‘She should have let you drown. I’ve told her that many a time. Oh, and your tasty niece won’t like losing a job, either. Or hadn’t you worked that out?’ Tom was starting to enjoy this vignette of absurd theatre.
‘Tom-boy, I’ve worked everything out. This offer is not going to be open forever. I’m going to give you precisely a month to respond. Let’s see, where are we … today is the twenty-sixth of August, so I’ll be expecting your answer by the twenty-sixth of September.
‘A month is not very long to get your affairs in order. Don’t think for a minute you can ignore me … that would be unwise. In fact, if I don’t hear back from you, I’ll be telling the good folk of Burraboo that you sold them out to that Rainbow Lily troupe of jokers, to generate some extra cash for your fancy development.’
‘Hardly news.’
‘To think …’ Pritchett sucked his teeth, ‘that you are consorting with one of those feral animals. To think that you are in an intimate way with one of those hippies … Plum Blossom? Oh no, that’s not it. Perhaps it’s Cherie Blossom? Yes, that’s the one, Cherie Blossom. Tom-boy, she would be very bad PR for the Horizon, what with all those terrible rumours around town.’
A hard metallic taste entered Tom’s mouth.
‘Lucky for you, I’m going to give you a second option. It’s less attractive than the first option, in my opinion, but there’s subjectivity for you right there. Option two is that you sell me the pier and the crappy scrap of access land at the beach, all for a consideration of one dollar.’
‘Why would I agree to that?’
‘This is a bit circular, Tom-boy. I didn’t take you to be so daft. What will happen is that I’ll tell the good folk of Burraboo about your little tryst with Cherie Blossom. I’ll tell them how relaxed you are when you are on the farm with her and her other boyfriends. Perhaps I’ll let slip that there are certain substances of an illegal nature on that property that are consumed under your nose. Perhaps I’ll inform our Burraboo friends that you have consumed this very substance yourself. Perhaps you take a cut in return for letting them sell their wares on your houseboat and on your pier. Perhaps your foreigner girlfriend is in on this racket, too. Bargearse would be keen to hear about these activities of yours, I’d say.’
‘You’re a lunatic. Even if I was to agree to your offensive proposal, you wouldn’t let my houseboat within a dog’s fart of the pier. The kiosk would have to close.’
‘Ah. We come to a full circle back to your foreigner girlfriend. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep things going with the New Australian.’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Oh, didn’t I explain? You would hand over your kiosk business to me.’
‘I think I’ve heard enough demented ramblings for one day. You look as though you’ve enjoyed your day release.’
‘Humph.’
‘So this is how things are going to play out. You leave my office right now, on your own feet, or I will remove you myself. I let you in here out of a misplaced courtesy.’
‘Curiosity, more like it. There’s a lot of ugly talk out there … about industrial action.’
‘There’s a bloody recession out there. People would be crazy to strike and if they did, you know what, it’s no big deal. There are alternatives to union labour.’
‘Are you kidding? Are you so disconnected from reality that you would take scab labour? That would piss people off even more. Fanciful, your ideas are, Tom-boy. There is great concern in this town at present. You should sack your executive team for the advice they’re giving you.’ He picked at his teeth.
‘My executive team will enjoy having a laugh when I tell them about this meeting.’
‘How’s your Dodge?’
‘Piss off.’
‘Feelings are very delicately balanced, Tom-boy, what with those Rainbow Lily problems you introduced. They are parasites and you are their host. It wouldn’t take much to—’ he motioned with his hand, ‘—push things right over the edge.’
‘Get out!’ Tom shouted, and stood up abruptly. The force of his movement lifted the desk and knocked over his water glass. A mallet thrashed at his temples. His mouth was clotted. No words.
Pritchett rose from his chair. ‘There’s no need to get tetchy. I’ll expect your answer by twenty-sixth September.’ He walked towards the door, every step slow and deliberate. ‘Humph. Thanks for the hospitality,’ he said, and exited Tom’s office.
