Love: Classified (9 page)

     “You’re even worse than me when it comes to food,” I chuckled.

     “Let’s find some fish and chips.”

    
We walked along the sand towards a jetty with a shop at the end. He picked up a flat pebble and skimmed it expertly along the water’s surface where it bounced three times. I picked up another and flicked my wrist to make it jump four times before it sank.

     Magnus whistled. “Where’d
you learn to do that?”

     “Growing up in a small country town where there wasn’t much else to do.”

     “That’s where I mastered pebble flinging, too.”

     We walked another few steps and he said, gri
nning,” See, that’s another thing we have in common. And we haven’t started yet.”

     I couldn’t help but smile back, but I did resist the urge to brush the thick fringe of shining brown hair back from his eyes.

     We ate the fish and chips out of the paper, dangling our legs over the water under the pier. Magnus acted like a kid, holding up the last few chips for the seagulls to snatch from his fingers.

     “When I was a little kid, my only friends were dogs, cats and our cage birds,” he said.

     “I find that hard to believe.”

     “We were dirt poor. My father sold farm manure to city gardeners for a living
. Usually I walked to school but sometimes he drove me there in the truck with the manure in sacks on the tray and I was sure I stank of it. Then a relative we’d never met died and left Dad, who was his nephew and only heir, a big sum of money. We couldn’t believe our luck. Dad bought a small farm and I was slowly accepted by my classmates after that.”

    
“And then you went to university,” I prompted, remembering him telling me that he couldn’t interrupt his uni-mates’ television-viewing.

     “Yeah,” he said, dropping his gaze as if this was a taboo subject.

    
He probably doesn’t want to tell me his profession,
I thought. There seemed a lot he wasn’t telling me, but I was uncharacteristically unconcerned. After all, by his own admission he was reeling from recent events. I hoped that maybe in time he’d confide in me.

     We shared lemon-and-lime-flavoured mineral water,
both drinking from the same bottle. I loved letting my lips circle the warm bottle where his had been. His lips were luscious and full with a pronounced indent over the top one and a dimple in the square chin under the bottom one. They were eminently kissable, as many lucky women, and one in particular – his wife – would know only too well. But I put her and their son out of my mind and concentrated on how thrilling it was to be doing this intimate bottle-sharing with him.

     Watching the afternoon sunlight dance on the water, however, reality kept swamping my thoughts and I began to imagine the women he’d dated. He was perhaps in his early forties and would have been a devastatingly handsome young man, although I preferred him at his present age, with a few grey strands at his temples and laugh-lines around his mouth.
He seemed wise and experienced – and I was, as I’ve said, a virgin. Many beautiful women would have been – and would still be – drawn to him.

     “Penny for your thoughts,” he whispered, leaning so close I smelt
– again – the clean, male scent of him.

     I blushed to the roots of my hair and spluttered, “Ah…er…I…”

     He smiled. “Forgive me. I have no right to pry into your private musings. I was intrigued, though, by the look on your face. When you relax, you are extraordinarily lovely. Wistful. Soft.I want very much to kiss you, Virginia. Would you let me?”

     I gulped, unable to believe my ears. How could I tell him I’d never been kissed? That I had no idea what my mouth was supposed to do
? That he must need thick glasses, if he found me attractive.

     “Is that a no?” he asked, in that thick voice that made me worry about his health.

     When I looked up, he wiped the tears off my cheeks with his fingers and licked their tips. “You’re unlike any woman I’ve known.”

     “You can say that again,” I said bitterly.

     “No, no, not in a negative way. In the best way.” He looked away and said abruptly, “We should go back to your place, plan tomorrow and then I’ll go home and throw some tee-shirts, a spare pair of jeans and a jumper into a backpack.”

     “Okay,” I agreed, suddenly excited. My unhappiness had evaporated. Unless all this turned out to be an amazing daydream I’d be on the road tomorrow with Magnus Winchester after only one more lonely night. “I feel like a kid!” I laughed.

     “That’s good,” he remarked, getting to his feet and helping me up to guide me down the rickety steps. “I was worried you might be regretting all this.”

     “No way,” I said buoyantly.

I woke in the middle of the night, gripped by a fever of fear.
What on earth was I doing? My small suitcase lay open at the foot of my bed, the new jewel-coloured clothes folded inside. Jake was armed with an array of tins of cat food and dry biscuits for Barney and sacks of chicken pellets for the girls. I’d visited Josie once more and reassured myself that she was okay. And me, almost middle-aged virginal Virginia Brook was off in a Kombi van with a divine-looking stranger about whom I knew little more than his name.

     What was the alternative? To stay home alone for the next three months?
To have to admit to Peta that I had less gumption than a pussy cat? To answer my colleagues’ well-meaning questions about my holiday when I returned to work in April with:
Oh I had a great time. I read lots of books, saw heaps of movies, went on Facebook every day to talk to you guys and cleaned out all my cupboards three times.
Oh no,
I’d add,
I didn’t cook at all. I was much too busy for that. Instead of eating healthy food, and lots and lots of it as I usually do, over my break I ate lots and lots of junk food instead because I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to spend time in the kitchen.
Worse than facing Peta and my lovely work mates I’d have to admit to myself, the sternest judge of all, that I was a failure as a human being. That I’d been granted this long stretch of paid leave during the most glorious season of the year and had squandered it.

     I realised I had no choice. I owed it to myself to have an adventure, whatever the consequences. But then I imagined lying on the floor of Matilda on one of the two ma
ttresses, Magnus on the other. What if I reached out for him in my sleep, betraying what I felt about him? He’d be repelled and I’d risk dying of embarrassment unless I could come up with some excuse.
Sorry Magnus, I thought I was at home and Barney had jumped onto my bed for a cuddle.
Would he buy that? He’d have to.

