Claustrophobia

by Tracy Ryan

  Pen crammed it back into her carry bag and thought, ‘Somewhere in the bush along the way.’

  ‘What were you throwing into the water?’

  Pen started: how long had Kathleen been watching? She’d not seen her till afterwards.

  ‘Ah – just a little flat piece of bark. I wanted to see if I could skim it, you know, across the surface.’ She knew she must hold Kathleen’s gaze with confidence, despite the doubt flickering in it.

  At last Kathleen smiled and nodded. ‘You’re just a big kid at heart.’

  Hungry from their exertions, they stopped for Devonshire teas before going back to the chalet. The tearooms were imitation colonial, with bushranger prints on the walls, and staff in what passed for period costume. These places never changed. But the scones were huge and fluffy, and the cream overwhelming.

  ‘Like the cream in that Katherine Mansfield story,’ Kathleen said. ‘The one where they have a garden party while somebody’s dying.’

  Pen only vaguely remembered, from school maybe. ‘I thought you were French literature, not English,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, yes, but my mother was a Mansfield devotee – I was named after her, you know. Her real name, Kathleen Beauchamp. Funny how we say ‘English’, since she was a New Zealander.’

  ‘I meant writing in English.’

  ‘Anyway, we read all those stories. She’s wonderful. You should read her. She was bisexual, you know.’

  Pen looked around her: no one had heard. The mob-capped waitress went on serving teas; the other customers went on with their conversations. Why did that word sound so loud?

  ‘Meaning? Is that how – is that how you would describe yourself?’ She was thinking inevitably of Derrick.

  Kathleen patted cream from her lips with a serviette. ‘Isn’t this dinky?’ she said, ‘silver forks and cloth napkins … Well – I suppose so. I haven’t been close to a man for a long time. But I certainly did experiment when I was younger. I just try not to use labels. And you?’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Pen. Which was true. Thinking about any of it made this more real, instead of a brief deviation. One more night, and then they would be back in the ordinary world. She would have to resume her normal behaviour before Derrick came home from camp.

  Act as if nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘One more night,’ Kathleen said now, squeezing the last of the over-stewed tea from the pot, prolonging the moment. ‘I mean one more where you don’t have to hurry off. Where we get to wake up together.’

  Pen was silent. For an instant she thought, ‘I could come clean. Not about everything, but tell her – that I’m not free. Even that I’m married.’ She pondered where that could lead.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – I’m not trying to push you. I know it’s early days yet. And they always say that time apart is healthy for a relationship, don’t they?’ Kathleen smiled and squeezed Pen’s hand across the lacy tablecloth. ‘It’s just that I’ve so enjoyed this little interval.’

  ‘Me too,’ Pen said weakly.

  ‘How do you feel? You don’t say much, Pen.’

  Pen gazed into her large eyes, mesmerised and teetering.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she began. Waited then, as if for Kathleen’s reassuring prompt. But none came. Surely she couldn’t do it. ‘I – I’m not the person you think I am.’

  Kathleen laughed. ‘None of us is what others think, Pen.’

  ‘No, but I’m really not … not a very good person.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Pen faltered, fidgeting, pressing at spilt grains of sugar on her saucer till her fingertips were sore. Her breath felt stale with tannin and fear. Everything would fall apart. If she went further.

  ‘I’m just no good, that’s all.’

  ‘Good enough for me!’ Kathleen said, trying to break the spell. ‘Don’t be morbid, Pen. Sometimes when things are just great, people feel they have to pay, you know. Self-sabotage and all that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Pen was monotone, to stop herself teetering.

  ‘You’ve got a self-esteem thing, and from what you’ve said about growing up with your mum I’m not surprised. She seems pretty down on you. I’m sorry if that’s too blunt. But you know what? You’re exactly fine the way you are.’

  The moment of madness passed. Pen forced a smile.

  ‘If you insist,’ she said, with faint irony.

  ‘I insist!’

