The Happiness Show (14 page)

 

Hey, I shave it so that I look less bald. I put it to you that you are at once proud and ashamed of your roots.

 

I prefer to think I have the courage of my contradictions.

 

Well, I am (and you won't like this) much more classist than I am racist.

 

Seeing as class is such a preoccupation with you Brits, this is not surprising to me. I myself am a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

 

Some of my best friends are working class.

 

I don't believe that for a second. The only working-class people you know would be your cleaner and your nanny. Oh, and your kids' nanny.

 

Now it's a little bit later. I'm just back from lunch. I had sushi. Why do I always think of you when I eat sushi?

 

Because I taste like fish?

 

Ha, ha. It always takes me by surprise when they speak to me in Japanese at this place. It's my fault – I wish I'd never started it. I don't ever properly understand what they've said until about half an hour later.

 

Oh yeah, the Japanese thing is weird. Australian tourist places tend to be full of happy-snappy Japanese. I'll be muscling through the turnstiles at the Steve Irwin zoo, the
Neighbours
theme park or
Crocodile Dundee on Ice
and the little bit of Japanese I used to know (Hello, How are you, Excuse me, Go left, Go right, Go straight and Please don't spaff in my hair I just washed it) comes flooding back. It must be bizarre for the office ladies and salary men, seeing this crazy Celtic woman speaking Nihongo. Or when I'm in Melbourne and eating balls on sticks at some yakitori joint. Hearing Japanese again feels like having a long-distance phone call.

 

Do you miss Japan?

 

Sometimes. I have these strange dreams that I'm back there. I wake up thinking about the doilies in the taxis, the way the staff greet you when you walk into an izakaya, the sounds of the pachinko parlours and those vans that used to trawl the streets with insane politicians on the back, shouting through megaphones and flanked by lovely ladies wearing sashes.

 

I forgot about those megaphone guys. I miss the little streets and saying ‘Moshi moshi' when you answer the phone. Do you remember the rain, the sticky humid rain?

 

All those umbrellas.

 

Did you ever go to a love hotel?

 

Did you?

 

I asked first.

 

Well, yes, okay, I did, but only for research.

 

Ha ha. You comedians can pass anything off as research. I wish I'd known you in Tokyo. You could have saved me from all the earnest Americans. Those girls were all too genki for my liking. But the Canadians were always good value.

But anyway, back to what you said before. Interesting that you often refer to your Irish roots. You New World types (and I include the Americans in this) seem to be obsessed with which Old Country you come from. As if it's a badge of honour to be from somewhere as opposed to … what, exactly? Being indigenous?

 

Are you banging on about this again? I remember in London we had a long discussion about this. I don't see myself as ‘from' anywhere. And I don't see Australia as
my
country but rather as just
a
country. If you came here you would understand. The place feels like an airport. Everyone on their way in or on their way out. And I don't really feel Irish, even if I have cashed in on it from time to time (for example, when I auditioned for Riverdance. Which reminds me: What has fifty legs and one cunt? Riverdance).

Actually, I've just realised something. I probably consider myself more a Melburnian than anything else. But I do believe nature trumps nurture and that there's some truth to the idea of a genetic imprint.

Got to go, the shepherd's pie is burning.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. I think Benjamin Franklin said that. Him or Britney Spears.

 

I think it was Samuel Johnson. So one of my grandmothers was from Frankfurt and the other was from Saint-Étienne. Am I German? French? No, fuck it, I'm British. Last time I went to Paris I almost got my head kicked in.

We have a version of this in England amongst the aristocrats. They always say, ‘How far back does your family go?' I say, ‘Right back to the amoeba. And yours? Or did you skip a couple of evolutionary steps?'

 

That's funny. Check for thumbs and then the small of their back where a tail might have grown. That's the sure way to identify queue jumpers. And I should know; we're as inbred as they come.

 

I would love to come to Australia, though.

 

Is that an elaborate plan to have a drunken pash with me in a bathroom at a dinner party?

 

Bathroom, eh? Make sure it's carpeted.

 

Will a bathmat do?

 

It'll have to.

 

Meet you there.

 

Great. Wear that perfume you always do and I'll be able to find you in the dark.

 

I've got to go and have a swim before the pool closes. Get a hard one up ya.

 

What does ‘Get a hard one up you' mean?

 

Put it this way, if Victoria Beckham had done, maybe she wouldn't look so sour.

 

Okay, I speak the international language of single entendre. Enjoy your swim.

 

One day, Tom wrote:

 

I think of you every day. You're standing on a remote landing strip as I land a plane. You're waiting with a campervan, ready to disappear into the bush together to start a new, survivalist existence.

