Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  The gentle porter led us past a swimming pool, stars reflected in its flat, still surface, through landscaped gardens dense with dark shapes and the sound of crickets calling from deep within the foliage. He stopped in front of a carved wooden door, unlocked it with a key that could have unlocked a dungeon, and pushed open the heavy door to reveal a garden of swaying palms and fragrant jasmine.

  The stone villa had floors of polished marble and dark wooden furniture set against pale white walls. Fine mosquito netting hung from a wooden frame around a massive bed set on a plinth in the middle of the bedroom, and in a delicate touch of welcome, there was a banana leaf on each pillow. It held a chocolate cupped in the middle, with a handwritten note etched on the leaf: ‘Have a nice sleep.’

  We climbed into that huge, welcoming bed and fell asleep immediately.

  chapter fourteen

  CC stirred in his sleep. I lay awake in our bigger-than-king-size bed, listening to the gentle sound of someone sweeping leaves outside the window. The cotton sheet felt cool against my skin and fine white mosquito netting softened the early morning light that filtered through the wooden shutters. A low murmur of words spoken in a language I didn’t understand rose and then faded. I turned over, quietly so as not to wake CC.

  This was a new sensation. I hadn’t lost myself in a tortured angst of passion, I wasn’t standing on the edge of a cliff, poised to swoop and soar or plummet to my death – sometimes both. I had a lover I liked and we had a week to get to know each other. It was a relief to know I wouldn’t get swept along by feelings I couldn’t control and that lack of angst had unexpected benefits, freedom even.

  CC’s body beneath the sheet was lean and long. He had the legs of a ballet dancer and the muscled torso of a long-distance runner . . . or a cyclist. I thought back to that scorching-hot day, my bulky thighs squeezed into cycling shorts two sizes too small, my face a sweaty beetroot, and I marvelled that he’d found something attractive in that.

  Did he marvel that I found him attractive? In sleep his face looked ageless; the skin graft that stretched from his cheekbone down to his chin was smooth and hairless, suggesting the skin of a far younger man. I wondered if he’d been wearing glasses when he’d been burnt. The skin around his eyes looked to have been spared but his nose had suffered badly; his lips too. An arm above the sheet showed the extent of the damage: deep scar tissue running from his shoulder to his elbow, a twisted mass that distorted the skin. The scars faded as they reached his wrist; there was a clear patch where the leather strap of a watch must have offered some protection and then the spider web of distorted lines started again, extending to the tips of his fingers.

  He blinked and I looked away, embarrassed to be caught staring.

  *

  ‘It was a helicopter crash.’

  The cloud above us was milky white as we lingered over a second cup of coffee on the terrace after breakfast. Rice paddies of deepest green stepped down from the high side of the hotel, dropping to an unseen river below. It was so humid you could have reached out a glass, scooped it full of sky and gulped it down. I sipped my coffee, waiting for CC to expand on his answer to my question: what had happened?

  ‘I was working for Geosurveys. I was part of an airborne team conducting gravity surveys on the Cape York Peninsula. There were two of us working this particular section. I was the surveyor and Jim was the pilot. He would land in a small bush clearing, I’d jump out to take a reading, and then we’d take off again. We plotted our course with a control centre so they would always know where we were in case of accidents, but on that particular day one of the landing spots was too wet, so we changed direction and flew to a new site. Jim radioed through the change but for some reason the message didn’t get through.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  At twenty-one I was cruising my way through a part-time job teaching English as a foreign language in Madrid, sleeping in, staying up late and partying hard. It was my first job out of university and my only concern was where to find a decent tapas bar.

  ‘About four in the afternoon we landed in a small clearing. I took the reading we needed, got back in the helicopter and Jim took off. Unfortunately the main blade clipped the top of a tree and the helicopter crash-landed. A fuel tank behind my seat exploded and I was thrown clear but Jim was trapped in the burning helicopter. I went back in to try to release him.

