lifetime. Penny his first girlfriend had one, and after two years living with her he found himself, like any spouse, eating dinner in front of it almost every night. And hating it. When they broke up, he went on a television fast for a year but his life didn’t improve. He was too poor to have a holiday and too shattered to attempt seductions. He filed three days a week in the Film Finance Office while finishing his Honours thesis on Australian pop icons of the early twentieth century. He was miserably aware each time he went home and faced his father of how unsuccessful he was.

  His financial situation changed with the $300,000 Ross gave him on his twenty-fifth birthday, a sum to buy real estate that all the children would receive. But Clark didn’t want to identify as wealthy so he banked most of it and escaped to Europe for three years, where the jobs ended in a nadir of delivering cooking oil in Brighton. He began to write travel articles and, when he moved back to Australia, tried journalism. It was insecure work. He spent more of that real-estate money. Then came the museum job and three months later he met Janice, a publicist for the Sydney Festival. They bought a house together and had Nell. They got free tickets to everything. Clark felt like he had been saved. These were the glory days when things fell into place just as they were supposed to when you were in your thirties. What you never foresaw was how just as easily things could fall apart.

  The Sony 23” in his living room had been handed down from Blanche and Hugh when they upgraded to plasma.
It was on a stand that Clark could twist around to face the kitchen so he could watch it while he did the washing-up. He missed Janice’s Miele appliances and cable TV. He missed their subscription to the Sydney Theatre Company. Although the plays generally bored him he liked to go down to The Wharf dressed in black and stand around drinking by the harbour. He missed the view of the ocean from the Clovelly house. He missed his daughter like a limb. It was galling to see the disappointment on her face when she came to stay. Clark became loud and hearty while Nell soldiered on with polite bravery. It took until Sunday night for them to relax, then he had to unpeel her and stick her back in her mansion. With typical caution, Clark had bought a small two-bedroom flat outright after settling with Janice, who owned most of their house. Now he was kicking himself as with a growing daughter he would have to find something bigger yet the market only got more impenetrable. How could he pay a mortgage on a $25,000 stipend? Blanche and Hugh had been at him for years to invest but Clark remained averse. Consequently he neither made as much money as his sister nor spent as much as his brother. He missed not having to worry about money; he hated this incessant gnawing at the back of his mind. He had liked the idea of marrying a richer woman. He could live the good life without feeling personally responsible; it assuaged his guilt at being born into privilege. Penury was good when you had a safety net but real penury was torture. It was pure humiliation, just as genuine inferiority to a woman was. Clark’s uselessness with money began as an amusement in his relationship with Janice — him the Batty Intellectual indulged by her, the Organiser — and ended as one of the main causes of the bickering that chipped their relationship to the bone. He watched TV as he filled the sink and listened to Blanche. Four ads in a row. Better off reading The Guardian later to get the full story. Clark still read more than he watched. He rarely bothered with literary fiction, let alone poetry, but read history, biography, crime, the paper every day and a variety of publications online.

  ‘You know they had executions in your old art school at Taylor Square?’ he said to Blanche, phone clamped between head and shoulder. ‘Huge public events, those hangings. One guy called Knatchbull got a crowd of ten thousand. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Sounds fantastic.’

  ‘And when they built Darlo Gaol in the 1840s, the convicts from the old place in Lower George Street were moved there on foot. Think of the spectacle, hundreds of crims clanking through the city in chains, everybody coming out to heckle and gawk.’

  ‘Well, thank god we’re alive today and not then.’

  ‘But it’s still going on. You just saw it on TV.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I didn’t watch it.’

  ‘It’s just been removed from us. We don’t have to confront anything.’

  ‘I didn’t learn anything being confronted by that execution Clark. Except how fucked up the human race is.’

  A sunburnt reporter was standing in a paddock of cracked earth. A graph came on showing how low the dams were, then the words Permanent Drought. Clark could just make out the reporter saying: The Murray–Darling river basin, responsible for forty percent of Australia’s produce, is dying ...

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’ Blanche said.

  ‘Sure.’ Clark muted the television. ‘How was your trip to the Evil Empire?’

  ‘Great. We shot lots of people and released ten times our quota of pollution daily, just by talking crap.’

  ‘Did you ski?’

  ‘Well, it was fabulous the first week, lots of powder, then the rest of the time it rained. It was bizarre. We were out when the weather changed and it was like a switch being flicked. After that it was bloody awful to tell you the truth. There’s no reason to be there apart from the snow. We just watched DVDs. Have you seen Ants? It’s amazing.’

