Chapter 20 - The Journey
Isabelle had never travelled beyond the bounds of her country. Paris had seemed exciting enough as a student and, in her free time, she had come home to her family with whom she was still close.
But now she had caught the travel bug and was off to see the world, going to its furthest opposite side. She felt really excited as she flew across the world to discover this new land was both familiar and yet so different. The language and the French culture had crossed the seas and still lived strongly in this place. But alongside it was a new people and new culture, where France and Polynesia partly existed side by side and partly fused into something else again where, in the fusion, a thing that was new and unique was created, a warm and embracing new culture.
The year passed in a blur of fascination, as she imbibed and absorbed the Polynesian lifestyle and customs like a sponge. She had kept a strong religious conviction, loving the Polynesian singing at the local church. She joined in with gusto, bringing her guitar to accompany their singing and teaching them new songs. She soon was part of the island music scene.
She gained great joy from this year of her life but knew by the end that this place was too small for her and that the wider world beckoned. Part of her wanted to return home to France to see family and friends, another part had caught the travel bug and wanted to see more of the world far from France.
She tossed up various options. She did not have a lot of money, she had saved very little of her small allowance here and her parents had none to spare. But she had enough saved to support herself while she travelled for a couple months on a low budget. She thought she could always get some jobs to add to her store along the way.
So in the end, rather than returning straight home, she decided she would like to spend some time in Australia. After all, but for a few days, La Perouse would have founded the first colony there and then, instead of speaking English, they would now speak French.
She was also drawn by the idea of improving her English language skills; she was fluent in French, Spanish and Italian and her German was more than passable. But her English was still weak and she knew the only way for it to get good was to live for a while in an English speaking country. Australia and New Zealand were both nearby choices. Canada also appealed, but with the bilingual status she thought it may be a bit too easy to revert to French there.
So she applied for and was granted a twelve month working Visa to Australia. She flew via Noumea then on to Brisbane. All her friends said Sydney was the place to see, but rather than encouraging her to go there she found it motivated her to go elsewhere.
It was June when she arrived and having spent a year in the tropics the idea of going to the south of Australia in winter was not appealing. So she drifted north and found herself working in a backpackers lodge in Cairns. This gave her a way to see the country, stay cheaply and meet people from across the world.
Her multilingual skills helped her get this job as she could talk fluently to many European visitors in a passable form of their own languages. In addition, when she did bar work at night in the backpacker bar, she would often bring out her guitar and sing a few songs and the extra tips added to her wages, so she found she was now saving money at a steady rate.
One visitor who stuck in her mind was a man named Mark Brooks. He arrived after she had worked in Cairns for two weeks with a pretty little girl in tow. She had an accent that could be Canadian. They stayed there for two nights before the girlfriend caught a bus on to Sydney. They were obviously lovers, but in the casual way of travellers who meet and join together briefly before they go their different ways.
There was something in this man which exuded sexuality, a sort of wild devil may care look. She could not help looking at him as he danced closely with his girlfriend, clearly with one thing on their minds. The first night they stayed there together until late but the second night it was not long before the level of passionate intensity between them needed to be consummated and they left. As they walked out, hand in hand, it brought to mind for Isabelle her own limited experience of that sort. She found herself remembering it in detail for the first time in the three years since it had happened.
Isabelle was not that sort of girl. She had only ever had one man with whom she had become intimate. It had happened on a summer holiday in her village. This man, Francois, had known her since they were children. They had found themselves both home from Universities in different cities for a few days. He was two years older than her.
She remembered feeling a childish crush for him when she was about twelve and he was a much more grown up and muscular fourteen year old. But he had not noticed her then and she was too shy to give any clue. Then their lives had gone separate ways. Then, that summer, when she was twenty one, in the second year of her four year degree, they had re-met at a village party and both were on their own.
So they arranged to meet the next day and go walking in the hills together, she with her goats, which she had promised to mind for the day, to give her little brother a day off.
Francois came another way to meet her, not wanting the village to know. He had found her in the high valley behind their village, hidden from village view by a mountain.
At first they had sat side by side surveying the barren mountain. She had found herself telling him of her childhood crush on him. He was a handsome man and as she spoke she had felt that flush of early teenage emotion return and make her body tingle.
