The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends

by Helen Garner

  Father consults a map. They flash past a sign. He cranes his neck but can’t get a proper look at it. Gives Beth a cross glance, which she does not notice.

  BETH: What’s the time?

  FATHER: One-fifteen.

  BETH: One-fifteen?

  FATHER: I’m not changing it. I’m keeping it on Eastern Standard.

  The car is now in red desert proper.

  Beth slows down as they approach a tourist bus which has stopped by the roadside.

  FATHER: What are you doing?

  Beth doesn’t answer.

  FATHER: Why have you stopped here? Looks the same as everywhere else.

  They pull up and get out.

  A crowd of old people from the bus tour (most of them women) are taking photographs of the nothingness.

  OLD MAN: (to Father): You can waste a lot of money taking photos. Unless you’ve got something like your wife on the side of the picture. A personal touch. Otherwise you’re better off buying one of those folders with the views hanging off it.

  FATHER: This is my daughter. Would she do?

  The old man gives him a puzzled look.

  The car rolls on, with Beth at the wheel.

  FATHER (with contempt): ‘A personal touch’. Stupid old bugger. I’d much rather a plain landscape, wouldn’t you? With no people in it?

  BETH (eager to talk about something): I like interiors. Photos of things on tables.

  FATHER (losing interest as soon as she gets arty): Can’t see the interest of that. (Looks out the window.)

  Not many kangaroos. I thought we’d have seen herds and herds. No emus either. What’s happened to this country?

  We see the empty horizon passing.

  The empty horizon becomes a postcard. Pull back to show it is held in the chubby fingers of JP, who is examining it with dismayed fascination.

  JP (to himself, with feeling): Quel pays affreux. It is all the same. C’est un pays perdu. Qu’est-ce que je fous ici? (What a dreadful country. It’s a lost country. What the hell am I doing here?)

  Behind him, boppy music. Tim, Vicki and Annie are mucking about in dress-ups, running to and fro. Vicki is putting on a Dolly Parton wig.

  JP’s gaze settles on Vicki as she arranges the wig on her head; her face, unaware of his scrutiny, is trembling with suppressed laughter at her part in the game.

  Beth and her father have got out of the car and are standing separately, at some distance from the car, in featureless red country. Car ticks as it cools. They are bewildered, overwhelmed by the hugeness around them.

  Father holds a map but his hand is dangling as if he had given up trying to navigate; the map no longer applies. Night is coming on. Colours very deep and spectacular.

  Days later. Afternoon in the house.

  At the table are Vicki, JP, Tim and Annie. They are all colouring in. A big box of pencils is open between them. Behind them the room is in disorder: pizza boxes, papers, etc., strewn all over the floor and furniture, empty stubbies on their sides, dirty dishes in piles.

  But in spite of the disorder, the house is peaceful and slow because Beth is away.

  There are many pauses in the talk. During silences, the sound of pencils moving against paper. Someone shows their work, others glance up, then it is quiet again.

  In the corner the TV is on with no sound: a marathon, runners slogging desperately along rainy roads; the pathos of this—their grim struggle contrasts with the voices of the cheerful colourers-in.

  TIM: Did you get homesick when you were overseas, Vicki?

  VICKI: Sometimes.

  Pause.

  VICKI: JP’s overseas all the time, aren’t you, JP.

  They all look up at him, struck by this remark. They are in an agreeable, half-stunned state.

  JP looks up too, sees that he has their attention fully; he gives a shy smile, not his usual clever one. They continue to colour in.

  JP: There is one thing I miss. Andouillettes.

  VICKI: What’s that?

  JP: A kind of sausage.

  Pause. Colouring in.

  VICKI: I thought about you, JP, one time when I was in Italy.

  JP (flirtatiously): Only one time?

  VICKI (smiling; looking at her work): Some people took me to their place by the sea. They were really nice people but they used to laugh whenever I spoke. I had to put up with it because they were my friends. Anyway I went out on this balcony and looked down on the beach, and it was disgusting. It was narrow and made out of stones, and there was matter floating in the water—oil and plastic milk bottles and stuff. I couldn’t help it—I started to bawl. I wanted to yell at them, ‘Okay! I’m only an Australian and I make stupid mistakes when I talk and my clothes are all wrong and you can laugh at me if you like, but at least I know what a proper beach looks like’.

  Pause. Everyone listening as they colour.

  VICKI: One with waves.

  TIM: Don’t they have waves over there?

  JP: What has this to do with me?

  VICKI: I was ashamed of how mean Beth and I used to be when you played your daggy French rock records.

  JP picks up Vicki’s hand and formally kisses it.

  ANNIE (glancing up and down, colouring even more vigorously): Ewww, yuck.

  It is a hot night. Beth and her father come out of the motel dining room to the yard between the rooms. It is clear from their demeanour that they have nothing much to say to each other, are bored with each other’s company through the long driving day, and are now parting for the evening to go to their rooms. They walk together to a certain point in the carpark, then peel off and head for their separate doors.

