The sun streamed through the open slim-line blinds of the bedroom window. The strength of the rays at such an early hour warned of a coming scorcher. Mark leant over Helen who slept on. Chance lay quietly cradled by his mother’s arm, though the phone had woken him too. His wide blue eyes watched Mark, bright and alert. Mark’s mind, befuddled by sleep, registered surprise when he identified the caller. It was Beth. He quickly decided to take the call in his home-office. Content beside his mother’s breast, Chance made no cry as Mark pulled on shorts and left the bedroom with the cordless phone. He reached the office, closed the door and turned his attention to the call. Beth’s words were to the point.
“Since when did you want the kids to live with you?”
“So they told you.”
“Of course they told me. You had no right to ask them not to.”
Mark remained silent.
“Well,” said Beth, “Say something.”
Her high pitched tone was frantic and belied the reasonable nature of her question. Mark’s mind clicked into the present, imagining her sleepless night. She would have been checking and rechecking the clock, trying to judge when was the earliest time she could ring. Her fearful insistence rendered Mark non-communicative. He felt backed against a wall, not just by Beth, but by life itself. His response to pressure these days was to retreat into sullen silence.
Beth waited, frustrated and angry at the end of the phone. Despite her feeling of urgency, she soon recognised that Mark had no intention of being forthcoming. Maybe in person she could reach him? She was woefully out of practise where dealing with Mark was concerned. Reining in her agitation, she arranged a meeting. No. Not at home. She had visions of dancing about, avoiding Mark’s amorous advances. What about lunch? Later this week? Her heart sank. She wondered how she could live for days with this pit of anxiety deep in her stomach. Curbing her impatience, Beth agreed to the date and time. She needed Mark on-side now, as she never had before. As she finished the call, she realised grimly that she faced several days in emotional limbo before the relief of resolution.
Momentarily Mark considered going back to bed. But the day’s heat and his desire for peace kept him up. Helen and Chance were likely to expect something of him if he returned to the bedroom. He decided instead to shower and dress. While grabbing a quick coffee he thought about the coming day. As usual he would drive his red sports car through the snarls of commuter traffic to his city office. Then he’d park in his reserved space before taking the elevator to the twenty second floor where his pretty and efficient secretary would greet him, all smiles and fluttering lashes, and remind him of his daily appointment schedule. He no longer looked forward to such days.
For months now he seemed to be operating on autopilot. The truly frightening thing was that nobody else seemed to notice. Increasingly he felt like a dispassionate and objective observer of his own life. His disconnection was accompanied by a crushing loneliness.
Helen provided him with no comfort. Since the birth of Chance she seemed preoccupied. The baby; her girlfriends; her social life – Mark felt that he was now little more than a money-making machine, important to Helen in that he supported her in a particular lifestyle. The cost of that lifestyle was skyrocketing. Helen’s credit card debt continued to escalate. It had been the subject of several bitter arguments.
Mark’s thoughts turned to Beth. During their marriage he had been the spendthrift. He remembered Beth’s gentle, exasperated chiding about keeping expenses down. Now he pictured her, tight-lipped and serious, doing the monthly budget at the kitchen table; flicking strands of flame-red hair behind her ear, a look of intense concentration on her beautiful face. He felt a shock of painful comprehension so intense that it completely broke his train of thought. He missed her! The emotion was unpleasant to feel.
Slipping back into the bedroom, he dressed hurriedly. Helen was half awake. He went to kiss her goodbye, but stopped when he met his baby’s calm gaze. For a moment he felt a connection to the child. Chance turned to nuzzle Helen’s naked breast. She snuggled him close and helped him find her soft, rosy nipple. The baby sucked contentedly, his eyes closed. Mark felt a familiar stab of jealousy, followed by shame. Irrationally, he felt rejected by them both. He turned and left the room.
Helen heard the front door slam and blinked back tears. She was keenly aware that Mark left without kissing her goodbye. It seemed these days that he never gave her any attention, except to criticise. She took comfort in the sweet heavy warmth of her nursing infant. It never ceased to amaze her how intensely her emotions were now entangled with this child. His vulnerability touched her in a place she was previously unfamiliar with. Still, motherhood did not entirely compensate her for the growing distance from Mark. Why couldn’t they both share this newfound joy? The more she lost herself in maternal bliss, the more Mark turned away. This confused and angered her. Her mood lightened a little as she planned her day. She’d arrange lunch with some friends. That would help deal with the loneliness. Then perhaps a little retail therapy.
The phone call left Beth immensely frustrated. Her urgent need to deal with this looming problem remained, but for now, she was left with nowhere to go. In a determined effort to restrain her churning emotions, she woke the children and tried to focus on the routine tasks of a school morning. She made lunches, checked timetables and prepared uniforms. By eight o’clock she’d bustled the kids out the front door to the bus stop.
