‘You know I’ve always wanted to live in London,’ she said.
I raised my eyebrows. It was the first I had heard of it.
‘Well, I guess it’s been more of a dream,’ she said, and that word should have triggered alarm bells. Ant had had a dream too. ‘But you know what I’m like with money. Some weeks I don’t even have enough for the train, let alone money for a trip to London. But now, thanks to Nana, I’m set.’
Blair’s grandmother had recently offered her thirty thousand dollars to use as a deposit for an apartment. Nana wanted Blair out of Kings Cross and into somewhere nice, preferably Pymble, which was where she lived. ‘Nana wants you living next door, not halfway across the world,’ I pointed out.
‘True, but she also wants me married with children, and this is my most likely prospect in years. She wouldn’t want me to let him slip away.’
I had met Blair’s grandmother. She held some very firm, conservative views. ‘She might if she knew her great-grandchildren would be black.’
That gave Blair a moment’s pause. ‘You know, her eyesight’s not so great now. By the time I actually have a baby, she may not see well enough to even notice.’
All I could do was laugh. Blair’s reasoning was in itself so short- sighted. ‘Okay, but you have to tell her what you’re planning. She did give you that money for a particular purpose.’
Blair looked dubious. ‘I suppose,’ she conceded. I doubted that she would follow through.
However, two days later, she bounded back to see me. ‘I have Nana’s blessing,’ she chortled. ‘I told her I wanted to go to London and visit the royal palaces, see the trooping of the colour blah blah blah. Nana’s such a royalist and visiting London is something she’s always wanted to do. So I’m going to go and take lots of photos for her.’
Blair was giddy with excitement, but it was a strain to pretend I was pleased for her. When I subtly mentioned Ant as an example of how dramatic life changes could end badly, Blair took offence. ‘This is nothing like Ant’s situation. I’m not chasing some internet impostor. This is a man I have a strong connection with and someone who reciprocates my feelings. If I don’t pursue it, I’d always wonder if I’d let something monumental slip away. But I know these holiday things are tricky, that they almost never work out. I have very modest expectations. Truly I do.’
She was adamant and sounded sincere, but still her words made me shiver. Ant had made similar sounding protestations. ‘Besides, what’s keeping me here?’
Blair had recently begun an apprenticeship as a beautician, a job which seemed perfect for her. Her boss was a Russian woman called Jana, who was quite famous in the eastern suburbs for waxing people’s intimate areas at a reasonable tariff. Blair was being trained in this specialised work and Jana had instructed her to bring some ‘models’ in that she could practise on. Of course everyone she asked refused. But she seemed to take particular offence that I wouldn’t volunteer. She knew it was something I’d had done in the past. ‘What’s the problem?’ she demanded. ‘It’s free. Jana will be supervising and I know I’m going to be very good at this.’
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that same confidence. But I was also sensitive about that region. I wasn’t particularly blessed down there but I didn’t want Blair knowing that. I fobbed her off with all sorts of lies, such as that my boyfriend liked me to be a bit furry in that area. So to be honest I was more relieved than sorry when Blair left for London.
Dwaine was at Heathrow when she arrived with a bunch of flowers and a big erection to press upon her. However, on the tube, heading into Central London, he informed her that his flatmate didn’t like guests. Blair discovered she had been booked into a damp, malodorous bed and breakfast in Paddington. Dwaine took her there, fucked her twice, then made his excuses to leave. ‘You must be very jet-lagged.’
After a week of using that same excuse as to why he couldn’t stay the night with her, Blair got suspicious. She went through his wallet when he was in the shower and copied down his address which he’d never given to her. She was surprised to discover that he lived in Primrose Hill, as she’d been under the impression that he was in South London. She went to his home the following day, and a middle-aged woman answered the doorbell. Blair presumed this was the flatmate ‘who didn’t like guests’. When Blair asked for Dwaine, the flatmate started firing off questions, demanding to know who Blair was and how she knew Dwaine. When Blair explained they’d met in Sydney, the woman softened slightly and asked if she was a friend of Dwaine’s sister.
