by Wendy Harmer
Then Claire felt her body flood with a warm, liquid sensation. She was thinking of him. Again. Thinking of how his hard white teeth had bitten into the palest part of her neck, just hard enough to send a message of panic to her nipples. Thinking of how his knee had pushed between her thighs and lifted her from the ground, pinning her helplessly to the door like a butterfly in a picture frame. And she was thinking of how he had roughly hauled up her skirt so that the warm cheeks of her bottom had been covered in goosebumps when they met the cold steel door of the cubicle.
It was as if warm honey was being poured through her navel, was coursing through her pelvis and then seeping into the cotton of her knickers.
Claire knew what had to be done and she also knew this was highly inappropriate behaviour for the underground car park of the Edgecliff shopping centre. She smiled at the word ‘inappropriate’—the grammatical equivalent of Wite-Out. The word you used when you wanted to say: ‘Only some kind of oversexed slut would bring herself off in her car in a public place.’
But it was dark and private enough, and she eased her fingers though the elastic at the top of her thigh and found her clitoris. It was already buzzing like a bee drowning in the warm, wet folds of some carnivorous plant. Her fingers slowly worked the velvety petals as she gave herself up to her imagination.
This time she didn’t push Connor away. This time he was on his knees in front of her, tugging at her lace undies and parting her thighs with his strong hands sticky with coconut board wax. She looked down and wove her fingers through the tangle of golden curls which were stiff and coarse with sea spray. She pulled Connor’s head into her and his hot mouth was on those wet, puffy lips. Claire could feel his tongue slip through the slit and lazily trace circles on the sensitive folds beneath.
Her fingers moved faster. He was now sucking her clitoris and she could feel the energy of her body concentrating into the long, fine peak of a wave. Then he stopped sucking and was still. Claire took her fingers away for a moment and breathed deeply.
The wave receded. Then Connor’s tongue was at her again and so were her slippery fingers. This time the wave was bigger. It had redoubled its energy and Claire knew she couldn’t stand against it. Claire arched her back as the wave rolled relentlessly though her, sweeping her away. She spread her limbs like a starfish washed up on the sand. Then she drew her legs up to her stomach and wrapped her arms across her breasts until the tide subsided and eventually became a small tingling eddy lapping at the ends of her fingers and toes. Claire sighed and dropped her forehead forward onto the steering wheel.
PAAAAARP! The car horn ricocheted through the concrete bunker like a small cannon.
Claire jerked her head up to see a terrified old woman standing in the middle of a cascade of falling oranges. They were rolling under cars in every direction. A burly bloke in overalls was soon at the scene of the crime gathering the fruit back into a white plastic bag.
He strode to the car window and rapped loudly. His voice was muffled, but his words were clear enough. ‘Hey, you . . . girlie! Whaddya think you’re doing? Why would you scare an old lady like that? Why don’t you grow up?’
As Claire lurched from her parking space she was struck by the face of the woman who was clutching her handbag to the front of her grey woolly coat. It’s right what they say on the television, she was no doubt thinking. The world’s not safe anymore. Claire wondered what she would think if she knew she hadn’t been a victim of road rage but the collateral damage of a lone masturbator.
As she handed over her money to the man in the booth at the car park exit, she wondered if he could smell sex on her fingers. She hoped so.
Her little silver car smoothly entered the artery of traffic on New South Head Road.
‘Girlie—he called me girlie!’ Claire whooped. She caught her laughing eyes in the rear-vision mirror, changed up into fourth and was soon gone from sight.
That night, with Madeline tucked up in bed in the room next door, Claire leaned back against the scarlet silk embroidered pillows of the king-sized bed and watched her husband Charlie go about his pre-bed routine.
He set the alarm for 7 am, laid out his jeans and sneakers and reverently approached the shrine in the corner of the bedroom. In this instance the place of worship was a large wooden cupboard which, by conservative estimates, contained five hundred rock’n’roll tour T-shirts.
