by Wendy Harmer
‘Oh come on . . .’ they complained again.
‘The point is, kids,’ Louie was emphatic, ‘that when you’ve been married for fifteen years there is no favourite music to fuck by. I’ll take anything. Anything that’s coming out of the kids’ rooms—Silverchair, Pink, the theme to The Simpsons, The Hulk Xbox. Actually, the 1812 Overture could be playing and old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky himself could be firing the cannon in my fucking ear and all I’d be thinking is, I’m having sex, I’m having sex, ya-fucking-hoo! So I hope that answers your question. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going downstairs to perve on the waitresses before we go on stage.’
Louie left the room with laughter echoing in his ears. It was easy to forget they were all middle-aged when they were together, Claire reflected. The band was like a time capsule. They were still in their twenties, on the road, making music. And it was only after a speech like this that they remembered they were old and time was getting away from them.
Zack was still chuckling as he grabbed another beer from the fridge and settled back in his chair with his scruffy boots up on the faux walnut desk.
‘You know, Claire, I’ve been thinking. You reminded me of the best night of sex I ever had in my life. You want me to tell you?’
‘Was it with me?’ Claire teased.
Zack smiled at the memory. ‘That was a great night, wasn’t it? Funny as hell. Remember when the candles around the bath set the towel on fire?’
‘And my diaphragm flipped out the bathroom window?’ They both laughed.
‘Do women still use those things?’ asked Zack.
‘I don’t know. But I always used to say that I could tell it was a long time since I’d had sex if I went to get my diaphragm and mice were using it as a rowboat!’ They laughed some more.
Zack then looked at Claire and said earnestly, ‘You know something, Claire? You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen naked.’
Claire looked hard into her wineglass.
‘No—no, really. Your skin was like creamy satin. I’ve never forgotten it. I felt so, I dunno, Neanderthal lying next to you. All hairy and rough. In the end I think that’s why I’m glad it was funny and silly, and we never did it again. I don’t think I would have handled being with you. I always felt you were out of my league.’
‘Oh, Zack. That’s such a . . . I don’t know what to say. It’s a beautiful compliment, but it’s sad too. I thought you were so sexy. I remember hoping that you’d shag me with your red cowboy boots on.’
‘Cos of the smell, right?’
‘No, no! I remember you smelled fabulous. Jack Daniels, patchouli oil and cigars. As I said, so sexy. And you had the biggest dick I’d ever seen!’
‘Hey! That’s no compliment. You’d been living with Louie!’
As their laughter turned to sighs they paused and let the scene from all those years ago form in front of them like an apparition. Ghosts of fucks past. They stayed with you. Some of them you could recall as clearly as your first day at school. But you rarely had the chance to share them like this.
‘Anyway, this other night . . .’ Zack began again, vaporising the moment. Claire had a feeling that Zack had never told anyone this story before and that he had stayed behind in the room for the express purpose of sharing it.
‘It was in Bangkok a few years ago. I was there with my mate Cam. Anyway, we were having a beer in this bar and we met this chick. She wasn’t a stunner, but she was sexy as hell. A Thai girl, probably in her mid-thirties. She was a lot of fun. Anyway, one thing led to another and she took us to this hotel. So we get in the room and . . . you’ve never seen anything like it. One entire wall was mirrors, there was a dance podium, a pole—Christ, even a fucking mirror ball.’
Claire nodded and listened. This was entirely beyond her experience, thankfully.
‘Instead of the usual mini-bar—you know, chips and chocolate and shit—there was all this stuff. Handcuffs, dildos, vibrators, all kinds of edible gel. Every kind of sex toy you could imagine. Anyway, me and Cam just went for it and this chick went off. When she came she was almost catatonic. We got into it for about eight hours. It was fantastic. As I say, the best night of sex in my whole life.’
