Other Halves

by Nick Alexander

  And then she pricked my finger and transferred the blood to a stick that looked like a pregnancy test. She smiled at me stupidly during the entire thirty-second wait, whilst I sat and thought how, if it were positive, it would be the end of my relationship with James, of my new life, of everything.

  “Well there you go,” she finally said, sliding the stick across the table to me. It showed a single pink line.

  “Which means?” I asked, momentarily confused. She had explained the test to me less than thirty seconds earlier, but so convinced was I that it would be positive, that single line made no sense to me.

  “It’s all clear,” she said. “You’re fine.”

  I burst into tears.

  I didn’t mention the test to James that evening, even when he asked me if I was OK, even when he commented that I was quiet. I pretended it was just because he was leaving for Australia the next morning, and in part that was true as well. I was nervous about missing him, and scared of finding myself alone in the house.

  Once I had tearfully waved goodbye at the train station the next morning, I returned home. Luke was at school and in James’ absence, the place felt like a museum of my marriage with Cliff all over again.

  Within an hour, I had thrown myself into a cleaning frenzy that I continued every day that I wasn’t at the school. I scoured and scrubbed and “simplified” – my code word for removing from the space anything that spoke too deeply of my time with Cliff. I thought of an episode from Absolutely Fabulous and muttered, “I want to see surfaces, sweetie, surfaces.” But as every item of furniture was something that we had bought together, every bit of wallpaper a sheet that we had laughingly hung, it was an impossible task from the start. All I managed to do was to make the house feel even emptier.

  On three separate occasions I tackled Luke about the Australia trip, but if it had been clear from the start that he would not come willingly, it became a little more obvious at each discussion that the only sane course of action was to travel alone and leave him with Cliff, and that is what I eventually resigned myself to doing.

  When I finally phoned James to admit defeat, he revealed that he had booked my plane ticket weeks before. He had always known, he said, that Luke could not be convinced.

  * * *

  Finally, on the twentieth of December, Luke’s last day at school, I closed the door on the ridiculously spotless house and started to drag my suitcase towards the car.

  Amazingly, I had only ever flown four times in my life, and these flights had been short-haul trips, so I was as excited about my epic journey as I had ever been.

  As the flight dragged on and on, punctuated only by bland meals and family-friendly films, that excitement turned to stress, boredom, discomfort and finally a kind of exhausted despair that I had never known before. My back ached from the confinement of the seat, my throat hurt from the putrid air being pumped through the cabin. Somewhere over Israel my head started to pound, and just as the pilot announced our descent to Hong Kong airport, my nose, somewhat explosively, began to bleed. By the time I arrived in Sydney, I felt like, and was pretty sure I looked like, a troop returning from Iraq.

  I queued for my baggage, and then again for customs. I queued for immigration. I promised that I wasn’t smuggling soil or fruit or insects, assured them that I wasn’t looking for work or healthcare either, and then with a wave of the hand, I was free to step out into the arrivals hall.

  James was right there – he had travelled down from Brisbane to meet me. “You made it!” he exclaimed, bright as a button. He strode towards me and wrapped me in his arms.

  “Only just,” I said, resisting the urge to cry. “That was one of the most dreadful experiences ever.”

  “It’s a bloody long way, huh?” James laughed.

  “Yes, a bloody long way,” I repeated.

  “Come on, old girl,” he said. “You’ll feel better once you’ve had a shower.”

  “I’ll feel better once I’ve had a shower, eaten, slept for a week and had a head transplant,” I told him.

  “It’s all doable,” James said. “Well, except the head thing. The hotel’s lovely. We’ve got a sea view. You’re gonna love it.”

  “Sounds great,” I said. “Is it far?”

  “Nah. Half an hour,” James said, extending the handle of my suitcase and starting to drag it off across the concourse.

  “Oh, and James?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever call me old girl again, OK?”

  He squeezed my waist. “You’ve got it,” he said. “Old girl.”

  I shot him a glare and he pulled a silly face, and somewhere deep within me, I detected that, despite everything, my sense of humour was still alive. Just about.

  The light in Sydney was amazing enough that it managed to pierce my daze. I had come from an English winter to an Australian summer, but even taking that into account, the light was exceptional.

  As the train pulled out from the airport, I nestled against James and looked out at the cloudless blue sky, and the rich zinging colour of it all. “It reminds me of the south of France,” I murmured.

  “Really?”

  “Not the view. The light. The way all the colours are so bright. Look at that bulldozer over there,” I said, pointing. It was shimmering yellow against the green of the grass.

  I sensed James nodding beside me. “It’s kind of extra bright, isn’t it,” he said. “Like those old Daz adverts?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

  I watched the countryside slide by, and then the endless suburbs of Sydney, and slowly the city skyline rose before us.

  We got off at Circular Quay, a port crowded with crazy criss-crossing boats, and bustles of people fighting their way to and from them. It was a hot day, in the high twenties, and I was overdressed for summer. But the air smelt fresh and salty, and my brain slowly started to come to. “It’s a busy old port,” I commented. “Where do all the boats go?”

  “The beaches,” James said. “And suburbs along the coast. They’re just water buses really.”

