The Devil's Staircase (9 page)

‘You need to be in control,’ she’d told me. ‘Total control.’ ‘Are you really into Francesco?’ Pete asked me as we walked down Queensway Terrace. I smiled.

‘Yeah, well kind of. Why?’

‘Nothing. Just, he’s not the serious type, y’know.’

‘I’ve spent far too long being serious.’

We were about to cross the road to the squat when I saw two little boys sitting on the step of their main door flat. One of them was about seven years old. The other about five. They still had their school uniforms on and they were staring ahead, their hands holding up their heads. Just staring, cute as buttons, but sad. The youngest had curly blonde hair that had probably never been cut and a Band-Aid on his knee. His bottom lip curled outwards to emphasise his grumpiness. The older one had short dark hair and a serious face.

‘Hey you guys!’ I said, before crossing the road.

‘We’re not allowed to talk to strangers,’ the curly little one said.

‘I’m Bronwyn. I live over there . . . So I’m not a stranger.’ ‘Strangers are people you wouldn’t let hold your ultra rare cards and I wouldn’t give you any of mine. I’ve got five.’ ‘Four,’ the older one said, rolling his eyes.

‘Dr Who,’ a man said, appearing from the front door behind the boys. ‘He’s obsessed.’ The man patted the older boy on the head. ‘Any sign?’

The boy shook his head sadly. ‘He’s not coming.’

‘He will, he always does, eventually . . .’

The man put me in the picture: ‘Bobby, our cat, he’s a gallivanter.’

I surmised that Greg was their Dad. He was slim and gorgeous, but also a little sad looking. As we did introductions, I noticed that Pete had crossed the road and gone inside the squat.

I turned to the youngest boy again. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you and if ever you feel confident enough I would love to see one of your ultra rare cards, from a distance obviously. No holding.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ the curly-haired boy said. The older one stood up excitedly; the cat had suddenly emerged from behind me. It was the same cat that had jumped at my bedroom window. It meowed innocently.

‘Oh hello,’ I said before heading home. ‘He was in my garden last night!’

As I shut my front door, I looked back to the flat across the road. The boys and their Dad were holding the cat, but still sitting on the step, staring sadly.

After getting ready for my date, I looked out my bedroom window and saw that Pete had put the yellow pot with the tiny tree in the garden. It made me smile. He was cooking Thai chicken curry when I went into the kitchen later. I had, once again, prepared myself for a night of lust, and had one of Fliss’s ridiculously revealing tops on.

‘Hello mister,’ I said, opening the back door and checking my little piece of Oz. ‘Thanks for watering it.’

I tasted the green curry, which was very good indeed. It had basil and coconut cream.

‘Yum,’ I said. ‘Can you save me some?’

‘Where are you going?’

I raised my eyebrows with a ‘never-you-mind’ and waltzed out of the kitchen.

It seemed pretty obvious after the second date with Francesco that I would never lose my bloody virginity. I felt like Batman with his ticking bomb, running around trying to get rid of it, but finding nowhere to put it. Over dinner, I picked at food as Francesco yacked on about some restaurant in Scotland where you could choose your oysters from the loch. I couldn’t listen. It was boring, and I had only one thing on my mind, a mission.

I hadn’t had a mission in a while. Like when I was nine and St Patrick’s were to play the Broadford Minis in the grand final. I was centre, a furious little runner, and I’d never wanted anything so desperately in my life. I drew diagrams on a flipchart Dad brought home from work, deciding which moves would disarm my opponent, Kylie Dalkeith, and which throws would clear the tall defender who’d just moved south from Puckapunyal. I practised dodging in the garden. I ran to school and back each day to keep fit, and prayed. Please God, let us beat the Broadford Minis!

We lost. 23–21. I cried right up till the night I won Best and Fairest.

Since giving up netball at fourteen, my obsession with it had struck me as alien and pathetic. But here I was, obsessed again: with scoring a no-strong-feelings sexual encounter.

‘I just think we should take it slowly,’ Francesco had said after another boring dinner that he’d paid for. ‘I like you too much.’

I’d had three pints of lager, all of which seemed to have gone to my thighs as much as my head, and felt rather stroppy. I wanted to do it and I wanted to do it that night.

‘Screw “slowly”. Just take your trousers off.’ I was actually pulling at his zip in his hostel room and he was stopping me with his hand. What the hell was wrong with him?

‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow, over dinner. I’ve got indigestion.’

He pushed my hand away and opened his bedroom door for me to leave.

‘I don’t want dinner, I want sex!’ I yelled. The door was wide open and Hamish, my computer friend, was standing in the foyer. He winced.

