Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  In the velvety darkness, Patsy Kelly brushed past Jo’s face like a bewildered moth in a broom cupboard. ‘I’m going to start,’ she said. She groped her way up the stairs to the light and the lectern and, after the inevitable painful screech, the sound system came to life. ‘Order! Grandmothers. Mothers. Daughters. Your attention, if you please.’

  A low and insistent ‘shoosh’ rolled over the hall. Cutlery was instantly abandoned. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. The mothers sat bolt upright as if they were still under the threat of demerit points and detention. Some of them even peeked under their tables to make sure their shoes were shined.

  ‘What a marvellous occasion, special guests, ladies, Old Girls one and all!’ Mrs Kelly clapped to begin a ripple of appreciation that swelled to an enthusiastic wave of applause accompanied by the rattle of expensive jewellery.

  Jo was still watching through the thick curtains—couldn’t tear herself away—as Mrs Kelly delivered the expected tedious platitudes about school tradition. Most of the mothers had already tuned out and were observing their former classmates and fellow parents just as Jo was observing them. ‘How do I compare?’ was what most of them were thinking. The answer would be calculated by using an infinitely complex equation of weight, youth, beauty, fame and wealth. Jo turned away knowing that, by any measure, they thought her beneath them. If they ever thought about her at all.

  This afternoon Jo had one duty to perform. She was to introduce Mrs Carol Holt as the chair of the fundraising committee, thank her for her efforts and present her with a bouquet. Jo crept down the stairs and located the tribute on a trestle table backstage. Yellow and long-stemmed, there must be three dozen roses in the massive arrangement. No doubt Didi had chosen the shade to match the décor in Carol’s cliff-top home in Dover Heights. Jo had been there once, some years ago, for a charity cocktail party and the dramatic effect of sumptuous gold brocade drapes billowing in the breeze blown from an endless expanse of cobalt Pacific Ocean had stayed with her.

  Would her husband be padding barefoot across that same room tonight to worship at the gilded shrine of the Widow Holt? Painful imaginings crowded in. Jo saw the two of them having sex in Carol’s bed. Maybe she liked to throw open the doors to the terrace and cavort nude with the breeze coming in on her bare backside.

  After duly boring every female in the room rigid, Patsy Kelly introduced Mrs Blanchard, who, she announced, would be giving thanks and presenting a token of the college’s appreciation to Mrs Holt. Jo addressed the microphone and did just that, sparing no superlatives. ‘Dedicated’, ‘tireless’, ‘selfless’. She spread the compliments as thick as the almond paste on the celebratory cake sitting in state nearby.

  The guests applauded once more, this time adding a few high-pitched ‘woohoos’ and cheers. Carol sat for a moment at her table—a lolling, great basking shark, greedily sucking in the adulation like plankton—and then hauled herself upright. She made for the stage, pulling down the hem of her teal silk-taffeta skirt to cover chubby knees and tugging at the diamante buttons of her matching jacket that threatened to pop over her expansive bosom.

  Carol took her place centre stage and Jo stood behind and bowed her head. She was suitably attired in a black suit and pumps, her coppery curls scraped and flattened against her skull and held down with clips. She supposed she was almost invisible against the dark wall behind her.

  After the predictable gushing rollcall of thanks, Carol’s voice dropped to a theatrical sotto voce as she added a heartfelt, deeply personal note: ‘And finally, I would like to thank every single one of you here today, and of course my dear, dear friend Didi, for your unending support and cherished fellowship following the untimely death of my beloved husband, Senator Holt, last year. You have all been such a comfort to me.’

  Not as much a comfort as my husband has been, Jo thought bitterly.

  ‘The senator...’ Carol faltered here and trembled with emotion. However Jo, standing behind her, noted that not one hair in her lacquered blonde bob moved in sympathy. ‘He would have been so gratified to see all the mothers and daughters here today turned out so beautifully. And he would have been so impressed to see how Darling Point is continuing to lead the community in family values and moral standards, and to exceed all expectations. It is now more than ever, in these uncertain times, that we must show such leadership.’

