Simmer In The City - Episode 7

The Sunday Age

Sunday January 1, 2006

JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH

The story so far: Bonnie Burbank, CEO of the most successful reality television production house in history and a major figure in the Melbourne establishment, has been accused of seducing Harry, a 16-year-old schoolboy. Tilda Bright, a low-rung publicist looking for a break, has talked her way into handling the crisis, abetted by Bonnie's personal assistant, Matthew.

FROM the entrance to Clendon Road, Bonnie could see the news trucks gathered at the driveway entrance like mechanical vultures. It was hard to believe that only this morning everything had been humming along nicely. She pulled over, got out of the Merc and cautiously stepped onto the Fawnshaw's drive, praying that Skye Fawnshaw was out having her legs waxed or brow Botoxed. Again.

Sticking close to the inside fence, she pushed past the agapanthus to the side fence, which abutted her own small palace. Bonnie hitched her skirt up to her hips. Why had she worn the pencil skirt, for God's sake? She pulled off her heels, threw them and her handbag over the fence and hoisted herself up, curling her toes around the horizontal timber post for leverage. Crouching on the side of the fence, she could see the hacks standing around in a huddle, cigarette smoke making little clouds in the dusk sky. With one swift movement, she swung over the fence and hurled herself onto her front lawn. Grabbing her shoes and bag, she sprinted across the garden to the side door of the garage, scrambled for the keys and let herself in.

Todd's Mercedes was missing. It was possible that he was at yoga, kickboxing, tennis, tapas lessons or a cosmetic dentistry information night. Or at the Como, where he'd decamped, according to his phone call to her that morning. For just a moment, Bonnie contemplated Todd hurling himself from the top of the Como, just to test how sad she felt. Not very.

Bonnie threw down her Jimmy Choos and pulled off her stockings. She poured herself a vodka and sank into the over-sized sofa. The full, glaring unfairness of what had happened fell over her like a shroud. Sixteen-year-old Harry Hope had come into her life as a minor tremor and was rapidly becoming the fault line of her entire existence.

Bonnie closed her eyes. Outside the pffft of the sprinkler system erupted out of the chorus of crickets. Harry Hope had done a magnificent screen test for the Hogwarts show, naturally showing all the personality that reality television so often had to manufacture. She had interviewed him afterwards, gobsmacked by his televisual appeal and one thing had led to the Botanical for dinner and after that, well it was history. Or it would be history if the Herald Sun wasn't leading every day with it for the first seven pages. This was bigger than the society murders.

Bonnie's mobile rang.

"Boss," said Matthew, "I've tracked down the woman you need. MLC girl. She's agreed to help you out. We'll rocket over for a pow-wow around nine." He rang off.

She got up and opened the back doors to the terrace. She was enveloped in the perfume of the gardenias. That garden-designer fellow, the one that cost both arms and legs, had turned the block into a vision of symmetry so intact that it had the appearance of being half a garden reflected into a whole. Sometimes Bonnie felt that Toorak was just one big piss-take on the part of architects and designers who yelled: "Box hedges! Cumquats in Tuscan urns!" and watched while all the rich people tried to simulate what all the other rich people were doing.

She reflected she hadn't done anything technically illegal. Morally speaking it was the 16-year-old Harry Hope who had seduced her. He had wanted her in a way that Todd had not wanted her for years.

Maybe this was one of those life events that forced one to re-evaluate. Success, after all, had been a mixed blessing. Did she really need any more money? On the other hand, she had a God-given talent for schlock. And even people with no intelligence or taste needed something to watch, didn't they? Not everyone could be a Four Corners kind of person.

Bonnie heard a car in the driveway. Todd. Time for the reconciliation talk, the one where she persuaded him to believe that Harry Hope was an insignificant hiccup in the powerful ongoing saga of their deeply meaningful marriage. All long-term relationships face their little Everests and now she was firmly back to base camp. But when the key turned in the lock and the door opened, it was Brooke. Twenty-two, beautiful, and almost inarguably, a terrible artist.

"I've been asked to go on Australian Story."

Bonnie felt as if she might be sick all over the Persian.

"Prize-winning conceptual artist turns her back on life of privilege. Background of emotional abuse. Triumph over circumstance."

What emotional abuse? And prize-winning? She must mean the Booroondara Encouragement Award for the giant mushroom she had in the VCE installation at Chadstone.

"I'm calling them on Monday to say yes."

Joanna Murray-Smith is a Melbourne-based playwright and novelist. Her most recent novel is Sunnyside (Penguin).

Tomorrow in Summerage: Episode 8

Tom and the Yummy Mummy from Malvern

© 2006 The Sunday Age

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