     Eventually I turned over
and fell into a deep refreshing sleep. I woke at dawn, showered, dressed, fussed over Barney and the chooks and watered the garden, all before I heard the sound of Matilda rumbling to a halt in the driveway. I threw open the front door to let Magnus in.

     “I’ve brought honey, banana and
walnut muffins,” he said. “Shall we eat here, or find somewhere to stop later on?”

     “Let’s hit the road,” I heard myself saying. I was eager for the idyll – or the disaster – to begin. “I’ve made two thermoses of tea and coffee and Jake’s packed a mountain of food for us, perishable and otherwise. Just give me a minute while I load it into Matilda.”

     Magnus helped and soon, having cuddled Barney once more, we were off, stopping briefly to wish Jake well and ask him to send Josie my love. We’d agreed to leave our mobile phones behind and forget about the 21
st
century for a while and climbing into the Kombi without it certainly gave me an unexpected sense of freedom.

     The radio was on and before we knew it we were out of the city, heading for the Darling Scarp,
the ridge of foothills that edge Perth’s eastern suburbs. My throat was almost sore from joining Magnus in loud accompaniments to most of the Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkel and the Carpenters. Beyond the hills lay the bush. It was mild for January and Magnus asked if we should take advantage of the perfect weather by having a picnic breakfast in the forest. I agreed and he slowed the van so we could look for a good place to stop.

     Soon I spotted one not far off the highway. We got out of Matilda and walked to a wooden table and benches set in a c
learing amidst towering gum trees. A newspaper, weighted down with a stone, fluttered on the table-top. Its print was fading and its pages yellowing and I took little notice of it, but Magnus whisked it up quickly and rammed it into a rubbish bin, his face suddenly white.

    “Are you okay?” I asked, remembering Josie’s words. “You look exhausted. Shall I take over the driving for a while?”

     “I’m fine,” he said gruffly, sitting heavily and gulping coffee. “I need something in my stomach, that’s all.”

     I noticed, however, that he only picked at the muffin, leaving most of it for the crows and magpies that crowded around us.
His pallor made me want to take him into my arms and cuddle him but I knew that would make him feel worse than he already was.

     He was very quiet for most of the way to
York until I pointed out a picturesque ruined building about a kilometre from the town. He seemed as inquisitive about it as me and stopped Matilda for us to get out again. Half-hidden by overgrown vines, straggling almond trees and climbing roses, the place had probably been a small wayside inn for the mail coach a century ago. The remains of the hand-made bricks showed through the leaf-litter on the ground and a few big chimney stones still stood in place amongst them. Several flat stones, once the fireplace, made a good place for us to sit in what was a fragrant bower as the rose bush had produced a few perfumed yellow blooms around which bees hummed and ladybirds explored. After the bone-shaking, noisy ride in the Kombi I was glad of somewhere serene to sit and was entranced by the unexpected beauty of our hideaway.

     “I think this place is a good omen,” Magnus
commented, sipping another mug of coffee thoughtfully.

     “What do you mean?” I was thrilled that he seemed to like it
. In this shady place he seemed to have regained his composure.

     “I mean the fact that you found this beautiful place when we’ve only been on the road for a few hours has good implications for our holiday.”

     “I’ll drink to that,” I laughed, clinking my mug against his.

     He stared into the coffee before saying dreamily, “
There was a place a bit like this on our farm when I was a kid. It was an original stone farmstead built by a pioneer and not much of it remained. There was a fruit tree, but no vines or anything, and I spent hours there, imagining what it would’ve been like to be that pioneer, or even a trooper or a bushranger. I’d forgotten all about it until just now, when you knocked your mug against mine.”

     He looked up and our eyes met. “There I was, rambling on. Sorry,” he said.

     “No, go on. I was enjoying it.”

     “My wife
, Vanessa, used to hate me reminiscing about my rural childhood. But this place, and you, are bringing some of it back. My best mate, Huw Davis, stole a couple of bottles of beer one afternoon. We sat in the old ruin, knocked the tops off, and he clinked his against mine before we each took a swig. But it wasn’t beer at all. It turned out to be the fabulous tomato ragout his Italian neighbours made every summer and poured into brown beer bottles.” He grinned. “Not that we thought it was fabulous when we were twelve years old. We spat it out in disgust.”

     He looked at me with those shining brown eyes and
I silently rejoiced at his words
, My wife used to hate me reminiscing about my rural childhood
. He’d used the word
wife
in the past tense and if she hadn’t liked him talking about growing up in the country, then there must be something cold and snobbish about her. I said breezily, “I could really do something with a place like this,” trying my best to ignore the cloud of butterflies fluttering inside me. 

   “I bet you could. I like the way you’ve brought your house to life.
I must admit I’ve done some research on you. I don’t read magazines, in print or online, but even I was impressed by your work.”

     “I can’t imagine you reading about how to update a room with a selection of cushions,” I giggled.

     “Maybe not, but I liked the way your e-zine looked.”

      We sipped our coffee watching the bees and the beautiful roses against the bright blue of the sky and he said jokingly in a television reporter’s voice, his hand a pretend microphone, “What would you do, Ms
Brook, if you were asked to transform this charming pile of rubble into a home?”

     I laughed and pulled his cupped hand close to my mouth. “Well,” I began,
in a terrible mimic of a well-known DIY presenter, trembling inside because of his nearness, “I’d bring the outside in. After all, that rose is just too divine. I’d have glass walls, a massive pergola for the vine, and I’d make a feature of this wonderful, tortured-looking tree.”