Gucci Mamas (16 page)

The elaborate wrought-iron gate slammed shut behind Mim and locked fast with a resounding clang.

She shuddered at the finality of the sound – she was trapped, there was no going back on her classroom-helper duty now, and the thought of spending time in the rarefied air of Langholme Grammar filled her with dread. She always seemed to feel guilty about something as soon as she stepped onto the grounds. Her hair always felt wild and out of control, her voice too high or her vowels hideously flat. It was just like reliving her own cloistered schooldays.

The imposing century-old, ivy-clad buildings seemed to glower at her as she tiptoed around the finely manicured front lawn. The school had been secured with key-code locks since last summer when a paparazzi photographer snuck in to snap a prominent sportsman’s son after the father had been involved in a nasty sex scandal involving a weather-girl and a selection of vegetables.

Conventionally the realm of bankers, QCs and the like, Langholme Grammar had enjoyed a proud tradition of
educating only fine, upstanding citizens. But unfortunately, recent enrolments had been awash with the sons of media types, actors, tennis players and footballers. And now it seemed even tradespeople were managing to afford the exorbitant fee – rumour had it that a
plumber
’s child was part of the latest influx of blue-collar entrants.

Mim skirted the ostentatious fountain, which spouted water over a Greek antique statue depicting Ares, the God of War, in the centre of the main lawn. She climbed the white front steps that led up from the stone circular driveway to the grand façade of the main building. Then she slid through the ostentatious front door and made her way down the hushed corridor. Times-table chants floated out of closed doors and the tortured notes of a violin lesson reverberated down the curves of the sweeping main staircase.

A wayward student, obviously caught in the act of eating in class, was standing with his sandwich on his head faced into a corner of the hall. Mim gave him a wink of encouragement as he peeped out at her.

The rooms in the original building crouched off narrow, high-ceilinged corridors through which the bitter winter wind whistled and the oppressive summer heat sweltered. Refurbishment hadn’t quite reached these Grade Six rooms where the Heritage code had to be obeyed before trivial concerns such as student comfort were considered. Besides, the hefty building budget had recently bottomed out after the completion of the fashionable Early Learning Centre and Prep areas.

As ELCs became de rigueur at all the best schools, Langholme had acted quickly to keep up with the trend toward forcing children only just out of toddlerhood into teeny ties and restricting blazers. The school now had both Montessori and Reggio Emilia learning styles offered in the purpose-built centres, greenhouses and meeting areas.
The three-, four-and five-year-olds enjoyed an enormous range of educational activities, specialised classes and school excursions. Every single sensory experience was available in order to demonstrate a highly accurate model of the outside world to the children wrenched from it.

Mim walked through the swinging door that took her from the old building into the more modern lower-primary section. These children enjoyed air-conditioning, heating, and carpeted hallways. Two Grade Six children passed by Mim in deep conversation. Obviously one was attempting to convince the other to forego his lunch-time and join the school choir:‘… you’ll be thwilled with our contempowy piece, it’th a wollicking thea shanty, thuch fun!’ he lisped. But by the look of his friend’s downcast eyes, the petite blond lad had not landed a convert.

The more comfortable surroundings did little to help Mim relax. She hated being here. She hated classroom-helper days. It reminded her so much of her own private-schooldays where facts and figures were drummed into the students through tedious hours of revision and rote learning. And what she’d seen of the boys’ school (as little as possible, if she was honest) showed that not much had changed since her time.

Of course, schools such as Langholme Grammar were vital to her boys’ future, she reminded herself. The Old Boys’ network was strong, the school’s reputation was impeccable and her sons would land good uni spots and jobs just by association. It was just unfortunate it was all so … so, well, so awful.

But the school’s facilities were among the best in the country: the sculpture studio, the Olympic-sized pool, gym and sports fields, the school orchestra, symphony and choral groups, the television studio and state-of-the-art technology centre were worth every cent. And the headmaster was truly
a gun salesman. During the initial school tour he’d made Mim and James feel like child abusers if they
didn’t
send their boys there.

So here they were, with matching socks, template haircuts and surrounded by a thousand other boys.

Mim had never been in trouble during her own school career; she’d always been a diligent student, yet this place made her feel so naughty. She imagined that the teachers were scowling at her as she walked past them in their long black robes, with their arms full of important-looking books. And she was a parent, for chrissakes – how in the world would it make her two small boys feel?

Charley’s classroom door was shut firmly, a note on its exterior scolding: ‘Parents must not talk at drop-off time’ in thick black texta.

