by Anna George
An hour later, Amelia’s bedtime passed and their pictures were sticky-taped to the wall. He was still in his suit and she was still in her uniform when Nat arrived in a jumble of pizza and groceries. We all run late sometimes, he thought, feeling generous. But then he saw his new wife’s enormous pupils and smelled her hair. Had it not been for that sense of spaciousness and Amelia’s wary silence, he would’ve smashed something.
‘Honey,’ said Natasha, ‘let’s eat.’
With a furtive glance at Dave, Amelia nodded.
That night, he and Natasha brawled for two hours. What she took in his absence, who she was with or when she fed her daughter were none of his business, apparently. Around midnight, exhausted, he checked on Amelia to find her upside down on her pink bed. Tucking her in again, he’d felt sick at the thought of what she understood, and of his negligible rights as her stepfather.
But that was the past, he told himself, and he was free of it. Shut out of it. The digital clock clicked over to 2.44 a.m. He rested a hand on the sleeping woman beside him, as if to draw strength from her. She was, he told himself, everything he’d hoped Nat would have become with his help. Together, he and Elle could never be as dangerous as he and Nat became. He was sure of that. Healthy and high-functioning, Elle was there for him. Parenthood, he told himself, would be the making of them. Best of all, this time, the kids would be his.
14
Over breakfast the following Monday, Dave knew that he needed to act. One thing was clear: love for him was rare and Elle was his last chance at it. No matter how uncomfortable he felt, if he wanted a companion for life, he mustn’t stuff this up. She was the only woman who’d taken the time to know him and love him. The only woman he’d ever admired: for her intelligence, passion and talent. But with her shoot about to begin, he could feel her heightened energy, her soaring adrenalin. Soon she’d be both further out of reach and more demanding than ever. Something major was needed before he smashed the lot.
He saw the coming weekend as his last opportunity before she was completely consumed by her film. Oh so casually, he suggested they go away. At first, she laughed. It was ‘impossible’, she said; Mira would kill her. But when he insisted that they needed quality, uninterrupted time together, at least once in the next seven weeks, she sobered. When he watered it down to one night on the Mornington Peninsula and promised that Saturday would be a much-needed day of rest, breakfast in bed, massage, he could see her weighing it up.
‘Tell Mira you need some R&R before the shoot,’ he said.
‘Oh, David.’
‘You’ll feel better for it,’ he said, ‘and we need it.’
To his surprise and probably hers, she caved. On the conditions that she’d choose their Friday-night accommodation, they’d be back by noon Saturday, and the budget was hers, not his. Within a day, he’d read up on Red Hill and booked masseuses. By the Wednesday, she’d managed to find a cottage. By Thursday, he was nervous, and wondering whether he could do it.
At 6 a.m. Friday morning, he dropped three hundred dollars by her bedside table. ‘Buy some wicked stuff we can cook for brekkie,’ he wrote on a sticky note. Lord knew she was busy but they had to eat. When he returned that night, he saw she’d packed his favourite French cheeses and Turkish bread, and her orange chocolate, plus both their bags. He stuck his head into her study. A circle of light was falling across her laptop, script and torso.
‘Your front door was wide open again.’ He shook his head. ‘What’re you doing in here?’
She stood and trotted to him, kissed his lips. ‘Some last-minute tinkering after today’s final read-through.’
He took in the haloed script. It was like a sponge cake now, with blue, pink and yellow pages. ‘For God’s sake, if it’s not working now, it never will. Let it go.’ His tone, he realised, was resentful. And maybe hurt.
She slunk back to her seat. ‘Actually, I’m happy. I was just finishing.’
Kicking off his lace-ups, he left them like a trip-hazard on the floorboards, then strode into the shadows.
‘Is everything all right?’ she said, following.
‘Oh yeah, you’ve been chatting with actors and tinkering,’ he said, ‘while I’ve been jiving with bankers since breakfast.’
He’d learned a decade ago that Friday nights were not his best. The working week tended to erode his personality. He thought she would’ve recognised the signs, given her Freeman & Milne days, and let him be. But no. He peered along the hall to her lounge room. He felt like hiding in the television.
