Taming the Beast (16 page)

Daniel had just said something funny. Sarah knew this because the men were laughing. Sarah felt bad that she hadn’t heard what he said, because she didn’t remember him as being particularly funny. He was always too earnest to be funny. Maybe he had changed. It had been eight years.

The men patted Daniel’s back, nodded at Sarah, and went back to wherever it was they had come from. Daniel turned to her and started explaining who those men were and what they did and why he had to be nice to them. Something about an Old Boy’s network and an antiquated school administration system. Fucking hell, thought Sarah, let him keep talking all night, all week, forever.

‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.’

‘I am listening. Not really comprehending. Sorry.’

He took both her hands in his. ‘Not your fault. I don’t think I’m talking sense. I’ve thought about you every day for so many years, and now you’re in front of me I can’t make a single sentence come out the way I want it to.’

His hands were hot and smooth and she loved them. She remembered how aroused she would get watching him teach the class, the way he used his hands to make a point, punching the air or drawing little circles with his fingers. She loved that everyone was looking at his hands, and his hands knew the secret of what was under her clothes. And Sarah knew his secrets too. She knew every tendon and freckle and muscle hidden underneath his suit, except back then it hadn’t been suits, it had been jeans and t-shirts and a black leather jacket that he sometimes let Sarah wear on the drive home.

She could hardly bear the thought that with age he may have changed in ways that had nothing to do with wardrobe. That maybe there were wrinkles or sunspots she had not seen, or maybe his muscles had slackened or tightened. Had he put on weight? It was hard to tell with all the clothes he was wearing, but his waist
looked a little thicker than the one she used to circle with her arms. He could have a new scar somewhere, like the one she had across her back. She wanted to shine a light on him and taste, touch, pinch every part of him.

‘I’ve lost you again,’ he said, squeezing her hands harder than was necessary to get her attention. God, she remembered that too. The violence of those hands. The tendency to use more force when less would have worked just fine. The casual cruelty with which he would pinch or jab or scratch. The pleasure he took in making her cry and beg. She remembered that the last time she had seen him he almost killed her. She forgot what excuse she gave her parents for the condition she came home in; she remembered her grief when the last bruise faded and her body was restored to its unloved state.

‘Sarah?’ He squeezed hard enough to make her wince. ‘You’re making me very nervous. Say something.’

‘You’re crushing my hands.’

‘Oh!’ He dropped her hands, then quickly took them back and ran his fingers over her knuckles. ‘I forgot how small your bones are. I’ll have to be careful not to break you.’

Too fucking late
, Sarah thought. ‘Can you drive me home?’ she said.

Daniel led her out to the car park. ‘I’ve been trying to find you ever since I got back to Sydney.’ He unlocked the door of a silver BMW and guided her into the passenger seat. ‘You moved out of home.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re not listed in the phone directory.’

‘Neither are you.’

He smiled. ‘A school principal is the perfect target for prank calls. What’s your excuse?’

‘I have a thing about privacy.’

‘I see,’ Daniel said. ‘Is that why you’re being so reticent?’

‘It’s not reticence; it’s shock. And a bit of terror.’

He didn’t speak again until they were on the road. ‘Do I scare you?’

Sarah turned to him to answer and found herself slipping into a reverie again. What was it that made her unable to look away? He was not really handsome, not if handsome meant those dark, brooding soap opera types with swollen lips and scowling eyes. When she had first seen him she had thought he looked like Billy Idol, because his hair was blond and spiky and he wore a black leather jacket. That had been a first impression, but when she got up close she realised that he didn’t look like Billy Idol at all. He didn’t look like anybody. Everyone thought he did though, because he had a face and a body and a way of moving that made people think of movie stars or rock singers.

‘God, you’ve been terrified into silence.’

‘Something like that. When we’re together I go mental. I lapse into flights of fancy. I don’t recognise myself. That scares me.’

‘Do you know what scares me?’ Daniel glanced over at her, and then looked back at the road. ‘Living the rest of my life feeling as miserable as I have these last eight years. Living the rest of my life without the woman I love.’

‘Oh.’

