by Tim Buckley
“You know I don’t have any money left, Pete?” I said. “You know I can’t pay for that?”
He shrugged.
“That’s above my pay-grade, Wilde. That goes up to the lawyers and they’ll do whatever it is they do. I have to tell you, though – they’re bastards. They’d pick the flesh off your bones with their own teeth.”
Perspective is a wonderful thing. I had an art teacher at school called Mr Fitzmaurice. Never was there a man less suited to the teaching profession but he was never going to feed his family through the art he so clearly loved and so he cast his beloved pearls before the crotch-scratching, adolescent swine in his classroom and winced as they wreaked their footless havoc on the theory and practice of painting. I was as lacking in talent as any of my classmates but I did at least have a passing interest in the history of the great painters that gave him some respite from the philistinism. So he tried to teach me how to draw. Balance and contrast, unity and proportion all sailed far over my head, but perspective was the one thing I could actually get my head around. I would spend the whole class drawing that long, narrowing cuboid tunnel that mimics the eye’s focus over distance and I’d hand it to him proudly to go with all of the others that I’d painstakingly crafted during the year. There was never a picture, never a scene or a setting, just a long, narrowing tunnel criss-crossed with perfectly positioned parallel and perpendicular lines. I failed art, of course, but I got perspective.
Six months before, three months even, the thought of losing the lighthouse would have been a huge blow. A month before, it would have hurt me deeply because it would have been to lose something that I’d shared with Cara and something that was keeping my mind occupied in her absence. But that day, the day after I’d killed a man with a baseball bat to the back of the skull, I could see it in the tunnel and it was no longer the catastrophe that it would once have been. So I just shrugged and thanked Baxter for his time.
“Que serà, I suppose,” I said, shaking his hand and leaving his office without another word of argument. What would have been the point?
The next day, an official served me with notice that the council was applying for repossession of the lighthouse and the petition would be heard by the district court in Bunbury in five days. Things could move quickly when the state had a stake, it seemed. I called Cecil Farnham and he suggested I come to his office to “devise a strategy”. I could actually hear the air-quotes in his voice. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything that was going to make this better. Unless you counted running away as a “strategy”. Farnham did have a few other alternatives up his sleeve and he seemed more hopeful when I went to see him the next day than he had before. Those alternatives relied on legal principles that meant nothing to me but I trusted Cecil and he at least sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Based on the research he had done, he was putting his money on a case in Esperance where a tranche of public land was put into a common ownership trust jointly between a private individual whose property relied on it for access and the local municipality. In that case, the municipality was allowed to count the land held in common as part of his plot for the calculation of property rates. If the municipality in that case could count the land as part of the plot for its rateable valuation, Farnham would assert, then surely I could insist the municipality in Clovelly should count it for calculation of allowable habitable square metres. That was to be our case and it all sounded entirely sensible to me.
Back at the apartment that evening, I sat on the balcony with a beer watching the sea darken under gathering storm clouds. Its menace matched my mood. I had stopped trying to ignore the part of me that secretly hoped we would lose in court and that the council would take the lighthouse off my hands once and for all. I knew that was the wrong outcome, I knew it was just short-term relief that would lead to yet another fight over the costs of demolition and that it would just push me deeper into the morass of bureaucracy and debt. Farnham had seemed quietly confident, smug almost, that his legal argument would win the day. I think he had visions of being carried from the court on the shoulders of cheering locals, grateful that he had saved their lighthouse from the tyrannical political classes. Given my standing in town, the locals were hardly going to be on my side and there wouldn’t be much sympathy if I lost the place. I picked my beer up from the table but it was empty and I didn’t have the energy to get another so I just sat there, staring.
Back in the day when the biggest problem I had was finding a glazier to make windows for my folly, I was sitting one day at the kitchen table in the farmhouse. Cara was playing tea-shop with her dolls and I was poring over glass specification regulations and quotes from a supplier in Dunsborough. Like trying to herd flies, I couldn’t make the numbers sit still and add up. The panes that met the requirements for thickness were off in terms of weight; if the weight was right then the dimensions were wrong; if the dimensions were good then the delivery times were too long. I sighed a long, frustrated sigh and sat back in my chair with my head back and my eyes closed. I must have been that way for a few minutes, because when I opened my eyes, Cara was carefully carrying my favourite coffee mug across the floor, a frown on her face and her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth. She reached where I was sitting and put the mug – empty, of course – on the table. Then she clambered up onto my lap and gingerly picked up the mug again, handing it to me.
“No worry, Papa,” she said, shaking her head earnestly so that her pigtails ran around her cheeks. “Coffee.”
The two answers to all of my problems – coffee and my little girl. But coffee wasn’t going to cut it and Cara wasn’t here. Beer was going to have to be my refuge so I climbed out of the chair and went to the fridge. I was popping the top off a bottle when the doorbell rang. I stopped in my tracks and thought about playing dead. The fingers on one hand could have ticked off the people who knew I was here and Nathan or Cecil Farnham or Emily would have called rather than trekking all the way out there.
