The Cloud Forest

by JH Fletcher

  ‘I agree with that. But not the rest of them. Generalising is bad,’ he informed her seriously.

  2

  When Judy phoned, Harley Woodcock said he was too busy to see her but she was having none of that nonsense.

  ‘The way your mates are stirring things up in this town, you’d be a fool not to see me. Assuming you want to go on doing business here. And tell Warren to be there too.’

  Which made Harley splutter. ‘I can’t tell Warren what to do.’

  ‘Then I suggest you learn. I’ve things to say to the pair of you that you’ll want to know about. I promise you he won’t be happy if you don’t tell him.’

  ‘Things to say? What things?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you. An hour, okay?’

  ‘He may be in a meeting.’

  ‘Then get him out of the meeting.’

  ‘You got a bloody cheek, you know that?’

  ‘I’ve got a lot more than that.’

  She put down the phone. Stick that up your pipe. And wondered where she’d got the nerve.

  3

  Half an hour later she rang Harley’s bell. He opened it and glared at her.

  ‘You said an hour.’

  ‘I wanted a word with you first. Just between the two of us.’

  He hesitated but in the end gave way, as she had known he would.

  ‘You’d better come in, then.’

  It was the first time she had been inside Harley’s house. Three of the living-room walls were panelled in dark oak; the fourth was of glass and faced the Coral Sea. On one wall hung a dead fish of some sort, probably a marlin. Below it was a sturdy-looking rod, presumably the implement by which the fish had been caught. A large desk had an inlaid leather top; upon it stood photographs of building developments in various stages of completion. The colours of the room were a ferocious mixture of dark and crimson: testosterone heaven, Judy thought.

  Harley sat behind the desk and glowered; no offers of coffee or easy conversation from this tycoon.

  ‘I can give you ten minutes.’

  Judy sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs — chocolate and red — and looked around with the pleased expression of a desert-dweller catching her first glimpse of an oasis; she knew how annoying that could be to a man professing to be in a hurry, whose self-esteem might be tweaked by anything less than a proper attention to business.

  ‘Wonderful place …’

  Irony never hurt, even if the recipient missed the point.

  ‘Eight minutes,’ Harley said, courtesy a commodity reserved for those who might have favours to dispense.

  To business, then.

  ‘I hear the council is planning to attract new industry to the area.’

  Harley’s bored expression said: So?

  ‘New factories. Dozens of them. New roads, infrastructure, even new council offices …’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘A gold mine for the builder who gets the work. What I hear, they’d favour a local man. Great opportunity for you, provided they thought you were the right man for the job.’

  ‘Anyone suggesting I’m not?’

  There were times when Judy thought that Harley must have been born with bared teeth.

  ‘No, indeed. Competent man, everyone says so.’ She smiled. ‘Bad luck you got tangled up in this controversy, though. Could make things difficult.’

  ‘Controversy?’

  ‘The town being split over the Native Title issue.’

  ‘That has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Of course not. But with Josh Richards tied up in this rainforest development of yours —’

  ‘That wasn’t my idea!’

  ‘Could be the albatross around your neck, all the same.’

  ‘Albatross?’

  Harley’s interests were confined to dry land, on which profitable developments could be built; he was not into matters of the sea or mariners, ancient or modern.

  Time for plain talking. ‘If half the town is itching to cut your throat over this land claim business, the council won’t touch you with a ten-foot pole. Same with that resort of yours. Last I heard, they weren’t too keen on giving it the go-ahead after all. Too controversial, apparently.’

  Harley sneered. ‘Fat lot you know. Warren tells those dummies what to do. We don’t have any worries there.’

  Judy shook her head. ‘You know what politicians are like. Think they might get turfed out, they soon change their tune.’

  Again the bared teeth. ‘You’d better hope they don’t, or your sister-in-law could find herself out of a home. That house she’s in belongs to me, don’t forget. If I can’t go ahead with Rainforest Rendezvous, I’ll have to try my luck somewhere else. That house and land, right on the beach, is a prime site.’

  ‘And you’ve had experience of beach developments before, I believe.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Frances is a good soul,’ Judy said. ‘People like her very much, you know. You chuck her out, I’d say you could kiss goodbye to any further development in this town.’

  Again she smiled, while Harley seethed in silence.

  ‘You see? I told you it would be worth your while to listen to me.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘That’ll be Warren,’ said Judy.

  4

  She could hear the murmur of voices: Harley high-pitched and agitated, Warren’s basso growl.

  A man unhampered by law or ethics. She had overheard Bernie Young describe Warren in those terms once.

  Warren came in with Harley on his heels. Warren had a scowl all over his red face.

  ‘Been having a cosy little chat, I hear?’

  She was having none of that. ‘Plenty to chat about.’

  ‘It’d better be good. I don’t have time to waste.’

  Straight for the jugular …

  ‘You’re going to pull out of this development,’ she said.

  Warren’s eyes were chips of ice. ‘What development’s that?’

  ‘Rainforest Rendezvous.’

