Читать книгу Nailed It! - Mel Campbell - Страница 5

When Rose arrived home, her father Alan was pottering around the front yard. For a moment she was pleased – it was already two weeks into spring, and maybe today, at last, he was mowing the lawn.

Their rented Victorian cottage was built on clay and shifted with the seasons. Rose was forever planing bits from the tops and bottoms of the doors to make them fit the frames, and the front fence never quite stayed in a straight line. Rose had repositioned the latch on the gate at least five times, repeatedly oiled the keyhole on the worn-out front door lock, and freshened up the flaking paint. The wooden palings on the fence were now mostly just metal and putty, because Rose had needed to nail them back in place so many times.

Now, she admired how neat the house looked from the street in the last golden rays of the late-afternoon sun. But the garden was a disgrace: a tangle of weeds and ivy. Rose’s mother Sarah was always complaining that couriers never bothered walking the few metres to the front door when they delivered her parcels of review books. But why would they bother, Rose wondered. It looked like the bloody Amazon out here.

Her heart sank as she opened the gate and saw her father was doing nothing much, as usual. ‘This is the darkest timeline!’ Alan shouted at his phone. ‘Huge if true!’

She sighed. He’d clearly got into another one of his online arguments, and he’d be useless for the rest of the day. That was the problem with having parents who’d devoted their lives to the arts. They were full of passion, but it rarely connected to anything in the real world.

Gesturing at the bag of takeaway food she was carrying, Rose walked past Alan towards the house. He briefly nodded at her, then turned back to his phone. ‘I can’t even!’ he yelled. ‘This is the conversation we need right now!’

The front door was harder to open than usual. A couple of kicks from Rose’s work boot and it finally yielded. She heard a crash and thud from inside.

‘Sorry darling,’ Sarah called out from the back of the house. ‘I’m writing a cultural history of thin-cut chips, so I had to move that stack of books to get to my copy of Fries of the Planet of the Apes. But then I rediscovered my Winter Reading Stack. I’d totally forgotten about it.’ She sighed. ‘That got so many likes on Instagram. So I figured – why not do a Spring Reading Stack?’ She paused. ‘Then I kind of lost track of time …’

‘That’s okay,’ Rose said, stepping over the volumes scattered on the hallway floor. To get to her bedroom door she had to move more books out of the way, without disturbing the other wobbling stacks lining the walls. Her bedroom curtains were drawn and the room was dark. She dropped her work bag on the polished boards with a satisfying thunk, and heard a strangled cry from the far side of the room.

‘Bloody hell! Renton, what are you doing?’

‘I had to use your computer,’ her brother said. ‘Mine had too much malware.’

‘Maybe if you stopped downloading those foreign art films …’

‘Art films!’ he said in an outraged voice. ‘Hardly – I was downloading the current season of Tramp Academy.’

‘Whatever,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve brought dinner. Get out – and leave my laptop.’

Once Renton had shambled away, Rose flopped down on the bed. After a day spent navigating the landlocked labyrinth of Ocean Springs, she dearly wanted a chance to rest. But the Thai takeaway was already getting cold, and Rose knew that if she hadn’t brought dinner home nobody else here would think about eating until 10 p.m. Her job meant she had to be in bed by nine.

She picked up the bag and carried it to the lounge room. Setting out the plastic containers on the coffee table she’d made during her apprenticeship, she wished she had the kind of family who sat around a table to eat dinner, rather than slumping on the couch looking at their separate phone screens. She’d even made them a dining table; but it was always stacked with her parents’ books and papers, and the chairs were draped in coats and scarves.

‘You’re home early,’ Sarah said from the couch, looking up from her laptop screen. She also had her phone in one hand and her iPad in the other.

‘I’ve finished up with Old Steve,’ Rose said, sitting down next to her mother.

Sarah frowned. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘I know you said he was a struggle sometimes, but I thought you were going to stick with it.’ She gave her daughter a determined look. ‘Never mind, Rose – we’ll tighten our belts. I can cancel my subscription to Jolly Good Show … even though their top 200 TV series of the decade issue is next month …’ She trailed off.

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Rose said, ‘I’ve got a new job. On television!’

‘Oh Rose, I’m so proud of you!’ Sarah said, hugging her daughter. ‘Alan! Rose has got herself on television!’

