Indelible Ink

by Fiona McGregor

  A bell rang in the far reaches and the door clicked open. Canvases of tattooed ladies danced around her with carnival exuberance. In the next room was a table with a large diary on it, a vase of irises, portfolios and a box of tissues. On the right, a staircase ascended to the floor above. The walls were hung with old photos. There was the tramp of boots then a woman emerged from the back room. She was tall with dark shaggy hair and an angular face into which were sunk large, dark, bloodshot eyes. Her high forehead and full top lip gave her an inquiring, opinionated air. Thick metal hoops hung from her lobes, she was of an indeterminate age, and both her hands were completely tattooed. She appraised Marie with one swift glance, and frank disappointment. She opened the diary on the table and leafed through the pages. She spoke in the tart, ironic drawl of old Sydney. ‘Um ... d’you have an appointment with Rob?’

  Diffident with sobriety, Marie tried not to stare at the grids that extended from the woman’s sleeves to the first joint of each finger. ‘No. I don’t have an appointment with anyone. I wanted to see Rhys.’

  The woman shut the diary and looked Marie up and down. Suspicion was joined by confidence, and mild curiosity. She cocked her head. ‘How did you get my address?’

  ‘From a place on Crown Street.’

  ‘Ohhh ... Why —’ she began, then cut herself off.

  She continued to stare at Marie, who squirmed and looked away. ‘I saw a photograph of your work there. I thought it was beautiful.’

  Rhys sent her a brief smile. ‘Just a sec.’ She left the room.

  On the wall was a photo of Alice — Inuit Tattooist, a smiling nonagenarian in a frumpy cardigan with tattoos lining her cheeks and jawbone. Next to this was a photo of a prepubescent girl whose sultry Asian eyes pierced the camera with bold self-possession. A tiny cross marked the end of her nose and the middle of her forehead. She was naked from the waist up, hung with necklaces, her arms tattooed with sleeves of snake scales. Marie could hear the rumble of a male voice, and Rhys’s lighter reply. She stepped closer to examine the tattooed girl, when the artist returned and issued her edicts.

  ‘I wasn’t supposed to be free right now. Somebody else was due.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I only do customised.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘I got a two-month waiting list.’

  Marie was crestfallen. She wanted a tattoo immediately but also felt she had come to the right place and didn’t want to go anywhere else. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Know what you want?’

  ‘Yes. Flames.’

  Rhys sat at the table and indicated the chair opposite, and her portfolios. ‘Okay, d’you know where? If you want my advice, I think flames go best on the lower torso. The belly is ideal for older women, especially if you’ve had kids. The texture of stretchmarks, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty of them.’

  She listened to Rhys’s advice while she turned the pages. A Hokusai wave breaking across a calf muscle. A corset delicate as lace down a woman’s spine, in black ink only. And all across a large man’s back, Australiana bright as a 1930s advertisement. She began to feel excited.

  ‘Alright, my belly. I’ve had three children,’ she added shyly.

  ‘Looks great. I presume you’ve been tattooed before. You’ll have to shave, down to about here, or wax. Think about how big an area you want to cover. You’ll notice a lot of space in my designs: bare skin is part of my palette so I tattoo fast, which is good for you. I’ll measure you up for the design today.’ She plucked a tissue from the box and honked into it. ‘Bloody plane trees. I’ll pencil you in for the first available and if you want you can go on my cancellation list. I get a cancellation, I text whoever’s next on the list. I don’t hear back within the hour, I text the next person.’

  ‘I’d love to come in as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Rhys smiled. ‘You want it, like, now.’

  She took a deposit, and motioned Marie to the stairs.

  Afterwards, what Marie remembered most about the tattoo studio was the photo above the stairs of what appeared to be a cadaver.

