The Affair

by Bunty Avieson

  There was no thunderbolt from the sky or heartstopping moment to warn her about what she had begun. So there was no moment when she could choose to reject what was unfolding. But by the end of the afternoon, this man had planted himself firmly in her life. It was only looking back, months later, when she was agonising over what she had done and how it had happened, that she realised what had started that day. That gloriously sunny Saturday would be seared onto her psyche forever. Bittersweet and poignant. The beginning of a tender, beautiful and illicit love.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dr Jones’s rooms, 7 February 2001

  James continued to stroke the underside of Nina’s elbow, gently and unobtrusively trying to impart his strength to her.

  ‘You have our test results, doctor?’ he asked.

  The doctor addressed himself to James.

  ‘Yes, I have here the results of the genetic tests. The gene for haemochromatosis is carried on chromosome 6 and neither you nor Luke Wilde carry the defective gene that would indicate a predisposition to haemochromatosis.’

  James and Nina sighed together with relief.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said.

  James felt Nina’s relief almost before he registered his own. The doctor’s words were as direct as they could be. Neither James nor Luke had this deadly, crippling disease. They weren’t going to waste away in agony as Frederick had. And James hadn’t passed on any genetic weakness to his precious son. Luke was as fit and healthy as he looked. The realisation washed over James like a cool, refreshing shower.

  Nina sought out James’s hand and squeezed it. She smiled at him.

  ‘He’s okay,’ said James. ‘Luke got the good genes.’

  Nina nodded. ‘And so did you, my darling.’

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  Nina felt a twinge of guilt for putting James through such anxiety. She knew he had been more worried about Luke than he had been about himself. She had caught him looking at the boy with an intense expression of love and fear. It had stopped her dead in her tracks. His anxiety mirrored her own.

  Nevertheless, since that startling conversation with Patty a week ago, Nina had known that Luke would be okay. She only had her husband to worry about. But Nina had kept that information to herself, tossing and turning in the night, agonising over what might be the best thing to do.

  It was a cruel paradox that if she told James what she now knew to be the truth, he would no longer worry about young Luke – and yet he would be devastated in the process. It was the classic good-news, bad-news scenario. The good news is Luke can’t possibly have the genetic weakness. Why not? Ah, that’s the bad news. Because he’s not your son.

  Nina remembered her own shock and pain on being told that very news. And the horror of the revelation was all the more marked because it was James’s mother who told her.

  Patty had come to town a week ago to sort out some legal matters after Frederick’s death. She met Nina and James for lunch and James had left the two women to enjoy dessert and coffee together. As soon as he was gone Nina burst into tears. She was sick with worry that James and Luke might have inherited Frederick’s errant gene and the emotional effort of staying positive and cheerful for James’s sake had begun to wear her down.

  Patty listened and said nothing as Nina poured out her fears, clutching her napkin and sobbing into it, aware she was making a scene in front of the other diners in the otherwise serene hotel dining room. When Nina had finished and her breathing had returned almost to normal, she became aware that Patty wasn’t really paying attention: she was looking across to the other side of the dining room. Nina felt immediately contrite.

  ‘Oh Patty, I’m so sorry. How thoughtless of me. You have just lost Frederick and here I am going on about James and Luke. Of course you are as worried about them as I am.’

  Patty shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  Nina looked at her mother-in-law. Patty’s lips were pursed and her eyes were thoughtful. She wouldn’t meet Nina’s gaze. Nina had known something was wrong, she just didn’t know what. And then Patty had dropped her bombshell.

  ‘I’m not so worried about Luke,’ she said, watching her own hands as they folded her napkin and placed it neatly by her plate.

  Patty lifted her gaze and looked into Nina’s eyes. She spoke quietly, with no evident emotion. ‘You see, James is sterile,’ she announced abruptly. ‘He had mumps when he was a boy.’

  It took Nina only a few seconds to understand what her mother-in-law was telling her.

  ‘He was about fifteen and his testicles swelled up hard like cricket balls. It was very painful for him, as you might imagine. The doctors said it was the worst case they had seen. It is very rare for mumps to cause sterility, but there you go. James was incredibly unlucky.’

  Nina took in little of what Patty was saying. She had just one thought. James was sterile. Luke could not be his son. And Patty had known this all along. She felt the room swim about her. Of course Luke was James’s son. Of course he was. Her heart cried out for Patty’s revelation not to be true. But a little nagging voice, somewhere at the back of Nina’s brain, told her otherwise. It was a voice she had silenced long ago.

  The possibility had occurred to Nina but only in the early days, when she first discovered she was pregnant. She had worked out her dates and realised there was a chance it was not James’s child. But from the moment he was born, Luke was every bit James’s son, and Nina had put all such thoughts aside. James believed he was Luke’s father. Nina wanted him to be. And anyway, there was every chance he was, she had reasoned. Then she had quite deliberately put a wall around the idea that Luke could be anyone but James’s biological son. She never allowed it to surface again.

