Spring Clean for the Peach Queen

by Sasha Wasley

  Blue hovered by me, hoping for an ear scratch. Bundy settled stiffly beside Angus, who held his bottle out to me. A little surprised, I stretched across to clink.

  ‘Cheers.’

  I echoed the salute and drank. Sitting beside a bonfire, having just dropped a net into a dam, beer tasted just right. I scratched Blue’s ears and she sat down with a pleased grunt.

  After several minutes of comfortable silence, it was time to commence the cremation. I untied the black bin bag. The big folder marked ‘Charlize Beste – Photographic Portfolio’ was right on top. I kept the cover facing away from Angus, although he wasn’t looking. He was staring into the fire like the hairy mountain man he was.

  I needn’t have gone to the effort to hide my portfolio because the moment I tossed it onto the fire, the brittle spine split and plastic sleeved A3 photos fanned across the stack of burning branches. My Year 12 school play – in satin finish; the vintage-style black-and-white studio shot of me as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The newspaper review of my first major musical; the snapshot from a rehearsal when I had a guest role in Neighbours. The flames covered the photos like fiery hands hurrying to conceal my past as everything melted and burned, the smoke pungent. My cheeks were hot too, and it wasn’t just from the fire.

  A stack of paper was next: a wad over four inches high. Plays, screenplays, Australian film and television scripts, advertisement briefs. Letters from agencies; print outs of articles about how to nail auditions; programs from my performances. The stack burned inwards from the edges, squealing and crackling as smoke gushed into the dusk air.

  I tossed my FAMOUS T-shirt onto the fire, diamantes melting as the red fabric scorched and steamed. Then a fake Oscar from Madame Tussaud’s, my name etched into the metal panel along with the words Best Actress. Three lucky keyrings for auditions: a shamrock, a teddy bear and St Genesius, patron saint of actors. Costume jewellery: a Bollywood headpiece; a Cleopatra armband; a Tudor Queen Elizabeth ruff and a Scheherazade necklace. None of this stuff was great for burning. It made a melted mess, dripping and sizzling within the fire with acrid fumes. Angus and I had to cover our noses with our T-shirts more than once. I’d probably created an ozone hole right over our heads.

  The sun disappeared and out came my high school yearbooks. They were full of determined teenage Lottie Bentz – photos of me in local performances, a listing as the performing arts medallist and one for winning vote as Girl Most Likely to Become Famous. I threw in the gold performing arts medal and didn’t feel a single pang of regret, even though it had been my proudest moment of high school.

  A stage makeup book. Certificates of completion for various courses: voice projection; US dialect; screen acting intensive; screen roll development. Bundy snored at Angus’s feet, almost as loud as the crackling of the fire.

  There were two CDs in the bag. I pulled them out and looked at them, a little confounded – did CDs burn? Angus held out his hand and I stared at it dumbly until he nodded at the CDs. I handed them over. He popped out the discs one after the other, then dug in his pocket and pulled out a pair of secateurs. What the …?

  Orchardist. Standard issue equipment. Angus sliced the CDs with powerful precision until they were silver confetti. He tossed the tiny pieces onto the fire and a spray of green sparks arose, along with a chemical smell that was carried away on the wind in moments. Angus caught my eye briefly in the firelight, then drained his beer.

  He got up and went to the ute, presumably to fetch more drinks. I finished my own and fished the flyleaves out of the CD cases: 7 Steps to Sing like a Broadway Star and Charlize Beste – Screen Roll. I burned them. Angus returned and handed me a fresh beer.

  The only thing left in the bag was my vision book. It fell open as I threw it onto the fire and the pages curled inwards one after the other, turning as though for our entertainment. We got glimpses of my projected future: a New York City apartment overlooking the bay, my name photoshopped onto the credit screens of iconic television shows and Broadway billboards; a Hollywood Boulevard pavement star. Magazine covers I’d doctored – my image pasted over the top of other actresses’ faces. Smoke rose, thick and silver in the evening air, charred curls of paper floating past my hair like tiny question marks.

