DEPARTURES

by
Rosalind Wyllie

Last night I punched Andrew, ran away from Alice and had sex with a stranger. Somewhere between the first bottle of beer and the last swig of whiskey I checked into a back packers’ hostel, smoked dope, drank in a bar in down town Sydney and danced at a nightclub. Later I had sex on the bottom bunk like a guilty adolescent. More surprisingly, I had sex on the bottom bunk with a woman. Forget longitude and latitude, last night I crossed so many lines that my head is a jumbled circuit. I have to get everything into some kind of order because I’m not going to be able to get out of this bed without removing the arms of a very sleepy Australian girl.

There has to be a start to a story, and there are too many places to begin, I can’t be bothered to fill you in on my family and my childhood, so let’s just say that I was brought up by wolves, which is close enough to the truth. There’s room for debate on whether wolves would have done a better job, presumably they would have met my basic needs for food and warmth, which would have been one up on the comfort I got from my parents. I digress: summary, my parents didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. There’s that old adage about how you need more qualifications and proof of your abilities to get a job stacking shelves at a supermarket than to bring up a child. A recent survey showed that over 20% of supermarket items are wrongly labelled, past their sell by date or stacked in the wrong place: I rest my case.

I’ll start in the departure lounge at Heathrow airport, one month ago. I’m going to spend the month in Australia visiting my best friend Alice. Alice and I go back over ten years, through the whole university, boys, sharing joints and flats together thing. We were inseparable for four years and then she met Tom, who’s Australian. A while back they moved to Sydney with their children Jake and Max. I’ve not seen them for a couple of years but Alice and I keep in contact on email and this trip is something we’ve been planning since the day that she left.

My boyfriend Pete has come to see me off. We’ve been seeing each other for a while, but he’s not ‘the one’. We get on fine as long as we stay clear of about a dozen subjects which include; football, politics, my parents, drinking, work, friends, DIY, money and cleanliness. Mainly we just get drunk and have crap sex, and I don’t know why we’re still together. We split up nearly every Sunday but then we make up by Friday when one of us ends up drunk and calling.

We’re at the airport waiting for the departure gate to open. He’s chewing gum loudly, the saliva smacking against the side of his mouth. I just want to be on the other side of the gate so I can have a coffee and a cigarette. Pete doesn’t smoke, and I do, so smoking is another one of the topics that Pete and I don’t discuss.

The gate finally opens, he kisses me, and we don’t know what to say to each other. So I run through the gate yelling that I’ll send him a post card, which I probably won’t. I don’t know whether we’ll still be together when I get back. It boils down to whether one of us meets someone else. I am still hopeful that I may meet a perfect Australian, fall madly in love and never return to England. I’ve got four weeks to find him, and then I can emigrate and live a little nearer Alice.

The journey is all crush and bore, somehow twenty-three hours doesn’t sound as bad as it feels. I made the mistake of speaking to the woman next to me when the plane took off, for the first few hours I learnt everything about her three grandchildren living in Sydney, her daughters’ house, the dogs; believe me I saw the photos. Then she got onto her ex-husband, they split up five years ago and she started by telling me how much she’d moved on, how much better her life is without him, then came the whole drama of: the marriage, the adultery, the lies, the impact on the children, his anger, her nervous breakdown, the solicitors fees, the time she caught him using their joint credit card to buy Viagra over the internet and the whole low down of the subsequent relationship she had started with a local GP whilst attending holistic yogic meetings.

She spilled out all the contents of her private life to a stranger, then she had to sit with me for the next twenty hours. I knew she wanted me to reciprocate, to pass the time by recounting my childhood disappointments and adult betrayals, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have the stomach for it. I didn’t know what I could do to make her feel better, so I pulled the travel blanket over my head and pretended to sleep.

There’s something almost cinematically depressing about hostels, like walking into a movie about drunks, battered wives and refugees. They’ve taken time on the detail: the grey walls, the dirt, the insects, the outside ‘dunny’, with a half swing door on it. Toileting is effectively a spectator sport. Then there’s the ground floor kitchen, when we came in at 3am the whole place was crawling in insects, the cupboards, the fridge door handle, the cooker, the sink were all shifting with flies, cockroaches and god knows what else, even Pete would have found the experience beyond his low standards of hygiene.

