Payback Ch. 03

'It was embarrassing,' Auntie Rose clarified. 'Once upon a time boys their age went walkabout. You know what that is?' she asked Ciaran.

'A bushwalk?' Ciaran guessed, because although 'walkabout' was part of most of white Australia's lexicon, none of us actually seemed to know where the term really originated.

'No,' Auntie Rose corrected. 'It's the time where a young, Aboriginal male would live separately from his tribe and learn to be self sufficient. It was about transitioning from boy to man.' She snorted suddenly. 'Now these same boys, who two hundred years ago could shelter, feed and clothe themselves, can't get back to shore without a tow from a big boat.'

Ciaran laughed. 'I think we've all got a bit useless as technology's increased.'

Rose snorted. 'They were lucky; Helen's mother bought them a new motor for Christmas.'

Ciaran turned to me. 'Is the boat still seaworthy?'

I shrugged. 'I have no idea. It's been sitting in the shed for the past few years. It's not registered or insured any more. Would you like to have a look?'

'Sure,' he agreed.

The kids, Rose, Ciaran and I went to the back shed, opened the doors and took the tarps off the boat. Ciaran and the kids were intrigued, but I just felt a wave of emotion at the memories of the boys going fishing.

'It's a Mercury engine,' Ciaran remarked.

I nodded. My mother, over the years, had softened towards Angus. I don't think she'd known how to show her love, though, and when she was diagnosed as terminal and her life insurance paid out, she spent two thousand dollars on the outboard motor. It had shocked all of us, but Mum had just shrugged tightly and said it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing, though. It was an extremely thoughtful and well received present, one which gave my foster sons and their friends a leisure activity which cost them next to nothing, and presented very little danger or risk. They never needed another tow, never came home late, never once got themselves into trouble with that boat.

I'd gone fishing with Raf and Beau and one of their friends once. I'd read a Mills and Boon romance that I'd found wedged into a crevice and in between turning the pages I'd watched them fish, barefoot and bare chested, windburned and sunburnt. They boys laughed as they reeled in whiting, the sun shining off their teeth and the scales of the flapping fish.

Rose peered curiously at the interior of the boat while I stood stock still at the edge of the shed, unable to move. Jesus fucking Christ, I whispered to myself. My mother was dead, Raf was dead, Beau was dead, Angus was dead. And this boat, somehow, was the culmination of all of their lives. I turned away and walked into the garden.

I heard someone knocking on the front door and went to see who it was. It was Angus' sister, come to collect her Mum.

'Come out the back,' I told her. 'She's meeting Ciaran.'

'Ciaran?'

'This guy I'm kind of seeing,' I admitted.

'Oh, the whitefella.' She grinned. 'That's what Mum calls him.' She wrinkled her nose. 'I smell cooking. Has Mum been baking?'

'Shit, the biscuits,' I swore. 'Come in.'

The biscuits were mercifully perfectly cooked. I grabbed a tea towel and pulled them from the oven just as Rose came inside. Ciaran and the kids were still out the back at the shed.

'I was wondering how the biscuits were doing,' Rose remarked.

'They're perfect.'

'We should have a bickie and a cuppa with the kids and your whitefella,' Auntie Rose remarked. 'They're all looking keen to get that boat on the water. Leave them alone too long and they'll be planning a trip away.'

When Rose settles herself in with tea and afternoon tea, it's a sign she isn't planning on moving any time soon. Her daughter started hinting at her that they might want to leave an hour after she arrived, but it took a further hour and a half before Rose finally made it into her daughter's car. By this point my former mother-in-law had well and truly got to know Ciaran, and I knew that in a day or two's time, she'd contact me to give me her assessment.

Ciaran didn't not notice that he'd been interrogated.

'Well,' he remarked as the two women drove off. 'I guess that teaches me to ring before coming around.'

I elbowed him gently in the ribs. 'I guess it does.'

He put his arm around me and kissed my cheek. 'Sorry. I missed you.'

My skin tingled. It's hard to explain how surreal it is to try and have a relationship with someone who's gone for weeks at a time. The lack of physical contact, and in-person conversations, is a difficult thing to deal with.

'I missed you, too,' I replied.

'Did you?' he asked curiously.

'Of course.' I leant into him. 'It's just weird to see you again. Sometimes I forget that you exist when you're not here.'

