Claustrophobia

by Tracy Ryan

  ‘How things are,’ Pen thought. ‘How indeed …’ Aloud, she said, ‘Okay, but it’s my workplace. And this – all this is new to me. I don’t think of myself as – you know. I can’t get my head around it. I don’t understand what happened.’

  ‘Is it a problem for you – I embarrass you?’ Kathleen spoke without harshness, as if somehow she expected it.

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that … we need to be discreet, don’t we?’ Pen’s heart was fluttering – the touch of Kathleen’s hand brought back the dizzying knowledge of last night.

  Could they see it on her face, or in her body, those carefree kids hunched over their laptops while they ate, or texting with one hand while downing a Coke? Would they care anyway, if they could? To them she was already an old woman, uninteresting. No drama in her life; part of the furniture. She took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s all going a bit fast for me. I don’t like the feeling of whispering in public places, looking over my shoulder,’ she said at last.

  Kathleen nodded. ‘Fair enough. But when can we meet?’

  Pen couldn’t look at her. ‘Soon. Of course.’ She was helpless now: it was like staggering down a very steep slope. However you tried to arrest it, you knew you couldn’t stop. ‘It’s not easy when I’ve got work. My time’s not as flexible as yours.’

  A wagtail hopped into the café from the terrace, pecked up a few crumbs at their feet, and bounced out again. Students laughed and pointed, and Pen felt all eyes were on her. Kathleen was oblivious, pondering.

  ‘I’ve got a teaching break coming up,’ she said. ‘It’s not holidays – just study week, there are no classes. Can you get some leave? We could have a couple of days somewhere. So you wouldn’t have to be rushing off.’

  Pen closed her eyes. Even if she could get a few days of her annual leave, pro rata for the months she had worked, it would be tricky. Then she clicked: German camp. Derrick would be on Rottnest for a week with the students. She was almost certain his term break – at least half of it – would coincide with the university study break. If it was only two or three days, he wouldn’t ever have to know.

  ‘I can try,’ she said, gazing directly at Kathleen now. Never had any woman appeared so flawless, smooth. Pen thought of the perfume of her milky hair, and the soft feel of her – like suede. Then the image seemed repulsive, since suede was dead skin.

  But she could not unseat the sensation from her memory.

  Kathleen lowered her voice. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you.’

  It was vertigo, the low voice, the proximity. ‘Yes,’ Pen murmured, as if in a dream. ‘Same.’

  Kathleen stood to go. ‘Ring me. We have to make this happen.’

  ‘Somewhere quiet,’ Pen said, pleadingly. ‘I don’t want to be around lots of people.’

  ‘Me neither. A little cottage in Pemberton or something. If that’s not too far … I’ve got marking to do, but I can knock that off beforehand. I already lost a batch of essays this year – have to get on top of it.’

  Pen swallowed. ‘What do you mean, lost?’

  ‘Well, between you and me, I think somebody filched them. Right off my office door. Fortunately I’d already submitted the marks – but the students were a bit miffed not to get their copies back. I’ve a fair idea who it was, too, because there’s been other stuff going on – but it doesn’t matter. In any case,’ she leaned joyfully close to Pen, ‘I don’t want to think about her anymore. I’ve got you to look forward to.’

  ‘Six days,’ Derrick sighed. ‘Six days and then I’ll be home again. I’ll have baked beans coming out of my ears.’

  It wasn’t easy being vegetarian on German camp.

  ‘You could eat the sauerkraut,’ Pen said absent-mindedly. She was driving him to the tour bus, where he would join two other teachers and a horde of boys exhilarated to be out of uniform, for the trip to the Rottnest ferry.

  ‘Oh, I’ll survive,’ he said grimly. ‘In any case, it’s an important thing for them, the nearest they’ll get to immersion for most of them.’ The French students had trips to Mauritius or La Réunion; for the German kids, it wasn’t that simple. He looked at her sidelong. ‘Pity you couldn’t come too.’

  Pen shrugged, and could think of nothing to say.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ Derrick tried again, as they rounded the corner to the college car park.

  ‘Yes. Me too.’

  ‘We can talk in the evenings, anyway.’

  ‘Of course.’ She leaned over to kiss him. ‘Goodbye, darling.’