Mim inwardly groaned as she saw that Hortense Mathews was to be her partner today and was already set up in the private reading room situated outside the classroom. Hortense was the ultimate suck-up, attaching herself to the movers and shakers of Langholme society like a starving leech. This year she’d decided LJ Mahoney was her best bet for soaking up some dimly reflected glory.

One could usually detect Hortense’s presence by the trademark snorts and whinnies she used to punctuate her speech, well before setting eyes on her. ‘MIM! How aaaaaaare you, dahhhling?’ she brayed now, ignoring the Prep child whose laborious reading she had been pretending to pay attention to moments before.

‘Fine, thanks, Hortense,’ Mim replied, heading for the box of reading folders. ‘Is this the batch that we’re working from today?’

‘Yes, it is. I’ve started at the front with dear little Jimmy here,’ replied Hortense, stretching back her lips to reveal an alarmingly large set of teeth. ‘You look FAAABULOUS, as
always, Mim, really, you do … really, I’m not just saying it … you really really do. Really,’ Hortense finished with a snort of glee, and paused, waiting for Mim to return the compliment, as one does. But Mim simply flashed her a slightly startled glance as she entered the classroom.

Mrs Keith looked up from instructing a group of boys how to cut out the photocopied rabbits they were creating. ‘Mrs Woolcott,’ she said, bustling over, her substantial bosom threatening to escape the buttons of a dull grey dress. She took her reading glasses off and let them swing from her neck on their gold chain.

‘Good morning, Mrs Keith, is there anything you need in here?’ Mim asked with fingers crossed; anything to escape the Hortense onslaught. ‘Or should I simply do the boys’ readers?’

‘The readers are fine, but I wanted to discuss something with you first, very briefly.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Mim asked with concern. ‘What is it?’

‘Well it’s Charley, I am quite worried about him,’ Mrs Keith said, pursing her lips and pulling her chin onto her chest to create a most inordinate number of chins, Mim thought distractedly, before turning her attention to the disquieting matter at hand.

‘Ohmigod, whatever is the problem?’ she asked, her hand fluttering to her chest.

‘It’s his colouring-in. He can’t – no, let me rephrase that – he
won’t
stay within the lines. He’s doing it on purpose,’ Mrs Keith declared in the manner of a judge passing sentence.

‘Sorry?’ Mim had to ask, because she was sure she’d just misheard.

‘He will not colour within the lines, Mrs Woolcott. We had a giraffe to colour the other day and instead of colouring it in orange, like everybody else in the room, he
coloured
outside
the lines – quite deliberately – in navy, and didn’t colour the giraffe in at all,’ Mrs Keith finished breathlessly, her bosom heaving.

‘Did you ask him about it?’ asked Mim, feeling a sense of unreality about the entire conversation.

‘I most certainly did, and he had the impertinence to say that it was an albino giraffe in the middle of the night.’ Mrs Keith took a deep, shuddering breath at the memory.

‘Wow, I didn’t think he knew what albino meant.’ Mim suddenly forgot herself.

‘Mrs Woolcott, that is hardly the point.’ The teacher waggled a plump finger in Mim’s face. ‘This is not the first time, you know – there was another occasion when his penchant for outside-the-line scribbling was particularly rampant, and do you know what he told me?’ Mrs Keith was by now on a roll and Mim decided to let her just continue. ‘He told me his mother told him to always think outside the lines and that’s what he was doing,’ she spluttered with indignation, looking accusingly at Mim. Then pulling herself together, Mrs Keith perched her glasses back onto the end of her nose: ‘I said, “Charley Woolcott, there is no way your mother told you to scribble outside the lines”, and I stood over him until he did it properly,’ she finished triumphantly.

Mim looked over at her precious six-year-old boy, his blond hair falling gently into his eyes as he frowned in concentration at the task in front of him. His fingers, squeezed tightly around his crayon, bore the chubby reminder that he was still so little. His tongue poked sweetly through his full lips and Mim felt her heart surge with a bittersweet mix of love and regret.

‘So you stood over my son until he did it your way, did you?’ Mim said quietly, her eyes flicking over the teacher angrily. If James had been there he would have known that
she was using her dangerous voice and would have advised Mrs Keith to tread very carefully.

‘Yes,’ the stout woman answered with pursed lips, ‘I certainly did.’

‘Hmmmm … well, you know what,’ Mim said, a thousand inappropriate words rushing into her head, ‘I’ve just remembered that Charley has a dental appointment, so I’ll be taking him out of class for the rest of the day. Goodbye.’

