The Party Line (4 page)

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t have any thoughts about him.’

‘What about what he said about sacrifice?’

‘Well, that bit’s all true.’

‘I didn’t really get it,’ Nickie said. ‘That stuff about sacrifice. How do you know for sure it’s going to be better in Heaven? You could go through your life turning down fun and then, when you get there, it’s actually not that great.’

‘My mother’s there already,’ Gabrielle said. ‘In Heaven. It’s true that everything’s perfect there.’

Nickie looked at her. She remembered how Gabrielle had talked about her mother being dead, back on her first day at school. How the cancer had eaten up her mother’s brain. How she’d said this as though it wasn’t her mother, as though it wasn’t anyone she’d ever cared about at all. It felt safe to ask.

‘Um … if your mother’s dead, how can she tell you what it’s like? In Heaven?’

‘She tells me in my dreams. I dream about her most nights, and she gives me all the details.’

The bell rang.

‘It’s neat you dream about your mum, Gabrielle. But you know, it is just dreaming. That’s all.’

‘I knew you’d say that.’ Gabrielle laughed. They walked towards the classroom. ‘Dad has the exact same dreams. That’s how we know they’re true.’

When Nickie first asked her mother if she could go to Gabrielle’s place on Saturday, her mother said nothing. This came as a surprise. Her mother always had an opinion on things.

‘Well, can I?’

‘Who will be there?’ her mother asked.

‘I don’t know, do I. Not her mother. Obviously.’

Joy gave Nickie a look. ‘It’s just that I don’t know them, Nickie. I don’t know Gabrielle and I don’t know her father. You don’t let your kids go off somewhere if you don’t know the people.’

‘Sharemilkers are just like us, Mum. They’re human beings.’

‘It’s nothing to do with them being sharemilkers.’

‘Well, what is it then? Why can’t you just say I can go?’

‘You’d better ask your father.’

The next morning, Eugene was out on the farm, and her mother was having a lie-in. Nickie slipped out the door, got on her bike and started out for Gabrielle’s.

She rode past their own cowshed. Mr and Mrs Janssen were painting the outside of the building. The Janssens had been their sharemilkers for years. They’d come straight from Holland. Her mother loved them; no one worked as hard as the Dutch, she reckoned, they didn’t complain, they just got on with it. Nickie liked Mrs Janssen, but it was hard to have an opinion about Mr Janssen who never talked to her or anyone else.

Nickie turned down the road to Gabrielle’s and cycled past the Gilberts’ house. Mrs Gilbert was outside her house, hanging washing on the clothes line in the rain. She was wearing her gumboots; underneath the line it was deep mud. The sheets she’d already hung out were so wet they were making the clothes line sag in the middle and they were nearly dragging in the mud. Nickie rang her bike bell and waved out to her. She just stood under the line, holding her big clothes basket, and stared at Nickie. It was nothing personal. Mrs Gilbert did a lot of staring and not much talking.

Nickie considered Mrs Gilbert to be the most beautiful woman she’d ever known. She looked exactly like Audrey Hepburn — an amazing coincidence because Audrey was Mrs Gilbert’s name. Nickie wondered whether her parents had seen the likeness at birth, and named her in honour of the glamorous film star. It was a waste that Mrs Gilbert was not quite right, Nickie thought. She could have gone places.

Gabrielle was waiting on the steps at the front of her cottage. She was wearing a mini-dress with purple and green swirls all over it, and white Beatle boots that came up to her knees. When she came close, Nickie could see she was wearing make-up.

‘You look amazing Gabrielle,’ Nickie said. She just couldn’t take her eyes away from all the aspects of Gabrielle’s face. There was pale blue eyeshadow on the bottom bits of her eyelids, it was powdery but with little sparkles of silver. Her eyelashes were long and black, and underneath you could see she had drawn black eyeliner, like Elly May in
The Beverly Hillbillies
. On her lips was shiny orange pearly lipstick, and there was the same colour rouge on her cheeks. ‘Did you do this all yourself?’

Gabrielle smiled. ‘Of course. Come on,’ she said, holding Nickie’s elbow. ‘Come and see my room.’

