Wife on the Run

by Fiona Higgins

  Hamish felt suddenly grateful. ‘Thank you, Linda. That’s really helpful.’

  Linda smiled like she was his new bosom buddy. ‘I can make you some bacon and eggs in the morning, if you like. There aren’t too many places to stop on the Nullarbor. You’ll need a good breakfast to line your stomach.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hamish. He wasn’t really a breakfast person. ‘That’d be nice.’

  ‘I’ll bring it over at six-thirty, then?’

  Hamish nodded. ‘I’ll set my alarm.’

  ‘Let’s get you to bed,’ said Linda, waving a cabin key at him.

  Following her outside, Hamish could hear the monstrous roar of the Great Southern Ocean, invisible waves crashing beyond the caravan park.

  He imagined his family camped out too, not so far away now. Every night that he’d slept on his own, he’d pined for Paula beside him. Along with everything else, too; their comfortable familial routine. All of the little attentions that Paula had paid to him, which he’d somehow failed to notice until they suddenly vanished.

  As for the kids, his gut ached for them. Text messages were one thing, but seeing them in the flesh was quite another. He wanted to hold them again, reassure himself that they were, even now, still a part of him. Despite all his fuck-ups and frailties, known and unknown.

  Marriage is a choice, his father had once said to him, on the day Hamish had presented Paula with a sapphire engagement ring. Anyone can sow their wild oats, but what’s much harder is keeping the respect alive in a relationship. Week after week, month after month, decade after decade. Good luck, son. I know you can do it.

  I’m capable of so much more, Hamish thought. The moonlight shone between the wooden slats of the window blinds.

  It’s never too late to be a better person.

  He lay awake in his cabin long into the night.

  Hamish ate his bacon and eggs on the balcony overlooking the Great Australian Bight. There was something about the ocean in the dawn’s breaking light which brought to mind the day he’d married Paula.

  The twenty-fourth of May 1995.

  It had been an overcast day and the ocean had turned a mossy green behind the colourful sweep of wooden huts lining Brighton Beach. They’d planned a low-key wedding in the gardens of a boutique beachfront hotel, not far from where Hamish was flatting at the time. Almost eighteen years ago now, he realised.

  How did I get this old, this fast?

  His relatives had arrived in a mini-bus, bedecked in the family’s tartan, like a Scottish football team. His mum, his dad, his brother and his young family. His grandparents, who’d flown out from Scotland, both of them bursting with pride. Old Sid standing in the garden, rare tears trailing down his stoic face. Paula’s mother, Jeanette, welcoming guests with air kisses. Her sister, Jamie, straightening Paula’s train, smoothing its edges and picking at tiny blemishes that Hamish couldn’t even see.

  And Paula herself, an apparition in exquisite ivory lace. Her skin glowing and translucent, her hair falling in soft curls down a smooth, bare back. The profound feeling of love, deeper than anything he’d felt before, as he watched her walk slowly down the petal-strewn path towards him. How he’d felt as he waited for her, like a boy who’d captured a butterfly. And when she’d finally reached him, how he’d pulled her to him and murmured in her ear.

  My love, my beautiful love.

  My almost-virgin, he’d said later, cheekily, as they’d sipped champagne on the balcony of their hotel suite, overlooking the ocean. If it hadn’t have been for Dr So-and-So, this could have been your first time.

  She’d arched an eyebrow at him.

  They’d been having sex for almost a year before their wedding. Hamish knew everything about Paula’s sexual history, so vanilla in contrast to his own: she’d lost her virginity in a brief relationship with a medical intern at her first hospital posting, six months prior to meeting Hamish. At the time she’d just turned twenty-one, and was newly graduated from her social work degree. Hamish, by contrast, had slept with fourteen women prior to Paula. Which wasn’t a bad effort for a twenty-three-year-old, he reckoned. Not that he ever told this to Paula, and not that she ever asked.

  ‘Well, let’s pretend it is my first time,’ she’d said.

