Charlie and Pearl (24 page)

CHARLIE

There are days when I think she’s doing really well. All the fruit that I keep squeezing into her has put a pink tinge back into her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes. I banned all crap food from the motor home, although she threw a tantrum about her beloved red wine and at the very next internet cafe made me pull over so she could show me numerous websites (largely Mediterranean) extolling the
many
benefits
of drinking wine daily
. So I let her keep it. Well I had to really after she found the secret stash of twisties and raspberry liquorice and Cadbury caramel chocolate I had hidden in a drawer under the bed. Oops.

“Hypocrite!” she laughed.

And then there are the days when I know she’s in pain and I feel incredible rage towards the world and it’s all I can do to smile and hug her and carry on as
if
everything is as it should be. She’s the most witty, vibrant person I have ever met; even now as we travel I meet no one as colourful as she is. No one who lights up the surrounding air like she does, who makes people smile just by smiling at them.

Who the hell gets to make the decisions on who lives and who dies...that’s what I want to know
.
I have no control and I have never felt so helpless.

Her laugh is still the same. I try everything I can every day to hear it because it reminds me that no matter what is happening to her
inside her
body she’s still the same girl I fell in love with, and also because of the saying, ‘Laughter is the best medicine’. It’s worth a try.

If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ I’m sure you’ll remember the scene with the turtles in the current, I can’t remember what it was called exactly, but they were like cool surfer dudes man, and Nemo’s dad and Dory hitched a ride with them. Well the backpacker highway in New Zealand is a bit like that. Familiar people everywhere you pull up, all following the same current. It’s nice. Makes me proud to be a kiwi to see how much they love our country.
We enjoyed spending time with them.

Sometimes though there were nights when we just wanted to be alone. Those nights we parked somewhere remote, enjoyed being
just
the two of us, cooking dinner together, watching the sunset and then when it got dark crawling into bed together. I would hold her close and try hard to memorise the feel of our bodies together. We still made love almost daily, in fact she initiated it more than I did. I was scared of hurting her but it was like she had something to prove. Sometimes when we made love she did it with such fury, a roughness that she never had before. I didn’t know the reasoning behind it, but hey, I certainly wasn’t complaining.

PEARL

The list. To be honest I was all for forgetting it. Who needed a reminder of
the things I would never accomplish when it
already hovered over my like a dark cloud. I didn’t have the energy. But Charlie wouldn’t let me
forget about it
.
He’d had it
typed up a
nd framed then hung it right above our bed so it was the last thing I saw when I went to sleep and the first thing I saw when I woke up.

Along with the rafting we’d crossed off:

-
             
Travel around New Zealand in a massive luxury motor home

The rest we separated into two groups, ones we could accomplish and ones we would have to admit defeat on. Then we set about doing some of the others.

In Taupo I ate raw fish sushi
by the lake while ducks hovered nearby hoping for scraps
. It was squishy and slimy and I nearly threw it back up. The seaweed smelt rank and the fish smelled fishy. “
That’s disgusting
” I said, “I don’t know how Japanese people eat this every day.
No wonder they’re so bloody skinny
”.
We played mini putt golf (I won; I think Charlie may have thrown the game though, no one can be that bad) and watched people throw themselves off a cliff attached by the ankles to a bungy cord. Charlie made noises about doing it but when it came down to it he chickened out.

In Gisborne
,
in a little
alcove at the back of
a music
shop that played thumping reggae beats,
I got my first tattoo and fuck, did it hurt
.
We spent ages looking over the sample books beforehand. I couldn’t believe the
things
some people put on their bodies. Hideous things, like snakes eating clowns, and skulls with maggots crawling out the eyes
. Even
the Grim Reaper
himself
.
Why tempt fate?

Charlie wouldn’t tell me what he decided upon. “It’s a surprise” he told me.

I went through the books twice
and nothing really appealed, but in the end I got a little tattoo of a blue anchor on my left bicep. I felt like pop-eye.

