Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  Talking more on that night in a quiet corner of the ballroom, they discovered they had much in common. They were both at university, Jo in her last year studying teaching and JJ in the last year of his part-time commerce degree. He’d spent a couple of years travelling in Europe and working odd jobs before he’d returned to ‘knuckle down’.

  As the daughter of Reverend Albert Brown, from Leura in the Blue Mountains, Jo had attended DPLC on a bursary. The scholarship would ensure she’d have the ‘best education’ and ‘experience all life had to offer’. JJ’s parents, Mr and Mrs Fred Blanchard, Kogarah, Sydney, owned a panel-beating shop and used-car yard and had worked hard, saved diligently, to send their son to Canonbury, where a boy might ‘make something of himself’ with ‘people who mattered’.

  That summer of 1988, the year of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations, was a bright, golden time of fireworks, flags and tall ships when anything seemed possible. Any dream could be fulfilled. After all, convicts from prison hulks had become respectable landowners and pillars of society in the Colony of New South Wales, the Lucky Country.

  Jo had found a job in the kiosk at the Hyde Park Barracks dispensing ice-cream cones to hordes of tourists. JJ had worked in the family car yard and, in whatever free time he had, picked up Jo at Circular Quay in his brand-new topless Leyland Mini Moke. He had driven, bare-chested, down New South Head Road while she stripped to her bikini in the front seat. They sunned themselves on the lawns at Redleaf Pool, Double Bay, and shared plastic bags of cooked prawns with fresh lemons and warm bottles of riesling.

  What had it been about JJ that made Jo want to share the rest of her days with him?

  ‘He’s a Canonbury boy,’ her mother boasted to anyone who’d listen. ‘In the First Fifteen in Rugby and the First Eight in rowing. Very nice, hard-working family. And he’s going places, mark my words.’

  ‘Yes, a very nice chap. He and Josephine will make a good team. They’re both hard-working, decent young people,’ her father had said.

  ‘She’s the daughter of a reverend,’ Mrs Blanchard had said when she presented Josephine Brown to her friends.

  ‘Oooh,’ they’d cooed. ‘That’s lovely. Having a churchman in the family’s always useful. They’re not Catholic, are they?’

  And driving Jo home to her room in her aunt’s house in Annandale, JJ had teased her with what his father had said about her.

  ‘Good looker. Got her head screwed on. And she can parallel park as well as any bloke. Don’t let her get away, son.’

  And with every nod of approval from their families they had moved closer to the inevitable.

  One night, they’d pashed on a blanket in a sandy corner of Nielsen Park, Vaucluse, overlooking Shark Bay, and as the darkness descended, made love. Jo remembered JJ lying with her on the still-warm grass, but unlike the two boys she’d been intimate with before, he had sought her hand, squeezed it and said: ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she had replied. As they walked along the beach, the stars wheeled overhead, the tide caressed their toes and blessed them both. They made a promise on the pointer star of the constellation of the Southern Cross to be together, forever.

  For the rest of that summer they wandered hand in hand through the streets of the Eastern Suburbs. They lingered in Centennial Park and loitered in Watsons Bay. They rowed out from Camp Cove in a stolen wooden dinghy at dusk and JJ pointed out the twinkling lights of mansions and declared they would live there one day, if that’s what Jo wanted. She did want that. She wanted anything he did.

  They would be a couple to be reckoned with, JJ promised. Their kids would be the equal of any they’d been to school with. Jo agreed they would send their children to Darling Point and Canonbury, if that’s what JJ wanted. He did want that. Very much. Their parents had been pleased to hear all this. It was what they wanted for their children and future grandchildren.

  They were married the next November in her father’s church during the Rhododendron Festival. And when they posed for photographs in the Technicolor gardens, all was picture perfect—as if their lives were an Oscar-nominated movie produced by Samuel Goldwyn.

  Jo recalled the giddy excitement of that day. So, she had been in love. It was the years of nagging doubt that she’d made a mistake in marrying JJ that had eroded the memory. When she looked back at wedding photos she saw a startled, skinny girl swamped by a vast meringue of a wedding dress who should have seen more of the wide world before she agreed to marry.

