Happily Ever After? Read online

  His job meant he was away a lot but that mostly suited me fine; it gave me more time to study for my degree and made his homecomings all the sweeter. I also loved telling people my boyfriend was a pilot. It spoke to me of a spirit of rugged adventurism, my brave and gallant explorer of the skies. Okay, so I was romanticising a wee bit, but that was my tendency in those days. Besides, Tony looked extremely hot in his uniform.

  All that first year I expected Tony to wake up and realise he was going out with little ol’ me. It is pathetic to say this now but back then I even thought he could have done better. My husband is a strong, silent type (Mr Darcy come on down) - not a great one for unnecessary talk at the best of times and certainly not someone who is comfortable talking about personal issues. Knowing what I know now, I’d say the romance writers have got it wrong and this is an overrated stereotype. Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say, and it seems I have wasted years of my life filling in the void created by his silences with my fruitless thoughts and pointless speculations. So in those days whenever he was a bit quiet, or a bit cranky, or a bit distracted, I’d think, okay this is it, he’s met someone else and he’s going to dump me, but of course he never did.

  The fact he never did became all the more remarkable to me when I got to know his mother, Pamela, well. And she definitely is a ‘Pamela’ (pronounced in short, breathy syllables), not a ‘Pam’ - no-one ever makes that mistake twice. Pamela is tall, blonde and elegant and both boys have inherited her good looks. Unfortunately she also holds copyright on the ‘mother-in-law from hell’ title.

  I’m certainly no angel (a fact that will become obvious the further you read) but I do at least give each person I meet the benefit of the doubt and am inclined to like them until given good reason to do otherwise. However, the very first time I met Pamela she was hostile to me and nothing’s changed since. It’s not as if I ever gave her cause to be in those early days: I was too intimidated to say anything to Tony’s parents, let alone anything offensive (although she probably interpreted this as surliness on my part). I’m not sure she would have thought any woman truly worthy of her beloved eldest, but she made no attempt to disguise the fact she would have preferred a girl from their social circle, not some middle-class upstart with ideas above her station. No doubt she tried her damnedest to break us up back then.

  I brought this up with David around this time, when he came back to Australia for his wedding to Amrita, but he claimed that Pamela had always been fine with him.

  ‘She probably thinks it’s okay to mix with the lower classes, just as long as we don’t interbreed,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Oh come on she can’t be that bad.’

  ‘I tell you she is.’

  ‘Well if it’s really that bad you may want to think about whether it’s worth it. Don’t get me wrong. Tony’s a good guy. But I’m not sure he’s the right guy for you.’

  I was pretty annoyed with David about that. Never seek advice unless you want to hear the answer. Although it turned out he was right about at least one thing - and I’m embarrassed to admit it took me a long time to realise this - it was less about snobbery with Pamela than jealousy and this has made her a much more powerful adversary.

  Fortunately at this time Tony was sharing a flat in Neutral Bay with another pilot and didn’t spend much time at the family home. Thus I was spared too much exposure to the formidable Pamela Cooper. Tony’s flat mate, Mark, was an older guy, who had been an air force pilot before joining Qantas. He was an inveterate womaniser, too. Tony and I started calling his girlfriends ‘Miss January’, ‘Miss February’, ‘Miss March’ and so on as few of them lasted more than a few weeks. Living with Mark meant you’d never know who you were going to bump into leaving the bathroom the next day. Some of these girls were lovely but there was no point getting to know any of them because as soon as you’d developed an attachment for one she’d be shown the revolving door. Of course Mark was often away, too, so we did have many glorious periods where we had the flat all to ourselves.

