Love...Under Different Skies

by Nick Spalding

  “Aw, thanks love. We like it.” She looks at Poppy, still in her mother’s arms. “I think we should get the little ’un squared away, don’t you? She looks all in. I’ll take you up to the second floor. It’s where you’ll be sleeping.”

  Sandra leads the way up the mahogany staircase to an area roughly three times the size of the apartment I’ve just got us locked out of.

  A super-king-size bed awaits Laura and me past a partition at one end, and Poppy has her own double bed to sleep in next door. There’s every chance she’ll want to be adopted by our hosts when we tell her she has to leave tomorrow.

  I spy a fifty-inch television in what looks like a second lounge area. And the view from here is if anything better than it was on the floor below.

  “Okay guys. Get little Poppy to sleep, and then pop back downstairs for a drink,” Sandra tells us. “Treat the place like it’s your own. We have this whole floor for when our kids come to stay with their families so it’s purpose-built for folks like you!”

  “We can’t thank you enough for this,” Laura says as she lays the sleeping Poppy down.

  “Oh stop it. We’re more than happy to help.”

  Sandra leaves us so we can get ourselves settled in. This doesn’t take long as all we have are the clothes we’re standing up in. The super-king bed is so comfortable it almost makes me cry.

  “I should get us locked out more often,” I say to Laura from my prone position. “This is perfect.”

  It turns out Bob used to work in the opal industry. “Did pretty well,” he tells us, as we sit with the both of them out on the vast decking. To the tune of several million dollars, it transpires.

  When he retired four years ago, they built this mansion in the hills at Coolangatta to be closer to their daughter Madison, who lives just north of here in a town called Currumbin. The second floor of the house, when not being used by the Newmans, is usually reserved for their other daughter Tamsin, who lives in Thailand with her rich husband and their two children.

  “But why do you work at our apartment block?” I ask when Bob has finished explaining all of this.

  “Well, you don’t want to get bored do you?” he says.

  No, I guess you most certainly don’t.

  “We like to feel useful,” Sandra continues. “So when we saw the vacancies come up we jumped at the chance.”

  “Yep, let’s us keep our hand in.” Bob takes another swig of lager from his stubby holder.

  It’s funny. Back in the UK Bob and Sandra would spend their days with other oily middle-class couples discussing the latest Audi convertible and complaining about the people from the Housing Association. Out here, though, you’re hard-pressed to tell the rich folk from the poor ones. Everybody acts, dresses, and talks the same. There’s none of that obnoxious superiority complex that seems to infect the British psyche once it’s earned a fair bit of money. The class system here appears to be deader than the Australian music industry. I find the whole thing very refreshing—and in the case of my family this evening, also very convenient.

  The next couple of hours are whiled away talking about life in Australia (it turns out Sandra is actually from Walthamstow and moved here when she was eight), the state of our respective governments, the state of our respective sports teams, the weather, taxes, the Second World War, having children, getting older, and invisible turtles.

  At ten thirty Bob takes a look at his watch. “Time to turn in, I reckon. We’ve got an early start.”

  “Oh yes!” Sandra joins in. “We’re off up to Brisbane to see my sister.”

  I groan internally. We’ll have to get up early as well, then. I was rather looking forward to a lie-in.

  “You folks don’t have to get up at the same time as we do, though,” Sandra continues, as if reading my mind. “You stay in bed for as long as you want and just make sure the front door is slammed shut when you leave. There’s a shower in the en suite, and feel free to raid the fridge for breakfast in the morning.”

  “Thank you so much,” Laura says. I can tell from the relief in her voice that she was thinking much the same thing I was about the early start.

  With that exchange, the evening is over and we retire to our bedroom…sorry, I mean our second-floor apartment.

  “Unbelievable,” I say to Laura as we climb into bed. “I get us locked out and it turns into one of the best evenings we’ve had here so far. What a lovely pair those two are.”

