by Lucy Gordon
But she knew without being told that he needed the physical effort.
Demons. Her mother had surely been right.
Not demons. Robbie.
He didn’t look up. Every ounce of energy went into smashing the axe into the wood.
She wanted to walk out and take the axe from him. She wanted to hold him, just hold him, the child inside the man.
She couldn’t. Whatever harm his parents had caused had gone so deep she couldn’t touch. His harm would just hurt her.
Fifteen years ago he’d walked away and she’d lived without him ever since. She could do it again.
With demons like his, there didn’t seem a choice.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE journey to Sydney was made mostly in silence. The truck had an excellent radio, for which Mardie was profoundly thankful. She tuned it to a discussion on nineteeth-century circuses. She tried to be fascinated.
For Blake had gone somewhere she couldn’t reach. He was silent and grim, hardly speaking at all.
‘Hitchhikers are supposed to entertain the truckies who pick ‘em up,’ she said at one stage.
‘Would you like me to talk?’
‘I’d like you to tell me about Africa,’ she suggested. ‘More than it has a truly appalling wind.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Fine, then,’ she said, grittily cheerful, and went back to her circuses.
When they reached the city she needed facts. ‘Where’s your apartment? Where can I drop you off?’
‘It’s on the harbour,’ he said shortly. ‘But you don’t want to be caught in city traffic, and we need to take Bessie to the vet clinic. We’ll go to your place, dump your stuff and take her straight there.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘To be brusque? Of course you did,’ she retorted. ‘But I like brusque. Least said, soonest parted. Let’s go.’
* * *
Least said, soonest parted … He wouldn’t have put it like that, but then he wouldn’t have put it at all. He was simply doing what he needed to do.
If he told her what he thought of the pompous historian spouting circus stuff, if he joined in, he might relax, and if he relaxed then they’d end up where they were last night and he’d end up hurting her. Hurting her more.
Shut up and move on. Do what needs to be done. Leave.
To go where?
He’d figure it. Eventually.
‘This is Irena’s,’ Mardie said, pulling up outside a tiny weatherboard cottage overlooking the cliffs of Coogee. ‘She has cats. Bounce is used to them. Let’s see how Bessie reacts.’
He climbed from the truck as Mardie negotiated the garden path and rang the bell.
Irena’s house. A friend of Mardie’s. If he’d thought about it, he’d probably have guessed Irena to be a Banksia Bay local who’d moved on.
Country girl made good?
That was the kind of thinking that was getting him into trouble.
It might also be a little bit wrong.
For the woman who opened the door was … magnificent. Fiftyish. Six feet tall. Black leggings, high black boots, a purple sweater that reached mid-thigh and a tiny skirt. Strings of amethyst and topaz. Oversized earrings.
A Cleopatra haircut.
She greeted Mardie with a cry of delight, enveloped her in a hug and Mardie practically disappeared.
The hug over, Mardie was held at arm’s length and inspected.
‘Look at you.’ It was a cry of dismay. ‘If you haven’t brought anything decent to wear …’
‘I have brought clothes but I don’t want to get dog on them. Irena, meet Blake Maddock, the guy I was telling you about. Blake, Irena’s my agent.’
Her agent?
‘How lovely,’ Irena purred, and smiled a totally bewitching smile that said she knew exactly what personable men were made for and she knew exactly what to do with them.
Mardie giggled. ‘You’re scaring him,’ she said.
‘Not him. He’s a big boy.’ She grinned at Blake and turned back to Mardie. ‘Did you bring them?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘I want to see them. Now.’
‘We need to get Bessie to the vet’s.’
‘Colin’s not expecting us for another hour.’ Blake was fascinated.
‘An hour’s great,’ Irena said with satisfaction. ‘And you said it’s right by here. Excellent. Bring them in.’
‘The dogs …?’ Blake ventured.
‘Bring them in, too,’ Irena said with ill-concealed impatience. And then she gave a rueful smile. ‘Sorry. Your dog’s why we’re getting the plates early and I should be grateful. I am. So I’ll take Bounce inside, and the memory box—is it in the tray? Mardie, you bring Bessie and introduce her to the girls. Blake, you bring the plates.’
