Off the Record

by Craig Sherborne

  ‘Lovebirds? What a quaint old word! You get points for reviving it, Emma.’

  That kept me laughing for a second or two.

  By the time we reached the restaurant I’d tried to pat Emma’s shoulders affectionately at the intersection lights but she’d taken it as a sign I was trying to control her or something. She said, ‘I can walk without help.’

  The evening, it was obvious, was not going well.

  I ordered food as if an expert. No to jelly balls made of fish meat. Yes to zucchini called courgettes stuffed with mince fashionably raw and bleeding. Yes to beetroot and kale salad, and a mash of kumara. I called for a bottle of vintage Mumm and a glass for Ollie to toast with us.

  We did reminisce about our wedding in the gardens, the horse-drawn carriage and the cake for which you needed swords to cut the concrete icing.

  ‘It was a nice cake,’ said Emma.

  That showed some progress.

  ‘They’re trying to ban horse carriages in this town,’ I said to fill a silence. ‘Something to do with the manure and being smelly. I was thinking of hiring a carriage for us tonight.’

  Then we relapsed to Well, here we are.

  ‘Highlight of the night so far? Your lovebirds revival,’ I said.

  The waiter bowed his way up to our table.

  ‘Mr Smith. I trust everything is to your liking?’

  Then the manager with his Irish accent. ‘Welcome and bon appetit.’

  He wore rings of steel and opal on his fingers. I looked at them not his chattering face. I heard him say, ‘I’m a big reader of pry. Never miss a day.’

  That impressed Emma, though he’d probably lied. I saw her lips twitch downwards, meaning Aren’t you the special one, getting this attention! I’m certain I did. I might have been dreaming.

  Either way, I put my thumbs in my belt, leant back as if to say Guess I am the special one.

  Ollie was so quiet you’d think him speech deprived, though that’s what happens when you’re an only child. You’re an honorary adult yet far from actually being one. You try to listen beyond your years but miss the connotations. That was my experience as a boy, and I was smart and born with a journo antenna. He must have been blank as brickwork to Emma and me, our sitting there sipping pearly fizz and nibbling courses of mini-meals. Polite to each other but not beaming man and wife. Having more than nothing-talk to say.

  ‘You all okay?’ the boy said, finally.

  We had to promise ‘All perfect’ before he stopped his harping.

  Emma touched her earlobe and straightened the knife on her bread plate. The oil and vinegar she’d used instead of butter shone on her thumb tip and she sucked it. She took a point of her stiff white napkin and cleared something, a crumb, from her lip corner.

  ‘You’re not talking to each other much,’ Ollie said. ‘I wish you’d talk more.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘We’re adults. We’re not going to say adult things in your company. We’ll say them later.’

  That was a hint for Emma to suggest there might be a later: an invitation to go home for an after-dinner drink. An opportunity for me to get my ‘deadline’ with her started. It was playing out in my imagination: how I’d pay the bill and Emma would say why don’t we both have a nightcap—‘Back at home.’

  A thrilled thump went from my heart into my stomach at the thought of it. My stomach gave back a mouthful of belch. We’d let Ollie sit in the front of the cab and wouldn’t care about the stop-start of traffic. It would give us touching time—our shoulders and our knees. We could play Here is the steeple with our joined fingers. I’d put my arm around her and she’d nuzzle me. And once home we’d pour brandy and get rid of Ollie up to bed. Emma would sit in the lounge, the leather couch your body slips on when you first sink down. I’d sit against the opposite slippery arm. We’d take off our shoes, put the cushions on the floor, tuck our feet under our rumps while we drank. And yes, it would happen. In its own flowing time, which might take fifteen minutes or it could be five. To kiss a woman so familiar to me, yet with my open mouth dry with worry. Was I doing it right? Were my lips tender pressers? Was my tongue not pushing its way in too fast? Was it being too confident of its sensual business? This woman I have touched for years in all her salt places but would move my hands onto her as if for the fumbling first time. Her hands doing the same. Then Emma would point her finger to give directions: let’s go upstairs. Let’s put our drinks down and go to bed together, now.

