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‘And what’s his name?’ Aimee had asked, entering into the spirit of the thing.
‘Hers. Calliope.’
‘Felix and Calliope,’ she said. ‘The sort of names one considers calling one’s children, and then doesn’t dare, in suburban Australia, in case they’re teased at school.’
‘Exactly. Will you come?’
‘I’d love to!’
So here they were, watching Felix and the other birds disporting themselves in the still, greenish, dust-covered water of this pond from their viewpoint on the boardwalk bridge that crossed over it. Felix certainly was a handsome fellow, with his long, salmon-pink legs, lethally curved black bill and green and purple iridescent neck and head. He had a white breast with a black back and belly, and when he spread his wings the big white feathers spread like fingers.
Taronga Park had to be one of the world’s most beautiful zoos. Situated on land that sloped down towards the harbour, amidst a jungle of semi-tropical greenery, it had magnificent views from numerous vantage points, taking in the blue-green water and the constant plying to and fro of sailboats and ferries and ships, the black fretwork of the Harbour Bridge in the distance, and that other landmark which could have been a clipper ship in full rig but was, in fact, the Opera House.
‘Almost criminal to leave the place to tourists,’ Marshall commented as they crossed the boardwalk bridge and set off in the direction of the reptiles.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Aimee agreed. ‘I haven’t been here since the children were preteens, and that’s too long. Why are locals, in every part of the world, so blasé about the treats that their home town has to offer?’
‘Inertia?’ he suggested. ‘Our senses and our imaginations get dulled by the daily routine. It’s something I decided to teach myself after Joy’s death…Oh, it’s trite when you say it, but true on a level I didn’t understand before I’d felt that grief. To strive to live each day, not merely exist. I brought some cousins from England here several years ago, and that’s when I decided to get involved with the place.’
‘Zoos need people like you,’ she told him. ‘I’m afraid I…do coast a bit perhaps. I have my garden, the children and now my work. But nothing else that I’m really energetic about, or committed to.’
‘Nonsense, Aimee!’ he said. ‘You seem like one of the most alive people I know, not openly passionate about things like my daughter is, bless her, but game for whatever comes your way—like the skiing on the weekend. And you’re thoughtful, perceptive—’
‘Stop!’ she protested. ‘I wasn’t fishing for that.’
‘I know you weren’t,’ he said, a little gruffly, ‘but I wanted to say it all the same.’
He looked across at her, a fresh sea breeze ruffling his hair for a moment before they passed into the interior display of reptiles, and she couldn’t miss the heat in his expression. It made her insides dissolve like melting chocolate to realise that he was happy to show what he felt this way.
She let her own gaze linger on features that were starting to be so familiar and important. His blue eyes with the laugh lines at their corners. A straight line of a mouth that could curve to express so many subtle nuances of humour and opinion—quizzical interest, amused irony, studious patience.
And then he slipped his hand into hers and all she could think about was that, the smooth touch of his palm engulfing her fingers, his shoulder nudging hers as they walked and the dry, pleasant timbre of his English voice.
They stayed at the zoo for nearly three hours, then he dropped her home to change, picking her up again an hour and a half later to take her to dinner. They’d arranged this meal at one of Sydney’s most exclusive harbour-side restaurants more than three weeks ago, before Marshall had even suggested the skiing trip that had taken place last weekend.
Thinking back to the cautious way Marshall had explained, back at the beginning of the month, that the booking for the restaurant needed to be made well in advance for a Friday night, Aimee marvelled at how far their connection to each other had advanced in so short a time.
Then he hadn’t been certain that they’d both still want an intimate dinner like this three weeks into the future. Now she felt a rich wash of pleasure just at being with him like this, loving the way he shared his feelings about the working week…and even the way he brazenly stole one of her oysters fifteen minutes later when their appetisers arrived. He would never have done that—and he wouldn’t have grinned like a little boy as he’d done it—if they hadn’t felt so right in each other’s company.
