by Anita Heiss
‘Oh, I love that back window, I haven’t been there for ages. We should do breakfast one day,’ Veronica finally spoke, although sounding flat. The girls all nodded. ‘Easter perhaps?’ She reached for her iPhone to log the date in her calendar. It was an outing to look forward to, and time away from her now mostly empty family home.
Izzy, Nadine and Ellen all looked at Veronica, each registering her unusually sullen mood, but Xanthe continued with where she’d left off. It wasn’t unusual for the hostess of the monthly book club to have the most to say when they met in their own home. Izzy liked that it took the pressure off to be, as she called it, ‘on duty’. Her job meant she was constantly either talking or listening or smiling for the camera. At least with her tiddas she could just chill. Or so she thought, until Xanthe started talking pregnancy.
‘When we get pregnant, we’ll need a bigger place than this anyway, of course. And I don’t want to be moving while I’ve got a bellyful, or worse, already have a baby. I just want to focus on being a mum.’ Xanthe was completely unaware that she’d fallen into talking about babies without even intending to do so. Every topic somehow became a natural progression to discussing them.
‘Won’t you miss Armstrong Terrace?’ Nadine asked. ‘You love this place. You’ve spent years doing it up. Richard is so proud of how he helped Spencer with the back garden.’
‘I’ll miss it, of course, and we love the garden too. Hopefully Richard can help with the new place as well.’ Xanthe passed a bowl of pistachios to Nadine. ‘But you know we originally moved here not just because I loved the layout but because it was where the Blackfellas used to camp in the old days when it was Armstrong’s Paddock.
‘Not living on my own country, the history mattered to me. I mean, it still does. And if I was going to be in the apparently “gentrified” part of town,’ Xanthe grinned at Ellen, ‘then I wanted to at least have some connection to the Turrbul mob.’
Izzy nodded. Being close to the local community and the stories of a place mattered to her too. It was the reason she loved West End so much – for its history, the ongoing political presence of the mob in Musgrave Park, the local organisations and simply seeing Blackfellas on Boundary Street any time of day or night.
‘Oh God, these are delicious,’ Ellen swooned, biting into a rice ball.
‘They’re from a new place not far from here. We do a lot of our shopping there, all their products are organic.’ Xanthe handed a bowl of Mexicana corn chips and a bowl of dip to Izzy, who, not being able to handle the smell, passed it straight on to Veronica.
‘We’re trying to be as healthy as we can, now we’re trying to have a baby.’
‘You are the healthiest person I know!’ Nadine declared. ‘Look at Xanthe’s calves,’ she said to the others, as she stood and headed to the kitchen. ‘And while you do that I’ll just pop into the kitchen and make another batch of this fabulous aperitif!’ She looked to Xanthe for approval, but wasn’t going to stop even if she didn’t get it.
‘Well, you climb these hills every day and you’ll have them too,’ the hostess called after Nadine. ‘Seriously, it doesn’t matter what direction I go in, there’s a hill. It means I can eat just about anything I want.’ She grabbed a handful of corn chips and pretended to be a glutton.
‘You’ve always been tiny,’ Veronica reminded her, a look of envy on her face. ‘I remember how little you were at school. Your dad could put his hands around your waist when you were ten, remember, you were so small.’
‘And I was the giant.’ Nadine strolled back into the room with a full jug, recalling how she used to slouch because she was always a head taller than her friends. ‘All legs, no boobs. I was like a bloke! Can’t believe Richard ever looked at me.’
‘But when your boobs did come in, they really came in, didn’t they?’ Izzy grabbed a handful of her own ample breasts, and laughed, recalling the rapid growth spurt Nadine had at fifteen and how her brother started taking notice of her best friend.
‘Speaking of good bodies, Miss Aboriginal Athlete, are you still doing that hot yoga thing?’ Izzy asked Xanthe.
‘Yes! Do you want to come with me?’ Xanthe seemed excited at the prospect of one of her tiddas going with her; she was always looking for an exercising buddy. ‘I notice you’re not drinking, are you on a health kick now or what?’
‘Oh God, you’re not detoxing again? How boring!’ Nadine was onto her third drink.
‘I’m not detoxing,’ Izzy said, thinking that Nadine was the one who needed to get off the grog.
