I had to admit that it had been a good couple of days with her, days and nights actually, but was it really worth going through, what with what had just been explained to me was the rest of my life?
I had only been in London three days when I met her, most of which were spent at the National Archives in Kew pouring over records in an attempt to trace my family tree, and put to rest some of the family rumours. Yes, there were convicts in my family, despite what my Grandmother had insisted. Back in her time it was a stain on their family reputation to have to admit to a convict ancestry, thankfully that is no longer the case, and in fact it is almost a badge of honour to trace one's roots to an ancestor who was an involuntary immigrant. A couple of mine were quite famous in that they did some things that today would have seen them spend some time as a guest of Her Majesty.
I had arranged to travel to Wales to spend time going through County Records because my search at Kew had come to a grinding halt at 1837. What was to have been my last night in London for some time, became my third last night after I met her. It had been at the pub just around the corner from my hotel, I didn't own it, I was just staying there, and I had been sitting at a table sipping on a red wine and watching her having a lousy time with some stupid bloke. I didn't know he was stupid at the time, that came later when he left her on her own while he went somewhere with some tart who obviously offered him more than she was prepared to give.
She looked lost and humiliated by his actions, and I thought that she was about to burst into tears, so I went over to her. "I have a spare seat at my table, why don't you come over and take the weight off?" She said nothing but came and sat. "I noticed you having a rough time of it with that moron who left you for the tart, so I thought that I should rescue you."
"Christ, an Australian, what would you know about any of this?"
"I at least know how to treat a beautiful woman, we colonial oafs don't take a Sheila to a shindig and then dump her for some tart." I was laying on the Ocker image a little thick in keeping with her comment.
"Touché, I asked for that didn't I?" She smiled, her first for quite a while.
"I'm up for a refill, what are you drinking?" I stood and picked up my glass.
"I'll have what you're having."
"Are you sure that you're ready for an Aussie wine, this'll put hairs on your chest."
"I'll take that chance." I was back in a flash with our wine, she took a sip and didn't flinch. "This's nice."
"What, did you think I'd buy you any old piss, this is top shelf stuff this is?" It wasn't really, but then it wasn't the bulk crap that we'd been selling over here for ages, 'quaffing plonk' we call it back home, and only drink it if we're desperate.
She took another sip and sat back to get a better look at me. "Where's the hat with the corks, did you leave that back at your hotel?"
"Gees, you don't think that we all walk around with one of those stupid things on our heads do you? They're strictly for the tourists, we never wear them, why would we give the flies somewhere to perch while they're working out their attack strategy? I do come to an Akubra from time to time, but your sun over here, doesn't have the power to turn milk, let alone give you a tan. You have a lot to learn about us, just as I have a lot to learn about you, not you specifically, although that would be an area of research that I could get into. I'm trying to figure you out, you're a decent looking bird, you scrub up pretty well, yet you let some bloke treat you like shit without so much as a whimper, what gives?"
She sat there in silence for some time before she made up her mind to tell me all about it. "That moron, as you so colourfully described him, was someone that I'd been going with for six months. I thought that he was one of the good guys, but then things began to change between us. At first I thought that it was me that was the problem, but then I came to realise that I hadn't changed, he had. He seemed not to want to see me as often as we had been, and he was spending more time with his so-called friends, friends who saw him and his money as a chance of a free ride. That was what we were arguing about before he left, she had offered him some new party drug and a good time, while that was not my scene at all. As you saw, he made his decision and left me all alone."
"You deserve better, you know that don't you?" I held up a hand to stop her from interjecting. "I know, I hardly know you, so who am I to judge you? You can tell me to crawl back under that antipodean rock that I've crawled out from under, but I would never treat a woman like the way that he treated you, and if you should get the impression that I'm flirting with you, you'd be right. But I'm not doing that to get into your pants, although that prospect does have some merit, I'm doing it to try to take your mind off your problems for a while. Should you, at a later part of the evening, decide that I should be allowed into your pants, then I'd be quite happy to oblige."
She laughed, she had a great laugh, there was nothing forced about it, she saw the absurdity of my suggestion and realised what I was doing and just laughed. That was when she got into my mood. "You never know your luck, I just might let you."
"No pressure, but if you don't I might just have to end my life at the end of the evening, I leave the decision entirely in your hands." I picked up a hand (one of hers) and held it. "And such beautiful, soft hands. They look great without my blood on them."
"Are you ever sensible?" Her smile told me that she was happy being with the stupid me right now.
"Oh I can be dull and boring when I need to be, but, hey this is Friday night, back home the happy hour would be in full swing, and the cares of the world but a distant memory. There is a time and place for dull and boring, and this is neither the time nor the place, so let's just enjoy the moment."
"What is this wine, it's my turn to buy."
"If you're shouting, it's a Grange, and it's around a hundred pounds a glass. No, it's a Church Block, just tell the barman that it's on Mark's tab and he'll know what to pour. I'm Mark by the way."
"And I'm Jane, I'll be back in a second." She walked off with our glasses. I saw Pete, the barman, look over at me and smile before getting the bottle and topping up our glasses. "I should have known, he's an Aussie too."
"Pete and I go way back, we were at Uni together last year. I see that he's put his Engineering degree to good use."
"And what have you done with yours, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Not as much as he has, as it turns out. I have a job to go to when the mining industry picks up. I was hired by one of the big miners for the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine, (Roxby Downs in South Australia) but the Chinese economy has pulled back and the demand just isn't there to warrant any expansion at this time, so, for the time being I don't have a job as such. The family has decided that I should make use of my free time and do some family research, so they had a whip-around and raised enough funds to keep me here for a while, and here I am, trying to make some sense out of our genealogy, without much luck."
"Have you made much headway?"
"As far as I can go at Kew, now it's off to Wales, to a place called Llanfrwog, don't ask me how they pronounce that, to see what I can find there."
"Good luck with that. So when were you planning to leave London?"
"Tomorrow as it turns out."
"Oh."
"You seem sad at that."
