Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds

by Gregory Day

  Craig sighed and looked up at the fake wood panelling behind his boss’s head, where Colin’s framed real estate certificates were hung. Looking down from the three certificates and back at Colin, he said: ‘I just feel a bit rude when I go round there. I prefer to feel good about a job. I’d like to be able to tell him honestly that we’ve got his best interests at heart. But I feel like I’m hassling him.’

  Colin picked up his mug and took a sip of coffee. He set it back down again on the desk. ‘OK then,’ he said, staring straight into Craig’s eyes. ‘Well, listen to this. A bloke I grew up with works in the planning department at the shire offices in Minapre. He told me recently – in an absolute whisper, I might add – that the government has pretty well decided on the whole area around the Two Pointers, from the jetty at Boat Creek right around to Heatherbrae, becoming a sanctuary, a marine park. They’re gonna consult the community and all that later this year but it’s already pretty much locked in, a done deal. It’ll tie in beautifully with the Met Station becoming a museum, the whole thing’ll be like a new precinct. But there’ll be no more fishing around there for Ron McCoy, fishing’ll be banned. And that’s not all. Part of the deal is that the government funds the marine park and the climate museum as long as the shire goes dollar for dollar on certain other requirements. The pollies want them to put in an extension of the clifftop walk, from Heatherbrae right along to the Met Station, so tourists can wander along the cliff, stand at various points, read the info boards and look at the sanctuary. It’ll all happen right out in front of Ron’s house. They’ll be trawling right past his shed and his garden and all that. I swore I wouldn’t tell anybody any of this but I can see now it’s gonna help. The fact is, Willo, it’s a dead certainty the old bloke’s gonna sell when he finds out. My idea is we tell him early. And about his neighbour’s involvement.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the whole thing’s a bit tricky, you see, coz the shire’s almost bankrupt, mate. They’re in love with the idea but how do you think they’re gonna go dollar for dollar on the cliff walk extension?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Dom Khouri, mate. The great philanthropist.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s not there permanently, it’s no skin off his nose if the backpackers and the grey nomads are trooping past. He’ll just extend his big wall around the front. Won’t block the view with the elevation he’s got. Nah, he’ll do it for sure. Add something green to his bow. He loves that type of thing. They’ll probably name it after him.’

  Craig pulled a poker face, as he got his mind around the information.

  ‘Anyway,’ Colin went on, ‘there’s no stopping it. Change is inevitable up there, mate. It’s too spectacular. And what’s the point of putting the ocean in a glass case if people can’t walk along and look at it? Hey? But Ron’s not gonna be happy when he finds out his neighbour’s helping fund the onslaught.’

  Craig shifted in his seat and frowned. ‘But how can you know for sure that Khouri will fund it? And anyway, Ron’s too attached up there. He was born there. I just can’t see him moving.’

  Colin shook his head confidently. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You’re wrong, mate. He might be attached but he’s also chronically private. He couldn’t handle people gawking at him all the time. Not to mention not being allowed to fish where he always has. And anyway, Ron’s talked about it for years. How when the time is right he’d just slip down onto the riverflat onto something smaller. Scale down in his old age.’

  ‘Is that right? You’ve heard him say that?’

  ‘Certainly have. So now can you see my point?’

  Craig knitted his brow, thinking hard.

  ‘And the thing is,’ Colin went on, ‘I’ve been thinking of selling my little renter down on the river there anyway, seeing you’re taking over the biz and that. I could do with the capital, you know. I can make more investing the money than I can from renting it out for a month or so over summer. So, what I want to do is look after the old fella, say, “Hey, Ron, this is the inside info on what’s about to happen up here, we know you’re not going to like it, we’re giving you the tip-off, what about you just move straight onto my block on the flat, without having to wait or to look around, and we’ll work out a deal for the clifftop.” All we’re doing is presenting Ron with a quick and easy way. Saves him the hassle. He doesn’t need it, particularly after his old mum’s just died. It just makes sense. We’re professionals, Craig, we’re being proactive. What we’re doing is looking after the old guy and getting our due share of the market. Rather than letting the whole world come crashing in on him.’