  ‘That’s when the second fuel tank exploded. I remember seeing my hands on fire and feeling no pain. I knew my head was on fire too but Jim was in a really bad way, he was on fire all over. I dragged him clear and tried to put the flames out.’

  The waitress hovered to see if we wanted more coffee, then sensed our discussion was serious and left us alone.

  ‘We crashed not far from a creek. An old tin of peaches we’d been carrying in the back of the helicopter burst open so I used the empty tin to carry water back and forth from the creek. I kept dousing Jim’s body and gave him sips of water to drink. I thought we’d be rescued quickly but they didn’t know our position. I kept going back to the creek for water and when it got dark Jim would call out so I could find my way back to him. One time, part way through the night, he didn’t call. That’s when I knew he’d died.’

  CC’s voice was quiet and measured. He lifted his coffee cup, drained what was left and held it for a moment in his hands before placing it back on the white saucer.

  ‘When did they rescue you?’

  ‘About twenty-four hours after the crash. They flew me to the burns unit in Cairns Hospital and I remember lying in hospital listening to a radio report about the crash. “One dead and one survivor, who isn’t expected to live,” they said. That was me.’

  CC smiled. ‘I was lucky,’ he said. ‘I died twice on the operating table but I pulled through. And I was doubly lucky because a top burns specialist treated me. Every day since 4 June 1966 has been a bonus.’

  Lucky? To be involved in a fatal helicopter crash that left him with first, second and third degree burns to eighty per cent of his body? That didn’t sound like luck to me but I was beginning to realise that CC was a glass half full kind of man.

  He shot a challenging glance at me. ‘My girlfriend at the time came to visit me in hospital. She took one look and walked out. I never heard from her again.’

  ‘What a despicable thing to do,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t blame her. There’s no point being with someone if you don’t want to be.’

  I heard what he was saying loud and clear. Whatever happened, I had to be honest: there was no point leading this man on with any kind of false expectation. I knew I liked him but I wasn’t going to fake a passion I didn’t feel.

  *

  Bali was beautiful and Ubud a quiet backwater of easy grace (this was just before the explosion of growth that followed the publication of Eat, Pray, Love). The hotel was a haven of frangipani trees, thatched roofs, brick walls, stone paths, moist green ferns, fruit trees, ivy, jasmine, gardenia, heliconia, hibiscus and a profusion of flowering plants I couldn’t even begin to recognise.

  The men and women who worked at Kamandalu were gracious and always ready to smile, going about their business with purpose. There was no loud music and no radio blaring; just the sound of a besom broom sweeping leaves, a motorbike putt-putting sharply in the distance, a tree being felled in a forest far away, wood pigeons cooing softly to each other and the call of a cricket, swallowed by the silence like a star falling into a black hole.

  CC insisted on learning a few phrases of Balinese from our waitress, whose name was Ketut. Rahajeng semeng, good morning; sukseme, thank you; sukseme mewalt, you’re welcome. He mispronounced the phrases and used them frequently, often at inappropriate moments. As a linguist, I should have thought it cringe-worthy but I found myself admiring his willingness to have a go.

  We hired bicycles and followed tracks that cut throu
gh the rice fields, waving at children who were immaculately dressed in pristine white uniforms, the girls’ hair braided into long plaits, on their way home from school.

  ‘Hello,’ they called, giggling to each other. ‘How are you?’

  We smiled and called back. ‘Very well, thank you, how are you?’

  I’d shed another couple of kilos over the weeks before we left, thanks to a new routine of cycling to work. It took seven attempts before I made it across Anzac Bridge without getting off and pushing, but once I made it there was no stopping me: I joined a peleton of regulars, clinging to the back of the pack as we swooped and soared through traffic, spiralling down to the fish market and then climbing up again over Darling Harbour. I didn’t feel as useless on a bicycle now as when I’d ridden in Broken Hill with CC.

  According to the guidebook, no trip to Ubud would be complete without a visit to the Monkey Forest, a sacred area of temples and forest that was home to a collection of long-tailed macaque monkeys, so we bought two small clumps of bananas at the entrance and wandered past groups of well-fed monkeys basking in the sun, grooming each other.

