The Naked Drinking Club (14 page)

‘Kerry!’ shouted Jim from the back yard.

‘What?’

‘Get out here, I want to show you something!’

I hobbled out, carefully trying to avoid toe contact with the ground.

Jim was stroking a small animal the size of a cat, with a grey coat. It was fat like a koala, and had big eyes. It was sitting on the wall.

‘Check this out,’ said Jim, with the letter in his other hand.

‘What is it?’ I put my hand out to touch it.

‘It’s a possum, I’m pretty certain.’

‘Why is it here, is it lost?’

Jim laughed. ‘No, it’s not lost, they live all over the place. They’re tame like koalas, just like we have squirrels. It’s just one of the things they have floating around Australia.’

‘Fuck, there’s so much stuff here, isn’t there? It’s so different from home. It’s weird, don’t you think? How far away we are?’

‘That’s the idea, isn’t it? To be as far away as possible?’ His voice tailed off at the end. He seemed unusually wistful for him.

‘Have you come to travel round then go back or have you come here to stay?’ I put my hand out to the possum.

‘Probably the latter. No plans. How about you?’

‘Same. I’ve technically only got six months with my visa. If I wanted to stay, I’d have to get married, I suppose.’

The possum chewed a branch and seemed quite happy with the two of us stroking it.

‘Don’t you miss teaching?’ I asked.

Jim was thirty-five and looked fit and healthy. He gave the impression that he liked his solitude above the company of others, and so I could never work out why he ended up in that particular job.

‘There’s this misconception about teachers, that we all feel so passionate about teaching and that we’re all so earnest and feel so fulfilled by educating young people, that we’re all fucking Sidney bloody Poitier. But we’re not. I regret the day I set foot in teaching; it was a fucking nightmare from beginning to end. It nearly cost me my sanity and there’s never a day goes by when I’m not glad to be away from it.’

‘Don’t you feel like a teacher here with us? Being the supervisor, driving us around, planning where we go, keeping us in line?’

‘Different this. It’s a laugh, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not a proper job, is it?’

‘No, it’s like a show or a game.’ I felt we were just using the possum by now in order to have our conversation, and if it moved away we would have to stop.

‘It’s a game all right. I would never have imagined me ending up in a place like this, two years ago even.’

‘Where were you two years ago?’ My hand felt grubby from the possum coat.

‘Two years ago I was playing a very different game from this, that’s for sure.’ He broke up his sentence with forced laughter.

‘What game was that, then?’

There was a loud bang from the street and the possum scurried away.

‘I’ll tell you one time, if we go away. There’ll be plenty of time to get drunk together.’ Jim wiped his hands on the jeans that he was never out of despite how warm it was.

‘Away where?’

‘The Gold Coast. Greg might have a trip planned. That’s what happens every so often, apparently, don’t know much more than that just now.’ He shook his airmail letter. ‘Got to catch the post.’

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

‘IT IS NICE.’
She hummed and hawed. ‘And I do agree with you, the other two just set it off nicely.’ The lady tried to get her husband’s attention.

I felt myself trying too hard, so I eased off a bit. I learned that trying too noticeably hard will get you no sales.

The lady had three paintings laid out that she fancied; predictably, it was the triptych. Her husband sat on the sofa watching the prime-time news. He was completely uninterested but seemed happy allowing her to choose what she liked.

It was my third day in a row of selling only one painting, despite the fact that I was adhering to another new healthier life plan. I had drunk only three or four beers each night, had made a considerable effort to eat well, and had cut out cigarettes until midday. However, my new approach didn’t seem to be helping much, so by the time I’d reached the second house in Magic Cove in the suburbs of Clifton Gardens, I’d already decided that I’d exercised enough self-control for this week and that it wasn’t paying off.

I had heard nothing from Hank, which was a total disappointment. I would have expected a response from anyone with any information almost straight away, but to me a week without hearing anything meant I would have to give up on him and pursue some other angle of the search.

‘Colin. What do you think? Come on, love, help me out.’ The woman clicked her fingers, and rolled her eyes at me.

