Hinterland

by Steven Lang

  ‘The thing is,’ Helen says, speaking from her dark bundle of rugs, he can barely see her anymore. ‘I’m on my own now. I’m not complaining. It’s my choice as much as anyone’s. I wouldn’t want it any other way. But I worry about Guy. I no longer know who he is. I don’t think he knows either. He seems to be confused about people and wealth. Perhaps he always was and I just didn’t notice.’

  Behind the wheel of the truck, its headlights following the narrow curves of the road with less certainty than he’d like, he takes note of his condition. He is on the edge of competence, having difficulty making the turns at the right speed, the lumbering beast beneath him lurching unnervingly on the much-repaired road. Pulling himself together so he can at least make it home in one piece. Concentrating on the task at hand. Not so hard really, except that the sleepless nights seem to be catching up with him on this winding road along the top of the escarpment, waves of exhaustion interfering with his will.

  A car appears from the opposite direction, its headlights sudden and painfully bright, causing him to brake sharply, and then it’s gone, leaving a wash of colour in his eyes. The road straightens and he changes up a gear, gives it a little juice, letting the machine take him home.

  two

  Nick

  The phone pealed out in the darkness, dragging him up from sleep. It wasn’t his night on call and in the moments of waking – fumbling for the glowing screen where it was lying on the carpet next to the mattress – his mind put together a scenario in which Miles was shirking his duty again, that he had somehow managed to get the hospital phone re-routed to Nick’s number. The resentment surging.

  It wasn’t the case; it was Guy Lamprey.

  ‘Sorry if I’ve woken you,’ he said. That affable television voice. ‘I’ve a slight emergency and the more I thought about it the more I thought you might be the man to help.’

  Nick managing, by way of reply, a sort of grumbling noise. A slight emergency. No precedent, surely, for such an adjective? His newly stirred brain going full tilt now, still developing the Miles script: Lamprey’s wife was one of Miles’s patients, Miles had been irresponsible in some way – not beyond the realms, he was drinking heavily, even, Nick believed, at work (the reason the previous locum had departed) – and now Lamprey had found out. What he couldn’t quite get his head around was why he should need to talk about it at this time of night.

  ‘The thing is, I need discretion,’ Lamprey said. ‘I don’t know you well, it’s true, but on the basis of our meeting the other night I get the sense I can trust you. Can I speak frankly?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nick rolled over to switch on the bedside lamp, revealing, even within its limited range, the unfurnished hopelessness of the room. The clothes he’d worn the day before thrown over a couple of cardboard boxes. The open sliding door of the built-in displaying his meagre selection of suits hanging limply, like so many shades. Soon he would have to make an effort.

  ‘It’s a sensitive matter,’ Lamprey said. ‘A boy’s been hurt at one of those ReachOut places up in the hills. We need a doctor to attend.’

  ‘If there’s a medical emergency, why hasn’t an ambulance been called?’

  ‘It’s not just anyone’s boy, you see.’ Lamprey calm, collegiate, inviting Nick into his world. It was the you see that did it, the affected English upper-class tic which acted as a hook because of course Nick didn’t see, and was thus obliged to ask for an explanation.

  ‘So who is it?’ The boy, the father, either, both. Still trying to come to grips with the situation.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m at liberty to tell you at this point. The son of someone important. Is that enough?’

  ‘And what’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s been in a fight with some other boys. I don’t believe it’s life-threatening but you can’t be too careful, can you? That’s why I thought of you. I know it’s late but I didn’t think you’d mind doing a special favour. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary.’

  This strange assumption people make about doctors, that they don’t require the same amount of sleep as everyone else.

  ‘I had a couple of drinks before I went to bed,’ Nick said. ‘Why haven’t you contacted Doctor Prentice? He’s on call.’

  ‘Can you drive?’ Lamprey said. As if his question hadn’t been asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m in Brisbane,’ Lamprey said. ‘You’d need to go out there yourself.’

