Perfect Skin (17 page)

Thanks,
she says, and then,
To home-cooked meals. Bite-size.

And a good year. A year that settles down and makes some sense.

And I wonder when I'm going to tell her about Mel. I know it won't be tonight. What is she thinking? What does she think is going on? Where does she think the source of the other half of Lily is, and does she wonder why she hasn't been told? Maybe she doesn't. We don't know much about each other and, since she doesn't know about Mel, she can't know what a big thing it is not to have been told about.

She picked Lily up without holding back, got involved. I watched her and I'm sure she knew I was watching her, as though she was being tested, but that wasn't it at all. I couldn't help watching her, and that's why I watched. The feeding, the bathing – my turn to do something, but Ash came in anyway, and both of us got splashed and stood there in our splashed-on shirts while I cooked dinner. I like the way she got involved, the energy and fearlessness and something like curiosity, the new range of boat noises. I always held back with other people's babies, before I had one. I think I was afraid of breaking them.

We eat on the verandah, with bats fighting in the trees and Debussy coming out through the French doors. There's lightning far off, a silent storm lighting up clouds, but the air is thick and windless here.

I complain about the heat, but she says,
It's not so bad. Or maybe it's what I'm used to.

Sorry. I've got English parents. Complaining about the heat's a sort of lifestyle choice if you've got English parents. Every summer catches my father unawares.

She tells me about her family. About how they grow tea on the Atherton Tableland. And the house she's living in now belongs to a family friend and spent years being rented to students through an agent. The people who owned it thought everything was fine, and then suddenly it couldn't get approval to be tenanted any more. Since they'd planned to build town houses on the block, they didn't fight the decision. They didn't even look into the reasons behind it. They knew Ash was coming down here, and if she lived in the house that'd keep out squatters. And her father remembered it from
his time at uni as a grand, old, riverfront house, a little past its best. He'd slept under it in a hammock after balls, or on a mattress on the bare floor, one of those kinds of stories (of which I've got a million, having a father who was brought up in the war).

So she'd heard about the house and the grandparents of the family friend, the people who had owned it back then but been dead her whole life. And she'd seen a photo – her father had got her a photo of the place, so she could know where she was going – and for some stupid reason she even had the old curtains in her mind when she drove down here.

It was pretty bad arriving,
she says.
They've got no idea what the place is like. It was good you turned up. You and your mysterious car that belonged to someone else.

Yeah. I'd forgotten about that. So are you okay there now? Is it at least safe?

Like I'm an expert. I've been okay so far. There's a room at one end that's got tiles off the roof above it, so the rain's come in there and some of the ceiling's rotted through. And there are birds nesting in there.

That doesn't sound good.

It's a big house. I keep the door shut. Unless I want to talk to the birds, of course.

Have you told the people who own it? Or your family?

No. I can't see the point. They're going to pull it down anyway. I think I said in an email that it's not in a really good way, but there's no point in going into detail. I don't want to worry them.

You communicate with your family by email?

Mainly, now that I'm set up. They wouldn't let me leave home without a lap-top and a modem. Oh sorry,
that's right, that'd conflict with those strange, far-north sensibilities, wouldn't it?
she says, emphasising ‘sensibilities' as though I've done her wrong and think them something she's really not entitled to.

I'm over that now. I realise that was just regionalism on my part. Some bad ‘ism', anyway.

Tableland hippy chick.

Okay. Let me come clean. Never been to the Atherton Tableland. Don't know what I'm talking about. I have seen a few hippies, though, and I've got to admit they tend to have much more hair. And a different approach to personal hygiene.

Which leaves us with chick.

Yeah. I hope it does. It's going to spin me out if I'm wrong there.

Okay, I might give you that one. Chick,
she says, and shakes her head.
And my family has its own home page, you know.

Really?

Halliday Tea.

Halliday Tea? I don't know that I buy a lot of tea, so . . .

We're a medium-sized operation, and for years we didn't have our own brand. We just supplied to other people. We're small enough to be well short of a household name, but big enough to have the occasional tour group come through.

The occasional tour group?

Yeah. I did tours. That was my weekend job. I never really got into the serious cultivation side of things. My father, you can see him rubbing the leaves between his thumb and his finger and you know he's got it sussed. In a second he knows just how good the tea is.
I've only got it covered at the tour-info level, really. But still, you wouldn't believe the amount of crap I could tell you about tea, from the effects of soil type on the growth of
Camellia sinensis
to the best biscuits to have with it.

There should be a particular biscuit preference?

Depending on the tea type and how you have it, why not? With a reasonable-quality regular tea
–
if you simplify things and assume there is such a thing as a regular tea
–
and a mainstream tea drinker who is interested in putting some thought into the biscuit, we'd recommend something like a Gingernut. But that might be because of some minor sponsorship deal my father did, so I can't tell you it's completely straight. But, yeah, Gingernut. Not the most fashionable choice maybe, but if you're interested in complementing the tea
. . .

Gingernut.

Queensland Gingernut.

Queensland Gingernut? You're not saying there's regional variation in Gingernuts, are you?

I certainly am. It's a historic thing. Arnott's was formed by an amalgamation of state-based companies when you were just a youngster. They tried to enforce a standardised Gingernut. Miserable failure. National revolt. There are four different Gingernuts. Always will be. The Queensland Gingernut is, in my view, indisputably the finest. It's the darkest. It's the most brittle. New South Wales's is the hardest. The Victorian Gingernut's a bit disappointing when it comes to the ginger. But they'd argue that too much ginger overpowers the tea. Very sensitive people, Victorians.

I always thought I was just getting old biscuits at interstate conferences.

And it's not that simple at all. Now you can see how I got interested in the psychology of retail.

