Читать книгу Half Past Dead - Jane Clifton - Страница 11

WHAT was it about Lawrence that had caused Ronnie to go off the rails in the first place? Was it something to do with his eyes? Not so much their colour or shape, or their distance apart, but how they made her feel when they made contact with hers. What? Just eye contact? It can't have been just that. Lordy! How many times a week did people make eye contact with people they found attractive? How many of those end up in bed together?

'Freshly squeezed orange juice. Poached eggs and bacon on toast with some hash browns on the side. Thanks.' She gave the order to a young man, who clearly had far more important things to be doing with his time and his hair. Ronnie checked her watch. Eleven-thirty. The Take Two Cafe was a block away from Arthouse. If she called this brunch she should make it into work by one and put in a full afternoon. Maybe stay back for a while and make up for this morning.

'Any coffee with that?' the waiter asked in a flat sing-song tone, implying that nothing could be less interesting than her reply and that he had a very important sculpture to finish back at his warehouse conversion.

'Yeah, white, thanks.'

'Flat white or caffe latte?' he demanded. 'There's a difference, you know.'

'Yeah,' she said. 'Whichever is the strongest.'

'They're the same strength.' He stared out into the street. 'One of them comes in a glass.'

What was this? 'Mastermind'?

'And, it's bigger.'

'I'll have that one then.' By now Ronnie would have accepted an instant coffee with aeroplane milk just to get him off her case.

'Do you want the coffee now, or after the' - he flipped slowly back through the pages of his pad - 'eggs?'

'Afterwards, thanks. I'll have the juice now.' And wipe that look off your face or I'll smack it off, she thought as she beamed at him.

He let out another long-suffering sigh and flounced off to the kitchen.

Whatever it was with Lawrence and his eyes it didn't happen at first sight. In late November, when Dexter hired him as the big expert on Asian retail and manufacturing, she was only interested in why.

'This guy's lived in Thailand for the last ten years, Ronnie. He's a bloody goldmine of information!' Dexter exclaimed. He leaned back into his office chair and stretched his long legs up onto the desk one on top of the other, while at the same time crossing his hands behind his silvery, close-cropped head.

'He's originally from Brisbane. Started out as a chippie with Angstrom Inc. and ended up as head of sales and marketing for their entire South-East Asian operation. He knows the territory. Parted company with the furniture kings when things got a bit quiet in the eighties, after Nils had that prang that put Diane into the driver's seat at Angstrom. Greener pastures beckoned for Konitz, all of them Asian apparently.'

Dexter Henderson was in his early forties with a tough physique that was holding up well against the forces of gravity. His rough-as-bags good looks still had a certain charm about them in spite of a hairline that refused to face the future bravely and insisted on retreating further and further each year. A strategy he countered by mowing down to stubble what was left, rather than indulging in the pathetic little ponytail style favoured by ageing executive baby boomers or the concentration-camp-chic, number-one, bald-guy shave adopted by pampered, war-free youngsters in the nineties. Mementoes of a long and successful sporting career were etched onto his face, the most noticeable being a three-centimetre diagonal scar traversing his left eyebrow and a hairline scar from his upper lip to just beneath a nose that been broken and mended at least once. His knees gave him hell, especially in winter.

'Why is he back in Australia?' Ronnie had asked.

'Thought it was time for a spell back home, according to Jenny.' Dexter always opted for the diminutive much to Genevieve Waters' palpable annoyance. 'Met him at some club. You know how Jenny operates. According to her, Konitz just wanted to check out the lay of the land, so to speak, didn't want to take on anything too permanent. We have lucked in, Fermoy. He's got the contacts, speaks the language, knows all the cultural crap and he's got an unbelievable bloody photographic memory to boot. You should hear him rattling off phone numbers, figures and the names of every CEO from here to Uzbekistan! The guy is worth his weight in scrip, Fermoy, and he's just fallen into our laps! It's going to make things so much easier.'