  She kept the engine running. Derrick grabbed her, impetuously, and kissed her again. Pen put a hand to her cheek where the bristles of his beard had burned – he’d just trimmed it.

  ‘Sorry,’ he grinned. ‘Wait till I’m back – it’ll be even worse. Robinson Crusoe from Rottnest.’

  Jean Sargent was there, organising the boys, and strode towards the car as Derrick got out. She looked in her element, laden with plastic bags, hats and towels, and carrying a first-aid box. The bus door hissed open and let out a reek of zinc cream, Twisties, old sandshoes and orange peel.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Long time no see. Not up for a free island idyll this time then?’

  Pen smiled but said nothing. Jean seemed very tiny and far away, as if already well across the water. She belonged to another life, with the long line of students, the heap of backpacks and sleeping-bags. School camps were nightmares to Pen – everyone in each other’s pockets. In the past she’d only gone along to keep Derrick company and – if she were honest – to keep an eye on the one or two other women who always went. People got up to odd things when they were away from home, away from routine.

  This time she had plans of her own.

  9

  The drive down to Pemberton was long but glorious – the worst of the holiday traffic had already been through some days before, and they were in no hurry, having left early. They took Kathleen’s car because it was better on fuel – ‘arg’, Pen remembered, the silver Corolla she had so often stared at in the days before …

  ‘We’ll have lunch in – maybe Busselton? I’d prefer to go that way – Bunbury’s too big,’ Kathleen said. ‘Maybe even a swim – you did bring your bathers?’

  It wasn’t quite warm enough yet, but Pen had brought them anyway. The day was unclouded, high and blue. Pen had a distant memory of diving into a forest pool as a small child – a big, dammed rectangle in the river among tall trees, cool and majestic.

  ‘That’d be Pemberton Pool.’ Kathleen nodded. ‘I don’t know if it’s still open these days.’

  ‘You know the area quite well?’

  ‘A bit. I grew up over east. But I’ve been down south before with – friends, you know, now and then.’

  Pen swallowed. She couldn’t ever be sure what Kathleen meant by ‘friends’, since the whole definition had now shifted. She thought for a moment, ‘Maybe she is repeating a pattern – bringing me somewhere she’s been with someone else.’ It wasn’t a pleasant thought – not jealousy, exactly, but the sense of compulsion about it – and yet here she was, playing out Derrick’s own past despite herself. Maybe that was all people ever did; maybe they never genuinely interacted with anyone.

  But then Kathleen’s hand wandered over and squeezed hers, and she remembered the sheer fact of her, the overwhelming scent and texture of her beauty. That was not a repetition, surely.

  By the time they pulled in to Busselton the sun was well and truly out. Pen’s heart surged at the long line of trees flanking Causeway Road as they entered the town. Imitative, a little would-be Europe, it made her think of Monet’s poplars, and the idea of France – with Kathleen – flashed into her mind. Logistically impossible. But she was wistful. Why couldn’t life be like that, instead of this constant battle?

  ‘Let’s go down to the beach first,’ Kathleen said, ‘otherwise if we eat, we’ll have to wait too long before we can hit the water.’

  They had to keep moving further down
because there were too many kids in the jetty area. Pen went to the change rooms, and when she came back Kathleen was already in the shallows, sleek in a black halter-neck suit, her wet hair gleaming.

  ‘It’s bracing,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t been in the sea for ages. Come on!’

  The slap and sting of salt brought Pen up with a shudder. She rose from the waves not sure where she was, or which way she was facing.

  ‘If you keep your shoulders in, you’ll soon get warm. It’s the breeze that makes you cold.’ Kathleen laughed.

  It was true: it was just a matter of acclimatising to another element. Before long, you forgot your displacement and didn’t ever want to get out again. Pen was a moderate swimmer, Kathleen a strong one. Watching her strike out for the deeper water brought a lump to Pen’s throat. There was grace in her swift movement, yet she looked miniature against the distant waves, bobbing and signalling for Pen to follow. If she went under out there, no one would even see her.

