Green (28 page)

She swings the basket as we walk and it's like walking with Gidget, but I don't mind it at all. This could be a second chance I'm getting, in which case her list of automatic turn-offs is surely more generous than most. And tonight the phone call goes like this: ‘Hey Frank, I talked to her, like I said I would. We had a drink this afternoon. So will you stop hassling me now?'

It sounds good and, if I word it that way, it's not even a lie.

On the stairs going down to the Rec Club, I tell her I'm buying and she says she'll have any kind of cooler. We find a table out on the balcony and away from the pool games and the noise. And then she laughs at me again.

‘Sorry,' she says. ‘I just hadn't expected to be here, you know? Drinking with you, Speedy.'

‘I know. Don't worry, I know. Is there any chance we could . . .' There's nowhere to go from there, other than to pause and let her laugh again. ‘You're enjoying this too much. You can't begin to imagine how embarrassed I am.'

‘It's all right.'

‘All right? It couldn't be much further from all right. Last Saturday . . . I was kind of unprepared. I didn't realise the turn events would take.'

‘Obviously.'

‘Obviously, or I'd go around wearing plastic pants. Yes, thank you. No, I mean, I didn't know how things would . . . proceed. You know what I mean. So, enough about me. Enough about that. Tell me about you.'

She seems reluctant, as though we're already skirting the edge of a better topic, but she relents and lets me off the hook for now.

She's third-year Arts/Law, with the Arts major in French because she did it at school (though that stopped looking like a good reason at least a couple of semesters ago).

She doesn't mind French films, but she still has to read the subtitles. She'd like more to happen in some of them, and less attitude. I mention Sartre and she tells me, ‘We don't do him. It's not that kind of French.' She doesn't have a part-time job. Her parents don't like her to. Her father's a solicitor. Her mother doesn't come up in conversation. She has a brother, but they don't really get on. ‘And Saturday wasn't all bad,' she says. ‘You mix a pretty good jug of cocktail, and what would Belle have done without you?'

She buys the next round of drinks, another cooler and another beer.

I'd like a photo to show Frank, just as proof. That's what I'm thinking while she's standing at the bar. What a waste sending the film off with three or four blanks at the end. But Frank will still hassle me, and a photo wouldn't change that. I'll tell him about this later, and he'll still hassle me if I haven't got follow-up organised.

And so he should, dammit. Jacinta, with her lively eyes and an Alice band holding back her wavy hair, telling me about herself and being interesting enough and not running away. Interesting enough and not taking flight: two major desirable girl features in my world. Somewhere in the distance, the shouting of silly protest is rising. I need to get over there, but I can't yet.

There's a drink coming my way, and perhaps a chance I couldn't possibly have expected. She hands me the beer, takes her seat and gives a Friday afternoon kind of sigh, paying attention not to the shouting but to the lorikeets flying by, the people with bags on their shoulders crossing the playing field below us to head for home, and me. And she says it's my turn—time for my life story, the part prior to last Saturday.

I tell her about my parents and their strange ways—material that could make anyone look like a raconteur. My mother's flair for accents and my father's for coloured drinks and old cardigans. How much better fifth-year medicine is than the other years, but I'm still not sure what I'll do in the long run. How I've done Labour Ward once, but my time there hasn't amounted to much so far. How I might travel at the end of the year, I suppose, since we have to do a term somewhere out of Brisbane. America looks good. Which leads me to World of Chickens and Ron Todd, his two-tone hair, his rank beige teeth and his seventies body shirts gone bad in the armpits.

And I'm not boring her, whatever my mother says. I'm on a roll, particularly with the Ron Todd stuff. So I keep going, making this big move on Jacinta mainly at Ron's expense, long past the point where I feel guilty about it and forgive myself on his behalf, since chances like this don't come along every day.

Then I realise I need to convert. I need to stop now while things are going really well and convert this opportunity into something, this talking into an arrangement.

‘Maybe we could do something some time.' In my head the line sounds casual but, when it comes out and interrupts the conversation, it's more like someone holding up play to take a kick at goal.

‘We're doing something at the moment, aren't we?'

