The Jacaranda House, page 3
Evie made a face. ‘Did you make her take it back?’
‘I tried.’ Polly sighed. ‘I think she needs something to love.’ She was silent for a moment, thinking, actually, so do I. ‘I mean, she loves us, but I think she needs something that depends on her. God, and now Star wants a dog.’
Evie leant towards the mirror to apply eyeshadow. ‘Oh, well, why not get a horse and a few cows as well?’
‘I thought we’d stick to smaller animals,’ Polly said, ‘like pigs and sheep. And maybe a few koalas, seeing we’re in Australia. It’s not the biggest of flats.’
‘That’s true. Well, I’m not coming to visit if there’s going to be cat shit everywhere.’
‘Don’t worry. Rhoda’s bankrupted herself buying all sorts of cat gadgets, including a poo box.’
‘Pity it didn’t use it this afternoon.’
Polly lit a cigarette and agreed. ‘God, it stank. It had the shits. I nearly spewed.’
‘Did you get it out?
‘With about two pints of Dettol.’ Polly laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Rho’s face when the kitten shat. I don’t think it’d occurred to her that anything like that would come out of its bum. I think she thought it was too . . . angelic.’
‘You should laugh more often,’ Evie said. ‘You always look so fierce.’
‘Do I? Well, I can’t help what I look like.’
‘You can, you know.’
Polly grunted noncommittally, and ferreted in her make-up kit for her eyeshadow palate. ‘Blue or mauve?’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ Evie said. ‘I know when you’re out of sorts. Is it Gina?’
‘No.’ It was.
‘Are you missing her?’
‘No.’ Polly was.
Evie looked at her in the mirror. ‘Why don’t you go home for a visit?’
‘I can’t go home. They all hate me.’
‘Because you sold her?’
‘I did not sell my daughter. That money’s still sitting in her bank account, for her to use one day.’
‘Well, you know what I mean,’ Evie said. ‘Surely all that won’t matter now. God, it’s been, what, eight years?’
‘You don’t know my mother. I can never go home.’
‘You can, Polly.’
Polly sat for a moment, then lit another smoke off the end of the cigarette smouldering in the ashtray. Evie knew what the real ‘selling Gina’ story was, but no one else at home did because no one had bothered to ask. They’d all been too busy judging her and condemning her terrible behaviour, and then she’d left New Zealand and it had been too late for explanations. But she hadn’t sold Gina, not really. Gina had always lived with Polly’s mother, Awhi, because Polly had known she couldn’t look after her. Not then. In the beginning she hadn’t wanted her because it had all been just so bloody awful but even after she’d come to love her she’d been working as a waitress, a model, and on and off as a prostitute, and her life was all over the place, and well, she’d just thought Gina would be better off with Awhi, who knew kids because she’d brought up eleven of her own.
But the more she’d thought about how she and her brothers and sisters had been raised, the more she’d clashed with Awhi over Gina. Their father, Pera, had been a drunk and a bully, and he’d terrorised the life out of all of them, her mother included, before he died when Polly was about twenty. She still wondered how much their mother could have done to stop him, especially when they were little. Could Awhi have done anything? And had she known how bad it really was? It had annoyed Polly to have to hand over the care of her daughter to a woman who hadn’t looked after her properly, but she hadn’t had much choice. She’d been living an unstable sort of life then. She was now. And her mother had cared for Gina well, and she’d been healthy and happy. The biggest problem was that Awhi had behaved as though Gina were her child. She, Polly, had paid for everything for Gina, and visited three or four times a week and taken her out, but Awhi had flatly refused to listen to any suggestions she’d had about Gina’s care. This had been on top of Awhi constantly sniping at her for the way she lived her life and for getting pregnant, and she hadn’t even known then she’d been working in a brothel. On and on it had gone, Awhi’s dislike radiating out at her.
