This is a love story

The birds are singing and I can sense that the room is becoming light. I keep my eyes tightly closed because I can feel no weight across my feet. Adam gets up for a wee in the backyard - but he’s not followed by the scramble of paws today.

It’s so quiet.

I tell myself to start. I see myself walking to the kitchen to make coffee, as if nothing has changed.

Adam appears in front of me and holds out his huge arms and says,

‘Come here and kiss me!’

I put my arms up in a Kung Fu pose and say,

‘Careful, I’m a pirate!’

‘That doesn’t make sense!’ he declares, and wraps his arms around me. I pretend to struggle, but he is too big, I know my efforts are useless.

I also make a declaration, ‘I know my efforts are useless!’

He hugs me and kisses me on the cheeks and the forehead. The tears are falling out of my eyes and my lips are shaking. He pushes his head into my neck and breathes there until I stop. I wonder how he doesn’t suffocate.

I never would have met Pearl if Rocket hadn’t slutted it all over the Kimberley like she did.

Rocket was Pearl’s mum - a grey and dirty terrier. She travelled across the Kimberley with Tim - a grey and leathery landscaper. They got around together in cars and bobcats and trucks, and even in a helicopter once. While Tim planted native trees in remote communities, Rocket went off in search of boyfriends. Tim made sure all the puppies went to good homes and held reunions every couple of years.

The last of the 2007 litter were presented to me out the back of Mark’s pearling cottage in Sasawaka Street, in Broome. It was a blue and crisp dry season morning and we were soaking up the warmth of the brickwork. My heart was full again, with my new home and my new friend. Tim stepped into the yard with a clove cigarette in his mouth and a puppy in each hand.

‘Puppies!’, said everyone.

He lowered them so gently to the ground with his very brown arms, and we laughed at how they lurched about with their new legs and squashed faces.

‘And who’s this little baba ganoush?’ Mark was referring to the little white ball that was veering off into the bushes. I picked her up. She fit into the palm of my hand.

‘She fits in the palm of my hand!’

I knew then that this was a ruse to make me fall in love with her. But I had only just arrived in Broome - I only had a contract for a year. Then what? I couldn’t imagine where I might go next, and do they allow dogs there? And if they don’t, then I can’t go there either? What if I’m doing something at dinner time and can’t give her food? How can I plan to be available at dinner time for the next fifteen years?

‘You can just keep her overnight and think about it.’

I popped her down and watched her stagger this way and that. She needed me.

‘She looks like a Margaret. I’ve always wanted a dog called Margaret - she was meant to be a Labrador though.’

‘Oh my God!’ Mark was outraged. ‘You can’t call her Margaret! It sounds like someone’s old aunty! What about …Perla! She looks like a little pearl and it’s perfect for Broome. Bella Perla!’

‘Aunty Pearl.’ I agreed. It was very sweet.

‘Little Pearl.’

‘She’s not coming back, is she?’

‘Not unless she can make her own way back from the crematorium’

We laugh a bit.

‘No’, Adam says, ‘she’s not coming back.’

So that’s that then.

‘But I’m still here’, he says.

This is a love story.

In the early days, Pearl and I rode around Broome on my red shiny moped. She sat in a bag around my neck, so she could see the road ahead and we could both feel the wind in our hair. Every morning, before sunrise, we saddled up and raced out to Cable beach before it got too hot. We ran and ran. We ran for years. If it was cool, she chased horses and we met new friends. In cyclone season, the wind could spit the rain sideways like tiny pins, so on those days, I carried her. I took her to work with me, where she circled and scratched around my feet and jumped in and out of my lap, while I made TV shows. She camped in my tent, up and down the Kimberley coast. I watched her sneak in from her all night adventures, turned completely red and covered in prickles. I panicked once when I found her strolling out onto a high tree branch along the Fitzroy River.

She started bringing me presents whenever I came home from somewhere - from buying milk, or bringing the bins in. They were usually sticks and leaves, which she would store for safe keeping on Mark’s couch. I found her once trying to push a tree branch through the back door.

When I wanted to escape from the sanity of life, I would crawl into a little shelter just outside the world, and Pearly would come with me. She licked the tears off my face and listened to me talk, endlessly. She was my audience for many improvised songs and dances. I thanked her for coming and said ‘you’re welcome.’

There is a big hedge in our street. Recently, while Adam and I were walking past it, I imagined how funny it would be to take him completely by surprise and push him into it. It was very tempting so I gave him a big push in the back and waited for him to disappear into the scratchy abyss. But he never swayed from the path and without a word he took my arm and escorted me into the hedge.

