‘We’re all going to the pub,’ Orla told him. ‘Do you want to come? No? Come on then, Puck, my little midsummer night’s dream. Let’s see what you get for Christmas.’
Isolde appeared, cradling a man who looked wholly delighted to be there beneath her arm. ‘Oh hi Albert,’ she said, as if she had just come upon him on her parents’ driveway and hadn’t just been at a party where he was the unlikely guest of honour. ‘This is Lance,’ she said, and then whispered in his ear as she passed, ‘I’m going with the flow too.’
Albert stood on Kinsey’s front porch, thanking people for coming, feeling like an imposter on Lucas Saint Claire’s doorstep, until everyone had left, calling out ‘Merry Christmas!’ down the driveway, and Victor loudly joking about how he would need to take a taxi home. Everyone except Florence, Amanda and Richard, who was not the caterer, he had eventually realised, but the Saint Claires’ manager, and so clearly in love with Florence’s mother, Albert wondered why Florence had never mentioned it. Among other things.
‘Are you about to do a runner?’
Florence stood in the doorway, her face bare, no longer shrouded by Miss Suki.
‘No,’ he smiled, ‘but I was going to go for a walk, if you want to come along?’
Florence shook her head. ‘I would, but I’ve got a small party to clean up.’
Albert felt a shot of embarrassment at his cheeks. ‘See,’ he wanted to tell her ‘I am no good at this. I was going to leave without lifting a finger to help you. I am woefully out of practice at parties. I’ve never been to one I haven’t worked at.’
Instead, he looked at Florence’s bare face and said, ‘Then we’ll do it together.’
*
Florence opened the music room door. She and Albert had cleaned up the flotsam and jetsam from the party downstairs: empty bottles and glasses, bowls half full of nuts, a Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer earring from under the couch, its nose still half-heartedly flashing – ‘Sharon,’ she and Albert had laughed. They had cleared the lounge and begun on the kitchen, scraping soggy corn chips into the bin and putting the empty bottles in the recycling box. They had stacked the dishwasher, and when that was full, Albert had washed up by hand, Florence drying the dishes beside him and flicking him with her tea towel. When they were younger, she and Puck and Isolde had done this every night in Kinsey’s kitchen, and Florence had been unable to resist the urge to do it again, her fingers twitching at the tea towel’s corners from the moment she picked it up. Watching Albert dodging and twitching away from its flicking edges, Florence had thought that this could most certainly be called a lark.
Richard had come in to say goodnight, and to let them know Amanda had gone to bed, and not to move a muscle, he would let himself out.
‘Doesn’t he live here?’ Albert had asked when Richard had gone. Florence had answered, ‘No, why would he?’ and Albert had told her the same ridiculous theory Isolde had about Richard and her mother. They had spoken about Monty’s unexpectedly fluid dancing, Puck in animated conversation with Orla, and Florence’s delight at spying Isolde and Lance Bueller entwined on one of the upstairs couches. She hadn’t invited Lance, which meant either Puck or Isolde had. Either way, Isolde had finally noticed that Mercy Jones’s long-time roadie had left adolescence behind.
They had spoken about Albert’s mother fluttering around ‘Call Me Natalie’ Bishop like a moth to a flame. Albert had started a long story about how moths were not really attracted to flames, and Florence had told him she already knew, and flicked him with her tea towel again. When they had finished in the kitchen, she had asked Albert if he would like a glass of whiskey in the music room. It had seemed the right place for the conversation they were about to have; just her, Albert and the grey and white ringtail possums scurrying along the telegraph lines.
The music room was quiet and shadowy when she and Albert walked in, and it was time, she knew, to stop larking about.
She led Albert to the window seat.
‘Here goes nothing,’ she said silently to Lucas, somewhere in the shadows.
‘This is where my dad did all his practice,’ she said, ‘and this is where I’d sit and listen to him.’
‘I’m sorry about your father, Florence,’ Albert said.
‘I’m sorry about your brother, Albert,’ she answered evenly.