Putting aside any thoughts she had about this anonymous Thai woman—and she would obviously never know what was going on there—Claire realised she actually knew bugger-all about men. How could two best mates, who had been sitting at a bar with Tiger beers in their hands, suddenly be standing there with their dicks in their hands at either end of a strange woman? You’d be tempted to say their friendship had some sort of homoerotic element to it, but that didn’t explain Zack and Cam at all. Men, eh? Who the hell could understand ’em? If they didn’t have dicks you’d be across the road throwing half-bricks at ’em.
The best Claire could come up with was, ‘Did it make any difference to the friendship between you and Cam?’
Zack raised his eyebrows with surprise and looked at her. ‘No. Why would it? We’ve never talked about it, really. Anyway, look at the time, we’d better get down there.’
Claire crossed to the mirror to check her lip gloss. Zack’s story had thrown her. Could a man and a woman really agree on what constituted the best night of sex they would ever have? Zack’s night was something straight out of the Penthouse letters section. What Claire had in mind was . . . God, what did she have in mind? Something out of Mills and Boon? Was it replicating something she’d already done? Or was it doing something she might never have the chance to do again? She knew for certain the night she had in mind didn’t include a dance podium and a mirror ball. But then again, if she was open to a night of sexual adventure, maybe it did.
It was almost eleven o’clock when they all fell back into the room.
‘Holy shit! What a bunch of tossers!’ Zack attacked the mini-bar again and retrieved the last tiny bottle of Bacardi.
‘Did you see that fat chick off that reality show?’ Louie threw himself into a chair.
‘Which reality show? Do you mean the fat chick that sings or the fat chick that runs the restaurant?’ answered Zack.
‘I mean the fat chick off the island. Man, was she working the room.’
‘I was too busy checking out that newsreader. That brunette piece. I always wondered what she looked like from the waist down. Nice arse, fat ankles.’ Zack found himself a Coke and was mixing a drink.
Claire was used to them dissecting the women after a gig. She knew that most women would be shocked by the way they talked, but she also knew enough not to take it personally. Normally she would have sat back and enjoyed their locker-room talk like one of the boys. But tonight she looked at the bedside clock and saw she had about ten minutes before she was due to ring Connor.
‘Well, I’m off,’ said Mike. ‘I’ve got work in the morning.’
‘Yeah, I’ll get a lift with you. Zoe’s got the stopwatch on me tonight. I’ve got to get the kids to school,’ said Louie with a sigh. He reluctantly hauled himself out of his chair. They left after brief goodbyes.
Two down, two to go. Now Claire needed to think fast to get rid of Zack, who was showing every sign of settling in.
‘Hey, Zack. I noticed that actress tonight. What’s her name? Daisy something?’ said Claire innocently.
‘Daisy Cameron? Is she here? You’re kidding! Did I tell you I saw her tits in a movie on cable this afternoon? They were just like I imagined. Perfection. Jeez, I’d even let her eat biscuits in bed!’
‘That’s her. I saw her head to the cocktail bar with her girlfriends as we were coming upstairs.’
‘Fucking oath, Claire! I owe you a spotter’s fee.’ Zack was out the door so fast he almost burned a hole in the carpet.
Then there were the two of them. Claire and Ellery. In a hotel room together. Claire poured a glass of wine and sat in an armchair. She made sure there was a coffee table between them. Five minutes to go.
Her stomach started to churn and her feet and hands began to tingle. The digital clock
flipped over to 10:56. She looked at the telephone and realised with alarm that Ellery was not going anywhere. He was sitting staring at the floor.
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Claire.’ He looked up at her.
It had been fifteen years ago, but Claire remembered with absolute clarity the six long months she had spent searching those brown eyes for meaning. Over dinner tables, in beds, on planes. She thought that if she looked hard enough, some understanding of what was in his soul would swim up to the surface and be able to be read there. Unfortunately Ellery had spent the same six months making sure his eyes gave away nothing.
Their affair was the grand passion of Claire’s life. She had found in him a dark brooding mystery. Her very own Mr Rochester. Their assignations were always intensely theatrical. For his birthday they had rented an old wooden house by the sea. A wild storm had hit that night and he had run into the rolling surf and disappeared from sight. Claire remembered running up and down the sand terrified he had drowned. Her calls to him were whipped from her mouth by the howling wind. And just when she was convinced he had been swept away, he staggered up the beach exhausted and icy cold. She had taken him back to bed and brought the warmth into him with her tongue.
