The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends

by Helen Garner

  Jenny returns while they are speaking. She leans towards Louise’s pile of presents and discreetly removes the tag from a little wrapped box, then turns to Kelly and hands it to her.

  JENNY: Here, Kelly. This is for you.

  Kelly takes the box, surprised, and opens it. Inside are some blue dangly earrings that Louise had wanted. Kelly kisses Jenny: she looks a bit stunned.

  KELLY: I love them.

  We see Louise’s face: she is devastated. It is a pointless gesture on Jenny’s part.

  FADE TO BLACK

  PART FIVE

  TWO MONTHS EARLIER OCTOBER 1984

  It is almost midday: a spring morning.

  In a classroom at City Girls’ High School, an exam is in progress. Rows of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls (some in street clothes, some in uniforms of different schools—not a homogeneous group—among them quite a few Chinese, Greeks and Italians) are all slaving away. A tense silence. The teacher (a woman in her fifties) walks up and down. The blackboard has times crossed off, up to 11.55.

  Some keep scribbling. Others are checking their work. One or two are already sitting back with folded hands.

  We see Kelly and Louise. Kelly is surrounded by screwed-up bits of paper and is still madly scribbling. Louise is reading through her answers: her desk is orderly but she is very tense, twiddling a lock of hair in one hand and chewing her pen.

  TEACHER: Right, girls. Pens down.

  A clatter, a sigh, a rustle.

  One girl keeps scribbling. It is Soula.

  TEACHER: Leave your papers folded with your names and schools clearly marked on the outside. You may go.

  They stand up (still overawed by the unfamiliar surroundings) and file out. Kelly and Louise are among them, casting anxious looks back at Soula.

  The teacher stands by the door as they pass.

  Camera stays in the classroom.

  Outside a swell of girls’ voices, some shrieking, others going ‘Shoosh’!

  Soula is the last to get up, long after the others. Her tension and distress are terrible to see: not tears, but a frightful tightness which is worse.

  Out in the schoolyard, Soula runs through the crowd of girls toward a hot Commodore which is parked half up on the footpath. Con is leaning against it with his arms folded. He sees Soula coming and steps forward, dismayed at the state she is in.

  Kelly and Louise watch her get into the car.

  KELLY (with real feeling): Poor thing.

  They watch the Commodore roar away, then turn to each other. The babble is going on behind them.

  LOUISE: Did you finish?

  KELLY: Yep. Did you?

  LOUISE (beginning to smile): Yep.

  KELLY: What essay topic did you do?

  LOUISE: I did ‘The Most Unusual Person I Have Ever Met’.

  KELLY: Who’d you write about?

  LOUISE: You, actually.

  KELLY: Argh! You did not! You dag!

  She grabs Louise’s cheeks, pinches her and shakes her head like a grandmother with a baby that she is loving half to death.

  They are both laughing with the release of tension.

  Some nights later Kelly and Louise are ensconced on the couch in Jenny’s lounge room, their legs wrapped in a rug. Both are weeping luxuriously, chewing chocolate. A box of Kleenex stands between them, on the low table, beside a plate of snacks.

  Swelling music from the TV indicates the end of Gone with the Wind.

  Louise presses the remote button and there is silence. Kelly blows her nose and heaves a quivering sigh. They are both fat-eyed and red-nosed.

  KELLY: Wasn’t it gorgeous.

  LOUISE: That’s the fifth time I’ve seen it.

  More quivering breaths and blowing of noses.

  LOUISE: I love the book. When I read it at Grandma’s, I cried so much my pillow was all wet. I cried really loudly. I went ‘er her her!’

  They both start again—‘Er her her’—half mocking themselves, half really bawling.

  KELLY: How did they stand those corsets.

  LOUISE: ‘Whah Scow-leyett! Ever’body knows yew got the littlest waist in th’ en-tah county!’

  Kelly is reading the TV guide. She reaches for the plate of food.

