‘I’m her mother. Why would she worry?’
‘She called the police, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. That’s just the kind of hysterical theatrics Carol goes in for.’
‘My god—just call her!’
‘Of course I’m going to call.’ Ruby swiped her handbag off the bed—stunned that her phone should be the first thing she fingered when she shoved her hand inside. She dialled, only to be met with Carol’s recorded voice telling her to leave a message—Ruby was unsure whether to be relieved or alarmed.
‘Hello, Carol, it’s me, Ruby. I think there’s been a terrible mistake. I was led to believe you gave Izzy permission to stay with me. I’m so sorry. Izzy’s fine. We’re all fine. Um … I’ll try calling back later.’ She hung up and waited a minute, half-expecting it would ring right away.
They spent the next two hours with their eyes glued to the television, jumping from news report to news report. Izzy’s last school portrait was exhibited on screen several more times before the evening was through. Izzy wished she could have looked prettier in it. The photo showed her grinning dumbly out from a sky-blue background, freckles popping against her maroon jumper, her eyes slightly crossed. Worst of all, the big gap where a front tooth should have been made her seem like a Dopey Dora.
Angela rose and collected her beauty bag as another gimcrack local ad break assumed the screen. ‘I can’t stand this any longer. I’m going to take a shower. You two can sort out this kerfuffle while I’m gone.’ She swept out the door like a departing Cruella de Vil.
Once Angela had left, Ruby made two cups of tea. The abandoned vegetables piled on the chopping block reminding her they hadn’t yet eaten dinner. She brought the biscuit tin over to the couch. ‘You’ve done a terrible thing, Isabelle. How did you think you’d get away with it?’
Izzy gazed into the biscuit tin, seemingly absorbed in the decision between a Kingston or a Delta Cream. She looked sideways, dismayed to see Ruby still staring at her, waiting for an answer. ‘I didn’t think anyone would mind.’
‘Rubbish. Not good enough. What exactly did you say to your mum?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘When you spoke to her on the phone, what did you say?’
‘Not much.’
‘Did she say it was okay for you to stay with me?’
Izzy masticated her biscuit into a watery mash, hoping to appear like someone who was thinking deeply. When she could no longer logically appear to be chewing, she forced the sludge down her throat. ‘Um, no.’
‘What do you mean, no?’
Izzy puffed out her chest, then let it cave in on itself. ‘I didn’t actually talk to her. I hung up.’
‘You hung up?’
‘Yes.’
Ruby blinked impassively. There were no smiley crinkles now, just smooth, powdery flesh. ‘At what point did you hang up?’
‘At the start.’
‘I heard you talking to her.’
‘I was pretending. I really didn’t think it would matter. She doesn’t care about me.’
‘How do you explain being on the news then?’
Izzy couldn’t explain it. It didn’t seem at all like something her mum would do. She’d imagined her mum might be pleased to be rid of her. The fact that she’d gone to the police was strange and kind of scary. Then again, Izzy quite liked the idea of being important enough to be looked for. All her life she felt she’d been playing a single-handed game of hide-and-seek with no one bothering to come find her.
‘Well, Izzy?’
She shouldn’t have lied—all the biscuits in the tin were staring up at her reproachfully. Adults hated being lied to. Izzy didn’t see what the big deal with honesty was all about. She’d rather be told nice things than nasty truths.
Ruby’s phone was still embedded in her palm—it had taken up residence after the first call and been desperately deployed over the space of the evening. ‘If I call your mother again will you come clean? It might mean something coming from you.’
Izzy gazed incuriously at the brooch pinned to Ruby’s chest. ‘You keep saying “your mother” or “your mum”—but she’s your daughter too you know.’
‘I know perfectly well how the relationship stands.’
‘Then why didn’t you ask her if I could stay? Why did I have to do it?’
Ruby considered giving her granddaughter the brush-off, but found her candour impossible to deny. ‘Because she was angry at me. She thinks I don’t care about her. She thinks I’m a bad mother.’ The admission pierced her heart.
