To Know My Crime

by Fiona Capp

  She smiles, resolute. ‘There was something you wanted to tell me.’

  ‘There was?’ Richard laughs.

  ‘There was.’

  Her certainty floors him. He is practised at throwing up smokescreens, at keeping his emotions under wraps. He can churn out indignation or bonhomie or toughness depending on the circumstances, and has become so good at it that he is sometimes not even sure how he really feels. And yet none of this seems to wash with her. She sees straight through it.

  And so he tells her about sitting in the beer garden, the disappearing beach, coming back to the house and how different it looked. How it was just a house. A big, old house! And how she was right about his parents and about his obsession with the place. As he speaks he is buoyed by a great wave of relief. ‘It was your doing, Angela,’ he says, raising his glass of cognac. ‘My turn to say thanks.’

  Angela can see a couple getting up from their seats at the table behind him. Most of the diners have gone and the waiters are clearing the tables. Soon she and Richard will be the only ones left.

  She nods. ‘I thought it might be to do with the house.’

  Before she can continue, he reaches out and gently strokes her upturned hand. Angela stares at his long, elegant fingers tracing a circle on her palm. Once, if the touch was right, if the chemistry was there, the lightest caress would have travelled like electricity straight through her.

  ‘I mean it, Angela. Thank you. For everything.’

  When he stops, she removes her hand from the table, smiles at him and takes a deep breath. ‘I’m pleased you feel that way, Richard. But it wasn’t my doing. I simply planted the idea. You did the rest.’

  He laughs. ‘Well it mattered, all right. The talking cure, eh? Who would’ve thought?’ He throws down the last of his drink. ‘I’m a convert. It works.’

  Why does he insist on behaving like a patient? All he did was tell her about his family and show her the home movie. For whatever reasons, her response has shifted the way he sees himself and his past. She is glad of it. Sometimes it can help just to talk. But she has to make him understand. ‘Whatever happened, Richard, whatever changed your feelings, it wasn’t analysis. It doesn’t happen like that.’

  Her defensiveness makes him smile. ‘Well, if that’s the case, I can’t be infatuated, can I?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So it must be love.’ His voice fills the empty restaurant. They stare at each other. Why did he say that? It had never crossed his mind until the words came out of his mouth. But now that they have been uttered, he knows that they’re true.

  Angela studies the tablecloth, the subtle pattern of white on white, like a watermark. Richard’s watch ticks loudly. Time drags. She would never have picked him to be so reckless. Never have suspected that Richard the politician would let himself be overpowered by Richard the man. She raises her eyes, gives a tight, sad smile. ‘It’s dangerously easy to mistake gratitude for love. I know because I’ve done it.’

  He seizes his chance. ‘Forgive me for saying this, Angela. But if you’ve never been in love, how can you know what’s real and what isn’t?’

  Angela’s eyes flash. She lifts her chin. ‘Romantic love is an infantile delusion fuelled by lust.’

  He longs to reach out and take her hand again, to touch the soft swelling of her breast. To reawaken every part of her body, restore the pleasures she has lost.

  Her face softens. ‘You love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We don’t know each other.’

  He looks away. ‘No.’ The word falls from his mouth like a stone dropped into a well.

  Richard signals to the waiter for the bill, desperately trying to compose himself. He can’t remember when he last felt this undone. He’s not giving up that easily. Defences are there to be breached.

  21.

  Through the gridlines of the scaffolding, Ned can see the old Victorian lady coming back to life. Rotted window frames restored and painted. New guttering and downpipes. Splintered veranda boards and cracked roof tiles replaced.

  Bad weather has slowed everything down but it doesn’t matter now that Morrow has changed his plans. He summoned Ned into his study and announced that he was selling the house. He has cancelled the most expensive restoration work – recovering the boarded-up fireplaces, knocking down walls that shouldn’t be there, treating the rising damp in the theatre – and directed the builders to make the place acceptable to go on the market, nothing more.

