‘And they’re not back yet?’
‘No.’ It was now nearing eleven thirty.
‘Did he say when they would be back?’
Saskia knew Carla was asking for Alberto, but still she felt defensive. ‘No. I don’t know anything, I’m sorry.’
Saskia waited for Carla to explain further, but she didn’t. Instead she cleared her throat. She sounded more sure of herself when she spoke. ‘Do not let them make you believe that just because you have less money than them you are not worth as much.’
Saskia felt a surge of affection towards Carla. ‘I won’t.’
‘Good night, Saskia. If you see Alberto, please let him know I have been trying to reach him.’
‘Of course.’
Saskia hung up the phone and went to bed.
Day 203, Saturday, May 2
Saskia flinched as she dabbed the cut on the side of her finger with Betadine. Her hands were ravaged by marks and abrasions. Her nails were ragged and chipped. There was a giant blister on the heel of her right hand.
Her plan to use prefabricated silver casts to satisfy the rush of orders Leila’s photo had sparked was working, but the demand for Little Hill jewellery was putting pressure on her. Two customers had sent back their cuffs. One was warped and wouldn’t stay on the buyer’s ear, the other was too thin and snapped on the second wear. Saskia took the returns hard and berated herself for getting too cocky. The quality was slipping and she had to maintain her focus.
Andy came into the bathroom as she took a Band-Aid from its box, and tried to use one hand to wrap it around the end of her finger. It twisted and sealed itself closed. Saskia swore as she tried to pull it open but it held fast. She tossed it in the bin and ripped open another one, but as she tried to wrap it around her fingertip, the end somehow curled up and the insides stuck together.
‘Here.’ Andy took a third Band-Aid from the box and held Saskia’s hand.
‘I can do it,’ she said, snatching her hand away and getting another bandage, this time managing two wrap it around the injured tip of her index finger.
‘This is exactly why you need a break,’ he said.
There was a chill between them. Andy had told her she was not to go into work and she had argued that he used to work on weekends all the time. He retorted that his work wasn’t as physically demanding as hers, and she had fought him just because she didn’t like his tone. They had retreated to different corners of the house, sullenly, until she had said she had decided she wouldn’t go in, but it wasn’t because he told her not to.
‘I’m going for a swim,’ he said, his tone signalling he wanted an amnesty. ‘Why don’t you come?’
It was warmer than it should have been, for May, and Saskia had to admit the thought of stretching out on a sun-baked banana lounge did sound tempting.
‘This could be the last fine day before winter,’ Andy added.
‘Okay.’ She got to her feet. ‘That’s a nice idea.’
*
Andy stripped to his shorts when they arrived at the rippling turquoise rectangle and announced he was going in.
‘I think I’ll just lie in the sun,’ Saskia said.
Children were splashing and squealing in the shallow end. A little boy in floaties ran to his mother, his arms flapping. Saskia bit her thumbnail, fearing he’d slip as he sped across the wet concrete. His mother held her arms out, caught him and swung him into the air, squashing his cheek with kisses.
The scene ushered in thoughts of her own unborn offspring, which were becoming increasingly common figures in her daily thoughts.
They snuck into her mind the way she and Aiden used to sneak into the lounge room when they were supposed to be in bed: moving slowly on their hands of knees, below the sight-line of the parent. Saskia was always surprised to catch herself with these future children on her mind. They had straight blond hair and did not resemble anyone in her family. Every photo in her childhood house was of dark-haired people, except one of Aiden as a newborn when he was balder than a light bulb.
Lorna was fond of telling Saskia that when she was born she weighed eight pounds, ‘two of which were hair’. The birth had been a difficult one and at the thirteen-hour mark the doctor had said something about posterior labour and needing to turn the baby.
Lorna had groaned and pressed her palms against her forehead willing it to be over. ‘Can’t you just cut her out!’ she’d wailed.
The doctor held up an instrument. A fine dark strand adhered to the metal. ‘That’s your daughter’s hair,’ he’d said.
