by Eva Mazza
Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch
Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch
Eva Mazza
First published by MFBooks Joburg, an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2019
10 Orange Street
Sunnyside
Auckland Park 2092
South Africa
+2711 628 3200
www.jacana.co.za
© Eva Mazza, 2019
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-928420-40-8 (d-PDF)
ISBN 978-1-928420-41-5 (ePUB)
ISBN 978-1-928420-42-2 (mobi file)
Cover design by Maggie Davey and Alexandra Turner
Editing by Shelagh Foster
Proofreading by Linda Da Nova
Set in Sabon 11/16pt
Printed by CTP Printers, Cape Town
Job no. 003429
See a complete list of MFBooks Joburg titles at www.jacana.co.za
For
Girlfriends, especially the first four: T, M, C & C
BBD
& my daughters, all four
Part One
One
Her cheek peeled reluctantly from the pillow. A union forged by drink and drool; the latter, an unglamorous snail-trail from the left corner of her mouth. Eyes wide open. What’s the time? Jen turned her body gingerly onto her side. Her phone read 05:00 am. The party was over! Crap! I’m in the dog box, that’s for sure. Only after she’d made the enormous effort to move her face back onto the pillow’s clammy wet spot to check whether her husband was asleep, did she remember she had locked him out of their bedroom. Double bloody crap!
Needing to pee, she sat up and waited for her head to catch up with her body before placing her feet on the floor. Using the bedside table to ease herself off the bed, she staggered stilettoed in the dark to the bathroom.
“Shit!” she cursed, butt sliding into the wet toilet bowl. She clutched the sides to avoid slipping any further. John always leaves the effing seat up! She flushed, then stumbled to the basin to splash water over her face.
The fear felt like ice.
What had she done? And where was John?
She chose to ignore her best friend Frankie’s string of WhatsApp messages. Probably apologising for being such a bitch. Frankie could go to hell!
Jen threw her stilettos across the room, unlocked the door and padded towards the lounge, tripping over the rug and nearly landing on her face on the way.
“I’m still drunk,” she moaned aloud as she collected herself, grabbing a bottle of still water from the fridge and gulping it down.
“John?” she called. “Are you there?”
No answer. She moved towards a shadow of a man asleep on the couch. Larry the Lecherous Lout. Stirring, he grabbed at her.
“You need to go home now, Larry.” Jen pushed his hand away and stepped outside. A gentle breeze stirred the hot air and she shuddered at the prickly perspiration under her armpits. Where the hell is John?
Candlelight flickered in the tasting room. All was quiet, but perhaps he was in there, asleep. An owl’s last call heralded the dawn.
Bloody reckless to pass out with a candle burning!
Jen moved towards the entrance, the candle beckoning her in. “John?” she whispered, gently pushing the door open. A man was seated on a bench in the shadowy far corner, his head thrown back, eyes closed and mouth agape.
Good God! It was like road kill. She couldn’t help herself; she didn’t want to look, but she had to. Revolted and intrigued, she stood there, incapable of moving, of anything.
The man’s one hand seemed to be cupped around a woman’s breast while the other held the back of her head.
“Yes, baby,” he groaned.
Baby!
And then it dawned on her. That man was her husband of twenty-four years! Jen do something. Anything!
“John?” Her voice sounded foreign.
Wide-eyed now, he looked straight at her. The idiot remained seated. He must be in shock.
There was an agonisingly long pause. Aren’t you going to stop her?
She must have communicated this telepathically because both their eyes shifted to the kneeling woman, commendably (or so Jen thought) using her mouth to effectuate her adulterous husband’s happy ending.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She had always imagined a stronger, more dramatic reaction to such a revelatory scene of deceit and treachery.
The woman’s head jerked away from her husband’s groin. Jen felt ridiculously relieved when she saw that John-John wasn’t standing at attention. He’s mine! Breasts spilled out from an unbuttoned top.
Distracted by the sight of the porn-star mammaries, Jen wasn’t yet aware to whom they belonged.
Then.
