by Judy Nunn
Paul’s sigh of relief was audible. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Having a shower. She likes hot showers; they’re a real treat.’
Then Bev proceeded to tell him all about their afternoon excursion, the shopping, the wonderment of a sandwich for lunch, coffee at a sidewalk café.
‘We were even joined by a couple of the gang from the library,’ she said.
‘Oh hell,’ his reaction was nervous, ‘and how did that go?’
‘Easy,’ she replied breezily. ‘I introduced her as the little sister of a close friend of mine from uni days. “This is Jalila, my friend’s little sister,” I said. “She’s just arrived from overseas to join her family in Perth and her English isn’t too good, so you have to be nice to her.”’
She laughed, Paul involuntarily joining in, either with relief or admiration, he wasn’t sure, but probably a mixture of both. Bev had always been a highly accomplished and supremely effective liar. She usually only used this power in order to string someone along with a tall story just for fun, but her talent had rescued them from many a sticky situation during their childhood.
‘Anyway, my mates were awfully nice to her,’ she said, ‘and why the hell wouldn’t they be? She’s bloody gorgeous. Oh and before I forget, make sure you bring your bathers tomorrow,’ she warned. ‘Jalila’s desperate to go to the water park. She won’t wear bathers herself though, wouldn’t let me buy her any – too revealing it seems. You’ll just have to let her get soaked in her clothes.’
‘Tell you what,’ she added as an idea occurred, ‘I’ll leave a pair of my bathers out on the bed, together with a wrap-around. Take them along with you just in case she changes her mind. Don’t forget to grab a couple of towels too. Linen cupboard in the hall.’
Bev had rattled on a little longer. Then, ‘See you tomorrow, probably be gone when you arrive, key’s under the pot plant,’ and the conversation, to which he’d contributed virtually nothing, had been over.
‘Bev friends is nice …’
And now Jalila was recounting her day in her own way. The shopping, the sandwich, the coffee, Bev’s friends. Paul found it enchanting.
‘I like Bev friends …’
‘That’s good, Jalila. I’m sure they liked you too.’
Then, as if on cue …
‘We go water park, Paul? Bev say you will take me, yes?’
‘Of course I’ll take you to the water park. Are you ready to go now?’
‘Yes.’ She stood. ‘Ready.’
‘I’ll just get us some towels, back in a tick.’
After fetching the towels, he ducked into Bev’s bedroom, collected the bathers and wrap-around she’d left out for him and, rolling the whole lot up together, reappeared with the bundle tucked under his arm.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and they left the apartment to walk down to the foreshore barely five minutes away.
Geraldton’s foreshore was without doubt the town’s major attraction, and a feature of which its citizens were justifiably proud, for stretching along beside the broad oceanfront promenade was landscaped parkland designed specifically for the enjoyment of the people. There were grassy picnic areas, tables and benches, drinking fountains, playgrounds for all ages, and a huge indoor-outdoor café, beyond which lay a holiday-maker’s paradise – an ocean of the most inviting blue and a beach of the whitest sand that was separated by two jetties forking out into the sea. To the north of the foreshore was the marina and to the south the main port of Geraldton, but in between was the preserve of the people, most particularly those with families, and the most popular attraction of all, apart from the oceanfront itself, was the water park.
The day was fine. There was little breeze, and although it was barely ten o’clock in the morning, a late-October sun bore warmly down. Paul sought out a bench on the grassy verge of the park and he and Jalila sat watching the revellers. It being a Sunday, there were many frolicking amongst the array of inventive sculptures. Infants skipped about with their parents beneath fountains and shower-like structures, youths battled each other with fierce water jets, and youngsters squealed as they ran through colourful arrays of hoops and giant metal circles that triggered unexpectedly, releasing huge deluges upon them.
Jalila gazed at the scene, her eyes flickering here and there, enthralled by a sight she’d never before witnessed and had never expected to witness. This was more than a magical place. This was a joyful place. She’d never seen so many people so happy.
