409

He’d come in at about 11 pm just as the café was closing. 

“Sorry, we’re closing,” she’d said, automatically.

“Gao on!  It’s not quite 11 yet!”

“Well, the coffee machine’s been shut down.”  She stared at him blandly.

He bowed.  “O esteemed princess!  Howzabout a cup of grayn tay, then all you’ll have to do is rinse out the cup afterwards?  And we c’n have a sip of this!”  He reached inside his jacket and removed a small bottle of brandy.

“Where’d you get that?” she exclaimed.  As soon as she’d spoken, she thought how silly she was.  He’d prolly bought it at a bottle shop.  There was one down the road, open until 10.  Or he’d bought it earlier, the day before perhaps.  Why should he have obtained it lately?

“I pinched it,” he said calmly.

“Where from?”

“Nex’ door.  I work there.”

“Are you gay?”  She cursed herself for letting the question slip out.  Just because The Lord Grey was a gay pub.

“Who wants to knaow?” he asked, drily, withdrawing a little.

“Why,” she said, suddenly feeling oddly happy, “The Countess Esmeralda at your service.  Come this way, Prince Charming.  Green tea on its way.”

She made some for him and herself, and sat down opposite him.

“The answer’s ‘yes’,” he said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes I’m gay.  And you?”

“Oh.  No.  I don’t know.  My best friend’s gay.  But I prefer men, I think.”  She thought of her father and wondered.  But then, her mother hadn’t exactly been an icon for womanhood.

“That’s what I feel too,” he said, grinning.

 First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#408)       Next MF post(#410)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

408

Brunswick St, by artist Linda Chase

Centrelink allowed student welfare recipients to earn a couple of hundred dollars a week before the allowance was removed.  So Esmé started looking for a job.  Luke had been to The Lord Grey one evening, returning as usual without a companion, and said to her,

“The café next door to The Lord Grey is looking for a waitress.  Why don’t you apply?”

He himself hadn’t found a job yet, but he wasn’t looking very hard.  His parents supported him.  He always seemed to have enough money.  And she was always short.

She got the job, to her surprise.  She wore a long sleeved shirt to the interview, so that the scars wouldn’t show.  She was worried at first that she might meet her parents there, but then she remembered that they would never visit Brunswick Street.  Her father, with his BMW 4WD tank would never demean himself by coming to somewhere as louche and counter-cultural as that.  Gays!  Immigrants!  Refugees!  Poor people!   Her father was vocal on the subjects of gays and how perverted they were. 

And that was where she’d met Keith.

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#407)       Next MF post(#409)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

407

Esmé’s TER score was high enough for her to choose any course of study at uni.  But she didn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer.  She wanted to study French.  For her it was still a gateway to enchantment, a getaway from what had been done to her.  It was the romance of a different culture, of a far-away place, of escape from hell, that attracted her.  Once, she’d explained the attraction to Luke, who was studying the French horn at the music conservatorium.  He said that being big helped you play the horn; and also that not many people took it up because it was so fiendishly difficult, so his chances of getting a post afterwards in a real orchestra were much better than with other instruments.  They had to move house twice because their housemates complained about the racket. (Mozart’s second racket).  They stayed together when they moved, because each was the other’s best friend.  Esmé rather liked the sound of the French horn.  Especially when it was muted by distance.

“It’s always my friend,” she answered when he’d asked what was so special about French.  “No unpleasant arguments.  Always there, happy to let me share.”

“Yeah, that’s like me and food!  My best friend.” 

Esmé knew Luke well enough to hear the bitterness underneath the seemingly unemotional words.

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#406)       Next MF post(#408)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

406

She excelled at school.  She endured the school awards ceremonies, trying not to visibly shrink from the hand of her father placed on her shoulder while he pretended to be an ordinary dad instead of a monster.  In her finals, she achieved a TER score of 99.9, placing her in the top 0.1 per cent of school leavers.    

She didn’t tell Luke everything about what her father was doing to her, and the indifference and cowardice of her mother, but she did mention that she wasn’t very happy at home, and Luke, who had also been accepted into Melbourne University, suggested that they share a flat.  He explained how she could get Centrelink, and how it would be more if she was “independent”.  He was happy at home, but happy also to move into a flat or a shared house.

“I’ll be able to bring guys home,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

Esmé entered into this game with spirit.  “Me too!”

They laughed together.  Two more tragic losers you couldn’t hope to find anywhere, she thought bitterly to herself. 

She left home without saying goodbye.  There was nothing for her there, except wretched memories and deep unhappiness.  She did leave a note, though, for her mother.  It was short, and brutal.  “Ma, I’m leaving home.  You know why.  I hope I never see you or dad again.”

