by Gary Kemble
Harry shook his head. Fred. His name wasn’t on the flyer but it didn’t need to be. And now that he’d made the connection, Harry recognised the guy who’d thrust it into the letterbox. Harry had seen him with Fred once, down the library. Bill, or Bob – something like that. He and Fred had served together. Harry scanned the text.
Swenson Constructions has put in an application to the Brisbane City Council, proposing to replace Paddington water tower with THE TOWERS – an eight-storey apartment complex and retail.
Swenson. That name again. Harry leant over the fence and peered through the drooping purple flowers of the jacaranda trees lining the street. There it was, in all its glory: a stark bulb of graffiti-scarred concrete in the distance, topped with a crown of mobile-phone antennae.
Harry had no interest in going head-to-head with Swenson again. But Fred would want him to. Like every other cause Fred had adopted over the years, this would be the most pressing issue Brisbane had ever faced, and Harry wouldn’t hear the end of it until he donated some coverage.
He headed back to the house. In the kitchen, he dumped the mail on the bench and grabbed a beer. He unlocked the back door, and took the beer and the green flyer out with him.
The afternoon sun winked through the mango tree’s thick branches and lush green leaves, painting his legs with dappled light. At the bottom of the steps a small concrete path doubled back under the house, to the laundry. The back yard sloped steeply upwards to a mossy picket fence that was falling down in places under the weight of the shrubbery on the other side. Through the gaps, Harry could just make out the back of another Queenslander, although this one had been raised and built in underneath.
He sipped his beer, grimaced, looked at the label. It was a Corona, the beer he’d favoured since earning a decent wage. It tasted watered down. He took another sip, shrugged, continued drinking. It was still beer.
Up the street there were similar-sized patches of lawn – the same, but different. A greenhouse and a shed at the back of one, kids’ toys and a trampoline in another. Further up, a yard was given over to the rusting remains of an old car, partially covered by a fraying blue tarp. Each garden had a Hills Hoist, as though at one point this was a city council planning regulation.
Looking at the state of his own yard, Harry thought it might finally be time to buy a mower. He and Bec had lived in an apartment, and before that a place where the landlord had paid for lawn care. The thought of now having to mow lawn made his stomach churn. Another sign that he was moving on, the things ‘he and Bec’ had always done would now be decisions he made for himself. Maybe he could get someone to tidy the garden a bit, and then he could reassess.
The general condition of the house led him to believe it hadn’t been lived in for a while, which was odd, given the rent was reasonable for what it was and for the location – a short walk to Paddington’s fashionable cafes and boutiques. After moving out of Bec’s he’d expected to be dossing at Dave’s for a week at least. Maybe the woman at the real estate agency had seen the desperate look in his eyes and taken pity on him. She showed him a photocopied flyer for a place that wasn’t even on the rental list. He filled in an application right then and there, and they texted him that afternoon to tell him he’d got it. He’d thought about asking, ‘What’s the catch?’ but didn’t want to push it. He deserved a bit of good luck.
He sipped his beer. It still tasted odd, but he’d never met a beer he didn’t like. Besides, abandoning the beer would mean it was time to unpack boxes.
Harry focused on the pamphlet. The tower was built in 1927. The only one of its type in Queensland. An iconic part of the Paddington landscape. Fred had roped in his ‘IT mate’ to do a website, and Harry didn’t need to check it out to know there would be plenty of animated GIFs. Fred wanted people to share their stories about the water tower and send in photos.
Good luck with that. Brisbane didn’t exactly have a great record when it came to protecting cultural icons, and Fred didn’t exactly have a great record when it came to rallying people to the cause. It started with Cloudland dance hall, its picturesque arched entrance torn down by the Deen brothers in the dead of night back in the 1980s. Fred and his wife, June – like many of their peers – had met there. He launched a campaign to bring the Bjelke-Petersen government to account for its actions, or at least the Deen brothers. This was long before Harry’s time at the Chronicle, of course. Fred failed. Years before he’d told Harry that Joh’s secret police had tapped his phone. Since then he’d been iffy about phones, even though Joh was long gone.
