THE SCORN OF BECKY PILBEAM

The moment she entered the plaza her rancour began leaching into morbid self-consciousness, but head down, eyes averted, she pressed on, unsteady on rarely worn high heels, feigning keen interest in display windows but seeing nothing, nothing but a pale frightened imitation of a woman in her mid-thirties. This was ridiculous, for why should she feel guilty, she told herself, but was immediately shafted in her mind’s eye by a horrified glare from her gaping mother and an air of incomprehension on the benign, more wordly face of her father.

No, Tyson was definitely going to pay for this . . . this humiliation.

Shame she might shuck off if only she looked up and brazened it out.

After all, there were several single women, mainly Asian, admittedly, strolling around window-shopping, some young and inexperienced, you’d think, some of indeterminate age, several smartly dressed in lightweight woollen jackets and tailored trousers, most in casual western, even shorts, and a few cougarish possibles who stared through you. Hardly any would be rivals, surely.

She wondered if she had shown enough restraint in her application of eye-shadow, the electro blue spectrum, and had never before doubled burgundy lipstick as blush for her cheeks. Tyson had always been repelled by bold ruby lips, more so by wet lippy, reminiscent of Albert Tucker’s schoolgirls and cheap St Kilda brothels, preferring the Nordic penchant for the natural look, so she seldom used any foundation in spite of her freckles scattered like poppy seed beneath deep-set bluish eyes; maybe this time a touch of powder. Even her nails she’d dabbed bubblegum purple rather than safe coral pink. Might as well go the whole hog and put the boot in. O for a steel stiletto!

Although Tyson was her first and only boyfriend, Becky wasn’t entirely ignorant of the whiff of testosterone. She and bosom pal Anita would occasionally sit in the outer at the MCG and admire with a giggle the likes of Robbie Flower and David Polkinghorne and Steve MacPherson, who had kissed her at a fund-raising ball, but it was more of an aesthetic attraction, so it seemed. Her younger brother, Max, though, a farmer out Camperdown way, would rabbit on about the antics of the footy chicks who came on hard about prime beef. Becky did blurt out a laugh or two at that choice of language, designed in a straight-faced, matter-of-fact manner to shock his mother, especially as she knew Mum was squirming inside, but was both saddened and disgusted by the surrender of self-control and dignity by such tarts. Yet here she was behaving in a similarly sleazy fashion. What on earth was she letting herself in for?

It had been such a terribly long time since she had last wriggled into a mini-skirt, too long she now realized, though never would she have dared to wear grenadier red before. She was on fire now, all right. Lou Sickert, her brother-in-law’s tennis pal, had encouraged her with, ‘I didn’t know Beck had legs,’ which both cheered and embarrassed her. But Lou must have several times seen her chicken-white limbs complementing a lily-white tennis dress on court. Or was she wearing white leg-warmers? Lou chortled, trampling over neighbours’ gardens in search of balls he’d clownishly bomb-dropped beyond the base line.

Becky’s pride was still hurting from that last rubber with Tyson, a three-hour five-setter on a sweltering Sunday afternoon, when he had vanquished her for the first time. How the cunning old fox fought back from two sets down, when she was already bored with another one-sided match, could hardly bear thinking about. Instead she trudged off the court in a huff, pouting. ‘That’s the last time I’m playing with you, you meanie. I refuse to play against this rubbishy ping-pong.’ Didn’t even offer to shout him a blueberry milkshake at the corner milk bar, the traditional lot befalling the loser.

