Simply Heaven (8 page)

And still I wait. I’m glad I didn’t do anything as foolish as smile when I started; the expression would be all over the place after such a lengthy performance.

Eventually, she says: ‘There isn’t any money, you know. Not for you, anyway.’

This brings me up with a jolt. This isn’t a needling little prod like the last one, a small experiment to see how I will react. This is a direct accusation.

‘Sorry?’ I say.

‘I’m sure you are,’ she says. Then: ‘Would it be too much of an imposition to ask you for a glass of water?’

I get to my feet. ‘Fridge water?’

‘Thank you.’

I’m surprised she’s given me this much thinking time. Although, of course, I quickly realise that what she’s trying to give me is stewing time. What she wants is for me to get so worked up that Rufus will come back to find me snarling. She’s smart. I guess she’s already figured that I might have a bit of a temper on me, and is hoping that she can needle me enough to show her son what I look like when something’s got me going.

In the kitchen, pulse going like the clappers, I roll the water bottle over my forehead, my cheeks and the back of my neck, and concentrate for a moment on lowering my heart rate. I take half a dozen deep breaths, do a bit of counting, and, once the moment of panic has begun to subside, I return to my mother-in-law.

She accepts the glass without thanks, takes a sip.

‘No,’ she continues, as though this hiatus had never happened, ‘Rufus hasn’t got much more than a bean to rub together. It’s all in trust, I’m afraid. Has been for years. Since the socialists started trying to get their hands on it.’

‘I may be Australian,’ I inform her, ‘but I’m not totally wet behind the ears.’

‘I’m sure you aren’t,’ she says drily. ‘I just thought I should let you know. There are so many fortune-hunters in the world,’ she says pointedly, ‘and so many of them end up disappointed.’

I take another sip of water, glance down at my watch. He’s only been gone five minutes. If he doesn’t make it back quickly, I’m in deep, deep shtook. So I decide to take the bull by the horns. ‘Mary,’ I ask as pleasantly as I can manage, ‘are you implying that I’ve married Rufus for his money? Because, you know, that’s not the case.’

She sips in turn. ‘It’s not
always
money. Cachet. Social status. He’s a very attractive man from many points of view.’

‘He certainly is. It sort of struck me the first time I clapped eyes on him. But believe me, I didn’t know anything about this landed gentry sh—’ I catch myself, correct my language in a hurry ‘—ebang until yesterday afternoon. He kept very shtum about that. Seriously. As far as I was concerned, he was ordinary. Well, not ordinary. Obviously. I wouldn’t have married an ordinary fella.’

Call-me-Mary lets out a laugh that’s a million miles away from the men-in-the-room fairy tinkle she affected when we first met. A rooster-like explosion of disbelief and disdain.

‘So how exactly was I supposed to tell? With my magical powers of perception?’

‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ she snaps. ‘As you said yourself, you’re hardly wet behind the ears. Where did you think this house came from? And his accent? Surely you’re not trying to tell me you couldn’t tell something from his accent?’

I force myself to relax against the back of the chair. ‘Mary,’ I say, and allow just a little trickle of I’m-indulging-you into my voice, ‘if your film industry is to be believed, ninety-five per cent of your population talks like Rufus, and anybody who doesn’t is probably carrying a gun. And besides, just look at him! The guy dresses like a scarecrow! Jeez. If I saw him in a bar, I’d probably think he was the cleaner come early.’

She blinks. Well, I guess blinks is the right word for it. Her upper lashes snap down to meet the lower ones, like the eyelids on an old china doll. ‘I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, come on, Mary. That linen suit with the elbow patches? Those checked shirts with the holes in the cuffs that look like they ought to be dishcloths? The tweed jacket? The lining on that must have gone while he was still learning to tie his shoelaces.’

‘It’s a
hacking
jacket,’ she replies icily, ‘and it was his grandfather’s.’

What in hell’s name is a hacking jacket? Something you wear for coughing in?

‘Well, exactly,’ I say. ‘I mean, what sort of rich fella wears hand-me-downs?’

The blink again. ‘The sort,’ she replies – and I think, yes, I’ve got her grinding her teeth – ‘who has clothes to
inherit
.’

‘Oh, right,’ I reply, injecting as much airiness into the words as I can muster. ‘My lot only ever have one suit at a time, and they tend to be buried in it.’

