The Happiness Show (5 page)

Inside the terminal, she marvelled at the refrigerated boxes of orchids and the supermarket that sold everything, including Vegemite, a soft drink called Grass Jelly and a lolly called Bum Bum. The shock of the gleaming white sterility reminded her that she'd had the foresight to pack a packet of Juicy Fruit. She flicked a few pellets of gum into her mouth and left the rest on an empty bench, snapping a photo of it with a ‘Welcome to Singapore' sign in the background.

This had been on Lizzie Quealy's ‘to do' list ever since chewing gum in Singapore had become a caneable offence. She chewed as loudly and conspicuously as she could; if the chewing-gum police pulled her up, she figured, she would swallow the evidence. If they administered some kind of saliva test and she got sprung, it would be great material. She could write the gum off as a tax deduction if she mentioned it in her routine, and the wounds would heal eventually. Who knew – caning might even be a turn-on.

Her protest went unnoticed. People were far too busy buying Swatches, Chanel No. 5 and Johnny Walker Black to pay any attention to a shit stirrer with too much time on her hands. Joining the hordes of weary passengers, Lizzie wandered aimlessly around the airport. The young family from the plane seemed to be stalking her. If she couldn't see them, she could hear them, everywhere she went. It was only when she travelled that she remembered how truly annoying the Australian accent could be.

‘Troy! Aaron! I said sit here and don't move,' growled the mother.

‘But it's so
boring
. When are we getting back on the plane?'

‘Half an hour ago all you wanted was to get
off
the plane. All I've heard all day is, “When are we going to the airport?” “When are we getting on the plane?” “When is the plane taking off?” “When is the food coming?” “When are we landing?” “I need to go to the toilet” and “I'm hungry.” Jesus Christ, it's no wonder I drink.'

Finally Lizzie saw a sign that said ‘Smoking Area.' The mere thought of it made her salivate. She found a little newspaper stand and bought a packet of Marlboro Gold, a lighter with ‘Souvenir of Singapore Changi Airport' inscribed on one side and a copy of the
South China Morning Post
. She wondered if Elton Chong still wrote for it. She'd gotten loads of mileage out of that gag, and it only worked because she'd kept the paper with his byline in it and took it on stage with her. She'd bought it during a dirty weekend in Hong Kong with a Canadian guy called Guy, a fellow teacher in Tokyo. They'd spent nearly the entire weekend in a windowless, flea-infested shit hole called Chunking Mansions, having lukewarm sex and watching reruns of
Diff'rent Strokes
.
After two days trapped in an airless room, Guy had begun to smell of Weet-Bix and Lizzie had pulled the ‘Sorry, mate, it's that time of the month' stunt. She'd spent the rest of the trip buying silk pajamas and sitting in the lobby of the Peninsula, reading
Marie Claire
, eating club sandwiches and drinking iced tea.

She headed up to the rooftop smoking area and as she pushed open the door, the air hit her in the face like a surprise party. Asia. Glorious, intoxicating Asia. Rotting vegetation, open sewers, frying fat and diesel fuel. The chaos. Building and disintegration happening furiously and simultaneously. God, how she loved it. She had forgotten how much. Her single life came flashing back as if someone had just pushed the ‘play' button.

She lit a fag and took it all in. She didn't smoke much these days, just at the odd dinner party and at her gigs. But she'd smoked like a chimney back in those days of backpacking, when a bowl of noodles and a can of Coke was a sensible breakfast. The humidity felt so exotic and so sexy. She felt as if she were with an old lover. She looked up at the sky and the stars were all still there. The same ones under which she'd drunk, laughed, cried, danced and kissed, back when ten dollars could buy you anything and three weeks was a long time.

Her head spun from the tobacco and she looked around to find that she was surrounded by the most extraordinary cactus garden, overflowing with succulents of all types. They were the only plants she knew anything about – and the only plants she'd never been able to kill, no matter how hard she tried. A plaque announced that this garden had been voted ‘Best Rooftop Garden 2001.' The sign had come away a little from its stand and Lizzie fished an ice-cream stick from the ground, took the chewing gum from her mouth and poked it into the gap.

