Anne smiles coyly.
‘The most important thing is that you’re happy, whatever it is that you end up doing.’ He grimaces at the clock on the wall. ‘I’m such an ogre of a boss. Please, go home.’
Her blue eyes seem to burst with excitement.
‘You’re not going home, are you?’
‘I’m off to drinks with some of the other associates,’ she says, and offers a bashful grin that would make the young men in the registry quiver.
‘Have a good night then. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Silence replaces her. He pictures Anne with a champagne glass in her hand, the associates sitting around a table, exchanging war stories that are really anything but. He opens the cabinet behind him, revealing a bottle of his favourite Scotch. As he pours the amber into crystal, Bruce catches sight of his reflection in the small mirror that sits on the corner of his desk. His jowl is a puffer fish adding weight to his depression.
He savours the first gulp of Scotch. He has to admit the bastard looks good. Charlie has the hard body of an old boxer that not even death could kill. It’s been a good thirty years since they last spoke. A few times during the trial, their eyes met. But there was never anything beyond faint recognition. The past only ever leaves you with fragments, Bruce thinks, withered bones of truth. His mobile phone drags him back to present.
‘Emily, how are you?’
They’re both surprised by the spring in his voice.
‘I’m fine, thank you. I just called because I’m on my way to get Isabella.’
‘Oh.’ He pauses, navigating the trapeze cable that is his marriage. ‘How is she?’
‘What do you think?’
Her crisp answer betrays the hurt of too many late nights in the office, and later, affairs that usually left him cold.
‘Where is she?’ he says.
‘I can’t talk about it now. I’ve spoken with the director. They’ll take her back.’ She laughs wryly. ‘Provided I can get her into the car.’
‘Do you need my help?’
There’s no need for an answer; both know it’s a hollow gesture.
‘When can I see her?’ he says. ‘It’s been weeks.’
‘Look, I’ll ask. But I can’t make any promises,’ she says, and ends the call without saying goodbye.
Another gulp of Scotch. He savours the burn, welcomes the lightness of spirit. Bruce opens the drawer and takes out a photograph of Sherene. Amber eyes sparkle against luminous skin, surrounded by thick brown hair. Ten years ago, Sherene walked into this office, brilliance overflowing. He couldn’t wait to see her fulfil her potential. She would go on to politics, the Bar, scale the heights of academia. But when he ran into her six months ago, she was a shell. Her confidence had all but disappeared.
Now she’s beginning to bloom again. He dials her mobile number, the one she keeps just for his calls.
‘Bruce.’ The anxiety in her voice cuts like a knife.
‘Darling.’
‘Something terrible has happened.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I told Dick. Bruce, he’s furious. I’m scared that he’ll do something.’
‘Darling, I doubt that he’d be that stupid.’ Bruce knows he shouldn’t press her. ‘Sherene, I need to see you.’
She pauses, mind ticking over. ‘When?’
TWO
The machine thunders, it tears Miranda’s brain like ripping concrete. In spite of itself, the jackhammer has elegant precision. It pierces directly above her left eye, a space the size of a scalpel’s head. Miranda grimaces as she lifts her cheek from the White Pages on her desk, and the familiar taste floods her mouth. Sugar and vomit in equal measure, it compares only to the cheapest plonk, napalm that slowly cooks your insides.
Most who purchase the vile brew do so sheepishly. But not the old drinkers, with grasshopper bodies cloaked in emaciated skin. A few have interesting stories, like Auntie May. Twenty years ago she was a dancer and enjoyed affairs with corrupt government ministers. But her lovers have long since departed, to the grave or to jail in the aftermath of Fitzgerald. Now she spends her nights with other shells in Meston Park, anaesthetising themselves to life. Miranda wonders if she too is destined for the wooden bench that had been stripped of paint and tattooed with meaningless rebellion. Once you reach the bench, death is imminent. You choke on vomit, get killed by predators or, more likely, you just collapse.
