Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  ‘You do know what the salary is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not much.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Yes it does.

  ‘Shut up, PK.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Sorry, I was talking to the dog.’

  ‘What will happen to your dog if you get the job?’

  What now, Clever Clogs?

  ‘He’s not mine, I’m just minding him.’

  ‘The job starts in five weeks, is that a problem?’

  ‘Gosh no, I was planning to move back to Australia anyway.’

  There was no stopping me. When I came off the call I danced around the dining room because, improbable as it seemed, I was convinced I’d got the job.

  No chance.

  Two days later they offered me the job.

  ‘Stick that up your arse, Miss Prissy Knickers.’

  No need to be crude.

  To all those people who were better qualified, I’m sorry. Your turn will come.

  *

  With five weeks to get to Australia, I abandoned stalking and started packing. My sisters and their partners helped me pile books into cardboard boxes, clean the house, fill the shed with packing crates and sell my battered second-hand car. Dad offered to drive me over a hundred miles to the airport, which was a sweet and lovely gesture given that he was eighty-three years old and not the world’s best driver. But I knew I’d fall apart if I had to say goodbye at Heathrow, so I bought a train ticket, booked a taxi to take me to the station and said my goodbyes in the village. Most people weren’t surprised by the choking sobs I couldn’t hold back; my secret obsession with A3 hadn’t been that secret after all.

  ‘We’ll see you at the end of the year,’ my brother-in-law Don said, crushing me in a hug that threatened to burst the dam on my pent-up emotions.

  ‘You can always come back,’ said Wendy, my older sister who saw through most things and worried quietly in the background about all of us.

  *

  Two hours before the taxi was due to arrive I was still touching up paintwork on the windowsill in the front sitting room, a last-minute job that had been overlooked. The windows were clean, the paths were swept and the smell of wet paint mingled with disinfectant and floor polish. I could see early daffodils beginning to poke their heads above the frozen earth in the front garden. Spring would bring tulips; lavender, roses and honeysuckle would follow in summer.

  I dabbed at worn patches of timber with a stiff brush that held layers of old paint trapped between the bristles. My suitcase was standing in the hall. Once I’d finished painting, I would empty the bin, drop the keys off with the agent, take the taxi to Parkway station, then a train to Heathrow . . . next stop: Australia. The phone rang, and I wondered which one of my sisters it might be.

  ‘Hello.’

  I held my breath at the unexpected sound of A3’s voice.

  ‘What am I doing? I must be MAD! Why do I want to get married?’ I listened to his familiar rising wail, the phone tucked under one ear as I held the paintbrush above the windowsill, watching a single drop of glossy white paint slowly form into a thickening teardrop. It glistened in the winter sunlight.

  I did my best to keep my voice steady. ‘Don’t do it,’ I said. ‘Call it off.’ The smell of acrylic paint grew stronger and I could feel my heart thudding against my ribs.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, you’ve never been married.’

  The drop of white paint trembled and my throat tightened, words trapped in a glue of unspoken grief. The blob lengthened, hesitated then slowly released its sticky hold, disappearing into the silence.

  ‘No,’ I said eventually. ‘I haven’t.’

  I lowered the brush and balanced it on the edge of the pot with a trembling hand.

  ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to?’

  Oh sure, I felt like saying, I wanted to marry you and isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever heard? And then I wondered if he was trying to tell me something. Was he suggesting there might still be a chance?

  Don’t be ridiculous he adores his fiancée. He’s got cold feet, that’s all. It’s perfectly normal behaviour.

  For once I thought PK was right. Maybe he missed all the attention I used to lavish on him. He would never have asked me to marry him anyway, not in a million years. If he had asked, would I have said yes? I suspected the answer to that question lay at the heart of my problem with men. I don’t think I would have. I just wanted what I couldn’t have; what I’d known all along I could never have.

  ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve never wanted get married.’

  ‘Oh well, have a safe flight.’

