Free Cairo by Chris Womersley Page A

cotta (which was custard from a packet, tasty nonetheless).
    Keen to impress my new friends — or, rather, desperate to avoid making a dolt of myself — I tried not to spill food on myshirt or interject with idiotic questions, although they were all so kind it was unlikely anyone would have taken umbrage, had they even noticed. The party was lively and intimate, presided over by Max, who was the most gracious of hosts, ensuring the conversation flowed as freely as the wine. I felt I was being initiated into an eccentric cabal and, of course, this was exactly what was happening.
    At first it was difficult to keep up with the current of conversation, and I was relieved that not a great deal was asked of me other than to be an attentive audience. I tried my best not to ogle her but was fascinated as Sally laughed and played with her food. She was an expert at rolling cigarettes but, endearingly, smoked them like an amateur, tentative as she held each one between her slender fingers.
    I sat beside James, who smoked cigarillos throughout the meal and filled me in — parenthetically, from the side of his mouth — with sly and precise wit on the details of friends and incidents they discussed. It would be a role he adopted for the duration of our friendship.
    In the course of that evening I learned Max was composing a major musical work based on an obscure nineteenth-century French poem called
Les Chants de Maldoror
. His piece would, according to him, change the musical landscape in the way Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositions had done earlier in the century.
    I discovered that Sally had been a singer in a local pop group, but that Max had ‘rescued her from the dreadful nightclub scene in order to preserve her voice’. She now worked as a temp secretary in offices around the city — only until the completion of Max’s opus, naturally, whereupon her career would be re-launched into stratospheric new artistic realms.
    Max told me the apartment he and Sally shared below us had, infact, been two neighbouring apartments they had transformed into one by removing the dividing wall, which accounted for its size and unusual design.
    â€˜Poor Sally was living here all alone when I moved next door nearly eight years ago,’ he explained. ‘But after we met and fell in love, I bought her place. We smashed out a few walls and made a much bigger apartment. Bit of vision is sometimes all it takes, isn’t it? Damned planning people wouldn’t allow it but we went ahead and did it anyway. Sometimes you have to make your own rules. That’s one of the many problems with this country. No vision. Everyone is so bloody
ordinary
. The cult of the ordinary man. Even the prime minister wants to be an ordinary man, God help us. Who wants to be the same as everyone else? You don’t want to be ordinary, do you, Tom?’
    I hesitated, self-conscious in the spotlight of sudden attention. It was a good question, and an opportunity to make a case for myself that might not again be presented. I was already tipsy, but paused to sip my wine.
    â€˜No. I don’t want to be ordinary,’ I said truthfully, feeling defiant and alive as the words left my lips. To say such a thing was a kind of delicious blasphemy, for which I might well be strung up were it to become public knowledge in Dunley.
    â€˜Of course you don’t! Tell me, what is it you wish to do? You’re not an office-worker type, are you? And you’re not a tradesman. You, sir, are destined for greater things. Come on. Don’t be shy. Tell us.’
    â€˜Well, I’m going to study at Melbourne University this year. Literature and history. An arts degree.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I’m enrolling in —’
    â€˜Yes, I heard you. I’m puzzled, that’s all. A chap like you.’
    â€˜Max,’ said Sally, ‘leave him alone.’
    But Max was not to be restrained. ‘You know what they