Love...Under Different Skies (7 page)

“Sorry, can we—”

Bbbrrrrruuuuummmmmm
.

“Can we—”

Bbbbbrrrrruuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm
.

“Jamie! Stop doing that!”

“Ow! Don’t pinch me like that, Laura!”

“Can we please take the car for a test drive?” I eventually get to ask Bushy.

“No worries. Take her for a spin.” He gives Jamie a look. “I wouldn’t put your foot down that much, mate. The cops will be all over your arse if you’re not careful.”

The test drive goes well. Jamie even relinquishes control of the steering wheel long enough for me to have a go. This is nice, as it’ll be me who will actually be driving the bloody thing most of the time. This is the first time I’ve driven in Australia and I’m a little nervous. It becomes quickly apparent that their road layouts are strikingly similar to the ones back home though, and I’m happily driving round the streets of Wynnum in no time, trying hard not to rev the engine too loudly. Mind you, it’s not like I’m going to wake anybody up. Everyone around here has been awake since the crack of dawn and is on their third popsicle of the day.

By the time I pull back into the parking lot, Brett has returned and is standing with Bushy near the office building. By the animated way he’s waving his hands around, I can only assume the third test isn’t going all that well.

“Found one you like there, Laura?” he asks as I climb out.

“I think so, yes.” I look to Jamie for confirmation, who bobs his head like a nodding dog in an earth tremor.

“Great stuff! Let’s go do the paperwork with Bushy.”

The process of buying a car in Australia is not as straightforward as it could be. In the UK you just put your details on the registration document, take your new owner’s slip and other documents, and hand over your cash.

In Australia you first buy the car from the vendor, and then you have to drive it across town to a garage, where they complete something called a roadworthiness certificate, which is much like an MOT without the hand wringing and casual overcharging. Finally, you drive across to the
other
side of town to pick up your registration (or, rather inevitably considering we’re in Australia, your “rego”) from the Department of Transport.

All this takes the best part of a day.

Yep…a
day
.

The Mitsubishi Magna isn’t officially ours until after three in the afternoon.

“Right, then, that didn’t take too long,” Brett says unbelievably as we walk back out into the glaring afternoon sun from the cool confines of the Department of Transport building.

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah, the queues were pretty short. It took me four days to get my Commodore. Still, no worries, eh?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Do these people ever get irritated by
anything
?

“Right, then, I’ve gotta shoot off. Got a football match at five. You guys okay to find your way home?”

Unfortunately we are. “Yes, thank you, Brett. Jamie’s phone has GPS.”

“Great! I’ll see you Monday morning.”

And with that we are left alone once more, this time in charge of a three-litre automobile that’s so large it makes me look like a little girl while I’m driving it.

It’s on the drive back to Grant and Ellie’s that Jamie comes up with his plan to get us out of there.

“Look, they’re lovely people and very hospitable, but I don’t think my nerves, lower back, or survival instinct can stand another night,” he says as I follow the digitised female voice back along Wynnum Road.

“What do you suggest?”

Jamie looks back at Poppy, who is fast asleep on the backseat. “I think Poppy should develop a hideous fear of koala bears.”

“What?”

“We’ll tell them she’s frightened of koala bears, and we can’t stay another night because it might traumatise her for life. All the grunting is keeping her up at night and causing night terrors.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No it’s not. They
are
keeping
me
up at night.”

“Why don’t we just say it’s your problem, then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a grown man.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

All in all though, it’s not the worst idea in the world. We can leave Poppy in the car while we broach the subject with our hosts when we get back.

I hate lying to people, especially good, kind folks like Grant and Ellie, but I also hate mosquitoes big enough to play the harmonica, a bed harder than the Orloff diamond, and the kind of heat usually reserved for browning the tops of cupcakes.

By the time we pull up outside the ramshackle Queenslander, we have our story straight.

“She’s scared of the koalas?” Ellie says doubtfully from where she sits in her rocking chair out on the veranda. Jamie and I are standing sheepishly in front of both her and Grant as they relax the afternoon away.

“Yes, deathly afraid of them, unfortunately. It’s the grunting,” Jamie explains.

“I’ve always found it quite soothing,” Grant offers and takes a sip of what looks like the frog sauce he smeared over Poppy’s head watered down to a drinkable level.