  How wonderful, I thought, to take a ferry to work instead of the tube. “Can we take one tomorrow?” I asked. “Just for fun?”

  “We sure will,” James confirmed, squeezing my hand.

  Our hotel, a Holiday Inn, was an impressive red building, dramatically modernised beyond its “historic” facade. My initial disappointment that we weren’t staying in some romantic bijou hotel faded as soon as I saw the room. I dropped my jacket on the bed and ran to the window, from which I could see the whole of the port, the boats zipping in and out, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and beyond that Australia’s most famous landmark, the Opera House.

  “My god,” I said. “Now that’s a room with a view.”

  “You like it?” James asked, lifting my suitcase onto a rack, then crossing to join me. “Did I do good?”

  “It’s gorgeous, James,” I said, turning to kiss him. “Thank you!”

  I took a shower and changed into light summer clothes – a pre-crumpled linen suit I had bought from French Connection for the trip.

  “So what next?” James asked when I reappeared. He was lying on the bed, his arms crossed behind his head. “Sleep? Tucker? Drink? Or d’you fancy a bit of naughty?”

  “Ooh a drink,” I said. He looked so disgruntled I had to laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry, babe,” I told him. “But the idea of a gin and tonic is just too much to resist. Is there a bar here where we can get one?”

  James stood and took my hand. “Come on.”

  He led me to the lift, and when the doors closed he pulled me to him and kissed me. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said, taking my hand again as the door opened.

  The roof garden had a sparkling blue pool with half a dozen sunbeds along one side. We were the only people there. I strode to the edge and looked out at the bay. A gentle breeze was blowing from the sea, ruffling my hair, and the view was astounding in every direction.

  “Nice?” James ask
ed with typical understatement.

  “Nice!” I confirmed, glancing up at the sun, and then at my watch. “Is this right?” I asked. “Is it three p.m.?”

  James nodded. “Jet lag’s confusing, isn’t it. Plus the fact the sun goes the other way.”

  “It goes the other way?”

  “Yeah,” James said. “In England it does that . . .” he drew an arc from left to right. “But in Oz it goes like that,” he continued, doing the same gesture in reverse.

  I frowned. “Can you explain that to me tomorrow when I’ve had some sleep?”

  James laughed. “Sure.”

  I peered again over the balcony at the swarms of people below, then turned to follow him to one of the sun loungers. “It’s so busy down there!”

  “It’s a big city. And it’s high season.”

  A waiter appeared, so we ordered a gin and tonic and a beer, then I sank onto my recliner and closed my eyes. “This is heavenly,” I said, reaching out with my left hand until it found James’ arm.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said, fumbling for my fingers.

  “I am so tired though. I feel as if I have been drugged or something.”

  “It’s tough,” James said. “But worth it. I’m so glad you came, Han’. Oh, drinks are here already.”

  I opened my eyes to find the waiter rounding the pool with a tray containing a bowl of rice snacks and our drinks. My gin and tonic tasted like some magical elixir invented by the gods for the sole purpose of reviving weary travellers. The ice cubes chinked as I sipped it, the sun sparkled in the bubbles. “God, that’s good,” I said, taking a second sip, then putting down the glass.

  I turned my face to the sun and let myself soak in the heat from that fabulous ball of fire, a ball of fire that, back in England, I had all but forgotten existed.

  Sydney was gorgeous. We were only there for two nights, but I couldn’t fault the place. We meandered through sunlit shopping streets, took a blowy, salty ferry out to Manly beach (which was aptly full of very manly bodybuilders); we sat in funky coffee shops and drank luscious Italian-style cappuccinos, ate gorgeous seafood platters in gleaming restaurants . . . With everything being in English, the place felt comfortable and familiar yet new and shiny and different, like a remanufactured version of home, only sunny.

  A few times we walked past groups of drunken Aboriginals in doorways or on park benches – a stark reminder that all of this glitz had come at great cost to someone. But when I asked James what Australians thought about the Aboriginals, he said, rather brutally, “We don’t much,” and talked about something else instead.

  That reply shocked me, and for half an hour or so I worried about that hard selfish streak I had detected in him previously. Despite my critical silence, James continued to be lovely to me, and he was so forthright and sexy and warm that I couldn’t resist him for long. I finally reasoned that I understood nothing about Australia, and decided that I would just have to put the Aboriginal question in a box for later analysis. When a beggar asked us for money, I handed him one of my plastic banknotes, as much to see what James would say as anything else.

  “He’ll just buy booze with it,” was his comment.

  “If I were living on the street in my own country, surrounded by rich white people, I’d want to be drunk too,” I replied.

  “Fair dinkum,” James laughed, grinning at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “What’s with the big grin?”

  “Oh, I just can’t believe how lucky I am to have you here with me,” James said.

  That afternoon we went to Bondi Beach, smothered ourselves in factor fifty (the sun’s rays were so strong they pricked the skin), and went swimming in the crazy waves.

  Though the beach was vast, most of it was prohibited for bathers due to lethal rip tides. But being crowded into a tiny strip of sea along with hundreds of other people was fun. James and I ended up playing with some kids in a boat – people all seemed very friendly and open, it felt almost like a visit to a different era, to the fifties perhaps.

