James would pop into my mind from time to time and I would allow myself a moment of pleasure, thinking about him, before getting on with the task at hand. It all felt so much more settled between us now and my obsessive preoccupation with him had calmed down.
Grabbing a moment between customers in the afternoon – the great spring weather seemed to have put all of Woollahra into a shopping mood – I rang his mobile just to say how lovely it had been to have him stay over. His phone was switched off, so I reckoned he must be caught up doing whatever it was he was doing that day – James McLoughlin, international man of mystery. I wasn’t bothered because I knew I was going to see him the next night anyway. I hugged the thought of him to myself for a moment and then got on with my life.
*
That evening Tom, Percy and I went out for dinner. We were all in very good moods, although Tom’s mentionitis was reaching a peak.
‘Guess what, Percy?’ he said, simultaneously shovelling a huge spoon of ice cream into his face.
‘Now let me see …’ said Percy. ‘Could this be a fascinating fact about James by any chance? And could you stop eating like a Visigoth, please?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘It is about James. That was a clever guess. Dix points. Anyway, he loves Mummy. He told me. And he slept in her bed. With no clothes on. I saw him. He’s got lots of muscles.’
He held his puny little arm up in an attempt to make his biceps pop up like James’s. Percy stuck a bread roll up the sleeve of his T-shirt.
‘Is that more like it?’ he said, winking at me.
‘Yeah, cool.’ Tom poked at his bread muscle and then tried moving it down to his chest, then his stomach, while Percy and I put our hands over our mouths to stifle giggles. I could see he was wondering whether he could get away with putting it down the front of his shorts, when Percy snatched it away from him.
‘That’s quite enough of that, young man,’ he said, turning to me. ‘Where does he get it from, do you think, Antonia?’
I just shook my head and collapsed into laughter. Tom looked at us both, frowning and oblivious to what we thought was so funny.
‘Anyway, Mummy,’ he said. ‘About James …’
‘Oh God,’ said Percy, sinking down in his chair. ‘I’m losing the will to live.’
‘Do you think he will soon come and live with us all the time?’ said Tom. ‘James, I mean. The way Greg lives with Daddy? Is James your special friend now?’
‘Well, he’s certainly a special friend,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if he’s going to come and live with us.’
Not yet, I thought, but maybe one day. It was looking better all the time.
James wasn’t on the desk when I arrived at the gym the next night, it was the Chinese guy Percy liked. I wasn’t concerned because I knew my darling man would turn up later. I liked it when he crept up on me, it added to the general naughty thrill of it all.
I did my twenty minutes on the treadmill with a big grin on my face, anticipating how good it was going to be to see James when he did turn up. I was going to tell him about Tom and the bread roll muscles. How he’d laugh.
When I was about halfway through my weights and he still hadn’t appeared, I started to wonder what was going on. Maybe he was planning a really big surprise, but it seemed odd, when he had definitely said he would be there.
He still wasn’t around by the time I finished, so I went up and asked the guy on the desk if he knew where he was.
‘James not here tonight,’ he said, helpfully.
‘Yes, I know that,’ I said, trying not to sound irritated. ‘But he said he would be. Do you think he’s coming later?’
The guy shrugged, he really couldn’t have been less interested. I left James a note – signed Jane, for old time’s sake – asking him to call me as soon as possible, and went home.
I tried his mobile when I got in – it was just so weird for him to say he’d be there and then not be – but it was turned off again. I decided not to leave a message. Didn’t want to sound too needy.
By the next afternoon, when I still hadn’t heard from him and he still hadn’t answered his mobile, I was feeling extremely needy. Between Dee and James both doing disappearing acts, I was beginning to feel quite abandoned.
After a few hours of agonizing I rang Muscle City at 5 p.m. to ask if James was going to be on that night. A woman answered the phone and sounded friendly enough.
‘I’ll go and have a look at the roster,’ she said. ‘Won’t be long.’
She came back shortly after.
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘He’ll be in at 11 p.m.’
But when I got there at midnight, James wasn’t there. The Chinese guy was on the desk again and was as uninterested as before in my questions.
‘He not here,’ he said. ‘He on roster. He not here.’ Shrug.
I was beginning to miss Spider, who seemed like Mr Congeniality compared to this bloke.
‘Did he get the note I left last night?’ I asked.
The guy had a desultory look under the counter and brought up a few pieces of paper.
‘One of these?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. My note was still there and had clearly never been unfolded.
I went home. I tried his mobile. There was no answer.
I didn’t know what to think. Had he gone off the whole idea again? We’d had that dodgy night out, but it had all turned out fine in the end. He’d specifically said he wasn’t going to let it bother him, and he’d stayed over for the first time. It had all seemed better than ever, but then he hadn’t turned up at the gym as he’d promised. It didn’t make any sense. Once again, lying on my boiling mattress, ridiculous possibilities coursed through my brain.
Maybe it had been too cosy at my place, too domestic. Maybe taking Tom to school had freaked him out – too much like being an instant dial-a-dad. Maybe the beautiful Jasmine had called him and he’d decided she was less bother than a neurotic weeping woman with a seven-year-old child, a mad poofta uncle in residence and an insanely jealous gay husband round the corner. We must seem like the Addams Family, I decided, to the outside eye.