 

Thrilled, Lizzie responded:

 

Nice, but a posh tosser like you wouldn't last a week.

 

The conversations went on like this for days. London was ten hours behind and she knew that any time after dinner something might roll in. Sometimes she found herself awake at 2 a.m., typing away under the guise of doing research for the show.

‘Hey, Lizzie, are you coming to bed?' Jim would call out.

‘In a minute.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘Happiness.'

Which was partly true.

She would roll into bed sparkling and smiling. Jim would be so sweetly asleep and she would feel so far away. His body smelt so familiar, of Log Cabin tobacco and Palmolive shaving stick. She imagined what she and Tom would talk about if they were lying side by side again. She would touch herself and imagine it was Tom.

One night when Lizzie was quite drunk and feeling very rude she wrote:

 

I want to be somewhere in Asia, just you and me, full of dirty martinis and ecstasy. Ceiling fan, mosquito net, white sheets, lots of teak. Loved up, sexy as fuck.

We're both lightly covered in sweat. After a long, long, slow hour of kissing, smelling and caressing – no, not caressing, something a little harder – I lay you back on your pillow, kiss your beautiful mouth and work my way down your chest, your stomach, and bury my head between your legs, breathing in the earthy, sexy muskiness. Then I take your cock into my mouth and I suck you, lick you, swirl my tongue around the head, feeling drops of your come start to spurt … I put your balls in my mouth … I stop and I start, then I take you in my mouth, firm and slow. I put my tongue, my lips, my mouth on your cock. I kiss, lick and swirl and gently bring you to climax, sliding a finger inside you as you come.

Then I get up on all fours and it's your turn.

 

Tom received it but never responded. He couldn't stand up for hours. Lizzie was glad he didn't write back. She had gotten a bit carried away. But something had woken up in her and it wouldn't go back to sleep.

Don't think Lizzie Quealy didn't feel guilty. She did. She felt very guilty, but she told herself they were only emails. She wasn't actually doing anything wrong. When she felt dirty and deceitful, she closed her eyes and waited for the next wave of excitement to wash her away.

 

It was thrilling to have a secret. Lizzie felt like she had a part of herself back. She was in love, speedy and preoccupied. She swam every day and watched the glorious naked bodies of the women in the change room as they undressed, fascinated to see the young unmarked girls alongside the mothers with their short hair and their caesarean scars and the old women with their saggy skin and varicose veins.

Lizzie pounded up and down the lanes, knowing that this was her body and it was the only one she was getting. And it wouldn't always be like this, feel like this, look like this. She loved the stillness underwater and the contrast with the world above. As her arm reached over for the next stroke she'd feel sun, wind, rain or cold on any given day. Sometimes all four over the course of her twenty laps.

An old woman called Lorna would often catch her eye. Lizzie only knew her name because she'd been coming here for donkey's years and everybody knew her: the people on reception, the cleaners and the pool attendants. ‘How's it going, Lorna?' they'd say as they went about their business. And she'd call back something like, ‘Any fitter and I'd be dangerous.' She had a loud throaty laugh and you could tell just by listening to her that she'd had a full life. A life full of loves, losses, food, fucking and dancing. A lot of dancing. You could tell she could sum people up in a whiff.

One day in the change room Lorna turned to Lizzie and said, totally out of the blue, ‘You know why old people like to swim so much?'

‘No,' said Lizzie, drying herself. ‘Why?'

‘Because in the water, their bodies feel young again.' Lorna struggled into her big beige undies. ‘Enjoy it while you can, darl.'

Lizzie dived and swam like the clappers that afternoon but she couldn't get those words out of her head.

In the water their bodies feel young again.

 

She straddled her bike and rode through the dry dusty day, down Sydney Road in her bathers and sarong, her hair still wet. She rode through the smell of baking bread, brewing coffee, cigarettes, hot asphalt and diesel fuel and before she knew it, she'd dropped in at Jules's. She had to borrow an electric frypan because her stove was on the blink. Jules was still as sick as a dog.

‘Jesus, mate, how many weeks are you?'

‘Ten. You know they call it ten but it's really twelve or eight, I can't remember. Something. When does it get better?'

‘Don't ask me. I've erased all those memories. They are now officially repressed. I did have shocking indigestion towards the end. I remember one week all I could eat were hardboiled eggs, beetroot and liquorice. Did you have a look at that website?'

‘Tried them all. Ginger, spearmint, even something called slippery elm bark which is a powder you mix with water and it has the consistency of spit. And they do fuck all, Liz. Fuck all.'

‘You know what they say: sick mother, healthy baby.'

