‘Let’s find spring,’ Duncan said.
They packed up the SUV – ‘Finally, some off-road driving,’ Alice teased – abandoning half-reworked stories and conference papers, student essays and crisis emails, and set off at once. A rare stab at spontaneity, a week away from the madness.
They drove northward through the rain, singing along to old Radiohead CDs, slowly rousing from their urban stupor. The clouds cleared and the wind blew the wild scent of the ocean through the car, and the world came to life again. They exclaimed at the massed pinks, yellows and whites of everlastings swathing their route. Shared gossip about their colleagues at uni, laughing at the burdens that seemed less weighted now. Swapped jokes and lollies, searching for their favourites in the jumbo bag they’d bought at the service station, nudging each other like excited children.
Alice drifted into sleep smiling, and when she woke saw the tutor she’d fallen in love with years before. She watched the movement of his wide mouth and heard anew the deep voice. When his spiced freshness came to her, she inhaled it greedily. And when they stopped for petrol she stayed in the car so she could observe the slow roll of his hips. It made her want to hold him, her hips stilling his. She felt intoxicated. Predatory.
Then off again, Duncan still driving – ‘You relax,’ he said indulgently – and her mind free to wander, empty for just one single moment before it filled itself, crammed itself, with writing – the last few hectic years of writing, writing, writing … mind dashing round and through the stories – those weird, sometimes startling mutations of family – the essays to submit … the tutorials, whipped up and delivered on the run. She let her mind spin all the thoughts, twirl about half-formed plans and ridiculous ambitions until finally it was done, her mind, it had released her. Emptied, she floated over the scrubby dunes and wind-blasted trees that passed them by like scenes in a movie.
In the warmth of the coastal town Alice felt herself further loosen and unfold. Though she and Duncan talked about swimming and fishing and dining out, protective of their recovered easiness, they barely left their room. On the queen-size bed – so much smaller than their king-size in Perth – they pressed and rolled, sweated and laughed. There was something illicit about the room and their privacy that reminded Alice of the time she was Duncan’s student. He became as he was once, too, back in their delayed coming together, their sex-glutted days and nights: not the middle-aged man who these days, it seemed, no longer really wanted sex, but the lover who wanted to push himself inside her, over and over. Whenever they felt they must leave the room – to eat, to breathe fresh air, to stretch their surfeited bodies – they rushed back impatiently, and with each passing day he seemed more assured. She began to understand how much of his potency was connected to her desire for him. Her encouragement, even praise.
On the evening before the day they were to return to the city, Duncan brought a gift to the bed. ‘An early birthday present,’ he said. They sat naked next to each other as Alice turned the tissue-wrapped oblong in her hands. She was used to receiving gifts from him: prized books – he gave her a first edition when she graduated from her bachelor’s degree, and then again to celebrate her PhD – and sometimes tasteful pieces of jewellery. She sensed from his nervous hands, though, that this one was different, so she drew out the unwrapping, forcing the pleasure to linger. When she had removed the final piece of tissue, she thought that the gift was itself further wrapping. Until she really saw it.
‘Oh, Duncan. It’s lovely!’
It was a silk purse, intact but very old. She could tell this by the metal frame with its embossed flowers, by the tattered remnants of lining when she opened the ‘kiss’ lock. She looked more closely at the embroidery on the front panel and saw an image of courtship: a gentlewoman reclining slightly on a garden bench, red rose in hand; a gentleman inclining towards her, his hand covering hers. Her peach gown, his hose and ivory robe, and behind them a woodland, above them a small cupid. Alice looked even closer, saw expressions of tenderness in the young couple’s faces. Enquiring, perhaps; flushed by love or desire. The perfect pastoral, she thought.
‘It’s a reticule. An evening purse.’ Duncan’s voice brought her back. ‘Nineteenth-century. Mum thinks it was made in France – maybe the 1870s or 80s? We could get that checked if you like.’ His face, too, was flushed. ‘Apparently it’s been in our family for generations, but she isn’t sure of the original owner.’ Duncan was delighted with her, the gift, himself. It was a success.
She brought the purse to her nose, not knowing what to expect. What does age smell like? She was surprised by the sweet, musky scent.
‘Mum stored it with sandalwood. She said, A thing of beauty should also smell beautiful.’
Dear Ena. Alice could hear her saying the words, the slight lilt a reminder of her Scottish childhood.
Who had cared for the purse over the years? Had it been used, or kept for show? Alice saw that it was slightly faded down one gusset. She imagined it sitting in a lady’s bedroom in a country manor, maybe on a dresser ready for use, the sun through the window falling always on the one side. Perhaps her husband had given it to her when they were courting and she had used it, when they went visiting, to hold her coins, handkerchief and smelling salts.
