The Best Kind of Beautiful

by Frances Whiting

  Orla bobbed her head and would have gone for a full curtsy had Florence not shot out an arm to stop her descent.

  ‘Thank you, Natalie,’ Florence said. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you.’

  Natalie Bishop put out her hand. ‘I so enjoyed our garden chat, Florence. I do hope you’ll come and see my Rhododendron Capistranos when they bloom, it’s quite something.’

  ‘I would love that,’ Florence answered and the two women’s eyes met in understanding.

  People could say what they liked about running, or knitting, or skiing, or doing crosswords; they could quote ‘there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats’ all they liked, but Natalie Bishop and Florence Saint Claire knew they were all wrong.

  Gardens were the absolute ticket, as Bertie Wooster might say.

  9

  When Florence returned home from Avalon, she found the three remaining members of her family waiting for her.

  Amanda, Isolde and Puck were sitting in a tableau at the kitchen table, sipping tea and feigning surprise at Florence’s arrival, even though she lived there.

  Hanging her handbag on the hook behind the kitchen door, Florence turned to her mother and siblings and said, ‘What’s going on?’ because she knew something was. Isolde began to prattle, telling a long and unnecessarily complicated story about how she and Puck had popped into a café and had been about to order a pot of tea when they’d spied Amanda sitting at a corner table, and they’d all thought why not just go to the cottage? Isolde had always been terrible at lying, Florence thought. Amanda had never sat at a corner table in her life. She smiled and kept listening as her sister continued the tale with a completely superfluous detour of going to the service station on the way home to get milk.

  When they were small and had committed some misdemeanour, it was Florence who did the talking, Issy under strict instructions not to say a word because of her predilection for saying too much. Nothing had changed, Florence saw as both Amanda and Puck aimed warning glances at Issy from across the table, but really all three of them were hopeless. The only person in their family who was especially skilled at artifice off the stage was Lucas, Florence thought, but then silently added herself and her undulating alter ego.

  ‘So, what’s really going on?’ she asked, although she thought she probably knew.

  November was nudging its way towards December, the jacaranda flowers had dusted their carpets all over East Elm, and everyone was talking about how hot it was. Christmas was on the shelves at the supermarket: jars of chocolate almonds, rows of boxed baubles with paper-thin shells; and Jazz Cat, of course, which seemed to be playing wherever Florence went. And nipping at the heels of Christmas was New Year’s Eve.

  There had been no more talk about the Hello 2000! concert, but Florence knew that just because she hadn’t been part of the conversation didn’t mean it wasn’t ongoing. She could think of no other reason why what was left of Lucas Saint Claire’s Swingers would be pretending to be nonchalant, except if it was something they cared deeply about.

  Amanda spoke. ‘As you know, Florence, we have been invited to sing Jazz Cat at Hello 2000!’

  Florence nodded.

  ‘Your father,’ Florence flinched a little; she had not expected the Lucas Saint Claire lure to be trailed across the water so early, ‘would have absolutely loved to have performed at it, Florence. I think we all know how much Lucas would have wanted to play this particular show.’

  There was the slightest ripple of difference in the way Amanda said Lucas’s name now, Florence thought. Amanda Saint Claire used to say her husband’s name as if everyone should quickly perform the sign of the cross afterwards, but while her mother still said her father’s name with a lick of reverence, Florence was sure she could detect a far less deferential tone.

  Amanda gave Florence a brief smile and continued. ‘It would have meant a great deal to Lucas to have the four of us play together on stage once more.

  ‘Your father used to say to me, Florence, that after you left the Swingers, we never sounded the same again, that there was always something missing.’ Amanda smiled. ‘I remember once asking him what he thought it was, what exactly was absent, and he said that it was “essence of Florence”.’

  Not fair, Florence thought, not fair for Amanda to tell me this now.

  ‘And he was right, darling, we never did sound the same without you. I remember those first few dress rehearsals looking across to see you in one of those ridiculous costumes Richard kept putting us all in, and you were not standing in your spot. Of course, there was no spot because you weren’t there any more – I think we might have popped a chair there in your place . . .’

