The Price of Life

by Nigel Brennan

  We pull up outside Heather and Geoff’s place, the house that Nigel built for them with Geoff and Ham, their retirement home. Heather always wanted to live on the coast and after so many years on the farm in inland New South Wales, she finally got her wish. The house was designed to fit everyone in – all the kids, partners and grandkids. Downstairs is fitted with an open-plan kitchen, dining and lounge room, a huge kid-friendly bathroom, laundry and three bedrooms. Upstairs is designed around the view; all rooms look towards the ocean over Moore Park Beach. I am almost certain, though, that when Heather decided the house needed to be big enough to fit everyone in, she wasn’t thinking of her present AFP guests.

  There are about seven cars parked out the front, some I recognise and some I assume belong to the AFP as they are very similar to Gayle’s. I am so nervous about going in – the Brennans are my family, but even so I’m unsure what to say to them.

  I walk in the front door, and I can see from the passageway that the lounge room-cum-dining room is set up with clocks, computers, printers and phones. Butcher’s paper covers the walls, and written on it are the prompt questions for Nicky to ask the kidnappers. There are also proof-of-life questions and, at the very top, the instruction KEEP CALM in big red lettering. I wonder if that is really possible.

  I see a large map of Somalia on the wall, with Mogadishu highlighted in yellow. On the opposite wall are four clocks with time zones set for Moore Park, Mogadishu, Nairobi and Red Deer in Canada, where Amanda’s parents live. Dave from the AFP starts explaining everything in front of me, but I’m too distracted by the official-ness of the room and the people in it to actually hear anything he’s saying.

  This is feeling unreal, like I’m in an episode of 24. All I need is for Kiefer Sutherland to burst through the door.

  ‘Thanks for explaining all that, Dave, but I think I’ll come back a bit later and go through it all again. It’s all a bit much to take in at the moment.’

  Dave understands and invites me back whenever I’m ready to do it all again.

  I walk up the stairs to find the rest of the family. Nic is standing in the breezeway, waiting for me.

  ‘Hi, kiddo,’ she says, smiling.

  We hug, holding each other longer than we normally would.

  I can hear Heather in the background saying, ‘No tears, no tears.’

  Nic and I let go and laugh as we look at each other; our eyes are wet but we are not crying.

  I hug Heather, squeezing her tight, and ask her if she is okay.

  ‘We’re all fine, but thank you for coming.’

  I see Geoff coming towards me; he looks very fragile and older all of a sudden. Poppy, as everyone calls him, gives me a giant bear hug and I can feel his body start to shake around me.

  ‘It’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine,’ I tell him.

  ‘I know, but, god, it’s good to see you,’ he says, wiping his eyes.

  ‘It’s good to be here.’ I look at everyone in the room and then quote Hamilton. ‘Well, this is a bit of a shit sandwich, isn’t it?’

  The whole family is here: Heather and Geoff, Nic and Si, all the kids, Jacinta, Monty and Atti, and Ham and Amy. Adrian from the AFP heads downstairs to give us some privacy. AJ has arrived from Scotland too. It was her idea to come – going it alone over there would be even harder than this. We welcome her into the family.

  A lamb roast is cooking and smells amazing. I have arrived right on wine o’clock and start on my first glass of chilled sauvignon blanc. We all start talking. Gayle is with us, though not drinking because she is working. It is so nice to sit with loved ones, to just see their faces and know that they are doing okay.

  The house feels different. It’s not sterile or hospital-like; it has a sense of anticipation about it, like something unexpected could happen at any minute. It takes longer than usual to feel comfortable in a house where I am always very relaxed.

  Maybe it has something to do with the way everyone is talking. It’s like someone came in and taught my family a new language, and I missed the lesson. They’re all speaking in acronyms that I don’t understand. I wasn’t aware that any of my family were members of the Australian Federal Police, but that’s what it sounds like now. Nicky is the NOK negotiator, downstairs is the NOK cell (I also hear of a ‘Nairobi cell’), all the negotiators are being referred to by their initials, and the kidnappers are now the HTs (hostage takers).

