‘The fact that you were going from A to B is in your favour,’ Maurice was saying. ‘But if you were having sex with this man —’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You’re being charged with indecent exposure.’
‘I was fully clothed.’
‘Did you have your penis out?’
Leon cringed. ‘I wasn’t doing anything!’ He remembered the man’s chest hair beneath his palm, his beautiful eyes. How pathetic he had seemed as soon as they got caught, a total turn-off. A lot of what Maurice said was jargon or else it was Leon’s inability to concentrate. The photos on the desk were tilted so both Maurice and his clients could see his family. A woman holding a baby. Maurice standing on a rocky coastline, holding a child’s hand, a fishing rod in the other. How alien it seemed and yet Maurice could have been Joel Rosten from Shore, chewing his pen at the desk adjacent during the HSC. Every night and every day since the bust, Leon had thought of worst-case scenarios. That everyone would find out, and he would be shunned, unable to work. That he would go to gaol.
But Maurice was saying something completely different. ‘You’re free.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have no dependants. You said you were living between cities, didn’t you?’ Maurice capped his pen and straightened the papers on his desk.
‘Yes.’ Leon realised that the appointment was winding up.
‘I envy you that flexibility. Horticulture. That must be a great job. Have you always wanted to be a horticulturalist? What got you into it?’
‘My mother, I suppose. I grew up in a beautiful garden next to the bush. Plants were always kinda fundamental.’
‘So grounding, having your hands in the earth every day. I nearly became a horticulturalist, you know. It’s my fantasy job.’
‘Really? Why didn’t you?’
Maurice led Leon to the door. ‘Oh, you know, pressure from Dad to study law. Not that I don’t enjoy it. But if we have a recession here and my work dries up, I’m going back to the garden.’
‘You won’t earn as much.’
Maurice smiled quizzically. ‘I’m not motivated by money, Leon.’
Marie started to get dressed when Fatima came upstairs to clean. The vacuum approached as she pulled on a clean bra. When Fatima knocked, Marie called out, ‘It’s alright, you don’t have to do my room today.’ The vacuum receded down the hall. Marie was unable to close the clasp of her bra. Every time she reached behind, her hands lost strength and dropped by her sides. A colossal weakness overtook her and when the bedroom door swung open in the breeze, all she could do was stay where she was sitting on the bed, trying in vain to pull a shirt over herself before Fatima noticed her.
Fatima switched off the vacuum cleaner and came up the hall. ‘Can I help you, Mrs King?’
‘I can’t.’ Marie shrugged. Half naked, helpless and humiliated, she plucked at her bra.
Fatima’s expression was clear and unafraid. She stood behind Marie and fastened her bra, then held the shirt open and Marie put her quivering arms into the sleeves. Looking down at her wrinkled tattoos and emaciated thighs, Marie didn’t care anymore abut her state. She was sick: this was how she looked, and that was that.
‘Do you like pants? Something from the cupboard? A skirt?’
‘There’s a wraparound skirt in there that I could put on.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Fatima fetched it from the ensuite, bringing out the cashmere hat as well. Marie stood up and let Fatima help her put the skirt on. She bowed her head to receive the cap.
She descended the stairs with Fatima at her elbow. Something funny in her left knee, so that when she bent it the knee wouldn’t straighten again properly. At the bottom, Marie turned to Fatima. ‘Thank you, I’ll be alright now.’
It was snowing in the mountains and an icy wind had swept over the plains into the city. Marie walked down the side path into the bottom garden. The mulch she had piled around plants before the sale was still high. The blackboy, as Leon had pointed out, was dark with scale.
She drifted beneath a low, glowering sky. Along the northern fence, the wattle was in bloom. She attempted to pick some and it sprang out of her hand. She tried again, some yellow fluff remaining in her palm. She walked across the lawn to where the view was open and gazed at the bush along the headland opposite. Beneath the lime tree she found Blanche’s fossil-fern headstone. She released her handful of wattle over the grave, wondering about Mopoke’s death. Most animals hid themselves to give birth or die. Were they ashamed of their pain? In their vulnerability did they expect attack rather than comfort from the pack? Did animals understand what humans so often denied: that all life was dispensable? We humans with our drama and ceremony and paraphernalia. Marie thought of Mopoke’s difficult last months: she must have been relieved to die. ‘Well, Moey,’ she said to the grave, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it back to the bush after all. I’m just too tired. I’ll just have to look at it.’
