Mad About the Boy

by Maggie Alderson

  ‘Crikey,’ I said. ‘No wonder Dee hasn’t introduced me. He sounds terrifying. Do you think he’s seriously dodgy?’

  ‘I’m sure he is, but he’s strangely decent at the same time. He’s not the sort who would ever hit a woman. He’d get someone else to do it.’

  Percy paused to laugh at his own joke and then got back to his tale.

  ‘Do you know what he said, when he met me? “So you’re the old poonce I’ve been hearing about. What happened to your purple hair?” That broke the ice. I like people who are upfront.’

  ‘What was the boat like?’ I asked, not wanting to miss out on a single detail.

  Percy uttered a strangulated cry.

  ‘It is soooo vulgar, like some kind of adolescent James Bond fantasy, but actually so gross, even Goldfinger would recoil. But the helicopter is a very fine thing. I do rather envy you going up in it. Perhaps I’ll have a ride with Tom. Frank is the kind who would keep his promise to a little boy.’

  I was still puzzled how Dee could have such good taste and live in such an awful house.

  ‘What do you think she did with all the stuff she bought from me?’ I said, trying to figure it out. ‘Do you think it’s all in a store room somewhere, still in the carrier bags? I saw a programme once about compulsive shoppers who did that.’

  Then something occurred to me.

  ‘Hey, Perce,’ I said. ‘Do you think the beach house will be as yucky as the Sydney house?’

  ‘Bound to be, darling. You’ll probably have a solid gold Jacuzzi to watch the whales from. Wish I was coming too.’

  14

  The day before I was due to be airlifted up to Dee’s beach house she popped round to see me. She handed me an envelope that contained a map, a note and another set of keys. I looked at her questioningly.

  ‘The chopper will drop you off at our beach house in Byron,’ she said. ‘But this map shows how to get to another house which I think you will like a lot more.’

  I didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The keys you have already are to our official Byron Bay house, but I actually have another house twenty kilometres away, that is my house – really my house. This is the key for that.’

  She looked down a bit nervously.

  ‘Frankie doesn’t know about it. Nobody knows about it, except me – and now you. It’s my escape and my safety hatch. I bought it ten years ago, in my maiden name, with money I had saved from my various allowances. I needed something that was just mine. I know I can trust you not to tell anyone about it – and I really do mean no one.’

  She looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘Frankie wouldn’t like it if he knew,’ she said quietly. ‘But you’ll like it much better than the official house, trust me.’

  ‘Won’t people notice if I’m not in the other one?’ I asked.

  ‘Just leave the lights and some music on. It’s very private and that will be enough to cover us. I’ve cancelled the gardener and the housekeeper for the fortnight, saying I didn’t want you to be disturbed. Just make sure you’re back there ready for the chopper when it comes to get you. Stay one or two nights there, if you like, and mess the place up a bit, so it looks like someone’s been in when the cleaner comes. Then get a taxi into town and hire a car to go out to my house. Don’t get one taxi from the big house straight to my house. Byron’s a small place.’

  She smiled conspiratorially. I knew that she was showing me a level of trust even beyond my asking her to be my business partner. I gave her a really big hug.

  The minute I walked into Dee’s secret house – which was called ‘Gumnuts’ – I knew where all the stuff she’d bought from Anteeks had gone. The place was divine.

  It was really tiny, with just two bedrooms, a small kitchen/living room and a funny old bathroom, but it had true character. The walls were all panelled with tongue and groove, painted subtle shades of green, and the floorboards were painted cream with large sea grass mats and rag rugs over them. It wasn’t right on the beach, but a short walk from it and surrounded by bush, so I could hear the wind in the trees as I lay in bed at night. I knew at once that this was somewhere where I could be happy alone and could really build up my strength.

  What a contrast to the other house, which had been, just as I had feared, a nightmare of hard granite surfaces, gold swan taps and vertical blinds, complete with a very elaborate spa on the deck, just as Percy had predicted.

  It had a row of golf buggies waiting at the back door, to save you the chore of walking the few yards to the beach, and I was terrified of the burglar alarm, which was like the flight deck of a 747 and looked like it would call out the national guard if accidentally set off. I hated the place, just as Dee had thought I would, and couldn’t wait to leave.

  Even though it was right on the well-populated slopes of Watego’s Beach, I spent one very nervous night there, feeling like floodlit prey for burglars. I felt so much happier out at Gumnuts, on my own, even though it was in a much more remote location and there was no telephone.

  My mobile didn’t work very well out there either, so if I wanted to call home for a proper chat, I had to walk half a mile to the payphone at the nearest minimart, which was good for me. I missed Tom a lot, but I needed some time alone, just to be and not to think about anyone else.

  On my first day, I realized with a jolt that I’d never really spent any time on my own, in my whole life. I’d gone straight from home to university, via a year in the States, where I had travelled with my best friend from school.

  Then I’d met Hugo in my first week at St Andrews and lived with him for the next ten years. When he left I still had Tom and shortly after that Percy had arrived. So spending some time completely alone was a novel and interesting experience.

