Falling into Place Read online

  “My lips are sealed. But promise me you’ll go to the country before you break it off. Observing the St Johns in their native habitat will give you something to write about.”

  Chapter 11

  Breakfast

  Claire is spending the first day of the rest of her life with the wrong twin.

  Alex cooks breakfast: one of those immense fry-ups country folk enjoy.

  “I’m watching my figure,” Claire tells him. She’s unsurprised when he offers to watch it for her. The St John boys chime in with cute quips faster than bell-ringers on speed.

  They eat in the kitchen. Claire is dressed in Clive’s jeans with the legs rolled up and the waist belted. The kitchen looks cleaner today. If nothing eventuates from her night of love, she’ll be leaving one small corner of the world cleaner than she found it.

  The marbled Laminex table with zinc edging is quaintly retro. The Kelly’s in Wang is merely old. Alex’s chairs have grimy foam-padded plastic seats – practical and comfortable, a quality she values since experiencing Melbourne’s love affair with unstable Frenchified bentwood chairs.

  There are five differently patterned surfaces, including sunburst wallpaper, gold starred venetians, speckled Laminex counter tops, swirly lino, and some faddist has attempted to stencil a starburst pattern on the walls. In one corner of the room, the ever-expanding universe retreats.

  Aren’t we humans quaint? The way we decorate our caves, make them uniquely ours, Claire thinks, knowing the insight’s not original enough to share with her lover’s clever brother.

  Alex chatters through breakfast. He’s as keen to know about her life on the farm as Clive had been incurious last night. Claire answers as honestly as the occasion merits; with new friends, she romanticises family life somewhat.

  “Happy childhood! Loving parents!” she says. “Not ideal for a moderately educated girl like me.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Because genes and upbringing make me broody.”

  “A lot to be born?”

  “Ha-ha! Our parents’ heroic fecundity plus Catholicism are to blame for our big family. Mum would have had it easier with fewer of us.”

  “But she’d never wish you away,” says Alex, empathising.

  “I’m not too sure about that.”

  “Bloody Catholic clergy. Unless their flock risk their health and wealth, they get no oats.” He glares at her indignantly.

  “Don’t blame me, Alex. I’m not the Pope. Besides, I was awake half the night,” Claire says, then blushes.

  “Ha. Didn’t realise my brother was so amaaazing,” he says, sounding wounded.

  “Calm down, Alex. I’m exhausted and I dread facing Suz.” Alex looks at her with concern. He goes quiet. Claire uses the break in Alex’s harangue for a sip of coffee. She pokes at the egg yolks with her toast-soldier. Nice and runny, whites firm, the bacon crisp, not burnt. Despite this awkward conversation, she can’t help feeling happy suddenly.

  “What do you farm?” Alex asks.

  "Everything. We subsist, making butter, keeping bees. Recently, Dad started making wine. Mum tells him it’s ‘beaut’ and forces herself to drink a glass each week. Dad says, ‘Drink up, we can afford a glass each night,’ but Mum winks and says in a parody of her Irish forbears: ‘It’s not a wine for the wasting of – it’s only for special occasions.’ Dad squeezes her bum to say thank you.

  “There’s olive groves, immature. Apples and pears in commercial quantities. Apricots are turned into delicious jams. Mum makes ricotta; her cheddar’s awful. We’ve chooks, and Dad shoots rabbits for stews. Pigs. We’re not allowed to name them in case…There’s water cress by the spring.”

  “Boy, What an industrious lot. My olds eat bunnies, but Dada loves his roast beef. We’re in debt. Your family life seems idyllic.”

  “You Sins are rich, aren’t you?”

  “The portraits in the hall are disappearing. Ma conjured up certificates of provenance so paintings can go off to auction rooms when things are desperate. Bet your olds don’t have faux ancestors.”

  “Faux. Write it in my book, please,” Claire indicates the tabbed notebook on the table.

  “Consider it yours,” he scrawls the word in his vertical tented hand.

  “Mum’s style is hippie retro; she’s papered the walls with hessian sacks. Surprisingly good. Last year Dad tried organic farming. He only produced some scrofulous veggies.”

  “Scrofulous?” Alex says.

