Distractions (17 page)

‘I thought you’d be busy fucking Sally.’

‘What?’ he said, exasperated.

‘I went for a walk so you two could be alone.’

‘Well, you’re too subtle for me, once again. I
didn’t catch on. Is that the part you have written for me?’

‘Why didn’t you fuck her?’

‘Emma, you do hear yourself? You sound …’

‘How do I sound?’

‘A little demented.’

She strode past him.

‘I came looking for you. Hey, I’m angry with you!’

Emma stopped.

‘With me? What the fuck have I done?’

‘Because of last night. It was grubby.’

‘Grubby. You’d have fucked her if I hadn’t come down. She wouldn’t have let you get away. I know Sal. And don’t say you wouldn’t. I know the both of you. You’d both swear blind you had no intention to deceive me even while you were shoving your cock down her throat.’

‘That’s bullshit!’

‘The stupid thing is – I don’t mind if you fuck her! She is my oldest friend. I love her. I wanted you to. I wanted to watch. I wanted to join in.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? Last night was grubby because you were so insistent. Sally was decent enough to stay out of it. I wasn’t. I succumbed. I did as I was told. And I woke up feeling used.’

Emma erupted into cruel laughter and again strode away.

‘Why is everything about sex? There is more to life,’ David called after her.

‘For you there may be. It is everything to me,’ she replied over her shoulder.

‘Rubbish! What about all your reading?’

She spun around and came back to him. ‘The brain is the most important sexual organ.’

‘There is more to life. You could finish that degree and get a job.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Because you would feel like you were doing something.’

‘Listen to yourself. Who are you talking to? Do I have self-esteem issues? Have I come to you because I lack things to fill my day? I wish you would think before you speak. Do you want me to stop thinking about sex?’

‘I want you to stop having it with other men, or … or, women, for that matter.’

‘That’s your point. That’s all it was. I can be a sexual person as long as that sex is with you exclusively.’

‘Yes! I want you to be the mother of my children.’

‘It’s children now? Make Sally the mother and me the mistress.’

‘I don’t want Sally!’

‘Of course you fucking do.’

‘You’re so patronising.’

She was silent.

‘You’re not the first person to indulge themselves.’

‘I’m the first person you’ve experienced strong-willed enough to do so. I’m the first person who will be open and honest with you about sex. My life is more fulfilling than yours could ever be.’

‘Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. Everyone does it. Everyone! It’s not the be all and end all. There has to be more to your life than sex.’

‘You haven’t been complaining. You get more sex than any man in banking!’

‘Yes, and my work is suffering because of it.’

‘You shit! You big, stupid shit!’ she said, hitting his chest with open palms.

‘Life cannot all be about sex! How do you think I could afford to keep you in the style you’re accustomed to if I didn’t work hard?’

‘We’d fuck more if you were a fisherman and we lived in a caravan.’

‘Everybody has sex, Emma!’

‘Say that again and I’ll slap you. I know everyone has sex. Everyone talks, too, and walks, can kick a ball, and can pick up a pen and make marks on a page. Some do things better than others. I live better than others. I live better than you. With or without your money. I have and I always will.’

‘Live better? Fuck better, you mean. It’s always sex with you.’

‘You’re such a fraud anyway. Last night. Remember last night? What chance would you have of experiencing such things? Huh? Two intelligent, beautiful, sensual women all to yourself.’

‘I’ve had threesomes before. I wasn’t a fucking virgin when we met.’

‘And tell me, Don Juan, how did we compare?’

‘To tell you the truth, I’ve had better!’

‘You’ve
never
had better! And you never
will
!’

‘Go to hell!’

‘I’ve already booked my flight!’

David stormed off in one direction and Emma in the other.

TWENTY-THREE

Sally was alone in the house when her husband arrived back with the seafood. She was still upstairs. It seemed the best policy. If she had run into David again she wasn’t sure what she might do. The strength of his will, as she saw it, was as attractive as his scent. He was right, they shouldn’t betray Emma. But David’s cool-headed restraint in the face of her outrageous effort to tempt him provoked her. His resistance made him impossible to resist. You could say she was in quite a state. David was able to turn off immediately whatever it had been Sally had switched
on. Sally had no such luck with herself. She was distracted to the point of tears. His whole essence seemed to hang in the room, linger on her skin, tease her senses.

Sally believed they had passed the point of no return. David saw no such thing. Sally had crossed her Rubicon, David had not left Rome. She’d exposed herself in more ways than one. She had revealed every card she had. Sally was falling in love with the
man
, not just his form, and the more she admired him the worse for her it was.

The truth of this struck her when Mark re-entered the fray. To Sally’s eyes he was a new man altogether. The veil of love had been rent. He stood before her as he had stood before strangers. This was an awful moment for Sally. Thankfully, as self-protection, she safely stowed away this impression under the title
I’m upset, I’m tired, I love my husband, this feeling will pass
.

But Mark noticed that some warmth had gone from her smile. He tried to make up for the misunderstanding earlier that morning by helping with the food preparation. Sally managed, unconsciously it would seem, to place tables and chairs, benches and walls between them till an
ashen-faced Emma entered the main room and began, silently, to set the table for lunch.

With so many desires unfulfilled lunch was an ordeal for the four of them. David had dragged himself home ready to apologise to Emma, but she never left Sally’s side. There was an ugliness in the air that no number of aromatic candles floating prettily in a glass bowl could dispel. Sally resented David’s apparent lack of interest, Emma watched for evidence of duplicity and found it everywhere, Mark suffocated in unpleasantness and David sat in stony silence barely eating. The crack of crab shells and the clatter of forks on china were the only accompaniment to the growling surf. Sally was the one present with enough natural talent to smooth such an awkward social situation but was unwilling to do so. Her decision not to act was, in fact, an action, one which was intended to wound and wound indiscriminately. And each face bore the scars.

