Into My Arms (29 page)

‘No. Not yet. It would be too lonely during the day, when we are all out. She is better with the women. They do weaving together.
Termeh, kilims
—cloth, prayer rugs. It’s good for her.’ Zia shrugged and stretched his hands out in front of him. ‘Having Habib and Iman back would also be good for her.’

Arran mumbled his agreement.

‘She comes over for dinner twice a week,’ Zia went on. ‘I cook. I’m a much better cook now. I haven’t burned myself in ages.’ He grinned suddenly, white teeth gleaming against his dark skin, and Arran thought how handsome he was becoming. Were the girls at school getting interested? He wondered what Mrs Vasseghi would think about that.

‘What are you doing over the holidays?’ he asked. ‘Are you going on one of Ben’s camps? They sound like fun.’

‘No. I have to be home for Farid, while my father is at work.’

‘Farid could’ve gone too, you know. He’s old enough. He’d probably love it—all those outdoor activities.’

Zia stared ahead at the cricket game. Farid was still in; he was tapping his bat impatiently as he waited for the bowler. ‘We don’t have the money. Baba gives us twenty dollars a week. I didn’t want to ask him for more.’

‘Zia, I could’ve helped,’ Arran said, frustrated. ‘The agency could have sponsored you—you
and
Farid. You should have asked me.’

A cry went up and the kids sitting watching the game jumped to their feet and ran onto the pitch.

‘My team is into the field,’ Zia said and stood up.

‘Fielding,’ Arran corrected. ‘Hey—what about tomorrow? Do you have somewhere to go for Christmas Day? Why don’t you come to lunch with my family? Skye would love to see you again.’

‘I can’t,’ said Zia, moving away. ‘Baba has the day off. We are picking up Madar and going to the beach. Farid wants to swim.’ He held his new phone to his ear, turning back to Arran. ‘Please say hello to Miss Holt for me. Or maybe I’ll call her instead.’ He laughed and ran off, putting the phone carefully in his pocket. Arran lay back on the lawn smiling. The cheeky bugger.

Arran pushed open the door then took off his shoes, lining them up with the others on the porch. He’d been surprised and a little affronted when John first asked him to do that, but now he understood. It wasn’t like living in the squat. The terrace was lovely, and John took pride in it. He had bought and then renovated it all by himself.

‘Six and a half years,’ he’d told Arran on their first real date, at a Vietnamese restaurant on Victoria Street, almost shouting to be heard over the clamour from the kitchen. ‘I was always up a ladder, or on a scaffold—I started to feel like Michelangelo.’

Arran had laughed, but later, when he saw it, he understood just how much love had gone into the house, how much time and effort and money. He’d never been asked to remove his shoes in any other place he’d lived, but then he’d never lived anywhere where the cornices were hand-painted, where the hall runner came from Iran, and not Ikea.

As Arran came into the kitchen John was at the island bench, methodically laying out circles of pastry.

‘I thought we’d have gyoza tonight. Dumplings.’ He wiped his hands on a tea towel. ‘Something nice and simple while it’s just us, before all that heavy stuff tomorrow.’

Arran leaned across and kissed him, astonished anew by all he had somehow tumbled into: John, John’s cooking, this house, their bed, his own toothbrush in a cup in the mosaic-tiled bathroom. These days, he never thought of Mark except to wish that he could see all this, where Arran lived now, how loved and happy he was—see it, and then have the door closed in his face.

‘That doesn’t look simple,’ Arran said, inspecting John’s preparations. ‘My idea of simple is ordering pizza.’

John laughed. ‘These will taste far better, I promise. Plus the delivery boy’s much cuter.’

The gyoza were good, light and yet filling, exactly the right consistency. Arran finished his meal and sat for a moment, suffused with contentment, then pushed his chair back from the table and began to clear the plates.

‘Leave them,’ John said, pouring himself a second glass of wine. ‘I want to talk to you.’

Arran’s stomach sank. In his experience, this sort of statement never heralded good news. He sat back down.