  “Yes. Do you want that one?”

  “I’ve got it already.”

  “Smart Alec!”

  “Smart Alex!”

  Claire places her toasty soldier carefully on the plate and attacks him with her fist.

  “Dear Claire, there’s no one I’d rather be killed by. You’re so half-hearted.” He sniggers mercilessly. “Now drink your juice, boot up and let’s go get your things.”

  But her boots won’t go on over Clive’s jeans. He pushes, Claire pulls. The boots buckle at the ankle. They fall back on the bed! Is Claire forever doomed to fall when she’s around these twins?

  Alex goes off for socks and thongs. “Wear these!” he orders.

  “Only a drongo would wear thongs and socks. I’ll put my frock on.”

  “Ridiculous. You’ll die of cold in that flimsy seduction frock.”

  “It’s not a seduction frock. The crucifix was meant to tone it down.”

  “Then it didn’t work, did it? Your legs looked very long last night.”

  “My mum made that frock,” Claire says, hands on her hips like an angry child.

  Alex gives Claire a solemn look. “She ran out of fabric. Should have used her wheat bag wallpaper!”

  “You didn’t have to look.”

  “Couldn’t help myself. Come on, we’re squabbling like brother and sister. Let’s hit the road before we have a proper fight.”

  Chapter 12

  Clifton Hill Walk

  They climb into the ute and head for Clifton Hill. “What’s Suzy like?” Alex asks.

  “She has character.”

  “We all do,” says Alex, rather pedantically, Claire thinks.

  “She has strength of character, I mean. She automatically knows what’s right.”

  “Not open-minded enough, then. Serious people hold issues up to the light, look for flaws, weigh up arguments before making decisions; there’s always new information to consider.”

  “Suzy doesn’t need to change her mind. She leaps to the right conclusion instinctively.”

  “She’s a blooming wonder, then. But how do you know it’s the right conclusion since you’re implying you’re not as clever as she?”

  She’s been checkmated, Claire realises. With Alex around, she’d live in constant fear of seeming foolish. “Suz can be impatient with lesser mortals,” she says aloud. “And she doesn’t suffer fools. Like you, Alex.”

  “Am I a fool?” he asks and grins when she groans and grasps her forehead. “But I am suffering you gladly,” he says not taking his eyes off the road but giving her a quick tap on the knee.

  Claire gives him a gentle back-hander to match his back-handed compliment.

  “Ouch!” he complains.

  She wants to tell him that it was meant affectionately but she stays silent. She mustn’t tell him how to take her – what’d be the point? She sighs. “Suz hates emotional, illogical people like me, and she’s even more waspish than you are, Alex.”

  “Good, I’m glad you take me seriously. I’d hate to be thought bland!” His good humour returns.

  “With those she doesn’t know Suz can seem arrogant,” Claire explains, “but she’s shy, you realise when you know her. Her IQ’s off the charts.”

  “Impossible. If it’s been measured.”

  Claire ignores this jibe. “Her family’s rich. She went to PLC. She’s travelled everywhere but never skites. She knows hers is just dumb luck. She’s as small and dainty as I am tall and clumpy.”

  “Clive says you’re ele
gant and willowy.”

  Claire blushes and turns away to indulge herself in the merest of smug private smiles for the benefit of the unfolding streetscape of stately Fitzroy North. Alex offers no opinion upon Clive’s compliment, but he hasn’t implied that it’s ridiculous. This pleases Claire to a stupendous extent.

  “Suzy’s blonde,” Claire continues, “with short naturally curly hair that frames her face and makes her look angelic. Her blue eyes see into the core of you; she always gives you a straight answer and she’s loyal.”

  “How will she react to your desertion?”

  Claire wishes Alex hadn’t used the ‘d’ word. She ponders the possible origins of ‘desertion’.

  It’d probably feel like being in an emotional desert, she supposes, empty and solitary. She sighs.

  “I reckon Suz will see it as a boon,” Claire announces boldly, “she’ll think I’m moving on with life instead of deserting her.” While saying this, Claire knows she’s whistling in the dark.

  “Clive mightn’t want you seeing much of Suz.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’ll want you dancing attention upon him; obsessive and adoring.”