“Wilde? I know you’re in there, open the bloody door!”
The other person who knew where I was. I winced and opened the door.
“Hey, Mitch, what…”
He pushed past me into the apartment and picked up my newly opened beer off the kitchen counter.
“Fancy a beer, Mitch?” I said, as he took a long draught.
“What have you been saying to Nathan Price?” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Mitch was usually the most laid-back person I knew, save for the few times I’d seen him riled or angry, so this agitated version was a stranger to me.
“What are you talking about, Mitch?”
“Nathan Price. He came up to me in the street today and warned me to stay away from you, that you had buddies who didn’t take kindly to people messing you about.”
I waved away his ranting.
“Don’t worry about Nate, he’s just looking out for me.”
“Yeah, but what did you tell him?”
“I told him what we said we’d tell people – we had a row, it got a bit rough, then we sorted it out and we all lived happily ever after. I told him that it was as much my fault as yours. Like I say, he’s just watching out for me. I’ll have a talk to him tomorrow, make sure he knows it’s all good. What did you say to him?”
“Nothing. He just walked away before I could say anything.”
“Good. Remember, we just had an argument. Don’t tell anyone what it was about, don’t make up any complicated story that we’ll have to remember. We had a row, it’s over, we’re mates again. End of. All right?”
He took another drink and nodded but his eyes told a different story, darting around the apartment like he was trying to catch a bug. I hadn’t expected this side of him. He’d been so calm and pragmatic the night before that I’d assumed he’d take events in his stride like he always did. I’d never expected that I’d have to keep him on the rails.
“Listen, Mitch,” I said, “what did you do with Cooper’s backpack, the one he had on last night?”
“I wrapped it up with him, in the tarp.”
“And the bat – did you clean it off? I mean really clean it off?”
He nodded.
“Good. Look, relax. Nobody’s going to miss Cooper and, if they do, there’s nothing to suggest anything other than he wandered off to another job like he has every time before.”
I hoped I sounded calmer than I felt. I was racked with the same dread that had taken hold of Mitch, that somebody would miss Cooper or that somebody would have seen us at the vineyard or in Leewara. But as long as we stayed calm, there was really no reason for anybody to suspect anything and life would go on as before.
“Got another beer?” Mitch asked, holding up the bottle.
“I think we should go easy on the beer for a while, Mitch. We need to be sharp, we can’t let our guard down. And we probably shouldn’t be seen together any more than we have in the past. Let’s just keep everything normal.”
“Guess you’re right. I’ll get off.” He walked to the front door and turned as he opened it. “Good luck, Wilde.”
I had more to lose than Mitch – he, after all, was only an accessory – but I trusted him that he would never knowingly give me up. What I hadn’t prepared for was that he might panic and drop us both in it. I would have to keep an eye on him for a while.
60
The day of the court hearing came round and I went to Bunbury to hear the case. I wouldn’t be called to take any part but I wanted to be there even though Cecil told me there wasn’t really any point. His bullish optimism regarding the legal arguments was infectious and I was actually feeling quietly confident about the hearing. I had dismissed any lingering suggestion that losing the lighthouse might be best and I was excited again about the prospect of getting it finished. I had spent the days before trying to find a way to make the money I had left go as far as possible to meet the commitments I’d made to the council. That proved difficult – impossible, in fact – but if we got through the hearing then I figured I could go back to Pete Baxter with a new set of plans. Maybe the council would be more willing to compromise to get the job done and to avoid going back to court again.
Farnham might not have been the London- or New York-style super-lawyer that we’ve got used to seeing on television but he had a casually confident demeanour and he seemed to take everything in his stride. He looked perfectly at home in the courtroom, as though the other side was taking him on in his manor. He was on casual conversation terms with the judge and he seemed to know all of the court officials. The whole thing was over in less than an hour.
Counsel for the municipality was a young lawyer, she couldn’t have been too long out of law school. She fluffed her lines a couple of times and at one point she managed to call the judge “Your Highness”, to much chuckling from the few observers in court and even from the bench. Farnham subtly but obviously shook his head and smiled knowingly from time to time, but the young brief battled gamely on. When she had set out the basis for their objection, Farnham stood up slowly and deliberately to make his case.
He quoted the facts from Esperance in detail and said, in not so many words, that the state could not have its cake and eat it. He referred to a couple of other cases, quoted some legal principles that meant nothing to me, then wrapped up his case with a florid tribute to my efforts to “preserve an important part of the state’s coastal history”. The judge seemed impressed and across the courtroom I could see Pete Baxter nodding in tacit acknowledgement as Farnham argued his case. The judge asked the municipality for their response and, given that they hadn’t brought the case off their own bat and given the fact that Baxter and I were on good terms, I felt sure that they could accept the argument while still representing fairly the objection of whoever it was that had brought the claim.
