by Tony Park
Henri drained his glass then shook his head. ‘No, that is not politically correct. How about “the Native American Club”?’
Liesl laughed out loud and slid her glass across to him for a refill. He emptied the bottle as the waiter brought a second, along with Liesl’s goat curry.
‘Hey,’ she said, chewing her first mouthful, ‘I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve been eating airline kak for the past two days, but this tastes fantastic!’
‘I told you it was good.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said, her mouth full. He poured more wine. She liked his eyes.
‘So, you took the picture that has become the centre of so much controversy?’ he said.
‘Yes. I wish I hadn’t. It was a good shot, but it was eclipsed on the day by another I took, of an RPA soldier executing a woman.’
‘Terrible times.’
She looked across at the pool and remembered falling in. Despite all the death, there had been wild times. Was it wrong to say good times? Probably, she thought. She wondered where Richard was and what he was doing. Fucking coward.
Henri filled the void of her silent reverie. ‘You were a photographer. A difficult job for a woman at the time?’
She scoffed. ‘No one could accuse you French of being politically correct, could they? It was like any male-dominated profession – hard at first for women to be accepted, but eventually we turned out better than most of the men doing the job.’
‘What makes a woman a better photographer?’ he asked. ‘Charm?’
She laughed and drank some more of her wine. She wanted to feel the numbness, but she also needed to take this handsome, but arrogant man down a peg or two. ‘God no, there’s little room for charm in news photography. But there was a difference, I found, between men and women shooters. The men would want to be there first, to push their way past the police tape, or past the soldiers, to get in close and get the strongest, bloodiest, most dramatic pictures.’
‘Isn’t that what it’s all about?’
She pushed her plate away. She had wolfed down the food. ‘Yes and no. The strongest image is not always the first, or the closest, or the most graphic. A woman is more likely to stand back for a moment – sometimes all it takes is a second – and look at the whole scene, not just the body on the ground or the crashed car or whatever it is. We’ll look at the people on the edges of the disaster; the crying loved one, the dead child’s abandoned toy, the laughing soldier. A man will bully his way into the centre of the action. Am I making sense?’
‘You are.’
‘Good. Then pour me some more wine, so I can get back to being senseless.’
He smiled as he poured. ‘You seek escape. It’s not unusual.’
‘You shunned the limelight when Escape! did the story on you. I couldn’t place you when we met, but I remember hearing about you now. We sent a journalist and a photographer up to your place to do a story on your volunteer program, and the editor was pissed off when they came back without a picture of you.’
‘I value my privacy, and I don’t rescue animals for personal aggrandisement or profit.’
‘So the story said,’ Liesl said. ‘Instead, all we got were dozens of frames of pretty young female volunteers working with chimps and other endangered animals. Is that why you do it?’
‘For the endangered animals?’
‘You misunderstood.’
He placed his glass down hard enough for the wine to slosh, and a few drops spattered the tablecloth. ‘No, I didn’t misunderstand your question. You seriously think I run a wildlife rehabilitation centre in order to have sex with young female volunteers?’
‘You’re a man, aren’t you?’
He raised his hands. ‘I give up. Enough of the interrogation. It seems you are as good a journalist as you are a photographer.’
She liked him, she decided. ‘What’s your relationship with Carmel?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘She is one of our donors. She came to see my animals and that is when a man broke into my property. He had a gun. I have never had an intruder before. Carmel believes he was there to kill her.’
‘Ja, well, there’s a lot of that going around at the moment.’
‘So I gather. But why would someone want to kill you and her and this other man over a seventeen-year-old photograph?’
‘That’s what I’d like to find out. The bottle’s nearly empty. How about another?’
‘But of course,’ Henri said, smiling at her across the candles.
*
Richard rolled over. The bedside clock told him it was 4.33 am. There was no way he could get back to sleep. The woman lay on her side, softly snoring.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and walked naked to the bathroom. As he urinated he looked across to the mirror and saw his eyes were bloodshot and his grey-flecked stubble was approaching beard status. When he ran his hand over his chin he could smell her. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said softly.
The jet lag had woken him, but some of the substantial amount of alcohol he’d consumed on the Qantas 747 was still circulating through his body – enough to let him know that while he wasn’t technically suffering a hangover, it wasn’t far away. His brain was fogged in, and so, too, was the city of Sydney when he parted the curtains and looked out the seventh-floor hotel window.
He switched on his laptop then rummaged in his pack for his nylon rugby shorts and pulled them on while he waited for the computer to boot up. The arch of the Harbour Bridge was visible above the layer of fog, as was the top of Sydney Tower, off to his right. It was as if the structures were floating in a sea of cottonwool. He laced his running shoes as the email program opened.
There was a message from ‘Clemenger, Jason and Denise’. He clicked on it.
Hi Richard, long time no hear, mystery man. Where are you? In Australia? Collette is living in Sydney and I’m sure she’d be interested in seeing you after all this time. Will we see you?
