Waves of Temptation

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‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’

‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’

‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’

‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.

But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.

They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.

He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.

‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’

‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’

‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’

‘Unhappiness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jess was clinically depressed,’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor. You know it’s different. He wasn’t just unhappy; he was ill.’

‘No antidepressants showed up either.’

‘He wouldn’t touch antidepressants,’ she said, not sure where this was going, not sure that she wanted to go with him. ‘He’d fallen into addiction once and it terrified him. In all the time I knew him, he took nothing.’

‘How long did you know him?’

She shouldn’t say. She didn’t owe this man an explanation, and her story hurt. But it was also Jessie’s story. It hadn’t been told and maybe...maybe Jess would want his brother to know.

‘Get in touch with Matt if anything happens to me,’ he’d said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll look after you.’

If anything happens to me... He’d obviously been thinking suicide. It still played in her mind, and it was still unbearable. So many questions... The questions surrounded her, nightmares still.

But maybe she had to expose a little of that pain. Matt was waiting for her to speak, and after all these years his gaze was non-judgmental. He wanted to know.

Eighteen years ago he hadn’t asked, and she’d hated him. But then he’d been young and shocked and grieving, she conceded, and shock could be forgiven.

Almost. There was still a part of her that was that cringing seventeen-year-old, remembering this man’s fury.

‘I met Jess when I was sixteen,’ she said, forcing herself to sound like the grown-up that she was. ‘And I was a mess. But not because of drugs. I was just...neglected. My father was interested in surf and booze and nothing else. My mother disappeared when I was four—at least, I think it was my mother; my father never seemed sure. It didn’t matter. It was just the way things were. I was dragged up in the surfing community. There were good people who looked out for me, but they were itinerant and there were lots who weren’t so good. But all of them came and went. I stayed.’

‘It must have been a tough upbringing,’ he said quietly, and she nodded.

‘You could say that. And then, of course, I reached my teenage years. I matured late, thanks be, but finally at sixteen I became...female, instead of just a kid. Then things got harder. Unprotected and often homeless, camping as we often did, I became a target and my father was little use. I was a little wildcat, doing my best to defend myself, but it couldn’t last. Then Jess arrived. He set up on the outskirts of the camp, seemingly intent on surfing and nothing else. I didn’t think he’d even noticed us but there was an ugly scene one night when someone offered my father money. I remember someone grabbing me as if he owned me.’

‘You were so alone.’

‘I... Yes.’

‘With no one?’

‘No one who cared.’

‘Kelly—’

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, and she even smiled a little. ‘You know, when you spoke then, you sounded just like Jess. Just as angry on my behalf. That night he appeared out of the dark, out of nowhere, and he was furious. I hit out—and Jess moved in before the guy could retaliate. He just...took over.’

‘Jess was always bringing home strays,’ Matt said. His instinctive anger seemed to have settled and his tone gentled. Strays. The word drifted in her mind. She knew no offence had been meant and none had been taken, because that’s exactly what she’d been. A stray. Living in temporary surf camps. Going to school when the surf camp had been close enough or when her father had been capable of taking her. Living hand to mouth, the only constant being the surf.

But then there’d been Jess.

‘He was the best surfer,’ she said, pain fading as she remembered the way he’d transformed her life. ‘He’d only just arrived but everyone there respected him. He was also...large.’ She eyed Matt’s strongly built frame, his height—six three or so—his instinctive anger on her behalf—and she remembered Jess. For some reason it made her want to reach out and touch this man, comfort him, take away the pain behind his eyes.

She could do no such thing.

‘He told me he hadn’t seen his family for years,’ she went on, trying to ignore the urge to comfort Matt. ‘By the time you saw his body the depression had left its mark. He hadn’t been eating for weeks. But imagine him as I first saw him. He lived and breathed surfing. He was beautiful. He was built like a tank. No one stood up to him—and yet he stood up for me.’

‘You became his lover?’

