The sameness of the urban landscape held no interest for Rowena as she sped down the Princes Highway between Melbourne and Geelong. She had managed to leave the office early that day before it had begun to get dark. It had been the bleakest winter day, grey and drizzling; it was also one of her own sharp-sorrow days. She made several attempts to avert her thoughts from Kurt Weininger as she drove. She let her mind dwell on her friends in the insurance office where she worked as an account executive. The girls there were not unlike herself, smart sophisticates in their twenties and thirties. Over the past few years she had dated several of the men in and around the office, including David Collins and Roy Samson, poor Roy, she thought. But she knew she now had to put down that albatross - regret. There was no point in defrosting the past.
Recently she had begun an affair with Kurt Weininger, head of a large property development company. Several times she had questioned her own motive in this relationship. She told herself that no man had excited her as much as Kurt. Somehow Kurt evoked a fear in her of herself, stirring an instinct so deep. She found herself breathing hard, her hands tightening on the steering-wheel. For almost an hour she weaved through the heavy traffic, overtaking an interstate transport truck as she entered the fast lane. On her left was a lot of open land, that was soon to be turned into yet another housing estate, and there ahead of her she spotted the buildings that was the turn-off into Geelong itself. It was a night that had neither moon nor stars. Dark streets - the blur of café lights. She watched the grey of the sky deepen to black as she drove to Western Beach.
Kurt had a large house at the edge of the beachfront overlooking Corio Bay. She looked out towards the headland across the bay, where the water was the colour of dark metal. She pulled into the open driveway alongside of the house with a balcony suspended over a double garage. There were sleek columns at the doorway and a wooden deck that ran the length of the house beneath the balcony. Leafless trees - oaks, maples, and sycamores white as a bone filled the garden. Rowena made her way up a paved path, where she was obliged to ring the doorbell several times, the door painted a violent orange, in defiance of local council regulations. The evening falling cold. 'Hi! So you made it!' Kurt was a man of about forty, over six feet tall, muscular, with curly blond hair, wearing a gaudy 'art-silk' dressing-gown and nothing underneath. 'Sorry,' he grinned, 'just stepped out of the shower.' His dark eyes roved up and down her figure. 'It's good to see you.'
His glance was shrewd but not penetrating. Kurt had the massive self-confidence that the knowledge of good looks and wealth give. Rowena lifted her head flirtatiously, 'It's - it's nice to see you again, Kurt.' 'Come on in,' he said, putting an arm around her, 'I'll show you your room.' She followed him into a marble and mahogany entrance foyer and up a staircase to a landing. 'The bathroom's to your right. You can freshen up. Take your time. Take a bath if you like. Call out if you need anything.' Rowena knew that it was the spare bedroom Kurt had assigned for her use, their use, she corrected herself. She was not to enter the master bedroom. Kurt had a wife somewhere overseas and two sons boarding at the local grammar school. Rowena ran a bath in the adjoining room and lay for a while in tepid water.
Her thoughts were pensive. Her man was not her man alone. Kurt had demanded discretion; theirs was the affair he could not show the world. Kurt had an easy way with women, and it was this which had attracted her to him, along with the athletic hardness of his body. He had said the first time they were together and he had cut the words clean. 'The best loving is done on impulse. Sex must be spontaneous and quite free and quite apart from emotion,' and she had been more than ready to accept this. A purely physical relationship meant never letting anyone get too close. Was she emotionally cold? she wondered.
Kurt was standing beside the window when she entered the bedroom. He held her close when she moved to him, his body telling her what she wanted, his hand brushing over her breast.
Her own fingers felt firm flesh. Kurt had touched a secret spot buried deep with her; she would give herself to him with abandon. Her body awakened by his rough hands was claiming its right. She had been aroused at the first touch.
The moon had risen. A shaft of light laid them both bare on the bed. His hand running down the arch of her back, across the curve of her buttock. Her breath quickening as she stretched supine. Pressing her fingertips into his biceps, he was in her hard and to the hilt, she tightening her thighs about him. But as for love - she knew it was the love of the wolf for its prey. Her body quivered in his hold.
In her sleep that night Rowena tossed from one side to the other. Once she woke to find the pillow wet with tears, but was unable to recall the nature of her dream. It was like a solitary voice calling out to her.
She lay on her back on her side of the bed. Touching her face, she felt the tears. She turned and looked into Kurt's face ... but he was sound asleep. She listened to his breathing, deep and regular. The house was quiet. She lay watching the patterned moonlight and shadows on the bedroom wall opposite. She could not think what had disturbed her. Perhaps the solitary voice was her conscience, returning to her body.
Then it came to her. She had a bad conscience about a man she had known in the office five years ago. Roy Samson had haunted her mind all that time. Roy worked in the same building as she, but not for the same company. He was an articled clerk in a firm of barristers and solicitors on the sixth floor. And now he was shadowing her like a bad nightmare.
The bad dream was real enough and she was still living inside it. I do have tremors of conscience, she thought. That what is going against me is my guilt. Guilt like a persistent vulture flying to my throat. But there now was no way to right the wrong.
She thought of the man sleeping beside her. She had begun the affair with Kurt soon after the first meeting, even though she knew he had a wife and family. He was a property developer on the Bellarine Peninsula and had business interests interstate as well.
The two men filled her thoughts. Kurt and Roy. They were as different as bronze from cast iron.
Roy Samson was the man who once told her he loved her. But she had been unable to respond emotionally. Her feeling was cold toward him. Roy was twenty-four but looked nineteen. He was clean-shaven with a baby-face and black hair, blue eyes.
She recalled the rainy afternoon when she made the mistake of letting Roy come to her room. She had stood before him, her russet-brown hair tousled, her green eyes alive. She had given him a teasing smile. She had even let him kiss her. Or rather her tongue had teased his. But she was not wanting to go the distance with him and tried to push him away. However, she did not want to be thought a teaser. She feared the adoration in his eyes.
Maybe I was sorry for him, she thought, got too involved. I let him fall for me, without taking steps to avoid it. Leading him on when I couldn't love him.
A year before she had met Roy, another would-be lover, David Collins from the office where she worked, had once told her she was cold. She was not at all offended by this, and found it unexpectedly pleasing. So when Roy put his arms around her, she thought she could respond at a physical level if nothing else.
Roy's fingers were gently touching the points of her breasts. Her body responding, urging him. But it was exactly awkward as she feared it might be. They undressed but he fell limp beside her. And she was not at all impressed by his pale string-bean body; she could no longer respond herself.
She remembered meeting Roy a day or two later, outside her office, recalled telling him how sorry she was, but her answer had to be 'no'.
Her words fell on him like a terrible blow. He stood stunned. To her it had been like executing someone, but she had to refuse him.
She saw Roy a few more times after that in the lift where they worked. He kept on asking her out. He looked at her with stricken eyes, 'You could have been patient,' he cried. 'It needn't have been like that.' He looked as if he was about to walk in front of a truck.
Soon he was beginning to irritate her. On one occasion she had laughed straight into his face; she had met his eyes with scorn. He turned and walked away from her and she knew she had gone too far.
It wasn't until later that afternoon she felt herself grieving because she could not love Roy as he loved her.
It was a moment that became fixed, frozen in her consciousness.
She climbed out of bed, careful not to wake the man sleeping beside her. She went to the big picture window and looked out across the street to the bay. The sea was broad and flat and glittered like polished metal beneath a milky wash of moonlight.
