‘I should tell Stav about these,’ Hugh said to the gridiron players.
‘Why? I didn’t know Stav was interested in art.’
‘He’s not. He’s just looking for stuff for his pub. He’s decking it out as a New York bar.’
Blanche placated herself with the apprehension of no more than three blue dots on the walls around the room, on this, the last day of the exhibition. (She wondered when blue dots had replaced red as sale markers; whether they were using them in Woollahra now as well, or just here in Waterloo. She wondered if it was an ironic comment on the blue genesis of Tait Green.) She couldn’t believe that Tait, head nerd at COFA, was holding his seventh solo show in Sydney alone. She couldn’t digest the three-page CV, the words Shanghai, Berlin, and grant and award like drops of acid in her eyes. She steered Hugh towards the exit.
Outside the air was dense with coming rain. Dark cloud hung on the horizon. They walked past a row of terraces with pretty gardens.
‘God, it’s changed around here,’ said Blanche. ‘It’s so nice now.’
‘I still wouldn’t buy in Redfern.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’ve still got all the housing commissions down the road.’
‘But housing commissions give that authentic inner-city feel. People like that.’
‘Too many break-ins. If you don’t have a lock-up garage, woe betide your car.’
‘I heard that most of the Aborigines have been moved to the western suburbs.’
‘They’re still down near the station. You see them when you drive past. I know a bloke whose wife had her bag stolen at the lights there from the passenger seat of her car. They just opened the door and took the bag. Completely brazen! Terrified her. And you never know when there’s going to be another riot.’
They headed down to the new bistro in Danks Street. Along the footpath, its umbrellas gleamed like mushrooms beneath the purple sky. At the end table were a man and woman in black. With her high slanted fringe, the woman was definitely a curator. Definitely Beth, Blanche soon saw. She stopped to say hello.
‘Blanche!’ Beth grinned up through her sunglasses. ‘Long time no see!’
They introduced their husbands. James — Beth’s — smiled and folded the travel section and placed it on the seat beside him. He wore his watch loose like a bracelet, and black thongs and long black shorts. The blonde hair on his forearms seemed to have been conditioned and combed. Blanche tried to remember whether or not Beth had been with him the last time she had seen her. Their hands were linked beneath the table in a gesture of sexual propriety; they emanated contentment.
The Hillsong church on the next block was spewing its Diesel and Tsubi congregation out to the footpath while a line of Toyotas and four-wheel drives emerged from its underground carpark like a series of metal turds. On the wall of the grey edifice in huge lettering were the words JESUS Saves Us.
‘Have you just been up to Tait’s show?’ Beth smiled at Blanche.
‘Yeah, it was really good.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely loved it,’ Hugh said.
‘He works so hard,’ said Beth.
‘Yeah,’ said Blanche. ‘I was telling Hugh about the blue circles.’
‘Discipline.’ Beth nodded. ‘He’s totally zen. Did you know he doesn’t even drink tea anymore? No alcohol, smoking, drugs or coffee, yoga every day. And he meditates.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Apparently they love his work in China. The art market is going off in China. Are you still with Huston Alwick?’
‘Creative director!’ Hugh placed a hand on Blanche’s back.
James smiled up at them from beneath his visored hand.
‘Wow! Blanche is advertising royalty,’ Beth explained to him. ‘Her father is Ross King.’
‘Oh right.’ James examined her keenly.
‘I so loved that No War ad. Everyone was talking about it.’
‘Was that yours?’ said James excitedly. ‘That was excellent.’
‘And are you making any art?’
‘All the time.’ Blanche laughed, adding, ‘You mean my own work?’
‘Yeah.’
‘God, no, I haven’t got the time.’
‘I know the feeling. Blanche was a great drawer at college,’ Beth told James and Hugh. ‘You were. Drawing’s making a comeback, you know.’
‘How about you? How’s it going at the MCA?’
‘Oh, you know. Bureaucracy. Dead wood. Permanent funding crisis. There’s one curator who’s an absolute dream to work with. But I hate my boss.’ Beth grinned.