  Craig nodded slowly in agreement. Sometimes Colin could make him feel like he was still very much a novice in the game. One thing still bugged him, though. He wasn’t convinced that Ron McCoy would ever be able to bring himself to sell. Any messages he got when he visited were to the contrary.

  ‘So anyhow, what we want to do now,’ Colin went on, ‘given that you reckon he’s holding his cards close to his chest, is knock Khouri right out of the running with this new info about the marine park and my block down on the flat. It’ll clear things up for Ron and show him that it’s us he should be dealing with. Any ideas he might have had to sell to Khouri again will be out the window then. I bet you a slab of Heineken he’ll start to talk to us. He’ll have to! What do you reckon?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he of all people has a right to that information. And then, of course, he can work out for sure whether he wants to sell or not.’

  A look of annoyance came over Colin Batty’s face. ‘Trust me, mate,’ he said emphatically, ‘he wants to sell, all right. You’ll see.’

  Craig looked out the office window at the playground across the road. A strip of plastic cordon tape was flapping where it had come loose in the wind. The playground was in the process of being updated with colourful new slides, climbing nets and swings.

  ‘So you want me to go slowly or tell him straight out, about your block and everything?’ he asked Colin.

  ‘I don’t see why not. You tell him that and about the shire’s plans and you’ve got the inside running. Mate, short of the Met Station itself, which the government owns anyway, this block is the one. Personally I’d like to see someone buy it and build a few units, tasteful units, around the garden that’s there, solar powered, grey water systems and all that, rather than see it locked up as an extension of the Khouri compound. People should be able to enjoy a spot like that. Last time I looked we were living in a democracy. It shouldn’t be just for the privileged few.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of buying it by any chance, are you?’

  ‘Me? No way. I’ve told you, I’m out of here. Nah. Two million dollars is a lot of money, Willo. I’m just not a developer anyway. I’ve helped a few out over the years but nah. Couldn’t handle the stress. Building my place was bad enough. Imagine building six or eight, or ten or twenty, at the same time. It’d be a fuckin’ nightmare. And I’ll tell you this for the future. I’ve never, in all my time in this lark, ever, met one property developer with a smile on his face.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No way. They’re shocking, mate. Stressed out, always got too much going on. They think they’re real smart but they’re thick, eh? Life’s too short, mate. Isn’t it? Half of them have already got more money than they know what to do with. But it’s like they’re addicted. You watch ’em, when you take all this on. Watch them very closely. They’re always trying to cut you. Secret is, Willo, you’ve got to laugh ’em off. That’s what I’ve always done. Just be cheery as hell. It drives them nuts.’

  The two estate agents sat there chuckling and looking out the tinted window at the half-renovated playground. Now that the next stage of Colin’s plan was worked out they moved on to talk about other things, like travelling. Craig was reluctant to tell Colin about their planned trip to Prague for fear of seeming presumptuous but after chatting about the beauties of Vietnam, Colin made it easy and natural for him
when he asked:

  ‘Where are you and Liz gonna get to with the extra dosh you’ll have in the coffers?’

  They talked about Prague then for a little while and Colin told Craig about the month he spent hiking through Scandinavia in 1986. Craig had always wanted to go to Scandinavia but had never managed it. He told Colin it’d have to be next on the agenda after Prague, even though he knew Liz was super-keen these days to go trekking in Nepal.

  That night Colin Batty reclined on his leather couch with his bowl of tomato and chilli pasta and a stubby of Heineken. He watched Punch-Drunk Love on DVD. He thought it was a weird film, and he loved it for that. The Adam Sandler character was bent, the whole atmosphere of the film was drug-fucked.

