Eighty Days White (27 page)

‘You’ll have to travel next week.’

I felt just like I had when I told Jonah to go ahead with the teardrop tattoo. An overwhelming sense of rightness. As though this had been preordained and I’d spent my life swimming towards this moment, travelling down the sea of life on an inexorable current from which there was never any escape. You could fight the tide, but it would find a way to pull you along anyway.

The ticket was pricey, and as I punched in my credit card details and completed all of the paperwork the realisation of what I was about to do hit me in the gut. What would my parents say? Liana? Neil?

Perhaps I could slip away without telling a soul and call them when I arrived.

My last week in England passed by without any fanfare or dramatics. I dropped into the music store and the club to hand in my resignation and took particular satisfaction in the look on She’s face as I told her that I wouldn’t be returning.

I saved Neil ’til last. I couldn’t face telling him over the phone, so instead we arranged to have lunch. My treat this time, I said, and I chose a little place in Chinatown that did great dim sum and wouldn’t eat through too much of my savings. The nest egg I’d managed to save up still looked healthy enough to get me through a couple of months if I lived frugally, but I’d need to find work shortly after I arrived in Australia.

Ten minutes had gone by since our appointed meeting time and he still hadn’t arrived. I frowned. Neil was usually
so punctual you could set the clock by him. My phone burst into life. I was still using the Jace Everett ring tone that Liana had saved on the handset as a joke. ‘I wanna do bad things to you,’ it warbled.

‘Lily,’ Neil said breathlessly, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been called into a client meeting. No way out of it. For this new deal we’re tying up … Can I have a rain check? I’ll take you some place nice to make up for it.’

‘Sure. No problem.’ I tried to hide the disappointment in my voice. He was just a friend after all, I chided, and I’d be back to visit.

‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll tell you another time.’

‘Rain check. Next week. I’m looking forward to it.’

And with that he was gone.

I sipped green tea and endured the curious glances of the waitresses for another hour as I gathered my thoughts and then I went home and packed. My flight left the next day.

I’d send Neil a postcard when I arrived.

The end of the year was fast approaching as I settled down in Darwin. I’d found a job in a local music store, which sold mostly CDs and second-hand vinyl and attracted an interesting crowd. I’d been taken on for the busy pre-Christmas period as an additional pair of hands, but another staffer had left to get married ahead of the festivities and I’d been offered the position full-time and gladly accepted. Most of the money that I’d saved had been spent on travel and subsistence since I had left England, and it was good to be able to rely on a regular, if modest, income.

Christmas Eve had been spent, of all places, on the beach
with the guys I had befriended from the store and their crowd. It felt odd celebrating in the sand, wearing only a bikini, knowing almost everyone I knew back in Europe was sheltering in the cold and crowding around log fires. A warm Christmas, albeit in the wet season, just didn’t feel right to a cold-weather Northern hemisphere girl like me and this disquieting feeling unsettled me. Maybe it was the permanent smell of eucalyptus like a chemical trigger affecting my senses.

I woke up late with a bad hangover on Christmas Day and the untidy sight of my small room conjured up a deep well of depression and self-pity. I had no plans for the day, or what was left of it, and most places I reckoned would be closed, so I couldn’t even avail myself of the comforting darkness of a cinema or the air-conditioned busyness of the local mall and its brightly lit windows.

I sighed theatrically, as much for the mirror facing me on the bathroom wall as for the invisible spectators of my pretend road to Calvary.

Maybe later I would phone my parents, who had both proven totally unsurprised by my sudden move to the other side of the world, although I seemed to recall them mentioning some time back that they had plans for the holiday season so might not be home, even after factoring in the time difference. I sent Liana a text message with the usual banalities for this time of year, and then, as an afterthought, sent an almost identical one to Neil, who had never even responded after I’d left the UK. I guessed he’d taken my departure as a personal affront, and I thought it best to leave him simmering.

Surprisingly he responded within the hour, even though
it must be night-time back where he was. Maybe he had forgiven me by now.