Fred had little better luck against subsequent Labor governments. Festival Hall – the birthplace of Brisbane’s rock’n’roll scene. Gone. The art deco-style Regent Cinema. Gone. The apartment buildings put in their place always had a ‘tribute’ to what came before, but a load of photos and memorabilia behind perspex didn’t really cut it in terms of preserving cultural identity. The perverse thing was that each subsequent defeat fired up Fred even more. It was as if he’d forgotten why he was fighting. The fight was enough.
Harry laid the flyer to one side. His fingers played gently over the skin at the back of his neck. He thought he could feel the design under his fingertips. He was angry, but didn’t know who to direct it at. He pulled out his phone and looked at the photo again. He’d often toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo. He’d once actually stood in a tattoo parlour, looking through books of designs. But he baulked at the thought of having something, anything, etched on his body for the rest of his life.
As a journalist, he was a literary omnivore. He consumed a wide range of books, magazines, opinions, commentary. He had engaged in a range of pursuits for short periods of time, usually while researching a story or shortly after writing a story. He’d done some volunteering for Meals on Wheels, delivering food to old people. He’d played beach volleyball for a while, and indoor soccer. But there was no real passion. No one thing that he adored above all else. So anything he got tattooed on his body would be flippant and have no real meaning.
He’d considered something symbolic. When he and Bec moved overseas he thought about two swallows – birds that mate for life – but was put off when she rebuffed without fail any talk of marriage. He’d dodged a bullet there.
He zoomed in on the design. He certainly wouldn’t have had some arcane symbol tattooed on his body just for the hell of it. What the fuck was that? It was ugly, and kind of creepy. He closed the image and put his phone away.
CHAPTER 5
Harry pulled up outside Fred’s house, peering up at the old worker’s cottage: flaking paint, weeds growing around the stumps and along the cracked concrete driveway. He couldn’t see Fred but he knew he’d be peering down at him through the small gap in the front curtains.
Harry composed himself. It had been another rough morning, after another rough night. The nightmare. The flash of the knife. The dull sawing sensation as Blondie carved the tattoos off. Harry had jerked awake as Beergut and Blondie shovelled dirt onto his face. He came to, shivering, and for a few moments he thought he could see his breath pluming from his mouth. At this time of year that was impossible. He must’ve still been dreaming. Just as he was drifting back to sleep, he heard the scratching under the house. It was steady, almost to a beat: Scratch, scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch, scraaatch.
In the end he got up to investigate. He crept under the house, squinting in the morning gloom. Nothing. The sound stopped and there were no obvious signs of rats. After that he was plagued by a restlessness that wouldn’t leave him until he pulled on some clothes and headed out the door, into the street. He didn’t know he was going to start running until he was doing it. He couldn’t face the hill so he took Ozanne Street, making it a couple of hundred metres before he was panting, the taste of blood thick at the back of his throat. Another couple of hundred metres and he was dry-heaving. Harry waited for the nausea to pass, gasping for breath. Then he limped home, wondering what had got into him.
Harry checke
d his iPhone and pulled out the charger. It had failed him again, the phone’s battery dead despite charging all the previous day. But the one upside of the nightmare and the scratching was that he didn’t sleep in.
He turned off the car engine. Picked up his phone and called work.
‘Hey Chris,’ he said. ‘I’m at Fred’s place. Yeah, yeah, I know. The car wouldn’t start again this morning. No, they had to put a new battery in. Anyway, I’ll be in later. If I’m not back by lunchtime, send the search party.’
He climbed out of the car, crunched across the lawn. It was ten in the morning and stinking hot and humid. The weather bureau predicted more storms, and the first of the summer cyclones was forming out in the Pacific.
Harry trudged up the steps, and Fred was there to meet him. The door was secured with two deadbolts. The security screen was one of the ones advertised on daytime TV – strong enough to withstand a knife attack. Harry knew for a fact that Fred slept with his old service bayonet underneath his pillow.
‘G’day, mate,’ Fred said, ushering him in after an iron-clad handshake.