  With space to think about everything that had happened, I even began to wonder whether Hugo hadn’t done me a favour by ending our cosy relationship. We’d been little more than children when we had got together and I began to wonder if I’d had a case of arrested development.

  I certainly knew nothing of the world my sisters inhabited. The lives they told me about – of the modern workplace and the dating scene, starting and ending relationships, one-night stands and sharing flats – were like another country to me.

  I was like some kind of 1950s bride, the way my life had been until Hugo left, and being forced out into the real world, painful though it had been, would give me a more interesting and rounded life in the long term, I decided. It was good to join everyone else in the twenty-first century.

  With every day that passed I felt physically and emotionally stronger. Although it was well into winter, the days were still warm up there and I spent them lying in a hammock on the back deck reading, listening to music and just dozing. I went for long walks along the beach, picking up shells and stones and gazing into the horizon.

  It was chilly at night, so I would light the log fire in the sitting room and curl up and listen to my favourite poems on cassettes my mother had sent over to me from home.

  When I arrived back in Woollahra two weeks later, I felt reborn, more rested than I’d been for years and much more able to cope with life. Two days after I got back, Percy – ever the canny diplomat – had organized the first family supper at our house, with Greg on the guest list. In my new laid-back beach-bum state, I coped with it just fine, basking in compliments from all of them about how well I looked.

  It also helped that it was now over eighteen months since Hugo had left and it didn’t seem so much like ‘our’ house any more, it had become where I lived with Tom and Percy.

  ‘You are looking absolutely marvellous, Ant,’ said Hugo, when he walked in. ‘You’ve really got a bloom about you. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were pregnant.’

  Now clearly used to such hideous Hugo clangers, Greg rushed in to change the subject.

  ‘How’s the gym thing going, Antonia?’ he asked. ‘Still going to Muscle City?’

  ‘Do you know, I haven
’t been for five weeks,’ I said. ‘I haven’t gained any weight, thank God, because of being ill, always wonderful for the figure, but I am starting to feel a bit squidgy again, I’ve lost my – what do you call it? – my definition. I think I need to start going again.’

  The fact was, I felt quite nervous about going back there. I didn’t want to lose what I’d worked so hard to build up before I flaked out, but equally I didn’t want to knacker myself again. But mostly I was shy about seeing James.

  I had thought about him a lot more than I wanted to admit, even to myself, while I’d been away, and still hadn’t resolved my feelings. It didn’t make any sense to me, but just remembering how his muscular, hard body had looked when he stretched, could give me a serious twinge. It was embarrassing, immature and cringe-making, like falling for your tennis coach, or your ski instructor, which I thought I’d got over when I was seventeen.

  But was it really him I had a crush on anyway, I wondered, or was he just a focus for my generalized sexual frustration?

  In the end I decided I just had to go and see whether I had been imagining the whole thing – which I justified to myself by saying I was merely taking him up on his offer of strengthening chi gong.

  To be sure of seeing him, I went back at my old time of well after midnight and there he was – a slightly odd and fully celibate speccy kung fu weirdo, in his godawful nylon track pants and that wretched bloody hat. I was beginning to wonder if he was bald underneath it. His face lit up when he saw me. I’m sure I blushed.

  ‘Antonia!’ he said. ‘You’re back. That’s great. You look great too. Really rested.’

  He came round from behind the counter and for a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but he just patted me on the shoulder and shook my hand.

  I had definitely been imagining the whole thing, I realized. The glasses, the track pants, that stupid hat – he was a total geek. I looked at my feet in a confusion of shame and self-consciousness. Relieved and disappointed at the same time, that my childish crush had evaporated like steam from a kettle.

  I must have been slightly insane from the exhaustion, I thought, with too much time to think. His attitude to me was exactly the same as it had always been, but I felt very differently about him.

  ‘Now, you mustn’t overdo it tonight, Antonia,’ he was saying. ‘Just five minutes on the treadmill and then I’ll show you those chi gong moves, if I’m not tied up at the desk.’

  ‘That would be great,’ I said, totally dreading it, and shot off to the aerobic zone.

  The chi gong wasn’t too embarrassing actually. I was worried he would take me upstairs to the dance studio, which would have been way too intense, like a scene out of Fame, but as he was alone on reception, we had to do it somewhere he could keep an eye on the door.

  It turned out to be just simple movements, with very concentrated breathing, and I did quite enjoy it. When it was over, I promised to come back for more sessions to build up my strength and then bolted for it.

  I had parked in my usual spot, in a small laneway, just across from Muscle City and along a bit. There was always a space there and I had started to think of it as my own. Not that night. As I stepped forward to open the car door, a figure emerged from the nearest doorway and grabbed me round the neck.

  ‘Give me your bag,’ said a really rough voice.

  ‘I don’t have a bag,’ I said, truthfully, I only took my keys and my membership card when I went to the gym. The man pulled his arm tighter round my neck.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, sister. Feel this?’

  Something cold touched my cheek.

  ‘It’s a knife and I’m serious, so give me your fuckin’ bag.’

  I was trying to answer, although I could hardly breathe, when another figure stepped into the laneway. I couldn’t see his face, because the light was behind him, but now I was totally terrified, there were two of them, I didn’t have a bag, I didn’t have any money – what would they do to me?

