The Tying of Threads (60 page)

‘Your publicist arranged for a photographer to come to the house. Everyone and their dog will recognise you in that. Put the green on first – and that bra too.’

Other than a swipe of face cream and a dash of lipstick, Jenny rarely bothered with makeup. Georgie plastered it on her that morning, a sheet protecting the flyaway green. She added eye shadow, eyebrow pencil, mascara and layers of pale pink lipstick, guaranteed not to kiss off. Then they pulled that crawling wig into place and when every fading tendril of gold had been tucked beneath it, they pinned the wig down with a multitude of bobby pins and slid long dangly green earrings through her lobes.

‘Where are your black-rimmed glasses, Jen?’

‘They’re my reading glasses.’

‘They’ll do for the photographs. Those frameless things look like you,’ she said.

They had trouble sliding the arms of the glasses beneath the too well pinned wig, but they covered much of her face and matched the wig. If she’d been wearing her black slacksuit, she might have looked like a writer.

‘Let me wear my slacksuit.’

‘Jennifer Hooper doesn’t wear green and pink, now behave yourself.’

She couldn’t run from this, couldn’t hide from it. Couldn’t sit down on the floor and kick her heels. Couldn’t think of her list of questions but remembered every word of that poem and recited it in her mind while the photographer carried in half a ton of paraphernalia.

She preened in the mirror. She made herself neat
. . .

He took umpteen dozen shots of her, first in her green with her green dangling earrings, then in her pink, with pink and gold ear studs. He shot her full length, head and shoulders, pink suit walking, pink suit sitting. Hair hanging forward, hair held back to show one earring. He took shots of her wearing Georgie’s maroon jacket, a few with one of Georgie’s scarves. Then he wanted her to remove her glasses. She clung to them and raised her hand at Georgie.

‘We’re out of time,’ Georgie said.

And she opened the door – to be swept off her feet
. . .

Greensborough was a long way from the city but that morning the trip was too short. She saw no traffic on the road.

‘Where were you born?’ Georgie asked.

‘Halfway between Australia and Italy.’

‘What year was that, Juliana?’

‘I can’t give them Margot’s date of birth. She would have turned sixty this year.’

‘They’ll know you haven’t had a facelift – and they won’t ask anyway.’

‘They’ll bring up that plagiarism thing again.’

‘What will you say if they do?’

‘Rape is all too common, as were Sydney boarding houses during the forties. And until that coot started—’

‘Don’t call him a coot, Jen.’

‘Until that literary gentleman started his plagiarism thing, I had not read
Angel at My Door.
’

‘And?’

‘And I thought I was here to discuss
The Winter Boomerang
, much of which is also set in Sydney during wartime.’

‘Good enough. What are you currently working on, Juliana?’

‘Thanks to you, I’ll probably die of a heart attack before I finish it.’

‘Relax and be yourself – as much as you can,’ Georgie advised.

‘In pink, with a thirty-eight inch foam rubber bust and my knocking knees on show – and as blind as the proverbial bat in those reading glasses. With a bit of luck I’ll fall over and break my neck before I get in there.’

‘Try my glasses,’ Georgie said, offering them. They were black-rimmed but sunglasses.

‘You said I couldn’t wear sunglasses.’

‘They’re only tinted once you’re inside,’ Georgie said.

‘You’ve got a weak muscle. They’ll send me cross-eyed.’

‘Which could be a good thing this morning.’

*

Jenny had never ridden a roller-coaster. She rode one that Wednesday morning and all she could do was hang on until it stopped or she was flung off flat on her face. You can imagine an experience over and over, you can practise your replies until you’re word perfect, but all of that didn’t matter a damn. Once out of the car, her mind turned to baby mush and any second now she was going to spit up. She almost vomited when they ushered her away from Georgie – just as she and Sissy had been ushered away from Amber on the night of the talent quest, and just as Amber had attempted to follow Sissy, Georgie attempted to follow Jenny with the glasses she’d required for driving. Someone brought them in to the makeup room. Jenny slid her sunglasses from beneath her wig and put the other pair on, then the makeup woman asked her to take them off so she could powder her face.

‘I’ve already powdered it.’

