‘Sorry, I can’t help myself. You’re very pretty.’
‘Really?’
‘You sure are.’ He smiles. ‘I can be such a dingbat, can’t I?’
‘A what?’ she giggles.
‘Idiot, fool, you know.’ He makes a face.
She raises her eyebrows and chuckles. Then they both break into uncontrollable laughter, waves of it, until they clutch their sides. Then, with the floodgates open, an explosion of words follows.
With the aroma of food wafting around them, they talk about the flight, Australian weather, the crazy autumn winds, pictures on the wall, Italian cafés, why wood-oven pizzas taste better than normal ones, Australian slang, horoscope signs. They recount the little stories from their letters. Laila feels her shyness rising off her like steam from a damp garment being ironed. Every now and then, Jim touches her hand or elbow lightly.
‘I can’t believe you’re really here,’ he says finally.
‘I know, I can’t believe it myself. So happy to be in Australia.’
‘You speak English really well. I know you mentioned learning English at school and that, and your written English is perfect, but hearing your voice now, I can’t get over it.’
‘It’s not that good. Only average.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Everyone speaks English in Malaysia. Some well, some not so well.’
‘I thought Malaysian was the main language.’
‘Yes, Bahasa is, but with friends and at the shops, everywhere, we only speak English.’
Now that they’ve broken the ice she can take in her surroundings. As if awoken, she sees everything with curious eyes: the glitter of the glass cabinet with cakes and ice cream, the row of upside-down wine glasses above the bar, the clean pavement, dogs sitting quietly while their owners sip coffee or read a magazine. The whiteness of people’s skins, multicoloured streaks in hair, exposed midriffs of young women, tattoos peeping up from their buttocks above waistbands. She’s entranced. The meals come. She eats.
‘Food okay?’ Jim asks.
‘Yes, yes.’ She shifts her focus back to him. ‘Everything so new, so different.’
‘A lot to take in, huh? You’ve plenty of time, don’t worry. A whole lifetime to discover your new home.’
Her new home. It still hasn’t sunk in that Australia is now home. But now that Jim has articulated it, the idea winds its way into her consciousness. Goose bumps rise on her skin, then she’s light-headed. She flashes him a smile. He takes her hand and plants a kiss on her fingers. The sensation makes her body tingle. Blood rushes to her face, so she lowers her head hoping he won’t notice.
She does not taste the food; she only sees his face, awash with sunlight streaming in through the window. She imagines him opening the door to his red brick home. Sweet fragrance, like that of the roses sitting on the chair beside her, wafts out from the front door. Music swirls in the air. Jim places her hand gently back on the table. She sees the fine golden hairs on his wrist, gazes at his lips and she wants to explode in happiness.
The red brick exterior will soon come into view, the image already imprinted in her head from his photo. She’ll recognise it at once. The white bay window will leap out first. Patience, she’s waited all these months. The drive to Renmark will be a long one, three hours at least. That’s what Jim said.
It is mid-afternoon and they’re heading out of the city. Buildings and traffic peter out, and vehicles speed along the two-lane highway.
‘Recline your seat if you want, princess,’ Jim says. ‘Press the lever, by the side of your seat.’
She presses the lever. The seat collapses and her body falls flat. ‘Oops.’
Jim pulls the car across, leans over and adjusts the angle for her. ‘There, better now?’
She nods, looks up at him and smiles.
The café meal and the quick drive around Adelaide have overloaded her senses. Less than a day in Australia and already she’s seen and experienced so much. She leans back, feels the softness of the seat, stretches out her legs and lets it all soak in.
Jim drives them through valleys that undulate and fold into expanses of bush scrub, past little towns of a few streets with names she can’t remember. At a roadhouse, he stops for petrol, and she sees massive trucks pumping fuel and people going into the eatery.
