by Greg Fleet
Sophie agreed to run interference with Catherine. If she were to get in touch, Sophie would tell her that she didn’t know what Tamara’s plans were and that Catherine would be better off speaking directly to her mother. Tamara did seem to be warming up to the idea of living at the Peggy Day Home, though. At least there she would have people to talk with, to laugh with. ‘And,’ she told them, ‘someone has to keep an eye on the two of you.’
Sophie and James assured Tamara that living in one of the larger units at the home (which she clearly had the money for) would not be unpleasant at all. ‘Seriously,’ said James, ‘those places are bigger than my apartment. I mean, sure, it’s not this house, but you could make it your own.’
After Tamara had gone to bed, Sophie and James cleaned up and then eventually made their way upstairs, down the corridor and into the room once occupied by the person that James had earlier that day been pretending to be. The room was, like many people’s old rooms in their family home, a kind of potted history of the person Robert once was. There was everything from children’s drawings and model cars to a signed poster of Johnny Depp from the film Blow and a rudimentary but seemingly functional homemade bong. And in the middle of the room stood a downlit, king-sized four-poster bed with a canopy hanging around it that meant you could make it into a sort of room within a room, kind of bohemian and romantic, and incredibly hard to ignore. Any anxiety being felt by Sophie and James (and there was heaps of it) was amplified by the downlighting. The bed may as well have had neon arrows pointing at it and a flashing sign saying: ‘You are both about to get in this!’ Or: ‘Don’t forget, this can be used for other things than just sleeping!’
‘Wow,’ said Sophie, taking in the room. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m . . . I’m feeling nervous. Yep, I don’t think nervous is too strong a word. I also feel awkward. Like I’ve just moved into a flat at 39 Awkward Street, Stress Town, Anxietyville, 3182. I also feel safe while I’m talking. I feel like as long as I keep talking I won’t have to deal with any of the things that I’m feel—’
Sophie put her finger to his lips. The gesture was meant to be practical but came across to both of them as intimate. It was becoming increasingly difficult to do anything that didn’t seem layered.
‘What do you want to do?’ asked Sophie.
‘What do you think?’ said James.
Sophie let out an exasperated groan and leaned her head against his chest.
‘Fuck!’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ he replied.
‘No, James! We can’t! Not here,’ said Sophie. ‘I mean, you have no idea how much I want to, but not here . . .’
‘Why not? We both want to. The bed obviously wants us to. And I reckon Johnny Depp would want us to.’
‘I know! But I’m not fucking in Tamara’s house. In her dead son’s room. Do you understand what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ replied James, ‘of course I do.’
‘Good. Thank you,’ she said and hugged him close.
‘We could do it in the garden,’ he suggested.
‘Shut up, James!’ She pushed away from him, laughing. ‘Or I will punch you.’
He moved towards her and dragged her back into his chest, not wanting that feeling to end.
‘Have you noticed,’ he asked, ‘how punching or the threat of punching is about as intimate as our relationship gets? What does that say about us as a couple?’
‘Are we a couple?’ she asked. And with that they fell into a kiss. A real kiss. A kiss that was not only their first real kiss but had the added bonus of being a great kiss for all of those involved. Some first kisses are not great. Some first kisses are hideous. Sometimes they are first and last kisses because one of the people doing the kissing has a tongue like a violent escaped prisoner who has been cornered by the police and refuses to be taken alive. But this was a kiss to build a dream on.
‘I’m really glad that we did that standing up and fully clothed,’ said Sophie, feeling as though she was made of liquid.
They both stood facing the bed.
‘So what do we do now?’ asked James.
‘Well, we just get undressed and get in that, I suppose,’ said Sophie. ‘Can I use your toothbrush, and borrow a T-shirt to sleep in?’
‘Sure,’ said James, going to the backpack and finding one for her. Sophie went off in search of the bathroom to change and brush her teeth, and James hurriedly stripped down to his underwear. He folded everything neatly, placed it all on a chair and put his shoes together underneath it. He then jumped into the bed, pulled the doona down to around his waist and tried to look casual. He felt extremely formal. Then, suddenly, he thought: ‘Shit. When she comes back into the room and sees me like this, she’s going to think I’m naked!’ He leapt out of the bed and tried standing next to it, looking relaxed. It wasn’t working. He then saw his pile of clothes and decided that neatly folding them had been a mistake; it made him look anal. He crossed to the clothes and tried to mess them up a little, throwing his shirt onto the floor and kicking his shoes around a bit. He felt like he was seventeen again, a nervous but not altogether unpleasant feeling.
After a wait of what seemed to James to be about four years but was in fact more like four minutes, Sophie returned, and to James she was the personification of perfection, in a pair of simple cottontail undies and his big daggy T-shirt.
‘My god,’ he said. ‘If I was a woman I would wear that outfit every single day.’
‘You’d get cold,’ she replied.
‘Not if I lived in Hawaii.’
‘Why are you standing next to the bed looking awkward?’ she asked.
‘I wanted you to see that I still have my underpants on.’
‘Okay. Well, thanks, that’s certainly good to know . . . Are you holding your stomach in?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Get in bed, you idiot.’
