How Do I Love Thee? Read online

  He grinned. ‘True. But sometimes we just know about another person the way we never can about a car.’

  ‘Come on, you can’t tell by looking if a man is a risk when it comes to gambling or cheating but you could get a clue from his genes. What about variant 334?’

  Martin frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘The monogamy gene—AVPR1A without any variant 334.’ I enjoyed his surprise that I could say something scientific. ‘You can’t work in a lab office without picking up a thing or two and I do some reading in my spare time.’

  ‘Remind me to give you something without any media hype,’ he said dryly.

  ‘In fact the ideal man has just passed through your lab and across my desk.’ I sighed and tipped my glass for the few drops left in it.

  ‘What? Who?’ said Martin. He took my empty glass and bent to set it on a stone table.

  ‘Keith Farrar. What a profile. Evolution’s gift to women,’ I said to his back, sure he would laugh at the old lab joke.

  Instead he straightened as if someone had inserted a steel rod in his spine. And his jaw. I’d never noticed how square his jaw was because it was rarely set in annoyance or whatever it was.

  ‘Oh!’ I realised why he was suddenly cast in bronze. I put my hand over my mouth. I had just committed the cardinal sin and named a test subject in a public place. ‘Sorry. Martin, I’m sorry. I don’t usually break confidentiality and talk about test results.’ I swallowed guiltily, thinking of my ramblings about Keith to Julia, albeit without disclosing his surname. ‘Please don’t sack me,’ I said. ‘I love working for you and—’

  ‘And that’s what makes this—Keith—an ideal man?’ he interrupted. ‘No variant 334 on AVPR1A?’

  ‘Well,’ I said weakly, noticing that the confidentiality rule hadn’t induced him to lower his voice. ‘Not just that. All the indications were good—fantastic even, if you—’

  ‘And that’s all they are.’ He was curt. ‘Just indications, not guarantees.’

  My loyalty to Keith was rekindled by this brusque dismissal. Would no-one share with me the beauty of his profile? ‘If you remember that profile though, you’d have to admit that he’d be hard to beat as a potential partner—from a woman’s point of view.’

  ‘That’s garbage, Cass,’ he said forcefully.

  I didn’t know what to say. This was a Martin that I’d never seen. His face was averted, his jaw clenched. What had always appeared as dimples had morphed into clefts. Suddenly he turned back to me. ‘I need to straighten out some misconceptions you have about genes and behaviour, Cass.’ And he added almost as an afterthought, ‘Over dinner.’

  Another bump in my heart rhythm. Relief, I suppose. ‘You’re not going to sack me, then?’

  ‘Friday night? I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty?’

  I didn’t feel I could afford to argue on any point so I tamely said yes, and yes again.

  I’d had dinner with Martin before. He liked talking about work over food, mainly because he worked through lunch and was ravenous by evening. His business account favoured an Italian place close by the lab, but this time we dined at an upmarket place with views of the Yarra River.

  We talked about a lot of things.

  What subjects was I choosing to paint in my spare time? Still life, because it had been too windy to paint on location.

  What adrenaline sport was he pursuing at present? Parasailing, because the winds had been from the right direction. We laughed at that, and touched wineglasses.

  He did as he promised and spent some time correcting my ‘misconceptions’ about Keith’s profile.

  ‘What you’ve seen is a genotype,’ he told me, turning his wineglass in a tight circle on the tabletop. ‘That’s the sum total of all the genes he has, okay? Some of them stay dormant in him but might pass on to his kids. See?’

  I leaned my chin on my palm and paid attention. A jazz quartet played old popular classics. The restaurant was a throwback, too, beyond the current craze for marble, metal and big, bare expanses of wall. It had carpet, fabric on the chairs, paintings on the walls and mellow lighting that lingered on Martin’s rather nice cheekbones and struck bronze highlights in his hair. His eyes were very dark blue.

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘But his phenotype is what he actually is. For instance, he might have genes for blue and brown eyes in his genotype but the man you see, the phenotype, has brown eyes.’

  ‘Or blue,’ I said.

