Chapter Two

2


A duck’s quack does echo

I was from Auckland, New Zealand, but had lived in Brisbane for nine years. Gabriel was from a tiny rural village in North Yorkshire and had lived with me in Brisbane for a year. She had also lived in London and Durham and God knows where else since running away from her vile family at sixteen; backpacking her way across three continents and befriending people along the way, including me. So, you can see, there were a swag of people we (Gabriel mostly) felt were entitled to our news firsthand – straight from the Shetland pony’s mouth, so to speak.

All nearest and dearest had received our intoxicating news while we were intoxicated in a Montmartre bar and in no state to quibble over mobile phone bills to England, Australia and New Zealand.

This just left everybody else.

On our return to Brisbane, two ‘Guess what!’ lists were drawn up – an A List and a B List. The A List were those we would telephone. The B List were those we would snail mail (email just seemed too tacky).

The A List ‘Guess what!’ calls were made. The B List ‘Guess what!’ letters were posted to the four corners of the world – the furthest of these perhaps taking a week to reach their destination via Australia Post. This was just long enough for Gabriel to fly into the latest of her sudden vitriolic rages over nothing, dump me and get the next plane back to England.

The first congratulatory call came in while I was in the drive giving her departing taxi the finger. I got to it on the second ring as the phone was in my hand – I was about to call Gabriel’s mobile just in case she hadn’t seen the finger. I answered it because I assumed she had.

It was a German girl who Gabriel had met in Perth, whose English was atrocious, phrases such as ‘No, no, wait! We’ve actually just split up!’ and ‘No! Listen, you stupid Nazi, she’s just dumped me and buggered off to the airport!’ falling on hopelessly foreign ears. The only time we spoke the same language was when she hung up on me.

The phone rang again fifteen minutes later. Just long enough for Gabriel to have had second thoughts.

‘Hello?’…

They were New Zealanders. Uncles and aunts and cousins clustered around the phone whispering and giggling, age range mid-forties down to mid-teens and after a ‘One…two…three,’ from Uncle Ian, they began to sing. The song they had chosen was Congratulations.

I endured one discordant line and hung up on them.

Clearly I needed to screen my calls.

Beep!

‘Hi. This is Bailey Harland. I’m either out or antisocial. If you’re calling to congratulate Gabriel and I on our engagement, there is no engagement. Gabriel has left me. She got on a plane and effed off. If you’re not calling to congratulate us on our engagement, please make duck noises after the beep and I might just pick up. Thanks for calling!’

Beep!

A pause and nose breathing down the line. The caller, no doubt thrown by my message, seemed to be considering whether to hang up or make duck noises.

Then two unconvincing quacks. The duck impersonator was male, but unidentifiable as tends to be the case with people impersonating a duck.

I picked up. ‘Hello?

‘Bailey? It’s Michael.’ Michael was a cousin from New Zealand. ‘What the hell’s happened? I was all set to sing Congratulations!’

‘Not now, Michael. Sorry. It’s all a bit fresh. See ya.’

I hung up and had a howl.

Beep!

A pause. Then three quacks in rapid succession. Again male.

‘Hello?’

‘Bailey? Andrew.’ Andrew was a mate from McCarthy Ellison Worldwide: Brisbane, the advertising agency I worked for. ‘God, man! I suppose this would be a bad time to sing Congratulations!’

‘You could try Commiserations. Actually, it’s a bad time generally.’

‘What’s with the duck noises thing?’

‘I’m trying to scare off well wishers. And rubber neckers.’

‘Fair enough too. God, so what happened?’

‘Well, one minute I was holding the phone like this. Then it just slipped out of my hand like this and…’

I hung up on him, called my boss’s mobile and took a week’s compassionate leave.

It was a mistake. For that entire week, my house reverberated to the sound of duck noises, not to mention an iPod mix of deliciously anguished break-up songs: Jeff Buckley, Last goodbye; David Gray, Alibi; Doves, Friday’s Dust; Silverchair, Miss You Love; Queens of the Stone Age, Long Slow Goodbye; Coldplay, The Scientist; Alice in Chains, Got Me Wrong (Unplugged); Antony and the Johnsons, Hope There’s Someone; Kaki King, Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers; Broken Social Scene, Her Disappearing Theme; Embrace, Looking As You Are; Sigur Ros, Glosoli; Rosie Thomas, Farewell; James Blunt, Goodbye My Lover; Alex Lloyd, Green; and Radiohead, A Punch-up at a Wedding.