  Ten minutes later, Father comes out of his room. The screen door bangs shut behind him. He walks across the gravel yard, carrying a heavy jerry can. He approaches Beth’s door: he can see a light on behind the screen. He knocks. She comes to the door, holding a book.

  FATHER (gruffly): Want some tank water from home? To have in your room overnight?

  BETH (without interest, oblivious to the meaning of the gesture): Oh…no thanks. I never get thirsty at night.

  He nods and turns away. He is hurt, but remains impassive. Beth’s door closes. He trudges away with his jerry can, head down.

  Back at the house, late on a hot afternoon, Annie and Vicki are messing round with Beth’s things, both in a state of busy, intense personal concentration. Each is lost in her own fantasy at first, though they communicate in a two-level exchange.

  Vicki behaves in this scene as if Beth were her mother. The clothes they try on are ones we have never seen Beth wearing: linen suit, high heels, dresses with big full skirts. They are playing in Beth’s discarded fantasies of herself.

  VICKI: But do you think they still love each other?

  ANNIE (with unintentionally comic dignity): How would I know? I’ve got my own life to live.

  VICKI: That colour definitely doesn’t suit you.

  Vicki fossicks on Beth’s desk among her papers.

  VICKI: Ooh, look. She’s trying to write a play. Or a movie. Listen. ‘Her shoes looked like two crows’ beaks.’ Hey! I said that!

  ANNIE: She writes down everything. (Holds up a complicated bra.) What’s this thing?

  VICKI: What if she wrote a movie about us. Would you go in it?

  ANNIE: Don’t snoop, Vicki. My God—flares.

  VICKI (lifting pillow): Where’s her diary.

  Annie slams the pillow back down but Vicki picks up Beth’s nightie and smells it.

  VICKI: Mmmm. Smell this. Like when you were a baby.

  ANNIE (putting on jewellery): I don’t remember.

  VICKI: I do.

  ANNIE (looking at herself in the mirror): Was I cute?

  VICKI (moving to the smaller mirror on the dressing table): I only saw you in the distance. I had to wait in the car outside your house with Dad. He wouldn’t let me go in.

  ANNIE (still at the long mirror; astonished): Why not?

  VICKI (at the small mirror; speaking c
asually): Oh, he couldn’t stand your father. Any bloke Beth brought home he couldn’t stand. He wouldn’t go to her wedding or anything. He was jealous of your father.

  Annie listens, stock still in items of her mother’s clothing and jewellery.

  VICKI: When you were born he wouldn’t go to the hospital to see you. He even tried to stop Mum from going.

  Annie makes no reply; she is rather shocked.

  VICKI: Hasn’t she ever told you all this?

  ANNIE: No.

  VICKI: You ask her one day.

  Annie in Beth’s big dress goes to the window in silence and looks out.

  VICKI: Are you upset?

  ANNIE (lying): No.

  VICKI: I wonder how they’re getting on out there.

  We can see the hand of cypress trees, which Annie too is looking at from her position at the window. Against the remaining light in the sky, they look very dark. The rest of the dialogue is in voice-over.

  VICKI: She’s probably murdered him by now.

  ANNIE: Maybe he deserves it.

  VICKI: And buried him in a shallow grave.

  ANNIE: Shutup, Vicki. You’re giving me the creeps.

  Night, in a desert motel.

  Beth looks up from the notebook she is scribbling in, and sees on TV a show about doctors and patients—a documentary. A woman is having a caesarean: her abdomen is slit open with a scalpel and a baby pops out into the surgeon’s gloved hands. Beth gives a gasp and watches intently.

  Vicki, on the couch in front of the TV at home, sees the same thing and bursts into tears.

  Father, ensconced in glory in his motel bed with an open wine bottle, the esky beside him, a newspaper folded tightly into the square of the crossword, his pencil nicely sharpened, glances up and sees the same thing on TV. He gets out of bed and with distaste flips the channel over to the cricket.

  JP enters the living room carrying two bowls of soup, and heads for the couch where Vicki is sitting, bent over herself, weeping helplessly. On the screen we see the baby being dealt with: tubes are thrust down its nose, a little silver paper cap is put on its head to keep it warm, its tiny arms wave feebly in protest.

  JP, shocked by Vicki’s weeping, puts down the soup and opens his arms to her.

  JP (softly): Mais qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Qu’est-ce qui se passe? (What’s the matter? What’s going on?)

  Vicki can’t explain. He rocks her, murmurs in French. She lets herself be comforted.

  In the motel, Beth with full attention watches the baby being dealt with. She too is moved, on the verge of tears.

  On the living-room sofa, Vicki and JP eat their soup. Vicki is still taking big quivering breaths.

  JP: You should have asked me. Beth—with her everything must be cleared up always. She can’t wait.

  VICKI: I never thought you’d be interested.

  JP: You could have given me this baby.

  VICKI: Oh, don’t tease me, JP.

  JP: You always think I am tizzing.

  She stops slurping her soup and stares at him.

  He leans forward and kisses her on the mouth. The phone rings. They take no notice. It keeps ringing.

  JP and Vicki are staring at each other, breathless.

