Absence Makes

by Bruce Menzies

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  Simone jumped.

  ‘Sorry, just thinking about your situation and what it means.’

  ‘Forget that.’ Ross drained his glass. ‘I’ve been reading a lot.’

  They spent an hour on existentialism. His arguments lose and confuse her but she is intrigued, nonetheless.

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a deep thinker.’ She was on her third beer. To hell with the meeting.

  He looked at her and shrugged. ‘Hardly. But I try to make sense of things.’

  ‘Do you think we’re all doomed – a nuclear war or whatever?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. We could be lucky but that’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’ Two beers made her light-headed. Three, and her mind was a sieve.

  ‘The point is there’s no point. When we wake up to that, we can be realistic.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ She saw herself tapping the table. ‘If we see there’s no point, we can be realistic about what?’ What’s the point of this discussion, she thought?

  ‘Being realistic means we don’t kid ourselves all the time.’

  ‘About love and romance? Things like that?’

  She felt she should turn the conversation back towards June. Isn’t that why she was there, a counsellor of sorts?

  ‘Not just romance. Everything. Everything we pretend is important.’

  She decided to cut to the chase. ‘What about you and June? Aren’t your relationship issues important?’

  He’s not offended.

  ‘Of course they are. But I’m looking at them differently. Realistically. No more rose-coloured glasses. It’s pretty basic. She left. I suffered. The usual ending is misery for everyone. That’s being realistic. I have to accept it.’

  ‘Are you serious? Don’t you have a choice?’ She was not happy with his neat, dismal equation. ‘We always have a choice.’

  ‘Do we?’ His amusement shows. She would like to smack him. She refrains. Their time was definitely up.

  11

  Simone had her work cut out. Purportedly engaged on a research project on elderly people, she should be, as the proposal stated, collating the results and looking at commonalities and trends, trying to remember how to do statistics and tables. Her boss at the Institute was quite laid-back but wouldn’t indulge her forever. Soon, she would be asked for a preliminary draft of the paper they had undertaken to produce. She hadn’t written a word. Her notes and tapes were spread over her desk creating, she hoped, a semblance of industry. But, before long, her bluff would be called. Despite her usual sang-froid, she felt a touch anxious. I don’t want to blow it, she thought. This lifestyle suits me. I’m left to my own devices and no one is leaning on me each day as I swan off for appointments with these old folks. In short, I’m trusted.

  It interested her, this question of trust. Her boss trusted her. Most of her interviewees trusted her – she knew Baxter did. She had a way with people. Sometimes, it made her feel guilty, the way she could draw them into her confidence. It’s a strange kind of power, she reflected. Mesmerising, almost. She could feel it with Baxter. He held off for a while, quite rightly, she reckoned. Over the years, his secrets were safe. He’d constructed his defences and they seemed to work. Nobody pried into his private life. Nobody, until Simone came along. She’d tapped into a deep need. In a very short time, he’d poured out his heart. She had listened, enthralled. But, the truth was, it scared her, this responsibility. And she didn’t scare easily.

  She, too, wanted to pour out her heart. In her estimation, she was a pretty cool kitten. When the inclination arose, she could be the life of the party, pulling the attention and the laughs. Her father would say: ‘Simone, you’re a proper little show-off.’ At school it worked – well, mostly. Among the girls in her class, she was the leader of the pack. Even a few of the boys seemed to appreciate her. So did her the teachers, apart from Miss Simmons. Peering over her thick glasses, Miss Simmons would lecture: ‘Flippancy, Simone, is not endearing.’ It never sank in. Poor Miss Simmons. The old crow meant well. Simone might have paid attention but she did not then know the virtue of restraint.

