Goodness Itself

Diane’s mum, Nancy, knew how to size people up. Like one of those TV Commanders she’d strafe over your life as if it was some little country to be annexed, and back in her headquarters, she’d spread out the map and plant her flags. So Vanessa’s mum was Brick Veneer; Brenda’s mum was Chenille in Rollers; and Allan’s dad, Two Bob Short of a Full Quid. This was followed by a long pause, where you were meant to draw conclusions. And Esther’s mum, Olive, was Goodness Itself. Each time Nancy said Goodness Itself, Diane saw Olive’s benign bow-lipped smile and big brown eyes and knew that Goodness was a sweet dumb beast, mild-eyed, laboriously cropping the grass.

Nancy said she was glad that Diane seemed to like to go there; it would help her appreciate her own privileged upbringing. The family lived on a Modest Income. Of course it was possible that Goodness had chosen that maroon and beige vinyl lounge suite but it was probably a matter of budget. Goodness had no boundaries. Goodness was blindly devoted; Goodness let herself be walked all over by others; Goodness always came away from the P and C meetings finding that she’d become the fund-raiser, the secretary, the fete coordinator. Anyhow, there it was, permanently flying over Olive, a flag that said: Goodness Itself.

Goodness Itself was everywhere in Olive’s house. Diane saw it aligning the few black hairs on Olive’s shins under her silk stockings, in the pastel angora twin-sets she wore, in her big, round, clip-on earrings, in the perm she’d have every few months, in the white roots which pushed the reddish tint away from the crown. Goodness was there in the wide pathway of her sparsely sown eyebrows, in the big, honest statement of her bumpy nose. Diane tasted Goodness Itself in the lime cordial Olive served Esther and her in twin anodised aluminium glasses along with scones, jam and cream, on TV trays with little folding legs. Goodness Itself waited upon them, never making comment about More Useful Things the girls might be doing when they sprawled side by side on the Axminster carpet watching Gunsmoke or 77 Sunset Strip. Goodness itself never said a thing about the rusting car bodies up on bricks in the back yard of her Manning house.

‘One of those basic two-bedroom plus sleep-out War Service places, adequate, I suppose,’ Nancy said of Olive’s house. ‘Obviously neither is very interested in the garden. Well, to say ‘garden’ is to dignify it; it’s an unkempt yard, littered with car bodies, Poor Soul. Her husband’s one of them, a tinkerer who never finishes a job.’

Tinker, tailor, poor man, thief. At least tinker was at the top of the list. But tinkerer?

Diane saw Goodness Itself skirting those car bodies and pushing backwards and forwards with the hand mower, a haze of green clippings tossed by the spiralling blade, through the onion grass, the clover, and the long hairy couch between the Apple Blossom Hibiscus and the Oleander. Esther’s dad was doing two jobs back then, one as a salesman, Esther said, and another as a night watchman. So you couldn’t blame him. Still, there was a sort of sadness that tightened her throat when Goodness Itself tried every time to correct the lean of the metal letter box, and sing as she looked in, ‘Oh dear, nobody loves me,’ and smile widely with her cupid’s bow in bright red lipstick stretching under her big, bumpy and slightly hooked Goodness Itself nose.

Esther, Daughter of Goodness, kept her distance, like she could catch something from her mother. Esther would look daggers at Diane if she said so much as thank you, like it was breaking the rules. Esther changed the rules so quickly; it was hard to keep on the right side of her. Diane’s mum said Esther had developed a sly look lately, like an ermine. It looked like trouble down the track.

Esther’s big brother, Brian, was something else again, with his snowy blond crew cut. He moved without words mostly; he had pictures, though. He drew in lead or the faintest coloured pencil battleships with planes he said were Lancasters bombing them. The exploding bombs festooned the sky like crazy, just under the bellies of the planes. He drew all this like it was the work of fairies, delicately. Diane couldn’t even remember asking him, but there she was in his shorts, climbing from the rusty chassis of the Renault, onto the branches of the weeping peppermint. She liked the rippled elastic and the way the pockets made room for her fists, which was the form she thought her hands should take. Whistling, with her fists in those pockets, she was inside the riddle of the quiet boy who made the sky festive with bombs, who made the sea laugh with torpedoes.

