Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  Jo peeked below deck and caught the smell of old wood, slightly musty. A smell she loved. What did they say about boats that were perfect? She was ‘yar’. Where had that word come from? And then she recalled that Katharine Hepburn had said it to Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story about a boat. ‘My she was yar.’ ‘She was yar alright.’ And then Jo remembered the name of the boat. It was the True Love.

  ‘Solveig,’ she said, ‘what does that mean?’ If it meant ‘true love’ in Norwegian or Finnish she thought she might keel over into the harbour.

  ‘It’s a bit obscure, Old Norse, but “strength of the sun” is how I take it. There’s a reference in Peer Gynt. Greig wrote the music for “Solveig’s Song”. I’ve stuck the lyrics on the wall down below if you want to read them. Well, at least, the words that make any sense when they’re translated into English. I’ll show you.’

  Down a step was a tiny galley with a dinky sink and metho stove. Two benches followed the curve of the hull, and through a low door at the front was a V-berth—two beds piled with pillows that met at the prow. In a small cubicle, if required, was the ‘head’. Jo was happy to see it was a toilet.

  There, on a sheet of paper taped to the wall, was ‘Solveig’s Song’:

  Perchance both winter and spring will pass,

  and next summer, and the entire year.

  But at last you will come, that I know for sure;

  and I’ll still be waiting, for I once promised I would.

  Michael packed provisions in the ice chest and then went back up on deck to make preparations to cast off. He turned the key to the motor and after one spluttering false start it came to life.

  ‘The old Yanmar, she never lets me down,’ he said with a grin, and inched out of the berth, easing the craft between the behemoths either side. He turned the little yacht’s nose north-east and puttered along, winding a way through dozens of monster power boats at anchor in Rushcutters Bay.

  Then it was as if Solveig sniffed the breeze and was keen to make a break for it, and Michael had only to respond. He raised the mainsail, unfurled the headsail, pulled on the sheets and they were sailing. The engine was turned off and the only sound was the wind breathing heavily in the sails and the water churning past the hull.

  ‘The wind’s from the north-west. So we can take a run to Parsley Bay if you like,’ he called.

  Jo had another destination in mind. ‘Could we go as far as Watsons Bay?’

  ‘You got it. Let’s go.’

  Solveig flew past Clark Island, gave a wide berth to the Manly Ferry and then hooted along on a broad reach towards the Heads.

  ‘Look!’ Jo pointed. A little creature some twenty metres off poked its sleek head above the water, looked at them with bright inquisitive black eyes and disappeared below the surface again.

  ‘Fairy penguin. Lovely things. Always a good sign,’ he said. Then he sat down by her, one hand on the tiller, slipped his arm around her waist. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed her.

  Half an hour later he jibed and headed into Watsons Bay. Dropped the mainsail, furled the headsail and kicked the Yanmar into life to push the boat further in to shore. Jo directed him to a spot where The Cape was clearly in view. Then she followed instructions to go up for’ard and drop the anchor. She was becoming quite the sailor. A quick reverse thrust from the motor to make sure the anchor was holding and then it was cut. The noise from people on the foreshore—promenading, playing in the shallows and gathering in restaurants—reached the boat like the chattering from a far-off flock of parrots.

  Soon enough Jo had arranged her things on the small timber table he had retrieved from below deck and screwed down on the floor of the cockpit. It was slightly awkward with her board resting on a cushion and her heavy paper secured with bulldog clips, but her watercolours were arranged in orderly fashion at one arm and her brushes on the other. She was at peace.

  Lathering herself with sunblock, tying her flapping sunhat under her chin and rolling her linen pants to her skinny knees, Jo was aware that she hardly presented as one of the bikini-clad girls who were diving into the water from the decks of power boats nearby.

  ‘Glass of wine?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d rather tea, if you have it,’ she replied.

  ‘Okay. I’ll just go and dice with death on the metho stove, then.’ And before she could protest that wine would be fine, he ducked below, just like a fairy penguin.

