Claustrophobia (14 page)

They stopped briefly in Nannup, Pen pleading a toilet break. She knew it was going to be too hard to ring Derrick from the chalet, and they'd already topped up on petrol and a few grocery items in Busselton, so she had to think of something.

She stepped out near a small playground with dank grey sand, one small girl leaning listlessly in the centre of a climbing frame.
Cage à poules
, the French called it – ‘chicken coop' – and she did look like a little lost yellow chick, trapped all alone in the bars. Pen smiled at her, but the chick poked out its tongue.

Pen did her best not to take too long in the cubicle, while Kathleen sat in the car.

Derrick's mobile was switched to voicemail. Pen strained to keep the relief out of her tone. He might ring her back later, but she could leave her own phone switched off, at least on this first night, and he wouldn't think anything awry. And if he tried the landline at home, there was voicemail – she could easily be under the shower, or out in the garden …

‘Hi, darling, sorry I missed you. Hope it's all going well. Everything's fine here. I'll give you another call tomorrow' –
that might hold him off. In any case, he had his hands full supervising the mob. Communal meals, communal wash-up – and then evening entertainments. Charades and quiz shows, all in German. He'd hardly have a moment to himself.

When they finally drew up at the forest retreat, Kathleen went to collect the key. Pen sank in her car seat, trying to keep out of sight should anyone emerge from reception. Though it was late, a little sun still streamed at an angle through the tall karri.

But only Kathleen appeared.

‘Phil's not here anyway,' she said, ‘as it turns out. So you can breathe easy – your secret is safe for today …' Pen darted a glance at her, but she was joking. ‘He did leave us a lovely bottle, though,' and she held up champagne and a card. ‘Let's go play house.'

The chalet was made of rammed earth and scented timber, and the leadlights meant a weird light streamed through around sunset. Kathleen flopped on a lounge chair and put her feet up, but Pen scuttled about investigating – a little kitchen, fully equipped, a queen-sized bed, a full bathroom with spa.

‘You've got three nights, you know,' Kathleen called, ‘you don't have to memorise it all straight away!'

‘Very decadent,' Pen said as she wandered back in, perching opposite Kathleen on the other armchair, and biting her lower lip nervously.

Kathleen smiled and beckoned for her to sit closer. ‘It's a honeymoon cottage.'

‘I've never had a honeymoon,' Pen mused sadly.

Kathleen wrinkled her forehead and laughed. ‘You and
me both.' Pen was jolted at her own careless thinking-aloud. They'd had to choose, she and Derrick all those years ago, between house deposit and trip away somewhere exotic. You had to be sensible if you wanted to get ahead in life. It was her choice – Derrick would have blown the money to please her if she'd insisted.

‘Penny for your thoughts, Pen-ny,' Kathleen said.

‘I was thinking about the spa,' Pen said. ‘And I hate being called Penny. Just so you know.'

‘Okay, okay. Fancy the spa, do you?'

‘Actually I was thinking how … how unhygienic it must be. Do you think there's any Pine O Cleen in the cupboards?'

‘You're a true romantic,' Kathleen said. ‘They do clean the place between guests, you know.'

‘Yes, I can just imagine the kind of poisonous stuff they use.'

Kathleen rubbed Pen's shoulders. ‘
Chill out
, as my students say. Or even just
chill
, these days. It changes so fast I can't keep up with it. Mostly they don't talk, anyway. They're too busy texting.'

Pen was silent a while. ‘You get along well with your students, don't you?' She thought, ‘Rather too well in some cases …' She was watching Kathleen.

‘Yes, generally. I like teaching.'

‘Do they know that you're … are you out with them? I mean, at work, you know. Doesn't it – affect things?' Maybe ‘out' was the wrong word, since Kathleen must be ‘both ways', Pen thought, and then blushed, realising people could say that of her too now. If they knew …

‘I have no idea. It never comes up. It's probably discussed
– who knows? – but not to my face. I'm a fairly private person, anyway. Some of them might have guessed. I found a note once, screwed up in the seminar room, where someone had written, ‘Prof Nancarrow has balls'. That's the closest it's ever come. Given the boy who wrote it, I chose to take it as a compliment.'

