A Father At Last (15 page)

She couldn’t help her gasp of horror. “Did he hit her—your little sister?”

“No, thank God. Just me, when Mum wasn’t around. He always had excuses for my bruises. But he hit her—Mum—as well. Like most battered women, she blamed herself, and believed his pathetic promises that he’d never do it again. Until he finally overstepped the mark.”

She saw him breathe deeply, struggling for composure. “So you see, Kelly, it’s there, in my blood, waiting. I’ve never had trouble controlling my temper, but I’m scared, scared to the very bottom of my soul, that one day…if I had a child—had children—my temper would snap under pressure, just like his did.”

She had no words of comfort. Instead, acting on instinct, she loosened her hands from his and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling her body close to his. She kissed his cheek, then rested her head in the crook of his neck, and she felt him tilt his head against hers.

And while they stood embracing, motionless and silent, Kelly’s mind sifted the information he’d given her.
Evan Smith.
Evan Smith, the Member of Parliament Ben had punched in that television news clip she’d seen a couple of years ago. The MP who’d surprisingly never pressed charges against his attacker. It made sense now.

Then Ben said, “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

When she nodded, he continued: “He’s been in Parliament for years, my father, secure in a safe seat and about as useless as tits on a bull. Although, ironic as it seems, he was deputy spokesman for law and justice for a while.”

Ben’s voice, close to her ear, was steady now, and she could feel tension easing from his body.

“He may have changed, Ben. Your father may have changed, just like my father has.

You’ve persuaded me to see my father. Maybe it’s time for you to heal the rift with yours.

Lay the demons to rest.”

He lifted his head then, and looked down at her, a weary smile teasing his lips but failing to reach his eyes.

“Nice try, babe. There’s a big difference here—your father was basically a decent man who went off the rails. He admitted his mistake and paid the price. My father, on the other hand, is morally bankrupt. He has never acknowledged that what he did—what he continues to do—is wrong.”

“Continues…?” Could his story get any worse?

Julie Mac

“Yep. The demons are alive and kicking, sweetheart. I’ve done a little checking. His present wife has an unfortunate habit of walking into doors—with monotonous regularity.

One of these days, I’ll have a quiet word with her.” He glanced across at the bedside clock again. “Fortunately, he didn’t have any more kids.”

The tension had returned to his body. “So that’s my genealogy, Kel. That’s why I can’t be a dad. Haven’t got the right qualifications.”

“Oh, Ben, I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say, darlin’. The blood in my veins is rotten. End of story. I can deal with it.”

I can deal with it.
So why was his body suffused with pain?

Anger welled in her heart. “Press charges, Ben. Retrospective charges. I can help you.”

He shook his head. “Okay, that might hurt him, and give me a bit of satisfaction, but imagine how much more it would hurt and upset my mother. She’d have to relive it all. I’d never do that to her. Anyway—” he straightened his body, stood taller, and she felt his arm muscles flex against her, “— I gave him a good thumping a few years ago. Broke his nose. I believe he had a black eye on the very day he was supposed to deliver a speech to Parliament on law and order.”

She couldn’t help smiling, and she saw a smile tugging at his lips. “I saw the TV clip of you punching him at the airport,” she said. “I knew it was you! Wish I’d been there to give him a damn good thump as well.”

He said nothing, but his smile broadened and she sensed his mood had lightened.

And she thought of something else: “You didn’t lose your temper, Ben. You hit him and walked on calmly. I remember thinking you hardly broke stride. See, you’re not a…a…”

“A violent nutter? There’s a big difference between hitting in cold blood, and going off your head. I should know.”

Then he bent, kissed her on the cheek, hugged her tight once more and was gone.

She heard the dull click as he pulled the locked front door closed behind him, and nothing more. The room should have felt lonely, but his heat, his vital presence, was all around her.

The next day was Saturday. It was mid‐morning before she got back to her own house, which meant she was late for her customary Saturday morning visit to the supermarket. By then it was horribly crowded and trolley rage simmered in the aisles, but today, Kelly didn’t pay attention to the mayhem around her.