The Winnebago door flapped open. Angela strode in, reeking of apricot body wash. ‘I hope you’ve finished your little tête-à-tête.’ She moved to the kitchen and sloshed water into the kettle, stubbing her toe on the way back. ‘Goddamn it! This place is like living in a dollhouse.’ She positioned herself in front of her audience, as though taking her turn in a game of charades. ‘We go to the police first thing in the morning. Tell them she conned us.’
‘Take it easy,’ Ruby murmured.
‘I’m as much a part of this as you are, in case you forgot—my head is on the chopping block too.’ She fluffed her fingers through her newly dried hair. ‘First thing, as soon as they open the station. You got me?’ Her face, without its cosmetic camouflage, bore a fragile, silty quality, interspersed with scaly red patches, as though the pigmentation was furious at having to be suppressed day in, day out. She looked younger than her sixty-four years, softer and more vulnerable; less like a female impersonator.
Izzy paled. ‘Will I go to jail?’
‘No, dear, no one’s going to the police.’ Ruby glared at Angela.
‘Well, I’m not chaperoning little Queen Sheba around another day.’
‘No one’s asking you to.’
Angela stormed back over to the heaving kettle and slapped the off switch, subduing it. ‘I say, let the cops take her home. We’ve been put out enough.’ She sloshed boiling water into her cup. ‘Scare some sense into her. Teach her to stop lying all the time …’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
By Friday, Bernard had made his peace with the world. He was woken in the night by his smoke alarm, which turned out to be his phone—even in somnolent confusion he assumed the worst. He fumbled for the receiver, for the first time appreciating the pragmatics of what he’d considered a daft early-nineties gift, the phone and clock radio in one. The glaring red digits told him it was one-thirty.
‘It’s in the bag,’ Neil said. ‘I’ll send it through to your agent in the morning.’
Bernard felt himself drifting as the weight of obligation lifted from his shoulders.
‘I can’t thank you enough, you have to let me do something to repay the favour.’ Bernard prepared to shoot down the platitudes and polite civilities, but Neil made no resistance.
‘Sure. My band, The Marsupials, have a gig this Friday—you can introduce us. It’ll be a laugh having Bernard Barkley call us up on stage.’
‘You’re forcing me back into the spotlight?’
‘We’re playing at the King Edward, the hotel across from the station.’
‘So more of a nightlight than a spotlight.’
‘Torchlight.’
The next morning’s Regional Times front page featured a local schoolboy who’d made it through to the national swimming championships. Inside were the usual house fires and burglaries, and an exposé on a disease killing off local cockatoos. Bernard found his name mentioned on page seven, bringing up the rear of all that delightful drivel: five lines, sans picture, reporting that police had dropped their investigation into the Bernard Barkley accident.
On a whim he flicked back through the paper; Jessica Madden was nowhere to be found. He eventually spotted the reporter’s name on the back of the sports page where the local football and cricket scores were announced—a sorry end to a promisingly mediocre career.
Bernard appreciated that the King Edward wasn’t going out of its way to entice the punters; the m
ost the owners seemed to be doing was unlocking the doors each morning. He respected them mightily for their lack of ambition: no affected bistro-swank, no attempt at low-cost retro grunge, no rendered Italian trattoria walls or Irish drinking den memorabilia, no reproduction posters advertising French cigarettes or liqueurs they didn’t serve, just a pub with a bar and a toilet, and a bit of grub to soak up the alcohol—not a cost-increasing exercise, just common decency. The King Edward hadn’t even taken the trouble of deteriorating into a pokies venue, notwithstanding a single sad machine that flickered in a corner, emitting the occasional gurgle or tinny jingle, like some sad tropical bird that had become separated from its flock and was starting to fret.
Bernard ordered another drink.
‘You should have ordered a bottle,’ the bartender observed, ‘would have come out cheaper.’
‘I thought it was only going to be a one-drink wait.’
The bartender nodded. He finished pouring wine to the lip of Bernard’s glass then left the bottle beside him. ‘You polish it off.’
‘That’s good of you, though at seven-fifty a glass I was happy to pay.’