‘What sister?’ Blair asked.
‘His sister lives in Sydney and she’s just had her first baby,’ the woman explained.
Blair shook her head. ‘I spent ten days with him in Sydney and he never mentioned any sister or baby.’
The woman recoiled slightly. ‘What do you mean? You were sleeping with him?’
Blair hesitated. ‘You’re his flatmate, right? Hasn’t he mentioned me to you? I’ve come out to be with him.’
The woman gave a sad, hollow laugh. ‘My dear, I’m his girlfriend not his flatmate. We’ve been living together for nearly three years.’
Blair was stunned. Yes, she’d had her suspicions that there was another woman, but she’d imagined something casual or perhaps an ex-girlfriend with a child, not an ongoing de facto relationship. ‘But … but I gave up my life in Sydney to come here …’ Blair protested and then began to cry as the scale of Dwaine’s deception sunk in.
The tears made the woman soften and she invited Blair inside. ‘My name’s Vanessa. Let’s have a cup of tea and talk. I think we could both benefit from knowing the different stories he’s been telling us.’
Vanessa explained her situation. She had met Dwaine in Negril, Jamaica, on holiday, four years previously. Their romance had persisted and she’d flown back to see him twice. Eventually she’d brought him back to London. Of course it wasn’t said—that famous British reserve—but it was perfectly plain what the situation was. Vanessa was a divorced woman, late forties, maybe even fifty, with a lovely home in Primrose Hill, while Dwaine was a hot black stud with no prospects.
When Dwaine turned up at Paddington late afternoon, Blair confronted him. Dwaine insisted that he didn’t love Vanessa: it was ‘just an arrangement’. It was ‘his work’. Blair would be his real girlfriend, on the side. Blair stormed out, clutching her suitcases, leaving him to settle the bill on the B and B. ‘Though you might need to keep this room on,’ she advised from the doorway. ‘Vanessa said something about calling a locksmith after I left.’
Blair felt empowered, watching Dwaine’s face fall. She hailed a cab in the street and commanded that it take her to The Ritz. It was the only London hotel she knew by name and she needed a little luxury after all her privations in Paddington. She spent the night there which made her feel much better, though a great deal poorer. The Ritz was an extravagance but it did give her an idea. She enquired and a week later, she had a job there in the restaurant. Nana thought it was simply marvellous.
Surprisingly, it was Strauss, always the giddiest of ‘our quartet’, who startled us all by doing the sensible thing upon turning thirty. He bought an apartment. None of us could understand where he got the money, especially as he hadn’t bought just any old apartment—he had purchased in The Altair, one of Sydney’s most glamorous new buildings, replete with a uniformed concierge and resort-style facilities. Gradually, it transpired that Strauss had overcommitted himself quite considerably. The first time I visited him, I was startled by how sparsely furnished the apartment was. Yes, the building was a temple to designer minimalism, but Strauss’s living room was completely empty except for an iPod stereo which sat forlornly on the carpet beside the power point. There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to eat. There weren’t even pictures on the wall. When I asked what had happened to the furniture from his William Street ‘penthouse’, Strauss looked horrified. ‘I couldn’t bring that rubbish here. They wouldn’t have let me in the front door. I put it all out on the
street. I’ll take my time to furnish this place properly.’
Proudly, he ushered me into the bedroom and showed me the new bed he’d bought from David Jones. We sat on it, as there was nowhere else, and after a few more champagnes, he admitted that the mortgage was crippling him. He was paying off his bed over twenty-four months on his charge card. ‘Next year, for my thirty-first birthday, I might be able to start paying off a sofa,’ he said optimistically. ‘In the meantime, it’s rather fun to make do.’
The next time I visited, there had been décor developments: a rather smart wing chair with matching ottoman and a television set with stand. When I complimented Strauss on them, he looked a little shifty. ‘Did you come into a windfall?’ I asked.
‘You could put it that way,’ he said mysteriously.
