A Perfect Square

Chapter 1-2

She sat down on the other sofa and poured, passing Ginny her tea.

‘I’ve lost my job,’ Ginny said, directing her comment more at the cup in her hand.

‘At the Derwent?’ Harriet said, hoping to keep her tone natural.

‘I can’t make ends meet in North Melbourne without it.’ Her voice was faint and small.

She had relinquished her lofty ambitions at least, or so it seemed. All through her doctoral studies Ginny had craved an academic position. After much fretting over her prospects, upon completing her thesis she had managed to acquire a twice-weekly residency at the Derwent Hotel. It was only a stopgap, she said, while she waited for something tertiary to come up. She would scowl at the music industry, the paucity of opportunities it afforded when she had had to go all the way through university and gain a doctorate to get the sort of gig she could have managed in her first year. Harriet never mentioned that her unmet aspirations might have had a little to do with her attitude, not to mention the low-life company she kept.

‘They can’t just fire you,’ she said, worried that Ginny’s return home would prove more permanent than she might have liked.

‘They can and they have. The job was casual. I am, as they say, a dime a dozen. Besides, they had every right. You know their reputation. All these years I’ve been dressing up like a Gucci doll for that swanky joint and then Garth walks in and it’s ruined.’

‘Looking like a bum?’

‘Oh Mum.’ She paused, shooting Harriet a reproachful look before lowering her gaze. ‘Well yes, with his guitar in hand. He came right up to where I was performing and knelt on one knee and played his latest song to me. I was halfway through “Moonlight Sonata”. He was so drunk he lost his balance and fell at my feet. Then security came and dragged him away.’

‘But you did nothing wrong.’

‘By association. I would have disowned him but as they steered him off he launched into a loud lament about how much he loved me and would see me back at home.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Not oh dear,’ Ginny said, at last lifting her face. ‘It’s totally understandable that I’m fired. The hotel couldn’t risk him turning up again.’

Harriet gave her an awkward smile. It was an inevitable ending; Garth had been a drag on Ginny from the start. Even the circumstances of their meeting were symbolic of the seedy underworld life he would later weave around her.

They had met in the underground of Flinders Street station. She was readying to submit her thesis. On her way back to her flat after her final meeting with her supervisor, she encountered him standing in the tunnel, busking. The incongruity could not have been more apparent. When Harriet had phoned Ginny that evening, curious to hear of her supervisor’s comments and poised to enthuse and praise, Ginny had described the encounter, her voice all light and girlish. Harriet hadn’t heard that tone since Ginny was fourteen with a crush on her peripatetic piano teacher. How Garth had caught her eye as she passed him by and she had stopped and turned. He serenaded her, she said. With Hotel California. She was transfixed, she said. Dropped a dollar in his guitar case, then another, and he kept on singing and playing, ignoring the others who had gathered to witness the moment, directing exclusively at her his gaze, his smile, his l**t. Harriet knew then that Garth was no good. Her daughter love struck dumb. Whoever in any event calls their child Garth? And it mattered not one jot that he made good money busking, or that he had a prime pitch, and of course Ginny’s insistence that he really had talent, Harriet took to mean he had absolutely none at all.

Garth moved into Ginny’s North Melbourne flat a few weeks into their relationship and that was when Ginny discovered his whisky habit. He was a stupid soppy drunk, argumentative when riled, in the hair trigger manner of the alcoholic. Harriet only visited the once.

There was an exhibition at the Sutton and it seemed to her appropriate enough that she should make use of her daughter’s spare room. After all, it was only for one night. And a ghastly night it proved to be.

The flat was small and dim and plainly furnished, although nicely laid out with a narrow hall and separate kitchen. The living room was Spartan: two drab chairs, a television and a clutter of musical gear shoved into one corner. Ginny was at the Derwent and not due back until nine. Garth had returned early from a bad evening’s busking, carrying a bottle of whisky and a parcel reeking of fish and chips. Harriet wished she had ignored the heavy footsteps lumbering to the door, the grunts then the turn of the key.

Entering the living room to the smell was bad enough—a sickly mix of fish supper, whisky and sweat—and the sight of Garth devouring his repast with all the manners of a hog made Harriet bilious. When he started slugging back the contents of his glass and reaching for a refill over and again, she succumbed to a mounting disgust.

She did nothing to mask her displeasure. He did nothing to hide his relish of her disapproval. Nothing was said. They both made pretence of watching television.

When Ginny at last arrived, Garth staggered to his feet and slobbered her with kisses. She pushed him away and Harriet caught a flash of annoyance in his face. Not wanting to add to the tension she chose that moment to retire, and she was then forced to listen through her bedroom wall to raised voices, one gruff the other defensive.

Ginny stayed loyal to her beau and Harriet could not contain her chagrin. After that night, she hardly saw her daughter. They were three difficult years. Harriet called it her Persephone period and she broke away from abstract art and produced a series of moody landscapes in pen and ink which, thanks to her friend Phoebe, she promptly sold to a cohort of mothers who met each Wednesday in Olinda for Yoga and to bemoan their wayward daughters.

