Be Mine: Valentine Novellas to Warm The Heart

by Nicole Flockton

  3

  He takes me to the best coffee place in Ballarat: tiny and dark, filled with the good smells of single-origin coffee beans, the caramelised sugar scent of small Italian cakes, newsprint, books and people.

  ‘I’m Lilac,’ I say, as we sat in a tiny window table, next to a tottering bookshelf.

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘Good choice of cafe, Harry, I love this place,’ I say. ‘But I don’t come here much. When I was bringing up the kids, I cut out every non-essential, and that included $5 coffees in cafes.’ I giggle nervously and scrunch my shoulders. ‘It still feels like a wicked, indulgent treat, coming here.’

  ‘Today it’s my wicked indulgent treat,’ Harry says. ‘I haven’t laughed so much in a very long time. Not at you, I mean,’ he adds hastily. ‘With you.’

  I give him the raised brow look I still sometimes use on my kids. It works. He blinks and squirms an infinitesimal fraction.

  Harry is a good listener, asking me questions about my life and activities.

  ‘Single mum, two kids, a struggle at times, but now they have their degrees and great jobs, it all seems worth it,’ I tell him. ‘I miss them though. Lily is just here in Victoria checking out ocean pest species – she is a marine scientist based in Queensland – and Sam is a power engineer living in Sydney. It’s terrible. I really miss them so much, but of course I’m very proud.’

  ‘And you would love a grandchild, but...?’

  I huff a breath. ‘I’ve no hope of Sam. He is just devoted to his work, completely focussed. But Lily, she is so social, and she loves kids...I do keep reminding her that kids generally need a man somewhere in the equation. I suppose there is egg freezing and IVF...but she is showing no interest yet. I thought if she fell in love, there might be some hope.’

  ‘How old is she now, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘She is 28 – and Yes! I did have her young!’

  He grins. ‘Isn’t there plenty of time for her?’

  ‘Well no, not really. She isn’t even dating, and it might take a while to find the right one.’

  ‘She is having a good life though?’

  ‘She loves it! She has her usual five hundred best friends, does every sport known to man or woman and is getting promotions at work. She is super-organised, that’s how she fits it all in. Just not time or inclination for a partner, sadly.’

  We sip our small dark coffees.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Droning on about all this. I know I’m lucky, and so many women would kill for my problems. I just...want her to be happy. Find that special someone who will care for her above all others. Look after her, make her laugh. Be there, through the bad bits.’

  More sipping.

  ‘And... you?’ he asks, his voice soft.

  My hand shakes, startled. ‘Me? I don’t matter. Hit my fifties. I’ve got my life now. Worked hard, made some difficult choices, made it through the tough patches. Now, I’ve got things how I want. It’s not about me.’

  He is gazing at me, his quizzical expression so endearing that I feel like hugging him.

  ‘And you have that someone, there for you?’ he asks.

  ‘Once. He died. Long ago. I did try dating, early on, but none of them measured up to my husband. So I just got on with my life, filled it full of activity and challenge, and as much joy as I could wring from the day-to-day. That’s all. I’m not anything special and I’m happy with that. But...I would so love a grandchild!’

  ‘And go to any lengths to achieve it!’ he says. We both chuckle.

  ‘About that...oh never mind! It’s impossible to explain away!’

  ‘You know, I want to help, if only to stop you from doing serious damage to yourself. So, what’s the Operation? How is it going so far?’

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ I admit. ‘Everything is just going nuts. I keep setting up ‘accidental meetings’ with likely young men, but Lily is oblivious.’

  ‘Maybe I can help?’

  ‘What? ‘As if!’ as the kids say. Actually...’

  I study him more closely, noting the humour lines around his eyes and mouth, the kindness lurking in his eyes. He is mid-fifties, but in fantastic physical condition. He seems to know his way around a coffee bar. And he is a good listener – Lily does so love to talk.

  ‘Are you single yourself? Looking for a life partner perhaps?’

  He chokes on his coffee. I reach over and spend a few minutes banging him on the back, noting that the breadth of shoulder is nothing to do with excess fat and plenty to do with good strong Aussie muscle.