“Patty?” she asked, as if she had stumbled across her after many years. She turned to her husband. “Patty? The wine rep?”
Two
It was John’s fifty-fifth birthday bash; a birthday that would have been overlooked but for Brigit, the eldest of their offspring and the apple of her daddy’s eye. It was Brig’s idea to surprise her father, yet as much as they’d tried keeping it a secret, he had found out. Brigit was disappointed, but Jen was happy the cat was out the bag; surprises weren’t something she was comfortable receiving, let alone organising.
Things had gone awry after the speeches; a pity, since the party had got off to such a good start. It was Jen’s fault entirely. If only she had stuck to her prepared speech. Well, it wasn’t really hers; Brigit had written it. Blame it on the champagne and shooters. Maybe if she hadn’t drunk so much, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did. Brigit had always said that Jen couldn’t take a joke, that she had no sense of humour. Tonight, I proved her right.
Looking back, Jen’s sense of humour failure could be traced to her gold stretch pants. Normally she paid no attention to Brig’s jibes. Since she could remember, Brigit almost always found her mother embarrassing, invariably resulting in some snide remark which she had learned to ignore. However, the eldest’s disparaging comments about her outrageously expensive too-tight pants had hit a nerve because, well, they were embarrassingly true.
“Oh my God! You’re not wearing that tonight, are you?” She asked in the demeaning tone reserved solely for her mom.
“Yes, I am,” Jen said, pouring herself into them.
John came to his wife’s defence, which was rather sweet of him as the two loved to tease her. “Brig!” he bellowed from the bathroom. He’d strutted through to their bedroom, bath-towel wrapped dangerously low around his hips, and planted a kiss on Jen’s cheek. “Mom’s aim is to look hot; it’s an age thing, hey love?” he teased, looking her over appreciatively.
“What is it with men and women in tight pants?” Brig ridiculed.
“No, it’s not my aim!” Jen lied as their daughter watched her struggling to close the zip. John moved in to give her a hand, which Jen smacked away.
The mirror reflected her delusional wannabe-hip forty-nine-year-old self in pants intended for someone decidedly younger. Maybe John’s birthday had triggered fears of her imminent fiftieth. She had told the shop assistant she was sick and tired of looking like a boring middle-aged farmer’s wife and the young woman had assured her the pants did the trick.
“Actually, my aim is to look hip.” She’d managed to get the zip up. “I’m tired of looking like a mom.”
“So, you decided to shop at Forever 21?” Brig chortled appreciatively at her own joke and, as usual, John joined in.
It was true, Jen wanted to look sexy. Instead, she looked like a desperate cougar at a university digs’s sex fest. She’d watched her husband as he prepped for the party. He’s effortlessly hot.
I
n truth, it wasn’t effortless. John spent three afternoons at gym and two mornings cycling or jogging through the vineyards, every week, without fail. It had paid off. Unlike many of his friends who had developed paunches, he devoted a lot of time to his appearance.
“More time than I do,” Jen had bitched to her book club friends.
“Count yourself lucky,” Shelley had retorted, and the rest of the group agreed. “At least you have something to work with. Some of us have to use our imaginations.”
Jen had cringed at the thought of poor Shelley having to perform her wifely duties.
“You still look hot, Daddy,” Brig said, then turned to her mom giving her the once over. “Just don’t tuck your shirt in, k?”
Jen hated the way Brigit would shorten okay to ‘k’. It’s not like it’s a thirteen-letter word, for heaven’s sake. And it’s so bloody condescending!
However rude her daughter was, she valued her opinion. “Why not?” Jen asked, lest she became the laughing stock of the party. Her eldest looked at her dad and rolled her eyes.
“Cleavage, push-up bra, butt and crotch… Leave something to the imagination. You don’t want to look like you’re really trying, do you?”
“You’ve already established that I’m really trying! By the way, does my new haircut also look like I tried too hard?”
“You look great, love,” John said, turning from the mirror and dabbing cologne onto his freshly shaved face. “Don’t listen to Brig. You’re gorgeous.”
