The Piper's Son (23 page)

“No,”
he says, irritated. “Who told you that?”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m sure there are some people out there who organize novenas for Tara Finke’s people. To keep Thomas Finch Mackee away from her.”

Georgie’s forgotten that Dominic and Joe got their ability to shit-stir from Grace. It used to make Georgie giggle uncontrollably when she was younger. She finds herself laughing now. Tom isn’t. He asks Grace for his sunglasses back and goes inside.

“Too sensitive, that one,” Grace says, putting her scarf across her eyes. “Gets it from Jacinta Louise’s side of the family.”

Too many things disturb Tom. One is that even people in his grandparents’ town of Albury know what went down between him and Tara. Then there’s the whole thing about the peacekeeper being Brazilian. That starts him thinking about what the Brazilian and Tara get up to and what Tom got up to with her and then his head’s spinning, not to mention every other part of his body. It doesn’t help that he receives an e-mail from Siobhan Sullivan the next day. He’d been waiting for this one. Siobhan and Tara are best friends, despite being polar opposites. The last time Tom had seen Siobhan was one night in Darlinghurst when he was out with his ex-flatmates and she was about to head off to London. Siobhan hadn’t held back telling Tom what she thought of him. He couldn’t imagine things being any different eighteen months later.

Siobhan’s mention of the one-and-a-half-night stand pisses him off, but it triggers major regrets and memories. Of the night when he took Tara back to Georgie’s attic to clear out his stuff for Joe’s arrival.
Don’t go back there.
He’s learned to give himself instructions from a self-help program. The
Learn to Listen to Yourself
program of healing. Georgie suggested it. Worked for her when she was getting over the Sam betrayal seven years ago. Although when he thinks about it, she’s now pregnant to Sam, so the results aren’t exactly for life.

Don’t go back there. Don’t go back there.

He goes back there because he can’t forget what those foils had done to her hair.

“Foils, fool,” she had said, wiggling her fingers to a little kid who was sitting opposite them on the bus. Somewhere back in Year Twelve the insults became signs of affection.

She had been tired and leaned her head on his shoulder, which was the resting place for all their heads, but when Justine and Siobhan and Francesca used his body so shamelessly, he had never felt the need to turn his head and press his mouth against their hair.

“I’ve finally decided about what I’m going to study,” she said. “Permaculture.”

“Hmm, Permaculture.”

She looked at him. “You don’t even know what it means.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s a hair thing. Like the foils.”

“You’re a dick.” But she laughed all the same. “It works perfectly with cultural studies. There’s a component of overseas study, so I’m going to look at how we can create a sustainable urban environment.”

“Huh?”

He had felt her watching him and when he shifted his eyes to look down into hers, she had been staring intently.

“Do you know what I’m talking about, Thomas?”

He sighed. He had known exactly what she was talking about. He didn’t mind the sustainable, or the urban, or the environment. It was the word
overseas
he hadn’t cared to dwell on.

A bunch of gigglers vacated the back seat at Central Station, and Tom grabbed both their stuff and led.

“And I owe it all to your great-aunt Margie,” she said, settling into the corner.

Oh, yeah, thank you, Great-Auntie Margie. Love your work.

“She introduced me to one of the nuns. You remember her? Sister Susan. She’s one of the Josephite nuns. When she spoke about East Timor at the Town Hall a couple of years back? Well, we’ve been e-mailing and she reckons I should go over to Timor as part of my studies.”

He hadn’t responded. Just looked past her, outside the window, as if construction on Broadway was mesmerising.

“You’re not interested in what I’m doing,” she said, her voice flat.

He moved away from her, so he could look at her properly.

“No, I’m not interested,” he had said, pissed off.

Her face went pink instantly. She was in retreat and it was going to take him forever to force her back into advance. That was Tara Finke for you. The moment she stopped making speeches and proving a point, the rhetoric went flying out the window and she was all awkwardness, stuck to a wall of vulnerability built over the years. Tom could get her off that wall.

“You’re going overseas for how long?” he asked.

“Forget it. You’re not interested, remember?”

Then it was her turn to be peering outside. Glebe Point Road had never looked so exciting. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and he knew she felt it, no matter how hard she was looking out that window. Because her face had deepened in color until he actually thought she was going to cry.

“What part of you going overseas, for probably more than a year, would you like me to be excited about?” he snapped. There was no turning back now. She looked up and he had seen it in her eyes. She was getting what he was trying to say. Her face was flushed again. An awkward flush.

“Go out to Campbelltown, Tara. They’ve got a bigger need for ecological design out there.”

She smiled. “You
do
know what it means, you moron.”

