The Best Australian Stories 2016

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The Best Australian Stories 2016 Page 12

by Charlotte Wood


  She brought out two glasses of iced Milo on a tray, and a plate of ginger nuts. He fetched the hose spike from the corner of the bed and drove it into the middle where the spray would fall on the lettuces. His mother had rung, he was in the late editions of both papers. She was sending them over with the neighbour’s kid.

  He dusted the cabbages and cauliflowers for aphid, then began on digging compost into the bed he’d left fallow. But after half an hour the knowledge that the papers would probably now be lying on the kitchen table pulled him to the tap at the back door.

  Joyce was baking, the table floured and waiting for the pastry mix she was turning in a bowl. The papers lay side by side on the benchtop, each unfolded to the front page. She said, ‘You’re not much, just a couple of lines.’ He leaned on his damp fingertips and skimmed both accounts. They seemed identical. He chose the Herald, read it standing. Body Of Professor Found 1,000ft Below Top Of Cliff Katoomba, Sunday – The body of Professor Vere Gordon Childe, 65, famous Sydney-born archaeologist, was found today below Govetts Leap at Blackheath. Police believe that he fell over the leap about 8.30 am yesterday while taking a compass reading near the Bridal Veil falls. A 15-year-old boy, Malcolm Longton, of Blackheath, found his body in dense scrub on a ledge 200 feet above the bottom of the falls. He jumped ahead to his own name and was astounded to find himself reported in words he didn’t recognise, that the professor had told the taxi driver, Mr Harry Newstead, he was going along the cliff top to study the ranges and would not be long. The man had said nothing of the kind, only stood for a very long moment looking out over the Grose, then turned back to the open door and said, reaching in for the papers he’d been shuffling and reshuffling for the whole trip, ‘I will take these.’ In the next paragraph he, Mr Newstead, was reported to have become concerned when the professor had not returned by noon. It was a stupid word and he never used it. ‘Worried’, he’d said. And the visitor from Sydney, Mr Brian Darragh, was now the one who’d alerted Blackheath police. The whole bloody thing was twisted! He had walked back there with the Darraghs, seen the professor’s things, then driven to the police station. Reminded, he moved his eyes over the article for any mention of Morey. There was none, apart from police said. He supposed that was standard, only members of the public mentioned by name. Morey, though, after making a statement to Arthur Toohey and answering questions, had stayed at his elbow when Toohey turned to him wanting to know what the deceased’s – assuming he was – what his mental state had been on the ride there. Morey had stepped in before he could open his mouth.

  ‘Arthur, Mr Newstead’s not a psychiatrist. He’s told you the facts you need from him, I’ve given you the facts at the lookout and what the police believe happened. Now I hope you’ll appreciate that Mr Newstead has lost most of a day but still has a living to earn, and I’ve got a search party to organise to try and get down and up before dark. If you’ve still got state-of-mind questions I suggest you wait for the coroner’s.’

  Toohey had looked at him, then back at the policeman. Newstead remembered the man’s eyes, amused, as if newsgathering was a game of wits, no more.

  ‘I won’t trouble him for more than a sentence or two, Senior Constable.’

  ‘Good day, Mr Toohey.’

  The man conceded with a tilt of the head and closed his notepad.

  ‘You don’t mind if I come back after I file this and walk round to the lookout?’

  ‘It’s a public track, Arthur, you’re a member of the public. But be so good as to not pester my officer there to be allowed up to the edge. For our sake as well as yours – we don’t want you landing on us.’

  Toohey broke into a merry laugh.

  He’d turned towards the Wolseley to hide his anger, but caught at the edge of his vision the policeman make a damping gesture with his hand to the man.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Newstead,’ Morey said, ‘we haven’t forgotten why we’re here.’

  He read to the end of the article. The final paragraphs described the climb, the men carrying the stretcher with the body forced to relieve one another every hundred yards. They were protecting their readers, he supposed, calling it a ‘body’. Immediately below was a story as boldly headlined, Tulloch’s Owner Not Decided About Cup. What was that about? He’d planned to put a few quid on the wonder colt. He began to read, then stopped, disgusted with himself. He was as bad as the two yesterday. He folded the papers together facedown on the benchtop and turned. She’d rolled out the pastry and was stamping out circles with a floured tin to make turnovers. The rhubarb and apple filling was in a saucepan on the table, a spoon sunk in it. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said without looking up. For a second he didn’t understand, both teasing and food far from his mind. She lifted a white finger towards the papers. ‘Why on earth would they take a boy of fifteen?’

