by Rodney Hall
There is a witness to these details.
The witness knows what he’s doing. He makes himself invisible just by how he stands, apparently with a perfect right to be there. A certain masculine grace sets off the largeness of everything he does. As he lights a cigarette his new uniform jacket, rucking at the armpits, barely contains his bulk. Squinting against ravelled wreaths of smoke—he is downwind of her—he picks a flake of ash from one sleeve and then consults his mobile, idly scrolling recent messages. Each element plays its part in his invisibility. He pauses long enough to re-read the latest SMS. From far down the road the level-crossing bell warns of an arriving train. He knows to expect a few regulars: one female shiftworker, who will walk up from the station returning home to number 76, a cyclist emerging from 62 and setting off towards town, plus this young woman (the wife) out for her daily jog in the park. And here she is, dressed in sports gear. But instead of jogging she procrastinates.
He needs her to get going soon.
Every morning, so his dossier informs him, she completes a circuit of the lake. While she’s away the regular rehab team arrives. They will let themselves into the house. Between this moment and that—her leaving and their arrival—is a reliable window of fourteen or fifteen minutes. Tight but workable. Potential wildcards include a neighbour (Shaohua Yao, 27, Chinese, black hair, brown eyes, 175cm, 69 kg) and, less likely, the cousin (Zacharia Griffiths, 29, brown hair, blue eyes, 187cm, 83kg, independent federal senator, driving Range Rover SUB262). Calmly he waits, alert to the anomaly that there seems no good reason why she is not yet off and running.
Minutes pass. He keeps her in his sights, not for a moment losing concentration or failing to observe her slightest movement—the wife being key—while she is stuck there, engrossed, gazing at the place next door. Her inaction, for some obscure reason, seems connected to a small black dog busily scratching itself among tufts of rank grass in the shadow of the rusted roof.
The watcher watches the wife watching the animal.
Meanwhile in order to remain unnoticed he keeps moving. He strolls back to his regimental car. Consistent with the curious gift of officialdom the insignia on the doors confirm his anonymity. He gets in. Once more behind the wheel he checks his rear-vision mirrors and then glances ahead along the street. No sooner has the resident of 76 duly approached and turned in at her gate than the expected cyclist emerges in lycra, strapping on his helmet: she goes in, he goes out. A precious minute passes. The watcher rehearses the tricky part, which will be handling the departmental medics (‘Just visiting on behalf of the regiment . . . his comrades-in-arms.’) and then, crucially, the returning wife (‘A good man in an emergency, your husband . . .’). Orderly, formal and respectful.
Job done, he can drive off in his innocent car, which has been parked on the street the whole while for all to see. He can sign off, return the vehicle to the transport division, head home to pick up his baggage and fly out to Thailand for the postponed pleasures of the beach. Taking Quentin along, of course. Ah yes, the thought of this new woman fills him with satisfaction. Exploring her. Burying his nose between her breasts, his hands already busy, but put off his stroke by the question mark over that unexplained message: Report for duty tomorrow 0700 special assignment. The memory leaps to mind and a drawstring rictus twitches his cheek. There is an aspect to service that sits awkwardly with him. His knuckles tap the wheel. Anyhow—where sex is concerned—his gamble paid off. She came good. The climax began to build long after midnight and then, as if a shock ran through her body, she finally opened out (what a beauty!), sweet as a rose. No doubt she is still there, warm and waiting for him, just as he left her.
That reminds him.
He ponders yesterday’s weird little drama. Some sort of inaugural ceremony. Quentin had been invited because it turns out she designed the building—she’s a class act, this one—so he broke out the YSL and took trouble choosing a sophisticated tie. Why not? What did he have to lose? And when it came to the point the event was much bigger than expected: the whole street closed off, police, a helicopter milling overhead, Rolls-Royces and press photographers. Perfume in the evening air. The flash of jewels. Him feeling comfortably at home in his best gear. Vindication of the effort.
A long way from the dust and grime of the Middle East.
Minding his manners he thanked the usher who conducted them indoors. Cool shit. Champagne. Classical music happening in one corner. Surreptitiously he checked his armpits with his nose. Acceptance among the powerful and privileged a blast in its twisted way—the place full of bankers and industrialists—all somehow connected and tight as a club. More intriguing was the prevalent mood, which he’d describe as . . . dissatisfied. A hint of reputations being undermined and plots hatched. New experience. Women as much a part of it as men. The whole performance came to an end when an old dame, at long last clocking the porn on the walls around them, waved her walking sticks and shouted in the voice of a terrified horse, ‘Which way OUT!’
Pretty funny.