‘You know what else they say, Lizzie?'

‘What?'

‘Shut the fuck up. Anyway, how did you know I'd be home?'

Suddenly Lizzie realised it was Friday. ‘I didn't. Why are you home? I just saw your car.'

‘I've got three weeks of accumulated annual leave and sick days so I'm using them. I've never wanted to lie on the couch, watch
Wheel of Fortune
and eat toasted cheese sandwiches so much in my life. It's like being hung over, jetlagged and carsick all at the same time.'

‘Stop whinging, you've got your baby now.'

They smiled at each other. Lizzie stood up.

‘Fancy a cup of tea, primigravida?'

‘Sure, but what's primigravida?'

‘It's a woman having a first baby. I don't want to brag but that makes me a multigravida.'

‘Sounds like a disease.'

‘It is, mate.'

‘Where are the kids?'

‘Having a sleepover at Nana Myrna's. Jim's down at the school doing some training in anti-bullying techniques.'

‘That'll come in handy round the home.'

‘Don't laugh. He has his moments.'

‘Yeah, his pussy-whipped moments.'

As Lizzie banged around in the kitchen, she broached the topic.

‘Jules, I've been meaning to tell you. When I was in London, I bumped into Tom.'

Jules spat her tea across the room.

‘Tom? TOM?! Tom as in Hugh Grant Tom? You fucking bumped into Tom and you didn't tell me?'

‘I know, I know, it just hasn't been the right time. But now it is.' She handed Jules a cup of tea and told her everything. Everything as in bumping into Tom at Keith's place, the London Eye, Celia's car accident, the emailing, the lot. By the time she finished, she was flushed, speeding and buzzing. It was absolute heaven being able to talk about Tom, to say his name out loud. Her eyes shone and her voice sparkled. She loved hearing his name hanging in the air.

When she stopped, Jules looked gobsmacked.

‘So did he ask about me?'

Lizzie laughed and threw a pillow at Jules.

‘In all seriousness, Lizzie, how could you keep this all to yourself?'

‘I don't know. I must admit it's been kind of nice to have a secret.'

‘You dirty dog, Lizzie. He's your unfinished business.'

‘We all have unfinished business. What about George?'

Jules almost blushed. ‘I am so over him. I keep bumping into him everywhere, at Coles, at the petrol station, on the street. I've seen him deteriorate from a rock star to a suburban dad. They've got three kids now, you know? And a Commodore. The thing you and Tom have going for you is that you're so far away from each other. You can remain fossilised in each other's minds.'

‘Fossilised? Thanks very much!'

‘No, seriously, Liz, think about it. You're still twenty-seven in his mind and he's still twenty-eight in yours. You haven't watched each other go through the whole pregnant and parenting thing. You haven't bumped into each other at parent–teacher interviews or done what I did the other day, pull up next to George at the lights and see him smacking his kid.'

‘I know. I blame STA.'

‘What?'

‘You know, STA. Student travel. If it wasn't for cheap travel, we'd never have met.'

‘You and me?'

‘No, dickhead, me and Tom.'

‘Maybe you would have met in London.'

‘No fucking way. Don't you understand how the English class system works? But all bets are off when you travel. Travel is a whole different planet. You meet people you wouldn't cross paths with in a million years under normal circumstances.'

‘What do you want to happen? You're not going to leave Jim and the kids and move to murky, cold, depressing, expensive London all in the name of a root, are you?'

‘No, of course not. What do you reckon? But the cyber flirting is amazing and if you want to know, I can't stop thinking about him. I barely sleep.'

‘You two did have a pretty amazing chemistry. I remember I couldn't get the smell of your chemistry out of my doona for weeks after you had it off the day I moved into Sophie's. Hey, I forgot, did I tell you she died?'

‘Fuck off. Sophie? How do you know?'

‘I got a Christmas card from one of her cousins. We met on that ferry trip in Greece – you know, the one where I thought I was going to die. Anyway, cancer, it was. Ovarian.'

‘Fuck. Any kids?'

‘No, thank God. Maybe that was why.'

‘No, Jules. Shit happens, that's why. There doesn't have to be a reason for everything. I wonder if Tom knows.'

‘Ah, there you go, working Tom into every conversation …'

Lizzie picked up their cups and took them to the sink.

‘Are you in love or is it just a crush?' Jules called after her.

‘Good question. What's the difference?'

Jules lay back and looked at the ceiling. ‘I think … when you have a crush on someone, it's more childish and less sustainable. A knight in shining armour kind of thing. You can't see any of their flaws, or you refuse to. It's exciting but it's draining, because there's so much you don't know. And it's likely to fall apart at the first drama. Loving someone means seeing them warts and all and
still
loving them. Even if they do a terrible thing, or reject you.'