  They’d made love three times that night, with a rare urgency and heat. Overlooking sleep and food, they’d devoured each other instead. And when they’d stood on the balcony at seven o’clock the next morning, watching the sunrise turn the sand the colour of hope, he’d felt as if he finally understood the concept of union. Her warm, naked body pressed against his, a hotel robe draped around them, their hearts beating centimetres apart. He’d never felt more satisfied, more complete.

  And every year since then, on their wedding anniversary, Paula had tried to recapture that honeymoon intensity. Buying new silk underwear for the occasion, the type Hamish liked, sheer and lacy. Sometimes she’d entice him with candlelit dinners, baths and massages, or sensual appetisers like chocolate-dipped strawberries. On their first anniversary, she’d done a striptease for him, overcoming her natural self-consciousness to gyrate like a pole dancer to ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’. She’d been worried Hamish might laugh at her, but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d been so turned on he’d dropped his load prematurely.

  The next year, emboldened by her successful striptease, she’d dressed up as a hotel maid and seduced him as she went through the motions of changing the bed sheets. Now that had been a good year, Hamish thought. Paula in a frilly outfit, bending over and folding hospital corners, wearing nothing but silky suspenders and a pair of fishnet stockings. There sure as hell hadn’t been one like it since.

  Despite her best efforts on anniversaries, there was no escaping the fact that, over the years, Paula had become increasingly indifferent to sex. On the rare occasions they did it, she hardly ever reached climax. He’d quizzed her about her vanishing orgasms, which she always attributed to fatigue. But she’d been tired for fourteen years, he’d calculated. Ever since the third year of their marriage, when Caitlin was a baby and Paula had fallen pregnant with Lachlan. From then on, their bedroom activities became a muted imitation of once-real passion.

  Hamish wasn’t sure it was fixable, either. However hard they might try, he had a sneaking suspicion that monogamy and sexual satisfaction were mutually exclusive. How could having sex with the same person, year after year, be truly exciting? Longevity and titillation weren’t readily reconcilable. Even pole dances and costumes didn’t help after a while, because fundamentally, the landscape remained unchanged. He was still looking at the same body, feeling the same flesh, over and over again. There were simply no more surprises.

  But I do love my wife, Hamish insisted to himself, watching a flock of gulls circle high above the ocean’s swirling surface. Without her, I’d be cactus. So why isn’t that enough?

  Hamish stared out at the waves, mesmerised. The wind had picked up and the ocean’s rhythmic sets had turned into rolling mountains of jade, pounding against a rocky shore.

  He wasn’t a religious person; he’d doubted the existence of God since his earliest years, despite his parents’ simple faith. Truth be told, Hamish thought of God as a benign cultural fiction, a sort of societal fairytale used to indulge young children and comfort the dying. As plausible and potent as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. But sitting alone now, watching the ocean’s currents stretching to the southernmost tip of the world, Hamish suddenly felt as if he was perched on the edge of infinity. Tilting towards something grander, more meaningful than his own miniscule life.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’ Linda was suddenly next to him, clearing the plates.

  Hamish couldn’t explain the inexplicable.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Thanks for breakfast, Linda.’

  By eight o’clock, he’d passed signs to Denial Bay and Cactus Beach, and travelled past the old silver windmills of Penong, rearing up like metal dragons along sandy fence lines.

  Minutes later, even
these visual distractions disappeared. At best, the landscape was unremarkable and unrelenting. At worst, it was a stark, uninhabited wasteland of Mallee scrub, stretching out forever.

  Hamish had heard people waxing lyrical about ‘crossing the Nullarbor’, but if this was a taste of things to come, he wasn’t a convert.

  By the time he reached Nundroo, he was running a little low on fuel, but it seemed too early to stop. He checked the map and calculated that he could easily make it to Yalata, the next petrol station.

  He pushed on for another fifty-one tedious kilometres. Just as the fuel gauge began to flash its red warning light, Hamish spotted the Yalata roadhouse.

  He veered towards it, noticing the absence of other vehicles in the car park. The whole place looked deserted, in fact.

  Hamish pulled up next to the entrance and saw that most of the windows were broken. The petrol pumps were locked, and the shopfront was unlit. Inside was a vandalised mess.

