The Best Kind of Beautiful

by Frances Whiting

  About The Best Kind of Beautiful

  A warm-hearted novel from the author of Walking on Trampolines about music, grief, relationships, gardens, love, laughter and family.

  Florence Saint Claire is a loner. Albert Flowers is a social butterfly. Good friends who think they know each other.

  But, somewhere between who they are, and who people think they are, lies The Best Kind of Beautiful.

  Award-winning journalist and author Frances Whiting brings her renowned warmth and empathy to this witty and gentle novel about bringing out the best in each other.

  Praise for The Best Kind of Beautiful

  ‘The Best Kind of Beautiful is the best kind of book: touching, funny, whimsical and mysterious! A special story about a delightful family.’ Liane Moriarty

  ‘There are moments when Frances Whiting writes about family dynamics and relationships where you wonder if the woman has a hidden camera set up inside your soul. On a single page she’ll tickle your ribs with three laugh-out-loud gags then punch your gut with some deep observation on living. All heart. All soul. All kinds of beautiful.’ Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe

  ‘Florence, a fresh contemporary irresistible heroine, holds a cast of fascinating, brilliantly drawn characters together. Frances Whiting at her best, warm, witty, provocative, a wise observer of human nature, family, life . . . It’s true, you can’t put it down.’ Quentin Bryce AD CVO

  To John, Max and Tallulah

  and my mother, Shirley Whiting

  CONTENTS

  About The Best Kind of Beautiful

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Acknowledgements

  About Frances Whiting

  Also by Frances Whiting

  Copyright

  To be alive: not just the carcass

  But the spark.

  That’s crudely put, but…

  If we’re not supposed to dance,

  Why all this music?

  Gregory Orr, from Concerning the Book That Is the Body Of the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2005).

  1

  He looked, Florence thought, like a glazed Christmas ham.

  His face was a burnt shade of orange beneath the party lights as he shouted: ‘You’re one of Amanda’s children, aren’t you? Now what was the name of that song you all had …’

  Florence pulled the corners of her mouth towards her ears like curtains.

  She did not want to be here, at her cousin Samantha’s eighteenth birthday party, with a potpourri of relatives who’d known her for twenty-seven years but kept telling her how much she’d grown. Florence longed to say to them, ‘Well yes, because that’s what people do, isn’t it, grow?’ She didn’t much care for cousin Samantha either who she felt was determinedly pouty and had once bitten Florence on the leg when she was babysitting.

  Florence’s eyes narrowed, looking over the man’s shoulder to the birthday girl and the black and white photographs of her in various poses dotted around the walls.

  ‘Like soft porn,’ her sister Isolde had whispered in passing earlier.

  ‘What was it again?’ the man shouted, his breath like a warm wet curry in her ear. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue.’

  Florence shifted her attention back to him. ‘All right I won’t,’ she said mutinously.

  ‘Something about a cat . . .’

  Florence sighed. ‘“Santa Was A Jazz Cat”,’ she said, giving in, because she could see he would not be giving up.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, slapping his thigh. ‘Now, what was the chorus? Something about purring . . . Could you do that bit for me?’

  ‘No,’ she answered, thinking that if she did not get away from him this instant, she would find an apple, shove it in his stupid, piggy little mouth and ram it down his stupid, piggy little throat.

  For a moment she felt a spark of shame at her thought, the violence of it.

  But it had been a long night of flying the Saint Claire flag, as her mother Amanda insisted on calling any gathering of her clan in public, and Florence was exhausted.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she told the man, and then added, ‘but ask my mother to sing it for you, she’d love that.’

  Aunt Margo would be annoyed at her younger sister Amanda nabbing the limelight yet again, but Margo had irritated Florence earlier by poking at her ribs and saying she looked ‘peaky’, so Florence decided to poke back.

  Then she left, before the man could say another word, before she could hear her mother oblige, purring at the piano keys.

  Because Amanda would.

  She always did.

