by Wendy Harmer
‘Well, like “long anticipated” or “lightning strike”, “surprise” or “familiar”. And then there’s the one that would come out as the crowd favourite: “forbidden fruit”.’
‘Back to melons and bananas again,’ said Steve.
‘What would you call that kind of sex where you have to do it or you’ll go mad with frustration?’ said Francie. Everyone turned to look at her.
‘I reckon that’s the kind of sex most single 40-year-old women in Sydney are having.’
‘By themselves, or with someone?’ Claire laughed.
‘I’d laugh too if it wasn’t so bloody tragic.’ Francie turned down her mouth.
And Claire would have been sympathetic too, if it wasn’t that she’d tried to set Francie up with at least ten blokes over the years. Like Elaine on Seinfeld, she always found something wrong with them. They were messy eaters, angry drivers, wore their trousers too high or, Claire’s favourite: ‘He’s got spinach in his teeth.’ (‘For God’s sake, Francie, it won’t even be there in half an hour!’ ‘It will be. He’s got these gaps. It’s going to be like it for his whole life. We’ll be married for ten years and I’ll look over and he’ll still have spinach in his teeth, and I’ll have to leave him.’) It was at this point that Claire gave up on Francie’s love life.
‘Of course, we haven’t mentioned my personal favourite,’ said Steve, ‘which is—’ he paused for the dramatic effect— ‘chemically enhanced sex.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Claire, ‘and you would be an expert on this topic?’
‘I would. But I am willing to share. Right. Well, first there’s weed or hash, which is great. You’re so relaxed. It’s excellent for blow jobs. You can actually have a whole out-of-body experience with that combo. Amazing.’
‘Sounds as boring as hell for the chick,’ interjected Francie.
‘Shut up, Francie. This is my area of expertise!’
Francie sulkily shut up, but within moments realised she was completely out of her depth anyway.
‘Then there’s coke, which I’m not all that big on. I mean, it’s good if you’re getting into a whole bent-and-twisted scene and you wanna get the power thing going. It makes you perform like a god. Well, in your own mind anyway. But for straight-up shagging? Nup.
‘Of course, you can alternate coke and smack. The old yin and yang. But that’s too hard-core, even for me.
‘Mushrooms? Crap. I spent five hours with this chick one night checking out the skin on her elbow.
‘But if you really want to go right off, you get some MDMA powder—eccy powder. And you shelve it—you know, stick it up your arse. That way it comes on really quickly and changes your whole mood in one go. The whole warm-and-loving thing in one hit. You could hug a telephone pole. Shag a hole in a telephone pole. The orgasms are amazing.
‘Of course, if you can’t get hold of powder and you’ve spent the night on the Charlie and eccies, you want a Viagra. Half an hour before you need it. And you only need half a tab, which should keep you going for six hours. A whole tab could give you a hard-on for twelve hours which, let’s face it, is going to end up being pretty inconvenient.
‘So . . . I think that about covers it.’
Claire, Patrick and Francie were stunned. They looked at each other, then looked at Steve, then looked back at each other and still couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Gee, you’re all quiet . . .’ Charlie was suddenly standing there at the head of the table, wearing a cheery smile.
The four of them looked at Charlie, paused, then exploded with laughter. And the more they laughed the more pissed-off Charlie became. He was turning to go when Claire reached for the hem of his jacket and managed to gasp an apology.
‘Sorry . . . sweetie . . . we were just . . .’ She steadied herself on the side of the table. ‘We were just . . . talking about sex. I mean, sorry . . . you had to be here . . .’
‘I am here,’ said Charlie evenly.
Claire finally collected her wits. ‘We were talking about all the different kinds of sex there are. And we actually came up with quite a comprehensive list. Didn’t we, Patrick?’
Patrick started mumbling. ‘Yeah . . . er . . . make-up, breakup . . . um . . . political, obligatory . . . er . . .’
‘Commitment, one-last-bonk,’ added Francie.
‘Oh, yeah. Well I suppose I’ve never looked at it that way. Interesting. Did you mention baby sex?’ asked Charlie.
There was no comment from the committee.
