Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  ‘Every child offers their parents the chance to be as open, generous and giving as they are. Children offer every one of us an unselfconscious invitation to share their joy. It’s something they carry in them, and offer naturally, expecting no reply and holding no grudges when it doesn’t come. They are always hopeful and grateful for even our smallest gestures of love. The eternal spirit of humanity burns brightly in our children and reminds us of the mystery and wonder of what it is simply to be alive.

  ‘Chazzie, like all of us, had a unique quality. Hers was the restless side to her sweet and compassionate nature that made anyone who ever met her, love her. This was best expressed when she took off on her beloved pony, Minty. She was never happier than when they were away together down the bottom of the paddock.

  ‘Eleanor tells me that she would call and call her to come inside for dinner, but Chazzie would always drag her heels, just wanting to be out there, at one with her pony and nature for a little longer. Free to be herself.

  ‘She was a brave and carefree soul. I’m sure that when she and Minty were out together on those summer evenings—when the moon was rising and filling the valley with silvery light and the stars were on the move—time seemed to go on and on forever. And so too will our love be eternal for this precious child.

  ‘We are gathered here to celebrate a life that was not cut short, but was complete. Perfect in its own way. As all of our lives will be.’

  So the celebration of Charlotte Hazeltine’s life began. Jo called upon the children to lay their offerings in front of the fire to, as she explained, ‘create a portrait of Charlotte through the eyes of a child’.

  ‘This is for Chazzie. A flower to smell. This is for Minty. It’s grass.’

  ‘I found a special white stone and it looks like the moon. Minty had a moon shape on her head. Chazzie showed me.’

  ‘It’s cow poo, there’s a lot of it in this paddock.’

  There was laughter amid the tears.

  Bells were rung, violins and flutes sang. There was a trumpet solo, readings of poetry and many beautifully written tributes. Jo recognised that in the performance of this elaborate ceremony there was a way out of the darkness. It was a way, she could see with her artist’s eye, to frame and capture a moment in the way a painter might strive to hold the swirl of a skirt in a dance or the faintest smile, the tumult of clouds on a starry night or the precise colour of water lilies.

  Near the end of the ceremony, a procession of mourners came to stand in front of the fire to offer words of remembrance. Jo was looking beyond the gathering at the sunshine flickering through the trees when she heard the voice of Michael Brigden.

  ‘I have the privilege of being Charlotte’s godfather,’ he said. Today his tie was under his collar, neatly knotted, and the buttons of his dark suit were fastened. He stood to attention, hands flat against his thighs as if one move might undo the impression that he was holding it all together.

  ‘Chazzie gave me more in a short time than I could ever give back, even if I lived to be a hundred. She would take my hand and drag me out to the paddock here to watch her ride Minty.

  ‘She would ask me to steal away from the house with contraband marshmallows and light her a little fire—even on total-fire-ban days, when she knew it was illegal! But even without the fire, she’d sit beside me here and beg me to tell her stories.

  ‘She marvelled at everything I told her and, through her invitation, as our celebrant Josephine Blanchard has just expressed so well, I came to appreciate the joy in my own life. I thank Charlotte for all the gifts she gave me.’

  ‘I must say that I was very disappointed that the service wasn’t going to be held at St Luke’s,’ said Charlotte’s grandmother. ‘But—’ and here she sought Jo’s hand to grip it tightly ‘—today was every bit as good. You have your father’s gift for words and quite the same look about you. Tall, lovely bearing. Kind and calm. He must be very proud of you. Thank you so much for everything. You captured Charlotte’s spirit so well.’

  There were many more of the same grateful sentiments. Jo answered them all with: ‘I consider it a great honour and a privilege to have played my part.’ And she really felt that. Tremendously honoured, extraordinarily privileged and humbled by the role she’d been given. And she’d got it right. Hadn’t stumbled once. Remembered all the dates. All the names. Pronounced them correctly. Good diction. Good projection. Been heard clearly, even right down the back. Kept the little ones engaged and under control. Paid due deference to the extended family. Hit the right notes of solemnity and hope. Jo had been in the middle of a great whirling wheel of emotion. Had kept it steady and steered it along with confidence so that, by the end of it, they had all reached their destination. Ready to truly celebrate, knowing all that could have been done was done. She’d found her place. Right there in the moment when people were at their best. When they were their most selfless and gave of themselves most freely to others. It was where she felt truly alive.

