The Best Kind of Beautiful Read online

  Puck, Lucas always said, was a born drummer, emerging from the womb with rhythm in his veins.

  Puck drummed when he was happy, he drummed when he was sad, and he drummed when he didn’t know what he was, a twelve-year-old boy at his father’s funeral, wearing a suit of velvet armour.

  Florence had sat stony-faced through the service and scowled her sixteen-year-old scowl when anyone approached her at the wake.

  Prickly, everyone said afterwards.

  *

  The door to the office opened and Albert walked in, smiling at Florence as he took his daypack from his shoulder.

  ‘Still here, Florence?’ he said.

  ‘Obviously,’ she replied and instantly regretted it.

  It had sounded sarcastic when she had meant it to sound fun, flippant, larkish, and Albert had dipped his head the way he did when he was unsure of what to say next.

  ‘How’s the lantana in the east section?’ she asked, altering her tone to a lighter dolcissimo.

  ‘Unruly,’ he smiled at her. ‘How was our little friend Pedro?’

  ‘Also unruly,’ she smiled back.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she answered, standing to grab her bag off the hook.

  They walked home the usual way, ducking the odd East Elm third grader whizzing past on their BMX – ‘Hello Miss Saint Claire, hello Mr Flowers’ – and through the park, but today Albert suggested a diversion from their path.

  ‘Let’s just sit, Florence,’ he said, ‘if you have time?’

  He looked tired, leaning back on the park bench to close his eyes against the sky. ‘So I went to this wedding on the weekend . . .’

  2

  ‘I’m not in love with her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I don’t love her, mate.’

  Albert and Simon Bishop looked across the lawn to where Simon’s bride was twirling underneath her father Tom’s outstretched arm on the dance floor.

  Siobhan Peters – now Bishop – looked, Albert thought, like spinning fairy floss, her white gown taking on a lolly-pink hue beneath the party lights.

  ‘Oh,’ he replied, watching her dance, joyfully, cluelessly, in her father’s arms. Tom Peters held his daughter close. He would hold her closer still, Albert thought, if he could hear this conversation by the lake.

  ‘Don’t just say “oh”, say something helpful, mate,’ Simon Bishop demanded, his face too close to Albert’s.

  ‘All right,’ Albert replied. ‘Stop drinking’ – and stop calling me mate, he added to himself.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Simon answered, throwing a stone into the ornamental lake, its small weight immediately sinking into the inky blackness.

  Albert had wandered down to the wooden landing to take a break from the party and the conga line that was about to inevitably break out on the dance floor.

  He had been thinking about what he would tell Florence later if she asked him to describe the wedding dress – frothy, he had decided – when Simon had lurched up in the darkness beside him, a beer in his hand.

  ‘Got a smoke?’ he’d asked.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Albert had answered, wishing Simon would lurch away again, back to his leering mates who had cheered his leering speech, while Siobhan had smiled wanly beside him.

  Siobhan, Albert thought, probably had a life of smiling wanly ahead of her.

  Lucky she had a sense of humour – earlier when Albert had complimented her on her wedding dress she had laughed. ‘I know, I know, I look like the wedding cake,’ and laughed harder when he’d said, ‘Only the first tier.’

  There was something endearing about Siobhan Peters, something about her face that was slightly off kilter, making her, he thought, the best kind of beautiful, the almost kind.

  Albert had met Siobhan a year or so earlier at his local watering hole, World’s End, where she had insisted on paying for their drinks and had pretended to be interested in his ongoing struggles with the African boxthorn weeds. He’d gone to World’s End after work, still in his uniform, and she had introduced herself at the bar, the two of them chatting easily for a couple of rounds before Simon had turned up, kissing her on the cheek and raising his eyebrows just slightly at Albert.

  ‘Hi sweetheart,’ he’d said, then looking at the name embroidered across Albert’s chest: ‘and Albert I presume – either that or you’ve nicked someone else’s shirt.’