'I thought Lucy was doing a pretty good job on all the overseas stuff. She got the foot in the door with 2-SWAN. You know she's doing a crash course in Cantonese off her own bat and... '

'Sure,' he cut her off. 'Sure, Luce was doing good, I know. But with Konitz we can fast-track. Don't get me wrong, her effort's been duly noted. She'll provide a great backstop.'

'How much are you paying him,' she asked brazenly, 'for all this - expertise?'

'None of your bloody beeswax, Fermoy!' he said, snorting with laughter. Fermoy was her maiden name. Dexter was in denial about Mrs Ronnie Collins. 'Rest assured it's not coming off your salary.'

There was a pause. 'Handsome bastard too, eh.'

'Didn't think he was your type, love,' she smirked.

'Not me, smartarse! Don't you find him cute?'

'I'm married, remember,' she replied dryly.

'Doesn't stop you looking, mate. Jesus! Lou-Ann nearly fell off her chair when he walked in last week!' he cackled. 'Most unseemly. All the chicks in the joint had their eyes hanging out on stalks, married and single. Are you trying to tell me you're somehow immune?'

'Don't give it much thought, to tell you the truth,' she countered, irked at having to defend herself.

'What? You mean if someone like Brad Pitt or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Hugh Grant maybe, walked in here you wouldn't even look up from your desk?

'Not my type, any of them,' she laughed.

'You see!' he crowed. 'You do have a type. You do look!' His blue eyes blazed with triumph.

'Dexter, is there some point to all this?'

'Nah, I'm just having a go at you,' he said, quite calm, as if his baiting hadn't happened.

'I mean, I genuinely haven't given the guy a second look. But, hey, if it makes you happy I'll do so at the first opportunity,' she said with a mock salute, 'and report back with a score out of ten. Okay?'

'Don't worry about it,' he said gruffly. 'I was only joking. Just forget it, eh.'

She got up to walk out of his office but he stopped her at the door.

'You're still an attractive woman you know, Fermoy. That bloody husband of yours wants to be a bit careful.' He said this without looking up and without a trace of humour. It sounded almost like a threat.

'Thanks, boss. I'll bear it in mind.'

What was all that about? And why did Ronnie find it so unsettling? Dexter was a creature of whim, and so far that had worked in her favour. As employer and employee they were good friends who enjoyed making fast and loose with sarcasm and the piss-take. He'd taken her on fourteen years ago and gave her free rein. He encouraged her, praised her and, on occasions, was constructively critical of her prodigious talent which, he knew, had helped to put Arthouse on the map. He was singularly unimpressed when she had announced her impending marriage.

'What the fuck do you wanna go and ruin your life like that for?' he had bellowed. 'Look at you! You're young, talented, you've got so much more to do with your life other than being some dickhead's housekeeper. Especially that dickhead!'

Dexter was a 'self-made' man with little formal education. He had never made a secret of his low opinion of Boyd, in spite of only having met him half a dozen times. 'Smartarses' like lawyers made him feel inferior and he hated that.

'Dexter,' she had countered, 'just because I'm getting married doesn't mean I'll forget how to use a paintbrush. Nothing's going to change. I'll still be lovable old Ronnie Fermoy.'

'Well, don't expect to see me dancing at your wedding. Take it from one who knows, marriage is a crock of shit.'

This was a sentiment Ronnie had always subscribed to in her youth. Her parents never expected her to marry. Faith, for one, cautioned her against it, warning that marriage led to a life of drudgery and disappointment: 'I knew after two weeks that I'd made a terrible mistake' was her summation of thirty years' bliss with Ronnie's father. While Godwin loved to say, with a hint of mischief, 'Never marry for money, sweetie, just marry where money is.' It had taken her most of her adult life to figure out what he meant.

Ronnie planned to have a career and a series of lovers and gave no thought to marriage or letting the patter of little feet drown out the roar of the jet plane that would whisk her away overseas to soak up life and shopping.

Boyd and Ronnie had lived together for three years before she capitulated and agreed to marry him. Boyd had strong features: eyes as big and blue as Antarctic ice, a long, straight nose hovering above a small, sensuous mouth, a square jaw and pointed chin that delivered a profile sharp enough to cut your steak with. It was rakish charm as opposed to drop-dead handsome that attracted Ronnie to Boyd.

