Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  ‘I do. I don’t think she’s interested.’

  ‘I don’t think that can be right.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘It’s just a feeling. I’m concerned. I feel we’re not finishing on a very good note.’

  ‘That’s okay. It’s Christmas after all.’

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’re a good person, Louisa. I’m on call over the break. If you need to talk.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  As Louisa leaves she wonders again whether this therapy is making things worse. She really feels terrible now. Why would she think Lucy has the answers any more than she does? She’s just a woman. What makes her think that anyone has the answers? All she wants is to go home and have a good laugh with Harry.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  At South Beach Cafe the furniture is cemented to the ground to make it impossible to steal. Carole, Louisa and Rhianna sit around the immovable table like the old friends that they were, and to the untrained eye might appear as solid and as difficult to shift.

  Carole, who prefers everything out in the open, is determined to make the most of the meeting by ensuring that their common history isn’t ignored, but Louisa and Rhianna resist. There is still something blocking progress. Louisa tries to ignore it, but feels it enclosing her, frustrating movement in all directions. Her habit is to pretend that it isn’t there.

  It is not good for her to live like this. She needs her friends. She tries to identify where the cooling of the friendship occurred. There was no single dramatic incident, but something has happened progressively.

  When she was younger she was more forward-looking: after she left Victor, when he had found other distractions and faded from their lives, and also before him. In those days it seemed that there was still the possibility of better times ahead. She and her friends helped each other out and grew closer as a result, drawing up and replenishing each other’s strength. Later, when she needed it most, in the years after Tom as her daughter became progressively more remote, Louisa was too worn out and too overwhelmed to ask for help or offer it. For whatever reason, the dynamic had changed and they all drifted apart.

  Then one day, she wondered, and perhaps the others did too, what they were doing. It happened for her one evening as the sun was sinking from a cloudless sky into the ocean. She, Harry and Buster were watching together, wishing for a skerrick of cloud to catch the afterglow. Her thoughts had been drifting but a coincidental combination of thoughts came together in synchronicity. She felt a sense of longing for things lost: the warmth of old friendships. She began to see more of Carole, and sought Rhianna out again. She and Harry minded Rhianna and Simon’s old dog when they went away, and they looked after Buster from time to time.

  But that sort of contact is a different, diminished sort of connection. It is too fleeting and distracted, too polite, too pleasant, dropping off and picking up the dogs, talk of practicalities, quantities of food and emergency phone numbers. They never really talked the way they used to.

  But three women, old friends meeting for lunch, has potential. So today they meet hoping to create something new. Or she does. Everyone remembers the past differently. Carole is pleased that they are all together again. Rhianna is giving nothing away but seems open to whatever happens. For the first time in a long time they really see each other. In the harsh outdoor light with shadows cast from the cafe shelter and the blue reflections from the painted tables, Louisa notices how old the others have become, and how changed. She’d seem that way to them too, she guesses. The women smile and appear relaxed, but their eyes expose their history, the difficult and unnecessary detours their lives have taken. Rhianna has never had children. She would have made a good mother. Louisa thinks that perhaps Rhianna resents her for having children and making such a mess of it. She looks closely for signs of this, but can’t identify anything in her eyes, except kindness.

  They talk and smile, and try too hard to recapture the relationship they once had. The years have banished it, and it won’t come back. Instead of talking over the top of one another in their excitement to share, they smile pleasantly, protecting their gains and losses.

  ‘Louisa said you’d been to Scotland again,’ Rhianna is saying to Carole.

  ‘I’ve been three times,’ Carole says. ‘We’re planning to go back in March for about six months. Gordon’s sister is going to Spain and wants someone to stay in her house so we said we’d go. It’s going to be fantastic. There’s a small studio room in the backyard where she said I can do my sculpture, and Gordon has long service leave. I can take leave on half-pay and then leave without pay, so I’m going to do it. Bugger it! You’re only young once!’

  ‘That’s fantastic!’ says Rhianna, as Louisa nods. ‘It’s about time you did something for yourself.’