It was a magic, sophisticated evening after the frivolity of their trip to the zoo. He wore grey—a dark grey suit, with a steel-grey shirt and tie, simply cut but with a quiet distinction of style that could only have come from one of Sydney’s best men’s outfitters.
She loved dressing up for him, matching his subtle elegance, wearing clingy, simply cut black, with her pale, silvery hair folded and pinned high on her head. She’d had to ransack her jewellery box for things she hadn’t needed—or bothered…to wear for years. A necklace of silver and garnets which had belonged to her grandmother. Matching earrings. A bracelet engraved with a subtle, filigree design.
Over dessert and the last of the white wine, Marsh started playing with the bracelet, rolling it around her wrist with his finger so that she could feel the warmth of his skin against hers. It made her want more—more of his touch and his company, more of his conversation, which had all the seasoning of a mature man’s knowledge and experience, yet none of the rigidity and complacency that some of her women friends complained of in their husbands and which Alan had started to display when he’d reached his late fifties.
Perhaps it was because Marshall had been widowed while still in his thirties. His two children had been his closest companions, closest to his heart, and he’d retained their vigour and freshness of outlook. He’d said something about that time in his life that afternoon—that it had been Joy’s death which had taught him how to live.
His own thoughts had been travelling along a sober path as well.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier today, at the zoo, about sacrifice,’ he said, as their dessert plates were taken away, and she was pleased that he’d remembered their conversation so clearly and had thought it important enough to mull over.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re right,’ he told her. ‘Looking back on my experience, sacrifice is more common when there’s a change or a crisis involving people who care about each other. Knowing how her daughter feels, I wonder if Mrs Deutschkron will do what she thinks is best for herself, or what she thinks is best for Marianne.’
‘You won’t try to influence how she decides?’
‘I hope not. It’s hard. A doctor has to try to present the options in a neutral, factual way so that it truly is the patient’s decision. But if you do know your own opinion, it’s sometimes almost impossible not to let that colour the way you talk about it.’
‘And do you have an opinion in this case?’
Marshall sighed, and let his fingers trail down to rest across the back of her hand. She felt his heat begin to rise all the way up her arm. ‘I’d be inclined to say, “Leave it, and enjoy the time you have left”, but if she decides otherwise, I’ll do everything I can to help her retain her quality of life during the treatment and afterwards, as will her oncologist, of course.’
‘It sounds as if that’s all you can do.’
‘Yes, and I’m sorry we’re still taking about it.’
‘Not still. Again. We haven’t talked about it for hours. And it’s fine, Marsh. I’d hate to think you’d edit your conversation out of a desire to spare me,’ she told him, meaning it.
‘Making sacrifices of your own?’ he teased. ‘Putting up with me to that extent?’
‘It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it!’
They both laughed.
Outside her house, half an hour later, he left the engine of his car running. Listening to its subtle purr, Aimee began to shape her mouth into a polite thank you, before an equally polite goodnight. Then she rebelled. That wasn’t what she wanted. Not tonight, after the deepening connection created by the time they’d spent together. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and the weekend lay ahead.
‘Turn it off, Marsh, please,’ she begged him boldly. ‘I’d like you to come in.’
‘Would you?’ A light flared in his eyes, and there was a little catch in his voice.
‘We didn’t have coffee at the restaurant,’ she hedged, her courage already slipping. ‘We could talk a bit more, and—’
But he hadn’t heard this last part. The engine was off. He’d opened his door. He was through it, out of the car and bouncing onto his feet. Oh, heavens! Her heart started to beat faster and she was battling to suppress her grin of relief and pleasure. Courage? If she didn’t have it, he certainly did!
He’d wanted her to say that! Wanted it rather badly, if the swiftness of his response was any guide. And he didn’t care that she knew it.
Aimee was laughing as she got out, coming round the front of his streamlined car. And she was planning to say something clever and tender, like there was no point in his getting to the front door first because she had the key, but he didn’t give her the chance to say anything at all.