  Marie walked down the path beside Susan, trowel and pots in hand. She was debating with herself whether to apologise for vomiting in the homewares shop. When Susan had arranged to come and get plants, she hadn’t mentioned it, but plenty of things were never mentioned let alone apologised for. Marie decided to wait. Overnight, fifteen centimetres of rain had dumped on the east coast and a thin cloud cover kept the air cool and damp. A couple of lorikeets shrieked as they alighted on the angophora blossoms. Marie noticed a track through its shedding bark, probably made by a possum. The trunk beneath was raw and pink as skin beneath a scab.

  Susan kept a hand clamped on her large white hat. ‘Wooh! It really does pong.’

  ‘It smells happy; it smells like death.’

  ‘Your garden’s really surviving, isn’t it.’

  ‘It always perks up after rain. But some things are dying.’

  ‘My last azalea’s dead, thanks to these bloody water restrictions.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about azaleas, Susan. I’ll give you some broms.’

  ‘And I hear they’re going to toughen them even more.’

  ‘The dams have dropped to forty-five percent.’ Marie arrived at the patch of bromeliads and bent down to dig. ‘Sometimes I think we’re going to run out of water altogether.’

  ‘Not with the desalination plant.’

  ‘I mean in the long term. The whole country.’

  Susan stood above her, scanning the garden despondently. ‘I’m very unhappy with my gardener. He charges through the nose.’

  On her knees beneath this cascade of mild rebuttals, two feet from Susan’s gold sandals, from her freshly painted russet toenails, Marie was assailed by a sudden sense of incongruity. What am I doing with this woman? She had been friends with Susan since their husbands formed King Jones in the 1970s; even after the cataclysmic split of the advertising agency twenty years later, and worse, they had endured. We hardly know each other, she thought as she potted the bromeliads. They walked back up to the house.

  ‘I saw Louise out the window of my car the other day. She looks like she’s about to drop,’ Marie said.

  ‘It’s due in the new year.’

  ‘God, it goes quickly. You’re going to be a grandmother!’

  ‘We’re getting old, Marie.’

  ‘We’re all getting old at the same rate. Nature’s democratic by nature.’

  Pleased with her platitude, Marie stopped to pick some mint and lemongrass.

  ‘And how’s Clark?’ Susan asked. ‘Has he found another job?’

  ‘He’s applied for a PhD.’

  ‘Oh yes. Robert moved home when he did his PhD. He was only twenty-three. Watch out you don’t have Clark back on your doorstep, wanting three meals a day.’

  ‘Susan, he’s thirty-nine. He’s a father.’

  ‘Well, they do say that mature-age students apply themselves better. And Blanche?’

  They discussed their children briefly, mechanically, like cuckoos coming out to strike the hour.

  ‘Anyway,’ Susan reverted, as they walked up the side path, ‘nature doesn’t have much to do with ageing anymore. Honestly, Marie, the lengths people go to these days. Sometimes when I’m at the hairdresser’s I think I’m the only one in the room who hasn’t had something pulled out or put in.’

  ‘You don’t need to. You look fabulous and you know it.’

  In the shade, Susan’s eyes were visible behind her purple UV lenses. She looked at Marie with devious invitation. ‘Gina has been getting Botox treatment. Did I tell you?’

  ‘No.’ Marie’s face jutted forward eagerly.

  ‘She swears by it. God help her.’

  ‘Gina always was very careful with her appearance.’

  ‘I don’t know. I can understand sometimes why the Muslims hate us. It all seems so self-indulgent.’

  ‘I read in
Good Weekend that nose jobs are all the rage in Iran.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Susan considered this scandalous piece of information. ‘Well, there I was thinking they were such downtrodden goody-two-shoes skulking about in their veils,’ she said in a cheated tone. ‘I wonder if they use Botox as well ... They inject it, you know. Needles! In the face.’

  ‘I’ve heard that Botox is good for migraines,’ Marie said smugly. ‘Apparently it’s one of the most poisonous substances in the world.’

  Susan barked with laughter. ‘You’d better not say that to Gina.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Gina since the divorce, Susan. I’ve been dropped from her dinner party list.’

