Roadside Sisters

Praise for Farewell My Ovaries

‘Cleverly crafted . . . as warm and light and welcome as a doona.’
The Age

‘Witty and wise . . . with a down and dirty sense of humour when it comes to life and love.’  
Geelong Times

‘[Harmer] expertly portrays the rollercoaster range of emotions found within a marriage.’  
Sunday Mail

‘Harmer makes a grand job of her first novel, pioneering a warm and welcome Australian chick-lit genre about beautiful, interesting and intelligent women who aren’t invited to 30th birthday parties any more. And don’t really care.’  
Newcastle Herald

‘Harmer has written a sexy romp with an underlying core of morality and an overlay of the ace comedienne’s characteristic wit and humour.’  
Sunday Telegraph

Praise for Love And Punishment

‘Harmer’s new novel is sharp, witty and insightful.’  
Sun Herald

‘
Love and Punishment
. . . might make you reminisce about acts of revenge you have taken or fuel the fantasies you harbour about taking a coin to the side of your ex’s sports car. Whatever effect it has on you, it can’t fail to make you laugh.’  
Good Reading

‘One of Australia’s favourite comediennes has written a hilarious account of the dark side of love.’  
Notebook

‘A fast-moving, funny, poignant novel about love, loss, revenge and punishment.’  
Herald Sun

‘
Love and Punishment
is a quirky, painfully honest yet hysterically funny account of one woman’s journey towards relationship closure.’  
New Idea

Wendy Harmer is one of Australia’s best-known humourists. She has enjoyed a highly successful thirty-year career in journalism, radio, television and stand-up comedy.

She has written for newspapers, been a regular columnist for magazines and is the author of five books for adults, two plays, three one-woman stage shows and a libretto for the Australian Opera. Her bestselling children’s book series ‘Pearlie in the Park’ has been translated into ten languages and is the subject of an animated television series.

Wendy lives on Sydney’s Northern Beaches with her husband, two young children, and (at last count) two goats, fifteen chickens and three ducks.

First published in 2009

Copyright © Wendy Harmer 2009

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.

Lyrics on p. 307 are from ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Carl Perkins © 1956 Carl Perkins Music Inc/Wren Music Co Inc. For Australia and New Zealand: EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Limited. (ABN 83 000 040 951) PO Box 35, Pyrmont, NSW 2009, Australia. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Harmer, Wendy.

Roadside sisters / Wendy Harmer.

ISBN: 978 1 74175 165 9 (pbk.)

A823.3

Set in 11.5/18 pt Sabon by Bookhouse, Sydney

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my three fellow travellers—
Brendan, Marley and Maeve

‘This is your half-hour call. Technical crew, performers, front of house—theatre doors are now open. This is your half-hour call.’

The announcement from the tinny speakers on the walls of the dressing rooms at the Athenaeum Theatre stirred everyone into frenzied activity. Meredith leaned towards the make-up mirror and attacked her black spikes of gelled hair. ‘Has anyone seen Corinne yet? Where the hell is she?’

‘I’ll check the other dressing rooms,’ Nina volunteered. ‘Oh God! I feel sick. I’ve been to the loo five times already! And wearing this thing . . .’ she flapped the purple batwings of her gospel robe, ‘it takes twice as long. You want anything from the Green Room? I’m getting something.’

‘White wine. Thanks.’ Annie, sitting on the threadbare carpet, held up her plastic cup for another refill. Nina took it and hoisted her hem. She stepped over Annie’s splayed legs.

‘Haven’t you had enough already?’ Meredith gave Annie an evil-eyed reverse squint through the illuminated mirror.
‘Tonight’s not a rehearsal! Every one of us has to be on-song, note-perfect.’

Annie rolled her eyes. Praise be to Sister Meredith for restating the bloody obvious. ‘Wait, Nina, I’ll come with you.’ She leapt into the hallway and sniffed the air—a lean-limbed whippet at the entrance of a rabbit burrow.

‘ANNIE! I want everyone back here in five minutes!’ Meredith bellowed after her.

Backstage was a dimly lit labyrinth connected by narrow wooden stairs. The sounds of last-minute rehearsals issued from every dressing room door Annie passed by. She noted the odd tootle from a trumpet, the chorus of a song accompanied by a strummed guitar, stray punchlines to half-heard set-ups—and judging by the anatomical detail of the gags, it sounded as if a good many of them tonight would be about Ronald Reagan’s colon surgery.