  Funny, now Jo thought of it, how they never made a sequel to Guys and Dolls. How had gambling addict Sky Masterson and stitched-up Sister Sarah ever made a go of it? Had she spent her days hauling him out of gambling dens? Had he worn a blue serge suit and marched as an officer in the Salvos? What had become of them?

  ‘Anyway, enough about us!’ said Simon as he stood and clapped Jo’s mind to order. ‘You must get sick of people sitting on your couch giggling and holding hands like those couples on TV in home-loan commercials.’

  ‘Not that you ever see two boys in those ads,’ Kim added tartly.

  Jo nodded and smiled in agreement, pretending it wasn’t unusual for her to have two men in her living room who wanted to be married. Actually, it made a refreshing change. She was used to heterosexual couples sitting in front of her desk and projecting a sense of smug entitlement or surly defensiveness because they’d paid twenty-five thousand dollars a year and more to send their offspring to Darling Point.

  ‘I’d be honoured to marry you,’ she heard herself say.

  Simon and Kim whooped in joyful stereo, leaped from the sofa and dragged Jo from her armchair to her feet. They caught her in a double bear hug and heartily kissed both her cheeks as she blushed and stuttered.

  ‘We brought a bottle of Moët to toast the occasion. Come on, Jo, where are the champagne glasses?’ called Kim as he commandeered the kitchen and began taking liberties with her cupboards.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I want to marry him,’ Simon whispered. ‘You gotta love a man who’s not afraid to rummage!’

  For the next hour—over the bottle of champagne and a plate of cheese, quince paste and olives unearthed by Kim from Jo’s fridge—she listened as they made excited plans for how the ceremony would go.

  ‘How did you find me, by the way?’ she ventured.

  ‘From your website,’ said Kim. ‘We looked at hundreds of them and yours was the best! We loved that proverb you quoted...What was it again?’

  ‘“Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow”,’ Simon recited. ‘We really liked that.’

  ‘And we loved the way you looked!’ Kim again. ‘In your black academic gown you looked like someone we could trust...’

  Simon finished the thought. ‘Although, you look way too young to have been a deputy headmistress. I thought you all looked like Minerva McGonagall.’

  Jo spluttered into her champagne.

  ‘Who?’ Kim was baffled.

  ‘In the Harry Potter books—you know: gorgeous Dame Maggie Smith. Oooh, I love her! She’s so elegant and grand. And I see, Jo, you’ve got a black cat.’

  ‘Minerva McGonagall is seventy years old!’ Jo protested. ‘She’s a witch!’

  ‘Oh, now I know who you’re talking about! Jeez, Simon!

  I don’t know what’s more embarrassing—that you’ve told Jo she looks like a witch or that you admit to watching Harry Potter films!’ Kim made disbelieving eyes at Jo.

  She was laughing by now. ‘I know, I know. People still have this idea that we’re all crusty old spinsters, but you’d be surprised. There are a lot of relatively young women who make it to the top of the profession. Sometimes a retirement can propel you there faster than you’d think. Or you end up in the job when it’s the last thing you expected.’ Jo thought of her successor at Darling Point and imagined she was shocked to find herself deputy head in circumstances bizarre enough to rock the staff of Hogwarts to the tips of their pointy hats. Jo was hoping she wouldn’t be pr
obed for the ugly details of her departure.

  ‘Are you married, Jo?’ Kim inquired.

  ‘Hello? She’s already passed the job interview.’ Simon squeezed Kim’s thigh in rebuke.

  ‘No, no, that’s fine. It’s a fair question.’ Jo affected a breezy reply. ‘I’m happily single and fancy-free at the moment.’ She forgave herself this white lie and reflected that she would probably be telling a lot more of them in her new profession.

  ‘Well, if you’re in the market for a partner, we can certainly recommend weddings. That’s where we met.’ Simon put his arm around Kim’s shoulders and nuzzled his neck.

