Pants on Fire (10 page)

“The plague?”

“AIDS, darling. That little
fauteuil
over there was another bequest. Hello, Stephen darling. And that mirror. Hello, Roger. And hello, Lee darling, of course. Lee was the one who left me the studio. Not that he has entirely left the studio. I can feel him here sometimes. The lights flicker on and off when he finds something amusing.”

Although it was huge the main room had very little in it. There was a kitchen along one wall, with a gleaming stainless-steel bench, a matching fridge and stove, and a long line of stainless-steel pans hanging from a ceiling rack. A row of bar stools ran along one side of the bench and there was a large tray at the end crowded with bottles of alcohol. The opposite wall, the only one with no windows, had a steel rail stretching the length of it with about six dresses on it, each as extravagant as the one I'd seen Debbie in. Hanging above them were enormous hats covered in plumes, like something from a Gainsborough portrait. There was very little else apart from the small red armchair, the gilt mirror mounted with two imperial eagles and an ormolu console table stacked with invitations.

The only other furniture was a bed, standing on a Persian rug right in the middle of the room, and covered in pillows and cushions, with a huge chandelier hanging over it. Next to it there was a small table with just one book on it. This surprised me, as I thought Antony would be the reading type.

There was no sofa, no dining table, no TV and no curtains. And there was no sewing machine, no pins, threads or patterns, or any sign at all of where he made those extraordinary dresses. Music had started playing—Ella Fitzgerald—although I couldn't see the hi-fi. Antony was opening a bottle of champagne and didn't seem to mind me gawping at his home.

“I suppose you get used to people staring,” I said.

“Not many people see it—I do all my fittings at clients' houses—but I thought you'd enjoy it,” he said, handing me a long flute of champagne. “I imagine you are wondering three things: Where are his books? Where does he go to the loo? And where does he make those funny dresses?”

I laughed.

“I'll show you.”

He walked out onto the roof garden and I saw that there was another room running perpendicular to the main room and about half the size. This was his studio. Great bunches of patterns hung from hooks next to a long work-top with a cutting table, a sewing machine and an overlocker. Along one wall was a shelving system filled with bolts of fabric. There were two dressmaker's dummies, another set of shelves stacked with cardboard boxes marked “ribbon, silk, tartan, red,” “buttons, pearl,” etc., and a whole shelf of Barbie dolls in fabulous outfits. The other walls were covered in . . . stuff: pages torn from magazines, little snippets of fabric, feathers, plastic toys, badges, shells, stickers, matchbooks. Magazines were piled up everywhere. Unlike the rest of the place, the workroom was a total mess.

“This is where I make the dresses,” said Antony. “And this is where I ablute.” He gestured towards two doors between the shelving units. He opened the left one, revealing a bathroom that was like a cave. Apart from a loo and a basin, the rest of the space was filled with large grey rocks. A giant showerhead dominated the centre of the ceiling and the entire floor sloped down towards one central drain.

“It's a steam room,” said Antony. “Lee put it in. My workroom was originally his bedroom, but I like more space to sleep in.”

The other door opened into a square room lined from floor to ceiling with books, with one of those old-fashioned library ladders to get to the top shelves. In the middle stood a round table with more books on it and a very comfortable-looking dark red leather club chair.

“This is wonderful, Antony. I can't believe this place. It's my fantasy to have a library. I just have books everywhere—all over the floor in my new place, actually.”

“This used to be Lee's gym. I have different interests. Are you hungry?”

I nodded.

“Omelettes,” he announced.

We went back into the big room and I sat on a stool while he whirled around with eggs and whisks. He sent me out into the garden to get some fresh basil and oregano.

“Well, you passed that test,” he said when I came back with them. “You didn't ask me where they were.”

