Love or Money

by Peter McAra

  And so to the wakeful nights in the following weeks of her first crush, the endless replays of their time together. His body warm against her wet bikini-covered skin. His chest sliding against her shoulders as he paddled back to shore. His parting smile. The same smile that had turned her brain to mush this afternoon.

  Erin parked outside her grandmother’s ancient weatherboard cottage. Actually it wasn’t her grandmother’s cottage now, she realised, but her very own. She’d enjoy it for the brief time she owned it. Why not? As she locked her car, she saw the tangle of bougainvillea wrapping its purple flowers round the brick chimney at the end of the cottage’s roof. Left ungroomed, that vine would cover the rusting roof in a few years.

  Fishing in her handbag for the keys given to her by the lawyer, she took hold of the verdigris-covered front door knob and turned it. The sagging door scraped against the worn sandstone step as she pushed it open. Its bare weathered wood cried out for a coat of paint. As she stepped inside, the whiff of wood smoke washed over her. In her mind’s eye she saw Grandma Spenser leaning over the wood stove, stirring a pot of something that would later become a tasty country-style dinner.

  She gazed around the gloomy room. There was so much to do. She must have painters in, and a carpenter to fix the sagging roof. An electric cooktop to replace the wood-fired stove. The place would fetch a higher price after some basic sprucing up. Then, the garden. Her grandmother’s pride and joy would be a jungle now. She’d think about that later. Night would fall in the next hour.

  She changed into shorts and trainers, hoping to catch the last of the sun as she walked the cliff-top path. There’d be scenic beauty there, she knew, but she’d tune her senses for something more precious — memories. As she walked, looking down at the white spray surging over the rocks, recollections fluttered back like birds returning to their nests at twilight. Her grandmother telling her the names of flowers growing beside the track, picking edible berries for her from overhanging branches, explaining the history behind a wave-spattered headland or a distant lighthouse.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Grandma,’ she murmured aloud as she walked. ‘I love this place, love that you gave it to me. But Mum…you know how she suffered after Daddy left. Now, at last, I can make it up to her. And Grandma, that will mean selling your beautiful place. Your lawyer friend, Hamish — I can understand why you two got along so well — he said that you’d turn in your grave if you heard me say that. Please don’t. Please understand that I don’t have a choice.’

  She stopped to listen, childlike, for the sound of the old woman’s voice; heard nothing but the keening cry of a seagull in the dusk. Could there, just possibly, be another way? No. Without surgery, her mother’s tired heart could not go on beating for much longer. Erin had been told often enough that the surgery would be expensive, but it was the only way to save her mother’s life.

  She turned and headed for home in time to beat the dark. There were more memories to be savoured as she sat in the lopsided cane chair on the veranda and looked out over the darkening sea. Wouldn’t it be a joy to live here forever, nurtured by her grandmother’s spirit? It was easy to believe the old woman’s soul still lurked here, watching her every move.

  Then the side of Erin she called Practical Pig tapped her on the shoulder. She must sell. Her mother wouldn’t live without the financial help that could only come from selling the place. There were other positives in Erin’s life. She lived a happy enough existence in a cute Sydney suburb — a comfortable flat, a job she loved, a mother who needed her to visit often. It would be crazy to leave all that behind.

  There was Todd Archer too — the ex-boyfriend who didn’t know the meaning of ex. Moving to Luna Bay for a few weeks while she organised repairs might finally cut the rope he’d tied round her over the years, and still tugged way too often.

  They’d been seeing each other for six years; too many, she saw now, in hindsight. She’d met Todd when he was in business school and she was part way through her graphic arts course. After graduation, he segued into his father’s merchant banking consultancy, and gradually took it over. Their relationship had firmed into a reliable, always-there convenience — slowly, like milk turning into cheese. Todd had seen their future together as a given. Over the last few months, he’d been ramping up the pressure.

  ‘We’re getting to be an old married couple these days, Eri,’ Todd had said over a celebratory Friday night dinner at Sydney’s glitzy Darling Harbour. For days beforehand, something in Erin’s subconscious had bugged her about that dinner — the latest in an ongoing series marking the capture of yet another new client for Todd’s business.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ she said, edgy from the moment they were shown to their table.

