by Lilian Darcy
‘Collecting eggs? Not all three of them…’ It was only around eight-thirty in the morning.
‘No, dear,’ Aunt Helen said. ‘They seem to be under the impression that they’re collecting you!’
‘Oh. Right,’ she answered weakly. ‘Perhaps there’s some arrangement that I forgot.’
She knew it was deliberate on Gian’s part the moment she stepped into the kitchen and saw his face.
‘Ready?’ he said, shamelessly cool. ‘We’re a bit early.’ His gaze locked with hers, a wicked looking glint in his eye.
I dare you to call my bluff, his face said.
‘Just remind me where we’re going,’ she murmured. ‘And tell me if I should bring a hat.’
‘Definitely bring a hat. We’re driving to Yerrinda.’ Kit knew the town slightly. It was about an hour and a half’s drive away. ‘Dad’s sister lives there, and Mum hasn’t seen her for ages. We’re dropping her off, and taking ourselves and Bonnie for a picnic. We’ll pick Mum up again mid-afternoon, doubtless get invited in for afternoon tea, and get back to the farm at around six.’
‘You’re right. I’ll need my hat.’
Helen walked Freddie and Bonnie out to the hen run, because even when she’d been told she couldn’t actually have the eggs today, the little girl still wanted to collect them and put them in Helen’s fridge. With the two older women safely out of earshot, Kit added, ‘Why did you spring this on me?’
‘Tactical manoeuvre. Sicilian style. An offer you couldn’t refuse. I didn’t want to give you time to think up a reason to say no.’
‘I wouldn’t have said no, Gian.’
‘You cancelled last week,’ he pointed out. ‘Via my front desk.’
‘Bad day, and I didn’t want to inflict it on you. Nor,’ she added ruthlessly, ‘did I want to hear you trying to convince me that you could shake me out of it.’
‘That about evens the score then, I think,’ he answered lightly. ‘Neither of us gave the other one a chance.’
Kit didn’t know quite how to interpret the comment, so she carefully didn’t try.
Bonnie had found her eggs. Six today—a lovely, exciting number, and three of them were unusually beautiful, a warm pinkish brown, covered in little white freckles. After a quick wash, they looked quite irresistible, and Bonnie reneged completely on her promise that she wouldn’t mind the eggs going in Mrs Campbell’s fridge instead of coming home to Nonna’s.
She cried. Loudly.
‘Oh, dear!’ Aunt Helen said helplessly. ‘They are particularly perfect, lovely eggs today, aren’t they, Bonnie?’ She looked at the other adults. ‘Is this a tantrum? Am I not supposed to give in to it, or she’ll think that’s always the way to get what she wants? Freddie, help! I need the eggs for a cake I’ve promised to the fund-raiser at Sarah’s kids’ school, and I have to make it this morning, because Sarah’s dropping in on her way home from town this afternoon.’
‘Oh, goodness!’ Freddie sighed. ‘Marco used to have terrible tantrums as a toddler. I had the energy for them, then. Whereas now…Bonnie, don’t cry, love. We’ll get more eggs another day.’
But Bonnie roared.
‘How many eggs do you need for the cake, Helen?’ Gian asked.
‘Four.’
‘And there are six. Bonnie, love, listen. Do you want these eggs because they’re so pretty?’
Her howls diminished rapidly as she listened. Gian had crouched down to her level as he always did when talking to her about something particularly important.
Eggs, for example.
She nodded at his words.
‘Then how about you choose the two very prettiest eggs to have for your very own breakfast tomorrow, and Mrs Campbell will mind them in her fridge for you until we get back from our picnic?’
Bonnie nodded again. ‘Choose.’
‘Yes, you choose. One, two, OK? Two eggs.’
Bonnie chose the two brownest, speckliest eggs and Gian ripped the soft cardboard carton in half across the middle and showed her exactly how he was putting her eggs in one half of the carton and Mrs Campbell’s eggs in the other half, so that they wouldn’t get mixed up. Bonnie was perfectly happy about the whole thing.
‘Bless you!’ Freddie said in a heart-felt aside to her son, and Helen was able to go back inside with her egg carton in one hand and Bonnie’s egg carton in the other, without further protest.
