Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  ‘Assuming we can get it up, how do you plan to tie it down?’

  The small patio (which was smaller than I remembered now that we had aluminium posts strewn across it) was enclosed by high walls and concreted right to the edge. Clearly there was nowhere to drive in a tent peg.

  ‘Let’s not worry about that now, let’s just get the thing up, shall we?’

  We spent the best part of twenty minutes sorting through poles, most of which looked identical, only of course they weren’t. Some were marginally shorter, or fatter, depending on where they sat in the overall structure.

  ‘Why didn’t they just number them?’ CC grumbled.

  Sydney was sweltering through a heatwave and the task was made more difficult by the fierce sunlight. His shirt was soon stained with sweat.

  ‘Do you want a cold drink?’

  ‘Let’s get this done, shall we?’

  ‘What about a hat?’

  ‘No, thank you. That’s a jointed piece; here, put that over there.’

  ‘How many corner pieces have you got?’

  It took an hour and a half of sweaty work to assemble the gazebo and we needn’t have worried about tying it down because it had to be shoehorned into place. The back door would only just open without hitting the frame and the poles were jammed up against the walls. Conversation had been lacklustre while we’d been working but that didn’t surprise me: it was hot, the poles were fiddly and twice we’d had to dismantle half the structure when we spotted an infinitesimally small difference in pole length, barely noticeable on the ground yet critical when six feet up in the air. We pulled over the cover, hoisted the jointed legs and stood back to admire the finished result.

  ‘Shall we discuss it?’

  I assumed he meant the dinner party.

  ‘I was thinking about salmon, I could get a whole one from the fish market and slow cook it.’

  ‘No, I meant the phone call. Why did you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  CC bent down to clip a flap of fabric to the bottom of a pole. He spoke calmly and quietly, with his back to me. ‘Why did you sleep with him?’

  There was silence.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said, just as quietly.

  CC didn’t answer at first. I was puzzled, unsure what was happening. Why was he accusing me of sleeping with A3 when I’d explicitly told him I hadn’t? CC straightened up. ‘You said something about a drunken night of passion. You said you realised it wasn’t worth jeopardising our relationship for. So why did you do it?’

  I tried to remember my exact words.

  ‘I didn’t say I slept with him. I said it wouldn’t have been worth it if I had. It would only have been a drunken night’s passion. Only it wasn’t, because it didn’t happen.’

  Was it jealousy that twisted his interpretation of what I’d said? Insecurity? Or was it because I was stupid enough to invite A3 to stay?

  ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘What do you mean, where do we go? Nothing happened! We agreed, we promised . . . I didn’t . . . nothing happened.’

  Before I could say anything else his mobile phone rang. He flipped open the case and checked the number. ‘Excuse me, I have to take this.’

  Snatches of conversation drifted through the open window as I sat under the gazebo. I couldn’t hear what was said but there was unmistakeable warmth in his voice, even a suggestion of laughter. Up until that moment I’d thought that kind of warmth had been reserved exclusively for me (not that I’d seen too much of it recently).

  *

  It took less than a week for CC to turn into a bitter, jealous, quietly enraged lover. He tried hacking into my phone to check for messages, grilled me endlessly on tiny details, twisting and turning them until they became bitter black stains on my character. It was a relentless process of accusation and suspicion, certain to kill our fledgling relationship if it continued. CC was in the grip of something he couldn’t control and all I could do was tell him, over and over again, that I hadn’t slept with A3.

  ‘I haven’t cheated on you, I’m not cheating on you and I won’t cheat on you.’

  ‘I have evidence,’ he muttered darkly.

  ‘Evidence of what?’ I shouted. ‘Nothing happened!’

  CC’s forensic examination was not unlike the intense scrutiny I used to turn on any potential new relationship, analysing it until there was nothing left. Turn a magnifying glass on a butterfly, examine it too closely and the sun will scorch its wings until it shrivels up and dies. And there ain’t no way you can resurrect a dead butterfly.

  ‘Have you seen Othello?’

