Searching for Sophia
Andrew Saw is an award-winning television producer delivering documentaries, drama, arts, travel and light entertainment. Originally trained as an artist, Andrew joined the ABC working as a presenter in arts TV and current affairs before becoming a freelance writer, producer and director. His documentaries and shows have appeared on major Australian and international networks. Searching for Sophia is his first novel.
Published by Hybrid Publishers
Melbourne Victoria Australia
© Andrew Saw 2019
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use
as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced
by any process without prior written permission from the publisher.
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PO Box 52, Ormond, VIC Australia 3204.
First published 2019
ISBN 9781925736212 (p/b)
9781925736243 (ebook)
Cover design: Gittus Graphics
For Deborah, Amelia, Jemima and Georgina
1
It’s said real lovers don’t just meet, they’re a part of each other all along. Maybe it’s their dateable DNA. I’m not sure. What I can tell you is that when the violinist Sophia Luca walked out of my office in Elizabeth Bay, my business partner Dr Joe Franken was stunned.
“Definitely didn’t see that coming,” he said, as she left the building.
“See what coming?”
“You heard her. She had this weird feeling we’ve known each other forever, practically since we were kids.”
“A little unusual, so?”
“I know it’s bizarre but I felt the same thing.”
“Well, it’s nice being noticed by talented women.”
“So now I’m Harvey Weinstein?”
“Joe, you know I didn’t say that, but you’ve never seen her before, right?”
“Never.”
“So how does that work?”
“I wish I knew.”
I’m Dr Tim Wilde. For twelve years Joe and I have run a successful veterinary practice on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, about a ten-minute drive east of the Opera House. Elizabeth Bay is an unusual suburb, both shabby and elegant like an elderly courtesan who has seen better days. To the west along a low ridge, her streets run into the drug confusion and retail sex of Kings Cross. To the east, she’s a haunt of elegant 1930s apartments and Georgian terraces, with the occasional mansion rolling its lawns down to the wintergreen harbour.
It rains cats and dogs in Elizabeth Bay, along with light showers of guinea pigs, goldfish, rabbits, snakes and budgerigars, so Joe and I are doing okay. We’re both single, in our late thirties, living in good apartments with harbour views. We drive nice cars and travel abroad whenever we feel like it. All we’re really missing is the right woman to love.
We’re devoted to the animals, of course, and our work is important but, with the exception of the odd anorexic axolotl, our practice rarely encounters anything exotic. Wandering between the strip joints and organic grocers you’re unlikely to be run down by a yak. On the other hand, if your guinea pig is buffing its claws and staring at you with an unpleasant look in its eye, Franken and Wilde is there to offer help. Although, as Joe never stops saying, “We’re not just treating animals, Tim, we’re treating whole families. Living things that keep other living things as pets need affection.”
Some of our customers dote on creatures that slither in cold blood, but it’s animals who pack or flock in nature that fall in love with their humans. They love like we do, with an attachment similar to that of human babies for their mothers. I’ve learned more about unconditional love from my feathered and furred patients than I have from any human. They’ve also taught me how terrible life becomes when devotion is ignored.
A nurse named Charlotte and her pet parrot were a case in point. Michael Hutchence was (and still is) a sulphur-crested cockatoo deeply in love with his human; and like all parrots, a passionate animal. His seventy-year life span and lifelong mating in the wild made him obsessed and possessive in captivity. Charlotte was freshly remarried in her early thirties with two small boys, and in Michael’s cockatoo mind they’d been in love since she was a little girl. They’d shared the homework, the hockey, the eisteddfods, every teen crisis, her difficult divorce, even the birth of her children. But the new man in her life made Michael simmer with jealous fury. When Charlotte and her husband wanted more out of love by candlelight, Michael would fly to the top of the bedroom cupboard and peer through flickering shadows with a baleful black eye. As soon as her husband’s back was uppermost, he would swoop, a parrot out of hell landing talons first, biting and tearing at bare flesh.
The strain on Charlotte’s marriage was considerable, but she couldn’t give up the parrot she’d loved since she was eight years old. They tried the obvious but Michael had never lived in a cage. As a precursor to lovemaking, chasing an angry cockatoo flying from room to room was a disaster. Charlotte’s claustrophobia eliminated shut windows and doors. Finally, after weeks of shattered crescendos, her husband had had enough. When Michael attacked he pivoted back onto his knees, snatched him up with both hands, and threw him into the garden. An hour later, peering through the bedroom window, Michael was ruffled and noticeably depressed, although not as depressed as Charlotte, who faced the dilemma of loving a man who throws sulphur-crested cockatoos.
When she came in with Michael early the next morning she was pale with contained rage. “I have to see Dr Joe.”
“He’s with a patient,” I said, “but I could …”
“I’m sorry, but I need to see Joe straight away,” she said, while Michael stared at me from her left shoulder with a single obsidian eye. “If I don’t, I’ll be forced to do something terrible. I’m serious, Tim.”
This is significant. A meaningful engagement with the power of oestrogen is a vital part of veterinary practice. It’s wives, mothers and girlfriends who initiate most of the pet care in Elizabeth Bay. Even when the surgery is flaming with rainbows, a clear understanding of oestrogen is very useful. We both get on well with our clients, but Joe has the edge.
Women with pets love Joe, there’s no more honest way to put it. He has a presence that I’ve never been able to classify. There are plenty of words: empathy, humour, intelligence, but none really do the job when it comes to understanding Joe’s relationships with our female clients. It’s not as if he’s stunningly prepossessing. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s referred to the anatomy supporting his glasses as his snout, for good reason. When his magnified marsupial eyes blink behind heavy spectacles it’s like window blinds snapping up and down. He’s very healthy, that I’ll say for him. Twenty years of amateur boxing have given him a muscular welterweight frame, a good match for his emphatic nature.
He’s most comfortable with women, but Joe is no ladies’ man. His obsession with ethics prevents him manipulating for pleasure, although much of his