by Darry Fraser
This Time Forever
by Darry Fraser
Copyright © 2016 Darry Fraser
Previously published as This Forever Game
This edition published by KI Paperworks at Smashwords
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Australis Island - otherwise known as (the real) Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
Edition License Notes
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Author’s Note
This work is one of my older stories and it may differ in style to my more recent work.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Also By Darry Fraser
PROLOGUE
As he turned up the gravel road towards The Hill, Jarrad glanced across at his young son, Harry. The boy smiled at him, his clear blue eyes full of childlike wonder at this most interesting game they were playing.
“Daddy, are we nearly there?”
Jarrad nodded and smiled back. “We should see her house just about now,” he answered, though his voice sounded alien and constricted in his throat.
He gripped the steering wheel. God, how would she react to him? How would she take seeing him after six years and bringing his son along as well?
His gaze swept to the right and he saw the sprawling homestead only one hundred metres from the road. Her tour vehicles were backing out of their respective carports but Jarrad couldn’t see her.
He rounded a curve which, if memory served him correctly, would swing further to the right, and the magnificent coastline of eastern Australis Island would appear at the bottom of the road. He glanced at his odometer. Another half a kilometre and the causeway would appear on his right, past a thin, long stretch of broombush.
“Can we swim at the beach, Daddy?” Harry pressed his nose to the window, eyeing the expanse of ocean at the bottom of the hill.
“Sometime,” Jarrad said. He slowed the vehicle, negotiating the laterite pebbles and the soft sand at the start of her long driveway.
His arms shook and his grip on the steering wheel strengthened. He was a fool to attempt this. She could’ve married again, by now. At the very least, after their last meeting, he wouldn’t have blamed her for shooting him on sight.
His mind wandered a moment as he glanced again at his son.
Harry was the one he left her for. But was that it, really? No. Admit it. She made him choose Cindy. She gave him the option to have the child he badly wanted, that she couldn’t—no, wouldn’t have. She made him leave her and he hated himself for it.
He laughed to himself. He loved her because of it.
The vehicle swung over the causeway and on to the property. It hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d seen it, although the homestead was new. It hadn’t been built when he was seeing her, it was only a dream they’d shared. She’d done it without him as she said she would.
He’d helped pore over the plans, revising and restructuring the floor space. He wondered if she’d changed the layout. Probably.
Great pieces of red sandstone scudded what was once farmland pasture. He vividly remembered the line of broombush and the shock of her completely unexpected announcement while they strolled over the property.
He took the right-hand sweep back towards the ocean. Following a now well-worn track, there was her homestead, sprawling and magnificent just as they planned it would be, atop The Hill and overlooking one of the greatest coastal views on the island.
He gave a cursory glance at a small cabin which lay on the western fence line but he didn’t remember planning that. Nor did he care.
His heart hammered as he drove closer.
“Is this it, Dad?” Harry leaned forward, straining against the seat belt.
Jarrad nodded, unable to find his voice. So far, it looked exactly as they’d planned.
There was no sign of her, so far. He pulled in beside a row of young pink gum that shielded him from the main house. They’d talked about tree planting and pink gums. He smiled to himself. They’d been heady, exciting days.
A four-wheel drive crept alongside. The driver gave him a quick wave and a grin. “G’day, mate.”
Jarrad nodded again.
Harry struggled out of the restraining belt. “Come on, Dad, let’s get out and go see her.”
Jarrad stepped out of the vehicle. He caught up with Harry before he took off, and held his hand. They peered through the window of the tour vehicle across to the back landing of the house.
A second vehicle slid across his line of sight and then he saw her, through the series of car windows. There was another couple there, handshakes and hugs exchanged, laughing. The woman in the couple clutched her flaming auburn hair, gathering it in check against the stiff breeze. They stepped into a vehicle and headed off.
He looked back at the woman he’d come to see. She looked as lovely as he remembered. Willowy, graceful and yet with an energy that shone from her body. Her hair was still in its familiar bob, shoulder length and still dark; he reckoned she’d be nearly forty six now. She bent to check one of the boxes her driver was carrying.
He swallowed, hoping to moisten his dry mouth. Her effect on him was as strong as ever and he stood, mesmerised, even as Harry tugged on his hand.
The driver who’d spoken to him moved his vehicle off.
Jarrad clutched his impatient son’s hand tightly. As five year old Harry began to squirm, he saw the woman he loved straighten, flick her hair back across her shoulders, the way still so familiar to him, and stand with hands on still-slim hips as she spoke to the other tour guide.