My bed is in a communal room somewhere upstairs; there is no such thing as a single room in this hostel. I’m in Gemma’s bunk in the smaller room on the downstairs corridor. Gemma is sharing with just one other girl who’s from Latvia and speaks almost no English. Latvia is working somewhere that requires her to go out each night dressed in stockings and a short skirt and sleep through most of the day. I know that Latvia comes home in the early hours because she stripped off and climbed up the ladder to the top bunk at the same time as Gemma had her head between my thighs. Latvia gave me a wink before she climbed up, I didn’t do anything, I was completely at a loss on how to respond, and I don’t think Gemma even noticed.

I lasted nearly three weeks with Alice, Tom and their version of a family: I should get an award for that. Families have never been my strong point, I know there’s supposed to be a halo that hangs over the idea of shared blood, but it was never like that for me, like I said, wolves. The pack I grew up in was more about grabbing what you could, ducking punches and practising invisibility.

Tom and Alice live in a large house in the Sydney suburbs with their two children. Jake and Max were sweet little toddlers the last time I saw them, now they are five, and far from sweet. They live for the opportunity to kill each other, even when they are playing quietly it’s just a cover for their long term plans to commit fratricide. Alice, I discovered, spends her days shouting at them, repeating the words ‘No’, ‘Don’t do that to your brother’ and ‘Boys, please be nice.’ None of which make the slightest bit of difference.

All of which would have been almost bearable, almost recoverable from, after all they go to school and are in bed for seven thirty. The evenings should have been clear for us adults to drink, smoke, and reminisce; except that Tom and Alice, who were a loving, funny and enjoyable couple the last time I saw them, now seem to live for the opportunity to kill each other, an unhappy symmetry. Alice has this theory that families who eat dinner together are more likely to stay together. She says that there are statistics to prove it. So every evening she waits for Tom to come home from work before they sit down to eat a formal meal.

The family meal goes something like this:

Jake and Max stick knives and forks into each other, try and flick food, make vomiting faces at each other and kick each other under the table. Tom eats in silence.

Half way through the starter Alice says, ‘How’s your food, Tom?’

Tom says, ‘Fine, lovely, thanks.’

‘It’s just I’ve spent hours making this, so it would be polite to comment.’

‘I have commented, I said it was lovely.’

‘Only because I asked you.’

‘I was going to say something.’

‘Course you were.’

‘I was, and anyway, why do we have to have a three course meal every evening?’

‘So, now you don’t like my cooking?’

‘No. I think you’re a great cook, but sometimes a cheese sandwich would do just as well.’

‘I give you salmon and asparagus and you want a bloody cheese sandwich?’

‘I didn’t say that, I just said that sometimes a fucking cheese sandwich would do just as well.’

‘Don’t swear in front of the children.’

‘Sorry.’

Jake and Max start to giggle, Tom tries to return to his food, but Alice grabs his plate and takes his half eaten meal through to the kitchen. I stare at my hands while Alice loudly scrapes the remains on the plate into the bin.

‘You happy now?’ she yells through at Tom from the kitchen.

‘Fuck this.’ Tom gets up from the table and marches out of the room.

Jake pours salad dressing over Max’s head. Max starts crying.

Alice bursts into tears.

Max screams and Jake starts singing ‘You’re retardedly retarded, you’re retardedly retarded,’ over and over.

Alice comes back into the room, still crying, looks at me and says, ‘ Why the fuck didn’t you stick up for me?’

So, all in all, evening meals didn’t seem entirely the right way to be keeping a family together, but as Alice pointed out frequently, what the fuck do I know, I don’t have kids.

You’re thinking that’s why I ran away from Alice….it isn’t. I kept hoping it would get better. I tried to spend my evenings watching TV or going for walks around the neighbourhood, plus, Tom keeps a big wine cellar, so the pair of us managed to keep ourselves sedated most evenings.

When we were away from the children and Tom, Alice was almost herself again and that was enough to make me stay. I tried to talk to her about whether she was happy, but she seemed far more interested in talking about Andrew, the Australian neighbour and her new best friend.