  ‘What’s Shakespeare got to do with anything?’

  ‘Because I feel like bloody Desdemona right now!’

  But I was no butterfly and no innocent Desdemona. You don’t have to sleep with someone to be unfaithful and I had jeopardised my intimacy with CC by inviting A3 into my home. That put a man like CC through an agony of jealousy and suspicion.

  ‘Surely if I was going to cheat on you I would have kept it quiet?’ I reasoned.

  ‘Maybe you felt guilty. How can I trust you?’

  ‘Trust is like faith,’ I reminded him, not knowing how else to counteract his suspicion. ‘You either have it or you don’t.’

  ‘You should believe your own eyes. Trust what you can see,’ he countered.

  ‘But what can you see?’

  ‘Evidence,’ he said, refusing to be drawn on what that evidence was.

  *

  ‘This is the point when you would normally head for the hills.’

  I was with Kate and Hanne, flicking through racks of clothes in a bid to find something special to wear at brunch. Hanne had suggested we look in Just Jeans (somewhere I hadn’t thought to try, can’t think why) and she and Kate had listened patiently as I’d told them a little about the tension with CC that had built up over the past few days. Kate’s comment about heading for the hills took me by surprise. I’d been expecting sympathy.

  ‘I don’t do that, do I?’

  Kate raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Hanne, do I do that?’

  I looked across at Hanne, who was calmly inspecting scraps of material that passed as dresses and barely covered the hangers.

  ‘Maybe. A bit,’ she said, diplomatically.

  ‘What about this one?’ said Kate, holding up a maxi dress with thin plaited straps. The flimsy concoction of pale blue, dusky pink and ochre chiffon had a plunging neckline and a frilly hem (it looked a lot better than it sounds).

  ‘Seriously, I’m turning fifty, not thirty.’

  ‘Try it on.’

  I emerged from the changing room, tugging at the neckline.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I said.

  ‘You look gorgeous!’ said Hanne.

  ‘Come on,’ said Kate, ‘it’s perfect. Get a wriggle on, I’ll be late for Inga.’

  I paid for the dress, arguably the cheapest and prettiest dress I’d ever bought, and thanked Kate and Hanne for coming with me.

  ‘See you Friday,’ Kate said. ‘And wear the dress!’

  I went home, clutching a featherweight bag of coloured froth, wondering how many relationships I had run away from at the first hint of trouble. The answer was probably quite a few.

  *

  The gazebo was decorated with fairy lights and flowers. There were hot croissants, fresh fruit salad, Greek yoghurt, homemade muesli, French champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice. There were bouquets of flowers from friends in Sydney, more from family in England and still more from friends in London. I floated through it in my flimsy maxi dress, clipping on high-heel shoes, waving painted fingernails.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ said Kate, as she and James squeezed under the gazebo (which trapped an obscene amount of heat under its plastic cover even at seven thirt
y in the morning).

  There was a shout from upstairs. ‘Anyone home?’

  ‘We’re out the back,’ I called.

  ‘Happy fiftieth, sweetheart, love the dress,’ said Andrea, fanning herself as she joined us on the patio. I poured champagne and handed out glasses. ‘Here’s to ageing disgracefully,’ Andrea called. ‘Cheers!’

  The day passed in a blur. There were cards and gifts, and calls from family in England, followed by a girls’ trip on the harbour from Balmain to Chowder Bay for lunch at Ripples. The champagne flowed, the sun shone and I couldn’t have wished for a better day.

  If only CC had been there.

  He’d done all the right things, sent a card and flowers, phoned to wish me happy birthday, said he was sorry he couldn’t be there, said he’d try to get down to Sydney again as soon as he could, but we both knew something had shifted. He was convinced I had slept with A3.