  Jo began her pencil sketch of the roofline of The Cape. She was able to see it from a perspective that the Walpole sisters had perhaps never been afforded.

  ‘That one?’ He set down her tea and pointed. ‘Beautiful house. One of the last of the old-timers by the looks of things.’

  ‘Can you imagine what it must have been like back then? Wouldn’t it have been lovely to live there?’ she said.

  He found a small space on the seat and crammed his legs under the table. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe sailors had the best of it. They sailed past everything and kept going on their adventures.’

  ‘Leaving women behind to mind the children,’ she reminded him.

  ‘That’s true.’

  He sat back and sipped at his mug of tea as Jo sketched. She thought she might like to do this forever. The thought occurred that it didn’t matter so much that The Cape would never be hers.

  ‘Would you like to sail around the world with me?’ he asked. ‘Leave all this behind? All these houses crammed with endless goods and chattels that weigh us down and stop us from living life. I’d get a bigger boat and then I could take you anywhere. You could bring your paints and anytime you saw a view you wanted to capture, we could drop anchor. You could paint the world, Jo.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  Chapter Forty

  Rob’s car was out of registration and there was no point renewing it because one of his mates was going to buy it for six hundred dollars, so Suze was in the van waiting for him at the front gates of St Bernadette’s. She caught the glint of the metal bell in the church spire in the afternoon sun. There was just one thought clanging over and over in her head. ‘What now, what now, what now?’

  She had just driven from Watsons Bay after visiting the ledge from where she’d almost jumped two nights ago. She wasn’t exactly sure what had taken her there in daylight. Maybe it was to remind herself of her good fortune on being saved. Maybe it was to survey the terrain so she could try again sometime if her life became unbearable, as it seemed it probably would.

  On the cliff top, the stiff wind almost knocked Suze off her feet. She felt so...flimsy. As if she could be blown away holding the string of the one last balloon she held. Apparently she wouldn’t be going to jail. She wouldn’t be found out. Would be neither lauded nor loathed for her actions. She would just be poor. Poorer than she’d ever been. And insignificant. Maybe working behind the counter of someone else’s shop, fetching and carrying for those who still had the opportunity to make something of their lives. The most she could say about her own life was that she was still breathing. So she had been saved. For what purpose, she wondered.

  But, by daylight, she could see just how far she could have fallen. It was a miracle she still had breath in her.

  From The Gap it had been a short walk to The Cape. Suze hoped she might find the gate unlocked so she could walk the grounds again and take a stroll in Jo’s shoes as the future mistress of the house and its magnificent view. She might not ever again have the chance. Couldn’t imagine that she and Jo could go on being friends. That was an utterly depressing thought. She remembered telling Rob they were stuck in Sydney, but there had to be a way to get unstuck. Leave for good and start over somewhere else.

  As she got nearer to the house, she saw workmen on the footpath busily erecting metal scaffolding and draping it with green shadecloth—the same cloth that was still draped over the spot where Villa Porto Rosa used to be and which was now a deep hole filled with concrete. That’s what they used to hide their dirty w
ork. Then the full force of what she was seeing hit her. As if the workmen’s truck blocking the street had backed into her.

  She had trotted faster. Felt a rising panic. Like how it must feel when you saw a road accident and, getting nearer, saw it was a person you knew who had been run over. ‘It’s going to be demolished? When?’ Suze, breathless, asked a workman in overalls and fluorescent vest.

  ‘Next couple of days,’ he replied.

  ‘YOU CAN’T!’ Suze had shouted, surprised by the rage she felt. She had stood in his way, hands on hips. ‘I know the woman who owns this place! This is where she’s supposed to live. This is her house. This is bullshit!’

  ‘Watch your language, lady, or I’ll call the police,’ he’d threatened. As if he couldn’t shut Suze up with one swipe of his meaty hand. She almost wanted him to try. She wanted to lay into him and scratch his eyes out. Suze had hissed like a feral cat, snatched his staple gun from the footpath and run away with it, up the street and into the nearby reserve. She pelted down a bare path through the grass, skirts flying, across the rocks to the water’s edge and then heaved the wretched thing. It bounced once on a ledge and disappeared into the water. She’d then crouched under a bush when the bloke and his mate came looking for her and sobbed until she couldn’t cry anymore.

