by AJ Collins
‘The drivers will see us coming. They’ll take us for tourists and charge us double.’
‘We are tourists.’
‘No, we’re not.’
I pout. I’m trying to make the most of this. Why can’t he? ‘Come on, let’s just have some fun?’
I watch his face. He’s scowling as if the decision holds the gravity of taking out a mortgage. He gives in, lets me put the lei on him. ‘Happy now?’ he asks.
I grin. ‘It suits you.’
‘I’m sure.’
We negotiate a price with a driver and set off through the township with its weathered, white-painted buildings, concrete roads and cracked footpaths. Outside an ice cream shop, a local mother is passing a giant cone to her tiny, fuzzy-haired child. His big eyes and open mouth show joy at the prospect of eating an ice cream almost as big as his head. I make a mental note to stop there on our way back.
As I’m looking out the window, Harry takes my hand. I don’t move, just breathe deep, my heart skipping a little. The skin on skin feels good. Warm. Right. Why can’t we just be? Why does it have to be so complicated? This on–off, up–down, angry–happy stuff is driving me crazy. It must be driving him crazy too. I grip his hand firmer, letting him know it’s okay. Hold on. Surely, we can work it out?
Ten minutes more, and we’re out of the central township, heading past shanty houses shrouded in creeping greenery. Further into the countryside, the road is dotted with aged wooden benches next to rotted wooden poles that serve as bus stops.
Our taxi driver, Luke, turns into a gravel parking lot, the handbrake ratcheting as he comes to a halt. We step out into a rainforest, its tall canopy blocking the sun. I sniff the cool air with its mustiness of rotting undergrowth. Apparently, we’ve arrived at a national park, and there’s an entry fee. Australian dollars are fine.
We follow Luke through the jungle, sticking to packed-dirt paths, but stop when a sudden downpour hits. Luke strolls off the path into the jungle and comes back with two giant green leaves. He bends the stem of one and threads it through the leaf, then pops it on my head.
‘Nature’s umbrella,’ he says.
Harry shakes his head. ‘I’m fine.’
What a killjoy.
Further along the path, Luke stops and picks up a fallen coconut.
‘You know how local people open this?’
I shake my head, expecting him to magically produce a machete and hack off the green husk, but he sets to work with his magnificently perfect white teeth, ripping off sections until he reaches the inner shell. He whacks the nut on a rock, breaking it into pieces and releasing the water. We each suck and chew on a piece as we continue up the hill.
‘You know, the water of the coconut can be used for blood transfusions?’ he says.
Harry and I look at each other. Really?
‘The chemical make-up is similar to blood plasma,’ Luke adds.
I’m secretly embarrassed. For some reason I expected Luke to be uneducated. Why else would a forty-odd year old man be making a living by scavenging tourist dollars?
‘The women, when they cannot breast feed, give the coconut milk to their babies. Lifeblood, we call it. Very nutritious.’
I nod, keen to learn more. Luke has probably told these stories a thousand times, but whether they’re true or not, and I have no reason not to believe him, they’re fresh to my ears. A while later we reach the waterfall. There’s another couple standing waist deep in the pool beneath it. They yell and hoot as they dive into the foamy water cascading over their heads. The water in the pool is an incredible milky aquamarine.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I say.
Harry smiles. ‘Told you.’
Luke clears his throat. ‘Okay. You can swim. I will leave you here for two hours? Happy, yes?’
We ask him to have some lunch with us, but he refuses, disappearing back down the track. Harry pulls out a couple of towels from his backpack, and we settle on a mossy patch beside the pool. He points to my Hello Kitty backpack. Inside is crusty ham and cheese sandwiches, water bottles and a couple of pear ciders. I screw up my nose.
‘Try it, I think you’ll like it,’ Harry says. ‘Hair of the dog might help.’
