Ebb and Flow

by Mary O'Sullivan

  “You’re spot on, Max. If kissing arse pays, why not do it? Let’s drink to that!”

  They touched glasses and then she sat down at the opposite end of the couch. Kicking off her shoes, she settled cushions behind her back and gracefully put her long legs up onto the soft leather. Andrew held tightly onto his glass. His fingers needed something solid to hold, something to distract them from following in the direction his mind was already travelling. He imagined how soft her skin would feel. Smooth and cool. She was unpinning her hair now, shaking her head as the blonde shining tresses came loose and tumbled around her face and shoulders.

  “Comfortable?” she asked, stretching out one leg towards him and touching the side of his thigh with her perfectly shaped, tanned foot.

  He gripped his glass even tighter. He was hypnotised by the slow movements of the model’s red-varnished toenails as her foot stroked his thigh. Blood-red varnish. Blood. Like he had seen pour from Ella’s head. He shivered, remembering his wife after the accident, her waxen face, her bruised and swollen eyes, remembering how he had prayed for her survival, bargained with any god who might listen.

  “It must be a year now since Ella’s accident,” said Maxine, almost as if she knew what he was thinking.

  Andrew nodded. It would be exactly a year next week. Twelve months of absorbing the horror of the crash, the deaths of the young mother and her child, the seemingly endless wait for Ella to come out of her coma, the joy when she opened her eyes. Then the inquests, the therapy and the pain of realising that the Ella he had known and loved was gone forever.

  “Do you think Ella has changed? Events like that can alter people’s personalities.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my wife,” Andrew said abruptly.

  Maxine swung her legs down from the couch and, smiling, took his hand. “Of course you don’t. You want to value my apartment. Come with me and I’ll show you around. There are only two bedrooms but the master bedroom is big and has a Jacuzzi. Maybe you’d like to see it?”

  Andrew put his glass down and cleared his mind of all Ella thoughts. He was not really being unfaithful to her. Twelve months of celibacy was all he could take. He needed sex and obviously his wife did not. He needed this beautiful woman who was leading him by the hand into her bedroom. It was just a fuck.

  “I may need to try the bed too,” he said to Maxine.

  “Of course,” she smiled. “Nothing quite like hands-on experience, is there?”

  Her smile and her words freed Andrew. He took Maxine with all the hunger and passion of a man deprived of sex for a year. Then he took her again with the tenderness of a man making love to a beautiful woman.

  * * *

  As Andrew dressed, Maxine noticed in the dim light that she had left a scratch on his back. She felt sated, totally satisfied, as she had never been before. This had not been part of the plan. She had meant to be the one in control. And she had been for a while. The man had been desperate for her. For any woman. It seemed like stuck-up Ella Ford was holding out on her husband. Not surprising maybe after the trauma of that fatal accident. Silly bitch. She could have found rehabilitation in her husband’s arms. Maxine stretched and put her hands behind her head, knowing that she was showing off her breasts to their best advantage. She smiled at Andrew.

  “Funny, isn’t it, that we have known each other socially for so long and yet we never got together before now?”

  “I’m married,” he answered sharply.

  And guilty, Maxine thought. Better let him work that one out for himself. She was not worried. Andrew Ford would be back. Of that she was sure.

  Chapter 2

  Ella swam through thick layers of exhaustion. She lay still and concentrated. Satisfied that she had not dreamt or had nightmares last night, she sat up and threw back the duvet. Her legs felt heavy. She hated the side effects of those sleeping pills but loved the safe, dreamless void they created. She looked at her watch. It was seven fifteen. She could hear the shower running. Andrew was already up. He must have slipped away early from the Coxes’ party last night.