A long, frosty silence. I check my watch. Ten minutes now. Hopefully he will be queuing at the checkout, or at least at the deli counter.

‘How’s your water?’ I ask.

‘Fine,’ she snaps again, ‘Fine. It’s water. How else would it be?’

‘Just asking,’ I say. I’m beginning to think that I might quite enjoy winding this woman up. I mean, if she’s going to think I’m a peasant, I may as well take it all the way. I bury my face in my glass to hide the smile that has started to play across my lips.

Eventually she can’t resist beginning to speak again. ‘So. You do something that involves
feet
?’

I nod. Think: I must remember to ask her what
she
does later. Just give her a little time to get settled in, first.

‘And how about the rest of the family?’ she asks. ‘Any more chiropodists in the family? Or are you the only one?’

I go for it, really go for it. Lay on the accent like peanut butter. ‘Naooouw waaay!’ I cry, hamming it up till her eardrums reverberate. ‘OI’m the inderl
ik
-chewull in
moy
fimmer-luy.’

There’s a long pause, and I think that perhaps she might have realised that I’m jerking her chain. But the encrusted horror in the ‘rii-ull-uh’ that emerges from her mouth suggests that she hasn’t picked up on it at all, but has merely adjusted her own accent to show the contrast with my own proletarian vowels. I’ve noticed this before, actually: the very grand rarely have what anyone else would call a sense of humour, especially about themselves. I suppose a sense of humour is hard to develop when you’ve got so many noses wedged up your butt.

‘Aow, yih! They were happy as Larry when I went to college when I was twenty-three. An
ology
in the family!’

‘Really,’ she says again. ‘And what does your father do?’

‘Whaddya
think
? He’s a Greek Cypriot, for crying out loud. Obviously, he bought a cab, like everybody else.’

‘A
cab
?’

‘Yih. Done pretty nicely out of it, as well.’ Yeah. But I’m not going to tell you the half of it.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yih. After he married my old girl he jumped over the wall and set up a firm of his own. My mum helped out in the office, you know? They’re pretty much retired now, but life’s treated them pretty good, all told.’

Mary, by this time, has the sort of ghastly smile on her face that you usually only see stuck to the corners of cathedrals. ‘A taxi firm? How … Well. And weren’t you tempted to follow in their footsteps?’

‘Naaaoooouuuuw!’ I give her a really long one, watch her recoil. ‘My brother, Costa, did, though. Dad’s more of a sleeping partner these days.’

‘Costa?’

‘Yes. Like the coffee.’

‘Like the coffee,’ she echoes, and it’s evident that she’s not got the first inkling as to what I’m on about.

‘Yeah, yeah, but that’s not him. Though he’s in catering as well.’

‘
In
catering?’ The ‘
handbag
’ accent is right back. ‘What sort of catering? A restaurant?’

‘
Kebabs
,’ I say, and almost squirm with pleasure at the look of abject misery that crosses her face.

This is great. She thought she was going to put the frighteners on me, and I’ve turned it right on its head. Let’s face it: my mother-in-law may have had some fantasies about the unsuitability of my background, but what I’m telling her is all her wildest nightmares come true. I’m not going to let her off the hook.

‘Kebabs?’ Her voice is faint. ‘As in
doner
kebabs?’ She pronounces it ‘dough-ner’, as in blood.

‘Oh, yih. Doner, shish, shawarma, kofte, iskender. Pretty much anything you want, really. They’re pretty popular, and not just with the ethnic communities.’

I pronounce ‘ethnic’ ‘ith-nikk’, and watch my mother-in-law close her eyes and suppress a shudder. This is fun. This is really fun.

‘He and Dad had this great idea, and it sort of mushroomed,’ I tell her. ‘Like, you know how a guy likes a few bevvies and a takeaway of an evening? And I don’t know if you know this, but our police have been cracking down on drink-driving lately?’

Mary says nothing. I don’t know if she thinks I’m extracting the Michael or not. Not, as it happens. Well, only with my delivery.

‘Anyways, they thought up the solution. Got franchises across most of the eastern seaboard. You’ve probably heard of them. KebabCab?’ I announce, keeping the relish (mild chilli, of course) out of my voice as best I can. ‘Get your fast food while you wait. Hundred-dollar surcharge if you chunder on the ride home.’

Eventually, and in a voice that contains more than a hint of a tremor, she says: ‘Well, you’re certainly going to find your new life a bit of a contrast with what you’re used to.’