  Jo had the urge to push the fatuous old fake right off the stage and fair into the middle of the front table. Hopefully Carol might end up with one high heel up each of Didi’s perfectly Dior-powdered nostrils. Instead, Jo kept her hands demurely clasped in front of her and squeezed her fingers until her knuckles turned white. There was no doubt Carol Bloody Holt had a thick hide.

  ‘Thank you so much, one and all, for coming to share this truly faaabulous day!’ she trilled.

  There was another thunderous round of applause as Carol beamed at her loyal subjects. It wouldn’t have been surprising if she had executed a royal wave. In fulfilment of her duties, Jo disappeared side stage to retrieve the thankyou gift. She approached the lectern, her step steady, her mind clear, to where Carol was standing, having taken a discreet step aside from the microphone to wait for her massive floral accolade.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Holt, for your kind words,’ said deputy headmistress Josephine Blanchard. Her voice rang with the authority of the school’s brass bell and could be heard with perfect clarity right at the back of the room.

  Remembering her speech now, as Jo stood on the street outside the gates of Darling Point a year later, she could not quite understand how she had managed to remain so calm and considered, especially as every nerve ending in her body was screeching with indignation like the alarm on one of JJ’s prestige motors. No-one in the room that day saw how tightly her left hand gripped the side of the lectern to stop herself from falling into oblivion.

  ‘It’s always so difficult to think of a gift for the woman who has everything,’ she continued graciously.

  Jo paused then, and in this split second saw thirty years of her life at Darling Point about to collapse like a row of balanced dominoes. She handed over the flowers and saw Carol totter slightly under the weight of them.

  ‘I thought you might also like this,’ Jo announced into the microphone as she reached down and grasped a leather handle. ‘It’s my husband’s overnight bag with his toothbrush, shaver and supply of Viagra. I thought it might come in handy when next you travel together as husband and wife.

  ‘Oh, and I found your underpants under my sofa, Carol—they’re in there too. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to wash them.’

  Jo dumped the bag on the lectern, turned smartly on one modest heel and exited stage left.

  The room was silent for what seemed to everyone in attendance a long, long time. There was still no sound coming from the auditorium as Jo pushed open the emergency exit and bolted up the concrete path to the red-brick admin building, a shrill siren heralding her escape. It was only later that she read in the newspaper gossip columns how the hall had eventually given way to ‘pandemonium’ and then ‘unbridled hilarity’. That was just one of many stories Didi hadn’t been able to stage-manage.

  Jo flew into her office, grabbed her laptop computer and pitched a few items into a cardboard box—framed pictures of James and Tory, her little clay Venus, a trench coat from the back of the door and, oddly, a potted maidenhair fern that she had bought only the week before. She ran to the car park, threw the box into the back seat of her Mercedes and herself behind the wheel.

  Standing at the crime scene this morning, Jo recalled how her car had skidded on the quartz driveway and smashed into the wrought-iron front gate. Looking in the rear-vision mirror, she had been appalled to see a sandstone pillar stagger and crash to the ground and, with it, the gargoyle tumbling and exploding, showering her car boot with rubble.

  It seemed impossible that the deranged woman who had made that speech in front of the mothers and daughters of Darling Point and then driven her c
ar pell-mell into this fence could have been her. Now, one year later, Jo smoothed her hair back and willed herself to move on. The morning was getting away and she was to meet her friend Suze for lunch. She ran the

  next bit.

  Chapter Six

  Jo looked at her watch. ‘They’ll all be in chapel now.’

  ‘Yup. And the mothers will be praying that old Reverend Pottharst gets on with it so they can get to lunch and swill more champagne. God, that man was a punish. The whole day was insufferable,’ said Suze.

  They both paused to think of the scene being played out in St Anne’s. The familiar chords of an old English hymn—‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ or ‘Let Saints on Earth in Concert Sing’—would be ringing up, up to the Huon-pine rafters, bouncing off the milky leadlight window panes and lifting every voice in God’s praise. Then chatter would be quieted. Hearts stilled. The brims of a multitude of cream straw hats circled with purple and gold ribands would dip to folded hands. Their mothers’ fair heads would bow. And the women of the Darling Point Ladies’ College would pray.