I twist off the lid and gulp a couple of mouthfuls. Not too sweet. It’s good. A burp escapes me before I think to cover my mouth. We both laugh. I lie on my stomach, enjoying the spray mist from the waterfall drifting onto my hair and shoulders. The other couple pick their way among the underwater rocks and climb up the embankment to dry their feet and get dressed. Pretty soon we’re alone with birdsong, the waterfall, rivulets trickling over rocks. I notice more sounds: the rustling of the rainforest canopy, a frog’s chirp – or is that a cricket? Do they have crickets in Vanuatu? Or some other strange variation of insect?
I’m still chewing on a big mouthful of sandwich when Harry decides he’s ready to swim. He strips off his shirt and flips off his thongs. When he unzips his shorts, I stop chewing. Is he going in naked? No, he’s got boardshorts on underneath. He wades out.
‘It’s perfect,’ he calls. ‘You coming in?’
I shake my head. ‘Later.’ I point to my tummy. ‘Might get a cramp.’
‘Wuss,’ he yells.
‘Whatever.’
Harry floats on his back and swishes his arms like one of those two-armed insects – water boatmen – and heads towards the waterfall. I compromise by sitting on a flat rock and dangling my feet in the water. It’s perfectly cool, not cold. I close my eyes and let my head drop back. The sun makes bright red patterns behinds my eyelids. I breathe. It might be psychological, but the air seems cleaner, as if it’s been filtered by the water and rocks and greenery. My ordinary life seems so far away. I could stay here forever. And ever.
Something touches my foot, and I wrench my legs out of the water, shrieking. It’s Harry. He grabs my arm and pulls me into the water. I flounder until I find my footing. The water only comes up to my hips, but I’m soaked.
‘You arsehole.’ I splash him.
‘Steady.’ He laughs.
‘My clothes. I’ve got nothing to change into.’
I look down. My nipples erect against my white t-shirt. I cross my arms, and spin away, heading towards the embankment.
‘Stay,’ he says.
I turn back and glare at him. If looks could kill, he’d be floating face down like a ... a ... I don’t know what. A dead floaty thing. I hoist myself onto a rock and pull my t-shirt away from my body, twisting and squeezing the material until water runs out of it.
He floats off on his back again.
‘Arsehole,’ I repeat under my breath.
At least the sun is my friend. I stay on my rock, feet dangling in the water. The murkiness my thrashing stirred up has settled, and tiny fish nibble at invisible morsels in the gravel. The water is soothing. I could get back in, I suppose, since I’m already wet. Harry looks like he’s really enjoying himself ...
No. I get up and head over to our towels, lie on my back, my arm across my face. I bat at a pesky fly that keeps landing on my arm until I realise it’s not a fly – it’s the little hairs on my arms prickling as they release moisture to the sun. I’m almost asleep when Harry grunts as he climbs out of the water. He drops soggily onto his towel.
‘You okay?’ he asks.
I squint at him. ‘Mmmm.’
‘You pissed at me?’
‘Maybe.’ I close my eyes. The sun makes patterns behind my lids.
‘We’re even then.’
I ignore him, but secretly I’m a bit relieved.
‘Hungry?’ he asks.
‘Hmmm. Not really.’
‘Not even for chocolate-coated raspberries?’
I open an eye. ‘Really?’
‘They might be a bit melted. Still taste good though.’
He breaks open the packet and holds it out to me. I pick one out. He’s right, the coating is soft and squishy in my fingers. I pop it into my mouth. It’s good. Really good
. The raspberry centre is tart and unexpectedly crispy.
‘Freeze-died,’ he says. ‘Yum, hey?’
I nod, sucking chocolate off my fingers.
He leans back on his elbows, clears his throat, and I just know he wants to talk about last night again.
‘I wonder how Snap’s doing,’ I slip in.
‘Did you email him?’
‘Yeah. He hasn’t said much though. I suspect he’s grudgingly accepting his granny. He’s too big-hearted to turn anyone away. It must be confusing though, being told rubbish about her by his dad all these years.’
‘He’s not the only one who’s confused.’
‘Huh?’
‘Last night.’
‘Ugh.’ I turn over, bury my face in my towel, muffling my whinge. ‘Now?’
He doesn’t answer.
