Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  A chair scraped across the floor above. The trio in the corridor dispersed. Somebody was kick-starting their motor scooter below the window. I opened my journal at a new page.

  Sunday Lunch

  I woke with a parched throat and puffy eyes. I opened the window and saw that overnight the rain had become snow. There was movement in the apartment opposite. The same man I had seen last Sunday was shifting a pot onto the window-sill. He disappeared then returned with a brush and began to paint the outside ledge. I pulled on layers of clothes and went downstairs. On the staircase the creamy aroma of flageolets was spreading over the sharpness of morning coffee.

  The double doors of the front room were open. The sound of me brought the patronne to the doorway, a folded lace tablecloth on her outspread hands.

  – Bonjour, madame!

  – Bonjour!

  Inside, her son sat at the table wearing the mantelpiece behind him like a yoke, a bovine grin on his face. The cousin from the banlieue would arrive soon, and the daughter with her husband and child. Their Sunday lunches were a visible, inaccessible ritual to us hotel tenants.

  There were always Sunday lunches at my parents’ house. Children returning, children leaving, cousins visiting, birthdays – it was always somebody’s birthday.

  I could still smell the flageolets when I’d crossed the road, and by the time I’d turned the corner I had the impression I was smelling a memory. My mother cooked them sometimes, on special occasions.

  It must have been my birthday, it was winter. I had known Matthew a few months and was taking him home to meet the family. We got up late, scrambling through the mess in my room for clothes. I couldn’t believe how many of my things were ripped and stained. I found a shirt my mother had given me years ago that I hardly ever wore. I plugged in the iron.

  – Don’t forget I have to drop Helmut’s stuff back to him. We’re going to be late, Matthew said.

  – You can shave while I iron.

  – All the razors here are blunt from your legs.

  – Okay, okay.

  We drove down through Woolloomooloo, via Helmut’s squat. Helmut had a sculpture in his living-room of noses on a wheel, which turned in the wind. There was a big hole in the roof, so the noses were always turning, idly sniffing the same patch of dirty carpet over and over. I waited for Matthew in the ute, reading the graffitted wall. Across the top, daubed in red paint was a line from an old Birthday Party song: My life is a box full of dirt! I liked Helmuts place.

  A scruffy guest might be just what my parents needed, I was thinking when Matthew came out of the squat. And the crushed look was in.

  Matthew typed on his legs, waiting for the lights to change. I left my hand on his shoulder, fiddling with his earring as the light turned green. We took the curve up around the art gallery and Matthew swore when a Holden cut in front of us.

  – All this dressing up. Feel like I’m going to a formal, or a bloody funeral.

  I took back my hand.

  – What’s wrong with dressing up sometimes?

  – Why should I tailor my looks to someone else’s taste? I’m not into role playing.

  We crossed the bridge in silence. Driving up through Neutral Bay, his hand crept onto my thigh.

  – I’m sorry, Siobhan. I’m just a bit nervous, that’s all. The way you go on about your family.

  – I do not. What about you?

  – Mine are irrelevant.

  – Exactly. You’re always complaining about how boring they are.

  – Okay, okay.

  As we were parking and the ute was doing its usual reverse gear scream, he said, It’s true though, you worry too much, Siobhan.

  – I don’t. I agree with you, Matthew.

  The kitchen was warm with cooking, and piano music was coming from the sunroom, but the house we walked through seemed empty.

  I took Matthew out onto the verandah. The harbour was still, waiting under a low sky. It was like this European cloud I walked under now, down to Bastille to telephone the people I was thinking about, a pale homogeneous non-colour to the horizon. The colours of the garden in a daylight without shadows were deep and fresh. Mum emerged from beneath the lemon tree, the back of her dark grey head bobbing about like one of the hydrangeas. She paused at the bust of the Virgin Mary that sat in a bed of honeysuckle under a passion-fruit vine. Time had worn the statue’s white to pearl-grey and she was cracked with age, the cracks stained as though someone had been emptying tea leaves over her. Mum pulled at a length of potato weed that snaked far back under the honeysuckle.

