Wife on the Run Read online

  They shut the door behind them.

  Hamish let his eyes close again.

  Why had he interrogated Caitlin over a stupid Facebook post? He’d hurt her—and himself—in the process.

  Paula had nagged him into it, for sure, but he’d also jumped to his own rash conclusions.

  At her core, he knew, Caitlin was a good girl.

  Right from the beginning, she’d always been his angel.

  He could still remember Caitlin’s birth, just like it was yesterday. He could barely remember the day or the month and, much to Paula’s chagrin, sometimes not even the year. But other tiny details were etched in his memory. Like the enormous clock on the hospital wall, its hands circling like a windmill, marking the hours and minutes of Paula’s protracted labour. The dulcet tones of pan flutes, punctuated by Paula’s animal-like grunting. Beanbags and cushions and lukewarm labour baths. Midwives with sympathetic expressions floating in and out of the room, talking to Paula in hushed tones. Pastels everywhere. Peachy pinks, lavender, powder blue.

  And then the angry red blood, flooding everywhere.

  The crown of the baby’s head pushing down through the walls of his wife’s pelvis. Paula, on all fours, her face purple, veins bulging in her neck, straining to look between her own legs. Huffing and heaving and crying ecstatically as a face appeared. Touching the baby with the fingers of her right hand, even as blood gushed between them. Hamish stumbling backwards, simultaneously repelled and elated. The baby slipping quietly into the hands of a waiting midwife, its umbilical cord trailing out of Paula.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ the midwife said, turning to him and smiling in a knowing kind of way. As if they’d shared something now, the two of them, having watched his wife’s vulva explode.

  ‘Want to cut the cord?’ she’d asked, just before he’d fainted on the bloodied floor.

  He’d been helped onto a nearby sofa by one of the midwives. As the nursing staff buzzed around Paula, he’d closed his eyes, still feeling queasy.

  When he awoke, Paula’s eyes were trained on the baby nuzzling at her breast, her lips curled in a whimsical smile. Hamish had to cough to attract her attention.

  ‘Isn’t she perfect?’ she said, without looking up. Paula’s lips brushed the baby’s forehead. ‘Our beautiful Caitlin.’

  It was a name they’d chosen together beforehand, in honour of his maternal grandmother; the only grandparent he could remember, with soft wrinkles and kind eyes, who’d plied him with sugar-coated shortbread whenever he visited.

  ‘Can I hold her?’ he whispered, desperate to touch his daughter. Wanting to see her face again, stroke those tiny fingers poking out of the bunny rug.

  ‘She’s feeding now.’ Paula eyed the empty glass on the tray table nearby. ‘Can you get me some water?’

  Without so much as a ‘please’, Hamish thought, but he let it go. She’d been through hellish contractions, eighteen hours of labour, a pain he’d never truly understand.

  He went to fetch water for Paula.

  And that was the beginning of the rot, by his account; the unspoken malaise that had slowly infected their marriage. Paula’s first demand as a new mother was only the beginning of a barrage of further demands that he, as father and husband, was apparently required to accept. As if maternity had somehow conferred on Paula the God-given authority to wear the pants in the family.

  Her nagging began with the little things, whenever he tried to help with Caitlin. They laughed, initially, when he got things wrong—the nappy he put on backwards, the expressed breast milk he boiled in the microwave. But after several weeks, Paula stopped seeing the funny side. On the night he soothed Caitlin’s cries by dipping her dummy in honey, Paula whisked the baby out of his arms.

  ‘You don’t give an infant sugar,’ she snapped, throwing the dummy into the sink.

  ‘But my mum did,’ he replied, raising his voice over the bawling that ensued. ‘She swore by it for all of us.’

  ‘Well, your mother was wrong,’ Paula snarled, stomping off to bed with Caitlin.

  He’d slept on the sofa that night.

  There was so much he didn’t know, it turned out. He’d attended all the antenatal classes religiously, but most had focused on the birth itself, not the weeks and months afterwards. He’d received no training in baby-rearing, possessed no life skills in that department. Sure, he’d been an uncle before becoming a father: his eldest brother had four children, ranging in ages from two to nine years. But Hamish always found their visits from Canberra insufferable: one of the kids was always crying, getting stuck in a tree, whining for food or regurgitating it. He tired of them within hours of their arrival, and was always relieved when they went home.

  Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a father, he sometimes thought, in the early weeks after Caitlin’s birth. He even said as much to Doggo, who’d been quick to reassure him that it would all settle down soon enough. And Doggo knew his stuff, with five children of his own.

  Three months after Caitlin’s arrival, Hamish figured out the best way to keep the peace with Paula: by restricting himself to ‘blue jobs’, bloke-only tasks like assembling cots, fitting car seats and lifting prams. Paula was rarely direct in her criticism, but Hamish could sense her scrutinising his every move. Scanning their surrounds for potential pitfalls, hidden or overt, as if she alone could gauge environmental danger. Hamish kept telling himself that it was a biological imperative; that Paula, like every other mother in the animal kingdom, was genetically programmed to defend her offspring. But he still took it personally. He wasn’t a bumbling fool and he was, after all, Caitlin’s father. You didn’t make the baby by yourself, he sometimes felt like pointing out. Why doesn’t my opinion matter as much as yours?

  By the time Caitlin was six months old, Paula was the undisputed expert on all things parental. Was it nature or nurture? Hamish couldn’t be sure. His wife could certainly anticipate Caitlin’s every need, like a lifeguard discerning the ocean’s currents. But he’d allowed that to happen, too, in the interests of marital harmony. He didn’t always agree with Paula’s decisions, but she clearly wasn’t in the mood for amicable dissent. In almost every other domain Paula was easy-going, kind-hearted and generous; all the qualities he’d found attractive in a prospective life partner. But when it came to parenting, her demeanour altered. Suddenly, she didn’t suffer fools gladly, and all too often he was the village idiot.

  It wasn’t a recipe for marital passion. He’d always had a healthy sexual appetite and, prior to having children, Paula had matched him. While she wasn’t very experienced in the bedroom, she’d always been prepared to try new things. But after Caitlin’s arrival, her focus shifted. She went on maternity leave from work and life, it seemed to Hamish, and never really came back. The baby consumed her; Caitlin was a night-waker and often unsettled during the day. As the weeks turned to months, Paula became plumper and more resentful, worn down by the ceaseless twenty-four-hour cycle. In the place of sleep, she ate. Their bedroom was no longer a place for adult play; instead, it became an unlit tomb where Paula could be found at any hour, pale and bloated, catching a brief moment of rest before Caitlin woke again.

  By the end of the first year of Catie’s life, Hamish could count on one hand how many times Paula had been interested in sex. And to be fair, he hadn’t really been looking for it either. Every time he saw her naked, his mind flashed back to the birth; the growling animal sounds she’d made as her vulva had split open. And she hadn’t exactly bounced back like a Hollywood celebrity, either.

  It was all perfectly natural, of course; everything Paula’s body had done, or was doing, was thoroughly normal. But knowing that didn’t help his sex drive. Sometimes he would watch Paula change into her pyjamas at night, willing his dick to do something, anything. But just one word came to mind as he watched her pull on her voluminous pyjama pants and breastfeeding singlet top: mumsy. She was a mother now, and she looked it.

  The mother of my beautiful daughter, he would remind
himself, willing his cock to twitch.

  But his dick never lied.

  It was a surprise to them both, then, when Paula fell pregnant with Lachie. Caitlin was just thirteen months old and, as Hamish later joked with Doggo, it was virtually an immaculate conception. Paula had made a special effort for their anniversary, in honour of their three years of marriage, seducing him as soon as he walked in from work. On the couch in the lounge room, a rare moment of sexual liberty. But, as luck would have it, he’d knocked her up; so much for the supposed contraceptive benefits of breastfeeding. He’d only just started to enjoy baby Caitlin, too, who was crawling around after him like a smitten puppy. Being a dad had suddenly become a whole lot more fun, so Paula’s news of a second pregnancy scared the bejesus out of him. Wouldn’t having another one so soon just fuck everything up again?

  And sure enough, it did.

