by Tara J Lal
I went up to Edinburgh to start my university life, just as Adam had hoped I would. I recalled the letter he had scrawled to me when he left for Oxford to embark on his own university days. It felt good to know that I was doing what he had wanted.
In Edinburgh, I lived like a typical student, eating baked beans on toast and shivering my way through winter, gauging the temperature in my bedroom by my ability to see my breath in the morning when I lay in bed. I could see Arthur’s Seat out of my bedroom window. Well, I could once the frost on it had melted. I drank copious amounts of beer and smoked a few cigarettes in between learning to windsurf and play basketball. In short, I did everything except study. In fact, I prided myself when I managed to get a negative mark in my first-year quantitative mathematics exam, by virtue of the fact that it was a multiple-choice exam in which a mark was deducted for every wrong answer you gave. I giggled at my achievement, laughing with my newfound friends. I visited my aunt for cups of tea, and she invariably asked me if I had been burning the candle at both ends, seeing the grey rings around my eyes. During my holidays I waited tables and travelled anywhere and everywhere I could, taking student loans out to fund my trips.
Although the years after Mum had died had been lost to me, my twenties were lived in a blissful, unaware kind of way. In short, I took time out from grief, blind but happy. Shortly after my twenty-first birthday, I met a guy called Jonny at the Commonwealth swimming pool in Edinburgh, which was just up the road from my flat. I used to meet my friend Anna there after our afternoon lectures. One day, I’d hauled myself out of the pool, bored of ploughing up and down the black line. I wished my friend farewell and left. The next day, as I sat myself down next to Anna for our biochemistry lecture, she whispered to me.
‘My friend Jonny wants to meet you! He saw you getting out of the pool. He’s got it bad!’
I was flattered. Jonny was older than me. He drove a nice black car. He seemed like a man not a boy, tall and big with beautiful blue eyes and a slightly receding hairline. It wasn’t long before we started dating. I loved to get myself lost in his big hairy chest. He always said to me that he reckoned all the hair had fallen off his head and landed on his chest. We had fun together, living the student life.
I really liked him and I liked being in a relationship. It felt good to be loved, and I knew he did love me. At times he’d tell me I was distant, or get frustrated that I didn’t show him more affection. I told him I loved him, for I assumed I did, but somewhere deep inside, I felt at odds.
I didn’t hold the strength or purity of feeling for him that I had for Adam. I would have done anything in the world for Adam, yet I didn’t feel that way for Jonny. Did that mean I didn’t love him? At times I preferred to watch TV rather than be with him. He frustrated me. I started to question if what I felt was really love.
We spent three years together, yet in that entire time we never really spoke of my past, of Adam and Mum, or any of the heartache that I had felt. I had packed it all safely away in the deepest recesses of my heart so that I barely felt its existence. I didn’t know then that you tend to fall over the things you put behind you, as if they are constantly drawing you back, until you finally turn around to look at what’s there and revisit the past.
One day, during my third year at Edinburgh, when I had started wondering what I was going to do with a degree in physiology, I sat myself down in front of a computer-generated careers program. Diligently I filled in question after question about my likes and dislikes, my priorities and passions. After an hour or so, the computer obligingly spat out a list of fitting professions:
1. Fireman. (Gender political correctness clearly hadn’t arrived in Edinburgh in 1993.)
2. Physiotherapist.
I laughed. Fireman? I’d never thought of that. Physiotherapy? Now that seemed like the perfect fit. I could engage my fascination with the human body and stay connected to sport while making a difference to people’s lives.
I completed my degree with honours in physiology, although how I passed I’ll never know. I began looking for courses to study physiotherapy. But I still had a thirst for travel. I wanted to see the world and be free. I didn’t want to be tied to Jonny any more, so I ended my relationship with him in a heartless, distant kind of a way, had a brief fling with a friend of mine and threw myself into endless hours of waiting tables to save the money for my trip. I actually became a half-decent waitress in the end, proving to myself that anything’s possible if you practise.