The woman not satisfied, Georgie’s glasses came off and, Georgie’s eye makeup or not, the eyes looking back from the mirror were Jenny’s and they were petrified. She clung to her wig, refusing to allow the makeup woman to touch it then, when the glasses were poked and prodded back beneath it, she dared another look in the mirror. Maybe Juliana Conti looked back at her – a somewhat blurred Juliana.

They led her out, pointed her in the right direction, gave her a nod when it was time for her to make her entrance. Then she was on her own. She’d made a few entrances in a past life so, grasping at straws, she reached for the past and for Miss Rose’s final instructions before kid Jenny had made her entrance on stage:
Head high. Give the audience a big smile, Jennifer.

Head high, stomach threatening to lose its two bites of breakfast toast, she fixed on her fake smile and walked across to the host – to applause. Maybe the applause helped. If the worst came to the worst she could stand up and sing ‘I’ll Walk With God’.

Georgie hadn’t told her there’d be a second guest. With too much else to see in the studio, Jenny didn’t notice the already seated stranger until the host introduced her to Ms Langhall.

S
issy and Lila usually watched the morning show. It came on before
Days of Our Lives.
They knew the host well.

‘He wasn’t a bad-looking sort when he was young,’ Lila said.

‘All you ever talk about is men. If you’re going to watch it, shut up and let me listen.’

‘They’re writers. Who’s interested in what they say?’

Sissy was. She’d read about Juliana Conti in a magazine. ‘She had a grandmother who went missing in the war or something. She’s Italian.’

‘When I was young, blokes used to ask me if I was a dago,’ Lila said. ‘My hair was as dark as hers and long enough to sit on.’

‘So was mine,’ Sissy said.

‘You ought to dye it. Grey hair is aging.’

‘So is going bald. You’re so thin on top I can see your scalp shining through. A friend told me once that too much dying kills all the hair roots.’

Sissy had plenty of hair, the Hoopers’ steel grey. At eighty, she took up less of the couch than she had at seventy. Lila would wear the weight off anyone. Watching her incessant movement burned calories, as did sucking in her secondhand smoke.

She rose to get the remote, then to flip through the channels looking for something worth watching, and while her back was turned, Sissy helped herself to another Tim Tam. She’d almost got rid of it before Lila gave up flicking and settled for the writers. She caught her crunching.

‘We paid half each for those,’ Lila said, claiming the packet and placing it out of Sissy’s reach while the Conti woman spoke about her small country property.

‘She looks like a cat on hot bricks,’ Lila said.

‘Can you keep your mouth shut for five minutes?’

The camera swung to the other writer, clad in a silky beige shirt and brown slacks.
I wrote the first drafts of
Angel at My Door
in longhand during my first year at college
, she was saying.
It began as a search for my own identity
.

The Conti woman said she’d never considered writing a book until her son-in-law introduced her to a floppy disc that knew how to play cards.

‘She sounds familiar,’ Lila said.

‘She doesn’t sound Italian. That other one reminds me of someone.’

They sat forward as the camera moved in on Conti, who was speaking about being born on a boat halfway between Italy and Australia.
It must have been traumatic. I haven’t been on a boat since
, she said, and the audience laughed.

‘She sounds like Jenny!’ Lila said. ‘Her and Jim and those up-themselves McPhersons used to make kids’ books years ago. I was in three of them.’

‘If you think I believe that, you’ve got rocks in your bald head.’

‘It’s true. I had a copy of one of them until the old mongrel I was married to burned it. Jenny’s still got copies of them. Ring her up and ask her.’

‘If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times not to mention her name in my house.’

‘She’s my best friend and I’ll talk about her if I want to, and I pay half the rent and half the bills.’

‘The bills come to me so it’s my house.’

You write directly to your computer, Miss Conti?

Why do it twice?

‘Close your eyes and listen to her. She sounds exactly like Jenny.’

‘As if I’d know what she sounds like. I haven’t seen her since . . . years.’ Conti had said something. The audience was laughing. ‘What did she say?’

‘Who cares? It probably wasn’t funny. They have a bloke on stage who holds up signs telling the audience when to laugh,’ Lila said. ‘I went to one of Tommy Hanlon’s shows once. I didn’t get picked to be on it, but one woman who did, she got a new washing machine and dryer.’