‘You know, the sex you have when you’re trying to make a baby? That’s the best of all. Somehow the two of you have a spiritual connection. It’s the only time sex really makes sense because, after all, that’s what sex is really for, isn’t it?’
There was another silence.
‘But don’t you know you were only making a baby in retrospect?’ Now Steve was out of his depth.
‘Not always,’ he said, smiling at Claire and holding out his hand. ‘Come on, honey. It’s time to go.’
Since Charlie had managed to kill the conversation stone dead, it probably was.
When Claire finally found the hostess to say goodbye, Helen was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. She had taken off her glamorous white slip and changed into a navy velour tracksuit.
‘Oh, what a good idea. You look so comfortable,’ said Claire. Although, when she really looked, Helen didn’t seem relaxed at all.
‘I wish I could say it was the reason I’d changed,’ said Helen. ‘I haven’t told you I’m going into hospital for a hysterectomy on Monday.’
‘You’re what?’
‘Oh God, Claire, it’s been so awful. I haven’t stopped bleeding for months. Really heavy floods which soak through everything, even if I use two or three pads at a time. I suppose it was an act of blind optimism to wear a white dress tonight. It’s probably ruined now.’
‘Helen . . .’
‘And I’ve had really awful pain with it. Like ten times the worst period pain you’ve ever had. At the end of every day my stomach is so swollen it looks like I’m pregnant. My back hurts, I’m busting for a wee every ten minutes. Anyway, the gyno says it’s fibroids; he says it’s best to just take everything out.’
Claire didn’t know where to begin. She thought hysterectomies were something they did to old ladies in the 1950s. ‘It sounds a bit extreme. Isn’t there anything else they can do?’
‘Actually he says the growths will probably shrink after menopause, but I’m only forty-nine. It could be another five years or more!’
‘Oh, Helen . . .’
‘In the end I’m glad. I’ll just be relieved to have it over and done with. He’s taking my uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes. I’ll be on HRT for the long term.’
‘Are you worried about that?’
‘What? Increased risk of cancer, heart disease and loss of libido? Should be a breeze.’ Helen’s bottom lip wobbled and tears spilled down her cheeks. In a moment Claire was behind the kitchen counter and hugging her.
‘Oh, Helen, darling. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.’ Claire’s hands were stroking Helen’s hair. Claire could feel her snuffling into her shoulder like a baby rabbit. There was no use telling Helen not to worry. It was one thing to wish your ovaries a lingering farewell, another to have them stolen from you in a surgical strike. It was a crippling assault on your sense of womanhood. An almost fatal blow to your femininity. Well, without time to rationalise that it was all for the best, that’s how Claire felt anyway.
She could feel that she was on the verge of tears too. ‘All I can say is, take it slowly. It’s such a big thing,’ she said. ‘Remember, you are more than your ovaries. You have a wonderful life. Beautiful daughters, a husband who adores you, friends who think you are magnificent. And if you need time to grieve, take it. We’ll all be here for you.’
Claire grimaced to hear such a pathetic ‘Dr Phil’ piece of pat advice come from her mouth. But what could you say at the end of such a long night
when your husband was standing at the door jangling the car keys? Claire wished she had a long afternoon to sit with her friend and talk it through. Instead they reluctantly untangled themselves and said goodbye.
Soon Charlie and Claire were heading east through the city for home. Charlie wasn’t much of a drinker, which meant they were spared the usual arguments about who was driving. The only drawback was that he was ready for a post-mortem long before she was.
‘So,’ he said as he expertly accelerated through the dark streets, ‘how was your night?’
Jesus, where did you begin? With Helen’s hysterectomy? Carolyn’s lesbian bombshell? Her suspicion that Patrick was playing around? With Brazilians and fake boobs? Steve sticking drugs up his bum? With her fears she’d never be a grandmother? She was thinking about where to begin when her ears started ringing. Or her handbag started ringing. Or, to be more precise, the mobile phone in her handbag started ringing. But by the time she realised this, it had been ringing for a while.
‘Are you going to answer that?’ Charlie was irritated. ‘It could be Meg and Tony calling about Madeline.’
