We were young, Harvey and I. Time does not render strong memories of domestic routine, but micro moments of time spent in another city, country or culture? These reminiscences remain in the brain like a faded Japanese tattoo, as something you did, but you don’t remember why. The colours of the postcards collected from the piazza near the Fontana di Trevi, of long-gone Italian movie stars, have faded to muted sepia. The cards gathered on the pilgrimage from London to Scotland, with lush green hues and pigments of yellow, whisper an era of backpacker hostels. The antique cards collected at the Portobello Road markets transport me back in time; I am riding down rickety streets on a borrowed silver bicycle. Maneuvering through brash, English peak hour traffic I am dodging black taxicabs and swerve to avoid a British flag plastered on the side of a red London bus. It is 1985, and I am laughing as Harvey flies by, his blonde hair catching the sun in the wild, chilly winter wind. We could do what ever we wanted for a year and we had Frommer’s Europe on $20 a day. We were high on life, and we were best friends, Harvey and I.
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There were up to fifteen intrepid travellers at any one stage, staying at the West Kensington apartment digs. God knows who the actual tenant was. There was a house ‘hat party’ the night we arrived up from the underground. I had jet lag. Harvey found a metal colander in the kitchen and a bunch of pink carnations. He wore it as a hat with a flower in every other hole. The English girls at the party were impressed with the novelty of Harvey’s innovation. We slept in our double sleeping bag, lying on the not so comfortable, smelly carpet floor. Harvey had a hangover the next day. When the Kiwi’s left for their Glacier Trek we were promoted to the ‘having a bed’ status. We were now officially part of a London sub-culture, the “I come from a land down under,” Aussie crew. We had brought our vegemite currency with us, the Australians were winning at the cricket, and everyone loved Harvey. Living by the book we scoured the pages of our Frommer searching for Avalon at ancient druid sites, devouring history and battles with every European castle. Each day was a festival of our own making, and at every opportunity, I bought a picture postcard to mark the event. These were the only souvenirs I could afford, and it was my way of keeping the moment. The cards with little bubbles of scribbled memory are all that I have left of that year. Harvey disappeared a long time ago. On the occasion we drove through three countries in a day I might even have bought more than one picture card. Forget the standard souvenirs of silver spoons, ceramic plates and fridge magnets. There was no room in the backpack for anything more than the essentials. With each postcard there is a little burst of unforgettable flavor, a little story with each one. They are reminders that when innocence becomes aware of it’s own ignorance, travel becomes a rite of passage.
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Harvey was the love of my life, but I lost him somewhere. It was sometime around May Day, in Rome. Away from the hot city smells, we were high up on the balcony of the orange dome, looking out over Vatican City. Or perhaps it was Amsterdam’s Vondel Park, where the soft summer grass melded with the greenery of the trees, with the innocent, lurid experience of psychedelic dope cakes. Harvey was there when I was almost kidnapped whilst getting off a bus in Turkey. Stepping down into the grey Ankara dust a local university student yelled the warning, responding to the ‘surround and separate’ tactic being executed by a small group of tall Algerian men. It was like we were running with the bulls. My chest hurt from trying to draw breath, with the bouncing heavy backpacks slowing us down. We had met the animated Turkish students on the bus after trekking through the fairy domes of the Cappadocia Valley. The students yelled English in our faces, “come with us, run!” Hesitating, I could see Harvey’s frame up ahead, he was laughing in solidarity with one of the students, Devrim. In a flash of slow motion I reached forward and pulled at Harvey’s surfer T-shirt. Fear crystallized on the distorted face of Aydin, another student friend. Lurching forward into high speed Harvey grabbed my arm screaming, “run!” The fez hats with long white kaftans folded gracefully into a fence. I looked up into black eyes, with pearly white smiles that I didn’t believe. Slipping out and under, I ducked and weaved with Harvey, we were laughing with adrenaline… Drinking Turkish coffee late into the night, we were huddled in conversation with the students at their modest urban apartment. We listened respectfully to Aydin’s pigeon-English as he interpreted Devrim’s passion for the politics of his country. I lay back in Harvey’s arms, listening with humility. We were grateful for the simplicity of our life back home, and the nights free accommodation.
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‘Midnight Express’ was the film everyone was talking about as we boarded the overnight train from Istanbul to Athens. Not daring to sleep for twenty-four hours we passed wide-eyed through the old Yugoslavian border checkpoint. Terrified from rumours about officials receiving cash payouts for planting hashish on unsuspecting backpackers, we sweated voluminously in the damp night air when the train stopped for military inspectors to search our meager belongings. It was daybreak when we celebrated our successful crossing of the border with the twins. The two German backpacker boys spoke no English, but they managed to share their wonderful Belgian chocolate with us… comrades forever, never seen again…
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Two teenage American girls were hitting on Harvey in the train carriage to Pompeii. Rows of olive trees flew by, as their incessant giggling and no apparent through line of conversation lulled me into a deep sleep. The ashes of the volcano had long gone, but the petrified bodies of a past civilization incited our imaginations. Deep in contemplation Harvey climbed the ridges of the sandy crumbling walls, his sun burnt body outlined by the amber afternoon light. The American girls wandered off, trailing after some feisty English boys. A little Italian gypsy boy was selling postcards for lira. I found another card for my collection, Vesuvius at dusk, in all her magnificence.
