Hinterland

by Steven Lang

  She walked with Alt down to his truck. When they were out of earshot he told her his part in Ange’s departure from the camp. ‘I wasn’t so happy having Will round the place,’ he said. ‘That house he’s staying in, I’ve heard of it. The man, Jaz, is ex–special forces, she’s right about that, highly decorated, got a Star of Gallantry in Bosnia. Runs training camps in the bush back of here, amongst other things. All very hush-hush. So much so I could find out very little, even from my sources.’

  ‘What sort of camps?’ she asked, disingenuous.

  ‘On the surface they’re ReachOut schools for rich kids. Church-based.’

  ‘But what are they really?’

  ‘Can’t help you there.’

  ‘But what d’you think? Is it,’ she asked, not happy even saying the word, ‘something to do with terrorism?’

  ‘You don’t call it that when it’s a program supported by the government, the private sector and the churches.’ Raising an eyebrow. ‘If you ask me it’s a training ground for some sort of militia. But for what or whom, I don’t know.’

  They were out under the big Moreton Bay. Alt’s truck a battered old-model Hilux, peeling stickers on the back window, Save the Tarkine, No to James Price, Lock the Gate. A catalogue of campaigns. He put his foot up on the bull bar, stretched out his leg.

  Only a few months ago a conversation like this would have been inconceivable. Not just the content of what Alt was saying, but her involvement. She had that sense again of there being larger forces at play. It seemed she’d made the mistake of believing she was at the centre of her own life.

  ‘So you’re saying there’s a real threat here?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Without going into too much detail I’d say these boys present the clearest danger right now. The tactical use of violence. I thought if you’re with Ange this evening you could keep your eye on her. Anything you find out might be useful.’

  She wondered, not for the first time, what Alt meant by ‘his sources’. Where, indeed, Alt came from with all his unusual skills.

  He clapped a hand on the bonnet, ready to go. ‘It’s one of the benefits of this kind of work,’ he said. ‘Sometimes when you’re dealing with a local issue you get to cause serious irritation to powerful people.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’ Eugenie asked.

  ‘Of course it is. It’s not worth doing this stuff if you’re not making waves.’

  Lindl was back in the kitchen again, cleaning up. She asked Eugenie if they’d stay for dinner.

  ‘We are horribly spoiled by you. My children and me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s something I like to do. We miss having children around.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘I saw you during the meeting. I didn’t say anything, but I saw.’

  The remains of the scones, poor misshapen things, on a baking tray on the kitchen bench, her girls now outside at the table where the meeting had been, the hippie chick looking over Sandrine’s shoulder at her homework. Emily watching with a kind of awe, seduced by her older sister’s conversion to the cult of Ange.

  ‘You know how this sort of thing affects me,’ Lindl said, turning to put things in the fridge, talking into its interior, to the shelves laden with half-used jars, as if what she was saying had no importance. ‘Marcus loves it, though. The battle. You can see that, can’t you? I mean, he says he hates it, but that’s for show. Under all that Left-wing pacifism beats a deeply competitive heart. What he doesn’t get is that it’s the wrong fight; he’s taking on people who don’t play by the rules.’

  ‘I’m not sure any of us know what the rules are.’

  ‘Same as they’ve always been,’ Lindl said. She looked out towards the veranda. ‘She’s a curious bird, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eugenie said, amused by this archaic description. ‘Although for myself I thought some small animal.’

  Lindl laughed. ‘A vole?’

  ‘I’m not sure what a vole is. Something from Wind in the Willows?’

  ‘You’re right, probably not sexy enough. I’d say she’s not what she seems. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but might be.’

  ‘A bit of a mixture, then,’ Eugenie said.

  ‘It’s possible she doesn’t know herself,’ Lindl said. ‘She’s very young, of course. God knows it took me long enough. Some girls never seem to get the power of their sexuality, do they? They kind of sail through as if all the attention’s their birthright, getting a shock when the men throw themselves out of their cars onto the street.’ Laying out vegetables on the island bench next to a cutting board. ‘Ange’s one of the ones who both get it and don’t, at the same time, if that makes any sense. She goes around milking it for all it’s worth while pretending not to know what’s she’s doing. She’s what they used to call naïf. I was watching her before, when she was in here with the girls. I think I’d like to paint her. It’s not something I feel like doing very much these days, but there’s something about her I’d like to capture which might come to light under paint. She does that to you, doesn’t she?’ Looking up at her. ‘I suppose we’re all attracted to the damaged ones.’