“We’re really very sorry,” I add. “It’s been lovely staying here, but we do think we should probably go back to the hotel in Brisbane for her sake.”

I can see your face, Mum. Please stop scowling like that.

I don’t like this any more than you do, but did I explain the mosquitoes, noisy wildlife, and oven-like temperatures?

Grant and Ellie both look disappointed, but there’s a definite note of sympathy in their expressions as well, suggesting that our ruse is working.

“Well, I guess you’ve got no choice, then,” Ellie says. “We don’t want the poor little thing suffering, do we?”

“Nope!” Jamie says, with an unnecessary level of happiness.

Grant snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” Jamie asks.

“You guys can have our room!”

“What?”

“What?”

“Yeah…our room looks out onto the side garden. The bears never go past us there, no trees to get to. Little Pops will be fine. The room’s a little warmer than yours, but she’ll be right.”

A little
warmer
?

Seriously, are these people lizards?

We’re trapped.

No way out.

Our excuse hasn’t worked—and if anything, we’re now even worse off as we have to sleep in a bed that Grant and Ellie have probably had hippy sex in, and in a room that will be even hotter at night.

“That’s very kind of you!” I say too loudly. “Isn’t that right, Jamie?” I add through newly gritted teeth.

“Yes,” he says, his head dropping to his chest. “Yes it is.”

“Great! That’s all settled, then!” Grant moves to get up.

“Laura can’t poo,” Jamie blurts out.

“What?”

“What?”

“
What?
”

“She can’t poo. Didn’t want to say anything…obviously very embarrassing for her. That’s the other reason why we need to leave.”

“I can’t
poo
?” I spit at him.

I can’t believe he’s doing this.

I can’t believe he’s
humiliating
me like this.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first and say it was
him
.

“Yes honey. I’m sorry to bring it up, but we should be honest with these guys, don’t you think?”

My nails dig into the back of the chair I’m standing next to. “Not really Jamie, no. That’s not what I’m thinking
right now
.”

Jamie does his best to ignore the danger signs and swiftly looks back at Grant and Ellie. “It’s a nervous thing. She can’t go to the toilet in other people’s houses. The poor thing is more backed up than the M25 at rush hour.” He gives me a pleading look. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

I’m now bright red in a combination of gut-wrenching embarrassment and a rage so unholy it should be confined to the pages of the Old Testament. “Yes, that’s right,” I say in a strangled voice. “I don’t seem to be able to go properly. Not at all.”

Grant and Ellie both look like I’ve just pulled down my shorts and bent over to prove my point.

“Well…that must be quite uncomfortable for you,” Ellie says slowly.

“It is!” Jamie jumps in. “That’s why we’d like to move back to Brisbane, so Laura can have a proper shit.”

Oh my God.

There will be nowhere for him to hide. He could have a week’s head start, $10,000 and access to a plastic surgeon in Kiev, and I will
still
track the bastard down and make him pay for this.

“Okay,” Grant says. “I guess we’d better help you pack up your things, then.” He fixes me with a sympathetic gaze. “Would you like me to make up some of my home remedy, Laura? It might help you get things moving again.”

I shake my head vociferously. The last thing I need right now is Grant trying to shove liquidised frog up my bum.

And so, some twenty minutes later I am sitting in the driver’s seat of the Mitsubishi Magna, wringing the life out of the steering wheel with whitened knuckles. Jamie is collecting the last of our things and saying a final farewell to Grant and Ellie.

One swift phone call has booked us back into the Brisbane Metro and a short drive west is now the only thing between us and the joys of a comfortable king-size bed and climate control. But first there will be suffering, the most suffering a man can endure while sitting in the passenger seat of a car, without it being on fire and covered in scorpions.

I’d already said my goodbyes to our hosts before running to the car as fast as my legs would carry me. I just couldn’t bear to look at their faces ever again. These perfectly nice people, who brought us into their home and let us play Rummikub with them, now think I have a daughter who’s scared of her own shadow and that I have antisocial bowels.

Only Jamie has come out of this unscathed. This is an unacceptable state of affairs.

As my husband loads up the last of the suitcases, slams the trunk lid down, and lowers himself into the passenger seat, I open my window.

“Grant! Ellie!” I shout up the tangled driveway.

“What are you doing?” Jamie asks as he slams the car door.

