The Other Side of the World (5 page)

He realizes the girls are staring silently at their mother. Mascara-blackened tears course down her cheeks. Again Charlotte wipes at her face with a sleeve, her eyes flitting away from the gaze of her family. Happiness is related to cheerfulness, Henry reasons, looking at his sad wife. Not the same, but near enough to be mistaken—for cheerfulness to be wrongly taken as a sign of happiness. Henry wishes the girls would look somewhere else—all of a sudden cheerfulness is imperative. To distract his children Henry mimics the happiness he no longer feels sure he can possess. He knows he ought to take Charlotte's hand but is afraid of touching her. He is afraid of the sadness he has caused. Instead he hoists May onto his shoulders and takes Lucie by the hand. He throws coins to the buskers, smiles, waves. May lifts her chubby arms above her head. She laughs and bounces.

The four of them board the
Castel Felice
and find a space on deck from where they can look out over the railing towards the shore and the crowd. Charlotte feels the engine begin to rumble beneath her and sees the grimy water start to churn. Visitors are asked to leave the boat, and the gangplank is pulled aboard. Thick coils of brown rope are lifted away from the pilings and a
horn sounds before a jet of black smoke is released into the air. People ashore cry and wave, some run towards the ship, others turn away. There are whistles, hoots, and calls. Paper streamers in bright shades of pink, blue, and green are thrown down from the deck and strings of colored flags sway between the masts. Passengers cast flowers into the crowd and bystanders toss their hats in the air, while a young woman in a polka-dot neck scarf stands weeping on the pier, pressing a pale handkerchief to a red mouth. On board, a small child in a grey coat and pink shoes jumps up and down in an attempt to see over the boat's railing, wanting to take a last look at the country she will soon hardly recall.

As the ship prepares to leave, Henry raises his arm, to everyone and no one in particular. It is hard to tell whether his loose wave is a gesture made in greeting or farewell, a hello that says, simultaneously, good-bye.

Charlotte stands beside him, looking out, wanting to remember the scene in every detail, knowing she will forget. The colors, the shapes, the round, white faces of her country's people. Over this the smells: fish, smoke, wet concrete, damp wool, and dog. The low cloud keeping the odors close. There are the grey-and-brown brick shop fronts and behind these, out of sight, the green land—the place of meadow and field, oak and birch, aspen and yew.

She looks out and tries to remember all this for her children, so that she can tell them what it was like. She knows they too will forget, as one forgets, in winter, the brightness of summertime. Events are compressed, days forgotten. In the mind one jumps from one intensity to another, the hours in between elided and lost. It is the failure of life to stand out. As the ship pulls away the bright streamers begin to snap. One after another they tighten
and break, the tail ends fluttering down into dark water. Red and yellow, blue and pink, until finally the ship is free. They sail down through the locks, out into the North Sea, and south along the coastline. Night comes and snow falls, covering the shoulders of Henry's coat as he stands on deck, taking his last look at England, the white lights of Dover shining and blinking, then burning out.

PART TWO

Landfall

Perth, 1965

T
hey sail south over the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean. When the boat docks in Port Said, people in dark robes climb on board with baskets of goods. There are smells that Henry does and does not recognize. Fish. Spices. It is nighttime when they pass through the Suez Canal. Later there is Ceylon and the family leaves the boat. They go to a market and Henry shows them the fruit he used to eat as a boy: mango, custard apple, persimmon. He bites the tough skin off a lychee and holds the fruit out to Charlotte. She opens her mouth, and as the fruit ­releases its flavor she thinks back over the many Christmases that she has wrapped an orange in tissue paper and placed it carefully in the bottom of her husband's stocking. All of a sudden an orange no longer seems exotic, but plain and sour. Henry buys a pair of sunglasses from another stall, then they take a taxi through the streets and get lost, making it back to the boat just before it sails. Not long after this they cross the equator; there is a party and the captain of the ship dresses up as King Neptune. He presents the children with a certificate proving their initiation into the Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep, the document signed by the king and his servants. The girls are fed watermelon and ice cream, and entertained by a friendly steward in the playroom while Henry and Charlotte dance.

