The Ghost of Timor Ch. 11

December 1999

Sally and I still felt wired from the cola and sex, so it took hours before we finally got to sleep. We used that time to continue to make out and to enjoy each other, but Sally also filled me in on her three-year mission to get with me.

I began working in that Canberra office, where I eventually met Sally, in early 1996, when I was still living with Beth. Beth and I had been dating behind the scenes since '92. We had kept it to ourselves until we completed our officer training and then we moved in together.

I try not to be too harsh in my judgement of Beth. We all have our issues. However, I have to say that I have never encountered the same type of friction in any relationship since her. After Beth, I had my share of weird lovers. Two people who wanted revenge on their lovers; three affairs; one alcoholic who barely spoke English; another who let her cat and its fleas sleep in the bed with us; a children's book author and ship's officer. But none of them tried to win the relationship as much as Beth did.

I think the problem was that Beth had developed an image of who I was before we started dating. When I didn't measure up to her fantasy, she passive-aggressively tried to wreak the relationship. She even slept with another man after one of our many disagreements. I forgave her, but a smarter man would have ended it then.

So it was in that light that I first met Sally in 1997. I'd been in that office for almost a year. The sands from my relationship with Beth almost fully drained. Sally arrived in Canberra from her previous posting in Adelaide at about the same time.

As Sally told it, she took an immediate shine to me, even though I wasn't available. I had my doubts about the timing of her interest in me, as she told me, because she wasn't even married at that stage. But I believed her when she described her marriage. She had met her husband, John, when they had been at the Australian Defence Force's language training centre (Langs) in Victoria. He was a confident guy, and they hit it off and started dating. Sally said that he had proposed to her when she was 23, not young by 1990's standards. But she had said yes only because she wanted to know what it was like to be married.

That seemed like a stupid reason to get married to me, but I didn't say so. Sally admitted that she now knew she should have said no, or waited, but either decision would have doomed the relationship. So, she agreed, and they got married in Canberra not long after they had arrived, but after she met me. She said that the wedding had been a blast, but even on her wedding night, she was having doubts about whether it would last. Not about his commitment, but about hers. Sally knew then that she was already doubting her will to just stay with one man forever.

Even though we hadn't spoken before she wed, Sally was now obsessing about me. She knew that Beth and I were doomed. I've seen it in other couples myself, so I don't pretend that it wasn't true, even if I didn't think it would end.

Sally was about to get married, but knew that she was no longer into him. She saw me and knew that it was only a matter of time before I broke up with Beth. That would be the opportunity for her. But the real game changer happened when Sally and I started working together.

It was just good luck and timing, I suppose, that just a week after Sally returned from her honeymoon, I joined her team. The job that I had been doing was probably redundant before I began in it and its previous occupant had left under similar circumstances. My employer had a track record of hiring people and under employing them until they got fed up and asked for more responsibility. Then we would get shifted into a more challenging position, but they could still pay us at the same lower rate.

That is how I got to sit next to Sally. Fed up with my do nothing job, I asked for a transfer and moved three seats over to Sally's team, which had a vacancy. We immediately hit it off, but Sally was such a fun person it would have been hard not to. The rest of the team was good value as well, and we had a fun time most days.

I didn't have any romantic feelings for Sally, but she had by now developed them for me. She could see that my relationship was over, and she got conflicted about her wedding vows. Sally had intended to keep them when she uttered them, but now she was not so sure. She said that it used to keep her awake at night.

The first sign I should have had that anything was up was the day that Sally told me she had dreamt about me the night before. I was having coffee on the front steps of our building, as did so many others did. Sally had come with me to keep me company--she didn't drink coffee--when she dropped her truth bomb.

She said that the second that she had told me she wanted to slap herself for being so stupid. But that having sex dreams about me had been eating her up for weeks. I now learned that she hadn't had just one dream about me. There had been a few. And if it wasn't dreams, it was daydreams.

I hadn't encouraged her, and I didn't know she was into me. We just got along, and I treated her like a friend. And that was the maddening thing, Sally told me. She was into me but as I hadn't the wit to see all the signs and reciprocate; she couldn't rebuke me. Sally supposed then that that would have stiffened her resolve to keep her wedding vows. But in hindsight, she knew, even then, that they were a lost cause.

And that is how it may have stayed, Sally wanting me but not being able to pull the trigger, and me just thinking that we were good friends. But then the world got turned on its head.

It all came to a head in the winter of 1997. I left Canberra still living with Beth and came back two weeks later with Alison. It's a long story, but to summarise, I went to Queensland on an Army Reserve training camp with fifty other soldiers. While I was there, Beth used my absence as an opportunity to split up with me and move out.

Not knowing that I thought I was still in a relationship, some of the female soldiers became interested in me. They openly discussed amongst themselves hooking up with me before the end of the camp. Alison was the only one to try anything and, as I was now single, I was interested. We exchanged numbers at the last minute, but never hooked up. The next day, I returned to Canberra. I called her immediately, and we made plans to meet up the next weekend.

