Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘Oh, sorry, sorry,’ she giggled in a high-pitched Hispanic accent. ‘Did not know you there. Did not see in bed. Job new. I new job.’

  Elsie frowned and rubbed her forehead. Could this day get any shittier? ‘Would you mind coming back another time?’

  The maid looked at her, eyes scrutinising. Narrowing. Then recognition dawned on her. She started flapping her hand holding a cleaning cloth and pointed at Elsie.

  ‘Ah, you! You! You singer!’ she called out loudly and excitedly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elsie vacantly. She was about to turn her back and go lie down again, but the maid kept speaking.

  ‘You make sex with that man! Big man! Tall!’ She waved her hands in the air for extra effect. ‘Hat. What his name? Colorando?’

  Elsie pulled a face as if there was a bad smell in the room.

  ‘He have lovely wife. Beautiful. And children.’

  Elsie’s mouth dropped open.

  It had been years ago now, right before her career had skyrocketed, but still the scandal with Colorado was the only thing people focused on. Not her music. Not her talent. Not her hit songs.

  There had been weeks of tacky entertainment channels devoting hours a day to their ‘sex tape’. They had been caught backstage one night by someone with a camera having hasty sex on an amp behind a thick black stage curtain. It had been a stupid thing to do, but at the time, Elsie had thought she was in love. A YouTube frenzy followed, clocking up hits in the millions. The footage was grainy and shadowy, but there was no mistaking it was them.

  Images of the ‘lovers’ were beamed into people’s catalogue-furnished lounge rooms on huge flatscreen TVs. Shopping centres blared the news across entire walls. Big-haired, white-toothed journalists interviewed each other, speculating, accusing, gossiping, gossiping, gossiping. Ugly talk from beautiful people. Over and over they played footage of Elsie behind large dark glasses as she was caught ‘leaving Colorado’s hotel’. Behind her Colorado’s outstretched hand did nothing to block the intrusion of the cameras and the crush.

  For weeks after their first concert without Charity, everywhere they went, they were followed by greedy people with a hunger to spread gossip. The professionals’ telephoto lenses were trained on their windows; television cameras whirled overhead in choppers. File photos of the three Buck children looking their cutest and Charity looking her worst were added to the mix. The story to start with was all about the ‘cheating dirty old man’ and ‘that husband-stealing trollop EJ’.

  Elsie remembered the storm of assistants and agents and executives confronting them in Jacinta’s plush offices the day the story broke. ‘You’re both in serious breach of contract,’ Jacinta growled at them. The hyena within licked its bloodied lips and gave a toothy grin. To her, in truth, this media storm was a boon. It was a sure-fire way to put Colorado in the place she wanted him, move the painful Charity aside, and put EJ right there where Jacinta wanted her — a frontrunner: a household name. Jacinta knew that with the right strategy EJ would come out of this looking squeaky clean. What young woman so far from home wouldn’t fall for the older mentoring man? She had the media release compiled in her head already. Fans would turn on Colorado, but forgive him eventually. And Charity, now the drug secret was out, would bear the brunt. The mother-police would crucify her. EJ, Jacinta saw, was sitting in the box seat. Not that she’d let her know that now.

  What Jacinta hadn’t been telling them was that Elsie’s newly released single ‘The Skin She’s Livin’ In’ had been downloaded across the globe a record eight billion times in an astonishing three weeks, and that wasn’t counting full album sales, which had climbed to over the two million mark. Here was pure youth and beauty singing about a core facet of wisdom, and there before them stood Charity, who clearly couldn’t bear the aged skin she was living in. Jacinta couldn’t have scripted it better herself.

  As the leather couch squelched under her jeans, Elsie had reached for Colorado’s hand.

  ‘I don’t care if my career is gone, Jacinta. We are not just friends. Can’t you see?’

  ‘Can’t you see this is bigger than just you?’ Jacinta asked. ‘You go, an entire crew goes. No jobs, no gigs, no money for their families. You got hundreds of people relying on you.’

  Elsie wove her fingers into Colorado’s. Now, above all, she needed him. For days he’d sheltered Elsie from the papers. They had spent their time tangled in hotel sheets, exploring the world of their new lover’s body. For a time it was easy to forget the kids, the chaos of Charity’s addiction, the constant calls from Jacinta. They had more concerts scheduled, but Jacinta had cancelled them, fearing a riot.

