‘Compliment accepted.’
‘He chose me, too. I was young and I took a risk, but he was ambitious, and I thought he saw me the same way. I thought we’d have this big life.’
‘And?’
‘It wasn’t as awful as you keep implying. You met him on two bad nights. I was interested in what he did. We had lots of things to talk about.’
‘You lay in bed discussing corporate law?’
‘Law in general. And politics. Like whether employers should have to offer paid maternity leave.’
Law in bed. That might have been one reason for the problems in their sex life.
‘Let me guess. You said yes, and he said no.’
‘Right. But he had good arguments. Things I hadn’t thought of.’
‘So he won?’
‘If that’s the way you want to look at it.’
‘Hardly surprising, seeing it’s what he does for a job,’ I said. ‘What about acting? Did you talk about that?’
‘Not the theory. It doesn’t interest him.’
It wouldn’t have, since Angelina knew more about it than he did and he couldn’t use it to put her down. There were doubtless deep psychological reasons for his behaviour, but my mother, sight unseen, would have diagnosed short-man’s syndrome.
Oney night, quite late, after we had spent the earlier part of the evening in my loft, Angelina took me to a Chinese restaurant upstairs in one of the city’s laneways. It was an institution, a dive, crowded and noisy and about as far away as possible from the white-tableclothed is-the-blackened-lobster-to-sir’s-liking places I imagined her going with Richard.
We had a table by the door and the waiter had just poured our wine into teacups when a blond woman and her besuited escort, brown-paper BYO bag in hand, arrived at the top of the staircase.
I saw him before Angelina did and automatically stood up, so quickly that I knocked the table over. Teacups and wine hit the floor, and the restaurant went quiet.
We were only a few yards apart. I was looking at Richard and he was looking at Angelina. No more than a couple of seconds passed before he spun on his heel and dragged his lady out with him. I had met her before, though it took a moment to see past the comfortable jeans and loose long-sleeved T-shirt: Angelina’s colleague at Mornington Police, Constable Danni. Jayne Mansfield.
Angelina looked as if she had been hit. The colour had gone from her face. She half stood, then sat back again as a waitress pushed past to deal with the spill.
‘Can we go? Please.’
‘Wait a minute or two. Let them clean up.’
I persuaded her to stay and we talked it through. The problem was not about us being seen together, nor even about her having to deal with Jayne Mansfield at work, but Richard being out with someone else, anyone else.
‘It’s my problem, not yours,’ she said. ‘I told you at the beginning, I haven’t given up on trying to make my marriage—our marriage—work. I knew he was probably seeing someone. It’s just being hit in the face with it…Them out together, like a couple. And here I am, with someone who says he loves me and it’s going nowhere. I’m wasting my time. I’m wasting your time.’
From the start we had agreed that our relationship would end with my departure from Australia. Without that guarantee of an ending, I doubt that Angelina would have been prepared to embark on an affair at all. I think she saw it as a process of sorting herself out, doing the things she should have done before she got married, and then picking up again, with Richard or someone else. But now something had shifted, even more so than on the night we admitted we were in love.
Did our relationship have to be going nowhere?
Putting aside my difficulty in believing that Angelina was in my life, let alone in love with me, the problem was a practical one. I had signed up for a fifteen-month job that plenty of contractors would have killed for. My reputation would be mud and the project set back if I pulled out after the Australian leg, taking the experience with me. I had nine months of country-hopping before I could see Angelina again.
Angelina was tied to Mornington Police. Walking away would be fatal to her budding career. Her dream was to become a leading actress—a Judi Dench or Meryl Streep or Lauren Bacall. It was a stretch from an Australian soap opera, even if she’d had a prodigious talent. Sergeant Kerrie was not Lady Macbeth. Angelina was working hard at it, taking classes in acting and singing and even doing some teaching herself. But there were no guarantees and she could not afford a false step.
I was familiar with the territory. I played piano better than plenty of rock stars. It didn’t matter. Nobody criticises John Lennon’s piano playing on ‘Imagine’. Or, to take an extreme example, Al Kooper’s organ on ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, the Greatest Rock Song of All Time. The punters would not know Al Kooper from J. S. Bach.
After a certain point, it’s not about the last ten per cent of technique but whether you answer a casting call for a madcap TV show or marry Paul McCartney. There is only so much of that sort of luck to share around. I’m not saying I didn’t dream of stardom, but I planned for a career in computing.
Angelina was making no back-up plans, professionally or personally. She would continue with her acting and singing studies, try to keep in work and wait for the break.
It was late November. We had been seeing each other for less than three months since the rainy-night excursion to the Mock Tudor. We may have been in love, but we had never spent a night together, never met each other’s families, never been out with any of her friends. It had made sense when there was a looming end date.
‘Would you wait for me?’ I asked.
She took a few moments to answer. ‘What does that mean? Not see anyone else for nine months?’
I had not thought it through, but that seemed to be the spirit of it. I nodded.
