The feasting lasted for over an hour. No matter the subterfuge, the ritual gorging could only have been attributed to yuletide gluttony. Eventually all that remained were greasy skid marks on bone china, where hunks of bread had swiped the surface, a smear of blood giving the impression of wet pavement after some devastating car accident.
Bernard and Mia adjourned to the sunken settee to recuperate, careful to make no sudden movements and risk upsetting their brimming wineglasses. On their left Carl and Angela were comparing notes on blood pressure medications. To the right, Cherise and Peter were well into stage two of their make-out session. Bernard felt violated by the spectacle. He glanced over his shoulder to where Mark and Lucas were busy playing backgammon while Stewart tended to the washing up, having assured his guests that he and Mark had extensively negotiated the duty roster. Bernard could only imagine how exciting their evenings must be. He wondered aloud on the whereabouts of Jim and Hawaii Five-0 and was informed they were burning off lunch.
‘They went for a walk? I would have tagged along if I’d known.’
‘I’m sure they’d be delighted.’ Mia leant forward to extricate some lint caught between her toes. ‘If you hurry, you should be able to catch them.’
‘Why are you smiling?’
‘Because the exercise is currently being carried out in the second bedroom.’ She sipped her wine. ‘Did you happen to take a look at those designs I made?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t sure if this was the right forum to mention it. I think they’re brilliant, inspired …’
Mia narrowed her eyes. ‘Is this an alcohol accolade?’
‘Not at all. I mean, anyone can make a living doing something, take me for example, but very few people are truly gifted at what they do.’
She gave him an affectionate nudge. Bernard swung his glass aloft to stop it from spilling. ‘Oy!’ he shouted. ‘Get your mitts out of there!’
Peter immediately slid his hand out from under Cherise’s jumper.
‘You’re defending her honour now?’ Mia observed. ‘I barely recognise you.’
After yet another bout of eating—sugar orientated—Mia happened upon Bernard’s Hits of the 80s discs and insisted playing them in order. Infirmity kept her pinned to the couch, where she swung her cane like a drum-majorette in time to the music. The rest of the guests took to the parquetry and danced appallingly until midway through disc two when they began falling back onto the cushions like contestants in a dance marathon. At around seven, Jim decided his pleasure threshold had been reached. He violently shook his date, who’d lost consciousness trying to soldier through the remaining rocket ship birthday cake.
‘He’s plastered,’ Jim proclaimed to the room. ‘I’m stranded in this pristine backwater! Someone call a cab, I’m starting to suffocate from all this fresh air.’
Mark eventually located his phone. ‘I’m ordering a taxi,’ he announced.
‘Hold the anchovies,’ Peter cried. Cherise collapsed with laughter. Bernard and Mia exchanged withering looks.
‘Are you trying to get rid of us?’ Bernard enquired of his hosts.
‘Not at all,’ Stewart lied.
‘Absolutely,’ Mark confirmed.
They decided they could manage with two cabs. Mark finished negotiating with the operator and turned to the huddle of tired faces. ‘Looks like it’ll be at least a two-hour wait.’
‘Sweet Jesus, kill me now,’ Jim moaned, falling back onto the couch.
Bernard watched Carl inch away and disappear around the doorway of the spare bedroom.
It took a little over three hours for the first of the taxis to arrive. The Sudanese driver gazed blankly at the seven people standing on the doorstep. ‘I can only take four,’ he said.
‘Where’s the other taxi?’ Mia asked.
‘No other, only me.’
‘We ordered two.’
Jim pushed past her and opened the passenger door. ‘Could you get the boot please—I have to put my pressies in.’
The driver lifted a lever and the boot popped open. Jim signalled for his date to begin loading the car.
‘Call dispatch and see if there’s another one on its way,’ Mia said.
The driver shrugged. He picked up his radio and engaged in a brief, static-impeded conversation that seemed little more than a greeting. ‘No more taxi,’ he told Mia. ‘It’s Christmas—very busy tonight.’
‘I know, that’s why we ordered two over two hours ago.’