Freddie insisted on sitting in the back seat with Bonnie during the drive to Yerrinda. ‘So you and Gian can talk,’ she told Kit.
They dutifully did so, covering such thrilling topics as the state of the crops they passed in various fields, the prospects for winter rainfall, and the competence of their local elected representatives. Gian spoke very earnestly on each issue, rather as he might have spoken to a visiting health department dignitary whom he had been ordered to entertain but with whom he had nothing in common.
Under cover of Freddie’s absorption in singing songs with Bonnie in the back seat, Kit muttered to Gian, ‘You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?’
‘Sometimes Italian mothers need a firm hand,’ he replied.
‘So it’s Freddie you’re teasing with this, not me?’
‘Mainly Freddie. Tell me why you cancelled the other day, Kit.’
‘I did tell you.’
‘You told me you were having a bad day, but not why.’
‘It’s finished now,’ she answered firmly. ‘Today, if you leave me alone about it, I’ll have a good day.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Barring the unforeseen, yes.’
They delivered Freddie to her sister-in-law, a silver-haired and very Italian looking woman in her seventies, who was old-fashioned enough to wear only black in memory of the loved ones she’d lost. She greeted Freddie in what Kit knew must be broad Sicilian dialect.
‘Mi piace viderti assai!’
Freddie hugged her and answered, ‘E tu! Pare bene, Nina!’
Predictably, Gian and Kit were begged to stay for lunch, but Gian was cheerfully firm. ‘Not on your life! We have a picnic in the car, and a little girl with energy to burn.’
‘Assimiglia Marco,’ Nina said to Freddie. They were both looking at Bonnie, who was jumping around on the ground like a playsuit-clad rabbit.
‘Si, ma in charactere, assimiglia Gian,’ Freddie replied.
‘Did you pick up what they were saying?’ Kit asked Gian as they slid into the car again.
‘Nina says Bonnie looks like Marco, and Freddie says she’s got my delightful personality.’
‘Hm. “Delightful”. Say that for me in Sicilian, Gian.’
‘Can’t.’
‘She didn’t say “delightful” did she?’
‘No.’ He grinned, unrepentant. ‘She was ambiguous as to whether Bonnie’s resemblance to me was a good or a bad thing. I chose to interpret it in my own way.’
‘And is she right, do you think? Is Bonnie like you?’
‘I haven’t thought about it that way,’ he answered, suddenly much more serious. ‘Bonnie is just Bonnie.’
Kit craned around. ‘She’s asleep.’
‘Mum tired her out for us with all that singing. We’re going to a spot I know on the bank of the Murrumbidgee River. It’s only a few minutes away. We’ll park in the shade, leave the car windows open, put down our picnic rug and just lie on the grass for an hour until she wakes up.’
‘A whole hour? Will she sleep that long?’
‘I’m an optimist, Kit.’
He glanced across at her and smiled, and she thought, I can’t let him go. What will happen to me if this ends? I love him. What do I need to do to keep him in my life? I can’t relax about this, yet. He says he’s an optimist. Am I?
Bonnie slept for an hour and a half. It was a perfect day—mild and sunny, as winter days along the Murrumbidgee so often were. Gian spread the thick tartan picnic blanket on the short green grass beneath a huge coolibah tree and they lay part in sunshine and part in shade while a bre
eze rustled the long, pointy leaves overhead and the river slipped silently past, the colour of milky, greenish-brown tea. Gian offered to continue his discourse on weather and politics, but Kit wouldn’t let him.
‘Then I’ll have to kiss you instead,’ he threatened.
‘Gosh, I never thought I was letting myself in for something as dire as that,’ she murmured, and nothing very sensible happened until Bonnie finally woke up.
She was tearful and grumpy for a few minutes, as usual, then she settled down, had a little explore along the riverbank with Kit and was ready to go back for lunch. Meanwhile, Gian had made a ring of big, smooth river stones and set a fire in the middle of it. The flames were leaping, bright orange and almost transparent in the sunlight, when Kit and Bonnie got back to the picnic spot, and there was a pungent smell of eucalyptus wood smoke in the clear air.
‘Mm, what are we cooking?’ Kit asked.
