Season of Shadow and Light

by Jenn J. McLeod

  C’est la vie! She sighed.

  ‘How you holding up after your big night?’ He let go of the hand Paige hadn’t realised still languished in his, her momentary—albeit pointless—fantasy ending when he held the same hand to his nose, sniffed and said, ‘Sorry. Everything ends up smelling of dead worms when I fish.’

  ‘Mmm, thanks for the heads up.’ His other hand held a small fishing rod, its rust-crusted line guides and gaffer-tape handle giving away the antique status. ‘Catching much?’

  ‘A couple worth heating the pan for, unlike the third one I let go when I heard you. Other than that I’m managing to hook myself a whole lot of debris. A river in flood never makes ideal fishing conditions.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Therapy.’

  A man who admitted he needed therapy? Another lovely quality; not one Paige was used to.

  ‘And I’ve interrupted the session,’ she said, feeling suddenly intrusive. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  Paige stopped and turned back. Those two words sounded more impassioned than anything her husband had uttered a short while ago. If only Robert’s ‘come home’ had held the same fervour. She hesitated. Maybe she should stay. Why not? Aiden was easy to be around, despite her initial impression of him, and he was proving rather amusing. She could do with a good laugh.

  ‘A little therapy is not a bad thing.’ She held out a hand and wiggled her fingers. ‘Could do with some myself. Hand me the line and let me try.’

  ‘Sure. Pub’s closed tonight and we’ve gotta eat. So far I’ve only caught two worth keeping.’

  She followed him over to the river’s edge where he lifted the lid on a tin pail.

  ‘If you can catch ’em, I’ll cook ’em. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘Here.’ He tossed a tatty T-shirt at her. ‘You can use this to wipe your hands.’

  She dropped it on the ground by her feet and saw the logo. The word G’Day in big black letters, only the apostrophe and the capital D had been purposely struck out of the design with a thick red line.

  ‘Interesting T-shirt.’

  ‘Oh, that one, yeah. I’ve got a few.’ He exposed a bit of blue fabric from inside the knapsack on the ground by his feet. ‘My reward for helping out with a Mardi Gras float year before last. Some mates wanted a food theme for the traditional political take-off. You know the floats I mean?’

  ‘I do. They’re fun.’

  ‘That year we did Tony Carrott with Julienne Gillard and Bill Shortening mixing it up with Pot-Albo. They did a Sloppy-Joe Hockey and a Rudd Mudd Cake too. I helped brainstorm; I got paid in leftovers—leftover T-shirts, that is. Six of them. One in every colour of the rainbow.’ He shrugged, laughed at his own joke, continued. ‘Thought about wearing this pink one around town to get some of the old fogies talking because, in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t have enough to talk about. Your little jig with Stavros will be feeding gossip today, no doubt.’

  ‘Shush, stop talking. You’re frightening the fish away.’

  ‘I’ll leave you with it.’

  To her delight, she caught one in the first fifteen minutes, smaller than any of Aiden’s—which he thrice managed to point out in the time required to release and return—unharmed, thanks to the squishy plastic Squidgy lure.

  ‘Had enough?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘A woman who doesn’t give up easily. That’s my kind of woman.’

  ‘Oh?’ She tried keeping the surprise out of her voice. She failed. ‘And what other qualities makes an Aiden woman?’

  ‘You’d be surprised just how unfussy I am.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she grinned. ‘Try me.’

  ‘Try this instead,’ he laughed and plonked his Akubra on her head, giving it a sharp pat so it slipped over her eyes.

  She knocked it back on her forehead with the flick of her middle finger.

  ‘Mmm, sorry, it probably also stinks of dead worms. Guessing that doesn’t bother you though.’

  ‘No, but I am curious. How is it if we’re using plastic lures I’m supposed to smell dead worms?’

  ‘Good question. I should have said the remnants of dead worms. I used this gear about a million years ago when I was a kid and my old man would use anything as bait. If not worms he’d always have cow guts handy or—’

  ‘Enough!’ Paige thrust her hand out. ‘I may not be able to smell, but there’s nothing wrong with my imagination.’

  ‘No imagination needed in my case. It’s one of those smells that gets into your system and never leaves. You know what I mean?’