‘I know the feeling.’
‘There are some good things coming up. I should get your email.’
The Hillsongers were heading towards them. Blanche shifted her bag down her arm and began to work the zipper to extract one of her cards. A waiter brought out two plates of eggs Benedict. Glistening folds of smoked salmon scattered with dill slooped across the white china beneath Hollandaise sauce. The waiter placed the meals before Beth and James then pulled a giant pepper grinder out from where it was wedged in his armpit. Blanche’s stomach growled.
‘I ordered a skinny cap as well,’ Beth told the waiter.
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s coming.’
‘Look, why don’t you join us? Quick, so the Christians don’t sit here ...’
Blanche laughed, and she and Hugh sat down.
‘No offence,’ said Beth. ‘I mean nobody here’s a Christian, are they? I mean there’s nothing wrong with being a Christian. Aaarghh ...’
‘I believe in God,’ said Hugh.
‘Hu-ugh. He doesn’t go to church or anything,’ Blanche explained.
James nodded. ‘I go to midnight mass at Christmas. The singing’s beautiful.’
Beth waved her hands. ‘Each to their own. I’m totally fine with it. I mean we just bought a house in the block behind them so I’m hardly allergic.’
‘Really?’ said Hugh.
Blanche examined her menu although all she wanted was exactly what Beth and James were having. She considered the buttermilk pancakes with blueberries and ricotta but they would be too fattening. Maybe if she got hash browns with her eggs it would seem different to Beth and James’s. But then it would be too much food. Hugh could help her eat it, but she didn’t want him getting fat any more than herself. Beth was one of those skinny women who could eat what she liked, judging by the way her eggs were disappearing into her size-10 figure. At college Beth had seemed frivolous. She had had a lot of boyfriends and missed a lot of classes and was always hungover. She failed sculpture, which she had done with Blanche, who had topped the class. Beth’s real talent lay with theory: she wrote her thesis on Arte Povera and went to every art opening in Sydney and every conference overseas as a postgrad. And now she was an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Just goes to show, thought Blanche, better to be a pisshead networking slut than a hardworking talent. Then again, Tait had been a conscientious nerd. Well, obviously you couldn’t get by just being normal. Blanche wondered what they earnt at the MCA. The heads of the major theatre and dance companies were on six figures these days: the top museum administrators must be on par. Again, Blanche rued her decision not to stick with art, but she had to admit that advertising had given her greater independence and greater security at an earlier age. She could still smell the sour cockroach kitchen of the Chippendale house she had lived in at nineteen while at art college, then fled to return home a year later. Nobody who wanted anything to do with art, it seemed at that time, would rise above that. But Beth and Tait had.
Anyway, who said that advertising wasn’t art? The same people who claimed to ignore the divide between high and low art, who lauded ironic commentary on popular culture, and kept ‘art’ books of Australiana — most of which was old advertising designs — on their coffee tables. Blanche knew in her heart that she was a better artist than Tait Green and had said more with her Dulux ad than he had with a dozen pairs of Blu-Tac
k Adidas. Oh, how she loved being creative. Because while she sat here looking at the menu, maintaining a conversation and reminiscing about Beth and art college, deep in the mud of her exhausted mind the seed of an idea was cracking open. Diet Coke. Better than sex. A rumpled bed, sleepy hornbag of a bloke, the sheets tented by a bottle. She shut out the voice that told her how unsatisfying her sex life with Hugh was. She let the idea alone, watching it out of the corner of her eye, careful not to frighten it away.
She looked up the street and liked what she saw. A large furniture store across the road, another bistro and a landscape gardening place with huge agaves in pots along the footpath. Amazing how nice it was here in the heart of Redfern, Sydney’s biggest slum just ten years ago. Only a handful of the Christians had stopped in the bistro, and they were so well-dressed that pretty soon you forgot they were Christians. A truck rolled into the drive of the whitegoods warehouse ten metres away and opened its back doors to accept a load of fridges. Blanche imagined moving into this neighbourhood and it didn’t feel like such a bad idea. Even Marie had mentioned looking here. Not that she’d want to live in the same suburb as her mother.
