Allen & Unwin’s House of Books aims to bring Australia’s cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation’s most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.
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Kathryn Heyman is the author of four novels, including The Accomplice and Captain Starlight’s Apprentice, published internationally and in translation. She has received an Arts Council of England Writers Award, the Wingate and the Southern Arts Awards, and been nominated for the Orange Prize, the Scottish Writer of the Year Award, the Edinburgh Fringe Critic’s Awards, the Kibble Prize and the West Australian Premier’s Book Awards. She has written several radio plays for BBC radio, including adaptations of her own work. Her fifth novel, The Floodline, will be published in 2013.
More information at www.kathrynheyman.com
HOUSE of BOOKS
Keep Your Hands on the Wheel
This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012
First published by Phoenix House, London, in 1999
Copyright © Kathryn Heyman 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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ISBN 978 1 74331 535 4 (pbk)
ISBN 978 1 74343 265 5 (ebook)
For Kym Heyman, with love and infinite respect.
Also, as always, for Richard Griffiths – beloved kindred,
beloved flesh.
The Entrance of the Bride
The Declaration of Purpose
The Confession
The Objections
The Vows
The Giving of the Ring
The Kiss
The Sermon
The Blessing
The Wedding Procession
This is me when I was thin. The hair isn’t mine. Bright blue Cleopatra wig. Three bucks at the Royal Darwin Easter Show. We got one each: Marah’s is bright red – they called it Fire Engine Passion. That one on Jethro’s head is supposed to be rainbow. And mine was blue. It was the last time we went anywhere with Dad, so I must be – what, eleven? No. Twelve. Definitely twelve. I’ve got boobs. It’s the last time I was ever thin. I keep it here on the fridge, to remind me. About being thin. That I can be. Have been. Mum’s idea. She sent it to me with a note:
Dear Charis,
Hope all is ‘smashing and brill’ ha, ha, as it certainly is for me. Dingo and I are off to the ‘Snowies’ for a week, which should be beaut – same old white stuff for you, hey? Anyway, dug this ‘pic’ up of you, look how thin you are!!! Thought it might help with your ‘weight battle’. Stick it on the fridge as a reminder and when you go to eat anything, look at it and think: That’s what I can be. Good idea? Always works for me! See you ‘soon’, still looking forward to the day you come home!
Lots and lots of love,
Mum.
And that was it. So I stuck it up, in case the spirit of my witch-mother is floating around this kitchen. Which wouldn’t surprise me – if there’s a chance I’ll be caught eating something, my mother will be there, calorie-counter in hand. With lotsandlots of love, though, which is nice. Anyway, so that’s what I can be. A pubescent girl in a blue wig too scared to open her mouth. It’s great to have ambition.
Someone down the hall is playing ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, do you believe it? I don’t mean to, but I start to feel all soft. When you look through a window and there’s music playing loud and there’s mist and grey and falling leaves outside and there’s warm tea inside you, somehow – have you noticed this? – somehow then Lloyd Webber, Cole Porter, even Simon and Garfunkel start to sound important. Emotive. You feel like you’re in a movie, you let yourself be dictated to. I know for a fact that it isn’t just me that this happens to, although not everyone is game enough to admit it. Game. I love that word, it’s so fresh. Like a little bantam hen, isn’t it? Strutting about, ready to take on the world. About to be eaten by a huge fat rooster. Do bantam roosters eat their hens? Actually, are they called bantam roosters? I should look it up in the bird book downstairs in the common-room. It probably wouldn’t be there, though, not exotic enough. I’d best not look, I’d only be disappointed. It’s not important anyway, not really.
They used to say that about Charis – game. Game for a laugh, game for a go. Who said that? Jethro, I think. I think I’m game, actually, more game than Charis. Because I’m here, I was game to get here, game to make my future. Mother calls it sensibly making choices, but it’s gameness. It’s fall outside. Fall. I’m trying to use the right words, to make myself sound less like an Australian. Fall. Sidewalk. Nickle. I’m not trying to pick up an accent, not really, but I think a slight twang would be nice. I wouldn’t complain is what I mean. I bought two sweaters the first week of semester, with a big Y on the front. One blue and one white. You can buy postcards with a picture of the campus on the front, they’re very discreet. I bought twenty and I’ve made a list of who to send them to. Not to make a big deal of it, just to, you know, say here I am: I got here. Absolutely got here.
Mother gave me a self-timing camera before I left, so I’m snapping all over the place, just for the fun of it. Here’s me kicking leaves outside the halls. Jethro gave me the mittens. This is me in front of the Chrysler Building – I asked an old woman to take it for me, I thought she wouldn’t steal the camera, but I was still nervous. It’s a good camera. I don’t like that one so much, I look a bit fat in it, if the truth be told. Maybe it’s because I was worried about her taking the camera. Silly, silly me. I’m collecting them all on my wall, and I think I’ll send some home as well. I want to have one of me ice skating, maybe doing a turn with my arms out in the air. That’s for when winter comes. Maybe it would be nice to have someone else in that photo. And to be a size eight when it’s taken.
