Demons (2 page)

Tim left work early that day a changed man (yes, Adele had freed him), determined
to go back to his bluestone church and tell his wife how much he loved her, how he’d
decided to quit his job and work from home from now on, how they’d plant vegetables
and fruit trees, starting tomorrow, how he’d be close to her, always, and their new
life could begin. The further he drove, the further away his troubles seemed. He
now had almost to squint his mind’s eye, so to speak, to bring Adele’s face and body
into focus or to feel anything for her.

When he pulled into the driveway behind Jay’s ute and stepped out of his car that
afternoon he felt completely strange and new. The air hummed with an unfamiliar silence.
The light was all askew. Even his body felt different, unworn by those few extra
hours of work. It was only when he was on the doorstep (the side door, they never
went up the wedding steps at the front) that he was overtaken by an even stranger
feeling. He shouldn’t be here, it was not his time of day; he’d thought only about
what he was running away
from
, not what he was running
to
. He listened to the silence;
there was no hammering, no sawing, no FM radio playing. Then in that silence he found
what he now realised he was listening for: a whimper, a groan, the sound of a chair
scraping across the timber floor. He listened a bit longer, then walked back to his
car.

Carly heard him: the footsteps on the gravel, the sound of the car door, the ignition,
the motor, the whine of the gearbox as it reversed out of the drive. Jay had tied
her to the kitchen chair, as she’d asked. From his position he wouldn’t hear much—if
anything, she thought, as she squeezed her thighs a little tighter. She listened
to her husband’s footsteps going. What would happen would happen. She leaned back,
closed her eyes, and pushed her tongue a little harder against her teeth.

Tim spent the rest of that afternoon in the pub at Diggers Rest. He drank light beer,
so as to keep his head, and bought a bottle of white wine before leaving. He arrived
home at ‘the usual time’. He and his wife drank the wine over a meal of mushroom
tortellini and green salad while talking about their renovations. The smell of sawdust
was thick in the air. They packed away the dishes and turned the television on. They
went to bed early and slept back to back.

So, said Lauren, as you can imagine, Tim went to work the next morning in a pretty
foul mood. He had given his wife the chance to come clean. It’s not as if I haven’t
tried, he thought: didn’t I agree to the country move, bend my will to hers, give
her everything she asked? And this is the thanks I get? All right, he thought; if
that’s the way you want to play it.

While Carly Ashburton steeled herself the next morning to tell Jay the carpenter
that their ridiculous affair was over, her husband, Tim, even before morning tea,
had cornered Adele the marketing manager in the photocopy room, apologised for yesterday’s
mess and begged to come around to her place after work to show her how serious he
was.

The end of the day was a long time coming, the path of emotions leading to it jagged
and steep. His wife had been having an affair, right under his nose, with his cousin,
a tradesman half his age! Tim made some calls, answered some emails; at five he packed
his briefcase. He felt like he’d been cut loose; anything could happen. He went to
the toilet, washed his hands, and stared at the mirror. He was just stepping into
the elevator when his secretary called out. His wife, Carly, was on the line. Did
he want to speak to her? Tim paused, thinking, then the elevator doors closed.

What did she want? And what was she to him now? He was free, had been freed. The
elevator moved. But perhaps she knew he knew, perhaps she was ringing to confess?
Why hadn’t he thought of that? He couldn’t
hate
her, he’d known her half his life,
they’d shared everything together, and yes, the more he thought about it the more
he came to see that, despite her infidelities (her
mistakes
, he told himself), he
could still love her, even forgive her. With a bit of love and forgiveness they
might put all their errors behind. His forthcoming rendezvous with Adele suddenly
felt filthy and absurd. But he couldn’t turn back; he had to balance that part of
the ledger too. He walked across the bridge—a white plastic bag swirled above the
water on the breeze—and made his way to her building.

She greeted him in her office clothes. There was a steely resolve coming off her.
She wanted to talk. She was not going to delude herself, she said, she knew this
was just an affair but, the fact was, she had only been able to go on with it by
pushing the thought of his marriage—his wife, his children, his bluestone church—from
her mind.