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Everyone seemed intoxicated at the Munich Beer Fest. Off the bus we all stood there in the main square, one big plastic umbrella, of touristy throng. We were waiting to see the clock strike the Cuckoo bird’s entrance, when Hansel and Gretel would dance in the hour. The cold rain smelt wet as it pelted down into a non-therapeutic mud bath around our flapping tents. It wasn’t just the Australians behaving like they were on a grand final footy trip.
Harvey and I left the beer halls to take the day trip train to Auschwitz. Walking in reverence we felt a weight in the air, and noted an uncanny absence of birds. Without speaking we followed the outline of where the prison camp buildings had once stood. There were no signs, German, or Jewish, to indicate the holocaust, only a sensation that time had slowed down to a science fiction pace. In the thickening silence Harvey became translucent in the mist. I hurried on to catch up. For a moment there was utter stillness. The rain had stopped. The only audible sound was the gentle crunching of gravel from under our boots as we walked. Harvey and I wandered, hand in hand. In disbelief we turned down one corridor path after another, and then another, and another. The grey nothingness overwhelmed our sense of homage. It was too much. With an almost tangible smell of burning bodies, we lingered in the hall of documentary photos. Feeling sick with shock we drifted past hundreds of images, gliding toward the light of the exit like lost souls. We left the sacred ground with relief, changed forever, but never, ever being able to comprehend. In the train on the way back I cried into the fogged up window, the pain under my chest sat like a hard lump of metal. Harvey’s eyes turned grey as he stared through the window at the flashing Germanic greenery. Back in Munich it was still raining steins of mud. The contrast was beyond absurd. Harvey and I were alone in the world.
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The combie was dark blue; we christened it ‘Vincent Van Gogh’. We bought it in Amsterdam for only four hundred pounds, and broke even later when we sold it back in London. One particular night, when we were having showers in a caravan park I screamed when I saw an eye reflected from under the door in the water on the floor. Harvey got lost in the dark, chasing the guy across the lawns. He was gone for so long I thought he was never going to come back.
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Harvey apparently has Viking heritage. He went into a strange trance on the ferry to Denmark. I watched the shifting change as he sat high above the first deck with his face into the wind. A carved, wooden boat head ploughed into the dark depths below. The black water shimmered as light reflected off the silver fish streaming by. An aged dolphin flipped across the bow as if to herald Harvey’s heritage. In the mountains Harvey kept disappearing into the cool shadows of the Norwegian wood. I frolicked in the fragrant summer sun making flower circlets for my hair. Harvey and I stripped naked to skinny-dip norsca style in the freezing cold mountain river. We saved our money by cooking rice and beans by campfire. We were worried that Vincent might break down. We argued over map directions and spent days barely talking to each other. Setting off in the soft, cool northern lights of dawn, we climbed all day, over rocky terrain. We arrived at the fjord Preikestolen, by sunset. The 25-metre plateau stands 604 metres above sea level. Looking down at the drop I understood why it was an ancient place of Scandinavian sacrifice. The drama of the view was worth every step, even if the yodeling strains of euphoric tourists were not.
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The curly haired South African boy, on the ferry to Crete, was a caricature artist. We shared our fresh bread, marinated feta, olives and wine. He adored us both, especially Harvey. The African boy spent all morning drawing our portrait: Harvey and I standing with backpacks on, next to a donkey. We all travelled as companions for a while, sleeping on island beaches and hostel rooftops. Whilst reading the memoir of Joni Mitchell I watched Harvey fall off a boat pontoon into the sea one morning, when he rolled over in his sleeping bag. It was safer travelling with two guys.
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One evening, on a small island in a local Taverna, we invited a young French couple to sit with us, there were no other tables left.
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sail around the islands’ I said.
‘Oui, it is!’ they said
‘No, pardonnez moi my anglais! I meant wouldn’t it be wonderful to sail,
around these islands?’ I said again.
‘Oui! Yes, it is, tres bonne. Wonderful,’ they replied.
The French couple then invited us to sail with them on their little yacht ‘Oxygene’.
We later found out that they had sold everything to buy it, this boat was their home. We sailed with them as crew for three weeks. Fishing, swimming, sun soaking, learning to cook Bouillabaisse. We visited remote islands, and often rowed to a random beach taverna at sunset. On one island expedition we came across an elderly Greek man who offered us the local ‘retsina’ wine, while he told us the story of how he saved the lives of Australian soldiers during the Second World War. His family gathered around Harvey, like he was a ghost of one of those young Australian men who had hidden in the hills, waiting to evacuate in the middle of the night. Speaking in Greek the old man cried, hugging and kissing Harvey. From the passion in his eyes we understood. The French couple refused to speak English, and only understood a little Greek. I had no Greek, and only a little high school French. Harvey didn’t speak Greek or French, but he hugged the old man back and we all laugh. The next day we went diving in the midday sun, shaking off the hangover, and the echoes from the past that lurked in the shadows of the wild thyme blowing on the barren Greek hills.
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I really can’t remember where I lost Harvey, or when. Now I just get lost in all the postcards. I remember his smile, and his eyes reflecting mine back into his. Comrades forever, never seen again…
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In 2014 Cheryl Bradley finished a Bachelor of Arts Degree at Flinders University of South Australia, majoring in Drama and Creative Writing. With a TAFE Advanced Diploma in Acting, and an early career as a professional ballet dancer with the South Australian Ballet Company, Cheryl is familiar with stage performance. Teaching dance and drama has been Cheryl’s mainstream of income whilst studying and living in Adelaide with her young daughter. After completing a series of AFTRS film making workshops, Cheryl has directed a portfolio of short films. This is Cheryl’s first published piece of writing.
