CHAPTER 42
She wasn’t a clone of Carolyn, her hips being a little broader, and her legs not as lean, but in many ways it was a rerun of that pool table moment. Bugger. I sorted my goggles and headed straight for the water.

It wasn’t anywhere near bath temperature, but it was welcoming enough. I pulled down my goggles, and started an appropriate Australian crawl away from the beach. It felt like the best hangover cure imaginable.

Chad, naturally, had a snorkel and mask, which I envied, but the water was so delightful, the company a gift, that I couldn’t hold that against him, simply adding ‘snorkel, mask, fins’ to my notional Aussie shopping list: the one from which I had recently crossed off ‘Aussie hat’. That was waiting on the beach, of course. I popped up for air to find Maryam in front of me.

“I love this, Mike! How could anyone want to live anywhere else?”

“Not going to argue, Maz. Done some swimming back home where I thought my bloody heart would stop, the water was that cold. This is, well, this is wonderful. Want to borrow the goggles?”

“Please! Promise I won’t hog them”

I handed them over, and I was treated to a nice view of a rather exceptional arse as she craned her neck to see whatever there was beneath her. What the hell was up with me?

She soon surfaced, panting for breath, and I gave her a smile. She started laughing, waving towards Chad, steadily ploughing the water, snorkel tip fluorescent yellow.

“Got to go shopping, yet again, that bastard! There’s stuff on the sea bed, fish, so much, and then I run out of air”

Another happy grin.

“I look down again, and whatever it was has gone. Makes me even more determined to tick my dream box”

Her thoughts were so nearly identical to my own. I continued treading water, avoiding speaking for the moment, but doing the eyebrow thing. She understood.

“A dream, Mike. You know when you see something on TV, and it gets really familiar, and you just want to BE there, just once in your life? I have a list of them”

“Bucket list?”

“Not at all, Mister Rhodes. I want to be able to go back and enjoy them again”

“Got my own. What do you have on your list?”

“Oh, Eiffel tower, Venice, Barrier Reef, just for starters. Sydney and its bridge look like being the easiest, if we get that contract. Trouble is, and this is me being stupid, I think Kul should have first bite at that, with Geeta. Family, yeah? And he started the office, so he should get first bite”

That comment hit home, because a memory had ambushed me. I nailed my smile in place, and tried to change the subject.

“So: this Vern, then?”

She giggled, really giggled, hand to her mouth.

“Oh, he was most definitely homed in on Chad! Trouble is, I don’t know how Chad really swings. I, well, I don’t think he was actually that anti”

She was suddenly very serious.

“Chad was talking about going down to the place Kul and his boy use, the Adrenaline Vault? That’s where Vern hangs out when he’s not at Statham’s. I think we hang back and don’t push him. What’s that English idiom, about dogs and rabbits?”

“Let the dog see the rabbit?”

“That’s the one. Vern obviously likes his rabbits on the skinny side”

A vague wave at my shoulders as we bobbed in the water.

“You’re obviously safe from him”

In one fluid movement, she turned on the spot and dove for the bottom. I turned towards the shore and started swimming slowly, feet dangling, until the bottom rose to meet them. Maryam appeared once more, and swam my way, something in her hand.

“I think this is an abalone. Or rather, was one”

“Know nothing about shells and sea life, I’m afraid, apart from what I like to eat”

My mouth moved before I could stop it.

“Birds, yes. Got a decent grounding from Carolyn”

“Your partner?”

Can of worms opened.

“She was my wife. There was an accident”

Her eyes dropped to my chest.

“Oh. I am so sorry, Mike. I…”

Suddenly, her face crumpled, as the arm holding the shell waved at herself.

“Oh hell, Mike. I say I am sorry, but what I mean is, well, same boat. These people tonight, the one’s with the girls: they were mutual friends?”

“Two of them, yes. Carolyn… Look, just now, well, she would have loved this place, and, I mean, ‘not now’. Save it for a better moment?”

She put her free hand to my shoulder.

“And make it a two way thing? I think we both need that. Mike… No, woman. Later. What are we doing for lunch?”

“That bag of stuff from Geeta? Hangover easing, then?”

A hint of a blush.

“Sorry about that. It was…”

She stopped for some slow breathing, then tilted her head, her own wry smile emerging.

“Not normal to be so tongue-tied, but it would have been Alan’s birthday next week. I’m a bit out of sorts, so I let myself go, and, well, who better than you to understand where I’m coming from? Sorry: I said we’d leave it for now, and here I am”

I shrugged.

“Well, yes, and I understand both bits. Sod it: shall we go and violently assault Chad. Now, I was hearing this story, about a swimming spot in the Ogwen Valley, which is where tonight’s Skype friends live. Lake, waterfalls go under the road, and the river then winds down a lower valley. Road stays high, and it’s got a stone wall beside it, so when some people I might be familiar with had been climbing on a very hot day got there, they didn’t bother with ‘swimmers’, as Chad called them”

Her eyes went wide.