  ‘Well, you’re not getting out of New Year’s at our place, and the Tottis are coming too.’

  ‘I’d love that.’

  Susan’s witty malicious eyes raked Marie’s body approvingly. ‘You’ve lost weight, haven’t you? Shall we go in?’

  From behind, Susan looked removed and vulnerable. The skin around her elbows had loosened. Sunday after Sunday on her husband’s yacht had sailed deep furrows across her face. Nobody escaped these marks of time, the cracked heels and spotty hands. Nature couldn’t be cheated. Rain followed sun as night followed day.

  Marie walked into the house affirmed. Common enemies aside, she and Susan had bonded from growth in the same patch, absorbing the same nutrients. As they removed their hats, the air outside began to brighten with cicadas. The clouds parted and a billion tiny legs in the trees around the house grew frenetic with their worship. Within minutes it felt as though it hadn’t rained at all; within hours the garden would be completely dry. Was there such a thing as true balance? Nature was also the cane toad plague moving steadily south, the man signing the contract for the pulp mill in Tasmania, the spreading saltpans.

  ‘The new lounge suite!’ Susan exclaimed. ‘I want to sit in it. Why is it over there? Why isn’t it facing the view?’

  ‘I don’t know. I like the old one.’

  Susan sat stiffly with her hands either side of her thighs, like the man in the shop. ‘You have to get rid of it. Put this in front of the view, Marie.’

  Marie took the herbs into the kitchen and put on the kettle. She could see Susan move to the old couch, then descend into a recumbent posture, her sandals snaking over the armrest. Her swathed hair hung neatly off the other end. There was something comforting in the sight of feet and hair not biologically related parenthesising the furniture. Marie hadn’t had a dinner party since her divorce.

  ‘Oh,’ said Susan to the view. ‘It’s so beautiful here. How can you sell?’

  ‘With great difficulty.’

  Susan sat up to face her. She made a pained face.

  ‘I have to, Susan. I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Well, you can get something near here, something a bit smaller.’

  ‘The real-estate agents are going to start traipsing through next week.’

  ‘Hugh will handle the sale, won’t he?’

  ‘I’m seeing a few others anyway. Just to be sure. God, I’m dreading it.’

  A loud groan issued from the couch. ‘God. I’m dying for a cigarette. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I gave up fifteen years ago and all of a sudden I’m getting these cravings. I couldn’t sleep last night so I watched the late movie. You could hardly see the people for the cigarette smoke.’ Susan sat up and looked in outrage towards the kitchen. ‘It’s a crime to smoke these days. It’s a crime to hose your garden.’

  ‘It’s all a bit phallic.’ Marie sniggered.

  ‘It was a Julie Christie movie. Wasn’t she just style incarnate?’

  ‘She’s not dead yet.’

  ‘I always wanted to be Julie Christie, cool as a cucumber. The young one, I mean. Have you been watching Desperate Housewives?’

  ‘Yes. Out of desperation,’ Marie said.

  ‘I think it’s funny.’

  ‘But do you think they’re really desperate? They’re all so perfect.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just America. They’re all on drugs or plastic surgery. What about the one that was on Melrose Place? Do you think she’s gay?’

  ‘The one with the long face? Oh yes, she’s so cold.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Susan was saying as Marie came out of the kitchen. ‘Oh my Lord.’

  Mopoke was making her way across the floor, back leg dragging. She stopped and miaowed loudly. Marie put down the tray and carried the cat out to her spot beneath the Weber on the deck. ‘She’s got arthritis,’ she explained to Susan, who watched the whole procedure warily.

  Susan settled into a recliner. The tide was rising, waves thudding against the sea wall. ‘What are those trees?’

  ‘Brushbox.’

  ‘It’s a shame they’ve grown so much. It’ll cost you on the sale.’ Susan pushed her glasses down her nose and looked over. ‘Have you thought about poisoning them?’