‘Hi Fred.’
It took a while for Harry’s eyes to adjust to the gloom – Fred didn’t open his curtains much – but there were no surprises. Original kitchen. Like Harry’s but much better cared for. Green benches, orange cupboards. One clean tea towel hanging from the handle on the stove. Fred’s wife had died before Harry could meet her. But unlike a lot of older men in a similar situation, Fred seemed to have kept his shit together. Maybe he’d reverted to his military training. He cooked simple meals, kept his kitchen spotless. But while he’d managed in some areas, he’d struggled in others. The garden was always June’s thing, so he’d let it run to seed. It must’ve been hard. Being with someone for sixty years, and then having to cope alone. Too much time to think.
Every Sunday Fred visited her grave at Lutwytche Cemetery. Best suit. Hair combed. Face shaved. It made Harry feel extremely depressed. When he was with Bec, it made him feel down because he wondered what it would be like to live your whole life, pretty much, with someone, and then for them not to be there anymore. And now, well, now it made him depressed because he could never imagine having something that special with someone. He had thought Bec was ‘the one’.
‘Take a seat,’ Fred said.
Harry sat, placing his notebook and phone next to the porcelain pineapple salt and pepper shakers. June used to collect them – Fred called it ‘her vice’. Fred closed and locked both the screen door and the front door, then went to the kitchen to finish the pot of tea. It was part of the ritual, no matter what time of day Harry visited.
The L-shaped open-plan lounge and dining area contained a formica table – again, much like Harry’s but in better nick – an old brown lounge suite and a matching sideboard with display cabinet. The cabinet was filled with porcelain figures, books and photos. And even though Harry had seen the photos dozens of times, he had a look, as he always did. Fred and June on their wedding day. Fred in his army uniform. Fred and June with son Michael – this was one of the few colour photos.
Fred brought over a XXXX tray with the teapot, cups, a milk jug, and a plate of Scotch Finger biscuits. He put the tray on the table, then sat down.
‘I saw your flyer,’ Harry said.
‘This Swenson bloke has gone too far this time. He wrecks Lang Park, turns most of Brisbane’s good farming land into housing estates, and now this!’
It was too hot for tea, but Harry took a sip anyway. ‘It’s a water tower, Fred. It’s hardly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.’
Fred hissed. ‘Typical. When you get older, you’ll understand.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Fred looked away, across to the photos. ‘You take these things for granted. But that tower’s been there most of me life. June and I used to walk the streets around it when we were courting.’
Harry stared at his tea. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it meant that much to you.’
‘The bastards got Cloudland. They got Festival Hall and the Regent. They’re not getting this one,’ Fred said. ‘Besides, there’s something fishy about it. Prime land. Tower’s been sitting there for years. Should have been heritage listed, but no. . .’
Harry opened his notebook. Fred was known to go off half-cocked, but he also knew a lot about Brisbane. Harry found that writing notes prompted him to talk.
‘What makes you think it’s dodgy?’
‘You hear things. Friends of friends. Bill’s daughter’s friend works for council. She reckons there were moves to try and get the tower listed.’
Harry looked up. ‘Oh yeah? What happened?’
‘I heard some money changed hands. And I heard this isn’t the first time Swenson has paid his way, if you know what I mean.’
Harry nodded, jotted it down. Fred twisted things to suit his motives, and he saw things through the prism of old age. Fred thought Mrs Dixon up the road was running a puppy farm (puppy farming had been the story of the week on Today Tonight) when in actual fact it was just that her bitsa had given birth to a litter of totally legitimate (other than pedigree) puppies. Another time he’d been convinced the guy down the other end of the street was planning to blow up the Story Bridge. This was in the wake of counter-terrorism arrests in Melbourne. Fred called the hotline, reporting a ‘Muslim man loading explosives into a white van’. The ‘Muslim man’ was in fact an Australian-born Sikh, and the ‘explosives’ were in fact his tools of trade – he was a cable guy. Harry never passed judgement on Fred’s claims, not in the first instance. He just accepted them with healthy scepticism.
