The pair were temporarily speechless, then burst out laughing as the last item, a cookie cutter, came to rest against the cupboard kickboard.
‘Good heavens! Look what we’ve unearthed.’ John picked up a set of rusty measuring spoons. ‘I do believe I used these at school in home sciences.’
‘They look well used.’
‘A long time ago. These days I burn more than I eat, usually because I draw well into the night without realising the time.’ He stood and straightened his frame, then went to the far end of the kitchen and dropped the measuring spoons into the pedal-bin.
‘There certainly isn’t a lot of reward in cooking for one,’ Ava said. ‘That’s all I have unless my daughter is at a loose end, which is rare these days. Maybe this is better in the bin, too.’ She pinched the perished piping bag between her thumb and index finger, handing it to John from where she was scooping the strewn cutlery into piles.
John kicked something on his way back to the bin and both of them reached for it.
‘I’ve got it,’ they said in unison, and while Ava let go, John felt a powerful urge to hold on to it as if his life depended on the heart-shaped cookie cutter.
Ava remained on her haunches, looking up at him as he turned it in his hand. ‘Do you recognise that, John?’
What did she mean? He wondered. It’s an old cookie cutter, but… The frisson of expectation took him by surprise and the small heart fell from his fingers, back into the drawer on the floor beside her. ‘Excuse me, Ava, I need to… Sorry, I won’t be a minute.’
*
Ava’s legs gave out and she dropped onto her bottom to stare at the cookie cutter she and John had fought over in the little corner shop in a Brisbane backstreet. When the man had refused their money, they’d believed the cookie cutter held the key to their happy-ever-after. John had insisted.
‘It’s a sign,’ she said now.
‘What is, Ava?’ John had come back, startling her.
‘Oh, um, never mind.’ She looked up at him, squinting through the shaft of late sunlight now streaming through the kitchen window and hoped humour would negate the need for explanation. ‘But now you’re back, would you mind helping me up?’
John grabbed the hand she held out and gently hauled her upright, allowing her to get her balance before he let go. ‘Sorry I left you there. Sometimes this head of mine plays tricks on me. I needed to step outside.’
‘At least you came back. I might’ve been stuck on the floor for ever.’ She stepped back to lean against the counter.
‘You were talking to this cookie cutter. Something about a sign.’
‘Was I?’
‘If you want it, it’s yours,’ he said.
She picked up one of his hands, turned it palm up and placed the cutter firmly on it. ‘Maybe you should keep this. Try cooking something one day.’
Chapter 31
Ava Marchette
Ava Marchette was everywhere: in his bed – figuratively speaking – and in his head. Her presence was enough to keep John awake for the second night running. Not only that. Tonight he was thinking about scone dough and cookie cutters. What the hell? He needed to call off the portrait before things got any weirder, if only to save his sanity, which was clearly at risk, as evidenced by his cookie-cutter meltdown in the kitchen.
With no official offer and acceptance, and no money changing hands to make the contract binding, it wasn’t too late to renege on the agreement. And why hadn’t he talked about his fee? That was how taken aback he’d been with the unexpected arrival of the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. He’d been remiss not to discuss the cost of a commissioned work: he needed every cent he could get, these days, especially with the bank circling. His father’s affair with racing form, along with too many careless financial decisions, had taken a decade to undo. Making matters worse, Katie had handed over a property to Blair whose wife, with her fancy ideas, had left Blair with a debt so serious he’d had to ask John for help. So, yeah, some extra money never went astray.
This portrait idea was madness and yet, from the moment he’d clapped eyes on the woman at his front door, John felt like he’d been sucker-punched. Before he knew it she was in his house, smiling and charming him, wanting to strike up conversations and bake scones. Basically cracking the anti-social shell John existed in these days.
