1988

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘I think you owe these guys a few beers,’ Vince said, ‘Seeing they cleaned-up your mess.’

  ‘I suppose we do. Kevin, shut up.’

  Kevin backed off and they all tramped onto the verandah. I went inside, got our last carton, brought it out. We all settled down, squatting on the floor. The beers passed around amidst mutters and laughs. Wayne opened a pack of Winfield Blues, and they did they rounds too.

  ‘Is the car alright?’ Wayne asked Vince.

  ‘The body is. But when you put it in four-wheel drive, I don’t suppose you locked the hubs on the front wheels?’

  ‘Uh . . . no. I didn’t know you had to.’

  ‘And I suppose you spun the shit out of the wheels trying to get free?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘That’s that then, the bearings are fucked.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ I asked.

  ‘Just be grateful I’m not gonna make you pay for it. It’d cost you more than a few drinks.’

  Even so, we were being punished. Our precious beer supply was dwindling fast. The four men introduced themselves. Con. Davie. Long Bob. Jerry. They smoked and drank. Mostly they spoke in Gurig, sometimes in English. They asked our names and where we were from and what we were doing there. Wayne they were particularly amused by. They made remarks about the Toyota.

  ‘She was pretty easy to get out.’

  ‘Just a push, eh.’

  ‘How’d you get stuck there anyway?’

  ‘Bloke’d have to know nuthin’, get stuck in a place like that.’

  Wayne smoked, looked at the floor, endured it. One of them turned to me. His name was Long Bob. He was very tall, his narrow face half-hidden behind a frosted-grey beard. ‘You from Brisbane, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Government’s there, eh?’

  ‘Uh . . . the Queensland Government, yes.’

  ‘No, that federal mob. Australian Government.’

  ‘That’s in Canberra.’

  ‘Canberra? Where the hell’s that?’

  ‘Down south.’

  He gave me a sideways look. ‘That Malcom Fraser then? He still Prime Minister?’

  ‘Uh . . . no, not for a while. It’s Bob Hawke now.’

  ‘Shit eh? Bob Hawke!’

  He started laughing. They all did. Even Vince. I sat there, no idea what was going on. After a while Long Bob leaned over, poked my leg.

  ‘Hey. S’alright mate. Bit of a joke.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Just seein’ if you knew.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They forgot about me again. I pulled on my beer. I felt stupid. Slow. After an hour the beer was all gone. Everyone said thanks, then they rose and wandered out into the sun. Vince went back to his house. The rest of the men went with Russel to his. The women and kids were already settled there on the front verandah. The men joined them. After a while I could see a cask or two of wine being passed around the group. I could see Eve too. She was laughing and talking, playing with the children. There was nothing silent about her now.

  I retired out the back, looked at the sea. All Wayne and I had left now was the red wine. I drank a glass, slathered myself with insect repellent as evening fell. It was the usual routine, but the mood was different. Yells and shouts drifted across from Russel and Eve’s house. Other people were around, a lot of them. People who sounded happy and relaxed and utterly at home. Wayne and I, hiding away in disgrace in our house, we were something else.

  The crowd stayed for several days. Mostly they seemed to hang around Russel’s house. Sometimes they’d wander down to the bay and come back with fish, or crabs. Once even, the skinned remains of a wallaby. It was their right, after all, to hunt wherever and whatever they liked. From what I understood though, none of the bigger game had ever worked its way through the swamps and creeks to reach the land around Cape Don. So there were no buffalo, and no banteng.

  Generally they left Wayne and I alone. A few of the kids appeared in our hallway, shrieked when we saw them, ran out again. Only one of the adults bothered with us. His name was Con. He seemed about our age, short and solid, verging on fat. He dropped in one night while we were playing Scrabble, wanting to borrow a few cigarettes. Wayne handed some over. We offered him a drink. He sat down and stayed about an hour. He asked us more about ourselves, about the painting and writing, about what we thought of Cobourg.

  ‘I’m not Gurig y’know,’ he said, ‘I’m Tiwi. From Melville Island. Just visiting.’