  Baby Lachlan turned out to be a better sleeper than Caitlin, but Paula’s fatigue levels soared. Having ‘two under two’, as she described it—as if it was a badge of honour—was a hell of a lot harder than one. She was short-tempered, forgetful and utterly uninterested in sex.

  I just want a cuddle, she’d say, whenever he attempted to arouse her.

  It was the cruel irony of maternity, he often thought; the one time in her life that Paula’s breasts were massive, but they were off-limits. He knew her tetchiness was temporary, but he just wanted his old wife back. The woman who’d laugh at his humour, who’d sit up at night sometimes and watch Ultimate Fight Club with him—not because she enjoyed it, but because she knew he did. The woman who’d pay attention when he arrived home from the office; kissing him, asking him how his day was, eating with him. Not leaving his dinner luke-warm and cling-wrapped on the kitchen counter, or boycotting cooking altogether. The woman with interests other than babies; who’d wiggled her hips against his in a Latin dance class, who’d burst into laughter during a ‘yoga for couples’ course. Who’d wanted to travel the country with him in a campervan, before conquering the world. Who’d made love to him more than once a month, and who’d enjoyed it when they did.

  Where exactly had that woman gone?

  More than a decade later, the question remained unanswered. Deferred, and then eclipsed, by competing demands. Hamish had done well at Crossroads Cars, growing the business more than tenfold in the same number of years. He’d become a poster boy for new recruits within the company, the staffer who’d progressed from faceless underling to executive general manager, operations. Boss of hundreds and second to none; except to the CEO, who’d empowered Hamish to run the business exactly as he wished. His bonuses alone had funded their family holidays to Fiji and New Zealand. Not exactly one of the destinations in their ‘adventure scrapbook’, but a decent consolation prize nonetheless.

  Work was the first thing Hamish thought about in the morning, and the last thing on his mind at night. And in his diminishing hours of leisure time, he spent them mostly with the kids. Hours of soccer practice or Sunday cycling with Catie, chess and Wii tournaments with Lachie, punctuated by fleeting moments of connection with Paula.

  By the time Lachie and Caitlin were in high school, Hamish’s life had settled into an inexorable routine. Work, always work. Beers with Doggo on a Friday night, mowing the lawns every second Saturday, sex with Paula whenever she let him, but always on their anniversary. There’d been fifteen of those at least, but somewhere along the way, Hamish had lost the urge to count.

  He had no doubt that he loved his kids. He could feel it in his body when he caught sight of them sometimes: Caitlin sprawled over her biology textbook at the kitchen bench, her mouth working in concentration; Lachie fretting about his next chess move, rocking on his spindly frame. And he could still remember, aeons ago, holding their hands and dancing around the apricot tree in the backyard. Chanting ‘Oranges and Lemons’ as the kids squealed with laughter and their bare feet slipped across the ripe fallen fruit. Watching their eyes widen as he bent down and sang in a deep, menacing tone: When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey. Caitlin’s half-terrified, half-excited shrieks as Hamish walked towards her, his legs spread wide, pretending to be the huge prison bell.

  He’d invested days and weeks and months and years, rearing these two beautiful children. And he’d done it all with the permanent fixture in his life, Paula, who tried so hard to be a good mother and wife.

  But is this it? Hamish sometimes wondered, tiptoeing about before dawn on a Sunday morning. Pulling on his cleated cycling shoes and pedalling out into the sleeping suburbs, crouching low over the handlebars.

  Is this as good as it gets?

  In the week Hamish turned forty, he decided to talk to Doggo.

  They’d been observing their weekly ritual of Friday-night beers ever since finishing high school, only ever skipping it on public holidays. Doggo wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but there was something reassuring about his rough chippy’s hands wrapped tightly around the base of a schooner; something that told Hamish that the planets were in their orbits, and all was right with the world.

  ‘How’s Paula?’ Doggo asked, sinking his second beer.

  ‘Busy,’ Hamish replied. ‘Does heaps for the kids. You know how it is.’

  ‘Yep.’ Doggo swilled the beer around his schooner glass.