I huff, sit up and cross my legs, ready to get this elephant out of the way. ‘Look, I had a bad experience when I was young. And it ... kind of screwed me up. So, when that guy grabbed me, I freaked out.’ I watch his expression for any sign of judgement. There’s none. He nods, keeps looking at me, waiting.
‘What? What else do you want? An apology?’
‘No. I want to know what happened afterwards.’
‘I told you, I freaked out. That’s it.’
His face hardens. He knows. There’s no point lying. I should just rip the bandaid off.
‘I took an E.’
He doesn’t react, just sits back and looks out at the water.
‘So?’ I prompt. Why doesn’t he say something?
‘Why?’
I throw my hands up. ‘I don’t understand half of what I do myself. I think I’m okay and this ... this huge fear grips me. And I hate myself for it, because ... I wish I could be calm and normal like other people and not fly off the handle. But dudes ... they all think the same, don’t they?’
He turns to me. ‘That’s unfair.’
‘Is it? Tell me. A lone woman walking on Chapel Street at two-thirty in the morning. She’s gang raped and left in an alley. What’s your first thought?’
‘I don’t know ...’
‘Yes, you do. Just tell me the what pops into your head.’
He winces. ‘It’s terrible. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. But ... I guess I’d wonder what she was doing there at that time, alone?’
‘See? You just proved my point. Why not ask what the men were doing there? And why they felt they had the right to attack the woman? If you read that newspaper report it’ll tell you what she was wearing, if she’d been drinking, insinuate she might have been a prostitute. And that negates what happened to her? Does it? Look at Jill Meagher. Look at Eurydice Dixon. They were just trying to get home after a night out, and some creep on the street rapes and murders them. Girls are judged all the time by how they look, what they wear, where they are, how they act.’
‘Whoa. Where is all this coming from?’
‘That guy last night. He had no right to touch me.’
‘You think he grabbed you because ... what? Because of what you were wearing? He said he was just trying to help you off your chair.’
‘I didn’t need his help. And if he really wanted to help, he should have offered to hold my drinks, not manhandled me.’
‘Uh huh.’
Harry doesn’t look convinced. I grind my teeth, breathe, try to speak calmly, but it’s hard. This shit makes me furious, probably because I don’t have all the answers myself.
‘Didn’t you see the way he was staring at me during our first bracket? I didn’t know which way to look.’
‘No. You should have told me.’
‘And you would have done what?’
‘Spoken to him at least.’
‘Seriously? You couldn’t even call him out when I told you he grabbed me.’
He rubs his hand through his hair. At least I’ve got him thinking.
‘And what if I were to go for a walk on the top deck at midnight? Get some fresh sea air after our gig, and he turns up? How are you gonna save me then? Would you tell me I should have stayed in our cabin, like a good little girl, and have never ventured out? And why should you have to fight my battles, anyway? My word should be enough.’
‘Because you’re not ready to fight your own yet?’
Ooh, I want to smash him.
He holds up his hands. ‘Hear me out.’
This should be good.
‘It’s obvious there’s something upsetting you—’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
‘Can I speak?’
I purse my lips, dig my nails into my palms. I should shut up.
‘Thank you.’ He clears his throat, looks away, collecting his thoughts or calming himself. ‘The way you want to be close with me, then don’t; your lack of confidence on stage – even though you’re brilliantly talented; how easily you want to escape with alcohol; and drugs now. You gotta talk to me about it. Or talk to someone. Or this, we, are going to fall apart.’
Oh, that’s not fair turning it back on me. My throat thickens so much it’s painful, and suddenly I’m spent. ‘I can’t. I just can’t,’ I whisper. There’s no fixing this. I am who I am.
‘Lauren, look at me.’
I shake my head, play with the corner of my towel. Breathe.
‘Please? I want to talk to you. Face to face.’
I shake my head. I’m not ready.
He taps my knee. ‘Come on.’ He takes both my hands. ‘I think it’s time to talk about Samuel.’
I think I’ve heard wrong. Samuel? Nobody knows about Samuel; I’ve been too careful. Now I look at him, and his next four words are like a foreign language I can’t decode.
