by Joy Dettman
‘Don’t you read the warnings on the packets?’ He walked to the concrete wall, leaned with her guitar.
‘We’ve all got to do what we’ve all got to do.’
‘How long have you been doing it?’
‘Since I was eleven.’
‘Singing?’
‘Smoking. The kid on the guitar talked me into busking a few weeks back,’ she said around the cigarette, her hand still searching for a lighter. It was hours since she’d had a smoke. She was gasping for one, but he snatched it from her mouth.
A reflex grab to reclaim it. Cigarettes cost money, and she wasn’t into wasting them. He caught her hand, and she jerked it free. Didn’t get the cigarette, and Matt’s ring slipped off, tinkling as it fell on the concrete.
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she said. ‘Just who the hell?’
‘I know who I am, De Rooster. Not too certain about you.’ He picked up the ring, glanced at it, held it to the sun before handing it back. ‘No harm done.’
‘And no thanks to you.’ The ring reclaimed, slipped onto her finger, she picked up her guitar.
‘Who is the cheapskate?’ She tossed him a look of disdain and walked towards the entrance. ‘Not Mr Smooth with the classy wheels and Italian suits,’ he said, following her to the door. ‘It’s not a diamond, De Rooster.’
‘What would you know about anything?’
‘You’d be surprised what I know. My sister’s husband has got a jewellery shop in Sydney. They made me work there for my keep for a while. The capitalists.’
‘Bloody bull in a china shop.’
He laughed. ‘Yeah. It was a bit like that, but it still doesn’t make Mr Smooth’s zircon a diamond, and with a voice like yours, you don’t need second-rate.’
A voice like yours? She glanced at him, looking for derision, finding none. Long hair, black as a crow’s wing in the sun. No smart reply she could make to that one, so she lit a cigarette and walked fast up the stairs. No more crow with a sore throat. Now a nightingale with a broken heart.
Still a bird.
That night she looked at her ring beneath the bathroom light. It was a diamond. It had to be. What would a bikie know? It was a diamond, and a big one. Symbol of Matt’s love. His promise to marry her – as they might say in Mills and Boon.
But she read a second-hand Stephen King that night. Read it in one greedy gulp, and when she put it down at 2 a.m., she dreamed of the ring. It had turned her hand as black as the bikie’s, and when she looked at the diamond, she could see a bleeding rose thorn in its centre and she couldn’t dig it out.
She woke up prickling, and she ate breakfast prickling, the phone book open. She was going to take her ring to Cash Converters, see what they offered for it.
Lots of Cash Converters, and one at Forest Hill, which was close to East Burwood, or so Varicose – Joyce Rogers – had said. Joyce with her bungalow for fifty dollars a week.
Flipping through the phone book, thinking of rings and pimples and grandfathers and Mummy, she found herself staring at a column of Rogers; her fingernail tracked down to the J’s. Only two in East Burwood; she chose the top one and dialled. Why not?
J Rogers picked up the phone. A female ‘Hello.’
‘Would I be speaking to Joyce Rogers? Ex-Phonepross.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Sally from the tearoom.’
‘How sweet of you to call,’ Joyce said.
It took a minute of polite conversation before she got to the point. ‘This is probably a very silly question, but . . . but did Michael, you know, the pimply guy who got the boot . . . did he ever contact you about your bungalow?’
‘I’ll get him for you.’
‘I don’t want to talk to him –’
‘He’s in the kitchen. We were talking about you last week. We never did know your other name.’
We? Pimples and Varicose?
Fifteen minutes later, phone down, she was still uncertain of how it had happened, but Joyce Rogers had somehow made the swift transition from big woman with bungalow to lunch date at twelve at Forest Hill Chase.
The guy at Cash Converters barely glanced at Sally’s diamond.
‘Zircon,’ he said. ‘We don’t touch them.’
She didn’t want to touch it either. She escaped. Fast. Ran across the road and entered the shopping centre, seeing the field of grey mushroom tables Joyce had described. A multitude of eaters, but not twelve yet, too early for Joyce. She sat a moment while her heartbeat steadied, her eyes staring at that ring that was turning her mood, if not her hand, black, then she sprang to her feet and rode the escalator up. What would a guy in the second-hand junk business know?
