She walked back to the kitchen to finish up with the cleaning. So much wiping to be done in the kitchen: the trail of ants was never ending. A few more customers knocked politely on the window of the cabin, inquiring if she was still open for business. There were only a few pieces of baklava left. She was saving them for Fawzy. On the other hand, money spoke with greater appreciation than Fawzy could ever muster for baklava. She handed over the baklava.
A headache stirred in the back of her head. She kicked the garbage bin. This kitchen could go and bugger off. She took off her dress. Leaving everything on the houseboat as it was, she ran to the deck and up onto the pier. Taking a running jump, she bombed into the water. Everyone could go and bugger off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Industrial action was an imminent possibility. These words, he knew, were intended to scare the bejesus out of him. The tips of his fingers were wet, the palms of his hands were humid. His management team nodded solemnly around the table. After threatening for weeks to strike for higher wages, the union whispers were getting louder and the construction company was close to agreeing to negotiations. Problem was, the union wanted tools down during negotiations while Larry McBean’s construction company wanted the union to demonstrate good faith by continuing the build during the talks.
‘We’re screwed. They can’t even agree on the process for negotiations.’
‘What can we do about it?’ asked Tom.
‘Larry thinks it’s unavoidable. There’s nothing that can be done. If he’s right, we’re going to have to fork out more. Strike was always a risk for this project, which is why he insisted on including that special provision in the contract to share any wage blowout. If the unions get their way, our costs will balloon. We all know we can’t afford any blowout, we’re holding on by the skin of our teeth as it is. Hell, we still haven’t covered the last ten per cent of the project.’
‘Larry should be sweating bullets. Why isn’t he? If the timetable slips and we don’t finish on schedule then he doesn’t get his construction bonus. He should be as nervous as we are,’ said Tom.
‘One could assume that he’d rather miss out on his bonus than be whipped by the union. This is a bigger issue for him. If he capitulates now he’ll have to fork out higher wages on every project from here on.’
‘He won’t do that,’ agreed Mick, Tom’s chief strategist.
‘I’m not hearing a solution. For godsakes let’s at least consider a few scenarios,’ Tom barked at his team.
‘Non-union is an option. We have enough information now. We can make an approach.’
‘Scab labour? I don’t think we can afford to disenfranchise the community.’
‘Unemployment is rising out there … what’s wrong with the union? Does no one read the papers? There are people out there in real-life land gagging to bring in some income. They’ll be lining up to work. Give them a chance, you’ll see.’ Tom raked his moist fingertips over the top of his knees.
‘This sort of activity will attract national coverage.’
‘We’re not going to be browbeaten by Larry. That’s final.’ He looked around the table and stared into the eyes of every man seated in the room. ‘Now, how the hell are we going to fund the last ten per cent? We need to find an investor right now, because if we don’t, we can’t pay anyone. Mick, where are we up to with that?’
‘We’re chasing some leads, waiting to hear back. Some of the proposed loan terms have been prohibitively high,’ said Mick.
‘We still have time. Let’s not jump into anything that smells like desperation,’ said Harvey, his head of operations.
‘No, we don’t have time,’ interrupted Tom. ‘And we are desperate. If there is anyone here counting on divine intervention you can exit this project right now because we need to get this last ten per cent funded. Otherwise, we’ll be selling an almost finished project at a loss to the luckiest bastard on the planet. I don’t know who that bastard is but I already hate him and don’t want to hand him that pleasure on a silver platter. We are on the brink of genius or disaster. We are that close to both. Mick, you’ll update us once you hear back. But let’s not wait for destiny. I want every one of you to come up with two new proposals for closing the funding shortfall by the end of the week.’ Tom sat back and watched his team fidget with their expensive Swiss pens. Cripes. He wiped his moist fingertips discreetly down the side of his thighs.
Tom wondered what his father might have done in this situation, how he would have asserted his authority. It troubled him that his point of reference was a re-occurring boomerang to his father. His father had been unlikeable and feared, and on reflection, made as many bad business decisions as he had made good. No point thinking how his old man might have behaved differently.