  Fuck.

  He looked again at his map. There it was, the Yalata Roadhouse, with its fuel icon. No mention of the sign now plastered across the door:

  Yalata Roadhouse is temporarily closed. Travellers are advised that the nearest fuel stop is Nullarbor Roadhouse 94 kilometres to the west, and Nundroo 51 kilometres to the east.

  Hamish knew he wouldn’t make it in either direction.

  Think. Think!

  He stood up out of the car and slammed the door, kicking at the car’s front tyre for good measure.

  The pain took him by surprise. He hopped up and down on his right foot, bellowing.

  He stumbled towards the roadhouse and sank onto the steps. Then he lay back on the dirty grey tiles, cool through his t-shirt, and stretched out his injured leg.

  He closed his eyes and moved his head from side to side, racking his brains.

  You’re an ideas man, his boss had once told him, presenting him with a fat sales bonus an eternity ago. Where were his ideas now?

  ‘You right, fella?’

  A voice pierced the darkness.

  Hamish sat up. Where am I?

  Oh yes, Yalata Roadhouse. The pumps with no fuel.

  It was just after eleven o’clock, according to Doggo’s watch.

  Snoozing on the steps for two bloody hours? He cursed at himself. Wasting precious time he could have spent pursuing Paula.

  ‘You right, fella?’

  Hamish looked up at the source of the voice. An Aboriginal man stood less than a metre away, straddling a quad bike. He was wearing a faded pair of stone-wash jeans and a long-sleeved flannelette shirt. A red baseball cap covered his short brown hair, his beard was trimmed neatly against his jaw, and he wore a pair of dusty thongs. The whites of his eyes seemed yellow against his dark skin and a fly crawled across the bridge of his nose, without him even noticing it, apparently.

  ‘Uh, yes,’ said Hamish, propelling himself upright. His left leg was aching again. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’

  The man looked at him, then at the roadhouse. ‘Farken stupid place to sleep.’

  Hamish wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘Well, I ran out of fuel.’

  ‘Farken stupid thing to do out here.’

  Hamish nodded. It was stupid.

  The man turned the ignition on his four-wheeler. ‘Get on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Need some farken fuel, don’t you? Get on then.’

  Hamish checked the highway in both directions, unsure what to do. A campervan was approaching from the west; he watched it whiz past the roadhouse without even slowing.

  I’m rooted, Hamish thought. This guy’s my best chance. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  The man tilted his head in the direction of the highway.

  Hamish hobbled over to the four-wheeler and climbed onto the seat behind the man, with some difficulty. He couldn’t possibly keep his splint up off the road.

  ‘My knee’s . . .’

  The man stood in his seat and lifted his shirt, removing the brown leather belt from his jeans. Without a word, he looped the belt around Hamish’s splint at shin-height. Then he pulled the strap tight, wrapping its other end around his left wrist.

  It was a remarkably comfortable position, with Hamish’s left leg extended alongside the four-wheeler. But it also meant the man would be driving one-handed.

  ‘Hold on, fella,’ said the man.

  Hamish felt for a grip behind the seat.

  ‘Hold on to me.’

  Hamish gingerly put his hands around the man’s waist.

  ‘Tighter, stupid.’

  Hamish gripped the man hard as the quad bike jerked into gear.

  What the hell am I doing? Hamish wondered. I may not get out of this alive.

  They rumbled along the highway to the west, then turned right onto an unsealed road. A warning sign flashed past and Hamish craned his neck to read it: something about entering restricted territory.

  Where were they going? Hamish stared at the back of the man’s neck. He’d never been this close to an Aborigine. In fact, he’d never even talked to an Aboriginal person before. The closest contact he’d ever had was on his Sunday-morning cycles through Preston, where he’d inevitably see a few Aborigines lying drunk in the park. One morning he’d had to swerve to avoid one, a ratty-haired old man, swaying across the road and jeering at the world.

