The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  Polly turns to her. ‘No you’re not, you got through the entry test with ninety-two per cent. And he’s not my lover – at least not yet!’

  ‘It’s pretty romantic, all those emails and then suddenly this. Are you sure it’s what you want, Poll?’

  Polly blushes. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. Past experience suggests – actually yells at me – that I’m a poor judge of character when it comes to men. It also yells that I’m always at my best when not in a relationship. But I need to know more about Leo, and about what we’re like together. I keep telling myself that I know him really well from the emails, but of course I don’t. I only know what he’s chosen to tell me.’

  Joyce nods. ‘Well going there, spending time with him, doesn’t have to have any strings attached if you have doubts.’ She pulls into the kerb, switches off the engine and flicks the switch to open the boot. ‘Just go and have a great time and see what happens. And don’t worry about Stella, we’ll keep an eye on her and when you get back we can work out what to do.’

  They get the bag from the boot, and Polly turns away to the automatic doors into the terminal. Joyce slips back into the driving seat, watching as the doors close behind her and she disappears into the building. A driver waiting to discharge his passenger hoots at her, and she starts the engine and pulls away, out along the slip road onto the highway and back towards home. How weird, she thinks, to fly away at forty-eight hours’ notice, to spend five days in Hong Kong with a man you barely know. She has often envied Polly her freedom to decide things on the spur of the moment, without having to fit in with other people. They are just two years apart in age and from similar, rather conservative middle class families. But Polly’s Hong Kong adventure reminds Joyce of the profound difference between her own life, defined by decades of marriage and family, and Polly’s, defined by the rejection of these and the passionate pursuit of her career. She has been a risk taker in her professional and emotional life, has been battered by both and bounced back, always shaping up to start again. ‘And I’ve always played safe,’ Joyce says aloud, ‘living up to everyone’s expectations, or at least trying to.’ She had known in her teens that what she most wanted was a husband and children, and what she wanted to be was a good wife and mother. When she and Mac had met he was still doing his PhD and she was part way through her Literature degree and hating every moment. She actually felt it was interfering with her love of reading and, much to her parents’ disappointment, she abandoned it and enrolled in a secretarial course at the local business college. Later she’d got a job as junior secretary in the laboratory of a big chemical company and, once he had his PhD, Mac joined the company as a research chemist. The following year they were married and when Ben and, later, Gemma came along, Joyce stayed home. But she often returned to the lab to cover holiday or sick leave. And when the kids left school she had gone back part time. She knew the work like the back of her hand and loved it. By then Mac had progressed to the top of the scientific arm of the business while she was still doing what she had always done. She had liked that sameness: it made her feel competent and valued at home and at work. She and Mac had retired at the same time and he had found all sorts of things he wanted to do: projects around the house, regular fishing trips on a friend’s boat, some serious bushwalking with a former colleague.

  They had bought the cottage in Albany for their retirement years earlier, used it for holidays, loaned it to friends. Several times when they were all at uni, Helen’s boys had gone there with Ben and Gemma, sometimes with various girlfriends. It was only in the last couple of years, when Mac had hinted that it was time to make a move there, that Joyce had begun to feel increasingly restless. She had a sense of time running out, and Albany, much as she loved it, really implied retiring from one sort of life to another.

  ‘We’d really be doing much the same there as we do here,’ Mac had said.

  But to Joyce it didn’t feel that way; there were things she needed to do, she just didn’t know what those things were.

  Time to yourself now, a friend had written in her sixty-third birthday card two years ago. Strike a blow for freedom!

  It was a joke of course but it had resonated just the same.

  As she turns onto the highway Joyce thinks of Polly, checking in her bag and browsing the airport bookshop before taking off into the unknown. I’ve been so predictable, she tells herself, when did I ever take a risk or try something different? Only Gemma really seems to understand how important passing the test is to her. She is desperate to succeed now and to make something valuable from what she has learned.

