Taming the Beast

  Sarah kept her face to the window. She knew she looked horrible, and it wasn’t as though she wanted false compliments; she just didn’t understand why he had to be so intentionally hurtful.

  ‘Oh, my Sarah.’ His mouth brushed the back of her neck, her ear, her jawbone. ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun.’

  Sarah leant back into him, forgiving him instantly and completely. Shakespeare’s sonnets were the background noise to their entire affair. In the public torture of the classroom he would read aloud, and every word seemed to be written by him for her. His favourite was eighteen: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Now, it seemed trite and contrived, but maybe that was just because it had become a cliché, a Hallmark greeting floating over a picture of daffodils and long green grass, and a girl with her face hidden by a large white hat. When Shakespeare wrote it, it was original and crammed with sincerity, and so it had been when Sarah heard it for the first time. When he had looked at her across the classroom and she had felt her cheeks redden as he recited. He is such a spunk. If only he didn’t make us do all this lovey dovey crap Jess had whispered. Sarah couldn’t recall what she said in response but whatever it was she had said it too loudly and he stopped reading, his eyes reproachful. Something you want to share with the class, Miss Clark? Sarah had shaken her head, mortified. Mr Carr kept her back after class that day and lectured her on being disruptive. He said she had no respect for him as a teacher. Then he fucked her while she recited the sonnet over and over. So you never forget he said.

  ‘What will it take to get you to talk to me again?’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to talk to you. I don’t know what I want to do with you.’

  ‘How about a drink at my apartment?’

  Sarah felt like she would weep. ‘Yeah, alright.’

  Daniel’s apartment was on the fifteenth floor of a near new building in Rosehill. Sarah didn’t want to look at anything except Daniel, but she forced herself to be polite about his polished timber floorboards and marble bathroom and extra wide balcony. He was childlike in his excitement as he pointed out the fridge with built in icemaker and the rosewood bookshelves that covered an entire wall of his living room. It was as though he was eighteen and living away from home for the first time. Then Sarah realised that he probably was living alone for the first time and felt a surge of protectiveness.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his neck. ‘Can we go to bed now?’

  Daniel laughed. ‘No, we can’t go to bed, Sarah. We hardly know each other.’

  ‘That’s crazy talk.’ Sarah kissed her way up the side of his neck until she got to his ear. ‘No one knows me like you do. I wouldn’t have let you do what you did last night if we’d hardly known each other.’

  ‘Firstly, Sarah, you didn’t let me do that; you didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’ Sarah stuck her tongue in his ear.

  ‘And second,’ Daniel stepped back from her, his hands remaining on her waist. ‘Last night is the perfect example of why we can’t go to bed. I have no self-control with you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to have any.’

  ‘It’s very important to me that we do this right. It isn’t going to be like last time.’

  Sarah pulled him close again, pressing her body against him. ‘It will be so much better. I can show you some things this time.’

  ‘Jesus, Sarah!’ Daniel pushed her and she fell backward onto a coffee table. He didn’t seem to notice; he was pulling books off the bookshelf and mumbling to himself. When he turned back to her, he was holding a leather book the size of the yellow pages. He pointed to the lounge beside her. ‘Sit.’

  Sarah did as he said. ‘Is this one of your fantasies? You want me to read you bible stories before we fuck? Or will you read them to me while I–’

  Daniel put his hand over her mouth. ‘Shut up. I want to show you something, then you can tell me how well we know each other.’

  He took his hand away and Sarah poked her tongue out at him but didn’t say anything more. He had opened the book on his lap, and Sarah saw that it was not a book at all, but a photo album. He had opened it to a wedding photo; the couple in it looked as happy as Sarah had ever seen anybody look. They were smiling, not at the camera, but at each other and their hands were entwined. He had shoulder length blond hair and wore a pale blue tuxedo; she was in a flowing white dress with a garland of flowers on her head. A banner over their heads said: Congratulations Danny and Lisa.

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘I was Danny then.’

