Sunil extended his hand and Oliver shook it.
‘Who do you work with, Sunil?’
‘WHO.’
Oliver paused. ‘Sorry, who?’
‘WHO. The World Health Organisation,’ Sunil explained patiently.
‘Oh, right. WHO.’
‘Yes.’
Rick was staring at them with a big glazed smile that suggested he had already consumed a fair amount of beer. He caught Oliver’s eye. ‘Hey, Oliver. Ask me about the hat.’
Oliver nodded. ‘Tell me about the hat.’ He settled back and prepared himself for Rick’s reply, buoyed by the promise of another night caught up in the magnetic pull of Rick’s vibrant, ardent spontaneity that would chase Jasmine from his mind.
‘So I went to Gizo for this workshop and we went surfing on the weekend, right, and I met this crazy old tourist from Texas who is sailing around the world with his much younger wife, and I was playing poker with him on his yacht and he bet his hat! He literally bet his hat. He said it’s the hat from that movie with Chevy Chase.’
Oliver stared at Rick. He had no idea what he was talking about but it sounded cool. ‘Can I touch the hat?’
‘You know it,’ Rick replied and solemnly leant his head towards Oliver. Oliver stroked the hat with admiration.
‘You want to touch it, Sunil?’ Rick asked, leaning towards Sunil.
Sunil looked very much like he didn’t but he stuck out his hand to placate Rick and gave the hat a small pat.
‘Yes. It’s very . . . hat like.’
‘Yeah,’ Rick agreed. ‘What a hat . . . Man!’
Sunil had gotten into development to make his country a better, fairer place. He wanted to do something meaningful to help create an India where extreme wealth and consuming poverty did not grind against each other so harshly. He had studied hard and found a volunteer position with a large multinational and they had told him the best thing he could do was to get experience in another country so that he could bring new ideas back to India. Sunil had reluctantly found work two oceans away from the young wife in Delhi he had spent very little real time with and tried to muster the same enthusiasm on these foreign shores as he felt back home. And it worked, most of the time, but every so often Sunil found himself sitting in a bar surrounded by other expats stuck in meaningless conversations that involved stroking someone’s hat and he saw his father’s confused face as he asked Sunil why he had to travel to other countries to learn what he could plainly see from his own backyard. But Sunil put up with it, because having Rick on side helped his work, and it beat doing nothing on a lonely Saturday night in Honiara.
As the beer flowed, Rick got into full swing. He tended to act like the ring leader of a slightly abashed, marginally overwhelmed circus, ushering in conversations and designating when it was time for various audience members to contribute.
‘So that chick called again the other day. Mandy, remember her, Oliver?’ – Oliver did – ‘and she wanted to know if I wanted to meet her for dinner at that place where we had the chilli squid once, remember, Sunil?’ – Sunil remembered – ‘but when I got there she was acting really weirdly and I was like “Man! Don’t do this. Do not do this. Don’t act like we’re dating because we’re not”. And I knew it would get weird. I mean, I don’t blame her, but man . . . Chicks . . . Am I right, Sunil?’
Sunil gave a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders, then stood up and excused himself to go to the bathroom. Rick watched Sunil walk away then leant across to Oliver.
‘Sunil’s a top guy, but he gets a bit funny when people talk about ladies, because he’s got this wife back home who he hasn’t seen for ages. Poor guy, trying to make things work long distance. It doesn’t work, man. That’s why I told my old lady goodbye.’
Oliver nodded, took a sip of beer and prepared to listen to Rick’s regular rant about his ex. Though he’d heard various iterations of it already, Oliver was always struck, and inspired, by Rick’s dual ability to roll with the punches and his no shit attitude to life. If life was a person, Oliver liked to think that Rick was in a constant state of gripping it by the balls.
‘I mean, man, she was just so . . . so . . . she didn’t feel the realness of the world. She didn’t get the pain and suffering and awesomeness of other countries. She was happy in her own little world with shit like brunch and IKEA and DVD box sets and I was not going to have her bring me down. Man, I totally dodged a bullet there.’
