Truly Madly Guilty

  She held up the phone in front of her, staring at the screen, trying to imagine him holding the phone in his big hand. She remembered him saying, 'You and me, we are the feckless ones.' The feckless ones. She closed her eyes and her stomach cramped on cue. She wondered if she would eventually pay with a stomach ulcer. Was that what caused stomach ulcers? Regret-filled bile?

  The phone stopped ringing and she waited for the text message to tell her that Vid had once again not left her a message. There had been only two occasions when he'd given in and left a clearly reluctant message: 'Clementine? This is Vid. How are you? I will call again.' He was one of those people who avoided leaving messages and just wanted you to pick up the damned phone. Her dad was the same.

  Her phone rang again instantly. It would be Vid again, she thought, but it wasn't; she didn't recognise the number. He wouldn't try to trick her into answering by calling from a different number, would he? It wasn't Vid. It was Erika's IVF clinic. They were returning Clementine's call about setting up an appointment with the counsellor to discuss egg donation.

  Erika had given her the number for the clinic this morning, irritably and impatiently, as if she hadn't really expected Clementine to go ahead and make the call.

  Clementine took out her diary from her handbag and held it on her lap while she made the appointment for the day before her audition. The clinic was in the city. She would only just make it back in time for her lesson with the scarily talented little Wendy Chang (grade five at age nine). The lady making the appointment was lovely, she was being so nice to Clementine as she explained about an initial blood test she might like to do now or later, it was completely up to her, and it occurred to Clementine that the lady probably thought Clementine was a kind, altruistic person, doing this out of the goodness of her heart, not doing it to slither out from under the weight of an obligation.

  She heard Erika's resigned voice on the phone that morning: 'Oh, Clementine, we both know that's a lie.' But then she'd immediately got down to business, giving her the number of the clinic, as if she didn't care that it was a lie. She didn't care about Clementine's motivations, she just wanted the eggs.

  What had Clementine been expecting? Gratitude and joy? 'Oh, thank you, Clementine, what a wonderful friend you are!'

  She jumped as someone thumped on the driver's window. It was Kim, her violin case in hand, standing under a giant umbrella and looking miserable.

  Clementine wound down her window.

  'Isn't this fun,' said Kim flatly.

  *

  The pop-up marquee didn't inspire confidence. It looked cheap, like they'd got it from a two-dollar shop.

  'I don't think it's going to hold,' said Nancy, their viola player, scrutinising the flimsy-looking white fabric. It was already sagging in places with puddles of water. Clementine could see the dark shapes of leaves floating in the little ponds above their heads.

  'It's completely dry so far,' said Kim worriedly. Their booking contract specified that they be fed and had to be able to keep their instruments dry. They had the right to pack up and leave in the case of wet weather but they'd never yet had to do it.

  'I'm sure it will be fine,' said their second violinist, Indira, who always took on the role of optimist, as well as the role of making sure they were fed. She had been known to put down her violin in the middle of a piece to waylay a passing waiter if she saw something delicious, which was very embarrassing.

  'How's the practice going?' asked Nancy as they tuned.

  Clementine sighed inwardly. Here we go. 'Pretty good,' she said.

  'How will poor Sam cope with school pick-ups and all that when you're away on tour?' said Nancy.

  'Nancy. I'm not going to get it,' said Clementine.

  'I think you've got a great chance of getting it!' said Nancy.

  Nancy didn't want her to get the job. She pretended it was because she didn't want Clementine to leave the quartet, but Nancy always made Clementine think of that Gore Vidal quote: Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

  Nancy was the sort of friend who was always pointing out slim-figured women to Clementine: 'Look at her tiny waist/long legs/tight butt. Wouldn't you just love to look like that? Don't you just hate her? It makes you feel so depressed, doesn't it?' (Because if it doesn't, it damn well should!)

  'Oh well, if you don't get it, you won't have to deal with all the orchestra politics,' said Nancy. 'It's like being part of a big corporation. Meetings. Policies. Personally, I couldn't stand it, but that's just me.'

  'You'll love it, Clementine. The camaraderie, the travel, the money!' said Indira.