‘The plates?’
‘It’s the box on the back seat,’ Mardie said, taking pity on him. ‘The memory box is the big one in the tray. The plates are smaller. But please be careful. If you drop them I’ll have to shoot myself.’
‘You and me both,’ Irena said. ‘And Cathy.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I hope you don’t mind but she’s been desperate to see. She should be here … Oh, great, here she is now. Come on in.’
And then they were in Irena’s huge kitchen, which seemed to take up half the house. There were two Siamese cats, circling the dogs with care. Bessie seemed cautious but not overwhelmed. She stuck close to Bounce and seemed fine.
It was Cathy who looked overwhelmed.
Cathy was a middle-aged woman, mousy, wearing a twinset and a tweed skirt, looking scared. She’d received one of Irena’s hugs as well, which could, Blake thought, overwhelm anyone.
‘Blake doesn’t know what’s happening,’ Mardie announced, looking bemused. ‘Sorry, Blake, I should have told you.’
‘You didn’t tell him about the memory wall?’ Irena demanded. ‘It’s only the most beautiful thing you’ve ever done.’
‘Blake and I have been too busy for chat.’ She was opening what Irena was calling the memory box. Tugging out as-sorted … things.
A battered seaman’s cap. A container of model trains. A box of fishing flies. Photographs. Letters. Boots. An ancient pair of scuffed slippers.
A rat-trap?
What the …?
‘Cathy’s husband was drowned when a pilot boat tipped at the harbour mouth twelve months ago,’ Irena told him and Cathy flinched as all eyes turned to her. She reached out and took the rat-trap, and held it as if it were a shield.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Blake said, because there was nothing else to say. ‘What happened?’
‘It was an awful night,’ Mardie explained, as Cathy hugged her rat-trap like a talisman. ‘An oil tanker was threatening to flounder on the rocks past the heads. They sent tugs and pilot boats out. They saved the tanker, but one of the tugs and one of the pilot boats were lost. Six men and two women were drowned. Cathy’s Bernard was one of them.’
‘Bernie was a crewman on the pilot boat,’ Cathy whispered. ‘He went out … and he didn’t come back. It’s been awful. But now … we’re going to have a memorial wall, at the harbour where their boat used to be tied. Mardie’s making plates. Nine plates for each one lost. Seventy-two plates in all. Mardie asked me to choose things that were important to Bernard, things the kids and I want him remembered for. Funny things. Silly things. Like the rat-trap.’
‘Why the rat-trap?’ Blake was totally caught in the emotion in the woman’s face. The grief. The pride.
‘We were friends at school,’ she whispered, and pride prevailed. ‘One day I told him there’d been a rat in my bedroom and the very next day Bernie brought me a rat-trap. We were both fourteen and I went to bed that night with my trap under the pillow. No way was I using it for rats.’ She hesitated. ‘Isn’t it dumb, to have kept a rat-trap. Did … did you use it, Mardie?’
‘I surely did,’ Mardie said. ‘Can you unpack the plates?’ she asked him.
‘Each panel’s on individual padding.’
He lifted the plates free, one after another.
Nine enamelled plates.
He couldn’t believe their beauty.
Each one was about twelve inches square.
The first was a portrait, glass, fired onto a copper base. A seaman.
It wasn’t exactly a portrait, he thought. It was slightly abstract, an impression, but it was wonderful. The strength of the man came through—a battered sailor, his face creased against the weather, the sea behind him.
Cathy choked back a sob. She let the rat-trap fall to take it. She just … looked.
He lifted the next plate free. It was like a collage. A thing of exquisite beauty, but built from images of ordinariness. Here was the rat-trap. A football. Fishing flies.
A second plate was trains—a whole panel of trains Bernard had obviously loved. The real trains, the models, were spilling from the memory box, but their image on the plate was just as real. Bernard’s face was on this plate again, as a faded background, a man watching with pride as his trains circled a track of crimson glass.