  Paige did know, but despite a good imagination, some smells were becoming more difficult to conjure up: the aroma of Alice’s fresh scones straight from the oven, that nutty scent of rain on a hot pavement, and the summer’s salty air whipped up by the late afternoon easterlies. But it was those precious and personal scent memories that she missed the most, like the coconut in Nancy’s sun tanning oil and the scent of Hubba Bubba bubble gum that used to remind Paige of her first kiss, the night she first fell in love.

  ‘I said thanks for your help the other night.’ He was speaking to her and she hadn’t heard a word.

  ‘Oh, ah, I didn’t mind at all.’

  ‘I reckon we could start a new food trend. Retro chic.’

  ‘You mean the pineapple hedgehog? Yes, I hear they’re planning a ‘Masterchef’ special dedicated to the pineapple hedgehog.’

  ‘And featuring the processed meat and mashed p’taty rollup.’

  ‘With every contestant getting a limited edition pack of shish kebab skewers.’

  ‘In your choice of six exclusive colours.’

  ‘Kebab perfection guaranteed.’

  Their banter continued that way until they were laughing so hard, tears streamed down their faces and Aiden let out a resounding, ‘Opah!’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Paige feigned sickness. ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘Drink?’ He handed Paige a plastic flask, but her slowness to react must have been telling. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only water.’

  ‘Must be the city girl in me. If you watch the news lately it seems drink spiking is the new “Hey, gorgeous, how about going somewhere more private so we can talk?” In other words, no foreplay required.’ Did she just say foreplay? The supercilious grin on Aiden’s face suggested so.

  ‘Must be fifteen years since I was into the nightclub scene,’ he said.

  Paige was the confused one now. The guy went to Mardi Gras, but not nightclubs?

  ‘I do worry what things will be like for Mati. I mean a woman who wants to walk a few streets to her home late at night is apparently stupid or asking for it. I don’t miss that about the city. Do you miss anything?’ she asked, handing back the flask.

  ‘Maybe the variety,’ he replied, screwing the cap on tight. ‘A guy can only eat so many pub meals. I also miss experimenting with food and flavours. Not much apart from that.’

  ‘Tell me about the places you worked. Did you have a favourite?’

  ‘I moved around a lot until . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe you’ve heard of Renegades.’

  ‘Renegades Restaurant? Hmm . . .’ She shook her head, staring at the water glistening behind him, until her eyes focused on the tattoo running up his neck, from the bottom of one ear. For the first time, with the low-cut collar of his T-shirt, she could make out the full word.

  ‘Renegades,’ Paige read aloud. ‘You have the name of a restaurant tattooed on your neck?’

  ‘Not just any restaurant. My restaurant. At least that was the dream.’

  ‘What happened to the dream?’

  ‘From my experience, dreams rarely become reality.’

  ‘Well, according to Matilda’s father, I put too much emphasis on my dreams. So, there you go. Let’s talk about your restaurant, shall we?’

  ‘That was close to two years and a lifetime ago. I have a better idea. Let’s fish.’

  Wh
ile Aiden prepared a small handline, Paige racked her brain trying to remember if she’d heard of a Renegades Restaurant, but two years ago restaurant reviews were the furthest thing from her mind. Two years ago she was preparing to celebrate a new life, until death ripped her beautiful baby boy away and stroke ripped her world apart. The clearest memory of that night was the first faint tingling in her foot.

  The strange sensation had snapped Paige awake, her first thought always to check on Matilda. She’d reached over and snapped up the mobile phone from the bedside table to check the time, ready to launch her weary body from the bed. But something about the usually bright illumination from the light on the phone seemed not right—dulled—like the odd feeling in her leg, its creeping advance under her skin spreading to her thigh. If she could only get to the bathroom; the cold floor tiles had eased a calf gripped by cramp in the past.

  A crushing weight made moving impossible and the twitch in her leg, now in her arm as she tried working her phone, suggested this was no ordinary case of muscle cramp. Had Robert been sleeping beside her that night, and not at a conference on the other side of the country, she would’ve nudged him awake. She thought about telephoning.

  If it’s two o’clock in Sydney, what time is it in Perth?