  There’d be no athletics to the actual sex—we were never kinky lovers. Ah yes, what a relief to have an erection it would be. I’d need no doctor’s pill. Nature had dealt its justice out to me and Emma would override it. I could feel a slight swell in my trousers now. What bliss it would be. Bliss is something only suited to a child. They can jump around and holler with no fear of opposite forces. Relief and comfort are enough for a man like me. To hear Emma breathing slowly into sleep. To let my eyes close and have my head tilt gently against hers. Limbs light as if hollow and my blood swaying slowly through me. Head empty of thinking. Dreamless. Bliss.

  Ollie’s behaviour shook me from my reverie. His eyes were shiny from sucking on that earlier Vodka olive and sipping a child’s serve of champers. Meat had glued itself into his braces and given his tongue the flicking, digging task of excavation. The champagne had flared in his blood.

  ‘I’ll have to listen in to your adult things,’ he said.

  He had too wicked a grin for my liking. Cheekbones tucked up high, their undersides hollow.

  ‘A good journo is a good spy, eh Dad?’

  ‘I don’t think so, son. You’ve got your wires crossed.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. That’s what you said to me.’

  I gave him as quick a glower as I could while Emma returned the napkin across her lap and smoothed it flat.

  ‘You’ve got your wires crossed.’

  ‘That’s what you said when you got me to practise on Mum.’

  He inhaled to speak again but I squeezed his knee. He flinched. My hand remained on his kneecap. He reached for his champagne glass but I grabbed the glass away.

  ‘And he’s only had a couple of mouthfuls,’ I said to Emma. I said to Ollie, ‘That’s enough for you.’

  Emma stared at Ollie.

  ‘Practise on me?’ she said.

  Ollie, halfwit at humour as at most things, realised his blunder but it was too late.

  ‘Are you saying that your father had you spy on me? I knew it. I could sense it. In what way, Ollie? What did he want to know?’

  ‘Emma. Settle down. Don’t raise your voice. People will hear.’

  They already had. The couple to our left. And to our right a table of four. They were glancing at us, pausing mid-mouthful, silently disapproving.

  ‘Ollie, what did he ask you to do?’

  ‘Shh, Emma, please.’

  Ollie was frozen, frightened.

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Emma, shh.’

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘About the guy. The old guy,’ the boy whimpered.

  ‘Gordon?’

  Ollie nodded.

  ‘You are so low, Callum.’

  ‘It was all very harmless, Emma. I have a right to know what’s going on in my house. Some man wandering in and out. It was a safety issue. I was concerned for you. I was concerned for Ollie.’

  She threw her napkin on the table. Vinegar and oil splashed across the linen surface. Splashed me.

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. A fork and a spoon fell to the floor. ‘Stand up, Ollie. Stand up, we’re going home.’

  Everyone was looking at us now.

  ‘I said let’s go, Ollie. Now. Move.’

  The manager walked over, wringing his metal fingers.

  ‘Something wrong, Mr Smith?’

  ‘My wife has to leave.’

  ‘Something we’ve done?’

  ‘A family matter.’

  Emma had Ollie by the wrist. She led him to the door. I told me
tal-fingers I’d be away for a minute and followed them.

  The street was bright-dark from the blob lights from poles, car lights and shop lights. The footpath a flow of people. The air was wearing too much perfume. The bass beat of the bars.

  Where were Emma and Ollie? They’d disappeared among the pouring people. They reappeared. Emma was on her toes to find a cab in the traffic. I ran and I side-stepped and I caught up to them.

  ‘Emma, please. Let me explain. Please.’

  Right near us there was a street shut off to vehicles. Drinkers sat out on couches and upturned milk crates. A street with alleyways off it, graffiti walls and knobbly cobbles.

  I begged her to come with me to an alleyway, get some privacy and talk. Ollie could sit on the street’s rock garden and wait for us.