Instead, he turned suddenly and she cannoned into his mouth, then felt his arms wrapping her in a hug like a huge, friendly bear. She’d never known a kiss to get off to such a flying start, and for the first half-minute of it she was still laughing. Laughing against his lips, then with her head thrown back as he made a trail of moist fire from the edge of her jaw to the top of her collar-bone.
‘What’s funny?’ he growled, pulling off his glasses and sticking them heedlessly in his hip pocket, then glowering at her.
‘You’re so good at this!’
‘I should hope so,’ he growled again, and came back to her mouth for more. Much more. A hungry devouring of her that was so decisive it made her limbs as weak as water. ‘Admittedly, I haven’t been practising lately, but—’
She laughed again, and he frowned. ‘No, seriously, Aimee, is there something that—?’
‘Seriously,’ she whispered, ‘I think this is what’s known as being swept off my feet, Marshall. One minute I’m walking around your car in a very sedate manner, and the next I’m…’ She took in a slightly ragged breath, unable to describe it. ‘And it’s fabulous.’
‘Oh, it is, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Aimee, I don’t think that…well, that my feet are any closer to the ground than yours are.’
Marshall laughed, a rich, full sound from deep in his diaphragm, and shook his head, his brow slightly furrowed in bemusement as if he couldn’t quite believe that those words of confession had come from his own mouth. Then his lips claimed hers hungrily and fiercely once more, and his hands cupped the curve of her behind, sliding the silky fabric of her dress upwards.
‘Shall we go in?’ she said breathlessly.
‘If you can hold the key steady enough to get it into the lock,’ he answered. ‘I’m not sure that I could!’
She managed it, with his hand still roaming her back and his impatience and eagerness sounding clearly in the rhythm of his breathing. As soon as they were both through the front door, he kicked it shut behind him and engulfed her with his touch once more, turning her mouth into a swollen, tingling mass of nerve endings and her breasts into two aching buds and her insides to sweet, warm jelly.
‘We talked about coffee,’ she almost gasped at him. The words hardly made sense, barely escaped from her lips in recognisable form.
‘I don’t want it,’ he said, still painting her mouth with heat and pressure. A moment later he apparently thought better of the shameless response. ‘That is…’
He stopped and schooled his voice and his expression. Again, she almost laughed. It was the worst performance of upright social manners she’d ever seen!
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice burred with effort. ‘Coffee. Of course. That’s why you invited me in, isn’t it?’
‘It needn’t be. It wasn’t really. Actually, it was the furthest thing from my mind,’ she said in a low voice, hearing her own words with a stab of shock.
It was impossible to pretend. Her meaning was obvious to both of them, and she hadn’t stopped for a moment to think about what she was offering, and why.
Her body. Her bed. Why not? She was a grown, experienced woman, confident in her judgement of character and of her own feelings, and he was her male counterpart. There was no one to disapprove, no one to hurt, few physical risks.
She knew enough of him and his history to be certain that if he’d had a lover since his wife’s death thirteen years ago—and somehow, she doubted he had—then it would have been a woman much like herself, careful in such matters, not someone who slept around.
‘What are you saying, Aimee?’ Marshall demanded softly.
He knew. Of course he did. But she understood that he wanted to make sure that she meant it, and she loved that chivalrous quality in him. He was old-fashioned enough to want to protect a woman from any regret she might feel after the event at having let her body dictate the pace.
But she was old-fashioned enough to blush at the idea of putting it into words. ‘Don’t make me say it,’ she murmured, her eyes wide and honest. ‘Just…just take it, Marshall.’
‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘Did you plan this?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
Marshall saw the sudden doubt and questioning in her eyes at once, and understood the new feeling.