As she spoke he lay his hand on her leg and stroked it gently.
“I noticed you too he said, but you seemed too young then. Now we are both grown up and can enjoy these feelings.” As he said this he slid his hand down her inner thigh, sliding it under the place where her skirt covered it.
His face was flushed and she could feel her own face grow warm too as she enjoyed the touch. But at the same time she had felt awkward with the intimacy. It was not something she had allowed to happen before, having always resisted the urgings of the local boys at the University.
Until this day she had followed her mother’s Catholic adage that some things were best kept until the time was right, in the marriage bed. She knew this touching was of that sort.
But his touch had brought her body alive in a new way. So she let his hand continue its slow and intimate journey until it was stroking the place where her legs met, first over her panties and then from the inside. As he touched that place she could feel waves of pleasure come over her.
Francois was obviously an experienced lover. He had had gently stroked and fondled her body until it was fully aroused. After that she remembered herself allowing him to undress her and lay her on a blanket he had brought along. It happened almost despite herself. Then, as he stroked her more and more in that place of pleasure, she became aware he had taken off his own pants and she saw his maleness aroused.
It was hard to stop his insistent touching and her body wanted more. She remembered how he had placed his body over hers and pushed her legs apart, then her feeling of alarm, not sure she wanted this, but not knowing how to stop him.
When she had felt him try push inside her at first it really hurt and she tried to shake her head and push her body away. But she was pinioned and he was too strong. Then the pain became sharp and she felt a place tear inside her, and after that the pain eased. In its place she remembered her sense of regret. It had been too cheap. But, by then, the time to resist, alone with him on a barren hillside, was past. She was powerless to make him stop.
So she had allowed it to finish, lying still and unmoving on the blanket, flat on her back with her legs pushed wide apart. She remembered, as if a bird, watching, with a sense of sad perplexity, as his body rose and fell and he groaned as he pushed in and out of her. For her there had been a small amount of pleasure mixed with the pain but it was not much. It did not override the sense of loss.
Then, when it was done, he had removed himself from her with a shuddering moan, leaving that part wet and blee
ding. She had felt a sense of strong remorse.
But it was done, even if disappointing. It had given her little pleasure then and, even now, she felt short-changed. Soon after he had dressed and left, suggesting they meet again soon.
She had not responded. She had known she would not do this with him again. For the next few days she had thanked him for invitations to do more things with her but declined. Then he was gone. She had not heard from him over the three years since. On that day, when it was done, she remembered she had also felt relief that no one else knew.
Since that time she had little inclination to repeat it with another man, religious beliefs aside. She still held to those religious beliefs but they were not so strong now. She knew that almost everyone else her age, married or unmarried, did these things without second thoughts. They did not seem to feel any guilt. Now she wondered was it really guilt and remorse? Or was it just that she had done it with the wrong man at the wrong time and, with another man, it would be different?
As she wondered of other men she found the face of this man, Mark, come into her mind. Now he was doing this thing with another girl and not with her. So, even though she sensed a raw sexuality with this man, Mark, that made her tingle, she did her best to ignore it and push it away.
She expected that Mark would leave on the same day as his girlfriend. Instead he stayed on another night; she saw his name again in the guest list. In the afternoon and evening she glimpsed him walking in the distance and felt a strange thrill despite trying not to notice. That night she was rostered to serve in the backpacker bar. She took along her guitar; she had not played for over a week and felt a need to make music.
At first there was another girl behind the bar with her and while she served Isabelle played with her guitar and sang her bracket of Piaf songs. As she started to play she could see that Mark was sitting at a table at the back. She had not noticed him come in and had not served him a drink. But he had a drink in his hand and was talking to another man a few years younger, explaining something with his hands.
When her song began she saw him turn towards her and put down his drink. She sensed his attention had locked onto her. A couple times as she looked up she connected with his eyes and sensed admiration.
When the songs were finished there was strong applause and a steady stream of tips which she split with her co-worker. Soon after that most people drifted off and now there were only half a dozen people remaining. She told the other girl she was happy to be the one to lock up, so her friend went off to bed.
At the end, before she closed the bar, it was only him and another couple left. This couple were only interested in each other. So she fell into a conversation with Mark, discovering small fragments of his life, though he was guarded in what he said. But she listened with interest as he told her of having worked in French Africa for a period.