  ‘Call you what?’

  ‘Eri.’

  ‘But I’ve always called you that.’

  ‘And I’ve always told you I don’t like it.’

  ‘Come on. It’s your name isn’t it? Close enough?’

  ‘I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked you, Todd.’

  ‘Better get used to it, Eri. Anyway, I have something to tell you.’ He leaned back, smiled mysteriously. ‘Something rather interesting.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘My new client will deliver a nice little blip in my bank account.’ He hammed a dramatic pause, hands extended. ‘Enough for…a deposit on the Pacific Towers penthouse!’

  A few weekends before, he’d frogmarched her through the newest high-rise monstrosity to be built on Sydney’s harbourside. As they took the lift to the penthouse floor, she decided she hated the glass-and-glitz building plastered with For Sale signs. He’d liked it. Fallen in love with it, actually. Then he’d walked her through the penthouse on the fortieth floor.

  ‘So, we should move in as soon as possible — as a couple,’ he finished.

  ‘As a couple?’

  ‘Of course. You know my parents would approve. Strongly.’

  ‘I see. So it’s all about what pleases your parents?’

  ‘Oh, come on Eri. We’re solid. As if you didn’t know by now.’

  ‘Maybe I…didn’t.’

  ‘Get real, babe. We’ve always known we were made for each other. I don’t have to mention the ‘b’ word, do I?’

  ‘Are you talking Bentley or Benz? You’ve already done BMW.’

  ‘Babies, Eri.’

  ‘It’s not a word that turns me on.’ She shivered as she answered. The idea had hit her like a cold wind. Something she’d known in her heart, through six years of tagging along with Todd, had now surfaced. She must deal with it.

  ‘But everybody’s doing it. Sebastian and Kate. Tarquin and Sheena.’

  ‘I see. Your friends are having babies, so you want one — some, even. I suppose fancy new cars do get boring eventually.’

  ‘So when would you like to move into my stunning new penthouse — sorry, our stunning new penthouse, beloved?’

  ‘Mmm. I’ll get back to you.’

  Over the next few nights, Erin lay sleepless through the small hours. Why, when she loved children, had she shuddered at the thought of having Todd’s babies? Why, why, why? Eventually, her heart told her the simple truth. Todd was not Mr Right.

  A week later she phoned and told him the relationship was over. Now, months later, it still hadn’t registered with Todd. Hardly an evening went by without a phone call from him: a cheeky text, a grovelling email. Sometimes he was apologetic, then aggressive, or let’s-kiss-and-make-up. But always he was the same boring, insensitive, selfish, ego-driven, testosterone-powered man on whom she’d finally turned her back. As she sat on the veranda, the stars came out in all their glory. Waves breaking on rocks below whispered their messages of untamed nature. Life in a city penthouse might have its moments, but it could never offer nights like this.

  When the dark solidified around her, Erin stepped inside, ready to take a realistic view on the repairs the old cottage would need to make it liveable. A year before, she’d visite
d to help her grandmother move house for the last time in her life — the shift to Sunnyside Nursing Home in the nearby respectably-sized town of Pembroke. Over the months that followed, the old woman grieved over the loss of her lifestyle, her cottage, then quietly died.

  Checking the mostly bare cupboards, Erin pulled out her notebook and made a shopping list. Thinking about food made her hungry. Her stomach rumbled. Tonight she’d be eating Chinese or nothing — the Golden Dragon was Luna Bay’s one and only restaurant. As she thought about the place, the memory of its tangy Asian spice aromas wafted past her nose. Not only that. It was Friday night. Maybe a busy lawyer might stop off at the Golden Dragon for dinner? She deleted the thought fast. The man had as good as said he hated her for planning to sell Lovers’ Lookout.

  If you sell the place, we probably won’t meet again.

  Chapter 2

  Hamish Bourke locked his office door and drove home as the sun slipped behind the ranges. After a grinding week at the office he looked forward to his weekend access with Dwayne, starting with a happy roll-around on the carpet with his toddler son. Lately, Honey Biggs, Dwayne’s mother, hadn’t always stuck to the arrangements for Dwayne’s handover to his father. The always-fragile relationship between Hamish and Honey had gone belly-up a year ago. He moved out of the home he’d bought for the three of them, then rented a cottage across the street to make it easier to co-parent the son he loved.

