CHAPTER 72
The cruise was a delight, right from the start. We hadn’t moved more than a short distance from the jetty when Maz was pointing at one of the smooth granite outcrops near the port.

“Cape Barren geese, Mike! Bloody good start to the day”

There were dolphins, sea lions and fur seals in or by the water, along with a constant flow of bird names from my wife. The island had walks over really interesting slabs of granite, including some amazing exfoliation, and there were skinks and parrots, lunch in an open-sided dining hall with a bird feeder outside that had Maz in ecstasies, followed by an actual underwater snorkel trail. The glamping was comfy, and the little penguins much smaller than I had expected. We had made the short stroll to the side of the island away from the town, so the stars were there for us. As we lay out under the spangled sky, Maz stroked her belly and whispered, “We will show you the photos, and one day bring you here to make your own memories”

We flew back happy with each other, but more than a little sad to leave the place. We had swum on wild beaches, in an almost perfectly round sheltered bay, next to a jetty in a small port on a creek, and eaten some of the freshest seafood I could remember.

That had led to Maz teasing me about my insane and insectile suggestions for ‘seafood’ dishes in Alice Springs. Oh: we drank wine as well, almost all from Western Australia, and each time I opened a bottle from one particular winery, I teased Maz about it. Honours were even.

Chad was the one to offer and provide a lift from the airport back to Scarborough, and when he caught Maz slumping against me in the back seat, her face radiant, he just remarked, “I don’t need to ask how it was, then”

Neil was away when Chad dropped us off, the Beemer too. On a hunch, I checked the shelves where our camping kit lived, and that told me all I needed to know. It was, after all, why we had offered him the bike, as well as the space in our house, and as I thought that through, I could feel the warmth rising from the simple use of words like ‘We’ and ‘Our’.

We sorted our laundry into the appropriate piles, set the machine running and ordered an Italian, or rather started looking at the menu until Maz, checking for milk supplies, found Geeta’s present of a number of containers of rice, dhal and something with plenty of chicken and many more spices. And a pack of beer. We were just sorting out crockery and cutlery before setting the microwave working when I heard the sound of the Beemer outside, followed by the rattle of the garage door’s up, over and back down. Maz welcomed him at the door, and I heard a few comments about smelling the food.

Neil came into the kitchen with my wife, an arm around her shoulders.

“Kul and Geeta said they’d fill the fridge for you, which is why I stopped off on the way back, and I have more beers and a couple of ready made curries to mix and match. Let me get the beers in to chill, and then, if you don’t mind, could I have a shower before we eat?”
Maz waved a hand.

“Mi casa, su casa”

I coughed after Neil had headed off to wash, and she turned back to me.

“Did I get the Spanish wrong, love?”

“Sort of, though I’m not a speaker. Should have been something like ‘nuestra casa, tu casa’. Our house, not just yours, and Neil’s a friend, so that form. I think, anyway. Not snarking, love, just, well, saying ‘our’, being able to say it, it’s been giving me the warm and fuzzies all day”

“Snog?”

“Yes indeed, Mrs MTR”

“Oh my!”

As we broke, memory hit me.

“That was the phrase, Maz. ‘Oh my’. That triggered Neil. Probably best avoided while he’s here”

“You think it was a Maddy thing?”

“I suspect so. Anyway, what’s he brought for us?”

“Um… two garlic naans… poppadums, ready cooked ones… lamb jalfrezi and a couple of veggie bhajis: brinjal and bindi. I am going to end up fat, Mr MTR”

“Yes, but you’ll be expanding anyway, so we can just lie to people”

“Shower’s cutting off, so let’s get heating. Is his beer in the fridge?”

“Just going in. Can you put these ones on the table while I do the nuking?”

All so wonderfully domestic.

We didn’t plate up, merely setting the containers of hot food on mats in the centre, and even left the beer alone until Neil was back down in T-shirt, shorts and flipflops. Maz chuckled, pointing at his feet.

“Know what they call those things here?”

Neil shook his head.

“Thongs”

“Oh… Beer. Beer will be good”

There had been another twitch at that word, and I was certain Maz had caught it. I called “Cheers!” to try and break his thought train, but I wasn’t sure if it had worked.

The food was good, if a little bland in the case of the shop-bought curries. Neil must have read something in my face, because he started nodding as if I had asked a question.

“I like sausages, Mike. All sorts, and I mean things like the Spanish, French and German ones. Bought some to snack on from Coles. I got chorizo, nduja and frankfurters. Tried the frankfurter first”

Maz nodded.

