Birdbrains and Bar Rooms
The flicker of the pub’s illuminated sign through branches outside the Moo-tel’s office jolted Ava from thoughts of Rick Kingston. The sun was long gone and she wondered how much more time she’d have to waste waiting to check in. She had tired of hanging around Candlebark Creek once before, and now she was tiring again. Or was she afraid again?
‘So foolish,’ Ava muttered. ‘Who was the birdbrain back then, eh?’
‘Birdbrain! Bwark!’
The cockatoo’s owner was off the phone. ‘Sorry about that. Shut up, Jack.’
‘Shut up, Jack! Bwark!’
Ava smiled and paid the man for two nights’ accommodation, skilfully skirting his question as to whether she’d been to Candlebark Creek before. ‘I notice you don’t keep him chained.’ She nodded at the bird. ‘Can he not fly away?’
‘Sure he can,’ the man replied. ‘He’s got out a few times. But you know what they say about setting something free?’
‘If it returns it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.’
‘Or it comes back simply because it’s hungry and too lazy or birdbrained to feed itself. What do you reckon, Jack?’
‘Give Jack crack. Bwark!’
‘It’s “cracker”, Jack,’ the proprietor scolded, flushing. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? It’s give Jack a cracker. I swear that bird will have me arrested one day.’
Ava smiled. ‘There’s every chance that bird of yours is smarter than us both.’
The car’s interior lit up as she opened the door and she almost fell into the seat before driving the short distance to her room. It was later and darker than she’d planned, but she hoped a good night’s sleep would make her feel more positive about things. She’d return to Ivy-May in the morning, even though going back would bring with it shades of three decades ago when she’d driven there for the last time to see John before she’d said goodbye to the town and to him for ever. Ava remembered the fear as if it were only yesterday. The way she’d prayed that the car tyres scattering gravel as she left the pub in the dark had not woken Rick.
*
Ava drove with her lights off until she was a safe distance out of town. About thirty minutes later, as close to Ivy-May as she dared go, she parked the old Ford Falcon behind the dilapidated milk shed, disused since the 1930s when the place was a dairy farm. With a coat tucked around her to keep the night’s chill at bay, she closed her eyes and tried to convince herself the shed couldn’t possibly still smell of sickly warm milk. When sleep didn’t come, she watched the hands ticking on the dashboard clock, waited for the sun to rise over the rocky mound and wondered how many ill-fated lovers the mountain had kept apart.
Unable to sit in the car any longer, she splashed her face with water from the plastic bottle she kept in the cup holder, fixed the auburn bun at the back of her head, and checked her teeth in the rear-view mirror. As prepared as she could be to knock at Ivy-May’s door, she had no idea what to expect. For all she knew Marjorie Tate might answer and escort her off the property for a second time.
Ava touched her dragonfly brooch, gathered every scrap of courage, then strode determinedly along the driveway and up Ivy-May’s front steps two at a time. She knocked firmly, her resolve wavering as a figure and face came slowly into focus through the fly wire.
‘John.’ The whispered word wasn’t intentional. Her voice had failed her at that very moment. A crew-cut replaced the wild blond curls. It made his brown eyes even bigger and she could see the surgery scar on his head.
‘Can I help you?’ He waited, expecting Ava to speak. When she didn’t he grinned. ‘Am I supposed to guess your name?’
‘I’m—’
‘Ah, the cook!’ Marjorie Tate appeared beside him, ready to guard her son from Ava. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’ Stepping forward, she spoke deliberately: ‘You remember the cook, don’t you, darling? She worked here before your accident. This is Ava.’ John showed no recognition. ‘Ava, this is my son, John.’
‘You’re a cook?’ John’s smile broadened and Ava knew then that some things didn’t change. ‘Perfect timing. I need a cook to settle a food argument I’ve been having with my mother.’
Ava knew she’d opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
‘I mean, if a man wants mud cake, he should be allowed mud cake, right?’ John explained. ‘Mum insists a wedding needs fruit cake.’
‘Fruit cake? But you hate fruit cake, John.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, I do.’ With the familiar tilt of his head, the mischief in his smile shifted to curiosity. ‘I hate it with a passion.’
‘John, dear, Ava’s not here to settle your arguments. I believe you were putting the kettle on while Katie and I discuss the wedding plans. Where is Katie? Katie!’ Marjorie was beginning to sound uncharacteristically anxious. ‘Katie! Come here!’
‘Would you like to come in for a cuppa?’ John was asking Ava, his voice cutting through Marjorie’s.
‘Yes, I—’
‘No, dear, definitely not.’ Marjorie was back to being bossy, buzzing back and forth between the front door and the kitchen. ‘Katie,’ she called again, clearly not daring to stray too far from her son. ‘Ava can’t stay, John. Rick called me a short while ago, and he— Oh, there you are, Katie.’
Wearing a floral smock, the girl waddled across the living room towards the door, one hand pressing the small of her back to emphasise a protruding belly. So that was why Marjorie had called her. She’d wanted Ava to see for herself. Perhaps that was what Rick had meant at the pub that day when he’d told Katie she was carrying precious cargo?
While wanting to scream and lash out at someone – probably herself for being so stupid – all Ava managed was ‘Oh.’
John laughed. ‘That’s kind of what I said when I found out she had a bun in the oven. That’s a cooking joke. Get it?’ For that, he received a thump on his arm from Katie. ‘Ouch! I mean, er, I’m going to be a dad. Imagine that.’ There was no mistaking the genuine excitement in John’s face.
‘Everyone say goodbye to our visitor.’ As though she had sensed that at any moment Ava would throw herself at John and beg him to remember, Marjorie Tate took a step outside, one hand firmly gripping the screen door close to her body. The other she waved at her son. ‘And please pass me the white envelope from the hall stand before you go, John. No, no, the next drawer. It has Ava’s name on it.’
