This Time Forever (Australis Island)

by Darry Fraser

  Taste.

  Just a little tongue-touch behind his ear, or a light lingering kiss soft as a breath on his fine brow. Maybe a lick across one man-nipple and a nudge of her lips into the soft hair under his arm. A taste of salt and hard work on his chest, of soap and shampoo in the hair all over his body. The scent of skin hidden from the sun, particular skin, velvety smooth and warm, in wrinkled folds before it filled out before her hungry gaze.

  Her breath caught.

  He’d be asleep, she was sure of it. And he probably went to sleep sure that she would think of him and be mighty unsettled by those thoughts.

  She started to drift off, exhausted by the day but elated by the idea of tomorrow. It had been a long time since she’d felt like this.

  Then she snapped awake with the thought that perhaps something final had occurred between them tonight and she’d missed it.

  She was right. The remaining few days of Jarrad’s stay were strained.

  Anne made a comment to Meg about him and took the angry silence to mean that she’d find out in due course.

  The house was busy, the tours were busy, the office was busy. Meg was exhausted, though happily so, as it meant her life could run on as it had. She didn’t have time to think.

  Jarrad had taken to coming in late. He would sit up for a drink with guests after dinner, making sure to retire before the last of them had gone to bed.

  Meg thought it best to leave the situation alone. For one thing, what sort of trouble would she find for herself if she did let him climb into her bed? However, Jarrad was keeping his distance, politely but coolly.

  Ah yes, she could play the game, and at her age she had no desire to ambush some young guy if he were ... unwilling.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, Meg,” he said one night, as the last of the guests lingered outside with cigarettes and coffees.

  “Time’s up, hey?” She glanced at his gorgeous face, so serious. Her chest was suddenly hollow. “Where’s that twinkle in your eye?”

  “You’ve got it somewhere,” he said.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, we’ll hug goodbye and all that stuff. You’ll keep in touch, of course?” She was trying to look busy but all the work was done.

  “I’d rather hug now and not see you tomorrow.”

  She was exhausted and didn’t want to face this night. “Jarrad, I’m dirty and smelly now. I’m going to have a quick shower and go to bed. I’ll be up early to see you off. Please don’t tell me you don’t want to see me tomorrow.”

  “Now you sound like someone’s bloody mother.”

  “I do not.” She smiled but it was a bit wobbly. Meg watched him as he disappeared into his room and swallowed hard.

  Tomorrow would be hardest of all. As if to deny herself the anguish she knew she would face tomorrow, in bed she dropped instantly asleep for the first time in days.

  Yet the next day it was clear Jarrad had left quite a lot earlier. Meg looked at his empty bedroom and then at the empty driveway and wept.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “So, you want to tell me what was going on?” Anne hadn’t missed Meg’s red-rimmed eyes.

  “He was a nice kid,” Meg said, sniffing. “And I don’t know why he had to enter my life right now when we weren’t able to make anything of it.”

  Anne made some comforting noises. “Sometimes it happens like that to show that we have a purpose in life after all.” She patted Meg’s shoulder. “And he didn’t look much like a kid to me. Oh sure, he was probably younger than you, but so what?”

  Meg poured coffees. “If ever there was a type of man to run away with, he was it.”

  “And live your life soil testing and volunteering to work in sheep’s piss? No thanks.”

  Meg laughed. “Nothing wrong with the romance, Anne.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything romantic about sheep’s piss.”

  Meg told Anne about how Jarrad bewitched her from the beginning.

  “But you didn’t – you didn’t—?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Well, damn me.”

  “Damned if I did and damned that I didn’t.”

  “You is a married gal, Meg.”

  “Oh, I know. And the honour of some men.” Others she knew didn’t have quite the same tack on honour. She shrugged. Her episodes with other men had nothing to do with honour.

  But Jarrad wasn’t other men. And he was gone.

  Martin returned, tanned and full of the wonders of the world. He asked how the place had fared while he was away and Meg let him know she coped, as usual.

