‘real’ work.
I’d be sweating away down in the boat shed, welding together my latest piece of sculpture, or making my way to the dump to search for interesting pieces of scrap metal to use for my next. I was thinking about holding an exhibition in the middle of the next year. Meanwhile, Jas would be tinkering away at the piano, songwriting. Sometimes, if the wind carried to the boat shed just right, I could hear him playing the same bar of music over and over again, adding a piece, subtracting a piece, the song getting longer, in fact becoming a song, as the days passed. Our work was similar in an adding, subtracting, trying things out way that eventually led to an end product after a lot of sweat and a bit of good luck.
When we needed some time off we’d head to the local swimming pool, have a barbecue in the nearby park, or just take a walk. Once I took him to Byron Bay for a week, to visit my mother. He was blown away. Not a great surprise, because most people were by my mother and the things that surrounded her: by her house, which was wooden and built over five levels down a hill to make the most of the view; and by her own sculpture, which dominated every room and the front courtyard of the house and was made entirely of sandstone—not like my metal productions at all (to tease me she would call me ‘junkie Charlie’ because of my frequent scavenging trips). But mostly by her, with her booming voice and large-enough-for-a-whole-group-of-people personality.
The real surprise was the fact that she liked him back. Suffice to say that Mum didn’t get on with all that many people. She either liked them or she didn’t, and usually she’d tell them her verdict within the first five minutes of meeting them. Sometimes it could be quite embarrassing.
She told me on the phone, a few days after we left, that Jas would be very famous one day. She could tell by his aura. When I relayed this to him, Jas thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, but he still called her back pretty smartly to see if, hopefully, she had any other nice big fibs to tell him.
Community life at Magnolia Lodge went along swimmingly too. Right from the moment he started flirting with the Miss Tenningtons on the lawn, Jas was a hit with the elders of the building. The funny thing was, after a few months of our living together, a rumour seemed to have passed around that we were married. We became officially Jasper-and-Charlotte to the people we knew fairly well, or ‘the nice young married couple in apartment 10’ to the people we knew only in passing.
One day, when we came home, there was an invitation under our door to my own wedding shower, organised by Mrs Kennedy in apartment 14. I went over, invitation in hand, to explain that we weren’t really married, but when she opened the door Mrs Kennedy and the three other ladies who were there planning the party were so excited I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth.
It was a recipe shower, as it turned out, and I still have all the recipes in the scrapbook they gave me today. I don’t use the Miss Tenningtons’ mutton one very much—never, in fact—but the caramel fudge one from Mrs Holland comes in quite handy on rainy Sundays.
Jas and I became even more involved in building life after our fake marriage. We played croquet every second Saturday, and even started going to bingo on the second Tuesday night of each month. After our first night at bingo we made a pact.
We would draw the line at bowls.
Bowls, we decided, would be taking it too far. Apart from the white uniform being expensive, and a little more than unflattering, we agreed that it was probably best to save something for our own retirement.
As we got to know the people in the building better, little treats started to turn up on our doorstep. Lemon butter. Lime butter. Passionfruit butter.
There was a lot of butter.
Pumpkin scones, fruit scones and plain scones were also popular.
We’d do little things in return. Change lightbulbs. Open tough jars. Things like that. Whatever we could, really. But while things were tottering along beautifully with everyone else, it was at this time, around the six-month mark, that Jas started to act a little oddly.
I’d always thought it was strange that he never brought any friends back to the apartment. In fact, a few weeks after he’d moved in I’d noticed this and thought that maybe he was worried that it wouldn’t be OK with me. So I mentioned it, asked if he wanted to have a house-warming or something and invite all his friends along. He just shook his head. He was busy, he said. With his work. Now, I knew that he didn’t get on with his family very well, that they didn’t agree with what he was doing—studying music—but there must be people he socialised with, and why he didn’t want them in the apartment was a mystery.
As for me, I had people over by the dozen. My mother, my aunt Kath, friends from work, the odd love interest—whoever.
I didn’t give up on the friends thing with Jas, though. I would ask again, every so often, just in case he changed his mind. Or, that is, I kept asking until things went a bit strange. Because all of a sudden Jas started bringing people home. Every weekend. Always different ones.
And all girls.
The first time, I didn’t think much of it. I got up on a Saturday morning, half dressed, and went into the kitchen to find some tall blonde girl there I didn’t know. I knew Jas had been out the night before with some people from uni, but I didn’t know he’d brought someone home. I said hi, made a hasty cup of tea and scooted back to my room with the paper. When I emerged an hour or so later she was gone, and Jas didn’t seem to want to say anything about it.
The next week, it was the same.
There was a girl there Saturday morning.
And a different girl there Sunday morning.
All blonde and all tall. Well, maybe there was one bordering on brunette and one you might have called strawberry blonde…but always a different girl.
The weekend after that there weren’t any girls. Not here, anyway, because Jas didn’t even bother to come home.
Things went on like this for weeks. Girls arrived, then disappeared mysteriously early in the morning of the next day. For the short periods of time it was just us in the apartment Jas hid in his room, working furiously. He avoided me. He avoided everyone. He stopped going to croquet, he stopped going to bingo, he even looked as if he’d stopped eating, he got so thin. The ladies pressed new recipes on me, fattening recipes for lasagne and roasts and bread and butter pudding with butterscotch sauce.
I went through stages. At first I was worried—this wasn’t like Jas, not like the Jas I knew, anyway. Why was he suddenly so withdrawn when we’d been getting along so well? I tried to talk to him, but he dodged the questions, avoided me, simply didn’t come home. It carried on and on in the same way. The girls kept coming and would leave around midday. I’d stay holed up in my room until they left.
It was embarrassing, having to go out into the kitchen when there was a 99.9 per cent chance there’d be a half-naked girl in there who always looked too good for that time of the morning. And generally with a smile that even lemon-scented Jif and the scratchy side of the kitchen sponge wouldn’t be able to wipe off her face.
I just didn’t feel comfortable.
After weeks and weeks of this, I started to get a bit shitty. I was sick and tired of being a prisoner in my own room every weekend morning. And things had heated up. Girls came over during the week. And when, one Saturday, a few of my CDs went missing, I moved up from shitty to simply furious. I didn’t talk to Jas for the rest of the week and decided that if things kept up like this he was out.
