Payback Ch. 04

'You tell me,' he asked. 'What would you do? She's homeless, she's on the pension, and she has a two year old.'

I thought about it. 'You... need to get her to apply for subsidised housing.'

'Mmm. And what do you think the chances are that she'll find something cheap that's to her standards, in an area she likes?'

'Non-existent.'

'Exactly. That's why you can't let Dani move in. It's not just letting a grown arse adult, unrelated, move in, because they're easy enough to kick out, but kicking out an adult plus a child... impossible. Particularly when, as in both our cases, that grown arse adult also has a biological tie to kids that we're raising.'

'You're right,' I reflected.

'Yep. I only wish someone had had this conversation with me before Symantha moved in.'

'I thought it was your parents who ultimately offered her a place?'

'Yeah, but I could have put my foot down.' He paused. 'Maybe. I don't know. My point is, Helen, that you don't owe this woman shit, and it's rude as fuck that she'd even ask. As for Pearl... fuck. Keep the kid. You're doing a great job raising her. Don't give her to some numpty just because they're both black.'

'That's...brutal.'

'I'm tired. I'm not in the mood for niceties. I'm scared for you, because I know what you're like, and I want you to be happy and safe and to enjoy life for a while.'

I fiddled with a pen. 'What about you?' I asked.

'What about me?' he asked wearily. 'One day at a time, Helen. One foot in front of the other. For the time being I have you, and every night I look at our pictures. I love you.'

I chewed the end of the pen. 'Symantha has pictures of you up from last time you were in Brisbane.'

'Shock me.'

'You look happy,' I said hesitantly. 'Were you?'

Ciaran sighed tiredly. 'Facebook is an illusion Helen, and Symantha is very good at illusions.'

~~~~~~~~~~

2015

Twenty years. That's what Angus and I had clocked up; twenty years. You know all those clichés about loving someone more than ever? They were true.

We decided to go away on holidays. It wasn't simply a matter of hopping on a plane and going. We thought it was in Beau's best interests we took him with us, and we had to take Pearl because Raf started work before her day care centre even opened (I'd been doing the drop offs for him), so we decided to make it a family trip and took Raf along, too. The Northern Territory was the obvious pick, so we booked our flights and went.

Everyone was in a good mood. Angus was nailing it at work, and had earned several bonuses. Raf was nearing the end of his apprenticeship. Beau was still working as an assistant at a motorcycle yard and was simple enough to be content with what life had given him.

We stayed at an apartment for our first leg of the journey. Raf, always keen to help out, always willing to help, almost immediately went to work helping out Auntie Rose's cousin with her bathroom. She was renting from a landlord who didn't believe in undertaking repairs.

Staying with Rose's cousin, Hannah, was a younger, female relative who'd come to Darwin to study. Nina. As Hannah put it, it was 'love at first sight' between Raf and Nina. My foster son had had girlfriends before, but they were more casual lovers than romantic partners. Nina was different. She was an education student, dark like Raf, pretty and filled with light and optimism and he seemed to like her as a person.

The two of them went out that night. Neither called it a date. Apparently Nina knew of a good gelato place and had been keen to show Raf and Raf, miraculously enough, had developed an overnight love of gelato. Funny how that is, huh? Hannah and I both laughed about it, and even Angus cracked a smile, despite telling us not to gossip about the poor kids.

Raf and Nina went out the following night, too, and the one after that. He came home that last night smelling of perfume and with the relaxed, pleased air of man who's recently had sex. Angus raised his eyebrows at me, and I half-shrugged. Whatever happened next between the pair was up to them.

The following day the five of us packed up and headed down the Stuart Highway to visit Beau and Raf's mobs. Normally Raf enjoyed being back with his community but this time he seemed restless. I knew why. We'd be heading back to Darwin for the last few days of our holiday and he was keen to get back to the town, and Nina, as soon as possible.

After four days in Central Australia we headed back to Darwin.

'You're gonna see your girlfriend,' Beau teased Raf.

Raf gave Beau the most disparaging look he could muster up and muttered something under his breath. I didn't quite catch what he was saying but I heard the words 'boyfriend', 'suck' and 'cock', which was fairly typical of the slurs they'd throw at each other.

'Maybe Nina will have come to her senses,' Angus added. 'We'll have rushed back to Darwin for nothing.'

'Angus!' I hissed.

Raf looked as if he wanted to murder us all, which was reasonable in the circumstances. Poor kid. He was twenty-three years old. The same age Angus had been when he met me. I remembered Angus had lost his temper with his Mum and siblings several times in the early days of our relationship, when he'd felt they were interfering, and wondered aloud how he'd have felt if his parents had openly teased him about me.

'Are you kidding, Hez?' Angus asked incredulously. 'Everyone kept waiting for you to dump my fat, black, arse.'

I tried to bite back a smile but Raf saw it and told Angus I was laughing at him, which made Beau laugh, which in turn made Pearl laugh, and Angus, much to his dismay, laughed too.

We were all in a good mood as we arrived back in Darwin. We weren't staying in a rental apartment this time, but in one of Rose's relative's houses. It wasn't modern by any stretch but it was big and we all enjoyed having the time to stretch out.

For the first time, Raf didn't spend his time rushing out to help people. Instead, he spent it with Pearl and with Nina. We had a few phone calls from my father-in-law's relatives, all but demanding Raf go and fix their problems. They were angry that Raf had told them he was 'busy', because they knew that 'busy' meant 'having sex with Nina'.

Raf came to me two days before we were due to leave and admitted that he knew people were angry. Angus, who was with me, agreed that they were.

'Maybe you should go and do a few jobs to keep everyone happy,' Angus suggested.

'Or maybe they should accept that Raf needs some down time,' I argued.

'True,' Angus conceded. 'I'll call Dad. I'll explain. I'll get him to talk to his people.'

Good, I thought. Good. Raf had spent his whole goddamn life just struggling to survive. Now, having made a success of himself, everyone seemingly felt entitled to his labour. When was it his turn? When did he get a chance to sit back, have a rest, and spend some time with a pretty girl?

Besides, Pearl was also enjoying spending one-on-one time with her father doing 'fun stuff' and in my eyes, that trumped everything else.

Raf didn't need much convincing.

'Thanks,' he said to Angus. 'Hey, would it be okay if Nina spent a couple of nights here? She only has a single bed at home and...'

Angus nodded. 'Sure.'

Raf smiled. 'Thanks.'

