Beginnings (2 page)

Once safely inside she was able to chide herself for her foolishness. The boy had fallen from the sky in a moment when she was highly aroused. Her feelings were an accident of circumstances, nothing more. This rationalisation did little to calm her heightened senses. She drank a glass of water and stared out of her kitchen window. Across the side passage was the window of her neighbours’ house. She could see right into their rumpus room. The room was empty. There was the pool table she and her husband had played on a few nights before. Would she ever be able to be so comfortable in that house again?

Emma pulled the cord to her Venetian blinds and let the slats fall noisily and heavily down, tidying her view. She wished she could do the same in her mind. Her imagination was building upon the chaste scene she’d just shared with Jason, improving the dialogue, developing the themes and changing the outcome to suit her immodest expectations. The fact that any involvement with
him was impossible only made the subject more attractive to the fantasist. The sound of the tennis ball was still audible. With a flick of a switch music filled the room. Pock-pock. She ran upstairs to her bedroom at the front of the house. She changed into her jeans quickly and threw on the top she’d been wearing earlier. But pulling on her jeans had excited her. She was on heat. It was all so unexpected. There was no way around it. The bitch switch had been flicked.

Now, in front of the mirror, she stood studying herself with new eyes. She adjusted her hair and looked closely at her face, pursing her lips then relaxing them into a smile. Her eyes lied to her. They looked calm, indifferent and in control. In a flash the t-shirt she’d just put on came off and with it the bikini top beneath. Her breasts were scrutinised. She’d always liked her breasts, but now she looked at them and wondered whether they were sagging. She lifted them with two hands and let them drop. His youth had rattled her. His body was so vital, youthful, potent. How quickly time seemed to run away from one. It was almost a year since she had married David. She had just turned thirty-two.

Before she knew what she had done she found
herself at the back of the house, in a guest bedroom looking down at the boy hitting the tennis ball in his backyard. She was still topless, as was he. She wondered whether he would look up and catch the crazy old lady next door flashing her boobs at him.

But Jason was totally absorbed in the task at hand – which was more adorable than sexy. His feet moved swiftly and his muscles were sharply defined as he hit the ball with surprising power. He seemed taller, stronger and fitter than ever before but he had a boy’s look of concentration. The ball would rebound from the wall at great speed and he was there, ready and waiting, nearly every time. He’d been known to do this all day. Emma had paid him no attention in the past except heed the sound of the ball. He’d only ever been the neighbours’ son. But now …

Minutes passed by as she watched his graceful athleticism.

She wandered away from the window, conscious of every step. She seemed helpless against the onrush of her desire and could barely hold herself steady. She lay on her bed and tried to relax, but realised it was the wicked nature of her desire which had done this to her. He was not just
a handsome young man, he was the neighbours’ son. Her lovely, sweet neighbours’ nice, polite, naive, handsome son. Their little boy. On this nice street, in this nice neighbourhood in Mosman.

That was the key to her disturbed state. She needed a release. She’d been good for so long. She’d never been married before, she’d never been so restricted in her choice of sexual partners. Her life was once very different. She was not unhappy with her marriage. She loved David. She was surprised by him every day. He was more attentive to her needs than many men would know how to be. David was an instinctual lover, an insatiable man-beast. She was not unhappy, not at all, except in this: she needed from time to time to be very naughty.

TWO

Emma had remained faithful to her husband for three long months. This may not seem long, especially when we note that fidelity in marriage is presumed to be lifelong. But Emma knew the exact quantity of respect, in days, a modern marriage deserves. Eighty-nine days, or roughly three months, was her assessment. This was according to her concentrated personal brand of respect not the heavily diluted brand commonly bandied about.

Her behaviour seemed worse than it was. Her only indiscretions were with her lifelong friend and lover, Paul. Emma was not a bad woman. Morality
was the guiding light of her life. She wanted to live by morals that recognised and included who she was – a self-reliant, thinking, sensual woman. She did not need to be protected by archaic moral laws. These did more damage than good. She was not a coward. She’d read widely on the subject of morality and rejected most moral systems as basically sexist. They tended to reflect the supposed needs of women in a world greatly different from the one she found herself in. She did not relate to those traditional moral guidelines. Her own system of values was exact and, she would boast, thoroughly examined. How many of us can declare they have done as much? She was more than ready to defend her moral position against bigots. She had discarded, over time, many values people mistakenly believed, and still believe, to be essential. That was all.

According to Emma’s lover, Paul, a three-month hiatus was excessive. Emma was sure she knew best. She’d actually told him she’d remain faithful to her husband till the day she died. This was a bold lie to excite a certain response. Her lover was disconsolate but nevertheless, from her first denial on her wedding day, he redoubled his efforts to seduce her. She was chased round her home and
even pinned against the wall when David was in the next room.

Paul was incorrigible. Over weeks he begged, teased, threatened and had come close a number of exhilarating times to resorting to the extreme of taking her by force, but his good heart got the better of him. Emma had always found Paul very attractive, for many reasons, and had indulged his every whim since meeting him in her teens. Denying him now, and by default herself, was a very, very erotic act. To Emma the good life was a life of play.

One night, shortly after Paul had tried his best to tempt Emma in the hallway while David was pouring them champagne in the living room, Paul found himself alone in said living room and distinctly heard the brutish sounds of David reaching climax with his wife, probably in the very same alcove where his own attempt had come to nothing. The smile on Emma’s face when she reappeared was worth the searing jealousy Paul had felt and more. She was his devil.

