Christmas in Canberra

by Nicole Taylor

  Margot looked at Louise thoughtfully. “It is too depressing to look into the future unless you are going to fantasize about dreams coming true. Looking into the future and looking at the most likely boring reality is just plain scary. It’s like watching one of those shows written by scientists who are certain that there will be no clean air, no clean water and too many people if we don’t all stop having babies and driving cars immediately.”

  Louise laughed. “You’re right. “Sorbent Green”, wasn’t it? Sorry. I didn’t mean to be expresso depresso. It just seems to me that, all of a sudden, everyone else in my family is ‘normal’ because they have made every mistake in the book and that is what they all have in common. Jane avoided uni by getting married straight out of school and now she has a husband and family and a gorgeous home; Michael is hopeless with money and has to let his dragon of a wife mastermind his affairs and now they have a home and a baby on the way; Marie is having a baby on her own and will soon be swapping recipes and stretch mark remedies with Mum, Jane and Roxanne; while I – I, who finished school, went straight on to uni, got a steady job, didn’t date losers and didn’t get pregnant – I am the outcast because now no one in my family has anything in common with me!”

  “I know!” Margot was laughing. “It’s the same in my family! And I recently found out that Mum and Dad have been giving all the others money!”

  “Oh – mine have been doing that for years.”

  “Do they ever give you any?”

  “I’ve never asked them.”

  “Me either! So now I feel like the parent, telling Mum and Dad that they are starting a very bad trend by baling out their adult kids every time they need money. And it is never for unforeseen emergencies. They know perfectly well that if they overspend, Mum and Dad will hand over the difference. It’s pathetic.”

  “The only people who care are you and me, Margot. No one else cares. I sometimes think Dad actually enjoys writing cheques for his adult kids.”

  “Well, I don’t think my parents enjoy it.” Margot shook her head as she spoke. “Mum is trying to put something aside for herself, but she can’t because of all the demands made on their purse. I keep telling them to stop being so generous. In the end, I can’t bear to hear about it. It annoys me so much that I start to get angry with the others, and where does that get me? They already think I am ‘little Miss Perfect’.”

  “That’s what I get called!” said Louise excitedly. “How come we are the only responsible ones in our families? Is it a ‘birth order’ thing? Because both my parents are eldest children and they are like me when it comes to being financially independent and responsible.”

  “Must be,” said Margot. “But somehow what started out as “Margot is the sensible one – she will go places” has become “Margot would never take a risk – she is just an old maid.”

  “So what are we missing?” asked Louise. “What great, cracking fuck-up can we bring down on ourselves to get our lives back ‘in sync’ with the rest of humanity?”

  “Well, we could quit our jobs but apply for lots of credit cards before we quit and use them to go on holidays when we are unemployed,” suggested Margot.

  “Good! Yes! That’s the idea!” Both girls were laughing as they thought up ways to emulate their brothers and sisters.

  “We could sell our cars and lease new ones –“

  “You’ve been talking to Michael, haven’t you?”

  “No, just watching my sister.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to try to take all the credit.”

  “Yes. You’ll have to watch that. What else? Oh! Oh! We could borrow huge sums of money from our parents -”

  “Promising to repay it next week –“

  “But never actually repay it!”

  “And date every loser who asks us out!”

  “And have sex with them all and never take any precautions!”

  “Ew!!!”

  “I know! You have to have a tough constitution to be a total loser. It’s not a job for the feint-hearted.”

  *

  When Louise finally arrived home later that evening, it was with a lighter heart and a greater sense of belonging than she had thought possible just a couple of hours earlier. Her phone was ringing as she let herself in and she answered it, thinking it might be Margot with a last minute thought; or Pat; or even Marie.

  It was, in fact, her mother.

  “Hello, Louise?” Mary sounded tentative. Louise had received so few calls from her mother in her life that she was surprised to find that over the phone her mother sounded just the same as she sounded in real life.