  And there, Florence thought, was Lamanda, still lurking beneath the surface like Gerry the Catfish beneath the softer version of her mother.

  ‘We had to rejig everything because we had gone from a six piece to a five when you left and then a four when Lucas died.’

  Amanda was waving her hands about, as if moving the remaining Saint Claires into their new positions.

  ‘It was like when Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls,’ Isolde said.

  ‘The point is, Florence,’ Amanda continued, ‘that in light of recent events, we have all – Isolde, Puck and I – decided that we do not want to play the show.’

  Florence blinked.

  This was not what she was expecting.

  What she was expecting was a three-pronged, coordinated ambush using the entire Saint Claire weaponry – loyalty, legacy, guilt, debt and familial duty to keep the Saint Claire flag flying.

  Instead, it appeared her family was voluntarily lowering the flag and folding it away.

  Isolde leant forward. ‘Because you thought you’d murdered Dad,’ she said, explaining as if to a small, not very bright child.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Florence said. ‘I never thought I murdered him . . .’ God, Isolde and her endless exaggerations.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Isolde said, then leaned forward and whispered hoarsely, ‘because of the Blue Feather.’

  ‘Isolde,’ Florence repeated firmly, ‘and you too, Puck, you need to know I never thought I murdered him, I just thought I was partly to blame for his death – there’s a difference.’

  ‘Manslaughter then,’ Isolde said, and Amanda shook her head.

  ‘Stop it, Isolde,’ she commanded. ‘I want all three of you to listen to me, especially you, Florence, and Puck, no drumming.’

  Puck’s fingers, beating out a rhythm on the table, stilled, and he folded his hands in his lap, his fingers, Florence knew, still tapping mutinously on his thighs.

  Amanda straightened her back. ‘The person who caused your father’s death is the unfortunate driver, whose name, by the way is Greg Calloway, if any of you had bothered to find out, from the Packers Dairy company,’ she said.

  ‘The rest,’ Amanda clapped her hands together, making Florence blink, ‘is life.

  ‘None of us, not you Florence, or you Isolde, or you Puck, or me, has much say in it, not in the big things, not the death things.

  ‘Your father died because he stepped in front of a truck.

  ‘What happened before that is inconsequential, so unless you physically pushed your father into the path of the oncoming truck, Florence, unless you shouted at Mr Calloway, “Here’s a live one for you!”, then it is time for you all to accept that fact in full.’

  Florence looked at her mother, Amanda’s nostrils slightly flaring, her gaze steady on her children.

  ‘It is also time for us to accept that Florence does not wish to be in the Swingers, and to stop pushing her to be. But it’s not just you, Florence. Puck has also expressed his reluctance to perform Jazz Cat, and Isolde,’ she smiled at her youngest daughter, ‘says she now doesn’t care either way.’

  Amanda straightened a little more. ‘As for me, I find that I no longer have the stomach for it.’

  She nodded, as if dismissing them all from a board me
eting. ‘So that’s it,’ she said, clapping her hands together once more. ‘I’m going home now to listen to Chopin’s “Raindrops” and have some sweet tea.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Florence said.

  ‘What?’ shouted Isolde – Isolde always shouted when she felt unsure about anything.

  ‘I said I’ll do it,’ Florence repeated. ‘I’ll sing Jazz Cat with you at the concert. I want to do it, I really do.’

  Florence was astonished at herself. The words had come before she had formed them in her mind, but the moment they had tumbled from her mouth, she knew she meant it. She did want to sing Jazz Cat with her family. She wanted to very much. She wanted to open her mouth and sing about the stupid damn cat again with her mother and sister and brother and draw them to her like a tide coming in.

  Essence of Florence, her father had said, but he was wrong.

  It was the essence of all of them that was needed.

  Even Lucas.

  Especially Lucas.

