Animal People (17 page)

About a hundred metres from Fiona's front gate Stephen saw a pale pink delivery van parked at the kerb, with a thick pair of woman's legs hanging from its side door. As he drew closer he read, in purple sparkly cursive text on the passenger door,
Fantastic Fairies. Servicing the Greater Metro Area
, and a mobile phone number.

The legs, in pink lycra tights, lifted and hovered unsteadily above the guttering, and now Stephen could see a whole woman, sitting back on the floor of the van, struggling into a pair of wings. She wore a spearmint-green stretchy body suit, and a long purple tutu made of leaves of synthetic-looking transparent material. The layers of tutu fell all about her on the dirty floor of the van as she shrugged her way into the wings.

‘Are you Fairy Flower?' Stephen glanced up the road to Fiona's gate and leaned into the van. He looked down at the woman's large bare feet waving above the gutter. One of them had a bunion.

‘Am today,' the woman said in a monotone, and then grunted as she sat up, pinching and pulling at the tight elastic of the wings at her armpits.

She looked about forty-seven. She stared at him out of her pouchy eyes. The unlikely circlet of plastic flowers around her head, and the deep creases around her mouth, gave her a hard-knock, washerwoman's air. Andy Capp's cartoon wife came to Stephen's mind.

Now she reached behind her and hauled a plastic toolbox on to her lap. She had a stocky torso and her bust was the solid, all-of-a-shelf kind. Her calf muscles were thick and angular in the nylon leggings.

‘Oh. I'm going to the party,' said Stephen.

‘Right,' said the fairy, ignoring him and flipping open the toolbox. It was filled with cosmetics: trays of eye shadow, little bottles of foundation, lipsticks, fake eyelashes and bottles of sparkly stuff.

Stephen heard a child's shout float up from Fiona's backyard.

‘Um, do you think you should be doing this here?'

Fairy Flower had upended a glug of foundation into one of her large palms and was busy slapping it over her face. ‘What?' she said, not looking at him but peering into a small tilted mirror on the opened lid of the toolbox.

‘I mean, the kids might see you. They think you're a real fairy.'

She kept slapping the foundation on and then rubbed and pushed at her face with both hands to smear it over her skin, jutting her chin. ‘They won't see me,' she grunted.

Stephen looked up the street again. Three pink and purple balloons fluttered from Fiona's gatepost.

‘Well, they might,' Stephen said. After a pause, he said, with more emphasis, ‘They easily could. They're just there.' He gestured. The heat was even more unbearable now the sun was coming from the west; he could feel it burning his neck.

She didn't answer, but glanced up at him without interest while dabbing some other pale, flesh-coloured makeup on her face. Now her skin had a jaundiced yellow hue.

‘Well, if you just let me get on with it, I'll be finished soon, and they won't,' she said to the mirror.

She dipped into the tray and pulled out some eye shadow. She leant in to the mirror and swabbed her eyelids—first one, then the other, turning her head slightly in either direction—with the gaudy purple cream. Then she pulled down the lower lid of one eye and began working at the lashes with a mascara stick in a practised, surgical movement. Still ignoring him.

She should listen to me, Stephen thought. Nobody had listened to him all day. A nugget of anger formed in his gut. He glanced back at the fluttering balloons.
I could be paying her wages
.

He heard himself say, ‘I'm the father.' Not quite authoritatively. It was near enough the truth.

The fairy stared at him, one eye thickly lashed, the other naked, giving her a menacing, cycloptic air. ‘Oh,' she said, in a tone one might use for a child, and went back to the mascara, but not before glancing at his trousers. ‘I thought you were the cook.'

Christ almighty.

‘Well I'm not. These aren't—listen. I'm the
father
.' A flush of real rage bloomed upwards in him now with the lie, and he liked it, the sound and the force of it. The weight of the word pulsed in him. ‘And I'm . . . well, I'm—'

Fairy Flower stood up. ‘What?
Paying my wages?
' She sneered it, and then took a step towards him, eyeing him steadily, her face garish and alarming in the doll's makeup. She was almost Stephen's height. She rolled her shoulders, jerking them back and forth, and then reached behind herself with one hand to yank on one of her wings.

