Morning in Melbourne

by Nicole Taylor

  “Hi, Judith!” Louise was back to Earth.

  Judith laughed. “Oh my God – you have it bad, girl.”

  “What?” Louise couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

  “The hots! You, my dear, have the hots for Billy Ray!” She looked around to see where her husband was, and spotted him pouring drinks for himself and John. “Although I can’t say I blame you.”

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. It was Katherine. Before she could close the door, Mr Eye-Candy and Sir Beefcake entered. Katherine kissed them both on the cheek and ushered them in.

  Within five minutes, everyone had arrived. As soon as they were in a corner of the kitchen, Diana demanded of Louise: “Where are all the gorgeous men from?”

  Louise, who was already on to her third champagne, giggled, “Aren’t they lovely?”

  “Yes,” agreed Diana, “they are. But where are they from?”

  “Diana – that is so ‘Melbourne’! Who cares where they are from? They are from heaven, darling! And it’s my birthday!” Now Louise was doing a little jig to the song that was playing: Michael Jackson’s ‘You’ve got to be starting something’.

  Louise wriggled off to the dance floor she had set up in the lounge room, where John was happy to stand in front of her and rhythmically jostle his left shoulder in time to the music. This was sufficient to encourage Louise to perform the complete repertoire of her rather extensive dance moves, which both entertained and fascinated her more sedate friends.

  Fortunately Judith had brought numerous platters of delicious savouries because as it happened, all Louise had provided was alcohol. It was true that she had anticipated every taste, and had beer (which she never drank) and claret (which she only used in cooking) and white wine (which she drank when there was no champagne) and champagne, which she preferred.

  “You brought me flowers,” Louise said to John.

  “I wanted to bring you something you would like,” he smiled at her.

  “And champagne!”

  “I knew you were a champagne lady.”

  Louise winced at his use of the word ‘lady’. It was like saying ‘pardon’ when you really meant to say ‘what’. But he was so handsome and he smelled so good….

  “I so am a champagne lady,” she smiled at him.

  Later, when John was attending to other matters, Mr Eye-Candy, whose name turned out to be Damien, delivered himself to Louise’s side. Louise smiled at him. “Hello! I’m so glad you could come. Do you have a drink?”

  “Yes, thanks,” he smiled at her. Louise noticed how developed his biceps were, and how tall he was. “What is happening to me?” she wondered. “Am I becoming a lecherous old woman?”

  “I was just talking to Katherine,” he continued. “She is going to get me to install air-conditioning in her house. So, if you think you need me, too...”

  “That’s right,” Louise was finally paying attention. “You teach refrigeration, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, just part-time,” Damien shrugged. “I have my own business but after the divorce, I needed to catch up financially.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Louise. “That’s something we all have in common.”

  Damien smiled. “You’re an accountant! You should be right!”

  Louise laughed. “Being an accountant is useful, in that I know which mistakes to avoid, I suppose. But it isn’t a pot-of-gold solution. Unfortunately there is still only one sure fire way to get rich, if you don’t inherit wealth.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Hard work and deprivation!”

  “Deprivation?”

  “Yes. It’s no good working hard and earning a lot of money if you go out and spend it, is it? You won’t get rich doing that!”

  “But isn’t that why people work hard? To buy things?”

  “Sure, but they can either buy things or accumulate wealth. Unless they are buying appreciating assets, like real estate, they will be poorer after they have spent their money.” God, Lou thought, I need to drink more! Why am I talking about this?

  Damien nodded thoughtfully. “So, deprivation is the only way to get rich, you reckon?”

  Louise smiled. She remembered being 15 when everyone “reckoned” everything. It was ‘the word.’

  “I reckon,” she said. “And then, of course, we have to deal with the obvious fall-out of deprivation.”

  “What’s that?” he smiled.

  “Pent-up demand,” Louise fluttered her eyelashes at him saucily. Damien laughed and nodded.

  “You are out-of-control!” he said.

  “In my own home, on my birthday, you had better believe it!”

  Louise danced with both her hunky fellow Certificate IV students; and John. She flitted from man to man, first dancing with, then passing them along to be shared amongst her perfumed and painted female friends where they were received as happily as a Christmas bonus.

  Chapter 10 – Another mother

  Katherine arrived the next morning with coffee from the local café – real, hot coffee. James was up and let her in, inviting her to go straight up to his mother’s room.

  Katherine laughed when she saw Louise’s dishevelled head being clutched in her hands, a low groan telling her that Louise was, in fact, awake.

  “I feel sick,” Louise wailed.

  Katherine handed her the cup she was holding. “I thought you might,” she said. “Here, drink this.”

  Louise took the cup and although the smell of the freshly brewed coffee was a bit overwhelming, she sipped it gratefully and with enjoyment. “Oh, God – thank you Katherine.” Then she added, “Do you mind if we don’t discuss last night?”

  Katherine sat on the end of the bed. “Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

  The thought ran through Louise’s head that Katherine may have come over so early, bearing the coffee as a camouflage, to see whether Louise was alone that morning; but she dismissed the thought as ungrateful and suspicious. Nevertheless…

  “Nothing you don’t already know about, but I don’t feel well enough to cope with embarrassment as well. So please, if you could just wait a day or two till I am feeling better, then you can tease me about it all you like.”

