by Steve Hawke
‘It’s a great project Joe. Right up your alley. Not sure that you and Johnson’ll ever make a good fit though.’
‘I can’t bid on my own. There’ll be five of the prereqs that rule me out.’
Anne pokes her head in just as they are about to start game three to ask if Eric’s staying for dinner, but he begs off, saying he’s got plans for the evening.
‘Your loss, it’s roast lamb tonight. Mind you I’ve still got to get it in the oven. Lost track of time.’
‘For a change.’ Joe’s retort is automatic. They just raise their eyebrows at each other.
Eric thinks about it, but answers, ‘I’m tempted, but … no.’
‘Plans?’ Joe asks as soon as Anne has left.
‘To stew in my own juices. I’m not feeling sociable today.’
‘I clearly don’t count as real company. But I can live with that. Stewing about anything in particular?’
‘Bloody Lil.’
‘S’pose I should’ve guessed. Bloody Lil what?’
‘She keeps in touch with Anne doesn’t she?’
‘They’re mates Eric. You can’t change that.’
‘I don’t want to. But I’m not her mate am I. I’m her fucken ex. I don’t want chatty fucken letters and happy snaps of her literary tour of France.’
‘She’s trying to keep things civilised. That’s all … isn’t it?’
Eric snorts and goes to the bar fridge for another bottle. ‘She walked out on me.’ He snaps his fingers fiercely. ‘Very civilised. Out the door without a word of warning.’
‘Yeah, but she reached out when the dust had settled.’
Eric’s answer is almost a growl. ‘I know.’
‘So the official line really is bullshit.’
‘Well what was I supposed to do? Keep playing the wounded martyr?’
‘Doesn’t seem to have done you much good pretending that it’s all ok.’
‘It is most of the time. But that’s all, just ok. And I have these moments. Not helped when I get one of her fucken letters.’
‘I don’t know what to say Eric. I thought it was getting easier.’
Eric pulls a photo out of his pocket, and slaps it down on the table as he snatches up his cards. ‘Beret man with his arm around her shoulder looks a bit bloody smug to me.’
Joe picks it up. ‘It’s a group shot mate. There’s at least three arms around shoulders that I can see.’
‘But why send that to me?’ Eric puts his two discards out for the crib, and takes a pile from the deck for the cut. ‘Come on.’
Joe doesn’t know what to do with the photo now. He plucks his two discards and turns up a card. ‘Two for the jack.’ As he moves his peg he contrives to place the photo, face down, next to the board.
Eric downs his third beer to Joe’s second, the inverse of their usual ratio. Eric wins the decider. Game over, he flips the photo over, contemplates it for a moment, then manages a small exhalation that approximates a laugh as he slides it back in his pocket. ‘Bit weird hey, carrying it round. Am I bitter and twisted mate?’
‘There is a touch of bitter there boyo. I wouldn’t go as far as twisted though.’
‘I’ve got to get myself a life somehow.’
‘I hear the railways restoration club in Ashfield is looking for new members.’
‘Dickhead.’
They share a laugh as they get up. Eric shakes his head when Joe offers the last beer from the sixpack.
‘Sure you won’t stay for Annie’s famous lamb roast?’
‘No mate. I’ll be right. Promise.’
‘Fishing tomorrow?’
‘We’ll see.’
Joe sees him out, opens the beer in his hand, and sinks back into his armchair pensively.
BIRDS’N’BLUES
Which is better, the roast lamb dinner or the leftovers? It is a question that Joe has often pondered without ever arriving at a firm conclusion. Carve the remains from the bone. Multigrain toast smeared with tomato sauce, thin sliced tomatoes and plenty of lamb shavings. Generous with the salt and pepper. He is just finishing off a third slice when Anne emerges.
‘Get my email?’
‘Mississippi? It’s getting ridiculous Joe.’
Smithtown Festival. The Delta Blues as they’re meant to be, read the website. He’d stumbled across it this morning. Imagine it! He’d flicked her the link, knowing she was at her desk.
