Morning in Melbourne

by Nicole Taylor

  Black was “rigueur du jour” in Melbourne, and soon Louise discovered why.

  “There is absolutely nothing in the shops here other than black clothes! No wonder the poor old Melbournians all wear black! It is either that or go naked!” she complained.

  It was true. Every boutique and department store had racks and racks of gorgeous styles of various trousers, skirts, jumpers and jackets – all in black. Shoes and bags were on offer in just one colour, too. Black.

  The accountant in Louise understood the rationale behind this. For manufacturers to stock just one colour was cost effective; and for stores to order in a single colour saved both time and confusion. It was for a similar reason that the Chinese had to wear Moa Tse Tung style outfits during the communist regime. Economy.

  But the woman in her baulked at buying black on every occasion. She determined to wear floral dresses in as many rosy tints as she could find, even if she had to go interstate to buy them. Even if she had to make them herself!

  So, she was not surprised to see Julia wearing a pantsuit in basic black. However, she also wore a lovely aqua scarf draped over her shoulders, and a heavy, silver pendant with matching amulet. Jack wore jeans and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt in blue and white. And Julia’s broad, toothy smile made Louise suspect that, like her, Julia was not a Melbourne native.

  “So, how long have you been in this house?” Lou asked, accepting the glass of white wine Jack had poured her.

  Julia looked at her husband. “Has it been three years yet?’ she asked him.

  “Almost,” Jack agreed. “We’ve only been married for 5 years,” he added. Since they were both old enough to have been married for 25 years, Louise awaited an explanation.

  “We met in Vietnam,” said Julia. “Jack was on a business trip and I had been working there for a couple of years, managing the Hanoi Hilton. We came to Melbourne because Jack’s kids are all here, so we bought a big family home in Belgrave.”

  “I’m not from Melbourne,” explained Louise, “but I do know that we live on the Belgrave Line, so I’m guessing it is further out.”

  Jack laughed. “Anywhere that is at the end of the line is by definition further out!”

  “It was taking us hours to get to work and Kathy, Jack’s ex-wife, lives in Camberwell, and the kids go to Camberwell High. It took them ages to commute to school when they spent time with us. We bought the place as a family home but in the end no one wanted to go there unless they were staying for a week,” Julia explained.

  “Which would have been fine with us, but the kids were pretty linked–in to their school, so we bit the bullet and sold up and moved here,” Jack added.

  Julia nodded. “But this is too small.”

  “It’s fine!” exclaimed Jack. “And look at all the new friends we have!” He indicated Louise.

  Louise smiled back. This couple were the friendliest, most embracing people she had met since moving to Melbourne. “If I only get to make friends with one couple – I’m glad I met these people now, when I am more alone than I’ve ever been,” she thought.

  “And do you have any kids of your own Julia?” The subject of children was on the table, so Louise didn’t feel that she was delving into personal territory.

  “No.” Julia looked at her husband. “I would have had one with Jack, but he already had four, and if I then had another child we would lose my income for a while, so we decided against it.”

  “Kathy works too, so we really need two mothers,” Jack said, smiling at his wife.

  “Every family with two working parents needs another mother!” Louise agreed. “So step-parenting is okay?” she asked Julia. “Some people find it extremely tough.”

  “Yes,” agreed Julia, “and I would be one of those people. But parenting of any sort is tough.”

  “Sure, but parents have natural authority; and, even then, it is tricky.”

  “That’s the problem for us all then!” said Julia. “My main problem is with Jack’s eldest daughter, Laura.” Julia waited till Jack had left the room to adjust the barbeque outside, then added, “She is a master manipulator and guess who she has in her sights?”

  “You?” Lou laughed her commiserations.

  “Oh, yes!” Julia stopped speaking when Jack reappeared.

  “So,” said Jack, “has my wife filled you in on the powder puff power struggle?” He glanced from one woman to the other and they all laughed. “Dinner’s nearly ready, so let’s go outside.”

