But of course the one who was noticing the difference was him. He had accosted me because he needed someone to talk to now that he’d finally made it after days of driving. He had to hear his own voice in Surfers just to be certain it was he who was here. He stood by my side, looking out over the untouched sand and the blinding sea. ‘It’s like bloody Hawaii,’ he said at last. Then in case that gave me the wrong impression of him, in case I thought he was skiting, he added, ‘Not that I’ve ever been to Hawaii, but I bet it’s like this.’

There’s no helping the poor. They just can’t lie like the rich.

I asked him if he intended to stay long.

‘Here? Might stay all summer. I’ve got nothing else to do. There’s no work down there. That’s why I came away. If I’m going to do nothing I thought I might as well do it up here.’

‘No point in not staying, then,’ I said.

He gave me the sad smile of the habitually isolated – wary but eager. He’d been on his own in his big, ugly, beaten-up Holden for days. Mine was the first non-radio voice he’d heard. I the only living soul he so far knew in Surfers Paradise. I was only sorry that I couldn’t, in my own person, encapsulate more that was paradisal for him.

I wished him well and watched him walk off towards the beach in his stained olive-green trousers – strides if ever I’d seen a pair – his silver buckle catching the sun. Directly in his path a young woman was coming out of the surf. Apart from a twist of string about her loins she was naked, and as she walked she shook the water from her breasts, droplet by droplet. He had his back to me now but I could see the tension of the long drive and the worry about unemployment flowing out of his shoulders.

We, on the other hand, were growing heavier with every kilometre. Somewhere in-between the twin towns of Coolangatta and Tweed Heads we crossed the border into New South Wales. The grand, expensive-looking Services Club, at which Gene Pitney was currently appearing, provided our farewell glimpse of the mess that was Queensland morality; for it was to this club that Queenslanders trailed in their thousands after dark, to play the poker machines they were denied, for the good of their immortal souls, in their own state.

But that didn’t mean we were pleased to leave it. ‘Now that I’m in New South Wales I feel I’m safe,’ Ros kept saying. ‘I feel as though I’m home.’

I’d never heard the words ‘safe’ and ‘home’ sound so desolate.

20 Found! – The Spangled Drongo

Twenty
 
Found! – The Spangled Drongo