Cicely had always liked that name, ever since she had seen Brideshead Revisited on TV. Maybe she should take up online dating herself. Sebastian would suit her more than he would Odette. She had already published a book that might impress a professor. Did the script, all sealed up and posted, count? Would he dismiss it as too lowbrow?
But then a lifesaver with an Olympic silver medal beckoned her, and she turned to him. He would have attracted sporty Odette, with his beachside shack to which he invited her. Had she gone there? Was she right now surfing and skinny-dipping with this bronzed Aussie?
Or had she preferred the direct approach of the black belt karate champ with the photo of himself next to his erotic cacti collection? She saw Odette in her white karate gear, then for a moment, glimpsed her strangled in bed by this giant …
How about Tiger, a married man who recommended himself for his outright honesty in admitting his marital status, and assured her that he did not sleep in the same bed as his wife? He promised that he slept in a lumpy bed in the garage, with a bar and a shower, where he spent a lot of time thinking about honeylicks. This shower was prominently featured in a literary work which he attached.
ME AND YOU
She gently removed her hand from where it lay against his side and slid it from beneath the sheets. He felt the movement in his sleep and half rolled over.
She stroked his head and kissed him lightly on the cheek and padded off to the bathroom.
He heard the click of the light, the soft hiss of the water as she turned on the shower and he imagined her standing there, adjusting the stream.
He felt a familiar stir and let his hands wander as he buried his head in the pillow in which her smell lingered. He ran his fingers over his manhood and thought about her in the shower. He was tempted to bring things to a head but stopped himself and, sliding out of bed, he made the short walk to join her.
As he opened the door he saw her through the glass shower screen. Her head was tilted back, her blonde hair swept from her forehead and down the nape of her neck as she let the water flow through it. He watched as she soaped her body, moving her hands in circles across her stomach. Then she reached down and each thigh had the pleasure of her touch.
He opened the shower door and stepped inside. She turned to greet him, her eyes glancing down at …
Feeling slightly grubby, Cicely wiped her hands with a tissue, and could read no more of this candidate for The Bad Sex Award.
Anyway, Sebastian was calling to her again from the verandah of his mansion in the English countryside, offering her a sunset sherry …
This idyll faded as she read more from him, for his novel was to be called The Axe Murderer. Was that a clue?
But here was Heartthrob, a plump travel agent who offered a free ticket to be his companion on a dream cruise. Was Odette even now locked in a struggle for survival on a storm-lashed deck, waves threatening to sweep them overboard?
Masterful was an American airline pilot who wanted to book certain weekends for clubbing with her, suspiciously well in advance.
Hardman was a drummer in a rock band who promised to save Odette from a stalker, saying he would get a hit out on him as he worked with some ex-cons.
A stalker?
Cicely shivered once more, suddenly aware of how vulnerable Odette would have been, alone, as she was, in the apartment in Golden Tower. Had Tiger’s wife discovered his online affair and targeted Odette?
Was she the stalker?
By afternoon, Cicely was slouching at the computer, considering a return to Zac as the prime suspect, overwhelmed by the paralysing effect of endless alternatives. She groaned and forced herself to read a lengthy email from Dreamboat.
You will visit me tomorrow and see that all I have said about my nest is true. It awaits you, nestled among gum trees. I will leave the security gates open for you. You will lie on my Sheridan bedspread strewn with rose petals and sip tea all the way from China. I will cook for you every night, stack the Miele myself so that you will not damage your fragile hands …
Cicely’s eyes slid over further scenes of domestic bliss until they came to a halt. He had her full attention.
I was shocked at first when you told me your secret, I must admit. You were wearing those fantastic boots and the skirt that shows where your sexy stay-up fishnets end. But I’m amazed and honoured that you would share this intimate detail of your life with me, and if you let me, I truly will strive to live up to the task of being your Knight of Cups in every way …
A shocking secret?
A quick check of email dates showed her that Odette had been writing to five men at once. A ‘set’, as she had said. She should be taking notes, she realised, as all these men were making her head swim with fear and desire. She pulled out her small blue notebook, in which already languished the opening lines for the three abandoned novels.
Verlaine had said that the first line of any poem was given by the cosmos. The rest followed. Or not. More pages of the notebook were covered with sketches for wool creations, from the days when she had actually planned ahead, rather than, as now, letting the hook or needle pull her fingers along in its wake.
She should make up a shortlist. But how to select from the hundreds on offer?
For example, here was NewAgeGuy again. She had passed over him at first because he was inclined to quote his own poetry. Your languid hair upon my chest etc. But this romantic tone had come to an abrupt halt. She examined the emails in order to see why.
He had found out that Odette had created another profile, using the name skintoskin, with what he called a ‘saucy’ photo.
You are pretty whacko, that’s all I can say, using a double alias and posting that almost naked photo like that. I’d just like to say, please be careful who you invite into your life. There are some real whackos out there …
Cicely saw again the deadly sequence. But this time as Odette flipped easily into the handstand, positioning herself, legs spread, against the battered corkboard, she was flushed with the sexual pleasure that had been disturbingly obvious in the kitchen that afternoon when Cicely had surprised them. Thrilling as each knife skimmed to its destined position along her inner legs, waiting for the last one, the one which was to draw blood …
How well did Cicely really know Odette?