  They moved out to the deck beside the barbeque and settled down to eat at the wooden table.

  “So,” Louise was interested. “Are you both originally from Melbourne?” Perhaps Julia had become friendlier than most of her Melbournian peers after living overseas for a few years.

  “I’m not,” answered Julia. “I grew up on a cattle station in Queensland, and then moved to Brisbane to work and study. Jack is, though.”

  “I’m originally from Brizzy, too!” said Louise. “But I’ve lived in lots of other places in between leaving Brisbane and coming here.”

  “Oh?” said Jack. “Where were you before here?”

  “Sydney,” said Louise.

  “Ah!” Jack laughed. “The enemy!”

  Louise laughed too. “I know – Melbourne people are very sensitive about Sydney. I think they feel competitive towards their older sibling!”

  “It’s a two-way competition,” said Jack.

  “No – it really isn’t!” Louise contradicted him. “I lived in Sydney for almost 4 years and I never once heard a negative comment from a Sydney-sider about Melbourne! Yet whenever Sydney comes up in Melbourne, Melbournians rush to say that Melbourne is better than Sydney!” Louise sipped her wine, and continued. “I think Sydney people are so innately certain that they live in the best city on Earth that they can be delighted by another city without feeling that they are slighting their own.”

  Jack listened, and poured more wine into everyone’s glass. “But Sydney just pisses everyone off,” he laughed.

  “What?” Julia was disbelieving.

  “Oh, you know, all the great weather; and all the convict settlement crap.”

  “Jack!” His wife was indignant. “It’s historic fact – not crap!” She laughed and shook her head. “Inter-city rivalry is one thing, but you can’t rewrite history just to pump up Melbourne.”

  “It’s just ridiculous that Sydney is always credited with being the birthplace of Australia,” Jack refused to relent.

  “Oh, do you mean the 17th century landing of Dirk Hartog in New Holland?” asked Louise.

  “No.” Jack was seriously interested in his topic. “I mean that Melbourne is the real birthplace of the independent nation of the Australia that we now live in.”

  “What do you mean?” Louise was confused. “Do you refer to the inimitable contribution of ‘Neighbours’?”

  “No; – I refer to the gold rush of the 1860’s in Victoria, which saw our pathetic post-convict settlement population increase tenfold. And they didn’t move to Sydney – they all moved straight to the Victorian gold fields around Ballarat.

  “Did you never wonder why Australia became a Federation in 1901? After over a century as a colony? It was because of the gold rush! Money! Australia would still be Britain’s off-shore remand centre were it not for the Victorian gold-rush. The gold rush brought us our ‘critical mass’ of population; it brought us more money in the shortest period of time that Australia had ever experienced – and consequently, it brought us tax revenue in various forms and we could actually commence ‘nation building’.

  “Is this all from that book?” Julia wondered.

  “Not all, but a lot of it is in it.” Jack leaned over and extracted a thick book from the shelf. “You have to read this,” he offered it to Louise. It was Roland Perry’s ‘Sir John Monash’.

  “Thanks,” said Louise. “I will. I love biographies.”

  “You will love this book,” said Jack. “And it will give you a better understanding of M
elbourne’s place in Australia – historically and now.

  Louise flipped through the pages and started to read.

  “Not now!” Jack tried to take the book from her, but Louise grabbed it away just in time. “It’s Friday night – time for drinky discussion, not for reading.”

  “Oh, alright,” Louise put the book into her bag. “Well, at least I know one true Melbournian: you! And - married to a Queenslander!” she smiled at Julia. “That shows good taste! Actually, you don’t meet all that many banana benders who have moved out of the sunshine state permanently.”

  “True,” Julia agreed. “But that is generally true of all Australians, I think. People gravitate back to their home states eventually.”

  “They need the free babysitting from the grandparents!” Jack chuckled.

  “Probably!” agreed Julia. “Most of the people who move here permanently come from overseas.”

  “Melbourne is definitely the most multi-cultural city I’ve ever lived in,” said Lou. “And aren’t we lucky to be so close to Box Hill – our own suburban Chinatown! I may never cook again!”