It was the same story on the third day. James’s mobile was turned off. James was rostered on at the gym, but when I went in James wasn’t there. There was a different man on the desk that night, an older chap I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t bother with my exercise routine, I just went straight up and asked him.
‘Is James coming in tonight?’ I said brightly.
‘How would I know?’ said the man. He was wearing a thick gold bracelet and one of those nasty rings with a gold sovereign in it. I looked at his name badge, it said ‘Sam the Man’. James had mentioned him to me, he was the big boss of Muscle City and a bit of a ‘character’.
‘I was told he was rostered on tonight,’ I persisted. ‘But he’s not here …’
‘I know he’s not bloody here, sweetheart,’ he said rudely. ‘That’s why I’m bloody here. He hasn’t turned up the last three nights, so he needn’t bother turning up again ever. The last thing I need in my night staff is unreliability.’
‘Where do you think he is?’ I asked, stupidly.
‘Probably cracking bricks with his head,’ said Sam. ‘Fucking kung fu weirdo, they’re all cranks those blokes. Good riddance to him.’
He swiped my card and went to hand it back to me.
‘You can keep that,’ I said. ‘I won’t be coming back to this gym.’
‘Suit yourself, darling,’ he said and threw it in the bin. ‘And if you see your friend James, give him a message from me – get fucked.’
‘Get fucked yourself,’ I said and walked out.
I didn’t go back to Muscle City, but I did keep calling. I even asked for Spider a few times, but he wasn’t there either. In the end the nice girl who answered the phone in the afternoon told me – kindly – it probably wasn’t worth bothering to call any more.
‘I don’t want to be rude,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think James will
be back here. He really pissed Sam off not turning up three nights in a row and he’s been sacked. Sam threw all his things in the bin.’
‘Isn’t there some kind of staff record, with his home number on it or anything?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been really nice to me. I’m sure you understand how it is. I really need to find him.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You’re the girl he’s been seeing, aren’t you? The one with the little boy? I’ve heard he’s pretty gone on you. Spider told me. I’ll go and have a look for you.’
She came back a few moments later.
‘I’ve got a phone number,’ she said. ‘But there was no address on his file.’
It was his mobile number.
‘Well, thanks anyway,’ I said. ‘And thanks for being so nice over the last few days. I really do appreciate it. What’s your name, by the way, in case I ever come by’.
‘Jasmine,’ she said.
22
Now I was totally baffled. It was more than five days since James had said he would be at the gym. He hadn’t answered his phone the whole time and I’d had no word from him. I had been steadily working through the well-documented stages of grief and at this point I hit anger.
I could think of no plausible reason why he shouldn’t have rung me – unless something awful had happened to him, but surely they would have known at the gym if he was in hospital or something. I’d been over it all in my head a million times and it didn’t make any sense. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that he had finally – and for good – cooled off on the whole idea of me.
For all I knew he might already be back in Hong Kong at his dojo. Maybe he’d finally decided that my corrupting influence was not worth it after so many years of rigidly sticking to his practice. I’d had him drinking alcohol, eating junk food and squandering his precious chi in countless orgasms – everything a kung fu weirdo shouldn’t indulge in.
But would he really put his precious bloody ‘practice’ before his feelings for me? I started to feel furious with him for mucking me around – if spending one night at my place had convinced him he had been right all along and we were from ‘different worlds’ why hadn’t he just told me? How dare he discriminate against me and call me a silvertail. It was just snobbery reversed. He was as bad as Hugo, I decided.
Meanwhile, Tom was driving me insane asking me when he was going to see James again. How could I explain to him that the lovely kind man who had taken him to school the other day had decided we were upper-crust boneheads and had disappeared off my radar completely? On the morning of the sixth day, I’m afraid to say, his nonstop barrage of questions was just too much and I screamed at him to stop pestering me. I felt awful afterwards.
Later that day Percy dropped into the shop.
‘Dee still waiting for her wounds to heal?’ he asked.
‘As far as I know,’ I said. ‘I hope she’s OK, but she said she was going off to a spa to recuperate and not to worry.’ I shrugged. ‘God knows what she’s had done to herself, but it’s just her little obsession, I guess.’
Percy was pulling a very strange face – sticking his tongue right out like an All Black mid-haka and stretching his jaw and neck like an old tortoise.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him, as he pulled his mouth up into a rictus smile like Jack Nicholson as the Joker.
‘My facial exercises.’ He went over to the mirror and patted his jawline with obvious satisfaction. ‘If Dee did these every day, as I do, she wouldn’t need a surgical facelift.’
I just shook my head and smiled. Having Percy around was like watching a twenty-four-hour comedy channel.
‘Anyway,’ he said, clearly satisfied that his regime was working, ‘I thought I’d come and help you out here, in case you needed to pop out for anything.’
He looked me straight in the eye with his unblinking Heaveringham gaze.
‘And I thought you might like to pick your young son up from school today, because I heard you being vile to him this morning.’
‘Oh God, Percy, I feel awful about that,’ I said.