By the time she had started seeing him on a regular basis she was a confident, ambitious young woman who knew what she wanted, in and out of bed. Sex with Boyd was the best she had experienced, so far. Spectacular, in fact. But was that because Boyd had opened new doors of sexuality for her or simply because she knew what she wanted?

Then Boyd had arrived at her flat one day, with a boot full of clothes, books, a couple of old sporting trophies and an electric frypan. 'Whaddya reckon?' he beamed, 'might as well give it a shot, eh? I promise to go quietly when you get sick of me and not to make a mess.' And then he'd taken her in his arms and given her one of those stop-the-world-I-have-to-lie-down kisses.

'I'll give you six months,' she said, 'eight with good behaviour.'

'Gor' bless you, ma'am, you won't regret it,' he said, tugging his forelock.

'Is that all there is?' she asked, as she surveyed his goods and chattels.

'Is that all there is?' he sang back. 'If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booze, and have a ball. If that's all, there is.'

She laughed helplessly as he waltzed her all the way up the stairwell, knowing that there would be no turning back.

When Ronnie found herself pregnant she was furious. She did not want to have a baby. For a start, she subscribed to the western world's obsession with the Body Thin. Secondly, she had a low tolerance of pain and the idea of a possible twelve- to sixteen-hour stretch, no pun intended, with no guarantee of a satisfactory outcome was not an experience she wanted to undertake. Thirdly, she was only twenty-eight years old for Chrissake! She had her whole, single, fancy-free, the-world-is-my-oyster life ahead of her. If it had to happen at all, now was not the right time!

Most of all, though, she did not want to feel that she had to stay with Boyd for ever. That would spoil everything. She knew she would start to feel trapped and that would take all the fun out of it.

He, of course, was no help at all. 'You do what you think is right,' he kept saying, toeing the correct line, letting those who ride decide, letting the woman have complete control of her body, etcetera, etcetera. Pathetic SNAG. Why couldn't he say something like, 'Well, that's it, we have to get married now, the party's over,' or even, 'Okay, I'm off, it's been great but I'm just not ready to commit myself right now.' But, no, it was, 'You do what you think is right.' In other words, 'If you're going to flush it, it's your decision, if you're going to keep it, it's not my responsibility.' Those feminists had a lot to answer for, she railed, this was the kind of responsibility she could do without!

Then, as the pregnancy hormones started to kick in, loosening her ligaments and lulling her into a kind of hypnotic trance, she decided, against the odds, to keep it. She stopped kicking herself and let the baby take over.

Marriage and motherhood had changed her, but for the better, she thought. The focus of her affection now was her son, but she wasn't unhappy. In fact, most of the time she didn't give 'happiness' a second thought. So when she found Dexter making such a big deal about whether she thought Lawrence was good-looking or not it had pulled her up short.

At what point in her life had she stopped looking? For that matter, had she ever done so? She was far more likely to be struck by a man's personality than by his looks - fortunately for Boyd, she thought with a chuckle. Nonetheless, the next morning she found herself taking a long hard look at the new member of staff. She noted his good taste in clothes, his broad shoulders, the thick, wavy, blond hair that fell over his tanned male-model features. Definitely cute, she concurred. But Ronnie had always been wary of so-called handsome men. Life was generally too easy for them. People - women mainly - were forever bending over backwards - and forwards - for them. In her limited experience they were users, for whom she had no use.

She was staring, when Lawrence suddenly looked up and met her gaze. And held it. Held it a beat too long. Maybe he'd looked at her like that before and she hadn't noticed? But maybe Dexter had. Maybe that's what their conversation was all about? Maybe Lawrence was the kind of guy who couldn't look at a woman in any other way. And what kind of way was that? Ronnie asked herself. Why, in a sexual, come-on kind of way, stupid, she replied.

An unsmiling, searching look; intimate, somehow, like a lover, and it was only when he raised his eyebrow quizzically and said, 'Did you want to see me?' that she realised she had been staring at him for far too long.

'What? Oh! No. Sorry, I was miles away,' she blurted out, cheeks blazing.

