The Departure Gate

'Shame' (From the series A Love) by Max Klinger, 1887-1903

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We arrived in the country together.

And flew home alone.

I cried from the moment I felt the plane become weightless. I took the smirks and sniggers at my insistence on wearing Ray-Bans for the entire flight to be judgements of vanity. As time passed and the tears remained, an air of uneasy confusion settled around me. This only intensified when the plane landed and I removed them, turning to the woman beside me to ask what she was planning on doing in Adelaide. She hesitated for a moment, then said she was visiting her daughter, before telling me about her grandchildren.

When she politely returned the question, I said, “Making my way home.”

I knew it was a bad idea before we left. By then, flats had been emptied, jobs resigned from, tickets booked. We agreed that we would make the trip as friends. There were people he knew who he had arranged for us to stay with along the way. He asked that we maintain the appearance of being a couple, unless he said otherwise. To me, it felt like an unnecessary use of energy — I couldn’t see why this would be a problem — but I agreed to comply.

We might have pulled it off, had we been better actors.

Or less human.

Or had we not technically just broken up.

We made it as far as Sydney before I could no longer keep up the performance. We’d gone out for sushi at one of those places with a conveyor belt of delicately wrapped parcels. I remember him sniffing a salmon roll before putting it back. I wondered if the sushi minded being paraded in front of people in this way — the lack of dignity in the whole event.

Waiting at the bus stop afterwards, he said he’d already told the couple we were staying with in Manly — Chris and Jane — that we weren’t together anymore. Chris worked in finance and had a very nice car and a very crisp shirt. Even on the weekend. Jane was polite in that socially well-trained kind of way and always stood with both her hands behind her back, like we were in a team meeting.

I couldn’t understand why he’d waited to tell me this now. I winced at the conversation I’d had that morning with Jane about the imaginary flat he and I were going to get when we returned to our imaginary life together in Britain. He said he wanted to spend the day with them alone tomorrow, and that I wasn’t to come. I thought about all the things I could do. How much I didn’t want to be around him.

“What do you mean I can’t come?”

“I want to go out with them on my own. Without you.”

“You can’t invite me halfway around the world and then tell me to piss off once we’re here.”

“Lower your voice.” He had the look of a disappointed father. “Everyone can hear.” He glanced around at the other people sitting on the shiny red seats and loitering nearby, glancing at the noticeboard. All of them waiting for an update.

“Good!” I made sure I raised my voice. “I hope everyone can hear what a fucking arsehole you are.”

When someone let out a short, involuntary laugh, I felt justified.

The four of us went to the zoo the next day. In the reptile house, I told Jane that we were trying for a baby. That they should definitely fly over for our wedding. I said I was sure he was going to pop the question — that this was just a little patch we were going through. I asked whether she thought maroon or forest green was the right choice for the bridesmaids’ dresses.

When we woke the next morning on their sofa bed in their cramped flat, Jane brought us coffee and casually mentioned that their family were suddenly coming to town, and that they wouldn’t be free for the rest of the week after all.

By the next morning, we were on a flight to the Gold Coast.

The first night there, some of his friends came to our apartment. We paid over the odds for pills, but it was promised they would be worth it.

And they were.

I woke disoriented by the blinding daylight pouring in through the doors and windows. Outside, an immense golden beach, relentless waves rolling down the shore like dominoes. The high-rises lining the coast seemed both foreboding and vulnerable. An oceanic sadness welled up inside me.

I found him sprawled across the double bed in the spare room and wondered what time he’d got home.

We drove out to the suburbs that afternoon and stayed with another couple — Bernard and Jeanette. They were kind-natured and sweet. Homely, but fun. They liked a drink. Jeanette’s favourite phrase was It’s wine o’clock somewhere, delivered with a big, toothy smile. I remember them both smiling a lot.

Things were better there.

We even slept together once, drunk and high. For once, it felt almost human.

By lunchtime, whatever it was had gone.

Later, there was a poker night. The atmosphere shifted in ways I hadn’t anticipated. One of his friends — someone I’d known back home and liked — reprimanded me when I used his nickname.

“You don’t get to call me that.” It was the way he laughed that stunned and wounded me the most.