John picked up his glass and swirled it gently, the ruby liquid catching the light of the fading evening. ‘You love your niece, don’t you?’ he began uncertainly, gazing into the wine. ‘And that boy you were telling me about that you saw today. Zia.’

Arran nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘You’re fabulous with my nephews too, you really are. They think you’re great.’

‘They’re good kids,’ Arran said simply. Where was this heading?

John took another sip, then looked up. ‘How would you feel about having one of our own?’ he asked.

The antique clock on the bookcase chimed, eight rich notes hanging in the dusk.

‘Are you serious?’ said Arran.

‘I’m not getting any younger. Next year I’ll be forty.’ John leaned back in his seat. His eyes were bright; as he lifted his glass again his hand trembled slightly. ‘I know we haven’t been together that long, but we’re good, aren’t we? It’s something I’ve always wanted, that I thought you might want too.’

Arran swallowed. He wanted to reach across and hug John; he wanted to jump up on the table and dance a jig. ‘I do,’ he said instead. ‘I
do
. I adore Molly, but I always thought that’d be as close as I got. I don’t have the money for surrogacy, for a start, and now that there’s laws against it—’

‘We won’t need a surrogate. You know my friends, Mardi and Erica? You met them at the barbecue on Anzac Day. Mardi called in, last week, while you were at work. They want a baby too. They can’t use IVF—they’re looking for a donor.’

‘Just some sperm?’ Arran asked suspiciously.

‘No,’ John said, then conceded, ‘Well, yes, sperm, sure. They need that. But she said they’d be happy for us to be involved with the child, if there was one, that maybe we could share custody once it got past the breastfeeding stage, that kids need dads too, not just mums . . .’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Look, we’d have to nut it all out, of course, maybe get something legal drawn up. I’m not saying it’ll be easy—but they’re good people, Mardi and Erica, and they like you. Others have done it like this. Why not us?’

A warmth went through Arran that was more than the afterglow of a good dinner and excellent wine, as filled with promise as the gold-streaked twilight beyond the dining room windows. He reached across the table and took John’s hands. ‘I’ve only got one question,’ he said, pausing for effect. ‘Mardi came around last week. Why’d you wait so long to tell me?’

‘I wanted it to be tonight,’ John said. ‘Silly, isn’t it? But it just felt right.’ He raised Arran’s hands to his mouth and kissed them gently, knuckles first, then the fingertips. ‘Merry Christmas, Arran,’ he murmured, his head bent. ‘Merry Christmas.’

32

‘OK, Luca, your turn. What did you like most about today?’

Ben poked at one of the logs on the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. The January air was warm, almost cloying. They didn’t need a campfire, but the kids had begged for it, for marshmallows to toast and potatoes wrapped in foil, for ghost stories told while they clutched each other and hunched their backs against the dark. Everything, he imagined, that they’d seen on TV or in the movies but had never experienced for themselves. How could he deny them? This was what the week was supposed to be about, after all. You couldn’t have a campfire on the eighteenth floor of a housing commission flat.

‘I liked the abseiling the best,’ Luca began, his face animated in the flickering light.

‘No way. You were shit scared!’

‘Daniel!’ Ben cautioned. ‘Enough with the language. And it’s Luca’s turn now. You’ve had yours.’

‘I was not scared!’ Luca protested. ‘I was just making sure that Sanjeev was all the way down before I had my go. That’s what Sally told us to do.’

‘You’re quite right, Luca,’ Sally said, leaning into the circle. ‘It is a bit scary at first though, isn’t it? Just that moment when you put all your weight on the rope, before it catches . . .’

‘Yeah,’ Luca conceded, glancing across at Daniel as if daring him to comment again. ‘And you don’t know if it’s going to hold you. I know you said it would, but you don’t
know
it will, if you get what I mean.’

Sally nodded. ‘That’s why I love abseiling. It’s great when you’re doing it, but there’s always that moment of fear when you start. It’s the fear that makes it so exciting, I think.’