  ‘Climate change.’

  ‘It’s the latest excuse, isn’t it. It floods and it’s climate change; there’s a drought and it’s climate change. Apparently even therapists are doing a roaring trade. Like, Help me I’m suicidal because of climate change. Insurance companies too, you know, Sorry for running up the back of you, I was stressing out about climate change.’

  ‘Some guy here murdered another guy for using his hose on a non-watering day.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘True. Out in the suburbs. Last week. When did you get back?’

  ‘Four days ago. I didn’t hear about that. I’m drowning in emails and I have a toothpaste campaign coming up and I’m still jet-lagged.’

  ‘You should use me as a model. I’m running out of money.’

  Was that another Clark joke, or a covert appeal? Blanche wondered. Many a true word spoken in jest. Well, tough luck. No way, José. What you sow you will reap. Clark had refused to wear orthodontic braces as a teenager. The family assumed it was an abjuration of vanity. Blanche disagreed, saying the opposite was the case. She maintained that for a hormone-crazed boy, eighteen months in oral quarantine didn’t seem worth a lifetime of straight teeth, but he would regret it later. She, on the other hand, had worn her braces with committed idealism and emerged from her metal chrysalis twice as popular with boys. She could hear the thunking of solids in water beyond Clark’s voice.

  ‘I’ve always thought vampires would make a good toothpaste ad.’

  ‘They’re so conservative these days, they’d never agree to vampires,’ Blanche said, while a cute little Nosferatu with a white frothy brush held to his cute little fangs materialised before her. ‘In terms of hygiene vampires are totally politically incorrect.’

  ‘They never go out of fashion. You could make them quirky, like the Addams Family. Shit!’

  There was an almighty crash as the salad bowl slipped out of Clark’s hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry, I just dropped something.’ He propped the bowl to drain and pulled out the plug.

  ‘Was Leon here for Christmas?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Alright. The usual.’

  Clark stretched his neck to the left and right, holding out the phone so Blanche’s voice tinkled into the air. ‘He owes me money.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I lent it to him a year ago, interest-free, to keep his business afloat.’

  ‘I don’t think the business is doing so well.’

  ‘Climate change,’ Blanche said acidly.

  ‘I’m not defending him.’

  ‘And he hasn’t even said anything. I mean, wouldn’t you even say something?’

  Clark went into the living room, swivelling the television as he passed it. He regretted his earlier provocations. He realised he assumed an attitude like Leon’s — a more polarised view — just to wind his sister up. A fractious exchange was preferable to one of calm affability because Clark felt uncomfortable at anything remotely intimate with his sister. He was also still angry at Marie’s decision to use Hugh for the sale of the house, entirely predictable as it was. He began to pace his living room. It was small and the laps quickly multiplied.

  ‘And he’s still sending me those bloody online petitions just about every week.’

  ‘Yeah, I just got the Burmese junta.’

  ‘Like it makes the slightest difference. Anyone can sign those things, under ten different names and addresses if they want. And he’s obviously got enough money to fly down to Sydney twice in three months.’

  ‘Mum’s frequent flyers. He didn’t stay long.’

  ‘Of course. And did you see her tattoos?’

  ‘Ye-ep ... You know she’s got one on her stomach now.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘On her stomach, flames or something. And she’s getting one on her back of a moth.’ To appal Blanche, because it would make him feel less appalled, he added, ‘Like, you know, big.’

  ‘... Jesus. Are you serious?’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Clark walked up and down, up and down.

  ‘What is wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s freaking about the sale.
’

  ‘Do you think that’s why she’s on this bender?’

  ‘It’s not really a bender, not in the normal sense. She wasn’t that pissed on Christmas Day. She said she saved the liquor cabinet for you, but when you didn’t take it she took it to Sotheby’s, and she’s packed all our stuff. Every time I go over there I come home with another carton.’

  ‘I didn’t want the liquor cabinet. It was ugly. I took a carton last time I was there.’

  ‘You’ll never believe what ended up in my last one. Speaking of teeth. Your plate.’

  ‘God, really? I haven’t gone through mine yet.’ Blanche began to sound mournful. ‘I must admit I’m beginning to feel a bit wrenched by this sale. It’s our loss too, you know.’

  ‘And your husband’s gain.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Clark. He hasn’t even given her a valuation yet!’

  ‘It’s in the bag, though.’

  The telephone ticked with silence. Blanche’s tone changed. ‘So who’s your preferred agent? Go on, you’ve had three months to choose.’

  ‘I don’t know. They all give me the creeps.’