The Bit In Between

by Claire Varley

  When she emerged from the shower, Oliver was back at his laptop. She kissed his cheek. ‘How’s it going?’

  Oliver stared at the screen. ‘This is all I’ve got for three hours work.’

  She looked over his shoulder. There were a couple of random lines, a few individual words, and then a longer passage that was preceded by a note reading: ‘Col. Drakeford talks to assistant over tea and scones.’

  ‘You know, Johnson, independence is like these scones here.’

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘Well, everyone thinks they have the perfect recipe but rarely does one come across a truly decent version.’

  ‘Quite right, sir. Quite right.’

  ‘The secret,’ Colonel Drakeford said conspiratorially, ‘is the jam. You can have any type of scone you want, but the jam’s the thing that brings it all together.’

  Johnson peered at his scone. ‘We’re the jam, aren’t we, sir?’

  ‘Right you are, old boy. Right you are.’

  Alison was quiet for a moment.

  ‘It’s a metaphor,’ Oliver prompted. ‘For empire.’

  There was a prolonged hesitation, during which Oliver deleted everything he had written that morning.

  They had lunch together, but then Oliver started looking morose, so Alison grabbed her bag and headed back out the door. She was enjoying this new adventure with Oliver and hanging out with him was fun most of the time – he made her feel special and important, and he laughed at all her jokes. There was something incredible, too, about being beside him as he conjured a whole new work from nothing, but she knew by now when he was about to enter what she called ‘moody bastard writer mode’, and preferred to leave him alone at those times. If she didn’t, he would spend hours complaining that he was a hack and a fluke and should just give up on life altogether because he was terrible at everything. Alison didn’t mind listening to him moan for a while, but the unspoken rules of relationships dictated a level to which one should not see one’s partner descend, and Oliver curled up under the table biting his knuckles was a fairly solid benchmark for this.

  The Honiara air was thick and muggy, desperate to release the rain from its clouds. As she strolled towards town Alison felt sweat patches forming across her lower back and stomach and beneath her armpits. She couldn’t bear another afternoon drenched in her own sweat, so she waved down a taxi and got into the passenger seat. The taxidriver was a worried-looking young man with thin dreadlocks pulled back into a thick bundle at the back of his head.

  Alison smiled at him. ‘Mi laek go lo post offis,’ she said and he nodded, pulling into the traffic. Alison sat beside him, still smiling, trying to look open to conversation. The young man didn’t take his eyes off the road but cleared his throat.

  ‘You are from where? America?’

  ‘Australia,’ Alison replied.

  ‘You are with RAMSI?’

  ‘Nope. Just . . . volunteering.’ While currently she had no work, she was looking into volunteering options, so it wasn’t really a lie, and it was much easier than trying to explain that she had come here with her boyfriend, who was writing a novel. That explanation always prompted more questions, such as were they married, why not, would they get married and what did their parents think about all this?

  Her answer seemed to satisfy the young man.

  ‘Mi friend with wanfala Australian girl before,’ he said.

  Alison knew he meant friend in the same way that Oliver’s mother had introduced her to everyone at his ­yiayia’s funeral as Oliver’s ‘friend’.

  ‘Hem work with an NGO. Mi work with same NGO before mi drivem taxi.’

  ‘What happened?’ Alison asked.

  The young man blinked. ‘She had to go home. She said she’d come back one day.’

  They both let this last part hang in the air, untouched and unbelieved, until it faded away out of existence.

  In the post office car park Alison paid the young man and paused. She wanted to say something, but there wasn’t really anything she could say, so she offered an awkward ‘tagio’ and left the cab. She watched him drive away.

  Moses had worked for one of the biggest NGOs in the Solomon Islands as a driver and mechanic. The work was relatively easy, the pay was all right and he got to spend a lot of time staring at Jessica, the Australian volunteer who smiled at everyone and sometimes baked cakes for the entire office. One day when he was filling in his fuel log, Moses noticed that Jessica was staring at him, and later that day the piece of cake she saved for him was by far the biggest of all the slices. Moses and Jessica started what was at first an awkward but then wonderful friendship and made plans for a future full of adventure. Then Jessica’s contract had ended and she couldn’t get it extended. So she and Moses cried together and promised each other things that they both knew would never happen and then Jessica flew back to her homeland. The other expats working at the NGO felt sorry for Moses and told him that Jessica had used him, but Moses didn’t say anything because it wasn’t their business and they didn’t know anything. Not long after, Moses quit his NGO job and started driving his own taxi, which gave him more freedom because he could choose his own hours and have lunch whenever he wanted. And every time a missus flagged him down, a small, ­unrealistic part of him hoped it would be the one person he knew it never would be.

  When Alison returned home Oliver looked considerably more cheerful.

  ‘How many pages?’ she asked.

  ‘Two.’ He gave her a smug look then glanced at the parcel under her arm.