In these moments, he felt wholly unprepared to run this mammoth endeavour. That was the thing about mammoth endeavours. You were never ready.
* * *
Tom parked his Monaro in front of the compound’s locked gate and stepped tentatively into the old dairy farm. The Rainbow Lilies had moved into the farm a couple of months ago and each time he came to visit, he was astounded by the amount of work they had completed. Every time, there were more tents pitched near the main farmhouse. Beyond the farmhouse they had started to mend the long neglected fences, section by section. There were horses in a paddock; in another were a couple dozen chickens, and there was a goat, somewhere. They had tilled the earth for an edible garden. Seedlings had already made way for lettuces, radishes, tomatoes, parsley, basil and rosemary. They had planted cucumbers, potatoes, eggplants, pumpkin, beans and broccoli.
There was no doubt in his mind the Rainbow Lilies were here to stay for the long haul. They had planted mango trees, avocado trees, apricot trees, macadamia nut trees, mulberry trees, strawberry shrubs and passionfruit shrubs. He was pleased to see the earth being put to productive use after a decade of neglect. The hippies paid homage to the earth, he could see where they were going with the compound concept, but they took natural living too far. Not one of them thought to scrub up a bit before going into town for supplies rather than walk barefoot with filthy toenails and smelling like Neanderthals. The more the Rainbow Lilies confirmed the worst expectations of Burraboo’s most conservative residents, the more Tom would cop the backlash.
It was reckless of him to be visiting the farm when the vitriolic posters at the Royal hadn’t stopped and the memory of his burnt Dodge was still fresh in his mind. Since he’d found the note wrapped up in the billiard ball on his doorstep, he’d organised private security patrols to his house and ramped up security at the Serpentine Heights building site, plus Bargearse Barry’s crew were doing their useless bit with increased patrols.
As much as he berated himself afterwards, it was hard to keep away from Cherie Blossom. She was full of hocuspocus, that little dropout student lawyer hippy, but she was also smart and damned good company and her legs were as long as a greyhound’s.
He was still wound up after meeting with his management team. Industrial action. Not on his watch. Cripes, the thought of dealing with the Horizon right now was overwhelming. He didn’t know if he wanted to sit or stand, eat or drink, talk or sleep. He just wanted to see Cherie Blossom. ‘Stuff it,’ he said to his Monaro and took long strides towards the gazebo.
The portable canvas gazebo was the pulse of the compound. He peered inside the tent at the bodies lazing on cushions, dozing and smoking and talking. ‘Anyone seen Cherie?’
‘She’s in the garden,’ said a chubby young man, raising his hand in a friendly wave. The Rainbow Lilies neither feared nor loathed him. They paid him little attention. He liked that. He often stayed till late, listening to them play music and talk rubbish.
The paddocks looked dry but the gardens were something else. The smell of damp, tilled earth thrilled him. Cherie was humped over a section of earth, hacking at spidery roots with a small spade. ‘Hey, baby,’ she said, rising when she saw him.
‘What’s next in the garden?�
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‘Cauliflower. I’m glad you’re here to get me out of the sun because I think I’m about to pass out, baby.’ She stroked his face and neck. ‘You’re strung tighter than a djembe.’
‘It shows, huh?’
‘Yup, it shows.’
She wrapped her earthy dirt fingers around his hand. The pulsing heat and life in her hand felt restoring. This is why he came here. She led him to the main house and into her regular room, which she shared with two of the other hippies but was presently deserted. ‘I’m taking a quick shower, wait for me here,’ she said in a way that was more of an order than a suggestion.
