The Bit In Between (7 page)

If he had been born anywhere else, George Panopoulos would not have become a teacher. He would have been a police officer or a politician or a lawyer. But because he was born to Kon Panopoulos, a former teacher from Crete who now worked in a stocking factory in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and practised his English by listening to the radio at night, little George was destined to have the career his father had sacrificed to give him a better life. His mother, Maria, struggled with her new country's language, so little George spent his childhood translating bills and doctor's prescriptions and notes from school, so that she could understand the mundane happenings of their everyday life. George learnt many things early. He learnt what the word ‘evicted' meant when he was eight and translated a letter from their landlord to his mother. He learnt what ‘congenital heart defect' was when he was ten and had translated the doctor's diagnosis for his mother, who sat desperately clutching his newborn baby sister. He also learnt what the word ‘fatal' meant, but he had looked at his mother holding little Andrea like she would fight a million armies to protect her and left that part out. When his father found out what he had done, George was terrified he would be punished, but instead Kon sat his small son on his lap and cried into his hair and promised him that he would have a better life one day. So George Panopoulos had become a teacher and on the day he was appointed principal his father had wept, prouder than any man in the world had ever been.

As they approached their one-month mark in Honiara, Oliver found himself still struggling to focus on his work. After a good few weeks of lying flat on his back cursing the gods of writing, a vague plot had started to take shape, and he'd spent the past week trying to tease it out. It was now a love story set against the backdrop of the last days of colonial rule before Solomon Independence in 1978. When he'd first told her it was a love story, Alison had pretended to vomit and Oliver had hurried to add that this would be equally weighted with an exploration of racism, colonialism and the concept of fate.

‘And it's still going to end with a plane crash,' he had reminded her.

She would go out every day, exploring the streets of Honiara while he locked himself in their little blue house, trying to concentrate, but sometimes after a full day's work all he had to show for it was an extra comma and a couple of new adjectives. Oliver was reluctant to call this writer's block because ‘block' implied that the story was already inside him, just waiting to find a way out. More often than not, Oliver felt like there was nothing inside him. So instead of writing his story he would let his mind wander and write vague little haiku about things around him.

Two pens full of ink,

one is blue, the other not.

I use a laptop.

Then he would stare at the compact syllables and quietly mourn the departure of his sanity as he slowly deleted them, one letter at a time.

Often, instead of writing, Oliver thought about Alison. He would notice something in the house, like her bra draped across a chair or a cartoon she had drawn of the rat that kept gnawing holes in their garbage bags, and he would try to work out exactly what had happened in the last month. One minute he had been alone, single, convinced he would spend the rest of his life a solitary figure sitting at bars by himself like some dramatic character from a Wild West movie, then suddenly there she was, stealing the covers from him in bed and drinking the last of the milk and putting the carton back in the fridge. And in this foreign country, too. Sometimes he would go to their bedroom and bury his face in an item of her clothing and breathe in her scent to reassure himself that he hadn't imagined her. She was real. She was here. She was his.

This part startled Oliver the most because when he looked at Alison he saw someone full of the usual personal flaws that all humans carried, but someone who was also magnificent. Someone who made the room ignite and who was exceptional beyond anything Oliver could ever imagine. He knew that this wasn't what everybody saw, but it was what he saw. She had only been in his life for a month or so – a mere seven hundred and forty-four hours – but Oliver couldn't remember life before her and couldn't imagine a life without her. He didn't tell her this, of course. He had enough sense to realise this would freak her out. It freaked him out. So he didn't tell her. He didn't tell her why his book had so suddenly become a love story, either.

He didn't know exactly where his book was going, what the characters would do, or even who they were. His plot notes consisted of the words ‘love story racism independence key plot plane crash'. A whispering anxiety accompanied each day's work. He knew his mother's greatest fear was that writing was neither a stable nor secure profession and that he would never be able to buy a house or afford to have children, and he worried that this fear kept her awake at night and made her think crazy things at two in the morning like how to renovate the garage so that there was room for both the cars and Oliver's future family. These fears sometimes bothered Oliver too, and as he pecked uncertainly at his laptop he prayed the story would materialise before him. But despite this uncertainty, he felt deep inside him, in the part where abundant hope lives, that perhaps now, with Alison by his side, it would all work out.

He wanted his book to be everything. A brilliant literary masterpiece. A commercial success. Comedy. Tragedy. An instant classic. Though on days like today he would just settle for ‘finished'. Or even ‘started'.

One night, as they sat on the steps of their small blue house sipping warm beers, Alison sensed Oliver's anxieties making their way to the surface. He'd had another unproductive day.

‘So I reckon we go out tonight,' she said brightly, putting her hand on his knee.

Oliver took a sip of beer and considered this. ‘Why not? What's the worst that could happen?'

Rick was what happened. Rick was tall, tanned and American.

‘But don't hold that against me,' he had winked at Alison and she had immediately done so.

Rick had arrived at Kava Bar shortly after Alison and Oliver and, because there were no free tables, had plonked himself down at theirs. He introduced himself, bought everyone beer and asked Oliver if he was a surfer. Oliver said, ‘Not really,' which was his way of saying he was terrified of sharks, and the only reason he could go in the ocean at all was that he only ever swam with other people around him, thereby decreasing his risk of being eaten.

‘No?' Rick asked. ‘Just 'cos you totally have the body of a wave rider.'

Alison watched as Oliver instantly fell in love with Rick.

Rick started and ended a majority of his sentences with the exclamation ‘man!'

As in, ‘Man! This place is busy!' or ‘You haven't tried kava? Man!'. Then he'd bought them a round.

‘What does it do?' Oliver asked.

‘Man, it makes you go all numb. Like, your face and everything. Once I had an allergic reaction to it and my face swelled up like the Elephant Man. Man!' Rick said, draining his kava and sucking a lollypop to sweeten the taste.

