Beneath the Mother Tree

by D. M. Cameron

  She watched the droplets of water run down his tanned back as she followed him, relishing the sensation of undoing the buttons that ran down the front of her frock.

  He turned before she had finished, and saw her dress half open. He threw the towel at her. ‘What the fuck? Everyone can see you.’

  She went down on all fours to spread the towel on the cement floor. ‘Now they can’t.’

  Panicked, he pulled the roller door down to the counter. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Get up.’ He stood over her.

  She knelt, so close she felt heat radiating from him. His wet board shorts clung to his crotch, inches from her face. She looked up at him. The drip of pool water on cement and their breath the only sounds. As if the spring on a trap was released, they moved at the same time. He grabbed her by the hair, pushing her face into him as she yanked his pants down. Her dress was ripped, buttons flew into the air as they became a mess of limbs on cold concrete. He bit into her, she cried out, straddling him, coming hard and fast, riding the wave of his orgasm.

  Removing herself, she stood up and buttoned what remained of her dress. ‘Thank you.’ She felt rejuvenated, powerful and in control once again.

  He lay there mortified, hand over his face.

  ‘Maybe you should get up.’

  ‘I’m married,’ he croaked.

  ‘This can be our little secret. No one need know. If I were you, I’d pull your pants on in case someone walks in.’

  He did, not looking at her. She could see by the expression on his face he was disgusted with himself.

  ‘Don’t know why you’re so worried. Sharon knows all about you and Samantha.’

  He was aghast. ‘How do you...?’

  ‘Sharon told me, she’s waiting for you to grow the balls and admit it to her yourself. The whole island knows.’

  She pulled the roller door up and left the booth, amazed at how energised she felt. ‘Thanks for the swimming lesson,’ she called, spotting the ferry pulling in. She longed to ask the ferryman if he had seen Riley, but her dress was gaping open.

  Maybe Riley was home by now, she hoped, driving as fast as the bike would allow. The breeze against her wet dress felt arctic, but the lingering warmth between her legs more than made up for it.

  Ayla had already suspected it would be a sun moon day when she spotted the pale moon, a chunk of quartz in the sapphire sky. She manoeuvred the foil wrapped potatoes out of the coals then sat so her body shadowed Riley’s face from the brightness and checked the time on her phone. Almost midday. Wow, he was tired.

  She savoured being able to watch him unashamedly and couldn’t decide if he was more handsome asleep or awake as she studied every inch of him: the blackness of his lashes, the shape of his lips. She restrained herself from leaning forward and kissing them. But it was the cut of his jaw and neck and shoulders that entranced her, they spoke of strength and loyalty. Riley was someone she could trust with her heart. It was there in the rise of his Adam’s apple, the line of his clavicle. At this thought, he opened his eyes.

  ‘Afternoon, sleepy head.’

  He pulled her into him, nuzzling the nape of her neck. ‘Love the way you smell.’

  ‘I pong. I’m dying for a swim.’ She kissed him and extricated herself to dish out the potatoes.

  He lay on his side, propped on his elbow, smiling at her.

  ‘What?’ She said, passing him a potato.

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me, what?’

  ‘Just, you.’

  She kissed him and told him to eat, after which they packed up and climbed across to the sand dunes so they could roll down, laughing so hard Riley spat sand.

  ‘Want to skinny dip?’

  ‘What if someone comes?’ She liked the way he asked this, his sandy lip twisted in a naughty curl. An expression she had never seen on him before.

  ‘You just have to be quick.’ She pulled her dress off, sand flying everywhere, and ran into the oncoming wave.

  He stripped and ran after her, calling out before he dived in. ‘The first time I saw you, you were naked.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she splashed water at him. ‘I knew you saw me that morning.’ She wouldn’t stop splashing him. He grabbed her, holding her arms down. ‘Let go of me, you perv,’ she teased.

  ‘You’re mine now…trapped forever.’ He did an atrocious version of a wicked laugh as Ayla saw a figure coming around Dead Tree Point.

