Pants on Fire

by Maggie Alderson

  It was impossible to resist—and they were the first flowers I’d had since Nick Pollock that weren’t from a multinational corporation. I rang him.

  “Is that the vile old degenerate?”

  “Oh, Pussy. I hate myself. Did I really say those awful things to you? Well, I know I probably did because I’ve had other reports about my shocking behaviour. You weren’t the only victim. I really didn’t know it was you, you must believe me.”

  “I forgive you. But if you didn’t know it was me, why did you say ‘I don’t give a fuck about Pussy?’ It’s your name for me, after all.”

  “I probably thought you meant pussy as in female genitalia . . . Which I’m really not very interested in.”

  I had to laugh.

  “Antony, you are appalling, but I still love you. What on earth had you taken to get like that? Hemlock?”

  “Quite a few eccies . . .”

  “I thought they were meant to make you love all mankind.”

  “. . . some cocaine, several lines of speed, and then the real killer—copious amounts of vodka.”

  “What’s wrong with vodka?”

  “It turns me into Vlad the Impaler. On everything else I’m just various sorts of silly, but vodka turns me into a mass murderer. I shouldn’t drink it. On champagne I’m quite delightful, as you know, wine makes me merry, tequila makes me take my clothes off—not a good look—beer makes me sleepy, whisky makes me droll, but vodka turns me into a sociopath.”

  “That must be why they call it vodka.”

  “Uh?”

  “It stands for Vile Old Degenerate. V.O.D.—you’re a Voddie.”

  He shrieked. “That’s it! I’m a voddie. A voddie and tonic. I’m so glad there’s a reason. Anyway, I’m sorry you saw me that way.”

  “Don’t worry, I forgive you completely. We’ll never mention it again.”

  “So will you come over and play tonight? Just we two? A little dinner à deux chez moi? À sept heures?”

  “Oui, ça sera bon.”

  “Au revoir.” And he put the phone down in his usual peremptory fashion.

  Dinner was quite a production—Antony must have been feeling really bad about what he’d said to me. There was a little round table out on the roof garden with candles, a starched white cloth to the ground and enormous napkins. It was set with beautiful silver (which I recognised as Tiffany & Co. pattern), fine crystal glasses (which Antony told me were Baccarat) and Limoges china (I looked). He met me at the door, wearing a frilly white apron and holding a bottle of Cristal.

  “It’s so hard to get staff these days,” he said.

  The food was wonderful—a huge platter of prawns (with silver finger bowls to rinse our fingers), grilled barramundi with a lemon sauce and purple potatoes, which he said he’d bought as a joke, mashed and piped into little castles.

  “Have you really got one of those piping bags?” I asked. “I haven’t seen one for years.”

  “I inherited all this from Lee. He loved cooking and had a very Women’s Weekly circa 1972 style. I’ve got a fondue set too.”

  After we’d enjoyed a nice peppery rocket salad, Antony produced a great mound of meringue, whipped cream, strawberries and kiwi fruit.

  “Is that a pavlova?”

  “Bien sûr. La Pavlova du Lee.”

  “Why have you started speaking in French, Dolores? I’ve never heard a worse accent.”

  “I met a gorgeous French flight attendant at the party . . .”

  And he proceeded to entertain me with a blow by blow—literally—story of his evening. His impersonations of Betty up on a go-go boy’s dancing podium left me helpless with laughter, but I noticed his account didn’t mention Debbie very much.

  “Didn’t Debbie go to the party with you?”

  “Oh yes. She looked amazing. I made her that outfit I wanted you to wear and she walked all over town with her boobs on display—and they’re much bigger than yours, let me tell you.”

  I poked my tongue out at him. “Did she have a good time?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. We got ready together here before going to Trudy’s house for a pre-party, then we watched the parade right at the end of the route and afterwards we went into the Showground, where we immediately lost each other.”

  “Didn’t you see her again all night?”

  “Come off it, Pussy darling. There are twenty thousand people there, you know, most of them gorgeous-looking men. There was no way I was going to go trailing around looking for her, and I knew I’d see her at the recovery party anyway. She can look after herself.”

