by Tim Buckley
I wanted to tell Bobby how Emily and I often came at things from different angles but, hey-ho, it had always worked out and so we just got on with it. Lately, though, the differences had got bigger, without me realising. Even before Cara was taken, we didn’t travel much anymore. We’d stopped going to gigs or to festivals. Even the little bit of socialising we did here dried up. I thought at first it was because we had a baby in tow and that was just how it was, but now I didn’t think that was it. I think Cara was just an excuse for Emily to stop doing the things she didn’t really enjoy doing anyway, but just did because I wanted to do them. And even that, even those changes, I could live with. I put it down to getting a bit older and life moving on. I didn’t like it so much, but what can you do, right?
I wanted to tell her that I could live with the fact that we wanted different things, or that we had to make compromises from time to time. That’s part of being with somebody and, fuck knows, Emily made sacrifices for Cara; she’d had to put her life on hold. But what I couldn’t live with and what I could never accept was deception. We had to be able to trust each other implicitly. Without the remotest doubt. Without even having to think about it. I had to know that I could trust her and she me. But she lied to me, twice, and so I didn’t know if I could trust her anymore. If we didn’t have that, we had nothing. The trust was gone. Can you ever get that back?
I couldn’t tell Bobby that Emily lied to me about the night Cara was taken. I couldn’t tell her how angry I was but that the anger gave way until I actually felt sorry for her. She made a mistake, a huge, awful, maybe unforgiveable mistake, but she needed me. She was in bits and I… well, I love her. I loved her. Fuck it, I still do. So we got past it but, to be honest, we never really talked it out. We ignored it a bit and figured we’d come back to it. I know that was wrong, stupid maybe, but it was the only way we could get through it. And we did, get through it, I mean. She’d put it between us and now that it was out in the open, we were somehow able to work together, like we did before.
And I certainly couldn’t tell her that some crackpot scam artist contacted Emily when I went down to Adelaide and said he could find Cara “by searching the universe for her energy”. I couldn’t tell her that Emily sent him the money, a small fortune. That’s why she disappeared off to Sydney, to meet him. Of course, she gets there and he’s nowhere to be found, him and our money. I couldn’t tell her that that’s what Emily was doing while we were calling every hotel in the central business district, trying to find her.
I wanted to tell Bobby all of that, but I didn’t because it would have been a betrayal and so I took a long mouthful of the wine to cover the silence. It was a big, brutish Barossa that tasted of dark red fruits and tomorrow’s hangover. Emily didn’t like the style, she said “a wine shouldn’t have to beat you over the head to be noticed”. I liked it. One more thing we didn’t agree on.
“We had a row and I left,” was what I said, was all I could think to say.
She waited for me to go on, to explain.
“That’s all happened a bit quick, hasn’t it?” she said, when I didn’t. “I thought you guys were doing well since you brought her back from Sydney?”
“So did I, Bobby. I really did. But it turns out there’s so much damage under the covers, where nobody can see.”
She was quiet for a few moments, trying to take it all in, and we sat in silence and drank. The cicadas chirped and the stars twinkled and I just wanted to sit there forever and never go back to the real world again.
Eventually, she leaned forward across the table and put her hand on my arm.
“I wish I could help, mate, really,” she said. “So what are you going to do now?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s broken and I don’t know if I can fix it. And I don’t know how to go about starting all over again. I just don’t have the energy, you know?”
She picked up the bottle from the deck beside her chair and poured two huge glasses.
“I know,” she said, “but tell you what – for now, let’s just get pissed, yeah?”
42
I’m pretty sure Emily wouldn’t have approved of the wine Bobby and I drank that night, and I know she wouldn’t have approved of how much of it we put away. I vaguely remember Karl coming in about midnight and looking at us with some alarm before going straight up to bed and I think we kept on going for a few more hours after that. I obviously wasn’t in any shape to drive home so I slept in the spare room where I woke up the next morning with my heart racing and my head pounding. I groaned and turned over to bury my face in the pillow. I heard the radio playing downstairs and looked at my watch. Nine thirty. Shit. I hauled myself out of bed and, as I pulled on my clothes, my phone pinged. It was Nathan, there was a problem on the site. Of course there was. There was always a problem on site.
Karl was in the kitchen when I got downstairs, finishing breakfast and putting his bowl in the dishwasher as I walked into the kitchen. He was caught in the middle of the war and it must have been awkward for him. He wouldn’t take sides but I knew that, deep down, his allegiance would be with Emily.
“Hey, Karl,” I said, “good night last night?”
“Yeah, good thanks. You?”
I smiled and shrugged.
“I think so. All a bit of a haze, to be honest.”
He grinned and if there was any tension, it was diluted a little bit.
“Shouldn’t try and out-drink my mum!”
“You’d think I’d know that by now, wouldn’t you?!”
“There’s coffee in the pot,” he said. “And toast… and… you know, whatever.”
“Thanks, mate, I’ve got to get going though.”
“Yeah, me too, got to get over to…”
He stopped short and looked down at his feet.