‘All I ever wanted was to go birdwatching in South America.’ She sounds exasperated.
This rolling discussion had started with Anne talking idly about Ecuador. A twitcher’s mecca apparently. Hummingbirds, sylphs, the names escape him. She’d heard from one of her mates about the tours you could do there, and her fancy was tickled. Then he came up with a throwaway line about flights between Quito and New Orleans. He has always dreamed of a blues pilgrimage. Without them realising, the idea had taken root. It is not an official plan yet, but don’t they have fun talking about it—when Anne’s in the right mood. But she’s been doing his books this morning.
It had been Joe’s choice to strike out on his own, a few years after they had returned to Perth. He swore he’d rather be his own boss and do suburban renovations if he had to, rather than keep kowtowing to the small-minded philistines in the firm he’d found work with. Anne knew better than to resist, despite her reservations.
The first two years went better than expected. A new house that was shortlisted in the Institute’s annual awards. A three-storey office building that both he and the owner were proud of. Then he fell out with the same client on the next project at the concept stage, before he’d got the commission. He called it a blessing in disguise, as Warton & Associates had just landed its biggest project yet, beating Beechcroft’s firm for the design tender on a suite of offices for the federal government in the expanding northern suburbs.
It didn’t go well. The building would have won its category if put up for the awards, but its history was too messy by the time it was completed for anyone to contemplate a nomination. He was off the project by then. The disputes about responsibility for the time and budget overruns were fierce and complex. He just escaped being placed in bankruptcy.
The all-consuming stresses of trying to save first the project, and then the business itself, came just at the time that Anne was re-establishing her teaching career, now that Claire was at school. She hadn’t had to spell out to him that he would not be easily forgiven if she lost her home and garden. They survived the crisis, but from then on Anne had insisted on doing his books. She could be ruthless with the slow payers.
There have been some good years since, with the odd building that has piqued his interest. But it has become a truly suburban business, comprising largely of renos and extensions. A good proportion of his clients are philistines too, but he finds them less aggravating on the whole than bosses.
He hates these sessions after Anne has done the monthly accounts though. Especially when things are slow.
‘Birds’n’blues. We might as well do it properly. It’s not as if Claire’s going to need an inheritance from us. Assuming she sticks with Geoffrey that is.’
‘Bad joke mister. What I’m thinking about is whether we’re going to survive our old age with any dignity. No super contribution this month. Again.’
‘Never been part of my plan, the old age thing.’
‘Don’t start on that one. Look.’ She pushes his brunch debris out of the way and slaps the spreadsheet down. ‘That’s four months running of negative cash flow.’
‘Yeah, yeah, it’ll turn. I’ve got three meetings next week that should turn into jobs.’
‘Wasn’t the Scapides quote supposed to go out this week?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Mmm what?’
‘Hold up with the permit, the neighbours are objecting. Just between you and me I’m on the neighbours’ side. I wouldn’t want Mrs Scap looking down into my backyard from her new second-storey bedroom—she’s terrifying. It might be legal�
��or not, as the case may be—but it won’t be going on my resumé.’
‘You need that job to go ahead.’
‘I know, I know. Don’t have to like it but.’
‘You’re just too good for this world, hey Joe.’
‘If I can’t have a whinge to you, who else?’
‘Glad to know I have a useful function.’
And so they banter their way out of the parlous territory of the finances once Anne has made her point. She lets him off easily because she has other things on her mind. Once she has the coffee on she gives his shoulders a rub as he stands at the sink, rinsing off his dishes.
‘You reckon Geoffrey’s jealous?’ Anne asks.
‘D’you really want to go back there?’
‘No. But you got me thinking. It’s not a word that’d come into my mind.’
Suddenly Joe feels weary, as he sits at the kitchen table.
Anne won’t let go. ‘Jealous of who? What?’ she asks.
