better by eating the cornflakes box rather than its actual contents.
When, finally, Donald returned, with Snowy in the can and before pre-production started in earnest on Crocodile Dundee, he honoured his part of their bargain. During Epidurals rehearsals, he’d bring the kids along, asleep in the double stroller. He even laughed at the dick jokes. Meredith had loved him then. They were a team. She was a liberated woman and he was a Sensitive New Age Guy. Briony suspected that declaring themselves SNAGs was just another ruse men used to get wimmin into bed. Donald protested he’d never had the least desire to get wimmin into bed in his entire life. Meredith’s comedy career had taken her on a round of dingy Melbourne pubs and clubs and once to the Adelaide Festival. She and Briony were routinely abused as ‘a couple of hairy dykes’ by the drunken hecklers from bucks’ night parties. Standing at the bar after the show with their arms around each other’s waists was a good way to fend off boorish pick-up lines.
They had abandoned the Epidurals after one particularly nasty review in The Age: ‘The Epidurals is an apt name for this pair of die-hard feminists, because that’s what every man and quite a few of the women in the audience were calling for after an hour of unfunny tampon, leg-waxing and armpit-shaving jokes. After a night crossing and uncrossing my legs during the put-downs of male genitalia, I knew an epidural wouldn’t do the trick. The only way I would see this act again is under general anaesthetic. Utter rubbish!’
Meredith never forgot that public mauling and years later, when she heard this same critic on ABC radio hosting the afternoon show, she had logged on to the website guestbook and written anonymously that he was ‘Utter rubbish!’. This had given her a great deal of satisfaction.
‘So, do you ever hear from Briony?’ Nina asked Meredith as the van purred along beneath a canopy of branches.
‘She sent a nice card when Edith died. She’s up in Cairns, running some mad tree-house eco village tourism thing in the Daintree apparently.’
‘Well that apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.’
‘Meaning . . . ?’ Meredith leaned forward to catch Nina’s eye as she drove. Meredith knew exactly what she meant: that owning a swish interior decorating and homewares store was a long way from parsnip juice at a wimmin’s co-op.
Nina blithely continued: ‘Don’t you ever look back and wonder what went—’
‘What went right? Thank God Donald did so well in movies financially in those early days and was able to drag us out of that hovel in Fitzroy. Look at most of that old arts crowd now. You still see them hanging around the cafés, looking a million years old. Still renting. Poor as church mice, most of them. Thank God I left all that behind and made a success of myself for my family’s sake. That entire era was an utter aberration, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘You don’t mean Sanctified Soul as well?’ Nina was crushed. Being on the road and singing with the group was one of the best times of her life.
‘A bunch of silly feminists singing black American, gypsy and protest songs? A cappella? It means “unaccompanied . . . without music”. Stupid. Waste of time.’
‘Oh, that’s crap, Meredith!’ said Annie. ‘We had a great time. And out of all of us you were the one who was the most passionate about changing the world. Remember how you used to get stuck into me and Nina for wearing high heels?’
‘She was right,’ said Nina. ‘I’ve got bunions now. They hurt like hell if I wear stilettos.’
‘You and Briony would come to rehearsals covered in paint,’ Annie continued. ‘And you both used to brag about defacing almost every advertising billboard in the entire northern suburbs in the early eighties.’
‘I used to watch out for those billboards,’ Nina recalled. ‘I remember going to work on the tram down Nicholson Street and getting this thrill every time I saw some half-naked woman in a lingerie ad covered in slogans. It made me think things were changing.’
‘“Smash Sexism”, “Adam and Even!” and “Use the ‘F’ word—Feminist”. Wasn’t that the sort of stuff you used to spray?’ Annie asked with some amusement.
Meredith turned her face to the window. ‘Actually Briony was the billboard specialist. I wasn’t good with heights. I was better at the back of toilet doors. “Men put us on pedestals and then look up our dresses”,