Sheer Abandon (49 page)

Helen looked rather nervously at Nat. She had asked him to Sunday lunch; Kate had been rushing off to meet him again, straight after breakfast, and Helen couldn’t bear it. Kate was clearly delighted, had thrown her arms round her and kissed her.

“You’re ace, Mum!”

“He might not want to come,” said Helen hopefully.

“He’ll come,” said Kate. “Just don’t try and make him talk about politics or the news, Mum, yeah? He’s a bit shy.”

And now here was Jim, stopping mid-carve, saying that these politicians were all the same, totally immoral, and he wouldn’t vote for any of them.

“That Mrs. Thatcher, she was all right,” said Nat. The entire family stared at him; it was as if he had declared his intention to take up ballet.

“Mrs. Thatcher?” said Kate incredulously. “I thought she was a real old bag.”

“No way. She had the right ideas, my dad says, sorted the unions out and that. He says they needed their heads examined, kicking her out. She wouldn’t have let all these people in, neither.”

“What people?” said Juliet.

“These foreigners. Refugees and that. Taking over all our houses and hospitals and stuff. And Legoland,” he added as if this was the final felony, putting a large forkful of Yorkshire pudding into his mouth.

“Legoland?” Helen and Kate spoke in unison.

“Yeah. They sent a whole load of them there free last week. Said in the paper.”

“Gracious,” said Helen. “I had no idea.”

“She was good on the radio, wasn’t she?” said Nat after a long, chewy silence, pointing his fork at Kate. “I thought her mum might come on the programme, that she’d be, like, listening.”

“It wasn’t a phone-in,” said Helen gently.

There was a long silence; then: “Yeah? What’s the point in that, then?”

Kate stared at him, then she said, “That’s a really good idea, Nat. I might ask Fergus about it.”

Martha stepped out of the English luxury of the Observatory Hotel and into the Sydney sunshine. It was absolutely beautiful: a cool but brilliant day. She smiled up at the blue sky, and asked the doorman to get her a cab.

She was going to the Rocks, to do some shopping, wander round Darling Harbour, go back for an early dinner, and then prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. How absurd that she had been worried about being here. About the ghosts. This lovely place was so far removed from the other Sydney, the Sydney where worry had turned to fear and fear to panic. This Sydney was smooth and luxurious and busy and beautiful. She looked down at this Sydney, at the legendary view, the white wings of the opera house carved into the blue sky, the flying sails of the yachts in the harbour, the great bridge arched over it all, and the ranks of dazzling new buildings, gleaming in the sun: and turned her back absolutely and resolutely on the other, the scruffy room, the endless smell of frying food, the relentless heat. It had been another Martha who had lived there, too, an uncertain, frightened, lonely Martha. The one standing here now, in her linen trousers, her silk sweater, with a dozen appointments in her diary, three people waiting to buy her dinner, she had nothing to do with that one, she was no more. Nobody knew about her; she was safe from her, she had escaped.

“Where would you like to go then, on this beautiful day?”

The cabdriver was friendly, good-natured, anxious to help; and of course she wanted to go down to the harbour, to buy T-shirts at Ken Done and to sit in the sun on the quay, drink lattes, maybe take a waterbus across the harbour, then back to the hotel to wait to be picked up for dinner, down on the Rocks. She did not even consider visiting the northern beaches of Collaroy and Mona Vale and Avalon, that was back, not forward, and forward was where she had to go, the only place indeed and—

“Do you have plenty of time?” she said.

“As much as you want,” he said with a dazzling smile—Australian teeth were as good as American ones, she thought irrelevantly.

“Could we go up to Avalon, please?” she said.

She got off the bus on the Barrenjoey Road, blinking in the fierce brilliance of the sun. She had seen the beaches, all along the road from Sydney, stuck sweatily to her seat, longing to be in the cool of the water. The two boys she was with were surf-struck, boasting of the waves they would catch, the boards they would ride; Martha listened to them, smiling to herself, wondering just how their English-school swimming would survive the reality of waves and rips.

They had been directed to Avalon by a boy they met at the airport, who was doing the trip the other way round: “It’s the only real surfers’ hostel near Sydney, really great place.”

And so they had heaved their rucksacks onto the bus and sat there for more than two hours as it lurched through the suburbs of the city and out again the other side, riding the high bridges, gazing awestruck at the dazzling harbour below them, out through the smart suburbs of northern Sydney, of Mosman and Clontarf, and then along the endless, charmless highway, studded with car salerooms and cheap restaurants—and surf shops, always surf shops.

She stood on the dizzily high cliffs of Avalon, looking down to the beach; and there it was, not just the sight but the sound of the sea, roaring and rolling in, and the smell of it too, fresh, salty, and altogether beautiful. She stood there for a long time, watching the surfies riding the waves, huge, rolling breakers, deceptively small from her viewpoint; and then she hoisted her rucksack on again, and walked down the steep hill and into Avalon, thinking how inappropriate was its name, so importantly a part of the English myth of Camelot, this infinitely Australian place.

Avalon was built on a crossroads, little more than a village really, and the Avalon Beach Hostel was just along one of the roads forming the cross. It was quite large, sleeping ninety-six, and the first one of its kind in the Sydney area, the warden told her.

Martha looked up at it rather nervously as she walked through the big gates and across the paved courtyard; she was easily intimidated in those days, and the sun-bleached boys sitting on the long veranda overlooking the courtyard, some lolling back with long brown legs propped on the rail, others leaning over it chatting and smoking, looked as settled as if it were home. Which it was to many of them; they stayed here for weeks, months even.

