The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital Read Free Book Online

to give him the benefit of an outsider’s clear-sightedness. “You take it for granted. You can’t imagine what a difference it makes. And the sheer clarity of sky. You must grow up with the goodwill of the universe as a certainty in your bones.”
    â€œThat’s just Mosman, lush with shade and well-watered gardens. I would only need to drive you out into the southwestern suburbs to see grit and irritation. I could take you out to my property west of the Blue Mountains and you could see dry waterholes and the carcasses of sheep and bushfire scars. I grew up there and I never thought of the land as well-intentioned. I guess I thought of her …” He trailed into silence, seeing the shimmer of heatwaves over scrubby spinifex grasses. “She’s a tough seductive sheila. She’s a bitch I’m in love with. It’s a thrill to do battle with her because she never lets up.”
    â€œOh!” I am fascinated by men with obsessions, Emily thought. I see the tongues of fire over their heads and am instantly bewitched. “I’m partial to bitches. I hope you’ll introduce me.”
    â€œAny time. First the southwestern suburbs,” Dave said. “Brown grass and red dust. Shall we go?”
    Driving across the Harbour Bridge, inevitably he asked her: “What do you think of our white elephant?”
    â€œYour white elephant?”
    â€œOur hundred-million-dollar idiot child”— indicating it with a nod of his head.
    â€œOh, the Opera House! I think its breathtaking! Dazzling!”
    â€œDo you really?” He seemed pleased. “To tell you the secret truth, I’m rather crazy about it myself. Though it’s quite unfashionable to admit that. In our circle, anyway.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œOh I don’t know. Showing off embarrasses Australians. We leave that to the Americans; you know: world’s greatest this or that. We go the other way You’re supposed to say witty disparaging things. Like: It reminds me of an untidily sliced apple.”
    She laughed. “Now that you mention it…”
    â€œOr a highly successful cement works”
    â€œOh cruel. How about a bevy of paper planes?”
    â€œHey!” he said sternly. “You can’t say nasty things, only us. Those are the rules. You’re a bloody Yank and it would be filthy cheek on your part!”
    â€œWell, since I do think it’s gorgeous …”
    â€œIt’s supposed to be finished this year. So we’re promised. With luck you’ll be playing there by Christmas.”
    I’ll be very pregnant, she thought. I’ll play for the opening, but will they make me take leave soon after?
    â€œBefore you,” he said theatrically, in the overly mellow voice of a documentary narrator, “are the rusting iron roofs and shrivelled lawns of suburbia. Behind that peeling paint, the worlds most bored and unhappy women await the return of pot-bellied husbands who are even now emptying their pay envelopes in every corner pub in Sydney.”
    â€œYou seem determined to make me despise the place.”
    â€œI thought I already explained my coded comments. This is an absolutely dreadful country except for Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke and Patrick White and Test cricket. And Joan Sutherland and Co., who of course don’t count, having fled. It’s parochial, isolated, sun-blasted, and full of beer-punchy Philistines. I love it with a bigot’s passion and I don’t want you saying anything unpleasant about it. Let’s get away from this ugliness and I’ll show you my house. It has a view of the Pacific. My Sydney house, that is. Maybe one day I’ll show you Kurrajong.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œMy station out near Forbes.”
    â€œI know you’re not a musician. Are you an artist or a professor?”
    â€œNone of the above. I don’t quite belong. But we all went to university together and we