Spotted Lily (9 page)

He asked me what colour it was naturally. And then he felt it, and accused me of murdering it.

Mum had cut all our hair. Mine was 'impossible'. What she did to it, or maybe the way my hair grows, ensured that no matter how I wet it, it always looked like I'd slept on it funny. As soon as I got to uni I changed it to something citified, and had kept it that way ever since. In Bettawong, there were lots of people with hair like mine.

Kevin showed himself to be definitely not into what others said was cool. Kevin asked me if I valued his judgement. If I felt that he understood the soul of the butterfly.

'Do you, little butterfly, Desirée Lily? What a beautiful name! Just like you. Your mother named you well. So how could you
do
this to yourself? She must be turning in her grave! Is she dead yet? No? Well, she'd kill herself if she saw...'

And all this while he was feeling my hair like a medium feels the table for the spirits of the dead.

Finally, either the vision of my hair appeared unto him, or he got bored. 'Your hair is thick ... otherwise, an unknown quantity. You will wear turbans till your hair grows out. If you touch a finger to it other than to use the treatments I give you, I'll bloody well paddywack you till your lily cheeks are purple!'

Well! That put me in my place, so I wore turbans that Kevin made till one day, he rushed out and returned with Anthony, a hairdresser friend. Kevin must have strained their friendship because he allowed not a whit of creativity. Every movement of the scissors was directed by Kevin, Anthony reduced to robotic arms. After a while, Kevin said, 'Stop.' His face filled with one of those expressions that scream
Eureka!
Something was clear as water to him. Anthony and I waited.

'A karakul hat, luvs,' Kevin said, as if then we'd hit ourselves in the noggins for being thick as two planks.

Our mouths closed as we tried not to look stupid. Kevin snorted, and explained.

The pelt of aborted karakul sheep make the best hats, with the closest waves and brightest lustre. He told us how the karakul pelts are obtained.

'They beat a pregnant ewe till it aborts. The lamb's fur only remains tight and curly for the first twenty-four hours so you have to skin it while it's still alive. And then you make your hat.'

By the time Kevin finished his explanation, all the while gazing at my hair, he was in what used to be called a 'state'. His voice, and his chest,
quivered
with passion. I thought of an image—a crowd of Greenpeaceniks coming upon the Marquis de Sade just as the Marquis spots Bo Peep with her sheep.

'Don't you see?' Kevin asked, and I suppressed a giggle.

We didn't see.

He couldn't suppress himself any longer, but turned to Anthony and chucked him a whack on the back of his head that brought tears to his tolerant friend's eyes. 'She's wearing the hat, you fool ... and it's a beaut.'

Anthony put his hands on my shoulders and turned me so that he could see each angle. It might have been a displacement exercise. He concentrated on the haircut with a professional eye, and what he saw was what I now saw, and he smiled at Kevin in forgiveness. Kevin was an artist, Anthony just a tradesman.

What we saw was a high crown of a hat widening at the top. Its thick sides stood out from my head, and it sat deeply upon me, its rakish angle throwing a great coruscation of hair across my right brow and the top of my eye socket. At the back of my head, the hair was cut close toward my nape, where it was cut off sharply, the errant hairs on my neck plucked out.

It was a magnificent attention-getter of a hat, a Belle Époque picture hat, but with a twist—this, on a delicate, closely cropped head.

He turned to me. 'I was going to order one to be made for you, but you grew your own.'

~

My Face.

I suppose you wonder about that. Kevin said not to worry. That it had 'character'. Justin agreed. I didn't feel that I could ask Brett, and he didn't offer an opinion.

~

And do you wonder about Brett?

Except for the art bought for him, he seemed to approve the rest of the developments, or at least they didn't noticeably bother him. And though he didn't say, he should have liked my karakul look with its glossy, jet-black waves, because, except for his horns and the cock of my 'hat', we could have been wearing the pelts of twins.

—15—

Which brings usto Brett. How is he going in his job, you ask.

So did I.

At first, I didn't ask. We'd eat together at every meal, and he would ask about my progress, and nod and hmm, and carry on with his meal.

And we would make small talk, unsuccessfully. What do you say in small talk to the Devil? Also, he was always—I can't think of another way to put it—preoccupied—even when he was attentive.

But writing does that to you. I certainly didn't want to upset his thought process.

Sometimes he worked on his futon mountain, but mostly he kept to his room.

I never entered. I never peeked in.

And that's how it was for the first while, when I was busy affecting my transformation.

The nights were disturbing.

Howls, groans, crashes, low litanies of mumbled words—incantations? And then, commonly, silence. Or the reverse—silence in the early part of the night, to end when I was woken at dawn by the howls and groans. They sounded inhuman, and yet I remembered my dad of an evening walking out of the house and making sounds like that. We knew because all of a sudden, the dogs would start up.