And they did, pulling the canopy down for the full Omar Sharif, tent-in-the-desert effect. They lay on their backs for a while and talked about Tamara Higginson and Byron Bay and what was to come. After a while they both rolled onto their sides, their arms around each other. They didn’t talk any more because they didn’t have to, and every part of their bodies where skin met skin felt like a promise.
The next morning when they woke up together for the first time things were sickly sweet. Lots of long desiring gazes, and now that they had broken the kissing barrier, there was quite a bit of that also. Neither of them seemed to mind that they hadn’t had sex. Even Johnny Depp didn’t seem to mind; but, having said that, it can often be hard to tell what actors are really thinking. Especially posters of actors.
‘How did you sleep?’ asked Sophie as she got up.
‘Brilliantly,’ he said. ‘How about you?’
‘It was nice having you there,’ said Sophie, borrowing James’ toothbrush for the second time in eight hours.
‘Did I snore?’ asked James.
‘Not at all,’ lied Sophie as she slipped out the door and headed to the bathroom.
By the time the two of them made it downstairs Tamara had two big suitcases by the door and was busying herself with making preparations for their departure.
‘Hello, young people. How did you sleep?’
‘Beautifully, thank you, Tamara,’ said Sophie. ‘And you?’
‘I was a little excited about our trip to Byron, but I did eventually doze off. There’s breakfast things in the kitchen, help yourself.’
Sophie and James did just that. Alongside a pot of delicious coffee, there were ham and cheese croissants, bacon and egg rolls, fruit and pastries. James was delighted.
‘Tamara, did you make all of this?’ he asked.
‘Oh please, be serious. I made the coffee but the rest I had delivered.’
‘It’s hard to fault a woman who dials out for breakfast,’ said James. ‘I think I’m going to like travelling with you.’
‘Would you like to see the Jaguar? After all, you will be d
oing all the driving,’ said Tamara.
James was not a car nut. Living in St Kilda meant that he didn’t need one. He was close enough to everything he needed to be close to, and efficient public transport, cabs and Uber meant that he hadn’t owned a car for the last couple of years. But as the three of them stood in front of the garage and Tamara used the remote to open the door, he suddenly found himself hoping it would be a great car.
It was.
‘It’s stunning,’ said Sophie as the door opened and revealed a late-model Jaguar that was as feline as its namesake.
‘I don’t know much about it,’ said Tamara. ‘But it’s reliable, comfortable and fast. And it has an amazing sound system and an engine the size of a small European country.’
‘I reckon it’s perfect,’ said James. ‘Is it insured?’
‘Yes, James, it’s insured. Just how badly are you intending to drive it?’
‘Just making sure . . .’
At 10.47, kisses and hugs were exchanged (no handshakes required). Sophie closed Tamara’s car door for her and James slipped in behind the wheel.
‘I think this may be the most comfortable seat I’ve ever sat in,’ he said.
‘Good,’ replied Tamara. ‘You are going to be sitting in it a lot over the coming days.’
Sophie gave James a final brief kiss and a seriously meaty punch on the shoulder and then he pulled the Jag out on to what Winston Churchill had once lovingly called ‘the road, baby, the motherfucking road’.
Exactly seventy-eight metres up the motherfucking road, James pulled the car over. In their excitement about their journey, neither of them had bothered to find out how you actually get to Byron Bay.
‘I assumed that you would know how to get there,’ said Tamara.
‘Why did you assume that?’
‘Because you are driving the car.’
‘Our phones!’ exclaimed James. ‘We can ask our phones.’
He took out his phone and asked Siri how to get to Byron Bay. She redirected him to Google Maps and within a minute he and Tamara were back on the road.
‘We need music, James. What is a road trip without music?’ said Tamara after they’d been driving for a while. She pushed a couple of buttons on the dash and James prepared himself to be open-minded. He was ready for some Vera Lynn – style tunes, or at best some kind of 1950s doo-wop numbers. What he got was The Velvet Underground & Nico.
‘The Velvets. I’m impressed,’ said James.
‘Thank you, James. That’s very patronising of you.’
‘Oh no. I didn’t mean to sound . . . I love this song. And you are . . . senior. That’s all I —’
‘James, pull the car over,’ Tamara said abruptly.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Just pull over.’
He did as he was told, pulling the Jaguar onto a dry grassy verge.
‘James, we have known each other for about twenty-four hours. In that time things have been somewhat amplified. We have, for various reasons, jumped ahead quite a bit on the “getting to know each other” scale.’
‘I agree,’ he said.
‘I don’t care if you agree,’ she replied. ‘I want to ask you, James: do I treat you as though you are a certain age? Don’t bother answering, because the answer is no. I treat you as a person. The idea of spending a week with someone who is treating me like a relic of a lost age is a thought that I find extremely tedious. We are partners and we shall treat each other as equals. Do we have a deal?’
‘We have a deal,’ said James, contrite.
A few minutes later, as they started to pass through what James would call ‘actual countryside’, he asked: ‘Where are we going?’
‘What do you mean? We’re going to Byron Bay.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ said James. ‘But why? Who is this mysterious person that you have to see?’
