Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  ‘What? You’re pissed.’ He was stepping away from her when Suze grabbed a fistful of finest wool-and-cashmere-blend sleeve.

  ‘I thought that’s where you spent most of your time these days, with the new missus. You really are a total arsehole. Why don’t you just pay Jo what you owe her?’

  JJ paused, then leaned forward to whisper in Suze’s ear: ‘And why don’t you mind your own business, you fat, ugly bitch.’

  Suze cackled. She screeched with laughter. She would have fallen over with hilarity if she didn’t have the urgent need to stand on tiptoes and whisper in JJ’s hairy earhole: ‘I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, but I don’t have to, now you’ve got old lady Holt to pull your tiny dick.’ He drew back from her. They stared at each other in a bloated thought-bubble of mutual loathing until it was punctured by razor-sharp consonants.

  ‘Tsk, tsk! We can’t have secrets here this evening! What, exactly, are you two characters up to?’

  Suze and JJ exhaled and deflated. They arranged civilised smiles and stood back to accommodate a tiny woman encrusted in black sequins and topped with a helmet of shiny, silver hair. She was, Suze knew immediately, Mrs Jennifer-Alison Strong, BA Hons MA MBA AM, chair of the DPLC Council of Governors and board member of Western Mining, Telstra, Nestlé and Coles Group Limited. Suze could recite this biography in the same way kindergarten children could parrot ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’.

  ‘Mr Blanchard! So good of you to come.’ Mrs Strong fixed JJ with beady eyes and a toothy smile that Suze estimated could only warm the heart of a white pointer shark. ‘We’re all looking to you to lead the bidding. Perhaps an exquisite Charles Blackman painting or etching would be the perfect thing for your new office at Parliament House?’

  JJ nodded deferentially. ‘Good evening, Mrs Strong. Wonderful to see you. Many thanks for your vote of confidence, but I’m not sure that any politician these days should be tempted to use the line: “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?”’ He offered an equally toothsome grin.

  ‘Oooh! Hadn’t thought of it that way.’ Jennifer-Alison hooted appreciatively. ‘But, yes. Of course. Quite right!’ She then dispensed JJ with brusque efficiency. ‘Now do excuse us, Mr Blanchard. I must have a private word with Mrs Reynolds.’

  Mrs Strong took Suze’s elbow in a vice-like grip and they set off. The crowd instantly parted before them, intrigued to see this unusual pairing. They gawped as if they were watching a tugboat towing the Queen Mary through Sydney Heads. Even though the champagne haze was turning everything in front of her into a sickening swill, Suze understood that for some privileged people, this must be the way they always saw the world—as a stately progress from the prow of a mighty ship.

  When they had apparently reached their destination—and Suze was confused to see it was a deserted spot near an exit sign and not the captain’s table—Jennifer-Alison said sternly: ‘Now, Mrs Reynolds, the downstairs ladies’ conveniences need toilet paper. Please see to it immediately.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ‘You can never underestimate what people will do for money,’ said Father Patrick as he handed a platter of ham sandwiches to Jo. She unwrapped sheets of plastic cling film and set the platter on the faded and cracked bench. ‘I’ve seen otherwise good people turn into irrational morons when they get the sniff of a few bucks. They come to church on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week lying and cheating and swindling their nearest and dearest. I should be way past being amazed, but I’m not.’

  ‘That’s a good thing,’ said Jo. ‘It means you’re not getting cynical.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mistake what I’m saying. I’m bloody cynical alright. It’s just that Jesus isn’t. That’s one more challenge he’s given me.’ Patrick acknowledged his Lord, who was nailed to a wooden crucifix on the wall above a hand-crafted spice rack. The small icon had been given the responsibility of ministering in the heavenly outpost of the kitchen in the hall at the rear of St Bernadette’s, Woollahra. ‘There’s a quote I like: “Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does.”’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Jo as she hunted through a drawer for teaspoons.