I locked my door that once I told you about, the night I gave Brett the boots, when the sounds were so terrible that I ran water just to keep me company.

Brett never referred to the sounds, and I dared not.

Those howls were never made in my presence, but he was prone to
something
. His eyes would suddenly yellow in the whites, the rose-coloured red of his irises turning a muddy brown. His face would sag and tinge greeny-grey like that first evening when I thought he had motion sickness.

Sometimes I wondered—what if the taxi that had just missed Brett, had hit.

Attacks affected his balance. Once he fell from his futon mountain. Kevin and I heard the thud while in my room for a fitting. My arms bristled with pins, so Kevin ran to help, but Brett waved away assistance.

~

So with this and that, I didn't say 'How's the book going?'—the best question in the world to put a writer in a rip-your-face-off mood.

I was more than content here, and in no rush. And Brett obviously needed some time to get down to it.

It would have been fun knowing how he was going, so I was sorry we couldn't talk. The plot was something that I was hungry for. I got a certain frustrated satisfaction from not knowing yet, but though I teased myself with the dubious enjoyment of delayed gratification, I was never into masochism, and would much rather have devoured the plot chapter by chapter, hot.

Was he using the 3 x 5 card technique, or did he write longhand on foolscap? Did he use loose pages or notebook, or did he type, which I sometimes thought I heard, or dictate? He never asked me or anyone else to get supplies, but with the periods of silence coming from his room when he was not in the lounge, I had to assume he spent much time out. What he did when he was out, I could only guess. I was sure he didn't stand in queues, as he could rustle up a packet of 3 x 5 cards with a wave of his hand, and without having to pollute with a plastic carry bag.

~

One day in late February I was stretched out on Ferdinand's portable massage table in my bedroom where Kevin was supervising my daily massage. Just as Ferdinand reached my left ankle, I broke and swallowed half a molar in a tutti-frutti frangipani fondant.

At the sudden loss and pain, Ferdinand and Kevin were all over me like a rash. Kevin got on the house phone immediately, and it was all (to downstairs) 'Miss Lily's emergency' and (to me) 'You'll love him,' and (to downstairs) 'No, right away.
Now!
'

Forty minutes later, my teeth were in the hands of the Restonia's dental surgery team led by Dr Bernard Kipple-Swan, Royal Fellow of this and that, but I was so comfortable, I fell asleep. We were downstairs in a sub-ground level at the Restonia, in its own fully equipped hospital/dental suite. Afterwards, I was taken on a tour of their completely fitted-out civil defence shelter, a level below. Their definition of essential supplies was another step in my education.

The next day, another luxurious session with 'please call me Bernard' and his equally pleasant assistants completed the molar capping, as well as some perfectionism he felt driven to perform on my front teeth. He was scheduling more for the next day when Kevin intervened.

My teeth were part of my character, Kevin said, and he didn't want Kipple-Swan getting hold of them and making them
too
perfect.

K and K-S discussed until they yelled, at which they were equally capable. When K's fists bunched, I intervened.

K had the better argument. K-S was a pedant. And a fanatic for the perfect smile. But once you thought of the subject deeply (as K obviously had), a smile you could buy had all the individuality of duty-free designer goods. So I thanked Bernard with grace, lovely man that he was, and explained to him that, in the superficially judgemental world that we live in, my writing would be bound to be judged lightweight and I wouldn't be taken seriously, if my teeth were
too
beautiful.

Kevin almost ruined my point by blurting, 'Common, common, common.'

Kipple-Swan didn't swan out. He held nothing against me, but I know he thought 'weak woman', and was just planning for that inevitable time in the future when the moon would conspire with a midnight toffee ...

~

The excitement of it all surprised me, as did the disappointment, since everything was taken care of in-house. I had, in fact, no need to go out—for anything.

Those rumours about the Restonia's secrets were true. The hotel was not a simple shoebox but a warren, the defunct factories with their carefully maintained exteriors being part of the whole. Justin offered to show me around and to move Brett and me to a suite with secret access. I didn't need any secret access, and was always too busy to take Justin up on his exclusive tour offer. As for celebrities, I could only play spot-the-face by looking in the mirror. The place was quiet as a tomb. Probably quieter. I only ever came upon two 'friends'—a hag with Albert Einstein hair and an expensive handbag, in the lobby on the day of Jim's funeral; and a tall man with a bad back, a worse toupee, and a disaster of a white belt, in the lift after the Kevin and Kipple-Swan fight.

The next day  I asked Justin about these friends. Justin smiled at my moniker, 'Mizz Einstein'.

'A lovely old friend,' he said, 'A retired mistress.'