  Honey’s car was gone from her carport. Most likely she’d taken Dwayne to her parents, and gone out on the town. It was Friday night after all — the night it all happened at the local pub. Hamish walked up to the front door of the house, clinging to hope. The little boy would be waiting to see his father. He knocked, rang the doorbell. The house stood silent. Hamish sighed and walked back to his car. Over the past year, Honey had gone from bad to worse. Lately, she’d taken to locking Dwayne in the house during his afternoon sleep and heading for the pub. ‘Just for a coffee, darl, maybe a quick little drink. I’m always back before he wakes.’ Hamish knew, the neighbours knew, that often she’d come home late, and drunk. Sometimes, the neighbours told him, Dwayne would be awake and crying. How would the traumatised little boy react to a mother who acted ‘strangely’ when, eventually, she came home?

  Hamish decided to grab a quick shower, and dash to the Golden Dragon. Starvation made any other option impossible. As he towelled himself dry, he recalled again the woman client who’d turned his last hour upside down. He pictured the face, mouthed the name: Erin Spenser. Any guy would call her beautiful. The first sight of that slender, shapely body would fire a bomb into a man’s hormone bank — and lead to the too-obvious physical response he’d felt as she walked in and looked up into his face. For those electrifying first moments, she’d reduced him to mumbling monosyllables as she took the chair opposite, powder-blue eyes probing his. She had some of her grandmother’s features: those wide-set eyes, the cute upturned nose. But her youthful beauty was all her own; the sweep of golden hair washing over her shoulders, and those lips — small, bow-shaped, seductive. Any straight man under ninety would want to kiss them the second he got the opportunity.

  But the woman’s plastic, citified values had surfaced. She’d as good as said she’d sell Edna Spenser’s beautiful property the minute she could. What was it about city people? They put money above everything — healthy living, taking care of the planet, honouring an old woman’s dream to restore her property to its original pristine loveliness. Forget Erin Spenser, he ordered himself. You have a partner and a son. He brushed his towel over his face one last time, flicked it so that it cracked like a horsewhip, and hung it on the rail. He’d best get on down to the Golden Dragon. Hunger made a man aggressive.

  Erin allowed herself the luxury of a slow dawdle from the cottage to the Golden Dragon. It would be good to stroll past the old shops, the heritage town hall with its lichened classic sandstone portal, the war memorial with the names of dead Luna Bay soldiers. She needed a distraction from the pain of the inevitable. She must sell the cottage, and soon. Her mother’s cardiologist had hinted that given his patient’s worsening health, she might have only months to live unless she had expensive major surgery.

  All through Erin’s childhood, Helen Spenser had struggled with mortgage payments, keeping a roof over their heads, never quite letting go of the hope that one day her straying husband might return. On the last lap of her exhausting marathon, Helen had won the financial tussle to enrol her daughter in a prestigious art school. Not that the school hadn’t been a good investment. Erin had shown talent way back in kindergarten. Now she made an acceptable living doing what she loved — writing and drawing for Possum Publishing.

  Erin arrived at the restaurant, stared up at the doorway draped with the familiar gold-painted carving of a scary dragon. She stepped inside. The Golden Dragon was empty except for proprietor Andy Chan. Erin and Andy had known each other since childhood, back when she spent the summers with her grandmother. The two children had come to know each other through Grandma Spenser’s shameless addiction to Chinese cuisine. The spicy perfume dragged Erin back to those days as she walked in.

  ‘Hi Erin.’ Andy looked up from his laptop on the counter. ‘Good to see you again. Sorry to hear about your grandmother. Lovely lady. Will we be seeing a bit more of you? Now you’ve inherited Lovers’ Lookout?’

  ‘Thanks, Andy.’ Erin flinched inside. So the Luna Bay grapevine was still working. ‘That’s a big question,’ she smiled. ‘Too big for right now.’ She cast an eye over the spread of empty tables right down to the big tank of goldfish near the kitchen doorway. As a child, she’d spent hours spellbound by those goldfish during dinners with Grandma Spenser. ‘It’s quiet tonight,’ she said, nudging away from the touchy subject of her plans for the property.

