Food, Sex & Money

by Liz Byrski

  And Hamish, what was she to do about him? When Marjorie had first suggested that Hamish was flirting, Irene realised that she was right. Since then Hamish seemed to have shifted into top gear. Somehow he always managed to commandeer a seat beside her at meals or in the bus, and he was always in close proximity to take her arm as they picked their way over the rough unmade paths to the beach, or into the next ancient ruin or gallery. He had taken to putting his hand over hers on the table when he wanted her attention, and to calling her ‘my dear’ in an old worldly sort of way that was quite nice, but also disconcerting. It seemed like an attempt on his part to change the nature of a friendship that went back decades to when she’d met Dennis.

  Hamish and Dennis had been at school and university together, and each had been best man at the other’s wedding. Hamish and Gilda, Dennis and Irene had often been a foursome, until Gilda left Hamish for another woman, something he’d found very hard to come to terms with. A few years later he’d married a rather mousy woman called Celia, whom neither Irene nor Dennis could stand, and so they’d seen less of each other.

  After Dennis’s death, Irene had seen Hamish and Celia even more rarely and then, six years ago, when Celia died of some typically undefined, pale, wasting condition, Hamish had decided to take himself back to his Scottish roots for a few years. He had only returned to Australia in the last year, unable to tolerate the icy Highland winds and persistent rains that played havoc with his arthritis. Was it just the fact that they were on holiday, or was he seriously trying to change an old friendship into something else? She’d been alone for so long and liked it a lot – wouldn’t a man be an intrusion, an unnecessary complication? Having Bonnie fussing around her had been difficult enough to cope with, but to have a man who, knowing the nature of men, would probably want her to fuss around him was something she really didn’t need.

  Some time after the loss of Dennis, Irene, then in her early sixties, had occasionally been on what could loosely be called dates, with men her own age. They had gone out for lunch or dinner, sometimes to the opera or a concert, and sometimes to formal functions that required a partner, but she had always ended up listening politely to tedious monologues that seemed to replace real conversation. Occasionally, she found herself sitting in a restaurant or café virtually comatose while a man droned on about the latest letter he’d written to the newspaper, or how he’d fix everything if he was in charge. So she started refusing the invitations without offering an excuse or reason, and the men accordingly drifted away, turning their attentions to less prickly women.

  But Hamish was different. He certainly wasn’t boring; he had cultivated the art of listening as well as talking, which made him positively unusual. Irene would be happy to have him as a friend, a companion, she thought, but anything else? What else was there at their age? Love? Sex? Surely not! She’d almost forgotten how to do it and the prospect of relearning all that stuff didn’t seem very inviting – in fact, she thought it might be faintly ridiculous and embarrassing. She would have liked to talk to Bonnie about it but it would be difficult over the phone. On the other hand, of course, it wasn’t night time in Melbourne; perhaps she could just mention it in passing.

  Irene crept back into the bedroom and retrieved the mobile phone Bonnie had bought for her the week before she left. ‘Much easier than messing about with hotel phones,’ she had said, keying in the house phone number and handing it to her. ‘All you have to do is press this button and you’ll dial straight through to here.’

  Marjorie had stopped snoring, and was so quiet that Irene wondered briefly if she had actually stopped breathing. But as she made her way cautiously back to the sliding door there was another blast like a motorbike revving up, and Irene fled to the balcony, closing the door behind her.

  Bonnie, to her surprise, had some difficulty getting tickets to the Wine Club dinner where Fran was to speak. She’d assumed it would be a small affair and that she could just call nearer the time and book two tickets, but Will’s visit knocked the subject out of her head and by the time he left, the dinner was just two days away.

  ‘Members and guests only, I’m afraid,’ the club secretary told her in a rather snotty voice. ‘This is our peak event, three clubs are combining for the dinner, and I’m afraid it’s not open to outsiders. We are mindful of security these days.’

  Bonnie restrained herself from pointing out that she was a friend of the guest speaker and wasn’t planning a terrorist attack. She had been away for a long time but she knew Melbourne well enough to understand the snobbery of some of its subcultures. She was sitting at the kitchen benchtop tapping the end of her pen against her teeth, trying to remember who she knew who might be a member, when the phone rang. Bonnie was surprised to hear her mother’s voice and shocked to realise that it was over a week since they’d spoken.

  ‘Anyway, dear,’ Irene was saying as Bonnie tried to focus on the conversation, ‘it’s beautiful out here on the balcony and I daresay I shall survive the snoring but I really rang to talk to you about Hamish.’

  ‘Hamish? What’s he been up to?’ Bonnie asked distractedly. ‘I thought he was in Scotland.’

  ‘No, he came back to Melbourne a year or so ago. He’s with us on the trip. The thing is, he’s being rather strange.’

  ‘What sort of strange?’

  ‘Well … I don’t know, really,’ Irene said vaguely. ‘Oh, this must sound so silly, but he seems to be – Marjorie says he’s flirting with me.’

  ‘How nice,’ Bonnie said with a smile. ‘Make the most of it.’

  There was a pause before Irene said, ‘It’s just that – Bonnie, what do you think he wants?’

