Light Pollution
Without a moon, and only an occasional solar-powered bollard and the intermittent beam from Blair’s torch to light the way, Nina found the blackness strangely disorienting and the star-filled sky distracting. ‘Look at them all. You don’t get that spectacle in the suburbs, or am I never outside and looking up at night?’
‘Light pollution.’ Blair blackened the torchlight again, pausing to look up. ‘Cities, even regional centres, can have loads of misdirected artificial light that basically blots out the stars. Mum and I have a plan to get Candlebark Creek accredited as an official dark-sky place.’
‘What’s a dark-sky place?’
‘Where artificial light is purposely minimised so the night sky can be fully enjoyed. They call them pristine dark skies,’ he explained. ‘When I was a kid I was totally fixated on finding the man in the moon. Then my dad told me something and I’ve been mesmerised by the night sky ever since.’
‘Do you mind if I ask what your dad said?’
They started walking again.
‘Not sure how old I was at the time, maybe ten,’ Blair said. ‘He was explaining his need to draw and he said, “Blair, little buddy, I love you so much I’d paint the moon to prove it.” So, of course, every night after that I’d look up and wish on a star and wait. I remember my first red moon. I told everyone at school: My dad painted that.’
‘He sounds special.’
‘My dad?’ Blair huffed. ‘Yeah, he’s that, all right.’
‘You’re lucky. I met my dad only once, a few years ago in a noisy café near the Spanish Steps in Rome, and as father-daughter moments go, the occasion was pretty unmemorable.’ Nina had never told her mother about the meeting and neither, it turned out, had her father. What did that say about them as a family? ‘We had nothing to talk about. No connection whatsoever. I stopped wishing.’
‘Such a shame we have to grow up and stop believing stars are magic and can make our dreams come true if we wish hard enough.’
Nina slowed to a stop and looked up at the sky again, Blair alongside her. The path had narrowed so much she could feel the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. ‘What would you wish for now, Blair? Besides a coffee machine.’
When he didn’t laugh at her joke Nina guessed she’d struck a nerve.
‘When I was young I used to wish Mum and Dad would get back together, and that my dad didn’t have to be so different from everyone else’s. I didn’t much like him painting all the time. It made everyone uncomfortable.’
‘Your parents split up how long ago?’
‘Hard to say for certain. Even after moving into town Mum spent most days out here on the property. She was still managing the accommodation business, and I think deep down she was also still trying to make her marriage work. Other wives would’ve walked away, fed up, but things were different for Mum.’
‘Different how?’
‘In that there was no slow realisation of her marriage failing, no acceptance that the love was no longer there, because it was. Surgery changed Dad when he was only twenty-one in ways no one could’ve predicted. They’d married soon after and I get the feeling Baby Blair might have had something to do with the rushed nuptials.’ His chuckle bubbled, like effervescence in a glass, light and refreshing enough to give Nina another dose of the hiccups. ‘Once word got out about Dad, the circus came to town and the yelling behind closed doors started. Watch your step on the slope.’ Blair put out a protective hand to guide her, his grip firm on her elbow. ‘My grandmother did her best to hide the truth about Dad, but there’s no keeping secrets in a place like Candlebark Creek. Between the gossip and the unauthorised article hidden in the pages of the local rag, news about Dad’s rare condition started to attract interest – medical researchers, the tabloid press, the art world. That’s what Grandma Marjorie called the circus.’
‘As if life wouldn’t have been difficult enough for you all. Not sure I’d cope very well with such attention.’
‘Poor old Gran didn’t, not at all. Mum said she grew angrier every year and that the stress probably triggered her early dementia, which is what I remember most: Gran as an angry old lady turned sad who, towards the end of her life, would sit and stare at me while calling me names and shouting all kinds of weird stuff. Mum insisted we give her a wide berth and let her shout at the moon. That made Dad withdraw further into his art, and Gramps kept busy away from the house.’
‘And your mum?’
‘She was the buffer in the family. Mum spent her life shielding the rest of us from outsiders. She does still. Sometimes I think she’s shielding us from each other.’
‘Sounds like my mum,’ Nina said.
‘Dad once told me she’d turned out the strongest of all, and that while everyone else shied away from the circus, Mum walked straight into the centre of it – the ring master who wielded a whip.’