  That night she lay awake a long time, contemplating Kathleen who was always, it seemed, a sound sleeper. The bed was firm, but the bedding was all feather-filled, which tightened Pen’s chest and irritated the nape of her neck.

  ‘Just to think,’ Pen mused, ‘I had ideas of smothering with pillows, of somehow getting rid of her.’ And now here she was, utterly trusting, utterly in Pen’s power.

  As Pen was in hers.

  She remembered suddenly an old, musty piece of sheet music in her grandmother’s piano stool, which she’d often rummaged through as a child. There was a picture of Audrey Hepburn on the cover, so it must have been a song from a movie. ‘Fascination’. The lyrics leapt at her: And it might have ended right there at the start …

  Pen knew the tune, too, because Nanna had given her a music box that played it. The sort that had a plastic ballerina with a real net tutu, pirouetting as the music tinkled. Lined with pink satin that eventually tore away from the edges and exposed the rough insides of the cheap, painted wooden box, the stippled metal barrel inside. Pen would wind it over and over, compulsive.

  Fascination, like being held by a serpent’s gaze. Except that this woman was no snake, no tempter, no witch – so far removed from what she had imagined as the trap a youthful Derrick had fallen into.

  Or else if Kathleen were indeed a trap, then Pen too had now fallen in, and no longer possessed the ability to see it.

  She thought, ‘In the morning I go home – home – to my other life.’ It was vertiginous, the chasm that had opened up between the two halves of her terrain. Her head spun, and sleep receded further and further away. She could see no end to it, and no way of things continuing either.

  If only it could all be over. Everything.

  Pen toyed with the edge of her pillow now, in the dark. Suffocation, like she was feeling now. If you were strong enough. A sleeping woman taken by surprise. It might be possible.

  Little Pen flipping her ju-jitsu teacher to the floor.

  Better if you got them drunk first. (Where did that idea come from? A movie?)

  But perhaps a pillow like this was not thick enough.

  Plastic bags. Completely airtight. But how would you do that to anyone without their cooperation?

  It was the same as suicide: no point trying unless it was guaranteed to work.

  But different, too, because you would be left with the body, the whole situation to get rid of.

  Dazed, Pen got up from the bed, shivering, and staggered to the bathroom, locking herself in.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Kathleen called through the door. It was light now, but Pen hadn’t woken. ‘How long have you been up?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘You going to open up? Why did you lock it?’

  Pen pulled the door open, eyes to the floor. ‘Habit, I guess.’

  Kathleen laughed. ‘You live alone, but you lock the bathroom door?’

  ‘Living alone is more reason to lock doors.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘More fool you,’ Pen thought, but there was no pleasure in the thought. She felt a leaden weight of disgust with herself, of shame at the places the night had taken her.

  Maybe this whole business of going against type, of sleeping with another woman, was leading her down a slippery slope to all kinds of evil. But no, that was a cliché and she didn’t believe it.

  She glanced up at the framed print on the bathroom wall, rippled from moisture underneath the glass. All night in the gloom it had look
ed down at her, murky and submarine, till she’d turned the other way. Now in daylight it was only a seaside watercolour, the bland sort of thing you bought from Kmart. She rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Have you been crying?’ Kathleen said, holding Pen’s chin to inspect her face. ‘You look a little puffy.’

  ‘No. I’m fine. I had a bit of trouble sleeping.’

  Kathleen pulled her close. ‘You don’t have to hide it from me, if you’re upset about something.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Pen muttered into her shoulder. Her lips met the satin of Kathleen’s nightshirt, giving her an involuntary shudder. The bathroom’s whiteness was growing more than she could bear.

  ‘You’re cold. Come on, let’s have a hot shower and get rugged up and pack our bags. We might as well get away good and early.’

  ‘You go first, then,’ said Pen, thinking: ‘Her shower is the only time when I can check in with Derrick. Or maybe get rid of that camera.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kathleen smiled, and slipped one hand inside Pen’s singlet. ‘I meant together.’

  The camera would have to wait.

  11

  ‘Where’d you get this?’ Derrick asked. ‘Very swish, I must say.’

