‘I am.’
I wanted to reach across the table and feel her hand, get contact with her skin. She must have sensed this and considered skin contact wrong just yet. She leant back and checked her watch and said, ‘It’s close to five. I have to organise dinner for Ruth. What time will Tilda start wondering where you are?’
‘Good point. I better go.’
What a deliciously awkward few seconds came next. I stood and wanted to step forward and kiss and smell and caress her. Restraint is such a delicacy. I was teetering on the edge of her body and could not move.
We agreed I would ring her tomorrow. I was to let her know immediately if I changed my mind. I said I had no intention of changing my mind but she reserved the right to be cautious: she feared letting go of her heart and having me change my mind and stay with Tilda.
‘I won’t change my mind.’ I did step forward at this point. The teetering was too much—I had to act on it.
Donna held up a halting hand. ‘Don’t,’ she motioned with her head that Ruth might come in.
I apologised for being impetuous. I opened the sliding door and smiled goodbye. I drove home.
If you could call it home. It was no home to me now. It was a place I was forced to part from Donna to go to. It was a place I did not want to arrive at. Then, having arrived, loathed. It was nothing but a place to be hostile in. Me, the betrayer, blamed Tilda for it all. To become the betrayer makes you turn on the betrayed. Why? Because they are the obstacle to your desire. They are the reason for your guilt. Hostility is the only option. The mere sight of Tilda brought it out of me. From the moment I got home to my un-home I ground my teeth and mocked Tilda in my thoughts. Can’t you see I do not love or need you or care for you anymore? Can’t you tell where I’ve been? Don’t you see Donna in my eyes? Are you blind? Are you stupid? Surely you can hear her in my silence.
She tried to kiss me hello: ‘How was your day? Would you like a beer?’
I was not going kiss her, no way, not even a peck. ‘No, I do not want a beer,’ I said with raised voice. ‘No, I am not hungry. No, I have not had a bad day. No, I am not in a bad mood.’
Couldn’t you decipher my secret, Tilda? I’d had the most glorious day. A day of craving the body of another woman. A day of being in lust and plummeting in love. Couldn’t you make that out in me? ‘No, I am not going to massage you tonight. Can I not have one night off? One night of freedom from stroking that fucking log of an arm?’
I told her I had no intention of naming her new picture tonight. Call it a pile of shit for all I care. I complained about the smell of turps through the house. ‘Fuck, I hate the stink. Air it out. Fuck! I’m sleeping in the futon room tonight. The turps is soaked into your flesh. It’s like sleeping with petrol. Am I supposed to be attracted to petrol? I don’t care if I am being hurtful. I am speaking my mind. See my lips move? That’s me speaking my fucking mind. Goodnight. I’m off to bed. You just stay there crying, there’s a good girl. Here, borrow my handkerchief—you can’t say I don’t comfort you.’
I felt entirely justified in my cruelty. I felt powerful and right. I quipped, ‘You might want to consider skolling some weedkiller like you used to promise. Whatever happened to that promise? Why don’t you buy some tomorrow? Or get a rifle? Do yourself a favour and top yourself. Goodnight, sweetheart. Sleep well. Don’t disturb me.’
I got halfway up the stairs before Tilda’s sobbing got to me. I turned around, hung my head, trudged towards her intending to be kindly and say I was tired, overtired from being busy at work. She was seated on the edge of dinner table, weeping into her hands. I turned back to the stairs, mounted them quickly before the weeping did its job and had me weakened and apologising and acting tenderly. I congratulated myself for not having given in. I muttered, ‘Do yourself a favour and top yourself, Tilda. You’d be doing me a favour as well. That would solve my problem.’
In bed I wished it upon Tilda, death. I wished it like saying my prayers: now I lay me down to sleep, I pray she dies before the end of the week. I wanted to kill her. How could I do it and not be found out? Was there a way of stopping her breathing without evidence?
Chapter 70
Sleep brainwashes us clean like a natural remorse system. If it wasn’t for sleep we might act on all our impulses, never have doubts to keep us rational. If it wasn’t for sleep I might have smothered Tilda with a pillow that night. Sleep did the decent thing and dreamt it out of me, sweated it out of me with horror-dreaming of being utterly alone, desolate. I was in a paddock and mourning, not for any particular person, not at first. Just mourning my own desolation. Then I realised I was also mourning for Tilda. She was dead in my dream and I was begging the dream to bring her back to life. The colour of the dream was like photo negatives.
I brought her breakfast in bed next morning—Vegemite on toast and a mug of milky Nescafé. She gave a faint nod of thanks but did not squeeze my hand when I cupped hers, or respond with a nuzzle into her pillow when I kissed her temple. Her temple was dank with hot hair. I could see where a crow’s-foot of tears had rolled over it through the night and dried crusty.
I began saying, ‘I said some awful things last evening. I’m…I get wound up in my work…I feel dreadful and I want you to forget I opened my cakehole and said those awful things…’
She made no attempt to assure me I was forgiven. Not so much as an eyelid twitch of recognition that she had heard me.
‘Eat your toast before it gets cold,’ I said, touching her chin. I was resolved to driving to the Hastings Road phone that instant. I was going to lay down the law to Donna Wilkins. ‘I am not going to pursue a relationship with you,’ I was going to say. ‘Finished. Over. I am not going to break my wife’s heart. I can’t do it. I don’t have it in me. I can’t do it.’
I whispered ‘I love you’ to Tilda, kissed the lobe of her ear. A desperate I love you to reel back the life I was only yesterday prepared to let slip. There was still no eyelid movement or parting of the lips from her. ‘Oh well, then,’ I sighed. I was impatient for a reward for my gentle effort. I was prepared to relent to mutual servicing if she showed gratitude for my tenderness and kiss. I expected a return I love you too even if it sounded automatic.
I deserved the silent treatment. But as I drove to Hastings Road I could not help but feel an injustice. Why couldn’t she have blinked or relented with one little lip-corner smile? Why couldn’t she have given me something to go on with instead of blank rebuffing? Just one little lip-corner smile. By the time I pulled onto the gravel beside the phone box I was brooding on being taken for granted by Tilda. Was I supposed to beg and crawl to her? I’m worth more than silent treatments.
I was in no good humour to queue to make a call. Three girls—aged fifteen, if a day—had wheeled their baby prams into an arc of waiting and smoking. A fourth girl was in the box on the phone. Housing Commission types with oily unbrushed scalps, tracksuit pants, black moccasins.
‘Excuse me,’ I said gruffly, as if interviewing them. ‘Is there a problem with this telephone? I’m Colin Butcher from the Wimmera Wheatman. There have been reports of vandalised public phones. I have to check this one for a story I’m doing on how viable our phone network is to cope with bushfire season.’
That got me to the head of the queue, huffing loudly enough to rush the current user into hanging up. Once in the box I said, ‘Do you mind all standing back, please. Back further, please. Thank you.’ It got me privacy.
I was still determined to finish it, the Donna thrill. The brainwashing horror-dream was still fresh in me. Daytime does reduce the power of nightmares, however; the sun shines down a calming light. But I was determined to finish it. I just hoped it would not be too brief or blunt a call. I intended to explain that I was not a weak man but I was resigned to the dutifulness of my marriage, even at the expense of my happiness or the affections of my heart.