by Heather Rose
It was close to 1 am when I left. Navigating the garden path, I saw a car I recognised pull into the facility. It was JC. I turned to go back and meet him, then I realised he was not alone.
From the passenger’s side stepped Becky Walton. JC walked around to take her hand. Then he leaned down and kissed her. It was a lover’s kiss. It may have had recent sex in it too. I took out my phone and photographed them. They walked towards the door hand in hand. I photographed that too. When he pressed the buzzer, they dropped hands, stepped apart, and a nurse came and let them in. By the time I had walked up the hill again, my rage at his deceit had settled into the pit of my stomach.
Viper knows, I thought, remembering how he had observed the two of them. We Tasmanians never fly far from the nest. Not in our hearts.
Did JC know he knew? I was enraged for Stephanie. I remembered Ben waiting by the kitchen table with a bag packed when I flew in late one night. Like some scene from Heartburn.
‘What’s this?’ I had asked him.
‘Astrid, there’s someone else. I need to be with her.’
I’d been calm at the time. I had been reasonable.
‘How long? How long has it been going on, Ben?’
‘Six months. I’m really hoping we could all be family together, somehow.’
‘Is she married?’
‘Divorced.’
‘Children?’
‘Two.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Thirty-four.’ That had stung a bit.
‘Why, Ben?’
‘You know, you stopped being fun a long time ago.’
‘Please leave.’
‘I am.’
I came home one day and he’d taken every wedding present we’d been given. When I’d asked him why, he said they’d come from his friends. We’d been married for so long, I didn’t remember things like that anymore. I thought of everything as ours.
I had requested we see a counsellor. She told him to stand up and imagine a circle around him. That’s your personal space, she said. Now imagine that Astrid has the same circle. So if you want to come into Astrid’s space, you need to ask. That means the family home now. That’s Astrid’s space.
It was after that he took the paintings. Tavvy rang me. ‘Mum, I just came home and there’s all this art missing off the walls.’ I changed the locks. Everyone should have to get divorced from the person they’re married to, just to see who that person really is.
All of that went through my mind, thinking of JC and Becky and Stephanie. Had it been going on all these years? Or had it started again recently?
I waited for JC to come home. I heard the car come up the driveway half an hour later. I heard the door shut quietly and his footsteps on the side path.
I said, ‘JC?’
‘Jesus, Ace, what are you doing awake?’
‘Come sit by the pool with me,’ I said.
‘Now?’ he said.
‘Now,’ I said.
It was a warm, moist, big sky night with a waxing moon, a week from full. The pool was scrotum-shaped with lights that changed colours from blue to purple to red to green to gold.
‘JC, I didn’t tell you this, but I’ve been going down to see Dad at night. If I’m restless, can’t sleep. I went tonight, after the dinner.’
I could sense him stiffen.
‘I saw you with Becky. I saw you kissing Becky.’
‘Ace,’ he said.
‘Are you fucking mad?’
‘Jesus, Ace,’ he said.
‘JC, you’re the premier. You are going to get caught. It’s going to be everywhere. You think people don’t talk?’ I don’t know why that was my first concern, but it was.
‘We’re really careful. It’s only once or twice a year. I …’ So it wasn’t new. It was very old.
‘You’re a pig. You do not deserve your wife. You do not deserve your girls,’ I said.
‘Easy, Ace.’
‘She gave up her career for you. She keeps us together as a family. You have to stop this.’
‘You know how it is with me and Becky, Ace. It’s …’
‘Oh, yes, I remember. I remember when you were fifteen and seventeen—but you’re fifty-six and you’re married and you’re the premier of this state.’
‘Ace, I don’t know how to …’
‘Why the hell didn’t you marry Becky?’
‘Because she wouldn’t have me.’
‘What does that tell you?’
‘You can’t say anything, Ace. You can’t tell Steph.’
‘Who else knows, JC?’
He was silent.
‘Viper?’ I asked him.
He said nothing.
‘You stupid idiot. He’s got that over you?’
He said nothing, just sat there silhouetted against the pool lights, his big bulky frame with the lights behind him going blue, purple, red, green.
‘Has he called it in?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, so quietly.
‘Maybe?’ I was beyond furious by now.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He called it in.’
‘What did you have to do?’
He was silent. Then he stirred and stood up.
‘I had to get the bridge finished by election day,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
It is immensely difficult in Hobart to find somewhere discreet you can meet. She was having an affair with my brother. She was the other woman in Stephanie’s life. I had hardly slept at all. But that wasn’t why I was meeting her. I wanted information from Becky.
I had come all the way from New York to help JC. And to help causes bigger than JC. Becky hadn’t been a friend for a long time, but she had been my closest friend growing up. As the PM’s adviser, she would almost certainly know what was really going on here. Even if JC didn’t. Would she turn up? I was pretty sure she would.
When she emerged from under the she-oaks above the cliffs, I walked to meet her. She hugged me. ‘It’s so good to see you, Ace.’
‘You too,’ I said. And it was, despite everything.
‘Beck, turn off your phone, please,’ I said. ‘I really mean off. Mine is off too.’