She wasn’t afraid of dying now. But she was afraid of that fast-approaching threshold beyond which lay intolerable pain or helplessness or self-disgust. And although she had listed the furniture she wanted taken to Neutral Bay, she still could not countenance the move.
She continued to the bottom of the garden. Asparagus fern was creeping over from the Hendersons’. She wanted to pull it out, but it remained a thought, her body unable to carry out what her head directed. Then the squall came in.
There was ice in the rain. It sliced against her cheek like flint. She shuffled back up to the house enjoying the violence of the weather, watching the garden whip and lash. A squawking rose from the reserve. Two cockatoos flipped out beneath the crown of a phoenix palm, their wings flapping as they dangled upside-down, screaming deliriously in the rain.
Leon was in the kitchen when Marie came back inside. He had returned from his appointment with the barrister and was drinking cordial. ‘You’re drenched.’
‘It’s lovely out there. You look smart in those clothes.’ Marie removed her wet cap, and Leon fetched her a towel and jumper. ‘How did you go?’
Leon hadn’t told his mother about the indecent-exposure charge either. The only people who knew were George and Maurice. ‘The barrister was really nice. A wannabe gardener. He said it mostly depends on the magistrate.’
‘Let’s have a joint. I still have Brian’s pot in my handbag.’
‘Well, who’d’ve thought I’d be getting stoned with my mother right when I’ve got drugs charges.’
‘It helps me eat. It helps with the pain.’
Leon didn’t like smoking much and wasn’t a very good roller, but his mother liked the company. He settled her on the couch with an ashtray and went into the kitchen to finish preparing pumpkin and sweet potato soup. He noticed no difference in his mother when she was stoned. He supposed she was stoned all the time on painkillers anyway. The sheer effort of carrying the disease must be enough to make a person vague, he thought. He laid the table and brought out the meal. ‘Remember the hissy fit Dad had when I got busted for smoking pot at school?’
‘He wasn’t above smoking when he was young. We both had the occasional puff.’
‘Why did you give up?’
‘I think we just forgot about it. Maybe we thought we were above it ... It was considered more classy getting drunk on expensive alcohol.’ Marie began to cough, and Leon rubbed her back. He could feel her bones through the clothes.
‘The barrister asked why I became a gardener and I told him it was because of you.’
Marie fixed him with her fierce blue eyes. ‘You’re good at it, Leon.’
‘I’m good with plants but I’m crap at running a business.’
‘You’ll have to sort that out then, won’t you.’
Leon picked up a cushion she had knocked to the floor during her coughing fit. He stood there twisting it in his hands. ‘Yep.’
‘Where did you get those clothes?’
‘George.’
‘Is he well?
’
‘He’s great.’
‘That’s better.’ Marie handed him the joint, then settled into its fog. ‘I could try eating some soup now.’
Leon moved the heater around to face her. Marie had trouble controlling the spoon. Her hands felt like twigs slithering around the handle. She took a breath and tried again, the creamy relief of lentils finally sliding into her mouth. She concentrated on the food, aware of Leon watching her. ‘When are you moving back to Sydney?’
‘I don’t know.’
He was so quiet, tearing his bread, sloped over his bowl, checking her face every so often. ‘Stop dithering, Leon. Forget about your father, forget about George, and move back to where you belong.’
‘It’s just the huge cost of this court case —’
‘Forget about money. You’ll be inheriting. Do your horticulture’ — she banged a bony fist onto the table — ‘in your city.’
The clouds had thinned to messy white skeins and the gutters dripped in the sunlight. ‘I might look for a job with National Parks. Go and do arboriculture at TAFE, get a licence for big vehicles and away I go,’ Leon replied. ‘I’m not sure I want to go back to doing the books, let alone the gardens of north shore ladies. No offence, Mum.’