“Skinny dipping? How wonderful!”

“Yup. Until a couple of tourist buses went past, double-decker ones, and the flashes started going off on the top decks”

Maz laughed, a much happier sound.

“Flashing the flashers! Lovely! And of course, none of them were you, were they?”

“My lips are sealed. Let’s get that rabbit”

Her chosen method of attack was inspired. As Chad finned forward, ever so slowly, Maz simply swam under him from behind, looking up, and he jerked up out of the water, the snorkel dropping from his mouth.

“Christ, mate! Bit of warning next time be good!”

She shook her head, water flying from her hair.

“Where’s the fun in that? Anyway, found a shell, and Mike here’s useless unless it comes with tartare sauce, he says. What do you say?”

He trod water next to us as he examined the thing.

“See the row of holes? Abalone. And that’s been someone’s dinner. Big industry in Tassie, they are. There’s limits on what you can take in this state, I think. Shell’s are cool, though, all shiny inside”

I found myself remembering Python, of course, and squawked out “How d’ya cook it?”

Chad pushed his mask up to his forehead.

“Mr Rhodes, it is neither a gas turbine engine nor a stormy petrel on a stick, and I doubt it tastes of bleeding seabird flavour”

Maryam started singing softly.

“Spam, spam, spam, spam…” and things proceeded to get progressively sillier and sillier, and ‘that’ conversation was most definitely on hold. We worked our way through Geeta’s fresh fruit and other snacks, along with draughts of the large bottle of LLB she had included, before some more dips in the wonderful water.

‘Alan’.

Chad was musing on the way back to Chez Butt, on two main subjects.

“Definitely going to tag up Kul and Dal about that Vault place. We could do a sort of team night thing again. Going to look up restaurants round there, and you can try abalone for real rather than just an empty shell”

He started laughing.

“Bloody big country this, a continent! And almost all of us live round the edge, so it’s seafood everywhere. I bet there’s even a bloody sushi place or oyster bar in Alice!”

Maz tapped me on my shoulder again.

“You up for that, Mike? Lots of young men in tight shorts to ogle, followed nu a nibble on some clams?”

Chad roared out that she was getting worse, so of course I had to tell them the story of Penny’s adoration of men in tight shorts, or rather one particular man, and while I kept up the happy banter, I was having an inner dialogue of my own, and it was a hard one.

Geeta had been absolutely right about Maryam’s flirting, and our day at the beach had seen her spending most of it by my side, which was certainly not an unpleasant experience. She was certainly attractive, and more to the point she was alive in so many ways, and that was the word that caused my internal debate, because Carolyn wasn’t.

Was I being unfaithful, sinning in my thoughts as that book put it, or was it a stupid thing to consider in the first place? I watched Maz from behind, and I saw Carolyn’s backside as she bent over a pool table; I saw her dimples as she smiled, and there was my wife again.

“You’re an arrogant tosser”, said that inner voice; “Just because a woman flirts with you it doesn’t mean she fancies you”

Fair point, fairly made, but once again I was seeing that bloody lizard, waiting by the side of the road. I had moved from That Place to Sheffield, and then again to the other side of the world, to avoid that, and here I was crawling back to the same position.

I told the other voices to piss off, and decided I would wait and see. The day at the beach had been full of life, even with the shadows we both carried, so dig once more for the smiles.

Geeta had been busy, as she always seemed to be, and Kul looked slightly embarrassed.

“Hi, you three, bonzer, ripper, et cetera, can I ask you two what you have to do at your flat? Anything urgent? Triffid to feed? Latest body to dismember still in the bath? Just, well, we’re all due in at the same time tomorrow, so we sort of left the bedding still in place. And I did another run to the bottle shop, just a few drinks, no debauch…”

I looked at my companions, who each shrugged and nodded, as Chad snorted.

“If I’d known, I’d have had a few more on Saturday, and got the bus down to the beach with these two. Yeah, I’m in, if Maz is happy wearing the same stuff to work on Monday”

She nodded.

“Office day for me, so I don’t need anything smart, and before you ask, I always carry a couple of spare pairs. What has that boy done?”

She pointed to a laptop that was connected to the Butts’ rather large flat screen telly, and Kul bristled as best he could manage.

“Screen’s set to play through the telly, and there’s a webcam on top, so we can all see each other in comfort. Why do you think it was the boy”

“Because I know how useless you are with computers, Kul. How much time do we have?”

Geeta appeared from the kitchen.

“Call start in half an hour. Dinner whenever we finish; it’s all cooked, so I just need to nuke it to add heat, and finish a couple of things in the oven. Who needs a shower? Get the salt off? Oh, Maz: cossie work okay?”

That little voice was back, and the words it chose about the fit of the costume were very direct. Maz was laughing, though.

