Holier Than Thou
Also by Laura Buzo
Good Oil
Author’s note:
This novel is set in Sydney. The suburb of
Elizabethtown and its surrounds are fictional.
First published in 2012
Copyright © Laura Buzo
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 ten 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.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Lines on page vi from
A Better Woman
by Susan Johnson, Random House
Australia, 1999. Reproduced by kind permission of the author.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74175 998 3
Cover and text design by Design by Committee
Cover photo by Betsie Van Der Meer/Getty Images
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Dad
Just you wait until your own nightmare
wakes, loud and roaring, just wait until it
comes alive to scream in your face.
Susan Johnson
,
A Better Woman
Contents
There’s a point on Jindarra Street where you crest the hill and ile& suddenly the city skyline appears on the horizon. Even on hazy days you can see the figures of the buildings, straight and tall, taking more than is their due. Far from the quiet desperation of Elizabethtown. Not so quiet at times.
When I crest that hill I always think of Lara and Daniel, high up in Governor Phillip Tower, seated in the offices of their respective firms. Then I draw a line south across the city, passing Tim’s office near Central Station, down to Abigail at St George Hospital. I extend the line west, pausing briefly to glance down toward Canberra where I think Liam and his girlfriend are still living, and then link them all back to me in Elizabethtown – Befftown – where Nick and I are hurtling along Jindarra Street in the work car.
Today we occupy the car in pained silence until Nick, who is driving, rubs his hand on his thigh and asks, ‘A penny for your thoughts, Woman-of-steel?’
The moniker that even he has adopted for me brings tears to my eyes. I know that my steel, once shiny and impenetrable, is now rusty and corroded. Almost all the way through.
I shake my head, looking out my window. A Silverchair song comes on the radio and Nick turns it up. He always drives the car with one hand on the gearstick, even though it’s an automatic. Old habits. Death is always hard.
We pull up outside Gerard’s fibro shack and Nick switches off the engine. Seatbelts still on, we brace ourselves for the stench that will hit us inside the house, not to mention the thirty-five-degree heat that penetrates the car the second the aircon is off.
Nick reaches for the medication box on the back seat and lifts it onto his lap.
‘In and out, right?’ I say. ‘No chatting. It’ll take everything I’ve got not to heave my guts up in there.’ I am a little hung-over.
Nick flips open the top of the box and fishes out an ampule, a syringe and a needle. The car rapidly heats up even though we have parked in the shade of a lonely eucalypt. Our faces are moist and I can feel a drop of sweat rolling down my décolletage. I wind down my window pointlessly. The cicadas have set up a robust, unflinching song.
‘I am so not supposed to do this,’ Nick says. ‘And please don’t dob me in to the naughty-nurses board, but I’m going to draw up in here so I can walk straight in and give it to him.’
I watch him rip the packaging off the syringe.
‘I hope I didn’t upset you last night.’ He taps the bubbles out of the ampoule with his fingernail.
‘Oh . . . no no,’ I say, ‘not your fault.’
‘Some of it’s my fault.’
I shake my head again, tears brimming, and this time he sees them.
‘You’re a good person, Holly.’ Dear Nick. He wants to comfort me.
ickwidth="‘You don’t know anything,’ I mutter. I want him to comfort me. But I am speechless with anger at myself, and I won’t look at him.
‘I just wanted to put it on the table.’
‘Well. You certainly did that, Nicholarse.’
‘Anyways,’ he says, drawing the viscous liquid from the ampule into the syringe, ‘let’s get Gerard done, and then it will be time for lunch.’ He touches my right cheekbone. ‘You need it.’
He throws the needle he used to draw up into the sharps disposal and fits a 21-gauge needle in its place.
We both glove up – I only glove up at Gerard’s house – and get out of the car, faltering briefly in the heat.
‘Hotter than hell,’ says one of us.
I look across the road and see a woman come out of her home. It is another fibro shack and someone has punched two great big holes in the front wall next to the door. She wears black from ankle to wrist and a black hejab. I wonder how she doesn’t collapse from heatstroke.