  ‘Although I wouldn’t hold out much hope of meeting an eligible man at ours!’ Kim laughed.

  After they’d insisted on paying a deposit for her services and made another appointment to discuss their plans in detail, Jo saw them out. The lovers were still playfully shoving and kissing as they walked down her front path and she closed the door behind them.

  Jo turned to the old rosewood dresser and stared at the four fifty-dollar notes lying there. Yes. They were real. The first money she’d earned as a civil celebrant. She felt energised by the afternoon’s encounter and her mind was already whirling with how the ceremony might go. What she might say.

  She caught sight of herself in the dresser mirror. Her chestnut tangle was caught back with tortoiseshell clips, behaving itself for once, and her make-up was still in order. She appraised her outfit—small cultured-pearl earrings and matching double-strand necklace, grey silk blouse and neat black skirt. Did she look like someone you could trust?

  ‘Or someone you could cheat on?’ Jo muttered to her reflection, and wiped away plum lipstick with the back of her hand. She stripped off her jewellery and stared in the mirror again. Did she look like someone you could love? That’s what she really wanted to know.

  She hadn’t expected to be unloved at the age of forty-five. But that’s how she saw herself. What had she expected? That she would still be shouting at her children to turn down the music; battling for time in the bathroom; bustling out the door; kissing her family goodbye; teaching, shopping, cooking and kissing her family hello again.

  She had assumed that life would continue to propel her down the same familiar track and all she would have to do was hang on. Instead, the rattle and hum of teenagers and husband had become a distant echo. The train had unexpectedly pulled into a siding and left her standing on a deserted platform.

  The thought of it made her reach for the telephone.

  Chapter Eight

  It was nine o’clock that same Friday night—it had been a long day—and Jo was at her kitchen bench fussing over another cheese platter and listening intently to an impromptu lecture on the Catholic marriage ritual.

  ‘There are three questions at the heart of it,’ said Father Patrick. He paused to pour another glass of red wine, fished in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and stepped into the small courtyard. Jo took up the platter and followed. She laid out napkins on the wrought-iron garden table and sorted out an earthenware pot-plant saucer to serve as an ashtray.

  Patrick fired his cigarette, took a deep drag and recited: ‘Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? Will you honour each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives? Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?’

  He sat at the table, gulped his wine—a pause for emphasis—

  and said: ‘Now, with the best will in the world, Josephine, two men just can’t win that particular trifecta.’

  Trust Patrick Joseph Ignatius Gilmartin to draw a horse-racing analogy. He was a mad punter and the form guide was tucked into his backpack along with his Bible and BlackBerry. Patrick had been a Jesuit priest for a quarter of a century. He smoked and drank with enthusiasm and didn’t deserve to look almost a decade younger than his forty-five years. His plump round face, ruddy cheeks and twinkling green eyes were standard issue for a fresh-faced country pastor.

  ‘It seems unfair they can’t be married in a church,’ Jo mused. ‘They seem as much in love as anyone else.’

  ‘Christ, Jo! I’m the first to acknowledge that most churches don’t have the capacity to recognise that a lot of people are excluded,’ Patrick declared. ‘I reckon same-sex couples should have all the legal bells and whistles like everyone else, but in the Catholic Church—and here I quote—“the sacrament of marriage is only available to a man and woman who have a commitment to the bearing and nurturing of each other’s children”. End of sermon.’

  He sat back in his chair, pleased with this pronouncement, and stretched his legs that ended in a pair of scuffed boots Jo guessed were second-hand. Patrick took delight in telling her that his shirts and trousers came from St Vincent de Paul’s charity bin and that he was usually turned out for less than ten dollars. He boasted that he could board a flight overseas for a three-week spiritual retreat with only hand luggage. Of course, he didn’t object when Jo handed over one of JJ’s cashmere coats or fine wool suits that had been hanging, unworn, at the back of the wardrobe.