“It’s all right, mate,” I said. “You’ve heard then?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, going a bright shade of red. “Sorry…”
“Have you been over there the last couple of days?” I asked.
“No. I’ve had exam resits so I’ve been at school. Why?”
“Someone painted graffiti on the machinery shed wall. I painted over it but Emily’s going to notice. I’ve tried to let her know before she sees it but I haven’t been able to get hold of her. Ask her to give me a call when you see her, yeah?”
“OK.”
“And can you try to do a better job painting over it than I have? Maybe paint the whole wall and it might need a second coat.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. And I know this is going to be a bit awkward, but don’t worry, I’m glad you’re working with Emily. She’s going to need the help more than ever so you make sure things keep ticking over at the vineyard, yeah?”
“Yeah, I will.” He picked up his backpack. “I have to get going. See ya, Wilde.”
“See ya, Karl.”
I got back to the apartment, showered and changed, and headed for the site. It all seemed a bit quiet when I got there and I found Nathan in the cottage preparing some of the lumber to make the cross-beams in the roof. When he saw me coming, he stood up and wiped sweat from his brow, then shook his head.
“Bad news, Wilde,” he said, without preamble. “Four of the guys are threatening to quit. They’re looking for more money. I said they’d have to wait until you got here and we could talk about it, but I told them they can pack their bags if they want to because there’s no more money to pay them.”
I should have been shocked or dismayed or something but I’d taken so many punches to the gut that this latest didn’t seem to hurt so much.
“They’re all earning pretty well, Nate, aren’t they?” I said. “What’s this all about?”
He turned to a couple of the guys who were working in the kitchen.
“Robbie?” he called over. “Got a minute?”
“Hey, Wilde,” Robbie said, wiping his hands on a cloth tied to his work belt as he came over. “Nathan tell you the news?”
“Yeah, he did. What happened?”
He raised his eyebrows and scratched his head.
“Bit of a bolt from the blue, to be honest. There’s been a bit of grumbling since Stevie’s accident, a lot of it from Cooper. Some of the boys talked to the family and they found out the insurance didn’t pay out. I know it’s because he wasn’t wearing a lid, but there’s a rumour going round that you’re running out of cash and you didn’t pay the premiums. Nathan and I have told them the real story but you know what these guys are like, a rumour is like a bushfire, it’s hard to put out.”
“If they think we’re out of cash, why ask for more money?”
He shrugged.
“Bryce Cooper’s not the brightest monkey in the zoo, the others are just following him. To be honest, they know they can get more money out there, there’s a lot going on. They’re just testing you, I’d say.”
“Would they really leave? If we play hardball, I mean?”
He looked at Nathan, then nodded.
“I think they might.”
“Can we finish on time without them?” I asked.
Nathan shook his head.
“We’d be down to four blokes, cut in half. No way we can finish on time with that crew.”
“Can we replace them?”
“I’ve put some feelers out but word spreads fast, I’m not getting any bites. There’s so much construction going on right now, there’s no shortage of work. Guys won’t take a chance on a job that might not be funded, that might fold.” He looked over my shoulder and nodded to something behind me. “Look out, here they come now.”
“G’day, Nate, Wilde,” said Bryce Cooper, with a sly smile. Cooper was a labourer who seemed to have been elected spokesman for the group. He was a migrant labourer, I think he came originally from somewhere up in the Northern Territory. He was a short, squat man but hard and lean and muscular with forearms the size of my legs and hands like shoeboxes. He had no particular skill nor was he qualified in any trade but he was as strong as three men and that was qualification enough on a job like this one. I hadn’t had much to do with him over the weeks but in the dealings I had had with him, he’d struck me as a bit of a smart-arse with an inflated sense of his own importance. I didn’t like him and I was fairly sure he resented me and the wealth he thought I had. We’d had a couple of run-ins over little things like looking after the equipment and turning up on time to work, things that Nathan would usually have handled, but Cooper rubbed me up the wrong way and I’d stepped in where I should probably have let Nathan deal with it. Now, he was annoying me and we hadn’t even started talking. I bit my tongue and let Nathan take the lead.
“Hey, Bryce,” he said. “I told Wilde about your demands, why don’t you talk to him yourself?”
“Yeah, thing is, Wilde,” Cooper said, “we reckon you’re not giving us a fair go. We’re working flat out here, but we could get better money for easier work in the city. You have to give us more money. Or we’ll find something else.” He shrugged. “Simple as that.”
The bile rising in my throat burned but there was nothing to be gained from having a shouting match in front of everyone. By the same token, there was no way I was giving in to this snake. I tried to mask my contempt but I’m pretty sure he knew what I was thinking.
“I can’t pay you more, Cooper,” I said. “There isn’t any more money. You guys are on good wages, we all know that. So either get back to work and we’ll pretend this never happened or get on your bikes and go. I don’t care.”
He obviously hadn’t expected the conversation to go this way and he was taken aback. The others shuffled around and mumbled to each other and Cooper knew he was losing face.
