by Liz Byrski
Climbing onto a chair he reached up to a high shelf and retrieved a couple of bulky photograph albums. Abandoning his packing he sat at his desk turning the pages. There was Joan, in her twenties, about the time she met his father, wearing a full skirted, sleeveless cotton dress, laughing and pointing at someone just outside the frame. And there she was in a conga line of young women, all of them wearing paper hats, streamers draping their shoulders and circling their arms.
A few pages further on, she was sitting on a staircase in a tight-fitting sweater and skirt, holding a baby above her head, gazing joyfully into its face. Oliver looked at his mother and himself, connected as they were by love and blood, a symbiotic relationship that had survived for decades on her love and generosity and what now seemed like his own spineless and unquestioning dependence. He turned another page and found his christening, his first day at school, and then high school, birthday parties, Christmases, his own graduation, and always Joan: smiling, laughing, making things happen. There were pictures taken in the shared house, messy cooking in the kitchen, makeshift barbecues in the garden, Joan on a swing, and legs crossed, in a chair eating an ice cream, and then in bathers spraying him with the hose. Oliver shook his head.
‘I know you,’ he said to the woman with the ice cream. ‘You’re my mother, the woman who laughed and cried and played terrible tennis, who was a lousy cook but always got boiled eggs just right. And you hated bananas and Brecht and you loved dancing to big band tunes and had a crush on Gregory Peck.’
In the next album he found her again, well into her forties this time, in a satin evening dress, dancing with a man whose name he couldn’t remember. And then with Jackson, the Nigerian philosophy lecturer with whom she’d fallen madly in love at sixty. On the last page the two of them were together, Joan in a long purple caftan and Oliver in his best suit, dancing at her seventieth birthday party. Oliver picked up the serious graduation photograph that had stood on its shelf for longer than he could remember.
‘Why this one?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Why did I choose this one?’ And opening the catches at the back of the frame he took out the photograph. Then he removed the woman with the ice cream from her place in the album.
‘I’m outing you,’ he said seriously, slipping the picture between the glass and the backing board. ‘Giving you a chance to see the light – or do I mean giving me a chance?’ He was rather drunk by now and he fumbled as he slipped the backboard of the frame into place, snapped on the catches and put it back on the shelf.
Joan smiled down at him, traces of ice cream on her lower lip, a little running onto the back of the hand that held the cone. Her legs were crossed and her left shoe dangled from her toes. ‘Nice to see you again, Ma,’ Oliver said, raising his glass to her. ‘I’d almost forgotten who you really were.’ As he stepped back, pleased with the transformation and the way it made him feel, he tripped on the carpet and stumbled against the corner of the desk.
‘Whoops!’ he laughed. ‘Better get something to eat, piss-head,’ and, checking his pockets for money, he let himself out of the house and strolled down the hill into Fremantle.
He ordered a pizza with double anchovies and another glass of red. The pizzeria was bright and noisy and Oliver sat happily devouring his meal, feeling extraordinarily liberated and unusually benign. Then he had another glass of red, a long macchiato, and walked home contemplating what a fortunate man he was to have always been surrounded by splendid women, even though he hadn’t managed to land many of them.
He thought of Gayle and suffered a fleeting stab of shame at the way he had treated her, at his own self-righteous pomposity, his insensitivity and narrow-mindedness. But nothing could mar his pleasant mood for long. And as he reached home the vision of Sonya, and particularly Sonya’s breasts, engaged him. Why had he ever thought, boasted even, that he was a small-breast man? As though it were some politically correct response to a woman’s body, as though to admire large breasts was somehow lascivious in a way that admiring small breasts was not.
He sank down in a chair and closed his eyes remembering Sonya shedding the cream lace, recalling the delights of burying his face in her breasts, feeling her firm thighs against him, her legs wrapped around him. He burped as the wine and the pizza tangoed noisily and decided that another drink might fix it. Getting up to fetch a second bottle he caught his foot in the phone cable and the instrument crashed to the floor.