He watched the second driver slide behind the wheel, give him a curious glance and then gun the big motor into action. The vehicle moved off.
Jarrad stood stock still. Harry stopped fidgeting.
She’d not seen either of them. Until she turned to gaze, as he knew she did daily, at the magnificent view.
CHAPTER ONE
Eight years earlier
Meg Donovan turned on her side and could have wept. She would’ve done six months ago, but now she’d almost become impervious to it.
Martin threw back the covers on their bed and stretched. As usual, he was not in the least perturbed their lovemaking had failed yet again. She closed her eyes. He’d be standing now, surveying his body in the mirror before striding to the bathroom to relieve himself.
/> He whistled. Not a care in the world. She was lucky this time he hadn’t said his standard, ‘Thanks for the root.’
She rolled on to her back. How is it that a man in his prime was not able to make love to his wife? Not now, nor hardly successfully even in the seven years of their living together. She squeezed her eyes shut again. If she broached the subject one more time about his needing professional help, he would not speak to her for a week, which made life in their tourist business very difficult. To put it mildly.
She sighed aloud and pulled the covers over her naked body. Six months ago she would have been in an agony of insecurity, wondering as she had for the previous six years why he wouldn’t make love to her, why he wouldn’t ejaculate or even have an erection. Her only answers up till then had been because she was, as he’d said many times, not sexually attractive to him. That’s how he explained it all, yet still insisted he loved her and didn’t want to find another woman.
She’d begun to realise he simply didn’t want to make love to her. More to the point, to any woman, or any man. It was asexual.
It was a torment.
All her efforts to initiate lovemaking had been rejected and it was only when she insisted that they try, did he even bother to turn to her.
Even bother to turn off the television.
Meg was sure he loved her. She was also sure now that the problem was his. Hers by marriage, but his by condition. These days, however, she knew the eight month old marriage was not going to survive his problem. That was her fault. When they married she thought she’d accepted his problem as hers. He needed help but she found she couldn’t give it to him.
Now it had gone beyond her wanting to.
He farted loudly and spun the taps in the shower recess, the water crashing out of the rose. Within a minute he was out and toweling himself off.
“Short shower,” she ventured, then instantly regretted it. She knew his answer already.
Martin poked his head around the bathroom door. “I had a shower last night...only had to wash off the bit that got dirty,” he said, and grinned.
She rolled away again, her eyes smarting. Still the same old joke. Still that her body was unclean, that it was her fault his erection subsided on entry into her, that she was sexually unattractive. That she smelled.
She slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, used the toilet and then stepped under the steaming water of the shower. It was the last time she’d subject herself to his humiliation. The last time.
It made matters worse knowing he thought nothing of it.
She wondered again why she put up with it. Why, after all the knock backs, the soft insults, the boyish attempts at intimacy which dismally failed both of them, had she stayed?
Because she believed he would come good after the pressure of his failed business had dissipated.
Because she thought his tiredness would be relieved if she helped him as a partner and a wife should.
Because initially, she believed it was her fault, not his.
Because she’d lost all her money, that’s why.
Had she been physically battered and beaten she would’ve had the excuse to leave. But just as battered wives tend to stay with their husbands, so too did she. Maybe it was the same type of syndrome. Of course, she knew now that it was emotional abuse and the only scars were on the inside.
She let the powerful stream of water cascade over her head, reached for the shampoo and lathered with a vengeance.
Meg warned him after their last chat about this problem. She warned that she would start to live her own life, get her life back, regain her self esteem again and leave him behind.
He scoffed. What would she do? Have an affair? Who would want her?
The discussion descended into a yelling match.
“If bloody Elle MacPherson was lying in that bed instead of me you wouldn’t be able to keep it up for her either!” she screamed in frustration.
He’d scoffed again. “Oh, I would for her,” he said, confidently, smirking at her. “Most certainly.”
Meg winced at the memory. She lathered soap all over her body and vowed Martin would never fumble over it again. Not that he’d ever really wanted to in the first place. She rinsed off, stepped out and toweled off, hardly noticing that the television was on in the bedroom and he was watching the 6.30 morning news.
She heard him explode about something, the football results then the weather. She padded past him, pulled on her underwear and padded back to the bathroom.
Her reflection stared back in the long mirror. She’d lost her ‘unhappy’ fat as she called it and had back her girlish figure.
Meg was thirty-eight. And still a size twelve, still able to gain the winks of her colleagues and male friends. Still able to turn heads when she went out, dressed to kill. Still able to reel ‘em in. Why had it taken her so long to see it?
