CHAPTER 41
I was up early. Still slightly out of synch with local times, and also a little sore in the forearms. The routes with Vern had been fine, apart from the need to fiddle about for ages with those lunatic Aussie bolts. I could imagine how that must push local climbing grades: if you can climb E4 while gibboning like an idiot to place pro, then the silly grades must be that much easier.

I took my laptop down to the kitchen, sneaking past the sleeping beauties and brewing a cuppa as I searched for details about those granite cliffs near ‘Maggie River’. I found a site called ‘The Crag’, which gave decent photo topos as well as rather abbreviated route descriptions, but, well, beggars and choosers. Kettle boiled, tea poured, bowl of cereal before me, and Maryam walked in.

“That kettle still hot, Mike?”

“Made a pot. Pass me a mug?”

She sorted mug and milk, I poured, and she sat down at the other end of the kitchen table.

“What are you looking at?”

“Research, really. Those routes on the coast near Margaret River”

She almost cuddled her tea to her chest.

“You really are into this climbing thing, aren’t you?”

Sod it. I closed the lid on my laptop so that I could give her the attention she deserved.

“It’s a lot of things, really. I think, I hope, you and Chad got some of them yesterday, the fun bit, but it’s more than that, it’s perspective. Look… where I prefer to climb, it’s a sort of silt stone. You get pebbles and that embedded in it, and sometimes, well, they are the only things to pull on, to stop you hitting the ground. There’s even a famous route called ‘Three Pebble Slab’. You’ve had a rubbish day---”

“You can say ‘shit’, Mike. I’m a big girl”

“Okay; you’ve had a shit day, and then your priorities are in focus, and they are the tiniest details in a bit of rock you almost have your nose on, and they aren’t whatever a bipolar twat of a manager has decided is his game for the day”

Or whatever a piece of burst tyre has… No. she was nodding, though, so I dug for a smile.

“I got pissed last night, didn’t I? Sorry”

I nodded.

“You did, but that isn’t a problem. Safe space here. I have a friend… Maryam, I have a couple of very good friends, her and her husband, yes? Before she met him, she was a drinker. Now, well, she likes a decent ale, but with a smile, with friends”

Maryam stared at me, eyes slightly narrowed.

“Why was she a drinker, Mike?”

Because the world, and her life, had shat all over her.

“She had serious personal issues, but Geoff, her husband, he’s a really decent man, and he loves her deeply. She was… I knew her before she met him, and they are both friends now, and she smiles at last. Maryam, I know why Steph drank, but let me say I don’t need to know if there’s any reason for last night. Mates, yes? Sometimes we go a bit beyond, but this is Kul’s place, not public, if you get me. Chatham House Rule”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, what happens Chez Butt stays Chez Butt”

She drew in a slow breath.

“What happened to you, Mike?”

I found myself looking down at my closed laptop.

“Please, Maryam. Not now. I will simply say I lost someone special to me, and leave it there, please. Some wounds… Anyway, this Maggie River thing?”

“Oh, not for a while, that. Chad has to work out who he is first. But, well, some background for me, and yes, that Maggie trip sounds cool, and not just for the tropicbirds. I just need to do some…”

She sat back, drawing yet another long breath before fixing me in the eye.

“Mike, my country is an odd one. We have a strange neighbour to the South, and a much bigger one almost wrapped round us. Singapore’s an odd place, libertarian and police state crossed. Indonesia, well…”

She sighed again, this time so deeply I almost expected her to faint.

“There is a province in Sumatra, Aceh, yes? We had a horrible disaster, the Boxing Day tsunami. I was on holiday then, in Pulau Pinang. It was… Lots of people died, including someone I…”

She took a long sip from her tea before continuing.

“Aceh, yes? One of the most strictly fundamentalist states, provinces, whatever, in Indonesia, and their interpretation of the slaughter was ‘Hey, we can’t be strict enough! Let’s crack down even harder on the women and queers! That’ll deter random natural disasters!”

She shook her head, then looked back up at me.

“Notice how it is never a question as to whether they are right, but simply an assumption that they haven’t been ‘right’ enough? That was… My parents were like that. Bad enough when I moved to Singapore, worse when we went to Pinang for a holiday, and then, well, they were just like Aceh: he wouldn’t have died if, well, you can guess the rest”

Another sip of her tea, then a smile.

“You going to start breakfast? With my hangover, scrambled eggs on toast would be a lifesaver”

I nodded, and started a pan heating, eggs broken into a jug. My mouth rattled on, however.

“And in Malaysia?”

“Morality police. No ban on eating pork, or having a DRINK drink, but police who come into places to check no Muslims are nibbling a pork chop or sipping a glass of pinot grigio. Mum and Dad were fine with that. Malays are automatically Muslim”

Once again, she looked up at me.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but last night I felt safe. That’s why I let myself go. We, Chad and Kul and me, we’ve had a few barbies, but, well. The climbing yesterday, it made a difference. Trust, yes?”

I found myself laughing, and her eyes screwed up a little, but I managed to gasp out a ‘Not at you!’ before I settled my mirth.

“Breathe, Rhodes… No, not laughing at you: just having one of those silly moments. We both said ‘safe’, and then you said’ trust, and my warped mind, oh dear. I t was what Chad said, about being a proper management consultant on one of those trust exercises, and there’s one where you just let yourself fall backwards and trust a team mate to catch you”

Suddenly, Maryam was laughing as well.

“And you thought ‘Sod that, Imma gonna drop them off a cliff, mwahahahaha!’ or some such!”