‘Bronny! Wait!’ Hamish said, following me out of the hostel.

‘What is wrong with me?’ I asked him. He sat down with me on the front step.

‘Nothing. You’re perfect. He’s actually being very decent.’

‘Who wants decent?’

‘You do, believe me. And there’s plenty of time for all of that. No hurry. Enjoy yourself.’

‘I’m scared I’ll never lose it.’

‘You need to lighten up.’

I took Hamish’s excellent advice. We went to the squat, smoked two bucket bongs and ate at least seven white bread, real butter and crunchy peanut butter sandwiches. Hamish and I had finished the loaf when Pete came into the kitchen. He looked unwell.

‘Did you save me some?’ I asked him.

‘What?’

‘Green curry.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Lucky escape, I reckon. You look a bit peaky.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, walking out with his glass of water.

I had a bonkers idea after Hamish left. It came to me as I stared at the living room wall: wouldn’t it be fun and – yay – necessary – to tiptoe up the stairs, open Pete’s bedroom door and yell ‘BOO!’

He was lying stark naked on his mattress. He made no attempt to cover himself up, and I made no attempt to stop staring – at his face, at his torso, and then at his bits. I’d never seen bits in real life, and – in Pete’s case –
lots
would have been a more apt description. When I finally looked up towards Pete’s upper half again, he stretched his hand towards me and held it there. There was a peanut stuck in my molar. I picked it out with my tongue, then turned, walked out the door, and shut it firmly. I stood against his door in the hall, breathless, and a little numb.

‘Ow!’ Pete had opened the door while I was still leaning on it. I fell backwards into his arms. As I righted myself and turned around, I was relieved to see that he had put on his shorts.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Mmm, fine,’ I gulped, finally prising my hands from his inked biceps.

I was suddenly awkward around this guy. Not like with Francesco, who, to be honest, probably bored me into relaxation. During our sexless dinner dates, Francesco had only ever talked about food. He was a rich boy, I realised, happy to eat out most nights, unlike his skint fellow travellers who lived on pot noodles, toast and peanut butter, and pasta and pesto. His parents had slaved away in the restaurant business and left him with a love of everything culinary.

‘My family are from Umbria,’ he’d explained during our last date. And before he’d even ordered a starter he’d decided: ‘For breakfast tomorrow I’m going to have poached eggs!’

So with Francesco there was indigestion rather than sexual tension.

Not so with Pete.

Escorting me into the living room to ‘chat’, Pete fluffed the sofa cushion for me. He then sat beside me and I wished he hadn’t because it was altogether too close. The sofa was old and soft and we both sank into the middle and touched each other from the leg all the way up to the shoulder. I stretched my torso in the other direction. I did the buttock-lift. But it didn’t work. He was too heavy, the sofa was too squidgy, and the torso and buttock refused to be diverted from their touching positions. To make things worse, I had turned my neck at right angles to listen to his ‘chat’ and it had locked. If I moved my head, I pondered, as I breathed carefully through my nose, it might just fall off. So I didn’t move it. Instead I said yeah a lot while he told me about some flat town near Adelaide, which he loved, and which I thought sounded bloody awful.

When Pete finally said goodnight, I managed to remain upright on the sofa until he disappeared, and then fell down sideways, my neck still ninety degrees from where it should be.

There were no noises that night. I had the first decent sleep since I’d moved in. The next day, I arrived for my shift at work, watered the bamboo palm as usual – I seemed to be the only person who ever did – and wrote another letter to Ursula.

Dear Ursula,

I’m sitting at a desk in the Porchester Steam rooms, which is where I work forty hours a week. I hand people towels and clean the hair out of drains. There are naked women everywhere.

Have you decided to forgive me? Do you understand? I can’t – won’t – talk about you-know-what, but I’m not hiding from you or Dad anymore. I’m just trying to have some fun, and it’s kind of working except for the naked women everywhere.

God . . . Kate and Esther are talking about me from the chairs across the way. They can’t stand me, the old bags. I was made Employee of the Week by the knob-head manager, and they are so jealous. Kate, the flabby white thing has boobs that reach the floor when she sweeps it. And Esther, she’s an arse-licker and I hate her.

I’ve met a boy. His name’s Francesco. He manages the hostel next door to my house and likes eating out. There are so many Aussies here – there’s one guy called Pete, but I’m not sure what I think of him yet. (He’s the one in the photo.) And my new best friends – Hamish and Fliss – who I can’t imagine life without.

One day maybe you could come over? I know you hate rain, but sometimes it stops, and you should have some fun, Urs, you should fall in love. I wish you would. More than anything, I’d love to see someone adore you. I wish you would come over. As long as you promise not to talk about you-know-what.