  This question of trust. She’d seen what happened when trust was broken. Maybe that’s why the guilt came up when she sloped off, doing her own thing instead of writing up the research. She told Baxter she once had a real job. It was true. She didn’t set out to become a social worker. Probably had no idea what that was. No, she could have gone to uni – her school marks weren’t bad – but the lure of money was strong. After a crash course in typing, she joined a law firm - the same outfit where Jeff works. A rather ancient firm on the Terrace, in an equally ancient building with a lovely wooden staircase. She felt at home amidst the mustiness and the panels dividing the typing pool from the solicitor’s offices. It was fun to dress up each morning and catch the number 78 bus to the city and compare nail varnish with the girls in the ‘Pool’. Everyone was nice and polite. The work was repetitious but you were paid each fortnight and that’s what counted. But, there was a downside. She could thank – or blame – Germaine for bringing it into focus.

  Actually, her mum was the instigator. She welcomed the sixties, her mum. She got hold of The Feminine Mystique before anyone in Perth ever heard of Betty Friedan. An older cousin swanned off to America and became a feminist. She sent her mum books. Simone wasn’t interested. None of her friends were. They were teenagers, dreaming of clothes and parties and boys. They were proud when their breasts grew grand enough to have bras. They cost money – the bras, that is. They had no desire to burn them. But something must have rubbed off. Her mum would regale her dad about women’s rights. He was quite sympathetic, but only in principle. At heart, he was another Latin male, head of the house, bringing home the bacon, and, if you scratched below his schoolteacher persona, you would find the typical Italian machismo. She loved him – still did. But Mum, she wouldn’t shut up. Dad put his hands over his ears and made out he was being browbeaten to death. She thought her mum was over the top but, after a few years with the law firm, her ideas began to change.

  She never read Betty or Gloria or any of those Yankee academics, at least not until further down the track. Germaine Greer was different. The Female Eunuch had come out in London. A girlfriend who was overseas brought a copy back. Simone was open to reading it since it came from her girlfriend and not her mum. And it changed her life.

  In the office, the girls did the dirty work. They typed the letters and the documents – fair enough, they were paid for that. They also acted as couriers to the courts and the government departments. If she had a dollar for every minute she’d stood at a counter at the Titles Office she’d be rich. They all took their stint as ‘the outside girl’. And within the office they did the filing, crawling around in the dust of the filing room, trying to locate a file among the thousands stacked on the shelves. It was always the one you needed that had been wrongly filed. She must have used a box of tissues a day, sneezing and wheezing. Probably could sue them if she could prove it caused her hay fever. Fat chance. They were too smart to get sued, those lawyers. But it was the tea-making that really got up her nose, even more than the dust. She felt like a maid in a feudal manor. So bloody condescending, those men – there weren’t any lady lawyers in her firm. She could have strangled one or two, especially the partners.

  After she devoured Germaine, she was brimming with rebellion. She’d been four years in the Pool, and if she wasn’t quite ready to burn her bra, she was more than ready to speak her piece. Well, that was her intention. Putting it into practice was not so easy. Lawyers, bloody lawyers, lording it over everyone, including their clients. You – the poor, confused client - didn’t stand a chance. Forced to listen to rambling sentences, full of unusual phrases you think you should know but really you don’t. And then a smug lawyer asks you if you’ve understood, and you’re too ashamed to admit you’re completely lost so you sit there dumbly nodding your head. And then you sign so
me document – an agreement or an affidavit or whatever – and you just hope it makes sense to someone, as it sure as apples makes no sense to you.

  She watched the lawyers with their clients and would laugh to herself. Poor buggers, the clients. Paying a fortune for legal advice and reeling under the weight of convoluted confusion delivered by some silver-tongued sharpie in a three-piece suit. They could lay it on, those lawyers. Lay it on with cream and jam. But if you crossed one of them, be prepared. Out would come the acid tongue. Masters of the law and masters of the put-down. You wouldn’t believe how good they were. She wasn’t often on the receiving end but saw those who copped it. Girls running off to the ladies and bawling in private. And no one held to account. In theory, you could complain to the Personnel Department. Useless in practice. A couple of aging clerks, untrained and unsympathetic.