  “I was worried,” he said, eyes wide, the pseudo-hurt on his face evidence of his guilt at being away.

  “Why didn’t you stay away longer?” she asked by rote, certain he’d say the opportunity was there to keep sailing.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” he said with a jocularity that made her feel ill. “I have a responsibility here, you know.” He patted her on the head. “Can’t leave my girl all alone while I go out and have fun.”

  He dumped his sailing bag by the washing machine.

  Meg eyed the bulging bag, knew it to be full of washing that hadn’t seen a machine for over two weeks. “You’ll do that, of course, won’t you?” she asked without looking at him.

  It was his moment’s hesitation that made her grit her teeth. “Oh, there’s no washing to go on? Thought it might go in with yours.”

  “No, I’ve done mine,” she said. And walked away from him. Gone was the pretence of a welcome home for him. She didn’t want him at home.

  As he cursed loud enough for her to hear about how the machine was obviously not working, she peeled the vegetables for dinner. Six guests. It took her mind off the awful farce of living with him.

  Anger boiled close to the surface as he kept cursing. All he wanted was for her to go to the laundry and do it for him. Think again, Marty-baby. You best learn to do it by yourself. Learn to do a lot of things by yourself.

  Though there was that one thing he did admirably by himself.

  She slammed the potato peeler to the bench and his cursing stopped.

  Which brought her up short. He thought he’d got her.

  Meg exhaled, inhaled shakily at first, then more strongly. And carried on with the veggies. Her work came first, not his bloody dirty washing, or his useless house-keeping.

  “So, what’s up your nose?” he asked as he sauntered back into the kitchen.

  Oh, a confrontation to ease his guilt, she thought. Ah yes, of course.

  “You’ve been a snarly bitch since I’ve been back.”

  “Maybe that’s why.”

  He’d never heard that from her before. He deliberately stood where she’d have to ask him to move. “On the rags, are we?”

  Her gut squeezed. There was nothing she liked about Martin, and least of it all was his total ignorance about the female body and its normal functions. “Why, Martin, as a sailor you’d know there’s been no full moon, so for me to have my period is impossible, isn’t it? You’re always the one telling me all women menstruate at the same time on a full moon. My goodness, how did the world’s greatest sailor even find his way home if he didn’t notice there wasn’t a full moon?”

  Martin had nothing to say. Somehow he’d heard that the full moon brought on the menstruation of a billion women all at once. For some reason he believed it, probably because he never thought to ask.

  Meg often wondered about this full moon thing. About how Martin thought the world’s dispensaries, pharmacists and supermarkets could handle the onslaught of a billion women marching en masse to purchase tampons all at once. She wondered if Martin had ever seen the phenomenon himself.

  Meg went back to chopping vegetables. A nice big ratatouille for tonight. Beautiful.

  “So lover-boy left the nest, did he?”

  Her heart lurched. “Which one are you talking about?”

  She must remember to put that special sauce over the top, once the vegetables were cooked
.

  “That one with the goopy eyes for you. Get the boy in the sack, did you?”

  Meg looked at him calmly. She noticed the red rims around his blue eyes. She hoped like hell he was stressing. “Why would that be of interest to you?”

  He believed himself to be a master in the bedroom. He led people to believe he was a regular Jean-Claude Van Damme. Or was that Arnie Schwarzenegger? She could never remember and it didn’t matter.

  He wandered off to the bedroom and Meg heard the telly click on.

  He’d have forgotten all about the spat before he even left the kitchen.

  At dinner the laughs and jokes came from guests from all over the world and Meg’s life rolled on.

  She worked, slept and got up again, worked. Went to bed alongside Martin.

  But after Jarrad left there was one difference: she knew she no longer had to stay.

  Jarrad, Jarrad, Jarrad.