  Elsie couldn’t stop her eyes dragging back to the image of her own face printed in a magazine. Perfectly pretty, but the editors, having got the story of her mole from Nathanial Rogerson’s Facebook, had airbrushed a giant one onto her face. As she looked at the photos, Elsie dragged her hair down the side of her face with her fingers and buried her head into Colorado’s shoulder.

  ‘Will you quit that! We’re not in primary school now!’ Jacinta yelled at her.

  Even Colorado moved so that Elsie would have to sit up and let go of his hand. ‘Babe,’ he said in a husky voice, ‘we really got to sort this.’ He spoke to her as if he was addressing one of his children.

  ‘Fuck off!’ Elsie said, standing abruptly. Jacinta looked around the room at her stunned staff, then back to Elsie.

  ‘Would you mind?’ Jacinta asked Colorado. ‘I’d like a word alone with her, if I may.’

  Colorado shrugged. He stood up, tall in his Cuban heels. ‘Sure,’ he said. He didn’t even look at Elsie as he sauntered out of the room.

  Elsie felt as if she was back in her childhood, about to be berated by her mother, with her father gone to the barren paddocks or absent at the council offices.

  ‘You lot too,’ Jacinta said. The other marketing people seemed to sigh a little, then filed out of the office.

  Jacinta leaned her tiny backside on her expansive desk, crossed her ankles and folded her arms. ‘You know, dear girl, I’m on your side.’

  Elsie breathed long out of her mouth. ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Someone’s gotta be. Cos you and I know he’s goin’ back to his wife.’

  ‘Really? How do you know?’

  ‘Because they all do, sweetheart. They all do.’

  Elsie had swallowed hard. She nodded, bit her lip and the tears began to fall.

  Now, as she saw her reflection caught in the bright lights of the hotel bathroom, behind the maid, Elsie felt like crying all over again. Couldn’t people just leave her alone? Maybe if she explained to this woman what it was like, then she would in turn be kind. Elsie turned on her winning celeb smile. ‘I used to do a bit of cleaning once,’ she said. ‘With a friend of mine.’

  The maid jutted her chin out. ‘You? Cleaner? No. I don’t think so.’ She set down her mop and bucket. ‘You home-wrecker slut. I come back. Finish room later.’

  The plush hotel door clicked shut and Elsie was left alone. There before her in the bathroom sat the mop and the bucket.

  ‘It’s a sign,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a sign.’

  Forty-nine

  Tara’s new silver Jeep was crammed full of her favourite possessions. The window was wound down, the wind in her hair. Behind her sat her stone Buddha, her Japanese blossom-print quilt, her maidenhair fern plant named ‘Nana’ and her fluffy green bathrobe. On the front seat was a box of her most precious books, Wayne Dyer sitting on top of the pile as if he too, in hardback form, was looking out to the ever-flattening plains of the west. She sang along to Elsie’s latest album, thinking over the whirlwind of change sparked the day she saw Elsie on television. Once the epiphany shattered the opaque wall in her mind, there was no holding her back. She revved along the road eager to create new energy and new memories in Culvert. She turned and grinned at her Wayne Dyer book.

  ‘Excuses begone!’ she said.

  Three months earlier, when
she’d searched Culvert real estate on the internet, she’d been overjoyed to find Mr Queen’s Dolls’ House for sale. Her dream home. And the old abattoir house. Her nightmare home. While scrolling through the listings, she also saw Grassmore Estate flash up. Images of Elsie and her in the lounge room with Elsie’s guitar and her mop came to her. Her past was suddenly in the here and now.

  She had scanned the pictures of Grassmore. The photographer had tried to capture the appeal of the large farm homestead, complete with ballroom, but the years of rural decline and drought made the house and farmland look not just tired but abandoned and sad. Hopeless even. Tara knew the energetics of the place were also a reflection of the slow rusting of the Joneses’ marriage and lives. Tara wondered what had become of Elsie’s brother and parents and why they were selling up. Grassmore had been listed for three years and the price reduced several times.