And then she told him, as promised, what she knew. How she had gone to Avalon where the Milky Way was hiding in another sky, dressed as Miss Suki, in a tuxedo. How she had seen Albert behind the bar and heard the words of Oscar Bishop’s friends. How she had thought, fleetingly, of killing them. She told him about meeting Sadie Bishop at the bottom of Avalon’s garden, and then Adelaide in a puff of smoke outside the library. She told him again that she was sorry Hamish had died, because she understood he was spectacular. And then she asked him if he had a photo of his brother. She felt sure that Albert carried his brother with him somewhere besides his memory.
Albert reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. From behind one of its thin sleeves, he took out a folded strip of photographic paper and passed it to her.
It was from an instant photo booth, the type they used to have dotted around shopping centres like mushrooms. She and Isolde had loved them, pulling across the short curtain to sit smooshed together on a stool, pulling a series of cartoonish faces. There would be some sort of beeping sound to let the sitters know the camera was about to go off, but it still surprised her and Isolde every time. They always looked vaguely dazed in each shot. Dazed and delighted, and a little unhinged.
Florence carefully unfolded the strip in her hand.
Two boys. One in his early teens – Hamish – and the other still a boy – Albert. Both with sandy blond hair, Albert taller and with broader shoulders, but obviously younger. Both staring at the camera, their faces caught in that same look of surprise she and Isolde always wore, even though these boys also knew what was coming. Except, she supposed, they didn’t. She flicked her eyes down the vertical squares of the strip. They were smiling. Then laughing. Then pulling faces, Albert with his tongue stuck out to the side of his mouth, and Hamish with his eyes crossed and his teeth bared. Then she looked at the last square on the strip. Hamish and Albert with their arms looped around each other in headlocks, holding each other in vice-like grips of tenderness. Florence handed the strip of photos back to Albert.
‘He looks like you,’ she said.
Albert smiled. ‘Only smaller. People used to think I was his older brother. Sometimes we used to let them keep thinking that, just for fun. Or Hamish would send me to buy tickets for movies he couldn’t get into. Once, I got us a six-pack of beer. I think I was about thirteen, the guy at the bottle shop didn’t even ask me for ID. We snuck it into the house and Hamish drank them in his room. I remember Hamish playing The Blues Brothers soundtrack really loudly and Mum banging on the door and telling us to keep it down. Hamish hid the bottles under his pillow.’ Albert started to laugh, and Florence did too. She could see them, two blond boys dancing in a bedroom, all hormones and beer and music.
Albert drained his glass and set it on a coaster.
‘I was always a big boy, Florence, and people expected me to do all the things that big boys are meant to do. Play football, or row, or just go around demolishing things. And I didn’t want to do any of that. Mostly I wanted to be left alone, you know?’ Florence knew. ‘My parents didn’t know what to do with me. Mum was always pushing me out the door to make friends. I wanted to shout at her that I didn’t know how to, and why couldn’t she see I didn’t want to. I was fine the way I was. Until I wasn’t.’
Florence shut her eyes briefly, seeing herself in her room at Kinsey, reading her books on her bed and wishing that she could just stay there, tucked under her quilt while the adults downstairs discussed what on earth to do with her.
‘I didn’t actually know there was anything different about me until other people started pointing it out. At school the other kids started shoving into m
e in the hallways, or flicking rubbers at me in class. They’d kick at the back of my chair during lessons, because they knew I wouldn’t kick back. I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t want to kick anyone. Everything would have been all right,’ he sighed, ‘if I’d only played rugby.’
Their eyes met and they both started laughing again at the idea that if Albert had just popped in a mouthguard and barrelled his way through high school, everything would have been all right.
Florence uncurled her feet from under her. They had been sitting at the window seat for quite a while and her limbs felt restless. She had wanted to move them but didn’t want Albert to take it as a sign that she was restless also.
But Albert shifted too, standing up to refresh their glasses.
‘First time I’ve poured you a drink,’ he smiled as he handed Florence hers.
Florence smiled back. ‘Monty tells me you make an excellent Tequila Bon Bon.’
