Angela suggested she go home. There was, after all, nothing more she could do. The building was an orange, hissing rubbish tip. Jennifer took up the idea as if it were her own, informing everyone that she would ‘freshen up’ and maybe have a bite to eat and then return. They were welcome to go too. The group had nodded their heads understandingly, as if to acknowledge her distress was greater because she was the instigator of probably everything that was worthwhile about the school.
She was very glad to escape: from the scene, from Brock, and from the pictures that were mix and matching in her head. As she pulled the car away from the school, she began to shake all over, almost unable to control the accelerator, her hands like a sick chook’s feet locked on the wheel. But by the time she was out of sight of the village lights, the shaking had been replaced by a relief, almost a euphoria, that made her feel light-headed. Along with it came an overpowering need for a cigarette.
The stupidest thing she could do now, she said out loud, possibly the stupidest thing she could do at any time would be to light a cigarette. Nevertheless, she craved one in a way that couldn’t be argued with, so she rummaged madly through her handbag with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. She found the pack, pulled one out and broke it in her haste. So she carefully extracted another one, the diverted concentration causing her to swerve and skid a little in the gravel. Heart pumping, she corrected, lit the cigarette and drove slowly, telling herself it would help her calm down, assess the whole sex and conflagration situation and think of a strategy, or at least a temporary strategy until she could come up with something more comprehensive.
For starters, the cigarette pack had to go. She knew from TV that forensic-type people were very good at establishing the cause of fires. If they figured out a cigarette had started the fire, they’d begin looking for a smoker.
She pulled over on the side of the road, let the car idle and enjoyed the cigarette—her last cigarette. It was pitch black outside and in the dark, with no one around and only the sound of the motor running, it was possible to believe that none of the events of the past couple of hours had actually taken place. It felt as if she could just drive home as normal and not even mention that there’d been a fire that had obliterated the school, just as she wouldn’t mention she’d had adulterous intercourse and may have inadvertently caused the fire. For some minutes, in the reverie of the cigarette, it seemed a real option.
And then she had an image of herself, en déshabillé, sitting on that desk, smoking and giggling like a schoolgirl, and realised this was not the time to get lost in self-deception. This was the time to act. She frantically stubbed the cigarette out and wound down the window, attempting to chase the fumes away. Doing nothing or hoping it would all go away meant that someone else would decide the future. She pulled back out onto the road.
Who knew she smoked? Brock, obviously. Andy. But he knew her too well to ever think she would be smoking at the school. No one else really. And no one would ever dream that Jennifer Booth would smoke in a classroom. So it was Brock she had to deal with.
Had Angela seen anything through the office windows as she and Susie had pulled up? Unlikely. But her car was there. If the police asked her, she would have to admit she was there with Brock before the meeting. No denying that. So unless they could insinuate that maybe an unknown arsonist was in the office before them or that someone had lobbed a cigarette into the office while the meeting was in progress, the finger pointed at Brock and Jennifer. But, surely, most squarely at Brock.
And possibly she was panicking for no reason. The fire could well have been started by faulty wiring, a mouse chewing a cable, kids playing with matches underneath the building, sunlight magnified through the window that afternoon … It was best to deal with the cigarettes.
ANDY
He would have liked more tenderness. Sure he wanted more sex (lots more), but if he honestly had to prioritise he would put tenderness as number one. It would surprise Jennifer—and almost anyone else who knew him—to hear it. It surprised him to think it, as he sat in his office running through budgets and estimates, checking bills, scratching his groin and occasionally clicking to see if Abi had left a message.
That you missed tenderness in your marriage wasn’t really something you mentioned to your mates over a few beers. Especially when you were Andy Booth. It wasn’t something he was likely to mention to anyone over anything. You could say you missed sex (they all missed sex) but they probably wouldn’t even know what he meant by tenderness, unless he was referring to a cut of meat. He wasn’t really sure himself. A timely hug maybe, a hand on the shoulder, a kiss at the back of the neck, a note in the voice, a look. Stupid stuff.
If you weren’t sure what you were asking for, then you couldn’t want it very much. Almost anything else that he’d ever wanted he’d been able to say clearly in a sentence: I want to play football; I want to run the farm; I want you; I want to marry you; I want to increase my borrowings; I want to do a better job; I need to, you know, do it. Tenderness, or whatever it was, was a whim. And if, after twenty years of marriage, a lack of tenderness was your only complaint, then you were doing pretty well, weren’t you? So it wasn’t a genuine complaint. It was a kind of yearning, a mature age yearning, that had snuck up on him in the past few years.
He didn’t remember feeling like this as a younger man, but he wouldn’t have admitted it to himself then anyway. Back then he was hungry for action: sport, sex, work, hunting, exercise. Always wanting to test himself and push himself. Not that he didn’t want love or someone who cared about him, but sitting around worrying about tenderness would have seemed pretty suspect. He was lucky that he found and secured love early, so he could rule it off and be free to worry about other things, like whether he could run the farm well, well enough to expand it, whether he’d be more successful than Mack, or able to grow a better crop than the neighbours. It seemed like such a long time ago.