  ‘From your mother,’ Alison said, and Oliver’s face contorted in a look of suspicion.

  ‘What impractical thing has she sent this time?’

  Last week Oliver’s mother had sent them three packs of scented baby wipes. Alison tore open the box and grinned, then held up a tea towel, two rolls of toilet paper and something that claimed to be an ‘egg peeler’. Oliver stared at the toilet paper. ‘What does she think we’ve been using for the past couple of weeks?’

  Alison glanced in the box. ‘There’s a letter too.’

  She extracted the folded letter and a photo fell out. Oliver picked it up. It was a profile shot of a beautiful young woman hugging a fluffy dog. Oliver turned it over.

  ‘Lexi’s boyfriend left her to study bees in the Amazon, and her mother says she’s single now.’

  Written on the back in pen was a phone number and an email address accompanied by a playful love heart.

  Alison’s mouth dropped open. ‘Wow.’

  Oliver looked at the letter. ‘It’s addressed to both of us,’ he said.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Wow.’ Alison grinned. ‘I wonder when your mum will stop hating me?’

  Oliver didn’t say anything.

  ‘Maybe at our wedding?’ Alison joked. ‘Or my funeral?’

  Oliver didn’t respond.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Oliver looked at his hands. ‘I’ve been thinking about something Rick said last night.’

  Alison’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, yes. What did Rick have to say?’

  ‘He said something about how it was nice that we’re still in the honeymoon phase where everything I do is cute to you and you haven’t started hating me yet.’

  Alison scowled. ‘What? What does Rick know? I’m not going to start hating you. I can’t believe you’re listening to Rick. You barely even know him.’

  Oliver gave her a measured look. ‘I barely know you, really.’

  Alison shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. Should we try to peel some eggs?’ She held up the device and waggled it in the air.

  ‘What happens when it ends?’

  ‘When what ends?’

  ‘The honeymoon phase. What h
appens when you wake up and realise that this is reality? When I fart in bed or I get really sick and you have to put up with my sniffing and hacking up phlegm? When you look at me and see a Picasso?’

  Alison shrugged again. ‘That won’t happen.’

  ‘Yes, it will. Because that’s life. That’s reality. Some days I’ll do things that annoy you. In fact, I reckon I’ll do something vaguely annoying pretty much every day, because that’s the type of person I am. But you don’t know that, because you don’t know me yet. You still think I’m perfect.’

  Alison gave him a look that suggested otherwise, but Oliver kept going. Clearly this had been on his mind all day.

  ‘You know who I am? I’m a mess. I pretend I’m not but I am. And one day you’ll see that and not want me anymore. I’m ridiculous. I try to read the newspaper every day but sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes I get nightmares and punch in my sleep. Once on a tram when I was really tired from working all day, there was a pregnant lady and I pretended to be asleep so I didn’t have to offer her my seat. My feet get really dry in winter and shed skin. I hate pets. I sometimes piss on the toilet seat because I get distracted.’

  Alison looked at him bewildered. ‘Distracted by what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Stuff. What I’m going to have for dinner. If I have any bills that need paying. The size of my penis. Just stuff. But the point is that one day soon you – we – are going to emerge from this bubble we’ve been living in and things are going to get real.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon that bubble has already burst . . .’

  ‘Ok, but I mean it. What will you do then? Run away again?’

  Alison looked at the ground. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll – I’m not going anywhere, ok? I’ll . . . I don’t know. I’ll stand by you.’

  Oliver grinned. ‘You’ll stand by me? Who are you? Ben E. King?’

  ‘What? Who?’ Alison was confused.

  ‘He sang that song.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I think.’

  Alison took a breath and her shoulders relaxed. ‘I love you.’

  Oliver deflated a little. ‘Yeah? Why?’

  ‘Because you know stupid things like that.’

  ‘I learnt it at a trivia night.’

  She scrunched up her nose and Oliver grinned, reaching out for her.

  ‘Well,’ Alison straightened up and put on a mock-affected voice. ‘Regardless, I don’t know if I can do this because I always told myself that I would end up with someone who understood science and could explain things like global warming to me and you don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘I know it’s not good.’

  ‘What isn’t good?’

  ‘Global warming.’

  ‘Why isn’t it good?’

  Oliver gave her a bemused look. ‘Because of the ice caps and the sea levels and the cannibal polar bears and . . . do you know what, this is just distracting from the point.’

  ‘Which is?’

  He looked sheepishly into her eyes. ‘I don’t even remember anymore.’

  And then she laughed, and he laughed, and they had post-fight, pre-dinner, lazy weekday afternoon sex, which is widely regarded as one of the best kinds of sex.