  That would be in the New Farm apartment, a converted loft in an old bond store, close to the city. Lamprey having a way of letting people know about both the company he kept and his possessions. ‘Are you capable of driving?’ he asked again.

  ‘I suppose so. Where is it?’

  There was, apparently, an old training camp up in the hills to the west of town. An area he’d not yet visited, out along dirt roads. Midnight already, had he really only been asleep for a couple of hours? It felt like longer, one of those sleeps where you plunge to the depths.

  What was he supposed to do with this boy when he found him?

  ‘See that he’s okay, if he’s not then bring him back with you, do what you have to. But whatever it is, be, how can I say, circumspect. We don’t want the media involved.’

  The more Lamprey spoke the more Nick suspected there must be some sort of abuse involved. Was it a church camp? At least he was now awake.

  ‘I need to know more,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t be expected to go along with this without knowing what I’m getting myself into.’

  ‘Fair enough. But if I tell you do I have your agreement that you’ll go? That you’ll be discreet?’

  ‘I’m not undertaking to break the law, you understand that? If there’s anything reportable I will report it.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll discuss it with me, and his father, first.’

  ‘Who is?’

  Lamprey saying a name to conjure with – Peter Mayska. Even someone as disconnected as Nick knew of him. The Queensland billionaire. The actual value of his fortune dependent on both the trade weighted index and the price per tonne of various minerals at present still required by China.

  ‘His son, the boy’s name, is Cooper.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘And what’s he to you?’

  ‘I’m a friend of a friend.’

  He followed the unfamiliar road down into the valley, spots on the windscreen promising rain, grateful of the choice he’d made of a new four-wheel drive, never mind the expense. Cocooned against the night in its hermetically sealed module, the instruments glowing, nothing visible outside the parabola of the headlights. Nick not being the sort of man who put much store in cars, only persuaded to lease this one by his brother’s arguments about tax advantage, agonising over the decision for days as if the question of owning a car was not financial or practical but personal and ethical, a Judeo-Christian conundrum as to whether or not he deserved to own such a fine piece of machinery; a question further complicated by what Abie might think. The same dilemma which contributed to his empty house: it was not only that he’d have to actually go out and shop for the stuff, but that in doing so, in spending money on furniture he would be committing to this place, finally confirming their marriage was over.

  After almost an hour he arrived at the bridge Lamprey had described. He took the turn just beyond it, setting the milometer to zero where the road became gravel, dusty despite the promise of rain, starting off wide but getting narrower as it climbed, barely more than the width of the car. Forest on either side, occasional tall eucalypts with white trunks catching in the headlights, big trees. Darker, thicker woods behind, rainforest, high branches reaching out to join their counterparts above the road. He’d not seen another car since he left Winderran and now, on the dirt, not wanting to meet a vehicle coming the other way, he was relieved about that, but at the same time, equally, unnerved. Twenty-three kilometres along this road, Lamprey had said, but althoug
h he’d been driving interminably he’d only gone fourteen and the road was getting rougher, rising steeply then descending sharply, in tight, loose-gravelled turns. More up than down. What if it was the wrong road? If he’d made a mistake? Not just with the directions. The longer the journey took the more uncertain he became about the whole undertaking. He had no need to get tied up in some quasi-legal escapade on behalf of privilege. A failure of judgement on his part brought on by Lamprey’s charm – one of those men with such an enlarged sense of their own worth that it leads them to expect others will do their wishes, which, by some curious self-replicating mechanism, they then do; people like himself, for example, taking a corner too fast and grinding to a halt, side-on to the road, gravel flying up. The implication being that to do Lamprey a favour was to do yourself one, too. Like those bumper stickers, What’s Good for Halliburton is Good for You.

  The occasion on which they’d met was Sophie Allenby’s house concert. To which Nick had been invited by the town’s worthies out of a combination, no doubt, of curiosity and the false assumption of a knowledge of the arts in the new locum. The kind of event he would normally have gone out of his way to avoid except that Miles (conspicuously absent himself) had insisted he attend. You need to get to know these people, he’d said. This isn’t like Canberra, you can’t just ignore your patients, you have to live with them.