Alice wondered what items she might secrete within its small pouched form. She let her fingertips probe textures and ridges, squeezed the body of the purse to see where it resisted and where it surrendered.
‘You know, when I first saw you, I was reminded of this purse.’ Duncan’s hand rested on hers, an unconscious echo of the courting couple. ‘Something about you …’ His eyes moved upward, recalling. ‘A self-containment. You hadn’t been discovered yet; what was inside you hadn’t been brought out.’ A smile. ‘And I wanted to be the one to do that.’ He leaned back against the pillows and pulled her towards him.
With her free hand, Alice placed the purse carefully on the bedside table. ‘And have you?’ She lifted her leg over his thighs and rubbed herself against him.
‘I’d like to think so.’ He pushed her onto her back, then traced his finger around her belly and slowly down. Tickled at her and sampled her wetness. ‘Sometimes I feel that I will never reach to the bottom of you.’
‘You’re getting pretty close right now.’ But he was too focused to laugh. She felt his fingers, slippery now, moving lower, circling her anus. The involuntary pucker. He brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them, his tongue a small triangle, like a cat’s. Then he tweaked and pulled at her nipples with his fingers and mouth. His penis moved against her.
It was too much. ‘Duncan.’ That intolerable pleasure. The ache inside.
‘Not yet.’ He lowered his head between her legs and lapped at her with that delicate tongue, teasing the small hardness. He put his fingers beneath her buttocks and tilted. Brought his hands to the outside of her thighs and pressed her legs against his ears, till all she could feel was his mouth. Drawing it out.
‘Oh, Duncan.’ But she pulled away. ‘Wait – wait.’ He read her intent and lay back, passive. ‘That’s it.’ When she straddled him, he began to move. ‘No.’ She stilled his hips with hers. Looked into his eyes. Found that place where they could meet. She began to rock against him, choosing the pressure, that elusive feeling coiling. Then slowing the pace. And stop, suspended. She leaned forward and kissed him, open-mouthed.
His voice against her cheek. ‘You are mine, aren’t you?’ He turned her onto her front and before she had settled was inside her. ‘You are mine.’
She felt his penis pushing deep, and herself stretching, expanding. He lunged further, into her belly. Stroked her, his fingers following the rhythm of their bodies. The sway and plunge. The quickening thrust.
Oh, God, the joy. It was upon her. So deep. Wide.
I cannot. I cannot.
And, oh, I will, I will.
Now. Now. Splitting into light. Cracking open. Now. Into the white.
Gone, gone.
Gone.
She returned to herself reluctantly, holding his hand against her, squeezing herself around him in diminishing spasms, eking out the pleasure. Sinking into the languid heaviness of her body, her thoughts dormant.
Then slowly, in the pool of her mind, lines and colours swimming, weaving, threading, finally coalescing – a different kind of desire in her chest and in her belly. She saw a baby, and felt it moving; witnessed its translucency and helplessness.
Duncan’s stance on children came to her – how could it not, when they’d talked it through so thoroughly before marrying? – but there was something about this moment that made the thought natural, the idea possible. For her, at least. Should she broach the subject or hold it to herself for now, a delicious secret?
She turned her face and saw the evidence on his. How much he loved her.
She listed them, her post-PhD plans, from least to most important, and clearer now after the oceanside break from their confused, chattering demands.
She’d need to look for academic articles relating to her thesis. ‘Representations of Family in Contemporary Western Australian Fiction’: it sounded boringly pragmatic, when really it was a wonderful opportunity to re-read her favourite authors, to write about them. But it had been a while since she’d been on top of journal publications, what with the frenzy of thesis submission and examination. She’d need to see if the topic had any traction, identify the best journals to submit to.
And the stories … They were lodged in her, these tales of modern families: the harried single mum with fourteen kids, the bloke lavishing care on his cabbage-patch-doll children, the same-sex couple meeting a potential surrogate, the family that knitted disparate ethnicities together with urgency, with care – all the adoptive, half, step, part, foster, de facto, in-law mutations of kinship that wound their way through the pages of her collection. The characters were as familiar as friends or enemies, and she loved her tales, was proud of their success – the PhD award; three stories finding quick publication – but their creative heat had dissipated since the heady days straight after graduation. Maybe it was down to the barrage of teaching, all the other perks and demands that came with being ‘an academic’.