  I try to pick up what I can of the new lingo. As the night progresses, I learn that the boys, Dave and Adrian, come upstairs every evening to give the family a progress report. I wonder how tonight’s will go: we’re all starting to get a bit jolly with the consumption of good food and alcohol, and there’s plenty of family banter. It actually feels good to have a few drinks; I can feel the tension that I have been holding in my shoulders for the last nine days start to slide away.

  After dinner is finished, we stay sitting at the dining table and start telling stories about Nige, funny stories about him as a kid. The pitch-black humour of the Brennan family comes out. It’s great to have a laugh about the ridiculousness of what has happened – only Nigel would get himself into something like this. We laugh at his vanity, how worried he’ll be without his toothbrush to keep his teeth white. How he got himself kidnapped by chasing a bit of skirt into a dangerous country.

  The night turns into an absolute piss-take of Nige, his life, his failed marriage. We laugh at how he has a great house but even if we sell it, it won’t get his sorry arse home because he owes too much on it. He had to pay out the ex-wife he cheated on with Amanda. We’re all yelling over each other to tell yet another tale about the black dog Nigel, so called because you can’t trust a black dog. You turn your back on them and they will bite you on the leg.

  This starts Ham singing falsetto.

  Black dog, black dog, where’d you park your bone?

  Black dog, black dog, now you’ve lost your home.

  Of course, the conversation turns to money and how we could ever get our hands on such an extraordinary amount. Ham suggests we sell T-shirts with the phrase ‘Bring Blackie back’ on the front and ‘He still owes me money’ on the back. We talk about sending him one in Somalia so he can get a laugh out of it too, but decide it could be taken as being racist and might in fact get him killed.

  The laughter is raucous and I wonder what on earth they are thinking downstairs. I don’t really care because for the first time since we heard the news everyone around me is smiling and enjoying themselves. I am so pleased I came.

  Tuesday, 2 September

  I wake up early and walk into the negotiation room; it’s unnerving that the officers close their laptops as I approach. I wonder if the information is that sensitive or whether they’re just killing time on Facebook or playing solitaire. I decide to go back upstairs.

  I sit down to eat breakfast and the phone rings. The phone.

  Nic starts running downstairs, yelling, ‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’ Everyone else in the room has frozen. Nic takes the stairs three at a time. Then the ringing stops as she picks up the receiver.

  The rest of us just sit or stand in silence. I can feel my heart pounding.

  ‘False alarm!’ she yells.

  Everyone around me exhales.

  Later in the day I find Gayle working on her laptop in the negotiation room and we start chatting about her real job, when she is not being an FLO, and some of the places she has been. I like Gayle; she seems like a straight shooter and is very easy to talk to.

  She asks me about the family, how we all fit together and which kids belong to whom. She asks me about Geoff’s family’s farming partnership and Geoff and Heather’s families and about Matt’s accident and what side effects still linger. She then asks me if I know whether Nigel has ever been involved in any criminal activity. The only thing I can think of is his growing marijuana plants in Heather’s garden a few years back, and Heather trying to hide them from the local Tulloona Lades one Melbourne Cup Day.

  I�
��m sure she is not referring to this sort of indiscretion – I think she wants to know if he entered Somalia on false documentation, but I say nothing.

  All of the family members have already been interviewed about Nigel, his travel plans, his last known contact, his relationship with Amanda and so on. Now it is my turn.

  I know Nigel has had his fair share of life experiences and was always quite ‘resourceful’, but what country boy who’s been sent away to boarding school isn’t? He has travelled the world and been to many places off the regular tourist track. He is a typical type O personality – a nomad – so he gets antsy easily. He always needs a plan to move on to the next thing, to get to the next destination.

  I answer Gayle’s questions as honestly as I can, and tell her about our family.

