The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends

by Helen Garner

  The man’s side of the room is messy, as if a boy lived in it: dirty runners, a tennis racquet, newspapers strewn around. The woman’s side by comparison is prim, almost bare: it looks recently organised and tidied. In an alcove off the room stands a table with a typewriter on it, and piles of paper. None of her clothes are lying about.

  Vicki approaches the bed, and with a strange sigh casts herself on to it. She presses her face into Beth’s pillow. She relaxes. Then suddenly she leaps up and bolts out of the room with her hand over her mouth.

  In the bathroom Vicki wipes her mouth as she straightens up from the toilet into which she has just been sick. She flushes it.

  Screeches are heard from the kitchen below.

  ANNIE: Vicki! Vicki!

  Vicki rinses her mouth at the basin and, wiping her face, darts out into the hallway.

  VICKI: I’m up here.

  Downstairs in the dining room, Beth approaches the table and sees the cake has been broached. Annie is running out the back door towards the stairs, yelling, in great excitement.

  ANNIE: Where are you?

  Downstairs, Beth picks up two oranges from the fruit bowl.

  Annie and Vicki come tumbling down the stairs towards the back door.

  VICKI: I had to get the bus!

  ANNIE: You said Friday—I’m sure you said Friday.

  Beth is standing in the back doorway, striking a crass pose with the oranges stuffed down her jumper and holding the cake on its plate.

  BETH (in coarse Australian accent): Okay—which of youse two molls got stuck into this cake?

  VICKI (bursts out laughing): The Butterworths!

  BETH: Cheryl Butterworth is still top dog round here.

  Beth lets the oranges drop out of the front of her jumper. She and Vicki fall into each other’s arms. Vicki is almost crying. She wipes her eyes furtively behind her sister’s shoulder as they embrace.

  VICKI: Ah, Beth—I haven’t had a good laugh since I left.

  BETH: Don’t they talk dirty in Wogland?

  VICKI: I brought you some stuff.

  A great fuss of cake-eating and parcel-opening: New York-style presents, cheap vulgar funny things—toys, in fact—including a grotesque pair of rubber gloves with red fingernails and a crude metal ring on the wedding finger.

  ANNIE (seizing gloves—teasingly): Hey! Vicki got married!

  This is a clanger but Vicki responds by grabbing the gloves back.

  VICKI: No! They’re for Beth!

  ANNIE (unaware of her tactlessness): We need another man round here. The Butterworths need boyfriends.

  VICKI: Blokes can’t play Butterworths. It’s a girls’ game.

  ANNIE: What about that cupboard upstairs. Someone could pay rent. A student.

  BETH: It’d have to be an Australian. One wog’s plenty.

  VICKI: Where is he?

  ANNIE: We should have waited with the cake.

  They start to giggle. Annie tries to make the cake remains look more presentable.

  There is a rattle of hubcaps in the street.

  Vicki runs to the front door, and out on to the verandah.

  On the street in front of the house, JP gets out of a dinted Kingswood and locks it.

  VICKI: (leaning over the railing in Butterworth style): G’day dago. You still here?

  JP (tries to answer in Butterworth voice): Moll. You are already back. Where ’ave you bin?

  VICKI (Butterworth style): None of your business.

  They are both straight-faced but it is a joking exchange.

  The same evening JP and Beth are preparing dinner, cheerfully, moving closely and with familiarity in the small kitchen. JP wields a meat cleaver, singing.

  JP (with gusto): ‘Nessun dorma…nessun dormammmm…’

  BETH (absentmindedly critical): You always go mmmm when you sing.

  JP: Tu sais rien du tout. C’est comme ça qu’il faut chanter. (What would you know? That’s the right way to sing.)

  Vicki is leaning in the back doorway, holding a newspaper in one hand but looking out into the yard and beyond.

  JP (pleasantly to Vicki): Do you want a little job to do?

  VICKI (taking no notice; in a jetlag reverie): I was watching the light change on the Simeonis’ place.

  BETH (working; without looking up): There was practically murder over there while you were away.

  JP (acting; raising the cleaver): ‘You will go to this wedding over my dead body.’

  BETH (in her brisk, rather tough manner): Someone pregnant who shouldn’t have been, I suppose. Look out—your oil’s burning. You’d think girls these days would have more sense.

  Vicki reads aloud from the paper in the doorway while the others work.

  VICKI: It says here that there are more than a million and a half stray cats in this city.

  Vicki wanders away into the living room.

  JP (unaggressively; just remarking): Elle fout rien, ta soeur. (She never lifts a finger, your sister.)

  BETH (lightly defensive of Vicki): Tu es pire que mon père. (You’re worse than my father.) She’s only just got off the plane.

  That evening. The table is set and at it sit Beth, Annie and Vicki, waiting to be served. Through the living room we can see that the front door is still wide open on to the street. JP enters the dining room, ceremoniously bearing a large dish.

  JP: Mesdames; le plat de résistance.

  ANNIE (to tease: they are fond of each other): Don’t talk wog.

  BETH (in loud, commanding tone): The mat, the mat—put it on the mat.