  I had worked out by now that Captain Considerate liked a joke. We once took a cab from Balmain to North Sydney, stopping first at Circular Quay for CC to get out. We kissed goodbye and he stood on the pavement, holding the car door open.

  ‘Say hello to your husband,’ he said, then shut the door before I could think of a rejoinder and waved as the taxi pulled away from the kerb. No amount of righteous protest would convince the grinning driver that we weren’t having an affair.

  Given CC’s fondness for humour, it came as no surprise when he hid his bananas in his pocket. We sat on a wall to feed the inquisitive monkeys and a small male tugged at CC’s pocket, knowing what was in it. CC stood firm. The monkey clambered onto his lap and CC wouldn’t relent. Finally it leapt onto his shoulder. Still the bananas stayed hidden. In the end the monkey climbed onto CC’s head, sank its long filthy teeth into his scalp and bit hard enough to draw blood. After I’d stopped laughing I told him not to worry.

  ‘I’ve got some tea-tree oil back at the hotel,’ I said.

  Nurse Nightingale dabbed at the angry-looking bite and kissed it better. It was only later, when we got back to Australia, that we discovered rabies was a serious risk. He was luckier than I gave him credit for.

  The days slipped by in an easy rhythm of late breakfasts, long massages, frequent lovemaking and hours spent lazing by the pool with a good book. We were content to drift with no real plan and I could tell by the way people looked at us that we must have seemed like one of those loved-up couples I’d found so confronting on Koh Samet, which was odd because I knew I didn’t love him. But I liked him. I liked him a lot.

  Captain Considerate was patient, emotionally mature and level-headed. He reckoned there was a guardian angel looking out for him and I had to agree because, in the course of seven days in Bali, quite apart from being bitten on the head by a potentially rabid monkey, he fell over playing tennis and drove the motorbike we hired the wrong way around a busy intersection, narrowly avoiding killing us both. I know I can be impulsive, headstrong, accident-prone and likely to get into some tricky situations, but I was a non-starter compared to him.

  The seven days we spent in Bali were a joyful reminder of how to have fun. And I quickly forgot CC’s burns – they were nothing compared to his atrocious dress sense. It amazed me that someone with such an incredible physique had no idea how to wear casual clothes. He’d always looked stunning in a suit but in Bali I discovered that CC’s idea of casual wear was tracksuit pants with a rugby shirt. Not so terrible, you might think, but wait, what if you were to tuck the aforementioned rugby shirt into the elasticised waist of those tracksuit pants? And how about very short shorts with trainers and long white socks, pulled up to the knees? Was it just another of his cunning ploys, so I’d prefer to see him naked? I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  One afternoon we climbed up to the private Balinese day bed that perched above the roof of our villa like an observatory, offering 360-degree views of the whole resort. The day bed was sheltered under a gazebo-type roof with mosquito netting shielding the open sides. It seemed totally private and secluded, an ideal place to shed those tracksuit pants and relax. So that’s what we did.

  Something happened up there that I struggle to explain. I remember reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls in my early twenties and in the novel the elderly Pilar talks to the young Maria about how the earth can move when you make love, how a person is fortunate if it happens once in a lifetime, and how it can never happen more than three times. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  What nonsense, I scoffed, absolute bunkum. Rubbish. As you can probably gather, I’d never had an orgasm. I eventually worked out what orgasms were but I still didn’t get the whole earth-moving business; it seemed such a massive exaggeration. Now I know what Pilar was talking about.

  The earth shifted up there on our Balinese day bed – I was there, and not there. I was connected and disconnected; unhinged and easily moved, like the way sunrise can slip unnoticed across the sky and tinge the clouds pink.

  I glimpsed a parallel place; a tranquil, kind, loving place I’d never visited before. I have no idea if I was happy or not, all I know is I felt more alive than I’d ever felt before. It was more ephemeral than physical, a sense of belonging to each other and to the world around us, of being human and in place, a place of me but not me, a blurring of the edges, a different reality. Is that what it means to become ‘one’ with someone? It felt larger than that. I was ‘one’ with CC and everything else in the universe. I was nothing and nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. There were no edges, no inside or outside, no skin, no bed and no body.

