Bloke, page 22
‘And you got two gift pigeons.’
I cleared away some of the dishes, not feeling up to examining my predicament, and when I returned for the glasses she grabbed my arm. ‘Sit down, Jacques. I’ve got something to say.’
I sat opposite her with the glasses in my hand. She took them off me one at a time.
‘We’re in this together, Jacques. I’ve never ever sat looking out over the river drinking wine with someone I love.’ I went to say ‘Madeleine’, but she saw the deflection rising and put a finger to my lips. ‘No, Jacques. I’m over thirty now —’
‘The passport says closer to forty.’
‘Thought you didn’t pay any attention to passports and tickets? Anyway, I’ve made up my mind, I’m staying. That Retha thing put the wind up me fair and square.’
I went to say something and she stopped me again but needn’t have bothered because I couldn’t see into a sentence past ‘I’.
‘Look, Jim, I don’t know what was going on, but —’
‘Nothing was going on —’
She just waved away my feeble attempt to explain, like you’d deflect a blowfly on its last wings. ‘I’m not interested in what was happening in your pants while … But I am interested in your head. What you were thinking, how you thought it might —’
‘Do you want to know?’ It was my turn to interrupt. ‘It’s simple, I don’t know. I can’t explain how men think but I’ll tell you this, I spent a quarter of my life in a single bed and I don’t think there was a night when I didn’t imagine myself with a woman. Complicated, isn’t it? Profound isn’t it, the mind of a man? This man. Was it too much lost time? Imagining running my hand over a woman’s body. And seeing Retha – I can’t pretend I didn’t think about it.’
‘Not just think about it, you tried to kiss her.’
‘Well, did I? Or just hold her. I don’t even know myself. If she’d said, Come on, big boy, fuck my pants off, what would I have done? I don’t know, but she’s my cousin, just blackfella way, but even so, she was having none of it —’
‘You don’t know women.’
‘I’m not talking about women, I’m talking about me. What did I want? I’ll tell you what I wanted, someone to hold me, someone to love me, that’s what, and if it was a choice between Aunty Cookup, Lilly and Retha, I’d take Retha any day. But what was it all about? Sex? Probably. Loneliness? A lost bloody sheep wanting someone to cradle its poor stupid head? Who bloody knows. You loved your old man, he loved you —’
‘In his way.’
‘Well, I never had any way.’
She went to speak again but I held my hand up. I was on a roll. I’d never sorted it out so clearly before, and having her there before me, my lover, released it, because – yes, that was it, because I’d never had the risk of losing anything before because there was nothing to lose, and it was the having something that had me tied up like a hamstrung pig.
‘I never had anyone who ever put a hand on me who loved me. No one. Not one person to wish me goodnight. I had a girlfriend, but I wouldn’t let her anywhere near me. We fucked, my oath we did. I knew what I wanted, or thought I did, but I didn’t have a clue why she was with me, and as it turned out, neither did she.’ She went to speak again but I put my finger on her lips.
‘It wasn’t until I saw you that I worked it out. I wanted a mate. Someone I could talk to. Someone who wouldn’t talk for two hours about shopping and a hair appointment. Big deal, you might think. But I was lonely, Vanna, I’d been lonely as soon as I realised other people had families. I saw a film when I was about nine where a woman kissed her baby goodnight and I thought I was going to die. Did I cry? No bloody way, but I thought my heart would stop. And I’ve felt like that all my life. And suddenly there I was in a boat with an incredibly beautiful woman, I’ll tell you about your jaw one day, and the most important thing I could think of was how to get her to talk. Find out what she thought. I could see that you were thinking, and whatever it was, I wanted to hear you talk about it. I wanted to talk …’ I paused because I was searching for the words to describe what I meant.
‘Maybe you just hadn’t met enough women.’
‘Oh, I’d met a few. I was only inside for five years, but it was people too, I hadn’t met many people I wanted to talk to. It’s the talking, the bloody conversation I’ve always had trouble with, and just here now, looking over the river, we talk like … I’ve never had anything like it before and I want …’ I paused again, unsure what I wanted.