He sat on the bed and pulled the curtain to the side to take in the medley of tents just outside. Between two tents, a man with a disfigured face was talking to a huddle of people. His face was melted on one side and his ear was almost completely closed over. Tom knew him as the ‘horticulturist’ for the Rainbow Lilies. He was the green thumb who had quite a few special crops of green hidden away. A woman was laughing at something he’d said, her arm was around his waist, and the whole group was suddenly laughing and the woman was now embracing the man with the melted ear. Except it wasn’t just any hippy woman, it was Goldie Pritchett. There she stood, looking brash and cocky and very comfortable on this compound, with this gathering of Rainbow Lilies. He quickly moved the curtain back into place and peered through a small opening so that he was no longer visible.
His presence at the compound had always felt risky. There were drugs here. There were hippies. And the town hated both. Spending time with Cherie Blossom on the farm had felt like a gamble but with fairly low odds of being exposed. The Rainbow Lilies paid him no special attention; the Pritchett girl was another matter. There was enough bad blood between the Pritchetts and the Grieves to fill an entire continent. Strangely, he didn’t really know how it started; Big Jack never wanted to talk about it, which made Tom suspect that his old man had done something so crook that Pritchett couldn’t let go.
This could damage him and everything he was trying to build, if the truth about his relationship with Cherie Blossom was made known to the Burraboo folk. He thought about the threats to his house, to the Royal, his burnt-out Dodge. She was a snake in long grass, Goldie Pritchett; a sly presence that would wait in stillness for the perfect moment to strike, just like her uncle. He’d make it his business to catch her in her tracks.
* * *
The early morning smell of wet bark and honey myrtle drifted into the kitchen. Nayeema was seasoning the ful medammis, a stew of fava beans, with salt and cumin as Fawzy chewed a mouthful of his breakfast cereal precisely twenty times and read the first page of yesterday’s Daily Mirror. The cover was splashed with a large photograph of a cricketer at the stumps, his head pointed skywards, his bat raised in tribute. Fawzy turned the page and stopped his fastidious chewing to stare at the Page Three girl. She was a brazen thing with pendulous breasts and open lips.
‘Tea?’ asked Nayeema, amused and irritated in equal measure.
‘Er, yes. Thank you, ya butta.’ Flummoxed, Fawzy quickly flipped the page over. He sucked in his breath. ‘Very interesting … very interesting, indeed.’
‘What is?’
‘It would seem that there was a break-in at a pharmacy up the coast. There have been other pharmacy robberies, too, at night. I’ve been reading about them in the pharmacists’ newsletters. Filthy thieves. I have no respect for the thief. The thing is, I think I may be having the same problem.’
‘Is someone breaking into Pat’s pharmacy?’
‘Not so much breaking in but I’m certain we have a thief. You know I have been making all kinds of improvements to the pharmacy? I have changed the shelving and devised a new stocktake system. This has raised some … irregularities.’
‘What kind of irregularities?’
‘I do a daily stocktake each afternoon. I capture the movement of stock on the busiest shelves. It is entirely dependent on my memory.’
Nayeema smiled. Fawzy’s penchant for numbers wasn’t a talent that many people valued or understood. He thrilled in jumbling up a number series so that he might have the pleasure of recalling their initial order. He did this with phone numbers and bank account numbers and number plates on cars. He would multiply them, average them, or assess the cardinality of a number series, all in a few seconds. He loved numbers with the passion that Nayeema reserved for the piercing of ears.
‘At the start of yesterday, I counted ten packets of antacids, twelve liquid cough expectorants and twenty packets of paracetamol. I start each day with individual product lines displayed in even numbers only, never odd numbers … There are a total of six rows of shelving. Over the past three weeks I have counted an increased number of missing stock. I can’t account for the stock discrepancy … stock is disappearing off the shelves. Especially the sedatives and treatments for anxiety, not the heavy duty stuff, just the benzos … I have some sympathy for the difficulties of an insomniac, but none for a thief.’
‘You are sure someone is stealing from you?’
‘Maybe more than one person.’
‘Why?’
‘The pharmacy is an easy target for a thieving dog. Pat is a good man but he is old and tired. Some days, I think I am a gardener pruning back the weeds of his poor management. But I must stick to the concrete facts.’