—

Down at Rockingham, where Wally and Olive rented a beach cottage, the kids were allowed to go buy fish and chips for tea almost every night. They’d spread the paper out on the jetty, slurping in turns from a shared bottle of Coke, and throwing chips to sea gulls. Diane wanted thighs hard like the Rockers who hung out at the Dodgem Cars, sheathed in tight, black jeans; she wanted one of those insolently hunched torsos in black T-shirts or leather jackets; she wanted sideburns with greasy, messily crested hair; she wanted to kick into the sand with her black suede desert boots. She wanted to dangle a cigarette from her lower lip and look at the world through narrowed eyes. Maybe Esther would look back at her then.

Brian and his mates, who reckoned they were Teds, but didn’t have the long jackets or the motor scooters to go with their stovepipe pants, would ram the girls in the Dodgem Cars. Diane could smell their sweat as they came close and they’d play the squealing girls act, spinning the steering wheel, roaring and grimacing with the jolting and thudding, turning up their faces to watch the electric conductors shower sparks as they trailed the mesh above. The boys would see Diane’s swollen nipples tremble. Esther was already in a trainer bra, not that she needed it; she’d just pestered Goodness Itself, who gave in quickly, like she was relieved that Esther would ask anything of her. They both wore pastel Bermuda shorts and little striped midriff cotton tops that showed their belly buttons. Their leather sandals had a loop for the big toe and strap which criss-crossed, Roman-style, at the ankles. Their shoulders were like the topographical maps in their Jacaranda Atlases, the deeply tanned, withered skin giving way to tender pink as they peeled it. This in turn they re-plastered with coconut oil and then re-burnt. Olive said she didn’t like the look of the sprinkling of black moles that had appeared on Esther’s shoulders and around her chin but Esther said, ‘Oh, lay off Mum,’ and that was that.

With the green sky fading as the fun fair lights came on, the sea-salt tightening their skin, their blood still pulsing from the sun, they barely needed to talk, and Esther seemed calmer. She said she dreaded going back to Manning now He had given up his security job: He’d be snooping around her all the time. When she spoke like this, of Him, Diane felt she’d missed something in Wally’s flat-cheeked face, in his thin, straight moustache and his slatted green eyes. All Nancy had to say about Wally, apart from the Tinkerer bit, was that he was Rather Weak; so that his flag fluttered above him blank and apologetic.

Right now it was just her and Esther walking along the dirty dimpled sand south of the big jetty with the Rolling Stones’ cover of ‘Under the Boardwalk’ blaring from the fun fair. Esther was biting her lips. She had put on her I’m-Not-Home look. Diane’s hand sort of moved up and out and hovered near Esther’s shoulder but she called it back. She knew she’d be shrugged off like Wally. She liked Esther’s lashes stiff with mascara globules and the wide arcs of her plucked eyebrows. She wished she had the guts to apply charcoal eyeliner like Esther to get the Smouldering Look. Wally would say, ‘Walk into a door or somethink?’ Or, ‘You want to make out your ol’ man’s been beating you up, Bubs?’ Esther’s forehead was high and rounded but her long cheeks were thin, almost flat, like his. Her lips weren’t full either, but she picked out a shallow Goodness Itself bow with the Moonstruck lipstick, a sort of opalescent beige.

They stopped at an up-ended rowing boat, loosely tethered to a metal pole. Eyeing one another they turned over the hull: there were the oars, sweetly sleeping, just waiting for them. They unbuckled their sandals and tossed them in, untied the rope and dragged the boat down to the water, all the time locking their eyes, silently laughing, thrilled with their luck and with their daring. Diane had passed some sort of test for Esther: she’d been admitted to a new place. All she needed now was to slide into that quickly lapping water, where the broken oval of the Ferris Wheel turned. It was an agitated lapping, sort of urgent. With the oars in the rowlocks, Esther was ready and laughing, her teeth flashing blue-white, like Ephrim Zimbalist Jnr’s. She looked like she’d done this lots of times. Diane splashed through the shallows, pushing, and as she leapt in, they shot forward. Now it was the Little Red Rooster’s moan coming across the water, too laeeeeete to crow the dawn.