It's scary, though, isn't it? If something as friendly as the Gingernut biscuit is so complicated, what is there going on that we don't know? How many times a day are we being subtly and painlessly manipulated?

Go on. Be the first person to come up with a conspiracy theory based on the Gingernut biscuit.

I'm completely socialised to the Queensland Gingernut. And so, I suspect, are you. We've been nobbled. And how could it end at biscuits?

Would it have been better if I hadn't told you?

I think I needed to know.

On the tours
–
just so you understand how other people handle the information
–
the tourists generally find the Gingernut story mildly interesting. You know, quirky. Not stressful.

Yes, well, they're obviously not thinking it through.

We take our empty bowls into the kitchen and Elvis jogs out of the Bean's room. He stares at me, makes the familiar initial grumbling overture for Bonios. This, perhaps, is not the time to play the entire Bonio game.

He stares, grumbles. He trots across the room and tries the same with Ash.
Something's going on,
she says.
He's expecting something.
More grumbling. Elvis thinks it's the perfect time for the Bonio game.
What does he want?

Why don't you ask him? Why don't you ask him what he wants? Just try ‘What do you want, Elvis?'

What do you want, Elvis?

Some pawing of the ground, more grumbling.

Again, louder, like you really mean it, I tell her.

What do you want, Elvis?

More pawing, louder grumbling, sounding like one of those spooky reincarnated mummy voices from a
Scooby Doo
cartoon. And, if Ash knew what she was listening for, at this point she would start to hear the word ‘Bonio'.

Say it again. Say it again.

What do you want, Elvis?
Louder, more enthusiastic, like she knows the game already.

And Elvis comes back louder, too, just as he knows he's supposed to.

Okay, you have to go with me on this one. The next line is, ‘Do you want a cheeseburger, Elvis?'

She laughs, bends forward to get closer to his face, brushes hair away from her eyes as it falls forward.
Do you want a cheeseburger, Elvis?

And Elvis moans like the
Scooby Doo
mummy venting its spleen at the far end of a long tunnel, lifts his front paws from the floor, then drops back down again.

And now, ‘Do you want a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Elvis?'

You are insane,
Ash says, still bending forward, her hands on her knees.
Okay, here we go.
She takes a breath in, musters up a huge amount of pretend enthusiasm for the offer she's about to make.
Do you want a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Elvis?

Elvis goes down low to the floor, moans
Bonio
long and mournfully and several times.

Okay, here's the big one. And you've got to do this one sort of innocently, as though you've just worked it out. ‘Do you want a' – and I mouth the next word very carefully – ‘Bonio, Elvis?'

Ah,
she says.
I've got it now.
She pauses. He looks at her. Stares. She holds the pause and then, just as he's about to get very confused, says briskly,
Do you want a Bonio, Elvis?

He dances around on his back legs, says
Bonio
like someone who knows he's close to the prize, nudges his shoulder into Ash's calf to urge her in the right direction, pushes her over to the corner of the room where the Bonio jar is waiting.

And now?

Now you give him one. And don't worry, he'll be completely polite, even though he's pretty excited. And he won't eat it. He'll take it away somewhere for later. The treat is having the Bonio. Eating it is a separate treat. It's surprising how much joy a small-brained creature can get out of a dense, wheaty biscuit. But I guess you know all about tea drinkers and Gingernuts, so . . .

Don't be rude.

It's all right. I come from a long line of tea drinkers. I can say that.

She takes the Bonio out of the jar, Elvis reaches up and it clunks into his mouth. He jogs out of the kitchen. Ash follows.

We're going down a hall now,
I hear her say.
Looking in a door. Not going in. Looking in another door. Going in there. It's a bedroom, double bed. Pushing the Bonio under a pillow with our nose . . .

She says a few more things that are too muffled to hear, then Elvis's toenails are back on the wooden floor of the hall, moving at jogging speed, and he reappears in the kitchen. Ash is behind him. Wearing a slim green silver-and-black swirly tie.

You must have been Mister Trendy in the eighties,
she says, treating the discovery like a victory.
And someone's done them all up too.

It's just easier that way.

Oh no, you're defending it.

Well, what choice have I got? You've found them now. Besides, it makes sense.

And it makes sense to keep every tie you've ever had?

Yes it does. They take up very little space, and that style will be back, you know. I'm quite attached to that tie, and I'd be depressed if I chucked it out and then it came back in. It got me through a lot, you know. Back in the dark Dickensian days when I was a resident and they'd work us sixteen hours on a Sunday. There were days when my fashion sense was all that got me through. I used to have these excellent black pointy shoes that went with that tie perfectly, but they got a bit fungoid so they had to go. They laced up at the side.

Bet you got a lot of action in those.

Well, maybe I did. But they were strange times. I also had an excellent skinny black leather tie, but it got fungoid as well. I think I got the idea from the Knack. Who also inspired me to learn guitar. You know the Knack?

Do I know the Knack? How old do you think I am? Six? ‘My Sharona' is a classic.

A classic? ‘Smoke on the Water' is a classic. The Stones' ‘Satisfaction' is a classic. ‘My Sharona', attached as I am to it, can't have been around long enough to be a classic.

It's a classic. Live with it. And anyway, this is a cycle-time issue. Who knows when a song's a classic? Soon a song'll he a classic if two people talk about it after it drops out of the charts. That's all it'll take. And, by the
way, before we move right along, that's quite a game you've got going with the dog.

Hey, you seemed happy to play it.

How long have you lived alone, exactly? With your knotted-up ties and your dog rituals.

Six months. But the dog rituals go back at least a few years, and the tie knotting about ten. Or so. I'll have you know I haven't developed a new eccentricity in ages. So I'm stable, at least. And I stand by the tie knotting.