  ‘I’ve thought about poisoning their owners, the Hendersons.’ Marie bent to remove her shoes and stretched her feet towards the breeze. ‘Their bloody wandering jew is spilling into the bush. I’m constantly pulling it out.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to call it that anymore, Marie. And your blackboy is a grass tree, you know. Xan-thor-rhea,’ she intoned. ‘One of the Tottis’ neighbours in Clontarf is being prosecuted for poisoning a tree.’

  ‘I read about that. The Norfolk Island pine? Lovely trees! What a creep.’

  ‘He doesn’t care. He says the fine is less than what tree removalists charge. There’s a logic there, you have to admit ... I’ve asked myself a couple of times if it isn’t the Tottis, actually.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They know every detail of the story, let me tell you. They even know the type of poison.’ Susan picked up an almond biscuit with her thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re looking very chipper, Marie. Better than the last time I saw you. What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been getting myself tattooed.’ Marie twirled her feet. She had painted her nails too, to extend the celebration. ‘I got the first one just after our trip to the homewares shop.’

  Susan’s face went blank. Marie felt like she had just whipped out a plate of strawberries for dessert, only to find they’d gone off. She had always associated Susan with her new self, the big-spending, freewheeling advertising executive’s wife, who had supplanted her old self, the prudish Catholic schoolgirl. She thought that Susan must be joking, that any minute she would laugh.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You can see the designs properly now the swelling’s gone down.’

  The corners of Susan’s mouth began to turn down, her eyes widening. ‘Just like that? You just walked into one of those places and got tattooed?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Marie began to talk excitedly. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. You feel so elated afterwards.’

  ‘Don’t you feel cheapened? I’d feel cheapened. Marie, you were blind drunk.’

  ‘Well, I felt enriched. And I hadn’t had a drink for hours when I got this one.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Look at them, Susan. You haven’t even looked.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Susan looked in the direction of the Hendersons’. The scrape of trowels drifted over the fence. Marie began to pour the tea. She wanted to crawl away and hide.

  ‘My lime tree is dying,’ Susan said. ‘Really, I’m at my wits’ end.’

  ‘Piss on it,’ Marie said sullenly.

  Susan swung her head around. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

  ‘Nitrate is good for citrus.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It’s a well-known fact.’

  Marie drank her tea too quickly, scalding the roof of her mouth. Every little act, every wish was nature as well, even sitting next to her best friend in a state of alienation was the most natural thing in the world, as natural as disease.

  ‘Marie.’ Susan narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re alright
?’

  ‘I’m fine!’

  The next day Marie sat in the vet’s waiting room leafing through magazines. The comfort of animal and the scourge of disinfectant fought in her nostrils. Mopoke hissed through the bars of her hutch at a docile Great Dane sitting between the boating shoes of a middle-aged male opposite. Every so often, Marie’s finger rose to a bristle emerging from her chin. She hadn’t seen it in the mirror this morning but the message her nerve endings now transmitted to her brain was that it was enormous.

  She went over yesterday’s scene with Susan. A shard of pain sat in her chest. Her two selves weren’t that dissimilar, she reflected now, and neither of them — along with Susan — was in agreeance with this third new self who thought of the Surry Hills tattoo studio with impatience, who anticipated it even more than the appointments with real-estate agents. Susan would have scoffed at the page in New Idea now open in Marie’s lap —

  In

  Out

  Rock music

  Dance music

  Facial hair (on men)

  Tattoos, body piercing

  Pilates, yoga

  Gym, aerobics

  Sunblock, fake tans

  Real tans

  Hipsters

  Shoulder pads

  Recycling

  Fossil fuels

  — but she would have secretly ticked things off the list just as Marie was doing now, because it was always better to be in the In column, even when the arbiters were fools. Marie noted with relief and satisfaction that she was only Out on one count, and considering how hopeless Susan was at recycling, they were pretty much even. She flicked the pages irritably, compulsively feeling her bristle. Witchy hairs, Blanche called them. To think that Blanche was getting them too. Marie was filled with impatience by all she still had to do.