The Best Kind of Beautiful

by Frances Whiting

  Oscar and Florence joined the small line at the bar, Oscar’s hand on the lower part of Florence’s back as if she was a ventriloquist’s dummy, needing his touch to propel her forward. Natalie Bishop might be lovely, she thought, but Oscar Bishop wore his entitlement like a smoking jacket. He would not be on her list of things to say yes to. The line moved again, and Florence moved with it, stepping away from Oscar’s touch, then she stopped as everything tilted alarmingly off centre.

  The bartender was leaning across the bar, passing a tray of drinks to the woman in front of Florence, and smiling.

  Florence knew that smile. She knew how it grew to settle into its corners. She knew how it would part to reveal a slightly chipped front tooth.

  It was Albert.

  Albert Flowers was behind the bar wearing a long black apron tied at his waist, scooping ice into a tray of glasses and laughing at something the woman was saying.

  Florence was holding her breath between the familiarity and unfamiliarity of him. What was he doing here? What had he said at the library? He had so many parties to go to, he was exhausted just thinking about it. Was this one of them?

  ‘Oscar, you complete fag,’ a voice boomed behind her as a tumble of men descended on the line.

  They circled around Oscar, bumping into his shoulders.

  ‘Bishop, get us a drink from your mummy’s bar.’

  ‘Where have you been anyway? You left our table ages ago, you bastard.’

  There were four of them, all tugging at Oscar, and then one of them let go of his shoulder and said: ‘Wait, is that you, Bertie? Is that B-B-B-Bertie F-F-F-Flowers?’

  ‘It is! It is you, B-B-B-Bertie,’ the tallest of them spluttered, while the others grasped at each other’s coat sleeves in laughter, one burying his head into Oscar’s shirt.

  ‘B-B-B-Bertie F-F-F-Flowers,’ said one with braces tracking across his teeth, ‘could I have a S-S-S-Sidecar, old mate?’

  Oscar, she saw, was not laughing but flicking their arms away, a scowl settling on his face.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said, stepping away from them towards Albert.

  ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ he said, ‘they’re just really pissed, don’t serve them if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Ooh I’m s-s-sorry too, B-B-B-Bertie,’ said the man in the braces, ‘will you f-f-f-forgive me?’

  Florence took a step back, then turned and strode away as quickly as she could without breaking into a run – thank God she was wearing trousers.

  She was not sure what was happening. She did not know why Albert was behind the bar or why Oscar Bishop’s mates were stuttering at him. She had seen an arc of spittle spray from one man’s lips as he laughed. She had seen Albert’s face. She had seen his head lift as his name was spoken, then dip again as he heard the stammered words. She had watched him fold into himself, somehow getting smaller in his space behind the bar. Whatever was happening, she thought, she was absolutely not meant to see it.

  Reaching the driveway, Florence did begin to run down it. She could not wait to get away from the place where she had seen Albert Flowers break.

  He hadn’t seen her, she was sure of it. Or if he had, he hadn’t recognised her. There hadn’t been enough time for Albert to find her face beneath her makeup. Florence slowed her pace as she neared the end of the driveway and saw a garden seat tucked beneath a spreading fig. She sat down, her breath sharp and quick from her sprint from Avalon, and put her hands to her face.

  ‘You all right?’

  A girl in a dress, long and silver and strappy, stepped out from behind one of the tall green lampposts that guarded Avalon’s gates.

  Florence started. Another bloody apparition out of the dark. Avalon was teeming with them.

  The girl smiled. ‘Sorry to scare you. I have to come all the way down here to smoke, otherwise my mother will have a conniption – perhaps two,’ she laughed, sitting down beside Florence.

  She was, Florence saw, more than a little tipsy, tilting her head back to rest against the top of the seat, closing her eyes and throwing an arm around Florence.

  ‘Sadie Bishop,’ she said.

  Another one – all the Bishop children apparently bestowed with a genetic gift of materialising from thin air, this one looking like a slightly drunk, slightly demented angel.

  ‘Do you want a smoke?’ Sadie Bishop asked, sitting up and retrieving a packet from a small silvery clutch.

  ‘No,’ Florence shook her head.

  ‘You’re crying,’ Sadie said.

  Florence nodded, putting the back of her palm to a wet cheek, surprised. ‘So I am. Bit of a rough night.’

