Luckily, Ash hadn’t even enquired as to where Judy was, or what lay behind Adam’s warm curses. Ash had turned into one of those smug bastards who you couldn’t help but like, but who inadvertently (conveniently, in Adam’s case) forgot to enquire about you.
Elena shook his hand, giving him time to read her name tag and confirm that she was indeed the Latvian Australian who had seduced him in the cook tent. Well, that was his version, and he was sticking to it. Being seduced reduced his culpability.
‘Adam.’
Elena enfolded him in a spirited embrace. She was taller than him; that hadn’t changed. His head connected with her chin and he had time (briefly) to consider their coupling; how random and how awkward, all those years ago.
‘Judy has told me about your new life.’
Ah, so Judy had filled in the blanks for him. He wondered about Judy’s version of his life.
‘She tells me you have two daughters.’
I do, he thought, but said aloud, ‘They’re Louise’s daughters.’
‘Yes, Judy told me.’
What else did Elena know?
‘What about you?’ A diversionary tactic. He knew of course that she was a Classics lecturer at university.
‘Me … I have one son.’
That wasn’t what he had meant, but he was obliged now to follow through.
‘A son?’
‘Yes, his name is Michael — after your kiwi bird.’
Right where it hurt. He guessed Judy hadn’t gone into much detail about either of them.
‘Michael.’
His voice was unfamiliar, and he had a hollowed-out feeling. The outer version of who he thought he was continued talking to Elena.
‘Judy tells me you’re lecturing in Classics.’
‘Yes, our trip to Ephesus and Athens sowed the seed.’
Athens and Ephesus. Now he remembered. He’d blurred the boundaries. He knew it had been in the cooking tent somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Greek and Roman ruins … but which particular country, until this moment, he’d forgotten. Now he could see the Sacred Way, the blue, blue Mediterranean sky and the marble white upon white, the romance of the library at Ephesus, and Elena — answering his questions, debating timelines with him, sharing his rapture. They’d drunk raki in coffee mugs (Judy, Elena and Adam) and Judy had sloped off to their tent to sleep off the alcohol. Elena and Adam were on cooking duty, planning moussaka, amazed at the abundance of eggplants and tomatoes. They had purchased raki from a sad little shop selling souvenirs, and figs and goat cheese from the market.
‘Yes, indeed …’ Elena went on. ‘I found working at the university fitted around motherhood. The Classics were a foregone conclusion for me, and I’ve never forgotten our trip to Turkey …’ Then abruptly, she began talking of her son, as if the Classics and her son were somehow related.
‘My son Michael is off to Brazil. He’s just completed post-graduate studies in conservation biology: he won a scholarship to look at the rainforests.’
Adam tried to look suitably impressed but he was swamped with memories of Turkey, their indiscretion, their betrayal of Judy. He looked across the room to see where she was. Judy was in animated conversation with Ash. She appeared to be enthusing over photographs. His guilt was compounded. How could she be so generous with Ash? All that loss, and she was sparkling at this reunion. Elena didn’t notice his distraction; she had been too busy searching through her handbag.
Had he known the reunion would be like this …
‘There, take a look. What do you think?’
She was holding out a photograph.
More people were arriving. He could hear background shrieks of recognition. Judy was introducing herself to someone and gesturing towards Ash. There were tables set up with the year and type of Overland Adventurers tour displayed on helium balloons. Their table had a red balloon and a banner across the top saying ‘Classical European Tour’. It was a party atmosphere, and only half past nine in the morning. Why had he come? He really had no idea. He took the photograph from Elena and saw a young man standing in a forest somewhere, wearing a backpack. He thought perhaps the young man looked like Elena, but probably only because he was tall — and maybe something about the eyes. Actually, he didn’t care all that much, but to make up for his lack of interest he held the photo longer and forced himself to comment.
‘How old is he?’
Elena didn’t answer. She took the photograph from him and popped it back into her handbag as if it was of no interest to her now. Perhaps he’d offended her somehow. Maybe his lack of interest was more obvious than he’d intended.