  ‘I’m rattled, Emma. My judgment’s shot to hell. I’ve made a mistake going to pry and it’s affected all my judgments.’

  She wouldn’t come with me but agreed to stop hailing a cab. I told Ollie to sit on the ledge by the pizza place. We could keep an eye on him and he couldn’t listen.

  ‘I really have fucked up by going to pry.’

  I explained Pockets’ duplicitous treatment of Jenny and the impact for me, losing the editorship.

  I do not believe in honesty but I attempted it now, out of desperation.

  ‘You saw my nice office. My lovely Danish desk. Well that’s all temporary. I feel very vulnerable at the moment, Emma. Shareholding or no shareholding, you don’t get bumped up to editor then bumped down again and think That’s reasonable.’

  I did not expect an outpouring of sympathy but I hoped I’d be spared those eye rolls of hers, those head shakes. This wasn’t one of my fakes. This was real. A confessional moment.

  ‘I’m not a young man, Emma. It’s not easy to quit and find a new job and start over. Besides, I had something happen recently that’s never happened in my life. I had writer’s block. No words came. Me, the wordsmith—I was empty where usually I have word-rivers. It humbles me to have to say these things. Think less of me if you like but I’m just being truthful. I’m sorry about Ollie’s spying. I was jealous. I was stupid.’

  We were standing in everyone’s way. A herd of black-leather humanity bumping us aside with elbows and shoulders. We’d become one of those couples who argue in public. Emma abhorred this kind of behaviour. What a trashy thing to do, but we were doing it.

  ‘I want to ask you something,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, relieved she was talking to me.

  ‘Did you screw Gordon Grace over?’

  I didn’t expect that.

  I said no. I said yes. ‘I thought you’d want me to. I thought it showed proof of how I love you. And this is how people like me show love.’

  She hit me. Her! The Miss Twee of the planet. The wrist part of her palm where the bone is less fleshy. It hurt her and stung my eyebrow. My hands went up in front of my face. The herd flinched from us, wanted out of our way as if we were dirty to them, and dangerous.

  ‘Fuck, Emma. The cops’ll come.’

  She shook the pain from her arm and wrapped her wrist with her other hand. Now she wanted to get off the street and into an alley to cry. Ollie had seen the whole incident and thought I’d hit her first, because why else would she raise her hand to me.

  ‘I did not hit your mother. Never have. Never will. She hit me. It was nothing. Just a little dusting up. It was nothing.’

  I gave a hearty chuckle to reassure the boy.

  ‘People do this, Ollie. They lose their temper and it’s nothing. Your mother’s pissed off about your spying for me. Women overreact. She’ll settle down, don’t worry.’

  I told him to wait by the rock ledge and I’d go speak to her. Smooth everything over and by morning we’d all forget the matter.

  Emma still had her wrist bound in her fingers.

  ‘You all right, sweetheart? Let me look at your wrist. It’s not broken, is it?’

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I am shocked and I am ashamed that I have been reduced to this. Reduced to hitting you.’

  I tried making light of it. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you,’ I said.

  ‘Did you imagine I’d slept with Gordon?’

  ‘Did you do it with him?’

  ‘No. But I thought about it. And would have.’

  ‘A man that old?

  ‘He was kind.’

  ‘And rich.’

  ‘He was not another you. He was decent.’

  ‘Not so decent now. Go ask the tax office.’

  When I argue I can’t help myself—I have to poke and dig and scald.

  ‘I’ll tell you something. I went to his house. Just for a look. He may be rich but he’s got no taste.’

  ‘You went to his house…Did you contact the tax department? Did you? Did you, Callum?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll admit it. I used a public phone. Anonymous tip. Chances were they’d find something. I would do anything for you. Anything to anyone for you.’

  ‘You’re a disgrace.’

