The Affair (8 page)

It was turning into a glorious day with the merest hint of a fresh easterly breeze. Nina wound down her window and inhaled the salty air. On the radio an old Mungo Jerry song was playing. It made Nina smile. She had grown up on the edge of the windswept prairies, surrounded by snow for a large part of the year, listening to this music. For the first time in her life the song made sense.

In the summertime, when the weather is fine, you can
jump right up and touch the sky
…

At the foot of the hill Rushcutters Bay was laid out before her, its boats heading out for a day on the harbour from the busy marina of the Cruising Yacht Club. It was the same pretty bay she looked onto from the apartment windows, but seen from an entirely different angle. Instead of little toy boats, parked in orderly rows along the marina, many of the yachts were massive, she realised. And beautiful. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some
were small and streamlined, obviously built for speed. Others were the size of a four-storey building. Millions of dollars in fibreglass and brass, floating peacefully in the sun. One had a helicopter perched on its deck.

The park was awash with colour as people frolicked under the massive fig trees. All across the grass they were doing their thing – reading newspapers, playing football, holding hands, watching babies take their first few tentative steps to the picnic rug or dozing mindlessly as flies buzzed around them.

In spite of herself, Nina felt her mood lift. What a beautiful day. A day you would never see again, as her father would say. He used to say that at least once every weekend, pushing her and Larry out onto the back porch with their coats and telling them to make the most of it, regardless of the weather. So here she was with this beautiful day to enjoy. How could she feel miserable? What a waste. What an insult to God.

Suddenly Nina knew exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to get in amongst it. She wanted to lie on her stomach on the grass reading the newspaper. She wanted to toss off her shoes and wriggle her toes. She wanted to laugh with the small boy unsteady on his feet and smile knowingly with his parents. She wanted the football to land near her newspaper so she could throw it back to those strapping young men in the short shorts.

A car pulled out of its parking spot and Nina swiftly took its place before any other car had a
breath of a chance. When she reached the edge of the lawn, she took off her sandals and enjoyed the feel of the spiky cool grass beneath her feet. She walked slowly across the park, skirting around a cricket match and picking her way through groups of people, some alone, some clumped together. In the centre of Rushcutters Park was a kiosk with a few plastic tables and chairs.

Most people bought their toasted foccacia and coffee at the kiosk and took them to their chosen pocket of grass. A gentle slope provided many vantage points to watch the boats coming and going on the harbour. Nina gave her order to the young woman behind the counter and looked around the park, wondering where she would sit. The woman handed across her foccacia and coffee and a paper serviette. She smiled at Nina, a simple, friendly smile. ‘Enjoy,’ she said before she took the next order, but the spontaneous friendliness was enough. It made Nina feel good. She picked up a discarded newspaper from a plastic table, tucked it under her arm and headed for one of the magnificent fig trees that made the park such a popular spot. Half-a-dozen people were already taking shade under the tree’s sprawling canopy.

Nina nestled herself between two massive roots that protruded through the dirt and settled back against the trunk. She appreciated its rough solidity through the thin fabric of her shirt. A cool breeze came off the water. The leaves above her shimmied and twirled, making a gentle, dappled light. There was so much to watch and enjoy as life
buzzed around her. The loneliness, her anger at James, all of it was forgotten as the last of the tension in her body dissolved.

Leo had spotted Nina just as she was crossing the grass. She was a graceful figure, lithe and dainty, moving with sensual elegance. She wasn’t tall or imposing but she had a presence. It was in the way she carried herself. With her long legs and her short skirt she attracted the attention of most male eyes. Only the men that were more interested in each other didn’t look up and follow her progress as she threaded her way through the different groups of people to the kiosk.

Leo was chatting with Nick, his sailing partner, at the edge of the grass. They had met for breakfast to relive the previous night’s satisfying victory and then spent a few hours checking the boat and making minor repairs. They were just winding up. Nick was about to get into his car and Leo would walk across the park to his apartment.

Nick spotted Nina first. Just 24, good-looking and full of testosterone, Nick had two interests in life – sailing and women. The merest hint of the female form in his peripheral vision acted as a trigger.