  And he hung up.

  I boarded the flight to Australia on Thursday 28 February. We were due to land in Sydney on Saturday 1 March and, since it was a leap year, I was going to miss 29 February altogether – the one day every four years when a girl could supposedly ask a man to marry her. I reached for my phone but we were taxiing down the runway and the woman in the next seat shot me a warning glare.

  chapter four

  Bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, I stood in Sydney airport and waited for my luggage to appear on the carousel. We should have landed in Sydney at seven o’clock in the morning but delays in Singapore threw the schedule; it was nine o’clock before we touched down. By the time we’d disembarked and made our way through passport control it was 10 am on Saturday 1 March; back in England it was eleven o’clock at night. With a sickening lurch I realised it wasn’t too late – with the time difference it was still 29 February in England. I could call, tell him I’d changed my mind, ask him not to marry her, beg him to marry me instead. The phone was in my hand, I was scrolling frantically through the address book, his number was backlit on the screen in front of me . . . then I pictured his shocked face as he received a late-night marriage proposal from someone he thought of as only a friend, an amusing part of his past, his future decided elsewhere. I pictured her lying next to him, ‘Who’s calling at this time of night?’ Did I really want to ruin someone else’s chance of happiness, especially someone I professed to love? No. I suppressed the destructive, irrational impulse, closed my phone and waited for my familiar blue suitcase to trundle towards me.

  There was no point speculating; the past was over, I was in Sydney, and in two days I would start a new job with the RFDS.

  I collected my suitcase, passed unheeded through customs and stepped into the early morning sunshine. In spite of my misgivings and the ache in my heart, it felt good to be back.

  *

  The suburbs of Balmain and Birchgrove are crowded onto a skinny finger of land that stretches into Sydney Harbour, tantalisingly close to the city. The streets are filled with weatherboard houses and terraced cottages, originally built to house workers on the nearby dockyards. Glimpses of Sydney Harbour are never far away. Impossibly narrow in places, the streets are lined with towering gum trees; jasmine tumbles over white picket fences and frangipani trees bloom overhead. Much of the peninsula has been gentrified but the suburb still has a village feel and a whiff of original character.

  My friend Kate lived in Birchgrove and we’d been friends since university. I was ‘Aunty’ to her two children, Ben and Hanne. When Kate and her husband James moved to Australia she gave up a successful PR business to retrain as a social worker. She took a job as a grief counsellor in the department of forensic medicine at the city morgue, a demanding job few people could cope with. She nurtured her marriage, raised two children and forged a worthwhile career while I grizzled my way through a series of shallow obsessions and mediocre jobs. Somehow we had stayed friends, good friends, and until I could find a place of my own I would be staying with them.

  Anny, Kate’s sister, met me at the airport and drove me straight to Birchgrove in time for an open viewing of an apartment I’d spotted on
the internet before I’d left England. I was keen to find somewhere as close to Kate and her family as I could. Anny parked the car opposite an old apartment block and I was astonished to see Kate waiting on the steps outside. ‘Welcome back!’ Kate shouted, waving from across the road. She rose to her feet, carefully and slowly, hiding the fact that she was in pain. Three months earlier Kate had been diagnosed with breast cancer and two weeks before my arrival she’d undergone a double mastectomy with reconstructive surgery, taking fat from her stomach to create new breasts. My beautiful brave friend, whose hair had turned prematurely grey, was hunched over like an old woman.

  I ran across the road, gave her a tentative hug and, not for the first time, felt blessed that I had the good fortune to call such a loving and gracious woman my friend.

  Feeling like a leaky tap I wept as Kate’s son Ben, a budding lawyer, gave me a huge hug, followed by Hanne, now a sports science student at Wollongong uni. Even their Danish Granny Inga was there as well. I squeezed the kids, hugged Inga and grinned at Kate, who’d been camped on the steps of the apartment building for the past twenty minutes. Thanks to her, we were first in the queue.

