Elianne (13 page)

Jeremy refused to tell Kate his news until he’d made them mugs of instant coffee, after which they adjourned from the kitchen to the front living room to discuss their plans.

The idea from the start had been that Kate would stay for a week or so at the Cowper Street house while she looked for a suitable place within walking distance of the university. Sylvia and Larry, the students with whom Jeremy shared the two-bedroom terrace, were lovers who’d been living together for the past year, and they were perfectly happy for Kate to stay. In fact they’d made her the offer of permanent lodgings.

‘Syl and I reckon you should move in,’ Larry had said in his customary bald manner. ‘We could do with a four-way split in the rent.’

Jeremy’s glance to Kate had queried whether she would like him to correct the couple’s obvious assumption that they were lovers, but Kate had ignored the offer.

‘Thanks, Larry, but I really do want my own place.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Larry and Sylvia had presumed Kate was protecting her reputation, which was understandable. The university didn’t approve of students ‘living in sin’, although quite a number did and there was little could be done about it. The couple had naturally assumed, however, that Kate would share Jeremy’s bed during her brief stay. They had been wrong.

‘You can have my bedroom,’ Jeremy had said gallantly before she’d left for Queensland. ‘I’ll take the sofa in the living room.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she’d scoffed, ‘I couldn’t possibly do that. The sofa’s mine.’

They’d decided to argue the point upon her return, but the unspoken agreement had been that they would not sleep together until the conditions were right and Kate felt comfortable. She appreciated his understanding, aware that most other young men would not have been so patient.

‘I’ve found you the perfect place!’ As they seated themselves on the sofa, coffee mugs in hand, Jeremy made his announcement. ‘Single-storey terrace with attic bedroom, fully furnished, up for immediate rental, walking distance from uni,’ he said rattling off the sign he’d seen on the university noticeboard and making no attempt to conceal his excitement. ‘It’s only a few blocks away in Campbell Street. I’ve given it a good once over and it’s the coolest place – you’re going to just love it.’

‘Sounds ideal,’ she said, although she had the vaguest sense of being railroaded. She hadn’t wanted everything done for her, she’d looked forward to house hunting, but she didn’t want to appear ungrateful, so she smiled. ‘I’d better give it a good once over myself then, hadn’t I?’

He nodded vigorously. ‘And the sooner the better, it’s bound to get snapped up. I collected the front-door key from the agent just before you arrived.’

‘You what?’ She stared at him dumbly.

‘I put a twenty-quid deposit down and said we’d call around this arvo.’

‘Right.’ I really am being railroaded, she thought, annoyed by the idea that Jeremy might after all be pressuring her. She had no intention of making a premature decision about where she would live simply in order for them to become lovers.

She swigged back half her coffee, dumped the mug on the side table and took her purse from her shoulder bag. ‘There’s the deposit.’ She put two ten-pound notes on the table and stood. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Jeremy was a little taken aback by the speed of events, but he hadn’t registered the fact that she might be irritated. ‘You don’t have to pay me the deposit . . .’ he started to protest.

‘Of course I do. You can’t afford twenty quid.’

‘Well, yes, there is that.’ He took a swig of his own coffee and rose to his feet, pocketing the twenty pounds. ‘Come on then, let’s check out your new home.’

‘Jeremy . . .’ She halted him before he headed off for the door. ‘You do know that if I don’t like it, I won’t take it, don’t you?’

Her eyes signalled a warning, which he either failed to notice or chose to ignore. He grinned. ‘Yes of course I know that, silly.’

They walked the four short blocks up Cowper Street and around the corner into Campbell, where Jeremy led the way to a tiny single-storey terrace with an attic window cut into its steep, corrugated iron roof. The house was just one in a line of many, some with attic rooms added, some without, and most with white picket fences in varying states of repair. The only distinguishing factor of this particular house was the gnarled and incongruous gum tree that towered over it, taking up the whole of the front plot that could hardly be called a garden.

‘I like the tree,’ Kate said.

‘I knew you would.’ He unlocked the front door and stood to one side as she entered.