Mick Jagger’s voice ballooned and stretched, broke and faded, then floated out to them again as the beach shrank to a shimmering line and the Ferris Wheel lights blurrily turned through the water. Diane wanted just this, the fullness of it, all of it, the salt and vinegar still on her lips, the sun in her blood, the burn of her skin, the air pulling warm and soft like a dressing on a wound, Esther’s smile, the water gathering the dark, and the Little Red Rooster coming out on the prowl.

Further out there were yachts and launches, laughter and voices, rocking cabin and fairy lights in the inkiness. There was a slight thud and Diane saw that they’d nosed up close to the side of a big white launch. It was called Blue Lagoon. A tall man was at the stern.

‘Hi,’ he said, with a sort of question mark. Hi? His face leaned down, shadowy, inside a halo of whitish hair.

‘Hi,’ Esther said.

‘Why don’t you girls come on up and join me?’ Look, there’s a rope. Tie your dinghy up at the ladder and come on board. Like champagne? Pink champagne?’

Already Esther had laid down the oars and was clambering up.

‘C’mon, Di, don’t be a pill,’ Esther’s look urged Diane over her shoulder. Either way it was too late: Esther was climbing up to this stranger but so was she hauling herself up the metal ladder, and now, her arms trembling and her calf muscles heavy, she was nearly at the top. If anything happened, they could always dive over-board. The thing was to stay on the deck, not to climb down into the cabin, like Esther was already doing.

‘Hugh,’ he said.

‘I’m Esther and that’s Di.’

‘Esther. Di. Drink?’ He was using his thumbs to ease the cork out of a bottle of pink Champagne.

‘Why not?’ Again, Esther’s eyes challenged Diane.

‘You girls on holidays? Still at school? I bet…Let me see. You’ve just…done your Junior?’

He turned on a transistor, a big one, in a fitted leather jacket with windows for the dial and portholes for the controls. It was Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Only Want To Be With You’. He pulled out segment after segment of the telescoped aerial.

‘Nup. Not yet. In a year but. I’m at Kent Street; she’s at Mod. She’s the brainy one.’

‘Are not.’

‘Are so.’

‘Are not.’

‘Oh, shut up. Who bloody well cares.’

Diane looked down at her polished knees and freshly shaven brown calves. She blinked; it was like the words trickled in acid at the back of her throat. She felt like one of those sailors in the Middle Ages, perilously close to the rim of the known world. No one said perilously. Hugh sank back on the red-studded upholstery, beckoning them over to join him. His open palm with the fingers slightly curled was meant to include Diane but she knew it didn’t really.

‘Your friend doesn’t have much to say. Cheezel, Di?’

She hooked one on her finger. He wasn’t a teenager. Maybe he was in his twenties. His hair was ash-blond. His face was a bit like a spade: long jaw, long chin. His eyes were dark for a blond. You couldn’t tell their colour. His hands were slightly reddish, like burnt by a chemical or something. When he laughed, he showed a gold filling. His shorts were shorter than Bermudas, maybe to show off the rope-like muscles in those long thighs. The hairs on them made a mesh of little white wires when he approached the bench-side lamp. Esther lurched, almost spilling her drink. Diane’s cheeks felt scorched. Esther had sunk back, thrusting her hips forwards, her face turned towards Hugh. He was inching closer to Esther, leaving Diane to drift away into the shadows. Like one of those satellites, she had strayed from orbit. Like a lost bloody Sputnik, she didn’t show up on their screens.

‘C’mon, Di, don’t be so…lighten up.’

Diane took a slug of her drink. It had a burning sweetness. It wasn’t even cold. How could Esther pretend she liked it? Now the two of them were up. Esther and Hugh, she said to herself, are smooching.

It was Gene Pitney: ‘And then I kissed her, caressed her…’

‘Oh that’s awful, Diane. What on earth have you got on?’ Diane’s mum had said.

‘It’s not. It’s Gene Pitney. He’s got three octaves.’

‘Octaves or not, it’s awful.’

Hugh had his hand between Esther’s shoulder blades now, somewhere near that little lacy trainer bra, steering her in their tight little dance. Gene Pitney’s high voice worked at Diane’s stomach in little hiccuppy scoops. She was going to throw up.

—

How did it happen? She’d strayed from her orbit and there she was climbing back up onto the deck. Now she was easing down the metal ladder on the stern, unhitching the rope from the rowing boat, dipping the oars and slipping away. Why was her heart wildly banging like this? What had Esther done to her? She’d only told her to, what was it – loosen up? Lighten up? What was wrong with Esther calling her she? No one would see that as hurtful. You could hardly say, ‘And do you know what she did then? She called me she,’ could you? Still to free her throat, to let her heart bang out into the gorgeous summer night she wanted to lie down in that rowboat and howl. She tried to get the oars into a rhythm but the boat turned round and knocked the launch again. There was this cold inside her now, despite the softness of the seaweedy air, and she realised her teeth were chattering and that her shivering was all she could hear: VR-VR-VR-VR, no Hugh, no Esther, no Gene Pitney. What if they tried to stop her, but then, why didn’t they?

As the space opened up again and she saw she was pulling away strongly, it came to her clearly. Esther was alone with that man; she had left her alone with that man. Who knows what he might do to her? He might be a Maniac; her mother talked about Maniacs. They had axes or guns, which they raised or pointed on the other side of the plate glass. They could get you when you were eating toast on a lounge, babysitting, about to draw the curtains and turn on the TV. Esther would either have to beg his mercy or swim ashore. It was a couple of hundred yards from that launch. Diane thought of his red hands. What if the headline in the Daily News went: TEENAGER MEETS DEATH IN THE BLUE LAGOON? Was Esther strong enough to swim that far? Of course she was. And she’d been purring; she had her eyes half-closed like Ava Gardner, as she sipped that drink. So what’d she expect her to do? Olive and Wally. Diane would have to tell them that she had lost Esther somewhere after the Dodgem Cars. But then, Brian and his mates saw them there together. They looked happy then, they would say.

Now, as she was trying to drag the boat up the beach, she saw their sandals, in the hull, looking like evidence, with a pool of water swishing over them. Should she leave them there, turn the boat over as they’d found it or leave it, hull upright, so They could see them? Should she leave Esther’s sandals stranded in the middle of the beach? That would look terrible, like she was kidnapped, dead. Should she row back to the launch, tie up the dinghy and swim ashore? Row back, yell out to Esther to give her another chance? Then she saw it clearly: she’d run back to the beach cottage to Get Help. She was rescuing Esther; of course she was. But how would she explain it to Goodness Itself? It was like a million tiny torpedoes were dimpling the water between her and The Blue Lagoon. Now even her running was like treading water; it was the dream where your struggle to move sets like lead and the terror banks up in a tidal wave behind you.

The sand was wet and heavy and bits of seaweed were catching between her toes and the four flapping sandals were lashing her thigh with their wet leather and buckles as she ran. She’d park Esther’s sandals at the back door; that’s what she’d do. Then they wouldn’t freak out at the sight of her, dangling from her hands all that remained of their daughter. Near the Fun Fair, in front of a motel, a girl was bouncing high on a trampoline, her hair flapping like bats’ wings around her face, her wrap-around mini-skirt blossoming at her hips. The rockers were standing around going Whoah! If only she could be in that story, suspended in the land breeze, with the rockers going Whoah! The houses looked the same to her and she hated the extravagance of the huge plots and the wide, wide streets; it was all designed to freeze her forever in this trying-to-get-there. She hated the smug look of the houses fronting the street blind, with their verandahs turned into sleep-outs, clad in asbestos and fitted with louvres, their front yards as blank as Esther’s in Manning, except for a long apron of couch grass, and maybe a couple of cactuses, sometimes a tea tree hedge. Diane felt wetness between her toes; she must have stubbed them against the rough, warm bitumen, in this forever-not-getting-there. She would tell Goodness Itself the truth. What did Esther expect?

—

Olive was reading in the kitchen in her floral lawn nightie. She was glowing in her Goodness, in her not-knowing that Diane had left Esther behind. She must have heard Diane’s breathing; she looked up; it was too late. Diane could hear every grain of sand rasp under foot on the lino, feel the blood stick. She had done her Holy Communion; she knew how to confess.

‘Hello, sweetie. Have a nice time? But you’re puffed out! What’s the matter?’ Olive put her book down, cover upwards. It was called Tobacco Road. She took off her blue and silver-rimmed glasses, shaped like curled paisley leaves. She rose, blinking, to read closely in Diane’s face. Diane wanted to throw herself into her arms and sob like a baby.

‘What is it, darling? Where’s Esther? What’s up?

‘We…’

‘Oh!’

Clear of make-up, without the glasses, Olive’s face looked naked and crumpled. Her eyes were big with alarm; her beige lips pressed together and then hung apart, as if forgotten.

‘We borrowed a rowboat. Esther’s with a man on a launch.’

‘Esther’s with a man on a launch. But how did this happen?’

‘He asked us on board. He’s called Hugh. Esther was dancing with him. I rowed back ashore. I thought I’d better tell…’

‘But. Oh Goodness! You left her there! We’ll wake up Wally and call the police. That’s what we’ll do.’

‘Oh, can’t we just go there and get her? We can borrow that rowboat again. Esther’ll never forgive…’

‘I don’t know how…Even if you two were silly enough to get on his boat, I’m surprised that you rowed away, leaving her with a stranger, without the…without any way of getting back!’

This sounded more like Esther’s mum. It was the word Surprise, like an alternative to Disappointment, which was Nancy’s favourite. Surprise was opening up a great distance between Diane and Goodness Itself. She saw that she was definitely, irreversibly, adrift.

‘In the car, quick,’ Wally said, his look at Diane murderous. Sliding onto the rear bench seat of the E.H. Holden, Diane saw that she was now done for, dead, a corpse, no longer adrift, but sinking.

‘What about Brian?’ Olive was saying.

‘What about him?’

‘You think he’ll be okay?’

‘Of course he’ll be okay. He’s a sixteen-year-old boy, for Pete’s sake. Bubs might be being raped at this very moment and you’re worried about your great big boy.’

Wally, in his dressing gown and striped pyjamas opened the phone booth door.

‘The cops said to meet them at the jetty. They’ll take us out there in their launch.’

The headlights tilted towards the peppermints next to the jetty and picked up a figure running: hair streaming, long legs moving like a slow machine. It was Esther, her clothes plastered to her skin, her hair stringy, dripping.

Olive thrust open the car door as Wally tooted. Goodness Itself had thought to bring a large beach towel, equipped with mermaid, shells, anemone, and coral waving wicked fingers like rubber gloves.

‘Oh, sweetheart!’

‘I’ll speak to the cops,’ Wally said.

In the back seat Esther was cocooned in the towel. She was looking into the night, her back refusing Diane.

‘Sorry!’ Diane tried, ‘I was worried what might…’

‘Worried!’

‘I thought…’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Her whisper was fierce.

Diane’s ribs pressed in on her lungs.

‘The thing is, you’re safe now, darling. Diane thought she was doing the best thing, I’m sure,’ Goodness Itself said.

Later, from the top bunk, Diane tried again as Esther slid on her shortie pyjamas, in the shadows. She didn’t want Diane’s eyes on her; that was clear.

‘I’m really, really sorry!’

‘Arrgh. Don’t say anything. I know why you did it. You were jealous, jealous. And you’re a suck. You give me the creeps. I’m really really sorry! I bet you’re dying to know what we did. Well, I’m not going to tell you. You know what? I think you’re bent. I reckon you really are. You with your really really sorry can go to hell, for all I care.’

Diane could feel it already as she turned her sunburnt body between the sandy, sea-weedy sheets. Behind her lids the quiet furnace persisted and she glimpsed in a visual stutter the face of Goodness Itself, cow-brown eyes staring and cupid’s bow unsmiling, before the flames engulfed it.