fashion. She had herself so firmly into a look that she could not choose anything that did not, in some way, fit within its eccentric borders. She did not know how to dress differently, and whenever she tried – her black suit, for instance – she felt inauthentic. She was as inextricably linked with her wardrobe as men often were with their motor car.
In her parents’ house there had been no money for female fashion. Her mother wore black as she had in Letkos and fashion was something you made over a noisy sewing machine in Surry Hills. Maria had grown up in a house without clothes just as someone would grow up in a house without books or music. It had affected her sister Helen in the way you could see – she bought clothes at Grace Bros at sale times, and so even though she and Con now owned five electrical discount stores Helen still dressed like a piece-goods worker from Surry Hills.
As Maria entered the very small foyer at Chez Oz, pressed in behind the bare tanned shoulders of women with blonde coifed hair and little black dresses, she suddenly felt herself to be vulgar and inelegant, and not in the right place.
‘Am I dressed well enough?’ she asked her partner who, although she had not even thought about it in Franklin, so obviously was. Now she saw the insouciant crumpled look was 100 per cent silk.
‘Perfectly.’
She was thirty-four years old and thought herself at ease with herself, but now she was self-conscious, and on edge. Through a gap between the bodies in front of her she saw a famous crumpled face – Daniel Makeveitch – a celebrated artist whose work she much admired. She was shocked, not merely to see him in the flesh for the first time, but by the juxtaposition of this old Cassandra with these black-dressed women with expensive hair.
They were guided through the restaurant. Maria hardly saw anything. She felt herself being stared at. They sat beside the glass brick wall she had seen glowing from the street.
‘The clones are looking at you,’ Jack said, breaking his bread roll immediately and spilling crumbs across the cloth. Maria saw she was indeed being looked at.
‘They’re anxious,’ Jack said. ‘They’re thinking – what if this is the new look? How will I know?’
‘Is it too extreme?’ said Maria who realized slowly she was the only person, of either sex, whose clothes were not predominantly black or grey. Many of the men, like Jack, wore black shirts. ‘I suppose I look like a circus to them.’
‘You expose them as the bores they are.’
‘You know them?’
‘A few. Now,’ he picked up the wine list, ‘I take it we have to throw this away.’
‘I’m permitted one glass.’
‘Then we’ll both limit ourselves to one glass of something wonderful.’
Alistair would never have done that, not even Alistair at his charming best. He would have confidently gone on doing exactly what he wanted to do and assume that this was why you would like him, which was mostly true. He was gentle and loyal but he also had a will of iron, and when she felt Jack Catchprice bend his will to hers she felt a gooeyness at her centre which surprised her.
He guided her through the menu and she was amused to find herself enjoying the experience of being pampered until he said: ‘You should have protein, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right.’ But it made her distrust him and he saw this, she thought, because his smile faltered a second and his mouth seemed momentarily weak and vulnerable. She was immediately sorry.
‘This restaurant is perfect for protein,’ he said, looking at his menu. ‘It is famous for protein.’
If she had known him better she would have laid her hand on his arm and said, ‘sorry’. Instead she did something she had never done in her life – encouraged him to order for her. He chose oysters from Nelson Bay and, for their main course, duck breast with a half bottle of 1966 Haut Brion. It was, admittedly, a little more than one glass each.
Maria sipped the Haut Brion and smiled. ‘I can’t believe this.’
‘The wine?’
‘You,’ she said.
‘What about me?’
‘From Catchprice Motors in Franklin.’
‘From that terrible place, you mean?’
‘I didn’t mean that at all. Although,’ she paused, not quite sure if she should smile or even if she should continue, ‘you seem so totally unconnected with them. You’re Cathy McPherson’s brother. It seems impossible.’
‘I’m like my mother, physically.’
‘But you’re not
‘Well they got stuck there. They didn’t want to be stuck there, but by the time they realized it they had no other choices. The environment affects you. If I’m different it was because I had to get out. If I hadn’t got out, I would have been just like them, different of course, but the same too.’
‘But you got out. That makes you different.’
‘You know why I am sitting here tonight?’ Jack said, wiping the corners of his very nice mouth with the crisp white napkin. ‘It wasn’t discontent. It was because I couldn’t sing.’
She laughed expectantly.
‘If I was musical, I’d still be there. Mort and me, side by side.’
‘But you love music. You have great taste in music.’
‘I love it, but I listen to it like an animal,’ he said. ‘If you want to picture how I listen, think of the dog on the HMV label. Intelligent, attentive, and ultimately-puzzled.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear, exactly. No matter how many times I listen to that Wagner, I never know what’s going to happen next. Every second is a surprise to me.’
‘Well I guess we’re all the product of little tragedies,’ Maria said. ‘This wine is amazing. I have never tasted wine like this in my life.’
‘Mort and Cathy have really very good voices,’ he said. ‘Our father loved music, so he loved them. He had them up in the middle of the night to sing, not rubbish – opera. He had them singing Mozart to drunken farmers. He couldn’t help himself. He’d come into the room and shake them and shake them until they were awake. He was like me though – he couldn’t sing. No one ever knew this, but I found him once, in the back paddock, trying to sing. I watched him for an hour. He had sheet music. It was really terrible. One of the worst things I ever saw, like an animal trying to talk. You could not believe all the effort in the face and the terrible noise.’
‘The poor man.’
‘Well it’s worse than what I’m saying, obviously.’
‘I hear lots of bad things,’ she said.
‘You’ll tell me your bad things, too?’
She thought: surely he doesn’t want to go to bed with me. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you want.’
He cut a piece of perfect white potato and joined it to a piece of duck which he had already neatly dissected. ‘He messed around with them,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
He tore his bread and mopped up a little gravy.
She drank from her water glass. ‘How horrible.’
‘He was always at them in the night. I don’t really know what happened. Sometimes I think I invented it, or dreamed it. I stood beside Mort in church last Christmas and he was miming the words. He wouldn’t sing out loud.’
‘He told me your father was a wonderful man.’
Jack shrugged.
‘And your mother?’
‘Who would have any idea what goes on in that head? Who would guess what she knew or understood? But it was definitely my father who decided there was no room for me in the business. I was very hurt, at the time. Can you believe it – I cried. I really wept. All the things I’m lucky about, they hurt me at the time.’ He hid his eyes in the depths of his wine glass. ‘Your turn.’
