by Ros Baxter
***
The late afternoon sun warmed Gen’s shoulders as they stood at the jetty and the children wheeled and squealed around her in their excitement to be boarding the boat. By the looks of it, it was made to seat twenty or thirty, but they were the only customers today. Gen kept a hand on Bea’s shoulders as she stepped on, and Will held the back of her dress. She had thought he might be nervous, his first time on a boat, but it seemed his stint playing superman had relieved him of lesser fears.
The children greeted the driver noisily and set about arguing about which seats would be the best. They settled on some in the middle, Gen between them, Brodie in front. He took it upon himself to play tour guide as soon as they were all aboard. ‘See the bridge, guys?’ He pointed up at the distinctive structure rising up out of the sparkling harbour. ‘We’re not going that way, but I’ve asked the captain to take us for a little spin under it so you can have a look.’
Will grinned and Bea squealed some more as they started slowly then picked up the pace, eating up the waves before slowing as they approached the bridge. Brodie pointed upwards again. ‘See those little figures up there?’ A small conga-line of people inched across the bridge’s spine. ‘That’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. Pretty cool, huh? I’ve done it; great view.’
Gen felt her stomach lurch at the thought, even though she too had conquered the indoor skydive, albeit not at the dizzy heights of Will.
‘Looks a bit scary,’ Will echoed, straining his neck to catch sight of those daredevils.
‘Yeah,’ Brodie agreed. ‘For some people, I reckon. Not for a brave guy like you. Piece of cake, I reckon.’
Gen watched as Will seemed to grow to twice his size.
Brodie was a regular tour guide, turning around to wrap them all in his contagious joy as he chattered on about the bridge.
‘It opened in 1932,’ he said, spreading his hands to indicate its size. ‘It’s the sixth longest spanning-arch bridge in the world, and the tallest steel arch bridge. It’s over 130 metres from the top part up there—’ he indicated the apex, ‘—to water level. I think it also used to be widest long-span bridge in the world, but then some bridge in Canada had to go and ruin that for us.’ He grinned. ‘What do you think of it?’
‘I love it,’ Bea breathed, twisting a red curl around one finger and looking at Brodie in a way that left Gen in no doubt she loved him right along with it.
The driver banked right and took them back the other way up the harbour, passing the Opera House, the Gardens, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and the trendy U of the Woolloomooloo wharf. The late afternoon sun was soporific after the big day, and Gen found herself lulled by the motion of the water and the sweet cadence of Brodie’s voice, pointing out interesting things to look at and sharing facts.
‘Where are we going?’ she finally gathered her wits to ask.
‘Doyle’s,’ he responded. ‘At Watson’s Bay.’
‘Oh.’ Shit. Gen had been hoping maybe she could shout dinner, but from what she knew about Doyle’s there was little chance what she had in her account would cover it.
‘The kids’ll love it,’ Brodie said quickly, as though he picked up on her discomfort. ‘And I’m mates with the guy who owns it, so don’t worry; it’s a steal.’
She didn’t believe him for a moment. Why was he doing all of this for her, for them, after what she had done to him? She got that he wanted to help the town, help Nelly, and that they had some history which wasn’t all bad, but she wondered if he could ever understand how much her little family needed some fun like this—whether he really knew what a great thing he was doing for her?
She swallowed hard and tried to smile graciously. It was not easy. She had spent the last ten years looking after herself, even after she’d married Mac and had the kids. Her ex-husband hadn’t been much of a team player. They’d been through some hard, lean times, this one most of all, and through it all, she had been the one to take care of things, get them through. She wasn’t used to taking help, especially when she didn’t understand the nature of the exchange.
The boat slowed as the iconic image of Doyle’s on the Beach came into view, with its pretty green and cream awnings and a row of canoes resting against the front path. The small white beach made the children squeal again and start asking if they could paddle.
‘No,’ Gen almost squealed herself. ‘We’ll be eating; you’ll get dirty.’
Two little faces fell as they stood and pressed against the glass while the boat taxied in to the pier.