The light zebras down the car. Charis, dozy in the dark-light-dark of it, walks her fingers along the edge of the window, a line of glass barely squeezing out from the rubber. Her fingers walk and dance, keeping time with the shadows and with the radio songs. Up the coast they drive, upup and up, then in, heading for the centre. They started out way before dawn. Noeline was still in bed, Charis and Marah had peeped in at her, spread across the huge bed, her arm thrown out. She always opened her mouth when she slept. Once, Jethro stuck an apple in her mouth while she was asleep like that, mouth wide open, arms spread out. She walloped him when she woke up that time. Really walloped him, which wasn’t like her at all, she said so herself. ‘Mum.’ Marah whispered it from the door, just to see what would happen, just wanting her to wake up and say, Oh, what the hell, why don’t I come too? But she hadn’t. No sound from that mother, not even a flicker of an eye. Still, it was an adventure, having breakfast in the dark, hearing no sound from the road outside. Jethro ate his Weetbix with his eyes closed while Joe carried all the bags out to the car. They’d driven for hours before there was even a slash of pink, knifing across the sky.
Joe is alone in the front, his hands big and brown on the wheel. The front seat is strange and empty without Noeline beside him, her hand on his knee. Charis, Marah and Jethro are tucked in the back, skin sticking to the vinyl seat. Now and then, Joe says, ‘Climb over the front,’ to Jethro, and Charis says, ‘Can’t I climb over the front, Dad? I’m the eldest,’ because she calls him that even though he’s not her dad, not really, not her real one, and he says, ‘No, only Jethro, because Jethro gets sick.’ The road winds out endlessly before them, the shadows stretching for miles, the tar bubbling below them. The day grows white with the heat and houses stop flashing past them on the side of the road, replaced by tall eucalypts. Then the trees stop, replaced by thick scrub. And then, the scrub stops. Just dust and the occasional dead tree stump.
When another car drives past, they yell and wave at each other like old, old mates. Play ‘I Spy’. Run out of things to spy. Something beginning with D. Dirt. Something beginning with D. Dust. Something beginning with D. Dead wombat. Joe starts singing an old song, bunging on a girl’s voice specially: ‘Keep your mind on the drivin’ and your hands on the wheel, keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead. We’re havin’ fun, sittin’ in the back seat, huggin’ and a-kissin’ with Fred.’ When he finishes each bit he does a high-pitched giggle and Charis leans over the seat and hits him and tells him not to be so silly.
They make it all the way to Eucka on the first night. Unfold themselves from the Land Rover, bones creaking, noses full of the smell of burning vinyl. Heads full of heat and country music and long shadows. Red dust dances around their feet, catching clothes, dipping into mouths. Jethro chucks his guts up, as soon as his feet touch the dust. Joe says, ‘No more Minties for you, my boy,’ and Jethro sticks his tongue out all covered in spew. Loads of trucks are parked in the dusty car-park. A big sign is stuck up outside: EUCKA MARIGOLD TRUCK STOP CAFÉ – BEDS. EATS. GAS, painted on in red. Joe blows his lips out when he sees the sign. ‘Gas, ha. Do they think we’re in bloody America?’ and Marah mouths the word ‘America’, all dreamy.
There is a line of demountable rooms out the back of the service station, three of them lined up next to each other, and divided inside by partitions as thin as cardboard. One room for the four of them: four single beds, one desk, one lamp, one tiny electric fan whirring like crazy. Yellow curtains, covered with dust. The shower is outside, in another demountable. Bore water it is, stinking of the deep earth. Marah ties a hankie over her nose while she showers, but then she gets dust all over her legs as soon as she is dry. Charis just holds her nose and Jethro says he doesn’t want a shower anyway, he’d rather stink of his own smell. Inside the café, three men in blue singlets are huddled around one red table. The waitress has a name badge – Trudi – but when Joe says, ‘Give us three burgers, two Fantas, one Cherry Cheer and a pot of coffee, wouldya, Trudi?’ she gives him the filthiest look ever. Joe whispers that probably Trudi pinched the name badge from someone else and her real name is actually Fredarina. Jethro laughs so much that the Cherry Cheer spurts out of his nose and then Charis has to put her head on the table until her guts stop hurting from laughing. Even after they turn out the light in the stuffy little room, Joe keeps saying, ‘Fredarina,’ and, ‘Oh, my darling Fredarina, please may I have a spot of burger in my burger?’ in a really posh voice and then they laugh so much that the beds squeak.
There are two bright orange nylon tents in the back of the Land Rover. One for Charis and Marah, one for Jethro and Joe. They leave the Eucka truck stop when the sun comes up, and Jethro hangs out the window yelling, ‘Bye, Fredarina, we love you,’ as they drive away, laughing their heads off. Now and then, Joe goes all quiet in the front, stops singing suddenly and stares ahead at the road, with his lips pulled together the way he does sometimes. Outside the window, the tree stumps start to look taller, whiter, and thicker. Anthills, Joe says. Giant buildings made of sand and dust and full of whopping great white ants. They pull over and Marah takes a photo with her new Polaroid: Joe, Charis and Jethro, standing next to one of the anthills, grinning into the blaze of sun. The anthill towers over all of them. It sounds hollow when you put your ear to it, but there are zillions of billions of lives going on in there.