‘Because Bikram is great for detoxing, you sweat all that crap out.’ Xanthe was still trying to solicit at least one tidda.
‘I couldn’t think of anything worse than sweating like that around strangers,’ Veronica said quietly.
‘Nor I, Vee,’ Izzy admitted. ‘And I really don’t like the heat that much.’
Izzy wondered if she should just take a sip of something so she didn’t appear to be out of sorts, but she didn’t feel like a drink. She was seven weeks’ pregnant, and while she had buried herself in work as usual, she had also allowed a sense of denial to replace the urgency of having to ‘do something’ about the situation. She wasn’t so much undecided as she was inactive. Izzy didn’t want the baby, but she didn’t want to have to do the unmentionable about it either. As she sat there in Paddington, she knew that with Xanthe dominating the night’s yarn with her talk about babies, there was no way she could confide in her tiddas. Not right now, anyway.
‘What about you, Nadine? Do you want to sweat out some unnecessary fluids?’ Xanthe was being diplomatic, but the other girls knew what she was getting at. Except for Nadine, who let the real intent of the question fly right over her head.
‘I love your sense of humour, Xanthe, it’s so endearing.’ Aside from having her personal Pilates trainer come to her house, the only exercise Nadine did was lifting her glass.
Xanthe was a little hurt by Nadine’s comment, as if she’d been spoken to like she was a cute child.
‘I was serious, I thought you might get something out of it.’ Xanthe wished she’d been more blatant about Nadine’s toxic waste needing to go.
‘Oh relax, I was kidding. You know me well enough to know I couldn’t cope with all those people in a room and no bar in sight. That’s my idea of torture, really. Really!’ She shook her head, crossed her legs and sipped her drink. Izzy and Ellen shook their heads as well, but for a different reason.
Hating any form of conflict, Veronica spoke up. It was time to change the subject. ‘April really is a lovely time here in Brisbane, isn’t it? The humidity drops, it’s easier to sleep and I love walking around The Gap at dusk. Everything is just more comfortable.’
‘Oh yes! Definitely! Thank God!’ came the chorus of agreement after the steamiest summer on record.
‘Spring is gorgeous here too. I have this great bloom of dark and light mauve outside the back window come late September,’ Xanthe shared her passion for the calmer weather.
‘The yesterday, today and tomorrow flower,’ Nadine stated knowingly.
‘That’s it,’ Xanthe said, remembering hearing its name from a neighbour not so long ago.
The women had settled in comfortably for the night with their usual banter regarding what was going on in each other’s lives. The book could wait, as it often did.
‘Well, I have some news,’ Ellen chimed in enthusiastically.
‘You’ve met someone?’ Xanthe asked.
‘Why do you all think any news I have is always man related?’
‘Because it usually is!’ Izzy said with a chuckle.
‘Which reminds me,’ Ellen continued. ‘Why hasn’t Spencer set me up with one of his friends? It’s a recession; I don’t care if he’s a coloniser. I told you last month I was about to do something drastic. I might just take on a reconciliation project with a pom!’
‘I think suggesting you’ll date someone as a last resort based on where they come from is racist, so why don’t you
just get on with your news?’ Nadine who was, like Xanthe, in an inter-racial relationship, had a very short fuse when it came to people who joked about mixed marriages. And as she got more sloshed, Nadine’s fuse got shorter.
‘Fine,’ Ellen said, rolling her eyes like a chastised teenager. ‘My news is that after a year of post-flood sleeping on other people’s couches, including yours, Nadine – thank you very much – I am finally moving into my own place. I’ve settled on a property!’ She clapped her hands as if applauding her own achievement.
‘Yay! That’s great! Finally!’ the tiddas responded in a chorus, most of them out of the property-buying loop that Ellen was in. Her sex life was usually her main topic at book club get-togethers.
Ellen burst into song, crooning the chorus from one of her favourite Stevie Wonder songs, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours’.
‘Not that ugly place in Kangaroo Point?’ Nadine slurred, remembering when she went house hunting with Ellen and they found an old building that they imagined had previously been nurses’ quarters for St Vincent’s Hospital.