And the more she’d watched the progress of her family over the next few years, the more convinced she’d become that Gina was surely doomed to the same lives of low-paying jobs and lack of ambition, initiative and opportunity all the rest of them were living. So when she’d bumped into an old client, James Murdoch, she’d told him that Gina was his, although she wasn’t, and blackmailed him and banked the money for Gina’s future. But when James’s wife found out, she’d insisted on taking Gina to Napier to be raised by the Murdoch family, and Polly had agreed. The Murdochs had offered three thousand pounds in ‘compensation’, and Polly had banked that for Gina as well. Which was better: being raised and educated by a very rich white family who owned a huge sheep station, or a poor family who’d been thrown off their land by the government and owned nothing and were at the bottom of the social heap? She’d thought she’d made the right choice at the time for Gina, and still did, if she took her own feelings out of it, because it had nearly torn out her heart to put Gina in the taxi that day with James Murdoch and his wife.
No one else had thought she’d made the right decision. Everyone had instantly decided she was the devil. Awhi had gone berserk, and so had Sonny at first, and he had raced down to Napier and brought Gina back. Awhi had hated her, Polly, ever since, and so had the rest of the family, except for Sonny and his wife, Allie. Of all her brothers and sisters, Sonny alone had continued to make an effort to keep in touch with her. No one else had understood what she’d done or why, but the Manaia family had always needed a scapegoat, and it had been her for years and years. She knew that. If the others were picking on her they didn’t have to look at themselves. She understood that, but after the selling Gina business she hadn’t wanted to be the scapegoat any more, so she’d left the country. It had worked, sort of, except she’d had to leave Gina, too. And she missed her desperately.
She and Evie finished making up in silence, but it was a companionable silence. It was funny. No matter how blunt Evie was when they talked it never annoyed her, unlike the way she felt when other people tried to give her advice. Other people usually just got up her nose. Of course, maybe it was her that was wrong and not the advice. But she didn’t think so.
Evie changed into her attractive spangled dancing costume, which she’d made herself. It was gorgeous. Slinky, sparkly and with white- and blush-coloured ostrich feathers. She also designed and made costumes for many of the other dancers, and was particularly good at bras that fitted perfectly. Polly put on her stupid outfit, which consisted of a bra made out of halved coconut shells held together with string and a grass hula skirt constructed from bright pink raffia. Beneath the coconuts her nipples were hidden by pasties, under the skirt she wore skimpy bikini pants, and on her feet were bright blue stilettoes, which everyone knew were traditional Maori footwear. A headband of fake hibiscus crowned her ensemble, and her humiliation. It didn’t matter how many times she remonstrated with Adler that the costume wasn’t remotely Maori, and neither was doing the hula, he refused to budge. According to him no one wanted to see a girl twirl some coloured balls on strings or do a Maori war dance before she stripped, they wanted to see hips moving. Polly countered by saying she wouldn’t be using poi or performing a haka (she’d rather die than incorporate her tikanga into a strip show, for God’s sake), she just wanted to dance and strip like the other girls. But no, her skin was brown, so she had to look exotic. Christ.
Her session, which she performed three times a night, was before Evie’s so she shoved on her shoes, stubbed out her smoke and hurried into the corridor leading to the back of the stage, just in time to hear the compere back-announce the girl before her.
‘And that was the gorgeous Belinda! Let’s give her a big round of applause.’
A few half-hearted claps.
The gorgeous Belinda passed Polly, looking sour. ‘Shit audience tonight.’
‘And now, let’s hear it for the beautiful, the exotic, the one and only Heliopolis the Dusky Maori Maiden!’
