Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  ‘White, please.’ I told myself I could have one more glass, two at most. Any more and I’d be sloshed. The waiter brought a bottle of chilled sauvignon blanc.

  ‘Would you like to taste the wine, Sir?’

  ‘The lady will taste the wine.’

  I made a passable imitation of a lady who knows how to taste wine and sipped demurely. CC held his hand over his glass.

  ‘Sparkling mineral water for me, thank you.’

  The waiter nodded and left.

  ‘You’re not having any?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I drove home from a function one night and realised I was over the limit. I could have killed someone in that state. So I stopped drinking.’

  ‘Why did you order wine if you don’t drink?’ I asked, helping myself to another glass.

  ‘I thought you’d enjoy it,’ he said.

  I did. By the time the food came I was sloshed; well and truly pickled, off my trolley and floating away with the fairies, which could explain why I happily told Captain Considerate all the lurid details of my early life – sexual misadventures included. I didn’t hold back. I wasn’t trying to impress this man so what did I have to lose? I told the truth about the mistakes in my life while he recounted all the amazing achievements of his.

  We shivered our way through a mediocre meal as I heard about his successful career as a geological surveyor in oil and gas fields (I think), followed by an equally successful career as a pilot. He seemed fit, happy and emotionally intelligent. (And since when did that ever describe anyone I normally fell for?) He got out of the stock market before it crashed and he won the George Medal for bravery in his early twenties. By the end of the meal I’d worked out that Captain Considerate had enjoyed a stable marriage that lasted twenty years before it ended in divorce (I’m guessing; there wasn’t much of the bottle left by that stage), and he had a cordial relationship with his ex-wife and a grown-up son he loved.

  ‘I’d run a mile if any of my ex-lovers crossed my path,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?’

  ‘It was only t . . . uh . . . oh, let me think . . . five years.’ (Maybe I did care what he thought after all.)

  ‘And now you’re single?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  He nodded.

  Having watched me slip inexorably into a drunken stupor, Captain Considerate asked if I’d like to have coffee at his hotel, in that terribly polite way that only someone wearing a blazer can get away with.

  ‘How far is it?’ I asked. By that stage my legs felt numb with cold. Or alcohol. Either way I’d have trouble walking.

  ‘Five minutes.’

  I figured it had to be worth it to get out of the cold.

  We passed through a quiet wood-panelled lobby (thankfully deserted) and stepped into a lift. Moments later I was propped in the doorway of a dimly lit lounge room with an adjoining bedroom.

  Being so far gone there seemed no point stopping, I reached for a glass of red wine from the minibar, then slumped onto the sofa. Before I could get the screw-top off Captain Considerate had slapped a ladder against the fortress wall and was clambering up the side, poised to leap over the top. I slapped him back down.

  ‘Don’ doo that!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you wanted me to.’

  ‘Whaddever gave you thad idea?’ I said, forgetting the rollcall of sexual misdeeds that I’d cheerfully recounted over dinner, some in graphic detail. I wrapped myself in what I could muster of my tattered virtue and stood up, grabbing hold of the door jamb to stop from falling over.

  ‘I am gonna gedda takshi,’ I declared.

  I tottered down the corridor to the lift and Captain Considerate followed, presumably to make sure I didn’t fall over. He appeared at my side while I stood swaying on the pavement outside.

  ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, thank you,’ he said politely.

  I squinted at his fuzzy tie and succeeded in raising my eyes high enough to meet his. He seemed genuine.

  ‘Me doo,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK to get home? Would you like me to come with you? I’ll come straight back.’

  ‘I’m abshloodly fine. Thangk yoo.’

  He flagged down a taxi and helped me in. As I sprawled across the back seat he reached across to pay the driver. ‘Please make sure the young lady gets home safely,’ he said, making me feel like a Victorian.

  l dimly remembered my manners and scrabbled into an upright position. ‘Thangk yoo for dinner,’ I managed.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he replied. ‘Almost.’

