Yes–that gives us a week. If you book we can pay in a couple of days. I’ll find some money, somewhere.’
‘All right,’ she says slowly. This is not how she thought things would go here. But I am now galvanised with purpose. Her green eyes follow me around the room.
‘You should come tonight, then. To say farewell.’ Clara says this in a measured voice, the voice of someone aware that their efforts, though appreciated, will likely come to nothing. ‘They would love to see you–’ she closes her bag and looks up at me–‘before you go.’
Since Christiane left me, Clara has been trying to get me ‘out of myself’. I’m not being very cooperative. (Though if I believed this were literally possible, I’d do anything she said.) Lately, her efforts have taken the form of urging me to meet with my refugee friends–George Grosz, Klaus and Erika Mann, Kurt Rosenfeld–at their Thursday gatherings at Epstein’s restaurant downtown.
‘Good idea,’ I say, rubbing my hands together and smiling.
RUTH
This day has decided to be full-throated and beautiful. Shadows are sharp on the road out front; everything throwing its shape around. Workmen in blue singlets and Blundstone boots traipse in and out of next door.
In 1952, when I bought this house, Bondi Junction was cheap, a place of lazy Californian bungalows, cars in side driveways and street cricket. Now all around me homes are being bull-dozed on million-dollar blocks; new glazed bunkers for peering at the ocean over steel-rimmed balconies are being erected to the boundaries, dwarfing me in my house like a relic from another time. Bejewelled real-estate vultures circle about in BMWs, put cards and letters in my box. They are waiting to match my death notice to their title search, to whip out the Deceased Estate signs they have preprepared in the boot and plant them, triumphant, all over my lawn. Get your piece of Lebensraum ! they might as well cry. A Platz an der Sonne going for a song!
But they will not win. The beauty of this city is too elemental, too fecund and raw, to be tamed by mere money. Though the financiers and bankers and dot.com millionaires hug the shoreline, their topiary palaces and towered developments will never conquer this landscape. Bougainvillea and wisteria, ficus and monstera treat it all just as food and trellis and will, if unchecked, devour the lot. And there, smack in the middle, the sparkling, billowing harbour–the earth is alive here. This beauty is a force, and it will never lose.
I have always been seduced by beauty. Seduced and consoled, and then betrayed. Then seduced and consoled again.
The cat’s at the door! Who let him outside the flat? Scratch, scratch.
Mein Gott , is my Arsch sore from sitting. I don’t have a cat. It’s a key in the latch. Someone is letting themselves in.
Bev stands over me. She looks unhappy. No doubt I am responsible. Although, as I examine her face, I see that there are other possibilities: the bottle-coloured hair a pinky-orange unknown to nature and her bad eye a bit twitchy today. Or, possibly, her thieving daughter Sheena, an ex-nurse with a heroin addiction whose sadness is the one and only terrible thing, I’ve discovered over the years, it gives Bev no satisfaction to talk about.
‘Well,’ she huffs. ‘Sitting around like a bottle of milk, are we?’
Mrs Allworth in Bloomsbury called me ma’am. ‘If you’d like, ma’am,’ she would say, ‘I could do the windows. From the inside only, mind.’ When she said ‘If ma’am would prefer’ I knew she was cross. I didn’t like ‘ma’am’, but this Australian ‘we’ is worse–it makes me feel like a Greek chorus, all the parts of me breathing and heaving together like some ancient, static, sore-arsed monster.
‘I’ve been down at the village with the oldies–’ Bev doesn’t bother waiting for a response–‘giving hand massages. Poor old ducks.’
Eastlakes Village is a retirement home and Bev must be nearly as
‘All right,’ she says slowly. This is not how she thought things would go here. But I am now galvanised with purpose. Her green eyes follow me around the room.
‘You should come tonight, then. To say farewell.’ Clara says this in a measured voice, the voice of someone aware that their efforts, though appreciated, will likely come to nothing. ‘They would love to see you–’ she closes her bag and looks up at me–‘before you go.’
Since Christiane left me, Clara has been trying to get me ‘out of myself’. I’m not being very cooperative. (Though if I believed this were literally possible, I’d do anything she said.) Lately, her efforts have taken the form of urging me to meet with my refugee friends–George Grosz, Klaus and Erika Mann, Kurt Rosenfeld–at their Thursday gatherings at Epstein’s restaurant downtown.
‘Good idea,’ I say, rubbing my hands together and smiling.
RUTH
This day has decided to be full-throated and beautiful. Shadows are sharp on the road out front; everything throwing its shape around. Workmen in blue singlets and Blundstone boots traipse in and out of next door.
In 1952, when I bought this house, Bondi Junction was cheap, a place of lazy Californian bungalows, cars in side driveways and street cricket. Now all around me homes are being bull-dozed on million-dollar blocks; new glazed bunkers for peering at the ocean over steel-rimmed balconies are being erected to the boundaries, dwarfing me in my house like a relic from another time. Bejewelled real-estate vultures circle about in BMWs, put cards and letters in my box. They are waiting to match my death notice to their title search, to whip out the Deceased Estate signs they have preprepared in the boot and plant them, triumphant, all over my lawn. Get your piece of Lebensraum ! they might as well cry. A Platz an der Sonne going for a song!
But they will not win. The beauty of this city is too elemental, too fecund and raw, to be tamed by mere money. Though the financiers and bankers and dot.com millionaires hug the shoreline, their topiary palaces and towered developments will never conquer this landscape. Bougainvillea and wisteria, ficus and monstera treat it all just as food and trellis and will, if unchecked, devour the lot. And there, smack in the middle, the sparkling, billowing harbour–the earth is alive here. This beauty is a force, and it will never lose.
I have always been seduced by beauty. Seduced and consoled, and then betrayed. Then seduced and consoled again.
The cat’s at the door! Who let him outside the flat? Scratch, scratch.
Mein Gott , is my Arsch sore from sitting. I don’t have a cat. It’s a key in the latch. Someone is letting themselves in.
Bev stands over me. She looks unhappy. No doubt I am responsible. Although, as I examine her face, I see that there are other possibilities: the bottle-coloured hair a pinky-orange unknown to nature and her bad eye a bit twitchy today. Or, possibly, her thieving daughter Sheena, an ex-nurse with a heroin addiction whose sadness is the one and only terrible thing, I’ve discovered over the years, it gives Bev no satisfaction to talk about.
‘Well,’ she huffs. ‘Sitting around like a bottle of milk, are we?’
Mrs Allworth in Bloomsbury called me ma’am. ‘If you’d like, ma’am,’ she would say, ‘I could do the windows. From the inside only, mind.’ When she said ‘If ma’am would prefer’ I knew she was cross. I didn’t like ‘ma’am’, but this Australian ‘we’ is worse–it makes me feel like a Greek chorus, all the parts of me breathing and heaving together like some ancient, static, sore-arsed monster.
‘I’ve been down at the village with the oldies–’ Bev doesn’t bother waiting for a response–‘giving hand massages. Poor old ducks.’
Eastlakes Village is a retirement home and Bev must be nearly as
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