Love...Under Different Skies (11 page)

He then moves behind me, dancing on the edge of oblivion, before jogging back to the orange ute and the two girls he’s no doubt going home to have sex with.

“Thanks Milo!” I call after him. He throws me a salute and jumps back in his car.

I crawl back into my seat and drive away from the heart-stopping hairpin. I’m still going about four miles an hour, but I’m also revving the engine like an idiot, guaranteeing the clutch will explode within the next few minutes if I’m not careful.

The split second the road divides into two lanes again, Milo and the twins roar past with a blare of the car horn that fades out rapidly as they turn a corner ahead. My wife’s horn isn’t likely to fade as quickly, and I have a feeling I’ll be servicing her requirements once Poppy has been put to bed for the night—and providing she doesn’t tell me to rev her engine at any point we should be fine.

On the drive back to the apartment I reflect on what’s turned out to be a fairly typical day in Australia: one part terror, two parts awe, three parts incredulity. Add two spoonfuls of emasculation and you’re golden.

LAURA’S DIARY

Saturday, June 10

Dear Mum,

I don’t know if you ever noticed this in your years on the planet, but human beings really aren’t meant to be in the water. We may kid ourselves with flippers, masks, armbands, and swimming costumes that advertise our sexual services, but the truth is that the water—particularly the ocean—is an environment we are poorly suited to. I speak from cold, hard experience, thanks to the events of today.

“Have you seen the turtles yet, Laura?” Alan says to me on Monday during one of his frequent visits to the store.

“Turtles?”

“Yeah, down at Cooly, where you’re living? There’s a reef system out round one of the islands where you can swim with the turtles. It’s a glorious way to spend the afternoon.”

I guess I have to take his word for it. If anyone knows how to have a good time when he should be at work, it appears to be Alan Brookes.

“I’d be happy to take you out there sometime,” he adds, once again showing how nice a boss he is once you get past the bluster and Australian machismo.

After the beach whore incident though, I decide it would be far better to take Jamie, who is well used to my blunders and won’t bat an eyelid if I do something embarrassing with a snorkel mask.

I bring the dive company’s website up on the computer at lunch. The whole thing appears quite impressive, to say the least. Lots of pictures of happy snorkelling tourists weaving their way through forests of brightly coloured coral while sleek green turtles frolic around their legs. There is even one picture of a blonde girl feeding one of the cute little buggers from her hand.

That could be me. I could be the blonde feeding the cute little turtle as I bob around gracefully above the multicoloured reef. All for seventy-five dollars. It sounds like a brilliant day out. Unfortunately the age limit is fourteen, so Pops will have to take an impromptu Saturday visit to Surf Tots. The trip will do my morose husband a world of good, though.

Things have gone from bad to worse with Jamie’s work situation, Mum. He
still
hasn’t managed to find a job, and it’s really starting to bring him down. I can tell because there are days I get in from work and he hasn’t even taken off his dressing gown. Jamie can be a lazy bugger if you give him enough of a run-up, but he also has a very active mind and when it’s not being properly exercised, it can lead to a permanent hangdog expression and the kind of loud sighing that really gets on your nerves after a while. You can imagine how delighted I am to return from a hard day at work to find that Jamie has done absolutely nothing with his day, other than sigh and bemoan his lot.

Going home from a day with Alan Brookes who not only grabs life with two hands but strangles it until it turns blue, to a husband who doesn’t have enough energy to grab life even if it were to stand in front of him and jiggle around on the spot is quite depressing. I hate making the comparison between the two, but it’s hard not to.

Jamie has attempted to fill his spare time by writing a book. He even read a few paragraphs of it to me the other day. I’m not sure the world needs a novel about killer robot women with enormous breasts, but I didn’t want to make his mood any worse so I just nodded and said it sounded quite well written. Which was no word of a lie. Jamie can string a sentence together—I’m just not sure he’s stringing the
right ones
together at the moment. Good subject matter for a book or not, writing only serves to fill a few hours of his day before he gets bored and starts surfing the Internet.

To combat the malaise I’ve started leaving Poppy with him for a couple of days a week. I’m not too sure my daughter is particularly happy with this development. She loves her daddy, but the entertainment possibilities with him are severely limited when compared to all the fun and games she can get up to at Surf Tots. She also gets to come into the shop at lunchtimes to see me. This delights her to no end, but I can’t be sure whether that’s because she gets to spend time with her mummy or just because mummy works in a chocolate shop.