  It seemed he mostly hung around in Darwin. He’d been in prison a few times, for drunk and disorderly, and assault. That’s why he was in Cobourg at the moment. He was lying low from the law over some incident at a Darwin hotel. The police might’ve found him on Melville, but they’d never bother looking in Cobourg. He had cousins among the Gurig people, so they didn’t mind having him.

  ‘You boys don’t have anything to smoke do you?’

  ‘Other than tobacco?’

  ‘Yeah. Gunja, y’know.’

  Wayne brought it out, and he and Con smoked a joint.

  ‘Be careful with this stuff,’ Con said, ‘That Allan Price finds out you got this here, you’ll be out. He doesn’t even like the grog much, but gunja, you’re gone.’

  ‘Does he ever come over here?’

  ‘Dunno. He doesn’t like me, I keep out of his way.’

  ‘You lot gonna be around for a while?’

  ‘Nah. Better over at Araru, or Black Point. Not even any fucking women around here. None that want me anyhow.’

  Everyone finally packed up. Con came to say goodbye. Wayne gave him a pack of Winfield Blue. We had plenty to spare. Wayne ordered ten packs every week, but smoked less than one a day. The surplus was growing.

  Con climbed into the Toyota with the others, then Russel drove them back to their boat. Russel and Eve were staying on at the lighthouse. Once the crowd was gone the mood of the place faded back to normal. The weather was serene, dry and unchanging. The generator thumped along twenty-four hours a day. Kevin snuffled up and down our stairs, slept on Wayne’s bed. Wayne himself painted or didn’t paint in his studio. I ran up win after win on the Scrabble board, sat at the desk from time to time, stared into the mirror, and wrote absolutely nothing.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Vince finally got sick of waiting for his cruiser to come back from Darwin. For anything—his generator parts, his outboard motor parts—to come from Darwin. Cape Don was falling apart and the radio calls were getting him nowhere. He decided he’d go to Darwin himself. He booked passage on the supply plane and flew out. There were no worries about leaving Wayne and me on our own. Russel was there this time, to watch over us.

  There was nothing to watch. For the next few days all was quiet. Wayne and I barely left our house. I was feeling a little low. The writing wasn’t happening and time was beginning to weigh heavily. I walked from room to room. I read books, wrote letters. None of it seemed enough. We saw no sign of Russel or Eve. Then one afternoon I heard yells and screams from their house. I went out, looked over. They seemed to be having an argument.

  A door slammed. Russel came running out, then Eve. They were both half naked. Russel in shorts, Eve in a bra and pants. Eve had a fishing spear. She was trying to stab Russel with it. He was avoiding her lunges with ease, laughing at her. Eve was screaming. I couldn’t pick up the words. Kevin ran out and joined in, barking. Wayne emerged from his studio.

  We watched. For all her anger, Eve was handling the situation with a certain dignity. She gave up trying to stab Russel. She stomped back to her front steps and sat there, spear at the ready. He wasn’t getting back in. Russel himself watched her for a time, then pulled some tobacco out of his back pocket, began rolling. He sat down under a tree. Kevin stopped barking, stood between them. Stalemate. We all waited.

  ‘Look at her,’ Wayne marvelled, ‘She’s beautiful. She was gonna kill him.’

  ‘I think if she really wanted to kill him, she would’ve. She was taking it easy
with that spear.’

  But we were staring at her. We couldn’t help ourselves. It was her naked back, her shoulders, her long legs, cradling the spear. She was breathing fast, radiating fury. We’d never seen Eve in anything but her long floral dresses.

  ‘Imagine it,’ Wayne said, ‘The two of them over there, in that bed, under that mosquito net. Jesus. All that anger.’

  ‘I’d rather not think about it.’

  It was too late. It was there.

  ‘How often are you wanking these days,’ Wayne asked, staring at Eve and the spear.

  ‘Once a day I suppose.’

  ‘Twice for me. So you think we should do something about it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Maybe we should fuck.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Who said I was joking?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Wayne, ‘I know you’re bored.’

  ‘No.’

  He laughed. ‘Relax Gordon, I am joking.’

