Asylum – 6th instalment of my serialised novel

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

in which Yvette meets her online matches and goes to a party. Will her quest to meet the father of her children before she’s thirty be fulfilled?…

2.10

 

She met Frank in London Court. She was standing beneath the clock watching a throng of city-workers and tourists wander up and down the narrow thoroughfare of small shops and cafes. All the buildings had mock-Tudor facades, replete with dovecotes, gabled rooves and weather cocks, crenelated towers and wrought-iron gates, and gargoyles, shields, crests and statues. Nothing, it seemed, missing from that homage to an Elizabethan history Australia never experienced. An elaborate and expensive folly, but one undeniably attractive. At the first stroke of seven a gathering of tourists gazed at the clock above her head. She looked up as four mechanised knights moved around the clock face.

Frank was considerably shorter and older than his photograph suggested. Even at a distance of about fifteen metres Yvette knew he wasn’t her type. The closer he got, the stronger the feeling. He looked swanky in a loud open-necked shirt, beige trousers and patent leather shoes. With his hair swept back from a clean-shaven face, he had a rakish look about him. His face lit when he recognised her as the woman in the profile.

‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he said, with a contrived chivalrous bow. At that moment she pictured him, an extra from the pageant of London Court, in a powdered wig, frilly collar, doublet and hose.

‘Shall we?’ He escorted her by her elbow back to his sports car, shiny and red with a plush interior.

As they headed towards his favourite restaurant, her mind raced faster than his driving. What was she doing with this man? For all she knew he was a lecherous creep using internet dating for easy sex.

The restaurant was set in a swathe of manicured lawns and carefully arranged plantings of native grasses, overlooking the sublime estuarine waters of the Swan River. The setting immediately brought to mind the original name of the Swan River, the Derbarl Yarrigan, so named by the Nyoongar people, the place of the fresh water turtle. The river was later renamed by Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh, Yvette recalled with irony, after the preponderance of black swans. Facts beaten into her class by Mrs Thoroughgood, who had a twisted sense of white dominion, an unvoiced yet discernable ethnocentric hatred of all migrants, and a palpable disdain for the Aboriginal custodians of the land, all of which she conveyed with sleight. For Mrs Thoroughgood, swans were eminently superior to turtles. No doubt swanky Frank felt the same.

Inside the restaurant, the tables were occupied by expensively-dressed couples murmuring conversations over softly glowing candles in ornate jars.

The maître d’ led them to their table and handed them each a menu before walking away.

‘Have whatever you want,’ Frank said, sweeping a limp hand above his menu.

Yvette chose modestly, goujons of chicken with steamed vegetables and mash. He chose the lobster, commenting that unlike his Irish forebears, he would never suffer a diet of potatoes.

Once the waiter, a thin and serious young man, had come and gone, Frank explained that his wife had died of a heart attack last year and he’d been lonely. Now he felt he’d recovered from the loss and was ready for romance. He reached across the table for her hand. ‘You don’t seem the sort of woman that’s only after a man’s money,’ he said, staring hard into her eyes.

‘Of course not,’ she said, shocked he should even suggest it. She pulled away her hand and took a large gulp of the Sancerre he insisted she should try because it was French. She didn’t bother telling him she’d visited France many times. Keen to divert his attention, she asked him about his interest in Renaissance portraiture.

‘I’m a collector.’

Figures, she thought. ‘Fascinating,’ she said. ‘But why that period?’

‘Good re-sale value. Art from that period doesn’t devalue.’

‘What sort of portraiture? Originals or reproductions.’ She couldn’t imagine anyone as crass as Frank being in the multi-million dollar fine-art market. She pictured in his house a reproduction of the Mona Lisa in a chunky faux gilt frame above the fireplace. Perhaps that was unfair. A Holbein then.

He looked offended. ‘I have a Goya and a Botticelli.’

‘Blimey,’ she said. But his claim did nothing to shake her scorn.

When the food arrived she paid close attention to her every bite, riding out the ordeal making small talk.

Once the meal was over, he made a show of paying the bill then offered to drive her home.

