Pants on Fire (30 page)

“Ah—the plonker gambit. That would be a pleasure. And I have to tell you I don't think I'll find my role very hard to play . . .”

It worked like a dream. We walked around the garden a bit, because Rory didn't want anyone to see he had red eyes, and then he presented his arm to me and walked me up those steps as though we were entering an embassy ball. Plonker Pants On Fire Pillocky Pollock was standing in the perfect position to see us as Rory bent down and pretended to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.

“Nothing nothing nothing” is what he actually said, so I found it easy to laugh coquettishly. In fact with Rory's head so close to mine, I didn't find it hard at all.

Unfortunately Plonker was talking to Jasper.

“There you are, Pinkie,” Jasper cried. “Come and meet my very good friend, Nick Pollock.”

Then he surprised me by doing a shoulder manoeuvre that effectively closed Rory out of the group. I moved aside to let him in again.

“Nick and I have already met,” I said through a steely smile. “Where is your lovely fiancée tonight, Nick? Spinning a barrel somewhere?” Then I copied Jasper's shoulder trick and turned my back on Plonker. “Jasper,” I said. “This is
my
very good friend, Rory Stewart.”

Rory put out his hand. Jasper shook it as if it were a wet fish. I couldn't believe it. He was standing in a really stupid slouchy way and chewing gum. I'd never seen him chew gum before.

“Yeah right, hi Rory, howareya? Anyway, catch you on the flip side, dude, Nick and I have some serious shit to talk about. See ya.” And he made to put his arm around my waist in a proprietorial fashion. I wriggled away. There was no way I was going to be stuck listening to his “serious shit” with Plonker. Dude? What was he talking about?

“Rory's just taking me to meet Cordelia,” I said and turned to him with a panicked expression on my face. I mouthed “HELP” and crossed my eyes.

“Oh yes,” said Rory, getting it immediately. “She's inside. Come on, Georgia.”

“I can see why you call him Plonker,” he said, once we were in the house. “What's with the American accent? ‘Catch you on the flip side' . . . Puhlease.”

Oops, I thought. Wrong plonker. I couldn't believe Jasper's behaviour. I couldn't believe ghastly Real Plonker was a friend of his. But I was beginning to realise that there was about half a degree of separation between everyone who lived in Sydney.

“Shall we get a drink?” I said quickly. “And if we see Cordelia, I really would like to meet her.”

“Here she is now . . .”

She looked exactly how I thought a Cordelia should look—tall and willowy with long wavy auburn hair. She was wearing a long green dress with tiny glass beads embroidered over the pattern and a headdress made of real calla lilies. She gave Rory a huge hug.

“Oooh, you gorgeous thing,” she said. “I'm so glad you decided to come after all. I really want you to have a good time—and I
really
want you to like Michael. He's not a horrible greedy lawyer—he's a nice one, or I wouldn't have married him.”

She paused and looked Rory straight in the eye.

“I wouldn't have married anyone I didn't think Alastair would have approved of, Rory,” she said gently and he smiled back at her, sadly.

“I'll look forward to meeting him then,” said Rory. “I haven't seen him since I was thirteen and he was a big scary boy in Year Twelve. Cords, this is Georgia Abbott.”

“Hi Georgia,” she said and kissed me, which I thought was charming. “I'm so pleased to meet you. I've heard such a lot about you. You'll have to come over for dinner one night when it's not so manic here. I suppose I can get your number from Rory . . .”

Yeah, right, I thought—not. I glanced at him, but he was staring studiedly off into the distance.

“You can always get me at
Glow
,” I said. “On the switchboard number.”

“Oh, that's easy,” said Cordelia. “I know that number off by heart, because we send Debbie so many bouquets. I've learned always to ring first, because there are so many days when she's out working on location.”

Something like that, I thought.

Then Cordelia swept us off to meet Michael, and she was right, he was a nice lawyer. As well as his money-making clients, he also represented anti-logging groups and environmental charities—for nothing—and that was how he and Cordelia had met. She'd been chained to a tree at the time. Despite Rory's misgivings I could see that he did like Michael, so I thought I'd leave them to bond and went off to find the loo.

Cordelia directed me upstairs to her private bathroom where I found Jasper—doing cocaine with Plonker.

“Pinkie darling, there you are,” said Jasper, throwing his arms open extravagantly. I didn't run into them, but I saw Plonker's eyes flicker as he registered the intimacy between us. I really hoped he'd have the restraint not to fill Jasper in on our previous acquaintance. It made me feel like a slut. From what I'd heard Plonker was the biggest slut in Sydney, but it was OK for him, of course, he was a bloke.

“I see you boys are powdering your noses,” I said, icily. “I'll see you downstairs, Jasper.”

“Don't you want a little line, Georgie?” asked El Plonko.

“I'd rather set fire to myself.” I flashed a big fake smile and left them to it.

Back downstairs, the party was beginning to take off and people had started dancing. Trudy and Betty were out shaking it on the dance floor, so I joined them. Rory was sitting on a sofa chatting happily to a fair-haired girl I didn't recognise.

It soon turned into the usual Sydney mayhem. Trudy was jiving with me. Betty was doing some kind of tango with a very attractive Asian guy. Lulu and Tania were doing the twist. Rory was dancing with the fair-haired girl. I asked Trudy who she was and he didn't know, so she clearly wasn't part of the “in” crowd. In between spins and turns, I took a good look at her.

She was wearing a dark red suit with a very short skirt, natural-coloured pantyhose and black shoes. Lots of fussy gold jewellery. And too much lipstick. The girl in the polyester suit. Not someone I'd want to go on a villa holiday with, I said to myself, sniffing.

After a few more songs I saw her leave the room and Rory came over to me.

“May I have the pleasure of the next dance?” he asked, bowing low.

“I would be enchanted,” I said, dropping into a curtsy, and we grooved and shimmied and generally got down. After we'd danced to a couple of tracks I saw the girl in the red suit come in, spot us and walk straight out again. Rory didn't notice, taking me into his confident waltz hold and spinning me around the floor to a dance mix of “I've Got You Under My Skin.” And as he dropped me down into that familiar dip at the end, I realised I was beaming up at him.

Then, as the music changed to the unmistakable opening bars of “Groove is in the Heart,” somebody grabbed me, quite roughly, from behind.

“There you are, Pinkie my darling,” said Jasper, pulling me close and shoving Rory out of the way. “Sorry mate,” he said to Rory, “but I think it's time I danced with my date. Hop it.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but Jasper had turned me round and propelled me to the other side of the dance floor, where he started pumping his groin into mine in a grotesque way. I looked over my shoulder to see Rory stare with amazement and then turn on his heel.

“Jasper, what are you doing? That was so rude.”

“Oh sorry, did I offend your nice middle-class friend? I'm so sorry if I don't know the correct etiquette.” He had a really unpleasant tone in his voice and a hard glint in his eye. Maybe it was the coke, maybe it was Plonker's evil influence, but I hadn't seen Jasper like this before. Suddenly I didn't feel like dancing anymore. Specially not the pervy way he was swivelling his hips.

“Jasper, I'm going to sit this one out,” I said, coldly.

“What's wrong? I'm not good enough for you now? You only want to dance with the private-school boys?”

“Get over yourself, Jasper. I'm going to get some fresh air—the atmosphere in here just got a big muggy. I'll see you later.”

I went outside and sat on the wall of the terrace. What had got into him? I'd never seen this side of him before and I didn't like it. Through the open doors I could see him dancing with Lulu and Tania and he seemed quite happy. Plonker appeared with a very pretty girl who looked about seventeen. He was gazing into her eyes and singing along with the words to “It's Raining Men”—all very familiar. Cordelia and Michael were clasped around each other, apparently oblivious to their guests. After a while Rory came back onto the dance floor with Red Suit. She had her arms around his neck and was pressing her large breasts into him. He didn't seem to mind. But I realised I did.

After a while I saw Jasper leave the dance floor and Tania came out and sat with me.

