by Wendy James
Honor had still been a hack on a big city paper back in Suzannah’s heyday and had always assumed that Suzannah had done something wrong, that her career had taken a nosedive, that she’d been left without options, forced into teaching. Celebrity worked like that for most people—took whatever they offered, chewed them up, then spat them out. Honor’s job was different. She’d approached it stealthily, entered from the back door, a secret door that let her into the real powerhouse, become one of the people who ran the show. One of the people who did the chewing up and spitting out of the Suzannah Wellses of the world. But if Suzannah was telling the truth, her exit had been entirely voluntary. Her part in the show was over, and she’d simply decided she’d had enough.
It gave Honor a bit of a jolt to think that someone could actually choose such a life—small, peripheral, provincial, relatively meaningless—once they’d had a taste of living life at the center of things. That Suzannah had made a decision to leave, to embrace this other life, frightened her a little. And when Suzannah looked like she might be revealing more than Honor really wanted to know, Honor quickly steered the conversation back into acceptably shallow waters.
“Have you seen much of your neighbor?”
“Chip? Not really. Although he took me on a guided tour of the town one day after the trivia night—showed me the sights, drove out to the river, that sort of thing.”
“What did you think?”
“Of the river?”
“Ha. No, although I want to hear about that, too. What do you think of Chip?”
“He seems okay.” Suzannah’s shrug was casual, her expression noncommittal. “Why do you ask?”
Honor grinned. “Just a heads-up. He has a bit of a reputation around here. With the ladies.” She stretched the word out.
“I gathered that. Anyway, there’s no need to warn me. He’s really not my type. He’s a bit too, I don’t know, a bit too sure of himself for me. And I don’t think there’s any interest from his side either.”
“Don’t be deceived,” said Honor. “Chip Gascoyne is always interested.”
“You two seem like good friends.”
“I’m not sure about friends, but we’ve known each other forever, and now that we’re neighbors, it’s kind of impossible not to socialize. He and Dougal have drinks every now and then, and we have dinner occasionally.”
“And you said you’d had a thing with him?”
“Very briefly, when we were still in high school. It was never going to go anywhere. I was a townie and he was a grazier’s kid, a boarding school boy. And in those days that difference meant something. Maybe it still does, I don’t know. There was an expectation that he would find someone appropriate—someone who would help him keep everything going for the next generation. A farmer’s wife. That was never going to be me.”
“I guess he was a catch back then?”
“Oh yeah. He was. Every second girl had the hots for Chip. He was good-looking, he was rich, he had impeccable manners, he was smart, he was the vice-captain of some posh school, captain of the rugby team, the cricket eleven. He only had to click his fingers and he could’ve had any girl.”
“And did he?”
“He ended up marrying the kind of girl everyone expected him to marry—Gemma Barton. She was the female version of Chip: from an old grazing family, boarding school—you know—well bred, pretty, vacuous. Perfect breeding stock. Their fathers were great mates. Grandfathers, too, probably.”
“I heard she died.”
“Yeah. Actually, that was sad. It was all looking good, I guess—work had started on the new house. They’d been living in the old manager’s cottage, which was pretty basic, I think. It’s been knocked down since. His mum and dad were living in your place. And then Gemma got breast cancer. They shelved the build and focused on Gemma, on getting her better. She was sick for five or six years, I think, before she died. And then—wham! Everything else seemed to go wrong. Both his parents died, and Chip had to buy out his older brother, Hal—he’s a lawyer, lives in town. So he had this big debt, and then the drought hit. He almost lost the farm. Hal helped him out, and I think he sold off some other portions of land as well. He finished building the new place a few years ago, but it took him a while to move in.”
“I wonder if he’s a bit sad about leaving this place. It’s been in his family for what, over a hundred years? He must have some regrets.”
“Maybe.” Honor shrugged. “But the rest of us have never had that privilege—that history—to cling on to. I guess Chip Gascoyne has had to join the real world.”
After the second bottle, Honor got up to leave. It was late, past midnight, and Suzannah suggested she stay over; it was no problem to make up a bed in the spare room, she said, or perhaps she could call a cab? But Honor insisted on driving: she would go at a snail’s pace, and it was barely a K if you discounted the driveways.
As she drove carefully down the long driveway, Honor realized that she’d enjoyed herself more than she had in a long time. She liked Suzannah; she even liked the crazy mother. Suzannah was smart, curious, funny, and, despite her trying circumstances, she was far from self-pitying. And there was something about her—some residue from her years in front of the camera, an easy sort of sexiness, a confidence in her own skin that most people outside the celebrity world rarely had and that Suzannah herself probably wasn’t aware of. That the sexiness was latent, and that the woman herself was so unaware of it, made it all the more potent and, to Honor—who was easily bored by anything or anyone that smacked of the commonplace—all the more appealing.
More importantly, the evening hadn’t left the customary bad taste in Honor’s mouth. There’d been no painstakingly disguised competition between the women; nothing was said that Honor was only just decoding now. And for once the thorny issue of children hadn’t come up—Honor’s lack of, whether she wanted them, and if not, why not; was it too late, did she regret it, were there problems? But Suzannah hadn’t mentioned children at all, and for this she was grateful.
