by Kim Lock
There was a loud splash beside her. A percussion of water slammed against her, shoving her back to her knees.
‘I’m okay!’ she spluttered, scrambling to find the bottom again.
But before she could, she was lifted into the air. Strong arms wrapped beneath her back and the crook of her knees and she was placed carefully on the boardwalk. Water streamed from Ark’s body as he clambered back onto the boards alongside her.
‘Are you okay?’ Brows furrowed, he swiped at the water dripping into his eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ she replied breathlessly, wiping water from her face. She didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or wither from embarrassment. Her dress was sodden and tangled high up her thighs. Greenish mud smeared down her shins. Looking up at him, his face crowding out the sun, her mirth won over and she began to laugh.
After a beat of concern, Ark joined in. A dark pool spread onto the dry timber around them as water sluiced from their bodies and they doubled over, gasping for breath. As their giggles subsided, Ark took up her hand. He laced his fingers into hers, kissed her knuckles. Leaning in, he touched her face gently with his free hand, as though to stroke her, but instead he plucked a long string of pond weed from her cheek.
And then he tugged her to her knees, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, his body pressed close and their clothes clinging to their skin, and his mouth tasted red-warm, of promise and of possibility.
iii
‘You’re telling me a bird did this to you?’ Jenna asked, pulling on a pair of gloves.
‘Actually the cat did this,’ Mr Ryland answered, ‘while I tried to stop him from eating the bird.’
Jenna pulled a stool alongside his wheelchair and the old man winced as she gently swabbed antiseptic over a series of deep gouges on his cheek. His skin was craggy and thin, spotted with age.
‘It’s not even my bird, you see,’ he continued. ‘I’m looking after it for a mate.’
‘Perhaps owning a cat isn’t the best prerequisite for being a bird-sitter, Joe,’ she pointed out.
‘Not my cat, either.’
Jenna laughed. She instructed the 77-year-old to hold still as she applied butterfly tape to his wounds.
‘Right you are, nurse.’
‘So who came first, the cat or the bird –’
Stella, the registered nurse on shift, popped her head around the door frame. ‘Jenna, what are you still doing here? Your shift finished fifteen minutes ago.’
Jenna smiled and nodded. ‘We’re almost done. I couldn’t leave without catching up with Mr Ryland again, right, Joe? It’s been, what, a week since we last saw you in here?’ When she checked her watch, her blood quickened. Forty-five minutes until Ark would be picking her up. Hastily she finished dressing Mr Ryland’s wounds, tossed her gloves into the bin and scrubbed her hands at the sink.
‘Nurse?’
Jenna’s head snapped up.
‘I need to whiz.’ Joe Ryland whistled, and swept his hand away from his crotch in a fountain-like curve.
Jenna glanced again at her watch. Forty minutes. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you.’
*
She couldn’t find her earrings. Fairlie was at work, so Jenna couldn’t recruit her in the search.
Jenna tore around the flat, flinging books and DVD cases and the odd shoe looking for the pair of oversized silver hoops she’d purchased from a street vendor a year ago on a boozy weekend to Ballarat with Fairlie.
‘Shit,’ Jenna muttered, thumping into the kitchen. ‘Bloody hell.’
She rifled behind the spice rack, slid aside two hardback cookbooks, wrinkled her nose over the precarious stack of grimy dishes in the sink. She even shoved her fingers into the damp maidenhair fern on the windowsill, grown too big for its pot and overflowing onto the benchtop.
‘This place is a mess.’
In the lounge room, she dropped to her knees and thrust her hands beneath two clothes racks laden with stiffening laundry, her fingers skimming the carpet as she resolved that as soon as Fairlie was awake tomorrow they would tidy up.
‘Yes, Fro,’ Jenna said aloud to herself, hurrying to the bathroom. ‘We clean all day at work. But I’m scared one of us is going to catch Ebola at home.’
There they are! Triumphantly, she pulled the hoops from inside the glass jar holding her toothbrush. Just as she threaded the bars into her earlobes, there was a knock at the door. With her stomach flip-flopping, she returned to the kitchen and pulled open the front door.
