Hammerhead

by Peter Nicholson

  Chris was keen. Celia wasn’t since it meant him missing the last week of the school term. But I talked Celia round. I didn’t know how long we’d be gone, so I packed quite a lot, cleaned up, got rid of rubbish and so on. Thérèse helped me since I wasn’t inhabiting my normal skinline yet. I still had images of Jacmel falling impinging on me at odd moments.

  I went and fetched Chris. He was excited to see me. It would be good to get down to visit my friends. With Thérèse, we would be a happy family, sort of.

  Away from the bulging city, the road twisting before me, I moved into a different rhythm. I didn’t realise how tense I had been until now, and I felt myself uncurling from the shell of my pursuits.

  Chris occupied himself by looking out of the car window for registration plates that he wrote down in a notebook. He collected these obsessively and never tired of the opportunity to list a new one.

  Chris was still rather shy. I was hoping to bring him out of himself on this trip. But I didn’t want him to end up a blusterer. After all, shyness was a rather attractive personality trait in a country where you often encountered stupid bravado and macho posturing. Then, after experience didn’t match up to reality, the coroner sometimes had to bring down a verdict of suicide, the wrecks of cars, heads blown apart and rope burn last indicators of time all used up. Chris needed to come out of himself more, but I didn’t want him to end up like them.

  Thérèse kept me talking about inconsequential things so that I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

  Towards late afternoon we decided we should spend the night in a motel—the trip to South Australia was too long to complete in one go.

  I could feel myself tiring by evening and it was all I could manage to get onto the bed while Thérèse took Chris to dinner.

  I woke feeling much better and looked again at the slip of paper I’d saved from the fight the other night. It was useless to me since it was in code, and I didn’t have Stephen to help me out. I would have to get it through to him and wait for a reply.

  I sat on the end of my motel bed, sorting through each of the deaths that had diminished me. So I was supposed to feel, for ‘any man’s death diminishes me.’ If it was true—or that unfashionable thing—the truth—I wasn’t yet ready to accept it. God seemed absent. We were left to cope with the tidal waves of birth, suffering and death bearing their cycles endlessly through the receding starbursts of space. But we had to believe in something beyond dull explication. A fairytale might be true for a child—look at the fairytales adults managed to believe in—but if we believed in nothing, nothing would believe in us (shades of Nietzsche) and we would become nothing, achieve nothing.

  Carol and Jim Sanderson were friends from my early banking days. They had quit the rats’ maze and moved to a farm near a small country town on the edge of the Flinders Ranges. If you weren’t careful, this country had the ability to make you old before your time. You had to live big or its bigness would devour you. In the city you lived at more than one remove from the natural world; you didn’t often see the sun rise or enjoy the variegated life of the land.

  I had rung Carol and Jim before we’d left, and they seemed happy to have us stay. But when we arrived I sensed at once that things weren’t good between them. This was all Chris needed—another dysfunctional family. You could see the blotched, reddened matting of the drinker in both their faces.

  They had two children, and Chris seemed content to play with these boys who had a self-sufficiency a city parent could only marvel at. I guessed this had partly come about in an attempt to cope with their parents’ hostility. I don’t think they could have had many visitors in their years here. Perhaps they had forgotten the social graces which smooth off the incivility of life and make it manageable. I hoped they at least still liked one another. Surely you had to like each other to survive in such a place.

  Thérèse was absorbed in the colours of the distant mountains. She had never seen anything so intense.

  I could see Chris relaxing, grief lifting from his shoulders as he played with dogs, mucked about in mud, went running after cockatoos. How selfish Celia and her husband were to have left Chris to find his own way through for so long, their troubles preoccupying them. Why have a child unless it is going to be the priority.

  Children could survive unhappiness. Most grew into decent, caring people. But some were defeated too, losing the decades that should have prospered happiness.

  The Sanderson children were teenagers and expected to do their share of work on the property. They rode horses expertly and Chris was in awe of their ability. He wanted to ride but I couldn’t let him as he was completely inexperienced. Each morning the boys would go off, returning at the end of the day.

  I wanted to talk with Jim and Carol, but was finding it hard to break through their reserve. They asked in a desultory way about me, but I didn’t feel they were especially interested.

  Where reality lay in all of this I couldn’t say. Their lives were real too, not just mine. After all, I could just as easily have been fantasizing this whole experience, imagination drilling into its dreamshaft to pull up some talisman from the ocean of desire. It would be no good telling me about the credibility gap. I was living it.

  That night Thérèse and Chris lay in bed together hugging one another. They slept as I stared at the land beyond.

  I thought about my future and about Chris’ future too. I wondered if he would grow up realising the giant con contemporary culture had prepared for him, the rackets taking money but giving little in return, the idea you could buy happiness. How depressing it was to see models put up as worthy of emulation, or heroin-addicted rock singers, every sponsored television program, the subtext of which was: do not take anything seriously; make a joke of your life because you are not worthy of seriousness. I hoped teachers had the courage to make children do the things they didn’t want to do, to study and think hard, criticise and evaluate, to be proud of themselves, to realise you couldn’t be good at everything or maybe even anything. That was no excuse not to try, not to try again, because there would always be negativity, whatever you did. And there would always be the mediocre who would try to take you back to their way of doing nothing and calling it a life.