The whipcrack sound Blair made startled Nina, and several big black shapes – kangaroos she guessed by the speed and heavy thud – bounded across their path, in front and behind, so close that the air around her whooshed.
She clutched her chest. ‘That’s awful. Don’t do it again.’
‘Sorry.’ He laughed his apology. ‘That’s Mum – still. Katie doesn’t ask. Katie commands. Then she criticises. I love her, of course,’ he said, ‘and I don’t doubt she loves me, but interestingly my father turned out to be the most consistent thing in my life.’
‘Why interestingly?’
‘Because I grew up with John Tate, artist extraordinaire. To me he was just Dad, until the school bullies decided to explain otherwise by beating the crap out of me.’
‘Hope you hit them back.’
‘Nah. I decided then I was a lover, not a fighter. Besides, Mum and Gran had enough verbal punch-ups for everyone.’
‘Typical mother-in-law spats, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘I’d seen two heifers head-butt each other and I can tell you which I would rather have put myself between.’
‘You like your jokes, don’t you?’
‘I’m trying to make up for being Mr Grumpy. We turn off the main path here and cross the bridge.’ Blair guided Nina to the left and flicked the torch around to light the way. ‘Almost there. The darkness doesn’t make it a quick hike.’
‘But it does make it special.’ Nina stopped again, maybe to delay the goodnight that awaited them once they reached their destination – the rustic and now awfully romantic cook’s cottage – or maybe she wanted another look at the stars. ‘I’ve been overseas a few times, but there is something spectacular about the southern sky. Have you travelled much, Blair?’
‘Loads. My mother was keen for me to get the travel bug out of my system early. Less keen about me marrying six weeks after meeting a woman in London.’
‘Married?’ Great, Nina told herself. Love at first sight and married after six weeks? She and Conrad had notched up eighteen months before she had decided to call it off, emailing him last night to tell him she wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for marriage. In typical Conrad fashion he’d suggested she hang on to the ring until they could talk when he was back in town, two weeks from now. Nina patted down her pockets, remembering she’d buried it deep in her other jeans en route to the yards yesterday.
‘My marriage was brief,’ Blair was saying. ‘Veronica was living in London when we met. We travelled together, looking for the best place in the world to put down roots. We found our way back here and stayed. I figured it’s true what they say, that the best is quite often right under our noses. We just don’t see it for all the clutter and confusion.’
‘Like we don’t see a night sky until we stop to look up?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Being in Candlebark Creek is what I wanted, so we stayed. Well, I stayed. Veronica lasted long enough to rack up a debt the size of a small planet. Now I have a mortgage on the place while she’s living in the light-pollution capital of Australia with even shinier Smeg appliances, a new husband and my son.’
Nina sensed a change, the joker’s smile less genuine.
‘In the time we were together, Veronica made a huge difference to the accommodation side and I’m grateful for that. Some things definitely benefit from a woman’s touch. It just would’ve been smarter to spread the renovations over a few years, rather than go into debt.’
‘You have a son?’
‘Yes, I see Tyson regularly enough, and I’ve no doubt he’ll come back here in time. He has country-loving genes, so here’s hoping he makes his grandma happy. Tyson is the end of the line, unless I hook up and have more kids, and the pressure from Mum is, well…’
‘You don’t need to tell me about parental pressure.’
This evening was turning out a serendipitous encounter on so many levels, the enormity of the situation even greater as Blair ushered Nina inside what were once her mother’s quarters.
‘Here we go. Home, sweet home. Let me show you a few things: the ceiling fan has a remote, no air-conditioning until the renovations. The gas hot water can be tricky and there’s air in the pipes so they rattle. Oh, and these glass louvres can be stiff.’ Blair grunted as the panels shifted, sending in a rush of evening air.
Nina tried to concentrate on the room tour, making mental notes about rainwater tanks feeding the kitchen while the bathroom was plumbed to bore water.
‘Still fine for drinking,’ Blair was saying over the beeping of his mobile. He glanced at the screen and dropped the phone back into his shirt’s breast pocket, then opened the fridge door. ‘I asked Lily to drop a breakfast basket over.’
‘How lovely. Thank you again for allowing me to stay. Being here is so unbelievably amazing.’ Nina did a small pirouette and sighed. ‘But, gosh, I’m suddenly beat. Exhaustion just hit me.’
‘Must be time for bed,’ he said. ‘If I can help, let me know.’
‘Thanks, but I think I can manage to fall into bed without help.’