She found that, notwithstanding his guarded way, she liked him and enjoyed his company. When the other couple left he made his excuses, though it seemed that he would have stayed on if they did. She would have liked to talk with him for longer
The following day he was gone and she did not expect to see him again, such was the traveller’s way. She felt regret as she watched his broad back walk away down the street.
A month passed and she decided to move on. It was now the end of July. She decided she wanted to see the desert and booked a flight from Cairns to Uluru, thinking that, after she saw the sights there, she would go on to Alice Springs and look for another job for a month or two before she travelled on again.
When she came to Yulara she saw a “Positions Vacant” sign at the Desert Sails Motel. After a short interview she gained a position on the strength of the reference from Cairns and her multilingual skills. Again the living was cheap with a room provided and her days off gave her the chance to explore. After a fortnight of work she had four days off. She caught a bus to Alice Springs.
As she left the bus and walked down the main street of Alice Springs toward the mall, she looked across the street. Her heart skipped a beat. There was that man, Mark, walking down the street, another girl on his arm, again very friendly. She felt regret that he was always with someone else, usually a girl prettier than her.
But then he looked her way, saw her and gave her a huge grin. He brought his friend across the road and introduced this girl to her.
“This is one of my best friends from Alice Springs, Martha, who is a nurse in the hospital. I have not seen her for almost a year, even though I am often in Alice Springs, and here she is walking down the street.”
Then he addressed them both, “So, as I start walking along to have a coffee with Martha, what do you know? I discover another friend, Isabelle who I met over a couple nights when I stayed at a backpacker lodge in Cairns. She was the delightful bar maid who served me drinks late in the night and listened to my drunken stories when most other people would have told me to go off to bed. Plus she plays the guitar, sings like an angel and talks with the most delightful French accent.
Martha held out her hand in welcome. Now they all walked along down the street together before stopping at a cafe for a coffee and snack.
Isabelle found something nice about meeting a person she already knew, and she liked his friendly friend. They all chatted freely, exchanging tales of the road and them talking of the goings on in this bush town. The picnic races were coming up the next weekend. Martha asked Isabelle and Mark if either would be able to come.
Isabelle replied, “Regretfully I cannot, I must catch a bus back to my job in Yulara in three days’ time. Then I must work for another ten days before I get my next break.”
Mark also said that he had to head out of town this afternoon and would be away for at least two weeks before he got back again, in fact he must leave very soon, he had just come to the town to get a couple things before heading out.
After half an hour he excused himself, saying he had a long way to drive tonight as he was expected at the Granites Gold Mine, in the Tanami Desert over 500 kilometres to the north-west, tomorrow at daylight. As he left he promised Martha he would call and see her when next in town.
Then he turned to Isabel, took her hand lightly in his own and said, “Most sincerely, I hope to meet you yet again somewhere in your travels.” He said it with such charm she felt herself blush inside.
Then he was gone and it was just her and Martha left to finish their coffees and food.
She found she really liked this girl, Martha. She was down to earth and good natured. She was also attractive in a well rounded way, if not classically beautiful.
Isabelle could not help herself; she wanted to know about what was between Martha and Mark. With Gallic directness she said. “Are you and Mark very good friends, do you know him well?” Then she blushed, self conscious at her prying.
Martha looked at her directly and laughed. “Oh, you mean, is he my boyfriend or lover? Are we shagging? God no! The girls he picks up, those girls are much classier than me, much more your type, more often girls from other countries, people who want to see the outback. He offers to show them and I am sure he offers them more than that. You know, nights out under the stars, two of them in one bed. I am sure he tells them when it is cold that he will keep them warm.” she said with a lascivious grin.
“Every time I see him he has a different one on his arm. Not that I would mind trying it on with him, just a one night stand would be fun, I am sure he is a great lover, you can tell it by the way he looks, so intense!
“But I have a regular boyfriend who works in the hospital laboratory. He is not as wild and exciting like Mark but he is much safer. Now he has gone away to Sydney for two weeks to see his family. That is why I am out on my own and at a bit of a loose end.