She poured them both a glass of wine. Tim stood at the glass door to the balcony,
the city buildings shining gold. He needed a cigarette but he knew it was too early
yet. Now Adele was crying. (
My God, what next?
) Couldn’t you have kept lying? she
said, between sobs. Couldn’t you have kept the thing here, in this apartment, between
us? He’d still not had a chance to speak, and now he was getting annoyed. He wanted
to give her a piece of his mind, but on the other hand he wanted to get her to bed,
make love, and by doing so get revenge on his wife—that, after all, was why he was
here. But he had no sooner said this to himself, begun to dwell on her faults and
blemishes, than Adele became suddenly very attractive to him again. He looked at
her leaning there with one hand on the bench, tears rolling down her cheeks, and
with just enough cleavage showing for him to imagine his way in there, and realised
how utterly ravishing she actually was. He put an arm around her, kissed her neck,
but this only made it worse; she pushed him away, he approached again, then without
either of them knowing how it happened they were kissing furiously, stumbling into
the bedroom and falling onto the bed.

Tim’s blood was now at boiling point: he wanted Adele, wanted to possess her and
with that drive home the dagger of revenge for Jay’s possession of his wife. He was
tearing at her clothes; he heard a button pop and hit the wall behind. He knew he
was out of control but he was powerless to stop it. Then Adele rolled out from under
him, literally rolled off the side of the bed and landed on the floor with a thud.
Tim sat up, deranged, confused—one moment she was there, the next not. Her head popped
up beside him. With all his experience of women—two wives, three daughters (two
from the first marriage), many girlfriends—he still could not fathom that look. It
was a mixture of horror and hatred. I rang your wife, she said, earlier this afternoon,
and told her what we’ve been doing. She stood up, rearranged her clothes and looked
down at him. I’m going out to eat, she said—and I don’t want to find you here when
I get back. And with that she was gone.

What happened next probably took little more than a minute but for Tim it must have
felt like hours. He heard the door slam, her footsteps in the hall, the elevator
bell, the elevator doors, the elevator descending. He got out of bed and went to
the living area. He took a cigarette from the packet on the bench and the half-glass
of wine he’d left there. He stepped out onto the balcony. The evening was cool. He
could see the light on in his office across the river, the cleaner moving around
inside. It was a good job, sure, but why did he do it? What was the point? He drank
the wine and put the cigarette to his lips. Then he lowered it again. He leaned against
the rail. He was a long way up. He butted out the cigarette and put the glass down.
He stepped up and closed his eyes. He swayed slightly. Then he jumped.

Right at that
moment—
at that very moment
—Carly Ashburton was facedown on the floor of the church
with a blindfold on, her fingernails scraping the boards while Jay the cousin-carpenter
took her from behind. Strewn around the half-built mezzanine was all the evidence
of a long afternoon’s indulgence: empty wine bottles and half-full glasses, various
pieces of underwear, candle stubs on saucers, a stainless-steel phallus, jars of
lubricant. Even now, as the daylight began to fade in the high stained-glass windows,
with every part of her body hurting, with every muscle spent, she still bucked furiously
beneath the carpenter’s heaving and still kept repeating in her head:
Catch me, I
don’t care
. She wanted her husband to come home from work and find her spread out
like that, all the evidence of her debauchery on show. She had wanted it all afternoon,
but her husband didn’t come. She was exhausted, dry and torn, Jay under her instructions
had to scoop great fingerfuls of lubricant from the jar, but Carly had drunk so much
wine by now she was beyond feeling.

