Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

‘You couldn’t bear to tell me you’d used me?’

‘Please, don’t, Cal,’ she whispered. ‘It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t. What we had was amazing.’

‘Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?’ he said heavily into the stillness. ‘Mind-blowing. It was sex. Was that all it was? Great sex, Gina, followed by pregnancy, and then back to your husband so you can play happy families?’

‘You’re not going to let me explain?’

‘Mom?’ The voice came from behind them. CJ. The little boy stood in the doorway behind the screen door, looking from his mother to Cal and back again. ‘Mrs Grubb said you’ve finished saving the baby. Have you?’

‘Yes, we have, CJ,’ she told him, visibly gathering her wits. As he came through the door she held out a hand to tug him close. Then she gestured to Cal, took a deep breath and performed introductions. ‘CJ, this is Cal. CJ, this is the very special Australian friend I’ve been telling you for about all these years. The man I hoped we’d get to visit while we were over here.’

‘The man with my name?’ CJ asked, and Gina nodded.

‘That’s right.’

‘Hi.’ CJ put out his hand, man to man. ‘I’m Callum James Michelton. I’m very pleased to meet you.’

Callum James.

CJ.

Cal swallowed. His hand was still being gripped so he shook the child’s hand with due solemnity and then released it.

‘My mom says you’re the best doctor in the world,’ CJ told him. ‘And she says you can juggle better than anyone she knows.’

It was hard, getting his voice to work. Cal swallowed again and tried harder. ‘Your mom told you that?’

‘She told me lots about you. She says you’re terrific.’ CJ eyed Cal cautiously, as if he was prepared to give his mother the benefit of the doubt for a while but Cal just might have to prove himself. ‘You’ve got the same colour hair as I have.’

‘Is it the same colour as your dad’s?’ Stupid question. Stupid, stupid question, and he felt Gina flinch, but he’d asked it and now he had to wait for an answer.

‘My dad’s dead,’ CJ told him. ‘He was in a wheelchair and he had black hair and a big scar down the side of his face.’ He sighed. ‘My dad watched TV with me and he read me stories but then he got so sick that he died. I miss him a lot and a lot.’

‘I…I see.’

He didn’t see. There were so many unanswered questions.

‘Are we talking about Paul here?’ he asked—feeling his way—and Gina nodded.

‘That’s right. Paul.’

‘So when you said your marriage was over…’

‘CJ, do you think you could bring me out a glass of water?’ Gina asked, and there was a note of desperation in her voice. ‘Would Mrs Grubb give you one for me?’

‘Sure,’ CJ told her. ‘We’ve made choc-chip cookies with twice the number of choc chips in the recipe ’cos Mrs Grubb let me tip and I spilt them. They’re warm.’ He turned to Cal. ‘Would you like one, sir?’

‘Yes, please,’ Cal managed. ‘Um…call me Cal.’

‘Yes, sir. I mean Cal. I’ll be an aeroplane. I haven’t been an aeroplane all day.’ He was off, zooming along the veranda, arms outstretched.

‘CJ,’ his mother called, and he stopped in mid-flight.

‘Yeah?’

‘This is a hospital and some sick patients might be going to sleep. Do you think you could be a silent glider instead of an aeroplane?’

‘Sure, I can.’ CJ put his lips firmly together. ‘Shh,’ he ordered himself, ‘If you make one loud noise up here, you’ll scare the eagles.’

And off he glided, kitchenwards.

Cal was left staring after him.

‘Great kid,’ he said at last—cautiously—and Gina nodded.

‘Yeah. He takes after his daddy.’

‘Paul…’

‘You.’

He sighed. The anger had gone now. All that was left was an ineffable weariness. A knowledge that somehow he’d been used and somehow this child had been born and there’d been four years of a child growing in his image that he’d known nothing about.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘In a nutshell?’

‘Take your time.’ His voice was heavy. He hardly wanted to know himself. If she didn’t want to tell him…

But it seemed she did.

‘Some of it you know,’ she said, her voice distant now, as if repeating a learned-by-heart story. ‘I told you the bare facts when we first met. That I’d been married and that I was separated.’

‘But—’

‘Just let me tell it, Cal,’ she whispered, and he stared at her for a long minute, and then nodded.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Big of you.’

‘Gina…’

‘I married Paul when I was eighteen,’ she told him, and there was a blankness about her voice now that hadn’t been there before. ‘He was the boy next door, the kid I’d grown up with. We decided to marry when we were twelve. We went through med school together, we were best of friends—and then suddenly he just seemed to fall apart. There’d been huge pressure on him from his parents to become a doctor. To marry. To be successful in their eyes. Maybe I was stupid for not seeing how much pressure he was under.’

‘You weren’t sympathetic toward him when you were here,’ he said, and she nodded.

‘No. I was young and I was hurt. We’d made it as doctors, we had the world at our feet and suddenly he didn’t want any part of our life together. He wanted to find himself, he said, and off he went. And to be honest it wasn’t until I decided to come here…until I met you…that I realised that he was right. We’d been kids, playing at being grown-ups. We’d married for the wrong reasons.’