“Excellent! I’m on leave myself for a while so I can meet you in Darwin. It looks like being one hell of an adventure!” Alexander concludes with a burst of enthusiasm, offering no explanation of what she would be on leave from.
They finish the meal and Jed checks his watch as he picks up the bill. “Music will have started at Grape, a few doors up. Want to check it out for a while?”
She places her hand on his and slips the bill from his fingers. The warmth of her fingers leaves a tingling sensation on the back of his hand. “Thank you for a lovely dinner and the flowers, but the last time I checked you are working for me and this is a business expense. I would also like not to be patronised again. I am not a helpless woman or the enemy but an equal!”
He holds her eyes to front the challenge and nods his permission for her to deal with the bill. He recognises that beneath the feminine exterior there is strength and independence he has never experienced before. A month spent with her is certainly going to be interesting.
They leave their bags and the flowers in the Jeep and walk into Grape, packed with the Friday night crowd. Between the walls lined with wine racks are heads leaning close together, laughter, yelled conversations, couples moving in their individual ways to the music, customers and bar attendants squeezing their way between the drinkers, talkers and dancers, all under the lubrication of good wines and the stimulating beat of the music.
“Would you like a dance?” he asks, in an impulsive act of daring.
“I could consider it,” she replies carefully.
“Let’s take pot luck on the next one—if you don’t like it we can get a drink,” Jed replies.
At the first notes of the music he takes her into his arms. For the first few seconds she is stiff and resists his efforts to sway to the music.
Damn
, Jed thinks.
It’s going to be a long track!
He feels the eyes of people on them and is about to call on nature for an excuse to end the agony. Suddenly she relaxes and matches his movements with a grace he considered impossible a few seconds before.
“I know this one but have never danced to it.” His mouth next to her ear, they move with increasing sensuality to the music.
“Baker Street!” is all she says. The space is tight and people keep trying to walk through the dancers. He deftly avoids five in a row to keep the rhythm flowing. She moves in total synchronicity and as the saxophone kicks in she closes her eyes and leans back with a sigh of absolute pleasure.
“God, I love the sax! It’s such a sensual sound.”
They fit their bodies to the rhythm, his hand at the small of her back, her hips touching his, moving in unison. The room disappears.
When the music stops she shakes her head as if coming back from a trance. “I’d like a drink,” she tells Jed. “A light refreshing wine, please!”
They find a corner and Jed heads to the bar. A Frogmore Riesling might go down well. He checks his selection with a bar attendant, orders the wine and heads back to the little table in the corner. She isn’t there. Glancing left and right, he notices that everyone in the vicinity is looking toward the dance floor. He turns and sees her, dancing by herself to something he cannot quite place.
She is a vision, with her eyes closed and head back, her feet, legs, hips, shoulders and arms rhythmically tuned to the music. He finally recognises the raspy song as Santana’s
Into the Night
, its lyrics about the angel and the devil. A fitting description of Alexander’s seemingly complex personality.
And he asked this woman to dance! With her sensual wonder of movement! Still holding the wines he watches mesmerised, like every man and woman focussed on her. One man is staring intensely, his gaze boring straight into Alexander with an expression of hunger and something darker that makes Jed briefly uncomfortable. Alexander’s feet are tapping a rapid salsa staccato, her legs and hips swaying in a pulsating rhythm. Her arms arch in an emotive capture of the tension in the song and her hands communicate the passion and conflict embodied in the music. The music ends with Alexander against the glass wall by the door, the muscles of her shapely legs clearly defined, head arched back and her fingers running through her hair. She opens her eyes, gives her hair a flick and walks over to him with a smile. She accepts one of the wines.
“Sorry, I love Santana, can never resist it!” She takes a sip of the Riesling. “Hmmm, that’s absolutely lovely!”
“Bloody hell!” is all he can say.
“What’s wrong? Have I done something to upset you?”
“Not a thing Alexander! I’m just thinking that I asked
you
to dance… and you can dance like that!”
After an hour of music and dancing, Alexander suggests it is time to leave. “I think we’ve caused enough mayhem here. You can walk me back if you like.”
“Very happy to, Alexander! Where are we going?”
“Not far, just over to the Grand Chancellor.”
It has the potential to be a romantic stroll; bustling crowds beside Salamanca’s sandstone buildings and along the waterfront past the fishing boats in Constitution Dock. But there is no romance, just a hovering tension between them, like the build-up to a thunderstorm after a hot and humid summer day. They walk side by side into the Grand Chancellor and take the lift up almost to the top floor. She lets him into the room and offers a drink that he declines.
