Canberra Tales, page 7
‘Search me. This Potter’s a collar-and-tie bloke, I suppose.’ Maybe Joan already knew where Potter lived, just around the corner, five minutes’ walk away, when she booked them into the Grevillea back in Hazelwood. Ray scowls at the parrots. He was all for a caravan park until Joan talked him out of it. Said it wouldn’t be handy. Handy to what? Fair go, he reminds himself, she had to ring Potter at work to get his address. First thing Monday morning she rang him: Richard Potter? You’ll never guess … Yes, Canberra! Really and truly Canberra!—and half an hour later his wife was phoning Joan at the Grevillea making an evening for dinner.
‘Which do you reckon?’ Ray asks, holding out the ties.
The houses in Baynton Street are small, brick, each the mirror image of its neighbour, and set well back behind shin-high fences. ‘These Canberrans are certainly shy about displaying house numbers,’ Ray Skerritt comments. Secretive! he says to himself. Arrogant! And as he goes on peering takes a gloomy pleasure in repeating Arrogant! Secretive!
‘What does this chap Potter do?’ he asks Joan.
‘He’s in the public service. I told you that, dear. He got married years after most of us, and they’ve got one little girl.’
‘I said, what does he do?’
Joan doesn’t answer. Just because Ray’s had to put on a tie! She finds a house number and starts counting ‘This must be it,’ she says doubtfully, stopping in front of a forest of spindly gums and banksias. They make their way to a small porch with firewood stacked against one wall.
As Joan raps on the frosted glass door panel, Lurlene says ‘This isn’t a bit posh, there isn’t even a doorbell!’ and Ray Skerritt adds ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right street, Joan?’ ‘Oh shoosh!’ breathes Trish in an agony of embarrassment, convinced someone on the other side of the door, overhearing, will think these Skerritts have never been anywhere.
A stranger in the House
The bloke looks buggered, Ray Skerritt thinks as he shakes hands with Richard Potter. Potter’s skin is pale, grey almost, and there are furrows running from his cheekbones to his jaw. Poor bugger looks ten years older than me already, Ray thinks, and gives Potter’s hand an extra shake.
‘What a splendid coat!’ Potter says, hanging their things in the hall. (‘It’s my sister’s,’ Trish mutters.) ‘Come in by the fire—come and meet Angel and Emma.’ He’s wearing sports trousers and a polo-neck shirt—no tie; Ray makes up his mind to get rid of his just as soon as he can.
How on earth do blokes like Potter who look about ready for the knackers … is Ray’s first impression of Mrs Potter. Sitting up very straight on the sofa, she is looking up expectantly, her face, no, her whole person alight, welcoming, her dark hair coiled around her head, one ankle above very high heels crossed over the other, her instep curved like a dancer’s, and so smooth it looks sculpted. In a flash Ray Skerritt registers all this, then Mrs Potter has sprung to her feet and, hand outstretched, is coming to greet them.
She’s wearing black velvet trousers and a silk shirt—tucked in, Joan notices, pulling in her stomach. Potter’s wife has this modern thing of shaking hands, Ray sees; Alvie’s picked it up too. ‘This is Emma,’ says Mrs Potter, one arm around the shoulders of a small, glowing girl. ‘And I’m Angel Drimys.’
Huh, one of those relationships, is it? Ray Skerritt glances at Potter. Joan’s laughing her meeting-new-people laugh. ‘Drimys. You kept your own name?’
‘Her father’s,’ Ray puts in drily.
‘No, it’s really hers,’ the child Emma tells them. ‘She chose it herself. It’s a shrub she likes, mountain pepper.’
Trish thinks Angel Drimys, Angel Drimys. She’s different, she’s got an accent—Spanish is it or something more wonderful—Persian? Malay? And the room’s lovely, friendly, with that hot fire, and all the flowers even though it’s still winter, creamy white jonquils you can smell right across the room, and everlastings the colour of summer, and those dried things in an old crock, we could do that at home, and the paintings on the walls, what are those black and gold puppets with the funny faces?
‘What can I get you to drink?’ Richard Potter asks Oh dear, thinks Joan, This is Canberra, I mustn’t say sweet sherry. ‘Beer for me,’ Ray is about to reply when Richard says ‘Champagne?’ and pours for all of them, Trish and Billy too, and a splash with mineral water for Lurlene and Emma, so that Joan thinks, So this is how things are done in Canberra! and Ray thinks, He’s putting on an act for Joan, damned public service!
