Stacy hung back. ‘I won’t come. I’ll say goodbye now.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Good luck with it all here.’
‘Thanks.’
I went down the stairs, left Wayne to say whatever he wanted to. Russel and Eve were coming across from their house. It wasn’t to say goodbye. Russel was coming with us. He had business of some sort in Darwin. He had one small bag, threw it on top of all our rubbish. Then Vince and Wayne came down. We got in. There was only room for the three of us, none for Eve. She said goodbye to Russel, and then, quite distinctly, to Wayne and to me. Vince started up the engine and we rolled down the track. The bush closed in. Cape Don was gone.
The plane was waiting at the strip. It was a twin-engine, twelve-seater. We weren’t the only passengers. A couple of Commission officials were on their way back from Black Point. We loaded our stuff in, crowding the plane. The two officials were both weighty, middle-aged men. They laughed at us. Then everything was on board. It was time to go.
‘Well,’ said Vince, sticking out his hand, ‘This is it.’
I shook it. ‘Thanks for putting up with us.’
‘It wasn’t so bad. Don’t forget me though. Send me a bottle of port at Christmas.’
Christmas, I thought. It was over four months away. I felt an acute and utter pity.
Then Wayne shook Vince’s hand, said goodbye and thanks, and we were through. We climbed on board with Russel, took our seats. It was only my second time in a plane, but there were none of the nerves of the first time. The plane was too big. And it was the end. I wasn’t going anywhere I hadn’t been before.
We taxied slowly up the runway. Wayne, Russel and I were sitting in one row of seats, facing the two officials. They were in a jovial mood. They tried to talk to us. Especially to Russel. He was, I supposed, an important man in Gurig terms. They joked, asked Russel questions. Somehow they sounded patronising. Russel gave only monosyllabic answers. So, in our turn, did Wayne and I. The three of us, for the one and only time, in accord.
The plane turned. I caught a glimpse of the Toyota out the window, Vince standing beside it. Then the engines surged and we accelerated down the runway. Red dust and olive scrub streamed by. We tilted, lifted off, began climbing. Once above tree level we turned into the sun. It was westering, throwing the sky into orange glare. There was nothing clear to be seen out the windows, but I kept looking. Finally the plane turned a little and I saw, already far off to the right, the lighthouse.
It was just a black sliver, no features. I thought briefly of Vince winding his way back along the track. Of Stacy waiting there. Of the radio crackling in the weather shack. Of the ceiling fans spinning in our house, in empty rooms, over no one. The lights off. The shadows deepening.
I stopped thinking about it, turned away from the window. We flew in silence towards Darwin.
FORTY-TWO
It was dark by the time we had all our luggage unloaded. We were on the tarmac outside the Northwing terminal. The woman from the office was waiting. So was my car. It was freshly washed and, she said, the tank was full. She also handed me a new set of keys.
‘I lost the old set on the beach,’ she said, ‘But thanks again. I didn’t drive it to Alice Springs or anything, but it was very handy.’
‘That’s alright.’
She headed off. The two officials were long gone, in a cab. Russel too. He’d been picked up by a carload of relatives. He’d said goodbye and shaken our hands. Wayne and I were alone and in Darwin. The night was warm, there was the sound of traffic in the distance. We loaded the car. It was tiresome. Again, we should’ve been excited. We weren’t.
We drove out of the airport, into town. It was a Monday night. I waited for some sort of culture shock at the sight of the traffic and the buildings. It didn’t come. It felt like any Monday night. Drab, lacking in promise. We went to the same hostel we’d stayed in before, booked a room. We sat there for a minute.
‘What now?’ said Wayne.
‘The pub, I suppose.’
We headed out. Ate at Kentucky Fried. Wandered along the mall. We ended up in the Victoria Hotel. It had been refurbished in our absence. The chicken wire was gone. There was new carpet and new colours. We sat and drank. Eventually a band came on. They weren’t very good. The crowd was small. Wayne and I spoke to no one else. Hardly spoke to each other. We sat it out until one a.m., then went back to the hostel. Nothing else appeared to be open. We went to bed. It was not how I’d imagined our first night would be.
Next morning we attended to some business. I closed my cheque account. I’d sent maybe seven or eight cheques to Darwin from Cape Don, I didn’t expect to need it again. We visited the Met. Bureau offices and got the last of our wages. I looked for Lawrence, didn’t see him. We went to the Nightcliff supermarket and payed what remained owing on our account. Then we got back in the car and took a last look at Darwin.
We had talked, once, about staying in the North for a while, on holiday. About not going straight back to Brisbane. About seeing some of the Territory. Kakadu. The Katherine Gorge. Maybe even getting across to the Kimberly. Neither of us mentioned it now. We found the highway, headed south.
It took four days. We skipped Katherine, but otherwise we stopped at the same towns as we had on the way up, and in the same hotels. And between Mt Isa and Longreach we took the direct route, not the scenic. We had no interest in scenery. At night we sat in the hotel rooms eating take-aways, drinking beer and watching TV. It was good to see a screen again, but there were only two stations out there, and neither had much on.