‘Listen, you dickhead. This is my daughter's gig, only she's got gastro suddenly. I'm a fucking para
medic
—' she gave her substantial bust a single, vigorous thrust, which appeared to settle the wing discomfort—‘and I've just come off an eleven-hour shift saving the lives of bigger arseholes than you, but to save my daughter's gig I've come here to entertain your little girl and her friends. So I don't need any shit from you. Understand?'

She stood there in front of the open door of the van, hands on her heavy hips, the tips of her nylon gossamer wings only just peeking out from behind her shoulders.

‘Oh,' said Stephen. He could imagine her wrestling drunks to the ground, plunging needles into flesh. ‘Okay. Sorry.' He nodded.

The paramedic fairy put one foot into the van and heaved a shiny pink velour blanket towards her. Into the middle of the blanket she dumped a purple plastic tub filled with little coloured plastic bags, bulging with lollies and cheap plastic trinkets. Then she gathered up the blanket to make a sack, the bucket inside it, and swung it over her shoulder.

‘Hold this,' she ordered, shoving a crimson plastic wand into Stephen's hand, and turned to drag the van door shut.

‘Now, I have to make some calls, and get something to eat. Tell—' she looked through the window at a piece of paper on the passenger seat ‘—Fiona
,
that I'll be there in half an hour.'

‘Okay,' said Stephen. ‘I'm, um, sorry about . . .'

But Fairy Flower simply held out her hand for the wand. Stephen handed it to her, and turned and tried not to run the rest of the way to Fiona's house.

He crossed the shallow lawn and stepped on to Fiona's wide, cool, tiled verandah. He swallowed, peering into the gloom of the house. He must prepare himself. Get through the party, then do it, then leave. And then this dreadful day, the longest of his life, would end.

‘Oh, you're
here
.'

In silhouette he saw her sweeping down the hallway to fling the screen door wide, opening her house, herself, to him.

He had spent all day thinking of her but now he was here he was shocked by the physical, moving fact of her. The humidity was confusing him, slowing his perception: she seemed to move towards him in slow motion. He saw her outstretched arms, the blue and white curlicue print of the soft Indian cotton shirt against the brown of her skin, the neckline fallen open, the string-ties dangling loose, the soft shadow of her breasts beneath. He watched her easy, unwavering stride towards him, her bare brown feet and smoothly sturdy thighs in the cut-off denim shorts. And finally he made himself meet her gaze, her calm grey eyes, that wise, sceptical smile.

She looked so cool.

He let himself be reeled in, wrapped in Fiona's arms. ‘You're
burning
, you poor thing,' she murmured. She blew a long, cooling breath of air down the back of his neck and he almost sank to his knees with the sweetness of it. She kept murmuring, was he all right? She had worried about him all day. Was the girl all right? Was work unbearable?

If he could only stay like this, nuzzled into Fiona's cool neck, all his life. He descended into the layers of her smell, breathed in the light brackishness of her morning swim beneath the soapy warmth, but most of all the dank sweetness of her sweat. He rested his forehead in the curve of her neck. He wanted to lap at her skin with his tongue; to take heavy, nodding strokes at her, like a horse at a salt-lick.

She stepped back, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, and looked into his eyes. ‘What a terrible day you've had.'

Stephen saw that he could fail now, in this moment.
PLEASE DON
'
T
. He looked into Fiona's face, perhaps more closely now than any time since they had met. A strand of blonde hair fell across her high, honest forehead, which glistened faintly with perspiration. He saw her pale eyebrows that she plucked too finely, her serene, intelligent eyes bestowing her good faith upon him. He could forget it all, right now. Let go and allow himself to fall once more into the cool, deep pool of Fiona's life, and drown.

He gulped for air.

‘I'm fine,' he said, and peeled her hands from his body. And then the girls came pounding down the hallway, shouting. They stood in their fairy clothes, hands on their hips. ‘Did you bring me a present?' demanded Ella, blazing with entitlement, looking down at Stephen's backpack on the ground.