‘Great,’ her dad said, strolling into the lounge room, ‘I heard they were building new sets for the upcoming season of … you know, that period drama with Dame … whatsername.’

‘It’s Dame Matilda Petersen,’ Sarah said, ‘and the show is called Macarthur’s Park. It’s really quite good.’

‘If you like local dramas,’ Alan said. ‘But good on you for getting a job there.’

‘I’m not working on Macarthur’s Park,’ Rose said. ‘I’m working on The Dock.’

‘Legal drama, is it?’ Alan said. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’

‘It’s not a drama,’ Rose said, ‘it’s a reality show.’

‘Reality?’ Alan said. ‘Is that like a documentary?’

Rose looked at her mum. Sarah’s face had gone deathly white. Rose reached out to her. ‘Mum?’

Sarah shrugged off her daughter’s touch. ‘Reality television,’ she hissed. ‘We raised you better than that.’

‘It’ll cover the rent,’ Rose said. ‘It’ll pay for the internet.’

‘I don’t care about those things,’ Sarah said.

Rose looked at her.

‘Okay, I do. But I care about you more. And the idea of you parading around on one of those trash shows, flaunting yourself, is –’

‘Mum! I’m not going to be a contestant.’

‘But what else is there to do on a show like that?’

‘I’m going to be helping out the contestants, behind the scenes. I’m not on-camera or anything.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ Alan said, ‘we won’t have to make any awkward explanations down at Cinémathèque.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s soap opera for dumb people.’

‘“Dumb people” is implied,’ Alan said.

‘Well, I’m sick of sharpening nails and pretending it’s going anywhere,’ Rose said hotly. ‘Why am I the only one in this family who worries about paying the bills?’

‘We all try our best,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s not our fault the personal essay is dead.’

‘Not to mention the rampant casualisation of academia,’ Alan said.

‘And the massive cutbacks to review sections in both broad­sheets and tabloids.’

‘I get the idea,’ Rose said. ‘I’m sorry your careers have flatlined. But it’s this kind of “shit” job that’s going to keep this family in takeaway food.’

‘Takeaway sounds like a great idea,’ Alan said. ‘Rose’s new job calls for a celebration.’

Rose gestured to the coffee table, where the boxes of food were laid out. ‘One step ahead of you, Dad.’

Her parents cheered, and rushed the table like starving hyenas. Hearing the commotion, Renton burst into the room. For people who did nothing all day, they sure seemed to have worked up an appetite. Rose barely had time to hand out the plastic forks before her family descended on the food.

Defeated, Rose picked up the pad thai – the only dish left after everyone else had served themselves. ‘So, what’s been happening here?’ she said in a last-ditch attempt at conversation.

‘Big day today,’ said Alan. ‘Did you see the STIFF lineup announcement?’

‘Did I!’ Sarah replied. ‘What is it with all these white American male actors thinking they’re directors now? Retire, bitch!’

‘I see slow-cinema auteur Yuan Yang-yu’s latest effort is on the list,’ Renton said. ‘More like Yawn Yawn-yawn.’

‘Oh, you’ll like this, Renton,’ Alan said, scrolling through his phone, ‘they’re showing a “vengeance film”! This time they’re killing paedophile vets who molest baby animals.’

Renton shrugged. ‘Already downloaded it. Gave it two-and-a-half poo-splosions on Backed-Up Toilet.com. Of course, over at my other review site, Best Movie of the Year, I said it was the best movie of the year.’

‘What about Sharks Don’t Sleep at Night? They say it’s a stunning contemporary fairytale that does for the Pacific Trash Gyre what Orson Welles did for Californian wines.’

Rose stood up. ‘I’m going to leave you guys to it.’

‘But Rose, there’s a Mnmskmo retrospective!’ Sarah said. ‘They’re showing The Hand that Holds the Hammer. You loved that film when you were a kid!’

‘Sounds good, Mum. Depends when it’s on.’

As she padded back down the hall, she heard her father’s voice: ‘Thanks for dinner.’

Rose smiled to herself.

‘And don’t forget the gas bill’s due on Wednesday.’

Rose stopped smiling.

‘And the internet,’ Renton added. ‘It’s meant to be an unlimited plan, but the dark web really burns through the gigs.’

They were still talking when she closed her bedroom door behind her.

