Absence Makes

by Bruce Menzies

  ‘Does the other person have a veto?’ Intelligent question. It came from Jacob.

  ‘Not really,’ declared June. ‘That would defeat the whole purpose.’

  ‘And what, pray tell, is the purpose?’ Ariana crunched another prawn. She sounded threatened.

  June looked at Ross. ‘We really love hanging out with one another. But we’re both young. Too young, we believe, to be tied down. It’s a big world out there and we want to travel. Maybe together. Maybe separately. Rather than have sneaky affairs, we want to be able to share and be honest.’

  ‘And if you fall in love with someone else?’ Ariana interrupted.

  ‘That can happen,’ said Ross, ‘whether you’re married or not.’

  ‘Yes, of course it can. But what about your vow to forsake all others? If everyone did what you plan to do, it would be musical chairs every week.’ Ariana was clearly unimpressed.

  ‘I agree,’ echoed Rachel. ‘And what about babies? If Jacob had a girlfriend on the side it would be bad enough but now we have a child and I’m at home all day it would be a thousand times worse.’

  Simone had seen their little girl, a real cutie, now asleep in the front room.

  ‘What do you think, Simone?’

  She took a spoonful of the fresh asparagus soup. ‘Beautiful,’ she said, running her tongue over her lips. ‘Superb soup.’

  They all looked at her, rather too expectantly.

  ‘I’m not a great font of wisdom on this subject.’

  ‘Think about it for a moment,’ said Ross, ‘while we get the fish from the barbecue.’

  A few minutes later, he and Ben came back with two laden serving plates.

  ‘On the left,’ announced Ross, ‘Balmain bugs in lime butter.’

  ‘And on the right,’ chimed in Ben, ‘pink snapper with shallots and red pepper seasoning.’

  ‘Supplemented by,’ cried Ariana, as she deposited a bowl on the table, ‘prawn, mango and macadamia salad.’

  There was a distinct lull in the discourse while they chewed and slurped their way through the main meal. Riesling was all the rage and her glass may have been refilled three or four times before her reprieve was over.

  ‘You have the floor,’ said Jacob.

  She swirled the remnants of wine in the glass in what she hoped was a reflective manner. ‘I agree with everything I’ve just heard.’

  A collective groan ricocheted around the table.

  ‘That’s a cop-out.’

  Simone let the complaints settle. ‘Before I say more, can anyone tell me if they know other couples in an open marriage?’

  No one did. She was not surprised. It wasn’t the sort of thing found in the personal ads of the West Australian. But Ross had loaned her the book. She thought some of the arguments were worth trying out in the relative safety of the dining room.

  ‘Rather than me adding my uneducated opinion, why don’t we explore some of the ideas the authors put forward?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as, they say any extra-curricular liaisons can only be an addition to your basic relationship and not be an escape or a substitute. That rules out falling in love with someone else, wouldn’t you think?’

  There was a brief silence. Simone looked around the table.

  ‘Easier said than done,’ said Ariana. ‘It assumes you have sex without love.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ June jumped in. ‘I could love Ross as my primary mate and love someone else who I had sex with. But it would be different.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be as attached?’ queried Rachel.

  June and Ross looked at each other. Simone wondered if they’d present the same answer.

  ‘I would be worried if I became too attached to anybody,’ said June. ‘It may compromise me being my own person.’

  Rachel scoffed. ‘I’m totally attached to Jacob, and I am still my own person.’

  ‘Maybe you’re talking at cross purposes,’ Simone offered. ‘Love and attachment could be part of the same package for you, Rachel. But for you June, too much attachment would leave you feeling consumed by the other person.’

  June nodded, but Rachel looked dubious.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Ariana. ‘And nobody has mentioned jealousy. If I caught Ben with another woman, I would dismember him.’

  Instinctively, Ben covered his crotch. They all laughed.

  ‘Seriously,’ Ariana went on. ‘It’s normal to get jealous. There would be a helluva lot more homicides if open marriages became compulsory.’

  ‘In the book they argue otherwise.’ June sounded impatient. ‘Anyway, we are experimenting. If Ross goes with someone else, I’ll let you know how I feel afterwards.’

