by Peter Corris
No-one challenged my right to tie up at the jetty. A couple of people were working on their boats, a few were lounging on theirs, and I wasn’t worth their attention. That suited me fine. I had the simple map of the island in my head: outer ring road; inner ring road with several streets radiating off it towards the park in the centre; and one road bisecting the island. Bougainville Street was one of the radials. I reached the outer road by stepping off the end of the jetty right onto it. It was a wide, well-made road with a narrow gravel strip on either side. Things had changed on the island since little Cliff’s visit in the faraway fifties. It was the smells that brought the memories back—gum trees, perhaps a peculiar combination of them, intermingled with the smell of cut fennel where someone had been mowing an unruly lawn. There were many more houses now and more big ones. The outer road had been a rutted dirt track back then and it seemed that we hiked for hours to get to the park. Not so now; the road had been graded and followed the contours of the land easily; it was uphill to the bisecting road, but gently. As I walked I got glimpses of the water through the trees and eventually over the tops of them. It was going to be a soft, mild night with a breeze. The treetops waved and the water turned darker. Christ, I thought, you’ll be admiring the sunset next. You’re here to work!
From the road I could see an untidier part of the island, down near the water’s edge where small, old houses clustered together like bits of driftwood. Up here it was all solid constructions and cement driveways. A football came sailing towards me as I walked past one of the houses. I caught it awkwardly, surprised at its shape. It was an American football, smaller than the ones I was used to, and pointed.
‘Throw it!’ The order came from a kid standing twenty feet away. I could see him through the sticks of a high tea-tree fence. It’s an old habit—when told, asked or challenged to throw or jump something, the odds are I’ll do it. I’d seen the quarterbacks on TV; the way they gripped the ball, shuffled and threw. I tried it: the ball sailed in a perfect, looping spiral into the kid’s hands.
‘Hey,’ he cried. ‘You’re good!’
He threw it back in the same way and I caught it again.
‘Just luck,’ I said. We both approached the fence. ‘You don’t sound like an American,’ I said.
‘My Dad is.’
‘I see. D’you play baseball too?’
‘Naw. Prefer cricket.’
An all-round kid. ‘Am I heading the right way for Bougainville Street?’
‘Yeah. It’s up there.’ He pointed.
‘Know a man named Agnew who lives in that street?’
‘Naw. It’s a crummy street. You wanna have another throw?’
‘One more.’
He tossed the ball over and turned his back to the fence. He was a stocky kid wearing jeans and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. He was strong-looking, with an air of concentrating on the job at hand. ‘You yell “hike”, he said. ‘I run back. You count three and then throw. Try to throw straight and keep it away from that fuckin’ bush over there. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ I felt silly. ‘Hike!’ I said.
The kid ran; I counted and threw. The ball wobbled and looked like falling short. The kid spun around, dived and caught it inches above the grass. I raised both hands in the American athletes’ salute, felt the gun bump against my ribs, and walked on.
Bougainville Street let the rest of the area down badly. For one thing it straggled and dog-legged where the other streets were straight. For another, the houses had more fibro cement in them and less timber and brick than was the rule. Number 2 was at the bottom of the range—a wide bungalow set back in an over-grown garden. The fence in front was a ruin and the grass had become tangled and matted at about knee height. The gate hung at a crazy angle and I stepped around it and went up the path, scarcely discernible in the grass, to the front door. No deep, shady verandahs here; just a mean little structure of rotting timber and rusty iron, overhanging the front door.
The houses on either side were better tended but had the look of weekenders, infrequently visited. This was Friday; maybe there’d be neighbours in residence tonight, maybe not. Across the street from this house and the few on either side of it, the land fell away too sharply to allow building. It was the perfect setting for a house to be left empty, neglected and ignored. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed; I hadn’t expected Agnew to be out there mowing the lawn, but the neglect looked discouragingly old. Still, you never can tell. A man on the bottle lets things slip; the desertion could be contrived rather than real; or things might look different around the back.