‘Of anything that threatens his hold on her. Don’t you remember the earring thing? Right at the start.’
‘It wasn’t that big a deal was it?’
‘Not in its own right, no. But it struck me as pretty weird at the time. Why did she have to pretend she’d never had another boyfriend? Twenty years old and never been kissed—in the twenty-first century?’
March 2004
DON’T LOOK BACK
Anne raises herself on the balls of her feet. Just enough to reach that hollow between neck and collarbone with her lips and place a feathery kiss. ‘I’ll tell her you’re there in spirit.’ She runs a fingertip down the centreline of his forehead and nose, touches it to her lips and then his.
‘Give her my love.’
‘As if I need to tell her that.’ A last squeeze of his hand. ‘Love to Betty. And good luck for Friday.’ She turns to join the boarding queue and does not look back.
Joe watches until she disappears behind taller bodies.
He’ll be right. Lost in his drawings. Won’t have time to—
The gully wind swirling down from the scarp almost snatches her hat away mid-thought as Anne steps out of the terminal. It is an autumn wind with a bite to it, and a hint of winter storms ahead. The hostess directs her towards the rear stairs of the plane. She crosses the tarmac surrounded by young men in hiviz and steel-capped boots heading for their swings on mine sites across the Pilbara.
The last time she did this walk, the wind was a searing northerly a week before Christmas. An Ansett flight direct to Newman, for a sweaty wet season break between year twelve and starting at teachers’ college. More than half a lifetime ago. Six months before she first encountered Joe. The thought makes her feel old.
This year seems to have been a bit like that so far. Too many reminders that the rest of the world is moving faster than she would like. Or is it just that she is inclined in a different direction? Her heart sank when she saw the curriculum content for her English classes this year, and she finds some of the jargon of the new principal simply incomprehensible. She is starting to get the sense that some of her newer colleagues think she might be well-intentioned, but just a bit old-school—and it drives her wild.
A shake of her head, a squaring of her shoulders, as she sets foot on the stairs. Forget all that stuff for the next two weeks, she tells herself. This is going to be special.
LIAR GIRL
The doors of the departure gate close, the crowds drift away. Joe doesn’t notice. He stands there bereft. The longing to be on that plane, to be with Anne and Claire, is an ache, a knot in his guts. He knows it won’t help, but for the umpteenth time he finds himself mulling over events past.
That second semester, in the aftermath of Jason, the only times Claire was not on the first train home were when she stayed back at the library. She who’d breezed through school and the first year and a half of uni with no trouble but little diligence, began to emerge as a seriously talented student. Her marks had Anne and Joe struggling to keep a lid on their pleasure and pride. There was talk of going on to do a masters, perhaps even a doctorate.
Anne was convinced she’d been right in her prediction of years ago, that for all the pain Claire would emerge from the fire stronger; her own woman with all possibilities open to her. To Joe it seemed as if the terms on which she had resumed life were a rejection of emotional engagement of any sort. The quiet ferocity of the way she threw herself into her studies disturbed him for some reason.
But as the months passed she seemed to loosen a little. On a good day she would engage in a little banter with him. On Remembrance Day she rose to one of his tentative jibes with a grin, and they had their first good argument in months. She ran rings around him, to their mutual delight.
They’d found it strange doing the Dongara Christmas with her. Twenty years old and going bush with the oldies? ‘For old times’ sake,’ she answered, when they asked if she was sure. She passed on the fishing. She dragged herself out for a day’s birding with Anne. But mostly she took Lil’s place in the hammock—minus the bottle, and her reading was of a much more serious bent. New Year’s Eve had its rituals though. Fire built. Marshmallows ready for toasting. Champagne in the fridge. Then off to the tavern. Joe and Anne leaned into each other on their bench as they watched her dance.
‘You’ve noticed?’ Anne whispered.
‘Of course.’ He gave her a squeeze. ‘Never thought we’d see that again.’
