The Slap (11 page)

The pub was getting crowded, full of smoke and it was a wait before she could get served. Just as the bartender asked for her order, she felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned around. The man from the table next to them was grinning at her. His face was flushed, pink. His mouth was wide and his lips full.

‘Can I buy you this round?’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I’m getting a bottle for the table.’

‘That’s alright. I’m happy to shout all you ladies.’

Anouk smiled ruefully and shook her head. ‘Afraid not.’ She had let go of the fantasy the second he began speaking. His voice was thin, reedy. Men should not have little boys’ voices. ‘I’m with someone.’

‘Lucky bastard.’

‘Thank you.’

The bartender returned with her order and the man slipped a fifty-dollar note across the counter. She began to protest but he interrupted.

‘My shout. I’m Jim.’

‘I’m Anouk.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Like the actress?’

It pleased her that he knew this. This was not common for Australian men.

‘Yes, like the actress.’

Jim assisted her back to the table. The noise from the crowd was amplified in the narrow bar and they found they had to shout.

‘Your parents French?’

‘No. My parents were francophiles.’

She found herself a little tongue-tied when she reached their table. Jim placed the bottle before the women and introduced himself. He pointed to his friend, who rose, and walked over.

‘This is Tony.’

Tony was also tall, younger than Jim, slimmer with a thick moustache. He was balding. They all shook hands and then there was an uncomfortable moment of silence.

‘Do you want to join us?’ Aisha finally asked.

Jim raised his eyes at Anouk. He slowly shook his head. ‘You ladies look like you’re having a girl’s night out. We’ll do the gentlemanly thing and leave you alone.’ He looked straight at Anouk. ‘Enjoy the night. I just wanted to buy you all drinks. In celebration of gorgeous women.’

Anouk left it to Rosie and Aisha to thank him. She was making sure she could memorise everything about him. The colour of his hair, his ruddy cheeks, the strong, heavy jaw, the fading sunburn visible under his unbuttoned collar, the thick neck, the smattering of fine blonde hair on his arms and wrists. His eyes, his mouth, his hands.

Aisha waited till the men had seated themselves again at their table before speaking. She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I don’t want to giggle but I feel like giggling.’

‘Don’t you fucking dare giggle.’ Anouk’s eyes were imploring her friends to behave. ‘What did I miss?’

The grin departed from Aisha’s face. It struck Anouk that Aisha looked too thin. Her cheekbones seemed too sharply defined beneath her dusky skin; there were dark shadows beneath her eyes.

Anouk took her friend’s hand beneath the table and held it tight. ‘You alright?’

Aish nodded and Anouk loosened her grip. Their hands slid apart.

‘Rosie was saying that Shamira is the first veiled woman she has ever spoken to.’

Rosie looked embarrassed. ‘Not quite, Aish. Obviously, I have shared greetings with strangers or across shop counters. But I’ve never had a conversation with a Muslim woman before.’ Rosie dropped her voice. ‘I feel a bit ashamed, but I can’t take my eyes off her headscarf. I want to forget it but I can’t.’

‘That’s because it appears strange to you.’

‘And it isn’t strange for you?’ Rosie shot back.

Aisha didn’t respond. God, thought Anouk, let’s not have this conversation.

‘Aish simply meant she’s Indian, it’s not strange for her. Or for me.’

‘Because you’re Jewish?’ Rosie sounded incredulous.

Anouk remembered as a child her parents taking her to Sydney for a wedding, and in Bondi, at some stranger’s house, she had first seen women covered. They had not mixed with any Orthodox in Perth. They had scared her, these women; even the young ones had seemed ancient.

‘Yes, some Orthodox women cover their heads. I think they’re doormats as well,’ she added emphatically.

‘Shamira says it gives her strength. It’s given her confidence.’

I’m not going to have this conversation, thought Anouk, let us not have this fucking conversation again. She was sickened by the return of questions of religion and God. Increasingly she felt restricted by the morality and the confusion of this new century. She had abandoned God a long time ago when still a child. Her athiesm had seemed normal, expected. Of the world. This new century seemed to stretch out before her with an unrelenting, atavistic resolve. She wished that she had been born twenty years earlier. Born a man, twenty years earlier.

‘I hate it when I see women covered. I detest it. It makes me furious that they let men do that to them.’