She lifted her eyebrows. She did as I asked and I shoved both our phones into a Faraday bag.
‘You’re not taking any chances,’ she said. And I knew then that she knew something and she knew I knew something. This was going to get interesting.
At 5.30 am the light was low and the place was deserted. In another hour there would be walkers and joggers making their way between Bellerive Beach and Howrah Beach. Here on the cliff edge, away from the track, we were almost invisible. But she was right, I wasn’t taking any chances.
I motioned to her to go first and followed her down over the edge on a tiny path to the cave that made us entirely invisible unless you were a seagull, or someone out on the water with binoculars. But it was early and there were no sailors, and here in the cave we were in shadow. The cave mouth looked all the way down the Derwent and we could just make out the arc of the bridge as it curved across to Bruny.
Becky said, ‘I remember you having sex with Lance Van der Laan just over there.’
‘Oh, God, I remember that too,’ I said.
‘All those ways you invented to get out of the house to see him. I was always in awe of your nerve.’
‘I learned from the master,’ I said. ‘Mistress.’
She said, ‘Should I be nervous?’
‘I saw you and JC together last night at the nursing home.
He knows. I’ve told him.’
She blanched. In her face I could still see the messed-up younger Beck. She’d had much older step-siblings and bitter parents. Our house had been her home too. Our mother had always liked Becky, mostly because Becky’s mother was the centre of a certain old Sandy Bay elite that mattered. And Becky had a way of being charming that always took our mother by surprise. She remembered our mother’s birthday and found just the right scarf or piece of jewellery. Her p
arents didn’t give her their time or their interest, so they made up for it with a hefty allowance, enough for good presents and all the best drugs. And a fancy car on her seventeenth that allowed us to escape to places like this.
‘Ace …’ she said.
‘I love Stephanie,’ I said. ‘This will ruin their marriage if she finds out.’ I wasn’t sure it would, but it was worth saying.
‘I had to see Angus. I begged JC to take me. I was so worried I might never see him again. He’s so fragile now.’
Our Dad had treated Beck like one of his own. ‘Ah, the third daughter is here,’ he’d say when he found Beck at the dinner table.
I waited for whatever was coming next.
Beck said very softly, ‘He’s always been my weakness. JC. You know that, Ace. I don’t know why. Young, not so young, fat, thin, he’s under my skin.’
‘Why didn’t you just marry him?’
‘Because I didn’t—I don’t—believe in marriage … I tried. After he and Stephanie got married. But it only lasted six months. I don’t want that sort of life, Ace. I don’t want anyone to own me.’
Oh, I knew that feeling now.
‘You need to stop, Beck. It will ruin him. It might already be ruining him. Viper knows.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘Oh yes he does.’
‘Shit. Shit shit shit,’ she said.
‘But that’s not why I asked you to meet.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘What’s going on with the bridge?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, a shade of contrived innocence in her voice.
‘The Bruny Bridge, Beck,’ I said.
‘I can’t, Ace,’ she said. ‘It’s too dangerous. For me. For you. You don’t want to get involved.’
‘Believe me, I do.’
‘I won’t—’ she began.
‘I have photos of you and JC last night,’ I said.
‘Fuck, Ace, who did you become?’
‘Someone who needs to know.’
She paused. I waited. She got a little teary. Then she reached out and took my hand. We’d been sisters of sorts.
‘If I tell you, I’ll be breaching the Official Secrets Act and the counterespionage laws. There’s new legislation. I’ll get a life sentence if anyone finds out it came from me. You understand? Twenty-five years, Ace. You too. We’ll both go to prison. So if it’s a choice between my name getting splashed about for having an affair with your brother or this, that’s the choice you’re giving me.’
If that was the truth, then it was worse than that, far worse than she could know. But I needed her to go on. I needed to know what the PM’s adviser knew. Tasmanian to Tasmanian in a cave from childhood with our phones off and the sun just risen.
I pulled down the sock on my left foot. There was a quarter moon tattoo. Beck did the same. There was hers. A trip we’d taken to a backyard parlour for my eighteenth birthday. When my mother glimpsed it a few days later, she had been furious. Which had been the whole idea, of course.
‘Break the rules,’ said Beck.
‘Break the rules,’ I said. Our motto all those years ago.
‘When I got your note, I thought maybe you already knew,’ she said.
I looked at her. ‘Beck, I need small steps. From the top?’
‘You’ll destroy the photos,’ she said.
‘Done,’ I said.
‘I’m not doing this to save my own skin, Ace,’ she said. ‘Or even JC’s. I’m doing it because it’s been burning a hole in me ever since I found out. I’m doing it because … well, you’ll understand in a minute.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
She stared down the river, took a deep breath and let it out. ‘The government is selling Tasmania to the Chinese government.’
I couldn’t speak for a moment. Then I managed a feeble, ‘What?’
‘They’re selling it,’ said Beck. ‘The Chinese government are going to put their high-value people here. They’re also going to bring some of their most sensitive technology here, away from mainland China, to keep it safe. Agriculture, aquaculture, IT. It’s a big plan.’
