Lunch with a Soldier

by Derek Hansen

  ‘I thought I was a genius, but in truth Grant was the genius and his directors weren’t far behind. It was their talent the agencies and advertisers wanted. I put the polish on the production and did the numbers that made things possible. I was only ever the facilitator. But in an industry where egos raged, when Grant called me a genius I was more than willing to believe him.’

  ‘Can I get you some more wine?’

  ‘God, where did it all go?’

  Linda put her head back and tried to relax as Billy took the empty bottle to the kitchen. Once she’d started telling her story the floodgates had opened. Her torrent of words had surprised her and so had the intensity of her feelings. It was so unlike her to be so open, yet she had no regrets. She felt up and primed, as though she was pitching for a commercial. She heard a cork pop followed by Billy’s footsteps and exhaled to release some of the tension that had built up inside her.

  ‘It’s a verdelho,’ said Billy. ‘Whatever that is.’

  ‘So long as it’s cold and wet.’ She waited while Billy refilled their glasses and rolled a cigarette. The Milky Way looked closer than ever.

  ‘When did things go pear-shaped?’

  ‘They probably always were but I was too blind to see it. I was dazzled by my new life, Billy, and by my success. It’s easy to look back now and be critical, but I wasn’t stupid. I was just blindly in love: in love with Grant, my job and my new life. Despite the fact that Grant had walked into my little westie-world and literally charmed the pants off me, I guess I was naive enough to think I was the last girl he’d ever charm. It never occurred to me to question our relationship. We were Grant and Linda, Linda and Grant, a dynamic duo, entwined and inseparable. We lived together, worked together and went on wonderful overseas holidays together. I was blind to the fact that, between times, Grant went away on location with beautiful young actresses and models, gorgeous make-up ladies, wardrobe girls and stylists. Beautiful people were just a fact of our lives. We were surrounded by beautiful people. Heavens above, we were beautiful people ourselves. I was blind to the looks some of the girls in the office exchanged when we announced we were getting married. I was blind to the guarded nature of their congratulations. Grant was the sun around which I revolved and I was made blind by his brilliance.

  ‘I had mixed feelings when I discovered I was pregnant. Having a baby meant change at a time when I didn’t want anything to change. My life was perfect the way it was. On the other hand, Grant was ecstatic. When I voiced my concerns he dismissed them. This was the new age of women’s liberation. He told me to keep working and doing what I loved until the baby was ready to drop. He talked about putting a crib in my office and how cool it would be to breastfeed the baby while I was pitching our quotes to agencies. He made it sound like another glamorous stage of our glamorous life.

  ‘Six months later Grant took on a new producer and I was promoted-stroke-relegated to office manager. Producers need to be able to fly and I was becoming increasingly reluctant to because of the baby. The new producer was called Sharna and we clicked immediately. She had fire in her belly, bubbled with energy and confidence and could reduce the whole office to fits of laughter with her cheek. We loved her. Our clients loved her. She had big flashing eyes, jet-black hair and could not be intimidated. She was drop-dead gorgeous and, the funny thing is, I didn’t expect my wonderful husband’s producer to be anything but.

  ‘Sharna became my best friend. She often shared meals with us and when the baby came along she often babysat for us. The two of us had girls’ nights out together, shopped together and went to movies together. Some of the things we got up to were outrageous. She was my best friend. My mistake was thinking I was hers.’ Linda paused as though reviewing a flood of memories, not all of them pleasant.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘What do you think happened? Jammy, my daughter Jasmine, grew too big and disruptive to take into the office and preschool would only take her two days a week. I tried leaving her at Mum’s, but by the time I’d driven out west, had the cup of tea and the third degree, half of the day was gone. The changes I’d feared took place and my perfect life slipped away from me. I became housewife, mother and spectator to the life I craved.

  ‘Things changed between Grant and me. Naturally I blamed myself. Grant wanted a lover who was also a beautiful, ebullient, effervescent companion and as wrapped up in his daily affairs as he was. I was wrapped up in nappies, NapiSan, reading stories, fund-raising, keeping house, shopping. The highlight of my day was seeing someone I knew at the supermarket. I used to breathe a sigh of relief when Grant brought Sharna home with him for dinner because it made things easier. I didn’t have to deal with Grant on my own. I couldn’t instantly get up to speed with his world and he wasn’t interested in mine. Sometimes I’d chat away and think I was being bright and entertaining and then I’d catch a look on his face that told me he’d give his right arm to be anywhere else. I didn’t blame him. I blamed myself. I hated what I’d become. I was boring, a boring little westie housewife. The only good days were the one or two days a week I managed to spend in the office. I consoled myself that once Jammy started school, my life could get back to the way it was.

  ‘I went back to work the week Jammy started school. I got myself an assistant and started producing, not for Grant but for the other in-house directors. Either my assistant or I picked up Jammy after school and brought her into the office. Strangely enough, it worked really well. My one or two days a week had kept me up to speed on costs and changes in production. I took my directors’ reels around and started hustling for work. I surpassed everyone’s expectations, even my own, with the number of bids I won. I felt my relationship with Grant was getting back on track now that we had work in common again. Grant seemed happy and, of course, my directors raved because they were paid on the basis of the jobs they did.

