Gracious Living

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Somewhere quiet turned out to be The Red Centre, a plush leather bar at one end of the club house, decorated with gigantic pictures of Ayers Rock, the Olgas, the desert, Aborigines in traditional dress, in fact all the major attractions of Australia’s Centre. ‘Saves you from going there. And a good thing too.’ Lauren giggled. ‘We went a few years ago. The heat was unbearable, and the flies! This is a far more civilised way of doing the sights.’ Country and western music played softly and there were, fortunately, very few people. Lauren ordered a mineral water – she rarely drank alcohol these days – and Elizabeth, after declining the offer of a complimentary Eden Park Flyer, had the same.

  Lauren did appear to be genuinely pleased to see Elizabeth. So much had happened, she said, since their last meeting at the races. ‘I was at my lowest then. If I hadn’t found Stephan, god knows what would have happened – probably drunk myself into oblivion.’

  ‘Stephan?’ Elizabeth asked.

  Stephan Hall, her analyst. He’d saved her life. Surely Elizabeth was able to see the change? No more self-destructive behaviour, no more self-hatred, no more burying her emotions, no more escapism.

  ‘You can see it, can’t you, Elizabeth? You can see the difference?’

  Elizabeth assured her she could.

  It hadn’t been easy, Lauren said. ‘I’d become so dependent on my self-destructiveness I had to learn a whole new way of relating to myself.’ Stewart had supported her all the way, ‘one hundred and ten per cent.’ He’d been a willing participant in marriage counselling, and the group therapy where they had met the Putnams, had been his idea. They were now closer to each other than ever before, closer than they had ever thought possible. ‘So many couples only partially connect, but we have gone the entire way. And what’s so wonderful,’ she grasped Elizabeth’s hand, ‘is we can still be our own person.’

  And Sherrie, what about her?

  ‘We don’t see her.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’

  But Lauren wasn’t. ‘It’s much better this way and we’re all much happier. I’ve accepted the situation with Sherrie and I’ve accepted I’m not perfect. All that suffering did no one any good. Now I can live with myself, I know I’ve done my best and I’m proud of it. Every day when I look at my marriage, when I consider the strong bonds I have with the boys, I feel my actions are validated – not that I need proof of course, but it’s nice to have it anyway.’

  And this self-congratulation, had it served Sherrie well? Elizabeth wondered. Had Sherrie too, gone through a process of acceptance, acceptance that her family did not love her, did not want her? Elizabeth had had enough, she said she was meeting someone, she had to leave.

  ‘Oh no! Must you really? But I’ve heard nothing about what you’ve been doing. Did you remarry?’

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘Oh, what a shame.’

  Elizabeth shrugged.

  Lauren leaned in closely, dropping her voice to a confidential, sympathetic low. ‘Is it Ginnie? Has she stopped you?’ And before Elizabeth could say a word, she continued. ‘Ginnie always was a handful, much worse than the others in our little group. I know what it’s like to be shut in day after day with a needing child, can’t let go, and then the child’s a child no longer and separation is impossible and – ’

  ‘I’ve never heard so much rot in all my life.’ Elizabeth was on her feet.

  ‘You’ve become defensive Elizabeth, even a little hard, but don’t worry, I understand, I – ’

  The sentence was lost as Elizabeth left the room and hurried down the passageway to an entrance that opened on to a fairway. She was so angry and who should she see as she stepped into the daylight but Oliver Warby and Lydia Branch studying the putting green. Elizabeth was sure they had seen her but she did not care and hurried away to meet Vivienne.

