Charlie and Pearl (4 page)

You can already see what’s coming right?

He backed away so fast I didn’t understand what had happened until a friend sat me down and told me he’d been seen in town with someone else.

I begged, I pleaded.

He resisted.

“We’re not good for each other,” he told me, “We’re too intense. It’s not how love is meant to be”.

I disagreed. It was exactly how I thought love should be, but he wouldn’t hear it.

“We moved too fast” he said.

How could I argue with that when even I knew it was true?

I was heartbroken, sick with it.

And then I was sick with something else.

The stick I peed on came out with a big pink +. So did the next one. There was no mistaking it.

He would pay his share, he said, but he didn’t want us to get back together.

CHARLIE

On the Sunday afternoon I could take it no longer, I drove out to her place. No flowers or chocolates, but I did take a bottle of wine that the guy at the liquor shop told me was a ‘particularly nice drop’ with smooth
characteristics
and velvety undertones.

Whatever the hell that meant.

I drove back and forth past her driveway
three
times before telling myself to grow a pair and parking on the verge.

The lawns
were long, the grass thick and wet in places. Like a lot of these holiday homes the gardens were sparse, not
many
flowers, just hard wearing, low maintenance tussock plants. I thought, perhaps I should offer to mow the lawns for her? Good opportunity for an opening for another visit.

Walking round the side of the house I saw that the ranch slider that faced out to sea was wide open, there was a book and an empty glass of water on the outside table, but no sign of her.
The view was a knock out. I could see right out to the islands, including White Island, its plume of volcanic steam stark white against the blue of the sky.
A large container ship was splayed against the
horizon
, on its way to Tauranga to unload its cargo. Despite living in a coastal town, it was moments like this that made me realise how little I took the time to appreciate the
view on my doorstep.

Climbing the deck,
I knocked on the open door, waited a couple of minutes then stepped inside, telling myself that my concerns for her safety (she had been quite pale and weak looking the other day) validated any crime I might be committing.

Dishes were piled high in the kitchen
and clothes were
draped over chairs and
lying around on the lounge floor, like she’d simply dropped them where she took them off. She was messy
. I’m not a particularly fastidious kind of guy, but my mother had raised me to at least pick up after myself
.

I cleared my throat.

“Pearl?” I called out.

There was no answer.

I really didn’t want to go looking down the hall into bedrooms and definitely not the bathroom, what if I walked in on her naked in the bath?
Then for sure I’d be committing some kind of criminal act!

I decided I’d wait on the deck for awhile and had been sitting there for about 20 minutes, just starting to wonder if maybe I should check the bedroom after all when I noticed a figure walking
my
way along the beach, the foam from the waves bubbling around her knees. I could tell it was her. Skinny even from here, her dark hair blowing loose around her shoulders, arms hugging her chest like she was cold.

Any doubts I’d had vanished, seeing her I still felt the same way, in my chest and, because I had no control over it, my groin. Before she noticed me I half turned and quickly adjusted myself a little, I didn’t want
my feelings to be that obvious.

She
was almost at the top of the stairs before she saw me,
and then
she screamed a little and jumped backwards.

“Sorry!” I reached out to steady her. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright, just wanted to stop by and check in on you, make sure you’re ok”. But as I said it I realised she was crying, there were salty tear tracks
staining
her cheeks and she turned her head and wiped them away on her arm.

“I’m fine!” she said, and sniffed loudly.

“Ok” I wasn’t going to argue even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary.

That’s when
I ran out of conversation. I didn’t want to talk about the weather, or ask
inane
questions like how her stay was going, I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be alright because I was here to look after her, if she’d let me.

To hell with it, I opened my mouth to tell her so but then her arms were around my neck and her hips were pressed against mine and she was kissing me, and after that there was
no need for conversation at all.

I couldn’t think of another way to stop him asking questions.

I’d been for a long walk along the beach, my feet in the water, dodging
the odd
jellyfish and all I could think about was the time Adam and I flew to Queensland for a long weekend. He surprised me with the tickets; pick
ing
me up from work and instead of driving home we just drove straight to the airport and got on the plane.

It was the most spontaneous, wildest thing I’d ever done. We spent most of the weekend in our hotel room, making love, and the rest on the beach, sunbathing and swimming. It was glorious, the perfect holiday.

This beach couldn’t be more different, the sand darker, the water colder and pipi shells littering the shore. But a beach is a beach and the memories from that other one wouldn’t leave me alone.

So I didn’t see him through my tears until I almost walked into him. He was obviously nervous,
his eyes too bright and a huge smile plastered across his face, but standing with a brave,
forced confidence, rubbing his hands together as if he didn’t know where to put them. He asked me if I was ok and my answer came out
loud and piercing, like the cry of a seagull
.

And you know what, he looked at me with something that looked like pity but which may have been sadness, and I couldn’t handle that look. That’s the look I kept getting from everyone back home, everyone who knew about Adam and I, and what happened with the baby. I was sick to death of that look.

So I kissed him.

I
stood on my tip toes,
shut my eyes and I kissed him.

CHARLIE

She tasted of salt.

I didn’t want it to ever end.

PEARL

His breath was a little stale, but as far
as kisses go it wasn’t too bad
.

When I let him go and stepped back he just looked at me, an amazed, excited look like I was
a wrapped up
present
he’d just found underneath his tree Christmas morning.

“See....I’m fine” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Yes! You certainly are!” his voice had gone up an octave like a prepubescent boy.

He smiled
his
smile again; only this
time it had a hint of
anticipation.

CHARLIE

Here’s some more clichés for you....I’m over the moon, Singing in the rain, Walking on cloud nine!

I’m h
appy, in other words.

Happy, happy, happy, happy!
With a capital H.

My feet
feel like they’ve barely
touc
hed the ground since we kissed.

Of course, what happened afterwards wasn’t ideal. Instead of inviting me in and ravishing me, as I’d
rather
hoped, she
looked down at the deck,
told me she was tired and politely asked me to leave.

Still, it’s progress.

I had to confide in someone. “She’s like the sun Pete”, I told him; “she lights up my world and makes me feel all warm inside. Her face is like...well it’s....
you know that woman and the ships?
Ha
!
That woman was n
othing compared to my Pearl. S
he’s just....
gorgeous
” I sighed.

Pete was happy for me, pinched my cheeks
hard
and breathed in my face and told me to “jolly well make sure you hang on to her boy”. Later, he showed me a black and white picture of a
beautiful
young woman and told me it was his one true love,
Ava
, and that they’d been cruelly torn apart by the trials and ravishes of war, separated by oceans, destined to never see each other again but always to live in hope. He’d given her a lock of his hair
and in return, he said,
she gave him her shoe, a slipper, and it was one of his most treasured possessions.

A
moving story, but I knew
for a fact
that he’d cut the picture out of a book on 1920’s
actresses
because the book was lying on the table out back, open at the page with the big hole cut out of, the sciss
ors beside it. The slipper part, well
I could only guess he’d got his stories crossed with Cinderella somehow.

No harm done though. No need to call in the men
in the white coats
with the straight jacket just yet.

I hoped Pearl would come in and see me. Every day I took extra effort picking out what to wear
,
ok so I didn’t have a lot to choose from; my wardrobe consisting of jeans and T-shirts, but I did at least make
sure I wore clean ones
.
Love, for that’s the only explanation for this feeling I felt, had dulled my appetite a little. I hadn’t eaten takeaways in weeks and my skin was looking all the better for it, my clothes a little looser.  I also used the Clearasil scrub mum got me religiously every night and every morning