All she had ever wanted was for Mr Carr to return to her and confess his despair at being away from her and his need to have her now, always and forever. For him, only him, to say the words that so many men who didn’t matter had said. And all she could say was
oh
.

He asked for her address, drove to her flat, walked her to the door and declined her invitation to come in. He didn’t kiss her, but he did press his palm to the side of her face for a long time.

‘I want to take you out tomorrow night.’

‘I have to work.’

Daniel removed his hand. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven.’

‘I really do have to–’

He was walking away. ‘Seven o’clock,’ he called out over his shoulder.

For eight years, Sarah had lived with an emptiness that couldn’t be touched. Not by men or booze or drugs or knowledge or hope. She had lived with it for so long that it had become a personality trait; it was her edge, her toughness, her ability to be intimate and still distant, passionate and still calm. She had built her life around the Daniel Carr shaped hole in the centre of the world. And just like that, the void was filled. Overfilled. Overflowing.

Now a new kind of emptiness had established itself, not in her, but around her. She felt, for the first time in years, physically vulnerable. Her tiny flat was cavernous, her creaky bed enormous, her sofa wanted to swallow her up when she retreated there. No safety or comfort could be found. Every space was vast because he did not fill it. She longed for him to come and enlarge her. She hoped it would happen soon.

Sarah called in sick and was out the front of her building by six-thirty. Daniel pulled up at six-forty-five. Apart from a polite enquiry about her day, he did not speak to her during the drive. She didn’t mind the silence; it allowed her to meditate on his thighs. Sarah knew that underneath the stylishly baggy, beige linen slacks, the muscles were tensing and releasing with every brake and acceleration. She knew that the blond curly hair covering his legs thinned and then stopped midway up the insides of his thighs. The skin there was pale and baby-soft and would respond to her tickling tongue by breaking out in goosebumps. In the ten minutes it took Daniel to drive to Parramatta and find a parking space, Sarah worked herself into a mute frenzy.

‘Is Mexican okay?’ he asked, putting his hand on the small of her back and guiding her down a back alley.

‘Fine,’ she said, as if it mattered.

The restaurant was dark and half-empty. They sat in a corner booth next to a photograph of a Chihuahua in a sombrero. Daniel ordered a jug of sangria and a glass of scotch, and then turned to Sarah with a frown.

‘Is all that face paint for my benefit?’

‘Oh, yeah, I suppose so.’

‘You look better without it. Plain girls wear make-up, the beautiful ones don’t need to.’

Sarah shrugged and picked up the menu, but as soon as they had ordered she went to the ladies room and rubbed off all her lipstick. When she got back to the table he touched a finger to her lips and smiled.

‘So,’ said Sarah while they picked at their food. ‘Where have you been all these years?’

‘Ah, that’s a big question. The short answer is I’ve been up north.’ Daniel took a sip of his scotch. Was he nervous or did he always drink Scotch and water with dinner? Sarah ached with not knowing him.

‘Why don’t you give me the long answer?’

He sipped his drink again. ‘Right. I moved to Brisbane, taught English and Modern History at a nightmarishly underfunded city school, completed my dissertation, tutored migrant kids, ran a men’s devotion group at the local church, learnt to ski, learnt to speak French, took my family around North America and Western Europe, watched my mother die of breast cancer, moved to Kempsey, set up an out-reach program for disadvantaged teens, won a citizenship award, celebrated my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, took up jogging, learnt to cook, got divorced, moved to Sydney, secured a position at a prestigious boys college, searched for the girl I have thought about every day for the last eight years, found that girl, sat across from her and drank scotch. The End.’

Sarah realised she had been holding her breath. She stared at the tabletop and breathed deeply for a few seconds. She could not bring herself to look at him.

‘Now your turn,’ he said.

Sarah looked at her plate. ‘School, waitressing, uni, haven’t been anywhere. Boring.’

‘Hmm, no mention of boyfriends. In all those years – teenage years no less – there were no love affairs, no romances?’

‘None worth mentioning. My food’s cold.’ She pushed the plate away and looked around for an ashtray.

‘You can’t smoke in here, Sarah.’

‘I know. Do you see me smoking?’

‘I see you looking for an ashtray, and you’re jiggling around like a true addict.’

