CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE
Nayeema raised her head and sniffed the air appreciatively. The entire cabin, her clothes, her hair and fingers were drenched in the baharat—mixed spices—she had ground up for the lamb and chickpea stew, now on a low simmer. The blend of coriander, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, cumin, cinnamon and chilli was perhaps a risky addition to the dish, though she could not bring herself to compromise by leaving these spices out.
She turned the pages of the Bay News. There was a pleasing absence of news about the missing girl. Every article printed about Annabel’s disappearance did nothing but stir bad feelings towards Fawzy. She quickly thumbed through the remaining pages before returning to the front page. She almost yelped. How could she have missed this photograph on her first read? It was Jayney, the dirty-haired hippy, in a large photo with several other lank-haired people, holding placards somewhere in Sydney, in the city, outside a gated building. She read the caption: ‘Burraboo Fights to Preserve Historic Site.’ Her eyes scanned the article. There were rock carvings and paintings, all Aboriginal, right here in Bishops Bay. She had a faint recollection of Tom telling her about ancient paintings. Jayney and her friends were trying to preserve these special relics. Right here above the bay. Not far from where the fossil bones had been found.
Until recently, she’d never thought too much about the discovery of the ancient amphibian fossils. Her customers, the fossil researchers, had taught her to appreciate the fragility and power of the fossils. These ancient bones were an enduring and permanent record of past life, embedded, rested and preserved in the earth; and yet, so vulnerable. Once lifted from the earth, if they were not stored correctly or if a single violent movement dislodged them, they were easily destroyed. Like memory or words. The permanent record becomes impermanent.
She gazed over to the inlet. The reverie that seized her when she caught sight of the oversized boulder protruding from the earth, the rocks that sat off the southern end of the inlet, the gnarly shrubs, was interrupted by Goldie.
‘Don’t say I don’t do anything for you, honey.’ A self-satisfied smile sprawled across her face as she took a seat beside Nayeema.
‘Huh?’
‘Let’s just say that I reckon I can pull off the miracle of the century.’
Nayeema folded the newspaper and watched Goldie flick the ends of her glorious hair behind her shoulder. The tremble of worry about Fawzy remained in her chest but she felt ignited by Goldie’s gaiety and her impish mania.
‘What miracle?’
‘The miracle, my dear friend Nayeema, is that I think my Uncle Frank is going to sell that parcel of land.’ She nodded towards the inlet.
‘How can this be? Before, you tell me he will never sell. Never ever, you said.’
‘Believe me, he is thinking about it, baby. But the thing is … are you interested in buying?’
Nayeema dropped the newspaper from her hands. It swished and flapped until it found the floor.
‘Well, why not? I might be able to convince him to sell it to you. You saved him from drowning, didn’t you? It’s not like he has gone out of his way to thank you for it. Not yet anyway. The way I see things, he owes you first dibs on that parcel of land, you know, to show his appreciation. That’s what I’ve been telling him.’
‘I have no money. It is impossible for me to buy this land.’
Goldie shrugged. ‘Honey, he is definitely selling. Land and pier with it.’
Tom had anticipated something like this would happen. It was a trick. Frank Pritchett was making his move. She had to let Tom know.
‘Honey, take a look.’ Goldie pointed down the pier. The first of their lunchtime customers were making their way to the houseboat. Nayeema groaned silently. Fawzy was one of them.
Goldie’s words sat undigested like a heaped plate of rich dessert: tantalisingly sweet, but impossible to eat all at once. She spoke of buying this land as though it were nothing more than buying a second-hand car. The land she spoke of was not a residential street with power lines and a water supply; it wasn’t a densely populated apartment block, it had not yet been forced to yield to anything but wind and sun and erosion and salt.
