Forty-Seventeen

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘The olive is like leaking radioactivity,’ she said. She was preoccupied with nuclear war but not as an issue – more as a macabre firework or as a sort of video game.

  ‘I’ll give you a twist of lemon next,’ he said, ‘that’s the other classic garnish.’

  She moved against him, began to arouse him, but he was in another mood, and said, ‘I thought this was the cocktail hour.’

  ‘I want to get rid of that sad look you have.’

  ‘I’m not sad.’

  But cross-tunings were coming in across the sea from his youthful marriage to a girl from his home town (although they’d never had sex in their home town – except for some vaguely recalled, fumbled caressing on a river rock in bushland, a ‘fully dressed rehearsal’, which he chose not to count). And a crude, bizarre ejaculation in a classroom late one afternoon – but no entry. The cross-tunings were entries of ill-handled love, their artless fumbled living …

  In the sedate lounge of the Windsor he called the waiter. ‘This martini is too warm, we asked for it very cold and very dry. It is neither.’

  He was relieved that at twenty he had got the complaint out, slowly, and with some force.

  ‘Yes sir.’ The waiter went to take their drinks away.

  ‘Leave mine,’ Robyn said. ‘Mine’s all right.’ She put her hand out over the drink.

  ‘Yes madam.’ The waiter took only his drink. ‘I’ll bring a fresh martini, sir.’

  The waiter moved away.

  ‘You are a pain in the arse sometimes,’ his wife said.

  ‘I thought you were big on consumer rights. Waiter!’

  The waiter turned and came back to the table. ‘Take my wife’s martini also – we’ll both have a fresh one.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  She let the waiter take the drink this time.

  ‘You give me the shits,’ she said.

  ‘So much for our second anniversary.’

  ‘Fighting with waiters isn’t my idea of a good time. It’s alcohol, isn’t it? I thought that was all you cared about.’

  He knew he’d complained as a way of getting at her. He didn’t really care about the martini.

  He wanted to be in New York drinking martinis in Costello’s bar with Thurber. With the sophisticated Louise.

  ‘I wish I was in New York. In Costello’s. Only the Americans know how to mix a martini.’

  ‘What would you know about Costello’s or New York?’

  ‘Travel isn’t the only way of knowing.’

  ‘The martini was invented by a Frenchman, anyhow.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘Have it your own way, I read it in Origin of Everything.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘And stop big-noting yourself,’ she went on, ‘you’re just a country boy – you’ve drunk only one martini before in your whole life. You get it all from Scott Fitzgerald and you get it wrong.’

  He remained silent, stung, taking balm from a private relishing of a secret score against her – that on the day before they’d left on their anniversary trip to Melbourne he’d drunk martinis in bed with Louise.

  He reached across to take her hand, reversing the mood to place her at a disadvantage, gaining himself virtue for making the move to heal the mood while at the same time continuing to relish Louise.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, taking the blame onto herself.

  ‘We don’t have to stay the country boy and girl all our lives.’

  ‘I’m quite happy to be the country girl,’ she said, quietly …

  ‘Stirred never shaken,’ Louise said, putting a finger on his nose to emphasise her point, stopping him with her other hand.

  He’d been doing an American bartender act with the cocktail shaker, Louise being the first person he’d known to own a cocktail shaker.

  ‘That’s how I’ve seen it done in American movies.’

  Louise laughed. ‘You have been going to the wrong movies. There are some cocktails we do that way, my love, but not the martini, never the martini.’

  ‘That’s how we do them in my home town,’ he said, trying to joke over his naivety.

  ‘I’d believe that.’

  He put the shaker down and removed the top and looked into it. ‘They seem all right, they haven’t exploded.’

  ‘They’ll be bruised,’ she laughed, ‘or at least that’s what an aficionado would say.’

  ‘Should I throw them away and start again?’

  ‘No – I’m sure we can drink them with impunity – and I have an idea.’

  He stopped himself asking who the aficionados were.

  He began to pour them but Louise again stopped him. ‘Tch, tch,’ taking away the wine glasses he’d taken out and bringing back martini glasses, ‘a classic drink demands a classic glass. And my idea is that we take the martinis to the bedroom and watch the sun set over the city.’