In the first year of their marriage, Claire had almost committed the unpardonable sin of trying to chuck out the oldest ripped ones from down the very bottom of the pile. Charlie had rescued them from a cardboard box near the wheelie bin. Almost hyperventilating with emotion, he had explained to his new wife that his T-shirts were a record of his life. If he had no memory of the eighties—and no one else in the music industry did either— then it was all there on the back of the T-shirts.
She had rolled her eyes, but got the message. So now she chucked a lavender sachet in the cupboard every six months, slammed the door and vacuumed around it. She had, however, recently come to a new appreciation of his collection after reading in Harper’s Bazaar that the shirts were not ‘old’ anymore, they were ‘vintage’ and worth as much as $1000 each.
The one he had chosen to wear to work tomorrow was a classic from Jethro Tull. The ‘Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die’ tour of 1978.
Claire was flicking through a Vanity Fair and idly thinking about giving Charlie a blow job. It had been three weeks since the preparations for Rose and Dermott’s wedding had swamped their lives. Three weeks since they’d had sex. She could see Charlie had that antsy, distracted demeanour of a deprived man. Not that she had missed it. That was the funny thing about her sex drive (and most women’s, she suspected)—if you didn’t have it, you didn’t miss it. But once that switch was flicked! It was like the central heating being turned on for the first time in autumn. You wondered how you had got along without it and the warm, humming, low burn of desire was with you all day. The fire had to be constantly stoked to keep it blazing, otherwise it just quietly burned down to ashes until the next time.
Claire’s encounter with Connor had ignited a conflagration that was threatening to raze the entire house. She could almost hear the news story: ‘By the time the fire brigade arrived Claire Elise Sellwyn-Wallace was well alight. Bystanders could only watch as she was completely gutted. Firefighters reported the suspicious smell of coconut oil at the scene. The arson squad is investigating.’
Now Charlie was kneeling on the floor kissing her toes. Claire could see his quizzical eyebrows above the top of her Chanel ‘Rouge Noir’ toenails and knew he was thinking about sex too. ‘And how’s my gorgeous Claire Bear?’
Claire Bear?! Fuck! If that wasn’t a passion killer.
‘Don’t call me Claire Bear,’ she heard herself whine. Charlie stopped kissing and patted her feet with a sigh. He threw the overstuffed pillows down on the floor and climbed into bed.
That small sigh said it all. These days Claire and Charlie just seemed out of sync somehow. It was as if they were two old room-mates trying to negotiate sex for the first time.
They both retreated to their corners and thought about the next move. It came from Charlie, who was clearly a man on a mission. ‘What are you reading?’ It was a nice neutral change of gears, which gave Claire the chance to re-engage.
‘Oh, nothing much. I’m just looking at these pictures of Michelle Pfeiffer.’
‘Lemme see. Hmm, she looks good for an older woman,’ said Charlie, unaware that he was about to stumble into a hidden menopausal swamp.
‘Why does everyone have to say “good for an older woman”? Why can’t people just say “good”,’ said Claire irritably. ‘So how old do you reckon she is?’
‘I dunno. I suppose about thirty-nine.’ Charlie was wading farther out into the swamp until his gumboots were taking on water.
‘And that’s “older”? I’m forty-five. So I suppose that makes me “old”, does it?’ Crocodile Claire rose from the murky depths and t
ook off Charlie’s balls with one neat snap. He at least knew enough to stay very quiet and hopefully avoid another savaging.
Claire slammed her magazine shut and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I went to the gynaecologist today. She says I’m perimenopausal.’
‘And what does that mean?’ asked Charlie as he diplomatically moved his now flaccid penis off Claire’s leg.
‘Oh, heavy periods, mood swings, night sweats, weight gain, dry fanny, cancer . . . just the usual.’
Charlie considered this information and knew his next move was crucial.
‘Well, honey. You’ve stuck with me—man-boobs, love handles, bald patch and all—so I guess I’ll stick with you. Besides, I’m fifty-five, so to me you’ll always be a young chick.’ He reached over and drew her into his arms.