Miss you. Hope you’re having a lovely time. N

Was he partying? With someone? Or was he alone like me?

I realised he was one of the few friends I still had left and I missed him too in a strange way. It would have been nice to talk, exchange gossip or news.

I had deleted the numbers of Dagur, Grayson and She from my contacts list some weeks back, so they were out of reach, but I didn’t regret that particular decision. Leonard was still listed; that was one step too far for me to take. Sometimes you live with hope against hope, even though everything around you tells you just shouldn’t.

Had I ever spent Christmas alone before? No, and it felt awful. And then I knew that in seven days’ time, it would be New Year’s Eve and I would have to confront my loneliness all over again. Memories of the riotous times we had all spent in Brighton when we had been students came swirling back to the surface of my mind, and I couldn’t help but smile. The silliness, the companionship, the sense of belonging. All things I had lost.

I forced myself to get out of bed and shower, then had an improvised breakfast of milk and cereals, but still the bleak rest of the day lay ahead of me.

I plugged in my laptop, and walked over to the trunk in which I kept a messy assortment of books, old magazines and my DVDs. Half of the movies I had accumulated, mostly unwanted duplicates the store was ready to dispose of, were no longer in their cases, the discs scattered haphazardly along the bottom of the trunk. I picked up a
handful at random, wondering whether I was in the right mood for a comedy or an action flick. Romances were certainly off the menu.

Carrying the DVDs and the laptop to the bed, I closed the room’s curtains to cut off the daylight and tucked myself into bed. The patterns of the screensaver danced in the artificial penumbra I had created. I moved my finger over the pad and the screen came to life, its tidy line of icons like a bedrock frieze.

I was about to insert one of the DVDs when my attention was caught by the blue Skype icon. I clicked on it and scrolled through the directory. There were only half a dozen, mostly family and someone I didn’t even recognize. And Leonard.

A symbol indicated he was online right now.

My heart jumped.

I called him.

The screen flickered and his face appeared.

‘Hello, Lily.’

He seemed tired, his eyes imbued with sadness. Behind him, a bookshelf stood in half darkness. There was a terrible bleakness about the surroundings and his ghostlike features at their centre.

‘I …’ I swallowed hard. ‘I just wanted to wish you a happy Christmas.’

‘That’s very kind of you, my love,’ Leonard said.

‘I still miss you, you know.’

‘Me too, Lily, but we’ve discussed this before and—’

I raised my hand, sensing his irritation, forcefully interrupting his words. It had been a forlorn hope calling him the way I had. We gazed at each other silently, both deep in
thoughts. It was strange seeing his familiar face on a screen, the skin I knew so well now a pale accumulation of pixels. Leonard appeared a little older now, as if the passage of time since he last touched me and my lips had surveyed the private landscape of his body, had accelerated in the absence of me. More likely it was the distancing effect that this mode of communication imposed on us. And as that thought occurred to me, I also felt a tsunami-sized sense of both relief and tenderness for him, and began to understand his renunciation of me better. He was the one who was sacrificing himself for me. Not the other way round. The storm clouds surrounding my heart lifted.

I was about to break the news that I was now in Australia when Leonard began speaking again.

‘You haven’t changed a single bit,’ he said. ‘You are so lovely.’

‘Why, thank you.’

On impulse I lifted the top of the thin nightgown I was wearing and showed him my breasts.

On the other side of the world, Leonard smiled.

‘They haven’t changed either,’ he remarked. ‘As scrumptious as ever.’

‘Well,’ I pointed out, ‘I might be young, as you so often remind me, but I’m not likely to grow into a large cup size. This is what I am.’

‘You always had that mischievous streak, didn’t you?’

I nodded.

I wished him a merry Christmas one more time and closed the connection.

I knew I would never see Leonard again. He had set me free. Once and for all.

As ever, the heavens opened at four-thirty and the heavy rain pelted down, cleansing the air and the town. By evening, the skies were clear again. I was told the wet season usually lasted all the way to May.