She was also nettled that her mother had been right all along. Lorelei was matronly in manner and ample of build, a clucker of fuss, Tyson thought, but generous to a fault, for hadn’t she brought him back a waste-paper receptacle in purple leather from Florence? ‘She never used to be this doty,’ Becky often murmured behind her hand. ‘I love life,’ Mum would burble away, even if the gossip from the Church of Christ was spiked with trials and tribulations, including the mauve and greening black eye that her depressive bully of a husband had inflicted, which led to her taking refuge with their eldest daughter; even then there was no stopping her running round meals or selling raffle tickets or sitting with the elderly noddies on Sunday afternoons. Her jolly mood was seldom dinted. Except Becky’s relationship with a much older man had been gnawing away at her for years. Quite obviously, it was going nowhere, and since her youngest daughter had moved in with Tyson she could no longer bring herself to speak dotingly about the wayward one to friends at church.

‘Is he a kind of father-figure?’ she dared ask over the Sunday roast, eventually, trying hard to understand the attraction. Dr Handysides at church had agitated her by confirming that Becky was missing all the pleasure of marrying a man closer in age, setting up a home together with future guaranteed and bearing children before she was too much older. After all, this Tyson fellow had already experienced that blissful state with another woman, admittedly without the good fortune of kids. At which remark, Lorelei became doubly worried. Would she never fuss over a grandchild by her favourite daughter? If only her Becky were game enough to ask Tyson where she stood. But then, she sighed, a lockstitch of her own creed was that a good wife should always pander to the male ego.

‘No, of course not, Mum. It’s rather more than that.’ Though Becky was abruptly reminded of her thirteenth birthday treat in the City when her own father bustled all three daughters into an adult sex shop to initiate them into the esoterica of sexual mores, disgusting Lorelei by the by, who disowned the lot of them by storming off to Best & Less on the corner, entertaining hideous imaginings of torturous surgical gizmos and those disgusting bilboes.

‘I do feel hurt that you no longer come to church.’

‘Oh Mum,’ Becky said, trying not to reveal her exasperation, ‘Tyson does have a spiritual side. We’ve started attending meditation . . .’ but bit her tongue when she recollected that her other much younger brother training for the ministry had pronounced lugubriously that meditation was evil, the work of the devil. To make matters worse, this was a radical hi-tech variation hot from the debauched west coast of America.


While gloating over his upset victory, still miming his slashing backhand down the line which would have given Ken Rosewall nightmares, Tyson was taken aback by Becky’s funky mood. It was so out of character. And to dismiss his tactical subtlety as ping pong was most condescending. She knew he would always chase down everything, because he was a devil for lost causes. Besides, he did enjoy for pure exercise running to the lines and scampering with desperate lunge up to the net, which she with her lack of mobility would seldom attempt, preferring to dominate from the base line with solid ground strokes and pass him down either wing. But that afternoon his extravagant flourish of a backhand slice swishing across his body with vicious backspin to cut the ball low and suddenly dropping short gave her nothing to hit on the bounce. Whereas he smiled at the hint of blood spilt on court, the red seeds and pulpy rind of pomegranates at the northern end beneath the neighbour’s fence, rotting.


She had brought her pooch with her, a toy mongrel with a yap of Jack Russell, a tricolour waif from Lost Dogs, polka dot with a dash of grey about its head, harried by two much larger, snappy hounds and neglected by a careless old codger working for council maintenance, who was frequently blind drunk over a painful separation. Polky was ageless but old before his time, hairless and defeated, constantly scratching his bald patches and licking the carpet, waddling on bow legs with minute, springy steps, now stopping to scratch his flank with minuscule hind leg.

Tyson did feel sympathy for the poor old thing that frequently suffered bouts of hiccups or coughing and spent his days curled up in a blanket out of harm’s way, still to learn how to bark again. So Becky was reassured, for any man who loved dogs must have a good heart.

‘Remind me to get some cod liver oil for Mr Polky,’ she said, jouncing the pup in her arms and bussing his nervous little head.

‘That’s what got me through the 1940s,’ he replied. ‘That and a thick twist of malt. Now listen, he bit my toe again last night.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Tyson, he says, but you shouldn’t be rough with me. Naughty Mr Tyson mustn’t invade my space, you know. That’s my bed too.’

