Silences Long Gone

by Anson Cameron

He puts his hand on my shoulder and tells me not to give myself grief about it. One of life’s hard duties. He asks me don’t I see the sense in what he’s saying? How do I feel about it?

  I tell him I feel … Fuck It. Now my hand is forced, I feel I believe … I believe what Adrian told me when I visited him a few months back in Tinburra. That something’s as sacred as you say it is. That no one else knows how deep you believe. So I don’t think she’s any madder than anyone else for wanting to live up there alone. And I tell him I know not being madder than anyone else still leaves her pretty well shit-faced with lunacy … but not mad enough to be locked up for it.

  ‘She’s mad, all right,’ he says. ‘She’s unprofitable. Which is the worst kind of madness to their kind of orthodoxy. And is definitely enough to get you locked up.’

  ‘Maybe they’re bluffing,’ Jean says. ‘Maybe they haven’t got the Western Australian parliament in their pocket.’

  Thaw wanders over to the handrail and leans on it and looks out at the sea and says, ‘They’ll have the parliament in their pocket. Where else are they going to put it?’

  Then he tells us, ‘Jesus, that’s a handy looking swell coming in past the pier.’

  ‘Surf reports are another form of weather talk,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve started talking weather at me.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ he says. ‘I’m just wondering shouldn’t we all go out there and catch one while they’re around.’

  Jean and I lie out beyond the break on Malibus and laze in the rise and fall of water. Further in toward the beach the rise is turning into good upright left-handers. Thaw is in there. Jumping up into crouch on his Tidal Warrior tri-fin where the swellface angles upward and sharpens and curves into wave. Now and then we can see his head and shoulders sliding north across the hills of Lorne on the humped silver wavebacks that reach high in spindrift before crashing with him turning back out of the white of wavecrash and across the smooth back of crashed wave and sinking gracefully into still water sometimes with a two-fingered V for victory held high at us as he sinks and sometimes doing a muscle man pose at us as he sinks and sometimes blowing kisses with both hands like Elvis as he sinks and we fail to laugh or even smile at the buffoonery.

  Every now and then he paddles out to us and gets in between us and sits up on his board and looks down on us lying there and tells us they’re hanging wicked and they’re travelling all curled and sculpted and hollowed out like he hasn’t seen for ages. And he calls us lazy bastards and tells us it’s a sin and a bullshit action to waste what nature provides only once in a blue moon. Like letting a bumper harvest wither and rot, he says. We were born to harvest this, he says. This bounty. When we don’t move he shakes his head at us and flops forward on his Tidal Warrior tri-fin and paddles in again to where they’re breaking so as not to let any more of them wither and rot under him and wash up dead on the beach without him having harvested them.

  I haven’t got the appetite for waves. I let them wither and rot beneath me. Jean’s prepared to let them wither and rot beneath her as well as she floats there close to me and says how beautiful it is out here today.

  We watch the blue patches break from out over the top of the windless gullies and light the water bright green. And watch the strato-whatevers break from out over the top of the windless gullies and dull the water down grey and opaque and shallow and fray it with drizzle. And watch the blue patches light the water up bright green again and smooth it out and give it depth right down to the ribbed sand floor again, while Jean says, ‘Check that. That’s amazing.’ Trying to get me amazed … or at least interested.

  I’m not amazed lying there watching the sea turned on and off by the sky. I’m appalled. I’m sick. I’m thinking about her. Out there in her loneliness a thousand miles wide and eight years and sixfuckingteen years deep. With nothing sacred in her world now but a wardrobe and five rose bushes that owe their life to the water hated strangers drive to her through the desert in tankers. And nothing of happiness left to her now that doesn’t depend on her ability to reach backward, by way of that wardrobe and by way of those roses, through time with her beautiful tyrannical memory and her beautiful tyrannical delusion, I suppose, to Molly and to Dad. And nothing of future left to her but the knowledge imparted by the beautiful tyrannical memory and the beautiful tyrannical delusion that she will be joining Molly and Dad and Adrian as well in an unreconstructed heaven of the old school.

  And thinking how all of whatever else was around her has been carried away by trucks and all of whatever else was in front of her has been carried away by time. And now she’s going to be carried away from whatever is left to her, which is the wardrobe and which is the roses and which is the beautiful tyrannical memory and the beautiful tyrannical delusion, by me.