It was New Year’s Eve. I’d tried to hook up with some of my co-workers, but all had family obligations. It would be another evening spent on my own.

As I reflected on the past year and its varied adventures and sorrows, as well as occasional joys, I found myself drawn to the sea front after an aimless walk through the Smith Street Mall where most of the stores were closing early.

There was a bar by the beach that also served as a restaurant in the evenings which I was quite fond of, simple and uncluttered and with friendly staff who were not too inquisitive. I’d grown to enjoy parking myself in small bars and observing others, trying to guess their occupations, their past, their personal stories. I had once done the same at the fetish club in London before She had got me more involved in the action, and imagined elaborate stories, some the size of novels, about the visitors to whose special tastes we catered. There was no harm in speculating and it kept me entertained.

Here the visitors to the bar were, of course, less colourful: transient hippies whose contrived appearances all seemed to originate from the same mould; older locals who gave the impression they hadn’t left Australia’s Northern Territory in their whole lifetime, wedded to the land and sea like burnished icons; restless youth dressing the way they thought hipsters did in the distant big cities and mostly getting it wrong and advertising their blissful ignorance.

But, for me, every single one had a story to tell. Maybe one day I would try to write about them.

Lily the writer.

It had a nice sound to it.

The nice thing about this place, the terrace with its ring of palm trees and thick white sun umbrellas looking over the vivid blue of the ocean, was that no one minded if you sat, either at the bar or in a quiet corner, sipping your beer and making it last for hours. Today, they were busier, the staff preparing the tables, juggling with large white plates, distributing glasses and cutlery and chintzy little pots in which candles were being inserted. New Year’s Eve must be one of their best nights of the year for business, I guessed.

The evening’s first diners were beginning to arrive and, in the small alcove where I had taken refuge, I called for another beer and asked for the snacks menu. I was in no mood for a full meal. The bar offered a mix of wraps and sandwiches.

I watched as the place filled up. Terry, the young waitress who had been looking after me, came to the end of her shift and was replaced by Stellios, an elderly waiter with a pronounced Greek accent who’d been working here for over twenty years he’d once proudly informed me with fatherly concern.

‘No big plans for tonight, Miss Lily?’ he asked me, frowning as I sat alone in my recess.

I nodded.

‘It’s a shame, a pretty thing like you. No boyfriend, no man?’

I blinked and grinned.

‘Ah, a woman of secrets. I’ll leave you to it.’

He moved on to take an order on the terrace, leaving me at my improvised observation post.

I sipped my beer, later switched to coffee, idly biting into the turkey and chutney sandwich and daydreamed and watched the diners, the new arrivals and latecomers as they came and went.

An older couple at a table by the terrace’s entrance were savouring a huge plate of oysters. There was something old world and charming about them, I thought, yet not without a hint of danger, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it or come up with the right story for them. Like seasoned partners in crime, relaxed, suave, worldly.

Stellios hovered by, three cups of coffee balancing on his tray. He dropped mine off and continued to the old couple’s table and served them the remaining cups just as the beach restaurant’s sound system was switched on behind the bar by the duty manageress who ruled from afar. Unctuous strings began to swirl across the terrace, familiar melodies spilling onto the beach, gliding through the small lights hanging from the trees. It felt like a picture postcard, although a kitschy one at that. The first song was a waltz.

The bamboo dance floor at the end of the terrace extended into the sand.

I saw the older couple both turn their heads to the dance floor as some younger diners began to rise from their tables and make their way to the bamboo matting. I followed the direction of their gaze and noticed a tall blonde with short hair and her partner, a rugged athletic guy in jeans and white shirt, moving hand in hand and begin dancing. I hadn’t seen them before as the table they had been sitting at was obscured from my view by the bar counter.

The older couple began whispering to each other, as if they were commenting on the handsome new arrivals.

The woman wore a modest white dress that reached down to her knees, and flat ballet pumps to attenuate her height. Amber earrings hung loose from her lobes, and I noted the deep emerald hue of her nails, a perfect combination of colours.