It’s strange how you can’t see death from outside a house, but you can feel it as soon as you are inside. I used to stand on the footpath after Liam’s mum dropped me home from rehearsals, looking at my family’s house. It looked, for all the world, like the other houses on our street. But as soon as I was inside the door, death filled the space. Waiting.
I raise my fist to knock on Gerard’s door and notice a dirty scrap of paper stuck to it with sticky tape. I lean in closer to decipher the scrawl.
I cant take the side affect
‘Hmmm,’ I say. ‘Good times.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Nick says, looking around at the filthy porch, the hideously overgrown grass in the yard, the letterbox overflowing, the generations of rain-sodden, sun-dried advertising catalogues littered every which way, the garbage bin on its side in the gutter with stinking detritus spilling out.
‘This guy needs a hospital of the old school,’ he continues helplessly, ‘not us and a fortnightly fight about a needle.’
I tear the note down and knock on the door. The dog in the next yard starts barking furiously.
No answer.
Nick does his ‘policeman’s knock’ with one of his strong carnie arms. I can see the peppering of new and old burn scars on his hand.
Playing with fire is stupid
, I tell myself.
No answer.
‘Odd,’ he says. Usually Gerard is quick to answer the door and start arguing with us.
I try the doorknob and it turns. The door swings open to reveal nothing but the empty hallway, but we must kns gt we muow on some level because we instinctively reach for each other’s hand.
‘Gerard?’ I call. ‘It’s Holly and Nick.’
No answer.
‘Gerard!’ Nick joins my call. ‘Still asleep, mate? Rise and shine!’
Adrenaline begins to pump through our bodies as we cross the threshold together and walk slowly down the hall.
In the kitchen we see him.
The needle and syringe drop from Nick’s hands onto the ancient lino. His hands connect with my body and he is shoving me out of the room.
‘Get out! Get out, Holly!’ His shouting is hot in my ear.
‘Oh shit! Oh no.’ I think that’s my voice.
Nick is still shoving me, all the way down the hall and back onto the porch. The dog next door’s barking is aggressive, deafening.
I yank my work phone off my belt. Nick runs back inside, and, as I dial the three zeros and press the green button, I can hear him frantically ransacking the kitchen for a knife.
‘Police!’ I tell the operator out of habit. ‘No, ambulance! No, both!’
I can hear Nick swearing.
‘Yes, I’m in, um, Guthrie Hill. There’s a man hanging. Uh, 26 Koorana Street. ‘K-o-o-r-a-n-a. Guthrie Hill. Nearest cross is Jindarra Street. It’s a fibro house. White. White-ish. Um, I don’t think so . . . I don’t know. Nick! Is he alive? Nick? I don’t know. I’m from the, uh, mental health service. Elizabethtown.Yeah. Gerard Stanek. S-t-an-e-k. Okay.’
I hang up, and Nick appears by my side. He pulls off his gloves.
‘He’s dead.’
I hook my phone back onto my belt and take off my gloves too.
‘Is he down?’
‘No. No knife. And . . . he’s dead. We’ll have to wait . . . the ambos’ll have something. To get him down.’
We sit on the step clutching hands until we hear the sirens, far off, over the screaming of the cicadas.
It was the eucalypt that we signed the lease for. The flat itself was much like all the others.
Uninspiring red brick?
Check.
t s
Original kitchen
, read:
ancient lino, filthy electric oven, stained sink, hardly any bench space, peeling, cockroach-ridden cupboards
? Check.
Shared laundry?
Check. Which we had no quarrel with really. The machines were pretty old and festy, but hopefully they would clean our clothes, which is all we asked.
Neat bathroom.
Read:
bathroom installed before Gough was PM but it does the job so just lump it, you know you can’t afford any better
? Check.
Carpeted throughout
. Read:
carpet so so skanky with years of stains but why would the landlord put in new carpet when he could use the money for his son Toby’s rugby tour to the UK?
Check.
Vertical blinds that perhaps were white or beige at the beginning but are now brown, blotchy and tangled down the bottom?
Check.
Exorbitant rent and ten other harried, worn-down-looking applicants all willing to pay it and not mention the skanky carpet or the shitty fittings?
Check. Hello, Sydney.
