A Bird on My Shoulder Page 5

  In between courses I talked to Edward, already at fourteen so thoughtful and measured.

  ‘I don’t think Dad should get married again,’ he said casually and without rancour.

  I was caught off guard. Why was he was saying such a thing to me? As far as I was concerned, there was an element of courtship to our encounters but so far nothing of any substance had actually happened.

  ‘Well, I don’t think one-night stands are much fun,’ I said in what I hoped was an equally nonchalant way.

  During dinner I asked to use the bathroom. The main one was already occupied so Julian suggested that I go to his instead. We stood by the door talking and then, quite out of the blue, he squeezed my arm affectionately then let his hand casually linger.

  ‘Better get back to the party,’ he said, smiling apologetically.

  Walking in I immediately felt an unexpected sense of intimacy: the cracked porcelain pot, the packet of cotton wool balls, a dusty box of unopened aftershave. Here was a glimpse of the private Julian, a more real and ordinary man than the one I had witnessed so far. Through my slightly wine-muddled haze, I could hear music from the other room and the scrape of chairs as Nancy began to cajole everyone into dancing.

  Leaving the bathroom, I had to pass through Julian’s walk-through wardrobe. I stopped to look at the rows of pressed shirts and trousers hanging in the semi-gloom. Without thinking or even knowing why, I found myself gathering an armful of Julian’s shirts and pulling them close to my face, inhaling a faint tang of his unmistakable scent.

  I stood there, drinking in the moment. And as I did, a small clear voice spoke to me: You are going to marry this man.

  •••

  After my father had gone to bed that night, I stayed up, reading the many letters I had kept from my mother, neatly written in her long, elegant hand on pale blue airmail paper.

  My mother, Eileen, who had married in her early twenties after training as a nurse, performed with great skill the expected domestic duties of her time. Observing her through the adoring gaze of childhood, I was also in awe of all she could do which fell outside the duties of a normal middle-class housewife: she built a rock wall, rode horses, plucked pheasants, hung wallpaper, constructed shelves and made home-made wine out of potatoes (she labelled the vintage Pot Chab).

  My father’s demands and what appeared to be her escape into busyness often made her seem remote. I sometimes missed the opportunity to talk with her now that I lived so far away, and instead we relied on letters and infrequent, expensive phone calls.

  My mother and I expressed ourselves more honestly in our letters; she would allow herself to confess how much she missed me and I sensed she found it difficult to understand the life I was pursuing. Ultimately she wanted me to return to England, to see me settled into a more conventional life in which she could play a greater part.

  You ask what to look for when considering marriage, one letter began.

  Lucy darling, when you find the right person, you will know. However, here goes. He should be: someone who loves you – warts and all. Someone you love and want to be with, someone who cares for you – your feelings, your point of view, your ambitions, your failings and vice versa, someone who you are never ashamed of or who causes you embarrassment, and someone who is kind and considerate of others, someone with whom to have children and to whom a family is important and worth striving for. And perhaps, above all, someone who makes you laugh. When you have found this paragon of virtue let me know and I’ll be right over.

  •••

  Could this be Julian? While a part of me still felt strangely elated by the evening’s unexpected revelation, another voice began to remonstrate that I was simply lonely and getting broody, that Julian was still grieving and that at any moment he would come to his senses. While we were affectionate with each other, so far there had been no outright declaration of anything more serious from either of us.

  And what about Julian’s children? How would we all get on? Such relationships, I knew, were notoriously difficult for everyone involved. I wondered whether I had the fortitude or maturity to navigate such demanding waters.

  In the late-night hours, however, my anxiety demanded action. I crept down to the office. After several attempts, I settled on the following:

  Dear Julian,

  I’m not quite sure if this is a good idea. If you’re not serious about embarking on another relationship, I’d like to know.

  Lucy

  •••

  I hurriedly fed the letter into the fax machine and dialled Julian’s office number.

  •••

  When the sun came up, I went downstairs to see if he had replied to my somewhat melodramatic message. Nothing.

  I heard a slight shuffle on the pathway and Geri appeared at the window. ‘Morning!’ he sang out with a tired smile.

  Geri and his extended family had looked after the AAP house for many years. It was hard to see how life in Port Moresby in a tiny house at the end of a suburban garden could be better than the pristine coastal village he came from. But like many Papua New Guineans, he was passionate about education and did not want to lose the highly prized school fees the company paid for his children.

  Geri was a modest man, a kindly soul who loved to chat. I opened the door and we stood in the quiet heat of the early morning under the shade of an enormous twining tree.

  ‘Mi les long ol wantok bilong mi. I’m sick of my relatives,’ he told me as we stood in the doorway. ‘Yu mas rausim tupela bois, ol i givim trabel long mi. Tok strong long ol. You must get rid of the two boys, they’re giving me trouble. Speak firmly to them.’ Two young teenage boys had arrived about three months before, the children of his village-based brother. I could see that Geri, who was earning a reasonable wage, was struggling under the pressure of tribal expectations to care for his extended family.