‘Yes?’
‘I want that. I want that friendship. You mightn’t think that’s romantic, it might not be what you want, but that’s what I want, I want the talk, and the holding hands, your arm around my waist in the night, you asking me if I want a cup of tea … You probably don’t even remember asking me that this morning. Your hand brushed my shoulder as you went past.’
‘I remember.’
‘Well, whatever that is, that’s what I want.’
‘It might be love.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘I do, but it’s not my area of expertise either. Maybe we just have to keep making each other cups of tea for a while.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And maybe if you like my conversation so much you should believe what I tell you.’
‘Look, being where I’ve been you get to distrust everything, you never —’
‘Well, you’d better start because I don’t lie, Jim. I wasn’t playing you to get back at Baras.’
‘I know that.’
‘Good, because we can’t survive if you don’t trust me. It really hurt me that you’d think I’d do that.’
‘I wasn’t … it’s like a reflex, it’s a habit, nothing is ever for real.’
‘This is not playtime for me, Jim. I was never going to … well, you know, I didn’t want another relationship and then …’
‘Those bloody earrings.’
‘No, you’re not very observant, long before that.’ Me, not observant, apart from being wrong, it was an insult. ‘I could see you were different. Hoped you were, hoped it wasn’t just me being sucked in again. Wondered if I was accident-prone. Had to keep my distance.’
‘Until?’
‘Until I found myself waking at night, thinking of you.’
‘Thinking of me?’ I know, I know, I was fishing for the compliment, any compliment, couldn’t help myself.
‘Your jokes.’
‘Jokes? I don’t know any.’
‘The way you speak, Jacques.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘It is if I say it is. I was doing my level best to keep you at a distance, even though I wanted to know what you thought about. And now here we are, all of six months down the track and I’m worrying about your woman dreams?’
‘Don’t you worry about that. I know what you say about Retha, but you’re magnificent. You don’t have to worry. You don’t even know that I spent most of last night staring at your face.’
‘Poor tired boy.’
‘You wouldn’t have a clue about faces in the moonlight.’
‘And things that go bump in the night.’
‘Don’t even talk about it. La Paz had me convinced there was someone on the verandah.’
‘There was.’
‘Someone who meant us harm, I meant.’
‘There you are then, someone else looking after you. Family.’
I turned away from her and grabbed the glasses and took them to the sink.
‘I didn’t mean to be flippant,’ she called.
‘It’s all right, I’m just not used to it.’
Someone looking out for me. Leaving pigeons, making tea. I had to get used to it, but at the same time I was scared to let go, letting someone do what I could do for myself. I didn’t want to say that to her in case she stopped, but I’d have to get used to it – without handing over all the keys. May as well be locked up again.
I calmed myself at the sink, looking down the slope of the paddock to the river. I washed and stacked, got particular about how the cutlery would drain. I had a house. And a woman. And we were in trouble. Despite what Madeleine thought. Maybe she was just trying to convince herself.
Any way you looked at it we were short of some crucial information.
nineteen
The mahogany gum in Flying Bob’s backyard was of such great antiquity that it sprawled across a larger space than the house. Old before the town existed. These trees are like great mythic creatures. There weren’t many of them but each was like a fable from an ancient book. The branches looped and coiled, writhed and stooped, gouty elbows rested exhausted on the ground and yet new growth erupted from them, as supple as young women’s fingers, as lush as their hair. It was a woman, this tree, I was sure of it as I sat on a python loop at dawn, waiting to see what Bob would do, wondering what I was going to say.
Giovanna was convinced that Madeleine could be trusted, but I felt, while she told you everything she knew, she might not know important things. Like who had guns and whose lawyer might save the skins of clients by offering a suitable sacrifice. Giovanna suggested Flying Bobby Phillips could as easily be that sacrifice as me. Bobby might know more than he let on, but I wanted to watch his eyes as he explained it.