  ‘You dragged me over here to tell me crap like this?’ He was on his feet, a whirlwind would have moved more slowly. He turned to Harley, his fury spilling in a hot stream. ‘I’m outa here.’

  ‘Charm Bay Developments.’

  Judy had to shout to be heard in the general excitement but it stopped him. He turned back, moving more slowly now, and she had time to see how big he was.

  ‘What did you say?’

  It wasn’t easy to keep a tremor out of her voice but somehow she managed it.

  She repeated the name, spelling it out slowly. ‘Charm. Bay. Developments.’ Was it her imagination, or had she seen the slightest flicker of a glance pass between the two men?

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Warren said.

  ‘That’s funny. It was well publicised at the time. The papers were full of it. Roads not built, blocks in the bed of watercourses …’

  ‘All very interesting, but what’s it got to do with us?’

  ‘Maybe you remember the name Galway Trust better?’

  There was a stillness in the room that told her she was on the right track. A scent of danger, too: these were not easy men.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Harley wondered while Warren, silent, cut her with his eyes.

  ‘The people who lost their money … The lawyers reckoned they’d have a claim, if they could track down the blokes behind the development.’

  ‘So?’ Warren’s voice remained untroubled but his scowl was blacker than ever.

  ‘So if they knew who the beneficiaries of the Galway Trust were, if the names were leaked to the media, for instance …’

  Listen to the silence now.

  ‘Then there’s the Lucky Parrot. It’s a nightclub. There was talk of drugs.’

  ‘There was never any proof,’ Harley said. And stopped.

  ‘You’re right,’ Judy said. ‘There isn’t any proof. Doesn’t look good, though, does it? Nobody�
��s accusing anybody, but you know what people are like. Even the rumour doesn’t sound good. Not on top of everything else.’

  ‘You mean there’s more?’

  ‘Hadn’t you heard? A child’s been hurt …’

  Warren shook his head with a politician’s gravity. ‘I was deeply grieved to hear about it.’

  ‘The question is, why?’

  ‘Who knows? We don’t even know who was responsible.’

  ‘We know,’ Judy said.

  ‘There may be suspicion. No witnesses, though.’

  ‘Jeff Toms saw what happened.’

  ‘The word of a lunatic.’

  ‘A strange man, I grant you, but a lunatic, no.’

  ‘In that case you should lay charges. If you think you can make them stick.’

  ‘If I do, the police will want to interview Brett. Possibly even your brother, to find out why it happened.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But might become so. Luke is telling people you’re driving him out.’

  Warren shook his head impatiently. ‘How can I drive him anywhere? My brother’s a free agent. He can do what he likes.’

  ‘But if the police do get involved … He’ll do anything to protect that boy. If necessary, he might even be prepared to say that Brett was incited to do it.’

  ‘That would be a lie.’

  ‘Bad for public opinion, though. Right now, in particular, with an election coming … Some voters might even wonder if it was true.’

  ‘Only the fools.’

  ‘The world is full of them.’

  ‘Let’s stop playing games,’ Warren said. ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘Nothing you don’t know yourself. Push Rainforest Rendezvous any further, you could find yourself as popular as anthrax at the ballot box. To say nothing of the police. You know how diligent they get when there’s a public outcry. At the very least it would cause a nasty scandal, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You’re making all this up —’ Harley began, but once again Warren silenced him.

  ‘I’m out a few grand setting-up expenses. Could make things tricky.’

  Judy saw that the protest was for the form of the thing, to demonstrate that he had not given way too quickly. She brushed his objection aside.

  ‘Keen businessman like you, you’ll soon make it up. Unless you decide to go ahead anyway, take a chance on what might happen.’

  ‘It’s not just us,’ Warren said. ‘There’s Josh Richards to consider.’

  ‘If the pair of you pull out, what can he do?’

  ‘Make a fuss.’

  ‘Let him. It’ll die down soon enough. If he causes too much drama, you can always remind him he’s got the gallery. The way the scientists are queuing up to check out that tiger, he ought to do very well out of it.’

  ‘His community, you mean.’

  Judy smiled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And Brett?’

  ‘No point stirring up past grievances, don’t you agree? Forget the past, look to the future, that’s what I always say. The same with all the rest of it. They’re only rumours, after all. Malicious, probably.’

  It was Warren’s turn to smile, a little wryly, but with what might also have been a touch of admiration. ‘I hope you never decide to run against me, that’s all.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Warren said. ‘Harley and me’ll have a talk about all this. Get back to you. Okay?’

  I’ve done it, she thought. Done it.

  And found it hard to believe that it might be true.

  5

  Judy was drained when she got home.

  Arthur saw her white face. ‘Tell me what happened …’

  ‘It’s okay. They say they’ll talk it over but they’re going to agree. They’ve no choice.’

  ‘If they’d refused, would you have gone ahead and leaked the information?’

  ‘Couldn’t very well, could I? Not without dobbing Alec in. I wasn’t going to do that. But they couldn’t be sure, could they?’