  Her memories of the summer of 1991 were so raw and painful that Nina chose not to think about it. Occasionally they would surface in her dreams and she would wake with an indefinable feeling of longing and desire. Her body would be aflame and she found it hard to concentrate. But she would shake off the feeling and go about her daily life as a wife and a mother.

  From the moment Luke was born Nina had been overwhelmed by her love for this scrunched-up little bundle. She was in awe of the ferociousness of her feelings. Their intensity scared her. And she could see her own helpless love mirrored in her husband’s eyes. Like Nina, he had fallen completely, devotedly, in love with baby Luke. They had taken turns getting up to him in the night. James had happily danced with him around the lounge room to the Play School video. And as Luke grew older, James was the proud father cheering his boy from the sidelines each Saturday, cricket through summer and rugby in winter. He was Luke’s father in every sense of the word. Nina felt her blood rising in angry defence. But sitting here opposite her mother-in-law, she stopped herself. The time for self-delusion had passed.

  ‘You have known this all the time,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ said Patty matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve always known it. Frederick and I.’

  Nina felt the noise of the dining room recede. She remembered discovering she was pregnant and James’s surprise then joy. They hadn’t planned to start their family so soon. What a special time it had been for them. She had wanted it to be the sign of a new beginning. Those little voices that she had managed to avoid for so long were loud and triumphant in the back of her head now. The guilt and shame of her past had just come screaming up to greet her. The thought of James finding out tore at her soul. She felt a sickening thud in her chest. She could lose him to this illness or she could lose his love and respect. Or both.

  Patty’s eyes narrowed and she looked at her daughter-in-law with disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know,’ said Patty.

  ‘That Luke wasn’t James’s son?’ replied Nina. She shook her head dumbly. Tears poured down her face. Her own napkin was already soaked. Patty handed across hers. Nina struggled to compose herself.

  ‘Why have you never said anything?’ asked Nina.

  ‘I wanted to at first but Frederick wouldn
’t let me,’ said Patty. ‘He said it wasn’t our business. It was between you and James.’

  Nina stared at the older woman. There was no trace of malice or judgement or even anger in her demeanour. She could have been telling Nina she would like more cheesecake.

  ‘I’ve seen the pleasure that child has given my son, and I know the joy he’s brought me. As far as I’m concerned he is my grandson, every delicious inch of him.’

  Patty’s face softened and she smiled at Nina. Nina marvelled at her generosity of spirit. In the past ten years there had never been a hint from Frederick or Patty. They had accepted Luke as if he were their blood. Patty had given Luke as much attention and affection as she had given her other grandchildren. She had always treated Nina warmly, made her welcome in her home. Over the years they had fashioned a relationship of mutual affection and respect. It was quite independent of James’s own, sometimes fraught, relationship with his parents.

  And all the time she and Frederick had known of Nina’s betrayal. Then Nina thought of James and Luke together, side by side on the couch watching some televised sports match. They were close, as a father and son should be. James had encouraged Luke in sport from the moment he could walk. He spent hours throwing a ball for him to catch. When Luke caught it he would say ‘What do you expect? He’s my son.’ When he dropped it, he would tease Nina, saying that it must be her family’s lack of sporting abilities coming through. James clearly thought Luke was carrying his genes.

  ‘I don’t understand. James believes Luke is his son.’

  Patty nodded.

  ‘Yes, I think he does. A few times I have heard him comment about Luke inheriting his talents. So I gathered you hadn’t told him.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ protested Nina quietly.

  ‘I realise that now,’ agreed Patty.

  ‘What I don’t understand is, doesn’t James know he is sterile?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Patty. She looked chastened, guilty almost. ‘Well, no. He doesn’t know.’ She sighed. ‘It wasn’t something you would tell a boy in puberty. We didn’t want him to develop any kind of hang-ups or inferiority complexes. He wasn’t interested in girls then so it didn’t seem relevant. And when he got a bit older he gave no indication of wanting to settle down. I suppose I also thought that, with medical advances, the problem might be solvable by the time he wanted to start a family.’

  Patty’s manner changed abruptly. She spoke unnaturally fast, nodding and looking intently at Nina, as if to justify her actions.

  Is she trying to convince me or herself, wondered Nina.

  ‘I always intended to tell him but somehow the time was never right. Then he became very angry with us in his twenties. I don’t really know why. He just reached that age where everything we did was wrong. Our politics, our way of living, our way of thinking. He grew away from us. I suppose a lot of it was to do with not winning at the Olympics. He became a very angry young man. He and Frederick didn’t get along. We hoped he would settle down and work with us on the winery. Then he suddenly took off overseas.

  ‘We were as surprised as anyone when he arrived home with you, his bride. You were both so young, we didn’t think you would want to start a family for many years. Frederick and I talked about telling James. We knew we had to and we were just trying to choose the right time. But then you announced you were three months pregnant. I hoped against hope that it was some kind of miracle. But I knew as soon as I saw baby Luke, he wasn’t a Wilde.’