The driver smiled. ‘Very busy,’ he repeated.
‘Order us another one please,’ Mia demanded. Bernard hoped she wasn’t about to shake her crutch at the man.
The driver picked up his radio. The conversation lasted slightly longer this time. Meanwhile, Jim made a round of cheek kisses before pushing the Hawaiian shirt into the back seat and diving in after.
The driver replaced the handset and grinned uneasily at Mia. ‘There should be another one soon.’
‘When?’ she asked.
Standing at her shoulder, Bernard thought he saw the man swallow nervously. ‘Two, maybe three—’
‘Three hours!’ Mia shrieked. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
The driver smiled again, without baring his teeth this time. ‘Christmas,’ he offered, ‘very busy.’
‘Fucking Christmas.’
‘And a Happy New Year,’ chorused Jim. ‘Who’s coming with us?’
Bernard forfeited his spot in favour of Cherise because he couldn’t endure another minute of her tittering. Peter wasn’t about to miss his seasonal lay and squashed in beside Jim. Lucas was contemplating nursing Cherise because he’d made a binding promise to his mum he’d be home for Christmas.
‘I’ll take you, Lucas,’ Angela offered. ‘Lord knows I’ve worked up a tolerance for a bit of champers and wine over the decades. Plus, I stopped drinking hours ago when my ulcer kicked in.’
‘Maybe you can come inside and say hello,’ Lucas offered. ‘Mum would love to see you.’
‘Like hell she would.’ Angela turned to Bernard, resting her cheek alongside his. ‘I’m looking forward to catching up.’
Bernard put his hand inside his pocket and pulled forth the matchbox, using his thumb to slide out the cardboard drawer.
Angela peered into the box. ‘It’s a cornflake.’
Bernard urged her to take a closer look, rattling the box to insinuate she should hold it.
Angela gazed at the flake, contemplating its contours. There was something instantly familiar about it, something reassuring over and above its connotation to breakfast. ‘Australia,’ she said brightly. ‘It’s the exact shape of Australia.’
Bernard gave a stiff nod. ‘One in a billion.’
Angela admired the object a moment longer before sealing the precious oddity back inside its cardboard chamber. She held the matchbox out to her brother.
‘Consider it yours,’ he told her. ‘A Chrissie pressie.’
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she mocked.
‘I was going to give it to Mia, but I think you should have it.’
‘So I wasn’t even your first choice—for a cornflake?’
‘Pity it wasn’t a chip. You could have worn it on your shoulder.’ He pulled her in for a hug before she could berate him.
Jim thrust his torso out through the window of the departing taxi and performed an excitable Texan farewell—‘Bye ya’ll!’—brandishing his princess cap through the evening sky.
Angela waited for Lucas to finish saying goodbye to Mia before embracing her sister-in-law almost fondly. ‘You and Lucas … it’s a small world.’
‘It’s a small town.’
Feeling magnanimous, Angela said, ‘I’d offer you a ride but the back seat is …’
‘Backed up,’ Mia suggested, having already noted the belongings blocking the rear window. ‘Lucas told me your unit was finished.’
‘It is. I thought I’d do some downsizing—live a bit more minimally. Only I don’t know what to do with it all. It’s too g
ood to junk. I’ll probably end up carting it back inside again.’
‘With any luck someone might steal your car.’ Mia waved and headed back inside.
In the living room, Stewart was dancing to ‘99 Luftballons’ as Mark impelled the vacuum around the dining chairs.
‘What’s happening?’ Stewart asked, rotating his hips methodically.
‘It’s going to be hours.’ Mia carefully eased down onto the couch. ‘We might have to stay the night.’
‘Monopoly!’ Mark cheered and dropped the vacuum to fetch the board.
When Bernard returned from the toilet, Mia informed him, ‘We’re trapped and about to be tortured with board games.’