The camera was on the second writer, who had a lot more to say than the one in pink. She’d flown over from England yesterday and was flying up to Sydney tomorrow, then on Monday she was off to Perth.

‘They have a good life, jetsetting around all over the country. I wish I had the money to fly somewhere,’ Lila said.

‘I went on a boat to Tasmania once,’ Sissy said.

‘Tasmania’s not somewhere.’

I like your title,
A Hand of Cards
,
the writer in pink said.
I’ve always thought that we’re dealt a hand of cards at birth and good, bad or indifferent, we play the best game we can with what we’ve been dealt.

‘That’s Jenny, or I’ll eat my hat! Her legs look like Jenny’s.’

‘I haven’t seen her legs in fifty years and if I don’t see them in another fifty I won’t care, now shut up!’

‘You’ll be dead in ten – if you’re lucky.’

‘You’ll be dead in fifty seconds if you don’t stop talking – as if it’s her! She looks ten years younger than you.’

You deal a few of your characters a difficult hand, Miss Conti,
the host said as the camera swung back to the woman in pink and caught her trying to break off a dangling thread.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

What was your inspiration for
The Stray?

I’m here to discuss
The Winter Boomerang.

‘What did she say?’ Lila yelled.

‘Who cares?’

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to discuss the plagiarism accusation,
the host said.
Your protagonist in
The Stray
is raped at fourteen, and by the age of eighteen is a single mother of three, and in an era when few unwed mothers raised their children, when those who did were frowned upon. Ms Langhall’s Jessica, in
Angel at My Door,
is also raped at fourteen and an unwed mother of four by the age of twenty.

The writer in pink shrugged.
When I was a kid I knew a woman who wandered around town with a pillow stuffed under her pinny so she could pass her unmarried daughter’s baby off as her own – which is where I got my idea for the landlady’s cushion in
The Stray.

Where did the idea for your book come from?

Life
, the writer in pink said as she glanced at her watch.

Are we keeping you from an appointment?

My dau
. . .
agent is waiting for me.

‘Did they say how old she was?’

‘You haven’t shut up long enough for me to hear anything,’ Sissy said. ‘Did she just say
The Stray
?’

‘I dunno.’

Sissy reached for the Tim Tams, but Lila snatched them away. ‘You pinched one before,’ Lila said.

‘If not for me you’d be living on the street.’

‘If not for me, you’d be catching a bus to bingo.’

Lila was agile. Sissy had height, weight and determination. They squabbled over Tim Tams while a commercial played, and when it was done the Tim Tam packet was in the kitchen.

‘What’s plagiarism?’ Lila asked.

‘If you listened you might find out.’

There are many similarities between the two protagonists
, the host said, then the camera swung to the one in pink, who was more interested in the hem of her skirt, so it swung to the other one.

My research for
Angel
was done in Traralgon, where the fifteen year old daughter of family friends was brutally raped. I set it in Sydney because I knew the city well.

You are familiar with the city, Miss Conti?

My grandmother lived there. She used to talk about the Yanks pouring into Sydney during the war.

You appear to know the city.

I bought a street directory.

‘I lived in Sydney during the war,’ Lila said. ‘It was the best time I ever had in my life, then my first husband got out of the army and got me pregnant that same night. I didn’t hang around after it was born to give him another chance at me.’

The one in beige was on the screen still yapping about plagiarism. The watchers were silent, attempting to work out what the word meant.

Did Daphne du Maurier plagiarise Charlotte Brontë? I’ve always seen a similarity between
Rebecca
and
Jane Eyre
. Juliana’s Sally has three children. My Jessica has four. Sally marries an abusive American. Jessica ends up with the love of her life. Where is the similarity?

The host turned to the one in pink, who shrugged, and when the camera didn’t move away, she sighed and spoke her longest sentence.

There are only X number of words in a dictionary and X number of stories to tell. There might be one book in a hundred I read these days that doesn’t remind me a bit of one I’ve read before. And to kill this subject, which I’ve had enough of, a fool of a girl I once knew was my inspiration for Sally. She grew up and moved on with her life, which is what I’d like to do right now.