Miranda Lee - Her Secret, His Child

When he’d first climbed into the rented four-wheel drive for the trip to Rocky Creek, Nicolas had felt both refreshed and relatively relaxed.

Not so anymore.

Grimacing at his discomfort, he bent forward to turn up the air-conditioning to the max. Some very cold air blasted forth and it helped clear his mind from thoughts of Serina so he could concentrate on where he was going.

Wauchope loomed up ahead, the town closest to Rocky Creek, where Nicolas had attended high school and where most of the people in Rocky Creek came to shop. He glanced around left and right, not noticing the kind of major changes he’d seen in Port. The railway crossing was still the same, as was the main street. It wasn’t till he was heading out of town along the highway that he could see that the houses went farther out than they had before. There was also a big new shopping centre opposite the Timber Town tourist park.

Wauchope’s prosperity had once relied solely on the timber from the surrounding forests. The trees would be cut down and the logs brought out of the hills by bullock trains, then floated down the Hastings River to Port Macquarie. Not so anymore. But you could still see demonstrations of the old ways at Timber Town, as well as buy all kinds of wood products.

Nicolas was thinking about the wooden bowl he’d once bought his mother for her birthday when he drove right past the turn off to Rocky Creek. Swearing, he pulled over to the side of the road, having to wait for several cars to go by before he could execute a U-turn. Finally, he was back at the T-intersection and heading for home.

No, not home, he amended in his mind. Rocky Creek had never been his home.

Nicolas had been born and bred in Sydney, the offspring of a brief affair between his forty-year-old mother—who’d been working as wardrobe mistress for the Sydney Opera Company at that time—and a visiting Swedish conductor who’d had a wife and family back home and a roving eye whenever he was on tour.

The conductor’s eyes had landed on Madeline Dupre, who’d still been an attractive-looking woman at forty. Her lack of success so far in relationships, however, had left her somewhat embittered about the male sex, giving her a brusque manner that men had found off-putting. She’d been rather taken aback, but secretly elated, by the conductor’s interest in her and had happily comforted him in bed during his stay in Sydney, deliberately deceiving him about being on the pill. She’d waved him off a few weeks later at the airport, well satisfied with her rather impulsive but successful plan to have a child by a man who would be conveniently absent from her life, but who was both handsome and intelligent. She hadn’t realised at the time that raising a child by herself—especially one like Nicolas—would be so difficult.

After quitting her job during her pregnancy, she’d set about earning her living as a dressmaker. That way she could be home to look after her son. She’d already had the foresight five years earlier to get into the property market, purchasing a small though rather run-down terraced house in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. The deposit had taken her life savings and there was a twenty-five-year mortgage, but it had given her a sense of security. She’d patted herself on the back now that she was having a baby.

Sydney, however, was a harsh city for a woman alone. Madeline’s parents had passed away—longevity did not run in her family—and her only brother had moved to western Australia to find work and had not exactly been a good communicator. All her friends had drifted away when she stopped being part of their working and social life, leaving her increasingly lonely. All she’d had in the world was her son, who’d proved to be more than she’d bargained for.

When Nicolas had been eleven—and becoming more difficult to control with each passing day—she’d made a dress for a regular client’s sister who was visiting from a small town on the north coast called Rocky Creek.

‘If there was a dressmaker of your skills in my home town,’ the woman had gushed, ‘she’d never be out of work.’

Madeline had often thought about living in the country, but just hadn’t found the courage to make such a big change. She herself had been born in Sydney and had known nothing else but city life. But the problems she was encountering with Nicolas—he was getting in with a gang of boys who roamed the streets at night—forced her to look seriously at getting him away from the bad influences in the less than salubrious suburb where they lived.

Assured that she’d be able to buy a house in Rocky Creek for half of what her Surry Hills place was worth, Madeline made the massive decision to up stakes and move from Sydney to the country.

Nicolas had been furious with her. He was a city boy through and through. He didn’t want to live out in the sticks. He didn’t want to go to a school that had less than sixty children. He complained—and played up—at considerable length.

Till Mrs Johnson—and the piano—came into his life.

Despite being known as Mrs Johnson, the piano teacher was actually a childless spinster who lived in the house next door to the small cottage in Rocky Creek that his mother had bought. She gave private piano lessons for a living and had reputedly once been a not so very famous concert pianist. As fate would have it, her music room was just over the fence from Nicolas’s bedroom. He could not help hearing the music.

For ages, Nicolas had not understood why he liked it so much. Up till then his musical taste had stopped at rock and heavy metal. One day—he’d just turned twelve—he hadn’t been able to resist the pull of the music any longer, so he’d asked his mother if he could have piano lessons.

Despite not having any spare money for music lessons—or a piano—a delighted Madeline Dupre had quickly come to an agreement with Mrs Johnson, who would teach Nicolas for nothing if Madeline made her a dress whenever she needed one. As for a piano, Mrs Johnson had also agreed that Nicolas could practise on hers whenever it was free. Once she’d realised she had a prodigy on her hands, the ecstatic teacher had even gave him a front door key so that he could let himself in when she was out playing bridge.

Soon Nicolas was practising every chance he got. He’d rarely done any of his homework but he’d excelled at the piano. At the age of fifteen he’d passed seventh grade with honours. By seventeen he’d received his Licentiate Diploma of Music, the highest musical exam one could take in Australia. During his last year in high school he’d sat for—and won—a scholarship to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Mrs Johnson had been extremely proud of him, as had been his mother. But no one else in Rocky Creek had cared all that much. Why? Because he was an outsider. He’d always been an outsider, not a true local. At school, he’d never joined in, or played sports, made friends, had a girlfriend. All he’d cared about was playing the piano.

Serina was the only girl he’d ever bothered to speak to.

Serina again…

Nicolas scooped in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. It was a toss-up, he decided, who had seduced whom that first night. Serina had confessed to him once that she’d had a wild crush on him since their paths had crossed when he was twelve and she was only nine. She’d told him she used to organise her own music lessons so that they came after his. She would arrive early and sit in Mrs Johnson’s lounge room and listen to him play. He’d hardly noticed her back then. Gradually, however, they had exchanged a few words and in the end he’d quite looked forward to their conversations. Once, Mrs Johnson had taught them a duet, which they’d performed at the Rocky Creek annual fete to much applause.