That stretch of time was at the base of the problem. In fact, time was the base of many of his current problems. They’d been married young (everything seemed to fit and they knew what they wanted so why not?), and since then time had worn away at them. It had smoothed away the feelings, good and bad. They didn’t bicker much anymore but they didn’t search for each other either. They were so busy doing what they had to do, it never really came up.
He still loved Jennifer, he was certain of that, and he guessed she felt the same. She probably didn’t love him as much as she loved order, but second fiddle to an attitude wasn’t too bad. They had a good, functional marriage. They got things done, they agreed on things, they had a beautiful (lively) daughter, a well-run farm, they were respected and liked by their community and they did more than their share of helping out in that community. That was a good life and something to be proud of.
So why then was he so hooked on chatting to Abi on the computer? Why was he so keen to sit indoors and stare at a small screen, communicating only in words, secretly, with someone he hadn’t actually been in the same room as for fifteen years? It didn’t fit anywhere with his image of himself.
Fifteen years ago, Abi had been a friend of his cousin Ellie: very pretty, smiley and warm. At the time, both were unmarried and came to stay with his folks, Mack and Celie, before heading off to parties and races and other all-night events. They seemed to be having a great deal of fun compared to Andy and Jennifer, who had pre-school-age Madison and a farm that demanded their attention twenty-four hours a day. He’d never been close to Abi back then. But now, so many years later, through the internet, they’d bumped into each other online. She was Abi Dunlop now, married to someone called Tim.
Not that he’d ever been very keen on social media. But when Madison started to get into trouble at school and, boy, did she get into trouble, he decided it might be a good way of finding out what people Madison’s age got up to. In the bumbling process of educating himself, Andy became an enthusiast.
He got in contact with old school mates, blokes he played fo
oty with, ex-girlfriends, even some relatives, and then he chanced upon Abi. After a few ‘How’s the family?’ messages, they began to talk about where they’d been and what they’d done in the last fifteen years. It started with one or two lines, but gradually multiplied into blocks of text on the page. Over time, it developed into discussions about their fears and their insecurities and even their yearnings. Now they chatted at length pretty well every week and he couldn’t wait for the latest instalment.
Jennifer didn’t know about their conversations because he did it on the office computer, pretending to work, while she and Madison watched TV or made dinner. He didn’t tell her because it was sort of childish and he knew she would think it stupid. If he thought about it, and he usually tried not to, he knew it was at least a little bit disloyal. If he imagined Jennifer walking in on him, tapping out a private message to Abi, he knew he’d feel like she’d caught him masturbating. He couldn’t explain to himself why he felt that way and he wasn’t prepared to think too much about it. All he knew was that he couldn’t make himself stop.
He discussed things with Abi that he would never discuss with Jennifer.
He told her things that he’d never told Jennifer. He would have no compunction telling Abi about his desire for tenderness—in fact, the idea excited him—but he couldn’t think, even in his most exaggerated imaginings, of a situation where he could speak about it with Jennifer. ‘Darling, on the topic of tenderness, I think we need to improve on it as a couple.’ ‘Just put it on the list, Andy. I’ll do it after the bathrooms are clean.’
Tonight he didn’t have to be covert because Jennifer and Madison were out and he wasn’t expecting them home until late. He hoped Abi was available for a chat. It was difficult to find a good time for both of them, so often they just left messages for a follow-up.
It was a strange thing to do, hidden in the office, pretending to work, while Madison and Jennifer came and went, but even stranger was his hunger for it. It was the thing he looked forward to in the week. He was always trying to think of witty things that he might say and took any opportunity to jot down jokes and sayings that he’d heard. He’d even got to checking the app via his mobile phone to see if she’d left a message.
Once, Abi had asked him if he thought they were being unfaithful by sharing all their thoughts. He had ‘lolled’ it off. How unfaithful were you being if you never touched or actually spoke? It was a long-distance friendship. Besides, she was happily married, too, with kids and responsibilities and the whole works. It wasn’t as if they were ever going to do more than tap words on computer keys. He didn’t tell her that he did fantasise about being with her—it was hardly a breach of the marriage vows. If it was, his marriage was long over. And the Abi he was fantasising about probably didn’t exist anymore. You couldn’t be unfaithful with a phantom.
Sometimes he thought it was nothing to do with Jennifer or his own marriage and more to do with the fact that he worked all the time. He had a successful, profitable farm—not many people on the continent could say that—and still he worked all the time. Even when he wasn’t working, there were calls on the two-way from workers relaying disasters, or phone calls and messages from agronomists or grain buyers or complaining contractors, or intrusions from unasked-for sales people.
One thing Mack had taught him was that for the farm to be successful it had to have his total commitment. In life there was family and there was the farm and everything else was insignificant. Often as not the family had to come in second place to the farm. Mack was right. You could look around the district and see that the people who had sold up and moved on were the ones who didn’t understand this basic tenet and had got distracted by other interests or ambitions or taking time off or hoping someone would do the work for them.