When they pulled up outside the flats he peered out the window.

‘You’re renting here?’ His tone was judgemental.

‘Yes.’ She said, suddenly defensive.

‘Well, it’s been lovely.’

‘Thank you.’ She opened the door.

He kept his hands on the steering wheel. He made no attempt at a kiss, not even a handshake. Instead he said, ‘Dating wealthy men isn’t the pathway to riches you know.’

She slammed the door on his remark and marched across the car park. How dare he judge her circumstances! Ostentatious twat!

 

2.11

 

The following evening, undeterred, Yvette was seated in Café Mocha, looking out for a swarthy thirty-something man with a shaven head, if Dimitri’s photo was honest. He appeared twenty minutes after the arranged time of six, decked out in black; leather jacket, T-shirt and jeans. He seemed flustered. Noticing her sitting alone at a table by the window, he quickly regained his composure and walked towards her wearing a charismatic smile.

‘Yvette,’ he said, taking up the other chair. ‘Sorry I’m late. Just finished a photo shoot. Damn model couldn’t hold a pose.’

Yvette offered him an understanding smile. He was handsome in a burly way with dark eyes and a sensual mouth. He seemed intriguing.

‘Have you ordered?’ he said as a waitress approached their table.

‘No.’

He took the menus and passed one to Yvette. The waitress stood over them, the cleavage of her bosom heaving above her tight blouse.

He scanned down the list of main dishes. ‘I’ll have the fettuccine con broccoli,’ he said, shooting Yvette an inquiring glance.

‘Vegetarian lasagne.’

He flicked over the menu card. ‘And a bottle of house red.’

The waitress returned with the wine. Dimitri poured, holding up his glass to Yvette before taking a swig. Buoyed by the wine, he launched into a detailed account of his day, of his creative frustrations and photographic successes. Several times Yvette opened her mouth to speak, hoping to break into his monologue, but without success. The food arrived and he was still talking.

Then at last he leaned back in his seat and acknowledged her, as if for the first time. ‘So, tell me about yourself.’

‘I paint,’ she said, convinced this remark would kill any further conversation about her.

‘Walls?’

‘Hardly.’ Suddenly wanting to impress him, she added, ‘My Masters focused on Precisionism.’

‘Sheeler?’

‘And O’Keeffe.’

‘Ah, now you’re talking. My favourite piece is Red Canna.’

‘I thought it might be,’ she said with a slow smile.

His eyes wandered across the room. She followed his gaze to the waitress leaning over a customer ordering from the menu, her bulging cleavage almost spilling out of her blouse.

‘Beautiful name, Yvette,’ he murmured, returning his gaze to her face. ‘Are you French?’

‘No.’

‘Pity.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t answer.

Yvette cut into her lasagne. She ate quickly, swallowing her discomfort with every bite.

Dimitri, it seemed, had latched on to her artistic tastes. When they were about half-way through their food, he pointed in her direction with the tines of his fork and said, ‘you must be a sensual woman to be into O’Keeffe.’

‘There’s more to her than just the flowers.’

‘Yeah, maybe. But what courage and audacity to convey the sexuality of the flowers so explicitly.’

‘I think you’re exaggerating. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.’

‘Ah, but there is always the artist’s intent.’

She avoided his gaze after that and they finished their meal in silence.

When Miss Busty cleared away their plates, Dimitri’s eyes never left her cleavage. He asked for the bill then followed her to the counter with his wallet. Yvette sat up straight, irritated and anxious to leave.

Outside, young couples with gay expressions strolled by beneath the limbs of small trees. Dimitri stood to one side, letting a woman holding the hands of two small children shamble past before he turned to Yvette.  ‘Would you like to take a walk?’ Without waiting for a reply he took her hand and they strolled to Russell Square.

The park appeared empty except for two figures embracing beneath the vast canopy of a Moreton Bay fig tree. Dimitri led Yvette across a swathe of lawn to the play equipment and invited her to climb up a ladder to a platform leading on to a wobbly bridge.

