The Pause (16 page)

Mum looks at me through the steam of her second double espresso. The three glasses of wine before dinner on the plane were one thing, it's the couple she had with dinner I think she's now seriously regretting. She might have also given the minibar in our room the once-over before the room began turning about her.

I'm having the full English buffet breakfast in our hotel's restaurant, while Mum has opted for coffee and Nurofen with a Berocca chaser. Despite her vastly decreased brain functionality, she's playing with her iPad, which is practically surgically attached to her hand.

‘Mum. Your eyes look awful.'

She takes another sip of coffee. ‘You should try them from this side.'

Poor Mum has clearly woken up with a hangover of biblical proportions. She looks like Death is skulking over her shoulder, scythe unsheathed.

‘What do you want to do today?' asks Mum, through eyes so bloodshot the world must look maroon.

‘Seriously?' I say. ‘I want you to go back to bed.'

She shakes her head and then groans. Bad idea. ‘Sorry,' she says. ‘Pushed the boat out a bit last night. Not a very good example. Celebration went a little too far.'

‘They say you shouldn't really drink alcohol on long flights,' I offer, as if this will actually help. ‘Dehydration doubles the impact of jet lag, apparently.'

‘Thank you, Mr Temperance.'

‘What were you celebrating?'

She looks guilty. ‘Oh, you know.'

‘Oh, I don't.'

‘Just getting away from … things.'

‘You mean Dad?'

‘Sorry,' she says. ‘Probably not what you wanted to hear.'

‘Are you guys okay?'

She sighs deep and loud. ‘I don't know. Things are a little complicated right now.'

‘You mean because of what I …' I look down at the table in shame. ‘… What I went through?'

‘A little.' She reaches across the table and holds the back of my hand. ‘But don't worry about me. I'll be fine.'

‘You and Dad had nothing to do with it. You have to do what's right for you, Mum. You deserve it. You're worth it.'

Her face breaks into a warm smile, but there are tears welling in her eyes.

‘Right,' she says, changing the subject. ‘School gets out around three, I imagine.' She flashes me a watery wink. ‘So let's do some tourist stuff before you pay your social call.'

I nod and try to hide a smile.

‘Now there are two aspects to Hong Kong. Do you want to see the real one? Or would you prefer the bling version? Where does Lisa live?'

I open my phone and bring up Lisa's contact details. ‘Um. North Point.'

Mum nods. ‘Nice. Hong Kong Island. She's more bling. Relatives must be doing okay. So how about we go gritty first. We can traipse out to the markets, and then swing back to Hong Kong Island later?'

‘Sounds good to me.'

After heading back to our room to change and load Mum up on some more Nurofen, we step out
from the hermetically sealed safety of our hotel and after a short walk during which I am bombarded with offers to buy suits and copy watches, we disappear down the escalators into the Tsim Sha Tsui station and the rabbit warren of the Hong Kong MTR. Even though we have left daylight far behind, Mum's eyes are protected from the world (and it from them) behind the duty-free sunglasses she bought at the airport.

In Sydney you can wait ten, sometimes twenty minutes for a train. Here, they seem to come every minute. No sooner have we started milling on the station than a train arrives. Once the passengers have poured off, we bustle onboard with everyone else. Mum makes for a pole with me in tow. She doesn't even bother to go for a seat and I'm left to strap-hang next to her, because although it's mid-morning, the train is packed. The young women all look so classy. They've clearly spent ages getting ready but try to make it look like they've just thrown something on. Most of the guys are so busy trying to be hipsters and checking each other out that they fail to notice the young women. It's kind of pathetic, really.

A couple of teenage school girls with white socks pulled up to their knees are nudging each other, giggling and staring at me. I try to catch them out by glancing back at them but each time I do they look away and giggle even more.

I look up at the MTR map. The stations reveal a curious mixture of old Hong Kong and its former colonial masters: Tsim Sha Tsui, Jordan, Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok, Prince Edward, Sham Shui Po.