  *

  I know how powerful a trickster the mind could be. It had been easy for me to believe that A3 was interested in me and I had seen ‘evidence’ where none existed. It had been enough that, after bombarding him with calls and text messages, he had occasionally picked up the phone in exasperation when I rang, or answered the odd email weeks after it had been sent. The stalker in me had taken that as evidence that he was burning with desire to be with me. He hadn’t been.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t make me any more understanding of CC’s behaviour now. I was offended and hurt by his constant questioning. Did he have an Iago dripping poison in his ear? Nothing good would come of it if he did. I thought back to something Metro Mike had said, how there were three women around CC and any one of them would have made a suitable partner. Was he now reconsidering his options?

  The phone calls got worse, terse question and answer sessions that led nowhere, and we lost the easy rapport we’d once had. I knew it was partly my fault for inviting A3 to stay but I was furious that CC wouldn’t accept my word when I told him, repeatedly, that nothing had happened.

  The relationship with CC seemed to be going nowhere, which disappointed me more than I was willing to admit. My stint in Australia had served its purpose. I was over A3, finally and definitively, and I’d learnt a hard lesson: stalking any man was pointless and counterproductive. Kate’s comment about always heading for the hills at the first sign of trouble had stayed with me. It rankled because it was true, but surely now it really was time to leave? It made sense to pack up the few belongings I had brought with me, and head back to England. The short-term contract at the RFDS had turned into something more permanent but working in a marketing department, even for an organisation as prestigious as the RFDS, wasn’t really what I wanted to do.

  I rang my close friend Helen, who worked in the HR department of a large fund manager in London. ‘It’s not good,’ she said. ‘We’re making 150 people redundant.’ She faced a nightmare few months herself that would culminate in her turning out the lights and making her own job redundant.

  The event management team another friend headed, where I had worked before leaving England, had been slashed from a team of seven down to just two, and they’d been forced to let all of the contractors go. That would have been me if I’d stayed.

  Prospects in the UK looked bleak but were they any better in Australia? It had been a long time since I’d worked as a freelance journalist and my contacts were few and far between. I thought back to what Metro Mike had said about writing. How, though? The lease on the house in Birchgrove was coming to an end and, without a job, I wouldn’t be able to afford to rent anywhere, never mind a place in Balmain or Birchgrove. It made sense to go back to England, where at least I had family. I felt unaccountably gloomy at the prospect of leaving Australia.

  In all the swirling indecision I couldn’t get CC out of my mind. There had been something about him – respect, kindness, laughter, fun, consideration – that made me wish we could have spent more time together. I missed his lean body and his sense of humour. The realisation that it was too late left a hollow feeling where once there had been joy.

  He used to call every day, sometimes several times a day, and now my phone was silent. I missed him.

  chapter twenty-one

  ‘Casper likes people making a fuss of him, don’t you, darling?’

  The terrier lying on my lap gave a surprisingly loud snore as I stroked his overweight body. Pale hair clung to my black trousers, stuck to my fingers and floated in the air around my head. ‘He’s a delightful dog,’ I said, plucking hair out of my mouth.

  The owners smiled indulgently at the snoring creature spread-eagled on my knees. ‘We think so. The cats are a bit highly strung but you’ll get used to them.’ I silently hoped I would. I needed this house.

  Unemployment in the UK was rising and the economy had been officially declared in recession. Redundancies were rife and thousands of jobs were being shed each week; no one knew who could be next. Friends in the UK had counselled against going back.

  I took a chance and negotiated a deal with the RFDS to continue working on their quarterly newsletter, which would pay me a salary for one day a week and bring in just enough money to cover food. All I had to do was find somewhere to live.

  There are people who never pay rent, moving from one house-sit to another, and it seemed like the perfect solution to cover the shortfall in salary until I could find more work. So I joined 8500 other registered house-sitters and I started searching. I had a clear notion of what house-sitting would be like: a prolonged summer holiday on the island of Santorini perhaps, or maybe high-rise apartment living within easy reach of Sydney Opera House. There was always the chance I might luck upon a Glenn Murcutt classic surrounded by swaying eucalyptus trees, or perhaps I’d find a glass-walled apartment perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. I wasn’t fussy; any of those would have been fine. My ideal was somewhere near the coast, a haven of uninterrupted bliss that would supply me with a calm, orderly existence (unlike my own life) where I could embark on my plan to write a bestselling book and learn to meditate.