She gazed in the direction of the couple, wondering what she was doing here with this lascivious stranger, when he pulled her to him, wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her hard. Then he pressed his body to hers, grinding his loins, groaning. She felt the hard lump of his cock and struggled to repress a gasp. ‘God, I fancy you,’ he said. Without so much as a, “May I?’ he slid a hand beneath her skirt, pulling at her knickers.

‘You are adorable,’ he murmured in her ear, his hand pressing up between her legs. She was aroused, in spite of her misgivings. Yet before she had a chance to decide she didn’t want him, he’d unbuckled his trousers.

He thrust and squeezed and thrust and squeezed, moaning, ‘Honey, oh, oh,’ over and again, until his ohs and his honeys merged into one long whooooaaah.

And she was free of him.

‘Wow. Did you feel that?’

She said nothing.

‘That was intense.’

‘Really?’ she said, straightening her clothes, feeling a sudden rush of self-disgust.

They headed back to the café.  Dimitri paused beside a silver hatchback. ‘Here’s my car.’ He pulled his keys from a trouser pocket. ‘It’s been nice. We must do this again sometime.’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, but what she thought was absolutely not. Dimitri belonged in her pantheon of self-centred men she had known. His ego more precious to him that his Nikon.

 

2.12

 

Lee, the music teacher, was no better, although she thought he might have been at first. The day they met, she’d found him charming. He was medium in height with a light build, cropped black hair framing a genial face. They’d strolled up James Street on their way to a café, chatting happily. He told her he was half Chinese half Portuguese, his mother marrying a businessman from Hong Kong. He’d asked her where she was from, took an interest in her family and her past and when she supplied him with carefully crafted vignettes he interjected here and there with a polite comment. He’d seemed a sensitive and well-mannered man.

Two dates in and he was lounging on her sofa in a green polo top and a pair of loose track pants. He’d been there since he’d arrived that afternoon. It was a bum note in his symphony of charm. A full hour had passed and he’d done nothing but recline with his hands behind his head, talking to her about how superb last night’s school concert turned out to be, how accomplished the ensemble, the orchestra, the quartet and the solos. She concluded that his tender gestures, cupping her hand in his, stroking her cheek, smoothing her hair, were practiced behaviours. He was a man adept at getting what he wanted by the most pleasant means. And once he had, or thought he had achieved his aim, complacency held sway.

Her weak affections for Lee took a farewell bow as she asked him to leave, conjuring by way of excuse a throbbing headache and mumbling that she needed an early night.

She’d been right all along, you can’t force fate. Yet left with no-one to soothe her longing, her thoughts wandered back to Carlos.

Dearest Carlos. Dear Carlos. No, Hi Carlos.

She pictured him, watering the plants in the courtyard. The stone staircase winding up to the bedroom, their bedroom, with the four-poster bed and the rocking chair and the window overlooking the flat roofs of the village. Her heart was still bound to that house. Only a small part of her, that skerrick of common sense and the instinct of self-preservation, had escaped. Were her belongings still there? She thought of retrieving them. She didn’t expect he’d ship them to Australia on her behalf. More likely he’d use them to tempt her back. She wondered where he was. At home planning his next adventure? There was no phone in his house, he never answered his mobile and he didn’t use email. She’d already sent three letters. He wasn’t the sort to reply.

With her elbows on the table, she rested her face in her hands and gazed in the direction of the kettle. She thought about working on a sketch but felt too bleak to try. There had to be a man out there, a man capable of eclipsing Carlos. That palm reader had looked too fey to be a charlatan. Mustering her resolve, she refused to give up hope.

A cockroach meandered across the kitchen bench.

 

2.13

 

Her mother phoned the following afternoon, as she did once every week, partly to find out if Yvette had heard from the DIBP. Yvette told her she hadn’t.

‘Met any nice men yet?’

‘No, Mum. Not yet.’

Yvette couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother she’d been doing online dating. She was certain Leah wouldn’t approve. After her second husband had died, Leah remained a widow, concentrating her affections upon her grandchildren and her cat.

‘I saw Terry the other day,’ she said, lightly.

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘Not really. He was in a hurry. He looked preoccupied.’

