The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends

by Helen Garner

Beth looks around sharply. JP turns his head away.

  Down in the yard, Annie is yelling towards the stairs, straight past Beth who is hurrying down to answer the phone call.

  ANNIE: ‘Joan-Pier’! (She mocks the caller’s mispronunciation of his name.) Phone for you. Some girl.

  Half an hour later, Beth, Annie, Vicki and Tim are finishing their dessert. No one could fail to notice Beth’s mood. She looks tight-faced, controlling her anger, not speaking. There is a silence you could cut with a knife.

  Annie glances over her shoulder towards the closed door of the living room where the phone is.

  This door opens and JP enters. His mood has dramatically changed: now it’s a defiant cheerfulness. He sits down in his place and with a flourish removes the saucepan lid which has been placed over his plate to keep it warm. He pretends to be ravished by the humble meal which is congealing underneath it. His merriment gets no response. Beth gives him a scorching look. Vicki polishes off her pudding without looking up, and Tim and Annie get up and leave the table as if for study. JP begins to eat his main course, ignoring the dirty looks he is getting.

  After dinner, Vicki is watching TV. She hears muffled voices arguing in the kitchen, and glances apprehensively up towards the door.

  In the kitchen Beth and JP are arguing, keeping their voices down. The kettle is boiling madly, unnoticed, filling the room with steam. Tea things stand ready on a tray.

  JP (fiercely): And where is the leg you stand on? What lesson can you give of fidélité?

  BETH: You told me it was finished.

  JP: I thought it was.

  BETH: We agreed it was.

  JP: You agreed. I did not agree.

  BETH: She’s a dumb-cluck. A twit.

  JP: She is young. I like her. She is full of life. And she is not always speaking about her rights.

  BETH (contemptuously): She can’t even pronounce your name.

  JP (furious): And I can’t pronounce yours. Bef.

  He heads for the door. He is halfway into the dining room when she chucks the full sugar bowl at him. The bowl hits the door frame just above his head with a terrific crash. Sugar and broken china fly everywhere. Vicki sits up with a jerk.

  JP barges across the living room, sugar in his hair and on his shoulders, walking fast, black-faced with rage, looking straight ahead. He strides out the front door which he violently slams behind him.

  Vicki can see Beth in the doorway in the steam-filled kitchen, hands hanging down, shaking with fury.

  Some hours later, Beth is lying on the bed reading. She has been crying. JP comes in with a cup of tea, puts it on the bedside table, and sits beside her.

  BETH (bleakly): I smashed my best brown bowl.

  JP: Why can’t you be more reasonable. She is only—

  BETH (cuts across him): I don’t need you to reason with me. Put your arms around me. That’s all I need.

  JP does so, but stiffly, keeping his torso separate.

  BETH (on the verge of tears again): I just want you to love me.

  JP (with a nervous laugh): Oui—mais ‘Pour être aimé, il faut être aimable’. (Yes—but ‘To be loved, one must be lovable’.)

  BETH (twisting away from him, crying, angry): Do you think I need to be told I’m not lovable? I know that! I know what I’m like! I’m bossy, impatient, too motherly, ill-mannered, unfaithful, greedy, a spend-thrift. (She howls with abandon.)

  JP (quietly): C’est pas ça que je voulais dire. (That’s not what I meant.)

  Again, the possibility of connection between them has been missed. Beth lies there hopelessly bawling.

  JP stands up. He sees the doona is all crooked; he picks it up (revealing Beth flat on her back in her nightie, arms by her sides) and repositions it over her—but he puts it on sideways without noticing, and her feet are sticking out. He kisses her cheek and tiptoes towards the door, eager to escape.

  Down in the yard Vicki, one foot on the bottom stair, is calling out, loudly because of the background roar of racing cars from the TV in the living room.

  VICKI: JP! The Grand Prix’s started!

  JP slides out of the bedroom door.

  Beth lies there, still letting out the odd sob. Then she gets out of bed, turns the doona round the right way, and climbs back in. She turns off the light.

  Next morning, Beth is on her hands and knees on the dining room floor, sweeping up the sugar with a dustpan and brush: humiliating evidence of her outburst. The phone rings in the living room, and is answered. Beth keeps working wretchedly, stiff-faced. Vicki enters.

  VICKI: I got the job. Word-processing.

  BETH (mechanically, trying to smile): Good on you.

  VICKI: HOW long were you sending stuff out before you got published?

  Beth doesn’t answer. She keeps on sweeping.

  VICKI: Hey. You know the arguments for and against abortion.

  BETH: Yes.

  VICKI: Well, could you just run through them for me one more time?

  BETH (taking a breath; still on her knees): To have a baby, you have to really want one.

  JP comes bustling in through the back door, on his way out to work. Beth stops talking and scrambles to her feet, in a hurry to go with him.

  BETH (urgently): Wait for me!

  Vicki is swept aside.

  The same morning, in a café where people are having breakfast on their way to work, JP and Beth are sitting at a table near the window.

  The waiter (tatts, gold chains, crim-style but friendly looking) pulls a cappuccino and slaps together a morta-della roll for an old dero in filthy black clothes and a greasy cap, and gestures to him to piss off.