‘Technically you already paid for it, you just went the wrong way about ordering.’
As Bernard sipped his wine, his curiosity directed him toward a sign pointing to the Ladies Bar; he rounded a corner and arrived in a dingy alcove, like some long-abandoned prayer room following the demise of religion.
‘What? No jacket?’
He spun around to find Terri grinning waggishly. They launched into an awkward cheek-kissing folk dance.
‘I didn’t think there was a dress code.’
‘You chickened out,’ she said.
‘It was green, and furry.’
The previous day, his judgement weakened by an intemperate lunch, he’d agreed to accompany Terri on a costuming mission. A snob at heart, he’d done a quick check over his shoulder before following her into the op shop. The first thing to strike him was the mothball scent of camphor; the second was the volume of stock. The place was very neatly packed to the rafters—a wealth of thrift. Two crones sat behind a counter, unmoving save for their eyeballs, which tracked the newcomers’ movements. Upon recognition, one of them latched onto the other’s forearm. ‘Bernard Barkley,’ she pronounced in a voluble whisper, ‘and that must be the wife.’
Terri smiled and mouthed, Moi?
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Bernard had managed a proper, silent whisper.
‘We’re not planning on robbing the joint.’
He watched Terri flick through a rack of clothes.
‘What do you think?’
He looked at the small pink dress she was holding. ‘What’s it for again?’
‘Wendy. We have about a dozen Peter Pan outfits and no Wendys.’
She pushed the dress back among the other garments. ‘I’d rather something in yellow.’ She moved off to examine another rack of dresses.
Bernard turned over a white tag hanging from a women’s shirt: $3. He wondered if it would fit Mia. Across the room, Terri held up a black tuxedo.
‘For Wendy?’ he asked.
‘For you.’ She considered the tag attached to its sleeve. ‘It’s fifteen dollars.’
Bernard held the jacket up to his chest. ‘I used to pay seventy just to hire one of these.’
‘You should buy it, we can hit the town.’
‘I could be buried in it.’
‘Whatever takes your fancy.’
Bernard looked back at the beady-eyed yentas, both women smiled unctuously in response. He returned the suit to the nearest rack. Terri had three dresses slung over her forearm. She ran her hand across a row of polo shirts.
‘You’d never have to buy one again.’
‘I’d rather the ingrained sweat be purely mine. Did you get what you needed?’
‘Yes, but I’m not leaving until you find something.’
Bernard unlooped a tie from a nearby coat rack.
‘Too easy; it has to be outlandish.’
He spotted a green velour jacket hanging at the front of a discount rack. He retrieved the jacket and brought it back to his mistress.
‘Try it on,’ she demanded.
He slipped his arms into the orange satin lining.
Terri clapped her hands together. ‘It’s perfect. I love it.’
‘Somewhere a billiards table is missing its felt.’
He looked at the tag hanging from his cuff: the black eight had been crossed out and replaced by a four. ‘And it’s half price,’ he announced. ‘I’m starting to get the hang of this.’
At the counter, the crones flapped about trying to work the register and figure out the change from his four-dollar jacket. After they’d handed him the wrong amount three times, Bernard calmly explained to the women how four from fifty will always come out to forty-six. The ladies made excuses about the blasted till as Bernard and Terri backed slowly out of the store.
Terri wriggled her bottom down into the barstool. ‘I want a serious drink.’ She looked at the bartender. ‘Hello, what do you have that’s a serious drink?’
The barman furrowed his gleaming brow. He was young to be bald—life is indiscriminately cruel. ‘I’m not sure. I’d say a Jack Daniel’s is pretty serious.’
‘Would you? And what would you suggest is a serious drink for a serious woman?’
‘Um, gin and tonic.’ He winced at the lameness of his suggestion.
‘I’m serious, not seventy. I’ll have a vodka cranberry.’
‘We don’t have any cranberry. I could do a vodka orange.’
‘Juice or Fanta?’
The bartender winced again.
‘That’s okay.’ Terri forced a smile in an attempt to appear unflappable. ‘I’ll have a Tom Collins.’