  “Oh, hi Mum,” answered Louise, unable to disguise her surprise. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Well, I’m not fine actually.” Mary contradicted her automatic response in an even tone. “I need to talk to you about something. Something private.”

  “Oh?”

  “But not over the phone.”

  Louise caught herself before she offered to drive to Mary’s place at a time convenient to Mary. “Okay.” She said politely. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Could I meet you at lunchtime tomorrow?”

  “Where abouts?”

  “Gus’s?”

  “Okay. What time?”

  “12.30.”

  “12.30. See you then.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Typical Mum, thought Louise to herself. No preliminary chat; no show of interest in anything concerning Louise’s life. Strictly business. “I wonder what she can want to talk to me about?” Louise thought. “After all, we’ve done her taxes.”

  Chapter 12

  The Keats family had moved to Canberra in 1968 when Jim was recruited by the Department of Treasury. Canberra was much smaller then and, as the newly formed capital of Australia, was experiencing a population explosion as graduates from all the major universities were relocated to take up positions in the federal public service. Civic was the main commercial area and most of the shops clustered themselves around Alinga Street, which in those days still accommodated traffic. Northbourne Avenue defined Civic on its western frontier, and the Monaro Mall was the farthest point on the eastern side.

  Then, Civic held just one cinema – aptly named ‘Centre Cinema’. It stood on the northernmost road enclosing Civic, Bunda St, beside that most venerable of Canberra cafes, Gus’s.

  ‘Gus’s’ was what everyone knew the place as, but in fact it was ‘Gus Allouette’s Café”. It was well established by the time the Keats’ arrived, backing as it did onto Mama’s Pizzeria (where red letters painted onto a tin pizza pan proclaimed that ‘Pizza should be eaten with the fingers’) and Garema Place. Gus’s served European style coffees, delicatessen quality sandwiches and the best, richest, creamiest, most delicious baked cheesecake ever. Gus, his wife and miscellaneous Austrian relations served these treats wearing floral aprons while singing out orders and greetings in quaint accents. For the Keats’, who came from Brisbane where the local milkbar menu comprised a milkshake choice of two flavours: strawberry and chocolate, and a food choice of fish, chips or potato scallops, Gus’s was a little piece of Europe under a bright canvas awning in the middle of the bush capital.

  Almost twenty years later, Civic was unrecognizable but little had changed at Gus’s. Even Gus seemed not to have changed. Louise worked in the Moore St Tax Office which was barely a ten minute walk from Gus’s and she arrived early, as was her wont. Although longstanding, she wasn’t a regular customer and so had no need to exchange pleasantries with the staff when she seated herself under the awning in the footpath section of the café. She extracted the novel she was currently reading from her stiff leather ‘old lady’ handbag and looked forward to stealing a few minutes of literary escape before meeting her mother.

  But it was not to be. Louise was like her mother in more than just looks, for neither one could bear to be late. In appearance and in manner, mother and daughter reflected one another and their mutual punctuality was
one of many areas in which they failed to differ.

  Mary arrived wearing her customary deep red lipstick. She had on a navy blue suit with matching shoes and Oroton handbag, cream silk blouse, pearl brooch, sapphire rings and Jackie Onassis sunglasses. Without looking at anything in particular, she made her way to where Louise sat and offered her daughter her cheek. Louise duly stood and kissed it, then resettled herself as Mary sat and removed her sunglasses.

  “How are you?” Mary asked in a casual tone.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Louise answered pleasantly. “You look well.”

  “I’ve just come from Cataldo’s,” said Mary, patting her sleek, not-quite-shoulder-length hair. “Emilio gave me a trim.” She smiled contentedly.

  Cataldo’s was another longstanding tradition but they were regulars there, and had been for more than a decade. At the age of 15, when Louise had begun to worry about such things, there were only two hairdressers to be considered by the discerning young woman: Franco’s and Cataldo’s. Somehow, Franco’s had earned the reputation of cutting off more than was necessary; and as Louise had always preferred longer styles, she had stayed loyal to Cataldo’s.