  Sophie’s house (Mr Allenby apparently long dead) was perched on the edge of the escarpment and boasted a wide room whose curving windows delivered a view across the plains towards Brisbane and Moreton Island, dusk falling over the landscape, those impossible, almost oriental mountains standing up out of the summer haze. Certainly they were all there: Atkinson, the plump little man with the round gold-rimmed glasses who ran the art gallery above the gift shop; the overly perfumed over-bearing woman who owned the same (and, apparently, half the buildings in the main street) – he above her – although it didn’t pay to dwell on such things; the cruel-mouthed editor of the local newspaper and his rather glamorous wife; the former big pharma executive turned hobby-farmer; the pianist, Ms Allenby’s daughter, a doe-like, sweetly edible blonde twenty-something whose playing, along with a fellow student from the conservatorium, was the attraction for the night. The trouble with being a doctor in a small community being the hidden knowledge, small and large, so quickly developed about people – Atkinson, for example, suffered from dreadful piles, while the host, Ms Allenby, a formidable woman in most aspects of her life, was plagued by a series of disorders, not all of which he could be certain were real; the big pharma man – surprisingly urbane and entertaining – had early-stage Parkinson’s. He and his wife had moved to Winderran to enjoy rural tranquillity, raising Charolais beef, and now had different choices before them. There was a need to observe in any gathering professional distance, avoiding not just talk of an individual’s ailment, but also the temptation to define them by it.

  Seventy or more chairs were set out in a semi-circle facing a small podium in front of the windows. Nick stood awkwardly to the side juggling biscuits and cheese on a napkin along with a glass of wine, praying his beeper would vibrate and free him from the requirements of sociability.

  In the break he went out to the deck. With the coming of night the western sky had turned an extraordinary silver, fading to a burnt orange along the line of the hills. Far to the south the lights of the city. Lamprey and another man out there, smoking, talking, their voices swollen with the confidence that their insights would be entertaining, even educational, to others. On seeing Nick, Lamprey broke away to introduce himself, holding out his hand and saying his name, as if Nick didn’t know it already, hard not to feel flattered that the author and television star had taken the time to find out who he was. Introducing the other man as none other than Aldous Bain, local Federal Member and Shadow Minister for Energy and Employment in the Lonergan cabinet.

  Bain tilted his head towards him and, by way of a handshake, offered the touch of something soft and slightly repellent, managing to maintain in person, despite his exquisite suit, the same impression he gave on screen of being either an undertaker or one of his clients re-activated for the occasion – pale-skinned, sharp-nosed, longish grey hair held back by product, excusing himself with the brusque ease of those who know they must share themselves around.

  Lamprey, a tall thin man with a long neck and weak chin that gave him the peculiar appearance, at least in that light, of an inquisitive ostrich, held up the remains of his cigarette between his fingers.

  ‘Exiled,’ he said, ‘For my sins. The trouble is I like it. Though I shouldn’t say that to you, should I? Tell me, are you enjoying the concert? They’re good aren’t they? For ones so young. You wonder where they get the sensibility to know how to play this sort of thing. You tend to assume that music with such deep emotional resonance must be played by people who’re familiar with those feelings. You are a lover of classical music?’

  The music had been unexpectedly beautiful, a couple of sonatas by Haydn and Mozart – although, not being familiar with live performance, Nick had been surprised at the raucousness of the horsehair on gut in that refined space, each pass of the bow rending the air. For much of the first piece he’d wondered if the violin was really meant to sound like that, or if it was ever so slightly out of tune, a concern which dissolved when a pair of fruit doves, big birds, landed in the branches of a tree beyond the window and began ripping cautiously at a wire bag of seed, pausing in their work to look in at the assembled guests from cool circles of eye centred within perfect white heads, their silence and staccato movements suggesting that they, too, were affected by the noise from the instruments; and, being a kind of apotheosis of beauty themselves, giving evidence that the music must be the same.

