by Helen Garner
JENNY (voice-over, from outside): Does it fit?
LOUISE: It’s the right length.
Jenny pushes in through the curtain. She takes a look at the dress.
JENNY: Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll have to get the next size bigger. Here.
Hands her the other dress.
LOUISE: But I like this one.
JENNY: The waist’s right up under your armpits!
Louise snatches the other dress and holds it up against her.
LOUISE: It’s daggy. I’m going to look a dag in it.
JENNY: Oh, stop mucking round and try it on.
LOUISE: I’m waiting for you to go outside.
Jenny goes outside. Louise, with excruciating modesty, changes dresses. This one’s waist is in the right place but the hem is halfway down her calves. She looks at herself in sullen despair.
JENNY (voice-over, from outside): Have you got it on?
Louise doesn’t answer. Jenny sticks her head in, and enters.
JENNY (briskly): Oh, that’s miles better. You can grow into that one.
LOUISE (almost in tears): It’s foul. If you think I’m going out on the public street wearing this—
JENNY: Oh, for God’s sake, Louise—I’ll take up the hem when we get home!
Jenny charges out.
We see Louise slowly taking off the dress and putting her ordinary clothes back on. At the same time we can hear Jenny speaking to the shop assistant in the charming tone mothers use to others even after they’ve just been growling at their child.
SHOP ASSISTANT (voice-over): It’s always wisest to buy the bigger size. I think you’ll find she’ll soon grow into it.
JENNY (voice-over): She’s small for her age. I’m sure she’s about to shoot up any minute now.
Louise examines herself in the mirror. She is ill-tempered, mutinous, miserable, helpless.
An hour later Louise and Jenny stand waiting with a pile of books at the cash register of a big secondhand bookshop.
Jenny spots Kelly on the far side of the shop.
JENNY: Hey, look who’s here!
Louise sees Kelly. Jenny goes to call to Kelly; Louise grabs her sleeve.
LOUISE: Shutup!
JENNY: What?
LOUISE: I don’t want her to see the uniform.
But too late. Kelly has seen them and approaches.
KELLY: Hi, Jenny! Ooh, I love your shirt—it’s gorgeous. What’ve you two been buying?
Louise decides to brazen it out, and hands her the bags. Kelly rummages; pulls out one shoe, an ugly black lace-up with square toes. She holds it up and makes a great play of examining it from every angle.
LOUISE: They’re awful. They’re disgusting.
KELLY: You poor thing. Imagine having to clomp along the street in those.
Louise takes it and hastily puts it back in the bag. Jenny meanwhile is forking out more money for the books.
Early that afternoon, Louise, Kelly and Jenny, loaded with parcels and bags, travel home in a bus. Louise and Kelly sit together in a double seat, Jenny is in the seat behind. Jenny is examining the textbooks. She leans forward to the girls.
JENNY: Hey, this is interesting—listen: (She reads out a sentence.)
LOUISE (embarrassed): Shutup, Mum! You’re so loud!
Jenny, rebuked, sits back and goes silent.
LOUISE: Oh, what’s the matter.
JENNY: I hate it when you speak to me like that.
LOUISE: Tsk. Oh, sorree.
Louise and Kelly exchange a glance of complicity.
Jenny looks out the window. She is hurt. The girls in front of her (we see the backs of their heads) are chattering brightly—we can’t hear what they’re saying. Jenny is excluded.
Louise turns round and speaks to her.
LOUISE: Mum, can Kelly stay the night?
JENNY (pretending not to be hurt): Yes, I suppose so. I’m going out for tea. She’d better ring her mother when we get home.
KELLY: Oh, they won’t mind. They’ve gone away for the weekend.
Early one afternoon, in Jenny’s kitchen, Louise and Kelly are washing up. They begin to sing, something they’ve learnt at school. They are busy with their task and don’t look at each other. A pretty, simple harmony, a traditional tune.
It is not a performance. It is casual. Kelly with the rubber gloves on slings some coffee grounds out the window without breaking the rhythm.
They are at ease with each other: it’s a common activity, a remnant of less complicated times.
It is mid-afternoon, a hot summer day at the baths.
Louise and Kelly emerge from a changing shed.
We see that Kelly is physically much more developed than Louise, and flaunts it, while Louise is slender and bony, and keeps a towel round her shoulders in that shawllike way of small girls.
In the best position on the steps is a group of rougher-looking teenagers.
KELLY: Hey, look—there’s Renato.
Louise glances, then looks away, but Kelly waves. The girls lay out their towels and bags.
Louise and Kelly are in the water, bobbing about. Kelly is trying to keep her hair dry. Louise doesn’t care. She splashes.
KELLY: Look out! It’ll go all flat.
LOUISE (keenly): Want to swim up and down?
KELLY: I might just go and say hullo to Renato and them. Back in a minute.
Kelly swims away, keeping her head up. Louise begins serious swimming.