The rest of the flight was like any other. Just when you thought you couldn't take it any more, it was over. As they were about to land, she looked out the window and saw pastures. Green patchwork pastures. She remembered flying into Narita for the first time and being shocked by the sight of rice paddies and people tending them. The enormity of what she was doing had suddenly hit her and for the first time in her life she'd been scared. What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing? I don't know anyone in Japan, I don't speak the language, I have no money and no job and I've never been overseas before. She'd wanted to run to the cockpit and ask the pilot to take her home again.

Now, she walked through Heathrow feeling grubby, wrinkled, itchy-eyed but triumphant. She'd made it. She was almost as far away from her kids as humanly possible, yet they were fine and so was she. She turned on her mobile and there was an SMS from Jim. ‘Please pick up milk on the way home. Ha, ha. Let me know when you are there.'

As she pushed her trolley out of the limbo of customs into the real world, she felt the cold bite her bare ankles and scanned the sea of faces for the BBC producer who was supposed to pick her up. How would he find her? Then her eye was caught by a sign: ELIZABETH QUEALY. It was held by a balding man in a brown leather jacket and a black jumper who looked like a younger version of Clive James. Even halfway around the world, television producers all looked exactly the same.

He'd spotted her already. ‘Hello. Welcome to Britain. Sorry about the weather, but it's always shite. I'm Keith Race.' She wanted to hug him, but instead she held out her hand.

‘Lizzie Quealy. The only people who call me Elizabeth are my doctor and the bank.'

He took her bag, led her to his car and swung her backpack into the back seat next to two new-looking baby capsules. It looked grubby and pathetic alongside them. ‘Have you got kids?'

‘Yeah, twins. Boys. IVF. It never rains but it pours.'

So they talked kids and life as they sped along the M15 past cows, trucks and houses full of other people's lives. As the sprawl grew denser, the suburbs outside gentrified and before they got around to talking about the show they'd arrived at Thistle Charing Cross on The Strand. Trev had booked it; the manager was a mate of his. It was a refurbished railway hotel, covered in crud and full of backpackers.

It was breakfast time and despite three cups of coffee and the excitement of landing in another country she was, as the English would say, totally knackered. The adrenaline had worn off and she'd been dumped.

Keith carried her backpack into the lobby and dropped it onto the carpet with a soft thud. She liked Keith. He was a working-class boy made good and he laughed at her jokes and drove like a psychopath. He also obviously adored his wife – and there is nothing more endearing than a man who loves his woman.

‘Listen, Lizzie, we're having a bit of a Christmas drinks thing on Sunday afternoon. Just family and some friends. Would you like to come? Maybe you're busy catching up with all your London friends?'

‘No, I don't know anyone who lives here anymore. I have a friend in Scotland and one who lives in a place called Spital Tongues, which I don't believe actually exists, but that's it. So yeah, drinks would be great. What's today?'

‘It's Saturday. Here's my address.' He handed her his card with an address scrawled on the back. ‘Anytime after two. Let me know if you need anything.'

With that, Keith sped away to the insanity of three-month-old twins and Lizzie was shown to a room with a freshly made bed, a large white bath and a view of the London Eye. She immersed herself in a steaming chamomile-scented bath and soaked the travel away. Then she pulled on a big soft T-shirt and slept like a dead person.

 

Tom was up to his elbows in copies of
Photo
,
Popular Photography
and
Leica Fotografie
when his mobile went off. He was desperately hoping to come across the November 1999 issue of
American Photographer
that would make his set complete. The one where they road-tested the Canon Eos 3 against the Nikon F100. His camera-fair luck must surely have run out – he had already snapped up a ropey Leica M2 for fifty quid and the guy had thrown in a lens hood for nothing – but he couldn't stop looking. This must be how gamblers feel: ‘Just one last box. I'll just sift through one last box.'