They pass Ungudara and Walla-walla before they see a big green sign pointing the way to the Manchester Arms Hotel. Hang a left and go straight for eighty miles and there it is. Surrounded by the red dirt of the Territory, but with a fake green lawn, a metal arch over the entrance, and a garden of dry-looking roses. The skinny woman behind the bar has sweat pouring out of her. There is a picture of the queen when she was young and beautiful and a row of trophies for something or other, all lined up and polished on the high mantelpiece. A round blue neon light buzzes behind bars, now and then sizzling with the sound of electrocuted fly. The lemonade comes in a jug and the woman says no, they can’t have a glass of iced water – they like to keep the water for the roses. Joe raises his eyebrows high up near his hair, says, ‘What’s bloody wrong with wattle or kangaroo paw?’ but he says it so quiet that no one would notice anyway. They take the jug outside, sit at a wooden table shaded by a huge jacaranda.
‘Aaaaaah. That’s hit the right spot. Bloody oath.’ Joe stretches his arms above his head, his belly poking out between his shorts and his singlet.
‘Giss some chips, Dad, I’m starvin.’ Jethro pokes his father’s arm.
‘Shoulda eaten yer eggs at brekky, then.’
‘Garn, Dad.’
‘Yair orright, piss off, then. Get some for all of us, willya? Here’s two bucks – I’ll have salt and vinegar.’
Jethro takes the dust inside with him.
‘Da-aad.’ It is Charis who starts it, kicking her heels against the wooden bench, flicking jacaranda leaves away with her fingers.
‘Wha-aat?’ He does the whining voice back at her.
‘It’s a good holiday.’
He blows a loud breath out of his lips, like a lazy laugh. ‘Giss a chance, we’ve only just begun.’
‘It’s good but.’
‘Yair, really good.’ Marah does her special super-grin at him.
‘Why wouldn’t Mum come with us?’ Charis, trying the Marah-grin, but ending with a face that seems lopsided. ‘She’d have a good time with us.’
‘Yair.’ Joe’s face goes heavy. ‘Sure she would, love. She just needs a break at the moment.’
‘From us?’ The super-grin slips from Marah’s face.
‘From everything, I think. You know yer mother, she works too hard for her own bloody good, she reckons she’s got to do all the lesson plans for next term and sort all the rosters out. Problem with being head-teacher. Anyway, I wanted some time with you on me own, isn’t that allowed?’ He tilts back on his chair, calls over his shoulder. ‘Hurry up with those chips, Jethro, ya great bludger.’
They scoff the chips, wiping salty fingers on clothes. The sun burns down in dapples, makes black and white patches across the dry lawn. They fall dreamily silent, lulled by the heat and light. Big sighs fall from them. Charis’s eyes start to close, her head tipped back, warm and moist. Sweat trickles down her face, a bead of it drips from her chin. When the lemonade is gone, Joe says if they don’t get a move on they’ll never get to Kakadu, let alone bloody Darwin. When they walk through the bar, stumbling a bit from the sudden darkness, he turns the picture of the queen around to face the wall. Charis turns it back again, so that Her smiling face can be seen. Charis thinks the queen is lovely, just lovely.
They only mention Noeline once more, just before they reach the gates of Kakadu and Jethro says, ‘I wish Mum was here, why isn’t she?’ and no one answers. After a while, trees appear again, but real trees not scrub. Thick and ripe with green, and green earth as well. The sun is sinking behind the trees, an orange fireball dive-bombing the land – smooth as smooth – and the dark begins to rise up and swallow the ground.
They drive to the end of a wide dirt road while the light still hovers around the trees and they pitch the orange tents by a gorge, a series of falls. Joe tears up mosquito net and wraps them each up, one at a time, Jethro first. Makes them turn around and around while he douses them with the chemical cold smell of Aeroguard. There’s no mozzie net left for him, so he holds a burning mosquito coil and rubs the rest of the Aeroguard into his face. Charis and Jethro pretend to be mummies from Egypt, jumping out and scaring Marah, who is a bride coming down the aisle, all dressed in white. Dum dum da da. Joe is the bride’s husband, waiting at the end of the aisle with a mosquito coil in his hand instead of a ring. They have to run screaming when Jethro and Charis jump out from behind the Land Rover going, ‘Who disturbs the mummies, woooooo.’ They do it six times, the marriage never quite coming off because of the mummies, until Marah trips on her mozzie net and starts crying. Joe lights four mozzie coils in a square outside the tents, one for each corner of the earth. Marah sleeps like Noeline, her arm spread out, flung over Charis’s chest.
They wake to the smell of bacon and the sound of the waterfall. Joe has tied a bit of the mozzie net around his head and dances around the gas ring singing, ‘Burn, baby, burn, disco inferno,’ pointing his arms all over the place. Charis says, ‘You’re such a dag, Dad,’ and hugs him hard. They eat the bacon straight from the pan, holding the rashers on bits of paper towel. Marah eats only one piece, which is good, it leaves more for Jethro and Charis. When they finish up, Joe says, ‘Right, who’s for a morning dip?’ and everyone says, ‘Me, me.’
