The Bit In Between (9 page)

Alison gave him a look that suggested otherwise, but Oliver kept going. Clearly this had been on his mind all day.

‘You know who I am? I'm a mess. I pretend I'm not but I am. And one day you'll see that and not want me anymore. I'm ridiculous. I try to read the newspaper every day but sometimes I don't care. Sometimes I get nightmares and punch in my sleep. Once on a tram when I was really tired from working all day, there was a pregnant lady and I pretended to be asleep so I didn't have to offer her my seat. My feet get really dry in winter and shed skin. I hate pets. I sometimes piss on the toilet seat because I get distracted.'

Alison looked at him bewildered. ‘Distracted by what?'

‘I don't know. Stuff. What I'm going to have for dinner. If I have any bills that need paying. The size of my penis. Just stuff. But the point is that one day soon you – we – are going to emerge from this bubble we've been living in and things are going to get real.'

‘Yeah, I reckon that bubble has already burst . . .'

‘Ok, but I mean it. What will you do then? Run away again?'

Alison looked at the ground. ‘No.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. I'll – I'm not going anywhere, ok? I'll . . . I don't know. I'll stand by you.'

Oliver grinned. ‘You'll stand by me? Who are you? Ben E. King?'

‘What? Who?' Alison was confused.

‘He sang that song.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah. I think.'

Alison took a breath and her shoulders relaxed. ‘I love you.'

Oliver deflated a little. ‘Yeah? Why?'

‘Because you know stupid things like that.'

‘I learnt it at a trivia night.'

She scrunched up her nose and Oliver grinned, reaching out for her.

‘Well,' Alison straightened up and put on a mock-affected voice. ‘Regardless, I don't know if I can do this because I always told myself that I would end up with someone who understood science and could explain things like global warming to me and you don't know anything about that.'

‘I know it's not good.'

‘What isn't good?'

‘Global warming.'

‘Why isn't it good?'

Oliver gave her a bemused look. ‘Because of the ice caps and the sea levels and the cannibal polar bears and . . . do you know what, this is just distracting from the point.'

‘Which is?'

He looked sheepishly into her eyes. ‘I don't even remember anymore.'

And then she laughed, and he laughed, and they had post-fight, pre-dinner, lazy weekday afternoon sex, which is widely regarded as one of the best kinds of sex.

The rest of the week passed and soon it was Sunday. They had come to the Solomons knowing, from their guidebook, that the locals were devout Christians for whom Sundays were for church. Neither Alison nor Oliver were believers, so for the first few Sundays they had remained hidden at home, not wanting to offend, but lately they had begun to venture out, joining other expats, non-believers and the ecclesiastically lazy as they enjoyed the quiet streets of the city, free of their usual bustle and buzz. However on this particular Sunday Oliver sat at his desk struggling through an incredibly dense book on the history of the Solomon Islands. He had realised that he would, at some stage, need to do some actual research and had managed to locate a book with a couple of chapters dedicated to the country's independence, pledging himself to a quiet Sunday of nothing but research.

A sketchy outline was scribbled in his notebook:

Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira first European to reach islands in 1568. Named ‘Solomons' after rumours islands hid the lost ­treasures of King Solomon.

Missionaries began arriving in nineteenth century, followed by ‘blackbirders' – tricking or kidnapping islanders to be labourers in Queensland cane fields

WWII – not great place to be. Battle of Guadalcanal. Estimated 38,000 dead. Dysentery/malaria. Like South Pacific but less singing and dancing.

British declared protectorate after WWII.

Independence 1978 – transition of power.

Maasina Rule self-determination movement.

My pen is running out of in

He stared at his notes. He wanted his book to reflect this tumultuous time in world history. To describe the atmosphere of excitement and apprehension and incredible pride that would have accompanied the handing over of sovereignty to this new nation. He wanted to share the difficulties of the transition of power from a British-led administration experienced in the art of colonial rule to a new government that was trying to lead as a single nation a country made up of many diverse and often conflicting tribes and cultures. To capture the insanity of creating a nation where nation hadn't existed before with the seemingly random grouping together of a chain of previously non-unified islands. The conservative in him wanted to write something you could hear a flag fluttering behind while the radical in him wanted the book to stick its middle finger up at colonialism for essentially ruining the world. He wanted it to be revolutionary. But also funny. And moving. And packed with underlying life lessons. A bestseller and literary phenomenon and something Oprah would have included in her book club. So far all he had written today was a paragraph detailing Colonel Drakeford's tendency to wear white knee socks with sandals. It was a good start.

He abandoned his notes and wandered outside. Alison was swinging back and forth in the hammock, one foot trailing along the ground beneath her. When she saw him she sighed dramatically. She'd been searching for volunteer work but had discovered she didn't really have the qualifications she needed even for unpaid work.

‘I'm starting to regret my arts degree,' she told him glumly. ‘I spent the entire time drinking cheap cask red in squats in North Carlton and protesting against wars the university wasn't actually involved in but no one seems to be hiring for someone with that particular skillset.'