Rick took a large sip of beer. ‘She said she loved me, but I mean love, what is that? What is that?’
Oliver nodded, then realised Rick was expecting a response. ‘Well, I suppose, no one knows. No one understands love. Or human emotions.’
‘True, brother,’ Rick said, raising his beer bottle.
‘And I suppose that’s a good thing. If we did, what would people write songs about, or poetry or stories?’
Rick nodded solemnly, his bottle still raised in the air. ‘I’ll drink to that, my poet friend.’ He drained his bottle and slammed it unsteadily back on the table.
‘Ol’ Man River,’ he said, looking into Oliver’s eyes. ‘You totally need to join my band.’
As the sun came up the next morning, Alison was sitting on the stoop at the little blue house drinking tea and writing in her notebook. She had started writing a list of the various tasks she was currently helping Sera’s friends with and this had turned into a list of all the countries she wanted to visit and then that had somehow turned into a list of jobs she might one day have which would take her to all these countries. There was a rattle of a tin can across the ground and Alison looked up guiltily. Two dull red eyes stared back.
‘Hey, Roger.’
The dog didn’t respond.
‘What, you can’t tell me you prefer to be called Nightstalker?’
The dog looked at her indifferently and sniffed its crotch. Alison stared at Roger-Nightstalker and for the first time noticed the telltale raised nipples that suggested Roger-Nightstalker had recently been feeding pups.
‘Roger! You’re a mum?’
The dog glanced at her as if she was simple.
‘Of course you are,’ Alison said and sighed. She leant forward. The dog looked startled for a moment and pulled back slightly.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Alison said in a hushed voice, ‘but I have no idea what I’m meant to be doing.’
The dog said nothing, and Alison turned back to her to-do list. Soon a taxi pulled up and Oliver stumbled out. His face lit up when he saw her. She wondered if she should ask where he’d been, but before she could he knelt down at her feet and gave her a despondent look.
‘I don’t feel like an adult.’
Alison looked at him blankly.
‘I don’t. People look at me like I am. They treat me like I am. But I have a secret, Ali.’
She raised an eyebrow.
His speech was slurred. ‘Really I’m just . . . I’m just . . . just a giant man child.’
Alison reached out and touched his cheek. It was sticky with sweat.
‘Do you need a hug?’
‘I need a bed.’
‘I can give you both.’
‘Done.’
Later that morning Alison sat waiting in the Lime Lounge for Sera to turn up. She figured they’d have about an hour for their English lesson before Sera’s friend was due to arrive with a job application she wanted Alison’s help with. Alison had hastily downloaded an English grammar lesson plan and was only now really looking at it. Truncated copular-participial clauses . . . Alison examined the page and felt a twinge in her temple. She suspected this was her brain exploding. She would never share this with anyone, but the phrase made her think of a group of Coptic elephant lawyers. She looked up as Sera sat down and grabbed her hands.
‘Alison! I have exciting news! There is a special event tonight to celebrate the Australi
a–Solomon Partnership Initiative and my husband said you can come!’
This was far more interesting than truncated copular-participial clauses.
‘It’s at the high commissioner’s house!’ Sera added. ‘Which means chocolate cake!’
Alison’s eyes lit up with joy.
‘Also, I’m pregnant.’
Alison stared in shock as she processed what she’d just heard. ‘Wait, what? You’re pregnant?’
‘Yes. Three months.’
‘You’re going to have a baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is so great! Wow! When did you find out?’
Sera looked shyly at her hands. ‘The other day. That’s why I’ve been putting on weight. I thought it was all the cake, but it turns out it’s a baby instead.’
Alison self-consciously touched her own new layer of stomach fat which was entirely cake-related.