  ‘That’s really brilliant, Mum, honestly,’ Gemma had said when Joyce had Skyped to tell her. ‘I think it’s a really big achievement, and it’s a whole new start for you, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘I do, I do want that,’ Joyce had said, moved by Gemma’s enthusiasm and the questions she’d asked. ‘I want to prove that I can do something really well, and to make a contribution in some way.’

  Gemma had grinned. ‘Well you do being a mother really well, and a grandmother too, but this is different; it’s about who you want to be now.’

  Gemma was right. For Joyce, signing the letter of acceptance and sending it back seemed enormous, a step into the unknown, a chance to prove herself in a new and different way. Now, as she turns in to Emerald Street, she is looking forward to spending the whole afternoon preparing for the course, getting through the pre-reading, organising herself for four weeks of hard and demanding work. I’d better check on Stella first, though, she tells herself, I’ll start after that. But as she rounds the bend she sees that there, outside the house, is Helen’s car, and Helen herself is walking disconsolately away from the front door.

  Joyce’s heart sinks. The stand-off with Helen had been horrible, but since their lunch Helen has called and turned up at the door several times, needing to talk things through. Now as she spots Joyce’s car the look of relief on her face is obvious. Joyce sighs, switches off the engine, and glances quickly at the text message that has just beeped to announce its arrival on her mobile: Tried calling but you’re not answering. Call me back – I think my thumb might be going septic. So now there’s Stella and Helen to deal with, and Mac and his stupid thumb. ‘You and your thumb will have to wait,’ she says aloud into the silence of the car. And tossing the phone back into her bag, she opens the car door, steps out and leads Helen into the house.

  Chapter Nine

  Once they’re airborne Polly slackens her seatbelt and tries to relax. ‘I wonder if I’m doing the right thing,’ she’d said to Stella this morning. ‘It’s all so sudden.’

  ‘Yes, but what’ve you got to lose?’ Stella had said. ‘A few days and an airfare, just do it. It’s an adventure. Enjoy it, don’t make any commitments, but don’t hold back either.’

  Polly had laughed. ‘Okay, that’s totally confusing. Which is it – maintain my distance or jump headlong in?’

  ‘Both of course,’ Stella had said, ‘whatever seems right at the time. You’re grown up, you’ve handled much bigger things than this. Take photos, and remember everything because I’ll be interrogating you when you get back.’

  ‘You are a rock, Stella,’ Polly had said, hugging her.

  ‘A rapidly eroding one, but I’ll still be standing when you get back.’

  The seatbelt sign flicks off and Polly lowers the back of her seat and looks out onto a great white bed of cloud below. Since the first time she flew as a child she has loved that sight and as she stares at it now she remembers another flight, fifteen years ago, when, flushed with menopausal lust, she had gazed from another aircraft window on a flight from Paris to Cannes, imagining herself in a king-sized bed, with white linen and soft down pillows, with a man she’d met a few weeks earlier. She’d been aching with desire then, and once on the ground could barely contain herself until they got to the hotel. And, like her few previous relationships, some painfully b
rief, a couple lasting even more painfully a few years, it had begun with sizzling sex that, once burnt out, left little worth salvaging among the charred remains.

  ‘Well it’s a good thing you got it out of your system,’ Stella had said when Polly had told her later. ‘We all have to have a crazy encounter or two like that in our lives.’

  And Joyce, listening in amazement, had flushed. ‘I never have. I’ve only ever slept with Mac.’

  And Helen, who was making frittata for lunch, had tightened her lips, and asked if someone could please shift themselves and lay the table.

  Leo’s call, a couple of nights ago, had taken her completely by surprise. The sense of possibility in the email relationship had been intoxicating. She could toy with ideas about where it might lead but now she wonders if she has been playing some sort of game and whether Leo has been playing it too. Well, even if he has he has now raised the stakes. She’d put down the phone feeling both excited and confused.