The kids were outside with us. Noah and Pearl were picking the flowers out of the front garden but Will had stopped playing with them when he'd seen Ciaran and I talking. He walked over, a fronwon his face.

'Why are you hugging him?' Will asked me. 'My mother's back. Dad doesn't need a girlfriend.'

I pulled away from Ciaran guiltily.

'Your mother's staying with us until she sorts out her accommodation,' Ciaran corrected his son. 'She and I aren't a couple, buddy. She's free to see other people and so am I.'

'That's not true,' Will said.

'Yes,' Ciaran said. 'It is.'

'You told everyone Helen was just a friend,' Will continued. 'You said you were coming around because Noah and Pearl wanted to play together. Mum believed you.'

Ciaran flushed slightly and I realised Will was telling the truth. My stomach churned.

'Take the kids inside,' Ciaran told Will. 'I'll talk to you later.'

Will's eyes were brimming with resentment.

'Now,' Ciaran said. 'Go inside now.'

Will shook his head ever-so-slightly at me, before collecting the younger kids and taking them inside.

Ciaran laced his fingers together behind his head and stared up at the sky. Frustration oozed out of every pore, and I felt sorry for him, but also disappointed, because he should never have lied to his son, and he probably shouldn't have told him to go inside. He was entirely disregarding the child's emotions.

On so many occasions Ciaran had expressed how angry he still was at being forced to live with Symantha, but honestly, he needed to man up. I knew it would be hard, but pussy-footing and lying and sneaking around was so much worse in the long run.

From inside the house came the sounds of Will and Noah arguing.

'Fuck,' Ciaran remarked suddenly, tiredly. 'I'm so fucking sick of living. Do you ever feel that way? Not suicidal, but if someone came up and said 'I can make it end', you'd accept?'

'Not anymore. Once upon a time I did.' I wrapped him in a tight hug. 'You need to be up front with those kids.'

'Yeah, I know,' he replied disinterestedly. 'I'm just... sick of arguing. Sick of everything being so hard.'

I leant my head against his shoulders and kissed his neck. He wasn't much taller than me, and I doubted he had more than ten or so kilos on me. I'd described him to Rose as 'skinny' but he wasn't anything of the sort. He merely wasn't fat.

I reached around and patted his bum. Ciaran made a small noise in the back of his throat and began to kiss my forehead. Nuzzling me, really, not kissing me. His hands moved over my back and waist, and when I shifted my head, he took the opportunity to press his lips to mine.

Sometimes, all it takes is a kiss. Sometimes, a kiss is a sign that it's over, that it's not worth the effort, but sometimes a kiss is so sweet and perfect that you realise you have to give a relationship your best shot. As Ciaran and I kissed, I realised I had to be more patient with him, more forgiving. He was struggling, just as I was.

'Baby, I missed you so much,' he muttered, squeezing me tight. 'You once told me that when I go away I can forget about life back home, but let me tell you this; when I'm away, I think about home almost none stop. I think about you, about my kids, and about all the things I want us to do together. The worst feeling in the world is getting off a plane and finding out everything has changed.'