  KELLY: 12.45—Rear Window. That’s got Grace Kelly in it. Would you contemplate a smoked oyster on a biscuit?

  She hands Louise a biscuit with several smoked oysters stacked on it.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, Jenny has fallen asleep with the light on, the book on her chest.

  Saturday afternoon at North Head. Jenny is standing by a clump of bushes. No one else is in sight. She is looking to left and right as if keeping watch.

  JENNY: There’s no one coming! Just do it!

  LOUISE (from behind the bushes): Well turn around, can’t you?

  Jenny does so. At the top of the path a man appears and shouts to a sullen teenage boy who slouches into view lower down the path. Jenny is between them.

  JASON’S DAD: Jason! Will you please keep up?

  Jason slummocks past at a dogtrot, hands in pockets. Does not look at Jenny as he passes.

  Louise scrambles up out of the bushes.

  LOUISE: That was close! He nearly saw me.

  They walk along the path to the edge of the cliff.

  JENNY: When are you going to rebel?

  LOUISE (surprised): Don’t you think I rebel enough?

  JENNY: Aren’t teenagers supposed to?

  LOUISE (clicks her tongue): ‘Teenagers’. Don’t embarrass me. You talk like a magazine.

  Pause.

  They look at the sea.

  JENNY: Would you say Kelly was rebelling?

  Louise shrugs as if reluctant to answer.

  JENNY: Kelly’s more interested in boys and sex than you are, isn’t she.

  LOUISE: Oh shutup! Do we have to talk about this?

  JENNY (persisting): But you will tell me when you start getting your period, won’t you?

  LOUISE: Shutup, Mum! You’re revolting.

  Jenny, embarrassed and laughing, tries to put her arm round Louise, who darts away.

  LOUISE (calls back to her): If you really want to know something, Kelly’s on the pill.

  Louise waits a few yards away for Jenny to catch up. They walk. Jenny picks up a twig and strips it.

  JENNY: Does Kelly actually do it?

  LOUISE (mortified with embarrassment): How would I know? You’re so awful! You stick your nose into everybody’s business.

  JENNY: But that’s what the pill’s for, isn’t it?

  LOUISE: I wish I hadn’t told you. I wish I never told you anything. Don’t you dare tell.

  They stump along. It is a beautiful spring day.

  Afternoon.

  A hand with a biro is writing on a lined pad in big sprawling letters: ‘Dear Sir’. It is Kelly’s hand.

  Kelly and Louise are sitting at a desk in an empty classroom of their old high school. Kelly scribbles out the last few lines. They think. Louise eats some CC’s out of an open packet on the desk.

  A cleaner comes in and starts to rub off the blackboard: he’s a Greek in a boilersuit.

  KELLY: We’ll have to do it again, in best writing.

  LOUISE: Read out what we’ve got so far.

  KELLY (reads): ‘To the editor. We are two young girls, who do not wish to die. Our lives are before us. We want to study, to learn about the world. But every time we open the newspaper . . .’

  LOUISE: ‘We read about the arms race.’

  Kelly writes.

  KELLY: ‘Mr Reagan and Mr—’ What’s the Russian president called?

  LOUISE: Haven’t they got a new one?

  KELLY: We should know that.

  LOUISE: DO you think we should say about nuclear stuff right at the beginning?

  KELLY (reads): ‘We are two young girls. Who do not wish to die.’

  The cleaner begins to mop the floor. As he works he sings, very softly, one of those Greek songs with many flourishes that sound
strange and difficult to us.

  It is later the same afternoon, in a corridor of the school building, empty except for Kelly and Louise who are heading along it, going home.

  LOUISE: Wait for me.

  Dumps bag and darts into dunny.

  Kelly waits.

  Pause.

  Louise shouts from inside.

  LOUISE (voice-over): Kelly! Come here! Quick!

  Kelly runs into the toilets.

  A girl’s legs are sticking out under the half-open door of one cubicle. She is face down. Louise is bending over her, trying to drag her out and roll her over.