“Perhaps if Mark stayed in town tonight and we kicked on we would have a shag at the end of the night. I am sure he would give me a wild ride and one to remember, but that would be it. You can be sure I would never tell my boyfriend. B
ut never so far and we probably never will.
“Mark is just a good time mate. Someone to have a drink and a laugh with, a good friend but not in the way you were thinking. It is better that way as, for mates, sometimes the sex thing gets in the way.
“I have known him for a couple years since I treated him in hospital one time when he cut his hand pretty bad. He is as tough as an old boot and his hand got better before you could blink. But we became friends and now I see him now and then, maybe once every six months.
“I know almost nothing about him. He seems to come to the Alice for a few days once in a while; it is like a base for him. Sometimes, when he comes to town, he rings me and invites me out for a drink. But then he is gone again and many months go by until I next see him around.
“So it was a genuine pleasure to run into him this afternoon and an equally big one to meet you. Where are you staying in town? Perhaps we could go out for a drink together tonight instead.”
Isabelle admitted that she had yet to find a place to stay; she had only stepped off the bus from Yulara five minutes before she met them.
Martha said. “I have a little flat near the hospital. It has a spare room, with no one in it. Why don’t you stay there while you are here?”
So it was agreed. Isabelle wanted to give her some money but Martha would not hear of it. “No way, it would have been empty if you had not come. Tell you what. I have been promising myself a trip to the Rock for over a year. If you can squeeze me into your room, I am happy to sleep in my sleeping bag on the floor, that will save me some money in return.”
So it was agreed. Next weekend Martha would come to the Rock and stop with Isabelle in return for her giving Isabelle a bed in Alice Springs.
They walked down the road to Martha’s house and, after Isabelle was settled, went out for a drink. Their friendship grew from there.
Isabelle really liked the frank and open way that Martha talked about her life and loves. She had always kept her personal secrets much closer to her own chest.
They got on really well over the next three days. While Martha went to work during the days she told Isabelle the places and sights to see. Each night they met up for a drink and dinner, somewhere inexpensive, often with other friends of Martha’s.
Isabelle found herself liking this town and thinking that perhaps, in a month’s time, she would look for a job here for a couple months. It was nice to make a group of friends rather than continually meet strangers.
When Martha came down to the Rock on her days off Isabelle juggled her shifts to get a full day off. By the end of this she felt she had made a real friend, they exchanged home addresses to keep in touch in the future and Martha promised to visit her if she came to France.
With Martha gone Isabelle found herself strangely restless. She liked the desert but she had more or less seen what was to be seen around Uluru and the Olgas. While she could return to Alice and look for a job there she felt something beckoning her on, drawing her to go further.
One evening she was chatting to a guest at the bar when it was quiet. He told her he lived in the town of Broome, on the opposite side of the country from Cairns but up north too. He had a hotel in Broome and was always looking for barmaids and restaurant waiters. So, if she came there, he would be happy to give her a job.
Isabelle thought he might be sleazy to work for but it put the idea in her mind as he told her about this town with its tourist resorts and sandy beaches. She decided she would like to visit Broome.
She had heard of guests at the Desert Sails flying on to Broome direct. So there was must be a flight from here to there. The next day she looked up fares to Broome and booked a flight at the end of her batch of shifts.
Isabelle had the habit of sending a post card to her parents each week to keep them abreast of her travels; it was easier than ringing at the wrong time of day. So, after she made the booking, she put a postcard in the mail to tell them of her plans. She was starting to feel homesick to see her family again and said that, after Broome she may fly to Bali for a week, but then she was planning to head home. She said she was really looking forward to coming home. She knew they wanted to see her again too.
Her last week in Yulara flew by and then she was at the airport. Here she did a quick post card to Martha telling her of her changed plans. Then she was on the plane flying across endless barren red sands before she came to a small town on a peninsula reaching into sparkling blue ocean.
Stepping out of the plane the air was balmy and warm. She felt she had returned to the tropics though this was a much dryer place than Papeete. Its climate felt closer to the warm dry air of her home in the hills of Languedoc in the summer months, when the wiry hill grass was brown and dry and only in the river valleys was any green grass to be seen.
As she walked around the town, luxuriating in the dry air blowing from the inland, she felt more settled than in any place since she had left her home a long time ago.