‘Whoa, check her out,’ he declared, interrupting Leo in mid-conversation.

Leo glanced in the direction Nick was looking and saw what had caught his friend’s eye: Nina making her way from the kiosk, shoes held casually in one hand, juggling a paper bag and coffee cup
in the other. Leo recognised her immediately. The girl from the taxi the previous evening. She seemed to bounce ever so lightly on the balls of her feet, gliding across the grass.

Nick gave a low whistle. ‘I’d give her one, and then one more.’

Leo felt his hackles rise. ‘Hey, lay off. I know her.’ Leo was as surprised as Nick at the words that came out of his mouth and the sharp tone he heard himself using.

Nick shrugged. Two young women in shorts were unloading hampers of food from the boot of their car. In an instant he was over helping them, leaving Leo alone to watch Nina settle herself against a tree.

Nina licked the last of the melted butter from her fingers, then screwed up the paper bag and relaxed into the tree trunk. All about her people laughed and played and enjoyed the day. She looked at all the high-rise apartments circling the park. She fancied they were like giant filing cabinets that had spilled their contents out onto the grass. She let her thoughts wander, disconnected images passed through her mind and were gone, leaving no trace. The sun warmed her bare legs. A butterfly fluttered for a moment in front of her face. She tried to follow its path but even that was too much effort. She let her eyes blur and enjoyed instead the movement of colour in front of her vision.

It was into that lazy, hazy, mellow world Nina
was enjoying that Leo stepped. There he was, suddenly standing in front of her, smiling in his cheerful, open way, his eyes laughing as if at some private joke. His head was tilted to one side, his baseball cap askew. He wore oversized baggy shorts and a jaunty air. He looked cheeky, like he had just done something very naughty but wasn’t going to tell.

‘Hello again,’ he said.

Nina’s immediate reaction was to laugh. ‘Hello again,’ echoed Nina.

‘What are you doing under my favourite tree?’ asked Leo.

‘Your favourite tree?’

Leo nodded solemnly. ‘This tree and I have had a long and fruitful relationship. We are known around these parts as something of a couple.’

Nina felt herself responding. This man is mad, she thought. Quite, quite mad. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I didn’t mean to come between the two of you.’

‘May I?’ Leo gestured with his coffee to a spot beside her.

‘But of course,’ replied Nina. ‘Is it all right with you if I stay?’

Leo appeared to think for a moment, then nodded. Nina moved across to make room for him. It was entirely unnecessary. They were in a park with acres of grass. The nearest person was at least four metres away. But somehow it felt appropriate. Leo waited till she had resettled herself then took the spot she had vacated.

‘I often come by after a morning on the boat and sit right here watching the world go by for a bit before heading home. I like this exact tree because it offers the best view of both the marina and the races. Well, you need binoculars to see the races from here.’ He looked so naughty that, even though what he said sounded innocent enough, Nina wasn’t sure whether he was teasing or not.

‘You have a boat at the marina?’

Leo nodded.

‘Which one is it?’

He looked across at the mass of boats.

‘It’s about fifth from the end along there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The timber sloop with one mast.’

Nina tried to follow his directions.

‘She’s the wooden one surrounded by a row of fibreglass ones.
Bessie.
A real beauty.’

Coming from inland Canada, Nina knew next to nothing about yachts. The closest she had come to being on one was catching the ferry across the harbour to Manly shortly after she arrived in Sydney. It had been a fun, if slightly nerve-racking experience, feeling the timber sway and vibrate beneath her feet.

Her mouth formed a perfectly shaped O.

Leo laughed. ‘Obviously you’re not a yachtie.’

Nina shook her head. ‘And I’m guessing you’re not an Italian count, heir to half of Italy.’

Leo feigned shock. ‘You didn’t believe that?’

‘Not for a minute.’

Leo gasped.

‘Okay, maybe for a minute … or two,’ she said.
‘Your Italian accent was quite good, and the hand-waving, very Latin. But I believe the phrase
Mon
Dieu
is French.’