  The teacher’s lot was difficult. When I think of the hard time I gave mine! But how much they taught me. And how much I owe them. I wanted Chris to grow up to be a thinking, caring person; that he would love, as I had tried to love, and care, as I had tried to care. I didn’t especially like the disposition I’d been given, but it was mine, and I had tried to be true to it without, I hoped, failing too many others. Finally, I wished that Chris would have passion, because without passion even the best achievement would be meaningless. If you could achieve something with passion it would be the greatest thing in the world. And to have that kind of passion meant having the courage to do something alone. If my wishes could have been deeds just then, Chris would have been, eventually, true to himself. But as I knew, wishes were not deeds. It was the deed that mattered, not false praise, tarnished prizes.

  I got out of bed since I couldn’t settle. Thérèse and Chris were asleep. How peaceful they looked.

  Outside on the veranda I listened to the night calls, the strange eddying of the spirit world, songlines crossing at my feet, entering me, giving me their strength.

  I stayed outside as the world turned and the sun opened onto the land, the pink growing to fiery orange, dust hanging in the air, the leaves in the gumtrees shaking in the morning breeze.

  I felt I might be consumed by this landscape.

  In this morning tremor I thought of life, of death, the world, and fate.

  Chris came out and sat with me.

  ‘I want to live with you,’ he said plaintively.

  I told him it couldn’t be. How could I say you were fated to your parents and they were fated to you. He could not understand that yet.

  Chris was silent.

  Then he asked me what I didn’t want asked.

&nbs
p; ‘Are Mum and Dad going to stay together?’

  He looked at me for the truth, but I couldn’t tell all of it.

  ‘I don’t know Chris. They are going through a rough patch. But both your Mum and Dad love you. You know that, don’t you.’

  Chris stared at the ground watching ants in file going through their travail.

  ‘Do you love Thérèse?’

  I did love Thérèse. To acknowledge that was marvellous. What had begun as an affair, perhaps a convenience, had turned into something much deeper. I so looked forward to knowing Thérèse better, in all of her intelligence and beauty, her marvellous sense of the ridiculous, her sheer enjoyment of life.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I answered, surprised at my own happiness.

  ‘Do Mum and Dad love one another like that?’

  Chris couldn’t yet understand the splendours and executions of love—well, who did—so I put an end to his questioning.

  Everything was difficult. Best for him not to know it yet.

  One of the cattle dogs came up to him and started licking Chris’ legs. He went off to play with it while I went in to get breakfast ready for the others.

  The Hammer seemed far off. I knew another meeting was being convened soon, but that could as easily have been in the next millennium for all I cared just now.

  Thérèse had showered and dressed before the others got up and we enjoyed some quiet time together in the large kitchen, playing with pieces of toast and holding warm mugs of coffee to our chests.

  ‘You know we will have to be getting back soon,’ she suggested.

  I said I hoped we would be able to leave in the next few days.

  Stephen finally got back to me later in the morning. He had managed to get the single message I’d saved decoded.

  Extremely bad news. The message implied The Hammer had been infiltrated. Someone within was leaking to someone without. Where had we slipped up? I knew it wasn’t me and couldn’t have been Anton or Thérèse. Who then?

  I heard Carol and Jim arguing later that day. It was a money argument and, as such, didn’t get resolved. I hadn’t asked how the financial side of farming had worked out for them. I’d assumed it was alright because the house they lived in was impressive, and they seemed to have everything they needed.

  I offered to take Chris and the boys on a trip up into the ranges, which were spectacular. It wouldn’t be the outback I’d wanted when I first promised Chris we would go away, but it would suffice. Thérèse would stay behind to be with Carol—she felt Carol needed a shoulder to cry on and missed female companionship.

  I was tired of everything being so uncertain. Even here, where I thought I would be able to get away from the complexities of The Hammer, there was not much that was solid to hold on to, only Chris, whom I could see turning into someone wise before my eyes, and Thérèse. Chris’ brief time here had opened him up to a new world and he was rejoicing in it.

  Our trip to the ranges was good. We borrowed Jim’s four-wheel drive and really got to explore the land in a manner that transformed my perceptions. Even the simplest act—drinking water from a creek, for example—took on a nobler import. I felt the eternal in wind, leaf and stone enfolding my anxiety.

  When we returned late the next day we were sleepy, but everything had gone well, and Chris was happy. It was the first time he’d slept outdoors, under stars, and he was full of excitement at what he’d seen. How I wished I could feel that way more often.

  Later, Thérèse told me the farm was heavily mortgaged and there was a danger of foreclosure. Their drinking had gotten worse and the boys wouldn’t be able to go to boarding school next year if things kept going the way they had been.