‘Oh stop staring at it will you!’ Claire exclaimed later as they sat around the fire at the shack, marshmallows on forks, champagnes in hand, with the midnight countdown about to start. She fondled an earring. ‘You didn’t think I’d chuck them out did you?’
‘Well we sort of figured you might’ve darling.’ Joe raised his glass just as the distant thump of fireworks sounded from the tavern.
‘Happy New Year.’ A chorus of three.
‘Happy New Year,’ he whispers. ‘And happy travels, my love.’ He finally turns away from the gate and heads for the carpark, but he cannot escape the churn of memories.
Anne could hardly get her out the door fast enough when Claire told them she was thinking about moving into a share house as the start of her third year at uni approached. She vetoed Joe’s desire to help with fixing the leaking tap Claire mentioned, or any of the other stuff he wanted to do for her, telling him to wait until he was invited into her space. ‘Our girl’s moving on,’ she declared with satisfaction. ‘She’s ready to take on the world.’
Joe was not quite so sure. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but every now and then he got a sense of brittleness still, beneath all her upbeat reports. He reckoned there was something she was … she was … what? He couldn’t say, and didn’t think it was his place to ask. Most weeks she came up for Sunday lunch, but at some point that seemed to shift to Tuesday dinners. She said that fitted in better with her study and work commitments.
Liar girl.
It is a conversation that has stayed ingrained in his memory. He can’t help thinking of it as the pivot point, the day he felt his daughter slip away from him. One of those Tuesday dinners.
‘I feel like a teenager all over again,’ she said. ‘I can still remember the agony of working up my nerve to tell you about Jason.’
SWEET JESUS
He is back there, living the memory. Claire is embarrassed at her own awkwardness as she breaks the news of her new relationship and suggests a ‘getting to know each other’ dinner. They are careful not to be overenthusiastic. ‘What does he like to eat?’ Anne asks, thinking ahead to the menu, eager to please. ‘He’s not vegetarian is he?’
‘No Mum. Anything you cook’ll be brilliant I’m sure.’
Joe senses there is more to come. Claire may have sprung the news, but she doesn’t look like the weight has lifted from her shoulders yet. She is fingering an earring. She sees him watching her, a question in his eyes. ‘Geoffrey asked me who these came from. I just didn’t want to … you know … I told him you gave them to me for my
seventeenth. Please don’t say anything if he asks.’
They assure her they will be the souls of discretion. Joe is relieved, and pleased that she has a pang of conscience about the white lie. ‘No harm done darling. If he lasts as long as Jason did, I expect the two of you will laugh about it one day.’
The nervous grin she gives puts him back on guard. Something doesn’t feel right.
‘There’s something else I’ve got to tell you.’ She corrects herself, ‘Want to tell you.’
They can see that she is gathering her courage, and exchange a quick look.
‘Mum, Dad. Geoffrey’s a Christian. His father’s a preacher. He goes to church every Sunday.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Joe knows it is inappropriate, but he can’t help laughing. ‘How do you cope with that?’
‘So do I.’
For a moment he doesn’t comprehend. She lifts her chin and glares at him, declares at him, ‘So am I. A Christian.’
The room goes still. And then it is Claire laughing. ‘Look at the two of you. What’s that old saying of yours, Dad? Stunned mullets isn’t it? I did say Christian. Not devil worshipper. There’s quite a lot of us out there you know.’
Anne is the first to recover. ‘A preacher you say … Which church?’
‘The Evangelical Brotherhood.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Joe murmurs, feeling the ground shift beneath his feet, and unaware of the irony.
Claire picks him up though. ‘No offence taken Dad, I know it’s just a saying to you. But please don’t use our Lord’s name in vain. Or at least not while I’m around.’
GOTCHA
‘Watch where you’re going mate!’
‘Sorry. So sorry,’ Joe exclaims. He reaches down to comfort the toddler he has stumbled over, but the little girl’s father snatches her to safety and glares at him, as Joe hustles apologetically in the direction of the airport’s exit escalator.