‘So this is your local!’ Hugh said.
‘We love it,’ said James. ‘We were in Woollahra before, and it just got too much.’
‘Twelve dollars for a jar of cream at Jones the Grocer,’ said Beth. ‘We called it Jones the Grosser, as in, you know, with two s’s. And the biggest carbon footprint in the whole of Australia, after Mosman.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Hugh. ‘Blanche and I were just talking about how much it’s changed around here. Can I ask how much you paid?’
‘Hugh’s in the business,’ Blanche said peremptorily.
‘Oh right,’ said James. ‘Well, Redfern is going off.’
‘You too?’
‘I’m an architect.’
‘We’ll have to show you our house. James did everything. We’ve got solar panels, a tank. Skylights.’
‘An absolute wreck when we bought it.’
‘Really?’ said Blanche. ‘How do you find room for a tank in a terrace?’
‘We built a deck out the back and put in a native garden. The tank is a bladder and fits under the deck. I don’t know how anyone lives with themselves these days who doesn’t have one. We love it. We’re going to die there.’
Hugh’s leg was jiggling up and down. He looked from Beth to James and back again. ‘Can I ask how much you paid?’ he said again.
‘One point seven five. It’s three storeys.’
‘Whoa.’
‘But eighty K on renos.’
‘Still.’
‘Last exchanged for two thousand pounds in 1963,’ Beth said proudly.
Blanche and Hugh made noises of amazement.
Hugh went inside to order and Blanche listened to Beth and James describe their new house. They asked her about hers. She told them about the heritage sandstone cottage in Lavender Bay they had bought five years ago after marrying and as she spoke she regretted how rarely she and Hugh had people over. Yet they loved their house and had bought a seven-thousand-dollar teak dining room table and kitted out their kitchen with the express purpose of having dinner parties. But there was never enough time. Blanche wanted to change this. She wanted her and Hugh to be like they were today every Saturday, out together enjoying the world, in the company of friends.
Hugh came back out. The stormclouds were receding. Far off in the distance thunder rumbled and overhead the sun pushed through cloud, turning the light a purple green. Blanche felt as though she were sitting inside a giant bruise: painful, tender, healing.
It was raining in Mexico for the fourteenth day in a row and millions of people were being evacuated. Towns were flooded to the rooflines, humans and animals alike were drowning, more rain was predicted. But all across the eastern states of Australia, skies remained blue, and in Sydney the temperature continued to rise.
Marie spent Saturday going through her finances. Six months earlier she had stopped her health insurance, saving about two thousand dollars a year. Stopping her car insurance had lost her thousands, as the gouge had begun to rust. She was late with her rates and water bills. She still hadn’t paid the tree surgeon and her credit cards were almost at their limit. A letter arrived with the Visa bill: Dear Mrs King, Enjoy 2.99% p.a. for 6 months on a single purchase over $500. Why not treat yourself to something you’d really like with an ANZ Great Rate? None of the buyers had made an offer on the house and Hugh had counselled an auction. She refused to be worried by these lowered expectations, the price still enormous in her eyes. Each night on the news she watched the stockmarket fall. She held shares in half the major companies with red downward arrows beside their names and supposed it boded badly but she still couldn’t feel real danger. She was like a drunken teenager driving down a dark country road.
Yet to be without money was a frightening thing. Money brought a sort of peace. It was the access it gave you, the broadened world, to walk into any place and know that whatever you wanted was just a signature away. To leave big tips and luxuriate in your benevolence. Even back from explicit display, money was a cushion. It didn’t matter if the washing machine broke: a new one was just a phone call away. Marie knew she was sliding. Her spending had reduced over the past year and the boundaries of necessity kept shrinking. The orchids could do without food and she could do without fancy restaurants. She knew where she had gone wrong. She could have seen it coming with the mandate for reduction in Ross’s settlement. She was also aware, subliminally if nothing else, that there remained an impulse in her to spend because she didn’t quite believe this asset was truly her entitlement; her treasure was also her albatross and the impulse to destroy was all bound up with the impulse to preserve. The sadness of losing it contained also relief. Therein seemed to lie the possibility of feeling.
