Nine Perfect Strangers

Now he was fifty-six years old. A grandfather! He’d seen his wife give birth to their three children. He was beyond feeling embarrassed by the dark mysteries of a woman’s body. Yet that’s how Loony Woman had made him feel.

He stood, agitated, his chair scraping back. There were two hours of ‘free time’ to fill before dinner. At home the hours between work and bed glided by in a haze of beer and food and television. Now he didn’t know where to go. This room felt too small for him. There were too many cutesy ornaments. Yesterday he’d turned around and knocked a vase off a side table, shattering it, causing him to swear so loudly that whoever was in the room next to his probably heard. He hoped it wasn’t an antique.

He leaned over the balcony and studied the grounds. Two kangaroos stood in the shade of the house. One of them was grooming itself, twisting around in a very human way to scratch. The other one sat still, ears alert; it looked like it was carved in stone.

He could see the gleaming aquamarine of a huge kidney-shaped pool. Maybe he’d go for a swim. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been for a swim. The beach used to be such a big part of his life when the kids were little. He took all three to Nippers every Sunday morning for years, to learn how to be surf-safe. Meanwhile, his three pale-skinned grandchildren had probably never caught a wave in their sad little Dutch lives.

He went to his suitcase and pulled out his board shorts, trying not to think of a stranger’s hands rifling through his clothes, searching for contraband, noting his faded underwear. He needed new clothes.

His ex-wife used to buy all his clothes. He never asked her to buy his clothes, she just did it, and he wasn’t interested in clothes, so he got used to it. Then, years later, during the divorce, it appeared that was one of the many, many things she did for which she felt ‘taken for granted’. He ‘never once said thank you’. Didn’t he? Could that be true? Jesus. And if it was true, why wait twenty-two years to mention it? Surely he said thank you. But why not tell him he was being an ungrateful pig at the time, so he didn’t have to feel like the worst man in the world sitting there in front of that counsellor all those years later? He’d felt so ashamed at that moment he literally couldn’t speak. This turned out to be an example of him ‘shutting down’, ‘being emotionally distant’, ‘not giving a shit’ – and on it went until he no longer did give a shit and he was numbly signing the papers.

What was that phrase his wife used to describe him? As if it were funny? ‘Amateur human being.’ She’d even said it to the counsellor.

A few months after that counselling session it occurred to him that there were various things he’d done in that marriage for which he was pretty sure he’d never been thanked or acknowledged. He took care of everything to do with her car, for example. The amateur human being kept her car filled with petrol. He’d often wondered if she thought it had some sort of self-filling mechanism. He got her car serviced once a year. Did her tax return.

Wasn’t it possible they both took each other for granted? Wasn’t it possible that taking each other for granted was one of the benefits of marriage?

But it was too late by then.

Now it was five years since the separation and they were the best five years of his ex-wife’s life. She was back in touch with her ‘true self’. She lived on her own and did evening courses and went on weekends away with a gaggle of blissfully divorced women. In fact, they often came to places like this. His ex now had a ‘daily meditation practice’. ‘How long do you practise before you get it right?’ Tony had asked, and she’d rolled her eyes so hard it was a wonder they didn’t get stuck there. Whenever she talked to Tony these days she kept stopping to breathe deeply. Come to think of it, she looked like she was breathing through a straw.

Tony pulled up the board shorts.

Jesus Christ.

They must have shrunk badly. He’d probably washed them the wrong way. In cold water. Or hot water. The wrong water. He tugged at the fabric with all his strength and slid the button through the buttonhole.

Done. Except he couldn’t breathe.

He coughed and the button pinged free, skittering across the floorboards. He laughed out loud with disbelief and looked down at the huge, hairy bulge of his stomach. It seemed to belong to someone else.

He remembered a different body. A different time. The almighty roar of an ecstatic crowd. The way the sound used to vibrate in his chest. Once there ha

d been no barrier at all between his mind and his body. He thought ‘run’ and he ran. He thought ‘jump’ and he jumped.

He rolled down his shorts so that they sat beneath his belly, and thought of his ex-wife, six months pregnant, doing the same thing with an elastic-waisted skirt.

He picked up his room key and put a white bath towel over his shoulder. Were these towels allowed outside? There was probably a clause in the contract about it. Old mate the beanstalk would be able to tell him. Presumably a lawyer. Tony knew all about lawyers.

He left his room. The house was as quiet and still as a church. He opened the front door and walked out into the afternoon heat and down the paved path that led to the pool.

A woman walked towards him from the opposite direction, wearing a sporty black swimming costume and a sarong tied at her waist. The one with the chunky plait of hair like a horse’s tail and brightly coloured cat’s-eye glasses. Tony had her pegged: intellectual left-wing feminist. She would write Tony off after five minutes of conversation. Still, he’d rather be ignored by the feminist than interact with Loony Woman.

The path was too narrow for them to pass each other, so Tony stood to one side, which hopefully would not offend her feminist principles, like that time when he’d held open a door for a woman and she’d hissed, ‘I can open it myself, thanks.’ He’d thought about letting it slam in her face, but he didn’t, of course, he just smiled like a gormless goon because not every man was capable of violence towards women, even if they did have the occasional violent thought.

This woman didn’t make eye contact, but lifted her hand in thanks as if she were lifting it from the steering wheel of a car to thank him for letting her into his lane, and it was only after she’d gone past him that he realised she was weeping quietly. He sighed. He couldn’t stand to see a woman cry.

He watched her go – not a bad figure – then walked on towards the pool, tugging at his shorts to make sure they didn’t fall at his feet.

He opened the gate.

For fuck’s sake.

Loony Woman was in the pool, bobbing about like a cork.

chapter nineteen

Frances