Love...Under Different Skies (5 page)

“Here you go, guys,” Grant says, depositing my suitcase on the mattress. The ancient bed emits a protesting creak loud enough to echo round the room.

I’m struck dumb. The walls are painted with what I assume was once canary yellow but is now roughly the same shade as the stuff that comes out of a large blackhead when squeezed. The floorboards are bare and look like they’d insert several nasty splinters into your feet should you walk across them without shoes on. A monstrosity of a ceiling fan squeaks its way round slowly above, and the large oak wardrobe in the corner looks like it’s been there for so long it’s now fused to the walls and floor like a giant wooden limpet. A wide set of double doors lead back out onto the veranda, which then gives way to the chaos of the back garden.

The fan and the open doors do nothing for the temperature. It’s like an oven in here.

“Quaint,” says Jamie, doing his best to maintain an air of polite Britishness—and keep the shrill tones of insanity out of his voice.

“Glad you like it!” Grant says happily.

I turn round and notice something. “Er…is there a door?”

“Nah! We don’t like doors, me and Ellie. Too restrictive in the heat, you know? You got this blind though.” Grant grabs a thin bit of rope next to the doorway and proceeds to lower a set of blinds that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of the next
Texas Chain Saw Massacre
movie.

Fantastic. Not only are we now expected to spend the next few nights in a house Pig-Pen would run screaming from, we won’t even have enough privacy to argue about how stupid I am for agreeing to it.

“Right. A few things to tell you about,” Grant says. “There’re a few things you need to know about the area.”

“Go on,” I say, trepidation writ large across my face.

“First off, ignore the koalas at night. The little bastards like to use the back garden as a shortcut to the gum trees across the road. You can hear them snorting like pigs at all hours.”

Oh dear.

“Also, if you see a big brown spider with long legs you’re fine, it’s just a huntsman and they’re harmless.”

“Good to know.” There’s a squeaky quality to Jamie’s voice that worries me deeply.

“If you see a little black bastard with red on its back, though, you might want to avoid it. They’re redbacks and can kill you faster than a croc with a toothache.”

“And what do you suggest we do if we can’t avoid it?” Jamie asks, the squeak now so bad he’s starting to sound like one of the chipmunks.

“Ah, stick a glass over it and come get me. She’ll be right.”

“Okay.” Jamie is holding Poppy much more tightly in his arms and is slowly backing into one corner.

“Lastly, Monty might make an appearance at some point. He normally does when it’s really dry like this.”

“Monty?”

Please let Monty be a neighbour or the postman.

“Yeah, Monty. He’s the ten-foot scrub python we’ve got hereabouts. Likes to sleep in the eaves on the roof, so if you hear something moving around up there, don’t panic.”

Don’t panic?
This lunatic has just told me there’s every chance a snake large enough to swallow my daughter whole is going to be our roommate, and he tells me not to fucking panic?

Jamie has started to make a high-pitched keening noise and is holding Poppy so tight she’s starting to turn blue.

“Thanks Grant,” I say on autopilot.

“No worries! Ellie will be home soon, and she’ll get on with tea. We’re having tofu burgers and lentil salad.”

“Sounds lovely.”

It does not sound lovely. It sounds like the kind of thing they’d serve up in an internment camp.

“I’ll leave you folks alone for a while, then. You’ve got your own dunny when you need it. Just head out of the double door and straight down the garden path. Make sure you don’t trip on a koala in the night. I did that once and the little bastard bit my ankles.”

This is hell on Earth.

Grant ducks under the blind, leaving me with my red-faced husband.

“Why, Laura?” he intones. “Why would you do this to us?” he holds Poppy up. “Why would you do this to our daughter?”

“It’s not that bad,” I say, not believing a word of it.

“Not that bad? We’re all going to die in our sleep, Laura. That skinny maniac will come in tomorrow to find my rigid corpse covered in redbacks, you torn to pieces by the local koala gang, and Monty, the giant fucking python, sunning himself in the garden with a Poppy-shaped lump in his belly!”

“Don’t be so silly.”

