Passion too has a brainwashing ability. Once in your system it makes bad dreams fade from the memory fast. I did not finish things with Donna during the call. It felt too good to be on the end of her voice. Too good to hear her excited at hearing my voice. She asked if I had changed my mind, and when I said I hadn’t she said ‘Excellent’ and ‘I was worried you might.’
‘No need to be worried. I’m very sure about what I’m doing.’ Just saying this made me feel surer and stand more fixedly in my shoes. I told her there was tension between Tilda and me. I did not mention my cruel tongue, of course. I used ‘frosty’ to describe us. I used ‘a difficult evening with unpleasant exchanges of words.’ I said, ‘There is a…what’s the word…a realignment happening inside me. Like I’ve changed my focus. My focus is you—you’re who I think about. Not Tilda.’ Which sounded so clear-cut. I even told her Tilda and I slept in separate beds last night. ‘I can’t sleep with her any longer. It’s like I’d be unfaithful to you.’
Donna gasped that she wished she could hold me and give me strength for what must be so harrowing.
Yes, I would love to be held, I replied. I reckoned I could swing another Watercook trip in the afternoon if she wanted, on the pretext of more work being needed on the rye-grass-resistance story. I said I could swing anything if it meant seeing her.
‘There’s a playgroup in town. I could leave Ruth there for an hour.’
Chapter 71
I liked Donna’s term keep company. It had her smell on it—citrus and aniseed from the gels she showered with. I liked her long, coy way of saying the word—commpanyyy. She made it sound like a foreign language. Tilda’s congressing was pompous, like she was better than fucking, too good for it.
I never intended keeping company in Donna’s house. When I arrived I was hoping for her to hold me like she said she wanted to, but even that seemed unlikely given her shyness and hesitancy. I had to make the first move. I asked her, ‘Can I have that embrace we talked about on the phone?’
She kept her head down and took two slow steps my way. I took a step her way to meet her more quickly. Contact. We made contact. Slow and tender contact, as if our skins might bruise. Citrus and aniseed were all through her hair. There was a peppermint breeze from her lips as they parted upward onto mine. She was shorter than Tilda, which meant a more physical kiss: I had to strain and lower my head down more.
We almost didn’t go further. I pulled away on seeing her brass bed reflected in the hallway mirror. It had four pillows—two each side. Her and Cameron’s pillows. Their bed, not Donna’s and mine. I tried to ignore that line of thought. I adjusted my kissing position to a deeper and more strenuous hold. I stepped towards the bedroom, still kissing, keeping Donna in step with me. I was not rushing her. I stepped and stopped, stepped and stopped, and she kept in time—a walk-dance. At that moment I thought of Tilda: how I was breaking faith with her. But it was a thought no more than a heartbeat long. Breaking faith was easy. I had given over completely to breaking it now. I slipped my fingers under Donna’s blouse and rubbed the small of her back to test her willingness. She pressed on tiptoes to kiss her yes.
But the mirror reflection kept bothering me. We could not do it on his bed, Cameron’s bed. We could not do it in his house. You don’t have to be alive to be a presence. I unkissed my mouth from hers to explain: ‘It’s not like I’m feeling his eyes looking on. It’s just, I’d love somewhere neutral. Somewhere ours.’
Her eyelids were half closed with willingness. She came down off her tiptoes, pulled her blouse straight and licked her bottom lip like a way of kissing herself to keep the kissing going. This drew me back to kissing. Then to stepping. The ‘neutral’ idea could not compete against resting my hands on her hips, running them up over her ribs to her bra strap. Then a breath, a pause to concentrate and savour what my hands were about to do. They were about to shift around onto two breasts. Two not one. No scar, no elephant fatness in the sandy shaved pit of her arm.
I could not stop looking at them. As we crabbed onto the bed her breasts transfixed me—two not one, as if two were unusual and I had never seen them before. Their little noses of nut-nipple, softer than Tilda’s body-part nipple. We were unwrapping each other from our clothes yet I had to slow up and stare at them, give my lips the pleasure of rubbing both. I said nothing of this to Donna. I just revelled in her to the point of over-delight. I had to close my eyes or else I’d need mathematics. I concentrated on removing my shoes, taking a moment to unlace and settle. Two breasts not one. And ribs not poking out but covered with a healthy layer of flesh. Rounded buttock and thigh, strong not skinny.
It is impossible not to compare one lover to another, even as you’re climbing into them. I was thinking how Donna’s diaphragm was not as deep in as Tilda’s. I butted its rubber and refrained from thrusting quite so deeply.
Chapter 72
I could feel Cameron’s shape in the bed. The scoop where his body slept on the mattress. Even if I changed sides his scoop was still there under me. Donna put it down to my imagination but conceded somewhere neutral would be preferable. She agreed it didn’t seem right stepping over children’s toys and dolls in the hall and then doing what we were doing. Having been spreadeagled in one another’s arms, it was hardly romantic to get up and wash us from the sheets because Ruth liked to get into bed with her mother in the mornings.
What about we use the forest at Ringo Point? I suggested it because a motel was difficult: we’d have to drive halfway to Melbourne given the risk of tongues wagging. No one hires a motel room for the day in the country, not unless they’re up to no good. Besides, there was the expense of it. I knew all the forest at Ringo. I knew of clearings and cavities in the scrub where only kangaroos would see us. There was the risk of the odd reptile but that was okay, I would shoo any away and we could throw a blanket down. Consider it a temporary measure, I said, until I left Tilda. And I would leave Tilda soon, I promised.
The forest became our arrangement. Tuesdays and Fridays—Donna’s non-uni days. She dropped Ruth off at playgroup and drove an hour to me. We used an old doona cover she had, spread it at a spot three minutes’ walk west of the sundial where there was plenty of bush to screen us. Ironbarks stretched out enough for two people to keep company in shade. The ground was hard but smooth. There were no bull ants. We codenamed it Neutral Motor Inn.
For six weeks we made a brief bed there, never fully naked in case we heard humans. We did a drill, just so we’d be ready, pulling our clothes up as fast as possible. We were never interrupted except by parrot voices. Afterwards we shared water from Donna’s thermos and watched the ticker-tape effect of sun through the swaying branches. We could not remember, either of us, being so happy, so peaceful.
I said, ‘You’re the love of my life.’
She answered, ‘I’m very respectful of Cameron, but I feel love like you do too.’
Her saying that always gave me such resolve. I would go home from Neutral Motor Inn determined to tell Tilda goodbye. I whipped myself into a state of contempt for her, the right frame of mind to deliver the ruthless news. I rehearsed it: ‘I am leaving you, Tilda. I am walking out. I am not in love with you. I am in love with Donna Wilkins.’ I walked in through the back door without so much as a ‘Good evening.’ My jaw was clenched for conflict. I hadn’t showered, hadn’t washed Donna from me. Surely I reeked of the off-smell of wetness dried and clotted in my trousers. I deliberately breezed by her so she might catch the scent, but failed to provoke her into getting the whole smithereens of us underway. Call me spineless but I baulked at igniting it myself.