‘If I ever get tired of being a gardener and handyman I could always become a travel agent,’ he said, when they were in the bedroom packing their respective bags on Thursday night.
‘I can’t see that,’ she said.
‘And why not?’
‘I find it hard to imagine you working in an office for one. And while I imagine you’d be more than proficient with the required technology, I detect a certain ambivalence.’
‘You’ve worked me out pretty well in a fortnight.’
‘I think I have a reasonable idea of what makes the man,’ she said. So far, there was nothing about him she didn’t like and wouldn’t miss when he left in a week’s time.
He stowed the folded T-shirt into his duffel bag and scratched his head. ‘I wish I’d worked me out in as short a time as it’s taken you.’
‘I’m sure there’re depths I haven’t plumbed yet.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Hate to disappoint you, Gracie, but you’ve seen me at my deepest. I am basically a simple, and shallow, man. You, on the other hand, remain somewhat a mystery.’
‘What do you mean? There’s nothing complicated about me. I think you worked me out very early on: I like to be in control, and I can’t help but want to rescue people … Members of my family, mainly.’
Aaron laughed, a low rumble. ‘That too,’ he said, and went back to his packing.
Grace shoved her sneakers into the suitcase and dragged it off the bed and onto the floor.
‘Ok, I’ll bite,’ she said, hands on her hips. ‘If there’s something you want to say to me, about me, just go on and say it.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said, carefully laying aside a pair of jeans. ‘Do you ever think you’ve spent your whole adult life being what other people want you to be? And you’ve maybe lost track of who you really are and the person you want to be?’
Grace blinked, several times, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Damn,’ she said in a flat voice.
‘Maybe it is something you have thought about and you accept your lot, but sometimes I get a glimpse of another Grace, a happier, more carefree Grace, and I wonder …’
‘Really. That’s pretty deep for someone who claims to be shallow. And if I’m such a fake, how come you like me?’
‘The last thing you are is a fake, Grace. Far from it.’
The bed sagged as he sat down beside her. Her impulse was to pull away when he put his arm around her, but she didn’t. He pressed a kiss to her temple.
‘I’ll tell you a story,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’ll help you understand why I said that, and why I believe how important it is to be true to yourself, first and foremost.’
She tilted her head sideways, studying him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Does this include the face-to-face stuff you alluded to in one of our conversations?’
‘In a roundabout sort of a way.’
‘Am I allowed to ask questions?’
‘Not until I’ve finished.’
They wriggled up the bed until they were propped against the bedhead, sitting against pillows.
‘And then you can ask whatever you want, and I promise I’ll answer.’
‘I can do that,’ Grace said. But her mouth was dry, her pulse rattling in her ears and instinct warned her that their relationship could shift after he’d told his story.
It was only a week until he went home and they had been living in a blissful bubble since Tim left. Grace accepted that there were things that needed to be discussed before he left. She needed to know the direction they were heading, one way or the other. The conversation had come sooner than she’d expected.
‘All right,’ Aaron said, shifting around until he was comfortable. ‘Imagine a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood. He’d been a happy and successful kid and then teenager, but the transition to adulthood was starting to get bumpy. Enter his biological father, a wealthy man, but not the father who’d brought him up and loved him like a father should.
‘The biological father feels guilty for all the years of neglect and wants to make up for it. He showers the boy with gifts, finances a gap year for overseas travel and offers to support him through university, as long as the boy studies law.
‘The boy agrees to do that and studies hard and excels because by now he feels indebted to his biological father. And he tries his hardest to be the person his biological father tells him he should be. He becomes increasingly unhappy. But he stays on the expected trajectory. He all but ignores his mother, his two half-brothers and the man who for all intents and purposes was his father and still loved him like a son.’
Grace snuggled closer into Aaron’s side, linking her fingers with his and giving his hand a gentle press.
‘Fast-forward five years and the boy is a man, a discontented man, who pretends he’s living the dream and making his biological father proud. He meets a girl, a female facsimile of the person he’s pretending to be, only she’s not pretending, and they decide to get married. There’s a lavish engagement party, paid for by the biological father. Then, the man—’ Aaron’s voice hitched. Grace strengthened her grip on his hand. He rolled his lips together, then continued.
‘The man discovers a lump in one of his testicles, and it turns out to be cancer. During this time he does a lot of thinking about the fragility of life. And how unhappy he is. He hates living in the city, he hates his job in his biological father’s corporate law practice, and he isn’t sure if he even likes his fiancée.’
Grace swivelled around in the bed so she could look directly at Aaron. ‘You don’t have to finish story if you don’t want to,’ she said.
‘But I do want to. I want you to know all about this person, who I guess you’ve gathered is me.’
Grace sat back. ‘Yes, I’d worked that out. Go on then, please,’ she said, although she was beginning to wonder if they should have deferred this until after their weekend in Paris.
‘Needless to say it wasn’t Robert, my biological father, or Stacey, my fiancée, who ferried me to and from the doctors’ appointments, radiotherapy and chemo treatments in Adelaide. It was Mum and Dad who were there for me. Literally. They were beside my hospital bed after the surgery, by my chair in the day-patient centre for the chemo. Mum, not Stacey, held the bag while I got sick, and Dad, not Robert, held my hand when they told me I might never have kids.’