  It took fifteen minutes of struggling with the crowd before Elizabeth descended into the huge sunken piazza in front of Eden Park Lodge. Marble assailed her, marble everywhere, pink marble, slippery marble, and such a noise! The sound seemed to catch in the crater, magnifying the voices until they screamed, tossing them above the huge white noise of the central fountain. So much noise, and music too, piped music audible from the sides of the crater, and a string quartet that one hardly heard at all. She was still a few minutes early so looked for a table, but none was available. She stood to one side watching and waiting for people to leave. When at last a table did become vacant she dashed over to it, arriving at the same time as two young men. They looked at her, briefly and without interest, and sat down. Any negotiation here? she wondered, but they refused to meet her gaze. This wasn’t an issue worth fighting she told herself as the fury rose, just leave them be. She retreated to the sidelines once more and watched. Not long afterwards – connections were made quickly here – one of the men approached two women at a nearby table and invited them to join him and his friend. The women looked him up and down, they looked his friend up and down, they consulted each other, gathered their belongings and joined the men, leaving their table to Elizabeth.

  She sat down and tried to calm herself. The noise, the rabble, the pushing and shoving, the young men, the self-interest, all of it was unsettling. This is irrational, she said to herself, push it away – the noise, the people, the frenzy – at least suffer over something worthwhile. A waiter appeared and she decided to have a drink. He recommended the Eden Park Flyer, a delicate concoction of vodka, crushed strawberries and cointreau. Delicate? Elizabeth said, you must be joking. But he was not, and it was clear Elizabeth shouldn’t be either. We put enormous effort into the food and beverages at Eden Park, he said, a proprietorial tone in his voice and an expression of disdain on his boyish face, and most people, he looked at her pointedly, know how to appreciate it. He ran his eyes over her neat but unfashionable clothes, slowly and deliberately he picked at her seams. If Elizabeth had been less astounded she would have found an appropriate response, as it was she was ambushed into silence and was saved only by the appearance of Vivienne.

  ‘Thank god you’re here. I’ve just been sneered at by a pompous waiter who’s at least half my age and acts as if he owns the place.’

  ‘I had a similar experience back at the Eiffel Tower bird cage.’

  ‘I think we should try and ignore the people,’ Elizabeth said. ‘What do you say?’

  Vivienne thought it a good idea, although with certain practical problems. They both laughed, and with arms linked pushed their way to the escalators at the side of the crater. They stepped on to one and ended up in the lobby of the hotel. Icy air hit them, Vivienne shivered – less because of the temperature than the space. It was gargantuan, rising up and up, a vastness that seemed to extend beyond the building itself, up and through the planes of intersecting glass at the zenith, a sort of gigantic geodesic dome meeting the sky, pulling the sky inside, or dragging the building upwards, impossible to judge from down on the floor. And surrounding the space, not enclosing it but rather forcing it upwards were ascending balconies, the edges camouflaged by dripping ivy, the greenest ivy, dripping and drooping according to the laws of gravity but with the appearance of climbing.

  It was like a theatre in the round and an amphitheatre all in one. In some areas the ascending balconies were terraces, stepping back from the space as they ascended; in other areas, each balcony jutted over the one below. As you looked up it was as if the space were amplified, rising and crushing at the same time, challenging you to take it in. And eventually, crushed rather than awed, you lowered your eyes and fixed instead on the area closer to the ground, the eating nooks, bars, fountains, palms, and the rising column of glass elevators in the centre, the people within clearly visible, their bodies turned to the space, turned to the audience, pointing and waving, stars for a moment.

  ‘Is it a Hyatt?’ Elizabeth wondered aloud.

  But it was not, although it could have been and that was what mattered
.

  ‘It’s a copy. We used to imitate the old, now, it seems, we imitate the new,’ Vivienne said – or rather shouted, owing to the huge obelisks of water rising and crashing on to the pink marble in a coronet around the elevators.

  ‘Rockets, the lifts look like rockets,’ Elizabeth shouted.

  And so they did, appearing out of the circle of spurting Water, for a brief moment almost continuous with it, and then leaving the water far behind. And even though the rising water had to fall, and the ascending elevators had to descend, the entire sense was of movement upwards, leaving the people diminutive observers.

  ‘Let’s walk around, it’s too noisy here,’ Elizabeth said, taking Vivienne’s arm.

  The floor of the atrium was pink marble, pink marble laden with ferns and palms and couches and chairs and tables and people drinking. Around the edges the walls had been hollowed out to form shops – boutiques, jewellers, souvenir shops, a tobacconist, a newsagent – and although many were empty, they wouldn’t be for long, according to a passing guide with a tour group in tow.

