by Wendy Harmer
At the mention of ‘men’s group’ Claire could feel herself taken over by a rage beyond reason. ‘Men’s group! Oh, now I get it! So you could all reaffirm your victim status. Your “nice guys never get an even break” pathology!’
‘As a matter of fact, we weren’t talking about that at all. We were talking about the challenges a marriage faces when that flush of passion dies. Because then it has to be replaced by . . .’
‘Is that what we’re in? A dead, passionless marriage?’
‘No, no, no—that’s not what I’m saying! But inevitably . . . inevitably it changes. You put kids and kitchen sinks and middle age together and every marriage is tested. And you don’t throw it away. You have to move through that and into another place where the love is deeper and you both—’
‘I can’t live without passion, Charlie. I might as well be dead!’
‘WELL, GO AND HAVE AN AFFAIR THEN! GO ON! JUST CHUCK IT ALL AWAY BECAUSE YOU WANT FIREWORKS AND BELLS RINGING EVERY NIGHT! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT!’
Now Charlie was on his feet standing over Claire. She stood her ground and spoke quietly with all the menace she could muster. ‘Well maybe I will have an affair.’
‘OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, CLAIRE! GROW UP. JUST FUCKING GROW UP!’
‘I’m going to bed,’ Claire cried. She burst into tears and rushed from the room, just like the little girl Charlie accused her of being.
When Charlie came to bed that night, Claire was wearing one of his old T-shirts. She was curled up away from him with her hands covering her bald patch. The waxing she’d had, which was supposed to ignite some erotic bonfire, now seemed like a damp, pathetic joke.
Sunday
The First Day of the
Rest of Claire’s Life
When Claire got out of bed on Sunday, Charlie and Madeline had already left to spend the day with Grandma Wallace. The overcast day and dark seas matched Claire’s mood. Her Connor fantasy had been switched off and the burning fire of desire was extinguished. There was just grey ash.
She wouldn’t ring him today. She wouldn’t even say his name anymore. The thought of Rose and Dermott finding out made her feel nauseous again. Maybe he’d already told them.
‘Hey, guess what, guys? I’m going to fuck your mum!’
Claire found her mobile phone and switched it off. She knew what Charlie had said last night was right. She had to grow up. But did that also mean she had to grow old? She thought back to last Sunday morning when the encounter with ( . . . ) had made her feel so alive. What was it all about? Why did she feel so alive then, and so dead now? Time to dig, she told herself. Time to dig deep, Claire, and answer all the questions waiting there below the surface.
She imagined herself back in therapy. Although it had been more than ten years since she’d sat in the chair in Hope’s front room, Claire had kept up the habit of self-analysis. She was calm and logical. These were two of her best qualities. She sat at a small writing table near the bedroom window and took out a notepad and pen. The first thing she wrote was:
decline in fertility = decline in passion?
Maybe, she thought. Maybe they were the same thing. You heard all the stories about loss of libido and so much of who Claire was was bound up in her sexuality. Like most women? While she knew all too well that the price of passion was pain, was the absence of passion peace? Or death? Would she find some way through the rapids to a mythical, still lake of bottomless love? Or would it just feel like she was becalmed? Going nowhere? Or worse—up to her neck in mud?
She didn’t have any answers to this question. Just more questions. The next thing she wrote was:
frightened of being old + ugly?
Yes, yes, yes. Of course she was. Her first memory was of being told she was beautiful. She was Dad’s white-skinned Claire of the Moon. Green-eyed, chestnut-haired Claire. Now she went to the hairdressers to have her hair dyed. She needed reading glasses. She felt she was fading. The colour was draining out of her before her very eyes. One day her singing voice would be gone too, and then what would she have to recommend her?
Claire wondered whether in fact her whole professional life had been just a musical sex act. The reviews she got spent a good deal of time talking about her sex appeal. She was ‘playful’, ‘sultry’, ‘seductive’, ‘alluring’. How much longer could she pull that off? For Claire’s whole life she had been able to turn a man’s head. She’d always felt she could guide a conversation her way with a toss of her hair, a languorous crossing of her long legs. Without that, what? Maybe move to Europe where they appreciated older women? Live next to the Eiffel Tower and have a lover on a permanent basis? Ridiculous. And this thought brought her to her next question:
one partner = boredom?