Even in the long queue at the checkout, and out in the car park where tempers frayed, she simply floated through her task, one minute on a sea of ecstasy, the next, plunged into troughs of agony.

A Father at Last

Her head—her whole damn body, truth be told—was humming with joy, and why not? She’d spent the night in the arms of the man she loved and it felt good.

Then the agony asserted itself.

Ben’s horrific early childhood. His pain. His fear of being a father. Even if she wanted him to be a dad to Dylan, he couldn’t be. And did she want him to be Dylan’s daddy? Did she really love him?

Questions churned in her head. Followed closely by the answers.

It’s not real. Can’t last. The boy’s no good. Get on with your life and let him get on
with his. Best all round that way.

The sensible voice of the realist in her clamoured to be heard, but her joyful self didn’t want to listen. By the time she packed the groceries in her car, she’d made a decision.

Today, she’d luxuriate in the good feelings he evoked—the sexy, loving, cherished feelings.

By this time next week, Dylan would be home from his holiday in Australia, and there would be no place in her life for Ben. Okay, there might be a tiny little place in her heart for him, but certainly not in her life.

On Wednesday, after he’d taken her to see her father, she’d say goodbye for the last time.

Her grip on the steering wheel of her car tightened at the thought of her father. On Wednesday, a mere four days away, she would see him. The prospect scared her a lot—so much, she could hardly bear to think about it. It also caused a tiny and unexpected bud of happiness to unfurl in her heart.

She’d been home only a few minutes and was still unpacking the groceries when her friend Jen dragged her out to the mall to help find a new outfit for an upcoming wedding, then later, Jen and her husband, Warren, insisted Kelly stay for dinner with them.

After dinner, over coffee, Warren looked at Kelly and said, “There’s something different about you. I’ve been trying to think what it is all night. Have you changed your hair or your makeup or something?”

She shook her head, smiling, and Jen and Warren exchanged a glance.

“You’ve met a man, haven’t you?” Jen looked gleeful. “Come on, spill the beans.”

Kelly mustered a laugh. “No such luck,” she said.

It was after eleven when she got home, and she’d only just shut her front door when her house phone rang. She dropped her handbag and car keys and ran to grab the phone in the kitchen. It would be Dylan; Marnie had promised to let him use her mobile phone to call home a couple of times while he was away. It was late here, but in Queensland it would be just after eight. He’d be ringing to tell her all about the exciting things they’d been doing.

Julie Mac

Today was the day they were going to the theme parks. He’d be tired, but still hyped and dying to share his news with her. She snatched up the phone.

“Hello, my darling.” There was a pause on the other end of the line, which she put down to time lag.

Then a voice, deep, bubbling with suppressed laughter, and definitely not her son’s said, “How’d you know it was me?”

Ben!

For a moment she was unable to form words. She’d thought about him all day, and now the sound of his voice was sending a huge shiver of excitement right through her body.

“I…I…thought it was going to be Dylan.” She sucked in a shallow breath. “Ringing from Australia to tell me about his day.”

“And am I your darling too?” His voice was like a purring caress coming down the line.

“No!” Why did Ben have to be
so
annoying? “Dylan’s the only male in my life who I call darling.”

“So, those things you did to me last night…you’d do those things to a man you couldn’t call darling? And those things you let me do to you…do you let men who are not your darlings do those things to you?”

“Yes. No, of course not.” She felt a smile spreading wide across her face. “I…”

“What, sweetness?”

“I liked those things you did to me, Ben.”

“And I liked them too.” His voice was soft, and the teasing and the laughter were gone. “What we did was special, and I’m sorry that I had to leave you in the middle of the night. And that I unloaded all that…history on to you.”

He paused then, and she was about to say, ‘No problems,’ except that sounded like a platitude and as she tried to think of a better response, he said, “That’s what I was calling to say. Sorry. And to hear your voice, and to know that you’re okay.”

For a moment, she couldn’t say anything. He cared!