That, however, was not to be. After taking a short recess to talk with Baxter and another state official whom I didn’t know, counsel for the state set out why, in their view, the facts of the Esperance case did not apply. The essence of the argument seemed to be that in the Esperance case, the property was only accessible via the public land and as such that land was “intrinsic” to the site. The legal principles were flying around the room, the state’s counsel, Farnham and the judge all putting their points of view in a lively exchange that they seemed to consider sport. It wasn’t a game for me though, and my stomach sank the clearer it became that the state was winning. The young woman was growing into her role and, encouraged by the judge who seemed to have sympathy for her, she made solid, watertight arguments. “Intrinsic” seemed to be the crux of it, or “belonging naturally to” as she put it again and again. Even Farnham seemed impressed by the young woman’s improvisation and the judge certainly was. Cecil had warned me that it might take a couple of days for him to arrive at a conclusion but the judge needed no more time to consider. With a crack of his gavel he found for the state and it was over. The project to which I’d dedicated so much of myself was over. We were done.
Baxter stood up to leave and, when he saw me sitting there, he came over to me with the look of a mourner at a funeral.
“I’m really sorry, Wilde,” he said. “I didn’t want it to go this way.”
“I don’t understand, Pete,” I said, anger bubbling up from the disappointment. “We gave you a way out, you could have taken it, but you didn’t. Why? It was a reasonable argument and it gave you a way to let us go on but still have made the point. Why did you have to go for the kill?”
“I don’t like it anymore than you,” he said, quietly but with a hint of his own frustration, “but I’m under orders. The council has an obligation to represent the position of anybody who makes an objection.” He paused and looked around to see if anybody else was in earshot. “Especially when that objection is raised by somebody with a bit of clout. And Leo Gretz has a lot of clout.”
Gretz! Of course! I’d suspected Walter of being involved in every bit of mischief that had happened, but why would he bother with graffiti or sheep-worrying when he could use his daddy’s leverage over the council to really hit me where it hurt.
“I really am sorry, Wilde,” Baxter said and he left the courtroom.
Cecil Farnham, who had been busily shuffling and reshuffling papers while he waited for Baxter to leave, was next in the funereal line. He was genuinely upset, I think – partly that his argument had failed, but also because he had been firmly on my side. He said that he’d get in touch with the council to start negotiating our withdrawal from the site and he graciously waved away my warnings that there wasn’t much left in the pot to settle his fees.
“We’ll work something out, my boy, don’t you worry about that,” he said, and shook my hand.
Then he too left and I was alone in the court save for the janitor who was busy emptying the wastepaper baskets and mopping the floor.
61
It’s all been a bit chaotic since I got back to Clovelly, I suppose I was naïve to think it would be anything else. Just being here has been a hurricane of memories and emotions and that’s even before Emily lobbed in the hand grenade of holding on to the farm. Just being near her again, too, has been a weird emotional paradox – anger and frustration, for sure, but also the comfortable familiarity. It’s been a crazy – what? – few days? A week? Is that all?
The one thing I haven’t yet managed to do is catch up with Nathan and I’m looking forward to seeing him again. He’s a good man, Nathan, the best, and he kept me from disappearing into a dark place during some of the most difficult days of my life. So I’ve given him a call and arranged to meet him in the Schoolhouse. For old times’ sake. I get there before him and order a beer at the bar.
“Haven’t seen you for a long time, Wilde,” says Frankie, the barman, pulling a pint of porter. “How are you going?”
“Good, Frankie, t
hanks. It’s been a while, you’re right. But nothing seems to have changed much round here!”
“Mate, nothing ever changes round here!”
We chat for a few minutes and I take my beer to a table in the corner. A few of the regulars who are already tucking into the first one of the evening nod to me or wave a hand and, even though I know I’m imagining it, it feels as though I’m being allowed back in. What’s done is done, we’re moving on.
I’m flicking through the sports pages of the local paper when Nathan comes in.
“Wilde,” he shouts from the door, “it’s good to see you, you old bugger!”
He strides over and waves away my outstretched hand, enveloping me in a big bear hug.
“You’re looking good, mate!” he says, holding me back at arm’s length. “Older and uglier, but pretty good! Let me get a beer and you can fill me in. You’re ready for another one?”
It’s good to see him, really good. He’s been a rock through it all and I will always feel that I let him down. He won’t hear that but I failed him with the lighthouse. I let it get away from me and I just watched as it all fell down around us.
He comes back from the bar and I ask him about Carly and about the kids and I ask him about what he’s been doing. I’m glad to hear he’s been doing well, really well, running a big project in Mandurah. It scared the shit out of him, he says, but he thinks it’s going all right. I’m sure it is. I tell him what I’ve been up to and where I’ve been. I tell him about the pieces of work I’ve picked up and about trying to write and, I suppose, about trying to rebuild my life. I tell him about coming back here to sell the farm and how that journey’s taken an unexpected turn. I tell him about Emily and about how she wants to hold on to the place after all and after everything. I smile at that, for some reason it’s stopped making me angry.