As she got older and more beautiful, the Mudface tag kept her grounded … it was a pact they’d made that day. She was his Mudface and he was her Dam … not her biological father, but a dad all the same. With Vanessa, things were a bit trickier. They negotiated their relationship. She let him into her world in small ways, but he had to earn every privilege and he never took it for granted. In some ways, Vanessa was like her mother. But Frankie simply was.
Louise tackled everything in a precise and particular way. Now she unpacked the dishwasher methodically, moving around the kitchen quietly, opening cupboards, shutting drawers — every movement precise, useful and resolute but without the clash and clatter that others made doing the same chore. She planned things. She even planned spontaneity. It didn’t detract from her pleasure. When she chose to have fun, she embraced it wholeheartedly. Adam had been drawn to this dichotomy in her from the start. Focus and fun. Somehow she managed to combine the two. When she laughed, it was huge and invigorating. She didn’t laugh at you, she laughed with you.
At the time he met Louise, he and Judy had stopped laughing with each other and begun laughing at each other. It crept up on them.
When he looked back, the signs were there. Judy might tell other people some humorous incident that implicated him, embarrassed him. He would respond with a sharp and funny put-down of himself and more especially of her. Once started on journeys of laughing separately, they needed to have a truce: someone had to back down. But it hadn’t happened …
And there was Louise and before he knew it, he was laughing with Louise. Louise, who could pick a tune on her teeth, by flicking her fingernails behind her radiant smile. Listen, she would say, and then she would sound a high note, a low note, and he would lean closer to listen until their breaths were mingling and the tune was irrelevant. And this before he had even an inkling of desire.
Alfalfa in her teeth, a thread of salad still caught between her ever-so-slightly crooked bottom teeth. He removed it for her, as if it was stray dental floss and he was the dentist. All detached curiosity and concern — but, on replay, it was his most erotic memory of her.
Louise straightened from bending over the dishwasher. She was dressed for work already, wearing a pink V-neck jersey, a grey skirt and just a hint of make-up. Mostly mascara. Louise wore lipstick in the evenings, but not during the daytime. The V-neck was low enough to suggest a cleavage, and high enough to cover it. She brushed his cheek with hers. He moved his mouth to meet hers, but it was gone. His neck was extended, his chin tilted, and his lips half open, now shut.
‘Five-thirty, dive school: you’ll be there?’
Of course he would. He lived to be a good man, a family man. He might resent Louise not returning his kiss but that was about affection. Louise was all focus when it came to fucking. Except that more and more, it was less and less. Inevitable, he realised: the early frenzy could never have been sustained. It had been their emotional connection (affection) that started this journey; he hadn’t even realised he fancied her until she was sitting astride him … well, that was how he remembered it. Louise in charge, his trousers undone and affection now an erection. Even in the retelling he found himself aroused. Bloody women. Goddamned bloody women.
Women joked that men kept their brains in their trousers and here he was, living proof of it. Carnage because of it.
In the beginning …
He could just as easily say, in the end …
Nowadays, he didn’t care so much for ends or beginnings. He was on track, one foot in front of the other, treading carefully, not wanting to squash the undergrowth and not wanting to send a branch he had lifted flying back to swipe someone else. It wasn’t an easy way to live. But who said life was easy? And he wasn’t unhappy. He knew about unhappiness. He and Judy had done unhappiness. They’d made it into something spectacular and the consequences unforgettable.
Adam patted his inside pocket to check for his wallet. He loosened his belt (just one small notch), belched. How Frankie loved his belches, but she wasn’t here to hear — she was long gone on the bus to school. Vanessa wrinkled her nose when he belched. Frankie belched in return, or thumped him. Louise pretended not to notice his belching. She pretended about a lot of things so that her world stayed in shape. Only if he farted would she disapprove and he did sometimes, especially loudly for Frankie, who would run from the room screaming with laughter and holding her nose and loving him for being male, obnoxious and there.