“I’ll bite. The nduja?”

“Tasted like frankfurter”

“And the chorizo? Tasted like---”

“Frankfurter, yes. No spice, no red stain in the pan. Anyway. How was Esperance?”

I waved my little stack of SD cards.

“Want to see?”

“After the meal, please. I have some of my own, but with X-rays in security, I had my film ones developed, and they gave me some CDs of the prints as well. Are they CDs or DVDs? Doesn’t matter”

“Where have you been?”

“I went down to the south coast by way of the giant trees. I stopped a couple of nights at that place you recommended for Betty’s family so I could have a look at some of the caves, then rode through somewhere called Beedelup for the trees. Two nights in Walpole, then a ride straight back. That was only about two hundred and seventy miles, so an easy run”

If you have an iron arse, perhaps.

“I’d… I’ve been a bit cheeky. Didn’t ask. Should have done”

Maz rose from her seat to hug him, which seemed to help.

“Neil, let me and Mike be the judge of that, okay? You’ve just jumped on a plane and flown halfway round the world, just for our wedding. It is us that owes you, not the other way round”

“That reminds me: I have got prints from my shoot at your wedding, and they did CDs for those as well. I don’t like letting other people do my developing, but I wanted to be safe”

He was overexplaining again, and I wondered whether it was just tiredness or something heavier.

“Neil, mate, let’s get this meal done, and thanks for the naans, gone down a treat. Then we can have a pig-out with the pics”

Maz had her hand up.

“Can we see the wedding snaps first? I want to pick the right one for work”

Neil looked puzzled.

“Won’t they all see them all anyway?”

“I mean the one for the frame I’ll buy—the frameS WE’ll buy—for our desks, as per tradition”

“Right. I’m done, at least with food. If you can plug in your disc player, I’m off to wash my hands before I handle the prints”

I set up the video as Maz washed her own hands, and then Neil produced a surprisingly large number of discs. Just as we were about to start the show, Maz called out an ‘Excuse me’

“Neil, we got off topic. You didn’t tell us how you’d been ‘cheeky’, as you put it”

“Oh. Um, I sent our… I sent my shop a message. Only got two staff, and they mostly do pic-to-disc conversions, and those transfers of pictures onto sort of canvas enlargements. And they know how to use an enlargement machine for paper prints. I told them I’d given myself an extra week and rebooked my return flight. I have decided to do a new portfolio of images”

Maz was still being gentle with him, thankfully.

“What subject?”

“Eucalyptus bark, or lack of. Amazing colours and shapes. Ah. Wedding CD”

The images were as sharp and clear as I had expected, and Neil had caught some really tender moments, as well as the funny ones. Maz had him stop the slide show every so often, and finally pointed at one image of me.

“That one. That’s for my desk”

Neil looked at me, eyebrows up, and I had him click back to a particular shot of Maz as the wind had taken her hair.

“That’s mine”

Our friend laughed, a little more happily, and reached into a document case to produce the two images in question, printed and enlarged, together with a pair of simple frames. Maz said ‘Wow’, and Neil actually laughed.

“No, I am not telepathic. I just had all of your portrait style pics enlarged, and as each shot is numbered and filed in here, it was easy. Your turn!”

We played him our own discs, and he gave us a running commentary on how they could be improved with a little editing. It wasn’t in an offensive way, but clearly intended to be helpful, if just a little tactless. Once that lot was done, and our beers refreshed, He went through his holiday snaps, as he called them.

“Now, this disc is all digital, and I need some help from Maz”

“In what way, Neil?”

“I know nothing about birds and…”

The bird’s head was a shimmering blue-green, as if turquoise had been mixed with silver, and Maz cooed “Red-winged fairy-wren, male! That is a stunning shot, Neil”

“I have a lot more. Can you tell me the names so I can write a list? This is the other side of my planned portfolio”

Not just tree bark, then. Thank god. I had been worrying he was losing his contact with the world, for he had already explained his intentions re gum trees at least twice. That said, he did show us some of his bark pics, and the colours were intense. Maz asked the obvious question.

“I thought you were into monochrome, Neil”

“I am, but the colours are too…”

He paused for quite a while, eyes somewhere else, outside the room and probably the whole continent, before starting to speak in a much softer voice.

“When… When Maddy and me, when we first got together, I took her for a ride along Hadrian’s Wall. We’d both been in County Durham at the same time, coincidence, so I went to see her, and…”

That pause was even longer.

