I Get No Kick from Champagne

CROSSING (8)

We agreed that we would meet at around six that night. With Ken’s magic, to create magelights, and Sam’s and Tiltheus’s eyesight, it seemed that it might be a good time to travel during the early part of the night. I phoned Damo on my mobile, and told him the news.

“Are you coming with us, mate?” I asked. The unspoken question was – when are you going to stand up to Sonya?

His answer surprised me, both by what he said, and the grim way he said it.

“Too right, mate. I’ll catch the tram there.”

“We got a rucksack for you, and Ken’ll be making suitable clothes. And don’t bring your iPod. Just come as your own sweet self.”

“I’m not that thick, dickhead. See ya at six.”

I would have to winkle the truth about him and Sonya out of him when we saw each other at six. I was agog. Damo standing up to old bitchface. I had to know, and soon, what was going on.

I took Tiltheus for lunch on Lygon St. It was a Monday, so it wasn’t that full. All the same, there were plenty of interested looks, from men and women, even though we didn’t arrive on Graziella, but came in an altogether more plebeian way on the tram.

He was intrigued by pasta, had four café lattes (the last two decaf) and was as pleasant a lunchtime companion you could wish for. We talked about all sorts of inconsequential things – his life in the palace, the lovers before Danethon, about half of whom were intriguingly (to me, anyway) women, and what he thought of our world. He didn’t much like it, which at first surprised me, until I thought about it. At the very least, he was probably homesick. Also, as a noble back in never-never land, he’d had a pretty comfy life, and our civilisation provided lots of material things to ordinary people. If I’d lived in his world, I would probably have been a peasant, starving, smelly, with bad teeth and a narrow mind.

But he had more serious criticisms too. He said we were always hurrying, never had time to talk, that we seemed unfriendly (Ozzies, unfriendly! Go and try New York, I thought) and that the air smelled bad and the water tasted bad. So I decided I wouldn’t tell him about global warming or AIDS or the failed states of Africa and elsewhere. In a way, it would have been too much for him. Without a global media industry, he probably wouldn’t even know about other continents and their problems. I didn’t even know how big his kingdom was – a hundred square miles? A thousand? Ten thousand? And from his point of view, our world was Melbourne and the places he’d seen. And when I went to his world, I would know only those parts I saw for myself. No jets, no high-speed trains or cars. Just horses, carts, shank’s pony. It was weird.

We’d had a bottle of wine between us, and when we got back to the flat, we both flopped down onto the bed and went to sleep. But before I did that, I went and checked to see if the log cabin was still behind the cupboard. It was.

I woke up before Til, and made myself a cup of tea. Til hadn’t taken to tea, which was odd, given his passion for coffee. While the kettle was boiling I looked out onto the world that I was leaving and wondered if I would ever see it again. This wasn’t a young Australian’s European tour, with all the comforts of home just one plane flight away, courtesy of the Ozzie consular offices if you ran out of money. This was another world, with an uncertain link between it and my own, with customs I might run foul of, and with the Darklings, created from the same cloth as Tiltheus, but who were ultimate evil.

Damo arrived, walking very slowly, as if he was carrying a huge burden. I knew at once what had happened. Good, I thought. Now maybe he can find a woman who loves him for himself, not his money. I did not for one minute believe that Sonya cared for him, or loved him, or did any of the things a supportive lover and friend is supposed to do. I schooled my face to neutrality as he came up the stairs. It would never do to be too sympathetic or to gloat. A brief manly handshake would be all I could do, even though I knew he would be hurting terribly inside. I swear, I meant just to shake his hand, but I suppose I’d been too long with Tiltheus. Instead I gave him a brief hug, and put a can of VB in his hand.

“Shitty, huh?”

He was surprisingly phlegmatic about it. “I don’t think she ever really loved me,” he said. “She was always shittin’ me about something or other. And I really loved her Steve. I thought she was the one.”

“You might find someone beautiful over there.” I was hoping to distract him from the pain in the present.

“Like him?” Damo gestured to Tiltheus.

“Yeah. A female version.”

“Think the women are as beautiful?” he said, hopeful. So not that hurt, then, I thought sardonically. And also not unaware of male beauty!

“Yeah. Tiltheus doesn’t think he’s beautiful.”

“Real men never do.”

“Real men? You getting broad minded? Last time we spoke he was as queer as rocking horse droppings.”

“I’m awake, you fat, thieving dills,” said a sarcastic voice from the bed. Damo blushed scarlet.

“Sorry,” he muttered, staring at the floor.

Tiltheus put his hands behind his head and eyed us, a smile tickling his lips.

“What is it with you blokes? So terrified of something so effing natural and normal? What is going to happen to you if you have a kiss, a cuddle and a wank with another man? Will your precious drop off? Will you turn into a frog? What? Well go on, tell me! Come here and I’ll show you how easy it is – and how nice.”

Damo was still scarlet, with shame and embarrassment.

“Stop teasing, Tilly,” I said, annoyed with him. “Just get it into your head that Damo’s as straight as a plumber’s rule. It’s not that easy to get rid of the conditioning of a life time.”

“I’m the same age as you! You’ve had the same conditioning as me. And you’re thinkin’ of sleeping with Mr friggin’ beautiful friggin’ prince friggin’ angel effin’ being of light here.” Discomfort had made Damian angry.

