Chapter 9: Darwin!

“So, tell me, honey, is this Maggie that you were married to, for a whole decade or more, completely off her rocker?”

Bonnie had allowed a fuel tanker road train of six tanker trailers pass the junction going south before pulling away from the motel and crossing the highway to the northbound side. She was comfortably in top gear before allowing her additional thoughts to be expressed verbally. “To even consider such a thing as giving you up without a fight, or not begging you on her hands and knees to come back, is just plain stupid.”

“She certainly had kangaroos bouncing around in the top paddock,” I replied, stifling a yawn at ten past six in the morning. I sat in the shotgun seat again as Bonnie decided she needed to build up her truck driving experience, “but I was completely ignorant of that fact until the very night I left her for good. I am only delighted that you, whose opinion I now value above all others, have formed the same view.”

“I shouldn’t really knock her that seriously, as her actions were at one and the same time her loss and my gain. I should find her, embrace her and thank her for my present state of utter happiness. However, she brought this on herself, I find all her actions inexcusable and, frankly, inexplicable. Why do you think she was uninterested in really finding you, giving the authorities such duff info that there was very little chance of the police ever tracing you?”

“For one thing, I realised years ago that she never really loved me. That came as a flash of clarity in that Darwin birthing room five years ago. Marriage to an unsuspecting galah like me meant that Maggie could still enjoy her single sheila’s lifestyle for a couple of months every year, knowing that she would not end up as a partied-out and rather desperate old spinster in her mid-thirties. That was when she planned to settled down to have the family, including an heir that, as an only daughter, her father fully expected her to produce, to continue the bloodline and inherit his fortune. So, she worked on me when I arrived fresh from college, knowing she was an attractive woman that I could easily fall in love with. Now, though, I now realise that her attraction was only skin deep. She even laid off the third member of staff, so the two of us had to work long hours together, keeping unsociable hours.”

“So it was she who laid the third person off?”

“Her father did, to be honest. George Stone was always looking to cut costs on the newspaper to help boost his company’s profit. He used the paper to advertise his other businesses, a supermarket, travel agents and estate agents, he printed ecstatic raves about them. Maggie knew I had the skills and training to work faster, to find solutions to get more out of a raw photo than she or the other assistant could. I hardly knew the bloke I was supposed to be working alongside, because I was in one day and he was gone almost the next. Both Maggie and I worked long hours together, well into the evening most days, which meant that I had little social life and few opportunities to build friendships in a strange new and isolated city. Her plan worked, she turned on the charm, I fell in love with her and was completely under her spell, all the way through until she broke my heart at the end.”

“Are you under my spell now, sweetheart?” She reached across from the driver’s seat and squeezed my hand.

“Completely,” I admitted. “I’m yours as long as you want me.”

“Well, no spells, Mark. I want us to be in partnership, no domination by either one of us. I need us to each be wanting the other. And I’ll be working my arse off for the rest of my life making sure we’re both 100% committed to each other. I want to feel as happy as I am now, forever.”

“Me too. So what are your immediate plans?”

“Our plans Mark,” she glanced over to see me eagerly nod my agreement to her correction. “I’ve already booked my seat on the flight to Peru using the Wi-fi at the hotel, we just need to get to the airport early enough and see if we can swap around seats to sit together for the three-stage flight. According to the Consulate I can stay up to 183 days in Peru—”

“I was thinking more like 40 to 60 days would cover it.”

“We can be flexible about the stay. However, Monika tells me I still have some modelling commitments in the spring in the US that I couldn’t break. I hope to be completely free until then and after. I would like to introduce you to my family in Copenhagen immediately after we leave Peru, would that be alright?”

“Too right!” I said, “Can’t have them worrying about you going off with an unknown truckie on walkabout. Some stranger that you’ve only known for a couple of days.”

“It may only be a few days but I’ve been looking out for you forever, Mark. We’ll send them some of your photos. Dad’s an artist and Mum has a really good eye for composition, which should reassure them that you are no ordinary trucker.”