  I heard the fax machine whirring into life and made my excuses. I hoped it was not one of the many press releases I received every day: updates on the crisis in Bougainville, press conferences on the economy, accusations of government incompetence.

  The thermal paper slowly inched out.

  Let’s talk tonight. I adore you. J

  FOR JULIAN

  Let our love flow like a river,

  Winding gold throughout our dreams.

  Let our love roar and sing like the ocean

  And our blue eyes shed saltwater tears.

  Let your hands caress my body

  As the soft vine embraces the tree.

  Come and lie, half awake in my meadows

  And sleep on the bed of my sea.

  8

  Love, that tender feather,

  pierces me and leaves no mark.

  In a dark green desk diary for that year, I keep a treasured photograph of Julian. One weekend we took my father away to see the Huli tribes of Tari. In the background of the picture there is a line of young men wearing handcrafted wigs made from their own hair as part of a traditional initiation ritual. The wigs were shaped like upturned canoes, decorated with shells and everlasting daisies.

  Julian is in the foreground, his long patrician nose shining with light sweat, his blue eyes squinting under the noon sun. It is the only photograph I have of him where he is not wearing glasses. Without them he looks softer somehow, more vulnerable. But what really stands out for me, behind his shy expression, is the innate and immoveable stoicism that not even the most trying experiences would alter.

  •••

  It was not long before Julian and I began to talk about a future together. This was not just giddy love on my part; clearly Julian felt exactly the same way as I did. It was as though I was already a part of him and he a part of me.

  One night I went out with him alone, leaving my father happily ensconced at home with a good book. Later, I rang to let him know I would not be coming back.

  ‘I see,’ he said wryly. ‘Developments are afoot.’

  •••

  My father had
observed the blossoming of our relationship with kind, uncritical eyes. He may have had misgivings about the age difference between us, but if so he did not express them and was delighted when, towards the end of his visit (which had stretched into several weeks), Julian formally asked him, with some irony, for my hand in marriage over a long lunch to which I was deliberately not invited.

  After arriving home in the UK my father penned a rare letter.

  I’m glad you and Julian are growing closer together – I have a strong affection for him. Possibly because I see in him the brother that I would have liked to have had.

  I cannot imagine a more exhilarating, exciting, entertaining, or interesting seven weeks in my life. Without everyone I met in PNG, there would have been no sublime experience. Thank you so much, both of you, for everything you did.

  He could not resist a parting shot, however:

  PS Julian, I think Lucy is faking her orgasms.

  A few weeks later I fell quite ill. I was constantly nauseous and could barely touch any food; even the smell of alcohol made me vomit. My body felt like porcelain as I moved around the house, aching, vague and preoccupied.

  When I saw the doctor, I regaled her with a list of symptoms: constant nausea, unexplained tiredness, light-headedness.

  ‘Your last period?’ she asked.

  I couldn’t remember. They were irregular at best.

  ‘Is it possible you are pregnant?’

  I stared at her.

  ‘I can do a test now, if you like,’ she said briskly.

  A few moments later she came back into the room.

  ‘It’s all very straightforward,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. The test is positive.’

  •••

  I left the surgery feeling dazed.

  Although Julian and I were now almost inseparable, I wondered how he would react. We had discussed having children, but I think we both imagined this would happen later rather than sooner. I rang his office and asked him to meet me for lunch in a downtown café.

  I sat near an open window, ordered a soft drink and kept breathing deeply. Out in the port I could see large container ships, rusting and ugly, against a hopeful sky. A sickly smell of copra drifted through the air.

  Julian arrived and apologised for being late. He had barely sat down before I blurted out my news. He took my hand and kissed it.

  ‘That’s marvellous, darling,’ he said. ‘Well, we should get married as soon as we can. I’ll organise everything.’

  •••

  Looking back, it still amazes me how quickly my life changed in a matter of weeks, how I had gone from staunch independence to a deep level of connection and commitment in such a short space of time. This transition took place without any hesitation.

  Before the wedding, Julian decided we should fly to Korea so that I could meet his second son, Charlie, who was studying at university in Seoul. I had met his other boys, Oliver, Henry and Edward, when they had come home on holidays. We had managed to negotiate these initial meetings without too much difficulty; in my own mind, I was simply someone their father knew. However, with a baby on the way, whatever Julian’s sons thought of the situation before, it would have been very confronting for them to realise that I would now be a permanent part of their lives. At the time, I was quite naïve. I had no real idea of how they felt, nor any real ability to empathise; their situation was completely outside my experience. I was caught up in the bubble of being in love, and had little insight into the enormity of what was happening for them.