I made a pledge then and there that I'd see this through. There was no pulling out now.

~~~~~~~~~

2012-2014

Raf moved out on Saturday morning. Angus helped him pack up his things and load them into the car. The two men moved quickly and efficiently, and so cooperatively it was almost impossible to believe the events of last night had ever transpired.

By eight am, our first ever foster child got in his old blue sedan and drove off. I had no idea where he was going, and when I asked Angus, my husband just shook his head.

I stared at him helplessly. 'How will I know if he's safe?'

My husband turned to me, his eyes pooling with resentment. 'He never should have moved in with us, and he shouldn't have stayed once he was eighteen. He's an adult.'

'He's Aboriginal. Family is everything.'

'Thank-you for explaining my own culture to me,' Angus replied curtly. 'Maybe if you knew a bit more of it after all these years, you'd understand why he shouldn't have stayed with us.'

'Don't you...' I trailed off, my words dying in my throat when I saw the resentment in Angus's eyes.

I went to our room, slammed the door, and fell onto the bed in a sobbing heap. Angus followed a minute or two later and pulled me into his arms. He gruffly apologised, kissed me, and told me to stop crying. I cried some more, leaving the front of his shirt wet with tears.

'Hez,' he muttered. 'He needed to move out. Last night was just the thing that made it happen.'

'The catalyst.'

'The what?'

'The catalyst. The thing that made it happen.'

'Oh, I see.' He squeezed me tightly. 'See, my problem is that I know why he loves you. I've always loved you, and everyone has always said you were too good for me, but none of the men ever chased you. Raf did. And I'm not sure I can measure up next to him.'

The mere idea that Angus would be intimidated by a twenty year old was preposterous. I giggled through my tears. 'Angus, I love you more than anything, but if you think I'd run off with Raf, or anyone else for that matter, you're very, very wrong.'

'Hez, you're my wife,' he said, kissing the top of my head. 'How'd you feel if Raf was a girl, and she was acting towards me the way Raf acts towards you?'

The thought horrified me. Angus saw the expression on my face and he gave me a small nod.

'Exactly,' he said, not triumphantly, just matter-of-factly. 'Hez, I know you loved him, but he couldn't keep living here, especially not after last night. He told me what he said to you when he saw you naked.'

'Oh.'

Angus grimaced. 'It was really disrespectful.'

'He wasn't in a very respectful mood,' I agreed, thinking back to Raf smirking at Angus.

'No,' Angus said. 'Maybe moving out will teach him some, I dunno, there's a word for it, but I'm not really sure what it is.'

'Humility?'

Angus nodded. 'Yes, that's what he needs to be more of, Hez.'

I appreciated and understood my husband's stance and, while I had my regrets and misgivings about what had transpired, I stood by him.

Not everyone felt similarly, though. News soon got out that Raf had been told to find somewhere else to live, and the gossip grew and festered. Everyone had an opinion. Most of the men supported Angus. They felt he had gone above and beyond what was required, and agreed that Raf was now a man and capable of supporting himself.

Many of the women were concerned about Raf. According to local gossip, after spending a week on a friend's couch Raf had moved in with an indigenous woman called Dani.

'She's bad news, Angus,' Auntie Rose warned. 'She's had three kids taken away from her, and she has no job, no husband, and she drinks. She's thirty-two years old! Old enough to know better.'

'Raf needs to make his own choices,' Angus replied, meeting her eye.

'But young men make stupid choices!' Rose argued.

'I made bad choices before I met Helen, but I came good,' Angus said. 'Too much drinking, the wrong sort of women, I did all that stuff. It's part of growing up.'

'You had your father to pull you into line,' his mother warned. 'Raf doesn't have that.'

Not for the first time, I wondered about Angus' life before I came into it. There had been more than a few hints over the years that he'd been wild, and had good times with loose women, but I'd kindly been spared the specifics. 'He's got you now,' the women would say with finality.

Now it was Angus' time to be firm.

'Raf will be find his feet,' Angus said. 'Leave the topic alone, Mum. He's not moving back in with Helen and me. If you're that keen on him, you live with him.'

'I would, if your father would agree to it!'

'But he doesn't,' Angus replied smoothly. 'Because Dad understands.'

The argument ended. Rose, defeated, simply crossed her arms over her ample chest and stared a hole into her son until he got up and muttered something about talking to his father.

I sat at the kitchen table fiddling with the tablecloth. I desperately missed Raf, and it broke my heart to think he was living with a 'no good woman' as Auntie Rose put it.

I called Raf that week to see how he was faring, but he didn't answer his phone. I left several messages and sent several texts, as well as messaging him on Facebook, but I got nary a peep out of him until I sent one final, desperate text, begging him to at least confirm that he was alive.

'I'm alive,' he texted back. 'Have a good life, and thank-you for everything. I'll never forget you. Love, Raf.'

~~~~~~~~~

Angus, Beau and I got on with life as well we could. For the boys it seemed a simple matter to continue on without Raf, but I keenly grieved the young man and often felt acutely lost without him.

Raf had taken most of his stuff with him when he moved out, but for weeks afterwards I would find random odds and sods. Shirts, books, socks, mail. I'd be dusting and come across an old TAFE workbook of his and all of sudden I'd be dealing with the grief of loss all over again. I continued to clean and tidy his room, and his bed was made with fresh sheets, which I changed weekly, 'just in case'.

Raf must've been gone a good few months when I found the USB stick. Curiosity led me to insert it into my laptop and check the contents. I thought it might have TAFE stuff on it, or photos, or just junk, but that wasn't what I found.