  ‘Me too,’ Sadie sighed. ‘All of Oscar’s stupid friends groping at me.’

  ‘I met Oscar,’ Florence offered, ‘and his stupid friends.’

  Sadie leaned towards Florence, crinkling her nose. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked. ‘Or are you staff?’

  Florence smiled. Orla would expire with laughter.

  ‘I’m a singer,’ she answered. ‘I just finished performing.’

  Sadie nodded, lighting up. ‘I’m a singer too,’ she said, ‘in the shower mostly,’ and giggled, adding, ‘You sure you don’t want a cigarette?’

  ‘No thank you, Sadie,’ Florence answered, ‘but you might be able to give me something else.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Sadie’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t do drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking . . . well I do, but only with people I know really, really well.’

  ‘No,’ Florence shook her head, ‘information.’

  Albert clearly had some connection with the Bishops – he had been at Simon Bishop’s wedding and he was here again tonight, albeit behind a bar and wearing a ridiculous apron. Sadie Bishop might know why.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know Albert Flowers?’ Florence asked.

  Sadie clapped her hands together, the cigarette falling from one hand as she did. She pitched forward to retrieve it then righted herself next to Florence and said, ‘B-B-B-Bertie, ’course I do.’

  Florence prickled. No, this wasn’t a prickle. It was a steadily rising anger. She had felt it build since Oscar Bishop’s friends had pecked at Albert with their words. Now this stupid girl wearing a nightie for a dress was purposely stumbling around inside her sentences as well. Florence breathed through her nose and expelled the air slowly from her mouth, a relaxation exercise she had been taught by Lucas.

  ‘Don’t kill her, Florence,’ she heard her father say close to her ear. ‘Listen.’

  Florence looked around. Was Lucas lurking in the bushes as well? Was her mother about to float down the driveway on a sea of gossamer fabric exclaiming, ‘There you are, darling, I’ve been looking all over for you!’

  ‘Just listen,’ Lucas Saint Claire repeated in her ear, so Florence breathed some more through her nostrils, and did.

  ‘Albert . . .’ Sadie was saying, ‘I don’t know him too well, but my brothers do, well they did at school, well not him so much but his brother Hamish, you know, the one who died.’

  Florence shook her head. No, she did not know. Albert had never mentioned a brother. He had certainly not mentioned a dead one.

  ‘Hamish Flowers,’ Sadie was saying dreamily. ‘God, he was gorgeous, everyone was in love with him, even me, although I was so small, it was more like a crush . . . everyone had a crush on him, even my brothers.’ She giggled and tossed her cigarette to the ground.

  ‘No one had a crush on Albert,’ Sadie pronounced solemnly. ‘It was hard to believe they were related.’

  ‘Why?’ Florence prodded. ‘Why was it hard to believe?’

  Sadie Bishop laughed. ‘You really didn’t know them, did you? Because Hamish Flowers was spectacular, and Albert was like a . . . like a big old dugong with a stutter.’ Sadie smiled, pleased with her description.

  ‘But they were really close, I think,’ Sadie continued. ‘Mum said Albert had to leave school after Hamish died, and that his stutter got worse . . . poor old B-B-B-Bertie Flowers,’ she fini
shed, a hand through her hair.

  Sadie stood up abruptly – she was, Florence saw, now bored with the story and with Florence’s company. ‘I better get back – nice to meet you, strange woman in a man’s suit.’

  She began to walk back up the path and Florence stood up hurriedly to catch her.

  ‘Sadie,’ she said, ‘why is Albert here tonight? Why is he working here behind the bar?’

  Sadie paused, her eyes narrowing. ‘Why are you so interested? Do you like him? I don’t blame you, he’s much better looking now, isn’t he? I tried to flirt with him at Simon’s wedding, but no go,’ she sighed.

  Florence tried again. ‘What was he doing at Simon’s wedding?’

  ‘Working,’ Sadie answered. ‘You know, at his bar business, like he is tonight – Albert Flowers, Mobile Mixologist.’

  Sadie continued walking up the path, stumbling a little over her trailing hem.

  ‘He does all the best parties,’ she said over her silver shoulder. ‘You should hire him sometime.’