The bartender looked to Bernard for assistance—blaming him for bringing this exotic drinker into his deficient domain.
‘Why, don’t we share in a bottle of Champagne?’
The barman opened the door to his fridge. ‘There’s a good one and a not-so-good one here, I reckon.’ He grabbed a menu from the bar. ‘Yep, the good one’s a bit more expensive—I’m pretty sure we can assume that.’
‘That’s the general order of things,’ Bernard concurred. ‘We’ll have the good one.’ As the barman twisted the cork, Terri began rummaging in her handbag.
‘Get your bloody hand out of there,’ Bernard said, slapping his credit card on the counter.
They were halfway through the bottle when Neil arrived, buckling under the weight of a Marshall amplifier. Two men carrying black guitar cases followed. Bernard and Terri watched as they set up.
‘Should I offer to help?’
‘In what way?’ she asked.
‘Point taken.’
Ten minutes later, Neil skulked over. His ginger moustache curtsied in greeting, ‘Hey, Bernard, thanks for coming. Hey, Terri.’
Terri tipped her glass at him in recognition.
‘You two know each other?’
‘I take his girls for jazz ballet.’
Neil wedged a shaky hand into his pocket. Bernard found his nervousness endearing. ‘I jotted down some stuff, couple of ideas, you’re free to say what you like.’
Bernard skimmed over the note, considerately written in easy-to-read block letters—Neil being well acquainted with his occupational dyslexia. ‘When do you need me to do it?’
‘Now.’
The pub had filled considerably while Bernard and Terri had been flirting with one another. He and Neil were forced to skirt the circumference of a noisy crowd of youths on their way up to the stage. Bernard took his time in raising the microphone to meet his mouth—a theatrical excitement builder.
‘Evening all, I’m Bernard Barkley.’
From across the room, Terri gave a drunken whoop.
‘And these are … THE MARSUPIALS!’
The rest of the audience broke into spontaneous applause, no doubt swept up in the enthusiasm given o
ff by Bernard’s cheer squad of one. He raised a presidential hand in the air and stepped down off the stage. Neil’s speech had been somewhat wordier, detailing the band’s recent absence from the music scene and their plans to release a second album soon. Bernard considered his version to be a little more rock ’n’ roll.
The band started up, submerging the pub into a screeching, pounding, electrical-feedback-humming vacuum of sound. Neil and the singer hung their heads over their guitars, as though marvelling at the sound they were able to produce from a few strings. Meanwhile, the cherubic pot-bellied drummer smiled out at the audience as he thumped monotonously upon his plastic cylinders like an oversized toddler. Terri nudged Bernard’s arm and directed his attention to two four-year-olds in saggy tulle skirts and sneakers who’d managed to clear a space at the edge of the crowd. The pale, flossy-haired girls were throwing themselves around and jumping up and down out of time to the music. Their mother stood some distance back, a sleeping baby held like a football at her chest, one striped arm cradling its ovoid bulk, the other stretched to the ceiling to pump the air.
Terri brought her lips to his ear. ‘They’re the sweetest-looking tyrants you ever saw.’
‘Sounds terrifying. How does Neil stay so composed?’
‘He gets to escape the house and work in a sound booth all day.’
Forty-three minutes later it was over. Bernard’s eardrums hummed as they acclimatised to the silence. When he spoke, his voice sounded as though it was coming from some faraway place at the back of his head. ‘What did you think?’ he asked.
‘Not good.’ Terri flinched apologetically.
‘Really? I was thinking more along the lines of god-awful.’
Neil eventually made it to their table, having finished receiving plaudits from all the bright young things. ‘What did you think?’
Terri beamed. ‘Very good.’
‘God-awful.’
‘Appreciate the honesty, Bernard.’
Terri left to use the toilet, which Bernard indicated by aiming a finger at the Ladies Bar—just through purgatory’s waiting room. He and Neil passed an awkward two minutes dispensing chitchat like a game of I Spy. Bernard noticed Neil’s wife madly attempting to corral their groupie nymphs and complimented him on his beautiful family.
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