  ‘That it’s ironic that the poor bastards here today are probably the least cynical people I know. Oddly enough, most of ’em are hopeless romantics. They believe that tomorrow can be better. Meanwhile, all the cynics living in the swanky houses up and down the street outside think that things can only get worse. They act out of fear. As if they’re facing some terrible catastrophe. The blokes who are here for lunch are in the middle of a catastrophe. They’re on a first-name basis with it.’ He winked at Jo, stepped around her in the tiny kitchen and flicked the switch of an ancient urn. ‘Let’s just say, I find it an interesting perspective.’

  ‘So how many are we expecting?’ Jo surveyed the offerings of sandwiches, pastries and fruit piled on plastic platters.

  ‘About thirty in today, Father,’ a plump sixty-something woman in a smart plum-coloured suit announced from the doorway. She bustled into the cramped space, tying a floral apron over a bosom that expanded as if to suck in all the available oxygen. ‘Excuse me, dear,’ she said briskly.

  Patrick placed his hand in the small of Jo’s back and steered her towards the door. ‘The committee’s on deck,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Time for us to nick off.’

  ‘I’m opening up now! Elaine! Mugs! Sugar! Milk!’ the woman bellowed as she slid back the plywood panels in front of the bench.

  The first customer was revealed: a hunched figure who seemed to be entirely constructed from matted grey hair and bits of cardboard, like a pre-schooler’s project.

  Jo followed Patrick through the hall past a straggling queue of equally nondescript humans. She saw them out of the corner of her eye as a shabby, shuffling centipede, pungent with the odour of cigarettes, alcohol and stale sweat.

  ‘Look at this lot,’ he muttered. ‘ You don’t need to go to Karl Marx for an explanation. Jesus knew all about it before capitalism was even invented: “For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” That’s how it works these days.’

  ‘You and Jesus—bloody communists, the pair of you,’ Jo shot back.

  ‘Yeah. Who’d have thought a carpenter in ancient Nazareth could have predicted the American bank bail-out?’ Patrick took a yellowing plastic chair from a stack and dragged it across the wooden floor. Jo followed his cue and sat next to him.

  ‘I’d tell them off for smoking, but I’m dying for a durrie myself,’ said Patrick cheerfully. When he had taken the first drag of his cigarette and exhaled with satisfaction, he pointed to the matron in plum at the kitchen hatch who was now expertly taking orders and piling plates with food.

  ‘See her?’ he said. ‘Husband’s in the Bathurst lock-up. Doing five years for corporate fraud. Her offsider? Son’s in Berrima for drug manufacture and trafficking. Fifteen years. They amaze me, these women. Lesser types would be curled up in the foetal position. But here they are helping out. God bless ’em.’

  ‘She looks familiar.’ Jo indicated the shorter, slim woman and caught the glint of large diamonds on her fingers as she handed over steaming mugs of milky tea.

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised. The son went to Shore School. Father used to be a big wheel in the Old Boys’ Union. Mining exec. He would have been one of JJ’s mates. With the kid in the clink he’s a ruin now. Took retirement at sixty and went fishing. Poor, sad bastard.’

  Like Patrick, Jo should have been way past being amazed at the daily scandals of the wealthy, but she wasn’t. What parent, no matter how much money they had, could ever predict what their offspring might be capable of? A brief image of James taking mint tea in the caves of Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden flashed through her mind.

  ‘Is there anything you don’t know about the people around here?’ she asked him.

  ‘Plenty. But like you, what I haven’t seen, or haven’t been told, I can guess.’

  Jo picked at b
its of fluff on the thighs of her black trousers. ‘That’s the one thing I can’t forgive myself for,’ said Jo. ‘I should have seen what was happening with Rob and Suze and I had no idea. If I’d just asked a few questions I would have found out about the poker machines and everything. I’ve been bloody stupid, really. Obsessed with my own pathetic worries.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. You know I see all this on a daily basis—the complete and utter foolishness of humanity at large. But the person who appals me the most is my sister Sheila. She’s angling to get Mum into a home so she can get her claws on the house. I only found out last week.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Jo.

  ‘Yep. Somehow we can deal with the mortal sins of the whole human race—rape, murder and genocide—better than we can with the venial sins of our own flesh and blood or our best friends. It’s the old viper-in-the-nest routine. Isaiah 11:8: “The nursing child will play near a cobra’s hole, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.”’