‘Ella!' Fiona said. ‘Go and brush your hair. You too, Larry. Leave Stephen alone, he needs to have a rest.' She turned to him. ‘Why don't you have a shower, cool down?' He obviously reeked.

Larry sniffed: ‘It is her
birthday
.' As she turned to follow Ella's sulky retreat she peered down at Stephen's backpack, where the Kmart plastic bag protruded. She leaned towards him, asked slyly, ‘Watcha get her?'

Fiona said, ‘Stop it. It's rude. Go.'

Stephen shoved the forgotten My Little Pony deeper inside his backpack as they walked into the house. He would get rid of it later. He whispered to Fiona, ‘I got tickets to the circus.'

Three tickets to the circus.

Fiona grinned and set a tall glass of icy water on the table for him before turning away to scrabble in her handbag on the bench. ‘I think she's scared of the circus. She'll love it though. Listen, I have to run to the shops, I forgot the bloody candles. Chris and the shrew will be here soon. I'll just be five minutes? You should have a shower.'

Stephen nodded, drinking deep, and waved her away. He held the icy glass to his temple.

The Arrogant Shrew was a species of endangered mouse on the zoo's fundraising list. As soon as she read the name Fiona had started using it to refer to her sister-in-law, Chris's wife, Belinda. Stephen recalled the day Fiona came to meet him at the zoo, reading creature names aloud from the billboard list—Allen's Cotton Rat, the African Giant Free-Tailed Bat, the Bridled Nail-tailed Wallaby, the Arrogant Shrew—as they tossed coins into the spiralling donation funnel. There were hardly any coins in the Perspex tank at the bottom of the funnel. Saving animals from extinction was of little interest to zoo visitors, he had pointed out to her, unlike the gift shops and the food court, crammed with punters buying plush synthetic monkeys made in China or eating chips fried in palm oil which they ate while staring into the eyes of the orang-utan whose native habitat had been destroyed for the expansion of palm oil plantations.

Fiona had rolled her eyes as Stephen lectured, and squeezed his upper arm. ‘You're a cheerful bugger, aren't you?' And she kissed him and slid her arm through his, and he was silenced by the simple pleasure of it—wandering along together, holding hands.

The next time she came she brought the girls, who soon grew bored with the real animals, finding greater joy in flinging themselves over the sun-warmed bronze statue of a giant tortoise and lounging there, or spreading their arms to measure themselves against the plastic model wingspan of the Andean condor while the real bird sulked, hunched and monstrous, on a broken branch beneath the high swags of its netted cage. At the finch cages the girls and Stephen snuck away to feed extra chips to the dirty, long-beaked white ibis which swung down from the trees and stalked throughout the zoo grounds, while Fiona stood nodding and smiling with the finch-keeper, who held her captive with the dreary details of his tiny, invisible birds.

It was only a year ago, but it felt like ten.

Stephen got out his wallet and yelled for the girls. They appeared instantly, grinning, breathless in their fairy clothes.

His girls.

Ella wore a pale mauve ribbed singlet with a Barbie logo printed across the chest in a shiny plastic transfer, and a skirt made of flimsy tongues of torn pink and purple gauze. A silver plastic tiara with one broken point sat low on her hairline, and a tight bracelet of purple plastic baubles bit into one plump wrist. She settled herself on a kitchen chair, the strips of her fairy skirt settling around her, like the puff and shiver of flamingo feathers. She grinned up at him, open-mouthed, her gappy little teeth and lips wet with spit and anticipation. Her legs and bare feet stuck out before her and she sat straight, arms at her sides, as if making a space large enough for an impossibly enormous gift to be lowered into her lap. Larry stood beside her sister, arms wound across each other, alert and watchful as a bodyguard. Her faded ballet tutu—too small for her now—was pushed below the round pot of her belly, so it stuck up at the back like pink hen feathers, the pants elastic cutting into the soft flesh of her legs.