Jen gave him a peck on the cheek. “Why thank you, John,” she said, then playfully stuck out her tongue at Brig.
“I personally like your hair darker and longer,” Brigit said while tugging Jen’s top out from her pants as if Jen were a three-year-old. “But if a mousey bob blows you away, then hey, who am I to comment?”
Jen inhaled deeply. She tried hard not to allow Brig to get under her skin. Definitely not tonight. They’d got along so much better these past few weeks, both preoccupied with John’s birthday preparations.
“Well, Brig, you look as chic as ever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to fasten my shoes.”
She hoped she would be able to carry them off. Farm girls don’t wear heels; they wear practical flats – her mother’s favourite line when Jen was an adolescent. Judging from the look in Brig’s eyes, it was obvious that her daughter concurred.
Jen had meant it when she said that Brigit looked chic. She had developed a unique style; understated, but elegant. She wore her hair short – a throwback from her swimming days at school – and was one of the few women who could wear a boyish hairstyle without looking butch. In fact, she never had a shortage of admirers; there was something so feminine about her that complemented her masculine crop.
Brigit had chosen tight black satin pants that tapered to just above her ankles and a loose-fitting black top with a subtle gold shimmer that plunged sexily at the neckline. Her accessories were understated: a gold cuff for her wrist, a long black and gold necklace that hung low to her belly and small studs in her ears. She wore an unusually big ring on her middle finger, drawing attention to her manicured nails.
Her look was simple yet sophisticated. The exact opposite of Jen’s.
“Don’t forget this,” Brigit said, handing over a typed speech before leaving the room.
Jen tucked the speech into her pants pocket, and her shirt back into her pants.
“Cow!” she mouthed to John.
“Don’t be like that, Jen,” John said. “I think you look shaggable, especially bending over to buckle those heels, baby.” He rubbed up against her. “John-John agrees. Here, feel. He’s standing at attention.”
Jen playfully pushed him away and turned to give the birthday boy a quick peck on the lips.
“Now, piss off,” she teased. “You and John-John. We have a party to go to, and I believe it’s yours, you dirty old man.”
Three
John hadn’t celebrated his fiftieth, choosing to take the family on holiday instead. It seemed that a bash for his sixtieth was not on the cards either, as he’d often said that the thought of celebrating old age was depressing. Brigit had come up with the idea of a surprise fifty-fifth party for her dad. “It’s halfway between fifty and sixty.”
Jen thought it a great idea. She loved dancing and she loved a party. She also felt that it was important to mark his birthday with friends who had touched his life, and hers; friends they’d practically grown old with.
Old! She didn’t like to think of herself as old, but forty-nine sounded pretty decrepit.
That night at the party, music from the eighties and nineties had blasted from the speakers. A handful of people frolicked around the dance floor, looking like throwbacks from the era of shoulder pads and Swatch watches.
Jen gyrated with her girlfriends. Over the years, John’s friends’ wives had become her besties. Their tipsiness had made them zealous to show off their Zumba moves. Not that any of their husbands noticed; they were drinking at the bar, probably commiserating over Stellenbosch’s latest drama, the Steinhoff scandal.
Despite Brig’s disapproval, Jen had been complimented on her outfit, giving her the confidence she desperately needed to carry off the contentious stretch pants and the killer heels. Gladys, their housekeeper was the first to offer praise. “You look so young, Jen. I thought you were Brigit.”
Jen kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Gladys, but I don’t think Brigit will be happy to hear this.”
Her friends thought her new haircut and colour took off ten years, and the padded push-up bra (the best invention since the nineties) did an impressive job under her sheer white top. At least someone had the intelligence to put those awful eighties shoulder pads where they mattered!
Lecherous Larry had already given her bum a squeeze, which Jen took in the spirit of things. Lee, John’s best friend since childhood, had taken the time to tell her how beautiful she looked.