  Can she? I wondered.

  “I thought I saw her in that hideous alley where—” I started to say, but Antony interrupted.

  “You said you’d never mention it!”

  “OK. But I thought I saw her.”

  “Probably. Like I say, we always meet there—it’s a well-known recovery party.”

  “She was down a side alley.”

  “With a man, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she giving him a head job?”

  “Antony! No, she wasn’t. Don’t be disgusting.”

  He pulled a face.

  “Sorry, I forgot I was having dinner with Mary Poppins for a moment. What was she doing?”

  “She was sort of resting . . . Antony—do you think Debbie’s OK?”

  “No. She’s completely out of control.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as I ever am.”

  “What I mean is, do you think she might harm herself?”

  “Well, all that alcohol certainly isn’t doing her skin any good and her reputation is shot . . .”

  “Do you think she might be injecting drugs?”

  His eyebrows broke the land speed record.

  “Whatever makes you think that?”

  “Oh I don’t know, just something I saw . . .”

  He looked serious.

  “Now that would be a bore. Injecting is so déclassé. I tell you what, I’m fitting her for a dress at the weekend, I’ll check her over for track marks. Although I draw the line at looking between her toes. Will that keep you happy? I really don’t think you need to fuss too much—she just likes to have a good time and, since that plane crash, I’m quite happy to go along with anything she wants to do that makes her smile. But don’t worry, I won’t let anything really bad happen to her—if I see a track mark I’ll let you know immediately. Anyway, did I tell you what Trudy said when I told him about Jean-Luc? Well . . .”

  And off he went.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On Friday morning, while I was in a planning meeting with Liinda and Maxine (who’d been totally mollified by Debbie’s bogus doctor’s note), Seraphima took a message from Jasper for me. He’d invited me over to Caledonia that night for what he called “a film show.”

  It turned out to be an open-air showing of various short films made by Jasper, the animators, and their friends, projected onto a big sheet in the garden. There was the usual Caledonia crew of weird and interesting-looking people sitting on the grass, talking, drinking and smoking, while we waited for it to get dark enough to start the show. Jasper floated around being host, coming over regularly to check I had someone to talk to, a fresh drink and—most importantly—that I was having a good time. I was.

  The films were pretty average, and the remarks shouted out by the crowd were far more entertaining. Two of the films were by Jasper and the awful thing was that I really couldn’t see the point of them. I was dreading him coming to ask me what I thought. Luckily he made it easy for me.

  “Well, that was a piece of shit wasn’t it?” he said, sitting down on the grass next to me.

  “Um, well, yes it was, really,” I said. “I have to say I didn’t get the point, Jasper—I was hoping you would explain it to me.”

  He roared with laughter and then leant over and gave me a big kiss on the lips.

  “That’s my Pinkie. No bullshit. That film isn’t
about anything. It’s garbage. I’m going to set fire to it so I can’t ever show it again by mistake. I’d been smoking this really heavy hydroponic weed for about two weeks and I was convinced I was the new Tarkovsky. What was I thinking? A two-minute static shot of an empty bus shelter. I thought it was a fantastic symbol of suburban ennui.”

  “So is that why the next two minutes was a static shot of a man trying to start a four-wheel drive? Was he desperately trying to escape his ennui?”

  He nodded and began to laugh silently, until he was shaking uncontrollably and tears were running down his cheeks. I couldn’t help joining in and it just made him worse when I said, “And I couldn’t see the Turkish bread in it either . . .”

  “Aaah,” said Jasper, falling back onto the grass. “Oh, I’m such a pretentious git. I really must stop smoking dope. What total garbage. God, I’m a tosspot. Well, at least it didn’t have any of my terrible dialogue in it.”

  Then he sat up again and looked at me.

  “Hey, you work on a magazine—you must be able to write. You could write a film with me.”

  “Well, I do write things now and again, but I don’t think I’m up to a film script.”

  “Of course you are. I know—we can have a girl leafing through a copy of Glow and then we can cut to her trying to apply what she reads to her own life.”