Evenings had never been John’s friend, not since his brain had mysteriously shifted into artistic overdrive while he’d slept in a hospital bed. Whereas the soft stillness of a country evening once serenaded him to sleep after a day working the land, his nights had become a frustrating form of exhaustion as he tried turning off the creative chaos that cluttered his mind. Over the years, doctors had prescribed antidepressants, not that John ever took one: no pill was capable of curing his melancholy. The only remedy for that was getting his old life back. While that hadn’t happened, at least he no longer closed his eyes at night wishing he’d never woken up from the coma.
He knew he’d left for a weekend away, capable and fit. He’d returned to Ivy-May confused, feeling like a stranger in his own home. Life went on around him. He became a father in his twenty-first year. But rather than the key to the door, his family had locked him out, excluding him from discussions and decision-making as if they considered him no longer able to contribute. He witnessed arguments he didn’t understand between a family that remained guarded and wary around him.
Like John, they’d struggled to grasp his reality. He’d become an outsider in his own home, the guy who arrives halfway through a movie. The burst aneurysm had not only flipped the world John loved on its head, he was constantly torn between two passions. When art emerged the winner, John accepted the outcome. His family did not. He moved on and learned to cope with their disappointment in him by hiding, until the world found him and the headlines began. John Tate: accidental artist.
It was not unusual for John to start the day in bed, awake and thinking about painting. But to be in bed, awake and thinking about painting Ava Marchette? Now that was different. John was eagerly replaying snapshots from their time together and conjuring up a never-ending loop of Ava in various poses for the portrait. He placed her in different settings around the property and pondered ways to tease out that strong spirit, her smile, her seriousness. She was reigniting his passion and setting his imagination on fire – and that wasn’t the only thing when he pictured a young version of Ava in his mind: a blaze of red hair, a complexion flushed with freckles, a figure sylphlike but fit. His imagination had her astride a horse, then by the creek, lying on a picnic blanket. He even saw her curled up on a bed reading a book, riding the ridgeline to exercise the dogs, and making sausages in the old meat house. Sausages? That’s weird.
The woman joked about being old, but John didn’t see Ava in that way, either in his mind or in real life. Mature? Yes. Worldly? Yes. Graceful, like Grace Kelly? Yes! So, John mate, how hard could she be to paint?
Picasso’s opinion of the sitting process had made John wonder what lay behind Ava’s attractive outer layer. At one minute she seemed so poised and determined, but at the next she was self-conscious about the tiny scar above her left eyebrow. John could only assume the significance was in its origin, rather than its appearance. Ava Marchette was a woman of many expressions, perhaps with as many life stories, and John hoped his growing fascination and inexplicable need to know more about her would be satisfied during the sitting. So, too, he hoped, his hankering for more scones.
In anticipation of applying that first brushstroke to canvas, he grabbed the alarm clock from his side table to set it. Maybe while he waited for Ava to arrive he’d tidy the front path and weed the herb garden at the back door. He glanced at the clock, looking forward to morning, and saw it was already five.
Close enough, Tate, and nothing wrong with leftover scones for breakfast, either.
*
As his knife scooped out the remnants from the jam jar, John made a mental note to restock. If not for the early ho
ur he might have nipped over to see Blair – his son always had homemade preserves. He’d also have a freezer full of meat, the carcass of a misbehaving heifer. Those that failed to conform took a bullet, but only when their heads were down and focused on the feed. John never enjoyed the kill, but that was the way of the country and fresh meat was like nothing else. None of that cling-wrapped supermarket meat that he had been forced to buy during his brief stint in the city. Maybe he could whip up something for dinner and have Blair over.
He missed his family – his son – and what Ava Marchette had said about the kitchen table being the heart of any home had been true until something years ago had turned the Tates’ table into a time bomb. His earliest memories were of a dinner table like every other family’s at mealtime, everyone speaking with their mouths full, spluttering over town gossip or discussing business. Then someone, usually John’s father, would make a comment and whoosh!