“Why the long face, Georgie?” she said. “You seemed to be having a good time earlier.”

“Oh, I just don't feel like dancing any more.”

“Is Jasper being an arsehole?”

I looked at her. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Cocaine. Doesn't suit him.” She rolled herself a cigarette from a little embroidered pouch she always had with her.

“How did you know he'd been doing coke?”

“I've known the guy since he was twenty. I know Jasper better than just about anybody, I suppose.” Tania was smiling smugly to herself. “He's always been a pain in the arse on coke. Makes him paranoid and brings out his pent-up anger. And coming to houses like this makes him aggro too.”

“But he lives in a house bigger than this.”

“Yes, but he doesn't own it. He likes to pretend he's Mr Laid Back King Boho—and if he smokes enough pot he is—but deep down he's really bitter about the way his career has tailed off.” She lit the roll-up and took a deep puff. “It all started to go wrong for him when he got involved with that Liinda Vidovic,” she said, with smoke pouring out of her nostrils.

I stared at her. “What?”

“Doesn't she work with you on
Glow
?” Croatian. Big hair. Great writer, total nutcase . . . used to be a junkie, now she's a one-woman Salvation Army.”

“What do you mean by ‘involved'?”

“She was madly in love with him. He was screwing every model in town and wasn't interested. He liked her intellectually, but he didn't fancy her. Jasper likes blondes . . . Like you. And me. Anyway, one night he was stoned and horny and she was the only woman around, and he fucked her. That was a biiig mistake. She stalked him relentlessly—she thought he should marry her because they'd slept together once. She was relentless. Phoned him day and night. Followed him. Left threatening messages for any woman who went near him. It was insane.”

I couldn't believe it. No wonder Liinda had warned me off him so intensely.

“Is she still in love with him?”

“If she is, she's not so obvious about it. But she's the reason Jasper can't work for
Glow
anymore and a lot of other places. Terry would be the one to ask.”

“Who's Terry?”

“You know Terry, big guy, bald, nose ring, works at Radio National, you've met him at the house. He's a very good friend of Liinda's—they're both AA, NA and all the rest of it.

Aha, a mystery solved—that was how she knew I'd been to Caledonia that time. I wonder what else he'd told her.

“I haven't seen him around for a while,” I said.

“No, he's been in Melbourne for weeks—there was a big NA convention and he stayed on.”

Tania carried on smoking and I just sat there feeling winded. I really liked Liinda—I didn't want to become her love rival. She took feuds very seriously. And she had that knife. I'd enjoyed my time with Jasper—until tonight—but I didn't like him enough to risk making my life at work total misery.

“Thanks for telling me all this, Tania. I wonder why Jasper didn't warn me not to tell Liinda . . . I could have gone into work and told her I'd met this wonderful man.”

“I think he reckoned you were strong enough to take Liinda on.”

“I think he's overestimated me,” I said, stunned. This was too much. Did every man in Sydney come with several steamer trunks of emotional baggage?

“I hope I haven't spoiled your evening,” said Tania, grinding the butt of her roll-up into the terrace. “Jasper's a good guy really, but his career's on the skids and he needs people to blame it on. And he needs all the help he can get to put it right again.” She smiled at me innocently.

What exactly was Tania telling me now? Was she implying that Jasper was only seeing me in the hope of getting work from
Glow
again? I'd had enough unpleasant revelations for one evening so I decided not to pursue that line of thinking. Maybe Tania was a bit of a stirrer. And then another thought occurred to me—maybe she fancied Jasper for herself. I'd noticed her looking at him in a certain way and she certainly spent an awful lot of time at Caledonia for someone who didn't actually live there.

Living in Sydney's tangled web of relationships was beginning to smarten me up. I was going to check out everything she'd told me before I acted on it.

“Well, thanks for letting me in on the background, Tania. I think I'll go in and see if Jasper's mood has improved.”

The look she gave me as I got up made me think I'd been right in my deduction. Perhaps she thought her sordid revelations would make me go home. Well, tough luck.

Jasper was back on the dance floor.