With the car still, she can see into the distance and the sprawl of the land over hillocks and rises. The landscape is completely different to Sarawak. So brown, so dry. Grass in shades varying from olive to ochre to golden give way to stretches of land broken by rock outcrops, shrubs and patches of red earth. A stark contrast to the lushness of jungles back home. Is this what wheat looks like? Or is it barley? She thinks hard and tries to recall what she studied in Geography. Soon, endless trees glide past, some with silvery trunks, layers of curling bark hanging off them. Jim tells her they are gum trees, native to Australia. When she catches sight of a leaping creature, she squeals.
‘Is that a kangaroo?’
‘Sure is. Just wait, we might see emus yet.’
‘Ee mews?’
‘Yep, E-M-U-S, also native to Australia. They look like ostriches.’
‘Really? Wow.’
Laila watches the landscape coast by, and catches an occasional view of Jim. She doesn’t notice his baldness anymore. She decides she likes his nose best, more than his mouth. It is the way it slopes, the pointy tip, prominent now from his side profile. It is what she’s always liked about Caucasian men. Unlike her own nose, round and wide.
Jim flicks on the radio. Eighties hits bellow out. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the song ‘Staying Alive’. When country and western tunes come on, he whistles. He looks pensive, the talkativeness at the café gone. Laila hears his steady breathing, notices the coarse skin of his hands. His quietness does not worry her. In fact, after the hours of chatting since they met this morning, it’s relaxing. She has a whole lifetime to exchange words with him. Moments of unease and awkwardness are only to be expected at first.
The car engine drones. Occasionally Jim shifts in his seat, and his joints creak. Minutes tick by. Warm air flows out from the heater, lulling her. She lets her eyes close, in warmth, in pleasure, into the drift of sleep.
‘Nearing Renmark now.’
Jim’s voice awakens her from what feels like a long sleep. The car is slowing down. She pulls the seat lever, sits up and looks out the window. The sun is low in the sky, the colours ahead have changed and deepened, distant valleys and trees darkening.
When they reach the town, Jim points out the main streets to her, the church with the white statue where he and his mum used to go for Christmas mass, the Renmark Hotel with its 1930s architecture. The place is nicer and more modern than she’d imagined for a country town. Old-style buildings look clean and new.
She takes in the pretty gardens and homes with lace curtains and windowsills lined with pots of colourful flowers. Jim drives past orchards, miles and miles of them. She doesn’t recognise the fruit trees. Jim tries to explain but she can’t tell the difference.
‘See that big house?’ Jim points. ‘That’s where my boss lives.’
Laila looks out the window at the majestic-looking mansion perched on a hillock. Surrounding it is a sprawl of fruit trees. It looks like a castle lifted out of a fairy tale.
‘It’s huge.’
‘Yeah, one of the richest men around the place.’
‘Really?’
Fruit-growing must be big business. She’s thankful Jim is in this industry.
About a kilometre out of Renmark, they wind through a quiet street set in leafy surroundings. He slows down as they approach a boom gate, sticks in a card to open the gate and enters a fenced area tucked away from everything.
‘Nearly there,’ he says.
Rows of funny-looking box-like structures sitting on wheels appear. Laila looks around her in amazement. Where are they heading? Things feel a little strange. At the far end of the area,
Jim angles the car into a tiny space beside one of the boxes, wheels grinding to a dreadful halt.
She stares at the thing in front of her. Her breath becomes short. She cannot believe her eyes. Her mind starts to spin. She hits her temple with her palm as if to stop her brain from processing what is going on. Where is the red brick house? This is a shoebox on wheels, a tin shed. Tiny holes for windows, a door as makeshift as the ones in the longhouse. Dozens of these box-things sprawled over the place, parked alongside each other. Some hooked to cars, some looking like war tanks. Do people actually live in them? What on earth are they?
‘Well, this is it. My caravan,’ Jim says. ‘Home.’
Laila can’t believe what she’s hearing. She looks out the window and surveys the area. The sun is weakening, the sky deepened into shades of purple, ink-coloured hues flaring out in jagged strokes. A pale eerie light stains the evening air. Not a soul about, endless stretches of gravel and shale, dotted with rows of these dreary structures in various shades of grey. Like a scene in a movie where they’ve reached the end of the journey and find themselves stuck in an unknown and terrifying place.