‘Hey, Jenna.’
‘Hi,’ she replied. ‘I’d invite you in but, frankly, I’m too embarrassed by the state of our house.’
He laughed then peered over her shoulder. ‘I’m not here to judge your housekeeping skills.’
‘Lucky,’ she told him. Taking a step forwards, she made to move through the doorway but he took her hand.
‘This is for you,’ he said, handing her a small white box, loops of pale blue satin spilling from its top.
Jenna felt a stab of self-consciousness. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said, her fingers hovering over the ribbon.
‘I couldn’t show up empty-handed to our second date. Chivalry isn’t dead,’ he told her, ‘despite what they say.’
Inwardly cursing the burn in her cheeks, Jenna untied the bow and opened the box. Inside was an exquisite white silk scarf. Fringed with soft threads, the fabric billowed and floated as she moved it through her fingers.
‘It’s real silk,’ Ark said. ‘According to the lady at the shop.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, taken aback. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She wrapped the scarf around her throat, it whispered like breath on her skin.
Ark smiled and thrust his hands boyishly into the pockets of his jeans. His hair was raked into spikes and, with skin clean-shaven, he smelled alpine, fresh. He looked at the floor, shuffling the toe of one carefully shined shoe.
‘It looks great on you – I knew it would.’
Jenna collected her bag and Ark held the door as she stepped outside. The air was delicate and aromatic with the smoky scent of summer-dry grass. Magpies warbled from the eucalypts. Parked at the kerb, a silver Mercedes glinted, dappled with gum tree shadows. Jenna felt her nerves twang.
As he opened the passenger-side door for her, she was careful to tread directly onto the spotless mat in the foot-well. The last man she had dated was a painfully reticent dairy farmer from Kalangadoo named Ron who drove a battered old Ford Falcon ute and always smelled faintly of cow dung. Ron’s parents were old friends of Jenna’s mother; she had only agreed to go out with Ron a few times after her mum had impressed upon her that his dog had been trampled by a bull and had to be euthanised, and they were all worried for his mental health. The contrast with Ark was stark, but the thought triggered her mother’s voice again. She swallowed it away.
‘I had a great time on Sunday,’ Ark told her. ‘Your friends are fun.’ He pressed the ignition button and the car purred into life. ‘So you and Fro are pretty close, huh?’
‘Since we were babies,’ she said, without thinking. ‘Our mothers have been friends since before we were born –’ She stopped, closed her mouth.
‘Small town,’ he said lightly. ‘Limits your social options a bit?’
She regarded him. Was he teasing her?
‘You lived in Adelaide – I suppose you have thousands of friends?’
He tipped his head with a laugh, glancing to give way to oncoming traffic. ‘I actually grew up in Tanunda, in the Barossa. Didn’t move down to Adelaide until I was eighteen. My parents,’ he stopped to clear his throat, tapping his mouth with a loose fist, then went on, ‘they owned a winery up there. Pretty typical childhood – went to an expensive private school that didn’t exactly keep me out of trouble.’
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘
Sister. Younger.’ He smiled then. ‘Much younger. She makes me want to move back home, just so I can sit on the front porch with a shotgun, you know? Scare off all the blokes.’ He laughed. ‘But don’t tell my mother that – she’d be straight on the phone whining for an ETA in writing.’ Sunlight and shadow strobed across his face as the car sped up. ‘You?’
She wanted to change the subject. ‘Just me,’ she answered quickly.
‘You’re more than enough.’
Startled, she looked at him, thinking it was an oddly fascinating thing to say. He didn’t go on, just smiled at her, and after a moment she settled back into the seat, running her palms over the fabric of her skirt. The engine hummed softly and Ark drove one-handed by resting his wrist on top of the steering wheel, fingers relaxed, the other hand draped across his lap. Sculpted biceps stretched against the sleeve of his shirt. She was filled with an urge to trace her fingertips along the sinuous veins in his forearms. The interior of the car felt humid and she loosened her scarf.