Rosie’s face registered shock and disapproval. Anouk too was surprised by Aisha’s vehemence.

‘But, Aish,’ Rosie answered, ‘not all Muslim women are forced into the veil. You know that. Surely you support their right to wear whatever they want.’

Anouk couldn’t keep silent. ‘I’m not having this fucking conversation. Let us not have this conversation.’

‘Why?’ Rosie would not back down. She was directing her questions to Aisha. ‘Do you think Shamira is lying to herself when she says the veil gives her strength?’

‘Shamira’s strength comes from being with Terry. Shamira’s mother is a drunk, her sister’s a junkie and her father is God knows where. It’s Terry who gives her strength, not a piece of cloth over her head.’ Aisha’s fingers moved towards the cigarette packet but she didn’t take one.

‘And Bilal’s faith is what gives him strength.’ Rosie would not back down.

Anouk knew she was right. She remembered Terry before his conversion, his wit and boyish charm, but also the violence that seemed to lie just beneath his jovial, egalitarian demeanour, the aggro that would surface whenever he got drunk. His open, friendly face was inexorably falling to dissipation and fat, there was always the toxic smell of grog emanating from his body. She had been amazed by the different man who had shaken her hand years later at a dinner at Hector’s and Aish’s house. He had not yet taken on his new Muslim name but he had converted and was studying Arabic and his new faith. His eyes and skin were clear, he had gained weight, filled out. He was calm, as though he had finally found repose. She had never thought him a happy man, but he looked content then. Truth be told, the lacerating awareness of her country’s racial history and her own prejudices had made her assume that he would never be happy, that he would always be aggro. That he would die aggro—aggro and young. She grinned at a blasphemous thought, one that she knew she could never share with Rosie: he had been young and aggro and now he was pious and boring.

Instead she nodded. ‘It’s true. But can we not talk about religion? I thought God had died just before my ninth birthday but it seems that was not the case. I hate being proved wrong. Let’s talk about something else.’

Jim was still glancing over at her. She was glad to be a woman, drinking, flirting, having fun.

Rosie laughed. ‘Done. No God talk. It’s just that she’s been such a help to me. I think we’re going to be friends.’

‘Who?’

Anouk, distracted by the flirtatious game she and Jim were playing, had lost track of the conversation. Was this muddle-headedness also a curse of pregnancy?

‘Shamira,’ replied Rosie, stealing a glance at Aisha and then quickly looking away. They’ve talked about this already. Anouk felt a piercing jolt of adolescent jealousy.

‘How is she being a help?’

‘She’s been such a rock. With this business of Hugo being bashed.’ I will not go there, I will play dumb.

‘We’ve charged Hector’s cousin with assault.’ Rosie could not bring herself to look at Anouk.

‘Rosie, don’t do this.’

‘Gary’s determined.’

Anouk, in frustration, glared at Aisha. ‘You say something to her.’

‘It’s Rosie’s choice,’ Aisha answered firmly.

‘Then I’m going to be a witness for Harry and Sandi.’

Rosie swung around. ‘You saw that bastard bash Hugo.’

‘I saw Harry slap Hugo. And I saw that Hugo deserved it.’

‘No one deserves to be hit, let alone a child.’

‘That’s just a platitude, a new age bullshit platitude. You need to teach a child discipline and sometimes that discipline has to be physical. That’s how we learn what is acceptable and what is not.’

Rosie was furious. ‘Just shut it, Anouk. You have no right to say what you are saying.’

Because I’m not a mother? She nearly said it, she had to choke back on the words: I’m pregnant. She must not raise her voice, she must state her argument calmly.

‘My point is not about your son. My point is a general one. We’re raising a generation of moral imbeciles, kids who have no sense of responsibility.’

‘You do not teach children responsibility by bashing them.’

‘Harry did not bash Hugo.’

‘He hit him. He assaulted him. That’s illegal.’

Anouk exploded. ‘That’s crap. Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped Hugo but what he did was not a crime. We all wanted to slap him at that moment. You’re going to fuck up Harry and Sandi’s lives just because Gary has it in his head that he was done wrong and because Gary always has to be the victim.’