Dr Alice Tennant: it still felt like she was pretending. Bluffing away as the months passed, as her confidence in these tales of strange families seesawed, as she re-edited scenes and fussed about with fine details, as she hummed and hawed about where to send the coll–
The phone. And, damn, she needed to go to the loo again.
‘Happy birthday, Alice!’
Her mother. What time was it in Melbourne? Five-ish. Joan must be finished for the day, though Alice knew she often saw patients in the evening. She caught herself: analysands.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Have you had a nice day? What are you doing tonight?’ It was her birthday congratulations voice, especially excited because of the figure: thirty.
‘What – today? How was the drive?’
She could hear a second voice behind her mother’s, the low hum of conversation in the background. Andrew. Her mother’s second marriage, the one that had pulled her from Perth to Melbourne. Soon Joan would sit down to one of his famous meals – stroganoff or sushi; he was versatile. Then they might recline on the leather sofa and share news with their guests, or with one of Andrew’s adult children, ‘just popped in’.
‘Alice?’
‘It was fine. Fine. The day was great. And we had a fantastic break. But we’re going to have a quiet one tonight.’
‘You’re not being taken out for dinner? No party?’
‘No. I’m not feeling so good. I think I’ve got a urinary tract infection.’ She wouldn’t usually share the information, but there was a certain satisfaction to be had. ‘I’m just going to lie low and drink plenty of water. Maybe see a doctor if it hangs around.’
‘What brought that on?’
‘Mum. Holiday. With Duncan. What do you think?’
The pressure in her bladder was a strange relief, mixed as it was with rawness and satiation. Lust had overcome them; they still found each other desirable.
‘Oh!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘You must have been at it like rabbits.’
Alice chuckled smugly. ‘Yep. Still going strong.’
But then she had to run to the loo. Cut off the conversation … had she overstated things?
Alice returned to the sofa and tried to relax, but her bladder called out its constant message: you need to pee. You need to pee. You need to – Maybe if she lay down … No. What about on her side? That was better; less pressure on the bladder.
Duncan’s voice drifted from the shower. That beautiful baritone. She remembered the moment when her allegiance had shifted irrevocably to him. A conversation with her mother in 2000 that was the final in a series lasting several years. Her mother’s concern; her own defence. Also conducted by phone, while she sat in the corridor of the share house where she lived then, though Joan was still in Perth. Just beginning her psychotherapy training.
Twelve years, Alice. It’s a big gap at your age.
She’d snapped at her mother to let it go, rushing to Duncan’s defence … how they’d been together for three years, for Christ’s sake, how he loved her and she loved him and what did age even matter? And then her mother snapping back, yes, but Duncan was in a position of power … and Alice feeling the anger rising, rising inside her.
Mum, please. You don’t think I have my own thoughts? My own ideas?
Of course you do. But it remains that you began a relationship with him when you were an undergraduate and he was your tutor. Your much older tutor.
Alice had made her voice dry, demanding her mother give her some credit, stating coldly that they’d managed to hold off.
This was debatable, the holding off, but she’d maintained the fiction. To protect their mothers, and themselves. The reality? Only the one unit with him – English to top up the writing degree – but the rush in her gut each time she walked into his tutorial room not open to mistranslation, unlike his response, which, perhaps, could have been. And then the coffees on campus – perfectly innocent – and the charged phone calls – not so much – the end of the unit, the end of the year, the end-of-year party. The lift home and then, yes, the knowing.
You understand what I mean, Alice. She remembered the desperation in her mother’s voice, as if she knew she’d gone too far but couldn’t hold back, saying Duncan took advantage … nineteen … someone his own age … worried about his hold over –
Enough, Alice told herself. It wasn’t as if they were a proper family anyway, her mother an occasional fly-in fly-out visitor, her father living in a haze of hippiedom in Nimbin, Daylesford, Eumundi … somewhere that was just a name to her, anyway – and no cute brothers or sisters to pull the scattered ‘family’ together, when she alone had never been enough, or so it seemed. It was Duncan who’d been there when it mattered; Duncan who was her family. And she didn’t want to think about the hard words she and Joan had flung, her mother’s judgement on Duncan, her own sobbing drive to Duncan’s house – into his arms and then straight into his home. The new divide separating daughter from mother. It was the jagged words that diagnosed Duncan like he was some kind of illness, the words that came to her whenever she had doubts about her husband, that played in her –
Stop.
The sharp twinge behind her pubis was proof of their desire. Desire and love. Sometime soon she would share her new feelings with Duncan. Describe that translucent image and how it called to her. Persuade him.
And tomorrow morning she would go to the doctor. Antibiotics should fix this bloody problem.