New Australian Stories 2 (31 page)

I confess a part of me has been a little jealous of Russell. Of his physique. Of his hair. Of how the last seven or eight years, more often than not, he has been travelling overseas. Lucky beggar. I wonder how he has been able to afford it? It can't have been cheap. Another way of looking at it might be that in the last seven or eight years he has been out of work more often than not. Alternatively, perhaps Shona sees in both of us the same outdoorsy, adventurous type.

I am still setting the table when the doorbell rings. Suddenly I am struck by the banality of the sound. Shona is still getting ready. I open the deadlock. Russell is early. The prodigal boyfriend. There is nothing else for it but to shake his hand.

‘Welcome home.'

‘Home?' he says, philosophically, considering all the nuances of the word.

‘Come in. Would you like a beer?'

Russell gives a little shrug.

‘No? Wine then? Or juice?'

‘Juice.'

I go into the kitchen, open the fridge, pour a flute of orange juice. The fridge is full of alcohol, but all he wants is juice. When I return, Russell is still standing by the front door.

‘Would you like me to take my shoes off?'

‘No, no. That's fine. Come in. Make yourself at home.'

Russell wipes his feet, then shuffles in and takes off his coat, which I hang by the tall mirror in the hallway. He still cuts a strapping figure. There, that's a sentence from a tale of action and adventure. A strapping figure — despite the tinge of salt and pepper at his temples. He stands at the entrance to the dining room and watches me finish setting the table. The doilies in place. The serviettes. I notice that he peers into his orange juice, examining it closely.

A toilet flushes in the distance. In a moment there is a squeal from the far end of the hallway, and I take this to mean that Shona has at last spotted her long-lost friend. She throws herself into his arms, and I find myself counting the seconds of their kiss. She has reverted to a schoolgirl. I think about candles, then dismiss the idea. Candles are too intimate. There are only a few little birthday candles anyway.

I have met Russell before, of course. I could not have married Shona without knowing something of her past dalliances, just as she knows mine. Russell's name has always cropped up at the most significant moments in her history. I don't know exactly how I feel about this. Once, before I met her, Russell drove Shona to an abortion clinic. Afterwards he took her home and listened to her sob in the shower and made her a cup of tea even though he was not the father. He came to our wedding, of course, and after our daughter was born a few years later he gradually faded from our lives. Then, when he had disappeared overseas, the postcards began to arrive. I think it is good for a woman to have male friends, friendships of a platonic, non-threatening nature. Friendships that would be perfectly fine for me to have too.

I have mashed an avocado, mixed with garlic and tomatoes to make guacamole. I have crushed chickpeas and garlic to make my own hummus. I have julienned carrots and celery as instruments to dip and dig into these concoctions. Russell looks at them and sighs. He explains that the jet lag is still catching up with him. He hopes he'll be able to stay awake. Shona seems to find this inordinately funny, and giggles. I pour some wine for Shona and, as he doesn't appear to be drinking, another juice for Russell, which again he examines with forensic attention. During this momentary silence the whine of a mosquito is clearly audible. Shona flaps her hand. She hates mosquitoes. I don't mind them because they always bite her and leave me alone. I jump up to put on some music so as to camouflage any future intrusion I fear silence may make into proceedings. Shona apologises for the mosquitoes.

‘That's all right,' Russell says, ‘mosquitoes are nothing. In Honduras, near Tegucigalpa, I was bitten by a vampire bat.'

‘A vampire bat?'

‘I was camping in the jungle and there was a hole in my sock. It bit me on the toe. There was blood everywhere.'

‘Weren't you in a tent?'

‘There was a hole in that too.'

‘Don't they give you rabies, those things?'

‘I don't know.'

‘That's amazing,' Shona says.

‘Not really. They're very common.'

He takes a celery stick, digs and dips, and pops it into his mouth.

I say: ‘I hope you don't mind the garlic in the guacamole then.'

‘No. It's very nice.'

We listen to the music for a moment.

Ambience.

‘Shona didn't tell me if you still eat meat or not. We're having lamb, but there's plenty of vegetables as well.'

‘Yes, I eat everything,' Russell says. ‘In fact in Brazil I ate a howler monkey.'

‘A howler monkey?' Shona is not quite sure if she has heard right.

‘Yes, we were travelling overland from Imperatriz and got disoriented in the jungle. We had no food and after a few days my companion, Jacques, shot a monkey.'

‘Aren't those things jumping with parasites?' I ask.

‘Are they? I don't know.'

‘What happened?'

‘We cooked it first. It was very tough.'

‘Did you get sick?'

‘No. My friend got sick. But I was fine.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘He got better.'

I excuse myself. Duty calls. With industrial-strength oven mitts I fetch hot plates out of the oven. I carve the leg. I serve the slivers. I bring out the main course, garnished with rosemary and mint. Pumpkin. Sweet potato. Lots of spuds in a ceramic bowl that Shona made during her pottery phase. A clichéd Australian meal to welcome back the lonely traveller.

‘Careful, the plates are hot.'

Russell chews every mouthful diligently, thoughtfully. I see that candles wouldn't have been amiss. Something to look at while he is finishing each mouthful. Shona tries to tell him about a holiday we had last Christmas down at Batemans Bay, but there is not much to tell. Grace stubbed her toe so badly the nail turned black and fell off. Framed photos of the happy, sunburned children gaze down from the walls. Russell reports that he was stung by a stingray in the waters off the coast of Luzon and spent two weeks in a Philippine hospital with the lepers. He offers to show us the scar, but Shona declines. She is still eating.

I say: ‘I guess you won't have heard about Steve Irwin then?'

‘No,' Russell says. ‘Do I know him?'

