Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  All was far from well.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t crazy. I’ve never hung around the gates of Buckingham Palace thinking Prince Charles was in love with me, and I’ve never driven halfway across America wearing a nappy so I didn’t have to stop for a toilet break in my bid to reach the man I loved as quickly as possible (I wasn’t that desperate), but I did hound him with the occasional text message now and then . . .

  How are you?

  Are you OK?

  Haven’t heard from you, I’m worried. Please call or text.

  Just need to know you’re OK, that’s all.

  Are you depressed? What’s the problem?

  Please call me.

  What’s the bloody problem?

  Sorry, ignore that last message.

  Seriously though, are you OK?

  . . . sent over the course of, oh, twenty minutes?

  It reached the point where I decided I would have to stake everything on an outright declaration of love; maybe I’d been too subtle, maybe he didn’t realise how I felt?

  A3’s house was 120 miles away from mine, in West London. I would sometimes turn up unannounced. Hey, how are you? No, I just fancied a day in London, happened to be passing, thought I’d set off early to miss the traffic. Before dawn is best, don’t you think?

  So one cold winter’s morning, with rain teeming down, I got up at five and drove to London. I parked the car in Ealing, outside my old flat where I knew I could get free parking for the day, then I hopped on a tube to Hammersmith and by eight o’clock I was in Starbucks, paying for a bag of croissants.

  With the paper bag tucked inside my coat, I waited impatiently for the lights to change on Hammersmith Road then sprinted across the pedestrian crossing, dashed down Bute Gardens and stood for a moment outside his front door, trying to catch my breath. I rang the doorbell, clutching the still-warm croissants, and suddenly there he was, the man of my dreams, a look of weary resignation on his beautiful, crumpled, sleep-creased face. Clutching the sweaty bag, I hoisted it into the air. ‘Surprise!’

  He pulled the cord of his dressing gown tighter around his waist, turned his back and padded down the corridor. I followed, staring at his calves.

  We reached the living room and I attempted a clumsy, affectionate, ‘we’re just friends and this is what friends do’ kind of hug. He sidestepped the hug and turned away. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ I sat on the sofa, hoping he’d sit next to me but he sat on a wooden chair at the table under the window and gave me an equally hard, wooden stare.

  ‘I’m getting married,’ he said.

  ‘Wow,’ I replied, mentally cursing the fact that I’d run out of time. ‘You’ve waited long enough.’

  ‘It’s not Melanie.’

  For a heart-stopping moment I thought he was about to propose. He must have seen the look on my face because he rushed to explain.

  ‘I met someone, someone else! Someone new.’

  ‘You met –? You didn’t . . . why didn’t you . . .?’ I was so confused I couldn’t form a complete sentence. In the end I just said, ‘When?’

  ‘About a year ago.’

  Twelve months of courtship. A whole year of dinners and sex and flowers and all the sweetness of new love, culminating in an engagement to be married, and I hadn’t known anything about it. ‘Congratulations,’ I managed.

  I drove home along a dismal stretch of the M4 motorway, sobbing all the way. We were meant for each other, why couldn’t he see that? What more could I have done to convince him? Symbolism stalked me in single magpies, frozen ponds and signs of bleak misfortune. A white van I followed had the words I’ve gone scrawled in dirt on the back and Amy Winehouse came on the radio singing about trouble and being no good. I sobbed some more.

  Of course, somewhere deep in my subconscious I knew A3 and I weren’t right for each other, and I’d known it from the beginning. If I had told him what was on my mind – I want to be with you, leave your girlfriend and run away with me instead – I knew what the answer would have been. So I said nothing and concentrated on the fantasy life I’d built in my head. Four long years had passed since then.

  Reality sank in on the drive home and a stark, inescapable truth cut through all my romantic fantasies: I was nothing but a silly, middle-aged fool who should have learnt her lesson long ago. At forty-nine I may as well have been in kindergarten when it came to men.

  If I had been a man I could have run away to join the Foreign Legion so no one would have seen me cry.