  ‘I am not a disgrace. I am a man who has been chucked out of his home because he made a mistake and would do anything to get his wife back again. Funny thing, to be a man like me: for all the bad things I can do I need the safety of a home, the tradition of a wife and the son we made. That’s the only chance I have for peace inside.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I am not at peace at the moment and you’re not helping.’

  ‘You. That’s all you can think about.’

  ‘Come on, let me take you home. I apologise for my jealous behaviour. I apologise for not having the morality of Jesus. But you wouldn’t want a Jesus. I wouldn’t believe you if you said you did. You love the “other species” aspect to me. Be honest. It gave you goose bumps all those years ago.’

  ‘All those years ago, yes. But I’m tired, Callum. I’m forty-six. I’m tired. I don’t want “other species”. I want the normal human kind. Not the animal.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to be that.’

  ‘I do not want you around Ollie.’

  ‘What? He’s my son.’

  ‘I want you to leave us by ourselves for a while. I want to undo the harm you’ve done to Ollie. I want to free him of your antics. No spying, no mind games. No Callum Smith stains. Don’t make me call a lawyer and get an intervention order. I will do it, Callum. I swear I will. I will say you’re a threat to him. And you are. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m a threat to him? What are you? Going around hitting me! Do you hit Ollie? I’ll get an intervention order of my own.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  Me and my temper. Me and my mouth.

  ‘Forget I said that.’

  She was off, she was taking Ollie by the arm and looking for cabs again.

  ‘Emma, don’t run off. Don’t end the night like this.’

  A cab pulled over, grimy yellow and the turbaned driver waving her to hurry and get in because he was blocking the lane of traffic.

  ‘At least let me say goodnight to Ollie.’

  I knelt down, making the bewildered boy taller than me.

  ‘I won’t see you for a little while because I’m busy, got a lot on at pry. But you be good.’

  I pulled his hand to get closer to his ear. He thought it was to kiss him. And I did kiss him, but what I really wanted to do was whisper: ‘If your mum says any bad things about me, don’t believe her. I’m your father. Who got you out of trouble at school? Me. Remember that.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m on your side. Don’t ever doubt it. I’ll see you soon.’

  Car horns were blasting the taxi and Emma ordered Ollie into the back seat beside her.

  She’d put the fear into my bloodstream again. Resentment was already fighting to restore calm but this fear was a strong brew. Intervention order. What a tarnish to your name. A scarring embarrassment.

  I could not believe Emma possessed such blade-edge bitterness. She was worked up
and only saying what she thought might hurt me. But just in case, I took a look around—where were the CCTV cameras situated? One at the pizza place. One above a bar-room door. The lighting about the buildings was luminous enough for a clear shot of us both: me standing trying to reason with her. Not a hint of physically threatening her. Her striking me across the face. A vicious act of violence. That ought to neutralise any case for an intervention order.

  I looked at my watch, noted the time. Tomorrow I’d come here. ‘I’m editor of pry,’ I’d say to the businesses. ‘I’d like a copy from your cameras, please. A crime took place last night and you have a duty to assist me.’

  I hurried back to settle the bill with metal-fingers—he might have called the police over my running out and not paying. I told him the food was lovely, to keep him happy. I promised I’d review his restaurant as one of the city’s finest.

  21

  Contemplating that your marriage might truly be at an end puts you in two minds: utter loneliness is the first; the second is looking for bright sides. The bright-sides aspect is forced, a faux optimism. You’re free, you tell yourself. You can go wild now. All those women on dating sites, waxed to appear girls again without pubes. Off to the doctors, a script for Cialis. You’ll bounce back in no time. Your penis, your ego. The monetary harm will have this compensation—erotic experiments; the guiltless libertine.

  Such posturing relieves that first-mind feeling for a few hours. You’re not a loser and lonely, you’re playing the field again. I walked home in that haughty state. Seven kilometres of self-confidence. Across the lake park, dodging the ticking grass sprinklers. If I get mugged, I kept thinking, I’ve got a first-person front page. Words Wounded in Action as my alliterative headline.