The two Australian hippies reemerge onto the veranda. “What’s up, Laura?” Ellie asks as I start the car engine.

“I just thought you both should know…Jamie has an extremely small penis. He wanted to leave before either of you accidentally caught sight of it and called the
Guinness World Records
.”

Yes it was childish, but by crikey it made me feel a lot better as I sped away, my husband’s shrieking protests ringing in my ears.

Jamie did get the ear-bashing he so richly deserved for blaming our hasty move on my bowels, but as I sit here in the Metro with the gentle breeze of the air-con playing across my shoulders, I have to confess that the embarrassment was almost worth it.

I start a brand-new job on Monday and really could do with the next few days being as stress-free as possible. This is more likely here in our modern hotel than it would have been back in 1950s Australia.

Love you and miss you, Mum. And I can assure you that my bowels are functioning with clockwork regularity.

Your relaxed daughter, Laura

xx

JAMIE’S BLOG

Wednesday 22 February

Stop raining.

Please
stop raining. This is Australia, for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be warm, sunny, and potentially carcinogenic for the skin 365 days a year. Here I am, though, sitting on the balcony of our apartment on the
eighth
consecutive day of incessant rain.

And you thought the August bank holiday weekend in the UK was bad. I’m glad we’re not camping anywhere, as by now I would have probably been swept out to sea on my inflatable mattress, never to be seen again.

Apparently this kind of weather is not actually that surprising in this part of the world at this time of year. The Gold Coast is in southern Queensland on the east coast of the country about a hundred kilometres south of Brisbane, and it has a subtropical climate. Essentially, this means it is either hot and sunny or hot and wet. And in January and February the chances of it being the latter are quite high.

They fail to mention this in the brochures and travel shows. Not once have I seen a family from Cleethorpes standing outside a Melbourne detached bungalow in the pouring rain while a bedraggled TV presenter tries to convince them that open-plan living rooms are a good idea.

The constant downpour is lovely for the rainforests and gardens, I’m sure, but it’s not so great for an out-of-work writer with a short attention span and borderline ADHD.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had Poppy to look after, but Laura’s annoyingly efficient new employers have access to an excellent day-care centre a scant few minutes’ walk from their Surfer’s Paradise store, so Poppy is currently having the time of her life playing in a state-of-the-art ball pit with her new Australian toddler friends.

Actually, this is probably just as well. I can only imagine the psychological damage I’d do to her if we were left alone for days on end. It would be virtually guaranteed that I’d lose her in a department store again before the week was up. Either that or I’d poison her the first time I tried to whip us up a cooked lunch on the tiny two-ring electric cooker in the kitchen. She’s far better off picking up an Australian accent with her peers and trying not to feel bad about not having much of a suntan.

Similarly, my wife is no doubt extremely busy right now with her new job. Worongabba Chocolate didn’t hang around, that’s for sure, and put her to work as soon as was humanely possible. We were only back at the Brisbane Metro for a few days before Alan Brookes decided to send us down here to the Gold Coast early, because as he so eloquently put it: “You’re a bloody miracle worker, Laura. I want you down there and up to your elbows in it as soon as possible!”

This came after only a few days of Laura getting up to speed with the company’s operation. Within forty-eight hours she’d already identified several key areas that would increase turnover and lower expenditure. Brookes knew a valuable asset when he saw one and didn’t want to waste any time getting her up and running.

So I barely had time to work out the electronic programme guide on the hotel room TV before we’re moving again and driving the Magna (which for some reason Laura has started to call the Randy Lion) to the apartment Worongabba has rented for us in the strangely named but delightful town of Coolangatta. This beautiful place sits at the very edge of the state of Queensland and is bordered by equally picturesque places such as Tugun, Tweed Heads, and Currumbin.

I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to the names in this place. Every time I try to use the GPS it has a mild panic attack and refuses to cooperate until I agree to use abbreviations. I was highly amused to discover a place less than an hour’s drive away called Wonglepong. I’m going to suggest a day trip there to Laura just to take pictures of me standing beside the road sign with an idiotic grin on my face.

Coolangatta is half an hour’s drive south from Laura’s place of work—but according to Brett,
“
It’s a lovely place. My gran lives there. Much prettier than Surfer’s if you ask me. That place is all shiny skyscrapers and Jap tourists.” Jap tourists who enjoy luxury Australian chocolate I trust, given the decision to locate the company’s shop there.