Raf had been writing stories about the two of us, erotic stories. I doubt he'd ever intended to show anyone his work, because intermingled with the tales of lust were random snippets and anecdotes that I suspected related to him. Not all of the revelations were pleasant, hinting as they did to sexual and physical abuse. I started reading two of the short tales but had to stop reading on each occasion. Embarrassment mixed with horror made me yank the USB out and hide it at the back of my underwear drawer. I didn't want to throw it away, but nor could I continue reading.

I tried to forget about him. I tried to pretend the loss I felt was the loss of a mother, even though I knew that wasn't quite true. I tried to believe that with time, I'd forget him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eighteen months after Angus kicked him out, the police came to our house and demanded to speak to Raf. I was the one who answered the door, dressed in my flannelette pyjamas, and I looked them over, trying to sense what this might be about, before telling them Raf wasn't here.

The two officers didn't believe me. They wanted to come in, to 'look around' but I refused. They were here out of desperation, not because they had a valid reason to believe Raf was around, and that both scared and frustrated me. Scared, because I didn't know what Raf might have done, and frustrated, because I was angry at him for not keeping on the straight and narrow.

It's difficult for me to talk objectively about police. Having grown up in the poorer suburbs of Logan I was well accustomed to their expectations that I would be an underachiever, a troublemaker, a nobody. This dismissive attitude, which reeks from their every pore, is confirmed when they open their mouth to demand you show them your train ticket, your ID, or tell them where you're going and who you'll be with.

In my younger years I was irritated by the treatment, but didn't really object. I didn't know I could question what was going on, or rather, that I should. Back when we had Buzz, our little terrier mix, Angus and I were stopped on three separate occasions when we were walking him at night. One evening, the police all but accused us of scouting people and houses to rob. And what did we do? We meekly apologised before heading straight home, as if walking your dog after dinner was something to be ashamed of.

It's difficult to explain to people who haven't walked in our shoes what it's like to be torn between an almighty anger at your young, Aboriginal foster child for getting himself into trouble, and an intense desire to protect them from the police, who you sincerely doubt will do anything that will any way help rehabilitate your charge.

Perhaps I will leave it at this; I have simply seen, heard and experienced too much to have any faith in our police force, and because of this, I was very almost pleased when the boys in blue, defeated, went back to their car.

'Who was at the door?' Angus asked, coming out of the bathroom.

'The cops,' I replied. 'They're after Raf.'

'For?'

'I don't know. They wouldn't tell me.'

Angus grimaced. 'That's no good. Maybe I should give him a call.'

'How would you find his number?'

'He gave it to me,' Angus replied. 'I saw him a month or so ago. He came by work, and said he wanted to talk to me. He apologised for everything that went on.'

'God, why didn't you tell me?' I exclaimed.

Angus shook his head. 'It was nothing to do with you, Helen, and you don't reward a man for loving your wife by letting him back into her life.'

I wanted to argue but knew it would be fruitless, so instead I did the only thing I could do; fret. That, and repeatedly make Angus promise to tell me if he managed to contact Raf and if so, what the trouble was about.

Angus agreed to keep me in the loop and three days later, he threw me for six by coming home with Raf. Raf wasn't alone; in his arms was a bundle of blankets and buried within them, a newborn baby.

Raf looked older, tireder and worn down. I yearned to see him smile and to see the stress erase from his face, but I didn't know how to make that happen. I didn't even know if I should hug him or not.

'Helen,' he said softly. 'I have a daughter.'

'Can I see?'

He nodded and handed over the bundle. The baby, tightly swaddled, felt impossibly light and she stared at me with wide, dark eyes. She had that wonderful, unmistakeable scent of a newborn, and her cheek was velvety soft.

'She's so beautiful,' I told him. 'Oh Raf. Congratulations. What's her name?'

'Pearl.'

'Pearl,' I repeated, kissing the baby's head. 'You sweet, lovely little girl.'

Angus cleared his throat. 'When the police dropped by a few nights ago it was because they wanted to do a welfare check on Pearl,' he explained. 'Raf took her from the hospital.'

'With Dani's permission,' Raf added. 'The social workers were hovering. They were talking about going to Court to get orders to take her away. They wanted to put her in foster care.'

I stared at Raf. He shrugged ever-so-slightly.

'I don't want to go into it,' he muttered. 'Dani was raised in foster care. I've lived through it. That's not happening with Pearl. I know she can't be with Dani, but she can be with me, and if she can't be with me, I want her to be with you.'