Paul’s smile disappeared like someone had flicked a switch, and Yoshi looked confused.
“I was going to email her but…” Sam sighed, then ducked his head, embarrassed by the admission. “I didn’t want to give her the chance to tell me not to come.”
“So… what? You’re just going to knock on her door and say, ‘Hey, babe, remember me?’”
Sam twitched a smile. “Yeah, something like that. Although I won’t call her ‘babe’ – she’d probably hit me. Again.”
“It’s your face, buddy,” said Paul, shaking his head with a reluctant smile.
Yoshi laughed.
“You strange fellow, Sam-san. I wish you good success. Now we celebrate! Big time!”
Sam picked up his bottle and clinked it against Yoshi’s. “Cheers!” he said.
“Kampai!” shouted Yoshi.
“Banzai!” yelled Paul.
It was a strange feeling being in the empty hostel. Sam looked around his room, now stripped of personal belongings. The tiny, hutch-like room seemed desolate, sorry to see him go. Sam had sold or given away much of the belongings he’d accrued over the previous nine months and paid an exorbitant amount to ship home – to his sister’s home – the things he wanted to keep. It was almost a re-run of leaving London back in the Spring. He wondered where he’d be in a month’s time, unwilling to let himself hope who he might be with.
He looked again at the plane ticket. It had been a spur of the moment decision to use up the greater part of his savings to travel to Melbourne, but after what had happened with Gerda – or nearly happened – Sam had left himself with little choice. At least, that’s how it felt.
Yoshi had left for Hokkaido, insisting that Sam contact him as soon there was ‘news’ as he put it. Paul, more bluntly, had reminded Sam that a visit to New York was also available at a moment’s notice – with or without Tara.
With a final glance round, Sam dropped the room-key on his desk and walked out of the hostel.
He had been travelling for 24 hours including a short stop-over at Singapore. Now, standing on the burning tarmac outside Melbourne’s airport, he couldn’t help wondering what the hell he was doing. He was light-headed from jetlag, and found it more than a little disconcerting to hear so much English spoken around him after nine months in Japan; he felt off balance.
Sam looked again at the map he’d printed out. From what he could work out, Tara’s mother’s farm was somewhere out in the sticks in the Yarra valley, a few miles beyond the nearest village. He could get the bus most of the way and after that, he was probably hoofing it.
It hadn’t seemed like a great distance when he’d looked at the map on a winter’s day in Tokyo, but now the sun was scorching the air, even at ten o’clock in the morning. It was yet another shock after the sleet and slush he’d left behind: pleasant for a moment, but only for the few seconds it took before sweat started to trickle down the back of his neck.
It was early afternoon by the time the jolting bus dumped him in the improbably-named village of Woori Yallock. The place slept, looking utterly deserted, and Sam wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweed being blown down the dusty street.
“Good luck, mate!” yelled the bus driver, then added something under his breath that sounded like “crazy pom”.
Sam hefted his battered duffel bag over one shoulder, squinted up at the bleached sky and headed out, walking north.
The road climbed steadily, leading him past yellowing fields and scrubby bush, to a distant ridge thickly covered with tall, thirsty-looking eucalyptus trees.
His shirt was soon saturated and ringed with salt. He shifted the duffel bag to his other shoulder and walked on, more slowly now. Not because of the heat or the dust or the growing weight of his bag, but because he was nearly at his journey’s end. What on earth was he going to say to Tara when he got there? ‘Hello’ seemed deeply inadequate, and wasn’t quite the devastating opening that he was looking for, but anything else sounded – well, he didn’t know how it sounded. Dumb, probably.
He reached the crest of a hill and stared down across the valley, pausing to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. It was beautiful in a bleak way; a beauty that was more to do with the sculpted hills and the sharpness of the horizon than the bareness of the land.
Sam pulled a bottle of tepid water out of his bag and took a long drink. He was tempted to tip the rest of it over his head but decided it was more useful to save it for drinking. He thought Tara’s place must be near, but the bare hills gave no clue.
A battered Land Rover roared up behind him and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and diesel. Hopefully the driver would be able to point him in the right direction because there didn’t seem to be a single building of any description in the valley below, or anywhere else nearby.
The driver’s door opened the door and a woman jumped out. She was tall with spiky blonde hair, her skin turned a golden-brown by the sun.
“Sam? Oh my god! Sam!”
“Tara!”
Sam’s eyes were hungry but uncertain. He dropped his bag to the ground and strode forwards, hesitating for the smallest fraction of a second before scooping her into his arms. There were no words.
He kissed her until he couldn’t breathe anymore, and when he opened his eyes, she was smiling at him.
“You are the dumbest, most stupid, most ridiculous, most clueless excuse for an idiot of a man I’ve ever met, Sam Patterson.”
“I know,” he said, grinning back.
He was a year older but was he any wiser? After all, he was still hopeless with women…
“What kept you?” she said.
Sam’s Blog
I’m in Melbourne, Australia. I’ll write soon to explain.
PS Julie – I guess you’ve won the bet.
Australian haiku
All the music I need
In the arms
Of my love.
THE END
The New Samurai Page 31