Nickie had never seen a kid’s room like this before. The bed was a double. Opposite was a wooden dresser. On top of it was the make-up. Little black plastic cases with eyeshadows — every colour possible. Rows of lipstick — at least ten tubes altogether — and the colours were lined up in order, starting with the palest pink at one end and finishing with the reddest red. Nail polishes, rouges in little round blue cases, creams and of course the mascara. The cases all had swirly writing on them, either gold or silver. Nickie recognised two names from magazines, Helena Rubenstein and Max Factor.

Behind all the make-up, on a little wooden shelf slightly raised from the dresser, there were bottles of perfume. Some of them were really tiny, no bigger than a fat pencil lead, but you could tell it was real perfume inside every one of them.

Nickie knew some of the names — not from real life, but from advertisements in the
Woman’s Weekly
— Chanel, Je Reviens, Shalimar, Tabu, Arpège, Blue Grass and Musk.

Nickie sat down at the dresser. She ran her fingers over all the smooth little cases, picking up one now and again to click it open and shut. Even that little click was special; it felt as though secrets were being unlocked and set free. Her own mother was not a glamorous person. She had one red lipstick and that was all. Once, when she’d
been out, Nickie had sneaked into her bedroom and looked through her drawers, thinking that even if she was boring now, she must have been young once and worn make-up to get a husband. She found nothing.

‘Sit still,’ Gabrielle said. She knelt down beside Nickie and looked across the range of lipsticks. Her fingers took one of the little tubes. She held Nickie’s head with her left hand and carefully painted her lips red. Not a single smudge.

‘Where did it all come from?’ Nickie asked with her new luscious lips.

‘It was Mum’s,’ Gabrielle said.

‘So … why did she need all this make-up?’ Who, Nickie wondered, could need so much make-up? Was she really ugly, Gabrielle’s mother? That didn’t seem likely. Or maybe she needed it when she was nearly dead, to keep her looking human.

‘She didn’t need it,’ said Gabrielle. ‘She wanted it.’

Nickie said nothing. If you needed something, like new undies or socks, then sooner or later you got it, in her experience. If you
wanted
something, you didn’t get it. Not unless you already needed it as well. An example would be shoes — if you needed new shoes, you might get a say in the type or colour of shoes you ended up with. Something like make-up could never be needed.

Nickie wished she’d met Gabrielle’s mother — a lady who wanted and got beautiful things like make-up and perfume and earrings.

‘She was given most of the stuff for free,’ Gabrielle said. ‘She worked in a chemist shop in town, when she wasn’t too sick. The make-up sellers always brought free samples into the shop. The owner let her have them.’

‘That’s what I’m doing, when I finish school,’ Nickie said. ‘I’m working in a chemist shop. For sure.’

They moved on to the perfume.

‘Go on, choose one,’ said Gabrielle.

Nickie fingered the little bottles, one after another. Some of them had the tiniest little black rubber caps in them. It felt as though she would break the glass, just trying to open them. She picked up a bottle called Tabu.

It fitted into the palm of her hand. The label was black and
Tabu
was printed in elegant white letters. In the corner of the label, someone called Dana had signed her name. Underneath Dana, New York and Paris were written. Around the black lid of the bottle there was a very thin string.

The liquid was a deep orange colour, almost brown. Nickie held the bottle up to the sunlight and tipped it to one side. The liquid took its time to move; slowly, more like oil in a bottle than water.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Nickie said. ‘Already it’s beautiful, and I haven’t even smelled it yet.’

She looked at Gabrielle.

‘Trust you to choose that one,’ she said, giggling.

‘Why?’

‘Tabu. You know what
that
means.’

‘No, what’s it mean?’

‘Tabu — it’s French or something for … taboo! T.A.B.O.O.’

Nickie had never heard of the word. ‘Oh, really!’ she said.

Gabrielle was smiling. ‘You’ve got no idea, have you?’

‘Nope.’ Nickie laughed.

‘Well.’ Gabrielle nudged Nickie over and sat on the chair with her. ‘Taboo means forbidden.
Completely
forbidden,’ she said. She lifted the bottle to her nose and took a deep breath in. Then she held it under Nickie’s nose. Nickie sniffed. She’d never smelled anything like it before. It was like every flower ever grown had been mushed up together, then after that mixed with something else. Sherry or whisky.

‘It was made by a famous perfume maker in Europe,’ Gabrielle carried on. ‘And the story is that he was given a challenge.’

Gabrielle was tipping the little bottle. Her finger was over the hole. She brushed aside Nickie’s hair and gently dabbed her finger against her neck, behind her ear. ‘This is where ladies put it, to attract men,’ she said. ‘For allure.’