There was now time to brew herself a coffee and to compose herself. Thoughts seethed in her head, out of control. Like kaleidoscope images, possible outcomes no sooner popped into view than they disappeared again, replaced by some other equally undesirable permutation. The kids would want to live with their Dad; they wouldn’t; one would, one wouldn’t; they would be embroiled in a custody battle; they would hate her if she did this or that; they would hate her no matter what she did; they would hate their father; she would hate their father…the possibilities were endless. Her meeting with Mark, however, was not until Friday and she needed to get through the next few days with her sanity intact.
Finishing breakfast, she dressed and went outside to meet the bright day. Whistling up the dogs, she walked down to the stables, intent on a ride to clear her mind. The beer-can Mark had dropped still lay to one side of the path. Stooping to retrieve it, she noticed it was already warm to the touch. The first intensely hot day of summer was here. A bold Willy Wagtail, resplendent in black and white plumage, followed her hopping from stone, to fence, to ground, wagging his upright tail and chattering cheekily at the dogs. Dell, the Scotch Collie bitch, was serenely indifferent to the impudent bird. Not so the terrier pup, Scrap. Clearly intrigued, Scrap began to leap about with excitement. The little Wagtail seemed supremely unaware of his own mortality. Calling Scrap to her, Beth picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.
The horses dozed in the shade of a bush gully, twitching their satin summer coats, their tails swishing away the flies. Beth stopped to check that the automatic water trough was operating. A slowly leaking valve created a damp patch of soil beneath the inlet pipe. A variety of insects were making grateful use of the available moisture. European wasps and Honeybees stood side by side, drinking the water from the wet earth. Beth noticed a Mud Dauber wasp, intent upon gathering her load of clay. The industrious insect forced her head down into the moist soil, at the same time raising her body into a nearly vertical position. While she worked, she gave vent to her feelings in a loud, satisfied hum. Finally she ceased to sing and rose carefully with a large lump of mud held proudly in her jaws. Once more intrigued Beth followed her to the stable.
On arrival at the nest site, the wasp ingeniously placed the soft mud in position, using her mouth, mandibles and feet. On further inspection, Beth noticed several other new nests under construction. She wandered around the other side to find the now completed Paper wasp’s nest alive with activity. Beth admired the queen for successfully establishing her first generation. Carefully, so as not to arouse the ire of the irritable insects, Beth moved closer. The nest consisted of a single comb of hexagonal cells, contained in a paper cup that hung from a central stem. It looked rather like an inverted umbrella. From beneath, Beth could clearly see up into the nest. The shallow peripheral cells at first appeared to be empty. However when her eyes adjusted to the deep shade, she could distinguish minute white eggs within. These eggs were cemented to the cell wall. Deeper central cells contained larvae. Two cells had white caps, and already contained pupae, whose silken cocoons lined and closed the chambers’ entrances. Three or four adult wasps guarded the nest.
Perched nearby, at the tip of a thin branch, was an enormous fly. The movement as it landed caught Beth’s eye. The insect was dark in colour with a distinct neck. Large, prominent eyes were positioned at the top of its head. It was huge – over twenty millimetres long – and Beth did not recall having seen anything like it before. On its face it had an ugly beard. From between its eyes a strong pointed proboscis protruded. The thorax and legs were very hairy and its abdomen was long and thin. The fly looked dangerous and thoroughly unpleasant.
This was an Assassin fly. A Paper wasp approached the nest, returning from a foraging mission. The fly darted in swiftly and grappled with the wasp, grasping her in mid flight. Successfully avoiding the wasp’s desperate attempts to sting, it held on firmly with its long spiny legs. The Assassin fly then inserted its sharp probiscis into its living victim through the membrane of the neck. Within seconds it had sucked the wasp dry. The limp and empty body was then discarded.
Beth was horrified. The Paper wasp nest was young, clearly consisting of only a dozen or so individuals. This opportunistic predator presented a real threat to its survival. The Assassin fly returned to its vantage point overlooking the nest site. Its large compound eyes keenly observed the colony as it patiently awaited its next opportunity to feed. Beth crept nearer. With a well timed whack, she swatted the fly hard. The force of the blow hurled the insect into the fork of a nearby tree. Before the stunned fly could recover, Beth squashed it with the heel of her hand. She wiped the remains off on the bark of the tree. Replete with the blood of its prey, the fly had made quite a mess when it burst. The usually gentle Beth felt a sense of elation at her kill. The ugly marauder would trouble the nest no more. She took one last, lingering, protective look at the colony before going for her ride. Little did she know that the European wasps posed a far greater threat to the Paper wasps than did the solitary, native hunter that she had just destroyed.