  Not that this was in any way a burden for her. Cataldo’s main attractions, Emilio and Angelo, were gorgeous beyond belief and impossible to get to see unless you had “connections”. Both men were a few years older than Louise, and Emilio was the elder son. Their father had originally opened the salon when the boys were still at Daramalan, the Catholic boy’s school in Dickson which was partner to the girl’s school Louise had attended in Braddon. After training as hairdressers, and taking it in turn to win Apprentice of the Year awards, both Emilio and Angelo had joined their father and built up a formidable reputation as the sexiest men in hairdressing. Louise often marvelled at this fact, since although they were tall, masculine, very handsome and sensationally Italian, both boys were so intelligent and gentlemanly that they had in fact done very little to acquire the reputation they enjoyed. Nevertheless, women of all ages paid them three times what they would pay anyone else to wash, cut and blow dry their hair, passing through their salon swing doors lighter in wallet and woes.

  Mary was exhibiting the normal ‘Cataldo’s afterglow’ and Louise thought it was probably about time she made an appointment for herself. It mattered not that both men had long since married beautiful Italo-Australian girls and were themselves fathers; for the price of a haircut, they could be yours for an hour.

  “Emilio!” Louise let the name roll off her tongue. Just thinking about the Cataldo’s made her feel good. “How is he?”

  “Actually, we mostly talked about me.” Mary never blushed and she didn’t now. “He looked well, though.” Mary looked at Louise and smiled. “You look good, too.”

  Mary had been pleased to see that Louise was wearing make-up and that all her accessories matched. “I rarely see you dressed up.”

  “That’s because I usually drop in on the weekends.” Louise was careful to say “usually” and not “used to”. She wondered whether Mary had even noticed her absence lately and didn’t want to be the one to draw attention to it.

  They ordered a cappuccino for Mary and a macchiato for Louise, a toasted asparagus and cheese sandwich to share, and a slice of cheesecake with two forks.

  “Did you hear about Michael and James going into a partnership?” Mary launched into her subject without further ado.

  “Yes, unfortunately,” said Louise.

  Mary shook her head and gave Louise a look of angry annoyance. “I’m really at the end of my tether with Michael, Louise.” She put down her coffee and sat back in her chair. “And Jim just keeps on giving him money. Now he’s talking about selling the land to pay Michael’s debts.”

  Fifteen years earlier, Jim had bought 50 acres of lovely mountainside land – replete with mountain stream and rock-pool waterfall; peacocks, wombats and even trout, not far from Tathra, the New South Wales coastal town where they left their caravan on-site in readiness for the summer holidays. The family visited ‘the land’ regularly and camped by the water, shooting rabbits and fishing, then cooking over an open fire.

  “He wouldn’t!”

  “He would!”

  “But, Mum – does Michael know this?” Louise didn’t want to be the one to tell her mother that Michael and Sam had for years been growing a crop of marijuana in a gully on the land, and selling it for a large profit to their dope-smoking friends in Canberra. Selling the land meant inspection by realtors and interested buyers. If the crop was discovered, would Jim and Mary be held responsible? It produced a large amount of marijuana and was sure to be more than could be explained away by claims of ‘for personal use only’. Louise had to remind herself that this was not her problem. She had never seen the crop nor smoked the dope. So why did she feel so awful?

  Mary was unaware of this element of the problem and thought only of her finances.

  “No. But I doubt he would care. Michael seems to think that whatever is ours, is his.” Mary looked even more annoyed. “I’m getting really sick of it, though, Louise.”

  “God, Mum – I don’t blame you. But I don’t have any money. My studies have cleaned me out and I’m afraid I don’t believe in borrowing money.” She looked apologetically at her mother. “Accounting 101 I’m afraid. Make compound interest work for you, not against you.”