Colin was watching a report on Channel 7 about a Christian movement led by some freak called the Reverend
Fred
Neil, who was leading a march in Sydney against what seemed like absolutely everyone who wasn’t a Christian. I tried to watch the item, bored with the situation. The husband wouldn’t look up from the screen. He wore top half officeworker clothes, bottom half sweatpants, which was a sign to me that he was tired and just wanted to be left to the television. He grunted in response to his wife’s plea.

‘I’m just not sure.’

I eased right back. ‘Would you mind if I sat down for a moment and left you to take this in your own time?’ I asked, already sitting down. The husband looked up, which I knew was a bad sign.

‘No, go ahead, love.’ She scrutinised the painting. ‘Is it meant to be wet? The paint’s all sticky over here by the trees.’ She pointed to the three brown strokes on the left painting.

‘Yes, it’s very normal, it’s the nature of oils,’ I said, as the man glanced over again. ‘They will dry over the next few weeks.’

‘I do think they would look good above the sofa.’ She held one up. ‘Actually, I might take it over there and just get an idea.’

‘You do what you want, and only buy it if you are sure. It’s no good me telling you what I think and what I like, when at the end of the day you know what you like.’ I pulled some easygoing bullshit out of my bag.

‘Would you mind helping me just hold that up?’ She pointed. ‘Just above where my husband’s sitting.’

I obliged, trying not to disturb the husband in any way despite the fact we were holding the paintings directly above him.

‘Colin, just have a look. It does look nice.’

Colin looked above him, but wouldn’t budge further than that.

‘Up to you.’ My spirits lifted. I detected a green light. I figured they would be card buyers or possibly cheque, but not cash. Office workers rarely had cash as opposed to manual workers or ethnic groups.

My arms were getting sore from holding the paintings up. The wife had me up and down to the sofa five times. She was hopelessly insecure without her husband’s backing, and
although
he’d given her permission to do what she wanted, I could see that in reality she couldn’t.

‘OK, how much?’ she said eventually, now that we were off the news and on to the ads before
Emergency Ward 901
.

‘The oils cost one hundred and fifteen dollars each.’ I never ran the price together for a multiple sale straight away; that would come next. I didn’t want to overwhelm the customer with a large sum straight away.

‘And for the three?’

‘Well, that would be three hundred and forty-five dollars for three oils.’ I thought I heard the husband laugh from his sofa.

‘Can’t you sell me them at a reduced rate as I’m considering more than one?’

I had already weighed up the pros and cons of bartering with them in my first ten minutes in their house, and decided that it would work against me. This was a fairly educated, well-spoken couple with a stable income, judging by their house and clothes, and experience had taught me by now to know that people like to think they want a bargain but they don’t really. The moment the painting is brought down in price, they immediately distrust it. I would have felt confident bartering with a builder, or cab driver, but not these people. I would have to teach Colin and his wife the value of my beautiful works of art.

‘I’m sorry but the reduction in price has already been accounted for with the removal of the gallery aspect. If you were to find these paintings in a small gallery, let’s say, or a café, you would find that they would fetch this plus another fifty dollars just for the privilege of hanging there.’ I felt Colin turning towards me, but when I looked at him, he glanced away.

‘It’s just a lot to pay out unexpectedly.’ She laughed tensely. ‘I wasn’t planning to buy a painting tonight.’ She had a simple and honest point, and as usual I was going to have to think of an effective comeback.

‘I know, you’re right, but often the most spontaneous things in our lives are the best, don’t you think?’ Predictably they said nothing to that. ‘Look, they are paintings done by artists who want to live and work as artists.’

‘Oh, I know that, I’m not arguing with you there.’ She started stroking her throat, which was a cry for help, and I was about to give her some.

‘I’m sorry if I get carried away at this point, it’s just I feel very strongly about the amount of money and commission galleries take from artists. That’s why we formed this way of working.’ I became so strident, I believed myself again. ‘And yes, it is technically door-to-door selling, but it’s what we believe in. We believe in bringing art to the people.’ I made the inverted commas sign with my two index fingers, to reinforce our motto.