He smiled politely, nodded and they both returned to their work.

And that was it. The beginning.

A man, other than her husband, had looked at her 'like that' and she had felt - something. Chemistry? Cupid's dart? All that Mills & Boon crap? Anyway, something she hadn't felt for years. A former, long-forgotten self had awoken, stretched itself and sprung to life full of passion and mischief. A secret panel in her emotional life had slid open and she had entered it like someone in a trance, illuminated by a rosy glow.

Just like that. In a split-second.

It was as if someone had turned a spotlight onto Lawrence. In her hunger for another hit of that original blast, Ronnie found herself sneaking furtive looks at him, eavesdropping on his conversations, manufacturing excuses to talk to him. To discuss one of her drawings, for example, which would necessitate him standing next to her at her desk. Unbearably close.

She was convinced, moreover, that he too felt the electricity and that, even though the other women in the office drooled over him and he, in turn, flirted with them, he treated her differently. Something special was going on between them and it made her feel very excited.

Over the weeks this pleasant distraction burgeoned into an all-consuming obsession. She was constantly aware of him during their shared working hours. Then, driving home, she would while away peak-hour traffic delays with elaborate fantasies: clandestine meetings in stairwells, alone in the office after work, an interstate trip away together, these were some of many feverish scenarios starring herself and Lawrence Konitz. He desperate for her, she protesting marital loyalty, but succumbing after that lingering kiss. The graze of her coat collar against her cheek was enough to set her off.

Some evenings would find her at home up to her elbows in the dishes staring out of the kitchen window into the void, cheeks on fire, heart pounding, as romance flayed her imagination.

'Can I have a lunch order tomorrow, Mum? Pur-leese?' Matt's whingeing would snap her back to reality but it would take a long time for her pulse to return to normal.

So powerful and detailed were her fantasies that the real-life Lawrence sometimes caught her off-guard by doing something quite uncharacteristic for his imaginary counterpart: like spending fifteen minutes in the drying room with Genevieve before returning to his desk without so much as a glance in her direction. Ronnie glossed over these glitches. And although she had an idea that she was courting disaster to indulge herself like this, after a while she no longer had the ability, let alone the will, to resist. After all, what harm was she doing? It was all in her mind, wasn't it? No-one was getting hurt and no-one need ever know.

In the tea-room one morning in late December, when they were alone together, he had leaned against the benchtop, nursing a coffee as she rinsed her cup. 'That colour really suits you,' he said quietly. 'Dangerous.'

She turned, catching sight of herself, in her short red dress, in the mirror.

'What's that supposed to mean?' she asked, barely able to get the words out.

He grinned mischievously, while somewhere on another planet someone called out her name.

'You're wanted,' he said, and stepped aside for her to pass.

They should rename this place the 'Take Too Long Cafe', she thought, as neither her breakfast nor her coffee had arrived after twenty minutes. Time to put in a quick call to work, and yet another trip to the toilet. This was getting beyond a joke. As soon as she had finished she wanted to go again. Something was definitely wrong.

She caught sight of her face in the tiny mirror over the hand basin. She looked pretty good, considering how she felt. Not uncommon with a hangover, she had found - time the Ponds Institute found out why and bottled it.

She crabbed over to the blue payphone and inserted a dollar coin, the only small change she had. Brain cancer, shmain cancer, she moaned to herself, I want my mobile!

'Good morning, Arthouse Studios, this is Lou-Ann.'

'Lou, it's Ronnie. I'm running a bit... '

'Thank Christ, you've rung!' Lou-Ann cut in. 'All hell's broken loose. I have to put you straight through to Dexter.'

'Hang on a minute, Lou! What's going on?' The knot of fear was back in her stomach. Was it something to do with Lawrence?

'Sorry, Ronnie. More than my job's worth. Putting you through. Good luck.'

Strains of 'Für Elise' tinkled down the line for a few bars.

'Where the fuck have you been?'

'Good morning to you too, Dex. I'm sorry I... '

'Forget it, don't want to know. Just get your arse in here straight away. We've>got a major problem. We are in deep shit.'