The faint pock-pock of the tennis ball reached Emma’s ear where she lay, in the safety of her bedroom. The very sound had her imagining wicked things. But she was being foolish. She had to distract herself.
The fact was she did have things to do. Important things. She was a first-year student of Literature, History and Philosophy. The bag she used to lug books to and from the library hung from the back of her door. She took it down. She’d been so bad lately, letting the essays pile up. And to think she might have spent the whole day lying in the sun. Where was her laptop? Time was running out. Her first year was nearly complete. As was her first year of marriage, come to think of it.
Where had the year gone?
Pock-pock. Pock-pock.
She stood in the middle of her room listening to the sound.
THREE
When Emma and David first met, a little over a year ago, David had been living out of boxes in an awful one-bedroom flat in North Sydney with no view. His work and social life was so full and demanding he rarely did more than sleep there. Which was why he hadn’t bothered to unpack the boxes or to take the plastic off some of the furniture he’d had delivered.
There was no mistaking him, David Benson was a successful man, a man’s man. He had few talents but those he had he exploited. He had a head for numbers, was quick with them, and often found himself with a solution before others recognised there was a problem. He was a decision maker in a world of indecision. With David on your side things moved forward at a rapid rate. His bosses recognised this, as did his brighter colleagues. Many rose with him, till David led a tight group of like-minded men who made an enormous amount of money for their masters and for themselves.
David had been squirrelling away his earnings for something inconclusively labelled ‘The Future’. For a family, presumably, though it wasn’t openly acknowledged as such by him. But life is short and time was draining away faster and faster, and he was thirty-five and hadn’t had a steady girlfriend for years.
Before meeting Emma he could make time for sport but would rarely make time for a woman. Business first, above all, then sport.
And then David met Emma.
When Paul, their mutual friend, introduced Emma and David, he did so in the spirit of play. Emma, he believed, would tear down David’s ‘citadel of bullshit’, a shorthand phrase Paul used to describe his friend’s belief system. And David would give Emma the shake she needed.
So Paul arranged for them to meet. He chose a bar in the city. A bar he knew David frequented. He wanted David to feel comfortable. He wanted David to be himself. He wanted Emma to meet the David the world saw.
David was late and Paul spent the time preparing Emma for what she was about to receive. But no male can properly describe another male to a female. And when David finally arrived Emma realised Paul had missed one vital point, David’s presence. Maybe it was because the men had known each other from childhood but Paul hadn’t spoken of David’s size. Hadn’t mentioned the casual grace with which he held all that power at bay. Emma saw an untapped energy source. A sleeping Leviathan. A barbarian taught to wear a suit and shown how to use a knife and fork. To a woman like Emma this was a man unlike any she had encountered before. All that power and yet, she was quick to note, his eyes told her he had that essential germ necessary for tenderness, empathy. Underneath all the layers of so-called civilisation she could sense the man was intelligent and, more importantly, good.
Having said all that, Emma was responding less to the intelligence report garnered by her mind than she was responding to a thumping physical report proffered by her body.
David too had been quick to appreciate a marked difference between this woman and many of the women he had known in the past. Just the way Emma held his eyes with her own was enough to dismiss the concerns of the day. At first he thought she was defiant but this was wrong. He thought for that moment she was strutting, puffing out her chest in the manner women with hairy armpits, atrocious dress sense and coloured hair at university used to do when he would stumble into the wrong bar.
But he realised his mistake. This woman knew she was easily his equal. He was facing a reversal of fortune for he suddenly realised he was being judged to see if he was worthy. And what was worse, he raced to the conclusion that, no, he was not.
He was uncomfortably aware that the mere movement of her lips as she spoke, and how well she spoke, was arousing him more than any lap dancer, any drunk secretary undressing in his office, in fact any erotic encounter in his entire life. She had a natural, easy manner that hid something provocative from him and the world.
She was dazzling him with her words, which he saw dancing around him. She was talking about Tangiers. She was talking about ordering them both Caprioskas. She was asking him about his family and he was answering. But he felt – he was sure of it – he felt her hand on his crotch. He actually had to look to see that it wasn’t there. Weren’t each of her fine words fingers on a hand which was, this very moment, cradling his cock? Such suggestiveness he’d never known.
He thought her the most beautiful, the most attractive woman he had ever met.
The couple were married in under two months of Paul’s orchestrated meeting.
It was one thing to know when a person is the one, it is another thing to live with them. Both Emma and David had enjoyed very independent lives. Emma had always seen to it that she was able to afford to live alone. David had always expected he’d eventually have a large home to call his own. Emma never had such grandiose expectations. Marrying David was an experience akin to stepping into a parallel universe and not being able to leave.
The trouble with stepping into a parallel universe is that from now on there would always be two ‘yous’ to deal with. And this Emma discovered very soon after marrying.
She kept the old life going. She couldn’t, or wilfully wouldn’t, let it go. She needed to be independent Emma and married Emma at the same time, even though each had mutually exclusive agendas.