‘Yes, the ugly place on Main Street. But it’s not going to be ugly for long, just on the outside. I’m going to go full steam ahead with some serious renos and turn it into my own little paradise. Just like Xanthe and the col– I mean Spencer did here.’
‘Cheers, it’s great to hear good news.’ Veronica raised her glass in a genuine toast to Ellen, although inside she was crying. Her divorce papers had been delivered that day and she hoped she wasn’t weighing the entire room down with her mood. She didn’t want to ruin the moment with her own misery. ‘You’re a first home buyer, congratulations.’
‘I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since you were evacuated,’ Izzy said. ‘Or me, for that matter. At least it was only the garage that got flooded.’
‘Personally, I can’t believe how the clean-up was done so quickly.’ Xanthe passed around roasted eggplant, garlic bruschetta and some grilled vegetables with tarragon vinaigrette as the women all thought back to their own flood stories.
‘Well I can’t believe that someone said to me that they’d hoped we’d beat the 1974 flood,’ Ellen said. ‘I think their words were, “If we’re going to flood, we may as well break the record.” ’
‘What? Who said that? That’s just fucked!’ the women responded over the top of each other, having resumed their normal way of sharing.
‘Some dickhead cab driver I had, yet another reason why I ride a bike or get the City Cat most places!’ Ellen didn’t own a car, preferring to lessen her carbon footprint when she could.
‘And you’re staying in Kangaroo Point, so that’s good.’ Izzy knew how much her tidda liked living close to the river, and the Story Bridge Hotel.
‘Yeah, it’s my home. I love the river; it reminds me of the Cudgegong back home, only it’s five million times the size, of course. But I used to find so much peace there under the gum trees when I was young. I feel at peace being near the Brisbane River somehow too, if that makes sense at all.’
Ellen regularly took the ferry from Thornton Street to Eagle Street Pier and then the City Cat down to Bretts Wharf and back. If she was in the mood she’d get off at New Farm Park, walk the three minutes to the Powerhouse, and have a beer and listen to music. Sunday was ‘Ellen time’. She didn’t need company to be entertained. She liked being alone. She needed time alone. She couldn’t imagine ever living with anyone. A legacy of having too many siblings, some she never heard from, even on birthdays. She wondered if removing herself from Mudgee had pissed them all off. She didn’t care at this point. If they didn’t need her, she didn’t need them either.
The river was the most important thing in Ellen’s day; in her life. She ran and walked beside it. She lost herself looking into it. She rode it to work, to Izzy’s, to the city. The only thing she was grateful to Campbell Newman for was introducing the public bike system when he was Brisbane City Mayor. She’d often grab a bike from CT White Park and leave it at any number of designated spots around town, depending on what was on her schedule. On days when she had to visit a bereaved family or do a service that was too far to get a cab she’d book a share car. It was still cheaper and better for the environment than buying her own car.
But it was the City Cat rides Ellen liked most. She shamelessly enjoyed perving on the ferrymen in their Hard Yakka shorts minus the bum crack made famous by tradies. She’d give each guy a score out of ten for their ‘arse shape’, and then check to see whether they wore a wedding ring or not. That flirting option was not open to her, men who had wives or partners.
‘I completely understand. Walking along the river at West End totally centres me,’ Izzy nodded, knowing exactly the power of water and the calming way it affected her. It was why she got the City Cat to work each day too, because the physical motion – prior to morning sickness – and the breeze on her face made her feel alive and rejuvenated.
‘And now that I’m turning forty I feel better having a place that’s all mine. In some ways the flood kicked me into gear on that front. And I’d been meaning to clear out my place for a while; the flood just did it for me.’ Ellen smiled a painful smile, because in reality she’d lost a lot of things she loved, including a box of thank-you cards from families she’d helped farewell their loved ones. She tried not to get too personal or connected to the families she worked with, but that was near impossible, meeting people at the most traumatic times of their lives.
Nadine started laughing hysterically, slamming her glass on the table.
‘What’s so funny?’ Veronica asked. Her lack of self-esteem meant she was often paranoid that the joke might be on her.
‘I remember driving with Richard to pick Ellen up when her place was flooded, and she was walking towards us holding her crocodile boots in the air. Funniest fucken thing I’d ever seen.’ Nadine slapped her linen-covered legs in hysterics.