  There wasn’t a moment in Meg’s day which didn’t belong to Jarrad. Meg thought of him, of what he might’ve said as he stared at her, of what he wore, the way he moved his hands. There was something about how he connected with her, though they’d barely touched, had barely bumped shoulders, or shared a companionable hand. The simple kisses were spontaneous. The one time it might have gone further it didn’t and was not repeated. But she knew he was there on some sort of level, emotional, intellectual, something... Or maybe all of the above.

  She wanted to know if he thought of her. Her hand lingered often over his phone number but it would’ve been a futile exercise. ‘Hi, Meg. No, of course I want to hear from you…’ No thank you. No matter what he might have said about keeping in contact. Besides, what if Mindy-Candy-Bambi answered the phone? You just couldn’t trust ‘em.

  Jarrad.

  In the dead of night her dreams were filled with his hands on her, all over her, sliding down her back to the cleft of her backside, lifting her on to him, holding her steady. Or cupping her breasts and sucking or squeezing a ready nipple. His fingers would stroke and strum her, sometimes his mouth instead in those same places and over and over again...

  Sometimes the daily grind was harder than ever. And oh-so deliciously uncomfortable.

  Jarrad.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Six months later

  “I can’t live here, Meg,” Martin said.

  Meg gazed around her. The house was by the beach, isolated, beautiful and private. No one could access this place except by boat or over the land they now rented.

  They’d sold their B&B in the little town and Meg was looking for a quieter life. They still had the tour business and a smaller, more exclusive B&B.

  “You wanted this place,” she said to him.

  “It’s too isolated. No one’s around.” Martin stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “There’s all that lovely ocean out there. You could get a boat.”

  “We can’t even get telly.”

  “Aha. That’s the main problem. So put up a sat dish.”

  Martin inhaled. “Look. I thought it’d be a good idea for you to be here. Our block is just behind, you can run the show from here easily, plenty of space, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I’m not really suited to it.”

  Meg heard loud and clear what was happening. “Maybe if your lady friend was with you and not me, it’d work out.”

  Martin reddened and looked away. “I told you that she’d said that. I didn’t say it... But if I did have the right person here maybe I’d be happier.”

  “Nice.” You moron, she wanted to shout. You had the right woman, but you didn’t look after her.

  Tears smarted so she deliberately looked towards the sun. All the years she strived to make it work with Martin and here she was having to listen to him agreeing with some bimbo about the right woman.

  “Well, there’s only me. So you better think about what you’re doing and where you’re going,” she managed. “Because you will be going.”

  Meg packed a little overnight bag and went to help the new girl in their old B&B for a night. When she returned the following day, her house looked like a tip. The kitchen in particular.

  Martin was gasbagging on the phone, highly animated and laughing.

  The girlfriend. Someone he’d met on one of the marketing trips for the business. It was all over the island and the industry and people assumed she didn’t know. She knew Martin so through and through it surprised him. Surprised others when she let them know that the girlfriend was old news. She also knew that Martin wouldn’t get it up, and would soon start blaming the girlfriend—if she didn’t ditch him before it got to that.

  Some new relationship.

  She unpacked the little bag, satisfied that Linda would cope admirably in Meg’s old B&B and that Anne still had her job there. She took a hot shower and prepared for bed.

  Martin was still chatting on the phone.

  Meg pulled back the covers of her bed ready to climb in, and stopped short. She stared at the bottom sheet and the large stain which pooled on his side and smeared on to hers.

  The time has come, she said to herself, snorting at the pun. Some people just never learn. Martin, there was never such a fool as you.

  “I’ve got a problem,” he said as he carried the portable phone into their room.

  “I am well aware of that.”

  He looked at her. “What are you doing?”

  Meg looked from the stained sheets to his face. “You’re too old for wet dreams, Martin, so I guess you wanked again and left me to clear up the mess.”