The very idea of sharing a life with someone seemed to her to be impossible. It had seemed possible before marriage, but we know how practical a theory can seem before testing. Now it was impossible.
She loved David. She wanted to be with David. She wanted to wake beside him. But just as his business life excluded her completely, her independent life necessarily excluded him. He worked long hours, still played lots of sport and was very social. What right had he to know what she did during all that time? None. Just because he chose to spend his time in a socially acceptable manner didn’t change the fact that during that time she was out of his mind completely. He just used his time unwisely. Emma had the right idea.
A week after Emma’s flirtation with Jason from next door she was sitting on her balcony with David, her head nestled on his shoulder, wondering how she could keep feeling sexy with a husband who demanded so little from her. She felt in herself a massive potential for fun.
They’d just made love. These moments were lovely, spontaneous and dangerous in a very limited sense of the word. The neighbours were unlikely to spy them where they lay. She liked these times. But they fed some other part of her needs, not her erotic needs. Her erotic needs seemed so vast by comparison to those warm and fuzzy regions which lapped up tenderness. A shoulder to lie on, a warm body spooning her, hugs, kisses, caresses and comfort were an essential part of love and easily satisfied. David appeared to be completely happy with their sex life.
The sex was great. That wasn’t the problem. The life outside the sex was the problem.
She had lived a wonderfully erotic life which was separate from her marriage. She could not find a way to combine them both. And as her need to lie developed she was aware that the window of opportunity for change was closing.
The trouble was, the more she loved David the harder it became to hurt him. She wanted to share her erotic life with him, to open up to him about her sexual life and convince him that to share in her experiences was to truly know her and be include
d in a much wider sexual world. She hated to think that little hurts would forever keep half her life from him. The fun half. The upshot was, however, that in the last year, in order not to hurt her husband, the door to her erotic life had all but closed.
By the third week of her conscientious effort to complete all that she had to complete for university Emma realised she had been a little foolish in some of her recent behaviour. She had been avoiding the back garden. Temptations, however slight, were to be avoided, it would seem. Without commenting internally on her choices, she had chosen to sit on her bedroom balcony high above the street, with a book or her computer, at the same time each afternoon. Jason never noticed her sitting there when he came home and Emma made no outward sign of noticing him. Temptation was at bay, but the interest was still there, simmering perhaps … perhaps not.
FOUR
Another day, another idle hour and another chance to lay out one’s towel while the sun shone on the square of grass in the backyard. Emma had recommenced her practice of spending part of her day bikini-clad bathing in the sun’s brilliance. For the last week when the weather was fine she would stop working away at her essays to take a short recess. Most days she would read while lying stretched out on her towel, revisiting old favourites.
Ever since young Jason had leapt over the fence Emma had been in the habit of reminiscing and as books were like milestones on her path into her past she had been interested in re-reading some of the most influential.
Re-reading the erotic stories of Anaïs Nin, Emma was less impressed by the stories than by the memories they conjured up. Past lovers were before her eyes again. Each passing man had served to disillusion her in some way. But reading the stories she was able, for a time, to feel what it was to have such grand expectations. She was able to relive, to a certain extent, the excitement she felt before the curtain of experience had come down. She wanted to feel such heightened emotions again.
When she thought of what her first few lovers had shared, when she considered them from the point of view of an adult, she was astonished at how powerfully the experiences had affected her. And how she, she now knew, had affected the men. What it must have been like for them, especially the much older men, the risks they were taking, she only now considered and these considerations made her past appear all the more erotic.
One moment in particular stood out. An older man. A neighbour. A married man. The first time he had touched her – undoing her pants in a public place, a car park, thrilling her to almost unbearable levels, paralysing her body and mind – was a moment she might live but once. She would never again experience the uncertainty, she would never feel the anticipation or the bewilderment at those extreme levels again.
When Emma sat up to reapply her suncream she became aware of a familiar sound – the pock-pock of a tennis ball on the back wall of her neighbours’ house. The sound alone was enough to make her whole body tingle. She marvelled at herself for not noticing the sound earlier.
Sitting cross-legged she rubbed the cream in her skin and listened. She had come to recognise that the circumstances which led to his sudden appearance were rather extraordinary. He was, by his parents’ own account, a very good boy and so by skipping school that day he had been acting against type. The sound of the tennis ball now seemed to suggest otherwise. There was nothing special about this particular Monday afternoon that she knew of.
The pock-pock of the tennis ball was not as inarticulate as one might have expected. To Emma the sound spoke volumes. She rubbed the cream into her legs, running her hand all the way down her shin to her bare foot, thinking all the while of her neighbour’s lean torso twisting as he hit the tennis ball. She convinced herself that this sound was not an accident. Very few accidents have their sequel.
He had taken the day off to speak with her.