‘I stink,’ he said. ‘I need a shower.’
In the ensuite, his skin felt hot and gritty. And it itched. He longed to shed the lot of it. She was still behind him when he stepped into the shower. She sat on the bath, with her left foot jiggling.
As the minutes passed, steam billowed. The tiles began to sweat.
‘I’ll pack the car,’ she said, springing up. ‘Let me know when you’re ready.’
She was at the door when he yanked the shower screen open; scorching water sprayed. ‘I’m not in the mood for much tonight.’
She blinked through the mushroom clouds of steam. ‘This was your idea, you know. I’m happy to cancel.’
‘Yeah, okay.’ When her face fell, he was pleased. She seemed genuinely torn.
‘Actually, Mira thinks Mum’s here for the weekend. I’ve got an eighteen-hour leave pass. I could do with a massage.’
David scrubbed his hair with soap and froth flew. ‘Okay, if you insist. But I don’t want to drive.’
‘Good, because I want to.’ She paused. ‘Did you meet with Alex for lunch?’
Despite her ridiculous schedule, she remembered his stuff better than he did. ‘His board wants to shake things up. There’s talk we might have to tender for Leonidas’ business.’
‘But that’s a first, isn’t it? What’s behind that?’ she said.
Through soapy water, he bared his teeth in a brief smile. ‘They reckon we’re too expensive. Don’t worry, Alex’s got my back. It probably won’t happen.’ He could see another question coming. ‘I don’t want to go into it.’
‘Oh, okay.’ She tried for a sunny smile. But there was confusion in her face now. Seeing it, he felt better.
Twenty minutes later he was more comfortable, dressed in a red windcheater, ugg boots and old blue jeans. He was walking, empty-handed, to the car when he felt her eyes upon his rump. Her desire never let up.
‘That’s so much better,’ she said.
‘Yeah, okay.’
She clambered into the driver’s seat. He opened the boot then stopped. ‘What’ve you done?’
‘I was in a hurry.’
In a jumble were their bags, a car fridge, a picnic basket, her bloody DVDs, massage oil, candles, a box of Scrabble and groceries. Wedged to one side were her laptop and notepads. On top was a box of charcoals and a roll of paper.
She appeared beside him. ‘Oh, that was meant to be a surprise.’
He glared at the mess, the stupid box of charcoals.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘We’re not going like this.’
He yanked things from the boot, like a dog digging a hole, stacking them behind him on Tennyson Street. He took out a camera, her script and her storyboard roughs, and looked at her. She held his stare but said nothing. He took out her laptop and notepads and that box of charcoals, and put them inside the house. It took him twenty minutes to repack the car. All the while, he was double-handling the very things he’d wanted to leave behind.
The road was like a tunnel in the country dark. Eucalypts fenced both sides of the unmade surface and met overhead. They parted only to allow the crossing of other narrow tunnels. He kept his face to the window and his shoulder twisted from her. He’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to rest. But whenever he shut his eyes, he thought of what he planned to say, and how she might respond. He wondered how soon they could start a family. He felt like a bag of birds, and bloody cross.
Althou
gh she was driving carefully at 95 kilometres an hour, he could see red-brown dust pouring from his car like smoke. Red Hill should’ve been a seventy-minute drive from Melbourne but they’d been going for ninety minutes. They hadn’t spoken, other than to quibble over their route. He was responsible for that, although they’d both realised fairly quickly she could read maps better than he could. Thanks to his last direction, they’d taken a short cut on an unmade road and were now backtracking.
His telephone rang, loud in the quiet, and he jerked it to his ear. ‘What?’
Elle turned sharply towards him.
‘No.’ He hung up and tossed his phone to his feet. Seeing her concern, he regretted his asperity.
‘Not work again?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Natasha.’
‘What does she want?’
‘The usual: money. And she’s trashed.’