Emma was sure an erotic life must be managed, if only loosely managed. Marriage awakens in oneself, and in others, a wealth of traditional values and habitual perspectives which permeate one’s life. People treat a husband or a wife differently.
Living with a man just doesn’t have the same status, there is no solidity to it, and therefore no risks are involved if one were to stray or be led astray. In the eyes of a predatory outsider, marriage is a fixed entity which must be acknowledged. The seduction of a married person requires subtle arts not needed at other times.

David was all for their marrying. He thought it the natural progression of their relationship. Emma was the one for him – case closed. She was dead-set against it, until … until she discovered the erotic potential of marriage. Then she got married, much like a good girl puts on a pair of sexually charged high heels for the first time. Marriage as an erotic accessory.

Some people may jump to the conclusion that Emma did not love her husband but this would be a hasty judgement, for Emma was unlike most women, or more like their potential, their true selves, than their actual selves. She was a sexual glutton but, like any good diet, her diet required variety.

The faint pock-pock of the tennis ball reached Emma’s ear where she lay, in the safety of her
bedroom. The very sound had her imagining wicked things. But she was being foolish. She had to distract herself.

The fact was she did have things to do. Important things. She was a first-year student of Literature, History and Philosophy. The bag she used to lug books to and from the library hung from the back of her door. She took it down. She’d been so bad lately, letting the essays pile up. And to think she might have spent the whole day lying in the sun. Where was her laptop? Time was running out. Her first year was nearly complete. As was her first year of marriage, come to think of it.

Where had the year gone?

Pock-pock. Pock-pock.

She stood in the middle of her room listening to the sound.

THREE

When Emma and David first met, a little over a year ago, David had been living out of boxes in an awful one-bedroom flat in North Sydney with no view. His work and social life was so full and demanding he rarely did more than sleep there. Which was why he hadn’t bothered to unpack the boxes or to take the plastic off some of the furniture he’d had delivered.

There was no mistaking him, David Benson was a successful man, a man’s man. He had few talents but those he had he exploited. He had a head for numbers, was quick with them, and
often found himself with a solution before others recognised there was a problem. He was a decision maker in a world of indecision. With David on your side things moved forward at a rapid rate. His bosses recognised this, as did his brighter colleagues. Many rose with him, till David led a tight group of like-minded men who made an enormous amount of money for their masters and for themselves.

David had been squirrelling away his earnings for something inconclusively labelled ‘The Future’. For a family, presumably, though it wasn’t openly acknowledged as such by him. But life is short and time was draining away faster and faster, and he was thirty-five and hadn’t had a steady girlfriend for years.

Before meeting Emma he could make time for sport but would rarely make time for a woman. Business first, above all, then sport.

And then David met Emma.

When Paul, their mutual friend, introduced Emma and David, he did so in the spirit of play. Emma, he believed, would tear down David’s ‘citadel of bullshit’, a shorthand phrase Paul used to describe his friend’s belief system. And David would give Emma the shake she needed.

So Paul arranged for them to meet. He chose a bar in the city. A bar he knew David frequented. He wanted David to feel comfortable. He wanted David to be himself. He wanted Emma to meet the David the world saw.

David was late and Paul spent the time preparing Emma for what she was about to receive. But no male can properly describe another male to a female. And when David finally arrived Emma realised Paul had missed one vital point, David’s presence. Maybe it was because the men had known each other from childhood but Paul hadn’t spoken of David’s size. Hadn’t mentioned the casual grace with which he held all that power at bay. Emma saw an untapped energy source. A sleeping Leviathan. A barbarian taught to wear a suit and shown how to use a knife and fork. To a woman like Emma this was a man unlike any she had encountered before. All that power and yet, she was quick to note, his eyes told her he had that essential germ necessary for tenderness, empathy. Underneath all the layers of so-called civilisation she could sense the man was intelligent and, more importantly, good.

Having said all that, Emma was responding less to the intelligence report garnered by her mind
than she was responding to a thumping physical report proffered by her body.

David too had been quick to appreciate a marked difference between this woman and many of the women he had known in the past. Just the way Emma held his eyes with her own was enough to dismiss the concerns of the day. At first he thought she was defiant but this was wrong. He thought for that moment she was strutting, puffing out her chest in the manner women with hairy armpits, atrocious dress sense and coloured hair at university used to do when he would stumble into the wrong bar.

But he realised his mistake. This woman knew she was easily his equal. He was facing a reversal of fortune for he suddenly realised he was being judged to see if
he
was worthy. And what was worse, he raced to the conclusion that, no, he was not.

He was uncomfortably aware that the mere movement of her lips as she spoke, and how well she spoke, was arousing him more than any lap dancer, any drunk secretary undressing in his office, in fact any erotic encounter in his entire life. She had a natural, easy manner that hid something provocative from him and the world.

She was dazzling him with her words, which he saw dancing around him. She was talking about Tangiers. She was talking about ordering them both Caprioskas. She was asking him about his family and he was answering. But he felt – he was sure of it – he felt her hand on his crotch. He actually had to look to see that it wasn’t there. Weren’t each of her fine words fingers on a hand which was, this very moment, cradling his cock? Such suggestiveness he’d never known.

He thought her the most beautiful, the most attractive woman he had ever met.