Silver

by Chris Hammer

  But Martin shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. It seems more prosperous than when I was a kid.’

  St Clair calms down a bit. ‘Sure. We’ve still got the horticulture up along the river. We’ve got the backpackers. And we attract a lot of sea changers, people retiring here. So yes, there’s money. But a lot of it’s still government money, marginal seat money. Scrape the surface and there’s still plenty of poverty. Not enough jobs. We get the invalid pensioners and the supporting mothers and the druggies and the poor cunts with mental health issues. They can’t afford to live in Sydney or Brisbane or Byron; soon they won’t be able to afford Coffs and Tweed Heads, so they’ll come here. Plus the local Gooris, doing it tough like they’ve always done it tough. The Settlement’s not big enough anymore, the poor have spilt over into the caravan park.’

  Martin gestures towards the scale model of Hummingbird Beach and Crystal Lagoon. ‘And that’s the answer? That and a gated community?’ He can’t keep the scepticism from his voice.

  ‘Tourism is the answer. Tourism and high-value retirees. And telecommuters. The high school and the swimming pool are terrific, but the real change is going to be broadband. This is a marginal seat: we’re going to be better connected than a Macquarie Street lobbyist. I’m going to put a free wi-fi hotspot on top of the lighthouse.’ He turns, sneering at the monument. ‘Might as well put it to some use.’

  ‘And you really think developing north of the Argyle can overcome a century and a half of stagnation?’

  ‘I do, I do. You see, our mistake was chasing growth. For decades I believed we needed to grow, to get bigger, like all those other boom towns. But I was wrong. Our future isn’t in getting bigger, our future is in becoming exclusive.’ St Clair works the last word around his tongue, as if it is something to be savoured. ‘The escarpment and the sandbar won’t be barriers to development; they’ll be protection against overdevelopment. I’ve stopped lobbying to have the road realigned, stopped pushing to have the breakwaters extended. Instead I’ve started donating to the Greens, pushing for a population limit. I want to get McDonald’s chucked out, like in Byron. We want to be small and exclusive, clean and green.’

  ‘I’m not sure draining Mackenzie’s Swamp is exactly clean and green, is it? And have the blackfellas taken up golf?’

  St Clair laughs, taking no offence at all. ‘No, but I want them to be able to. They’ll come around. So will the greenies.’

  ‘How so?’

  A canny expression comes across the developer’s face. ‘You been up there? Hummingbird Beach? The lagoon?’

  ‘Just this morning, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And beyond that, did you go any further?’

  ‘No. Why would I?’

  ‘My point exactly. Nobody does. The beaches up there are too wild, the land behind them too sandy and full of salt. The dairy farms, those that are still there, don’t start until a couple of kilometres inland. A few cane fields, but I just told you what’s going to happen to them. It’s shit country. The government has made most of it a nature reserve because they don’t know what else to do with it.’

  ‘What are you proposing?’

  ‘In the next few months, the premier will be here. She’ll be announcing a new national park running up the coast, joining with the one further north. There’ll be jobs for Indigenous rangers as part of the deal.’

  ‘A trade-off for the swamp?’

  ‘That’s what I’m working towards. But I’m trusting you with this: nothing in the papers.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ Martin can’t imagine the Herald getting too excited over a minor park on the north coast, even if he were still working for the newspaper. ‘And the state government is involved with those negotiations?’

  ‘Yep. But don’t expect me to say too much more on that. I have confidences to keep.’

  ‘So a national park. A buffer for the Hummingbird Beach development. A guarantee of privacy and exclusivity and unspoilt views.’

  ‘Now you’ve got it. Luxury and exclusivity on the edge of wilderness, with Port Silver a twenty-minute drive away for amenities and labour. Perfect. Hummingbird Beach is the grain of sand, north of the river is the pearl, and Port Silver is the oyster, growing fat and succulent.’ And St Clair bares his fangs in what Martin presumes is his idea of a winning smile.