They sat as silent observers for quite some time, then, ‘Would you like to join in?’ Paul finally asked.
Without taking her eyes from the revellers, she nodded.
He stood, stripping off his T-shirt. The blue shorts he wore served also as bathers, made of a synthetic fabric that dried quickly.
‘Come on, then.’
He offered her his hand, and she took it and stood. But she made no further move, appearing confused.
‘You can’t join in without getting wet,’ he said.
Looking out at the park, where everyone was running around on the colourfully patterned, spongy-wet surface, all of them saturated, all of them semi-naked, Jalila realised what Bev had meant. ‘Ruin your new clothes then, see if I care,’ she had said. She glanced down at her pretty new dress with its pattern of pink flowers. She didn’t want to ruin her new dress.
Paul picked up the bathers and wrap-around from the bundle that sat on the bench and offered them to her. ‘The change rooms are over there,’ he said, pointing to where they stood on the other side of the park.
She studied the bathing costume he held out to her: a pair of Speedos, modest by Australian standards, but to Jalila incredibly revealing. Did she dare?
Paul recognised her dilemma. ‘Go and put them on, Jalila,’ he said, ‘but wear this too.’ He draped the wrap-around over her shoulder. ‘Wear it to cover the bathers,’ he explained. ‘It won’t matter if this gets wet. Do you understand?’
She nodded. Then, the wrap-around still draped over her shoulder, she took the bathers from him and walked off towards the change rooms.
Paul sat on the bench awaiting her return and thinking of her past. After all she’d gone through, after all the sexual abuse, the humiliation, the degradation she’d suffered at the hands of the soldiers, the modesty of her childhood remained somehow ingrained. It seemed to him incredible.
She appeared several minutes later, the wrap-around tied at her chest, carrying her new dress folded neatly, and as she crossed the grassy area that led from the change rooms, he could see the eyes of many mark her passing. Not only men, he noted, but women also. It was more than the girl’s beauty: it was the grace of her every movement.
When she arrived beside him, he took the dress from her and placed it with the towels in a neat pile on the grass, leaving the bench for others who might want to use it; the park was getting busier by the minute.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
She nodded, but remained motionless, staring at the water park and the sea of carefree, wet, bather-clad bodies prancing about, the infants, the parents, the children and youths. Then she did the most amazing thing. Lifting her hands to her chest, she untied the knot of the wrap-around and let it drop to the grass.
‘Ready,’ she said, standing there in a bathing costume obviously too large for her.
‘Good,’ Paul said. ‘Let’s go then.’
If Jalila’s acceptance of the bathing costume was to be perceived as a breakthrough, the following half-hour, to Paul, was nothing short of a revelation.
Self-consciously hoisting up the straps of her bathers, Jalila approached a giant yellow circular sculpture that grew out of the spongy surface of the playground. She stepped tentatively beneath its arch and was instantly hit by a deluge of water that appeared from nowhere. But instead of being alarmed she laughed. Instinctively, she threw back her head and laughed, just as the others she’d been watching in the park had done. It was a sight and a sound Paul would never have thought possible.
<
br /> From that moment on, the water park continued to work its magic. Paying no heed at all to her bathing costume, now saturated and hanging baggily from her slender frame, straps slipping off shoulders, Jalila ran from one piece of equipment to another. And each time she was unexpectedly showered or hit by a jet of water, she laughed in delight.
She’s become just one of the young people playing in the water park, Paul thought, and as he did he wondered if it was at all conceivable that one day Jalila might be capable of leading a normal life. He would not have believed so. None on the island would have believed so, but none on the island had seen her like this.
He joined in the fun. They played together like children, following each other through the hoops of the water canyon, competing to see who could second-guess the overhead showers that sprang on without warning, duelling with the high-powered water jets, knocking each other over, slipping and sliding. And a good half an hour later, they were thoroughly exhausted.