I looked a Damian for a while. “Feeling better now?” I asked.

He gave me a reluctant grin. “Yeah.”

“OK,” I said, “let’s get something straight between the three of us. Firstly, Til and I are not rooting each other, if that’s anybody’s business but ours.” Yet, I added, sub voce. “Secondly, Til will not do anything to you to make you uncomfortable, will you, Til?” I looked firmly at him. He shook his head. “Thirdly, you won’t do anything to embarrass Til, will you, Damo?” I looked firmly at him. He tried to avoid my gaze. “Will you, Damo?” I repeated. He shook his head, staring at the floor. “Fourthly,” but I’d forgotten what the fourth point was. Damian waited a minute or two, and then he and Tiltheus looked at each other and grinned.

“And you were the one who went to uni! I thought you were supposed to learn how to debate there.”

“Get lost, you hopeless Mick loser. We English should never have allowed you Irish scum in, you know that, don’t you? Frigging uptight Catholics.” This was my favourite insult. I only used it when Damo was really upset. He grinned at me. It always worked. He was feeling better. Probably losing his temper had helped him get over the worst of breaking up with Sonya. When he was a bit happier I would ask him what she said. She had a very sharp tongue.

“Upper-class English git!” he replied affectionately. The fact that it was at least two generations since our ancestors had come from our ancestral lands was completely irrelevant to these ritual insults.

It started to get dark. Not long after, an elegant woman arm-in-arm with Jack, the man carrying a guitar case, and the woman a saxophone holder, walked up to the house, and the downstairs buzzer sounded. I pressed the button to let them in. “Top floor”, I shouted. For a moment, I wondered who the woman was, then realised, klutz that I am. “Madam,” I said, giving Sam an extravagant bow. He grinned amiably at me. “Turn round, let me see you. Mmm. Very tasty. Shoulders a bit too broad perhaps, bum a bit tight.” But beautiful, I thought, as a man or a woman. “Why the gear?” I asked aloud.

“Protection against the sun,” said Sam. He wore a large elegant hat with a gauzy veil, and long gloves. Underneath the dress were boots like those Tiltheus wore.

“Very convincing,” said Til. “You look like a reasonably well off gentlewoman from the provinces. But what about your clothes?” he asked Jack.

“Wiz is going to make all our clothes when he arrives,” said Jack. “He didn’t want two weirdly dressed people wandering the streets of Melbourne. He’s also got to teach us your language, and how to ride. He said he’ll do us all at once.”

Speak of the devil. Ken arrived in the usual way, without warning, just inside the doorway. This time he was carrying six backpacks and six sleeping bags in some sort of glowing net. Since Jack was standing where Ken materialised with his burdens, it caused some slight inconvenience. After Jack had picked himself up from the floor from under a pile of rucksacks, and everybody else had stopped laughing, he said, very calmly, “G’day, Ken. Nice of you to drop in.” There came another delighted whoop from the mattress and a cackle from Damian.

“My apologies,” said the good doctor. “Now,” he continued, quickly changing the subject, “let’s teach the three of you who don’t know Rhistênika the language, and everybody except Tiltheus and me how to ride a horse, and then get us all dressed in the right gear.” This time we stood in a circle holding hands, rather than sitting down, and I felt the now familiar rifling through my mind. When it was finished, I knew, without knowing how I knew, that I could ride a horse, using the odd saddles that the elves used, and also, how to fight with a rapier or a dagger. Damo was rapt – he did Shodo-Kan, and this was a new martial art, and he was an expert in it, with all Til’s knowledge and skills. We could tell that Tiltheus was a superb swordsman, and only partly because he had had the best teachers.

“Now,” said Ken, “the clothes.” He waved his hands in a series of very rapid gestures and we all found ourselves in the kind of clothes that Tiltheus had been wearing when I first found him – leather pants, boots and a sort of silky shirt.

“Can you make the colours different?” asked Til. “We wouldn’t normally all look the same.”

“What sort of colours should they be?” asked Ken.

“Grey or brown or black for the trousers, and white or pale green or beige for the tops. Boots same sort of colour as the trousers.”

“Done!” said Ken, gesturing again. Everybody now had different coloured combinations of trousers and shirts and boots.

“Handy!” I said. “You could go into business.”

“They don’t last. We will have to buy something ‘across’ within the next week or so, or we will all be naked.”

He gestured towards the door, and it quite literally disappeared before my eyes.

“Has it gone on the other side, too?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s still there. You just can’t see it. If you want to go through, you can feel your way, but you won’t be able to see your way. Shall we go?”

Picking up our backpacks and sleeping bags, and hefting out instrument cases (in Ken’s case, his doctor’s bag), we pushed our way through the membrane between the worlds, and my mouth was dry, with excitement and fear. It was real. It was happening. And I was terrified.

When we lifted the beam that barricaded the door, I expected it to be dark on the other side. But it was a twilit evening in early summer. The sky was turquoise, with peach and apricot streaks, and the far-away mountains were violet and grey. Birds were calling to each other and singing sweetly in all the small bushes and trees, and the lights were beginning to twinkle in the distant town. The air was warm and scented. There were no kribothneia, no Darkelves, not a soul in sight. We tethered our sleeping bags to the bases of our backpacks, and then we shouldered our backpacks and set off, down the stone steps into another world.

I shivered, without knowing why.

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