  ‘Grappa.’

  They scrambled for their clothes. By the time Grappa reached them, Riley had his jeans on and Ayla’s dress was stuck to her still wet body.

  Grappa was trying to catch his breath. ‘In her scooter.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Riley frowned.

  ‘It’s in her scooter…the box…a compartment under the seat.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Ayla heard the excitement in her own voice.

  ‘The Nor folk told me.’

  She looked at Riley, disappointed, but he wasn’t deterred. ‘Worth a try.’ He took off.

  ‘Wait,’ Ayla and Grappa called, simultaneously. Riley turned back.

  ‘I’ll lend you my push bike. It’ll be quicker.’

  ‘Promise me something, son?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Don’t let your mother see you take it. Sneak a look then put it back without her knowing. She’s already blaming Ayla. Please don’t upset her any further.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Grappa put his hand on Riley’s shoulder. ‘You’re a soldier about to enter the frontline. Good luck, son.’

  Grappa was overdramatising the situation, caught up in another one of his fantasies. She hoped Riley wouldn’t be too heartbroken when he found the box wasn’t there.

  ‘You’ll be right. It’s a sun moon day,’ Grappa called after them.

  She had to run periodically to keep up with Riley. ‘Don’t get too hopeful. Grappa has a tendency to make things up sometimes to add to the drama of it all.’

  ‘It’s the only place I haven’t looked.’

  Ayla decided not to say anything more. The squeak of his feet in the sand sounded determined.

  Riley hid Ayla’s bicycle behind the large bloodwood tree at the edge of the mangroves. Where he rested the handle, there was an explosion of sap: solidified blood from a wound on the tree. He broke a length off, snapping it as he walked up the dirt road until all that remained was a ruby globule in the palm of his hand.

  Tilly’s car was parked outside the house. Her loud voice floated down from the kitchen. When he saw the bright yellow scooter, it looked to him like something divine blazing out of the gloomy backdrop. He quietly flipped the seat and his heart whirled in delirium at the sight of the box. The carved wooden lid felt familiar.

  Tilly sounded upset. He crept to the screen door.

  ‘Wouldn’t even let me on the barge. Said people who spread vicious rumours aren’t welcome on this service. What on earth possessed you to tell him I said that?’

  ‘But I didn’t. I mean…I didn’t say it was you.’ His mother was flustered. ‘He guessed it was you. Who else do I know here? I told him, it didn’t matter who it was. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I panicked. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Marlise, golden rule to surviving a small community: it’s fine to repeat gossip but never to the person who the gossip is actually about. Don’t know how I’m going to mend this. Grunter is one stubborn cookie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about him after what he said about you.’

  ‘What did he say about me?’

  ‘What about your golden rule?’

  ‘Forget it. What did he say?’

  ‘Promise not to tell him I told you? I don’t want any more trouble.’

  Riley held his breath. What was his mother up to? He really liked Tilly.

  ‘Of course I won’t. What did he say?’

  ‘If you didn’t have such a problem with alcohol, you’d be a good real estate agent.’

  ‘What? I like a drink on a Friday night, that’s
it. He can’t talk. He’s down at the resort every chance he gets, drinking the place dry. I’m a bloody good real estate agent. He’s talking through his arse. Bloody dickhead. That’s it. He’s blown it with me.’

  Riley heard a kitchen chair scrape across linoleum as someone stood up. He ran to Ayla’s bicycle as quickly and as lightly as his bare feet could carry him over the sharp gravel. With the box firmly under one arm, he steered with the other, pedalling with all his heart towards the thought of his father.

  Ayla was waiting at her front gate. ‘How did Grappa know?’ Her face ecstatic.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can go? If she discovers it’s gone, she might follow me here.’

  ‘The tree?’

  ‘Jump on.’

  She grabbed a cushion from the verandah and placed it on the bike rack to sit on, then put the box in front of her under the seat, using the ocky strap to keep it in place. ‘All set.’