‘Yes, but maybe we could go out, or something.'

‘You had my number, as far as I know.'

‘Yes, but . . . circumstances. What about the circumstances? As if I could have called. What would I have said? If your father had answered the phone, what would I have said? Tell her it's the guy who . . .?'

She laughs. ‘Chicken.'

‘That's hardly fair. But we're past that now. Aren't we?'

‘Maybe.'

‘So let's do something.'

‘I'm busy over the weekend.'

‘Okay, next week. Or the following weekend.'

‘What kind of thing?'

‘A movie? Something to eat? Whatever. How about next Tuesday night?' I'm plunging right into it now, fearlessly wading knee-deep into this asking out.

‘How about Wednesday? That's probably my best night.'

‘I think I'm working at the World on Wednesday. Lunchtime Friday? A week from today?'

‘Hmmm. Okay.'

‘So that's a yes?' I'm playing it almost like Frank. Right at this second the
Paradise
is practically a plus because it means I've got nothing to lose. She's seen the worst of me, and we're still here talking.

‘Yes.'

‘Okay. Um, so, lunch . . . How about I make you lunch? You can come to my house. We don't live far away from each other. And I'll make lunch.'

‘That sounds nice,' she says, and lunch it is.

I write my address and phone number on a beer coaster, and she puts it in her bag.

But I don't cook. All that pride about wading, and now I'm stupidly out of my depth. Okay, I do burgers and other simple chicken products, but there's nothing resembling a good lunch in my repertoire. I needed to anchor a timeslot, and I overshot.

I'll deal with it, somehow.

There's a roar of voices from the direction of Mayne Hall, like the roar of a crowd acclaiming my heroic comeback from a tragic last game.

Jacinta shakes her head, in a very tut-tutting way. ‘Why don't they just grow up?'

‘Who?'

‘The demonstrators. They're such a cliché. They'll shout about anything. Rent-a-crowd. Most of them are just socialists who turn up everywhere. They're not even students at all.'

‘I think there were students on the bus that I caught to get here.'

‘Well, if they were students they were probably going to lectures. Nothing to do with the demonstration. Joh's done a lot for Queensland. My father was in the Liberal Party, and then he moved to the Nationals after the last election. But I'm still in the Young Liberals. It's a tough choice, now we're not in coalition any more. We'd be in the same electorate, wouldn't we? How did your family handle the election?'

‘We're not very political.' Actually, some of us find the very mention of politics depressing.

‘Really? I think everyone should be political. That's what democracy's about. It's not about all that protest rubbish. They're just getting in the way. Getting in the way of people who are actually doing things. It's like unions.'

‘Don't get me started on unions.' By which I mean, please don't get started on unions.

‘Yeah,' she says. ‘Yeah.' More animated than she's been all afternoon. ‘Don't get me started, either. And what is it with hippies? What's wrong with progress? What about all that rainforest in north Queensland? It's completely underutilised, and there's so much of it. Think of the tourism potential if you just cleared some of the coastal bits and put in marinas and theme parks and things.'

‘Hey, Phil.'

The voice doesn't stop Jacinta, but it catches my attention. I turn around, and it's Sophie.

‘I thought it was you,' she says, as Jacinta talks up the virtues of Japanese tourists landing big marlin off the reef. ‘I wondered if I'd see you out here. Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?'

‘No, not at all.'

A minute or so earlier would have been perfect, but I can't complain. Jacinta stops telling me where this state's future lies, and she turns her head towards Sophie with the expression of someone who feels quite interrupted. Sophie looks from me to her, then back to me again. Jacinta appraises Sophie vertically, from head to foot—her lack of make-up, her sleeveless top, her khaki shorts, her boots—and she does it openly, as though it's what happens to intruders.

‘Phoebe?' Sophie says tentatively. ‘Would I be right in thinking you're the Phoebe I've heard so much about?'

‘Um, no, this is Jacinta, actually.' I manage to say it in a way that makes it sound as if I'm hiding something from both of them. ‘Jacinta, this is Sophie. She's one of the people I work with at the takeaway place. A friend I met at the takeaway place.'