  Challenges ahead, Simone thought. No doubt word will get out. How will Ross and June deal with the notoriety? And how would their friends will relate to them from now on? Ariana and Rachel will lay down the law and she couldn’t see Ben or Jacob pushing for freedom, no matter how tempted they may become. But she had been wrong before.

  Her musings were disturbed by the arrival of a splendid Black Forest gateau. The talk turned to more prosaic matters, and to her knowledge no penalties were invoked.

  ‘How do you think that went?’ June came out of the bathroom wearing a robe of seduction.

  He drained his Grand Marnier. ‘I’d like to be a fly on the wall in their bedrooms tonight.’

  ‘We shocked them a bit.’ She stroked the hairs around his navel.

  ‘Did you see Rachel’s face? I think she was expecting an invitation to group sex. They left pretty quickly after the coffee.’ He leaned back and put his hands behind his head.

  ‘Group sex? That would be a dinner party with a difference.’ Her hands drifted south, following the pathway to paradise, as she had taken to calling it.

  He closed his eyes. An image of a horse race unfurled before him. A tightly bunched group of sweating horses galloping around a bend, nostrils flaring and hooves thumping the turf. He saw the tiny jockeys astride the flanks of their massive mounts. His body quivered, as June eased herself aboard.

  ‘Think big,’ he murmured. ‘Think big.’

  17

  Simone escaped into the night, leaving the three young couples to deal with the mountain of dishes and the inevitable introspection that would flow from the ambitions of the confident hosts. All too much for me, she grizzled, opening the gate and ambling unsteadily to the front door. I’d settle for a steady boyfriend and slippers by the bedside. Do you hear me, you rotten God? Give a girl a break. Her fist shook at the heavens and the neighbour’s cat fled from its perch. Finding her way to the kitchen, she put on the kettle.

  A holiday. That’s what she needed. Throughout the year, she’d taken on too much. The project. Baxter. It had been a year of stimulation but suddenly she was spent. To compound matters, the dinner party, with its fervid debate about the merits of open marriage, resurrected her relationship insecurities. She needed a break. New sights. Different company.

  A week later she was on a flight to Rome.

  Before leaving Perth, she paid a final visit to Baxter. When she knocked on his door, a gruff voice answered. ‘I hope you brought my winnings?’ She let herself in and handed him an envelope. With her aversion to betting shops, she had given Jeff a small amount for both of them. It was her first ever wager and she felt quite chuffed. ‘Don’t think it’s always that easy,’ Baxter cautioned. ‘You can get sucked in and end up like me.’

  He was happy, however, about her mission. After Italy, she would travel north, destination London. ‘I have no idea where Alice is,’ she told him. ‘But I’ll give it my best shot.’

  She was heading into a European winter. Her friends thought she was crazy. She tried to explain. It was a good time to go. Baxter was not her only reason. Her relatives in Umbria were clamouring for her to come. Vince, her brother, turned up on their doorstep over the summer and was treated like royalty. With her project completed, the Institute was happy for her to take an exte
nded break. They would review her status in February. When she checked her bank account, there was enough for an air ticket and some spending money. Her fantasies invoked fancy Italian boots and a long leather coat. If she budgeted carefully, who knows?

  The Eternal City. Her week in Rome flew by. She hunkered down in a tiny hotel near the station. Each day brought forth enough wonder to bedazzle and enchant her for a lifetime. She walked everywhere, stunned by the splendour of the antiquities, the buildings, the fountains, and the glorious piazzas, where she rested on cold steps and gazed at the masses going about their daily business.

  ‘Bella signora,’ rang in her ears, as slick young men on motor scooters flashed by. Though tempted, she managed to wave away their effusive invitations to be shown the sights. Back at the hotel, a sturdy concierge fussed over her. They conversed, usually at breakfast, hands working overtime amidst broken English and stuttering Italian. She was repeatedly warned about pickpockets and about rogues who might want to pick more than her pocket. From what she could make out, her host took a dim view of these expressions of Roman gallantry.