  They wobbled at first, but once he gained speed they were off. With Ayla’s arms wrapped around him and his father’s words tucked safely beneath him, he had a sense of journeying into a new life.

  On reaching the tree, Ayla released the box, presenting it to him as the ambrosia scent drifted over them. The tranquillity inside the grove felt sacred.

  He felt ashamed at his trembling as he studied the wooden carvings on the lid. ‘I remember now. When I was little, she kept this on her dresser with jewellery in it.’ The anticipation made his legs contract. He sat down.

  With Ayla beside him, he lifted the lid of the box. His heart stopped. There was nothing in it.

  ‘She probably kept her jewellery here, but look.’ She slid a thin piece of wood from the side of the box, revealing letters and photos. ‘A false bottom.’

  She handed him, piece by piece, the story of his father. It was the images that held him first. He looked so like his Dad it was uncanny. Ayla pointed to the baby Riley, in the arms of his father beside a sign: Yellowstone National Park. ‘Too cute.’

  ‘I look happy. We all do, even Mum.’

  ‘They look very in love.’

  Riley tore himself from the photos to work his way through the letters. Ayla suggested they read them in chronological order and arranged them by the post dates on the envelopes.

  By the time he had finished, he knew many things about Lorcan Gallaher. He was Irish, and a musician. ‘Like me.’ Riley couldn’t stop thinking of this. ‘I wonder if he plays the flute?’ His smile disappeared at the next thought. ‘I wonder if that’s why Mum hates music? Because of him?’

  The story of the break up unfolded like a faded and torn newspaper with bits missing. They looked over the letters again, trying to piece the history together.

  ‘I must have been what? Three when he left?’

  ‘He left you and your Mum in America to go back to Ireland for someone’s funeral.’

  ‘His Dad’s. Look he says so…here. So weird…we have similar handwriting.’

  ‘There was some problem with money. He was forced to cover the funeral costs with the cash he had for his flight home.’

  ‘He got stuck over there trying to make enough money to get back to America. So what? Why did that upset her so much?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it was during that time she must have sent a “Dear John” letter.’

  ‘But what did he do to make her do that? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sounds like she gave no explanation. Listen to this…how shocked he is.’ Riley’s mouth hung open in confusion as Ayla reread the letter.

  Marlise, your letter knocked the bejesus out of me. Where did all this come from? What’s going on with you now? I’m busting my gut here, working three jobs to get the money to get out of here. A couple more weeks and I’ll be there. Just hang in there. I love you pet. Just hang on for another while. I’m sorry you’re finding it hard with Riley and your work and stuff – that’s why I wanted to take him with me. But you wouldn’t have it. I’m not lying to you, I’m coming back. Why have you had the phone cut off? Why won’t you ring me? I’m going mad from the silence and now your letter, it’s tipped me over the edge. Jesus Christ woman you and Riley are my world. You cannot be doing this to me.

  Riley’s head felt on fire with all this new information.

  ‘I wonder what he tried to do when he did get back to America, for her to take a DVO out on him?

  ‘Nothing. Doesn’t he say somewhere about her lawyer friend inventing facts to destroy him, to ensure he never obtains access to me again?’

  ‘This one,’ Ayla hands him a letter.

  ‘Listen to how angry he is.’

  You fuckin lying bitch. Why? Why are you making up these lies? What have I done to deserve this? I have a right to see my son, Goddamn you.

  ‘So out of character from the other letters.’

  ‘I’d be angry if someone stole my child and wouldn’t let me see them.’ Riley felt crushing pity for his father at the hands of his mother.

  ‘Did you notice toward the end, the letters don’t start, ‘Dear Marlise’? They address you instead. Look –’ Ayla leafed through them. ‘My dear son. My dear son…and without fail he always mentions the amount of money enclosed.’

  ‘Their falling out might have been over money.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Here. Look.’ Riley found a letter.

  If money is so important to you why did you have a child with a musician? You should have had one with a fuckin doctor.

  ‘Look at the return address on this. He must have given up and gone back to Ireland, eventually.’