  After spending thirty-one years in their company Jo had a good idea of what they would be petitioning for. Some of them would pray for the victims of some disaster they had witnessed on the morning television news—a plea for mercy for the poor wretches caught in the earthly hell of a tsunami, flood, bushfire or earthquake. The wives and daughters of wealthy diplomats would ask for peace in their homelands—a prayer that had apparently gone unanswered for millennia. As for the rest? Suze was probably right. Not for forgiveness or grace or mercy. Not these days. Those virtues—along with modesty, moderation and humility—were decidedly old-fashioned.

  ‘Tell me, I’ve forgotten...What was that bloody college motto again?’ Suze chased a garlicky mussel through a tangle of tagliatelle and speared it with her fork.

  ‘Per Perseverantia nos Vadum Increbresco. With perseverance we shall prevail,’ Jo recited. After so long she had this phrase embroidered not only on her old school blazer, but on her beating heart.

  ‘That’s it. What a joke!’ Suze swallowed and went for another bite. ‘Prevail with money, more like. I’ll bet they’re all praying desperately for more of that too.’

  The time spent in the company of the good Christians of Darling Point had done nothing to ignite Suze’s religious feelings, but she did claim to possess a deep spirituality. Suze was always incinerating stinking bundles of sage or lighting candles to appease some deity or other. She was a spiritual and pyro kleptomaniac. The sticker on the back window of her mini-van read my other car is a broom, and today, looking at Suze, with her dyed-black mop of hair dragged up on top of her head and tied with a paisley scarf, her big dark eyes ringed with kohl, Jo could almost believe it.

  Suze had come straight from her florist shop, Geraniums Red, to meet Jo for an early quick lunch in a cheap and cheerful little bistro in Surry Hills, and still had the odd sprig of greenery caught in her hair.

  ‘Of course the twins wanted me to go, but I explained that some of us have to work for a living,’ said Suze.

  Jo ignored the sarcasm. Suze wouldn’t be the only mother who couldn’t make it because she couldn’t get time off from work. She conveniently overlooked that there were many parents who made incredible sacrifices to send their children to Darling Point. ‘Never mind,’ Jo said. ‘But you’d better go next year. It will be the last time you’ll have the chance.’

  ‘I can’t wait until the girls graduate and I never have to see the joint again,’ said Suze. ‘Although I should have slipped Pottharst a few bucks to get St Dorothy to give me a blessing.’

  ‘What?’ said Jo.

  This was the millionth time Jo had asked her friend to explain herself. Suze had this cryptic way of verbalising her thoughts so that you had to stop and ask what she meant. It was her way of maximising attention from others, Jo decided. Something everyone did. She had observed her students do it year after year. Everyone developed unique personalities—niche-marketed, if you like—in order to draw attention to themselves. Not consciously. It was just human nature. Yet despite what her students may have thought, there was not one of them who had gone unnoticed by Jo. Some of the girls had tried to be plain and ordinary, hoping to blend in with their surroundings—like stick insects—but it was their determination to blend in that, in the end, made them so fascinating and notable. Like, in fact, stick insects—one of the most celebrated camouflaged creatures on earth.

  Jo figured that every human being would find some way to be remembered. Even the invisible person who lived next door and who ‘always had time to say hello and goodbye, but kept to himself ’, would make headlines either by blowing up a bus or being found as a skeleton sitting in a lounge chair nine months later, TV remote still in hand. But would she, Josephine Margaret Blanchard, be remembered?

  Suze clicked her fingers at the waiter for another glass of wine and interrupted Jo’s musings.

  ‘St Dorothy? Who?’ Jo repeated.

  ‘The patron saint of florists! Don’t you think it’s weird she was beheaded? And that she’s always painted with roses? Have you ever heard the expression to “deadhead” the roses? Every time I’m hacking into a bunch with the secateurs I’m reminded of what sick bastards all those popes were.’

  ‘Suze!’ Jo reprimanded. She’d never become used to her friend insulting the Christian faith. She turned her attention to her grilled veal cutlet and mixed leaves.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Suze. She scraped off the last traces of her cherry-red lipstick with a table napkin. ‘Don’t tell Father Patrick I said that. So, anyway, how is he?’