There was a mobile number for Collette, and a message of love from Denise, Jason Clemenger’s wife. The couple lived on Sydney’s upper north shore, a short commute by train from the city, where Richard was staying. He didn’t know, though, if he would have time to see them. It was their daughter he needed to talk to. He wrote the phone number on the hotel notepad and was about to dial it when he remembered what time zone he was in.
He typed a quick note of thanks to Jason and Denise and the tapping woke the woman behind him. She groaned. ‘What time is it?’
‘Early. Go back to sleep . . .’ Embarrassingly he couldn’t remember her name, but noticed her bag beside the table. The luggage tag read, K Driver, and it came back to him, ‘. . . Katrina.’
She groaned again. ‘I can’t sleep. My body thinks it’s midday. God, how much sleep did we get? A few hours?’
‘Something like that.’ There had been a spare seat between them on the flight, in a row of three. She was South African, from Durban originally, a green-eyed bleached-blonde beach girl who’d moved to Noosa Heads, in Queensland, with her husband and two children. She’d divorced him when she’d caught him cheating with his secretary. She’d been home to South Africa on a two-week trip back to care for her mother, who had just come out of hospital. Richard had noted that she kept her tan in good shape, and her arms.
Their flight was due into Sydney at three in the afternoon, but Katrina had told him she was planning on staying in Sydney for a night rather than getting a connecting flight through to Brisbane.
‘I guess it’s good to break the journey, but isn’t it only an hour’s flight to Brisbane?’ he’d asked her.
‘Yes, I could easily go all the way through, but I never get to spend a night away from home all by myself.’
She had booked a hotel, which was more than Richard had done. He’d welcomed the small talk on the flight as she’d matched him drink for drink, and had even found himself laughing a few times. She’d twirled her hair wh
ile she talked and reached across the empty seat a couple of times to lay her hand on his arm when she was making a point. He’d known he shouldn’t entangle himself with her, but he couldn’t help it.
Richard picked up the T-shirt he’d worn on the flight from the floor and put it on. It stank, but it would only get worse on the run. He slipped the room’s key card into his shorts.
The blinds had been closed and the cabin lights turned off on the flight to allow the sensible passengers to sleep. Richard had slid into the middle seat, ostensibly so they could continue chatting without disturbing the passengers around them.
Four hours into the flight they were kissing, her tongue snaking in and out of his mouth. She was hungry.
Five hours down and she was sucking her belly in so he could unbutton her jeans and unzip her. ‘It’s been months,’ she breathed into his ear. She slid down the seat and he parted her with his fingers.
He moved the thin blanket over them as he found her clitoris, circled it, then moved his finger up and down, pushing against her. Her short, sharp nods encouraged him, and she reached for him under the blanket as her breathing quickened. She squeezed him and whispered, ‘I want to ride you, Richard.’
She unzipped his cargo pants and freed him, her hand encircling him as she massaged his natural lubricant into him. They paused, breathless, when Katrina saw the flight attendant coming down the aisle. The woman glanced at them, and Katrina pulled the blanket over her head and started giggling.
‘Shush,’ he said, and would have laughed himself if she hadn’t lowered her mouth to him. Richard had done a mental inventory of his daypack and could have kicked himself.
Katrina emerged from under the blanket and placed her lips against his ear as her hand replaced her mouth. ‘Let’s go. To the loos.’
‘Oh, bollocks.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t pack any condoms.’
She groaned again, but not in a good way. He went back to kissing her and touching her, and she orgasmed, grinding into his hand, then fell asleep. He was frustrated, and passed the time with another in-flight movie, drinking alcohol served by a flight attendant who winked at him. He was angry at himself for forgetting the protection, and for letting himself fall for her. He knew he had a problem with women and casual sex, and he knew he’d be shot of Katrina within twenty-four hours.
When she’d woken, smiling sheepishly, they’d kissed again, tenderly this time, and the passion had been reignited, despite their fatigue, when they’d shared a cab to her hotel in Sydney.
Katrina pulled up the covers and shaded her eyes with her forearm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going out for a run,’ Richard said. ‘I need to clear my head.’
‘I’ll be here when you get back, as long as you’re not running a marathon.’
‘Thanks.’
He took his mobile phone, left the darkened room and shut the door behind him, then took the lift down to the ground floor.
Richard nodded good morning to the concierge and doorman and went outside into the cool dregs of the night. Most of the traffic on George Street was taxis whose tyres hummed and hissed on the wet road. But the rain had stopped, replaced with fog. A young Asian man on the footpath turned his face from the stiff breeze coming off the harbour.
Richard didn’t really know Sydney, but figured if he stuck to the water’s edge he’d be fine. It was a big harbour. He ran along Circular Quay, which had been crowded with tourists and commuters and buskers when their cab had pulled up to the hotel last night, but was now quiet and barely lit. His running shoes slapped on the pavement as he passed the giant white sails of the Opera House. Headlights buzzed along the Harbour Bridge, up to his left, but Richard turned his back on the distinctive structure and carried along on the water’s edge, down the eastern side of the Opera House and along the waterfront edge of the Botanic Gardens.