  *

  ‘I can’t believe you left the party without saying goodbye,’ Isolde said the next morning. ‘Lamanda is not happy with your trapdoor exit.’

  High Notes music magazine had recently featured Amanda Saint Claire on its cover – half-closed glittered eyes, and curling white smoke straying from her lips, her head tilted, like a cat waiting to be stroked. LA AMANDA, its headline had read, which Puck, Florence’s younger brother, had changed to ‘Lamanda’, a contraction Amanda Saint Claire did not care for. But the name had stuck, if only among her three children, who used it when she was out of earshot, or when they wanted to burrow a little bit beneath their mother’s scented skin.

  Florence considered her younger sister, Isolde’s black-clad long arms and legs folded about her, giving her the appearance of a migratory crane that had somehow unexpectedly found itself in the kitchen. It was certainly unexpected for Florence. When she had moved out of Kinsey, their family home, three years earlier, Florence had thought she’d be living in the small worker’s cottage alone, away from the constant thrumming within Kinsey’s walls. ‘It’s only one bedroom, with a sleep-out, but it does have a rather lovely garden,’ the rental agent had said, and Florence had thought, Perfect.

  The cottage was only a few streets away from Kinsey, close enough to walk between the two homes but far enough to live your own, particular sort of life, and Florence had very much wanted to live her own, particular sort of life. But as she had begun to empty out her drawers and cupboards, filling and lining up cardboard boxes in the hallway, Florence had noticed that the boxes were multiplying, her neat rows joined by a jumble of boxes in various states of falling apart, and all of them marked Issy.

  Isolde, being Isolde, had not said anything at all to Florence about the growing pile, except to once ask if Florence had any spare packing tape.

  Florence had seen her moment. ‘Isolde,’ she’d said, ‘do you think you’re coming with me when I move out?’

  Isolde had looked at her with the same eyes that had followed her out the gate when Florence had started primary school, a three-year-old Isolde sitting on Kinsey’s front step calling, ‘Where you going, Florrie?’ Now Isolde had answered, ‘Of course I’m coming with you, Florence,’ untangling a jumble of coathangers dangling from her hand, then added, ‘I always come with you.’

  Florence had capitulated, as she had known she would from the moment the first box marked Issy had appeared. Isolde was like a cat that followed you around, rubbing itself against your legs and tripping you over in doorways. It was exasperating but when it slunk away you found yourself looking for it under the beds.

  ‘Fine,’ Florence had told her, ‘but you’re not getting the main bedroom.’

&n
bsp; Florence looked at her younger sister in the kitchen of their cottage, which Florence mostly paid the rent for, and was mostly glad Isolde was there.

  If only she would sit still for a minute.

  Isolde, Florence thought, did not actually know how to sit, how to relax into a chair, instead she constantly folded her limbs into complicated shapes, like human origami. ‘The Stork’, ‘The Crane’, ‘The Lily’ – her sister could do a whole series.

  She was doing it now, tucking her knees beneath her on the window seat and folding and unfolding her arms into a V shape, her hands clasped around the back of her neck.

  ‘I know I should have said goodbye, Issy,’ she told her shifting sister, ‘but it was so hot, and some man with an orange face was annoying me.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Margo’s boss, Adrian. Completely overdoes the self-tanning thing, but he’s harmless – anyway, Mum is angry with you,’ Isolde replied.

  ‘Full-blown tempest or just scattered showers?’

  ‘I’d say cloudy with a chance of thunder. Anyway, where were you?’

  ‘I just needed to go home, Issy, I was tired.’

  ‘Mum said you threw your glass at Adrian and stormed out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said you had a fit over something he said, tossed your champagne in his face and left,’ Isolde grinned.

  Florence frowned at her mother’s need to wrest every last drop of drama out of a situation, to make a thing – anything – bigger than it was. Amanda Saint Claire’s latest album was called Stories I Could Tell You, and she and Puck had subtitled it, And Not One Of Them True.

