Falling into Place Page 3

  “Keep them to yourself, Clive,” she says tetchily. “Is that a patchouli candle?” Claire asks.

  “Yes, but you’re a younger woman. Surely you don’t remember the sixties?”

  “I’m nearly twenty.”

  “That’s old enough,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “For anything!” he does his lewd eye-roaming thing again.

  “But you’re 28. Now that’s really old.”

  “That’s exactly how it ought to be. The man a little older.”

  “Why?”

  “Women have sharper instincts. Men need the extra experience age gives us.”

  A clever comment, she thinks. Even the most unwavering feminist couldn’t argue with that. “My mum wore kaftans in summer,” she admits. “There’s photos of her holding me when I was a baby.”

  “My mama had a curly perm with a hint of afro. Afterwards, she cut her head out of all family snaps dating back to that era. She’s never followed fashion since that day. She deludes herself that fashion follows her,” says Clive.

  “Gosh! To be so sure of yourself!”

  “Mama doesn’t harbour self-doubt.” Clive raises his glass, demanding Claire’s acquiescence.

  She mirrors his gesture. “To Claire,” he says. “To the two of us getting to know each better after ice-cream.”

  “No,” says Claire. “To getting to know each other. Slowly.” They clink glasses.

  Clive begins speechifying, “Freud, Roman hands, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

  “Here you are.” Claire rids herself of the orecchietti she hasn’t been enjoying, transferring them to his bowl. She feels her date is starting finally.

  Clive uses the ears to circle in sauce the nipples of his bosom apron, whose condition by now is dire – he’s had it on most of the evening. Then he discovers that, pierced, the ears make beaut whistles. His behaviour is juvenile even by Claire’s young brothers’ standards. Is this really a date in sophisticated Melbourne? They won’t be discussing Proust anytime soon, she decides.

  The front door opens with a crash. Loud footsteps sound in the hall. Claire waits for Clive to react but he remains calm.

  An exotic-looking man stands in the lounge doorway. He’s taller than Clive, and slender, with the attenuated look of subjects of El Greco. He must be the flatmate, she presumes. His hair is drawn into a ponytail; he has the intensity of a character actor – poles apart from Clive’s leading man good looks.

  Claire grabs the ear that Clive’s been daubing his bosoms with – she won’t have a stranger witnessing their juvenile behaviour. Gosh! How quickly ‘they’ have turned into a ‘we’.

  The man is unfazed by their disarray. He has an air of other-worldliness about him as if he were an alien visiting earth. It’s as if everything amuses him, and nothing surprises him.

  “Hello, Claire. You’re Clive’s Madonna of the MMTB safety zone?”

  She nods, blushing.

  “Your stilettos are famous. Clive reckons you’re six-foot four in heels.”

  “No way!”

  He looks down at her bare toes. She feels quite naked, though it’s only her toes on show.

  “He’s had it off with your shoes already. Hm! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Claire.”

  “Shouldn’t you introduce us formally?” Claire asks Clive.

  “Sorry. This is my twin brother, Alex, Claire. He owns this dump. He’s not a bad bloke, actually.”

  “Nice to meet you, Claire.” Alex reaches across the coffee table for her hand. Because it’s hiding pasta, she gives it to him clenched.

  His huge hand swallows hers; he raises both their arms and shakes them in the air. *“Arriba La Libertad!* What’s this?” he asks, prising her fingers apart.

  “It’s only an ear,” she says, blushing.

  “We never lend our ears. Ah,” he says, examining the contents of her hand. “I knew a food collagist once. She saved bad food. This is collage-quality.”

  “It wasn’t bad. But I’m no gourmand. Just a nurse,” Claire stammers. Something about Alex makes her feel she should apologise for herself.

  Clive stands, removes his apron again. “Delicious!” he enthuses. “Alex, will you please look after Claire while I go for ice-cream?” He pats himself about his person, meanwhile chanting spectacles, testicles, receptacles and keys. “Any flavour you favour, my dear?”

  “No. Anything will do,” Claire says. “Let me come with you.” Claire’s loath to remain alone with Clive’s unnerving brother.

  “No way. We’d never pull your boots back on,” he says.

  “Oh!” Claire says, as her date exits.

