by Liz Byrski
That same morning, Brian stood by the side of the swimming pool holding a cup of tea and staring down at the pool-cleaner steadily suctioning up the debris. He was tired and headachy, having risen at five-thirty to drive his guests to the airport, and the odd start to the day had left him out of sorts. It had been a tiring seven days, various relatives hanging around after the wedding and Mal and Rita staying for the whole week. They had combined the trip west for Angie’s wedding with a few days’ holiday, and Brian, having previously told Mal that he and Gayle would love to have them over for a visit, had felt honour bound to invite them to stay. Having his new boss as a house guest when the situation at work was, to say the least, uneasy wasn’t something he relished, but it did provide an opportunity to cement his connections with Mal, who had been transferred from the US to Sydney to revitalise the Australian operation. Shortly after Mal and Rita arrived, all the senior executives and their wives had assembled in Sydney for a weekend to meet and greet the new arrivals. Within the first hour, Gayle had commented that she hoped this would be the last she’d have to see of them.
‘I don’t know why you had to invite them to the wedding anyway,’ she had groaned when he’d broken the news that they would be staying on for a week.
‘Good political move,’ Brian had said, sounding unconvincing even to himself. ‘Anyway, it’ll be nice to have a bit of company when Angie’s gone.’
‘Oh please,’ she’d said with a sigh, ‘just the thought of a week of Mal and Rita is enough to make me want to slit my wrists.’ But she’d come up trumps in the end, always did, of course, and Brian was grateful. They had spent the week eating and drinking, taking their guests on a wine cruise up the river, visiting the Fremantle markets, driving out for lunch in the hills, and up to the monastery at New Norcia. The effort of being a good host, trying to suss out the best way to stay in favour with Mal and ensure that Gayle didn’t get wind of the clouds that were forming at work, had worn Brian out. Mal wouldn’t have said anything directly to her, but Brian had been anxious that Rita might let something slip. In the event it had all passed smoothly and now it was Saturday and he was tired and grumpy, and didn’t know what to do with himself.
At times Brian felt he was sadly misunderstood, the casualty – the victim, even – of his own generous nature; misunderstood at work, where no one appreciated his efforts to come up with creative new ideas and marketing strategies. Outside the company others regarded him as the guru on product marketing; if he weren’t so loyal he could’ve moved to the competition anytime, not that they’d ever approached him but he just knew it. And he was certainly misunderstood at home, Angie’s wedding being a case in point.
‘Why does it have to be so big?’ Gayle had asked him when he outlined his plans. ‘They want something small and simple, that’s what Angie said.’
‘Nah, let’s give her a big sendoff,’ he’d said. ‘Marquee, French champagne, live music – the works. She’ll love it.’ He’d wanted it to be special so he could show off his daughter, his home, his generosity to his friends and colleagues, and to show Tony and his family how fortunate they were to be linked by marriage to his own. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘girls always want a big wedding with all the frocks and flowers, and we’ve only got one daughter, after all.’
Brian sighed. Perhaps he’d feel better if he had a swim. He put down his cup and walked to the shallow end to test the temperature of the water. There was an orange and white towel spread out on one of the chairs, where Gayle had left it after her swim. Gayle: most of the time she was a mystery to him. She’d been a quiet girl, always so eager to please him. That was what he’d liked about her, the way she went along with what he said, agreed with him, backed him up; it was really what had made him decide to marry her, that and the delicate prettiness that reflected her passivity, her willingness to follow his lead. He’d put it about a bit in his youth but when he was ready for something more permanent, Gayle had seemed ideal.
From the edge of the pool he could see her moving around in the kitchen and as he watched he struggled to define why, over a period of years, he had become the one who was trying to please. When had passivity and acquiescence changed to resignation and resentment? They’d had their ups and downs, of course, and there had been times when she’d tried to leave, but he’d refused to back down. He knew he was in the right, a man had to have standards, and he’d stuck to his guns. She accepted it in the end, he’d known she would. But why couldn’t she be like normal women, shopping, running up the Visa card with new clothes and stuff for the house, insisting on holidays and nice hotels, throwing dinner parties? He could cope with that. But no, not Gayle. She had to insist on keeping the stupid job in the library, and on studying. What was the point of doing all that at her age? She’d be over sixty by the time she finished this thesis thing, and then what difference would it make, being a doctor of something or other? It wouldn’t improve their financial situation, which he had already secured through his own hard work. Oh yes, he was misunderstood, all right. Even his daughter was always having a go at him about his job – not that she minded him spending up big for her wedding, paying for the honeymoon, and stumping up the deposit for a house.
A slight breeze ruffled the water and a couple of pink blossoms from the bougainvilleas by the fence drifted on the ripples. Brian reached irritably for the leaf catcher and skimmed them off the surface. The day after the wedding he’d found cigarette butts in the pool. Disgusting. His relatives, probably – slobs. People just didn’t know how to behave anymore.
‘No respect,’ Brian said aloud. ‘No respect for anything, that’s the trouble with people these days.’ He glanced across to the house again. ‘No respect and no gratitude,’ he said again, although it was nowhere near loud enough for Gayle to have heard. Dropping the leaf catcher he did a rather flat dive into the pool.
