The Bit In Between (19 page)

Alison lay in bed that night clicking the fingernail of her thumb against that of her index finger, something she did to rein in her anxieties. Now that Ed wasn't actually standing in front of her, the absurdity of what was happening had finally hit her. Ed was there. Ed. As in Ed who had been the first person she had ever been convinced she loved. Ed who had gathered her up in his cyclone and then dumped her in the middle of a flattened town when he was done. No, that wasn't true. She had jumped ship first. She had awoken early one morning and watched the sun rise over the busy workers stacking wooden crates of fruit beneath their tiny top-storey rest house room in Nanning. A young boy, barely into double digits, had struggled to lift a large crate of persimmons and been assisted by a young woman with a baby in a sling on her back. Alison watched, mesmerised, and then she turned to Ed, sleeping spread-eagled and naked on the bed, and knew things did not look like she'd pictured them. Ed had awoken to find her dressed and packed and she had prepared herself to give the dramatic and beautiful speech she had been rehearsing in her head. Instead, she had said, ‘I'm going,' and burst into tears. Ed had sat there naked and unmoving, tracing one fingertip across the tattoo of Nietzsche on his right thigh. She had waited, self-consciously staring at her trembling hands, half-hoping he would try to convince her to stay, because that would be much easier than trying to find her way to the airport alone. But he didn't. As she slung her pack across her back and headed out the door, she heard him sigh. She turned, even though she knew she shouldn't. ‘I'll write a poem about this one day,' Ed said simply. And that had been the last she saw of Ed. Until today.

Before Alison left China she had spent three days alone in Shanghai. Really she just wanted to hang about feeling sad until her flight home, but the backpackers hostel was full of loud Americans trying to get it on with beautiful Germans and the only books on the communal shelf were Edward de Bono's
Lateral Thinking
and a copy of
The Pelican Brief
, both of which she had already read at other backpackers, so she forced herself to go out and wander the busy streets. One day she walked along the Bund, looking at the crumbling grand old British colonial buildings on one side of the river and the rising space age towers of modern China on the other. The buildings played hide and seek in the smog, startling each other with their sudden presence. Her mind had strayed to Ed and the events of recent days, and it was in this slightly bewildered, melancholic state that she stumbled upon the old Jewish quarter of Shanghai. She stopped to take her bearings, confused at the giant synagogue in front of her. Around her Shanghai went about its daily routine and she sat down on a small brick wall opposite the temple. She stared at its perfect curved domes and the worn Star of David above the entrance. A tiny aged Chinese woman hurried past her pushing a trolley laden with an assortment of cheap plastic sandals. Alison looked from the old woman to the temple and suddenly realised that the world was an incredibly big place and she did not for an instant understand most of what went on in it. She thought about Ed, who she understood least of all, and about everything that had happened. She hadn't wanted it to end like this, but what other choice did she have? So she acknowledged that things with Ed had not worked out, and the next day Alison had boarded the plane that would fly her first to Kuala Lumpur and then onwards back to Australia.

When Alison went to bed that evening, Oliver sat up in front of his laptop, cracking his knuckles one by one. Part of him felt like he should stop writing. This part was anxious and worried. It wasn't sure if he was the puppet master or the puppet in this strange game. It wasn't sure if he was setting himself up for disaster, if it would all go spiralling out of control. But as he read through the story – the parts he had written and put his all into – it dawned on him that there was a part of him, a big part of him, that didn't care. It was a good story. It was the story he had always wanted to write. It was the story he was meant to write.

He left early the next morning to meet Rick for coffee and to discuss the potential imminent explosion of the Ocean Head Liners, which was the current name for the band. It had previously been the Solo Men, Jam Man and the Shazam and, for one brief moment, the Salubrious Case of Edmund Barton, which had made no sense and for which no one officially took responsibility. Oliver sat in El-Shaddai café nursing a latte and waiting for Rick to bound through the café door. He was also hoping to discuss the Ed problem but he knew this would have to wait until after band talk. The problem with the band, as Rick saw it, was too many big personalities clashing for dominance in a musical partnership that depended on cohesion. The problem, as everyone else saw it, was Rick, but Oliver was too much of a pacifist to raise this. The Rick-Boris feud was gathering momentum each day. At their last rehearsal, Boris had sabotaged Rick's decision to instigate a thirteen-minute guitar solo in the middle of Bruce Springsteen's ‘Born to Run' by hiding Rick's electric guitar jack and then playing the drum line from
Boléro
loudly until Rick stole his snare and went and sulked in the garden with it. Clive and Junior had watched in amusement and suggested to Oliver that the three of them go get a drink instead. They had left Rick hiding in the bushes with the snare pretending not to see them.

Oliver glanced at his watch. Rick was late. He checked his mobile. There was a text from Rick. It read:

Cnt cm. Dying. @ hosp. Pls cm. Mn.

Oliver caught a bus to the Number Nine Referral Hospital and found Rick in emergency. He was pale and sweating and had sprawled out dramatically across the floor, despite there being a dozen or so empty seats. Rick looked up pathetically.

‘Ol-dog. It's malaria. I've got it. It's going to go cerebral and I'm gonna die,' he groaned.

Oliver looked around and noticed a young woman at reception. He walked over to her.

‘Is he okay?' he asked, motioning to Rick, who had curled up into a ball and was rocking gently.

‘He's fine. He's seen the doctor and we gave him some medicine and told him to go home. He won't,' she added.

Rick started muttering to himself.

‘Can you admit him?' Oliver asked, knowing that Rick's infamous stubbornness meant that if Rick didn't want to leave, Rick wouldn't be leaving.