Brodie stood up and came and sat beside Gen. She felt his closeness like a bonfire, warming her skin and electrifying her senses. ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ he drawled, close to her ear so the kids wouldn’t hear. ‘But it’s pretty laidback here. Most of the kids order food, then paddle, then come back with sandy feet and wet clothes.’ He smiled. ‘They’re not bothered in the least. And I got Stel to get us an outside table, so we can watch them.’
Gen took in the little beach. Calm waters tickled the white sand, and the restaurant was probably only a few metres from the water’s edge. It really would be lovely for the kids to have a paddle while they ate an early dinner.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, and he made to move away. She grabbed his arm as he did, and he turned back. ‘And thank you,’ she said, ‘again.’
‘There’s no need,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had this much fun in years.’
He followed the kids to the front of the boat, asking them what kind of fish they liked and whether they had tomato sauce on their chips. Gen knew for sure he would—Brodie Brown had always had everything smothered in tomato sauce, from pies to chips to eggs to sausages. She smiled listening to the happy chatter as she followed them up the ramp and onto the pier.
The children’s eyes were wide and sparkly as they worked hard to read the menu, sounding things out and asking for help with the odd word. Finally, like an old man, Will sat back, rubbed his belly, announced that he was famished and declared he’d have the barramundi.
‘Order something from the children’s menu,’ Gen suggested, eyeing off the price and almost passing out.
‘No way,’ Brodie objected. ‘A man who’s been skydiving needs something to replenish his muscles.’ He rubbed his own belly. ‘And might I say, Will, an excellent choice. I’m with you. Barramundi it is. Beatrice?’
Bea wriggled happily in her seat at the use of her full name. Gen had heard her telling Brodie as they walked to the restaurant from the pier that she preferred it, now she was almost five. It was so very Brodie to indulge her; he’d always known how to please a girl. ‘Prawns,’ she lisped.
Gen felt a repeat of the almost-swoon of a moment before. Bea had tried prawns last Christmas and decided they were her favourite food. ‘You sure, honey?’ The price of those little suckers was almost as terrifying as the barramundi.
‘Yep,’ she said, setting her jaw and digging in for a fight.
‘Okay then,’ she relented, scanning the menu for options that might be at the cheaper end, and not make them all look like they were taking Brodie for a ride. ‘Well, I’m not really that hungry, so …’
But Brodie wasn’t having a bar of it. ‘Oh, Gen Jen,’ he objected, catching the children in a baleful stare and attempting to get them to join whatever conspiracy he was hatching. ‘Seafood isn’t about hungry, is it guys?’
Bea and Will both shook their heads earnestly. Little traitors.
‘It’s about yummy, Mummy,’ Bea added, looking at Brodie for endorsement.
Brodie nodded approvingly. ‘Indeed it is,’ he agreed. ‘God made seafood so we’d get a tiny taste of heaven. And I know just the thing your mum would love.’ He stretched the last word out in a way that sounded vaguely indecent, grey eyes focusing on Gen’s face.
She felt herself dig in the way Bea had a moment before as they closed ranks against her. ‘Caesar salad?’ she suggested innocently.
Brodie groaned. ‘Caesar salad,’ he scoffed, holding his heart as if she wer
e causing him pain. ‘Show some mercy. How can Will and I eat our huge plates of barramundi if you’re going to nibble a salad? We’ll look like animals.’
Will nodded. ‘It’s true, Mum.’
‘And, kids,’ Brodie went on, his face crinkling in the kind of smile that Gen knew from experience meant he was up to no good, ‘I, for one, happen to remember that your mum had a very healthy appetite, back in the day.’
It was true. Food had been one of Gen and Brodie’s shared pleasures. Gen’s natural energy seemed to require constant fuelling, and Brodie as a teenager had had the appetite of ten men. Gen would sneak raspberry pie from Sarah’s kitchen. Brodie would disappear with loaves of Nelly’s olive and fig bread, and they would meet for long, lazy picnics where food was only one of the things they indulged in.
Gen realised three sets of eyes were upon her and blushed as she tried to shake herself out of the memory.