He is nervous and unsure where this might end up, wary after his last involvement with a woman. He knows it has damaged him and he should let it go, but still finds it far too hard to trust.
But is she ever one bloody hot woman!
“I’m going to bed,” she announces and disappears into another room, while Jed flounders at the turn of events. Before he can sort himself out she emerges in a black silk nightdress.
As she walks across to the bed, he runs his eyes down from the blonde hair, her red textured lips, a hint of beautifully-shaped breasts, a tight, flat stomach framed by curving hips, shapely strong legs and a glimpse of her damaged right foot as she slips under the covers into the king size double bed.
Moving over to the bed, Jed sits tentatively on the edge, gazing down to the curve of her neck, catching the lingering aroma of her perfume. He is completely out of his depth. He considers leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek but misses the opportunity as she snuggles down into the pillow, pulling the doona around her, announcing, “I’ve had a wonderful evening. Thank you. It’s time you left.”
Jed breathes an inner sigh of relief. The decision has been taken from him, but he runs his eye along the hidden curves of her body under the doona.
“Goodnight Alexander,” he whispers as he moves toward the door. As he closes it behind him the husky, “Goodnight,” in return is cut off by the click of the door. Jed sits in the Jeep for a while before he heads home, feeling uncertainty gnawing inside him as his previously stable life trembles on its foundations.
As he pulls into the driveway he catches a flash of light from the living room windows, like a flickering TV, but the TV isn’t on. He unlocks the front door, slips off his boots and slides silently into the living room, checking left and right as he puts his hand on the Spanish rapier hanging on the wall. While its twin on the other wall still has a protective cap on the tip of the blade, this one is sharpened to a point. He once discussed close combat with his father, who spent time in the Arctic during World War II. His father’s advice had been simple, “Keep your opponent at bay and leave that hand-to-hand stuff for the movies. The best weapon I used was a sharpened spade!”
Jed had never asked for an elaboration, but remembers the advice.
Previous experience confirmed that when combat becomes personal, it is best to keep an opponent at arms length unless absolutely unavoidable. In the movies, opponents come one at a time but real life is very different! Jed holds the rapier low against his leg as he scans the room and methodically checks the adjoining rooms. As he steps out of the ensuite, he hears the back door open and senses a dark shape slide around the corner. Chasing the figure, Jed sees him stumble down the concrete steps at the side of house. He stops at the top of the steps, moonlight and the street lamp reflecting off the rapier held ready to defend. The figure stands up, staggers backward and turns to disappear into the street. A glimpse of the face in the light of the moon and reflected glow of the streetlamp reveals a brief flash of familiarity he can’t quite place.
Back in the house, the atmosphere has changed. His comfortable home feels violated. He detests low-life burglars and the disruption their presence causes. He secures the doors and turns on the lights to check the rooms. Nothing taken! Rent money from one of his flats is still on the table, ready to bank, and an antique revolver is still in its display case. Perhaps he interrupted the intruder soon after entry. The study has been disturbed and on the living room floor his planning for locating the plane is scattered as if it has been searched or tramped through.
When he tidies things up the only thing he can’t find is the map on which he has marked possible tracks from the Philippines to Darwin.
What a useless thing to pinch! If it has been pinched?
Perhaps he has put it somewhere but can’t think where. Is he having a senior moment? Unsettled by a surprise intruder? Or has he simply forgotten? He goes through the pile of material again and finds that one photograph of the plane also seems to be missing. Very strange. He sits up late with a good port to calm his emotions before an unsettled night’s sleep.
Darwin is an exotic city at any time, but is at its best outside the wet season. Since it was destroyed by Cyclone Tracey, it has been rebuilt into a modern city reflecting a mix of nationalities from all over the world. Auckland has a similar feel but is a big city. In comparison, Darwin is small but exciting, a melting pot of cultures.
Their flights arrive in the early evening and they catch up for a drink before returning to separate rooms for some well-earned sleep. The day is going to be busy. He knocks on her door at what he considers a fairly reasonable seven thirty am. It is opened by a dishevelled blonde in a blue dressing gown and bare feet, greeting him with a tone matching the sharpness of his rapier.
“Give me at least half an hour and don’t even consider talking to me until I’ve had two mugs of coffee!” The door is shut firmly in his face.
He raises an eyebrow in contemplation.