  It was a funny line, Albert had conceded, but there was something in the delivery of it, something in the way Simon had sat back and waited for the laugh, that had rankled. Men like Simon Bishop, he thought, always waited for the laughs, knowing they would come, knowing as they tossed their throwaway lines into the air that someone would always reach out to catch them.

  Listening to Simon order a drink, Albert had realised he knew Simon’s younger brother, Douglas. They had the same deep, clipped inflections – to Albert’s ears, all the Bishop boys sounded like Malcolm Fraser. Douglas had been in the same year at the grammar school Albert had left a decade earlier, loosening his tie on his way out through Farrow’s grey, whorled gates, never to put one on again.

  Douglas, he remembered, had once been knocked out during a rugby match, not getting off the ground, not getting up while it seemed the sky held its breath, and his teammates had shifted on their feet, biting at their lips.

  When Douglas did get up, groggy, empty-eyed, the boys in his team had been held back from touching him, while the medical staff ran onto the field.

  ‘I was there,’ he told Simon, ‘the day your brother got knocked out at rugby.’

  Simon’s brow had furrowed, trying to place Albert in amongst all the old school ties.

  ‘Were you one of Dougie’s mates, did you come up to the house?’ Simon asked, and Albert had noted the ‘up’.

  Once a year the Bishops threw open the doors of their home, Avalon, to the public, its pale salmon brickwork sitting atop East Elm’s only hill like a pale glacé cherry on a dessert. Natalie Bishop would welcome people from just behind its elaborate front gates with their curling wrought-iron inlays, while her children – there was a younger sister as well, Sadie, who had flirted with him earlier at the reception – would serve iced tea from jugs to people who would never ordinarily be wandering about their garden. The Bishop boys – and they would be called the Bishop boys even as they turned into old men – would be stationed behind the bar, serving flutes of champagne and orange juice to women in a swathe of bright dresses fluttering like Monarch butterflies about the cabbage roses.

  Albert wasn’t sure how many Bishop boys there were – he thought perhaps three, but it was hard to tell. They were indistinguishable from one another, and from most of the other Farrow boys, always travelling in small packs, and looking, Albert thought, like striped rugby jerseys caught together in a dryer.

  Albert had never attended an open day at Avalon, but his mother Georgina once went with a friend, returning to their family home with a sigh etched on her face. ‘It’s such a beautiful house,’ she kept saying, and somewhere in it he heard the reproach to his father Laurence that they themselves did not live in it. They lived quite near it, their back fence actually met once of its boundaries, but near enough, it seemed, really wasn’t good enough.

  Now he looked at Simon, who had grown up within those walls, who had, it seemed, everything, including the almost beautiful Siobhan, and still was not satisfied.

  Albert tilted his head towards the underbelly of the sky, the clouds slung low above them.

  ‘We should probably get back in,’ he said, ‘they’ll be waiting for you – Siobhan will be waiting for you.’

  The music from the marquee drifted down to them, carrying with it the sounds of laughter and music, drifting bubbles of happiness.

  Simon suddenly sat up straighter and slung an arm around Albert’s shoulders.

  Aaah, Albert thought, the pally stage.

  ‘The thing is, mate,’ Simon said, ‘you’ve got the right idea – no ties,
birds lined up to meet you, no fucking worries, no bloody dinner dates with the parents . . .’

  ‘So why do it?’ Albert asked, looking into Simon’s face in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do, isn’t it? Three years we’ve been together . . . she’s put in the time.’

  She’s put in the time?

  Albert shifted, causing Simon’s hand to drop from his shoulder.

  What was it, he thought, that made perfectly sane women like Siobhan Peters fall for men like Simon Bishop?

  Did her mother, Olivia, whom Albert knew vaguely through the library’s garden club, look at her daughter when she was extending her shapely leg so Simon could remove a frilly garter with his teeth, and think, Twelve years of school, five years of debating, four years of architecture at uni, a Rotary scholarship to study in Germany and she ends up with this . . .? Or did she look at Simon Bishop and see no further than the salmon-pink bricks of Avalon, its gates opening to let her in?