  ‘For Lily, I mean,’ I amend, blushing all over. ‘I didn’t mean...’

  ‘Oh you are hilarious!’ He wipes tears from his eyes, I hope related to the laughter and not the choking.

  He takes a breath, and the smile flees his face. His eyes are still kind, but shadowed now, with old pain. ‘I lost my wife, not so long ago. Three years. I’m still getting used to it. Bone marrow cancer.’

  ‘That’s terrible. How awful for you.’ I feel my own tears gathering. I am always a sympathetic crier, and even though he isn’t actually weeping, I can see the tears lurking just beneath the surface.

  Just then, a noisy group bursts into the cafe.

  ‘Lilac, Darling!’ a high-pitched voice screams, and the fabulous presence of Tori Donnelly envelops me in a huge multi-coloured and scented hug. Three other women, friends of Tori’s, stand around us shrieking like a flock of Rainbow Lorikeets in a peach tree.

  Harry rises. ‘It was lovely to meet you,’ he says to me, his tone formal. He ruins it though, by cracking a huge grin. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on dangerous heights and shrubbery. Just in case.’

  I am nodding at him, trying to listen to my most important client’s screams and jokes while being polite to everyone at once.

  Harry has paid the bill at the counter and is barely to the door when Tori screams at full volume – she has only two, loud and louder – ‘Nice score there, Lilac my love! Very nice indeed. Just look at those shoulders, and that butt!’

  I swear Harry falters in his step. Oh dear. This is worse than my multiple accidents. At least they were just pratfalls. This is another universe of blushes.

  I make excuses. ‘Actually, Tori, I don’t want to intrude on your coffee time. Please excuse me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly Darling,’ she begins, but I leap from my seat, offering it to one of the parrot ladies, agilely dodge an impending full-body Tori hug, and head for the door.

  4

  ‘Harry!’ I call, before embarrassment can make me slink away in the other direction. If I leave now, that might be the last I see of him. And he was saying how he could help with Operation Grandchild, just before Tori exploded into our table.

  He stops, turns. Looks, smiles, and begins walking towards me. I gulp, fighting the blush.

  ‘She is a very important client,’ I say, a little breathless with anxiety. A fleeting shadow crosses his face and is gone. We both think about her parting lines. He grins. I blush more.

  Our feet turn up the main street, back towards the park and the cricket.

  To cover my embarrassment, I search around for a neutral topic. As always, a garden saves me.

  ‘Look at that landscape over there, around the big new construction of the City Hall. Some nice plants, and good to see trees being put in.’

  ‘But?’ Harry stops, and because I am looking at the landscape, I bump into him. I step back as though electrocuted. ‘Ha ha, oh whoops. You know I am not normally so prone to pratfalls and accidents.’

  ‘What is causing it, do you think?’ Harry’s mouth presses in at the sides and his eyes crinkle.

  ‘Too much wicked coffee?’ I suggest.

  ‘Moss inhalation?’ he retorts.

  ‘Oh, very funny!’

  We stand there for a beat.

  ‘Tell me about the garden design,’ Harry says. He seems very intent.

  ‘Well... whoever designed the landscape didn’t put enough though
t into it.’

  ‘How so?’ Harry asks.

  I take a breath. ‘Those palm trees look very period and Deco, against the 1930s Art Deco City Hall, but they will come over in the first strong wind. They should have triple the stakes.’

  He is focussed very strongly on me, serious, the strong planes of his face tense. I continue, ‘The scale of plantings is wrong. The larger scale of commercial and government buildings needs larger-scale mass plantings, with the detail in the foliage, or light and shade...’ I tail off.

  Harry is studying my face, with absorbed interest. ‘Keep going,’ he says. ‘I remember now, you said you were a landscaper.’

  ‘There aren’t enough other trees, and those Eucalypts will die if they aren’t watered regularly in their first year. I love trees in a landscape. They reduce the hugeness of everything to a friendly human scale. Plus, lovely shade in summer, protection from Ballarat’s freezing wind and rain in winter.’ I stop. ‘Oh Harry, I am sorry. Lily always restricts my ‘talking gardens’ time at social occasions.’