‘You haven’t heard from James, have you?’ he said, quietly.
I bit my lip and shook my head.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He seems to have done a bunk.’
Percy thought for a moment.
‘After that awful dinner I was hoping perhaps you could just look on the whole thing as a good dose of lust antibiotics to get you over Hugo,’ he said. ‘But it went a bit further than that, didn’t it?’
I nodded, welling up, as usual.
‘I thought it had,’ I said. ‘And he seemed so fond of Tom.’
‘Not to mention Tom’s feelings for him,’ said Percy. ‘Reminds me of how I used to feel about the Willington game keeper when I was a boy. Marvellous in his gaiters, and all that blood and killing was so thrilling. So what are you going to do? Just let him go and hope he’ll come running back like last time?’
‘Well, I’d like to have it out with him,’ I said. ‘I think it’s appalling behaviour to lead someone on and win their trust and go away with them and become part of their life and then just drop them …’
I was working myself up into a lather of righteous indignation.
‘Mind you,’ I continued, ‘I should have known he’d behave badly in the end. Remember how he ate that night he came over for supper?’ I snorted. ‘All elbows and shovelling. Ghastly. It was like having dinner with a Viking.’
I looked round expecting Percy to agree and to make some catty remark that would make me laugh, but he was looking at me with a serious expression and narrowed eyes.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I can’t believe my ears,’ he said. He stood up, picked up his tote bag and walked over to the door.
‘I am so disappointed in you, Antonia,’ he said, in grave tones. ‘The one thing I have always loved about you is that you seemed to be so non-judgemental and open minded and now I discover that at heart you are just another shocking little provincial snob. You’re no better than the Anteeks customers you despise so much because they look down on anyone who drives a car more than a year old and think “chint” is the singular of “chintz”. If that’s the kind of person you really are, then that lovely James is too good for you. I think he’s made a lucky escape.’
I just stared at him in amazement.
‘You’ve taken on the very worst of the Heaveringham snobbery, Antonia,’ he concluded. ‘And with precious little basis for it. Good day.’
And he flounced out.
That was when I hit rock bottom. Dee and James had both done a bunk. Hugo and I weren’t speaking. I’d been horrid to Tom. The so-called friends I’d made when we first got to Sydney had long since dropped me and now Percy hated me too. I got through the afternoon in a daze of self-pity. I’m sure anyone who came into the shop that day thought I was a halfwit, but on top of the other abandonments, Percy’s outburst had left me in a state of shock.
The only things that roused me from my stupor were two strange men who came into the shop just after lunch. They attracted my attention because they were so unlike my usual customers. For one thing, they were men – my clientele was overwhelmingly female, plus a few glamour boys – and when ‘real’ men did come in it tended to be at the weekend, in golf clothes, following up some well-dropped hint for a birthday present.
These two were both wearing cheap suits and had a furtive air about them. They picked up a few things and I noticed them glance at me and then at each other. It was a bit spooky, but I was so generally shell shocked I couldn’t get worked up about it. I just kept an eye on them in case they were shoplifters. After about ten minutes they exchanged another look and left.
About an hour later, two more men came in, dressed in what you might call exclusive leisure wear. One of them was wearing a huge gold watch, but apart from outward appearances they behaved pretty much the same way the other two had.
After a few minutes one of them came up to the counter with a
n embroidered lavender bag. As I wrapped it for him I could see him peering over me into the back room. I straightened up and looked him full in the eye. I wasn’t in the mood for bullshit from anyone.
‘Are you looking for something?’ I asked, icily.
He shuffled his feet and pushed up the sleeves of his leather jacket.
‘I was just wondering if the other lady was here,’ he said. ‘Dee.’
I didn’t like this man.
‘Not at the moment,’ I said. Remembering what James had told me about Dee’s paranoia being valid, I felt extremely cautious.
‘Are you expecting her later?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s $30 please. Would you like to leave her a message?’
‘Er, no, you’re all right,’ said the man.
But was he, I wondered. I left a message on Dee’s mobile telling her about the two men and asking her please to ring me and let me know she was OK. I didn’t know what else to do. Between her and James, I was getting quite expert at such messages.
Percy wasn’t in when I got home and had left no note, so I did my best to make it up with Tom, taking him to a movie at Fox Studios and letting him have the very largest bucket of popcorn. He snuggled up to me during the film and – God love him – didn’t mention James once, even though it was a kung fu action picture. Children were so forgiving and so perceptive, I thought to myself.
There was no sign of Percy at breakfast either – was he going to disappear on me too, I wondered – and working on automatic pilot I took Tom to school and then trudged to the shop.
As I picked up my needlepoint, working on ‘A good man is hard to find’, to go as a pair with my incredibly successful ‘hard man’ cushions, I felt I was right back where I had been when Percy had arrived over a year before. Alone and lost. It was only a matter of time before I headed to Agostini’s for orange cake and two full-fat lattes.
As I sat there filling holes with brightly coloured wool, I wondered whether that was all my affair with James had been. Just using sex and imagined romance as another way of filling holes, as I had used food before.
Mad About the Boy Page 26