  Quite suddenly, it was all gone. I waited for a sense of liberation. After a few minutes I gave up waiting and dropped the CD cases into the empty rubbish bag, which I shoved under my legs. The beer had stopped tasting good. Blue gave me her good-humoured doggy grin and I rubbed her ears.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Angus said, watching me in the bonfire’s orange light.

  ‘If I can ask you one.’

  The fire popped and he was silent for so long, I thought I had successfully shut him down. Then he spoke again.

  ‘I did a bit of research into your situation. There’s a lot about you online. What actually happened that night? The night Jai Carradine died?’

  I sucked in a breath. ‘Really?’

  He flicked a twig onto the fire. ‘Forget it.’

  I thought hard. ‘No, I’ll tell you.’ It would be worth it to get an answer to my question. I grabbed onto the first part of the story that floated through my head, the words bursting from me in a rush. ‘I got a role in a new TV drama. Six lead roles – three guys, three girls. Life, love, friendships and secrets. It was the biggest role of my career. I was cast as the leading man’s best friend-slash-love interest – they were going to drag the romance out for the whole first series, then a kiss, then another series. Some backpedalling and then finish series two with a night of passion. You know the drill.’

  Angus probably didn’t know the drill; I couldn’t imagine him watching anything that wasn’t agricultural news. He found a long stick lying on the ground and poked at the dark red embers.

  ‘It was my big break. No more car finance ads, or smiling and nodding in stock footage shoots. No more musicals or bit-parts. It took me over a decade, but I was finally on my way. I lived the dream for three months. We made the pilot and started rehearsals for the next couple of eps. This role would put me in the public eye and even if we only got one series, even if it tanked, I’d be noticed. I’d get more parts, more auditions.

  ‘Then the news came through. The network had got wind of a new drama launching on a rival network. Three girls, three guys; life, love, friendship and secrets. Bigger names than ours, programmed to start before ours. They canned our show – never even ran the pilot. I was disappointed, monumentally disappointed, so Jordan, my roommate, and our friend Tamsin took me out to a club to cheer me up. I hit the shots hard. There were a few industry names there – actors, pop stars. It was that kind of place. Jai Carradine was there, and somehow I ended up snogging him. I don’t even remember how I met him. Wild girls were Jai’s thing and that’s why he noticed me, even if it wasn’t real.’

  I took a long drink from my beer. Angus was still stirring embers with his pointy stick, his gaze on the fire.

  ‘We partied together for just over a week. Jai was a funny guy – loved a good time. I knew he and I were going nowhere, but I grabbed onto the few days I could hang with him because it would put me in the spotlight.’ Angus’s eyes glittered in the flickering light. ‘Jai took a lot of drugs. My history’s not spotless, but what Jai took on a typical day made me look like a teetotaller. He popped prescription drugs all day long. Said he had a back injury. Then he’d take whatever was on offer at whatever party we were at. I couldn’t keep up – didn’t even want to, really. Just, I was getting so many new followers on Twitter and Instagram and suddenly people were inviting me places. Messaging me, tagging me. I hung onto Jai’s coattails, and Tamsin and Jordan hung onto mine, and we all hoped it would last.

  ‘Then that party. People were already calling us “boyfriend and girlfriend”, but honestly, it was just convenience. For him, I was a fun chick to party with. For me, he was consolation for my disappointment.’ I flicked a dry peach stone into the fire. ‘Most people mumble sympathe
tic noises when someone spills their guts, Mountain Man,’ I prompted. Nothing. ‘Or even disapproving ones.’

  Angus dropped his chin onto his hand, elbow on knee, and kept his eyes on the fire.

  I sighed. ‘It’s refreshing, I guess. Sympathetic noises get aggravating after a while.’

  ‘What happened on the night he died?’ Angus asked again, so suddenly it made me jump.

  ‘The party was at a TV exec’s place. Great big house, all lit up and sparkly. Jai and I arrived together but we got split up. I was in the garden with Jordan, getting wasted on Champagne and vodka shots. Jai was in the swimming pool for a while, then he got out and had drinks with his friends. He brought me a drink every so often.’