But this flat was on the top floor and had a tiny balcony that looked out over tiled roofs of duplexes to the west and identical red-brick apartment blocks to the north. In one of the back yards was an enormous eucalypt, its trunk and branches gleaming white, its delicate foliage a brilliant green in the sunlight, and shaking with the tiniest breeze.
‘That tree is beautiful,’ I said to Tim, unable to tear my gaze from it. ‘We can sit out here after work and drink a beer in summer. Bring out a cup of tea to catch some winter sunlight.’
Tim frowned and wiped his brow with the bottom of his T-shirt.
‘Nice abs,’ I said, momentarily distracted.
‘This is the hottest flat we have seen by far,’ he said. ‘It’s right up top and all the windows are west-facing. It’ll be so hot in summer. And it’s skanky.’
‘We’ll be at work under aircon for most of the days,’ I soothed. ‘In the dusk it will cool down heaps and we can sit out here in shorts and T-shirts . . . ’
‘No T-shirt for me.’
‘Sweetness!’ I said, slipping my hand onto his belly and sliding my fingers just under the waistband of his shorts.
‘I don’t know, Hol.’ His reservations were increasing at the same rate as my enthusiasm.
‘It’s close to everything, it will become less skanky the more we get to know it, and add stuff to it. Look at that tree,Timbo. It’ll make us strong.’
‘It’s a tree.’
I was going to have to pull out the big guns.
‘Don’t,’ I pulled his pelvis against mine, ‘be a North Shore pussy, sweetheart.’
He looked into my eyes, smiling without using his lips. He was softening.
‘Come on, our own place.’ I cajoled. ‘And we’ll have our Saturdays back. And we can be as
loud
as we want! Whenever we want. In whichever room. Not a parent for miles.’
‘Your mum’s only in Petersham.’
‘Who cares about the skank factor; we’ll be high on endorphins.’ I was free-stylin’ now. On a roll. A woman about to get what she wants.
Another couple came out to inspect the balcony. I looked inside and saw two more couples come in the front door and greet the skinny blonde property agent.
‘Now
go
,’ I squeezed him in a hug, ‘and flirt with the agent.’
Not many women can resist Tim’s understated charm, and this woman was certainly not one of them. One week later we pushed open the door to Ray Payne Dulwich Hill and sat down to sign the lease and pay the bond, plus the first two week’s rent in advance. On top of that, there was a fifteen-dollar ‘lease preparation fee’. Payable by us. Right up there with ATM fees, random ‘account keeping’ fees and the twenty-dollar ‘administration fee’ you had to pay to get on the waiting list for a staff parking pass at Elizabethtown Hospital. I wanted to present that skinny agent, in turn, with an invoice for a twenty-dollar ‘lease signing fee’ from me and Tim. We were lucky to be offered the place though, I guess, as neither of us had ever rented before and had no rental references. We had both put down our parents as referees, which hurt, but there was nothing else for it as the application form was quite specific about wanting to know where we had both been living.
But we had evidence of permanent full-time employment, albeit on new-grad salaries, and a one-bedder between the two of us was do-able. We signed here, here, here, here and here on their copy of the lease, and then same again on our copy of the lease. We were gouged another $15 for the keys deposit, then the agent finally gave us our two sets and booted us out onto Marrickville Road, where we stood, slowly becoming giddier and giddier with the freedom that was coursing through our veins. It was 11 a.m.
We drove Tim’s cretaceous-era Mazda 626 to the Supa Centa to look at fridges.
For moving day we hired a two-tonne truck and lined up Lara, Abigail and Daniel to sweat and grunt it out with us. My stuff was only coming from the family manor in Petersham so we knocked that over in an hour. Tim’s stuff, however, had to come all the way from the North Side so he and Daniel drove the truck over together, leaving us girls to unpack, assemble the clothes rack and wait for the new fridge to be delivered.
‘Omigod, there’s so much stuff we don’t have,’ I worried. ‘Kitchen stuff . . . and we don’t even have a coffee table.’
‘Don’t worry,Wozza,’ Abigail comforted me. ‘n td me. &;Tomorrow you can pop in to Kmart and pick up a few things. This crate will do for a coffee table for now.’
