A Distant Land

by Alison Booth

  ‘Yes, just a couple today and they won’t take long. Then I’ve got a few more lined up for Monday.’ There’d been so many interviews since his release he no longer needed to prepare beforehand. The questions were always the same. Why did the Vietcong let you go? What was it like with the enemy? Did they mistreat you? He could answer these even when only half-awake.

  ‘Stella and Nic Papadopoulos are having a lunch party at their place. Are you happy to go to that? Any time after twelve noon, they said. I hope you’re not too tired for all of this.’

  ‘I slept on the plane for the entire trip. I feel terrific.’ In fact he felt exhausted but he didn’t want to spoil the day by mentioning this. ‘Zidra, I really do need to talk to you.’

  ‘Can it wait?’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘We’ve got a tight schedule.’ As she bent to unlock the car door, her hair fell forward and obscured her face.

  ‘Okay.’ He put his bags down on the bitumen and waited.

  ‘Maybe we can go for a walk after the party,’ she said. ‘Through Centennial Park or somewhere like that. Then you can talk to me. There’s so much I want to tell you. And to ask you.’

  ‘By the way,’ he said, remembering the present he’d bought for her at the duty-free. ‘This is for you.’

  ‘How lovely.’ She took the bag and smiled, her golden-brown eyes glowing.

  ‘Dominique suggested this brand would suit you. I’ve told her all about you and she said you sound just like a Chanel No. 5 girl. French women seem to know these things somehow.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Her smile vanished and a tiny frown appeared. Perhaps she hated Chanel No. 5. Or maybe she’d given up wearing scent and he might have done better to buy chocolates and whisky or cognac instead.

  ‘Aren’t you going to look in the bag?’

  ‘Sure, although you’ve already told me what’s in it.’ After removing the sticker holding together the sides of the carrier bag, she gave the contents a cursory inspection before saying, ‘Thank you, Jim. That’s really lovely.’

  ‘I’ll hold the perfume,’ he said. ‘You seem to have your hands full, what with your handbag and the car keys.’

  ‘My handbag’s tiny and anyway I’ve nearly got the key in the lock.’

  ‘Tiny? It’s enormous.’

  ‘It’s my briefcase too.’

  ‘An enormous handbag but a tiny briefcase.’

  His laughter must surely have sounded as forced to her ears as to his own – a perverse and unnecessary addition to his words. However she acknowledged neither. All her efforts were directed at opening both doors of the car, an activity that seemed to require an unusual amount of concentration. After this achievement she tossed her bag onto the back seat before tackling the boot.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he ventured. ‘That’s a lovely dress.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s what I wore to your memorial service.’

  ‘A dress for all occasions,’ he said and regretted it immediately. Disappointment washed over him, at his own performance as much as Zidra’s. For so long he’d been wanting to see her; he’d never imagined their meeting would be awkward. Anticipation of their reunion, and a conviction that his love was reciprocated, had kept him going through those weeks of suffering in the jungle. Into his head slid the memory, quickly suppressed, of those seconds that he’d thought were his last, when he’d been so sure he was about to die. Zidra had been foremost in his mind then.

  But why should their conversation be this complicated when he had so much to say to her? Perhaps he should have telegraphed from Phnom Penh, straight after that first phone call last week. Why was it so much harder to express your feelings verbally than in writing? Probably it was that extra layer of protection you gained by not being able to see or hear any reaction. After a moment inwardly rehearsing his words, he said, ‘I’m pleased you chose to wear that dress today.’ Yet in spite of his preparation the words were like awkward pebbles that he had trouble spitting out.

  Perhaps it was fortunate that she didn’t hear. As she opened the back of the car, she said, ‘Have you heard about my ASIO story?’

  ‘Yes. Congratulations. That was fantastic.’ Of course he should have mentioned it before, as soon as he’d seen her. No wonder she was a bit irritated. He placed his bag in the boot, together with the unwelcome bottle of Chanel No. 5.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it in the car,’ she said, locking the car boot before putting on her sunglasses.

  Chapter 39

  The sun was low. Though Zidra would have liked to take Jim’s arm as they strolled across the rough grass of the park, she felt as if there were a glass wall separating them. He seemed tired and distant. Perhaps the day had been too much for him. I really do need to talk to you. That sentence had been fermenting in her mind ever since she’d collected him from the airport that morning. Filling her with foreboding and almost spoiling the day. Her anxiety was accumulating and she struggled to calm herself with the mantra she’d been repeating to herself a lot lately. Remember he’s alive. Remember that his altered feelings can never take that joy away. She kicked with her sandalled toe at a tussock of grass, hard enough to express her apprehension but not hard enough to hurt.

  ‘You did that a lot when you were a teenager,’ Jim said and laughed.

  She used to hate the way he would sometimes invoke the past like this. It had seemed to distance them rather than bring them closer, as if that difference in their ages gave him an advantage that he didn’t deserve. Yet now she felt touched by his comment and their shared memories, and she smiled back. For a few minutes more they walked in silence. In her head she began to formulate the words she would say. You said you needed to talk to me about something. Yes, that would do. They had to get this unsaid thing out into the open. She couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing where she stood. Or maybe she’d just say, What did you want to talk to me about?