She grabbed his arm, and directed him across the now crowded room. He followed because he had no option. Elena was all purpose and focus. He was fascinated by the thought that they had fucked. But it seemed from her behaviour towards him that she had long forgotten.
He looked around again, keeping tabs on Judy. She had become his security blanket. He didn’t want to encounter any more Ash incarnations happily married with families and photographs. He wanted to go back in time, to return across the Darling Harbour bridge and drink his cappuccino, savour, anticipate, and perhaps the reunion would never eventuate. Perhaps he could even forget the coffee and return to bed with Louise in their George Street apartment this morning (affectionate mates), Frankie and Ness only a text away.
Elena had drawn him away from the main hall and out into a reception area. They were alone except for a blue couch, a pot plant and a phone on a very stylish wooden desk. The noise had subsided and the silence grew awkward. She sat down on the couch, which was more like a decorative statement. If he was going to sit down, they would be crushed together. He had time to consider this before Elena patted the spare spot beside her.
Seated, he was able to observe Elena up close. She was as he recalled: blonde, sturdy and striking. Sturdier now, of course, and with that comfortable look that some women achieved at a certain age, a look that didn’t so much dilute their sexuality as enhance their sensuality. Her manner, though, was slightly overbearing. Adam was beginning to feel uncomfortable, even more so when he saw how uncomfortable Elena looked. She was desperately trying to find words, but so far had managed only another synopsis of her son’s life.
He hoped she wasn’t going to haul out more photographs. She didn’t. Instead she seemed to change her mind about the whole idea of the two of them having a private conversation: she looked at her watch and said she needed to sort out enrolments, leaving him stranded on the couch as she rushed back into the hall.
There on the couch, away from what was now quite a crowd, Adam relaxed. He could sit out there and avoid fraternising until lunchtime if he chose. From a window he could see the harbour, catch a glimpse of the bridge and watch tourists.
It was Judy who found him, insisted he return and join in the spirit of things. She linked arms with him and propelled him towards a group of people. He didn’t have the heart to resist. He was so impressed with her enthusiasm that he felt obliged to reciprocate. They caught up with a woman called Marlene, whom Adam could barely recall. Judy prompted him about an incident in Dubrovnik and, rather than disappoint anyone, he pretended to remember. As they had all been skinny-dipping at the time, it was possibly not surprising he didn’t recall Marlene’s face. She was separated, single and awful. Marlene sold art on the internet and had an exhibition coming up at the local community hall in a suburb of Broome, where she lived. Adam hated to imagine just how obscure a suburb of Broome might be. But Judy was attentive without being patronising, enthusiastic without appearing gauche.
Adam thought perhaps Ash and Marlene should get together. Actually, he suggested it: maybe Ash could screen-print Marlene’s landscapes on his T-shirts — expand her market. He was joking, but Marlene wasn’t and she rushed over to find Ash. Judy giggled. He hadn’t heard that in a while — her girlish giggle. It refreshed him.
‘Shame on you!’ she said, but she knew, he knew, she didn’t mean it.
And then he felt like a prick. This was normal of course. He was a prick for mocking someone he hardly knew, who might very well be a talented artist. After all, wasn’t it he, Adam, a factory manager from some obscure suburb in New Zealand, who was kidding himself about his own creative endeavours? Bar stools indeed. He mentally kicked himself — hard. There, you bastard — get a life!
An announcement was made over the hubbub of friendly banter, barely audible, though loud enough to attract everyone’s attention. A guy who looked pretty goddamn familiar was up on the dais with a microphone, waving it about — which didn’t assist clarity, but he had everyone’s attention.
It was Mike, the tour leader, who seemed to have inspired the naming of more than one child. How extraordinary that such an ordinary bloke with such an ordinary name could have that major an impact on people’s lives. And then Adam remembered. Michael had forgotten to tell Overland Adventurers that he suffered from epilepsy. Maybe forgotten wasn’t the right word, perhaps omitted. Or perhaps he had been optimistic, thought he had it under control.
