Claudia's Happiest Days

Claudia's second job was at an Irish pub and restaurant called Hoolihans. It was a warm, friendly and very popular spot that served good food and appealed to locals and visitors alike. She would wait on tables until the restaurant closed at 22h00 or so. She loved the crowd that she worked with and they all loved her, but then people always love Claudia. She is impossible to dislike. Her smile is immediate and engaging and on a more superficial -ie. day-to-day- level she has always been very easy to get along with. Deeper down - like the rest of us- she is a more complicated character, but still eminently lovable!. She was always better at registering her dislike of people she disapproved of, whereas I tend to be diplomatic and avoid creating that situation where a person knows that you do not like them. Claudia had no such fears and good on her for being like that. I always feel vaguely false and a bit of a wimp in that sense.

The place she stayed in had bedbugs and it became too unpleasant to remain. Claudia got the offer of renting a flat above a 4x4 rental centre and she took that. What incredible luck. It was huge for one person and she had privacy and all the space she could possibly want. The chaps at Ozi 4x4 loved her and she was happy to help clean vehicles and sort the camping gear out that came back from the trips to Fraser Island. She did that just because she felt that she should contribute a bit because she was staying there cheaply - and like any girl, she enjoyed the attention. It was more respectful than the constant ragging she had to contend with at my workplace. I was happy for her that she had all that. I bought her a mobile phone and we had better contact with each other. It was heaps better than trying to coordinate when she would be near a phone booth after work for our daily chat. While she was generally kept too busy, this did not mean that she did not still have those moments of terrible depression when she would sob on the phone and beg me to come up and visit her. I drove up as often as I could. It was a long way to go in Helga for a weekend and I was shattered on the Monday after a visit. Looking back now, it seems silly that in a period of her life that she will call her happiest, she could still be haunted by these feelings of loneliness and inferiority. Everyone loved her, she was showered with compliments, whether it was by clients on the Princess 2 or at the restaurant. These would make her giggly and wonderfully bubbly when she accepted them or was surprised by them, but there would soon be a self-deprecating comment that was designed to bring herself down to earth rather than just an attempt at modesty. It was jarring to hear and it is a feature of Claudia that I never got her to control.

In retrospect we should perhaps have started to confront these problems, but at the time, I thought that they were just the excitement and passions of such a busy few months. I had my own job that kept me busy and tired me out each day. While I was certainly missing her, like many blokes, the TV and computer could fill the gaps that a visit to friends and a beer could not. Claudia would torment herself with guilt at any manner of things.