Louise was in the bathroom cleaning her teeth. Adam called down the hallway (coward that he was).
‘By the way, I’m thinking of going to a reunion in Australia next month.’
There was no reply. Louise wasn’t someone who would interrupt her teeth-cleaning schedule to talk to anyone. She would complete flossing and gargling, and digest his remarks and weigh up what they meant (first the impact on her and second the impact on the girls). Adam knew it and this was why he had waited until she was fully occupied with her morning ablutions.
‘See you this evening. Don’t rush home. I’ll help Frankie out with her homework.’
He was Mr Good Guy, Dam-dad extraordinaire, reliable.
‘Great. I’ll work late and see you around eight-thirty.’ And then, because she never took Adam looking after the girls for granted, ‘Thanks, Adam.’
And he was reminded of why he had fallen for her in the first place: she looked life right in the eye and took opportunities as they occurred, without analysis or self-doubt — though she was always grateful for them.
Adam, in turn, was grateful for that.
He backed out of the garage carefully. It was a ritual he performed each morning. Checked his rear-vision mirror, checked the side mirror; sometimes he even got out of the car to check around the back of it, before heading up the drive backwards … and then another series of checks and manoeuvres before he edged his way into the morning traffic. It was just as he was rechecking his rear vision before accelerating out into the traffic that he saw Louise running down the driveway towards him, waving. Her skirt was straight and short and not really suited to running, but Louise wore flat shoes. He wound down the passenger window and she leaned in (they both waited until she found her breath) — a small moustache of moisture had formed just above her upper lip. Not speaking, breathing, with beads of perspiration … Louise was gorgeous. Everything he desired. Well, almost. No bugger ever had everything. And when you did, you rarely realised.
‘That reunion in Australia, when is it? I’d like to come too.’
So, she had heard him. Typical of Louise, she’d thought about it before responding — and, unlike Louise, she’d run after him to confirm her interest. Actually, he hadn’t been inviting her. Just advising her. But there she was, asserting herself as she always did, and because that was what he most loved about her, he found himself agreeing.
‘Judy might be there too … you don’t mind?’ He knew immediately that she didn’t. Her face assumed a look of pained patience. They’d had this sort of conversation before. As far as Louise was concerned, any problems about his first marriage were nothing to do with her any more. She had moved on and if they hadn’t, then it was their problem. Louise lived in the present and expected other people to do the same. Looking backwards (as Adam did every morning when he reversed down the drive) was, according to her, a bad habit.
Chapter Five
The gym was Louise’s idea. She wanted him toned and alert. (They hadn’t actually pinned down her meaning of alert but he’d got the general idea.) It was where he met Hagen. Hagen from Copenhagen was the joke. Actually Hagen was from Århus, a smaller Danish city, but he’d lived in New Zealand now for over twenty years. He and Nakita had travelled here on their honeymoon and ended up staying. Hagen was a good-looking bloke. He had a full head of healthy, un-greying hair — in contrast to Adam who had silver highlights as early as thirty. ‘Distinguished,’ Louise had said when they first met, but more recently he could see that it did less and less to distinguish him. I
t was Hagen who was distinguished, with his unnatural nut-brown thatch. Dead straight and a fraction long for a Kiwi bloke — but of course being Scandinavian he could get away with it.
There was something about the friendship of a good-looking bloke like Hagen that lifted Adam’s spirits. Hagen was an optimist, a visualiser. Someone who was always looking for the next chance and you couldn’t help but be enthused for him. Where Adam had plodded along for years running the factory, Hagen had lurched from one mad scheme to another, making money, losing money, but never losing his enthusiasm. Luckily for Hagen, Nakita had a reliable income through the public service, where she had worked her way up to a management position in human resources. This steady but unspectacular income had assisted whenever one of Hagen’s bolder schemes came unstuck. More recently she had branched out and become a life coach (after hours, of course). She’d been doing a dummy run, with Louise as her project. Louise was sceptical about life coaching but happy to indulge Nakita, as long as Nakita knew she didn’t take this sort of thing seriously.