We alight at Mong Kok and head up the escalators, the aromas from outside becoming more intoxicating the higher we go. I can't place the smell, though I suppose it's kind of a hybrid of sizzling woks, McDonald's, car exhausts, toil and industry all rolled into one.

‘You were quite a hit on the train,' says Mum.

‘You saw that?' I ask, embarrassed at being sprung. ‘I thought your eyes had ceased functioning.'

‘I'm a barrister,' she says. ‘And your mum. I see all.'

We finally emerge, blinking into the daylight like the Eloi out of the Morlock's subterranean abattoir. Mong Kok is mostly locals. Foreigners are few and far between. Several men stare at Mum as we walk by and are so unsubtle about it that their heads swivel around like those circus clowns whose mouths you stuff balls into to win a prize. After one guy's head practically does a three-sixty, I feel like shoving a couple of balls in his mouth myself. Tennis balls, that is. Even hung-over, Mum's Italian looks are enough to draw a crowd.

We continue through the tight crowded streets until we turn into the markets.

‘The thing about shopping in Hong Kong,' says Mum, ‘is to shop where the locals shop. If there are more foreigners about than locals, you're being ripped off. Also, don't forget to haggle.'

‘Haggle?' I ask.

‘Yes,' she says. ‘Haggle. Negotiate a price. Barter. Bargain.'

‘But what if I don't want to haggle?'

‘You have to haggle,' continues Mum, ‘otherwise the stallholder will pass it down the line that a thick-as-a-brick teenager, ripe for the picking, is heading their way and they'll bump up the price when they see you coming.'

Mum looks at me and smiles. I know what that smile means. We are out and about in Hong Kong – our first of possibly many holidays together. It's a gorgeous, sunny day. The warmth is spreading through me as if I were a lizard on a riverbank, and, to use an old Australianism, “You wouldn't be dead for quids”. And yet I came within a whisker of throwing it all away. The memory of that moment, of that pause, causes my heart rate to quicken and my throat to constrict.

‘Okay,' says Mum. ‘See that cafe across the street?' She points out a French patisserie not surprisingly called Le something or other. ‘How about we meet there in a couple of hours?'

A couple of hours? I try to hide my shock.
I don't want to split up. I don't want to be on my own. ‘Er, okay. You don't want me to carry your bags or something?'

‘I wouldn't do that to you.'

‘So why are you ditching me?' I try not to sound completely pathetic and fail.

‘I'm not ditching you, Dec. You can come with me if you want. But remember: unfortunately I adhere to every shopping cliché surrounding my gender. Guilty as charged. And you're a man. Well, a close approximation of one.'

I scratch my nose with my middle finger.

Mum laughs and continues. ‘So you'll be done in about half an hour, tops.' She opens up her purse and hands me some Hong Kong dollars to add to what she gave me this morning. ‘Get yourself a coffee and a bun or profiterole or something and sit in the cafe and read or maybe write Lisa some poetry.' I cringe when Mum says this, thinking back to my earlier haikus which, if I remember correctly, are still in my bedside drawer. To think that I came within a whisker of committing suicide, having failed to destroy any and all evidence of my poetry. Oh, the horror.

A seasoned consumer, Mum's eyes are bulging like those of a startled puffer fish at the thought of the shopping and browsing that awaits. She pulls me down and kisses the top of my head, tells me
to call me if I need her, and is soon swallowed up by the crowd, leaving me a bit lost and vulnerable, which scares me a little. I don't like being left alone since it happened. My thoughts and what they almost did frighten me. They're kind of like voices in my head, and I want to keep that voice that appeared when I was on the platform buried deep. I hate that voice for what it tried to make me do. For almost destroying me. For almost destroying my family. My life, my love, my world, my soul. Me.

I take a deep breath and absorb some vitamin D through my eyelids before beginning a slow stroll through the markets where the stallholders want to give a special price just to me.

The markets themselves have everything you could possibly desire, providing everything you could possibly desire includes copy watches, handbags, towels, toys, costume jewellery, mobile-phone covers, jeans, dresses, scarves, Hello Kitty accessories, or Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Robin Van Persie replica shirts – otherwise you're kind of stuffed. I find myself in little need of any of these things. In fact, I don't really need or want anything. I'm just happy to be out and about. Just happy to be alive. Thrilled at the possibility of seeing Lisa this afternoon. Happy that the voice is silent.