Claire fumbled in her bag for the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi—it’s me.’
Claire felt a shot of adrenalin to her brain. She looked at the clock—1:39 am; she looked at Charlie who was looking at her; and she looked at the phone, which was glowing an urgent electric green.
‘Oh hi,’ she chirruped.
‘Just couldn’t get to sleep without calling you. Is it a bad time?’
Claire’s voice sounded like a cheery prerecorded message. ‘Well, you could say that. Charlie and I are just on our way home from a party.’
‘I’ve been thinking about fucking you. I can’t stop thinking about it. I think I might lie back here on the deck and look at the stars, contemplate eternity, while you suck my cock.’
He’s stoned, Claire immediately thought. ‘Oh, that’s a good idea,’ she said brightly.
‘I’ve thought of another thing we could talk about. I want you to tell me the explicit details of the most dangerous, illicit sexual act you have ever performed.’
Claire thought that she was probably performing it right now with her husband not two feet away from her.
‘Well OK, I’ll do that and I’ll ring you back tomorrow. Bye.’ She threw the phone onto the floor.
‘Who the hell was that?’
‘Would you believe that was Carol ringing from London? She’s got to write an article about Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho and she wants me to help her with the Australian connection . . . you know, who’s played there. I said I’d call her tomorrow.’
‘Doesn’t she know what time it is here?’
‘Well, you know Carol! She gets these enthusiasms and time means nothing.’
Charlie seemed to buy the lie. Claire looked out her window to the streetlights and fought the panic which had made her throat as rigid as a length of PVC pipe. She slowly uncurled her fingers and began to breathe. By the time Charlie was negotiating the Anzac Bridge, the memory of the party had been fogged in by thoughts of Connor. Her limbs felt heavy and she drifted into a low-lying cloudbank of desire. The last she remembered was being at eye level with the front laces of a pair of blue floral board shorts. She was unthreading the laces from the eyelets with red fingernails and . . .
When Claire awoke she was sitting in the front seat of the car. Her phone read 2:47 am. She was cold and stiff and her head felt as if it had been nail-gunned to the door. Fuck! Charlie had left her there. Because he was angry with her? Suspicious? Or because she was so inert he would have had to use the dead man’s lift to get her out of the car?
She opened the door and fell into a gardenia bush. The security lights arced into life and next door’s dog started barking. Well, thought Claire as she hauled herself out of the garden and picked a creamy blossom from her cleavage, this is a familiar scenario. Welcome to Saturday!
It was now almost a week since she had first set eyes on Connor Carmody.
‘Just nine more days to go,’ Claire Wallace said aloud to no one at all.
Saturday
Unfaithful Aphrodite
The first thing Claire thought when she opened her eyes was that she couldn’t last nine more days until she saw Connor. She would have to think of a way to get to Kirra Beach and get her hands on him long before then.
The next thing was Charlie. Did he know something was up? Well, she thought, nothing was, apart from a couple of steamy phone calls. If you looked at the situation rationally it amounted to no more than a two-minute fumble in a cubicle. Everything else was happening in her head.
‘Charlie . . .’ she called. ‘Charlie?’ She looked out the window, thinking he might be having a morning swim.
‘Charlie!’ The house was empty. She guessed he had probably gone for a walk.
Driving across town to pick up Maddie from Meg’s place, Claire considered her options. She could ask Connor to come back to Sydney earlier; but having him in the same town as Charlie was risky. She had promised him twenty-four hours. If he did come back, where would they go? How would she explain to Charlie that she would be away overnight? In the end Sydney was a small town; if she was spotted with Connor—don’t even think about it!
The best option seemed to be to invent an excuse to make an emergency visit to see her mother and father in Surfers Paradise. Once she was there she could come up with another excuse to disappear for the night and following day. She would meet up with Connor at Kirra Beach, which was not that far from Surfers. And then . . . Claire amused herself with thoughts of ‘and then’ for a few moments until she realised that she had some preparation to do before she could get on a plane.