  The girl is tall, much bigger than either of the girls: at least sixteen, seventeen years.

  She has vomited.

  Louise tugs at her, not knowing what to do.

  KELLY: Do you know how to do mouth-to-mouth?

  LOUISE (disgusted): But she’s spewed!

  The girl starts to come to. She drags herself to her feet, and staggers to the dunny to press the flush button.

  Kelly and Louise stand back, alarmed and impressed.

  KELLY: Are you all right?

  The girl gives them a contemptuous look. She goes to the basin, tears off a length of paper towel and begins to sponge the vomit off her white trousers.

  GIRL: Piss off.

  At the door, Kelly turns to the girl.

  KELLY (with heavy sarcasm): Excuse me.

  They bolt; their bags thump.

  Outside, Louise and Kelly walk away across the empty yard.

  LOUISE: She must be drunk.

  KELLY: Maybe she’s a drug addict.

  LOUISE (shocked): Do they spew?

  KELLY: She didn’t smell like a drunk.

  They walk in silence.

  LOUISE: I’m never going to use drugs. I’m never even going to smoke.

  Looking at this prim little figure, we can believe it.

  LOUISE: It’s disgusting.

  Kelly walks along without answering. She is pondering what she has seen. While Louise simply and ignorantly rejects it, Kelly is more curious, and thinks about it. Louise glances at Kelly who does not notice.

  Morning, several days later.

  Jenny is in her car, driving towards Louise’s school.

  She turns the corner, and the school comes into view. The street is empty, except for Louise standing in front of a milkbar opposite the school, and on a bench twenty feet away from her, a couple pashing on shamelessly, hard at it. Louise is studiously ignoring them.

  Jenny pulls up. Louise runs across the road to the car. Jenny winds the window down and hands Louise a locker key and a paper bag of lunch.

  LOUISE: Thanks, Mum. Sorry.

  JENNY: Isn’t that Kelly?

  Louise barely glances at the kissing couple.

  LOUISE: Course it’s not! She must be in Maths by now. She’ll be waiting for me. Bye.

  Louise runs off.

  Jenny does a U-turn. The couple unclasps. The girl is not Kelly.

  The same morning, in a classroom full of girls and boys. A low hum of activity.

  The teacher at the board is explaining a maths problem. The room is modern, unlike the one where the exam took place at City Girls’: grey exposed bricks, and the tables have blue laminex tops: the kind of high school that’s had money spent on its buildings.

  Kelly with an empty seat beside her (Louise’s) is writing very fast. She has an open maths book on the desk as well—an unfinished calculation. She is pouring out a great note to Louise, writing carelessly in a sprawling hand. The top sheet says: ‘To my dearest friend Louise.’ We see she has already covered several foolscap sides: the text is sprinkled with printed words, fast rough drawings, clumps of exclamation marks, etc.