  But in the end it was Jim who broke the silence. ‘You didn’t reply to my letter.’

  ‘The one you wrote on the plane?’ She glanced up at him. The cruel glare of the sinking sun hurt her eyes and she quickly turned away to avoid it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I only got it the day before the memorial service. I told you that on the phone. There was no point writing to a dead man.’ Her words came out far more harshly than she’d intended. It was too late to snatch them back again. They hung solidly between them in the still air.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Zidra. I meant that you haven’t answered that question I asked you.’

  ‘Which one?’

  He didn’t reply. His attention was directed to the buttressed trunk of a Moreton Bay fig tree some twenty metres distant. ‘Did you know those figs are strangler plants?’ he said. It was as if he’d forgotten the point of their conversation. ‘When a seed lands in the branch of a host tree it sends down aerial roots, eventually killing the host and standing alone. I saw an amazing ficus in the jungle. It was completely covering some ancient Cambodian temple. It looked like lava trickling down the sides and oozing over the ground.’

  The crumbling temple covered with molten lava appeared to her like a vision glimmering in the greenish jungle light. ‘Where did you see it?’ she said gently.

  ‘I can’t remember where it was. I got very confused with direction. But I can tell you when. It was when I was being asked a lot of questions. My last interrogation.’

  Her heart skittered and she was about to speak when he said, in a choked voice, ‘Do you care for me, Zidra?’

  She turned to look at him, shifting her position slightly so that his head was no longer silhouetted against the sun. His eyes were obscured behind dark glasses, and his face was expressionless, if you didn’t count the tension around the mouth. He meant friendship, that was all.

  ‘Of course I care for you.’ She’d make it easy for him
to withdraw his proposal if that was where this conversation was heading. If only he’d take off those bloody sunglasses she might have a better chance of gauging his thoughts. ‘Do you still care for me? Even after all your time in captivity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She felt a flicker of hope. ‘Didn’t that change you?’ Yet even as she spoke, she knew what the answer must be. How could his experiences not have altered him? He’d gone into the jungle and come out again. He’d faced the enemy and found that they weren’t so different from the allies. He’d faced the possibility of his own death, had known there was a pistol being held to the back of his head. How could you possibly be unaffected by that?

  And then there’d been Dominique waiting for him when he’d returned to Phnom Penh.

  ‘Yes, but it hasn’t changed my love for you. Just think, Zidra, have the reports of my death changed your affection for me?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ But she knew they’d changed her in other ways that she didn’t yet fully comprehend. Made her more anxious, made her less trusting, and that was probably the least of it.

  ‘Well, the same with me. I still mean everything I said in that letter. Absolutely everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes. Every single word, every phrase, every sentence, every paragraph. Every feeling.’

  ‘I thought you’d changed your mind,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Is that why you were so abrupt on the phone when we spoke?’

  ‘Me? It was you. You sounded distracted, almost like it was a chore to ring me.’

  ‘Well, Dominique had just come into the room with some journalist friend that she couldn’t keep out. That’s why I might have come across as distracted.’

  ‘You haven’t fallen in love with Dominique, have you?’ She looked into the distance as she spoke; she couldn’t bear to face the answer she was dreading. ‘Mon chouchou, mon cher: I couldn’t help hearing her call you that when you rang me.’

  ‘Dominique calls everyone that,’ he said. ‘It means nothing. Of course I’m not in love with her. How many times do I have to say it, Zidra? It’s you I love. Why can’t you believe it? Or have you fallen in love with that American with bad taste in books?’

  She laughed. ‘You mean with Hank? No, I haven’t. That’s all over. And I do believe you now, Jim.’

  ‘And what’s your answer to that question?’

  ‘You mean the one asking me to marry you?’

  ‘Yes, that one,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I’d love to marry you, Jim Cadwallader.’ Her voice cracked and gave away her feelings, but that didn’t matter any more. After reaching up and removing his dark glasses, she said, ‘I’ve missed you so much. More than I ever thought possible.’

  He pulled her to him and she rested her head on his chest. ‘Me too, Zidra. More than I thought possible.’

  ‘I think we might forget about that folding bed tonight,’ she said. ‘I reckon you’ll find it more comfortable upstairs with me.’

  ‘I reckon I will too,’ he said and began to kiss her.

  Part VI

  Late November 1971

  Chapter 40

  Zidra opened her eyes and saw, only centimetres away, Jim’s green eyes staring at her. She said, ‘How long have you been awake?’ It had been Jim’s idea to break their journey at Gerringong on the drive to Jingera. His first few days in Sydney had been filled with radio and television interviews, with everyone wanting to know about his time as a captive of the Vietcong. And endless interruptions. Friends dropping around, the phone ringing incessantly, the Paddington terrace house always full of people.

  ‘Half an hour. It’s only seven o’clock. I’ve been watching you. You look so young and innocent. Very misleading.’