  What did she believe in? That question seemed to come from a long time ago but the answer was something she’d always known. Just doing what was right. Any number of holy people were venerated for their sacrifice, but they were merely sacred signposts to remind humans of the few simple tasks they’d been given—to be sincere, thankful and kind in return for the extraordinary gift of existence. Jo imagined the startled face of Patsy Kelly when she told her that.

  Down the grassy slope was the shed that had housed Minty. Jo stumbled towards it and, halfway down, looked at her sandals, caked in cow dung. Scraping the muck off her heels with a stiff yellow straw, she had to laugh. The boy had been right. Every time you set out, you had to keep your head up to the horizon but, still, mind your feet.

  She leaned back against the still-warm wooden boards of the stable, her arms crossed behind her, and exhaled. It seemed as if it was the first time she’d been able to do so all afternoon. There, where no-one could see, Jo watched the sun plunge behind the hill. As an offering to the brief, bright, lovely clouds that trailed after, she shed bittersweet tears that were the pure essence of her. When it was dusky purple-black and she was sure no-one would see her swollen eyelids, she made her way back to the blazing fire.

  ‘You said it all so perfectly,’ said Michael, again shaking his head with admiration.

  ‘You mentioned that already. Thank you. Again,’ Jo replied.

  The sun had long gone and everything beyond the reach of the firelight was now cloaked in darkness. Jo and Michael had found themselves a spot up the hill a bit, at the back of the crowd, where they had a good view of the dancers slowly circling the flames.

  They were sitting close, bodies touching, using Michael’s coat as a ground sheet on the damp earth. Jo found a spot on the grassy slope to set down her plastic cup of red wine and turned her attention to her curry and rice.

  ‘It’s just that I’d never thought of it in quite the way you put it.’ He dropped his vegetable samosa onto his paper plate. ‘Our children offer us so much and they don’t need a lot more than our love to keep them happy. We forget that. We spend so much time calculating what we give our kids and our friends and what they should then give back. It’s pointless walking around with some kind of ledger in our heads. Who gave what? Who took what? When, where and how?’

  ‘Teach us to give and not to count the cost?’

  ‘That’s it. Who said that?’

  ‘St Ignatius. My father and my best friend are both clergymen. Although the Blaxland Rovers said it too, I’m led to believe.’

  ‘Well, that explains it then.’

  ‘Explains what?’

  ‘The way you managed the congregation. The attention to detail, the confidence in the way things should go. The authority and moral certainty—’

  ‘Me? Moral certainty?’ she scoffed. She had accused the women of Darling Point of the very same thing.

  ‘You’re a good person, Jo. You don’t need to be a scholar of theology to be one or to recognise one. It’s p
lain for everyone to see. Without people like you holding us together, we’d all just fly apart.’

  ‘I’m not so good,’ she said.

  He leaned back on one elbow and Jo traced the glow of the fire in his eyes, his fine, straight nose and the contour of his lips. She saw he was amused by her endless moral questioning.

  ‘No. Really? I’m glad to hear it. Tell me more,’ he said.

  She looked back to the starry sparks hurled from the fire into the hereafter. ‘There are any amount of gods here tonight. Attracted by the pagan drums, I should think. I’m sure all of them want me to kiss you. If there’s any disapproval, let’s ask for forgiveness later.’

  They leaned in to take their second kiss over sagging paper plates. Fireworks exploded into the sky. They fell back onto the grass and laughed at the corny timing. Cracked up with a craziness that came from the emptiness of emotional exhaustion.

  When they recovered, they held hands and watched as Charlotte Hazeltine was sent on her way to eternity with a bang and a cheer.

  It was after midnight when Michael’s silver Jaguar purred to a splashing halt outside Jo’s place.