  Pen shook her head and gestured towards the shore, jogging through the tug of the shallows back to the sand, wrapping herself in a thick but gritty towel till no chink remained. Peering out through a slit, she watched as Kathleen emerged from the waves – Venus, she smiled to herself, thinking of every pop-cultural imitation of that moment, from Ursula Andress and Bo Derek through to the banality of the wet T-shirt competition … like something obsessively replaying. Droplets trickled from Kathleen’s throat and chest as if designed to mould, to mark her out; now her skin was prickled with cold.

  ‘Towel!’ she said, gasping, laughing, and Pen quickly threw one over her, with the mental image of throwing a blanket to put out a fire.

  ‘Let’s go and eat. I’m famished.’ Kathleen went to take her hand to help her up, but Pen pulled it away guiltily, surveying the area around them.

  ‘Pen, it’s okay,’ Kathleen said, but Pen just gazed at the sand as they walked, embarrassed and unsure. ‘It’s a free country, you know?’

  Despite the wide and airy streets, Busselton was packed. They had to walk up and down for ages before finding a café. Being damp and salty didn’t matter – most of the guests were extremely casual, and no one registered. They ordered strong coffee – ‘Still a lot of driving, and only weak instant in the roadhouses!’ Kathleen smiled – and grilled panini with mozzarella and warm artichoke that melted on your tongue. There were so many patrons, so much noise, that they could barely hear each other.

  ‘Lucky to get a seat,’ Pen said.

  ‘We were lucky to get a place to stay for tonight, come to that. Most places were booked out. The chalet’s only available because the owner’s a friend of mine.’

  Pen felt a sudden chill.

  ‘I thought we were just having time by ourselves,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think we were staying with people you knew.’ She put down her sandwich, sickening sharply.

  ‘Hey, slow down – it’s not a big deal. It’s self-contained, you’re not staying with anyone. They’ve got about ten of them. Come on, eat up – it’s delicious.’ Sticky cheese dripped onto Kathleen’s plate, and she scooped it up with a fork.

  ‘Still,’ said Pen. ‘You might have told me.’

  Kathleen gazed at her. Then she said, ‘Don’t be annoyed – I’ve got such a good time planned. You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to. If it’s an issue for you. Being with me, I mean.’

  ‘I like being with you.’ But she couldn’t afford for anyone to know who she was – even remotely, even third-hand.

  ‘But it’s hard for you. You’re not out, are you?’

  Pen frowned and looked at the ceiling fan, then at the waiters.

  ‘It’s all right, I understand,’ Kathleen said. ‘Really, I do. We’ve all been through that. There’s a lot for it, and a lot against it. I don’t tell everyone, you know? Need-to-know basis, that’s my approach. I guess that makes me not so political. But I’m not ashamed, either.’

  Not ashamed. Had she dumped Derrick all those years ago for a woman, perhaps? Was it possible to swing from one life to another and not lose your identity altogether?

  ‘I’m not ashamed,’ Pen said. But right now her life seemed like Alpha Centauri. And maybe it wasn’t just the deception. Maybe she did feel a bit strange about – what she was doing, with another woman. It hadn’t ever exactly been part of her self-image up till now. She didn’t want to think about what it meant, how it fitted in with the past.

  That was the tension: she knew she should find it odd, because it was utterly unexpected, and yet she didn’t. It felt natural, for all the world as if she’d clicked, at last, into the right place.

  After Busselton Pen took the wheel. Kathleen dozed a little, and Pen gazed sideways now and then, sneaking glances at her. The stilled face, the delicate breathing. Asleep, she looked even younger than awake, and yet she had a good few years on Pen. Pen no longer thought of her as the ‘older woman’. Sometimes she even forgot how they’d come to meet, as if she’d really gone back to scratch and started everything over. She had to feel like that, or she couldn’t keep up the pretence. As it was, she marvelled at how few questions Kathleen asked. But then, she saw, that was Kathleen’s nature – spontaneous, happy-go-lucky. She might have been a thinker, but something in her had decided long ago, it seemed, to get what enjoyment she could from life.

  They stopped briefly in Nannup, Pen pleading a toilet break. She knew it was going to be too hard to ring Derrick from the chalet, and they’d already topped up on petrol and a few grocery items in Busselton, so she had to think of something.