Sitting on her bed to finish her tepid pad thai, Rose tried to push down her frustration. She hadn’t meant to end up the family breadwinner at age twenty two. And her parents hadn’t always been this poor. When she was growing up, they’d made a decent living from freelance cultural criticism. But now, the market for their kind of waffle had dried up. They often complained that society didn’t recognise their genius, but from what Rose could tell, there just wasn’t any money in writing 3000-word diatribes about the need for more Transformers of colour.

They hadn’t neglected Rose, exactly. She’d received an excellent humanities-based education. But Rose had a practical mind and a bent for problem-solving. From an early age, it became clear she just wasn’t temperamentally suited to the arts industry. For instance, when they’d all watched Pink Floyd’s The Wall together, Rose – who was eight – had made the mistake of saying she liked the wall.

‘No,’ Alan had gasped, ‘walls are bad!’

‘D’you want to be just another brick?’ said Renton.

‘But I like walls,’ Rose had insisted. ‘They hold up the ceiling, so the books don’t get wet.’

Now, she opened her computer. Renton’s torrent was still in progress. She thought about stopping it, but it wasn’t worth the stink he’d kick up later on. She texted Nicola – can u talk?

She still wasn’t sure of the time difference; how late was it in Tokyo? Nicola had travelled to Japan six months ago for a working holiday teaching English, and Rose really missed her best friend. Nicola was meant to be back by now, but she’d been offered an amazing job on a cutting-edge technology project. ‘It feels like the future over here,’ Nicola had said, ‘but the calendars still say 2019.’

When Nicola had described the job, it had sounded to Rose like the work would mostly involve translating youth slang about romance and sex. Then, a few weeks in, Nicola had confided to Rose that she was working with a scientific team writing software for a highly advanced robot. Rose had joked that Nicola was helping build a love robot; to her dismay, Nicola had simply nodded. But she assured Rose it was all above board, even if she was surrounded by middle-aged men in lab coats and computer geeks who – she claimed – would squeal in terror if she looked them in the eye.

At least they Skyped regularly, and they still hadn’t missed an episode of Grim Designs. Nicola liked the drama of watching yuppies fight as they restored barns in post-industrial rural Britain. Rose liked mocking their shoddy construction methods.

While she waited for Nicola’s reply, she picked up the book she was reading: a torrid Highland romance set in the eighteenth century. The brooding Earl of Dalwhinnie had just returned from the Far East to find that his trusty gamekeeper had died, and the gamekeeper’s fiery daughter had her own ideas about how to manage the estate.

She’d barely caught up with the story again when her laptop started burbling. She accepted the Skype call. ‘Nicola!’

The screen showed a young woman in a lab coat, with other scientists moving busily behind her.

‘I can’t talk long,’ her best friend said. ‘We’re getting the first batch of results back and I have to translate in real time.’ Her gaze dropped to the book in Rose’s hands. ‘I can’t believe you’re still reading that.’

‘What? The Earl with the Dragon Tattoo? I’m really getting into it. It’s almost as good as Gossip Earl.’

Nicola laughed, and quoted the back cover blurb: ‘In the court of King James, where knowledge was power, one man held all the strings.’

‘I get enough of my parents ragging on my reading tastes, thank you.’

‘Remember how they used to keep leaving copies of Infinite Jest around the house?’

‘That was actually useful – I turned two of them into a clamp.’

‘Speaking of clamps,’ said Nicola, ‘did you see the latest Grim Designs?’

‘I know, right!’ Rose said. ‘I knew that clamp wasn’t going to hold the wall, but I didn’t think it was going to fall on them during the wedding! Lucky they got the “till death do us part” line out in time.’

‘Can’t believe the mother-in-law wanted them to concrete over it,’ Nicola said.

‘She’s getting that house no matter what.’

Nicola laughed. ‘Totally. We’ve gotta make sure we’ve both got Sunday night free for the final reveal.’

‘You know,’ said Rose, ‘I might have to start watching these shows professionally.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I ran into one of the guys from TAFE down at Gruntings, and he got me a job on one of the shows they film here.’

Nicola beamed. ‘That’s great! You’ll be able to finally ditch Old Steve. That guy should have been retired ten years ago.’

‘I don’t want to ditch Old Steve,’ said Rose, ‘I just want to do more with my life than make nails. I’m not a blacksmith.’

‘It’s a shame Old Steve won’t live,’ mused Nicola, ‘but then again, who does?’ She held up a unicorn folded from tinfoil.