  ‘I suppose he just took who he could get.’ At fifteen he’d have put up his hand too. He walked to the sink and filled a glass. ‘I’m just going to sit outside.’

  ‘Harry.’

  He halted and looked at her.

  ‘No – come here.’

  She kissed him on the mouth, keeping her floured hands above the table.

  ‘Don’t brood. There’s nothing you could have done.’

  The concrete wasn’t hot, only the air. He dragged one of the heavy patio chairs into the shade of the laundry wall and sat and stood the glass between his bare feet. Don’t brood. She might as well have said don’t think. Don’t breathe. He wondered how Fred was coping. He wouldn’t be brooding but he’d be upset, especially being behind the wheel. He’d rung him yesterday afternoon from the police station, not wanting one of the other blokes ringing to say he’d been missing from the rank for most of the day. He’d told him only what the evidence said, that the Professor had been off along the cliffs at Govetts taking bearings with a compass like he’d done all the times he’d gone out with him, Fred, and probably stepped too close to the edge not wearing his glasses and had gone over. ‘What – yous found his specs?’ Fred had shouted down the line. ‘Why would he take his specs off? You seen him – the thickness of them – he couldn’t cross a footpath without them, let alone a bloody cliff! Did you tell the coppers blokes had goes at him because he looked a poof? Some bastard could have pitched him off and made it look an accident!’ He’d told him, keeping his voice as calm as he could, that neither he nor the police thought that was what had happened. The lookout wasn’t on the main track, it was down a loop. The police had examined for shoeprints and other signs of anyone else having been there and found none. The specs were sitting on the rock with the lugs open like you’d do to pick up and put on again, and his pocketbook with fifteen pound was still in his coat. The line went silent, he thought for a second it had gone dead. Then he heard Fred blowing his nose. When he spoke he was still choked up. ‘I’ll miss driving him, Harry, my oath I will. The knowledge that man carried in his head. He could take you to the Stone Age and you’d reckon you were walking round there.’

  ‘You’ve said, yes.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Eh? You reach my age and the world can still kick you in the nuts. I’d reckon knock off, son, bring the car here and have a whisky and go home.’

  A whisky would be good now. He looked at the glass between his feet. They kept nothing in the house, and he wasn’t going near the pub with his name on the front pages. He’d thought the first time he saw the man come down the Carrington steps he had something wrong with his hips, but Fred was right, it was his eyes. They gave him a strange prissy way of stepping, a bit like a chook, as if he wasn’t quite sure the ground would be under his foot each time he placed it down. Yesterday he’d stopped on the steps and tilted his hat back to peer at the sky and nearly toppled over. And that was with his specs on. Morey had never laid eyes on the living man. Maybe he should have said, I’ve watched him come down from the Carrington, constable. Just this morning he nearly tripped over his own feet. ‘You didn’t because of him being a cop,’ he muttered at the concrete. Bu
t why couldn’t something like that have been what happened? He hadn’t said it to Morey but he would say it to the coroner. The clack of a beak made him look up. A magpie had landed in the newly-turned soil of the fallow bed and was stabbing for worms. He clapped and it started, but stayed where it was. He half-rose and threw his arm, get out of it! and the bird reared into flight and fled over the back fence. It struck him that even something with a bird wasn’t far-fetched, him without specs and a maggie or a rosella diving past his face. ‘You bloody don’t want it to be the other, do you,’ he muttered. Because then he was back to asking himself why he’d sensed nothing. The signs he was putting together now – the shuffling of papers, the furious puffing on the pipe, the hesitation at Govetts when he got out and saw the immense blue trench that was the Grose – all of it was hindsight. The man had been perfectly calm and natural, appeared to be anyway, when he stopped at the bottom of the Carrington steps. Despite the promise in the sky of another hot day he was wearing bow tie, vest and coat. Fred said that on most days he walked to Echo Point, sometimes as far as Narrow Neck, so Newstead was expecting him to turn right and head off down Katoomba Street. Instead the man had looked both ways, then crossed the footpath and bent to speak through the open passenger window. Newstead had never seen him up close. The specs were like bottle glass and his nose, as Fred had also said, was a pale blue, webbed with fine veins. ‘Ah – not Mr Benham.’ ‘No,’ he’d replied, ‘I’m Harry Newstead, Mr Benham’s partner.’ ‘Ah. Well, are you free to take me to Govetts Leap, Mr Newstead?’ There was a standard response but he’d felt unable to give it to a man probably above common humour.