He did this to her over and over again. Took her to wild places—mountain ledges, flooded rivers, deserted wharves— and left her. He pushed her to physical and mental extremes and then rescued her. The sex afterwards was always intense and abandoned, as if they were at the brink of death and had been granted one last moment together. Claire found his passion exhilarating, like nothing she had ever experienced before. At the time she thought they were cast in the likeness of great lovers in history like Tristan and Isolde, or Heloise and Abelard. Looking back, Claire thought they were more like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
And, if she was truthful, the degradation of their affair was like nothing she had ever experienced either. She knew he still loved Martine, who was living in Paris. She saw Martine’s letters to him on the bedside table and she heard him call to her in his sleep. She kept going back to him convinced that he would one day come to love her instead. But, as much as she tried to gain his heart, Martine remained an occupying force she couldn’t evict.
‘Have you ever heard of solipsism?’ He had dropped this on her one night at dinner at the end of a long silence.
‘No . . .’
‘Well, Claire, that’s what I am. A solipsist. In simple terms I believe that the only thing I can really know is my own mind. Not yours, not anyone else’s. And I only believe in the here and now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Every day I practise just being in the moment. It’s the hardest thing anyone can ever do. All that’s here in front of me . . .’ and here he had gestured around the dimly lit restaurant and brought his hand up under Claire’s chin, ‘. . . is all I know.’
‘I see,’ Claire had replied quietly as if she knew what he was talking about, when in reality she didn’t have a frigging clue.
‘Right now, Claire, I am here with you and that’s all that matters. Right now, I love you.’
Claire had been overwhelmed by his declaration. She took this to mean that he had forgotten Martine and was finally hers. The sex that night had been transcendent. She had a feeling that she had trekked the arid wastes of his psyche and bathed at the oasis of his soul. Or some poetic shit like that anyway. It wasn’t until some months later that she looked up the dictionary and read: ‘solipsism 1. Philos. the view that the self is all that exists, or is all that can be known. 2. self-centredness, selfishness.’
Of course, in hindsight Claire realised that it was her shattered self-esteem after the break-up with Louie which had propelled her into the disastrous affair with Ellery. All that ‘oasis’ crap had turned out to be a mirage. His eyes had been not so much deep pools as stagnant ponds.
The way he had dumped her had been so utterly devastating that Claire had not told anyone, even Meg, for years. Although she had confided to Meg that, until her affair with Ellery, she never understood the sheer heartbreaking emotion of Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor, dead roses and drizzle. She still remembered how Meg had just shaken her head in disbelief.
Claire now saw the clock was reading 10:57. Ellery was still looking at her in a way which made her heart lurch. He’s going to tell me he loves me, she thought. And in the same instant she sincerely hoped he wasn’t.
‘Martine and I are finished.’ His dark shiny hair fell down into his eyes and, as he brought his hands to his face, Claire realised he was crying. He crumpled to his knees, crawled over to her and put his head in her lap.
Claire smoothed the hair from his face. Well, wasn’t this ironic! For years she had imagined again running her fingers through this black curtain of hair which flopped over Ellery’s forehead. There was something about the way his head was set perfectly on his neck which always reminded her of a Greek statue. She still could not look at the back of his neck without wanting to kiss it. And now she had his head in her lap—on a plate—and she wanted nothing more than to push it off. The clock flipped again. 10:58.
Her hand rested on his sculpted head and she bent down to his ear. ‘Oh, come on, El, honey. It’s probably not that bad. You know you and Martine are made for each other,’ she cooed. Yeah, she thought, like a shepherd boy and an old French jersey cow.
‘I know,’ he sniffed, ‘she’s the only woman I’ve ever really wanted.’
There was a pause. Claire’s body tensed as she thought of everything she could say to him. He had once told Claire he loved her. Had he forgotten that? Because she hadn’t. And she hadn’t forgotten sitting in the transit lounge at Heathrow airport, crying in despair and humiliation. And she hadn’t forgotten that he had never apologised.