They race through the trees, playing Catchies under the dark wet of the rainforest, with the whuuuuush of waterfall getting bigger, even bigger. Jethro is It, he whacks his hand on Charis’s arm and yells, ‘You’re It.’ A mosquito bites her nose and she slaps herself on the face. She’s laughing so much she trips on the root of a bougainvillaea. Joe puts his foot on top of her and says, ‘We claim this Charis in the name of the republic,’ and Jethro and Marah cheer while Charis pretends to cry big sobbing tears. Joe hoiks her to her feet and points at the very next tree – huge, a huge bloody thing it is. Wide as the whole place and its leaves making the place where they stand dark as dark. There is a hole in the ground – just a hole, like God has poked a finger through – and the roots, thick as the branches of a redgum, run down through the hole. Down and down the roots, making a kind of ladder, the haired roughness of the roots sanding fists and faces. Joe climbs down first, then Jethro, then Charis, and Marah last. She almost stops breathing, the hole is so tight. The hole gets smaller and even smaller, the earth coming close and pressing on the edges of her back. She scrunches her eyes tight shut then – somehow this is easier with dark inside as well as out – and feels the rub of Joe’s hands on her waist, feels the whoosh of his breath, lifting her down, feet on squelch of solid mudground.
The light hits her eyes like a bomb. She snaps them shut again, lets the light ease into her face, woo the lids apart. It was the same for everyone; it’s so bright when you get to the bottom you just have to hold your breath. They have climbed down to a heaven. The roots settle and dig on the edge of a spring, bubbling and only just warm. All around is green, with little diamonds and crosses of light jumping through. They step into the water in a line, Joe holding hands with Marah holding hands with Jethro holding hands with Charis. Soft sand sinks under their feet while they run, screeching like parrots, into the water. Warm and soft, like the sand. Even a waterfall, blasting its way down the rock on the far side of the pool. Marah says, ‘This is the best, Dad. The best thing ever,’ and Charis lies on her back with the water just over her ears. Water slips over her cheeks like skin and her hair floats up around her. She closes her eyes. Listens to the splashing as if it’s far away. She knows her face won’t stop smiling. Not ever. By the time they get out of the water the sun is high up overhead and all the shadows have disappeared.
They eat white bread rolls filled with sweaty cheese for lunch. The milk has spilt in the esky, so everything smells a bit cow-like. After lunch, Joe wraps left-over mozzie net over their eyes and walks with them in a line. All holding hands again, but this time with Joe leading. His voice is strong and clear, calling out in among the kurrajongs, ‘Not far, that’s the way, no, don’t take it off, Jethro, it’s meant to be a surprise.’
Jethro tugs and rubs at the rough blindfold. ‘It itches, Dad. It’s scratching at my head.’
‘Orright, take it off if it’s really truly scratching. If you really can’t stand it. But you have to keep your eyes shut, or it will spoil the surprise. Well, ya don’t have to, I spose – it’s up to you, but I reckon it’ll be better if it’s a surprise.’
Jethro leaves the blindfold on and lets himself be pulled along in this human chain, lets himself be pushed by Joe on to something solid and yet swaying beneath this feet. He can hear water, but still opens his mouth in a loud gasp when the netting is finally pulled off him. ‘We’re on a boat. Excellent.’ He swings his head about like a bird, watching everything, everywhere.
There is a solid engine chug and they start moving, slowly, into the sun. The woman in the big hat – Nora Yoreguide – speaking into a little microphone, tells them that there are hundreds of plant and animal species. Charis and Marah lean over the edge – the gunnel, Nora calls it – counting types of plant. Near the water’s edge, there’s a fallen tree, brown and dry-looking. As the ripples from the boat ease across the river, the tree opens its mouth wide, wider than a river. Marah screams and Charis feels a trickle of wet seep into her knickers. Joe puts his arm around each of them, his mouth wide and happy on his brown face. ‘Don’t ever be sucked in by a crocodile, my girls. They’re cunning bastards. Really bloody cunning.’ Jethro runs across and all over the boat, looking for more crocs. Each time he sees one he swings his arms up high and sings out, ‘Hello crocodile, you cunning bastard.’ Not one crocodile responds.
By the time they pack up the tent the next morning, Joe has skin peeling all across his shoulders. Jethro is pink except for the stripe across his nose where he remembered to put Zinc cream. They drive up the dusty road again, playing Spot-O and Twenty Questions. Jethro wins each time. When they get to Darwin, the sun is setting and they can just see a Ferris wheel in the distance, twirling away on the casuarina spit. Red and orange fire across the sky, lighting the wheel up. It looks as bright as fairy floss, but Joe says it’s shutting down for the night soon and anyway better to be there first thing, bright and early after a good rest, tomorrow. Tomorrow, when everything is bright and good. This is a memory. Memory can be that way.
There’s a huge man with a sword in front of me. I have to cut him open before I can get to the prize, but he’s got the sword and he’s waving it right in my face, right up close, and saying he doesn’t want to hurt me, he won’t hurt me if I promise not to tell. I wake up when I scream, the same as I always do, a strangled little sound which wouldn’t get me saved in a dark alley. But anyway. My pillow is wet with sweat and spit. I’ve been doing that dribble thing that I hate but can’t seem to stop doing. My room stinks, there’s probably a mouldy apple core under the piles of clothes. I lie in bed holding on to my skin, tucking my hands under the small fold of fat on my gut. It’s warm there. Familiar. I keep my eyes open for hours, not wanting to sleep again, not wanting the man with the sword to come, and not trusting him to stay away.
