Rose Leopard (9 page)

She sighed and said: ‘I'm sorry, but you must see — I had to ask. Anyway, it's the children that we need to talk about. As I said before, their futures are paramount.'

I dug my heels, stopped swinging.

‘I suppose there would be a number of options,' I said casually, playing the game.

Then her shoulders lifted and her eyes widened and she launched yet another it's-only-my-opinion-but speech at me: The children — my children, I kept thinking ruefully; those pinpoints of sunshine and genetics that Kaz and I and no one else had created — could stay here (but of course that would be lonely and sad with too many memories of their mother and how on earth can you get any proper psychiatric help or grief counselling in a backwater like this?); alternatively they could come to the city and live with us or even with their grandmother (which, when you think about it, is a much better idea either way because we can offer them support and guidance and there are some lovely schools in the area, St Pat's or Sacred Heart or even the alma mater St Christabel's, all very solid with impressive parent lists and excellent values in place and besides, an arrangement like that will give you the chance to re-gather yourself and there are many more jobs in the city because you'll need a job, a steady stream of income is so important for the children's futures); or there is one other option which is not really my preference but I've been asked to put it to you so of course honesty and good manners demand that I should and anyway that option is that Amelia has said that she wouldn't mind living here for a while and looking after the children (which she would be very good at, she's such a compassionate girl and it's true she's been quite unhappy at school where she doesn't feel that her art-work is valued in any way — not that I can understand her paintings either, very bold, too strongly coloured and strange sorts of demonic figures everywhere — and she is constantly clashing with her father), but I'm certainly concerned that it is not necessarily the right role for a girl of her age and there would have to be conditions laid down to do with responsibilities and payment and I really think that two to three months would be more than enough because this is just a time-out and she will need to complete her education at some stage, even if it is non-compulsory.

She stopped, gulped in some of the cooling air. A few blanched strands of evening fog drifted into the valley.

‘So, what do you think?' she asked.

Lots of things, in no particular order. I told her about how I did have a real job, at least by my definitions (which may not be in accord with hers or those of her bug-eyed Gorgon mother but they worked for me and more importantly they had worked for Kaz), and for us the single most important factor in all of this was closeness; it's a matter of proximity, I said, meaning that this is the house that we chose for our family and I think it would be totally, unnecessarily disruptive to remove Milo and Otis (yes, I know their real names but I prefer these, okay?) after they've just lost their mother. Francesca was pale and swaying slightly but I continued regardless. I told her that proximity means being close to someone (and there is a concept you may have trouble with, dear Frannie) and I think it's essential that the children have access to their mother's everyday things and the places she walked and the bathroom where she rinsed their hair (but lightly, like she was a curator treating a sacred parchment dredged from antiquity) and her side of the bed, still moulded to her shape, where they lay after nightmares and let her wondrous fingers stroke away the ghouls of their young imaginations. They need to know that she is still here because I can't ever lose her and neither can they — that would be unfair to all of us and whilst this will never be a shrine, it will be a place where her life will be constantly, unashamedly celebrated. I told her that they were staying; they're our kids, I said, no other bastard's — our kids and Kaz would expect nothing less than they stay with me in this house, our home: sandstone, bluestone, boxbrush, sandalwood, our temple of togetherness.

‘I should go,' says Stu. It is late and his speech is slurred.

‘You're pissed,' I remind him. ‘There's an old mattress in the study — sleep in there. Go tomorrow, when you're sober. You won't be missed at work. We're all dispensable, even the boss.'

He nods wryly, raises his glass, slurps. We are drinking wine now, a healthy Australian merlot.

‘You know, you were right,' he tells me. ‘Moving the kids to the city — that would've been disastrous. Taking them away from their one security, the one fixed point in their lives — ghastly bloody idea.'

I allow myself a small, painful smile.

‘Correct me if I'm wrong,' Stu continues, ‘but there was another agenda, wasn't there? Like, do they really think you're that bad — as a parent?'

‘Bad? Stu, I'm the worst. Bernice has never trusted me. I am a lazy, financially inept, dissipated, opinionated, foulmouthed dipsomaniac.'

‘All true, but these do not necessarily a bad parent make.'

‘Thanks. Look, Bernice would like nothing more than to get her gnarled old hands onto Milo and Otis, get them away from this spiritual vacuum and their low-brow father, then mould them into the robotic little right-wing talking-heads that she dearly wants them to be. They are, as far as she is concerned, Kaz's kids — but not mine.'

‘Are you sure about this?'