She’d imagined sandwiches and a thermos of boiling water for tea, but Gian already had a billy can with a wire handle sitting on a home-made grill, also wire, over the flames, and there was a styrofoam cooler sitting on the ground, out of reach of the fire’s heat.
‘Sausages and lamb chops and pineapple rings to grill,’ he answered. ‘And potatoes wrapped in foil, when we get some coals. Little potatoes, so they’ll cook fast enough for Bonnie. Lamingtons for dessert, to go with tea. Lemon cordial for Bonnie. Cold water for all of us. Apples if we’re still hungry.’
It was as good as it sounded, their appetites and their taste buds sharpened by the outdoors. The pineapple rings were hot and smoky and sweet, the lamb chops were tender, and the sausages, eaten wrapped inside a slice of bread with a splash of bright red tomato sauce, were a flashback to the simple satisfactions of childhood.
Kit helped Bonnie to scoop out the steaming, floury centre from her outwardly charred potato. The little girl ate her lamington on her own, ending up with a face covered in jam, vanilla sponge, and the chocolate and coconut coating that covered the cake.
She wiped a good part of the mess from her mouth onto her sleeve, and the way she then examined the resultant chocolate smear suggested that she might be planning to try and suck the sleeve clean. Mess would be everywhere within minutes. This was the point at which Gian discovered he’d forgotten to pack any napkins.
‘No worries,’ he decided, and tucked Bonnie under his arm, crouched by the water and splashed her face and hands until he was satisfied. She laughed, and wanted him to do it some more.
‘Hm. Maybe later,’ Gian said, and came back with her still under his arm, to finish his tea. ‘Having a good time?’ he asked Kit.
‘Perfect,’ she answered a little sleepily. ‘I don’t want it to end.’
‘No,’ he agreed, and not for the first time Kit had the dangerous, seductive thought that they could so easily be a family—a happy, functioning family—if Bonnie had been their child. The illusion was too easy, and wasn’t right.
Cooking over an open fire took time. It was after three when Gian doused the remaining coals with water from the river, while Kit packed away the remnants of their meal. At Freddie’s sister-in-law’s, the two women were sitting on the back veranda of the farmhouse in a patch of sloping winter sunshine, drinking iced lemonade and eating sugary Italian biscuits.
Irrigated by water from the river, the farm was operated by Nina’s two sons and their families now, and was mainly devoted to citrus fruit. The trees had glossy green leaves, and boughs weighed down with their ripening crop of lemons and Navel oranges.
The Guarino brothers kept pigs, as well. Gian took Bonnie for a walk to see the animals, while Kit was persuaded to stay on the veranda and ‘keep us old women company.’
She regretted it at first. Watching Gian and Bonnie wandering off, hand in hand, Nina Guarino made some rather sharp comment in Sicilian, and Freddie replied equally rapidly in the same language. Kit had a strong suspicion that the rapid flow of their speech wasn’t an accident. They didn’t want to risk her catching a word—or a name?—that she might be able to guess or recognise. Did she hear the word ‘Marco’ in there somewhere? And ‘Gian’? She wasn’t sure.
Freddie wasn’t the sort of person to exclude someone from a conversation by deliberately using another tongue, and Kit was a little surprised. Hurt, too. If the exchange in Sicilian was designed to make her feel that she was missing something important, it had worked. After a few more quick phrases, however, Freddie went back to English and spoke to Kit.
‘I’m sorry, Kit. Gian would be angry if he knew we’d been talking this way.’
It was an oblique sort of comment. Not precisely an apology, and inadequate as an explanation. Kit was left with more unanswered questions than before. A cloud had passed over the day, like the clouds that were beginning to build in the west. Fluffy and innocuous at the moment, but bringing with them the possibility of darkness and change.
One of the clouds sailed over the sun, making the temperature drop on the sunny veranda at once. The sun came out again a few minutes later, but Kit was restless now, a little uncomfortable and ready to go home.
Freddie ceded the front seat to her once again, and claimed Bonnie for herself in the back. ‘You look tired, love,’ she told Kit, touching a concerned hand to her shoulder.’
‘A little,’ Kit agreed, softened by the older woman’s warmth.