Was Odette the real whacko?
Sister whacko welcomes the new grade twos with a melody
‘I am going to play a hymn and if you know what it is I do not want you to say so until I ask you afterwards. I will play it all the way through. Listen and nobody speak.’
A suburban Catholic primary prep class. Sixty-five pupils, three to a double desk. They were not allowed to change seats. Ever.
Sister Whacko perhaps needed this time out at the piano, as she was rather flushed from finally managing to control the Polish girl who didn’t speak English and who was inclined to wander the aisles at will. Sister had successfully attached the girl to her desk bench, using her long, shining, foreign hair braids as rope. The class had enjoyed watching this event in their otherwise predictable day. Sister Whacko, the victor, now walked in dead silence to the back of the classroom where the piano keys trembled in anticipation of her mighty hands.
She began to pound out a tune, while scrawny Odette, in the dreaded middle seat, picked surreptitiously at a scab on her left temple. After a few more jolting bars, plump Cicely could no longer restrain herself.
‘It’s Hail Queen of Heaven,’ she whispered to her neighbour, Odette Boylan, whose hair was white and unkempt. It fell over her eyes the same way Cicely’s darker, greasier hair did when they bent over their drawings. Odette’s neighbour on her other side was a little girl whose neat hair was held perfectly in place by a series of headbands – gold, silver, pink with mauve flowers, she seemed to have one for every day of the month. Her name was Madeleine, and she was fingering her headband, pink with sparkles today, which recalled to her the last time she had worn it, the aroma of rhubarb cooking in heavy sugar
syrup, and three mothers having afternoon tea of scones and jam and cream.
The mothers, Cicely’s looking as if she had just dragged herself from her bed and Odette’s mere skin and bone, had brought their equally dreadful daughters, without having consulted Madeleine. Her own impeccably neat mother had assumed that she liked the girls, just because she sat with them at school. But neither of them owned anything she would have wanted to swap, which was the basis on which Madeleine selected her friends.
She ate her scones precisely, taking care not to get jam on her white dress. Both the little visitors had jam in their unkempt hair by the time tea was finished.
‘Madeleine’s got so many headbands. Go upstairs with the girls and give them one each won’t you darling?’ urged her mother, aware of being kind to the less fortunate.
‘It’s such a hot day to have hair falling all over their faces.’
Madeleine did not move from the table, so her mother stood up and the whole procession went into her pink and white picture-book bedroom. Madeleine, furious at this desecration, hung back as her mother opened her special drawer. Odette and Cicely gaped at the drawer full of all kinds of glittering treasures.
‘You won’t even know they’ve gone you’ve got so many,’ said her mother, picking out the two plainest ones, both brown, and holding them out to the visitors.
They were just about to take possession when Madeleine darted from the doorway and grabbed them from her mother’s hand. She threw herself onto her bed, and started howling, protecting the precious jewels under her chest.
Madeleine’s mother waved her arms about helplessly as if chasing flies away from her daughter, apologising as the other two women bustled their daughters out of the room, muttering.
‘It doesn’t matter, they don’t really want them, do you girls?’
They shook their heads reluctantly.
‘Go into the bathroom and wash the jam out of your hair like good girls. And don’t make those faces.’
Children were brought up differently then.
Sister Whacko had finished playing her hymn in praise of the Mother of God. She turned to the class, perching herself expectantly on the edge of the swivel stool.
‘Well, did anyone speak while I was playing?’
Silence.
‘Now it’s time to own up to Jesus, who can see into your hearts, and say you are sorry for driving another nail into his hands.’
No movement in the class.
‘Alright then. Did anyone hear anyone else speak?’
Madeleine’s hand shot up.
‘Yes dear?’
‘She did,’ and she pointed to Cicely.
‘Did you?’
‘No Sister.’
Sister’s eyes sparkled at the challenge. She looked at Odette now.
‘Did she?’
Odette did not hesitate.
‘No sister.’
Alright, come out the front with me both of you, Miss Big Boots and Miss Big Ears and I will help Baby Jesus discover which one of you is breaking the ninth commandment.’
The accused forgotten, the two witnesses traipsed behind Sister down the long aisle to the dais at the front of the room. Once arrived, sister addressed the class theatrically.
‘What is the ninth commandment children?’
‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,’ the class chanted loudly, glad of a chance to use their vocal cords. Except, that is, for the Polish girl who was weeping silently, and Cicely, overlooked by Sister’s vengeful logic, who was speechless with guilt.
‘Remember it is a mortal sin to tell a lie and it is a black mark on your everlasting soul.’
Cicely saw the black mark on her soul, made of the same slippery stuff as the bare knuckle of an uncooked leg of lamb.
Sister reached for her strap, always in view on her belt. It was well-oiled black leather, half a metre long and so well used that the metal rod insert was visible at the frayed top. She had a moment’s annoyance as it entangled itself in her rosary beads. Sixty-three pairs of eyes were on her, and she was ready to turn first to Odette.