There was also Nellie Furtado, I’m Like a Bird…Someone recently told Gabriel she bore a passing resemblance to the little Canadian-Portuguese songstress, thus beginning a short stalker-like obsession of picture clipping and manic replays of the aforementioned song. Fortunately it ended before she had to be committed.

So I’m like a bird was mixed in with the rest, if for no other reason than its prophesied accuracy. All these songs were downloaded onto my iPod like the broodingly indulgent madman I’d temporarily become, all corralled into an obsessive little mix I named ‘Songs to slit your wrists to’. All played ad nauseum as I paced the house, the yard, the pool leaving trails of tears. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t shave or bathe. I just drank a bit. And smoked a lot.

I also came to distrust duck noises.

By the first afternoon, I’d stopped answering the phone. All my (and some of her) family and friends had become out and out liars, quacking their way into my confidence, turning from congratulators to interrogators on a gossip-fuelled whim.

There were exceptions:

Beep!

‘Quack, quack.’ Female. A pause. ‘Bailey?…Quack, quack…I’m not calling about the engagement, Bailey. That’s why I’m quacking. I’m calling to see if you’re still on for mixed doubles on Thursday…Oops! Maybe not. Sorry. Bye!’

And:

Beep!

‘Quack, quack.’ A laugh. ‘Ahm, mate, it’s Evan from Blockbuster Video regarding Fargo and American Beauty which are now two weeks overdue?’ A pause. ‘I’m happy to quack some more if you’ll pick up and tell us when we can have our video’s back…No?…Okay, mate. Bad time, I’m sure. If you get them back to us in the next couple of days, I’ll waive the fine. How does that sound? Cheers, mate. Bye.’

There were still decent people in the world. People who didn’t use duck noises deceitfully.

A select few opted not to call at all, sending their congratulations in cards instead. Cards attached to parcels containing engagement presents I now had no idea what to do with. If, as with token gifts, it’s the thought that counts, surely the same applied to token engagements. I’d always wanted a four slice toaster and I seriously needed some new bed linen. In an uncharacteristic display of moral fibre unbefitting an ethically pliable adman, I returned all the gifts. The very same day I received the following answer phone message:

‘Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!’

Female. Young. Probably about twenty three. Probably about five foot tall and English. I sat up in my chair and stared at the answer machine.

‘Monkey?’

I leapt from my chair faster than you can say ‘All is forgiven’ and snatched the phone.

The essence of the call: she missed me horribly and wanted me and her ring back. She wanted to reactivate the engagement. I agreed. On one condition: She had to learn to control her temper.

She agreed. On one condition: I had to move to England.

I was pleased to hear that she had fallen back into her old job at Hattie’s Homewares in Darlington so quickly. I was doubly pleased to hear that a local kitchenware supplier, Updike Littlejohn Ltd, had been so impressed with her vivaciousness and passion for butter curlers and apple corers, they had offered her a sales representative’s job. Gabriel informed me that Updike Littlejohn Ltd were the number one kitchenware distributor in the North East of England. She told me they had given her a territory and base salary and bonuses if she exceeded her monthly budgets. She told me she had bought a 1990 Skoda for fifty pounds. She told me this was the most exciting time of her life and she wanted me to be a part of it.

This was exceedingly unfair. Fine if I was a twenty three year old former backpacker like her, yet to set down any roots itchy feet couldn’t dig up. I was thirty five and settled in Brisbane, as boringly, steadfastly settled as an ungarnished flan. A good many of my friends were in Brisbane. I had a promising copywriting career at a multinational advertising agency, McCarthy Ellison Worldwide, in Brisbane.

I had two dogs in Brisbane…

Kurt and Courtney were my children. My best mates. The epicentre of my life for five and four years respectively. Kurt had already been Kurt when I adopted him from the RSPCA shelter in Fairfield, Brisbane. Courtney had blundered into our midst one morning in a city park, a small yellow bundle of stray puppy. When no one bothered to claim her, we kept her. Kurt – Rottweiler, German shepherd cross – and Courtney – bull mastiff cross – represented the largest and furriest obstacle to me joining Gabriel in England. They were as important to me as she was and I was petrified of losing them. I simply couldn’t lose them.