The wife straightens up, at long last. Well, he has fully memorized his brief, even to knowing the floorplan of her house. His tactical mind is satisfied. But no sooner has she begun to move than she hesitates again at the top of the ramp. Bloody woman. Get a move on. You’re supposed to be long gone by now. Despite himself a strange heaviness settles on his heart. The shadow of some buried rebellion. Tricky to pinpoint. He broods. No doubt it will only last the interim till the sequence of events kicks in and unfolds of its own accord. There’s a change of wind. Trees rustle in the park. Water glints from the hollow down there. He double-checks his watch. What must be done must be done. Now she’s about to set off. Hips. Bottom. Not bad—not at all bad. Even so, she has cost his schedule a full six minutes. Time will be tight. It’s just as well he knows his job. He reviews the range of available certainties. Strange, the places life can lead a man. Connections you never expect.
The great thing is that action comes of silence—as men of courage know.
But what’s this? Another hitch puts the assignment at risk. Jesus! What the fuck! A little girl emerging around the corner of the house next door stops dead in her tracks. She has spotted him in his car even at this distance. Invisible to everyone else, he is not invisible to her. Never trust children. He reaches to slot the key in the ignition. She stares, her obstinate black eyes dark with suspicion. She knows he does not belong. But here comes a man (the father?) shouting, ‘Look, Linda!’ and pointing among the bushes, ‘Baby!’ The child rushes over, scoops the tiny dog in her arms and buries her face in its fur.
The wife with her hips and bottom joins them. They hang around and indulge in unnecessary talk. Eroding his precious margin. Finally—man and woman—they get their act together and cross the road. The child skips between. Taking each by the hand, she uses them to swing herself up off the ground. Into the green folds of the park and out of sight they go, with the dog running ahead, trailing a leash that has just been clipped to its collar. Useless.
The watcher checks his mobile. He notes a redundant weather forecast: 26° sunny. He texts: Home in 50.
The empty bed is made. The front door stands open. It’s expected that Josh and Vanessa will walk straight in as soon as they arrive. They know the drill. Adam, up and dressed, resumes the laborious task of typing with one finger. But his concentration is shot. Ever since offering Bridget her freedom—because this happened somehow spontaneously and without plan—he is mortally afraid she will take him up on it. There was no particular reason for telling her about those women in the war zone (and now what has been done cannot be undone) or the contented baby being passed from hand to hand. She heard him out. Then quietly and factually she said, ‘You’ll tire your voice.’
It’s because of this he knew they had reached the end. There was nothing more definite than a change of tone. In her eyes he could see that, whatever the cost, Bridget would honour the only gift he had left to
offer. When she set off she apologized for going—which also seemed to suggest something about Yao—so he’d picked up this thread and responded cheerfully, ‘Thanks to his. Ramp. I might make my. Ar. Getaway. While you’re out.’
Those were his last words to her. O sweetheart.
To salvage his wrecked life he’ll use all the tools at hand. Hence the need to get busy on his book. He casts a fresh eye over last night’s attempt at a chapter summary. Hmm. He toys with the idea of beginning in the middle by putting the bomb blast right up there on page one, followed by the question: Who the fuck fired that? Leading to the Donald Rumsfeld quote about ‘known unknowns and unknown unknowns’, which he needs to look up again so he gets it right. But while clicking on Google, without a second thought, Adam finds he has activated an utterly irrelevant search: Datong.
Up pops Wikipedia with the official website: A small Chinese city. Pop: 3.6 million. Known for coal production and obsolete religious images. The Yao family hometown. Pictured on the screen a huge statue of Buddha stands, shadowy and snow-covered, at the mouth of a cave. (Once in his life Adam saw actual snow—on the mountain—when they travelled down from Canberra. Uncle Paul driving the Ford. And they’d all got out, grown-ups and kids alike, to walk into a swirl of flakes, the delicate tumbling sky a collapsing dome of silence, in which you were allowed to spread your arms and tip your face up and laugh like a maniac. Delicate flakes came to rest on woollen jumpers and cold white stars got caught in everyone’s hair. Trees stood around, cloaked and weightless. His own body weightless too, he trod the soft bank. Gusts of wind disturbed flurries and eddies as that steady unstoppable teeming continued to pour down on the land until the bush itself appeared to be rising up into it. A space puzzle. Uncle Paul was young again, scooping snow into a ball and throwing it. The sting and sudden explosion of the bursting snowball, when it hit, carried the shock of realizing grown-ups can have fun too, dangerously breaking the basic rule that separates them from children. And Zac flung himself flat on his back among yielding drifts, smashed to death when Aunt Tracey’s snowball splattered against his chest. Uncle Paul showed how you can bury your face and eat the snow. Mouthfuls of light. Caught up in the eternity of wonderment, ‘eating light’ became the next craze. That’s when everyone realized there was a kangaroo standing nearby, perfectly still, paws crossed on her chest, haunches tensed ready to leap away, fascinated by their game, ears pricked, nose twitching, jaws ruminatively working, daring to stay despite the danger. And a tiny joey emerged from the pouch to see for itself. ‘Boo!’ Zac shouted. Even then the calm mother only turned her head as if to hear better. Meanwhile the torrent of falling snow grew thicker and wilder till it was suddenly too much for everyone. The whole family made a dive for the car with its snow-clogged hubcaps. They tumbled in, noses and ears red, shivering all over and hysterical as banshees, the boys competing to see whose teeth chattered most. Uncle Paul made the tyres skid by hooning on to the mountain road. And the only other car to come along during that whole snowstorm had yellow headlights burning in the middle of the day . . .)