She had an uncertain grasp of her own shape and what shadows she might cast on this land. She was a foreigner. She had left the country that had suckled her from birth. Her only claims were sentimental attachments to people, places, and things; her memories were fragile and as finite as her own breath. But the inlet of land was different. It seduced and cooed and spun inside her. The inlet sprawled naked and tense and vulnerable—always aware of the lines of memory that ran over it, of the skin that bruised so easily.
Her desire to pierce, the electric pulse that coursed through her body when she simply thought of puncturing ears, still remained but it was weakened by a second, stronger heartbeat that came from the inlet. Her life’s devotion to the ear and to piercing had been supplanted slowly and sweetly, and her heart ached as she realised there could only be space for one great yearning. She wondered whether this was just like suddenly and unwittingly stumbling into one’s great love, the one giant love that could only happen once in a person’s life … that once you come by this love everything would recede into the shadows. This inlet had claimed her as soon as she had clapped her eyes on it and felt the earth oozing between her toes, heard its timeless dance. She had allowed thoughts about this pocket of land to drench her with hope.
She’d had inflated hopes before. How easily they had become submersible. The piercing palace. Fawzy.
She looked over at her husband, who sat beside her on the deck. It was his third unannounced visit in as many days. It surprised her, that he hankered for her company. Pat Morris had asked Fawzy to take an extended period of leave from the pharmacy. Without occupation, he was a shadow that followed her all the time with his mournful eyes. She sensed his watchfulness over her even when she was not in his line of sight. He was a man with plenty of time. Oh Fawzy. Her old friend. They had saved one another when they married and fled to a new land in their imperfect family of two, without so much as a backwards glance at what they had left behind. He had saved her from a future with her brothers: where her wishes would always be considered last, where their sense of entitlement would be matched by the worthlessness she felt at their hands. She had saved him from the legacy of poverty and shame that had gripped him like a collar his entire life, by escaping the hurtful gossip about his mother. If only her feeling for him had grown new shoots as she had hoped. A guilty gloom came over her.
Today, he had brought a book with him. He sat silently facing the westerly sun, with his chin tilted upwards, allowing the beams of warm light to fall directly on his doleful cheeks. His arms were stretched out and raised before him as though he were offering himself to the sky. She stole a second look at him.
Sensing her gaze on him, he turned suddenly, and with the light now falling behind his head, he looked at her with clear steady eyes; his smile so endlessly charming and warm and boy-like, that she ached as though her bones were splintered. She could do nothing else but look away.
* * *
Tom watched her from the glass window of his office. She was hard to miss with her velvety hair that draped to halfway down her back. Her tight trousers clung to her pert arse like wet paint. Geez almighty. She was some piece of work.
She stood on the pavement on the opposite side of the road and followed the line of the building upwards, her eyes resting for a moment on the second-floor window that was Tom’s office. He rolled his chair away from the window, believing for one crazy second that she had caught him watching her. Bloody drongo, as if that was remotely possible with the latest tinted-glass technology wrapped around this building.
He rose to his feet and walked to the small cupboard by his office door, which housed a collection of ties for precisely this type of unannounced visit. He reached for the closest, without paying any attention to its colour or design, and strung it around his neck. Sometimes, before important m
eetings, he felt like he was preparing his own noose.
Denise buzzed him. ‘Goldie Pritchett is here to see you. No appointment.’
‘Typical of a Pritchett. Let her wait for ten minutes, thanks love, then you can let her in,’ he instructed. Well, why not? He smirked as he tightened the knot around his neck. Good thing he’d already spotted her on the street.
Goldie entered his office chewing on a piece of gum, smelling like sandalwood and tobacco, and coiling a section of hair below her shoulders around an index finger. She swaggered towards him with a half-smile on her face. Strapped to her ankle was a piece of cheap silver jewellery, with bells hanging off of it, which made an annoying jangle as she moved. He rose but remained behind his desk.
‘Goldie. You’re looking well … this visit is quite a surprise, though. You’re lucky to have caught me in the office today.’ He watched her make herself comfortable on one of his plush brown armchairs. ‘Very lucky, in fact.’