The colours were extraordinary. The depth of field, the layering of objects upon objects. Each one was saying this man had such depth …
Nine plates, representing a man’s life.
Cathy was crying openly now, moving from plate to plate, touching them with awe, with reverence and with love.
‘You guys need to get Bessie to the vet,’ Irena said, a bit more roughly than she needed to, sniffing a bit, but Blake wasn’t ready to surface yet.
He turned to Mardie—who was watching Cathy. Smiling a smile he’d never seen before.
‘You did all these?’ he managed.
‘I’ve done seven sets,’ she said. ‘Sixty-three plates. I have Robyn Partling’s story left to do. Another month and I’ll be finished.’
‘You should see where they’re going,’ Cathy whispered. ‘They’ve made a wall at the harbour. Every person will see my Bernard. They’ll see he loved trains. They’ll see that letter he wrote to the paper about the turtles. They’ll even see my rat-trap.’
She choked, and Irena put a bracing arm around her.
‘Whisky,’ she decreed. She turned to Mardie and Blake and sent them a silent message. Go. ‘I’ll dry Cathy up, but I suspect she’ll like to be alone with these. So off you go and save your dog. Cathy and I will phone the harbour master. He’s the one organising this. The other six have blown him away. This one will be no different.’
It took ten minutes to drive to the vet’s. It took almost that long for Blake to catch his breath.
He remembered the plates over the fire-stove and knew now where they’d come from.
He’d seen the plate in Charlie’s nursing-home bedroom and knew it was Mardie’s as well.
Brilliant.
They pulled into the car park. Mardie went to get out of the truck but he caught her hand. There were things he needed to get clear.
‘I always knew you could draw,’ he said slowly. ‘I never dreamed …’
‘That I’d do enamelling? There you go, then. And I never dreamed you could be a doctor in Africa.’
‘You never said …’
‘You knew I loved drawing.’
‘Yes, but not like this,’ he said explosively. ‘These plates … I’m not an expert but … with your skill you could make a fortune.’
‘I do make money,’ she said diffidently. ‘But not with these. My friend Liz is a nurse I work with. Liz’s brother, Mike, was one of the men who died that night. I came to the memorial service. I saw Liz clutching an old fire engine Mike loved when he was a kid and I thought … I could do something.’
‘But you’ve been enamelling before?’
‘For years. I run the sheep to keep the grass down. I work three days a week at the nursing home because I love it. The rest of the time I do this.’
‘Raff said you were broke.’ He was trying to get things clear. ‘You couldn’t afford to help Bessie. I assumed …’
‘There’s a lot of that about,’ she said. ‘Assumptions. You always saw my art as my hobby, not the passion it is. While I had no idea you were striving for medicine and why.’
‘So you’ve been enamelling since school?’
‘It’s what I do,’ she said gently. ‘I don’t make millions but I do make a living. The problem is the cost. There’s always something. For these plates I needed a bigger kiln, a good one. You need an even temperature over the entire surface or the glass cracks. Lorraine’s a local potter. She and I went halves but it still cost a fortune.’
She turned to Bessie and Bounce on the back seat, moving on with decision. The two dogs were sitting bolt upright in their harnesses, both looking nervous. ‘Okay, Bessie, you’re next. Do you think we should take Bounce in?’
‘I think we should,’ Blake said, because a man had to say something and that was all he could think of.
Concentrate on the dogs.
Anything else was too difficult.
Colin was waiting for them, a big, confident vet who oozed professional competence. In the veterinary clinic, with its strange smells, Bessie reacted with even more nervousness. Colin, however, was amenable to Bounce staying beside her. He could see that together they were settled.
A bond was growing between these two dogs that was starting to seem a tangible force.
Like me and Blake, Mardie thought, and scared herself by thinking it. Glanced at Blake and thought … for once, don’t know what I’m thinking.
Luckily, both Colin and Blake were intent on Bessie’s eyes. Colin was cautiously optimistic and once he examined her he became even more so.