Harriet was not the only one to hold Garth in disregard. Ginny’s peers at the university fell away one by one, presumably after suffering an encounter with the inebriated lover.

That he had devastated her career was little short of tragedy. Whenever Ginny telephoned, Harriet would inquire after this friend and that, or the progress of a band or collaboration. The truth was hard to elicit but between the lines of Ginny’s evasive remarks she gleaned that Garth was at the root of the shedding.

Seated across the coffee table, Harriet watched her daughter take short sips of tea from the cup she clasped in her hands, her lowered gaze, her worn and pale face. She would be sure to remain in withdrawal from the mayhem of her relationship for some time. Harriet felt concerned. Yet it was concern tinged with consternation. It was one thing having her daughter move back home, that was challenging enough, but to have her misery move in with her would be intolerable. Something would have to be done. Without that something, her daughter’s mood would thwart her creativity. She wouldn’t focus. She wouldn’t paint. And seated there, sipping her tea, Harriet saw her immediate future cloud over.

For three weeks she put up with Ginny’s glum mood. Then one night, she could endure it no longer. They were having dinner and for a good ten minutes Ginny shunted about her plate the salad Harriet had so painstakingly prepared, picking at the olives and little else. Harriet was ready to blast forth with frustration, incredulous that anyone, especially her own daughter, could wallow so wilfully.

She downed her black cohosh tea in several large gulps before its bitter taste took hold, then stood and leaned her hands against the table, commanding Ginny to the living room with, ‘We need to talk.’

She went and held aside the beaded curtain, waiting for her daughter to pass through. She was determined to lift her up by her paisley socks if need be.

Rather than let her sit down on a sofa, she accosted her on the Kashan rug, blocking her movement with a sharp, ‘Stop.’

Ginny tried to walk away and Harriet put out her arm to block her. Defeated, Ginny stood limply and Harriet was about to tell her that she wanted her to pack her bags in the hope of shocking her out of her mood, when she saw her daughter in part profile together with the pianola and the artwork behind her, and she had an idea.

She envisaged a collaboration of music and art, an exhibition that was a concert, or a concert that was an exhibition. Either way, a marvellous ruse.

At first Ginny seemed nonplussed. Then resistant. Eventually, after much walking back and forth and Harriet trying every means of persuasion from the obvious, ‘It will lift your spirits,’ to, ‘It will be a splash on the local arts scene,’ the comment that secured her co-operation was, ‘It will give the gallery a lift,’ as if Ginny had been waiting for the real reason to come along and that was it.

Ginny agreed, in principle, and went to her room, leaving Harriet in mild shock.

She pondered the artwork hanging above the pianola, her homage to Kandinsky, painted in the Eighties when she had been her daughter’s age and her passion for abstraction had exploded on canvas upon canvas. And she wondered if this collaboration might afford her something of a renaissance, a chance to recapture her prolific pre-Ginny creativity.

Two years before Ginny was born, Harriet had been as free as any sandstone graduate could afford to be. She was the daughter of a corporate lawyer and a Bible-worshipping headmistress of a private school. They were British ex-patriots who had left South Africa with their wealth long before the collapse of a*******d, and lived an erect and moral life in Mont Albert. In the face of her parents, Harriet felt an additional pressure to conform. Yet she forewent all their suggestions of careers that could be pursued with a degree and a Masters in Art History. ‘The Heide Museum is looking for a curator,’ her father would say, staring at her over the rim of his glasses. Or, ‘Here’s one for a conservator,’ and her mother would look at her keenly, willing her to step in line. Harriet had no predilection whatsoever to become a curator or a conservator. She yearned to spend a few years exploring her creativity while she was still young enough to make an impression in the art scene. And she was naïve enough to believe she stood a chance.

Once, at her mother’s birthday lunch at which Rosalind had been the only other guest, they were seated at the dining table, her parents at either end, both dressed formally, him in a grey suit, the collar of his shirt cutting into his plump neck, all shiny freckly pate and jowly cheeked and looking more judge than lawyer, her in a plain blue dress, grey hair permed curly, straight backed as she cut into her tuna terrine. Harriet, seated midway between, shot Rosalind an uncertain smile and scooped the last of her curried egg. Then, on an upwelling of courage she announced she had spent the last five years attending art classes wherever she could find them.

Her parents exchanged glances, but she persisted, stressing the virtues of following her passion and insisting that they always said they only ever wanted her to be happy.

Her father looked stern, her mother equivocal. Then Rosalind spoke wistfully of her own youth and how she had longed to be a concert pianist but her parents thought her not worth the additional investment so she turned to philosophical pursuits instead. At first Harriet thought Rosalind was siding with her parents, until she said, ‘I often thought I’d have been equal to Eileen Joyce given the chance but of course we’ll never know.’ Harriet bounded in with pleas and assurances. Her parents were swayed and, despite their disappointment, they gave her a small living allowance.