It wasn’t until nearly five that Ro thought to tell the others that she’d invited Julia to help them with the Anti-Nuke Café fundraiser. Their household was rostered to cook and serve.
Ro found Petra fussing over pots of soup and dhal, wrapping them in towels and trying to make them level in the back of the car.
‘I suppose it’s all right,’ Petra said. ‘Did you tell Sue?’
Sue and Mikki were in the kitchen.
‘Ladles, egg slice, beater for the cream,’ recited Mikki from a list in her hand.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ responded Sue, packing things into a basket.
‘Um,’ said Ro.
The other two looked up.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Mikki asked.
‘At work. I’ll do double dishes to make up.’
‘You’d better,’ Sue said.
Ro smiled sunnily. ‘But anyhow I had an idea. I asked Julia to help us.’
‘Who’s Julia?’ asked Sue.
Mikki groaned. ‘You know, Ro’s latest.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Not really,’ Ro said.
‘Not yet, is what she means,’ Mikki contributed.
Sue frowned. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘this is supposed to be a household affair. Why doesn’t she take a turn with her own household?
‘She lives on her own.’
‘Oh. Fair enough. And we could do with help. Where’s the cheesecake?’
Ro was startled. ‘Oh shit. That’s right. Now. I’ll do it right now. I’ll bring it in the van as soon as it’s done.’
‘We’re supposed to start serving at six.’
‘You do soup and mains. Julia can help you. She was going to meet me there anyway. I won’t be long. Honestly.
She hauled eggs and cream cheese out of the fridge. She had never made a cheesecake before, but she didn’t want Sue to know that. She had watched her mother and was certain that beaten eggs were involved. ‘Where’s the beater?’
Mikki shook her head. ‘Lucky we’ve got fruit salad,’ she said.
Sue said nothing, simply retrieved the beater from the basket and handed it over to Ro.
The café was tiny and packed, windows steamed up against the cold night outside. It was everything Ro loved. A buzz of conversation. Food and friends. The possibility of singing later. And the delicious tingle of Julia beside her at the sink. Or brushing against her as they passed in the narrow spaces between tables, carrying empty or full plates.
Ro loved this stage in a new relationship. The unspoken anticipation, the glances, the dare of skin contact. Will she? Won’t she? She refused to think of Gerry. This event wasn’t a thing that Gerry would enjoy anyway. She didn’t like cities.
Ro had gone too far with Julia to draw back now. She had the sensation referred to by a friend’s mother as a tingling in the down-belows. A strong tingling, and spreading. Better ignore it, or she might have to drag Julia out the back and take action.
It had been clever to ask Julia to help tonight, though Ro hadn’t thought it through in advance. It was a household evening, with that domestic intimacy. But it was also completely public. Sascha was glowering from a dark corner. Maddie and the entire Shelter collective were eating scorched cheesecake in another. It was almost a declaration, to have Julia here, part of her household, working alongside her.
‘Oops,’ she said, dripping dhal onto a customer. ‘Sorry.’
By the time the last dessert was served and the last dish washed they were all dropping. It turned out that Julia had to be up early the next day to walk in the Hills but Ro was philosophical. It would happen. She knew that now. That chemistry was never one-sided. Their time would come. And meanwhile she was supposed to be working extra hours so she could spend four days with Gerry in a couple of weeks.
Extra hours notwithstanding, Ro made time to get off with Julia. Sex was a shower of fireworks, dazzling to Ro. Julia was outside Ro’s usual orbit, cared nothing for group norms, wore whatever she pleased and behaved in whatever way felt right to her. That was true of Gerry too, of course. But somehow it made Gerry a dag, whereas Julia was high style. The night before Ro’s trip to Victoria Julia appeared at a party in bustier, black stockings and garters. Ro had never seen such an outfit before, other than in films. It was a fashion that hadn’t yet arrived. All her feminist sensibilities should have been outraged, but she was in such a fever that she could hardly wait to get Julia home.
So she arrived at Gerry’s in the daze that comes from too little sleep and too much sex. And a lot of confusion about where she was and with whom.
Ro balanced on the steep hillside, trying to rotate the broken umbrella so as to minimise the number of drips that found their way down her face or the back of her neck. In front of her, slightly down the hill, Gerry was digging a hole with deep thrusts of the spade. Perched to one side was the dunny can, covered with a sodden newspaper. The hole had to be deep enough, Ro knew, to deter foxes from digging the shit up again. She knew it, and also knew that once upon a time, as recently as two years ago, she had found such information, such an activity, fascinating. She had been inspired by the pioneering earthiness of it, the authenticity. She had been ready to throw away the alienated urban life.
Now she wanted to be in a place that didn’t leak, where hot water gushed from a tap, and where shit disappeared down a toilet at the press of a button, away to an unknown destination that she didn’t have to think about.
She was aware, as she had been all weekend, that back in Adelaide women’s soccer was starting, that the Armpits game would be happening at this very minute. It wasn’t only, she assured herself, that she was missing the flash of Julia’s thighs, that long stretch of leg between Julia’s socks and Julia’s shorts. It was the whole lovely experience. She didn’t mind rain dripping down her neck on a soccer field, and in any case it was far less likely to drip in Adelaide. And if it did, there was the pleasure of steaming dry in a pub with her friends.
Gerry glanced at her. ‘Why don’t you go back inside and check the fire? I can manage.’
