‘Yes.’ I took out my phone.
‘Are you googling?’
‘Yes. There is a Turner exhibition on. I love Turner.’
‘I have never seen you google anything.’
‘I google things. Just not people. That seems like a weird thing to do. If we cannot accept each other at face value and allow the time needed to get to know one another, what is the actual bloody point? I cannot imagine there is much truth in social media.’
‘You are incredibly wise, Abigail Parker.’
‘You are starting to sound like Gran, Nick.’
‘There are worse ways to be.’
‘After the gallery, we’ll go to the footy.’
‘Footy?’
‘Yep, let’s go, we’ll pub crawl from the art gallery down to the MCG. We need to have the full Melbourne experience, so AFL it is.’
We were walking side by side in the winter sunshine, pushed along by the gale-force wind, up to the gallery, when he grabbed my hand and gave me a boyish smile that made my heart contract and my stomach flip. I lifted our joined hands to my mouth to kiss his.
I had never really paid attention to art until I was a teenager and through drama class, where I had this kick-arse teacher, I learned about different art movements and became absorbed. It wasn’t my fate to paint or draw, just to admire.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was a favourite, and I was absolutely delighted when we walked in, to the point where I may have squealed like a little girl at my good fortune. I dragged Nick into the building and practically ran to the exhibition and then slowed down, becoming silent and absorbed in every single painting on display.
We read about Turner’s life. How he had fathered two daughters, but had only had a casual relationship with their mother, Sarah Danby, who he never married and how, after the death of his father, he had suffered through bouts of depression.
At every painting, Nick would pepper me with questions. What did I like about it, specifically? What didn’t I like? What did it make me feel?
‘Why are you so interested in what I like about them?’ I finally asked him as we sat in front of one. If there was a perfect time to see the popular exhibition, half past three on a Friday was a winner. Apart from four old ladies, we were alone.
‘Well.’ He gathered the thought in his head. ‘Art is rather subjective. It’s like perfume or cologne. It’s quite individual. What appeals to one person is not what appeals to another.’
‘Art is not that subjective,’ I argued. ‘People a lot wiser than me have decided that this art is worth more than other art. It appeals to the masses, it’s not that subjective. I think you’re right about perfume, though.’
‘You don’t have paintings like this on your wall at home though,’ he said, pressing his point.
‘I would find a spot for one if I had one.’ I went back to looking, but then something occurred to me. ‘Wait a second, moneybags. Please do not tell me you own one of these?’
‘Own one? No.’ He snorted. ‘I have three.’
I giggled at his joke, and he laughed along, too. ‘Are there any other artists you love?’ he asked.
‘Degas. Most of the impressionists. A little romanticism too.’
‘My wife was the same.’
My head snapped towards him and I looked at him in awe, stunned at this offering, to the point where I felt tears sting my eyes. ‘Will you tell me about her? What was her name?’
He met my eyes and then turned back to Turner. I could see him wrestling with his choices and the decision to offer this to me; the reason why he was broken. The reason he wasn’t whole. The reason why he couldn’t take chances with his heart anymore.
‘Her name was Rebecca. I met her in Leicester Square one day. It was like a scene from a movie. A meet cute. This huge downpour started really very suddenly, and I didn’t have a brolly. I ducked under the cover of a cinema entrance, and she did too.’ A small, sad smile graced his face. ‘That was it. We made eye contact. I said something … forgettable. One day I was alone and then the next day I wasn’t.’ He breathed as if he had forgotten it was required. ‘We had this whirlwind romance. I married her within six months of meeting her and we were happy. About three months later, she was pregnant with Summer. She was having what we thought was just severe morning sickness, but she also started fainting and just having periods of acting a little odd. She fell down some stairs in the garden carrying tea out for us. I took her to the hospital. They ran some tests, and they found it … a brain tumour. It was early days … in the pregnancy … and I …’
His voice caught and I took his hand, moving closer so that my body was completely against his. This was like lancing a wound, or at least I hoped it would be.
‘I begged her to terminate. They could have operated on the tumour at that point, and I couldn’t imagine not having Bec in my life. But she refused to risk Summer and it was completely out of my control.