‘This one, Mum?’
‘Yes.’ Marjorie tucked the white envelope into the side pocket of the gum-leaf green trousers she was wearing. ‘Now, hand me my hat from the hook so I can walk Ava back to her car.’
‘No worries.’ He slipped the sunhat through the small gap between his mother and the door, then turned to leave, stopping to look back and smile. ‘See ya round like a rissole,’ he called, waving.
‘Now do you see that I know what’s right for my son?’ Marjorie asked, closing the front door behind her and positioning her hat. ‘Come, walk with me, Ava, so we can talk.’
Ava could only nod and allow Marjorie to guide her by the elbow, back down the Queenslander’s steps and along the path towards her car. She steeled herself, determined not to cry, even though this was hardly the terse march off the property she’d expected. Marjorie seemed to have softened.
‘I knew you were waiting, Ava, and that you’d come back to Ivy-May in due course. I’ve been waiting as well to give you this.’ Marjorie held out the envelope.
‘What is it?’
‘Take the money this time and go. Waiting any longer would be a mistake. I’m going to look after my son and do what needs to be done. Take this and go somewhere nice. Make something of yourself, live your life and let John get on with his. I have my son back. You need to go away.’
Ava was reminded of her father’s last words on the day he’d told her to walk away from her family before it was too late. She had wanted to turn around on that occasion as well, but Marco had given her the brooch and begged the daughter he loved to walk swiftly and not look back.
That was why she’d kept her eyes forward when leaving Ivy-May. She would never return. This was the last time Marjorie would send her away and Ava was going because she could see it was the best thing for John. He’d looked genuinely happy when he’d said he was going to be a dad, and Ava knew how much a child could miss a father. Defying Marjorie and telling John the truth came with only one certainty: more lives would be destroyed and hearts broken. She didn’t want to shoulder that responsibility. She felt enough guilt already.
With Marjorie Tate’s envelope in her hand, Ava returned to the car crammed with her belongings. Just before she reached the highway she pulled to the side of the road, curious about the white envelope wedged into the corner of the dashboard. She opened it and, as she let the car idle in the shadow of the mountain, she knew what she had to do. With the help of Marjorie’s parting gift, she would grow more resilient. The contents had provided her with the wings to soar, to follow her dreams, and hope she found a new life and some happiness.
*
Ava’s Audi purred softly and blew cool air on her face. She was parked at the Moo-tel, the car’s headlights shining on the reflective door number directly ahead. Thirty. Fortuitous, Ava thought, that thirty was the number of years since the day she’d driven away from Ivy-May, too young to understand how far a mother would go to protect her child.
She was gathering her coat and handbag from the passenger seat when another thought struck her. If not for Marjorie Tate and her parting gift, would she have had the courage to fulfil her promise to her father that she’d do the four things he never had – to travel far, find her place in the world, love deeply, and be loved in return?
She would have given up her travel dreams in a heartbeat, if it had meant being with John. But that would have changed so much: no jaunt to the Amalfi coast, no catering job aboard a luxury yacht moored in Capri harbour, and no Dirk Toft – the wealthy Irish-American businessman and frequent guest on board Il Mare d'Amore, who’d fallen for the Australian cook with the wicked sense of humour.
The New Yorker had been older, easily amused and generous, and he’d treated her as if she mattered. A couple of years later, the well-travelled and much-loved Ava was the mother of twins, Nina and Tony, whom she’d named after the owners of the yacht. With Dirk uninterested in babies, or in anything that interrupted his jet-setting lifestyle, Ava had found herself back in Australia, settling into a small house in a Sunshine Coast suburb where, as a working mother, she raised the twins. Eventually she’d met the man who became her next boyfriend. She’d declined his marriage proposal, and that of the man who followed. She had no reason to marry, even though her daughter constantly asked for a father.
‘You have one,’ Ava would say, wishing one parent had been enough.
‘But he’s not here.’
‘We’re still a family, Nina, even without Dad.’
How could she make her daughter understand when it had taken Ava years to understand herself? That no matter whom she dated, or slept with, something always prevented her from giving her heart completely. John Tate was that something and to this day her heart waits, refusing all others, because it knows what the swell of real and lasting love feels like when someone fills a heart to bursting.
A knock on the car window startled Ava. She lowered it.
‘Sorry, love, you might be right about that bloody bird being smarter than me. I forgot to give you this.’ The motel proprietor dangled a key attached to a plastic T-bone steak. ‘Everything all right? The room number’s right there on the door. Number thirty, love. Not an unlucky number, is it? I’ve struck that a few times.’
‘Yes, I mean no. Any number is fine. Perfect, thank you.’
‘Okay. Enjoy your stay, Ms Marchette, and let me know if I can do anything else. I’ll be in the office teaching my old mate how to answer the phone, see if I can’t work out how to get a few days off and leave the bird in charge.’
Ava appreciated the country hospitality and fell back into the car seat. Did she think she could come all this way and not find herself lamenting numerous what ifs, even though she’d enjoyed a good life with her children and was more fortunate than many. Was she returning to Ivy-May out of some sense of guilt because she’d had a good life, even if it was without John?
Martin had been close to breaking down her barriers, coming into her life at the perfect time. A quiet, gentle man who’d lost his wife years before, then lost himself in the chaos of corporate life, he had found fulfilment with Ava and had taken her on a P&O cruise each year. They’d managed eight trips and were on their way to Martin’s goal of Captain’s Club status when he’d fallen ill. That man had broken a little piece of Ava’s heart when he’d died, and her daughter, Nina, was devastated.
She shuddered. Time to get out of the car and under a hot shower.