We crossed from Sasape to Honiara the day before leaving the Solomons and stayed the night with friends. It was drizzling and overcast, rather like our friends’ mood. Their marriage had been under a cloud. Someone had told them that when a marriage is going through a rough spell you need to commit to recalling how you used to feel about each other.
The problem is, she said, I’ve never felt that way.
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An American woman called round with her address in Boston and her parents’ contact details. We were exchanging her house in Boston for ours at Sasape for a week. What were the chances of that?
I wrote the following after we got there.
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10 August 1980: The Air Nauru flight is turbulent, flying through cloud most of the time. The hostess is generous, giving us a cooked breakfast when we ask for extra sandwiches.
Nauru is more grey drizzle. The runway is as long as the island is wide and the jet has to brake hard with its reverse thrusters to stop. The terminal is even tinier than Honiara’s.
We walk into town. The crumbling facade of the “Central Pacific Curio Centre” is fading and plastered with gang graffiti (the “Warrior Gang”) and dance posters. The local people are big, beefy, with an odd singsong language. The kids say Hi with a nice smile, and play in puddles after the rain. Rubbish, beer cans, lemonade cans, slopping jandals. Pigs (small ones and old sows) wandering. Rundown shuttered houses painted a drab uniform pastel blue. Smart new Japanese cars and bikes on narrow but smooth tar sealed roads.
A road crosses the runway, which has to be cleared for takeoffs and landings. A policeman in a blue shirt stops traffic to let the next jet take off.
Back at the terminal the toilets are out of service. We head for the hotel, which seems deserted except for a Chinese family quietly camping in the lobby, waiting like us for the midnight flight to Guam and Hong Kong. This is where you wait for your flight. Heather sleeps. I read Nietzsche (I know) and worry about Pan Am timetables out of Guam.
A notice says a suitable standard of dress must be observed in the dining room, but outsiders will not be served at the Sunday Buffet. Well, today is Sunday, we’re hungry and they agree to serve us provided we make a booking, which we do. We sit on the coral gravel beach and watch the surf under an overcast sky. I hope they make money out of this place. Nothing else seems to justify its existence.
I put on my tan jeans and a green evening shirt, Heather dons an imitation silk overblouse, the lobby comes to life, the doors open to the brightly lit dining room and we join the stream of well dressed, murmuring expatriates who suddenly appear for the weekly feast. The buffet is an extravaganza. Spectacular. Beef Wellington, roast chicken, a brilliant glazed ham, pork, a dressy potato salad etc. All the trimmings. We eat enthusiastically over a weedy Beaujolais and finish with perfect mangoes and pears and bananas and Chinese gooseberries. Two cups of coffees. A cognac. The crowd disperses and we go back to sleep on the lobby couches — warmer than the slightly unpleasant air conditioned chill of the dining room.
Bleak, sleepy eyed Chinese gather outside for the bus. Piles of luggage. Whirring fans. The cold institutional Hotel architecture. At 11:30 a little transit bus arrives, loads up with us sleepy squatters and a few fat cat guests, and takes us to the now bustling little terminal. We speak to a young Singaporean with an American accent who’s returning to Guam. Elegant moustache and haircut; slim, discreetly striped pants; bone-coloured nylon shirt; loaded down with good gear — a 35mm Canon with a motor drive and multicoloured carry strap, vari-tinted wire-rimmed glasses, stereo headset wrapped round his collar, black leather clutch purse, ringed fingers. Compare him with more typical tropic men in their cotton shorts and white sweatshirts and plastic thongs.
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We sleep through to Guam. It’s raining there too, but harder, and there are many more lights as we come in. The All American blonde girl from Air Nauru who comes to meet the plane suggests we walk to the terminal since we have umbrellas. Half an inch of rain covers most of the runway. Heather’s espadrilles come apart on her feet. The custom forms are formidable — almost impossible to fill in properly. We give up but customs are friendly anyway. They try to help us find a hotel but no luck. We drink some fruit juice at the Blue Marlin airport cafe then try again. The Avis lady puts us in contact with a motel called the Micronesian. Blue Eyes tells us it’s okay as a last resort — “the sheets are clean”.
The Micronesian does have a room, so we check in and pay a man in a sweatshirt US $15 plus 15% tax. The sheets are clean, the oscillating ceiling fan very pleasant and the shower excellent. Everything else is grotty, and, although we’re a bit put out, remind ourselves that no one promised us a light in the bedroom. It looks like someone has taken it out and connected the fan to the same wiring. Good thinking. The beds are comfortable and we sleep well until 8.30 despite planes that seem to take off and land right above our heads. I take down the iron curtain rail to get enough light to write this diary.