She wanted a whole day at a body spa for her geisha routine. Full body scrub, facial, manicure, pedicure and the dreaded waxing. And it was Saturday. The first time she could get it done would be Monday. All this meant that she couldn’t make it onto a plane until Tuesday. Boring! And wouldn’t Charlie be impressed with that? His wife comes home with a bare fanny and then gets on a plane. Exactly how do you explain that you’re getting your pubic hair removed to see your mum and dad?
Of course Charlie didn’t need to get a glimpse of her before she left, but then she had to come home. So, being logical about this, she could get the wax job done up there on Monday morning, spend the time with Connor and then present herself to Charlie when she came home as a surprise! Only—and because she’d opened her big mouth to Charlie—it wouldn’t be a surprise. It would be evidence. Exhibit A! Aaargh!
Maybe she could stay up in Queensland until it all grew back? How long would that take? At least three weeks. Maybe she could avoid having sex with Charlie until it grew back. And wear pyjamas. That would be a possibility, except that she’d spent their entire married life sleeping nude. ‘I’m perimenopausal, Charlie, and I’m feeling very . . .’ Shy? Cold?
And then there was Maddie, who loved to have a bath with mum. That would make for a great piece of morning news at school: ‘Good morning, Miss Baggely. My mummy’s got no hair down there.’ Excellent!
Claire knew what she needed. A merkin! A pubic hair wig! She was thrilled with herself for remembering this word from a gruelling game of Scrabble, but had never thought she’d have cause to use it in a sentence—until now. Where did they get the hair for merkins? Claire realised hers would be disposed of in a disgusting ball of wax. And, really, how did they ever fool anyone, even in the 1600s (or whenever they were used)? She thought back to that girl at the party who lent her chicken fillets out to her boyfriend. You could do the same with a merkin. ‘Go on, take it, honey—knock yourself out.’
There was no simple way out of this. She would just have to make it up as she went along—start singing and then improvise when she didn’t know the words. She’d done that before, so she picked up her mobile and dialled.
‘Aphrodite Salon & Spa! Gavin speaking.’
‘Hello, Gavin, it’s Claire Wallace.
’
‘Hi, doll! How are you? How can I help?’
‘I’m great, but I’ve got a bit of an emergency on my hands. I need a bikini wax this afternoon. Any chance in hell?’
‘Hmm . . . just the bikini?’
‘Well, I’m thinking I might go a bit further . . . I’m not sure.’ Claire tried to sound casual.
‘Oooh, I knew we’d get you on board sooner or later. You’ll love it! Lucky, lucky hubbie! Look I can shuffle a few things around and get you in at three. How does that sound?’
‘Great . . . I think.’
‘Just see how far you want to go when you get here. No drama. But honestly, luvvie, the whole pain thing is totally hyped. You’ll be fine. It’s nothing . . . you’ve given birth, haven’t you? Ha ha ha!’’
‘Thank you, Gavin. See you at three.’
A more faint-hearted person than Claire would have given the game away at this point, but they were not Claire. After all, when she was thirty-three Claire had conducted an affair with a married man for two years. During that time lies had become second nature for her and Simon.
‘I’m at the osteopath, getting my back looked at. Won’t be long, darling. Do you want me to pick anything up? OK . . . yep, milk and bread.’ This was said by Simon as Claire sat naked astride his back, rubbing his shoulders with massage oil.
‘Of course I’m not seeing him anymore, Meg! I’m not going to throw my life away on a married man.’ This was said by Claire as Simon was naked, pushing her head down under the sheets.
What were the categories of sex they had come up with last night? Affair, make-up, break-up and going back for one last bonk. She’d done all those with Simon. Claire had been astonished to find herself having an affair with a married man. The whole time she was doing it, she felt like some dumb cliché in a trashy holiday paperback. She’d just come out of therapy as well and should have felt like she ‘owned her own life’. Another dumb cliché.
She had met Simon one night after a gig at the Adelaide Festival. Of course there had never been a shortage of men wanting to meet her after a jazz gig, but she was usually wary of fans who knocked themselves out trying to impress. Flowers, bottles of French champagne and, in one memorable instance, a pair of diamond earrings. They all spelled ‘try hard’ to Claire.