“After some random man walked past, staring at my bum while pretending not to, and doing it so badly his wife slapped his arm, I tried to stay in the water. Oh: brought you this. Chad says it’s an abalone”

She brought the shell out of her beach bag, light rippling from the mother-of-peart on its inner side, and Geeta sighed.

“That is gorgeous!”

“Ah, take it. Wouldn’t really go with stuff in my little rabbit hutch”

She handed it to Geeta, who put it on a pile of place mats on the sideboard, as Maz’s eyes flicked to mine, then away.

We showered sequentially and settled ourselves in the rearranged living room furniture as Dal (Maz had been absolutely correct) got things rolling, and after some back and forth from chair to laptop, the screen cleared to show a familiar Welsh living room, packed with people. Yells of welcome competed with each other, and I waved my arms to shut everyone up.

“Like bloody schoolkids! Now, I’ll make the introductions, because I know who everyone is. Just raise a hand when I say your name. You lot, you know these three. The two extras are our colleagues. Chad… Maryam… Now, for those two, I will work through the Welsh lot. Vic and Nansi Edwards… their daughter Alys… Keith and Panny Hiatt… their daughter Enfys… Neil Strachan, who is a nutter… And Steph and Geoff Woodruff, yes I know. Steph is also a nutter, but in a different way”

Geoff shouted that while his wife might be a nutter, she was HIS nutter, etc, and yet again, Maz had a hand up asking to speak. I waved at her to go for it.

“Nutters? You mean ‘mad’? In what way?”

Keith led on that one.

“Steph is a musician, a fiddle player. When she gets carried away, she gets a bit, well, lively. Neil’s a cave diver”

My two newest friends each muttered something along the lines of ‘for a game of soldiers’, and Enfys was saying something loudly to her mother. Penny shushed her gently.

“Cariad, they only speak English, remember? Ask Uncle Mike what you want, but in English”

Enfys took Alys’ hand with a grin.

“Alys is coming to big school with me! When are you coming back to Fethesda?”

Penny murmured, “Heb treiglad meddal, Cariad, does dim angen”, while I waved at the people around me.

“I’m a long, long way away now, girls. Got a new job here, and even…”

I paused for effect.

“What do you think we did this weekend, girls?”

Alys was shouting “Swimming!”, Enfys “Climbing!”, while once more it was Maryam with the words.

“You’re both right! Uncle Mike took us all climbing yesterday, and we have just got back from the beach, where I found---can you grab that for me, Dal? Thanks. I found this shell, on the seabed”

Lots of oohs and aahs as she turned the shell so that the light flashed from it, and it was Alys who had the next question, which was a confusing one about submarines and Captain Nemo. Chad then talked about parrots, and when he mentioned he was from Tasmania, both children were off on a wave of cartoon-linked excitement. When they wound down eventually, we settled into more sedate conversation, which ended in a discussion of meal plans. Geeta covered that one with a few choice comments about kitchen drudges, and then Steph was onto the climbing, as I had guessed she would be. I gave her the condensed version.

“Quarry, repurposed. Dolerite, like the Whin Sill stuff, so not like grit, nor as slippery as slate. Some proper climbs, but most are sports stuff”

She winced.

“Not with Aussie bolts?”

“Some of them, yes. You know about them?

“Oh god yes. And you call me and Neil here nutters”

“Yes you both are, but it’s like I said, in different ways. Anyway, some indoor centres here, with air con. Dal and Kul have been going there, and Maz and Chad fancy tagging along as well”

No hand up this time, Maz cut straight in.

“Mike has promised me lots of fit young men in tight shorts!”

Penny was doing her best to stifle her laughter as Keith glared at her, and the evening carried on like that until we called it a whatever-part-of-the-day it was where we were.

Our dinner followed, together with a rather more sedate session of liquid refreshment, taken outside on the patio as seemed to be the norm for us, and eventually we settled into our rooms or corners for the night. My mind kept coming back to a comment from Maryam, and that little flick of her eyes to mine as she spoke.

‘Let the dog see the rabbit’, and then she called her place a ‘rabbit hutch’. Was I reading too much into a couple of words? Sod it. Work tomorrow.

I checked my mail before turning the light off, and there was one from Penny.

‘Really good to see you all again, love. Girls are still talking. Forgive Alys and her prattle, but she’s getting really into reading, particularly SF. Weird, those two: they have to be reminded to slip out of Welsh, and she’s devouring Kules Verne and HG Wells in English. We envy them their ability, me and Keith.

Can you snail mail us some postcards, for the kids? Something with parrots and kangaroos would be great, and obviously sending us some pics electronically would be super. Keith and me would like to see what the local crag is like as well.

Oh, and that girl who had her eyes on you all the time? She’s lovely, and she came across as a sound one. I know you, my love, me and Keith both do. You know how we moved things on, and I really think this could be the time for you to let go’