But their first minutes together had been awkward. Dan was conscious that he smelled of the flight, and that his clothes were awful — a frayed mixed-blend hoodie and ugly baggy trackpants. Luke was dressed in a well-cut charcoal suit; he had the physique of a gym fanatic, and was sporting a neatly trimmed beard, which suited him and gave him gravity and solidity. Luke had wrapped Dan in a wrestler’s embrace, and feeling the silken beard against his cheek, and the strength of his friend’s muscular arms encircling him, Dan had marvelled at how they were no longer boys, that they were finally men.
Luke returned from his call and fell back into the club chair opposite. It was then that he had asked, unable to disguise his incredulity, ‘Are you really sure you want to go home?’
The question had brought back those last awful weeks in Glasgow; he could feel shame flame his cheeks. Clyde’s fury, all his regret and disappointment had been channelled in snide, bitter attacks on Australia. Go back to that fucken arse end of the world. Dan had worn the vitriol stoically and that had only enraged Clyde further. It had been a relief for Dan to get to London, to disappear into that vast, unknowable metropolis. He had rented a room at a hostel in Shepherds Bush, and apart from the most cursory of exchanges with his fellow plasterers and labourers on the cash-in-hand jobs he managed to find advertised on Gumtree or pub toilet walls he had not spoken a word to anyone. He’d had enough of words. No words had been able to appease Clyde.
He didn’t know how to answer Luke. He was trying to form an explanation, not sure that he could convince his friend, but Luke had already launched into a torrent of conversation, and didn’t wait for Dan to answer — it was clear that he was also feeling the unfamiliar and unnerving distance between them. ‘Katie and I can’t imagine going back to Australia. China has spoiled us, mate, every time we go back to Melbourne it’s like we’ve stepped back in time. The complacency, the inwardness, the self-satisfaction, it gets on your nerves.’
Dan nodded and feigned agreement; he had no defence and in the pit of his belly that familiar feeling of humiliation started to bite. He had no retort to Luke’s argument: the return had to be a retreat, the future was China and the EU and Luke’s world of trade and exchange and frequent flyer points. It was a cosmopolitan future that baulked at return, for return would always be a backward step. The future was change — how could Dan even admit his longing for things to stay the same?
‘I’m looking forward to the summer,’ he said, giving an embarrassed smile. But that was also the wrong thing to say.
‘What’s so great about an Australian summer?’ Luke countered. ‘I’m so sick of all the Aussie ex-pats banging on about how great our beaches are, how good our weather is. That’s what vacations are for, to get to a great beach, to experience the great weather. That’s not the real world,’ he ended accusingly.
The word is holidays, Dan wanted to spit out, we say holidays, not vacation. But he kept sipping at his beer, wishing they would call his flight, wanting to be in the plane, next to a silent stranger.
‘Of course, I’m not sure how much longer we’re going to stay in Beijing — Katie really wants the kids educated in Europe or the States.’ Luke squinted out to the long horizon of planes outside the windows. And then it was all about how the school system was too rigid in China, it was all rote learning, with no space for imagination, how they should have been in London or DC by now, except for the damn economic crisis that had stuffed everything up. All the jobs were in China, it looked as though they were going to have to stay put in the Middle Kingdom for the moment, but he didn’t want to raise the kids there, where everyone called them bananas: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. They didn’t want the ex-pat life for their kids, it wasn’t the real world. If they ever returned to Australia, it would be for their kids’ education, but they’d prefer Europe or the States. How long could the frigging economic crisis last, anyway?
And then, coyly, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was doing it, he slid the phone across to Dan to show him a slideshow of photographs: Luke in a short-sleeved shirt, a toddler on one knee, a little girl in a smock beaming at the camera (that’s Costa, that’s Lissa); an unsmiling Katie clutching a giggling Lissa, a craggy hillock of rock jutting out of a jade sea behind them (we went to Vietnam last Christmas); Lissa standing in front of a thin grey-haired man, a petite harried woman holding the little boy (that’s Mum and Dad, back on Samos — we took them there for their thirtieth anniversary). The final image was of an elderly Asian woman, much older than Luke’s mother, unsmiling, looking straight at the camera. Lissa had her arms wrapped tight around the woman, Costa was hugging her neck — that was their nanny, that was the apartment at home.
‘They’re gorgeous,’ said Dan. ‘What beautiful kids.’
And suddenly it was as though no years had past and sculpted and changed them, and Luke’s grateful smile was that of the little boy who’d always looked up to Danny Kelly. The awkwardness started to dissipate. Luke reached out and softly grazed knuckles with Dan. ‘It’s so good to see you, mate.’ He slumped back in his seat. ‘They are gorgeous kids, Katie and I are really proud of them. And I’m glad we raised them here — I’m glad we can offer them the world.’
And that was when Dan realised that Luke wasn’t really challenging Dan about going home — that he wasn’t thinking about his friend but was justifying his own actions, to himself, convincing himself that he and Katie were doing the right thing. Changing or retreating, both were futures taken on trust.
Dan now knew how to answer his friend, he knew exactly what he had to say. ‘I have to go home. I miss my family, I want to return to them. I want to see my new niece.’
It was the right answer. Luke’s quietness and warm smile said that he understood.
Dan talked about Scotland, Luke explained China. They had another beer each and then delicately, ever so carefully, Luke asked about the break-up with Clyde. Dan thought Clyde would have emailed Katie, maybe even spoken to her about it. How much did Luke know? The digital departure screen clock above them was counting down and there wasn’t time enough for that conversation. Dan did want to tell Luke about Clyde, and maybe one day he would. But he and Luke needed more time, they had to draw maps for each other, to mark the borders of their experiences, to show the roads they had travelled, to shade in the frontiers they had reached, and to plot their cities of work and love and desire. A terrible sadness overwhelmed him, at how far they had travelled from one another, how much time it would take to sift and reconcile their shared past to their individual presents. He wished there was time to explore the kingdom his friend had created.
He would make sure there would be.
Luke walked him to the departure gate. His hug was crushing. Dan couldn’t believe the strength in his friend’s arms, the power of the embrace. The man and their history was in that embrace.
‘I was going to visit you in Scotland, mate, I really was. It’s just that time got away from me. I’m sorry.’