‘To live here …’ I repeated.
‘You understand about their ranking system, yes?’ she asked.
I nodded. The problem May Chen’s father had run into.
‘Chinese citizens chosen for this project will have an initial two-year stay. If these first residents maintain their social score, they’ll get another five years,’ Beck said. ‘Like convicts. But the reverse. A reward, not a punishment. If they do well here in Tasmania, they’ll continue to improve their social score. And they’ll be the first to be able to cache their ranking for inheritance by their children. Nobody knows the input or the algorithms—it’s made up of all the personal stuff about a person … but it extends way beyond that. Every business that interacts with China also gets a score. So this is a way for Australian businesses to grow their status in China by doing business in the new Tasmania.’
I looked at her, waiting for more. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, frowning.
‘To stave off dissent, of course,’ she said. ‘Those people are going to pose the greatest threat to the Communist regime. They’ll be the ones who’ll get restless and want to experience capitalism. They’ll urge for democracy. Want a free economy. The Communist Party is getting more and more pushback, especially since the Eternal Fragrant President announced his lifetime tenure. The CCP keeps trying to clamp down on dissidents, but the world is watching. They can’t hide their concentration camps and prisoner abuse so well. So they’re taking a gamble.’
‘They’ve sold Tasmania?’ I was still back at square one.
‘Sold,’ she said. ‘As soon as the bridge is opened, it all goes into play. The Chinese have already been making significant investments here. In the past five years thousands of homes and over half a million hectares of agricultural land have found their way into Chinese hands. All either private investment, or investment that can be traced back to the Chinese government. All up, almost a third of all agricultural land and around fifteen per cent of private dwellings. They’ve been smart. They use Chinese already living here to buy stuff so the stats don’t look so bad for foreign ownership. Students who got fast-tracked citizenship.’
‘Keep talking,’ I said.
‘About ten years ago,’ she continued, ‘pressure was put on the FIRB—the Foreign Investment Review Board—to tighten the eligibility rules. A few people had started to notice that great swathes of agricultural land beyond the Blue Mountains, up in Queensland, south of Perth, were being bought up in parcels below the two-hundred-and-fifty-two-million- or even the fifty-five-million-dollar thresholds. It’s all online. Every decision is made individually.’
‘So someone has been stacking the Foreign Investment Review Board?’
‘Well, they get politicised by government. But Beijing started taking a great interest in the members of FIRB. And our politicians, too. Suddenly there was a lot of travel to China, people being wined and dined at expensive restaurants in Canberra, Sydney, Beijing, Shanghai, Melbourne. Absolutely no different from what’s happened in the past with the British and the US, let me say. The same as the Chinese telcos. Very good at throwing money around for trips and conferences for politicians and advisers.
‘FIRB is not under the spotlight,’ she said. She had always been like this. Super smart. A debating champion. When she was interested in something, she was articulate. ‘By the time anyone finds out about these deals, the crops are already in the ground, the cattle off to market. It’s a slow-burn kind of situation. Until someone noticed that the fire was starting to run wild. Suddenly big, heritage grazing land, farms with generations of history, some of the most prized land in the Hunter Valley, was going into foreign ownership. Not just any foreign ownership. To the Chinese.’
‘Like the Japanese buying the Gold Coast back in the seventies. Or America buying our mining interests,’ I suggested.
She
nodded. ‘But then the Yanks stepped away. They were our biggest investor. And our protector.’
‘And how is the federal government dealing with this?’ I asked. A weight was settling in the pit of my stomach.
‘Cabinet already fell foul of Beijing when they tried curtailing foreign ownership in our energy plants and limiting the telcos. Beijing was getting very unhappy. If we lost the students, it would have a devastating effect on Australia’s economy. The same with the tourists. They did it to Taiwan. China instructed citizens to cancel their travels plans and Taiwan lost a third of their tourism industry almost overnight.
‘They did the same to South Korea,’ she said. ‘When South Korea put in a missile detection program with funding from the US, China ceased accepting imports, banned tourism, even did petty things like blacking out the faces of South Koreans on Chinese television shows. And South Korea backed down. The Philippines are in the same boat. Japan too.’
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. Beck went on. ‘Russia and China have both begun to look like capitalist societies, albeit with dictators as heads of state. People like to imagine real communism is dead. And in Australia, we have no sense what the retreat of individual freedoms feels like because we’ve only read about it in history books—and most of us don’t read those. So people can’t see it coming. Then the US gets that president, and we see the values we relied on America to uphold trickle away like sand. We’ve all heard about the dangers of speaking out in China. Being a journalist, or a lawyer, or even a movie star who dares to question the status quo. You disappear. In America the same thing is beginning to happen. I actually like our PM, but he had to choose.’
‘Choose?’
‘America or China,’ she said. ‘We’re already completely reliant on their economy. It was a small step, really. China offered a lot of money. I’m guessing the PM was convinced that the Chinese had too much leverage. Australia stood to lose too much if we didn’t.’
‘Sell Tasmania?’ It was barely a whisper.