The Prosperous Thief (41 page)
And all because of the intensity of their talk? Who does she think she’s fooling. And exactly on cue, there’s a peal of laughter from a pair of kookaburras.
‘Look,’ Raphe says, stopping on the track.‘Look, two of them, up there on the branch and having such a good time.’
‘Laughing at us, I bet,’ Laura says, laughing herself.
‘Oh I hope so, I do hope so,’ he says.
Such a sweet man, she finds herself thinking, earnest but very sweet. And as disturbing as these feelings might be, they’re far preferable to anything she has experienced with Nell these past couple of months. She is enjoying Raphe’s company, not anything she can really explain, and neither, she suddenly realises, does she care. He’s an unexpected gift, something in addition to the rest of her life, and very grateful she is too.
‘May I hold your hand?’
She stops, so deep in her own thoughts, and wonders if she’s heard correctly.
Then said again.‘May I hold your hand?’
The moment is magically prolonged. She is forty-three years old, has done a good deal more sex than she ever needed to do, and here is a grown man asking if he can hold her hand. It’s like hitting the jackpot at spin the bottle, and there you are paired with the only boy in the room without pimples and adolescent whiskers. She is blushing and confused and very aware of his maleness, not as something to avoid, but as a beacon of erotic light. And a sense of intimacy far greater than if he suggested they go to bed together.
She wipes her palm against her jeans and puts her hand in his, and the two of them walk hand in hand down the track. She moves in closer, or perhaps he does, better to establish a shared rhythm. Her arm brushes against his coat, against his torso, and with it a charge as if they were suddenly naked and his skin grazing hers, that clutching in the blood, that squeezing deep inside. The initial unease quickly falls away as she becomes utterly rolled into this man whose voice, whose language, whose entire presence is pulling her closer and closer. That and the warm, slightly sticky grasp of his hand.
For ten minutes they walk, hands clasped, without speaking. She has no idea what he is thinking but hopes he feels as knotted to her as she does to him. If she could see into his face she might know, but she does not dare disturb their rhythm by even a glance. The track rises higher; every now and then they catch a glimpse of the sea. They’re walking the edge of the world and Laura happy to take this moment out of time and prolong it for as long as possible, when they are suddenly brought to a halt by a fallen log.
They could clamber over and continue along the track, but nightfall is not far away. She sees him glance at his watch, he knows it is late. They sit together on the log, neither of them saying a word; her hand feels cold without his touch and she wants him to take it again. You’re a grown woman, she tells herself, if you want to hold his hand go ahead and do it. But something about that request of his: may I hold your hand, makes her not presume.
They are half a body length from each other, his breathing has quickened. It occurs to her that with a cigarette and a glass of wine they might well be postcoital, and in the next moment she changes her mind. There is an energy between them, and a tugging curiosity, but it’s not like lovers, not like soon-to-be lovers either. It is as if she and Raphe are diving far out in the ocean, using only the quiet hush of snorkels. Underwater and together in a world utterly beyond imagining, floating together in a closed, muted, sensual wonderland. And why this man and these sensations, she cannot explain, but for one day in an otherwise stormy month, she decides not to interfere.
It was dusk when they arrived back at the car. They were both very cold and content to sit in the warming cabin wrapped in their own thoughts. Raphe in particular, who couldn’t believe he was falling for a woman whose father had been responsible for so much harm to his family, a woman for whom he had travelled half the world in order to seek retribution. But he had been desperate to touch her, had wanted to all week. Five small words: may I hold your hand, just the touch of a hand when he yearned for so much more, five small words requiring several minutes’ rehearsal, and then: to hell with it. But this was not what he wanted, not what he had come to Australia for. It was not that his eye was drifting off the ball, it was more he had stumbled onto the wrong playing field. Yet he couldn’t stop himself.