  ‘I like it, but I don’t know it,’ he said, concerned to discover that, against his wishes, he was about to reveal something of himself, if only as an attempt to contribute to the conversation; as if Lamprey somehow demanded it. ‘My father loved opera,’ he said. ‘Had to be allowed to listen on Sunday afternoons without being interrupted. I think it worked against the genre for me.’ The little house in Stanmore drowning in the noise from the tall speakers that sat like sentinels in the corners of the living room. The rows of LPs and the restrictions on touching; the refusal to allow him or his brother to play their music on the system in case they damaged the speakers, as if what they chose to listen to wasn’t just a threat to social cohesion, it was physically destructive.

  ‘Now that’s a shame,’ Lamprey said, stubbing the cigarette out on the sole of his shoe and burying the butt in a pot plant with the fastidiousness of the modern smoker. ‘You mustn’t let childhood hurt deprive you of such joy. Come and visit. I have the very best sound equipment. I’ll play you Traviata. An aria or two.’

  He wondered at this. Why Lamprey was offering it. Why it is that people offer largesse they don’t really mean you to take up, like foreigners met on a train saying, You must come and see us when you visit Finland, knowing you never will or that, if you do, it’s barely likely you’ll land on their doorstep for three days of kayaking in the lakes. It is, he supposed, cheap and easy to say, even easier to add, We’re not just saying that, we mean it. It was something Lamprey could do because he was famous and Nick wasn’t, because it’s what grand people do: they make gestures secure in the knowledge that the less grand will never call them on it.

  He didn’t know why he was so critical of the man. Perhaps it was part of that Australian requirement to take down one’s betters, or those who believed themselves so, a way to prick Lamprey’s charm, but then it might, also, have been a reaction to the patronising comment about childhood trauma, the dispensation of psychological advice without invitation. Doctors get used to diagnosing patients at first glance. It’s a dangerous habit, because you can be wrong, and changing your mind isn’t as simple as many believe. But the job is, after all, to appraise people, to attempt to see to the core of their health issue before they can overlay it with pers
onality; never mind that it wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing out there on the deck with those curious megaliths sinking into the darkness below them. At the moment when Lamprey had taken his hand in his gruff own and – in contrast to Bain’s wet fish – squeezed it hard, that well-met expression on his face, what Nick saw was a man harbouring a nest of vipers. If he’d been asked he’d have said cancer, early stages in the gut, because of a somewhat sallow cast to the face. It was the projection of rationality that confused Nick, that made him critical of his own criticism and dig for sympathy, making it a medical problem Lamprey nursed and not something deeper.

  A light on the right-hand side of the road, flickering through the trees. His headlights picking up a couple of white painted tyres planted in the ground to mark the entrance. He took the turn, automatically indicating, but for whose benefit it wasn’t clear, passing under a metal archway with words filigreed across the top that probably said nothing like Work will make you strong, much more likely Spring Creek Camp, but surely the implication was there. A dollar fifty-three on the car’s digital clock.

  Coming into a wide clearing. Several bunkhouses standing darkly on a gentle slope, the forest beyond. An admin building at right angles to the others. A light on its veranda. He parked. No-one came out to meet him. He switched off the motor, got out. Night all around, silent but for the ticking of the car. The air cold. He had come up several hundred metres. He mounted the wooden steps with his bag. A few brave insects circling the light. One large moth, the same colour as the timber, stuck fast on the weatherboards. The screen door’s coiled spring complaining.

  Calling out, ‘Hello.’

  A door down the veranda opened, spilling yellow light. A man emerged, came towards him, grey t-shirt tight across the chest, thick biceps, military-style pants. Army-issue boots, the soft beige leather ones with the thick soles. Number three cut across the scalp. Stopped a metre away from Nick. Didn’t say a word. Attempting to intimidate and, quite frankly, succeeding. Extraordinary behaviour.