“Oh no, you’re absolutely right. I am being silly. That won’t happen to us at all. We’re just going to get murdered by the living skeleton of a hippy sailor and his tofu-cooking wife.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Why should I? I want to make the most out of my voice box before it gets torn out by the nearest marsupial.” Jamie’s voice then lowers to a hiss. “And why the fuck is there a picture of Steve Redgrave in the garden?”

“I have no idea!”

“Hellooo!” From the living room we hear a new female voice. This must be the lady of the house.

“Shut up, Jamie! We have to go meet Ellie.”

“Yes, we’d better say hello fast, before she gets attacked by something.”

Giving Jamie a look laced with venom, I raise the hideous blind and storm out of the bedroom, husband and child in reluctant tow. We’re greeted with what looks like the ghost of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
.

A small ball of brightly coloured material is floating its way across the hardwood floor. The ball has an enormous smile perched on top of it. “Hi! You must be Laura and Jamie. It’s just delicious to meet you.”

Oh great.
A podgy colour-blind Australian cannibal.

Ellie hovers up to me, her feet completely obscured by the diaphanous rainbow dress she’s wearing. I go in for a polite British handshake. She goes in for a hearty Australian hug.

This results in me punching her in the boob, which she ignores and throws her arms around my waist. “So lovely to see you both!”

My nostrils are assailed by what I can only assume is the outflow from a nearby perfume factory. Either that or Ellie must bathe in the stuff.

“It’s so fantastic to have you stay with us!” she says and noisily kisses me on both cheeks.

Grant has reappeared from another room with a big smile on his bony face. I turn to look at Jamie. We’ve been married long enough for something of a telepathic link to have been established between us. I know without a doubt that what’s currently going through his mind is,
She’s going to hug me next. I’m going to be suffocated by a walking haystack of technicolour vomit. I must find a way to avoid it at all costs.
He looks down at Poppy who is still wriggling in his arms. I see an idea forming in that overcooked brain of his. The bastard is about to sacrifice our daughter to save his own hide.

“Hey Poppy! Go say hello to the nice lady!” Jamie squeaks, planting Poppy on the floor and giving her bottom a swift pat. He then backs away in the manner of a bomb-disposal expert.

Poppy is, of course, oblivious to the treachery, and with arms outstretched she runs towards the delighted Ellie, who gathers her up.

“Hello little Poppy! I’ve heard so much about you, too!”

From the sound of things Alan Brookes has been bloody thorough.

Poppy giggles. Then her nose crinkles. The perfume has found its way to her delicate three-year-old olfactory membrane.

Small children don’t have the social niceties we adults are forced to obey. They therefore think nothing of sneezing right in someone’s face.

Ellie emits a high-pitched squawk and lets my daughter go. Thankfully, Grant has what appear to be catlike reflexes and grabs Poppy before she can make friends with the floorboards. “Easy there sweetheart!” he says, putting Poppy back on the ground, who proceeds to sneeze two more times and run back to her daddy.

I can see the smile trying to work its way onto his cowardly little face, so I turn quickly back to Ellie. “Sorry about that Ellie. Must be the strange pollen in the air.”

“No worries,” she replies, wiping Poppy snot off her forehead.

“Well, now that we’ve all met,” says Grant, “I suggest we get some dinner on the go. What do you say?”

Ellie suggests that this is a marvellous idea. I smile halfheartedly. Jamie tries not to grimace at the thought of eating tofu burgers, and Poppy sneezes three more times, wetting herself. This breaks up the meeting, and we retire to our room to take care of our damp and angry three-year-old.

So that was how we came to be staying in 1950s Australia, Mum. Grant and Ellie are extremely nice people, but I don’t know how long they’re likely to stay like that with us living under the same roof.

Love and miss you, as ever.

Your awkward British daughter, Laura

xx

JAMIE’S BLOG

Tuesday 10 January

The night.

It clings to me. The stifling heat. The cloying darkness. I lie in a pool of sweat, watching the broken ceiling fan rotate above my head, its low hum starting to lull me into an uneasy sleep. I’m responsible for the fact it’s broken, for reasons I shall come to shortly. My eyes close, the drowse of sleep overcomes me. Then it happens again…

Snorg!