At the sound of Brian’s body hitting the water, Gayle looked up from unloading the dishwasher and paused, her hands full of cutlery, to watch as he ploughed along the length of the pool and back again with a messy overarm. Since the wedding, Gayle had longed for time to herself. She was used to a quiet life: Angie was often out and Brian was always travelling, away for three or four nights at a time most weeks. The week with Mal and Rita had felt like an eternity. They relished each day with an almost childish enthusiasm, and maintained a nonstop stream of cosy conversation that made them tiresome company.
‘You sure know how to look after us, Gayle,’ Mal had said each morning as he tucked into his breakfast. ‘These are the best hash browns I’ve had since we came to Australia – well, apart from the ones my darlin’ makes me,’ and he patted Rita’s hand affectionately.
That was the most irritating thing about them, Gayle thought, their stifling togetherness. Holding hands, always sitting side by side, Mal’s arm around Rita’s shoulders, calling each other ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’ like characters in an American sitcom, sharing private jokes and then explaining them ad nauseum to anyone who would listen. She almost expected canned laughter and applause to accompany them everywhere.
‘Thirty-five years and she’s still my best gal,’ Mal said, usually several times each day.
‘And you’re still my guy, honey,’ Rita would reply with a playful punch on his arm.
Gayle sighed. How long was it since she and Brian had exchanged endearments, shared jokes, held hands? A lifetime, it seemed. Not that she wanted it now, no way, but she envied Mal and Rita the same way she envied Trisha and Graham: people who had been together for decades and who loved each other just as much, more perhaps, than they had at the start; couples who had grown closer, who had flourished through marriage rather than struggled to survive it.
Brian hauled himself out of the pool, padded dripping towards the chair where she’d left her towel, and began to dry himself. Gayle felt a flash of anger. It was her favourite towel, and she didn’t want him to use it. There was a time when she would have loved the fact that they shared a towel, and more r
ecently a time when she wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. Now she hated it. She put away the last of the cutlery and went through to the laundry to load the washing machine. Earlier she had stripped the sheets from Rita and Mal’s bed, and she piled them into the washer and reached for the washing powder.
Rita had shown her a photograph taken on their honeymoon. ‘I always carry it,’ she’d told her, ‘to remind me how much in love we were then and still are. It keeps it all alive, you see?’
Gayle saw. It had made her think about her own honeymoon. Brian was different then, never the most sensitive of men but loving in his own offhand way. He made her laugh and she felt safe and protected. So how was it that all these years later they so rarely laughed together and the one person she felt she needed protection from was Brian himself?
The washing machine rumbled into action and Gayle closed the laundry door and went back to the kitchen and filled the kettle. Out by the pool, Brian had spread the orange and white towel over the sun bed and was settling down to read the paper. She watched as he pulled out the supplements looking for the sport and business sections and dumping the rest in an untidy pile on the ground. Finally he leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him, ankles crossed, one foot characteristically jerking up and down. In a few moments he would cross them the other way and jerk the other foot. She knew he was grateful for the way she had looked after Mal and Rita, but he was unable to say so. He found her difficult these days.
‘I can’t make Gayle out anymore,’ she’d overheard him say to his sister recently. ‘She’s changed, you know, not like she used to be.’
‘None of us is,’ his sister had replied. ‘Except you, of course, Brian. You were always a Neanderthal and you still are.’
The worst part was that he really didn’t understand, despite everything that had happened, despite the fact that she’d told him just how she felt about so many things. Somehow he always managed to rationalise his behaviour and his decisions while riding roughshod over her, and she always let him get away with it. She just gave up, locked it away, closed herself off to avoid the bullying arguments, the oversimplifications, the manipulative explanations, so that in the end he believed she agreed with him.
The kettle came to the boil and she got out the milk and the plunger.
‘Coffee?’ she called from the doorway, and he gave her a thumbs up.
Behind her the rest of the house seemed to echo with a new emptiness. A phase of their lives had ended and for Gayle the motivation to keep going seemed to have died. As she spooned coffee into the plunger she felt devoid of emotion, as though the effort of suppressing her feelings and maintaining the pretence had finally crushed her. A light had gone out and she could no longer see the way ahead.
Sonya headed down South Terrace towards Gino’s, scanning the people at the pavement tables and feeling somewhat uneasy. She’d been trying to get hold of Oliver for a couple of days but he hadn’t returned her calls. This morning she’d driven down to Fremantle early to get her fruit, vegetables and fish at the markets, and when she’d put it all in the car she tried calling him once again, this time on his mobile.
‘Ah,’ he said – somewhat evasively, she thought – when she asked him where he was. ‘I’m out, you see, not at home.’
‘I realise that,’ Sonya replied. ‘I can hear a coffee grinder in the background. I’m in Fremantle. Tell me where you are and I’ll come and meet you. I want to talk to you.’
‘Er . . . yes,’ Oliver said, and there was a long pause. ‘I’m having coffee. Well, breakfast actually.’
‘Okay, where?’
