Love...Under Different Skies (4 page)

My my, they do use a lot of people for the special effects in these movies don’t they?

“Kyābātahai?”

Filmed on location in New Mexico, Pittsburgh, and Stuttgart. How very interesting.

“Apanēnākaujjvalalālaky
ōṁhai?”

“What’s going on Jamie?” Laura asks in a hazy voice.

“Daddy hit the baby!” Poppy cries and collapses into hilarity.

Manjula’s mother nails me to my chair with a look of deep suspicion. It seems the woman knows more English than she’s let on.

“What? No, no!” I lie, feigning complete innocence. “Pay no attention to my daughter. She’s a moron.”

“Jamie!”

Pops doesn’t seem too bothered by the insult. She’s still laughing like a loon and bouncing one hand off her nose. Manjula is quieting down now, so the Indian woman puts her back in the bassinet and returns to her half doze. I can’t help noticing her left eye remains slightly open.

For my part, I offer Manjula a final smug grin of victory and then try to give
Twilight 2: The Search for Kristen Stewart’s Personality
a go. I last twelve minutes before turning it off and doing something more constructive by picking my nose.

Yes indeed. There’s nothing like several hours of airline travel to reduce you to the level of casual child molestation, I always say. As I sit here writing this, we’re on the second leg of the journey from Singapore to Brisbane. Manjula and her mother did not get back on the flight I’m pleased to say.

I am now next to an elderly Chinese gentleman who could be anything from sixty-five to 450. I think he’s getting a bit annoyed with my constant tip tap on the laptop keyboard, so I’m going to shut it down and try to entertain myself with something on the TV. The Kardashian documentary has been replaced by one about Paris Hilton,
Twilight
has given way to all three
Transformers
movies, and I’ve already seen every episode of
Fawlty Towers
about seven times.

I’m starting to wish Manjula had taken my eyes out with her ninja book throwing.

LAURA’S DIARY

Monday, January 9

G’day Mum!

Sorry, I won’t write that again, I promise.

We’ve been here a week now, and I’ve never been so hot in my bloody life. Australia, it seems, is a mere ten-minute walk from the surface of the sun. My
eyelids
are sweating. I have never experienced sweaty eyelids in my life. It is a new and strange phenomenon I’m not entirely sure I approve of.

Two words have become of paramount importance to me in the last week: air conditioner. Without one I would have wilted into a small heap in the corner within five hours of getting off the plane. As it is, the dull drone of the air-conditioning unit is the most pleasurable sound in my life these days.

And what a few days it’s been! A real roller-coaster ride. We’ve well and truly been dropped into the deep end of Australian culture without a life jacket.

The first two days of the trip were spent getting over the horrific jet lag. My new employers had arranged three days in a fairly bland hotel in Brisbane to start us off, giving me forty-eight hours to stop yawning every five minutes and prepare myself for my first meeting with the boss. Said meeting took place in a rather elegant office building overlooking the botanical gardens.

Alan Brookes is possibly the most Australian Australian to ever walk the face of the planet. In his fifties, he speaks with a nasal twang that’s impossible not to find endearing and has a tanned, lined, and ruggedly handsome face that speaks of many an hour tramping manfully through the outback. Well over six feet tall, he wears a hat that mercifully doesn’t have corks on it but is exactly the kind of bushman’s hat you’d expect a working-class Australian millionaire to have perched on his slightly thinning head of blond and white hair.

I have to confess to a slight crush on Paul Hogan when I was a very young girl, so I can’t prevent myself from blushing slightly when we’re first introduced, as he shakes my hand in a gentle but firm manner. Having said that, Alan looks like the kind of man who knows as much about chocolate as I do about crocodile wrestling.

“The wife’s idea,” he tells me when I voice this rather impertinent opinion. I feel relaxed enough to ask this after only ten minutes around the man. He’s one of those open, funny, down-to-earth types who make you feel instantly at ease.

Alan Brookes probably makes friends easier than most people shake hands, firm or otherwise. “She loves the bloody stuff,” he continues. “Always wanted to own a chocolate company, she has. Hasn’t got a head for business, though, so I’m running the show for her.”

You know you’re rich when you can buy your wife an entire chocolate company for Christmas. I wonder what he bought her for her birthday? New Zealand, possibly? Still, I’d love it if Jamie had enough cash to buy me my own chocolate manufacturer. It’d make a nice change from all the electrical kitchen appliances he keeps purchasing in an unconscious display of Yuletide misogyny.

Alan Brookes made his fortune in the opal mines out West, then became semiretired with more money than God. It appears he now buys up small businesses as a hobby to keep himself busy when not strangling crocodiles in the outback. This chocolate venture is the latest of these little experiments. One that I’m going to be an intrinsic part of.

“Yeah, we’ll get you going down on the Goldie in a few weeks,” Alan tells me. This sounds like he wants me to do unspeakable things to a dog.