Phew! Love-all. Claire moulded herself to the familiar contours of Charlie’s chest and breathed in the smell of him. If she was a perfumer she would have described his fragrance as having velvety undertones of butterscotch and hay with a top note of . . . soy sauce? Or something like that. She couldn’t describe his smell. It was indelibly Charlie and she reckoned that blindfolded she could pick him from a thousand men. She had been with men she could have loved but gave them up because they didn’t smell right. There was something about Charlie’s aroma which made her feel safe and warm. Something which reminded her of her father. One corner of her mind was back in her childhood sitting on Dad’s knee, watching Disneyland on the telly. She felt the tension of the day slipping away. She sighed contentedly.
‘So, would you like to have sex?’
‘FUCK YOU, CHARLIE!’ Claire flailed around for her magazine, grabbed it and whacked Charlie fair across the head.
‘Owww . . . fuck off, Claire!’ Charlie’s hand flew to his eye. ‘That really hurt!’
The corner of the magazine had caused more of an injury than she had intended, but she was too furious to admit it. ‘I’ve just told you probably one of the most important things to ever happen to me in my life and you want sex?’
‘Well, isn’t that what you’re worried about with this whole menopause thing? Ow! My eye!’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘That you think I won’t want to have sex with you anymore.’
‘Why wouldn’t you want to have sex with me anymore?’
‘Because you’re too old.’
There it was. Charlie’s eyes were wide with horror. Up until this point Crocodile Claire only had his balls, now she was dragging him under for the final death roll. Charlie used his last breath as a living man to mount a desperate plea. ‘I mean . . . that’s what YOU think . . . not what I think!’
‘I don’t think I’m too old, Charlie. But maybe you do. Maybe you’re thinking about some young chicky-babe half my age right now!’ Claire shouted.
‘How the fuck would you know what I’m thinking?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I? Because what you think usually doesn’t make any frigging sense to me.’
Both Charlie and Claire knew that this was one of the most pathetic arguments they had ever had. Uninspired, unoriginal, nonsensical. One and a half stars. Claire thought she’d better crank up the drama level. She leapt out of bed, ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. Charlie was out of bed after her.
‘Is this what I have to look forward to?’ he shouted at the door. ‘Years of this bullshit? Is this what a menopausal mood swing is like? Because if it is, I’m out of here. This is crap, Claire. FUCKING CRAP!’
Well, he was right there, Claire had to admit. She looked in the mirror and was crying for the second time that day. Maybe this was a menopausal mood swing? Or maybe it was just Charlie.
Why did he have to ask for sex? Why couldn’t he just take her by surprise? Where was the spontaneous passion? Charlie would come home from the radio station, disappear into his study to read and then reappear hours later mooching around the kitchen looking for dinner. After dinner there would be more reading, television and then bed.
And, yes, there were jokes and conversation for her and cuddles and games for Maddie, but there was an odd absence of sexual intimacy. The stolen kisses at the kitchen sink, the sly squeeze of a breast or a hand slipped up under her skirt to caress her thigh as they bent to make the bed together. That sexual conversation had stopped. And she missed it.
Claire remembered that when she had come home with Maddie from school this afternoon she had crept into Charlie’s study and pressed her breasts against his back as he bent over his computer keyboard. She had leaned to nuzzle his neck just under the collar of his leather jacket and was rewarded by Charlie swatting at her as if she was a bothersome mosquito. Nothing all day, then a quick nibble of a toe and a request for sex. And that, Claire realised, was what she was mad about.
Claire waited in the bathroom until she heard the bedside lamp turned off. She slipped back into bed and as she lay there in the darkness listening to Charlie breathe, she put her fingers between her legs.
‘Now, where were we?’ she whispered to Connor in the silence.
Tuesday
An Indecent Proposal
‘Meg, I have a plan,’ Claire announced.
‘Oh no,’ Meg groaned, ‘why do I have a bad feeling about this?’
‘Hey, come on, I have had some brilliant plans over the years!’