There was a moment’s pause. She really didn’t want to go there, but she needed to tell it like it was. For Jessie’s sake. He’d been her hero, not some low-life who’d picked up teenage girls.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Believe it or not, I was sixteen and that was how Jess treated me. Dad and I were living in a rough beach shanty, but Dad left soon after Jess arrived, looking for better surf on the other side of the island. He came back every so often, but Jess built a lean-to on the side of our hut and we stayed put. Jess said it was to protect me and that’s what he did. He surfed with me, but it wasn’t all fun. He pushed me to go to school. I’d been going intermittently but Jess insisted I go every day. He gave me money for clothes. He stopped Dad...well, he kept me safe. He was my gorgeous big brother. But then the black dog got too much for him.’

‘The depression.’

‘He called it his black dog. He said that’s what Winston Churchill called it and that’s what it felt like. A great black dog, always shadowing him. He said it’d been shadowing him since he was a kid, something he was born with. He told me how his dad hated it, thought he was weak because of it. He told me about how’d he’d tried to escape with drugs when he was in his late teens, and what a mess that had been. I think that was a way of warning me, because drugs were everywhere in our scene. But Jess wouldn’t touch them. Never again, he said, even near the end when the depression was so bad and I pleaded with him to get help. “They’ll only give me pills,” he said, “and I’m not going down that road again.”’

‘If I’d known...’

‘Jess said you didn’t want to know,’ Kelly said gently. ‘Jess said you and he were close, but after rehab... He knew that shocked you. After he got his life together and the surfing was helping, he said he sent you the airfare to come and have a holiday together during your university holidays, but you wouldn’t come.’

Matt closed his eyes and she saw the pain wash over him. No. It was more than pain. Self-loathing.

‘He’d come out of rehab and gone straight back to surfing,’ Matt managed. ‘I thought—’

‘You know, surfing and drugs don’t really mix,’ she said gently. ‘There are always the fringe dwellers, people like my dad who surf a bit but who love the sun-bleached lifestyle more than the skill itself. But to be a real surfer you’re up at dawn, day after day. The sea demands absolute attention, absolute fitness. You need to work as Jess did—he did casual bricklaying to pay bills—but he surfed at dawn and then he was back at dusk to surf every night, falling into bed with every single part of him exhausted. Jess used the surf to drive away his demons and it mostly worked. He had no time for drugs. I swear he wasn’t taking them. I swear.’

‘I believe you,’ Matt said heavily. ‘Now. But back then...I’d just found out my brother had killed himself and, what’s more, that he’d married a seventeen-year-old just before he’d died. What was I to think? And then...pregnant?’

‘That was my fault,’ she said evenly, but he shook his head.

‘Seventeen was hardly old enough to consent.’

‘In those last months Jess wasn’t fit enough to think of age differences,’ she said evenly. ‘The depression was so bad he just...went away. Physically he left for a couple of weeks and when he returned to camp he looked gutted. I was terrified. He was limp, unable to make any decisions. He didn’t want to surf. He didn’t want to do anything. If I told you all he’d done for me... Well, I was so grateful, I loved him so much, and the state he was in, I was terrified. Anyway, I did everything, anything I could think of to pull him out of it, and in the end I just lay down and held him. I held him all I could, every way I could, and when he finally took me I was happy because I thought he was coming out of it. I thought...he must be.’

‘Oh, Kelly...’

‘And I’d bought condoms—of course I had—and we used them, but that first time, well, I had the experience of a newt and I guess I was doing the seducing and I didn’t do it right and then I was pregnant.’

‘You told him?’

‘He guessed. And for a while that woke him up. We had this first morning when we knew... I’d woken up sick and he waited until I was better and we took the boards out beyond the surf break to watch the dawn. And we lay there talking about our baby like it might really exist, about this new life that was so exciting. Life for both of us had been crap but this new life...we planned for it. And Jess told me I’d be an awesome mother and he’d try, he’d really try. But that was the last time...’