  The dero lurches out on to the pavement, where he can be seen for the whole of the scene, leaning against the plate glass, tearing at his roll with blackened teeth: a dark parody of the better-off breakfasters inside. Nobody pays him any attention.

  The TV is on, on a high shelf in a corner: a blonde woman astrologer is giving the day’s horoscopes. The waiter hops up on a chair to turn up the volume: the noise level in the café drops and everyone turns to listen to the soft, batty, whispering voice. JP alone continues to read the paper. Beth is just sitting there, unhappy and ignored.

  BETH (leaning towards JP): We could try going out together more.

  JP (not taking his eyes off the paper): And do what.

  BETH: Have dinner or something? Isn’t that what married people do?

  She is not being ironic: she really doesn’t know.

  JP (eyes on his paper): And you see them sitting there, the woman desperately trying to make conversation, the man wishing he was somewhere else.

  BETH: Well—but couldn’t we at least try? (Getting out her appointments diary.) I don’t have to do anything next Tuesday. Or Friday?

  JP (leans forward, speaks with bitter emphasis): I don’t want to be just fitted in.

  Beth draws back. He returns to his paper.

  The power balance has shifted.

  In the antiseptic corridor of a birth-control clinic, Vicki is walking along holding on to the arm of a young nurse. She is a bit groggy but clearly all right. They approach the waiting room which is down a flight of shallow stairs. As Vicki goes down with the nurse she can see Beth, who has not yet noticed her, sitting in a chair scribbling in her notebook.

  VICKI (relieved): There she is.

  NURSE: Your mum’s come for you.

  VICKI (eagerly): Beth!

  Beth looks up. She shoves the notebook into her bag, and jumps up to dart forward and take over from the nurse.

  Some minutes later.

  A taxi moves through the city streets.

  Beth and Vicki are sitting side by side in the back seat. Vicki looks upset and pale.

  VICKI: They were so…fast.

  BETH: I know. It’s much more civilised than it was in my day.

  VICKI: No—I mean in the interview, before…I thought they would have asked me a lot more questions.

  BETH: What sort of questions?


  VICKI: You know—who was responsible for me, and whether I’d thought properly about what I wanted to do.

  BETH: They must have thought you were old enough and sensible enough to be responsible for yourself.

  VICKI: When you did it, did you tell Mum?

  BETH (laughing, horrified): Are you kidding?

  VICKI: But who helped you?

  BETH: Myself. My self.

  VICKI (getting trembly): I think maybe people rushed me.

  BETH: Hey. Come on. It’s over now. Let’s go home and I’ll make you some chicken noodle soup. Out of a packet. Would you like that?

  Vicki nods, sticking out her bottom lip childishly. Beth puts an arm around her shoulders.

  BETH: You made the right decision, Vicki. I’m absolutely sure you did.

  Vicki, however, is not so sure.

  Saturday lunch at the house of Angelo and Sally. Beth and JP stand watching Angelo who is holding the new baby. He makes as if to pass it to JP; but JP puts out his palms in a gesture of reluctance.

  JP: I’d drop him.

  Beth rushes in eagerly and grabs the baby.

  ANGELO: No you wouldn’t. Hand him over, Beth.

  BETH (greedily): In a minute. (Sniffs at baby.)

  JP steps away to the window and looks out into the garden. Angelo stands beside him.

  ANGELO: I got a couple of bags of chook manure and dug it in. Works wonders.

  JP: Beans is what I like. At our other house, I would pick them up by the handfuls when I came home from work.

  Beth is gooing over the baby.

  JP: Now there is only concrete.

  Half an hour later, the baby is asleep in its bassinet in the living room of Angelo and Sally’s house. JP is standing beside the bassinet; he glances through the window out into the garden, where Angelo, Sally and Beth are sitting at the lunch table, unaware that he is watching them.

  Out in the garden, at the table under the vines, Angelo is reproaching Beth.

  ANGELO: You shouldn’t have said that, Beth.

  BETH: What?

  ANGELO: All that ball-cutting stuff about why you married him.

  BETH (careless, defiant): It’s true. If he hadn’t needed a passport we’d’ve just gone on living together. Anyway he was against marriage. On principle.

  SALLY (incredulously): JP?

  BETH (getting defensive): We both were. Listen—I had to buy my own wedding ring.

  ANGELO (not impressed): Still. You shouldn’t talk like that in front of people. It looks bad.

  SALLY: It hurts him, Beth.

  BETH (crestfallen and ashamed): I know. But I’ve never been any good at it. I don’t even know how it’s done. JP’s the one who can do it.

  ANGELO: What’s ‘it’?

  BETH: Oh, you know—‘sharing and caring’. Making plans. Being a couple. (She pulls a face, trying to make a joke of it.)

  Angelo glances at Sally who drops her eyes in confusion. She is not sure which of them to support.

  ANGELO: And what’s so bad about that? What have you women done to yourselves? You’re like husks.