  But I wasn’t a man; I was a stalking middle-aged spinster with a resume that would stand up in court as confirmation of multiple personality disorder.

  So I applied for a job with the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) instead.

  chapter three

  I have no medical qualifications and I can’t fly a plane but, since the Flying Doctor job didn’t involve sucking the venom out of a farmer’s leg or landing a plane on a dirt strip in the middle of a dust storm (am I the only one who remembers that old TV series?), that didn’t matter.

  The Flying Doctor wanted a junior in their Sydney marketing office, someone who could draft a press release, organise events, update the website and produce their quarterly newsletter. I wasn’t actually qualified to do many of those things either (and by no stretch of the imagination could you call me a junior, even stuck in a stationery cupboard with the lights off) but I was desperate to get away. It was only an eight-month maternity post, just long enough to make sure I’d be on the other side of the world when A2 and his fiancée got married. I didn’t want to embarrass myself (or the happy couple) by turning up for the ceremony in dark glasses and sobbing loudly.

  I liked the idea of a short-term job. I was a serial monogamist when it came to jobs, totally committed in the short term but always ready to move on. I’d lost count of the jobs I’d had – telephonist, receptionist, librarian, PR executive, English teacher, writer, actor, workshop co-ordinator, theatre producer, event manager, journalist – to say nothing of the failed attempts at speech therapy and primary school teaching. But there was another reason to be away for less than a year, and that was family. After four years of pining for A3 I’d begun to feel settled in England; it was the longest I’d lived anywhere since childhood. Village life was slow and measured and I was enjoying getting to know my sisters. I’d spent so much time obsessing over men I’d failed to appreciate how valuable female friends could be. In many cases I’d seen them as rivals, not friends. I had three sisters, one older and two younger yet I knew little about sisterhood. Growing up, I had shut myself off from them and escaped into a world of fiction. Wendy, Elizabeth and Rachel were wise, funny, understanding and supportive. I knew I would miss them and their families.

  I made a mental pledge.

  If I get this job I promise to stop stalking and start living; I pledge to have fun. I will embrace life before the cellulite that spans the troubled seas of my dimpled thighs drops as far as my knees. I will drink mint julep (whatever that might be), wear matching underwear and stop feeling like the last piece of mouldy old cheddar left on the cheeseboard.

  I thought back over the four years I’d spent in a damp stone cottage buried deep in the English countryside, much of it waiting in vain for the phone to ring, when my only excitement had been checking the number of worms in the compost bin (if you’ve never tried it, don’t mock it). Here was an opportunity to head back to the sunshine of Sydney, and this time I wouldn’t be chasing a man. I would be going on my own, to make my own way.

  Determined not to ask the Tarot cards if it was the right thing to do, I trudged up to the top of the garden instead, squelching through fallen leaves. Brushing aside cobwebs, I wrenched open the shed door and settled into an old green armchair with broken springs and velour cushions that once took pride of place in my aunt and uncle’s house. It still had a comforting
smell of cigar smoke.

  I reached for a talisman I’d told no one about. My little voodoo doll was mounted on a bamboo cane about twelve inches high, with worn trousers, a ragged straw hat and a lopsided grin. I’d found the miniature scarecrow in a tangle of brambles when I’d first started digging the garden and I had slowly invested him with all of A3’s characteristics. Many was the time I had sat in that armchair, as the evening light faded and the rain teemed down outside, clutching the scarecrow, begging the universe to bring us together. What must I have looked like? Exactly what I was, I suppose: a sad, middle-aged spinster who saved used tea bags, cut her own hair and normally had dirt lodged under her fingernails, crooning to a stuffed scarecrow in the shed at the top of the garden. My tears were unhurried and unstoppable, like rain set in for the afternoon.