‘Be reasonable. I can hardly turn over without accidentally kicking him. I don’t always know where he is when I’m in Snoozeville.’

Except when Mr Polky was licking the apparent salt on his hands and legs or burrowing into the crooks of his knees.


It was late Friday afternoon, twelve days before Christmas. Tyson collected the mail and shuffled the envelopes. The name and address on the last letter held his attention for several seconds, rooting him to the pavement: Fosselthwaite and Snype, Barristers & Solicitors. Never get involved with the law cautioned a primal voice and he hadn’t. Or hadn’t meant to. Though the image of a poor blighter in the dock at the Old Bailey sprang to mind, possibly being tried for murder, which Tyson wandering by as a footloose sixteen year old popped in to observe. He emerged sickened by the rapier thrusts of the QC, whose rampant sarcasm reduced the accused to a stuttering idiot, barely able to get his replies out before being withered with contempt of court. A wave of dread surged over him, then a secondary wave of panic. Was he getting up the nose of his neighbours again, the Montovini, whingeing about overhanging boughs or his roots forcing up their foundations? Or the run-off in stormy weather from the lateral slope of the back garden sluicing out their potting shed? Surely, it couldn’t be one of his massage clients – he was ethically sound, for goodness sake. Unless, he’d aggravated some chap’s hernia that he hadn’t been informed about. Oh, my god!

Imagine being shoved by surly-shouldered debt-collectors, hastily selling up dirt-cheap and moving into a packing-case beneath St Kilda pier!

Frantically, he jagged open the envelope.

Dear Sir,
                            Re: Rebecca Pilbeam – De Facto Entitlements.

Entitlements! What entitlements?  ‘Our client has been reluctant to make any claim,’ the letter began, although the list of alleged grievances that followed belied this statement.

‘Specifically, our client instructs that she contributed an amount of $150.00 per month towards the mortgage repayments over some eight years . . .’ Hey, not exactly. I had paid off the mortgage three years before Beck moved in. She had paid a token rent, but it was a hundred and fifty per month for the first four years, an amount nominated by the lady herself. This figure was much less than the sum she’d paid for her previous rental . . . and, I’d have you know, less than the rent demanded of her by her own brother-in-law when she sought short-term accommodation. In fact, now she was renting a house at six hundred per month!

'Given that the value of the home at separation was about $150,000 . . . ‘  Hold on! Who carried out this valuation? And when? And how? ‘We are instructed that our client is prepared to accept the amount of $17,750 as full and final settlement of her property entitlements.’

Eighteen grand! For god sake, that’s an arm and a leg! By what criteria did you arrive at that extortionate figure? Which works out at almost twelve per cent of your supposed valuation of the house. So what other factors did you take into account? And why did you not list them, so that I could present my version of events, or at least gain some inkling of exactly how I had committed any wrongdoing?

‘We advise that we are instructed by our client that should you fail to respond within 7 days to issue property proceedings.’

Tyson slumped deep into the armchair, his insides seething. Property proceedings? The sound of the euphemism with its punchy pontificating alliteration cut ugly incisions. Had he been given seven days from the day that the solicitor wrote the letter or from the day he received it? A mere seven days! It had taken Beck over two and a half years to plan her campaign, collect her evidence, refine her cost-effective arguments, nurse her ill-will and bewitch the solicitor. Fourteen years reduced to twenty lines of bloodless prose! Huh, can’t even write a grammatically correct sentence, these legal sharks!

There was no name on the solicitor’s letter, no face behind the dry tone; only an unidentifiable squiggle of a signature. Beck’s really landed us in the poo.

Fortunately, the fake samurai sword that he’d souvenired in Kyoto had been stolen in a burglary one Friday night when they were caught up in a game of Trivial Pursuit.