Two hours later she was well on her way to bringing everyone to financial ruin. She played listlessly, buying up green houses and red hotels out of a sense of obligation, taking no joy in the acquirement. Mark, viciously competitive by nature, swore blue murder as she ambled round the board, managing to evade the money-grubbing traps he’d painstakingly laid. He went berserk when she leapfrogged his hotel-laden Bond Street to spend the night in her Park Lane hotel.
‘What do you want?’ she barked. ‘Is it the money? Is that it? Because I’ll pay you the money …’ She snatched a handful of the multicoloured bills heaped haphazardly on the table beside her (from which Bernard had been secretly borrowing), and held them out to her opponent. ‘How much will it take to make you happy?’ She flapped the wad of money in the air. ‘Will this about cover it?’
‘I don’t want your charity,’ he muttered.
‘For God’s sake.’ She moved her Scottie dog back one place. ‘There, I made a mistake—how much do I owe you?’
‘Don’t lie, I saw you roll a five.’
‘Well, I got tired!’ Mia shouted. ‘I liked the look of your hotel more than mine.’
‘That’s true,’ Stewart reminded Mark. ‘Yours all come with spa baths and twenty-four-hour room service.’
‘Fine,’ Mark snapped, wanting to win more than he cared about being patronised. ‘I’ll take your money but only because you’re staying under my roof tonight.’
Stewart dropped out soon after. Bernard was down to his last few twenties—Mia having put an end to his pilfering. He finally opted to lean on her for a loan. ‘I’m in over my head,’ he confessed. ‘There’s no way I can meet the repayments.’
‘I’ll buy something off you,’ Mark exclaimed.
‘The bailiff’s after my investment properties,’ Bernard whispered.
She pushed a pile of money in his direction. ‘This game should be called Ideology not Monopoly.’
Bernard smiled as he laid out his cash into neat colour-coded piles.
He lasted another roll of the die before falling to Mark’s empire and joining Stewart on the couch with brandy and a plate of mince pies (which had to be secreted past Mia) in order to mindlessly enjoy the final half of Home Alone 2.
Bernard lay awake on the couch listening to the phases of the dishwasher. The birthday banners twinkled. The glow-in-the-dark Halloween ghosts shone phosphate green. Bats bobbed overhead. And he could just make out the white outline of the bridal tree. When the dishwasher’s final air-drying cycle was complete, the machine gave a self-satisfied shudder and switched itself off with a click. He nestled into his pillow, enjoying the apple-fresh scent of someone who bothered to use fabric softener.
He dreamt he was riding in an old-fashioned train carriage, sandwiched between Lucas and Neil, with Mia and Terri and Jim sitting opposite. Then Angela was beside him, she reached out to pull down the window shade. Bernard yanked it up again. Mia began scolding him, telling him to stop being difficult. She elbowed him in the side. He opened his eyes to see what was pushing him. Mia.
‘Did you just prod me with your stick?’
‘I’m not supposed to bend down,’ she said.
‘You’re like Fagin bullying his urchins.’
‘I can’t sleep, it’s too stuffy and they’ve locked the bloody window.’
‘So go wake them up.’
Her eyes were black marble in the darkness. ‘Mind if I sit next to you?’
He moved his legs up the sheet to make room and held out a hand to help her down.
‘I was thinking about our house,’ she said. ‘I feel sad. I never really thought I’d never not be coming back.’
‘I don’t follow—there were about five negatives in that statement.’
‘All right.’ She sighed. ‘I always thought I would be coming back.’
‘You want the house? I’d be happy to swap.’
‘I don’t want it on my own,’ she murmured. ‘I miss you.’
Bernard sat up, trying to read her pale face.
‘Why didn’t you do anything when Lucas came back? Why didn’t you argue, tell him to fuck off and leave us be?’
‘It wasn’t my place. It was up to you to be angry.’
‘You didn’t put up any resistance so I figured you didn’t care. It was the same as when I left the first time.’
‘I was furious.’
‘You were surprised; there’s a difference.’
‘You wouldn’t have listened.’
‘You settled down so comfortably without me, in the end I figured I’d done you a favour. It was refreshing with Lucas. He was always so aware of me—I put him on edge. It was nice to know I could still do that.’