Laura hit the ground running, and I barely saw her for the rest of the week. Her job is partly to oversee the three chocolate stores across the southern Queensland area, and partly to deal with the production and distribution of the chocolates themselves. It’s like running her own shop again, only times four and with a shitload more suntan lotion.

“It’s a fantastic company,” she told me one evening as I was giving her a foot rub. I still wasn’t entirely out of the doghouse after using her bowel movements as an excuse to leave Grant and Ellie’s. “Everyone seems delighted to be working for it, and they’re actually happy to come in to the store every day. It’s quite disorientating.”

“That’ll be the sun,” I reply sagely. “Well, that and the fact the economy here isn’t flatter than a deep-sea pancake.”

“A what?”

“A deep-sea pancake. You know, because the sea pressure is high, which would make the pancake even flatter than it would be if—”

“Right, I understand. I think all this sun is boiling your head, Newman.”

“Possibly so.”

“Anything come up for you?”

“Nope,” I reply downcast.

We’d come out here thinking I would have absolutely no problem finding work of some description. In a country with a strong economy and low population you’d think employment opportunities were being handed out on every street corner. I had every intention of landing myself a nice part-time job doing a bit of copywriting or marketing to supplement the already healthy wage Laura was bringing in, thus leaving myself enough time to write a couple of dreadful novels.

This had been the plan we’d agreed on when we flew out last month, but within a few weeks it had become apparent that finding some gainful employment wouldn’t be the breeze I thought it would be.

First of all, there are no writing jobs of any kind in this area. Any rare positions that do open are snapped up at near light speed before I get so much as a chance to fill out an application form. Which brings me to the other reason I can’t find work: I was unlucky enough not to be born Australian. If you weren’t educated in the Australian system, you can forget about any of your qualifications meaning a damn thing here. I have degrees and postgraduate certificates coming out of my arse, but as they were all earned in the UK I might as well have a PhD in advanced chicken molestation.

“Something will come up,” Laura tells me and gives me one of those sympathetic smiles you never want to have aimed at you.

She then launches into a lengthy diatribe on how chocolate manufacturing out here is ten times more efficient than it is back home. I continue to rub her feet while drifting off into a morose fantasy where I have to offer sexual favours to passing Japanese tourists to earn enough money to buy myself a degree in creative writing from an online Australian university.

When this chance for a new life came along, I spent all my time fantasising about long golden beaches, ninety-degree temperatures, and barbecues. I really didn’t think about what I was going to do for a long-term career until we actually got here. I was so happy that Laura had been offered a well-paying job—and would therefore dig us out of the mire I’d resolutely put us in, thanks to getting fired from the paper—that I didn’t stop to think about the ramifications on my own future employment, and my sense of self-worth should I not find something remunerative to do with my time.

Right now I’m a kept man, and it frankly makes me feel a bit sick. I’m very proud of Laura for what she’s accomplishing with Worongabba, but I hate the idea of her having to support us both. Oh, I can clean the house from top to bottom every day and rub her feet until they’re worn down to nubs, but I still don’t feel like I’m providing much to the family unit. It’s a very caveman-like attitude to take I know, but I just can’t help myself.

The lack of work and acres of free time wouldn’t be so bad if it would just stop fucking raining for five minutes. In previous weeks I’ve been able to take constitutional walks along the breathtaking beaches we’re lucky enough to be living right alongside. Our apartment is less than a hundred yards’ walk to the kind of sandy slice of heaven you usually only see glaring at you from the pages of the nearest travel brochure. I’ve grown quite used to ambling my way along the boardwalk, dropping into the town centre to pick up the local paper, and spending the next twenty minutes in a fruitless search for employment before throwing my hands up and buying an ice cream. It’s the kind of lifestyle I’d be insanely jealous of if I weren’t the one living it.

But then it started to rain and my life became a living hell.

The two-bedroom apartment we live in isn’t all that big. It’s part of a three-storey complex built around a small swimming pool and is obviously designed with the transient vacationer in mind. Not a day goes by without seeing a new collection of tourists wheeling their suitcases in through the main gate, happy expectant looks on their faces.