‘Of course I'm sure — I can see it in her bug-eyes. Look, my mother-in-law conveniently shuts her mind to the notion that it was my sperm which ran the intra-uterine marathon and locked greedily onto the eggs. I am a biological anomaly, in her view no more useful than an ashtray on a motorbike or a single sheet of toilet paper.'

Stu refills my glass, generously. The merlot is oil-smooth cinnamon. Moths cling to the wall-lamps like baby animals to their mother's bellies.

‘So she sent Francesca to do her dirty work?'

‘That's my view of it. And when I blew my stack and said no-no-no, Amelia became the compromise.'

‘A spy?'

‘Not at all. She doesn't like them either. She thinks that Bernice is, quote, a screwed-up mealy-mouthed cantankerous old bitch, end quote.'

‘Ha! Who taught her
mealy-mouthed?'

‘I did, of course. She's curious about words too. Nothing like her silly mother.'

And then, as Francesca's image and the dust of long-ago seep through, I am silent.

Two

T
he drifting, sluggish night falls away into the past, stars die, shame crawls across me like maggots exploring a corpse.

The first time I met Francesca, she was standing next to Kaz and I was instantly struck by their length; both tall, both slender and narrow but Francesca was smoother, more cylindrical, with flowing calves that led into a proportionate waist and torso. Her shallow curves reminded me of the cambers of country roads. Four years younger, Kaz was graceful but Francesca even more so; she had, I noted, the long bowing neck of a swan, arms that moved with minimalist economy, the same splendid, supple fingers as her younger sister. Whereas Kaz glowed with a healthy, radiant sheen, Francesca was paler, possessed of a snow-skin that looked as soft and pure as rainwater. It was a skin, I thought, that would remain forever unsullied by the sun.

‘And so it should.' Kaz's tone was derisive, perhaps even a little aggrieved. ‘The sun doesn't shine too brightly in the bathroom, now does it?'

‘Oooh, catty!'

‘A litre of moisturiser per day, minimum. Make-up applied like Spakfilla. Next you'll be telling me she's attractive.'

‘Well, she is … in an English sort of way. She's horsy — should be in show-jumping or dressage.'

‘Tell me you're kidding, please.'

‘No, it's true. She's like, like a fine-boned Sussex mare, snorting at the lower classes as she performs the
piaffe
and the
passage
around the rink.'

‘Whereas I am a clattering old draught-horse, wheezing and farting as I drag the plough through the potato paddocks, year in, year out?'

I considered, took her hand, massaged the spaces between each knuckle.

‘You are not horse but gazelle,' I told her. ‘You leap the African veldt, unfettered and joyous, whilst I, the ravenous lion of luuurrrvve, slink after you and eventually — bite — your — neck!'

She giggled and slapped my arms. Unclothed we slid to the muggy stink of the floor; an old matted rug, late-morning shadows, traffic grinding past outside.

If I was entranced by Kaz, then I was bewitched by Francesca. Six months into our courtship I knew that there was a rightness about Kaz that was empowering and comfortable. I knew that our love was genuine, that we would eventually marry, have children, carve out a future based upon eternal togetherness. But, though we rarely commit to our fantasies, an image of Francesca, the haughty First Lady of deportment, continued to eat at my mind (and occasionally nibble at my loins). Plainly she disliked me, just as plainly she disapproved of my association with her sister and treated me with the sort of disdain usually reserved for fraudulent politicians or cane-toads shitting in the water tank. But, in a wicked reversal of the heating-cooling principle, her Arctic contempt only served to further inflame the sensuality with which I, against my better judgment, had come to regard her.

So, like a sidling spider, I began to seek ways of capturing her within my groin-driven web. I went to places where I knew she would be. I deliberately made contact then pretended it was accidental. Most significantly, I allowed my dreams to wander away from Kaz — clean, sweet, forever-partner — and into the illicit, obviously temporary, morally dangerous but somehow more desirable realm of Francesca. And the more I dreamed, the easier it became. Illogically, I began to believe that I could take Francesca. I could take her anywhere —at her home, in the lounge-room or in the garage or on the stairs between the two, when everyone else was out shopping. Nothing, I reasoned, could be simpler.

I could take her in my car, or in hers. I had taken girls in cars before, when I was younger and more supple. A girl called BJ (either ‘Belinda-Jane' or ‘blow-job' — no one was ever certain) owned a Datsun which was a hatchback — so I cricked my neck and got my knee stuck under a pull-out ashtray. But we did it anyway, this silly frantic coupling, then went back into the night-club and pretended to be interested in other things, hoping someone would ask where we had been.