Anouk wasn’t shouting but she was loud, dogged, her tone urgent. She was aware that Jim and Tony had fallen silent at the next table but she did not care. She wanted her words to be knives, to hurt Rosie. She felt as if she had never detested anything in her life with more passion than her friend’s self-righteous conviction.

‘Or is it that he’s bored? Is that it, Rosie? Gary’s bored and he wants some drama in his life?’

Rosie was quietly sobbing. ‘You have no right. You have no right.’

‘Hugo’s problem is not that Harry slapped him. Hugo’s problem is that neither you nor Gary had the control over your child to stop him acting like a brat.’

‘Anouk, that’s enough.’ Aisha was livid.

It was enough. She had nothing more to say. She had wanted to say these things to Rosie for a long time, but there was no pleasure or satisfaction in saying them. She felt guilty and wretched at seeing the effect her words had on her friends.

Aisha was holding Rosie’s hand. ‘You don’t have the right to say any of that, Anouk. Rosie is right.’ Aisha’s tone was icy, her eyes were black steel. ‘You aren’t very interested in our children, we know that and we can deal with that. You don’t like babies and you don’t like talk about babies and children. You’ve made that clear over the years and we’ve respected that. But don’t then assume that you can start being an authority now.’ Aisha was struggling to hold back her own tears, her voice was shaky. ‘Harry didn’t have any right to hit Hugo. Yes, maybe we all felt like slapping him at that moment but the point is no other adult did. We exercised self-control, which is what makes us different from children. We didn’t slap him because we knew that was the wrong thing to do.’

No, some of us didn’t because we were too scared. But Anouk was tired. She was not prepared to argue further. This is why I will not have this baby, she said to herself, why I am going to have the abortion. I don’t want to become like either of you. I’m not on your side, not in this. This is not the only way to be a parent but it is the only way this world now allows. And to do it my way would be an exhausting struggle and maybe I could do it but I couldn’t do anything else. Anouk realised that she was repeatedly clenching and unclenching her fists. There was silence at their table, made more insistent by the buzz of the now crowded beer-garden, all the drunken laughter and conversation. She knew that the women were waiting for her to fill the silence, to renew their camaraderie, to make them all feel safe again. It had always been this way. It came to Anouk with the force of a revelation. She was the risk taker, the cool one, the glamorous one. She had the actor boyfriend, the high-powered job. She was not a mother, she was not a spouse. She was different and they must have always seen her as different. Even Aish.

Anouk stood, leaned across the table and kissed Rosie’s brow.

‘Darling, I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I agree. He had no right.’

Rosie smiled tearily. ‘Thank you.’

Aisha gripped Anouk’s hand and looked straight at her. I’m sorry too, she mouthed. Carefully, Anouk wrested her hand free and lit a cigarette. Aisha furtively, guiltily, took one from the packet and this made Anouk and Rosie suddenly snigger.

Aisha ignored them.

‘Has it struck you that smoking is the new adultery?’ Anouk whispered with a wink to Rosie.

‘That’s what Gary says,’ Rosie answered and Anouk let that pass without comment.

Aisha changed the subject. ‘So what did you want to speak to us about? You said on the phone you wanted our advice.’

I wanted
your
advice, thought Anouk, but instead said, ‘I’m thinking of quitting the job. I want to see if I’ve got it in me to write the novel I’ve always bloody talked about and have kept putting off.’

Rosie and Aish squealed as if they were girls again. They were overjoyed for her.

‘Of course you should,’ said Aisha. ‘We’ve been wondering how long it would take for you to make this decision.’

‘You’ve got to,’ agreed Rosie. ‘You’ve just got to. And you can, Anouk.’

‘I know,’ and she finished the sentence with the words that the others did not dare speak. ‘I don’t have children to worry about.’

Rosie poked her tongue out at her. She had been forgiven. ‘Gary’s in the same head space. He’s talking about painting again.’

Anouk and Aisha shared a quick, covert glance. There was no similarity between her creative ambition and Gary’s. He had no discipline, no talent. The idea that he was a painter was a joke to them.

‘Let’s get another bottle.’

They proceeded to get riotously drunk. Later that night, Anouk got home and rushed to the toilet where she threw up, again and again, something that she had not done for over twenty years. She drained her body of everything, of the food and the wine, and it seemed to her that she was expelling her child with every retch.