  She led him to her bedroom, he slightly trembling with desire, the martini slightly spilling.

  Looking out on the city at dusk from her bed he felt regret that he should need to be doing this against his young wife, felt the abrasion of his spirit. But it was numbed away with the lust for Louise, Louise who had the skills of living and such completeness.

  ‘What’s wrong, love – guilt?’ Louise asked.

  ‘No,’ he lied …

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He turned over in bed to face the question from his seventeen-year-old – eighteen-year-old – girlfriend.

  ‘Memories spooking about,’ he said.

  ‘But you said you hadn’t brought anyone else here.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, putting a hand to her face, ‘but the heart is a hotel.’

  He reached over and took his martini from beside the bed and finished it.

  Where had his young wife learned about the origins of the martini back then? He had looked in the book The Origins of Everything, she hadn’t got it from there.

  ‘I don’t want you thinking of other women while you are sexing on with me.’

  He smiled. ‘They have their rights.’

  She rolled on to him and began to arouse him again.

  ‘Mix another drink,’ he said, ‘first.’

  She left the bed and went into the bar, her naked, youthful grace tightened his heart. She looked into the cocktail jug.

  ‘There’s some left,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll be mainly melted ice.’

  He was taking from her the flavours of young, first love. She was trying out her own explorations.

  ‘I’ll make a new lot, tell me how,’ she called.

  He was collecting pleasures not taken when he’d been seventeen. He was taking also perhaps the last taste of pure youth.

  The first martini, though, had honoured his ex-wife and Louise. This next one would be theirs.

  ‘One part vermouth, five parts gin,’ he called back to her, ‘some would argue – but that’s my mix now.’

  A Portrait of a Virgin Girl (Circa 1955)

  FROM JANUARY/

  It’s hard for me to say dearest …

  It’s hard for me to say ‘dearest’ for I’ve never written a letter headed ‘dearest’. I know you start your letters that way but I’m sure you’ll understand that I mean it even if I can’t write it. I’ll learn because my liking for you has increased greatly since June 12 last year and the experience in Room 17 about which I cannot write (or think). I’m not making a very good job of explaining myself, it’s just that I’ve never written real words of love before and I guess the first time is always the hardest. The town hasn’t changed one single bit except that it’s deader (after one month of you being in the city). It really died a long time ago but it must be a good town. Why? Because you always say ‘Only the good die young’. PS. The next letter will be from the Red Cross Camp. I’m still your same old Robyn.

  The flag ceremony was deeply moving …

  The flag ceremony was deeply moving, with all delegates from overseas lined up with flags and as each country
was called the delegates took their flag forward and pledged it to world peace. It gave me the best feeling of my life. I’ve talked to one person of a different colour for the first time in my life. His name is Carlos and he’s from the Philippines. But the Americans are the camp favourites although Nancy and I outwit them in conversation and we’ve seen all the films they’ve seen. I’m having an American girl Jo-Anne to stay with me after the camp and brother I just dig her the most. I’m in a discussion group on how we can learn more about world affairs and so advance world peace. I suggested a world newspaper run by journalists from every country and published in every capital. Have to rush, Jo-Anne just called ‘Get up you all’.

  Back home again and everything is as dead as ever …

  Back home again and everything is as dead as ever. I’ve realised though that a year’s separation will be good for us and will prove to everyone how serious we are. But I’ll only have school to write about and you’ll have the exciting life of a newspaper office which isn’t really fair. I met the new headmaster today, he’s a Master of Arts and everyone said he’s very brainy. He told me he wants to bring ‘tone’ to the school. I agreed. I really want to be in Sydney with you instead of stuck here with a lot of kids with minds around the age fourteen. My mind seems to have shot ahead to age seventeen (comes from mixing with a seventeen-year-old cadet journalist, I suppose).

  FROM FEBRUARY/

  You’ll never be able to convert people …

  You’ll never be able to convert people to Steinbeck’s style of realism or make them realise that only those without an open mind pick out the parts which are not so gentle, because we have a perfect example here at school. Eddie Lyons got East of Eden at Prize Giving Day remember and over the holidays he let Jennie read it and she told him it was filth, although she read it all the way through. She made Eddie read it although Eddie is not what you would call a big reader.