He looked at his phone. The time read 13.07. The caller ID flashed ‘HOME.'

‘I'm on my way,' Tom lied. ‘There was an accident on Whitehorse Road.'

‘This is just a gentle reminder,' said Felicity in her calm voice. ‘I know how you lose all sense of time at those bloody camera fairs. Lucky they're only twice a year.'

Tom bought an issue of
American Photographer
– not the one he was looking for, but it featured a discussion between Eve Arnold and Henri Cartier-Bresson about the future of photojournalism. He also picked up an orange safelight for his darkroom and then hot-footed it back to the car. He was driving Felicity's sensible VW Polo, now that his ex-car was probably busy having its serial number ground off before being resprayed for some cockney pimp's daughter's eighteenth birthday.

Tom loved these camera fairs with an irrational passion. His heart beat faster when he saw the ad in the paper or plastered to a telegraph pole. It was only at the camera fair that he could forget who he was.

It had all started when he was seventeen. He was helping his father go through his grandfather's things when he picked up a dusty old Leica M3 destined for Oxfam.

‘Can I have this?' asked Tom.

‘If you want, but I'm not paying for the film,' grumbled his father, who had just hit his head on an open cupboard door.

Tom adored it immediately. The weight of it, the feel of the leatherette covering, the smell of the strap and the soft clunk of the shutter. It was brand new, in mint condition. Inside was a card that said, ‘Happy Birthday to my darling husband xoxox.' It was only as he learnt more about cameras that he realised what a treasure it was.

He would sit for hours in the Wiltshire Municipal Library reading
The Leica Manual
1975 edition over and over. He spent all his pocket money on film and processing and when he ran out of cash, he'd nick some from his brother. Ned always had money. Eventually Tom got to know the local chemist so well that he got a job mowing his lawn in exchange for film. He also gave the man's sixteen-year-old daughter, Veronica, a seeing-to in the back shed on a regular basis, but that's another story.

He joined a camera club when he was nineteen but soon tired of the still-life projects and the endless debates about lenses. As the anoraks waxed lyrical about Ansel Adams, Jack Dykinga and the best shutter-speed with which to capture a sunset, Tom would try to work Elliott Erwitt, Cartier-Bresson and Martin Parr into the conversation. His heroes were photojournalists and his dream was to be a professional photographer, wandering the streets with his Leica and his light meter around his neck. It was when he involuntarily blurted, ‘Don't photograph it, you twat, sit back with a pint and watch it' that he realised he'd attended his last meeting.

Now, all these years later, he still loved photographs and the magic of watching them come to life. He had built his own darkroom, owned fifteen cameras and had installed a special cabinet just for his camera magazines. He'd retreat to the darkroom after supper, put Pink Floyd on the stereo, come out for a drink and realise it was four in the morning. He loved the feeling of conjuring art out of life.

Sometimes he looked at professional pictures and thought, My stuff's as good as that. Then there were those moments when he thought, I'm doomed. There's no way I'd ever cut it.

When Celia was about two months old, he took a series of pictures of her, kind of an inventory of her body parts, which prompted a couple of people to ask him if he would photograph their weddings. They always said the same thing: ‘We want black and white, slice of life, no set-ups.' But when it came to the day, it was always: ‘You don't have any colour film, do you? It's just that one of the guests arrived on a Harley and we thought it would be fun to have a photo of the bride on it.'

Yeah, great, Tom would think. And let me guess: then a shot of all the groomsmen with their jackets swung over their shoulders, looking as if they should be in a menswear catalogue?

 

Tom pulled up outside his house and honked the horn. Felicity opened the door and Celia ran to the car, wearing a hot-pink leotard and leg warmers and a white tutu.

‘Hello, sweetheart. You look lovely. Why are you wearing your ballet clothes?' Tom asked.

‘It's Imogen's birthday and she's having a dance party. I'm going to do my Kylie dance.'