‘Phone,’ he said aloud. ‘Phone! Bloody good idea. Phone her.’ It took him another glass of wine and a bit of a search before he could find the tour itinerary and work out where she would be. ‘Broome!’ he exclaimed, triumphantly, and hit her mobile number, which was on his speed dial. ‘Damn,’ he said getting the answering service, ‘must be switched off. Never mind, I will not be defeated by technology.’ And he called enquiries and got the number of the Cable Beach Resort.
Gayle, unable to sleep, was lying on the couch watching Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster getting it together on the beach in From Here to Eternity, and thinking about Josh. The shallow waves crept up the beach and over Burt and Deborah’s feet. Watching them, Gayle considered how she would feel if she never had sex again and was surprised by her own sense of detachment. It had never been good with Brian always caught up in his own satisfaction, seemingly obsessed with penetration and orgasm as some sort of triumph. But there had been someone, a long time ago, a gentle, passionate man with a touch so tender and a mouth so sensuous that even now her body stirred at the memory. It wasn’t so much sex but the intimacy and affection, the tenderness, that she craved. The dancing had reminded her, had brought her back to life physically, and had her reaching back in time to the feel of being held lovingly against a warm body.
The phone shattered her reverie and she picked it up quickly, her heart beating fast with the shock.
‘Sonya, Sonya, issat you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s Gayle, Sonya’s asleep. Is that you, Oliver?’
There was some mumbling and shuffling at the other end of the line before his voice came back again, uncharacteristically loud and cheerful. ‘Gayle! Hello, Gayle, are you having a lovely time, doing all that dancing thing? I changed my mother, Gayle, she’s eating ice cream in this one, wearing high heels. You’d like her, Gayle, you really would. Can I speak to Sonya?’
‘Oliver,’ Gayle hissed, ‘it’s two in the morning, Sonya’s asleep. Can’t it wait till morning?’
‘No! No, no, no, very important to tell her. Need to talk to Sonya, s’urgent.’
Sonya appeared bleary eyed in the bedroom doorway, red hair in a spiky halo. ‘Did I hear the phone? Who the hell’s ringing at this time?’
Gayle held the receiver out to her. ‘Oliver. He wants to talk to you. He sounds drunk.’
Sonya rubbed her eyes and padded across to the phone. ‘Oliver? What’s the matter? Why the hell are you ringing me at two in the morning?’
‘Sonya!’ Oliver exclaimed. ‘Sonya, my dancing friend. Two o’clock, three o’clock, five o’clock – what does it matter?’
‘It matters to me but obviously not to you, as you’re clearly pissed out of your brain. What do you want?’
‘Had to tell you,’ Oliver slurred. ‘Had to tell you that you have magnifishent breasts. Big breasts, all bouncy and creamy with gorgeous nipples –’
‘Oliver!’
‘Yes, it’s me, Oliver the big breast man. Don’t think I told you before ’cos I didn’t know but I think I am definitely a big breast man. Knockers, jugs, hooters – I love ’em all, but especially yours. You are a splendid, sexy woman . . . and I am an entirely new man . . .’
‘Clearly,’ Sonya said. ‘And an entirely drunk one. Go to bed, Oliver, go to bed and pray that you won’t remember this in the morning.’ She slammed down the phone and sank onto the couch alongside Gayle, laughing.
‘What did he want?’ Gayle asked.
Sonya shook her head. ‘He wanted to tell me that I have magnificent breasts, or rather, I think the word was
“magnifishent”.’
Gayle’s mouth fell open. ‘Oliver said that?’
‘Not just that, he went on to describe them and then to claim a global appreciation of not just large breasts but jugs, hooters and knockers.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Nope. And, just as an aside, you’ll be interested to know that he is an entirely new man.’
Gayle took a deep breath. ‘Obviously . . . this is clearly not the Oliver we know.’
‘Therapy,’ Sonya said, ‘can do funny things to people.’
‘Hmm,’ Gayle mused, ‘I’ll have to try it myself. You’re not upset, then?’
Sonya shook her head. ‘Oh no! Hey, it’s Oliver – I mean, it’s probably the nearest to phone sex he’ll come in his life.’ She laughed. ‘Just imagine how he’s going to feel in the morning.’
