The Bit In Between (26 page)

One day in China, not long before she'd left, she had wandered down to a Nanning park and sat amidst the flowering almond trees. The park was full of young children zipping around on brightly coloured tricycles and old men crowded around Chinese chess boards. Every so often a triumphant cry erupted as a cannon took out an elephant or a general surrendered his kingdom. Alison watched as a hunched old man approached her carrying a tiny bird in a wicker cage. He eased himself down on the bench beside her and gently placed the cage between them. The bird chirped and Alison couldn't tell if it was singing in sorrow or joy. The old man turned to Alison and gave her a smile that caused the wrinkles of his face to form a complex new pattern.

‘Can I practise my English on you?' he asked.

‘Sure,' she responded.

They conversed for a while about the usual things – what their names were, where they came from, what they did for a living. Then the little man gazed at her intently.

‘Who are you today?'

Alison grinned. ‘You mean how are you today.'

He shook his head. ‘No, I mean what I say. Who are you today?'

She had thought about this but didn't have an answer.

Now, so many moons later, she still didn't have an answer. For a moment she was one hundred per cent certain that the very next thing she would do would be to stand up, walk to the ticket counter and buy a seat on the next plane to Australia, which was leaving in an hour or so. There were always spare seats and she had her passport in her bag. She could leave. She could have a fresh start. She could pretend the whole thing – the entire Solomon Islands experience – had never happened. If she tried hard enough she might even be able to convince herself that Oliver had never existed. Or Sera. Or the office.

She stared across the tarmac and into the hills of Guadalcanal. It was a bright day but the horizon was lined with ominous clouds. Alison was mesmerised. She had always been transfixed by the colours of travel: by green mountains against blue skies speckled with white cloud, the yellow sun shining high above, like a scene from a child's colouring book; by the thousand shades of grey that storm clouds came in; and by sunsets that never once repeated themselves, with their reds and pinks and crimson and orange and colours she had no names for. She loved the shades people came in, rich and dark and pale and bronzed, all unique and beautiful. She loved the way the sun wore a different outfit, behaved differently, had different mannerisms, breathed differently, in different parts of the world, as if trying to speak the local dialect; and the way night-time stole the colours from the world, cloaking all life in many-hued darkness. But what she loved most was the utter impermanency of colour, its ebb and flow. Each colour was unique to a specific moment, changing with time, temperature and taste, and could never be seen again. Everything was transient. Alison blinked and for the briefest of seconds her tears fractured the world into rainbows and in those rainbows she saw that all her reasons to run were really reasons for staying. Everything was transient but some things were worth staying for. She stood up briskly and dusted herself off. There was Sera to pick up and then Oliver to go home to. This she could manage for now.

More time passed. It would have been, for the record, the last month of Sera's pregnancy. It was Saturday afternoon and the boys were at a bar, as had become their habit. Oliver was perched on a stool fiddling with the label on his SolBrew waiting for Rick to finish in the men's room. He was beginning to suspect that Rick was a high-functioning alcoholic.

‘What up!'

Rick burst out through the men's room door with his Hawaiian shirt on back to front. He grinned at Oliver, spun around, overbalanced, tripped over an empty beer crate and then steadied himself on the bar. His eyes bulged for a moment, he gulped, then grinned.

‘Man, I totally just re-swallowed some vomit.'

A functioning alcoholic . . .

Rick leant over the bar and held up three fingers. ‘Threefala brewskis.'

Oliver frowned. ‘Three?'

‘Three,' Rick nodded. ‘Look who I met when I accidentally wandered into the girls' toilets.'

He indicated an expressionless young blond who Oliver hadn't noticed hovering in the background. She had striking blue eyes and was wearing the worn T-shirt and board shorts of a long-time traveller.

‘This is Ingrid. From Sweden. Show Oliver your tattoo.'

Ingrid shot Oliver a look, then sighed and pulled down the neck of her scooped T-shirt. There was a sprawling geometric shape reaching across her collarbone and down her shoulder. It looked like a dolphin.

‘It's Polynesian. From Tahiti,' Rick beamed.

Oliver looked up at Ingrid. ‘Are you Polynesian?'

‘I feel I am.'

The look on her face dared Oliver to challenge her, so he just took another sip of beer and looked away. Her face softened and she crossed the room towards the exit.