Felicity hopped into the car. ‘I have to take Celia to Imogen's at 3.30, so you'll need to make your own way home. Unless of course you want to come to the birthday party?'

‘I'll take her if you want,' Tom said unconvincingly as he turned into the high street. He was looking forward to a couple of cleansing ales at Keith and Becky's. They knew how to put on a good shindig.

‘No, it's okay, I'm meeting up with one of the other mums from school to talk about the Christmas concert. It's tomorrow night. You haven't forgotten?'

‘Of course not,' Tom lied. ‘But you do realise this means I'll be forced to drink beer and talk rubbish with your family all evening.'

‘The sacrifices you make, darling. Someone should give you a medal as big as a dart board.'

 

Keith and Becky lived in a converted church in Notting Hill. It had been earmarked for demolition when Becky, who was an architect, bought it, renovated it and made a packet. It was all skylights, European appliances, muted tones and mezzanines. The garden was full of clean-lined heliconias and yuccas. She and Keith sold off the Sunday-school building and the rectory and kept the church for themselves.

When Tom, Felicity and Celia arrived, the party was in full swing. A white-clothed table groaned with food: spanakopita, smoked salmon, free-range chicken roasted with thyme and mint, Turkish bread, olives stuffed with feta and courgettes stuffed with semi-dried tomatoes. Ella Fitzgerald crooned in the background.

‘Fancy a cheeky Chardonnay?' Keith greeted them.

‘Well, alright then. Just to be social.'

Tom milled around and chatted with the usual suspects. He avoided mad Aunty Fran and managed to get in and out of a conversation with Felicity and Becky's mother in a record three minutes. He floated in and out of various debates about real estate, politics and the latest health fads.

‘But are you taking
enough
vitamin E? I mean the RDA is one thing, but I know that certainly in the case of Vitamin B12, 430 per cent of the RDA is recommended and with Omega 3s, for example, there is very limited data. And what about quality? Are the vitamins water soluble or slow release or what? Is there any more wine?'

‘Here. White alright for you? I hear what you're saying about Omega 3s, but I think the main focus for long-term health has to be the glycaemic index. Have you got any fags left?'

‘Sure. Here. Where was I?'

Felicity tapped him on the shoulder. ‘We're off.'

‘Already? It's only 3.30. Oh right, hang on, don't tell me – school concert.'

‘No, that's tomorrow night. Imogen's party.'

‘That's right, Imogen's party.'

‘So you'll be right to get home? Remember, no car.'

‘Yeah, I'll get a cab.'

A few drinks later, Tom and Keith nicked out to the backyard for a cigar. Tom decided not to bore Keith with the shit that had been going down at work. Instead they talked sport and politics until Becky called from inside, ‘I need another pair of hands here!'

‘It's okay,' said Tom, butting out his cigar, ‘I'll go.'

He walked in and Becky thrust a twin into his arms. ‘It's shit or vomit, I'm afraid. I assumed you'd prefer shit.'

Holding Marks or Sparks a safe distance away from his shirt, Tom climbed the stairs to the nursery and lay the boy down on the change table. He grabbed a nappy, found a wipe and was just about to execute the procedure when Keith appeared, looking concerned.

‘It's alright, mate. It's just like riding a bike.'

‘True. A bike covered in shit.'

 

*

 

Lizzie slept for hours and woke up famished. She raided the mini bar for peanuts and a Kit Kat, then peered at herself in the mirror. A crease ran down her face where she'd slept on the bedspread. She was about to ring Jim when she realised it was midnight in Melbourne. So she pulled on her coat, grabbed her headphones and headed out in search of food.

She stopped for a bowl of creamy carbonara and garlic bread at a little restaurant called Lucia's, over the road from Covent Garden. It was the first thing she'd eaten since leaving Melbourne that actually had flavour.

‘Twelve pounds,' she thought out loud as she handed over her credit card. ‘I wonder what that is in Australian money.'

‘Probably one hundred of your dingo dollars, love,' said the cashier. Lizzie helped herself to a complimentary mint.