It was at the Spanish border, when they had overstocked the bus with Portuguese wine and the Guardia Civil were looking to confiscate their booty. Michael, all blond curls, tanned skin and exuberant innocence (Adonis), was part-way through the third chorus of their morning song when the Guardia Civil boarded the bus — wearing black boots, armed with black pistols — ready to ransack (wanting bribes) … He stopped abruptly on the third-highest note of the song, then appeared to rotate slowly before collapsing (bashing his head as he fell), frothing, fitting, rigid in the aisle.
Luckily a rowdy girl from Whakatane knew all about the recovery position, where Michael’s tongue ought to be, and that he was having a fit. The rest of the travellers were stunned into silence. The Guardia Civil retreated, backwards, out of the bus, their contraband uncounted, bribes forgotten, keen to avoid the paperwork required of a possible foreign death. The driver took off and they passed through the border, booze intact, and Michael still fitting. When he recovered, he had no memory of the moment, so they all resumed singing to distract him — and themselves. They were relieved that he wasn’t their driver, and from that moment on, Michael (previously just an attractive young Australian leading their tour) became a hero. That this Adonis was vulnerable made him more lovable. It now occurred to Adam that Mike might be the father of Elena’s son. With a few calculations, it became even more likely …
Elena was on the dais with Mike. They were clearly friends; together they had organised the reunion. It was obvious now that Elena had sent the packages to them with the kiwi and the menu. Jokes went back and forth and Adam heard his own name bandied about, perhaps even the butt of a joke, because everyone laughed and looked at him — but he was distracted by the idea of Mike and Elena. He confided this to Judy (thinking he was quite smart to have worked this out) and she shook her head slowly, looking at him in puzzled disbelief. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing.
Bit by bit, the pieces came together. People introduced themselves; memories were stirred, reignited, doubted and reinvented. He began to enjoy himself. Marlene turned out to be a hard-case, likeable sort of woman, which was proof of his own poor judgement: he really ought to work harder at liking people. It occurred to him that after Michael died he had stopped liking a lot of people, resented other people’s happiness. So he made an effort now with Ash and found himself confiding about Martin, the vagaries of manufacturing, and (once his guard was really down) talking with great pride of Ness, Frankie and Louise.
The wine at lunch helped — some particularly pleasant Australian reds that went down a treat. Judy, he noticed, wasn’t drinking, but she was radiant with all of the reconnections and keeping an eye out for him — almost as if he needed minding somehow. He decided the reunion had been worth it if only for this new-found rapport with Judy. She seemed resolved and peaceful. And he didn’t feel responsible for her.
He had never forgotten her face that morning. The face before Michael died. The face receiving the news of his affair with Louise. First startled, then puzzled, and then disbelieving. Her anger soon after, much easier to forget. And then her grief. His grief. So many emotions in one morning. And all of these moments embedded forever. He could fast-forward them, freeze frame, run them backwards, but he could never erase them. Now, though, he could bear them, and that was new. Possibly as new as today, he realised.
The rest of the reunion was a bit of a blur. He indulged his newly discovered good nature, and found people responding to him. Someone (he couldn’t recall who) congratulated him and Judy on being so successfully and happily divorced. He received the compliment politely … considered it … and agreed.
In the afternoon they were treated to a slide show — a projector was produced and those cynics who scoffed at the old technology were soon silenced by the quality of the images, the memories evoked. Incidents were recalled that people had hidden from each other. Guffaws, chortles and hearty approval, lubricated by lunch, punctuated the pictures.
Athens, a kaleidoscope of white on white, polluted sky, glimpses of blue. The spice markets in Turkey (Judy with her hands plunged into a sack of saffron); Ash hurling cinnamon sticks by the handful at Mike. That had landed them in trouble with the stallholder and cost them three bottles of duty-free liquor purchased in Dover. Shoes lined up outside the Blue Mosque (a shriek from Marlene, who’d lost her shoes that day). Adam having a wet shave in a small market town, his Turkish barber waving the blade murderously at the camera; Judy smoking strawberry-flavoured hubble-bubble and beaming up at a handsome Turk refilling the pipe. All of them, shoeless, bathing in the thermal waters of the white terraces at Pamukkale.