  I thought of a production of The Tempest at the church hall for which Mum had draped blue cloth over long ropes across the stage. In the wings, when the storm came, we flicked the ropes so that the cloth billowed and tossed like the sea.

  – Blast! we heard Mum say, and then she abandoned the weed.

  We watched her walk back up the lawn. Mum walked the way I walked, a stiff placing of the feet one in front of the other. She walked in me down rue de la Roquette, and so I broke loose, letting my hips roll and my heels scrape, and as I passed a shop window I checked the effect of this.

  But I was wearing an overcoat.

  Mum looked up and saw us.

  – Happy birthday, Siobhan! she called.

  Then she appeared behind us on the verandah, clip-clopping in her penny loafers, all smiles, greeting Matthew, sweeping her eyes over our attire and not speaking her opinion, then clip-clop on those hard wooden heels back to the kitchen, one hand beckoning for us to follow and get drinks.

  Paul was there, pouring himself a glass of white wine. He put out three more glasses and filled each, bit by bit, till the levels were equal. Beside Matthew, Paul looked small and furtive. He had the petite frame of my mother. How strange to see him like that – Paul, my eldest brother, from whose authority I still shrank. He shook Matthews hand, studying his face carefully. Mum asked Paul if it was true Thomas was driving up to the far north, and Paul said of course it was.

  – Well, he didn’t tell me anything about it.

  – Beautiful landscape, said Matthew.

  Mum glanced at him then picked up her glass of wine.

  – I don’t know why he’s going, quite frankly, she said, and put the glass down without drinking from it.

  – To see the beautiful landscape, I suggested.

  She turned away from me. She lifted the lid off a pot, stirred, replaced it. Bent like that over the stove, she suddenly looked very tired.

  – Do you want any help, Mum?

  – You can squeeze those two oranges, thank you Siobhan.

  Ten years before, Mum had made jelly boats from orange skins for my birthday. She poured the jelly into the empty halves, then when it had set she cut them into quarters and stuck toothpicks in for masts. For sails she pasted scraps of coloured paper onto the toothpicks. She did this for everyone’s birthday. She always went to a lot of trouble. She loved us, loved to make a fuss of us.

  I pressed the oranges on the electric juicer, feeling the flesh smash beneath the peel. Four violent blasts from the motor obviated the need for conversation.

  Mum picked up the orange skins and threw them into the compost bin. One of her nails nicked me. I turned around.

  – Don’t be so sensitive, Mum. Tom didn’t tell me either. I haven’t even seen him.

  – He’s only just arrived in Sydney, Siobhan, said Paul.

  – That’s not what I meant.

  Deftly, Mum rolled up her right sleeve, which had fallen loose. She faced us.

  – Look, he’s always going off somewhere. If he doesn’t like Melbourne, why doesn’t he come back to Sydney? If he doesn’t like his job, why doesn’t he get a better one? Lord knows he’s capable, he just doesn’t care.

  Matthew sidled out of the room.

  Going away is going to, as well as from, I was always at pains to point out. Mum said I didn’t need to tell her that – hadn’t she lived in London when she was young?

  She ope
ned the oven again and jabbed the leg of lamb.

  – Anyway, I’m cross with Thomas because he’s late. And lunch is ready.

  – Nora’s late too, said Paul.

  – Well then, I’m cross with both of them!

  I found Matthew in the living-room, a room dark with green velvet chairs and cedar bookshelves on the western side of the house. He was looking at the art books, his glass on the top shelf. I picked it up and rubbed the wet circle with my cuff; a pale stain had already appeared on the wood.

  – Sorry we’re late!

  Tom and Nora came in the back door. Tom ran upstairs to the bathroom, and Nora straight through to the laundry.

  Dad emerged from his study. The ginger-white hair on the right side of his head was fuzzy with static, making him look like a koala bear. I introduced him to Matthew. Dad slid a cheque into my pocket and pecked my cheek.

  – Happy nineteenth, my love. Here’s something for a new shirt.

  – Thanks, but it’s twenty, Dad.