  I’d established by this time that Tony’s sculpted body wasn’t completely a work of nature: he liked to exercise, a lot. I signed up to his gym and started joining him on the bikes and treadmills. We’d get all hot and sweaty on the gym equipment, have a shower, and then go home to get all hot and sweaty again whilst performing a work out of a completely different kind. He was not the wildly adventurous lover I dreamed of, but I was completely in love with the idea of being in love and with the intimacy that only comes with that. I think there is a place for the good old, no-strings-attached fling; one highlight from my trip to Italy I omitted to tell Tony about was the twenty-four hours I spent holed up in a pensione with Roberto, a lawyer I met at a restaurant near the Spanish Steps. It was with Tony, however, that I finally discovered the difference between having sex and making love.

  I never tired of the fact that he was so big and strong and masculine - it made me feel, if not exactly petite, at least very feminine. Once I’d worked up the courage to suggest it, we’d sometimes pretend I was a damsel in distress and he my rakish lover come to take advantage of me.

  One afternoon, after about a year of togetherness, we were lying in his bed. I plucked up the courage to ask him a question that had been niggling at me for some time.

  ‘You know the night we got together, at David’s farewell party.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Was it me or Mimi you were interested in?’

  His head jerked up from the pillow a little and he gave me a puzzled look. ‘You - I thought that would have been obvious.’

  ‘Well, she is very beautiful. Most men flock to her. I thought you might have been going to hit on her but when you got talking to me changed your mind, or something.’

  ‘No, never…Mimi is very attractive, but it was always you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know…it’s not something I can really put into words. You just looked nice. Although,’ he said, giving me a wicked look, ‘I did notice that you had very nice breasts.’

  Then he went quiet for a while, his usual state. I thought our conversation had reached a typical dead-end but he surprised me this time by continuing. ‘You know, I don’t really know Mimi that well, and she seems nice and all, but in my opinion really beautiful girls are generally more trouble than they are worth. You know about Sarah, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I knew of Sarah, Tony’s last serious girlfriend, well. Alice and Cathy, the catty girls in Tony’s crowd, delighted in telling me about this apparent paragon of beauty and virtue whenever they could. Sarah was travelling in Europe by this stage, so we’d never actually met.

  ‘She was absolutely, stunningly gorgeous [I could have done without hearing that] and when we started going out I thought that all my Christmases had come at once, but in the end she just drove me nuts and I got sick of her.’

  Ah, that was much better. ‘Why?’ I asked, trying - and failing - not to sound too eager.

  ‘She is a daughter of one of my dad’s friends and my mum and dad were really keen on us getting together. I think they thought we’d eventually get married, you know. [That explained a lot.] But Sarah is an only child and absolutely spoilt. When she got her driver’s licence her dad bought her a brand new MX5 as a present. My dad has always stressed that we should earn things, not have them handed to us on a plate. After a while she started bitching and moaning about my job - you know, when I’d have to be away when a good party was on and all. Anyway, one day she actually suggested I might want to give up flying and go into dealing or something. Can you believe it? I have never wanted to do anything but be a pilot since I was four years old. Flying is my life - you know that. So, I went home that night and thought about it and the next day I called her up and dumped her. That didn’t go down well, I can tell you,’ he said, wearing the smile of a small boy taking pleasure in being caught doing the wrong thing. ‘I decided there and then th
at I was through with these princess-types and I was going to find myself a nice normal girl who didn’t think the world revolved around her.’

  ‘So you decided to seek out a homely girl who would be so grateful to have your affection bestowed upon her that she would never complain about anything?’ I said this in a slightly mocking tone but it was closer to the truth than I cared to admit. There had been times when I had wanted to complain about Tony’s many absences but had checked this inclination because I had a feeling he would not like it. Seems I was correct.

  ‘Now you’re being silly. As if I would have gone after a homely girl. I always thought you were pretty. And now I have got to know the whole package - the fact you are so easy to be around - I truly think you are the loveliest girl I know…and as I said before you do have the most magnificent breasts.’

  ‘Are you in love with me?’

  ‘God I hate this sort of talk. Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘You know sometimes girls need to be told these things.’

  He went silent for a while.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Okay…I love you.’