  ‘Possibly, depending on his parents’ eye-colour coding,’ he said seriously. ‘And depending on where and how he was raised, someone—Keith—’ he loaded the name with derision, then paused as if he had a bad taste in his mouth, ‘could be a deadbeat in spite of all those indicators you fancy. He might bet on horses, or gamble on the stock exchange with other people’s money. He could be drinking himself into an early grave. He could be a crook.’

  ‘Or a bad dresser,’ I teased. He really had it in for Keith. But then you would hardly expect a man to appreciate a near-perfect male genotype. It brought out the competitive male spirit.

  ‘I’m just making the point that a profile isn’t the person.’

  ‘I get it,’ I assured him, feeling a slight loosening of my attachment to Keith. ‘In spite of AVPR1A with no 334, Keith could be a rampant womaniser.’

  Martin looked as if he was about to argue with that. But he looked down instead and spun his wineglass around a few times before he drank its remaining contents. We ate and finished the wine. We even danced. Not the energetic party stuff but slow and old fashioned while a vocalist sang about being romantic.

  Martin smelled nice. I’d never been close enough to notice how nice. I closed my eyes to identify the different parts of his scent. Sea salt with a hint of lemon and matured cheddar with grapes … I love matured cheddar. I stifled a laugh at the comparison and felt obliged to say something when Martin held me a little away from him and conveyed inquiry.

  ‘Do you believe you can identify your ideal partner from their smell?’ I asked. For some reason I thought this was less embarrassing than telling him he smelled like a cheese platter.

  He stared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve read that some labs specialise in matching up people by comparing their body odours. They send in their sweaty T-shirts and get them analysed to find out if—’

  ‘Cass, you’re looking for certainty. It doesn’t exist.’ He gathered me in a bit closer. ‘Let’s just dance.’

  The following Sunday morning, Martin knocked at my door, arms filled with coffee and croissants from the deli downstairs. I opened the door, realising that I was wearing no make-up and my hair was tangled. One hand automatically formed itself into a comb and valiantly pushed through the knots. I was also wearing my old Buffy the Vampire pyjamas that I’d put away because Simon mocked what he called my ‘cultural immaturity’. Martin smiled at The Slayer with her stake raised and ready, and I fancied that he was not averse to Buffy.

  At any rate, I forgot that I looked a mess and, possibly, ‘culturally immature’ as we ate and drank on my balcony where I kept my easel and painting stuff. The air reeked of paint, linseed oil and turpentine.

  ‘Show me what you’ve been painting,’ he said, brushing croissant crumbs from a chest that had benefited from all that skiing and climbing and diving. I suppressed a desire to say, ‘Let me do that for you,’ but said instead, ‘This way,’ and led him to the spare room.

  As Martin moved around, picking up a canvas here, a painted sketch on paper there, I wondered if I was falling for him. That would be ridiculous, of course. Martin was a sweetie but he was not long-term material.

  After nodding a couple of times at my partial still life, he went back to a barely brushed-in sketch of distant mountains with a vibrant foreground of crops. I’d done it hastily on a drive with Simon, who’d paced around, keen to get going again.

  ‘That’s only a quick study for a proper painting. I haven’t got around to developing it,’ I said.

&n
bsp; He pointed to a distinctive peak on the mountain range. ‘I’ve climbed in those mountains.’

  I had this vision of me, by the roadside, painting a mountain while Martin climbed it. A peculiar sense of togetherness gripped me. Stupid, of course. I was too imaginative for my own good. Perhaps I should phone Julia for some ice-water sarcasm before it went any further.

  With a throwaway gesture at the sketch, I said, ‘You can have it if you like.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  Well what else could he say? ‘No thanks, it’s not good enough’? ‘No thanks, I can afford real art’? I kicked myself for putting him on the spot. At least, though, it was only on paper and easier for him to dispose of than one of my boxed canvases.

  Martin offered no particular reason for dropping by and it was only later that I noticed that. After the initial surprise it had seemed a very natural way to spend a Sunday morning. I went to the door with him and he raised the sketch and said, ‘Thanks, Cass.’

  Then he leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek, just touching the corner of my mouth. I was about to turn my head to make it into a real kiss but, fortunately, Martin kept it brief and, with a parting smile that warmed me from my bare feet upwards, he was gone.