Gayle was laughing now too. ‘He told me he’d changed his mother, and that she was eating ice cream and wearing high heels!’
‘Oh my god, he’s really lost it,’ Sonya said, doubling up with laughter. ‘He gets therapy, gets drunk, somehow changes his mother and makes a dirty phone call – a lifetime of repression and political correctness blown in one night!’
‘He’ll probably call back in a minute and do some heavy breathing,’ Gayle said, getting up to fill the kettle. ‘Do you want some tea?’
‘Please. And let’s make sure he doesn’t.’ Sonya took the receiver off the hook.
Gayle spluttered with laughter. ‘What if he rings reception and asks to speak to Sonya with the magnifishent breasts? The concierge will have to come over here with a message.’
‘Don’t!’ Sonya cried. ‘Stop, I’m laughing so much it hurts.’
‘Your fault,’ Gayle said, setting out the cups. ‘You siren, you, corrupting poor innocent Oliver.’
Sonya snorted with laughter and grabbed some tissues. ‘Oh dear, we’ll never let him forget this, that’s for sure.’
They sat together on the sofa, drinking tea, watching the end of the movie.
‘What a night,’ Sonya murmured. ‘Our first concert with the musicians, Oliver’s first attempt at phone sex . . .’
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Gayle said. ‘Doing this, I mean, the dancing, the trip, the three of us being together.’
‘Very good,’ Sonya said. ‘Very good indeed.’
‘You can’t believe how incredibly daring all this is for me,’ Gayle said, ‘how totally transformed I feel since we started dancing.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Sonya said, smiling at her. ‘After all, you’re very different from the woman I met at Angie’s hens’ night.’
‘Yes . . . scary, really. After a change like this, you feel . . . I mean, I feel, I can never go back.’
‘Back home or back to the way you were?’
‘Both really, and that’s what’s so hard, coping with all that, with Angie, and Brian. All those battles there’ll have to be.’
‘Angie’ll be all right about it, surely?’
Gayle nodded. ‘In the end she will, but it’s sure to rebound on her. And then, I have no idea how to live, even how to get myself out of the house and into somewhere else – all that practical stuff.’
Sonya reached over and took her hand. ‘It’ll be okay, Gayle, really it will. You have friends, we’ll help you. And I’m sure Oliver will too.’
‘The entirely new Oliver?’ Gayle said with a grin.
‘Him and fragments of the old one, I suspect,’ Sonya said. ‘If you really want to leave, you can come and stay with me while you make up your mind what you want to do. You aren’t alone, you know.’
‘Thanks. I will need help. It’s horrifying, really. I’m fifty-six years old, never lived alone, always . . . well, almost always stuck to the rules. Now I seem to be breaking every rule in the book.’
‘Sounds good,’ Sonya said, getting up. ‘Sounds as though it’s time you started breaking rules. And look, there’s a long way to go yet. I mean, you haven’t even started getting drunk and making dirty phone calls in the middle of the night.’
Gayle laughed. ‘Does that come next, d’you think?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Sonya said. ‘So start thinking about it. Imran maybe, or Ali?’
‘Ah, that’ll be the day.’
Back in her room, Gayle sat in an armchair by the open window watching the shadows in the garden. Oliver’s call, as uncharacteristically funny as it was, had started more than just laughter. Alone in the dark she realised she had also felt a stab of jealousy.
Frank was struggling, the days passing in a blur. His usual forensic analysis of cases, the ability to think laterally and make the leap of imagination required to understand the workings of the criminal mind, were severely compromised by trauma and fatigue. Each night he returned home exhausted, knowing that he would get little sleep until a couple of hours before it was time to get up and go to work again. As always in this state he feared he might be a danger to those around him, that he would make the wrong decisions, overreact, miss something crucial, but, as always, he kept going because keeping going was all that he had.