  He had, of course, no idea what Olivia Peters thought of her new son-in-law, but he knew what he did.

  Albert felt the rush of words come to him, too late to stem the flow from his lips. It always happened this way, when he was riled up, when he was dealing with people like Simon Bishop.

  They tumbled from him in free fall before he could catch them and slow them down, part of him, if he was truthful, not really caring where they fell.

  ‘Simon,’ he said, ‘you are a fucking idiot, and you’ve probably always been a fucking idiot, but by some complete freak of nature Siobhan has decided that you’re her fucking idiot, and if you do not go back in there and take the miracle that is Siobhan Peters in your arms and love and honour and cherish her for the rest of your days, and get down on your knees and thank the Lord that she sees something in you that fuck knows I can’t, then you are even more of a fucking idiot than even I give you credit for.’

  The lake lapped beneath them.

  Simon swayed unsteadily, his body tipping to one side before he righted himself by placing his hands on Albert’s shoulders.

  He stared at him, eyes pulling into focus then narrowing as he tightened his grip on Albert’s shoulders.

  ‘Bloody hell mate,’ he said, ‘you’re right,’ and walked unsteadily back up the hill, making a beeline for his bride who was joining the conga line that had just broken out.

  *

  ‘So, what was the bride’s dress like?’ Florence asked.

  ‘Frothy,’ Albert said, ‘decidedly frothy.’

  ‘Did you stay long?’

  ‘Right,’ Albert told her, ‘to the bitter end,’ and then he told her about the food and the dancing and the conga line, which had snaked, eventually, all the way down to the lake, where Simon Bishop’s mates had thrown him in.

  ‘What a lark,’ Florence found herself saying, and then immediately wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Actually, it was the highlight of the evening,’ Albert said, ‘Simon Bishop being tossed in the drink.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’ Florence asked, and Albert told her about his conversation with the runaway groom, Florence visibly prickling at Simon’s ‘she’s put in the time’ remark.

  There were some circles in Albert’s social life that Florence had no desire to elbow her way into at all, and the Bishop clan sounded like one of them. They reminded her of her parents’ late-night crowd, men and women who romped and caroused at afterparties and occasionally spent the night at Kinsey, sleeping off the evening before on one of its couches, a man once shouting at Puck to ‘shut up with the fucking drumming’. Florence had flown at him. ‘You shut up!’ she had shouted back. ‘And get off my mother’s tartan couch.’

  Florence smiled, she had always liked to be specific. Now, listening to Albert, she thought it was a good thing she hadn’t elbowed her way into that particular conversation. She would have been specific with Simon Bishop too.

  ‘So what did you tell him?’ Florence asked.

  Albert smiled at her. ‘I told him he was a fucking idiot.’

  He stretched his arms wide along the bench, his arm nudging Florence’s back as he asked, ‘What about you? What did you get up to on the weekend, Florence?’

  ‘Oh just pottering around,’ she said, which was largely true.

  Largely.

  Florence felt the lights from her own Saturday night on her skin.

  *

  She pulled the netted cap tightly to her skull, wriggling it a little at her ears as she always did.

  It was a ritual, the linking of her hands beneath her chin, elbows propped on the dressing table, as she studied her bare face in the mirror.

  Dipping her fingers into the cold crème she massaged it into her skin, eyes closed, then patted her hands against her cheeks and ran the tips of her fingers along her eyebrows. She applied her base with a sponge, turning her face one way, then the other, considering. Then she reached for her brushes and began applying her eye shadows – Bayou Blue, Pot Black, Chartreuse Shimmer – brushing each shade across her lids, before painting on the thick black eyeliner, turning her wrist to apply the perfect flick at the corners.

  The mirror made the pupils of her eyes look strangely iridescent, which was, she thought, exactly how she felt: strangely iridescent, burning bright, like the light bulbs that danced around the mirror’s frame.

  Reaching for her lip pencil, she outlined its red tip along her lips, drawing a cupid bow where there was none, then filled it in with Cardinal Red lipstick.