  Ned is still trying to digest what it means. He can only assume Morrow can’t afford to keep it because he’s had to channel Stone’s money into the blackmail account he and Mai set up. Or perhaps he wants to clear his conscience, balance the ledger by giving Stone back his money, and can only do it by selling the house. Or perhaps it finally hit him that he can’t undo what he’s done, and that it has sullied the pleasure the house once gave him. That he has gone and killed the thing he loved.

  All this taken into account, it’s still hard to believe that the politician would part with his beloved Anchorage when he has sacrificed so much to get it back. Even if he can’t afford the full renovation, it doesn’t explain why he would sell up completely. But who can fathom the workings of another man’s mind? Ned has enough trouble fathoming his own. Angela would say you never can, that no matter how long and hard you try, there will always be vast regions you keep hidden from yourself. Strange job, hers. Spending her days peering into other people’s heads, not just trying to make sense of what they remember but, more importantly, what they can’t.

  To get away from Morrow’s Victorian folly and the cloud of guilt that hangs over it, Ned drives down to London Bridge. He’s damned if he’s going to feel bad about Morrow’s decision. And yet he does.

  On the cliff top next to the carpark, a paraglider is preparing to take off, the airfoil fabric laid out behind him on the launching pad as he eases himself into the harness. His back to the ocean, he jiggles the cords to coax wind into the bright red wing, and it rises slowly off the ground like some gutted creature brought back to life. Once it is flying high above him, he turns to face the sea and, resolute, lopes towards the edge of the cliff.

  Ned is holding his breath as he watches. How do you bring yourself to do it? To step out into thin air? An updraft catches the wing and lifts the man from the earth. He glides forward, hovers momentarily and feels his way into paths in the sky and then, as if slipping down an invisible chute, goes swooping along the cliff-line, while on the beach below, his shadow races across the sand as if trying to catch up. Out on the scalloped ocean, the white wings of a yacht skip over the chop.

  Ned sits down on a bench, heavy-footed, conscious of the weight of gravity holding him down. When life finally gets back to normal, he’s going to give it a try. Prove to himself he has the nerve. That he’s not an underhanded, gutless weasel – at least not entirely. Mai would do it in a flash. He can see her calmly soaring over the ocean, waving and laughing at him as he stands on the cliff top, too petrified to take off. Buoyed as much by her lightness of spirit as by the wind itself.

  That evening Ned is drifting off to sleep when the floor under his bunk shudders. There’s someone out there, walking down the jetty. He sits up, fumbles for his jeans and eases open the door. In the light of the three-quarter moon, he can see a figure that looks like Morrow standing at the end of the jetty, his robe flaring gently around his legs in the breeze. The bay is black velvet. Beyond it, the lights of the city flicker like a distant constellation.

  Ned stands in the doorway, watching as Morrow walks to the very edge of the landing stage and stares down into the liquid darkness. It is then that he notices that Morrow is not wearing shoes.

  This worries him and he steps onto the jetty, walking heavily so as to signal his approach. He is halfway down when Morrow turns, arms folded across his chest against the cold.

  When
Ned is a few metres away, the politician nods. ‘I disturbed you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s your jetty.’

  Morrow drops his arms to his side. ‘For now.’

  ‘You’re not really going to sell?’

  ‘You seem shocked.’

  ‘I know what it means to you.’

  ‘There were,’ he sighs, ‘unforeseen costs.’

  Ned looks down at his own bare feet.

  Morrow goes on, oblivious. ‘Which, as it turned out, was a blessing. It forced my hand.’ His smile is dazed. ‘I still can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but sometimes you have to let the past go. To be honest, I feel like a great weight has been lifted. As if I’ve been freed from a family curse.’

  Ned peers at him keenly. Bloody amazing, he marvels. He and Mai have gone and done the politician a favour! Everyone is off the hook. Everyone benefits. No need to feel bad at all. Mai wouldn’t agree, but she is young, she doesn’t appreciate that on the scale of corruption what Morrow did was pretty small beer. It’s the way business and politics work. The way deals are done.

  He notices Morrow shiver. ‘You must be freezing. How about I get you a coat from the shed?’