  They pull up near the girls’ flat on The Esplanade. This posh-sounding address disappoints.

  The park, a ribbon of native grasses with occasional elms, hardly aspires to the botanical. Any hint of water views is belied by a dirty trickle of Merri Creek way down in a gully that ferries industrial pollution from the northern suburbs to the Yarra River.

  “Okay, Claire.”

  “Come and meet Suz,” she pleads, wanting him for the distraction he’ll provide.

  “No. Screw your courage to the sticking point.”

  “I’m not Lady Macbeth about to murder anyone.”

  “Mm,” says Alex sceptically.

  Claire curls herself into the neatest shape she can manage on the farm utility’s bench seat and has a good cry. Odd. She’s not usually a sook, and she’d never play upon Alex’s feelings. But she feels as guilty as Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  She’d seen what she wanted and had taken it!

  “I’m ashamed, Alex. Let’s go back, get my frock and boots. Clive will just have to wait for me.”

  “Clive, wait? Ha!” Alex reaches across the bench seat and pats her shoulder. “You’re not totally callous, Claire. That’s good. When Aunt Aude died, Ma said: ‘Fred’s coping so well – getting on with life.’ But Aude would have wanted Fred to miss her for a bit. It’s tearing you up deciding whom to hurt, Suz or Clive. But however you play it, you will make someone sad. Forget all that win-win situation bull!”

  “You’re brutal in your honesty, Alex!” Claire holds her head in her hands as if keeping a sunflower upright past its time. “I need a walk. Come?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll shut-up. Let you think.”

  They head off along the track through bush beside the creek. Since moving to Melbourne, it’s been a favourite stroll for Claire. The path veers downhill. It’s tricky in thongs and socks.

  Claire’s usual confident swagger’s gone AWOL; she’d have liked Alex to see it, she’s proud of her walk. One’s gait is an odd thing to be proud of, she realises. Still, this awkward amble’s therapeutic so far. Concentrating on keeping her toes squeezed tight is helping her fend off discomfiting thoughts.

  “Alex,” Claire says, when used to her new gait, “what does ‘all’s fair in love and war’ mean?”

  He sighs, “Can’t we have an amble through the bush without things getting heavy? I guess,” he says, after a pause, “if war is mud and blood and trenches, so is love. When the chips are down, we put our own survival first. Love is an all-out battle for domination.”

  “What a pity your parents’ marriage is bad,” she says.

  “Not at all. Warring bonds them. If you think love’s all scented candles, then cancel your Women’s Weekly subscription.”

  “My parents are partners, not competitors.”

  “Ha!” barks Alex.

  “Clive will pay my share of the rent for three months. Is that fair?”

  Alex gives her a disgusted look.

  Claire is busy glaring back at him when she stumbles on a rock. She’d have come a cropper but for Alex’s reflexes.

  “How idiotic, to wear thongs bushwalking,” he says, helping her upright.

  “You…!” she says, not at first realising he’s teasing her. Lucky it’s not Alex she’s attracted to, she thinks. They’d have an awful, bellicose marriage. But she catches his eye, and he’s smiling.

  It’s hard to know how to take him sometimes. Luckily, she doesn’t have to take him. She shuts up, watches her feet and listens to the birds. They’re having a mid-morning conference. Or are they mocking the two of them? Did the early flowering wattles attract them here? Ribbons of light filter through the gum trees’ meagre foliage. Life’s beautiful. And sad.

  “You girls from happy homes unsettle the rest of us with your easy optimism… or you would if we believed in you,” Alex remarks, out of the blue.

  “Excuse me for my happy childhood. And, sorry you can’t believe in me. But it’s not like I’m God and it’s up to you to decide whether I exist or not.”

  They go on in silence after that. It isn’t a companionable silence, more a resentful one.

  Claire is so over Alex. She feels his judgment weighing on her shoulders like a backpack. She grips her thongs between her toes. She’ll soon be as capable with her lower limbs as her husband-to-be, closing doors and drawers in the funny way he does. This thought gives her the giggles.

  Alex flicks a puzzled glance her way. But there’s no chance she’ll share this thought, or let him save her from another fall.