  “Yes dear. You’re an accidental genius,” Laura replies in typical withering fashion. “They are lovely, but I still think I would have preferred the night in my own bed.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure, baby?”

  “Next to your door key on the floor of our currently inaccessible bathroom, pal.”

  I smile and give my wife a kiss. This stirs things in the trouser department.

  She catches the expression on my face. “Don’t be ridiculous Jamie. We’re in somebody else’s house. They might hear.”

  “In this place? It’s enormous.”

  “I’m not taking the risk. Try to hold on until tomorrow when I’m less sure we’ll be putting on a performance for a middle-aged Australian couple.”

  Laura kisses me back, not helping matters in the slightest. She then rolls over onto her side, leaving me looking down disconsolately at my erection and once again cursing my forgetfulness.

  Laura’s probably right, though. The idea of Bob and Sandra hearing us go at it is awful. Best to let this one slide and attempt reentry tomorrow.

  Laura’s reluctance to “get jiggy wid it” is proved to be the right decision some ten minutes later when I hear voices coming from directly above us. I can’t quite make out what’s being said, but it’s obvious Bob and Sandra are getting ready for bed themselves. It appears that while this palatial mansion has many, many good points, one of its less appealing characteristics is a lack of soundproofing. They could probably do with slinging a few carpets down instead of all the polished hardwood.

  “See,” Laura says sleepily. “They’d have definitely heard us.”

  “Yep. Good call.”

  Bob and Sandra’s conversation carries on for another few minutes. I hear the bed creak loudly as Bob gets in, and creak much more softly when Sandra joins him.

  This is actually making me feel a bit uncomfortable. I feel like I’m intruding in their private life. I’m profoundly glad, therefore, when I hear the click of a table lamp going off and the conversation above us stops.

  I roll over onto my side and close my eyes, willing my penis to stop thinking about Laura all naked, sweaty, and nibbling at my neck. I eventually win the battle and start to drift off into a half sleep.

  What brings me out of it is the soft moan of a woman.

  Hmmm. Interesting.

  Maybe Laura’s had a change of heart. Maybe the lure of my undeniable sexual magnetism has overcome her reluctance and she wants to throw caution to the wind.

  I roll over and disappointingly see Laura’s back still facing me. I can hear her breathing in a deep, even way that’s clear evidence she’s asleep and in no way up for some rumpy pumpy.

  I must have imagined her moaning. Damn my stupid penis and its ability to make me hear things. Then I hear the moan again. This time it’s louder and longer.

  Laura hasn’t budged, though, so where in hell can the sound be coming from?

  Then, the light dawns. It’s Sandra. I can quite clearly hear our female host in what sounds like the early throes of passion. Sandra moans a third time, this one ending in a throaty chuckle indicating that Bob has put something very important in exactly the right place.

  This is confirmed when I hear Bob grunt in a self-satisfied manner.

  The bed starts to creak in rhythmic fashion. I actually start to go a shade of crimson. They have no idea I can hear them at it, but it’s still very emba
rrassing all the same.

  The creaking gets a bit faster. Sandra moans again, this time joined by Bob. When he does it he sounds like a malfunctioning garden weed whacker.

  “Are they fucking?” Laura says from beside me in a voice half-full of sleep, half-full of incredulity.

  “Yep. Bob and Sandra don’t appear to be worried about being overheard,” I reply. “I just hope he’s a fast mover and it’s over soon.”

  “Agreed. I really need to sleep.”

  So there my wife and I lie for the next five minutes or so, waiting for Bob to arrive at his destination. We’re expecting the creaking to speed up even more, climaxing in a fairly typical orgasmic series of grunts and moans before Bob rolls off and peace returns to the world.

  This doesn’t happen, though. In fact, if anything the creaking is slowing down.

  “I don’t think Bob can cut the mustard,” I say.

  “He is in his sixties,” Laura apologises for him.

  “True.”

  Then the creaking stops completely.