She didn’t add that she always did manage, that this was one of her regular jobs. She could see that Ro was cold and miserable and she didn’t know what to do about it. A rare spasm of irritation shook her. She dug the spade more savagely into the dirt. She could see what was happening. She’d seen it all before. The pleasures of country life had worn thin for Ro. She wanted to be back in the city. And how could Gerry compete with pubs and coffee shops and friends and … it was probably this new woman. Julia. The idea produced a chilly cramp in her belly.
‘Go on,’ she mumbled. ‘Truly. I’ll be fine.’
Ro turned and clumped around the hillside toward the house. At the last minute she looked back. Gerry, jacket over her head, dogged resignation in every line, was still digging. Ro flung herself into the house. Why was Gerry such a martyr? Well if she would choose a grey miserable day to do literally the shittiest job, then that was her problem.
The house smelled musty and strongly of dog and suddenly Ro found it disgusting. There was no need for this. Plenty of people lived in the country in warm clean ordinary houses. At least she supposed so. She felt a passing doubt. Could you be a farmer and have clean fingernails? She didn’t know any other farmers.
And clothes. Why must Gerry wear such daggy clothes? She picked a holey jumper off the back of a chair and hurled it onto the floor. Any sane person would have put it in the ragbag years ago.
She stared around the shabby room, saw the chipped china stacked on makeshift shelves, the curtains made from old sheets. She thought of Gerry sitting in front of the stove through the long winter evenings, alone except for Hester at her feet.
It was unbearable, Ro thought furiously. She didn’t want to know about it. She couldn’t fix it. It was nothing to do with her.
By the time Gerry came back to the house Ro had calmed down. Or so she thought.
‘I’ll have a cuppa,’ Gerry said. ‘Then I need to work on the front gate.’
‘Why don’t you get a cattle grid instead of a gate?’
Gerry turned from hanging up her coat, startled.
‘Grids cost an awful lot to put in,’ she said.
Ro ground her teeth. The same thing again. She knew that she shouldn’t speak, but she did.
‘Well, so what?’ she said.
‘I haven’t got that sort of money.’
‘It’s the same as the phone,’ Ro said, beyond reason now. ‘Everyone else has a phone. Why can’t you? I don’t think it’s about money at all. It’s this head in the sand thing that you do.’
Gerry’s face was white. ‘I’ll get more wood,’ she said, and pulled her coat on again.
Ro felt simultaneously furious and sick. It was unbearable that Gerry never fought back. How could she be so … so infuriating?
It was no help to discover that Gerry had caught armpit fungus.
‘There’s something weird about the hair in my armpits,’ she said at bedtime. ‘It’s bright orange.’
‘Oh shit,’ Ro said. ‘It’s my armpit fungus. Everyone in Adelaide’s had it. You have to shave the hair off.’
Normally she would have laughed and told Gerry more. It was such an ironic affliction for lesbians, a fungus that forced them to shave their armpits. But now she felt cross and aggrieved and guilty. Typical of Gerry not to know about armpit fungus. And to catch it anyway.
‘I don’t have a razor,’ Gerry said.
Of course she didn’t, none of them did. It was a point of honour. That’s why they called their soccer team the Armpits. Ro sighed loudly.
‘Lie down. I’ll cut it off short with nail scissors.’
The long trip back to Adelaide gave Ro time to think and she became ashamed of her irritation. She arrived home in time for a three-household dinner party at Norma Street, so over dessert she put out a general request for armpit fungus cures.
‘Nothing,’ said a woman-who-knows. ‘There’s nothing you can do. You have to wait for it to go away.’
‘But it comes back again,’ said one weary soul. ‘It’s dormant when you can’t see it. Not gone.’
Several women had never heard of it and were horrified.
‘I don’t think it’s a fungus at all,’ said a scientific type. ‘I think it’s a mite that sticks to the hair. It goes through stages. It’s not always orange.’
A babble of conversation broke out. All those afflicted wanted to share their own particular observations about colour and general appearance
Alby’s voice cut across them. ‘Thyme oil,’ she said. ‘Dab it with thyme oil. Gets rid of it in hours.’
Ro remembered this advice as she was riding home from work next day and stopped at the chemist. But they had never heard of thyme oil. Alby didn’t have any left but told her she could get it in the Market. Finally, days later, Ro tracked it down. She bought two bottles. She would send one to Gerry.
Next morning she dried off after her shower and opened her little bottle. The smell was pungent, which was reassuring. It would have to be powerful to do the job properly. She swabbed it generously into both armpits.
The pain was instant and agonising, fire against her skin. She reeled back, clutching at the door handle. Leaping to the basin she ran cold water over her towel and tried to hold it under both arms at once, fumbling at the same time for the shower tap. She turned on the water and stood under it with her arms over her head, biting her lips from the cold. But at least the pain was gone.
The fungus, it turned out, was also gone, and her skin recovered. But she decided not to send the cure to Gerry.
Years later, when Ro’s armpit hair disappeared altogether, a symptom of age, she wondered darkly if it was thyme oil damage rather than hormones. Though Alby still had hair.
The time came for Ro to introduce Julia to her mother. Elsa’s reception was cool.
‘Give my love to Gerry,’ she called as they were leaving.
Ro slammed the car door with fury, grimacing. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.
Julia laughed, but from then on Ro visited her mother alone.
‘How’s that nice Gerry?’ Elsa would ask each time, and each time Ro was nettled. It was probably about class as much as anything. Her mother would see Julia as a toff. Ro preferred not to think about that.