I hadn’t wanted to join the poker game, but they insisted. They explained the rules as we went along. When I won, they dismissed it as beginner’s luck and agreed they weren’t keen on the game anyway.

When we left at the end of the week, Jeanette hugged me and whispered, “You’re welcome here anytime. With or without him.”

It was the best secret I’d heard for ages.

His parents collected us from the airport in the Northern Territory and we drove through miles and miles of orange desert. I remember seeing a kangaroo running parallel to our car, along a ridge of sand higher up, and feeling afraid of this human-sized animal, not struggling to maintain speed.

When we pulled onto their driveway, it was night-time and I was ready for bed. His mother turned around in her seat.

“We’ve got a surprise for you.”

She was looking directly at him. I saw the edges of his father’s moustache lift.

“What is it?” he said, smiling.

Behind the wire fence that sectioned off an outside space at the side of the house, I could see shapes moving in the dark.

“We’ve got everyone here to see you!”

“When?”

I saw the moustache twitch again.

“Tomorrow?”

“No. Now!”

He looked from his mother to his father, then bolted out of the car towards the tall metal gate, his parents close behind him, beckoning for me to follow.

After a few brief introductions, I was left to my own devices, watching from a distance as he folded back into a life that had nothing to do with me. I excused myself with jet lag and went to bed, finding even less of a place of my own among his childhood things.

When I woke the next morning, I was taken to hospital. I had caught the mumps, most likely on the flight over, and spent a week there.

His mother came sometimes, bringing grapes, telling me he would collect me at the end of the week.

A month later, I had settled into a routine with his family. When they all went to work in the morning — his father had given him a job with his building firm — I would gather the washing from the rooms and put a load on. Hanging it out to dry in the stifling heat, it was always cooked by lunchtime. I vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom, wrote emails to friends back home, then slept through the afternoon because it was too hot to go anywhere.

One afternoon, I woke from a nap and went to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. He was sitting in the living room, watching porn.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched him for a moment.

“You’re home early.”

He didn’t say anything.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He glanced up at me, then back at the screen.

“What does it look like?”

I watched a little longer. On the television, a woman was oiling her chest, her body exaggerated and glossy.

“That’s a man,” I said.

He laughed. “No it’s not.”

I smiled.

“That’s a man.”

“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” he said, not turning around. “Can’t you just leave me in peace?”

I stayed where I was. On the screen, the performer stepped out of frame and returned, no longer disguised.

I watched the moment register for him.

We both felt satisfied at the same time.

Later that evening, we went out for dinner and spent an hour talking about his career development and future prospects. As I stared at the huge bowl of spaghetti in front of me, I asked him if we could talk about something else for a change. He asked the waiter for the bill.

We went to meet some of his friends for drinks afterwards in a bar, and one of them commented on my breasts. He asked me to apologise to this man — for the offence I’d expressed. “You always have to spoil everything.” I did as I was told and then wondered if I would have taken such offence if I’d had bigger breasts.

The next day, as I was aimlessly floating around their condo, his father sent me a text saying he had forgotten to put the bird out in the garden and asked whether I would do it. I stared at the parrot in his cage. He was once wild but had been rescued by his father as a baby, whom I’d seen offer this bird more affection than his own children.

“Your father wants me to put the bird in the cage in the garden.”

“Yeh.”

“Well, I can’t. What if he flies away?”

“He won’t fly away. Just hold your hand out — he’ll jump straight on.”

“But he doesn’t know me.”

“Just do it.”

He hung up the phone and I reluctantly opened the cage, staring at the bird suspiciously while holding out my hand. He hopped on and I managed to carry him through the kitchen and out into the garden. Just as I was about to place him in his cage, he spread his wings and flew up high into the bright blue, clear sky, and away.

Everyone thought they knew why it had ended. And I let them. Because the punishment for the lie was easier than accepting the truth.

I had gone there out of revenge — or something close enough to it. An ill-thought-out attempt to give pain somewhere to land and rectify the imbalance.

I had met him in a bar and willingly followed him to his hotel room.

The only thing I remember after that was telling him to stop — that I couldn’t breathe — and the weight of him pressing down on top of me.