by Heather Rose
‘I’ll leave you to your fishing,’ I said, trying to find any sort of smile. The conversation didn’t warrant a smile. It seemed to warrant going to a pub and having a beer together but there wasn’t a pub for fifty miles. We’d have to drive to the south end of the island. There was beer in my fridge, but that felt way too intimate.
Dan Macmillan was vital to the project. I’d been here two days. I needed time to consider everyone and everything. Soon three hundred Chinese workers would be all over this bridge and they’d be in his care. I thought about Jimmy Talbot and how the bridge being blown up and the Chinese arriving would sweep away his story. He hadn’t even become official. There were no deaths noted on the construction record.
‘So I’ll meet you here at eleven tomorrow morning?’ he said.
‘Sure. Thank you. I hope that’s not inconvenient.’
‘It’s fine. It’s been a quiet week with the works shut down.’
We both looked again at the cables hanging loose, the missing tower, the twisted roadway.
‘Enjoy settling back in,’ he said. ‘Can’t be easy.’
Shaking hands again seemed too much physical contact in such a short space of time, so I nodded.
‘I meant with your family,’ he said, and grinned. It was a very white grin against his complexion. Your family. Was it a sneer? Your political family. Or a nod of compassion? Your very complicated family. I wished I knew the colour of his eyes.
‘Thank you,’ I said. And as I walked away I thought that thank you had not been the right thing to say. I thought about turning back and saying, ‘I’m not staying. I’ll be out of here as fast as I can, as soon as you’ve got the bridge built. I’m not like them, you know. My family. I’m not like them at all.’
But of course it wasn’t true. Back at the house, I took out my laptop and wrote a report on the day. I encrypted it and emailed it, along with a request for some supplies to be delivered here to the house. Then I went into the spare bedroom and took the framed print off the wall to give myself a large working space. Tomorrow I’d get photographs printed. Meanwhile I wrote the names of everyone I’d met in thick black pen on white paper. Using Blu Tack from the kitchen, I began a spider’s web of connections with JC at the top.
CHAPTER TEN
When I walked in for coffee the following morning, the new Dennes Point cafe was doing a bustling Saturday trade. There were young people and families, a seventy/thirty resident-to-tourist ratio, by the look of it. The tourists were easy to spot taking selfies on the balcony or photographing their food.
Maggie Lennox—cafe owner, Solitude owner, prominent activist—was at a table by the window. The cafe had a perfect view of the bridge and Tinderbox hill in the distance. Maggie waved, almost as if she’d been looking out for me, and indicated I should join her. She had beautiful skin, the bonus that older strawberry blondes get for keeping out of the sun. Think Helen Mirren with a careful chignon, nonchalant chinos and cotton sweater, elegant spectacles with peacock blue frames. It was a facade, of course. They all had a story, these white South Africans who made their homes elsewhere after apartheid ended. There was usually a dead relative, a torched farm, or worse secrets.
‘Morning,’ she said, smiling. ‘I was going to call you but, then, here you are. Could we have a moment?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘How are you finding being home?’
‘It’s a little strange, to be honest,’ I said.
‘I gather you’re not a great fan of the place?’
‘Tasmania?’
She inclined her head.
‘Oh, I am,’ I said. ‘Of course. I’m a Tasmanian. I have a place here.’ I indicated my house up the road.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘But you’ve done a good job of staying away.’
There are no days off in a job like this. Not unless I fly away again. While I was here, I was on. Everyone got my phone number. Soon enough, here at Dennes Point, they’d all be keeping tabs on me. Possibly the quietest place was in the apartment downstairs at JC’s. But this wasn’t a job where hiding out had any value. It was getting amongst it, having these impromptu conversations, when the real work started to happen. When they stopped me for a chat, when I listened, that’s how I built trust.
‘Coffee?’ she asked.
‘Double-shot long black,’ I said.
‘There are some lemon friands just out of the oven. Gluten-free. Dairy-free. My treat. If that’s allowed.’ And she chuckled. ‘Bribery by seduction.’