  “Poor bloke.”

  Turns out the festivities aren’t over yet, though. Our eyes both widen when we hear the unmistakable sound of an electric buzzing device being turned on. If poor old Bob can’t keep the fun going, then Sandra knows another way, it appears.

  Laura and I are now nearly frozen in combined mortification. We both subconsciously pull the duvet up under our chins in horror. The buzzing gets quieter…then louder. Quieter…then louder. Quieter…then louder.

  I start to chew the duvet cover. Sandra, now really going for it, starts to moan so loudly there’s every chance she’s going to wake Poppy up.

  She starts to say something to Bob. I can’t quite catch all of it, but she’s speaking loudly enough for me to pick up way more than I want to: “Mumble mumble on my back mumble mumble mumble up my arse mumble mumble jump on mumble.”

  The bed creaks again, this time for longer, indicating the shifting of bodies into a new position—a new position that I can only imagine all too well thanks to twenty years of watching porn.

  What’s playing across my mind’s eye right now is not two healthy, tight young porn stars assuming the position, but our good-natured middle-aged hosts, whose bodies probably haven’t seen tight in a good fifteen years. I don’t want to see Sandra on all fours with Bob’s beer gut resting on her bony bottom, but, God help me, I can’t stop it happening.

  The creaking starts again, this time in a harder, sharper rhythm indicating that Bob is really getting down to business.

  “What’s he doing to her?” Laura asks in a small voice.

  “Guaranteeing she won’t be comfortable on their drive up to Brisbane tomorrow?” I whisper back.

  Now Bob starts grunting in time with the creaking. Overlaid onto both sounds is the buzzing of Sandra’s little friend, in a symphony of awkward I wish I was ten thousand miles away from. The whole thing gets louder, faster, and more pornographic.

  “Fuck me!” we hear Sandra spit quite audibly through the ceiling. “Fuck me in that ass, you big strong bastard!”

  I feel Laura take my hand in hers, seeking some solace from the terror. My wife and I are locked in this horrible moment together, one that we will never be able to forget, no matter how drunk we get.

  “It’s coming!” Bob exclaims, his voice muffled by creaking bed and roaring vibrator.

  I’m hoping he means Armageddon, because after this night I don’t think I want to live in a world that would allow such horrors to be visited on me.

  Laura grips my hand tightly. I let out a small squeak of fear.

  Then finally, just when I think my mind is about to tip over into the chasm of insanity, Bob and Sandra let out a combined enormous grunt-moan, signalling the end of what would likely make the kind of porno only a very small, select audience would want to watch.

  “Thank God for that,” Laura says.

  The bed takes the strain of two spent middle-aged Australians flopping onto it in postcoital nirvana.

  The buzzing noise abruptly disappears, proving that Sandra is most definitely satisfied for the night.

  “That’s going to need a wash,” I hear myself saying and instantly regret it.

  A dreadful silence now descends across the house. It’s like the aftermath of a particularly destructive tornado.

  “Jamie?”

  “Yes, Laura?”

  “You know that we’ll never be able to have sex again after that, don’t you?”

  “Yes Laura, I know. It was fun while it lasted, though.”

  “It was.”

  More silence. Then a horrible thought occurs: “If that’s the kind of sex they have when they know someone’s in the house with them,” I say, “what on earth do they get up to when they know they’re alone?”

  “I don’t know.” Laura gulps. “And I don’t want to know, quite frankly.”

  “They probably use a pedal bin.”

  “Oh for God’s sake Jamie!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Can we just go to sleep now?”

  “Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. Then tomorrow, we can pretend this was all just a dream.”

  Our bedroom door creaks open. Poppy stands in the doorway rubbing her eyes. “Mummy? Daddy? Is somebody doing nasty things to Sandra lady upstairs?”

  Yes Poppet, they are. But the kind of things you’re not going to know anything about until I’m dead in my grave if I get my way.