He could see her surprise and questions forming. Her desire to meet his ex-wife and stepdaughter was a pain, but she wouldn’t raise it tonight. The two were like oil and water and neither of them needed to know it. He rubbed his forehead.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ve got a headache.’
‘Again?’
‘Yeah.’
Their uneasy silence returned. Ahead, a tin-shed hotel marked an intersection of tree-lined paddocks. Elle slowed, waiting for his direction until they were at a standstill by the gravel lot. In the car park, men were pouring out of the pub, like bull ants streaming from a nest. Utes roared to life, lights blinked on. In his car, Dave stared blankly at the map on his iPhone. Beside him, Elle was checking her mirror for rear traffic. When the nearest ute tooted, Dave jumped. Looking up, he saw that the Merc was blocking a queue of cars at the lot’s exit. He also saw the first driver’s large, angry fist.
‘Settle down, mate,’ said Dave.
The pink-faced driver tossed a can of beer at Dave’s baby-blue coupe.
‘Drive,’ Dave said, slumping into his seat. ‘Right.’
Bemused, Elle accelerated, made the turn. Unobstructed, the utes fishtailed from the car park and followed – every one of them. The darkness at the Merc’s rear was broken now by a train of lights and tooting horns. Dave felt a clamp in his throat as he kicked off his ugg boots. Soon they were cruising at 95 again.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘They’re only boys.’ She was staring into the tunnel of eucalypts ahead.
‘It’s not all right,’ he snapped. ‘We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.’
She laughed. Nerves, he supposed, but still he glared. She frowned and eyed her mirror. Each car held two or three men. They were so near, Dave could see the brand of their beer: XXXX. Even so, she maintained her infuriating, law-abiding speed. Abruptly, one car swerved to travel beside them.
‘Fuck!’ said Dave. Low in his seat, he tried to ignore the jeers. It seemed the hoons were pissed to see a woman at the wheel. ‘Go on,’ he barked to Elle. ‘Go!’ Dave felt the vintage Mercedes weave on the narrow road. Ahead of them was yet another hill. ‘Elle!’
Elle was eyeing the speedo and, in her mirror, the four trailing cars. Then the needle on the speedo rose. Thank God. The car surged. The ute, caught off-guard, floundered as the road began to rise. It returned to its lane.
Dave could feel his pulse in his head. He looked from the car in the side mirror to the rising speedo. The leading ute was still tailgating, its occupants now imitating Elle’s upright, ten-and-two driving posture. But she didn’t slow. And his old car managed it. Soon they were cresting a hill at 140. Ahead, the darkness was cut by the headlights of an approaching sedan. The sedan, innocuous enough, broke the mood. Dave watched as the gap between the convoy and the Merc gradually grew. Elle kept her foot down as, one by one, the utilities turned off.
‘Morons,’ he muttered.
Sitting up with a squeak of leather, he adjusted his jeans. He checked his mirror a final time. The road in their wake was comfortingly dark. His headache ebbed. In the silence, Elle let the car slow and Dave felt his face colour. It was possible he’d overreacted. In the cabin, he felt Elle’s eyes on his face. ‘No,’ she said, ‘that was awful. I’m sorry I laughed.’
He looked at her then, closely, for perhaps the first time all night. His ways, foreign to so many, she took the time to understand and accept. He felt it and she felt it. For the first time in days, he felt like kissing her. He leaned across the chasm created by their seats but his belt locked and their lips couldn’t touch. Abruptly, she pulled back as the road terminated at another T-intersection and a paddock. Their cottage was close. The eucalypts set off in perpendicular lines. Elle squinted at her notes, scribbled on an envelope.
It turned out that their weekender was only 400 metres to the south. Elle stopped at a wire gate, got out and, finding it padlocked, neatly scaled the fence. In the fuse box, she was to find a set of keys. From the car, Dave assessed the house. It was a 1960s rectangular brick-veneer, with the character of a rubber thong: a home reminiscent of his parents’ in suburban Moorabbin. In the middle of a wine property four kilometres from the centre of Red Hill. With one glance, Dave knew that it was a mistake. Her aversion to luxury staggered him. While she had an eye for beauty, she had no interest in buying it. He had to drag himself out of the car.