  Sitting in the van now, Suze remembered what she’d felt when she first walked through the old garden. Jo was meant to have that house. She’d known it, straight away. It was as if they’d both visited there in some other life and would again some day. It was Jo’s dream. She was ashamed to think she’d even entertained the idea that the place should be knocked down.

  There was a rap on the car window and Suze saw Rob grinning at her. Father Patrick was behind him. She got out of the car to shake Patrick’s hand in civil greeting, although she could only flick her eyes sideways, too ashamed to meet his gaze.

  ‘Suze, you should listen to what Father says,’ said Rob. He seemed excited.

  ‘Pat. Call me Pat—I feel more comfortable with that,’ Patrick said to Rob, not for the first time.

  Rob thrust a card at Suze. It was an invitation to a ‘forum on social justice’ to be held by the McMahon Family Foundation. The night would start with cocktails and canapés. The address for the gathering was at Dover Heights and it meant...Suze had no idea what it meant.

  ‘That’s the infamous Carol Holt’s address. Twenty-three Oceania Street, a well-known haunt of anarchist rabble,’ Patrick deadpanned.

  ‘There was this bloke handing out these invitations just outside the church hall,’ said Rob.

  ‘I recognised him straight away,’ said Patrick. ‘Some flunkey from the Young Liberals who’s been haunting a lot of the parish halls around here. We’ve been keeping an eye out for the creep.’

  Suze was still not making head or tail of what they were telling her. ‘You got an invitation to something at Carol Holt’s place? What?’

  Patrick patiently took Suze through it. ‘It’s about branch-stacking, no more and no less. The McMahon Family Foundation is a nice little friendly front for a bunch of extreme right-wing loonies from the Liberal Party. What they do is arrange an event in some supporter’s house, call it a “forum on social justice”, chuck in some drinks and nibbles, and put seventy dollars on the ticket price—although it costs sixty-eight bucks to join the Liberal Party, so the little bastard is making a two-dollar profit—then they get around the electorate and flog the tickets. Now there are some people who’ll happily stump up the price—and in this case there are enough people keen to nose around Carol Holt’s place to take the bait—but for others here, like Rob, who can’t afford it, they give the invitations away for free. And then, on the night, they’re surrounded by a few celebs and upstanding locals, the wine’s flowing, everyone’s civilised enough and the pressure’s on to join up.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Rob went on, ‘the bloke was asking me where I lived and if I was enrolled to vote and when I told him I was “of no fixed address” he said, “No problem.” When I saw it cost seventy bucks he said not to worry, he’d pay. He even said he’d pick me up from anywhere I wanted and asked me if I had any mates who’d like to come and he’d pay for them too. I got five invitations.’

  ‘Paying for someone else’s membership,’ said Patrick, ‘is highly illegal under party rules. Not to mention making up a fake address for people who don’t have one. It’s instant expulsion if head office finds out.’

  Rob grinned happily. ‘So, I go along, eat and drink as much as I like, sign a form and I’ll be a member of the Liberal Party for free! How about that, babe?’

  Suze was horrified. Rob had taken communion in the Catholic Church. If he joined the Liberal Party, she’d have him exorcised.

  ‘And they give these invitations out at churches?’ asked Suze.

  ‘Everywhere. In the street. They even try the homeless shelters,’ said Patrick, ‘but parishioners are their favourite catch. The disciples were “fishers of men” and so are the candidates around here come election time.’

  Then it was back to Rob. ‘Patrick says this all goes back to Blanchard trying to get more members for the Centennial branch before the pre-selection. If he gets done for it, he’ll be kicked out and—’

  The crunch of gravel behind them made them break from their conversation, and there was Tory.

  ‘Hi. Just came to see Patrick, and look who’s here!’ she said cheerily.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Patrick. ‘Looks like we have a quorum. Let’s go for coffee. Tory, I’ll walk with you.’

