New Australian Stories 2 (43 page)

‘I was thinking of going parasailing,' Caitlin said. ‘What do you think?'

‘Well, if you want to, you should.'

‘I was hoping you might come with.'

They'd seen them each day, little dots hoisted to the horizon by colourful sails, and each time Caitlin commented on them —
Oh, how wonderful
or
Oh, that'd be so much fun
— but Harry only saw them as a semi-interesting backdrop. If Ruth were here, she'd place a hand on his arm and remind him of his vertigo.

‘Oh, I don't think I could do that, Cait.'

‘Of course you could.'

‘No, no. I'm happy to watch you do it, though. If you want.'

She tilted her head to the side and squeezed the water out of her ponytail. ‘Maybe you'll change your mind in a few days.'

The breeze picked up, and Harry was assailed by the scent of frangipani, sunscreen and French fries, ordered by a guest a few seats down. The man was thick-set and paunched, with a complexion suggesting endless tiers of sunburn. His white hair was balding at the crown, and a finger on his left hand was in the vice of a wedding band fitted sometime in his youth. When he sneezed, his shorts bulged dangerously at the sides. Harry smiled and turned to share an unkind word with Caitlin, but stopped short. She wouldn't appreciate it as her mother would. Not that Ruth was mean-spirited — she volunteered at a charity and fostered four seeing-eye dogs — but she couldn't abide sloth and didn't mind when Harry poked fun at it occasionally.

A graceful, fine-boned woman of about sixty sat down next to the white-haired man and reached a hand across to his cheek. He smiled and took another fistful of fries while she fussed over him, applying more sunscreen, handing him a water bottle, checking the menu for an afternoon cocktail. They laughed about something and then settled into their separate books.

Harry looked away, feeling a clench in his abdomen. He tried to focus on the individual strands of thatch on the roof of the bure, the carvings on the supporting poles, the markings on the tapa cloth stretched to its limit on the wall, but all the details, separate or combined, couldn't stave off the growing feeling that none of this was right, none of it, not the warmth or the holiday-reading or the faint thrum of a ukulele from across the sand. He shouldn't have come.

The nights were the worst. By day, one could roam the beach, swim laps, play cards at the Tikitiki Lounge; at night, the children were parcelled off to their rooms to watch cable TV and eat burgers while the adults wandered two by two. The clamour of the day was replaced by crickets, frog song and village singers who channelled Tony Bennett and Burt Bacharach. He'd never noticed how alienating a place it could be.

Before dinner each night he'd rung the hospital, and before dinner each night the duty nurse had told him that nothing had changed. Now he sat by the phone, staring dumbly at the little tabs alongside each number: reception, laundry, room service. In thirty-seven years of marriage, he and Ruth had never ordered room service.

He stared hard for a moment at the message light — dim and unactivated — and then left for the restaurant.

Caitlin sat opposite him, nursing a pina colada and studying the menu. Candles dotted the tables, and when a breeze huffed theirs out, Harry hid it among the condiments.

‘When we were here last year, your mother ordered the wahoo steak every second night.'

‘Was it that good?'

‘It must've been.'

Caitlin shrugged. ‘Still, she could've tried other things.'

‘Your mother is a woman who knows what she likes.'

Caitlin smiled tightly and closed the menu. ‘I think I'll have the salmon.'

They sat there in silence; Harry tried to discern if it was comfortable, and after a moment he decided it probably wasn't. They had said all they had in them in the first few days, and the resort hardly provided extra stimuli. He was starting to repeat himself, and Caitlin, with her thirty-year-old memory, was starting to remind him of it.

‘Why don't we try the curry place tomorrow night, Dad?'

‘It's too spicy for me.'

‘You've never tried it.'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘Mum never cooked curries and you never eat at Indian restaurants, so when exactly have you tried it?'

‘I've had a rogan josh before, I remember it clearly.' But he couldn't. He knew that Ruth always steered him away from curries, and she usually had a good reason for these things. He put his menu down. ‘It was like
fire
.'