She booked in, was given a room—or rather one-sixth of a room, a hard bunk fixed to the wall by ropes, and a locker. It was very primitive, the floor simply painted concrete, but it was clean and the girls’ bathroom, equally spartan and clean, was just opposite her door.

“Stove’s here,” said the warden, who seemed about the same age as she was, leading her into the large room behind the veranda, half filled with long tables and benches, the walls covered with surfing posters. “And here’s the fridges; just bag one of the empty compartments, put your name on it, and it’s yours till you leave. Everyone eats in here.”

Martha smiled nervously at the boys on the veranda; they grinned back, asked her where she’d come from, where she was going. She felt very happy suddenly; she would like it here.

She did: it was absolutely wonderful. She loved Avalon, the villagey atmosphere, the small shops, and the French restaurant, with its red-and-white-checked cloths, where they very occasionally ate. There was a book-shop called Bookoccino, the Gourmet Deli, where they couldn’t afford to shop (but an excellent Woolworth’s supermarket where they could), and astonishingly, a cinema, which was apparently owned by someone who had a midday TV show. Whoever he was, he took the cultural life of Avalon seriously and showed foreign films on Sundays. Not that going to the cinema was a priority: it was January and very hot.

She made two good friends there, a boy called Stuart, inevitably named Stewpot, and a girl called Dinah. Dinah came from Yorkshire, and her father was also a vicar. “The worst thing I think,” said Dinah, passing Martha the joint she was smoking, “is being so poor and having to be posh. And the whole bloody parish watching you, of course. Can you imagine if you got pregnant or something, what on earth they’d do?”

Martha shuddered, then laughed and passed the joint back.

The three of them became a tight little unit. Stewpot had tried surfing and had a bad fright, caught in a rip, and was content to swim with the girls in the safety of the rock pools, the natural swimming pools filled every day by the sea. Together they roamed the lovely white beaches, went up to Palm Beach, to the exclusive, tree-lined shore of Whale Beach, and to Newport and Mona Vale and Bilgola. At night they sat on the beach at Avalon and smoked and talked with all the others, cooked on the beach barbecues, swam in the black-and-silver sea. Martha preferred this life to the self-indulgence of student Thailand; she liked the colder sea, the comparative order of the hostel, the more familiar food. She loved the Australians too, so easily friendly, upbeat, absolutely lacking in pretension. Looking across from this golden place at the dark, rainy English winter, she even considered, briefly, staying herself.

She told Dinah this as they sat on the beach one night in the warm darkness; she was horrified.

“Martha, you couldn’t. It’s so unsubtle. And the men are such chauvinists.”

“They may be chauvinists, but they’re very kind,” said Martha. “I’d rather have them any day than some stuffy public-school wally, thank you very much.”

“Plenty of those in your prospective profession,” said Dinah. “Are you sure you’ve chosen the right career?”

“Oh yes,” said Martha. Without knowing why, she had an absolute certainty that the law would suit her. “But you’re right. Especially the barristers.”

“Which you’re not going to be?”

“No, I’m not. Can’t afford it for a start, you need very rich parents for that. You can be years waiting to earn any money. And no thanks, no more beer. I feel a bit queasy. Don’t know why. I did last night, as well.”

Dinah laughed. “Don’t tell me the nightmare’s come true, you’ve got a baby to take home to the vicarage.”

“Of course not,” said Martha, almost crossly; and then—although she was not remotely worried, she told herself—when she got back to the hostel, she got out her diary. Her periods had been chaotic ever since she had arrived in Thailand. But no, it was all right, she’d had one in Singapore—very light, but nonetheless, a period—and that had been well after Koh Tao. And since then: no sex.

At the beginning of February, Stuart and his harem (as the other boys called them) set off for the north. They got a bus from Sydney, all the way up to Ayers Rock: two and a half days of jolting on the long, endlessly straight roads. It was only moderately uncomfortable; the bus was air-conditioned and it stopped every four hours or so. The worst thing was the boredom: the unchanging scenery for most of the way, the red earth, the flat scrub, the unvarying speed.

The bus was full of backpackers; they made friends, swapped chewing gum, cigarettes, and the sweets Dinah had christened anaesthetics. They stopped at Alice Springs for the night, and then in the morning caught another bus to Ayers Rock. Together they gazed in awe at it, at the great looming cliché, watched it turn purple at sunset, climbed it in the cold desert dawn, stood together, holding hands on the summit, faces raised to the sun, and felt—in spite of all the other tourists—alone in the world, while the desert stretched away from them, absolute emptiness in every direction.

When they got down, Martha felt odd; she sat for a while in the shade, and then was extremely sick; and was repeatedly sick again on the bus, as they travelled endlessly on up north to Cape Tribulation.

“Martha,” said Dinah gently, as she wiped her friend’s sweaty forehead by the side of the bus—it had stopped for her—“Martha, you don’t have anything to tell me, do you?”

Martha said irritably that no, she hadn’t; a distant crawling fear had begun to trouble her. But once they arrived at Cape Tribulation, she stopped being sick—and she started her period.

“You see,” she said, waving a Tampax triumphantly at Dinah, on her way to the loo, “it’s perfectly all right.”

Two days later it was over; but that was surely fine?

They stayed at Cape Tribulation, where the rain forest so famously meets the sea, for a month, and made friends with someone who had a boat. He took them out to the reef several times; they snorkelled and explored the underworld, the hills and valleys of coral, the sweetly smiling brilliantly coloured fish, the friendly baby sharks who swam up to investigate them. Martha was entranced by the silence and calm beneath the water, and the gentle slowing of time. She longed to try scuba diving, but couldn’t afford it.