Often, Colin would be cut out of conversations and constantly shooed away from Blair. Whether it was to feed his grandson or cuddle him, it was as if Marjorie didn’t trust her husband with a small child. John assumed it was a hangover from Peter’s death. His brother had been five at the time. Did that explain why Marjorie stopped her husband mid-sentence so often, and Katie barely spoke to him at all?
Women had worn the pants in the Tate household. Colin held no power, his views talked over by an opinionated wife. The only thing his parents had agreed on was the hiring of cooks, as their son’s future was not in the kitchen. His affable, salt-of-the-earth father had changed more than anyone else after John’s illness. He’d seemed to grow older, quieter, his appearance that of a man without influence in his own home: shoulders hunched, head down, muttering to himself. He could leave a room mid-conversation and no one would notice. Eventually someone would ask, ‘Where’s Colin?’ but within seconds they’d be back to what they were saying or doing.
Following Colin’s departure from the dinner table each night, Marjorie would break the awkward silence by asking the same question: ‘And how was your day, John, dear?’ Why she asked, he didn’t know. His answer never changed. By then John’s days were all the same and the family wasn’t interested in the particulars of his life any more than they were in the detail of each painting he laboured over. Dinner conversation inevitably shifted from his art to cattle or the B-and-B business Katie and Marjorie were growing together. Katie was never short of news from town, especially after she’d established the Candlebark Creek Progress Association, and a growing Blair continued to amuse everyone with his antics. No matter what his age, that boy reined in everyone’s bad moods. The three Tate men were all very different.
Thinking about Blair prompted John to head over to him to say g’day. His son was keen to secure some tourist-bus business and he’d been after John to brainstorm ideas, which he quite enjoyed, but he worried about his son investing too much too quickly. Blair wasn’t careless with his finances. He understood that to make money he had to spend some.
Yes, he’d definitely go over and see Blair, check out the new addition to the wedding marquee. If nothing else, his son would have scones. Thanks to Ava Marchette, John had developed a hankering for the things. Maybe he’d try baking some of his own. Three, two, one. He remembered that much.
Chapter 32
It’s a Date
‘Hey, Dad, how’s that quad bike since Charlie gave it a service?’
‘Started first go.’ His son drove another star picket into the sunbaked ground, his face flushed. The stocky legs and broad shoulders reminded John of a time when he’d also been fit and fired up over manual labour, nerves twitching, muscles pulsating, pores oozing sweat. ‘Tell Charlie thank you.’
‘No worries. What brings you over this way?’
John hoisted three star pickets from the back of the truck, stopping to pat the Blue Heeler tucked up in the shade of the ute’s cabin. ‘Thought you might like a hand to put these traffic signs out.’ His son stopped hammering, as John dropped the next three pickets along the roadway. ‘You do have a wedding today, right?’ he called back.
‘Um, yeah, I do, Dad, and I never say no to an offer of help.’ They worked in silence to string orange tape across the no-go roads and position directional signage to steer guests towards the marquee. ‘Hey, Dad, did I tell you Lily’s come down with the flu? I can’t seem to take a trick at the moment. The staff are dropping like flies, one after another.’ As if on cue, Blair batted a persistent fly from his mouth. ‘Luckily we’re not too busy, although wedding enquiries have picked up since the marriage equality laws passed, finally.’
‘Once something like flu takes hold you’ve got no choice but to keep a sick employee away from the guests. I’m here and I can help any time.’
‘I know, Dad, and that’s great, it’s just… I never want to interfere with you doing your own thing. You know what I mean?’
Of course John understood. Family members had been giving him a wide berth and lots of leeway for decades, when what he’d wanted more than anything was acceptance. There were times when he’d craved a crowd and wished he and Katie had managed to have a bigger family. Blair was the one constant in John’s fickle life. The open and honest relationship he’d always enjoyed with his son made up for his wife’s and his parents’ failings in the unconditional love department.