'Ooh. Whose?'

Justin pursed his lips. The prude!

'About that new Lindsay,' he said.

I didn't want to talk about that new Lindsay. I wanted to know about these mysterious guests. Justin wouldn't say anything more about Ms Einstein, except that she was Hungarian and her only need was a bag of beets a week. Then he changed the subject again.

I grabbed Justin's little finger. 'Jus ... tin?' I twisted.

'Careful!' He pulled at his finger, but I held tight. 'Who's Mister Toupee?'

He shook his head, but not at me. There was some internal angst busy here. I released his finger because this inner turmoil was far more interesting than Mystery Guest Number Two.

'Okay,' I said. 'You don't have to tell me about Mister Toupee. I've already got him down.'

'You do?'

'Film director.'

'My word! And his nationality?''

'You kidding?' I laughed. 'With that white belt, who ya'll joshing, pardner?' My cheeks warmed. I'm no impersonator.

'Ho ho ho,' Justin laughed mirthlessly. 'He's Norwegian.'

I was so shocked, I blurted, 'Is that good or bad?'

'Aussie toilet paper isn't good enough for him.'

'Crikey!'

Justin's scowled, a vanilla-blond Heathcliff. 'Where'd you see this bastard?'

'In the lift. Why?'

'They're supposed to stay in their own wing.'

'
They?
'

'It's a ... a convention. In the Piggotts Woollens wing.'

This was bad and getting worse. From the beetledness of Justin's brow, I knew he was hoping I wouldn't ask.

'A convention of whom?' I asked, reaching out.

He shoved his hands under him—a little boy who doesn't want teacher to see his dirty fingernails. His eyes screwed shut. 'Amway millionaires.'

'Fucking shit!'

What about my reputation?

'What about me?' I demanded.

'I haven't told anyone,' he insisted. 'And I've kept most of these groups away. Telling them it's booked. Stuff like that.'

'So are any
more
of these coming through?'

He hung his head. 'Next week. I couldn't refuse. They've been here before.'

'Who, Justin?'

'They're very discrete.' He muttered something. Was it 'Effing sods'?

'Jus—'

'Coppers. Retired coppers.' He exhaled so slowly and completely that he sagged like a emptied douchebag ... with a bow tie. 'International,' he added, poking a forefinger at his mouth and ripping its nail off down to the quick.

No wonder. I could just imagine. Perverts from Argentina.

'Periwinkle,' Justin moaned. He had forgotten I was there.

I snapped my fingers. 'A flower?'

'Brisbane. Periwinkle from Brisbane.'

'What about him?' I felt like an interrogator, my subject so broken he was putty in my hands.

'Ex-chief inspectors are the worst. They demand everything, and they're the reasons for the—' He stopped himself just as this was getting really good.

He had closed his mouth, but I could still squeeze more juice out. Besides, something didn't add up. 'I thought the Restonia was famous for the quality of its friends.'

This statement was a hypodermic jabbed straight into his vein. It produced an immediate effect.

'Oh, fickle fickle world,' he literally cried. 'Good friends are hard to find.'

I curled my lips inward, clamping them hard.

What came next was:

'Miss Lily!'

He threw himself on the floor at my feet and grasped my thighs. His eyes were wild. Not that I worried. I could take care of myself.

'Friends!' Justin cried, bitterly. 'You, Miss Lily, are above all that. You and Mister Hartshorn.'

I was astounded, and a mite insulted. The thigh grip was platonic.

However, he wasn't finished. 'Miss Lily,' he repeated, his voice a husky rasp. Perhaps its rawness stirred him, for he jerked his arms away as if I were fire.

He scrabbled to his feet, and ... bowed! 'Oh dear oh dear,' he said, becoming more remarkable by the moment. This man wasn't Heathcliff. He was a dead ringer for that white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I half expected him to pull out a pocket watch, scream, 'I shall be late!' and skitter off.

Instead, he gazed plaintively at the top of my head and uttered very fast, 'You are the light of my life. I will never say it again.'

At
that
, he skittered off.

When the suite door closed, I laughed till I cried. That bow tie! How passion could move it!

~

Oh, the Restonia, though quiet as a tomb, was a self-contained world, all right. Justin and Kevin and Ferdinand and Serge, and outsiders like Bernard and Mr Hazumi, not to mention the trouble-free, silent and efficient maids. I don't know what you would call these maids, as they were male. They had no airs, no names that I was ever told. All such a friendly society that there was no incentive for me to visit the uncomfortable, indifferent, poorly serviced outside world.

Besides, my new persona was not made for my former pastimes, now as attractive as yesterday's baguette. The few times I did go out—all to do with the formalities around Jim's death—only made me happy to get home, back to the Restonia.

There was, however, something in the air.