  'Would Sam mind socialising with all the musicians, do you think?' said Nancy. Nancy liked to mention the fact that Sam wasn't a musician at every opportunity. It was like she sensed a possible weak spot there, so she kept pushing her thumb against it. She'd once said to Clementine, 'I could never marry a non-musician, but that's just me.'

  'He gets on with most people,' said Clementine shortly.

  'I just thought it wouldn't be his scene,' said Nancy. 'He's more the rugged, outdoorsy type, isn't he?'

  'Sam isn't outdoorsy,' snorted Clementine. Shut up, Nancy. Nancy was your quintessential entitled eastern suburbs princess. Her father was a judge.

  'Didn't you once say he was tone-deaf?' said Nancy.

  'He pretends to be tone-deaf,' said Clementine. 'He thinks it's funny to say that.'

  'He likes eighties rock,' said Kim fondly.

  'Gosh, your legs look amazing in those pants, Kim,' said Nancy. 'Don't you just hate her, Clementine?'

  'I'm actually quite fond of her,' said Clementine.

  'Oh! By the way! Nearly forgot to tell you. I heard that Remi Beauchamp is auditioning.' Nancy threw down her trump card.

  'I thought he was in Chicago,' said Clementine. She felt a numb sort of acceptance. She'd known Remi for years and had always been in awe of his flawless intonation. Even if she got through the first round, the orchestra would ultimately choose him.

  'He's back,' said Nancy, and tried to pull her lips down in a sad face. The result was kind of terrifying. She looked like the Joker in Batman. 'But I'm sure you've still got a good chance.'

  'First guests are arriving,' said Kim. 'Shall we start with the Vivaldi?'

  They all turned to the right page on their sheet music and positioned their instruments.

  Kim tucked her violin under her chin, gave them a nod and began to play. Her eyes met Clementine's and she stepped back on one foot just enough so that she could give Nancy the finger behind her head, a quick, subtle movement that anyone else would think was just her fingers moving on the strings.

  As they played Clementine let her mind drift. She didn't need to think. They had been playing together since before Holly was a baby and they had all got used to each other. Nancy had a tendency to rush, although she disputed this, and believed the others dragged. Now they just went with her.

  They moved on to 'Air on G' and Clementine watched the poor wedding guests milling about, umbrellas held aloft over rueful faces, high heels sinking into the wet grass, desperate for it to be over.

  'The bride is here!' A woman wearing a tiny hat suddenly approached. She reminded Clementine of a Mr Potato Head. 'Start the bridal march, go, go, go!' She waved both her hands in her version of a conductor. It seemed like she might have already got into the champagne.

  Kim always arranged for one person to have the official job of signalling them when to start the bridal entrance music, but for some reason random guests (women, it was always women) took the job on themselves, and were often responsible for making them start too early. Once they'd played the entrance song ten times before they finally saw the bride.

  'Oops! Sorry, false alarm!' The potato head lady made an exaggerated face of apology.

  Brides were rarely early. They'd played at one wedding where the bride was an hour late and they'd had to pack up and go because they had another booking.

  Erika had been early to her own weddi
ng. 'We can't be early,' said Clementine, her only bridesmaid. 'Your guests will still be arriving.'

  'Oliver will be there,' said Erika. She had her hair pushed back off her forehead, and a lot of smoky eyeshadow. She looked like an entirely different person. 'He's the only one I care about.' It was one of the few times when Erika had been the one prepared to break a rule of etiquette.

  Clementine had felt not quite envy but maybe something like it, because she saw that Erika was truly only thinking about her marriage, not her wedding. She didn't especially care about her dress or her hair or the music or even her guests; all she cared about was Oliver. Whereas when Clementine got married she had cared about all that peripheral stuff. (The hairdresser mucked up her hair, for example, and Clementine had looked like Morticia on her wedding day.) She and Sam had barely seen each other at their wedding because they were too busy catching up with friends and relatives who had come from overseas and interstate, whereas Erika and Oliver saw only each other. It was kind of sickening. Kind of lovely.

  She wondered now if the signs had always been there. Sure, she and Sam made each other laugh, they had passion (or they did before kids), they had fun, but their relationship wasn't strong enough to withstand their first true test. It was a feeble marriage. A shoddy marriage. A marriage from the two-dollar shop.