At night the cabins are unbearably hot; some have taken to sleeping on the deck. Early one morning another ship, returning to England, passes at a distance. The passengers call to one ­another, but the signs are not good—those on the returning ship
wave in the direction of Europe, some swinging their arms in a cross above their heads as if to say stop, go no further. But then the ships move away from each other, Charlotte forgets the encounter, and a few days later they see land.

Charlotte and Henry stand on deck, watching the new country come into view: a distant line of flat brown sand, a row of pine trees that looks at first like a series of small dark triangles. As the ship moves closer they glimpse red-tiled roofs and white ­houses, dipping and wobbling in a sheen of heat. The country grows larger and people scramble to get a view. Charlotte glances up: the sun is a tiny white speck in the blue sky, but its power is monumental. Heat is everywhere, pressing down on her shoulders, throbbing beneath her skin, burning her face. Her cotton smock clings to the sweat on her back. A dry wind blows from the shore and the boat slows. She clutches her hat to her head. She can see no cars. She can see no people. What had she expected? An RAAF band playing, a welcome party with flowers?

They disembark and join the queue for the buses that are to take them to the migrant reception center. The line is long and slow-moving. They shuffle, then stop. Then shuffle, and stop again. How long do they wait? Half an hour, an hour? It is hard to tell. Charlotte watches the sun lift itself up into the very center of the sky. Her hands are red and swollen, her feet tight in her shoes. Small black flies swarm at their backs and faces. Charlotte flicks them away, only to look down and see the same insects clustered over Lucie's mouth so that her lips cannot be seen at all. There is no shade, no water. Charlotte feels herself growing faint. May begins to cry, her little face red as a pomegranate. Lucie needs to go to the toilet. The queue stops moving again and others around them start to grumble. From where she stands Charlotte sees the luggage lifted from the cargo hold in huge green nets, all the
goods of their English lives hauled out like a sack of refuse. The ground tilts and sways. Charlotte grips Henry's hand.

Finally it is their turn; they step up onto the bus. It is old and dusty, with broken seats and windows that rattle in their frames. They've eaten nothing since breakfast and the children whimper as the vehicle makes its way through a country of sand. Cottages with wide verandas litter the roadside. Geraniums and palm trees sprout from the dust. There are no people. They've seen no people. The bus bumps along.

Then it appears before them, although they don't know what it is at first: a metal shed with a hole in one end like a winter pen for animals. Everyone clambers out of the bus and they are told to make their way inside. From here they are to collect their luggage. Charlotte and Henry will then be free to go, but those traveling without sponsorship will have to catch another bus to the migrant hostel. Inside, the shed is dark and hot, and the small door lets in no air. Children and pregnant women faint, while around them other migrants push and scuffle, looking for their possessions. Luggage is strewn along the walls and people are crawling among the bags and trunks as they try to gather up their belongings. A large woman sits on the ground and weeps as she berates her husband.
What were you thinking? Why here? Would you look at this? Cattle!
A wiry girl in a Salvation Army uniform rushes about offering people tea in little paper cups too hot to hold, and a large, heavy-jowled, red-skinned man stands at the entrance to the shed and barks out names:
Barnes! Bertrand! Bunning!
Yes sir, yes sir, the respondents say, dashing forwards and climbing onto the next dusty old bus that is to drive them to the hostel in Swanbourne.

It is 105 degrees in the shade. Charlotte watches the bus fill up, glad she is not among that crowd; she's heard the stories, of
families sharing a tin shed for months on end, of people just waiting until their two years are up and they can sail home again without having to repay their outward fare. These are the people who came without jobs. Not like her and Henry. There are rumors of contaminated water, infestations, insufficient food. Charlotte watches the bus lumber off, then feels Henry pushing at her back, ushering her towards the taxi, his hand on her head as she ducks into the backseat. “Seventeen Chester Road, Rose Cove, please,” he says once everybody is in, and the driver nods.