Without a backward glance she swung Charley from his seat, stamped out of the room and to her son’s amazed delight the two of them spent the rest of the day giggling and chatting as they painted multicoloured animals all over huge sheets of butcher paper on the playroom floor at home.

Ellie was a celebration of slavish devotion to brands and fashion as she breezed into the café for the obligatory Monday morning lattes with the Langholme mums, a gossip opportunity for all different factions of the parent community. Her tiny flared-leg Seven jeans made the most of her toned thighs and non-existent butt; the white Guess T-shirt stretched suggestively over her enviable breasts and her blonde and multi-highlighted tresses were held in place by her Gucci frameless sunglasses – which had little other purpose on this grey Melbourne day.

The seat at the head of the table had, by unspoken agreement, been left vacant for Ellie, and as she unquestioningly took her prime position she sang out ‘Morning dahlings’ and blew Mim, at the far end, a fingertip kiss.

The coffee and complaints were already flowing, though the mums interrupted their conversations to register Ellie’s outfit, study her make-up and wonder how she got her hair so shiny, before greeting her.

‘A latte as a matter of some urgency, good man,’ she instructed the waiter at her elbow.

‘And breakfast for madam?’ he asked naively.

‘Oh good lord, no,’ she replied, tuning in to the conversations surging around her.

‘… that’s just ridiculous,’ one mother cried, ‘they can’t make him go swimming if he has a scratchy throat, it’s simply not medically appropriate.’

‘Well absolutely not. I was livid. I’ve already scheduled dialogue with the principal, let me tell you. I trust Willie’s self-diagnostic decisions now that he’s in the second grade. That boy knows a malady coming on when he feels it. Goodness knows the complication that may now arise from his contamination in that bacteria-ridden cesspit. I’ve insisted the doctor start him on a strict course of antibiotics for safety’s sake.’

‘Good plan,’ Ellie agreed, clapping her hands in glee, shaking a few dozen grains of sugar into her latte. She loved a confrontation, even if it was vicarious. ‘When Rupert insisted on taking that awful sink plunger to school with him for weeks, at first I didn’t have a problem with it really. I mean he was five and who knows what nonsense goes through a boy’s head at that age. Bryce is fifty-two for goodness’ sake, and he still has fixations on new toys and gadgets. He still sleeps with his mobile on vibrate, I mean what’s that about?

‘Anyhoo, then Mrs Hargreaves asked us to authorise an assessment for Rupert from the school psychologist: apparently he had full-blown plunger issues – which of course can be quite common in the gifted – but one hardly wants to be given such a terrible fright by a teacher. For goodness’ sake, what do teachers know about children?’ Ellie took a break from her caffeine-induced ramble.

‘So, LJ, sweetie,’ said Hortense, displaying the teeth and
laugh of a well-bred mare. ‘When’s the next big exhibit? Got anything in the pipeline?’

‘Yes, LJ, what’s happening next? Loved the last one,’ piped up Rosy Glow (tragic how she’d changed her name after taking a course on aura reading).

LJ Mahoney flicked her talon-like nails and looked coyly down at the table for all of a second before favouring the other mums with an electric smile and tossing back her hair dramatically. She loved an audience and shone into life under the warm gaze of attention she was commanding.

‘Well,’ she began, with her long fingers splayed forward, looking left and right to ensure that every ear at the table was hers and speaking slowly to maximise the limelight. ‘I have had just the most delicious opportunity float right under my pretty little nose!’ She scrunched the said proboscis and giggled merrily.

Not a bad nose for $20,000, thought Ellie.

‘But back to the story. Philby recently snapped up a simply to-die-for Victorian building in Swanston Street. He’s going to relocate the PR firm; so much more CBD, really. When he popped in for a look-see he realised that it was the former premises of Club 22, which was that swanky little strip club back in the late seventies, early eighties. I mean, what a scream. I died with laughter when he told me. To think of all those rich old men who used to frequent it and those slutty little numbers who entertained them. It’s just too fabulous.

‘Anyway, Philbs found the most divine treasure-trove of original posters and advertising material from the club’s heyday. It’s so tits-and-arse, girls, like you wouldn’t believe!’

She paused as Hortense snorted with unattractive and truly unacceptable laughter.