Later, again after a couple of glasses of wine, he confessed. ‘I snaffled them from the building’s rubbish room. Darling, don’t screw up your nose. Look at this stuff. This is what the people who live here throw out! The chair is Italian and that cushion is Versace. Doesn’t it just set it off perfectly? And the television is a Sony widescreen. Someone obviously upgraded to a plasma.’
I congratulated him on his good fortune.
‘And to more of it,’ Strauss declared, raising his glass. ‘I check the rubbish room every time I enter or exit the building now. I don’t want to miss out on any more treasures. There was this fabulous potted fern in there a few days ago but I couldn’t lift it by myself. By the time I’d arranged some manpower to help get it up to my apartment, someone else had whisked it away. It would have been stunning on my balcony.’
‘It sounds like you have competition. I predict catfights over who can get to the Otto bins first.’
‘Darling, I don’t go through bins,’ Strauss said severely, ‘and I only take designer brands or name products.’
‘Perhaps you can befriend the concierge and find out when people are moving in or out of the building. Or having fabulous new furniture delivered. That’s when the real loot will surface.’
‘You’re a genius,’ Strauss declared, clinking my glass. ‘I’ll set to work on him tomorrow with all my charm.’
For Strauss’s birthday, I recycled the card he had given me the previous year, whited out what he had written and wrote my own message.
Happy Birthday, to the New Queen of Thrift and High-End Recycling, Love Stephen
As a gift, I gave him a porn DVD I was bored with, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.
When my own thirtieth birthday began to loom, I was careful not to make any drastic life changes. My own situation, however, was quite different to that of my dear friends. I was actually in a relationship and had been for more than three years. I didn’t need to seize upon some guy to fill a perceived gap in my life. Or if I did seize a guy, it was mostly for a fleeting encounter, was completely anonymous and always handled with the utmost discretion. My boyfriend Blake was sweet, faithful and devoted—he knew nothing.
But what was also different for me was the fact that in some ways I’d ‘grown up’ and had my turning point five years earlier. I was forced to by an event that shook the foundations of my safe, dependable world—my father died.
It was completely unexpected. If there had been warning signs, Dad had shrugged them off. Certainly he hadn’t confided anything to my mother or myself. There was longevity in his family and he confidently expected to live as long as his own father who was a sprightly and alert eighty-five year old.
I was there when it happened, staying over at the family home after a Sunday night dinner. The next morning, my mother had risen first and left Dad ‘sleeping’. It was only when his alarm clock began to blare and he failed to turn it off, that she traipsed upstairs. She thought he must be in the shower, but then she walked into the room, and he was still lying there in their bed. No one could possibly sleep through such a racket. She ran to him but as soon as she touched him she knew. She screamed involuntarily. He felt as cold and unyielding as a slab of concrete.
I’d been awoken by the blaring alarm and I heard her make this strange, strangled cry from where I lay in my bed, across the hall. It sounded odd, but then I heard something even odder—a loud crash and the alarm stopped. I got out of bed and went to investigate. The first thing I saw was the alarm clock lying shattered in the hall. When I gingerly entered my parents’ bedroom, I found Elisabeth sitting on the bed, facing away from my father, sobbing. I asked what was wrong. ‘I couldn’t remember how to turn that dratted alarm off,’ she wailed, ‘and its noise was so intolerable, I just threw it against the wall. Oh Stephen, I don’t know what’s happened to him … but your father will never need it again.’
Later, we were told that it had been a fatal brain aneurysm and death was instantaneous. I don’t know whether that was true or something they said to make Elisabeth feel better, as she was tortured by the thought that my father had lain dying beside her and she had failed to wake up.
When the ambulance came to take him away, one of the staff recognised my mother from when she had appeared in ‘The Young Doctors’ on TV decades before. ‘I’m so sorry Sister,’ she consoled my mother.
My mother was too distraught to even notice. Though months later, when I reminded her, it made both of us laugh.