‘Oldest trick in the book,’ I said.
Maggie Lennox had an earthiness to her that was compelling. Practical, competent, very good at what she did by all accounts. Solitude was her fourth tourism venture in Tasmania.
We shared a little chitchat about New York. She had been many times. These days she stayed in Airbnbs, mostly in the West Village, but she used to frequent the private Metropolitan Club. ‘My first husband had reciprocal rights and we used to love to stay there,’ she said. ‘The view from the terrace out over the park was divine. But now I hardly ever go uptown unless I’m going to the Met or MoMA. Or the theatre. I’ve been watching the High Line grow ever since they planted it.’
The coffee and friands arrived. Both were good.
And so we came around to Bruny and her venture.
‘Yesterday, you came on the ferry, didn’t you?’ said Maggie. ‘I still find I let go as the ferry departs. I mean, to some extent, by the time everyone’s got to the ferry, they’re well on the way to letting go. In the case of my visitors, they’ve usually flown a long way to get to Tasmania. Either we’ve picked them up, or they’ve hired a car and navigated their way to Kettering. Did you stop for coffee?’
I nodded.
‘I’m sure you weren’t served by someone with a tattoo sleeve and a nose ring. It’s Elsie or Jean or Matilda, who grew up in the country and who smile as if it’s nice to see you. Then there’s the ferry and the crossing. The weather is whatever the weather is. The wind hits. Sometimes there’s spray and waves breaking over the bow. People are out of their element. It’s wild. Maybe a little dangerous. Their phone loses bars. It’s unsettling but something else is seeping in even then. That’s where the magic begins, crossing the water.’
She paused and I nodded again.
‘Then they arrive on the island and they’re ushered off the ferry by a bloke in a fluoro vest who doesn’t look like he cares a fig for where they’re from, their money and their fame or how important they are back home. He’s cold. He wants the car moved. Now.’
She was right. This was exactly how it had gone yesterday. How it had always gone, in my memory.
‘Of course, they’ve sealed the road now, so you miss that part of the adventure. Some people had never driven on an unsealed road. The world slowed down when it was gravel. Became a bit precarious. Those corrugations and soft edges. But it’s like any other road now.’
Who would have thought we’d get whimsical about narrow, windy, gravel roads, but she was right; I’d missed it too.
‘Then they top the rise and see Solitude as they come through the gate,’ she continued. ‘Instantly, their phones drop out. I installed a dampening field that cuts them off at the top of the driveway. No wi-fi, no calls, no emails, no news until they leave. Some of them tell me it’s as if five years drop away right then. They stare at the sea. They stand and take it all in. Inside, if it’s even a little bit chilly, they find a fire burning. Fresh bread or scones from the oven. There’s a view from every window to take their breath away. The air’s so clean, they want to drink it.’
‘You’ve gone to a fair bit of trouble,’ I said.
‘It’s been a dream for seven years. And it’s been awesome seeing how people respond. That first day they wander about looking a bit stunned. The next day they walk a little further. They eat well. Most everything we serve is grown and raised here on the island, or somewhere in Tassie. They say they’ve never known anywhere so peaceful. They feel as if the
y’ve left the world behind. They get present to themselves, to their lives. That’s why we have a minimum ten-night stay. So they can get past the shock.’
I understood all this. I hadn’t been to Solitude but I’d been to other retreats.
‘And they sleep,’ I said.
‘They sleep better than they have in years,’ she agreed. ‘They tell me their dreams get really interesting. No-one disturbs them. Our staff are entirely discreet. It doesn’t matter if it’s a movie star or a president, a prime minister or a rock star. They can drop all that and be.’