There was no one to talk to, no fixed point of emotional safety. The counsellor he’d seen a few times had moved away and the prospect of finding another and going through all the background again seemed unbearable. He was caught like a mouse on a wheel, each time recycling the same old stuff in the same old way. The only thing he could hold on to was the knowledge that he would eventually reach the other end of this dark tunnel. He grasped at that prospect, returning again and again to thoughts of Marissa.
‘You don’t sound too good, Frank,’ she’d said on the phone. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Oh, busy, busy, and not sleeping too well,’ he’d said, longing to unburden himself. Talking to her, even telling her nothing, felt like a lifeline. The last thing he wanted was to appear needy or, worse still, neurotic.
‘I’m not sure you lead a particularly healthy life, you know,’ Marissa said. ‘Too much work stress, probably not a very good diet, no regular exercise, and definitely too much coffee.’
He attempted a laugh. ‘I think it’s that terrible dandelion coffee substitute that’s to blame.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said, and he thought he could hear a smile in her voice. ‘It’s much better for you than all that caffeine. No wonder you can’t sleep. And what did you eat today?’
They discussed his failure to eat breakfast, and his consumption of a pie and chips for lunch and a double burger with cheese and fries in the car on the way home. Her solicitousness, disguised as disapproval of his eating habits, warmed him.
‘And exercise,’ she went on. ‘Walking, swimming, that’s what you need to counter the stress.’
‘No time,’ he protested half-heartedly, and mainly so that she would keep talking.
‘That’s ridiculous. Even detectives are allowed to have a life. Walking at South Beach, and swimming – we’ll do it together.’
‘Will we?’
‘Yes . . . well . . . if you want to, of course . . . sorry, I’m interfering.’
He could hear her backing off. ‘No,’ he said hurriedly, ‘no, you’re right, I need someone to help me get motivated. It’s a deal – walking and swimming and a better diet – when you get back.’
There was an awkward pause, as though they had both retreated to their respective corners. ‘Good,’ he went on, to fill the silence. ‘That’ll be good. And how’s it all going up there?’
She told him about the camel ride and their performance at the conference.
‘So we’re free today and then we have the closing thing tomorrow, and we’re off to Port Hedland on Monday.’
‘Hmm . . . Hedland,’ he said. ‘Not one of my favourite places.’
‘Me neither,’ she said.
‘Your first touchdown in Australia all those years ago. Ever been back there since?’
‘No,’ she said, sounding different now. ‘No, I’ve always managed to avoid it . . . I have
bad memories of Port Hedland. I’d rather not be going at all.’
‘Sometimes going back to a place helps,’ he suggested. ‘Like you said before about the bike – confronting it can make it less frightening . . .’ He was running out of words.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘We’ll see. Meantime, you take care of yourself, Frank, and I’ll see you soon.’
It seemed silly that just hearing her say his name should have mattered so much, should have seemed so intimate, so affectionate, so much as if she cared.
‘You too, Marissa,’ he said. ‘Take care in Port Hedland.’ And he hung up feeling as though the crack of light at the end of the tunnel had widened ever so slightly.
SEVENTEEN
Gayle set off early in the morning while her resolve was still strong. She had checked the map and reckoned it would take her twenty minutes to walk to the landscape centre. Saturday morning was probably not the best time to try to corner someone in that business, but she had to make the best use of the time left to her.
The centre was on a corner with a parking area enclosed by a low limestone wall facing onto the street. She stopped on the opposite corner, looking beyond the car park and stacks of paving slabs to an area filled with fancy stonework, waterfalls, birdbaths, stone benches, large plant pots, and some statuary. Hayes Peterson Landscaping. For all your paving and landscaping needs. Props: Dan Hayes and Josh Peterson said a sign on the entrance. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she crossed the street, heart beating fast in anticipation.
A young man in work shorts and heavy boots was stacking some plastic sacks of compost into the back of a white van and Gayle watched as he finished loading and called out that he was leaving to make the delivery. Was he calling to Josh, perhaps, or Dan? Gayle hesitated near the entrance, hidden from sight by a palm tree. She could see more now, past the slabs and the statuary to the single storey building that looked like an office, and then to the shade houses beyond.