‘She’s still a good eater,’ Bea encouraged. ‘Aren’t you, Mummy?’
Brodie hammed up a dubious expression. ‘I’m not sure I believe you, Bea,’ he said. ‘This is the same woman who just told us she was going to come to Doyle’s …’ He gestured around him, iconic seafood restaurant of Sydney, and order a Caesar salad. Was it not?’
Will leaned in towards Brodie, as if he was genuinely worried that he may be offended, and whispered, ‘I think she was just being polite. Didn’t want to seem greedy.’
‘Polite?’ Brodie clutched his heart.
Will and Bea nodded at him while Gen scowled and felt the noose tightening.
Brodie narrowed his eyes at Bea. ‘You say she’s a good eater?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bea said, smiling at her mother like Brodie had said she was a princess.
‘Do you think she could finish that?’ He pointed at the next table, where an exquisite-looking lobster thermidor was being laid down. Damn him, he didn’t forget a thing. It was housed in a single, perfect lobster shell, and the filling brimmed rich and creamy from what had been the poor creature’s home. The top was crispy and cheesy, and even the sight of it made Gen’s mouth water. She could almost taste the rich sweetness hitting her palate.
But she had vetoed that option the minute she had seen the price tag.
‘Yes, sir,’ Bea repeated, with the confidence of a child.
‘No way,’ Gen said.
‘Don’t you like lobster?’ Brodie arched an eyebrow innocently.
And Gen was lost in the memory.
***
It was very hot for September, and they’d done something bad.
Brodie had borrowed Nelly’s car, telling her he was checking out Sydney colleges. Gen had told her mother she was helping KD pick up some stock for her parents’ shop. And they had hit the coast, Brodie surfing and Gen swimming the whole long, perfect day. It was almost summer, and soon this would be their life. Together, away from Sweet Pocket, doing what they wanted, seeking their fortunes.
As darkness fell, Brodie produced the two lobsters and lit the fire on the beach. Gen had no idea where they had come from; you never did know with Bro. He might have bought them, bargained for them or liberated them. He boiled them on a pot over the fire, still in his board shorts, Gen in her bikini with a sarong tied over the top.
She lay on a towel on the still warm sand while he fed her soft morsels of lobster, drenched in lemon. It tasted like perfection and danger, the way Brodie did when she kissed him, and soon that was what they were doing.
But this time was different. They were close, so close, to doing what they’d talked about so much over the last year. It was the September holidays and there was only one term left.
Gen loved her mother, and she loved Sweet Pocket, but she loved Brodie more, and she wanted to go wherever he was going, do whatever he was doing, and maybe find something in that for herself as well. She knew Sarah would be fine with the farm; she was still so young and strong and capable.
More and more, Gen liked the idea of studying food. Not to be a chef, so much, but more the production of food. Away from the farm though—she’d had enough of milking cows to last a lifetime, and her mother never put that on her. Her mother would buy in the help she needed when the time came; she knew Gen had other dreams.
Gen’s skin prickled and shivered as Brodie traced a long line of kisses from her neck down the inside of her right arm. He whispered as he went. ‘Perfect, so perfect, Gen Jen.’
He unwound the sarong from her middle and continued the kisses on her belly, which was over-hot from the sun, the fire, and now his attentions. He licked her navel and stroked the top of her thighs as her insides wheeled and wobbled, wanting more but feeling the heady combination of darkness, lobster and love that might push them over the edge.
They had agreed. Not until they were gone. It was hard enough to leave him now. Every time they said goodbye, him back to Nelly, her to Greenacres, she missed him like an amputated limb. How could she do this, what she so desperately wanted to do, and be apart from him for an instant? They both knew it was right. They had to wait.
Except now it didn’t seem right. It seemed like a dumb, pointless rule, like every pointless rule that kept them apart. All the people who told them they were too young, that they didn’t know, that they were too intense, that they needed to find other things.
Well, Gen knew she sure as hell didn’t need to find anything else, and she knew Brodie felt the same.