  Beth is standing in a phone box on a desert road near the motel. It is totally black outside.

  A lit road-train goes past. A stack of coins stands on the top of the phone. We hear it ring and ring. Nobody answers.

  Finally Beth puts down the receiver. An avalanche of coins falls into the return chute.

  Father’s car is raising dust on an unmade road. It is a hot morning.

  Beth is driving. A cow appears, looking very small, on the verge of the road a hundred yards ahead of the car.

  FATHER: Ease ’er down.

  No reaction from Beth.

  FATHER (with more authority): Ease ’er down.

  Beth does not respond. He looks sharply at her.

  FATHER (bellowing): I said EASE ’ER DOWN!!!

  Beth, offended, pulls over, stops the car, pulls on the hand-brake rather hard. They are still yards away from the animal: there was no danger of their hitting it.

  Father leans across and lets the hand-brake off again.

  BETH: Why’d you do that?

  FATHER (faking reasonableness): That’s no way to put on a hand-brake.

  BETH (with exaggerated restraint): Dad. I have been driving now for over twenty years. In that time I have never had an accident. I know how to put on a hand-brake.

  FATHER: You yanked it. Maybe in the kind of bombs you drive that’s how you put a hand-brake on.

  This is their customary mode of behaviour with each other. They resemble each other; thus, any minor incident, a certain tone of voice, a momentary dinting of their vanity can trigger off ancient, unconscious, unresolved hostilities.

  Beth puts the car in gear and drives back on to the road. Grim silence.

  They approach a petrol station, a dismal dump on the endless plain. Beth is still at the wheel.

  FATHER: Turn in here.

  Beth obeys, and lines the back of the car up with the pump as if for a fill.

  FATHER (irritably): Back up, will you? I only want to compare prices.

  BETH (savagely): I can’t read your mind.

  She gets out, slams the door loudly, marches away towards the roadhouse.

  Father gets out of the car, walks around it and gets into the driving seat. Beth comes out of the cafe unwrapping a sandwich and starting to eat it. She gets into the passenger seat. They do not look at each other. He drives away.

  FATHER: It’s a wonder you don’t get fat, the amount you eat between meals.

  BETH: You should talk.

  FATHER: What’s biting you?

  BETH: I think we should talk about it.

  FATHER: About what?

  BETH: About why we have these stupid fights!

  FATHER: You start them. Doing stupid things. Slamming car doors. Yanking the hand-brake like that.

  BETH (starting to cry, stuffing the sandwich in): I’m over forty. This is undignified.

  FATHER (turning away, embarrassed): Gawd, Beth—you get so flamin’ worked up about everything!

  BETH: I hate the way we fight. I don’t want to be like this with you. I thought if we came away out here where there was nobody else we might be able to—to—

  She is sobbing and swallowing bites of the sandwich; she can’t speak.

  FATHER (completely baffled): Able to what?

  BETH: TO stop. We’ve been fighting like this ever since I was fifteen. It’s ruining my life. I don’t even know what we’re fighting about.

  FATHER (irritated): If you didn’t act like an idiot, the way you do, there’d be no need for us to fight.

  BETH (hopelessly trying to get herself under control): It can’t be all my fault. Why is it all my fault? Is it because I’m the oldest? Is that why you’ve always been tougher on me?

  FATHER (disgusted): I can’t see any point in thrashing round ‘talking things through’. Everybody makes mistakes, but Gawd! You’re as bad as your mother. She always wants to talk about things. What’s there to say? Everybody talks too much.

  BETH (starting to cry again): But you’re my father. And I love you.

  He looks round sharply at her, astonished, then away again, deeply appalled and embarrassed.

  BETH: And we’re both too old to be fighting like this.

  Beth finishes the sandwich and screws up the paper bag fiercely, holding it in her fist and keeping her eyes on the road outside the side window.

  Father keeps driving, eyes straight ahead.

  Father is now at the wheel. They arrive at a gorge.

  A big flash new 4WD is parked under a tree, with a large new caravan attached, but no one is in sight.

  Beth and Father get out and walk along the stony gorge (he’s in front, she follows) to a large pool of water. By the water’s edge there are four pairs of thongs left in a neat row.

  BETH (gloomily)
: Look. The suicide of the family.

  They stand by the water.

  Beth picks up a stone and tries to skim it. It sinks. Father skims his beautifully.

  FATHER (trying to be conciliatory; joking his way out of it, as he has always done before): That pool will eventually be filled right up, with the stones that people chuck into it, trying to skim.

  BETH (unfriendly): Hardly.

  FATHER: You don’t think so? Not in a thousand years?

  He is trying to tease her out of her miserable mood, but she won’t bite.

  BETH (bitterly): The human race won’t be here in a thousand years.

  Teatime, at a primitive motel. Beth and her father are sitting there dully, having finished their main course. It is still light outside.

  There is no one else in the room.

  The door to the kitchen is open and through it comes the cheerful noise of someone washing up and whistling, a radio, the clash of plates.

  A waitress comes out with a sundae dish and puts it in front of Beth.