Kate had expected the interior of the house to be gloomy, small as it was and conjoined on both sides, but she was surprised to discover quite the opposite. The two poky front rooms that had once led directly from one to another had been gutted to form a comfortably sized living space with a central archway. Another smaller arch led into the kitchen at the rear, where light streamed in through the French windows that opened onto the tiny backyard.

To the right was a mantelpiece, beneath which sat a little open fireplace, its grate attractively framed by burgundy and beige-coloured tiles.

‘Cosy in winter,’ Jeremy said encouragingly as he watched her take it all in, but Kate made no comment.

She crossed to the rear of the living area where, against the left wall, was a set of steps resembling more a ladder than a staircase.

‘Bedroom,’ he said unnecessarily, pointing up at the ceiling, but again he received no comment as she sailed through the smaller arch to the kitchen.

Jeremy followed. Her silence was worrying. She seemed dubious and he was beginning to feel unsure of himself. Then the thought occurred. Of course by her Queensland standards the house would appear poky to the extreme, perhaps even claustrophobic.

Kate opened the French windows that led from the sunny little kitchen with its walls of scotched-back clinker bricks directly into the backyard.

She stepped outside. On her left was an addition to the house in modern brick, which she correctly presumed to be the bathroom. The remainder of the yard was taken up by the giant umbrella-like skeleton of a Hills Hoist clothesline and at the far end against the paling fence stood a rickety wooden outhouse.

Jeremy’s heart sank even further as he watched her through the French windows surveying her surrounds. Oh bugger, he thought, bugger, bugger, she’d expected a garden.

Stepping outside, he crossed to the bathroom and threw the door open in a gesture supposedly triumphant, but born of desperation.

‘Look,’ he said over-brightly, ‘you won’t have to use the dunny down the back.’

She didn’t bother examining the modest bathroom with its basic shower, washbasin and lavatory. ‘I wouldn’t care if I did,’ she said, ‘I love the dunny down the back.’

She did. She loved both the rickety outhouse and the ridiculous Hills Hoist. To Kate, they signified just one thing – inner-city living. Here I am, in my own little house in the very heart of Sydney, she thought, and looking about at the pocket-sized backyard, she was suddenly imbued with the sense of freedom she’d longed for. This was as far removed from Elianne as it was possible to be.

‘I love the house, Jeremy,’ she said, ‘I love everything about it.’

‘I knew you would,’ he replied, attempting a nonchalant shrug.

They explored the place thoroughly, Kate listing an inventory of the purchases she would need to make – kitchenware, linen and the like. All the basic furnishings were there, comprising a small round dining table and four chairs, a plain but serviceable sofa with matching armchair, a rather attractive sideboard, and in the attic room, a single bed with a bedside table, a cupboard and a chest of drawers.

‘All it needs is a bit of dressing up,’ she said as, having climbed the ladder-like stairs, they stood in the little bedroom that was only just above head-height. Had Jeremy been two inches taller, or indeed had Kate been wearing high heels, they would have had to stoop. ‘I’ll get in some curtains and coverlets and lampshades and stuff.’

‘You could do with a bigger bed,’ he suggested.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t even look at the bed as they gravitated into each other’s arms. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I’ll get a bigger bed.’

Their desire was mutual and they could have made love then and there, but they didn’t. Jeremy sensed the moment was premature and he didn’t try to rush her; he’d waited this long after all. He called a halt to the kiss before it got out of hand and passion took over.

‘I wasn’t being pushy, Kate,’ he said as they parted. ‘I didn’t find the house just in order to sleep with you.’

‘Didn’t you?’ She smiled and raised a highly suspicious eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you really?’

‘Well, yes, perhaps I did,’ he admitted. She was confronting him certainly, but in so good-humoured a fashion that he was willing to be caught out. ‘But I knew the house was perfect for you the moment I saw it.’

‘And you were right.’ She kissed him gratefully. ‘Just give me a week, Jeremy. One week, that’s all.’

As things turned out, Kate didn’t need a week. She invited him around for an official house-christening dinner four days later. It would be just the two of them, she said, and they both knew exactly what that meant.

‘Very colourful,’ he remarked as he stepped inside, bottle of wine in hand in its bottle-shop, brown-paper bag. Her transistor radio was tuned to the ABC’s light musical entertainment hour and ‘Zorba the Greek’ was playing, which seemed rather appropriate. ‘Very colourful indeed,’ he said.

