by Luke Horton
Clara brought someone home once, during those first months in the house, and that was when Tom noticed it. He was jealous. He started wondering where she was when he got home and she wasn’t there. The house had a strange dynamic. It was like they were the parents and Trish was their difficult teenager, whom they loved but had to forbear, deal with her tantrums and worry about, and fret over when she left the room. When they exhausted the topic of Trish — her boyfriend woes, her drug intake, how she was getting any work done at university — there was little to say. But it was nice, the two of them pottering around the house, doing chores, cooking meals for each other, with Danny, the fourth housemate, occasionally joining them and making it feel slightly less embarrassingly obvious what was happening between them. But in this way, they became something like a couple before anything had even happened.
He found himself, in those first months, masturbating to the thought of Clara slipping into his bed without a word. At the thought of wordless, almost mechanical sex. Sex where she took him inside her like she was adjusting herself, getting comfortable on the bed. Sex that was seamlessly integrated into their movements around the house, enacted like any other activity, like picking up a book, or making tea. He fantasised about pulling up her dress and fucking her while she was cooking, that sort of thing. And it had something of that feel about it when it actually happened, after a night out together with Trish and talking in his room afterwards. She simply got into his bed and shuffled over. And that was that.
They never spoke about it, their relationship. They didn’t need to. It unfolded in front of them naturally: each step taken and decided through opportunity and necessity, and confirmed by him privately with a little thrill he felt, a shiver through him, which he thought he concealed from her successfully. A long weekend away at her parents’ place while they were out of town — an early time he remembered well, them lazing around in towels, playing house — then he was going camping over summer and did she want to come, and then a re-evaluating of their lives at the start of a new semester and deciding they needed their own place, to get more serious about things — not their relationship, they meant studying, working. They also wanted to be less distracted by Trish and all her drama. They had had enough of that house. They did all the cleaning, most of the cooking. Danny had moved out, and they’d never found a good replacement. Plus, the house was on a main road, and two lanes of traffic thundered past all day, leaving grime on the windowsills. And if they moved further out, they could maybe afford — just — to rent a place alone.
But then the idea of travelling came up. Maybe, instead of getting serious about things, they should do the opposite, they said, getting excited. They could go overseas for a year. Clara wasn’t enjoying her arts degree much and was thinking of giving it up altogether if more shifts came up at the nursery. She could save up over summer. Tom had some savings, and could borrow money from his parents, and was more than happy to defer his degree for a year. Maybe that was the better idea, before they got serious about things. Before they were locked into a new lease.
Looking back, it all seemed so natural, so inevitable. From the moment it started it was like they had always been together, like they were an old couple, not two people in the first bloom of love. Which, at the time, had been a huge relief. Sometimes, though, he’d worried about that. Worried that it pointed to some essential thing that was missing. Maybe it wasn’t relief he had felt after all, but resignation, he’d think. But he didn’t think that now. Not today, on the bed, directly under the struggling aircon, waiting for her to return with several dining options, each within walking distance.
3
The next morning they emerged from the path and from between a pair of semi-effaced putti to find a woman trawling a boy of four or five through the blue-spangled water of the pool, which, the previous day, they’d had to themselves. The boy was giggling and saying, To the frogs, Mummy, to the frogs, as she struggled through the deep end. Tom and Clara settled into their banana lounges, the woman smiled up at them, and Tom watched Clara smile back a strange smile that seemed more a mirror of the other woman’s than her own.
It was only midmorning, but the heat was already intense. The sun bore down upon them with such ferocity that the pebble-encrusted concrete around the pool seemed to wither under its force. The reflected light was blinding. Tom found his sunglasses and put them on. A Balinese woman in a sarong with a maroon sash around her waist appeared with three juices on a tray and put them on a table. As she left, Clara ordered juices for them, too.
Soon a tall, skinny man in wet shorts appeared and dived into the water. He came up grinning broadly as the boy squealed to escape his grasp. That’s when Tom learnt that he was Australian, but she was French. She was saying, Non, non! as he came after her, too.
When the woman and the boy got out of the pool, they sat on the lounges nearest them. The woman, who looked as if she was about to lie down, instead gathered her long hair behind her ears, and, squinting, turned to Clara.
Is your room mouldy? she asked.
There was a beat as Clara, behind her book, registered being spoken to. She lowered the book. No, our room’s not mouldy, she said. Is your room mouldy?
The woman twisted her hair into one big plait, pulled it around her shoulder, and let it unfurl down her front. She then lay back in the lounge and pulled on her sunglasses. It was, she said. Two different rooms were … The third room, it was okay.
Oh, said Clara.
It was okay, but — she spoke quicker, turning her face to the sky and perhaps closing her eyes behind her sunglasses — it was annoying to move each time. And then I found them spraying disgusting toxic shit in our room, which I asked them not to, actually.
Really? Clara put her book down and pulled herself up the banana lounge. What stuff? Insect spray?
The waitress returned with their juices. Tall, brightly coloured drinks, full of ice. Tom sat up and apologetically removed things from his table — his cap, book, towel — for her to set them down.
