by Gil Hogg
“Not much?” Sophie said, sickened. “It’s filthy.” Fliegler had his mouth open and she could see his long, yellow teeth. “This is not right,” she said, staring straight ahead, avoiding the man’s gaze.
Fliegler read her astutely. “You don’t like wounding Mr Travis?”
“I have scruples about doing business this way, Travis or no Travis,” she snapped, thinking she would do everything she could to stop the material going out.
“It’s what you’re paid for, my dear,” Fliegler said in a fatherly way.
“I’m not paid to do dirt,” she said, pulling on the earphones and switching to a pop music channel on the plane’s sound system.
*
When they arrived at the Big House, the operator in the radio room passed a message to John Marchmont that Paul Travis would be arriving shortly in Mirabilly. Paul usually visited Mirabilly from time to time to see friends and visit his mother’s grave. Like most of the hundreds of visitors each month he flew in and out without notice, but the operator, in common with most of the station’s staff, knew about the case and guessed the information might be significant.
Marchmont was enraged. “This man is being provocative. He’s doing his best to crawl right up my nose!” he said to Sophie.
She was glad to hear of the visit because she wanted the opportunity to see Travis. She wanted to talk to him about the case. She didn’t feel she would be acting disloyally. She simply wanted to tell him that he was in danger. She knew an approach by her would probably be misconstrued by both Marchmont and by Travis himself but she was determined to make it.
“Why shouldn’t he visit his mother’s grave? It isn’t going to hurt you,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem unreasonable, John,” Curtis Lefain said.
“It’s indelicate – at the present time,” Marchmont replied.
“Oh, come on, John, this is a town not a homestead,” Sophie said.
“I suppose you want to renew your acquaintanceship with him?” Marchmont said angrily.
“I’d like to see Paul, yes.”
Marchmont shook his head uncomprehendingly. “I trust you,” he said, and stalked out of the room.
“He’s a man of touching faith,” Werner Fliegler said to her with a sugary smile.
Sophie ignored him and went to the radio shack. She got the time of Paul’s arrival from the operator.
*
The next day at noon, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, Sophie went down to the old Heron house, which was near the cemetery, to wait. Half an hour later, Paul arrived with an armful of white carnations and went into the graveyard. There were about thirty people buried there, going back to the 1890s; the inscriptions on the crumbling stones stirred thoughts that were vignettes of Mirabilly life over more than a century.
When Paul emerged from the cemetery and paused by the gate in the shade of a red cedar, Sophie came out of the ruins of the old house and approached him on the narrow, dusty path. She felt nervous. He looked serious and very unlike a man of business, with his hands deep in his pockets, unkempt hair and loose shirtsleeves.
He had no change of expression when he saw her. “I guessed you’d be around somewhere. Come to see the shootout at the OK Corral?”
“I wanted to see you, Paul.”
“What’s the message from Marchmont?”
“I have no message. He hates me speaking to you.”
“You’re under orders are you? I might have known it. Then why bother to speak? I’ll see you in court.”
“I’m bothering because… I care for you. I’m begging you to stop this case, Paul. It’s madness. It’s going to screw up both your lives.”
“You’re forgetting. I’ve tried. Twice. Once at the Grange. And only the other day with your Mr Haldane. You forget. I’m the one being sued. I’m going to have a clean win. But even if I don’t I’ll take MCM. There’s nothing surer. Then all this will be mine,” he said, gesturing toward the Hill. There was no triumph in his voice only a cold certainty. “And Marchmont won’t have his empire to play with. He can take what’s left of his money and retire to Acapulco or Bermuda. He won’t be in any demand as the chief executive of any half-way decent company any more.”
Sophie stepped forward and put her hand on his arm but he thrust her away. “Paul, you don’t know what you’re up against. This isn’t the shootout. This is the beginning of a fight designed to drag you down. Marchmont will appeal and appeal. He’ll try to smear you. I think he knows he’s beaten in law, but he’s going to fight and wear you down.”