She soon found a job in hotel in the main street of Broome town and it supplied a tiny room out the back for her to stay. It only had a fan in the ceiling, no air conditioning, but the nights were cool. She did not care for the fancier resorts that were scattered along the beaches out from the town. There was something more honest about the locals who drank in her pub than the other tourist visitors of the upmarket resorts. She found their jokes and coarse humour, which she was beginning to understand as her English got more fluent, reminded her of the worker humour of those who lived in her home village.
It felt comfortable and good. They all called her Frenchy and mocked her foreign accent but it was good humoured banter. A week went by and then another and then a month had passed. It was now September. The weather was warming up and the drinkers were getting thirstier, telling tales of the ferocious heat of the inland and also of huge storms sweeping the coast when the wet season came.
She found this foreign climate and its weather patterns fascinating and it continued to remind her of parts of her hillside home. Each week she sent another post card home though, as she was enjoying this place, she was now much vaguer about her return dates or plans.
She often did the late shifts as she was more a night than morning person. So it suited her to work into the late nights, there was a peaceful solitude when it was just her and a couple last drinkers remaining and making polite banter.
It was a Tuesday night, over a month after she came, and there were only three drinkers left in the bar talking together around a table in the corner. The time was somewhere between ten and eleven in the evening. Eleven was official closing time and, with such a small number of patrons, she said she was happy to finish the shift and lock up. So her co-worker went off to bed. She worked her way around the room; wiping down all the benches, stacking the bottles neatly and putting the glasses in the dishwasher to wash overnight.
She was bent down stacking glasses when she heard new footsteps come into the bar Another patron for a drink, she thought. She stood up and found herself looking into Mark’s face, opposite her at the counter.
She blushed then smiled a big smile, delighted to see him yet again.
He returned a huge grin. “Belle, I can’t believe my luck running into you again. Wherever I go to across Australia I seem destined to meet you.”
She felt a breathless with the delight at seeing his face again. Three times over as many months felt like real friendship. It was like a strange destiny linked their travels.
After about ten minutes the other drinkers finished their drinks and left. Then it was only them alone. He was perched on a bar stool, directly opposite her. They fell into easy conversation.
She asked him where he had come from and where he was going.
He told her that, after working for a fortnight in the Granites, he had been offered work on a station south of Broome, fixing windmills. It had kept him busy for three weeks but today he had finished the last mill. He had pulled up the pump, stripped it down, fitted new seals an
d made other adjustments. Now it was working as good as new. He had called to the station homestead for a beer and a meal before deciding to push on to town. He had figured he could make it for a drink at his regular Broome pub before it closed for the night.
He was now glad he had because, a couple times, feeling tired, he had almost stopped for the night and rolled out his swag, but the thought of a cold beer at the bar had kept him going.
She refilled his beer and replied it was good he had come tonight as tomorrow was her day off and, if he had come then, he probably would have missed her.
He said that really was a cause to celebrate. He would have hated to have missed her. He suggested she have a drink too, his buy.
She agreed, she said it was so nice to talk to someone she had known for a while. Then they had a second drink together as their conversation flowed along.
She asked him where he was going, he said he was heading north, he had been offered a month of work at the Argyle Diamond mine south of Kununurra, up near the Northern Territory, but had two weeks until he started. In the meantime wanted to explore a remote place further north in the Kimberley that he barely knew.
Isabelle realised, as he paused in his story, that she had enjoyed the talking so much that she had forgot to finish locking up and shutting down.
She looked up. The time was now a quarter to twelve.
She stood up apologetic. “I am sorry, I must close up now. I have so much enjoyed talking to you that I forgot the time. If the police come now I will be in trouble.”
Mark got up, walked over and locked the door to the outside, then turned off the outside light. “That should fix it,” he said. “Now they won’t ever know there is someone still inside.”
Isabelle felt a bit giddy and giggled.
Mark laughed too. “Reckon, seeing as I have kept you talking long past your bedtime, I should help you finish the tidying and lock up. That way you will be finished sooner.”
She said, “No, you are the guest. I get paid to do this work.
“It is an excuse to keep talking to you and I like helping you,” he said.
They worked side by side, with her explaining the tasks required and him doing them. After fifteen minutes it was done.