And then what would happen? Becoming dependent on her children horrified her and would in any case be impossible with her sons. Leon didn’t care about money, which was part of the problem, the way he had so carelessly spent so much. Clark was prudish to the point of parsimony. It was Blanche alone who was comfortable with money, as skilled at making it as she was at spending it. There was no question: Marie would have to get a job.
Adapt or perish was the headline in Saturday’s paper. The article stated that if Australia didn’t implement a carbon-trading scheme within the next two years, the cost would be the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, the demise of the Murray–Darling, up to 9500 heatwave deaths per year, GDP collapse, inland migration to escape rising sea levels and severe storms, Pacific atoll refugees and political instability in neighbouring countries. Marie still hadn’t grasped exactly what a carbon-trading scheme was. She read every word of the article, depressed and confused.
She turned to Domain. The feature was about swimming pools. I know that Bondi Beach is only a stone’s throw away, but a swimming pool adds that element of privacy and luxury that’s very important to people in this market, said a real-estate agent, next to a photo of a pool by the ocean. The shot made the pool look as though it were bleeding straight into the Pacific. Clark never mentioned people like this: he had nothing but praise for Bondi. The prices for semis were around two million. What would it be like living near her eldest son? She might get to see Nell more often. Nell might even stay for a weekend. Marie went back to the feature article where a couple were interviewed who had renovated their Surry Hills terrace to include a swimming pool, but not moved in when the wife fell pregnant as they feared the pool would be dangerous for their child. The house was priced at two and a half million. Hardly her sort of place with all that glass and metal. The ad for her house was reduced to a quarter page this week. She thought immediately of the lawyer couple, whom Hugh had advised her to meet on their second visit. The woman so pale you could see the veins on her forearms. The bluff man in his high-waisted chinos and ironed polo shirt was the talker but clearly, also, obedient to his wife. The grumpy boy and girl. Marie too
k comfort in the family’s froideur, interpreting it as respect, and realised she had mentally passed the house to them already. She threw the paper into the recycling bin.
When the sun began to recede, she put on a load of washing and went into the garden. The coconut ice grevilleas were clustered with honey-eaters. The callistemon looked as though it had thrips. It was too hot to turn the compost. Just unravelling the bailing hose took all her effort. Ming and Tang snarled along the fence each time she went into the laundry. ‘Shut up, you little shits,’ Marie muttered. She went inside for an iced cordial and in the afternoon switched on the tennis.
Fifty minutes into the third set when they were back on deuce, David rang. Taken aback, Marie began to pace around the living room with the phone. A luxury liner was steaming towards the Quay, its windows lit up like opals. As the sun sank, the harbour caught fire. Drawn by the strange light, Marie walked onto the deck. Her mind, on hearing David’s voice, went immediately to Susan. Had he heard about their fight? He sounded friendly in a tentative way. He said he had been overseas. He didn’t seem to offer this an excuse for his silence, and his lack of guile eased Marie. It was the twenty-first century after all, so her own silence might have had explanation due as well. She thought back to the beginning of the year and it seemed an age away, the weeks since filled with irrevocable changes, but David spoke as though they had only seen each other recently and nothing untoward had happened. He said he had been catching up on his journal reading since returning to Sydney.
‘And I thought about you,’ he said warmly.
‘Oh?’ Marie was flattered, but she wasn’t going to succumb. She checked her reflection in the glass doors: pretty good, but she could do with a hair cut. Christ, her hands looked terrible, though. Wrinkly old-lady hands.
‘I’m a subscription junkie and a closet anthropologist. Everything worth reading on the subject comes through my letterbox. Did you know that Joseph Banks had himself tattooed? Isn’t that extraordinary?’
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