  Heather and Geoff have four children. Nicole is the oldest at forty-one and she’s married to Simon; they have three children: Jacinta (twelve), Monty (eleven) and Atticus (nine) and they live in Moore Park Beach, down the road from Heather and Geoff. Next is Matthew, my husband, who is forty, and we also have three children: Gigi (seven), Callaghan (five) and Stirling (two). We moved to Clarence Town in the Hunter Valley when the family farm was sold. Hamilton (thirty-nine) is married to Amy and they also have three children: Oscar (six), Izzy (four) and Mac (two). Ham and Amy have lived everywhere from Karratha to Cairns and Darwin but have settled in Grafton. And then there is Nigel, the baby, at thirty-six.

  When I married Matt, I basically married his family too, which was fine by me as I get along exceptionally well with all of them. Nicky is like the sister I never had, and she and Matt have a very special bond because of their horror accident.

  Back in 1985 on the way home from a New Year’s Eve party, about 350 kilometres from home, Matt and Nicky were involved in a terrible car crash. Matt was sixteen and Nic was seventeen. She was driving and swerved to miss a roo and landed in a ditch. They were on a gravel back road and there was no sign of any neighbours or help. Matt wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and had been flung 30 metres from the car. He’d landed on his head and split his skull open in not one place but two. He had massive internal injuries and was bleeding from his ears.

  When Nic found him he was dead, but she revived him and then lit a fire to attract attention. On a flat open plain there is nothing that raises the alarm better than a single spire of smoke.

  Matt was airlifted to Sydney but was in a deep coma. The Brennans were told not to expect too much in terms of his recovery; while he would wake up, it was more than likely that due to brain damage he would never walk or talk again.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ the family said.

  Six weeks later he woke up from the coma with no movement on his right side and no memory of the crash. He had to learn to walk and talk again, starting from scratch. He was incredibly determined. As he got better, he would wait outside the rehab room, and if patients didn’t turn up for their session, he would take it.

  His family was with him the whole time. They never gave up; they were always questioning the doctors and specialists, wanting more answers, doing their own research. They were not going to just sit there and let this happen to them; they were going to get in there and fight this battle with Matt.

  I met Matt ten years after his accident, when I was at uni studying agricultural science. I had no idea what he’d been through; he was just a regular guy. He had completed his HSC, gone to uni, played rugby, travelled the world, and he was currently working at the family property, Marlow, in Moree. It wasn’t until I got to know him better that I discovered what an extraordinary person he was.

  The legacy of Matt’s accident is paralysis on his right side, but it’s so slight that if you met him, you would never know it was there. And he takes a little longer to process some of his thoughts than other people. That said, I’ve met people without a brain injury who are a lot slower than he is.

  I married Matt Brennan in October 1999; we had been living together for two years prior to that at Marlow, down the road from Heather and Geoff’s place. When I first moved to the farm, Heather was the only woman I knew within 50 kilometres, so you can imagine we became quite good friends. She was, and still is, a very stoic woman – she needed to be, out there. She raised those four kids 70 kilometres from anything, while Geoff ran the farm.

  Heather is blessed with amazing skin; she goes the most beautiful golden colour in the sun. In her younger days she was a stunner and one you could imagine men admiring from afar.

  Geoff is like a mad professor, with this wild, woolly hair and a shaggy beard. He smokes a pipe, and in the old days he’d wear Volley sandshoes the colour of the black soil plains, stubbies and a ripped T-shirt come rain, hail or shine. I remember winters being quite cold at Marlow. I would be huddled in front of the fire and Geoff would rock up in his Volleys and shorts like the sun was shining. These days he still wears the same thing but manages to drag on some good shoes and a shirt when he goes out.

  Geoff is soft and at times can be a bit of a pushover. But if something goes against his principles, he’s at it like a dog with a bone, not letting it go until it’s over. Heather also always fights for what is right, but she just does it in a different way. Teachers’ college and Matt’s accident have made her the tough woman she is, one who will take on anything or anyone for her family. She is strong enough for all of them. Their marriage looks tumultuous; they bicker often, yet I know they couldn’t live without each other. What seems like a bit of a disaster on the surface is actually a solid relationship built on mutual respect.

