Claustrophobia (2 page)

Now watching this latest version with Derrick, Pen thought, ‘I can't have understood this at all, or I would have remembered it.'

When the program was over and the chocolate was gone, they sat on the sofa a minute or two, with the lights still off.

‘I don't know how I'll sleep after that,' Derrick said.

‘The chocolate?' Pen said. She'd realised with some dismay that she'd bought the coffee-filled one Derrick wasn't so keen on. Its wrapper looked like the plain dark sort. But he'd eaten it without complaint. Her own head was buzzing.

‘No – well, yes – but I meant the movie. The series.'

‘You didn't like it?' Pen asked.

‘Oh, it was very well done. But the whole adultery thing – it's so distressing. Especially because you
sympathise
with her, you know.'

Pen nodded. ‘But she pays.'

‘I know. It's not that, even. I just can't stand the thought of deception. That kind of double life.'

He leaned over and kissed Pen, the same kind of kiss he'd always given, as if his whole soul were in it. Like a transfusion, Pen thought.

‘I'm lucky I have you,' Derrick said. ‘I would die if you ever left
me
.'

‘Despite the
smell of the eastern suburbs
,' Pen thought. But he'd probably had a hard day at work, and it had made him emotional. Tired, and more inclined to say something extreme.

Yet she knew he meant what he said. That was something she relied on in Derrick. He might tell a temporary white lie to hide a surprise gift, but he was honest. Whenever anything had gone wrong, however minor, in the whole ten years they'd been married, he'd always told her straightaway, and they'd fixed it together. And it was never anything other than minor.

Pen suspected he was constitutionally incapable of deceiving her. That was why the mystery parcel was nothing to worry about. But she had decided, after all, not to think about that again.

Derrick did go off to sleep quite easily in the end. They'd made love, the quick way that Pen preferred, which always relaxed him to the point where he couldn't stay alert for more than a few minutes afterwards.

Not that Pen minded: she liked to watch his dim outline lying in the dark, rising and falling steadily, and know that he had gone ahead of her calm and satisfied into the night. As if she were a mother watching over a child.

Mostly Derrick's rest was still and deep, though there had been a very few times she'd seen him twitch or even convulse in nightmare, interior trauma he usually couldn't remember the next day. Once, he had even lifted his arm and belted her from his side of the bed, woken only by her yell.

‘Oh my God,' he'd said, sitting up suddenly. ‘I dreamt you were choking me. You had your hands around my neck and you were trying to kill me. I can't believe I hit you. And I can't believe I would
dream
that. Darling, I'm so sorry.'

‘It's all right,' she'd said. ‘Lucky you only got my shoulder.'

Derrick had been mortified, but Pen had to laugh.

‘You can't be held accountable for what your unconscious cooks up,' she'd said, and they had made love then, too, slowly and closely, moulded against each other, as if to repair the imaginary damage, to reinstate the true order of things and wipe the memory of the ridiculous nightmare.

Now he reached over to her from the depths of sleep so that they faced the same way, and wrapped one arm around her, tucking it over her belly as if that were simply where he belonged, and Pen let go, finally, of her wakefulness, and sank down to join him in her separate dreams.

In the morning they drove off to work together, as they always did. He would get the bus home later, because she finished in the early afternoon.

The school was about twenty minutes away down the hill, or more if there was a traffic problem, which increasingly there was, as housing estates grew up everywhere and brick-and-orange-tile replaced trees. The Hills were ‘booming', people said. The pocket of bush Pen and Derrick so treasured seemed to be diminishing daily.

In the beginning Pen had thought Hills people must care about trees, since those who lived in the cheaper wasteland where she'd grown up were indifferent.

But Derrick, born into the middle class and therefore the last word, had said, ‘No, it's a marker of affluence. The right kind of backdrop for the right kind of people. They'll still traipse dieback through the bush in their expensive hiking boots. Trust me, people are green when it suits them.'

They'd rented the house up there when they were first
married, and then bought it as soon as they could, forward-planning, thinking they'd need a big place when children came along. But children never did.