  “Well done, Claire. You’re the first girl I’ve met who isn’t a total fusspot.” Alex examines her palm. “Hm. You’ve a long lifeline but your heart-line’s unresolved.”

  “I don’t believe in astrology or fortune-telling mumbo-jumbo.” Claire wonders why she’s sounding so tetchy.

  “Ah! I see a tall dark man with a pigtail entering your life.”

  “Clive’s not dark.”

  “Then he can’t be the one. This man will force you to renounce astrology forever.”

  “But I disbelieve in it already.”

  “Good! You’ve made it easy for the bloke. The impression he gives is louche, I’m afraid.”

  “Mm. Not yet having added ‘louche’ to her word list,” Claire responds neutrally. Alex is the last person to whom she’d show her linguistic shortcomings. “Oh. Alex, there was a call for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Something about Ray Charles and a footstool with a view.”

  “Have you been drinking, Claire?”

  “No. That was mostly Clive,” she indicates the wreck of empties and curls of plastic among wine rings on the coffee table. “Or perhaps the bottles emptied themselves…”

  “Bottles have a way of doing that around Clive.”

  Chapter 6

  Meltdown

  Clive can’t stand queuing. Queuing’s about fairness, and fairness is a crock along with equality, fraternity and the other one. He moves through his isometric exercises. He wants svelte, not sweaty. Buff, not bulgy.

  He’s in Fitzroy, buying ice cream, hoping to impress a sheila. At 28 he should have grafted on a wife for the essentials: shopping, housekeeping, intimacy. He’ll choose a wife stress-free after his finals. Meanwhile, he window-shops, builds up a database of desired qualities like in a police photo-fit.

  His brother had arrived home while he and Claire were on their first course – but before intercourse. A virgin. He’ll need a decent ice cream to get anywhere with her.

  He’d totally nailed the accidental-on-purpose fall onto the bed. Convinced Claire it was her fault. Removed her boots. Made all the textbook moves. But she’d rejected him. A spirited woman. She’d almost left. It took much grovelling to persuade her to stay.

  Once urology’s in the bag, he’ll stagnate. He can’t remain single forever, not in a universe subject to gravity, a force ‘extant between all bodies possessing mass’. From what he’s seen so far, Claire’s mass has aggregated in all the right places.

  Gravity, if he remembers high school physics aright, works in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between two bodies. If their degree of separation doubles, their gravitational attraction quarters. Yet here he is in Fitzroy, thinking fondly of Claire from four kays away! How good would he feel beside her? WOW! KAPOW!!!

  Last year he’d taken up yoga. He’d rolled around in unnatural postures. But it was hard doing nothing in such a spine-wrenching way; it annoyed him more than queuing had.

  Measurement is ‘anathema to the yoga experience’ said the yoga teacher whom he’d dated, hoping she’d help him fast-track nirvana.

  He’s often criticised for being a quantifying man! Sure, he’s obsessive the way he calculates the ratio between monthly earnings in $Ks and his patient morbidity rates: his bottom-line versus his patients’ flat-lines. Means bugger-all of course. No
nexus exists between salary and surgical ability.

  Still, whatever’s countable counts. In May, he lost an elderly client. Sad! Messed up his average!

  Clive focuses mindfully upon his fellow-queuers. They sport nine o’clock Homer Simpson shadows, grubby sweat-shirts bearing inane adages. Their grotesque jogging shoes have more individuality than they. ‘Tubby hubbies in trackies’ – their bloated visages announce. They form a distinct social class: the sixth estate. Like Clive, they’re counting the cost of Charmaine’s ice cream against the fleeting harmony it will foster at home.

  Heartless bugger that Clive usually is, tonight he feels for all wage-slaves in bondage to households of squalling babes when ‘babes’ means something else to him. The irony of language!

  He gets their clothes. Let singles snigger up their premium leather jacket sleeves! But fleecy cottons – washing-machine ready are practical for baby puke. He has an urge to hug the guy behind him, say, “Mate, I feel your pain,” but he’ll be thought queer. Not that there’s anything…

  Clive can hardly wait to be the progenitor of a large litter. What fun he’ll have teaching them to swim, ride, shoot hoops. But establishing a solid family unit needs research. Finding the right partner is paramount; he has a list to tick off, all names alphabetised. Claire has somehow subverted his system: he thought he’d done the Cs.