  That’s what they learned, those lawyers, she supposed. To use their verbal rapiers before someone got in first. Thinking back, it’s a wonder the women put up with it for so long. Too meek and too intimidated. Women who had seen off the sixties but were still stuck in the girdled past of their mothers.

  Thanks to Germaine and a horny solicitor, Simone became unstuck.

  Delving into The Female Eunuch, she’d begun to think about differently about sex. Women are taught to hide their libido, proclaimed Germaine. They’ve become like castrated cows - fattened and made docile to serve their masters. When Simone read this, the images felt strange, even ugly. Then she thought about it. Men seemed to thrive on dirty jokes and lurid gestures, while women were taught to act demure, and ignore the innuendo. That was the expectation. Only at office Christmas parties was there a restricted license to cut loose. At that yearly ritual, you could act flirtatiously and let the champagne do the talking. She was a natural performer at these parties and drew the men around her like moths. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew where the line in the sand was drawn. And she’d seen one or two girls cross that line, helped of course by an inebriated lawyer. The aftermath was not pretty. The girl usually left in a hurry, while the boastful conquistador gained merit points among his envious colleagues. The unspoken norm: One rule for the boys. Another for the girls.

  At her final Christmas party, Simone bounced into the room, brimful of sedition. Germaine’s questions teased her brain. How come men want us to be wild and sexy and when we take them up on it, we’re spurned? If we spend our lives as delicate and reticent flowers, blokes feel comfortable and unthreatened. But heaven help us if we embrace the sexual vigour that Germaine says is our birthright. It freaks them out, and we are cast aside in no uncertain manner. Why do we put up with it, she puzzled?

  Whether it was the cheap champagne or she was already primed to shed her veneer of respectability, she would never know. It mattered not. The party was a hoot. They were all dressed up, including Hartford, the dour conveyancing clerk, resplendent in a rainbow waistcoat. Simone downed three or four glasses in a hurry and danced with Shirley on the large desk at the rear of the Pool. The booze disappeared like Lord Lucan. When the perfume settled, and the stream of inebriates had staggered off to other pastures, she found herself locking up the filing room and preparing for another dateless evening. As she reached over to close one of the cabinets, an arm encircled her waist. She recognised the aftershave.

  ‘What are you up to, Craig?’

  It was Porterhouse, a squat, thirty-something solicitor with muscular forearms that suggested he spent his spare time doing press-ups.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘No Craig, I haven’t.’

  His hands interlocked and he pressed her against his body.

  ‘I’m about to become a partner.’

  This was a Big Deal. She wasn’t surprised. He’d jockeyed for the promotion from the day he joined the firm.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Shall we celebrate?’

  ‘Celebrate?’ She knew what was coming. How predicable, under the circumstances. What the hell, she decided. It’s an eternity since I got laid.

  It was exciting, she had to acknowledge. It may have helped they were both well versed in the dangers of discovery.

  ‘What will we do if Jenkins returns?’ He was the senior partner, habitually forgetting a file and returning late to the office.

  ‘More of the same, I reckon.’ Simone shifted position. They were rutting in unison, her with a bare ass against the industrial relations section of the filing stack, and Craig with his feet wide apart and his arms around her neck.

  As the dice fell, they were undisturbed and collapsed on the floor when their legs gave out.

  ‘Hey, what about we try Jenkins’ desk?’ She wasn’t quite ready to greet the night.

  Poor Craig. He’d bitten off more than he imagined. To his credit, he gave it his best shot but she thought they’d both remember the filing room with greater affection.

  Two weeks later she resigned, and began her affair with Jeff.

  12

  Experiment. Simone encouraged him to experiment. To seek out new ideas. Ideas that might be helpful in understanding why his relationship with June had foundered. Follow your nose, Simone suggested. I won’t give you a shopping list. There’s plenty out there. But it has to be something that captures your interest.