Yes, the woman continued, her voice lowered as the waitress returned to the restaurant. This huge fucking can was on the dresser when we came back to our room. They use it in all the rooms, every day. I asked them not to use it in our room. I complained to the front desk. I don’t want Ollie to be sleeping in a room full of toxic fumes. Merde. He has a bad chest.
Tom looked over at Ollie. A vaguely pudgy, gentle-looking kid, he was not paying attention to the conversation. He had an iPad out, drawn very close to his face, presumably due to the sun.
I guess our room does smell of something, now you mention it, Clara said. I thought it was just, like, cleaning products … I haven’t seen them use it, though.
They do it when they clean the rooms, when you’re out, the woman said, growing angrier about it as she spoke. You wouldn’t know, unless they leave the fucking can in the room!
Wow, Clara said, and there was a pause in conversation as they considered the problem.
Clara had allergies, and other strange ailments and symptoms that had never been satisfactorily explained. A stubborn rash on her upper thighs. For weeks, every night she rubbed cream into the inflamed, pimply skin and he would walk into the room while she was doing it and pretend not to stare, her white legs pressed flat and wide against the bed, her unshaved pubic hair tightly curled. The thing above her lips, like an echo of her upper lip drawn on, a possible fungal infection that was a mystery to her doctor, and which meant they couldn’t kiss for a while. Also, iron deficiency, possible IBS.
Tom had nothing like this. He had an anxiety disorder, and he was perpetually exhausted from this and insomnia, but he could eat anything, rarely got sick, and, unlike her, was entirely complacent when it came to the chemical threats around them in the house: the black mould in the bathroom, the asbestos in the roof. For some reason these dangers gained no purchase on his anxieties. Perhaps because they were things that c
ould be fixed, but the fixes were expensive or involved a lot of work, so it was easier to just pretend they weren’t there.
Not that Clara was alarmist about these things, and ultimately she took them in hand — convincing the landlord to re-enamel the bathroom tiles, and repainting the ceiling herself. She was sensitive to smells; she was always catching whiffs of things he couldn’t detect at all, or not for ages after her, like the time a house a few doors down were polishing their floors, or when the tip caught on fire a few suburbs over. All her senses were stronger than his. She tasted burnt garlic in her food, heard all the mumbled things on television he didn’t catch, could read signs on the highway hundreds of metres before him. He had always meant to get his eyes checked, but he couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t just exhaustion that made things swim right in front of them or lines blur in the distance, unless of course he was short-sighted as well as long. He couldn’t afford lenses, so he put off even finding out.
The man — who had been floating on his back while the women talked, kicking off the sides of the pool with his long legs — joined them finally and stood over his family, drying himself and casting a shadow that fell over the legs of his son and over Tom’s feet, too.
The two women were talking about mould now, about its effects on the lungs of children, but in a pause in the conversation he interjected apologetically and introduced himself, and introductions were made all round. They were Jeremy, Madeleine, and Ollie. Jeremy made to shake hands with Tom, but, as he came towards him and leaned down, he got his foot stuck on Ollie’s banana lounge and dragged it with him a little, sending the iPad onto the tiles.
Papa! cried Ollie.
Idiot, Madeleine said, not quite under her breath.
Jeremy scooped up the iPad. It seemed okay. He handed it back to the boy. Crisis averted, he said, grinning at Tom.
Back in their room, Tom laughed about the rude Frenchwoman and her bumbling husband, but Clara was not amused.
I like them, Clara said.
Yeah, yeah … they’re fine.
He was naked at the bathroom mirror, working on his hair, which had become impossibly frizzed and uncontainable. He was wetting it and patting it down with his hands, which worked — while the hair was wet. Clara was on the bed, flipping through the channels on an old TV that sat on a bamboo cabinet in the corner of the room. He gave up on his hair, stepped back into his wet shorts, and pulled them on.
I guess we’re going to see them everywhere now, he said.
And they did. On the way to the markets, outside warungs they’d chosen for lunch, out on the beach. It was Tom’s intention to keep them at arm’s length, at the level of the passing nod, and he assumed Clara would want the same, but she was being warmer than that. She seemed glad to be making friends, and by the end of the third day she had a loose arrangement to meet Madeleine at the cabanas for breakfast.
Not sleeping well in the poorly air-conditioned room, Tom came out the next two mornings to find them all eating breakfast — banana pancakes, nasi goreng, eggs, pastries, large platters of fruit.
Madeleine held court, talking about her research (she was a cultural historian specialising in women’s history); flat prices in Paris as compared to Sydney, where her sister lived (which were shocking to her), and as compared to Melbourne (which were slightly less so); and about Ollie (the complications of her pregnancy, his chest problems), in muted tones, or in code (third-degree T-E-A-R, postnatal D-E-P) if he was around.
