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TrinaFuck. My head hurts. What time is it?
Are we really going to do this? Are we...? Can this work? It feels like there's too much pain to go back.
Look, I'm willing to try, but I can't put up with bullshit, all right? I'm not the bad guy here. And I can't fix it all myself. I apologize for all the things I've done to hurt any of you. Or all of you. But I can't undo it. Oscar, I'm sorry if that's not enough, but it's the best I can do right now.
Maybe I'll feel better after coffee and a hot shower.
ThomasI dined with Anise last night.
(See, William? Your
education is working. I didn't write "ate" like I crudely would have before.)
I stared, I'm sorry to say. It's a year since she moved out of Evergard-- "Richard needs his space," she said-- and I had trouble reconciling the crone before me with the woman I remembered. The lines describing her aged face were written by a different biographer, worn and resigned, the antithesis of the vigorous, carefree Anise who named her daughter Cinnamon in accordance with her family's tradition, in the face of a patriarch's anger.
She spoke of what she'd been doing as if nothing had changed, but even I could read the lie in her face: She was travelling again, yes, but now it was Vienna and New York and Sydney and London instead of the Kalahari and Uummannaq and Machu Picchu. She's doing a pretty poor job of escaping Richard.
And afterwards... God. How is someone supposed to recognise senility? Scrabble, merlot, and 75% cacao to see out one of Judith's dinner parties, it's not my thing but I can understand it. Last night with the scrabble ouija freaked me out. What happened to her?
It made me forget my own lines. That's probably for the better. I was wrong in thinking I could get my five minutes with Richard through Anise. When she called I thought she'd come back to Evergard, but she's handballing herself from hotel to hotel. Hasn't spoken to Cin yet, doesn't want me to mention our dinner to her.
Lie to the sunrise in my eyes? As if.
William LHow delightfully tangled this is, rather like a ball of twine itself. I always said that Twine stood for Total Waste of Everyone's Nous and Intelligence. Although not in that order. Now it seems we have this novel, tentative and quite muddled attempt to restore the strands of family communication. Plastic cups on the end of knotted twine would, I think, be more effective.
If I've been tardy in joining this project, it's for two reasons. First, I am a technophobe. Second, I rather despise the self-important melodrama that has always characterised our family, and which now has perhaps its ultimate outlet. But I have put these concerns to one side - retaining only my right to huff and puff - because, in short, I am lonely.
Evergard is quiet these days, with only young Cin and her father in the East Wing, and myself in the suite above the sunroom. I have time to think and time to read. I also have stories to tell, as you all know. There will be time for them too.
Charles L is in his late-forties and deals in antiques.
He is the only offspring of a second marriage to a "Trophy" wife, the earlier marriage produced two daughters who are many years older than Charles.
His father, like Erik, was a grandson of Albert L and died twenty years ago.
The TwineCo dividend cheques have helped him build an antique business and he now runs three shops on the NSW South Coast..
Sara is the latest of a long line of younger partners, Charles still has enough charm, urbanity, physical appeal and artistic credibility to attract young women who are convinced they and they alone have what it takes to "save:" him. He has fathered children by some of them.
The recent death of Joe Strummer (of The Clash) provided Charles with a hint of his own mortality.
His business is largely held together by a bookkeeper that has worked for him since the earliest days. She manages his day to day business including the mail, passing onto him, personal correspondence and letters not directly related to the business.
Charles ignores the business letters, TwineCo mail he opens, only to extract the dividend cheques.
Had we been more diligent with his mail he might have notice the following in an unsolicited Investment News Letter.
Unraveled At Last
For the first time in over 100 years the directors of TwineCo have failed to declared a dividend.
Although the recent upheavals within "TwineCo" are well known, the humble beginnings of this famous family business are less well known. The story begins with a near-fatal accident in 1853. Joshua William L, still in his early thirties, was proving to be a successful whaler and had nearly saved enough to buy his own whaling schooner when a falling spar crushed both his ankles. Fractions of seconds either way would have caused death or created a near miss quickly laughed off.
Condemned to the life of a cripple, Joshua used his savings to by up a failing chandlers business in Eden. Under his management the business quickly recovered. Frustrated by the time it took to obtain supplies from Sydney, Joshua began to plough his profits into raw materials and manufacturing equipment. Thus was born Eden Rope And Twine.
Business grew rapidly and by the time the Eden whaling industry went into decline Joshua had factories in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and was the head of a large and rapidly growing family based in one of the largest and best appointed mansions at one of Sydney's better addresses.
The business survived the ups and downs of the first half of the twentieth century and as their traditional business shrank the family progressively bought out their rivals. The resulting TwineCo emerged in the mid 1970's.
Simmering disagreements about the company's direction came to a head during the 1980's and war broke out between the family factions, each group making progressively extravagant offers for shares held by outsiders. This resulted in an expensive stalemate, no group acquiring a controlling interest but all of them being forced to sell off other assets to support this buying frenzy. Another result was that the company was delisted from the Sydney Stock Exchange having dropped below certain ownership thresholds.