She’d hardly slept the night before, she was sure she’d been caught, but still Tim
wouldn’t accuse her. But neither could she bring herself to confess. Their dinner,
during which they gave the truth a wide berth and instead ate mushroom tortellini
and drank white wine and frittered niceties back and forth, had left her confused.
As soon as Tim was out the door that morning she went to the fridge and took out
the leftover half-bottle. She listened to the whine as his car reversed out to the
road. She knew Jay would be arriving soon. She finished that bottle and opened another.
She heard the ute pull up, Jay unloading his gear; she sculled her glass and poured
another. It wasn’t possible to stop herself—just because her husband suspected something,
did this mean she should turn away from the pleasure? If he wanted to stop it he
would have. And anyway, she’d seen him eyeing off all those other women—the marketing
manager at work, Adele, for one. She was not going to start ticking herself off now.
She let Jay get started—he was fitting the skirting boards—before she locked the
front and side doors, gave him the signal, drew him to her, and unclipped the bib
of his overalls.

They spent the next hour making love in the usual places and in the usual ways, though
it was clear throughout that Carly Ashburton’s thoughts were elsewhere. Around mid-morning
their passion dwindled. Jay put on his overalls and went back to work, Carly sat
in the ramshackle adjoining living area with her wineglass and watched him. An hour
later Jay said he had to go—he needed some timber to finish off. Carly Ashburton
listened to the distinctive sound of his tradesman’s ute going through the gears.

A wattlebird was warbling. In the paddocks on the far side of the main road the scream
of a chainsaw rose and fell. She filled her glass again: she was already far gone.
She could feel her life unravelling, like the sad uncoiling of a spring. All morning
she’d felt it, and the drink would not quell it. She was angry. Did she need the
sound of Tim’s cousin’s ute to remind her that this time yesterday she had heard,
clearly, like the ringing of a bell,
his
car on the same gravel drive? He had been
here, had heard her moaning, for all she knew with a glass held to the wall; he had
heard everything and yet said nothing. What was his game? Was he going to punish
her with his silence? Was this the beginning of some great and complicated revenge?
Because in the end, she thought, what is more painful: the guilt of knowing you have
transgressed or the absence of punishment for your transgression?

These thoughts and more cluttered Carly Ashburton’s head while she drank what was
left of the bottle. She’d almost reached the point at which something serious might
happen, where everything would fall over into chaos. Then the phone rang. It was
her husband’s work colleague, the marketing manager, Adele. He’s dead, she thought,
he’s killed himself. He’s finally done it.

I’m ringing about your husband, said Adele.

He’s not here, said Carly Ashburton.

We’ve been having an affair, said Adele.

There was silence except for the sound of the two women breathing.

I’m sorry, said Adele. The silence got deeper. Adele said: Listen. But Carly Ashburton
hung up.

She opened another bottle, poured herself another glass. Then with an almost athletic
shove she got herself up off the couch, staggered a little, and walked into the kitchen.
The breakfast dishes were on the bench. She scraped them, gathered them, put them
in the dishwasher and turned it on. She wiped the brand-new benches. With her rubber
gloves she did the bathroom. She cleaned the toilet, vomited into it, cleaned it
again. She scrubbed around the taps with a nailbrush, cleaned her husband’s razor.
The anger she’d been toying with rose up inside her like an indigestion. She grabbed
her stomach, panted, threw the gloves aside. She put on a coat and went outside.

It was raining; she’d not heard it on the roof. She walked, her feet crunching the
gravel, down to the main road where the old church sign still stood. She had no idea
where she was going. She started walking towards town but then jumped the barbed-wire
fence and headed out across the paddock. The sodden ground gave way beneath her.
The cows looked up, deadpan. She struggled up an incline until she came to the single
tree at the top. It was dry underneath, with a scattering of fallen branches and
cow pats. She sat with her back to it, while down below the cows resumed chewing
their cud.

She could see the church, tucked into its cypress grove. She saw Jay’s ute arrive,
him unloading lengths of timber and taking them in by the side door. After a while
she thought she heard him banging, though it could have been another sound, coming
from the farmhouse on the other side of the hill. She lay with her head on a fallen
branch, listening to the sounds drifting up to her, hearing and sometimes feeling
the
drip-drip
from the leaves. She opened and closed her fists. She spent an hour
like this, maybe more, until she heard Jay’s ute start up. She watched it turn out
of the drive and head towards town. She went back down the hill.