  I stood holding the edge of the door for some time, worrying about these impulses to touch and snuggle. Not Martin. Martin was a lovely man, a friend, even occasionally a confidant. But a partner? All those girls-I’d-never-seen-before. And I could hear Julia saying, ‘Avoid sportsmen.’ Besides, he probably only saw me as a friend. I closed the door at last and my inner chaperone said, ‘No,’ and ‘No,’ again.

  But next time Martin suggested dinner, I was so surprised that there was a next time that I said ‘yes’ again.

  ‘I’ll cook,’ he said, which was a clincher in itself. A man who cooks, I thought. I wonder if there is a genetic indicator for that. Just so long as he didn’t make lasagne.

  He didn’t. Martin casually tossed strips of beef and vegetables on a portable hotplate while we sipped at some cold white wine and talked about adolescent angst and fashion crimes and best friends and favourite places. There was a spicy sauce to go with the main course, followed later with a dessert of raspberries and cream piled into champagne glasses.

  ‘Raspberries,’ I said with a sigh as I finished mine, ‘are the most seductive of fruits.’

  He smiled. Well, actually, he smouldered. ‘Want some more?’

  When your heart skips beats, it is pointless to remind yourself that it is only a surge of adrenaline or sundry hormones that causes it. The feeling makes a person vulnerable, a little bit breathless. Did I want more? Martin waited, his eyes steady on mine. Blue was supposed to be a cool colour, but it could be very warm, I realised. Hot, even.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, almost in a whisper as if that strict inner chaperone might not hear me say it. ‘But not raspberries.’

  If the taste of raspberries was seductive, the taste of them on Martin’s lips was irresistible. We sat on one of his couches, arms entangled as we explored by touch the territory we knew quite well by sight. I passed my palms over his chest, his shoulders, his beautiful back. When I felt Martin’s hands on my bare skin I leaned back and watched as he slid my bra out from under my shirt like a magician pulling silken scarves from a pocket. I giggled then sighed when he gathered me up in both hands and worked his thumbs until I was whispering his name over and over.

  ‘Beautiful Cass,’ he breathed, just before his mobile buzzed.

  He was still for a moment but then withdrew. ‘Have to take this,’ he said, passing a hand over my hair as he got up. ‘Might be news about my father. He’s somewhere in South America and I haven’t heard anything from him for weeks.’

  Dreamily, I lay back while he talked. It was his father actually on the line. As the call went on, I got up and wandered about, enjoying the casual comfort of his home, more obvious without the party crowd. I passed a half-open door, not wishing to pry, but a glimpse of something familiar drew me back to look inside.

  My paint sketch, framed, hung on the wall of what was clearly Martin’s home office. Intense pleasure pulled me inside. He really must like it. I wouldn’t have thought that my feelings for Martin could grow any warmer but they did.

  Lightly, I touched my painting, feeling again that strange sense of connection with him.

  I heard Martin say, ‘Take care of yourself, Dad. Don’t forget the antivenene.’ With a sense of anticipation, I moved towards the door, trailing my hand over Martin’s desk as I passed. I turned back to straighten a lab printout that I’d shifted and some small print leapt into my vision as if in a headline. Keith Farrar. I smiled. I’d all but forgotten Keith.

  Underneath it was another printout. And another. Different formats and different laboratory names but all analyses of Keith Farrar’s DNA. The foreign labs showed Martin’s email address as contact. I frowned over the pages and looked up as Martin came to the door.

  ‘I saw my painting and came in,’ I said. There was something worrying about the way he folded his arms when he saw what I was reading. Silently, I held the printouts up in inquiry.

  ‘I—uh—wanted to compare our methods with the opposition,’ he explained, coming over to take the pages from me. ‘You probably noticed that some of the results differ. I sent a DNA sample to each of them and ran one through our lab as a control.’

  ‘A sample from the same person, of course,’ I said, with a doomed feeling. ‘Cheek swabs?’

  He nodded. ‘Mine.’ Warily, he went on. ‘I used my uncle’s name so that no-one at any lab would relate the sample back to me.’

  ‘You let me rabbit on about Keith and all the time—’

  ‘Cass, you must know I feel more than friendship for you. Always have.’