  CC saw it happen. ‘You shimmered,’ he said afterwards.

  At breakfast the next day we realised the Balinese day bed wasn’t as private as we thought. We would have been visible, relaxing and shimmering, to the entire restaurant. Over the following three days we worked out we would have been visible, relaxing and shimmering, to anyone who might have been sunbathing by the pool, playing tennis or walking by the river. In fact, there wasn’t a single place in the hotel where you wouldn’t have been able to spot us, relaxing and shimmering. It’s a wonder we didn’t get arrested. It might explain why on the last night they upgraded us to a private villa with a pool and left a cake in our room. The icing on it said, ‘Happy Honeymoon.’

  By the end of that week in Bali I felt ten years younger. I forgot all about the ‘we need to work out if there is any prospect of this being a long-term relationship’ nonsense, and I had fun. Fun was what I’d wanted and fun was what we had. Miss Prissy Knickers, frosty ice maiden and suspicious single stalker, melted on holiday with CC. We got naked. We laughed and joked and I would even go so far as to say I frolicked. When did I last do that?

  CC was funny, kind and sexy, and seemed to think I was too. He was thoughtful, dependable, strong and supremely confident, a Machiavellian chancer who believed in the world of spirit; a happy, jealous, sensual man, prejudiced against anyone with tattoos or body piercing, crap at speaking a foreign language, accident-prone and a terrible dresser. In short, he was human.

  We didn’t argue or split up. I didn’t sulk, throw a tantrum or threaten to walk out. The force was with us. Captain Considerate, Master and Commander, conquered the ice maiden. Hallelujah, ring out the bells!

  Now that was the best holiday you’ve ever had.

  chapter fifteen

  But that was a holiday, not real life. Within days of getting back to Sydney I’d convinced myself it could never work; the holiday had been a fluke. All that sex had been great in a five-star resort with massages every second day and nothing else to do in between but lie by the pool with a beer and a book (really great, actually) but by the end of it, to be perfectly honest, I felt a bit overwhelmed. There’s only so much sex a wo
man can take (only so much this woman can, anyway) and while CC came back keener than ever, all I wanted was a rest and a lie down – on my own.

  Back in the real world I had a stressful job and I was working long hours, struggling to make ends meet on a small salary, and trudging back and forth to Woolies without a car. I didn’t want more sex. I wanted companionship. I wanted someone I could talk to. And, let’s face it, CC and I simply weren’t compatible.

  I’ve been a vegetarian since the age of fifteen and I hate killing anything. I apologise automatically whenever I kill spiders, ants, even flies. A photograph of a starving child never fails to have me reaching for my (normally maxed-out) credit card. I studied languages and I’ve worked as a teacher, a librarian, a workshop co-ordinator and, for several years, as a struggling actress. I treasured the hard-won Equity card that had finally allowed me to work professionally, even if I did get it by pulling on a kangaroo suit and playing the lead in a primary school production of The Bunyip and the Black Billabong (seems prophetic in hindsight).

  I write poetry (mediocre, but who cares) and I’ve been known to transcribe Shakespeare onto my living-room walls, even onto the curtains. I like camping, reading, gardening and fringe theatre festivals. I’m a workshop addict. You name it, I’ve done it – mime, movement, clog dancing, flamenco, mask making, Reiki healing, yoga, jewellery making, pottery, cake decorating, creative writing, wood carving, painting, photography, wine tasting, sacred singing, abseiling and windsurfing.

  I believe in Tarot cards, spiritual healing and messages from the dead.

  Dig deep and you’ll find a flaky old hippie.

  From what I could gather, CC worked and worked and then he worked some more. When he wasn’t working he swam, cycled or played tennis, then he went straight home (not via the pub) to consume a large steak and check his stocks and shares. He was driven, competitive and conservative.