  I had made a pledge to move on so I took the scarecrow into the fading light of that gloomy afternoon, intending to plant him in one of the garden beds where he belonged. As I lifted his tattered jacket I saw the clear outline of a heart, traced in mould on the back of his pants. The discovery made me waver, tears falling freely, and I forced myself to ignore the sign. ‘I love you,’ I whispered and thrust my little scarecrow into the mud, leaving him to the vagaries of a harsh English winter.

  Back inside I banked up the wood-burning stove and couldn’t resist a quick Tarot card reading, not for me but for the man I loved and his bride to be. Will they be happy? Are they an ideal couple, meant for each other? Will their love last? The cards were unequivocal, topped by the Ten of Cups depicting Psyche hand in hand with Eros. There was no finer card when it came to happiness and family life. I pictured them at their wedding, the sun setting behind the trees as they exchanged their vows, sparkling lovers in diaphanous chiffon and crumpled linen, champagne flowing, baby-making to follow. Bugger.

  I put the cards away and turned my attention to the application form for the Flying Doctor, downloaded from the Sydney Morning Herald website. With the time difference between England and Australia, I had just three hours to submit, so there was no time to waver or prevaricate. I erased several years of intermittent work experience as a librarian, a telephonist, a secretary, a workshop co-ordinator and an English teacher (five years as a struggling actor wasn’t going to impress anyone either) and said nothing about my age. Instead I focused on public relations. Years ago, back in my early twenties, I’d had a stint with a PR company in London, pitching lame story ideas on industrial shelving to Fleet Street journalists who were far too busy to listen. They had glamorous product launches to attend, some of which I had to organise. The editor of Industrial Shelving Weekly could always be relied on to turn up but he normally had the canapés to himself. I hated PR, frequently went home in tears and couldn’t wait to leave. No matter now, I needed this job.

  The job spec also asked for someone to help organise events. Freelance event management was one of those jobs I had fallen into in my thirties, during a lull in theatre work. (Apologies to any professionals who’ve worked their butts off getting a foothold in the industry but that’s the way it goes. I bet you’re married and I’m an ageing spinster, remember?)

  When it came to event management I had made it up as I went along: handing out badges, directing people to breakfast in five-star hotels, making sure luggage got to the right room (‘Porter!’), I’d greet guests with a flourish (‘Bonjour’, ‘Buenos dias’, ‘Ciao’) and was often in charge of counting them on and off coaches – that was until the day I lost someone in the souks of Marrakesh. I miscounted, told the driver to leave and the poor sod I’d forgotten had to make his own way back from the teeming madness of Jemaa el-Fna. When he eventually turned up at the hotel several hours later, a sweaty, gibbering wreck, I made him swear not to tell anyone. I reckon he blabbed, though, because they never gave me the coach counting job again.

  My colleagues in event management were consummate professionals and I was waiting for the day they would finally work out I didn’t know what I was doing. One of the best was Lilian, a blonde Swedish bundle of energy, who rang one day to check my availability.

  ‘We’re taking a group to Puerto Rico. Are you interested?’

  Seriously, that’s what she would say. Are you interested? As if I might have something better to do.

  ‘When is it?’ I said. It didn’t do to sound too eager.

  ‘In three weeks; we need you for eight days.’

  Eight days in Puerto Rico, all expenses paid, staying in a top-class resort. Sometimes I couldn’t go through the whole ‘let me check my diary’ nonsense in case I snorted and blew my cover. I took a deep breath. ‘That looks OK,’ I said.

  ‘Book your flight and we’ll reimburse you,’ Lilian said.

  A few days later I joined a conference call to confirm the final details.

  ‘Who are you flying with?’ Lilian asked.

  ‘BA.’

  ‘Great, so are the rest of us. Let’s meet at Heathrow around noon.’

  It wasn’t often I got the chance to show how professional I was so I grabbed the opportunity whenever I could. This one was too good to miss, especially with six other event managers on the call.

  ‘Isn’t that cutting it a bit fine?’ I said. ‘The flight’s at 12.45.’

  ‘No it’s not, it’s at 2.30,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Oh. I must be on an earlier flight.’