‘I understand and I agree with you about the price of them elsewhere. I’m just not sure if I should pay all that tonight, that’s all.’

‘Entirely up to you.’

Colin got up and left the room.

‘Take your time, honestly. I like it when people take their time,’ I said.

‘Let me have a word with my husband.’

‘Sure,’ I said cheerfully, knowing that Colin would never, despite his passivity while I’d been there, allow his wife to use any of their money to buy my or anybody else’s paintings. While they were both out of the room I slumped in the chair momentarily, running my hands over my face with the kind of body language that you don’t want your customer to see. The Joyce Cane carpet sale ad came on as usual, boasting further and final reductions on all carpets in her Parramatta Road showroom. The couple came back in; I sat upright and changed my tired face to neutral. I could already tell by her expression that she wasn’t going to buy.

‘Sorry, but I don’t think so. Sorry about that, really.’

‘You don’t have to apologise to her, you didn’t ask for her to try to sell you stuff,’ Colin said, pulling the ring on a can of Foster’s and falling back into the sofa without even looking at me.

I had a real problem with him now; I would have to deal with him. At moments like this, it was hard to contain my rage, for the rage I felt against the people rejecting my selling technique had become indicative of the rage I had felt most of
my
life against the world and most of the people in it, and inevitably the rage I felt against my mother. It would be so easy, just once even, to let myself go and tell Colin, or whoever I was working my arse off in front of, to fuck right off. But it would be so wrong, and I had vowed that, no matter what lows I would experience in this game, I would keep control of the urge to lose it. I could play games with these people, I could politely express my disappointment, but I wouldn’t allow myself to lose it.

Colin was, in my opinion, about as rude and annoying as anyone I’d come across so far. I was going to sell him a painting – fuck the triptych, even if I sold him one I would be happy. But it had to be him I was winning over now, not his pathetic, insecure, can’t-make-a-decision-for-herself wife.

‘Sure, no problem, I’ll just pack up.’ I began going through the motions of leaving. The wife looked guilty while the husband looked more relaxed and pleased with himself, which made my blood boil.

‘It’s interesting.’ I casually set my trap.

‘What is?’ she asked, as I’d hoped.

‘It’s just interesting all the different people you come across when you do what I do. You think you have a sense of people and what they like, but you’ve just proved me wrong.’ I slowed down my packing, careful not to run out of paintings to pack away before they bit at my bait.

‘Why’s that, then?’ She still spoke for the both of them.

‘Well, based on what I would call instinct, like, you know, the surroundings, your colour scheme, everything, I would have thought that you’d have gone for a very different kind of painting to this one, which is, in my opinion, rather bland.’ I waved goodbye to the triptych sale, but I had to scapegoat it in favour of hooking them in on something else.

‘No, I liked it, I really do. I just think it’s too much money.’

The husband still fixed his gaze on the television. I couldn’t be sure whether he had listened to anything I had said, but if I was reading his type correctly then he was hanging on my every word.

‘I would have thought that you’d like this one.’ I held up the Peter Stuger, and, right on cue, Colin turned his head away
from
the television and on to the painting that I had the audacity to tell his wife that she should have liked.

‘No, I don’t like that one so much,’ she said.

He just sneered. I was counting on him saying something but the sneer reaction would have to do.

‘Oh, you don’t like that?’ I said, with deep warmth and charm in my voice despite the tightness of my jaw.

‘That is awful, look at it,’ said Colin suddenly. He was engaging with me, right where I wanted him to be.

‘You don’t like this?’

‘No, I bloody don’t.’ He wasn’t angry or aggressive, just dismissive and sneering.

‘You are obviously someone who knows exactly what kind of work they like.’

‘Yes I do, and it’s not that crap.’

There were proper sentences being exchanged between us now, and that was something I could work with. The wife had sat down, taking a back seat, leaving it to me and Col to battle it out.

‘OK and you don’t like this.’ I brought out another nondescript landscape.

‘That’s not so bad, but the other one’s really bad. I mean, anyone can see that, you don’t have to be a bloody art expert.’