Peter Carey by Bliss

Author:Bliss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780679767190
Publisher: New York : Vintage Books, 1996.
Published: 1986-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

PART FIVE

Drunk in Palm Avenue

The house was in disarray. Harry had always liked it neat: the grass trim, the floors polished, the magazines in their rack, but today he was pleased to see it looking different. At least there was some external sign of change. There was a mattress on the floor in the living room (Joel – he won't go home) and another upstairs folded against the wall (friend of Lucy's). There were empty tins everywhere and, on the front lawn, an ancient Cadillac with a crumpled tail fin (some nonsense Lucy's going on with: tell her to shift it). The back garden was high with weeds (had to fire the gardener) and Bettina glowed.

She was a hot-shot.

'Let me show you ads,' she said. 'Let me show you ads.'

'Where do I sleep?' he asked, looking around the blanket-strewn living room.

'You have our old room.'

'What about you?'

'Don't worry, don't worry, it'll be alright. Come on, Harry, look at my ads.'

He sat down at the table, his heart heavy with thoughts of Honey Barbara, while his wife stood up near the fireplace and presented him with some forty comped-up magazine advertisements.

A comped-up ad is not a final ad. It is, technically, a rough. It is the sort of rough that is done when a client has no imagination or, more often, when the person doing the ad is too much in love with it to show it in any way that is really rough and does everything to make it appear finished, taking 'rough' photography and getting colour prints, ordering headline type and sticking down body copy in the exact type face (if not the correct words), carefully cut to give the appearance of the final paragraphs. And over all of this is placed a cell overlay, so that a comp ad, framed with white, mounted on heavy board, covered with its glistening cell overlay, looks more precious to its maker than it ever will again.

But as Bettina said, presenting her work to Harry, 'It's only a rough.'

For a moment Harry forgot his pain. 'Who did these?'

'I did. I told you.'

'I mean, who did the art direction?'

'I did it all. I wrote them. I laid them out. I ordered the type.'

He was silent for a long time, rubbing his moustache.

Bettina stood at the end of the table, holding an ad upright.

'You did it all?'

'Yes,' she said.

'Oh Bettina,' he said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

She had dreamed of this moment for years and still she was shocked to hear the pain and remorse in her husband's voice. He was like a dead man's friend speaking to the dead man's widow.

She did not need to ask him why he was sorry. It was damned right that he be sorry. But it was shocking. And embarrassing. She could not look him in the eye. She became frightened he might display weakness and weep. But it was right, he should weep for all those wasted years when he wouldn't listen to her.

She did not regret the years.

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