What was it about sex with someone new? Well, it wasn’t just the sex, although the feel of new skin—the surprise of a new body—was always thrilling. But it was more than that. It was a way to get to know someone at the most basic level. More than the sex, she liked the lying there afterwards. The instant intimacy in that newly created space between two people. Who was he? How did he think? What did he think of her? And, if she was honest, there was the satisfaction of bedding the brightest and best looking. She liked to mentally stick a small flag of conquest in their navels. Another dark continent explored. And so many new roads to take!
Although she sometimes regretted the experience or felt embarrassed, she didn’t feel guilty. She never wasted time on guilt. There was only the chance to learn something new about herself. So . . . did being with one man mean that her adventures of exploration were over? Then she wrote:
beyond sex, where?
When Claire thought about it, her whole life had been in thrall to men. But that’s what being female was all about. Unless you were lucky (unlucky?) enough to be a lesbian. So if you didn’t need sex anymore to procreate and your libido declined so you didn’t think about sex anymore, was there a new place you went to where men didn’t exist?
Like Planet Period and Planet Pregnancy and Planet Menopause, was there a Sexless Planet, where you went and learned embroidery or studied Ancient Latin or learned the piano? All the things you had ever wanted to do without men interrupting you. Was this a place where you became wise? And if it was, how come so few old women Claire knew had ever navigated their way there?
Her next question was just two words:
what now?
Claire knew the answer to this one at least. It was ‘let go’. Let go and the answers would come. At least now she knew the questions.
So she was sitting by the window looking out to sea thinking about all this when the phone rang.
‘Hello.’
‘Claire, it’s Dad.’
This was unusual. It was always her mother who rang, and handed the phone to her father as if it was some new-fangled contraption he had no notion of.
‘Dad, is anything wrong?’
‘It’s your mother . . .’
Claire’s eyeballs hardened in her head like two green marbles. Her entire body solidified into a block of fear as she waited for the news she most dreaded.
‘I think she’s having another affair.’
Claire shook her head in an attempt to get all the gears in her brain to mesh and form a coherent thought: WHAT? What do you mean AFFAIR? What do you mean ANOTHER? What do you mean MUM? These were three words which shouldn’t be found in the same universe together, let alone the same sentence. For the umpteenth time in her life, Claire felt like giving her father a good shake.
‘DAD—SHE’S SEVENTY YEARS OLD!’
Her father’s voice was trembling and small, as if he had handed the phone to a mouse.
‘I know, I know. But your mother’s an attractive woman, Claire. And a husband always knows these things. It’s Clive Sinclair from the surf-lifesaving club. He drives a Lexus.’
‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, DAD. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT CAR HE DRIVES! IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT CAR ANYONE DRIVES! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?’
/> ‘Please don’t swear, love.’
‘Oh gawd!’ Claire threw herself into a chair. ‘Alright, Dad, sorry. Let’s just take this slowly. I presume Mum isn’t there?’
‘No. She’s gone to see him again.’
‘It’s eleven o’clock on Sunday morning! I really don’t think she’ll be having a hot affair over morning tea. You’re losing it, Dad, you really are. And, anyway, what do you mean—another affair?’
‘The first one was in 1982. About eighteen months after you and Ben got married. Douglas was at university and Louise was living in London. I didn’t ever tell anyone. There was no one in the house left to tell.’
‘Who did she have this affair with?’
‘Monty La Marr. Look, I can’t talk now, Claire, she’s just come in the front door. Can you come up? I know it’s short notice, but I . . . and I know I’ve never asked you before . . . I’d really like to get your advice. You’re a grown woman now and you know about these things . . .’
‘Of course I’ll come, Dad. I’ll fly up tomorrow morning after I drop Madeline at school. I’ll ring you from the airport, OK?’