‘Does that make it…less appealing to you?’ she said to him hesitantly. ‘Would you have preferred me to—I mean, it’s not as if we have to think about—’
‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously, his mind leaping ahead once again to understand her meaning. ‘No, Aimee! Nothing could make you…this…less appealing. And the fact that it was an impulse on your part, and so strong…’
‘Then isn’t that enough?’ she said. ‘There’s no reason in the world why this shouldn’t happen, and every reason why it should. That’s more than enough for me.’
‘And for me,’ he whispered, and kept on kissing her with an intensity that made both of them tremble, all the way along the corridor to her bedroom.
When they reached her bed, their need reined itself in a little, overtaken by ‘first-night nerves’ that he wasn’t afraid to admit to.
‘If you hear a squeaking sound in a moment, don’t worry,’ he said to her in a low voice, still holding her close. ‘It’ll only be the rust.’
She understood at once, and answered, ‘I can hear it already, only it’s coming from me. Marsh, I’m not—I’ve never—’
‘Let’s make some rules,’ he suggested, lacing his fingers in the small of her back as he held her more loosely.
‘Rules?’
‘Let’s not talk about the past, what we have and haven’t done or felt, and how long since we’ve felt it.’ He made a trail of tiny kisses from her forehead to her ear. ‘Let’s not put any pressure on ourselves or each other to succeed in some Hollywood version of this. We’ve succeeded already.’ His lips brushed her mouth. ‘Everything that happens from this minute on is just a bonus. That means we can take it at whatever pace we want to and that, whatever happens, it’s safe.’
‘Safe…’ she echoed.
‘I know what you’re entrusting to me, Aimee. You know I’m going to look after it with all the care and tenderness it deserves. And what I’m entrusting with you is just as fragile.’
‘Oh…yes. Thank you, Marsh. Thank you for saying it.’
She buried her face in the warmth of his neck for a moment, and heard a rumble of laughter from him, a mixture of relief and happiness and triumph, and she was so astonished and almost disbelieving that she’d managed to find a man like this that she had to pull away and simply look at him, laughing, too, at first until the magic between them made both their faces still.
In the silvery light that seeped into the room through the half-open curtains, his expression was serious and searching, and the lines of experience on his skin were softened so that the strong bone structure beneath was more apparent. The attraction between them was like a measurable force. It ought to have some sort of a scientific scale, she thought vaguely, like earthquakes did, and electricity. Volts or hector-pascals.
It seemed incredible that an attraction like this should be accompanied by such a sense of certainty and peace. On one level, she was a wild cauldron of feeling, but on another, at the centre of her being, there was calm, and those first-night nerves were ebbing by the minute.
Marshall had started to undress her now, with a tender reverence that had her breathing in little flutters as she held herself completely still so that she didn’t miss so much as a moment of sensation. Wanting to touch and explore his skin, she slid his jacket from his shoulders and began to unfasten his steel-grey shirt, then loosened his tie and started on the shirt buttons.
When they stood naked together, he whispered, ‘You’re beautiful.’
She didn’t try to deny it because she was too busy thinking the same about him. The texture of hair on skin, the taste of him, the smell of him…
They sat on the bed and he kissed her again, touched her in places that made her shudder, took his hands away when it became a little too intense and simply held her until she was ready to go further. Even when they were lying together, entwined beneath the sheets, and neither of them could breathe without making a jagged pattern of sound in the air, he was still able to pause, wait, let her become accustomed to the intimacy of it before they took another step.
Aimee hadn’t known it could be like this, that each step could be so thoroughly savoured, like an endless banquet of tiny, exquisitely served courses. She hadn’t known a man could possess such patience, pitted against such sensual need. She hadn’t known that she could lie in his arms afterwards, sated and replete yet still wanting more.
It was the longest, slowest, sweetest and, in the end, most passionate night of love-making she’d ever had.
CHAPTER THREE
‘AIMEE, it’s Peter,’ said her brother on the phone the next morning.
