A Distant Land

by Alison Booth

  Laughing was the only way to express her delight, Zidra decided, when she couldn’t really dash around the desk and plant a kiss on his shiny pate. ‘I reckon that’s the best thing I’ve heard all week,’ she said.

  And to think that, only a few moments ago, she’d believed he was trying to get rid of her. She leant back in the chair and swung her legs and suppressed the questions that had sprung into her mind. Questions such as are you sure? Am I really awake and not dreaming this? ‘Thank you, Joe,’ she added. ‘I won’t let you down.’

  ‘I know you won’t,’ he said gruffly. ‘And now be off with you.’

  She half-expected him to clap his hands and say ‘Chop chop’, as she’d seen him do when telling the Ryan family cats to shift off the sofa, but he didn’t. He simply gave her that asymmetric smile that on good days made him look almost boyish and on bad days as if he were recovering from a slight stroke. Today was a good day, no two ways about it.

  Chapter 4

  Zidra spotted Jim as soon as he emerged from the immigration and baggage hall, one of the stream of people flowing through the swing doors. She waved but he didn’t notice; a party of giants had somehow managed to squeeze in front of her, even though she’d been there long before them.

  Jim strode past a large family, the parents pushing trolleys that had minds of their own and an older couple, probably grandparents, marshalling four or five recalcitrant children. For a moment Zidra feared he might stride past her as well, although she was waving and calling his name. His straight brown hair was shaggier than it had been when she’d last seen him, and he looked older too, as you’d expect after nearly two years. It had been that long since they’d last seen each other. Long enough to fill a shoebox with letters.

  As soon as he caught sight of her, he grinned and waved. She ran behind the crowd of waiting people and reached the end of the barricade at the same time as he did. There he dropped his bag and, bloody hell, undemonstrative Jim was hugging her! She put her arms around him and rested her face against his chest. How she loved this smell of cotton and clean skin; somehow he’d managed to wash and shave before getting in this morning. Yet he could have arrived travel-stained and stinking and she wouldn’t have cared. They stayed like that for a moment, before the press of people propelled them forward. Then they let go of each other but still he was smiling, and so was she. There was such a lot to catch up on but they’d never learn each other’s news, not if they were both talking at once. She stopped speaking at the same time as he did, and then they began to laugh. You go first. No, after you. We’ve got all day to catch up with each other, and then there’ll be time in Jingera too.

  She led him out into the oblique sunlight of the Sydney morning, still only seven o’clock, although she’d been up for two hours already. Jim didn’t have much luggage; he never did – everyone she knew who’d been to a boarding school seemed to travel light. Yet it was still a bit of a squeeze in the boot of her car because she had a lot of stuff. That was the thing about driving, she found: you could just chuck things in and not have to worry about capacity, even with a car as small as her red Mini.

  It was one of those perfect spring days. Cloudless, and the air crystal clear, cleansed by overnight rain and a westerly wind that had blown away the haze of pollution. As she drove, she barely noticed the ugliness of the inner-city streets, the industrial area around the airport, and then on through the interminable suburbs and eventually out of the city altogether, and still they were talking and laughing.

  After a couple of hours they stopped for coffee. When they were getting back into the car, Jim spotted the book she’d forgotten she’d left on the floor in the back; her reading matter for Ferndale. Though Hank had lent it to her days ago, she hadn’t got any further than the title page and table of contents. Jim picked up the book and opened it. ‘“The library of Henry Fuller”,’ he read from the inscription inside the book. It was written on a nameplate embellished with curlicues. ‘Ha,’ said Jim. ‘Have you read this yet?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I have. It’s a rather self-serving justification of US involvement in Indochina. I’m surprised you’d want to read it.’

  She suspected that his reaction to this find was emotional rather than logical. He’d taken against Hank on the basis of the sticker and the book. ‘Well, Jim,’ she said, ‘I’m surprised you actually finished reading it if it’s such terrible trash. On the other hand, you only learn something’s rubbish from reading it all, don’t you think? What’s that old saying? You can’t judge a book by its cover.’