  “Oh, you have to cook!” exclaimed Jack in mock horror. “Now that you have the best courtyard in the neighbourhood – we are expecting to be invited over to al fresco dinner parties all summer long.”

  “But it’s autumn!” insisted Louise.

  “That’s fine,” Jack was not going to be rebuked. “We aren’t going anywhere. We’ll still be here next summer.”

  *

  The builder who was contracted to oversee the painting and replacement of rotted wood looked like Billy Ray Cyrus back in 1992 when he had that achy breaky heart. He introduced himself to Lou one Saturday morning when he was doing his door-to-door inspection of each property to ascertain what needed to be done.

  “I’m John,” he said. “We will replace any of the window jambs that need it,” he told her, “before we do anything else. So if you see us working more on one place than another – that’s why.”

  “Oh, OK,” said Lou, returning his smile. “Thanks for explaining that.”

  “Well, you get used to dealing with people in body corporates,” looked over his shoulder and down the driveway. “We do a lot of maintenance on places like this, because they attract the sort of people who want someone else to do the maintenance.”

  “I suppose they would,” Lou agreed.

  “And single women usually prefer a townhouse to a big house.” He waited for Louise to comment, and she obliged him with another smile.

  “Yes, we do,” she agreed.

  He smiled back. “So, are you going to be home during the week?”

  “Oh my god!” thought Louise. “This is like one of those male fantasies where the workman visits the bored housewife!” She laughed out loud before she could stop herself.

  “No, but I only work in Box Hill. I can be here in 5 minutes if you need me for any reason.”

  “Ah,” John smiled, success written plainly on his face. “Then I had better get your mobile number!”

  Lou laughed again. “Yes, you had!” And she recited it and watched as he put it into his phone.

  Chapter 3 – Middle child

  Camille and Peter attended the local primary school and consequently knew all the kids in the neighbourhood. The parent/teacher interviews were being held and Louise had been assigned appointment times with each teacher, straight after one another.

  Peter, who was in Year 4, had Mrs Henderson. She was an intelligent, mature, kind-but-firm woman who had no favourites and liked her students.

  “Peter is very popular,” she began.

  “I know,” said Lou. “He should start his own religion one day.”

  Mrs Henderson laughed. “He certainly knows how to work a crowd,” she said.

  “And he is clever—”

  “And very polite. Peter has lovely manners.” Mrs Henderson closed her book and smiled at Louise. “Unless you want to hear more compliments for you son, we have nothing to discuss.”

  Louise returned Mrs Henderson’s smiled farewell and made her way to Camille’s classroom, to see her teacher, Mrs Daly.

  Camille struggled at school. At first Louise had helped Camille go over her lessons every afternoon, thinking that perhaps the moves from state to state had interrupted some fundamental learning process and that perhaps Camille needed to build her classroom confidence. In Year 1, the school had informed her that Camille had “literacy problems” and that the department of education was sending a specialist reading teacher to help Camille twice a week for 30 minutes.

  Despite this, Camille continued to fail in every subject. She was branded as “slow” and pretty soon no other child in her class would befriend her.

  Louise and Jeff employed tutors to sit with Camille after school three days a week, doing homework and re-doing classwork. Camille was already exhausted after school and she hated these lessons. Louise tried to get young, beautiful teenage girls, whom Camille might look up to, and this made the lessons more bearable, but nothing seemed to help her achieve better results.

  Mrs Daly smiled nervously at Louise. “Hello Mrs Clark,” she began. “How are you?”

  Lou smiled and nodded and waited.

  Mrs Daly sighed and continued, looking at her records book. “Well, I’m afraid Camille is not achieving the standard we require for her year level.”

  “I know,” said Louise.

  “She might benefit from repeating a year.”

  “I know,” agreed Lou. “But if she repeats a year, she will be in the same class as her younger brother and he is really clever.”

  “Oh!” Clearly Mrs Daly had not known that this was the situation. “That’s does make it very difficult.”