  ‘What are you going to do with your house?’ asks Louisa.

  ‘I don’t know. I was thinking I might rent it out, but I don’t want to take a risk with it. You never know who you’re going to get, do you? Would one of you like to stay in it? You could have a holiday of your own. We’ll need someone to look after Percy. There’s a good cat-boarding place up in the hills, but I think he’d be more settled in his own home.’

  ‘Have you still got him?’ says Rhianna, amazed. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Eighteen. He’s got a couple more years in him.’

  Last time she saw him, Louisa noticed that Percy had started dribbling, but he is very special because he belonged to Carole’s daughter.

  ‘Moggies last longer than pedigrees I suppose,’ Louisa says.

  ‘Yes. So what about it? House-sitting.’ Carole sticks to her agenda. She’s angling to close the deal. It’s made her the successful businesswoman that she is.

  Louisa can’t imagine anyone feeling particularly comfortable there. Carole is obsessed with having everything just so. What would happen if she were to break something? She might feel compelled to break something.

  ‘You know that Buddha water feature with the light that we saw at the winery that day?’ says Carole. ‘I bought it. You could sit and meditate out the back. You could have Harry over, as if he was your lover. You know it’s very private out there, except for the sound of the chooks next door, but you get used to them. I don’t know if they are allowed to keep chooks in the metro area; do you? I wanted to complain, but Gordon wouldn’t let me. He reckons it makes him feel like he is living in the country.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Louisa. ‘I’d have to think about it. It might be nice having my own space for a while, but I don’t know about Harry. He might get used to living on his own. Or what if I did?’

  ‘What if you did?’ says Carole.

  ‘You used to be more adventurous when we were younger,’ Rhianna says.

  ‘Why don’t you move in then?’ says Louisa.

  ‘Because I don’t want to,’ says Rhianna, with a hint of her old liveliness. This gives Louisa some hope. Something of their old relationship might be salvaged.

  ‘It’s an interesting idea,’ says Louisa. ‘Can I think about it?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Carole. ‘I want to sort something out soon, so can you get back to me by next week sometime?’

  Louisa agrees to do this after she has talked it over with Harry. She wonders whether some distance might make the heart grow fonder or more remote. She wonders, for some reason that she doesn’t analyse, about that man in the white van. Perhaps he is homeless. Perhaps he is driving around parking under people’s trees so that he feels he has some roots. No pun intended. She smiles to herself. Pun intended. Perhaps he would like to house-sit Carole and Gordon’s house. Perhaps he is a nice young American man with good manners. Perhaps he is escaping some sort of situation.

  After they hug and go their separate ways, Louisa drives slowly home with her window open, the radio turned off and her hair blowing into knots. When she arrives home, Harry is out. She makes herself a cu
p of tea and takes it outside to sit on the swing and think about what has transpired.

  She wonders about the commitment of keeping up with old friends, that level of intimacy that women have. She provisionally decides that it isn’t good to force anything. You can’t go back, can you?

  Then she thinks about Tom, and is suddenly angry at him for choosing the wrong path and for putting her and Meri and everyone through so much pain. ‘It’s too bad,’ she says to him. ‘I know you were young, but what on earth were you thinking? Why couldn’t you just exercise a bit of self-control? What made you think you had no responsibility for the life you were given?’

  The opportunity more or less falls into their laps. Gordon has had to fly back to Scotland because his mother is ill, so Harry has arranged to meet Carole at her place. When he gets there she takes a while to answer the bell.

  ‘Who is it?’ she eventually asks through the closed door.

  ‘It’s me, Harry,’ he says, feeling foolish. Who did she think it was?

  She opens the door. She is wearing a pair of dark blue pyjamas made out of some sort of silky material. Her hair, which she normally keeps tied up, is hanging loose. She looks younger, more approachable, less businesslike than normal.

  ‘Oh Harry,’ she says, ‘just making sure. There’s something wrong with the peephole. Come on through.’