David saw that their glasses had remained empty, the bottle of white wine in the cooler untouched. He too had no desire for alcohol. Even with the slight breeze running through the house,
the unseasonable humidity kept his brow speckled with beads of sweat. He stood up and walked unassumingly to the refrigerator to see if there was a bottle of chilled water. There was. When he returned to the table all eyes followed him. None, though, looked him in the eye. He poured water into all of their tumblers then left the table to check on the southerly. The billowing front had made no progress. He wondered if the front was heading out to sea further south. He wondered if they would miss it. He wanted a storm to break. Break now or never.

Again, when he returned he was still being watched. He sat down in silence. Then they all went back to pushing their food from one side of the plate to the other. But now he could see the funny side of the situation. He was the oldest member of the group and the first to ‘wake up to himself’. They were lovers and friends, surely pride should not be allowed to have free reign.

He downed his glass of water, then: ‘Let me clear the air,’ he said, startling each one from their private ruminations. ‘If you don’t mind, Sally and Mark, I haven’t had a chance to speak to Emma in private and I fear I am the cause of this damnable silence. What I need to do is apologise. We had a
fight on the beach, you see … Emma,’ he said, looking at her intently, ‘I’m sorry for what I said. I was out of line. I was angry, that was all. Will you forgive me?’

He watched her as Mark and Sally looked to see if she would accept his apology. She was silent for a long time. Looking him in the eye, unnerving him not a little. The others could hardly breathe.

Sally was dumbfounded by David’s little set piece. He was brave and proud but humble and sweet as well as being honest, upright, gorgeous, big and strong-willed. She forgave him instantly. Her mood was lifted. Poor Mark suffered further losses.

Emma had no intention of talking to her husband in front of Sally and Mark. She was mortified having had her marriage opened for Mark of all people to pry into. But he had done it now, there’d be no undoing of the banal progress of events unless she was willing to make a greater scene. After a breathless age, she nodded her head ever so slightly and then reached across to take a handful of prawns to show her appetite was back and all was well. How she hated the world and her odious part in it. She felt like pulling off the prawn heads and tails and eating them in silent
protest, throwing the meat into the bowl provided. By tiny increments she was being remade a wife. A wife a man can be proud of.

David continued. ‘I’d like now to apologise to you two as well. You’re our hosts and have provided a wonderful meal and we have done our best, horrible guests that we are, to ruin it.’ He wore the broad easy smile that had, in the past, won over opponents in many a meeting.

‘Forget about it,’ said Mark, ready to blow off all this talk of forgiveness. ‘Really, what’s a meal without a floorshow?’

‘Indeed. How about a swim before we head back?’ asked David of Mark and Mark alone. So he would be going back to Sydney early, after all. Both women felt hurt by this sudden revelation. There was, it has to be admitted, a kind of relief for both, yet also a sense of betrayal.

To say that the Emma of last night was the same person as the Emma sitting sullenly at the dinner table might well seem absurd, so different did they appear. And yet although daylight hours had intervened and interrupted the flow, the Emma of last night lay in wait for the night’s return. She had expected – in fact, had counted on – another night with her two favourite people, regardless of
the troubles experienced in the day. There was so much unfinished, so much undone. With Mark gone everything would change. She felt sure of it. She had hoped to open herself up to both of these people. She hoped to draw them together, through her and with her.

David glanced at her as he stood up with the dirty plates and smiled a guilty little smile, but she could see he’d made up his mind. Now she felt a fool for indulging her foul mood, an idiot for letting such a chance pass. There was no good reason for any of the trouble they’d all experienced today.

This moment marked the beginning of the rather ignoble end to the lovely week spent at the beach house. David had set the tone with his little one-act play and Sally and Mark rose to his call for light and easy banter. The careful casual air they manufactured eased them through the washing up, the swim the three shared – Emma declined – and the waving goodbye first to Mark, then ten minutes later to David.

Emma managed to read a novel through much of this decline, manufacturing her own specific facade for the situation: the rather childish
Do as you like. As if I care what you do,
of which, sadly, she was rather adept. David leant over her
and kissed her forehead, which was as much as he dared to do. But he too, underneath all the smiles, was angered by their failure to make amends. The difference being, Emma knew they must share in this process while David expected Emma to fix whatever was broken. He foresaw worse to come in a week’s time when Emma planned to return.

Now her reading came between the couple and accelerated his desire to be gone. Her concentration on the novel was like a slap. In truth, he’d only said he was leaving to excite Emma to beg him to stay. Even though the Sally situation remained, buried in the back of his mind, obscured by his role as the good husband, lurked the desire to have everything he damn well pleased. At the merest promise of equilibrium he’d have tossed his keys into the bowl by the door. Nothing. He would go. The horrid cover of the paperback, which screamed culture and obscured Emma’s face as she lay on the couch, gave him the impetus to do so.

David looked long and hard at Emma but she did not stir. He allowed Sally to lead him away to his car. He got in. He looked up at the house thinking Emma would come to the top of the stairs, but she didn’t.

Sally stepped into his field of vision, put her hand on the car door.

‘Bye, Sal. And good luck,’ he said, nodding towards the house.

‘She’ll be fine. You know what she’s like when she doesn’t get her way.’