She said, “I suppose I should let you out and then lock the door behind you before I go home to bed.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought. “I wish you were not leaving again and travelling on so soon. It has been so nice seeing you and talking to you. Every time it happens I feel like you are gone before I have barely met you.”
Mark was looking at her quizzically. “I must admit I have enjoyed talking to you tonight more than anything else I have done since I met you in Cairns three months ago. Why don’t you come along with me for the trip? That way we get to keep talking and telling the stories to each other that we both want to hear.”
Isabelle blushed; then she looked awkward. “I like talking to you and listening to your stories but I am not very good with men. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I like being with you and talking to you. But I am not like the other women you know that go with men, you know, that way.” Then she blushed again.
Mark looked at her, even more curious. “Oh, are you one of those women who like other women, the gay ones?”
Now Isabelle went really bright red. She shook her head furiously, temporarily lost for words.
Mark touched her shoulder, eyebrows raised, questioning still.
“No it is not that. I like men just fine, but I don’t go with them the way you mean, it is hard to say why, perhaps I am just shy about that, I think being with men alone scares me. No I really don’t know what I mean, I am not scared of going with you, it’s what you say, that I don’t quite get that man-woman-in bed with stranger thing. It feels wrong.”
She realised she was burbling and not making sense and should stop. She put her hand on her mouth, forcing herself to stop talking, and just shook her head as she collected her thoughts.
“I would love to travel to the places you talk about and to see them. But I don’t want you to think that means.” She paused, again stuck for words; she just could not say it. She felt light headed and started giggling. “You must think I am such a prude,” she said.
Mark laughed, shook his head, and patted her arm. “Don’t be embarrassed. I understand what you are trying to say. That part doesn’t have to be part of the deal. I do like you, I won’t pretend I don’t find you attractive that way, I do. But I am happy for you just to come along as a friend, see the country and let me enjoy your company.
“That is far the most important thing. Being my friend is more than enough. I don’t want you to think that the other is a part of it. It should only happen when both the people really want it too.”
She found herself hugely relieved and excited. It filled her with a vast sense of adventure, the idea of travelling out away from civilisation to see all these other places.
She said, “Thank you Mark. I will come. When will we go?”
He winked and looked at her. “How about right now?”
She said, “But what about my job, I must give notice.”
Mark answered, “Don’t worry about that, he will find someone else tomorrow. That is how it is in these towns. Leave a note to say you had to leave unexpectedly and ask him to post on your pay-check to your home. Oh and tell him you have left the keys in the till. He will have a spare set to let himself in tomorrow in the morning.”
So Isabelle wrote out a brief note and showed it to Mark.
He said, “That should do just fine.” It did not say where she was going or with who. It did not seem important and Mark did not suggest it.
So they walked out into the street, pulling the door locked behind them. They got into Mark’s Toyota. He drove around to her room.
In five minutes she had packed all her things and they were on their way. Mark carried her bag and she carried her guitar as they left her room and locked the door.
It was a dark night with no moon as they drove away. After a few minutes they had left the town lights behind and the only sight was a huge mass of stars stretching from horizon. Isabelle found herself spellbound watching them all. They were much the same at Uluru but there the nights were cold and she had spent little time outdoors after the sun had set. Here the night air was balmy, just a tiny edge of coolness.
She found herself thinking, The universe is such a vast and empty place. I wonder if the God I have believed in all my life lives out there some place? Or does he live in another place again, another huge but separate place that I cannot see?
At first they drove along in silence but as the signs of the town fell away and there was just a black emptiness, she became aware of Mark’s occasional glance her way. She did not feel threatened by it; it was a friendly and inquiring look. After a few more minutes of silence he asked her, “Penny for your thoughts?”
At first she did not understand this English idiom. Then it came to her, he is asking what I am thinking about. She replied, “As I look out this huge and empty sky, I wonder where is the God; the one who made it all? Does he live out there, somewhere beyond all those many stars? Or does he live someplace else?
“What do you think? Perhaps you don’t believe he is there at all.”
Mark thought for a minute, used to making polite conversation with girls to try and charm them. But this was not like that; she was not making conversation for conversation’s sake. It was the sort of question he often wondered about when he was on his own, looking at the vast immensity of the earth and sky.