‘Why’d you move to Adelaide?’ she asked.
‘My dad died when I was fourteen, and after a few years I just needed to get out for a bit.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Hey, not at all.’ He offered her a smile before his attention returned to the road. ‘It was a long time ago. My history is mostly uninteresting. I’d rather hear about you.’
‘Growing up on a winery doesn’t sound dull.’
‘Far more dull than having a local TV celebrity for a mother.’
Jenna’s fingers tightened on her knees. ‘It’s not as exciting as you might think. And I really am sorry about your father. That must have been rough.’
‘It was, but, you know. Time heals wounds and all that.’ This time, the smile he gave her was heart-stopping.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got it all planned out,’ he told her with a grin. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he added, accelerating to pass a log truck that lumbered in their lane. ‘We’ve got pizza at The Wooden Spoon, then I’ve got tickets for the movies in Mount Gambier.’
She let her head rest back on the seat, her eyes stealing to the side of his face to watch him as he drove. At the tender hollow of his throat she imagined she could see his pulse; she could almost taste his skin, salty on her tongue. He’d planned out a date: polite conversation, dinner and a movie, but all Jenna wanted to do was screw him against a wall.
What was happening to her?
iv
River red gums, so tall their branches plucked the clouds, shed rags of bark onto the white gravel drive. Two low walls of limestone flanked the entrance to the driveway, arkacres in brushed steel lettering affixed to the stone.
The indicator ticked as Jenna slowed down and pulled from the highway onto the drive. The gums gave way to vines as the car crunched along the gravel. Jenna rolled down her window and breathed in the sweet bite of fertile earth and eucalyptus in the morning air. The land undulated softly and the rows of vines dipped neatly into hollows and climbed over ridges. Dots of sheep grazed the bright green strips between the grapes. Was this all Ark’s?
The car rounded a curve and the gravel driveway opened out into lawn that sprawled before a long limestone home. Dark red iron roof, chunky timber architraves and a wide, shadowed deck running the length of the house. A purple-green Cootamundra wattle dropped browning balls of blossom onto the lawn. Sheds and outbuildings of multiple sizes were dotted around the property.
Unsure where to park, she rolled to a stop next to a new-looking shed alongside the house. Nervously, she applied the handbrake and stepped from the car. Sunlight broke from between the clouds and warmed her scalp.
‘Hey,’ Ark called out to her from the verandah.
‘Is this all yours?’
‘Eighty-two acres,’ he replied. He strode to her, kissed her cheek. ‘The vineyards all butt up together around here so it looks like hundreds of hectares, but yeah, pretty much everything you can see.’ He leaned close to her, bringing a scent that kicked the backs of her knees. He pointed back down the drive. ‘See that line of pine trees?’ He indicated a dark line in the middle distance. ‘That’s my northern boundary. The highway is another boundary, the back you can’t see from here and the southern edge is down near Hollick’s.’ His breath smelled of peppermint.
‘And your grandmother left you this?’
He shook his head. ‘Grandma left me an inheritance. I bought this with it.’
‘Some inheritance.’
He laughed. ‘I’m very lucky.’
‘And you live here alone?’
‘Well, for the last few months, yep.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jenna said, warmth rising in her cheeks. ‘That’s so nosy.’
‘Not at all.’ He waved away her embarrassment and took up her hand. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.’
Inside, the house was as beautiful as the outside suggested. Light and airy with open spaces; slate floors and plush carpet and fresh paint. Although Ark lived alone, she sensed the uneasy ambiance of someone recently absent. Ark’s solitude was evident yet he didn’t seem lonely. If she breathed deeply enough, she might be able to catch a whiff of her: shampoo or perfume perhaps, a ghostly trail left behind.
After making tea, they sat at a wooden table on the back deck. The view rolled down towards the highway: more grapes, more gum trees, more broad expanse of lawn. In the middle distance, a ute moved stutteringly through the rows of grapes and a man heaped mulch over the roots of the plants.