  ‘No Rainforest Rendezvous?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘You’re a marvel, you know that?’

  ‘It was you who did it really.’

  ‘Me?’ He was incredulous.

  ‘It was you saying they were crooks that gave me the idea. I dunno why I never thought of Alec before.’

  ‘I don’t know how you got him to tell you.’

  A rueful smile. ‘Neither do I.’

  They were silent for a spell, companionably.

  ‘You asked me why I married you,’ she said presently.

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Let me ask you the same question.’

  ‘Why I married you?’ A smile dawned in his eyes. ‘Because you were the best meat in town.’

  She scuffed his hair. ‘I always had you down as a carnivore.’

  ‘Darn right.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Any chance of a bit of steak now?’

  ‘Running a takeaway, are we?’

  ‘I rather thought eat in instead.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  1

  It had been Jacqui’s idea to ask him.

  At first John had been disparaging. ‘Take Jeff Toms into the Cloud Forest? Why should he want to go there?’

  ‘The doctor says he saved my life. The Cloud Forest’s my best thing. I’d like to share it with him, if he wants.’

  ‘My best thing is that gallery.’

  Which now, ringed about with taboos, was barred to him. For the present, at least.

  Jacqui spoke to Jeff and he said yes.

  Up they went. To Jacqui, more than ever, it was a pilgrimage, the floor of the Cloud Forest thick with the silent seasons of a hundred years since her great-grandfather had come here.

  To Jeff, it was very different. He had not been into deep forest since Vietnam, had been frightened to come for fear that the memories that still set his dreams on fire might spill over to revisit him even in daylight.

  It was only because of Jacqui that he had agreed to do it. He hoped she would protect him from the evils of the past. Why a child should be able to do such a thing he did not know; because she was a child, perhaps.

  As he walked, memories welled like mist.

  2

  Of killing when terror or even the second-by-second unfolding of events ran out of control. One day. This woman he knew. Vietnamese, Buddhist. A good person. He admired her, might even have come to love her, had he dared and she permitted.

  He knew she was a nationalist. That was all right; they never spoke of it.

  Even today, her voice echoed in his dreams.

  ‘You will tell the authorities of me …’

  ‘No. No.’

  The notion would have been laughable, had it not been so sad.

  He respected her as few others. They were sent out on a raid to pick up named subversives, troublemakers, enemies. Enemies of whom, no one said, or asked.

  They went into the house, near Saigon’s Bring Cash Alley. A bellowing of voices, of feet trampling, the destruction of stillness. A bullet fired into the ceiling.

  She was there, not with an AK but with something more deadly still: her faith and the sense of betrayal and anger that was hot enough to set the wooden house on fire. She was looking at him, at what was happening to her, to her world, at his role in her destruction. She saw the truth of what the world was, what war was, and he watched as the knowledge dropped acid into her eyes and heart. He knew, as she turned to meet him, her hands with their hooked nails raised in a passionate denial of the abominable realities of war that, if she lived, she would hack him to pieces, even as her nails sought to hack his eyes. That would have been bearable; what was not was the image of her handed over for interrogation, the ripping of skin and flesh and bone that these kinds of interrogations meant, of things far worse than the mere rupturing of the body. He knew that he could not permit that.

  He held her wrists as light and br
ittle as the bones of birds while she screamed and panted and wept that he, that of all men he …

  ‘Why me?’

  He knew she did not mean Why do you treat me so, why am I to die? but Why do you spare me, who am willing to bear all? Why do I read the destructive mercy in your eyes?

  He wanted her to be far away, for time to have retraced its steps so that she had never been there at all, that none of them had been there in the midst of the flame and killing of war. He wanted the war never to have been, either, but it was too late for that, too late for him, too late for her, and he knew that she understood nothing or perhaps everything and that such knowledge, unchecked, would destroy her and so all meaning.

  He read in her eyes that in that sense she, too, was an emissary of death. The knowledge burnt him; he could bear neither the truth nor the wishful longing for what was untrue that lay in all people. It was too late to push her away, to unwind the passage of the hours, so he did what he had to do. He lifted the muzzle of his gun, he pressed it into the yielding flesh of her breast, he watched the blue silence that came to her eyes. He blew her away. Yet no: because every night thereafter she had come to him. She continued to come. His greatest fear was that she would do so forever. No penance of his would close those eyes or still the words that he heard nightly from her lips:

  ‘Why me?’

  In that moment of what he told himself was truth he embraced the insanity of war, became its implement and slave. Implement and slave: that was what her eyes told him. Amid the fire.

  3

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Toms?’

  Jacqui sounded scared because he was blundering, weeping, while John walked a little apart, eyes round and white in his dark face.

  He did not answer, but they had come into the mist now, and suddenly — as it had for her — the mist parted. The world was a blaze of diamond drops.

  She took his hand in hers as though he, too, were a child.

  ‘Look, Mr Toms …’

  And Jeff Toms looked.

  EPILOGUE