Craig Sherborne - The Amateur Science of Love

Her eyelids were half closed with willingness. She came down off her tiptoes, pulled her blouse straight and licked her bottom lip like a way of kissing herself to keep the kissing going. This drew me back to kissing. Then to stepping. The ‘neutral’ idea could not compete against resting my hands on her hips, running them up over her ribs to her bra strap. Then a breath, a pause to concentrate and savour what my hands were about to do. They were about to shift around onto two breasts. Two not one. No scar, no elephant fatness in the sandy shaved pit of her arm.

I could not stop looking at them. As we crabbed onto the bed her breasts transfixed me—two not one, as if two were unusual and I had never seen them before. Their little noses of nut-nipple, softer than Tilda’s body-part nipple. We were unwrapping each other from our clothes yet I had to slow up and stare at them, give my lips the pleasure of rubbing both. I said nothing of this to Donna. I just revelled in her to the point of over-delight. I had to close my eyes or else I’d need mathematics. I concentrated on removing my shoes, taking a moment to unlace and settle. Two breasts not one. And ribs not poking out but covered with a healthy layer of flesh. Rounded buttock and thigh, strong not skinny.

It is impossible not to compare one lover to another, even as you’re climbing into them. I was thinking how Donna’s diaphragm was not as deep in as Tilda’s. I butted its rubber and refrained from thrusting quite so deeply.

I could feel Cameron’s shape in the bed. The scoop where his body slept on the mattress. Even if I changed sides his scoop was still there under me. Donna put it down to my imagination but conceded somewhere neutral would be preferable. She agreed it didn’t seem right stepping over children’s toys and dolls in the hall and then doing what we were doing. Having been spreadeagled in one another’s arms, it was hardly romantic to get up and wash us from the sheets because Ruth liked to get into bed with her mother in the mornings.

What about we use the forest at Ringo Point? I suggested it because a motel was difficult: we’d have to drive halfway to Melbourne given the risk of tongues wagging. No one hires a motel room for the day in the country, not unless they’re up to no good. Besides, there was the expense of it. I knew all the forest at Ringo. I knew of clearings and cavities in the scrub where only kangaroos would see us. There was the risk of the odd reptile but that was okay, I would shoo any away and we could throw a blanket down. Consider it a temporary measure, I said, until I left Tilda. And I would leave Tilda soon, I promised.

The forest became our arrangement. Tuesdays and Fridays—Donna’s non-uni days. She dropped Ruth off at playgroup and drove an hour to me. We used an old doona cover she had, spread it at a spot three minutes’ walk west of the sundial where there was plenty of bush to screen us. Ironbarks stretched out enough for two people to keep company in shade. The ground was hard but smooth. There were no bull ants. We codenamed it Neutral Motor Inn.

For six weeks we made a brief bed there, never fully naked in case we heard humans. We did a drill, just so we’d be ready, pulling our clothes up as fast as possible. We were never interrupted except by parrot voices. Afterwards we shared water from Donna’s thermos and watched the ticker-tape effect of sun through the swaying branches. We could not remember, either of us, being so happy, so peaceful.

I said, ‘You’re the love of my life.’

She answered, ‘I’m very respectful of Cameron, but I feel love like you do too.’

Her saying that always gave me such resolve. I would go home from Neutral Motor Inn determined to tell Tilda goodbye. I whipped myself into a state of contempt for her, the right frame of mind to deliver the ruthless news. I rehearsed it: ‘I am leaving you, Tilda. I am walking out. I am not in love with you. I am in love with Donna Wilkins.’ I walked in through the back door without so much as a ‘Good evening.’ My jaw was clenched for conflict. I hadn’t showered, hadn’t washed Donna from me. Surely I reeked of the off-smell of wetness dried and clotted in my trousers. I deliberately breezed by her so she might catch the scent, but failed to provoke her into getting the whole smithereens of us underway. Call me spineless but I baulked at igniting it myself.

Those six weeks provided me a sordid balance: I had Donna waiting in the forest and still had a home to return to afterwards. I had it both ways.

I began writing these pages in the first of those six weeks. My daily regimen. I suppose I was hoping they would help me make my decision. The unhappiest people in the world must be those with too many decisions to make. Even one is too many. In my case, Tilda or Donna.

Donna pressed me only slightly. She said, ‘Promise Neutral Motor Inn is temporary?’

I promised. And I did mean it when I was with her, though I avoided giving an exact timeline.

The excuse I used was Tilda’s health. Towards the end of the six weeks she got so thin. She didn’t eat, stayed in bed as if wasting away. Surely this time it had to be the cancer. How could I leave her in that predicament?

‘You can’t,’ Donna said, tears in her eyes. ‘This could drag your leaving on forever and ever.’

‘It’s not my fault.’

‘I know it’s not.’ We pulled up our clothes and lay in sun-leaf dapples. The only obvious utterance to make was: maybe Tilda will die and leave the way clear. We bit our tongues. Neither of us was going to reveal that we were capable of such a statement.

Anyway, it wasn’t cancer. It was me. Tilda didn’t need Roff to confirm that for her. She’d put the whole heartwrecking puzzle together.

Donna would park her car at the sundial area. I always left the Commodore out of sight up a narrow track half a kilometre from Neutral Motor Inn. In all the years I had run up the track I had never seen another person. It wasn’t our cars that gave us away. Nor did I ever call Donna from home—the phone bill didn’t spring us. Yes, I overused the Hastings Road phone box in broad daylight but I couldn’t help it: when you’re in love you simply have to hear your loved one’s voice constantly. I called from the office three or four times but I made sure everyone was out on a tea break.

It was the underpants I bought from O’Connor’s Manchester. I believe I set out to sabotage myself. Brand new underwear after years of the same old saggy ones. I was ashamed of saggy ones with Donna. I replaced them with bright blues and purples—four pairs, tight-fitting with bulgy Y-front pouches.

I didn’t take care to rinse off the stains before throwing them on the wash pile. Surely it was sabotage—my way of telling Tilda without actually telling her. I was letting dried wetnesses do the work for me.

I was standing at our backyard oleander, running the filter end of a cigarette around my mouth to simulate Donna’s nipples. It was here I had first seen the crease of her bottom. I smiled at how far we had progressed from that to Neutral Motor Inn. I lit the cigarette and had just drained the dregs of a vodka and ice when Tilda walked up behind me. Her arms were crossed tightly. Her hair was frizzing loose from her plait as if it had been picked at. There was such a narrow-eyed strain in her face you’d have thought she was lifting a heavy invisible weight. She said, ‘Have you got a problem with your water works or something?’

‘Ay?’

‘What else would leave these kinds of stains?’ Her fist threw me the purple underpants I’d worn yesterday, which was a Donna day.

I held cigarette smoke deep in my lungs for courage. Let it stream out of me like a long, calm purge. I did not answer.