She dragged him back up to her face. ‘I’ve changed our mind,’ she whispered against his ear. ‘This is perfect, this now. I want it now.’
‘No.’ He sat up and shook his head. ‘No, we were right.’ He studied her earnestly in the firelight. ‘I don’t just want you for this, Gen.’ He swept his hands around the fire and the beach. ‘I want you for everything.’
‘So do I,’ Gen said, pulling him back down to her on the warm sand. ‘And everything starts now.’
Chapter Eight
Seafood and Sydney
‘Lobster it is,’ Gen said, dragging herself back to the present and unable to summon the energy or reasoning to deny the determined threesome ganging up on her. ‘Now why don’t you kids go paddle? We’ll call you when the food arrives.’
They ran off with piercing shrieks, hurling shoes at Gen as they went.
Brodie watched them with a smile. ‘They’re cool,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of you in them.’ He motioned to the waiter as she passed. ‘Despite how much Will looks like Mac.’ He said the last without a trace of bitterness, and Gen wondered how he did it. Like he could read her mind, he shrugged. ‘It’s not his fault his dad’s a dickhead.’
Gen stared him down. ‘What was with the whole lobster conspiracy?’
‘You don’t like lobster?’ His face was warm and open, all innocence.
‘I like lobster fine,’ she said, shoving a large chunk of sourdough into her mouth as soon as the waiter dropped some on her plate. Brodie indicated something on the wine list to the waiter. She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
She didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing. But all of it was discomforting. Even the bits that felt kind of good.
‘Do you?’ He leaned closer and she could smell the Rexona-y maleness of him. ‘’Cause I don’t, Gen.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. I’m just making it up as I go along.’
She leaned closer too, more because it felt conspiratorial, what they were talking about, than because she wanted to be closer to him. At least, that was what she told herself. ‘I get why you’re helping with the meetings,’ she said. ‘At least, I think I do. You always hated the Big Cow, and I know they’re trying to screw Nelly too, and this is our best shot to break free of them. But why the rest of it?’ She waved her hand around, indicating the restaurant, the beach—the whole damn thing. ‘Having us stay? Showing us around? Taking us flying?’
Brodie shook his head, and she tried hard to read the look that was in his eyes—part thoughtful, pa
rt troubled. ‘Honestly, Gen, I don’t know. I only know I want to.’ He took a breath. ‘I mean, I really want to.’
‘Because you want answers?’ It was one of those moments when truths lie hanging in the thick sludgeyness at the back of the spoken words.
He studied her. ‘You got any to give?’
Did she? Would it make any difference to tell him now? She knew this man, regardless of the fact that they’d had ten years apart. She knew the boy he had been, the things he’d believed and the kernel of the man who had been growing inside him. He understood duty keenly, for all his mad ambition. She didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t want him to try to make things right. And she didn’t want him going back trying to rewrite history. ‘I just realised I wanted to stay more than I wanted to go.’
His jaw tightened. ‘And the Mac thing?’
‘I knew I needed a reason,’ she said softly. ‘A reason you’d buy, or at least be too hurt to question.’ Saying the words was like taking a butter knife and stabbing herself in the heart with it. ‘You needed to hate me, or you’d never go. And I knew how badly you needed to go.’
His eyes were dark grey and shuttered. ‘I wanted to go with you,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t want a fucking holiday.’
He had every right to be angry. It didn’t matter that she had done what she did for him, because she loved him more than she loved her own cells. All he knew was that she had betrayed him, and made up a lie that meant he not only lost her, but also his best friend.
Brodie waited, looking as if he was working hard to compose his features while the waiter reappeared and served them both a cold glass of wine. Gen took the moment to watch the children, squealing as the waves licked their feet. They’d found an accomplice in the setting afternoon sun, a young boy who looked to be about their age. The little boy had a football, and the three of them were tossing it to each other in the waves.
When the waiter left, Brodie started again. ‘But the Mac thing was true, right? I mean, you guys ended up married …’ He motioned towards the children at the water’s edge. ‘Kids, the whole nine yards.’