Lorna sputtered and cried, and forty minutes later gave birth to Saskia and her glorious mane, all slick and wet like a seal’s pelt. After mother and daughter had been cleaned up, a photo was taken of the two of them together with their heads on the pillow. Saskia’s wild tuft of baby hair stuck everywhere, while Lorna’s tangled strands spread across the pillow. It was impossible to tell where hers ended and Saskia’s began.
Saskia mused that her daughter could in all likelihood be fair — the type of girl whose ribbons matched the trim on her knee-socks. She’d don a blazer by age six and blend in with the other smartly-dressed girls at whatever school Millie had already written to about admissions. In summer she would wear a boater hat made of straw. Saskia hoped this imagined daughter would bring some personal flare to the uniform.
She watched her husband carve through the chlorinated water of the outdoor pool. She squinted, making out his face as it broke through the water, mouth open, sucking in oxygen. She could see nothing of Millie in him. The older woman’s features were narrow and sharp. Her nose was long. Her cheekbones dominated her face. Andy’s features were rounded and soft. His jaw was wide and his nose was blunt.
He pulled himself up onto the concrete and climbed out of the water. As he came towards her, he shook his hair, flicking droplets everywhere.
‘That felt good,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come in the water?’
‘We should go soon. I promised Aiden I wouldn’t be late to his gig.’
‘Ah yes, the gig. What’s the band called — Subterfuge?’
‘Centrifuge.’
‘The things I do for you,’ he mused.
‘Aiden’s new stuff is excellent.’
‘Risking life and limb by venturing into damp pubs that should be condemned. Where the carpet twitches from the infestation of fleas that dwells within.’
It was true that band room at the Leopold was a deep, dark, sticky pit; every surface was covered in a viscous membrane of half-dried bourbon and coke that had collected a moss of dust and fluff.
‘It’s lucky you’re so hale and hearty then, isn’t it?’
‘Okay. One more lap and then we’ll go.’ Andy dived into the pool leaving barely a ripple as he disappeared beneath the surface.
*
They were getting ready to go out when Saskia said, ‘I’d feel so much better about tonight if Aiden had just kicked Seth out of the band.’
‘Wait.’ Andy stopped towelling his hair. ‘Seth is still in the band?’
She cocked her head. ‘You know Seth is in Aiden’s band.’
‘You mean, this great gig we’re going to is your ex-fiancé’s?’
‘Andy,’ Saskia said, exasperation creeping into her voice, ‘you worked with your old girlfriend.’
‘Exactly — my ex-girlfriend, not somebody I was going to marry.’
She started putting things in her handbag — keys, lipstick, mobile phone. Every movement was exaggerated by a jolty energy that told him that if he abandoned her again it would not be well received.
‘You can still go,’ he said.
‘You mean I have your permission?’
‘You don’t need my permission.’
‘The idea was to go together.’
‘Sas, I really don’t feel like watching your ex-fiancé’s band.’
‘It’s my brother’s band too. This is a big deal for Aiden.’
Andy didn’t like to admit it, but he hated Seth. It was
a strange sort of feeling, hating someone he had never met. In the photos he had glimpsed, Seth was a beautiful and vain dilettante who let his shirt hanging casually open to reveal expensive ink work on his chest.
Regarding the concert, he knew he was being childish but he had just been fired. The interview he had pinned his hopes on had turned out to be a humiliating misunderstanding, and he just didn’t feel up to attending a gig that celebrated Saskia’s ex-fiancé’s creative success.
Saskia hooked her bag over her shoulder and made her closing argument. ‘My brother’s band is supporting a major international act. Hundreds of people are going to be there. We won’t be anywhere near Seth.’
They glared at each other. She hated how she sounded — when did she become this nagging fishwife? — and he hated the way he made her sound.
‘I said you should go, Sas,’ he said. ‘Please, have a good time.’
He stared at the cricket match playing on TV so he wouldn’t have to face the hurt look in her eyes.
‘I won’t be late,’ she said, and left without a kiss.