  Martin walks back around the windows, looking again at the scale model of the proposed development. ‘I’m told you plan to demolish the old cheese factory.’

  This time St Clair doesn’t just grin, he laughs. ‘Not me. I don’t own it.’

  ‘Really? Wasn’t that your security guy I met out there this morning?’

  ‘You have been busy.’

  ‘What’s he doing out there?’ Martin persists.

  ‘Just giving a helping hand to a hardworking journo.’

  ‘Yes, Doug Thunkleton. He seems to think you own it.’

  St Clair shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what gave him that idea. Amory Ashton owns it.’

  ‘I thought he was dead.’

  ‘That’s what we all think. But there’s no body. And until he’s pronounced legally dead, he still owns it.’

  ‘So if Doug Thunkleton finds something, finds a body, that helps you?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘You were the one who tipped off Doug, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And who owns it if Ashton is declared dead?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I stand more chance of buying it from them than from a dead man.’

  Martin frowns. ‘Why the metal detectors?’

  ‘Didn’t Thunkleton tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  St Clair displays his incisors. ‘Ashton was a surly old bastard, possibly because of his shit diet. Red meat, red wine and blue cheese. Chronic arthritis. Riddled with it.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘He had new hips, new knees. Titanium. If he’s buried out there, the metal detectors are set for it. Nothing else will give the same signature.’ St Clair raises his eyebrows, apparently finding the idea entertaining. He turns, looks out to sea for several seconds, then back to Martin. It’s a strange gesture, as if he’s put Martin on hold while considering more important things. Now his face is serious. ‘The cheese factory has nothing to do with Jasper. Trust me. It’s not connected.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Jasper was opposed to the development, that’s common knowledge, so he wasn’t in the loop, he didn’t know where I was up to.’

  ‘So if it’s not relevant, why show me all this?’

  ‘The Settlement.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can still see it from here, you know—the Settlement. In summer, there’s a kind of haze hangs over it, as if you can see the disadvantage. Welfare cases. Druggos and alcos and refos. Gooris isolated from their own land. It’s where you come from, Martin, where the Scarsdens come from. And it’s where I come from. I want to change it.’

  ‘By building a gated community? And a golf course?’

  ‘That’s right. Real jobs. Real money with real futures.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And, Martin, one way or another, it’s going to happen.’

  But Martin is shaking his head. ‘Not if Jay Jay Hayes doesn’t sell her land. And as I understand it, she’s not selling. And without Hummingbird Beach, everything else collapses.’

  ‘She’ll sell.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Martin can’t help but think of the box of scans behind Jay Jay Hayes’s desk, the X-rays and MRIs and so on. Does St Clair know something?

  ‘Human nature. All that money sitting there, tempting her. She’ll sell.’

  ‘So the French are still interested?’

  ‘Too right. They left a million dollars on the table. A spotter’s fee, if Jasper and I could convince Jay Jay to sell.’

  That sets Martin thinking. Jasper had been protective towards Jay Jay Hayes, warning her of impendin
g health inspections and rate rises. Had he been competing with St Clair, or colluding with him? ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I want you to work for me.’

  ‘What?’ Martin starts to laugh, thinking St Clair is joking, but is brought to a halt by the expression on the developer’s face. ‘Work for you? Doing what?’

  ‘Making this happen.’ The developer encompasses the model with a sweeping gesture. ‘You said it yourself, journalism is leaving you behind. You need a job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Communications. Public relations. Government liaison. There’s no one this side of Brisbane with your portfolio of skills. Media experience and connections, knowledge of how the real world works.’

  Martin says nothing, but a worm in his brain is telling him St Clair is right. If he stays in Port Silver with Mandy, what is he going to do? Go work for the Longton Observer? Scrape around looking for more true crime to turn into books? ‘What are you offering?’

  ‘Plenty, Martin. Plenty. But don’t do it for that. Don’t do it for the money. Help me put an end to the Settlement once and for all.’