  When the Saint Claire Swingers walked onto the Hello 2000! stage just before midnight – Puck first, she thought, to duck behind the kit; then Isolde smiling and waving like a homecoming queen; then she, Florence, probably scurrying to the microphone; then last of all, Amanda casting her light like shards of glass – a frisson of energy would spark through the crowd. Women would whisper to each other that they’d once had the most enormous crush on Lucas Saint Claire, and look, there was Amanda, the wife, still so gorgeous, how did she do it? And the children! So grown-up! And so brave, singing without their father.

  Some of the younger people in the audience wouldn’t know who they were, but it wouldn’t matter. They would know at least some of the words to Jazz Cat, because everybody did. They would notice – Florence hoped – that Puck was worth watching, his hair falling over his eyes as he played, and that Isolde was frenetically herself, and that she, Florence, was, well she’d be there, doing something, she supposed, with her hands and feet.

  But what none of them would know, would ever know, was that Lucas Saint Claire was a root rat who sometimes used his son as a wingman; Amanda Saint Claire had a narcissistic twin called Lamanda; Isolde was a kinematic stick insect with an alternate view of reality; Puck was every bit as weird as his name; and that she, Florence, had spent most of her adult life walking around like a bag of shattered glass and only felt truly comfortable around shrubbery.

  They would not know that the Saint Claires were just a family, as glorious and inglorious as any other.

  Looking at the faces at the kitchen table – Amanda’s shocked, Puck’s still processing the information, and Isolde’s face failing at pretending not to be wholly delighted – Florence knew she had made the right decision.

  It was time to say yes to her family.

  ‘So, can I have my spot back?’ she asked, feeling Lucas Saint Claire’s beaming smile upon her.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he said.

  *

  ‘You are not!’ Victor said when Florence told him the Swingers were playing at the Hello 2000! concert.

  ‘I am too,’ she said, smiling at Victor’s face, his hand splayed across his mouth.

  ‘You are not!’ he repeated, removing his hand to say it, then clamping it fast across his mouth again.

  ‘Look, Victor,’ Florence said, fastening a small cable tie to some jasmine he was trying to train along his side fence, its star-like flowers in full, bursting bloom like thrown confetti, ‘you can say I’m not all day long, but it won’t change the fact I am playing at the millennium concert and I am – for one night only – singing “Santa Was A Jazz Cat”.’

  ‘Christ, I hate that fucking song!’ Victor said, then immediately apologised.

  ‘That’s all right, Victor, I hate it too,’ Florence said cheerfully, ‘but as I said, it really is for one night only.’

  Florence felt it was important to clarify this, to Victor and her family, and especially to Richard, who had received the news of Florence’s change of heart by falling in a swoon to the floor. ‘Get up, Richard,’ Amanda had said. ‘Florence has only returned to the Swingers, not back from the dead.’

  ‘You also hate cats,’ Victor reminded her.

  ‘I don’t hate all cats,’ she corrected him, ‘just that one.’

  Victor patted down his hair, damp with sweat. ‘Why, Florence?’ he said. ‘Why now?’

  Victor – and Leon when he was alive – knew most of Florence’s musical history, and they both adored Amanda, buzzing around their front fence like native bees when they knew she was due to visit Isolde and Florence. Once, when Florence had drunk several glasses of Leon and Victor’s homemade beer, she had told them about her choking incident on the Jonathan Hammond Christmas Show. They had listened gravely and Leon had said, ‘Oh honey, if I got upset by every boy in some hideous jacket who told me I was a loser, I would have spent my entire teenage years locked in the closet.’

  Florence smiled, remembering.

  Victor and Leon. Leon and Victor. Everything about them, even their names, belonged together. How hard it must have been for Victor to step outside his front door again, without the sound of Leon’s step behind him. But he had done it – the last couple of times she had visited, there had been no one home. Victor had returned to trivia night at the Shandon Pub, and he had renewed his State Theatre subscription ticket. ‘I always buy two tickets,’ he told her. ‘I just pop Leon’s programme on the seat.’

  Good for him, Florence thought, good for Victor, stepping out.

  Victor was squinting at her in the sun, waiting for her answer.