At the sound of a vehicle Adam consults the clock. Josh and Vanessa are early. That’s a change. Well, good. In a sudden effort to reach out and close down the laptop—his interest in Yao’s background being none of their business—he leans at a perilous angle. For a moment it’s a wrestling match against gravity. Knotted by spasms of pain and afloat on vertigo he establishes rules for the neutrality of space. The steadfast Contraption supports him. Incrementally—and always game—he reassembles his wreckage. Better.
Balanced once more, he rights his aching body. Breathe.
Life, he decides, is more or less worth it. The green glass bowl on the windowsill is filled with light. The future itself may be no more than transparency. And the past, stored in memory, begins to make sense. Out on the porch his father’s empty wicker chair catches the morning sun in a shadow-web. The large and startling presence of a stranger already stands there.
‘The boys that’s left send you their best,’ says the stranger. And steps in.
‘Chris?’ Adam croaks in amazement, his heart lifted by sudden hope. ‘Is it. You?’
Already Lieutenant Christian Fletcher displaces all the air in the room.
‘This won’t take long, mate.’
_______________________
Notes & Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my dear family—Bet and our darling, brilliant daughters, Imogen, Delia and Cressida—also the friends who enrich my life, with particular thanks to Julian Burnside, Mary Cunnane and Dylan Warren, also my patient and perceptive publishers Geordie Williamson and Mathilda Imlah. My local coffee shops, Journeyman, Garage, Glass Merchants, Two Lost Boys and the Gramercy, kept me caffeinated while much of this book was being written there. A section of the opening chapter was published in Island magazine as ‘The Married Man’.
p. 11: When completing the first draft I had the idea of an exo-skeleton that could be activated and directed by Adam’s brain. But just how he might convey these commands to the equipment was another matter. I got as far as the idea of an electrode attached to his skull. Then, as I was putting the finishing touches to the first draft, the experts came to the rescue. On 9 February 2016 a research team at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne announced the breakthrough using a stent, implanted in a blood vessel adjacent to the brain, connected to a wireless transmitter in the chest. In effect they had harnessed the power of thought (which Professor Terence O’Brien described as ‘the holy grail for research in bionics’). I gladly acknowledge that this was their research, not my invention.
p. 18: I came across the Burroughs quote in Kubrick by Michael Herr, Picador, 2000.
p. 25: Coalition troops commonly referred to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr by the leader’s name, the Moqtada.
p. 109: Colin Powell interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, 2008.
p. 149: The existence of these erotic drawings, and that there were a great many of them, is attested by biographers of both Ruskin and Turner, also that Ruskin and a friend burned them all (for the stated reason) with the collusion of Ralph Warnum, Keeper of the National Gallery. Not surprisingly, this was shrouded in secrecy at the time. The rescued sketchbook of my novel is fictional, as is Hardingham’s ancestor and his role in saving it.
p. 218: Lines from ‘Eight O’Clock’ by A. E. Housman (1859–1936).
p. 248: The theory behind the sacred numbers thirteen and twenty (as the months of the lunar year and the number of human digits) is my speculation—as is the idea that these temples were validated by their abandonment—with no pretence to any scholarly validity. The reader should be warned that Joshua Shilling himself is fictional and last appeared in another of my novels as a firebrand agitator.
p. 281: Scott Ritter, Frontier Justice, Context Books, 2003.
About Rodney Hall
Rodney Hall is one of our foremost authors. He left school at sixteen for family reasons, already determined to become a writer and to educate himself by experience. Two years later he was called up for National Service. Afterwards, when the opportunity arose, he sailed from Brisbane to Genoa and set out, with £112 in his pocket, to walk around Europe. He was thirty-one when he enrolled at university and his formative literary influences—quite at odds with those of his contemporaries—were already set. He studied Old English and the cultural history of India while supporting himself as an ABC radio actor and scriptwriter. Since then he has won two Miles Franklin Awards, his novels have been widely published and translated into many languages, and he has been twice presented with the gold medal of the Australian Literature Society.
Also by Rodney Hall
novels
The Ship on the Coin
A Place among People
Just Relations
Kisses of the Enemy
Captivity Captive
The Second Bridegroom
The Grisly Wife
The Island in the Mind
The Day We Had Hitler Home
The Last Love Story
Love without Hope
short fiction
Silence
memoir
Popeye Never Told You
non-fiction
Australia: Image of a Nation 1850–1950 (with David Moore)
Journey through Australia
J.S. Manifold
poetry
Black Bagatelles
The Most Beautiful World
Selected Poems
The Owner of My Face
opera libretto
Dry River Run (music by Paul Dean)
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations
mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s
imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe
actual conduct.
First published 2018 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Rodney Hall 2018
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.