‘Aa-dam.’
Hagen was beaming at him. Adam liked his name the way Hagen said it. They shook hands. Always did. No matter what the encounter. Contact; warm and affirming. It was a European thing, he reckoned. He sometimes thought Hagen was about to kiss him. He wouldn’t have minded, either. A continental kiss — the sort of thing Hagen did with Louise: one cheek, then the other, then the other … mostly making loud imitation kiss noises, but rarely (well, sometimes) actually making contact with Louise’s cheek. He did the big-hug thing with women too — enthusiastically wrapped them close to him. But in such a jolly way that it could never be misconstrued.
Hagen could flirt with other men’s wives and get away with it. Somehow, by his attention, he managed to flatter both husband and wife. Louise said he was the sort of man who made you feel like a woman without feeling compromised. And what did that mean? The sort of man, Louise would say, in whom you could confide (Louise didn’t confide in anyone) and who, if he hugged or kissed you, you wouldn’t think had ulterior motives (not like most men). And this was why Adam rarely hugged other women … he couldn’t guarantee a lack of ulterior motive and he didn’t want to be put to the test. It was more inside his head than his trousers.
He had an absolutely no touching rule at the factory. He knew the rules and he’d only crossed the line once — the day Zeus escaped from his cage and seemed to have got lost. Adam had wrapped Heather in his arms, not so much to comfort her as to quieten her. She had snuggled in as if she belonged there and he ended up having to extricate one arm at a time, gently, his first and then hers, and then giving a small push that became a small shove. He’d personally shopped for and purchased a new lock for the chinchilla’s cage, enduring sly amusement from Martin and the production team as he installed it under Heather’s watchful gaze.
‘Aa-dam,’ Hagen repeated, something he did often — a Scandinavian affectation was how Adam explained it. Kiwi blokes didn’t use your name very frequently — unless they shortened it, or changed it in some other way. But the name Adam didn’t lend itself to mutilation or endearments.
Hagen was wearing a light suit (imported cloth, no doubt), his shirt hanging out and his sunglasses pushed up on his head. His gym bag was slung carelessly across his shoulder. He managed casual with corporate in a way that Adam envied.
Inside the gym, they disrobed together silently. Both were fastidious about their clothing — the folding and the storing. Hagen had a habit of stroking his gold bracelet against the underside of his wrist and then shaking his arm to rearrange the bracelet before removing it. He then draped it across the palm of his hand and slipped it into the side pocket of his red canvas bag. Both men shook their trousers out and placed them on hangers with their suit jackets and shirts inside their gym lockers.
Adam observed his own hairy chest and Hagen’s almost hairless one. Hagen had an all-year tan whereas Adam’s colour waxed and waned from pasty to not so pasty, disguised by what Louise called his flokati rug. Even that was thinning and turning grey. He stroked his chest in an unconscious gesture, then quickly looked across at Hagen in case he’d been observed. Hagen was mopping his brow with a handkerchief. One thing Hagen did really well was sweat. He sweated in the heat and in the cold. Hagen said it was due to his excessive fitness and maybe it was. It was an endearing fault as far as Adam was concerned, making up for Hagen’s otherwise almost perfectly taut and tanned physique (and yes, a small paunch — growing, actually). It was Adam’s slightly larger paunch that Louise had harped on about. He thought it was more to do with how he looked than his health but she’d used his health as the reason for her harping and so he tried to believe her.
‘How’s the new smart-pants production boy?’ asked Hagen.
He was fully changed now into super-white trainers, shorts and singlet. It did wonders for his tan. Hagen often used sayings incorrectly and it was never clear whether it was accidental. He dined out on his Europeanness and it endeared people to him, especially women.