  Then we spread our towels on the sand, and with my head resting on his rising and falling chest and his hand caressing my hair, I fell into a deep jet-lagged slumber.

  When we got back to the hotel I took a shower to wash the sand and the sun cream off, and though I had been quite reasonably white when I went into the bathroom, I was a deep shade of pink by the time I came out. It was as if the cream had been not protecting me from sunburn, but hiding it.

  “I look like a lobster!” I said plaintively as I stepped back into the bedroom.

  James rolled over and looked at me with such desire that it made my heart race. “Sexiest bloody lobster I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  Once we had delicately made love – my shoulders and neck were raw – we headed back out and wandered through the narrow streets of The Rocks to Darling Harbour, a glitzy modern space of open promenades and waterside bars.

  Along with tens of other people, we took off our shoes and paddled in a vast spiral water feature and then, after some debate, chose an Indian restaurant for a leisurely aperitif and a disappointingly bland Thali. By the time we had eaten, the sun had gone down and the lights from the bars were sparkling on the surface of the water and I felt, with the exception of the sunburn, as if I had stumbled into an advertising shoot.

  “How’s the jet lag?” James asked me once our plates had been taken away.

  “It comes and goes,” I said. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m going to collapse and have to be carried back to the hotel. And then ten minutes later I feel fine again.”

  “You’ll be back to normal by tomorrow, I reckon,” he said, stroking my hand. “If you can just make it through to bedtime.”

  “I think we’re already there,” I commented, glancing at my watch. It was ten to eleven.

  “Unless we go dancing?” James said.

  Dancing! I hadn’t danced for over ten years. I wasn’t even sure quite what the word meant these days. “Dancing,” I repeated.

  James shrugged. “It’s our last night in Sydders,” he said. “We might as well.”

  We ended up in a nightclub called Cherry, surrounded by people in their twenties. The music was strange, electronic, monotonous and yet, and yet . . . with a few drinks inside me, it was incredibly easy to dance to, and surprisingly euphoric. For an hour and a half we danced and shouted snippets of conversation, and laughed at the fact that even shouting we still couldn’t hear each other. For an hour and a half I was not only in love, but twenty again, and, as James would say, it felt bloody great.

  And then, while we were queueing at the bar, I caught sight of a twenty-year-old Kylie lookalike staring at me. The queue for drinks was slow, and initially I ignored her, but eventually her open-mouthed gaze was too much for me. “Can I help you?” I asked her.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, slipping into a crazy grin. “I was just wondering how old you are.”

  I glanced at James, who frowned. “What business is that of yours?” he asked the girl.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she said, still grinning. “It’s just that I think it’s really great . . . the way you’re still dancing. At your age and everything. How old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” I told her. “So not actually ancient, you know?”

  She nodded. “That’s amazing,” she said. “You’re older than my mum. I hope I’m like you when I’m old. I hope I’m still enjoying clubs and stuff.”

  Her boyfriend, a spotty nineteen-year-old, tugged at her sleeve at that point. “Forget the drinks,” he shouted. “You’ll be there all night.”

  “This woman is thirty-eight!” Kylie told him loudly, pointing at me. “Isn’t it great that she’s still enjoying life?” And then, giving me a little fingertip wave, she turned and vanished into the crowd.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed, scanning the youthful faces around me, many of whom were now looking at me. “Still enjoying li
fe!”

  “Silly bitch,” James laughed, “She was off her head on drugs.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, I’m sure.” I did my best to smile too, but from that point on, all I really wanted to do was leave. Which, less than five minutes later, is exactly what we did.

  “Has that girl upset you?” James asked, as we headed back to the hotel.

  “No,” I lied, then, “Maybe. A bit.”

  “Don’t let it get to you,” James said. “You’re more beautiful, and far more clever than she’ll ever be, no matter how old she gets.”

  And though I felt instantly just a tiny bit better, the event troubled me, stupidly, the whole way back to the hotel and even on into the next morning.

  * * *

  Because it was midsummer in Sydney, it had entirely escaped my attention that it would be the wet season up in tropical Brisbane.

  We were greeted with grey skies, thirty-degree temperatures and eighty per cent humidity. It was nigh on unbearable and every part of my linen suit started to cling to me before we had even stepped out of the plane.

  Once we had negotiated the airport, we took a fast, modern train link into the city before checking into a smaller more mundane hotel in the centre.

  “Sorry it’s not as good as the place in Sydney,” James apologised, “but I’m trying to get you prepared for the farm.”

  We showered and then made love, then, sweaty despite the air con, showered again before heading out. Once again, the humidity outside the hotel hit me like a brick and as the doors to the hotel slid closed behind me I could already feel beads of sweat sprouting on my forehead.

  We wandered around the streets for a while, dipping in and out of air-conditioned shops and malls when the heat got to be too much for me (James seemed impervious) and eventually ended up in an area called Southbank, a stunning development of restaurants and museums, cinemas and bars set in a strip of tropical parkland right next to the beaches.