‘It's not too late to try new things, you know. You're not dead yet.'

Harry clenched his fork. ‘No. Not yet.' He noticed Caitlin's cheeks, now flushed. ‘And how many of those drinks are you going to have? I didn't know you were a drinker.'

‘Oh, Dad.' She crossed her arms and looked out over the pools. In this light, her face seemed on the gaunt side. Ruth wouldn't have approved; she always said that a woman had to choose between her figure and her face. Ruth chose her face, and even as she lay prone and blanched of make-up at St Vincent's, her facial routine — cleanse, tone, moisturise and slip into bed each night smelling of cucumber — shot to hell by the tubes passing over and into, even then she looked a full five years younger than her age.

The food arrived and they ate without a word. The wahoo steak was a little overdone, he thought.

The next day they caught a taxi into town. At the local market, Caitlin sifted through knick-knacks while Harry looked on, his vision glazing over in the heat. ‘Can I help you with anything, sir?' A young woman was suddenly by his side, gesturing at a display of tropical lotions.

‘No, no. I'm just looking.'

‘Something for your wife, perhaps? The frangipani is very popular.'

Before he could decline, the saleslady had popped open the lid and dabbed a little on his hand. The smell was sickly, not at all true to the flowers on the resort, but it got into his nostrils and under his skin and made him tear up for a moment so that he had to turn away from the girl and pretend to be checking his wallet for enough cash.

Caitlin was inspecting piles of fruit at another stall, picking up pineapples and limes, asking how much for a bunch of sugar bananas. She settled on a mango and exchanged money with a tiny woman who clinked with rows of bangles as she moved.

Caitlin held up the mango to him and mouthed, ‘Gold.'

‘You can have mango at the breakfast buffet, you know.'

‘I know, but this I can have whenever I like. Plus, it's helping out the local economy.' She reached into her bag, pulled out a tub of lip balm and was about to apply it when Harry grabbed her wrist and stopped her. ‘Dad, what are you doing?'

‘You've just touched everything in that market. Do you think you should be putting that same hand to your mouth now?'

She rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously? Dad, it's not like there's cholera here. Stop being ridiculous.'

‘I'm not being ridiculous.' He felt the heat rise to his cheeks and wished for some support. ‘I'm just looking out for you. You should wash your hands before you transmit all those germs to yourself.'

She stood there and stared at him. ‘Where is this coming from? This isn't you, Dad. You don't fuss and bother about germs. Mum does.'

‘Maybe it is me. Maybe I've always fussed about germs, but your mother has been the one to voice it more regularly. How would you know? Only your mother and I know.' He pointed to his chest and then to his right, where Ruth's chest would have been. ‘
We
know.'

Caitlin, mouth agape, looked so much like her mother he felt doubly admonished. But there was nothing to be done; it was said, she was hurt, and now they would return to the hotel and eat another meal in silence.

Neither of them said a word in the taxi. The radio was up loud, and Harry could feel the pulse of the reggae through his forearm as it rested on the doorframe. The driver picked up speed, taking corners so quickly that Harry's grip fastened on the door. He reached behind him for a seatbelt but felt only the pinholed leather of the seatback. These old models came without them, he realised, just like the ones in his youth. He watched each turn on the drive back, his chest bare and unbolstered.

By their second-last day, Harry and Caitlin were swimming in different pools. One of them would make a vague attempt at unity — ‘I'll probably be around the Tikitiki Lounge if you feel like lunch at some point' — but then ‘island time' afflicted them and the opportunity passed.

Harry read the local paper by the main pool, browsing the jobs section and calculating what he might need of a salary to make a life here. It wouldn't take much if it was just himself he had to support. That thought alone made him put down the paper and close his eyes.