  ‘Why am I singing Jazz Cat again?’ she said. ‘Because like you, Victor, I have decided to rejoin the land of the living.’

  Victor nodded.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Cup of tea?’

  *

  The East Elm Library was gradually turning into a Christmas-themed art installation.

  Outside, the lower branches of the trees that hugged its corners were looped with red and green baubles, and the bike rack outside its front door had been wrapped in silver tinsel. Someone – Monty probably – had put a Santa Stop Here! sign in the herb garden, which the graffiti kids hadn’t got to work on yet. Florence knew it was only a matter of time before Santa was turned into Satan.

  Inside the library, crepe-paper bells hung in low rows across the room – Isolde would have to duck if she visited – and the craft table in the children’s section was littered with glue guns and paper-chain snowmen.

  Where the Book Marks display usually stood, with its notes handwritten by the librarians about books they had read, which Florence loved reading, especially the grumpy ones (‘There’s three nights of my life I’ll never get back’), was the tree.

  An absolute beauty.

  It had been Albert’s idea to replace the library’s tired artificial tree, its green plastic branches looking like they had been gnawed by dogs, with the Araucaria heterophylla or, ‘in English please, miss’, a Norfolk Island pine.

  ‘Actually,’ she had told the children, ‘it’s not really a pine at all, it’s an evergreen conifer,’ but they hadn’t been impressed, they had just wanted to get their hands on its feathery branches so they could string tiny lantern-shaped lights on them. The tree was now the first thing library patrons saw when they came through its double glass doors, standing tall with its branches extended upwards and outwards – ‘like jazz hands,’ Albert said.

  He tended to the tree all year around, before bringing it in from its spot on the library’s back verandah where just the right amount of light bathed it, and Albert made sure just the right amount of water quenched it, and Florence was sure, although she had never actually heard him, just the right words of encouragement were murmured to it.

  In the next couple of years, Albert would have to perform the tricky task of removing it from its pot and planting it outside, but for now it stood sentry among the books, simple and majestic at the same time, something Florence thought only trees could
really pull off. Trees. And music. And her mother, with the right lighting.

  Every year a different class was chosen to decorate the tree, and Florence was admiring 6B’s handiwork – red crepe bows and silver paper chains – when she heard Albert’s voice behind her.

  ‘They did a great job, don’t you think?’

  ‘They did,’ she agreed, ‘and so did you.’

  Albert bowed a little from his waist. ‘Thank you, Miss Saint Claire.’

  ‘You’re very welcome, Mr Flowers,’ she smiled as they walked into the Green Team office together.

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas, Florence?’ Albert asked, hanging up his daypack.

  ‘The usual, just going to Kinsey with Isolde and Puck.’

  ‘That’s the family home, right? I’ve read about it,’ he said.

  Every now and again Albert would say something that let her know he knew all about her family background, but unlike Monty he didn’t press. Once, she remembered with a shudder, Monty had brought a Saint Claire Swingers album into the library, her family on the cover standing behind Lucas in descending order, their hands on each other’s shoulders, heads turned to face the camera. Florence was wearing a blue and yellow tartan pinafore and a grimace. She remembered the day the photo had been taken. Her parents had been fighting, Puck had complained of a stomach ache, and she’d had her period and had convinced herself everyone knew it.

  She smiled at Albert. ‘Kinsey is the family pile, but it really is just a pile of old bricks, with lots of rooms no one goes into any more. It’s nowhere near as fancy as its name suggests.’

  There was a thawing between them, Florence thought. It was something to do with the general festive mood in the library, and her own decision to keep their friendship between the shelves, or in the forest where they shed their outer layers like papery sheets from the melaleuca trees.

  Albert certainly seemed relaxed as he asked her casually, ‘So everything turn out all right with Puck?’

  Florence nodded. ‘Yes, thanks, he’s fine.’

  She didn’t want to explain Puck’s quarry visit, or the reasons behind it, to Albert. That would be like stripping all the melaleuca’s layers, from its shaggy, outer bark to its spongy white core. Florence did not want Albert Flowers seeing her core.