  When it ended, he got up and sat at his computer terminal to go online. Typing in his own URL he had a quick look at the Batty Real Estate site just to check the updates. Then, he googled his own name as well as Batty Real Estate. After scanning the results he paused before googling his father’s name, Art Batty, and then the words Art Batty’s Surfer’s Shop. A plethora of entries appeared to do with the origins of surfing and the surf industry. He clicked on Google Images and found twelve photos of either Art or the shop. There was one of his father standing proudly on the beach, holding what was supposed to be that first bit of cypress he ever surfed on. Beside him a row of multicoloured Currumbin planks were stuck in the sand with a young Nat Young standing next to them. The photo was obviously taken up north but the inference was that Art had fathered it all. Scoffing under his breath, he then visited the Lonely Planet site, some travel agent sites, and checked prices to Vietnam. Things looked good for spring. Shutting down then, he got up and put a Van Morrison CD on and kicked back again on the couch. He fell asleep, loaded up on pasta and beer.

  At 11:30 he woke disoriented and confronted by the silence. In his body he felt a brief rush of panic until he remembered what came next. He got up, splashed his face with water at the kitchen sink, and heated up a frozen sausage roll in the microwave. Then, slipping on his beanie and his black Bollé rain jacket, he left the house to drive up to Ron McCoy’s.

  Craig went home after work with a single salmon he’d caught under Turtle Head and described his conversation with Colin to Liz.

  ‘Well, change probably is inevitable up there, you know,’ Liz had said. ‘And a marine park would be wonderful. To know that at least one spot can’t be raped and pillaged. It’s a shame for old Ron but at least by telling him you can feel a little better about what you’re doing.’

  Craig supposed she was right.

  She told him about her day (she’d had to go to Colac to see their accountant) and how Libby was planning for an overnight horse ride in the bush in a fortnight’s time. It was all worked out apparently and John Patterson, the outdoor rec. teacher at the school, was going to go with them. Craig thought it sounded good and reiterated how they’d done the right thing by bringing the kids to live in Mangowak.

  ‘It’s their home now,’ said Liz, ‘much more than it’ll ever be ours. It’s all they know.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s like their Doncaster,’ Craig agreed, half amused by the comparison.

  They flicked on the telly at around eight thirty, once Reef had gone to bed with a book and Libby was lost to her bedroom. They lay on separate couches and watched a repeat of a Parkinson interview with Jack Lemmon. Craig fell asleep halfway through the interview but Liz was captivated. Lemmon was reminiscing about working with Marilyn Monroe. He was trashing her. Liz couldn’t believe how frank he was being. Somehow or other, Marilyn had really pissed him off.

  When the show ended, she zapped the TV with the remote and watched Craig slowly wake in the silence. Opening his eyes he looked around and for a moment was confused. He’d been dreaming. Playing in a stormwater drain back in the suburbs with his brother. Reef was in the dream somewhere as well.

  Gradually he refocused on the room, and on his wife watching him with a smile on the other couch.

  ‘I think it’s time for tired husbands and fathers to go to bed,’ she said to him lovingly.

  He nodded and yawned, but an hour later, with Liz fast asleep in bed, he was still lying there, staring into space, the stormwater drain of his dream having opened up eastern suburban memories long stored away. Outside in the night, a possum seemed intent on dashing back and forth across the roof and further along the ridge the mopoke owl was hooting.

  THIRTY-TWO

  A PORTERGAFF CHAT

  The wave was breaking to the east of King Cormorant Rock, rolling over the reef and peeling off into Horseshoe Cove. The swifts had arrived and were putting on a show. If the handful of surfers out there needed inspiration or an example to emulate, all they needed to do was look up into the sky from where they sat on their boards.

  The swifts only arrived once a year and only stayed for a day or two. They appeared in the high strata, on their long journey south, before shearing down through the air to bank and curve with a speed unknown to the year thus far. They careened over the cliffs, skimming the edges of correa and groundsel, banking into the rose-gold slips and divots rising above the water, their wings sheening, tracing calligraphic arcs in the afternoon light, astonishing in their skill and drawing a further definition to the season.

  Craig pulled into Ron’s drive and sat for a minute as the Art of Fighting tune on 3RRR ended. At the last resounding note of the piece he waited as it was back-announced. He’d never heard it before but already loved it. Hearing who and what it was, he gathered up his satchel from the passenger seat, popped a sugarfree piece of gum into his mouth and got out of the car.

