Fiona Lowe - Four Weddings

You don’t belong anywhere.

He scooped the child into his arms, refusing to listen to the words that haunted him every day.

* * *

Tom meticulously laid pieces of driftwood on top of each other in the fire pit he’d dug in the sand.

‘Did you belong to the Scouts?’ Bec’s laughing voice washed over him.

He looked up from his kneeling position to see her smiling down at him, the slight breeze whipping her soft hair around her face. Whipping the shapeless cotton trousers and jacket onto her body, outlining pert breasts and round hips. His blood stirred.

He cleared his throat. ‘I was in the Scouts for awhile, but it was Dad who taught me how to make a fire.’ He lit a match, watching the small yellow and blue flame curl around the paper and catch the kindling.

He’d spent the day at the hospital. Miraculously he’d managed to keep little Kim alive on the long, slow journey to Danang. He’d reluctantly handed her over to the care of the physicians at the hospital but had stayed around until she’d shown definite signs of improvement.

Bec had virtually pushed him out the door at five o’clock. On the way home she’d completely floored him when she’d asked him to show her China Beach. It was the first social thing she’d initiated since he’d met her. She usually disappeared into her room at the end of a working day mumbling excuses ranging from washing her hair through to writing letters to Rotary Clubs.

She’d even offered to shout him dinner at a hawker’s stall. But on an impulse he didn’t want to examine very closely, he’d found himself insisting that he’d cook dinner for her at the beach. They’d stopped at a market and bought fish, coriander, chilli, beer and rice. Everything he needed for a China Beach barbecue.

‘Can I help with anything?’ Bec hovered.

He noticed she didn’t do ‘just sitting’ very well. ‘No, I’ve got it sorted. We’ll just let the fire burn down to embers and I’ll cook the fish. Right now all we have to do is sit.’ He grinned at her disconcerted look.

The sun, a blazing orange ball, slid silently closer to the mountains that curved around the coast, its last rays turning the South China Sea from blue to a fiery red. Spreading out the picnic rug, he sat down next to her, slightly closer than she normally sat next to him. He waited for her to move away.

A slight tremor raced across her shoulders but she smiled brightly and stayed put. ‘I love sitting on a beach and seeing the sun set. I spent a lot of time on Cottesloe beach in Perth. It became a refuge for me.’ Her matter-of-fact voice belied all she’d been through.

It took all of his self-control not to put his arm around her shoulder and hug her close. ‘I reckon my mum must have come from the coast. I’ve always hankered to have the sting of salt in my nostrils. When I’m in the south I always make sure I come to the beach. I always feel at peace here.’

‘I guess the farm was a long way from the coast.’ She tucked her hair behind her ears as she looked at him.

‘No, the farm’s only a half-hour drive from the sea. Dad used to take me fishing at Corner Inlet and I was never more content than when I was sitting in that tinnie boat with a fishing rod in my hand.’ A wistful memory stirred inside him.

‘Makes you think about nature versus nurture, doesn’t it?’ Her relaxed face glowed with the rays of the setting sun. ‘You grew up close to the ocean and your adopted dad was a keen fisherman. We could hypothesise that your love of the sea comes from companionable times sitting in a boat with your dad.’

Resentment swirled in his gut as her comment snagged against his ideas about his biological mother. ‘ You could hypothesise that.’ He opened the food bag and pulled out two bottles of beer, jerking the seals off with more force than necessary.

People had no idea what it was like to know nothing about their family. ‘You grew up with the mannerisms of your parents and grandparents, knowing who they came from. I bet someone in your extended family wrinkles their nose like you do.’

She accepted the proffered beer with a nod of thanks. ‘Sure, but did I see my mother do that and copy her, or is it embedded in my DNA?’

‘Twin studies would say it’s in your DNA.’ His words shot back hard, fast and uncompromising.

Surprise streaked across her face. ‘No, twin studies would say that under certain environmental conditions genetic traits may come to the fore … or not. If you had lived inland then you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to fall in love with the sea, and you probably wouldn’t have missed it.’

She spoke softly, understanding on her face. ‘I think you need to believe your mother came from this area so you can hang your hat on something, try and place yourself in a particular part of Vietnam, so you feel that you belong.’

Fear tore through him. How the hell had she worked that out? ‘Yeah, well, belonging is just a fantasy. A little girl nearly died of malaria because I don’t belong.’

Disbelief and confusion played across her face. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

All his anguish of the day rushed back, installing itself inside his cavities of doubt. ‘If I’d grown up here, Kim’s mother would have listened to me, administered the ACT, and Kim would have recovered without developing cerebral oedema.’ His fingers, taut with tension, gripped the beer bottle.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘We’re talking about people who have limited education. Ask Hin. I bet he wasn’t surprised that they used the medication as an offering. Especially when they believe that all things good come from their favoured deity.’

He bristled at her words. ‘But at least I would have understood that might happen and I could have done something to prevent it.’

‘Really?’ She raised her brows, her eyes full of questioning doubt. ‘I don’t think Hin has much understanding of how to stop it and he’s university educated.’

‘But I would have been a doctor fluent in the language, accepted by the community, someone to look up to. They would have listened to me.’

She held his gaze, seeing into his soul. ‘If you’d grown up here, you might not have even finished primary school, let alone become a doctor.’

Her quiet words slugged him, ripping into traitorous, questioning thoughts he’d hidden away deep inside himself. He didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to revisit those thoughts. He stood up. ‘I would always have been a doctor.’

Tom’s words, laced with determination but mingling with pain, evaporated into the evening air. Bec swallowed a sigh. He truly believed he’d been ripped away from his country of birth and therefore was a lesser person in the eyes of the Vietnamese.

How could an intelligent man get it so very wrong? He did amazing work here. He needed to talk to local doctors and hear their frustrations about lack of patient compliance. Had he conveniently forgotten his Australian patients and their lack of compliance? She was sure the stories from home would match the Vietnamese stories. Lack of compliance crossed cultural borders.

He strode over to the fire and grabbed the shovel. With a side-to-side action he spread out the coals ready to accommodate the fish he’d wrapped in banana leaves. His shirt moved fluidly across his shoulders.

An image of her hands exploring taut, rippling muscles bombarded her, a pool of yearning welling up deep within her. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. This unwanted physical attraction was getting harder and harder to control.

Throwing her head back, she gazed up into the night sky at the bright pinpricks of the early rising stars. The beach was blissfully quiet, all the hawkers having retreated for their own evening meal. Bright blue and red fishing boats were heading out to sea for the night, their lights glittering in the reflections of their wakes.