No one ever did.

I thought: I could take Francesca in the city. In my office area — I was masquerading as a government clerk at this time — after the cleaners had cleaned and with the grey blinds drawn, secrets shut into their proper drawers. She might like my office; it was scrubbed and anonymous, comprised mainly of corners. In there, I dreamed, we could be safe and exploratory.

The fantasies continued, unabated, obsessive. I dreamed: I could take her in the fetid greenhouse that sat in their backyard or under a stone bridge in the country, a lush silent place where the morning dew was perennial. I could take her in a suburban bus shelter, shielded from the prying public by a spray of graffiti and the stale odour of urine, or I could take her in a graveyard, leaned up against the biggest tombstone and crushing someone's sacred flowers of remembrance. I could take her in my spare bedroom at daytime, in the rubble of a neighbour's garden as dawn scrolled over us. I could take her anywhere, I thought.

And eventually I did.

The first indication that she might be reciprocal came during a conversation at a Malaysian teahouse. We were in one of those tiny rooms where the tables were jammed together — why is it that Asian restaurants seek to reproduce the population density of their cities by shoving twenty tables into a space designed for ten? — and the air-conditioning had broken down. Everything smelled of layered grease, fish sauce and lemongrass. We were part of a large, noisy group which often, ironically, provides the best opportunity for private conversation. Kaz had lolloped off to the powder-room, Francesca's beau for the evening — a klutzy stockbroker who kept droning about ‘imputation' and ‘renounceable rights' — was outside smoking a foul cigar.

I had just finished a bowl of Mee Goreng that tasted as if St Peter himself had netted the prawns, and drunk enough Golden Gate Spumante to voice the most pervasive of my interior monologues.

‘Frannie,' I asked, ‘why do you hate me so?'

She had the grace to look surprised before she launched a predictable counter-attack.

‘Hate you? That's a remarkably violent choice of verbs, Vincent. I don't
hate
you — I don't
hate
anyone, for that matter.'

I inclined my head in deference to her candid response.

‘Then … dislike?' I inquired politely. ‘Displease? Disgust? Shit you off? Which shall it be?'

‘Oh, none of those,' she said quickly. ‘Although it is true that I find you unsuited. For Katherine, I mean.'

‘Unsuited?'

She popped a sliver of battered crustacean into her mouth and masticated delicately.

‘Your temperament,' she told me, ‘is completely different to hers. Chalk and cheese rather than Yin and Yang. I can't think what you two have in common.'

‘Words. Oh, and sex.'

‘At the same time, no doubt.'

‘Of course. We bonk by the book.'

She refused to smile. Around us mobile phones were ringing incessantly, people were screaming the bastardised lyrics to eighties love songs, stockinged feet were canoodling socked feet beneath the lurching tables. It was Scenes From Yuppies-ville, Episode 99.

‘You're obviously quite clever,' Francesca said in a low voice. ‘It's a shame you don't use your intelligence more fruitfully.'

‘And how would I do that, Wise Owl?'

‘Please don't mock me'

‘Humblest apologies. Memo Francesca: how should I use my intelligence … more fruitfully?'

She stared at me impassively.

‘Oh I think, less cornball chit-chat. Less smutty jokes — they're so seventies, so Benny Hill. Less references to genitalia, bodily functions and secretions; it's tawdry. Less noise I think, and less irreverence. A more mature approach to discussion, and to life generally.'

‘You know, Frannie, I can't decide whether you're erudite or anal.'

This time she did smile, albeit poisonously. Someone passed a plate of curry puffs. I grabbed one and stuffed it in my mouth, kept my lips apart while I chewed, let the pastry shoot out in small wet pellets.

‘I suppose it's just insecurity,' Francesca continued, unfazed by my boorish behaviour. ‘A little-boy thing. Like seeing who can urinate the furthest. You try so hard to impress us'

She mock-tickled me under the chin. ‘Still, it works for some — Katherine obviously likes you this way. Then, she's always been maternal. I just wonder when you'll realise.'

‘Realise what?'

She leaned forward then and I caught a glimpse of pearly cleavage, the alluring scent of an Hellenic orange-grove.

‘That other women prefer a more refined approach,' she whispered. Then, after a discreet pause: ‘Refinement can take you to all sorts of interesting places. It can engender a remarkable passion.'

She sat back triumphantly, nostrils not even slightly flared. In my mind's eye I saw the tigress in charge of a successful hunt.