Her brother-in-law, Steven Gough Allinson, who puffed himself up as a businessman but didn’t stoop to a serious job since he could comfortably live off his mater’s legacy and who ran both a BMW and his wife’s armoured Land Cruiser, occasionally took on casual book-keeping jobs to keep his hand in the till as well as collecting rent for well-oiled acquaintances of his late father who let their homes for six-month cruises or the Venice Biennale.

‘I’d be screwing the bastard for everything he’s got!’ said Steven, still sulking over Tyson’s unwillingness to go into partnership with four other families to purchase a valley property up near Marysville with a thriving snap-frozen raspberry business. Possessed of a couple of on-site cottages, the six groups could take it in turns to book a weekend, go bush-walking, let the kids learn how to ride a trail-bike, splash about in the dam in summer, live like squattocracy. Besides, in spite of his competitive bluster in the doubles, he was made to look ridiculous and sulky by that bastard’s bamboozling spin and his own fresh-air swipes.

‘Look, I don’t feel comfortable . . . ‘

‘Let’s not pussyfoot around. He led you on, didn’t he? Gave you the impression he was ready to get hitched?’

‘I thought so,’ Beck said hesitantly, frowning. ‘That very first meeting, Max’s twenty-first. At Kooyong, on the centre court. He told me his short-lived marriage hadn’t worked out, a huge mistake, but that didn’t mean he might not re-marry.’

‘Well, there you are. He was testing your reaction, playing with your emotions. And now here you are a dozen years later, no further forward. You have solid grounds, my girl. Now let’s consider his assets.’


Fists clenched, jaw locked, Tyson could see the second-hand silver BMW she had just bought, could see himself slipping round to her carport under cover of darkness and scarring the panels, breaking windows, stabbing tyres. Then as anger, indignation, frustration expired, a sense of pity welled up. She was attacking him not because of any financial exploitation but for his lack of emotional capital. ‘I’ll come back to you if we can get married,’ she’d said forlornly. ‘We can get counselling . . . if you want.’

At nights, sickened with guilt and shame, he’d lived through those last months again and again, the months of Beck’s despondency, her listlessness turning to sickness as her larynx tightened so that she could barely speak, desperate now for marriage but withdrawing into herself further and further beneath fits of coughing, ruffled bedclothes and walls of silence. ‘Why do you reject me?’ she’d occasionally whimper.

But persist he would in his cold-shoulder treatment, for he knew she thought too highly of him; he didn’t deserve her, nor could he cope with such adulation and loyalty, such limpet steadfastness, even though she was gradually becoming less clingy, more a course junkie . . . the Jung Society, Hatha Yoga to undo the knots, Initiation into the Kama Sutra . . .

How do you put a value on feelings? How do you read the happiness index? In any case, how do you remember the ebb and flow and all the muddied eddies of emotion before the final lunacy? And how do you weigh in the balance all those thousands of little everyday favours given by both parties without heed of reward or even acknowledgement?


She’d done everything to capture him, except perhaps be more forthright about her own heartfelt wishes. Her pain when he left for a holiday in the States she recalled with a shudder. So dreadfully did she miss him that she resolved to make an appointment with a GP whose locum lay outside her parish to obtain the pill. On the evening of his return her parents were at choir practice, a perfect opportunity. She collected Tyson at Tulla and brought him straight back home, practically breathless.

‘Just wait here a moment,’ she said coyly, gesturing him to an armchair in the lounge. ‘I’ll call you in a jiff,’ and disappeared into her bedroom. Having taken off her clothes, she arranged her naked body on the counterpane in the most dignified pose she’d rehearsed, one she’d discovered in the local library – Goya’s Maja desnuda. Now, though, at this very moment she’d been dying for, she was trembling, felt the whole embarrassment of seduction too arch, with her arms back behind her head, utterly exposed, indeed, far too yielding.

‘Darling, I’m ready for you now!’ she warbled, with a bit of a croak.

