Scary stuff.
Our other housemate was rather more unusual. He moved in a few days after we did, having just arrived from America. Halfway around the planet he’d come, to the winter-sports capital of the world – wearing a neatly-pressed shirt, trousers with suspenders, and socks with little suspenders of their own.
To get a job.
But not in the ski industry.
“Any job, really,” he said when pressed, “I’m just gonna look around and see what there is.”
He was an odd one. There seemed to be something imperceptible missing in him. A spark, a sense of humour perhaps, some sign of… sentience.
Slowly, we pieced his story together. It was important not to ask him too many questions, as he got confused quite easily, and also tended to spit further the more excited he got. So to avoid a bath in mucus, the best way of extracting information from him was in small snippets here and there.
So. He’d worked as some kind of manual labourer in Kansas. He’d lost his job, but fortune had shone on him when a friend of a friend told him that there was plenty of work to be had in New Zealand. With no further research, he’d gone to the nearest travel agent, explained his plans, and booked a one-way flight. The travel agents had clearly seen him coming; not only had they let him buy the ticket, itself an act of cruelty bordering on the malicious, but they had also charged him four times the going rate.
And told him that everything would be alright when he got to New Zealand…
It was a wonder the immigration people hadn’t picked him up.
He had no work visa. He had no working holiday visa. He had no way to get either, being too old, unskilled, and, well, American.
He’d blown all his savings on the flight over, so he couldn’t leave. Hell, he wouldn’t leave, studiously ignoring the fact that no-one in the country would risk a fine and imprisonment just to employ his dumb ass.
But for the most part he was happy, and harmless – unless he was playing his violin.
Now, I’ve seen plenty of people travelling with instruments. It’s a great ice-breaker when meeting new people, and everyone loves the bloke who pulls out a battered guitar and starts strumming a few pop songs. I could never be that bloke, because I play the drums.
Badly.
This bloke played the violin badly. Or more accurately, he couldn’t play at all – he was the rawest of beginners, and had obviously dragged the thing all the way over here with him solely because – wait for it – he was planning on starting a new life here!
Really.
Despite being on a three-month tourist visa.
But the craziest thing about his musical ambitions was not that he preferred to pursue them – violently – in the early hours of the morning; nor that they extended exclusively to religious hymns (only evident because he’d brought a vast quantity of sheet music with him, all of which was for hymns). It was this: he was also travelling with a folding music stand. You know the ones – stainless steel, tripod base, adjustable, use them a lot in school, weigh about eight kilos…
I can honestly say, I’ve never seen anyone travel with anything less practical.
Including the decapitated dog’s head I carried across the Gulf of Thailand in a polystyrene box.
Other than that, it was business as usual; we eked out damn near two months there, snowboarding five days a week and working most evenings, before Mount Hutt closed down for the season.
In that time we saw all kinds of dramas unfold in the microcosm of Countdown Ashburton, including the breakdown of at least one marriage; it emerged that the shift supervisor (who was subsequently re-assigned) was sleeping with – and accidentally having a baby with – one of his night-fill girls. This was the sort of gossip that kept us occupied each evening, as we busied our hands with a strange task known as ‘facing’.
It was my favourite part of the job, and by far the most ridiculous; for the last full hour of every shift, the entire team would take to the shop floor, working our way down every single aisle – turning all the tins and packets around so that their labels faced the right direction!
Oh yes! I couldn’t believe it either. But the supermarket management placed such a high value on customers being presented with a uniform wall of correctly-orientated products, that they were willing to spend hundreds of dollars each night paying us to achieve it.
How bizarre.
And so, inevitably, there came the moment when Roo and I had our ‘when should we tell them we’re leaving?’ discussion. The problem has always been the same; no-one wants to hire us short-term, so we always kind of gloss over the fact that we’re effectively transients, when we apply. We’re both hard workers and fast learners, and we always give 110% to an employer – our motivation dramatically eclipsing the poor sods who really are working there for the rest of their lives.
And in almost every job we’ve ever done, we get great progress reviews and recommendations for promotion from the management.
Typically around the same time we’re thinking of leaving.
So then we have the familiar problem; do we come clean and explain our plans, and spent our last weeks working under a cloud of disappointment? Or do we wait until the last minute, and make up some shock excuse; “Gotta leave – family emergency,” or “Sorry – just discovered we become technically illegal in your country in three days time…”
I hate doing this. But having already booked our tickets back to Perth, it seemed like the logical time to tell someone about it.
Geoff, our friendly night-shift supervisor, was the ideal candidate.
I’d have sought him out at work, only he sought me out first.
“There you are Tony,” he said, “Guess what? It’s time for your progress interview! Step into my office…”
Ooooh bugger, I thought. Here we go again…
“So tell me, Tony – how long to you think you’ll be here?”
I glanced down at my watch. Today was Wednesday. So… six days? It didn’t seem like the kind of answer he’d appreciate.
“I’m not sure, really,” I said instead, “my options are open.”
“That’s good to hear! See, you can have a real future with this company.”
“Absolutely!” I lied.
