cheap white room over a red pub in an old gold rush town in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t a place she had chosen to be. She was only there because she couldn’t get a bus out till the next day. She was just waiting for her connection . . .
It was outside of backpacker season and the hostel had been virtually empty, a little creepy it was so deserted. Jerry-built too: the door handle to her room felt as if it might come off if she turned it too fast; one tap dripped and the other gave nothing away; the walls seemed thin, insubstantial; a breeze whipped round the window frame as if hinting that anybody who wanted to could get in. The pub next door at least seemed solid and enclosing, even if it was ersatz? a traditionalBritish boozer, dim and high-ceilinged with brassy mirrors and crimson walls and ornate mouldings, in an un-English, flat, dusty, remote no man’s land of a place. But the job of any pub is to allow you to forget that sometime soon you’ll have to leave and go home, and it fulfilled that . . .
She’d played a couple of games of pool. She only knew how because Lucy and Tina had taught her. Her opponent was a girl with bright blonde hair that was dark at the roots and a pack of Gauloises in her back pocket. Nobody had noticed when Natalie left with her; nobody had turned a hair.
The girl’s room smelt of sandalwood, her skin was soft, her ribs, her hipbones, her spine were hard and apparent, there was nothing redundant about her, no baggage. She had a mole on her left breast. It was a fight for something and yet she was accommodating and it was real, and then it was over, it was morning and Natalie was being nudged awake, ‘Didn’t you say you have to get your bus?’ and she was rushing dazed to the flimsy room she hadn’t slept in, half surprised to find her things were still there, gathering them up and running for the stop and the bus was still there, waiting, and she got on and the bus moved off and the town disappeared behind her, and there was no reason why she would ever return.
When she saw Richard six weeks later, the first night she got back, spacey and strung out with jetlag, she had been astonished by how much she coveted him. He was so gentle, so unsure of himself, so visibly trying to hide it. She wanted him to hug her and soothe her and assureher it was all right, but of course he couldn’t, because she told him what had happened and he was shocked and he cried and she cried too and then it became possible to wish in earnest that it could all be undone.
They held each other and he left. She hurt him and they broke up and they didn’t tell anybody why. Everybody wanted them to get back together, and eventually they did . . . But slowly, slowly . . . and who could blame him?
Those doubts were over. There was nothing there for her; it wasn’t where she lived and it was nowhere she could stay. What was left behind was a sort of shadow, an unease, the ache of something that had been excised and refused the chance to grow.
How was it possible to be happy once you knew your future was restricted and you had made it that way, and your bed was well and truly made and now you had to lie on it?
It had happened a long time ago; nearly a decade. Wasn’t living in the past what old people did? Ignoring all the interim, returning to the clarity of youth?
But when you are trapped and waiting and afraid, what else is there to do?
At 4.00 a.m. she was examined by another midwife, a big, easy-going woman with an air of calm and expert authority. A youngish doctor came by afterwards and informed her that she would be allowed another four hours. He made it sound like a significant concession.
‘Patti’s been doing nights on the labour ward for twenty-two years,’ he explained, ‘and she says she thinksyou’re about to start dilating, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’
Natalie had been reprieved by the Queen of the Night.
Richard went back to sleep and she waited, and she
It was outside of backpacker season and the hostel had been virtually empty, a little creepy it was so deserted. Jerry-built too: the door handle to her room felt as if it might come off if she turned it too fast; one tap dripped and the other gave nothing away; the walls seemed thin, insubstantial; a breeze whipped round the window frame as if hinting that anybody who wanted to could get in. The pub next door at least seemed solid and enclosing, even if it was ersatz? a traditionalBritish boozer, dim and high-ceilinged with brassy mirrors and crimson walls and ornate mouldings, in an un-English, flat, dusty, remote no man’s land of a place. But the job of any pub is to allow you to forget that sometime soon you’ll have to leave and go home, and it fulfilled that . . .
She’d played a couple of games of pool. She only knew how because Lucy and Tina had taught her. Her opponent was a girl with bright blonde hair that was dark at the roots and a pack of Gauloises in her back pocket. Nobody had noticed when Natalie left with her; nobody had turned a hair.
The girl’s room smelt of sandalwood, her skin was soft, her ribs, her hipbones, her spine were hard and apparent, there was nothing redundant about her, no baggage. She had a mole on her left breast. It was a fight for something and yet she was accommodating and it was real, and then it was over, it was morning and Natalie was being nudged awake, ‘Didn’t you say you have to get your bus?’ and she was rushing dazed to the flimsy room she hadn’t slept in, half surprised to find her things were still there, gathering them up and running for the stop and the bus was still there, waiting, and she got on and the bus moved off and the town disappeared behind her, and there was no reason why she would ever return.
When she saw Richard six weeks later, the first night she got back, spacey and strung out with jetlag, she had been astonished by how much she coveted him. He was so gentle, so unsure of himself, so visibly trying to hide it. She wanted him to hug her and soothe her and assureher it was all right, but of course he couldn’t, because she told him what had happened and he was shocked and he cried and she cried too and then it became possible to wish in earnest that it could all be undone.
They held each other and he left. She hurt him and they broke up and they didn’t tell anybody why. Everybody wanted them to get back together, and eventually they did . . . But slowly, slowly . . . and who could blame him?
Those doubts were over. There was nothing there for her; it wasn’t where she lived and it was nowhere she could stay. What was left behind was a sort of shadow, an unease, the ache of something that had been excised and refused the chance to grow.
How was it possible to be happy once you knew your future was restricted and you had made it that way, and your bed was well and truly made and now you had to lie on it?
It had happened a long time ago; nearly a decade. Wasn’t living in the past what old people did? Ignoring all the interim, returning to the clarity of youth?
But when you are trapped and waiting and afraid, what else is there to do?
At 4.00 a.m. she was examined by another midwife, a big, easy-going woman with an air of calm and expert authority. A youngish doctor came by afterwards and informed her that she would be allowed another four hours. He made it sound like a significant concession.
‘Patti’s been doing nights on the labour ward for twenty-two years,’ he explained, ‘and she says she thinksyou’re about to start dilating, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’
Natalie had been reprieved by the Queen of the Night.
Richard went back to sleep and she waited, and she
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