‘Oh well.’

‘You should have married him Yvette. It would have saved all this waiting.’

Yvette said nothing. She listened with forced patience to her mother’s update on the progress of the forthcoming agricultural show and Debbie’s run-in with her son Peter’s current teacher over a low grade for his geography project. ‘Keeping busy?’

‘Yes Mum.’

She said her goodbyes and hung up her phone.

 

2.14

 

The following evening, Yvette adjusted the fall of her short black skirt and slipped on the loose batik top she’d bought in Bali. She brushed her hair and applied a thin smear of tinted balm on her lips. Thomas was due at the flat any minute. He’d been attending an acting course and the tutor was having an end-of-semester celebration at his house in Subiaco. The Honda Civic was having clutch repairs so Thomas had arranged for his friend Rhys to drive them there.

In response to a soft knock, she swung open the door. Thomas and Rhys stood side-by-side, dressed like twins in plain Ben Sherman shirts and chinos. Thomas kissed her cheek and Rhys, small and thin with short mousy hair, a dimpled chin and an overbite, offered her the limp handshake she’d anticipated. They were early so she suggested a cup of tea.

Ignoring Rhys hovering near the sofa, Thomas followed Yvette to the kitchen and leaned against the bench. Looking past him at Rhys, still standing as if he needed permission to sit, she said, ‘please, sit down,’ and he did.

She flicked on the kettle. ‘How’s it going?’ she said, quietly.

‘Better, I think. Anthony strays but he keeps coming back. He says no-one else satisfies his intellect.’

‘There’s hope then. Excuse me.’ She went to open the cupboard door nearest his face. He moved away and joined Rhys on the sofa.

‘What do you do Rhys?’ she called out.

‘I’m studying for a certificate in small business.’

‘What for?’

‘I want to open a model and hobby shop.’

‘Good for you,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘Tell me, how did you two meet?’

‘In the stairwell. I used to rent a flat on the ground floor.’

Yvette succumbed to a sudden rush of repugnance, comparing herself to the sorts of tenants that live in this block. ‘Where are you now?’

‘Back with my parents in Inglewood.’

‘The ancestral home?’

‘Yeah.’

She set down on the coffee table three mugs, a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar.

‘Milk?’ she asked Rhys, catching his eye.

‘Er, yes please,’ he said, blushing.

‘Sugar?’

‘No, er, no thank you.’ He took the mug from her hand and knocked his elbow on the arm rest, spilling tea on the floor.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, wincing.

‘Don’t worry. The carpet’s absorbed worse.’

She felt unexpectedly sympathetic. He was artless and unsophisticated. She was pleased he’d come: Thomas seemed a little less intense in his company. And having lived his whole life in Perth, Rhys was bound to find his way to Subiaco without a hitch.

 

Rhys drove a dark-blue sedan. Yvette was sitting in the back behind Rhys, relieved she didn’t need to navigate. Heading for a route that circumvented the city centre, Rhys swung the car into Beaufort Street. The setting sun cast a redemptive glow on the lacklustre flat-roofed buildings. They waited in the right-turn only lane at a set of traffic lights.

The lights changed.

‘Walcott Street,’ Yvette said, reading a street sign.

‘Walcott Street?’ Thomas said, puzzled. ‘Don’t we need Vincent Street?’

‘Woops,’ said Rhys. ‘I took a wrong turn.’

He slowed, indicated and swung the car back down the street, narrowly missing an oncoming vehicle. Thomas stiffened.

Two right turns and they drove down Vincent Street.

‘I need to take a left somewhere up here,’ Rhys said. ‘Yep, this is it.’

Charles Street. Yvette watched the approaching city lights.

‘I don’t think this is the right road,’ Thomas said. ‘We don’t want to end up in the city.’

‘I’ll turn off,’ said Rhys, heading up a slip road to a roundabout. ‘We’ll be able to cut across the freeway.’

He changed lanes and exited down another slip road. The road swept in a wide arc, entering the Mitchell Freeway. Even with her limited knowledge of Perth, Yvette knew they needed to head across the city centre towards the ocean, then veer south to Subiaco. Which meant they did not want the Mitchell freeway.

