Page 8 of Wedding Bells By the Creek

She saw him turn towards her and give a quick wave in greeting. At first she was inclined to merely acknowledge him and turn away, but her battered soul suddenly cried out for human contact. If she couldn’t be with her daughter, at least this man had no reason to hate her. Of course, she had no reason to believe he wanted to talk to her either. But he had been kind to her.

She raised a tentative hand, suddenly feeling quite shy.

‘Good morning!’ His voice carried easily across the silent street.

‘Good morning,’ she called back and set out in his direction. If he didn’t seem to want company, she could always just ask directions to somewhere and walk away.

‘How are you? I hope you were comfortable at the pub.’ His smile as she approached was as welcoming as his words.

‘Thank you, yes.’

‘You know, the pub was how the town started,’ Ed continued. ‘This was the junction of two droving routes back before trucks and the railway. The bullock wagons used to stop here on their way to the stations with supplies. The pub was just a shack back then. But it’s been the heart of the Creek ever since.’

‘You know a lot about the town,’ Helen said.

‘I’ve been here a long time too.’ Ed smiled. ‘The town has two parts. The old town – that’s those of us who were here before the mine. Then there are the newcomers. They came when the mine opened. The town grew a lot then.’

‘And do the two sides get on all right?’ she asked.

‘Oh yeah. There’s a great community spirit here. There has to be. We are a long way from anywhere and we have to find our friendships and our fun right here. It’s a bad place to have enemies, but it’s a good place to find friends.’

As his words tailed off, Helen suddenly realised that he was deliberately distracting her. There was something about the tone of his voice and the look of sympathy in his eyes. He knew.

‘You saw Tia this morning.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘I get up early. And that Harley Hog of hers is pretty hard to miss.’ He didn’t sound apologetic, just concerned.

‘We started to have breakfast …’ Helen couldn’t go on. Her relationship with Tia was too complex for a stranger to understand. There were times she wanted to talk about it, hoping that speaking the words out loud would somehow put things into a better light. But how could she? Even back in Brisbane, she didn’t have many friends. Work colleagues, but not friends. And she had long since excluded men from her life, because men had been part of the problem with her daughter.

‘Have you seen the creek? It’s quite beautiful in its own way.’

Helen blinked. The creek? What was he talking about?

‘Why don’t I show you, and then any time you need a walk or somewhere peaceful to sit and think, you can find your way.’ Without waiting for her reply, he turned and began locking the door he had so recently opened.

They set out together. Ed led the way past what was obviously the local school, and along a dirt path towards a line of trees. He didn’t ask her any questions. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. But somehow his presence was comforting as Helen took the time to bring her distressed emotions back under control.

At last they stepped under the shade of the trees. The ground sloped quite sharply to the water’s edge. The creek didn’t look deep, but the water was clear and reflected the blue sky above and the green of the overhanging branches. Ed jumped easily down a steep bit of bank and held out his hard. Without hesitation, Helen put her hand in his and let him help her down to near the water’s edge, where a tree had fallen as if designed specifically to provide a seat for the likes of them.

Helen sat for several minutes, enjoying the respite from the heat and the unremitting flat, brown earth. She felt her tension begin to fade away. She cast a sideways glance at Ed. He was quite relaxed, chewing the end of a piece of grass and staring into the distance. It was so strange to find herself relaxing around this man she hardly knew. Most of the men in her life had been the source of stress and despair.

‘I have a son,’ Ed said in a slow and gentle voice. ‘He lives in England. His name is Scott.’

Helen held her breath, a little afraid of what would come next. Ed seemed sympathetic and kind, but how could he possibly understand the hell she had suffered when her daughter left. He could never understand how it felt to not even know where your child was. If she was all right, or unhappy… or worse.

No one understood that … least of all Tia.

‘He ran away from home when he was seventeen. Or rather, I drove him away,’ Ed’s voice continued. He spoke slowly, his words thick with emotion. ‘He was looking for his mother, who had left us a few years before. But he was also running away from me. In all the years he was gone, I thought about him every day. But I didn’t have the courage to try to find him; to admit my mistakes or tell him I loved him. Finally, he came looking for me. Seeing him again was the best day of my life. And the most terrifying. I was so afraid I would do something wrong and lose him again.’

Silence settled for a few moments. Ed seemed lost in his memories.

‘But we worked it out. That’s not to say there weren’t a few tough moments.’ The corners of Ed’s mouth curved into a smile. ‘We’re both very alike. Pig-headed is a good word for the pair of us. But we got there. Some things are too important to not work out.’

How she wished she could believe him.

‘Where is he now?’

‘England. Restoring old cars.’

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