  Friedman and I will have to work on them both this year but I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll join the Free Thinkers. The Head wears academic robes at school assembly to give the place a bit of tone. Fat chance.

  Dearest, there I’ve used the word …

  Dearest, there I’ve used the word and I hope it makes you happier. But I’m using it because it seems natural now and it didn’t before. But the letters are hard for me to write because all the emotion inside me just doesn’t get out onto the page. Your story about a strange jelly fish on page nine was great. What does it feel like to have your first story in print? Dad’s now in favour of me becoming a shorthand typist. Because no one in our family has ever done the Leaving Certificate he sometimes thinks I should be a doctor and next week remembers that I’m a girl and thinks of shorthand and typing. Your letters are on the lounge room table when I get home from school and I then journey into my bedroom where I emotionalise. Penny’s just put on Sixteen Tons which she does every morning and afternoon. Please tell me if you’re sick of hearing about school but you do understand don’t you. It’s the thing I am at the moment.

  At the local show I had a passion …

  At the local show I had a passion to go to the shooting gallery but it took all my energy to lift the adjectival gun let alone shoot it. I watched a cow cocky and copied him. I shot a duck. Do you believe in hypnosis? I didn’t at first but Azarah the Floating Lady had a hypnotist who put a spell on Freddie Hawker. Anyone who can get Freddie Hawker to eat soap must be for real. Although the idea of having a spell or trance put on me is frightening, another part of me would like it very much methinks. Do you really take the communist side now? I’m having an awful time trying to keep awake after nine at night. You wouldn’t have any of those ‘pep pills’ you talked about taking? Where did you get them and are they dangerous? I really don’t know what’s wrong with me. I sleep all Sunday. Dad says I need a tonic. Just kidding about those pills. Jill is not doing the Leaving Certificate this year because her boyfriend failed it last year and she didn’t want to be better than him. Crazy. How can you drink whisky? Dad says it will burn your insides out. Please don’t. Curious that you say you like the plastic raincoat smell. I think the smell is awful but everyone is wearing them now. Anyhow, how come you were close enough to this girl to know whether she smelled plasticraincoaty? Here’s a joke: An epistle is an apostle’s wife. Why do you say that only Americans rhyme ‘liquor’ with ‘slicker’?

  The matter of religion worries me a lot …

  The matter of religion worries me a lot because I don’t believe it at all but the scripture lessons the minister gives make it sound so unquestionable. Only later talking to Friedman do I realise that it doesn’t make sense. Rev. Benson asked me why I wasn’t going to be confirmed. I had to tell him I didn’t believe in it (which took some doing) and that my mother thought it was all popery. So he suggested afternoon tea with his wife and himself to talk. Me against them at afternoon tea. Help! You’ll have to come to my rescue with a good book. How many times do I want to say love things to you but my feelings won’t come out in words. I still can’t seem to keep awake. I’m going to get something from the chemist. The strangest thing has happened. The Leader of our State Red Cross group is coming to call on me – remember I met him at the camp at Christmas? Maybe I didn’t mention him. He’s forty and he wants to see me! I hope I can find enough to talk to him about.

  FROM MARCH/

  Forgive me for being such a fool …

  Forgive me for being such a fool when you were home. I said some stupid things and I hurt you. It was after you’d gone that I came to realise the things you were saying about the full meaning of the word ‘love’. You knew the whole time what it was I was scared of but I’ve lost my fear at last. I knew but couldn’t say it, that one thing led to another from saying ‘I love you’ and I wasn’t ready for the physical thing which came along with it. (The ‘experience’ last year still shocks me.) And you mustn’t go on about Richard from the Red Cross. I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Fullstop. For godsakes he was so old and how can I be blamed if he turns up here? Nothing ‘happened’. But I agree it was odd and he’s written to my parents, about ‘what’ I don’t know and I don’t care. They don’t want him about the house at all. To change the subject, I’ve just heard the most fabulous record. I’m trying not to say ‘fabulous’ all the time and I’m trying hard to believe that the record is actually Australian. It’s Richard Gray and the Four Brothers singing Tina Maria. Well, the first school social for the year was the worst the school has ever had. The Head tried and wore a dinner suit and his wife a full evening dress. He’s trying to lift the tone of the school but it’s hard going – when there wasn’t any tone to start with. He went out the back in his bow tie and all and found two girls smoking surrounded by a mob of drunks (not school kids).