  She is wearing a familiar perfume. Harry has a flashback – Yasamine dressed in a smooth black dress. She was wearing the locket he gave her for her birthday. He just fastened the clasp of the chain, and his fingers stopped to play with the fine silk of her skin. He wound his arms around her from behind and buried his face in her hair. He feels the sensation of it now on his cheeks. He shakes the thought away. He is here, now, in Carole’s house, and not with his wife.

  He is more nervous than he had expected. It’s not the first time he’s done something like this, but he hasn’t been with anyone else since he moved in with Louisa, and her best friend is high stakes. The foreplay is over. This is the real deal.

  He smiles, raises his eyebrows, and hands her the flowers he’s bought from a roadside stall that is permanently set up around the corner from his house. The flower-seller is surly and never says more than two words, so there’s no chance of it getting back to Louisa. If it did he’d say they were for his mother. The flowers are all pungent smells and bright colours, and the oversized bunch is wrapped in purple and red paper. One orange daisy thing is hanging its head as if its neck is broken.

  Carole relieves him of the flowers and puts them on the hall stand beneath the pictures of her grandchildren.

  ‘How thoughtful.’

  She kisses his cheek, lingering there and slowly working her way around to his ear. Her perfume is heavy but not suffocating. His ear is cold where she has licked it. When she turns to get him a drink, his hand automatically goes up to wipe his cheek.

  ‘Here’s something I prepared earlier,’ she says, handing him the drink.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she says. She leads him into the sitting room and sits on the couch. ‘Come and sit down.’ She pats the seat next to her.

  Harry sits, takes the glass from her hand and puts it on the table at his side, slopping a little over the rim and his hand as he does so. Carole takes his hand and licks the spilt drink from his fingers. It feels strange and Harry has the urge to laugh, but he controls himself.

  ‘Sweet,’ she says. ‘Intoxicating.’ She is leaning over him. He can see down her pyjama top. Her nipples are erect. He feels himself getting hard. It feels good to be hot, and he finds it reassuring that he is responding as easily as he is.

  ‘Keep it up,’ he says, half to himself.

  ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ says Carole. ‘I’d better wipe that up off the table before it marks,’ she says, grabbing a handful of tissues.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She mops it up, leaning over him. Her pyjamas are silk and slide around on her body without making sparks: none of that cheap polyester stuff that Louisa wears. ‘I don’t want you to worry one bit,’ she says.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he says, taking her wrist. He kisses her, a long, deep, slow kiss. She has just cleaned her teeth and is wearing some sort of flavoured lipstick. ‘You taste nice,’ he says.

  ‘So do you.’ She pushes him down so that he is only half lying on the couch, with his legs angled down to the floor, and climbs on top of him. ‘I like it on top,’ she says. ‘I like to feel strong and powerful. I like to take control. All you need to do is what I tell you to.’

  ‘Great,’ he says. ‘I like a woman who knows her own mind.’

  She unties her complicated pyjama top without Harry seeing how. She has the body of a younger woman, at variance with her face. Harry vaguely wonders if she’s had some sort of cosmetic surgery. Gordon has plenty of money and is generous enough, he thinks, and Carole’s got a good job too. Between the two of them they’d be doing all right.

  Carole starts to undo his shirt, kissing his neck and his chest as she goes down on his body. ‘Mm, nice chest,’ she says. ‘What else do we have down here? What’s this here?’

  ‘I think that’s pretty obvious,’ he says. He cups his hands over her breasts, but the position is awkward and he lets go. She goes down on him now, licking and sucking.

  He is uncomfortable, not enjoying it as much as he should. He clears his throat. ‘Do you have a bed?’ he says after a moment. ‘It’s just that my back is killing me.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ says Carole. ‘Don’t be an old man.’ She keeps playing with him, kissing him, teasing him with her tongue.

  ‘Well as far as that goes you’re hardly sixteen yourself, are you?’ Harry snaps this more than he intends to. His back has started to hurt quite badly and the pain is shooting down his left leg.