She dozed for a while in the car on the way back to Glenfallon, and only awoke when they turned into the farm track that led to Aunt Helen’s place. So Gian was dropping her home? She’d hoped, without admitting it to herself, that they would spend the evening together, as well.
He must have seen something in her face, and explained, ‘Bonnie’s eggs, remember?’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘I’m hoping you might want to pick up a dress so we can go out. Do you fancy Kingsford Mill again? Just the two of us, this time.’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘Change at my place. Have a shower there, if you want to.’
Come to bed with me, Kit.
He didn’t say it, but the words flamed in his eyes, heating her blood. This time, she only nodded, letting her face show what she felt and adding after a moment, ‘Just give me a minute.’
Alone in her room, still able to hear Helen and Freddie and Bonnie talking in the kitchen, Kit felt flustered and absurdly happy, as light of heart as if tomorrow didn’t exist. She took a swishy, calf-length midnight blue skirt out of her wardrobe and matched it with a stretchy, slightly off-the-shoulder black top.
She collected heeled shoes and filmy black stay-up stockings, a bit of make-up in a zippered bag and a hairbrush, and put everything into a paper carrier bag from Glenfallon’s best boutique. She was ready for Gian in a few minutes. They dropped Freddie and Bonnie and the eggs at the Di Luzio farm and headed directly to Gian’s unit in town.
He looked at his watch as soon as they got inside the door. ‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ he announced.
‘For what?’
‘What do you think? For anything. For being alone. For being together.’ He wrapped his arms around her, seductive and familiar at the same time. ‘You smell of wood smoke, Kit. You need a shower.’
‘That’s just an excuse, isn’t it?’
‘Transparently.’ His mouth brushed the tender skin below her ear. ‘I want to cover every inch of your skin with soap lather, then run my hands down your body, helping the hot water to rinse it away.’
‘You smell of wood smoke, too, Gian.’
‘Good…’
They hardly made it out of the shower, staying beneath it, wet skin wrapped in wet skin, until the water turned tepid. Gian had one huge clean towel ready, and he wrapped both of them inside it so tightly that they stumbled and laughed their way to the bed, then tumbled beneath his thick down quilt to warm each other.
This took a long time, and conjured its usual complex magic inside Kit—happiness and pain, promise and terror, love and dread. Gian never said anything
about it. They hadn’t talked, hadn’t confronted serious issues, since that first night nearly three weeks ago.
Kit was aware every time Gian reached into the drawer beside his bed for contraception. She felt the extra passion and urgency in the way he returned to kiss her, having been absent for the minimum possible time from her arms. He thought that this was enough, and for the moment it was, but she knew it couldn’t be enough forever.
Deep down, she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
‘Kit, are you going to sleep?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Just thinking.’
‘Tell me.’
‘About how much I love this, and how good it feels.’
He kissed her, content with what she’d said, and he was probably right to be. She was the one who needed to change, relax, let down her guard against her own feelings, not think so much.
‘Going to get dressed up to go out?’ he asked.
‘Are you?’
‘I’m going to watch you, first.’
And he did, the rogue!
He lay in bed, sprawled out, lazy and naked, except for a twist of sheet pulled across his hips. He smiled every time she caught his eye. His lids were heavy and creased, and his eyes were dark and soft—the eyes of a man who’d just made love with a woman he cared about, the eyes of a man watching that woman dress for him.
‘You’re beautiful, Kit,’ he said, heavy-voiced, when she was ready.
You make me feel beautiful, she wanted to tell him, but for some reason the words got caught in her throat and wouldn’t come.
CHAPTER TEN
THEIR meal at Kingsford Mill was wonderful. Gian knew the owner, and spent a few very earnest minutes in conference with him while Kit waited at the bar.
‘All fixed up,’ he told her, when he came back. ‘They’re going to do us a special tasting menu, with wines to match. That picnic today made me hungry.’
‘It should have had the opposite effect, shouldn’t it? We ate pretty well at the picnic,’ she reminded him.
‘Too long ago.’
A succession of beautifully presented miniature courses began to arrive, and two hours swam by in a swirl of tasting, laughter and wine. Finally, they arrived at coffee and a selection of bite-sized petit fours. Kit was too sated even to speak.