Even the news was dull. Both the papers and the television. We’d heard basically nothing for six months, but overall the world seemed to have kept fairly quiet. The only thing I was interested in was the football season. It was well progressed. The new Brisbane Broncos, it seemed, had started well in the NSW League. They’d won their first five or six games straight. Now they were fading badly in the latter half of the season. Finals didn’t look likely.
Otherwise we slept and ate and waited for the road to roll by. At Tennant Creek our friends with the cocktail lounge in their hotel had disappeared. The lounge itself was closed. In Longreach we saw that the Stockman’s Hall of Fame had been completed and was now open for business. We didn’t go in. Wayne overheated the car once more, the same way, and I got annoyed. We argued, then stewed about it for a few hours. There was a deep and final weariness between us. I looked with something like real hatred upon Wayne, and he looked the same way back at me.
Finally it was Friday evening and we were back in South-East Queensland, nearing Dalby. We were arguing again. The problem was that I wanted to stop over at my parents’ farm, spend the night. Wayne wanted to push on to Brisbane. I could see his point, we were so close, it was only another three hours. I gave less than a fuck about his point.
‘You can see your parents anytime,’ Wayne was saying. He was almost in tears with the frustration. ‘Let’s just get this over with, get back to Brisbane.’
But it was my car and I was driving it. At Dalby we turned north, drove out to the farm. My parents weren’t home. The house was dark, their car wasn’t in the garage. I hadn’t called ahead. It was freezing, standing there in the dark. We were in winter. If anything felt alien, it was that. The cold. I’d forgotten that weather could even be that way. Cold weather, cold welcome.
‘Well?’ said Wayne from the car.
‘In a minute.’
I went inside. My parents never locked the house—some of the doors didn’t even have locks. I walked around. The place was chill, empty. I picked up the phone and dialled my sister in Brisbane. She was surprised to hear from me. Was I due back already? I said I was, asked if she knew where Mum and Dad were. It turned out they were in Brisbane. Visiting the family. I went back out to the car.
‘Okay,’ I said to Wayne, and started up.
The very last stretch. It was back through Dalby, up to Toowoomba. Then down the range, across the Lockyer Valley, over the low
Brisbane hills. It was almost midnight. And there it was. The glow in the sky. Orange streetlights. Outlying suburbs. It was beautiful. The highway turned onto the six-lane arterial. We came in through Oxley and Annerly, flowing with the traffic. Then the city highrises were in view, alight, multicoloured. Brisbane. It was impossibly beautiful.
I drove across to Hamilton, pulled up outside Wayne’s parents’ house. He went inside to wake them, I started unloading. Wayne came back with his mother. She was in a dressing-gown, excited, asking questions. We stacked all his stuff on the footpath. Then it was finished. Wayne’s mother went back inside to get some food going. I sat on the hood, lit a cigarette. Wayne lit one too.
‘Where you gonna stay tonight?’ he asked.
‘At my sister’s.’
We smoked for a moment. I looked out over Brisbane. There was a strange beam of light, arcing across the sky. It came from somewhere behind the bulk of the CBD.
I said, ‘You’ll be right getting this stuff inside?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay then.’ I got up, opened the car door. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He nodded. I started up, put it in gear, drove away.
I steered through the streets. I was tired. I headed for Louise’s place. On the way I passed along the top of the Kangaroo Point cliffs. I stopped. If there was any single view of Brisbane, maybe it was this. I left the car, walked to the edge. There was the river and the city centre. Then the botanical gardens with their small mangrove patch and their mudflats. And beyond all that, glimmering, were the buildings and pavilions and sails of the 1988 International Exposition.
I stared. The great event itself, four city blocks of it. It was quiet at the moment, closed for the night. I didn’t really know what was in there, what it was all about, but right in the middle was a tall, slim tower. I knew its name. It was the Expo Skyneedle. It was meant to be a giant piece of sculpture. At the very top it had a powerful light. The light was revolving, it’s beam sweeping across the sky. It was what I’d seen from Wayne’s place. It was strong. Solid. Silent. Stretching out over Brisbane, over everything.
I turned away, went back to my car.
FORTY-THREE
Brisbane again.
I went through the process, caught up with everyone. Family members. Friends. They all seemed pleased to see me. They asked questions about Cape Don, about the Cobourg Peninsula, about any writing I might have done. I said what I could about the former two. I said Cape Don had been interesting. Worthwhile. I mentioned the fishing. The crocodiles. The boils. I said that, as far as the writing went, it hadn’t quite worked out.
But the questions didn’t last long. There was no reason why they should. Other people I knew were returning from overseas after being away for years. From holding down jobs in Europe. From having disappeared into India. Indonesia. They had better stories than a patch of scrub on the coast.
And Brisbane felt strange. It wasn’t the way I’d left it. At times, in the evening, I could hear the popping of the fireworks from the Expo site. Or the droning of the blimp that constantly circled the area. The streets were full of tourists. The papers were full of Expo events and Bicentennial news. Live acts. Free concerts. Parades. My mother had given me a season pass to Expo, I’d have to use it sooner or later. But every day seventy or eighty or a hundred thousand people packed themselves in there. The thought of it appalled me.