Stale cigarette smoke makes her queasy. The boss is going to be furious. She’s smelt the distinct fumes of marijuana linger from behind his office door, but she knows he loathes cigarettes. O’Neill isn’t like her. He rarely drinks to the point of intoxication, and after obligatory Friday afternoon drinks he disappears.
Her mind wanders to Dan. It’s been three weeks since he stopped returning her calls. There was no warning of their break-up. No bitter argument. Only cowardly silence.
Screams ricochet in the dungeon on her neck, her eyes are on fire and the pain in her wrists stabs. She looks around slowly. Binders crashed on the floor, hundreds of pieces of paper scattered like tiny stars. Photographs of Meston Park sit on top of the explosion like seagulls perched on barnacled wood. For all of its cruelty, the aftermath of a night on the turps offers stunning clarity. The shambles of her office is now in stark relief. Empty coffee cups are partly disguised by photocopies of judgments and articles from legal journals. She curses herself when she sees that clients’ personal statements have been left exposed. The only object unscathed is the shoebox of feathers that Ethel gave her. It sits next to the filing cabinet, neglected. For reasons that she wouldn’t disclose, Ethel insisted that the feathers were important evidence. Jonathon counselled them against using the feathers at the trial. In the absence of a story, they prove nothing, he said.
Guilt jabs like a needle, releasing a vaccine that should protect her from the disease of self-destruction. But never will. O’Neill is so proud of this practice, the tug that never loses its nerve in an ocean of big business and governments addicted to the market. She’s let him down. Failed all of them.
The three empty wine bottles chastise her, like members of a Star Chamber. All the same brand: a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand’s Marlborough region, the brand name embossed in black with golden peaks in the background. Burnt matches are clumsily piled around a torn packet of Benson & Hedges. Cigarette butts swim in wine dregs like pond scum.
She can go for a few days without having a cigarette. But once she begins to pour into the glass, the familiar urge flows, like blood pumping through her veins. Gulp the wine, suck the fumes. And tally all of life’s injustices, the disappointments, the pain, because when she’s drunk, she’s resilient. And the wine bottles and cigarettes are a captive audience, simultaneously inspired by her intellect and overwhelmed by her humility. But in the brutal aftermath she’s just a fucking loser.
Why did I go back after the first bottle? She was already tipsy. But she has the performance so well honed, it’s instinctive. Brush the teeth, spray the perfume. Wear the confident façade like skin. The young man behind the counter offered his usual smile, full of teeth and empty of sincerity. She made a seemingly off-the-cuff remark about buying more wine for a dinner party. Both knew it was a lie, but what would he care?
Miranda wants to cry, begs to, but the tears won’t come. She’s a broken-down boxer, lying on the ring, face a war zone. The faithful are calling. But she’s comatose. She tries to retrace the events of last night, but ends up with a half-finished jigsaw. Angela emerged briefly while she was still working on the second bottle and almost caught her red-handed. Then Miranda opened the packet of fags. Promised to drink only one glass of the third bottle.
A gentle light flickers through the blinds and throws a grenade into the chaos. Miranda looks at her watch – seven-fifteen. Angela usually gets in by seven-thirty. She climbs
into her skirt, which stinks of demons and yesterday’s sweat. Picks up her blouse. It takes a few seconds to register. She’s shaking violently, but Miranda doesn’t know if it’s because of the toxins inside her, or the blood that’s caked the white linen. Tears that seemed impossible a moment ago begin to slide down her cheeks.
Dick’s face is a bomb of a car whose rattling panels threaten to fling into the air once the speedometer reaches one hundred. Baby cries, Dick’s brain explodes.
‘Sherene!’
Harsh light bounces off his eyelids; heat rises from his face with no place to go.
‘For fuck’s sake! Sherene!’
Sounds of kisses being planted on soft skin. Baby’s smell lingering from behind the ensuite door: formula, vitamin E cream, talcum powder.
Most mornings she calls out to him, ‘Dick, it’s your turn to change the baby.’ Or her old favourite – ‘Dick, you spend far too much time in your office. You’ll regret it, you know.’ But there will be no chastising this morning.