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#405)       Next MF post(#407)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

405

At the hospital they eventually wormed the name of her parents out of her.  When they arrived, they behaved exactly as if they cared.  Her father shocked and manly, covering his alarm with a man-of-the-world bluff taciturnity.  He fooled everybody.  Her mother was truly frightened.  Esmé could see it in her eyes.  Why didn’t you help, she thought.  Surely you knew about it?  The walls aren’t soundproof.  Surely you fucking knew?

The hospital made an appointment with a counsellor.  Her parents took her home.

The day after, her mother stayed at home instead of going to work.  This was unusual enough that Esmé was filled with hope.  Maybe she and her mother could go away together.  Away from him.  When her mother sat on the edge of the bed, she seemed to Esmé to have shrunk.  She’d always been a timid woman, but she appeared even more frightened now. Her eyes darted away from Esmé’s. Her gaze avoided her daughter’s. 

“So are you a bit better now?”

Esmé didn’t know where she pulled the strength from, but she managed to say, her eyes fixed on her mother’s face, “You know why?”

In a light insincere voice, her mother replied, “No dear.  I have no idea.”

“Dad.”

Her mother was silent. 

“You know what he …. What he does … to me.”

He mother stood up and went to the window.  She hummed a little to herself.  “I’ll go and make us a nice cup of tea.  We’ll all feel better after that.”

Esmé was too worn to shout at her.  After, she would run different scenarios through her mind, where she yelled at her mother, forced her to listen, made her understand what had happened.   But at the time, she was too worn to do more than weep.

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#404)       Next MF post(#406)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

404

Jason’s phone buzzed.  It was Keith.  “How arya, sexy?”

“Key!  You missed a nice party.”

“Esmé an’ Oi watched Single Dads.  You knaow, that TV series.  She had the DVD.”

And afterwards, you made love, thought Jason.  “Esmé could have come to the party too, you know.”

“Yeah.”  Keith sounded doubtful.

“Yes, Key.  Yes.  She’s my friend too.”

“OK.”

“Key, my dear.  You know I …  she and you … you know I don’t mind, don’t you?  You were my first friend here in Australia”—he pronounced it with the long “au” the English use, which always made him sound like Prince Charles—“and she was the second.  I don’t mind, truly.”

Keith sighed.  “Sometimes it’s so complicated.”

“Yeah.  But … Key … you do know, don’t you, that … I care.”

Not, noticed Keith wryly, I love you.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Me too.  Hey, what’re ya doin’ this mornin’?”

“I dunno.  Taking Grandam and Lucasta sightseeing.”

“Whoi dontja go to the Healesville woildloife park.  Lots of kangaroos an’ stuff.”

“Why don’t you come along too?”

 “I can’t.  Gotta work.”

“Oh, shit.  All right.”

“How’s Cody?”

“OK.  Well, not really.”

“And Luigi?” 

“Seemed not too bad.  They’ve just left.”

“They stayed the night?”

“Yeah.”  Jason grinned at the mixture of indignation and shock in Keith’s voice.  “And you know what, Key, you can too.  Tonight.”

“Done and dusted.”  Jason could hear the smirk in Keith’s tone.  He couldn’t help smiling himself.

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#403)       Next MF post(#405)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

403

"Despair": from this blog

The first time.  She’d gone to the shopping centre and locked herself into one of the cubicles.  It took her a long time to get up the courage to cut the veins in her wrists.  She’d used a Stanley knife.  She bought it at the hardware store in the centre.  The woman at the checkout had smiled at her as if she really cared. 

When she cut, she put the knife against the vein, closed her eyes and sliced.  The burn was much worse than she’d expected.  At first the blood flowed freely, but then it started to clot.  She began to weep.

“You OK in there darl?”  The voice was smoke-roughened, gruff.

She couldn’t answer.  The unlooked-for kindness made her wail even harder.

A face appeared over the top of the cubicle.  Brassy, dyed hair, grey at the roots, lined face, yellow from cigarette smoke, resigned to life’s insults and miseries.  There was blood all over the cubicle floor.  The face took it all in in an instant, and then she heard footsteps going away, brisk, as if to say, I don’t want to know.  “I’m going to be left alone to die,” she thought.  “Good!” she added, defiantly.  “Free at last.”

But the footsteps returned, with others.  The cubicle door was unlocked from the outside. 

While they waited for the ambulance, the woman cradled her in her thin arms.  She smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke.  “Don’t you worry now love, it’ll all be all right, you’ll see,” her gravelly voice and worn face oddly comforting.

Esmé had shaken her head in despair. 

“What was it, darl?  Why’dja do it?”

Esmé had been too ashamed to explain.  But before the paramedics had wheeled her away, past the goggling shoppers, her saviour had taken her hand gently into her own and bent down and kissed her cheek.  “Don’t give up, love.  I made it.  You can too.”

Esmé never saw her again.  But she never forgot her either.

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#402)       Next MF post(#404)

Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter