A Hand in the Bush. Jane Clifton
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Right.'
An asbestos friendship: they were both laughing now.
'You cannot not come, girleen!' Zan cajoled. 'The food at Watertower Hill is, like, the best! Not to mention the wine. It's a sleep-over! We'll have a great time! The rooms've got spas, the music'll be sensational, we may even score a root. We...'
'I've got a kind of...date,' Decca cut in.
Silence at the other end of the line.
'Well, you know, it's not really a date per se,' she stumbled on. 'It's a possible date...with someone I haven't met...yet...but, I'm meeting him tonight at,' she took a deep breath, 'the Hathaways.'
Zan exploded with snorts of derisive laughter.
'Oh, fuck me,' she shrieked, 'It's come to this? You are standing me-your oldest friend in the entire world, who has stood by you through thick and thin-you are standing me, and an all-expenses paid piss-up-you are standing me and Father-Christmas-in-July up to go on a blind date arranged by Dax and Flavia Hathaway!'
'Yes. I have to say I am.'
'Colour you D for Desperate. Haven't you heard of a vibrator?' Zan steamed on. 'You can borrow mine!'
'Yu-uck!' said Decca, starting to laugh again.
'Seriously though, haven't you learned anything from that cunt of an ex-husband of yours? What makes you think for one mad moment that loose men our age are going to be out there looking for loose women of our age? Single men our age have either been cut loose by their long-suffering wives after years of boredom, or they're G-A-Y, gay! Any of the ones that were even halfway decent have all gone out and purchased themselves a younger model!'
She was right. As usual.
Five years ago, while the smoke from the candles on her birthday cake still hung in the air, Decca's husband of fifteen years dumped her for Stacey, his voluptuous twenty-two-year-old P.A. The very same Stacey, in fact, who had organised Decca's birthday party as efficiently as she would, a few short months later, mastermind her own oh-so-white wedding.
The trophy bride had promptly pumped out three blond sons and heirs-Hans, Viktor and Kyle-in rapid succession. 'Hitler Youth', as Zan loved to call them, providing a further slap in the face to Decca, whose inability to produce children herself, as a result of a backyard abortion gone wrong during her twenties, had been a constant source of disappointment.
'Oh, she wept and she sighed and bitterly she cried' as the old folk song goes, but nothing would bring her marriage back.
Her beloved, foolish husband, Volker Danehart, jogged away in his brand new Nikes, down the well-trodden track marked Mid-Life Crisis, desperately staving off mortality with a shield of progeny and the sword of young flesh.
Fifteen years of marital contentment wiped out with a single blow job.
'Jesus, Zan, don't you get tired of being such a know-it-all?' said Decca.
'It's like my friend Bill the bass player says, "If you don't like it, get used to it."' Zan's voice was muffled by the action of placing a cigarette between her teeth and lighting up. 'Is this guy married?'
Deserted by his wife, Decca remembered the Hathaways' description of him with a jolt, but said nothing.
'Oh, shit,' drawled Zan, blowing a long stream of smoke into the receiver. 'Well,' she continued chirpily, 'you never know. You could get lucky. Stranger things've happened.'
'Yeah, I mean, they put a man on the moon,' said Decca, before they chorused in unison, 'but no-one knows why they brought him back!' And they laughed again.
'Well, fuck you and good luck to you,' said Zan. 'I'll call you from Coldstream.'
'Do,' said Decca. 'Especially if you score.'
'Dream on,' said Zan, and hung up.
Decca sat back in her chair, and glanced at her watch: only 9.45. More time to kill. The pile of mail lay where she had left it. She got up and paced the room.
What was going on today? Little bells kept ringing. Why had her motorcycle endorsement notice appeared on the very day that Winsome had, apparently, risen from the dead, and onto the pages of the morning newspaper? Synchronicity-the acausal connection between events? Or was Decca's anxiety about the impending date throwing up unresolved self-doubts?
She had had several opportunities over the past twenty-six years to let that motorcycle endorsement on her driver's licence lapse. Why had she kept it up? The only bike she was ever going to use again was the non-motorised sort she rode along the streets of Williamstown every morning.
One simple word: 'bike'. It had sat there, on the page, like a coded message from the old Decca to the new. A little yellow post-it sticker, left in place to remind her of unfinished business.
Was today that day? Was the past on the march? Were the demons limbering up? Her gorge rose at the remembered odour of mouldy earth and antiseptic.
Decca rushed to her door, heading for fresh air, and came face to face with a beaming, unshaven Oleg Kransky.
A dripping bunch of cerise carnations was clenched in his left hand, a bottle of Long Flat Red and car keys in the other.
'Let's go to a motel,' he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Decca Brand on a motorbike? Candy chuckled at the thought as she strolled along Park Street in the chilly sunshine. There'd been no leather jacket or tell-tale 'helmet hair' when she first encountered the good doctor, back in the late eighties: although neither would have looked out of place in the salubrious surroundings of the St Albans Crisis Centre toilet block.
Candy had needed three arms to change a steaming nappy on the then two-year-old Jorel as he wriggled around on a vinyl mat wedged between two dirty hand basins. The hyperactive little tyke kept stretching over to turn on the taps, screaming when he was restrained and not responding at all to her tirade of expletives.
Next thing she knew this woman had appeared out of nowhere, like some Fiorucci-clad fairy godmother, and started waving a set of car keys over the kid's face. Instant calm. The baby reached up and turned the shiny objects in his sticky paws, cooing with interest, while Candy completed the change, bagged the nappy, washed her hands and lit up a Winnie Blue.
'What's your little brother's name?' the woman said.
Candy propped against the toilet door, arms folded defiantly, and sneered. 'He's not my brother. Jorel.'
'Oh,' she said. 'Like Superman's dad?'
'What?'
'Isn't Jorel the name of Superman's dad in the movies?'
Candy said nothing.
'You know? Marlon Brando's million-dollar gig.'
'Nuh,' Candy said, puffing out smoke. 'It's made up.' Then, gathering up child and nappy bag, she had pushed her way out of the stinking toilet block, leaving the woman to dangle her keys in space. Volvo keys by the look of her.
An inauspicious start to a long association with Decca; her champion, her friend.
Rude, that's what I was, Candy thought. At sixteen years of age, the words 'thank you' were not part of a smart-mouth's everyday speech. She had little to be thankful for. And who did Decca think she was, in her nice clothes and plummy voice? Sure, Candy had seen those Superman movies, but who was Marlon Brando when he was at home?
The only reason her kid was called Jorel was because the stupid cow of a midwife had misread Candy's handwriting when she'd tried to put 'Joel' down on the birth form. Once the mistake was made Candy decided to go with it.
Superman's dad? Now there was someone she'd like to meet...Or Spider-man, or the Phantom-any of those Marvel men.
'Oooh...'Candy shivered with delight. They were the ones to mate, not the losers she'd lost it with. Wonder Woman she wasn't, and neither was Decca-even though she thought she was. Thought she could take