‘Damn!’ said Rhys. ‘Which way are we heading?’

‘North,’ she said. ‘The city lights are behind us.’

‘I’ll take the first exit.’

‘That’ll be the Vincent Street exit,’ Thomas said.

Before long they were back at the Charles Street intersection.

‘We’ve been here before,’ she said, wryly.

Rhys indicated right.

‘Don’t you need to turn left?’ Thomas said.

‘That’s what I did before. I’ll turn right this time.’

‘But we’ve come at the intersection from the opposite direction,’ she said, thinking Rhys couldn’t navigate his way round a figure-of-eight slot-car race track.

‘I’m sure there’s a way across the freeway if we head up here.’

He swung up the slip way to the freeway roundabout again.

This time he took a different exit, veering in a downward arc. The camber seemed strange.

When they entered the freeway Thomas yelled, ‘Wrong Way, Turn Back!’ as three lanes of cars raced towards them with flashing headlights.

Thomas gripped his seat.

Rhys braked hard, threw the gear stick into reverse and screamed back up the slip road, chased by a roaring semi-trailer blaring its horn.

One laborious three-point turn, three times round the roundabout and Rhys chose another exit.

Now they were heading south on the freeway.

Yvette groaned.

Thomas stabbed the air frantically. ‘Take the next exit! Riverside Drive.’

‘No. That’ll take us into the city.’

‘But we’re about to cross the river!’

They had to stay on the Kwinana Freeway for about five kilometres until the next exit. Thomas could scarcely disguise his exasperation. Speaking between locked teeth in a hissing monotone, he fed Rhys’s every manoeuvre. ‘Now stay in this lane. The exit we need is up ahead. See it approaching. Now indicate. Yes this is the right road. Up here.’

‘But…’

‘Yes, yes, we do need to get back on the freeway.’

As they crossed back over the river, approaching a sign for Riverside Drive, Thomas shouted, ‘Take this exit! And turn left.’

Flustered, Rhys headed down the slip road.

‘Left! Left!’

Rhys veered right.

‘Oh no!’ Thomas covered his face with his hands. ‘We’ve missed the turn!’

They were on Riverside Drive, heading straight for the city.

Rhys braked and steered the car towards the narrow hard shoulder flanking the central reservation.

‘What are you pulling up here for?!’

‘I need to see the street directory.’

‘You can’t stop here!’

‘You don’t need a street directory,’ Yvette said, struggling to suppress a laugh, ‘The sunset is behind us. That’s west. That’s the direction we need to go.’

Thomas was shaking his head. Rhys switched on the interior light then rifled through the directory. When he found the right page he poured over the map. Eventually he said, ‘You’re right. I need to turn around.’ He started the engine, made a U-turn at the first opportunity and managed to take the Subiaco exit at the roundabout.

‘Now, just keep going,’ Thomas said.

Reflections of city lights danced on the river. To her right, King’s Park was a dark swathe of native bush blanketing Mount Eliza, so vast for a few moments she lost all sense of her location. Sitting in the back seat of the car, bearing witness to the most ludicrous navigational experience of her life, she couldn’t resist imagining that a battle of competing fates was occurring over the course of her life, Rhys and Thomas unwitting agents of Hope and Doom. She had no means of discerning which was which.

Thomas directed Rhys the rest of the way to Subiaco. They were nearly there when the car spluttered, slowed and came to halt beside a small park.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

‘I think we’ve run out of petrol.’

‘Oh my god,’ Thomas said softly.

‘It’s okay. I’ve got a petrol can in the boot,’ Rhys said. ‘Any idea where the nearest petrol station is?’

‘We passed one back there,’ she said, pointing behind her.

When they were standing on the pavement, Rhys took out his wallet and searched inside. ‘Err…You don’t have any cash I could borrow?’

Thomas caught Yvette’s eye. She shrugged. He reached in his back pocket for his wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill.

‘Do you want us to wait here?’

‘We’ll walk the rest of the way,’ Thomas said. ‘I feel like some air.’