  She stepped out near a small playground with dank grey sand, one small girl leaning listlessly in the centre of a climbing frame. Cage à poules, the French called it – ‘chicken coop’ – and she did look like a little lost yellow chick, trapped all alone in the bars. Pen smiled at her, but the chick poked out its tongue.

  Pen did her best not to take too long in the cubicle, while Kathleen sat in the car.

  Derrick’s mobile was switched to voicemail. Pen strained to keep the relief out of her tone. He might ring her back later, but she could leave her own phone switched off, at least on this first night, and he wouldn’t think anything awry. And if he tried the landline at home, there was voicemail – she could easily be under the shower, or out in the garden …

  ‘Hi, darling, sorry I missed you. Hope it’s all going well. Everything’s fine here. I’ll give you another call tomorrow’ – that might hold him off. In any case, he had his hands full supervising the mob. Communal meals, communal wash-up – and then evening entertainments. Charades and quiz shows, all in German. He’d hardly have a moment to himself.

  When they finally drew up at the forest retreat, Kathleen went to collect the key. Pen sank in her car seat, trying to keep out of sight should anyone emerge from reception. Though it was late, a little sun still streamed at an angle through the tall karri.

  But only Kathleen appeared.

  ‘Phil’s not here anyway,’ she said, ‘as it turns out. So you can breathe easy – your secret is safe for today …’ Pen darted a glance at her, but she was joking. ‘He did leave us a lovely bottle, though,’ and she held up champagne and a card. ‘Let’s go play house.’

  The chalet was made of rammed earth and scented timber, and the leadlights meant a weird light streamed through around sunset. Kathleen flopped on a lounge chair and put her feet up, but Pen scuttled about investigating – a little kitchen, fully equipped, a queen-sized bed, a full bathroom with spa.

  ‘You’ve got three nights, you know,’ Kathleen called, ‘you don’t have to memorise it all straight away!’

  ‘Very decadent,’ Pen said as she wandered back in, perching opposite Kathleen on the other armchair, and biting her lower lip nervously.

  Kathleen smiled and beckoned for her to sit closer. ‘It’s a honeymoon cottage.’

  ‘I’ve never had a honeymoon,’ Pen mused sadly.

  Kathleen wrinkled her forehead and laughed. ‘You and me both.’ Pen was jo
lted at her own careless thinking-aloud. They’d had to choose, she and Derrick all those years ago, between house deposit and trip away somewhere exotic. You had to be sensible if you wanted to get ahead in life. It was her choice – Derrick would have blown the money to please her if she’d insisted.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, Pen-ny,’ Kathleen said.

  ‘I was thinking about the spa,’ Pen said. ‘And I hate being called Penny. Just so you know.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Fancy the spa, do you?’

  ‘Actually I was thinking how … how unhygienic it must be. Do you think there’s any Pine O Cleen in the cupboards?’

  ‘You’re a true romantic,’ Kathleen said. ‘They do clean the place between guests, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I can just imagine the kind of poisonous stuff they use.’

  Kathleen rubbed Pen’s shoulders. ‘Chill out, as my students say. Or even just chill, these days. It changes so fast I can’t keep up with it. Mostly they don’t talk, anyway. They’re too busy texting.’

  Pen was silent a while. ‘You get along well with your students, don’t you?’ She thought, ‘Rather too well in some cases …’ She was watching Kathleen.

  ‘Yes, generally. I like teaching.’

  ‘Do they know that you’re … are you out with them? I mean, at work, you know. Doesn’t it – affect things?’ Maybe ‘out’ was the wrong word, since Kathleen must be ‘both ways’, Pen thought, and then blushed, realising people could say that of her too now. If they knew …

  ‘I have no idea. It never comes up. It’s probably discussed – who knows? – but not to my face. I’m a fairly private person, anyway. Some of them might have guessed. I found a note once, screwed up in the seminar room, where someone had written, ‘Prof Nancarrow has balls’. That’s the closest it’s ever come. Given the boy who wrote it, I chose to take it as a compliment.’

  Pen thought suddenly of a calendar she’d seen when she was a kid, in the backyard toilet at the house of one of her father’s workmates: a naked caricature of Martina Navratilova with both vulva and testicles. She smiled, with a sudden, sad affection for Martina.