‘Does it make your mouth so numb you stop talking?' Alison asked.

‘Nah, man!' Rick laughed.

Rick liked to talk. He talked about everything. His life. His work. The whore of an ex-girlfriend he had left behind in the States because she was stale and boring and couldn't feel the Pacific vibes calling to her. The stagnant pace of life since his best expat buddies Loretta and Justin had fallen in love and shifted to Mongolia to teach nomads about nutrition and live in a yurt. Rick was a consultant for one of the larger multilateral development agencies and had been living in the Pacific for the past nine months.

‘The Pacific . . . man!' he said, shaking his head in amazement, and Oliver had nodded enthusiastically, as if this actually meant something.

Throughout the evening, Rick provided a running commentary on what they were doing.

‘Hey, man, Alison totally just spilled beer down her front!'

‘Man! Oliver totally just called you out on that one!'

‘That waiter looks like what Bob Marley would look like if he was still alive and reliving his youth in the Solomons. Man!'

Rick was sporty and adventurous and told them about how once, when spearfishing, a giant manta ray as big as a car had glided over his head and as it looked into his eyes he had been profoundly changed.

‘Man, the fish we caught that day, they tasted so incredibly sweet that night.'

Then he told them about eating turtle and Oliver had nodded along with the story while subtly placing a restraining hand on Alison's knee.

‘Alison's vegetarian,' Oliver told Rick.

‘Yeah?' He looked surprised.

‘Yeah,' Alison replied.

Rick looked at her mournfully. ‘Man. Turtle is so good, though. Why Alison, why?'

Shortly after, Alison suggested to Oliver that it was time they leave. Outside, waiting for a taxi, Oliver wrapped an arm around her. ‘Why
are
you vegetarian?'

The heat was consuming and she shrugged his arm off. Everything she knew about life she had learnt at a very young age from Chook and Caesar. Chook was a plump ISA Brown and Caesar was the cocky white rooster who ruled the yard. There were other hens, but Caesar loved Chook the most. He would dance for her and sleep by her side every night. Each evening Caesar would stalk Alison's family as they ate dinner on the verandah, stealing morsels of food which he took back and shared with Chook. Caesar was loyal to her and in return Chook kept herself well-preened and produced a steady stream of eggs for him. Theirs was an epic love which ran well into the time her eggs became less abundant and one day stopped all together. But Caesar loved her just the same. One evening there was a fuss in the yard and Alison went out to find Caesar wandering distressed around the coop. Chook's nesting box was empty. The following night as the family ate dinner Alison's father commented that the chook tasted particularly fine that evening. Alison suddenly understood what had happened to Chook and gasped, dropping the piece of meat in her hand. Caesar darted under the table then raced off to a corner and before Alison could stop him he had pecked up the soft white meat of his former love. That night, apparently cured of his heartache, Caesar shacked up with Bristol, a younger Brown. Alison had never again eaten meat, and it had, she often reflected, taught her much about the realities of love.

The following night Rick called at nine-thirty to inform them he was heading out to a nightclub and they just had to come. Neither of them particularly liked nightclubs because neither of them could dance particularly well, but they went anyway. Oliver went because Rick asked. Alison went because Oliver did.

The nightclub was full by the time they got there. Loud island music pounded as a mix of locals and foreigners shook it on the dance floor beneath flashing strobe lights. A flickering TV screen took up one whole wall. Rick appeared out of nowhere, sweaty and beaming, and bought everyone a drink. He said something which was drowned out by the music, but Alison could make out the ‘Man!' at the end of it. Rick grabbed their arms to drag them to the dance floor but Alison resisted. She motioned for Rick and Oliver to go ahead, then found a small table in the corner and pulled herself up onto the stool.

With nothing else to do, Alison focused on the TV and was amused to see that it was, somewhat incongruously, playing re-runs of an Australian midday cooking show. When this grew boring, she played a game she had invented called ‘Drunk or Asleep', which involved staring intently at other patrons and trying to work out what state they were in. It got harder as the night progressed.

Meanwhile, Rick was tearing up the dance floor. He had moves that Alison had never seen before and, most likely, would never see again. She watched as Oliver tried to keep up with him, doing an awkward, improvised little shuffle. Rick scrunched up his nose and laughed, gyrating his hips in a way that was far too sexual for Oliver to mimic. Then Rick noticed someone he knew on the other side of the dance floor and danced over to her. Oliver stayed where he was, looking extremely self-conscious, and Alison wondered if she should go and rescue him, but then a young local girl caught his eye and danced over. She gave him a smile and started dancing close to him, her hips brushing against his. Alison watched with amusement as Oliver smiled politely and tried to keep up with her, looking desperately uncomfortable. The girl was very young, possibly eighteen but most likely not, and her clothes were tight and short. Rick reappeared and leant over and said something into the girl's ear. She looked at Oliver, shrugged and walked away.

Dina's father was a village chief and if she had been a boy she too would have become a chief. She would also have taken over the family business, a medium-sized store that was the area's main source of goods, but there were three brothers to do that and Dina was expected to marry. When she refused to do this, her family sent her to Honiara to stay with relatives and help look after her younger cousins. When she arrived, her aunt gave her a long list of household chores Dina was expected to complete each day. And she did, for the first month. But soon, exhausted and despondent, Dina saw a future of nothing but tedious, unpaid manual labour ahead of her and refused to continue down this path. One day she left her aunt's house to buy bread and never returned. She went to stay with friends and tried to find a job, but no one had work for a girl who had only completed primary school. Then she had found a way to make money – real money that was hers and hers alone – and though it brought her incredible shame, it also brought a freedom that she had never experienced before and was desperate to hold onto.