1988

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘Is he any good?’

  ‘He’s fantastic. Just a little obscure, that’s all. People don’t know what he’s on about. You know what Art’s like.’

  ‘I thought I might try writing again.’

  ‘That’s great. A novel for you and an exhibition for Wayne. This lighthouse’ll end up being famous. When are you going?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Are you having a going-away party?’

  ‘It’s only six months. No one’ll even notice we’re gone.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Thanks Madelaine. That’s very kind.’

  Monday night I began clearing out my room. I’d given William two weeks’ rent as notice. He wasn’t happy about it, but he understood. I packed gear for the trip. When it came to clothes I went through my stuff, selecting warm weather gear. I was heading for the tropics. I needed shorts and T-shirts. Hats and thongs.

  I came to my leather jacket. It was heavy and stiff, with lots of zippers—a motorbike jacket. I’d bought it about a year before. I’d worn it only twice and both times I’d felt like a fool. It took a certain style to wear a leather jacket. I didn’t have it. And it’d be hot up north. I’d have no possible use for it. I threw it on the discard pile, then took it out again, packed it for Darwin.

  Afterwards I gathered up everything I wouldn’t be taking and ferried it over to my sister’s house. Louise had plenty of storage space downstairs.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘A lighthouse. That’s very romantic Gordon.’

  ‘Romance is the last thing I need.’

  ‘It’s just a pity you’re going to miss everything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The Bicentennial. All the special events. Expo. Everything.’

  She was right. Brisbane, like the rest of Australia, had a big commemorative year planned. But Brisbane in particular had the International Exposition Expo ’88. It was almost ready to open. I’d seen the massive construction site, read all the brochures. Laser shows and monorails and hundreds of thousands of visitors. People couldn’t wait.

  I said, ‘I think I can live with the loss.’

  ‘Really? I hear that while Expo is on all the pubs in town’ll be open twenty-four hours a day.’

  I considered that.

  ‘I didn’t say it would be easy.’

  Tuesday morning I loaded the last of my things into the car. I checked the oil and the water and the spare tyre. Everything was operational. I went back inside. Several of the Chinese were wandering around my empty room, discussing its potential. At least now they’d have some space. And I’d left them my mattress. I wished them luck with Australia. They wished me luck with the Northern Territory. They’d heard plenty about the Northern Territory. It was much closer to home for them than Brisbane was.

  ‘Crocodile Dundee,’ one of them said.

  ‘That’s me.’

  I went looking for William. He was in the backyard, under the mango tree. He was inspecting the rotten mangoes.

  ‘I’m off,’ I said.

  ‘You got some dope to take with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shit. I’m almost out, or I’d give you some.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Six months at a fucking lighthouse, straight? You call that fine? Maybe you can get some in Darwin. I hear it’s in good supply up there.’

  ‘Maybe. Well, I hope it goes okay with the house . . .’

  He gave me a stare. ‘They’ve already got another two lined up.’

  There was nothing more to say. I climbed back up the broken stairs. William continued his inspection. Peering down. Prodding. Dead fruit and the Chinese. I left him to it.

  I fired up the Kingswood. HZ sedan, canary yellow, just on ten years old. I sat there for a moment, warming the engine. Three days. That’s all it had taken to snap off my life in Brisbane. I supposed it could have been quicker. Maybe it should have been. Change, that was the hard part. It was supposed to be healthy, but who really knew. It was too late now. I slipped the shift into drive, got on my way.

  It was only a few minutes. Wayne was living with his parents, in Hamilton. We’d talked some more on the phone and I had the address. I drove around the hill, up in to the luxury area, found the house. Wayne was waiting in the front yard, with a woman I assumed was his mother. Next to them was a huge pile of wood, canvas, cardboard boxes and suitcases. It was a mountain.

  I walked over. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Is it too much?’ said Wayne’s mother, ‘I told him it was too much.’

  I looked it over again. ‘No wonder you didn’t wanna go by bus.’

  ‘It’s what I need,’ he said. Then to his mother, ‘If I’m supposed to be painting up there.’

  ‘Yes dear,’ she replied, ‘But will it fit in Gordon’s car?’

  We started loading. The boot overflowed and we moved to the back seat, piling it all up. I looked in some of the boxes. There were paints and brushes and papers. Dozens of art magazines and books. A portable stereo and lots of tapes. Two easels, wooden frames, rolls of canvas. The boy was an artist alright. The stuff reached to the roof.

  Wayne’s mother was concerned. ‘Will you be able to see out the back?’

  ‘I’ve got a side-mirror.’ I looked at Wayne. ‘Well?’

  ‘Right.’ He turned to his mother. ‘See you then.’

  ‘Goodbye Wayne.’ She kissed him, rubbed a tear from her eye. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t cry.’

  ‘It’s alright Mum.’

  I climbed in behind the wheel, Wayne into the passenger side. He slipped his feet up on to the dash, long legs bent. He was in old shorts and a paint-spattered singlet, white skin showing everywhere.

  ‘Sure you got everything?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. Get us out of here.’

  I turned the key, pulled out into the street, headed west.

