He elicited only a few facts. The Donnas had Italian origins but it remained unclear – as Bella was evasive – whether Donna was her family name or her married name, and Martin avoided asking whether she had ever been married. Her name raised questions either way. She let drop that she had been privately schooled, without naming a particular school. She travelled overseas at least twice a year and, while she had a couple of investment properties, she did not have her own home. After arriving in Sydney – from where was unclear – she had enrolled in science and nursing courses, but had stayed in each for only brief periods. Work had been mainly in hospitality – whatever that might mean – and she drifted in and out of real estate and administrative positions.
Seeming not formally intelligent she had an intuitive street-wise intelligence, occasionally worldly and, at other times, naïve. Mercurial seemed the apt word to Martin.
Bella snuggled close to him. Her left hand patted him on the knee, lightly tracked over his groin, withdrew, and picked up her wine glass. Bella opened a bottle of Semillon and poured herself a glass. Martin still had some Medoc. She nestled closer and spoke in a girlish voice. ‘Martin, I feel very content.’
‘I get the sense that that is unusual?’
‘You’ve actually made me think seriously about where I want to be in the future. I have lots of talents. Just haven’t found the right career to pursue.’
‘Just haven’t found your right ecological niche?’
‘Something like that, I guess.’ She burrowed into him and Martin was struck by her vulnerability, more childlike than nymph since they had left the bedroom. ‘But people are more important to me. I go out of my way to help people and I’m nearly always disillusioned. People don’t play fair in life.’
Martin detected a self-abnegating tone. He expected that she was about to raise some inner complexities. Instead, she looked up at him and said, as if she was a young girl talking to her father, ‘I don’t like sleeping on my own, Martin.’
Martin stroked her hair. He felt her helplessness and it evoked extreme tenderness in him.
‘I have to go home tonight, Bella. I really don’t want to leave you but I’ve got the dog to feed. I’ll lie with you for a bit, perhaps until you fall asleep.’
‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ Bella asked somewhat winsomely.
‘Of course. I’ll ring you mid-morning.’
He felt like carrying her to bed. Instead she took his hand, and with her wine glass and the bottle in her other hand, she took Martin back into her bedroom. He watched her change – not into some lacy, skimpy piece – but into pink loose-fitting pyjamas, and as she changed he wondered again at her perfect body and the luminance of her olive skin. She reached for a tablet from a bedside drawer as she slipped under the sheets. The pill? A sleeping tablet? He lay, fully dressed, on top of the blanket, holding her gently and, just before she fell asleep, he watched her cry quietly. For an hour he lay there, stilled sufficiently, before he noticed his thoughts starting to race again with a sense of agitation that had been missing for several hours. He slipped off the bed and drove home, fast, to distract himself.
At home, his agitation and energy levels increased further. He would not be able to sleep for long. At three a.m. he left home and spent the next hour skating around the suburb, with Captain finding it hard to keep pace, while drawing the occasional look of interest from passers in the night.
DOMESTIC BLITZ
Martin’s mobile phone rang a little after nine on the Sunday morning. It was Bella. She spoke quietly. ‘I need to see you.’
Martin, despite two hours sleep, had been active around the house. While eating his breakfast, he moved books, fed Captain, scanned the mail and tried to tidy up while both the television and radio were now adding background pink noise rather than white noise. Captain, normally pacific, was skittish, doing laps around the room. Martin was exhilarated to hear Bella’s voice.
‘Of course. I was planning to call you. Didn’t want to wake you up. What would you like to do today? I’ll be free around noonish. Just have to write up some files from yesterday.’
After a brief silence Bella spoke again. ‘Can I tell you what I’d really like?’
Martin felt his heart beat. ‘Please.’
‘I know you are on your own – at least for the next week. Last night was very special. You do something to me that I find hard to describe.’ She hesitated briefly. ‘Martin, I want you to move in with me.’
Martin did not hesitate. ‘Huzzah! Done deal!’
Bella’s voice radiated excitement. ‘You mean it!’