  It soon became apparent that there were alarmingly few houses to go around the thousands of people looking, and most were for properties in rural Queensland, inland Victoria or remote farms in Tasmania. I could have spent ten days in a flat in Marrickville, four days on a 500-acre property in outback Queensland or two weeks in a unit in Cremorne next to a busy main road, but where was the six-month stint in a villa overlooking the Pacific? Where was the glass-walled apartment close to Sydney Opera House? And house-sitting was a misnomer. No one really cares about an empty house. They care about pets.

  Every advertiser had pets, and lots of them. There was a man with four dogs and two cats in Fountaindale; a woman in Tasmania with two cats, a Siberian husky and six chickens; and another poor soul in Miriam Vale with seven dogs who wanted a weekend away. Who could blame her? If I’d known how to ride a horse or milk a cow I could have applied to spend three months looking after a stud farm but even I knew there was no point lying to that extent.

  After two weeks of scouring ads, with the end of my lease fast approaching and the perfect property no closer, I gave up on the idea of perfection and applied to house-sit for a young couple in Coogee, a trendy beachside suburb just south of Bondi. They wanted someone to mind two cats and a dog while they attended a wedding in Canada, followed by a two-month tour from east to west.

  ‘I’m an art teacher,’ Miriam said with pride, her pale face hidden behind a dark bob with a long fringe. I’d worked out it had to be something creative; her fingers were splashed with paint and wide bracelets jangled on her wrist. She was as dramatic as some of the pictures on the walls – unlike her husband, Jack, who radiated peace, his bald head as smooth and white as a Buddhist stupa. Their house was gorgeous, an old weatherboard perched high above the beach, full of books, prints, watercolours, patterned rugs and quirky furniture. It was spacious, free-standing and qu
iet.

  By that stage I had worked out that good house-sits were hard to find and getting an interview was even harder, so I was doing everything I could to impress. I had struck house-sitting gold.

  I sat primly on the edge of their worn leather sofa, stroking a warm bundle of sharp claws and wet snuffles. Miss Prissy Knickers took the floor to talk about housekeeping (there are some benefits to having her around) and the owners were impressed. They showed me around the place I was hoping to call home for the next two months and I gushed with enthusiasm at every opportunity. ‘Gosh, three litter trays indoors. That’s a good idea. I suppose you can’t have too many.’

  ‘There’s another one in the ensuite bathroom,’ said Miriam.

  ‘That’s handy,’ I said, wondering why any cat would need four litter trays. And who in their right minds would put a smelly litter tray in an ensuite bathroom? I said nothing. I wasn’t about to jeopardise my chances by showing any sign of discontent. Miriam opened a cupboard in the kitchen crammed full of tiny cartons of premium cat food, stacked up like gold bullion. She popped open a foil tray of tasty paté with chicken and turkey and scooped the contents into a pink plastic dish.

  ‘Itsy Bitsy! Tania!’

  A wisp of smoke from Harry Potter leapt onto the counter, closely followed by the feline equivalent of Beyoncé after a bad blow-dry.

  ‘Hang on, Princess,’ said Miriam, as Beyoncé pressed herself shamelessly against Miriam’s ample breasts. I expected her to sweep the cats off the counter, scold them for daring to jump onto a surface used to prepare food, but instead she popped open another foil carton and tipped the contents onto a gold-rimmed plate. She placed the meals side by side and Itsy Bitsy and Tania settled down to eat, on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Ah, so you actually feed the cats . . . on the . . .’ I let the unfinished sentence drift away. I needed this house.

  The magic words ‘Royal Flying Doctor Service’ clinched the deal and I thanked my lucky stars that they asked my boss for a reference, not the owners of the house I’d been renting in Birchgrove. I’m not sure they would have given me one, not after the accident – although before we go any further, let me just say it could have happened to anyone and the insurance will pay, I checked.