  Bonnie’s mind was a blank. Irene almost never asked her for advice and she certainly had nothing useful to say on this subject. ‘Probably he’s just enjoying your company,’ she said with a slight shrug. ‘You’re not worried about it, are you? I mean, he’s not making a nuisance of himself?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all, it’s just that …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh dear, I don’t know, this is silly of me, sorry to bother you with it. How’s everything at home?’

  ‘Fine,’ Bonnie said, pleased to escape the topic of Hamish. ‘Lots happening – lots to tell you when you get back. Will was here for a couple of nights. He sent his love. By the way, Mum, do you know anyone who’s in any of the wine clubs?’

  A couple of hours later, Bonnie had organised the tickets through an old colleague of her father’s who was more than delighted to book for them, and would keep a couple of places at his table. She wrote the cheque for three hundred dollars, tucked it into an envelope and sat drumming her fingers on the benchtop in annoyance. People were coughing up one hundred and fifty dollars a head for dinner and wine and Fran, the star attraction, wasn’t even being paid.

  She sat for a while, making some notes about marketing Fran and her work, and it was almost an hour later when she got around to thinking about her brief conversation with Irene and wondered if she had been too distracted. The old anxiety returned with sudden force and she picked up the phone and dialled the mobile number, but she was greeted by her own voice on the message she had set up for Irene. Presumably Marjorie had stopped snoring and Irene had switched off the phone and gone back to bed. She’d call her in the morning. Meanwhile, she had quite a lot of work to do. It was years since she’d written a business plan, but talking to Will had helped. He was due back in Melbourne again in a couple of weeks and she had definite goals to meet before they discussed things again in greater detail.

  Bonnie felt a surge of excitement at the prospect; an engine that had been idling within her had fired up again. The really hard part would be convincing the others. She would have to be very careful how she handled it. Will had been right, friendship and business could be a risky combination and the first risk lay in the way she put it to them. She would have to do a lot of work on that and make sure she got it absolutely right if she was not to risk losing the friendships that
had become so vital to her.

  Sandwiched between two club presidents on the top table, Fran stared enviously across to where Sylvia and Bonnie were deep in conversation with a small group at the far side of the room. This was the part of the evening she hated most. She could cope with interviews because they had an obvious direction and purpose, but making conversation with strangers over dinner was always a source of anxiety. Tonight the president on her right was a real estate agent who fancied himself as something of a gourmet cook and was keen to tell Fran about a recipe for a rabbit casserole he always used. The president on her left was a retired lawyer who had begun the evening by enquiring whether she had professional liability insurance. She hadn’t, and by the time he had finished describing the hideous case of a food writer in the US who had been sued by someone who had followed her advice and subsequently poisoned himself, Fran was not only bored but suffering terminal anxiety. She picked at the grilled barramundi, which was not as fresh as the menu claimed, and prayed for the evening to be over.

  Speaking engagements were a pain but the paper liked her to do them and there were always spin-offs, small commercial writing jobs that helped to pay the bills, and those jobs generally paid better than the newspapers and magazines. When it came to speaking, Fran knew she could deliver something entertaining and interesting as the diners, with several glasses of wine already under their belts, tucked into their dessert and coffee. But tonight she was nervous, and it wasn’t just the insurance scare.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be terrific,’ Sylvia had said earlier as they waited for Bonnie to get back from parking the car. ‘And you look wonderful.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ Fran said. ‘The only other time in my life that I went somewhere feeling confident about my clothes was the day I got married.’

  Sylvia brushed a speck of dust from the shoulder of the velvet jacket and gave her a quick up and down glance. ‘I admit it does look good,’ she grinned. ‘And I so enjoyed making it.’

  Fran tucked her arm through Sylvia’s. ‘I’m feeling really nervous. Bonnie’s wearing her business hat tonight. She’s going to be sizing me up for marketability.’

  ‘Exactly right,’ Bonnie said, coming up behind them and taking them by surprise.‘ You’re a mere product to me now, Fran, but a very well-dressed one, I must say.’

  As the main course was cleared away, the presidents exchanged nods and Fran watched as a rich chocolate mousse swirled into tall glasses was delivered to the tables. The introduction was tedious and as she eventually rose to her feet to a round of applause, she was sure she had completely forgotten what she was going to say.

  ‘Thank you so much for inviting me, I’m delighted to be here with you this evening,’ she said, adjusting the microphone, taking her time to allow herself to calm down. The sea of faces looked up at her expectantly, half-smiles of anticipation, a few stares from eyes already glazed by a surfeit of fine wine. ‘Tonight I want to talk to you about food and wine, not just the delights of both but what they mean – what we make them mean in our lives, our rituals, duties and celebrations. I want to talk about food and love and the messages we send each other as we prepare, present, eat and share food and pour the perfect wine to accompany it.’ She paused, knowing now that she was okay, she could pace herself, play the audience. There was an almost imperceptible ripple around the room as the audience settled back to be entertained.