  As he’d told Morey, he always looked at his watch when he arrived at a fare’s destination and he’d parked the Wolseley at the Leap at three minutes past eight. There was one other car, a two-tone blue Ford Anglia, but the lookout was empty. The professor seemed surprised to see they’d arrived, he didn’t move for a few seconds after the motor was turned off. Then he’d got out and walked a few paces towards the fence, extended his wrist from his coat sleeve and stood staring at his watch. Newstead had presumed he was calculating how long the wait might be, to tell him. But the man dropped his arm and lifted his head and stared then towards the Grose. After what seemed fully a minute he’d turned abruptly back to the open door and said as if thinking aloud, ‘I will take these.’ He’d gathered up from the seat the papers he’d got in carrying and what Newstead saw for the first time was a brass compass, which he slipped into his coat pocket. He set off towards the cliff track without goodbye or instructions and without closing the door. Newstead wondered if he’d forgotten he was with a new driver and thought he was with Fred, who wouldn’t need instructions. Fred had told him though, the man expected you to wait. He stretched his arm to its window winder and pulled the door closed, then chose a tree at the other side of the carpark and drove the Wolseley into its shade, knowing how hot the car got in a longish wait, being black.

  He took the slice of fruitcake Joyce had put in his box and walked over to the lookout, pausing for a moment to remind himself of the date on the stone obelisk, before continuing towards the fence and stopping a yard short of the railing. He’d been coming to Govetts since he was a child. He didn’t remember the first time, which was probably as a baby. The time that was imprinted on his memory as the first, his father had gripped his hand and dragged him screaming and struggling to the fence, pinning him against his legs and demanding that he look down while repeating into his ear that he was safe, daddy wasn’t going to let go of him. That day returned whenever he stepped through the stone arch, but now he could choose where he halted. The air was clear and blue, he could see all the way to where the cliffs blurred together and he knew Richmond to be. Wouldn’t that be a walk, five or six days of vertical rock each side and a strip of sky above. He craned forward to look at the trees along the river. They were far smaller than matchsticks, they looked like the pile sticking up on a carpet. He felt his breathing shorten. He turned and saw he no longer had the lookout to himself and made himself walk calmly to the nearest of the plank benches. When he’d eaten the slice of cake he walked back to the Wolseley. At nine the first of Barker’s omnibuses arrived with the pickups from the guesthouses, followed a few minutes later by the omnibus from the station. He folded the newspaper and put it back in the glovebox. He’d always been able to pass time watching people. By ten, though, he was restless. To work it off, stretch his legs, he walked to the top of Horseshoe Falls and back. By twelve he’d lost all interest in the Sydney toffs and the women in their sleeveless cotton dresses. When Fred said you waited he surely couldn’t have meant this long. He fetched his hat from the boot and locked the car.

  At the steps on the other side of Bridal Veil he was forced to wait for a couple coming down. They were red-faced and sweating, wearing identical white caps and with hankies knotted round their necks. When they reached the bottom the man gave him a quick grin. ‘You lost your fare?’ Newstead was surprised, then reasoned the man must have seen him earlier standing by the Wolseley.

  ‘Yes. An elderly chap in a green coat and bow tie, very thick glasses.’

  They shook their heads. The woman said, ‘We’ve been to Evans Lookout and back, we saw no one like that. We had a drink and a bite there, but we were sitting in view of where the track comes out.’

  ‘We did see a coat lying over a log.’ The man turned to her. ‘It was sort of a green wasn’t it?’