  ‘Thanks, but no need. It’s bracing. I wanted to clear my head. And I have.’

  ‘I was afraid you were going to jump in.’

  Morrow snorts and glances up at the Anchorage with its exoskeleton of scaffolding, lit up from within. ‘Do myself in because of the house? Ned, Ned, Ned. I fear I’m not quite the tragic figure you take me for. And fortunately, there are other things to live for. It’s taken me close to half a century, but I’ve finally twigged.’

  They walk back along the jetty. Morrow tells him that some of his neighbours are looking for a reliable gardener and that he will recommend him, if that’s what he wants. Whatever he chooses to do, the politician says, he is sure they will remain in touch.

  Ned tenses. He certainly hopes not.

  When they reach the boatshed, Morrow stops and says there is something he wants to ask him. He has noticed that Angela is fond of jewellery. Does he think she would wear a string of pearls?

  Ned is grateful for the darkness. ‘Pearls? Not really her thing.’

  ‘No, of course not. Thank you, Ned.’

  Morrow pats his arm, smiles evasively and says goodnight.

  Ned watches his slim form moving briskly up the zig-zag walkway to the cliff top. There is almost a bounce in his step.

  After hours spent tossing in bed, Ned gets up again, wraps himself in a blanket and goes to sit at the end of the jetty. The wind has strengthened, and with it has come an acrid tang.

  Much as he tries to divert himself, questions about Morrow and his decision to sell keep coming back. And what he asked about Angela. When Ned spoke to her about the dinner with Morrow, she played the whole thing down, implied that Morrow was just following up on the operation, making sure his friend, the surgeon who owed him a favour, had done what he promised to do. And that it had been successful. He wanted to see for himself. Nothing more to it than that.

  But if Morrow is thinking of buying her pearls, there’s got to be more going on. At least in his head. You don’t just buy anyone pearls. A string of pearls. For people like Morrow, the bigger the price tag, the bigger the deal. It’s a simple equation. Or should that be transaction?

  A gust of wind ruffles the water. Ned sniffs the air. There’s something strange out there, something more than the metallic whiff of kelp and ozone. Something rotten. He turns his nose into the wind. Whatever it is, it’s coming from the west, from the direction of the beach on the far side of the headland. And it definitely has the reek of death.

  As he makes his way up the cliff, the torch bores a narrow corridor of light through the darkness. The further he goes along Millionaires Walk, the more powerful the stench. When he reaches the beach on the other side of the headland, the moon is hidden behind cloud and it’s hard to see anything much. He sweeps the ground with the beam of the torch, following his nose, and finally he sees the great white shape. Flensed by the sea and the creatures in it, its pale blubber is almost indistinguishable from the foam washing around it. When a wave pushes it forward, the fluke lifts and the whole beast heaves, momentarily alive. Ballooning from the great cave of its mouth are its mottled intestines, still full of gas.

  Ned stares down at it, careful not to breathe through his nose. A whale had been sighted in the bay a few weeks ago. It amazes him that it ever found its way in through the narrow heads. No wonder it never found its way out. But what killed it? It was clearly dead before it washed up here, although the sea cannot seem to accept this, each wave mechanically forcing breath back in.

  Ned glances behind him at the mansions perched on the hillside. Surely the stench has reached them by now. In the morning, the dead beast will no doubt be in the news and on the front page of the local paper and the stench will be stronger than ever. And everyone will have their theories about what killed the whale. He wonders why he should be so indifferent to the death of the fish he catches and yet so moved by that giant carcass washed up on the beach.

  He wakes early and remembers the whale and even though he would like to roll over and keep sleeping, something compels him to get up and go back and look upon it again. The sky is cloudy and there is the scent of rain in the air. He sniffs, puzzled. Perhaps the wind has changed. All he can smell is the rain.

  When he reaches the beach, no one is around. He runs across the sand to the spot where the whale was lying only hours before, but nothing is there. The tide, which is now out, had been on the turn when Ned was here earlier and could not have taken the whale with it. He scans the shallow water and the sandbars and the empty beach. It is then that he notices the tyre-tracks of a digger. Tracks going all the way up the beach, right to the tussocky dunes and a low mound near the ramshackle shed he’d planned to move into. Here, the tracks end. The long mound is so slight that no one else would probably notice it. All evidence erased. Nothing but freshly ploughed sand.