  ‘You lose your bearings,’ Elizabeth said, looking first left then right in search of a marker. The boutiques all look the same and even if you recognise one – for example, I know we’ve passed here before because that gold leather suit is unforgettable – it doesn’t help orient you.’ She stopped suddenly and a tall gangly man with a woman on his arm walked straight into her. He was profusely apologetic, said he hadn’t been looking, but as he walked away Elizabeth heard him call her a silly bitch. She looked around helplessly. ‘I suggest we simply walk the perimeter until we find a way out.’

  But it was easier said than done. What looked like exits between the shops turned out to be passageways leading to function rooms. They decided to try one corridor which appeared longer than the others; there was no sign, so they continued to walk until the passage opened into an art gallery.

  ‘That’s not a Tom Roberts? No! couldn’t be.’ Vivienne walked over to what appeared to be Roberts’ Shearing the Rams. Next to it was a cluster of McCubbins: The Bush Burial, The Pioneer and On the Wallaby Track. And that was not all, a brief look at the exhibits revealed all of Australia’s best-known bush paintings: eucalypts, pioneer families, harsh bush, searing sun, and not a modernist amongst them.

  ‘They can’t be real!’ Vivienne said. She peered at one of the McCubbins, and then another. ‘But neither do they look like reproductions.’

  But they were. According to one of the roving guides they were copies of the highest quality which, having been treated with state-of-the-art chemicals, would outlast the originals. Not only that, the colours in the copies were more vivid, more true to the artist’s intentions than those of the originals. ‘And,’ the guide concluded triumphantly, ‘that’s not all. Our paintings are for sale, in limited edition of course, the originals are not.’

  ‘Their’ paintings were priced between five thousand and fifty thousand dollars – ‘which is nothing when you consider you’re purchasing a better product than the original, and one much cheaper to insure.’

  Elizabeth and Vivienne remained unconvinced, and soon after returned to the atrium.

  ‘It’s hard to believe all this is real.’

  Vivienne laughed. ‘I don’t think Eden Park is much concerned with reality, and by the looks of it no one much cares.’

  The place was bursting with people. There was a queue for the elevators; people were cavorting amongst the water obelisks their clothes wet and clinging, Eden Park Flyers in hand; others filled the souvenir shops, laden with baubles and eager to pay.

  Suddenly Vivienne grasped Elizabeth’s arm, she had seen an exit, and the two of them pushed their way through the crowd. The heat hit them after the air-conditioning but they were pleased to be outside.

  ‘I’d like to find somewhere ordinary,’ Elizabeth said. ‘A place where I won’t be menaced by space. And I need somewhere quiet. I feel quite disoriented.’

  They studied a map and discovered that Elizabeth’s requirements were not easily met. There was an artificial lake, the alligator farm, the native animal reserve, trout fishing, sporting pavilions, and numerous restaurants: the Stage Coach, the Bush Kitchen, the Olde Colonial Inn, the Riverboat.

  ‘There must be a coffee shop somewhere that pretends to be nothing other than a coffee shop?’

  At last they found one. It was attached to one of the gymnasiums and provided light snacks and beverages ‘after your workout’.

  ‘What about your curiosity?’ Vivienne asked Elizabeth as they made their way to the coffee shop. ‘We’ll not see much from there.’

  ‘I’ve had enough for the moment. Besides we’ll see it all again at the opening ceremony. “A show to be remembered” was the way Adrian described it during one of his interviews, and I’m sure that’s exactly what it’ll be.’ She stepped off the path and allowed a couple to pass; they were glued together the length of their bodies and had no thought of separating.

  Elizabeth and Vivienne were walking against the flow; everyone was flocking to Eden Park Lodge to secure a place for the opening ceremony. Elizabeth reached across and took Vivienne’s hand and helped her out of the current. They had no need to hurry; while Adrian’s ‘special guests’ numbered in the thousands, some guests were more special than others: Elizabeth, Ginnie, Kate and Vivienne had been allotted numbered seats on the offical dais for the opening ceremony. They could arrive at the last minute and still be assured of a good view.