Jeremy didn’t speak much, and he moved around the place quietly, too. He was always ducking his head, as if to dodge door frames only he could see, and, although he was mostly nimble, if he moved too fast he became clumsy, comical. But he beamed readily, at Madeleine, at Ollie, at Clara and Tom, too, and engaged happily with everyone he came across — hawkers, the women selling massages on the beach — while also following Madeleine’s orders and keeping Ollie entertained with board games, frisbee on the beach, or by drifting around with him in the shallow water. When he came back, he sat next to Madeleine, and she arranged him so she could lay her legs over his lap. Then he would stroke her legs as she talked. At one point, Tom saw him absent-mindedly raise one of her feet to his lips and kiss the joints of her toes. They were painted fluorescent orange.
For Tom, it was all too much. He wanted slow mornings. He wanted to stay so long in one spot they got hungry again and ordered the next meal there, too. He wanted to read his book. He did not want to make small talk. When he tried, he said stupid things, or distracted, awkward things, and received looks from Clara for them. She made excuses for him — said he was always preoccupied. And this was true, but he wasn’t relaxed about it. He couldn’t relax, and relaxing was the whole point. All he wanted was for two weeks what they’d never really had before: a proper holiday. And they’d picked Sanur because it was quiet; people called it ‘Snore’. Of course, he could see where they’d gone wrong there, now — because of this reputation it was popular among young families.
But beyond that, beyond Madeleine and Jeremy and Ollie, who weren’t awful, he had to admit (and sometimes it worked out well for him — with Madeleine and Clara talking for hours and Jeremy asking little of him, he was left relatively alone and could slip off and lie in the shade somewhere and try to nap), it was still too much: too much noise, too much accommodation of other people. Too much everything. He needed time. He needed peace. He was exhausted. More exhausted than he felt at home. The humidity wasn’t helping. He seemed to shed his body weight in sweat every few hours. It was triggering, too, the heat. He couldn’t decide half the time if he was starting to panic or was just overheated.
Plus, he was still coming to terms with the flight. The turbulence. How he’d simply … disintegrated. It had been a while, and he had been half-hoping — pretending, at least — that that was over.
So he continued to be disparaging about them, while Clara defended them both.
I think he’s funny, she said.
They were at dinner — a tiny, one-room warung on the corner of a busy intersection that was open on two sides to the street. On one side it overlooked the main tourist strip, forever congested with honking pick-ups and snaking scooters, and on the other opened onto a dark side street that led down to the beach. This was a popular parking spot, with scooters and motorbikes starting up continuously and thundering past.
Under hard lights, Tom and Clara sat at a small plastic table on gleaming pink tiles. It was their fifth day now, and Clara had taken to wearing the same thing each day — not shorts after all, and not the floral dress she had tried on at home, but a big loose-fitting cotton thing with pockets. It was a pale, faintly marled grey that turned darker in patches with her swimsuit underneath, and she wore it with sandals and a floppy red canvas hat that, by squashing her hair down, had the strange effect of making her face and ears appear bigger beneath it. There was something carefree about the outfit that told Tom she was enjoying herself. That she was happy. He would have liked to have been gratified by this, but something about it annoyed him. He was in a bad mood, it was true — the exhaustion, their new friends — but there was something about her attitude, her happiness here, that felt like a rebuke, even a rejection of him. It had nothing to do with him, her happiness — how could it, if she was enjoying herself so much and he wasn’t? It was all about Madeleine and Jeremy and Ollie, and he felt dumped for more interesting people while also pathetic for being so transparently jealous.
… and, actually, they have a good relationship, she was saying. Madeleine loves him, you can tell. She’s kind of play-acting, being grumpy like that all the time. She’s actually one of the happiest people I’ve met in a long time, I think.
Sure, okay, I don’t really care about the state of their relationship, Tom said. He was running his fingers along his eyebrows, collecting and inspecting sweat.
No, but you’re always making comments about how she comes to a place like this and
complains, or is ordering Jeremy around —
She is kind of bossy, is all I said. And when she’s not being bossy, she’s draped all over him and complaining about the mould in their room or the water pressure or whatever … in this incredible pl—
Mould is bad for kids, she’s just concerned about her little boy … who is very adorable, you have to admit that, at least?
He’s cute, he said, looking down at the menu.
They’ve had a difficult time, though, too, Clara said, more carefully.
Really, how’s that?
She was telling me about how hard it was with Ollie … when he was young. That he never slept.
I thought there was something in him I recognised.
Madeleine said he woke up all through the night, and ended up in the bed with her all the time. So they co-slept … but it was long settles every night, and still lots of waking up … with Jeremy sleeping on the couch for, like, years. She said they had become enmeshed, or something.
Enmeshed?
Yeah, enmeshed. Something her psychologist said. I’m not sure what that means, she didn’t really explain. But she said she ended up spending a lot of time away from Jeremy, with Ollie at her mother’s in Léon, weeks and weeks away, even though everything was okay between them, and he was a good father and everything … She said that was the only way she could stay sane, that her mother calmed her down … and things slowly got better, Ollie started sleeping through the night, but it took years.
Sounds tough.
Yeah. But they got through it … And now he sleeps like an angel.
Seems so.