‘Are you okay on your own?' Rick prodded Oliver. ‘I'm going to take Ingrid back to her hostel.'

‘No, you're not,' Oliver replied.

‘No, I'm not,' Rick agreed and turned to leave.

‘You're going to leave me here at the bar by myself?'

‘Solidarity, brother,' Rick replied and offered a fist bump.

He grabbed two of the beers from the bar, saluted Oliver and then marched towards the door where Ingrid was waiting for him. Oliver stared at the fresh beer in front of him. The one in his hand was practically full. He sat for a moment trying to work out if he should give up on the warmer one and start on the cool one. This problem was solved when a short, sunburnt man swung onto the stool next to him and grabbed the new beer.

‘I'll get the next one.' He nodded to Oliver and took a huge gulp.

Oliver stared at him. He had seen this man playing darts with some of the other regulars earlier and he had looked drunk then. Now he looked positively effervescent.

The man extracted himself from his bottle and turned to Oliver. ‘Gotta love it,' he smiled joyfully. ‘Drinking, I mean. Almost as good as flying. That's what I do. I'm a pilot.'

He stuck out his hand and Oliver shook it.

‘What's it like?' Oliver asked, impressed despite himself.

‘What?'

‘Flying?'

The man thought for a moment, sucking back his beer.

‘It's the most magical feeling in the world. Knowing you're doing something we're not born to do. That you're up in the realm of birds and angels.'

He paused for another sip and then carefully placed the bottle back on the bar as if it were made from expensive crystal.

‘Bloody scary, though. Knowing you're responsible for all those people's lives. That if you make a mistake – and they're easy to make – all those people are going to die a horrible painful death. I tell ya, now I know how planes work I'm way more terrified than before.'

Oliver stared at him with wide eyes. ‘But that rarely happens, right? You guys have autopilot and fancy remote equipment now, don't you?'

The pilot let out a low whistle. ‘Yeah, but . . . some of the clowns flying these days. Taxidrivers with wings. And the number of near misses . . .' He shook his head and took another big sip. ‘Unless I'm the one doing the flying, I'm never one hundred per cent comfortable. And even then . . .' He gave a small shake of his head and then drained the bottle.

‘Anyway, I better get back to my hotel room and sober up. Early flight tomorrow.'

He eased himself off the stool and staggered unsteadily towards the door. Oliver sat picking at the label on his beer bottle, watching him go. He struggled with the door, pushing instead of pulling, muttering curses to himself.
As the pilot finally managed to make his way out of the bar,
Oliver blinked then took a giant swig from his beer. In his mind, planes dropped from the sky, exploding in searing thousand-degree fireballs, ripping apart lives and shattering families. He thought of his manuscript and the plane crash he'd promised at the end. The one he was so insistent on. The one that would tear apart Colonel Drakeford and Geraldine, destroying the life they'd planned together. He felt sick. He knew this was how the book should end, but the thought of what this would do to his characters unsettled him – firstly because he had grown to love them, but also because their lives had become so entwined with his own. It seemed like they were going to be okay, Colonel Drakeford and Geraldine, that they'd actually get their happily ever after. That he and Alison would have theirs. Didn't they deserve a chance – all of them?

‘Ollie, you okay?'

He looked up. Sam the bar guy was staring at him with his deep brown eyes. Oliver gave a small smile.

‘Yeah, I'm okay.'

‘You heading home now?'

Oliver considered this. ‘Nah. I'll have another beer. Play it again, Sam.'

Sam frowned. ‘Huh?'

‘Oh, nothing. It's from a movie.'

‘Okay. SolBrew?'

‘Yeah.'

Sam prised off the bottle top and then handed the bottle to Oliver, who accepted it and took a big long gulp. Sam watched him carefully.

‘You sure you okay, Oliver?'

‘Yeah, why do you ask?'

‘You're drinking by yourself. People who drink by themselves usually aren't okay.'

Oliver gave him a tired smile. ‘Yeah, I'm okay. It's just . . .'

‘It's your missus,' Sam said.

Oliver nodded reluctantly. ‘How'd you guess?'

‘The only man in the world who don't got no trouble with his missus is the one who don't got no missus,' Sam grinned.