‘That would be good, love. Thank you.’
‘Bye, Dad—I love you.’
‘I love you too, darling.’
Claire stood by the phone and couldn’t think what to do next. If Charlie had been in the house she would have run to tell him. Instead she decided to take a bath. It was her favourite place to think.
As the water ran she tried to imagine her mother having an affair. Impossible. But then again, she would have been forty-seven in 1982, only two years older than Claire was now. She walked back into the bedroom and found a photograph album in the bottom of the wardrobe. She turned to a family portrait taken on the day of her marriage to Ben. There was Mum, looking like Linda Evans playing Krystle Carrington in Dynasty. She was wearing a sky-blue ruched jersey dress with shoulder pads as vast as the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Big hair, frosty pink lipstick and matching fingernails. She looked amazing for a woman in her mid-forties. More than could be said for Dad in his tuxedo—he looked more like a rumpled Jed Clampett than Blake Carrington.
But Monty La Marr? From the famous Marie and Monty La Marr who lived next door? Claire tried to imagine June and Monty having a go at each other in the kitchen during a break in one of their marathon games of canasta. She imagined Ron and Marie sitting there sipping moselle and waiting for them to reappear, flushed and bright-eyed with a plate of chicken liver pâté and Jatz crackers. Jesus, it didn’t bear thinking about! Still, maybe it wasn’t that far-fetched. Maybe she did have an affair and she’d passed the infidelity gene on to her daughter. But could she be doing it again now?
There was no doubt that June took care of herself. She was an infuriatingly vain woman. You could not calculate the number of hours which had been consumed as Claire and her sister were dragged around dress shops when they were young. June was always perfectly turned out, manicured, bejewelled, coiffed, on a permanent diet, still a size ten. She could easily pass for . . . what? Sixty-five? Sixty?
And it was also true that Ron looked older than his seventy-five years. June delighted in telling the story that one day Ron had been spotted with a young blonde half his age, when it had actually been his wife. But were there any eligible men June’s age in Surfers? If her mother had found one, Claire could only marvel. There must be fifty single women over seventy to every available man. Claire was sure there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation, once she got to Surfers Paradise. Which of course was only twenty minutes away from . . . Kirra Beach.
Lying back in the bath, Claire looked down at the breasts topped with fawn nipples just cresting the vanilla-scented bubbles. They looked like that French dessert Oeufs à la Neige, eggs in the snow. Her red toenails were a bunch of cherries. She was edible. Beautiful. God bless the Sellwyn genes. Was she vain, like her mother, or just self-assured of her own desirability?
She ran her hands over her body and down to that unfamiliar bare patch below. She was starting to like the feel of it. She’d never realised how soft the skin was under all that hair. It was the same soft velvety texture as . . . go on, Claire, give up, think about him . . . the head of a penis.
She groaned and slid under the water. Of course, from the moment her father had asked her to come up to Queensland Claire had been thinking about him. She stroked herself and felt her clitoris come alive with the silent mantra of his name. Go on. Say it again. Connor.
Claire stood up out of the bath and reached for a towel. She padded into the bedroom, climbed back into bed and pulled the rumpled sheets over her head. Her skin was still damp and she made her own little sauna under there. From her toes to her cheeks she could feel herself becoming warmer. She could see her skin turning rosy pink.
‘Oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,’ she sighed into the pillow. Her fingers were cupping and caressing the unfamiliar smoothness. So, so soft, so warm, so slippery, so—
‘Hello, what have we got here?’ Claire saw Charlie looking down at her as he slowly turned back the sheet to reveal her startled eyes.
‘What are you doing home?’ This sharp interrogation came out of Claire’s mouth before she could think about it.
Charlie didn’t respond to her tone, but kept talking in that deeper-than-dark-chocolate voice that signalled to Claire exactly what was on his mind. It was a voice no one on the radio had ever heard, except maybe when he had interviewed Tina Turner.
‘Well, Maddie and her grandmother have gone to the movies so I thought I’d come home and fuck my wife for the afternoon.’