He liked that this girl did not try and engage him with cute words, but was challenging him, trying to understand his deep thoughts. So he drew breath and thought carefully before he answered. The pause went on and she looked at him inquiringly.
Finally he said. “I wish I knew the answer. When I was only little my mother, who was a Catholic from Italy, taught me to believe in God. She used to take me to ch
urch sometimes.
“Then, when I saw the awful things my father did to her and nobody helped her, neither other people nor God, because everyone was too frightened of my father. Then I thought that God was either a coward, a terrible bastard or he was not there at all, if he chose to ignore what was happening. I think I mostly believed he was there and a coward who did nothing. That made him an even bigger bastard than my father.
“After my mother died I had to look after myself and keep out of my father’s way or he would hurt me too. A few times I felt like my mother was watching out for me. Maybe she was there with God and God had done something good for her, to make up for the bad from my father and now she was trying to protect me in turn.
“Then they sent me to remand school and I saw the awful things that the men did to the little boys, and there was nobody to help them. At that place I stopped believing there was any God, even a weak god could not be such a gutless bastard as to let what they did happen.
“At that time I decided I had to take the place of God and hurt back anyone who tried to harm me. When I killed the first man who was trying to hurt me I was glad there was no God because it meant that, instead, I had taken his job to pay that man back for the evil things he did.
“Over the years I have killed more people who have done bad things. Each time I was glad it was me not God who was doing it. I liked doing it, causing the payback.
“But since I have lived out here and got to know the aboriginal people of this land, and the same in Africa where I also lived, I am not so sure now there is nothing there. To them God and the spirits are as a real as you or I are. They seem to gain wisdom and power from their believing.
“So it seems stupid for me to try and decide about God. If he is there, he is too big and I am too small for me to work him out like that. The more I see the less I really know of the limits to what is out there. In that place where so much is beyond understanding I think it would be very conceited of me to tell a God thing how to do his job.
“Instead I find a part of me wants to believe there is something out there, something keeping the balance of the universe. But I do not think it has much to do with the world down here. I think it is mostly up to us to do the good things and right the wrongs of the bad people. Most people can see the good and bad and know how to choose to do the good. But sometimes bad things take them over. Then I think they become like a sick animal which can spread its disease to others. When that happens it is up to each of us to stop them, whatever way we can.
“I don’t believe it is for government to do this. It is for the people who see it and know it has happened. That is the best place for justice. I think God has left us alone to sort out our own messes while he deals with the bigger stuff of running the Universe. I am happy it is that way.”
Isabelle looked at him in amazement, half shocked that he talked so openly about what he had done, the killing of other bad people, and half in awe at his honesty.
She said, “Do you normally tell people things like this, so honestly? I am not sure I could be that brave.”
“Normally I do not tell people anything about me, not even my real name. But you are different, you asked me an honest question and so I gave you an honest answer. It is like when you told me the truth about how you are with men, you did not make an excuse; you just said what was in your mind. That was brave. Perhaps it helped me to be a brave and truthful with you. I think you are a brave person. I most like brave people, particularly those who think deep thoughts.”
In that moment a real and a deep friendship was born. It was the first time Isabelle could remember being with a man who she thought was a true friend; she had girlfriends, but could not remember a man friend. And he clearly was a man, he exuded man feel. But that seemed of far lower importance; the thing that mattered was that he was her friend, a person who, like her, thought deep thoughts.
After driving for a couple hours, with odd fragments of conversation, Mark turned down a side track off the main road. After a couple minutes they came to the side of a small creek.
He said, “We both need to sleep. The sun will be up in another four hours and it is less than an hour’s drive to Derby where we can have some breakfast before our real adventure begins. So I will fix your bed and then I will fix mine.”
He lifted a wire frame off the back of his truck, placed a sheet of canvass and thin mattress over the wire, then covered it with a blanket and put a pillow at the head, saying. “It is not quite hotel class, but it is good to sleep off the ground around here, there are things that crawl around that you would not want sharing your bed. I will say good night now as I need to sleep too.”
He made a space for himself on the flat tray at the back of the truck, unrolled a bedding roll there then climbed up.
Isabelle said. “Thank you Mark and goodnight.” As she stretched on her bed and looked at the endless stars above, she felt a tiny regret he was not lying beside her. She would like to know what his body felt like.