“Where do you see yourself, five years from now?”
The urge welled up within me to say ‘not bloody here, mate!’ – but I fought it.
“Uh, I dunno,” I told him.
“Within five years, you could be a supervisor. In less than ten, you could be running a whole shift. An assistant manager. You could be sitting here conducting this interview!”
The mind boggles. Well, mine did. I bit down hard on a sarcastic reply that I could feel forming. He really wasn’t making it sound any more enticing.
In the end I went with, “Ah, yeah, that’s interesting.”
And it was. I’m often fascinated by how many people seem content to settle for so little – a pay rise, an office with a window or some kind of token authority. Or maybe I’m the mad one? Settling for permanent insolvency, with no career, no real property, and less chance of getting either than I have of walking on the moon?
Then again, a couple of years ago I never imagined I could fall in love.
I flashed forward in my mind, wondering idly what I would be doing in five years time. Beaches, I thought. Somewhere hot. With cocktails with umbrellas in them. Maybe I should go to Tahiti. Tahiti sounds exotic. Do some diving, perhaps. And Roo can get a tan.
I realised Geoff was staring at me, waiting for an answer. I groped around for something suitable. “It’s a lot to think about,” I settled on.
“I know, it is,” Geoff agreed.
And we both sat there, pondering Tahiti for a few more seconds. Well, maybe that was just me.
“Right, I’d better let you get back to your pallets,” he said, and stood up to open the office door. “Think about it,” he advised, as I edged past him. “I’m putting on your form that I’ve recommended y
ou for supervisor training!”
“Thanks Geoff,” I said, gratefully. He really was a decent fella, and he was doing his best by me. As far as he knew.
It almost made me feel bad that I was leaving for Perth in less than a week.
Full Circle
When Sonja picked us up from Perth airport in her crumbling Morris Minor, the drive back to Roleystone already felt like coming home.
It was bittersweet, moving back into the games room in her dad’s house.
I reclaimed the sofa, but this time Gill wasn’t sleeping opposite me; she’d stayed in New Zealand, moving in with Chris as they tried to plan for a future together.
Roo returned to the room she’d slept in as a child – but Frieda, of course, was gone as well.
A lot had changed, for all of us, and this was very much on my mind as the last few days ticked down to my third Christmas in Australia. Because as far as change goes, I was about to push the envelope just a little bit further. Or at least, I was going to try to.
As midnight approached on Christmas Eve, I felt strangely detached from the merriment around me. It wasn’t that I was unhappy, but I had a job to do, a task to accomplish – and it was one of the scariest situations I had ever found myself in. I paced the corridor leading to the bedrooms, muttering to myself. Paced, and muttered. If anyone had noticed me, they have thought… well, let’s face it – they’d have thought it was perfectly normal. For me. I’ve been seen doing plenty of stranger things in my time.
But no-one saw me, and time was exactly my problem – because it was running out. I had to do this. It was now, or… or some other time? It didn’t have to be now after all, there was no real reason for it. A silly, self-imposed deadline was all that I’d be breaking, and any rule that I’d come up with was bound to be flawed. Maybe I should give it up altogether, I thought, at least for now…
No.
This had to be done. And now, before I lost my nerve.
Ha! Who was I kidding? I wasn’t even close to having the nerve.
But I have something else in abundance: I have stupidity. So I ignored my screaming instincts, and did it anyway.
I knocked on the door of Gerrit’s study, and went in. “Hi!” I said, trying – and failing – to sound casual. “Can I talk to you about something?”
“That sounds serious,” he said.
Then I closed the door behind me, and I think that got him really worried.
So I cut right to it. I didn’t think he’d appreciate small talk, and I wasn’t up to it. I was sweating, visibly trembling; even my voice was shaking. I was, quite plainly, terrified.
“I’d like to ask your permission to marry your daughter,” I said. I blurted it out all at once, for fear it would stay inside me forever if I didn’t.
Gerrit’s face went from concern to shock to delight in less time than it took me to write it – considerably less actually, as I only type with two fingers.
“Yes! Of course! That is great news, mate! I wondered if this was going to happen soon.”
“Oh, thank God for that! I was so nervous!”
“Yes, I can tell!”
And that was that. I swore Gerrit to silence, and hugged him – for the first time ever. He’d have to get used to it, I figured, if he was going to be my father-in-law. But I should probably draw the line at calling him daddy.
And then I went back into the family room, where last-minute adjustments were being made to the pile of presents under the tree. Less than an hour remained. I asked Roo if she’d like to come for a quiet stroll, and she said she would. Which was good, or I’d have struggled to get her alone in a house full of her sisters on Christmas Eve.