  ‘And I love you. See that wasn’t so hard was it?’

  ‘No…but I’m never going to be good at this sort of stuff. You’ll have to get used to that. [I liked this reference to getting used to it. It suggested a healthy permanence.] Talk is cheap and I’d rather you judge me by my actions not my words.’

  And then, embarrassed by all this personal talk, he made a move to kiss the aforementioned breasts and with that all sensible conversation ceased.

  So that’s when I found out that Tony did genuinely love me and why he stuck by me against the wishes of his mother. And more importantly I now knew the secret of keeping him happy. I resolved that very day that nothing I said or did would ever stand in the way of me marrying him.

  3

  A fairytale wedding

  Now there’s a title to get your attention - a fairytale wedding, a standard device called on by makers of a soap opera going through a ratings slump; slot in a wedding between two attractive co-stars and the viewers will flock back for sure. I am old enough to remember the fairytale wedding of Charlene on Neighbours, where the bride, complete with corkscrew perm and baby’s breath married her childhood sweetheart, Scott, of the bad suit and blonde mullet. As a matter of fact this was a red-letter day in the Parkes household, Jason Donovan being one of my medium-level crushes at the time. Of course Kylie Minogue went on to much bigger things after that, but she’ll never be able to completely live down that awful confectionery of a wedding dress she got to wear back in 1987.

  Anyway, just in case you were getting bored with my story, I am going to introduce a fairytale wedding in this chapter to liven things up, just not yet. You’ll have to be patient, as I had to be. The signs were always there that Tony wouldn’t rush into marriage without careful consideration.

  The gossip mags also love a good fairytale wedding, especially when it’s followed roughly eleven months later by a ‘bitter divorce’. I’ll admit that I’ve dipped my toe into this particular literary genre. Of course, everyone says they read them in the supermarket queue, but someone must actually buy them otherwise they wouldn’t exist, would they? Well that someone is occasionally me, usually after I have had a bad day at the office. I’m very well informed of all the bikini cellulite disasters, the latest starlets in rehab and the most ridiculous celebrity baby names. The trouble is I always feel a bit dirty afterwards, like I’ve indulged in watching some very bad porn, although I am highly sought after at the preschool trivia nights as a consequence. In any case, it has always fascinated me how these celebrities think it’s okay to marry one another one day and then jet off to completely different continents for the next six months to pursue their respective careers. Inevitably one of them has an affair with a co-star, or gets caught in a strip club in a compromising position or they both just drift apart (definitely the most annoying one). Who’d have thought it? Don’t these people have any idea that successful marriages require real work and commitment?

  Considering what I’ve been through in my own marriage, however, I am probably in no position to lecture anyone these days. Pilots are, of course, often away from home too and this can place a great strain on their partnerships. For a time I naïvely believed that Tony and I would be exceptions to that rule but we’ve since gone on to have some huge struggles that have almost torn us apart. I wouldn’t say we are completely out of the woods yet, either.

  When I first started seeing him I was surprised how often people, even those I hardly knew, would say, ‘Don’t you worry about him fooling around with all those hot young flight attendants?’ Such a helpful comment - I’ve spoken to other pilots’ partners and apparently I’m not alone in this. I was always tempted at this point to say, ‘And aren’t you worried that your husband/wife is banging the nineteen year old office temp/pool cleaner?’ but usually I just smiled through gritted teeth and responded with something like, ‘What sort of a relationship is it if you don’t have trust?’

  Tony knew the reputation of pilots and was keen to reassure me I had nothing to worry about; the reality was much less glamorous than the image makers would lead us to believe. And although not antisocial, he always preferred to keep himself a little aloof from the cabin crew. If laying over somewhere overnight he would more likely head to the hotel gym, or watch TV or work on his log books, or just go to bed - alone - than head out partying. He also used to phone and email me regularly to keep in touch, but if he wasn’t the best communicator in person he was even worse on the phone, so our conversations were more of the ‘I’m okay and I’ll be back XXX’ type, rather than intimate little chats about feelings. (Do any men really like to talk about feelings?) This was enough for me, however. So no, I didn’t worry too much about him fooling around, but what I probably didn’t consider was that all the time apart is a barrier and if you are not careful it can create a distance between you all by itself.