He opens his eyes to see his wife standing at the foot of their king-sized bed, a pathetic mixture of fear and defeat. Lines on her forehead plead for escape. Grey roams the ends of brown hair messily held together in a butterfly clip.
Sherene’s matronly figure is hidden in the black dressing gown that covers even her toes. Years ago, she would have stood naked in the doorway, teasing him. Sherene had been so proud of that lean body, those silky thighs. She probably won’t lose the baby weight now. He knows better than to raise it. That would only spark an endless rant about how she can’t attend Weight Watchers’ meetings, because he’s at work. Work that paid for this house. Their cars.
The baby wriggles in her arms. She has his eyes, brown and enquiring. Sherene’s milky skin. The curls aren’t from either of them. Probably an inheritance from his father-in-law, at least that’s what Wayne says, often. Now he doesn’t know what to think. Dick silently curses himself. The child is his, of course she is.
‘She’s teething.’ Sherene’s voice is meek, but there’s nothing innocent about her now. ‘Dick, what happened to your eye?’
She disappears into the bathroom and rifles through the cabinet, returning with a tube of antiseptic cream. ‘Put this on.’
He thunders, ‘Just leave me alone’, and rolls onto his stomach. He buries his head in the pillow. ‘Close the blinds.’
She says nothing, offering only the familiar sounds that shroud the room in darkness.
‘Dick,’ she says finally. ‘I’ve been thinking –’
‘Not now, Sherene.’
‘When?’
‘When I’m fucking ready, alright!’
‘You don’t have to swear.’
He pretends to sleep, but it’s pointless. She won’t leave.
‘I tried to call you last night.’
Sherene speaks in the little girl’s voice that he had once cherished.
‘Leave it alone.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Sherene, so help me! You got no right, woman!’
He opens his eyes to study her generous hips, and laughs. ‘That old man’s the only one who’d want your fat arse. Brosnan – fuck me! It’s a wonder he can still get it up.’
She instantly shrinks. Her self-esteem is a piece of paper, bowled over by a gust of wind.
The jets of water sting, but Dick needs the cold shower. It makes him feel alive. He grimaces into the mirror. Swollen skin in a purple sea. Dick stopped looking at his body long ago. But he still cherishes his handsome face. He savours the smell of his freshly ironed shirt. When Sherene first hired the housekeeper, he dismissed it as a ridiculous extravagance. After all, Sherene was only working part-time. But the housekeeper excels in washing and ironing. Now he’d let go of Sherene before the housekeeper.
He makes sure his leather shoes sound heavy as he treads along the polished floorboards. Ignores the portraits on the walls, all of her family. A lone mug of coffee sits on the huge teak table. Sherene stands at the kitchen sink, with her back to him.
‘I’ve spoken to Mum. She’s going to take the baby for a few days.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to Sydney this afternoon. I’ll stay with Romaine. I just need some time to think.’
He swallows a gulp of coffee, smirks. ‘I hope it doesn’t hurt.’
She turns the radio on as he walks out the door. He hears the clanging of cutlery falling to the floor and smiles.
The black Ferrari convertible purrs. He adores this car, especially since Sherene told him it wasn’t an appropriate vehicle for a family man. She was right. The looks that he gets from women make him the envy of the other men in the office, whom matrimony emasculated. He picks up in this car. He almost got caught once by a senior partner in the car park.
He drums the wheel at the traffic lights. Gigantic walls of green and copper cellophane peer into the river. Beauty queens foolish enough to believe that their stars will always burn. Mocking laughter oozes from the cranes and cement mixers. The machines know that the skyscrapers are destined to be dethroned by ever more grandiose buildings, an inevitability in a city whose soul cannot sleep. A cathedral stands among shrines to the State’s mineral wealth. Occasionally, Dick wanders inside. Even though he is not a Catholic, he enjoys watching the men and women in suits, grasping their rosary beads.