Polly floated onto the small stage to the strains of Burl Ives’s ‘Pearly Shells’, her hips swaying, the raffia of her silly skirt swishing against her bare legs. A row of floor lights blinded her to all but the first row of tables in the club, but she could see they weren’t full yet, and at those that were, the punters weren’t paying much attention. Belinda was right. But then she rarely paid any attention to anyone in the audience. She did her routine, and then went home at the end of the night. She glided sinuously around, staring out into the darkness, thinking about the nice big brandy she’d sneak when she went off. Then the music changed to ‘Wipe Out’ by The Surfaris, which was heavy on the drums and much wilder than boring old Burl, and she launched into an energetic and very fast Tahitian version of the hula. This was actually quite tricky in heels, as you needed to use your feet a lot for balance, but she’d got quite good at it. The Surfaris were suddenly replaced by Bill Sevesi and his Islanders doing their instrumental ‘Hawaii Tattoo’ – and not even at the start of the song, which was jarring – and she began her strip. She unhooked her skirt, held it in front of her as she continued to sway, then twirled it around her body as a matador would his cape, eventually revealing her scantily clad buttocks then her belly and pubic area covered only by the small bikini pants, then tossed the skirt to the side of the stage. She moved up to the front, turned, bent over to show her bum, then straightened and walked back to the centre of the stage, placing one foot exactly in front of the other, knowing this would accentuate the movement of her hips. She did a few more hula moves, thought longingly of brandy, and the methedrine in her handbag, and apprehensively about what the kitten was up to all by itself in the flat, then reached behind her neck with one hand to untie the strings on her coconut shell bra, holding the cups against her breasts. The strings fell, and she undid the ties across her back, and walked in a circle that took her to the front of the stage again. There, she revealed her breasts to a few cheers from the audience. A quick glance told her the pasties had both stayed on. She smiled beguilingly, and completely artificially, took a few steps back and performed about five seconds of the fast Tahitian hula so her breasts wobbled furiously and the punters got their money’s worth. Then the music stopped abruptly and she strode off stage, collecting her raffia skirt as she went.
‘Arseholes,’ she muttered to Evie waiting backstage.
One down, two to go.
*
Terry Lawson leant against the shop window on Darlinghurst Road, one Chelsea-booted heel hooked on the window ledge behind him, a hand on his hip, the other holding a smouldering cigarette. He wore tight-fitting shiny rayon trousers and a woman’s floral blouse opened to reveal his hairless chest, and his blond curls tumbled almost to his collar. He looked beautiful and he knew it. But he was hungry, and he was broke. He watched resentfully as punters went into Les Girls across the road. If he had a job there with all the other drags, instead of having to sell his arse on the street, he’d have plenty of money. He’d asked but apparently he was too young. Why was seventeen too young? It wasn’t too young to do what he was doing now. He should have lied. He’d be so good at it, too. He’d be gorgeous.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t make money on the street. He did, he made quite a lot, but he didn’t like doing it. He didn’t know any boy who really did. It was . . . ugly, and brutal, and it could be dangerous. He’d been beaten up more than once, and he knew boys who’d been put in hospital. But he spent his money as soon as he got it, on food, cigarettes and drugs, and sometimes clothes, and anyway he didn’t know how to do anything else.
He’d arrived in Sydney in July of 1962, with Randolph. He’d been a few months shy of sixteen then, and Randolph Halsey had been in his early sixties. Randolph had been a master at Christ’s College in Christchurch, the boarding school to which Terry’s charming parents, the perpetually drunk and bickering Kathleen and Jonathan, had relegated him so they wouldn’t have to deal with him when the family moved from Auckland to Wellington. He’d hated it. But he’d thought Randolph was all right for an old man, and probably rich, and Randolph had adored him, so when he’d suggested that they run off to his hometown Sydney to live happily together in the flat Randolph owned in Paddington, Terry had thought why not? He didn’t know much about Sydney, or Australia at all, really, but surely it couldn’t be any worse than dingy bloody old Christchurch.
So Randolph had resigned from Christ’s College at the end of term, and on the same day, instead of going home to Wellington to spend a miserable couple of weeks with his family, Terry had ridden with him in a taxi to the docks and boarded a ship, and a fortnight later they’d arrived in Sydney. Terry didn’t think about Christ’s College, or his family, or anything at all from New Zealand for about six months after that. Living with Randolph had become boring, though. He was old, and when they went out he only wanted to go to places like art exhibitions, antiques auctions, and concerts with dreary classical music. His friends were all old, too. But he was very free with his money, and not demanding sexually. Terry knew he was doing pretty well out of the deal, but he’d been lonely, especially for young company.