‘Name one.’
‘Um . . . OK. What about when we met those two guys in Paris? Remember? Marek and . . .’
‘Midi?’
Meg and Claire both threw their heads back and laughed at the memory. It was almost twenty years ago at a dingy nightclub in the Marais. Claire could still clearly recall two white double-breasted suit jackets glowing eerily under the fluoro lights on the dance floor. And, bizarrely enough, she could still remember the song that was playing. It was Boney M’s ‘Rivers of Babylon’.
‘Yes—what a pair of Euro dags! Remember what yours said to you?’
‘I can, I can! He leaned over to me and said in his best sexy voice: “Cherie, you have a beautiful eye.” And I couldn’t work out if he meant “arse” or whether I just had one beautiful eye and the other one was quite unattractive.’
Claire was doubled over with laughter. She managed to gasp a question. ‘Do you remember which one you had? Marek or Midi?’
‘Oh jeez . . . I dunno,’ Meg sighed. ‘Did it really matter? They were both bloody awful. But come on, where did your great master plan come into it?’
‘Well,’ said Claire, regaining her composure, ‘I’m the one who found us the escape route through the kitchen near the loo and I’m the one who found the taxi and had enough French verbs to get us home.’
‘That wasn’t a plan!’ exclaimed Meg. ‘That was necessity born out of sheer blind panic. That escape was about as organised as the fall of Saigon!’
‘Well, hello? If we were relying on your grasp of French we would have ended up in bloody Luxembourg.’
‘That is just a lie! My French was absolument better than yours, Claire Sellwyn!’ After seven years Meg had still not got used to the sound of Claire’s married name.
‘Oh really? You’re forgetting I was there the night we went to that five-star restaurant and you had poodle shit on your shoe. And I remember the waiter: “Oui, Madame . . . it’s a fried telephone book and you ordered it.” ’
Meg shrieked again. ‘Oh, I give up. You are evil!’
It was like this whenever Claire and Meg were together. They had shared a bottle of chardonnay sitting on the sunny deck in Meg’s backyard and the stories tumbled and tangled like the family washing in the dryer. Meg offered Claire more fettuccine carbonara and poured another wine.
‘So I’ll ask you again,’ Meg began. ‘What, precisely, is this new great plan of yours and why am I suspicious?’
Claire settled back into her chair and focused. She was clear about what she was going to say but she also expected a fight.
‘Right. Well, Meg, I told you about Connor and everythin
g that stirred up inside me. And I have come up with an idea.’
‘Hmm,’ Meg interrupted. ‘I figured his name would be mentioned today. Go on.’
‘I want to throw a going-away party for my ovaries.’
‘You what? What are you talking about? Where are your ovaries going?’ Meg was used to Claire’s odd pronouncements, but this one bordered on the bizarre.
‘Listen, listen. I told you about all the perimenopausal stuff at the doctor. What it actually means is the end of my sex life.’
‘That’s utter crap, Claire! It doesn’t mean any such thing! You have years, decades ahead of you as a sexually active woman.’ Meg wanted to take her friend and shake her hard.
Now it was Claire’s turn to raise her voice and interrupt. ‘Alright, alright, alright! Maybe that’s not quite true. Maybe what I should say is that it’s not the end of my sexuality, but it is, undeniably, the end of my fertility.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Shoosh! It is the end of my fertility and I can do one of two things about it. I can feel sad or I can celebrate. I can ignore the whole thing, pretend it isn’t happening, or I can embrace it.’
Meg was about to say that it seemed to be five things, but she had to admit that this was starting to make a bit more sense, although she was still sceptical.
‘So . . .’ Meg began tentatively, ‘we’re having a “goodbye ovaries party”. Fuck me! Bags not making the cake!’
Claire ignored Meg and continued. ‘I have decided that, as a way of waving my fertility a fond farewell, I am going to plan the best night of sex I ever had in my whole life.’
‘Well, Charlie will love that!’
‘I’m not going to do it with Charlie. I am going to do it with Connor.’