Funny, she’d never called him ‘Darling’ before. Deeming her behaviour more alarming than mysterious, his own thoughts were still gliding smooth and tranquil through the mangrove swamps of the Everglades, where every bubble rising from the murky shadows of mud and knotty roots feigned an alligator’s vigilant eye. In no hurry, he approached Becky’s bedroom, suddenly shocked to find her starkers. Struck speechless he was, a stunned mullet out of his depth. Abashed in turn, but smiling knowingly if not winningly, she opened her arms wide to draw him down out of his rapture.

‘Welcome back!’

Now he did look perplexed, not deliriously happy as was meant.

“I’ve been to the doctor’s. It’s okay.’

‘But you didn’t have to do that.’ Stumbling on difficult terrain, in a tone of dismay and almost annoyance, he knew how much it had cost her to surrender her virginity, how much he must have meant to her, when he didn’t need or particularly desire to have intercourse, yet sensed some kind of entrapment or tacit commitment. And yet she had done this for him, just as she had given herself to petting then oral favours, how could he hurt her feelings, saw the extent of her devotion, her wish to demonstrate she really was an emotionally mature woman.

Reluctantly, he made love, gentle and almost passive, touched by her faith but also sinking guilt that she had saved herself for someone worthy of her, someone whom she could bear off in marriage. Worse still, she had unilaterally moved the relationship onto another level.

For it was something old-fashioned about her, the cleanskin that he had really liked, really cuddly, until he realized that adjective was a euphemism best left to Personal Services in the local rag. In short, he thought he had her measure: her modesty and fondness for family, her church-going that he had given away in his teens, her conservative way of dressing, her genuine willingness to help others less fortunate, her mildness of manner, especially since he was still hurting from a torrid affair with a married woman with three young children under the age of seven, where he had in effect foolishly lost his sense of self, not to mention his dignity and inner calm. By contrast with that manipulative lady, Becky was easy to please and settled for few creature comforts, a homely girl who had a close circle of four girlfriends she’d grown up with, all now salaried professionals together with their partners, who, Tyson admitted, fifteen years senior, he felt ill-at-ease with, as if they too would be chivvying over when he and Becky would tie the knot. Then there were long-time friends from Youth Group, a capella, tennis club, a whole caravanserai of connections. Though very much a people person, she was nonetheless stable and unlikely to rock his hard-fought equilibrium.

Finally, several years having elapsed, he felt obliged to invite her to share his own house at a time when Becky was decidedly unhappy. She could not bear to stay in the same home as her loathsome father with his piggy eyes and vindictive manner, but she also felt stilted with her new flatmates, a loud, domineering party girl who’d romp in late Friday and Saturday nights with a different guy, and another girl who lodged like a fixture in the bathroom and got through several rolls of toilet paper each week, presumably on the removal of cosmetics, and was frequently snippy about Becky’s wardrobe that didn’t do favours, especially from rear vision.

Becky found co-habiting a painful matter to raise with her mother, who would certainly regard this unforeseen shift as living in sin and with – of all rough trades! – a masseur as a challenge to her own nurturing role; indeed, to her own moral values, the integrity of her whole family. How would this shameful development affect her sixty-year old brother’s recovery at Woodend from a triple bypass?


From day one Tyson was scrupulous in making sure they listed all their mutual expenses together with utility bills and divvied them up every Sunday. He attended to the cooking during the week the laundry and toilet; she to the vacuuming, weekend cooking and queasy chocolate cake home-made. It proved a comfortable arrangement for both parties. When Beck offered to pay for half the cost of repairs and cleaning the gutters, he declined, for he was determined not to take advantage of ownership, even offering his house for her collateral should they enter into some business arrangement with Steven Allinson.

Ever the latter-day New Age adventurer, Tyson suggested they go to a presentation of high-tech meditation by a celebrated master at the town hall. He did have misgivings about the inevitable sales pitch and signing up. Suspicious, he was nevertheless sold on the notion of getting back into his personal meditation that had of late lapsed into a dutiful chore and a lazy wander down memory lane.