Pen thought suddenly of a calendar she'd seen when she was a kid, in the backyard toilet at the house of one of her father's workmates: a naked caricature of Martina Navratilova with both vulva and testicles. She smiled, with a sudden, sad affection for Martina.

Kathleen looked tentative. ‘What's funny?'

‘Actually, for some reason, I was thinking of tennis.' Which was sort of true.

‘Do you play?'

‘No. Well, yes, I've tried, but I haven't got the wrist-strength. Badminton's about all I can manage.' Only the well-off kids at Pen's school had taken tennis lessons, extracurricular. ‘What about you?'

‘I used to play quite seriously. Speaking of which, have you seen the film
Match Point
? We should get it out while we're here. I'm sure they'll have films in town – or at reception. It's a load of fluff really, but quite watchable. It's a crime thriller. Scarlett Johansson.'

‘She's very lovely,' Pen conceded.

‘She's practically edible,' Kathleen laughed. ‘But eye candy aside – and the gaping holes in the plot – since you like suspense, Highsmith, Simenon and so on …?'

‘Sure,' said Pen. Then she yawned.

‘I'll assume that's fatigue rather than boredom,' Kathleen
said, as if she were responsible for keeping Pen amused. ‘How about we have a quick bite and then retire? Curl up with that champagne. We can save the spa for another time.'

Pen was more nervous than she liked to admit. This second time she could scarcely pretend she did not know what was happening. The honeymoon might be illegitimate, but it was no less daunting for that – she could not imagine any more anxious or apprehensive bride.
Play house
, Kathleen had said – but this was utterly, uncompromisingly real. More real to Pen right now than the empty pretend house in the Perth hills, abandoned and languishing in the middle of an eternal makeover. And in that house, Derrick's insistent and treacherous letter.

Morning in the karri forest was crisp despite the sunlight. Kathleen was an early riser.

‘Where do you get all this energy?' Pen said.

‘You don't do too badly yourself.'

They ate crusty rolls warmed in the oven and swept the crumbs outside for the birds, before setting off for a walk.

‘Now these are what I call trees,' Kathleen said, breathing in deeply. ‘Nedlands might have green verges and old gardens, but there's nothing like the bush. You live up in the hills – you must have a fair bit of bush around you?'

Pen nodded. ‘Not as much as there used to be, though. You can't even walk much because of the dieback thing. It's jarrah mostly, and banksia – nothing like this.'

‘And nothing like where I grew up,' she thought – a drained swamp and filled-in rubbish tip, with cheap brick-veneer housing that flooded every winter and no one would
take responsibility. Barely a tree left standing.

‘I expect there's a dieback problem here too,' Kathleen said. ‘You can't get away from it. We'll have to watch our step. Speaking of which, I'd like to climb the Gloucester Tree. Are you up for it?'

Pen groaned. ‘I don't know. Have you been up there before?'

‘No. Are you all right with heights?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, you'd know if you
weren't
.'

Derrick suffered from vertigo, so there'd never been any question of doing such a climb till now.

‘I like to try things I've never done before. It keeps you – aware you're alive, somehow,' Kathleen said, ‘I like to push myself.'

‘So long as you don't push
me
,' Pen joked. ‘Is it really safe?' Imagine if she fell, or was injured – how to explain that once she was back home?

‘Safe enough, perhaps. Lots of people climb it.'

But few made it to the top, they discovered from the brochure in reception.

‘Only about twenty per cent of people who attempt the climb,' Pen read aloud as they arrived. The Gloucester Tree was a massive karri that had been used as a fire lookout tower, and was now open to the public. A small group had gathered to try the sixty-metre ascent, but they'd arrived early enough that it wasn't yet a crowd.

‘How do you want to do this? I can go before – or after, if you think you're likely to back down.'

‘
Back down
being the crucial term!' Pen winced. ‘No, you
can go first. It will give me something to aim for. In any case,' she said, ‘there seem to be two sets of pegs.'

