The animal cocked its head by way of an answer.
‘What do you think? Shall we go home tomorrow or not? You to your forest, and me to mine?’
The possum ran off, it didn’t want to be persuaded to go anywhere. It had its home here in the park, among the cars, the people and the litter bins.
In Woolloomooloo he walked past a bar. The embassy had rung. He had said he would ring back. What was Birgitta thinking? She didn’t say much. And he hadn’t asked much. She’d said nothing about her birthday, perhaps because she’d known he would come up with some idiotic idea. Go over the top. Give her a much too expensive present or say something superfluous for the sole reason that it was the last evening and deep down he felt bad because he was going. ‘What’s the point?’ she might have thought.
Like Kristin when she came back from England.
They had met on the terrace outside Frogner Kafé and Kristin had told him she would be home for two months. She was tanned and gentle and smiled her old smile over a glass of beer, and he had known exactly what he was going to say and do. It was like playing an old song on the piano you thought you’d forgotten – his head was empty, but his fingers knew their way. The two of them had got drunk, but that was before getting drunk was the be-all and end-all, so Harry could remember the rest as well. They had caught the tram to town, and Kristin had smiled her way past the queue at the Sardines club for both of them. In the night, sweaty from dancing, they had taken a taxi back up to Frogner, climbed over the fence into the lido, and on the top diving board, ten metres above the deserted park, they had shared a bottle of wine Kristin had brought in her bag, looking out over Oslo and telling each other what they wanted to be, which was always different from what they had said the previous time. Then they had held hands, run and jumped off the edge. As they fell he’d heard her shrill scream in his ears like a wonderful, out-of-control fire alarm. He had been lying on the edge of the pool laughing when she climbed up out of the water and came towards him with her dress clinging to her body.
The next morning they had woken up wrapped around each other in his bed, sweaty, hung-over and aroused, and he had opened the balcony door and returned to the bed with a swaying post-booze erection, which she had welcomed with glee. He had fucked her stupid, clever and with passion, and the sounds of children playing in the backyard had been drowned when the fire alarm went off again.
It was only afterwards that she’d posed the enigmatic question.
‘What’s the point?’
What was the point if there couldn’t be anything between them? If she was going back to England, if he was so selfish, if they were so different and would never get married, have children and build a house together? If it wasn’t going anywhere?
‘Aren’t the last twenty-four hours good enough reason in themselves?’ Harry had said. ‘What if they find a lump in your breast tomorrow, what’s the point then? If you’re in your house with your children and a black eye, hoping your husband has gone to sleep before you go to bed, what’s the point then? Are you really so sure you can capture happiness with your master plan?’
She had called him an immoral, shallow hedonist and said there was more to life than bonking.
‘I know you want all that other shit,’ Harry had said, ‘but do you need to be one step along the road to marital nirvana? When you’re in an old people’s home you’ll have forgotten the colour of the dinner service you got as a wedding present, but I swear you’ll remember the diving board and making love by the pool afterwards.’
She was the one who really should have been the bohemian of the two of them, but the last words she said as she marched out, slamming the door, was that he didn’t understand a thing and it was time he grew up.
‘What’s the point?’ Harry shouted, and a passing couple in Harmer Street turned.
Didn’t Birgitta know what the point was, either? Was she afraid of things getting out of hand because he was leaving tomorrow? Was that why she preferred to have a birthday party on the phone to Sweden? Of course he should have asked her straight out, but as before, what was the point?
Harry could feel how tired he was and knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep. He turned and went back to the bar. There were neon lights on the ceiling with dead insects inside and poker machines along the walls. He found a table by the window, waited for service and decided not to order if no one came. He just wanted to sit down.
The man came over and asked Harry what he wanted, and Harry gave the drinks menu a long, hard look before ordering a Coke. In the window he saw his double reflection, and wished Andrew could have been here now so that he had someone to discuss the case with.