“I’ll just try to be myself then.”

“Completely the best thing you could do. My mother can smell a phoney from miles off,” she told me.

“I have no worries about meeting your parents. In fact it would be great to get to know them. I’m completely free these next couple of years, with no set plans, I just want opportunities to see the world and go where I can take interesting photos. Even if they are not destined for publication, each photo is a challenge to get the right result. Operating in different light conditions, temperatures and atmospheric weather are great experiences for me and will enable me to grow as a photographer.”

“So you’d come on some of those occasional modelling location shoots with me?”

“Yes. You try and stop me!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I think it’s important to be with each other as much as possible. I hate the idea of going away on location for one or two weeks and not be with you.”

“That’s what happened in my marriage, and look what happened to that!”

“Not going to happen with us. We’ll travel together and we’re going to have a lot of fun before we settle down and have our own family.”

“Most of my enjoyment will be seeing you, looking at you without feeling intrusive or pervy.”

“We’ll be looking at each other a lot, we can already say so much to each other through our eyes alone. I know I have seen anger and pain and love, just in the past couple of days and, as our knowledge of each other grows I am sure we will both know what we’re thinking.”

“After my experience, all I want is for us to be as open books between us, no secrets, no bottling up even little niggles.”

“I know, models can be so self-centred. I always try and interact with people around me.”

“I’ve seen that, it’s one of the things I love about you. So, if we have something to say I want us both to say it. Anything you want to ask, any doubts about what we want to do, I just don’t want us to go along with the other just because that is what they and only they want.”

“I know. It was Monika who pointed out something about commitments when I asked her to clear my schedule. At the outset, I just wanted to retire immediately. She reminded me that this company have employed me for up to six weeks a year, in spells of two or three weeks at a time for fourteen years. Therefore, if I was packing up for good, I really ought to give them some decent period of notice at least. And I have always enjoyed working with them in some extraordinary places, New Orleans last year and Yellowstone Park the year before.”

“Fine with me. I don’t want you to change, we can both work around our commitments. I would happily go to the ends of the earth with you. They don’t have to make any special arrangements for me, I can pay my own way.”

“No, Mark, it’s ‘we pay our own way’ from now on.”

“Yes, here’s to us.”

“Hooray for us, I want to shout out about us to the world.”

“We can after nine, I’ll ring your lawyer in Adelaide and give him all Maggie and my personal details, and just go for a divorce for irreconcilable differences. At least we can be registered as having the divorce ‘under way’.”

“Well, when you are asked to give your permanent address, I’ll sing out with my apartment address in Monaco. I never rent it out to anyone, even when I’m not there for weeks at a time, but family are forever dropping in and using it. So there’s usually someone about who will check my mail, and they’ll check yours too, if you like.”

“As we agreed, no secrets. What space do you have? I guess it’s sometimes rather crowded, is it?

“I have a three-bedroom apartment in one of the newer parts of Monaco, Fonteveille, with sea views on both sides of the apartment and views and use of a private swimming pool shared by the building. Monaco is a tax haven that has maximised the benefit of my earnings over the past fifteen years since I moved there. I started with a small flat and gradually moved up the scale as more money came in and I could afford better accommodation. This apartment has three double bedrooms, each with ensuite and a guest toilet off the entrance hall. There is an open plan kitchen next to a large lounge with seating for ten in the sitting area and eight at the dining table. Under the kitchen is a wine cellar for storage. The apartment is over 300 square metres. Outside is a balcony measuring 30 square metres, with garage space for two cars in the basement. I have an electric car, so it is always fully charged. Tina has been there this all this last week while I was away. It will be a great place for us to live short term, but not ideal for very young families. We could eventually rent it out but I would like to retain it and have it to retire to in the distant future. I have no relationships or family outside Denmark and I have no real ambition in life any more than settling down for a happy family life with a special husband and children we can devote time to and give them a great start in life.”

“The apartment sounds expensive.”