‘Yeah, it’ll come together, sweetie!’ called Lara from the bedroom.
It was hot. I went into the bathroom and splashed water from the cold tap onto my face. God knew where the towels were. I lifted my singlet to wipe my face.
‘What do you feel like listening to?’ I asked Abigail as I unpacked the speakers.
‘Hmm, KOL,’ she replied.
Once they were playing I opened the balcony door all the way across and listened to the cicadas singing. Tim was right, even with all the blinds shut, the flat was stiflingly hot.
At 4 p.m. there was still no sign of the boys so we slumped on my old double-futon-turned-couch with cold drinks from the little esky packed by Abigail’s mum.
‘I googled Liam last week and found a work email address for him,’ I ventured.
‘
Who?
’ exclaimed Abigail.
‘You googled
who
?’ Lara chimed in, as if they were singing a madrigal.
‘Liam-who?’
‘Liam-
who
!’
I had one on each side of me and they were no longer slumping but sitting dead upright and looking at me in demand of an explanation.
‘I’m serious, I emailed him at the new address. Unions are big on transparency, I guess. He was right there on the website.’
‘Why did you do that?’ Lara’s question was quiet but confronting.
‘Well, obviously because I . . . wanted to hear from him. To talk to him.’
‘Holly.’ Lara was incredulous. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to us. He’s either shut down his Hotmail or he’s just not replying. He’s changed his mobile number. He hasn’t given us an address in Canberra.’
‘Or a landline, or anything,’ Abigail interjected.
‘It’s done; he’s gone. He’s been gone for the better part of a year.’
‘It can’t be
done
,’ I protested. ‘It cannot just be done like that.’
‘Hols—’
‘
Abs!
’
I sat up straight, crossed my legs and decided against telling them that the week before I’d also rung Liam’s mum, their landline number etched into my brain since high school. She was genuinely delighted that tolighted I had rung, and I tried to keep the conversation as subtle as possible. I didn’t put her on the spot and ask for his new mobile number, or his address in the Berra. I didn’t say, ‘Your son has surgically removed himself from our friendship . . . why?’ I just said I was sure he’d been busy, and the move had been such a big deal, and I’d had some trouble getting in touch recently. Could she please ask him to call me when she speaks to him next? I gave her my mobile number ‘just in case he’d lost it’, which I’ll admit was pathetic.
‘Woz,’ said Lara gently, ‘he has all of our numbers. Mobiles. Landlines. He’s got our email addresses. He knows where we live. Well, where
we
live.’ She gestured at herself and Abigail. ‘You know he’s more than capable of getting in contact. He’s a smart guy.’
Liam was indeed a smart guy. I remembered the day I opened my HSC results, my whoop of delight and relief at my respectable nineties mark, versus his casual shrug at his spectacular 99.70 the year before. Then he won the university medal. But by that stage he had stopped asking me to things. On his graduation day I skulked in the cloisters until I saw him across the quadrangle. He was having pictures taken in his cap and gown and holding the medal with his mum and girlfriend. I watched for quite a while, obviously a glutton for punishment.
‘I just . . . ’ I couldn’t explain to them why I could not accept Liam’s absence. It didn’t add up. It was like waking up one morning minus a limb. ‘It can’t just be . . . we were, you know . . . He was . . . ’
‘Hol, he’s an international man of mystery,’ said Lara, firmly. ‘What can you do?’
‘Interstate,’ I corrected miserably. ‘An
interstate
man of mystery.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Babe!’ called Tim’s voice. I opened the door. ‘We’re gunna bring the bed up.’ He kissed me briefly, saltily.
At 6 p.m., Tim drove the truck back to the rental place at Campsie, and Abigail followed him in her car to bring him back.They returned to the flat at 7:30 with two brown paper bags filled with Vietnamese takeaway, two six-packs of cold beer and a bottle of cheap champagne.
‘Yeah, baby.’ I chuckedTim’s cheek and disappeared into the kitchen to find the plates and cutlery that my mother had donated to the moving-out effort.
We sat cross-legged on the carpet, eating hungrily and toasting Tim’s and my bid for freedom.