  “Help ya?”

  “Ice-cream please!” Clive’s voice emerges croakily.

  “Yep?”

  “That curvy little parfait number that comes in pistachio.”

  “All gone,” ice-cream man says, like he’s feeding a baby with a spoon. No curvy parfaits left.

  “A tub of pistachio then.”

  “No, there’s fruity, creamy or astringent. What’s the missus want? Ah! No missus? No worries, you’ll meet someone.” Ice-cream man winks, he’s onto Clive.

  “Yorta see my sister; she’s a doll,” ice-cream man whispers, leaning in.

  Is this a Greek bearing gifts, he wonders. Greek Aussies carry the wisdom of the ages in their back pockets! “No. No sister, thanks, just tell me what I want,” Clive says.

  “Stick with the classics. Vanilla, for instance. Decorate it with sprinkles for a second date.”

  “Don’t need a friggin’ second date.”

  “I’ll need second wife soon, calls some dill in the queue.” Clive flips him the finger.

  “One vanilla tub, then? Sprinkles?”

  “No. I bet you have two curvy flutes in the fridge outback.”

  “Too toe fin knee toe!”

  An Eyetie! Aha! So, it’s Italians rationing the good sorts here. He takes out $100. “Name your price.”

  “Nothing doing. Curvy’s gone.”

  Clive grabs the vanilla tub, the sprinkles. He leaves his note on the counter. That’ll make his point. He exits, fuming. Bloody market forces! Every six seconds a pretty girl falls off the shelf, her DNA floats off to fill the public gene pool. She’s lost to him, doomed to waste her eggs in a suburban blasted heath, so said ‘The Age’. Girls disappear faster than ice-cream melts.

  He stumbles on the pavement; can’t right himself. Ends up in the gutter. Where else!

  Best jeans torn. Maybe looking punk will prove he’s cool in grungy old Fitzroy.

  Eventually Clive gropes his way upright. Pedestrians give him a wide berth. Think he’s a druggie loser. And he is a loser. Even Charmaine’s lot knows that the missus wants strawberry swirl.

  Does he even want a missus? Yes! Married, he’d have someone in charge of ice-cream flavours…

  He lets the Saturday night revellers flow around him; he’s a rock plonked down in the river of life. Those living life whiz by him; they get on with it. Clive? He’s paralysed. When it’s safe to move, he staggers to the Porsche 911. Its loan agreement’s in his wallet. Earlier, he’d figured out that finally he owns the exhaust in its entirety. It seems he’s stuck down at the arse-end of both medical specialty and car ownership.

  He folds himself into the car. What’s with the watery eyes, he wonders. Just sad. Sad. Sad.

  When his tears dry up, he engages first. Merges with the traffic. Dawdles homewards.

  Love’s not about being struck in the solar plexus, winded by a powerful force, he decides. It’s more like sinking into a mineral bath at the spa in Hepburn Springs. It does you good to be immersed in something bigger. He’ll BE in love as the self-help books urge. Wallow in it. All he needs is a suitable object of desire. Whom? Claire might do. Mentally, he tries her on for size. Chants: “I love Claire. I love Claire.” He repeats this mantra 50 times.

  Did he turn into Johnston Street on auto-pilot? Who knows? He’s in it now. Crucial traffic lights all blink amber tonight, raising stress levels in drivers who are start-stopping all over the shop. Not Clive. He’s cool. His yoga lessons are paying off belatedly. It’s odd though. Clogged arterials are rare of a Saturday night when bourgeois Melbourne dinner parties.

  Are the fates helping him focus on his resolution?

  Despite the cold, the ice cream melts. Another shove from fate! His baby feelings for Claire mustn’t be allowed to liquefy. At the next amber light, he sounds a fusillade on the horn. Claire is enough, and enough is enough as surely as a rose is a rose.

  He opens the window. Inhales. Bugger the smoggy air; bugger his exhalations rising like mist before his face. He’ll surrender his singularity to the marriage police, settle down. You earn a lot, you spend a lot. And when a man can’t spend what he earns, he takes a nurse who takes a child, then, heigh-ho the merry-o the doctor’s out of hell.