‘You know what? That means you’ve been pregnant the whole time I’ve known you! In fact, you’ve been pregnant as long as I’ve been in the Solomons. What a coincidence.’
Sera nodded happily. ‘I know! It’s so random.’
Instead of learning about truncated copular-participial clauses, which, really, was no one’s loss, Alison and Sera talked about what they would wear to the party that night. Sera had just described a beautiful layered fifties-style dress that hid her stomach and showed off her legs, a bargain at one of the kaliko stores – the secondhand clothing shops that supplied the country with a majority of its clothing, sent in bales from Australia. Alison was mentally working her way through the cleaner T-shirts at home – both her own and Oliver’s.
‘I have a blue dress, but it’s kind of see-through on top and you’re supposed to wear a slip with it, and I don’t have one . . .’ she mulled. ‘I suppose I could wear my bathing suit and you wouldn’t really be able to tell . . .’
Sera stared at her with big eyes that gave away nothing. ‘Yes, why not?’
Alison was grateful to her for not making her feel like a complete sartorial failure.
‘I have a wonderful pair of earrings I got in Fiji when I was studying that match my dress. What jewellery will you wear?’ Sera asked.
Alison wondered whether there was anything in her house that could be used as jewellery. There was a kind of glittery red cord tying up one of the curtains . . .
‘Would you like me to bring you something?’ Sera added.
Alison thought about all the dust and dead flies that would be unleashed if she untied the curtains. ‘Yes, thank you.’
When she got home, Oliver was in a frantic state, churning through their pile of clothes.
‘What are you doing?’
He looked up briefly and then kept going. ‘I’m looking for something cool to wear.’
Alison could hear the panic in his voice. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Band practice.’
‘You have a band?’
‘Yes. With Rick. We’re awesome.’
‘What instrument do you play?’
‘We haven’t discussed the finer points yet.’
Alison leant over. ‘Here. Wear this one. It looks clean.’
Oliver took it from her gratefully and Alison started sifting through the pile.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘My bathing suit.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to a party with Sera tonight.’
‘Is it a pool party?’
‘No.’
Alison found her bathing suit and gave it a curious sniff. It smelt on the better side of clean. She started getting changed.
‘How is Sera?’
‘Good. She’s pregnant.’
‘Oh, wow. That’s great . . . Isn’t it?’
Oliver had been around women long enough to know that this was an appropriate question.
‘Of course it is. She’s super excited. I’m super excited. We talked about it and I’m going to help her through the pregnancy and childbirth and raising it and stuff.’
Oliver pressed his lips together.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What?’
‘It’s just . . .’ Oliver paused. ‘What do you know about raising a child? You’ve never been a mother.’
‘No, but I’ve been a child.’
Oliver conceded that this was true.
Rick’s band met twice a week in a big room underneath his house. The room could have housed an entire Solomon family, but for Rick it held two guitars, a bass, a drum kit and an assortment of other percussion instruments, as well as a giant poster of Bob Marley on the wall, across which Rick had drunkenly scrawled ‘Rock’n’Roll means dying from a gangrene toe’. Oliver had expected the band to consist entirely of other expat workers but was pleasantly surprised to see a few local faces in the room. Rick was wearing a T-shirt with Kurt Cobain’s anguished face printed on it. He’d cut the sleeves off and was wearing a red bandana. He greeted Oliver with a complicated handshake that ended with a double fist bump and casually gestured around the room.
‘Band, Oliver. Oliver, band.’
Oliver smiled awkwardly at the band members, who smiled awkwardly back. Rick cleared his throat.
‘Okay, introductions. I’m lead guitar, vocals and axe-master extraordinaire, obviously. On drums we have Boris the crazy German, who is a mild-mannered monitoring and evaluation adviser by day but a beast behind the bongos at night.’
The small blond guy behind the drums gave a quiet nod and went back to adjusting the high hat.
‘Then we have Junior the bass master and Clive on rhythm guitar. When they’re not tearing the world a new ear hole with their manic skills, they’re my security guards.’