Louise climbs out of the pool and returns to their towels. She dries herself carefully, fluffs up her hair, stretches out on the towel. Gets a book out of her bag and begins to read. It is a school English text: Jane Eyre.
She glances over at the group. Kelly is mucking around with Renato and others. Hoarse cries, laughter (also our first sighting of Sam, who will appear later that evening). Louise goes back to her book.
A shadow falls on her.
WALLY: Hi, Louise.
Louise looks up. A skinny, prepubescent boy is standing there.
LOUISE: Hullo, Wally.
She is not interested, but he does not notice and sits down.
WALLY: Isn’t Kelly here?
LOUISE: She’s over there.
WALLY: Oh…I was wondering if you wanted to busk at the market.
LOUISE (cool): I don’t think a French horn and a violin would go all that well together. I’d drown you out.
WALLY: We could take it in turns. I make a lot of money.
LOUISE: How much?
WALLY: I made about thirteen bucks last Saturday.
Louise is keeping a finger on the place in the book.
LOUISE: What sort of stuff do you play?
WALLY: Oh, showtunes mostly. Shit. That’s what they like to hear. Corny stuff. ‘Feelings’. ‘Be a Clown’, ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’.
LOUISE: I don’t know any of those songs.
She looks back at her book. Wally is dismissed. After a moment he gets up.
WALLY: See you, Louise.
LOUISE (without looking up): Bye.
Later the same afternoon, Louise and Kelly are walking home from the baths.
LOUISE (hurt and angry): You just dumped me.
KELLY: Oh, sorree! You should’ve come over.
She is all jangly and hyped up from the social and sexual attention; she tries to charm Louise out of her sulk.
KELLY: I was dying for a smoke.
LOUISE (bursts out): You look like a dickhead when you smoke. The way you hang your head back. (Mimics her.) I know you, Kelly. You can’t impress me.
Silence. They walk.
KELLY: I am absolutely starving.
Early that evening Jenny is at the stove in her kitchen. Louise and Kelly enter, looking cocky and comradely.
LOUISE: What are you doing here? I thought you were going out with Philip.
JENNY: He didn’t feel like going out. There’s some spaghetti here—want to sit up?
LOUISE: We’ve already eaten, thanks.
J
ENNY (surprised): What did you have?
KELLY: We went up to Marcellino’s.
JENNY: But you didn’t have any money.
LOUISE: I know. We conned a free meal.
JENNY: You conned it?
LOUISE: Kelly knows the waiter.
KELLY: We had rigatoni. One. With two forks.
Jenny is disapproving, miffed. Plays the martyr a bit.
JENNY: I’ve obviously been wasting my time, then.
She puts down the spoon, turns off the gas and flounces out of the room towards the stairs.
KELLY: Do you mind if I make a phone call?
JENNY: GO ahead.
Louise opens the freezer and peers in, looking for ice-cream.
Kelly is on the phone. We hear her voice murmuring, she gives an intimate laugh.
LOUISE (shouts): Do you want chopped nuts on yours?
KELLY (shouts): Yes, please.
Kelly bounces back into the living room and sits on the sofa.
Five minutes later.
Jenny is lying on her bed reading. She hears the front door-knocker and footsteps running to answer.
Downstairs, Louise passes through the kitchen doorway into the lounge room with a bowl in each hand: fancy ice-cream, all covered with topping, nuts, whipped cream, etc.
She stops when she sees there is now a boy in the living room, standing with Kelly as if about to sit on the couch with her.
KELLY: Sam, this is Louise.
Sam is about twenty, Italian, presentable-looking. We have already glimpsed him at the baths.
SAM: Hullo.
Sam has the blank look of someone determined not to notice the untowardness of the situation: he’s narrowed his sights to what will happen between him and Kelly.
Louise stands still, holding the plates.
KELLY: Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.
Sam does so. She sits beside him.
Louise goes back off into the kitchen, puts the plates down, opens the back door and goes out.
Louise is standing in the backyard. It is dark. The kitchen door behind her is open; light spills out.
A few minutes later, Jenny enters the lounge room on her way to the kitchen. She sees the back view of two heads on the couch: Kelly and Sam with his arm around her. Jenny keeps walking.
In the backyard, Louise is still just standing there. Jenny comes out the back door.
JENNY: Who’s that in there?
LOUISE: Kelly and Sam.
JENNY: Who’s Sam?
LOUISE: I think he’s a hairdresser.
JENNY: Where’d he spring from?
LOUISE: She met him at the baths. He knows Renato.
They stand helplessly in the yard. TV faintly from inside.
They are almost giggling.
JENNY: What’ll we do? I feel furious.
LOUISE: We could water the pot plants.
A pause. The dark yard. The sound of a car passing. The flyscreen rattles. Kelly comes out the back door. She speaks courteously to Jenny.
KELLY: Jenny, do you mind about Sam?
Jenny is disarmed by Kelly’s directness.