  – I’m terribly sorry, he said, going for the cheque, I’d better change it.

  I slapped him playfully and he rolled his eyes at Matthew.

  – I can’t keep up with my children, he said, then asked me, does your friend have a second name?

  Tom was last to the table, land rights T-shirt tucked in, face red from Dad’s antediluvian razor, eyes red from a pre-lunch joint. I was jealous. I glared at him and Nora; they smirked back. Dad leaned forward on his elbows.

  – Well Matthew, what do you do?

  – I’m a sculptor.

  – Ah, said Dad, and put his head down and ate.

  – You’re looking thin, Siobhan, said Tom. Living hard, eh?

  – Too many white nights. Nora narrowed her eyes.

  – Lovestruck! Tom widened his.

  – Pining away. Nora clutched her breast.

  – I can’t help it if you’re jealous, I shrugged.

  – Yes. Paul looked me over. I thought you’d lost a bit of weight.

  – I must have left it in the car.

  – Has anyone seen the STCs production of Death of a Salesman? said Mum. I think it’s marvellous. But Willy Loman’s too fat. I think he should be thinner, meaner.

  Thinner? Fatter? Did it matter? How would my family see me now? I went into the tabac for some sugarless gum, and looked down at my thighs while the man got my change. My jeans were tighter. But it could have been the long Johns underneath them, or the jeans could have shrunk. I asked the man in the tabac for five franc pieces. Grumpily he assented, and I made my way down to Place de la Bastille.

  When Mum offered me lamb I hesitated. It seemed like a good idea to adopt Matthews vegetarianism but Mum had obviously made an effort, so I held my plate out. When Matthew refused it Dad opened his mouth in astonishment.

  – No lamb? It’s bee-ootiful!

  – I used to be a vegetarian, Paul began.

  – I can’t understand all this vegetarian business, Dad frowned.

  – When I was a hippy. Paul looked meaningfully at Tom.

  Matthew looked enquiringly at me. I looked at my plate.

  – But you saw the error of your ways, sneered Tom, rocking back on his chair.

  – Stop that, Thomas! said Mum. Those chairs belonged to your great-aunt.

  – And what sort of a living do you make from this sculpturing business, Matthew? said Dad.

  – How’s your essay going, Siobhan?

  – Well, the other day I started the—

  – Oh, that’s right! David’s asked me to send his shirts. He said he left them here but I can’t find them. Did anyone take them?

  – God, Mum, why do you bother asking if you can’t even listen?

  – It’s not a business.

  – How ridiculous! Nora exclaimed. Can’t David buy anything in Beirut?

  – Oh? You do some sort of other work, do you?

  – Bulletproof vest, I said.

  – No, said Matthew, taking all the flageolets, which had not yet been around the table, so that Mum’s grip on her knife tightened. No, I’m just on the dole.

  – David’s such a bloody miser, Tom crowed.

  Dad lashed out at Tom for his language and Tom protested, What about Nora? Mum told Nora, who was scowling at Tom, that if she’d overloaded the washing-machine and it had broken again she would pay to have it fixed this time, and Nora told everyone to get off her back. Paul was saying, You see how the younger ones use Mum? I asked Paul why he was so blameless and always had to tell everyone what to do.

  There is one peculiar marking on all us children, peculiar because neither parent has it, and that is a zigzag vein on the left temple that bulges when we get angry. I watched the blood go to our heads, I felt it in mine, filling the vein.

  And then the table went silent. Fatima the cat could be heard moaning at a lizard on the path, and the washing-machine crescendoed to spin.

  Later, Matthew said everything went silent because he’d said he was on the dole. Tom said it was because he, Tom, had said bloody. Nora said it was because we’d all knocked David – Nora had always been convinced David was Mum’s favourite. Matthew said he couldn’t believe the way everybody knocked everybody else, and that otherwise all we talked about was jobs and money, and that my father was quite intimidating and my mother was really nice, but so ambitious for her children.

  I thought it was just one of those silences.