  As she sat in front of the computer, Tara had shut her eyes, breathed in three times and asked her angels if she in fact should relocate her business to the big rambling farm and homestead instead of Mr Queen’s house. She could easily stretch her finances that far, but did she want all that farmland to start with? It was in a bad way and she knew it needed to be rejuvenated as the Smiths had encouraged their land to life, but something blocked her. It had been Elsie’s dream to farm that way back when they were teenagers. Not hers.

  She had looked away from her computer screen. Beside her on the desk was a photo of a dolls’ house in a toy catalogue that had slipped out of the newspaper. Next to that was a twenty-cent coin, the silver image of the Queen right in front of her.

  ‘OK,’ Tara said with a smile drifting to her face. She was now sure that Grassmore’s future lay elsewhere, and that Mr Queen’s Dolls’ House was the home for her.

  One phone call to her lawyer, who contacted Rington Real Estate on her behalf, saw her snap it up for one hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars; and for another thirty thousand dollars she had also bought back the abattoir house and block from Dwaine’s family. Tara had some wrongs to right.

  Within a matter of weeks of buying the places she had gathered her favourite crew of Sydney builders and shipped them out to Culvert, headed by her wonderful tradesman, Gizbo. She’d put him and his builder boys up in the Culvert Pub, all expenses paid, including beer, and sworn them to silence about her identity. The builders loved both working hard for Tara and stringing the locals on, putting them off the scent of their favourite employer.

  ‘Steve Irwin’s missus is planning on a wildlife refuge for stick insects,’ said one of Tara’s builders to a Nicholson boy.

  ‘Olivia Newton-John’s havin’ it off with Russell Crowe and they want a love nest in an anonymous place,’ said another to a perplexed local. ‘Culvert’s perfect for ‘em.’

  ‘Richard Branson’s setting up the equivalent of a Playboy Mansion, only filling it with untouchable virgins instead of slutty bunnies. Kinda like an art gallery, where you can look but you can’t touch. Sick I’d say. More money than sense,’ said another to a waitress.

  ‘It’s Nicole and Keith,’ said the plasterer. ‘They want to breed Alpacas and run an Alpaca riding school for kids. Lady Gaga’s wardrobe artist is designing the saddles.’

  The publican had listened in to their ever-more-outlandish tales, grinning as he wiped up the bar and polished glasses, happy with the influx of lively, funny tradesmen. Suddenly because of this mystery real-estate purchaser, not only were his empty hotel rooms full, but more and more locals were stopping in for a meal or a drink to hear further rumours from the friendly boys who ate their evening counter meals in overalls splattered with the classy colours the new owner had selected.

  Gizbo would report back to Tara on his mobile each night from the privacy of his room. He loved working with her. She was funny and clever. Never condescending as so many rich bitches could be, and so practised at planning and guiding him, even from photographs. She made his job easy and the house was, according to him, ‘coming up a treat’.

  ‘The woman from Rington Real Estate called round this arvo,’ Gizbo had said. ‘She was kicking herself she hadn’t asked for more money for the joint. She reckons with the drought, falling grain prices and the youngsters leaving and the oldsters dying that commissions for Culvert and now even Rington real estate are at an all-time low. Won’t be long, she said, until she shuts up shop too.’

  Tara thought of the nosy agent, who had badgered her Sydney-based solicitor for details on his anonymous buyer. She felt sorry for her, and really for all of Culvert and the surrounding region. It was time to shake them up out of their own apathy.

  ‘Now about this abattoir house,’ Gizbo had said, ‘what’s your plan there?’

  Tara knew exactly what to do. Seeing the house online after all those years had been confronting. The photographs showed blank window eyes and boards dropping unevenly down into long unmown grasses. The front door was boarded shut, as if the darkness inside should never be released again into the world. The killing shed was slowly being engulfed by Mother Nature as she pushed seedlings through the thick film of cement, cracking the concrete monstrosity to rubble over time.