All up, for both of us, it took over 2 hours and cost, wait for it, nearly $
500
hundred dollars. Yikes. I nearly pulled out when I hea
rd the price because I figured even though it was on the list
it was really a waste of time seeing how in a few months the tattoos would be dust along with
the rest of
me
,
b
ut Charlie insisted, handing over his card and telling me firmly to “
shut up and get in the chair
”.

While I
was getting mine done another tattoo artist, who had blue hair and piercings through his chin, nose, forehead and eyebrows, tattooed Charlie on the other side of the shop where I couldn’t see what he was getting. When he triumphantly showed me the finished product I
burst
into tears
,
because the great lovable idiot had got a picture of an
open
oyster with a pearl
nestled
snugly
inside.

“I’m your oyster” he said, grinning. “And you’re my pearl”.

CHARLIE

I love my Tattoo.
It hurt like hell but I held it together as t
here was, after all, a man covered in tattoos with a needle nearby. I didn’t want him to think I was a
total wimp
.
H
e probably did
anyway
because I did
flinch and
whimper a few times as he
did it.
Who knew they hurt so much? I mean, obviously I knew it was done with a needle, but I didn’t know the needle was
repeatedly dragged across your skin like some kind of medieval torture treatment
.
I have a healthy new respect for the guys back home with whole arm sleeve tattoos. After today you’d probably need to knock me out to do anything like that.

They didn’t have
anything like
the tattoo I wanted
in their books
, so I asked if I could use their internet and a few Google image searches
later,
voila
.
A simple
case of printing it, tracing it and the magic work they do with ink and some liquid and I found myself the proud wearer of a
tattoo
of an open oyster shell, with a giant Pearl
sheltered
safely
inside. Pearl cried when she saw it.
Happy tears though
, which made
all
the pain worthwhile.

PEARL

My lips are bruised. Well, if they’re not, they should be. They haven’t had as much action in my
whole life as they have tonight.

From Wellington w
e caught the
interislander
ferry
across
the Cook Strait to the South island.
The journey
sucked actually. I’d been looking forward to
it as I’d never been on a boat
that size before, but
it turns out I get sea sick,
thanks to waves
I considered
GIANT but
which
Charlie said
were
merely a ‘gentle swell’. I gave him a ‘gentle’ punch on the arm in answer. Ha.

When we drove off
at
the other end I was so relieved to be back on solid, unmoving, ground that I insisted we stop somewhere in Picton and celebrate, rather than drive to Nelson as we’d originally planned. We drove round in circles for awhile, admiring the picturesque town, but even though it was full of cute cafes and nice restaurants nowhere jumped out at us so we drove for 40 minutes along the coast to Havelock where we found the perfect character pub called The Clansman.
I love Irish and Scottish pubs. They have so much character and The Clansman didn’t let us down. We ate fresh mussels for entre, then I had a venison main and, because I dared him to, Charlie order
ed
a haggis.

Just the thought of it makes me feel sick. Sheep’s hearts, livers and lungs all cooked in its stomach? Yuck. Whoever invented it must have been starving.

Charlie made a fair effort to eat it, pulling faces and gagging while I laughed so much my cheeks hurt and tears came out my eyes.

“Never again” he said. 

“
But y
ou didn’t eat it all”

“Be careful you,” he warned, “It’s my turn to pick for you next”.

The sign said it would be karaoke night in a few hours so we decided to stay for that, spent the time relaxed on couches in front of an open fire, drinking wine and
I even tried a
Guinness
.
According to Charlie his maternal grandmother used to insist his mother drink it when breastfeeding.

“That explains a lot
,
” I
teased
.

Karaoke night was
huge fun
. It was slow to start, but then a hen’s party came in
to the pub and
the girls got up there and sang
drunken
girlie anthems like Cyndi Laupers “Girls just wanna have fun” and Madonna’s “Like a virgin” although judging by the amount of slinky satiny short dresses, make up and heels between them Charlie and I decided it had probably been a long time since any of them could make that claim. We started chatting and they dragged us up to sing Pink’s “Get the party started” with them. I noticed Charlie kept trying to gently steer me away from the microphone
– not sure what that was about.