And all these years she had been ‘good Claire’ and ‘reasonable Claire’. She had put up with his ‘artistic temperament’, which was just another way of saying that Ellery Jones was a bad-tempered, ungracious prick. And she also wanted to say that he and that stuck-up French bitch deserved each other. Deserved to be totally fucking miserable together.
But Claire wouldn’t say any of this. Because of course she was now married, with a child. And apparently, when you are married, with a child, your nerve endings are cauterised. Your memories are dulled. You’re a wife and mother first and a somehow sexless shadow of your former self. To the point where ex-lovers can look at you and recall a grand passion as merely a flirtatious folly. And so Claire sighed and said instead, ‘It’s late. Go and see Martine. I know it hasn’t ended, and in your heart you know it hasn’t either. You’ve come too far together. Go and tell her how much you love her.’
He stood up and got his coat. He looked at Claire and held out his arms. Claire walked into them. He said softly into her hair, ‘Thank you. You know, Claire, I think you’ve always understood me more than anyone else. And that’s why I never want to play for anyone else but you.’ He kissed her cheek and left.
She stood looking at the closed door. Maybe all these years she had been wrong. Maybe it was the music which had always been at the heart of their passionate connection. What was it Meg had said? Time to put away childish things. And her stupid, embarrassing Ellery fantasy was one of them. Only to be replaced by a stupid, embarrassing Connor fantasy? She wondered whether she would be able to exist without some fantasy or other in her life. Well, at least she held the reins of this latest one firmly in her two hands.
She looked at the clock. It said 11:00. She poured another drink and rang Connor’s number. This time it answered straight away.
‘Oh,’ said Connor with mock surprise. ‘I was just thinking about you and here you are, out of the blue. Remember how last night we talked about the collective unconscious? How most of us are all thinking only the same few things?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking all day about getting you into my bed . . .’
Claire shivered. His voice, the way he talked to her—she found it deeply arousing. Her hand slipped inside
her bra to cup her breast as she talked.
‘Me too—but we’re not allowed to go that far yet. Tonight we’re only talking about music. Remember?’
‘Oh, that’s right. Typical woman. Foreplay, foreplay, foreplay. So where do you want to start? You’re in charge of this fantasy, after all.’
There he went again. Reading Claire’s mind.
‘Where are you tonight?’
‘Same place, same moon, same lovely swell. How about you?’
‘I’ve just finished a gig and I’m in a hotel room looking straight out to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This would be a wonderful spot to watch the fireworks.’
‘Now there’s a great one! Fucking by fireworks! I’m gonna put that on my list. There we go, just under fan dance.’
Claire laughed. ‘Fan dance?’
‘Hey, this is my fantasy too!’
‘Music. We’re supposed to be talking about music.’
‘Yeah, I’ll learn the piano accordion to accompany you.’
Claire giggled and then sighed as she remembered what she was going to tell Connor about tonight.
‘Well, maybe you should learn the piano, cos that was the accompaniment to one of my greatest erotic moments. Are you ready?’
‘Hang on. Let me get another drink. Yep. I’m gonna lie back here with my drink in one hand and my . . . um . . . telephone in the other and you are going to tell me all about it.’
‘Well . . .’ began Claire. She switched off the bedside lamp and lay down on the bed; the lights from the Bridge shone on the beads of her dress and projected a kaleidoscope on the ceiling. ‘Once there was this piano player. It was 1991 and we were at the Edinburgh Music Festival together. We’d been in a band for a couple of years and only just started an affair. It was pretty torrid.’
‘Good word, torrid. Gimme some details,’ Connor interjected.
‘There’d been this heavy sexual tension between us for years. It was the way we made music together, I guess. He would read my mind. I would read his. Then we’d come together to make this incredibly beautiful sound. It was pretty close to having sex for a long time. We both knew it. Then one night it tipped over into the real thing and that was it. We just couldn’t stop.’