  Up on the hillside, the big houses with their watching windows reflect the passing clouds. Ned tells himself he shouldn’t be surprised. It is the way things are done here. You don’t wait for the local council to get its act together, or for endless community consultation, or for the media circus to arrive. You get yourself a digger and you bury the stinking carcass and quietly get on with your life.

  22.

  Beneath her, the bay is bevelled glass. Over its solid blue surface glide the dark shadows of cumulus and the occasional yacht and bird. Inside the belly of the chopper, Angela is sitting next to Richard’s neighbours from Millionaires Walk, an elderly man with a military moustache, and his wife, who has spent most of the trip either twisting the heavily jewelled rings on her arthritic fingers or gripping her husband’s arm.

  When Richard made the offer, Angela refused, determined not to encourage him. Until it occurred to her that it was an apology for his lapse at the restaurant, his rash, alcohol-fuelled declaration of love. The gracious thing was to behave as if it had never happened and to accept his kind offer. And she is glad she did. Since Matthew’s visit, her flat has felt like a cage. Every time she hears footsteps on the garden path, she finds herself reliving his dream and braces herself for a knock on the door.

  Out the window, she can see the narrow tip of the peninsula and the headland opposite forming a slender collar at the neck of the bay. She had forgotten how good it feels to be up in the sky; the dizzying freedom of looking down on the world, of being above it all. As they approach, the Anchorage looms up out of the ti-tree, higher than all the other houses on Millionaires Walk, its creamy limestone airy as foam. The chopper tilts and wheels around and soon they are hovering over a flat apron of grass in a garden a few doors away, the branches of nearby trees in supplication from the blast of the blades, and for a brief moment it is a vision from Matthew’s cyclone-ravaged dream. Everything bowled over by the wind. She spies Richard standing at the far edge of the clea
ring, tall and unruffled, hand pressed to his forehead to shield his eyes from the late afternoon sun.

  There is the slightest bump as they land, the blades still churning the air. When the rotors come to a stop, the pilot lowers a ramp, helps Angela into her chair and guides her down. Richard strides forward and kisses her cheeks, placing a proprietorial hand on one of her shoulders while they wait for his neighbours to disembark.

  They head back along Millionaires Walk towards the Anchorage, talking about the ride, the ease and speed of it. He tells her he once considered buying his own chopper, but that was before his divorce.

  Angela can’t help laughing. ‘Your own helicopter?’

  ‘It sounds extravagant, I know. But as a politician, you travel a lot. There is never enough time.’

  He opens the gate and she wheels herself in. ‘Ned tells me you’ve been spending a lot of time down here lately.’

  ‘To keep an eye on tradesmen. Not that I don’t trust Ned to do it, but it’s not his responsibility.’

  Angela takes in the landscaped garden and the newly restored house. ‘Quite a transformation.’

  Richard stares thoughtfully up at the house. ‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘Saying goodbye to it won’t be easy.’

  ‘Saying goodbye?’

  ‘I meant to tell you earlier but decided to wait until you got here. Ned and Mai aren’t due to arrive for another hour or so. It will give us time to talk. Are you happy sitting out here?’

  He places his hand on her shoulder again. After the shock of his announcement, she barely registers the subtle weight of it. How much, she wonders, has she been taking for granted?

  Richard goes to the veranda and returns with an ancient-looking deckchair. He takes his time unfolding it and adjusting its height, fussing to give himself space to prepare what he wants to say. When it is ready, he carefully lowers himself into the chair.

  ‘I’ve already told you about my change of heart regarding this place, how it came about. Since I was a boy, my name has preceded me. I’ve never had to explain myself. I’m a Morrow and that speaks for itself. It smoothed my way through school, through university and into parliament. I never doubted that reclaiming the Anchorage was my duty, a matter of family honour, what I owed to my name.