‘Brunch as usual tomorrow?’ I asked the general assembly.
‘I’d love to but I have to go into the office tomorrow.’ Lara grimaced.
‘Me too,’ said Daniel. ‘We’re working to a deadline. Again.’
‘Ooh, I might see you then, Dans!’ Lara and Daniel work in the same heiin the building.
‘Unlikely,’ said Dan. ‘Very unlikely.’
‘I’d love to have brunch!’ said Abigail brightly. ‘Let’s leave the corporate types to themselves.’ When we are alone, Abigail and I have been known to change ‘types’ to ‘whores’. On occasion. ‘You and Tim can take me to Big Brekky again.’
‘It’s not too far for you?’ Tim asked.
‘Nah! I like the local colour. Plus, any excuse to take out the new bambina.’
Abs had recently bought herself a car. It was only a few years old and it too smelled of freedom. Not that her parents weren’t quite generous with their car. But not to have to ask! Gold.
After we had destroyed theVietnamese food and made a big dent in the beer, we all felt buggered and it was time to say goodbye. I hugged Dan while Tim kissed and thanked the girls.
‘Thanks so much for helping, Danny-boy. We will totally help you if you ever decide to fly the coop.’
‘Thanks, honey-pie,’ he replied. ‘But I’ll probably just hire moving men and stuff.’
Right, of course he would do that, what with all his cashola. Somewhere in my brain I knew he hadn’t meant it to be a barb, but the events leading up to Liam’s departure from our fold, indeed our city and the state of New South Wales, had me jumpy.
‘Man, what a stinky-Dan.’ I withdrew from the hug. ‘Go home and have a shower, big fella.’ I slapped him on the arse and regarded him for a moment, in his ripped old shorts and four-year-old Splendour in the Grass T-shirt. My oldest mate, who had helped me with my long division in Grade Three, completed my logarithms for me in Year Eleven and taught me how to do them myself in time for Year Twelve. I had a sudden premonitory flash of him standing in a doorway wearing the same outfit, in ten years’ time, helping me with a much more serious move – the disbanding of a marital home – me holding a baby and trying to work out what to do with the box containing my wedding dress.
I pushed the image aside – where did I come up with such dark shit? Vintage Holly that was. My mind will always go to the worst-case scenario, and then some. Couldn’t just leave it as a premonitory flash. Had to add a bit of Dickens, a bit of Hardy, me clutching a squawking bundle . . . and the wedding dress! Pure Miss Havisham. I turned to Lara, who slapped my arse and hugged me.
‘Good luck and fair winds to apartment number 5 and all who sail in her,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well done, Hols,’ added Abigail.
‘Lord and Lady Espie-Yarkov of Dulwich Hill,’ boomed Daniel from out in the vestibule.
‘That’s us.’ Tim grinned at me and slipped his arm around my waist. ‘Good night.’ He shut the door behind them.
‘Well Ms Yarkov
a
. Here we are.’
‘Here we are indeed.You are a very handsome de facto.’
We hugged and then took the plates to the kitchen, as we were fading fast. We discovered that we had no dishwashing liquid, no dish brush and no dish rack. Nor a rubbish bin or bin liners.
‘I’ll add them to the list,’ I said.
Suddenly I was conscious of my hair frizzing out in all directions, my body covered in dirt, dust and dried sweat, and my mouth tasting of alcohol, chilli and garlic. Tim looked similarly deflated.
‘Have we got soap and towels?’ he asked.
‘Um, yeah, I have a tiny bottle of body wash.’ I put both my arms around his waist. ‘And there are a couple of old towels I nicked from Mum’s linen press.’
I kissed his neck and tasted salt. ‘But,’ I kissed his neck higher up, just below his ear, ‘when we save up a bit, we can buy some nicer ones...’ I kissed his lips. Tim is the only person I had ever been with where I one hundred per cent did not have to put any effort into a sexual response. Nor did he, I suspect. It just happened. Even after a year together, I kissed him and I was on. He always looked so damn healthy. Maybe he appealed to my reproductive instincts. Plus he was the best kisser . . . ever.