I must fall asleep some time, though, cause I wake up to the sound of Janey and John screwing really loudly. John’s shouting, ‘Oh, do it, baby, baby,’ and Janey is barking like a bloody poodle, for God’s sake. I wait until the noises have stopped before I get up. My whole self is aching like I’ve been in a fight. I must’ve slept with my head tucked under my wing, cause my neck feels like it’s bent in two. Bloody bloody. Janey’s left two pineapple danishes in the bread-box, so I eat them both, to get back at her for making the poodle noises and also to give me strength to face the Fat Controller. I sit and stare out of the window for a while, with bits of danish sticking to my fingers and around my mouth. It’s one of those mornings when everything is slow, maybe a hangover from the dream. Even after rubbing my face hard with the stinking grey face-cloth, I still feel like my body isn’t with me. Like I’m only half here.
Downstairs, the street is wide awake. Heat from the launderette seeps up through the floorboards. Launderette. If I say to people that I live above a laundromat, they look at me, like: a what? How bright do you have to be before you work it out? Laundromat equals launderette. Bottle-o equals off-licence. In the end, it’s easier to use their language than to try to explain and explain and explain. Like it’s so difficult to get. Either way: I’m speaking like a yank or a pom, that’s my choice, always. When it’s grey outside, like this, I forget what I came here for. Forget that I chose it, to be a pom, to be here. Where it all happens. Where the opportunities are. Where the culture is. Culture being me dressing up in half-torn costumes and singing snazzy little anniversary/birthday/wedding songs to public servants. Still, better than South Windsor, Western Sydney, New South Bloody Wales. Better than suffocation. Or than a slap around the chops with a wet mullet, for that matter.
By the time I get outside, the sun is almost blaring and the launderette is full of bodies and the smell of other people’s washing. My moped starts on the second go, which is something of a record, and I almost convince myself that if the lights are with me, I won’t be late. Or, more ridiculously, that the Fat Controller won’t notice whether I’m on time or not.
‘Take ya bleedin time, Big Gracie.’ He’s standing on the steps when I get there, holding the preggy-bride costume out as if I’m half an hour late instead of a measly bloody twenty minutes. Wanker. I wish he wouldn’t call me Big Gracie, but I’ve given up trying to tell him, because I can see he loves it when I get annoyed, so I just imagine myself decking him instead, while I smile with my lips closed. It’s my own fault, I suppose, for telling him about me name. Charis. Charis means grace. I was laughing at the time, a bit pissed, I think, goin, ‘Me mum thought I was gunna be full of grace, anyway that’s what she wanted.’ The Fat Controller had laughed. ‘She got that dead wrong, didn’t she? Have ya gotta sister?’
None of his bloody business is what I said, and it isn’t.
I stay sat on the moped, just staring at him.
‘Getya skates on darlin’ I hate it even more when he calls me darlin and you can see the spit trickling down his chin. What I hate the most is when he calls me Little Ozzie, as if I’m his pet. He blows his nose, makes a loud snort. ‘Hadda call for a Betty Bondage in Hackney. Do ‘er first, then pop up to Islington for the preggy bride. KO?’
I say OK, and get changed inside, in the office. There’s a big JANGLE’S JINGLES sign leaning against the desk and a pile of telegrams. Donny a.k.a. Fat Controller writes all the telegrams, doesn’t trust it to anyone else. It’s very sensitive, he says, a very important occasion in people’s lives, they need it to be special. I look at the song for this one:
When Bobby lies down in the boardroom
Anne from accounts is there too
it’s lucky the missus missed the meeting . . .
or else she’d be screamin’ screw you (boom, boom).
I mean, for God’s sake. This is for the guy’s leaving do in some office. I have to storm in, all dressed in my preggy-bride costume (bride dress, veil under my moped helmet, plastic cushion – nothing new or blue) and throw my bouquet at him, accusing him of leaving me at the altar, sing him the telegram (they’re all to the tune of ‘My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean’) and then storm off, sobbing. Glamorous work indeed. Betty Bondage, as you can imagine, is even better. A German accent, fishnets and stilettos, a big black cape and a nice assortment of whips. I put a collar on the birthday boy and drag him around the room in front of his mates. Big belly laugh. In the words of the witch-mother: ha ha. I whipped a guy really hard once, and drew blood, because he’d tried to grope at me under my leotard. Give me half a chance and I’ll rip out the next guy’s fingernails.
I have to squeeze myself into a size-fourteen leotard and bride dress (also the black dress for – you guessed it – the French Maid, ooh la la, Messieurs), cause Donny doesn’t like his girls to be over size fourteen for the straight singing telegrams. He’ll have them up to a size twenty for the Fat-o-rama Strip-o-grams. Anything over a size twelve can be a Fat-o-rama, which is handy to know, isn’t it? The first telegram I did, I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick all over the guy. Donny came with me, stood at the back of the room watching me, giving me the thumbs up when I started shaking. It was a Valentine one, with me as the gift. Fancy that, hey, some girl giving her boyfriend a French Maid singing telegram for some romantic gift on Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t work that one out, still can’t. But then, I can’t work Valentine’s Day out at all, I can’t work romance out, or sex, or anything. It seems like a waste of time to me, even though I can’t think of anything else to be doing with my time. It’s true, Janey and John always seem busier or less bored than me. They don’t seem happier, though.