They all laughed at the memory of the photo Nadine took on her iPhone and sent them all immediately. Of course it wasn’t funny at the time.
‘Hey, those boots are important to me, and they were the only things that I could carry, given my backpack was full of photos.’
‘Oh the boots, the boots,’ Nadine kept laughing.
Ellen smiled, but the truth was she was depressed for a long time after the floods, having lost most of her books as well, and she had always been an avid reader.
‘The only reason I come to book club is so I can build up my library again. You know that, right?’ She refilled her glass and her plate almost simultaneously. ‘It’s not so I can be trashed by the comedic lush!’
‘I’d have to say, Vee, this was a great choice for us to read,’ Nadine said, pushing her copy of The Old School towards the middle of the table. ‘I loved it. Inter-racial relationships, female lead detective, and do you know I hadn’t even tried pho before reading this book?’
‘Were you living under a rock?’ Izzy joked.
‘Obviously!’ Ellen put a humus-covered cracker in her mouth.
‘I thought incorporating the Aboriginal Legal Service was brave myself, but it needed to be done. I was impressed with the whole storyline. It’d be great as a telemovie,’ Xanthe said, having also discussed the novel with Spencer.
‘Who’d play the character called Mabo? Wayne Blair?’ Veronica asked, knowing there was a strong pool of Indigenous actors ready and capable of taking on such a role.
Izzy, Ellen and Xanthe all thought back to when they’d got together to watch Redfern Now on TV. They had talked about it for weeks afterwards.
‘I think Jack Charles would be perfect!’
Veronica was spot on. She knew a lot about the arts sector and attended many Murri cultural events around Brisbane. She was the perfect example of reconciliation at work: the appreciation of and respect for Indigenous Australian cultures.
Izzy had read this month’s book as an escape from thinking about her own situation, and she too liked the storyline. ‘This Newton woman
has done a deadly job incorporating Aboriginal characters and issues into the story, I reckon. I’ve never read an Aussie novel like that.’
Nadine felt a pang of guilt and wondered if her sister-in-law was having a dig at her for never including Kooris – or Murris, as Blackfellas called themselves in Brisbane – in her own novels, but she never really knew how to, and Richard wasn’t big on talking about books. But even in her drunken haze she felt compelled to say something. ‘I really like Pam’s work too, we’ve done a few festivals together. She makes me want to lift my game.’
‘I thought it was interesting she was a detective before becoming an author. All those details, I knew she had to have inside information somehow,’ Veronica added.
‘Turns out she was her own insider.’ Nadine slugged back another cocktail. She needed an insider to help her write the next book, even though she didn’t know what it was going to be. This Newton woman might tip me off the bestseller list, she thought to herself.
‘We need some Black crime novelists too,’ Izzy added.
‘Actually,’ Ellen said, pulling a book out of her bag like a magician, ‘I know we’re doing crime right now, but can we do this one in the next few months?’ She held up The Boundary; there was a blood-red feather on the cover. ‘It’s set in West End.’ She raised her eyebrows and threw a nod of interesting, eh to Izzy.
‘Then we should do it when we have book club at my place, that’d make sense,’ said Izzy.
The tiddas all nodded in agreement.
‘But what should we read for May?’
Everyone looked at Veronica; she usually made the recommendations based on her being the one with time to suss out the bookshops.
‘Leave it with me,’ she said, glassy-eyed and not really listening.
At midnight the tiddas walked outside into the cool night air and said their goodbyes. Richard waited in the car for Nadine; both Cam and Brit were having sleepovers with school friends. Ellen and Izzy climbed into Izzy’s convertible, while Veronica slipped into the comfort of her Lexus and burst into tears. She felt a pang of guilt that she’d hated hearing Xanthe talk about her future with Spencer, planning a family and buying their house together. She could see the love they shared, a love she now accepted she had never experienced with Alex. And it was the same with Nadine and Richard. As tears blurred her vision, she tried hard to remember a time when Alex had waited for her anywhere. It was always she who had waited, doted, sacrificed. Alex was emotionally absent even when he was physically there, taking only minor interest when the boys played football on weekends in winter. It was she who went to meetings with teachers and to kids’ birthday parties, often making excuses for a father who appeared to be disinterested, a husband who had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to his wife.