  Surprisingly, I found being a stepmother in waiting slightly nerve-racking. I really wanted to be accepted by Julian’s sons and I could see it was not going to be easy. My presence created a minefield of bruised feelings – there was no point in pretending it was otherwise – and I felt powerless to change it. For the most part, we all got on very well and I liked the boys a great deal. However, I was excruciatingly aware, at times, of the undercurrents between us, of what was not being said. Naively, I just wanted to be myself, not occupy some awful maligned stereotype. But the relationship between children and their step-parents is one that has everything stacked against it from the start. I often found myself feeling self-conscious and slightly intimidated by the power of these confident, strong-willed young men.

  Julian was more philosophical. While he was not immune to the deeper emotional layers at work, he managed to stay above the fray and, like the sailor he had been since his youth, resolutely maintained an attitude of quiet understanding and a determined focus on the far horizon.

  •••

  I was happy to go to South Korea to visit Charlie, but my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the fact that I was constantly nauseous and tired and hardly in the mood for travel. I shuffled off the plane, creased and bloated. At the end of a long sloping gangway, hundreds of people milled around quietly.

  ‘Dad!’ A dark-haired young man pushed through the crowds to embrace Julian. Unexpectedly, an enormous bunch of flowers was thrust into my arms.

  ‘You must be Lucy,’ said Charlie, looking at me with a warm smile. ‘It’s really great to meet you.’

  •••

  During our time in Korea we took a trip to Seoraksan National Park, about a four-hour bus ride from Seoul. One night we went for dinner at a hotel which boasted several karaoke bars. After a few drinks Julian suggested that we should all get up and sing. Charlie and I laughed.

  ‘But you can’t sing,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he replied.

  I thought he was joking. For a start, Julian was deeply reserved – singing in public was the last thing I’d imagine he would ever want to do. He walked over and collected two books of lyrics from across the room.

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing this.’

  Julian sat idly flipping through the song sheets.

  ‘Ah, yes. This is the one,’ he said. He walked over to the stage and a group of men started clapping. Oh no, I thought, surely this isn’t happening.

  Julian nodded to the operator and the opening bars of the unrepentant ‘My Way’ began to float across the room.

  In that moment, I was in absolute awe of his ability to put fear aside and launch into the moment. Julian genuinely did not care that he couldn’t sing or that people were watching; he was having the time of his life.

  •••

  My mother flew over from England the week before the wedding to ‘give me away’. Having never met Julian I can only imagine the trepidation with which she anticipated meeting her prospective son-in-law, who was only slightly younger than she was. Like my father, she was gracious, but I could tell this was not an easy situation for her.

  One day she had gone out shopping with one of the young men from the AAP house, John. Although she was relatively young, still in her late fifties, I was concerned that some young street boys or raskol might take advantage of her.

  My fears were well founded. They soon returned home, John brimming with the story of how a young man had grabbed my mother’s small purse as they left a shop. My mother could be quite an anxious person in many ways but in a crisis she was amazing; clear, level-headed and in no doubt about what needed to be done.

  ‘I let the bag go because I didn’t want to lose my finger,’ she said very matter-of-factly with no trace of trauma. ‘John went with the police to track the lad down but they couldn’t find him. When he came back from chasing the chap, he said to me: “I find him, I kill him, I fuck him.’’’

  My mother’s instinct for understatement, a very English trait, came to the fore.

  ‘I said to him, “I don’t think you want to do that, dear.”’

  •••

  The wedding day was memorable but perhaps not for all the reasons I’d anticipated. Unbeknown to me, I had contracted malaria, and I spent the entire day before the late-afternoon ceremony drifting in and out of sleep, wondering if my blinding headache was a sign that I was having second thoughts.

  That morning, ML had organised
a raiding party to steal branches of bougainvillea from various hotspots around the city with my mother and another friend from Australia, Steph Clark. When I arrived at the cathedral in the late afternoon, dosed up on paracetamol in order to loosen the large vice of pain squeezing my forehead, I walked into the service through a glorious arch of vivid, tropical flowers. Even in my happy daze I could see it was hard on Edward and Henry. They were polite and friendly, but this was a very uncomfortable, painful and confronting occasion for them.

  Our vows seemed imbued with the age-old spirit of the tribal cultures that we lived among. ‘With my body I honour you. I share with you all that I have. Where you go I will go. Where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people.’

  ‘I take you as my husband to have you and to hold you from now on; for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To love you and take care of you until death separates us.’

  At the time, I did not realise that this was not just a promise I was making to Julian – it was a much deeper declaration about the kind of woman I wanted to become. I had no idea, of course, how hard these promises would be to live up to, or how much I would come to rely on them in later days, when so much of our marriage dissolved into darkness.

  •••

  In my mind I trace back over those early, heady days, searching for missed clues. Were there any signs, even then, that Julian’s health might be compromised in some way?

  I certainly thought he drank a lot, but it was no more than many did. It was just a normal part of being an expatriate and living in constant oppressive heat. At least, I reasoned, he did a lot of exercise. I knew his mother had died of cancer but I dismissed that as not being a particular cause for alarm – rather, I had focused on his father, who reached nearly ninety before his death in the accident.