“I’d seen some stuff on the map before we set off, and there was a field where the Vallum--- the trace of the Wall, marks in the ground? It was very, very clear, and so was the sky just then, brilliant blue, perfectly green glass, white sheep, and Maddy was sitting on the ground to get the angle absolutely right, and she said the colours were too bright to be thrown away for a moody monochrome shot, and it’s the same with those birds. So much colour, such fine detail. Got some parrots who look as if there have been moths chewing their way through their feathers, and others with red in their tails that is so vibrant, what else could I do?”

He slumped a little, and I could read his mind, bouncing between “How I wish she was here” and “They won’t want to hear sob stories about a stranger”, and once again it was my beautiful wife who teased it out.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“If you want to talk, you should know we can listen. You also know how much we… How well we understand what losing someone means”

“I… Is there another beer there?”

I waved at the kitchen.

“Fridge is full. I’ll grab some”

“Thanks… Maz, Maddy was a tall woman, a little under six feet. She loved how big I am, always spoke of being wrapped up, protected, made to feel precious. I was… I had been treated badly all the way through school. One time… there was a girl I liked. Asked me if s wanted to go to the pictures with her, and I had no idea about people. How could I? Short version: she arranged for half the school to see the weirdo’s reaction when eh stood in front of me to snog her boyfriend before she told me to fuck off and do the world a favour by dying”

Jesus Christ. I was starting to lose my self-declared faith in humanity.

“Neil. Mate. Bloody schoolkids?”

“Yes. Don’t know how many of them were recording it all on their phones, but a couple of years later I saw it on the internet”

Maz was goldfishing, but moved over once more to hug him, before standing up and drawing him to his feet.

“Sit between us, please, my love. Not alone here, are you?”

He did as told, almost as if he was without will.

“I told Maddy that story, and she topped it, no contest. I was, well, I was a complete innocent. A virgin. Maddy was, well, absolutely a straight woman, and she had… there were times when she really needed intimacy. She told me…”

Another, even longer pause, as tears welled up.

“three times, she said. Three men she took home for that. Two of them beat her up badly, and the third… Each one of them had their… Each one got what they wanted from her first, in her bed, and then changed. The third one, she said to me he’d been driving a Range Rover, said it should have been a red flag”

Sensible woman, I thought.

“Anyway, he, this Nigel, he actually courted her, made her feel special. Dinner dates, footsie under the table, all of that. So they’ve arranged a meal at hers, and she’s gone all out: candles, special dress, naughty underwear, heels she couldn’t really walk in, and she does the whole routine, and she’s even got her shoes still on in bed”

Maz put her arms around him and snuggled up to his chest.

“You don’t have to tell all the detail, love”

“Oh, I do. When you said ‘thongs’, that’s why I twitched. I know when that happens. That was what she was wearing. Stockings, suspenders, a thong. And silly shoes. And they’re in bed, and she was… she tells me it was very good, until he’s done, he’s dressing, and he’s calling her a disgusting freak and telling her to cover herself up before she makes him puke”

I heard my own mouth say “Jesus fucking wept” followed by a number of other words. ‘Faith in humanity’?

Neil’s tears were now flowing smoothly.

“That time I told you about, when we cuddled in the pub, that was… there was a misunderstanding later, a very personal one. Not sharing that. It was cleared up immediately, and that was the start of the best years I have ever had, and I believe it was the same for her. It was only… We started getting letters, nasty ones, and it took a while, but it turned out to be that Nigel. Maddy had another show, and he had turned up. Maddy said she thought he was cruising for what she called ‘posh totty’, or in his case ‘thick posh totty’, and hadn’t twigged it was her show. Left quickly, he did, and on his own”

I could feel the trembling in him as the story was obviously on course for an awfully dark place. Neil sobbed in a couple of breaths, and then started speaking quickly.

“Going to get this out before I lose the power. My parents retired to Spain. There was a car crash. I had to attend the inquest, whatever. I was away a week. Nigel started paying visits, hanging around outside the shop so that Maddy couldn’t go home without seeing him. One day it got too much and… I flew from one sort of inquest back to another, about how my wife had… I told them everything, and they just shrugged and said, par for the course for people like Maddy, all unstable as they are, all so prone to self-harm, and…”

That was when Neil left the room, to be replaced by a broken child, in more pain than any human being should ever have to bear, and he had been carrying it entirely alone.