  “Yes, very difficult sums it up. Camille is between two brothers, both of whom do brilliantly at school. It is really hard for her.”

  “Perhaps some extra tutoring?”

  “We have had professional tutors for her for the past two years.”

  “I see.” Mrs Daly had nothing more to say.

  “But thanks, Mrs Daly,” Lou said in a resigned tone.

  “She’s a wonderful class member,” said Mrs Daly brightly, determined to lift the mood.

  “Yes, I’m sure she sits quietly and never speaks to anyone.”

  “She’s very well behaved.”

  “Camille has no friends,” explained Louise, “so talking in class is not an option for her.”

  Louise left the classroom building and made her way to the oval where the kids were waiting for their parents. Peter came rushing up to her.

  “Mum, can I go back to Braden’s house? We are going to see his new Playstation. I’ll be home before five.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lou. “Hey – did you ask Braden’s mother?” Braden was the eldest of four kids and Louise wondered if his mother, Deb, new about Braden’s invitation.

  But she was standing nearby and had overheard them. “No, it’s fine Louise. I’ll send Peter home after an hour.”

  “OK, thanks Deb,” Louise waved to her.

  Camille was sitting on a step at the edge of the oval, playing with a Tamagotchi. She was engrossed and didn’t see her mother approach.

  Louise looked at her 10 year old daughter with a heavy heart. Camille was petite, with long blonde hair and clear blue eyes. She had peaches-and-cream skin and was a gentle, shy child. Soon she would need braces to fix her overcrowded teeth. For the moment, Camille had an expander in her upper jaw and this was both painful and effective as the first step in fixing her orthodontic problems. Camille spoke with a lisp which sometimes made it difficult to understand what she was saying, and Louise hoped that the expander and braces would make her mouth larger and the lisp less noticeable.

  It was hard on Camille that both her brothers and her parents were academically accomplished and did not find learning challenging, while she struggled with everything. Louise thought that even if Camille was below average in intelligence, she was nonetheless a valua
ble and good person who would have a worthwhile life and contribute to society happily. School was going to be difficult and it was especially hard to overcome the social ostracism that accompanied low marks. More than anything, Louise could see that developing Camille’s confidence was the key to her enjoying her school years.

  Unfortunately she did not enjoy sport, and ran away from any projectile aimed at her – like a ball, as they had discovered when Louise had enrolled Camille in the beginner’s netball league: ‘Netta’. But she was artistic and Lou thought that perhaps this was something she might encourage Camille to pursue outside of school.

  Camille finally saw her mother, and got up. “Peter is going to Braden’s, did he tell you?”

  “Yes, he did.” That was so like Camille – she mothered her brothers and thought about their welfare.

  “So,” she said with a shy smile, looking at her mother from under her fringe. “What did they say?”

  “Oh, the usual,” Louise didn’t patronise her daughter. “You are getting straight D’s.”

  “Sorry,” said Camille.

  “That’s OK, Camille, don’t worry,” Lou gave her daughter a hug as walked home. “Not everyone has to be a genius, and we have enough smart alecks in our house anyway! I know you work hard and do your best and that is all you have to do.”

  Camille sighed and trudged along beside her mother. “I don’t know how everyone else does it, Mum,” she said. “They are so quick – you should see Pomodi. She argues with the teacher – and sometimes she is right and the teacher is wrong!”

  “Wow, I’ll bet the teacher loves that,” laughed Louise.

  Camille giggled, then became serious again. “I just wish I could do everything as quickly as the other kids. Sometimes I think that because I have a lisp, people think I am a baby because I sound babyish. So, in the end I say nothing. Then no one can criticise me. I always get D’s no matter what, so why bother?”

  Louise looked at her daughter. That was a fairly complex thought for a ten year old to express. Then Lou realised that she had never thought of Camille as being of low intelligence. She had accepted that her daughter struggled at school, but she had never in her heart believed that Camille was not as smart as anyone else in the family.