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He arrived in the late summer. The English summer, that is.
It had been such a tiring year that I was beginning to think that there wasn’t hope left in me. For anything. We all have those moments of exaggerated despair, and I don’t know why exactly, but it had settled in me very stubbornly that sticky August morning. In my gloominess, I wasn’t certain if Jack would even be able to recognise me, as my Melbourne-self felt like a faraway dream.
Then he emerged from the ship looking so full of life, so vigorous and boyish, that I couldn’t help but smile. He strode toward me with purpose and I bunched my fists in emotion and anticipation.
“You look better than I expected after such a voyage, Jack.”
What a thing to say, I know. I was aiming for flippant, but I was shaken and not thinking straight, and right then the alternative to speaking, to saying anything, was crying.
He moved toward me until he was very close, then stooped to put his valise on the ground.
“I have taken a risk, Miss Fisher. It gives a man vigour.”
He said it with that subtle flirtation that he had perfected by the time I left and my heart thumped more insistently. He continued to stand close to me with no sign of movement except the flickering of his eyes around my face, full of admiration, or maybe curiosity. I began to blink quickly, feeling the tears near.
It had been nearly a year since I’d seen him, and he was right, it was a risk he had taken. But then, it wasn’t. As his hand came to my waist, the thing brewing between us felt nothing like a risk, but a solid certainty if ever there was one.
I moved to him slowly and buried my face in his neck, sighing a happy, sad, relieved, aching sigh. I felt his palm sweep over my hair, then down to my neck. He leaned down, I expected to kiss me, and I closed my eyes, but then I felt the tip of his nose move slowly along my cheek bone, then to my ear, to my jaw, to my lips, a mesmerising mapping that he repeated on the other side. My eyes remained closed, and I made the same slow, meditative tracing with the tip of my nose while our hands found each other’s. I’m not sure I have ever stayed so comparatively still for so long unless unconscious, but it was incredibly stimulating. We were in a world apart; nothing of the dock existed, and I heard nothing but his breath and my steadily increasing heart beat.
After a time, after a bloody eternity, he pressed a light, warm kiss against my lips, nearly no pressure. Then, I did begin to cry.
He must have heard or felt my tears, but he stayed still, our cheeks touching so that we couldn’t see each other’s eyes, our hands still intertwined; and somehow we began a small, soothing sway, a nearly imperceptible movement. An entire year. We had to warm up before we dove in.
After another minute, my snivelling more or less under control, he whispered: “Would you like to get some tea?” I laughed. That is my mother’s cure-all as well. “No,” I responded with emphasis, “I would very much like to show you my home.” By home, I believe I meant most specifically bedroom, and I guessed he knew that, as a sheepish look, followed by his half-smile spread over his beautiful face. Oh, that smile. I felt another pang at the realisation that I hadn’t seen it in so long and that I’d nearly forgotten it. I’d heard his voice in his letters which were worded so much like the way he spoke that it was easy to imagine him speaking the lines; and I’d seen his likeness in two photographs I’d saved from the newspaper. But I don’t believe anyone could capture that smile with a camera— he would never pose with that particular smile. That was a smile for me, and I had to look away from it because, damn it, my eyes were filling again, even as a goofy grin never left my face.
We hailed a cab and made it to the small town home just before lunch. “Would you like something to drink?” I asked him as I closed the front door, trying to create some semblance of a normal social visit, probably more to calm myself than for any actual desire for propriety. “No,” he responded, reaching for my hand.
He moved his head as though listening. “No one is here,” I assured him, “I only have—“
I was about to say ‘day help, whom I’ve given time off today,’ but he cut me off with a kiss that was not light and warm, that was not the barest pressure. It was a rough, wet kiss that spoke of heartbreak and hope, of three years of lust and near misses and waiting and wanting and then waiting some more. It was inelegant and perfect and my joy bubbled up in a laugh as we broke apart. I pulled away and caught his eyes, smiling, tugging at his arm, luring him down the hall toward my bedroom, though I might say the ‘luring’ was unnecessary as he fairly chased me.