We ate our omelettes, which were very good, finished the champagne and started on another bottle. We told each other our life stories. They weren't that different: Antony had grown up in the New South Wales countryside, five hours from Sydney. His father was the doctor for a huge area. Mine is a country solicitor. My blonde hair and freckles come from my Scottish mother, Antony's dark skin and black hair from his half-Spanish mother. He has two older sisters, I have one older brother. We both went to local junior schools, then boarding school, and we both hated riding although we liked the idea of horses. And we both played obsessively with Barbies. Well, Antony's was actually an Action Man, but he wore women's clothing, systematically pinched from Antony's sisters' dolls or created out of anything he could find.

“I had never heard of drag queens,” he told me, polishing a fresh glass for each of us, because he thought the first ones were a bit stale. “I didn't know they existed, but one day I had the idea of making Action Man a wig. I made the first one—a beehive—out of a cotton-wool ball, which I coloured yellow with a felt-tip pen. It was quite successful, but I really wanted hair I could comb. So I paid a girl at school $1 for a lock of her straight blonde hair. I mounted it on sticky tape and attached it with glue. It didn't look quite right, so I made a scarf out of a bit of material and tied it over the top, to hide the join. It looked fine with day wear, but I wasn't so happy with the effect for after six.”

It was a funny story the way he told it, but I could detect a little sadness in his eyes. “My father found Action Madame one day,” he said, sighing. “In his wig and a fine silver lamé gown. It was the only time he ever beat me.”

He drained his glass in one and demanded to know more about me.

I told him tales about my glorious years at Edinburgh University and Antony explained that he'd gone to art school to study fashion, but had dropped out after a year. He really only wanted to make fabulous dresses, he said—he wasn't interested in the commercial side of things. So he scraped together a living making evening gowns for his female friends, until one of them was spotted by a woman who worked in the wardrobe department of Opera Australia.

After ten years working at the Opera he had gone freelance, and now he made a few costumes when they needed something really spectacular, but he mainly specialised in wild gowns for costume parties—which Sydney seemed to have a lot of—and charity balls.

“I don't make much money, but I don't need much,” he told me. “Lee left me quite a bit of capital along with this place, so I don't have to work any more than I feel like. I really just do it so I can look at beautiful women in beautiful underwear.”

I must have looked very surprised. He started chuckling and doing the eyebrow thing—he'd obviously guessed what I was thinking.

“Yes, darling, I am gay, but I still like looking at beautiful underwear. And I can still find women attractive, you know—there are no rules against window shopping.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but he got in first.

“Yes, I have slept with a woman. More than one, actually. No, I didn't find it revolting. I found it quite pleasant, but I prefer having sex with men. I like the roughness of it. I like to keep sex and emotions separate and that's easier with other men. Especially if you don't know their names. Don't looked shocked. I use protection. I just like anonymous sex. Oh! Hello Lee!”

The lights were flickering on and off.

“See?” Antony smiled. “Say hello.”

“Hello Lee,” I said. The lights flickered one more time and stopped.

“I think he likes you,” said Antony. “Anyway, enough about my sordid sex life. I want to know more about you. How did you get into journalism?”

So I told him how I'd got into magazines when I was working as a bilingual secretary for the managing director of a publishing company. Then he asked me why I had moved to Sydney and, for the first time since I'd arrived, I told the whole story. I had only told Liinda the bare outlines—fiancé found with other woman—and I hadn't told her what the other woman did for a living and what the fiancé was doing at the moment of discovery. For some reason, though, I told Antony everything.

He laughed so much I thought he was going to have a conniption. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“That's the funniest thing I have ever heard. A gym slip. HA HA HA. He thought you wouldn't mind, HA HA HA.” Suddenly he snapped out of it and looked at me seriously. “What a complete asshole.”

“Well, he is and he isn't. Rick has his good side.”

“His money?”

“I didn't care about that. It was nice sometimes, but it wasn't why I was with him. He made me laugh. He was exciting to be around.”