My eyes snap open. A small wail escapes my parched lips.

Snorg!

I would cry but I’ve sweated out every millilitre of water from my body since climbing into bed.

Snorg! Snorg!

They’re fucking koala bears, for crying out loud!

Koala bears are supposed to sit in eucalyptus trees, eating leaves and moving their heads around slowly while people take photographs. Every TV show I’ve ever watched about them has taught me that. And you know what else? They’re always bloody
quiet
. Silent little balls of fluff that wouldn’t say boo to an entire flock of fucking geese. Not the koala bears in my current neck of the woods, though. These bastards would give a pack of hooting gibbons a run for their money in the decibel championships.

Snorg! Snorg! Snorg!

I’m going to kill myself. But first I will kill Laura. It’s been a fairly decent marriage up to now, but I’m afraid it must end with homicide. There’s nothing else for it. Poppy can be adopted by Grant and Ellie, if she isn’t eaten by snakes in the interim.

Speaking of snakes, when there’s a brief surcease from the koalas shagging one another outside, I can hear the occasional bump and creak coming from above my head.

With sleep impossible, I’ve brought the laptop out onto the veranda to chronicle this most bizarre of days. Grant and Ellie are indeed very nice people, but they’re also hippies. What’s more, they are hippies living in a world they are ill-equipped to deal with. It’s all very well preaching love and tolerance from a quiet rural Queensland suburb, but you try applying those philosophies to an average Monday morning on the M25 motorway and see how far it gets you.

Laura and I are very much products of our own environment and therefore have little in common with our new hippy friends. Dinner was a prime example of this disconnect. I’m sure in their world a limp green salad, a couple of grey tofu burgers, and a round of goat’s milk is a hearty meal. Grant looked positively stuffed after eating a single spinach leaf. I, on the other hand, hoovered up the meagre fare in thirty seconds and immediately started wondering what roasted koala tastes like.

After dinner I was looking forward to an early night. Poppy had already buggered off to bed, and I was feeling intensely jealous of her good fortune. Grant and Ellie had other plans for Laura and me, sadly.

“So, then!” Grant says from under a goat’s milk moustache. “Who’s up for a game of Rummikub?”

“What?” I reply around my last morsel of tofu.

“Rummikub! Me and Ellie love a game, and whenever we have guests we always insist they play!”

This day has now descended into levels of surrealism Salvador Dali would have been baffled by.

“Rummikub? What’s that?” Laura asks.

“You’ve never played Rummikub?” Ellie’s tone suggests that Laura has missed out on one of the greatest pleasures in the known universe.

“I have,” I offer up in a bland voice.

Rummikub is awful. A confusing mishmash of gin rummy and dominoes, it’s harder to pick up than molten lead, goes on for hours, and demands a level of mathematical ability most of us lose five seconds after we leave our final school exam.

“Fantastic!” Ellie shrieks and magically produces the oldest-looking Rummikub box I’ve ever seen. With combined looks of obsessive glee, Grant and Ellie start to hand out the game tiles and the wooden racks you put them in. They then proceed to fill Laura in on the rules of the game.

My wife is a very intelligent woman, who can grasp complicated theories and equations with relative ease. Therefore, it only takes what feels like eight weeks for her to grasp the infernal rules of Rummikub. This is excellent. It takes most people the better part of a year. And thus the game begins.

Two point eight nanoseconds later, I want to choke myself to death with my own fist.

We spend the next ninety-three years of our lives playing the first game, which Ellie wins by a country mile.

“Never mind!” Grant tells Laura and me. “You’ll pick it up better in the next game.”

And indeed, seven centuries later I’m surprised to find myself beating Grant. Ellie is still way ahead, but at least I’ve got one up on the bony head of the house.

Another forty-six millennia go by (including two ice ages) before Laura finally plucks up the courage to put an end to the evening. She gives a yawn of such overblown theatricality I can hear Laurence Olivier turning in his grave. “It really is time for bed I think. Got a long day tomorrow car hunting!”

Ellie couldn’t look more disappointed if you told her tofu had bacon in it. “Oh, okay. That’s a shame. The game was really getting exciting.”