  The memory of Jai stumbling into me where I sat on a garden wall with Jordan squeezed into my consciousness. My gasp when the icy cold of the Champagne poured down my chest; Jai recovering, laughing himself stupid. Jordan accusing him of wasting Veuve. Jai apologising and dropping to his knees to lick the Champagne off my chest and, when Jordan shrieked and covered her eyes, he whipped my dress down to flick his tongue over my nipple.

  I could replay that moment to the finest detail, watching myself from the outside. My memory of the whole night was like that: third person. Maybe I didn’t get back into my body until the moment I found Jai in the bathroom.

  ‘Someone photographed us messing around. You probably saw that one online.’ I waited but Angus neither confirmed nor denied. ‘Jordan had another party to go to, so she left. I wasn’t sure where Jai had gone. I got bored and went inside. I didn’t know many people there, so I searched the house for Jai.’ A rumbling noise started up and rapidly grew loud, stopping me mid-story. I looked around. ‘What the hell’s that?’

  ‘Grain train,’ said Angus.

  I couldn’t see much with the bright firelight in my eyes, but the train’s headlights came suddenly into view and a thunderous grinding filled our senses, making speech impossible. Lights appeared but were gone in a moment, then darkened bins clattered along the track behind the big shed. At length it was gone, the rumbling receding like the tail-end of a thunderstorm.

  ‘Bloody hell. I didn’t know the railway line was so close.’

  ‘It’s only used around this time of year,’ Angus said. ‘It moves the harvested grain from Dinningup. The track’s busy for a few weeks and then goes quiet again. The train usually goes past at night.’

  ‘I thought I heard thunder one night, a week or so ago. Must have been the train.’

  ‘So, you went looking for Jai?’ Angus wouldn’t be distracted.

  ‘Yeah. I asked around but no one knew where he was, so I went upstairs and wandered the hallways. Huge place, lots of rooms. There was a home gym and a bunch of guest bedrooms, a couple getting busy in one of them. I came across a child’s bedroom – pink and yellow with a four-poster bed and a mural of hot air balloons. Then I came to the bathroom and that was where I found Jai.’

  I locked my gaze on the stick moving in Angus’s hand, prodding the fire, and relied on the words I’d said to the cops so many times. ‘Jai was on the floor with foam coming out of his mouth, face going blue. I went down on my knees and reached out to – to help him up, or something. I don’t know. He was spasming. He kicked out and his shoe split my chin open. I got out of the way and Jai kind of half stood up, but it was like he couldn’t see properly. He fell down again, hit his head on the bathtub, and I screamed out; someone came running but Jai lay there and stopped breathing, stopped shaking. Stopped living.’

  It was surprisingly easy to recite this story to Angus. Maybe I was getting over it. I cautiously lifted the lid on my memories, and after a moment’s false stillness, things came poking and slithering out: my blood all over my dress as I stared at Jai’s half-closed eyes and loose jaw, slick with saliva. Jai’s facial muscles releasing, transforming his whole appearance, making him almost unrecognisable. The woman who tried CPR, coughing and gagging against the fluids dribbling out of his mouth. I slammed the lid back down.

  Although my vision book was long burned, I had the unnerving impression of it still sitting in the fire in a lump of blackened pages – indestructible. But it had disintegrated right on top of those logs. I checked Angus’s face. He was watching me with a deep crease above his eyes. Disapproval? Disgust?

  Oh, hell, that was sympathy. I threw my shoulders back and I used my best audition voice. ‘Just say no, kids!’

  Angus withdrew his gaze. No faking, I growled at myself, sterner and firmer than ever before. I swigged the last lukewarm mouthful of my beer and it made me feel sick.

  ‘Then what?’ Angus asked, his voice quiet.

  ‘He died.’

  ‘I know that. I meant, what happened to you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I got questioned and blood tested and questioned again. At the end of it, they asked me to name a friend who could take care of me and I named Jordan. They called her to come get me, but she was too drunk, so they phoned Tamsin. Tamsin said yes but rang me half an hour later to tell me her agent said she shouldn’t get mixed up in it because it would damage her reputation. I wanted to take a cab home but the cops wouldn’t let me. My sister came and got me in the end.’