  Florence began to walk back down the driveway, leaving Avalon’s gates just as fireworks sent their hot sparks above its roof lines – Albert Flowers, Mobile Mixologist, somewhere beneath them. Florence kept walking. She would walk all the way home, she thought, if she had to.

  She would walk and think about Albert who was not who she thought, who kept this part of his life apart from her, who had a brother who had been spectacular and who had died. Albert Flowers, who was not a part of East Elm’s A-list, or perhaps any list at all. There was no band of usual suspects. There probably wasn’t even a Jeremy or a Lydia. Good. She had hated them both, especially Lydia, even if she was fictional. Why would Albert make them up? Why would he make any of it up? The weekend parties, the tennis afternoons, the weddings, the house-warmings? Florence scrolled through all the social occasions Albert had told her about, as if she was flicking through a Rolodex. Lucas had one of those on the desk in his office, its name, he told her, a portmanteau of ‘rolling’ and ‘index’. Probably full of women’s names he had given blue feathers to, Florence thought, as the orange shimmer of a cab’s lights came towards her.

  The cab’s light blinked closer; Florence struck out her arm and it slowed down.

  ‘Where to, mate?’ the cabbie said as she got in. Orla would spontaneously combust.

  She was glad the driver was not a talker, telling her about new roadworks or complaining about the Premier. She didn’t want to think about any of those things. She wanted to sit slumped in the back seat and stare at East Elm tucking itself in for the night, house lights switching off as the cab cruised past them, and digest what Sadie Bishop had told her.

  Drawing up to the cottage, Florence was relieved to see Isolde’s bedroom light out. Usually Florence changed out of her costumes after a gig, so she didn’t have to explain to her sister why she was wearing a floor-length silver sequined gown to her horticultural class. But she had left her clothes at Veronica’s, so if Isolde had been awake, she would have had to slip past her somehow in her tuxedo. Florence turned off the kitchen and outside lights and went up to her bedroom to change into her pyjamas and think about Albert Flowers’s duplicity.

  Florence stopped short on the stairs, her own Rolodex of fabrications flipping over its silver rings. Albert wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. Florence opened her bedroom door and flung herself on the mattress, eyes on the ceiling. She had lied to Albert many times and in many ways, all of them boring. What did you do on the weekend, Florence? she heard him ask. Oh, you know, she answered, this and that. Pottered around. Spent time with Isolde and Puck. Visited Amanda. Went to the movies. Bought a bag of Valencia oranges. Florence grimaced. She had, she remembered, actually said that once. She, Florence, never said, ‘Performed at the Kit Kat Club’, ‘Sang at a twenty-first’, ‘Got a bunch of limp flowers tossed to me on stage’; instead she pretended she was possibly the dullest woman to tread the earth, endlessly on her way to the grocery store.

  Albert, on the other hand, always told her exactly where he was going and recounted the details to her. She remembered his description of Simon Bishop’s wedding. What was the name of the girl? It was unusual, something Amanda and Lucas might name a child. Siobhan, that was it. Albert had called her dress ‘decidedly frothy’. He had told her what the music was like, how pretty the small jetty over the lake was, what drinks were served – well, that made sense now, but had he ever specifically said that he had been a guest there?

  Or anywhere? Florence stood up to change into her pyjamas, brush her teeth and begin the shedding of Miss Suki from her face. She stared in the bathroom mirror, toothpaste bubbling at the corners of her own lying mouth. Had Albert ever lied to her? Had he said: ‘I went to the wedding as a guest of the bride and groom’? Or ‘I went to Cat Morrison’s book launch as her plus one’? Or ‘I attended Charlotte Markson’s funeral because I am a very close friend of the family’?

  Florence stopped brushing. No, Albert would never lie about that, which meant there was a very good chance he hadn’t lied about the other events either.