  There was a silence. She thought the topic finished with and was struggling to think of some way of bridging the gulf that had opened between them when he said, ‘Who is Henry Fuller?’

  She replied, more impatiently than she’d intended, ‘He works for the US Consulate.’

  ‘What does he do there?’

  ‘I don’t know precisely. Maybe he issues visas or stamps passports. And he’s always going to cocktail parties so I guess he pushes US commercial interests. Anyway we don’t talk about his work.’

  ‘Do you see much of him?’

  Taken aback by this question, she used the excuse of overtaking a truck that was labouring up an incline to delay replying. She didn’t see much of Hank, she might have said, although this last week they’d several times made wild passionate love, as a trashy novel that she’d picked up on a railway station described it. Maybe wild passionate sex was a better description of what they had actually got up to, but she wasn’t about to explain this distinction to Jim. She thought of Jim and Lindsay’s love affair in Jim’s final year in Sydney; she’d bet there was lots of wild passionate sex there. Lindsay was beautiful, and Zidra felt a pang of the jealousy that she thought she’d got over years ago. Somehow Jim’s first lover had been the worst. She hadn’t cared about the ones afterwards, although she had felt a twinge or two recently when a French photographer called Dominique had begun to appear in his letters.

  ‘Do you see much of him?’ Jim repeated.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. That was a noncommittal reply that covered a lot of possibilities. Perhaps it was because she was concentrating on her driving that it took several more minutes before annoyance with Jim’s probing began to set in. It was none of his damned business whom she saw or how often.

  ‘Do you tell him much about your work?’

  She took several deep breaths before answering. ‘No, I’m not stupid, Jim. I tell him nothing.’

  She unnecessarily changed down a gear and then up again. It was silly for her to feel agitated by the conversation but she did. ‘My job’s terribly dull, Jim,’ she said. ‘No one could possibly be interested in it.’ She surprised herself with these words. They’d erupted from some hidden depths, where they might have been bubbling like molten lava for many months, perhaps ever since she’d turned down a traineeship with United Press International in Saigon only weeks before he’d accepted a posting to the bureau in Phnom Penh.

  ‘Dull? Your job sounds really interesting from what you’ve been telling me.’

  He was humouring her, surely. Her life must seem to him pedestrian, her reporting even more so. No adrenalin rushes, no danger, no feeling of being on the front line with important events unfolding right around you. Then she thought of good old Joe Ryan and the new freedom he’d offered her. It was up to her to make of that what she could.

  ‘Zidra, my job might sound glamorous,’ Jim said slowly, ‘but it’s not. It’s a mix of news and checking legal contracts. Sure, the news is exciting at times, but not in the way you might be thinking. A lot of it’s the same old things happening again and again. Same old news headlines, day in, day out. Week in, week out. Bombing raids, forces from opposing sides fighting back and forth, bits of jungle being lost and then regained. And so it goes on. Nothing conclusive. The only certainty is that it’s going to get bloodier and
more deadly.’

  She thought about what he’d said. Bloodier and more deadly. She wished Jim out of all that. They drove in silence for several more kilometres before she blurted out, ‘Do you ever hear from Lindsay?’

  ‘Only indirectly.’

  It was clear he didn’t want to say anything more but she persisted. ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s been married twice. Each one a lawyer. Moving up the hierarchy.’

  ‘You mean like barrister, judge?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. She divorced the barrister when the judge’s wife died.’

  ‘Isn’t she a bit young to be married to a judge?’

  ‘Not when he’s got a farm in Kangaroo Valley and a mansion in Vaucluse.’

  She laughed. While longing now to ask him about Dominique, she thought her voice might wobble and give her feelings away.

  ‘Lindsay was years ago, Zidra.’