She raised an eyebrow in that arch, conceited manner that immediately identified her as a Pritchett.
‘How’s your uncle enjoying my houseboat?’
‘He hasn’t stepped inside it yet.’
‘Glad to hear Big Bertha hasn’t been soiled by his presence.’
They scrutinised one another in an unselfconscious way that struck him as childlike with its brutal lack of pretence. The corners of his mouth curled up as he looked directly into her rather beautiful, though ferocious, blue orbs.
‘So what brings you here, Miss Pritchett?’
‘I have some news that you will be very interested in,’ she said, with the coyness of a cat that was hiding food under her paw. She tilted her body towards his desk.
‘Is that so?’ He reclined into his throne-sized chair to maximise the distance between them.
‘Oh, yes. You see, my Uncle Frank has just been made an offer on that parcel of land he owns on the bay.’
Ah, the music comes in on cue. No surprises there, sweetheart. ‘Oh, really?’ he said, puckering his lips and lifting his brows with feigned curiosity. ‘Well, well. Good luck to your Uncle Frank.’
‘Don’t you want to know who’s made the offer?’ She pouted.
‘Course I do. Suspense can kill, you know.’
‘Don’t be a smartarse, Tom,’ she said, curtly.
‘So go on then. Who has made the old bastard an offer?’
‘The state government, as I am sure you already know, has been buying private land around the local area. Especially since that fossil discovery, they keep adding to the national park, so I guess it’s not surprising that they’ve made him an offer. It’s pretty attractive, what they’re prepared to pay. There’s a very good bloody chance that he will sell.’
‘That will fatten up the Pritchett coffers. Make for a nice little inheritance for you, one day,’ he said.
‘Your family has wanted that land back for years.’
‘No point referring to my family anymore. As far as the business is concerned, Grieves Inc is a one-man show. I won’t be held accountable for things that were done by any members of my family. You’re in the same situation, so you should know better.’ He folded his arms. Conversations about his family always revolved around blame and shame and he was tired of it.
‘Are you kidding me? There’s nothing similar about you and me. You happen to be the owner of a very successful business empire. I own nothing. I’m flat broke and I’ll never have what you have.’ She stopped to reach inside her bag and produced a small container. She dipped her finger into the container then slid its contents, a shiny balm, over her lips. ‘But what I do have is the trust of my uncle.’
‘How long did your uncle know that you were working on my houseboat?’
Goldie’s eyes fluttered in irritation. ‘He knew all along. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. He thinks I might learn something useful if I help him out with these negotiations. So I’ve been sitting in on meetings with him and Bruce, his solicitor. You know Bruce, of course. Say, can I have a glass of water? I’m parched, honey.’
Tom concealed his irritation as he called his secretary to bring in water. He turned away from Goldie and looked out the window.
‘It’s been real nice chatting, love, but I’ve got places I need to be this afternoon. So if there is a point to all this, I’d really appreciate you making it soon.’
He caught her reflection in the glass of the window, saw her impassive face. Her hide was as tough as a snake’s.
Denise knocked on the door, two sharp raps, and entered with a frosted pitcher of cold water and two glasses on a tray. She deposited the tray on the end of his desk and quickly left the room.
Goldie reached forward and poured a glass for herself. She took a sip and licked her lips. ‘So, I reckon that if you owned that land, you’d probably want to build something on it. That’s what you like doing, isn’t it … building things? So maybe you’d extend the idea of the houseboat and build a fancy restaurant right there on the inlet. I’ve heard about seaplanes flying rich people out of Sydney Harbour to all sorts of exclusive locations so that they can eat lunch. Something like that would be on the cards for you, I reckon … yeah, you dig that idea, I can tell. But the thing is, once the state government owns it, well, you’d have to wonder if the opportunity would ever come up again.’
‘You are barking mad if you think that after all these years Frank would consider selling to me. He’d rather give it away for nothing.’