I pushed the gate further open and walked to the front door. There were two wooden steps in front of it, one of which disintegrated when I stepped on it. A heavy knock brought no response other than to cause more paint to flake off the door. The glass in the transom was cracked and mended with insulating tape. Blinds were drawn down over the two front windows. I walked down the side of the house pushing aside stalks of woody weeds that jutted up from the fence and from the foundations of the house itself. One consolation, I told myself—no dog.
Behind the house the neglect intensified. The outhouse toilet was a ruin; some of its boards had collapsed, letting in the weather and the weeds. A rusted bicycle with cobwebs growing all over the frame and between the spokes was propped up against the back of the house. The three or four wooden steps up to the door were rickety; the second one almost broke when I put an experimental foot on it. The door was even more decayed than the one in the front. The windows were yellow with dust and fly specks and the frames were dry and splintered like old paling fences. The grass was waist-high and big oleander and privet bushes grew, higher than the fences, along both sides of the backyard. The only thing that had stopped growing was the decrepit Hills hoist.
The door was locked. A little effort with the fingertips pulled the window catch away from the wood. I slid the lower section up an inch and felt the absence of a sash. I let it down, fossicked for a piece of wood in the yard and found one the right length. I propped the window open, moved the bike across, stood on the crossbar and climbed through.
12
IT had been a long time since any fun had been had in that house, if you don’t count cockroaches. There was a thick film of dust over everything—furniture, books, crockery, glassware. The place looked as if it had been left suddenly, one busy morning maybe, and had never been returned to. The covers on the double bed in the larger of the two bedrooms had been quickly pulled up. A single bed in the other room had been used as a linen store—sheets and clothes, roughly folded, were stacked on it. A man’s clothes and a woman’s, like those in the drawers and wardrobe of the other bedroom.
Dishes had been washed at the sink and left to drain. Dust settling on them when wet had formed a sludge that was now a thin layer of dried mud. It was an uncanny and uncomfortable feeling to go through the drawers and cupboards collecting papers and other scraps of the lives that had been lived here. The clothes were the firmest evidence: blue shirts, dark trousers, plain shoes. There were holes where a badge had been pinned. Among the man’s clothes there was also some beach gear and summer wear. I found a camera and light meter but no photographs. The woman’s clothes were the kind Tania Bourke would have worn when she wasn’t strutting her stuff in the city—still well-made, still man-attracting, but with some concessions to a relaxed life in the lower heels and more casual styles.
As the flat in the Greenwich Apartments had contained more of the woman’s things, this held more of the man’s. The paperbacks tended to be of the hairy-chested variety, Robert Ruark and co. There was a small collection of the sort of thing that had been contraband in Australia until the Whitlam enlightenment—Lady Chatterley, Portnoy, Henry Miller etc. Joe Agnew must have been assiduous in his duties, or perhaps the boys divided the confiscated hot stuff at the pub after work.
I worked through the house thoroughly as the light dimmed outside. The electricity and gas were connected. The water ran rusty, the colour
of weak tea. In the end I could probably have filled another garbage bag with Agnew’s and Bourke’s significant effects. I could certainly have proved that the same two people had occupied this house and flat one at the Greenwich Apartments. Some newspapers and magazines indicated activity later than in the other place, up to about a year ago. Unusually for that sort of house, the front door had a letter slot. Mail had built up inside the door like an Aboriginal midden. Most of it was unsolicited junk, none of it was revealing, personal, or intimate, but receipted power bills indicated that someone was paying the way in a place where no-one lived. Again.
‘Where have you gone?’ I said to myself aloud. The sound of my own voice startled me. I was in the living room which was almost dark. I switched on the light and heard a scurrying behind the couch against the wall. A fully paid up house for mice, I thought. Wait till the news gets around. I turned on the three-in-one sound system and hit the AM button. After a few bars of music I got the seven o’clock news. They were shooting white people in the Lebanon, brown people in the Philippines and black people in South Africa. Petrol and unemployment were up, farm incomes and the dollar were down. Two Balmain players were suspended for head-high tackling and tomorrow was going to be wet. No comfort anywhere.