  ‘Sign on the spot if you can,’ said Kate. ‘Tenants are desperate; they’re offering to pay more rent, putting down huge deposits and signing leases that lock them in for years. If it’s any good, grab it.’

  Within minutes another forty people had arrived, some of them clutching coffees, others checking their mobiles or scanning copies of the local paper, fingers blackened by heat-smudged newsprint.

  Kate and the others waited downstairs while I trudged upstairs. Being first in the queue gave me a five-second advantage before the others swarmed in, and that was enough. The chipped paintwork and stained floors could be overlooked because there were two large rooms with high ceilings and stained-glass windows, a small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen. I craned my head out of the window to peer across Birchgrove Oval; somewhere out there was the Harbour Bridge. The flat looked old and tired – like me – but it was affordable. Having given up a well-paid corporate job for a junior position in a charity, I couldn’t afford to be choosy, not if I wanted to live in the same suburb as Kate. The only downside was an open stairwell between the living room and the kitchen, but since I wouldn’t be able to afford to drink there was no danger of falling down it.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I said to the agent.

  He looked at me strangely and handed me an application form.

  ‘The deadline’s Monday morning,’ he said, liberally passing out application forms to other people. They swarmed behind him like a flock of pigeons at Trafalgar Square, swooping and grabbing at the fluttering paper.

  ‘I’m not sure you understand,’ I said, pushing my way past the pigeons as he headed downstairs. ‘I was first in the queue. I’m happy to take the apartment.’

  ‘Fill out the form. Nine o’clock Monday morning,’ he repeated.

  ‘Could you please make a note that I was first in the queue?’ I called to his retreating back. I doubt if he heard me; he was already out the door.

  Back at Kate and James’s house I examined the form and was dismayed to find I needed references, bank account details, contact details of previous landlords, confirmation of employment, plus a photocopy of my passport, driving licence and medical card.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said James. ‘I’ll write you a reference.’

  I walked up to the newsagent’s on Darling Street to photocopy the few documents I did have and then I completed the rental application form, in triplicate, with the requisite photocopies and references. I added a note to explain about not having a bank account then I scribbled on the front ‘I was first in the queue’ before slipping it under the door of the real estate agent’s on Sunday evening.

  The weekend passed in a fuzzy blur of jet lag and comforting, familiar faces. Ben spent Sunday afternoon taking part in a game of pub golf and we spotted him wandering the streets of Balmain with a scorecard tied around his neck. Some of his friends looked like they already had massive handicaps and I had to suppress an automatic sneer of disapproval from Miss Prissy Knickers. They were having fun and where was the harm in that? It’s what I had pledged to do.

  *

  I slept in Hanne’s old bedroom, surrounded by pictures of horses and dogs, trophies lining the shelves and pennants pinned to the wall. ‘Don’t give up,’ one said. ‘Reach for the stars,’ said another. ‘Only begin and the rest will follow.’ I lay awake on Sunday night, preparing to start my new job the next day, reading the advice and vowing to stay strong.

  Come Monday morning I was a bag of nerves. For the past four years I’d worn black, navy, grey or brown – mostly brown. As I lost confidence, my wardrobe lost colour and I gradually put away anything vibrant and replaced it with dark brown. When I heard I’d got the job with the RFDS I made sure there wasn’t a single item of brown clothing in my suitcase. What I wouldn’t have given that morning for an article of brown clothing. I was begging for it, craving the security and anonymity of it, and all I had was a rainbow of colour. I had packed hoping the clothes would make me look younger but I felt like an ageing Play School presenter. I pulled on a green flowered blouse and (large) white trousers.

  ‘You look lovely,’ said Kate, lying in bed, massaging rose oil into an ugly scar that stretched from one side of her stomach to the other. I wondered what I’d ever done to deserve such a generous friend and I dug my nails into the palm of my hands. Her whole family was a touchstone, a reminder that love, commitment and kindness were the bedrock of any successful long-term relationship.