So I waited in his yard hidden by the skirts of his mahogany. Hiding before dawn was a good idea to avoid detection in the town but how it might affect Bob was hard to judge. Perhaps a man used to fey creatures finning about reefs might expect subterfuge in people too.
A brush wattlebird threw back his head, clack a lac, and looked me in the eye. Yock kweer tock, he quizzed. I held out my hands to indicate my inability to explain myself. Wheerz kertock. Exactly.
Trees like this didn’t survive in towns without neglect. The tree was already old when a fisherman built a shack near it in the time before the Council had thought of allotments. He died of prostate. Intestate. The woman who moved in was a fishwife and lost both sons and her husband when their boat slipped backwards beneath the waves under a massive load of salmon. There is such a thing as too much fish. The woman grieved for thirty years and never went into the backyard. The tree survived. The next bloke who bought it lived in Sydney, and when he died shortly after, the family forgot they had it. Neglect: the only way a big tree survives.
Then Flying Bob moved in because no one said he couldn’t. And Bob, when he couldn’t be under the water, liked to be under trees. The series of photos inside his house recorded the history of the tree in its association with the town. Bob was like that.
But I still didn’t know what he’d make of me being in his backyard at dawn. Quock charlock, commented the wattlebird. Indeed.
At last Bob ambled into the yard to take a piss at the base of the lemon tree. As you do. Scratched his napper, rearranged the balls. I could see the thought of a cup of tea cross his mind and I emerged from the branches close to the drive as if I’d just arrived that way.
He stared at me. Expressionless. Chakack chakack.
‘Morning, Bob, thought I’d drop by.’ All that time under the mahogany had not produced a riveting sentence. The wattlebirds had been no help at all. Bob and I stared at each other for a moment. I’d ruined his thought of a cup of tea. Or something. There was a look of dread on his face. Fear. Of me? Surely not. But if he was afraid then so was I.
‘Mate, I’m worried about what’s going on. Thought you might know a bit.’
Bob sat at the table beneath the banksia. I sat opposite. The mahogany loomed behind him and the banksia, leaning away from its shade, arched corky branches over our heads. Chick chicka chicka chicka, warned the lewin honeyeater. Shack facack, replied the wattlebird, who didn’t like to share. Sit sit sit sit, wheezed the New Holland honeyeater, but everyone knows what they’re like.
‘Bob, I don’t think anyone’s safe at the moment. There are too many desperate people trying to blame someone else. Who can we trust?’
‘No one.’
I liked it better when he said nothing. ‘Stoker too? Stoker and Baras are the ones I’m worried about and Stoker’s back in town.’ Bob shrugged, an evasive sort of grimace on his lips. ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘Baras is back too.’
Wonderful. A choice of assassins.
‘I’m not sure what the police are most concerned about, the heroin or the bloody fishmeal.’
‘The ab disease has spread up the coast. It’ll wipe out the industry. Politicians are shitting themselves.’
‘But what about the heroin? That’s what they got me for. So they said.’
Bob looked away, stared into the mahogany, wishing he was a wattlebird. Didn’t want to talk about white powders. Nectars.
‘They’re trying to blame someone. Make it look like the disease wasn’t caused by their slack supervision.’
‘But how can arresting me help that?’
‘A deal with Stoker and Baras maybe. Scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. They supply a credible scapegoat. Charges dropped in exchange for something.’
‘What?’
‘Confirmation of their story. None of the cargo was theirs. Who knows? Some important people relied on those shipments. They’re putting pressure on Baras.’
‘I don’t think any of us can be safe, Bob, while it’s up in the air like this, while those bastards are plotting.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘So what about you, Bob, what will they do to you?’ I ventured.
Bob gave me a long, strange look. I froze. He’d hardly ever caught my eye before. He turned away and lifted his gaze into the branches of the banksia. His face was lit by the fretwork of light sheering off the saw-toothed leaves. A jagged mosaic capered on the lawn beneath.