With Jamie, poor old Pops is forced to sit and watch bad Australian cartoons, play age-restricted games on the laptop, and take long ambling walks along the beach until her feet hurt.

“Daddy’s boring,” she said to me in the car on the way to work last week. “He doesn’t push me properly on the swings.”

To Poppy Helen Newman this is a grievous crime. My three-year-old maniac of a child absolutely loves to be pushed as hard as is humanly possible while on a swing. Anything other than your 100 percent commitment is met with a no-nonsense frown on her little forehead and a pout that will last the rest of the day unless you buy her an ice cream.

Nevertheless, her presence at home is keeping Jamie from permanently living in his dressing gown, so for the foreseeable future Poppy is just going to have to put up with some limp-wristed swing action.

It also means I have to contain a certain amount of jealousy that Jamie is spending a lot more time with Poppy now than I am. But I have to suppress that feeling as much as Poppy has to put up with being a bit bored every other day. It’s all for a greater good.

I figured the trip out to see the turtles might cheer Jamie up a bit, and for once I’m right.

“Cool! I’ve walked past the place a few times down in the town and it looks great,” Jamie says with the first genuine excitement I’ve heard from him in a long time.

“I know. You can feed the little sods and everything!” I exclaim happily.

It’s generally quite rare for Jamie and me to be genuinely excited about something, so we both intend to make the most of our day on the water and take as many pictures of the aquatic little fellas as possible. Jamie doesn’t even make a comment about being a pathetic and emasculated kept man when I call the dive company to pay for the tickets.

This is something of a miracle, as not a day has gone by recently without him making
some
reference to the fact that I’m earning all the money. We can’t do the weekly shop without him making at least one comment about the disparity between us, usually in a tone of voice replete with self-pity and barely concealed jealousy. I’m getting pretty damn sick of these comments, so I’m very relieved when I don’t have to hear any of them this time around. It appears his enthusiasm for turtle watching is enough to make him forget his silly neuroses for one day at least.

“I’ll go put the camera in the waterproof case and make sure everything’s working okay,” Jamie says eagerly and skips into the bedroom to go track it down.

I sip my cup of tea and sit back feeling decidedly pleased with myself. Not only do I get to have a lovely day out on the water, I also get to put a smile on my husband’s face for the first time in weeks. Two big fat birds with one expertly aimed stone, I’d say.

And I do like to make him happy, Mum. He can be a very frustrating man sometimes, especially when things aren’t going his way, but he’s still the man I fell in love with and still the man who gave me the most important thing in my life, our daughter Poppy.

Anyway, this situation won’t last much longer I’m sure. Jamie will find some work soon and this problem will go away. Once he feels like he’s contributing something again, I’ll get the old Jamie back, I’m sure of it.

We were both up this morning at the crack of dawn. Standing out on the balcony and looking to the heavens I deduce that it’s going to be another warm, sunny, and thoroughly pleasant day, ideal for some frolicking with green turtles.

By eight o’clock we’re at Diving Gold and meeting the crew who will be taking us out on the water. They are, in apparent order of boat seniority: Daffo, Wilko, Tommo, and Spud. Spud is the only one who doesn’t appear to be delighted with the nickname bestowed on him. I can only assume his surname is Murphy or O’Neil, and the other members of the crew have made the appropriate connection between the Irish and potatoes and named him accordingly. I guess O’Neilo wouldn’t come across right and would skirt very close to sounding Italian, which just wouldn’t suit Spud’s ethnic background at all.

Daffo, Tommo, and Spud take off in a large VW van covered in pictures of turtles to prepare the boat down in the harbour, while Wilko stays behind to help us choose wet suits.

There is a grand total of eight people on today’s excursion.

Alongside Jamie and me are a French couple, two lads from Arbroath, and an American twosome who look well into their sixties. All appear to be fairly pleasant, although one of the Scots is very possibly mildly drunk at eight fifteen in the morning.

Of the group, it’s the pensionable Americans who seem to have the most trouble getting their wet suits on. None of the rest of us jump into ours like we’re Jacques Cousteau’s cousin, but we don’t have the indignity of realising we’ve put it on the wrong way round. Such is the unhappy fate of the husband, who neatly pinches his elderly penis in the teeth of the zipper before Wilko realises what is happening and has the old man turn it around with the zipper running up the back as is right and proper.

I can see Jamie suppressing a grin throughout this pantomime. He obviously doesn’t realise that the old American is basically him in thirty-five years with a Yankee twang.