  Breakfast always consisted of coffee and toast. Ella put on the kettle, popped some bread in the toaster and opened the patio door. It was a foggy morning. Stepping onto the patio, she breathed in the moist air. It floated, cold and damp, into her lungs. She pulled her dressing-gown more closely about her and went down the steps into the garden. Autumn berries were just a memory now. Shrubs and trees were bare but had a stark beauty in the diffused light. She touched her finger to a branch and watched as a droplet of water swelled and wavered and finally plopped onto the grass. The greyness of the scene resonated with her mood. She closed her eyes and tried to visualise the summer garden. Roses, lupins, sunflowers, begonias, trailing clematis and geranium. The blooms sat, overblown and grey, in her mind. Even her memory was stripped of life and colour. Except red. Blood red.

  She opened her eyes and started to make her way back to the kitchen. As she turned, her attention was caught by a spider’s web. It was delicately balanced between twigs, intricate and beautifully crafted. Tiny specks of moisture beaded each fine strand, leading the eye towards the closely woven centre. And there, enmeshed in the web, was the face of the blonde woman. Karen Trevor. The woman was terrified, her eyes huge and her mouth wide open. Blood was trickling from the wound in her forehead and seeping into the strands of the web. Just as it had on the evening of the crash. Ella’s face mirrored the terror, her eyes dilated and her mouth wide open in a silent scream. Her mind filled with fear and left her body standing, icy cold and mindless, in the winter garden. She became Karen Trevor, hurtling towards death, out of control and terrified.

  “Ella! Ella! What in the hell are you doing standing out in the wet garden? You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  Andrew’s voice reached through the capsule of fear surrounding Ella. Karen Trevor’s face faded. Bleeding and terrified, the image shrank. There was nothing left now but a misted spider web. And despair. Slowly, Ella made her way back to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Traffic was heavy. It was backed up for six kilometres into the city. Andrew switched off the engine. Normally, he would be verging on road rage but he was glad of the chance to get his head together this morning. His mind was racing in all directions, his body still tingling from last night. Maxine Doran. Beautiful, sexy Max.

  His excitement was tempered by guilt. Being unfaithful to Ella did not sit easy with his conscience, even though he had reasoned that the dour, depressed woman who hung over his life like a dark shadow was not his Ella. Her depression was getting worse. He made up his mind. Today he would contact her doctor. Before she arrived into the office. He shivered as he remembered her this morning, standing in the wet garden, absolutely terrified by a spider’s web. She had not told him that of course. Ella did not confide in him any more. But the fear had been obvious in her staring eyes and ashen face.

  He allowed himself think of Maxine again. A smile crossed his face. He had never before experienced the intensity he had felt when he made love to her. Her body was lithe, smooth, warm. More than that, there had been a chemistry between them. An instinctive knowing of each other’s bodies and needs. Except that he had a scratch on his back to prove it, he would imagine their coupling had been nothing more than an erotic dream.

  The beeping of car horns behind him brought him back to reality. He had not noticed traffic ahead beginning to move on. He waved his hand in apology and started his car. He would have to wait until later to figure out why Maxine Doran had targeted him, wooed him, and slept with him. Or maybe that was something he would never know.

  * * *

  The office was busy. It was always busy. Ford Auctioneers had gone into business at the right time. He and Ella had opened their doors just as the property boom had begun its meteoric rise. Luckily for them, the demand for property, especially in the urban areas, was rising almost as fast as the property prices. Long may it continue, thought Andrew, as he looked at his staf
f busily taking calls and dealing with customers. A chorus of respectful “Morning, Andrew” greeted him as he made his way into his office.

  Logging onto the computer he looked up his address book and found the number for Ella’s specialist. He should just about get the call in before Ella reached the office. The doctor’s secretary put him on hold. He drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk as he listened to an endless stream of tinny holding music. By the time Dr Edmund Quill finally came on the line, Andrew was in no mood for pussyfooting around.

  “Good morning, Dr Quill. Andrew Ford here. I’d like to talk to you about my wife.”

  “What’s the problem, Mr Ford? Has something happened?”