  But Hamish had seen enough on television to draw his own conclusions; you didn’t have to be an anthropologist to figure it out. Aboriginal communities were troubled places, full of dysfunctional families, doped-up teens and lazy parents. People who said they wanted to work, but never did. People who claimed they needed housing, but didn’t respect it when the government gave it to them. People who made excuses for themselves, who let bad things happen to their children in the name of culture. People who took handouts, but no responsibility.

  Takers.

  A small township appeared. Neat white boxes for houses, a dilapidated school, a dust-bowl oval with a bunch of kids playing Aussie Rules on it. They scooted around the outskirts for another kilometre or so before the quad began to slow. Then they pulled up next to an airstrip, where a double-prop aeroplane was offloading supplies.

  ‘Postman today,’ said the man, nodding at the aeroplane. ‘Flying doctor tomorra.’ He unwound the belt around his left hand and slowly lowered Hamish’s leg to the ground. ‘Gettin’ the fuel.’ He headed off in the direction of the aircraft hangar.

  Hamish watched as the ‘postman’, presumably the pilot of PY Air, unloaded several crates.

  What would it be like, Hamish wondered, living somewhere where everything had to be flown in? Where the doctors arrived by aeroplane? Where if you had a time-critical health problem, you mightn’t survive?

  Hamish looked down at his kneecap, visible through the cut-out in the splint. There was a lot to love about the city, he decided. Hospitals within easy driving distance, doctors on call whenever you needed them. Power and sewerage systems, road grading, rubbish removal, all taken care of by local and state governments. In remote places like this, the community had to fend for itself.

  Which was probably why they whinged so much, Hamish thought. And always had their hands out.

  For a moment Hamish tried to calculate how much this little adventure was going to cost him. At a petrol station, he’d pay somewhere between a dollar fifty and a dollar seventy a litre for unleaded fuel. It had been one sixty-three at Nundroo, he thought ruefully. But in this case, there was sure to be a premium for trouble, and for travel. How much cash did he have in his wallet? Hamish patted his pocket.

  Shit, it’s in the hatchback.

  I’ve left the keys there too.

  Hamish slapped his forehead.

  My wallet’s in an unlocked car, keys still in the ignition, outside a vandalised roadhouse in the middle of the desert.

  The Aboriginal man emerged from the hangar carrying a forty-litre jerry can in his arms. From
the way he hauled it, straining beneath its weight, it was almost full. That’d get him much further than the next fuel stop at Nullarbor Roadhouse, Hamish knew.

  ‘I don’t need that much fuel, mate,’ he called. ‘I’ve only got to drive a hundred kilometres to the next pit stop.’

  The Aboriginal man said nothing. He began strapping the can to the rack at the back of the four-wheeler.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  The man climbed onto the quad bike.

  He’s really going to sting me, Hamish thought. And I can’t argue with him, either. Not with my keys still in the car.

  The man lifted Hamish’s leg off the ground and secured it with the belt.

  Then he revved the engine, and they were back on the road.

  The midday sun was unbearable. There was nothing in the landscape to absorb it; not even the dull-coloured scrub offered respite. Beneath it, the sandy earth—a rich red, toffee orange or lemon-tinged white—only seemed to act as a mirror, bouncing the scorching light back up into the clear sky.

  Hamish closed his eyes against it all: the light, the heat, the wind blasting his face.

  Soon they were back at Yalata Roadhouse, and the man was untying his leg.

  The hatchback was still there, thank God. Hamish sighed in relief to see his wallet, too, lying in full view on the dashboard.

  The Aboriginal man followed his gaze. ‘Farken stupid place to leave your wallet.’

  Hamish nodded. ‘I know. About the cost . . .’

  The man unhitched the jerry can and began siphoning the petrol into the hatchback’s fuel tank with a length of hose.

  Crafty bugger. Getting the fuel into the car before we talk price.

  ‘I don’t need a full tank,’ Hamish objected.

  The man looked up from his task. ‘These little lady cars don’t need much fuel, eh?’

  Hamish felt slighted. You should see my ute.

  A minute later, the man hitched the empty jerry can back onto his quad bike.

  ‘How much, mate?’ Hamish asked, poised for an argument.

  The man flicked a dismissive hand at Hamish, then climbed back onto the four-wheeler.