The Bit In Between (14 page)

‘Dad, that was ages ago.'

‘It was two years ago,' he said gently.

‘Yes, well,' she conceded, ‘that's different. I just . . . I just feel like maybe it would stop me feeling so restless. Maybe a baby would ground me. Give me a purpose.'

Her father frowned.

‘That's a lot to expect from a kid, love. It's a big responsibility, too. I mean, once you've got them, they're yours forever. You can't give them back. We tried.'

‘Ha ha, Dad.'

Her father's expression softened. ‘Look, sweetheart, you're a grown-up now, so whatever you want to do is the right thing for you. Just don't do anything like that until you feel like you've lived enough of your own life to be ready to share it with something that's going to tie you down and depend on you for the rest of your life.'

Alison bit her lip. ‘Noted.' She didn't comment on her father's earlier approval of Rosie having a baby, nor what this showed he thought of his daughters' differences.

Her father smiled. ‘Good. Anyway, I better go, love. Your mother's calling. I think she needs help blow-drying Gemstone.'

‘Okay. Bye, Dad. I love you.'

‘Love you too, sweetheart.'

‘And don't mention this to Mum.'

‘Wouldn't dream of it,' her father said, and he gave her a nod. She watched as he leant forward looking puzzled.

‘Top right, Dad. The one you pressed before.'

She heard random clicking and then the screen disappeared and he was gone.

For the next few weeks Alison kept herself busy with English lessons at the Lime Lounge. More women dropped by for help with various applications and grants and forms, and she and Sera filled their downtime with gossip and planning for the baby. A group of Sera's university friends came looking for advice on how to go about petitioning the government to get more women into parliament and suddenly Alison found a use for all the advocacy skills she'd developed as a student activist.

As Sera entered her second trimester, Alison took on greater responsibilities. She'd already been doing the paperwork, but now she took on the legwork too, slowly learning how to navigate the various government departments. Eventually she learnt that it was best not to stumble into these confusing bureaucratic mazes in the first place, and started to work out other, simpler ways to get what she wanted, persisting until she had achieved the desired result. The little blue house soon became cluttered with dog-eared documents and bundles of files, and when Oliver went out Alison sometimes held meetings there too. With her work and Sera's pregnancy to distract her, she almost forgot she'd been thinking about a baby of her own.

As Alison worked, Oliver continued to write. He had once assumed that when his first book was published he would suddenly feel secure in himself as a writer. Instead the opposite had happened, and he had convinced himself that he was, in actual fact, not just a terrible writer, but a terrible writer who had fluked it, and this was even worse because now someone would discover he was a fraud and make a scandalous current affairs program about him and he would be scorned by the literary world and have to find a job working as a windscreen washer at a moderately busy intersection because he wasn't qualified for anything else.

The book wasn't going terribly well. He was also plagued by a constant anxious certainty that at some point Alison would leave, that her restlessness would carry her away from him and there was nothing he could do to stop this.

There was solace in Rick and his real-time existence, which made dwelling or foreboding difficult. Rick seemed cloaked in an ability to live in a very short measure of time consisting of here and now, with virtually no regard for what had been or could be. Oliver felt drawn to this, compelled to the possibility of absorption by proxy, but he feared deep down he'd never be a Rick. Sometimes when Oliver thought about his future he felt an irrepressible urge to start screaming and not stop. He had instead developed an unshakable habit of gnawing the nail of his left pointer finger down to the quick. He had been doing this since he was a child.

As a child he'd often been distressed by the fate of minor characters in movies, such as the henchmen dispensed with by Batman or police officers whose cars rolled in high-speed chases. His mother had banned Star Wars from the house after the week-long drama induced by watching the Death Star explode, which had seen Oliver lie awake for countless hours weeping about the dead stormtroopers. Even into adulthood, Oliver continued to look at life through the eyes of the minor characters and realised that essentially the world was just a complex web created by the backstories of several billion intersecting lives. None of which helped him feel any better about himself.

One stifling hot night four months after they'd left Australia, Alison found herself nursing a warm beer in a rundown outdoor bar in the centre of Honiara awaiting Oliver's musical debut. Before he'd left for a last minute rehearsal at Rick's, Oliver had chatted excitedly, filling her in on the latest band news.

‘Ultimately we're going to be playing a range of sounds but right now we're really just kind of focusing on Dire Straits,' he had told her.

‘What instrument will you be playing?'

‘At the moment I'm on percussion,' he said evasively.

She had stared at him and he looked away.

‘Well, mostly tambourine. I'm still working on my greater aural contribution.'

‘Does Dire Straits have a tambourine?' she had asked.

‘They do now.'

Alison had given him a kiss on the forehead. ‘Knock 'em dead, tiger.'

‘You know I will,' Oliver said coolly. ‘Now, can I borrow your blue T-shirt? All mine need washing . . .'