She stiffens in her seat, wishing she could stop time. Darkness engulfs her as if she’s sliding into a cavity. She is gripping the sides, trying to claw her way out but she slips in deeper and deeper. Then nausea rises in her stomach. She puts her hand to her mouth, tasting the bile at the back of her throat. This is not what she imagined for her first day in Australia. This is not part of the promise, the deal. Things are not going according to plan. Things have derailed. Badly. Something else has taken over, something out of her control.
Her mind leaps back over the past twelve months of planning and scheming. The fluffy towels, the sweet scent of bath gel, the sofa in the living room—all fizzle into the air before her eyes. She has had these images in her head for so long. It started when Jim assured her that life in Australia would be a change from the longhouse. Then the photo. They had percolated in her, burned in her, to materialise into this nightmare.
She turns to Jim. ‘What about the house in the photo?’
A pause. Jim looks down at his hands. ‘It was a friend’s.’
Shock closes her in. And a million questions: Why didn’t you tell me it wasn’t yours? Why did you agree when I said the house in the photo looked nice? Why did you let me imagine all this time that it was yours? Why did you deceive me?
She keeps silent, pulling the jacket close around her. She stays glued to the seat. Like the huge wild boars plying the rainforests of Sarawak, her thoughts lumber.
Beside her, Jim sits quietly, twisting his fingers into a knot.
‘The caravan’s not the best, but a lot of people live in them,’ he says.
Laila stares in horror at the caravan.
Jim gets out and opens the back tray of the ute, and she feels the ground below her cracking, shifting and giving way. Her legs will not move. She hears Jim’s feet scuffing across the gravel, sees him put the suitcase on the ground. He inserts his key into the door, opens it and flicks on a light switch. Bluish fluorescent light floods the caravan inside. Laila catches a glimpse of shabby-looking kitchen cabinets. A lime-green sheet, partly discoloured, covers the floor. She doesn’t need to enter the thing to imagine the rest of it, to size up the shambles of her new home.
She leans her head back, convinced she has ruined her life.
2
HER FACE TORMENTS HIM, the way she looks out the window, clutching the jacket as if she wants to sink into herself. He had expected her to attack him, kick up a fuss about it.
But Laila just sits there as if paralysed. A bitterness creeps into her face, reminding him of the first taste of lemon on your tongue. He turns away, unsure what to do. Something tells him that this time he has dug himself into a hole he can’t get out of. He had, in past moments like this, always lied his way out of trouble or, as he would prefer to put it, bent the truth a little. But he can’t this time. The truth of his life confronts him, here and now, in the caravan, the flimsy door rattling in the wind.
Jim pulls a chair out and sits it in front of the door to stop the rattle. He drags Laila’s suitcase up the two steps into the caravan. He busies himself, shifting things around, avoiding looking her way.
Pinned to the wall is his favourite photo of her, sitting on the grass near the riverbank, the longhouse visible behind her. Swathes of black hair cascading over her shoulders, gleaming where it catches the sun, her neck stem-like, her olive skin luminous. Looking at it, a rush of pleasure always floods his veins, a glow spreading from the pit of his stomach. Laila’s slender waistline and petite form remind him of a tiger lily just bloomed, petals arching and opening out just so.
But now, the last twelve months of exchanging letters go up in smoke. He thinks about the secrets he shared with her in his letters, stories about his childhood that he had never breathed to anyone. And there were times when he felt so close to her his body quivered in anticipation of her letters—but as she sits now, glued to the car seat, Jim realises she is a stranger, and sees how much he still needs to learn about her. He wants to do or say something to ease the tension, but he doesn’t know what. How could they get into something so deep so soon anyway? He is afraid that by talking about the problem he will break the spell.
‘I’m going to get some takeaway for tea,’ he says, when she finally gets out of the car and climbs the steps of the caravan.
‘Tea?’
‘Yeah, something to eat.’
‘You mean dinner?’
‘Of course, dinner. Fish and chips, you like fish and chips?’
From the doorstep she looks blankly in at him. ‘Haven’t had it before.’