‘It’s looking good. We’ll need blood tests, scans, the works, and I need to start her on anti-inflammatory eye-drops. Can you leave her with me today, pick her up about five?’
‘Can Bounce stay with her?’ Mardie asked, and Bounce looked up with sudden distrust. ‘I know, smarty-boots,’ she told him. ‘You understand. But today you’re the sacrificial lamb. If I could hop into the cage with Bessie to comfort her I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I suspect I wouldn’t fit.’
Everyone laughed
They left the dogs and walked out into the sunshine.
Laughter died. Silence.
No dogs. Nothing. Sunshine, beach, nothing.
Without speaking, they headed towards the beach. Found themselves on the sand. Just walking. Just walking.
There was something about Bessie and Bounce …
Togetherness. He hadn’t felt like that even when he was engaged to be married.
Maybe that was why he was no longer engaged. He didn’t know how to do it.
So what was the problem with that? He’d always been an outsider.
Except when he was with Mardie.
He was with Mardie now.
The difference was, Bessie and Bounce connected. They belonged together, in a way he and Mardie never could. Mardie had been his escape from reality. Banksia Bay. Mardie. They were part of his past, the part that had been used to ‘get over Robbie’. Neither were part of his real world.
He could, Blake realised, walk away right now. He could pay Colin’s bill. Take a cab into the city to his apartment. Leave Mardie with Irena, with her life that didn’t include him.
No. There was a growing part of him that was denying his outsider tag, that was hungry to come in.
‘I’d like to talk over what Colin says this afternoon,’ he said diffidently. ‘I have this fund-raising dinner tonight …’
Don’t go any further. A voice was raging in his head. Don’t! To be an outsider was the life he was accustomed to, the life he’d chosen.
A life where the pain of losing Robbie could never be repeated.
‘Talking to lots of strangers,’ Mardie said sympathetically. ‘Ugh.’
‘Would you like to come?’
He couldn’t believe he’d said it.
He’d said it.
‘It won’t be all that inter
esting,’ he said. ‘Corporate money, politicians, people wanting to look charitable while contributing as little as possible. But …’ He hesitated. ‘You did ask about Africa.’
‘So I did,’ she said. ‘You’ll be talking about Africa?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll come.’
Just like that. She glanced at him and their gazes locked—and then they looked away. A step taken …
Regretted?
‘I’d like to be there, but inconspicuously,’ she said hastily. ‘Can you arrange for me to slip in at the back?’ She ventured an uncertain smile. ‘But, as for coming … It’s only fair. You’ve seen my plates; I wouldn’t mind seeing your work.’
‘Great. I’ll pick you up at …’
‘No,’ she said, suddenly definite. ‘I have a truck. You have a mangled Mercedes. And, besides, I’m not coming as your partner. I’m coming as me. If you could organise a ticket I’ll collect it at the door.’
‘And you’ll wear beige and blend into the wallpaper.’
‘Something like that.’
‘You’re not an inconspicuous woman.’
‘I am, too,’ she said. ‘Five feet two in socks. Favourite footwear, gumboots. Favourite perfume, wet dog.’
‘In this crowd that’d be conspicuous,’ he said and grinned. Feeling suddenly absurdly happy. Not knowing why but suddenly not caring. ‘Would you like to have lunch now?’ he asked before he knew he was going to.
But she was shaking her head. Looking a little … scared? ‘Irena wants me to talk to the harbour master,’ she told him. ‘And I imagine you have things to do as well. If we need to discuss Bessie … Ring me in the morning if you don’t get a chance to speak to me tonight.’
‘Of course I’ll get a chance.’
‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t,’ she said softly. ‘We live in different worlds, Blake. They’ve collided today and it’s lovely. But, apart from this one collision … we both need to get on with our lives.’
He did have things to do.
There was the small matter of insurance and a crumpled Mercedes. That took most of the afternoon.
He checked the cost of hiring another. Crashing hire cars did appalling things to premiums.
He gave up, found a car yard and bought one.