‘Did I say
Mon Dieu
?’

Nina nodded. ‘Uh huh.’

Leo threw his hands in the air. He was so harmless and appealing in his baggy shorts and baseball cap.

Here we go again, thought Nina to herself. ‘But I shall always think of you as the fourteenth Count Mauro de March, heir to an Italian coffee empire.’

She felt spontaneous joy bubble up inside her. Leo gazed at her big, round brown eyes flashing with humour and intelligence. They stared at each other for one long moment. Neither spoke. Something gentle and sweet passed between them. It was like there was a subtle shift in the air vibrating around them. They were acutely aware of each other.

And so it began. Under the shade of a sprawling fig tree with a pair of noisy currawong birds quarrelling in its branches and ants crawling unnoticed over their bare feet, Nina and Leo fell in love. Years later, whenever Nina allowed herself to remember that time, she thought of it as slipping rather than falling. It had been so easy and natural, like meeting up with an old friend after too long apart and picking up where they left off. It seemed there was an aura of synchronicity and inevitability about it.

Time ceased to be relevant, but for the next two hours they chatted, laughed, watched and listened.
They were completely intrigued by each other. At times Nina sat leaning against the tree trunk, her legs stuck out in front of her, with Leo cross-legged, his hand on his chin and his face earnest. At other times Nina knelt while Leo lay stretched out beside her, waving his hands about to emphasise a point.

Their conversation was open and wide-ranging. They didn’t dwell on the personal, yet they shared some of their most intimate feelings. Nina referred only once to James, though not as her husband, then moved on, revealing nothing of her unhappiness, but sharing her self-consciousness and sense of alienation living in this foreign country. It touched a chord deep within Leo. He understood. He talked of his own school days when he was humiliated constantly by the sports-loving boys. He was the class geek, happy in the science lab, miserable on the football field. He sounded bitter. Leo revealed that he chose sailing because it was a sport he could excel at and it went some way towards healing the scars of his youthful humiliation. He had never admitted that to anyone before and he looked at Nina shyly as he spoke. He talked of his studies and his parents who had died within six months of each other when he was just eighteen, leaving him wealthy and in shock.

They talked of themselves and of the world as they saw it. Important things, trivial things, things that they were excited to discover, things that made them both feel angry or made them both laugh.

Leo told Nina about how, when he was eight,
he used to catch flies then keep them in little prisons he made out of corks, hollowing out a cave in the middle and using his mother’s sewing pins to create prison bars. He would proudly present them to his next-door neighbour, ten-year-old Kimmie Butler. Together they would tie a single hair around the fly’s head and let it out, flying the flies as if they were on a leash.

Nina described Chooky, the chicken she had hatched as part of a school project. Chooky refused to believe it was a chicken. It would not stay in the chicken coop but insisted on living indoors with the family. For the first year of its life it had the run of the house, sleeping on Nina’s bed and watching TV from the arm of her father’s chair. Then one day it had mysteriously disappeared. Only recently Nina’s mother had admitted that Chooky had ended up in the family’s Sunday night casserole.

There was nothing untoward in their time together, nothing for Nina to feel guilty about. They were just like two old friends catching up. Yet Nina did not even know his real name. Nor did he know hers. But Nina did know, as she walked back across the grass to her car, that she would see him again. She didn’t know when or how it might happen, and it didn’t matter. It was as if her world had just expanded and he fitted in somewhere within its new parameters. She didn’t explore the feeling, or question it, she just enjoyed it. She had made a new friend. Everything was as it should be. While just that morning the world had seemed a dark and unfriendly place, now everything felt okay again.

There was no thunderbolt from the sky or heartstopping moment to warn her about what she had begun. So there was no moment when she could choose to reject what was unfolding. But by the end of the afternoon, this man had planted himself firmly in her life. It was only looking back, months later, when she was agonising over what she had done and how it had happened, that she realised what had started that day. That gloriously sunny Saturday would be seared onto her psyche forever. Bittersweet and poignant. The beginning of a tender, beautiful and illicit love.