  After hanging up from Gizbo, an email whizzing through cyberspace soon gathered a demolition crew. They had joined the builder team at the pub and by the end of the week had begun to knock down every brick, chisel up every bit of concrete and tear off every board so that soon the house, the killing shed, the yards were all gone. It was a bare, blank patch on the earth. When the last truck rolled out towards Culvert tip, Tara’s landscaping crew arrived. Sylvia’s nursery was never busier as the landscapers ordered in topsoil, plants, advanced trees, potting mix and poly pipe. No one knew what was being created there, but Sylvia was making money for the first time in years.

  Like the rest of the crew, the landscapers, who owed a great deal to Tara for their recent business success, were keeping their cards close to their chest.

  ‘It’s Jamie Durie,’ said one of the customers. ‘He must be moving to Culvert.’

  ‘Or Jamie Oliver?’ suggested another.

  The landscape crew always simply smiled and said, ‘Maybe.’

  Her team of people were, as Tara described them, ‘pure place people’ and they would not be swayed from their mission to help her build her dream in Culvert.

  Tara knew the sale of the properties and the activities would be sparking a tsunami of questions in Culvert so, at night, as she lay in her blissful bed in her Sydney house for the last few weeks, she closed her eyes and blessed the town. She conjured up the image of the Dolls’ House and talked a little to Mr Queen’s hovering soul in the thin silver film between the here and now and the passed souls of the planet. She promised him that when she got there, she would adopt back his precious cats who had been sent to the Rington Cattery along with a breathtakingly large donation after his death. Then she visualised herself hovering in the empty rooms as teams of angels cleansed and healed the space.

  This night-drifting sustained her; it was something she’d done all her life. It was unconventional, but it was how she had survived her childhood. She imagined the bare block that had once been the site of her childhood home. She sent it love and healing. She sent her little child self love too. Then Tara would roll over, thanking the Archangel Michael for giving her new energy and the courage to do this. Then she would hug herself, knowing she was safe, but lonely. One day, still, she longed to be held. Held by a kind man who cared.

  Amos came again and again to her mind, and she usually pushed him away, but now as she at last passed the fifty-K speed limit sign of Culvert, she felt a buzz of excitement. She would visit the Smith house that night because she was coming home. Home without fear. Without limits. She was utterly changed and ready to prove herself to herself. A big smile spread across her face.

  From the southern end of town, Tara could see she may have changed, but Culvert had not, unless to grow tattier and closer to death than she had imagined. The signs advertising Syl
via’s Silverspoon Café and the Smiths’ roadhouse were faded, and the Golf Club billboard had a giant hole in it — like someone had driven golf balls at it. The paddocks that spread to the west were almost grey, so deathly low was their energy. She drove further into town, turning past the old school, finally pulling up outside the lovely leafy trees that spread their arms in welcome over the high fence around her new house.

  She got out of the Jeep, stretched and walked through the wrought-iron front gate shining with a glossy new coat of emerald-green paint. She stood on the path and looked up.

  The Dolls’ House was everything Tara imagined it to be and more. She practically skipped like a child along the path and up the wide steps. Her key slid in the lock as if it was drawn by magnets. It turned as easily as the tide. The door swung open silently. She stood in wonder.

  The stained-glass window above the door spread rainbows over new carpet in a wide airy hallway. To the right a broad staircase with a gentle gradient led her gaze upstairs to the light from big windows on a landing. She climbed the stairs, feeling Mr Queen at her side, happily escorting her up. In the largest room facing east the big windows were shielded by summery giant leafy old elms. The trees took her eye to views beyond the ordinary Culvert rooftops next door and out to the plains. Dry and overgrazed as it was, Tara saw beauty in the vastness. She sighed with relief. This was what she was missing. Space. Solitude. The country. Culvert reborn.

  She was about to head downstairs to inspect the kitchen, which she knew opened onto a large north-facing deck, and the lounge room and its fireplace, when she heard a knock on the door. Tara frowned. Maybe it would be the real-estate agent come to welcome her? But how would she know she was here? Tara instructed herself not to be annoyed by this intrusion and instead to feel gratitude someone was dropping by. She trod down the carpeted stairs, her hand drifting on the polished banisters. The hairs on her skin stood up. That would be Mr Queen again. His happiness at her arrival must be flooding the house and her system. He must be glad someone had come to love his house to life and fill it with goodwill and love, plus soon his dear old cats.