My mind, for some reason, is already moving on to the fact that not long after we get back the two younger children are going away again - to Thailand. Home of avian flu. My daughter found a flight and accommodation so cheap (huts on the beach for about £1.00 a week) that she kept drunkenly inviting random acquaintances until some vast crowd is setting off. She has been there before and it casts some kind of spell as I can list many people who have never come back. Including a friend's brother who went out for a holiday twenty years ago and then bought a run-down hotel on an island and is still there. Occasionally hosting one of the main Asian drum and ssab festivals. The children will be with him part of the time, which seems reassuring but I think his brain is mostly elsewhere.

When I was young I happened to be the oldest child amongst my parents' group of friends, so everything I did was a first and not always acceptable. As a teenager I left home fairly early and threw myself into hippieness, mind expansion etc. The nearest children in age to me of that parental group, two brothers, meanwhile, followed a sensible path and began the long training to become accountants. They always spent Christmas with us and although I cleaned myself up and behaved politely for the occasion they could obviously sense that I thought they were huge bores. I am not particularly spiteful, (I swear), but not long after one of these holidays my commune-like flat was giving a massive party and on a whim I sent a formal invitation to the older brother. Reclining on a mattress listening to some low insistent beat and wearing flowing rainbow garments, as was everyone else, I glanced up to see the brother hovering in the doorway. As a rising accountant he had chosen to dress for success in a natty pin-stripe suit and silk tie.

I have to say that we were quite a stylish and cutting edge commune and the party was full of pretty people and looked rather glamorous. He advanced towards me with mad eyes and said 'How could you?'. I laughed meanly, 'I thought you should see how other people live and anyway, I hardly expected you to wear a SUIT'. (I am saying here that I had put up with some years of 'Oh why can't you be more like.. ' about these boys). He looked sad and beaten, 'I always thought you liked me'. Oh f@ck. 'Don't be silly. I'm really sorry of course I like you', (not totally true), 'I wanted you to see another world because yours seems so dull'. 'Oh - whatever'. He quietly left the building.

Not six months later I was chatting with my mother on the phone and asked after them. 'OMG', she said, 'I can't believe you don't know'. 'Both the boys suddenly gave up their accountancy courses and went to Bali on an extended holiday. Their mother is frantic as she has just heard that the younger one has got engaged to a Balinese girl and they have said that they are never coming back'. And they didn't.

The younger one married a local village chieftan's daughter in an exotic ceremony where she arrived at the wedding on an elephant. The older one married an Australian backpacker. After a couple of years they moved all together to The Great Barrier Reef, where they opened a bar catering for deep sea divers. AND THEY ARE STILL THERE.

I don't feel guilty. How could I possibly have guessed? All I had wanted was for him to loosen up and maybe occasionally leave the house without wearing a suit. In the typical way of 'things' I ended up marrying a conventional, hard working businessman and ,lately, leading exactly the kind of life of which my parents would be proud.
- posted by Iris @ 2/05/2004 12:19:00 PM comment