  ‘He just got back from Rome last week. He’s been on a spiritual retreat.’

  ‘For a priest who’s taken a vow of poverty he clocks up a hell of a lot of frequent-flyer miles.’

  ‘He might be taking up a post in Asia soon—in the Philippines or Taiwan. Most of the Jesuits do it for a while.’ Jo found the prospect depressing.

  ‘That sucks,’ said Suze. ‘I know how much you’ll miss him.’

  ‘We’ve known each other since we were at kindy. He’s my best friend...You know, apart from you.’ Even as she said this, Jo wondered if it was true. Since they’d both left Darling Point it had been difficult for her and Suze to make time to meet, and when they did, they found it harder and harder to make themselves understood to each other.

  Suze thrust the bread basket across the table. Jo made a quick calculation and took the smallest roll. She always chose the slimmer slice of cake, the entrée instead of the main, the glass half-empty, while Suze couldn’t help but drain the bottle and demolish the loaf.

  Jo reached for her barely touched glass of wine and imagined that everyone in the dining room must think them an odd pair. She in her slim-cut black trousers and spotless white jacket, her unruly curls carefully pinned and tamed; Suze in her bright gypsy skirt and cheesecloth shirt, scarves dangling and bracelets clanking with every move.

  When Jo had interviewed her for the payroll clerk’s job at Darling Point six years ago, Suze had been a washed-out mum with two young daughters and the weight of the world on her broad shoulders. She hadn’t expected to get the job and was only just qualified. But there had been a determination in her that Jo had admired. The way Suze set her heart-shaped face to the world and dared it not to love her. The unruly eyebrows that were puzzling and thinking things through. The weary yet defiant grin that said to Jo: ‘I’ll give you a run for your money. Just give me a chance.’

  Jo had given her that chance, and over the years watched Suze fluff her feathers and grow to rule the roost in her domain behind the frosted-glass door that read Staff Only. Sitting around the table in the staffroom they’d shared countless pots of tea, homemade cakes, salad sandwiches and cheap champagne in plastic cups. And with all that had come the exchange of children’s photos and birthday cards, confidences, silly jokes and the odd tear.

  It was because Suze was so different to the rest of the teaching and administrativ
e staff that Jo had sought her out. There was a lively spark there she found irresistible. Suze was no academic nor diplomat. She could be wildly illogical, infuriatingly opinionated, stubborn and rude. And, as she would no doubt say herself, those were her good points. Her enthusiasms for all kinds of New Age chicanery—feng shui, crystal healing, colour therapy—were the subject of much eye-rolling in the staff kitchen, but Jo ignored the bemused looks. She was fascinated by Suze’s endless capacity to ‘believe’.

  When Jo’s life fell apart, when everyone else had deserted her, Suze was by her side—her arms full of flowers, her heart brimming with sympathy and her big, loud mouth ready to dump bucketloads of righteous indignation.

  Suze had a different view of their friendship. There was nothing random about it. When Suze had first sat in front of Jo’s orderly desk and looked into her kind, grey eyes she had felt a deep sense of calm. Right then she was sure Jo had been sent by her guardian angel. She was a saintly presence in a sensible navy suit and black velvet headband.

  ‘I’m practising creative visualisation,’ Suze would say as she munched on fatty sausage rolls from the tuckshop. ‘I’m meditating on good fortune coming my way. I’m going to attract success. The universe will provide.’

  ‘I think it’s called dreaming about winning the lottery, Suze,’ Jo would reply as she picked at her small salade niçoise. ‘And I doubt the universe has got anything to do with it.’

  Jo was amazed when, in the middle of last year, the universe had provided and Suze won three hundred thousand dollars in Oz Lotto. She quit Darling Point Ladies’ College, took the twins to Disneyland and finally opened the florist shop she had always dreamed of. Jo had stood on the footpath on a cool spring evening wielding a giant pair of scissors and cut the ribbon to Geraniums Red. And as friends and family cheered Suze’s good fortune, Jo had to wonder...What might the universe have granted her if she’d been brave enough to make a wish?