by Chris Hammer
‘Who are they then?’
‘No idea. It’s got me worried. There’s something going on here and I don’t know what it is. They only asked briefly about her confrontation with Jasper Speight at the lifesavers, as if they’d already dismissed it as inconsequential.’
‘You think Montifore is investigating something else? Something unconnected to Jasper?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you asked her? Does she know?’
‘If she does, she’s not telling me.’
There’s more silence, more contemplation. Martin trawls through his mind, hoping for some spark, some inspiration, but nothing comes.
Any further deliberations are interrupted by Mandy herself, pushing Liam’s stroller through the bar. She looks exhausted. And gorgeous. Martin leaps to his feet. She sizes him up for a moment, then smiles and falls into him, not so much an embrace as a bid for support.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks.
‘Yeah. Just zonked.’
‘Liam?’
‘Fine now. They get sick, they get better.’
‘Something to drink?’
‘God, yes. Gin and tonic. Lots of gin.’
Martin orders at the bar and, with Mandy’s permission, buys bottled water and apple juice to help Liam rehydrate. He makes up a weak mixture in a sterilised bottle and hands it to Liam. The boy’s eyes light up as Martin squats. ‘Marn,’ he says. ‘Marn!’ Martin looks up at Mandy, but she’s deep in conversation with Winifred and hasn’t heard. Martin gives Liam the bottle, silencing him, then stares at him chugging on his bottle for a long moment. He stands, collects Mandy’s drink from the barman and hands it to her. She doesn’t muck about, ditching the straw and taking a healthy slug, then sighing with exaggerated relief. ‘Thanks. I can’t tell you how much I needed that.’
‘Right,’ says Martin. He slides onto his stool, glancing back at Liam, busy with his bottle in the stroller. ‘Tough day?’
‘Pointless day. A waste of time. Fuck-knuckles.’ She looks at Winifred, who nods her accord. Mandy takes another drink. ‘Let’s get takeaway, Martin. Then an early night.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
Across the bar, behind Mandy, Martin can see the meat-tray man preparing to draw the raffle. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says to her.
Later, back at the caravan park, Mandy is dozing on the couch but Liam is wide awake, as if he’s extracted the last energy out of his mother and is now joyfully squandering it, sliding along the linoleum floor on his bum, pushing himself backwards with puffy piston legs, looking for things to attack. He finds a magazine, tries sucking on it, then starts ripping at it instead.
‘Backpack, Liam? Carrier?’
The child beams back at Martin. Is there comprehension there, or is Martin imagining it? Whatever, the boy doesn’t stop chirping as he’s lifted into the contraption and strapped in. Martin swings the pack up and onto his back. He’s growing fond of the carrier; he likes the weight, the load supported by his shoulders and hips, the sense of impetus it gives him. It’s like a remnant from an earlier life as a correspondent, the sensation of going somewhere, of forging ahead. And so it is with the boy: he and Liam are heading into an uncertain future, but for now they are travelling together.
He walks out the door of the cabin, leaving Mandy sleeping. And almost immediately a memory comes to him. Perhaps it’s the heft on his back that invokes it, perhaps the angle of the sun cutting through the trees as it sinks towards the distant escarpment. Martin stands still, letting the memory come, closing his eyes, as if trying to capture a dream. His father. He’s following his father. Martin has a backpack, his father too, and Ron Scarsden is carrying another bag in his strong hands. Where? When? Martin keeps his eyes closed, shutting out the present, willing the past to return. Camping. Camping with his father. There is sand, the sun low. Camping. Night-time, mosquitoes, unable to sleep, his father snoring. His father, hands imbued with competence, erecting the tent with speed and skill. Martin awed, worried he could never manage such a feat. Fishing. His father casting, reeling in. A fish on the coals of the fire. The wild beaches. Treachery Bay. He’d been there with his father, back before it all went wrong.