  I don’t even hear him paddle out to us this time while I’m looking down through the lit green water to the ribbed sand and the rolling vines of seaweed and brushing sand off the top of my board and watching it fall in a sparkling curtain through the water. The first I know of him being back out here letting the waves wither and rot is him asking me, ‘Mister Couldn’t-Give-A-Shit, eh?’ And I look up and see him sitting astride the Tidal Warrior tri-fin with his hands on his hips and his ribs pumping out and caving in from the paddle, watching me, and I ask him, ‘Huh?’ But he just keeps watching me with his brow down and his mouth small like a man will watch an event panning out wrong. Like a man will observe a situation going all to shit and nothing he can do about it.

  I ask him, ‘What? What’s up?’

  Jean asks him, ‘Thaw?’

  And he watches me some more until I look away down through the water again and then he tells me, ‘You poor haunted bastard.’ And lies down on his board and paddles hard back in to where the swell is sharpening into waves and climbs up onto one and rides all the way north along it into town.

  16

  The Finger

  The cops of Lorne get the finger because the people of New South Wales get rid of the government that had bankrupt them, the opposition said, and had been soft on crime, the opposition said, and gone as far as to actually mollycoddle recidivists, they also said. Get themselves a new Liberal government who have promised Economic Rationalism and promised Law and Order. Get themselves this government during the second innings of a one-day match Thaw and I are watching on TV on the Saturday night after he has stared at me out there in the surf like I was an event panning out wrong.

  Australia are batting under lights. Seven wickets down and needing thirty-five runs off the last three overs to pull off a miracle victory against England. Jones is still out there. Telling Hughes Settle, settle, and stepping away from the stumps and smashing anything slightly off-line over the infield into the gaps and into the pickets. We jump up with our beer cans held high and cheer when he hits a boundary and Thaw yells, ‘Fetch, little doggie. Fetch,’ as an English fieldsman jogs out to the fence. And Thaw plays his flowing cover drive and I hook to fine leg where Jean is in an armchair with the headphones on, reading Kurt Vonnegut, drinking gin, listening to Neil Young and waving at me sometimes when I stand to play my hook and can see her.

  Jones takes block. Stands up straight again and holds up his hand, stopping Willis halfway through his run-up. He looks all around to make sure he’s got the field sussed right. Looks from one Englishman to another slowly. Nods at each one, logging him in his memory. Takes block again. Willis bowls a slow looping ball outside off stump that Jones pretends he can’t reach and Thaw calls, ‘Wide,’ and the umpire looks close and says nothing and Thaw is on his feet calling, ‘Fucking wide. Had to be. Unbelievable.’ And Jones raises his eyebrows into his helmet at the lack of call.

  Willis bowls again. A ball right in the slot with no swing on it and Jones dances two steps toward him and lifts it back over his head and it bounces once into the sight screen while Willis puts his hands on his head and swears and then laughs at something Hughes has said to him. Thaw and I are up off the sofa again dancing a two-step drive
toward the TV and spilling beer down our arms with the loft of the shot and telling the whole blind umpiring world, ‘What about that, arsehole?’ and telling the whole of England to ‘Fetch, little doggie. Fetch’.

  We need thirty-one runs off fifteen balls when Willis bowls the yorker that gives Channel Nine the chance to insert some ads and insert the beautiful news reader with the screen-wide spread of auburn hair who, it is rumoured, can make herself orgasm just spinning innocently on her stool in the Fox and Hounds where she drinks in Melbourne.

  He bowls it right up in the blockhole and Jones tries for the sight screen again but his bat only grazes the top of the ball and bounces it up into leg stump and Bill Lawry screams, ‘Got Him. Yeees … Gooone,’ and I say, ‘Ohh … shit,’ and Thaw shouts, ‘No ball. Had to be.’ But really we’re not too disappointed because we expect to lose again. We recall England winning this match on the last ball a few seasons back. We’re only watching now because we also recall that a particularly well-stacked streaker streaks across the ground during the last over and is tackled and rolled in the outfield dew by a tracksuited cop. This game is being replayed because the scheduled match between Australia and the West Indies at the SCG tonight has been washed out.