Maybe it is a bit early,
he decides with a smile as he ponders the brief moment of intimacy and realises how attractive she is even without make-up and hair askew. Catching a quick glimpse of a scar normally hidden by make-up running down the right side of her nose, Jed wonders briefly what happened to cause it as he turns and goes to find a paper to kill some time.
Alexander, now immaculately made-up, meets him on time dressed in jeans, sneakers and an open-necked blouse. They settle on a Mitchell Street café with a sidewalk table in the morning sun, a full cooked breakfast of poached eggs on toast, tomatoes, mushrooms and salad followed by good coffee and a read of the papers.
Jed particularly enjoys the papers. The last mistake he married would have regarded reading the papers over breakfast as being disconnected and given him a hard time. Instead, he can now enjoy breakfast in good company. The sky is a cloudless bright blue and the temperature comfortable, a good time of year in Northern Australia.
While they wait for breakfast, Jed lets his imagination take one of its random journeys. “The Darwin of Karl’s time would have been a lot different to this!” he suggests thoughtfully as they watch the city coming to life.
“In what way?” Alexander asks with genuine interest, fired by the second coffee. She recognises the randomness of a restless mind similar to her own and identifies with it.
“In 1942, Darwin was a gathering ground of drifters, dead beats and men who wanted to leave their past life behind. There were also the buffalo shooters from ‘down south’, overland mailmen and linesmen from ‘down country’ and jackeroos from the ‘nor-west’. On top of that lot, throw in the fettlers who kept the railway open to Birdum, the gold miners of Tennant Creek, cattlemen from the station runs, the squaddies from the garrison and the pompous civil servants of the administration, whose ‘stiff necks’ would have loosened up the longer they spent up here.”
“You paint quite a contrast from this,” Alexander comments as her eyes roam the street.
“Pre-war Darwin was known as the ‘Suez of the South’ where a melting pot of nationalities met—Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Italians, Russians… you name it! They were travellers, gamblers, revellers, labourers, drug runners, pearl divers, tradesmen and clerks. The place was a tapestry of colour, drama and romance virtually unknown to the Australia down south and held in awe by those who had heard of the place. It was a complex jigsaw of love, hate, vice, greed, labour, industry and opportunity forever blasted off the map by the Japanese bombing and then erased again by Cyclone Tracey. The end result is what you see now!” he finishes as enthusiasm carries him away.
“You paint a fascinating picture!” Alexander offers again. She has been able to imagine flashes of the atmosphere he described. “You talk as though you would have liked to experience it,” she suggests with empathy.
“It would certainly make a change from the politics of education!” he replies wistfully, hinting at regret at being born in the wrong era. Jed welcomes the arrival of breakfast, cutting short any opportunity to pursue that line of discussion. He prefers his inner feelings well hidden under a layer of professionalism or what some mistake as aloofness. Instead, they settle into a hearty breakfast with healthy appetites and the distraction of the newspapers.
“Much in the local?” Alexander eventually asks between mouthfuls.
“Another crocodile story,” Jed says, scanning page three of the Northern Territory News. “Every time I’m here there’s some story involving crocodiles. If they couldn’t run crocodile stories I reckon the local papers would be up the proverbial creek in a lead-lined, mesh-bottomed canoe!”
“Probably keeps the tourists excited!” she replies as she scans her part of the paper. “Property prices are holding up well here.”
Evidence of an astute financial mind Jed notes. “Mining and defence keeps the demand up I guess. We need to be at the airport before ten to give time for a briefing.”
“What’s happening again?”
“Although the aircraft I lined up is a private one, it’s hired out by Darwin Air. For pilots they don’t know, they need to do a check flight to make sure the pilot is competent and has a current licence. We’ll do a short flight and some basic manoeuvres so they can sign me off as safe.”
“That sounds like fun. I’m coming with you. There’s no way I’m sitting around waiting.”
“Yeah, you’re coming. If I left you on your own you’d be surrounded by men by the time I got back or picked up and flown to some exotic location!”
“I’m sure I could cope!” she responds cheekily, looking up under her wayward fringe.
Jed feels a tingling sensation wash through him as he takes in the look. He gives no hint of his feelings. The wall around those feelings must stay intact.
Jed pays the bill and Alexander drives to the airport, handling the manual Landcruiser with an easy grace that belies its size. The airport is a combined domestic, international and air force facility. Darwin Air is easy to find in the general aviation section of the airport. She parks the big vehicle competently and they walk over to the office area.