Finally, in February 1995, I left England grasping a one-year round-the-world air ticket. I travelled through Thailand and the Philippines before arriving in Sydney on 28 March. I always remember this date because it is the date I found my home.
CHAPTER 17
I was twenty-four when I flew into Sydney on a perfect autumn day and caught my first glimpse of the harbour with its luminescent Opera House, flaunting its beauty, luring me in, toward the light. I could see the white triangles of tiny yachts, like stars on the sparkling water. I took a deep breath. It felt surreal. I was finally here, the place I’d dreamed and read about for so many years.
Mum had been to Australia with work, researching documentaries, before she married. She had named a teddy bear of mine Sydney, and since her death I had kept a toy koala that had been her good-luck mascot. He had gone everywhere with me, anywhere I might need luck. He’d sat on my desk through my school exams, had come to every athletics meet I’d ever attended, and he was there with me whenever I cried. It had never occurred to me that he was a koala or that he came from Australia. He was with me because he had been Mum’s, and I wanted to hold something of hers.
It was only years later, when my aunt told me that Mum had loved Australia and had dreamed of moving there one day, that the pieces fell into place. I looked at my koala, thought of my teddy named Sydney and smiled. It gave me a sense of destiny, of things happening for a reason. All would unfold just as it should. I got a job waiting tables in a restaurant that sat directly under the Opera House. It was almost surreal walking through Circular Quay every day, watching the army of ferries and jet cats chug in and out busily. As I walked toward the sails of the Opera House I would gaze at the Harbour Bridge as it hung over the lively blue water that almost seemed to talk to me, willing me to stay. Countless times, as I laid a plate of pre-theatre food down in front of a customer, I would glance up, stealing a glimpse of the water and the bridge and smile in disbelief. I was a part of the postcards that I’d stared longingly at for so many years, living and breathing it.
To earn some extra money, I got a job as a drinks waitress at the Basement, a live music venue near Circular Quay. That’s where I met Anthony.
I remember the first time I saw him. He was standing behind the bar in his black Basement T-shirt. He had beautiful olive skin, thick dark hair and piercing blue eyes.
‘Hey, I’m Anthony. Anything you need, just ask,’ he said with genuine enthusiasm and a sparkle in his eye.
He took my breath away. Somehow, though, he made me feel relaxed. Nothing seemed to bother him. He always seemed to have time for me. If I forgot a drink order, he’d just throw his hands in the air and say, ‘Pretty sure it was a gin and tonic, eh?’ with a cheeky glint in his eye that melted my anxiety into a loving smile.
Unlike me, he never seemed to stress about anything. When I asked which cappuccino was skim, he’d just grin and whirl a finger in the air before pointing at whichever one took his fancy, exclaiming, ‘This one!’ I would just shake my head and laugh, praying the customer didn’t have some full-fat milk allergy.
As staff we often sat and had a drink after work. It was the highlight of my day, a chance to get to know Anthony a bit better. He was always chatty and friendly. Everyone seemed to love him. It was impossible not to be drawn to his playful boyish nature. In his characteristic laid-back way, he always wanted to help people, fixing their cars and offering everyone, including me, a lift home after work. Like me, he lived in Bondi.
I hid my
adoration in every way I could, convinced that Anthony was not interested in me. We talked many times of the virtues of friendship over romance, which I took as his way of letting me know that he wasn’t keen. I was the world’s most useless flirter. Whatever one is supposed to do in order to let a man know that you’re attracted to him, I am sure I did the opposite. When Anthony offered me a lift home I would cheerfully decline and hop on the bus. When he looked me in the eye, I would look away. And whenever the subject of romance came up, I said how great it was to have male friends.