Since then TwineCo has gone from bad to worse, the deadlock remains and trading conditions continue to worsen. The company can no longer borrow money at reasonable rates and the factions cannot agree on a new share issue for fear of diluting their own holdings. Denied injections of further capital the company seems doomed to fail, the failure to declared a dividend this year would seem to confirm the company's imminent collapse.
The following e-mail is one consequence out of many.
To: info@twineco.com
From: "sara"
Subject: Attention Erik L CEO - Dividend Cheque
Dear Cousin Erik
Sorry to bother you but the dividend cheque hasn't turned up and I'm a bit short just at the moment. Sara tells me this is the quickest way to get things done these days.
Yours
Charles L
Sebastian LBear with me although for me it's near unbearable.
Come in under our tin-roofed terrace, water feature out back by the old shitters' lane, inside all-a-glow with Noguchi lamps, her chicken stock burping and farting on the stove, Miles Davis tarting up poor blind Rodrigo, sticking a needle into the Concerto Aranjuez.
Our home. Christ, listen to us.
Judith: I hear Oscar's back.
Me: Hunchback, dwarf.
Judith: Maybe --- but he's had your measure all these years ...
Me: The little bastard should've been trussed up with twine and suspended from the ceiling. Central Industrial Prison. An art project for the rock spiders.
Judith: Really, Sebastian --- you're not applying for a performance grant now. Anyway, you should thank him --- he's been your muse, really, stopped you from getting fat and lazy --- well, everything's relative --- he's the reason why you're still so edgy, so
award-winning.
Me: Say it --- it amused you to fantasise about him, didn't it? --- over there in his crotch cottage --- whatever he called it --- him and those unnatural companions of his,
baaah!--- you should have joined him years ago.
Judith: Oh, but you've been such delightful company, Sebastian, so ...
attentive, understanding my little foibles ... and all these years, you couldn't bring yourself to mention his name but I knew what you were thinking, I knew ...
Me: What? That he'd come back for you, with his clever little hands, his midget promises and all that grubby money thrust away somewhere unspeakable?
Judith: A girl can dream, can't she?
Lavina L
You will be well aware that I am saying this without a trace of vanity, but I have started thinking back to the glory days of the L family when I was at the height of my beauty. Of course all the L girls were pretty but family legend has it that in every second generation someone comes along that surpasses earthly beauty, that has been blessed with the gift from a fairy godmother at birth.
I squandered my beauty. If the younger generation could see me now they would were that legend started. Of course I still manage to bedazzle, to have heads turning and jaws dropping...if the light is right and with the right makeup. But remember when I didn't need props or tricks.
There is a day that is frozen in my mind. Running into the house, red and sweaty from the tennis court, rubber soles pounding across the tiled entrance hall, but still with that special glow. That was the day I met David. Ran slam bang into him. Does anyone else remember that day? Remember David? Dear, sweet David, he is still my favourite husband. I wonder how different, how much more stable my life would have been if had survived.
I bet you all remember what happened after that though, don't you? I don't excuse myself. I was a young, beautiful and very rich widow. And I was distraught. I comforted myself the only way I knew how. Maybe I was a bit wild, but not all the stories are true. It didn't help that I moved to New York and lived a life of infamy in the public eye. But New York in the '70s! What a time to be alive. So many temptations and all so freely available. And, darlings, what fun!
I guess people will believe what they will, no use denying or confirming anything. But just remember, those of you who know the stories, remember me when I was that young innocent girl then think what you really believe.
Anyway I am getting old now and my thoughts turn often to old times and familiar people. I fear becoming a tired skeleton, held together with nips and tucks. I want something real. Of course I have Carlos but I don't kid myself that this is anything approaching love. Just another tired old matron with her toyboy. He hands me another martini and I hand him another cheque.
Maybe it's time to repair some old rifts and make my peace.
Rebecca LSo Oscar is returning to the fold. Funny to read his words. Funny to balance what you remember of a person with how they perceive themselves. Sees himself as the family joke, the black sheep. This is not how I remember him. My husband (Bill) spoke so proudly of his adopted brother (for this is how he saw him) when we first met, although I realise now it was a pride mixed with jealousy. The brilliant Oscar- the one last hope of the L family, new blood.
Begrudgingly seen as bright! How amusing. I remember Bill fuming at Oscar's ability to spend the entire year in the campus bar, saunter casually into the end of year exams and come out top, year after year. And then the troubles he caused for the L. family with his various "larks"- the break-ins, the forgeries, and the fire, of course, that some say broke the old man's heart forever (although, it must be said, no one has ever conclusively linked it to Oscar.)
But also Oscar the kind, Oscar the witty, let's not forget that person too. Oscar who befriended me on my first terrifying dinner at the L. mansion where I seemed to lose the power of speech. Oscar who told me to picture them not in their underwear, but in
each other's underwear, as this was actually quite close to the truth anyway.
So yes, I'll be there to pick you up, if you feel safe to drive with me (if I remember rightly the last time I gave you a lift you swore never to do it again). Give me the details. I'll be there.