  LAURA’S DIARY

  Tuesday, July 18

  It took us a good half an hour to convince Poppy that Sandra wasn’t being murdered upstairs, Mum.

  “You just dreamt it, Pops,” I lie to her unconvincingly. “Sandra is absolutely fine, I’m sure. She was probably having a bad dream, too.”

  My daughter gives me the most suspicious look a three-year-old can summon in a half sleep. “Don’t like bad dreams.”

  “I know Poppet.”

  “Wanna sleep with you.”

  “Okay, honey,” I sigh. When Poppy climbs into bed these days it usually means a restless night for all concerned. She’s much like her mother in bed: a fidget. One night not so long ago she spun round a full 180 degrees. It was quite disconcerting to have tiny pink little toes waving around in your immediate field of vision at two thirty in the morning.

  Poppy yawns, climbs in between her mother and father, sticks one thumb in her mouth, and promptly falls asleep.

  “I guess I can look forward to getting kicked in the balls later, then,” Jamie says, knowing what Pops is like as much as I do.

  “Well, it’s better that than she goes back to bed and has nightmares about Sandra being assaulted by a swarm of buzzing insects.”

  “That fucker was loud, wasn’t it? I’ve had washing machines make less of a racket than that. It must be a huge one.”

  “I don’t want to think about it, thanks.”

  But now I have to, of course.

  I’m a woman of the world, and I’m fully aware of what shapes and sizes vibrators come in. I can’t help but picture Sandra holding one of the ones at the upper end of the spectrum, the kind that have complicated machinery going on inside them and in a pinch can be used as an effective weapon of self-defence.

  I don’t know what to feel sorrier for—her lady garden or Bob’s self-esteem. Still, at least it sounded like they were enjoying themselves. I have to confess I’m quite jealous.

  Thanks to my workload and the fact that Jamie appears to be sinking further into an unemployed depression, our sex life is more dormant than a volcano that last blew its stack when sabre-toothed tigers were all the rage.

  For the first time in the years we’ve been married, I have to actually try to remember when we last made love. It takes me a good minute or two to recollect the brief fumble we had last month after I’d put Popp
y down for the night. And that was decidedly unmemorable for both of us.

  The time before that was a further month back, and I have to confess that I was probably thinking more about Milo, the ute-driving hunk of young Australian and his rippling biceps, than I was my own husband.

  This is a sorry state of affairs, Mum. I feel a combination of frustration that Jamie can’t find work and a severe feeling of guilt that I’m having such a good time in my job. I know damn well that he’s feeling pretty emasculated by the whole thing. Coming to Australia is proving to be the best thing to happen to me since Pops was born and the worst thing to happen to Jamie.

  These concerning thoughts keep me awake for another half hour before I start to drift back into sleep. I only start to do that once I’ve resolved to put some time aside to helping Jamie find a job while also reining in my enthusiasm about Worongabba when I’m at home. That’s if we ever get back into our home, of course.

  I very much hope we can pick up a key to the apartment tomorrow with no problems. The idea of spending a second night listening to Sandra impale herself on her weapon of mass destruction fills me with dread.

  In a half doze the next morning, I hear Bob and Sandra leave the house.

  I lie in bed with an exquisitely strange and uncomfortable feeling. We’re now completely alone, undressed and half asleep in the house of two people who were complete strangers twenty-four hours ago.

  They’re not complete strangers now, it goes without saying. Once two people have put on an audible sex show for you in the middle of the night, you probably know them in a more intimate fashion than you do your best friends.

  “Do you think we should get up?” Jamie says from beside me, and over his daughter’s wriggling toes.

  “I suppose. This bed is very warm, though.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Can’t you wait until we get back to the apartment?”

  “Probably not. The last thing I ate was tea before I got us locked out. If Sandra and her buzzing friend hadn’t woken us last night, I think my growling stomach would have done it instead.”

  “I don’t feel right about eating their food.”