The results of Kate’s frenzied shopping spree were evident: the house was decked out with curtains and scatter rugs and tiffany lamps, but at first glance it was the shawls that particularly caught the eye. Multi-coloured and fringed, they were draped over the sofa and the armchair, and also over the small circular dining table.

‘Yes, the girls I used to flat with were mad about Indian shawls,’ Kate said, taking the bottle he handed her. ‘Far more interesting than bedspreads and table cloths and much, much cheaper.’ She pulled the bottle from its paper bag. ‘Chianti, excellent, I plan to have candles all over the place.’ Chianti was the popular choice of most students not only because the wine was inexpensive, but because the raffia-encased bottles made attractive candle-holders, and candles were very much in vogue for those trying to create an atmosphere on the cheap.

‘You’re really getting into the groove of things, aren’t you?’ he said, although he couldn’t for the life of him fathom why she would bother practising frugality when she had money so readily to hand. She’d told him her father regularly deposited cash in her account.

‘That’s the object of the exercise,’ she replied archly, aware of what he was thinking. ‘I intend to avail myself of sugar-cane-king daddy’s assistance as little as possible. His money will simply sit in my account to be returned to him at the end of the year.’

‘I’m sorry, Kate.’ Jeremy felt genuinely contrite. ‘Was I that readable?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t mean to be critical. Honestly I didn’t.’ He gave a cheeky grin in order to win her around. ‘Hell, if I had a sugar daddy like yours I’d take whatever he offered.’

She couldn’t help but smile. ‘No you wouldn’t, you’d stick to your principles. You always do. You’ve never accepted assistance from your father.’

‘Well, face it, a dermatologist with three kids, two in school and one at university doesn’t have much assistance to offer,’ he countered.

‘That’s beside the point,’ she insisted, ‘you wouldn’t accept anything from him even if he did.’

‘Oh no?’ Jeremy held up his hand, ostentatiously flashing the 21-Jewel Omega wristwatch his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday. ‘What about that?!’

‘That,’ she said, ‘keeps perfect time.’ The dispute over, they both burst out laughing.

Jeremy Venecourt’s expensive Swiss watch had received, and continued to receive, much adverse criticism from his radical friends, who argued the contradictory nature of such a possession. Venner, who professed to despise all things bourgeois, who bought his clothes in op shops and spurned any symbol of capitalism, openly sported an Omega! ‘Why?’ they demanded.

‘Because it keeps perfect time.’ Venner’s answer was always the same.

‘Don’t listen to me, Kate,’ Jeremy now said, ‘I’m a fraud. Nothing will part me from my watch, because quite simply I love it. Change of subject: shall I open the wine?’

‘Yes please.’ He isn’t a fraud at all, she thought as she fetched the glasses. He was as passionate as the next man about his causes, and yet prepared to admit he was human. She respected him for his honesty.

They sat on the sofa and toasted the little house.

‘To your new life, Kate,’ he raised his glass.

‘To my new life,’ she said.

They looked into each other’s eyes as they drank.

‘Something smells good – what’s for dinner?’

‘Chicken casserole. I can cook, you know. Not very many things, but there’s a few dishes I’m quite good at.’

‘I don’t doubt the fact.’

Their eyes were still locked.

‘Chicken casserole, roast beef, and mulberry pie,’ she said. ‘Those are the three specialities Cook taught me.’

‘Good old Cook.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Not yet. Will it spoil?’

‘Not if I turn the oven off.’

They didn’t bother going upstairs to where her brand-new double bed had been installed that very morning, taking up the entire attic and now draped in a welcoming brightly coloured shawl. They were not impractical, however. They dimmed the lights, ensured the curtains were tightly closed to the outside world and upon his instruction she fetched a towel for them to lie on.

The ABC was playing a medley of songs from
Mary Poppins
as they made love on the sofa. He was gentle, and she was ready. She’d been ready for months. It was a kind initiation.

‘I thought the first time was meant to be unpleasant,’ she said afterwards as they lay together, Kate revelling in their nakedness and the sharing of bare skin.

He smiled and trailed his fingers lazily over her breast. ‘Not if you’re a natural.’