Blood Ties

by JD Nixon

  I’d had a real go at Des over it when he finally returned from Foxy’s place, but as usual he’d just brushed it aside as ‘woman’s nerves’ and even made a few jokes about it. It had taken me a while to cool down after that little incident.

  The Sarge appeared thoughtful. “That won’t happen again, Tess. I’m a big believer in team work.” Then he changed the subject. “Why do you all call it the secret bikie retreat? Clearly everybody knows about it. It hardly sounds like a secret.”

  I laughed. “They try to keep it secret, but it’s a bit hard for us to ignore thirty bikes rumbling through town in the middle of the night every couple of months. They usually keep to themselves and don’t cause much of a nuisance, surprisingly. But God only know what they’re doing inside that place.”

  We finished dinner and Dad volunteered himself and the Sarge to wash up, leaving Jake and me free. I took his hand when he offered and let him lead me from the kitchen.

  “Your room or mine?” he joked, pinning me to the hall wall with his body. He received free bed-and-board at the prison in exchange for being on-call whenever there was an emergency like a fire or an attempted escape. Guests, especially women, were definitely not allowed. I’d never stayed overnight in his room.

  “No! Not with the Sarge here. I don’t want my new boss to hear us getting it on, Jakey. He’s right across the hall. He’ll hear everything. And we’re not exactly quiet.”

  “Baby doll, please don’t tease me,” he groaned, kissing my neck and pressing himself up against me. “I need you. I’ve been thinking about you all week.”

  “I can see that, honey-boy,” I gasped, feeling his hardness through his jeans. And that was the last thing I got to say for a while as his mouth, tongue and hands got busy again.

  My Jake was a wonderful seducer. Everything he did felt like foreplay to me. Ringing me up to ask me if I wanted him to pick up some milk and bread sent a warm thrill down my spine. Complaining that he was too tired to love me only built up my anticipation for the next time. I lived in a constant state of heightened sexual awareness when I was around him.

  In bed, he was dynamite. He was only the second lover I’d had in my life, but even I could tell he was head and shoulders over most other men when it came to sex. After a night spent with him, I went around the next day with a silly smile on my face that nothing could budge. Being a Bycraft, he had become sexually active as soon as he hit puberty. Being so good-looking and much more charismatic and nicer than the average Bycraft, he’d had a line of girls willing to experiment with him. I hadn’t been one of them. He had never paid any attention to me anyway, being a year ahead of me at school. Instead I’d been hounded relentlessly by his younger brother, Denny, who had been in the same grade as me.

  I hated Denny Bycraft. He had been a pest to me during primary school and was my chief tormenter all through high school, persisting in his stupid belief that if he harassed and insulted me enough, I would sleep with him. Not bloody likely! The ninety minute bus trip to and from high school at Big Town each school day was hell on earth for me. He spread rumours about me, telling everyone I’d put out for him, which nobody believed anyway. It was well-known that Dad and Nana Fuller both kept a fanatically close and careful eye on me, knowing exactly where I was and who I was with, twenty-four hours a day.

  To my endless embarrassment, everybody in the whole high school knew that I was a virgin. And the fact that Denny kept haranguing me constantly let everyone know that he hadn’t succeeded in his attempts to get me into bed (or more likely into a stolen car for a quickie up at the lake carpark, which was as romantic as a Bycraft boy normally got). He didn’t keep his message consistent either, one day telling everyone in a loud voice that Teresa Fuller was a stuck-up frigid bitch who thought she was too good for every boy in Little Town, and the next telling everyone that Teresa Fuller was a dirty whore who would sleep with anyone for money, even other girls, even sheep, even her own father. Yeah, Denny Bycraft was a real charmer.

  I completely ignored Denny, didn’t speak to him, didn’t look at him and didn’t acknowledge his presence in any way. I stared out the bus window or read calmly as he shouted out hurtful things about me, blanking him on the street if our paths ever crossed. That made him even more obsessed with me, because he was a good-looking boy too and couldn’t believe that I was indifferent to his Bycraft ‘charm’ when every other girl in my year fell for it. I became some unobtainable holy grail for him and he wasn’t going to stop until he broke me down or forced me to agree to sleep with him, neither of which was ever going to happen.