  Miss Prissy Knickers glared at him with drunken displeasure and his grin widened as he waved goodbye.

  *

  The next morning I dragged my sore head in to work by bus, feeling every jolt on the journey. My queasy stomach protested at the parade of aftershave and perfume that wafted past and as soon as I got to the office I shut the door. I slumped at my desk with my head in my hands and stared at the proofs of the next newsletter. Lines of text swam across the page like startled ants.

  Five minutes later, there was a knock at the door and I peered through splayed fingers to see a pair of navy slacks standing in front of the desk.

  ‘Looks like you had a big night,’ said Captain Considerate. ‘Did it go well?’

  Judging by the barely concealed laughter in his voice, Captain Considerate wasn’t remotely embarrassed by the previous night’s encounter. I was at a loss for words. Having dinner with the boss was bad enough, but I hadn’t just had dinner with the man, I’d had dinner, got drunk, spilled the beans on my disastrous love-life, and then gone back to his hotel and told him to piss off when he made a pass at me. Did it get any worse? The only thing saving me from personal and professional ruin was the fact that I would be leaving the RFDS, and Australia, in less than four months’ time. Plus he lived in Broken Hill.

  Sometimes I’m the kind of person who can think on her feet and come up with a witty rejoinder; sometimes I’m not.

  ‘Uh . . .’

  Another note appeared on my desk while I was at lunch.

  ‘I enjoyed your company tremendously last night. Perhaps you would allow me to invite you to the cinema, or the theatre; I will be in Sydney for the next few days. I promise not to tease or embarrass you if you prefer to decline.’

  Once the fug of alcohol had cleared from my system (the sense of embarrassment took longer to fade), I realised that if you took away the awkward fumble at the end of the night, I had enjoyed his company too. And it was such a sweet note.

  That fact that he was the CEO didn’t bother me unduly; I wasn’t about to start a relationship with the man and he wasn’t married. I didn’t report directly to him, or even indirectly, and I worked in the marketing department, twelve hundred kilometres away from his office in Broken Hill. I wasn’t even a permanent member of staff and, anyway, going out to the theatre didn’t commit me to anything else.

  So I upped the ante and took him to a left-wing theatre group in Newtown, run by a bunch of humanists and socialists, with the odd communist thrown in, some of whom were my friends. He passed with flying colours, chatting happily to strangers in the foyer on King Street and saying nothing about the packing tape holding the New Theatre seat covers together. He even said he enjoyed the show (which was going a bit far – we both knew he hadn’t, but you get the idea).

  ‘I’d like to see you again,’ he said at the end of the night, this time making no attempt to persuade me to go back to his hotel. ‘Perhaps we could have dinner again the next time I’m in Sydney?’

  I liked the fact that he’d braved an onslaught from Miss Prissy Knickers and hadn’t given
up; he’d smiled in the face of the icy winds that blew across the tundra and laughed at the stony silence that greeted him when Miss Prissy Knickers found him standing on the wrong side of her defensive wall.

  Captain Considerate was hardly Captain Fantastic, and he was a long way from being Mr Right, but I liked his laid-back approach to life and his mischievous sense of humour.

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘It could be a lot of fun.’

  chapter thirteen

  In the interest of fairness we went to a Sydney Swans game at the SCG, where I met and liked Captain Considerate’s grown-up son. I can’t say AFL floated my boat but each to his own, I thought. And, as simple as it sounds, that was a major step forward.

  I’d never been out with anyone whose interests diverged so widely from my own. In the rare case that the object of my desire might not have enjoyed theatre or the arts, I quickly dropped my interests to fit in with theirs (which, by the way, is the fastest way I know of becoming a boring, needy appendage). So I feel I should declare, here and now, that no matter how gorgeous that Hallberg-Rassy yacht was, I never really enjoyed sailing (A2); the whole idea of crawling down a dark, wet cave in a boiler suit and hard hat actually filled me with dread (A3); and I’m not nearly as adventurous in bed as you thought I was (A1, and just about anyone I’ve ever slept with).