‘So,’ LJ continued, arching an over-waxed eyebrow at her friend. ‘You should see this stuff – it’s gold! Buxom strippers in gaudy silver platform boots, straddling poles, tiny silver
stars glued to their tits. And the hair, my god, bouffed up, flicked back, it’s a wonder they can hold their little heads up. The graphic design is unreal: balloon typefaces, rainbows. It’s so kitsch it’s cool.’

‘And so retro, so
now
,’ said Rosy.

‘Oh it’s so now it’s almost tomorrow,’ LJ enthused. ‘Très zeitgeist, girls. You know how I love to stay ahead of the game.’ She licked her scarlet lips with delight and ran her fingers through her cherry-red hair. ‘Of course, it all needs an artistic touch, girls, these club promoters were hardly artists and most of the chicks in the pictures could do with their share of air-brushing.’ She paused as Hortense honked annoyingly. ‘Sooooo, I’m going to enlarge the brochures, lime wash some of the images, collage others. I’ll be a busy little buzzy bee, let me tell you.

‘And,’ this last bit of news was the icing on the cake for LJ and she enunciated carefully so her words could have their intended effect. ‘I have one special little piece that’s going to look particularly good as the hero shot: blown up life-size, to underscore the entire exhibit. It’s of a gorgeous young girl with a sad little face wearing these amazing purple cork-wedged sandals, and … well … poor love, not much else,’ she tittered gaily. ‘You should see it, Ellie, you’d so love it.’

‘Sounds fab,’ murmured Ellie.

‘Oh, LJ, how amazing, you clever little pussycat,’ chipped in another voice.

‘How superb,’ sang another.

‘You are such a visual genius.’

‘Aren’t you the artistic one?’

LJ closed her eyes and let the gentle balm of adoration wash over her. She sighed with contentment and smiled around at these silly women who wouldn’t know art if it kicked them in the arse.

‘What do you think, Ellie, do you remember Club 22?’ she asked serenely.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ellie vaguely, sipping her latte, ‘I think so, but it’s been closed for years, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, it’s so passé, of course, that’s what makes it so now. I mean, do those sorts of dirty little places even exist any more? With my help, the memories will be all shiny and new and given a slick millennium twist for my opening next month.’ LJ smiled and turned back to Hortense to savagely suggest she try laughing with her mouth shut in future.

Ellie sat quietly as the conversation ebbed and flowed around her. Mim had had enough of the shallow chatter and one-upmanship and wondered if she dared skip next week’s session. Then she noticed Ellie’s vacant look from the other end of the table, and, realising that something was bothering her friend, picked up her mobile.

Ellie pulled the tinkling phone from her crocodile-skin bag and read the new SMS.

Blow this scene? My house? the text read.

GR8, Ellie texted back, and waited for Mim to air-kiss her way around the table before making her own escape.

Ellie came to an abrupt stop in Mim’s driveway but made no move to get out of the car so Mim came to see what was happening.

She walked to the driver’s door and saw in horror that Ellie had her head down on the steering wheel and was sobbing her heart out, which was obviously a bad sign – Ellie would never waste good make-up unless it was something serious.

‘Oh, Ellie, sweetie, darling, what’s the matter?’ asked Mim, putting her hand on Ellie’s shaking back and feeling the knotty ridges of her spine.

‘Oh, Mim,’ said Ellie, looking up at her friend through blackened eyes. What a day to forget the waterproof mascara. ‘Oh Mim,’ she repeated, and her huge turquoise-blue eyes re-filled with tears. Her cheeks glowed pink and her hair framed her face, making her look like a vulnerable waif.

Why don’t I look this good when I’m miserable? thought Mim as she helped Ellie out of the car and into the house. ‘Sit down, sweetheart, let me get you some water.’

Mim grabbed mountain-bottled spring water from the fridge and poured it into a crystal beaker, adding ice cubes, a slice of lemon and a sprig of mint. Picking up a napkin, she set the glass on a coaster on the mahogany coffee table in front of Ellie, who was denying her perfect posture by hunching over like a factory worker who had found the weight of the world too much to bear.

‘Mim, what I’m about to tell you is something that I can trust only you with,’ Ellie said moistly. ‘I haven’t told anybody this before, and I know that you won’t judge me.’ She sniffed noisily and, slightly shocked, Mim jumped up to pass her an embossed, scented, over-sized tissue.

‘Of course I won’t judge you,’ she said, looking at Ellie with great concern. ‘What on earth is happening?’

‘Well,’ Ellie took a deep breath, and blew it out towards the ceiling with her eyes closed. Opening her eyes again and looking straight at Mim, she said, ‘I am the girl in the purple cork-wedged sandals.’