‘You’re doing it to me right now.’
‘Am I? Good.’ She stroked his hand with one finger. ‘I loved being cared for by you, until Lucas came back and took me away and you didn’t say a word. I thought you must have been dying to return to Terri.’ Her finger paused. ‘Were you?’
‘Yes, but only for the sake of my ego.’ He watched a cardboard skeleton fade in and out in the gloom. ‘I was hurt, very hurt.’
‘Will you take me back?’
‘Jesus!’
Mia began to cry. ‘I understand if you won’t …’
He crawled out from the sheet and nestled into his wife’s tiny body; pressed his lips to her head, smelt her scalp, still moist from the pillow. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ he whispered.
‘I love you,’ she murmured into his chest.
‘I love you too,’ he said, removing a strand of her hair from the tip of his tongue.
EPILOGUE
Ruby sat on her couch, back to the armrest, legs outstretched. Scattered about her were a number of damp, scrunched tissues, which she’d been using all afternoon to drive the mucus in her head out through her nose. Feeling a chill, she adjusted the mohair rug and in so doing exposed a foot. She scowled at an unsightly bunion and snatched her hoof back under the rug. On the television a family slid down a waterslide together, laughing as the azure waters splashed up to meet them—an advertisement for the Gold Coast where it was Summer Everyday! Hell on earth. She sniffed and turned the lozenge over in her mouth; the menthol seeped into her saliva and trickled down her throat, doing little to dissolve the painful lump plugging her oesophagus. Her program resumed and she wriggled a little higher in her seat to get a better view.
A studio was divided into three makeshift kitchens: red, blue and green. Bernard opened an envelope and read out the name of the first contestant.
‘Collar’s too tight,’ Angela observed from the recliner. ‘It’s giving him a turkey neck.’
The camera panned to the audience to reveal a young woman rising to her feet. She pressed her hands to her face in mock astonishment before jogging down the aisle and into Bernard’s awaiting arms.
‘We’ve seen that before,’ Ruby muttered.
Bernard spoke a few words to the girl, asking what she’d be preparing and where she came up with the idea for her recipe. The series was a spin-off from a recipe-sharing blog, Communal Cooking—essentially a televised cooking competition based on regular people’s recipes. One of the major supermarket chains had come on board as a sponsor, followed by a prominent kitchen manufacturer.
Bernard called for the second cont
estant. The camera zoomed in on an elderly Italian woman in black widow’s weeds. The dumpling jumped out of her chair and danced about in the arms of her two daughters.
Ruby yawned. ‘Doesn’t appear to be grieving to me.’
The woman peeled herself away from her daughters and ran jiggling down the aisle, pitching herself into Bernard’s arms. He made some cheesy comment about loving his job, causing his sister to wince.
The third contestant was a nondescript father of three and stay-at-home dad; hearing this the audience broke into spontaneous applause. ‘You’d think he was curing cancer on the side,’ Angela scoffed.
Bernard turned to face her, reminding viewers not to go anywhere, they’d be right back after the break, and when they returned they’d be ‘cooking with gas!’
The program cut to an advertisement for the sponsoring supermarket: a series of images depicting tractors ploughing paddocks and farmers picking oranges that equated to mothers and sons selecting fresh produce at their stores.
‘I’m surprised this made prime time,’ Ruby mused, dabbing Sorbolene beneath her nose. ‘Sunday night!’
‘Give it six months and it’ll be playing midweek afternoons.’
‘I thought so too.’ Ruby screwed the cap back onto the tub. ‘I can see why they chose Bernard, he brings a nice debonair feel to the whole thing.’
Angela pulled the recliner lever and the footrest retracted. ‘Kettle time.’
Ruby watched her friend’s trajectory across the imitation oak floor, almost as good as the real thing. ‘Open a pack of bikkies while you’re at it.’ She found the remote tucked down the cushion beside her and muted the bumptious adverts, informing the TV, ‘If I don’t have it by now, I’ve learnt to live without it.’
The Grand Tour Page 29