  ‘I suppose I was jealous of her. Lots of us in Women’s College were. She was the most gorgeous girl on campus. Funny how these things stick. I saw her recently in Woollahra with someone I took to be her father but he was probably the judge. She didn’t recognise me, though I don’t think I’ve changed that much.’

  ‘No. You don’t look a day over sixteen.’

  ‘You never have been able to take me seriously, Jim Cadwallader.’

  A few more kilometres passed in silence. Wattle was still blossoming in the bush on each side of the road, the flowers lingering later here than in Sydney. She wound down her window and inhaled deeply. She was about to question Jim regarding the safety of his job when he said, ‘When I asked you about Henry Fuller, I was just trying to see if he’s good enough for you. It wasn’t prurient interest.’

  She laughed at Jim’s choice of words. He was so formal and old-fashioned sometimes. ‘Hank Fuller,’ she said. ‘So you weren’t trying to establish the degree of hanky-panky then?’ She would have preferred that he was jealous.

  ‘Think of it as brotherly love. I’ve known you ever since you were nine, after all. I’ve had to rescue you many times.’

  ‘Only twice,’ she said. ‘And you know I’ll never forget that.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what friends are for.’ She didn’t understand why she felt a twinge of sadness as she angle-parked in the main street of the little fishing town where they’d decided to stop for lunch. Quickly she dismissed it. She was tired, that was all. The day was much too lovely to be spoilt by any introspection.

  They bought soft drinks and fish and chips from the shop next door to the fishermen’s cooperative and drove up to the park on the promontory to eat them. When they’d had enough, Jim carried the leftover chips a hundred metres away. Standing on the vivid green grass, surrounded on three sides by deep blue sea flecked with whitecaps, he hurled the chips into the air. For an instant he was lost behind the seething sphere of screaming seagulls and then he emerged laughing like the boy she’d met at Jingera all those years ago.

  Why tears should spring to her eyes she couldn’t fathom. She stood up and felt the stiff sea breeze whip her hair across her face. Turning away from the wind, she found Jim standing behind her. She looked up at him: his skin was glowing, reflecting the sun’s rays back at her. She resisted the temptation to reach out and touch his face. Instead, she said, ‘Time to go.’

  After they’d settled into the car again, she turned on the ignition and then the radio. Tina Turner belting out ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ instantly took her back to the days not long after she’d started university. As she put her palm on the gear stick, she felt the touch – the accidental touch – of Jim’s hand as he reached for the map. A current passed through her, like a small electric shock. At once she withdrew her hand, before looking at his face, just a few inches from her own. He was staring at her. Surprised by the intensity of his gaze, she looked back, deep into those eyes that she’d always thought of as olive green, the colour of the bush or the Jingera lagoon on a dull day. Now she could see that they were flecked with tiny streaks of brown.

  For a moment she thought he might kiss her, but she was mistaken. Turning away, she put the car into gear. It was odd how you thought you knew everything about someone when you really knew only a little.

  She didn’t even understand herself all that well and she certainly couldn’t trust herself to speak.

  Chapter 5

  Zidra, starting to feel exhausted, was the first to glimpse the township of Jingera and its collection of cottages clinging to the hillside. Below the road lay the river, widening into a lagoon connecting to the ocean beyond. While negotiating the first of the hairpin bends, she said, ‘Perhaps you’ll come to dinner at Ferndale.’

  ‘Yes, your mother’s already invited me,’ Jim said. ‘For the night after tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh? I know you write but I didn’t know about the dinner invitation. That’s great.’

  As they turned into the little square that lay at the heart of Jingera, he said, ‘Two years since I was last here and nothing’s changed.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s one of the nice things about Jingera.’ She drove by the hotel, shut for Sunday, around the war memorial, past the road leading down to the lagoon and turned left just before Jim’s father’s shop, Cadwallader’s Quality Meats.

  ‘Progress has passed the town by and gone to Dooleys Beach,’ she said. ‘And look what a hellhole that’s become. Suburbia by the sea. Kerbed subdivisions, all the trees knocked down, and nothing of the old character left. God, I’m starting to sound middle-aged, but it’s true. I don’t mind them building new houses as long as they keep the trees.’