  Such is life in our small town. There are rumours that the fifth year girls will be able to make their début at the Teachers’ Ball. Would you come back for that or does your taking of the communists’ side not let you go to débuts and balls? I do love you. Dad must realise my feelings about you because he told me I should go out with more boys and I nearly told him how I felt about you but considered it the wrong time.

  FROM APRIL/

  It was really great to be a ‘real girlfriend’ …

  It was really great to be a ‘real girlfriend’ with you in the city. As much as I wanted to amaze them I didn’t tell Mum and Dad about going with you to the Greek Club and the wine but I’d have loved to see Mama’s reaction. I’m just dying to read your novel and glad that it’s nearly finished. I thought novels took much longer (no sarcasm intended). Julia is going with Jim Fairly – don’t you think that’s a bit off – a fifth year girl going around with a third year boy? It wouldn’t have happened in our day. Every time I get on the phone to you my heart beats like a hammer and I get hot all over and I start to perspire. This only happens before I start talking to you. As we talk I lose all these queer things and return to normal. It’s almost as if I were nervous of you. But
then sometimes after your calls I laugh uncontrollably and tears roll down my face and I shake. I must love you. When you come down again we must talk the matter over sanely because I don’t know where we’re headed. I do know we’re on the edge of losing control. I’m going to get to read East of Eden finally (it’s going the rounds). The Head put it back in the school library after Eddie gave it back as a prize. The Head has started ‘Prefect Teas’ where we entertain a guest. Friedman sat next to the Head’s wife and Ron sat next to the Head. The Head’s wife after taking a slice of cake proceeded to eat it using a teaspoon (oops, cake spoon, just to be correct) and to hide their ignorance Friedman and Ron took up their teaspoons and the whole table followed with carefully suppressed mirth unbeknownst to Mr & Mrs Head. So that’s how the prefects of 1955 learned how to eat cake properly. Yes, I know your mother and her friends eat cake with a cake fork. You still want to know the secret that I had to keep from you? You said we shouldn’t have secrets from each other and that the world would be a better place without secrets. I think the world is a stranger place because of secrets. Secrets are part of being family. But I suppose you’re headed towards being family. Calm down, boy, not in that way, unless we have both misunderstood biology lesson 14. The secret is that Dad’s father is an awful drunkard – I’m surprised you didn’t know this around town – shows our families do mix in different circles. He drinks things like methylated spirits and the police are always picking him up in the town park. So you see why I worry about your drinking, especially things like whisky.

  FROM MAY/

  My dearest, I went to Dennis’s. barbecue and jitterbugged …

  My dearest, I went to Dennis’s barbecue and jitterbugged all night to get rid of my want for you. But I would like you to know that Dad picked me up at midnight and I was in bed the earliest I have ever been after a party – 1.38 being the record. Mr H. was talking to me after class and told me he once wrote a poem about love and thinking that I would appreciate it, he let me read it – the whole school seems to know about us now. The poem was beautiful and I was moved that a teacher should care about us and that he showed me something of himself. I have to say it again that I’m worried about the amount you drink and I can’t keep on going along saying nothing. You’ve given in to the stuff. You’ll never be able to save or get anywhere while you drink. But there – I’ve said it and I’ll say no more. I won’t be ‘nagative’ again. My own confession is that I’ve put on weight and feel frightfully ashamed. If I’m not careful I won’t fit into my new suit. Dad is always giving me money for new clothes but now he tells me at the same time to forget about boys until I’m thirty and to become a career woman. Doesn’t he know that clothes are worn to attract boys? I want you to promise me that you respect me enough not to get drunk in front of me or to let me see you drunk. I don’t want that ever. But when I come to the city we’ll soon have your cravings under control. All the cravings (yikes!! I’m becoming outspoken!). After I’ve written things like this I feel so childish and old-fashioned, but I can’t help it.