  Maybe it was easy to accept that Captain Considerate had totally different interests because, for once, I wasn’t looking for a long-term mate. I wasn’t weighing up his every move to see if he was ‘the one’. I was having some fun, and hard as it is to admit this, I was also marking time. I had flown to Australia, pledging to have fun while I got over a broken heart, and here was a single, attractive man with a good sense of humour who wanted to take me out. There was no reason not to enjoy his company.

  Mind you, as much as I tried to minimise it, the fact that we both worked for the same organisation was tricky. He was the boss, and the people that I reported to reported to him. What’s more, after five or six dates – all of them charming, proper, good fun and light-hearted – I saw no reason not to sleep with him (hardly a ringing endorsement, I know).

  CC was keen to do the right thing and advise the Board about our fledgling relationship but I resisted. What if it didn’t last? What if this was just a fling? The only way to find out was to take drastic action.

  ‘I think we should go on holiday,’ I said sternly when I saw CC next. ‘We need to find out if this is a fling or a proper relationship and if this is a proper relationship, then we have to decide what to do about it and the only way we’re going to find out is if we spend some time together so I think we should go on holiday.’ I paused to draw breath. ‘If you agree,’ I added, rather lamely.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,’ CC said. ‘Where are we going?’

  In the weeks leading up to the holiday I thought about phoning and saying, this is a bad idea, let’s not do this. How did I end up agreeing to spend a week in Bali with a man I barely knew?

  I hate hurting people. I once got engaged to a man I didn’t like kissing (he was as desperate as I was to avoid being single; not exactly a match made in heaven) and rather than admit I hated the way he shot his tongue between my lips at unexpected moments, rather like a lizard trying to catch a fly, I got engaged to him. Brilliant plan. That way he never suspected a thing. In the end, when I thought I’d gag if he kissed me once more, I broke off the engagement and the poor man was left wondering what went wrong.

  I was worried I might be doing the same with CC. Nice guy, not sure I wanted to have a relationship with him, so hey, why not go on holiday and spend a week together. Another brilliant plan!

  You have a rubbish track record with holidays.

  It’s true. I’ve had some monumental foreign fuck-ups in my time.

  When I decided the time had come to move back to England in hot pursuit of A3, I booked a stopover in the Far East, hoping to soak up some rays so I could arrive tanned, relaxed and irresistibly attractive. If nothing else, it would stave off the reality of an English winter with no job.

  I splashed out on a beachfront resort on the island of Koh Samet off the east coast of Thailand and pre-paid for a five-night all-inclusive stay. The resort emailed me confirmation that a bus would pick me up from a Bangkok hotel.

  The driver greeted me with a smile, then looked around the lobby.

  ‘No Mister.’ he said. ‘Where Mister?’

  I smiled good humouredly and said, ‘No Mister.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘You go Ao Prao Resort?’

  I nodded. He shrugged, picked up my case and led the way to a waiting tour bus, where two young couples were already onboard. I took a seat on the single side. Three hours later we got off in the town of Ban Phe, where the resort had its own ferry that shuttled between the mainland and the island of Koh Samet. I joined a queue of people at the ferry check-in desk.

  ‘Hello Madam, you on your own?’ The demure girl with a pink frangipani tucked behind her ear looked over my shoulder for the elusive Mister as I handed over my booking confirmation form.

  ‘Yes, all alone,’ I said with a brittle smile, dimly aware that several couples were waiting to check in behind me. As we filed along the pontoon towards the waiting ferry the throng of porters thinned out and I took stock of my fellow passengers. I was the only single person, surrounded by a sea of couples.

  We landed on a small deserted beach fringed by palm trees. A line of timber cabanas and thatch-roofed bungalows nestled among the trees. Two young girls stood ankle deep in water, waiting to drape garlands of jasmine flowers around our necks, and, as far as I could tell, there were no shops, no restaurants, no bars and absolutely no sign of any other single people.

