This resolution lasted at least five minutes into the Tuesday morning. Oh God, if you could meet this boy, I think you’d understand.
He was in my office at the first available opportunity and shut the door behind him.
‘How are you?’ he said in a loud whisper, ‘I was thinking about you all weekend.’
‘Alex, be a little bit discreet would you. I have my reputation to consider.’
‘Don’t worry - people will just assume we’re talking about work stuff. So when can I see you again?’
‘Do you really think this is wise?’
‘Oh definitely not, but can you tell me truthfully that you don’t want to?’ he said, looking at me with those bedroom eyes. Where did that steely resolve of mine go? I looked down to find a small puddle of molten metal under my chair. ‘So when is your husband away again?’
‘See, you do get off on the idea being with a married woman.’
‘I don’t. I honestly don’t know why you are still together and hope you have the good sense to leave him soon. I’m just thinking practically until you do.’
‘Well…I am free tomorrow night. Tony will be away and Isabel will be at her grandmother’s. She sleeps over every Wednesday.’
‘That’s fantastic. I think I’m going to grow to love Wednesdays. You can come over to my place again then.’
‘I haven’t actually said yes yet…’
‘C’mon, it’s all settled. I’ll cook you dinner.’
***
This time I was better prepared. I fed the cat and diverted my home phone to my mobile before I left. Can you believe my audacity at dropping Isabel off at my mother-in-law’s before rendezvousing with my lover? I would do the same on more than a few occasions over the ensuing months. If Pamela had ever shown the slightest gesture of goodwill towards me over the years I might have felt guilty, but she hadn’t, so I no longer cared.
Alex turned out to know his way around a kitchen and whipped up a magnificent crab curry, although Paul was heard to loudly complain that he wasn’t so great at washing up afterwards. We didn’t eat till about 10pm; other appetites needed to be satisfied first. Alex also knew his way around a woman’s body in ways I’d barely begun to contemplate.
Yes, Paul was there. Alex’s flat mate, who had been a good friend since school, owned the apartment so we couldn’t complain. He had a glittering career in banking but this success hadn’t yet translated to women. He was as fair as Alex was dark and, although not unpleasant looking, had a slightly receding hairline and an overly fleshy face that somehow created the illusion he was overweight when he actually wasn’t. I got a sense he was disapproving of me, which was understandable under the circumstances; he made a few comments during dinner which I think were deliberately designed to wound.
‘Alex is such a chick magnet. Would you believe this stunning girl came up to him on Saturday night and said, just like that, no preliminaries, “I think you’re gorgeous and I’d like you to come home with me tonight.” Can you believe it? I thought that sort of thing only happened in bad Hollywood movies.’
Alex’s eyes darkened and he said quietly through a set jaw, ‘I didn’t take her up on the offer, though.’ He stroked my hair to reassure me, but also, I think, as a warning to Paul.
‘Yeah, I offered myself as a substitute but she wasn’t interested, sadly.’
Poor Paul, I imagined that hitting the town with Alex would be like it used to be with Mimi and I, but magnified ten-fold. I hoped he found a girl soon, if only so he might be distracted from passing judgement on his friend’s choice of lover.
Later when we were back in bed, Alex said, ‘Sorry about Paul before. I don’t know what that was about.’
‘Oh don’t worry. Now I’ve heard all your war stories it explains how you could have misinterpreted my motives on the team building weekend, although my methods must have seemed very subtle compared with the approach of some girls.’
‘Even so…’
‘The thing is Alex, I can hardly expect you to be faithful to me. If you want to see other people that’s your own business, though I’d appreciate it if you used condoms, just in case.’
‘Thanks, but I really don’t want to see anyone else.’
I wondered then if Alex might have assumed a bad marriage was also a sexless marriage. In many cases he might have been right but not with my own. However, since he didn’t ask I decided it wasn’t necessary to set him straight.
***
That Friday I had some errands to run in my lunch hour. As I had a few minutes to spare, I stopped by the newsagents to have a quick squiz at the latest ‘stars without makeup’ issue of a gossip magazine too trashy for even me to buy. That’s when an article in one of the glossies caught my eye: How to have an affair and not get caught.
Only a few months earlier I would have pursed my lips that such an irresponsible feature would ever be published: fancy encouraging people to commit adultery. Now my perspective had changed somewhat.
I dashed to the counter and presented the cash to the shop assistant. ‘May I have it in a paper bag?’ I asked politely and she scowled. At first I thought she’d somehow guessed my evil intent but was relieved to realise it was my request for the paper bag that was the problem. Everyone’s an environmentalist these days.
Once back in my office I pored over the article eagerly. I don’t know what startling insights I was expecting from an article published in a magazine whose raison d’être was the Holy Trinity of beauty, fashion and romance, but I wasn’t behaving particularly rationally by this time.
The first and number one rule, opined the author, was:
Don’t have an office affair. It will inevitably end in disaster.