She felt no qualms about giving away the core of Marchmont’s strategy, which Paul might possibly have anticipated, but not the intensity with which Marchmont would direct it. Paul showed a glimmer of understanding. He turned away from her and walked up the path a few steps, then stopped and looked back.
“Nice try. You’ve been trained well. You don’t scare me. My reputation can stand anything that Marchmont can throw at it. You go back and tell him I’m taking the Mirabilly mine, Mirabilly Station and his company and he can go to hell!”
Paul walked on up the path and Sophie called after him but he didn’t respond.
24
On the morning that the case was due to open at the New Territories Supreme Court in Darwin it was a hot, damp spring day. The colours of the city were bright; people in the street wore shades or narrowed their eyes. To Sophie it seemed odd in this weather to have to go into a shadowy panelled room which was very cold and argue over pieces of paper.
That morning Michael Davros assumed charge and Werner Fliegler retired to his role as the ingratiating observer – and stage-master. Davros was assured, his saturnine grin dominating and easing the others. He seemed taller as he conferred with their surveyors and engineers and seated them as he would have them in the courtroom. John Marchmont was at his side in an off-white suit.
Sophie was unobtrusively at the back of the courtroom. She planned to listen to the opening and then go back to the hotel to deal with the public relations material. She anticipated a dispute with Martin Thorpe and John about the personal dirt against Paul. She thought her loyalty would come into question and perhaps even her job, in view of Marchmont’s temper. She didn’t want to face this. For the moment, she was safe in the courtroom watching the gladiators shape up.
The Aborigine Trust and Argo, Paul Travis’s company, were to be represented by a Queen’s Counsel, Gerald Sleeman from Sydney. He was sleek-haired, paunchy and dressed in a black jacket and striped trousers. He was assisted by a young woman junior counsel. Davros, a solicitor, was carrying the entire weight of the MCM case alone. It was unusual for a corporation like MCM, which could have afforded to import glittering counsel from Sydney or Melbourne, to rely on a local man whose reputation for flair had apparently been acquired in the criminal courts.
All Sophie could see of Paul was the wavy dark brown hair at the back of his head. They all stood for the Commissioner Mr Justice Fowler to take his seat on the bench. His registrar was settled into the desk below and in front of him. As they sat down, Sophie had a feeling of emptiness in her stomach; those few seconds before a roller-coaster begins its ride. After the case was called and counsel had announced themselves, the judge smiled agreeably.
“I’ve read all the papers and studied the maps,” he said. “I think I can see the issue. This is a major boundary dispute and I’ve never heard such a case yet without viewing the site. It’s going to make the evidence of both parties more meaningful. I believe you’ve anticipated the possibility of a view and made some tentative arrangements. I’m afraid it’s going to be very hot and unpleasant out there,” the judge removed his spectacles apologetically, “but I don’t see a way of avoiding it.”
The judge invited Davros to open his case if he wished to, but after discussion between counsel it was agreed that the case should be adjourned now for a view of the site. It would have been impossible to complete the flight, 600 miles each way, in one day including the time taken
for inspection. At Marchmont’s invitation, the judge, registrar, the parties and their witnesses would all fly to Mirabilly for the night. The following morning they would depart in lighter aircraft for two landing strips close to the mine, where helicopters would be waiting.
*
The judge, registrar and lawyers were accommodated at the Big House and Travis and his party at a vacant house on the Hill. There was an embarrassment when the judge said he couldn’t dine with either Marchmont or Travis. That night he and the lawyers dined alone, the Travis team stayed in their house which Marchmont had provisioned and equipped with a cook and a bar. Marchmont and his executives dined together in another room in the Big House.
The next morning the entire party flew in three Cessna planes to the airstrips near the mine. Sophie asked John if she could go and he agreed; anything to postpone her work on the Travis smear material. She had the last seat.