I was disappointed that I didn’t like Andrew. She had spoken so glowingly about him in her emails. But I didn’t like his clothes, his voice, his accent, the way he moved, the way that every third sentence was a sexual innuendo. As far as I could see, if it wasn’t for the Australian accent and the tan, he was just like every lecherous middle-aged bloke that Alice and I had spent most of our university years taking the piss out of and avoiding. Whatever Alice saw in him, was lost on me. It was Andrew this and Andrew that from Alice, and whenever he made one of his awful sexist jokes she would giggle and blush. Andrew would squeeze my bum and say, “What’s wrong with you, are you one of those pommy lezzers or something?’ Which of course pissed me off, I didn’t want him to touch me and I hate that whole guy thing, where if you don’t fawn over them then it must be because you’re a lesbian. It’s not only gay women who object to being sexualised by men.

Which sounds more convincing if you don’t have a naked woman wrapped around your body.

I’ve never slept this close to a woman before, well maybe my mother, and even then it’s debatable that she ever let me into her bed. It’s the strangest feeling, she’s absolutely still, no snuffles, no snores, no dribbling and so young that I feel almost maternal towards her. I’ve never had sex with someone so much younger than me. I feel responsible for her, like I should make sure that she’s okay, but mostly I wish that she would just vanish, that last night had never happened.

Which would sound more convincing if I stopped stroking her hair.

Latvia doesn’t sleep so beautifully, every time she twitches or turns there’s a metallic groan from the bed. If Gemma wasn’t sleeping so soundly then I’d be tempted to stick my foot up and shove the top bunk hard, just for the pleasure of waking her. If Gemma wasn’t sleeping then I could have left by now to see whether there is any hot water left in the showers.

So, last night Tom and I are outside smoking, enjoying the warm air, the southern stars and the calm after the chaos of the evening meal. Andrew appears, uninvited, carrying a crate of beer and announcing that it is ‘Party Time’. Alice seems cheered by the idea, so Tom and I reluctantly come inside. Jake and Max are upstairs sleeping and the four of us open a few cans and sit downstairs in the front room drinking. Andrew is already drunk, and his conversation is abundant with references to blowjobs, threesomes and anal sex. Alice is apparently finding this hilarious, neither Tom nor I are laughing. Andrew picks up the remote control of the TV and starts flicking through the cable channels saying, ‘Let’s look for a good porno.’ Alice acts as though this is totally normal behaviour, although I’m remembering conversations we’ve had about how men need pictures in magazines to get off as they have no imaginations, but this new Alice has her hand on Andrew’s knee and is saying, ‘Try and find that Swedish channel - they always have great tits the Swedes.’

Tom picks up a newspaper and starts to read.

I say, ‘Isn’t porn supposed to be for tragic single people.’

Alice says, ‘Well you have to get your kicks where you can, I can hardly remember what sex feels like it’s been such a long time’.

Andrew is laughing and Tom isn’t, but Alice doesn’t care about Andrew anymore, she’s moved over to Tom and pulls the newspaper out of his hands.

‘That’s right isn’t it darling, we do it once a year whether we need to or not.’

Tom gets up and walks out of the room, I follow.

Tom goes directly into his study and closes the door behind him, putting on a CD and turning the sound up loud. I go out into the garden and smoke a cigarette and drink my beer. It’s nearly ten pm, but the weather is still warm and I try to feel peaceful, then a little later I think I hear something in the grass and scare myself into thinking it’s a snake so I come back into the house. I can hear one of the boys crying upstairs, Tom’s study door is still closed. I go to the front room to let Alice know, the door is closed so I knock before I go in. The front room is empty, so I go upstairs to the children’s room. Max is sat upright in bed wailing, when he sees me he goes quiet straight away and says ‘Red Bear,’ pointing to a cuddly toy on the floor. I pick up the bear from the floor and hand it to him, he lies back in his bed holding tight to the bear, puts his thumb in his mouth and is immediately asleep. I could almost convince myself that he is lovable.

I walk into my bedroom and find Alice and Andrew bent over a hand mirror shoving cocaine up their noses.

I say, ‘Max was crying.’

Alice looks at me with blurry eyes and starts giggling. Andrew has his arm around her waist and his hand under her shirt, I ignore him.

‘Max was crying’. I say again.

‘Max is always fucking crying,’ she says.

‘He wanted his mother.’

Alice has white powder mingled with snot around the tip of her nose. I take a tissue from my bedside table and hand it to her.

‘Come on be a sport, it’s just a bit of harmless fun,’ says Andrew.

He tries to put his arm around me and I push him away.

Alice sits on the bed and blows her nose, staring at me like I’m the one in the wrong.

‘What?’ she says.