Janey got me this job. At least, she saw the ad, saw me being miserable being a waitress and said, ‘Go on, go for it, you’ve got a great voice.’ When I was a kid, before Dad left, we went up to the Territory and stayed for ages in some hotel. Marah and Jethro and I made up musicals and performed them around the pool and everyone in the hotel told us how wonderful and clever and talented we were. I couldn’t get enough of it. Marah spent most of the holiday being sick, throwing up for any old reason: too much fairy floss, too many somersaults, too much bumping in the car. She was always like that: fragile. Jethro and I were hardier, stronger. Like Dad. Or like I thought Dad was, until he didn’t bother coming back.
Anyway, blah blah blah and all that. I put Betty Bondage on first – it’s gunna be a bit tricky, I can see that, cause for Betty I paint black swastikas on my face (black lips and barbed-wire lines on my eyebrows – it’s all very tasteful) and the blushing-bride look doesn’t go with swastikas. So I’m gunna need to find a ladies somewhere, whack some Ponds Deep Clean on to the face and paint some rosy lips on before I stick the cushion up my gillet. It’s OK, though – I’m going over it all in me head while I get into me suspenders and stuff. Donny’s still standing outside on the stairs when I walk out, starin at nothin. He goes, ‘Careful with the dress, my girl,’ like he always does and I stick my finger up at him and say, ‘No wucking furries,’ like I always do and then I ride off into the sunset. Ha ha again.
My A to Z is falling apart in my rucksack. Page twenty-three, the one page which happens to have the street I need, is torn in two. One half of the page is creased up and covered with what appears to be orange juice. The other half is fine, apart from a splodge of chewing gum covering what was once Mare Road. I throw both halves away and head off in the direction of the Hackney Empire, pull over, run into a chip shop and ask where J & E Services is. The shop smells of dead cat. The woman behind the counter says, ‘Services for what?’ I’m like: How the hell am I supposed to know? Services, it’s just services. Could be personal services, motor services, bloody farmyard services for all I know. Still, there’s no point in getting her off side, so I just ask where the nearest minicab office is and run out of the shop yelling, ‘Thanks anyway.’ The cab office (smashed cashier window, cigarette buts on the floor, smells of stale beer – could be my place) is devoid of any handy smart-ass cab drivers, but a bloke waiting for a taxi to King’s Cross tells me that Sinclair Street is literally around the corner. If it weren’t for the fact that he adds, ‘Sexy outfit, baby’ (he does, he says ‘baby’), I would want to kiss him.
The birthday do is happening right in the poor bloke’s bloody office, a huge room with his secretary sitting outside like a guard dog. She knows about it, because she stands up when she sees me coming and shows her teeth in what I think is meant to be a smile rather than a growl. She says she’ll buzz him, so that he can come out and everyone can see. There’s a whole corridor with offices off either side, so I start to make a racket and tap on all the doors. ‘Come on out, Betty Bondage is about.’ I didn’t pretend it was classy. Eventually I get a bit of an audience, standing about in the corridor, not sure what to make of it all. Laughing, but most of them – the blokes especially – are pink around the ears as well. Seems to be mostly men, in crumpled white shirts and ties. There’s a couple of bewildered-looking women in floral dresses. Birthday Boy is grey-haired and even more bewildered than the women. I drag him about in front of them for a few minutes, make him lift his leg against the secretary, sit up and beg, that sort of thing.
The way everyone laughs when I call the bloke Betty’s naughty little pooper scooper, I get the idea that he’s the boss, so I whack him really lightly with my whip, don’t even ask him to take his shirt off. I’m flat as a bagpipe when I sing, but they all seem to think it’s marvellous anyway. Outrageous. I can hear them in the pub later, telling each other and their mates, ‘Absolutely outrageous, hey, we’re mad at work, we are. Stark bloody mad.’ One of the white shirts stuffs an extra twenty quid in my hand, goes, ‘We must keep the mistress happy,’ really, really slimy.
I get changed in this teensy cubicle that they call a loo, and it stinks as well. Beautiful bride I make, though. I get the usual honks and cars stopping to let me cross the road and all that and I give em all big waves or fingers, depending. It’s best at the lights, when I stop and put me feet down to balance myself on the moped, I get that double-take thing from whoever’s in a car next to me. They kind of glance out the corner of their eye, see the white dress, the preggy belly – then their heads swing around for real. I try to pull the dress up so I don’t get stuck on the take off. It’s good when I’m doin Betty Bondage or the French Maid as well, cause they get an eyeful of fishnets and stilettos under the wedding dress. People have weird ideas about brides, I reckon. Like, they shouldn’t be able to even walk on their own, let alone ride a moped. (OK, it’s no Harley but it’s tougher than a Volvo. Isn’t it?) Mum had some old uncle give her away when she married Dad. Should have been my real father, I suppose – whoever he is – but I can’t see him being willing. Given the circumstances. So it was a smelly old uncle whose name I don’t even know. She said he had to because her father was dead and anyway she hated him, so what other man was there to do it? That’s what she says, whenever I ask. Which isn’t often these days, obviously.