‘He’s a very old friend,’ replied Tamara. ‘In so very many ways, he is the man that I should have married. His name is Baylor Petersen and I think you’ll like each other very much.’
‘What does he do in Byron Bay?’ asked James.
‘He did a lot of things before he retired. He was a musician, he was a fisherman, he was a builder . . . I went to Byron about a year after my husband’s death, to relax and to regroup. I met Baylor at a restaurant one night. We were both eating alone and the restaurant was very busy. They asked if we would mind sharing a table and so we did.’
‘Fate,’ said James.
‘Fate or economics,’ replied Tamara. ‘It doesn’t really matter. We ate and drank and talked. Before long we had fallen into each other. I can honestly say that those years were among the happiest times of my life.’
‘He must be pretty cool. And aside from Cash Driveway, he has the best name I’ve ever heard,’ said James.
‘Oh, cool doesn’t come close,’ said Tamara. ‘Selfless is more like it. Once when we were walking along the cliffs at Byron, we saw a little girl crying hysterically. She was pointing down at the water. When we looked down, what must have been twenty metres, we could see a little dog getting thrown around onto the rocks by crashing waves.’
James was compelled, like he was watching a movie. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ said Tamara, ‘if I wasn’t already in love with him, what happened next would’ve sealed the deal. Baylor casually handed me his sunglasses and jumped off the cliff into the water. Like it was nothing. He missed the rocks by about a foot. He swam over, grabbed the dog and made it back to shore. He gave the dog to the little girl and said to me, “How about I put on some dry clothes and we go out for lunch?” I swooned.’
‘What?’ said James looking very impressed but also anxious. ‘He sounds like a superhero! I’m going to feel pathetic when we meet.’
‘Oh, relax,’ said Tamara. ‘He’s not quite that dynamic these days.’
‘So why didn’t you stay together?’ asked James.
‘We did. For about ten years, moving between Byron and Melbourne. But we were both old and proud and stubborn. Both of us kept expecting the other one to drop their life and move. And eventually we realised that was never going to happen, so we decided to just return to our own lives and see each other when we could, when we wanted to.’
‘And how did that work out?’
‘Remarkably well. We both travelled back and forth; it seemed free and the best possible way to live. Now this will probably be my last trip to visit him. I wanted it to feel right, and it does.’
‘I’m not cramping your style? I’m still not quite sure why you even wanted me to come.’
‘Because, James, as George Mallory said about Mount Everest, you were there. You also seemed smart and kind and interesting. But more importantly, and don’t take this the wrong way, please, you seem as though you’re looking for something. I don’t really care what it is you’re looking for; the point is you’re looking, and an inquiring mind is an attractive mind.’
‘And I can drive,’ added James.
‘Yes, that was important too,’ she said.
‘I hope you feel safe with me,’ said James.
Tamara answered in the affirmative, but not with words. Instead, about two minutes later she promptly and very gracefully fell asleep.
As they were in no particular hurry they decided to take the slightly slower but more scenic route that would see them travelling from Melbourne out down near the coast, then through the national parks to Canberra before going inland to Sydney and following the coast road all the way to Byron.
‘According to Google Maps it’s about three hours more than if we just gunned it straight there,’ James had said.
‘We’re not “gunning it” anywhere. We have all the time in the world. Let’s go the beautiful way,’ Tamara replied.
‘You mean by aeroplane?’ prodded James.
‘Oh James. Do you equate car trips with boredom?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘That may well be because the people tha
t you have been on car trips with in the past were boring people. I, on the other hand, am not boring, so we won’t have that problem, or at least you won’t. And we will be travelling through some stunning scenery. Appreciate it, for god’s sake. Boredom is a lost art, as is transit. And I worry about that. These days we are never alone, not really; we’re always findable, and distraction is usually just an app away. Of course boredom was never fun, but it had its uses. Some of the best inventions the world has ever seen were the direct result of boredom. If cave people or the earliest forms of man had iPhones, I don’t think the wheel would ever have been invented.’
‘Maybe not,’ said James. ‘But they would have had Menulog and Twitter. They would’ve been all, “Hey Grug, my car hasn’t got any wheels but I’ve just had an excellent risotto from Chiccio’s. #GoodTimes.”’
‘You are extremely annoying, James,’ said Tamara.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But I’m funny . . .it. Aren’t I?’
‘A bit. But “funny” is not a quality that I particularly rate. “Funny” is best reserved for clowns and those terrible festival people that come out every April.’
They stopped for petrol and something to eat at a roadhouse in Moe, a town with a Twin Peaks vibe. As they pulled away eating their takeaway food, James laughed to himself.
‘What?’ asked Tamara.
‘Oh, nothing, really,’ he said. ‘It’s just, I have never heard anyone order a Chiko roll with such dignity: “I believe I’ll have the Chiko roll with some soy sauce, please”,’ he said, doing a terrible, posh impression of her voice.
‘Well, I’m not going to hide my education simply because I’m faced with limited culinary options. Anyway, you are eating steamed dim sims, which makes any opinion you express quite void of meaning for at least the next hour.’