  She forces a mat under the hot dish. No one takes any notice of Beth when she talks like this: it’s her way, they are used to it.

  Phone rings in the living room.

  BETH (in loud, fast voice, as if it’s always for her): I’ll get it.

  Beth darts out of the room.

  The others serve themselves and eat. Annie has a folder beside her and keeps riffling through her notes while she eats, mouthing things she is learning by heart, putting on an act of ‘the intolerable burden’ of the final year of high school.

  JP (mildly to Vicki): And what are you going to do, now you are back ’ome?

  VICKI (with a vague defensiveness): Oh…fix up my room…

  JP: Non! With your life!

  VICKI (writhing, as if pressured by a parent): I don’t know! Go on the dole, I suppose, till I…

  Beth rushes back in and picks up her fork again with vigour, cutting straight across their conversation.

  BETH: You’d think they could let me have a meal in peace.

  JP: Why don’t we pull the phone out of the wall?

  BETH (briskly brushing this aside): It might be important.

  JP sits back. When squashed like this, his face closes.

  ANNIE: There’s that lady again.

  They listen, forks raised.

  On the other side of the street in the dark, a woman in a pleated skirt, with a fat bum, glasses, a modest middle-aged haircut, carrying a briefcase, is walking past along the pavement on her way home. She is singing in a strong, confident but not trained voice—an alto, a womanly, adult voice—‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together?’ She does not care that it is a man’s song. She is singing for her own pleasure, unaware that she is being listened to.

  JP (to Vicki, trying to revive the previous topic): You are a clever girl. You can get a job without problems.

  Beth and Vicki laugh, looking at each other. A minor ganging-up against JP, who looks away, feeling the exclusion.

  The phone rings. Beth rushes to answer it.

  The woman’s singing is meanwhile fading in the distance.

  The others eat, looking down.

  Later the same night, Beth and Vicki are washing up together. They are making each other laugh, falling about foolishly as they work. They are addicted to each other’s sense of the ridiculous.

  VICKI: She wore these terrible shoes. They looked like two crows’ beaks.

  They laugh w
ildly, disproportionately.

  VICKI: And she told me they got married so they could stay in a motel without having to tell a lie.

  They are light-headed, giggling like girls.

  BETH: Start writing it, Vicki. Start tomorrow.

  VICKI (sobering up): But how do I know whether I’ll ever be any good?

  BETH: You don’t. Just start.

  VICKI (with light resentment, turning away): It’s all right for you.

  Early next morning.

  JP and Beth are in bed asleep. An alarm goes off: ABC voice in mid-sentence reading the bad news. Beth wakes first. She looks at JP while he sleeps: a quiet scrutiny. In sleep, his hands are clasped under his chin. He wakes.

  JP (thickly): Quelle heure il est?

  BETH: You had your hands clasped, like this—as if you were praying.

  JP: I have not won the Lotto? You have not had a proper haircut? There is no God.

  Beth hangs on to his back as they lie there.

  BETH: Shouldn’t we get up?

  JP: In one minute.

  Steps run along the hall; a door slams.

  JP: Oh merde. Your bloody sister.

  BETH: Vicki’s tougher, don’t you think?

  JP (eyes still closed): She is still ’opeless. Spoilt like a baby.

  BETH (fondly): I’m so glad she’s back. I missed her.

  JP (unaggressively): You missed your mirror. You missed your little echo. One day this girl will have to break from you.

  Beth laughs. She rubs her front against his back, but he makes no response. She accepts this philosophically, with a sigh.

  BETH (in mock gloom): Do you think we’ll ever make love again?

  JP (nonplussed): Why do you say this? C’est pas la question qu’il faut poser. (It’s not the right question to ask.)

  He heaves himself out of bed, grabs a towel and puts it round him; walks to the door, still stunned with sleep. Behind his back Beth sticks her tongue out at him with childish violence. He goes out.

  BETH (to no one): What is the right question?

  Sound of JP banging on the bathroom door and yelling impatiently.

  JP: Vicki!

  Morning. Beth comes whirling out the door on to the upstairs verandah, carrying a plastic bag stuffed with folders and an exercise book. Her friend Sal, hugely pregnant, is seated in the sun at the top of the stairs, beside a pot of rosemary.

  BETH: Don’t settle in, Sal. I’ve got to photocopy.

  Sal makes as if to stand up, then hesitates.

  SALLY: Ooh. He kicked.

  BETH: Or she.

  SALLY: I’m not supposed to tell, but it’s a boy. At my age they test you for everything.

  Beth is all revved up to start the day, but she is fond of Sal and pauses, though still on her feet, to weed the rosemary in the pot. Her movements are brisk and short, while Sal is slower and more tranquil.

  BETH: I’m glad I did it while I was still too silly to know better.

  SALLY: Get your tubes fixed and have another one.

  BETH: Me?

  SALLY: That’s what JP needs.

  Beth gives a light laugh, as at a casual remark. Pause.

  BETH (weeding vigorously): …Vicki’s back.

  SALLY: I thought there was some bloke. In Italy.

  BETH: It fell through.

  SALLY: Is she miserable?

  BETH: Hard to tell.