  “It might be classed as pornography in that case.”

  “Good! Good! This could be really interesting . . .”

  Fired with enthusiasm, he went off to find the animators to see if they’d do animated sex scenes for us so we wouldn’t have to hire real porn stars. Then he decided I should play the Glow reader as well as write the script and so it went on. A load of harmless, entertaining nonsense.

  About one in the morning I’d had enough and told Jasper I was off. Once again he insisted on walking me home.

  “Well, here we are at your castle gate again, Princess Pinkie. Perhaps one day you will allow your suitor to accompany you up to your ivory tower.”

  “Right now the Princess is about to turn into Sleeping Beauty. Good night, Jasper.”

  Saturday morning, at five minutes to eight, my phone rang. Vidovic.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Believe me, Liinda, the morning I’m not alone, I’m going to leave my phone off the hook in anticipation of your wake-up call.”

  “Thank God you’re by yourself,” she rasped.

  “Why? Are you coming over?”

  “No, it’s just that you were seen getting very chummy with Jasper O’Conner last night and I was worried that in your vulnerable state you might have fallen victim to his charms.”

  “What? Where on earth did you get this from? And what vulnerable state?”

  “Post Pollock. I thought you might need some uncomplicated validation of your attractiveness to men and accidentally fall into bed with Jasper.”

  I couldn’t believe this. “You didn’t answer my first question—who told you I was ‘getting chummy’ with Jasper O’Con-nor? And why did they think it was any of your business?”

  “So you were!”

  “Liinda, what are you playing at? Is this your way of warning me that Jasper is an even bigger bastard than Nick Pratface Pollock? Because if he is, just tell me. I don’t want another sushi sister evening; this time I’d like to know in advance.”

  “No, it’s just that he’s a big pothead flake like I told you and I don’t think he’s what you need in your life.”

  “Liinda, I appreciate your solicitude,” I said with heavy sarcasm. “Although it makes it even more bizarre that you didn’t warn me about the P. person. But this is really none of your business. And I’m not having a relationship with Jasper, he’s just very friendly and I like all the nutty people who hang around that mad old house—apart from whichever creep came snitching to you. Who was it, anyway.”

  “Oh, somebody I know just happened to mention it in passing.”

  “Well, they must have been up early. And how would anyone there have known I knew you? Oh, who cares. So, tell me, what are you up to this weekend? Got anyone else to stalk?”

  As the weeks went by, Liinda’s weekend wake-up calls became a regular feature of my existence, as my new life in Sydney started to fall into a kind of rhythm. Hysterical nights out with Antony and the boys and round to Antony’s place on my own for long chats and a bit of dancing. Mascara launches and boutique openings with Debbie. Workday lunches with Liinda and Zoe—who was eating more normally, encouraged by Dr. Ben—and on Saturday afternoons I would often meet up with Zoe and sometimes Debbie to go to the beach, or shopping in Oxford Street.

  And in between all that I got into the habit of dropping in at Caledonia. There was always someone interesting to hang out with, even if Jasper wasn’t there. When he was around we usually ended up in the cupola, talking, or watching whatever obscure foreign-language movie was on SBS.

  I really enjoyed his company and the more I got to like his mind, the more attractive I found his body. But Liinda was right about one thing—I was vulnerable after the Pollocking and, although it pissed me off, her warnings had sunk in.

  Work settled into a routine too. I was into my fourth Glow issue and I found the monthly magazine cycle very familiar and comfortable—ideas meetings, commissioning articles, reading them, editing them, checking them on proofs, coming up with catchy headlines with the subs and helping Maxine and Cathy, the art director, choose the best photos. I had great fun with visual ideas like “Which Celebs Look Worst with No Make-Up?” and “Beached Whales—Celebrity Swimsuit Cellulite.” Then it would be time to choose the cover shots with the team, followed by the coverline meeting.