  ‘One day one of them took me to lunch to say thanks. I chose the restaurant, one I hadn’t been to for a while and which Grant used to take me to. It was midweek so I didn’t bother making a reservation. The director dropped me off at the restaurant while he went to park his car. I opened the door and looked around to make sure there was a table free. I stopped dead in my tracks. Honestly, if my dear mother had been doing a strip on one of the tables I wouldn’t have been more stunned. Somehow I managed to turn around and leave before anyone saw me. I intercepted the director and told him the restaurant was full. We went to some other place. The director kept asking me what was wrong. He said I looked like I’d seen a ghost. I may as well have seen a ghost. I’d just seen my husband at a table kissing Sharna. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were supposed to be in Perth shooting a commercial and weren’t due back for another two days.

  ‘When we returned to the office I went through the call sheets and production schedules for the jobs where Grant and Sharna had gone away together on location. Surprise, surprise. According to the schedules, Grant invariably returned a day or two before he told me he was coming back. I had no doubt where he’d spent the time in between. I was amazed that he’d got away with it. The days following a shoot were always pretty intense with everyone wanting to see the rushes. It slowly dawned on me that everyone knew. They had to know for business to go on as usual. I don’t know what was worse, the hurt of the betrayal or the shame and humiliation. My whole world, my wonderful world, had flipped upside down. There are no words to adequately describe how I felt. Hurt, betrayed, abandoned, humiliated, crushed, you name it. Lump them all together and you still don’t even come close. Grant and Sharna were having an affair and, as far as I could tell, had been for a number of years. And everyone had known but me.

  ‘I told my assistant I’d pick up Jammy and left the office. I had quotes to finish and people to call back but none of that mattered. I picked up Jammy and went straight home. If it had just been a fling I think I could’ve handled that. But it wasn’t. Sharna was his mistress and had been for some time. She probably slept with him more than I did. I
wanted to scream and poke her eyes out when I thought of her deceit, of all the times we’d gone out together and how she’d played along with the best-buddy act. Advertising and the film business are full of predatory girls who are prepared to sleep their way to the good life and cold-bloodedly target their bosses, but I never thought it would happen to us. I dismissed Sharna as one of them, a gold-digger, someone who wanted the high life without putting in the hard yards. I was Grant’s wife and I decided to fight for what was mine.

  ‘For two days I carried on like it was business as usual while underneath I seethed and plotted how I’d deal with Grant on his “official” return from Perth. I wanted Grant to open the bowling and ask me what was wrong. All I had to do was give him the silent aloof treatment and he’d give me the oportunity. The trouble was, things didn’t quite go according to plan. He arrived home complaining of jet lag, gave me a perfunctory kiss and a hug and handed me his carryall full of dirty laundry. It was the laundry that did it. That seemed to define my place in the scheme of things. He’d spent the last three days screwing his mistress then brought his dirty laundry home to his wife.

  ‘It’s silly, isn’t it? A bag of laundry. The devil is always in the detail. You know, people in the industry sprinkle obscenities around like confetti but it wasn’t a habit I had acquired. But the gloves came off at that instant and I let Grant have it with everything I had. I don’t think he’d ever heard me swear before. The words I used were chosen to hurt and had hardly been devalued by over-use. They didn’t miss their target. For a moment Grant stood there absolutely stunned which encouraged me to really go for it. The next thing I knew I was sprawled on the floor. I didn’t realise Grant had hit me until he lifted me up and slammed me against the wall.’

  ‘He hit you?’

  ‘And how. Two seconds I think was all it took for my emotions to go from righteous rage to abject terror. I felt so utterly helpless. He pinned me to the wall and said, “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again.” The sense of threat and violence was overwhelming. I’d never experienced anything like this in my life. Next thing I was apologising. I was apologising. I was begging him for forgiveness. Somehow his deceit, his infidelity and his violence were all my fault. He let go of me and I just crumpled to the floor. He stepped over me, walked to the fridge and got himself a beer and sat down to watch the seven o’clock news. Business as normal. The whole side of my face was throbbing where he’d hit me. I could barely comprehend what had happened. Suddenly the dam burst and the tears started. They flowed uncontrollably. I heard a noise and looked up. Jammy was sitting on the top stair, watching. She must have heard her father come home, run out of her bedroom and seen the whole thing. I’ll never forget the look on her face.

  ‘She crept fearfully down the stairs and came up and put her arms around my neck. “What did you do wrong, Mummy?” she said. She was only five years old and, in hindsight, she equated what had happened to me with the spankings I threatened her with when she misbehaved. But her question reinforced the fact that what had happened was somehow all my fault.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I should’ve grabbed Jammy and gone home to Mum’s. But what would I have achieved? I would’ve been back where I started, suffocating in sympathy and I-told-you-sos. I would’ve lost everything. I was also certain Sharna would’ve walked in five minutes after I walked out and there was no way I was going to let that happen. I figured I’d let things cool down.