‘No worries, Lady M,’ I quack, watching her jerk about like a marionette, ‘my old girl’s always kept a neat house, and if there’s no money, we could always think about opening up a couple of franchises in the grounds, eh?’

This time, I think I’ve gone too far. The light flush that has been playing over Mary’s complexion drains away, blanching her face. And, having begun to slump as I described my family history to her, she suddenly shoots erect as though she’s just got back from her duchess masterclass.

‘I didn’t say,’ she says, enunciating with vicious clarity, ‘that there was no money. I said that there was no money for
you
.’

It’s like having a bucket of cold water thrown over me. Once again I’m brought up short. My mother can be pretty scary, but this woman seems to have a built-in ice machine.

She raises her chin, the better to look down her nose at me, says: ‘I’ve got your measure, young woman. My son may be behaving like a cunt-struck teenager –’

It’s my turn to recoil. Cunt-struck?
Cunt-struck
? Where in the name of God did she learn a phrase like that?

‘– and from the way you were splayed out like a five-bob whore when I arrived here, I can understand why, but believe me, it won’t work with the rest of us.’

‘You know what?’ I retaliate. ‘I’ve married
Rufus
. I’ve not married the rest of you.’

‘Ah, my dear,’ she says, in a voice dripping with syrup, ‘if you believe that, you’re very, very foolish.’

I shrug. ‘No skin off my nose, Lady M. If you’re going to be like this I’ll just make sure I never see you.’

A fruity, perfumed laugh, this time from the back of the throat. I don’t like it. It’s got a triumphal edge.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she says, ‘you
are
naïve. Where on earth do you think you’re going to be living?’

Dad picks up, barks: ‘Hold on’ into the receiver and, before I can say anything, concludes the call he’s having on his cellphone.

‘Fuck ’em,’ he says. ‘Fuck ’em. No, fuck the lot of ’em. Tell them, that. Tell them, if I don’t hear from them by tomorrow then I’ll come round and fuck every single one of them personally. Yeah. That’s what I say. You tell them that. Fuck ’em.’

He listens for a moment.

‘H’OK,’ he says. ‘All right. I gotta go. Got someone on the other line. Bye, Mum. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Then he clears his throat and comes back to me. ‘Ghhello?’

My dad smokes cigars: big, fat stogies, the sort that smoulder slowly away for an hour at a time. He can generally be relied upon to chew his way through five or so of the things a day, blithely ignoring the Greek tragedy chorus that follows him around going: ‘why do you smoke those things? You know how bad they are for you. You’re going to die and leave me a widow, and your children orphans, and all because you can’t stop smoking …’

But the thing is, they’re so much more than the simple nicotine hit, though the amount of the drug he takes in every day would probably stop the heart of a water buffalo. They are a symbol of his success. Though, obviously, he was never in as dire a position as the wave of Cypriots who followed in his wake after 1974, it would still be fair to say that my father arrived in Oz with pretty much squat. His cigars are proof of the degree of his achievement, as my mother’s forays down Queen Street Mall are hers, and it would be impossible to overestimate the amount of pleasure they give him.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

‘Owa! Milloddy-girl!’ he shouts from the throat. Then takes the phone away from his face. ‘O! Colleen! It’s Milloddy!’

A distant squeal.

‘Melody! Where you been? We thought we were going to have to put the feelers out!’

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I’ve been, well – some stuff’s happened.’

‘Oh, no, what? You in jail? You need I send you some money?’

‘No, no … no, it’s nothing like that, Dad.’

‘Well, what is it, Melody? What can happen you don’t call your family, you don’t write, nothing for nearly two months? Last thing we hear, you’re leaving Cyprus, and then nothing. We been worried!’

‘I know, Dad, I know, and I’m really sorry.’

‘So you forgotten all about your family?’

‘Give it a rest. You’re tattooed on my heart. You know that.’

‘Well,’ he clears his throat contemplatively, ‘s’long’s you don’t go gettin’ laser treatment.’

‘How are things, Dad?’

‘H’OK,’ says my father. ‘Can’t stop your mother shopping, though. Every morning, shop shop shop, afternoon, shop shop shop, and now she discover the internet, it’s shop, shop, shop all night, too, you know? Guess what she bought the other day? Go on! Guess!’

‘I don’t know.’ With my mother, it could be anything. She’s the queen of impulse. I guess that’s where I got it from.