Grace could feel herself tearing up as she imagined a younger Aaron going through all of this. It went a long way to explaining the man he was today.
‘I suppose Stacey ditched you when she found out you might be infertile, and Robert dropped you like a hot brick when you told him you didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.’
‘Yep, that’s about how it happened. I quit the job and decided to move back to Miners Ridge. We’d moved there when I was about six, about the time you left for boarding school. Dad got the job as works manager for the local council. I had lots of good memories about the place.’
‘What’s your dad doing now? I take it your parents don’t live in Miners Ridge anymore.’
‘Nope, Dad had a major heart attack when I was gallivanting around the world on Robert’s money. He’s older than Mum by about fifteen years so he virtually retired after that. They moved to Adelaide. They said it was for the boys’ schooling, but I think Mum wanted to be closer to better hospitals and specialist doctors. Mum’s a school support officer and she’s counting the days until she can retire.’
‘That’s quite a story,’ Grace said, when the silence in the room began to thrum. ‘I understand now why you chose Miners Ridge. I had wondered.’ She went to move off the bed but he tightened his grip on her hand.
‘You haven’t asked me many questions,’ he said.
‘I guess I need a bit of time to digest it all.’ And work out what it might mean for us, she thought.
‘I suppose it’s a lot to take in.’ He let go of her hand, reluctantly.
‘I suppose it is,’ Grace said, her emotions in turmoil.
She stood beside the bed for several seconds, staring at nothing.
‘I have a couple of emails I need to send,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ Aaron replied, his expression resigned.
Later, when they were lying spooned together in bed, the light off and both feigning sleep, Grace said, ‘How many half-brothers do you have, and how old are they?’
‘Two. Sam’s a carpenter and he turned thirty a few months ago. He has a partner and they have a couple of kids. She’s a nurse. They live in Mildura. Dominic’s twenty-seven and he’s a builder. He lives near Mum and Dad.’
‘No wife? Girlfriend?’
‘Nah, nothing serious, only a trail of broken hearts.’
‘What about your biological father?’
‘Oh,’ Aaron said and Grace felt his chest rise and fall against her back. ‘We have dinner together a couple of times a year. He pays for the meal and I let him tell me what a disappointment I am. I keep doing it because he’s my biological father, and wherever we go to eat, the food and wine are always excellent.’
Grace lay there for a few more minutes and then asked the question that had been bugging her since he’d told her everything earlier. ‘So, would you ever go back to practising law?’
‘Nope,’ he said, without a second’s hesitation, and although he didn’t physically move away, she felt his withdrawal.
‘Is that a taboo subject?’ She rolled over so she was facing him. In the dark she couldn’t read his expression but didn’t want to hear his answer while she had her back to him.
‘Not really, it’s just that there’s nothing to talk about. It is a chapter of my life, a part of who I am now, but there won’t be a chapter two in the life and times of Aaron Halliday, lawyer.’
‘You like what you do now?’
‘I love what I do now, and I’ve made Miners Ridge my home.’
Grace acknowledged this, but when Aaron reached for her to cuddle in again, she said, ‘It’s late, we have an early start in the morning.’
They lay there, not touching, neither of them asleep, or even pretending to be.
‘Grace, why don’t you say what’s on your mind? At least if you put it out there, there’s a chance we’ll be able to sort out whatever’s worrying you.’
‘All right,’ she said, and swallowed hard. ‘If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying that you can’t, or won’t, give up the life you’ve carved out for yourself in Miners Ridge. You tried to do it differently, but it didn’t work out for you. So if I can’t, or won’t, give up my career, and the life that goes with it, we don’t have a future together.’
41
Paris was always breathtaking. Grace tried her best to put aside the conversation from the night before, and she could see Aaron was trying hard to do the same. They were almost making it, but their closeness had unravelled a little. They did well considering neither of them had slept much, and they’d been up at five.
‘What about all that seabed and water on top of us,’ Grace said when they entered the Channel Tunnel. ‘At one point we’ll be seventy-five metres below the ocean floor.’
‘Don’t think about it,’ Aaron said, and he did his best to distract her.
They arrived mid-morning at the Gare du Nord in Paris. A fifteen-minute subway journey and short walk later, and they’d deposited their luggage at the hotel. Then, over coffee and pastries, they made plans for the afternoon and for the next three days. Both of them had been to Paris before; both when they were much younger.
‘This time I want to see more of the sights,’ Grace said, ‘and less of the insides of French bars.’
‘I hear you,’ Aaron said, and they set off in the general direction of the Place de la Madeleine and Concorde for their first taste of Paris together.
Over the next three days Grace and Aaron walked kilometres. They took in the Eiffel Tower by night, so many gardens that Grace lost track, the Musée d’Orsay, a boat trip on the Seine, and as much coffee, wine and food as they could fit in.
Each night when they finally fell into bed, Grace was amazed by how much of a second wind they both managed. And each time they drifted off to sleep Grace asked herself how she’d survive without this man in her life.