“Course there’s more money,” he growled, his cockiness giving way to sullen anger. “You got plenty and more where that came from. We’re just looking for our fair cut, you owe us that.”
“What I owe you, Cooper, is a fair wage. And that’s what I pay you now.” It was my turn to shrug. “I don’t know who you think you are or why you think I won’t let you fuck off out of here, but I could throw a stone in the Schoolhouse tonight and hit a dozen blokes better than you. So that’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
He looked at the others, his face like thunder.
“Come on, boys,” he snapped, “we’re out of here.” He pointed a finger at me. “See how you do without half your crew, Wilde. You’ll be sorry you let us go, I’m telling you, you’ll be sorry.”
He stormed off and his cronies turned and followed. The other workers stopped what they were doing and watched them go. For a moment I was afraid there might be a mutiny and I might lose the lot of them.
“All right, fellas,” Nathan called out to them, “show’s over. Let’s get back to work.”
The buzzing and hammering started up again and that disaster, at least, seemed to have been averted.
“Sorry, Nathan,” I mumbled, conscious with the benefit of hindsight that I’d perhaps dropped us into a deep hole with no way out. “I could have handled that better, I guess.”
Nathan shrugged and grinned.
“Blimey, Wilde, aren’t you a bastard, after all?”
I laughed and Robbie tried to hide a grin as he turned and went back to work.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“Let them cool down for a bit,” Nathan said. “They’ll be in the pub for the rest of the day, no doubt about that. Maybe talk to them tomorrow.”
“So can we get them back?” I asked.
“It’s all about the money, mate, simple as that,” he said. “Robbie’s heard they were offered work on a job in Bunbury, a new office block. It’s not very skilled work so I don’t think they’ll be getting much more money there. Maybe if we offered them a small raise, maybe that might turn their heads? Wouldn’t have to be a lot but the problem with that is we’d have to give everybody a bump. That’d be expensive.”
“Giving them a raise is like giving in and I’m not giving in to that bastard,” I said. “If we give them something, he’ll have to give us something in return. Or at least have to deliver something extra.” I thought about it for a moment. “How about we give everybody a bonus if we finish before the deadline? Would that tempt them back?” I suggested it but I knew there wasn’t a lot in the pot to make up much of a bonus fund.
“Depends how much, I guess,” said Nathan. “But they’re still going to be worried that this will blow up.”
“Can we get Robbie to go and talk to them, sound them out? They probably won’t listen to me or to you, but they might listen to him. Tell them we’ll cut the whole team into any profit we make when we sell the lighthouse. Ten per cent of any profit split between the workers that are there when we finish.”
Nathan raised his eyebrows and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and back.
“You sure about that, Wilde?” he said. “You really want to commit to paying a bonus?”
“We don’t really have a choice, do we? If they don’t come back, we’re screwed. So we have to do what we have to do.”
“OK,” he said, but he wasn’t convinced. “I’ll get Rob to go and talk to them, see what it’ll take to get them back. But are you sure you’ll be ready to sell the place when it’s done? I know everything’s changed but what about the plans you had for a restaurant and all the rest?”
I laughed. All of those plans had gone up in flames when Emily and I came apart and it was almost funny now to think about how committed I had been to what was probably a pipe dream all along.
“That’s all fine, Nathan, but if we don’t finish this and if I have to pay to knock it all down, then I’m left with absolutely nothing but a worthless piece of land; no money, no lighthouse, nothing. Better to be left w
ith something and share that with the boys, even if that means we have to give something to Cooper.”
The truth was that my map of the future had been wiped clean off the board in the days that had just gone by and I had to draw it again from scratch. The lighthouse came with too much baggage to be a part of that new future. I just wanted to move on, maybe even move away from there, so I had to shed the anchor that the lighthouse had become. If we could sell that and sell the vineyard and the house, there might be a way out of this mess after all.
“There’s one other thing, Wilde,” Nathan said, although it was clear he didn’t want to. “Robbie wouldn’t say it but, well, there’s been a lot of talk about you guys since that article. You’re not flavour of the month round here and that’s getting to the boys. Some of them are feeling pressure to stop working here, to stop working for you. Sorry, mate, but that’s just the way it is.”
43
If we were going to have the money to finish the job, let alone have enough left over to pay a bonus, then I was going to have to get my money – our money – back from Cathal. I called him but there was no reply so I left a message. When I’d heard nothing by the end of the day, I called again. This time he answered, but I could tell it was reluctantly.
“So how’s the cheese business, Cathal?” I said, trying to keep it light although all I wanted to do was shout at him to give me back my money and to hell with his business.
He told me about the challenges he’d had getting the whole thing on track – problems with suppliers, the endless circus of administration and red tape, the impotence of a small business in the face of the big retailers. He told me too that he had finally split up with his partner.
“Well, I suppose that’s probably a good thing,” I said, “he sounded like he was more likely to shaft you than anything else. Did you at least get a good deal out of him?”
He was quiet for a moment and the silence promised more bad news.