It seems a long drive, from the water to the suburbs. Later it will feel no distance at all. But everything seems so strange at first—the wide streets, the cloudless sky, the way the leaves hang lank on the trees. She'd seen no real pictures, had no idea. “Almost there now,” Henry says as the car makes its slow way. They pass wide brown lawns and sun-bleached shop fronts—red letters now pink, yellow letters white. On either side of them the road disappears into sand.

“Almost there,” Henry says again, leaning his face out the window. He feels warm air against his cheek and breathes in, catching the smell of eucalyptus, cut grass. The air feels light in his lungs: dry and salty. The sky is high and liquid above the trees. They turn a corner, then Henry points and says something to the driver. The taxi slows, pulling up beside a white picket fence in the shade of a red flowering tree. “This is it,” Henry calls, jubilant. He pays the driver, swings himself out of the car, then bends down and lifts the children from their seats. The driver takes the luggage from the boot as Henry and the children move towards the house. “You coming, Charlotte?” he calls over his shoulder, his hand on the front gate.

“Yes, just a minute,” she says, stepping away from the taxi and slowly brushing down her dress. The taxi drives off and Charlotte
watches Henry walk into the bright light of the garden, then disappear around the side of the house.

Henry stands in the backyard and wipes his sweaty palms on his trousers; he is unsettled but doesn't want Charlotte to know this. She didn't see the way the taxi driver looked him up and down just now. Nor did she hear what the Australian ship officer said to him the morning they docked at Ceylon: “Well, sir, I expect you'll be leaving us here?” It makes him worry.

In the garden, the horizon stretches away on either side. One ought always to be thankful, he thinks as he pushes his hands into his pockets. Now here he is, in the land of opportunity. Lucie runs in circles crying out with delight—it is a kind of space she's never seen before—while May blinks and stares, entranced by the tree shadows playing over the ground. He rocks back on his heels and looks to the sky—so big it makes him giddy.

“Poms, are you?” the taxi driver asked, his tone doubtful. “Poor bloody prisoners of Mother England,” he said, checking the side mirror before turning back to inspect Henry more closely, an eyebrow raised.

Such interactions have been few, but the force of them never lessens. In London there was the landlord who told him across the door chain that the room had just been taken, and the secretary at the tennis club who inspected his driver's license a little too closely when he went to fill out a membership form, looking at the photograph, then looking at Henry, then looking at the photograph again. And that encounter, years ago, when he and Charlotte traveled to the north of India to visit Henry's mother. They were waiting for the Toy Train and his watch had stopped. “Excuse me, chaps, but do you have the time?” he said
to a couple of British tourists. They stared at him, mute, as if they had not expected him to speak English. Afterwards, when they thought he was out of earshot, he heard them laughing.
Chaps! Chaps!
they called to each other in jest: a British word they thought him unfit to use. Charlotte had blushed and pretended not to notice.

Henry realizes that his hands are clenched into fists. He takes them out of his pockets, crouches down to the ground, and ­pushes his fingers into the dirt. Sand, all sand. Yellow sand, gray sand, and what looks like rust but is really red sand, blown up against the side of the house. He wants to be grateful; he wants not to waste things. This is, after all, how he and Charlotte live. Everything used and reused and nothing unnecessary; plastic bags, heels of bread, the last spoonful of sugary milk at the bottom of the ­cereal bowl. There is nothing that can't be fixed or find a purpose. “Come on, Charlotte!” he calls. “Shake a leg!” He wants her near him. If she is near him, he thinks, it will be all right.