  Eve looked across, saw us. She stood up, faced us, hands on hips. We couldn’t meet her eyes. Or her body. We retreated inside.

  I roamed the house. I was restless. Sex. It had me. I didn’t want it. It was pointless. More than pointless, there at the lighthouse. With Wayne. I went to my room. There was a pile of People magazines there. I’d been working my way through the collection. There were perhaps two hundred of them around Cape Don, in the weather shack and the sheds, some of them years old. The ranger who was there before Vince must have owned them. The one that had gone mad, stir-crazy. The magazines couldn’t have helped.

  It was all those breasts, endless pages of them, at least a dozen different pairs per issue. And the adds for X-rated videos. The pictures of mud wrestling, jelly wrestling. The candid snaps that men had sent in of their wives or girlfriends, in lingerie, wet T-shirts, naked. A magazine for the Territory. For lonely men in remote areas.

  I lay on the bed, flicked through. It was no use. The breasts were all huge, some of them verging on the fantastic. And the poses, and the colours, none of it was real. I threw the magazines away. I thought about Eve. I thought about mosquito netting. It was hot, sweaty. I had my clothes off, I was stretched on the mattress, my prick in my hand.

  I tried for a vision. This was the room for it. Huge and dim, the fan turning slowly over the single iron-framed bed. French windows open, a rectangle of light. Tropical heat. Slow heat, for slow fucking. Mosquito nets hazing everything with white.

  I began pumping. It was Eve, riding me. Her bra tight and high, her teeth gritted in anger, grinding. The anger was important. I didn’t know why. Something needed to be purged, desecrated. I needed the emotion. Eve faded away. She became another woman, one I’d slept with, just once, one of the disasters. Rolling breasts, her head down, her thick lips parted, frustrated, swearing at me. Because I was failing. Useless. She became yet another woman, someone I’d loved and hungered after for years, pointlessly. A slim pale body and a stern face, a cunt that was impossibly cool and smooth. Distant. Someone I couldn’t even hope to touch.

  It wasn’t enough. Rejection wasn’t enough. It took cruelty, pain. My arms arching back, strapped to the bed frame. Ropes burning my skin, a gag. And then it was a man, faceless, lithe, the two of us straining, strength against strength. Fucking me. Beating me down. Then Eve again, naked now, crouched on me, nipples on my chest, head next to mine, gasping, hating me, softer and faster and harder . . .

  I came. The vision was gone. There was no vision, only splinters. I didn’t know what they meant, what I wanted. I wiped my penis down, lay there in a dusty, empty room. I felt bleak and hopeless. Nothing was solved, nothing released.

  I got dressed, went out onto the verandah. I looked around the compound. Eve and Russel were gone. I was glad. I felt like I’d been masturbating in their faces. I went back inside. The door to Wayne’s room was closed. I wondered what he was up to. If he was having better luck than me.

  I needed distractions. From the boredom, from the frustration, from everything. Cape Don itself offered nothing. There was only one choice.

  I took a fresh packet of Winfield Blue from Wayne’s supply. It was a grave, beautiful, thing, the unopened pack. Perfect in shape, colour and promise. The graphic designers and advertising consultants had done their job. I took it out onto the front verandah and sat on the steps. I unwrapped the plastic, opened the flip lid, inhaled the smell. Dark. Rich. Twenty-five tightly packed cigarettes. I pulled one out, held it, considered what I was about to do.

  There were things of which to be aware. Lung cancer, emphysema, clogged arteries, lopped-off limbs. There was foul breath and yellowed fingers. There was the expense, the ash on the carpet, the pinhead burns in the shirts. And then there was the asthma.

  It didn’t work. The horrors were all years away, and none of them seemed to compare with what I needed now. Satisfaction. Of any sort.

  I looked at the long, slim tube. It would not, I knew, taste anything even close to good. But I was ready for that. Enjoyment would come later. Addiction, too, would come in time, once it’d been earned. All I wanted, for now, was tolerance. Lungs that would take what I gave them.

  I slipped the cigarette between my lips, lit it, inhaled. There was smoke and the hot tang of ash. I got it halfway along my throat, then coughed it out. The body was resisting. I could afford to be patient. I could work my way down the airways. I let the taste recede, took another puff.