JENNY: You didn’t even introduce him to me.
Pause.
KELLY: Would you rather we left?
JENNY: Oh Kelly—I wish you’d asked me first.
Kelly goes up and kisses Jenny on the cheek.
KELLY: I’m sorry. We’ll go.
She does not speak to Louise, but turns and goes back into the house.
Louise and Jenny enter the lounge room from the kitchen. The front door is heard to close.
The TV is still on. On the low table stand two half-empty glasses of whisky.
The same evening. Now, in the lounge room, music is playing, a serious mezzo singing.
Louise is standing on the dinner table with the new uniform dress on. Jenny is pinning it up.
Jenny is in a bad temper. She snarls at the girl.
JENNY: Turn. I said turn. The other way.
Louise is getting very upset, but Jenny, who is indulging her own ill temper, does not notice: she has her head down, her mouth full of pins.
Louise changes posture, lifts one arm to touch the lampshade or fiddle with her hair.
JENNY: Don’t do that! It alters the whole hang of the thing.
Louise bursts into tears.
LOUISE: Why are you being so horrible to me? I haven’t done anything.
Jenny is horrified. She climbs onto the table and puts her arms round Louise. Their heads bump the lampshade.
FADE TO BLACK
PART FOUR
ONE MONTH EARLIER DECEMBER 1984
It is a summer evening. In the entrance hall of City Girls’ High, senior students in uniform are welcoming and directing next year’s intake and their parents.
Jim is standing inside the door.
Louise sees him and comes bouncing up. Behind her are Kelly, Jenny, Chris and Malcolm.
We see from the nature of their greetings that the two families are no more than casually acquainted with each other.
Malcolm stands with folded arms and a carefully neutral expression.
In the entrance hall there is a mural, painted perhaps by an Old Girl of the school: mythical female figures, Pallas Athene in her helmet, nymphs, girls holding test tubes, girls hurling javelins, girls reading. All the characters in it are dressed in vague robes of indeterminate period.
Jim and Jenny, moving towards the assembly hall, mutter to each other.
JENNY: It’s so old-fashioned it’s almost feminist.
They all enter the hall. We see a proscenium arch stage with red curtains pulled back, a lectern, a microphone, several chairs in a row.
The hall is full of stackable seating, the kind whose seats flap into up-position with a very loud noise. The walls are covered in shields and honour boards. In strategic spots hang oil paintings of dignified old women, all of them in academic gowns, with severe expressions and folded hands.
Our characters sit in a row, Louise and Kelly side by side in the middle. Beside Jenny sits a stranger, a woman, who catches her eye and smiles. The woman keeps turning and looking over her shoulder.
WOMAN (whispers to Jenny): I think my ex-husband’s going to turn up. With his new lady.
They grimace and laugh.
JENNY (politely): Do you live far?
WOMAN: Oh God, yes, miles away. Rebecca’ll have to travel nearly three hours a day.
The Principal, wearing a suit, is clapping her hands for silence at the lectern.
She is a rather parodic figure: a bit of a Mrs Thatcher in appearance and dress but not posh—her accent is like Edna Everage’s, broad but with pretensions to gentility. Her manner is condescending to the point of rudeness: she addresses the adults as if they were students. Behind her, on the chairs, sit three other women, two oldish with short grey perms, one about thirty, rather chic, more modern-looking: the upper echelons of the staff hierarchy.
PRINCIPAL: Will those latecomers at the back please move quickly to their seats? We like to start our occasions on time at City Girls’ High School.
A seat whacks sharply at the back.
The woman next to Jenny, hearing the seat whack, cranes her neck towards back of hall.
WOMAN: Oh God, it’s him.
She sinks down in her seat, almost giggling with nerves.
JENNY (gazing at the Principal): Isn’t she incredible.
The woman turns around. Other parents are having trouble keeping a straight face.
Kelly and Louise are staring intently at the Principal.
PRINCIPAL: Good evening ladies, gentlemen and students, and welcome. Congratulations to all those girls who’ve been successful in our entrance examinations. We know that the high standards we’ve set and maintained at City Girls’ will be an inspiration to our incoming students. City Girls’ has a long and very special tradition.
LOUISE (out of the corner of her mouth): There’s a picture of the first woman surgeon in the state, up
there.
KELLY: Are there any famous singers?
PRINCIPAL: Our students are privileged people, and, as we all know, privilege entails a corresponding responsibility. This is a demanding school. We ask a great deal of our girls and we expect the support of parents as well. Of course this may not suit everyone. If you don’t like it here you don’t have to stay.
An uncomfortable laugh.
Eventually, the Principal sits down, and a small madrigal group files onto the stage to sing. It is old-fashioned; some of the girls are dags, but others have fashionable, extreme haircuts; all are taking the difficult music seriously, and singing it well.
Louise and Kelly are intent.
That night, Malcolm drives home. He sits in silence, but Kelly and Chris are talking excitedly.