Judging by a monstrous wall of curtains, large windows ran the length of the open-plan living–dining area. He peered behind the orange and brown stripes but couldn’t see a thing: just a paddock in shadow and blowflies on the sill. The kitchen and lounge room looked to have been renovated in the eighties and forgotten. The beige laminate bench was scratched, the bar stools antique Ikea. It was both familiar and not as he’d hoped.
His fingers were shaking as he put his travel bag and one box onto the kitchen’s black and white faux tiles. He wandered through the big, high-ceilinged rooms and tried to get his bearings. ‘Not enough air in here,’ he mumbled. ‘Dodgy deadlock.’ As she unpacked linen, wine, toiletries, he locked and re-locked all the doors: double glass sliding, flywire, masonite, security. Once the car was empty she prepared plates of antipasto which they ate quietly. Afterwards she made the king-sized bed; and he felt worse. He tried to ignore the flap of the linen as he jiggled the double locks, chains and bolts. Long after the bed was made, he was still at it. He heard her call to him once – not with insistence, more, probably, because normal couples spoke to each other. He heard her try again. When he answered, his voice was small. ‘I’m reading on the couch.’
‘Oh, okay. I’m going to bed.’
Dave sank into the brown velveteen couch. In an ugly house in the middle of a paddock, his courage was deserting him. Nothing, he realised, had changed.
He woke up on the sofa around six, disorientated and cold. He propped on his elbow as something nearby mooed at him. He scratched his hair. What a shocker of a trip. But it could’ve been worse, he supposed. They could’ve been forced to stop. He rubbed his face to get rid of the thought, but it was too late. He could see himself roadside, blindly throwing punches at those hoons.
He waited until seven before tiptoeing into the bedroom. In his hands was a glass bowl of raw eggs. He paused at the door. ‘Up you get, sleepyhead.’
She was stretched across the bed on her stomach. Her hair was sticking up, her right arm reaching to his side of the mattress.
‘It’s all ready,’ he said quickly. ‘Hup, hup.’
Elle rolled over and yawned, her eyes closed. ‘Where have you been?’
Though he knew she meant overnight, he said, ‘Cooking.’ Since six, he’d been hoping she’d come looking for him; that he could make up the ground he’d lost. When she hadn’t, though his head hurt, he’d decided to get to work. For half an hour he’d been tap-tap-tapping in the kitchen, and feeling better for it. The fat blade of the knife had been moving smoothly. He’d chopped from the thickest end, as she’d taught him. He’d watched the mushrooms form semicircles; the spring onions, rings; the cherry tomatoes, cute little caps. He’d watche
d, heartened, until finally, he needed the last ingredient for his omelette.
He knew she enjoyed her rare sleep-in and he knew her thoughts on raw eggs. She couldn’t stand the viscous white, the clear and stringy gunk. When she snuggled into the covers, he knew he had to act.
‘Oh no, you don’t!’ he said.
He streaked towards her, his penis bouncing with his laughter, the bowl of eggs thrust out.
‘These are waiting for you to beat them, sweetheart. Up you get.’
A smile parted her lips, opened her eyes. ‘Take that thing away. You’ll spill it.’ The sound of her voice was a relief.
He sprang onto the bed and straddled her. He swayed from leg to leg, swirling the eggs. Under the doona, she watched, repulsed, as a yolk broke.
‘Hop off, you,’ she said.
Keeping the bowl high, he bent to tickle her. She crawled beneath the doona and through his legs to run, in her T-shirt, into the lounge room. He and his eggs chased her.
‘Nothing to be scared of,’ he called. ‘There’re only six. With one feather and two globs of blood.’
She was grinning, hiding behind the geriatric television. It swivelled on its stand as he crept towards her, and she went with it. He lunged, the eggs swirling, beating themselves. He was giggling like a kid. Spinning the TV, Elle made a run for it across the slate tiles. He sprang to block her. He was face to face with her now, the bowl above her head. A devilish gleam in her eyes.