  They were both silent as Sarah turned the pages over. She could hardly believe he had ever been so smooth and fresh. He looked like a surfer or a beach bum hippy, and she – his wife – was beautiful, despite the flicked hair and blue eye shadow.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Too young.’ He squinted, revealing deep furrows around his eyes. ‘Barely nineteen.’

  Sarah counted back. ‘You know you got married four years before I was even born?’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Daniel, which made Sarah laugh although there was nothing funny about any of it.

  Sarah continued turning the pages. Lisa with very long hair, lying on the beach in a yellow bikini. Daniel on the beach in red Speedos striking a muscle man pose. Lisa in a karate outfit holding a certificate up to the camera. Daniel in his graduation gown, with his arm thrown over Lisa’s shoulder. Page after page of the golden couple. Her hair got longer and his got shorter as Sarah flipped the pages.

  ‘Here,’ Daniel said, and brushed her hand aside. He flicked through the pages hurriedly. ‘My girls. That’s Abbey in the red hat and Claire over by the tree. This is in Italy a couple of years ago. It was the last proper holiday I had with them.’

  Sarah stared. Two slim, blonde teenagers with brightly coloured ski gear and mocking smiles. The younger one, Claire, looked about sixteen and had Daniel’s eyes. They were both very pretty. Sarah felt nothing for them; they had nothing to do with her.

  She closed the album and put it aside. ‘Okay, I get it. You think I don’t know you well enough because I haven’t confronted the reality of your life away from me. But you’re wrong. I’ve spent the last eight years of my life confronting the reality that you had a family. I never cared and I don’t care now.’

  ‘You really don’t understand.’

  Sarah clenched her fists. ‘Can I smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Are we going to fuck anytime soon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to understand that I didn’t leave my family for the sake of a quick fuck, or a brief, torrid affair. This isn’t a mid-life crisis, or temporary insanity, or a whim. This is my life.’ Daniel took her hands, pressing them together between his own. His voice was barely a whisper. ‘I have never been a risk taker, Sarah. When I made love to you it was the first time I had ever broken the law. It was the first time I had been unfaithful to my wife. After being with you I always felt sick for a day just thinking about my daughters, and Lisa, and my job, and God.’

  ‘Stop acting so fucking superior. So you’re old. So you sacrificed shit. Boo hoo!’ Sarah pulled her hands away from him and grabbed her cigarettes from her bag. She ignored his narrowed eyes and lit one, feeling better immediately. ‘You, Mr-Kind-Religious-Family-Man, got yourself an eager, adoring, obedient little sex slave for a couple of months. Then you fucked off and lived your Kind-Religious-Family-Man life for eight years. While you were having international holidays, and skiing, and fucking your wife, I was back here growing up. I’m not a fourteen-year-old virgin anymore. I’ve been around the block more times than you’d believe. So stop this melodramatic bullshit. You want me or you don’t. Anything else we’ll figure out as we go along.’

  Daniel stared at her for a full ten seconds. Th
en he took the cigarette from her hand, walked to the window and tossed it out. When he turned back to her he was smiling. ‘You’re incredible. I mean…’ He came over and knelt at her feet. ‘You are incredible, Sarah. You keep blowing me away with how beautiful, and smart and gutsy you are. How am I supposed to keep a level head?’

  ‘You’re not. The level head is for the rest of the world; with me you get to go crazy.’

  ‘I know you think I’m being absurd, but I have to know you feel the way I do before I can let this happen. Resisting you when you’re so available to me is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, please don’t make it harder.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ She shrugged, and he, infuriatingly, gorgeously, shrugged back at her.

  ‘I have to show you something else,’ he said, returning to the bookshelf.

  ‘If it isn’t your cock then I’m not interested’

  ‘Stop talking like that or I’ll call you a taxi.’ He handed her a crumpled, yellowing envelope. ‘Have a look.’