  He is leaning in, his creased face warm and alight with interest. ‘You said you were a landscaper. Still practising?’

  ‘Totally. Try to stop me!’

  ‘Do you have a card?’

  ‘Not on me, sorry, I feel like such a tosser doing that. But my website is Lilac Loveday Landscape Design.’

  ‘Going well?’

  ‘More work than I can handle actually. I’m very grateful for my good luck.’

  ‘Lilac. Listen, I have to get back to the guys now.’

  A little pang hits me. Boring him, raving about gardens. What was I thinking? He had seemed so easy to talk with, so interested. I feel like a fool.

  ‘Harry, I’m sorry. I’ve been blabbering and I hardly know anything about you.’

  ‘Perhaps you would consider another coffee sometime? Is tomorrow too soon? We must discuss the Grandchild Project.’

  Lily is bouncing up.

  ‘Yes,’ I hiss, to get rid of him before Lily interrupts us. ‘Same time, same place, tomorrow?’

  ‘You bet. See you there.’

  5

  The storm in the night is expected, and sadly, as I had foretold, one of the huge, mature recently-planted palm trees in the big construction area topples over in the night. CBD street traffic is detoured for blocks while giant cranes remedy the remiss landscaper’s mistakes, adding huge steel cables to secure the palm tree in the ground once more.

  When I get to the coffee shop, Harry isn’t there. I felt like a twit. Of course, he isn’t coming. Why would he want to spend time with a dirty, messy, walking accident?

  It is a shame, as I have spent some time this morning planning my appearance. Not too casual: I want to overcome the earlier ‘street urchin’ impression, and show him the slick, professional woman that I have become. Pants and a crisp shirt? In the end, I chose one of my favourite stretchy floral dresses, which fits my shape and has the advantage of comfort. Why am I trying to impress him, anyway?

  I am in two minds: stay and have a coffee anyway? I sigh. Plenty more work to do. Tori Donnelly has messaged me early, saying she wants to discuss an idea for another garden ‘room’ in the massive landscape gardens around her mansion, in the millionaire’s strip adjoining the town’s famous lake.

  I am just getting up, when Harry rushes in. To my horror, I feel myself blushing again. I struggle to push down the blush, and to appear cool and collected.

  ‘Lilac, how very rude of me. I do apologise! I am never normally late, but a bit of a work emergency had to be dealt with.’

  I sit down again, conscious of a real feeling of pleasure. It makes me think, maybe I haven’t met anyone new for some time, and haven’t had that instant feeling of rapport with someone for ages.

  We order coffees, and I refuse the little cakes as usual. I notice that Harry likes them. I also notice the owners and staff all know him by name. Must be his favourite coffee place.

  ‘Today, we are discussing Operation Grandchild,’ he says grandly. ‘Now, I have seen your Lily, and she is indeed beautiful and blessed with a charming and sunny temperament.’

  Now it is my turn to choke. After the cricket, I had said to her, ‘You were having a good laugh with those two charming young men?’

  ‘Yes mum,’ she had answered. ‘I know them from touch footy. We were laughing at you two. You and that bloke seemed very interested in each other!’

  ‘Maybe I should just count my blessings,’ I say to Harry. ‘She has a full and happy life. I’ve never been an interfering sort of mother, up to now.’

  ‘You think?’ Harry is grinning. ‘I was enjoying the thought of assisting.’

  ‘How can you help?’ I ask.

  ‘In millions of ways!’ Harry’s face is alight with mischief and humour. I see more than one cafe patron’s glance linger on him, and then study me. He is very handsome, I realise. Charming and handsome.

  ‘Sorry, would you say that again?’ Harry has been talking for a while.

  ‘I’m on a lot of Boards these days,’ he says. ‘Cricket, Rotary, Hospital, Western Athletics. Full of eligible young men. Why don’t I get some of them to accidentally meet your Lily?’

  My heart picks up. ‘Perfect!’ I am overwhelmed with the possibilities. ‘Let’s get down to business then.’

  Later that morning, I drive to Tori’s over-decorated mansion. Flamboyant, irrepressible, engaging, enthusiastic, that’s Tori, and that is exactly how she decorates her palace.