Curiosity eventually got the better of Jenna. ‘How long ago did she move out?’
Ark looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve tried not to think about it, to be honest. Three, maybe four months.’
Jenna waited for him to offer more.
‘The whole thing was a mistake,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, she’s gone for good. Her family came and got her – they could never keep out of things. Always interfering. She’s back in Perth now. Deleted me on Facebook.’ He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘She wasn’t a very nice person. Showed her true colours quickly. Don’t know what I was thinking,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I dodged a bullet.’
Jenna gave a short, nervous laugh and looked down into her tea, embarrassed. Was he analysing her? Sizing up whether this woman was different? A grey edge of self-doubt crept in and, with a sudden fury, she wanted the feeling gone.
Slowly, deliberately, Jenna lifted her eyes, gazing at him from beneath her lashes.
He was drinking her in. An inquiring tilt of his head, a restrained smile in the corners of his lips, as though he knew something about her that she didn’t, as though he was peering into her, undressing her slowly. The sensation began in the centre of her chest and unfolded deep within her belly. Heat rose from her chest, warm fingers upon her collarbones.
Ark wrapped his hand around the arm of her chair. He tugged her closer and she shoved her way around the corner of the table, so there was nothing between them. He dragged her closer still, until her knees were pressed to his.
A part of her wondered what she was doing. It felt rash and irresponsible: rebellious. Alone with a man she barely knew, possessed by her own uncertainty and pain, and aware that he, too, was hurting. A diversion in the heat of his fingers on her thighs; distraction in his lips pressed into her neck. Belief in the hands that encircled her, the breath that consumed her.
‘I’m really falling for you.’ His words slipped beneath the surface of her skin, a gift. Hands on her hips, he lifted her effortlessly towards him and, as she straddled his body, he rose to meet her, his radiant warmth filling the space between her arms, her thighs, her knees.
He was an analgesic, a penance, and an offering, and she accepted it with welcome greed.
v
It was midnight when Fairlie returned home from her shift. Jenna lay
awake in the dark, blankets kicked to her ankles. She listened to the sounds of the front door push open then fall softly closed, keys and bags being dumped, shoes kicked across the floor. The kettle clicked on and water rushed as it boiled. Bright light shot in from under her bedroom door.
Jenna sat up. Squinting, she pulled open the bedroom door and shuffled into the kitchen.
Fairlie was pouring hot water into a cup. ‘Hey, what are you doing up?’
‘Hard to sleep with all the noise you’re making.’
‘Sorry.’ Fairlie sipped her drink. ‘Didn’t realise I was being loud.’
Jenna lifted Fairlie’s jacket and bag from a chair to sit down but the bag tipped upside down and its contents strew across the floor. Purse, balled tissues, sticks of lip balm, faded and crumpled receipts.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jenna cried. She wheeled on her friend and saw Fairlie’s eyebrows rocket up, her cup paused halfway to her mouth. ‘Why can’t you clean your shit up?’
‘Huh?’
‘Seriously, Fro. I can’t live in this pigsty.’
Fairlie’s gaze swept the kitchen, the lounge room. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she countered. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘This mess! It’s everywhere. There’s clothes, dirty dishes. Just . . . shit. Everywhere.’
‘Jen –’
Jenna couldn’t look at her. ‘It’s not big enough for the two of us.’
Fairlie set her cup down, firmly. ‘All right, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing’s “going on”. I’m just over the mess.’
‘We’ve lived together for a year. This is exactly how it’s always looked: lived in.’ Fairlie crouched and swept the contents of her handbag into a pile. ‘Sure it’s messy but we’re not wallowing in squalor.’
It was as though Jenna was looking through a lens and the focus telescoped out. Her peripheral vision blurred, and Fairlie shrunk away. Jenna blinked and saw Fairlie, grown robust, secure and affectionate with the love of two parents. Fairlie, a mess who didn’t care what people thought. And next to her, Jenna saw herself: a broken sidekick, bitter and bewildered. Uncertain. Seeking and craving. The thought repulsed her.