‘This reminds me of that party, Richard,’ Joan bubbles. ‘Remember? After your play? He wrote this play for speech night, Angel, full of all these ghastly murders. That’s how the name Chainsaw came about—’ She pauses. Angel Drimys is smiling as though she isn’t quite listening. Richard is uncorking a second bottle. ‘—terribly funny, really,’ she continues on indrawn breath. ‘Everyone fainting, all the parents and the stuffy old councillors, and I had to scream, in the play I mean, I was a little girl, I was the only kid in the juniors who got a part, and afterwards we all got drunk.—Where did all that bubbly come from, Richard?’
And you kissed me. And then you walked me home, and every girl in the school wanted to scratch out my eyes—wild Joan Lafferty who was only in second form, and my mother was waiting up, and when she saw the time she hit the roof, but not too much—she was married at seventeen, and you were a bank manager’s son. Oh Dreamboat Potter, what has happened to that skin smooth as jonquils and the dreamboat eyes?
Ray Skerritt feels chilled, funny how you’re always cold in someone else’s house. He moves over to the fire and stands with his back to it. Angel Drimys, handing around seaweed crackers, says ‘You and Joan manage time away together, do you? I’d like Richard to take a few days off this week during the school holidays.’ Ray says ‘Ah yes, it’s called flex time, isn’t it? Us workers out at the mill have flex-time, too—start early and work late.’
Angel Drimys doesn’t laugh.
‘And what’s your line of business?’ Ray jumps, turning on Richard who is refilling Joan’s glass.
God, I hope Ray’s not going to get on one of his hobbyhorses, Joan thinks, crinkling her forehead at him, signalling this is a holiday.
‘Have a drop more, Ray? I’m a public servant.’
‘You could have fooled me.’ Ray yanks off his tie.
‘On Monday I rang your old department, Richard.’ Joan says quickly. ‘The one you were in when I bumped into you in Melbourne. They redirected me.’
‘PMs? Yes, I’ve moved over to DAA now—Aboriginal Affairs,’ he adds, as they look blank.
Angel Drimys, on her way out to the kitchen, says ‘Richard’s just back from a trip to the desert. Visiting some of the communities.’
‘People who’ve gone back to their birthplace,’ Richard explains. ‘Away from towns and whitefellers and booze.’
‘And you travel everywhere visiting them? How exciting!’ Joan looks around the room and sees, upright as spears, dried heads of evening primrose in an old-fashioned bread crock. ‘I suppose you come back with all sorts of things, shields and bark paintings and things.’
‘No. No, we don’t do that,’ Richard says. ‘I did bring this back, though.’ From the mantelpiece he takes a jar of red sand, its crystals glinting like sugar.
They pass the jar from one to another, shaking it, turning it so that the grains rush down the sides of the glass. Handing it back to Potter, Ray says ‘And are they happy to hear what Canberra’s got to tell them?’
Richard laughs. ‘As much as anyone. Actually, our business is more listening than anything. Sitting down on the ground with the old men and listening. None of this belting questions at one another like rocks.’ He turns the jar of sand. ‘It takes time. Still … what’s a few hours under a bloodwood compared with forty thousand years?’
Angel Drimys from the doorway says ‘Dinner’s ready, everyone.’
‘She’s been cooking venison.’ Emma adds. ‘Aren’t you starving?’
‘Last week I had roast putjica,’ Richard tells them, leading the way into the dining room where Angel at the table is lighting pale candles in shallow bowls of camellia. ‘Feral cat. They’re all through the desert. Quite a delicacy, actually.’
The House will divide
‘Something I always feel after coming back from the desert,’ Richard says, looking around for somewhere to put the jar of sand and finally placing it on the table, ‘is this sense of dislocation. Joan, will you sit here? Trish—’ He’s got it all mapped out. Ray Skerritt thinks. Joan up there next to him and me way down here by his missus. When they are all seated Richard moves around the table filling the smaller of their glasses while Angel ladles out soup. Not much to chew on in that, Ray Skerritt decides, looking at the transparent liquid sprinkled with what seems to be dried grass. Oh good, there is sherry! thinks Joan, picking up her glass. She smiles at Richard: it’s like the old days again, Chainsaw Potter at the centre and everyone gathered. She sips. Her mouth wrinkles against the sudden astringency. ‘It’s hard to explain, this dislocation, I mean,’ Richard continues, ‘You’re here and you’re not here. Mind you, it only lasts a day or two. Then it’s back to normal again.’