Her boobs were good, not so pert, but they never had been. She’d have loved to have a strong collar bone, but her own was good, feminine.
Her waist wasn’t hourglass, but in proportion to her slim hips, thighs small and taut, the result of years of walking every day. She turned to her side. Big enough bottom. Thankfully.
She straightened and her eyes drifted to the reflection of her face. She was tired, she knew, and was looking forward to her holiday. Away from him and the business. The dark smudges under her eyes told of sleepless nights tossing and turning.
Her brows were strong and dark, legacy of her Italian heritage. Brown eyes, a good shape, stared back at her. She chewed her lips to bring some colour into them. Her cheeks had a hint of colour, not much, but her cheekbones were high and strong.
There was nothing wrong with the way she looked. Only the way she was told to look at herself by her husband. By what he didn’t say, didn’t do.
None of the reasons he’d given her were true. The sad thing was he believed them himself until she had spoken up and told him to have a good look. Told him she wasn’t about to take it from him any longer.
She’d made him see a specialist. Made him take his problem to someone she believed would help him. Help them.
She laughed to herself. He’d been referred to a urologist, not a sex counsellor.
It was the visit to her own GP which forced her to see the truth. She sat in his clinic feeling like an idiot.
“Now Meg, we can’t all be like Rambo and do it every night of the week like in those girl’s books out on the shelves now.”
How curious to put Rambo and girl’s books into the one sentence. She didn’t recall Rambo having sex in the movie. Maybe he did, but she didn’t recall it.
The GP himself not a great specimen of adult male. Skinny, with freakishly slim, pale white hands and balding with a comb over. If you have to be bald, don’t do the comb over.
“Once a month would be barely all right, Doctor, but once a fucking year isn’t my idea of good conjugal health.”
Doctor Cremont started. “Once a year?”
“If that.”
Doc looked at his writing pad. “Get him to come and see me.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “But more than anything, I want to know how to handle it. I want someone to tell me what to do, how to save my sanity.”
He rubbed his chin. “There’s nothing.” He tapped his pen on to the pad. “Accept it or get out. Most women get out. Most would not have stayed as long as you. He’s lucky you have.” He tapped again. “Get him to come and see me and I’ll refer him to a fellow in town.”
Meg left the clinic wrung out, betrayed and further humiliated. Not much help, a male doctor. He’d treated her as if she were an oversexed schoolgirl, that she couldn’t discern normal behaviour from abnormal. Oh, but she could. She could.
Martin insisted there was nothing he needed to have checked out. It was simply that she wasn’t attractive to him and that’s where it ended. Now if she could do this… or that... well, he was sure a sex life would magically appear and he’d perform splendidly. But
until then... He spread his hands. Tough.
She tried what she could without making a clinical farce of any approach. When it failed after the third attempt, he relented and agreed that this time—and only this time—he hadn’t been feeling well and maybe needed a check-up.
The specialist told Martin to stop wasting his time. There was nothing physically wrong with him, so go home, make a commitment to the woman and stop messing about. She’d take off unless he did.
And still nothing worked. And nothing changed.
Still nobody asked Martin about the state of his emotional health, or his mental faculties or even his understanding of the sexual act.
Still no one could help. Meg had to find her own solution. And she’d turned to alcohol first, then to other men like a predator, which was embarrassing.
She pulled on her jeans as Martin headed out of their bedroom, loudly greeting the guests ready for an early morning walk before breakfast.
She laughed that the dreaded words alcohol and men entered her head at the same time. There had been plenty of alcohol—that was part of their business. For her it helped her sleep, or have fun. But when she’d had too much, her problems bubbled to the surface and an angry argument would ensue, Martin making her out to be the world’s greatest bitch, screaming shrew and alcoholic.
Finally realising her problem would not go away, she decided to make a solution come to her. She shed seven kilos, slipped back into her ‘Meg’ clothes, as opposed to her stodgy work clothes, grew her hair longer, began to wear make-up and perfume again. She determined to smile a lot more and gradually became aware of the looks of admiration when she walked into a room. She liked how it felt. It’s how it felt before she met Martin, oh so many years ago.
She buttoned a Calvin Klein white shirt and tucked it into her jeans. The shirt had been a gift, and she tenderly fingered the collar as she remembered Paul.
He was lovely, such a gentleman. Such an understanding soul. He hadn’t so much as touched her, but he knew of her sadness and just let her chatter away into the night. He was a computer analyst, away on a holiday in Australia from the States. They’d sat up late after all the guests had gone to bed, after Martin had taken off early—no doubt to catch the big game on telly.