“Never mind,” offers Grant. “We’ll leave it here and pick it up tomorrow.”

If I could insert the dining table up Grant’s narrow arse right now, I would.

“Well done,” I whisper to Laura as we head to our room having said our good nights.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. My soul feels like it’s been repeatedly hit with a hammer.”

“Yep, that’s Rummikub for you.”

“What the hell does that word mean anyway?”

“It’s translated from the original Hebrew. It means to suffer a slow and agonising death.”

I’m joking of course, but in that instant Laura is more than prepared to believe me. I lower the blind across our door and lie on the bed. This is a jolly painful thing to do. I’ve slept in uncomfortable beds before, but this one actually causes me physical harm. It’s quite incredible.

I watch Laura check on Poppy, who is sound asleep. I watch my wife’s face change from one of sleepy discontent to abject horror.

“What’s the matter?” I hiss, trying hard not to raise my voice too loud given that Grant and Ellie can probably hear everything we’re saying, thanks to the lack of a fucking door on our room.

Laura points at Poppy’s head. “Mosquito!”

I jump up and peer down at my daughter. Perched on her forehead is a mosquito roughly the size of my fist. It’s looking back up at me and squinting—as if daring me to take a swipe at it.

“Get rid of it Jamie!” Laura whispers as vociferously as possible. Quite why I’ve been automatically designated mosquito killer is beyond me, but I start flapping my hand around just above Poppy’s forehead, hoping to dislodge the bugger without waking my daughter up.

This succeeds, but instead of having a calm mosquito sucking Poppy’s blood in fairly contented fashion, I now have an enraged mosquito flying directly at my face, intent on sucking my eyeballs out of my head.

I flap ineffectually at it. Mosquitoes are not the most aerobatic of insects, but this one doesn’t have to put much effort into avoiding my hands as they’re both suffering repetitive strain injury from the twelve years of Rummikub I’ve just played. The fat insect flies up towards the ceiling.

“Hit it with something!” Laura suggests helpfully.

I desperately look around for a suitable weapon. If I don’t deprive the sodding creature of its life right now, it will go off and hide until we’re fast asleep. Then it will spend the rest of the night snacking on our extremities.

Laura is bent over Poppy, no doubt checking for signs of a bite, so she can’t help with my search. I can’t see anything that looks like it has swatting potential, so I whip off my T-shirt and start chasing the mosquito around the room. Of course the T-shirt is just slightly too short to reach the bastard as it bobs around the ceiling, so I have to climb up onto the bed. This puts me precariously close to the ceiling fan, which is still turning slowly and wafting the soupy air around the room.

The mosquito has settled briefly on the coving a scant few feet in front of me. I lunge at it and smack the bastard square on.

Woo-hoo! That’s one dead mosquito that won’t be munching on my face tonight.

In my moment of celebration I forget that I’m standing on the bed and lose my balance. One arm goes out reflexively and my hand latches onto the first thing it can gain purchase on: one of the lazily swinging blades of the ceiling fan. This helps to regain my balance for the briefest of moments before the blade continues its sedate pace around on its arc and carries me off the bed.

At this point I should have let go. Unfortunately in situations like this my brain often likes to take a quick holiday from proceedings. It’s been in similar circumstances enough times to know things aren’t going to end well and wants to get as far away from the blast zone as possible. I don’t think to release my grip on the blade of the ceiling fan and therefore start to drop to the floor still holding it. With a horrendous shriek of ancient metal, the blade snaps clean off the fan.

I hit the floor, spraining my ankle in the process, and sit back on the bed with a look of pained befuddlement on my face.

“Jamie!” Laura cries. “What the fuck have you done?”

“I didn’t mean to. I was trying to kill the mosquito.”

She looks down at the long piece of bent metal I’m still holding in my hand. “Well you certainly did a good job of killing the fan, you silly sod.”

I start to object but am interrupted by Grant, who has appeared at the open double doorway clad in a brown terry dressing gown that barely reaches his skinny little knees. “What’s all the racket there, Newmans?” he asks and yawns.

“There was a mosquito, Grant,” I reply. “I had to kill it.”