  On the trip down from the mountains the rain had started to pelt down when they hit Wentworth Falls. It had been difficult to see more than a few metres of the road ahead. It was just the two of them ensconced in softest leather. The lights from the dashboard winked like stars in their own private universe. The gravitational pull of their earthly worries and responsibilities had fallen away and they were flying.

  They’d reflected on the day’s events. The small comforts that had been found amid the almost unspeakable tragedy. It had led them into a deep conversation about life and death. All that.

  They both agreed that the more they knew, the less they understood. Michael said that he lived by the motto ‘Life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved’. Jo couldn’t remember who’d said that and was utterly unable to translate it into Latin. Which, he said, proved his point.

  ‘Let’s just keep going,’ he suggested when they made the outskirts of Sydney. ‘We’ll take this turn-off and keep heading north until we fall off the edge.’

  ‘We’re not teenagers in a road movie,’ Jo reminded him, making one last heroic effort to keep her feet on the ground. ‘I’ve got a cat to feed.’

  ‘And I’ve got a meeting. You don’t suppose I could get the board members to open a can of Whiskas?’

  Then they had laughed together.

  She would always remember that shared laugh. There they had been, coming home from a funeral, laughing about Latin translations and cat food, and she had tumbled into love.

  The sex was a revelation to Jo.

  Not because she didn’t know such bliss existed. In fact, she kept a book of erotic art secreted behind the headboard of her bed and thought she must be the only woman alive who lingered over the explicit works of Rembrandt, Daumier, Millet and Gauguin. It was embarrassing really. Hopelessly old-fashioned when there was any amount of porn on the internet.

  It was a revelation because this time, Jo felt she was inside the frame. The observed rather than the observer. Her limbs were languid long strokes of a brush. She gave up the darkness, turned on the light and let him see her. Her most tender points were dabbed with scarlet tint. She was ‘a nude woman on her back, front view, hands masking face and legs spread wide’. It felt like one of the bravest things she had ever done. But once she’d done it she didn’t want to ever hide herself again. She wanted to be naked for the rest of her life, as long as Michael Brigden was looking at her.

  That she’d shared her body with only one man for most of her life wasn’t the liability she’d feared it might be. Instead, everything they did together was surprising. As if she was young again and on an insatiable quest to discover the boundaries of her desire.

  She was perfection. Her smooth skin was modelled by the light and dark as if she was a Madonna painted by Raphael. When she lay back and looked up at him she was Titian’s Venus of Urbino. When she bent over she imagined he saw the muscular elegance of Degas.

  Instead, he mentioned Lucian Freud. She laughed, swatted him with a pillow and teased that the reference to all that unbridled, painterly flesh was some kind of insult. But she knew that he was telling her he was truly seeing her. Glorious. Overwhelming. In all her lush and desirable femininity. He was lost in her. Sometimes even beyond her, to a place she couldn’t reach. But she was a wise woman, not an inexperienced girl, and knew he’d come back, in his own time. She understood all that.

  Michael told Jo that he had finally found an inspiration,

  a muse, for his erotic imaginings and Jo believed him. She’d never been surer of anything in her life. She knew that if she told the story of their passion in the light of day it would read as captions to pictures in a museum pamphlet—but that’s not the way it was.

  For her own part, Jo could not imagine any artist could do justice to the man lying between her sheets. No-one could capture the smell of him. The feel of his skin under her fingers. The warmth of his breath. The sound of his shuddering groans when she kissed down his stomach.

  And no work of art—no marble bust, no granite, bronze or stone statue, no ink, oil, lead or charcoal rendering of king, warrior or beautiful boy in any of the galleries in the world since antiquity—could arouse her the way he did.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  When Jo woke she could smell coffee and toast. On the table in her courtyard Michael had laid out breakfast—sliced peach and apple, the sugar bowl, milk in a jug, and he’d even found the jam and marmalade.

  ‘You gotta love a man who’s not afraid to rummage!’ She recalled Simon’s words from that first afternoon.

  He was standing, pouring tea, already dressed. At the sound of her footfall, he turned.