I nodded, reaching for some kitchen tissue to mop up the tea she had spilled when the mirth had seized her. We both sat for a few seconds in silence, apart from occasional snorts of half-stifled laughter.

“What’s so funny, you two?”

I turned to Chad as he stared accusingly at our steaming mugs.

“Neither of us is your mother, mate; grab a mug of you want some of this pot. As to what was so funny, it was something you said”

I quickly explained the ‘trust’ reference, and he was suddenly grinning with us.

“Yeah, exactly! Vern lowered me off a couple of climbs, and that was all about trust, bloody obviously. Only question is when we are doing it again”

He slid onto a stool, having grabbed the necessary mug, poured, and sipped.

“Needed that. Mouth like a wombat’s ringpiece… er, sorry, Maz. And Mike, no: I don’t know what one of those tastes like. Anyway, did you know their pouches face backwards so they don’t get full of dirt when they burrow?”

Distraction tactics, obviously. Let it ride for now, I decided, just as I realised Maryam’s moment of openness had ended.

“What are you two doing for the rest of the day? No idea what our hosts are up to, but I want to do some Skyping this evening”

Chad looked up, clearly grateful at the change of subject.

“These be people back home? Family?”

Maryam’s eyes locked on mine as I shook my head.

“No, no family. Got none of my own, really. Just some friends—oh, remember those photos we showed you? The two little girls? Their families. Thing is, with the time difference, needs to be this evening, their morning. Got a day to fill”

Chad was back in his noddy land, head bobbing ay every phrase.

“Got swimmers, mate?”

“Sorry?”

Swimming kit. Budgie smugglers or shorts and you’ll be right, I didn’t push the boat out last night, cause I’ve got the car, so I’ll be safe to drive. Ph, and it’s not Swanbourne”

“Eh?”

“That place has what they call a ‘clothing optional’ stretch”

“Ah. Like Studland, in Dorset. Top end of the beach has the same thing; you see people queuing for an ice cream in everything from nothing at all to full winter kit, all zips closed”

Maryam coughed for attention.

“Where do they keep the money, Mike? The naked ones?”

“After Chad’s comment about wombats, I really don’t want to think about it. Tou suggesting a day at the beach, Chad?”

“What could be more Aussie?”

“We’d need to---morning, Kul”

He filled the kettle again, before looking round the table.

“I heard someone mention scrambled eggs when I went to the loo. What else are you planning?”

Maryam answered for us.

“Mike says he wants to do a Skype call this evening, but we, Chad and me, we won’t presume. Plan is sort of evolving: we take Mike for a swim, then drop him back here before heading home”

Sangeeta followed Kul in, reaching for a feting pan as Dal arrived, and she was immediately in charge.

“Grab some eggs for me, love, and you can sort some toast out as I do the clever bit. Maryam, you’re both welcome to stay tonight and eat with us again. Just going to be some chicken, rice and dhal, but there’ll be plenty to go around. Ta, son. Can you bin the shells for me?”

Scrambled eggs for some, cereal for others; our breakfast was a simple one. Geeta was still musing.

“Beach trip? Nearest would be Mullaloo, and that’s an easy swim. There are reefs immediately in front of some of the beaches that make me a bit nervous—too easy to get picked up by a wave and thrown into some nasty sharp rock. Do you have a cossie with you, Maryam? Oh, and what do you normally wear for a swim?”

Another laugh from Maryam.

“Well, dunno about the boys, but this girl is not one for ‘clothing optional’. I normally wear a straightforward one piece, Not into either bikinis or hijabi-style trouser jobs”

“What size are you, love?”

“Oh, er… American twelve, which I think is… That’ll be UK fourteen. I think it’s sixteen in Aussie sizes”

“Ah. I’m a sixteen back home, so one of mine would work. Chad?”

“Oh, I keep my kit in the car. Place like this, finish work, nice to stop off for a splash now and again”

Geeta was nodding.

“I’ll dig out the cossie for Maryam when we’re all finished, and that’s a ‘No’, Dal. Clearing up to do this morning, and I know full well that you have college work to hand in on Monday”

I spent a few minutes in my room, wobbling over whether to take my own ‘budgie smuggler’ Speedo trunks, or the rather more modest swim shorts, before coming down on the side of the shorts. I was back down before the others, Geeta grinning at me as Dal worked outside to clear some of the debris.

“Enjoy yourself, love. Knowing you, you’ll have worked out my worry, and that is the effect on my puppy-love lad of seeing her in beachwear. Got some goggles spare if you want”

“In my bag, Geeta”

“Well, grab that eskie when you go, then. Cold drinks and some fruit for you all”

Three of us settled into Chad’s car, Maryam sitting behind me so that he could get enough leg room, and we made our way through suburbs to a well-maintained car park with signs that informed us that neither dogs nor kitesurfers were welcome. The ‘no dogs’ sign made me chuckle, for it was a clone of the one that Emlyn Williams had set up at Little Willie’s, just in case a visitor spoke neither English nor Welsh. A path led out through some shrubby dunes to a beach pf sand even whiter than that at Studland. I simply stood for a minute taking in the view, the sea calm and blue as the sun gained in power. Chad clapped me on the shoulder after setting down his bundle of towels and a reed mat.

“Got your swimmers on ready, mate? No need for a clothing-optional towel dance?”

“I’ve got them on, but I’m going to keep the T=shirt on as well, just till I get a bit more of a tan”

“Good call, mate. Maz? You need a screen?”

As an answer, she simply pulled off her dress to reveal her borrowed costume, and I understood immediately where Dal was coming from in his crush. I would say ‘I didn’t know where to look, but that would be a lie, because my mind knew exactly where.