When he was discharged, Russell continues, he was ordered to rest and recuperate, so he was laid up in a beach resort near Tuguegarao. The ash from a volcano simmering nearby kept falling into his orange juice and the waiter took twenty minutes to bring a fresh one, even though there was no one else staying at the resort. When it arrived it was brought personally by the manager who said that all the waiters had evacuated, and perhaps sir might like to consider evacuating too, but Russell had already paid up front and was determined to get his money's worth, so he said he would stay put until the volcano erupted if he had to, only it didn't erupt.

Shona says: ‘Wow.'

Over dessert, peaches and cream, Russell asks about a mutual schoolfriend of his and Shona's. Shona is sorry to report that the last she heard their friend, whose name I don't catch, broke his ankle falling off a ladder and was on crutches. Russell tells of how, while riding a motorbike near Cuzco in the Andes, he hit a condor that hadn't seen him coming, and nearly fell into a ravine.

‘Didn't it knock you off your bike?' I ask.

‘Nearly. It broke the mirror and I lost my deposit. I had bruises the size of dinner plates.'

I clear away our dinner plates and, for the moment, am happy to potter about in the kitchen. I put on the kettle and stack up the dishes. We have a dishwasher, but I am thinking perhaps tonight I will do them by hand. I can hear the music perfectly. When I return with the coffee, Russell is telling Shona a story about how he spent six days in a police lock-up in Lushnje in Albania.

‘What did you do to deserve that?' I ask.

‘Nothing. It was a misunderstanding.'

‘I'm afraid there's nothing very exciting about our lives,' Shona says.

‘Least of all the coffee,' I add, placing the tray on the table.

‘That's all right.'

In Montijo, Russell says, a gypsy touter sold him a quarter ounce of Lebanese hashish. Why did he buy it? Because it was a good price, and the Australian dollar was so much better than the escudo. It wasn't until he reached the Spanish border a few days later that he remembered it was in his pocket. As the guards were checking passports, he quietly sat in his train carriage and ate it. After what seemed like an hour, they opened the carriage door, and he vomited a foul-smelling goop into a plastic bag, which was enough to make the guards, after a cursory glance at his documents, move quickly on. Russell spent the rest of the journey studying the luggage rack overhead, sitting very, very still.

More music.

After finishing his coffee, Russell has another. He has several chocolates and several biscuits. I see that I have finished the wine. I think, may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, so I open a second bottle, even though I will suffer for it tomorrow. I return to the dishes in the kitchen, again leaving the school chums to catch up on old times, only I am coming to suspect that there are not too many old times being chewed over. There seems to be a big loud silence coming from the dining room. Like flat champagne. I clean everything in the kitchen. In fact I give it a thorough scrubbing. I sweep the floor. I clean the oven. I change the music a few times. I overhear Russell say, in response to Shona's question, that one of the things he has learned in his travels is that the native Inuits from Inuvik in Canada always take a long time over their meals so as to strengthen the social and familial bonds. They have a word,
sunasorpok
, which means to clean up the food left unfinished by others. I am glad I have removed the plates — there was only fat left on mine. A part of me wonders if Russell is making this up, if he has, in fact, been lying. I have never really swallowed the Stanley–Livingstone story. So I sneak into the study and quickly google
Canadian Inuit eating rituals
. This search yields zero results:
Did you mean Canadian Restaurants?
Such a dead end proves nothing, which merely reinforces my more general suspicion that Google is a great way to prove nothing. I'll have to take Russell's word for it.

When I eventually return, Russell is still sitting with his hands around his coffee mug, as if it is still warm. The school chums have run out of conversation. The old flame is flickering. Shona is looking decidedly weary, and Russell does not seem as though he wants to leave, ever. I see he has kicked his boots off. The couch appears far too comfortable. Thank goodness he hasn't been drinking. I sit down beside Shona and give an enormous, prefabricated yawn. Russell tells us how he was robbed at gunpoint in Rybinsk, but only had about thirty roubles in his pocket at the time, so everything worked out for the best. I realise, with the aid of my peripheral vision, something Russell has not: that Shona has fallen asleep. She gives a little, soft snore.

‘My god you've had some adventures Russell,' I say, ‘in these exotic places. I don't know where half of them are.'

‘Not really,' he replies. ‘It was all pretty boring.'

The sound of my laughter wakes Shona with a start. The dream-word she drags out of her snooze is: ‘Curriculum'
.

She's clearly got other things on her mind.

‘Oh, Russell, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm going to have to go to bed.'

‘Me too,' I add. ‘We've both got work tomorrow.'

‘Oh,' he says. ‘Bummer.'

Shona clambers to her feet and shows him to the door. He does not look at the photos on the walls.

‘Don't forget your coat.'

‘Did I tell you about the time I forgot my coat in Keflavik in Iceland? It's the most expensive place I've ever —'

‘Perhaps next time.'

‘Oh … okay … When?'

‘I'll give you a ring.'

Russell puts on his coat and, reluctantly, leaves. We listen to his footsteps, but there is no sound of an engine from out on the quiet street. I wonder if he is out there, waiting for us to change our minds and invite him back in. I clear away the coffee mugs. The kitchen is sparkling. I am so good. I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. I do it with my left hand so as to stimulate alternative neural pathways and thus avert the potential onset of dementia. While I do this, I stand on one foot, like a stork, for thirty seconds at a time so that my body will retain its physical memory of balance and not leave me bereft when I am older. I am thinking ahead. Shona comes in behind me. Like the children, she no longer asks what I am doing. She already has on her nightie. She hoists it and sits on the toilet unselfconsciously.

‘You cooked a lovely meal,' she says, ‘my dear, sweet adventurer.'

‘Me? It's all I can do to get the car started in the morning.'