‘Hold out your hand.’
Whack.
‘Now did Cicely speak?’
‘No Sister.’
To Madeleine.
‘Hand please.’
Whack.
‘Now did she speak?’
‘Yes Sister.’
This ritual was repeated again and again with the class counting under its breath. Even the Polish girl was mesmerised by these two who were even less fortunate than herself, and started counting in her own language.
Only Cicely was silent, feeling as if she would vomit if she budged. To block out the guilt, she started to think of other pain. Her invalid mother having a restorative afternoon tea under the trees with her brother, Uncle Bill. He had noticed Cicely had a Band-Aid, hanging from a scab on her elbow. He told her mother she should pull it off. Her mother told her to come closer, but she hesitated, suspecting this new, malevolent personality.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t pull it off.’
Egged on by Uncle Bill, her mother quickly leaned over and pulled it off.
It stung so badly that she hopped around, holding her arm.
‘Looks like a hairy spider made its nest under there,’ laughed her uncle.
‘Yuk. It laid eggs,’ added her mother, and the two adults laughed together at the terrified child, scratching at the cut, making it bleed again.
That night, Cicely had her first nightmare about spiders under her bedclothes, nesting in her body, laying eggs.
The whacks were still coming. Odette wished her hand was as numb as that spot on her forehead. Maybe she could make it numb, if she concentrated.
She remembered a house half-built next door, felt again the satisfyingly wet putty under her nails as she scraped it out from around the window-glass. She still had in her pocket the little white doll she had moulded from the putty before it set. It felt so good to build her and she was so much harder than plasticine dolls.
‘No Sister’, but she was crying now and her voice was weak.
To avoid looking at Sister, she focussed on the wall poster behind her head. A stone-age woman, sitting cross-legged outside her cave. She was forming pots out of red clay and one was already baking in the fire. The woman was staring at the pot and Odette wanted to be that otherworldly, savage woman, lost in the round pot she was shaping.
The class had counted up to twelve when Sister suddenly turned on them, out of breath from her exertions.
‘Stop counting,’ she ordered crossly.
Finally, with the class murmuring twenty-one, Odette cracked.
‘She didn’t speak Sister. She just whispered.’
Triumphant, Sister sheathed her leather sword.
She gave whimpering Madeleine a Holy Picture of Baby Jesus in the crib to make up. It was the one with the cow and the lamb, and had rare gold edging, so for Madeleine it was all worth it. Her hand did not hurt that much. Perhaps Sister had not hit her as hard as bad Odette. She gloated over her prize as they went back to their seats. The same seats as before, of course, with mortified Cicely on the right. Madeleine on the left. Odette in the middle.
Forever.
Cicely, feeling like the traitor she was, let her leg fall against Odette’s, then searched out her sore hand under the desk. She gently took it, turned it over and tapped out on the back of it their private Morse code, the one they used when they were visiting each other’s houses, so that only they would come to the door.
Three quick raps, then three slow ones then three sharp raps again.
There was a pause, interminable it seemed to Cicely, as she waited to be delivered from purgatory.
Then it came.
Odette returned their secret rhythm. And with that code, which they would use many times as they grew up – on the backs of hands, on their bedroom doors, on the front doors of the many houses they would share together – Cicely knew that she had been
forgiven.
But she also knew that she would owe Odette.
Forever.
PART
Three
A woman’s man
Cicely’s script was humbly working its way up the slush pile on Dragan’s mahogany desk, which had been sourced from Hollywood, as a Network Chief Script Assessor deserved.
Being the producer of six soaps and an assessor for the Film Fund, the network had naturally snapped up Dragan to judge Thatsarap. You might guess that such status required unpleasant brown-nosing, but there you would be wrong. Because you see, Dragan loved working with women, especially fat chicks. And as was obvious, they ran the industry. There was at least one on every committee.
He had found, working with women, fat or not, that there was none of the ego stuff he got with men. With every man he had ever worked alongside, it had come down to fisticuffs over who actually owned the project. So he just didn’t work with men any more.
He could smell the sweat of ambition oozing from the mountains of scripts surrounding him like … like … anyway, a bonus about being the NCSA was that he could borrow other people’s inspiration when his own failed. So, in the sedimentary layers of scripts that looked like, yes, wait for it, the ragged Hollywood Hills, Cicely’s was now second from the top.
New writers, he knew, agonised over character arcs, three acts, all that McGee stuff, but the fact that they were even writing for Thatsarap showed their ignorance. For he knew that the real money was in getting never-ending grants from the Fund.
He could never make this public, but he knew the secret of getting a grant. He had been funded from arsehole to breakfast at a ratio of one production to every forty-two grants and his trade secret was that he’d pick out the most influential woman on the board. And then he’d say, ‘Hey, like, have you lost weight?’
Even if she hadn’t, that was always a good one. He’d been surprised to learn that inside even the thinnest women was a fat chick trying to get out. And so, he’d get the grant. In short, he was a woman’s man. They would tell their partners that he was great, so all the men loved him too. Women, after all, chose the friends a couple had.
Madame Bovary's Haberdashery Page 10