He was alone, for the first time in what seemed like years. He’d run away, more than once, but always ended up in the arms of a new woman, and in the throes of another difficult situation. When he thought about it, everything that had gone wrong in his life, and the one thing that had been good, could be traced back to Rwanda. Liesl had called him a coward at the airport in Johannesburg and she was right. He ran and he ran and he ran. But he knew it would have to end one day. What Richard wanted to make sure of was that when his final reckoning came it was more or less on his terms.
He passed only two other runners, hardy souls or fellow insomniacs, as he rounded a point. On the far side he saw three Australian naval ships at anchor, and remembered the Garden Island base. He’d been to the base for a tour and cocktails there when he’d first arrived in Australia, before he’d been sent to Rwanda. It had been meant as a sunshine posting – six months on the beach in Queensland – and he’d put his hand up for a raft of pointless courses around the country so he could get in some paid sightseeing. He’d gone to Sydney for a course in marine medicine. Along the way, he’d met Carmel Shang, fallen for her, and been sent to Rwanda. And then his life had been put into a form of cryogenic suspension.
He thought about her as he ran. He had pursued her and won her love. Sure, later he’d worried about settling down too soon, but he knew now that what he’d had with Carmel had been, Juliet notwithstanding, the real deal and not just a passing infatuation. Most of his memories of Carmel were of her wearing a spotted camouflage uniform; he found it hard to imagine her as a civilian prosecutor in corporate armour. He remembered her in Rwanda, so torn over the powerlessness of her official role, so stung by the callous remarks of the soldier who couldn’t understand the nightmare of being a lawyer in a country with no law. His beautiful, fragile Carmel. Of all the bad things he’d done in his life, and there had been plenty since then – the drugs, the affairs – there was nothing he felt more guilt over than cheating on Carmel.
‘Fuck.’ He’d lost her. He’d told himself at the time that he would end it with Juliet and be good and true to Carmel. And then he’d slept with Liesl.
He increased his pace, punishing his exhausted, booze-soaked body. He was breathing hard as he followed a pathway inland, past an art gallery and then through the lawns of a park. Eventually he made his way back into the central business district and found George Street, which he knew would take him back to the hotel. A knot of clubbers emerging from an all-nighter cheered him, but he ignored them and focused on the footpath. A street-sweeping machine rumbled past him and a garbage truck clanked along, keeping pace with him for a while.
By the time he made it back to the hotel it was after five-thirty and the sun was just rising. He took the lift up to the room, the ammonia-like stench of perspired alcohol filling the small space. He heard the shower running. The bathroom door was ajar, steam leaking out. Richard was in a quandary. He wanted a quick, clean exit, but he needed to wash his stinking body. The smart thing to do would be to slip out and hit the hotel pool for a swim. It’d be cold, but it would do him and his libido good.
‘Richard, is that you?’ she called.
He pulled off his soaked T-shirt and slid out of his running shorts and opened the bathroom door. Fuck it, he thought. Katrina slid open the curtain and grinned at him. ‘Come on in, the water’s fine.’
‘I’m not staying, Katrina, and I probably won’t see you again after today.’
She reached for the soap as he joined her, and started lathering his chest, running her fingers through the curls. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.
19
Collette Clemenger had grown into a tall, beautiful twenty-nine-year-old woman. Her surname was from her adoptive naturalised Australian parents, but her skin was the colour of polished ebony. She rose from her seat in the cafe in Surry Hills to meet him and Richard took her hand and kissed her cheek.
‘Hello, Doctor Dunlop, how are you?’ she said.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, smiling. ‘Please, call me Richard.’
A waitress came over and relieved the awkwardness a
s they took their seats. Richard ordered a short black, and Collette a second latte. He checked his watch. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I thought a taxi would be quickest.’
‘Not in Sydney peak-hour traffic. You’re staying near Circular Quay?’
He nodded.
‘A train to Central would have been best, it’s only a two-minute walk from here.’
He looked into her eyes. ‘I hardly recognise you from the skinny little girl you were.’
She gestured around the cafe. ‘Well you couldn’t have mistaken me for anyone else. No other black women here.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t suppose there are many Rwandans here in Australia?’
‘No. I think at last count there were thirty in New South Wales. I don’t socialise with them, though.’
‘No.’ It was a good idea, he thought.
‘So, Jason and Denise tell me you’re a lawyer.’
The waitress brought over their coffees. ‘Yes. Tax law by day, and I do some pro-bono work as a refugee advocate.’
‘I’m sorry, Collette, I lost track of your life over the years. I wanted to stay in touch, but . . . I feel like I turned my back on you.’
She shook her head and reached across the table, putting a hand on his. ‘No, you mustn’t say that. Jason and Denise took care of me and provided a life for me that I could never have dreamed of in Rwanda, especially after the genocide.’
‘I see. Thanks.’ She was giving him an easy out.
She withdrew her hand. ‘You saved my life. I didn’t need anything more than that.’
He swallowed, then took a sip of the rich, strong coffee. It helped steady him a little. He found it hard to look at her, though he could feel her eyes searching him for more, for a reason for this meeting.
‘I haven’t seen Jason or Denise. Are they well?’