  With all her pockets intact, she caught a morning train to Perugia and then a bus to her relatives’ village. For ten days, her cousins, aunts, and uncles passed her around. She lost track of names and kissed innumerable babies. Her waistline expanded, as the good women of her extended family competed to sell her the virtues of country-style cooking. They loitered over lunches and souped and snacked their way through the evenings. The men eyed her off without embarrassment. Everyone asked her why she wasn’t married.

  Her re-immersion into ancestral roots over, she headed for Milan. In an overblown boutique, she paid far too much for a pair of leather boots. The coat would have to wait. Broke but happy, she flew to London.

  Though Simone may have sounded confident when speaking with Baxter, the reality was staring her in the face. Her search lacked structure. Only the son-in-law offered some hope. Claude de Baal was an unusual name. He was also a dentist. Someone must know him. He must have practice somewhere. But she was not a private eye, and had to start from scratch. It will be a bit of a lottery, she thought.

  After enduring the long queues and formalities at Heathrow, she caught a bus into the city. Gloria had furnished her with a contact. By late afternoon, she’d found a room in a rabbit warren in Clapham, filling in for a Kiwi who was travelling the Continent for a couple of months.

  Sleep was difficult in a household committed to The Who and Stevie Wonder. Music reverberated at all hours. ‘Turn the base down,’ she shouted, as the walls and floor pulsated. No one responded. She doubted that sleep occupied a high priority. It was a party house. Away from home-country constraints, the liberated occupants took to drugs and rock ‘n roll and, if her ears didn’t deceive her, some wild encounters beneath the blankets.

  She met then in dribs and drabs, a confusion of Aussies, Kiwis and Canucks. As fast as she was introduced she lost track of their names. They stumbled over one another in the kitchen and the bathroom or exchanged pleasantries in the queue for the loo. If money was no obstacle, she might have moved elsewhere. But she told herself it was purely temporary and at least she had a single room, unlike most of others who appeared to be sharing.

  When she did get mobile, she began to get acquainted with the Underground and paid visits to the Post Office and the British Library. As far as she could ascertain, there were no listings for de Baal within the Greater London area.

  Walking the streets of the city for the first time, her history lessons came alive. Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Marylebone Station, Pall Mall. She felt like a wandering dice on a giant Monopoly board, landing at random in places familiar from childhood games. Places that rose from the earth in a crowded magnificence as she mingled with the teeming mass of shoppers, workers, commuters and sightseers. Sometimes, she would put the map away and let her feet take her where they would, disappearing down narrow alleys and laneways and into small shops and pubs and now and then a department store. When her feet and legs grew weary, she headed towards St James’s Park where she would find a clean patch of grass and kick off her shoes. The weather in late November was fresh but the sun was often out and the umbrella remained in her rucksack.

  Had Simone not been on a quest, her daily rambles could easily have stretched through until Christmas. She was falling in love with London and beginning to show interest in one of her housemates, an interest that had yet to be reciprocated.

  But duty called. On the fifth day, she rang the British Dental Association. A receptionist with a royal plum in her larynx informed her that information certainly could not be released over the phone. However, the receptionist added, as Simone stifled a groan, if she would like to make an appointment, they would deal with her request in person. Forty-eight hours later she stood in the foyer of an impressive building in Wimpole Street.

  ‘De Baal, Claude de Baal.’ She was speaking to a spruce young man in grey suit. ‘He may be retired by now.’

  ‘Are you related to Mr de Baal?’

  She debated whether to fib but thought better of it. After hearing her story, the young man frowned. ‘We normally don’t release personal information without permission, but I see your dilemma.’

  She gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

  ‘Would you mind waiting until I locate our registers?’

  Simone stayed by the counter. Her helper disappeared and returned with two large volumes. She watched him leaf through the pages.

  ‘It seems he had a practice at Epsom for many years. Now he lives further south at Dorking.’

  Armed with an address and telephone number, she walked up to Regent’s Park and found a café. Dorking, she discovered, was twenty-five miles south of the city, accessible by British Rail from Waterloo. North of the town flowed the River Mole. Quite congruent with her enterprise, she thought, picturing herself as a female Smiley in a Le Carre novel. It was Friday afternoon and too late to set out. Showers were forecast for the weekend. She would not risk a rebuff over the phone, and decided to arrive unannounced.