  She laughed and rolled over so that her ear was resting on his chest. The morning light filtering through the ugly floral curtains was absorbed by the clinker-brick walls of the barn-like room of the motel. Jim’s heartbeat formed a soothing accompaniment to the keening of seagulls and the slower rhythm of breakers crashing onto the beach to the north.

  ‘I wonder who else has been watching me,’ she said.

  ‘No one, I hope, now that the Royal Commission’s been decided on.’

  ‘I’m probably being watched all the more closely, and Lorna too. I don’t understand how the government can have a largely unchecked surveillance system and yet view itself as the custodian of democracy and personal privacy. Who on earth is observing the observers?’

  ‘People like you.’

  ‘People in the media? You can’t trust the press too much, you know that, though the Chronicle’s a bit of an exception. The media picks up something, distorts it a bit for effect and then drops it.’

  ‘That’s a blessing. I don’t want to do any more interviews.’

  ‘What, don’t you want to be like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, repeating your story forever to everyone who’ll listen?’

  ‘I don’t need to do penance and I don’t want to think of it at all,’ Jim said, gently running his forefinger down the bridge of her nose and tracing out the contours of her lips.

  She smiled at him and pulled his face down to her own.

  Some time later she woke again, with a start. She reached out for Jim, but he was no longer beside her. She sat up too quickly and saw through oscillating waves of dizziness that he was seated at the desk at the far end of the room. Wearing only boxer shorts, he had a pile of papers in front of him. Deeply absorbed in what he was reading, he hadn’t noticed that she was no longer asleep. His head was tilted at an angle. He looked peaceful; he looked unshakable. He looked lost to another world, one in which he belonged to himself and had no need to assume a protective mantle. She caught herself smiling at his exposure and turned her head away, forgetting for an instant that she no longer needed to conceal the tenderness she felt towards him.

  Presently she sat up and perched on the edge of the bed. Although she thought such happiness was more than deserved, she wasn’t going to let it get away from her. Quietly she stood, not wanting to disturb him, wanting to creep up on him. At once he looked up. He smiled; he stood. She remained immobile, unwilling to change anything, unwilling to spoil anything. As he walked towards her, she watched his face, kind and reliable. He didn’t say anything; he put his hands on her shoulders and gently tilted her towards him as if she were a cardboard-cut-out doll, so that her hips were resting against his and her head was against his chest. They stood together for a long time, his warmth against hers, his hands holding her bare back.

  Suddenly there was a click as the small hatch door to their room opened. He manoeuvred her around so that her nakedness was concealed, and they smothered their laughter. The breakfast tray slid onto the bench by the door, pushed by an anonymous hand that withdrew immediately before the hatch snapped shut again.

  As Jim turned to retrieve the tray, she noted again how badly pitted was the calf muscle of his left leg. The scar tissue looked pink against his tanned skin; the tiny craters would be permanent reminders of his time as a captive. There were scabs too, from the slower-healing sores, and there were other wounds that she could not see. He was a lot thinner than he used to be. Each vertebra was clearly visible, making him look somehow defenceless.

  She remembered how, as a girl, she’d first noticed how beautiful he was. An image returned to her of Jim sitting on the beach at Jingera in the late afternoon, during one of those summer school holidays that used to seem endless, day after perfect day. Perhaps it was around four o’clock, the day-trippers already gone, the surf advancing with the incoming tide and the air not yet cool enough to make them want to put shirts on over their swimmers. After she’d shaken the sand out of her towel and spread it on the sand near Jim, she’d fought back an impulse to touch his tanned and vulnerable shoulder blades. How old would she have bee
n? Thirteen or fourteen, no more.

  She no longer had to repress those memories of Jim that were crowded into her head. He was tightly woven into the fabric of her past, and he would be tightly woven into the fabric of her future. They would grow up – and grow old – together.

  Chapter 41

  Jim watched Andy striding ahead, across the cemetery on the top of the headland above Jingera. He marched between the faiths. Catholics on one side; Protestants on the other. For the first time Jim noticed that the Protestants had the better view, of the ocean and the little township below.

  Jim knew where his brother, back home for a week now, was heading. Beyond the white painted fence bordering the graveyard, a narrow track led under twisted shrubs and along the cliff edge, before dropping to a ledge. This was the place they used to go to when they were young. This was the place where Andy could smoke out of sight of anyone who might report him to their mother.

  Jim followed Andy, just a few paces behind. His brother had changed. He’d become broader, more muscular. When he was older, he might have a tendency to gain weight. His straw-coloured hair was cut so short that his ears seemed more prominent, and the back of his neck was red, like beef jerky. And the changes to Andy were not just physical. There was a new hardness about him. His larrikinism was still there but it was not as spontaneous as it once was. There was something forced about his boisterousness.

  They sat on the ledge, their backs against the eroded sandstone cliff. The ocean lay spread out in front of them, its endless regiments of waves rolling towards the shore. The sky to the east was pale and washed out above the darkening blue of the sea.

  Andy pulled a matchbox and a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his trousers and lit a cigarette, sucking hard at it. After its end began to glow, he said, ‘Do you remember, Jimmo, that time we sat here when I was deciding to apply to the Army Apprentices’ School?’