*
An unruly mob of Centrifuge fans had overtaken the footpath outside the Leopold. Saskia’s name was on the door-list so she was able to walk straight in through the TAB room, which was filled with flashing neon television screens and littered with discarded betting slips, to the band room, which smelled like beer and wet carpet.
Saskia twirled a lock of hair around her finger as she pushed through the crowd of people in black Centrifuge T-shirts and studded leather. As annoyed as she was with him, she wished Andy was with her, his hand on the small of her back as they weaved between the groups of friends. She feared Seth was going to pop out in front of her, like a rattlesnake in an arcade game. And sure enough, as if she had imagined him into existence, there he was, standing at the bar flipping a cardboard coaster between his fingers.
Their eyes locked, and before she could look away, he smiled and waved uncertainly, and she realised he was nervous. For all of his arrogance, he cared deeply about music and this was by far the largest audience he had ever played to.
The bartender was filling two pots and Seth gestured at them, then pointed at Saskia, to ask if she wanted one. She smiled and nodded, because it seemed right under the circumstances, and she saw relief in the smile he returned. She started making her way towards him, squeezing through huddles of music fans, and was surprised at how harmless he now seemed.
She suspected she would always be angry with him on some level, on principal, but the feeling had lost its ferocity. It no longer reached deep inside her and strangled her organs the way it used to.
She was a mere metre from him now and wondered what inane conversation they might have. He held a beer in each hand and she was grateful they were spared making the decision of whether to hug, shake hands, or leave their arms hanging indifferently by their sides.
‘Hi Seth.’
‘It’s been a while since you’ve come to a gig.’ He held out a pot of beer, which she took with a smile. Then he destroyed the fragile amnesty. ‘His Lordship didn’t see fit to come to the Leopold?’
‘Seth.’ She handed back the beer.
‘Come on, I’m just teasing.’ He pressed the drink back into her hand.
She let the comment slide for her brother’s sake. ‘Where’s Aiden? I want to say good luck.’
‘He’s out the back. But wait, before you go. Just, wait a minute.’ He put his drink on the bar and dug around in his pocket. ‘I was going to leave this with Aiden. A wedding present. A peace offering.’ He held out a red-wrapped box about the size of a cassette tape.
‘You got us a wedding present?’
‘You. I got you a present to say, bon chance with your new romance!’ He raised his glass in an exaggerated toast. ‘Good luck with your new f—’
‘Seth!’
He laughed and rolled his neck. ‘C’mon, I’m trying. I don’t seem to be able to resist a little jibe here and there. But I am trying.’
He looked down at her through the lashes of his half-closed eyes, his lip curled into a smile.
‘Don’t look at me like that. You’re hardly qualified to play the part of the jilted lover.’
‘Sas, you won. I’m alone and you’re the lady of the manor. I fucked up and I’m paying for it. But . . . look, okay, I’m not going about it the right way. But I’m trying to be civil. There’s a lot of history here and we were both hurt. But I think, maybe in time we can be friends again. I want to try for that.’
‘We were both hurt?’ She folded her arms.
‘Yes, Sas. Yes. I know you think there’s an old scrunched-up newspaper where my heart’s supposed to be but, believe it or not, when you said you didn’t want to marry me it didn’t make me very happy.’
‘Seth.’ She closed her eyes, tired of repeating the same accusations they’d already waged war over. ‘You know what I’m going to say.’
‘I did that. Yes. It was very bad. But I still loved you.’
Saskia was surprised at the melancholy in his voice. It dredged up the feelings she’d had after that night at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda when The Tombolas were playing covers.
The girl had been wearing a cropped white singlet and had a tear-drop shaped jewel in her belly-button. She’d had her eyes on Seth from the start. And Saskia, trusting fool that she was, had left early to prepare her stall for the artists’ market the next morning, without the slightest inkling she had anything to fear.
‘It’s irrelevant now anyway,’ she said.
‘Don’t you want, one day, to be able to see me at your aging brother’s gigs, and instead of turning away, you come and say hi, and I say hi, and you tell me about what your little daughter is up to and I tell you about how I had to have an ingrown toenail cut out?’