~~~~~~~~~

2017

I spent a lot of time thinking about Dani. I thought about what was right for Dani, for Pearl, for the unborn baby.

As I was mulling over my choices, Auntie Rose contacted me and apologised for having told me to let Dani move in.

'You don't need to apologise,' I told her. 'I asked for your opinion.'

'Yes, but you've already done so much, love. And I was feeling a bit emotional when we had that conversation. I was thinking about when Graham and I were young and we had two little ones and Angus was on the way and Graham lost his job. I was thinking about how sad it was that us Aboriginal folk get so much on our plates and then whitefellas can't understand why we don't eat nicely with a knife and a fork.'

'Oh Rose,' I exclaimed. 'Really, don't apologise. I agree; Dani should be the one raising Pearl. I'm old and I'm tired and I'm single and I'm white. I'm just scared. I'm scared of being alone.'

'You'll never be alone, Helen,' she assured me. 'Not even if you tell Dani she can't move in. We understand why you'd say no, especially after what happened with Raf. All those accusations about you and him...' She trailed off, embarrassed. 'I'm so sorry about that. It's so disrespectful. I know he was... well,' she finished awkwardly. 'I understand why you would say 'no' to Dani. We all support you.'

'We', I thought. I was being gossiped about. I was neither surprised nor offended. I had too much on my mind.

'I'm going to see Dani and a social worker on Friday,' I told Auntie Rose. 'We're going to discuss options.'

'How does Ciaran feel about this?'

'I don't know. He comes home Sunday. I guess whatever happens, happens.'

Auntie Rose sucked in a deep breath of air. 'How is your whitefella?' she asked.

'Good, I suppose,' I replied vaguely. I didn't want to go into details. The more you think about life, the more you mull over it, the more you see hidden truths. It's easy to pretend things are innocent, because it's easy that way. You don't have to face facts, or have horrible conversations or accept that you, and those you love, are less than perfect. Sometimes, I think we humans are experts at putting our heads in the sand and ignoring the obvious.

'You suppose?' Rose asked doubtfully.

I shut my eyes. It was time for Ciaran and I to do away with secrets. His. Mine. We knew they existed and perhaps that's why he and I always danced around two particular topics.

