The Indigo Sky
Page 29
She threw back the sheet and slipped on a kimono. Her nightgown was in the laundry basket, along with a host of other things. The sheets would need washing too, she decided – she didn’t want to carry Hank’s scent with her for days. It was disturbing that in appearance he reminded her of Jim. Although Jim didn’t have those deep-set dark eyes, he had the same olive skin and straight brown hair. Yet she had to move on from this, just as Jim had.
The effort of fastening the kimono worsened her headache. Throbbing temples, dry throat, flashes of light. She shut her eyes. After feeling her way to the window, she pulled the curtains across. Funny to think that she’d known her two best friends, Jim and Lorna, for over two-thirds of her life. She’d first met them when she was only nine, soon after she and her mother had moved to Jingera. They’d befriended her and shielded her from those taunts of being a bloody reffo or the daughter of a commie bastard. And Jim had protected her from the predatory interest of Mr Bates too. She’d imagined, as she was growing up, that she and Jim would end up together. A wrong assumption. By the time she’d gone to university, he was in third year and in a different league. He’d become involved with beautiful Lindsay and had little time for her. Not that beautiful Lindsay stayed with him for long. Barely six months later she’d taken up with a rich lawyer ten years older and Jim had won the University Medal as well as a Rhodes Scholarship. Once he’d gone to Oxford, Zidra had embarked on a series of unsatisfactory relationships with unsuitable men.
Of course not everyone would view Hank as unsuitable.
In the bathroom she gulped down several glasses of water and swallowed two paracetamol. After a quick shower she ran damp fingers through her hair; it was no good combing curls like hers.
She and Jim had continued a close friendship by post. Sometimes it seemed to her that their relationship had deepened through the many letters they’d exchanged over the years. Letters giving details about their lives and their thoughts, if not about their romantic exploits. Jim was a part of the fabric of her life, even though he wasn’t in Australia.
Inspecting her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she decided she looked terrible; this is what too little sleep did to you when you were twenty-four. Carefully she patted face cream onto her skin. Surely that wasn’t a line appearing on her forehead? No, it was just the skin creasing from her raised eyebrows. Facial immobility was the thing if you wanted to stay youthful – that’s what the women’s page editor had told her in all seriousness. Maybe she’d have to stop raising her eyebrows and revert to wearing a fringe. She laughed and then grimaced at her reflection. Last night Hank had told her she was beautiful but some people will say anything to get you into bed.
As she passed Joanne’s room, the door opened. ‘Who was that guy?’ Joanne said. In her too-large pyjamas, she looked more like a twelve-year-old boy than a woman in her mid-twenties.
‘Hank Fuller. How did you know he was here?’
‘I heard you talking on the way up.’
‘Sorry. I thought we were whispering.’
‘Stage whispering, Zidra. I heard all about your gorgeous ass. Is he still here?’
‘No, he left early this morning.’
‘Pity. I’d like to meet him. Cute accent. Is he the one for you?’
‘Oh, Joanne, I don’t know what that means.’
‘Darling, don’t spoil my illusions. I like to think there’s a unique partner for each and every one of us.’
‘I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life.’ Zidra was now starting to feel slightly ashamed of using Hank as she’d done last night.
As she opened the front door of the house, she heard the telephone ring and then Joanne’s voice as she picked it up on the kitchen extension. ‘Yes, Zidra’s here but she’s just about to go to work . . . You’re calling from where? . . . Just hold on a moment.’
Joanne put her hand over the receiver and shouted, ‘Some guy from Phnom Penh.’
‘Phnom Penh,’ Zidra repeated. It had to be from Jim, though calls from him were a rarity – in fact he’d phoned from Cambodia just once before, on her birthday. As she took the receiver, she noticed her hand was shaking. ‘Hello?’ There was only static at first and then Jim’s voice uttering her name. She waited a few seconds, until she could hear that Joanne was well on her way up the stairs, before saying, ‘How are you? It’s been a long time.’
Reading Group Questions
1. Do you think Lorna’s experiences at the Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home will have the opposite effect on her future to that hoped for by the authorities? If so, why?
2. There are a number of contrasts between the characters of Lorna and Philip. For example, Lorna is a strong and resilient character who will defend herself against institutional cruelty, whereas, for a variety of reasons, Philip is unable to fight back against bullies, making him an easy target. What are some other differences between these two characters?
3. Ilona and Zidra Vincent connect the stories of Lorna and Philip. How do you think they are altered by their involvement?
4. When Philip is bullied, he tries to tell his family, but he fails because he initially targets the parent without the power. By the time he begins to target the powerful one – his mother – she has made her own plans (though she tries to make out they were his father’s) and Philip is too much in awe of her to fight back. What do you think Philip has learnt about his parents and himself by the end of the narrative?
5. Jim Cadwallader and Philip form a bond in spite of the age gap and their different talents. What do you think contributes to this friendship?
6. What is the importance of music in The Indigo Sky?
7. Why does the coffee table assume importance in George Cadwallader’s relationship with his second son, Andy?
8. The novel is written principally from five different characters’ viewpoints. What are the obstacles that each character must overcome, and who do you think is most changed by the events in the story?
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Version 2.0
THE INDIGO SKY
First published by Random House Australia in 2011
This edition published by Random House Australia 2012
Copyright © Alison Booth 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Bantam book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Booth, Alison.
The indigo sky [electronic resource] / Alison Booth.
ISBN 9781742742908 (eBook)
A823.4
Cover photography by Corbis
Cover design by Natalie Winter
eBook, Internal design and typesetting by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Permission to reprint words from the Judith Wright poem, ‘At Cooloolah’ from A Human Pattern: Selected Poems, published in 2009, courtesy of ETT Imprint.
Permission to reproduce words from Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order, published in 2009, Routledge
Classics, p. 32, courtesy of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd and Taylor & Francis.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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