  ‘You are a font of wisdom this afternoon, Father Gilmartin. So what am I to take from this one?’

  ‘Well, I take it to mean that being good or innocent is no protection. Chances are you’ll still get bitten. And as much as you and I like to think we’ve been around the block, we’re still naive.’

  ‘Suze says that trusting people can bring out the worst in them, but I hope I never become that cynical.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more. Just make sure you carry a big stick and know how to apply a tourniquet.’

  They sat for a while in silence and watched as the queue rapidly diminished. The women in the kitchen worked together with practised efficiency. At that moment Jo missed the mothers of Darling Point, especially the older ladies who worked on the committees. They were often great-aunts or grandmothers of the no-nonsense variety who never hesitated to pitch in. She’d often thought that if they were given the job of running the nation, the country would be as neat as a pin and free of graffiti, the road toll would be zero and all the trains would run on time...or be expelled. She could just see the Darling Old Girls giving the federal Cabinet the rounds of the kitchen and sorting out various political crises in short order, with plenty of time left for afternoon tea.

  The women of Darling Point were very sure in their purpose and place in the world. As one of them had explained after cornering Jo at a speech night: ‘When we all get together, there’s this sense of continuity and history. We are standard bearers for values and ideals which matter and are important. There’s a tradition of decency we have established here and we will not see it undermined.’ Jo had understood, although just who had handed them this flag for everyone else to march behind was unclear. It seemed that money purchased moral certainty, along with everything else.

  Jo had come to see that, in the end, what everyone was most concerned with was the survival of the old school itself. It was a boat at anchor in a sea of uncertainty. The institution of DPLC had lived on for a century while the names of the teachers and students there had long since faded. She may have wanted to change the world from that corner of privilege on the first floor at Darling Point, but she would have stood there at the window, mistress of all she surveyed—from the rose garden to the chapel and beyond to the harbour landing—and inevitably have come to the same conclusion. The cedar-panelled walls, the cathedral ceilings, the vast English walnut desk and leather chair would have seduced her. Jo had seen it so many times in so many private schools. The office of headmistress or headmaster inevitably became the captain’s quarters of a mighty ship with only one mission: Sail On! Repel All Boarders!

  ‘I met Michael Brigden the other night,’ she said casually, as if she’d run into him at a 7-Eleven.

  ‘Did you now? Very decent and generous bloke. I’ve got a lot of time for him,’ said Patrick. ‘And...?’ Of course he knew that if she’d brought up the encounter there was more to say.

  ‘His daughter Gemma wants me to perform her wedding, but she hasn’t told her mother.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I should or not. I imagine Didi wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘And what does he think?’

  ‘He’s not against it. He respects his daughter’s wishes, but he wants more information.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘So should I meet him again? I’m worried about doing it behind Didi’s back.’ Jo was hoping that Patrick would say she should. She longed for any excuse to see Michael again.

  Patrick turned to her then, placed a hand on her thigh and sought her eyes. ‘Let me tell you something, Jo. Despite what people imagine these days, weddings are not actually all about them. They’re about joining two families as much as anything else. They’re about partnerships and how people operate in a community, and the church only muscled in on the act fairly late in the piece.

  ‘Ask yourself how successful this partnership can be if it’s set up in the face of opposition from the mother. She’s one of the principal stakeholders in the whole enterprise. I know what you think of Didi. I’m well aware she’s your enemy and, considering what went down, that’s entirely understandable. But you have to search your heart. If you have any ulterior motives...Even a shred of—’

  ‘I don’t!’ Jo declared as the words ‘liar, liar, liar’ clanged in her ears.

  ‘Good.’ Patrick removed his hand and settled back in his seat. ‘I know you’ll do the right thing. It’s in your DNA, you can’t help yourself.’

  Jo dismissed that pronouncement. She was just about to take another self-punishing tour of her failings when she was jolted by the appearance of a familiar shaggy-blond head through the door. She sat up and stared. It was Rob. Was it? Yes. It was Rob Reynolds. Here in a soup kitchen?