Their house was a typical Hills place from the old days, before big money had moved up there. Wood and iron, up on stilts, not quite what people now called a ‘pole home' but a real bush retreat, freezing in winter if not for the wood-burning stove, and dark relief in the searing West Australian summers. Pen's mother had disapproved.

‘A tinderbox!' she always said. ‘In the middle of all those trees! It's just foolhardy.'

Yet ten risky Februaries had come and gone without so much as a lick of flame approaching, even one year when the national park, just down the road, had been threatened. You could call it luck. But Pen preferred not to dwell on the fear of fire. Everything came at some kind of cost.

And the whole thing with her mother mattered less because she had Derrick. Because they had each other, and supported each other. He was the ally she'd always wanted but never imagined was really out there.

‘Mrs Barber,' a boy's voice said, as soon as Pen had taken her seat at the front counter. She looked up – it was Cliff, one of the day pupils, fourteen or so. He was likeable, but very shy. This was enough to put Pen on his side. She was aware, too, that his parents were going through a divorce, the father had moved out, and she knew only too well how tough that could be.

Cliff was avoiding her eyes. ‘I've got a terrible headache,' he said.

Pen checked her watch. ‘Nurse isn't in yet, Cliff. But you could come back in about half an hour.'

Cliff bit his lower lip. ‘I've got phys. ed.,' he said. ‘But I don't think I can do it.'

Pen swallowed. ‘I understand,' she said; headache as euphemism. She knew the phys. ed. teacher wouldn't like it, but why should kids be forced? ‘Well, I can let you in to the sick room, and you can wait there till Mrs Davies arrives.'

The boy followed her behind the counter into a corridor, at the end of which was a clean, white room with a single bed and a cotton blanket. It was like a private hospital room. Boys' College looked ancient, imposing, on the outside, but it was all fake gothic, colonial pretension. Inside was expensive and up-to-date.

‘Just lie down here and don't worry about a thing,' Pen said, and Cliff gave her a look of shaky gratitude. ‘Cliff,' she added softly, ‘nobody's giving you trouble, are they?'

He sat very still. ‘What do you mean?'

‘It's not bullying, or anything like that?'

He shook his head.

‘Okay.' Pen slanted the venetians to dim the room. ‘If Mrs Davies isn't here soon, I'll see if I can get you some Panadol.'

‘Thanks, Mrs Barber,' Cliff said, closing his eyes, as if to squeeze back tears. ‘You're the best.'

Pen laughed gently.

‘No, I mean it,' Cliff said. ‘You don't make fun and call me a delicate little daisy and stuff like that.'

‘Who said that?' Pen asked.

‘Miss Walsh, in Science. Because they were dissecting frogs, and I didn't want to. I think it's cruel. Now the boys call me Daisy and sing that song, you know.'

Pen paused, careful. ‘Well, I can't comment on your teachers, Cliff, because you know you have to respect them,' and here she smiled, ‘but I must say I'm with you on that one. Only don't quote me, okay?'

Cliff nodded and lay back.

Pen shut the door and said to herself: he's a thinker, that boy, like Derrick, and sensitive. He'll be worth twenty of his classmates when he grows up, only now it's tough for him.

‘It's always tougher for boys,' Derrick had insisted, though Pen remembered how cruel girls could be too. Especially if you had no money.

Where'd you get that dress from, your grandma?

Someone run you over with a lawnmower?

Look, she's wearing ankle-freezers!

Pen's jeans had always been too short in the leg, because she grew faster than new ones could be bought.

The well-off girls, to whom Pen was a pathetic specimen, had taunted her and yelled abuse. The rougher ones, who thought her a snob, threatened ‘catfights'.

Up yourself, arntcha! Think you're better than us.

You had to steer between the two.

Long after Pen had left home, she was still paranoid, turning in front of mirrors and checking to make sure her trouser cuffs fell to the correct length. Even with Derrick to shield her, she crossed the road to avoid rough-looking women.

Now she looked around for Derrick in the staffroom at tea-break, but he wasn't there. He must have got held up. Instead she was cornered by Jean Sargent, school counsellor.