  She couldn’t think.

  Brain fuzzy.

  Get up!

  Maybe she could walk off whatever was squeezing her body, but sitting up was not easy and sweat formed droplets on her skin, rolling down the valley between her breasts. Tossing back the bedcovers only created a draft, her sweaty skin exposed, shivering in the night air.

  Cold!

  Everything was wet. Soaked through. She had to get up.

  Try!

  One leg moved, the other a deadened limb blocking the way free.

  Stuck!

  Half on half off the mattress, one arm swiped at the bedside table to grapple with the lamp.

  Move!

  But something was pinning her to the bed, dragging her flesh down and nailing it to a mattress of quicksand, sucking her down, crushing her lungs, her world dark.

  Floor!

  Hard!

  Nothing!

  Everything was different when she gained consciousness later that morning—the day the stroke had changed Paige’s life. She’d remembered very little after hitting the floor, but her indecipherable early morning phone call—the one she didn’t know she’d made—had alerted Alice, who then found Paige outside Matilda’s room, the four year old wailing in her bed while her mother moaned and pleaded, ‘My baby. Not my baby. Please, don’t take my baby.’

  Her pleas were easily explained. Only four weeks earlier she and Robert had farewelled their baby boy. What Paige hadn’t told anyone was the bad dreams she’d experienced on and off as a child, hitting again with a vengeance while pregnant with Matilda, were back and regularly waking her at the same time—always 2 am. They’d stopped after her daughter’s birth—it was hard to dream when sleep came in hourly bursts—resuming again as Paige struggled with motherhood and a career. She’d had no choice. Her job, if she wanted to keep it, had demanded an immediate return to work. Luckily, she could leave baby Matilda in Alice’s loving care. With news of her second pregnancy, the dreams had made a comeback and something inside Paige didn’t feel right. With Robert over the moon about the baby being a boy, all he could say to ease Paige’s concerns was, ‘You’ve done it once. You need to relax a little, Paige. Lighten up a bit.’

  Relax? You insensitive—

  ‘Jerk!’ Aiden’s yelling and her taut fishing line yanked Paige back, her focus now on the ripples radiating from where the line disappeared into the water. ‘Jerk again,’ he instructed. Something was holding tight and she hoped it was a really big fish.

  ‘What is it?’

  Aiden came from behind. He grabbed the reel, but quickly let go again. ‘Snag,’ he claimed. ‘Shame. Could’ve been something big.’

  Paige was holding firm. ‘How do you know it’s a snag?’

  ‘Experience. I’ll fix it.’ With his hand following the line from the tip of the rod, he waded thigh deep to the fishing line’s point of entry and tugged.

  Nothing.

  ‘Well? Snag or fish?’

  ‘Could be both.’ He tugged a little harder and slipped, sinking completely. When he emerged, arm raised, a fish barely the size of the lure flapped about on the end of the line.

  ‘Oh my! It is a fish. Don’t hurt him,’ Paige instructed, as Aiden puckered up and pretended to kiss the gasping thing before lowering it back into the water.

  ‘Ready to give in yet?’

  He was wading back to dry land: an Adonis, a dripping-wet Mr Darcy . . .

  ‘A damn shame!’ Paige muttered. ‘What a dish.’

  ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘Ahh, I said, do you think it will rain before I catch a fish? There’s a big one out there with my name on it. That tiddler was a warm up.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  As he peeled off his T-shirt, shook a shower of river water from his head and lay down on a patch of grass, Paige felt the long forgotten flutter of attraction. She also felt a little ridiculous, but at least it was reassuring to know there was no sensory deficit in that department. She shivered, yet it was hardly cold with the sun beating down. Confusion was suddenly the overriding emotion, turning Paige’s shiver into a tremble as light and shadow danced over the wet landscape of Aiden’s torso, prostrate under the dappled leaf light. He’d closed his eyes and draped the sodden T-shirt over his face letting Paige shamelessly inspect the length and breadth of the man who, just the other day to Alice, she’d compared to a handsome thoroughbred horse. Truth be told, Paige thought, Aido had probably tasted one too many crème caramels in recent years. She focused on his ample shoulders and arms, remembering them tight around her in a strong, manly hold, kind of like the hugs she hadn’t realised she was missing. Matilda’s cuddles were eager and fleeting, Alice’s were motherly and warm and protective. Paige craved the slow embrace and the attentions of a mate. A strong man. Someone to wine her and dine her . . . before making love to her in the back of his BMW because neither of them could wait to find a bed.