  He stared guiltily at the sheets. “I didn’t leave it for you—”

  “For crissakes, I’m not your mother you have to hide this from. It’s just—just-not-on!” Her blood heated. “You know, when I used to talk to you about sharing and intimacy, I’d even have settled for sharing just this if that’s all I could get from you. But you wouldn’t even do that.” Her rage billowing, she threw the covers down and began to strip the bed. “Well, you can share with yourself somewhere else in this house. I don’t care where. You can sleep in the shed for all I care and wank yourself stupid.” She ripped the soiled sheet off the bed, then stared at the mattress protector which she also grabbed by the handful and pulled it off the bed. She tossed the lot at his feet. “First of all, at least I won’t have to wash up after you, and secondly, I won’t have to be faced with the fact that you prefer to masturbate alone than to be with a woman.”

  He stared at her, sat on the stripped bed. “You weren’t here…”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” she railed mercilessly. “I’ve been here for seven years while you did it by yourself and told everyone else what a man you were in bed. I put up with your bragging about something you insulted me about.” She clamped hands on her hips. “And what does your new girl think of this amazing way to conduct a relationship, hey? Is she going to put up with the wanking on the sly instead of the love-making? Is she going to wonder why she’s not good enough, or wonder that you’re a closet homosexual while you tell her she stinks, or she’s sexually unattractive, or that you’ve constantly got a fucking headache?”

  “You’re screaming.”

  “Damn-right-I’m-screaming!” She was boiling mad. “And this is not a new conversation. You have a big problem, Martin. A big problem and I can’t stand it any longer. The moment you admit you have a problem—”

  “I have a problem with you.”

  “Same old line. It’s not only me, it’s with every girl, isn’t it? Probably started with your goddamned mother. Why don’t you admit you’re just not interested?”

  “If you mean I’m gay—”

  “The thought has occurred to you, then?” Meg was steaming. “If you were gay, do you think I’d care? We’d just go our separate ways, live our separate lives. But you don’t even have the honesty to admit this mismatch is worse than that!”

  “Don’t yell so loud.”

  “You won’t even acknowledge that you just don�
��t like sex. You don’t have the urge, the natural urge… you haven’t got the guts to say that you’re just – not – interested.”

  “I must get the urge,” he said, defensively.

  “The urge to be with a WOMAN,” she said at the top of her voice. “But even the wanking you do, you keep all to yourself. You don’t share, you don’t give. All you do is take, Martin. You’re the most selfish bastard I’ve ever known.” She sat beside him. “This ‘us’ is going to stop. So take the bed linen and go sleep somewhere else. Take all your clothes out of here. Get out of my life. And when you find another place to go, go. I don’t want to live this farce any more.”

  “I haven’t got anywhere else to go.”

  “Oh, don’t be so pathetic. You’ve broken your neck all week to let me know you’re talking to your sweet thing twice a day. Wonder who’s paying for those phone bills? I’m sure whatshername will put you up.”

  The air stilled. As usual there was no resolution. Martin simply picked up the bedclothes and found another room. Meg was sure he’d make up the bed using the soiled linen. She shrugged. Not her problem now.

  Her chest hollowed. Emptied. Thank Christ he was gone. At least as far as another bedroom. She began to make the bed with fresh linen.

  Martin came back to collect his clothes. “I said I had a problem.”

  “Another one?” she said, not able to resist. After seven baffling years with him, her anger was spilling over into every conversation.

  “I have a job offer.”

  Her heart jumped. “Where?”

  “That guy in Melbourne I visited before that last sailing trip.”

  Meg vaguely remembered his mentioning an appointment.

  “I can start at the end of the month if I want the partnership.” Martin hung shirts over his arm.

  “There’s no money for you to buy into a partnership.” Meg was thinking fast.

  “I know. That’s the problem. But this guy, Rod Brennan, wants a work commitment first, then he said we could talk financial input later. What do you think?”

  Not that it mattered, but Meg asked, “Did you know this was in the offing when you left for the trip?”

  He looked away before he answered. Suddenly Meg knew then that he must have been planning it for at least six months. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. God, why did it make her feel doubly lousy, doubly the fool?