‘I found the letter.’
When his meaning sinks in, the shock is like a wallop to my chest. I yank my hands away and grab my backpack. I check the zip pocket, my heart banging so hard I think it’s going to punch through my ribs. The pocket is empty. I feel sick.
‘Lauren, it’s not there.’
I keep looking through the rest of the bag, my hands wild things, tearing through suntan lotion, sunhats ... where is it? I reach the bottom, madly scratching around. There’s no crinkle of envelope.
Harry touches my shoulder. ‘Lauren, stop. I left it in the cabin. In your bedside drawer. It’s okay. It’s alright.’
‘It’s not! Why did you? How could you?’
‘It was on the floor, with your other junk,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t help but see who it was from. And I wondered why you would carry it around with you after all this time. And then it twigged. It was him, wasn’t it? He was the real reason you left.’
‘No!’ I’m not hearing this. I put my hands over my ears and scream it at him. ‘That was mine. It was for me. He wrote it for me. How could you go through my stuff? I NEVER went through your stuff while you away. Do you know that? I never pried, never broke your trust.’
‘I didn’t ...’ Harry is panicking, trying to draw me into his arms. ‘Shhh.’
I lash out, shove him away. ‘Don’t you tell me to shush. Get off!’
‘Lauren, stop it. Calm down.’
‘I won’t! You ... you ... I should have known better than to trust you.’
I’m too angry to cry. Something small and hard buried inside me has come back to life. It’s swelling, putrid and ugly. I should be over this. God. Why won’t it leave me alone? I scrabble to my feet. ‘Fuck you, Harry.’
I tear back down the path, slipping on rocks, crying out, branches whipping my legs and arms, until I bump into Luke at the bottom.
‘We’re going,’ I tell him, and climb into the back of his car.
Harry isn’t far behind me, and when he climbs in, I hold up a hand without looking at him. ‘Don’t even.’
Back at the ship, he has the decency to let me head back to our cabin alone. It’s only when I’m sitting on my bunk, still furious, that I open my drawer and pull out the scrunched letter. And realise it’s still sealed.
23. Nadir
Our room is a frigid wasteland. Harry has given up trying to talk to me. I don’t blame him. I’m an iceberg in tropical waters, unable to melt. On stage you’d never know anything was wrong, we smile, we perform, we party. Then the switch flips, and it’s arctic. Just as well we’ve only got another couple of days before we can go back to our own lives.
I’m broken.
We’re broken.
Our relationship is a rusty wreck, abandoned and sinking at sea. Nothing is going to mend this.
24. Dissolution
Our plane has landed, and again I have to give Harry credit. He hasn’t even tried to make small talk, apart from necessary exchanges. Probably because I’ve mastered a flat tone to my voice that’s an un-scalable wall. He may as well be sitting next to a stranger, the kind that makes you want to bury your face in a book so you don’t have to interact with them.
He’s tense. I can see it. Feel it. Finally, he breaks his silence.
‘What’s the plan?’
I shrug.
‘Are we calling it quits or what?’
You’d think I’d have that answer at the ready. I’ve had days to agonise over it, but the decision has eluded me. Obviously, I’ll be moving back to my and Snap’s apartment, but what happens then? Is the music over? I guess it has to be. We can’t continue like this, not that I’m angry anymore. What I am is lost. Back at sea. The one we just left.
‘Is that what you want?’ I ask, afraid to look at him.
‘Is it what you want?’
I can’t answer. I honestly don’t think it’s possible to fix this. Trust is like a broken cup: you can glue it back together, but there’s always going to be that worry in the back of your mind that one day it’ll leak or fall apart, and you’ll get scalded.
‘Suit yourself,’ Harry says, pulling my bag from the overhead locker and dumping it on the seat beside me. ‘Let me know when you get over yourself.’
I bite my lip through the sting of his words. ‘I’ll get a taxi and text you when I get home. I’ll have to borrow Snap’s car to get my stuff.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I’ll drive you.’
I shrug again. Am I the arsehole?