ABDUCTED: THE ELLIE CANNING STORY
A documentary by HeldHostage Productions © 2019
ELLIE CANNING: TRANSCRIPT #3
After my interview, I caught a bus back to Central. I had a few hours to kill, so I went to get something to eat. Somehow I left it too late, and by the time I got back, I’d just missed my train. There wasn’t another until the next day and I didn’t have much money left—I mean, I had some, but not enough for a hotel or anything like that, so it was a bit of a disaster. And my phone was running out of power. I decided I’d just have to hang at the station all night, which was a pain, but I thought I could try and get some sleep on a bench or something.
I wandered about the city for a bit to kill time. I went and got a snack at a café sometime around four, and a woman sat down next to me. She was old, like, in her forties, I guess, dark-haired—I thought maybe she was Italian or something. I can’t remember exactly what she was wearing—it was probably, like, jeans and a jumper—but I do know she had this mad scarf with all these swirly colors. We got chatting, and I told her what had happened, and she seemed concerned and said I could use her phone if I wanted to let someone know where I was—wouldn’t my parents be worried? I told her that no one was expecting me.
SUZANNAH: APRIL 2018
I walked over with a bag of late-season zucchini and squash and one oversize pumpkin, intending to drop them on his doorstep and leave, but Chip was there when I arrived. He opened the screen door as I was treading quietly across the veranda.
“G’day.”
“Hi.” I lifted up the bag. “I was going to drop these off. Didn’t think you’d be home.”
“Thoughtful of you.”
I held the bag toward him. “Here. Take it. They’re heavy.”
He peered inside. “Glad to see you remembered how much I love pumpkin. Excellent.”
“We’ve got more if you want them. Too many, really . . .” He wasn’t listening.
“
I’ve had a thought.” He pushed his hair back. “Why don’t you come for dinner? I’ll do a roast. Come on—it’s Saturday night. And I need to get rid of this.” He pulled the pumpkin out of the bag. “I’ll give it to the pigs if you don’t.”
“Do you have pigs?”
“No. But I do have a couple of goats that eat practically anything. Come on, Suzannah.”
“I—”
He must have sensed my hesitation. “And if there’s marking, it can wait. My wife was a primary school teacher, so I know all about marking. And I might be a country bumpkin, but I won’t believe you if you tell me you need to wash your hair.”
It was true that dinner with Chip sounded far more appealing than the previous night’s spaghetti bol I was planning to heat up, the painfully drawn-out routine of putting Mary to bed, three gins on my own, and the pile of badly written essays on Waiting for Godot that sat waiting to be marked. But there was a problem.
“I can’t leave Mary.”
He looked crestfallen. “Really? But don’t you leave her when you go to work?”
“I do. But nights can be . . . difficult.”
“Maybe you could get a babysitter?”
I shook my head. “It’s too late to organize.”
“Give her a sleeping pill?”
“They make her worse.”
“Damn.” He brightened. “I know. How about I bring dinner over to you?”
He came just before seven, bringing the prepared meal and a bottle of wine. Mary had been fed and bathed, and he was just in time for our evening game of Trouble. She was often restless at this time of day, sometimes aggressive, and always far less tethered to reality. If she was going to forget who I was or where we were, this was when it happened.
The old children’s board game distracted and focused her, and I got a strange pleasure out of it, too. I’d never really played these games as a child; once I’d moved past my earliest childhood, my grandparents were simply too preoccupied, too tired, too old. I’d had a cupboard full of games, though, and sometimes I’d take Trouble out and pretend to be two people—one me, the other some kid from a TV show or book or even school. Occasionally, I’d pretend to be Mary, although even imagining Mary engaged in such an activity was a stretch. It was bizarre to find myself playing a real game with her now, always reminding me of the improbable nature of this late-life reunion.
Chip was initially reluctant to play, but while Mary’s demands might be childish, her adult perceptions only added to her cunning: if Chips Rafferty wanted to get rid of her for the evening, he would have to do as she said—viz, play Trouble. Playing with Mary was unpredictable. Some evenings she was wild; she shouted gleefully when she was winning and swore when one of her pieces was taken or if she got stuck for want of a six. She was accustomed to cheating—punching at the dice bubble manically until she landed her desired number. But tonight, with Chip there, she behaved beautifully, playing quietly and accepting her losses with reasonable grace. Still, between the two of us, we contrived to let her win quickly, and the game, which could go on for far too long, was over in half an hour.
Like a small child, Mary was desperately tired in the evening, but she would still work hard to extend her day as long as possible, demanding a hot Ovaltine, snacks, more television. But after a final crude remark—If you two are going to fuck, make sure he wears a condom. I’m too young to be a grandmother—she cooperated. Even so, it took a while to get her comfortable. First she demanded I straighten her blankets, pull them right up, and tuck them in firmly, then complained she was too hot, that she couldn’t move and wanted them folded back down. Then she was thirsty—what did I think she was, a bloody camel? And then, naturally, she needed to pee. After the trip down the hallway, she was cold again and insisted on changing out of her summer nightdress into her favorite long pj’s, a pink silk pair I’d bought for her birthday last year that she called her Chanel pajamas. As always at times like this, I felt the rage and resentment begin to bubble up, along with a childish desire to pinch her or push her or say something vicious, and as always I took deep breaths and held my tongue.