The planes circled the boundary area for an overview. The fork in the Gudijingi Creek was clearly visible with the two legs imprisoning the mine and then rejoining. The ‘island’ was studded with boreholes and abandoned earth-moving equipment. All the syndicate’s work had been halted when Marchmont filed his claim of trespass.
The planes landed at the southern airstrip and the party walked through a tinder-dry woodland of grass, mallee and brigalow scrub with scattered acacias and thin beeches and gums, toward the fork. The judge’s group were ahead and seemed to take a long time. Those who were waiting sheltered in the mottled light of the gums. It was blisteringly dry and bottles of water were passed round.
Sophie looked down into the deep cleft where the creek ran. Although it looked black from the air, the water was a muddy red. As the eroded banks testified, in the past, huge volumes of water had swept through.
“Are there any crocodiles down there?” she asked Billy Tjakamarra the Aborigine Trust manager.
“Not here,” he said. “A few miles downstream. The water runs underground, through caves and there are crocs there. They retreat downriver or advance upriver depending on the season.”
She shivered. There was a sense of menace about the northern shores beyond Mirabilly with their crocodiles, snakes and spiders and the poisonous jellyfish and sharks in the warm seas of the Gulf.
It was two hours before their view was complete and they climbed aboard the planes for a flight of a few minutes to the northern airstrip. Sophie remembered this place from the night she spent there over ten years ago. The same old sheds and stockyards cooking in the blinding light.
When they landed, staff from Mirabilly had opened up the sheds and put a thin canvas up to shade the entrance to one of them; it was too hot to go inside. Cool boxes full of beer and coke had been brought in the planes. There were also bread rolls stuffed with freshly roasted beef and tomato. The three groups had to meet to eat in this shade and there was some restrained chatting and joking. Sophie found it uncomfortable to be so close to Paul but unable to speak to him. If his eyes rested on her he appeared not to see her. He was serious and aloof.
A plague of flies and midges drove them on with their task. The intention was to see where the Gudijingi rejoined the dry bed and flowed in one stream.
One of the surveyors led the judge and lawyers, sweating in their white shirts and shaded by broad brimmed hats, toward the escarpment; they would inspect the dry creek and then walk about 300 yards to where the Gudijingi rejoined the flowing stream and formed one watercourse.
Marchmont had never been on the ground in this place and he was interested in the access arrangements through the native reserve. He asked his surveyor to point out the route. The surveyor said it would be necessary to go down the escarpment and cross the dry creek to get a view. “When the judge has finished his deliberations, we’ll go and have a look,” he replied.
They waited in the mouth of the cave which Sophie had visited years before with Paul. She would like to have seen the paintings again, but it seemed like a diversion from a serious task to ask. The three groups walked to where the channels joined. Here the vegetation thinned and there was little shelter. The judge and his party unfolded the umbrellas they had been given at the landing strip and took their time.
The contestants waited under the thin trees running with sweat. Sophie began to feel strange in the heat and hoped she wasn’t going to faint. She thought for a moment as she looked out across the country that her vision was playing tricks. The horizon blurred and quivered. She saw the then distant fires she had seen from the plane as they flew across Mirabilly.
Sophie and the surveyor gave in to Marchmont’s impatience to see the proposed accessway and followed him through the dry grass and scrub, up the hill. They were soon out of sight of the other parties. On the way, they passed clearings where test bores had been made. A rusty Caterpillar bulldozer was idle in the sun with two giant dump trucks beside it.
“You could fry eggs on them,” she said.
“That’s all they’ll be good for,” Marchmont replied. “Unless I buy them at a cut price from that bloody son of a jackaroo.”
They walked for ten minutes and from a rise, the surveyor was able to point to a path winding through the reserve. “You can see where the dozer has broken through the undergrowth. There’s a distinct track. That’s about the line of the road. The only sensible way to go.”
“On to native land beyond Mirabilly,” Marchmont observed.