‘Oh, right.' The context helps, and Jacinta smiles. ‘Hi. It sounds like quite a place. How about that awful guy Ron with the bad rug and the bad . . .'

‘Sophie's father. Ron is Sophie's father. You're thinking of, um, of that guy from the Mater. The obstetrician. Ron the obstetrician. Ron Bellamy.'

‘Oh.' Jacinta still has the smile, though it's stiffened up a little. ‘Oh, yes. Sorry, I've heard about so many people this afternoon. Anyway, I wouldn't worry. Your teeth are really very nice, Sophie. And dental care's come a long way.' She laughs, but it gets us nowhere. ‘On the other hand, your hair could do with a bit of work.' She grins, Sophie gives her nothing back. ‘I'm kidding.' She puts her hand on my forearm, as if to reassure me that we're all just playing. ‘Your hair is . . . I'm kidding.'

‘I thought it was Theo Bellamy, the obstetrician at the Mater,' Sophie says to me, in a tone that could easily be described as terse.

‘Oh, sure, Theo's there too. Ron's the kind of less high-profile of the Bellamy brothers. The quiet achiever of the family. Not a bad guy, though. Doesn't go out a lot, so he doesn't go in for the same level of grooming. You should see . . . yeah, well.'

‘Yeah.' She looks down at my arm, still with Jacinta's hand on it. ‘So are you coming over to Mayne Hall then? For the demonstration.'

‘Um, yeah. I thought I'd get over there soon.' Jacinta's hand lets go of my arm and moves back to her drink. ‘Why don't you go and I'll see you there?'

‘Okay.' Said in a way that means, okay, you've done nothing but lie this whole conversation, so I expect I'll see you some time next week instead. ‘I'll see you there. Just follow the noise.' Then she turns to Jacinta and says, ‘I'm sorry about my hair, but it's a bit of a lost cause.'

And all Jacinta can say is, ‘Right . . .' as Sophie turns and walks to the door. She walks quickly and she doesn't look back. ‘Sorry,' Jacinta says, ‘I think I might have upset your friend. I really was only kidding.'

‘Of course. She's a bit sensitive about her hair, but you couldn't know that. It's a long story. I wouldn't worry.'

‘So, are you really going to the demonstration? What was that about?'

‘Oh, another long story. A misunderstanding. I think I mentioned at work that I was probably coming out here today. And I decided not to bore her with the detail of what I was going to do in the Biol Sciences Library. I didn't know she'd got the wrong idea. And when she started talking about it just then . . . you know, politics. Sometimes it's a lot easier not to get into it, and to just let it go.'

‘She's not the best at taking a joke, is she? The two of you don't have some kind of . . .'

‘No, we just work together.'

‘And Phoebe? Who's Phoebe?'

‘An ex. That's a situation that was over a while back. I don't know why Sophie brought it up. I can't have mentioned the name more than once or twice.'

 

*

 

It was a time for succinct answers then. I'd already been wondering if we should wrap it up before Sophie arrived and then, once she'd left, all I could think about was that I'll have some explaining to do next week. Or, as far as the Ron part goes, probably no explaining at all. If I'm lucky, we'll both pretend it never happened.

It feels like Sophie stood on the edge of the conversation, and Jacinta and I sat at our table and made her stand there. That's what her face was saying, too. Perhaps in a few weeks I could have introduced them in more ready circumstances. These worlds weren't meant to collide yet. It's as simple as that.

No it's not. I could have chosen some way other than dumping on Ron to try to impress Jacinta, if I'm going to be honest about it. If only it hadn't worked so well. But then we got to politics, and things worked less well.

By early Saturday morning, I've decided to think of her simply as misinformed, and I've decided that it's not fair to view her political position as an automatic turn-off. She's giving me a second chance following my
Paradise
performance, after all.

The afternoon nearly ended so well. We'd talked just enough, we were finishing our second drinks, an arrangement had been made.

‘Always leave them wanting more. Never outstay your welcome.' My mother's advice again, and perhaps this time she could have offered it to Jacinta too, and said ‘particularly when it comes to politics'.