  “I don’t want a loan,” laughed Mary. It was clear that Louise was the last person she would think of to borrow money from and Louise didn’t know whether to be relieved or hurt. “I just want some advice. No one listens to me and Jim will go right ahead and sell the land whatever I say. I just wondered if there was anything I could do to stop him.”

  “You mean – legally?”

  Mary shrugged. “Whatever,” she said vaguely. But she looked at Louise with real interest.

  Louise tried not to think of her family and tried to think of the problem objectively.

  “Whose name is the land in?” she asked.

  “Both Jim’s and mine.”

  “And you bought it outright?”

  “Yes. No loan or anything.”

  “Do you have the deed?”

  “Yes.” Mary added “And I have been signing everything for years.”

  “Wow,” thought Louise. “She is serious.” But she cleared her throat and said “Well, you could use the land as collateral to borrow money and spend it on something else. That way it wouldn’t do Dad any good to sell it because it wouldn’t result in him getting any funds to give to Michael.”

  “But what would I buy? And how would my spending the money make us any better off than Michael spending it?”

  “Well,” said Louise carefully, concentrating on the financial aspects of the problem and trying hard not to consider the political agenda, “you could re-invest the money.”

  “Go on.”

  “You could buy gilt-edged bonds, or put the money in a term deposit, but in each case you can actually get at that money again if you pay the charges.” Louise began to warm to her topic. “Or, you could use the money as a down-payment on a rental property. If you made sure that the rent was enough to cover both the mortgage and the loan repayments on the land, you would end up with two properties. You would negatively gear the rental so that you got a cash-refund from the Tax Office each year, based on the tax Dad pays fortnightly on his salary, and you could use this refund to pay down the loan or the mortgage.”

  Mary looked triumphant. “That’s what I suspected.” She looked at Louise shrewdly. “Do you know how to arrange all it?”

  “What – the loan?”

  “No – I can do that,” scoffed Mary. “We’ve had so much debt with our bank for the past twenty years that the manager sends us Christmas presents. No, I mean the negative gearing. Can you work that out?”

  “Of course. And once you choose a rental property, I can draw up an estimate of expected revenue and expenses, so you can see what is involved. Actually, you might like to open a family trust, and
get the trust to buy the property.”

  “Is that difficult?”

  “Not really. If it was, everyone wouldn’t be doing it! You register a $2 company, set it up as the trustee, then transfer whatever property you like into the trust. Then the trust legally owns those assets, and you are merely directors of the company which is the trustee, so effectively you are making all the decisions. You are also beneficiaries of the trust, of course.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good.” said Mary decisively.

  Louise felt uncomfortable, thinking that she was advising her mother of the best way to defraud her father. “But it is his own fault,” she thought guiltily. “He has no right not to consult Mum and, if he insists on ignoring her wishes, what other option does she have but to go behind his back? It is her money, too.”

  “That still leaves our home.” Mary hadn’t finished. “Jim could mortgage the house to give Michael money.”

  “You could always transfer the house into the Family Trust and insist that you both have to sign any changed financial arrangements, like mortgages or loans.”

  “We’ve been signing each other’s names for years on legal documents,” Mary was thinking out loud. “That wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, you could name a third director of the Family Trust – someone you trust to not allow one of you to sign for both of you – and make it a requirement that all three signatures appear on any document.”

  “Of course!” Mary smiled.

  Mary was now quite ready to relax and enjoy her lunch. She sat comfortably, taking in the summer scene of passing people, some carrying packages which no doubt contained Christmas presents. She remembered that it would probably be polite to ask Louise about herself but couldn’t think of anything.

  It was no use asking her if she was seeing anyone. That had been a zero for so many years now no one even gave it a thought. Her job was public service rah rah and Mary really didn’t care. It was always the same thing anyway: promotion gained or missed; the new mainframe computing system was a wonder or it was inefficient; the boss was great or awful; they were moving the office. It had been the same since Jim had joined Treasury 20 years ago.