  ‘But that didn’t stop him. He kept writing until I was...’ He found the last letter and calculated from the post date. ‘Eight.’

  Riley reread the letter but couldn’t finish it from the tears blurring his sight.

  On the envelope was written: ‘Do not open until Christmas.’

  My dear son,

  I’d give my right arm to be there with you to hand you this tin whistle in person. As a little one you had the love for music. Hope you still have. Hope she hasn’t killed the music in you, son? I hope to God you’re getting these letters. The fact that you’ve never written back makes me think you’ve not received a single one. I’ll keep writing you until I reach the grave. Without hope we have nothing. Don’t be angry at your mother for keeping you from me. I blame myself for leaving you both. She begged me not to leave. I should have seen the signs. Going back to Ireland for my Da’s funeral was the biggest mistake of me life. Your mother has done good for herself considering the shit she had to put up with from her own mother. She dragged herself up out of the gutter and taught herself all that fancy stuff about bugs. You should be very proud of her. Everyone important in her life gave up on her at some point. I should have known she wouldn’t have trusted me to return. I should have known she didn’t know my love for you and her ran deeper than life itself.

  Nollaig Shona Duit, mo buachaill. (Merry Christmas, my son)

  ‘Sometimes it’s more like he’s writing to her in a way, isn’t it? Like he knows she won’t pass them on to you?’

  ‘He said he would never stop writing. But he did.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t.’ Ayla pointed to the envelopes. ‘It’s the same post box he was sending them to. She had them forwarded to wherever you were living.’

  ‘We moved to Australia when I was eight. Maybe she didn’t bother then?’

  ‘Because she didn’t need the money anymore,’ they said it at the same time.

  ‘In that post office in America, I bet there’ll be a whole lot of letters waiting for you.’

  He couldn’t speak for the truth of knowing now how much his father wanted him, feeling it jumping out of the words on the paper, the smiling face in the photos. Riley stroked the letters as if the essence of the trees was alive in the paper and his father’s love was seeping into him via osmosis.

  She was crying now too.

  ‘Hey…’

  ‘Just imagining h
ow it would feel. You think your Dad’s dead all these years then you find out he’s alive. Always been my greatest wish.’

  He touched her cheek. ‘If he’s still alive.’

  ‘You could write to this address in Ireland.’ She turned over an envelope.

  That thought gathered in him like a tight knot of hope as he studied the photos again, until the shadows grew so long they merged into one.

  ‘I promised I’d let Grappa know your mother’s maiden name if I found out.’ Ayla started texting. ‘Marlise Griffin. God knows why he wants it. That’s Grappa for you, always concocting.’

  ‘I had no idea that was her name. It’s like she’s tried to destroy all trace of who she really is.’ He reread a letter and shook his head. ‘She almost destroyed my father.’

  ‘We should go.’

  ‘I can’t face her.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Stay at my place for the night.’

  Without speaking, they rode back to Ayla’s, his father’s words nourishing him with a new-found sense of worth.

  He took the box into the house with him. ‘May I keep these here tonight? At least I know they’ll be safe.’

  ‘Let’s put them in my room.’

  He followed her into her bedroom which was dominated by a window with a view of the track to the beach. Through the paperbarks, in the fading light, he could make out the moody hue of the sea. There was a bookshelf lined with science and veterinary textbooks, and clothes strewn everywhere.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, picking things up. ‘Since I’ve started cleaning houses my bedroom never gets cleaned.’

  She opened her cupboard and then her underwear drawer. ‘Here. Hide it under my bras and knickers.’

  He looked at her and neither of them could keep a straight face. ‘Lucky Dad,’ he said and they fell onto the bed in hysterics. Their mirth turned to kissing as memories from last night swam through him.

  The front screen door slammed. He sprang up, thinking it was his mother.

  ‘Ayla?’ Helen called out.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ She stood up.

  ‘You go. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He indicated the lump bulging through his jeans. They tried to suppress their giggles.