Oliver nodded mournfully.

‘What trouble?'

‘I'll tell you, but don't think I'm crazy. You know how I'm writing a book?'

Sam didn't, but he knew better than to stop a drunk man's flow, so he just nodded.

‘Well, I'm not crazy, but when I write, sometimes – and I know this sounds crazy – sometimes what I write comes true. Like magic. I swear I'm not crazy. But it's like I'm kind of controlling the world.'

Sam didn't drop his gaze.

‘Mmhmm,' he nodded, and Oliver knew he thought him crazy.

‘I don't know if Alison believes it or not,' Oliver said, ‘but she doesn't like it. And she thinks I did something I didn't. Something bad. I didn't. But I thought about it. I felt it. I felt it should be written, because there's no other way for the story to go. It has to happen this way. This is what needs to happen. But I also want my happy ending. I don't want the misery. It feels like it's coming, but I can't let it happen, even though it wants to and needs to . . . Does that make sense?'

Sam nodded slowly. He gazed at Oliver then placed his hands flat on the bar in front of him, as if preparing to deliver a speech.

‘Do you love her?'

This caught Oliver by surprise. He looked blankly at Sam.

‘Huh?'

Sam stuck to his script.

‘Do you love her?'

‘Um, yes. I do.'

‘And do you trust her?'

Oliver looked at his beer bottle and picked at the frayed label again. ‘Yes, I think so. I do.'

Sam leant forward and eased the beer bottle from Oliver's hand. He put it out of Oliver's reach, then set his hands on the bar again and gave Oliver a big smile.

‘Go to her, my brother.'

Oliver paused for a moment and his alcohol-sodden brain thought back to earlier that day when he had received a parcel from his mother containing breath mints, a beanie and a photo frame that still had a stock photo of a smiling blond-haired blue-eyed family and their dog. And sitting there at the bar with Sam's big brown eyes staring meaningfully back at him, Oliver knew that it was Alison's face he wanted to see instead of the pearly-toothed female model, with himself in place of the granite-jawed male. And kids who looked fifty per cent like him and fifty per cent like her, and definitely not blond and pale. The dog could stay the same. He wanted the same for Drakeford and Geraldine. For all of them.

‘I'm going home to my missus,' he announced loudly, then swivelled off his seat and lurched towards the door.

‘Take a taxi,' Sam yelled after him. ‘Don't you try and walk!'

As Oliver offered a final emphatic wave, Sam went back to wiping down the bar and waiting for the last drunks to leave so he could go home to his family.

CHAPTER SIX

OF WRACK AND RUIN

F
or someone who was almost universally disliked, Rick still managed to make the guest list of a great many parties thrown by Honiara's expat community. One night, around what would have been Sera's due date, he phoned Oliver to inform him that the British high commissioner would be holding ‘the party to end all parties' and demanded that he and Alison attend. Neither of them particularly wanted to, but as neither could come up with a good enough reason not to they went along anyway.

The house of the British high commissioner sat on a large block in one of the expensive expat enclaves. The grounds were impeccably maintained and the house itself spread out like a country estate, except instead of willows it was edged by swaying palms. Oliver and Alison got out of the taxi and were buzzed through the tall security gate that bore the British insignia in fine cast-iron detail. The driveway was lined with cars, an assortment of shiny white Hiluxes and the battered old jeeps that were bought and resold by the never-ending stream of expats. Oliver spotted Rick's car and they wandered up the driveway in search of him. People were crowded around outside chatting and sipping from bottles. Oliver recognised a few faces, only some of whose names he remembered. Alison clung to his arm, self-conscious amidst the mix of development workers, volunteers, diplomats and officials.

Inside they found Rick holding court before a small number of doe-eyed young female volunteers in a grand room with portraits lining its wood-panelled walls. Rick grinned when he saw them and gave a short bow. He'd cheered up somewhat recently since deciding to go it alone with his musical career and had thrown himself into writing songs that were specifically and purposefully not about love. He strode towards them, calling out a greeting, but neither of them could make out the words over the booming music. There was a large neon karaoke machine set up at the other end of the long room, and a middle-aged official from the Australian high commission was singing along loudly to Eminem.

Rick slapped Oliver on the back and grinned at Alison. ‘Great party, huh!'