  This seemed irrelevant but I couldn’t let it pass. ‘You never said anything. Never gave me a clue.’

  ‘You were with Simon for the first year I knew you.’

  ‘But after we broke up you didn’t say anything either.’

  Martin spread his hands in classic masculine helplessness. ‘I’m just a scientist, Cass. I don’t know what to say to a woman whose man has—um—’

  ‘Dumped her,’ I supplied, without pain. I was hurting about different things now.

  ‘I was waiting for the right time because I didn’t want to be rebound man. Then you fell for Keith,’ he said, throwing up his hands to show his frustration.

  I gaped.

  He paced around the room. ‘You don’t realise how hard it was to take—you raving on about his qualities and thinking he was the ideal man.’

  I reclaimed my sagging jaw. ‘You couldn’t say a nice word about Keith.’

  ‘I wanted to get him out of the way first. I wanted you to fall for me,’ Martin appealed. He stuck his hands on his hips and studied his shoes. ‘I was jealous.’

  ‘But Keith was—is—you!’ I felt as if I’d entered some weird world beyond the looking glass.

  He shook his head. ‘No, that’s what I’ve been saying. Keith’s my profile. My profile isn’t me.’

  Ah. Now I was grounded again.

  ‘You’ve got AVPR1A with no copies of 334,’ I accused, jabbing at his chest. ‘But you were always with a girl-I’d-never-seen-before. You’re not monogamous!’

  Martin shrugged. ‘Not so far.’

  ‘And you’re addicted to adrenaline sports.’

  ‘Not addicted, Cass.’

  I swept past him and into the living room where I snatched my bra off the floor. Is there anything more depressing than discarded clothes when the desire has gone? ‘Oh, yes. Addicted. Like your father. “Don’t forget the antivenene”,’ I mocked.

  ‘Look, I could have told you I was Mr Perfect Genotype, claimed that I was genetically programmed to be the ideal partner in spite of appearances, but I was honest about it. I wanted you to want me the way I am. Ten minutes ago I thought you did.’

  My face heated. ‘Don’t remind me.’ He moved towards me and I he
ld up a hand. ‘You lied to me, patronised me. I came this close … to … to being just another one of your girls. Brilliant technique, Martin. Removing this—’ I jabbed with the bra which swung like a pendulum, ‘was like a magician’s trick—practice makes perfect.’

  ‘Sorry I’m not a fumbling fool in bed,’ he snapped.

  ‘And nice touch, hanging my painting.’

  ‘Now wait, Cass—’ He caught my arm as I headed for the door. I shook him off.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it? If you hadn’t hung my painting I never would have gone into your office and seen those printouts. When were you planning to tell me that it was your DNA I’ve been mooning over?’

  The words hung in the air, ludicrous, laughable. If he laughed I’d throw something. But he didn’t laugh.

  ‘Goodbye, Martin. You’ll have my resignation on Monday.’

  It was a miserable weekend. The sun shone in a crystalline sky, the air was mild, early tulips appeared in the park across the road. Miserable. Eventually, I made a phone call, not to Julia but to my mother. She painted too, and I supposed it was her genes and influence that had started me off. After Dad had re-married for the second time, she had moved to Cairns, as far away from Melbourne as she could get and still find good art supplies. I often pictured her at her easel, a lonely woman living by the beach.

  ‘What’s up, Cass?’ she said, bracingly. ‘You’re not still moping over Simon, I hope?’

  It did occur to me occasionally that Mum might be lonely for reasons other than Dad’s defection. Artistic sensitivity did not spread far from the canvas where my mother was concerned. No, I said with dignity. I was not moping over Simon.

  ‘Someone else then?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s going to be someone else,’ I told her. ‘Too risky.’

  ‘Life is risky.’

  ‘You haven’t moved on to someone else,’ I pointed out. ‘Once burned, twice shy.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s nothing to do with it. If someone comes along I’d take a chance again.’

  ‘But—Dad left you, messed up your life.’

  ‘I’ve no regrets,’ she said. ‘I’d do it all over again. I loved your dad and he loved me and we made a lovely baby together. But nothing’s guaranteed.’