  He was up before Pen, dressing for school, rummaging to find a carry bag for some new textbooks he had to take.

  She rose in the bed, blinking. It was the camera. Kathleen’s. She’d forgotten to dump it on the drive home, and it had sat there in the wardrobe a few days now. Probably socks and underwear in the same bag. Why hadn’t she been more careful?

  ‘Work. Belongs to one of the ladies.’ Truth, at least. She paused to gain thinking time. ‘I’m s’posed to find her a new cable and a new card. She lost the card.’

  Derrick bit his lip. ‘Why you?’

  ‘I don’t know. She doesn’t drive, and I offered. I just haven’t got around to it yet.’

  Derrick came closer, pulled the quilt up and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘The woman who couldn’t say no,’ he smiled. ‘When am I going to meet any of these folk?’

  ‘Meet?’

  ‘Well, it seems odd somehow. I mean, you running chores for people I don’t even know.’

  Pen turned her face wearily into the pillow. ‘It’s no big deal, love.’

  ‘You’d better be up, sweetheart. It’s getting on.’ He leaned over and kissed Pen on the forehead. His eyes were wide with all he wasn’t saying. He knew something was amiss, Pen could sense it, but he didn’t know how to broach it without making it worse. Or perhaps he didn’t really want to know what it was. Like Pen herself, not telling him how she’d found his letter to Kathleen …

  She felt a terrible pang.

  ‘Derrick.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you chuck a sickie? Why don’t we both? And just have a day at home together? I feel like – like we barely even get to see each other.’

  Derrick sighed. ‘Yeah, okay – but I can’t just take a sick day, Pen. I’ve got too much on, and there’s no one to cover for me. Not right now.’

  She pouted. Back and forward it went, like ping-pong.

  ‘I missed you that whole time on camp.’

  He looked surprised. ‘But you hardly called.’

  ‘I didn’t want to intrude. I mean, it’s work, isn’t it. But I did miss you.’

  It felt true now.

  ‘I couldn’t actually reach you most of the time,’ Derrick said. ‘Your phone was off.’

  ‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t. Maybe it was playing up.’

  Derrick averted his face, checked his watch. ‘Your mum said she dropped around a couple of times, and you weren’t even here.’

  Pen pushed back the covers indignantly, and grabbed her wrap. ‘She forgets that some of us work for a living.’

  ‘At night?’

  ‘You know I work some nights. She knows it too. What a troublemaker she is – and why have you been talking to Mum, anyway?’

  ‘She was concerned – she rang me, just in case you’d gone along to camp after all.’

  ‘As if it’s any of her business,’ Pen said, heading for the ensuite. ‘Is this some kind of interrogation? I have to get ready.’ She turned on the exhaust fan and the shower taps, flicking her hand back and forward under the spray until the heat was just right.

  Then she stepped in.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Pen,’ Derrick said. He was a hazy outline through the waffled glass, the blur of steam. She was safe, cocooned for the duration of the shower. She would have to think faster, more clearly.

  When she came out of the cubicle Derrick was still sitting on the bed. He beckoned her over and pulled the towel off her.

  ‘I love you, Pen. You are so beautiful. I don’t tell you that often enough.’

  He kissed her belly, her breasts, and rested his cheek on the inside of her thigh. They hadn’t made love since before school camp – ‘before Pemberton,’ Pen thought, and heat welled in her – and for some reason it was urgent and insistent now.

  ‘But I’ve already showered,’ Pen said.

  ‘We can shower again together afterwards.’ Derrick smiled and checked his watch again. ‘It’ll just have to be a quickie.’

  Deja vu. Or mirror image. A doubled thing, like a page with a Rorschach blot. Repeating the action, the shower twosome, Pen felt faithless to neither of them. It was as if she possessed both Derrick and Kathleen in one; as if the pieces of a puzzle finally fitted together.

  At work Maureen called her over, low-voiced, discreet.

  ‘Is everything okay? I know you just had some time off and it’s not my business, but if you’re under some kind of stress I’m happy to help out, that’s all.’