  The rest of the week passed and soon it was Sunday. They had come to the Solomons knowing, from their guidebook, that the locals were devout Christians for whom Sundays were for church. Neither Alison nor Oliver were believers, so for the first few Sundays they had remained hidden at home, not wanting to offend, but lately they had begun to venture out, joining other expats, non-believers and the ecclesiastically lazy as they enjoyed the quiet streets of the city, free of their usual bustle and buzz. However on this particular Sunday Oliver sat at his desk struggling through an incredibly dense book on the history of the Solomon Islands. He had realised that he would, at some stage, need to do some actual research and had managed to locate a book with a couple of chapters dedicated to the country’s independence, pledging himself to a quiet Sunday of nothing but research.

  A sketchy outline was scribbled in his notebook:

  Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira first European to reach islands in 1568. Named ‘Solomons’ after rumours islands hid the lost ­treasures of King Solomon.

  Missionaries began arriving in nineteenth century, followed by ‘blackbirders’ – tricking or kidnapping islanders to be labourers in Queensland cane fields

  WWII – not great place to be. Battle of Guadalcanal. Estimated 38,000 dead. Dysentery/malaria. Like South Pacific but less singing and dancing.

  British declared protectorate after WWII.

  Independence 1978 – transition of power.

  Maasina Rule self-determination movement.

  My pen is running out of in

  He stared at his notes. He wanted his book to reflect this tumultuous time in world history. To describe the atmosphere of excitement and apprehension and incredible pride that would have accompanied the handing over of sovereignty to this new nation. He wanted to share the difficulties of the transition of power from a British-led administration experienced in the art of colonial rule to a new government that was trying to lead as a single nation a country made up of many diverse and often conflicting tribes and cultures. To capture the insanity of creating a nation where nation hadn’t existed before with the seemingly random grouping together of a chain of previously non-unified islands. The conservative in him wanted to write something you could hear a flag fluttering behind while the radical in him wanted the book to stick its middle finger up at colonialism for essentially ruining the world. He wanted it to be revolutionary. But also funny. And moving. And packed with underlying life lessons. A bestseller and literary phenomenon and something Oprah would have included in her book club. So far all he had written today was a paragraph detailing Colonel Drakeford’s tendency to wear white knee socks with sandals. It was a good start.

  He abandoned his notes and wandered outside. Alison was swinging back and forth in the hammock, one foot trailing along the ground beneath her. When she saw him she sighed dramatically. She’d been searching for volunteer work but had discovered she didn’t really have the qualifications she needed even for unpaid work.

  ‘I’m starting to regret my arts degree,’ she told him glumly. ‘I spent the entire time drinking cheap cask red in squats in North Carlton and protesting against wars the university wasn’t actually involved in but no one seems to be hiring for someone with that particular skillset.’

  When he smiled sympathetically she flopped back in the hammock and closed her eyes. ‘I’m serious. I have no actual skills.’

  He left her, and went to their room to change his shirt. When he returned a short while later she was fast asleep, dozing peacefully in the tree-fractured sunlight. Oliver had his writing to give purpose to each day, but she had nothing. She was bored, and Oliver knew that bored people tended to leave. He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined beams of energy travelling from his brain to hers, willing her to stay.

  One day she came home with a battered guitar and a book of chords.

  ‘Can you play guitar?’ Oliver asked with interest.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Alison had played recorder for three months when she was nine years old. She felt this gave her a basic ‘grounding in musicality’, as she called it. It didn’t. But she persisted, banging away at the strings with a vigour that often made Oliver wonder what horrible thing the guitar had done in its previous life as a tree. She would sometimes interrupt Oliver’s work to strum a few chords at him, then ask him to identify the song. Oliver dreaded this question because he was never even remotely right, yet every time Alison gave him a look of derision that suggested he was in some way to blame for her song being so very unrecognisable. />
  ‘Ollie, what’s this?’

  ‘. . . the theme song from Friends?’

  ‘No.’ She gave him the look.

  Apparently it had been ‘All Along the Watchtower’, the Jimi Hendrix version.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and decided that Colonel Drakeford would be a terrible guitar player who failed miserably at seducing his lady-love Geraldine through serenade.

  When Alison wasn’t playing guitar, she was writing poetry in her notebook, though she wouldn’t show it to him, and when she wasn’t doing that she was picking fights. One afternoon Oliver had pointed out that there weren’t, as she had been trying to suggest, polar bears in the Antarctic and she had proclaimed adamantly that there were.

  ‘There are! I saw it in a documentary. It was on SBS.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I did. And I read it on the internet.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Some science website. It was by a PhD candidate.’

  ‘What university?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Plus, I know it’s true because my cousin’s friend went trekking in the Antarctic to Mawson’s Huts as part of his Duke of Edinburgh and they had to shoot a polar bear to stop it attacking them.’

  She had said this last part so earnestly that Oliver had burst out laughing, amused by the childlike stubbornness with which she refused to back down. Later that night, during dinner, he had casually shown her an article he had downloaded from the web debunking her claims. She glanced at it briefly and pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about. When he laughed at her again she had thrown a piece of bread at him.