Harry sipped his tea. Fred wasn’t always wrong. He’d been right about the local Meals on Wheels being on the verge of collapse. They hadn’t thought to contact the local paper. Harry did a story, it ran on the front page, and the charity was inundated with offers of support. And when Harry heard about a cat called Smokey who had saved his elderly owner from a house fire, and the police wouldn’t come through with contact details, Fred was able to put Harry in contact with the woman. It wasn’t award-winning journalism, but it turned out to be a nice, offbeat yarn, and he wouldn’t have got it without Fred’s help.
Besides, Harry enjoyed being with Fred. He reminded him of his granddad, who passed away a few years earlier. After his parents split up, Granddad had been a rock for Harry. Things were different after the break-up. Harry thought that was why he wasn’t close with his sisters or his parents. When his granddad passed away, Fred filled the void.
‘Anything else you can think of?’ Harry asked.
Fred rubbed his chin, rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh yeah, had some pimple-faced political lackey round the other day,’ Fred said.
‘Oh yeah? Which flavour?’
Fred laughed. ‘Labor. Would’ve sent the other lot packing. He got hold of one of the flyers that Bill did. Said the ALP were mounting some campaign to save Brisbane’s landmarks. Those that are left.’
‘Weird.’
‘I’ll say. Probably nothing will come of it. Probably some New Labor focus group bullshit, if you’ll pardon me French.’
‘Still, interesting.’
Harry gestured at the somewhat incongruous forty-three-inch TV set in the corner. It was only ever turned on for the cricket, the footy and ABC news.
‘How do you think we’re gonna go this summer?’
Fred lifted a hand and tilted it side-to-side. ‘Depends on whether or not the selectors get some balls.’
As Harry turned to leave, his eye caught the photo of Fred in his wartime gear. ‘Hey Fred, I’m sure you’ve told me this before, but where did you serve?’
‘Oh. All over the place. A bit of time in Guinea. Italy. Middle East.’
Harry opened his notebook and pulled out his pen. He quickly sketched the design that was imprinted on his neck. He thought he’d have to consult with the picture on his phone, but he didn’t. It was burned into his consciousness. He didn’t want to show Fred the ta
ttoo yet, even though he thought the old guy would see the funny side of it. He had a couple of tattoos himself, from his army days.
‘When you were in the Middle East, you ever see anything like this?’ Harry asked.
Fred took the notebook, slipped on his reading glasses then peered down his nose through them. He shook his head.
‘Nah. Not that I can remember. But I spent most of my time in trenches or tanks. Didn’t do much sightseeing. Looks kinda like an Arabic bingo card, to be honest.’
Harry smiled. He moved to take the notepad back, but Fred held his hand.
‘Can I have the piece of paper?’
‘Sure.’ Harry tore it out. Fred took it from him, folded it carefully and put it in his top pocket. ‘Bill might know. He did a bit of travelling round those parts after the war. His hippy years. Before there were hippies. I can ask him.’
‘Thanks. That’d be great.’
***
Harry didn’t even have time to log in before Miles poked his head out of his office.
‘Are you two right for the conference?’
‘Yep.’
Christine followed Harry into the editor’s office, and they both took a seat.
‘Right. What have you got for me this week?’
Miles said pretty much the same thing every week, then herded stationery back and forth across his blotter while he listened. Pens to the left, pens to the right. Stapler to the top, stapler to the bottom. When Harry first joined the Chronicle he found it extremely distracting. He thought Miles was bored. But no, it was his way of focusing and dissipating some of the nervous energy zipping through his rake-thin body. Harry couldn’t see under the desk, but he knew Miles had his legs crossed, the leg on top jiggling up and down so much so that his slip-on barely stayed on his foot.
They detailed the stories they were working on. Possible leads for pages one, three and five, a couple of human-interest colour pieces, advertorials. Sport was centralised so that was the one thing they didn’t have to worry about. Harry couldn’t remember one edition in all his years with the paper that had come out as forecast at the news conference, but it didn’t really matter. Miles really just wanted to know they had a fighting chance of ‘filling the holes’.