I left the radio on and wandered through the house wondering if I should make an attack on the floorboards. In the front bedroom the blind was torn at the side and I glanced through the gap.
A man was standing in front of the house; he was slightly bent to get some cover from a shrub and the way his right hand was positioned suggested to me that he was holding a gun. He squinted at the house and then turned and made a beckoning gesture with his left. I raced through the house to the back, turned the key and pulled the door open. I was reaching for my gun when a man who already had one out and at the ready stepped into view. He lifted the gun.
‘Stand right there.’
I froze; he moved forward and gestured for me to back away. I stood my ground; he was going to come up the steps and that was fine with me. When the second step took his weight it crumbled; he lurched sideways and I bulled forward straight into him. He lost balance and footing; his gun slammed into the side of the house and I was past him and running through the thick grass to the back fence. I think I would have tried to jump it if I’d had to, but a ten-foot section of it had fallen flat. I hurdled the remains and ran on.
The light was fading fast now and the going was difficult. I was in light scrub and heading upwards. A rabbit track zigzagged up the hill and I followed it as best I could. Zigzagging was fine if there was going to be any shooting from behind. I gasped and wheezed, grabbed at saplings to keep moving up in the rockiest and roughest bits, and I didn’t look back. You can tell when you’re being pursued; you feel it on the back of your neck like a cold breeze and I was feeling it now. Still no shooting though.
I realised that I was heading towards the park in the middle of the island and I tried to remember its layout. Too long ago, and they’d probably filled in the water holes and installed adventure playgrounds. It wasn’t the brightest prospect—in the gathering gloom with at least three men and two guns after me, I should have been looking for human support rather than a tree patch with possums.
I blundered on, tripping on tree roots and feeling branches cut my face. I tasted blood and almost fell when a branch hit my right eye solidly and squarely. Suddenly, I was half-blind. Everything to the right of centre was a blank. I felt a rush of fear and blinked frantically but the vision wouldn’t clear. I swung my head to increase the field of sight and almost fell. I felt useless all down the right side. I was barely moving when I finished the climb and reached a level, grassy stretch. I stood for a minute with heaving chest, blind eye and raw throat, trying to decide what to do next. I could see the lights of the houses below me and hear noises: with diminished vision, the noises were incredibly clear—birds, rustling animals, stealthy feet. I jogged across the clearing towards a stand of trees. The eye throbbed; I put my hand up to it and felt a blow on the back of my neck. I sagged, dug in my pocket for the gun and felt it again in the same spot but harder. I closed the other eye. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t help it. I fell forward, slamming my shoulder into the hard earth.
I didn’t pass out but I might just as well have. I had trouble getting the good eye open; my shoulder hurt and I had practically no breath in my lungs so I lay as if I was paralysed. Three men stood over me—the two I’d seen back at the house and one other. The two I’d seen before were breathing hard, the other wasn’t, but all six of their eyes were open and none seemed to have a mouthful of blood like me. I managed to turn my head sideways and spit out some of the blood.
‘Christ,’ the one I’d seen at the front of the house said.
‘He’s all right.’ This was from the third man who wasn’t out of breath, wore a smart, full-length coat in contrast to the casual clothes of the others, and seemed to be the one in charge.
The man I’d pushed past on the back steps rubbed his shoulder. One small score to Hardy. ‘Do we do it?’ he said.
The boss bent down and took my gun from the jacket pocket. He put it away in his coat. ‘That’s what they tell us.’
‘Do what?’ I mumbled. ‘Who are you?’
‘Shut up!’ The boss snapped. ‘Think you can walk?’
‘How far?’ I said.