We arranged to go indoor rock climbing. He picked me up outside Town Hall station in his green Toyota Corolla. Samantha, Anthony’s sister, sat in the passenger seat. I’m not sure what I thought his sister would be like, but she wasn’t supposed to be that beautiful. My nervousness mounted. Sam was wearing a tiny crop top and shorts that sat perfectly on her slim, tanned hips. She was gorgeous and trendy. I felt huge in my big baggy Mambo T-shirt. Oh God, I thought. If you have a sister like that, why would you like me?
I sat in the back seat of the car, staring lustfully at the back of Anthony’s neck, wishing I could reach out and touch it. But I didn’t, and nothing happened after that. I’m okay with friends, I thought.
Life jumbled along happily, working at the Opera House and the Basement, living nocturnally. I was sharing a flat in Bondi with other backpackers, living in milk-crate city. Did you know that milk crates make great chests of drawers, coffee tables, stools and bookshelves? My fifty dollars per week rent to share a room in milk-crate city even included bills. I’d never saved so much money in my life. Having no real responsibilities gave me an invigorating sense of freedom. All my troubles and my pain were neatly and conveniently packed away back in England.
I had planned to work for three months, save money and travel before heading back to London, but I had a one-year visa, and life was good. I didn’t want to go home. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that my decision to stay on in Sydney might have an impact on anyone else. Anyway, nothing was going to stop me staying where I could be carefree and pain-free.
I called Jo.
‘Hi, Jo, I think I’m going to stay here for a while, cash in my air ticket and use up my visa.’
‘What? What about the house, Ta? We need to clear it all out to sell it. I’m not bloody doing it all on my own, you know,’ she said, angry and exasperated, for she had realized the enormity of clearing out thirty years’ worth of accumulated belongings.
We had an attic full of memories and endless boxes full of Mum and Adam’s clothes, letters and things we hadn’t known what to do with. I was supposed to be there too. Jo needed my help.
It was a bad time for her. Her marriage had broken up and she was deeply unhappy. I never really knew what had happened. Whether it was because she chose not to tell me, or because I failed to ask, I do not know. It didn’t occur to me how acutely painful a marriage break-up would be, and Jo never liked to show her vulnerability so we never talked about it. By now our lives were worlds apart, emotionally as well as geographically. I put down the phone, ignoring my sister’s plea for help.
Then I rang Jonny to tell him the news. He put the phone down on me. We had broken up, but I realize that he was still holding out hope. He was waiting for me to come home. I had no idea of the pain I caused him.
I cashed in my return ticket and continued my carefree existence.
6 August 1995
After work, we sat around the bar at the Basement having a staff drink. It would have been Mum’s sixty-third birthday, as well as Mum and Dad’s twenty-ninth wedding anniversary.
One of the bar girls, Pip, came over to me.
‘Are you ever going to get together with Anthony? Because, you know, if you want it, it’s there,’ she said nonchalantly.
I was speechless. Had he said something to her? Was she sure?
Anthony gave me a lift home that night and we sat on Bondi beach like a pair of schoolkids, fiddling with the sand, staring at the water.
‘I feel like a kid,’ he said.
I laughed nervously, ‘Yeah … playing in the sand.’
He smiled. We both knew he hadn’t meant that at all. Rather that he felt like a teenager on a first date.
I focused even more intently on the sand, until finally I looked up and he kissed me.
‘I can’t believe I just did that,’ he said with the childish innocence that I loved.
From that moment we were inseparable and all the shared paranoia and misconceptions of the last few months came tumbling out. We laughed like teenagers about all our misconstrued conversations. I felt just as I’d always dreamed I would. It was everything I’d always imagined falling in love to be. I was head over heels and so was he.
At work, Anthony just stood staring at me and I would smile back, abashed by the intensity in his eyes. One morning, soon after the night on Bondi beach, I woke up in his flat to hear him shouting from the street below the window. I stuck my head out. There was Anthony holding a red rose. I beamed a love-struck smile.
‘I’m coming up!’