The young woman shook her head. ‘I'm sorry, but all the beds are full. And we need them for people who genuinely require them.'

They both looked at Rick, who was now chanting softly to himself.

‘He's welcome to stay there, but he'd be better off in bed.'

Oliver sighed. ‘Thank you.'

He went back and crouched beside Rick.

‘Hey mate, what are you chanting?'

‘Mantra.'

He listened closely. It sounded like Rick was saying ‘Don't die' over and over again.

‘Do you think you might like to go back home to bed?'

The chanting didn't stop but Oliver saw the tiniest of nods.

‘Have you got your car?' he asked.

Another almost imperceptible nod.

‘Come on, mate, let's get you home.'

Oliver put an arm around Rick and tried to get him to his feet. Rick offered neither support nor resistance.

‘Okay, mate, if you just bring your legs up . . . And support yourself a bit more . . . Okay, support yourself a little . . . A fraction . . . Come on, man, you're like seven foot tall, help me out here . . .'

Oliver staggered beneath Rick's tall frame. He felt Rick straighten slightly as he let out a shuddering sigh. They swayed towards the door and Oliver offered the young woman at reception a tilt of his chin by way of goodbye. She grinned and gave a tiny wave, then turned back to her paperwork shaking her head. Oliver pulled Rick out into the car park, dodging others on their way in. He passed a slight young man helping a groaning older woman, struggling under the effort. He met Oliver's gaze and they exchanged grins. The young man said something to Oliver and then laughed, but Oliver didn't quite catch it. The young man chuckled again, strengthened his grip on the woman's arm and kept going.

Paul was two years into a law scholarship in New Zealand when he got the call informing him that his parents had been in a serious car crash. He had walked out of the lecture theatre, packed his overnight bag and returned home to bury his father and nurse his mother. He didn't know what was harder: losing his hero or watching his mother suffer. There were other sisters and brothers who offered to share the work, but Paul smiled and shook his head and told them all to focus on their own lives. He didn't mind. His mother's broken bones slowly healed, but the pain refused to subside, and was sometimes so strong she couldn't breathe. Paul found himself constantly rushing her to the hospital for tests and scans and pokes and prods to try to work out what was wrong. Again, his siblings offered to help but Paul shook his head and smiled. He didn't mind. During the many nights he spent sitting in emergency waiting to be called, Paul would often muse about his old life as a student in New Zealand. The minute he had hung up the phone all those years ago he had known that he would not return to his studies. Despite his siblings' protests, his life would be lived out here at home. He would often chuckle and sigh and talk about the time when he was almost a world-famous lawyer. What he never told another soul was that deep down he had been relieved that he no longer had to sit through tutorials he couldn't understand and lectures he couldn't stay awake in, failing or barely passing exams and dreading a future of work he was not cut out for. And whenever his siblings offered to take care of their mother to give Paul time to get his life in order, Paul would smile and shake his head. He didn't mind.

Oliver eventually managed to find Rick's car and with one arm supporting Rick, prised open the passenger door. He paused and took a breath, then exhaled sharply. ‘Shit.'

Rick looked up miserably. ‘What?'

‘Nothing. Just, it's a manual.'

Rick glared at him. ‘Of course it is. Why? Can't you drive a stick?'

Oliver hesitated. ‘Of course I can. I, uh, haven't for a while, but I'm sure I'll remember.'

Rick straightened slightly. ‘When was the last time?'

Oliver thought. ‘Uh, that would have been in my friend's uncle's paddock. When I was sixteen. One time . . .'

Rick stood up. ‘Give me the keys.'

He stormed around the front of the car before he remembered himself and bent forward again, slightly groaning. He heaved his body into the driver's seat, still whimpering softly, and then wrenched the car to life. It was a subdued ride back to Rick's place, punctuated only by the occasional moan. They pulled up at his tall razor wire gate and Clive, who was on duty that day, leapt up and opened it from inside. Rick parked by the house, turned off the ignition and then slumped forward as if exhausted from the effort.

‘You'll need to help me up,' he whispered.

It took both Clive and Oliver to get Rick up the stairs and into the house. They deposited him into his bed and Oliver tucked the sheet up around his neck. Rick blinked feebly and then rolled over.

‘I think I'll try to rest now,' he wheezed.

Oliver closed the bedroom door behind him. It was the first time he had actually been inside Rick's house. Band practice was relegated to the room beneath the house and Rick wasn't the kind of guy to hold dinner parties. Oliver glanced around the room. The whole living space was open plan with a kitchen that looked straight out of a
House & Garden
magazine. There were gleaming stainless steel appliances and two brand new refrigerators. Oliver looked inside both. Just as he suspected: a food fridge and a beer fridge, and in true Rick style, only one was well stocked. The walls were covered with beautiful Pacific artwork: carvings and tribal paintings. Oliver padded quietly across the polished floorboards. He opened a door and peeped inside to find an immaculate white-tiled bathroom. A series of large conch shells lined the floor leading up to the gleaming shower. Oliver closed the door. He crossed to the opposite side of the passage and turned another door handle. He stuck his head around the doorframe and let out a soft scream, as did the woman standing there. She was thin and middle-aged and had her wiry black curls pulled up under a kerchief. The woman held a broom up in front of her like a weapon and looked like she was about to scream again.

‘I'm Oliver,' he said. ‘I brought Rick home. He's sick.'

The woman looked him up and down. Oliver guessed she was Rick's haus mere – most of the NGO staff had locals who came in to do the housework for them. Oliver had suggested once that they could afford to get help too, but Alison had been staunchly opposed on the grounds of the unnatural hierarchies it created.