When he smiled sympathetically she flopped back in the hammock and closed her eyes. ‘I'm serious. I have no actual skills.'

He left her, and went to their room to change his shirt. When he returned a short while later she was fast asleep, dozing peacefully in the tree-fractured sunlight. Oliver had his writing to give purpose to each day, but she had nothing. She was bored, and Oliver knew that bored people tended to leave. He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined beams of energy travelling from his brain to hers, willing her to stay.

One day she came home with a battered guitar and a book of chords.

‘Can you play guitar?' Oliver asked with interest.

‘Not yet.'

Alison had played recorder for three months when she was nine years old. She felt this gave her a basic ‘grounding in musicality', as she called it. It didn't. But she persisted, banging away at the strings with a vigour that often made Oliver wonder what horrible thing the guitar had done in its previous life as a tree. She would sometimes interrupt Oliver's work to strum a few chords at him, then ask him to identify the song. Oliver dreaded this question because he was never even remotely right, yet every time Alison gave him a look of derision that suggested he was in some way to blame for her song being so very unrecognisable.

‘Ollie, what's this?'

‘. . . the theme song from
Friends
?'

‘No.' She gave him the look.

Apparently it had been ‘All Along the Watchtower', the Jimi Hendrix version.

‘Of course,' he said, and decided that Colonel Drakeford would be a terrible guitar player who failed miserably at seducing his lady-love Geraldine through serenade.

When Alison wasn't playing guitar, she was writing poetry in her notebook, though she wouldn't show it to him, and when she wasn't doing that she was picking fights. One afternoon Oliver had pointed out that there weren't, as she had been trying to suggest, polar bears in the Antarctic and she had proclaimed adamantly that there were.

‘There are! I saw it in a documentary. It was on SBS.'

‘No, you didn't.'

‘I did. And I read it on the internet.'

‘Where?'

‘Some science website. It was by a PhD candidate.'

‘What university?'

‘I don't remember. Plus, I know it's true because my cousin's friend went trekking in the Antarctic to Mawson's Huts as part of his Duke of Edinburgh and they had to shoot a polar bear to stop it attacking them.'

She had said this last part so earnestly that Oliver had burst out laughing, amused by the childlike stubbornness with which she refused to back down. Later that night, during dinner, he had casually shown her an article he had downloaded from the web debunking her claims. She glanced at it briefly and pretended she didn't know what he was talking about. When he laughed at her again she had thrown a piece of bread at him.

Their fights were never serious, but still Oliver worried.

One day, almost a month and a half after they had arrived in the Solomons, Alison was wandering aimlessly through Central Market. She had bought eggplant, bok choy and tomatoes, and was trying to work out which of the two types of practically indistinguishable ferns was the one that tasted amazing and which was the medicinal one that tasted like a marathon runner's feet at the forty-kilometre mark. The market was full of people, and as she turned down the aisle she accidentally bumped into a tall man in a torn singlet, his well-defined arms covered in tattoos. Alison opened her mouth to apologise, but the man wheeled around and started shouting at her, his words slurred and angry. She backed away but the man followed her, gesturing wildly. He raised his arms. ‘He's going to hit me,' Alison thought to herself and looked around helplessly. Suddenly there was more shouting, this time in rapid Pijin. It was a young female voice, strong and commanding. Another voice joined in, then another, until it seemed everyone around her was shouting at the man, who looked around him in confusion, his arms still raised. He shook his head as if trying to clear the voices from his ears and then stumbled off, pushing his way through the crowd. They all went back to their shopping except one small young woman who came up to Alison and put a hand on her arm.

‘It's kwaso,' the young woman explained. ‘Really strong alcohol people make at home. Makes people angry.'

Alison recognised her voice. She had been the first to start shouting at the man.

‘Are you okay?' The young woman gave her a concerned look.

Alison was about to say that she was fine when she suddenly realised that she wasn't, so instead she burst into tears. The young woman patted her on the arm until Alison calmed down. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Sorry.'

The young woman shook her head. ‘No apologies. Kwaso makes people scary.'

Alison nodded pitifully. ‘Thanks for making him stop.'

The young woman smiled. ‘Come. I'll walk you to a taxi.'

‘No, it's okay. I want to walk. Clear my head.'

‘Okay. I'll walk you out of the market then.'

She waved goodbye to the young woman at the market gate and then walked quickly along Mendana Avenue until she reached the Lime Lounge. Alison tended to avoid it because there were so many busy-looking expats in there but she wanted somewhere quiet and air-conditioned and she needed a coffee. She sat by herself in the corner so that she had a full view of the café. Then she pulled out her mobile and called Oliver. He answered on the second ring which told Alison he was not having the most productive of writing days.

‘Guess what just happened . . .'

As Alison recounted the story to Oliver she could hear him listening intently.

‘Do you want me to come get you?' he asked, concerned.

‘No, no, keep working,' Alison said, though she was comforted by the offer.