She laughed. ‘I know I’m passionate,’ she said, ‘but I need you to understand, Astrid. I need you to be quite clear on how I feel about a highway and a bridge that gets them here in forty-five minutes from airport to door, with a great big slip lane and traffic noise day and night. This bridge is my nightmare. I won’t stop fighting. Everyone laughs and says don’t we know we’re beaten. But I’m not beaten. None of us are. It doesn’t matter that we’ve been at it for more than four years. We’re trying to protect the only thing Tasmania really has going for it in the twenty-first century. Its isolation. Its quiet. Its lack of population. Its remoteness. We need fewer people with more money coming here. I’m not the only tourism operator to have invested millions here on Bruny. Not everyone agrees with me, but most of us can see that this bridge is a dumb strategy. Bruny needs careful planning, not this deluge of visitors we are unprepared for. It will destroy our boutique appeal. So nothing you are ever going to say, on behalf of your brother, is going to change our minds or make us compliant.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘Will you let me show you Solitude?’ she asked.
‘I’d love to see it,’ I said. ‘You’ve got my number.’
‘Here’s mine,’ she responded, pulling out her phone, finding my number and texting me.
I’ve met a lot of people. I’d heard their litany in every form. Religious. Political. Ideological. The end almost always justified the means. But then there were these people; people like Maggie Lennox and Jenny Singh and no doubt most of the BFG cohort. The ones who surprised themselves by becoming activists. You can find them the world over. What they had, what they valued, was being threatened or destroyed. Forests, water, fish, land. Here in Tasmania, right now, it was the quiet life.
I knew they’d hold their ground, these protesters. They would fight to their last breath. They would inspire their children to take on the battle, and their grandchildren too. Here were the opponents to the slave trade, the suffragettes, the unionists, the environmentalists, the feminists. Century after century, economic imperatives rode roughshod over people and they tried to stand in the wake of it, a picket fence against a tsunami.
I looked at this dignified graceful woman. In almost any other circumstances, we might have been friends.
‘Thank you, Maggie, for the coffee and the food,’ I said. ‘I’m due at the jetty at eleven. I have to get back to town this morning. As you know, I’m at the information-gathering phase. But I’ll be in touch soon.’
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘if you’re here for a few months, you’re going to need a hairdresser.’
‘I am,’ I said, smiling. I had been admiring her colour. Let’s face it, at our age colour is everything.
She texted me again. ‘That’s Fabian. He’s a whizz with all sorts of blonde.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Just ask if you need any others. Doctor. Nails. Girl things. There’s lots of good people.’
‘Not the outpost it once was?’ I said.
‘It’s beautiful. Still an outpost but people have relocated. Or come home. Or decided to stay and create. Twenty thousand tourists a week means we’ve got some great restaurants. People invest now because they know if they get it right, they’re going to get numbers. It’s quite the weekend destination, as you can see.’ She waved her hand at the cafe cohort. ‘Not just here on Bruny, but all over the state.’
‘But you’d like less of them on Bruny.’
‘I’d like them to catch a ferry. A bigger ferry. More frequent ferries. Just come by water. Preserve the magic. When they start up again,’ she said, staring at the tangled bridge, ‘you’ll hear it loud and clear from your place. It will give you a bit of a sense of what the future might be like. And soon it will be twenty-four seven.’
I nodded.
As I was going out the door, another woman stopped me. She was short, plump.
‘Oh, you’re that woman, the premier’s sister, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘Astrid Coleman.’
She looked a little surprised but shook mine. ‘Jean Henty,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m nobody, so don’t bother remembering my name. I just want you to know we’re not all like them,’ she said, frowning in the direction of the BFG camp. She spied Maggie Lennox and dropped her head.
‘Some of us think this bridge is the best thing that’s ever happened to Bruny,’ she said quietly.
‘And are you part of a group, Jean?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I’m from Bruny in Action. I think we’re expecting you for afternoon tea next Wednesday. Progress. Progress is what this place needs.’
I nodded. ‘Wonderful, Jean,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you on Wednesday. Thank you for saying hi.’
She smiled. And then I was out the door, and down the road to the jetty.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was Sunday and our mother Hyacinth (Cynthy to her friends) was seated in the middle of the table between Maxine and my niece, Grace. Mother was wearing a blue dress and pink satin pumps. Her wig today was Marilyn blonde. I hadn’t seen her in ten years. There had been photos posted by JC and Stephanie and Max on the private page Stephanie had set up for the family, but Mother didn’t like technology, so in terms of conversations, it was landline only.