‘Old Steve’s seen things you wouldn’t believe,’ Rose said, ‘but he’s not nearly as helpless as he makes out. He just puts on that fake cough whenever he’s trying to guilt-trip me. These days I ignore it.’

‘I don’t care about him. You being on a reality show would be awesome!’

‘I guess,’ Rose said. ‘Grim Designs is the only one I really watch.’

‘And it took me six months of convincing you it was full of handiwork before you’d even agree to watch it.’

‘Well, you’re going to have to talk me through this stuff – I have no idea.’

‘Absolutely! Oh, wait.’ Nicola frowned. ‘It’s not going to interfere with your big date, is it?’

‘No,’ Rose sighed. ‘It’s still on.’

Rose’s last boyfriend had been an installation artist named Marco. He’d recently moved overseas for ‘professional opportunities’, which was code for sleeping around. They hadn’t officially broken up, but things had been cooling for a while: initially Marco had seemed a practical, hands-on type, but it had quickly become clear that for him, actually making anything came a distant second to crafting long-winded explanations of what his (potential) work was trying to say. She probably should have cut him loose when he claimed stacking three burnt-out cars on top of each other was going to be his grand statement on gender relations.

‘Good,’ Nicola said. She hadn’t been sad to see Marco go, either. She had a long list of ‘really great’ guys she was itching to set Rose up with. Rose wasn’t sure exactly how Nicola knew these guys, but Rose needed all the help she could get. She sure wasn’t meeting anyone new spending all day cataloguing hammers.

Everyone told Rose that as a female tradie, she must have no trouble meeting men. And it was true – she met plenty. But the workmates who didn’t treat her like their kid sister were always playfully one-upping each other, or complaining about the incompetence of some other bloke on their site. After a day with Old Steve, there was only so much more shop talk Rose could handle. And from what she’d seen, dating a coworker never ended well.

‘Sometimes I worry that my artsy-fartsy parents have spoiled me for normal relationships,’ Rose said to Nicola.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They’re such snobs about everything,’ Rose said. ‘Maybe they’ve taught me to be too critical, you know? Holding out for the perfect guy?’

‘Your parents thought Marco was perfect, but that’s only because he’s an artiste,’ said Nicola. ‘I still can’t believe that embarrassing Guardian article your mum wrote about how it broke her heart when he moved to New York.’

‘I just want a man who gets things done,’ Rose said. ‘Is that too much to ask for?

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Nicola said. ‘That’s why I thought you might click with Alistair. He’s a go-getter.’

‘Good.’

‘But –’ Nicola held up a finger – ‘you have to be proactive too. Maybe if you were looking at other guys, I wouldn’t have had to set you up with Alistair.’

‘Nobody forced you to!’ Rose said, unable to keep a sulky note out of her voice. ‘It’s not like a chore.’

‘Listen, Rose, I’m doing this because I want to see you happy.’ Nicola pointed at Rose’s dog-eared paperback. ‘Maybe it’s those romance novels that are spoiling you. In real life, you don’t just … bump into the perfect man.’

‘Well,’ Rose said, ‘I actually saw a cute guy when I went for the job today. He was a contestant on Mansions in the Sky –’

‘What! You’re working on Mansions in the Sky?’

‘Um, no. I’m on The Dock.’

Nicola sighed. ‘That garbage show where they fix up trash barges? Last season they all got scurvy.’

‘I don’t think that’s how scurvy works …’

‘They did a crossover promo with Nude Island and they got lost at sea. Three months adrift. One of them married a basketball!’

‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘What kind of show have I got myself on?’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Nicola. ‘Tell me more about this hot guy.’

‘I don’t know, we just had a connection. He said his name was Dave.’

‘Hmmm, I’m on it,’ Nicola said.

‘He seemed really nice. He had really nice eyes.’

‘Nice eyes. Got it.’

‘We didn’t talk that much, but he seemed … kind,’ Rose said.

‘I’m not going to help you stalk him if you’re gonna make it weird.’

‘Look,’ Rose said with a laugh, ‘he was no Willie McCabe, Lord Dalwhinnie.’

‘That’s right, girl, keep your eyes on the prize. I respect that you’re holding out for a fictional Scottish earl,’ said Nicola. She kissed two fingers and reached out to touch them to her screen. ‘Love you.’

Rose repeated the gesture on her own computer. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you more when you’re on reality TV.’