After that, it became a matter of timing and opportunity. Kaz was busy with her Honours thesis and the imminent stress of job-seeking; I was working a nine-day fortnight, taking flexi-time, signing forms and specialising in long lunches. When Francesca rang and suggested a ‘lesson in refinement' at her inner-city apartment, my excitement was such that any guilty misgivings were rapidly subsumed. I flew down there like Mercury with his winged sandals, clattered up four flights of cement stairs and nearly battered down the door of number 28 in my eagerness.

Inside was a cliché to passion. It was just past midday but all the curtains were pulled. Fans spun slowly. The only light came from aromatic candles burning in glass holders. Grieg's
Peer Gynt
was gurgling like a hot spring from the CD player. Large purple cushions looked inviting on the sofa. She was wearing a long chiffon gown, an imitation tiara and the juice of a thousand ripened lemons.

What more to remember? It was a time when I became a mad thing, frantic in my ripping and unzipping as I ran forward, pulled the gown from her shoulders and fell to her breasts. I gorged briefly then dropped to her navel, tongued the tiny soldiers of hair that spanned her belly, plummeted further and discovered the tang of her. That particular sensation has never left my tongue, its sharpness as acrid as new rain mingled with the stench of screeching tyres. I rolled and fluted and dipped then fell back from her taste, licked my lips and scaled upwards to her armpit like a lizard scuttling the vine, slobbered hungrily on her flesh. I was frenzied, shaking with desire, the realisation of a long-held fantasy reeling through my mind like a movie on constant replay. I kissed her lobes, her nose, her thin motionless mouth, bit into her gracefully held swan's neck. Then, unable to resist any longer, I reached down, found myself hot and curved, slippery with intent, pushed into her lap, searched for her, felt the tip of me touch her coiled moisture — pulsed — ballooned — exploded to an anguished cry as her long pale hand descended, too slow, too late to guide me in.

‘Sorry!' I panted. ‘Jesus, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Jesus …'

Already she was dabbing Kleenex around the tops of her legs, wiping methodically. Eventually she left the room and I heard the tissues being flushed away. When she returned, she was wearing a terry-towelling bathrobe and small pink slippers.

‘You can go now,' she told me, quite civilly. Her face was as expressionless as an artist's new canvas.

‘Frannie, I'm really sorry —'

She shrugged, alone and powerful in the middle of the floor.

‘I'll be in touch,' she said then moved towards the door, held it open.

I nodded, began my retreat. I was unnerved by her indomitable self-control.

‘See you,' I said lamely. Then: ‘You'll — you won't tell anyone, will you?'

She half-smiled, leaned casually against the edge of the door.

‘Goodbye Vincent,' she said. ‘Thanks for coming.'

My ignominy was complete.

Nevertheless we continued to meet. I was compelled, although I couldn't understand why. It certainly wasn't the sex. Fantasy fulfilled is exactly that, even if it had been something of an anti-climax. Anyway, in terms of sex Kaz was an infinitely more enthusiastic and sensual participant whereas Francesca was clinical, always planned, never spontaneous. Somehow the paradigm shifted and I became the initiator — I went to her apartment, I undressed, I fondled, I inserted, I wiggled and waggled, I distended, I came, I shamefully withdrew. She lay passively in whatever position I had placed her, occasionally shivering, sometimes shaking slightly as if a tiny electrical current had tremored through her. That aside, her movements were, as always, minimal and she remained silent throughout my frenetic efforts. She was, to my continuing chagrin, in a state of total self-containment.

Once, as I scrabbled about for my socks, I asked her if she was enjoying our mutual experience.

‘You're improving,' she told me curtly, then, as an afterthought: ‘Besides, you're clean. Most of the time.'

Having cast Her verdict, She shut Her eyes and folded Her arms behind Her Most Serene head.

Eight weeks, two days and ten hours after spurting inelegantly over Francesca's marble-cold thighs, I knew that I was snared awkwardly between desperately loving Kaz yet still feeling obligated to somehow satisfy whatever desires were motivating her sister. What had begun as an over-zealous fantasy had become a sordid little Parisian farce where the audience first boos then mocks the hero. I had stupidly transported my life from the joy of simplicity to the melancholy of complexity.

The depth of my depravity was amply illustrated during a party, held at Bernice's forbidding neo-Georgian abode, in honour of Kaz graduating with First Class Honours. There were twenty, maybe thirty people milling aimlessly about, munching bowls of cashews and guzzling white-wine-and-spritzer drinks. Late in the evening Kaz led me quietly down a corridor, guided me into a bathroom, kissed me hard and pulled my left hand inside the crotch of her panties / knickers / undies, began to rub herself to-and-fro.