And then Randolph had become sick, so sick in fact that Terry got frightened and rang a taxi and asked the driver to take them to the nearest hospital, which was St Vincent’s. It had turned out that Randolph was having a heart attack, a serious one. Terry couldn’t tell the nurses who Randolph’s relatives were, but that was all right because Randolph, pasty and sweating, had managed to gasp out the telephone number of a sister of whom Terry hadn’t even been aware. After a while a woman turned up. Terry would never forget what a bitch she’d been.
‘And who are you?’ she’d demanded when she’d come marching into Randolph’s cubicle.
‘I’m Randolph’s friend.’
‘Oh yes. What sort of friend?’
‘I’m staying with him.’
‘Elspeth, don’t,’ Randolph had wheezed, but Elspeth had.
‘In his flat? Oh, that’s just marvellous, isn’t it?’ Elspeth had said, dumping her handbag on the end of Randolph’s bed. ‘Randolph’s mentally unwell, you know. I suppose you are too?’
‘No, I’m not, and neither’s Randolph,’ Terry had said, knowing she was referring to their homosexuality. ‘But he is having a heart attack. A bad one.’
‘I can see that, thank you. Where’s the doctor?’
And she’d stomped off in her sensible low-heeled pumps and A-line tweed skirt to find someone in charge. When she’d returned she’d said very quietly, no doubt so people in the next cubicles wouldn’t hear the Halsey family’s dirty laundry being aired, ‘Well, the doctor says Randolph is very ill. This is his second major heart attack, you know.’
Terry hadn’t known. He’d glanced at Randolph, wondering why he’d never said anything.
‘He may well not survive. So you can pack up your bits and pieces and get out of his flat,’ Elspeth had gone on venomously. ‘And I mean today. And don’t come back here. You’re not welcome.’
‘Elspeth,’ Randolph had protested weakly.
‘Be quiet.’ And then Elspeth had gone the most peculiar colour, nearly as sickly grey as Randolph. ‘You haven’t done anything stupid with your will, have you?’
There had been a short but very tense silence, then Terry, who had not a clue about Randolph’s will, had said, ‘He’s left everything to me. Everything.’
Randolph had made a snorting noise, which Terry had known was one of his smothered laughs, and that had made him happy.
Elspeth, though, had looked like she was going to vomit. ‘But it’s not his money! It’s Halsey family money! Randolph, it’s not your money. You can’t do that!’ She’d stood over Terry then and ranted, ‘Get out. Get out of here now! I’ll fight you. I’ll take you to court – the whole family will. I’ll have you arrested. It’s against the law what you’ve been doing, you know: it’s perverted. You’re a perverted, thieving, gold-digging little guttersnipe. I’ll have you arrested and –’
And then Terry had noticed that Randolph might not be breathing any more, so he’d rung the bell for a nurse. Several had hurried in, and so did a doctor, and no, Randolph wasn’t breathing. They’d tried hard but he was gone. So Terry had caught the bus back to the flat and packed up his belongings, which hadn’t been much. Yes, he’d helped himself to a few things – a pair of Victorian sterling silver candle sticks, a nineteenth-century pot pourri, two early Worcester dinner plates, and a bit of cash Randolph kept in his bedside drawer – but he felt he was entitled to some compensation for losing his home. Then he’d hopped on another bus to Kings Cross, where he’d been living ever since.
He’d had hardly any money so at first he’d slept on the streets, which had been a bloody rude shock after the relative luxury of Randolph’s flat, keeping warm under bits of cardboard and piles of boxes in alleyways and behind shops. But then he’d made friends with some other boys living outdoors and discovered how you made money on the street in Kings Cross. Mostly he gave blow jobs, or let punters blow him, though occasionally he went the whole way after he moved into a squat in a semi-derelict house on Victoria Street, when some punters wanted somewhere private. He charged quite a lot more if he did that.
When he was in the money he ate well, and when he wasn’t he drank a lot of coffee, hung around the Wayside Chapel in Hughes Street for the free hot drinks and biscuits, even though he wasn’t interested in the religion side of it at all, and, if he really had to, scrounged out of the bins behind delis, fruiterers and restaurants, because sometimes people threw the odd good bit of food out. But usually not, because his favourite drugs were Benzedrine and methedrine, both of which kept you awake and not remotely hungry for days, and that’s usually where his money went.