  Jo calmly found her seat, took a piece of toast and spread it with butter. Helped herself to blackberry jam. Michael sat opposite and they shared breakfast. Passed the sugar back and forth as if they’d done it a hundred times before.

  A cool wind sprang up. Strong enough to disturb the air in the sheltered courtyard, send autumn leaves spinning and Jo’s hair flying. The hem of her silk dressing-gown rippled against her bare calves.

  ‘Get your paints and brushes. I’ll take you sailing,’ he said.

  Michael parked his car on New Beach Road, Darling Point, found the jeans and T-shirt he kept in the boot and changed into them as Jo kept lookout. They ducked through Rushcutters Bay Park to avoid the public parade through the clubrooms of the Cruising Yacht Club.

  The day was bright and breezy, the sky a washed-out pale blue feathered with high cirrus cloud. Boats were straining at ropes and metal clanked on metal. It was Easter Saturday so there were plenty of people about loading supplies and firing motors. Puffs of exhaust fumes wafted from engines. Everyone was impatient to get moving and too preoccupied to notice Michael and Jo.

  They navigated the floating pathway that branched through the marina giving access to mooring for some two hundred vessels. Over Michael’s shoulder was Jo’s backpack of painting supplies, in his hand he toted a cooler packed with ice and goodies they’d purchased from a deli in Edgecliff.

  He pointed out multi-million-dollar cruiser racers and grand prix yachts—all snow-white fibreglass and bristling with technology: satellite navigation systems, power-driven winches and canting keels. Gaps between smoky-grey glass panels revealed banks of creamy leather seats, on-deck spas and shiny gas barbecues.

  He stopped and set down his heavy load in front of what he identified as a ninety-foot maxi yacht. It stood two storeys high. ‘State-of-the-art spinnaker. Carbon-fibre hull, mast, rudder and boom, mainsails and headsails. She’s worth about five million,’ he recited. The sun reflecting off the silver hull was blinding. Jo lowered her sunglasses against the glare and set down her basket. It was what she might have expected he would own. To moor it cost almost the same as housing a boarder at DPLC. Jo knew that because JJ had often said: ‘Yo
u might as well stand in a cold shower with the fan on and throw hundred-dollar notes out the window.’ He had no respect for yachties. ‘Weekend warriors. Think they’re heroes. Most of those so-called sailors would be flat out steering a dinghy across a creek. They hire race-car champions to drive their million-dollar hulks.’

  Jo was just about to take up her basket and ready herself to board when Michael regathered his burden and moved off down the marina, his bare, tanned feet slapping on concrete.

  ‘An identical one to that ran aground off Seal Rocks last year,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Skipper and navigator drowned after the boom knocked them overboard. Damn good sailors too, both of them. Too big for me. I like the feel of the water under my feet.’

  They walked further along and Michael eventually halted at a spot that looked at first glance to be an empty berth. Jo, behind him, was looking around, trying to locate the missing vessel, when he said: ‘Here she is. Solveig. My baby.’

  Jo looked down and there was a yacht, just as a child might draw with five strokes of a crayon. A tiny thing. The top of it barely reached the deck of the boats parked either side.

  Michael dumped the provisions on the marina and regarded the boat with unmistakable pride and affection. ‘She was custom-made for my father thirty years ago by the Halvorsen family. They won the Sydney to Hobart in 1953 with a boat of the same name. Dad loved the harbour. Loved to sail. He left her to me,’ he said, and then jumped onto the deck.

  ‘Welcome aboard. She’s happy to see you.’ Michael beamed at Jo and held out his hand for her to follow. She jumped after him. The deck swayed and rocked. He steadied Jo as she set down her basket, and then heaved the cooler on board. Jo kicked off her shoes and found a secure spot for her odds and ends.

  ‘Twenty-six foot. Designed in Scandinavia. Fibreglass hull, self-furling headsail and full keel. They call it a “folkboat”, which I think translates as “Volkswagen of the sea”. One of these was sailed by a Sydney woman around the world, single-handed. That’s good enough for me.’