Jetty Road by Cath Kenneally

Author:Cath Kenneally
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9781862549807
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

As Paula gradually took in the grey sky outside the window, the room swam into focus. It must be six in the morning, or thereabouts. The dream maintained its hold on her mind for some minutes more, enough for her to see again the Hong Kong gift shop she’d been in with Desirée, frantically searching for presents for Rosie. Des pranced into view around the corner of an aisle full of exotic merchandise, wearing billowing white harem pants that were just what Paula needed for herself. On enquiry, they proved to be the last pair in the shop. And when Des bought her niece a funny wooden puppet that climbed two parallel sticks, that turned out to be the last toy of its kind in stock as well.

Paula was wondering, panicked, whether Rosie would like a pretty paper lampshade, when the dream scenario changed to a windup celebration she was attending with work colleagues. Remembering that she owned a small cottage in the grounds of the large house where they’d assembled, she wandered off to find it. Hidden in a thicket, Paula found that sand had banked up against its gaily painted walls. She had to push hard to open the door and, as it swung inwards, two winged mice like outsize cockroaches scuttled past her feet into the woods. Paula was suddenly seized with a sense of the pointlessness of the whole business of maintaining social contact with anyone at all. Instead of dressing up for the evening, she sat on a bench in the enclosed verandah of her cottage, letting the golden light of sunset stream in through the windows, bathing her face and chest, washing away all her pointless striving.

When real-life Des informed her, as she deposited her bag and a few loose folders on Paula’s desk, that Hamish had devised a questionnaire he proposed to circulate to the residents on the subject of surrealism in Australian painting, Paula laughed out loud, brimming with a sense that today was a day to slice through thickets with a trusty sword that went snicker-snack.

‘It’s just dawned on me what we have to do,’ she told Desirée, as they stood together by Paula’s window with the first coffees of the day.

‘We sic him on to Friar Tuck. Keogh fancies himself as a patron of the arts. You know how he’s always banging on about the commission he gave this one to paint a mural, and the start he gave that one in religious sculpture. It’s Keogh’s day today – he’s never met Hamish – no surprises there, Hamish’s an atheist. Let’s introduce them. Say we want to give all the residents a chance to shine, and we thought Keogh could help extend the questionnaire to cover Australian religious artists. They’ll be at it till doomsday.’

‘Could work, Boss,’ said Des, downing another caffeine hit. ‘That man brings me out in hives. They both do. Hamish must have driven his wife mad.’

‘Wives. Then he had a succession of younger women acolytes.

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