‘Very profound for someone with pregnancy brain, Jules.'

‘I know, I've even impressed myself.' Jules was on a roll. ‘A crush is like beautiful costume jewellery but love is like a diamond – stronger, more beautiful, inherently more durable. It costs more, but it's worth more.'

Lizzie stared into space.

‘Well, Liz?'

‘I'm thinking … Can I get back to you with an answer? Maybe we should be thinking about a different word. Enamoured, besotted, smitten, I don't know. Anyway, where's Cam?'

‘He should be home soon.' Jules's tone changed. ‘Hey, Lizzie, don't do anything stupid.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know what I mean. Everyone wants what you've got: someone who loves them, a happy home life and a couple of excruciatingly cute kids. People climb mountains for it, they commit murders for it. You've just had it for so long you can't see it any more. You're taking it for granted. You and Jim are great. The kids are perfect. It's not worth fucking it up. Look, I know it gets boring sometimes but you know, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, till death do us part et cetera …'

‘Yeah, but there's nothing about cyber flirting in there. Plus we never married anyway. Thanks for the lecture, Jules.'

‘Hey, I'm your mate, it's my job. Just keep in mind that these things never end well.'

At that Lizzie snapped. ‘Just fuck off, Jules. Just fuck off. How terribly fucking boring and middle class of you. How do you know if Jim and I are great? Who's to say we'll even be together in five years? Have you seen the divorce rate? And who knows how many married people are happy, having affairs, jerking off to porn, committing emotional infidelity. Why can't I have this little moment? I shouldn't? Says fucking who? Plenty of happy relationships have only survived because of affairs.'

‘What shit! How would you know, Lizzie?'

‘Because I talk to people. And because I'm not a fuckwit. It's impossible for affairs to be all bad and monogamy all good.'

‘But how good can a relationship be if one partner thinks it's okay to commit adultery?'

‘For fuck's sake, Jules, “commit adultery”? What kind of archaic language is that? Are we going to talk about sluts and virgins next? Spinsters and bastards?'

Jules shifted in her chair. ‘But Lizzie. The guilt.'

‘Who's to say I'll feel guilty? Maybe I won't. Maybe no one will ever find out and it'll be my most treasured moment, the memory that keeps me warm in my old age, the last thing I think of before I cark it. Maybe having a moment with Tom will keep Jim and me together. Did you think of that? Maybe I need to get it out of my system.'

‘How will you live with yourself?'

‘Jules! How will I live with myself if I don't? “Happy ever after”? How likely is it that the person who was perfect for you at twenty-five will still be perfect for you fifty years later? How healthy can it be for us to want the same thing, eat the same meal, fuck the same person for twenty, thirty, forty years? Most people with children wouldn't be together if it weren't for the kids. And who says staying together is better for them anyway? I wish my parents had split up. I might have had a chance to see what a functional relationship looked like.'

Lizzie turned around and bit her lip, swallowing tears as she got a glass of water.

Jules was silent for a moment. ‘Dad had an affair. Well, it was a fling, when he went away on a conference about ten years ago. It was devastating. They never got the trust back. Never. And it didn't mean anything to him. He regretted it. It broke Mum's heart.'

‘Ted did the dirty on your mum? Really?' Lizzie was staggered. She had always seen Jules's parents as the ideal couple. ‘Look, nothing has even happened, Jules. He's in London, I'm here. I'm sorry for the tirade. It's not you. I'm confused.'

‘Lizzie, I'm just scared for you.'

‘I know. But Jules, there's no way around this one but through. The emotions are so strong. I don't know what the fuck is going to happen. Most likely it'll just peter out. Promise me you'll help pick up the pieces?'

‘As long as you let me say, “I told you so.”'

‘Deal. I've got to go.'

‘Keep me posted. Hey, listen, we're having an ultrasound Wednesday week.'

‘Great! Call me when you've seen the little monkey and we'll neck a bottle of champers.'

‘I'll be the one necking a bottle of Mylanta.'

Lizzie rode home, winding through the backstreets. She thought about what Jules had said. She knew her friend was right. It was a dangerous business. She wasn't sure what she was worried most about: fucking things up with Jim or fucking things up with Tom.

Although they weren't married, she liked the wedding vows. But ‘till death do us part' had always freaked her out a bit. She preferred to think of it not as physical death but the death of the relationship. To honour and cherish, not as long as we both shall live, but as long as we both shall love.

When she got home she was dusty and dry. She grabbed a long glass of water and checked her emails and, suddenly, she was wet.