Liam shifts his weight, no longer mesmerised by the sunlight through the trees, urging him on, a jockey on his horse. Martin opens his eyes but doesn’t move. Treachery Bay. He’d tried to remember earlier if he’d been there and could recall nothing. And yet now, unbidden, this memory surfaces. But that’s not what shakes him. It’s the memory itself. The flavour of it, the feeling of it. His feeling towards his father, the feelings he had back then, before. Admiration. Respect. Love. He draws a shallow breath. He has spent so long submerging the memories of after, he’s never considered what it was like before. He stands for a moment more, the western sky turning vivid, infused with gold and pink and orange, until Liam starts to grumble.
Martin heads to the river, attracted by the water, the reflected sunset. Colours ripple in the wake of a passing boat, Liam vocal in his admiration. Another recollection, vague and nebulous, of light fascinating him as a small child, when he was too young for words and comprehension. And another memory, an early experience with fireworks: Vern and his dad lighting them, skyrockets held vertical in empty beer bottles, sending them up to explode in the heavens above the Settlement. He recalls how magical they looked, how they evoked a collective ‘aahh’ from onlookers. The Settlement. He remembers now; each year there was a giant bonfire on a vacant lot, the whole community there, united in a desire to watch it burn. He wonders if Liam has seen fireworks; he hopes he might be with him for the first time.
They walk along the shore, coming to the wharf where Vern dropped him last night. Two old men sit hunched over their fishing rods, side by side on a wooden bench, dark against the sunset shifting on the river.
One looks up, takes a suck on his beer. ‘Hello, Martin, fancy seeing you here.’
Martin peers at the man’s face, recognising something familiar in the golden light, taking a moment more to fathom its provenance. ‘Sergeant Mackie?’
The man harrumphs. ‘Long time since I was a sergeant, son. Just plain old Clyde nowadays.’
‘Who’s this?’ the other man interjects, his voice like gravel. Martin sees nothing familiar about him. Whereas age has thickened Mackie and lowered his centre of gravity, this other man is wiry and without fat, his face folded in on itself: no jowls, just wrinkles as deep as crevices.
‘It’s Martin Scarsden—Ron Scarsden’s son,’ says Clyde Mackie.
‘Is that right? Well, in that case, I’m glad to meet you. Brian’s the name. Brian Jinjerik.’ Brian doesn’t stand, just holds out his hand. Martin shakes it, but cannot recall him.
‘It’s okay, Martin,’ says Mackie, as if reading his thoughts. ‘You wouldn’t remember Brian. He was inside most of the time you were growing up.’
‘Only ’cos you put me there, you old bastard,’ says Brian without rancour.
‘Only ’cos you deserved it.’
There is fondness in the banter; the former copper and the former crim, fishing together in the twilight waters of Port Silver.
‘Catching anything?’ asks Martin, unsure of what else he might say.
‘Fuck all,’ says Brian. ‘Good time of day, bad time of tide.’ And with that he reels in his line. ‘Time I got going. Missus will have the dinner on and it’s an early morning tomorrow. Nice to meet you, mate.’ The man stands, sprightly on spindly legs, taking his rod and his tackle box, flicking his head towards Liam. ‘And who’s this young fella? Ron Scarsden’s grandson?’
‘Near enough,’ says Martin, a touch of pride in his voice. ‘My partner’s son. Liam.’
‘Fine-looking fellow. Look after him.’
Martin watches Brian go, bandy-legged, as if he’s spent a lifetime on horseback instead of serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The man heads into the gloaming, towards the line of trees separating the permanent residents from the tourist park.
‘Take a seat,’ says Mackie. ‘Brian’s right about the tide, but it’s still better sitting here than up at the shack. Bloody beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Sure is.’ Martin eases the backpack from his shoulders, lowering it so Liam can look out across the sparkling water. He sits next to Mackie, wrapping his legs around the backpack to keep it steady. ‘So no Mrs Mackie waiting with your dinner?’
‘Not anymore. Died last year.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant.’
‘No harm done. She died easy. One stroke to let her know it was coming, another to carry her off. She led a good life; she died a good death.’