The lack of floor space is fine when you can get out and about, but when you’re confined thanks to the inclement weather, it’s akin to being in a prison—admittedly, the minimum security kind with cable TV and attractive views from the window, but a prison nonetheless.

Thus I am bored out of my tiny mind.

Which is frankly ridiculous considering I’m in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with access to a plethora of entertainment venues designed to keep the locals happy when the weather is a bit crappy, as now. The fine public transport system of Queensland could carry me to any number of cinemas, theatres, bowling alleys, amusement arcades, and shopping malls.

I’d also like to think I have a pretty creative intellect. I could be spending all this free time writing a novel of such great import and significance that it would change the face of modern literature.

So what have I accomplished in the past few days, you may ask? What constructive and proactive tasks has Jamie Newman completed in his days on the Gold Coast so far?

I have finished Plants vs Zombies, learned how to say “my elephant has a purple bum” in German, and jerked off a grand total of six times in one afternoon. By the end all I could produce was a fine dust. My life is truly blessed…or
“mein elefant hat einen lila unten”
as they say in Bavaria.

Thanks to this apartment block being largely full of tourists, I haven’t had much chance to get to know anyone. No sooner have I broken through my British sense of reserve and introduced myself to a neighbour, it’s then time for them to leave. There was a particularly nice couple from Munich I was trying to get to know last week. I’d just got to the point where I was attempting to work elephants into the conversation when Jurgen announced they were both leaving the next morning for Perth.

In fact, the only people I’ve seen on a regular basis so far have been Sandra the housekeeper, her husband, Bob, who tends the grounds, and Mindy, the pretty twenty-year-old letting agency trainee who sits in her small office at the rear of the apartment complex texting on her iPhone. Sandra comes from the UK so we have some common ground on which to base a conversation, Bob is quite happy to baffle me with the rules of Aussie football, and while Mindy isn’t the source of great conversation, I can at least stare idly at her fabulous breasts.

I can’t talk to the girl for more than five minutes at a time though, as she makes me feel older than shit. Mindy speaks in a language I can barely understand, using words like
stoked
and
wrapped
in contexts I am completely unfamiliar with. Apparently they are both indicators of excitement and happiness judging from the way she says them in a high-pitched squeal while bouncing around in one spot.

I have tried to put pen to paper (or fingertip to keyboard) and write something in the empty rain-soaked hours of the past week. It did not go altogether well.

I initially started to write a thriller about a British journalist living in Australia who has to fellate Asians to survive and gets embroiled in a human-trafficking operation, but decided after three thousand words that this was probably hitting a bit close to home and left it there.

Then I had a pop at writing erotica. I just can’t do it. Every time I start to describe how his throbbing manhood sailed majestically
towards her heaving sex, I feel a combination of horny and nauseated—
and start to giggle like a ten-year-old looking through a porno mag for the first time.

Then I wrote a poem about the rain. I’d only got three stanzas into the bugger when I realised that all I’d been writing was a weather report in rhyming couplets:
Heavy downpours all this morn, leaves me feeling all forlorn. Precipitation from the west, creates a weight inside my chest.

Complete crap, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I’ve come to the decision that I’m not cut out to write anything of great import and significance, so I should probably just knock out a derivative action potboiler featuring large explosions and women with chests that defy gravity. I am, therefore, now halfway through chapter one of
Max Danger and the Boobatrons
and am heartily looking forward to our muscular hero’s first confrontation with the evil Doctor Smegma.

We’ve been here in Australia for six weeks now, and that’s been long enough to get a pretty good idea of what it’s like as a country. So for your delight and edification, here’s the six-week report card:

The Good:

Free parking. I know I should probably start with the beautiful beaches and all that blather, but
free parking, people—everywhere!
We haven’t once had to pay for parking at any one of the various beauty spots and tourist attractions we’ve been to. The petrol’s cheap as well, even though the price is more up and down than an overworked prostitute some days.

The weather. Yep, here’s an inevitable one. It’s hot, and for the most part sunny. It hasn’t dropped below twenty-five degrees yet, and we’re all permanently living in shorts and flip-flops. This makes people happy and friendly, which makes us happy and friendly—those of us with jobs, that is. Yes, it’s summer here, but as their winter is generally the same temperature as
our
summer anyway, we’ll go ahead and give this one resoundingly to the Aussies, eh?