by Fiona Lowe
His kindness made her feel even worse for the off-hand comment but the thought of hot water warming her icy skin was too good an offer to refuse. ‘Thank you, that’s very kind. But what about your bike?’
He jerked his thumb toward the back of the car. ‘You’ve got those magic seats. If I put them down, the bike will be a sweet fit.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
Twenty minutes later, Georgie was wrapped up in one of Ben’s shirts and wearing a pair of soft cotton trackie pants that she’d rolled up ten centimetres. She was ensconced on his couch, sipping a mug of hot tea and feeling a lot more relaxed than she’d been in the car.
‘So while we wait for your dress to dry, do you want pizza, Chinese, Thai, Indian, fish and chips, Japanese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Greek, Italian …?’ Ben asked, shuffling menus like a deck of cards.
‘And this is what I love about Melbourne,’ she said, raising her mug in his direction, ‘there’s so much choice. I grew up in the country and our takeaway options were limited to fish and chips, a sole-your-shoe steak sandwich or Chinese.’
‘Me too.’ His eyes creased at the edges as a smile raced into them. ‘When we had Chinese, Dad always ordered number forty-three.’
She laughed, feeling absurdly excited that he was familiar with the numbered menu that was found in so many rural Chinese restaurants around the country. ‘Beef in black bean sauce.’
‘Yes.’ Ben grinned at her. ‘It’s decided. We’re reliving our childhood and having Chinese.’
‘Can I have my dim sims steamed?’
‘Steamed?’ he said with mock horror. ‘Sounds like someone’s forgotten her country roots.’
His teasing was easy and friendly, and with some good-natured bickering, they finally settled on their order of dim sims, spring rolls, special fried rice, honey chicken and beef with ginger and spring onions. Ben ordered it online before walking into his small kitchen.
‘So country girl, do you want a rum and coke?’
In her twenties, she’d been to enough B&S balls to know that rum was the drink of choice of many of her contemporaries, but she’d been raised around good-quality wines, which she preferred over spirits. Over the past five years, Jason’s job as a wine rep had cemented her choice. ‘Do you have any white wine?’
His hand paused on the door of the fridge and he shot her a bemused look. ‘First no fried dimmies and now you want wine? Exactly where did you grow up?’
She gave an apologetic grimace. ‘The Western District.’
‘Ah.’ The knowing sound echoed around his flat. ‘Let me guess? You’re the daughter of a rich grazier, you went to boarding school and you grew up in the country but you identify more with the city.’
She was used to this type of reaction and once she would have defended herself against the implied criticism but as she’d already leaped to one incorrect conclusion about Ben today, she let this one wash over her. ‘Your crystal ball’s a little foggy. One grandfather was both a grazier and a well-known Victorian parliamentarian but Dad was a doctor.’
‘And your mum?’
How did she explain her mother? Since the death of her father, Georgie had given more thought to her mother than she had for the rest of her thirty-four years. ‘She’s a woman of her generation and her job was raising me and my two sisters as well as being the woman behind the man. Before I was born she did a lot of socialising to help build the practice. Dad was new to Billawarre and her family had the connections. Now she golfs, belongs to the CWA and the historical society, and she raises money for a children’s charity.’ She thought about the respite-care house and how Edwina had helped raise money for it. ‘My middle sister’s daughter has cerebral palsy,’ she added by way of explanation.
‘That’s tough,’ he said holding up a bottle of sauvignon blanc. ‘This okay?’
‘Lovely, thanks.’
He poured her a glass and opened a beer for himself. Carrying both drinks over, he handed her the wine before settling next to her on the couch. ‘Cheers.’
She raised her glass and took a sip. The wine was overly cold and the chill had muted the crisp fruity flavours. She set it on the coffee table so it could warm up. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up?’ she asked, more interested in his story than she’d been about anyone else’s in a long time.
‘Mildura.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I don’t have quite the same illustrious family history as you. For starters, I can’t claim a parliamentarian.’