Grant looks up at the broken fan still turning lazily above our heads, only now with a pronounced lean to one side. He then regards the broken fan blade I’m still clutching like a sword. “Must have been a big bastard. I usually just hit ’em with a pillow.”

“I…I’m so sorry, Grant.” I stammer. “I’ll pay for a new one.”

Grant waves one skinny hand. “Ah, no worries. The bugger hardly worked anyway. You’ve given me an excuse to get a new one myself. Just do me a favour, though, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“If you see any more mozzies, just hit ’em with a pillow. That bed’s been in my family for generations and I don’t really want the headboard ripped off.”

“No problem,” I reply sheepishly and delicately put the fan blade on the dresser next to the bed.

“Well, night again then, Newmans,” Grant smiles and shuffles his way back from whence he came.

I breathe a sigh of relief. “That could have been worse.”

“Yeah? You haven’t seen the size of the bite on Poppy’s forehead yet.”

I trot over to the small single bed where my daughter has apparently grown a third eye. An angry red welt juts out from the middle of her forehead.

“Oh Christ,” I say.

“He’s not going to help us, pal,” Laura replies. “Pops is a deep sleeper, but that thing is going to itch like crazy. It’s only a matter of time before it wakes her up.”

And wake up she does about twenty minutes later as Laura and I are negotiating our way into semi-comfortable positions on the rock-hard ancient bed. I hear a plaintive moan from the other side of the room.

“Mummy? Itchy.” She’s asking for Mummy, but Laura gives me a look from where her head is buried in the pillow that suggests if I wish to keep breathing the baked air hanging around us, I should probably get up and attend to Poppy’s new bite.

I go over to where Poppy is lying scratching at her face like a dog with fleas. “Don’t scratch honey. It’ll make it worse.”

“It itches, Daddy. Don’t like it!”

“Perfectly understandable Poppet. That mosquito was the size of a camper van.”

I open my suitcase and take out the medical kit we’ve brought with us. Thankfully, Laura and her Teutonic level of organisation were responsible for packing it, so it’s stuffed to the rafters with every conceivable medicine. If I had been left in charge, I’d be looking down at four Elastoplasts and half a bottle of NyQuil. I pick out the sting-relief cream, squeeze a healthy blob of it on my hand, and lazily slap it on Poppy’s forehead.

“Just leave it alone now Pops. Let the cream do its stuff.”

“Stinky,” she growls at me and frowns in a carbon copy of her mother’s best annoyed expression.

“I know sweetie, but better stinky than itchy, right?”

“Don’ wanna sleep here,” she continues.

“It’s not for long, Poppet.”

“Too hot, daddy. Want the airy con.”

I want the airy con too. More than anything else in the world right now. “They don’t have it here Pops. Just the fan.”

“Why’s it broken?” she asks, looking up.

“Er…Daddy had to kill the mosquito honey. The fan broke while I was doing it.”

“Daddy broke it,” Poppy says in her most accusatory tone.

My daughter is developing so fast these days it amazes me. It seems like it wasn’t five minutes since I was spoon-feeding her brown mush, and here she is at two in the morning, halfway across the other side of the world, berating me for removing the only form of air cooling available in this wooden monstrosity of a house.

“Just try and go back to sleep Pops. And don’t touch your forehead.”

“Daddy…stinks.”

I don’t know if she’s insulting me or just reiterating her displeasure with the sting cream’s aroma, but I’m frankly way too tired to care and blow her a halfhearted kiss before shuffling back to bed.

“That’s some wicked parenting there, Newman,” Laura says, her words muffled by the pillow.

“I’m up for this year’s award,” I say sarcastically, before I close my eyes and try not to think about the temperature of the air or the solidness of the bed.

The night. It clings to me…

Snorg!

So that’s been our first day and night at Grant and Ellie’s. There will not be a second one. We’re supposed to be here for
weeks
, but I don’t think I can handle even one more day. That’s an awful thing to say, I know, but I can’t help myself. Uprooting your entire life to travel thousands of miles is bad enough, but when you get to the other end and find it’s unbearably uncomfortable, you have to do something about it.