The packed audience hushed and burst into applause as Master Delmondo’s presence manifested in a silky white robe with fluorescent blue sash. At once, Tyson was put off by the larding of abstract scientific compounds – ‘Alpha level Synchronicity Holodynamic vibrational entrainment technology’ – but he could not help tittering at the slick rat-a-tat patter of a master spruiker that suggested put-downs from Groucho Marx or old music hall routines: ‘Every thought you ever thought appears in your thinking. You’re not an individual, you’re a crowd’; ‘You shouldn’t eat animals, you’re not a cemetery’; ‘We use less than one per cent of our brain function. We are a bunch of walking corpses.’

How on earth does this guy ever still his chattering mind?

But when Tyson adjusted the headphones, he did school himself into an alpha state of promised peacefulness. It wasn’t long, though, before his conscious mind began playing up, trying to recall how many items were listed on the master’s whole-brain product catalogue: DVDs, hanging crystals, jewellery, perfume, almanacs, greetings cards . . .

His own soul’s vibration was obviously out of synch, he admitted, deflated, yet listening to Beck’s easy rhythmical breathing was far more satisfying than concentrating on his own. Feeling virtuous that once again he’d invited her to share a whole new experience, he wondered with a pang of regret whether he might have treated his own imaginary daughter in such a way, sharing life with a loved one as an educational journey. He just hoped Beck wouldn’t notice his fit of the fidgets.

And for her part, she was willing, really excited to learn how to keep both sides of her brain in balance and jumped at the chance to extend the narrow boundaries of her spiritual growth. ‘You must transcend your data,’ advised Master Delmondo, the lanky American radiating health, quips of wisdom and sure-fire conviction. ‘You are the god within.’ She readily gave herself up to the instructions: eyes closed, spine upright, hands joined loosely in her lap. Sounds from the synthesizer and veena and oceanic breakers washed over her afresh again and again; she might have been rebirthing in ambiotic fluid. ‘To be high on life,’ echoed Master Delmondo, ‘live for the moment’, a thrilling idea, till she pulled herself up - her despicable father would’ve entertained the same attitude years ago in the sixties.


Dear Fosselthwaite & Snype,

I am in receipt of your communication of 1st inst, in which you mistakenly claim that your client, one Rebecca M. Pilbotham, is entitled to the exorbitant sum of $17,750 due ostensibly to the fact that I had erred in divvying up our mutual bills equitably whilst said client was residing at aforesaid domus.


I put the case that the aforementioned Rebecca M. Pilbotham, sometime known as Beck, Becky, Bex or The Pill, is on the contrary indebted to my good self for offices rendered to the tune of $17,750.


Such services tendered run as follows:


            • Lender of $35,000 collateral for your client to enter business partnership


            • Male escort to Europe for initiation into a range of diverse cultures


            • Translator of French, Spanish, Italian and a range of English accents


            • Masseur with acupressure speciality


            • Adviser of and Assistant at regular sexual practices – sometimes irregular


            • Spiritual guide


            • Family counsellor, particularly re. her parents


            • Hit-up partner at tennis and church trivia nights


            • Dog-walker and pooper-scooper


No, no, no, too sarky, sailing far too close to the wind. Then he had a brainwave, but was unfortunately brought low by the reply.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for submitting an abstract of your article ‘Heav’n hath no fury like a man scorn’d’ to The Melbourne Inquirer. Regrettably we cannot use it as we receive many similar submissions daily.


When he broke the news as late as he dare that he would be spending Christmas in Europe, he hadn’t bargained at all on her violent reaction: those chestnut eyes smouldering, her hurt, disbelieving stare, her snatch at his hands and pressing them against her breasts. ‘Tell me that you love me!’ she pleaded. ‘Tell me! Please tell me you love me.’ He was in such a state of shock, he couldn’t speak, repulsed by this melodramatic snit, his own helplessness. Still she groaned, ‘Please tell me you love me!’ This was becoming ridiculous, she was acting like a child, but she clung on, sobbing, so that his own gathering irritation and desire to break away from her clutches subsided into pity, her wet face distorted with pain. ‘Tell me! Tell me!’ she growled a grizzle, pulling at the back of his shirt. All he could do was wrap his arms about her and bury her face in his already damp shirt.