  ‘Good luck. You’ll be fab,’ said Kate. ‘And remember how talented you are. They’re lucky to have you,’ she added, correctly reading the anxious expression on my face.

  chapter five

  The 441 chugged up Rowntree Street, past the All India restaurant and across Darling Street, stopping to fill up with passengers outside the Town Hall Hotel, then cramming in more on Mullens Street before speeding across Anzac Bridge, circling Darling Harbour and depositing me on Sussex Street; a journey of just eighteen minutes, from start to finish. With no way to access the office at eight o’clock in the morning I wandered down to Sydney Aquarium and sat on the wharf, watching seagulls bob on the water and noisy myna birds peck at discarded flecks of pastry. A ferry pulled in, churning up water as the engines slammed into reverse sending a fine salty spray drifting past. Office workers in white shirts and (I couldn’t help noticing) black, brown, grey or navy trousers and skirts poured down the gangplank. I followed them back up to Sussex Street, feeling like a tourist.

  The Slip Inn on the corner was made famous when a young unknown Tasmanian met a Danish prince; next thing she knew, people were calling her ‘Your Royal Highness’. Falling for a prince is the stuff of fairytales and I couldn’t help thinking my childhood overdose of fairy stories and romantic fiction probably helped get me into trouble in the first place. I banished thoughts of romance as I passed the pub and kept my eyes open for the Flying Doctor office.

  It turned out to be an unassuming building with a concrete grey front and glass doors that slid open to reveal an empty lobby. There was no doorman and no receptionist, just an old display board on the wall, individual white letters pegged behind glass: Royal Flying Doctor Service, SE Section, Floor nine.

  To her credit, if the marketing manager was surprised at how old I was she hid it well. More Janis Joplin than Kylie Minogue, she was a tall woman in her mid-thirties, with fine curly hair falling to her waist, a patterned swishy skirt and an air of distraction that I hoped might come in handy – it could delay the discovery that I didn’t know what I was doing.

  ‘This is Rachel,’ said Janis with a dreamy smile, introducing me to a twenty-something who was sitting cross-legged on a typing chair, dark grey leggings stretched across her pregnant belly, black hair held in a neat ponytail. I marvelled at her agility and wondered if my t
highs would squeeze between the armrests.

  ‘Shall I make a pot of tea?’ asked Janis, addressing the air around her and then drifting away without waiting for a reply.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘This is where the real work gets done.’

  She ran through a program of morning teas, school awareness days, base openings, volunteer speaker events, photographic shoots, press visits, the annual report, the quarterly newsletter, the weekly e-news bulletin, fundraising booklets, marketing leaflets and the back end of a website that looked like the control panel of a heat-seeking guided missile.

  ‘That’s pretty much it,’ she said.

  ‘Wow, the marketing department does all that? Sounds like a busy place.’

  She looked at me with what I can only describe as tenderness and spoke with quiet patience. ‘Those are my responsibilities,’ she said.

  ‘You do all of it?’

  Sweat prickled the neckline of my green silk blouse as the enormity of what I’d taken on began to sink in. I would be covering for Rachel during her maternity leave.

  Superwoman unfolded herself from the typing chair and smiled. ‘It’s not too bad if you’re organised, you just have to shut the door and get on with it.’ She glanced towards the closed door of the marketing manager’s office. ‘And ignore half the things she asks you to do.’

  Ignore what someone asks me to do? I’d always been a people pleaser, doing things to win approval, from cleaning a friend’s oven to having sex when I didn’t want to. I once took a part-time job at the back end of event management that involved inputting data about hotel bookings onto multiple spreadsheets. By mid-morning on the first day I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d somehow managed to cancel a perfectly legitimate booking for the Head of Finance and I’d booked Mrs Peabody into a smoking room with Mr Blackstone, when what she (quite reasonably) wanted was a non-smoking room with her husband. He’d disappeared off the sheet altogether.