Marchmont examined the area though his field glasses. This was a road that would avoid the escarpment but lengthen the journey for the ore.
On the way back, Sophie heard the whine of an aircraft and had a quick glimpse of the white fuselage and green trim of the judge’s plane as it headed back to Mirabilly.
“He’s finished at last! He’s not going to bother having a look from a chopper,” Marchmont said. “The sod will be sitting in the Big House drinking my whisky and soda while we’re still humping around out here.”
They walked back through tall grass for another fifteen minutes and then the surveyor began to slow down and look around. He said at last, “Look, I’m a bit confused. I know the maps and charts, but I’m not so familiar with the ground.”
They stood still looking at each other under a gum tree. Marchmont was annoyed. The surveyor was feeling a fool. And Sophie was immediately apprehensive. But they could fly back to comfort in a plane that was only minutes away. They could have a cold shower. Being so close to home reduced her concern and that of her companions.
Sophie felt the indifference of the land which didn’t care to give any sign-posts to the traveller. Indeed, there were no travellers. They were rare intruders. The country was designed to mystify, full of features, yet featureless. 200 hundred yards on was strangely like 200 yards back. Her fluttering thoughts were shattered by the sound of another aircraft.
“That must be Travis’s group. Ours will have to wait,” Marchmont said.
The three of them agreed the general direction and headed through the grass with the surveyor leading. He was a bearded six-footer with a shirt open on a sun browned chest. If he hadn’t already lost the direction Sophie would have had a lot of confidence in him. He looked as though he was at ease in the outback.
When they had walked about a quarter of a mile Sophie noticed that the pall of smoke she had seen earlier was now a lot closer. They stopped. What was ahead was a heat-haze with spurts of flame.
“We seem to have walked further than when we came,” Sophie said.
“Good God, we’ll have to hurry or be cut off!” the surveyor said.
Sophie could detect the panic in the surveyor’s voice. She looked at Marchmont. His, at first, mild annoyance had mounted. He was a man who expected simple matters like what path to take to be worked out for him. He employed staff to do this. When the surveyor continued leading them down the slope Sophie followed.
Marchmont remained standing. “Stop. That’s not my recollection of the way. It’s more on the high side.”
The surveyor stopped
and shook his head silently in disagreement, but his credibility was too low to make a case.
“You’ve lost us once,” Marchmont said angrily, “I suggest you go your way and we’ll go ours.”
“We need to keep together,” the surveyor said. “It’s just elementary bushcraft.”
“All burn together?” Marchmont strode off up the hill and Sophie, doubting the surveyor herself, followed her boss up the hill.
25
In a few seconds, Sophie lost sight of the surveyor and they might as well have been miles apart, for all the possibility of finding him again. Or he could be just beyond the bushes a few yards away. They were in an area where the dry grass and underbrush was waist-high in places and in others, thinned to scrub and sand. Overhead were thin trees, beeches and gums which would live through a burning. Sophie had heard about the burning in summer; how the fires could cover thousands of acres, a haircut that would leave the trees and land, as the flames passed, ready to start fresh new growth before the wet season. What was incredible to her, was that country which seemed to invite walking and navigating with ease, actually hid their way as they progressed.
They came to what Marchmont had said was the top of the rise and would give them a view, but it was a false rise capped by another. Their climbing was not over. They stopped. Sophie’s hair was hanging in damp strings across her face. Marchmont was puffing and for the first time his redness spelt exhaustion and concern rather than anger.
“That bloody man’s got the water bottle!” he spat.
Sophie heard the exhaust crackle of another plane, probably their own, heading back to Mirabilly.
“They won’t leave us here,” Marchmont said. “All we have to do is make the sheds on the airstrip before dark and we’re OK.”
Sophie followed Marchmont it seemed for miles, but always there was another rise, another cleft, or what seemed to be a track but as in a maze, they never gained a vantage point. The sun burned the back of her neck despite her hat and she could see that John was unsteady on his feet.