“It was just under ten million euros, equivalent to maybe thirteen or fourteen million US dollars when I bought it three years ago, in a quieter less fashionable part of Monaco. It was about twelve years old and had been completely renovated. It was bought outright as I had built up sufficient equity during my time in Monaco. Monaco is a fascinating place, where you can get anything done at any time of the year; Tina used my mobile phone back up to get a cloned phone for me on Christmas Day, as well as get my local travel agent to book the connecting flights from Copenhagen and Monaco to Paris for the flight to Darwin.”

I was quiet for a couple of minutes, a little shocked. OK, I was a nobody and had been for all my 38 years. I’d lived through a dysfunctional family life, three adult years with no wages at Uni, then the most junior of junior reporters/photographers on a small regional paper; spent a couple of years trying to run a company that was just one bad debt away from foreclosure and the last couple of years that were profitable and looked promising for the future but became too large for one man to keep juggling in the air, especially when my heart was only half in it in frustration. Yet this girl had been on the top of her game for most of what was a quarter of a century. She had talent, looks, poise, personality, with what seemed to me was a effortless and elegant beauty that would mature. I was certain that even in her seventies she would outshine most women in their late forties. Her earning power was probably endless, while I about to be unemployed and possibly unendingly unemployable with a two-year walkabout on my résumé, pinning my future potential on turning what had become my hobby into a career. I might even face imprisonment if prosecuted for using excessive force, or even if discovered that I had let Bonnie as an unlicensed driver drive my truck on public roads. I hesitated before returning to the conversation.

“My property is nowhere near as grand. I have a four bedroom house bought and paid for in the south east suburbs of Melbourne, with good schools in the area. It’s on a good-sized plot, so could be expanded, which would make it a bonzer family home. I might not get it back for three years though, if the current tenants love it as much as I do and take the offered option to extend the short-term lease. I did take out a small mortgage on it once, to use to invest in the business four years ago, but that was all paid up about a year back, as I was planning to clear all the decks as soon as Uncle Pete decided to retire this year. It was valued at 600,000 Australian dollars, when I was sorting out subbing it out for the next two or three years. I don’t have much in the way of savings, just a few thousand, but I should clear around two and a half million Australian dollars in the New Year from the sale of the company once all the liabilities are settled. I was intending to sit down and salt it away in various investments sometime in the next month.”

“I have a great financial advisor in Monaco, who has looked after my investments and pension and given some great advice. She sends me a quarterly report on current position and her recommendations. She clearly knows what kinds of businesses I will not invest in.”

No, I chooked out, I was not going to ask what her worth was.

“I have been putting away for a pension for the last five years,” I continued, “and was paying well over the odds to make up for this next passage of non-employment in my life, but the twelve years’ contribution to the Sentinel’s pension scheme was frozen when I left and not had any updates. It’s there for when I claim it but it probably won’t amount to much.”

“Once they know where you live...”

“True. Anyway, I love water and sailing, so Monaco sounds a great place to stay while I process all my photos.”

“Geraldine, my publisher friend and her husband would be easy to persuade to visit us and look through your photos as they enjoy a holiday. She employs ghost writers and editors or has access to specialist freelancers that could do a lot of the work towards making fantastic books for you.”

“Blue, I don’t know what I did, other than following through those automatic responses to threats and self preservation reactions, to lead me to deserve having you in my life, but I will be saying a few prayers before I go to bed tonight, if only to show a fraction of my gratitude.”

She laughed and said she should be the one praying as I was the answer to her prayers. “Although I think I screamed enough ‘Oh Gods!’ last night to cover the both of us for a while”.

“Well you brought me to my knees in devotion more times that I thought I had in me!”

And then she laughed even harder until the tears ran. I thought that whatever happens between us in the near or distant future, I will cherish that laughter forever.

As I drove for a spell and we covered the miles early on that Thursday morning, I could see Bonnie’s head droop and soon she was fast asleep. Listening to her gentle breathing was another delight. I thought back to the magic night we had just shared and enjoyed together.