Not once had he ever asked me the circumstances of Angus, Raf and Beau's deaths, and not once had I ever asked him why Symantha and his family were so convinced the two would reignite the relationship.

They were both tricky, dangerous questions, and the answers were bound to reveal unpleasant answers.

~~~~~~~~

2015

Anyone who's ever flown out of Darwin knows that the cheapest time to fly out is the middle of the night. If you don't want to leave at one am, be prepared to pay heavily for the privilege.

Raf, Beau and Angus were booked for a middle of the night return journey, but Pearl was a nightmare to resettle if woken in the middle of the night, so we'd agreed that she and I would take a more expensive, later, flight on the day the boys went home.

The five of us spent our last day in Darwin as a family. There was a public pool down the road from us that Pearl had taken a liking to, and Beau and Angus took her down there the minute it opened. Raf and I had told them to wait a bit, but the air conditioning in the house was suspect at best, the men were hot, and Angus and Beau were just as keen to get in the water as Pearl.

Raf and I cleaned up and packed as much as we could. None of us had bought much luggage with us, and we'd been careful to sweep, vacuum, tidy and wipe each day, so there wasn't much cleaning to do, either. Maybe an hour after the trio had left for the pool, Raf and I decided we'd go down and join them.

'I'm not gonna miss the heat,' Raf remarked.

'You're a tiler from Brisbane,' I teased him. 'You should be used to it.'

'I'm not,' he laughed.

He'd recently turned twenty-three and was as beautiful as could be. I loved being in his company and was glad Nina wasn't around today. She'd gone home last night to study, after having pledged to keep in contact with Raf.

'Are you going to keep in contact with Nina?' I asked him.

'Maybe.'

'Maybe? You seemed very keen on her a few days ago.'

He gave me a rueful shrug and a smile. It occurred to me that what Hannah and I saw as 'love' was actually just 'lust' mixed with 'like'.

'Raf!' I exclaimed.

'If I said it was just casual like, Angus wouldn't have let her stay over,' he explained.

I leant over and whacked his arm in a friendly way. Bloody men. Women think 'romance', they think 'sex'.

He shrugged again. 'You were young. You know how it is.'

'I met Angus when I was nineteen.'

'I know, but didn't you... I dunno. Stray?'

'No,' I replied firmly, my cheeks stained with embarrassment. 'No, that's not something our generation did.'

Raf gave me a cheeky grin. 'You always were a good girl, Mrs G.'

It had been years since he called me 'Mrs G'. I leant over and whacked his dark brown arm again, harder this time, and he laughed, ducked away and said something about going to his room to get changed into his boardies.

I shook my head at his behaviour. Cheeky, I thought. Angus would bloody murder him if he found out Raf had never had any serious intentions towards Nina, and no doubt there'd been some flack coming our way once Hannah told Rose about how my foster son had wronged her niece. Raf might not have had any serious feelings toward Nina, but I suspected the reverse wasn't quite true.

'Bad boy, Raf,' I muttered under my breath.

My bathers were still wet, but I had a spare pair that I'd packed but not yet worn. The spare pair was a white, strapless one piece that fitted me perfectly and even maybe made me look a bit sexy, but as anyone who's ever gone swimming with a young child knows, that they cling and jump all over you, pulling at your togs, and often leaving you scrabbling to keep yourself covered. Wearing strapless bathers was just asking for trouble.

I should have just worn my still-damp, firm-fitting, plain togs. I was only going to be getting into the water anyway, so it didn't matter if they weren't perfectly dry. Besides, my strapless bathers were from a high end 'resort wear' label and the tag had specifically told me not to swim in chlorine, not to sit on rough surfaces, and basically not to do anything but strut around in them. They were thoroughly impractical in every sense of the word. I'd only bought them because I'd found them on a 'final sales' rack in Myer at a ridiculously cheap price, and in a fit of optimism I'd thought that one day, Angus and I might find ourselves in a beautiful resort together and I'd be able to wow him, but with the benefit of hindsight, I know never should have bought them, and I definitely shouldn't have put them on that day.

Raf stopped in his tracks when he saw me. He stared at me for a minute or two while I self-consciously fiddled with the top of my bathers.

'Let's pretend you're not my foster son,' I suggested. 'Are they too revealing?'

'You, uh, want an independent assessment of your outfit?' he asked.

It's funny the stuff kids pick up. Raf's language was similar to mine; overly formal at times, and he used the exact same phrases, and had some of the exact same mannerisms that I did.