  Scotty never came to the Settlement. Jasper never came back after his dad died and his mum moved them. They didn’t want to come and Martin didn’t want to invite them. Not once he realised the stigma attached to the place, of being branded a ‘settler’. Not in those years when he and his father descended into squalor, when the lawn turned to weeds and the house stank so much they left the windows open all year round. He learnt to hate his house, but not his neighbourhood. The Settlement was home, the only one he’d known—at least in those years before his mum and sisters died, and again in those final two years when Vern had moved in and they fixed up the house. There were good people there, people with good hearts and shit luck.

  Scotty never came to his house and Jasper never came to his house and no one else ever came to his house. Except for Maz. One day Maz came. They were fifteen. He was keen on her and, as he realised too late, she was keen on him. She’d kissed him one night, down above the beach in the dunes, her mouth sweet with Bundy and Coke and sour with menthol cigarettes. He’d never said anything and she’d never said anything, but after that they’d had this thing, this unspoken knowledge that sooner or later they’d get together, become an item. And then she had come to the Settlement, come to his house, uninvited. She must have walked all the way from Five Mile Beach, through the town and out Ressling Road. He was inside, in his bedroom. He saw her through his window, dressed in her best jeans, a kind of floral top, pretty and demure. Her hair shone in the sun; she was wearing make-up. She was just standing at the gate, not moving, just staring. Then she checked the house number and tried opening the gate, the gate that was rusted shut and that he only ever stepped over. And then she stopped, looked once more at the house and turned away.

  That was when he started cleaning the place up, when Vern helped him get the mower going, replacing the spark plug, sharpening the blades, scrubbing out the carburettor and changing the oil. He mowed the weeds, then started mowing for those neighbours who were too elderly or too infirm to do it for themselves, for money when they could pay and for nothing when they couldn’t. He’d always been outwardly presentable, showering every morning, his school uniform and his street clothes washed if tattered; now he started cleaning the house, one step at a time, his own bedroom the beachhead. He washed his sheets, and when that didn’t work he soaked them for days, and when that didn’t work he threw them out and bought some new ones with his mower money. He vacuumed and dusted and chucked away clothes that were too small for him, some of them dating from before he was eight. From his beachhead, he advanced on the kitchen. It shouldn’t have been so bad; they never cooked. But there were things rotted to nothing in the oven, things rotting more slowly in the fridge, unholy smells emanating from the S-bend in the sink. One weekend it got too much. He scrubbed all through the day and all through the night and into the dawn, pushed on by a manic zeal. And at the end, he felt a sense of achievement, a sense of pride. And then his father threw up in the bathroom. And someone stole his mower.

  He used to see Maz often enough after that, it was impossible to avoid her: on the bus to school in Longton, in every second class, sometimes hanging on The Boulevarde outside Theo’s and smoking cigarettes in the dunes. She was always polite, never said anything mean, never called him a settler. But there was no longer an understanding. And in her eyes he could sometimes glimpse that most damning of emotions: pity.

  On The Boulevarde, Martin stops for lunch. The old supermarket has been converted to a hardware store, but the roof’s still a car park. He eases the Toyota up the ramp. It seems so much shorter, the incline so much shallower, than the night they raced their shopping trolleys. It’s baking hot on the concrete expanse, sucking in the sun and bouncing it back, heat and glare and not a skerrick of shade, the cloudburst that passed over Nobb Hill as he visited St Clair long gone. It’s not the best place to leave a car. Martin winds his windows down, leaves them wide open. If anyone wants to steal the rust bucket, they’re welcome to it.

  The day has exhausted him; he needs to eat, to gather his thoughts. Confronted by a choice of cafes, his mind again turns to the delicacy of his youth: fish and chips. Two days in a row? Why not? But instead of the new place next to the sushi shop, he remembers his old haunt, Theo’s.