Martin almost cut her off, speaking rapidly in a staccato voice. ‘Change of plans. I’ll be there in an hour and we’ll go out for lunch. Surprise restaurant. No, that’s unoriginal. Let’s go up the Hunter and go for a spin on a jet fighter? How about that?’
‘I’ve done that, Martin. And they only take one passenger. I want to be with you.’
‘How about learning to skydive? I’d love to give that a go.’
‘Martin. I’ve got to work today. Sunday is one of my best days for sales.’
‘Forgot that… So when shall I come around?’
‘Move in? Any time after six, I’d suggest.’
‘Done. And I’ll bring dinner.’
‘That’s so generous of you. And I’m so looking forward to having you here…at least for the week.’
Martin put the phone down and paced around his living room. Captain oscillated between trotting around the room and bringing Martin soft toys. As if to pacify him. The phone went again. It was Sarah.
‘Sunny. How are you?’
‘Sar. How wonderful. Me? Never better.’
‘You didn’t get my email?’
‘Oh Sar. I’m so sorry. Haven’t been on my emails for a day.’
‘That’s OK. It was pretty boring. Just reporting on a horror flight and the pain of jetlag. But are you really all right?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘No depression?’
‘Zilcherino. My mood’s great.’
‘And you’re not too lonely?’
‘No. Too busy to be lonely.’
‘Do you miss me?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s lovely to hear. I missed you on the flight, Sunny, remembering all those early trips we took together. You were always wonderful to travel with.’ Her voice dropped. ‘And last night I missed you of course.’ Her voice lifted again, and Martin visualised her shaking her head as she changed topic. ‘What have you planned for today?’
‘Skating…’ And, for a moment, Martin nearly added on thin ice, ‘and household chores.’
‘Skating?’
‘I bought a super skate yesterday and despite it being first time ever I’ve been rutting…’
Sarah interrupted. ‘Rutting?’
‘Rushing, skating, running over road ruts…’ Martin was prepared to continue but Sarah cut him off.
‘You be careful, Sunny. Anyway, I must go, this call will be costing a bit. I’m just so pleased to hear that your mood is fine. Love you, Sunny boy.’
Martin signed off with a simple ‘Love you.’ And he meant it. He immediately went to his computer, opened up her email, and with his impatience now interleaved with sentimental moments – even crying briefly on several occasions, Martin wrote her a long reply.
He began the email with Dear Harold Annison, judging that Sarah would be tickled by the Sarah in London anagram. Well at least he was amused. His email covered all the reasons as to why he loved her, touched on the intoxication of skating, summarised the qualities for being a good doctor, reminisced about the best French wines they had ever drunk and covered the reasons why Martin judged that Australia should become a republic. He wrote freely, without formal order. The piece was marked by its enárgia and amplificátio and, despite its elusiveness, it had an integral structure, perhaps best appreciated by Martin. He unconsciously embroidered each topic with a series of rhetorical devices, but with mos
t demonstrating purple rather than stylish prose. There were doublets (in sickness and in health), and pieces of diacope (let me love you, dear Sar, let me love you), epizeuxis (crazy, crazy, crazy), ploce (we doctors must stop the whole medicine thing going the way of the political thing and the whole new Australian cultural thing), parachessis (Sar, you seer, ever so sartorial), homoioteleuton (the patient took up much of my Saturday by her phoning, moaning, droning and groaning), catachresis (you’ll have kittens and hamsters when I tell you what I fed Captain last night) and anaphora (for two decades have I loved you, for two decades have I spent the days looking forward to seeing you at day’s end, and for two decades have you been my life companion). He typed for two hours, words cascading, many underlined and many sentences buttressed with exclamation marks, sometimes several. He signed off (this is my love letter to you) and pressed the send button, having no need to read it or edit it.