  The marquee swayed. Clementine felt something wet on her face. Was she crying? Or was it rain?

  'It's leaking,' said Nancy, looking up. 'It's totally leaking.'

  The rain suddenly intensified.

  'This is bad,' said Indira, who had the most expensive instrument at the moment. It was on loan from a retired violinist.

  'We're out of here.' Kim lowered her violin. 'Pack it up.'

  *

  Clementine was back in her car, her hand on the keys in the ignition, when her phone rang. She grabbed for it when she saw the single word on the screen: SCHOOL.

  'Helen?' she said, to save time on the niceties, because it was generally Helen, the school secretary, who made phone calls from the school.

  Her heart thumped. Disasters loomed now at every corner.

  'Everything is fine, Clementine,' said Helen quickly. 'It's just Holly is insisting her tummy is hurting again. We tried everything to distract her but to no avail, I'm afraid. We're at a loss and she's disrupting the class and well ... she seems so genuine. We don't want it to be a case of the boy who cried wolf.'

  Clementine sighed. This had happened last week too, and by the time she'd got Holly home her stomach had been magically fixed.

  'Do you know how her behaviour has been today?' Clementine asked Helen.

  According to Holly's adorable, kind of dippy kindergarten teacher, Miss Trent, Holly had been having 'occasional difficulties with her self-regulation' at school, and as a result wasn't always making 'the right choices'. Certainly her behaviour at home hadn't been wonderful. She was going through a naughty, whiny stage, and had recently perfected a brand new seagull-like squawk that she used instead of saying 'no'. It set Clementine's teeth on edge.

  'Not too bad apparently,' said Helen cautiously. 'The rain isn't helping. All the children have turned feral. So have we, actually. They say we've got at least another week of this weather, can you believe it?'

  Clementine looked at the wedding ceremony taking place in the park. The bride and the groom were facing each other, holding hands, while other people held umbrellas over their heads. The bride was laughing so hard she could barely stand, and the groom was supporting her, laughing too. They didn't seem to care that their string quartet had vanished.

  She and Sam had laughed a lot during their wedding ceremony. 'I've never seen a bride and groom laugh so much,' their celebrant had said acerbically, as though they weren't taking their wedding seriously enough. Sam couldn't stop laughing at Clementine's Morticia hair, which had made her laugh too, and made it not matter.

  But you couldn't laugh your way out of everything. They'd had eight years of laughter; a good run. They'd vowed to be true to each other in good times and bad, but they'd laughed as they said it, because everything was just so, so funny to them. They thought a bad hairstyle was as bad as life got. The celebrant was right to be annoyed. She should have grabbed them by their shirtfronts and cried, 'This is serious! Life gets serious and you two aren't concentrating!'

  'I'm minutes away,' she said to Helen.

  chapter thirty-five

  The day of the barbeque

  'Vid already knew me because he'd seen me perform,' said Tiffany to Clementine.

  'Mummy!' called out Holly from the egg chair. 'Come and see this!'

  'Just a minute!' called back Clementine, without taking her eyes off Tiffany. 'So you were a performer ...?'

  'A performer like you, Clementine!' said Vid delightedly.

  'Not quite like Clementine,' corrected Tiffany with a snort.

  'Mummy!' shouted Ruby.

  'Just a minute,' called back Clementine. She looked at Tiffany. 'Are you a musician?'

  'No, no, no.' Tiffany began stacking plates. 'I was a dancer.'

  'She was a famous dancer,' said Vid.

  'I wasn't famous,' said Tiffany, although she had been kind of famous in certain circles.

  'Were you a famous limbo dancer?' asked Sam, with a glint in his eye.

  'No, but there was sometimes a pole involved.' Tiffany glinted right back at him.

  There was silence around the table. Vid beamed.

  'Do you mean you were a pole dancer?' Clementine lowered her voice. 'Like a ... like a stripper?'

  'Clementine, of course she wasn't a stripper,' said Erika.

  'Well,' said Tiffany.

  There was a pause.