  Without even a second look at Jones’s false stroke we are off into a scene of young, cool long-haired males driving too fast in Volvo cars with a Nirvana soundtrack that is the final plank in the platform that shows us just how out-there Volvo cars are these days.

  Then a brass section plays and our planet spins out of the distance into the foreground and stops with Australia centre-shot shining gold and the beautiful news reader comes on with her news update. She’s magnificent. I love to think of her on that bar stool with a drink in her hand pretending to look for a friend she’s supposed to meet, swivelling five degrees left, swivelling five degrees right, surveying the scene. Maybe just a tic pulsing at the left corner of her mouth. But otherwise expressionless with secret orgasm.

  She is never expressionless on TV. On TV she’s either a chronically knit brow over some bus accident in Queensland or she’s a pained stretch of smile over some animal-and-kiddy tale the news editor throws in so she can show that very smile and show she represents Happiness too. Or sometimes, when the story is Australian-political, she is just a thoughtful tilt-of-head.

  Tonight she’s a tilt-of-head so thoughtful and deep the outer rim of her auburn hair disappears off the left side of our screen. She tells us good evening. She tells us she has a newsbreak, and whenever she says that me and Thaw say back at her that what we want to break is her string of self-inflicted orgasms. She tells us election results are confirmed in the New South Wales state election in what political analysts are calling a rout. A fully fledged rout. And political analysts are saying that the tactic adopted by the Liberal opposition of saying the Labor government is soft on crime and has mollycoddled recidivists seems to have struck a chord with the electorate. What was predicted by most pollsters to be a nine per cent swing against the Labor government to the Liberal-led coalition looks more like a thirteen per cent swing at this stage. It is likely, she tells us, that the incumbent Premier will lose his seat. Geoff Brennan is accepting the congratulations of his Liberal colleagues and is due to address a coalition function in Bondi shortly.

  Then she’s into her pained stretch of smile as a picture of dark-skinned Siamese-twin babies lying asleep on a white sheet is squeezed in on the screen behind her auburn hair and she announces a successful operation and announces both Rita and Bindy are doing well and expected to live full and normal lives back in Rwanda, where their current affairs guru with the hero’s hair found them living their empty and abnormal lives. Then she tells us goodnight and Bill Lawry is back on saying he was beaten neck-and-crop, the Victorian.

  Thaw stands up still looking at the screen. Probably looking at the auburn-haired news reader who is no longer there. Maybe looking at something further back even than her that was never on TV in the first place. Not looking at the slo-mo replay of Jones chopping the white ball into his leg stump anyway. And not listening to Bill Lawry tell how he was beaten all ends up, the Victorian. He’s white-faced into a blind stare and he’s caught the auburn-haired news reader’s tilt-of-head. He says, ‘Well.’ Says, ‘Okay then.’ Says, ‘Oh, well.’ Says, ‘Fuck it.’

  Jean can’t see the TV and can’t hear us, but she can see Thaw, and knows it’s not a wicket fallen, knows it’s not a hat-trick taken, knows it’s not the streaker streaked and tackled into the dew that he’s watching. She takes off her headphones and I hear Neil Young singing tinny and piercing about what a killer that Cortez was. She stands up so she can see the TV and asks, ‘What? What is it? Thaw?’

  Thaw swivels his blind stare at her and says, ‘Nothing.’ He takes a drink of beer and his eyes focus again and he looks around and says, All right,’ and he nods at me and nods at Jean. Just little, insignificant nods. Then he puts his beer down on the arm of the sofa and walks out the door into the black cicada-scream of January night and we never see him again but only hear where he has been.

  His shadow extinguishes the orange glow of my eyelids. I open my eyes out of my dream of defoliated Asian girls and their shaven-headed angry fathers. I blink. I tell his silhouette, ‘G’day.’ I know it’s his silhouette by the belly on it and by the peaked hat on it.

  Senior Sergeant Malcolm Lunn says he’s looked for us all over town. Jean tells him, ‘Surprise, surprise. It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and we’re on the beach. With nothing on.’ He’s standing above us big-bellied from graft in his uniform, staring down at Jean, on her back topless and legendary in the sand.