All the kids were nodding, Ben noticed. Sally had been a real find. When he’d first had the idea of running some camps for his drop-in group over the summer it had been Arran who suggested he get some help; Arran who’d realised that an outdoor education student might do the job cheaply, for the experience, and would come with both skills and equipment Ben didn’t possess. Sally had been the first person to answer Ben’s ad in the student newspaper. She was two years into her degree, she’d told him over the phone. She could run rock climbing and abseiling, if that was any use. Ben hadn’t actually envisaged much more for the week than hiking and fishing, maybe a bit of canoeing if he could hire the boats. Yes, he’d said, sitting up at his desk and reaching for his pen. Yes, that would be very useful indeed. He’d hired Sally on the spot.

So far, the abseiling had been the hit of the camp, and Ben was grateful to be able to offer it. Sally had brought more than that, though. As the only female in their group of nine—seven kids plus Ben and herself—she was a circuit breaker; she made them laugh at themselves when they were starting to get a bit competitive. It wasn’t a maternal thing—at twenty-one, she was too young and too pretty for that—but somehow she softened the group. If she wasn’t here now the boys would probably be standing around the fire seeing who could put it out quickest by pissing on it.

And she supported Ben; she understood what he was trying to do and helped him to do it. This was the first camp he had run. It was just a pilot, really, with barely a handful of boys, but next week he and Sally would do it again with twelve kids instead of seven, and the week after that with twenty. Then, hopefully—with community interest, with funding, and as long as no one died—the camps could continue and grow. Maybe he could get some sort of regular program happening. Ben didn’t want to give up the drop-in work, but to really be effective he knew he needed more. More time with the kids, to listen and to talk with them; more opportunities to connect, rather than just distract them for three hours two afternoons a week. More scope, more possibilities. To get them out of the city, away from the concrete basketball court and the cigarettes they were starting to smoke when he wasn’t around; to show them that there was more to life, to Australia, than either had so far revealed to them. He’d never discussed it with her, but somehow he knew that Sally felt the same way. She got it. He’d seen her in action; she didn’t just want to teach the boys how to rock climb, she wanted to challenge them, confront them, make them think about what they were capable of. She was on his side.

‘Hey,’ she said now, glancing up at him across the fire. ‘You look tired. Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll make sure this lot do the same. They’re due anyway.’ She cocked her head in the direction of Daniel, eyes closed as he leaned against Sanjeev, a silvery thread of saliva inching its way towards his chest.

‘Thanks,’ Ben said, standing up and stretching. ‘Are you sure? Don’t let them give you any trouble.’

‘They won’t.’ She smiled. ‘They know who’s going to be holding their ropes tomorrow—and fastening their harnesses.’

Ben laughed and headed towards his tent. Once inside, though, he changed his mind. The nylon had baked all day beneath the summer sun; it was too stuffy to sleep. He pulled off his t-shirt, grabbed a towel and walked down to the lake.

The cool water enveloped his ankles, slid silkily against his calves. Ben stood there for a moment, enjoying the sensation, then pushed off and dived out into the darkness. He opened his eyes under the water and he surfaced to a sky full of stars, the shore behind him barely a shadow. The boys would like this, he thought; he should bring them down tomorrow night, after dinner . . . Then he immediately changed his mind. It was a stupid idea. They’d start mucking around, ducking each other. He’d lose them in the inky depths in the first five minutes. Ben sighed and rolled onto his back. There was so much that the small group needed from him: attention, forethought, his mind always on their safety and well-being, even though theirs rarely was. They needed instruction and limits and a role model, but also a friend, a listening ear, someone to test themselves with and against. It was exhausting, but that’s why he’d done it, wasn’t it? For the kids, definitely, to make an impact on their lives, but also to relieve the loneliness of his own. They were his family now, Sanjeev and Luca and Zia and the rest; they were the ones who smiled when they saw him coming, who moved over and made a place for him when he sat down to eat.

The lake lapped around him, washing away the sweat of the day. Ben felt his limbs relaxing, floating, weightless and drowsy . . . Then suddenly there was a small splash and Sally’s blonde head appeared beside him, wet hair slicked back.