Junior and Clive shook hands with Oliver.
‘And guys, this is Oliver. Oliver is a writer who can’t dance.’
Oliver blushed. ‘Um, so tell me about the band. What’s your name?’
‘The Clintons –’
‘Pacific Waves –’
Rick and Boris replied at the same time. Rick shot Boris an irate look.
‘Yeah, well, we’re still working on that,’ he said shortly, ‘but as I keep telling Boris, we’re not going to be named after something that sounds like a fifties covers band that plays cruise ships and bar mitzvahs.’
Boris glared at him then did a comedic ‘ba-doom-ch’ on his kit.
‘Don’t Yoko this band, Boris. Just don’t.’
Oliver cleared his throat. ‘So have you had many gigs?’
‘Not exactly,’ Rick replied. ‘We’re currently looking for the right time to launch our sound.’ Behind him Junior shot a look at Clive, who snickered. Boris opened his mouth to say something but Rick cut him off. ‘All I can tell you is that we’re not going to be launching our sound at Boris’s team building day at work.’ He turned to Boris. ‘We’re not, dude. We’re just not. Anyway,’ Rick said, ‘let’s get our jam on.’
They picked up their instruments. Oliver looked around. ‘So, um, what do you want me to play?’
Rick appeared genuinely surprised by this question. ‘Oh, yeah. Right.’
He looked around the room. ‘Let’s see . . .’
Alison climbed out of the taxi, looked around and then quickly yanked one side of her bathers out of her bum. She hadn’t realised when she put the bathers on that they hadn’t been properly washed since she last went to the beach and the crotch was still full of sand. This was proving to be a slight inconvenience.
‘Alison!’
She turned around and saw Sera with a tall, handsome man in a suit. She smiled and hoped they hadn’t seen her adjusting her wedgie. Judging by the twitch at the corner of the man’s mouth, she suspected they had.
She stuck out her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Alison.
’
The man shook her hand with the warmth and affability of a seasoned politician.
‘Peter,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’
‘Congratulations,’ Alison gushed. ‘I mean about the baby. It’s such wonderful news.’
Sera held out a pair of dangly earrings and then grabbed Alison’s arm. ‘Let’s go into the party and find the chocolate cake!’
Peter smiled at them. ‘Yes. Let’s.’
The party was in the Australian high commissioner’s residence, a sprawling property with a tennis court and pool. The place was packed and as they made their way through the crowd Alison could pick out a range of local and international accents.
‘What’s this for again?’ she whispered.
‘The Australian–Solomon Partnership Initiative,’ Peter whispered back.
‘And what’s that?’ she asked.
‘It is our countries’ renewed commitment to work together to promote peaceful and harmonious co-development,’ Peter replied, and handed her a brochure that said this in big letters across the front.
‘And what does that mean?’ Alison asked.
He chuckled. ‘Every so often we sign a new agreement like this. It’s basically just a show of goodwill and it makes a nice story for the papers here and in Australia. You promise to keep giving us money and we promise to not harbour terrorists.’
‘Terrorists in the Solomons? Is that a thing?’ Alison asked.
‘Not if you keep giving us money,’ Peter replied and laughed loudly at his own joke.
‘Plus, there’s cake,’ Sera said, eyeing the trays as they passed.
‘Always wanting cake,’ Peter laughed. ‘Our baby will be the size of a whale.’
Eventually there was cake, but first they had to listen to a speech by someone who worked for the Australian high commission. Alison didn’t understand most of what was being said, but the words ‘cooperation’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘capacity building’ were mentioned an inordinate number of times. Whatever he was suggesting, everyone seemed to agree that it was in all of their national interests to do it. The speaker paused for applause and then stepped aside to allow more speeches to be made. He stood by watching with a fixed smile on his face whilst his eyes glazed over and he watched the cake tray out of the corner of his eye.
The Bit In Between Page 10