They clinked glasses. Florence looked out the window, where the sky still held on to its inky blackness. It had not yet given way to its lighter colours, but she knew it would soon enough and that she and Albert would witness it. It was that sort of night.
The sort of night where Albert Flowers could tell you, as he did now, that the reason he could make an excellent Tequila Bon Bon, or any other drink you might be partial to, was because he became a mobile mixologist. How Hamish had died and left him exactly the right amount of money to buy the business which had helped him get his words out. How he was sorry he hadn’t, however, found the right ones to tell her about it.
‘So,’ he said, ‘that’s me. Weird kid. Big boy. Stutter. Brother I wish was here but isn’t. Moonlighting bar attendant. Imaginary friends. I think that just about covers it.’
He met Florence’s eyes. ‘Your turn, Miss Suki.’
Florence wasn’t sure where to begin. With music, she supposed. She began to go through her own back catalogue, which began with the Saint Claire Swingers, and ended with Miss Suki. In between, she told him about the Jonathan Hammond Christmas Show, and the boy in the yellow jacket, and how much she hated Jazz Cat. Florence told Albert about her own dead family member, Lucas Saint Claire, who had also eclipsed every person in every room he strolled into. How she had carried his death like stones in her pocket until a blue feather had floated from Leticia Pepsi’s fingers. How she had prickled inside from longing to sing again, and Miss Suki had sprung from that longing.
Albert had been quiet during the telling. Florence was painting pictures on the music room’s walls. He could see everything she said in her slow, steady voice. No rushing words now, no hastening to fill in the spaces between them.
‘So,’ she echoed Albert’s closing statement, ‘that’s me.’ Then she added, ‘I’m a bit of a mess, Albert.’
‘I’m a lot of a mess, Florence,’ he answered.
‘I don’t think you are quite as messy as me,’ she smiled. ‘May I remind you I was a child star.’
‘I was anything but,’ he countered.
‘I froze on stage.’
‘I froze off it.’
‘When I was little, I used to dig holes and sit in them, like a mole.’
‘When I was little, I sent away for a shrinking kit from some dodgy comic book ad.’
‘I thought I murdered my father.’
‘I talk to my dead brother, mostly in his tennis whites.’
‘I talk to my dead father, in fact he’s possibly here right now.’
‘I have imaginary friends called Jeremy and Lydia.’
‘I hate Lydia, by the way.’
Albert smiled, and then continued. ‘I pretended to have parties to go to when I was working at them.’
‘I pretended to attend a hydroponics course when I was really singing in nightclubs.’
‘I talk to plants.’
‘So do I.’
‘I think they can hear me.’
‘I know they can.’
‘I have an entire, made-up persona called “Albert Flowers, Mobile Mixologist”.’
‘I have an entire, made-up persona called Miss Suki.’
This felt good. We are larking about, Florence thought joyously.
‘I threw a party recently where I didn’t know any of the guests.’ She smiled. ‘I think I win.’
Albert laughed. ‘How about we say we both win? How about we say that you and I are both as messy and weird and fucked-up as each other?’
He poured a last tumbler of whiskey, spiced with the heavy notes of Kip’s mea culpa.
‘To you, Florence Miss Suki Saint Claire,’ Albert said.
Florence smiled. ‘And to you, Albert “Mobile Mixologist” Flowers.’ They clinked glasses, two frauds together on a velvet window seat.
*
‘And now we have a very special surprise for all of you. Not seen together for many years, and here to perform their number one hit, “Santa Was A Jazz Cat”, please welcome to the stage the Saint Claire Swingers!’
Beneath her feet, Florence felt the audience’s roar before she heard it. She felt Isolde pressing her body into her back, her breath sharp and quick in Florence’s ear. She saw Puck’s hands drumming on his thighs, his head down, the starter at the gate. Then, from behind her, her mother’s voice. ‘Maximum wattage!’ Amanda Saint Claire commanded as the stage lights dimmed, then bathed the floor in colour.