I waited. The last of my money dwindled away. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought about applying for the dole. I’d never been on it. I didn’t like the idea. Finally I wandered into the public bar of the Capital Hotel, my old workplace. I sat at the counter, ordered a beer. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Then the bottle shop manager walked in.
‘Gordon,’ he said, ‘You’re back.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Right, can you start tomorrow? The guys I’ve got out there now are hopeless.’
‘I didn’t come in here looking for a job.’
He laughed. ‘That’s bullshit.’
I nodded. It was.
I went and saw Madelaine. She said she’d already seen Wayne, so she knew all there was to know.
‘What are you doing now?’ she asked.
‘Back at the bottle shop.’
‘What about the writing?’
‘I don’t think so. Is Wayne painting?’
‘No. He’s got a job.’
‘Cleaning?’
‘How’d you know? Have you seen him?’
‘No. I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of Wayne.’
‘How did you and him get along up there?’
‘What’d Wayne say?’
‘He said at least you didn’t come to blows.’
‘No.’
And I supposed that was something.
I needed somewhere to live. My sister’s place was free, but it was only temporary. I drove over to New Farm, went up James Street and parked outside William’s place. The house had been painted, in pastels, green and red. A couple I didn’t recognise were doing some carpentry on the front stairs.
I asked them about William. He was gone, they replied. They’d purchased the house from him about four months ago, had been renovating ever since. They didn’t know where he was now. They were forwarding mail to a post office box. I left them to it. I didn’t ask about the Chinese. I hoped they were doing well, but I wasn’t going to live with them again.
I began looking at small, single bedroom flats. I kept to the New Farm area. I couldn’t afford anything I saw. The suburb was slowly going up-market. Sixty a week was my maximum. I lowered my standards, began looking at small, dingy places. Two-room flats, boarding house conditions and old men lolling on the front steps. Finally I pulled up outside a place down near New Farm park. It must’ve once been a sizeable Queenslander with big verandahs. Now it was all shut-in and subdivided. I walked down the hall. The sign outside said to apply at flat three.
I knocked. An old black man answered, asked what it was about.
‘The flat,’ I said.
He peered at me. Coughed, hawked up some phlegm, swallowed it.
‘Emphysema,’ he said.
He got the key, showed me the flat, number eight. It was the best I’d seen for the money. Two large rooms, half of one partitioned to make a small kitchen. It was dark and old. Toilets and bathroom were down the hall.
‘I might take it,’ I said.
‘Yeah? Come back to my place and I’ll give you the forms to take to the agent.’
I followed him back. He walked with a slight hunch, but also with a wiry toughness. He invited me in. There was an old radio and a TV and stacks of paperback westerns against the walls. He hunted around for the forms.
‘You’ll be the youngest bloke here,’ he said, ‘Mostly it’s just us old bastards. Get a padlock for your door. Locks are fucked. Pricks stealing all the time. You want a drink?’
‘Okay.’
He poured a couple of glasses from a cask of red. Asked me my name. His, he said, was Vass. We sat and drank and he told me more about the place, what to expect, what rules to follow. I thought about another old black man, three thousand miles away, Allan Price. Vass was nothing like him, but I’d wandered into Vass’s territory just as I wandered into Allan’s.
Respect, I thought, respect. The place wasn’t much, but it was his home and I wanted to live there. And there was something about Vass himself that I liked. An old bitterness that sounded almost fond. I finished the drink. Had another. Got up. ‘I owe you a beer,’ I said.
‘Damn fucking right you do.’
I moved in. I worked in the bottle shop. I talked to the old men in the house. Watched TV. I thought about nothing, planned nothing. When I got drunk the old bitterness was still there. The old fear. I saw it all around me in the old men. They were my future.
I began writing. Only small things. Poems. Maybe two or three a week. I had no hopes for them, never expected anyone to read them. I wrote about sex. I wrote about the old men and the t
hings they said. I didn’t write about Cape Don. Christmas approached. I remembered Vince and the bottle of port he’d asked for. I didn’t send it.
Then it was New Year’s Eve. I went to a party to celebrate it, with friends. It hadn’t been the same with them either, since Cape Don. There was a distance. I felt uncomfortable in large groups. Had trouble following everyone’s conversations. At midnight the cheer went up. I watched people kissing each other. I watched the women. None of them kissed me. I didn’t want them to. I didn’t know what I wanted. From women. From men. Anyone.
I went outside, stared up. There were only a few dim stars visible in the sky. It was 1989. Australia was 201. Parts of it anyway. And I was 22. It didn’t seem significant anymore. Nothing was going to happen. At any age. I lit a cigarette. One pack a day now. The asthma getting worse.
I went home and slept. I showed up for work two days later. It was a quiet afternoon. Hungover. A new barmaid had started at the pub. I met her behind the bar. She was reading a book. I said hello. She said hello back.
Her name was Cynthia.
1988 Page 26