‘Yes, back to normal again.’ Angel echoes flatly, so that Joan stares. ‘And what do you all think of Canberra?’ she says, catching Joan’s glance. ‘Surprised? Disappointed?’
Yes! No! they reply, reminding themselves not to drink from the end of their soup spoons. It’s beautiful. It’s so clean. Those great wide streets. Blossom trees like weddings, offers Lurlene, giggling at her own daring. Great lot of building going on around the city, cranes everywhere. Great hands-off sculptures at the National Gallery, says Ray Skerritt, recalling Angel Drimys’s instep. Great mountains, says Billy. You can see the snow from here.
‘You should go skiing while you’re here,’ Angel says. ‘Shouldn’t they, Richard? Take a day off together to go skiing?’
Couldn’t we, Dad? Billy’s look pleads.
‘Well …’ Ray Skerritt laughs, thinking What would she know about the cost of taking five people for a day on the lifts?
‘Oh but you must!’ Angel insists. ‘Cross-country Of course cross-country. It’s so free. You go where you like. And economical. We love cross-country—don’t we, Richard?’
‘Ray and I met at the snow,’ Joan says dreamily. She was working at Fall’s Creek as a chambermaid, and Ray as a yardman, cleaning the dunnies and mopping up after the drunks, but she doesn’t say that.
That the debate be adjourned
As Trish jumps up to help, Joan smiles: she’s a good girl, Trish, easy, the easy one. On the kitchen table, amongst the preparation bowls and the vegetable peelings, Trish notices a small journal—poetry, she sees, glancing closer. On the cover is a familiar name. She picks it up.
‘You like poetry?’ Angel asks, turning from the stove where she is stirring red currant jelly into the gravy.
‘Yes. No. I mean some, I like some. I saw Philip Jennaway’s name on the cover—’ She isn’t explaining very well, and feels her face grow hot.
‘Yes, I noticed there’s something of his in that one. He’s getting published everywhere these days. You like Jennaway?’
How funny it is to hear him called Jennaway, like Shakespeare or someone; it makes him seem out of reach, dead even. ‘Yes,’ she replies. Of course I like Phil! she wants to say. He’s my cousin, he’s family, of course I like him, it’s only my sister—
‘So do I,’ Angel is saying. ‘Jennaway’s promising. One day he might even be good.’
Good? Trish wants to laugh Phil not good? Not a good person?
Angel is frowning. ‘I think … I think like a lot of people he’s looking for answers instead of looking for questions. But that’s the hard thing, isn’t it, finding the questions. Anyone can come up with an answer. Of some sort. You can always dig out an answer from somewhere.’
‘Like wearing someone else’s clothes,’ Trish says slowly. Angel glances at her, then goes on stirring. ‘Do you think it matters reading old stuff—Tennyson?’ Trish ventures.
‘Tennyson … Yelled and shrieked between her daughters o’er a wild confederacy. That always makes me smile, doesn’t it you?’ She lifts the stirring spoon, tastes, stirs again. ‘But there’s lots more, isn’t there? Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height, and murmuring of innumerable bees. Can’t you just hear those bees?’
‘My sister doesn’t like Tennyson.’
‘But do you, that’s what matters.’
Trish looks up in sudden gratitude.
‘Richard says, he’s finished carving the venison,’ says Emma at the doorway.
Angel takes the dinner plates from the warming oven. ‘Coming. Will you bring the gravy boat, Trish, please?’
The Honourable Member will draw her answer to a conclusion
‘This red’s a local.’ As Joan gazes in surprise at the minute amount Richard has poured in her glass, he adds ‘Try it, Joan, see if you like it. It’s distinctive, this one. Fruity. Bit of a minx. Like it?’ He fills her glass and moves around to Trish. ‘It’s won a prize or two, actually. Canberra’s well on the way to being Australia’s cool climate wine capital, in my opinion.’