“The Gold Coast, Laura!” he explains when I tell him I don’t understand. “We’ll send you down to the store in Surfer’s Paradise to use as your base of operations.”

He goes on to explain that he wants me to get a feel for how the three stores in southern Queensland are faring and provide him with a detailed report within the month.

“This month though, we’ll keep you here in Brizzie,” he says, “just so you can get your feet on the ground. Okay there, Laura?”

“Yes. That’s fine. Thank you,” I say in stilted fashion. I’m used to a typical level of polite British prevarication, so this Australian get-to-the-point bluntness is somewhat disconcerting.

“Great! What hotel did Brett stick you in?”

“The Brisbane Metro.”

“What? That’s a shit hole! Brett’s a good bloke to have as your right-hand man, but his taste in hotels leaves a lot to be desired.” He pulls out a mobile phone. “Got a much better idea. You can go stay with my cousin Grant and his wife Ellie, while you’re here.”

What?

“They live in a beaut of a Queenslander over in Wynnum. Gorgeous bit of countryside they’ve got, you’ll love it!”

But I want to stay in a hotel like a typical foreigner!

I’d been told back in England that the Australians do stuff like this all the time. They can be accommodating and welcoming to an aggressive degree. As two standard, socially repressed British people, Jamie and I were mildly terrified this kind of thing might happen—I just wasn’t expecting it to happen
this quickly
.

Alan’s on the phone for five minutes arranging our bed and board for the next week.

“Right!” he says, shoving the phone back in his pocket. “You’re all set. Grant’s expecting you this evening. You got a car yet?”

I blink several times. This sudden shift in conversation topic nearly gives me whiplash. “No.”

“Ah, you’ll need a motor, Laura! We’ll get Brett to drive you over to Grant’s today and I’ll set something up with my mate Bushy who runs one of the local car dealerships for tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I certainly can’t complain that my new employer isn’t helpful.

“Great. Good to have you on board then, Laura.” Alan thrusts out a rugged tanned hand, and I once again feel a blush coming on as it envelops mine.

Within the space of half an hour I have a new place to temporarily live, my first work task, and a viewing on some cars.

My head is spinning as Brett drives me back to the Brisbane Metro.

“I’ll pick you all up in an hour Laura,” he says as he drops me off. I nod and make my way back to our hotel room, still in something of a daze.

“You bloody what?” Jamie says in horror when I tell him of our change in accommodation.

“It’s a very nice gesture by Mr. Brookes,” I tell him, trying to convince myself as much as anyone of that fact.

“But I like it here!” Jamie whines. “The air-con is fairly quiet and the swimming pool downstairs is like a sauna.” The corners of his mouth drop. “We’ve even got cable.”

“I’m sure Grant and Ellie will have cable as well, Jamie.” I say and start to gather our things.

Jamie then pulls the child card. “Poppy likes this hotel. Don’t you Pops?”

Poppy looks up from the intense game of plastic horsey versus plastic cow she’s been playing on her bed all this time and giggles.

“See?” Jamie says, as if a chuckle from a three-year-old is a solid and well-presented argument.

“My new boss has made a generous offer, and I’m not about to get off to a bad start with him by refusing. Pack, Jamie!”

Poppy, realising her mother won’t be swayed on this one, climbs off the bed and puts the cow and horse in her pink plastic backpack. Jamie produces the time-honoured expression used on occasions such as this—the one that makes him look like he’s chewing a lemon—before sighing heavily and joining me in the grand cleanup.

Brett arrives right after we’ve checked out, and it’s not long before we’re motoring our way east towards Grant and Ellie’s Queensland abode.

“You’ll love it!” Brett exclaims. “We went there for a barbie a couple of weeks back. Lovely garden they’ve got.”

“Hmnm,” Jamie huffs from the passenger seat. He’s really not happy about all of this. Not in the slightest.

The first inclination I get that my decision to agree to a change of accommodation was a grievous error is when we pull off the main road and hit a long tarmac strip surrounded by thick foliage. The further we venture down this street, the worse the the road becomes. A couple of rights and a left later we arrive at a street replete with the kind of greenery you’d usually see Tarzan swinging through of an evening. It’s completely unbelievable how this kind of environment can be only a couple of kilometres from the built-up twenty-first-century Brisbane suburbs. Brett pulls up in front of one of the houses along the street and my heart starts to hammer.

What Alan Brookes referred to as a “beaut of a Queenslander” is an enormous rambling wooden house that looks as ancient as the gnarled, gigantic trees surrounding it. Set in a garden overflowing with the local flora, the house is a wide, squat bungalow finished in a fading dark blue.

Next to it is a massive lean-to, under which an antique boat sits. Captain Jack Sparrow would have looked right at home standing at the prow. All in all, it’s more rustic than an episode of
Escape to the Country
.