  Claire will raise Clive’s happiness quotient immeasurably.

  A beep sounds. He’s about to give his antagonist the finger, and shout “Shut the flip up, ass-hole!” but instead he forces himself to wave in a family-friendly way.

  ‘Victoria: On the Move!’ says the number plate ahead. He hits the accelerator; he calls out,

  “Upwards and onwards!” He positions himself for overtaking but moves back into the slow lane. I queue. IQ!

  Dada will like her far too much; thus, giving him the edge in matters oedipal. He vents his spirits with a triumphal riff on the horn.

  Chapter 7

  Dishes with Alex

  Claire is at Alex’s place in Carlton. So it’s not Clive’s after all. How many other unsubstantiated claims has she swallowed? He’s told her he could ‘quite possibly’ love her up to 98%.

  As in ‘up to 97% of dentists recommend Breathfresh’. Has he ever worked in advertising, she wonders.

  She’s doing what even the most enlightened females know to be their lot – the dishes. Who can resist their tidal pull? Left to crust up overnight, they need serious elbow grease. Women would rather suffer earlier than late.

  Claire is miserable beyond cheering. Maybe the dishes will excoriate her. She’ll wallow down around the painful end of her emotional spectrum, letting humiliation run through her like an enema.

  Clive’s a serial philanderer apparently. Wow! Alex hadn’t wanted to tell her. She’d pried it out of him.

  She plunges her hands into the suds; soggy pasta bits float in the murk. The water makes her fingers swell. The sight of them disgusts her, but she leaves them in the slops to pucker up.

  There’ll be no dirty plates for Clive to throw at the wall; she’ll leave with her dignity intact, meanwhile Clive, astounded at her grace, will miss her. A bit. She’ll abandon her belief in the ‘happily ever after’ myth. Her parents’ happiness has unfortunately left her without a protective layer of cynicism.

  For months, she’s felt as ripe for love as a squishy peach grown by her dad on their Wangaratta farm. She’d dared hope Clive might be the recipient of her cargo of unallocated feeling! Boy, what an idiot! She stomps around in her high-heeled boots her duffle coat on, so she can leave the minute Clive gets back. Alex looks on his mouth agape. “He’s crap at bringing home the ice-cream,” she says. “I’d eat it tub and all. Why does anger make you hungry, Alex, while sorrow t
akes your appetite away?”

  “Don’t know, Claire. Leave him the dishes,” says Alex. He reaches over to turn off the tap.

  Alex reminds her of Heathcliff, her fantasy man throughout her formative years. How can wild, dry Heathcliff be the brother of cheesy Robert Redford? “Tell me, Alex,” Claire asks, “are his evenings of love-making pre-scripted?”

  “More or less.” Alex starts scraping plates while she stacks them in the sink. “You’re a surprise. You’re not even blonde.”

  “Thanks!”

  He turns her to face him. “That’s a compliment! Clive goes for the dumb blonde disaster, usually.” He puts his arm around her shoulders, and they stand looking at their reflection in the kitchen window.

  Alex seems to see something through the glass that’s lurking in the darkness. “Good looking couple,” he says, referring to the two of them. “If he hurts you, I’ll exact revenge.”

  “How?”

  “Exactly! Wreck his Porsche.”

  “Porsche? Gosh! Why own a posh car, not a house?”

  Alex shrugs. “Pessimists, like me, scrape together the necessities. Optimists assume someone will take them in. They buy whatever says ‘rich and cool’. Such faith in the benignity of life.”

  “Ben…what? With you I’d have to carry my word book everywhere,” says Claire.

  “I’d marry both you and your book.”

  Claire searches his face for irony. “Don’t tease me. Alex, do his girls get a lift home?”

  “I’ll drive you home, Claire.”

  Claire’s resolve melts. She weeps, her tears mingling with wash-up water. It’s greyish with floaty green bits. Must be the sauce. It’s beautiful, like an art installation. Claire sees beauty in the middle of humiliation. Has she inherited her pioneering ancestors’ grit? Those brave souls slashed and burned like crazy so a spoiled girl like her could grow up in an orchard, and drop her Catholicism on a whim. Claire’s tears fall with a plop and a recoil splash. Her shoulders shake.