‘Time to call it a day,’ he panted, ‘what do you reckon?’
She didn’t understand the turn of phrase, but knew what he meant, and nodded, equally breathless.
Returning to their towels, they dried themselves off, Jalila donned her wrap-around and they sat on the grass basking in the sun. Their bench was taken, but they preferred the grass anyway.
‘That was fun, wasn’t it?’ Paul said.
‘Yes. Fun,’ she replied, unfamiliar with the word, but correctly presuming it meant something good. After which she lapsed into silence, her attention again focused on the park and the people’s enjoyment. Jalila had no need to discuss the pleasure she had just experienced. It was there in her mind to relive when she wished, which was remarkable for one who had so efficiently trained her mind to close out all memory.
Paul registered the fact that she didn’t need to talk, and even felt a little stupid for having made the obvious comment he had. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that language was not the barrier at all with Jalila. That she only talked when she felt the need – when she wished to communicate. He realised also, and for the very first time, that this was who she really was, and that he was finally coming to know her.
A little later, when Jalila had returned from the change rooms in her pretty new dress and when Paul’s shorts were virtually dry, they strolled down to the Dome Cafeteria, where they sat on the verandah overlooking the ocean and had lunch. Jalila opted once again for a ‘sand-wich’, relishing the sound of the word as she made her request.
‘Is good,’ she said, tucking in heartily, ‘thank you.’
‘My pleasure,’ he replied.
They didn’t say much after that, there was no need, they were comfortable with silence, but Paul’s mind ran rampant as he looked out to sea, remembering the news reports he’d read and the televised footage he’d seen of the boat that had come ashore in 2013. It had been around about this time of day, they’d said, people had been lunching at the Dome, just as they were now, when to the amazement of all, a boat carrying sixty-six Sri Lankan refugees had pulled up right here on the shore. They’d travelled over five thousand kilometres. The news had of course made headlines at the time.
What had happened to those poor souls? he wondered. They’d disappeared, of course, whisked off to some refugee camp, Nauru, Manus Island, who could tell, he couldn’t remember that part. The people of Gero had been kind, or so he’d heard; many had come down to the beach with blankets. But they’d been unable to save the Sri Lankans from their fate. Is that what lies in store for Jalila? he wondered.
After lunch, he took her for a drive.
‘We’ll pretend we’re tourists,’ he said, ‘which of course we are.’
They visited the historic settlement of Greenough twenty minutes to the south, where they wandered around the heritage buildings and the unique leaning trees that were a popular tourist attraction, and then on their return to Geraldton he took her to the HMAS Sydney II Memorial, which stood majestically on Mount Scott overlooking the township.
The memorial, he told her, was dedicated to the six hundred and forty-five men who had lost their lives in 1941 when the HMAS Sydney II sank in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia following action with the German raider Kormoran.
‘The whole crew,’ he said, ‘every single one of them. And the ship went down without a trace – the wreck wasn’t discovered until 2008. That’s their grave,’ he said, pointing seawards, ‘they’re still out there, all those sailors. And she’s still waiting.’
Jalila found the ‘Waiting Woman’ profoundly moving.
‘So sad,’ she said. He’d told her the life-size, bronze statue of the motherly woman, arm raised holding her hat in place, leaning into the wind and gazing out to sea, represented every woman who had lost a husband or a son or a brother in the disaster.
The statue itself had spoken very clearly to Jalila.
‘And do you know the most incredible thing of all?’ he went on. ‘When the statue was placed here in 2001, they had no idea where the Sydney was. But seven years later, when the ship was discovered,’ he held his arm out straight, indicating the Waiting Woman’s direct eyeline, ‘they found that she’s gazing along the exact bearing of the wreck’s site.’
The gist of this, too, Jalila understood. She had no doubt the woman’s gaze was fixed directly on the burial place.