  FOUR

  We had six days to reach Darwin. Neither of us had ever been there before, and we had no maps. It wasn’t a problem. All we had to do was head out west until we hit Central Australia, then turn north, up to the coast. Darwin was up there somewhere—it was the only thing up there—we could hardly miss it.

  Today though we only had to make Dalby. It was a country town, about three hours out of Brisbane. My home town. My parents still lived there, on the family farm. I’d arranged for Wayne and I to spend the night. It meant we wouldn’t cover much ground on the first leg, but six days seemed like time enough. The serious driving could wait.

  Wayne was surprised to hear I’d grown up on a farm. He’d assumed I was a city kid.

  ‘So what sort of farm is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Grain. Wheat and sorghum mainly.’

  ‘What about horses?’

  ‘No, no horses.’

  ‘Can you ride a horse?’

  ‘I’ve never even touched one.’

  ‘Some farm boy you are.’

  I’d heard it all before. Wheat farms weren’t very exciting. You planted the stuff, watched it grow, cut it down. People seemed to find that a disappointment.

  We cleared Brisbane. I eased the Kingswood up to one hundred and ten, let it sit there. It was a fine, hot day. We hung our arms out the windows, stared. There didn’t seem much to talk about, now that we were on our way. We were strangers. On the other hand, we would be alone together for the next twenty-five weeks. We had to start somewhere.

  ‘What about you,’ I said, ‘Always lived in Brisbane?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Been anywhere else?’

  ‘Sydney and Melbourne. You?’

  ‘Just Queensland.’

  I wasn’t widely travelled. A few trips up the coast to Rockhampton, Townsville, Cairns, that was about it. On the other hand, I’d been doing the Brisbane to Dalby stretch for years. The Kingswood had clocked-up the miles. These days I could just switch off and let it follow the road. Out through Gatton and Grantham, then up the Great Dividing Range to Toowoomba. Four-lane highway most
of the way, one or two spots notorious for radar traps.

  It wasn’t all that scenic a road. Wayne gazed out the window for a while, then he dug an art magazine out of the back seat and flicked through it. I glanced across at the pages. The articles looked long and dense. I thought about how many artists I knew, how much I knew about art. It wasn’t a lot.

  Wayne pulled out a packet of Winfield Blues. ‘Mind if I smoke in the car?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He lit up, then offered me the pack.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘I thought all writers smoked.’

  ‘I’m an asthmatic. It never seemed that good an idea.’

  ‘I know a few asthmatics. They all smoke. I didn’t think asthma was that serious.’

  I glanced across at him. ‘It varies.’

  He nodded, exhaled out the window, began playing with the radio. It was the Holden original, AM only.

  ‘Don’t you have a tape deck?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  He shook his head, blew out more smoke. ‘It’s gonna be a long drive.’

  Toowoomba arrived. We stopped at a pub for lunch—sausages and onion gravy and beer.

  ‘So this farm of yours,’ Wayne asked eventually, ‘Is it big?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘I thought it must’ve been huge. Madelaine said there were ten kids in your family.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I’m number nine.’

  ‘You gotta be Catholic then.’

  ‘My parents are. I wouldn’t say I was.’

  ‘Private schools?’

  I nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘Catholic parents. Private schools. Middle class.’ He held up a pale arm. ‘And very, very white.’

  ‘So how many kids in your family?’

  ‘Just me.’

  We got back to Madelaine, how each of us knew her. Wayne had met her at an exhibition, gone home with her that night, and the sex had started straight away.

  ‘How’d you meet her?’ he asked.

  ‘Through university.’

  ‘You did a degree?’

  ‘I dropped out.’

  ‘Yeah, I spent a couple of years at Art College, didn’t finish. Madelaine’s like that, befriending lost souls.’

  ‘How long were you a couple?’

  ‘We were never a couple. We just always wound up fucking at the end of the night. You know, after everyone has gone home and there’s just the two of you sitting there—what else are you gonna do?’

  I nodded. What else.

  ‘Ever done anything apart from painting?’

  ‘For money?’

  ‘For money.’

  ‘I get the dole usually. My parents help out sometimes. I haven’t had much luck with jobs. The last one I had was dishwashing. That lasted two nights. I was hopeless. Before that I tried being a pizza-delivery boy. That was one night. I kept getting lost.’ He thought. ‘Before that it was a 7-Eleven. I couldn’t get the hang of the cash register.’

  I was impressed. A man beaten by a cash register. ‘So the painting’s full-time?’

  ‘I suppose. I haven’t done much lately. That’s what the lighthouse is for.’

  ‘Same here.’

  Something else we shared then—great expectations. But that seemed about it. We got on to movies and books and music and there was nothing to talk about. Wayne was into the experimental and the new, I wasn’t into anything. Wayne spent many of his days hanging around the State Library, reading. I’d never been there. I had a fondness for watching rugby league and cricket. Wayne didn’t.

  But there were no impossible differences either. Neither of us were right wing, or new age, or religious. Or even vegetarian.

  It was enough for the time being.

  From Toowoomba it was out onto the western plains, grain-growing country. The sun beat down on the paddocks. Things were dry, dusty. There was nothing to see. We hit Dalby after less than an hour. Wayne stared out at the town, taking in the agricultural equipment lots, the muddy creek, the boys with their panel van, hanging out at the Shell service station.