  Katherine laughed. “Tell you what,” she said, “I’ll wait a day. How’s that?”

  Louise nodded. “A day is good. Thanks.” And she drank her coffee.

  “You’re welcome,’ said Katherine.

  Louise really wanted to hear about the whole party – and what sort of time everyone had had; but she couldn’t bear to hear about her own antics right now and determined to steer clear of the whole subject. She rubbed her head. “Did I mention that Mum is coming to live with us?”

  Katherine stopped what she was doing, which was inspecting the jars of face cream on Louise’s dressing table and looked at Lou. “No!” she said.

  Louise nodded. “Yes, she wants to get away from the Canberra winter. And as she is on the lung transplant list at the Alfred hospital, living here in Melbourne will make it easier for her to get to her appointments every six weeks. Currently she has to fly in for the day for every appointment.”

  “But if she lives in Canberra, why is she on the list at the Alfred?” asked Katherine.

  “Because Canberra is too small to have its own transplant unit. From Canberra, patients have to choose between Sydney and Melbourne, and since I live here, and you have to show that you have after-care in order to remain on the list, Mum opted for Melbourne.”

  Katherine took this in. “And is she likely to get one soon?”

  “Well, she’s been on the list for almost two years, and that is longer than a lot of people,” said Louise. “She is basically waiting for the phone to ring.”

  Katherine frowned. “But where is she going to stay?”

  “Here!” said Louise.

  “But where?” insisted Katherine. “You don’t have a spare room.”

  “Camille will have to share with me while she is here.”

/>   “You’re kidding!”

  “It will be okay,” Louise shrugged. “It won’t be forever.”

  “Do you and your mother get along?” Katherine was clearly thinking of living with her own mother, and perceptibly shuddering at the mere thought.

  “We do and we don’t,” smile Louise. “Mum’s a bit tricky.”

  “Oh, God!” Katherine rolled her eyes. “This will be interesting.” Then she looked as though a light had gone on in her head. “Is that why you had the birthday party and let your hair down – because your mother is about to land on you?”

  Louise smiled at her friend. “You’re not just a pretty face after all, are you dear?”

  Katherine laughed. “Not even!”

  *

  Louise and her mother, Mary, were more like sisters than mother and daughter. Mary had been 18 when she married Jim and 19 when she had Louise. As the other children arrived in quick succession, Mary had trained Louise in the feminine arts of bottle feeding, nappy changing, clothes folding, tea making and singing.

  Mary taught Louise all the songs of her youth as they folded the never-ending piles of washing that were the inevitable result of a new baby every two years. By the time Mary was 28 and Jim 30, she had had six babies.

  As a young child – and like most youngsters - Louise had adored her mother and did everything she could to help her with her never-ending daily chores. Mary was her best friend and Louise knew how much her mother relied on her. Extended family and neighbours constantly commented on the extent of the help Mary received from Louise, and Mary took these accolades as compliments on her superior mothering, to have raised such a loving, helpful girl.

  But the family had grown up, and Mary’s life had changed. She’d gone back to work, and left Louise to deal with the younger kids after school. By the time Mary – and Jim – arrived home after a day at the office, the house had been cleaned by Louise while she supervised the younger ones.

  Actually, Louise barely supervised her younger siblings at all. That was a fantasy enjoyed by her parents which allowed them to believe that their parental responsibilities were being discharged. Louise detested her younger siblings. Not only did they not assist her with her numerous after-school chores – they were a constant nuisance and doubled her work. Louise was a focussed student, and counted on doing her housework within the first two hours after arriving home each afternoon, so she could then spend at least an hour on her homework before dinner and a couple of hours after dinner.

  And the younger ones didn’t like Louise any more than she liked them. To them, Louise was that hybrid-entity: not an adult, but not a child; responsible but not powerful, and they resented her bossy attitude, not for a minute seeing that she was as dissatisfied with the arrangement as were they. And this arrangement held for 9 years – from the time Louise was 9 years old until she was 18.

  While Louise continued to solve her parent’s housekeeping problems, these problems ceased to exist for everyone but her. Mary had long since stopped even thinking about all the housework Louise did after school each day. When she went to work, the house was dirty from the night before and the kids were still in bed. When she arrived home, the house was shining and clean and the kids settled.

  The kids were settled because they were exhausted. Louise was tired out from two hours of housework after a full day at school, and the others were sleepy after fighting with, and chasing, each other around the house as Louise cleaned, tidied and vacuumed it and made all the beds.

  Mary had been thrilled to return to work when her youngest child was just a year old, and in anticipation had enrolled in a night class at the local business college to upgrade her shorthand skills. Just setting off to attend the night classes was hugely enjoyable. She didn’t have a driver’s licence yet but that would come. At 29, she was slim, very pretty, and looked much younger than her years. When she started working again in 1970, no one guessed that she had a large family and if she didn’t raise the subject, she could masquerade as a happy-go-lucky young woman along with her co-workers.