The house is made of weatherboard, painted pink with green awnings and surrounded by a long veranda. A tangled mass of wisteria and red bougainvillea flanks the veranda and shades the front windows. Bright green vines wrestle for space, clambering up the walls, over the gutters, and into the chimney. From a distance she hears Henry calling her.
Charlotte? Are you coming? Come and see this.
Everything is wild and hot. Dry and wild. Hot and dry. But she does not want to be the thing that disappoints him. Then it will be my fault, she thinks, the failure will belong to me.
Charlotte?
he calls again. May wails in the distance. She will go into the garden for the children. He knows she will go for them. “I'm coming, May,” she calls. “Mummy's coming.”

She finds Henry standing in the middle of an old vegetable bed, now overtaken by sand and the brown runners of buffalo grass. He is digging the tip of his shoe into the ground, snapping off bits of leaf and sniffing them. She picks May up off the ground. “Would you look at all this!” Henry exclaims, spreading out his arms. Lucie stands next to him, holding on to the cloth of his trousers. “We'll plant tomatoes over there, along that fence,” he says, pointing. “And lettuce near that tree, and—”

Charlotte doesn't hear the rest of his sentence. It doesn't matter; he is talking to the children anyway. She wanders over to the edge of the yard, looking for flowers. Henry's voice drifts towards her.
A bit of water is all the lawn needs.
He sounds ridiculous now; the grass looks like the mangy pelt of a dog, scratched and balding. Two ailing parsley plants on their way to seed and an overgrown, woody clump of rosemary are the only remaining vegetation. He'll see to it, he tells her, coming up behind and placing a hand on her shoulder.

Their shadows merge on the ground. “How will the light fall?” Henry wonders aloud. “Where will there be most shade?” These are the things he must find out. Charlotte can tell that he wants to keep her spirits up, to get her thinking about everything that can be done. True, it doesn't look like the picture he was sent, but they'll fix it. “There's nothing that can't be changed,” Henry says. Charlotte is quiet. A breeze eddies in, carrying the smell of the sea and rustling the tall weeds. Silver gulls come on the back of it, their mewing calls first, then their darting shadows against the bright sky. They pass quickly over the iron roof, then rise up, coast above the high tips of the pines, and head back to water. Charlotte goes inside.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness, her focus swinging in and out as the walls and floor float into position. She's standing in the living room. There's the dark wooden floor, a high white ceiling with pressed metal flowers, then the hall,
shadowy, running through to the back of the house, past the bedrooms, and into the sun-filled kitchen. A gust of wind rattles the windows and comes up through the gaps in the floorboards. Thin air moves through the hall, lifting Charlotte's dress. She puts her hands against her thighs, pushing the fabric down. The house is hot; above her the roof creaks and pops in the sun. Except for the kitchen, the rooms are dark and stuffy, the air sharp with the stink of animal urine—mouse and cat. She moves through the house, opening the curtains. The first bedroom, the second, a haze of dust specks floating up on the bright shaft of white window light. She returns to the kitchen and looks out. Henry is there, in the backyard, swinging Lucie in wide circles. He holds her hands, lifts his elbows, and turns round and round very fast, Lucie's feet coming off the ground as she swings out, loose, her face thrown up towards the sky, her hair fanning, eyes closed. Henry turns once, twice, three times, Lucie laughing and squealing, then stumbling, giddy, over the brown grass.

Charlotte leans against the sink and closes her eyes. She listens to the sound of them. Her children's voices. So small and high. They are giggling, yelping. Their voices lift up and vanish into the trees. Charlotte feels a sharp tenderness, instant happiness at their happiness. Gratitude that Henry can make them so. She opens her eyes and he is there: being silly, pulling his jaw down in a funny monster face and stomping after the children, who wobble, trip, and crawl across the yard. Drool. Red faces. Screeching. She laughs and the sound bounces off the closed window. She heaves it open, the frames stuck together slightly with glossy paint. She must trust him, she thinks, she must believe what he says. The garden air smells good: sweet, warm, thick with pollen. Henry hears the rattle of the window and turns round, smiling and waving, pausing in the game a moment. His big smile. Then
he hunches his shoulders, lifts his hands into claws, and chases after the children once more.