His silence was broken by a tinny rhythm, a constricted, muffled buzzing. He opened his eyes to see a woman lying next to him — really a girl — nodding along to the music from her iPod. She was black, a point Caitlin was always saying Harry shouldn't notice, but how could he not when a) she was so black it was extraordinary to him, and b) he had eyes? It wasn't as if you ceased to see someone's attributes once their background was deciphered, and this girl was the kind of smooth brown that Harry had only seen on American TV shows. Her skin was accentuated by a hot-pink bikini and nails to match, and she was mouthing the words to the hip-hop track seeping out of her headphones.

Harry looked around. All the guests were either white or Asian; the only other black people were the locals, ferrying drinks or tending the garden. Her hair was plaited in tiny braids that moved in a swirl along the contours of her scalp. Caitlin had done that once in Bali in her early twenties, but on her it had looked like a cheap grab at childhood. On this girl, it was fitting. The soles of her feet were pale, as were her palms, but the rest of her was immaculately black. No mottling of the skin, no blotchy allergic spots — nothing like the varicose veins Ruth had on the backs of her calves or the strange new freckles, bound to be liver spots, now surfacing on the skin of his hands. She was incredible, and Harry had to monitor the glances he stole every so often so as not to appear either racist or perverted.

She was sitting alone, and Harry wondered who her companion might be. Perhaps parents, though she looked too old and brazen to be holidaying with family. The hoist of her bikini and the ease with which she sat there, half-nude, one leg crossed high over the other, toes kicking every so often to the beat, said lover rather than daughter. A small silver toering glinted in the sun, and Harry decided that she might be a callgirl of sorts. She was pretty enough and there was a cheapness to her attire, and when the waitress came round to take her order, the girl seemed flustered and unsure, as if she might be caught out in a charade. Harry rapped himself over the knuckles. He was being uncharitable.

When a tall glass of something tropical was delivered to her, Harry took the chance to start a conversation.

‘Oh, this? It's called a Malolo Sunset, but I have no idea what's in it. The lady told me but I clean forgot!' The girl's accent — all-American — was as refreshing to Harry as her presence. ‘Maybe some rum with a whole lotta tropical juice? Did you want to try some?' She offered the straw to him, but Harry waved it away.

‘No, no, you enjoy it.'

‘You should get one, it's
amazing
.'

‘I tend not to drink much during the day. Or at night, actually.'

‘Oh,' the girl whispered, ‘you in AA?'

‘AA? Is that — oh, no! No, I don't have a problem, I just …' He thought about it. There was a reason, surely, but it eluded him. Alcohol just belonged to a different life, that's all, one he chose not to live.

‘That's cool, you don't have to drink. I'm not a big drinker or nothing, neither; don't be thinking I'm a alcoholic. I just like to treat myself now that I'm on a island, sitting by this pool, not worrying about no rent or work or alarm clocks. It's a holiday, y'know? Time to do things you don't usually do.' She smiled, her teeth a revelation. ‘I'm Alma, by the way.'

‘Harry.'

‘Nice to meet you, Harry. You here alone?'

Was that it? Was she here to solicit? ‘No, I'm here with my daughter. She's at the other pool.'

‘Oh, I get it. Embarrassed by her dad?' Alma laughed.

‘Possibly.' Harry took a quick breath. ‘What about you? Are you here with your family?'

‘My family? Hell no! No, they back in California where I left them. I'm flying solo this time. I just want to eat, drink, swim and sleep.' She swept an arm out across the landscape. ‘This is my treat to myself.'

‘And what do you do normally? When you're not treating yourself, that is.'

‘Me? I'm a travel agent, you know, booking trips for people who don't appreciate it.' She exploded with laughter and then quietened herself with a sip of the cocktail.

‘I'm sure they appreciate it.'

‘No, I don't mean me — who cares if they appreciate me? — I mean the
holiday
. Most of the couples who come in just want the safe option, something familiar, but it's never going to really rock them, you know? I offer them things like skydiving in New Zealand or hiking in Patagonia, but they never choose it. The husband leans over to the wife, or the wife to the husband, and says, “Maybe next year, honey.” But who they kidding? Not me, that's for sure.'