Brett leaps out of the car. Jamie gets out very slowly, like someone on their first parachute jump leaving the safety of the plane fuselage. I manhandle my wriggling daughter out as well and walk to the rear of the vehicle, where Brett has already removed our suitcases from the trunk. “Here comes Grant!” he says, and I turn to see a skeleton walking towards us.

No, scratch that, this guy’s a bit thinner than that.

Grant is about six four, has long, grey, wispy hair, an equally wispy beard, and big bug eyes that wouldn’t look out of place perched on the front of an owl. He’s wearing a grey paint-splattered vest that hangs off his bony frame, along with a pair of bright orange board shorts and flip-flops that look like they’re hand-me-downs from Moses. Around his neck is a stone pendant with that peace sign from the sixties painted on it in what looks like Wite-Out.

“G’day!” he exclaims brightly. I’m amazed he has the strength to even talk, let alone sound so cheery.

“How you going?” Brett replies.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hmnm,” Jamie grunts. No matter what else happens today, I know I’m getting a right earful later before we go to bed.

“I’m gonna leave you in Grant’s capable hands,” Brett tells us. “I’ll come back tomorrow to take you to look at cars.”

“Thanks Brett,” I say, trying as hard as I can to sound happy about all this.

“Hmnm,” says Jamie, who couldn’t hide his displeasure right now if you put several guns to his head.

“Great!” Grant says and ruffles Poppy’s hair. “She’s a cute one, ain’t she? Have to make sure the pythons don’t get her!”

Oh good God.

“Pythons?” Jamie stares at the nearest patch of undergrowth.

“Only messing about!” Grant tells him. The look of relief on Jamie’s face is palpable. “They don’t come in the house much anymore, so I’m sure she’ll be fine!”

Yeah. I’ll be getting a divorce pretty soon, I just know it.

Grant picks up my suitcase, further proof that his emaciated frame doesn’t necessarily square with his level of strength. “Let’s get you inside, eh?”

“Yes please,” I reply with genuine gratitude. The lure of air-conditioning in this baking thirty-degree heat overrides all other concerns.

We say goodbye to Brett and follow Grant through the dense foliage up a garden path that weaves its way between a variety of odd garden ornaments, including a rusty tin bath sunk into the ground as a pond, a plastic statue of a fat, naked Aborigine man squatting in front of an enormous didgeridoo, a small sculpture of a snake made from old beer cans—and Steve Redgrave.

Not the real one, needless to say. I’m sure getting a multi-gold-medal-winning Olympian to come and stand in your garden all day would probably prove quite expensive. This is a framed picture of Sir Steve nailed to one of the wooden banisters that runs around the sides of the house.

There is nothing to indicate a reason why Steve Redgrave is positioned thusly. You could almost understand it if there were pictures of other Olympians decorating the banisters at regular intervals—a moving shrine and testament to the soaring endurance of the human spirit. But Sir Steve is all on his own, staring out over the rambling Australian garden like a watchful guardian. Whatever else happens, I must question Grant about this later. I have to know the reason behind this oddity.

“I’ll take you through to your room,” Grant says as we walk across the wide veranda towards the front door.

Every door and window in the place is thrown open. This is not a good sign that cooling air-conditioning is to be had inside.

“Do you have air-con?” I ask as we enter the confines of the house proper.

“Nah! Don’t need it,” he replies, pointing up at one of four fans in the ceiling that are doing a good job of pushing the baking air around the broad expanse of the living room we’ve just walked into.

I say living room, but flea market would be more appropriate.

Every surface is covered with crap.

Plastic crap, metal crap, wooden crap, ceramic crap, glass crap.

A lot of it has a nautical theme. There are at least three of those lifesaving rings that always hang off the side of a boat. One is for the HMS
Purbright
, another is for the HMAS
Sandcroft
, and the last came from the HMS
Chucklebottom
—which I assume is a joke, unless the navy got really drunk once while naming the new fleet.

I could list every item included in the room, but this diary only has two hundred pages available to write on, and I still have something of a life to lead. Suffice it to say that an episode of
Antiques Roadshow
has raped eBay, and this room is the unholy product of that union.

“Fuck me,” I hear Jamie whisper under his breath. Poppy giggles from his arms and points at a plastic flamingo sitting on a small black-and-white portable TV, which probably last saw action when Jimmy Tarbuck was still popular.

“Through here,” Grant says, oblivious to the fact that he has a serious hoarding disorder, and shuffles through a broad open doorway. I enter the room and my heart sinks so far even the ring off the HMS
Chucklebottom
couldn’t save it.

We’ve walked into 1957.

I’m sure that’s when the gigantic wooden bed squatting in the centre of the room was built, anyway. Another smaller but equally ancient single bed sits along the wall opposite.