  What exactly had he said about Simon Bishop’s wedding? That he liked the bride and had an awkward conversation with the groom, whom he did not like at all, down by the jetty. Something about a conga line, and Simon being thrown into the ornamental lake? He could have done all that, she thought, from behind a bar, or on a break. Charlie Markson’s funeral? No. Her wake. Albert hadn’t gone to the funeral. What had he told her that day in the park when he had cried and she had sung Amanda’s song of lament? Florence squinted in the mirror, trying to remember. Albert had told her all the ways Charlotte Markson could have been a contender. The water polo. The boy she liked. The way she brought joy with her when she entered a room. But those could have been someone else’s words, recounted. A mother’s words, perhaps, uttered to just about anybody to keep her daughter in the room. Albert had told her about giving Charlotte Markson’s parents his van to drive away in from the wake when they could not stand upright a minute longer. Surely that showed how close he was to the Markson family? Who gave their van away to strangers? Albert Flowers would, she thought. Albert Flowers would hand over his keys without giving it a second thought, turning back to the wake to serve drinks to people whose mouths had turned to gravel. He was not at the funeral because drinks were not generally served at funerals. He had told her he had gone outside to get some air when he saw the Marksons holding each other up beneath a tree. He could easily have witnessed that on a break. Florence couldn’t imagine they’d be knee deep at a bar shouting for daiquiris at a wake. Did they serve alcohol at wakes for children? Florence thought grimly that if there was one place where people might desperately need a drink, that would be it. Florence shook her head slightly, remembering Albert saying that he wasn’t sure whether to hand the keys over to Greg Markson, worried that he may have had a drink. Had Albert served it?

  Florence spat in the basin, returned the toothbrush to its holder, and turned off the bathroom light.

  Getting into bed she saw Cat Morrison’s face looming large on a book cover. She heard her own voice – ‘Oh you know Ms Morrison, eminent American feminist, voice of a generation, woman who wears colourful hats?’ she’d asked Albert. Florence sat up in her bed. What had Albert said?

  ‘Well I’m going to the launch of her new book, Candy,’ she heard him reply, so he hadn’t answered her at all. Florence had been to a book launch at Savage Reader earlier that year, for Colin Jenkins, the ABC’s resident garden expert’s new book on succulents. Had there been drinks there? Of course there had. A table set aside with rows of glasses and bottles of red and white wine, a few champagne bottles too which had run out before Colin had arrived. Florence smiled, she loved Colin Jenkins, he always looked like he had just emerged from some potting mix. Focus, Florence, she told herself, get to the bottom of this particular garden. Albert had spoken about that night as if he and Cat Morrison were old friends, but they could just as easily have been new ones. Either way
, he hadn’t lied.

  Wriggling under the covers, Florence thought of all the times she, however, had opened her mouth to lie to Albert Flowers, and her family, and anyone else really who strayed onto her path.

  Albert had just neglected to mention things; he was guilty only of the sin of omission, while she, Florence, was a walking fabrication.

  The question was, why did either of them do it?

  She knew, of course, why she did it. She had permanent stage fright. From life. From being a child star under everyone’s stares. From freezing on national television. From thinking for years she had caused her father’s death. From being Lucas and Amanda Saint Claire’s daughter, and Isolde and Puck’s sister, and all the negotiating that required. She was a mess, really; no wonder she hid within Miss Suki’s satin folds. But Albert? Why did he keep his secrets so close to his great expanse of a chest? Why had he never mentioned his brother Hamish who had died and left Albert stuttering? And where had his stammer gone?

  Florence put one forearm across her eyes in the dark, listening intently for Albert’s voice.

  ‘F-F-Florence, do you know where I put those acacia seed samples?’

  ‘W-W-Watch out Florence, Monty’s on a coffee mug rampage.’

  Florence heard snatches of sentences from hundreds of conservations, and the occasional hesitation in his delivery. Albert Flowers had, she realised, every now and then stuttered out a sentence in her presence.

  Not that it mattered. Florence couldn’t care less if Albert stammered or not. Florence also couldn’t care less, she realised, if he had lied to her or not. She was hardly a shining paean to truth. But she did care, very much, for Albert Flowers. She had begun caring from the moment he said, ‘They asked me if I wanted Bertie,’ that first morning in the Green Team’s office.

  And anyone who hurt him, like those buffoons in the penguin suits at Natalie Bishop’s party, could f-f-f-fuck off.

  Florence curled her toes beneath the covers, and settled in beneath them, resolved.

  She was going to stop lying. She was going to retire Miss Suki from the footlights. And she was going to help Albert Flowers. But first she was going to sing Jazz Cat with her family. The Saint Claire Swingers had their first rehearsal tomorrow. Florence flicked off her light. Both she and Albert had things to face in the morning.