  ‘Yeah. That’s busy downtown Luna Bay,’ Andy smiled. ‘You’d see more action in a cemetery at midnight. Thought I’d grab some time to get the accounts sorted.’ He closed his laptop. ‘Like to order, Erin? Or do you need to go and say hi to your fish?’

  ‘Order first, fish later. I’ll have the usual, thanks Andy.’

  ‘Short soup, plus pork noodles in hoi sin sauce, sprinkled with chopped raisins.’ Andy scribbled on his pad. ‘I can hear my Hong Kong grandmother turning in her grave.’ He slipped out to the kitchen run by his mother, Rosie.

  Her meal arrived. Guiltily, she picked at it with her chopsticks. Grandma Spenser’s ghost sat opposite, quiet, reproachful. How could Erin enjoy her dinner while that gloomy presence watched her?

  Hamish Bourke checked his watch as he stepped into the Golden Dragon. He’d eat quickly and get back to the office. The application for the Department of Environment funding for the wetlands restoration project was due on Monday. Lately, he spent more time on voluntary Landcare matters than on working for a fee — not good for his fledgling practice. But the funding application was important. Extremely important. The orange-bellied tree frog whose habitat was under threat might exit Planet Earth if the wetlands project didn’t happen. He stared into the restaurant’s gloom. It was empty but for a woman, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. She sat with her back to him at the corner table near the fish tank. Chopsticks in hand, she turned as he walked in. He stared, then recognised Erin Spenser.

  ‘Hi,’ she called when she saw him looking hard in her direction.

  ‘Er, hi,’ he answered. Those lips, that cute pointy nose, the smile, set his heart racing again. He’d come to the restaurant for a quick meal. Now he’d have to be polite, waste time. A couple of hours before, as Erin stood to leave his office, he’d given himself an order. Keep your distance from that woman and don’t get ideas.

  ‘Staying for dinner?’ Her smile invited him.

  ‘Well…I…’ Hamish found himself stuck for words again. The scene was set for a replay of the afternoon at the office. He stepped towards her table.

  Andy walked in from the kitchen carrying a folder of loose papers. ‘You two know each other?’

/>   ‘We do.’ Erin grinned at Andy. ‘Luna Bay’s a pretty small town. Mr Bourke and I met this afternoon.’ Andy walked back to the counter and his laptop.

  ‘Is it okay to call you Hamish?’ she said, looking up at him as he stood beside her. ‘You said you were Hamish to your friends. I don’t want to presume —’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Hamish. Please.’

  ‘The usual for you too, Hamish?’ Andy called from the counter.

  ‘Yes, thanks Andy.’

  ‘Singapore noodles,’ Andy confirmed. ‘Vegetarian?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So, we’re not going to be adventurous tonight then?’ Andy said as he headed for the kitchen.

  ‘Would you like to join me?’ Erin eyed the chair opposite.

  ‘Well, thanks.’ He eased out the chair and sat. She used the moment to take in his shoulders again. She’d try to help him relax. His X-ray stare was getting to be rather too much.

  ‘Pardon my mentioning this — it’s a bit forward,’ he said, still awkward. She half-smiled, curious. ‘What is it about you, Erin? Your face? Whenever I look at you up close, something goes click.’ He paused, smiled across at her. ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘Since you ask, yes,’ she said. He stared at her again. ‘Roll your mind back to a certain summer afternoon at Luna Bay,’ she said. ‘Twelve years ago. A lifeguard sits on a lookout tower, keeping an eye on the beach.’

  ‘I used to do lifeguard duty at Luna Bay,’ he said. ‘When I came home for university vacations.’ He pointed. ‘Were you—’

  ‘I swam there. I spent pretty much every summer holiday at Lovers’ Lookout with my Grandma.’

  ‘So you told me.’

  ‘And one day, when I was surfing, a rip dragged me way out past the breakers. It scared me — really scared me.’

  ‘A lot of inexperienced surfers get caught in that rip. It comes in strong around half-tide, usually. We always fish them out, give them the lecture, and send them on their way.’