She walked for eight hours straight. Her idea was to fight off the jetlag by tiring herself out. When she arrived back at the hotel it was 1.30 a.m. and she called Jim. Then it was sleep again.

She woke to a strange buzzing noise which she realised, after a groggy few seconds, was the phone.

‘Hello?'

‘Lizzie. Keith Race here. How ya doin'? Just thought I'd remind you about the little get-together at our place today. Still got that card I gave you?'

‘Yeah, somewhere.'

‘'Bout two. Come over earlier if you want and meet the wife. Just give that card to the cabbie and he'll sort you out.'

‘Okay. See you then.'

Lizzie looked at the clock. It was 11 a.m. She picked up her A–Z of London, stuck Keith's card inside and decided she'd leave early and walk. If it all went arse-over-tits she could always hail a cab.

She showered and tarted herself up, pulling on a soft, emerald-green jersey dress. She'd packed it as an afterthought, but she loved this dress. It was crushable, with a low scoop neck and a flared skirt that stopped just below the knee. She'd picked it up in a maternity seconds place and had worn it through both of her pregnancies. She called it the Wonder Dress; every time she washed it, no matter how far she'd stretched it or how much her body had grown or shrunk, it snapped back into shape and hugged her hips and breasts. It was getting old now. There was pilling under the arms and a tiny hole near the hem. But no woman on the planet had squeezed so much wear out of maternity gear as Lizzie. She was still wearing her maternity bras, and Scarlet had been weaned for over a year.

She pulled on some black tights and black boots and grabbed her brown leather jacket, which smelt faintly of cigarettes and frangipani body butter. She felt foggy but great. Light. No strollers. No kids to wrestle into the car. No sticky fingers. On her way out she gave herself one last check in the mirror. Her hair looked flat and dull. She'd forgotten to pack her shampoo and the hotel stuff left something to be desired. She grabbed a tortoiseshell clip from her toiletries bag, twisted her hair onto the back of her head and plucked one red rose from a vase in the bathroom. She poked it into her hair and walked out the door.

 

‘Ah, Lizzie! Perfect timing. The twins have just woken up.' Keith ushered her in. ‘I don't suppose you can breastfeed.'

‘Sorry, Keith. But you can drink this if you're that thirsty.' Lizzie handed him a bottle of Jacob's Creek cab sav that she'd picked up from an offie on the way.

Keith showed her through the house, slightly embarrassed and slightly thrilled by its understated sophistication. ‘And this is my wife, Becky. Becky, Lizzie Quealy.'

‘I've heard a lot about you,' Becky said as she swung a baby over her shoulder and burped it.

‘Really? Those charges were never proven.'

‘Can I get you a drink? Beer, champagne, wine?'

‘Wine, please. Red would be lovely.'

It was just after one o'clock and the wine hit her like a tonne of bricks. After two glasses and a piece of potato-and-leek frittata, the jetlag fairy got her. She wasn't embarrassed; she just had to sleep. Her body gave her no other option.

‘I'm so sorry,' she told Keith. ‘I've just hit the wall. Is there any chance I could lie down somewhere?'

Keith showed her to the spare room and she was swallowed by sleep before her head even hit the pillow.

 

She woke up with a start two hours later, busting to have a wee. Disorientated, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and ventured into the hallway. She opened the next door along. A bedroom. But at the far end of the corridor, a door was ajar. She tiptoed down the hall, poked her head in, and there was a man changing a baby's nappy.

‘Sorry,' said Lizzie hurriedly. ‘I'm looking for the toilet.'

The man looked up and for a second her brain froze. It was Tom.

‘Lizzie?'

‘Tom?'

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Trying to find a toilet.'

‘Next on your right.'

Lizzie disappeared, then stuck her head back through the doorway. ‘Wait for me. I'll just be a sec.'

Tom was stunned. ‘Well, fuck me. Lizzie Quealy,' he said to Marks or Sparks. The baby looked at him and gurgled. And then peed on his shirt.