Puck walked out first, keeping his head down, and ducked behind the drum kit, then Isolde, smiling and waving at the crowd in the Domain like a homecoming queen. Florence followed in her wake, feeling the pull of her family. Then all three Saint Claire children turned their heads to where Amanda Saint Claire strode out, casting her light like shards of glass across the stage. Florence watched her mother stand in front of her microphone and run her eyes over the crowd, holding them still and silent in her gaze. Then she threw her arms out wide. ‘Well, Hello 2000!’ Amanda Saint Claire said, and the waves began rolling in.
Puck tapped his sticks together three times and Amanda began to sing in her low, throaty voice ‘On Christmas Eve when the lights are low . . .’ and Florence stepped towards her microphone, curling her fingers around it. In the crowd, women whispered to each other that they had once had the most enormous crush on Lucas Saint Claire, and look at Amanda, the wife, still so gorgeous. And the children! So grown-up! And so brave, singing without their father.
From the stage, Florence heard her cue and started swinging. In an area close to the front of the stage, reserved for family and friends of the artists, Florence saw Orla, her eyes set only on Puck, and Veronica waving at her, and Victor smiling next to Monty and Sharon, who was wearing a cat’s ears headband on her head. Florence saw Richard, his hands clapping in time to Jazz Cat, his eyes only on her mother, and for a brief moment she saw Amanda Saint Claire’s eyes travel to his. Isolde was only partly right. It wasn’t a one-sided affair.
Florence relaxed into the song, thinking about the last time she had sung in front of an audience with her family. This time there was no creeping flush on her cheeks, no boy in a yellow jacket to mock her. But there was, with one arm around his sister Adelaide, Albert Flowers in a sports coat, smiling at Florence, maximum wattage.
Then Lamanda’s purr quietened to a slow growl, the musicians played out the closing notes of Jazz Cat and Puck lifted his hands from the drum kit.
The Domain’s audience erupted as Amanda Saint Claire drew her arms out again and brought her children into them, as the Saint Claire Swingers bowed out.
‘Well that was magnificent,’ said one of the hosts, strolling onto the stage, and the other one answered, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucas Saint Claire was looking down on us all right now! What a way to welcome in the New Year, ladies and gentlemen. And it is time to welcome it. Are you ready? Let’s count down together. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .’
*
The sky was still spraying showers of light over the audience as they began pouring out of the Domain, one man making his way through t
he throng in the opposite direction, going against the tide. When he reached the front of the stage he raised his hand and tipped a grey felt hat from his head. Then he turned back towards the crowd and walked away, whistling.
In the Mount Bell State Forest, a breeze nudged The Comanche Dragon from its hiding place, lifting its wings as it rode the air currents under the watchful eyes of the mighty King Kong and landed exactly where it was meant to.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Cate Paterson from Pan Macmillan for her unwavering support, steady hand, wise words, and much treasured friendship. Thank you to the whole team at Pan Macmillan, especially Brianne Collins for her deft editing, and cheering me on from the sidelines! Such a joy to work with. And from Pan Macmillan also, the wonderful Charlotte Ree who stepped in, stepped up, and is the best publicist an author could hope for. Also makes excellent Nutella brownies. Thanks to Anita Davidson for her unflagging support of my work.
Thanks to Julia Stiles, for her always clever suggestions, gently offered. We’ll have that glass of champagne one day!
Thank you to my agent Catherine Drayton for believing in my stories.
Thank you to Claire Bickle for much needed advice on all things botanical.
My colleagues and friends, past and present at News Ltd, for words of support and love in the trenches. Thanks especially to all the team at Q Weekend and also U on Sunday, and to Robert ‘Crash’ Craddock, Dennis Atkins, Michael McKenna, Elissa Lawrence, and Jane Armitstead.
One of my favourite quotes is ‘Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid’. Here are a few of my mightiest forces. To the lovely Susan Johnson for making every day I worked with her a delight. To Matthew Condon, fellow author, for encouraging me to become one myself. To Liane Moriarty, who makes words sing, and is an all-round very good egg!
To Dame Quentin Bryce. Icon. Feminist. Bookworm. Hankie giver.
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