  I can look back on those early years with genuine nostalgia. Tony was so lovely to me back then, a total gentleman. He treated me…well, like a princess I suppose. I never got him talking much, but he was as good as his word and showed his devotion to me through his actions: a grasped hand, a proprietorial arm around my shoulders when with friends, a gentle stroking of my back when we were alone together watching TV.

  After we’d been together for about a year and a half, Mark bought a place of his own and moved out. Tony said, ‘How about moving in with me,’ and with that Miss Eleanor Parkes, formerly of Russell Lea, now of Neutral Bay, underwent a most dramatic transformation: a transformation which astounded her friends and annoyed the hell out of her shell-shocked parents. The girl whose bedroom had once been so messy it was declared a no-go zone by her beleaguered mother, learnt what it was to be neat and tidy. I had to because my live-in partner was (and still is) completely anal.

  Like his perfectly sculpted body, the immaculate appearance I’d observed on our first evening together was not an accident. This was a man who would never even leave the house in an unironed t-shirt. Our flat was so spick and span it would have made a 1950’s housewife green with envy and we could never, ever go to bed before doing the washing up. For the most part my domestic efforts measured up to his stringent standards, except where it came to ironing - I could never get the creases right. I was quickly dismissed from that duty (not too many tears were shed) and he’s assumed responsibility for the ironing ever since.

  However, without doubt my favourite Tonyism was (cue drum roll) - the germ phobia.

  ‘Aark! Think of the germs,’ he shrieked one day in a most unmasculine like way when he caught me double-dipping a spoon into a pasta sauce that only the two of us were planning to share.

  ‘Well, if you’re so afraid of a few girl’s germs we better stop kissing then - and sex while we’re at it.’

  ‘Okay, I suppose if you
put it like that.’

  Even so, I used to sometimes catch him eyeing me suspiciously whilst I was doing the cooking. I wondered where this all came from until I got to spend more time in the company of his mother. I’m not saying his neat-freak tendencies didn’t sometimes grate (‘Yes, I know if I leave a wet towel on the floor it won’t dry properly - I just occasionally forget, okay’) but for the most part I found this aspect of his personality reassuring, almost cute even. It made him seem more human and less like the cool football hero of his high school days.

  What I didn’t understand immediately was that this was all part of a larger issue, one that was not so benign. Tony is a perfectionist: everything he does, he does to the best of his ability. Whatever he lacks in natural aptitude he makes up for with application, studying and practising for the task at hand - whether it be kicking a rugby ball or sitting a flying exam - until he’s got it just right. Nothing is left to chance. But as a consequence of arriving in the world with ‘designated high achiever’ stamped on his birth certificate, and having this belief reinforced by his parents throughout his childhood, and pretty much achieving everything he’d ever set his mind to, he has a tendency to be intolerant of people who do not meet his exacting standards, which I’m afraid is most of the rest of us.

  A less charitable person might describe Tony as a control freak but you didn’t hear it from me.

  An incident from around this time brought this all home to me. My dear friend Tracey was visiting town from Melbourne and I was eager to introduce her to my new boyfriend, so I organised dinner for the three of us at a city restaurant. Tracey is a lawyer and probably the most intelligent person I know, smarter even than my brother. She is also fiercely funny and one of my favourite people. It’s not a good idea to drink too much in her company (although I inevitably do) because you have to keep your wits about you just to keep up with the flow of conversation, otherwise you’ll be left far behind her in her intellectual wake. She cracked me up laughing throughout the meal as she recounted some of her appalling client stories and we reminisced about the bad old days at school.