  She is one of my main clients, giving me multiple landscape projects over the years, paying handsomely, and recommending me to her friends. I never have to advertise, but am handed around amongst Tori’s rich and garden-loving set like some kind of secret weapon.

  It is true. I’d taken several acres of not much besides grass, shrubs and wildlife and turned it into a garden dream. The edges I’d kept wild, full of native grasses and shrubs to bring the birds, insects, reptiles and even small mammals.

  Formal rose gardens scent guests’ arrival, and expansive flower beds are filled with colourful seasonal flowers. My favourites are the peony roses, like princesses of the plant world, and I’d put in beds and beds of them. Tori even has Peony parties during November.

  The kitchen gardens resemble the old European patterned gardens, lovely to look at and full of useful plants. Naturally Tori has teams of gardeners to maintain all this splendour.

  Today I am meeting Tori in the walled garden, which shelters the most tender plants from Ballarat’s freezing winter winds and broiling summers.

  Tori is perched in her favourite herbal seat: made with an underlying stone shape and covered with sweet-scented herbs growing furiously all over it, so that it releases the most divine smells as one sinks into it.

  Tori leaps up and suffocates me in a hug. ‘You sly thing,’ she says in a teasing voice.

  We have known each other for years, and I never need to pretend with Tori. It’s one of her most endearing characteristics.

  ‘What are you on about, sister?’ I ask, picking a stem of Italian lavender, twirling it under my nose and inhaling.

  ‘Booked in for your blonde highlights? Eyelash extensions?’ she says, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. ‘Body sculpt? Fake tan? New wardrobe?’

  ‘Tori, stop! What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Does ‘Harris MacAulay’ mean anything?’

  ‘No,’ I say, puzzled. ‘What?’ Realisation slams into me. ‘You can’t mean Harry?’

  Tori snorts, which resembles a bull erupting. ‘The Harris MacAulay? Sound familiar?’

  ‘Should it?’

  Tori shakes me. ‘You are such a little garden gnome, my love, aren’t you?’ She laughs. ‘Ah ha, I have it! Having a little joke with poor little Tori!’

  I am shaking my head. ‘Harris MacAulay? I only know him as Harry.’

  ‘Harris MacAulay Constructions? Commercial construction giant, does all the big government and commercial contracts. Was lucky enough
to get darling Harry to do some work on my little house here. One of their big jobs at the moment is the big City Hall re-build.’

  ‘City Hall?’

  ‘Turned into a parrot, my love? Yes of course City Hall.’

  The conversation about the City Hall landscape design flashes through my mind and I groan loudly. You really cannot say anything about anyone or anything in country towns. Everyone is connected somewhere, in the most astonishing ways.

  ‘So sad,’ Tori is saying. ‘The wife. So glamorous, absolutely stunning, always perfection. After she died, Harris joined every Board and charity around. I think he is now trying to save everyone, because he couldn’t save her.’

  Tori doesn’t mean to, but her words are having a very strange effect on me. Glamorous, perfect wife. Big construction giant.

  Hiding in shrubs, falling off roofs.

  I am shrinking into myself; calling myself a stupid fool in ways it took me years to stop doing. I can’t find the positive mantras that helped to get me on my feet after my husband died. I feel like everything is going black and I’m about to die from mortification.

  6

  Harry and I are scheduled to have the next meeting that night at dinner, at a new Spanish restaurant in town. I have dressed in what I’d planned to wear, but I am hardly in the mood. I put on the light, floaty, floral trousers and neat, black fitted top, and add my ‘going out’ gold hoop earrings. At the last moment, I put on my Spanish platform shoes, and they cheer me a little.

  I don’t bother with make-up. What is the point? I am who I am. It’s clear Harry isn’t thinking about me in that way, with his blonde and glamorous wife, sadly passed.

  I get to the restaurant, but hesitate outside. Wait. Wait to understand what I am feeling.

  Disappointment? That let-down feeling after being all geared-up and excited for some reason, and then something punctures your balloon. Confused as to why I had been excited in the first place.

  Friends, I tell myself. A handy contact for big landscape contracts. Be polite and charming. Don’t flirt and embarrass him and yourself.