Oops - blown that one. Gee the author didn’t beat around the bush did she? ‘Inevitably end in disaster’ - but surely nothing in life is one hundred percent certain? I was comforted by a quote from Mark Twain: ‘All generalisations are false, including this one’. I decided that Alex and I would somehow prove to be one of the rare exceptions to this rule, although how it was all going to end peaceably seemed a bit hard to think about at this stage.
The other rules were:
• Don’t discuss your home life with your lover.
• Never ‘foul your own nest’ (bring your lover home to bed).
• Don’t tell anyone about the affair.
• Don’t communicate by home computer or mobile phone.
• Never have unprotected sex.
It was a shame about the last one - shutting the gate after the horse has bolted as it were - but the others were still implementable.
Later that afternoon, I marched into Alex’s office, closed the door and laid down the ground rules for our affair.
‘You are not allowed to phone or text me on my mobile or send me any personal emails. I am never inviting you to my home. You are not to tell any of your friends. We are not going to have sex in the toilets at work or anything stupid like that and if you’re having fantasies about me giving you a blow job at your desk one evening after office hours think again - it’s not going to happen. I value my job too much to risk getting caught.’
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘although I’m a bit sad about the last one. And of course Paul knows already but I think he can be trusted.’
So I had set the ground rules in place, but by this stage had fallen so completely under Alex’s spell that I no longer paused to reflect whether I should be doing any of this in the first place.
15
Madness and possession
I’m guessing this chapter is the whole point of the exercise: my confessional. Although, even as I write the title I am conscious that I may be being less than honest. ‘Disingenuous’ is the word my mother would use. Was I mad during this period, or simply bad?
Sexual desire - lust is another word. My immediate thought
was to describe it as a genie that’s been let out of its bottle, a very recalcitrant genie with its own agenda, mind you. Upon reflection, I think the metaphor is not potent enough. I’ve started thinking more along the lines of a serpent that entwines you in its vice-like grip, controlling your every action and stifling your carefully cultivated sense of right and wrong as easily as a python stifles the breath out of an unsuspecting small mammal that has stumbled across its path. Poor old snakes get a bad rap that is not always deserved, but if the imagery was good enough for the Bible and Harry Potter (although it’s probably blasphemous to mention the two in same sentence), then on this occasion it’s good enough for me.
Yes, unless you’re fully in the grip of sexual desire you’re bound to underestimate its force. There was a brief period last year when it dominated everything in my life.
I’ve made earlier reference to my evil twin and in an indirect way to Tony’s who, for a time, appeared to take up permanent residence in our house. I don’t think this phenomenon is unique to our little household. It’s a question that’s challenged more sophisticated philosophers than Eleanor Parkes throughout the ages: the capacity of humans for both good and evil.
I would say that the good me has been in charge for most of my life. I have been a dutiful daughter, an honest employee and a loving mother. I am kind to old people, pay my bills on time and my name is on a secret list that is circulated to all registered charities in Australia and entitled ‘Guaranteed Soft Touches’. Out of deference to my husband and daughter I have even kept my thoughts about my mother-in-law largely to myself.
All the same the bad me occasionally pops in for a visit, like the time I sat back complicitly and watched the mean girls at my school bully a fat girl so badly she had a nervous breakdown and never returned to class. I knew I should have spoken up for her, but was too much the coward. Instead I hung around at the back of the pack as those snarling hyenas went in for the kill. Then there was that day at uni when a shy boy with bad skin had asked me out within earshot of my friends and I’d callously brushed him off, laughing. I’d felt witty and sophisticated at the time, but had later reflected on how much courage it must have taken him to ask me and how I’d so thoughtlessly crushed his self-esteem.
Yes, the bad me has made a few cameos during my life, but for a time last year she was running the show, with sexual desire the evil mastermind pulling the strings above. I became scheming and duplicitous. To my unending shame I became a snappy and disinterested mother. And I lied. I lied to my mother, I lied to Melanie and I lied to Tony. I even lied to Alex.
But the thing about my evil twin is that she looks exactly like me, so no-one noticed.
For three frenzied months the primary driving force in my life became the need to spend time alone with Alex in that queen-size bed of his. I needed his mouth and his touch and the feel of him within me, the way he’d gently stroke my hair and let me fall asleep in his arms. More than anything I needed to experience his want for me; during the long years of my unhappy marriage I’d forgotten what a heady drug that was. I no longer felt the need to eat or sleep. I barely felt the need to breathe. Like Sleeping Beauty I’d awoken from a long, dull slumber to find my nervous system on full alert. I was in an almost permanent state of arousal; my synapses fairly crackled whenever he was around.
When I’d taken that first step and gone home with him in July I hadn’t had particular expectations. I’d detected a sensuality in him which hinted at good things but hadn’t thought much past the sexual attraction we obviously had for each other. He was so beautiful I thought he would just have to consent to turn up for the occasion and a girl would have an orgasm. But no, this was a man who was not content to rest on his laurels. He was a lover like none I’ve ever had before, or am ever likely to have again in the future and I’m not sure if I should bless him or curse him for allowing me to discover that.