‘What would I be waiting for?’
‘This.’ I waved my hand to indicate us, the room, everything. The hordes wolfing down congee at the long table detracted somewhat from the gesture.
‘Seeing each other, like this?’ she said.
‘Being together again. Seeing how it goes. Nothing to get in our way.’
‘I suppose that’s right. Nine months would be just about the time I’d need to sort out the divorce, find somewhere to live, have everything ready for you.’
I caught the edge in her voice in time to avoid digging a deeper hole for myself. She got up and went to the bathroom.
When she came back, she said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes.’
In the last few weeks, the sense of time running out was inescapable. Angelina made more of an effort to be with me, even skipping singing classes to lie on the grass in the Exhibition Gardens with her head on my chest. Despite my best efforts to live in the moment, to take everything I could from the time left, I was becoming like the Japanese tourists posing for group photos, gathering memories.
In early December, I organised a day trip to Mt Arapiles, about two hundred miles northwest of Melbourne, and booked a beginners’ rock-climbing lesson. It seemed like a fun thing to do together, and concentrating on something physical would give us a break from the ticking clock.
The day started well, driving to breakfast with the sun rising behind us. Angelina had warned me that she was afraid of heights, but I didn’t expect it to be a real problem.
It was. She refused to do the climbing lesson and wouldn’t even walk to the edge of the path to take in the view. It was a full-blown pathological fear: her father and sisters freaked out looking over balconies. I had my lesson, and Angelina managed to take a few pictures, but I couldn’t help feeling it was symptomatic of what was happening to our relationship.
On the return journey, I played psychiatrist. What did her fear of heights signify? Was she afraid of being at the top?
It prompted our only real fight. She had no fear of failure. She was the one taking the risks, working in the most insecure of professions, while I was able to walk into a well-paid jo
b anywhere in the world. When was I going to take some risks?
‘Hey, I was the one who went rock climbing.’
‘With an instructor and a load of safety equipment. You know that’s not what I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t want to be a full-time musician. I get to play piano all I want. If I played piano all the time, I’d probably get bored with it. The way it is now, I love it. Is there a problem with that?’
Apparently there was. Angelina was silent for the rest of the trip, but left a note under my door the next day.
Sorry. Thank you for trying to make the most of the time we have left. I’m just sad there’s so little.
10
It took a week, exactly a week, from Angelina’s first email. Wednesday morning, 9.30 a.m. in Norwich, 8.30 p.m. Melbourne time. I had resolved to put the whole thing out of my mind, and then up popped the window.
Hi
Still married to Charlie. Three kids. Working
full-time.
Angelina
xxx
I have a husband. I have children. Do not entertain any thoughts inconsistent with those facts. Except for two things.
The first was the xxx. It’s not as though three kisses at the bottom of an email meant I’m still in love with you, or even I want to kiss you three times, but they suggested that something remained from our past. The second thing was that she was writing at all, and apparently not to ask about holiday options. What had prompted it?
I composed my reply with some care. Angelina may have initiated the exchange, but her replies had reflected mine in the amount they disclosed. It seemed it was up to me to decide if and how it escalated.
Very belated congratulations. A lot happens in twenty-two years. Happy?
The reply took less than fifteen seconds.
Thanks. A quarter of a lifetime. Kids are great.
Work challenging, but I love it.
I noted the omission of the marriage and went back to her previous email. Still married to Charlie. Still. Was there a suggestion that this was a temporary state of affairs? How would I have written it?
I scrolled down and saw that I had written Still with Claire. If anything, that reinforced my interpretation that things might be shaky for her, or at least a bit dull. But how else would she say it? Everything wonderful with Charlie?
Before I could reply, there was another message from Angelina.
Charlie’s out tasting wine. It’s his regular Wednesday thing.
And two Wednesdays in a row you’ve emailed your old lover. Because you’re lonely—or bored—without Charlie, or because he’s not watching?
We were at a turning point. I could ask the names of her kids, what sort of work she was doing, where they lived. I sensed that if I did, I would slowly dismantle my fantasy of her. I was being offered the pill that would make me hate the taste of alcohol. It was too big a decision to take without more information.
I wrote:
I’m emailing my lover from twenty years ago. It’s in danger of becoming my regular Wednesday thing. xxx Dooglas
Not as witty as I’d have liked, but it would have to do. She had left me hanging the previous week and I would return the favour. I shut down the computer and went for a run.
The shot of adrenaline from upping the ante carried me to an extra circuit of the park before I changed and walked into town where, along with doing the week’s shopping, I introduced myself at the piano shop and spent an enjoyable couple of hours chatting and trying out keyboards. Back home, I managed to restrain myself from checking my email and headed for the pub.
I was on fire all evening, and my resolution to stick to a single pint in the interests of weight loss only added to my edge. Phil Upchurch’s big hit of 1961? ‘Oop Poop Ah Doo’. Roy Orbison song covered by Creedence Clearwater Revival? ‘Ooby Dooby’. Capital of Burkina Faso? Ouagadougou. Sheilagh barely got a look-in.