  “Nothing has happened. That’s the problem. My wife’s condition has not changed. If anything she’s worse. Shouldn’t this depression, or whatever it is, be lifting by now?”

  “I did advise that you would have to be patient. She suffered a very severe trauma. You have to understand that full recovery will take time.”

  Edmund Quill’s patronising tone was the final straw for Andrew. The previous twelve months of worry, fear and frustration poured out in a torrent of angry words.

  “I can’t accept your wait-and-see attitude any more. What are you doing for her? Sweet damn all! A few counselling sessions and a handful of sleeping pills and anti-depressants. Her treatment is not effective. Why aren’t you listening?”

  “Ella is my patient, Mr Ford. I’m not willing to discuss her condition with you. Certainly not over the phone. Accompany your wife on her next appointment. If she agrees, I will talk to you both then. Civilly. Good morning.”

  Andrew slammed down the receiver in disgust. The prick had cut him off. It was so easy for the doctor to advise patience. He was not the one who had to live under this perpetual cloud. Edmund Quill was supposed to be the best. He certainly charged the most. But somehow, some way, Andrew was going to have to persuade Ella to see another doctor. Before it was too late to save her sanity. And their marriage. Getting out the phone book, he began trawling through the medical directory in the belief that in amongst the small print was a person who could bring the real Ella Ford back to life.

  * * *

  Maxine was tempted to skip the gym today. She stood in front of the mirror and examined her body. It was honed to perfection and today it had a special glow. Andrew Ford had been stupendous. He had teased a response from her that she had never experienced before. Even her eyes seemed brighter and her hair shinier. Maybe if she continued burning off calories in bed with Andrew she would never have to walk sweaty miles on the treadmill again. He was funny too and kind. And married. Besides, she had only slept with him because Jason told her to.

  Her afterglow faded as she thought of Jason Laide, entrepreneur and shagger of young girls. Custodian of a video of a very young Maxine, nude and willing to perform anything, anything at all for his camera. She turned her back to the mirror, unable to meet the shame in her own eyes. Despite her effort to blank the memories, her mind travelled back.

  Maxine Doran had been born with the knowledge that she would have to, just must, rise above her background. She hated it with a vengeance. Hated the mean streets and pokey little house, the continuous striving to make ends meet, the drunkenness of her father and coarseness of her mother, the lack of ambition of her siblings.

  “That one is a throwback to her great-grandmother,” her father would always say as he watched his youngest daughter isolate herself from the rough and tumble of the family way of life.

  Her paternal great-grandmother had hailed from a high-class family. She had been disinherited when she eloped with a stable lad. Maxine often thought about her. How had the lady survived in the tiny, terraced red-bricked house her stable boy called home? The very house in which Maxine herself had been reared. Had she felt sick with disgust when she had to use the backyard toilet, when she had to cook and clean, when she had to dine at the scrubbed timber table and eat off thick pottery plates? Or had her love for Maxine’s great-grandfather, stable boy Thomas, been so great that it overcame all cultural differences?

  Maxine walked over to her dressing table and unlocked the top drawer. Carefully she removed the tattered photo album. The red velvet cover was faded and bare in patches. She held it up and sniffed the musty aroma. It fell open at the page she always went to. The portrait of her great-grandmother Harriet. The corners were curled on the sepia photograph but the dignity and pride of the sitter shone through. Her great-grandmother had been beautiful then, tall and slim, her blond hair swept up underneath her hat with the ostrich plumes, her hands clasped genteelly together on the folds of her silk skirts. But it was the eyes that attracted most. They still shone, hypnotic and lustrous, through the browny-yellow tincture of time and wear.

  Maxine snapped the album shut and, putting it back into the drawer, locked it safely away. This always happened. Every time she looked at Harriet’s photograph she began thinking like a member of the gentry. And if there was one thing Maxine Doran knew herself not to be, it was a lady. She washed and dressed quickly and then went for a four-mile jog. By the time she reached her apartment again, she was too exhausted to worry about her background or her confusing feelings for Andrew Ford.