It was Sunday night, and they were lying together after making slow love with a poignancy that almost brought tears to her eyes when Aaron turned to Grace.
‘I didn’t give you an answer when you said you couldn’t see how we could have a future together.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure if that was because you agreed and there was nothing more to say, or if you didn’t know what to say.’
‘I didn’t know what to say,’ he said. ‘You managed to summarise it so succinctly and, I’ll be honest, I hadn’t thought of our relationship in those terms. I didn’t see it as a dead end.’
Grace stared out the hotel window. It was dark outside but there wasn’t a view anyway. Only the walls of the adjacent buildings.
‘Aaron, why did you come to London?’
‘Simple. To see you … To make sure you had this weekend in Paris. Tim didn’t need company, or anyone to help him navigate his way around big international airports for the first time. And I hadn’t had a holiday in a long time.’
‘If I wasn’t here, and you hadn’t come to see me, where would you have gone for your holiday?’
‘This time of year? Most likely camping and bushwalking in the Flinders Ranges.’
‘By yourself?’
‘Probably. Tim’s come a couple of times. If Dom’s at a loose end, he sometimes tags along. We used to go when we were kids. It’s a magical place, almost spiritual. This time of year with the wildflowers starting to bloom … Have you ever camped in Wilpena Pound or Brachina Gorge?’
‘Years ago a group of us went to the Wilmington Rodeo and we stayed at Melrose, and that’s in the Southern Flinders Ranges. Does that count?’
He glared at her with mock seriousness. ‘Did you camp in a tent? Sleep on a blow-up mattress in a sleeping bag?’
‘No, we stayed in a B&B.’
‘Sorry, doesn’t count then. Did you climb up to the monument on Mount Remarkable? Awesome view.’
‘No, I thought about doing it, but if I remember rightly, I had a remarkable hangover.’
He tutted and shook his head slowly.
‘Maybe if I hadn’t been sent off to boarding school I might have bonded more with my rural roots.’
‘What about school holidays? Didn’t your parents do stuff with you?’ Aaron rolled onto his side and propped his head up with his hand.
Grace snorted, loudly. ‘School holidays were just that, a holiday from school. I was the eldest, and I’d had the privilege of going to a private school, so I was expected to pull my weight when I was at home.’
‘Sounds like your dad speaking there.’
‘Yeah, but Mum was always grateful for my help. When I first went to boarding school Faith was about eight, Tim six and Luke was still a baby. Plus Dad expected Mum to help out on the farm. I might have grumbled but I always did my share.’
‘Because you felt indebted to them?’
‘I don’t know … I’ve never consciously thought about it like that, but you could be right. Mum told me a few years ago that Nanna had paid most of my school fees. When it was Faith’s and then Tim’s turn for private school, there was no spare money. The farm took everything, even what Mum earned at the hospital. I kind of understand Faith and Tim’s resentment, but I didn’t get any choice about the matter either.’
‘What about Luke?’
‘Luke? When it got to be his turn he made it quite clear that he didn’t care about school. All he was ever interested in was the farm.’ Grace sat up, expelling an exasperated breath. ‘Why are we talking about my family on our last night in Paris?’
Aaron laughed. ‘I like your family, especially you,’ he said, and pushed himself closer so he could kiss her on the lips. ‘Mmm, I especially like you. But truthfully, I ma
y have some reservations about Doug … Now tell me, who is Grant Hughes? Do I need to be worried about him?’
Grace blinked. ‘Grant? Why would you be worried about him?’
‘I heard Tim mention him. That first night we stayed at your place. I thought he might be the competition.’
‘Grant was a colleague, a friend, and a couple of years ago we were lovers. But he went back to his wife, and family. He was in London when I first arrived, but he’s home in Sydney now.’
‘Would have been nice to see a familiar face when you first arrived.’
‘It was, and Grant’s a nice bloke.’
Aaron dropped a kiss onto her lips. He sprang out of bed and pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. ‘Do you want a cup of tea, or shall we finish the wine?’
‘Tea, please. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m just about wined-out.’
Aaron made tea and Grace watched. She soaked in the sight of him, because within the week it was going to be a long time before she’d see him again. And it wouldn’t be in Paris.
‘I’m really glad you came to London, because you’re right, I would never have gotten anywhere near Paris under my own steam. Bath was probably about as good as it was going to get.’
‘We’ll go much further together than a weekend in Paris, Grace, you’ll see. And at our earliest opportunity, I’m taking you camping in the Flinders Ranges.’
‘Thanks,’ Grace murmured when Aaron put down the tea on the bedside cupboard. He turned on the television and sat on the end of the bed fiddling with the remote control.
She wanted to be as optimistic as he was about what the future might bring. But Grace couldn’t picture herself doing anything else and international banking happened in big cities, not small country towns. When she went home to Australia, if she stayed with the same bank she could end up in Melbourne or Sydney. They were closer than London, but they weren’t Miners Ridge. There was so much to think about.
Grace didn’t say anything more because she didn’t want to spoil their last hours in Paris. But were they deluding themselves thinking they had a future together when circumstances indicated otherwise?
When Grace Went Away Page 26