Jewellers on this level and plenty of them, windows glittering. She chose one and walked in, head high.
The jeweller smiled his smile saved for the young and the beautiful. She flashed an answering smile. ‘I want to have it made smaller. It is a diamond, isn’t it?’ she said, offering the ring.
‘Nope,’ he replied, and his smile shrank to the size saved for those wasting his diamond-studded time.
‘Are you certain?’
One brief glance through his eyeglass and he was certain. ‘Zirconia.’ She held out her hand and from a height he dropped the ring into her palm.
Smartarse bikie. Cheap ratsus Matt.
The ring held in her palm, she walked to another glittering window. Display of zircons there. Lots of them, and cheap. The heart was on show, big and bold and brash. Half-price, the sign said: $79.
Just a bauble. Just a gewgaw for a fool.
Lunch with Joyce was a baked potato that would have fed Sally for a week when she was a kid. She snapped the plastic knife trying to get into it. Joyce managed, but she had a mother’s gentle hand.
‘I went with Mike to get his things and old Ron hardly said boo. But you should have heard his wife!’
Melburnians, packed like assorted olives in a jar, only thin skins keeping them apart, but prick the skin and allow the juices to mix, and what did you find? Just lonely people, eager for friends. Here she was having lunch with a woman she’d known for almost a year but barely spoken a word to. Here she was discussing Mike, who a month ago had pimples instead of a name. She glanced at Joyce’s breasts. Michael had always been obsessed by those breasts.
‘It’s nice having a man about the place. I mean, the lawns were up to my knees.’
Sally looked at her fake diamond as her plastic fork attempted to excavate the potato. Nice having a man around the place? Not so nice any more. It used to be nicer. When Matt had given her the ring, she’d believed it meant total commitment, total trust.
Total bloody fool. She’d sold her first true independence for a bit of fancy glass.
Happy Birthday
The trees in Bollinger Street were already turning gold; heat was slowly moving away from the city. Summer long gone but, to Sally, it would only slip into its annual coffin when March ended and took daylight-saving with it. She mourned the loss of that extra hour of light. Mourned another birthday too. All year she’d been counting down to the end of March to her birthday.
Thirty. Halfway to sixty.
The world turned too quickly. The year 2000, such a big deal for so long, was just another year. Now Australians had Olympics mania, but few, other than the rich and famous and those who had friends in high places, had managed to get worthwhile tickets. Sally wasn’t rich or famous and her friends were all on the ground floor, struggling to make ends meet. She struggled along with them. Only April’s rent to pay, which would take her up to end-of-lease May, then maybe she’d move into Joyce’s bungalow. Michael wasn’t using it.
She hadn’t spoken to Ross in weeks. Out busking every Sunday with Cocky, temping at call centres all day Saturday and some weekdays, playing waitress three nights a week. Perhaps he called while she was out. Perhaps he didn’t. She’d shocked the pants off him back in February. Literally.
It was late when she emptied her letterbox on Wed
nesday evening, and she was tired. Eight hours spent plugged into a telephone, trying to sell advertising space. She hadn’t sold any. Didn’t believe in the product. The boss lady had told her not to bother coming back. A Queen Ratsus in the making, not as big, no accent, but as tough.
Advertising space. Who wanted to buy it? Who looked at ads anyway, who sat avidly through television commercials – and junk mail? Did anyone ever open it?
She yawned, felt her left breast, then her right. Painful. Her back was aching too, and her neck. Symptom of thirty. She hoped.
A glance through her junk mail revealed a small padded envelope, a free sample of something. She turned it, felt it. No stamps, no address, no advertising. A small post-pack someone had hand delivered.
Number 14 got the junk mail; she kept the padded envelope and the phone bill, opening the bill as she walked to the stairs. It wasn’t a big one. No phone calls to Lakeside to swell it these days. Lots of calls to Sue and Joyce, a few to Cocky.
Six weeks and she’d be gone from this place. May to May. The year of Sally De Rooze, almost gone. So fast, and so slow. The bloodiest and the best year of her life.