  Sarah rolled her eyes, but she took the envelope and pulled out the small pile of photos it contained. The first was an official school photo of fourteen-year-old Sarah in her navy pleated skirt, white shirt and navy blazer, with her long hair plaited on either side of her head. Next were two blurry shots of Sarah playing soccer in her sports uniform. In one shot her arms were in the air, celebrating victory, in the other she was running towards the camera, frowning at her unseen opponent. Next was a photo of Sarah at the school swimming carnival. The photo was almost identical to one that Jamie had in his wallet, except Jamie had been cut out of this one so that only his hand was visible, resting on Sarah’s wet shoulder. Jesus, what would he say about all this?

  She picked up the final photo and winced. When Sarah was on the yearbook committee, Mr Carr had been the supervising teacher and had wanted some pictures of the team at work to put on the inside cover. Sarah and the other four on the committee had struck up some silly poses, tongues sticking out and eyes squeezed shut. He must have taken a whole roll of film and they all thought they were so funny, crossing their eyes and doing bunny ears over each others heads. The photo in Sarah’s hand was not one of the silly shots that she remembered being taken. It was of Sarah sitting alone at the editing table, her hair falling loose over one shoulder. She was concentrating on the clippings laid out before her, unaware that a camera was aimed at her, angled so that a triangle of pink underwear was visible between her skinny, unselfconsciously splayed legs.

  She put the photos on the floor in front of her. ‘These were taken before we… This is sick, Daniel.’

  ‘I know. When Lisa caught me with them she went crazy, threatened to call the police. I told her the truth that I loved you, but it only made her angrier. I suppose under all her ranting about abuse and exploitation she may have been feeling common jealousy.’

  ‘So she kicked you out?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘No, she was extremely reasonable. She offered separate bedrooms and psychiatric treatment, and I gratefully accepted. The psychiatrist was more helpful than I could’ve imagined. I told him all about you, about the affair and the photos and the fantasising, everything. Then he asked me if I was willing to commit myself to moving on from those memories. He said if I was serious about saving my marriage, then I had to be serious about putting the past behind me. I realised I didn’t want to do that at all. I went home and told Lisa that I was leaving her to come and find you. The girls sided with her, understandably. They both said as far as they were concerned they had no father.’

  ‘Daniel…’ Sarah understood a little more now. She understood that he had given up more than she had ever had. She understood, but it only made her want him more urgently. She ran her hands over his face, through his hair, down his neck and over his shoulders. ‘I love you, and I do understand what you’ve given up. But the past is past, we can be together now.’

  He moved out of her reach. ‘It’s important to me that we do this right. If you love me, you’ll let me do this right. You’ll wait.’

  She sighed and stared at the photos spread out in front of her. ‘So did you take these to jerk off to or what?’

  ‘I thought it might help get it out of my system so I wouldn’t have to… But it didn’t work. I kept… I went to my minister and told him that I was obsessed with another woman. That I was tempted to commit adultery. He told me to pray for forgiveness and to pay more attention to my wife.’

  ‘Did you?’ The thought of him with anyone else made her skin prickle. And she was so pretty, his wife, much prettier than Sarah.

  ‘I tried. It didn’t work. Every time Lisa and I made love I was thinking about you. It just made me feel worse, because she wasn’t you and I was unsatisfied, and I felt ashamed for betraying her, even mentally. I loved her, and I was so angry about what I was feeling. I kept thinking it was a phase, a mid-life crisis or something. But it didn’t pass. It got stronger and stronger. Until the photos weren’t enough anymore.’

  ‘How long were you doing this before you made a move on me?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few months.’

  ‘I’m trying to decide what I would have done at the time, had I known what you were doing. I think I would have been disgusted.’

  ‘I certainly was.’

  ‘I wasn’t disgusted when you touched me. And that was a hell of a surprise.’

  ‘God, I was terrified that day. If we’d been caught, worse, if you’d run screaming…’ Daniel slid over and kissed her cheek, his lips lingered for a moment then kissed a line up her cheekbone to her forehead. ‘I was just so overwhelmed. You were right there, right beside me, I could smell your hair and… oh…’ He pushed his face into her hair. She waited in silence for him to continue. ‘I was crazed. I had worked myself into such a frenzy, over such an extended period of time that it felt inevitable. One minute I was listening to you talk–’

  ‘Shakespeare wasn’t it?’ Sarah stroked the back of his head, getting lost in his memory. She could smell the chalk on his hands and hear the tennis ball thumping the classroom window.