  KELLY (voice-over): ‘To my dearest friend Louise, Well to tell you the truth NO I have never received a letter that long—My God! All those pages how did you manage it? I’ll try to make this long but I don’t know exactly how long well your about to find out. I started this in art. I was so bored without you and now it’s maths and even worse; where are you? I hope you aren’t sick or been rushed to hospital in the middle of the night and no one told me. I would buy the sweetest flowers and put them by your bedside, lillies, roses, whatever thy heart couldest desire. Here is a picture of my nose that pimple is really saw. It is beginning to annoy me, quite a lot. Today is the day we will be told wether or not we got into City Girls’. I can’t wait. If I don’t get in I will kill myself I swear. I think we should each make a promise that if the other does not get in we will not go either. That’s not very clear expression but you know what I mean. I just could not bear another four years in this hell-hole without you. My spelling is so bad. Do you think they take off marks for that? What if we got in but they didn’t put us in the same class? Endless things to worry about so I am keeping my fingers crossed and holding my breath. This pen keeps konking out I’ve now tried about six or seven pens to find one that works. This pen is from the pizza shop in Canley, we all got one last year when Mr Papalco took us on the Italian excursion, remember? I realy have to buy some material today for my sewing class as I have only cut out the pattern and we are already into the second half of the term. A lady has just walked by with a brolly, IT IS MEANT TO BE SPRING! Hurry up Louise, life has no meaning without you. Renato is bending over. He looks so cute in his little shorts—quite charming. I’ve come to the conclusion that he would make a very good gay! but for some reason Soula and I don’t think he would let himself have anything to do with “men” but only time will tell. We watched a video last night called TESS. I have just finished reading the book so I was realy quite pleased to see it. Do you remember that kid called Tony, he used to hang out with Renato and them? He’s really small and I can’t say I’m all that fond of him well I’m invited to his party in a few weeks and I have doubts as to whether or not I will be going—If I don’t I won’t have missed out on much if you get my drift. I expect that rat Guy will be going which casts another dark shadow over it. Oh well. This is page number three, nothing compared to what you wrote. When are you going to be up at Pelican Beach? We should get it organised so that I can be up there when you are. I hope it’s after Christmas what do you reckon? I can just tell that I’m going to get very very very burned e.g. as bright as a beetroot while as usual you will go brown in one day. You must be a wog, sorry, only joking. God I was scared before I went to the Family Planning Clinic. But it was okay after all. It was fairly impersonal. I’m a fairly routine case—nothing special so they had no reason for being astounded. Life rolls on. I realy want a job this summer Louise but I don’t know if there is much chance of one. Never mind. Notice I am making my writing smaller so you get more value. Oh gosh Louise I realy realy really realy want to live with my daddy. It must sound funny, me saying “Daddy” and not “Dad”, but I just don’t like “Dad”. What’s more it is too common. I just don’t know if he will want me and if I will be allowed to. I realy need a change of environment. God you wouldn’t believe how much I want to even though at times I have had him up the eyeballs but I really realy realy want to live with him. If he says yes the only barrier is Malcolm. He doesn’t like Daddy so I think he will probably give me the third degree but I’m still hoping. It is just not fair. It would be so good to have my own room, my own space, something I have never had. I’ve been trying to work out the colour scheme but I just can’t decide on a colour to paint the cupboard and to have for curtains. I hate to think about it in case it doesn’t happen and yet I can’t stop. Yipee! Yipee! Yipee! Hey man did you know that doodle blunk grandshun splonkle wunk blert danbrokmellop yefturd travoon goflarat? Lots of love from your best and most faithful friend Kelly.

  PS now you’re not the only one to have written a six-page letter so ner ner ner.’

  She folds the letter rapidly, wraps it in another sheet of paper, scribbles Louise on the outside and slides it on to Louise’s folder exactly as Louise gets back to her seat after getting the lunch and locker key from Jenny.

&
nbsp; They look at each other. They are dying to laugh. They look at each other with tenderness.

  Later the same afternoon.

  Kelly and Louise are running down the street. They are leaping and screaming.

  Behind them walks Jenny, smiling, carrying a paper bag with a bottle of champagne poking out the top.

  They approach Kelly’s house.

  The front hall at Kelly’s house: the door bursts open, and in barge the two girls and Jenny, all jubilant.

  KELLY: We passed! We passed! We passed!

  Chris runs out.

  CHRIS: Shh! Shh! Malcolm’s asleep!

  They all mime dismay, and tiptoe down the hallway. A fluster of suppressed excitement. Before they can get to the kitchen Malcolm emerges like a bear with a sore head.

  MALCOLM: What the bloody hell’s all the fuss about?

  CHRIS: The girls passed the exam, Mal. They got into City Girls’ High School.

  Malcolm makes a big effort.

  MALCOLM: Good on you. Congratulations. I’ll get my shoes on.

  He goes out.

  KELLY: Only us two! None of the others passed. Not even Soula.

  LOUISE: Not even Julie—and not even Justine!