  'Oh,' said Erika. 'Sorry, I didn't mean -'

  'You've certainly got the body for it,' said Clementine.

  'Well,' said Tiffany again. This was where it got tricky. She couldn't say, Yeah, too right I do, girlfriend. You weren't allowed to be proud of your body. Women expected humility on this topic. 'When I was nineteen I did.'

  'Did you enjoy it?' Sam asked Tiffany.

  Clementine gave him a look. 'What?' Sam lifted his hands. 'I'm just asking if she enjoyed a previous occupation. That's a valid question.'

  'I loved it,' said Tiffany. 'For the most part. It was like any job. Good parts and bad parts, but I mostly enjoyed it.'

  'Good money?' continued Sam.

  'Great money,' said Tiffany. 'That's why I did it. I was doing my degree, and I could earn so much more money doing that than being a check-out chick.'

  'I was a check-out chick,' said Clementine. 'I didn't especially love it, by the way, if anyone is interested.'

  'Such a pity. You would have made a wonderful stripper, darling,' said Sam.

  'Thank you, sweetheart,' said Clementine evenly.

  'You could have made your cello faces as you spun around the pole. That would have got you some good tips.' Sam threw back his head, closed his eyes and made his eyebrows go up and down, presumably in imitation of Clementine's face as she played the cello.

  Clementine looked down at the table and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Her whole body shook. Tiffany stared. Was she crying?

  'She's laughing,' said Erika dismissively. 'You won't be able to get any sense out of her for the next few minutes.'

  Oliver cleared this throat. 'I read an article recently about a move to make pole dancing an Olympic sport,' he said. 'Apparently it's very athletic. You need good core strength.'

  Tiffany had to smile at the poor fellow doing his level best to manoeuvre the conversation back into safe middle-class dinner party conversation territory.

  'Oh yes, Oliver, it's very athletic,' said Vid meaningfully, one eyebrow lifted, and Clementine dissolved again.

  Tiffany thought how much simpler the world would be if everyone shared Vid's almost child-like approach to all things sexual. Vid liked sex in the same way he like classical music and blue cheese and fast cars. To him, it was all the same. The good stuff of life.
It was just naked pretty dancing girls in a club. What was the big deal?

  Erika turned pointedly in her seat to look over her shoulder towards the kids. 'So does your daughter -?' she said to Tiffany.

  'Dakota knows I was a dancer.' Tiffany lifted her chin. Don't you freaking well question my parenting choices. 'I'll wait till she's older to give her more details than that.'

  Vid's older daughters and ex-wife didn't know either. Oh God, the judgement that would come her way from his daughters, who dressed like Kardashians but behaved around Tiffany as if they had the moral high ground normally reserved for nuns. If they ever found out they would leap on that secret like rabid dogs.

  'Right,' said Erika. 'Of course. Right.'

  Clementine lifted her head and ran her fingertips beneath her eyes. Her voice still trembled with laughter. 'So, forgive me, because I guess I've led a very, you know, vanilla life,' she said.

  'I don't know about that,' said Sam. 'What are you implying? I read Fifty Shades of Grey. I studied it. I tried to set up the study as the Red Room of Pain.'

  Clementine elbowed him. 'I'm just fascinated. Did you find it ... well, I don't know, where to start! Weren't the men watching you kind of ... sleazy?'

  'Of course some of them were, but most of them were just ordinary blokes.'

  'I wasn't sleazy,' said Vid. 'Ah, well, maybe I was a little bit sleazy. In a good way sleazy!'

  'So did you go to those places often?' Clementine asked him, and Tiffany could hear the effort she was making to keep her tone clear of judgement.

  This was what Vid never understood and Tiffany always forgot: people had such complicated feelings when they heard that she'd been a dancer. It was all mixed up with their feelings about sex, which sadly for most people were always inextricably linked with shame and class and morality (some people thought she was confessing to an illegal act), and for the women there were issues relating to body image and jealousy and insecurity, and the men didn't want to look too interested, even though they were generally very interested, and some men got that angry, defensive look as if she were trying to trick them into revealing a weakness, and most people, men and women, wanted to giggle like teenagers but didn't know if they should. It was a freaking minefield. Never again, Vid, never again.