‘Well, nothing like the first time. Shop down Renmark Avenue. They make good chips. Won’t be long.’ Jim points at the wardrobe down the end of the caravan. He had cleared some of his stuff before her arrival to make room for her things. ‘If you want to unpack, plenty of room in there.’
Laila steps inside and peers towards her suitcase, cast in shadow by the plywood doors hanging off the wardrobe as if they’re about to fall away from the hinges. He had meant to get them fixed, plus add an extra lamp to the wall, but hadn’t got around to it. He curses himself for his slackness. He takes his things and goes out the door, deciding against giving her a kiss.
The girl lowers the fish fillets into the receptacle, oil crackling like fireworks. Her movements are swift. She lays out the paper, shakes chicken salt from the shaker, wraps up the pack.
He could just run off. Split the scene. Crash at his mate Danny’s tonight. Easy. The possibility reels in his mind. Lots of guys do that. His other mate Tom for one. Tom once told Jim about the time someone set him up with a blind date. He’d come in through the back entrance of the restaurant, checked out the crowd, spotted the woman based on her description. She’d looked ten kilos heavier than what she claimed, and had buckteeth. Tom had exited through the same back door, without a moment’s hesitation.
Even while paying for his order, Jim entertains the idea. After he’d split up with Carol, eighteen months ago, he thought he could survive solely on the company of men. But when he enters his ute, the silence of the night cloaks him. He inserts his key into the ignition and sits there immobilised, the stillness ringing in his ears. Neon lights of the shop frontage flicker every few seconds. Suddenly he sees Laila’s face when she appeared out of the crowd at the airport, excitement bubbling in her eyes, cheeks glowing. He remembers the burn in his heart at the first sign of recognition. He lets out a breath, starts the engine and drives towards the caravan park.
With the packet of fish and chips warm against his arm, he finds her seated, as if frozen, on the bed. She has removed her shoes, and her legs are crossed. At her back a pillow is propped up against the bedhead. She still has the jacket collar tight to her neck, her hands in the pockets. What was she thinking the whole time he was out?
Her face looks pale, her eyes weary, and he swears there and then
he will make it up to her, though he doesn’t have a clue how. He notices that the suitcase is still sitting beside the wardrobe, unopened, but does not suggest again that she unpack. Plenty of time for her to do that. She smiles at him but he can tell it is an effort, because the lustre, so obvious at the airport and at the café, has left her eyes. She thanks him for the food, steps towards the kitchen cabinets.
‘How about we just eat out of this, hey? Saves washing up,’ Jim says, placing the packet on the tiny table.
‘Okay.’
He opens their dinner and the crackle of paper echoes in the small confines. From the fridge he takes a bottle of tomato sauce. There’s only an inch of sauce in it, so he tips the bottle over and hits the base with his palm. Droplets of sauce trickle out.
They eat in silence, the TV murmuring right next to them (he has turned the volume down), static ringing and chips crunching.
‘Like it?’ Jim says, dipping chips in the tomato sauce and pushing them into his mouth.
Laila nods her head.
‘Here, have this.’ He places a fish fillet in front of her. ‘Garfish. The best.’
She takes a bite, and nods her head again.
He wishes he could say they’ll soon be able to move to a decent place but that would be misleading her. He can’t bring himself to let her in on the truth—that he’s been trying in vain to save even a small nest egg. That all his life, his best intentions of saving up have come to naught. But his pay is erratic, and that’s not his fault. Sometimes he makes $1500 in one fortnight, and then nothing for the next three weeks. How’s a man to plan anything when things are crazy like this? She won’t understand. She’s probably never worked a day in her life.
Of course there’s Mum’s inheritance, but that’s a different story. The amount had taken him by surprise: $10,000. At first, he was reluctant to touch it. Spending it felt like an act of betrayal, like he had forgotten the pain of her leaving. The first five hundred he spent was out of desperation. He’d lost his job and was down to his last penny. The next few times were also out of dire necessity. The ute packed up, needed an overhaul, then the caravan plumbing gave way and pipes had to be replaced. These things happen, ups and downs of life. Then another thousand for Laila’s airfare and travelling expenses.
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