  There were three things that eased his harassment, none of them permanently though. One night at the end of eighth grade, stressed at being in the middle of exams and after a particularly virulent attack from him on the bus ride home, I sobbed out to Nana Fuller for the first time what had been happening for most of the year. She instantly took me very seriously. The next afternoon as Denny Bycraft stepped off the bus when it dropped us back at Little Town, my ferocious Nana – who stood barely five feet tall in her good heels but who was well-accepted as the most terrifying woman in town with the sharpest tongue you ever heard – was waiting for him. She gave him such an ear bashing about his disgraceful behaviour that she eventually made him cry in front of the other kids. Then she marched to his house, dragging him there by the ear, and gave his mother an equally brutal tongue lashing, pointing out her many flaws as a parental figure in clear and uncertain terms, berating her for her demon children, and eventually made her cry too. It was the talk of the town for the next two months because the Bycrafts were a hard family and they didn’t break easily. My Nana was the hero of Little Town. She was my hero too.

  The second incident that made Denny back off for a while was the beating I gave him in ninth grade. One afternoon, moody with PMS, I snapped after he tried to trip me as I got off the bus right after he’d made that crack about me sleeping with my dad. I grabbed him by his shirt with my left hand, and socked him one on the nose with my right fist. Then we were on in earnest, circling around each other, the blood from his nose dripping on to his crumpled white school shirt. All the kids surrounded us, cheering and yelling out ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ in that primitive Lord of the Flies way that kids have. Not many people knew, but from when I was a tiny child, my father, with the full support of the normally ladylike and proper Nana Fuller, had desperately and determinedly made sure that I could defend myself. Even back then when I was only fourteen, I was a competent sparrer, had learned some martial arts, was a crack shot, and carried my knife with me everywhere. So when other girls went to ballet, gymnastics or horse riding, I was at the rifle range or in the gym in Big Town, punching and kicking bags, learning self-defence. I wasn’t afraid to take on Denny Bycraft in a fight.

  By the look on his face, I could tell with disgust that the thought of fighting with me, of physically touching me, was turning him on shamefully. He playfully darted around in front of me, fists up, smirking with confidence. While he revelled in my attention and called out smart-arse comments, egged on by his relatives, I was silent, deadly serious, and focused. When he turned his head to diss me to Jake or Rick or someone, I suddenly feigned another right hook making him dodge in panic, but instead I lifted my right leg and drove my foot hard into his stomach. As he doubled over in pain, I raised my knee and smashed it into his face, cracking his nose. He fell to the ground, groaning and bleeding, and just for good measure I kicked him hard in the nuts. It was all finished that quickly. I stepped over him contemptuously, not sparing him a second glance, not saying a word to him the whole time. I walked proudly to the spot where I normally waited for Nana Fuller to pick me up, nursing my fist, which was bruising up. My girlfriends crowded around me, talking a million miles a second in high-pitched excitement and admiration.

  I was in big trouble that afternoon from both Nana Fuller and Dad for scrapping on the street like a common person, but I knew that they were both secretly bursting with pride in my ability
to look after myself. Denny missed the next three days of school and when he came back, his nose severely bruised, he continued to watch me but he didn’t speak to me for a long time afterwards.

  The last thing that lessened Denny’s campaign of terror was when I started going out with Abe. Abe, who was in the same year as Jake, one year ahead of me, was carefully vetted by Dad and Nana Fuller and approved to become my first boyfriend. Our families had known each other since we were born, and growing up we often ate at Abe’s parents’ pub, which he now owned. I liked him a lot, admiring his muscles of course, but also because he had gallantly come to my rescue many a time on the bus ride from hell when Denny became too obnoxious. His regular offer to forcefully expel Denny from the bus while it was moving had always made me look up at him and smile in gratitude, which only made Denny even madder. He hated Abe, but as I said before, you’d think twice before you tangled with him, even when he was a teenager.