They nodded in reply.

‘Drinks are over that way,' Rick continued, motioning towards a hallway that Oliver assumed led to a kitchen or dining room.

‘I'll be back in a moment then,' Alison said. ‘Beer?'

Rick and Oliver both nodded and she strolled off. As she left, Rick leant forward and beckoned Oliver closer.

‘He's here. I didn't realise until like ten minutes ago, but he's here.'

Oliver gave him a blank look. ‘Who's here?'

Rick leant closer. ‘Who do you think? Our Lord of Stupid Poetry.'

Oliver looked around him. ‘Where?'

‘In the kitchen, I think.'

Oliver frowned. ‘Is that where you just sent Alison?'

Rick's face fell. ‘Oh, shit. Sorry.'

‘It's okay,' Oliver said generously and looked towards the kitchen. ‘Do you think I should . . .?'

‘Do what?'

Oliver wasn't sure. So he didn't do anything.

Alison wandered down the hall and into a huge open kitchen. A marble island took up most of the middle and an incredible number of pots and pans hung from hooks suspended from the high ceiling. The room was full of happy laughing people and loud nineties pop was bouncing off the tiled surfaces. There were two huge sinks on one side of the room filled with ice and drinks. Alison pushed her way through the crowd and pulled out three bottles of SolBrew.

‘Coops!'

She spun around and was met by the full force of Ed as he embraced her in a solid hug.

‘Ed,' she replied, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

Ed pulled back, his hands still gripping her shoulders.

‘Coops!' he repeated.

Ed smiling had always reminded her of one of those black and white photos of some old-world artist. One of the ones taken during a rare moment of privacy, candid, real and full of authentic life.

‘Why are you here?' she asked, for she'd been certain he would have returned to Australia by now.

‘There was this program tagging turtles at the proposed conservation area and then I met a man from Reef Islands and went with him to visit his family, and the ship didn't come back for weeks and . . .' Ed trailed off. ‘Alison . . .' he started and then faltered.

Alison's heart was racing. He rarely called her Alison unless he was about to be serious and she didn't want him to be serious with her. Serious was scary. She gave him an overly bright smile.

‘I better get these to the boys before they get warm.'

She pushed off through the crowd, elbowing her way through the mass of laughing expats. She felt Ed's eyes burning into the back of her head and swore to herself under her breath. She reached Ed and Oliver and beamed.

‘Beers!' she announced enthusiastically and then frowned. At their feet were a handful of empty beer bottles. Oliver looked down guiltily.

‘Sorry. Rick made me catch up with him.'

‘You sculled them? How many?' she asked in disbelief.

‘Two.'

Alison looked at him in shock and then wordlessly held out the beers. The boys took them and Oliver glanced at Rick. They knew she had seen Ed, she could tell.

Alison looked flustered and took an uncomfortable
sip of beer. She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the whine of static from the karaoke mic.

A familiar voice said, ‘Check, check.'

The three of them looked over. Ed was standing in front of the microphone stand, holding it like a rock star. The music had stopped and the whole party had quietened down and turned their attention to him.

‘Mic check, can you hear me in the back?' Ed continued and there was an amused titter from the crowd.

Alison's mouth had dropped open. Even Rick looked bewildered. Ed held the microphone up in front of him.

‘Good people. I am Ed, the anarchist poet soldier, and I . . .' Ed paused and suddenly dropped the theatrics. ‘I'm going to read a poem I wrote for someone important.' He glanced over at Alison, giving her a look that made her blush and made Oliver, who was halfway through his third beer, almost drop the bottle. Rick placed a subtle hand on his friend's arm. Ed cleared his throat and gripped the microphone.

This is the sound my heart makes

when everything feels wrong.

When it's time to go

but my heart says no;

it's the saddest kind of song.

This is the noise my voice makes

when everything is done.

When the words won't float

for they're caught in my throat;

when the lyrics can't be sung.

This is the way my heart breaks

when everything is through.

When my spirit grieves

'cos I have to leave

and I just want to stay with you.

This is the smile my soul gives

when I think of you, my friend.

Though we're miles apart

you're still in my heart

and I know that I'll see you again.