Dubrovnik. Naked. Someone took photographs. Breasts and bollocks in abandon as they ran to the sea. Roars of approval and shrieks of shame. A poke in the back now from Judy: she remembered. Of course she did. They’d split from the shrieking crowd and fucked. Not even that successfully, but daringly and, most of all, romantically.
There was a break between the afternoon activities and the dinner that evening. Time to return to hotels, apartments, freshen up, dress up, whatever. He’d planned to sneak off early and foot it down to The Rocks, enjoy a bit of Sydney by himself. His plans were thwarted when Judy and Elena corralled him and insisted he come for a drink in a nearby bar. They were getting on famously. Of course they had on tour all those years ago, but seeing them together only emphasised his disloyalty. And one thing he was committed to now was loyalty. Oh, you couldn’t censor your thoughts, and you couldn’t control your libidinous reaction to other people, but you could temper your behaviour with responsibility. If anything, he was Mr Responsible. It fitted, it suited, he wore it.
As it turned out, though, Judy wasn’t staying long. She ordered the drinks (orange juice for herself), and soon after found a reason to excuse herself. Something about meeting Phillip. She produced her phone to prove her point, as if right there and then a text had arrived — except her phone was switched off.
Elena had ordered a whisky, which arrived with two straws. She took the straws out carefully, watching the whisky drip from the ends on to the table. And then she downed her drink, almost in one gulp, and wiped the drops from the table with her bare hand. Adam sipped his beer, uncertain what to say. He hadn’t bargained on Judy abandoning them. Elena shifted in her chair, leaning back as far as she could, and then she leaned forward and pulled a photograph from her handbag. She touched Adam’s sleeve, lightly but intimately, and he sensed her apprehension.
‘This isn’t easy, Adam.’
Elena was holding the photograph of her son, her index finger rubbing in a circular motion around the backpack he was carrying. And then she stopped, and placed her finger right on his face, covering it for a moment before lifting her finger and placing it over her lips. A reverse kiss.
‘Michael is your son.’
He knew that, wanted to correct her, make the ‘is’ into a ‘was’. He was shocked that she knew.
‘Judy told you.’
‘No, Adam, I’m telling you.’
‘What the heck!’
Elena lifted the photograph up towards Adam, held it beside his face.
‘Your eyes.’
It didn’t make sense, or else he didn’t want it to. A small part of him was beginning to understand and the rest of him refused.
He covered his eyes: both hands, palms flat, as you did when you were a child playing hide and seek and you had to count to a hundred. Perhaps if he counted to a hundred?
Elena waited, and he couldn’t hide any longer behind his flat, cold, terrified palms.
‘You are Michael’s father.’
It was terrible. It was so terrible that he couldn’t breathe. And yet there was a kind of wonder. The wonder crept slowly through the terror; they met halfway and he indulged them both. He looked at the photograph — he saw his Michael, his four-year-old Michael as a grown-up, imagined him as this young man in the hills somewhere with his blue backpack. He pretended. But it didn’t work.
This Michael was new and grown-up and, worst of all, alive. Adam had to face a Michael who had lived. He had to accept paternity and all that it meant. And Judy knew; he knew that now. Christ. He felt sick and then euphoric. The two emotions collided, struggled and coalesced. His hands shook as he took the photograph from Elena.
A young man, the outcome of a creative act, so carelessly enacted. He was tall (like Elena), had Adam’s droopy left shoulder and a thick neck (like Adam’s father). For all Adam knew, the wave in this young man’s hair was from a Latvian grandmother who’d died in the war. Just a photograph, but it contained everything that Adam had once believed in — the power of creation.
Every tear he had ever held back for his baby Michael, dead on the driveway, now fell on this new Michael. His heart was broken as he’d never known before. It was as if he’d glued it temporarily and the glue had finally come unstuck. It was four in the afternoon, the bar was almost empty and the sounds he heard were so foreign, so strange, that he wondered who was making them.
Turbulence Page 22