‘You’re looking fantastic,’ she said. ‘Have you got a job or something?’
‘Started running again.’ A week ago, but I was feeling a difference.
‘Well, keep it up.’
We nailed second place, beaten only by the pub champions. Stuart waited until Sheilagh went outside to make a call before offering his take on my reinvigoration.
‘Are you having an affair, mate?’
‘What? No.’ And then, because I knew I should share it with someone and that person was not going to be Claire, I added, ‘Someone I used to know got back in touch.’
‘Old geezer, happily married, wanted to talk databases, right?’
‘One out of three. She’s married, she lives in Australia and we’ve exchanged about a dozen words on email. No big deal.’
‘Except for the new personality. So you’ve told Claire and she’s good with it, right? Copying her in, maybe the four of you can have a holiday together. And since it’s no big deal, you can stop now.’
‘It’s only a few emails. Just woke me up a bit.’
‘I’m not complaining about that. I suppose it was the only way you were going to get out of the funk. Other than getting a job, which, of course, is out of the question. I keep thinking one day I’ll pick up the Telegraph and there’ll be a picture of you holding a blanket over your head, and I’ll find I’ve been playing the pub quiz with the bloody Unabomber.’
‘Come on, I’ve been fine. I’m out three nights a week.’
‘True, but with what sort of people? Seriously, I know your mum’s been sick, I know you and Claire are struggling a bit, but you’ve been flat as a tack since before Christmas. Maybe you need some sort of distraction, but these things turn dangerous quicker than you think.’
On the bus home, I checked my email. Four messages from Angelina.
Do you want to live dangerously?
Stuart had been prescient. There’s a lot of time to get to know people between pub-quiz rounds and I had two circles of friends as a result. Sheilagh and Stuart were in the centre, with Derek and the other once-a-weekers around them. I counted myself lucky. Short-term work assignments are not a good way to build long-term relationships, and I had lost touch with the friends of my early adulthood as they retreated into family life.
Claire’s friends were scattered around the country. She and I went out together on the weekends, but we had not been out with another couple for a long time. And none of my conversations with anybody involved flirting, innuendo and double entendres.
The next message just said,
Well?
She had waited three minutes.
Then:
Hey, I asked you a question.
Eight minutes. And, finally,
Wimp.
She would be asleep now. I emailed her something to wake up to.
I was in a meeting. Feeling dangerous now.
I was feeling extremely dangerous. Claire was still up, working at her computer. When I kissed her goodnight, I tilted her head and kissed her lips instead of her cheek, and she gave me a smile back.
I slept till 8 a.m., went for a jog, stole some of Claire’s muesli and yoghurt for breakfast in place of my usual fry-up, and checked my inbox. There was a message.
xxx
That was it. But it lifted me for the rest of the day, so high I couldn’t concentrate on anything. For the first time in living memory I felt switched on, in that driven, edgy way that affects your whole body. Wired. The way I used to feel before a big date.
They say your libido hits the downward slope hard at forty-five, and I was staring down the barrel of fifty. In less than a year, my friends would gather in some typically English pub, drink pints and wish me happy birthday. After that, Claire and I would go home, she might feel obliged to offer me some sexual favour that I would feel embarrassed about accepting, and later I would go to sleep in my single bed without ever feeling what I felt when those three kisses appeared on my screen.
It was odd, in a way. Sex had been an important part of my relationship with Angelina. But my memories of her
were romantic, nostalgic, downbeat. She had not featured in my erotic fantasies. I could see that changing.
I walked around the house like a caged lion, making coffee just for something to do, which made the problem worse. I was going to go crazy without some sort of distraction. Stuart had had a point.
I emailed my contracting agency in London. Distraction or not, I was due to do some honest work.
I only needed to work six months a year to match Claire’s income. Although I had lost interest in the progress of database technology, there were plenty of legacy systems needing maintenance and enhancement. Veterans prepared to forgo the excitement of the new were rewarded with premium rates.
On the other side of the equation, Claire had thrown in her project-management job to join a start-up software company that was doing better at building a brilliant child-support payments system for one government client than at making a profit. Three months ago, an American company had offered to buy them out and they had been in negotiation since then. As one of the principals, Claire could be coming home at some time in the future with a big cheque and no job. Or a transfer to run the new owner’s Ouagadougou office.
I had no plan for dealing with that, let alone next Wednesday.
11
Back in 1989, I did not have a plan, either. Just a hope—a fantasy—of how events might play out.
The Australian leg of my contract was due to finish on the Friday before Christmas and I was booked to fly to New Zealand on 28 December. Six weeks there, then a further seven months on the road, including the final stint at home.
If Angelina truly loved me, she would wait. I would return to Australia and we would pick up where we had left off, our love for each other only strengthened by the separation. She could continue her career and I would find a local contract.