  Breaking up a corm of garlic, starting to peel the cloves and slice them fine, one way and then the other. Always ‘throwing something together’. Her hair up in a swirl on the top of her head, a confection so casual and yet so confident, the kind of thing Eugenie would never have been able to do in a million years, not just because of her curls. The remains of the beautiful woman she’d been. A strange thing to think because she was still beautiful. Just older. The perennial strand come loose. Eugenie wanted to reach over and tuck it behind her ear.

  ‘It was you I was interested in,’ Eugenie said.

  ‘My damage? Nobody needs to know about my insecurities,’ Lindl said.

  ‘Your friends, I, I might want to know. It might help to talk about them.’

  ‘I don’t think so. You’re much more interesting.’ Squatting in front of the oven to fiddle with its dials. ‘How’s it going with the doctor?’

  ‘Now you’re definitely changing the subject,’ Eugenie said, desperate to deflect the question herself. What could she possibly say? Tell her friend where she’d been at lunchtime? She didn’t think so.

  They played Scrabble. Ange claimed not to know the game but when teamed up with Sandrine they wiped the table clean. Emily supposedly in cahoots with her mother but in reality just snuggled in her arms, barely even willing to go with Lindl to shut up the chooks.

  Eugenie excused herself and took Emily off to bed, risking falling asleep by lying next to her in what used to be – still was even though she’d been gone a year – Elianor’s room, with its girly things on shelves and walls, brand-name stickers half-torn off the timber chest of drawers, a poster of two surfers looking at a sunset, another of Beyoncé, the singer, in a skin-tight lamé pantsuit, pushing forward her breasts at the same time as she pulled back her arse; presenting from both ends. A popular image that Eugenie disliked even more than it deserved because it seemed to sum up so perfectly the struggles ahead of the delicate girl in her arms, a girl out of step with the world and yet already her own person.

  Emily burrowing into her shoulder. Eugenie rocking her a little, whispering sweet nothings. But not a good mother all the same. Already planning, it seemed, to spend more time with Nick, lots of time with Nick.

  After her daughter dropped off she stayed a while longer, staring at the ceiling. Letting the day wash over her. Listening to the sounds in the other room. Sandrine’s high excited voice. Thinking about the odd way Geoff and Marcus responded to Ange. What Lindl had said about the girl. These old men with, you’d have to think, no further interest in young women, behaving like fools; as if in the presence of some primal feminine force. Something she clearly lacked, or if she did possess, was not aware of how to use. Which made her the first in Lindl’s categories. The thought slipping into her mind that it was by no means certain a man like Nick would be drawn to her … take
n by a wash of both gratitude and trepidation at that; but then it might just have been the power of Beyoncé on the wall.

  It was after midnight when they heard the motors. Both girls long asleep, the five adults spread around the lounge, cups of herbal tea in hand, the Scrabble board abandoned on the low table between them with its curious matrix of words, CREEK and SLANT and QUIET, the wonderful vowel-employing but hardly game-winning APOGEE. Ready for bed but not yet gone.

  Several vehicles, all of them loud, coming down the track.

  Marcus up and out the door. Telling Lindl to phone Alt.

  Eugenie slipped in to look at the girls. All silent. Toe to toe with each other in the single bed. Sandrine with a grave expression on her face, as if struggling to understand something. Emily, always too hot at night, the covers thrown off, arms akimbo, t-shirt stuck to her skin.

  She pulled the door shut as quietly as she could.

  Lindl was by the phone, a look of consternation on her face. ‘There’s no dial tone,’ she said.

  Geoff standing in the circle of comfortable chairs. Suddenly very old. Fragile. Which she guessed he was.

  ‘It’s not just the power?’ Eugenie asked. ‘Do you have a plug-in phone?’

  ‘The power’s still on,’ Lindl said.

  Obvious now she said it.

  Marcus came back inside. Closed the door. Stood with his back to it. ‘They’re coming here,’ he said. ‘Turn out the lights.’

  ‘The phone’s dead,’ Lindl said.