  Pen shook her head. ‘What makes you ask?’

  Maureen put down the files she was sorting and patted a stool for Pen to sit.

  ‘Just that you’ve – there’ve been rather a lot of mistakes. Don’t worry,’ she added hastily, ‘nothing dreadfully serious. It’s just unlike you – you’re so thorough.’

  She’d reshelved a whole lot of books, apparently, that hadn’t been discharged – picked up the wrong trolley or something.

  ‘Nothing we couldn’t sort out – it was only a small bunch.’

  Pen closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘What else?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But it does. You must let me know. I don’t want to create problems for everyone else. I must have been having a bad day.’

  Maureen went cautiously, apologetically, through her little list of Pen-induced mishaps. The things people stored up behind your back! All in the days since Pemberton. It was true she’d been running on autopilot, her mind constantly engaged with managing complexities quite other than the library routine.

  ‘Sorry, Maureen. I’ll get on top of it. It won’t happen again.’

  Maureen laughed, embarrassed. ‘Oh, wait till you start menopause,’ she said. ‘It becomes a way of life, that hazy thing. Hazy and crazy …’

  At least Maureen hadn’t taken it any higher. Pen nodded, thanked her and excused herself, nervous she was about to get a blow-by-blow description of hormone-deficient senior moments. The way these things got nicknamed, as if that made them funny. Menopause! Thank God it should be a long way off yet – she was only thirty-two.

  In the lunch hour Kathleen called in for just a few minutes.

  ‘Semester’s full-on again now,’ she said, ‘and this time exams at the end. So it’s going to be a bit tougher.’

  She was all in white, a soft skirt and a knitted cotton top that grazed the upward curve of her bust and hung lightly. Pen felt woozy to look at her.

  ‘I was hoping you could give me a landline number or something. That way we could chat, in the evenings. That mobile number is wrong, by the way. Or have you changed it, to avoid me?’

  Kathleen was grinning, blithely unaware of the ironies.

  ‘I – I don’t have a landline anymore,’ Pen said. ‘Too expensive, and now
that I’ve got the mobile I don’t really need it.’

  She scribbled down the mobile number for Kathleen, correctly this time. The devil had only a small bag of tricks, and they wouldn’t go on working indefinitely. At least with the mobile she could control access; Derrick wouldn’t pick it up …

  ‘But maybe on the weekend?’ Kathleen said.

  Pen frowned. ‘My mother’s got me busy this weekend.’

  ‘And you’d rather not – combine us?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. Truly. I’ve told you what she’s like.’

  Kathleen shrugged and nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ She placed a hand on Pen’s shoulder, but Pen pulled deftly free of it, conscious of the other library staff, even if they stood at a distance. ‘Maybe the following weekend, then. I’d like to come up for a change. I can’t believe I still haven’t seen your place.’

  Pen pondered that. She could suggest somewhere else when the time arose. And anything could happen between now and then. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  Kathleen turned to go.

  ‘Oh, you haven’t got my camera by any chance, have you? I wanted to print off those shots but I couldn’t find it.’

  Pen shook her head. ‘Maybe it’s still in the car.’

  ‘Hmm. I’ll have to look again.’ She smiled at Pen. ‘Be nice to have something of us together. Hardly feels real now. I miss you when you’re not there.’

  Pen swallowed and looked around again, in case anybody had heard.

  ‘Which is most of the time,’ Kathleen murmured. Then she brightened artificially, almost grimly. ‘Well, I’m off to finish marking the first-years on their subjunctives, or they’ll be on my doorstep any moment. Catch you soon.’

  ‘Catch me,’ Pen thought. Perdition catch my soul … Shakespeare, back at school. Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee. She couldn’t remember the rest, or what it was from. But I do love thee. She’d always thought she knew what love was – married over a decade now, after all. These days she wasn’t so sure.

  When Pen came back from her solitary lunch – a sandwich in a brown paper bag, coffee in a paper cup on the grass at Crawley Bay, walking distance from the library – there was an urgent message on her email.