  By the time Elizabeth and Vivienne had reached the gymnasium the paths were almost deserted. Before entering, Elizabeth stopped and looked back. She took it all in: the fairways, the hotels the apartments, the bushland, the tennis courts, the lake, the retreating people.

  ‘Nothing much has changed from ten years ago,’ she said shading her eyes. ‘Just a little more exaggeration – more hysteria with the fun.’

  When Ginnie left the bird pavilion to avoid a meeting with Lydia she made her way towards the lake; the paths there made her feel less precarious – concrete rather than the tiles that clad most of Eden Park’s walkways – and there were fewer people. She had an acute sense of being all leg on this the first time she had worn shorts in public, although Kate’s compliment had made the trial easier. And yet these legs, the bane of her life, were not in appearance so very bad, indeed, the left one was quite attractive. She smiled to herself; hadn’t she studied it often enough? – hour after hour alone in her room, styling ancient Greek garments out of bedsheets, draping the material across a shoulder and down her body, catching the hem at the left side and looping it through a belt to leave the leg exposed. She would stand side on before the mirror and see that the left leg was long and straight and shapely enough. But the right? and both of them together? Well, Kate was being kind.

  As for the shorts, there was no adequate explanation for them; suddenly, quite literally overnight, something had happened to make her want to take on her body, if not full on, certainly not only from the left side. All her life she had tried so hard to pass for what she was not – to hide her disability under clothes, to avoid eating in public, to spend entire evenings at parties standing in a corner supported by the walls so as to avoid using her sticks – and now all the pretence seemed to have shed its urgency. You live your life according to certain strictures and then suddenly they become – what? Useless? Irrelevant? Or simply burdensome?

  Of course Scott was involved. She had loved him, of that there could be no doubt, but as well he had been a tool, a means of proving herself on the hazardous ground of her body, proving herself in an area that her friends – everyone – considered normal and worthwhile. It was of little consequence that Ginnie knew too much significance was placed on bodies and far too much emphasis was given to sex. It was a matter of stigma. To be eighteen and without a boyfriend, to be eighteen and still a virgin were terrible handicaps which, thanks to Scott, Ginnie did not have to bear. How she had enjoyed those Monday lunches swapping information with her girlfriends a
bout the weekend; the girls would ask about Scott and Ginnie would ask about their boyfriends. Some people liked to boast about being different, Kate, for example, loved to stand out from the crowd, but Ginnie did not.

  With Scott, she had passed the ultimate physical test, and in so doing had proved herself in a far more profound way than the time she had joined a bushwalking club and nearly killed herself, or when she had gone trailbike riding, tearing over the violent ground absolutely terrified. Sex seemed closer to your self, your essence, than trailbike riding could ever be, and while she knew there was little reason for sex to be saddled with this burden of identity, that’s the way it seemed to be. And it was the very fact of sex that mattered irrespective of whether she had enjoyed it, that someone had chosen to relate to her through this calamity that was her body. It put a gloss to her self which would last, of that she was quite sure: having taken that first great risk of revealing not her soul but its derelict partner, life should be easier from now on.

  As she made her way to the lake she glimpsed a time when she would walk along a path such as this, out in the open, legs as naked as they were today, and not be conscious of being an object of curiosity. One day, in place of fear and distrust and embarrassment she would focus instead on the distant hills with their bleached summer stubble, and the sheep huddling in the shade of a few decrepit eucalypts; she would stop and gaze at the blue sky unconcerned about her sticks blocking the path, she would rest without self-recrimination when she was tired. And this was not all, if she could learn to forget her body even for a short time, rid herself of her voracious self-consciousness, she might find the courage to swim in the ocean, she might ask her friend Leonie to show her how to play the cello, just once to stroke the rich beauty from the instrument. There had been so much she dared not do for fear of showing her disability, so much she had done in order to conceal it.