  Bonnie breathed a sigh of satisfaction; she had sat through enough after-dinner speakers to recognise the magical combination of well-prepared content and stylish presentation. Fran had invited them on a journey and now she was carrying them along, not just with ideas and information but with literary and historical anecdotes and quotations, finely tuned jokes and references to popular culture, all perfectly suited to the occasion. She seemed to be gaining confidence each minute and she looked every inch the professional.

  Bonnie sipped her wine and looked from Fran across to where Sylvia was leaning forward in rapt attention. Her idea would work, she was sure of that, it would work for the three of them. All she had to do now was finish the business plan, run it past Will and then convince them. A couple more weeks and it would be ready to go.

  THIRTEEN

  The morning after the Wine Club dinner, Sylvia woke at six feeling hopeless and vulnerable. Fran’s talk had been a huge success; while her business management might be chaotic she was clearly talented and disciplined in every other aspect of her work. And now Bonnie too was focused on a business she was developing with Jeff’s brother. To Sylvia it seemed that she alone had no talent or profession to turn to for focus or direction, no resources that would give her a grip on the future.

  Her anger at Colin had largely dissipated, and she felt a detached fascination at the way they had both given up on the marriage so readily. The advice they might have dispensed to others in their situation – get counselling, take a break away together, or even a trial separation – hadn’t entered into it and for that she was thankful. But what would she do now that she was free? She needed an income, a job and a place to live, and the challenge of finding them seemed insurmountable. This morning her anxiety about the future was crushing in its intensity. Who would employ someone with no formal qualifications, who had been out of the workforce for so long? Could she work in a shop, perhaps, or maybe a school?

  She got up. It was pointless to lie in bed worrying – she’d been doing that half the night. She pulled on her tracksuit and walking shoes and, stopping only for a glass of water on her way through the kitchen, let herself out of the front door and set off along the wide, tree-lined streets in the early half-light.

  Sylvia loved Gardenvale: the affluence, the beautiful old houses, the proximity of the beach, and most of all its familiarity from schooldays. She and Fran had both lived in Elsternwick and taken the train to school here, but Bonnie had lived close by and for years the three of them had roamed these streets and the nearby beach after school. Irene had always welcomed them and Sylvia relished not only the comfort and graciousness of the house, but also the precious memories. She was determined that she was never going back to Box Hill, which had become synonymous with the loneliness and sterility of her life with Colin, but Gardenvale was way beyond her financial means. Irene had insisted on the phone to Bonnie that Sylvia could stay on as long as she wished and had even suggested that she could move into the guest cottage, which hadn’t been occupied for years. Apparently it only needed a few bits of furniture, an airing and perhaps a spring-clean, and she could live there fully self-contained.

  ‘It’s so good of her, but it doesn’t really seem right,’ Sylvia had said. ‘I feel I’d be taking advantage of Irene.’

  ‘It was her idea, Sylvia,’ Bonnie said. ‘You know I drove her up the wall when I first came back, but I think in a way it made her aware that having someone around isn’t such a bad thing as you get older.’

  ‘But you’re here.’

  ‘Yes, but my guess is she’s not sure if I’ll stay or if she wants me to.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Stay, I think, but I’ll have to talk it through with her when she gets back, and when I’m clear about whether this business will work.’

  Sylvia, like Fran, had an aversion to talk of business and finance, albeit for different reasons. It was an area of which she knew nothing and her ignorance made her fearful. The one thing she had never really understood about Bonnie was her ability to become involved in the mysterious world of finance, and a conversation about business plans would, she was sure, be beyond her.

  ‘I’d certainly appreciate being able to stay on, either in the house or the cottage, until I get myself organised and find a job,’ she said.

  ‘Mum doesn’t have a history of doing things she doesn’t want to do,’ Bonnie said. ‘She wouldn’t have suggested it if she wasn’t happy about it. She likes you and Fran being around and she may be offering it as much for herself as for you.’

  Sylvia walked on through the
semi-dark streets turning down towards the beach, facing into the wind that was churning the water into choppy waves. A few early walkers and joggers were braving the chill, and by the time she had walked for twenty minutes the pearly glow of dawn was filtering through the trees. It was fully light by the time she reached the boatshed, and she stopped to read the real estate agent’s board, and then wandered up along the boardwalk, leaning for a while on the rail, staring out to sea, remembering the times they had spent here, hoping to get noticed. Perhaps that had been the start of the waiting, trying to look right, to be right, to capture a flicker of attention, longing for a smile. She had been doing that throughout her marriage to Colin, waiting for warmth and affection, for passion; marooned in the suffocating shallows of duty and responsibility, in a companionship that had slowly deteriorated into habit and isolation.

  ‘Get over it, Sylvia,’ she told herself, ‘you were your own worst enemy.’ Straightening her shoulders she turned back towards the house. Colin had agreed to let her have the car as part of the settlement, and she would have some money, a reasonable amount once the investments were sorted out and divided. She was fortunate compared with many women in her situation. And there must be a job for her somewhere and once she had found it she would really be able to relish the start of a single life. The postie gave her a wave as he pulled away from the gate and she took the mail from the box and let herself in through the tall wrought-iron gate, her footsteps crunching over the gravel drive.