  ‘A bluey green.’

  ‘Would your chap have had a compass? There was one on the ledge at the lookout just back there. We left it, of course – we thought the owner might have just ducked into the bushes.’

  Newstead felt his balls contract.

  ‘Would you be able to show me?’

  The man glanced at his watch, then at the woman. ‘Ah … certainly.’

  They introduced themselves. He apologised for making them climb again. Don’t be silly, the woman told him.

  They mounted the stairs, then climbed through a din of cicadas so loud there was no point trying to speak. Where the track levelled they came to a fallen tree with the professor’s coat neatly folded lengthways and laid over the trunk. He patted the breast and felt the hardness of a pocketbook. Brian Darragh pointed down a path leading off the track to the cliff edge.

  The lookout was a promontory of bare sandstone with a front fence and wing fences of waterpipe and rusty chainwire, beyond the fence on two sides nothing but air. Joyce had forced him out onto similar places. They were awful. He halted. So did the Darraghs. The man was his charge. He breathed in deeply through his nose, blew it out, then descended the cut steps, trying to limit the circle of his gaze to the feet of the fence posts. The professor’s brown felt hat and his glasses, the lugs open, and beyond them the compass, were on an unfenced portion of the promontory to the left, a couple of yards outside the wire. The compass sat on a small square of cardboard, one corner of the cardboard resting on a folded piece of paper to level it. He crept to the end of the wing fence and, not caring how it looked to the man and woman, squatted and waddled past the hat and glasses to the compass, trying to keep his eyes fixed on it alone but keenly aware that eighteen inches beyond was the lip of the cliff. His father had taught him to read a prismatic. He didn’t need to, he knew that, but it might become evidence. He took a stabbing glance along the line of the needle, refusing to see the blue immensity to either side. It was sighted on Pulpit Rock, two degrees east of north. In pencil block letters on a sheet of Carrington notepaper with a lichened stone weighting it were the names Mount Banks, Mount Hay, Table Peak, Pulpit Rock. He drew in a breath and raised his gaze to the edge, searching for a disturbance, a scuffmark, or, and he prayed not, anything that suggested fingers scrabbling for a hold. The stone’s grey patina was unmarked, the fine sand pooled in depressions along the rim bore only the ripples left by wind. There was no sign that anyone had been closer to the edge than he was now. He lowered his gaze and shuffled backwards on his haunches
until he could grab the wire of the wing fence, then hauled himself to his feet and stepped into the enclosure. Brian Darragh arched his eyebrows. He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s no marks. It’s hard to say.’

  ‘So … what do you want to do? We’ll have to leave you, I’m afraid, we’re expected at friends’.’

  ‘Yes – sorry – thank you both for your help. You’d better give me an address, though. Where you’re staying.’

  ‘Of course.’ The man reached to the straps of his knapsack.

  He walked with them back up into the cicada din to the track junction, thanked them again and shook their hands. He waited till they were out of sight, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘Professor!’ A pair of rosellas burst squawking from a banksia and skimmed away towards the valley. In seconds the cicadas flooded back in. He wondered how far into the bush his shout had even penetrated.

  He set off towards Evans Lookout, halting every fifty yards to cup his hands and shout into the trees, at the same time feeling a fool. He hoped no one came along the track. Where the flat walking ended he stopped and shouted down the steps, then turned without waiting for a reply, knowing none would come, and broke into a half jog.

  He stopped at the coat and laid his hand again on the breast to feel the hardness. Some dozens of people must have passed by and, like the Darraghs, looked but not touched. If, as it was seeming, the coat too was evidence, it would have to be left, pocketbook and all. He backed away for two or three steps, willing the thing to remain, then spun and broke again into his jog.

  He was back at Govetts in thirty minutes with Morey and a constable his own age named McShane. Morey questioned him as they descended to Bridal Veil about events from the time ‘this professor fellow’ had come to the rank, and about what he knew of the man. At times neither could hear the other above the cicadas and had to repeat questions or answers. He wanted to say, couldn’t we save the questions and get a move on, but Morey seemed in no hurry. When Newstead glanced his frustration at the younger man, McShane shrugged to say, that’s how he is mate.

 

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