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We spend the next day wandering around Guam in the rain. Take a taxi to Pan Am and purchase our Round the World in 80 Days tickets. It turns out we can choose Economy or First Class, Booked or Standby. When it turns out First Class Standby is cheaper than Economy Booked we choose First Class. We haven’t booked anything anywhere anyway, so let’s risk it.
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We buy Heather new walking shoes and eat a Chamorro style lunch at the public market — enough food for us both for $3. We ask where the movies are (to stay out of the rain) and get three different answers. When we finally find one it’s porno and closed. But by that time we can respectably go to the airport. We book through without any problem — the check-in woman says we’re too late for the flight, but the controller says OK.
Dinner on the flight to San Francisco is quite good — reasonable wine, good food, coffee and so on. The real corny purser comes to welcome us on board — dark, grinning, beanpole, middle-aged, middle American. Harsh air conditioning makes my nose feel like a desert. The movie, our first of many, is a wooden Roger Moore effort.
In San Francisco we try to find a room using the courtesy phones. Offers range from $38 for a “luxury room with water bed” to $59 for a twin to $72 at the Hilton. Then we meet an army engineer with a Korean wife who recommends the Royal Lodge at $28.50 plus tax, so we go there — weaving in and out of the flyovers and exits onto Airport Drive, wondering at the transformation from Honiara to Guam to SFO.
We sit exhausted on the bed and watch Hair and Americathon on Cable TV before going to dinner. Henry Someone’s Private Reserve Beer, lemon butter and barbecued chicken, french fries, Italian salad and so on for 15 bucks. Back to bed, grouchy, and to sleep. The bed has a vigorous 25c, 15-minute vibration feature but after an afternoon’s dry run we’re not tempted. A good shower and a dreadful WC pan so shallow it’s hard to wipe your backside without getting the tissue wet. Why is it so common to come across something so basic so wrong?
We get to the airport at 6 am as advised, but are told to come back at 8.00, so we have breakfast. Takeout coffee is 40c but sit-down is only 50c and you get somewhere to hang out and two free refills. Heather has chilled fruit juice whipped with egg for $1.50. Very nice actually. I have rye toast. Total with tea and coffee three bucks. That’s more like our budget.
We’re flying standby but there’s no trouble getting seats to New York once they realise we’re first class. A nice Danish boy who’s flying Economy Standby loses his nerve and takes an emptier flight direct to London. We head for the gate, where the controller stops serving her queue of economy class passengers and ushers us through to the First Class lounge.
The First Class women! A girl in blue jeans and red and white check shirt with a half-acre gold and diamond engagement ring, plus more rings; plus a glittery couturier watch. Everywhere couturier bullshit! An old lady with half a hundred weight of gold bangles. Another lady who chats with Heather. “Oh you come from Australia, don’t you? That’s where Olivia comes from! My husband flips every time he sees her! And that’s where Skylab came down! Did you get a chance to see it?” We plan to see Xanadu so her husband will be pleased. He’s in the mi-li-tary.
At every check-in we feel momentarily embarrassed about our bags — we’re definitely traveling economy except on Pan Am — but we get used to seeing people eating bananas with a knife and fork, and we enjoy the champagne, and bypassing the queues of people who haven’t noticed that First Class Standby is the way to go.
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The land below us as we traverse America…
So few signs of cultivation. Like flying over Australia. Turquoise Lake Tahoe. Dusty square fields with circular patches of irrigation.
Nearing sunset we approach New York City, the sun a scarlet half circle in the murk. When we take off from San Francisco we’re fifth on the runway, with five more behind us. Five planes land before us as we wait in line for La Guardia.
We land in warm, 27C weather, but not last month’s heatwave, and we flow like water in irrigation channels through to baggage collection. The baggage itself takes forever. While I’m waiting for it a middle-aged businessman who’d sat next to Heather in First Class — light grey suit and hair, a plump, cheerful, assertive salesman’s face — latches on to her again as they work the complimentary phones for hotel rooms. He persuades her that we should go with him to the Travelodge, where he can arrange a reservation for us. He’s very boozed but we head outside with him and wait for the courtesy car, which drives us just a few minutes to the hotel. We get a room, but not the discount our friend promised as we don’t have the necessary corporate IDs.
Starting with the bellhop’s tip, we watch our budget fall apart beneath us, like Heather’s espadrilles in Guam. We hide in our room from our salesman friend and avoid as much expense as possible. Room service seems like a good strategy, so we order two sandwiches with salad, crisps and coffee, $20. And we watch the Democratic Convention on TV.
For breakfast I order the “Frenchman” — French toast with bacon, it says. It turns out to be white bread dunked in sweet batter, fried and dusted with icing sugar. With corn syrup and bacon on the side. It doesn’t taste too bad, considering, but being new to America it was a surprise.
I won’t order French toast again. And our bill has climbed to $112 for just one night, so we need to evacuate.