‘Oh my god!’ You pushed me into the hedge!’

‘What?!’

Since that time, I have also tried to send Adam into the spiky grass near the train station - the prickles are thick and furious and up to my neck. But I have had no luck knocking him off balance, even with a running start. He is too solid. The fact that I keep bothering makes him laugh.

Eventually, Pearl and I got sore legs from running so we had to find an alternative. Most afternoons, we made ourselves comfortable on Tim’s verandah and waited for him to get back from work. I drank a cold beer and pulled the sticks out of Rocket’s hair until we heard the truck pull into the front yard. Then we all raced to the gate, piled into the car and headed out to Broome port. Tim would say, ‘That was a fucked day’ and I’d say, ‘It was so fucking hot’ and then we all fell out of the car and raced down to the beach. We walked away the last hour of the day, sighing at the purple and pink clouds in the fading light and imagined what a relief it would be if they rained. We walked to black rock. Everyone had to place a foot or paw on black rock. On the way back, the girls were hairy silhouettes, diving into the rock pools and rolling in the sand until they became crumbed schnitzels. We said hello to other walkers and laughed at their dogs. We always stopped to watch the orange ball disappear into the sea and Tim would say, ‘It’s so fucking beautiful’ and I would say, ‘It so fucking is.’

I put a pie in the Tupperware cupboard the other day, I can’t sit still and I don’t know where my patience went. My little friend is gone and has taken our stuff with her. I am reluctant to fill that empty space, or even let anyone touch it. I am unreasonable, often. Adam moves around me but I can feel his frustration.

‘I feel like everything I say annoys you. I can see it.’

‘That’s because you’re being annoying.’

We laugh a bit.

‘You should be as sad as you need to be. And annoying.’

He wipes the tears off my face and says ‘Keep moving. Keep moving.’

Then he sends me to the hardware store to buy wood and hinges so we can make some trestle legs for the garden table. He writes the shopping list on a piece of wood, and says, ‘Now you’ll look like a proper chippy’. I find everything I need without any help from the staff so I don’t get to show off my list. That night we light a fire and BBQ lamb chops until the fat is crispy. We eat in the garden, at our new table.

Eventually, I found another friend, and then there were three of us - it was me and Pearly and Adam. We all went to live in the Kimberley bush for a year. We forged deep tracks together. We swam on secluded beaches, saved a horse’s life and scaled a mighty gorge. We cut our dinners from a killer, wrote books in 40 degrees and cooled our bodies in a creek. Then times were changing, so we forged a flooded river and drove across the country. We had things to do. We chose Melbourne.

Pearly’s thin hair became a thick woollen coat and I was very jealous of her. We took to walking around the local streets in our new winter jackets. Pearly chased cats and I met all the old greek and Italian ladies. Adam made a dog basket for my bike, so Pearly and I could ride around together with the wind in our hair. When we all needed to escape the traffic and bitumen, we drove to cottages with wood fires and walked empty beaches with wild seas. Pearly dived and rolled until she became a crumbed schnitzel. Adam and I agreed, it was very beautiful.

Every night, Pearly made herself comfortable on my pillow and breathed into Adam’s face. Every night I asked her politely to move down to her spot at the end of the bed. She snuggled into my legs and we were all where we needed to be.

Adam and I ride our bikes to Papa Gelato. Adam takes the lead. I look back to confirm that Pearly is not in her basket and say, ‘good girl’. I wait until Adam is cruising slowly, unsuspecting, and then belt past him, feigning little effort and leaving him in my dust. While I catch my breath, he effortlessly overtakes me, without so much as a sideways glance. I veer too far into the street and my wheel slips into the tram track. It’s a tight fit so I can’t turn out of it. I don’t know what to do so I yell to Adam, ‘Adam!’, to warn him that something’s about to happen. I leap off the moving bike and it crashes to the ground. Our neighbours appear on the street, all licking their Papa Gelato cones and asking if I’m OK. Adam gets a coconut and pineapple gelato, and I get Israeli yoghurt with cashews. Then it occurs to me that I could have just stopped the bike by putting the breaks on, and then stepped off. I tell Adam and we both wonder why I didn’t do that.

At night, when we have read enough chapters for sleep, Adam wraps in behind me and completely encircles me with his huge arms. He is like a big warm sock. I feel comforted that I will wake tomorrow with the weight of his body next to me.

This is a love story.