His apartment was on the second floor of an old redbrick block on busy Bondi road, the main thoroughfare to the beach. Anthony put the rose between his teeth and began to climb as cars and buses trundled by. He scaled the side of that building with only his bare fingers and toes. I laughed and shook my head. A guy walked past and shouted:
‘Eh mate … Want a ladder?’
We had a fair audience by the time he finally made it to the window and into my arms. They chuckled about young love. And it was, young, innocent, lustful, uncomplicated love.
I felt totally safe with Anthony. If I was upset, he always held me, reassuring and comforting me even if he had no idea what was wrong.
‘It’s going to be okay, bub, I promise, it’s all going to be okay,’ he would say gently as he hugged me. He had an amazing ability to make me believe him. I felt warm and safe.
He took me to meet his parents soon after they had moved to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. I didn’t know that he had described me to his mother as an Indian princess. She opened the door, expecting to see a petite Indian girl with slender features, and was somewhat surprised when she saw me, tall, muscular and Amazonian with a mass of curly hair. Having recovered from the initial shock, Anthony’s parents, Helga and Bert, invited me into their family with open arms. ‘Don’t you dare hurt that girl,’ his father warned Anthony.
I could not have anticipated then the bond I would form with Anthony’s family or the impact they would have on my life. I had thought I had found the love of my life. In fact what I found was so much more.
As my visa neared its expiry date so the pressure mounted to make a plan for the future. There seemed so many obstacles in our way. We had been together for less than six months. Could we really make a commitment to move to the other side of the world after such a short time? I wanted an answer; I craved certainty.
Anthony never planned ahead. He had a sense that everything would work out. Had he asked and pleaded, I would have married him on the spot, but he didn’t. One night, after I had been pushing hard for an answer, we had an argument. I walked out of the pub we were in. Anthony followed me all the way home, walking patiently behind me for over an hour, never letting me out of his sight.
Finally we agreed he would come over to England for a holiday and we would see what happened. I left Australia the day my visa ran out and I cried and cried. I spent six weeks in New Zealand on my way back to England, sneaking to the phone whenever I could to speak to Anthony, and writing letters when I couldn’t get to a phone. I filled my days with every adventure sport I could think of. I sky-dived, white-water rafted, bungee-jumped, ice-climbed, took helicopter rides and hiked my way around the country. I was back in the mountains, in my element, where, like Adam, I always felt most at peace. He’d written:
Every panorama possesses a snow-capped mountain whose sides appear etched by a sculptor’s chisel, so naked and sharp are the roc
ks that form them. Clouds float in oblivious bliss through and among the peak – puffy and white – the type in which one finds faces. But perhaps one of the most spectacular sights of the day occurred when we had clawed our way up to the top of Cathedral and were timidly looking down the other side into a mountain crevasse where a stream raged but appeared to murmur. Two eagles floated in the air currents that rose from the valley floor. There is no need for me to describe the scene further as it is one so often recounted but so rarely seen – the majesty of the birds and their effortless grace soaring high and far in the mountain air – it was fantastic. We were on a par with the eagles.
I stood at the top of a ridge on the Routeburn Track, looking out at the spectacular scene before me, feeling an invigorating sense of freedom. That night I nestled in my sleeping bag in among the peace and tranquillity of the mountains in one of the tiny wooden huts that lined the track. I drifted into sleep, only to awake in the middle of the night. I became immediately aware of a deep rumbling within my soul that sat at odds with the quiet contented breathing of my fellow travellers. It felt as if a predator were preparing to strike. Fear clamped my chest, scaling the walls of my throat, stealing the breath from me until the panic engulfed me. I fought for logic. Why now? Why is this happening? The more I looked for answers the faster the fear spread. I felt as if I were in a cage, dangling precariously somewhere above the world, looking down at it wistfully. It was as if one of Adam’s eagles had caught me unawares, swooping down to grip me with its claws, severing my link with reality, driving me down into a crevasse.