Tom fell back heavily into his chair. His breath came out in fast, shallow punches. The ornery old man was contemptible but predictable. Pritchett had been patiently waiting to make his play. He’d found Tom’s weak spots.
By Pritchett’s reckoning, Tom would have to give up Neema or give up the Horizon. Public condemnation of his gambol with Cherie Blossom was more than a possibility. Goldie Pritchett, with one foot on the houseboat and one foot with the hippies, had probably fed her uncle all sorts of juicy stories about the Rainbow Lily farm and like a hungry varmint, Pritchett had gobbled them. They were probably in cahoots with each other from the very beginning. A little bit of fun for the Pritchett family. It would explain why the Pritchett girl continued to work on the houseboat without opposition from her Uncle Frank. She was his stinking little spy.
It would hurt the Horizon at this critical stage to encounter any type of community backlash. Construction was sixty per cent complete and about to hit an important milestone. In approximately eight months’ time the entire build would be finished. His team was prepared for worst-case scenarios being realised. They had response plans in place, they could resolve any number of disasters if the cactus hit the fan but that would be a splinter up his arse that he didn’t need.
Pritchett thought he had him by the balls but Tom was prepared. He had a plan. He waited for his breathing to slow down before he reached for his phone and dialled the number of the Rainbow Lily compound. Cherie Blossom was both the cause and solution to his problem with Pritchett. He’d show Pritchett what leverage meant.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was a shiver of cool in the air. The morning might turn completely overcast, become surprisingly warm, or flash rain. It was an odd, confused kind of morning where anything could happen.
Cherie Blossom was a few strides ahead of him. She was dressed for hiking, in jeans and sneakers, as he’d suggested. Her thick red hair was tied back into a braid and coiled like a vine down her back. She stopped suddenly and turned to face him, her eyes wide with exaggeration. ‘This is far out … the enchanted wilds of Burraboo. The more you look, the more you see.’
‘The more you see the more you find.’
‘Is there anything in particular that I ought to be finding? I get the feeling you want me to be finding something …’
‘I bring you to this beautiful, unknown part of Burraboo and you think I have a secret agenda?’ Tom said, smiling. ‘You’re a suspicious person, for a Rainbow Lily. What ever happened to “taking things just as they are”?’
‘I’m not usually suspicious, baby. When I need to be, though, this primitive instinct kicks in.’ She clipped him on the chin with her thumb.
‘I think the three years you’ve spent studying law is more likely to explain your suspicious strains. Primitive instinct, my arse.’
Cherie Blossom stood on the edge of the walking trail, over the lip of a rocky ledge. She lifted her arms out to her sides and took a deep breath. ‘There’s a great energy here, baby. It’s beautiful. State owned, you say?’
‘Actually, we’ve just crossed the boundary into private land. See that stump there? That marks the end of public land. I haven’t been here in years. Not since I was a kid. My brother and I … this used to be our playground. I knew every bit of it … by smell, by sight. I knew all the tracks. Before I left for boarding school, I hacked away at some of this scrub and created a track or two myself … I wanted to leave a bit of myself here.’
‘Spraying your turf like a little doggie?’ Cherie Blossom winked at him. ‘Marking your spot?’
Tom frowned. He was a part of this land. It flowed through him.
‘Ownership and possession, they can bring you down,’ said Cherie Blossom.
‘Didn’t seem to stop you Rainbows from wanting to own the farm. That doesn’t seem to have brought you down.’
‘Having the farm has given us freedom … for expression. That’s how we see it. Nothing more.’
It’s one thing to own land, another thing altogether to belong to it, Tom thought. She understood that. So did all the Rainbow Lilies. The agreement between man and earth was uneasy. Not symmetrical. Not like man and car. The earth wasn’t required to yield to a demand like a gearbox or brakes. His brother Nick understood that; he who chose the city as a demonstration of his disgust at his family’s untrammelled sovereignty over that which they owned.