‘What!’
Claire watched as Charlie started to peel off his clothes. His leather jacket and T-shirt were off in one movement. His jeans, shoes and socks off in the next.
‘Remember how we used to do that, Claire? Spend a rainy Sunday afternoon in bed together?’
Now he was down to his underpants and Claire could see the unmistakable outline of an erection. Uh-oh! Her hands suddenly flew to her miserable postage stamp of hair.
‘I was . . . I was just getting out of bed. How about I make us some lunch?’
‘I know what I want for lunch,’ Charlie growled. It was a line straight out of a porno movie. This wasn’t like Charlie! Not at all. He was crawling across the bed on all fours with a hungry look in his eyes.
‘You’re lying in bed thinking about him, aren’t you?’
Claire clutched the sheet to her breasts. ‘Who? No. I’m not thinking about anyone.’
‘Oh yes you are. You’re thinking about that French boy from the movie last night, aren’t you? You dirty—’ Charlie tried to pull the sheet out of Claire’s hands—‘. . . little—’ she clutched it tighter—‘. . . girl.’
Eventually he wrestled the sheet from her and slowly pulled it down, revealing her naked body. ‘You’re thinking about that handsome young man. Thinking about those lips kissing your stomach and then his tongue licking your . . . holy shit!’
Charlie sat back on his knees and looked down at Claire with amazement. ‘What have you done to yourself, woman?’
‘It’s just . . . I don’t know.’ Claire felt her face grow hot. She tried to cover herself.
‘No, no—let me have a look.’ He took her hands in his and held them firmly by her sides.
‘It’s just some silly thing I got done yesterday. I was having a bikini wax and sort of got carried away. I mean, it’s nothing— it will grow back and . . .’
‘So what’s this little bit left in the middle then?’
‘They call it a landing strip. I don’t know why. Well, yes I do, I suppose, it’s for the obvious reason that—’
The phone rang.
Charlie groaned with frustration. ‘Oh, don’t answer it. Just leave it.’
Claire immediately reached for the phone with one hand and pulled the sheet back up over herself with the other.
‘Shit!’ Charlie flopped down on the bed beside her, put his hands behind his head and
stared at the ceiling.
‘Hello.’ Claire was glad for the interruption to her interrogation.
‘Claire. It’s Dad again. I was just thinking. You’ll need an excuse for coming up here. Otherwise she might suspect that I suspect . . . something.’
‘Have you turned into Inspector Clouseau? Of course I’ll have an excuse. I won’t just walk in the door and say, “Hi, Mum, Dad reckons you’re having an affair!” I’ll tell her I’m coming up to see a friend or something.’
Claire was watching Charlie’s erection wilt as she spoke.
‘Yes,’ said her father, ‘that should do the trick.’
‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve read enough crime novels to help you solve the case. So stop worrying.’
‘OK then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.’
Claire hung up and turned back to see Charlie propped up on one elbow looking at her.
‘Your father thinks your mother’s having an affair?’
‘Yep. And not an affair—another affair would you believe?’
‘She had one before?’ Charlie was as puzzled as Claire had been an hour earlier.
‘Apparently she had one with the bloke next door in 1982 when she was forty-seven.’
‘Really? Well, well, well! Dear old June, eh? Mind you, I’ll bet she was a hot-looking chick. And she was the right age too. Runs in the family.’
‘What runs in the family? What do you mean?’ Claire decided to head Charlie off the path with a stagey show of indignation. She got up out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown.
Charlie was watching his planned afternoon of sex evaporate and protested, ‘I mean “hot-looking chick”. Did you think I meant “having an affair” runs in the family?’
‘Well, it sounded as if that’s what you were saying.’ Claire was bending down and making an elaborate show of looking for her slippers so she didn’t have to face Charlie.
‘Well, come on—a bloke could be forgiven for thinking that. His wife goes and gets a median strip out of the blue.’
Charlie was now sitting up, looking at Claire. She was standing at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips. Danger.