  ‘I hope you said yes,’ Alistair had said when she called him half an hour later. ‘Have fun, take a risk. You can’t live in that email bubble forever.’

  Polly closes her eyes against the white cloud. No lust this time; the possibility of desire but a different and more significant sense of connection. It was, as she had said to Alistair, a feeling that Leo had seen who she really was, rather than someone he wanted her to be. Perhaps, she allows herself to think now, perhaps this is actually the start of something really grown up and lasting.

  *

  Leo arrives at the airport uncharacteristically early. He orders a coffee and perches on a stool to drink it. Does he really want this – whatever it is – a friendship, a love affair, a romantic adventure? Does it really matter? He would like to tell himself it does not, that he could take it or leave it, but in fact he knows that he wants it a lot. Not just wants it but needs it. Needs the confirmation of himself as a man whom women still find attractive. At his age, he thinks, men do not look good with much younger women hanging on their arms. But to have a good looking, intelligent woman of a similar age or a little younger adds a certain cachet. Without a partner one could possibly look like a bit of a loser. And anyway, sixty-seven is not an age to be without love, but love is a bit of a puzzle. He remembers Prince Charles, who when asked if he was in love with Diana had said ‘of course, whatever that means’. A man after my own heart, Leo had thought at the time, and he has subsequently drawn comfort from the knowledge that he and HRH are as one on this subject. It’s all very complicated in his experience so distance may prove to deliver all the benefits and none of the disadvantages. He weighs all this up, just as he weighs up his professional life – it’s like a balance sheet. He’s always imagined himself ageing in style while doing just the same things he’s been doing for years: working to a greater or lesser degree, being in demand, constantly refreshing his tool kit of commentary with new ideas and arguments, all the time acquiring increasing gravitas. But there have been times lately when he has felt he could be losing his grip. A couple of significant public forums in which he’s long been included have passed him by this year. People no longer respond to his emails with quite the same enthusiasm as they once did. He is plagued by the fear of becoming irrelevant, and concerned about his ability to grow old alone.

  Finishing his coffee he strolls towards the arrivals area and waits, leaning on the metal guard rail, shifting his weight from one foot to another, wondering what he looks like to the rest of the crowd waiting for their loved ones or business contacts to stride out pushing their trolleys. But no one is looking at him, no one is remotely interested in him, no one gives a fuck about him. A cold bolt of fear punches him in the stomach and he straightens up and breathes deeply to calm himself. And it’s then that he knows that he really needs this thing with Polly, this Relationship Thing, to work, to anchor him without intruding on the rest of his life.

  Polly doesn’t have a trolley, just a bag slung over her shoulder and a small suitcase on wheels, and the sight of this delights Leo. He has loathed travelling with women’s luggage: loathed the way they never know whether or not they’ve packed what they need, and in which case, loathed lugging huge suitcases into taxis and stepping over them on the floors of hotel bedrooms. But Polly has only come for a few days, so perhaps this is not a reliable indication of seriously efficient packing.

  She smiles at him and he remembers Edinburgh, the hotel passage, the walk in the snow, and he forces himself upwards and outwards towards the man he knows he can be, confident, articulate, charming, a lot smarter than most, and he steps forward to meet her. As they walk towards the taxi rank Polly slips her arm through his. It’s a good sign, but insufficient to liberate either of them from the suddenly paralysing awkwardness of being together. Their history of emails now seems like an encumbrance; there is almost too much information in this shift from the keyboard to being face to face.

  ‘This all feels very strange,’ Polly says later, as the cab inches its way through dense traffic and yellowish fog.

  ‘I know,’ Leo says, still unnerved by the reality of being with her. He’s accustomed to shining, to wielding an upper hand, to knowing that his charm will carry him through. Panic tightens his chest, and in that moment he wants to back off, undo the last forty-eight hours, and calmly reinstate the original plan in which he would, shortly, be landing at Heathrow and heading for home. Sweat prickles his skin.