  * * *

  Ella stood in front of her office building and took a deep breath. She felt the strength flow into her, felt all the foggy greyness lift as she focused her mind on work. The door slid open and her business smile slipped into place. For an instant she wondered yet again how she could achieve this state of near normality for work but yet her personal life was controlled by what she had come to call her demons. Shrugging off the thought, she walked through the public area, saluting staff and customers, and went into the private office she and Andrew shared. He was on the phone. He waved to her and continued on with his call.

  While Ella was logging onto her computer and checking her appointments for the day, she was half listening to Andrew’s side of the of the phone conversation. When she heard him mention Ballyhaven, she stopped what she was doing and gave the phone call her full attention.

  “Of course, I would have to discuss it with my wife,” Andrew was saying. “It’s in joint ownership.”

  She indicated to him to put the call on speaker but he signalled to her that it was almost at an end.

  “We’ll certainly have a think about it,” he said. “Give me a week or so and then I’ll get back to you.” He laughed at something the caller said before putting down the phone and turning to Ella. “Well, well! You’ll never guess who that was.”

  “Probably not,” she agreed. “You’d better tell me.”

  His smile faded as the dullness of her tone washed over him, dragging his mood down to the murky depths of her self-pitying sadness. He shrugged. “It was Garry Cox.”

  “And? Why were you talking about Ballyhaven? Was it about our site?”

  Andrew frowned. More to the point, why was Garry Cox talking about Ballyhaven? Of what interest could it be to the Cox brothers? Maybe it was time to look again at Ford’s fifty acres in the country.

  “I think there must be some rezoning in the air,” he said slowly, more thinking out loud than answering his wife. “Ballyhaven is forty kilometres outside the city but at the rate the suburbs are expanding that’s no distance. Isn’t that why we bought it in the first place?”

  “We bought it because we had money to invest,” said Ella flatly.

  “Yes. And because fifty acres of scrubland in the middle of nowhere was all we could afford six years ago. Jesus, Ella, what has happened to you? Has your memory been wiped clean of all good things? Can’t you remember the day we went to view the fields? How excited we were, how we felt we had finally made it? Does your life start and end now with the accident?”

  Ella stood and picked up her bag. She walked over to Andrew’s desk and, staring solemnly at him, spoke in a near-whisper. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like. What it’s still like.”

  “Tell
me, for fuck’s sake! How can I know when you won’t even talk to me?”

  “I’m going to see a client now. I expect, when I come back, that you will have got control of your temper.”

  She turned and walked out of the office, leaving her husband no right of reply, no chance to tell her that he had made an appointment for her with a new doctor, or that Garry Cox was interested in buying their fifty acres of agricultural land in Ballyhaven. To hell with her, Andrew thought, as he began to sort paperwork.

  * * *

  Maxine was annoyed with herself. She should have taken this whole week off. The Seychelles job had paid exceptionally well but she was exhausted. Her problem was that she could never turn down an assignment. She was twenty-four now. Soon she would be past her sell-by date in modelling terms. This thought always drove her on. Her retirement scheme was not yet fully funded.

  Reluctantly, she packed her make-up and hairpieces and prepared for her appointment in the studio. This job would not pay much money but the prestige and publicity involved in a feature in Looking Glass magazine more than made up for the lack of bucks. It would be the usual. “How do you stay in shape? What advice would you give young girls starting out on a modelling career?” Run-of-the-mill trivia. Then it would be on to the photo-shoot. That is where Maxine knew she would shine. No matter how tired or down she felt, the camera lens revived her. They had a mutual love affair, she and the camera. A safe, noncommittal relationship.

  As she was about to input the code on her alarm, her phone rang. Very few people had her landline number. It could only be one of a handful of people, any of whom would expect her to answer. She dropped her bag by the door and went back to pick up the phone.