There’s that line about amorous birds of prey— you know the one, the Marvell, the Coy Mistress, ‘rather at once our time devour?’ That. It was that. I felt like that falcon, soaring to the thinnest air at the highest height, suspended, then falling and coupling as we plunged. Dizzying, frightening, thrilling. And we were still dressed.
Well, you can imagine, that needed immediate rectification.
Summer attire is just the thing for quick disrobing, and before I knew it we were naked on the bed, our limbs in a flurry of grasping. But I willed myself to focus. I had waited a long time to have Jack Robinson between my thighs—you can bet that I was going to pay close attention.
“Prophylactic?” he asked, sounding stoic but with a jagged breath that betrayed his frenzy.
“I took the optimistic precaution of placing my diaphragm earlier in the day,” I said as I flipped him over, kissing his mouth as I straddled him. He liked that I think, judging by his gasp as he reached for my breasts and the way he slowly closed his eyes. “Is that…enough?,” I continued, “would you prefer a prophylactic—” “It’s enough,” he said quickly, his erection twitching against my belly. He made a strangled noise, then calmed himself with a deep breath and began to kiss my torso with a slow reverence. I was delighted to see that he was going to pay close attention, too.
I took him inside me and the thrilling, dizzying feeling I described earlier— falling from a very high place, but with wings to recover then soar again— returned. I moaned and my moan sang in concert with his.
We spent several slow, easy minutes in a quiet rocking, me atop him and grasping at the hair on the back of his head, a gentle tug which he seemed to like. Suddenly, he recovered himself and put his hand to my face, seeking my eyes.
“Is this your home now?”
“My home?”
“Earlier, you said that you would like to show me your home. Is this your home now?”
His beautiful, concerned voice, asking me if I had abandoned Melbourne and him permanently. I was stunned. He didn’t expect me to return, but he was here with me now; he had made a very difficult choice, one I was only beginning to understand. Just how many times was I going to tear up in a day?
“No, Jack. No. I’m not staying here permanently.”
I had been, in fact, wondering if I could ever purposefully separate myself from this man again. In the moment, I thought not.
He nodded and we resumed the movement that we’d started earlier, but there was a new edge to the lovemaking, a sadness and a relief. Now I knew how much he wanted to be with me; now he knew I was coming back, that I wanted to come back.
He swung me around so that I was beneath him and hitched one of my knees above his shoulder to slide in more deeply. I moaned some more and he made desperate noises that were not quite words but sounded like they were trying to be.
He reached between us to touch that beautiful, sensitive spot on me, and I was overcome with a full body shiver, not a climax, but a further tightening of the tension that already had me strung like a bow. That clever, competent man. He began a rhythm, ‘rub-rub-thrust, rub-rub-thrust,’ that had me out of my mind very quickly; he whispered tender encouragements, “darling, love, dearest,” and I clutched his shoulders as I came.
He released my leg and began the most simple, slow movement, barely a half-thrust, and within seconds, he unravelled.
He buried his face in my neck and breathed deeply, then released a quiet, shuddering sob. Such a thing would possibly startle me in normal circumstances. But not then. “I would have stayed here with you, Phryne." His voice cracked. "I would have stayed.”
I knew— of course I knew— that he felt deeply for me… and one doesn’t tire of hard evidence of loving. It was not unwelcome. I was also relieved that I wasn’t the only one feeling unusually emotional. I stroked his back until the shaking subsided. Such a dear man, so dear to me. I held him and dreamt of Australia.
I had created so many stories about why I couldn’t go back yet: that my parents were still in a difficult financial situation, that Jane was on the Continent anyway, that Dot was married now, that Jack and I would never work well as a romantic pair. I gave myself so many excuses, but it was my life back there that I wanted. I didn’t want to go back in time, I wanted to go back to a work I loved, a sense of accomplishment, I wanted to go back to the warm people, to my familiars, to a people outside of the sphere of my parents. I had left England the first time for more reasons than my sister, after all. And suddenly, the straining weight of the last year made much more sense— I was living a life I was unsuited to.
“Jack,” I rustled him, perhaps startled him, “Jack, we have to get dressed.” He looked at me quizzically. “I have to…,” I toyed with his hair, “I have to buy an aeroplane.” He paused, then, never far behind, pulled me close for a kiss.