He spent another five hours responding to emails. Even brief queries from patients as to whether a medication should be ceased because of side-effects or have its dose adjusted generated lengthy responses from Martin. He would detail what the medication was designed to do, how its effectiveness could be best judged, what the options were, how the medication needed to be complemented with non-drug strategies and, if they had any more questions, not to hesitate to get back to him. His fingers danced across the keyboard and he ignored the rare typo.
After a frenetic and lengthy skating session, he returned home feeling calmer. He showered and packed a large suitcase which included his toiletry bag – after making sure his medication was stored there – and grabbed a coat and his medical emergency bag. It was seven before he arrived at the penthouse, carrying his bags, a bottle of Semillon, a Greek salad and fish – cod for cooking later.
Bella opened the door immediately. Again he was stunned by her beauty, with her intense and shining black eyes even more on show and with her black hair now piled up. She was wearing a long-sleeve plunge dress inviting dissolute unshackling. The dress hugged her clearly otherwise unclad body, her breasts swelling against the tenuous constraint, and her olive skin even more radiant than Martin remembered – and which he now could categorise as Fitzpatrick Type IV. She looked ravishing and prepared. His penis was rising. Along with a sense of entitlement.
Bella kissed him warmly on the mouth before pulling back and smiling mischievously. ‘I see you’re bringing some baggage into my life.’
‘You don’t need to take it personally.’
‘No, I don’t need any more personal baggage.’
Martin laughed. ‘I’m not sure whether to be your baggage handler or to undertake a strip search.’
‘Do you have the authority?’
He responded without even thinking his reply. ‘I’m a doc and I brought cod.’ It all made sense to Martin, and he resisted the temptation to add that he also had OCD, judging that verbal play had a limited half-life as foreplay.
Yet Bella appeared amused. ‘So it’s going to be cod tonight?’
‘COD indeed! Cock on delivery!’
Bella laughed and stepped out of her dress to be completely naked and unadorned apart from the long fingerless leather gloves reaching to her elbows and one silver diamond-encrusted anklet. She turned around slowly, twice, varying the arch of her back and plane of her breasts, Martin judging how sublimely the tints of her skin colour varied under the incandescent hall light. She then slowly unzipped his fly, smiled as his penis twanged into view, grasped it with one hand and led him to her bedroom.
Martin was unsure what to do with his own hands and so flapped them as if he was a bird seeking to take off. He smiled wryly at the image and even more by his awareness that he was metaphorically and physically a man led by his dick. The ceiling lights had been dimmed but he noted a shimmer coming from the satin sheets. She led him to the bed and while he tore off his clothes she dropped onto the bed. With her hands held behind her head, her rich black hair now spilling out of its pins and her inviting black eyes, she looked to Martin like Goya’s La Maja Desnuda.
So summonsed by his maenad siren, Martin sought to pleasure her and himself. For two hours they engaged in behaviours not even detailed in Comfort’s The Joy of Sex and which Martin mused as being quite simply the mathematical extension of a previous square root formula. Bella eventually pleaded exhaustion and asked Martin if they could just lie together. Martin smiled at her, allowed her to snuggle in, and held her lightly, stroking her shoulder, adoring her olive skin.
Bella slept for an hour. On waking she smiled tenderly at Martin.
‘Oh Martin, that sleep was bliss. I was deeply asleep and yet I could feel your comforting eyes. It was so soothing and it took me into deeper layers of sleep. Quite amazing.’
‘How about…’
But Bella put a finger against his lips and suggested they have a spa bath and then have their meal. Bella filled the spa, throwing in some lavender foaming bath salts, and slid in, now wearing long diamond earrings as well as her gloves and anklet. Martin found an unused bottle of CHC (Cowshed Horny Cow) bath salts, and added half the bottle to the mix. To Martin, the lavender had a smoky floral aroma, joining with and separating from the rose and cinnamon in the CHC, both in contrast with the earthy masculine smell of the CHC’s patchouli. The jets foamed the water, slowly becoming too hot for comfort, and with Martin reciting Fire burn and cauldron bubble with an impish leer, and drawing a questioning look from Bella. It was as if the words resonated with her in some atavistic way. The bubbles rose above the rim, running onto the floor and covering both Martin’s and Bella’s laughing and mock fearful faces.