  Doggo was one of seven siblings from a Catholic family. He’d finished his carpentry apprenticeship at nineteen, then married Tina, his high-school sweetheart. They’d pumped out five kids in the same number of years before deciding to stop doing God’s work in the bedroom; the oldest was now eighteen, the youngest twelve. Hamish hadn’t suspected how much Doggo’s life must have changed with all those ankle-biters until, a few years later, he’d had a couple of his own.

  Hamish looked up at Doggo. ‘Things are a bit, I dunno, with Paula. The kids are her life. We don’t . . .’ He scrounged around for the words. ‘Do you and Tina . . . ?’

  ‘Nah, mate.’

  Hamish wondered what question Doggo thought he’d answered.

  Doggo stood up and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘Anothery?’

  ‘Ta, buddy.’

  Doggo walked to the bar and waited to be served. A buxom brunette stood behind the taps, pulling beers like a milkmaid. Her cleavage rippled up and down, up and down, as she worked the taps. Smiling through voluptuous scarlet lips, flicking her long plaits behind tanned shoulders, fluttering her thick eyelashes at the blokes drooling all over the counter.

  Hamish’s cock moved, thinking of her working him like a beer tap. Up down, up down, whoosh. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes, for sure. And after the hand job, he’d find out if her other lips looked anything like the ones framing her teeth. He’d stick his fingers up her tidy little slit and work her over. Up down, up down, until she bucked her hips and screamed for him to finish her off. He’d do that with his tongue, until he felt her contract around his fingers. In out, in out. All done, hon.

  Doggo brought their schooners to the table.

  Hamish shifted on the bar stool, his cock pressing against his jeans. ‘Thanks, mate.’ He nodded towards the bar. ‘How’s that chick, eh?’

  ‘Hot as.’

  ‘She’d be up for it, I reckon.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Hamish paused, unsure how to venture further. It was one thing to talk about some random bar wench, but quite another to talk about your wife.

  Ah, bugger it. I’ve known Doggo for donkey’s years.

  ‘I’m not getting much, mate.’

  Doggo looked up from his beer, but said nothing.

  Come on, Doggo, help me out here.

  ‘Paula’s shattered all the time. Doesn’t let me touch her with a barge pole. And even when she does . . .’ He faltered. ‘It’s different now. We’re older, I guess. And ever since she had the kids, you know, it was rough on her body. It’s not as . . .’

  He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. It was only Doggo he was talking to, but he couldn’t spit it ou
t.

  ‘She got a smashed box, mate?’

  Hamish couldn’t help but laugh. Beer squirted out of his nose and mouth. Doggo slapped him on the back and they guffawed together until even the barmaid looked over at them and smiled.

  When they finally stopped laughing, Doggo downed half his beer.

  ‘I know what that’s like, mate,’ he said eventually. ‘After five kids, believe me, I understand. No traction, no action.’

  This set them both howling again.

  If we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying.

  ‘Just part of having kids, I guess,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Yeah.’ Doggo stretched his arms behind his head and belched, letting the air hiss out of the corner of his mouth. ‘But a bloke’s got needs, y’know.’

  ‘Too right. Can’t just keep floggin’ the log.’

  Doggo shrugged. ‘Me and Tina do it every Friday night.’

  Hamish looked at Doggo with newfound admiration. Paula refused to touch Hamish when he’d been to the pub; she wasn’t a fan of the drunken fuck.

  ‘Mate, that’s good,’ he said. ‘Real good.’

  Doggo glanced at the girl behind the bar. ‘The eye candy helps. A bit of Friday-night inspiration, y’know? I mean, Tina and I have been together for twenty-five years now.’

  Hamish would be thinking about that barmaid, too, the next time he jacked off in the shower. Maybe even the next time he made love to Paula, whenever that would be.

  ‘A few years back, I thought about hiring a hooker,’ Doggo continued, as if he was talking about a second-storey addition or a holiday to Hawaii. ‘I did the research, found an agency with decent girls, not skanks. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. Tina wouldn’t forgive me if she ever found out. It just wasn’t right.’ Doggo absently watched the large plasma screen on the wall behind Hamish, a field of racehorses whipping around a wet track. ‘Plenty of girls on the internet, though.’

  ‘Porn, you mean?’