  She stops and sits up. He adjusts his position and the pain subsides a bit.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘You’re not, are you?’ he says, still irritably adjusting his position underneath her. ‘Anyway that’s what beds are for. More room to manoeuvre.’ He winks at her to relieve the tension.

  Carole recoils slightly. She is reconsidering. ‘It’s upstairs,’ she says, but there is an edge to her voice now. Then she laughs. ‘Sometimes I forget,’ she says as she climbs off him and stands up. ‘You’re right. We’re not as young as we used to be. Gordon prefers the bed too. Come on.’

  ‘You’re only as young as the woman you feel,’ says Harry automatically. He uses this line with Louisa all the time and she always smiles, but Carole doesn’t get the joke. Too bad! He is annoyed that she has brought Gordon into the picture. There should be some sort of unspoken rule about that.

  He is still lying halfway off the couch and he asks her for some help to get up. She grabs hold of his arms and pulls him sharply.

  ‘Ow! Take it easy.’ His erection has fallen away completely. Bugger. He’s not as reliable as he used to be, but it’s understandable under the circumstances.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. She sounds resentful, petulant, childish.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll do it myself.’ He eases himself off the couch until he twists around onto his knees, and leans forwards into the seat-back. He stays there a while, head down, backside facing outwards.

  ‘Nice,’ says Carole.

  She doesn’t stay to watch, or to help further. She clears the glasses and Harry hears her rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. When she comes back into the room, he has made it to his feet but is having difficulty straightening up.

  ‘I need a moment,’ he says.

  ‘How do you feel about this?’ She has tied her hair up.

  ‘Not great,’ he says.

  ‘Me neither,’ she says.

  ‘I think I’ve put my back out. Can I take a raincheck? To tell the truth I haven’t been feeling the best lately.’

  ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that.’

  ‘Well,’ he
says.

  ‘Well.’

  ‘I’ll see myself out then,’ he says.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Okay, thinks Harry, I will.

  ‘We’ll catch up,’ he offers. ‘Soon.’

  ‘Of course. Give Louisa my love.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  As he drives home he is feeling humiliated and annoyed with himself. What was he thinking? She’s hardly his type: all feminist hard edges and neurosis. He knows, he knows from past experience that there is a reason why people don’t sleep with their wives’ friends or with workmates. You have to keep seeing them, and maintaining a pretended innocence. It’s all so exhausting and, besides, he’s not a hundred per cent convinced that he can trust Carole not to tell Gordon, or Louisa for that matter.

  Plus he likes Gordon, he really does, and he doesn’t want to lose their recently burgeoning friendship. He doesn’t like to think how finding out about this would hurt and humiliate him, and for what? He feels like an idiot. He’ll kick himself if he loses Gordon’s good opinion. These days, friends are few and far between.

  Louisa isn’t in when he gets home but the dog greets him, sniffs at his groin then wanders out the back. ‘Oh, come on!’ he protests. ‘Et tu, Buster?’

  But it’s fair comment. Before Louisa gets home he will have a shower and pop his clothes in the wash. Just to be on the safe side.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Louisa has decided not to take up Carole’s offer of the house. She’ll stay with Harry. Last night he seemed a bit down about the idea. He seems to be struggling with some sort of existential angst.

  She lends him her favourite book by Deepak Chopra, so that he can start the New Year on a new foot. She thinks that Deepak will be good for him, but after flicking through he tosses the book aside.

  ‘Why do you get this crap?’ he says. ‘Why make the man any richer than he already is?’

  ‘I guess so. Oh well, it doesn’t matter.’ She is embarrassed by her credulity and his disparagement, and finds herself back-pedalling. ‘I remember seeing him years ago and being impressed, but I was younger. He said something about not having to age and it seemed to make sense back then. I don’t know, somehow it doesn’t now. Make sense. Not all. Of course I did age, so it didn’t actually work. I think he thinks human beings are deluded.’