  ‘Well I didn’t,’ Florence said, ‘and you should get going, Issy, if you don’t want to be late for your voice lesson.’

  Isolde and Puck were both in Mercy Jones, a five-piece jazz ensemble Florence had repeatedly refused to join, the notes of their previous family group, the Saint Claire Swingers, still sharp as glass shards in her ears.

  The name – which all the children had hated – had been her parents’ long-time agent, Richard Miller’s idea. Richard, Florence often thought, was worse than that man in The Sound of Music who was always forcing the Von Trapp children to sing in public and wear Lederhosen.

  What was his name?

  Uncle Max, that was it – well, ‘Uncle Richard’ made Uncle Max look like a two-bit carnival hawker.

  The Saint Claire Swingers was an unfortunate name in what Florence had come to think of as a particularly unfortunate period of her life, and never more so than each December when their gargantuan hit, ‘Santa Was A Jazz Cat’ came back to rake her with its claws.

  The song had topped the 1988 Christmas chart, and had – the odd novelty song about drunken tradesmen notwithstanding – repeated the feat most years since. When it had first reached number one, Amanda and Florence’s father, Lucas Saint Claire, had been thrilled, Isolde had been hysterical, Puck had been quietly pleased, and Florence had been fifteen, and mortified. But there was no getting away from it, Jazz Cat, as the family called it, had a thumping bass line, a swooning clarinet solo played by Lucas’s nimble hands, and a chorus which featured Amanda felinely breathing ‘purr, Santa, purr’.

  Florence had hated cats ever since.

  She was particularly dreading this year’s Christmas, just a few months away and the last Christmas before an entirely new century began. ‘Santa Was A Jazz Cat’, she knew, was set to erupt in a wave of nostalgia, when everyone was caught between hoping that the year 2000 would herald some sort of new world, and already looking over their shoulders and pining for the old one.

  Not that it mattered. She would never perform it, or any other song, with her family again.

  The last time Puck had asked, she had told him, truthfully, she would rather eat the damn cat.

  After Isolde left for rehearsal, automatically ducking her head beneath the front door – ‘Freakishly tall,’ a man had once commented to Florence about her sister. ‘Statuesque,’ she had corrected him – Florence put the coffee cups in the sink and called her mother.

  ‘Hello,’ Amanda Saint Claire’s answering machine message began, her voice deep and low against a clarinet solo in the background (‘So obvious, Mum,’ Puck had said), ‘it’s Amanda speaking, if you are calling regarding either the Saint Claires or Mercy Jones, please contact Richard Miller at Miller’s Music . . . Ciao!’

  Florence hung up without leaving a message; her mother pretended not to know how to use the machine and would probably not return her call even if she did.

  Besides, she could imagine the conversation . . .

  ‘Mum, I did not throw my glass at that orange-faced man.’

  ‘Didn’t you, darling?’ – Amanda, distracted – ‘Well that’s a shame, I rather wish you had. Do you know he made me sing Jazz Cat in front of everyone? So tiresome . . . Margo was a bit put out, I think . . .’

  Florence shook her head at her imaginary mother and went into the laundry to iron her uniform: khaki shorts, and shirt with The Green Team emblazoned across the back and beneath that, in looping letters, We Plant Dreams.

  Florence often thought how absurd the slogan was.

  The Green Team did not plant dreams, but they did plant hundreds of native saplings in the Mount Bell State Forest, the huge tract of bushland that nudged part of her own East Elm neighbourhood, casting its grey shadows at its edges. Florence and the other members of the team also spent a good deal of their day making sure the forest never actually crossed the line into the manicured lawns of East Elm, hacking away at the lantana and cat’s claw like an advancing artillery unit.

  No, Florence reflected, pressing the iron down hard on the raised lettering, there was nothing dreamy about it. Mostly it was hard work that left her flesh knotted and her bones aching and Florence rubbing her neck at night with her sore, sorry hands.

  Once a little girl had asked Florence in that reedy voice children have, ‘Do you really plant dreams?’