‘It’s a lovely climate! People say Canberra’s a freezing place but we’ve had nothing but sunshine every day.’ As the ruby red wine courses down to her toes, into the pit of her stomach, Joan smiles at Richard as though the good weather is something he has turned on for her.
‘Just right for going to the snow,’ says Billy, looking at his father.
‘Yes, it couldn’t be better, Billy,’ Angel Drimys agrees, looking at her husband. ‘But the three-day forecast is for a change. For the snowfields, I mean. Richard! Rain!’
Richard sighs. ‘You know I can’t get away right now, Angel.’
Angel turns to Ray Skerritt with a brilliant smile. ‘That’s what he said all last winter, Ray.’
‘Another trip coming up?’ Ray asks Richard kindly. She’s giving him a hard time. You wouldn’t get her sort settling for a caravan park.
‘Trip? No. Desk work. Most of my time is spent writing things in the office.’
‘Writing things?’ Joan asks eagerly.
‘Reports. Memos. Speeches for the Minister.’
‘No more plays, Chainsaw?’
‘Plays? Plays?’ He laughs. Joan winces. She thinks he is laughing at her. Dreamboat Potter, laughing at her.
‘This dinner’s wonderful, Angel!’ she says, turning away ‘Isn’t it, Ray? I’ve never had venison before.’
Billy leans across Angel Drimys to help himself to glazed chestnut. ‘They reckon there’s deer up on Mount Hazelwood, Dad. You and me ought to get up there sometime with a gun.’
‘It’s very … tasty,’ Trish offers shyly.
‘Gamey,’ Ray Skerritt says, pleased at having thought of that, and glancing at Angel.
‘Canberra,’ Angel says, staring past Ray. ‘You were saying about Canberra. Let me see, how do I see this city? As a place where so many of the necessities of life, time-consuming things I mean, like shopping, and travelling to the office, are so easy, so taken care of, so lacking in challenge compared with a really big city, that people here direct all their energies into work!’
A matter of public importance
‘―this time, for instance,’ Richard Potter tells them, ‘Here we were sitting in a circle with men who saw their first whitefeller no more than maybe ten, even five years ago, and they were making a big effort to talk to us in English because they knew we couldn’t speak a word of their language—’ She’s right. He does go on. Joan thinks. Not that it isn’t interesting, Chainsaw Potter was always interesting, but it is a dinner party. ‘Listen Richard, they said, you whitefellers come over here all the way from the government and you tell us, Look here, you black fellers can’t start running cattle on the Myrrlumbing River, the Myrrlumbing River is a national park, that’s the law, you blackfellers are living in a national park. We try to explain that national parks are state government business and we’re federal not state government fellers. And they say, Richard, you go back and tell those government fellers, our people were here on this river long before national parks!’
‘Cattle, eh?’ says Ray ‘I wouldn’t like to see this—what is it? Myrrlumbing River turned into another dustbowl. Or another Ranger, either. How would they feel about that?’
As Richard starts to say something, Billy bursts out ‘I guess what they’d really like is for all us whities just to pack our gear and rack off!’ He looks around the table at his old man who might take him out shooting; at the fluttering candles like campfires in a garden; at the serving plates still half-full. Using his fork to spear another potato, he thinks, But rack off where to?
‘—go out with the seismic surveys,’ Richard Potter is saying.
‘Your dinner’s getting cold, Richard,’ Emma says, with a grin at her mother, so that Ray thinks Poor bugger, it’s a female conspiracy.
‘Myrrlumbing National Park.’ Angel swirls her glass slowly. ‘Not much left, is there, except the old names. Like some sort of sop to our consciences.’
‘Like Drimys,’ says Ray.
Angel laughs. ‘Drimys is not an indigenous word.’
‘But the shrub is.’
‘Australian? So am I.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say it!’ Ray Skerritt exclaims, so that Trish jumps, wondering what lovely Mrs Potter has done to make her father sound angry. ‘I don’t go for all this guilt business,’ Ray says. ‘I reckon that’s just a sop too. Some bleeding heart’s painkiller. Try a bit of guilt today, you’ll feel on top again. Look, when trigger-happy bastards were running round down our way, I wasn’t even born!’