She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I claim Gramps either. He was a staunch Country Party member and therefore aligned himself with the Liberals. He died years ago but if he were still alive we’d have clashed a lot on ideology. Unless, of course, he’d done a Malcolm Fraser.’
‘So you’re the radical member of your family?’ he asked with a mischievous glint in his lovely brown eyes.
She thought about Harriet’s obsession with family history—the way she lived her life entrenched in tradition—and Xara’s seeming disregard for it. Had Georgie rebelled against anything or had she just done what she wanted with no one seeming to notice? ‘Remember, I’m the youngest just like you.’
His face lit up with understanding. ‘Hard to be radical isn’t it? By the time we were old enough to do anything outrageous our siblings had already done it all. Didn’t leave us with much to rebel against, eh?’
‘I think there might be something to your theory.’ She pulled her knees up to her chin. ‘Even though you can’t claim a parliamentarian, I bet you have someone interesting in your family. What about a convict?’ She thought about her childhood disappointment. ‘I turned six in the bicentennial year,’ she said by way of explanation, ‘and I was desperate for a convict relative but all I’ve got are dour Presbyterians.’
‘Going to have to disappoint you there. We don’t have any convicts either.’ He met her gaze. ‘A branch of my father’s family wasn’t a big fan of white settlement.’
His tone was very matter-of-fact and she suddenly saw his deep tan, big brown eyes and dark curly hair in a whole new light; his heritage wasn’t Mediterranean as she’d previously thought. Ben was Aboriginal.
Her mind immediately and uncomfortably slid to the Mannering family folklore. How her great-great-grandfather and his brothers had arrived, squatted on the fertile Western District’s plains and dispossessed the local Aboriginal people of their land. The story of how Thomas Mannering had bravely fought off an attack by the Gulidjan people and saved William from being murdered was proudly recorded in the family bible. Not so long after the one-sided clashes with the Gulidjan, the brothers had weathered the drastic loss of staff rushing to the goldfields by being pragmatic and employing Aboriginal stationhands. It was a tradition that had lasted a century or more, but by the time Georgie had been born, the large stations had been whittled down—lands taken for soldier settlements, lands sold to pay death duties, land divided among descendants—and it had probably been three or four decades since an Aboriginal person had been on the payroll.
She swallowed against an odd feeling of the past suddenly inserting itself uninvited into the room. On an intellectual level, she knew she wasn’t responsible for the sins of her forebears but that didn’t stop her from feeling uncomfortable. Part of her wanted to blurt out, I voted Labour and supported the Apology, but that would make her sound as if she was begging for absolution and she wasn’t. Was she? She’d never been this close and personal with such a fraught topic before and she wasn’t quite sure what to say. No wonder people mostly stuck to their true and tried social groups—it avoided discomfort just like this.
She had a couple of Aboriginal kids in her class and she knew enough to know the words ‘caste’ or ‘part Aboriginal’ were no longer used to define Aboriginal heritage, and nor was skin colour. A person either identified as Aboriginal or they didn’t, and it was all based on their relationships.
She went for the base question. ‘Do you identify as Aboriginal?’
He shrugged.
‘Bit hard when I don’t know any of my relatives on Dad’s side of the family. By the time I was born, his mother and grandmother were dead and he never knew his father. Mum’s side of the family are the only extended family I know.’
‘What about your dad? Does he identify?’
‘It’s not something we’ve ever talked about. He married an Italian girl and spent the seventies and eighties establishing a workshop in Mildura. I think most people thought he was Italian.’ He sipped his beer. ‘I reckon claiming to be an Aboriginal back then would have been professional suicide.’
She was both fascinated and intrigued. Her family’s history was laid out in a framed tree that went back generations to the Middle Ages in England. It hung in the hall of her mother’s house, and in the halls of her uncle’s, her cousins’ and second cousins’ houses across the country. It hung very proudly in Harriet’s home and although Xara didn’t have it on her wall, Georgie knew she had a copy stashed somewhere. Georgie hadn’t bothered to hang hers again since she’d moved out of the house she’d shared with Jason because, as her only artwork, it looked pretentious. But her few hundred years of family history were nothing compared with the sixty thousand years Ben could claim.