  Meanwhile, JP stands over the bassinet, studying the sleeping baby intently. He puts his face near the baby, sniffs at him, then with a glance behind him to make sure he’s not being observed, he slips his hands under the tiny sausage roll of a body and lifts it out. He puts his hand carefully under the baby’s head, holds him up against his chest, and murmurs to him in French.

  A week later, on a Saturday morning, Beth comes rushing down the outside staircase, carrying a half-packed travel bag.

  Vicki is hurrying along behind her, trying to keep up, trying to get Beth’s attention.

  VICKI: And Beth—Beth? You should see the people who come in there, and I have to type out their cases. A bloke that murdered his girlfriend’s kid by running boiling water into the bath, and said it was an accident. Things that people ought to be whipped for. Shot.

  BETH (only half attending): Crikey. I hope you’re taking notes.

  VICKI: But listen—I can’t work out whether that’s any worse than having an abortion.

  Beth strides in the back door, across the dining room and into the living room, with Vicki close behind her. JP and Annie are playing a fast, noisy, fiercely competitive card game on the floor. Tim is watching them, laughing, strumming the ukulele. The radio is on—a dreary choir. There is a great racket in the room.

  BETH: What? Of course it is. Now—

  She dumps the bag on the couch and unzips it.

  BETH: DO I need seven T-shirts? The traveller’s rule: halve, and halve again.

  She halves.

  VICKI: I wish you weren’t going.

  BETH (busy): Phooey. You won’t even notice I’m gone.

  VICKI (stubbornly): Yes I will.

  TIM (wandering over): Who’ll look after Annie?

  BETH (teasing): You will.

  Tim looks alarmed and slightly guilty.

  TIM: I’ll never understand this family.

  JP throws down the winning card, Annie howls with fury, JP cackles evilly and jumps to his feet, seizing the pile of cards.

  JP (loudly, merrily): And who will look after me?

  Beth looks at him, smiles, but does not answer. The awkwardness of their recent fights is still present.

  JP approaches her; she is zipping up her suitcase. A little still moment between them.

  JP (mildly confrontational): Why are you going out there? There’s nothing there.

  BETH (softly, but straightening her back): I might find something.

  JP, shuffling the cards, turns away and speaks once more in his loud, jolly voice.

  JP: You drag this poor old bastard out into the desert—

  The door bell rings: three long, loud blasts. At the open door stands Father.

  Ten minutes later, Father’s car pulls away. Tim, Annie, Vicki and JP stand on the front verandah looking at the empty street.

  TIM (to Annie): Want to have a little play? Left hand right hand?

  They run inside. Vicki and JP are left on the doorstep. JP stands aside for her to enter first. The piano starts up: Charlie Parker’s bebop classic, ‘Donna Lee’, played badly, at a limping pace.

  Next day.

  Father’s car goes barrelling down a country road. Beth is at the wheel. They are not conversing. They flash past a warning sign.

  BETH: Border coming up. We’ll have to get rid of all that fruit.

  FATHER: I’m not chucking it out. What a waste. We could wrap it up and hide it under the bonnet.

  BETH: I’d be too embarrassed.

  FATHER (surprised—isn’t she supposed to be the bohemian?): Would you?

  BETH: What if there was an inspection? We’d look idiots, for a couple of oranges.

  FATHER: We’ll have to eat it, then. Pull over.

  On the roadside moments later, within sight of the border fruit-fly inspection point, Beth and her father are standing beside the car, eating their way dutifully through a bag of oranges, bending over to let the juice drip down into the dust. They are guzzling and slurping, without pleasure: it is only to avoid detection or wastage.

  Close-up of a mass of fresh fruit and vegetables from the market, arranged so as to tumble artistically out of a tilted basket on a table. We see Vicki, in the dining room at home, putting the finishing touches to her creation. African music is playing on the stereo.

  JP enters the dining room from the kitchen, drying a spaghetti strainer with a tea towel.

  VICKI (standing back to admire): Look! There’s nothing more pleasing than a cornucopia.

  She starts to dance to the music. She twirls merrily, skipping and bouncing, knees up, elbows pumping, her smiling face turned back to JP on a cheeky angle.

  JP puts the spaghetti strainer on his head and falls into step beside her, keeping a sober expression. They move across the room and into the living room in unison, straight-faced, towards the front door, then break out of it with a laugh. High spirits: when the cat’s aw
ay the mice can play.

  JP peels off to sit down and read the Saturday papers, with the strainer still on his head, but Vicki keeps dancing by herself.

  As she does so, her face becomes more thoughtful, and then sombre; but she keeps on dancing.

  Father’s car speeds across a hot, dry landscape. Beth is driving.

  Father is trying to open a packet of CC’s for her and is making heavy weather of it. He can’t find the right angle on which to tear the cellophane. It is not a problem of physical weakness—he is strong and agile—but of not knowing the way things are done in the modern world. He is annoyed and embarrassed.

  Beth grabs it from him and tears it open with her teeth, keeping her eyes on the road. She offers him one but his pride is hurt; he shakes his head and turns to look out the window. She starts to crunch them.

  Beth is driving. The landscape now is practically a desert.