It takes me ages to find the right building for the preggy bride. I just grin at the people who stare at me on the street. Mostly wankers, but some grin back. The office turns out to be some paper supplier’s or something, stuck up on the tenth floor in this huge posh white building, which means I have to go through two lots of reception and no one knows anything about the telegram. Security blokes snigger as I walk off, so I give em a flash of me bum, complete with red fishnets. That shuts em up. I find the place eventually and the guy stands around looking awkward, like they always do. During the song, I look around for Anne from Accounts, but I can’t spot her. I throw the bouquet at him, storm out, and get stuck in the elevator with some doddering old bloke who keeps asking me where the wedding is. Altogether now: ahhhhh, sweet.
So, I’m zooming along Islington High Street – i.e. zooming at twenty miles an hour, putputput – thinking about the coffee éclair I’m gunna get from Delifrance once I drop the dress back to Donny. I’ve got a left-over scrap of halva in me bike pack, so I reach behind me when the lights turn red. It’s covered in fluff where the plastic wrapper has come undone, but I’m not too bothered, I scoff it anyway. I’m starving. Or at least very hungry. I shouldn’t really say I’m starving, because according to Janey if I live in the Western world, the likelihood of me starving is a quazillion to one. Or something. She’s always coming out with figures like that, numbers that don’t mean anything. I expect the lights to take ages to change back, the way they usually do in stinking bloody London (I like moaning about London, it makes me feel really European and well travelled), so I lean back against the bike pack, close my eyes and chew, just for a second. And in that second the lights turn green. Surprise bloody surprise.
Some yobbo in a blue Merc starts honking at me before I’ve even got a chance to swallow the halva, let alone kick the starter. He gets a finger from me as I vroom off, get about twelve feet across the intersection and sort of stutter to a stop. The glorious Oxfam wedding dress is caught in the wheels, so either the moped stops or I come flying off. In terms of humiliation it doesn’t make much difference either way, cause by the time I get off the shitting bloody bike, the back half of the wedding dress is completely torn away and wrapped like a bandage around the back wheel. Being a total grown-up, I kick the bike and scream at it before I start unravelling the poor bloody dress. Glamour glamour glamour, that’s me.
Cars are banked up behind me, tooting horns madly while I wiggle my big fishnetted bum in their faces. When I get the dress unravelled and turn around to wheel the moped to the side of the road, the guy behind me stops hooting and leans out the window, says, ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry, love, would you like a hand?’ like he’s just realized I’m pregnant. I say, ‘No, thanks, I’m fine,’ and then shudder as if I’m having contractions. I keep pushing the bike, but stopping every couple of steps to double over. I’m panting and pushing for all I’m worth and hanging on to my belly. He yells, ‘Hang on,’ and, pulls over to the side of the road and gets out of his car. I go, ‘Oh no, oh no, my waters’ve broken, it’s gunna come, me baby, me baby,’ really loud and half-hysterical, pushing like mad. Bloke pulls his mobile phone out of his pocket – wanker – and starts dialling, while I push harder and make loud grunts, till I pull the inflatable cushion out and go, ‘My baby, my baby.’
Bloke has no sense of humour, honestly. He just stands there, looks at me like I’m piece of poo, then walks off back to his car. Slams the door.
The gutter’s cold on me bum, but at least I get to sit down. My lips are shaking like I’m about to start laughing me head off, and I think I am, I can feel that trembly laugh feeling building up down in me chest. I feel it come up through my throat and I open my mouth, ready for the laugh to dive out. My chest keeps shaking, but I realize I’m crying, not laughing at all. If Donny sacks me, I’ll have to go home. I hate London, but at least it’s not home.
The room is too cold, I can practically feel nodes developing on my vocal cords just from the strain of waking up, taking a breath, walking across the floor. Really, and winter is supposed to be ending. Every morning, the sun makes a stripe across my face and wakes me up. No matter how cold it is, you still get the bright sun. I could pull the curtains shut I suppose, but I don’t. I like it, being woken up like that, with that stripe of sun shining into my eyes. The cold doesn’t actually hit me until my feet touch the floor. The boards are bare and dark. The whole room is dark. Actually, the whole of the hall is like this, dark, boarded, held in. Why it should be worse for graduates, I don’t know, but the truth is that it is. Is worse. And I don’t think it’s just me. All the grad students look dark like the hall, full of gloomy wood. It’s the cold that makes me think like this, bleak and old.
I sat outside Sterling Library yesterday, going over the libretto. Everyone else seemed to be in little clusters of people, all amazingly bright and excited. Little huddles, giggling. I don’t believe the giggling for a moment, though, I know it’s a trick. When you walk past Davenport it looks all ancient and stone; they call it mock-Tudor or something. But if you get in through the gate, look behind you or look around the quad, you see it’s not stone at all, it’s all red brick, with shabby shutters that don’t even close. The giggling is like that, that’s what I think. If you get through the gate of the giggler, I believe it would be a whole different picture. Because it always is. And that’s what I need to get, in the audition. I need to get not just the voice but the intention. Intention behind the action – I’ve got that underlined in my notes from Supplementary Drama on Friday. Everyone moans about having to do it, including me, but actually I like it. Collette said she thought it was really a bit much expecting us to do that on top of everything else, and what’s the point, it’s the voice that counts. Lenherr says versatility, that’s what counts, and he’s right. Callas was a magnificent voice, but it was her performances that brought everything to life. Action and intention, anyway, that’s what I’m going for.