Chip’s meal was simple but good: slow-cooked lamb, squash, roast potatoes, zucchini. He’d baked one small slice of pumpkin especially for me. Neither of us had dressed up for the occasion, though I’d made a bit of an effort with makeup, and he was clean-shaven, his hair tamed. Chip insisted on serving the meal, and I leaned against the bench and watched, sipping champagne, as he carved the meat, piled the plates with veggies, poured the gravy. He was clearly practiced in the kitchen. We sat up at the breakfast bar to eat, and the conversation, slightly awkward at first, gradually became less stilted as the champagne took effect.
He told me stories about the house, about his family, their long history in the area. The first Gascoyne had come to Australia as a convict—a fact that had been hushed up by the succeeding generations. I told him about school: gossip from the staff room, a few stories of bad behavior from the students. He seemed to know most of the staff and almost all the kids, had something to say about their various backgrounds, sometimes surprising, frequently counterintuitive. No wonder Demi Barnes was a shit of a kid: her father, Gary, had been the same, and her mother—Jenny Downey before they married—was wild, too; he was pretty sure she’d had an affair with one of the math teachers when they were kids. And Connor McFarlane’s lawyer dad was a violent alcoholic who should’ve been locked up and the key thrown away.
I laughed when he told me of his own most recent adventure: a visit to Italy and Germany, where he had attempted, and ultimately failed, to make deals with continental wool buyers. He’d been a classic innocent abroad, bumbling through encounters with rich and sophisticated, and frequently snobby, Europeans.
“There’s something I need to tell you. A confession.” He sounded serious.
I didn’t know quite how to respond, so I kept it light. “I hope it’s nothing illegal.” Was it drugs? A second wife? A fatal disease? A criminal record? Somehow it already mattered.
“It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I’ve never ever seen that show.”
“What show?”
He was having trouble keeping a straight face. “That soapie you were in. Surfworld or whatever it was. I’ve never seen it.”
“Beachlife. Really? Not even one episode?”
“Not one. We didn’t—we could only get the ABC out here then. And Channel Seven when the wind was blowing from the south.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“So you never saw the episode when Jason and I got married? I thought everybody under the age of thirty saw that.”
“No, I . . . hold on—wasn’t that the other show? The one with Kylie in it?”
“Ah—so you’re not a complete philistine. You watched Neighbours?”
“I told you—we occasionally got Seven. But I only watched it once or twice. I promise. And it was total rubbish.”
“Hmmm. Well, I’m just sorry you never got to see me in my prime.”
“Pity. But you’re not that bad now, you know.”
“Not that bad?”
“Actually, I’ve just ordered the full box set off Amazon.”
“I didn’t even know there was such a thing. You didn’t really?”
“No. But maybe I will.” He thought for a moment. “Or maybe you could act out all the most important moments for me.” I choked on my wine. “It’d save some time. Not to mention money.”
Dinner eaten, the champagne drunk, we opened a bottle of red and moved into the lounge room, sitting in front of the fire I’d lit earlier in the evening, which, I was pleased to see, had somehow managed not only to stay alight but to warm the room, which had cooled down quickly even though it was still only autumn. The conversation became quieter, more personal. Chip told me about his marriage, the death of his wife, his sadness at not having children. “What about you?” he asked. “You were married, weren’t you? No kids?”
I answered
the first half of the question.
“I was married. We split up fifteen years ago.”
“And there’s been no one since?”
“No. I mean, I’ve been out with a few people, but I guess I wasn’t . . . ready. You know how it is.”
He knew.
“So who was he? Your husband? Is he someone I should have heard of?” Chip looked embarrassed. “I probably should have googled all this—but I’ve never bothered to get the internet set up at the new place. And anyway—it’s a bit dodgy, isn’t it? Doing searches on your neighbors.”
“You wouldn’t know him. He was a builder. Steve.” I was relieved that he didn’t know much about me, somewhat hypocritically, considering my own research efforts.
“Right.” He looked surprised. “A civilian? Isn’t that a bit unusual in your line of work?”
“Maybe. But I met him after I got out of acting. I’d landed my first full-time teaching job. It was in Collaroy, which is an impossible commute from Bondi, so I rented out my place and moved there. My landlord sent him over to fix some windows.”
“And he never left.”
“Something like that.” I laughed. “Actually, I moved into his far bigger, far fancier place.”
“And didn’t live happily ever after.”
“Not exactly.”
“What happened? Was the celebrity thing too much for him?”
“It wasn’t that. Any fame I had was pretty much over by that time, anyway. We lived this totally conventional life. I was teaching; Steve was building. We went to the pub on Friday nights, dinner at his parents’ on Sunday nights. We had friends over for barbies, renovated. It was wall-to-wall picket fences.” I could hear the wistfulness in my voice.
“So what? Was it you? Did you miss all the excitement?”
“God, no. I’d been happy to get out. I’d had enough.”