With what Sonya thought was a distinct note of reluctance he admitted to being at Gino’s, and she said she’d be there in minutes. He hadn’t sounded thrilled about it but she wasn’t going to miss this very convenient opportunity to meet up with him and set the record straight. It had been bothering her all week and she needed to get it over and done with.
‘This is excellent,’ she said, sinking into a chair beside him. ‘I’m so glad I caught you. How are you, Oliver?’
‘Oh yes, good really, I suppose,’ he said, folding his newspaper and dropping it onto another chair. ‘Not bad at all. Let me get you a coffee, Sonya. What would you like?’
Sonya watched him make his way to the counter to order. There was a tentativeness in his manner that she thought quite endearing. She vaguely remembered him telling her something about being brought up by his mother, but she’d had too much champagne to take in what he’d been saying.
‘So . . .’ he said, returning to the table.
‘Look, Oliver,’ Sonya said, ‘I really wanted to talk to you about last week.’
‘The wedding?’
‘No, not the wedding, the er . . . the rest of it.’
Oliver blushed and wrung his bony hands. ‘Well . . . yes, yes, of course . . .’
‘The thing is,’ Sonya said, realising she too was blushing now, ‘I don’t usually do that sort of thing . . . hop into bed with strangers, I mean. I didn’t want you to think –’
‘No, no, of course not,’ he cut in. ‘No, me neither.’
‘Really?’
He shook his head. ‘Never . . . at least, hardly ever. I mean, I could count on one hand or less the number of times . . .’ He dried up suddenly.
‘The thing is,’ Sonya said, ‘it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did – well, obviously you know that. But I just don’t think we should make a habit of it . . .’
Oliver opened his mouth and shut it again.
‘It’s not that you’re not attractive or anything like that,’ Sonya went on quickly, not wanting to upset him. ‘You’re a very attractive man. I really like you and the thing is that I would like us to be friends, just friends – that’s all. Real friends, I mean, not just casual acquaintances who got it together once in bed. Proper friends, not lovers. And I’m telling you this because I don’t want it to be awkward. I don’t like things left hanging, not knowing where one stands.’
A change had come over Oliver’s face. A smile seemed to be playing around his lips and Sonya feared it was the sort of smile people use to hide the embarrassment of rejection. ‘I’m sorry if this is hurtful, Oliver, but I believe in speaking my mind, getting things out into the open. Oh god, I sound like someone’s mother.’
‘You sound a bit like mine,’ Oliver said, and he seemed to be smiling properly now. ‘That’s good, Sonya,’ he said, and she noticed that the tentativeness had gone and he seemed more confident. ‘Very good, because that’s just what I was thinking.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, absolutely. In fact, that was why I hadn’t returned your calls. I was worried about what to say. You see, I don’t usually go to bed with strangers. Not that it wasn’t very nice, of course – exceptionally nice, actually – but I think the champagne must have got the better of me, and I agree entirely, we shouldn’t make a habit of it. Friends is good.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Not that you’re not a very attractive woman, of course.’
‘I thought you might be hurt.’
‘Not at all,’ Oliver said, his smile broadening.
‘It would be nice if you tried to look as though you were.’
Oliver sighed and wondered why he hadn’t seen this coming. Would he ever learn to spot the times when honesty was not the best policy? ‘But you wanted it all out in the open,’ he said, wondering how they would recover from this awkwardness.
There was a brief silence and Sonya scooped foam from her cappuccino.
‘You’re right,’ she said suddenly. ‘Absolutely right. Now we both know where we stand,’ and she raised her cup. ‘To being friends . . .’
As Oliver raised his in response, a very large woman at the next table stood up and swung her backpack onto her shoulder, sending his cup flying across the pavement.
‘A very strange start to the weekend,’ he said, almost grateful for the tension breaker despite his coffe
e-stained trousers. ‘Have you seen Angie since the wedding?’
Sonya shook her head. ‘Honeymoon in Fiji. What about you? Seen anything of Gayle?’
‘No, she’s having time off too – time to recover, I suppose – and she wanted to finish a chapter of her thesis.’
‘I liked her,’ Sonya said, ‘but they’re an odd couple, aren’t they, she and Brian?’
Oliver shrugged. ‘I must say he wasn’t quite what I’d expected. Gayle hardly mentions him, not to me anyway. We talk about other stuff – work, you know, university politics. She’s always very interested in my work.’
‘Well, it’s got to be a lot more interesting than Brian’s,’ Sonya said.
‘Really? He’s in marketing, I think.’
Sonya put down her cup and looked at him in amazement. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘He works for a tobacco company.’
Oliver stared at her. ‘Tobacco? No, no, you must be wrong. Gayle hates smoking. He does too – didn’t you hear him yelling at someone who was smoking out by the pool.’
Sonya nodded, her mouth full of croissant. ‘Yes, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with selling the stuff. In fact, according to Angie, when he first took the job it was to develop a campaign to market cigarettes in some third-world country. Angie says Gayle was livid.’
Oliver’s mouth had dropped open. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. That’s why Angie’s lived at home so long.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She worries about Gayle, what would happen if she wasn’t around, especially after the business with the brother.’