*
With the final sign placed – J & J ARE GETTING MARRIED TODAY – John looked away from the chalkboard he itched to embellish and spotted a familiar figure strolling along the creek’s bank. ‘Speaking of guests, son…’
Blair followed his father’s gaze. ‘Uh-oh, sprung!’
‘And what’s that mean, exactly?’
‘Ava, the woman you’re staring at.’ Blair grinned, sheepishly. ‘She didn’t want you to know she was staying here because you already thought she was a stalker.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yeah, but she’s a fascinating woman, Dad. Did you know she once studied pastry-making in France? I managed to rope her into helping with my tourist-bus menu planning.’
‘I thought you and I were supposed to be brainstorming those ideas?’
Blair grimaced. ‘Ah, well, sure, and we can. The more brains the better, right?’
‘I dare say mine is less reliable.’
‘Hey, I have an idea, Dad.’
John raised an eyebrow. His son was so easy to read. Blair, the enabler and family peacemaker, was going to make his father feel included. Whenever the Tate household imploded, his son had always managed to get everyone talking again, simply by being the adorable, inquisitive and outgoing boy he was. ‘Before you tell me, son, let me say this. The woman is interesting and, I agree, hardly a stalker, but I believe I said no to a dinner date the last time you had a single female guest staying.’
‘I’m not hooking you up, Dad,’ Blair assured him. ‘I’m suggesting a meal together while we brainstorm and I’m asking you first so you can say no if you prefer. But as we all have to eat tonight, I thought it might as well be in each other’s company. With two tables booked for dinner in the main house I’ve got Charlie rostered on to cook. That frees me up to play troubleshooter should the wedding party in the marquee tonight need something.’
‘You’ll get to enjoy a meal with us?’
‘Absolutely, Dad. Like I said I’m not matchmaking. There’s a table for three with the Tate name on it, if you want.’
‘Sure, okay, yeah.’ Why not?
‘Really, Dad, you’ll come?’ His son’s expression was a blend of surprise and disbelief, not unlike the time, as a boy, he’d mistakenly sucked one of the African limes growing in the Ivy-May paddocks.
‘Of course! I never feel like cooking for myself, and dinner with someone who doesn’t have a mobile phone stuck to their ear might be nice for a change.’ Blair’s phone rang. ‘My case rests,’ John added.
‘This’ll be the wedding client’s photographer,’ Blair said, in his defence. ‘I’ll see you later. Usual time. And th
anks for helping me with the signs. Gotta take this call. Bye, Dad.’
Chapter 33
First Loves
‘You two are going to have to carry on without me,’ Blair announced at the table. ‘I swear this wedding is jinxed. If their marriage lasts beyond the weekend it’ll be a miracle.’
‘Why? What’s wrong, son?’
‘Nothing at our end, but so far the DJ’s sound system has blown up, the caterer dropped the cake and, according to the latest text message, the best man just vomited on the gift table.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’ Ava chuckled. ‘I knew there was a reason I never married.’
John laughed with her. It was a sound he was getting used to hearing since he’d sat down opposite Ava Marchette at the table for three Blair had set on the deck. ‘What can you do about any of those issues, son?’
‘Not a lot, except maybe talk the hysterical bride out of her room. Seems no one else is having any luck. Fingers crossed,’ Blair called, as he hurried from the deck.
‘That son of yours is brave tackling a bridezilla without backup.’
‘He is many wonderful things and I love him dearly.’ John raised his glass in a silent toast to sons. A Penfold’s Shiraz Mataro, Blair had informed them as he poured it. ‘Here’s to family.’
John sipped the wine, his taste buds suddenly alive, his palate recognising the subtle oak and a complexity he’d not enjoyed for some time. His senses seemed enlivened as he looked across the rim of his glass at the woman dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a kind of woven Turkish poncho.
‘Tell me your story, Ava. You mentioned twins? And your husband is… ?’
‘As I said, I never married and, yes, I have twins, a boy and a girl.’
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