  ‘I couldn’t show my face in the office the next day because of the bruising. You know, it was only when I was trying to cover the bruising with foundation that I made the connection with the times Sharna had taken days or mornings off after she’d slipped in the bathroom or walked into a door. I suddenly realised the true reason for her bruising. A bag hadn’t fallen out of the overhead locker and hit her on the face. A set hadn’t collapsed on her and bruised her arms. The truth was appalling but all I could think was, the bitch deserved it.

  ‘For days I did nothing but think about my situation. The solution seemed obvious to me. Grant and I had never been happier than when I’d acted as his producer. I decided Sharna had to go. I told Grant he had to get rid of her, that I’d be his producer and that everything would be rosy again between us. I told him I wasn’t going back into the office until she’d packed up and gone. Grant had a different view on things. He’d listened to me, now I had to listen to him. He fired me and kept Sharna. She stayed on as his producer and I was banned from the office. He told me that I was ungrateful, that I was just a nothing schoolteacher he’d plucked out of suburbia, that I had money, a nice apartment to live in, a nice car and an easy life, and that millions of women would gladly trade places with me. He told me I should be happy with that. I wasn’t happy but what choice did I have? I couldn’t face going home. I couldn’t admit, not even to myself, that I was a battered, bruised and emotionally abandoned wife.

  ‘For three years we kept up an illusion of being a happily married couple. We still had some good times, enough good times to put up with the nights he came home and mistook me for his punching bag. We went on holidays overseas together with Jammy. Sometimes I thought he still loved me, sometimes I thought I still loved him. One night we had an argument and, to be honest, I can’t even remember what it was over. Probably a broken commitment. He may have failed to turn up to a dinner party we’d been invited to, or forgotten that I was waiting for him in a restaurant. It was the sort of thing we’d argued about before but this time it got a little out of hand. He hit me and for once I fought back. I wound up in hospital with a broken collarbone and a cut on the back of my head that needed stitching.’

  ‘Nice guy, your ex.’

  ‘I took some comfort, malicious comfort, from the fact that I wasn’t the only one suffering. There were plenty of times Grant came home in a rage in the middle of the night after a row with Sharna. I knew she’d be taking time off the next day as a result. I still spoke to people in the office by phone from time to time when I needed to find Grant. Some of the staff were quite sympathetic towards me and I learned the cause of their rows. Sharna wasn’t happy just being Grant’s mistress and made no secret of her ambitions. She wanted her status upgraded and made official. She’d taken my job, now she wanted the rest of my life. She wanted to be Grant’s wife and mother to his children.’

  Linda looked down at her glass, surprised to find it empty once more. When Billy went to refill it she shook her head.

  ‘I’m nearly finished. Then you can make me a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘I’ll cut to the chase. Grant came home one night about ten o’clock. His face was flushed and he was clearly agitated. I knew something had happened but I didn’t dare ask until he’d calmed down. He poured himself a scotch and slumped down in a chair, staring into space. When I took him a coffee, he grabbed hold of my hand and said, “If anyone asks, I was home all night, okay?” “Why?” I asked. He hit the roof. “Just do as you’re bloody told!” he said. “For once in your life, just do as you’re bloody told.”

  ‘I ran away into the kitchen. When you’ve been hit a few times you learn when not to hang around. But I was also worried for Grant. He looked scared and I’d never seen him look scared before. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. When he left for work the next morning he was really subdued, kind of apprehensive. I took Jammy to school, did some shopping and came home. I was just thinking about making a sandwich when the phone rang. It was Grant’s secretary. She’d rung to tell me that the police were interviewing Grant in his office. The police! Sometimes your mind makes connections without any conscious thought guiding it. “Where’s Sharna?” I asked. I was told she hadn’t come in and hadn’t rung to say where she was. I’d just hung up, fearing the worst, when my doorbell rang. I opened the door and found two detectives there. They asked if they could come in. I was too stunned, too stricken, to argue.

  ‘They introduced themselves and asked me what time Grant had come hom
e the night before. I told them I wouldn’t answer any questions until they told me what Grant was supposed to have done and why he was being interviewed. They asked if I knew Sharna. Then they told me that she’d been found dead in her apartment, that it appeared she’d been assaulted and that the assault had resulted in her death. I might not have the words quite right but that’s the gist of what they said. They didn’t say killed and they didn’t say murdered but they said enough. I went into shock. Sharna dead? The detectives helped me over to an armchair and sat me down. They brought me a glass of water and apologised for having to break the news and apologised for having to ask me questions. They told me witnesses had seen Grant enter Sharna’s apartment early in the evening but so far no one had seen him leave. They again asked me what time he’d arrived home. What could I say? Grant had asked me to lie and say he’d been home all night, but how could he have been home all night if they had witnesses that saw him go into Sharna’s apartment? The detectives must have guessed what was going through my mind. One of them asked if my husband drove a red Porsche. When I nodded he said, “We haven’t found anyone who saw your husband leave Sharna’s apartment, but, if it helps jog your memory, a red Porsche was seen driving away just before 10 pm. The driver seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.”