Then a bright green tennis ball had fallen squarely in her view, in the middle of the lawn. The ball had landed gently, as if placed, she was quick to note. She lay down on her stomach and waited.
She did not wait long. Hearing a grunt she raised her eyes to the top of the boundary fence. Jason flung himself over it with all the poise of a gymnast dismounting from the parallel bars. He smiled sheepishly at Emma then tried to pretend he was surprised to see her lying there. He had looked far more comfortable accomplishing that first feat of leaping the fence than this second one. Acting was not going to be his forte.
‘Young Master Singer! What a surprise!’ said Emma, raising her head slightly.
‘I didn’t know you were home. I mishit my ball. Have you seen it?’ said Jason, hurrying through his lines. They sounded as spontaneous as the chanted responses at a funeral service.
‘Relax, honey, there’s your ball,’ she said coolly. She lay her head down as if that was that.
Jason did not move. She could sense his confusion. This was all very awkward. Unnecessarily so. What she wanted to do was put him at his ease. He was much cuter when he wasn’t trying so hard.
She had noted with some excitement that he was wearing nothing but his board shorts again. She couldn’t find her responsible adult hat today. She had looked at him while he was speaking with predatory intent. But he was so young. There would be no satisfaction without restraint, without timing.
Emma opened her eyes and spied his feet through her eyelashes. He was stuck in the centre of her lawn.
‘Is it a holiday today?’ she asked, coming to his rescue.
‘No, it’s a home study day,’ he lied.
‘A what?’ she laughed, raising her head and looking directly at him. ‘Liar.’
‘No, really, it is,’ he said.
‘Shall I ring your mum’s shop to find out if she knows about your home study day?’
‘Can if you like,’ he said, easily. He was more proficient in this kind of banter.
‘Calling my bluff, huh?’ she said, and patted the ground in front of her.
‘I knew you wouldn’t call,’ he said. ‘You’re too nice.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Or do you think I’m a pushover?’
‘No!’
‘Do you mind that I think you’re cute?’ she asked, in her usual teasing manner.
He made no reply, which was his usual response. She patted the grass in front of her again, and he plonked down this time, legs crossed, elbows on his knees holding the ball in his cupped hands. He sat facing her and her breasts. She reached across and tried to take the ball but he was too fast. She let her hand rest on his knee. She left it there.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘So would I.’ She lay back down and closed her eyes.
‘You want me to get them?’ he said, jumping up.
‘Yep, there’s beer in the fridge,’ she said. He tossed the tennis ball back over the fence and dashed inside.
He was always moving quickly. He had so much energy.
FIVE
Jason returned with a bottle of beer for Emma and a glass of water for himself.
‘You can have one of these. I won’t tell,’ she said, taking the beer as he offered it to her. She wouldn’t normally drink a beer. She knew she was angling now.
‘I don’t drink much,’ he said.
‘God you’re straight. I was a dope fiend at your age.’ She lay her head down again.
‘I just don’t feel like it,’ he said.
‘One beer never killed anybody. But hey, if you don’t want one …’
She was silent. He stood feeling awkward, not knowing whether to sit on the grass or the chair. Or whether it would be best to leave. He sensed that Emma was in a weird mood. There was something strange in the air. He thought she was sad about something. He wasn’t comfortable with adult sadness.
He was wrong though. Emma wasn’t sad.
‘Your mum tells me you’ve got a girlfriend,’ she said.
Jason almost spat water everywhere.
‘I haven’t,’ he sai
d, after he had coughed.
‘She said you were hanging out with Jess.’
‘I don’t even know a Jess,’ he lied.
‘What do you do with her?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Have you done it with her?’
He was silent. Emma smiled at him.
‘Have I offended you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a virgin?’
‘I’m eighteen,’ he said in an unconvincingly indignant tone, still standing. He looked very nervous. Then she noticed the bulge in his pants. She saw that he had tucked the tip of his penis under the strap of his boxers to keep it hidden. He must have done it when he went for the drinks. All it did was highlight the long shape of his erection. That’s why he was standing. God, that’s cute, she thought. Then she wondered what it was that gave him the erection. Well, what it was exactly.
‘Look, Jason. Go grab yourself a beer and come back and keep me entertained. It’s hours before David will be home.’
Jason was happy for the excuse to go. He stood in the kitchen trying, in vain, to take control of his embarrassing condition. He worried about taking the beer, but reconsidered when he remembered that it was Monday. His parents usually came home later on Monday. His dad played squash and his mum had a cookery class.
He reached in the fridge and grabbed the glass bottle. He opened it and tossed the cap in the bin. He took a swig and released the obligatory ‘Ahhh’ then hurried out to Emma.
He sat on the grass beside her. Her face was turned from him so he had time to arrange his erection so that it looked normal.
‘What are you doing home anyway?’ she asked, still facing away from him.
‘I’m not,’ he replied.
‘So you’re at school.’
The Secret Lives of Emma: Beginnings Page 2