  The two youngest, who were not yet school-aged, were dropped off at a home day-carer on Mary’s way to work, and picked up on the way home. But as soon as they were at school, they joined their siblings on the school bus.

  If there were days one or other of them didn’t make it to the bus, who knew? Louise’s bus left a good 20 minutes before theirs, and she arrived home half an hour later than they did.

  Jim had been supportive of Mary returning to the workforce, thinking that she was only doing it so that they could save faster for the home they dreamed of building. Mary played the part of the overworked young mother for his benefit, but in fact nothing could have prevented her from reclaiming at least some of her former life. And nothing did that like a fortnightly paycheque.

  After Mary and Jim left each morning, one by one the kids straggled into the bathroom, ate or didn’t eat a bowl of cornflakes which they poured for themselves; did or didn’t brush their hair before wandering off to the bus stop; hopefully remembering to collect the fairly unappetising vegemite sandwich Mary had made for each of them and left on the kitchen bench.

  When Louise reached her teens and got a boyfriend and a social life, Mary regularly took her shopping and indulged her daughter’s taste in fashionable clothes. Louise saw this as her reward for years of housework, wrongly attributing her mother’s generosity to gratitude for years of servitude. But Mary bought her daughter clothes because that is what parents do. For her, there was no notion of reward. And as the others grew, they too received new, fashionable clothes.

  It was Louise’s boyfriend, Stuart, who had stopped the housework habit Louise had developed. She had just begun studying for her degree, and they had met in the first week. Stuart had arrived to take Louise to the library with him, but she had said she couldn’t go because she had to finish the housework.

  Stuart was disbelieving. “You shouldn’t be doing their housework!” he insisted.

  Louise was surprised at his tone, and a bit embarrassed. He said ‘their housework’ as though it had nothing to do with her.

  “I have to,” she explained. “I can’t leave it for Mum to do when she gets home from work.”

  But Stuart would have none of it. He looked around the large house and said “They should get a cleaner – they can afford it!”

  “No,” insisted Louise. “They can’t afford it!”

  “Come off it, Lou. Some people just love to cry poor. Both your parents have well-paid jobs, and your father has a very well paid job. He drives an MG and your mum drives a Mercedes Benz. They have three colour televisions, for God’s sake. This house is a mansion – why should you clean it for them? Why should you subsidise their lifestyle with your labour?” He made it sound as though the whole thing was her parent’s problem and they should solve it.

  Stuart sensed her confusion and continued. “You’re a full-time student. You shouldn’t be doing this. Just leave it.” And he had unceremoniously dragged Louise off to his car. He drove her to the library, where they worked for an hour, and then took her to the union bar to have a glass of cider with their friends.

  When they returned, it was after seven, and Stuart accompanied her into the house. He was four years older than Louise, a graduate student. Stuart was also over 6 feet tall and president of the student’s union on campus. He exuded goodwill and authority and few were immune to his reasonable attitude to life.

  The house was dirty and messy from the night before, that morning, and this afternoon. Mary and Jim wandered around looking slightly dazed, and met Louise with expressions which awaited an explanation.

  Louise had expected them to be concerned for her well-being. This was the first time she had ever let them down and perhaps they were worried that she had been in an accident. But she could immediately see that that was not either of her parents’ primary concern at all. She felt a bit deflated.

  “Oh, there you are,” her father began. His expression had
already changed to anger but, when he saw Stuart there behind her, he immediately re-arranged his expression into one of goodwill. Louise noticed that, too. “Oh, hello Stuart,” he said.

  “Hi, Jim,” said Stuart breezily. Then he looked around. “What a mess!” he exclaimed. “What’s been going on here?”

  Mary emerged from the kitchen. “We just got home,” she explained.

  “Don’t all the kids help you clean up?” Stuart asked.

  Jim looked at Mary. Neither of them spoke. Stuart continued. “Louise had a late lecture, so I waited in the library for her so I could drive her home.” He looked at Jim. “You should probably get her a car, you know. The buses are not very reliable after hours, and she has lectures every night till seven now. I can bring her home some nights, but on the nights I can’t she will be an hour on the bus and won’t be home till eight.

  Louise was speechless with shock. No one had ever spoken to her father like this before – like his equal. She wondered what was going to happen.

  “Oh, yes, you’re probably right.” Jim agreed. “We will have to see about getting her a car.”

  Stuart smiled. “Well, you look like you have a lot of housework to do so I might take Lou to my place for dinner. We can’t have her dropping out because she can’t keep up with her workload.”

  Mary and Jim stood there, surrounded by mess and bedraggled kids who were still wearing grubby school uniforms. Stuart kept talking as he ushered Louise back out the door. “Lou is exhausted. They really work the first years hard, to try to weed out the weaklings.” It was true. There were only eight universities in Australia in 1978, and keeping your place in one, were you lucky enough to get a place, required constant vigilance. Louise saw her parents visibly repeal their looks of disquiet at her negligence and replace them with looks of horror at the thought that she might be one of the weak students who were weeded out. Stuart smiled at them and chuckled before he closed the door. “You guys need a maid!” And they were off.