We walked through a pleasant Roleystone evening, taking advantage of the comparative coolness. We talked, as we usually did, but you know what? I can’t remember a single word of it. I can only hope I wasn’t babbling like an idiot, as all my focus was on what was about to happen. I’m not a great multi-tasker, it has to be said; if I talk while I walk, I invariably end up lost. If I try to eat at the same time, I end up in hospital. Roo was steering me, as usual, with light pressure on my hand, so this freed me up to spot potential sites. Unfortunately, I was drawing a blank. We’d walked a larger circuit than usual, passing down the hill and back up it from a different direction. We’d passed houses a plenty, and scraggly bits of bush, but this was still a fairly well-developed area; there weren’t any hidden spots of woodland, or sudden breath-taking views on offer. It was only the road, and as we walked beside it, closer and closer to her house, I started to get desperate.
“Let’s turn up there,” I suggested, and pulled Roo off the pavement to follow the road a bit further uphill. Now I could see trees around me, but only enough to shield the surrounding houses from the street. We reached the top of the hill. From there, the way led down – directly to the top of Roo’s driveway. We’d taken the long way around, and it had rewarded me with nothing.
I looked around frantically. This was it – last chance. Still nothing presented itself. Except…
“Let’s go and stand over there,” I said, pointing across the road.
“On the storm drain?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s what it is!” I’d noticed the raised platform on the opposite verge, and frankly had no other options. “Yes, it’s perfect!”
To her credit, Roo never questioned me on this. I guess we’d been together for quite a while by now, and she knew I was a freak. At least I hoped so, or she might be about to get more than she’d bargained for. I led her over the deserted road, through the coarse, scrubby verge-grass, and onto what turned out to be a large manhole cover, set into a raised square of concrete. We stopped there, and I held her close. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
She cast a wary eye back down the hill we’d hiked up. The view was of road, fading into a darkness punctuated by streetlights. On the upside, it was lined with trees; on the downside, they were invisible in the shadows. We were directly under a streetlight, which kind of obliterated most of our surroundings anyway. I figured it was as good as I was likely to get.
“You know how much I love you,” I started. I was looking right into her eyes, and she was looking into mine.
“Yes,” she said. “Me too!”
“So, I want to ask you something.”
I heard her sharp intake of breath as I lowered myself to one knee. I noted in passing that a colony of massive red ants were trooping straight across the steel cover. Ah well – nothing I could do about that. Just be a man, I thought.
I looked up. Roo was crying already, faint tear-tracks staining her cheeks, tiny beads glistening on her eyelashes.
“You know how much I love you…”
She sniffed back a sob, and nodded.
“OW!” I shouted at her. “Sorry! It’s the ants. They’re everywhere, and they bite!”
“That’s okay. I love you.”
“Right! Well, I know we’ve been together for a while now, and I was thinking, OW! You little BASTARD!”
“Are you…”
“Sorry! Sorry.”
“You can stand up, if you want.”
“Thanks, but I want to– ARGH! MotherFUCKER!”
I stood up. “Sorry, that one really hurt.” I scratched my knee, where a substantial lump was already blossoming. “Hang on…” I lowered myself into an awkward half-crouch, with one knee vaguely lower than the other. I took hold of her hands, more for support than for romantic emphasis. The only things still touching the ground were my feet, and the ants were swarming all over them.
“I can’t stay like this for long,” I explained, “so you’re going to have to answer this quickly.”
There was no response from Roo – she was properly crying now, either with love, or with despair.
I took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I love you with all my heart. I’ll love you for as long as we live. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and be together forever. Will you marry me?
”
Roo, drenched in tears, gave a kind of snotty burble.*
“Was that a yes?” I asked.
She was shaking her head – to clear the tears I hoped, as I had hold of both her hands. My attention was ninety-six-point-four percent on her, awaiting some kind of confirmation or reply. The other three-point-six percent of my attention was on the truly impressive bull ant climbing my leg, which had reached my knee and was now headed towards the gaping leg-hole of my shorts.
“Um, I’m afraid I’m going to have to rush you…”
“YES!” she cried. “I said yes!”
And with that I was released, both emotionally and physically. I stood up and wrapped my arms around Roo, pulling her close and sobbing into her hair. “I love you so much!”
“I love you too!” she sobbed back.
“Just think of all the adventures waiting for us… think of all the things we can do together…”
“I know!”
And then I felt a sudden pinch, and sprang back away from her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but it’s…”
“I know.”
And there she stood, gazing at me with what I like to think of as devotion in her eyes – while I hopped from foot to foot, shrieking and cursing, and punched myself repeatedly in the nuts.
*Roo has asked me to make it known that she has never in her life, in fact, made any noise even remotely resembling a ‘snotty burble’. I have chosen to keep the offending statement in however, as there are two sides to every story – and this is mine. ☺
Epilogue
Roo was delighted. Roo’s sisters were delighted. Roo’s dad was delighted, which was quite a relief for me, I can tell you.
“Frieda would have been delighted too,” he told me, which brought a tear to my eye.
There was quite a lot to talk about when I called my parents to wish them Merry Christmas.
Predictably, they were delighted.
Gill and Chris had decided to wait to break their engagement news until Mum came to visit them in New Zealand. Being rather nervous themselves, they ended up waiting until Mum was leaving – actually until she was on the escalator on the way up to airport security, having checked her bags in and everything.
Kamikaze Kangaroos! Page 39