Over the years, Hagen had shared his successive business dreams, many of which had never eventuated. In return, Adam drip-fed Hagen titbits from the factory, and had recently (regretfully) confided his feelings about Martin. Hagen was always quick with advice and new management techniques for overcoming staff problems. All right for him, he didn’t have any staff.
‘Has your Russian returned?’
Hagen could talk, sweat and pedal, but Adam had to concentrate just to breathe at first.
‘What’s your view of reunions?’ Adam asked, slowing just for a moment on the treadmill and glancing at Hagen, who was wiping his now very wet brow.
‘Reunions?’ Hagen, who had been on alert to proffer advice on how to handle the smart-pants, was now trying to retune his antennae. Adam retuned the treadmill to a slower rate, so he could breathe and talk.
‘A European holiday that Judy and I took years ago.’
‘Yuudy?’ Hagen had stopped pedalling and was looking sideways at Adam.
Adam remembered now why he usually kept his private life neatly contained and instead offloaded factory anecdotes to Hagen. It was too late now. Louise would not be impressed. She didn’t mind being the second wife but liked to control the flow of information on this part of Adam’s life so that no one got the wrong impression. The right impression being that Louise and Judy were good friends — and they were.
‘So, Louise won’t mind?’
Adam could up the speed on the treadmill and ignore Hagen, which was what he did. Thump, thump became thump, thump, thump and Hagen took the cue and resumed pedalling; clang, clang. They thumped and clanged without speaking for the rest of the gym session.
It was later in the shower that Hagen had another go. Adam was discreetly inspecting his left testicle to see if a small raised red lump was a pimple or what.
Hagen was singing ‘Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog’. (Except that Jeremiah came out as Yeremiah.)
Then abruptly, as if a thought had just occurred to him, he stopped singing.
‘A reunion with your first wife. And how would Louise be feeling about that?’ Hagen was in his element now; people’s personal lives intrigued him.
‘Na, na, it’s not like that. They’re good friends.’
Adam tipped his head back and allowed cold water to pour over his face and then he turned, dropping his head forward and letting the cold water beat on his back. It made him shiver. For just a moment he indulged the shiver.
Louise and Judy were good friends.
Louise and Judy are good friends.
A cold shower inevitably warmed him. The sheer exertion required to combat the cold generated a longer-lasting warmth than hot water could.
Hagen was dressed now. ‘I am sweating.’
Yes you are, you bastard, thought Adam, but a lovely bastard. The sweat was why he was lovely. Adam thought without Hagen’s prolific sweating, he would look like a smug prick. And with men sometimes, that was enough to be annoying.
Hagen mimicked quaffing wine. Adam checked his watch. Ten past seven. He’d promised Louise to help Frankie with her assignment.
What the heck, thought Adam. Frankie’s assignment was about World War Two and the German occupation of Europe. Hagen was from Europe. A drink with Hagen could be considered part of his research. Frankie wouldn’t mind.
‘Woodward Street — Beaujolais — my car?’
Hagen was now holding up his car keys to indicate he would drive. Adam would rather take his own car so he could extricate himself if Hagen settled in at the wine bar. But Hagen mistook silence for consent and he was leaning across the passenger seat of his Volvo, opening the door for Adam.
Beaujolais. Hagen liked this particular wine bar because of a view from one window: steps leading to The Terrace, legs heading up or down the stairs. In summer bare legs; in winter, black or shades thereof in boots of assorted colours — women’s legs, actually, but Hagen spoke of the view as if he enjoyed legs in general. He professed innocence in his words and in actions he betrayed himself with a sly joy bordering on exuberance whenever a particularly slim, long and female pair of legs passed by.
They sat by the window, each nursing a rather expensive and decidedly delicious Martinborough pinot, in silence except for Hagen’s mischievous sighs whenever a pair of elegant heels trotted up the stairs. The wine bar was cramped and noisy, making conversation unnecessary, something that pleased Adam tonight. He watched Hagen watching women, a companionable complicity.
Turbulence Page 4