‘No offence taken. God knows they wouldn’t hire me. We did a good job with the garden here, Leon.’
‘You did.’
‘Yes. I’m proud of it.’ Marie put down her spoon and gave her plate a push. She had finished the entire bowl. She drank some water and felt immediately better. ‘This is what’s keeping me alive.’ She held up the glass. Leon didn’t understand. ‘I know the garden can’t be saved,’ she went on. She could feel rumbles begin in her stomach; soon they would be embarrassingly loud, then issue as farts. ‘Now, while it’s damp out there, let’s go and burn the blackboy.’
The trunk of the blackboy was barely visible beneath the fountain of wiry stems. Standing close enough to be spiked by them, Leon could see into the heart of the plant where the scale was most copious. It extended a good foot up the stems in a suffocating black cloud. ‘This is the plant I missed the most in the tropics. It could put a blossom stem out after this, you know? Maybe next year? Did you know the flowers are bisexual? Did you know blackboys live up to six hundred years?’
‘I always found that so comforting.’
Leon parted the stems to inspect the infestation. He checked the direction of the breeze with a wet finger. Below them the toothpicks of masts bobbed about; a hydrofoil streaked across the distance. Leon lit the blowtorch and held it at arm’s length as it heated, the flame invisible in the sun. Then standing upwind he aimed it at the plant’s extremities. Vooomph, the stems ignited, releasing pungent oil scent. The air above quivered, ash began to drop in a circle and, as the flames poured into the heart of the plant, Marie and Leon cheered. Marie held her sleeve over her face as the wind changed and the smoke billowed towards her. The stump emerged, coated in embers.
‘How many creatures did we just kill, do you think, Leon?’
‘I don’t know. Millions?’ He watched the dying fire with satisfaction. ‘I won’t leave it here, Mum. I’m going to take it with me when we move.’
When Blanche got to work, she realised she had forgotten her BlackBerry and brought the wrong mobile phone in. It was a measure of the stress she was under that the night before she had put her mobile into the phone drawer and this morning had accidentally taken out an old one, uncharged, with no sim card in it. The phone drawer collected a new tenant every six months or so, when Blanche or Hugh upgraded, or Blanche was given a sample. She rang Hugh from her landline and told him not to contact her on her mobile.
‘We have to get rid of those bloody phones,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to throw them out. It would be a waste.’
‘Have you seen Terry yet?’
‘No. I’m going to do it at the end of the day.’ Blanche felt light-headed with fear and excitement. She felt so powerful: the proverbial bolt from the blue.
‘Fair enough. Then we’re having champagne.’
‘Then I’m going to Mum’s, actually. Sorry, Hugh. We have to finalise the furniture.’
The office was unusually quiet. Nobody had replaced Lim. Kate was on facebook when Blanche walked past, just sitting there with the screen fully visible. Blanche hadn’t completely decided whether it would be better to hand in her resignation now or wait until the end of the day. Passing the open plan, seeing the way the light came in, hearing the amiable chatter, she felt sad. She had been here for ten years. She was bloody good at her job. How would she cope without it? On her way back from the bathroom, Kate beckoned to her and Blanche went over. Kate offered her a cashew and Blanche accepted. Her appetite had doubled; every day she became more aware of how much of her energy was channelling to the baby. She could almost visualise the food she ate pouring down a tube straight into the foetus. A baby, she had thought, in wonder that morning driving into work. There are two people in this car! And her entire body seemed to fold protectively around her belly.
‘Can I see you for a minute?’ Kate asked.
‘Sure.’ Blanche led the way back to her office. She could feel a smile pushing through her lips: she was dying to tell Kate about her pregnancy. She didn’t care about facebook, or solitaire, or having to organise her mother’s things tonight. She didn’t care about Kate taking her place: let her take everything. For a moment, she didn’t even care about her mother’s impending death; a supreme acceptance of everything and everyone exactly as they were flowed through her.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Kate said when they were sitting in Blanche’s office.