‘No, Nina, I didn’t mean—’
‘Argh!’ Nina’s hand batted away her embarrassment. ‘That sounded weird. I didn’t mean anything either.’
They stared at each other, then broke into laughter, only stopping when Blair said, ‘Now we have awkward moment number two out of the way, we can move on.’
‘You’re counting our moments, Blair?’
‘I’m certainly enjoying them.’ He stopped at the door to look back. ‘Let’s do it again tomorrow with tea.’
‘Without the prairie oysters, please.’ Nina smiled. ‘Good night and thanks again.’
‘You’re welcome. Sleep well.’
After Blair’s figure had dissolved into the blackness, Nina went for her toothbrush in the overnight bag, and when she saw yesterday’s dusty clothes in the plastic shopping bag she patted herself on the back for deciding to pack generously, even though she hadn’t planned on an extended stay. Just long enough to satisfy her curiosity by meeting the man who’d charmed her mother.
She checked the mobile phone she’d neglected to turn on after service and found several missed calls. Too late to reply to her mother, Nina tapped out a quick reply to Miriam:
OMG! Intense, interesting, staggeringly irritating, and that’s just the man’s son! If his father is anything like Blair, no wonder Mum fell in love. ☺
*
‘Are you freakin’ kidding me?’ Miriam’s voice shrieked through the phone’s tinny speaker. ‘You’re falling for a cowboy?’
‘Of course not! I wanted to get your attention. Damn, hang on a sec.’ Remembering Conrad’s ring, Nina turned out the pockets of her dirty jeans and, breathing a sigh of relief, tucked it inside the small zipped compartment of her make-up bag, which lay open on the bed.
‘Neens, your late-night text has the goldfish wondering what the hell’s going on. Apart from that, I wasn’t doing anything important. Oh, bugger, hang on a sec.’ Loud noises followed, almost exaggerated. ‘Whoa, down, boy!’ Miriam said. ‘Down, you intense, interesting, staggeringly irritating hunk of a man. Ooh, those chaps of yours are chafing all the right bits and, no, I do not care if you’re hung like a stallion. Priorities, pony-guy, I’m talking to my girlfriend. Sorry, Nina, you were saying?’
‘Hilarious, Miriam. I’m sorry it’s so late.’
‘Who cares about the time? What have you found out?’
‘For one, did you know when you castrate a bull that the testicle, quite a delicacy in some countries, is called a prairie oyster?’ Nina kept the phone at a distance in anticipation of Miriam’s response. She wasn’t disappointed. ‘I’ll tell you all about it sometime.’
‘Good, because I know a bloke you can demonstrate on.’
‘What’s Kev done?’ As if Nina couldn’t guess.
‘Creep,’ was all Miriam said. In time Nina would hear everything, but for now her friend’s bravado spoke more of her sadness than any details might. ‘No more men for me, not that I’m turning into a lesbian, in case you were about to ask.’ Nina wasn’t. ‘What I mean is, Neens, I’ll be living my life vicariously through you from now on, so feed my fantasies with your sexy-cowboy story.’
‘I did not use the words sexy cowboy. I’ll call you at work tomorrow.’
‘Aw, come on, at least give me something to go back to sleep on. He is hot, isn’t he?’
‘Okay, okay.’ Nina’s giggle was restrained, probably because she felt guilty at sounding as happy as she felt right now. ‘Picture this… David Beckham, ten years ago, only all-Australian, as in burly – in a good way – and quintessentially brooding.’
‘Hooley-dooley, seriously? Dave Becks, Golden Balls? I’m hanging up now while I can see that image. I’ll let you know what we get up to tomorrow.’
‘Have fun, Miriam.’ Nina smiled and pressed end call, needing some shut-eye herself and thinking a chamomile tea might douse the last of the buzz. She’d spotted a variety of Pickwick infusions as Blair had shown her around the room.
Perfect.
The euphoria of today, of being in the same place where Ava had lived and loved was fusing with the knowledge that Nina was further from home and from her mum than she wanted to be. That thought, combined with the lie to cover her absence and the added exhilaration of the last few hours, sent her emotions into a kind of free-fall. She told herself Ava would be blissfully distracted with the grandkids, playing happy families with Tony and Mariska. Two more days, Nina, and you’ll be back to boring. Worse still, you’ll be back to single.
The kettle whistled.