  I felt sorry for Thérèse having to manage these strangers in a far-off place she wasn’t used to, but she didn’t seem to mind. A woman like that, so kind, loving and intelligent, is rare. How lucky I was to have met her. How strange it should have come about through Charles.

  There hadn’t been much in the press about Jacmel’s death, so I assumed it had been hushed up. Interpol would have been onto it quickly. Pity they hadn’t been aware of Jacmel’s activities in his heyday.

  Thérèse thought it would be best if we didn’t go back to Sydney. We could have left via Perth. But what about Chris. I couldn’t send him back on his own.

  We left my friends forlorn on their veranda, and I wondered how long it would be before I would see them again. Or if I would ever see them again.

  Chris didn’t want to leave, not understanding the exigencies of my situation. I guess he was getting apprehensive about going back to the house of gloom.

  Entering the city that clung to the ocean, my home, I tried to muster the energy I was going to need to get through the next month. I missed Anton, missed my father too. I finally delivered Chris to his mother. She didn’t seem to realise she was getting a new man-child back rather than the boy who’d left. I thought he would be strong enough to cope. I told Chris he could always ring me.

  Thérèse and I then approached my apartment, gingerly, just in case.

  Everything seemed to be in order, so we decided we’d chance it, and try to leave Sydney at the end of the week, on separate flights.

  But what you plan is not what is planned for you. That very evening I received a call from a removalist company. Charles’ rock transplant we’d talked about had come through, and the curator and others involved wished to start work on Friday. I knew Charles needed this done, so I could hardly disappoint him by going straight back to Munich. I said I’d be at Charles’ place on Friday.

  Nora James didn’t have a good opinion of white orthodoxy. The Aboriginal curator, not surprisingly, was angry this rock art had been stolen, but she calmed down when I explained how it had come to be here in the first place. She rarely smiled, having become well-acquainted with invader mendacity.

  With the help of an engineer, Nora spent the day working out how the rock, which was substantial, was going to be removed. Both truck and helicopter would be required to return it to Arnhem Land, which would be an expensive operation. That wasn’t a problem since Charles had authorised me to pay whatever was required.

  For the first time, I sat and actually studied the rock painting. It was a beautiful, dramatic thing with markings I couldn’t fathom. Nora was silent. I was left to guess what the patterning meant.

  Nora did, however, say she would lend me a book about Aboriginal culture and language. She told me I needed to read it so I could understand the significance of the work.

  I tried to think of it in the way I thought of my own life. Whatever had happened to me, good and bad, had made me the person I was right now. Yet at this moment I was becoming different too. In that rock art I could see history written, the pattern reaching out to renewal, rebirth. My renewal. My rebirth.

  The rock was gradually shifted out—the plate glass windows had to be dismantled—then wrapped and loaded onto the truck waiting at the top of the drive. Thérèse and I spent the rest of the day getting the house back in order and the glass windows reinstalled—only one large pane broke and had to be replaced.

  The empty space at the back of the room looked strange, a few swirls of dust all that remained on the wall, the ledge specially created to receive the work waiting, as if on some temple step, for another sacrifice.

  Nora thanked me for my help, but couldn’t help wondering about the expenditure she’d seen.

  ‘Reynolds has lots of dosh. What does he use it all for?’ she queried.

  ‘He’s changed a lot in recent times,’ I hedged. ‘He tries to do good things with his money now.’

  Nora gave me a quizzical look saying, ‘Come up and see the rock back in place. You haven’t really finished till you’ve done that.’

  I hesitated, but thought it might be a good idea to round things off this way.

  I rang Charles to let him know how things were. He sounded more pleased than I had heard in a long time.

  ‘That’s great. I want you to go with the
work and let me know when it’s back in its home. I am putting the greatest faith in you David.’

  He said it in a strangely vehement manner.

  He repeated himself, ‘Yes, the greatest faith. Please remember that.’

  We continued speaking, which was unusual for Charles. Normally he was brusque, but now he wanted to talk. He told me a lot about his parents—I guess he felt I needed some reassurance after my own loss. And he spoke of Roy. I felt his warmth coming through, something he didn’t show very often. He was somewhat distant, unless you gained his confidence, and then you saw just how large his soul was. Of course he was no saint. But he was no Macbeth either, just the usual irreconcilable human mixture.

  How I was looking forward to seeing him again.

  Thérèse and I decided she should leave first. I would join her after I’d ensured the rock had found its home.

  I travelled to Arnhem Land with Nora.

  I was looking through the book Nora had lent me and beginning to realise how little I knew my own country. What a different world offered itself up to me: Bandjalong, Birrikili, Bundjalong; Ngunawal, Ngypampa, Noonucal; Yalangi, Yamaji, Yankunytjatjara.

  I tried speaking the names softly to myself.

  So many journeys made. So many journeys still to make.

  It was plainly contradictory, my whole life since joining The Hammer, but I hoped a few people in the future would see I was trying to achieve something worthwhile.