  However, after eighteen months of dating, Abe’s and my relationship hadn’t progressed beyond handholding and kissing. And that’s the main reason he dumped me for Carole Smyth who was rumoured (and later confirmed by both Jake and Abe) to sleep around willingly and frequently. I’d desperately wanted to have sex with Abe and I’d wanted him to touch me everywhere, a simmering volcano of teenage hormones myself. But I knew that Nana Fuller would be broken-hearted and crushed with disappointment if I became what she called ‘one of those girls’, so I’d pushed him away and kept my knees primly clamped together whenever his hands went wandering. Abe hadn’t been willing to respect that or to wait patiently for me to be ready.

  I didn’t have another boyfriend at school after Abe, so by the end of high school everybody knew that I was still a virgin. My constant wariness, combined with me carrying my knife everywhere, caused the male teenagers in town to keep their distance. I’d gone to the end-of-school formal by myself, the only girl not to find even some spotty, maladroit, misfit boy desperate enough to take me as a last resort. Against my pleading wishes, Dad and Nana Fuller had forced me to go anyway, not wanting me to miss what they thought was an important rite of passage. I wore a pretty dress that Nana Fuller had spent a long time making for me, my knife carefully concealed underneath. Before he drove me to Big Town, Dad told me I looked beautiful, his voice breaking with emotion, and Nana Fuller couldn’t speak, tears in her eyes. Personally, I’d felt so sick with dread that I thought I’d throw up.

  It had been one of the worst experiences of my life. I still burn with humiliation ten years later remembering standing by myself in that huge festive school hall, abandoned by my own close girlfriends and their dates. The music thumped loudly, every person milling around me with a partner, excited and laughing, tribal and connected for one evening. After the third well-meaning teacher, noticing how miserable I looked, asked me kindly where my date was, I’d turned and fled. I’d spent the rest of the night sitting on a hard bench outside the hall. In the lonely darkness, I’d listened to the loud chatter, laughter and music inside, wanting more than anything to be a part of it, battling self-pitying tears. But that was the story of my life – my difficult personal circumstances had always made me feel like an outsider.

  I’d plastered on a bright smile when Dad picked me up though, claiming I was too tired from all the fun and dancing to even speak when he wanted to know the details about the evening. I’d pretended to sleep the entire drive home to Little Town, but I don’t think I fooled him for a second. Neither he nor Nana Fuller ever mentioned the formal again. I’d secretly ripped up every unsmiling photo that Dad had taken of me that night and shoved that pretty dress to the back of my cupboard, never wanting to set eyes on it again. One day I noticed that it had disappeared, but I never asked Dad or Nana Fuller what had happened to it and they never volunteered any information either. I’d literally jumped for joy when I was accepted into the city’s premier university a few weeks later, knowing that I finally had a compelling reason to move to the city and away from this town forever.

  I’d been glad to escape to the anonymity of the city and get away from the claustrophobic confines of Little Town. And from Denny Bycraft who had stopped overtly haranguing me, but who instead began following me everywhere I went around town. I loved the fact that in the city people only knew what I chose to share about myself and didn’t know everything about me before I even opened my mouth.

  And yet here I was, back in Little Town again, willingly tongue-kissing a Bycraft boy and letting him put his hand up my top. It was funny how life worked out sometimes.

  “Jakey, no!” I said firmly, pushing him away as his hands wandered under my skirt. “We can make up for it tomorrow night when the Sarge is gone. But not tonight.”

  He swore under his breath and looked down at his jeans, which were bulging unmistakably at the front. “And what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Sorry, honey,” I giggled regretfully, looking down as well. “A cold shower?”

  He squirmed, hands on his crotch, trying to rearrange everything more comfortably, grumbling all the while under his breath.

  I watched him for a moment, my nose screwed up. “I’m glad I’m a woman without all those messy dangly bits,” I laughed, and leaving him grappling with himself, I went into the living room and flopped down on the lounge, yawning. Having sorted everything out to his satisfaction, Jake threw himself down next to me and put his arm around me, pulling me close to him.

  “If you’re not going to make sweet music with me in the bedroom, then let’s make it somewhere else,” he suggested, grinning.

  I groaned, knowing what he was referring to. “No, Jakey. Not tonight. I’m too tired.”