‘Alice, what are you doing?’

She shrugs. Andrew sits down in the bed next to her and starts stroking her thigh.

‘Alice, tell your mate to stop being such an uptight bitch,’ Andrew says. Just watching his hands on her makes me itch.

‘Get your hands off her and get the fuck out of my room.’ I say this quietly.

He stands up and puts his face close to mine, breathing second hand alcohol onto me, the way my father used to.

‘It’s not your room,’ he says, ‘I’m not going anywhere unless Alice tells me to.’

I look over at Alice; she tilts her head defiantly and stays silent. ‘Fine,’ I say. I take my suitcase out from under my bed and start to pack up my stuff.

‘You know fuck all about any of this, you don’t know what it’s been like for me,’

I continue packing.

‘I’m stuck here, a million miles away from everything with just Tom and the kids, I’ve got nothing for myself, nothing.’

She starts to cry.

‘I hate them all.’

I zip up my case and reach for the handle, but Andrew has his hand there first.

‘Here, let me help you leave.’ His voice is laced with victory. I hear something in me snap. I punch him, hard, right on the nose, the way my mother showed me. He falls back onto the bed next to Alice. I don’t look at him again.

‘They’re your children.’ I say to Alice. ‘You chose to have them, so be a fucking mother.’

I grab my case and carry it down the stairs. Alice doesn’t follow me.

I call a taxi from the phone in the hall then take my suitcase out onto the front porch and wait for the cab to arrive. I don’t say goodbye to Tom, I wouldn’t know what to say. I can hear Alice sobbing upstairs. I light a cigarette with shaking hands and pace up and down on the porch. When the taxi pulls up I garble to the cab driver that I need a cheap, safe place to stay for the night, that anywhere will do. He brought me here.

Gemma was the first person I saw when I arrived at the hostel. She was sat out on the steps at the front smoking a joint and drinking from a plastic cup. She looked at me, no doubt taking in the large suitcase, my red eyes and my age and said, ‘It’s shit in there, full of cockroaches, you won’t like it.’ I ignored her and let a dreadlocked surfer boy show me to the dorm.

I sat on the bed and tried to breathe. Any other day I would have called another taxi and been more specific about the kind of place I wanted to stay, I’m too old for this discomfort, but I didn’t have the energy to make any more decisions, so I went outside for a smoke and Gemma was still there. She moved up along the step a little and offered me her joint.

‘You on the run?’ her accent is Australian, light and friendly.

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, welcome to cockroach hostel.’

‘You travelling?’

‘Something like that,’ she smiles at me.

I hand her back the joint. She passes me a plastic cup and pours me a Whiskey from the bottle next to her.

‘Drink?’

I take the cup and swallow the whole measure.

‘Thanks.’

‘No worries.’

I look into the empty cup, ‘I need to get drunk,’ I say.

‘You want company?’

‘How old are you anyway?’

‘Eighteen, nearly nineteen, why?’

I look at her clear, open, smiling face, and figure that some mindless conversation with a teenager might be just the distraction I need.

‘No reason.’ I say.

‘You got cash?’

‘Well, this place isn’t exactly breaking the bank.’

‘Wait there, I’ll be back in a two tics.’

A few minutes later we’re walking into a bar called Bondi Nites, and Gemma is ordering cocktails. I have no idea what I am drinking, I’m not interested in how, I just need to be drunk. A few hours later we’re in a club and I’m watching Gemma dancing while I drink. At some stage she comes back from the dance floor, takes the drink from my hand, finishes it, then leans forward and tells me she is going to kiss me.

A kiss of treacle and candyfloss. Pete hasn’t kissed me like that for so long, maybe no-one ever kissed me like that. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I let her decide, I let this young woman have all the power she wanted.

Then we were back in the hostel, and Gemma took out the whiskey from her rucksack, and more alcohol seemed the only way forward. We sat on the bottom bunk, swigging from the bottle, then we were kissing again, and the rest is all too confusing.

I cried; the alcohol, the exhaustion, the relief of escaping, and she stroked me and kissed my eyes, then pushed her breasts into my mouth until my tears stopped.

Later when she fell asleep, after Latvia had climbed over us and started her relentless tossing and turning I lay in the dark holding onto her while she slept, hoping she was happy.

Any minute now I’m going to find a way to leave her.

© Rosalind Wyllie
Reproduced with permission

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