  She stopped the car outside the Cadwalladers’ cottage. Since she’d last visited, it had been painted a pale blue, and the window frames and picket fence a glossy white. So glossy that she suspected they’d been painted recently, possibly even for Jim’s homecoming. The corrugated iron of the roof and the awnings over the windows hadn’t been painted for years, though, and she was glad of this; the rusty patina added to the charm.

  As soon as she switched off the engine, Mr and Mrs Cadwallader appeared at their front gate. They were dressed for an occasion. Mrs Cadwallader, in a red and white floral dress, a string of red beads and tightly permed hair, had slightly spoilt the effect by forgetting to take off her stained pinafore. Mr Cadwallader was in neatly pressed trousers and what looked like a brand-new tweed sports jacket.

  Not wanting to intrude, Zidra stayed in the car while Mrs Cadwallader embraced her son and shed a few tears. When it was his turn, Mr Cadwallader shook Jim’s hand and patted him on the back while saying, several times over, ‘Good to see you home again, son.’

  Mrs Cadwallader bent down to smile through the open car window. ‘Hello, Zidra. Won’t you come in for a cup of tea? It’s been a long drive.’

  ‘No, thanks, Mrs C. My parents will be waiting. Only another few kilometres to go and I’d like to get home before it’s dark. I’ll come and see you again though. I’ll be at Ferndale for the best part of a week.’

  ‘Come for tea then. I’ll give your parents a quick call to let them know you’re on your way.’

  Zidra got out of the car to open the boot and, once Jim had removed his bag, he gave her an awkward hug. Afterwards they stood looking at each other intently in the fading light. He began to say something but she couldn’t make out the words, for at the same time Mrs Cadwallader called out, ‘Better let Zidra get on, Jim. She wants to get to Ferndale before dark.’

  Zidra climbed back into the Mini. Her back was starting to feel stiff and her eyes tired, and she unexpectedly felt disappointment sluice over her. One day spent with Jim was nowhere near long enough and it would be another two days before she’d see him again.

  Though the street was so narrow that it was little more than a lane, she executed a three-
point turn without damaging either her own paintwork or that of the pristine picket fence. In the rear-vision mirror, the waving Cadwalladers became progressively smaller. So intent was she on this sight that she might have missed Mrs Blunkett if she hadn’t heard her voice. And there she was, waving from the garden outside her cottage.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Blunkett?’ Zidra said, stopping the car. Though the old lady had retired five or six years ago from running the post office, she hadn’t moved far, only fifty yards or so across the square to the little place next door to the school mistress’s house. From this vantage point, she was able to maintain her vigilant watch of the town and its inhabitants.

  ‘I’m good, love. Mustn’t complain about my hip,’ said Mrs Blunkett, her voice a solo trumpet against an accompaniment of distant surf breaking and seagulls wailing. ‘Glad you stopped, never know when I might see you again. You young things are always coming and going, mostly going I reckon. There’s not much for young folk around here unless you want to work in the fishing or timber industries.’ She paused for breath, before continuing, ‘So Jim’s just got in from Vietnam, has he? Bad luck to have two sons there, that’s what I said to Mrs Cadwallader this morning. Oh, it’s Cambodia you say? Same difference, dear, they’re both in a war zone, and that never does you much good, does it? Andy’s supposed to be back by Christmas, Mrs Cadwallader said. Lucky he’s not in the Fourth Battalion, she said. That got picked to stay. That’d be terrible luck, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Zidra agreed. The last time she’d seen Andy was two years ago, when he’d come home to Jingera for Christmas on Jim’s last visit, and just before his first tour of Vietnam. The only reason he’d wanted to enter the army was to get a proper apprenticeship. There must have been a fair few young men in that position. Andy’s dream of running a joinery works in Jingera or Burford had stayed exactly that. Before his nine-year indenture was up, Australia was at war.