We had phoned ahead and booked the room at Coober Pedy. Sure enough the State had booked a room for us but I upgraded to the best room they had, with their best pink champagne on ice. They welcomed us with open arms, recognising Bonnie immediately and treating her as if she was a princess, making me wonder whether I had taken any notice at all of what had been happening in popular culture during the last few years. We enjoyed a candlelit meal before retiring to the suite. Room service collected all our soiled clothes and promised to return them by the time we were ready to leave at 6am, and so we booked our early breakfast call for 5am.

Bonnie insisted on showering first and came out with a bathrobe on. I took my turn, showered and shaved and, wearing just a pair of new grundies bought from the hotel store, stepped out into a darkened bedroom lit only by a single bedside candle. She wasn’t in or on the bed as I expected, although the covers were turned back on both sides of the bed ready for us.

“Mark, come here.” Her voice was low and husky.

She stood by the window, not in front of it but to one side, lit across her from behind by one of the motel lights illuminating the boardwalks, her face thrown into shadow as I blocked the flickering light from the candle next to the bed. I took in the view of her, wearing a diaphanous night dress that came halfway down her long, lean thighs. Looking up, I could see that her arms were outstretched, inviting me to wrap myself into them. In three strides I reached her, my arms snaked around her narrow waist, gently squeezing her into me, her arms around my broad shoulders. As I bent my head and moved in to kiss her, she canted her head the opposite way and our lips met. We pashed as we had before, our tongues hungrily seeking each other out. One of her hands moved up to caress the back of my head. One of mine moved up to the back of her lovely head. We kissed harder, our breathing becoming deeper and more breathless as we devoured each other.

“I am ready for you now, Mark, my love,” she said as we both caught our breath.

“And I for you, Bonnie, I love you so much.” I moved my hands along her shoulders and arms until I held both hands and I pulled her towards the bed, me walking backwards. “Where did the candle... ?”

“Room Service.” She smiled.

“Er ... protection?”

“Shona managed to get my brand of the pill from the friendly chemists she knew was open Christmas Day. I had missed two days, so I took three pills together...” she paused in thought, “yesterday.”

She sat on the bed and, in one graceful movement, pulled the nightie over her head and threw it over the foot of the bed. She lifted her legs, twisted her torso and fluidly slipped under the covers, before scooting over to the other side of the bed. I slipped off my grundies, rather less gracefully than she’d sloughed her garments, and slipped into bed beside her. She held out her arms once more in invitation, so we avoided any awkwardness and we resumed our kissing. Now we were hot bare flesh to bare flesh and during our kissing we explored each other’s intimate areas with our gentle but insinuating fingertips. Her breasts were flattened against her chest but I soon found one button nipple, which I squeezed and rolled, before breaking off our kiss and traveled down her with my lips and teeth kissing and nipping her chin, throat, chest and engorged nipple, which I lapped at with my tongue, kissed, sucked and nipped gently with my teeth. For a while I revelled in the thought that this was my personal plaything that could tirelessly entertain me with delight forever, if such a time was granted.

“Yes, that’s lovely,” she breathed, both hands in my short bristly hair as she lay on her back, relieved of tension but undulating sensually against me.

I moved my body down and rolled onto her, moving my knees between her knees, my other hand found her now uncovered left nipple and began to caress it.

“Take me now, Mark, I’m ready and I want you, I need you, now,” she insisted.

“I won’t last long,” I said, leaving my ministrations to her wet nipple, “it’s been way too long since...”

“No matter, we have all night, I want to make you mine now, to consummate our pairing this instant, and I want to be yours, over and over again.”

I moved up, but not before kissing the dry nipple, her chest, clavicles, throat and lips. By the time I reached her neck, her hand had grasped my donger and guided me towards her hot core. After rubbing me up and down her wetness, she held me in position and I pressed myself into her.

Strewth, she was wet, but also as tight as a platypus’ clencher.

“Relax, honey,” I cooed, “I’m knocking on your door and still looking for the welcome mat.”

She laughed, “Easy for you to say ‘relax’, you’re as hard as a railroad spike! And as for the welcome mat I thought you’d appreciate me using the new blades in the razor.”