‘What are the concrete facts?’
‘My daily stocktake numbers,’ he sighed. ‘The numbers do not lie. The problem with the world is that too few people look at the concrete facts.’
‘Thieves, you think? But who?’
‘Schoolkids. There is one in particular, a clever girl. Clever and troubled. Her name is Annabel.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘The concrete facts don’t lie … I do my mental stocktake three times daily. First thing in the morning, after lunch, and at the end of the day. From this, I can see that all the discrepancies are at the end of the day. This tells me that my thief comes into the pharmacy after lunch. The busiest time of the day is after three pm when mothers and school children come in for this or that. The high-school children, they come in and swarm the shop like locusts.’
‘Is this your proof?’
‘Patience, ya butta! Most of my stock losses are taking place in the second aisle where the sedatives and antihistamines are kept. I have been extra watchful in the afternoons. Beverley Morris, of course, is as useless as ever. All she does is talk nonsense to the customers. This is her brand of customer care. One day, I promise you, when the pharmacy is mine, she will have to talk nonsense on someone else’s time.
‘Anyway … yesterday at two pm, Bev was still on her lunch break, twenty minutes late. So la-di-da! So free and easy!’ He almost spat. ‘So there I am, alone in the shop. Two schoolgirls, maybe fourteen years old, walk in. I am busy with a customer. They go straight to the second aisle and all I can hear are whispers. You should have seen them. Short uniforms that barely covered their thighs. They left the shop quickly and didn’t buy a thing. As soon as I finished with the customer I went to the second aisle. There were three packets of antihistamines on the shelves. I had counted four cartons only thirty minutes earlier.’
‘But why would young girls need to steal antihistamines and sedatives?’
‘Maybe they are part of a gang.’
‘It doesn’t make sense … what kind of gang would do this?’
He shrugged.
‘And how do you know the names of these girls?’
‘I went outside for a break. To clear my head. There’s a spot I go to, behind one of those disused cottages on Main Street. She was there, one of the thieves, she was there, hiding in the long grass behind the cottage and smoking.’
What was he doing there? Fawzy was allergic to most grasses and usually avoided pollen zones whenever he could. Nayeema twisted her earlobe with her finger.
‘I thought, “I must talk to her.” I couldn’t let her get away without letting her know that I knew.’
‘
You confronted her?’
‘I said that I had seen her in the pharmacy. I asked if she was sick. I said to the little truant, “If you were well you would be in school.’”
Nayeema was impressed. This was a ballsy version of Fawzy, one that she was quite unfamiliar with.
‘She didn’t answer me. How could she outwit me when I had caught her by surprise? So she asked me for a cigarette, the misguided little thief! Still, I have her name now. She is slippery and cunning but at least she knows that I am onto her tricks.’ He tapped his temple with a finger in a self-congratulatory salute.
‘Have you told Pat … or Bev?’
‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘I can’t tell them. This information might cast an undignified shadow over me. I have no idea how long this theft has been going on for … what if they think it is because of me? What if the old man thinks that I am somehow to blame … that I don’t assert enough control over the store?’
‘I think you should tell Pat.’
‘Nothing is more important to a man than the appearance of dignity … even if it is a hoax, ya butta, even if it is as crumbly as an old wall from ancient ruins. No, I’ll jolly well catch the lying dogs that are stealing from our future livelihood, with my dignity intact. Only then can Pat know.’
‘What about Sergeant Barry? Can you speak to him in confidence?’
‘No, ya butta, I need to figure this out for myself. Barry, he is no good. He still doesn’t know who set fire to Tom’s car … Tom, the most powerful man in Burraboo and he still can’t get any useful information from Barry. And that was an act of vandalism in broad daylight, on the streets. No, Barry won’t be able to help me.’ He folded the newspaper. ‘I need to watch those girls … I think they will show me their weaknesses if I look closely enough … A person with a wound on his head keeps on touching it! Maybe today, ya butta, today is my day to resolve this mess.’
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