  He stood up and pulled me to my feet by my hands. “Come on, lazybones. You’ll never improve if you don’t keep practising.”

  “I do keep practising and I never improve,” I moaned, but let him lead me by the hand out of the lounge room to the dining room that we never ate in, always taking our meals at the kitchen table. Instead, I’d converted it into a music room and it was where our old upright piano was located as well as a couple of guitars that belonged to Jake. He was a skilled guitarist. I, on the other hand, was absolute rubbish at it, but he persisted in trying to teach me to play. Currently, we were concentrating on the bass guitar, which I was failing miserably to master.

  “Okay, we’ll try ‘Walking on the Moon’ again,” he instructed, slinging his guitar’s strap over his shoulder, referring to the Police song he’d been trying to teach me for weeks. It had an easy little bass riff that Jake was convinced I could learn to play. So far, I wasn’t proving him right.

  “It’s too fast for me,” I complained, reluctantly picking up the bass guitar.

  “Babe. It’s the slowest music I could find. Give it another try,” he coaxed with a winning smile.

  I couldn’t resist that, so I gave it another try, then another and then another, Jake growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of competence. On my fourth attempt I stuffed up the beginning again, too slow to come in.

  “Concentrate.”

  “I am!” I snapped back at him, ready to quit.

  “One more time,” he demanded.

  I managed to get my timing right on the fifth attempt, but then hit the wrong strings, making Jake cringe. We sure weren’t making beautiful music together tonight. I looked up at that point and noticed both Dad and the Sarge crowding the doorway, watching us. Oh great, I thought crossly, an unwanted audience to my utter humiliation.

  “How did that sound?” I asked them hopefully when we’d finished, not really wanting to hear their responses.

  “Terrible,” replied Dad honestly.

  The Sarge agreed. “Cacophonous.”

  Jake glanced over at me. “Is that good?” he asked, uncertain.

  I laughed, my humour restored. “No, Jakey, that’s not good. He means we, or me at least, sound bloody awful. And he’s right.”

  “Enough for tonight then,” he decided, and gratefully
I placed the guitar back on its stand, taking a seat at the piano instead. I lifted the lid and started playing the introduction to a song that Jake and I both loved. I stopped suddenly, noticing him about to join in on the guitar. I grabbed the tambourine off the top of the piano and twisted on the seat, holding it out to Dad, smiling.

  “Feel like a song, Dad?” I asked him, shaking the tambourine temptingly. He smiled back as he took it from me. Jake and I communicated with our eyes and started playing together, Dad giving us a bit of beat with the tambourine. We’d all played this song together a hundred times before, slipping easily into its lovely rhythm. I sang the lyrics, with Jake and Dad, who both had pleasing voices, joining in with the chorus. We ended with a flourish.

  The Sarge gave us a polite clap. “I hadn’t realised I’d stumbled upon a modern day Partridge Family,” he said dryly. “What a beautiful song that was. I’m not familiar with it.”

  Jake answered. “It’s ‘Green’ by Alex Lloyd. One of Tessie’s and my favourites.” We smiled at each other. I had been playing it on my small bedroom stereo when we had first slept together.

  The Sarge’s deep blue eyes regarded us all thoughtfully one by one, before resting on me. “You have a lovely voice, Tess. And you certainly play the piano much better than you do the guitar.” A faint smile took the sting out of his words.

  “Tessie didn’t have much choice in the matter,” laughed Dad. “My mother was a singing and piano teacher. It was lucky for Tessie that she had some natural talent for my mother to build on, otherwise her childhood would have been completely miserable.” The Sarge raised an eyebrow. “My mother was determined to teach her to sing and play to her very exacting standards. My poor little girl had to spend hours learning and practising.”

  “I didn’t mind,” I chided mildly, pulling down the lid on the piano and standing up. “It was a privilege to learn with Nana Fuller. She was very talented.” Not to mention that it was the sole spark of culture in my relentless timetable of schooling and self-defence training. I’d grown up used to a rigorous routine, which was probably why I’d felt at home at the police academy when other more free-living recruits had struggled with the strictness.