  I got through maybe two-thirds before I was gagging. I stubbed it out on the floor. I felt sick, but overall it didn’t seem too bad for a first serious attempt. Eight-year olds and ten-year olds were probably mastering the art with greater speed, but then kids learnt everything quickly. I was a late starter. I closed the pack, stared out at the compound. Dust, sun, dead grass. I felt sicker now.

  And still not satisfied.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Vince came home. He’d got nowhere with the bureaucracy in Darwin. Budgets were being revised, money was short. They couldn’t promise he’d get his cruiser, or his engine parts. Vince was of the opinion that they could all go and fuck themselves. He packed his uniform away, went back to his drinking.

  I decided something had to be done about the writing. There were no more excuses. We’d been at the lighthouse nearly three months now. Wayne had been painting from the first few weeks, it was time I followed the example. I still had almost two and a half thousand sheets of blank paper. Nor had I used more than a couple of my one hundred ink cartridges. People were expecting a novel when I got home. I’d told people to expect one.

  The problem was horror novels. I’d already written one and started a few others and it was all years ago. Somehow the idea had lost its appeal. Why did I want to write horror novels? What was horrifying anyway? Most of the horror writers I’d read were terrible. My own horror novels were terrible.

  I began toying with other ideas. I had a recurrent image of a room packed with fat, naked men, all with long, sleek penises. It was nothing sexual. They’d move and sway around the room, the men and the penises. I decided that the men were angels, and that they knew things about the world. How it began, how it would end. And they were closeted in a bar in some small north Queensland hotel. They might even be canecutters. Drinking. Swearing. Filling in eternity. Waiting for something.

  The other image was of a woman, obsessed with sewage. Waste products. She accessed the treatment plants at night, sniffed the effluent, studied it, read things in it. Divined the future from the remnants of the past. In the meantime she worked as a nurse in Townsville. There she read the future in blood. Pus. Saliva. Semen. Bodily secretions of any kind. She too was just passing the time. She too knew things about the world, and sooner or later she’d be linking up with the canecutting angels in their bar.

  I wrote a few paragraphs. I began thinking about Christian sects and cults. I’d studied them at university. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Seventh-Day Adventists. Mormons. They’d fit in there somewhere too. Y
ou could never go wrong with religion.

  It lasted three or four days and maybe forty pages, then I threw it all away. It was dreadful. Why was I bothering? Even if I could pull it off, there were already thousands of slick, offbeat novels out there. After three or four they all seemed the same. I needed another plan. Maybe a western. Or a detective story. But there were millions of them too. I moved around the house, thinking desperately. Maybe it wasn’t going to work. Maybe in six months I wasn’t going to write anything.

  I went and stood in the doorway of Wayne’s studio. I was smoking a cigarette, slowly and carefully. Wayne was sitting on the floor, staring at a canvas. He looked up at me.

  ‘How many you up to now?’ he asked.

  ‘Three or four a day.’

  ‘Enjoying them?’

  ‘No.’

  He nodded. I assumed he understood. It wasn’t a question of pleasure. I had no craving for nicotine yet. It was necessary, that was all.

  I said, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t write anything.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘That’s tough.’

  ‘At least you’re painting.’

  ‘This? This is shit’

  I looked at it. Maybe it was. I didn’t know. It was easy for Wayne, he could afford to be critical. At least he was doing what he’d said he would.

  I said, ‘How many do you need for an exhibition?

  ‘More than this.’

  ‘You gonna make it?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He stretched back on the floor, stared at the ceiling. ‘I’ve been sitting here, looking at these things . . . I’m bored. I wanna go home.’

  ‘You can’t go home without an exhibition.’

  ‘You can’t go home without a novel.’

  It was true. We were trapped. I looked around at all the canvasses. It was alarming suddenly. I had no idea what any of them were. Wayne had been in that little room for weeks on end and he’d been thinking about something, but I couldn’t see it. I’d been living with him all that time and I still couldn’t see it. He was in his own world. He was an alien.