  ‘No,’ Florence had answered, ‘of course not. We plant native fauna,’ and the girl had spun away, her voice trailing behind her, ‘I was just asking . . .’

  Florence turned the shirt over to its front with her own name embroidered across its right-hand pocket. Flo, it said. She was not a Flo, although Isolde had persisted in calling her that for a brief time in their teens, until Florence had given her a Chinese burn to make her stop.

  But she was not, she thought, particularly a Florence either. Florences were winsome creatures, like that girl Miranda who vanished into thin air in Picnic at Hanging Rock, disappearing between the looming grey boulders with those irritating panpipes playing in the background.

  ‘I am more of a Ruth,’ she decided, picking up her uniform and taking it into the bathroom. ‘Someone to be taken seriously.’

  Not an easy thing to pull off in her family.

  As she changed her clothes in the bathroom, Florence took in her reflection in the mirror, a crack in one of its corners where Isolde had once thrown an electric toothbrush. Her skin was a deep, nut brown; her body, angular and, her last lover had whispered, prodding at her ribs, ‘too thin’. ‘Just right,’ she’d answered, and shown him the door.

  Florence ran her hands along her arms and felt the slight bump of her muscles on her forearm, pleased by their contours – useful arms, she thought, worker’s arms.

  Who’d have thought it? She grinned at her reflection, pulling her long hair – dark like her eyes; ‘Honestly, you’re like a crow, darling,’ she heard her mother say – into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck.

  The woman who looked back at her was not beautiful, as Amanda sometimes felt compelled to point out. ‘You, darling,’ her mother would say, extending her index finger to tuck beneath Florence’s chin, tilting her face this way and that, ‘are not one of those horrible little pretty girls with faces like Pekinese who age so badly, no, you are far more interesting looking,’ and Florence remained unsure whether or not it was a compliment.

  But she’s right, Flo
rence thought, staring hard at her face. I am interesting looking. More of a dragon flower than a rose.

  Better than looking like that drippy Miranda, she decided, and headed out the door to walk to work.

  *

  ‘Morning Flo,’ Victor Babieri called out from behind his fence, sagging under the weight of the passionfruit strung along it like strands of popcorn. ‘I’ve got some snow pea cuttings for you, if you like.’

  ‘I do like,’ she answered, ‘thanks Victor,’ bristling a little, as she always did, at the ‘Flo’.

  But Victor was harmless, and a man taken to endlessly hanging around his front fence casting for conversation since his partner Leon had died a year ago. So Florence decided not to bristle and instead smiled, giving him the Saint Claire ‘maximum wattage’, blinding in both its span and delivery, the whole, open horseshoe of teeth. All the Saint Claire children could do it, a smile that flicked on like a switch when the house lights eased down and the stage ones crept up.

  ‘I’ll pick them up later, Victor,’ she said, and continued to the end of the street where she passed through the two lampposts that guarded the entrance to Rushton Park and always made Florence think of the entrance to Narnia.

  Florence followed the park’s main path through its avenue of Hill’s Figs, lifting her eyes as she always did to their light grey branches clasped in prayer above her. People shouldn’t bother going to cathedrals, they should just look up, Florence thought, if it’s grace they’re looking for.

  Then she walked through the children’s playground, the usual scatter of yesterday’s forgotten balls and water bottles on the ground, its swings riderless and slightly swaying. Although she was not especially fond of children, she thought there was something particularly grim about a playground without them in it.

  Florence stopped to pick up a lone sparkly shoe and put it on a post, knowing that the tiny Cinderella who owned it, or more likely the tiny Cinderella’s mother, might come back later to claim it. Quicker than waiting for a prince, she thought, then took the small curved path from the playground to the East Elm Library, with its jaunty sign welcoming visitors in eighteen different languages. Florence, although sorely tempted at times, didn’t have the heart to tell Monty Rollins, the head librarian, that at least two of them were spelt incorrectly.