'Yes,' I agreed. 'Give it to me from a man's point of view.'

He shook his head over so slightly. 'There are some things that it's better that a woman doesn't know. But you look great. Are you sure they're not going to go see-through when they get wet?'

'I'm not sure they're designed for getting wet,' I admitted. 'I think they're just for... prancing. I should wear something else.'

'No, no, keep them on,' he said. 'I'll put some sunscreen on you so you don't burn.'

'I can put it on.'

'On your back?'

I shrugged. 'Sort of.'

Raf shook his head. There was a pump pack of sunscreen on the kitchen bench and he squeezed a generous blob into his hand. 'No, let me do it. You don't want to fly home tomorrow with a bad case of sunburn.'

I pulled my hair off my back and twisted it into a bun on top of my head, which I held in place with my hands. Raf began to smooth suncream over my back, neck and shoulders. He was careful at first, cautious, but then he began to not only coat my skin, but massage the flesh. He didn't speak as he gently kneaded my shoulders.

I thought 'I should tell him to stop', but it felt nice and perhaps I was just the tiniest bit curious. Was this what he did for the women he bedded? Did he make them feel relaxed before he tried to seduce them?

At that moment I knew Raf was no child of mine, not really. No woman feels for her child the way I felt about Raf. They don't let their offspring touch them the way Raf was touching me, they don't revel in the proximity of their bodies, and they don't feel the same, almost overpowering, sexual urges that I felt.

Raf quickly squirted more sunscreen into his hand and resumed rubbing it into my skin. This time he focussed on my front, and as his hands moved lower and lower, close to the top of my bathers, I found myself not wanting the moment to end.

Raf gently peeled the first centimetre of my top back from my skin. 'You don't want to burn,' he whispered hoarsely.

'No,' I agreed. I stared at his bare chest. Dark skin, tiny dark nipples, and barely any hair. His body was lean and hard, more lithe and fit than Angus' had ever been. Even now that Angus had lost weight he looked nothing like Raf, who was young and fit and in the prime of his life.

Raf leant in and breathed in my ear. 'Your swimsuit screams 'fuck me'. That's what every man who sees you will be thinking about.'

'Should I change?' I whispered.

He lips brushed against my neck. 'No. Not yet.'

I didn't move, didn't protest, didn't react in any way as he began to hungrily suck and kiss on my neck. His lips found mine and he held me tightly against him, his tongue forcing entry into my mouth. I could feel his erection pressed against my pubic bone but it didn't disgust me. None of this disgusted me. It should have; it was so wrong, so utterly and completely wrong, but I didn't want it to end.

Raf pulled my bathers down, exposing my breasts. I heard him grunt as he grabbed one in each hand and began to fondle the nipples. My hands found his shoulders, then his back and down to his bum. Raf groaned and ground his erection against me as he continued to pull my bathers down.

'Fuck,' he muttered. 'Let's go to my room, Helen. Let me make love to you.'

'We shouldn't be doing this,' I pleaded, suddenly rummaging up an ounce of common sense.

'No, we should have done it years ago. I could be good to you. I love you. I've always loved you, always will. What your husband feels for you is nothing compared to what I feel.'

My husband. Angus. That shocked me back into reality.

I shoved Raf away and yanked my swimsuit back up.

'We shouldn't be doing this,' I repeated. 'No. Just... no.'

I expected him to grab my arm to get my attention, as Angus would have done, but this man wasn't my husband. In many ways he was a world apart from my spouse. They were both male and indigenous but that was where the similarities ended.

Raf leant over and gently adjusted the top of my bathers so they were sitting as they should. He was very careful, ensuring that they were back in precisely the same position they'd been when I'd walked out of the bedroom.

I caught his eye and he smiled regretfully.

'You're the only woman I'll all be able to love,' he remarked. 'The only one.'

'That's not true. You'll find someone. Nina seemed nice.'

'She doesn't understand things. I told her I hate white people but I also hate our kind. I said I've gone into homes that make me wonder if we actually love our children.'

'I'm sorry,' I said, because I was, for everything, and because I understood what he was saying.

Raf glanced in the direction of the room that Pearl had been using.

'I took her to you because I trusted you,' he said. 'You know how to make good decisions about kids.'

'I don't...' I started.

My response was interrupted by a a noise outside. Someone was at the door, and both Raf and I both went to see who it was.