Sarah froze, realising that her shoulders had indeed been jiggling.

‘I love the way you move. I think I’ll only ever take you to places where you can’t smoke, so I can watch you squirm.’ He smiled at her with thin lips, and she had to put her hands on her knees to stop them bouncing up and down. He leant forwards, both hands flat on the table. ‘I’ve made you self-conscious.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

He leant closer. ‘Your face is all red.’

Sarah pressed a hand to her cheek; it was burning. ‘It’s hot in here.’

He leant further, so he was almost out of his chair, and took her chin in his hands. ‘The colour of your face right now is exactly the same as the colour of your face when you orgasm, and your throat flushes like that too.’

Sarah felt droplets of sweat run down her temples. She tried to come up with something witty or cutting to say but all she could think was
I never flush red, in bed or out
. Even when she had won the Cross Country race in year ten, her face had not been red. Jamie had said she was bloodless then, and he said it again last week, after they had made love for hours, in her stuffy flat with all the windows closed.

Sarah tried to look away from his green, green eyes but he held her head firmly, and to pull away would have involved a movement more violent than she felt capable of. She didn’t feel capable of anything. She sat dumbly staring into his eyes and feeling the heat from his fingertips spread out from the tip of her chin, up over her cheeks and nose and forehead and down over her throat and chest.

‘Where do you work?’ Daniel said, releasing her chin and leaning back in his chair.

‘Western Steakhouse. It’s this greasy dump on the other side of the river,’ she said, as though this was a normal, everyday conversation.

‘Sounds glamorous. How long have you been doing that?’

‘Since I left home.’

‘Which was when?’

‘About six years ago.’

‘You wouldn’t have even finished school.’ He frowned at her. ‘Why did you leave home?’

Sarah dreaded that question even under normal circumstances, which these were not. She usually lied, but couldn’t to him. If she told him the truth he would pity her and that would be unbearable. ‘That’s a hell of a story. Let’s save it for later.’ She smiled as though it was a treat to look forward to.

Daniel nodded, but looked annoyed. To lighten the mood, Sarah asked him about the French classes he had taken. She asked the question in French and was rewarded by a blinding smile. He was delighted with her and she glowed under his delight. Thinking only of keeping that brightness alive, she told him how after he left Sydney, she had started to meet Alex Knight every day after school, supposedly for French tutoring. She had to stay up half the night studying so her results would reflect the hours she had supposedly spent being tutored but had actually spent getting fucked.

He stared at her for several seconds. When he spoke, his voice was low. ‘That is the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard. I feel ill.’

‘What? Why?’ She laughed. ‘Like you never knew that teenagers spend study time screwing on the backseats of cars.’

‘That’s not the… You were…’ Daniel ran his hands through his hair. ‘Alex Knight was the School Captain. He was a Christian
Youth Director! Slimy little shit.’ He took a large gulp of scotch. ‘Did you realise it was illegal for him to be doing that? Did he?’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘If I had known that a Year Twelve boy was carrying on with an underage girl I–’

‘Daniel!’ Sarah grabbed his hand, and he stopped ranting to stare at it. ‘Alex was seventeen. You were how old?’

‘That’s not the–’

‘How old?’

‘Thirty-something.’

‘Thirty-eight. So, my second lover was twenty-one years younger than my first, and therefore, a total child as far as I was concerned.’ Sarah squeezed his hand. ‘He was actually the youngest of all the men I slept with in the year after you left.’

‘All the… What are you saying? There were others?’

‘Of course.’

‘I… Damn.’ He rubbed his eyes, sucked air between his teeth. ‘How many others?’

He was mad with jealousy. She was elated. ‘I’ve no idea. I lost count.’

‘But…’

‘But what, Daniel? What’s the matter?’

‘You were so bright. So clever.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Funny thing about brains is that men don’t tend to notice them when you’re wearing a short skirt.’

‘Shut up, Sarah.’

Daniel refused to see the dessert menu and less than an hour after they had arrived, they were back in his car and heading for home. Several times Sarah started to speak but he would not allow it. Each time she opened her mouth he took his left hand off the wheel and held it up. ‘No,’ was all he said.