  After their meeting, Ross made up his mind to act. He wasn’t sure where to start but Simone’s encouragement helped him shed his inertia. His reading broadened, as his existentialist heroes made way for the alternative thinkers of the Age of Aquarius. In a second-hand bookshop, he came across Open Marriage. The blurb on the back promised a new lifestyle for couples. The static institution of a closed marriage was contrasted with a ‘growing, living process’ of an open marriage. Ross shook his head. They’re dreaming. Existence proves otherwise, can’t they see that? His own bitter experience proved otherwise.

  Nevertheless, the book stayed in his hand. Flicking through the pages, he saw a chapter heading: Love and Sex without Jealousy. He zoomed in. Jealousy. If ever he needed a glimmer of wisdom, it was how to deal with jealousy. For most couples, the chapter began, love, sex and jealousy will seem a perfectly natural even inevitable threesome. Exactly, Ross told himself. And a very peculiar threesome at that. Was it love that drew him to June? Did the fact he felt so intensely jealous mean he must really love her? Sure, the sex was important – extremely important. He couldn’t imagine love without sex. If his love was purely platonic, would he have felt jealous when he found out she’d been bedded by Patrick? All too theoretical. The simple equation was: I love June. A mongrel Frenchman slept with her. I became jealous. End of story.

  Then he read on: ‘We would like to lay to rest the idea that sexual jealousy is natural, instinctive and inevitable.’ He grunted disdainfully. On what planet were they living?

  As Ross addressed this silent question to the authors, a series of disturbing thoughts came to him. When June told him about her Frenchman, he was beside himself with jealousy. His suffering seemed natural, instinctive and inevitable. To his way of thinking, he’d suffered a gross betrayal. Hadn’t that happened to lovers down the centuries? Now, he was reading that monogamy was unnatural – for men and for women. It implied ownership and demanded sexual exclusivity. Open love, on the other hand, was non-exclusive and had no limits.

  He shook his head in disbelief. Great, if it was true but these guys are kidding themselves. He put down the book and felt his face harden. That’s it. June must have a man by now. She hasn’t mentioned anyone but I can smell it. She has a lover.

  As he dwelt upon this fresh conviction, Ross felt his body heat up. His equanimity vanished. It’s just my stupid mind, he reassured himself. I want to believe the worst. But it was too late. His imagination cut loose and he pictured his wife having it off with a virile paramour; a cosmopolitan desperado with olive skin and slicked-back hair. He began to play it out, scene by excruciating scene. It hurt. It hurt badly.

  That evening, in desperation, he made a
decision. He would drive over to Claire’s and see what June was up to. If nothing else, it would settle his tortured brain, one way or the other.

  At midnight he was outside her bedroom. He knew it was hers. A faint stream of light filtered through the window. He crept closer, easing himself around the plants and feeling the earth stick to his sneakers. Through the flywire mesh he could hear the murmur of voices. He paused, astonished he had been right. For a moment he considered leaving, aware of his intrusion. The moment passed, and he tilted his head and peered through a gap in the curtains. On the bed in front of him he saw them, wrapped around each other, naked. One was June. Slowly the other rolled over, reaching up to find June’s lips. He caught his breath. Jesus Christ! It was Claire.

  A minute or two later he was back in his car, gripping the steering wheel, gob-smacked. Bloody hell. June and Claire. Why hadn’t he seen that coming? She never gave him any sign she was into girls. Can you believe it? Where did that leave him now?

  He looked across towards the house, contemplating whether to go back to the window. What were they doing? He wanted to see. He wanted to get close and see for himself. A cautionary voice suggested otherwise. That would be pushing it. Get out of here. It’s not your place. His mind buzzed, wrestling with opposing impulses. Eventually, he started the car and drove slowly into the night.

  ‘Can we meet? I need to talk to you.’

  Simone recognised the voice. He sounded impatient. She told him to hang on while she found her diary.

  ‘Tomorrow, Ross? Five o’clock at the same place?’ She had an interview in Subiaco at three thirty. That would finish her working day and she could see Ross on the way home. Much better, she thought, than getting pissed and having to rock up to a meeting.