  ‘There isn’t an earlier BA flight from London to Puerto Rico.’

  What Lilian didn’t know about airlines wasn’t worth knowing. In this case, though, I knew she was wrong.

  ‘Hang on. I’ll check my ticket. Yep, here we go, Heathrow to San Jose, leaving Heathrow Terminal 2 at 12.45.’

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Why are you flying to San Jose?’

  I wondered if it was a trick question. The pause stretched into silence, giving me the sinking sense it wasn’t.

  ‘The job’s in Puerto Rico,’ she reminded me.

  ‘That’s right, Puerto Rico,’ I said, weakly.

  ‘San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica,’ said Lilian, a little too sternly for my liking.

  Unbelievably they continued to employ me after that, but my days at the glamorous end of event management were numbered.

  In the Flying Doctor application, I glossed over my lack of website management skills – there was no way they’d find someone who could do everything – and concentrated on my writing experience instead, which was harder than I expected. No amount of imagination could make articles on kitchen benchtops for House & Garden magazine relate to the world of emergency medicine. Then I remembered I had once edited a newsletter for Wimpy, the UK hamburger chain. There was a nutritional angle there, surely.

  Desperation underpinned the stream of words that filled the page. I was hoping this job would save me; from what, I wasn’t sure. Myself perhaps. I lodged the form online with examples of work and slumped into a chair by the fire, clutching a mess of soggy tissues.

  Two days later I received an email.

  ‘The marketing manager of the Royal Flying Doctor Service would like to interview you, do you have Skype?’

  I immediately hit reply. Yes! I was no slouch when it came to modern forms of communication. Surely that would have to count for something in a marketing department.

  Excitement faded to insecurity as I considered the implications of a video interview at seven o’clock the next morning. They were looking for an office junior, not an ageing spinster whose face betrayed the fact that she’d been dumped once too often. Crap. I rearranged the furniture in the living room, set up soft lighting, added flowers to distract their attention and balanced my laptop on a pile of books so the camera wouldn’t focus on my double chin. It would have to do.

  The alarm went off at five o’clock the next morning, while it was still dark outside. An overnight frost had blanketed the lawn in shards of white an
d it was shimmering under the moonlight. I pictured Sydney, hot and sunny, at the end of another perfect summer’s day.

  My experience of Australians told me they were friendly, open, welcoming and overwhelmingly youthful, so my task was to appear happy, professional and at least ten years younger. I washed and blow-dried my hair (not something I had much practice with) then logged on to Skype to check the result. The image of a 65-year-old Soviet dissident recently released from a five-year stretch in a remote Gulag, but who’d somehow managed to get to a hairdresser, popped up on screen. I reworked the lighting, changed the angle and tried again. The Soviet dissident stared back.

  I knew there was some old make-up in a shoebox under the stairs but a frantic scrabble past scraps of carpet, pots of paint and bags of compost produced nothing more useful than a bottle of orange nail polish. I felt vulnerable and tearful, cursing myself for such ridiculous optimism. What made me think they would ever want to employ a heartbroken, middle-aged woman? The marketing department of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) was probably run by the equivalent of Kylie Minogue. I shrank like a slug exposed to sunlight, desperate to admit defeat and crawl back to bed, but it was too late. I averted my eyes from the startled crone staring out of a small square in a corner of the screen.

  Then the phone rang.

  ‘G’day. Sorry about this. We can’t get the technology to work. Can we do a phone interview instead?’

  Can we? Oh yes, yes, YES! I was so relieved, I sparkled. There was more razzle-dazzle in me than a New Year’s Eve firework display over Sydney Harbour Bridge. I was witty, clever and upbeat. I answered all their questions more or less truthfully, never mind that the job involved PR which I hated, or event management which I’d proved I was crap at, or updating a website which I knew nothing about. It was a job with purpose, a reason to dry my self-pitying eyes, stop stalking and start living. They were too polite to ask how old I was and by the end of the interview I knew I’d impressed them.