Which is why he had to get rid of Frank. His older brother was never interested in the land. He just liked the idea of being a landholder. He thought he could drive around in the ute telling the staff what to do and then shoot off to the races or the beach or something. Frank had got the idea somewhere that Andy could do the work, take the risk, handle the stress, and Frank could reap the benefits. That was never going to happen. It didn’t take long for Andy to confront him and tell him that he either got to work or he got out. Frank didn’t take kindly to it and so began the trench warfare that included paddocks left unsown, selling each other’s animals, fist fights, and the time Andy put Frank’s belongings (furniture and all) out on the main road. Eventually Mack told Frank he thought Andy was right. Frank took Andy’s offer to buy him out and was gone within the month. He’d never returned. Recently Andy had tried to invite him to Christmas and Mack’s birthday, but Frank hadn’t responded.
Andy was proud of what he’d created on the farm, he was proud of his reputation and he liked owning one of the bigger operations in the area. If there was a disaster or a family crisis, people turned to him.
The only thing that rankled was that he had assumed his success would bring time for leisure with it. It didn’t. The work never went away and so he never stopped working.
In the meantime the status quo held: the seasons and the rain and the prices dictated his days, Jennifer concentrated on her many community and charity commitments, and Madison seemed to have calmed down since the expulsion. The only thing different in the world was his furtive messaging.
He wondered if Jennifer ever considered straying. Not sexually—he couldn’t imagine her being interested or who she could do it with—but perhaps platonically. He only wondered about it as a professional exercise because he considered it prudent to walk through the scenarios in business and life. He had no evidence that Jennifer had a need or desire to stray but he thought it was a healthy exercise to imagine the possibilities because you never knew what people were capable of, even those closest to you.
She did seem to get on very well with some of his mates, so it was possible she shared confidences with one of them. It kind of broke the code, though, and he didn’t think his mates would be too keen. Maybe she had long chats with one of Madison’s teachers in Fresh Well. Or a shoe-shop owner or something. Perhaps her female friends provided all the warmth and understanding she needed. Women seemed to talk about the most personal things without giving it a second thought.
Now there were the lights of a car outside. Abi wasn’t online. He would try again another time.
MADISON
On the bus on the way home from school (she would have liked to drive herself but her mother said it was a waste when there was a perfectly good bus run), Madison had rested her chin on her tattered bag and looked out the window, across the plain, and thought how truly existence-numbingly boring it was. The most boring place on the planet, full of boring things and boring people: adults who all wore the same clothes and could only talk about work, children, sport, houses and holidays. Strange beings who didn’t express anything, didn’t feel anything, didn’t do anything outside their ironclad norms.
She didn’t feel that now. Now she felt some shock, some horror and some amazement as she quickly pulled up her undies and jeans and watched as Ian did the same while crumpling into a pathetic imitation of a man. She couldn’t stop looking at him. The transformation was so dramatic she found it transfixing. Had he not imagined what would happen if his wife found out he was having sex with the eighteen-year-old neighbour and babysitter in his house? Had it never occurred to him that the consequences of his actions would be the sort of pain and desperation he was suffering now? It immediately confirmed her long-held assessment of the people in Stony Creek: they suffered from a complete failure of imagination.
Nevertheless, it was cracking entertainment. In minutes he had gone from the classic hard man of the country, so sexy because of his remoteness and masculinity, to a pleading child. The latent power that had impressed her was gone, replaced by helplessness, nudity replaced by nakedness. It was something she’d like to try to paint but there was plenty of time for that later.
And Sarah was now a woma
n wronged, powerful and without a hint of mercy.
Sarah had come in, turned the light on, caught them in the act and not said a word. It was an impressive response. Far better, if less dramatic, than the squealing and vase-throwing that Madison might have expected, given her liking for television melodrama.
It was such a pity she had to leave. She tried to hang around, but Ian shoved some keys in her hand. ‘Go home. You don’t want to be here. Take the ute. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’ And so she had to leave the most dramatic night of her life before it was properly over.
Sitting in the ute, tossing the keys in her hand, she thought about sneaking a look through the window. Considering Sarah’s resolve there probably wasn’t much to see. But how could she pass up the opportunity when something as rare as genuine emotion was in play?
She put the keys in the ignition and got back out. She walked along the side of the house, with her back to the wall, until she got to the bedroom window. It was too high for her to see in properly. She found a clay pot, upended it, stood on it and peeked through the gap in the curtains. Ian was now dressed and Sarah was kneeling in front of an over-full suitcase, punishing it. She was ignoring Ian while he seemed to be begging, all but getting down on his knees. It was as if they’d taken some sort of Alice in Wonderland potion: he had shrunk; she had grown.
Then Sarah was up, wheeling the suitcase behind her and calling to the children.
It occurred to Madison that Sarah and the children might be about to walk out the door so she half-fell off the pot and ran to the ute, fired it up and drove off, only to see Sarah in her rear-view mirror, Julia in her arms carrying teddies, Damien by her side dragging toys, and the large suitcase trailing behind. She got home before her mother. Her father was in the office as he usually was at that time of night.
The Good Teacher Page 3