‘Of course, I love you,’ he whispered into her ear, doubtful, because he no longer knew what love was. Or at least could never seem to steer that middle way between the Scylla of romance and passion on the bedrock and the Charybdis of a steadfast companionable relationship not hijacked by sexual performance. He was fond of her, of course, but then hadn’t even thought of asking her to accompany him. In any case, she’d be at work.

‘Then take me with you!’

‘What?’

‘Take me with you!’ She was grabbing at his shirt collar as if about to throttle him.

When on Christmas Eve in Venice he was bailed up in his hotel room due to the incessant rain that had flooded St Mark’s, he found himself eagerly looking forward to her joining him in Paris. In fact, enjoyed taking her to those half-empty ultra-cheap underground restaurants off Boulevard St Michel and strolling about Versailles in a flurry of snow. She even forgave him when he mistook the twenty-four hour timetable at Barcelona, where the slow stopping train with no buffet car destined for Granada arrived twelve hours later than he expected, so that they reeled in headachy, parched and starving after a long, sleepless, frigid night on hard, wooden slats.


The first time that he’d asked her to leave his house, their home, he had worked himself up into a state of calm, speaking in phrases measured carefully in recent weeks, but her wide-eyed disbelief and dimples of pain nearly undid him.

‘Now let’s stay calm and rational,’ he was saying, slow and awkward, trying not to inflict too much suffering. ‘Somehow we don’t seem to be connecting any longer. To be blunt, I don’t think I can make you happy, Beck.’

So the time had come at last. She’d been waiting for an ultimatum for months; seen it in the immobility of his face, the terseness of conversation. They had allowed the relationship to grow stale. It was true that his occasional love-making had for years lacked any passion or more recently any genuine involvement at all. But he was usually there for her when she needed him; only nowadays she wondered if she really did need him, what with her new-found interests and widening circle of friends. Bloody hell, why had he waited so long to tell her! For him, the future was winding on and on and on, but happiness always lay round the next corner, never rocked the here and now. But what about me! Even Lorelei had plucked up the gumption to remind her she was wasting the best years of her life.

‘. . . so I think it better if you find somewhere else to live.’

Still she said nothing

‘What do you say?’ It was becoming almost unbearable to look into those brown pebbles. Beck?’

‘I’m staying here.’ Almost inaudible her voice, but she hid her tears in the hum of the vacuum-cleaner she’d re-started, leaving him standing there helpless, trapped in his own domain.


She must’ve been walking about for over an hour and her calf muscles were sore in those high heels, her toes bunched up. How many more laps of the plaza and rounds of arcades should she clock up, already weary, lethargic, hollowed out? There were limits to how frequently you could stare blankly at the window of Hollywood Nails. What a waste that hundred bucks spent on Acqua di Gioia! More annoying, she suffered the nagging suspicion that Tyson was stalking her. She wouldn’t put it past him, now that he’d lost her, especially now that he had no hope of getting her back. She felt a shiver of distaste, that same sensation whenever her estranged father greased to patch things up. Just her luck, for Tyson would occasionally shop at Asian grocers for his piquant spices, aromatic durians and Szechuan peppercorns.

So she attempted to hasten through the throng in the arcades and make her escape to the car park. Clopping woodenly through the plaza, she caught her heel and stumbled.

‘Eh, yer need some help, lady.’ The high-pitched bleat of a voice was quite at odds with the hefty frame bragging belly-gut, the pasty face nicked with port-wine capillaries, the grey, stubbled head.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she bristled, scarcely raising a glance at the man who’d disjointedly lifted himself from a seat next to some stunted box in a concrete tub.