  Damn you, Robert!

  ‘A penny for your thoughts.’ One eye peeked out from underneath the T-shirt.

  She had to think fast. ‘Oh, um, I was wondering . . . Do you think they’re ever the same again?’

  ‘Sorry, you’re going to have to go back a few thoughts and start over. Who is ever what?’

  ‘The fish we throw back. What must they think? We rip them from the water—the very thing that lets them breathe—prise hooks and lures from their mouths, kiss them, as if that’s supposed to make up for the trauma, and throw them back. What sort of story do they tell?’

  The T-shirt dispensed with, Aiden sat up, leaning back on both elbows, his eyes squinting in her direction. ‘Have you been watching Liam’s Finding Nemo DVD?’

  ‘I’m not so sure it’s funny,’ she said. ‘We don’t laugh at alien abduction stories. Same thing to a fish, isn’t it.’

  ‘Of course we laugh at alien abduction stories.’ He sat up fully, grabbed the blue T-shirt from his knapsack, and drew it over his head. He was leaving. Why wouldn’t he? She was sounding like a weird, crazy woman. ‘Are the worm fumes messing with your head?’

  ‘Fumes are never my problem, remember,’ she said, reeling in the line and securing the lure’s hook safely. ‘Stick to the subject. You’re telling me you don’t believe in aliens?’

  ‘Aliens as in . . . ?’ He reefed the tail of his T-shirt back up, stretching it around the top of his head like a hoodie. With only his face showing, he ever-so-slowly pointed his index finger at the sky. ‘E.T. phone home.’

  Paige walked over and whacked him in the shoulder, laughing.

  Shrugging the T-shirt back in place he said, ‘No, I don’t believe fish have memories, aliens abduct humans or, while we’re on this get-to-know-each-other roll, that divine interven
tion will turn our bread into fish and our water into wine. Which unfortunately means that for dinner tonight, with only two small fish between five people, we humans have our work cut out for us.’

  ‘Speaking of getting to know each other . . .’ Paige seized the opportunity.

  Just ask him, she told herself. For hours last night when she couldn’t sleep, Paige had lain in bed thinking up ways to let Aiden know being gay was totally fine with her. But that wasn’t at all true. She wasn’t fine. Paige was far from fine and having trouble believing what Sharni had said was true, especially since the cow and creek adventure when Paige could have sworn she and Aiden had connected on some emotional level.

  Maybe she’d misheard Sharni in the pub.

  Maybe she’d misunderstood.

  ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘Maybe what?’ Aiden was staring, his face bunched up into another curious squint. The blue G’Day T-shirt—the same apostrophe and capital D in the design struck out the same way—was like a neon sign. ‘Did you want to ask me something?’

  ‘Yes, um, no.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ he asked, his eyes teasing as if he knew there was more.

  How did he do that? How did a man she’d just met know her so well, when her own husband of twenty years failed to know her on any level?

  ‘Actually, yes,’ she blurted. ‘Fish fingers are as fishy as Mati gets these days.’

  ‘Did you say fishy fingers?’ Without warning, he lunged at Paige, taunting and tickling and cupping his fishy palm to her mouth until she was screaming like a six-year-old. She could no more smell fish than she could her favourite perfume, Chanel No. 5, but it was one of those weird reflex actions, a childhood memory that made her jostle and squeal with delight. And she would have escaped his grip had it not been for her over-shirt, the corner firmly clasped in his hand. He reeled her into his body and the playful squealing stopped.

  Caught like a fish.

  Caught in his arms, gasping for breath and wondering if she would ever be the same again if he kissed her before throwing her back.

  You idiot, Paige!

  She was never more grateful to hear the ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’ tune she’d downloaded to her phone at Matilda’s insistence. Paige pushed off his chest and, as if the phone had eyes, walked a safe distance away, fussing with her shirt before answering.