They’re quiet then, looking out across the moving water as it eases towards the sea. Even Liam is quiet, transfixed by the water and the shimmering light. Somewhere behind them a frog calls and a cricket answers. A squadron of fruit bats heads up the river into the fading sunset, off to infiltrate the defences of the orchards, greenhouses and market gardens. A strange feeling comes upon Martin. It’s not nostalgia, not that. It’s something else. A sense of belonging; that this is home after all. That some part of him never left Port Silver.
As the sunset loses its colour, the streetlights on the bridge hover in the eastern sky and the glow of Port Silver rises like an aura, he breathes in the sense of the place. On the opposite bank the lights of individual houses grow stronger. The frogs are getting bolder, growing louder. Between his legs Liam is joining in, vocalising, as if experimenting, enjoying the sound for its own sake. The air is warm and moist and forgiving.
‘Strange,’ says Martin. ‘You and Brian Jinjerik. Being mates and all.’
‘No, not so strange. We moved in the same world, knew the same people, lived by the same rules. Tough times, tough men. Tough women, tough kids. Out in the Settlement.’
‘You were from the Settlement?’
‘Grew up there. I was one of the lucky ones—my mum knew which way was up. Got through school, joined the force. People like Brian didn’t get the same chances.’ Mackie pauses for a while, reels in his line, checks his bait, recasts it. ‘He was tough, Brian. Him and his mates. Your father wasn’t as tough, but he was smarter.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He worked out pretty soon that warehouse robberies, repurposing cars and hijacking trucks was a mug’s game.’
‘He was a criminal?’
‘Never convicted.’
‘Arrested?’
‘Plenty of times. Especially after your mum and sisters died. Drunk and disorderly, most weeks.’
‘I remember. But before that?’
‘Brian went to prison, a warehouse job up in Brisbane. I suspected your father was in on it but couldn’t prove anything. Your mum, she straightened him out, and he moved on to more sensible lines of work.’
‘I can’t remember him working that much. Even before.’
‘Nah. He hurt his back working a shift out at the sugar mill. Got workers compo, quite a sum, then went on an invalid pension.’
‘I don’t remember him with a bad back.’
‘Funny that.’
Martin laughs. ‘You didn’t report him to the insurance company?’
‘Me? Fuck no. Not my problem. If it kept him out of trouble, that was good enough for me. Every now and then I’d pull him into line, tell him not to be too blatant about the other stuff.’
‘Other stuff?’
‘Working. Casual stuff. On building sites or a night trawler or a shift at the cheese factory.’
‘Right.’ Martin wonders if the sugar mill ever discovered the truth.
‘And when Brian got out, your dad showed him the ropes. Got him on a pension as well. Helped him onto the straight and narrow.’
The two men fall silent. In the backpack, Liam has slumped to one side, drifting towards sleep.
Suddenly Mackie is alert, his rod jerking in his hands. ‘Oh fuck it, I’ve caught a fish.’ Martin uses his smartphone as a torch while the old copper reels it in, silver and thrashing as it emerges from the water. The commotion wakens Liam. Something about the flapping fish upsets the boy; he begins to cry. Martin kneels, smiles, calming the child with soft words. Then he hoists the baby carrier up and onto his back, says his farewells and leaves the old policeman to gut his fish in peace.
Mandy is awake, waiting for them. She watches as Martin lowers Liam and gently removes the sleeping boy from the carrier. She takes her son, holds him close, rocking him before settling him in his travel cot, the boy oblivious. And then she comes to Martin, threading her arms around his neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘For what?’
‘For everything. It isn’t how I imagined it.’
‘I’m sorry, too,’ he says, pulling her closer, his good cheek resting on her head, aware of the electric softness of her newly darkened hair.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’
‘You think?’
‘I am so glad you’re here.’ And she kisses him, the first slow kiss of many.
But in the night, afterwards, Martin can’t sleep. He lies awake next to Mandy’s sleeping form, thinking of his father, trying to remember after more than half a lifetime trying to forget. What had he been like before the lottery win, before the deaths of Martin’s mother and sisters, back before the alcohol took him? Martin finds it impossible to visualise him. The enduring memory is of the drunkard, couch-bound and television-addicted, closed to the world and closed to his son, wasting his money and squandering his health. He survived his wife by eight years; that’s all it took to go from a fit and charming thirty-six-year-old to a cirrhotic, diabetic deadbeat. That’s all it took to go through all that money, to feed it through the pokies and send it around the racecourses of Australia on the backs of no-hoper horses, leaving nothing to his son other than debts. Unpaid utility bills, unpaid rent, unpaid loans. No wonder he had died; he had nothing left to live for.