‘I’m scared to ask you about the terrible plans you might have to build a monolithic structure in this part of Burraboo, you know, one that asserts your supremacy as the alpha beast of all beasts.’
‘You think I’m an alpha beast? You’ve a strange bloody way of understanding that I’m saving this town from extinction.’
‘Sounds self-justifying.’
‘Helping people to find a way to survive and stay, you make that sound as though it’s a bad thing.’
‘Intent is important, yes. But understanding the consequences of your decisions is just as important.’
‘Jayney,’ Tom said, knowing that she had a tremendous dislike for the name her parents had given her. ‘Believe me, I’m not doing anything with this bit of Burraboo. There will be no monoliths constructed here, not on my account, anyway.’
‘Excuse me for saying … that’s hard for me to believe. Land is your preoccupation, your reference point … I know it, I can feel it in you, even if you don’t have that realisation about yourself.’
‘Well, I inherited land. A lot of land … and I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to dispose of it.’
‘But you bought the site at Serpentine Heights to build the Horizon. You chose to accumulate … to acquire.’
‘The Horizon is different. That’s my freedom.’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Freedom? Baby, it’s given you nothing but headaches. Your neck is as tight as a drum … your eyes are worn. You’ve collected a few more greys above the ears … This is a strange freedom you’ve bought for yourself.’ She turned back to him and gently followed the lines around his eye with her finger. He wrapped his arms around her small waist, snuck his nose against the side of her neck. Sandalwood oil. So good. He could spend all day burrowed in the crook of her neck.
She touched his lips tenderly with her index finger then pulled away before he could kiss her. He took her hand and led her back to the walking track.
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t own this land, not anymore. It used to be owned by my family.’
‘Oh, you sold this one too?’
‘Not me, it was my grandad. He gambled it away. Silly bugger. This private lot belongs to a rabid old coot now. A nasty piece of work.’
‘A local guy? Someone from the town?’
‘His name is Frank Pritchett. If you ever meet him, you take my word and walk yourself a mile in the other direction. You never want to come across a man like him, not in your entire life.’ He saw a flicker of surprise on her face at the mention of Pritchett. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Never met him. So then … we’re trespassing?’
‘He never comes here. This is his neglected trophy. Don’t worry.’
They pushed through the gnarled and knotted undergrowth before reaching a section of exposed sandstone rocks that were clustered up along the face of an incline. They scuttled onto their knees and hands as they made their way over the rocks. When they reached the top they rolled onto their bottoms, panting and laughing on the gravelly dirt. Tom looked around. He hadn’t been here in a long time. He knew this place as intimately as his own breath. An understanding of a place doesn’t leave you when it is transferred or seized or sold or gambled away. It stays with you, no matter what.
The cave was exactly as he remembered it. There was a section of land that appeared to have been recently cleared, and evidence of a fire. The earth was blackened.
‘Looks like you may have been wrong about that Pritchett guy not coming here.’
‘That’s not Pritchett’s work,’ Tom said, barely concealing a snort. ‘I doubt he even knows these caves exist. Or that he’s ever spent a single night of his life under the stars. Come on this way, I want you to see something.’ He led her to a large sandstone rock in front of the cave, with a distinctive carving over its long, flat side.
‘Fish!’ Cherie Blossom ran her hand over the deeply etched grooves.
‘There should be another fish, up along the side … yes, there it is.’ Tom pointed to the smaller carving; its shape suggested to him a flathead. The surface of both carvings looked as though they had been brushed clear of dirt and debris, their outlines were crisper than his memory recalled, as though they had been re-grooved. The rock itself pointed towards Bishops Bay, which lay at the base of the rocky hill and was partially concealed by the dense heathland of banksias and casuarinas. Patches of sparkling blue water between the grey-green foliage hinted at the bay below.