‘D’yer fancy a coffee?’

‘No, no. I must be getting along.’ Although the porky’s line was what she’d been working for all evening. That and something far more blunt and direct.

‘Yer know, I really like you’se. I’ve noticed youse walking about. Yeah, I must’ve met you’se somewhere.’

As she turned to hiss ‘Fuck off!’ she bumped into a girl, Asian, neat and petite, fragile as a doll, hair shiny black as a raven’s wing that fringed a pale face, legs slender as saplings.

‘Sorry, very sorry,’ said the girl.

‘No, no, my fault.’

‘Don’t youse tart with me, yer scuzzbag!’ spat the hulk.

‘That man is trouble for you?’

‘Just a weirdo,’ said Beck in hushed tones, a glare burning her back. ‘I think he’s been stalking me.’

‘Excuse me? My English is not good.’

‘Let’s not worry about him. It’s certainly busy Thursday nights. I’ll let you get on with your shopping.’

‘No, I not do shopping,’ the girl said, staring anxiously at the ground, biting her lip. ‘I notice you two times tonight round shops here. Like you, I’m not happy.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘You understand, it is difficult to find work in Australia. There are too many Chinese in town. Also the money is very little for McDonald’s or washing dishes in Chinese restaurant.’

‘What a shame! How much do you need? I think I’ve got some change. Here . . .’ she said, already poking about in her purse.

A dozy-looking, unshaven youth hanging out of his jeans at the knees, eyes hooded to slits, suddenly hove to at her elbow. ‘Can youse spare twenty cents?  'Ere, can you'se . . .’

‘No. I can’t!’ she snapped, stepping away as if she might be contaminated.

‘Any loose change?’ His voice was practically inaudible as he tottered about her.

‘Buzz off!’ Beck turned back to the girl. ‘Jeez, for crying out loud, these men! Now how can I help?’

‘Thank you no,’ said the girl with anxiety, looking warily at the youth rocking on the spot, fixated upon on them. ‘I’m not beggar.’ A frowning moue of defiance or frustration passed her off as even younger. ‘As student, I am allowed to work twenty hours in week only. What can I do? Either work in massage parlour or work cash in hand. If I do massage parlour I must pay owner fifty/fifty. If I work cash, I must walk too much on my own. It is very dangerous at night.’

‘What a bummer! But how can you possibly cope with such degrading work?’

‘So sorry, what is grading?’

‘How do you manage to do this horrible work?’

‘I try not to think too much about this kind of work, but yes . . . yes, I am shamed. But what can I do? It’s a job. I must have job. I cannot phone my family in Shanghai about how I live or they will give me orders to go home very soon. Then I will be shamed much more. I cannot ask for more money. They give me too much already so I can study medicine and maybe stay here after uni.’

‘There’s an old man over there staring at you. Do you know him?’

She turned and gave a radiant smile that lit up her fine features and a delicate little wave at a grey-haired gaffer puffing away on a cigarette, hunched over a pot of tea inside the awning of an outdoor café just off the plaza. Occasionally an attractively dressed girl in bold colours would wave to him in passing its glass sides with a beaming smile and he would nod, flash his gold teeth and flick ash onto the floor.

‘Oh, he’s my boss. It’s okay. Come, we have a cup of coffee and I introduce you. He tells us to use room with bed in Centro even that public people don’t know. He has key. He can give you work. What is your name?’

‘Err, Wanda. No, no, thank you anyway. Must be going. Nice talking to you.’

‘Remember, if you want to be worker in the street, for money, you must look at the man in the eyes and smile real good. If you want to pick up a man, just go for coffee, no money, you understand, don’t look at them straight in the eyes, but out the corner only.’

As for Tyson, next time she really would bury him.



                                                                                                                  Michael Small
October 3 – November 20, 2010