Nickie didn’t bother asking what allure meant.

‘So,’ Gabrielle went on. ‘Do you want to know what the challenge was?’

She was breathing closely into Nickie’s ear. Her words seemed to
touch the place where she’d dabbed the perfume. It made Nickie feel weird, little shivers went down her back. It was a wonderful thing, this Tabu. One little touch of it and the glamour spread right through her.

‘Tell me,’ Nickie replied.

‘The perfume maker had to make a perfume for a whore.’

Gabrielle stared into the mirror. Her eyes were wide open and her cheeks were red — not just from the rouge.

‘Golly,’ Nickie said. She sniffed. ‘Wow.’

‘You don’t know what a whore is either, do you?’

‘No.’ Nickie was past being embarrassed about what she didn’t know.

Gabrielle took in a deep breath.

‘Ohh kaay. Well you say
hore
, like John Hore, but it’s actually spelt differently, with a W. So it’s W.H.O.R.E.’

‘Got it,’ Nickie said. ‘So what’s it mean?’

‘A whore,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Is a prozzy. Prostitute.’

‘Wow. So explain it to me again, the thing about the perfume.’

‘So. The guy who makes perfume was asked to create a perfume for a whore. Which if you think about it means he had to make a perfume that would make men choose you, instead of other whores.’

Nickie wanted to say something cool. She wanted to talk about sex, and a perfume that would make men want sex from you. But the smell behind her ear seemed to be getting stronger. It was starting to make her feel sick.

‘Can we wash this stuff off?’ she asked Gabrielle. ‘Mum will go crazy if I come home smelling like a … whore.’

‘We’ll do it later,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Let’s finish the job.’

She swished brushes around Nickie’s face, ordering her to open her eyes, then close them, look up, look down. For the last bits, Nickie had to close her eyes.

‘Don’t open them,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Don’t open them ’til I say it’s okay.’

It seemed to take forever. Nickie tried not to think about the sex perfume but it was hard, it was so strong.

‘Open,’ Gabrielle said finally.

Nickie stared at the mirror, at the amazing person that Gabrielle had turned her into.

‘Oh.’ That was all she could manage. She was so happy, tears were coming. She blinked them away before they leaked onto the make-up. ‘Thank you. Oh my God …’

‘Cool, eh?’ Gabrielle grinned at the reflection.

‘
So
cool … Does your dad mind you wearing it? All the make-up, I mean?’

‘He doesn’t even notice.’

‘How can he not notice? My father would go nuts. Actually, he wouldn’t go nuts, because Mum would have already gone nuts and made me wash it off before Dad ever saw it.’

Gabrielle said nothing and Nickie felt bad. It felt as though she’d been rubbing it in that her mother was dead.

‘Um … sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you …’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

It was hard to tell whether Gabrielle cared or not.

They sat and looked in the mirror together for a bit longer.

‘Shame about the hair,’ Gabrielle said. ‘It destroys the look.’

‘Sort of,’ Nickie said, and they both giggled. ‘A glamorous toilet brush.’

‘I know,’ said Gabrielle. She jumped off the seat again and went to her wardrobe. She dragged a cardboard box out of the bottom of the cupboard. ‘It’s in here somewhere …’

She pulled out a handful of shimmery fabric, the deepest red Nickie’d ever seen. Gabrielle shook it out and laid it on her bed.

The beauty of it made Nickie swallow. ‘Can I touch it?’

Gabrielle nodded. ‘Just watch the sequins.’

The material was silk and, although Nickie’d thought it entirely red, there were other colours hidden in the weave. The sequins were all shades of blue and green and formed the tail of a peacock. The peacock itself was painted in the centre.

‘Mum’s,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Dad bought it for her last birthday before she died. She used to wear it like this—’ Gabrielle flung the peacock across Nickie’s shoulders, letting the sparkle drape down her back —
‘until right at the end, when Mum’s hair came out from the cancer medicine. Then she wore it like this.’

Gabrielle lifted the fabric and gently draped it over Nickie’s head. She knotted it to one side and let the sequins tumble like a waterfall over Nickie’s shoulder. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That sorts out the hair problem.’

They looked at themselves in the mirror. Nickie fingered the scarf. The silk was so light, so fine, it was almost impossible to feel it at all.

‘Is your father alright about it just being stuffed in a box, in your wardrobe?’