‘What?’
‘I’m leaving.’
Blanche stared.
‘I’m going to work with Lim. I gave Terry my resignation letter this morning.’
‘Wow,’ Blanche managed.
Kate began to console her. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I really like you. It’s just too good an opportunity, you know. I’ll be head of the art department. Oh, Blanche, it’s a tough time for you, isn’t it, with your mum and all. I’m sorry.’
Blanche could see how pleased Kate was with the crushing effect of her announcement. She had always considered Kate’s confidence a supreme quality. Her mind began to run from corner to corner. Should she tell Kate she was going to leave too? Should she tell her she was pregnant? She looked at Kate in her cowboy boots and bright red skirt across which ran a hare and tortoise. She suddenly saw her as a companion, someone to have fun with on a Friday night. A younger-sister sort of thing. How she would have loved to have had a sister! And that skin, that accent. She burst out laughing. ‘God, I’m just so shocked. I mean I’m leaving. I’ve got my resignation letter too!’
Kate drummed her heels on the floor and squealed. She jumped up to shut the door. ‘Fookin’ Terry!’ She eyed Blanche’s fridge. ‘Let’s have a drink! Now!’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Blanche couldn’t stop grinning. She moved the papers on her desk. ‘I do actually have to do some work today, Kate. Like I’m not leaving for another month. And I’m still not up for drinking much.’
‘Oh come on. Just one shot.’
Blanche realised that she’d nearly given her pregnancy away. Fuck. Which then made her realise that she still wasn’t ready to bond with Kate and mention it. ‘Okay then, one shot.’ She had a bottle of Polish bison vodka with an unpronounceable name in her freezer, a luminous pale green with a strip of grass in it. She poured two shots and they knocked them back. ‘Right, my turn now.’
‘You go, girl.’
Blanche walked down to Terry’s office breathing fire.
Terry had his glasses on and was writing on his computer. He looked up at Blanche’s knock and motioned her in. His fingers flew across the keyboard as she sat down. Blanche rarely saw him like this. Terry preferred to be seen as perennially casual: all the better to sneak up on someone when they least expected it. But diligence became him, maybe because the
customary savagery was channelled into the keyboard instead of the conversation. He finished and pushed his chair away then propped his foot onto his knee. Those bloody winklepickers. Blanche didn’t feel the slightest bit intimidated today.
‘So,’ said Terry. ‘Kate. What a shame.’
‘Damn straight.’
‘Could you see it coming?’
‘Not at all. I knew she was really ambitious, but I just assumed that would play out here.’
Terry grinned, surprising Blanche. ‘So it’s just you ’n’ me, kid,’ he said, cavalier.
Blanche knew he was quoting someone from a movie; Clark would have remembered who. Terry was looking at her with shrewd challenge. There was a whole office of staff out there, but she knew what he meant and she agreed: none of them suited her like Lim and Kate had. She saw a kernel of playfulness in Terry’s eyes too. Yes, this was how men operated all the time with each other. They were in perpetual competition. Hadn’t Ross and Jonesy thrived on that, isn’t that why their friendship survived the break-up of their business? A surge of strength ran up Blanche’s spine. She could have picked up that stupid Marc Newson couch and thrown it out the window.
She met Terry’s gaze. ‘Yep, back to basics. We’ll have the edge when they pitch for the same stuff.’
‘So will they.’ Terry’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’m not worried.’ He patted a stack of papers on his desk. ‘You should see the applications for Lim’s position. Crème de la crème, baby. Three from agencies in the US, two from Europe.’
‘Why are people applying from overseas?’
‘They’re losing their jobs. There’s a flood of labour coming home. I’ve got thirty-five applications here altogether. We’re going to have a feast. And a bloody pain in the arse. Meeting at four? I’ll have culled them by then.’
‘Sure.’
Blanche walked back across the open plan. Kate was motioning to her, but Blanche kept walking with her eyes down, pretending to be vagued out, then went into her office and shut the door.
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