  At the simple resort check-in desk the worried manager took me to one side.

  ‘Why you come alone?’ he asked. ‘Why no Mister?’ he whispered, not bothering to hide his shocked dismay.

  ‘Because there is no Mister,’ I said, panic and frustration rising by the second as I realised I’d spent the last of whatever money I had on five days in a honeymoon resort. ‘I’m alone!’

  The happy honeymooners waiting to check in took a few steps back and I hurriedly signed the guest book, grabbed the keys to my room and disappeared along the beach.

  At breakfast the next morning I was an oddity of pursed lips and frosty silence, the single wrong note in a symphony of loved-up couples sipping champagne and slipping each other titbits from the buffet. There was worse to come. Day three of my stay was Valentine’s Day. The trees were festooned with strings of pink hearts, heart-shaped candles glistened on all the tables and a blackboard proclaimed that a crooner from the mainland would be ferried across with his keyboard to serenade the honeymooners with the world’s top 100 love songs at dinner. I ate in my room.

  The universe was trying to show me what love looked like and I didn’t want to know. I sat grimly determined on the beach each day – a lone warning to all those happy couples that life outside the blissful state of coupledom was bleak – and at sunset I retreated to my room, unable to bear the sight of honeymooners kissing on the still-warm sand as the sun slipped below the horizon.

  The only saving grace was a small library of paperback books in a cabana overlooking the beach. I ignored a couple smooching on the sofa behind me and knelt down for a closer look. The authors were typically undemanding honeymoon fare but I didn’t care; I would have read anything to get me through those five days. I peered at the titles and my heart sank as I realised the books had all been published in foreign languages. I could have read John Grisham’s Det målade huset, Danielle Steel’s Herzsturme, Barbara Cartland’s Hjerter dame er trumf or Maeve Binchy’s I år blir det nog bättre.

  Just as I was beginning to think I’d have to tackle the Binchy (something about being blathered after drinking too much egg nog), I spotted a lone novel in English, tucked aw
ay at the back of the shelf. It was a dog-eared, water-logged copy of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. I grabbed it, hoping I could make it last, and opened the battered front cover to discover the first twenty-seven pages were missing.

  I never did find out who Moose Malloy was.

  *

  In order to make the cost of the holiday fair and equitable, CC and I agreed we would each pay a proportionate amount of the total cost. I had no idea how much CC earned (and no wish to) but it had to be at least four times my salary, so he paid three-quarters and I paid a quarter. A sensible, grown-up solution.

  I sank a couple of glasses of wine to calm my nerves in the Qantas lounge (courtesy of CC’s Qantas Club membership) while he had a coffee and a sparkling mineral water, and pretty soon it was status quo: me well on the way to being sloshed, Captain Considerate stone cold-sober. Mid-afternoon, we boarded the plane and I made polite conversation as we took off.

  ‘Have you been to Bali before?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, several times.’

  ‘When was the first time?’

  ‘On my honeymoon.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What part of Bali did you stay in?’

  ‘Ubud.’

  We were on our way to Ubud and I was the one who’d chosen it. I pressed the call button for another glass of wine.

  The six-hour flight from Sydney to Denpasar was followed by a ninety-minute drive. It was after eleven by the time we left the airport and the city lights quickly thinned as we drove inland until nothing remained but dense vegetation and the flash of passing motorbikes. A lone guard on the boom gate at the resort, set high in the hills outside Ubud, swept a mirror under the car when we arrived. He wasn’t taking any chances, even in this remote spot; the Bali bombings in 2002 had rocked the tourist industry on this small island.

  We stood in the centre of a deserted lobby, like guests who’d arrived after the party had finished, until a smiling night porter appeared and presented us each with a garland of fresh marigolds and frangipani flowers. This time, it made me feel special instead of lonely and out of place.