It is the most terrible adjustment to be forced to make when someone you always depended upon and took for granted in many ways is simply gone—prematurely, without warning. The immediate aftermath was easier to cope with. Elisabeth and I had so much to organise, we were distracted. We were also surrounded by a bevy of sympathetic friends and family. Later it was difficult, months later, when that tide of sympathetic support had long since dried up, and I was out of work, and sitting home alone far too often, preoccupied by grim thoughts and recriminations.
I agreed ‘to see someone’ because I felt sure I needed anti-depressants. I sat through an hour’s session with Deidre, but when it concluded, to my astonishment, she told me everything I was feeling was perfectly natural. I didn’t need anti-depressants. I just needed time to work through my grief. I was affronted and stormed out, and resolved not to go back. Yet, in the days that followed, I found some of the things she’d said resonating in my mind. When Deidre’s receptionist phoned the following week with an appointment reminder, I found myself confirming that I would attend.
Sometimes Deidre said things that I wasn’t ready to accept, especially when she tried to suggest that things could have been worse. ‘One mercy in that awful event was that he died at home, in his own bed, and you and your mother were both close at hand,’ she said gently. ‘Imagine if he had died completely alone or amongst strangers.’
It was true that things could have been worse, as I remembered that I had attended that Sunday dinner somewhat grudgingly. I’d tried to get out of it as Sunday was a popular night at the Kensington sauna, but thankfully Elisabeth had put her foot down. At my next session with Deidre, I declared how thankful I was that I’d been at dinner. ‘Imagine how awful it would have been if my father had died while I was cruising the corridors of KKK,’ I shuddered.
Deidre just stared at me nonplussed. For once she had no soothing remark at the ready.
In the twelve months that followed Dad’s death, I made some changes in my life. It was especially satisfying when the change reflected advice Dad had given me over the years, and which I’d previously ignored. My first significant act was to buy a terrace in Surry Hills. He’d left me a substantial sum of money in his will; though when I discovered how much, my first thought was to travel and live overseas for a while. But when I mentioned this idea to my mother and saw the look of dismay cross her face, I knew it wasn’t fair. She had just lost Dad. It would have been cruel if his death enabled her only child to disappear overseas indefinitely. She needed me near. So I told her I’d changed my mind and decided to use the money for something substantial and permanent—I would buy a house. Dad would have liked that. He wanted me to be settled and I’d disappointed him in terms of
a law career and a wife. Though I think he would have approved of my boyfriend Blake, who I met after his death. Dad had a largely silent acceptance of my sexuality, but that was fine, as my mother took a voluble and opinionated interest.
One thing his death could not accomplish was to spur me back into a law career. I’d tried that once to please him. But I did apply and was accepted for drama school. It was prestigious and a major improvement on the aimless, casual approach to my career that I’d demonstrated to date. I was following in my mother’s footsteps and though she insisted that ‘one show-off in the family is quite enough’, she was proud of me and assured me that Dad would’ve been too.
I also spent a lot more time with my mother. Though at Deidre’s suggestion, I tended not to visit her at Wahroonga. Instead, we did things that got her out of the house. So we’d go to the theatre or a film, or have dinner together. Sometimes she would come and stay overnight in Surry Hills.
So in many ways, by the time my thirtieth birthday rolled around, and in contrast to my friends, my life was relatively well sorted. I had a partner, a home, and a career. Of course I still had my share of problems, but I could talk to Deidre about all of that. I had the basic infrastructure in place. However, that didn’t mean I was any more comfortable with turning thirty than my friends had been. Strauss had been perfectly astute with his words of warning. I was vain and having immense difficulty getting my head around the prospect.
As a youth, I’d always been advanced for my age and I’d considered it a compliment. Relatives, teachers and friends of my parents were constantly telling me through my teenage years that I was very mature. Men offered different compliments and assessments: I was told that I was ‘very precocious’ or ‘very forward’ or ‘amazingly good at that for one so young’. I suppose it was after turning twenty-five that those remarks became unwelcome. Yet still they persisted.