The guilt returns, now, in the middle of this sleepless night. The residual guilt Martin feels about his father’s death, his reaction to the unexpected news. His father had died, a single-vehicle accident, running off the road and into a tree, his blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. A stupid accident to end a stupid life. The guilt surges again as Martin remembers his reaction: of relief, of escape. Of joy. His father dead. And him laughing. And in the following days, even after discovering that all the money was gone, the enduring sense of freedom, his gratitude that he could live with Vern, that the shackles had fallen and he could re-create himself.
But there had been another Ron Scarsden, the man Clyde Mackie had recalled; the Ron Scarsden who took his son camping and fishing at Treachery Bay. Now Martin tries to conjure him, tries to push aside the memory of the bloated alcoholic. The first thing that comes to mind is his hands, strong and callused, agile and capable, the one image that had never fully deserted him. That most certainly must come from before, when Ron Scarsden was still working casually on the fishing boats and building sites and at the cheese factory, topping up his invalid pension. But there are other recollections, lurking dreamlike. Driving with him in the old van, Martin by his side, his father laughing and chiacking and telling jokes, taking him along for company up and down the winding escarpment to Longton. Can you see the sea? Another memory, a refinement. His father ruffling his hair, asking him if he wants to come for a ride up to Longton. He remembers that now, and a tear comes to his eye. He tries to remember more, but fatigue washes in like a tide, floating him back towards sleep.
chapter fifteen
Martin lies dozing, troubled night thoughts left behind, the cabin’s mattress over-soft, the morning light filtering through the lilac of the plastic blind. He’s finding it difficult to summon the impetus to move. Yesterday was a long and exhausting day, and sleep had come in fits and starts; now all he wants is to fall back down its comforting well. Somewhere a phone rings. He stretches out an arm; Mandy is already up. There are no sleep-ins for the mot
hers of young children. The phone persists; hers not his. He hears her soft voice, considerately low, and a warm wave of emotion passes through him. He still can’t fathom what she sees in him, but the bed feels all the warmer for her affection. He hears her voice again and then her laughter, and again the warmth comes to him, even as her laughter brings him fully to consciousness. He no longer wants to sleep, he wants to be with her: what is making her laugh, what is bringing her joy?
In the kitchen, flooded with morning light, he finds her dancing, waltzing around the small space holding Liam. The child is laughing, understanding his mother’s mood even without comprehending her words. For a moment Martin watches, spellbound, not wanting to disrupt the magic. Then Mandy sees him, glides over and kisses him. ‘Good morning, sir.’ There is light playing in her eyes and dimples dance on her cheeks. ‘It’s come through. Hartigan’s.’
‘The house?’
‘Yes. We just need to go in, sign some final papers and pick up the keys. It’s ours.’
Martin moves to her, holds her, her and her son, the three of them swaying together.
‘It’s going to be our home, our refuge. Liam’s castle.’ And she beams at Liam, starts dancing again. ‘Did you hear that, Sir Liam? Your castle.’
There’s a celebratory air out of keeping with Drake and Associates’ clinical conference room, the decor unable to dull the mood. Mandy is still buzzing with pleasure; even Winifred is breaking out a tight-lipped smile. Liam has been liberated from his stroller and has crawled under the conference table, from where he emits intermittent squeals, half words and half laughs, much to the consternation of Harrold Drake. Martin sees himself reflected in one of the dark glass walls and is surprised to find that he too is smiling. For once, there is a sense that fate is on their side, the axis of the world really has tilted. He considers removing Liam’s nappy, just to ramp up Drake’s discomfort.
There is not a lot to discuss: Mandy signs, Martin witnesses, Harrold Drake shakes their hands. He presents them with two sets of keys, as if bestowing a gift.