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said a deep voice. ‘Now! Drop the knife, raise your arms and step back slowly.’

  The second figure walked further towards us. It was James. He had taken his hat and glasses off – and he was holding a gun. I didn’t know which shocked me more, but I was highly relieved when the mugger let go of me and stepped back. Now it was his turn to be terrified. I ran down to the main road.

  ‘I just wanted her bag …’ he was saying. ‘I wasn’t gonna hurt her. I just need some money for a fix. Put the gun down, mate, I won’t hurt her.’

  ‘Fuck off out of here,’ said James. ‘And if I see you round here again, you won’t get away so easily. I’ve seen your face now, you piece of junkie shit. Fuck off.’

  The mugger ran for it and I just stood there shaking. My teeth were chattering, I was completely freaked out. James came over and wrapped his arms around me. It was like being enveloped in a big warm coat. He stroked my head and said comforting things into my ear, like you would to a frightened dog.

  ‘It’s all right, Antonia. I’m here. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

  But I was still freaked out – where was the gun? I’d never seen a handgun before in real life. It was almost as frightening as the mugger.

  Slowly James turned me round and, with his arm still around me, led me back to Muscle City. His other hand was still holding the gun. I looked down and saw it glinting silver in the streetlight.

  He parked me behind the desk, sliding the gun into a compartment under the counter and bolting a door over it. He wrapped a blanket round my shoulders and went to make me a cup of tea. I was still shaking and shivering when he came back with it.

  ‘Are you all right, little one?’ he said, bending down with his arm round my shoulder. He still didn’t have his hat and specs on. I looked up at him. He had short dark hair, slightly wavy – a full head of it – and almond-shaped green eyes. He was beautiful. On top of everything else it was just too much. I started howling. Really ugly snotty crying.

  James roped tissues out of a box and handed them to me, crouching by the chair and putting his arms back round me again, rocking me gently, like a child, which of course made it worse. His arms were so particularly nice. I howled some more. Nearly a yodel.

  Before I knew what was happening he’d picked me up, like I was a little rag doll and sat himself down on the chair, with me on his knee. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and buried my face in the male smell of his neck. It was so delicious, I felt dizzy.

  He had one arm tightly round my waist, the other hand was stroking my hair and he was whispering soothing noises into my right ear. I could feel his lips vibrating against it.

  It was so heavenly I almost lost consciousness, but I snapped back very suddenly when I realized that I was just about to start licking his neck. His celibate neck. It had been a completely unconscious animal instinct. I pulled away from him and looked into his face again, fully aware that my tear-stained gob probably looked like a monkey’s bum.

  Those eyes. They were gorgeous. The nose. The forehead. The hair. He had a scar through one eyebrow, which just added to the general effect. It all worked so well together. That hat and glasses combo he wore was like one of those joke-shop faces and completely obscured his looks. I just stared at him. And he stared back. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down his throat as he swallowed. He bit his lip. Talk about deep breathing, I could see my breasts heaving up and down in front of me. He broke the silence.

  ‘Are you all right, Grasshopper?’

  I nodded. ‘I feel better now.’

  He pulled me back onto his chest again and put his chin on top of my head. It felt quite natural to be there. I had one hand on the top of his arm and I could feel the round shape of his bicep beneath it. I was breathing in his scent with every breath, a mixture of clean shirt and man. I realized I was in some kind of erotic daze, but I had questions I had to ask him. The gun was bothering me most.

  ‘How come you had a gun, James?’ I asked his c
hest. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

  ‘We keep it behind the counter here,’ he said. ‘Just for moments like that. This can be a rough area.’

  I sat up and looked at him again. I wasn’t sure which I liked better – leaning against his chest or looking at his face.

  ‘But I thought you were a kung fu expert, couldn’t you just have Bruce Lee-ed him?’

  He looked steadily at me.

  ‘If I’d done that,’ he said, ‘I probably would have killed him. In the circumstances, the gun was safer. It wasn’t loaded.’

  I breathed out. It was a relief to know he didn’t walk round like the Sundance Kid as a matter of course. Then something else occurred to me.

  ‘How come you were there when it happened?’ I asked. ‘You were on the desk when I left.’

  He reached over to the counter and put his glasses on, then the hat. It was like a light going off. I was still waiting for his answer. I asked again.

  ‘How did you know I was in trouble, James?’

  ‘Like I said, Antonia. This is a rough area. It’s late when you leave here. I keep an eye on you.’

  I think I would have sat there for the rest of my life quite happily, but two men came in to use the gym. They gave us a very funny look when they saw us sitting there and James jumped up to look after them like we had been caught doing something very naughty. Not naughty enough in my opinion.

  At 2 a.m. another fellow came on duty at the desk and James drove me home in his car. I’d come back and get mine the next day, we had agreed, when I felt up to driving again.

  I was tense all the way home. I felt so close to James, but at the same time, things were no different between us. It was funny, I thought, unless you actually kiss, nothing has changed. Maybe he would have comforted any girl like that, whom he had just saved from a savage mugging. I felt all jittery and tense, but I didn’t want the journey to end either. I liked being sealed up with him in an enclosed space.