‘What if Nayeema was to buy it?’
‘Neema?’ He looked at her incredulously. ‘You think Neema has the means to buy a whopping parcel of land, just like that?’
‘Oh, you could work something out … between the two of you.’ She winked, with a little too much smut for his liking. ‘Of course, I’m not making any promises on that front either. It’s no secret that he hates foreigners … but there is another way.’
Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. His eyes narrowed.
‘Bruce and I have discussed this, at length. Bruce is quite a sweetheart,’ she sighed. ‘We get on just fine, Bruce and I. So we figure, what if a private consortium was to make an offer to Uncle Frank? What if there were two parties vying for Uncle Frank’s land? Uncle Frank would be crazy to knock back the highest price.’
‘You’re crazy. A private consortium would need to bid against the state government. Think about it … I reckon you’ve been smoking too much weed.’
‘The state government’s coffers are limited, they’ll pull out eventually.’
‘What you’re suggesting is not exactly above board.’
‘Well that should suit you just fine.’
Tom’s jaw tightened. ‘You haven’t said a reasonable thing since you’ve sat down. I reckon you’re wasting my time.’
‘I know that land means a lot to Nayeema.’ She paused and stared at him with her cool, blue eyes. ‘And I know that Nayeema means a lot to you.’
He returned her hard glare. ‘So this is for Neema?’
‘Well, she deserves to be happy. So do I.’
Tom watched the way she ran her hands down her thighs; saw the determined tilt of her head, and the brazen confidence she had in her body. But there was more to this girl than great legs and pretty hair. He pushed off the back of his seat and sat upright. ‘Go on.’
‘For argument’s sake, let’s say that my uncle sells the land to a consortium, or to some complex company structure. If your name is buried in the detail then he will have unknowingly sold to you, and that would be a miracle, you know,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘Miracles don’t come cheaply.’
‘What exactly do you want?’
‘In return for all of my troubles, I would expect you to pay me a fee. We can call it a broker fee, a transaction fee. Call it what you want, but pay it in cash.’
Tom stared at her. He couldn’t decide if she was incredibly stupid or cunning trash. Either way, she hated her uncle. And she had more ambition than he’d had in his entire life.
She should have been born a Grieves.
‘What makes you think I’m so cashed up? In case you haven’t noticed, Serpentine Heights is a massive project with massive costs. It’s more important to me than carrying out some pathetic vendetta against an old maggot already knocking on death’s door. But having said that, sweetheart, when the day comes that he’s taken his last breath, I’ll probably drink myself stupid and run naked down Main Street with joy, but I really don’t give a shit anymore. I can’t help you.’ He flashed her a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t smile.
‘You can always sell something else.’
‘I’ve sold down almost everything.’
‘You still own the Royal. And a handful of houses.’
‘You’re starting to sound a bit desperate.’
A few beads of sweat formed on her pretty blonde brow. She was as nervous as all hell.
‘I have my reasons for wanting to do this and it’s none of your business,’ she bit back, pure venom lashing her face. ‘Hey? Are you interested or what? You take me seriously or I’m out of here. You got me?’
‘Relax, little lady.’
‘Piss off.’
He refilled her water glass. To his surprise she accepted and with shaking hands brought the glass to her lips and drank all of it at once.
‘You know, Nayeema is pretty unsettled by all this stuff happening to her husband,’ said Goldie, her voice now calm. ‘In my opinion, there is a very good chance that the two of them might just split.’ She snapped her fingers suddenly; the sound she made was as loud and crisp as one of those Italian breadsticks being broken in two. ‘So what are you going to do about keeping her here? Reckon you’ve gotta be shitting bricks about her leaving, but then, what’s to keep her and the creepy husband from leaving here and going back to Sydney?’
He felt his face redden with the effort of sitting still when his guts were broiling with her words.
Fava Beans For Breakfast Page 27