  ‘You grew up here?’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad.’

  I watched the old streets slide by. I had nothing at all against Dalby. I’d enjoyed my years there. Still, I had no regrets about having moved on. I doubted the town had any regrets about it either. Ten thousand people, none of whom I knew anymore. I drove straight through without stopping. On the far side I took the northbound road. In ten minutes, we’d reached my parents’ place.

  You could see it all from the road, the farm, and it wasn’t much to look at. Dead flat, treeless, a square block of dirt. It was very good dirt however, agriculture wise. Productive. The twelve of us had never been desperate for money. I turned off into the driveway, pulled up outside the house.

  Wayne looked around.

  ‘Big house,’ he said.

  It was. Big and ugly. It’d been extended over the years and size had always been more of a concern than aesthetics. There were three living rooms. Three bathrooms. Ten bedrooms. Fifteen beds. Most of my older siblings were married, so there were extra mattresses for inlaws and grandchildren as well. The kitchen was huge and the dining room had three tables. But the family wasn’t in residence often anymore. We children had moved on to Brisbane, or interstate, or overseas. Not one of us had stayed on the farm.

  I took Wayne inside, introduced him to my father and mother. We settled at the kitchen table. Coffee and biscuits were arranged. Wayne sat there, upright and stick thin. His hair had blown vertical from all the wind in the car, his face and lips burnt faintly pink. My parents watched him.

  ‘So you’re a painter,’ my mother said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What style do you work in?’

  Wayne looked around at the paintings on the walls. My mother was a collector, on a small scale. Still lifes. Abstract landscapes.

  ‘Nothing like anything here,’ he said, ‘Uh . . . these are nice though.’

  ‘Well I like them,’ my mother said.

  A pause.

  I started talking with my father about the trip. He was worried about the Kingswood. It’d been one of the family cars originally, and it was still registered in his name. Would it make it to Darwin?

  ‘It has before,’ I said.

  This was true. Some years previous one of my older brothers had driven the Kingswood up there, looking for work. He’d gone in the wet season and used the backroads. The car had never really been the same since. He claimed to have collided with a crocodile while crossing a flooded creek.

  My father wasn’t convinced. ‘What about spare tyres?’

  ‘I checked it. It’s okay.’

  ‘You’re only taking one? What about water?’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘If you overheat. There won’t be service stations every ten miles out there.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll take some water.’

  ‘And a spare fanbelt, you can always use a spare fanbelt.

  I’ve got one over in the shed that should fit. What sort of map have you got?’

  ‘Uh . . . we haven’t.’

  He shook his head, got up from the table, went off. It was clear we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. He was easygoing enough, my father, but I was hardly his most practical son. He came back with a map and spread it out on the table. ‘How fast do you want to get to Darwin?’

  We studied the route. It was a big tourist map. It had little snippets of information on the towns and regions along the way. Looking at it you had a good idea of distances. It was a long way indeed to Darwin, right across the country. We discussed roads and destinations. Wayne took no part. He was bored.

  ‘Do you know anything more about the actual job yet?’ my mother asked him.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What will you be living in up there? The lighthouse?’

  ‘No, I think there’s a house for us.’

  ‘What does it have? Do you need to take you
r own cooking gear? And sheets?’

  ‘I don’t know about cooking stuff, but mum made me pack sheets.’

  She got up. ‘I’ll get some pots and pans together, and a few plates, and knives and forks.’

  I said, ‘The car’s already overloaded.’

  ‘You’ll have to eat.’

  ‘Got books to read?’ my father asked.

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Six months is a long time.’

  ‘And what about other things to do?’ said Mum from the cupboards, ‘Are you taking a pack of cards?’

  ‘I guess we could.’

  ‘What about some board-games? Monopoly or something. And insect repellent. There’ll be mosquitos everywhere up there.’

  It went on until everything seemed to be covered. Wayne shifted about in his seat, looked blank, but there were necessities that couldn’t be ignored. Afterwards I took him off and showed him the room my mother had ready. Most of the house was shut down, vacant. My parents used barely a quarter of it. We walked around, ended up in the main living room, in front of the TV.

  I said, ‘I could take you over to the sheds. Show you all the big machinery.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t like engines.’

  We sat there until dinner, then returned to the TV for the rest of the evening. My parents went off to bed around ten-thirty. Wayne and I were left with the late-night movie. Wayne’d hardly spoken all night. From time to time he’d walked outside to smoke cigarettes, come back in. I felt I should be entertaining him. This was my home after all. I couldn’t think of anything. As kids, my brothers and I had spent most of our nights out hunting rats around the sheds. It didn’t sound like Wayne’s style.

  I’d always enjoyed it though. They could be crafty, rats, and mean when cornered. It’d been a pleasant life, the farm. I still came home to help out around harvesting and planting times, when things were busy. I even looked forward to it. It was satisfying sort of work, certainly better than the bottle shop. Still, it could only hold your interest so long. I was no farmer. I was home when I first hit Brisbane, and I knew it.