  They shared an easy, companionable pause in their conversation. It was a balmy autumn night and the residents of nearby apartment buildings were out on their balconies gathered around hissing gas barbecues. The familiar aroma of grilled meat and spicy marinades wafted on the air. Bottles clinked. People chattered and laughed. Somewhere a baby wailed. Jo found it comforting to be surrounded by the noisy pulse of domestic life. It was a sound she hadn’t often heard from the rear garden in Centennial Park.

  ‘They’ll kill you, you know.’ Jo indicated his cigarette.

  ‘No they won’t. My vices are the only thing keeping me alive!’ Patrick defiantly produced a smoky halo that hovered around his balding head.

  Jo laughed. She was proud, even vain, that her dear friend was a Jesuit priest. It was, she imagined, a badge of theological intellectualism lest anyone thought she was a naive product of Ye Merrie Olde Church of England Sunday School. The locals were intrigued whenever they saw her sitting gossiping with a priest on the garden seat outside St Bernadette’s. Especially when he was garbed in his snowy-white vestments embroidered with gold. And when they walked through the church rose gardens arm in arm, Jo liked to think that anyone observing them would assume they were debating the deep profundities of life. They didn’t know she had been gossiping with Patrick like this over a garden fence since she was six years old.

  Patrick Gilmartin had lived in the house next door to hers in the Blue Mountains village of Leura. Whether his parents had been attracted by the godly radiation emanating from St Luke’s and then moved in, or been somehow infected with it afterwards, Jo could never decide, but like most of the neighbours back then, they were avid churchgoers.

  Patrick had loved to play-act in the pulpit with Jo as his reluctant, restless congregation of one. She had never found the church to be a particularly inspiring or sacred place. All she saw were gloomy corners, musty kneeling cushions and pigeons that got trapped inside and thrashed and bashed their heads against the stained-glass windows, desperate to get out. She’d hated emptying the vases of Easter lilies and Mothering Sunday chrysanthemums left to wither on the altar. The water was a putrid green and the rotting smell made her retch. She dreaded the job of sweeping the glutinous globs of wedding rice that swelled in the rain and stuck to the front steps.

  Patrick, however, had been transported by the wonder of it all. He was fascinated by the blessed items on the altar. The cloths and candles and leather-bound prayer books, even the carvings at the end of the wooden pews delighted him. Jo hadn’t been surprised when he’d gone on to be a priest in the Catholic Church. He loved the elaborate tabernacles, golden chalices and carved silver censers. On her first overseas trip during a break from university, Jo had met up with Patrick in Rome and he’d taken her on a tour of the famous artworks of the Vatican. He’d related the provenance of hundreds of paintings, r
elics and statues with a deep reverence.

  Jo had been astounded by the craftsmanship and artistry in everything she saw, from the tiniest stitch of pure-gold thread in a liturgical vestment to the soaring grandeur of the Sistine Chapel. However, even as she stood under the vaulted glory of St Peter’s Basilica, the greatest holy site in Christendom, still she remained deaf to God’s entreaties. She’d always thought that Patrick and her father must be deeply disappointed in her.

  ‘Let’s talk about something interesting,’ Patrick said suddenly. ‘How’s your love life?’

  Jo snorted dismissively. The idea that she had a ‘love life’ was absurd.

  ‘I saw a picture of them in the paper this morning. He’s a bloody idiot, that ex-husband of yours. Doesn’t he know he looks like a prize fool?’ It wasn’t only Suze who was blunt with her opinions. How had Jo managed to end up with two best friends who always gave her straight-talk she didn’t want to hear?

  Jo had seen the photograph. It was a happy snap of the newly-minted couple in the social pages of the Wentworth Courier: Mr J.J. Blanchard and Mrs Carol Holt at the gala Roar Ball for Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. Mr Blanchard’s generous donation of a Mercedes ‘A’ Class raised $100,000 for the proposed new jungle habitat for a pair of Sumatran tigers.

  Jo supposed that Carol Bloody Holt was exactly the sort of expensive, stylish crocodile-hide handbag JJ should have on his arm at such social occasions if he was to catch the attention of the wealthy voters of the Eastern Suburbs.