Cherie Blossom slid her soft, warm hand inside his as they walked towards the cave. They stopped a moment at its entrance before taking a few tentative steps into the shadows. Instantly, he felt a drop in the temperature. The cave smelled of earth and dried bark. It took some time for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. There they were. Just as he’d remembered them. The series of paintings on the inside wall, emerging like a gift in the parsimonious light. As old as the hills, Nick used to say.
‘What is this place?’ whispered Cherie.
‘I’m not sure exactly. Even after all these years, no one has ever been able to tell me. I think it’s a special place. Sacred perhaps. There’s a ceremonial feel to it … I don’t know. I used to come here all the time. This isn’t the only one, there are other caves with paintings, all around here.’
The cave was shallow, no more than ten feet deep and seven feet high at the apex. This was the largest of the caves. Cherie Blossom stepped back towards the entrance.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tom.
‘It seems a little … presumptive … for us to be poking our heads in here. It feels … private.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘How old do you think these paintings are?’
‘No idea … I once asked my dad and my grandad about them. My grandad didn’t have a clue they existed. My dad said that they’d been here as long as he could remember.’
‘Baby, they definitely precede your dad and grandad. I think we can be confident of that. To me, these paintings feel like they are an important secret … one we can’t access or understand. Do you think Frank Pritchett knows they exist?’
‘Doubt it. He doesn’t come here. I’ve told you, this is his trophy.’
‘From one hidden history to another. What’s that about? Why won’t you tell me how Frank Pritchett came to own all this?’
‘I’ve told you. This land was gambled away by my grandad.’
‘Strange isn’t it, that this property was whimsically exchanged?’
‘Something happened between my old man and Pritchett, well before this exchange. There was a period when Pritchett and my old man were friends and business partners. There were three of them. My dad, Pritchett and this other guy, Jim Goodhall.’
Pritchett, Grieves, and Goodhall had made a fearsome trio as partners on various business ventures on the New South Wales coast. For almost two decades they had shared commercial interests that spanned from Newcastle to Wollongong. When Tom returned from boarding school during a mid-term break, he learned that the trio had split up. Some irreconcilable difference of opinion between Grieves and Pritchett had made their partnership untenable. After the bust up, Big Jack remained friendly with the coalmi
ner.
With Pritchett, Big Jack Grieves was steadfast in his rage and venom. When Tom asked his mother about what had happened, her eyes welled up with tears before turning stony. In her habitual flat voice, she told Tom he should ask his father. He didn’t dare. It wasn’t until years later that Tom considered that the rift was probably of a personal, not commercial, nature. He suspected that his old man had been messing around with Pritchett’s missus. Nothing would surprise Tom about Big Jack when it came to women.
‘Your dad must have been pissed with your grandad for signing this land over to Pritchett.’
Tom laughed. ‘That’s an understatement. Dad spent years trying to get this lot back, too.’
Cherie Blossom contemplated the paintings on the cave wall in silence for a few moments. ‘So why do you hate Frank Pritchett? Is that some kind of crazy inheritance handed down from your dad? I thought you were a cooler cat than that.’
‘I’ve inherited plenty, but the way I feel about Pritchett is his own doing.’
‘And yet, I can’t help thinking that it’s so strange that your grandad gave all this land away. It’s not as though he was short of coin and couldn’t pay off a gambling obligation.’
‘My grandad was losing his marbles, the early stages of dementia, we later discovered.’
‘The lot of them sound like a pack of chumps. Arrogant men with supremacist inclinations.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m no different to them,’ Tom teased. ‘There’s a terrifying thought. Do you want to see the other caves?’
‘Sure I do, baby.’
Tom was relieved to step back outside. Behind every battle there was a secret. Some secrets become public but the most painful were too intimate to tell, these were held as close as breath. The secret of Big Jack and Frank Pritchett’s enmity would never be revealed to him.
‘I’ve known about this place since I was a boy. I used to keep my treasures here. Things I didn’t want anyone to find. I’d bury them here. It felt safe. Felt private.’
Fava Beans For Breakfast Page 20