This is the darkest of all the colleges, and the coldest, it must be. Nodes, nodes, nodes: do not think about nodes. Apparently you’re five times more likely to get cancer if you think about it once a day than if you never think about it, that’s the truth. Nodes are the same, I’m sure, although no research has been done on it yet. There are three things I have to do when I wake up; they fight over which comes first. At the moment, this is the order:
1. Toilet and wash face. I think these can count as one, because I do them both in the same space, more or less. Same space being the triangle of floor which sits in between my room and Wilma’s. Instead of a mirror, there’s a whole wall of reflective metal, so you feel like you’re in an industrial fridge.
2. One hundred sit-ups, a combination of crunches, stretches, pulses and twists, and I’m always careful with my back.
3. Dressing-gown on and vocal warm-up.
Again, I know they could count as two things, two separate actions, but the truth is it takes hardly any time to whip my dressing-gown on and then just a second to get myself by the window. Also, they are one intention. So, I think it would be silly to count them twice, because then I might as well count everything. Pulling back the sheets. Sitting up in bed. Swinging legs out from bed. Placing feet on floor. Taking steps into bathroom. You see? It would go on for ever and obviously I haven’t got time to spend the whole of my life putting everything into order, only some things. Only the important things. I know standing by the window is a bad place to warm up, the cold comes straight through the glass and I could easily get distracted by looking down at Cross Campus and wishing I was on the grass with a little huddle of friends. But I don’t, I just don’t do that. I’m more in control than that. Anyway, it’s not a proper warm-up, it’s not like I’m stretching my cords or anything, because actually I’m not. All it is, I’m opening my throat, loosening it enough for the day not to be a shock.
Lenherr’s wife had nodes and she’ll never sing again, not properly. I’ve got no intention of ending up like that. She was a lovely soprano. Beautiful. Very florid, I suppose, but amazing control. Lenherr played me a recording of her as Mimi in La Bohème – a New York Opera version. Absolutely lovely. Even in the recording you could tell it wasn’t just words and voice for her, that she loved Rodolfo madly. The thing is to get them both, the vocal control and the character belief. Lenherr said I try to coast on the physical performance and it’s a waste and I have to get my voice out and up and it doesn’t come from my throat and I sound like a straining fishwife and how can I get an Australian accent even into the Italian? Tapping me on the diaphragm the whole time. Because I told him I did drama-school before I switched to the Con., he’s decided I need to work sixty billion times harder on aural and vocal skills. As if I would have got a scholarship if I wasn’t up to scratch. Not that I said that to him, I never open my mouth to him except to sing. Anyway, Lenherr: I don’t want you in my head right now.
Thing is, I need to be warm and soft for the audition, but I need to hold something back. That’s a drama-school trick and they thought I was mad at the Con., but who got the only K. G. DeGado Yale School of Music Scholarship for International Students of Outstanding Promise? Me. Mother was so puffed up with pride she could barely speak. Breathing is the best thing to concentrate on, holding and controlling the breath so that my diaphragm is as warm as my throat. Breathe first for eight beats, then for sixteen, and then twenty-four. Everything, but everything comes from the breath. Then vowel sounds: mae, meee, my, moh, mooo. Soft and easy. I’m as prepared as I can be, of course I am, and there’s no point in exhausting myself beforehand. Wilma calls out from her room, asks if I’m coming down to breakfast. Yes, I say, I’ll be down in a minute.
She’s nice, Wilma, cool but nice. Divinity or theology or biochemistry or something like that. Leaves dental floss lying on the floor of the bathroom which I pick up every morning and every night, and hair in the sink. Has been known to leave wet towels on the floor, which I have never commented on. Reminds me when meal times are, as if I’ll forget. Smiles at me if we pass on the street and occasionally sits by me in the dining hall, passing condiments and wondering how I’m getting on. How it’s all going, is what she says. Apart from that, I wouldn’t know her from Adam. Very strange indeed, sharing a bathroom with someone who doesn’t know that I prefer Argento to Puccini. If it weren’t for the bathroom slitting between our rooms, I would be able to hear her munching on every chocolate bar or apple that she takes into her room. She’s a bit fat, actually, if the truth be told, but I don’t know her well enough to suggest a diet.
I’ve got my clothes laid out, across the chair by the towel rail. Everything looks old in this place, even the chair looks like it was built hundreds of years ago. I love it, absolutely love it, really. All the sense of real history every time I move or eat or breathe, you don’t have to look for it, it’s just there. Not like Australia, where it’s all pretend history. Oh, here’s a building which has been here for one hundred years, ooooh, how exciting. Or: here’s a rock which has been here for ever. Well, of course, I mean every country has rocks. Big deal. Vanderbilt studied here. That makes a difference.
Dido and Aeneas