His office is only a hundred metres away, but he knows it’ll take at least another five minutes to get there. He shakes his head; the traffic in Brisbane is ridiculous. In spite of the huge amounts that people like him pay in taxes, it’s impossible to get to work in a decent time. What the hell are the Council and the State government doing? This city has so much potential and yet they treat it like a precocious teenager. No mature debates about its future, only patronising clichés.
A group of workmen sit outside the Riverside Centre, finishing sandwiches Dick figures were wrapped while most people were still asleep. If you work hard, you prosper. Never mind that sit-down money. Dick saw what sit-down money had done to his family, how it corroded the moral compass of each one of them. He has more in common with these guys than his family back in Mount Isa. Parasites.
The house he was born in was gutted by white ants. Filled with people gutted by life. Mostly there were only ten, but during the bad times it felt like thirty were crammed in like battery hens. By the time that he turned twelve, Dad had already been gone for five years and Mum had begun her descent into madness. The misery was punctured by spurts of happiness, uncles who taught him how to hunt, schoolteachers who gave him respite.
At thirteen years of age, the boy excelled in the humanities and was a member of the debating team. His teachers were concerned that Dick would fall into the same bleak lifestyle that engulfed his family. So they rallied together for a scholarship to Elliot College, an elite school in Brisbane. Young Dick couldn’t believe his eyes. He had never seen ovals so elaborately maintained and the gymnasium was a kingdom of the finest sporting equipment that money could buy.
His phone rings and he snaps it onto speaker.
‘Dick, how you goin’, bub?’
Lesley Tagem. The old barracouta.
‘I’m good thanks, mate. How are you?’
‘Good, darlin’. I’m just making sure you’ll be at the meeting this morning.’
‘Wouldn’t miss it.’
‘Alright, bub. The boss is looking forward to it. See you shortly.’
He hides fear well, a skill perfected by hundreds of press conferences and dinners with clients whose fickle temperaments determine whether or not he’ll have a job to go to in the morning. But Dick smells the bubbling fear within. What will the Premier think of his black eye?
Lesley has chuckled over this plaque hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times. The faded brass looks like a neglected garden, overgrown by weeds, forgotten
by the hands that had once lovingly tended it. It tells the world that the Executive Building was opened by Premier Johannes Bjelke-Petersen on 23 July 1971. But Lesley is probably the only person in the world who still gives a shit.
I remember when you used to ride your horse into Manoah. You wanted to control us blackfellas. Well, now a black woman is working in your fuckin’ building mate. What do you think of that?
Child inside her giggles. That’s when the dizzying feeling hits:
Like her favourite scones (not pumpkin, mind you), the euphoria consists of a small number of ingredients. All high quality, of course. A morning win on the pokies, sifted with the thrill of sticking it to that old dictator. Add a cup of the atmosphere of George Street. She enjoys watching the men in elegant suits and polished shoes, others huddle in coffee shops, speaking animatedly and in no rush to leave. It’s not like Sydney, she thinks. She went there once and vowed never to return to the madness. Lesley had to endure the indignity of three taxis passing her by with their vacancy lights on. A huge lump of sugar, that place: humanity artificially soldered together. Manners evaporate in an instant.
Lesley smiles at the two security guards as she approaches. Mike is in his fifties, pot belly nurtured by his hobby of cultivating home brew. Derek, on the other hand, is in his late twenties and lean. Thick brown hair dangles over olive skin. Mike and Derek often work the same shift and they strike her as quite the odd couple.
‘Morning Derek, how you goin’?’
‘I’m good thanks, luvie. How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m coping. How you goin’, Mike?’
‘Good thanks, darling.’
Lesley swipes her card and makes for the lift.
Mike and Derek are the only sign of the importance of this place. The dark brown building is inconspicuous. Few ever stop to gaze at the place from which the Queensland Government wields its power. The ancient beings trapped underneath the bitumen mourn for recognition, but their grief is in vain. Power demands fidelity to the status quo. For black people, that means remaining the poorest and most despised.
The Boundary Page 2