  Inside, the store remains much the same as he remembers it, lino peeling from the floor, booths with laminate tables, heavy glass sugar dispensers with silver tubes. Two fans hang from the roof, circling slowly. The fridges, emblazoned with Coke livery, have been updated and the bakelite ashtrays have gone, but fading posters in cheap frames still line the walls with dead people: Elvis, Bogie and Lauren, Marilyn, James, Clark, Errol, Judy. Some time in the past quarter of a century, John, Paul, George and Ringo have been added to the pantheon. Not the hippie Beatles, but the mop tops, smiling at the camera, the print in black and white like the others. The pantheon cafe.

  At the same counter, the same order: two pieces of fish with chips. The teenager behind the counter doesn’t even tell him the price, she just shoves an EFTPOS machine at him. Dyed hair, piercings, tats and attitude. A Port Silver punk.

  ‘Cash?’ queries Martin.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Martin hands over thirty dollars and receives a handful of small change in retaliation. The surly face looks at him, challenging. Martin can’t be bothered, and starts slotting the coins into an empty charity tin one by one. Just as he’s inserting the last of the shrapnel, a man bustles out from the back of the store, wiping his hands on his apron. Martin recognises him instantly: not Theo Tomakis but his son, George, who has somehow grown into a facsimile of his father. George, a schoolyard contemporary, once a soccer star, lithe and handsome, with a jawline sharp enough to shave butter. But the jawline has long gone, together with the waistline and the hairline. A grand moustache has sprouted by way of compensation, but there is no doubting who it is. ‘George,’ he says.

  George looks at him, is about to say something, frowns as a mote of recognition floats before him, then smiles. He points his finger. ‘Martin Scarsden. Hotshot reporter.’

  ‘George.’

  They shake hands, grin at each other. Martin isn’t sure why; they were classmates, not friends. George was one of those that had bailed before the end of year ten, off to chase the dream of professional football. Martin hasn’t seen him since, but for some reason he’s glad to see him now. And then he has it; the fish-and-chip man is a fellow settler, a fellow survivor. ‘I heard you were coming back,’ says George. ‘Jasper Speight told me.’

  ‘You still saw Jasper?’

  ‘Sure. Used to come in most weeks. Fish and chips and a chocolate milk.’

  Martin smiles. ‘Some things never change.’

  ‘I guess you heard, though?’ asks George, face suddenly solemn.

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  ‘Mate. This town. We never had anything like that before.
Fights and brawls and domestics, sure; the Settlement was no circus. But murder? Sheesh.’

  ‘You’re not still out there then? The Settlement?’

  ‘Me? Shit no. Mum and Dad stayed out there for a long time, even after they could afford to move, but not me. Couldn’t wait to get out.’

  ‘How are your mum and dad?’

  ‘Dad’s dead. Years ago. Heart attack. Only exercise he ever got was playing poker and smoking cigarettes. Mum’s with us now. We converted the garage for her.’

  ‘Nobb Hill?’

  George laughs, a real laugh, from the belly. ‘Jeez no. But nice. Double-brick. Air-conditioned. Right on Five Mile Beach—you can see the waves from upstairs. Gets the breeze, kids can play on the sand. Real nice.’

  ‘Sounds beaut. Did you see much of Jasper?’

  ‘Nah. Just when he’d come in for his fish and chips. Never talked much, sometimes about what you’d written in the paper, where you’d been. And asking when we were going to sell.’

  ‘You own the shop?’

  George laughs again, even more warmly. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but Mum owns half The Boulevarde.’

  Now it’s Martin who laughs, thinking of the modest old woman, reluctant to leave the Settlement, living out her days in a converted garage. ‘So you could live on Nobb Hill if you wanted? I was only joking.’

  ‘She could, yeah. But she’s old, she hates climbing up and down steps. And she doesn’t want to be up there with the others.’

  ‘The others?’ asks Martin. ‘Big city lawyers and cashed-up retirees is what I heard.’