‘Christmas in July,' she reminded Pen. ‘We need to have numbers to book for the meal. Are you coming?'

Pen concentrated on filling her teacup from the urn.
Urnie
, it was called. Then she turned to face Jean.

‘I'll have to check with Derrick,' she said. ‘He might have plans.'

Jean laughed. ‘And
he
said he'd have to check with
you
. You both have the same alibi. So I'm going to have to get you two in the room together if I want a final answer. What do you reckon?'

‘Oh, put us down,' Pen sighed, figuring they could always pull out later, by phone if they had to. ‘I'll let you know if it doesn't work for us.'

On rare occasions she and Derrick did the right thing by putting in an appearance at these events. They got along with their colleagues well enough, but they weren't really party people, or quiz-goers, or even drinkers. They might sometimes have a glass of champagne at New Year or some other special occasion. But Derrick had been a bit too inclined to drink when Pen had first met him, and she wasn't sorry he went easy now. Nonetheless, Pen was careful never to go on about it, because nobody liked prim and proper wowsers, and neither did she. And many of the teachers were regulars at Happy Hour in the local, every Friday. But it did hamper social interaction, if you wanted to be discreet and avoid the booze.

On her way out at midday, she passed Derrick in the corridor.

‘I'm going to get stuck straight in this time,' she said, meaning sorting through the old boxes at home, and getting rid of stuff. ‘That's the only way to do it, no interruptions, no distractions.'

‘The
Putzteufel
,' Derrick grinned. It was a German word – the cleaning devil. As if something possessed you and took over your will at such times. Derrick leaned over and kissed her, despite the other staff members squeezing past. ‘You make me feel guilty.'

‘Don't be. You're here teaching all day, it's only logical that I do the clean-out.'

‘I'll make it up to you,' Derrick said, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

Pen dropped by the post office box to collect their mail on the way home, and picked up a sandwich for herself from the Eyrie, and a fresh vegetarian pizza from the deli for dinner. Her mother always tutted over bought food – ‘You spend much more that way!' – but to Pen it was a functional thing, not a luxury. It meant she wouldn't have to waste time cooking and could get started on the cleaning up.

‘
Putzteufel
,' she laughed to herself, ‘I wish!'

She had taught herself a bit of German from books and CDs, and then some French, and then some Italian. It was a way of getting closer to Derrick, though she knew she would never have his university-level fluency. There were too many gaps, missing patches. Back at her high school they didn't do languages, and anyway, she hadn't finished Year Twelve properly. But she just liked to feel she could connect with Derrick in that way.

They had that in common now, and books in general. Literary novels, biographies, poetry. Appalled at what she didn't know, and that fact that she mostly read genre novels, Derrick had guided Pen over the years, till she was at least as well-read as he was.

At first his guidance had hurt her pride a little. Then she found it useful. These days she could hold her head up with any of his colleagues, even if she was only office staff.

Once home, she ate her sandwich sitting cross-legged on the floor in the storage room, leafing through old documents.

It was a trap if you read through everything, because it took up time. On the other hand, if you didn't, you might throw away something important. Most of this stuff hadn't been touched for years. Newspaper clippings that had once seemed significant. Stacks of floppy disks from long-gone computers. Even a small pile of old mobiles they really should have recycled by now.

So much of it was garbage, or things Derrick had brought home for her from school that she would never get around to using. Audio books of German literature, for instance, that he was sent as free samples years ago. But Pen had only listened to one or two, and really couldn't justify keeping so many.

Maybe the CDs could be donated somewhere … They were stacked, forty or fifty of them, in shoeboxes above a desk so cluttered that neither Pen nor Derrick ever sat at it. Pen reached up to pull the last box down, and a thick envelope fell and wadded against her foot.

Dusty and old, it was addressed in Derrick's handwriting – to Kathleen Nancarrow in Sydney.

Pen turned the envelope over and over – yes, Derrick was the sender on the back. She felt immediately sick in a way she hadn't for a long time.