  He turns to look at Polly. Her face is pale, her mouth tightly set. She loosens the scarf around her neck, closes her eyes and he leans across her to flick the window button.

  ‘Do you need some air?’

  She nods as fog floats in to the cab and they both splutter and cough.

  ‘Window, no window,’ the driver shouts over his shoulder. ‘Very bad, no window.’

  And thankfully they both laugh and Leo flicks the window back up and puts an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Nearly there now.’

  ‘I feel ridiculous,’ Polly says suddenly. ‘I don’t know what to do, how to be. I don’t know what you expect – and worse still, I don’t even know what I expect.’

  ‘Me neither,’ he says, ‘I only know what I hope for.’ And he starts to laugh. ‘Let’s just take it slowly, have a drink and some dinner somewhere, a walk maybe . . . let’s just try to be normal. One step at a time.’

  She looks at him for a long moment as the taxi pulls up outside the hotel. ‘I’m glad I came,’ she says, ‘I’m glad to be here with you even though it feels so weird.’

  *

  Hours later Polly wakes and knows instantly that she is not at home. At home the shifting shadows of the peppermint tree against the night sky dance between the slats of the wooden blind and scatter themselves across her bedroom ceiling. But here it’s different; here the city lights fill the darkness with a pale, rosy glow that sneaks between the half-open curtains. Polly lies perfectly still in the big white bed and listens to the sound of Leo’s breathing. The evidence so far is that he is a sound sleeper, albeit a bit of a doona hog, but of course it’s really too early to make judgements. It’s strange to be sharing a bed again; she’s grown accustomed to sleeping alone and it took her a long time to get to sleep tonight. Now, a couple of hours later, she is awake again, acutely aware of him, transported back to exhausting, disturbed nights when the presence of another person determined how well and how long she slept.

  What am I doing here? She wonders. Why am I doing what I swore I’d never do again? Both Stella and Joyce had thoughtfully avoided reminding her of this vow, but she knows they remember it – they had to because she’d said it so often, and despite their restraint she’d seen it in their faces.

  Earlier she had discovered that it is still possible to feel desire, but that her attention span for sex is considerably shorter than it used to be. In one way it was a relief that Leo too appeared to be struggling. A few weeks ago in an email he had described how he wanted
to make love to her slowly and tenderly, and this he had done, satisfying her but unable to take himself through the last lap.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he’d said eventually. ‘Not just physically tired but I’ve had a lot to cope with recently – work, my sister’s condition . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she’d told him. And she had gone on to talk of how affection and tenderness are far more important to her at this time of life. ‘Intimacy has never had to include sex for me,’ she explained. ‘It’s about physical, intellectual and emotional closeness.’

  Polly leans up on one elbow now, rests her head on her hand, and looks at Leo, studying the shape of his head, the bristle of his silvery number two haircut, the line of his jaw. With two fingers she traces the curve of his chin, then stops as he twitches and shifts his position. In a few days’ time, she thinks, I will be on a flight home, back to the people I love, back in my little house, my writing and the lives of women long dead. I can leave this place, this adventure behind as a delightful interlude or take it with me as the start of something important.

  ‘I love you, Polly,’ Leo had said earlier. She thinks he meant it although his tone lacked conviction or intensity, as though he was not particularly at ease with either the words or perhaps the sentiment. Can she bear to do this again, to risk letting into her life someone who may ride through it scattering everything that matters to her in his wake?

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to change anything,’ he had said later. ‘I don’t expect you to give up your life. We can have a future together in separate countries, moving back and forth, sometimes together, sometimes apart.’

  ‘We’re at an age when most people are planning to settle down, not to career back and forth across continents several times a year,’ she’d said. ‘Besides, I can’t really afford that.’

  ‘I can afford it for both of us,’ he’d said. ‘It would still have permanence, commitment, but also the independence which we both value.’