Ed's poem was simple and unexpectedly beautiful. Oliver glanced over at Alison, whose face was a mess of emotions, none of which she was successfully containing. He clenched his jaw and lurched forward. Rick tried to grab his shirt but Oliver wiggled free and kept going, beer splashing out of the bottle in his hand. He stepped up to the small platform Ed was standing on and grabbed the microphone from him.

‘I have a poem too,' Oliver said triumphantly into the microphone.

Rick shot him a look and mimed putting down the mic. Oliver ignored him. He took a sip of beer and cleared his throat.

‘There once was a lady called Ali –'

This was as far as he got, because Rick had unplugged the microphone. Oliver flailed wildly, knocking over the mic stand.

‘Let me finish!'

Rick took him by the shoulders and frogmarched him out the side door. As he went he saw the look of mortification on Alison's face and a preening Ed smiling smugly. Out in the garden, Rick forced Oliver to sit down beside the pool. Oliver tried to resist, but Rick shoved him harder, so he sat reluctantly. Rick lowered himself beside him. He slipped off his shoes and dangled his feet in the water. Oliver did the same. He sat waiting to see what Rick would do.

Rick stared at the water, lit up by bright lights beneath the surface, then sighed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small ziplock bag. From this he extracted a joint, which he put to his lips and lit with a zippo lighter. He inhaled and a look of contentment spread across his face. He took another drag and then held it out to Oliver. Oliver didn't really want to take it because he'd been trying to act like a grown-up recently. He thought about the night so far. Clearly it wasn't working. Oliver accepted the joint from Rick and took a deep drag. It immediately clashed with the beer in his system and his head started tingling. He handed the joint back to Rick and sighed, tears pricking his eyes.

‘I feel like I'm going to lose her. Maybe not this time, but at some stage. Like it's inevitable.'

‘Yeah.' Rick nodded and took a drag. ‘Sometimes you can see the inevitable coming a mile off.'

Oliver flinched like he'd been slapped. ‘What can you do?'

‘About the inevitable? Not a lot. Some things you can't control. Only yourself. Sometimes not even that. Don't go down swinging blindly like an idiot. You can't put anyone on a leash but yourself.'

‘It's not fair,' Oliver whispered.

‘Most things aren't.' Rick took another drag and then passed the joint back to Oliver.

Rick stared at the water and kicked his feet slowly. Soft ripples spread out across the pool and he watched them mesmerised. ‘Let me tell you about Stephanie,' he said quietly. ‘Even though I knew it was coming, when she left it felt like winter. Like the trees were bare and the daylight only lasted for a heartbeat each day. I tried to get her to come back but there was nothing I could do. I felt dead. Like there was literally nothing working inside me. I sat in my apartment with the curtains drawn for like three days, in the dark, not doing anything, not moving. Barely breathing. Barely alive. And then I decided fuck it. If that was the way life was going to treat me, fuck it, I was going to treat life the same way. If life wasn't going to care what it did to me, I wasn't going to care what I did to life. I went on a bender and crashed my moped. My dad freaked out, pulled some strings and three weeks later I was here doing a job I'm not especially qualified to do in a country I don't really know anything about.'

Rick shrugged. ‘Fuck it,' he repeated and clenched his jaw.

They stared at the water, watching the moon's reflection ripple and blur.

‘I think about her every day,' Rick said quietly. ‘Every single day.'

He flexed his shoulder and took a long drag.

‘So that's the thing. You can't control shit.' He sighed. ‘Fuck it, right?'

Oliver felt the weed mingling with the alcohol inside his body. His head had started spinning.

‘I'm going to throw up,' he said, and he did, into the swimming pool.

After he'd finished throwing up, Rick put a hand on his back.

‘You ready to go back inside?'

Oliver wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Yep.'

‘Want me to talk to Alison? I'll tell her you're just drunk and stupid. That usually works.'

Oliver didn't meet his eyes. ‘Okay.'

Rick went to stand up, but then paused and leant towards Oliver. ‘Remember, man. By its very definition you can't stop the inevitable.'

Oliver nodded, but a small part of him disagreed.

Back inside, Rick went to find Alison, who had been sitting in the corner venting to an attentive Ed. Oliver kept his head down and walked over to the high commissioner. He waited patiently for a moment behind him and then tapped him on the shoulder. The high commissioner turned around and looked surprised.