“Oh, I really do, and looking forward to sliding my tongue over your smooth lips later.”

“Mmm so’m I!” she giggled. Just the act of laughing, the waves from her giggles slightly undulating and relaxing her body, released her tension and I sunk deeply and gratefully into her up to the hilt, while she received me hungrily. I paused, comfortably sheathed in her hot moistness, while her muscles clenched and released by turns, as if he was savouring the moment too. She sighed and said “I love you, Mark, you are a perfect fit.”

“And I love you, Bonnie, you are my dreamland girl.”

She was right, of course, neither of us lasted long that first time. My brain was going over why this felt so great and clicked so much better than any other lovemaking ever before, and what was so different from previous, just as she settled, sighing sated into my shoulder.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

Oh boy! I think I was trying to say how wonderful it had been and it was, but my mind was also looking back. She giggled. “I know what you’re really thinking, ‘Why was this so brilliant compared to any other time?’, right?”

“Yeah, you’re absolutely right. This was so much better than anything before, by a factor beyond my humble reckoning.”

“Tell me about ... before.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh, talking about sex, especially bad sex, is good for good sex.”

“Ahh, is there any such thing as bad sex?”

“Well, Knighty, you may be shocked to hear this and you should be eternally grateful that there is no chance you’ll ever experience such a thing in the rest of our fulfilling lifetimes, but there is bad sex out there for the unsuspecting girl.”

“Oh.” Me and my big mouth, only a couple of days ago she was contemplating having to deal with gang rape and its consequences. With her wealth and media influence, her abusers must have considered that her death the only safe outcome for the guilty participants.

“Just because you’ve never been in a situation where you’ve not got your rocks off. It’s, well, different for a girl.” Her voice was soft and light, not at all thinking along the same dark thoughts as I.

“Because we blokes don’t get you off often enough?” I responded in as light a fashion.

“No, it’s not that, any intimacy with the one you love, where there is care and consideration on both sides is good sex, ... no, better than that, it is great sex. It’s like I can afford to give out great presents to family at Christmas but get only small but loving tokens in return and that is always satisfaction enough for me. Lovemaking is not just a physical act that ends when the man gets off, it is the giving and sharing, the passion and the caring. Look, my first time ever with a man was horrible, truly horrible and I cried and cried over it for days after. That was bad sex. What about you?”

“Oh bugger, I didn’t cry, but it was embarrassing my very first time.”

“Come on, tell all, no secrets from Agony Auntie Bonita.” She snuggled in even closer, kissing my neck, giving me the courage to disclose all and any bedroom secrets, however embarrassing.

“I’ve never even told Maggie this, or anyone, not even a mate, especially not even a mate. My first time with a girl was at the summer camp before we left school for uni. My first lover was Marylyn, who was a year ahead of me at school and already at a tech college for a year. She was about to do a gap year and was earning summer break money as one of the camp helpers. She was a sexually experienced girl who basically tuned into me from the outset, regarding me as fanny bait as soon as she saw me. I never stood a chance.”

“Pushy, was she? Did she also leave her knickers off the first time she snuggled in with you, Knighty?” she giggled.

“No, we were both naked in a single sleeping bag the first night of camp, we were both incredibly skinnier then.”

“Was she a model?”

“No, she dropped out of uni and was later apprenticed as a motor mechanic. We didn’t go out long, maybe three months, she wrote me a ‘Dear John’ letter while I was in Perth Uni, to say she had fallen for one of her servo station customers. My Aunt found out later that she got knocked up shortly after, was abandoned by her new beau, and as far as I know is still a single mum. What about you?”

“Details first, Mister Cornwall, what was so embarrassingly memorable about your first?”

“I had probably been carrying this condom in my wallet for a couple of years, so long that the name had virtually rubbed off the cover—”

“Did it break?”