  Back at the car she gives Alex a see-you-later-if-I-live-through-this-ordeal wave and heads towards the flat.

  Chapter 13

  Telling Suz

  The flat in Clifton Hill is of unexciting cream-brick with grey cinder-block inserts. Very sixties! It’s hardly a notable architectural style, but Suz and Claire love it dearly – it’s their first home. Oh, the parties they will have, the heroic Spaghetti Bolognaises they will cook just as soon as they have a quorum of friends to party with!

  The flat’s cream interior provides a blank canvas on which to exercise their decorating muscles. Its northerly windows give onto an Edwardian red-brick house with an old-fashioned garden, replete with peach, apple, and loquat trees.

  Claire climbs slowly, postponing her knock upon the door. She inches upstairs like a crab, squinching her toes together to persuade Alex’s thongs to stay on her feet over hiking socks.

  Claire’s a bolter. In her usual hurry, she takes the stairs two at a time. Now, her awkward gait gives her time to marvel at the sly low person she has become. Is she really about to throw away two years of friendship on a one-night stand?

  Yes, she tells herself. Mother Nature decrees it should be so. A woman in love isn’t in charge of her life. She has surrendered to destiny and hormones! The latter have sussed out a sperm-donor tailor-made for fathering Claire’s future family. To fight it would be pointless.

  Claire’s overwhelmed by the idea of love. Clive is her future. Her ‘destiny is unfolding as it should’, to quote her mum’s hippie precept.

  Does she love Clive, she wonders. Does she even like him? Maybe not. At the very least she admires his academic achievements and his stupendous reserves of confidence. Is he charismatic? Of course! Does he make Claire herself more confident? Yes!

  It would be stupendous ingratitude to thumb her nose at fate. Lovers belong to a distinct social class – one older than those described by Karl Marx. Lovers are life’s emotional nobles. They’re bound to accept this happy turn of fortune’s wheel. Love has elevated them.

  Nonetheless, it’s random and unfair. But is it Claire’s fault that the world’s constructed thus?

  She’s been plucked from drear spinsterhood by a prince. She: love goddess. Suzy: handmaiden. But has she earned her cornucopia
of luck?

  At the door, she presses the bell; to have used the key would seem like breaking in. Suz opens the door, smiling. “Thank God, Claire. I was worried.”

  “May I come in?” Claire asks.

  “Silly question.” Suz gives Claire an affectionate punch on the arm.

  Once inside, Claire takes Suz’s arm and steers her to the couch, their only seating and placed on the diagonal so they both have an optimal view of the 24-inch TV over in the corner. She thanks God for their sparse furnishings. Claire won’t have to watch the pained/ brave expression on Suz’s face. Imagining it is bad enough.

  “Shall I get us a cuppa? Then you must tell all.”

  “No, thanks.” Claire will rip off the Band-Aid of treachery fast; be cruel to be kind. In hurting her friend slightly, she’ll be making herself and Clive exceedingly happy. And two smiles trump one frown…

  Claire knows there’s no Great Accountant in the sky reasoning this way. Some things are just plain wrong. She’s blithely abandoning Suz after a mildly successful one-night-stand.

  Leaving a true friend for a brand new one. Has Claire been hankering so cravenly for male approval that she’ll move in with any vaguely handsome man whom she quite likes? Oughtn’t she love him passionately? She’d been sloshed enough from hunger and bad wine to think she did last night. But now…

  “Suz, I’ve got good news,” she says. Why, do lies come out rhyming? “Great news!” Claire’s voice cracks and echoes in her head. “I think…I’ve fallen…Iminlove.”

  “Love?”

  “Love,” Claire snaps.

  “Are you sure?” Suz, won’t let anything go until she’s wrestled all implications out of it.

  “Sure, I’m sure!”

  “Sure? Not the urologist?”

  “The urologist. Who else?” Claire wonders why they’re echoing each other’s words.

  “I’m moving in with him.”

  “But not today!”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  We all ought to hear warning bells whenever the weasel words ‘afraid so’ are uttered.

  These words mean: I know I’m about to do something unforgivable but I’ll do it anyway.