Alison took a swig of beer and waited. She fanned herself futilely against the dense heat and surveyed the venue. It was dark and smoky, with a tin roof covering half the space and the rest of the area open to the elements. An eclectic mix of tables and chairs was scattered about, along with a couple of pool tables and some dartboards. A bar had been built at the back, where a handful of young men sold cans of SolBrew. Every so often there was a cheer from the crowd as someone pulled off a particularly tricky shot on the pool table.

Oliver darted out to see her.

‘Have you got any tape?'

‘What?'

‘Tape.'

‘No, why?'

‘Never mind.'

Alison glanced at the small wood block in his hand. ‘Where's your tambourine?'

‘It didn't go with our sound.'

He would later admit that during their final practice before the gig he had made a particularly high-spirited contribution to the band's version of ‘Money for Nothing' and Rick had afterwards approached him and wordlessly removed the tambourine from his hands, replacing it with the much quieter wood block.

Rick appeared again now, looking impatient.

‘Oliver,' he hissed.

Oliver ran off.

A couple of minutes later they strutted out onto the makeshift stage in the corner. Alison noticed that Rick had a long red mark on his cheek and that the drummer was holding one and a half drumsticks. Rick stepped up to the microphone. He tapped it and it echoed through the speakers.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,' he said in a deep voice.

No one looked up.

‘We are . . .' – he paused and looked at the drummer – 
‘We are the Pacific Clintons' – he tried to suppress a
grimace – ‘and we're here to Rock. Your. World.'

He turned to the band.

‘Ready, boys?'

Junior and Clive sighed and readied their instruments. Oliver nodded and hoisted the wooden block. Boris raised his drumsticks and started hitting them together. One-two-three-four. Rick nodded and set his chin.

‘Let's rock this joint.'

What followed stopped the crowd. At one point Alison glanced around the room: a young man was standing frozen in front of the dartboard, dart raised about to throw, his mouth open in bewilderment. The boys behind the bar had stopped serving drinks and were watching motionless, their faces contorted in confusion. An older man sitting on a beer crate looked like he was weeping. After what felt like an incredibly long set despite being only three songs, Rick grabbed the microphone.

‘We've been the Clinton Waves . . . or whatever . . . Keep it real, Honiara.'

He whipped around. ‘Get off the stage,' he hissed.

Oliver walked straight over to Alison, who held out a beer and gave him a big smile.

‘That was just great –'

Oliver held up his hand. ‘Don't.'

‘No, really, Ollie, that was –'

‘Please.'

They sat sipping their beers. Shortly they were joined by Rick, who drank his own beer wordlessly and then stood up, putting one hand on Oliver's shoulder.

‘Oliver. Dude. I want you to go home and google rhythm. Do that for me, okay, man?'

Oliver nodded.

‘Cool. I'll see you at rehearsal this week. Don't be late, okay, because we need to address this whole Boris thing.' He stroked his red cheek. ‘I will not have this tear this band apart. Don't be late, because you know how Boris gets when confronted and I do not want to face him alone.'

He saluted them both, bought another beer from the bar and left.

Alison turned to Oliver. ‘Would you like another beer?'

He nodded and Alison went off to the bar. As she returned a few minutes later, she saw a young man sit down beside Oliver. From his height and pale skin, Alison could tell he was from Tikopia, a remote island at the very end of the Solomon Islands chain that was a week-long boat trip from Honiara across rough open seas. Unlike most Solomon Islanders, Tikopians were Polynesian, and were famed for their incredible strength. As she sat down, the young man nodded at her, then smiled at Oliver and held out a giant hand. Oliver shook it.

‘Dire Straits,' the young man said. ‘Mark Knopfler.'

Oliver nodded. ‘Yep.'

‘Steady.'

‘Yeah, I suppose.' Oliver looked at the young man. He leant forward. ‘We were terrible, weren't we?'

The young man looked at his hands shyly.

‘You can be honest.'

‘Yes. Terrible. My ears hurt.' He looked at the wood block lying there on the table between them. ‘How can something so small make such a noise?'

Oliver looked sheepish. ‘Sorry.'

‘No wori wori.'

‘Can we buy you a beer to make up for it?'

‘Here, have mine,' Alison said. ‘I'll get another.'

One beer turned into two and soon Oliver and Alison sat engrossed as the young man, whose name was Kenneth, told them stories about his people and their culture. He explained Tikopian ‘kastom' – a word Alison had learnt meant accepted rules and beliefs about what was and wasn't acceptable in society.

Long ago, Kenneth told them, a man from his village had refused to follow kastom, so as punishment the other villagers put him in a canoe, handed him food, water and a paddle, and sent him out to sea. Never allowed to return, he drifted for what seemed like an eternity until he washed up on a new land. This land turned out to be Australia and the man had eventually married an Australian woman and lived there still.