As the bubbles slowly fizzled out, Martin was aware that his energy levels had settled. He smiled at Bella and observed, ‘Life is mostly froth and bubble, as Australia’s greatest poet once wrote.’
‘Which means that you have to make the most of everything. Seize every moment.’
She seized his flaccid penis and gave it a brief affectionate pat. Martin lay back, rejoicing in the effervescent and evanescent bubbles running down Bella’s breasts.
After dressing – Bella in a red lace robe with a satin belt and Martin in a T-shirt and shorts – Bella asked Martin if he could cook the fish while she finalised her sales sheet. Martin searched for his cooking aids, keeping up a conversation with Bella, who was preoccupied with a television program and her mobile phone.
‘Where’s the parsley?’
‘On the sill.’
‘No, that’s basil.’
‘That should do, don’t you think?’
‘And the garlic?’
‘No witches around here.’
‘So, I’ll take that as no garlic. Lemon zest?’
‘Lemon what? Can you use the limes I bought for G and T’s?’
‘Absolutely. Olive oil or cooking spray?’
‘Nah. Use butter.’
‘And where’s the aluminium foil?’
‘Sorry, Martin, but foiled again.’
Martin grimaced. ‘Do you cook, Bella?’
‘Of course. I did Christmas lunch a couple of years back for twenty people.’
‘That was ambitious. Did you do the works?’
‘The full Monty.’
‘Must have kept you going for days.’
‘It sure did. Had to persuade one of the guests, a real meanie, to buy five hundred dollars of seafood, and others to bring the ham and a turkey, salads, pudding, and a couple of eskies full of grog. Someone brought a tree and some tinsel. Just a matter of organisation. And afterwards I didn’t have to clean the stove or even the kitchen.’
‘Someone was actually kind enough to do the washing up?’
‘No. I got a guest to buy cardboard plates and plastic cutlery and glasses. He dumped them all and the trash on his way home. But I wouldn’t volunteer to do Christmas lunch again for a while. Too demanding. I’ll let others take their turn.’
Martin turned on Classical FM and set to work, musing on how, in comparison, Edina had pr
epared for Christmas. Whether it had been for their family of four, then three and then two, preparations had gone on for days and late into the night on Christmas Eve, with Edina determined to repeat every detail of his earliest Christmas dinners. What might he conclude? Perhaps no more than Bella was young and belonged to a different generation. He ignored the signal of entitlement and simply concluded that living with her was simply going to be different. A takeaway, throwaway experience. Only the sex would be recycled.
Some other music was playing in the background and Bella was dancing to it. She turned the volume up. Martin heard intermittent words: Paradise, Paris, Freedom. He called out.
‘What’s the song?’
‘“I’ve Never Been to Me”. Charlene. It’s my anthem when I’m happy.’ And she sang along, swelling to the refrain I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to me. ‘I sometimes play it time after time, just dancing to it by myself at my Scotland Island hideaway. My anthem.’
‘Scotland Island,’ responded Martin. ‘Lovely part of Pittwater. You have a hideaway?’
Bella turned the disc off and changed the topic. ‘What do you think of the penthouse?’
‘It’s wonderful.’
‘So you might be interested in buying it?’
‘I’m doing the sums.’ Martin had brought some of his superannuation fund papers in his bag. Where they stayed. Such black and white statements would show that there was not enough money in his fund and even less in his bank account. But he just knew that somehow he would come into money. A large amount and soon. So there was no need for him to worry about it. The details were of no importance.
‘If you want it I’d like a late settlement so I can stay here till I move to my new apartment. If you don’t, I’ll certainly find you some other smaller investment apartments.’
‘Are you going to stay in real estate?’
‘The money’s good at the moment, but I’m restless to do something.’
Martin echoed, ‘Do something?’ Gently inviting information by an open-ended question.
In Two Minds Page 11