  She tugged at Patrick’s sleeve and whispered: ‘That’s Rob Reynolds. Suze’s husband. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be lining up for lunch, by the looks of things,’ Patrick said from the corner of his mouth.

  Jo began wringing her hands. ‘Oh, this is terrible. I have to go and say something. Give him some money or...’ Jo started to stand and Patrick tugged at the back of her jacket.

  ‘Whoa! Steady on. Don’t. I’ll have a talk to him and find out the lie of the land. You just make yourself scarce. He’d be ashamed to see you, so go out the side door.’

  Jo ducked behind a plywood puppet stage and stepped over a straw-filled manger cradling a plastic baby Jesus. She found the rear exit and headed for the car park.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It was almost midnight when Jo looked in her bathroom mirror and promised herself she would not sleep with Michael Brigden. No matter how much she wanted to—and the low, steady beat of desire drumming through her veins was an indication that she really, really wanted to—she would not let it happen.

  Michael was in her living room right now, nursing a glass of dessert wine he’d unearthed at a bottle shop in Woollahra, not far from the restaurant where they’d had dinner with Gemma and Yoshi.

  The night had been an eye-opener for Jo. They had all met at 7 p.m. in the front bar of the Bellevue Hotel, Paddington, for a pre-dinner drink and then settled in at a corner table in the famous dining room out the back. Jo couldn’t remember enjoying a meal more. Fried soft-shell crab with chilli aioli; baked trout stuffed with asparagus and almonds; strawberry frangipane tart accompanied by a divine Billecart-Salmon brut rosé champagne and a Margaret River sauvignon blanc. Bliss!

  It had been a luxury to dress up and put herself out on show after a year of choosing to eat at dingy cafés and curry houses where no-one would recognise her, but it was sitting next to Michael Brigden that had given Jo the most pleasure. How easily she’d gone back on her resolve not to see him again. His secretary had simply rung her with the time and place and from that moment she’d thought about nothing for the whole day but what she’d wear.

  Despite reminding herself over and over in the taxi on the way to the hotel that she was being invited along
as a hired professional—a civil celebrant, nothing more nor less—as soon as she was standing next to Michael, Jo had let her mind wander to the intensely personal. She’d watched his every move and couldn’t help but compare him to her (almost) ex-husband.

  There was the way Michael had entered the dining room and spoken to the staff. He was patient and considerate, waiting until he was directed to the table. JJ’s usual modus operandi would see him barge past the maître d’ to the setting he liked best and, in between sitting down and receiving the menu, barking orders on the lighting, music and air-conditioning to suit his taste. At any dining establishment they went to, he would spy at least three people whom he calculated needed to upgrade their luxury vehicles and would abandon her in order to close the deals. Over the years, Jo had spent many tedious hours rereading menus and inspecting artworks and decorating fixtures in some of Sydney’s finest restaurants. Every now and then she would be summoned by JJ to an adjoining table to give an on-the-spot report card to startled parents. If the reports weren’t varnished until they reflected parental ambitions, if the child was not pronounced a future Nobel Prize winner, head of state or Olympic medallist, Jo knew she would have to answer to JJ. No wonder she’d begun to dread dinners out with him. They were more like after-hours business meetings with up-market catering and mood lighting.

  By way of contrast, this evening it had been made plainly and politely clear to the few people who had stopped by the table to speak with Mr M.E. Brigden, managing director of Brigden Auctioneers, that this was a private occasion and any discussion of business or lingering social chit-chat would be extremely bad form.

  Most people in the room got the message—although many of them were itching to ask the auctioneer for a tableside appraisal of a ring they were wearing or advice on a houseful of furniture they were about to inherit from an ageing parent. Trust Mrs Lucy Challis (former DPLC parent) to breach protocol. She was one of those Darling Point dames who barged their way through velvet ropes, blithely ignorant of the social niceties when it suited them. Especially when there was a juicy morsel of gossip to be pecked at and flown back to the nest. Jo knew Mrs Challis had been keeping a crow’s watch on her for at least an hour before she and her husband finished their meal and stopped by the table on their way out.