  Now I was part of the monthly loop, Liinda could no longer spring unexpected coverlines at me and I had a few laughs with ideas of my own, such as “Ten Surefire Ways to Spot a Bastard—Before It’s Too Late,” which Maxine thought would make a great coverline. I stuck my tongue out at Liinda and whispered, “Beat you to it that time, eh?” So she came back with an idea about how to stop a friend getting involved with the wrong man, which I was delighted to hear Maxine say was a stupid idea.

  “Our readers have enough problems with their own love lives without interfering in their friends’ relationships,” she said.

  “Two all,” I hissed, thumbing my nose at Liinda.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was Saturday morning. I’d had my hour-long conversation with Liinda as per usual, but unlike previous Saturdays, Zoe and I weren’t meeting as she was now into the stage of wanting to spend every spare moment with Ben. Perhaps I should take a cue from Liinda, I thought, and suggest a story along the lines of the “Man Trap—Women Who Desert Their Girlfriends for a Man.” I didn’t feel like staying in the flat so I decided to walk from Elizabeth Bay to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

  I stopped at the top of the steps in Victoria Street that look down over Woolloomooloo. It was one of my favourite spots in Sydney—it seemed to sum up the whole place in one view, right down to the ugly new units half blocking the view of the Domain. But I loved seeing the Australian Navy ships right in the middle of the city and the funny old pie cart, Harry’s Café de Wheels, standing proudly in front of the poshly renovated old wharf. In the main harbour beyond, the Saturday sailors were out in their yachts, and the city skyline looked proud and prosperous beyond the green of Mrs. Macquarie’s Point.

  What a pretty city, I said to myself for about the hundredth time. Sydney did that to me—every time I got complacent about living there it would leap out at me from another splendid perspective, grabbing my attention all over again. Look at me! Aren’t I something? Did you ever see a city as pretty as me?

  I spent a couple of hours in the Gallery, then wandered through an exhibition called Australian Works on Paper—New Acquisitions. Idly looking at the exhibits, I stopped in front of an almost abstract landscape done in warm yellow and ochre chalks. I admired it for a while and then looked at the plaque on the wall next to it: “Back
Acres III. Rory Stewart. Chalk on paper.”

  There it was, the golden landscape around Walton, its dreamy quality perfectly captured. It was a wonderful drawing. No wonder Rory was frustrated at being cut off from his artistic life, he had serious talent. And he was so modest about it. Nick Pollock boasted about books he hadn’t even written yet and Jasper summoned half of Sydney to come and watch films he admitted were terrible. But even though we’d had that conversation about the Gallery, Rory had never mentioned that he had a picture in it himself.

  Seeing Rory’s drawing unexpectedly like that was a bit of a shock. I wanted to tell someone about the coincidence, someone who would understand the full significance of it, but it dawned on me that there was no one in my newly divided life, in either England or Australia, to fill that role. The sudden realisation made me feel acutely homesick. I came out of the Gallery and decided to take a walk through the Botanic Gardens, with my latest food discovery—a chocolate Paddle Pop—for company.

  It was so peaceful in there, even on a sunny Saturday morning it didn’t seem crowded. There were a few people setting up picnic rugs under big shady trees, and families with small children went riding by on a brightly coloured miniature train, but you would hardly have known you were in a major city at all. It was a good place for a long think.

  I’d been invited to a big party that night—it was Trudy’s fortieth birthday and Antony’s gang were all very excited about the celebration, which was being held at the Diggers Club in Bondi. They’d booked out the whole place for the night and there was going to be hot music, lavish food and endless drinks for 300 guests. Antony and Betty had spent the last few days organising the decorations, which were going to have a Moroccan theme. Trudy ran a PR company which specialised in fashion labels and other groovy products like vodka and sunglasses, and it was set to be a very glamorous affair. “Dress: UP” the invitation had said.

  Debbie had bought a bright orange and pink stripey bias-cut backless dress from Scanlan & Theodore specially for the occasion and she’d made Kylie spend most of her week trying to find a pair of matching shoes. Zoe had a primrose yellow satin dress from Collette Dinnigan, which looked gorgeous with her olive skin, especially now that she’d put on some weight. And I was looking forward to giving my favourite Chloe dress its first Sydney outing.