“Especially when he got his cane out . . . Oh I'm sorry, poor you. It must have been such a blow to think you had your future all set out and suddenly, a blank page. So have you come out to Sydney to meet a broad-shouldered Australian man?”

I think I blushed.

“Well, I hope you won't be disappointed. And I hope you don't think Jasper O'Connor is it, because he really isn't. He's nice looking, I can see that, but he's a total flake.”

“Yes, I have been warned.” All these pronouncements about Jasper were beginning to irritate me. I'd only talked to the guy and everyone was warning me off him like he was radioactive or something. If anything it made him sound more interesting.

“Did you meet anyone else on Sunday?” asked Antony. “Who were you dancing with? I can't remember. Got too out of it later and blasted those particular brain cells.”

I hesitated, not sure if I should tell him. He might tell Debbie and I didn't want to short-circuit the whole thing, whatever kind of thing it was. Yet even as I thought this, I could hear my mouth saying “Billy Ryan.”

“Billy! That's right, I remember now. You
are
a fast worker.” He narrowed his eyes and did some eyebrow dancing. “Or did he hit on you?”

“Well, he dragged me onto the dance floor and put his tongue in my mouth.”

Antony sighed deeply.

“What's wrong? Is he notorious for snogging girls he hardly knows?”

“No, he's not notorious, it's just that through Debbie, I know a bit more about Billy than most people. He's a lovely guy, but he's rather confused. What happened between you two?”

I told him. I made it into a funny story, complete with me falling asleep with a mouth full of crisps. I waited for the HA HA HA—it didn't come. Another bottle of champagne did and Antony looked uncharacteristically serious. The dancing brows were meeting in a frown.

“Georgia, I've only know you five minutes, but I really like you. We are going to be friends. I don't make new friends very often, but when I meet someone and we click, that's it. So I'm going to tell you exactly why Billy behaved the way he did, because I don't want you to be disappointed.”

I felt a bit sick. “Is he gay?” At least I got a laugh that time. “No, he is not gay. It would be easier if he was. No, Billy's problem is that he's in love with his own brother's wife.”

“He's what? I don't believe this town. His best friend is Rory Stewart, whose brother was engaged to Debbie Brent, who is Billy's cousin . . . oh, I give up . . .”

“It gets better. Or worse. The woman Billy is in love with—the one married to his brother, Tom—is . . . wait for it . . . Rory's sister.”

“Rory's
sister
? Hang on, doesn't that also make her the sister of Debbie's dead fiancé?”

Antony nodded.

“This is ridiculous. You'll have to draw me a Venn diagram. Is everyone in Sydney related?”

“Pretty much. At the top end of ‘society' they are, anyway. The Ryans, the Stewarts and the Brents are three big country families. They all grew up together. That awful plane crash makes the whole thing seem a lot more gothic, but they've all been marrying each other for a hundred years. That's why Debbie's ghastly little common mother was a good thing—some fresh blood. Debbie and Drew's children would have been really something, but I think it will be good if she marries outside the clans now.”

“But hang on, tell me more about Billy. He's in love with his sister-in-law, Rory's sister. What's her name, anyway?”

“Elizabeth Ryan, née Stewart—known as Lizzy.”

“Is this Lizzy in love with Billy?”

“Yes.”

“Are they doing something about it?”

Antony nodded as he drained his glass.

“Does her husband—hang on, Billy's
brother
—know?”

“No. Tom doesn't know about them, but he does know something weird is going on.”

This was incredible. “Does Rory know?”

“Yes.”

“How does he feel about it?”

“He's not very happy about it, but he doesn't say anything. Remember, his sister is his last living sibling and she suffered a lot after the crash too. I guess he reckons it's her—er—affair, so he and Billy just never talk about it. They both pretend it's not happening. That's why Billy kissed you like that—to show Rory he's still chasing women.”

“But Rory dared him to do it . . .”

“That's typical too. He hopes Billy will meet someone else and leave Lizzy alone. All part of the game.”