Once the wet suit fitting is over and the suits have been stored away for the trip, Wilko packs us off with a map to the docks, where our boat awaits. Diving Gold is a small operation, and the single camper van it owns has already beetled off, so we have to drive ourselves. Jamie is somewhat put out by this, but I don’t mind. I’d rather not have to force polite conversation with anyone at this time in the morning. I’d only get trapped by the American pensioner as he tells me all about how his scrotum is now a ball of fire thanks to the zipper fiasco. I don’t know what it is about getting old, but you seem to lose most of the inhibitions you carry round with you when you’re young and are quite happy to discuss your most embarrassing ailments with a complete stranger if it’ll pass twenty minutes.

As it is, Jamie negotiates with the GPS for about three miles. It must not be in a truculent mood this morning as we arrive at the boat dock without having taken one wrong turn. Spud greets us at the gangplank and helps us onto the boat by taking our backpacks.

Jamie and I take up temporary residence on the bench at the back of the medium-size pleasure craft that bears a slight resemblance to a modernized version of the one from
Jaws
, which I try not to think about.

The docks themselves are about half a mile inland of the entrance to the broad Tweed River, which flows from the hinterland mountains, emptying into the Pacific Ocean right on the border between Queensland and New South Wales.

“I could get used to this,” Jamie says, lolling his head back and basking in the sun with his eyes closed.

I have to say I agree with my husband as I look across the calm river, squinting a bit as the sunlight bounces off the gently rippling water. Then something happens that fair takes my breath away. The water is suddenly broken by the glistening back and fin of a dolphin coming up for air. Before it sinks back beneath the waves, another one is cresting, followed by another, and a fourth.

“Jamie!” I cry and go to hit him to get his attention. I don’t turn my head while I’m doing this for fear of losing the aquatic creatures so end up whacking him in the testicles.

“Ow! What, woman?”

“Dolphins, Jamie!”

“Where?”

“There!” I point at where the first dolphin is coming up for another gasp, sending a fountain of water from his blowhole with an audible expulsion of air.

“Fuck me,” Jamie says in awe.

My eyes start to tear up a bit. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a dolphin, other than on TV or in a movie. It’s a rather special moment. Coming this close to the second most intelligent—and most playful—animal on the planet is quite incredible.

“Bugger off you little sods!” I hear Daffo shout from behind me. He looks down at me and my shocked expression. “This river’s chockablock with bloody dolphins. It’s a miracle we don’t run ’em over all the time. They can be a right nuisance.”

A
nuisance
? These beautiful, smart, graceful creatures…a nuisance? I’m incredulous and tell him so.

Daffo smiles. “You get used to them, believe me. The shine wears off the apple a bit when you’ve had to smack one on the nose for the hundredth time because he won’t bugger off when you’re trying to test your new scuba gear.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. They love irritating you.” He leans over the side of the boat. “Smack your hand in the water like this. One of ’em might come over for a look.”

I do as I’m bid and watch the water closely.

I spend the next five minutes concentrating on this and am thus completely unaware that the rest of our gang of turtle watchers have boarded the boat and are now watching what I’m doing. They probably think the English woman has gone stark-staring nuts, slapping the Tweed River like it’s getting a harsh telling-off for being too lazy.

I don’t care, though. I’m determined to attract a dolphin over. And yes! I see a fin break the water and come in my direction. I start to slap the water harder in excitement. I can’t believe I’m about to get up close and personal with a dolphin! I don’t care what Daffo says, these are majestic animals and the idea of touching one makes my heart hammer in my chest.

Underneath my hand I see a grey shape rise to the surface. A pointy grey head breaks the water, and a clammy wet nose butts against my palm.

“Bloody hell Laura, that’s amazing,” Jamie says breathlessly.

“Jim, look, this woman’s petting a dolphin!” one of the Arbroath lads says to his compatriot.

“Shit on toast,” Jim exclaims.

“Ooh!” squeals the French woman. “Incroyable. Zat is amazing!”

“Harry, get your camera out,” the American lady says, and I hear Harry rifling around in his backpack.

“Stand back a bit Myra, I can’t get a good shot,” I hear Harry say to his wife.

I can feel the others crowding around me, but I can’t take my eyes off my new aquatic friend. The cheeky way in which his mouth curls up at the ends makes me giggle, as does the way his eyes roll back and forth a bit, as if to suggest we’re sharing some unspoken but hilarious in-joke that only he and I understand.