She checked her watch. Plenty of time; Matt rarely arrived before seven. Time for a shower and a glass or two of wine. Have to get in the mood to entertain him. Have to paint a smile on her face, pretend she didn’t care that they weren’t going out for her birthday. Pretend she didn’t care that she wouldn’t even see him on her birthday.
‘Laugh and the world laughs with you, Sall old gal.’
Key in her door. Bag on the fridge. Wine in a glass, cigarette in her mouth and she tried to gain entrance to the envelope with her long fingernails. They made little impression. Too well-sealed with sticky tape, she had to cut her way into the envelope with scissors, and when she did, a tissue-wrapped brooch slid free.
Gold, with a stone that looked like a ruby. An oval cut. She stared at it. Who would have put something like that in her box? She turned the brooch in her hand, held it against the sleeve of her black sweater, and a ghost walked over her grave.
‘Pretty,’ she whispered, her hand searching for a card or note. Nothing. Tissue paper and her name on the envelope, written in small block letters. SALLY. No mistake about who it was meant for. But who would have placed it in her box?
An hour later, the brooch still in her hand, she stood by the window watching the car lights approach and drive on by. No Matt. Maybe he’d arrived early and dropped off the present. Picked it up at the two-dollar shop.
But it hadn’t come from a two-dollar shop. She knew that. The stone had a fire trapped within it, and the intricate gold-work looked old, worn. She studied the brooch, examined the fastener. It had been bent by years of use. And the loop at the top that a chain might be threaded through. A worn loop, almost worn through, needle thin. Someone had used this brooch as a pendant.
She showered, watched at the window until nine. Matt didn’t come and he didn’t call, so she went to bed, asleep when her head hit the pillow. And Thursday came too soon and she woke up thirty, and thirty felt nauseous and achy old, and people didn’t get cancer simultaneously in two breasts, but she checked each side for lumps, just in case.
She was still in bed when the phone rang. She snatched it up, ready for war.
‘Was last night a payback, Matt?’ she said.
‘It’s me, love. Happy birthday.’
‘Oh, Ross. I’m sorry. Thanks. I’m sorry, I thought it was –’
‘I know. It’s okay. So, how’s it going down there?’
‘I don’t know. So, how’s Lakeside?’
‘A bit of a madhouse. Old Charlie’s wife took off for Queensland and he’s gone after her. She’s been at him for years to give up work and buy a caravan. Might have got sick of waiting for him, I think.’
Then she heard a child’s laughter in the background. And she heard ‘Shush.’ A woman’s voice.
‘Got visitors?’ she asked.
A breath. A long, true silence. A cough. ‘Carol. Carol and the kids.’
‘Carol who?’
‘Your old schoolmate. Carol from Geelong.’
‘Carol Rigg!’
‘Murphy.’
‘What’s she doing there?’ Stupid question. Very stupid – 8.15 a.m. and Carol Rigg at the farm, hours away from Geelong? She swallowed hard, dug deep for a not-so-stupid comment. Wide awake now. ‘So you’ve . . . you’ve stopped fighting the women off with big sticks, have you?’
‘I wore out my old cricket bat on you, love.’ She raised a laugh. ‘Yeah, well how’s it going down there? How’s little Matt going?’
‘What?’
‘Matt. That’s his name, isn’t it? The little bloke with the bug on his jaw?’
‘Oh, he’s great. I’m great. Life’s great.’ Silence. ‘So. So, say g’day to Carol for me. I’d better let you go. Thanks for the call.’
‘Right. Carol says happy birthday and have a good day.’
‘I will. Tell her thanks.’
‘You come up some time and bring Matt. There’s always a bed here for you. Always will be. You know that. Bye, love.’
She hung up, but stood unmoving, her bare feet stuck to the floor.
Carol bloody Rigg! She got my house, now she’s got my old boyfriend. Carol bloody Rigg. Statue still, she stared at the phone and beyond the phone into a world that was darkening.
‘Ring me, Matt. You know it’s my birthday.’