The doorbell pealed and Ben unfolded himself from the couch, picked up his wallet and went to the door. Georgie walked into the kitchen and opened cupboards until she found plates and cutlery.
They met back at the coffee table. ‘That smells amazing.’
‘We can only hope it tastes as good,’ he said, passing her a wax-lined brown paper bag containing three steamed dim sims swimming in soy sauce. ‘Here’s your poor excuse for a dimmie.’
‘Yum. Thanks.’ She popped them on a plate before peeling back the tight plastic lids from the rest of the food. ‘Dad used to tell me that when he and Mum first got married, they took their saucepans to the Chinese restaurant for takeaway.’
‘Same,’ Ben said with a smile.
It was a wide and cheeky smile—full of the good things in life—and for the first time in a long time, it made her feel almost carefree. She smiled back, enjoying the sensation. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way. They loaded their plates with food and settled back on the couch, both opting to use a fork instead of the wooden chopsticks that had come with the order.
After commenting on the food—great flavours, could have done with more cashews and less spring onions—Georgie brought the conversation back to where they’d left off when the meal arrived. ‘So you don’t have much information about your Aboriginal heritage?’
‘I have about as much as I have about my Italian one. The family tree pretty much stalls on both sides at the great-grandparents.’ His brows suddenly rose over his bowl of fried rice. ‘Should I be more interested in one over the other?’
‘I don’t know. I guess not.’ The question brought up an interesting dilemma for her given she’d totally bypassed his Italian heritage with her questions. ‘Actually, maybe I thought you’d be more interested in your Aboriginal heritage because you live in Australia. We’re always being told about Aboriginal people’s connection to country.’
A sick feeling swirled her Chinese food around her stomach. Country my ancestors stole from yours.
Georgie, for heaven’s sake, Harriet’s voice echoed in her head. You don’t hear the English saying they feel guilty over what happened in Scotland in the eighteenth century. Besides, we don’t even own a tenth of that land anymore.
Ben leaned toward the coffee table and refilled his plate. ‘So much of my Aboriginal ancestry is missing that I was never given that connection. There’s a sad irony in the way my Italian grandfather used to fill my palm with the soil from under his vines and tell me that all things good came from the earth. I’ve never known Dad to take much notice of the bush at all but he’s magic with an engine. He’d fill my palm with oil and tell me how important it was.’
‘Did he grow up in Mildura?’
He shook his head. ‘Nah, he came from somewhere in outback New South. His birth certificate says Wilcannia.’
‘I have no idea where that is.’
‘I only know cos I looked it up on a map once for a school project. Dad never talks about his life before he met Mum. He’s not a big talker, full stop. I don’t know if it’s got anything to do with the time he spent in Vietnam or if he was like that before he got conscripted. Either way, Mum did most of the talking for both of them.’
She caught the past tense. ‘Did?’
Ben spun his fork through his rice. ‘Yeah. She died a couple of years ago. Cancer. Dad took it hard.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He gave a silent nod.
She tried her wine again and this time the zip of gooseberries hit her tongue and she remembered her father teaching her how to swill the wine in her mouth so the liquid touched all her taste buds. ‘My father passed away almost fourteen months ago.’ She added hastily, ‘Not that I’m trying to be in competition with you.’
He gave her a long look, his eyes filling with bemusement. ‘Why would you even think that?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably because after Dad died in a freak accident we had strangers telling us stories about how their relative died. It was like they thought it would cheer us up or make us feel less cheated. I don’t really know why they did it but it happened so often that my sisters and I started rating their stories as being either less freaky or more freaky than Dad’s death.’