  The Supporters of Josephine Margaret Blanchard Society was now in session at a coffee shop up the street from St Bernadette’s. They sat around a small wooden table and busied themselves with their orders. Suze was trying to recall if they’d ever been in each other’s company without Jo in the room. They hadn’t that she could remember. The odd thing was that no-one was quite sure who knew what about Jo’s predicament, so when they were all furnished with tea and coffee, Suze went first.

  ‘I suppose you all know what happened with me at the college.’ She looked meaningfully at Tory. When Tory ducked her head and reached for sugar to stir into her mug, Suze knew she didn’t need to go any further on that topic. ‘And I just came from Watsons Bay. The developers are about to move in on The Cape in a few days, so some goon told me. We have to find some way to stop it.’

  The Cape? Tory and Patrick lifted their eyebrows at her. They’d never heard of it. Now Suze was stuck. She had to tell, even though it was clear she was breaking a confidence.

  She related how Jo had her heart set on the place and how she’d said she wanted to live there ‘until the day she died’. When she came to the part about how much the property was worth, she noticed Patrick and Tory shoot a look at each other, but decline to contribute any comment. So, she surmised, there was more stuff she didn’t know and wasn’t supposed to know.

  What they all agreed was that if Jo was powerless to stop the destruction, she must have made a bad deal with JJ.

  ‘Shit,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Fuck him,’ said Tory.

  Rob declared passionately that he would round up some mates and lie in front of the bulldozer for ‘as long as it takes’. Tory hugged him and, with this, three of them leaned further over the table in a conspiratorial huddle. But Suze was frozen in her seat. She suspected that her crime was at the heart of things.

  ‘When Doug McIntyre came to see me about the money, he said he hadn’t heard from “anyone”. I thought that just meant you and Jo,’ she said to Patrick. ‘But JJ knows, doesn’t he?’

  Patrick scratched at his bald scalp. ‘Yep. I’m afraid so. And so does Carol Holt.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Suze’s heart stopped. She’d always flirted with the idea of being found out, but now, faced with the reality of it, she thought she might vomit.

  Rob found her hand and held on.

  ‘That’s why the house is going to be demolished. It’s part of the deal she made with him about me.’
Suze was stricken with guilt. Ruining Jo’s life as well as her own wasn’t something she’d planned on.

  ‘Hold on, maybe we’ve been given the chance to stop the wreckers in their tracks,’ said Patrick. ‘JJ’s campaign for pre-selection would be seriously derailed if we could catch him in the act of paying for Rob’s membership. But he’d have to pay the memberships with money directly out of his own pocket or with a personally signed cheque. And we’d need evidence of that. Otherwise it would be easy for him to say he had no knowledge of what was going on—and, to be fair, maybe he doesn’t.’

  ‘Would he do something like that, though?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Plenty have. It’s a long and glorious tradition with both Liberal and Labor. There was a Liberal candidate in the last election who got dumped for branch-stacking. He was paying for memberships for parishioners over at St Cath’s in The Shire.’

  ‘So he gets kicked out of the Liberal Party? Big deal. How does that help Jo get the house?’ asked Suze.

  ‘Don’t underestimate what it could do to his reputation.’ Patrick’s voice dropped to stern reprimand. ‘In the case over in The Shire, even the prime minister got involved in pissing the bloke off. The Liberal Party hates that crap. JJ would be a pariah. The media would go ballistic. The car business would be stuffed.’

  ‘Good. If he’s involved, he deserves it,’ said Tory. ‘Everyone should be voting for the Greens anyway.’

  ‘You mother would hate it, though, wouldn’t she?’ asked Patrick.

  Tory nodded. He was right. She would.

  ‘So how can we use all this to help Jo get the house?’ Suze asked again.

  ‘It’s called blackmail, Suze. Jo has to go to JJ with evidence of him caught in the act. If she does that, then she’s got him. Then she can do a decent deal for herself and, hopefully, that would include the house she wants. She really wants it?’