  Angus was staring. ‘Your friend wouldn’t pick you up because her agent said it might damage her reputation?’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that. Tamsin’s a dancer and she’s got a year-long contract doing this kids’ stage show. The agent was worried Tamsin would be contravening a clean-living clause in her contract.’

  ‘But she was supposed to be a close friend, right?’

  I rubbed a hand on my knee. ‘Yeah, but … I mean, it sucked when she didn’t come, but I understood. She had a contract. But then afterwards, she cut me off – wouldn’t even catch up in secret. I thought I meant more to her than that.’

  ‘Christ,’ Angus muttered. ‘And the other one? The one who’d been there?’

  ‘Jordan. The paps were banging down our door and at first she helped hide me, but after a couple of days the temptation got too much and she went outside while I was passed out on the tranquillisers they gave me for the shock. She told them about how devastated I was, and how Jai and me were practically engaged.’ I laughed. ‘She couldn’t understand why I was so pissed off at her.’ Angus had that sympathetic face on again and I hated it. ‘I’m trying to tell you the facts,’ I said. ‘It was a good thing that happened. It showed me who my friends were.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘And who are your friends?’

  ‘Well …’ I paused. ‘I don’t have any, I guess. Not in the industry.’ I laughed again but it sounded pathetic.

  In the silence, the flames dropped.

  ‘My turn,’ I said. ‘You know what my question is. Why do you mess around with your beehives without proper protective gear?’

  He kept his eyes on the fire. ‘Bees aren’t aggressive.’

  ‘You could still get stung.’

  ‘If you treat them right, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  Anger gathered inside me. ‘Unless you have an anaphylactic reaction to beestings, and despite having all the safety gear, you insist on tending to them without a veil or gloves. Like a dipshit.’

  ‘I trust my bees.’

  I stared hard at him. ‘So, it’s not some kind of self-destructive urge or something?’

  ‘Self-destructive?’ His mouth appeared to twitch in the dim light. ‘Says the girl who just systematically burned everything that represented her life up to this point. Who’s self-destructive?’

  I stiffened. ‘I’m starting with a clean slate. I can’t die from burning my old shit.’

  ‘You’re already dead. Or Charlize Beste is, anyway. You just cremated her.’

  ‘I’m getting cleaned up. Sorting myself out. I’ve got my list. It’s not like I’m trying to hurt myself.’

  ‘Living in a shitty old van with no running water, working for nothing, volunteering with Aunty Pris?’ He flicked a glance at me. �
�Burning everything that once meant something to you. But not trying to hurt yourself.’

  Outraged, I shifted on my log stump, but it didn’t help me come up with a cutting reply. I settled for staring moodily at the fire. Having devoured everything dry or small, the flames had dropped away and were merely licking over the last massive stumps.

  There was a long, long silence. Maybe an hour long.

  ‘It was a fucked-up thing to go through,’ said Angus.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Your boyfriend dying.’

  What was the appropriate response to that? ‘Thanks,’ I hazarded.

  ‘You got hounded by reporters, yeah?’

  ‘The media were quite insistent. My agent wrote a statement for me and I declined all interviews.’

  ‘Did they try to buy an interview?’

  ‘Yes. I got offered a lot of money.’

  ‘But you didn’t do it?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even want to think about it. My agent wanted me to do a couple of interviews. She put pressure on me, in fact.’

  He glanced my way. ‘What did you do about that?’

  ‘I stopped taking her calls. I got offered a spot on the next season of Celebrity Challenge. I knocked it back, obviously.’

  In his silence, I heard respect. I shouldn’t have cared, but it was gratifying. He poked at a burning log until it crumbled.

  ‘Your mum,’ I ventured. ‘Is she okay?’

  The poking stick stopped moving. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She seems a bit forgetful – or confused.’

  ‘She’s getting to that age.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but sometimes I get a feeling she’s not sure what’s happening. Or who I am. And a couple of things Pris has said …’

  ‘Like what?’ His voice was sharp now.

  ‘Nothing in particular. She just drops a comment every now and then about getting prepared for something. What’s she talking about?’