At the end of the first street, Yvette said, ‘I thought Rhys knew his way around Perth.’

‘Fair assumption.’

‘He should stick to remote-control cars.’

‘He’ll be U-turn Rhys forever more.’

Thomas sniggered, holding his hand to his mouth. Yvette laughed along with him and soon they were both doubled over, wiping tears from their eyes. It was the first time she’d seen Thomas relaxed and happy since she’d arrived in Perth. She hoped for his sake it marked a U-turn in his life. He needed to move on from his obsession with Anthony. Maybe find someone else.

Before long they passed an imposing flat-roofed building of pinkish-brick that bore down on the surrounding houses. Yvette read the sign out the front, ‘King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women.’ Now guilt passed through her like a deluge, as if the building itself were admonishing her and she’d no right, no right at all, to enjoy even the simplest of pleasures.

They crossed the road and the railway line and went down a side street.

Thomas stopped outside a quaint, weatherboard cottage set in a compact garden filled with ornamental plants. She followed him to the front porch. A suave-looking man dressed flamboyantly in a Chinese silk jacket and fisherman’s pants swung open the door upon Thomas’ rapid knock and greeted him with an effusive embrace. Then he took Yvette’s hand in both of his and looked straight into her eyes. ‘Welcome,’ he said with theatrical sincerity. ‘I’m Anton. Come on through.’

The living room was spacious with polished floorboards, leather sofas and an open fireplace at one end. Filled with anticipation she looked around at the other guests. Her quest uppermost in her mind, she ignored the women and scrutinised the men. The majority were unappealing. Some were too short, some too fat, others too raucous or shy. With unflagging optimism she persisted, mingling here and there, exchanging brief niceties, then heading first to the kitchen, where a clutch of women in flowing dresses giggled inanely, and through to an enclosed veranda out the back.

Immediately, she saw him, standing in a group of men gathered beside a table laid out with a buffet of finger food. Dashing, in tight high-waisted pants and an open-neck peasant shirt, thick and long fiery red hair loosely pinned back in a ponytail at the nape of the neck. He towered above the others. His eyes, a pale haze of blue, caught hers. She edged closer. There was a mystique about him, not the demonstrative charisma of Carlos, all bombast and camaraderie, here was someone gentle and serene. He turned to her with interest and smiled.

She smiled back. ‘Hi. I’m Yvette.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said in a soft accented voice. ‘I’m Varg.’

‘Varg. Hi Varg.’ Varg? He was a Viking then, standing at the helm of a longship, bearskin for warmth, hair blowing back behind him beneath a horned helmet, a battle axe in one hand and a pewter mug of mead in the other. An image at once absurd and intoxicating.

He held her gaze, eyes searching, lips turned up slightly at the corners. He had an angular face, strong jaw and heavy brow. She felt herself floating. The room emptied, the others taking their plates and glasses back to living room.

They chatted. In five minutes she established he was single, a carpenter from Norway with aspirations to become a professional actor. He had an air of the thespian. His graceful manner put her at ease. He asked where she lived. She described the flat, minus the cockroaches. He listened, attentively.

‘Do you eat meat?’ he said, taking a plate. He selected a few titbits from the buffet, arranging them neatly. She didn’t, not for one moment, question his sincerity. Just what she may have looked for in a man he revealed in perfect measure.

When he offered to drive her home she was thrilled. She found Thomas chatting to Rhys in the living room as she followed Varg to the front door. ‘See you later,’ she said, breezily. She didn’t wait for a reply.

Varg unlocked the passenger-side door of his white Celica. ‘Now where exactly do you live?’

She told him as she sat back in her seat. His driving was smooth. He headed straight to her flat with unfaltering ease. She finished telling him the story of U-turn Rhys as he pulled into the car park. He looked up at the flats without judgement.

‘Can I have your phone number?’

She wrote it on the back of an old receipt.

He walked her to her door, kissed her cheek and turned to go. With the key in the lock she looked up at him and said, ‘Fancy a nightcap?’

He smiled and followed her into the flat.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, black comedy, free novel, online dating, Perth