  Words

  Silence was all I heard when I put money into a phone at Place de la Bastille. I tried the next phone, and the next. Then there were four card phones in a row. I went almost the whole way around the Place before I found a pay phone that worked, and then I rang the only Sydney number I remembered. I had some coins left in my pocket, but I couldn’t resist. I rang reverse charges. My father’s voice was so close it made me jump.

  – Elliotts!

  My father hated answering the phone. He would never answer if my mother was there. I apologised, then I asked him for the addresses of Nora and Matthew. His voice became measured and cold.

  – Now, you’ve probably forgotten about things like this, Siobhan, but there is a purgatory you know, and you’ll go there. And I’ll tell you what: you’ll really cop it.

  – What have I done?

  It was probably the reverse charges that had set him off. Or, even worse, Matthew’s name. He never could cope with the living together. Masochistically, I just kept stoking the fire, the cold fire of my father’s anger.

  – Listen to me, my girl, I got on the blower about your friend’s number last time you rang. I spoke to several rather unhelpful people and finally tracked it down. I had it to give you, but you didn’t ring. You wait for a week before you ring back, and now I’ve gone and lost the goddamn thing.

  – I was moving, Dad.

  – And I’m late to mass, because every time I try to leave the house the bloody phone rings!

  My father swearing. Such a wicked sound, it brought a smile to my face. Was he being serious? Into the curve of my smile tears were running. I felt sick. Down the wire, all that distance, came a screeching of cockatoos. I was there in the hallway: out the window would be a big summer sky over the garden. Seven o’clock, warm dusk, soon the crickets would take over from the cicadas. Maybe it was storm clouds on the harbour making the cockatoos come up from the bush, raucous and restless. If Dad turned he would see all this. But he would be looking at his feet, pacing on the spot, holding the phone with one hand and picking at the sunspots on the crown of his head with the other.

  – I didn’t want to put you to any trouble, Dad. Can I just speak to Mum? Please? Is she there?

  – She’s out. So cop that!

  I hung up, hating him.

  I walked around the Place. Sunlight was leaking through thin cloud and the snow underfoot had turned to slush. I meandered through the ants’ nest of back streets until I came to Rue du Faubourg de St Antoine. It was close to midday, the markets were finishing, and there was a crowd to
rival the métro in peak hour. I walked among the people, a spectator, not intending to buy. The traders were selling furiously, singing prices, hands flying over produce, rearranging, piling up; a fruiterer had packed a bag of golden apples and thrust it to me and I was handing over money before I knew what was what. I wandered past the trucks and the crates stacked high alongside them, jammed with wilting fruit and vegetables. Old women in raincoats sorted through debris in the gutter for anything decent that had been overlooked.

  I went to buy eggs and unwittingly joined the front of the queue. An old woman next to me grumbled. I excused myself and made for the back but the boy was giving me eggs, protesting to the woman.

  – But she’s my sister!

  – Oh? Your sister?

  – Yes.

  – Well, at my age—

  – Mais c’est la famille! The family comes first, said the boy, winking at me.

  I smiled back. I wanted to throw the eggs at him.

  I went to a café just behind Bastille and had a coffee and a tartine. I bought the paper and my eyes moved across it, my hands turned its pages, but when I folded it up I didn’t know what I’d read. In what world were these people in the café, staring out at the street, talking to their companions, eating omelettes? I was in my own world. I was in Sydney, in my parents’ dining-room. I was in Paris, chipping out a niche for myself, I was in La Rotonde near Place de la Bastille, but I couldn’t get away from my own thoughts.

  I paid and went back to my hotel room. Still hungry, I made myself a Vegemite sandwich with the last slices of pain de mie. In all the time I’d been away from Australia, I’d never been without Vegemite. A new jar would arrive from my mother when I was still scraping out the old. The French didn’t understand Vegemite. Chantale spread it thickly, like Nutella. Then she spat it out, saying it tasted like medicine.

  Vegemite did not translate.

  And there is no word for mie in English. Go and look in your dictionary. You will find ‘soft part of the bread, bread with crusts removed’. A pretty lengthy explanation for a three letter word, don’t you think?