  I ask Gayle if this is enough information. I actually feel like I am dobbing on my family. I respect authority and the role it plays in the community. I’ve always been one to fall into line, right from the time I was at school. I wasn’t a rebellious teen: I did what I was told. However, now, as we talk, I feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’m divulging all of this information about my family, and I’m not sure for what purpose. I wonder if what I say will be crosschecked.

  The idea that the justice system in this country seems to rely on most citizens conforming starts to make me wonder. What if I keep travelling down this path and put all my trust in authority, and this situation ends up in a red-tape bungle? Perhaps it’s time for me, as an adult who knows my own mind, to start asking a few questions myself.

  I learn that every person who comes in or out of the house must be identified and logged because the information contained in the negotiation cell downstairs is highly confidential. When I leave the house two days later, I am asked to write down all the phone numbers and birthdates of each family member, including kids and partners. I m driven to Brisbane Airport by someone from the AFP, who has also booked my return tickets. As I sit in the airport waiting lounge, I spot a number of AFP staff nearby. I am now in tune with the activities of the Australian Federal Police.

  Nicky

  Moore Park

  Friday, 5 September

  It’s 4 a.m., still night-time by my definition, when once again the ringing of the phone pulls me from my sleep. As I open the door of the spare room downstairs, I almost collide with Adrian, who is running down the hallway to wake me.

  ‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ I mumble through sleep-numbed lips before picking up the phone.

  ‘Hello, Adam.’

  ‘Ah, Nicky.’

  ‘Adam, is Nigel there with you? Can I talk to him?’

  ‘Yes, one minute, but first we talk. Nigel. He has something to say, yes?’

  ‘Um, okay.’

  I stand rigid against the small table on which the NOK phone sits. My headset isn’t a little Madonna number. It’s got a big earmuff on one side only, so I’m lopsided. I squeeze my eyes shut in the vain hope that if I take away one of my senses, another – my hearing – will be enhanced.

  ‘Your family is very brave and I ask you to be brave and will think … to have him understand …’ Nope, the eyes-shut thing is not working.

  ‘Slow down,’ I say to Adam. It sound
s like his lips are pressed against the mouthpiece.

  ‘… want to say to Australian government, understand …’ Adam continues.

  ‘You don’t want the family to pay?’ Is that what he’s saying? He wants the government to pay the ransom not us?

  ‘Yes, yes,’ says Adam. Good guess, I think to myself.

  I try to clarify. ‘Nigel doesn’t want the family to pay?’

  ‘Nigel, yes,’ Adam responds. ‘We are sorry about the money… we want … he is … worried about the … ticket … wants you to know about the ticket …’

  What bloody ticket? Where is this going?

  ‘It’s a lot of money, you understand?’ Adam continues.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. No, I don’t understand any of this but let’s try to work it out. I look across to Adrian. He’s got the second headset on so he can hear the conversation and direct me if need be. He shrugs.

  The line is silent. Oh no, it’s cut out.

  ‘Adam? Adam?’ I call out.

  ‘Yes.’

  Okay, good. He’s still there.

  ‘He is wanting to come to you to ask, how is family at this time? Are they fine, are they good?’

  Is he kidding?

  ‘Our family is worried about Nigel.’ What an understatement. Terror and shock are still our reigning emotions.

  ‘Okay, okay. I will connect to you on the line,’ Adam says.

  ‘Thank you,’ I reply, trying not to sound fawning. Am I going to speak to Nige? My heart is thumping in my chest, adrenaline pumping into my core.

  ‘Please hold on.’

  My god, what is that?! I pull back from the table and almost rip off the headset. The feedback is ear-piercing – no, it’s not feedback; it almost sounds like a bird song, a butcher bird warble on a continuous loop, combined with the Dr Who theme.

  ‘Hello, hello?’

  We’re talking over each other, neither pausing long enough for the time delay, when I realise I can hear Nige.

  ‘Hello, Nic?’