‘Hello, Pete,’ she said, pleased to hear his voice but self-conscious as well. Was it possible that she sounded like a woman who’d enjoyed a tumultuous first night of love-making with her new lover? Undoubtedly! She was still in her nightdress, and her hair was threading loose from the plait she’d hastily woven it into at about midnight last night. Midnight? Maybe later…
Long, silky hair could be a sensual tool. It could be swept teasingly across a man’s chest or provide a cool waterfall for him to run his fingers through. It could also get in the way, hence the hasty plait, but Marshall had openly enjoyed the sight of her sitting up in bed, her torso bared as she efficiently braided the long strands in the soft glow of a single bedside lamp to show her what she was doing.
They hadn’t slept until after the early hours, and her voice on the phone was now lazy and croaky with late sleep and sensual relaxation.
‘Can I come round this morning? Are you free?’ Peter wanted to know.
‘Yes, I am, actually.’
Unfortunately, she could have added, but didn’t. Marshall was on call this weekend, and had had to leave half an hour ago to see a patient at Burradoo Nursing Home who’d fallen and torn the fragile skin along her calf. They hadn’t had time to eat breakfast together, although he’d taken her in his arms in that same imperious, joyous way he’d held her last night, and she’d responded in the same way.
‘I really have to get home after I’ve seen Mrs Bacon,’ he’d said, regret screwing up his face. ‘I’m having the upstairs bathroom redone. The shower’s been leaking and I haven’t been able to use it for a month. I hate baths! There are two contractors coming round this morning to give me quotes for the job. Can I ring you later?’
‘You don’t need to ask, Marshall,’ she’d told him.
And she’d known her eyes had been glowing as she’d said it. He hadn’t seemed to mind. But now he’d gone, and the house felt solitary and just a tiny bit accusatory, too.
What did you do? the quiet rooms seemed to be saying. You didn’t think about it very much, did you? And he’s left his glasses behind…
‘Or I could make it later,’ she heard, and realised she’d missed the first half of Peter’s sentence and possibly another sentence or two before that.
‘Whenever you like,’ she promised vaguely. ‘It’s fine, Peter.’
‘I’ll be straight round, then.’
‘See you soon,’ she answered automatically, and it only struck her after she’d put down the phone that Peter had sounded tense, agitated.
Or was that her guilty imagination?
She had no need to feel guilty, she told herself, as she put Marshall’s glasses carefully in her bag and washed up the evidence of the early morning cup of tea they’d shared. No need at all. It hadn’t been a one-night stand. It had been a beginning, important and meaningful.
Not knowing if Peter had eaten yet—it was only nine o’clock, she saw with some surprise—she began to get out some Saturday brunch things. He’d probably like eggs and bacon. Perhaps a crumpet. Coffee, of course.
Thinking about it, she was surprised he’d phoned so early on a weekend. It was unusual. Could something be wrong? Her breathing suddenly shallower, she ran through the possibilities in her mind. Their parents, Douglas and Dorothy Brent, had retired fifteen years ago to Queensland. Dad was eighty now, and Mum was seventy-six, but if there was bad news from them she wouldn’t have heard it like this, with Pete ringing to ask with a cryptic edge to his voice if he could come round.
Similarly, if there’d been an accident to any member of his family—his wife Annette and their two school-age children, Cameron and Alethea—he’d have said it straight out and not wasted time making the traffic-filled journey from Strathfield.
Yet, focusing on their conversation properly at last instead of on her vividly physical memories of Marshall and the night they’d just shared, she became more and more convinced that this wasn’t just a social visit.
At forty-five, Peter was five years her junior, and they were close. Good friends, she’d have said. She trusted him, loved him, respected him, and was very fond of his family. But they were both busy enough that casual Saturday morning visits to each other, just popping in for a chat and a cuppa, didn’t happen.
He had something to tell her. She was sure of it now, and as she showered and dressed and finished the preparations for breakfast, she couldn’t help feverishly and fruitlessly running through the possibilities.
When he arrived to find her rearranging the napkins on the table on the front terrace for the third time, she’d steeled herself to hear what she was now certain the news had to be. He and Annette were getting a divorce…
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