“No, worse than that. We ... er ... did the deed and I got ‘my rocks off’, as you eloquently put it, almost straight away. But Marylyn was still hot to trot and insisted I keep going, banging away at her. I didn’t know any different and kept trying to keep it up, but I was tired, overexcited and had completely shot my bolt. I started to shrink, even through she was metaphorically beating me with a whip as she drove me to her fast approaching finishing line. Just as she came and squeezed me in her throes, the condom came off completely and disappeared.”

“Oh no! Completely off, inside her?”

“Yeah, deep inside her, as far as one can go within her. Didn’t come down for days, or at least that’s what she told me later. She ribbed me about it for days before saying it eventually came out on its own accord.”

“She didn’t sound too distressed.”

“No, she was already on the pill and she knew it was my first time and therefore safe as far as transmitted diseases were concerned. She treated it as a joke and continually pulled my leg about it, while I was mortified for a long while after.”

“Yes, I can imagine you spending time making sure it was on properly for quite a while. So what about your wedding night?”

“Ahh. You haven’t told me about your first time yet.”

“Oh, of course. You know I was telling you about how in my business agents have such power and sometimes you are expected to sleep with someone to get jobs and help you get established?”

She looked up and waited until I nodded before lowering her head and tucked into my neck again.

“I was 18 and working in Paris and, although I had worked for a couple of smaller grown up fashion shows on the cakewalk and I had a deep and impressive studio portfolio built up over eight or nine years in the business as a child. Fashion modelling was what I aspired to do. But then the modelling work as I changed from girl to woman dried up. I tried auditioning for everything going and not getting anywhere. Then one of the girls told me straight, that I needed to sleep with someone to get on. When I admitted that I had never had time for a boyfriend and was still a virgin, she put me onto this creep of an agent that preyed on young girls like me. That was my most horrid experience, even though he was quite mature, he was, on later reflection, quite gentle with me. However, during the act I closed down, refused to let him know how upset I was and felt unable to ‘join in’ with any enthusiasm.”

“And did it work?”

“Yes, he got me solid work for the best fashion shows for a year or two that got me noticed and very soon I was the toast of Paris. The ‘Bonnie’ perfume followed the Vogue photos, as you know. I never slept with him again, he ... well that first time with a virgin, particularly one as clearly upset, even though I tried to hide it, as I was, was his particular thing. I got over it. Now, how was your wedding night?”

“Not memorable at all. We had been lovers for two years, it was a long, exhausting and uncomfortable wedding day and we didn’t make love until the next morning. Well, I made love, I don’t think she did and it was what it felt like, just OK, ordinary. Compared to how it was with us is like comparing a cardboard vintage plonk with the Lanson pink champagne that we enjoyed tonight.”

Well, we made love four times during that all too short night. I had never been so exhausted yet so invigorated at the same time. Bonnie was simply wonderful, joyful, responsive, playful, laughing and smiling, trying impossible positions. She was a mistress of yoga and said she would enrol me for a few hot bikram sessions when we got to Monaco and loosen me up. She had studied ballet as well, so she was so lithe and supple. She showed me some moves that would have a Sydney theatre critic drooling at a sheep station’s AmDram night.

“I have to hold poses for a long time, so yoga has always been important to me,” she explained, “when I had that lean spell in Paris, I modelled for life studies at art schools, where I had to hold poses for hours on end. My father would paint all us girls as we grew up. No, not as nudes,” — she slapped my arm at my raised eyebrows — “except as newborns. He just loved to paint us.” She gently kissed my slapped arm. “Although my mother always had posed for him nude and still does, I expect. We kids often wandered into the studio to see her posing naked, while he furiously painted away. It was a natural and beautiful thing they openly shared, so none of us were ever ashamed of our bodies as we grew up.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, my love,” I said, “you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Well, I am not even the most beautiful woman in our family. Tina, the youngest, is the most stunning of the girls, but she only wants to be a scientist. My mother is 60 but she is often mistaken for my sister, and still looks good in a bikini. Dad’s four years younger than her. They met and fell in love as she modelled for him when he was an art student. They were 19 and 23 when they married. They are still completely devoted to each other. A love like that is touching and inspiring.”