“I am.” There was silence between them on the phone, but it seemed perfectly natural. “And what about you? Are you okay?”

“All the better for having seen you last night.”

She couldn’t help smiling.

“Where are you?”

“At the airport, in a pay‐phone booth.”

A Father at Last

“Are you going away?”

“I’ll call you. Gotta go now.”

“Ben—wait. I—”

I love you.
Three little words. So easy to say.
So wrong to say.
“I’m glad you rang.”

“Me too.”

She held her phone to her ear long after the connection was broken.

Julie Mac

Chapter 8

On Sunday, she was glad of some quiet time alone. She needed to think. After lunch, she took her photo album from the living room bookshelf, and opened it up at the kitchen table.

Most of the album was filled with pictures of Dylan as a baby and a growing boy, but the first few pages held the photographic record of what she thought of as her own ‘other life’.

It was these pages she studied now, the story of those happy early years documented in photos; at the beach, at home on the lifestyle block with the animals, getting a prize at school. Her parents were in many of the photos, too, although it was usually her father, because her mother was taking the pictures. She studied one photo in particular.

She, Kelly, sat—looking nervous—on Annie, the pony her dad had just brought home for her, and he stood at the pony’s head, holding the reins.

He’d been so pleased with himself that day. She remembered it clearly: him walking down the drive with the old pony plodding along behind; Mum coming out of the house, shrieking, ‘Gerry Atkinson, what have you done? You know nothing about horses’; him grinning, saying, ‘That horsy lady down the road, Mary Brokenshire, gave her to me. She said this pony would be fine for Kelly to start on.’

Kelly’s smile widened now. Annie, the old pony, had seemed to like them right from the start. Mum had come out of the house with a piece of fruit cake in her hand, and while she was yelling at Dad, Annie had stretched out her neck, wrapped her soft rubbery lips around the cake and taken it from her mother’s hand, making a friend for life.

These were the photos she showed Dylan. During his kindergarten years, when he’d realised other children had grandparents and he didn’t, she’d shown him the album and pointed out Nana and Grandad.

“Where are they? Can we go and see them?” he’d asked excitedly.

Gently, she’d explained that Nana had got very sick and died.

“And what about my Grandad?”

“He’s…gone.”

“Did he die too?”

It seemed easiest and kindest to simply agree, so she’d let him continue to believe both his grandparents were dead.

But now it would have to change.

She took a deep breath and walked into her bedroom. On the top shelf of her wardrobe, well hidden under a file box of photos and mementoes from her university days, A Father at Last

was a manila folder.

She took it back to the kitchen and opened it on the table. Inside were the clippings, with the horrible reports about Dad’s arrest and court appearances, and those awful photos the papers had published. Sometimes, she thought she should burn them, but always she reminded herself that one day, she would have to tell her son the truth about his grandfather.

She’d planned to wait until he was at least eight, or maybe ten, but things were different now. In a week’s time, conceivably, he could be meeting his grandad. But he was only six, a baby really, she thought sadly, and for now, he would accept a simplified version of the truth. She practised the words in her head:
Your grandfather broke the law and had
to go to prison.
Dylan would understand that. He knew right from wrong.

When he was old enough, he could choose for himself whether or not to read the newspaper reports.

She studied the photos in the ageing clippings. Dad had looked like that, thin and scared, the one and only time she’d gone to visit him in prison. The next time she’d seen him, at her mother’s funeral, eight years later, he was still terribly gaunt—but then he’d just lost the wife he loved. What would he look like now?

Ben said he looked well.

Ben.

She moved around the table to where the photo album lay open. There was Ben, standing right beside her in her Year Seven class photo. His thick wavy hair was a shade lighter than it was now, and he was shorter than her, but he was unmistakably Ben, with that irrepressible grin.

And he looked just like her son.

The Year Seven photo would have to go. Quickly, she checked all the other school photos. They were all there, year by year, through intermediate and high school, and in every single one, Ben was standing beside her. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. He’d positioned himself alongside her in all the class photos.