‘Not far.’ He turned on his heel. ‘If he can’t walk, don’t try to carry him. Drag him!’
They pulled me up; everything spun and then settled down into a swirling mist. Maybe I walked, maybe they dragged me. I felt as if I was swimming while standing upright. I don’t know how far it was to the car, probably not far, but it felt like five miles. I knew it couldn’t be because the island was only one mile across. I didn’t care, it still felt like five. Sitting in the car felt good. I was in the back with my two friends beside me—soft seat, back rest; when the car got going I buckled in the middle and vomited on the floor between my legs.
The one on my right said, ‘You animal!’ and belted me across the face. The damaged eye took some of the force of the blow and I yelled with the pain.
‘Next time swallow it,’ he said.
‘I’ll make you eat it if I get the chance,’ I said.
‘You won’t, Hardy.’
That gave me two things to ponder—they knew my name and they were going to ‘do’ something with me. I concentrated on getting my breath back and my right eye open on the short drive. I succeeded with the first but not with the second. The flesh around the eye was puffy and swollen and I felt as if I’d lost muscle control in that part of my face. The shoulder hurt too; it was dislocated or nearly so. I was in poor shape for running away or fighting or doing anything but talking. I was so worried about the eye that I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I stopped worrying about the eye; dead is dead, one eye or two. I had to talk.
The car stopped at the jetty. We sat awhile for my companions to make sure the coast was clear. Then the boss snapped his fingers. ‘Harry,’ he said. ‘Take his boat.’
‘I’ll lose my deposit.’
‘Shut up!’
Harry, who hadn’t spoken yet, said ‘Right.’ He got out of the car and vanished. The boss and the other man manhandled me along the jetty and down a set of steps into a boat—a speedboat with sleek lines and an enclosed cabin in front. They switched on lights, started the engines and took her expertly out into the channel. I heard a Johnson engine kick a couple of times before it started. My boat. There was no-one around to yell to. I couldn’t have made it over the side and I doubted I could swim with the damaged shoulder anyway. Talk, Hardy, I thought. Talk!
‘Tell me what’s going on,’ I said.
No reply.
Were they going to drop me in the water? I felt the fear stir inside me and looked around for the right stuff—wire, cement blocks, bed frames, but there was nothing like that.
My voice sounded as if it was coming from under-water already. ‘Who’s b
ehind this?’ I said. ‘Darcy?’
The boss was sitting opposite me with his coat hitched up over his knees. He was a tall, thin character with a grooved, sharp-boned face. The grooves looked as if they were cutting their way through to the bones.
‘In a way,’ he said. ‘Any problems. Rolf?’
The man at the wheel lit a cigarette. ‘No,’ he said.
Not a gabby pair.
‘D’you want a cigarette, Hardy?’ the boss said.
I shook my head which hurt. ‘Bad for the health,’ I said, ‘but probably not as bad as meeting up with you guys.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You’re in a bad way. Eye looks terrible.’
Then he shut up and looked out across the water. I was puzzled by them; they didn’t act like hoods but then, hoods aren’t always acting like hoods these days. The boss had a kind of hard-bitten dignity and Rolf was cool and relaxed at the wheel as if what he was doing was perfectly legitimate. Cops? I wondered and the thought gave me no comfort.
‘Where’re we going?’ I said.
‘You’re Sydney born and bred, aren’t you, Hardy? You should know. Have a look.’
I swivelled around on the hard seat painfully and tried to get my bearings. The sky was dark now, but the moon was up and there were lights dotted here and there all around. Shetland Island lay to the east and we were heading towards a dark coastline.
‘National Park,’ I said.
‘You sound relieved.’
‘I thought this might be a burial at sea without the flag and the gun salute.’
He gave a short, barking laugh. ‘You’re a romantic, Hardy. Forget about Davey Jones’ locker. Haven’t you heard of the shallow grave in Kuringai Chase?’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t call that method reliable.’