  Nina heard herself cry out. She had never, ever allowed herself to think that. She had told herself that Luke had inherited his fairer colouring from her side of the family. Larry was sandy-haired. When she looked at Luke, head buried over some comic, or transfixed by the television screen, she had been sure she had seen traces of James. It was in the way he held his head or the way he furrowed his brow in concentration.

  She had seen what she wanted to see. The realisation of her own delusion was painful. She had duped everybody, even herself. And all the time Patty and Frederick had known her shameful secret.

  While Nina was still absorbing the ramifications of Patty’s disclosure, the older woman put her hand on Nina’s arm. Her touch was firm and, as she spoke, her fingers tightened around Nina’s arm. She increased the pressure until it was almost painful.

  ‘Of course, you can’t ever tell James,’ she said in a low controlled voice. ‘He must never know. You have deluded him this long, it would hurt him too much to find out. You cannot hurt my son in that way. I won’t allow it.’

  Nina looked into her mother-in-law’s face and felt the full force of her iron will. Patty sounded sharp, almost vicious, and her gaze seemed to bore into Nina, pinning her to the spot.

  Nina felt a sudden flash of understanding about the family dynamics that had shaped her husband. James’s father wouldn’t tolerate failure and, she suddenly realised, his mother would not accept a defect in her offspring, her precious son. She would rather live in denial than admit to anything amiss.

  Nina felt a rush of loathing for the woman opposite her. What about James? How dare he not be told about something so important. No wonder he stayed away those years, she thought. This family was so controlling, so invasive. And here was the result. What a mess.

  But who was she to blame them? Wasn’t her betrayal much worse?

  *

  For the next few days she had agonised over what she should do. Not to tell James was a further betrayal. But what would telling him achieve? Maybe Patty was right. It might assuage her guilt but it would only hurt James. And it had all happened so long ago.

  Nina tried not to revisit the memories of that time. She had done the unthinkable and loved two men. And she had betrayed them both. Yet Nina didn’t regret falling for Leo. It had been such a powerful experience she felt it was somehow inevitable that they should meet and fall in love. But a nagging feeling persisted, that she had ended it badly. It was much easier not to think about it, and it had no bearing on their lives today.

  She had turned it around and around in her mind, tried out various ways of bringing it up. Every imagined scene ended with James angry, hurt and humiliated. Nina made her decision. She would do everything in her power to keep him from ever finding out.

  And so she had gone through the charade of having Luke tested. Her worry was genuine. She hadn’t had to fake that. Nina was terrified that James carried the defective gene. But she had kept her enormous relief over Luke to herself, even as she had watched her husband tear himself apart in agony.

  Dr Jones watched her smile at her husband. She turned back to the doctor, her expression relieved and happy. Lying bitch, thought the doctor. To be fair, she may not know. There’s only one way to find out. He felt a surge of self-righteousness and power.

  ‘Your son doesn’t have any bad Wilde genes,’ he said, looking directly at Nina and enunciating the words slowly and clearly. There was a nasty tone in his voice that cut straight through her. The doctor, sitting in his high-backed leather chair, lord of all he surveyed, felt enormous satisfaction as he watched the smile freeze on Nina’s face.

  CHAPTER 7

  Saturday, 19 January 1991

  The Bondi Hotel was in full swing. Saturday night at the huge beachside pub was a regular event for many of the bright young things of Sydney. Local surfers in long shorts left their boards on the front verandah while they enjoyed that one quick beer for the road, which would inevitably turn into six or seven. Other patrons, more painstakingly dressed, had driven in from suburbs as far away as Marrickville and Caringbah to shout to each other above the pandemonium. In one bar the three-piece Saturday night band played cover versions of popular songs from the seventies and eighties.

  The main bar, full to its 650-person capacity, was frantic, the energy level constantly at fever pitch. By the end of the evening the bar staff would limp out the back door, drenched in sweat, hoarse from yelling and physically exhausted. In the pokie room a couple of purple-haired local pensioners, immaculate i
n stockings and floral frocks with neat beaded handbags over their arms, sipped their shandies, sitting alongside a group of young men out on a buck’s night.

  The quietest room was arguably the vast attic bar upstairs where a jukebox played and people gathered around 24 constantly busy pool tables. Patrons poured in here from the dining room and the other bars to watch a bit of pool, or play a quick game before heading somewhere else. Or they settled in for a serious night of competition.

  This was where Nina and James and a group of friends had spent the past few hours. They weren’t fall-down drunk yet, but both had passed the point of being legally allowed to take control of a car. Nina was feeling vivacious and flirty. The vodka tonics she was merrily downing enhanced her mood. She felt especially sexy tonight, vibrant and full of energy. She sat perched on a bar stool, laughing with the girlfriend of one of James’s friends.

  James was a few drinks ahead of her, throwing back the beers with an almost manic intensity. He drained the last of the jug into his glass while his mates were still a drink behind.

  Felix joined him at the bar where he was ordering another round. ‘How are you doing?’ he asked, leaning against James’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m pretty well,’ said James.

  His speech was beginning to thicken, a few of the words running into each other. Felix wasn’t much clearer. ‘I’m pissed but I want to get pissederer,’ he declared.