“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Is he God’s son, or isn’t he?”
“Get to bed.”
“Mum, I’m thirty-eight years old.”
“Do as you’re told.”
I love them because they’re like a million other sets of solid citizenry. The planet is spinning at around 1600 kilometres an hour and sometimes it feels like Australia could peel off and hurtle into space at any moment. Like all of us, they’re hanging on as best they can, but it was definitely a shock for a sheltered twenty-oneyear-old university student from the Northern Beaches to meet the Doctors Frankenstein for the first time.
6
“Hah!” was the first word I heard from Dr Franken when he opened his front door.
I was looking at Joe thirty years in the future, assuming Joe wears a ponytail of white hair, pince-nez, a black tailcoat, and paints on a Groucho Marx moustache.
“Hah!” the doctor said a second time, peering up at me through an antique pair of pince-nez eyeglasses.
“Dr Franken?”
“You the coach?”
“Sorry?”
“The coach – the dialogue coach?”
“No, I’m Tim Wilde, Joe’s friend from university.”
“You don’t teach dialogue?”
“No, sorry.”
“By Jehovah, you’ll think I’m out of my mind.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m not a clown, son – I’m an obstetrician.”
“Well, I.”
“Never mind – come in, I upset the neighbours enough as it is.”
He walked fast, leading me down a long corridor with polished wooden floors. There were African sculptures and Aboriginal dot paintings on the walls. As he strode in front of me I understood what he meant about the clown – his bulbous comedy shoes were slapping the polished floorboards like slabs of meat. A cool costume, I thought.
“It’s for a charity night,” he said over his shoulder. “The Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.”
Moving at speed, he turned a sharp left and we were catapulted into large living room with open dormer windows looking out over the harbour. He stopped in the middle of a Persian carpet and waved at the empty seating, clearly puzzled, the gesture magnified by his swirling black tailcoat.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
He walked over to the open windows and peered carefully through each; but he plainly saw nothing. There was the heavy ticking of a mantelpiece clock. The Supremes’ “Baby Love” leaked softly out of a distant room. He turned, scratching his head, and started as if seeing me for the first time.
“Dialogue?”
“Sorry, Dr Franken, no.”
“Call me Jack, or Dr Frankenstein – everyone wants to.”
“I’m okay for now, thanks.”
“My wife, the plastic surgeon, tells me Dr Frankenstein gave his monster Botox. That’d account for the big shiny forehead. What do you think?”
An answer would have been easier if Dr Franken hadn’t been smiling. Was he laughing at me, testing for some Aryan prejudice?
“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
“So who are you again?”
“Tim Wilde, I’m doing vet science with Joe.”
“Ah right, well sit and I’ll go for help. They could be anywhere. The place is a bloody maze.”
I was left alone with the distant sound of The Supremes. Like the hallway before it, the living room was defined by African and Aboriginal art, plus some Japanese prints; most of it was surrounded by carpets and wall hangings from Asia and the Middle East. It was as if I was in a nineteenth-century salon, where Monet might become distracted on his way to lunch.
I stepped out onto the veranda and was shocked by the view of the Opera House and the Bridge. They were too close for comfort and too beautifully lit, like a computer-generated illusion. The Frankens’ flat is the top half of a Victorian mansion in Kirribilli facing the Opera House across the harbour, the bottom half having been converted to consulting rooms for their practices. Soon I would get used to the maze of stairways and rooms and random encounters with wandering patients; but on that first day, in the middle of a summer afternoon, I was on a movie set.
I stepped back and turned into the gaze of two women watching me through a dormer window. The older one smiled. “Hello.”
For a confused two seconds I was caught out. I’d never seen women like these, except in magazines. I remember fine honey skin, auburn hair and Middle-Eastern eyes. It was a shock. I must have looked like a startled meerkat.
“Hello?” the older one repeated.
“Oh, sorry, I’m Tim, Joe’s friend from vet school.”
“Well, Tim from vet school,” she said, “I’m Ashira and this is Joe’s twin sister, Jarrah. Come in and we’ll have a cup of coffee.”
I stepped – well, stumbled really – back into the living room and tried to seem like an adult. It was years ago, but I can still describe the scene in detail. Ashira, in her fifties, was slightly built with fine features, as was Jarrah, but she was about my age, a girl clearly blossoming on her mother’s genes, her beauty flowing out of an ancient world. If you’re familiar with the famous portrait of Queen Nefertiti, you’ll know what I mean.
“Joe says you’ve become great friends.” Ashira smiled.
“Yes, I think so.”
“You’re a good-looking boy.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Do you play a lot of sport?”
“A bit.”
“Your mother must be very proud.”
“Sometimes.”
Jarrah was watching carefully, her dark hair framing the side of her elfin face. She was sitting on a silk piano stool, her hands under her thighs, her honeyed features bathed in flickering sunlight. When the trees outside moved in the breeze, soft shadows danced across her eyes. I was mesmerised.
“Jarrah is at Sydney University too,” her mother said, beaming. “Studying medicine.”
Jarrah’s gaze became merciless. “Are you gay, Tim?”
“Sorry?”
Ashira rolled her eyes. “Jarrah, please.”
“It’s a simple question,” the girl persisted, staring at me with a laser-like gaze.
“Jarrah, stop it.”
“So are you, Tim?”
“Me? No, I don’t think so, I like women.”
“Me too.”
“Jarrah!”
“Mum’s just anxious because I’m out.”
“Oh.”
“Out this morning, as it happens,” she continued, “over the bagels and lox. How about you – any outages planned?”
“I’m pretty much in, I think.”
“Good for you, but you’d make a great gay man.”
“Thanks.”