That said…

Gabriel’s father was dying. At least she hoped he was. Two mild heart attacks in three months had certainly been a good sign. ‘My family took my childhood from me and I’ll never forgive them for that,’ she’d said down a phone line from Durham. ‘I don’t care how it looks. This is a chance to get something back.’

That something was money. Potentially quite a lot of it.

Austin Hogg ran Windy Dale Eggs, the second largest battery hen egg producer in Yorkshire. While his fortune was not of Gates proportions, there was still a sizable windfall to be had. It all depended on who inherited Windy Dale Eggs in the event of his death. Did he plan an equal split within the family? Or would one lucky person get the lot? Not even wife Mariabella Hogg knew what his plans were.

Gabriel, despite her vocal disapproval of both boozing family and business, still held a cherished place in her father’s beleaguered heart. The question was: could she winkle her way back into the paternal consciousness so conspicuously and shamelessly and claim her fair share of the family fortune? A fortune, it has to be said, eked through the merciless exploitation of chickens. I didn’t condone Gabriel’s behaviour. Nor did I condone the exploitation of chickens. In fact, I deplored it. I was opposed to cruelty towards any bird or animal. Yet I loved Gabriel dearly. And there was something alluring about easy money. Particularly a Lotto-sized lump of it. What could we do with such money? Aside from obviously set ourselves up for life. Well, we could set up a private shelter for homeless dogs or fund a sanctuary for liberated Indian dancing bears. No one would ask where the money came from and, perhaps, there would be something poignant, something ultimately paradoxically good come from the suffering of all those chickens.

That was my epiphany. The moment I knew I had to go.

Leaving was a torturously drawn out process – you live in a city eight years, there is a lot of excess baggage to shed before you can fit your life in two Samsonites. Household effects and cars aside, long term tenancy agreements don’t go away easily. Nor do jobs.

At a strategically timed moment in that arduous process, I confronted the CEO of McCarthy Ellison Brisbane and gave notice. Which was difficult: He was a friend. He understood, said so, and asked me if I had a job lined up in England. I said no. He said McCarthy Ellison had offices in over a hundred-and-fifty cities across the world, which I knew, and that one of those offices was in North Yorkshire, which I didn’t know. He said this office was in a place called Leeds and he’d talk to them if I wished. I told him I wished. McCarthy Ellison Leeds asked for my CV and portfolio to be couriered to them forthwith. UPS did their job and a week later I did what was left of mine via video conference. They liked me. They offered me a job. I accepted. We shook hands as satisfactorily as hands can be shaken through a video screen and I hugged the CEO of McCarthy Ellison Brisbane like a brother.

I rang Gabriel in a flap. She’d been staying with a girlfriend in Durham while she got her head together.

‘So, you want to live in Leeds, then?’ she said less than elated.

‘No, I want to live wherever you want to live.’

‘I thought the plan was to live in the country.’

‘That’s still the plan.’

‘But you’ve just got a job in Leeds.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘Do you know where Leeds is?’

‘Vaguely. It’s in Yorkshire.’

‘Do you know how big Yorkshire is?’

It transpired I’d created a bit of a rod for our backs. Rather than having the whole of Yorkshire to trawl for rural rental properties, Gabriel was now confined within an hour’s commute of Leeds, which became an hour and a half, then two hours as she failed to find anything meeting my long list of pre-requisites. But she was working on it in and around peddling potato peelers across North Yorkshire, Durham and Cumbria. Fortunately her sales job allowed her to be something of a gypsy, only calling into her Newcastle head office every Friday afternoon to submit her customer orders.

Seven long and painful months after Gabriel disappeared out of my world in a yellow cab bound for Brisbane International Airport and I gave her the finger, everything I owned was either packed, sold or mercilessly dumped, and I was in a cab headed for that same airport.

Bound for England. Bound for Gabriel. And her unholy family of battery hen farmers. If only Family Hogg knew what sort of prospective son-in-law was about to drop into their midst.