‘Steps', it said in the brochure, but they really were pegs, spikes at most, driven at right angles in a spiral pattern all the way up to the lookout platform. Widely spaced enough to fall through: she could hardly imagine being able to latch on to one of the spikes if you slipped, dangling there like a Barrel of Monkeys toy… If you didn't look, you might feel all right. But then looking was why you went up, wasn't it?

‘Why are we doing this?' she whispered to Kathleen as they approached the tree's base. No harnessing, no supervision – just yourself and the tree.

‘Because it will be unlike anything we've ever done before.' Kathleen seemed faintly amused at Pen's timidity. ‘And because we can. Onward and upward!'

Uncanny – it jarred – the same thing Leon Masters had said to her when she was leaving Boys' College.

Like anything else, Pen supposed, it had to be mind over matter. There was no reason her body couldn't do this – she was fit enough, young enough, agile enough. It was one of those things where you had to fall into a rhythm and stick with it, tune out a certain level of your attention and bring it to focus on the crucial movement only.

Nevertheless, she couldn't resist looking up to see how Kathleen was getting on. Kathleen's hair swung, Rapunzel-like, as she moved steadily up, just as easily as if she'd been on a treadmill or crossing stepping stones without the metres of gaping air beneath her. Pen felt a pang of fear for her. ‘And this is the woman I wanted gone,' she thought. A horrible image of Kathleen, broken and askew, blood-covered, at
the foot of the giant tree, flashed across her sight, and she paused, leaning on the spike ahead of her to get her breath. Tachycardia, everything irregular. ‘If I fell,' she thought, ‘it would be something like justice.'

She gazed out then across the miles of treetops, literally trying to get things in perspective. Ancient trees, which had long preceded her and should long outlive her, in the natural order of things. But what was the natural order of things? These trees had been altered, disfigured, to construct the lookouts, but she supposed it was necessary to damage a few in order to save the rest, if fire should rear its fearsome head.

She thought of the forestry men, able to reckon the location and distance of the threat by taking this tree or that as reference point. With a trained eye. But she had no bearings for any of this. To Pen it was a sea of unearthly green: you felt you could almost dive out into it, as sailors were said to think they could walk on the ocean.

She was lost, and she knew it, but she had to keep moving.

At the summit, Kathleen hugged her, and nobody seemed bothered by it. There was a palpable exhilaration among the climbers up there; though, as Pen quickly pointed out, you still had to get down again.

She looked at the high railing and said to herself, ‘Once I would have wanted to topple her. I would have been looking for the gaps,' and she shook her head in astonishment. It must have been temporary madness.

‘Now tell me that wasn't worth it!' Kathleen said, and Pen had to smile. Alone, she'd never have attempted it, even apart from Derrick's vertigo.

‘I think you're insane,' Pen joked, ‘and it's rubbing off on me.'

‘Uh-uh,' said Kathleen, ‘I'm afraid you were already there, milady, before we met … Now: a kiss for luck before we descend!' and though Pen turned frantically, futilely, to make sure no one could see, Kathleen had grabbed her chin and planted a fat, deep kiss on her sweaty lips.

‘And a photo to prove we did it,' she said with triumph, pulling a camera out of her pocket. Another climber agreed to hold it for her, and lined up to snap.

Pen protested but was shouted down with good humour. Her legs went numb. Flustered, she realised she would have to delete the picture somehow later. Or lose the camera, whichever was easier. She should have thought, of course Kathleen would want photos. There were so many things to think of – she would have to smarten up.

10

When Pen stepped out of the shower the following morning, she heard Kathleen's voice.

‘… in a few days. No, I'm not alone.'

Pen stood still and quiet, oblivious to the cold with the towel only loosely wrapped around her. In the wall tiles, slick and glassy with damp, she could see her own stricken face ghosted over and over. She shut her eyes.

‘Not an old flame – a new flame.' Kathleen's soft laughter.

Pen let the bathroom door clatter behind her. Kathleen, already dressed but still pinkly glowing from her own quick shower, looked up smiling, then quizzical when she saw Pen's glare.

She straightened her expression, muted her tone.

‘I'll catch you later, got to go now.'

And she folded the tiny gadget into her handbag.