For an hour she waited, then she went back to bed, reading and dozing until she had to get up and go to the Riverdale pub, wait on tables, and every plate she served reminded her of Ross – and bloody Carol Rigg.
That night the fire-dream returned.
Yellow balloon, dipping, diving beneath the clouds. Sally reaching, reaching high. Almost. Almost there. Almost in her hands.
Then Daddy, running away from her. Smoky, misty Daddy, leaving behind him a road of fire. Sally, all grown up, trying to follow him, or run away from something.
Legs couldn’t run. Daddy all gone.
And a big black beast behind her, snarling.
She woke, heart pounding, on her knees again, on the bed, her hands reaching out for the beige wall.
Gasping for air she scrambled to her feet and found the window, where she stood counting while her heartbeat slowed. Dark out, but morning dark. Today. What was today? Thirty plus one day. Interview-in-Carlton day.
Gotta go, Sally. Got to get up, get dressed, get out there. Can’t slop food in a pub for the rest of your life.
Why not? At least my customers want what I serve.
She made coffee at seven and it didn’t taste right, but she sipped it while flipping through the phone book to the M’s, looking for the Marsdens. Not too many, easy to check. But knowing silent Matt, he’d have a silent number.
Marsden, MT 17 Charlton Grove, Hallam. Right on centre page. Matthew Thomas; that was his name. She checked the Marsdens again. No other MT in Hallam. It could have been him. Probably wasn’t. Might have been. Why hadn’t she looked him up before?
Because you can’t call him, because he still lives with his wife. You got sucked in by a zircon, Sall old gal. Go back to bed. Crawl beneath the blankets and hide. You’re thirty years old and you’ve still got nothing but a room full of junk, and that’s all you’ll ever have, and you’ll haul it around on your back until the day you die.
Black beast from her dream, still behind her, coming to get her, to drag her down. But she had her guitar, and it wasn’t junk, and she had Sue.
Sue would be on the train to work.
Joyce. I’ll wait until nine. I’ll call her at nine and I’ll go out there for lunch, check out her bungalow.
Joyce wasn’t answering her phone at nine, or at 9.30, or at ten.
Nobody home. Nobody for little Sally.
Frightened little animal, little chameleon wanting to hide in the dark, hide from something she didn’t want to know. Wanting to suck her thumb and hide until the black beast gobbled he
r up for breakfast.
Chameleon. That’s what Matt had called her on Monday night. Chameleon.
‘So change your colour,’ he’d said.
It had started out badly. Rain battering her window, he’d come to her door, his shirt wet, his hair dripping. She’d handed him a towel.
‘Tonight reminds me of that first night, Sall, the rain thundering down around us. I was sitting in the car, wondering what I’d find beneath your black overcoat,’ he’d said.
‘What if I hadn’t asked you in for a drink? Would you have pursued me?’ She’d been twisting the ring on her finger, wanting to accuse him – or throw it at his head. But he’d never said it was a diamond. Never asked her to marry him.
‘You did invite me in, and I knew you would. I can climb into your mind, kiddo. If you were lost, I could find you.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And what did you find under my overcoat, Matt?’
‘It was like unwrapping a birthday gift, expecting the usual socks, but finding what you’d wanted for half of your life. A chameleon kid.’
‘A lizard?’
‘So change your colour. Play the whore for me tonight, kiddo. I’ve got money to spend and I want the works.’
He liked to play sex games. They’d had fun some nights. He’d sit on the bed and call her number on his mobile, and ask for the little blonde who worked at Phone-a-pro. They’d had some crazy conversations; done some crazy things.
‘Sorry, she’s left town, Matt, and didn’t leave her number.’
‘You forget. I picked you up on a street corner, and you said you needed a hit. Said you’d do anything to get it.’
‘I conned you. I’ve been taken down once too often, so I rob my clients these days.’
He’d tried to take what he wanted, but he’d been too rough; she’d kicked him, the heel of her boot connecting with his inner thigh. It hurt him – and she didn’t care.
No way back after that. No plans made for her birthday. Nothing.
The relationship had gone wrong.
‘How am I going to explain that bruise?’ he’d said.