  By ten thirty in the morning the rain had not stopped. She shook the water from her umbrella and looked at the bronze plaque embedded in the stone wall. Deepdene. No owner’s name. The street numbering was inconclusive. It has to be the right house, she reasoned, glancing up at the ivy-coated walls and the steep gables. Not extravagant or ostentatious but more genteel. A house reeking of respectable English refinement and judicious affluence. The perfect house for a semi-retired dentist.

  She marched up the path and rang the bell.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  An elderly lady appeared in the doorway. Her accent resembled the Queen’s. She wore a navy blue dress. Pinned below her left shoulder, an ivory brooch stood out. Her white hair was pulled back, held in place with a polished clasp.

  ‘Does Mr de Baal live here?’

  The woman looked at her with a disconcerting curiosity.

  ‘This is the de Baal residence. And who might you be?’

  ‘My name is Simone Passeri.’ She hesitated, tongue-tied. This has to be Alice. She had expected Claude or Peggy to come to the door, not Alice. What should she say?

  ‘I’m helping a friend.’

  ‘A friend?’ The woman gripped the door knob. ‘You are from Australia, are you not?’

  Simone heard the crunch of tyres on the driveway. A silver Jaguar pulled up and a younger woman alighted.

  ‘You have a visitor, Mother?’

  This must be Peggy. She’s aging well. Tall, long-limbed, with shortish hair. A tennis player or a horse rider, or both.

  ‘She’s from Australia,’ said Alice.

  Peggy stared at her. Simone felt trapped between the two women. Her search was over and her legs felt like jelly.

  ‘I’m helping Baxter.’

  ‘Baxter?’ Peggy turned to her mother who had not moved. Simone could hear thunder in the distance. It was raining again.

  ‘You had better co
me inside.’

  They sat on floral lounge chairs in a dark-panelled room. Family photos were aligned along the mantelpiece. Peggy and Claude’s marriage. Their children at different ages. One of Alice as a young woman.

  ‘You are here on behalf of my husband?’ Alice had seated herself opposite. Her controlled calmness was unnerving.

  ‘In a way,’ she said, fumbling for the right words. The air felt icy.

  She waited until Peggy returned with the tea before explaining her purpose. Both women sat silently as she outlined her involvement with Baxter.

  ‘I apologise for not ringing first. I was unsure whether you would consent to see me.’

  ‘And what does Baxter want from us?’ Alice’s voice was cold.

  Again Simone hesitated. ‘He says he wants to know how you are and how the children are doing.’

  Peggy stared into her cup. Simone watched her. Did she ever think of her father? She was five when he left and must remember something about him. Did she believe he died? She looked shocked but not totally surprised to hear he was still alive.

  ‘He has gone from our lives,’ declared Alice. ‘He made his bed and he must live with the result.’

  Her tone carried a brutal finality, conveying the accumulated hurt of half a century. A hurt solidified into an impenetrable rage.

  ‘He has written letters. One for the children, and one for you, Mrs Moncur.’

  ‘Don’t you dare use that name with me,’ she snapped.

  Simone sank back in her chair. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

  ‘Show me the letters,’ said Peggy. Her face was white.

  Simone opened her rucksack and removed two envelopes.

  ‘Read yours out,’ demanded Alice. ‘I don’t want anything hidden from me, Peggy.’

  Peggy shot a glance at her mother. Alice had her jaw set. Not a muscle moved.

  Simone’s eyes widened. Baxter’s wife – the gentle Alice he had courted so assiduously – was now a proper matriarch, controlling the shots by sheer force of will. For a moment, Simone was reminded of her paternal grandmother who stayed in Italy and lived with her dad’s elder brother. ‘Your father was happy to escape,’ said her mother, on a family visit to their village when she was a teenager. ‘His mother is impossible.’ Thoroughly intimidated by Nonna, who gave her the once-over and clearly disapproved of what she saw, Simone agreed with her mum. Nonna had gone on and on, pointing out Simone’s flaws and foretelling a dark future for her. It hadn’t been easy, that visit, although her cousins extended her Italian vocabulary. Alice, sitting upright in front of her, was the English counterpart to her late and largely unlamented Nonna.