As they walked hand in hand through the bush, he had let his mind fly. He had imagined the weight of her breasts, the swell of her hips, the slither of skin, the stroke of her nipples down his chest. He imagined cupping her face in his hands, twisting his fingers through her hair, tasting the cool-hot damp of her mouth, entwining those long lithe legs with his. And even while he was soaking in his thoughts, he knew what a fool he was being. On the way back to the car and no longer hand in hand, he shook his mind free of her body but not free of her, and found himself wondering how she lived, the style of her house, the pictures on her walls, the books on her shelves, the colours of her furnishings, the indoor fountain she had mentioned. Even her cat, Wystan, he wanted to meet the cat and he didn’t even like cats. And long before they reached the car he had seized her hand again, grabbing even a flicker of that body he had imagined so vividly.
Now as they made their way along the twisted road back to the city, Raphe held himself as far from her as possible and forced himself to see reason. He had once read that when family members were separated – siblings when young, or parents from their babies – then met up later in life, often a sexual relationship sprang up. The desire was there even though it should not be. And so too with him and Laura: a desire where it did not belong. And while it felt as good as any desire he had ever known, he had a job to do. He did not know exactly what he planned, but for the moment he needed to get away from her before he lost his way completely. So when Laura asked about his movements for the next few days, he told her he would be leaving early in the week for the Philippines to see one of his favourite volcanoes, and then would be flying home.
His leaving seemed to have no impression on her whatsoever, but not so the volcano.
‘One day before I die I’d love to see one,’ she said. ‘I expect volcanoes remind you who you are.’
Laura dropped Raphe off at his city hotel and drove home through Fitzroy. At seven o’clock on a Saturday night the Brunswick Street cafés were filling fast. The footpaths were flush with strolling
flâneurs
of the twenty-first century variety, and Laura tempted to join the throng, although only fat cats and parking attendants ever found a car parking space in Brunswick Street. Besides, she wanted to be strolling with Nell.
After the odd, hot-house wonder of the day, Laura was feeling good. The time with Raphe had reminded her what was important between people, what she and Nell had neglected recently. She was eager to be home, and hoped Nell had shut the door on her grant proposals, her PhD supervisions, her strategic planning, all the work that had increasingly colonised their private life. Then together they could come back to Brunswick Street, have a cocktail in one of the bars, followed by a leisurely meal and a browse in the bookshops, then home to bed for the first sex they’d had in months – which was, she decided, not only the best way of diffusing all that erotic confusion with Raphe, but making the best sense of it as well.
A few minutes later, with her hopes reinforced with a heady anticipation, Laura arrived home. The house was in darkness and bloated with that stretched noiselessness of a place not disturbed for some time. Laura turned on lights, turned up heaters, turned on music, injected some life into the stillness. Then to the refrigerator to store the food left over from the picnic. The refrigerator was empty save for a few old jars of pickles, some mayonnaise and a bottle of undrinkable wine given to them by a stingy acquaintance. It was the sort of refrigerator that reeked of single person and no cooking, and just as eloquent as the supermarket basket with cans of cat food, packet soups, prepared freezer meals, and toffees to chew while watching TV alone. Bloody Nell, what was she thinking? Jobs come and go, grant applications and graduate students too, but their partnership was forever.
And suddenly, and leaving her so giddy she had to sit down, she knew something was terribly wrong, knew it with absolute clarity. Perhaps it had required this special day with someone else to open her eyes, but something was wrong, and not a manageable I’m-busy-at-work wrong, but a fundamental wrong, and had been for a long time.
Over the past couple of months Laura had made regular enquiries about the progress of Nell’s grant application, about the dynamics at work, about the new tutor. But only now did she realise she had kept her questions, her intellect too, on a short rein, because there were some things she never wanted to name, never wanted to canvas.This was how it had been between her and her father, and now she suspected she was loving Nell in the same way, a deep love, even all-consuming, but skirting the edges as if she were afraid of confronting the truth. Laura, it seemed, was an expert in loving profoundly and misguidedly.