His expression was part horrified, part amused and definitely intrigued. ‘Now you’ve made me want to ask how he died.’ He held up his hand like a stop sign. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve asked you a heap of nosy questions so it only seems fair.’ She told him the story in the script she’d developed and adapted over the months. ‘Dad spent one week a month in Melbourne lecturing at the school of medicine at Melbourne Uni. He always stayed at a serviced apartment and parked his car in the adjacent multistorey car park. On this particular day just as he returned to the car, a woman was reversing out of her space. She had a heart attack at the wheel and the car slammed straight into Dad, crushing him against a concrete pillar. He died instantly.’
‘God. That must have been traumatic for your family. At least we had a few months to get used to the fact we were losing Mum.’
‘Yeah, it was tough but it’s been the hardest for Harry and Mum.’ Ben’s brow furrowed in confusion and she explained, ‘Harry’s my eldest sister. She’s a surgeon and she shared a practice with Dad. Mum was a career wife and she seems all at sea without him, which is why Harry’s insistent on throwing this huge birthday party for her.’
‘Ah, the big sister who texted the other day.’ Ben refilled her wine. ‘Maybe we should introduce your mum and my dad so they can keep each other company.’
She smiled politely but no matter which way she came at it, she couldn’t imagine her immaculately dressed mother with her blonde bob, signature string of pearls and perfectly elocuted vowels having anything in common with a motor mechanic. ‘The five hundred kilometre distance between them could be problematic.’
‘True.’ He relieved her of her empty plate and set it down on the table. ‘Will you be spending all of the holidays in … Where do you live?’
Was he asking because he wanted to catch up with her in the holidays or was he just being polite? ‘I live in Essendon. My mother and sisters live in Billawarre and to answer your question, I’m hoping to get away with spending the first week up the bush.’ She forced herself to sound as casual as he did. ‘What are your plans?’
He shrugged. ‘I was going to go straight to Mildura but Dad’s on a road trip. He loves restoring old cars and he’s off somewhere, driving around with a group of old codgers. I suggested he come and visit me but he insisted I go to Mildura in the second week.’
‘That sounds fun,’ she said, disappointed that they’d be away at different times.
He gave a wry smile. ‘Not nearly as
much fun as spending a week getting to know you. Still, perhaps we can do that after the holidays or …’ He ran his hand through his hair as if he was regretting speaking.
She was clutching on tightly to the fact that he’d said getting to know her might be fun. She wasn’t going to let that disappear down a rabbit hole never to be heard of again. ‘What were you going to suggest?’
He shook his head and his curls bounced wildly. ‘Don’t worry, it probably wouldn’t work.’
She leaned forward. ‘Try me.’
He sighed, the sound laced with embarrassment. ‘That would mean exposing the fact my social life is currently nonexistent and I have nothing planned this weekend except for shopping and washing. No guy wants to look desperate.’
She found herself smiling at him. ‘Then I’m equal to you in the desperate loser stakes.’
‘Hey!’ He held up a warning finger but his eyes twinkled. ‘I never said I was a loser. I find it hard to believe that you’re desperate or dateless.’
She choked on her wine. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
He grinned. ‘Only the ones with eyes that remind me of the Mildura sky. Do people comment on your eyes?’
She thought about her childhood and how people in the district immediately identified her as a Mannering the moment they saw the colour of her eyes. ‘They do. My eyes got me into a lot of trouble as a kid because they were so recognisable. I share the colour with my mother, sisters and my nieces. Apparently it dates back to my Scottish ancestors.’ She set down her glass, determined to chase the elusive rabbit down the hole. ‘So, what did you have in mind for this weekend?’
He’d relaxed the moment she’d confessed to having nothing on this weekend. Now his arm was slung along the back of the couch and he was all loose limbed and easy grace. ‘Can you ride a bike?’
‘Ah … yes,’ she said cautiously, already worried that dating a PE teacher might mean pushing herself out of her semi-slothful comfort zone. ‘But isn’t tomorrow going to be hot again?’