The music came to an abrupt halt – Brigit’s orders – and everyone was summoned to listen to the speeches. Brigit delivered a well-constructed and polished speech, as expected. She is, after all, in broadcasting. Pete, on the other hand, was reliably incoherent. Drink and nerves were never his best combination and he was filled with both.
Next was John’s turn. He started by thanking his friends, and made some lewd joke about growing old. He then moved on to his family, first mentioning his parents, who were unable to attend (after years of animosity, they had a cordial but distant relationship). The best were left for nearly last: their children, waxing lyrical about Brigit and how proud he was of her. He went on to talk about Pete and what a wonderful man he had become.
Yep, I certainly have a soft spot for our boy. Father and son, however, had a strained relationship which Jen had hoped would improve now that Pete was employed full-time on the farm.
She straightened up as John began to speak about her. “What can I say? I know it’s a paradox, but I’m a happily married man,” he quipped, rather shyly. Jen smiled at him. He said how lucky he was to have had her by his side for twenty-four years of marriage, and how admirable it was of Jen to have stuck by him. She looked down rather coyly. The guests clapped, but John silenced them. “Well, she has nowhere else to go. Isn’t that right, darling?”
Her head jerked up and her coy smile faded fast. He’s turned a very private and potentially contentious issue into a joke! John quickly saved himself, “Why would I want you to go anywhere, baby?”
Oh my God! Shut up. You’re only making things worse. He turned to his friends. “See how hot she looks?” A few wolf-whistles from the men.
“Stop, guys!” Jen feigned laughter. “You’re just encouraging more of this ridiculous…” The whistling got louder.
“You’ve really gone the extra mile tonight, especially in those pants.” He had drawn the attention of one hundred pairs of eyes to her gold stretch pants. He winked at Brigit and her laughter egged him on. “Brig thinks her mom’s too old for them, but I think she’s
one hot mama, don’t you?”
“Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson,” said Pete’s friend, Max, a boy of twenty-two! Lecherous Larry began to chant, “Cougar! Cougar!” Jen looked at her girlfriends for some help, but they too had joined in. Everyone, except Pete, who knew his mom only too well, had become participants of Larry’s ridiculous chant.
My pants look shinier in this light! They seem to be tighter too.
“Kudos to you, Jen. Your husband’s a lucky man.” Thank God that silenced everyone. Jen craned her neck to see who her saviour was.
Patty!
The farm’s sexy wine rep.
A rush of gratitude towards her. “Thank you!” Jen mouthed.
When he’d hired Patty, John had said that she was just what they needed to sell their wine. Jen had been a little concerned, especially since her friends had warned her to “keep an eye on that one”. But she had decided it was better to be friends than enemies with the devil, and once she got to know her, she quite liked her. She especially liked her now. Her girlfriends could say what they liked about Patty: that she looked like a whore (she certainly dressed like a stripper) and that her boobs were fake (so were most of theirs) but she secretly admired her; she was afraid of absolutely nothing and no one. Despite her humble roots, mingling with the Stellenbosch elite – notorious snobs – never fazed her. Well, it looked that way.
John pulled his wife towards him for a conciliatory kiss then handed her the mic. Now, embarrassed at the attention drawn to her outfit, Jen surreptitiously buttoned up her shirt. She stood in front of the sea of faces, a fixed smile supressed her seething. She was angry with everyone. They had encouraged John to make her the butt of his jokes.
She looked down at the prepared speech. Where would I have been without you, John? You were and still are my knight in shining armour.
Oh my God! Really? I can’t get these words to leave my mouth. Not now. She had wanted to speak before John, but Brigit had insisted on the order of things. She inhaled deeply before she began, and now other words spilled effortlessly from her. “As John said, we’ve been happily married for a number of years. That’s no paradox, John. I’ve obviously been happy, and you’ve been married.” This elicited loud clapping and cheering from the guests. John laughed and squeezed Jen’s hand gently. “And for the most part, it’s been absolutely scintillating for me. Let’s see: John expects his breakfast at nine every morning. Nothing too heavy, maybe an egg or some oats, but definitely two cups of coffee to kick-start the day.”