  He’d come straight from a property only a couple of miles along Two Pointers Way, a funky aubergine weekender just opposite the Heatherbrae carpark, where with his woodsplitter he’d knocked a new FOR SALE sign into the hard ground. Standing back to admire it, he couldn’t help but imagine the name WILSON on the sign instead of BATTY. But maybe Liz had the right idea. Maybe the name should be something less obvious. RUTHVEN REAL ESTATE as she suggested, after Reef, or PAN ORAMA REAL ESTATE, or something like that.

  Getting out of the Tribute now, he approached Ron’s porch, but just as he did so he spotted the old man up beyond the woodpile at the back of the block and headed that way. He walked past the vegetables and across the yard. The air behind Ron where he stood at the woodpile was streaming with the diving and rising swifts. Craig felt a little guilty again as he caught the old man’s eye and waved but reassured himself that all would be made clear once Ron had heard what he had to tell him.

  Ron had been watching the swifts from the La Branca bench, and had got up only when an idea popped into his head that required a closer look at the woodpile. As the birds seared and swooped in the air all about him, plummeting over the edge of the cliff into the fathoms above the rocks below, Ron had begun to feel a share of their energy. His heart rate picked up and his mind grew clear with a solution. A rabbit trap would fix it. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

  So he walked back through the melaleuca gate to the woodpile and stood choosing a spot to disguise the trap that would injure the hand of anyone silly enough to pilfer his wood. He knew how to chock the steel jaws so that when it went off the teeth did not entirely shut. He could well and truly injure his intruder without actually amputating anything. He could hurt them enough with the rabbit trap to make sure they never ever tried it again. That was for sure. It’d be like dunking a currawong in a barrel of water. A warning shot, but one that hurt. As Craig approached him, Ron had just placed the trap and was feeling a lot better for having found a solution to the problem.

  ‘Hello, Ron. Nice afternoon,’ Craig said, thrusting out his hand.

  Ron shook it. ‘Yair,’ he said, in his slow drawl.

  ‘Getting some wood for the fire, eh?’

  ‘Yair. Why are you back?’

  Craig stumbled on his reply but then quickly remembered that for once he actually had something concrete to tell Ron.


  ‘Well, I don’t suppose I’ve come here to look at the birds, eh?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t reckon.’

  ‘Look, Ron, I’ve just popped in for another chat about your property.’

  ‘But I’m not selling.’

  ‘No, well, that’s exactly what I’ve come to talk to you about. As I’ve said all along, we’re just trying to do the right thing by you in what must be a hard time. That’s why I thought you should know about a couple of things that directly affect your place.’

  ‘What couple of things?’

  Without waiting for the answer, and still feeling buoyed by his rabbit-trap idea, Ron stepped away and motioned to Craig to follow him. It was obvious that this time the young fella had something of interest to say. They could talk in the open shed away from the woodpile where, for the moment, the dark steel of the trap was still showing.

  Ron entered the open shed with Craig behind and motioned for him to sit at the card table. Now it was Craig whose attention was distracted. All about him where he sat was the accumulation of Ron’s littoral and riparian existence. From light machinery to bushcrafted traps and nets, to framed pictures and disused navigational aids, the shed was full to overflowing with sea-whitened and tannin-stained things. Hanging from a nail he could see an old Victorian-era brass plaque which read: This Way To The Meteorological Station. Under the plaque an old pump organ stood with its lid open. The top of the organ also served as a bench for clear plastic nail boxes.

  The far reaches of the shed were dim and hard to see into but Craig sensed an endless miscellany of objects strewn and useful. The shed was crazy, a world unto itself. It smelt of petrol and ocean wrack and linseed oil and with his chambray shirt and bone slacks and his mobile phone on his hip, Craig felt straightaway out of place. Old Ron was more like a creature than a man and it seemed this shed was his burrow.

  Much to Craig’s surprise, Ron went over to a yellowing and rusty Electrice fridge and asked if he wanted a drink. Before Craig could refuse on the grounds that he was working, Ron had said, ‘I’ll make it a portergaff. I know you’re at work.’