When I’d embraced her, it had felt like hugging a cardboard box. There didn’t seem to be any substance left to her and I felt a wave of guilt and compassion until she looked into my face and said, ‘Ah, Astrid, sweetheart, how you’ve aged! We all do, but some of us do it faster than others.’
‘One may smile and smile and be a villain,’ said my dad as he ambled past.
‘What did you say, Angus?’ Mother asked, her gaze swivelling with laser precision.
‘Don’t trouble yourself, Mum,’ said Max, handing her a champagne and indicating to me to move our father along.
‘Hamlet!’ called Ella, my older niece, checking her iPhone. ‘It’s from Hamlet.’ She pressed a few buttons then looked up at me. ‘I’m keeping track, Aunty Ace. He’s never wrong.’
With the quote, or the inference? I wanted to ask, but a warning glance from Max dissuaded me.
There’d always been an expectation that dresses were worn by the girls of the family, and suits by boys, for all formal occasions. Sunday lunch, following church, was a formal occasion. I had bowed out of church, but JC, Max, Stephanie and the girls all went. I wondered how my Tavvy and Paul would adapt these days. For Tavvy, being told to wear a dress would probably mean she came in something short, tight and black with her piercings and ink on show. But Paul would have been happy to comply. He was fond of ironing his shirts. Here was order and ritual, compared to the rather bohemian affair that had been the family home in Brooklyn.
Stephanie, observing the scene before her at the table, said, ‘Well, don’t we all look nice.’
‘In my day,’ Mother said, ‘we socialised on a Saturday night over fish paste sandwiches. We had crepe paper decorations and a five-piece swing band. At the Mossman Hall. They played Buddy Holly and Elvis songs. We dressed properly. Stockings and shoes.’
Our mother had grown up in Far North Queensland before running away to Sydney. It was there she’d met our father after her first husband, also a politician—a senator no less, and thirty years her senior—had died of a heart attack in a Kings Cross brothel. Max had been less than a year old. For years, our mother pretended she
had no family. The senator’s family had disowned her, showing no interest in Max and paying our mother off. Her family up in Queensland were all dead, so she’d said. Until a sister showed up. I’d been rather impressed by her. I think she was called Frankie. I’d been about fourteen at the time. She’d drunk two longnecks for breakfast. But that was the first and last time we ever saw her.
‘Grandma, how old are you?’ Ella asked.
‘Goodness, Ella, don’t you know it’s rude to ask people their age?’ said Mother.
‘People ask me all the time,’ said Grace, seated beside Stephanie.
‘Well, it’s different when you’re a child,’ said Mother, stretching her neck so she looked even more like an ostrich. Cancer had accentuated her already chiselled bones, and given her a little panic in the eyes. The wig was a plea for another turn, I thought. A turn at being sexy, young and glamorous all over again. After the senator’s death, Mother and Max, widow and baby, had been on the front of the Women’s Weekly in matching white dresses.
If I’d met our mother in a counselling session, I would have thought shock. This woman has had a shock. And I would have trodden carefully.
‘Manners are everything, Ella,’ Mother said. ‘You’ll learn that in life. It’s what separates us from the great unwashed.’
‘Sometimes I am a king, then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, and so I am; then crushing penury persuades me I was better when a king,’ said our father, lifting his face from the onion tart entree.
Max traded a look with me. Ella grabbed up her iPhone and tapped in the words.
‘Richard the Second,’ she said.
‘You’re quick,’ I said.
‘Do we have to have phones at the table?’ asked Mother.
‘Mum, it’s her project, you know that,’ said Stephanie.
‘Even the idea of a child having a phone …’ said Mother. ‘Awful.’
‘Or the idea of Dad now only quoting Shakespeare,’ I said.
‘Oh, well, we could all have seen that coming,’ said Mother. And laughed.