  Finally she dipped her biggest brush into the pot of powder blush, blowing on it as she raised it to her cheeks, tiny pink particles dancing in the light, and swept it along her cheekbones.

  Lastly the wig, a short, cherry-red bob, its long fringe sweeping across the side of her face, almost covering her left eye.

  She raised her head slightly and stared at the woman in the mirror.

  ‘We’re ready for you, Miss Suki,’ the stage manager called from the dressing room door.

  Florence stood up and considered herself one last time in the mirror, while beside her the Nightshades wriggled out of their makeup chairs to join her.

  ‘This place is a dump,’ Veronica Allen said.

  Orla O’Loan rolled her eyes. ‘Like you’re normally at the Opera ’Ouse.’

  ‘Let’s leave the banter for the show, ladies,’ Florence said, clicking out of the door in her kitten heels.

  *

  ‘So you didn’t get up to much?’ Albert was asking, his voice bringing her back to the jacaranda branches dipping above them.

  ‘No,’ she answered, the last strains of Miss Suki and her Nightshades fading away. ‘Puck came over and I helped him with some of his music theory, he’s got his final exams coming up.’

  ‘How’s he going, is he all right?’

  Albert was one of the few people outside of the Saint Claire circle who knew about Puck’s habit of disappearing, dropping out of their lives as if a trapdoor had sprung beneath him, so that one of the most repeated phrases uttered at family gatherings or gigs was, ‘Where the fuck is Puck?’ through gritted teeth.

  Florence smiled at him. ‘Well, he hasn’t disappeared in a puff of smoke for a while, so that’s a plus.’

  ‘A Puck of smoke,’ Albert smiled, then added, ‘Sorry, that was truly appalling. So where does he go, Florence, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t think he goes anywhere in particular, he just sort of hits the road. My father used to say that Puck has so much rhythm in him, he has to count it out with his feet.’

  Puck’s wanderings had long been accepted by his family, although when he was very little – five or six, Florence remembered – Amanda would sit fidgeting, watching the door and going up to the music room to look out the window, until Lucas, if he was home, would finally say ‘Go’, and she would jump in her car to drive around the neighbourhood, Florence often riding shotgun beside her.

  But later, when he was older, around nine or ten, they all – even Amanda – jus
t let him go.

  Florence was watching Albert’s face closely, the way he was digesting this particular branch of her family tree.

  He had already met Amanda, who had flirted with him and said something vaguely suggestive about the size of his feet, and Isolde who had flapped around him like a magpie pecking at an insect, and Puck who had nodded at him, jerking his head down in what she supposed was meant to be a hello before ducking out the door. Just once, Florence had thought, it would be lovely if she brought someone home and her family just said ‘Hello’, without putting on a display of all their particular tics. The Saint Claires had always been like peacocks among pigeons, and Florence had often longed to be a pigeon.

  When she was eight years old a family had moved in next door to Kinsey for about a year, renting the Prentices’ house while Professor Prentice was on secondment to an interstate university. Florence had stared, round-eyed, from the music room’s window as a car had pulled up behind the removal van and a man and a woman had got out, followed by two boys and a girl she thought looked about her age.

  ‘Please let her be my friend,’ Florence had prayed, screwing up her eyes with the effort. ‘Please let her be my friend, and let her be . . . normal.’

  And Amy Burton was normal, Florence remembered, gloriously so.

  She and Florence had quickly formed a friendship, one Amy’s mother, Caroline, kept a watchful eye on, the Saint Claires perhaps not quite what the Burtons had in mind for their daughter.

  Still, Amy and Florence had flourished, Florence spending every spare minute at the Burtons’ for the whole year they had lived next door, both girls weeping the day the removal truck returned.

  The first time they had played together Florence had asked Amy if she’d like to go down to the local creek with her.

  ‘I don’t think I’m allowed,’ Amy had answered. ‘I’m not really allowed to do anything.’ And Florence, who was allowed to do everything, thought that sounded wonderful.

  Lucas had found her infatuation with Amy and her family hilarious.

  He’d called it her ‘Year of Living Not Very Dangerously’.