In the mid-eighties it seemed as if everyone in Melbourne wanted to be up on stage to be a part of this ‘New Wave’ of entertainment. Almost overnight, a crop of stand-up comedians, sketch comedy ensembles, punk magicians, circus acts and tap dancers (with or without small dogs) had sprouted from fallow suburbs to perform with rented sound systems set up in every empty corner of the city.

And if the organisers of the ‘venue’ wanted to call the night a ‘cabaret’, they also booked a musical act. Hundreds of musicians and singers formed and re-formed into groups, like mounds of tzatziki on a plate shovelled by grilled flat bread at a Greek café. A jazz ensemble was piled into a big band, then separated
into a ukelele, polka or cowboy band, a musical parody duo, trio or quartet (often with hilarious costumes), and finally what remained was scraped into a gospel choir. If you couldn’t play an instrument, weren’t funny or a natural performer or had no charisma whatsoever, you could always find yourself a place in a gospel choir.

In the Green Room Annie shook the cardboard box of Coolabah to drain the last drops of riesling into her cup. She sidled up to Nina, who was piling her paper plate with wholemeal pita bread and brown rice salad.

‘I’m going for a smoke,’ she whispered and headed for the stage door. There would be comedians and musicians out there in the laneway—cigarettes, filthy jokes and laughter. She vaulted up the stairs in high-heeled boots, dragging her Drum Blue tobacco out of the back pocket of her jeans as she went.

‘Don’t be long! Meredith says . . .’ Nina’s voice trailed away as she saw Annie disappear. She turned her attention back to her towering plate and saw, with some guilt, that she had enough food to feed a family of starving Ethiopians. She crammed cold rice into her mouth. Nina always ate when she was nervous. Or depressed, or happy, or bored.

On the way back to her own dressing room, Nina knocked on the door of the cubbyhole next door and peeked inside. She saw, through a thick, silvery haze of dope smoke, Genevieve and Jaslyn sitting back in plastic chairs with their bare feet up on the bench. Jasyln’s silver toe rings glinted, catching the light as she crossed chunky, hairy ankles. Genevieve idly picked at the threads of tobacco on her tongue.

‘You seen Corinne?’ Nina fanned at the pungent cloud. They shook their heads in reply. Nina groaned. ‘Bloody hell! Meredith will have a heart attack if she doesn’t get here soon.’

‘She needs a manipulation,’ drawled Jaslyn. ‘Her Vishuddha chakra is blocked. Or I could give her a reflexology massage.’ Nina dutifully returned to Meredith and relayed the message.

‘The last thing I need now is Jaslyn’s hippie bullshit!’ snapped Meredith. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes until showtime. The biggest agent in Australia is going to be watching us out there. We’ve got no Corinne, Annie’s half pissed, Briony’s still sticking those damned anti-nuclear leaflets on windscreens in Collins Street and I can smell Genevieve’s joint from here!’

Meredith reached for the garish-hued gown hanging on a coat hook. It was an appropriate enough garment for tonight, she reflected. If they screwed up their performance they might as well be singing at their own funeral.

‘Just go and get Annie. She should be dressed by now,’ Meredith instructed as she pulled the voluminous shroud over her head.

Nina flew out the door and wondered why it had been left to her to round everyone up . . . again. She located the stage door, shoved it open and fell into the laneway. She found Annie there doubled over with laughter in the middle of a group of blokes in scruffy tuxedos whom she recognised as members of the comedy tuba quartet, also on tonight’s bill.

‘Annie,’ Nina flapped her robes in urgent semaphore, ‘Meredith wants you to come now.’

‘Ah,’ said Annie, pointing at Nina’s improbable get-up. ‘Mother Superior’s calling me for vespers. I’ll catch you guys later. Have a good one!’

Annie paused at the doorway, turned, crossed herself with a grand comic flourish and sang loudly: ‘
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto
.’ She blessed those assembled with the tossed remains of her ice cubes.

With five minutes until curtain-up, the six of them were now squeezed into one dressing room. Meredith paused, mascara in hand, and checked her watch. She hurled the brush at her reflection. ‘We’ll just have to assume Corinne isn’t coming.’

‘No!’ gasped Briony, pausing with her fingers plunged up to the second knuckle in a jar of glitter hair gel. ‘She’s got all the solos and—’

‘I know that!’ Meredith interrupted. ‘We’ll have to share them around. I’ll take the first one. Nina, you can take—’