  ‘Yes. You were talking and I was thinking about how your skin would feel. I was looking at your knee and it was so close, and I was thinking that I could just reach out, just extend my hand the smallest distance, and then I’d know. I’d know what your skin felt like and that would be enough.’

  ‘And so you did,’ Sarah whispered.

  ‘And you did not run screaming,’ Daniel whispered back.

  ‘Although, if I had known you were a wanking, stalking, pervert I would never have let you touch me.’

  ‘But you know now. And you are letting me touch you.’

  ‘Now it’s too late. I’m already touched.’

  Daniel looked into her face. ‘I haven’t had a single moment of peace since that day.’

  ‘Me neither. I’ve been so restless all this time. I find ways to zonk myself out so I can have that oblivion. I drink much too much; I have sex until I’m numb; I take muscle relaxants. If I do all three, then sometimes I can sleep all night, or at the very least, my mind goes blank for a few hours.’ Sarah couldn’t stop herself from leaning forward and kissing Daniel on the lips. ‘Lots of times I’ve fallen asleep only to dream of you. When I wake up I feel like everything is wrong. I feel like my skin is too tight.’

  ‘God, I know, Sarah, darling, I know.’

  She couldn’t bear it anymore. She threw her body at him, covered his mouth with hers. He struggled for a second then groaned and pushed her onto her back. His hands were all over her, all at once. In her hair, on her neck, her thighs, pushing her dress up over her hips. He was a scavenging, hungry beast, gnashing his teeth and clawing at her like she was a dead thing. He made noises that came from his chest and the back of his throat.

  She struggled against his weight, freeing her arm enough to reach down and unzip his pants. He went on, tearing at her neck with his teeth, scratching her belly with his nails. She took hold of his cock a
nd he began thrusting into her hand. ‘I love you, Daniel,’ she said over and over, while he fucked her hand and tore at her body.

  Then he lifted his head, looked into her eyes and slapped her hard across the face. ‘Dear God, Sarah! Why won’t you let me do this right? Why won’t you let me treat you with respect?’

  Sarah knew that he could not see how ridiculous his question was. He didn’t see that biting her legs and slapping her face was less respectful than a mutually satisfying screw. She didn’t know why that intrigued her when any sane person would be disturbed. She could see the twisted logic, the distorted morality, the dangerous self-justification; it’s just that she didn’t mind.

  ‘I don’t want respect. I want you to fuck me.’

  He opened his mouth wide, as if to roar, but the sound that came out was an injured whimpering. He rolled off her and on to the floor. ‘Shit.’ He was panting and clutching his chest. Pitiful wounded beast. ‘We’re not doing this, Sarah. Not like this.’

  Sarah sat up. Her hands were shaking. ‘You’re a bastard, you know that?’

  ‘It isn’t going to be like this.’ He did not look at her.

  ‘Fine.’ Sarah stood up and put herself together again. She watched him the entire time, afraid that he would never look at her again. ‘Tell me how it’s going to be.’

  ‘You’re going to stop sleeping around, stop dressing like a tart, and stop acting as though I’m a novel distraction from your real life. I am going to get answers for all my questions about you.’

  ‘And then what? Then we can have sex?’

  ‘When I see that you’re ready to commit yourself properly, you’ll come and live with me.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Will I?’

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed to notice for the first time that his deflating penis was outside of his pants. He made another noise from his throat, like an animal dying slowly on a country road. ‘Until then there will be no more touching; it’s too difficult.’

  Sarah considered him. He was old, pathetic, crumpled, mean. He’d been back in her life for three days, and was ordering her around already. He put conditions on her that were arbitrary and nonsensical. He was contradictory and cruel. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to tell him to shove his rules and orders up his dirty old man arse. No, she didn’t. She wanted to do everything he said, twice as well as he told her to, then he would be delighted with her, and he would love her and touch her forever.