The answering machine registered just one message, and even while the tape was rewinding Laura was hoping it was not another excuse from Nell.But of course it was. Nell said she was determined to complete her grant application and would be home only when it was finished. The message had been phoned in at 4.46 p.m.,much the same time Laura was walking hand in hand in the bush with Raphe Carter. It seemed like an age ago. There was no apology from Nell, and Laura was suddenly very lonely as only one can be after a stimulating day. But worse, far worse, feeling very scared, and an old familiar fizzling in her stomach which she recognised immediately.
She grabs her coat, leaves lights, heat and music turned on, and walks up to the corner shop. She buys her first packet of cigarettes in years, is appalled to discover they’re the same price as a dozen oysters. She smokes the first cigarette slowly as she walks home. It tastes like the gutter. She perseveres for a few more drags then throws it away.
Back home she perches on the front doorstep and lights another. This time memory, or perhaps old entrenched habit is a winner, and she manages to smoke most of it.Too bad love is not so durable.
Inside the house it is all chill and glare. The cigarettes have lodged in her right temple as a dull accusing ache. It was Nell who insisted she give them up, said she didn’t want Marlboro Maid in her bed.And she still wouldn’t. Laura shakes herself into action. She goes to the bathroom and washes her teeth, scrubs the smell from her fingers, applies scented hand cream. She sniffs at her jumper and decides to change it, chooses a hot pink polo neck Nell likes. She dabs on perfume, changes her watch for one Nell gave her and returns to the lounge. She wants Nell home, she wants to tell her how much she loves her, she wants to ask all those open-ended, risky questions she has avoided these past few months.
She turns on the TV – Saturday night and it’s all sport or drivel – puts on some music but even Bach fails her, tries to do some work but her brain is itching to do something else. Reading will provide a better diversion. On the way to the bedroom for her book she walks past Nell’s study and notices some posters have been left on the display board. Nell is most particular about her posters, and without giving it much thought, Laura unclips them and files them away. Then to the bedroom for her novel, an early Iris Murdoch which should see her through the next couple of hours. Her bookmark has fallen out and one of the pages is turned down. Laura reads books as if they are priceless manuscripts, never a drop of coffee or a Vegemite smear on her pages, never a dog-eared corner or cracked spine. Nell used to say that if she were to have her time over again she would like to return as Laura’s collected Shakespeare: plenty of attention, plenty of admiration and first-class care. Which makes the state of Laura’s book noteworthy. If Nell was reading it she would have treated it with far more deference.
A moment later Laura grabs her keys, dashes out to the car and she’s on her way to the university. She knows what’s wrong, she knows with heart-stopping certainty what’s wrong – not the particular someone Nell is seeing, although she has her suspicions. The university is deserted. Nell always parks in the same area. But not tonight. The building where Nell works is spotted with the occasional light, but the cinema studies floor is in total darkness. Ten o’clock and Nell is not there. Back home at ten fifteen and Laura is checking the dishwasher – yes, she’s positive there’s an unaccounted mug in there, and surely those are sugar grains in the bottom. Neither she nor Nell takes sugar. And the shortbreads, ultra-expensive, pay-by-the-piece delicacies and only one left in the jar. Last night there were five. It’s simply not possible Nell could eat four pieces in a single day. And then back to the bedroom and Laura sifting through the bits and pieces on Nell’s bedside table, and only when she’s inspecting the sheets and then bending down to smell them does she pull back. She sinks to the carpet, swamped not by grief nor anger, but terror, gut-strangling terror. Time passes but with no proper thoughts to measure it, might be hours or minutes. Eventually Laura goes downstairs, pours herself a large whisky, lights another of the cigarettes and does not go outside to smoke it. She turns on the TV with the mute control activated, replaces Bach with Jeff Buckley, and amid the sorrowful insistence of someone else’s knowledge, waits for Nell to come home.