He leaned closer, his mouth an inch away from hers. “Not working against nature,” he said, “working with nature.”

She was looking at his mouth and then up at his eyes.

“That’s what
permaculture
means,” he said with a grin.

She laughed and leaned her head back against him.

“I’ve never even been on a plane, you know. The only place I’ve been to is my grandparents’ house at the Entrance.”

“A very underestimated part of the world, the Entrance is.”

Each time the bus door opened, he had felt a blast of cold air. When she shivered, he put his arm around her. He should have kissed her a moment before when the time was right.

“So you e-mail my great-aunt?”

“She reckons you and your dad are going out to Walgett to build something out there,” she said.

“Did she, now? I can think of a thousand better ways of spending my holidays, but you know my father. Gets anal about things, so it’s going to be Tom and Dom’s excellent adventures in Walgett.”

“Fun times?”

“Reckons he’s going to convince my uncle Joe to come along while he’s out here from London, which’ll mean that my step-pop’s going to want to come too and it’ll be the Mackee men building the world, while trying not to get into punch-ups after a couple of schooners.”

He grinned. He hadn’t realized he kind of liked the sound of that.

By the time they got off at Stanmore, they’d tackled everything from the United Nations to Brangelina, and it was while doing
Little Britain
impersonations with Tara wheezing from laughter that he stopped and leaned down to kiss her. Her satchel was a barrier between them and when he tried to put an arm around her, his guitar case battered her side and she almost went flying out onto the road. He had only one free hand to hold her, and it just seemed to be his mouth pressing down on hers and Tara on tiptoes trying to reach him. And by the time they had reached Georgie’s house, they’d stopped four times and he just wanted to get her into the house and up in the attic, where his junk could stay another day. It was late and he figured that Georgie was sleeping, but as they tiptoed up the stairs, she came out of her room.

“Yes, we are cleaning out the Messiah’s room,” he had said casually. Georgie pointed to her cheek and he kissed her and although she said nothing, there was that close scrutiny of hers, which kind of said everything.

He mumbled something about going upstairs and continued as if every part of him wasn’t trembling, and as if his head wasn’t yelling,
Georgie knows you want to have sex with Tara Finke tonight under her roof!
Tara stayed behind and he could hear them talk about her mum, who had just left the Red Cross to work for the Cancer Council and about a job vacancy that Georgie should look into. But then Tara was there in the attic and he shut the door behind her.

“What’s that?” she had asked, looking down at the LP in his hands, and he knew she was nervous and stalling.

“Slade. I’m going to paste it up on the wall so my dickhead uncle sees it the moment he walks in and stops going on about me losing it.”

His stuff was scattered all over the floor.

“You’re such a slob.”

But then they were kissing again and he was unbuttoning her jeans and she was shaking.

“Stop shaking,” he whispered.

“Georgie knows. I can tell she knows. And I’ve never noticed how beautiful she is. All dark hair and white skin. No freckles. How did she get to have that color skin with no freckles?”

“You’re babbling, Finke.”

And she was wearing too many clothes. Jeans, skirt, and probably, under it all, tights.

He bent and pulled down her jeans first. “How short is this skirt?” he said with wonder. No tights.

“It’s why I wear the jeans. Siobhan gave it to me.”

“How white are these legs?” he said with more wonder. Goose-bumped to the hilt. He ran his fingers over them. When he stood up again, he pulled off his sweater. She was still shaking.

“You’ve got to stop shaking, Tara,” he had said gently. “It’s just me.”

“I can’t do this if Georgie’s downstairs. Tom. It’ll be like having my mother there.”

He had tried to take off her top, but she was shaking her head emphatically. “With the light off.”

“No light off,” he argued. “I want to see you.”

And he saw a bit of fear on her face and he didn’t want that between them, so he reached over and switched off the light and then took her hand.

“We’ll lie down. I promise. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

Please, please, say we can do anything you want to do.

“It’s just if Georgie wasn’t downstairs . . .”

And he was holding her to him and then they were underneath the blankets and she was trembling and he wanted it to stop and for her to go back to being Tara in charge and bossy, so he wouldn’t have to deal with this vulnerability. The skirt was still on, but it barely covered her and he pressed his knee between her legs.

“Come on, baby girl,” he had whispered.

She stiffened. “Don’t call me baby girl!”

“Okay, honey.” He imagined the look on her face but couldn’t see it in the dark. “No? Bunny? Sweet cheeks? Babe? Darlin’ chicky babe? Munchkin? Poppet?”

And she was doing that wheezing laugh again.

“Doll? Treasure?”

“Enough.”

“Petal.”

He kissed her again because he couldn’t stop.