When I told her, Sally was both relieved and crushed. She had tried so hard, for months, to get me interested in her and not cross the line herself, and now I was in the throes of an entirely new relationship. Sally had wanted to scream. She would have been only days away from being able to swoop in and pick up the pieces of my shattered relationship. Then Alison came out of the blue and did exactly that. Someone she didn't even know ambushed Sally by taking the thing she wasn't allowed to have.

It made her sick to her stomach that she had missed out but also that she had been thinking about an affair so soon after getting married. Thinking about an affair at all. But there was a silver-lining. Now that I was with Alison, there was no way she would break her vows. Fate had intervened and saved her from herself.

So, for the next six months Sally threw herself into being the supportive friend. Egging me on from the sidelines as Alison's and my love grew but also supportive as Beth became more and more unhinged. She passed on all the gossip of my love life to John, who, understandably, didn't care a jot about the love life of two people he didn't know. That has been a lesson I've recognised in myself in later years. When I show interest in someone else's relationship, is it a sign that I am no longer interested in mine?

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Alison broke up with me on Christmas day '97 to pursue her career, bringing my world down on top of me. Sally was supportive again and if she still had had secret desires, she made no show of it. But in her heart, she became conflicted again.

There was nothing wrong with her marriage, per se. John was as good a match for Sally as any. They had a long list of mutual friends that they got on well with. But if Sally had only gotten married just so she could know what it was like, she had fast discovered that it was dull.

They had no plans for family or the future other than to take holidays and consume. Their incomes weren't low, but they weren't impressive either. They could holiday in exotic locales and dream about sports cars, but they would do so on a budget.

The other wrinkle in their relationship were their jobs. As serving members of the ADF, every few years, their jobs could send them to different bases. They could reasonably expect to be sent to the same city because of their marriage. It hadn't happened yet, but it was a possibility that work could split them up for years at a time. Then John got sent to sea.

As a sailor, this was an occupational hazard. Soldiers and airmen got sent to bases. Sailors went to ports and then to sea. And, in January 1998, that happened. John got sent to sea for six months just as I was entering the depths of my depression following Alison's departure. Sally had known he was leaving and told herself that she would be faithful. But only a week after his leaving, she was fit to burst with confusion and lust. She had planned to invite me over "as a friend" who was concerned about my well-being. She hated herself for thinking of cheating, but she could stop thinking about it. But before she had the chance to act, I left too.

I hadn't perked up at the thought of moving to Sydney; it was a poisoned chalice now. But it took my mind off my predicament for a while. My whole life was up-rooted to Sydney in a matter of weeks and before Sally knew it, I was gone.

Sally took my departure as a sign that she should put away any foolish notions of extra martial action once and for all. She told herself she had been lucky. Even thinking about it had been a dangerous move. So, she got on with her life, but I was never entirely out of her mind. I was just at an outpost of our larger agency while she was at headquarters. The only way we could lose touch was if one of us wanted to and neither of us did. So, for the next year, we chatted via email and the occasional phone call, swapping jokes and gossip.

The stars aligned in mid-1999 when the Australia prepared for the worst in Timor. Ships were leased, equipment upgraded, and plans made. A critical deficiency that was identified was the lack of Tetum speakers available. Because of the secrecy of the build-up, a regular request for interest in language training across the entire nation wasn't possible. These fresh linguists had to go into a war zone. That meant only one thing; those recruits would have to come from the Defence Force and preferably ones who had shown a skill in languages before. Enter Sally.

They sent Sally off to Langs in early 1999 to do a crash course in Tetum. I say crash course because it was. There was no option for failure and no chance to go in-country to confirm their training. Their first time in Timor would be in their translator's baptism of fire.

During her training, I lost contact with Sally for six months until she showed up on my doorstep in Timor in December. My email system was only connected back to HQ in Canberra, but Langs was in Melbourne. However, she knew where I was and I then learnt that she had been the one responsible for sending all the care packages. Of course, it all made sense now. The tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, the subtle flirting and innuendo. It was her modus operandi to a tee.

Sally had not wanted to come to Timor, but once she found out I was there, she threw herself into her training, determined to pass and see me again. She had a few contacts in the Task Force and word of what I had been doing for everyone had gotten back to her. She also learned of my private office and planned to seduce me here.

"I would have preferred to make it more romantic. Candles and music etc. but they were scarce," Sally mused. "So, I just brought a bottle and no underwear and hoped you wouldn't be too disappointed."

Of course, I wasn't disappointed, and her self-deprecating sense of humour only made me grin. "If you think I'm disappointed, then why do you think I'm smiling?"

Sally looked at me and laughed, but I could see that she was holding back tears. Quickly changing tack, Sally's persona reasserted itself, and she grinned. She kissed me, then threw back the blanket, taking me in her hand and kissing me.

"I dunno," she said, "but we'll think of a reason."