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask.

  ‘Your boy goes from strength-to-strength on the sicko scale, doesn’t he?’ he asks. Jean and I sit up. She puts a shirt on. I ask him, ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you “What.” Know where your tenant is?’ He takes his hat off and waves some air onto his face with it.

  ‘No idea,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you where he’s been. Illegal entry was gained to our station some time last night. Constable Scott opens up this morning and he finds a severed finger on our front counter. Blood all over the place … and a finger sitting there. Cut off clean.’ He makes a chopping motion with his hatbrim at his right hand. Then he holds a thumb and finger up to show how long the piece of discovered counter-top finger is.

  ‘Well, he calls me and in I come and naturally I take a print off it and fax it to St Kilda Road and they run it through their computer and what do they fax back but this is the right hand ring-finger of the chief suspect in an unsolved murder happened in the outback town of Wilpenia some years back. Probable miscreant’s name being … Oliver Thomas O’Brien. AKA … your boy Thaw.’

  He holds his right hand up with the back of it facing us and bends the ring-finger down invisible into his palm. Says, ‘When I was a prison officer we called that an act of advanced self-mutilation.’

  ‘You think Thaw chopped his own finger off? And left it in the police station?’ Jean asks.

  ‘Your Advanced Self-Mutilator is what the shrinks call Hyper-Fatalistic,’ says Mal Lunn. ‘Invents his own fate and charges headlong at it Usually messy. We ever got an Advanced SM in Pentridge we knew something bigger and badder was swelling in his head than just fingers and just ears and just his dick. Fingers and ears and dicks served up at authority are only signs. We’d lock him down and drug him up. A lot of ’em had spoken to God or Satan by the time they got round to digit amputation … to fingers and ears and dicks. Your boy ever have those sort of convos?’ he asks. ‘With God? With Satan?’

  He smiles down at us and drumrolls his fingers all across the top of his hat crown. ‘I don’t expect he has,’ he tells us. ‘My theory is your boy is more a Big Statement Maker than an Advanced SM. And your boy’s finger has a lot to say once the blood is wrung out of it and ogled microscopic.’ He holds his right hand up at us again with the ring finger hidden down in the palm.
‘It has its statement all right. It has its truth.’ He holds his hands out to show us the Big Statement Thaw’s making. ‘“Here’s Your Evidence, Pigs. Yes, I’m The Evil Prick You Thought I Was. Catch Me If You Can.”’ He nods. ‘Something like that,’ he says. ‘But I tell you this. Big Statement or not … I never see a man cut his own finger off who had long profitable ventures in mind. As I said … ears, dicks, fingers … they’re signs. We got ourselves another Range Rover stolen last night. My guess is he’s made another Big Statement with it off a cliff along the Great Ocean Road here somewhere. I hope he has,’ he tells us.

  ‘What makes you think he cut his finger off on purpose?’ I ask. ‘Maybe he’s been in an accident. A fight.’

  ‘What he’s been in is a thirteen per cent swing against,’ Mal Lunn smiles at us. I ask him What? by wrinkling my forehead and pouting my lips.

  ‘He never told you about the election?’ he asks. He pouts up at the sky and shakes his head. ‘You people,’ he laughs. ‘You were real close weren’t you. With your surfing and your dope and your knocking-off Range Rovers and your fucking art and your writing. Real close-knit. What they call a bohemian enclave. Alternate lifestylers.’

  ‘Hey … I’m in real estate,’ I tell him.

  He laughs. Puts on his hat and squats down close to us in the sand and tells us, ‘When the Brennan coalition came into power last night in New South Wales they came in on a Law and Order promise. And one of the new Bills they’ve promised to put through parliament is the Model Forensic Procedures Bill. Which’ll allow them to compel suspects in major crimes to have DNA tests. So when election results were confirmed last night your boy knew his test was finally on its way. I know he knew because I’d told him about it. Kept him abreast of events, so to speak. Threatened him, if you like, with the coming Bill. Told him his chickens were coming home to roost. So he knew the mollycoddling and the bullshit was over with. Knew the magistrate’s order was coming. Knew we were going to strap him down and take some blood. Actually just take it like we should’ve been able to all along. He knew his moment had come.’