‘They’ve been at it for years. I knew what was going on. Thought it would just blow over. But it didn’t. I wasn’t in it for money. I really wasn’t even in it. They just needed me, the famous footballer – so they could mix it with all the smart alecs in the members’ bar at the MCG. They’re fascinated by all that shit, like footballers calling them by their first name. So grateful they’d give them presents.’
He looked back at me when he said ‘presents’. Stared, really.
There was a mighty sadness in that look. It broke my heart, I really liked the big lumbering bastard.
Bob returned his gaze to the tree like a man who thought he might, well, who knows what Flying Bobby Phillips thought. Pak-ar pak-ar, shouted the wattlebird. Interview over.
‘Take it easy, Bob,’ I called as I left, more uncertain than when I arrived.
I collected my bike from where I’d hidden it in the gully and took a winding bush path back along the river to Uncle Marco’s farm.
I wasn’t sleeping well. I’d lie awake listening for steps on the verandah, whispers in the dark. I was exhausted. One morning I woke with a start. The sun was well up and there was a strange ute parked in the yard. The Dominator. What was he up to? I stared at the ute as I dragged on my shorts.
Dom was sitting awkwardly at the verandah table, cradling a cup as if unsure what you did with them.
‘G’day, Dom. Looking for a hideaway?’
A glum stare from a spotlit deer can look like stupidity so I went to rephrase the question when Giovanna came from the kitchen and sat beside him. She had the same look.
‘They’ve found Baras,’ she said. ‘Drowned. Picked him up at dawn this morning.’
Once again my mind acted on selfish impulse and went to rejoice and then I saw her face and realised. Her husband. Drowned.
‘How did it happen?’ I asked and went beside her chair and put an arm around her shoulder. She slumped against me.
‘He washed in to the island. Stoker’s missing too.’
‘Stoker.’ Christ, it was too good to be true.
She seemed to sense my struggle to camouflage relief. ‘Dom’s worried that someone’s killing anyone who knows anything.’
‘But you said Baras drowned.’
‘He did, but he hasn’t dived for years. What was he doing in the water?’
‘Looking for the lost shipment,’ I offered.
She shrugged. I looked at Dom, whose deerlike expression was becoming more doe than buck.
‘Well, could Stoker have done it? Business argument?’
‘But it was his boat, and his wetsuit’s missing too. The boat’s still anchored off the island,’ Giovanna added.
‘Maybe it was an accident. Maybe the compressor failed. Gassed them. It happens.’
‘Both of them? Hardly.’
‘There’s gunna be a conquest,’ Dom said.
‘Inquest,’ Giovanna gently corrected. ‘There’ll be a coroner’s inquest.’ Dom looked at her as if she was Barry Jones. ‘Dom’s worried because he had to dump the fishmeal.’
‘Why?’
‘Stoker asked me. I was scared.’
‘Where did you dump it?’ I asked.
‘At sea,’ Dom replied, as if it were a stupid question. ‘Out at sea. Just disappeared.’
‘You dumped the contaminated fishmeal out at sea?’
He looked at me as if I’d turned over the gallows card.
‘Anyone see you?’
‘Stoker. We went in his boat.’
‘Which will have traces of the food in the hull. Cops’ll be going over it already.’
‘Probably. And me ute.’
‘Is that the shit in the tray?’
‘Yeah.’
I stared at them both.
‘It’s not Dom’s fault, he was just doing a job,’ Giovanna said, trying to support her cousin.
‘But when they’ve finished the boat they’ll start looking —’
‘That’s what we’ve been talking about. They’ll want to talk to Dom about the fishmeal.’
‘Someone else to blame.’
That made them look even more downcast.
‘Look,’ I said, thinking as I spoke, ‘light a fire in the yard … chuck on those old fence posts and branches … and we’ll sweep out Dom’s ute. No, no, we’ll vacuum it and put all the shit on the fire, then we’ll wash down the ute with bleach or something.’
‘But what about the boat?’
‘It’s probably too late to do anything about that, but if Dom’s ute is clean at least it puts the transport of the feed in Stoker’s … but we don’t even know what’s happened to him yet. Let’s just do the ute first.’