Apparently the thing that surprises a lot of Americans when they travel overseas for the first time is encountering people who are completely ambivalent about America. They simply can't imagine anyone not wanting to at the very least visit. They seem to think that the rest of the world is queuing outside their international embassies desperate to migrate to the land of the brave and the home of the free. And so when they meet people who have no concept of the Super Bowl and don't know or care what the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs get up to, or, for that matter, give a rat's what Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian had for lunch that day (a lettuce leaf and spring water – fizzy, not still), it comes as a shock.

I feel a little that way myself as I meander along through the stalls. These people are Hong Kongese and, unless they have relatives Down Under, simply have no concept of Australia. Or if they do, it's the heavily clichéd one of the kangaroo in a corked hat surfing down the Opera House while eating a jar of Vegemite, which, as far as I know, has never happened.

After about half an hour, I abandon my quest for anything worth buying and settle on a Hello Kitty pencil case for Lisa as a sort of a joke, which I hope she gets. The stallholder wants to give me a special price if I buy two or more. Seriously?
What the hell would I do with multiple Hello Kitty pencil cases? She kind of growls at me like a rabid dog when I insist on just the one but then I change my mind and get one for Kate as well and so when I hand her the money she smiles.

Having survived the experience with the stallholder, I take Mum's advice and escape from the maddening throng to the sanctuary of Le Café (groan). I order a coffee and a blueberry friand and take a seat in the corner. While I am waiting for my coffee, I open up Lisa's Hello Kitty pencil case. There's a little card inside on which I write ‘Hello Kitty says Hello, Kitty'. And yes, before you ask, I call Lisa ‘Kitty', or ‘my Kitty Cat' or (and please don't let this get out) ‘Snuggle Bunny'. Fortunately Chris and Maaaate are back in Sydney, coming to terms with either their sexuality or the fact that they regularly scarf down the contents of the pantry, otherwise I would have to write something more blokey on my Kitty Cat's Hello Kitty card. God! Kitty Cat? Snuggle Bunny? What's happened to me? I've turned into a complete sap. Still, it's a damn sight better than being turned into mulch on train tracks.

As I'm waiting for Mum, I take out my writing pad and try to think about what I'll do with my life now that I have one. I was thinking of doing an arts degree majoring in English and history as well
as a bit of politics and then joining the army with a view to getting into the SAS. Though if I'm going to be honest, that career plan was largely to impress the chicks. A guy who could quote Tennyson while taking out a Taliban stronghold? You really couldn't go wrong. But, I suppose, in order to take out a Taliban stronghold, you generally have to shoot a couple of people, and that goes against my pacifist principles. And I'd imagine that the SAS would have a way of weeding out any pacifists in their midst, so I'm kind of forced to rule that option out. And besides, I've got a girlfriend, so I don't need to impress anyone with my Tennyson-quoting manliness.

I jot down a list of possible careers:

Doctor

Investigative journalist

Paramedic

Psychiatrist

Psychologist

Youth worker

Spy

Writer

Historian

Liberal Party politician

High-school English teacher

Human-rights lawyer

Aid worker

Giggolo

I figure that it's okay to have one joke career option on my list. As if I'd join the Liberal Party! Ha ha ha.

Several coffees and a couple of pastries later, Mum bustles into the cafe doing a fairly decent impression of a bag lady. She plonks herself down in the seat next to me and lets the multitude of bags fall where they may.

‘What the hell did you buy?'

Mum looks at her bags. ‘Pretty much one of everything.'

‘Looks more like two.'

‘Get me a coffee, please, Dec. I'm dying.'

‘Of what? Alcohol withdrawal?'

It's only when I return with Mum's latte and croissant that I realise I've left my writing pad open and, showing strict adherence to the mother stereotype, she's snooping through it.

‘Thanks, darl,' she says, as I put the coffee in front of her.