During our second time together, as I lay on my tummy and he kissed - one by one - those little indentations between the bones in my spine, he said, ‘You have the most beautiful back, Eleanor. I love it almost as much as I love your breasts…well, almost.’
‘Really? It’s usually behind me so I can’t say I’ve noticed. I have, however, noticed you’ve started calling me Eleanor. You once said you would start calling me that if I misbehaved and I guess if I’m not misbehaving now I don’t know when I would be.’
‘No that wasn’t my intention. I think I feel the need to separate the two of you - Ellie my work mate and Eleanor my lover - a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.’
‘Well it does sound beautiful when you say it so I’m happy for you to keep it up. But tell me, was the French Eleanor also a lover of yours?’
‘Maybe, but it was never serious. My French was never good enough for a start. She was just a precursor to better things. But you know, I think there is another reason why I call you Eleanor. It sounds more respectful somehow. And I do respect what you’re doing for me, you know. I know you’re taking risks.’
That’s how it came to pass that my formal name, the name on my passport and driver’s licence, the name that strangers call me by until they’re advised otherwise, also became my intimate name. The name my lover called me. I liked the secret contradiction in that.
If you are planning on having an affair it’s a very good idea to be married to a man who’s away a lot. There are few women who would have had the opportunities that I had to be alone with Alex, especially considering Issy’s regular Wednesday night sleepover at Pamela’s house. If Tony’s work roster meant he was home on Wednesday but away another evening Alex and I would make other arrangements to be together. I’d dream up some reason why Isabel had to sleep over at Mum’s house, or else employ the teenage girl up the street to babysit for a few hours.
One day Mum questioned me about my sudden desire for evening socialising.
‘I don’t know Mum. I just feel the need to get out a bit more and enjoy myself,’ I said, or something along those lines.
I fancied she looked at me a bit sceptically, but she’d known enough about my earlier troubles and I think was just grateful to see me so energised. Mum would have never thought me the type to have an affair. The daughter she knew didn’t do that sort of thing, although her evil twin just might.
Still, it was always those Wednesday nights when Tony was away that I loved the most. We’d make love and we would sleep a little and we would talk. And boy did we talk. I found out all about his early life: how his father was a merchant seaman who had travelled the world as a lone wolf until he met a beautiful young girl, ten years his junior, in Bombay. It had been a happy marriage that had produced two children before their own fairytale went sour and Alex’s dad developed lung cancer, dying when Alex was only twelve. He told me how he’d left his mum to go exploring himself, arriving in the UK in his early twenties with a plan to stay for a couple of years but it had somehow turned into nearly ten; how his sister loved her publishing job in New York but had been, like him, unlucky in love; and how their mother was now making impatient noises about wanting to be a grandmother. I in turn told him all about my family: Mum and Dad, David and Emma, and Isabel, my feisty little daughter, but not Tony, of course.
‘Emma sounds hilarious,’ he said one night after I’d told him about her latest antics. ‘I’d love to meet her.’
‘Ah, but she’s very beautiful. You might fall for her and then where would I be?’
‘No, my heart is already spoken for. Besides I don’t think I’d like to get on the wrong side of that truckie boyfriend of hers.’
Those Wednesdays I would stay with Alex all night, only returning to my house in the pre-dawn to feed the cat, pack Issy’s school gear for the day, and get dressed for another day at work. After retrieving my daughter and dropping her at child care I would arrive at the office still with the remembrance of my lover’s touch upon me. One Thursday we were summoned to an early morning me
eting with the entire marketing department. We always maintained a healthy distance from one another at these gatherings so I had the opportunity to sit back and observe as Amanda simpered and fluttered her eyelashes at him, all the while feeling an ache between my thighs that spoke of our long night of lovemaking. He couldn’t resist giving me a sly smile that morning and I think - judging from her puzzled expression - that Amanda might have witnessed it.
***
Mad or bad? If a jury was forced to make a decision I think I might be in trouble. Madness implies a complete loss of reason and judgement whereas throughout this period I continued to enforce those rules of engagement that we’d established right at the beginning. I knew the price I would pay for exposure and didn’t want to be caught out. Having said that, I almost weakened once…
It was one of our Wednesdays and I was pacing around like a cat on a hot tin roof, counting down the hours until we could be alone, when, at about 2pm, Pamela phoned.
‘I’ve got a bad head cold and I don’t think it would be a good idea for Isabel to come over this evening.’
I could tell she wasn’t making this up; her nose sounded distinctly stuffy. ‘Oh,’ I said. Obviously I didn’t disguise my disappointment well enough.
‘Why the big fuss? Can’t you manage to look after your own child for once?’
‘No, no. I just have a bit of work on but I can take that home and do it after she’s gone to bed.’ Another lie to add to the ledger but I could hardly tell her the real reason for my disappointment. I went into Alex’s office to tell him the bad news.
‘Oh no…What can we do?’
Happily Ever After? Page 19