Saskia couldn’t help but laugh.
‘This is the first step towards that. Let me buy you another drink.’ He waved a card at the bartender. ‘G and T. Lemon not lime. I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said, turning back to her. ‘That girl was nothing to me. It was an impulse. An itch.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t give you an itch,’ Saskia said as she accepted the drink from the barman. With the joke the tension eased, and she and Seth shared a smile.
*
The moment the door shut behind Saskia, Andy wanted to call her back. He slowly stood up and went into the bedroom in search of something to wear. Saskia’s rejected outfit options were strewn across the bed. Her shoes lay discarded on the floor next to a pair of jeans. He picked them up and lay them over the chair by her dressing table.
This was the second time in six months that he had churlishly followed her to one of her events, and he wondered if that reflected badly on her for going without him, or him for not attending in the first place. He knew it was the latter. He massaged his chin, under a layer of beard.
He entered the en suite and started to snip off the hair.
Thirty-five minutes later, Andy arrived at the pub, clean-shaven, smelling of Gucci and looking every bit the rising Associate Director he had until recently been. Beer fumes hit him as he crossed the threshold.
He was going to buy two pints of cider as a peace offering. Saskia’s brother and her ex-fiancé would be up on stage, and Andy would be in the crowd with her, his hands on her hips as she swayed to the music. He pushed into the packed band room and made his way to the bar. His eyes sought the barman but landed instead on Saskia’s face, across the room, talking to the man he recognised as Seth. Their faces were close. It was loud, and they were having a spirited conversation, gesticulating, and nodding and shaking their heads. He’d thought their relationship was still frosty, but that was not how it looked. To an outsider, they would have appeared tender and comfortable. They had the air of intimacy that came from a long-term physical relationship. Andy felt a jolt of jealousy, then anger.
He’d seen the way men behaved around Saskia, but she never responded to them like this. He couldn�
�t help but think of all the years she’d been with Seth before he knew her. He envied those years.
The barman passed Saskia a clear drink and Seth flashed a card. She took the glass and sipped, then said something. They met each other’s eyes, and laughed.
Andy turned around and walked back out again.
*
Thanks to a volley of text messages urging him to come out, Andy knew Alberto was at Jimmy Watson’s wine bar. As he unlocked the door to his Audi, he noticed someone had dragged a key along its side leaving a wobbling, white scratch. Andy gritted his teeth and set off for Carlton.
He needed cheering up, and that was where Alberto shone. His company offered easy frivolous fun. They’d go to Vlado’s and order steak and a bottle of wine, which they’d chase with a brandy or some really fine Scotch, then retire to leather chairs that weren’t sticky from spilled alcopops.
‘Andy!’ Alberto greeted him with his arms held wide. ‘Come, come.’ He guided him to a table where two other men were seated.
‘This is my dear old friend, Andy. Andy, this is Horatio and Salvatore.’
The men, already flushed from wine, welcomed him into their fold. The rest of the evening played out pretty much as Andy had planned. They each ordered a porterhouse from Vlado’s with a side of cabbage and grilled garlic capsicum. From there they went to a smoky room and chewed cigars, making their way through a bottle of two hundred and forty dollar Cognac until the waiter said they had exhausted the supply, but there was a three hundred dollar bottle he could give them for the same price. Merry now, they cheered this suggestion.
‘No, no, wait,’ said Alberto. ‘Make it the Armanac. You’ll like the Armanac,’ he told Andy.
From there Andy had a black spot in his memory. He found himself in a place with a stage that held naked ladies, but he didn’t remember how they arrived there. The men in the front row were pale and damp-looking, as if they had malfunctioning sweat glands. ‘Real court twelve types,’ Hugh would have called them; court twelve being where sex offenders were prosecuted in the Magistrates’ Court.
The girls here were chubby and young. Their lingerie was frilly and cheap, baby-dollish and made from flammable fabrics.
The First Year Page 25