The centrepiece of the memorial she found just as moving. The ‘Dome of Souls’ was an immense canopy, nine metres high and twelve metres in diameter, supported by seven pillars. The dome itself was an open-weave filigree of stainless steel, depicting a vast flock of seagulls.
The two of them stood in the very centre of the dome, looking up at the gulls.
‘There’re six hundred and forty-five of them in all,’ Paul told her, ‘one for every sailor who died.’
Looking up, Jalila slowly turned, watching the birds in flight, feeling their movement through the air.
‘The sailors,’ she said slowly and with care, another new word she’d learnt just that day, ‘the sailors, they is free.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, aware she was way ahead of him, that he need offer no further explanation.
When they arrived back at the flat, it was five o’clock and Bev was preparing to leave for the family dinner in Shoalhaven.
‘Did you have a nice day?’ she asked. Bloody stupid question, she told herself, they’re positively glowing.
‘We sure did,’ Paul said. ‘Starting with the water park. But I’m afraid you’ll have to buy a new pair of bathers for Jalila – yours were far too big.’
‘Really?’ Bev’s eyes were a little saucer-like.
‘Water park … fun,’ Jalila said with enthusiasm, remembering that was the word Paul had used.
‘And then we had lunch at the Dome –’
‘Sand-wich,’ Jalila interjected proudly. ‘I eat sand-wich, Bev.’
‘That’s nice.’ What’s happened? Bev wondered. They’re different. Both of them are different. Fresh cause for worry?
‘And then we drove to Greenough for a look-around,’ Paul went on, ‘and then we came back to the Sydney Memorial …’
‘So sad,’ Jalila said.
‘Yes, it’s impressive all right,’ Bev agreed. ‘Well I’m off.’ She picked up her car keys. ‘What do I tell Mum and Dad by the way?’ she asked pointedly.
‘Nothing. I’ve already phoned them, said I can’t come. Phoned Lou too.’
‘Oh yes? And what did he say?’
‘He said to be careful,’ Paul gave a shrug, ‘why the hell I don’t know.’ He’d found the comment annoying, he had to admit, but he’d let it go.
You don’t know, Bev thought. ‘So where are you having dinner?’ she asked.
‘Haven’t decided yet. Might even get takeaway and watch TV, that’d be something different for Jalila.’
Dangerous, Bev thought, but she didn’t say anything. ‘There’s a nice café around the corner that does good lasagne,’ she said, hoping
he might take the hint. Then she left.
Paul didn’t take the hint – he didn’t realise he’d been offered one. Instead, he asked Jalila what she’d like to do.
‘I like here,’ Jalila said. ‘I like be here with you.’
So while Jalila indulged herself in another hot shower, he went out and bought takeaway pizzas, two large, not sure what flavour she might prefer, or how hungry she might be.
As it turned out they were both ravenous and tucked into the food the moment he got back, eating straight from the boxes, which he’d set out on the coffee table, Jalila curled up on the sofa in the bathrobe Bev had lent her.
By the time they’d finished there was just over half a pizza left, which he stored in the refrigerator for Bev, knowing how much she loved cold pizza. Then he sat back in his armchair and turned on the television.
‘What sort of stuff do you want to watch?’ he asked, flicking through the Foxtel channels on the remote, ‘news, movies, documentaries?’ He knew the question was probably pointless, that in all likelihood she was unfamiliar with television, but it seemed impolite not to enquire.
She just shrugged. The decision was obviously his. So he turned on the news, which was devoted entirely to the American presidential campaign. Even switching channels, there was no escape: everywhere he looked political analysts, current affairs journalists, chat-show hosts and panellists were discussing the latest Trump/Clinton debate and the reason America was in such a state of chaos.
He settled back in his armchair to watch, presuming that Jalila was doing the same thing where she remained curled up on the sofa. But it wasn’t long before he became aware that Jalila was not watching the television at all. Jalila was watching him.
He pressed the mute button. Silence.
‘What is it, Jalila?’ he asked. ‘You want to talk, is that it?’
She nodded. He waited.