  Beth tears off a bunch of rosemary and hands it to Sal who sniffs at it.

  SALLY: Angelo says rosemary only grows where a woman’s in control.

  Beth laughs through her nose, concentrating on what she’s doing.

  SALLY (placidly, looking over Beth’s head at a distant garden): Those cypress trees are beautiful, aren’t they. Like a hand held up.

  Beth wipes her hands on her skirt and sets off down the stairs in a work-going manner. Sally heaves herself to her feet and slowly follows.

  BETH (over her shoulder as she descends): I always think I should find out whose garden they’re in. I’ve been up and down those lanes, and I can never find them. I set off in a really businesslike way, but pretty soon I start worrying about something else, and by the time I get to the corner I’ve forgotten what I was looking for.

  They both laugh. Beth surges out of the gate and disappears. Left behind, Sal follows slowly, and carefully pulls the gate shut after her.

  Late one afternoon, some days later, the three women are in the living room. Beth is ironing. Annie is doing maths with a calculator. Vicki is wandering aimlessly, looking at herself in the glass of a picture on the wall.

  VICKI: This haircut’s over.

  BETH: You worry too much. Annie, run the hoover over this carpet will you, sweetheart?

  ANNIE: Tell Vicki to. I’m working.

  Vicki takes no notice, examining herself discontentedly. She drifts away across the dining room and into the backyard.

  BETH: I’m asking you to.

  ANNIE: But why. I’m the one with exams. You never ask her to do anything.

  BETH: Yes I do.

  ANNIE: But you never make her.

  BETH: Make her? I’m not her mother.

  ANNIE: Why doesn’t she go home to grandma and grandpa then?

  VICKI (loudly, coming back in): Because they’re too old. They were too old when they had me and they’re too old to tell things to.

  Pause. This is convincing.

  Idle and bored, Vicki opens the drawer of the sideboard and rummages among the mess of revolting old worn-out lipsticks, rubber bands, packs of cards, false nose-and-spectacles, etc.; also a piece of plastic dog shit left over from some joke.

  Vicki chooses a lipstick stub and smears it on her mouth; looks at herself in the glass.

  VICKI: JP’s got balder, hasn’t he.

  BETH (ironing): Balding men are sexy.

  VICKI (launching the Butterworth game): You’d know, Cheryl.

  BETH: I would, too. I been around.

  ANNIE (joining in): Ewww. You’re slack.

  BETH (as Cheryl): Don’t take that tone to me, Tiffany Butterworth. Show some respect.

  ANNIE: You are—isn’t she, Chantelle. You’re rough.

  BETH (ironing with increasing vigour): You can talk that way now, my girl, but once you get out into the world of men and have to hawk y’ fork I bet you’ll change your tune.

  ANNIE (with gusto): I will not. I’m never gunna be like you. You’re a moll.

  Vicki, with one hand full of old make-up, seizes Annie by the shoulder with the other and spins her round in the chair.

  VICKI: Come on, Mum. We’ll show her what it means to be a real woman.

  Beth leaves the iron standing on the board and joins in. She and Vicki fall on Annie and transform her into a moll; all the while they are talking and murmuring, as below. Annie, still playing Tiffany, submits to this. They are all hamming it up as Butterworths, holding back laughter, but in fact it is a distorted initiation ceremony in which Vicki is expressing obliquely what happened to her overseas; there is also a hidden sadism in the process (as in all initiation ceremonies)—revenge on Annie for her youth and innocence; and for the jealousy Annie has expressed of Vicki’s use of Beth as an indulgent mother.

  BETH: I could tell you girls a thing or two about men.

  ANNIE (cheekily): I bet you could.

  BETH: Don’t move your mouth.

  VICKI: They’re only after one thing, aren’t they, Cheryl.

  BETH: That’s right, darl. And when they’ve had it they throw you away.

  ANNIE: Ow. Ow.

  BETH: Shutup Tiff. A girl has to suffer, to be beautiful.

  VICKI: Show up them cheekbones, love.

  BETH: If you got it, flaunt it.

  VICKI: Come on—pout. Pout.

  BETH: Make ’em quiver. That’s right.

  VICKI: Isn’t her skin gorgeous.

  BETH (grimly): Not for long.

  The iron stands upright on the board, emitting faint hisses and puffs of steam.

  A head s
hot of the transformed girl. A horrible sight. Silence.

  Annie hops up and darts out of the room to look at herself upstairs.

  VICKI (turns to Beth in a rush): I think I’m pregnant.

  Beth’s expression: surprise, pleasure, envy.

  VICKI: I am. Don’t you tell anyone.

  BETH: What are you going to do?

  VICKI (ignoring the question): I know what you think. And don’t you dare tell Dad.

  BETH: What do you take me for?

  VICKI: And don’t tell JP, either.

  BETH: Why would I tell JP?

  VICKI: Don’t married people tell each other everything?

  Beth gives her a cynical look and says nothing.

  Some days later, Beth is standing on the upstairs verandah with Tim, a young student, a likely candidate for the room the family wants to let. They are looking through the door into the room, which is rather bare; but Tim seems interested.

  BETH: Will you need a table?