  ‘They’ll have cut the line at the top of the hill,’ he said. ‘No mobile reception down here. They’d know that.’ Fear in his voice.

  The lights going out.

  ‘Keep back from the windows,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them see you. Keep low.’

  The motors throttled down as they reached the causeway. Big diesels burbling. Not stopping. Coming on up the rise towards the house. Headlights sprayed across the windows. At least three vehicles. Spotlights mounted on roll bars above the cabins, very bright. The vehicles beneath them rendered invisible. They swung off the road into the paddock, swaying on the wet ground. Their lights coming directly onto the house. Music blaring. Something with screaming guitars. So loud she could hear it over the motors. A strong bass note, heavy metal music. The white light shining in through the uncurtained windows. Square luminous patterns thrown onto the ceiling. Turning the house upside down.

  Eugenie sidled around the walls. She wanted to be back in the girls’ room. She wanted to see they hadn’t woken up. To hold them. Someone was moving across the room.

  Ange was walking towards the door.

  ‘Get down!’ she said, yelling a whisper.

  Ange turned to her. ‘It’s okay, I know these guys, I’ll talk to them,’ she said.

  Illuminated by a beam of light. Wearing a weird combination of innocence and gravity, a belief in her own inviolability so formidable it affected everyone around her.

  ‘No,’ Marcus said. ‘You can’t go out there.’

  He was still facing into the room. He went to Ange, put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down onto the floor, out of the light.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said.

  ‘No you will not,’ Lindl said. ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them intimidate me.’

  He went back to the door. It occurred to Eugenie that it was Ange’s example that was driving him, but she repressed the thought.

  A gun went off. Five, perhaps six shots. Eugenie dropped to the floor herself. Crawled crabwise towards the girls. Making it to the passage. Leaning back against the wall. The shots, she thought, weren’t anything. Guns fired into the air. Designed to scare them. It was working. She couldn’t remember being more scared in her life.

  A shadow coming towards her. She recoiled, but it was Geoff. He stood over her.

  ‘This is a diversion,’ he said.

  He seemed in control of himself. Excited if anything. She could hear his breath, short and harsh. ‘There’ll be others down at the causeway. We need to go there. We’ll go out the back.’

  Making his way along the hall, turning into the laundry. Not waiting. She stood. Followed him. This was the effect of people who believed in themselves. She ran her fingertips across the closed door of the girls’ room, as if to, what, she didn’t know, bless them, lock them in safely, communicate her love.

  Geoff was holding the back door open. He leant in to whisper in her ear, although with all the other noise such precautions were superfluous. ‘We’ll go around the sheds,’ he said. ‘Marcus will keep them up at the house.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Talk to them.’

  As if this was something they’d discussed.

  Geoff already moving, making his way around the back of the shed in the ambient glow of the spotlights, circumventing unidentified pieces of machinery. She behind him. The grass long. A sense of dread in every step. She didn’t even have a torch. The outbuildings oddly shaped in the referred light.

  Past the end of the shed there was only the track. The causeway a hundred metres downhill. The lights from the vehicles on their left side, behind them. Another vehicle was stopped, facing away from them, on the far side of the creek. Headlights off. At least two men moving around behind it. Their actions lit by head torches.

  ‘Get their number plate,’ Geoff said. ‘Okay? I’ll do the rest.’

  Simply going on down. Fuelled by God knows what rage. Threat to his frogs, perhaps, accumulated anger at the calculated destruction of everything he’d devoted his life to. She didn’t know. Only that she was a pace behind him, similarly charged. At ten metres away he turned on a big maglite torch. She didn’t even know he had it with him. Shone it on the men.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ he called out, no quaver in his voice now.

  There were three men in t-shirts and board shorts. Young men. They had several twenty-litre plastic drums already on the causeway, lying on their sides. Liquid spilling into the creek. White drums with green labels.

  The men frozen, caught in the light. Geoff’s torch so much brighter than their own.

  ‘You stop that. You’re breaking the law.’

  Going right on down. Grabbing the closest container and standing it up.

  She thought she recognised one of the men. The boy from the creek. Ange’s Will.

  She was about to say something normal to him, like, Hey! What d’you think you’re doing? in the way she might address a naughty schoolboy. Except he was reaching into the back of the tray. Picking up a bar. She was just behind Geoff. None of them had seen her in the darkness behind the torch. She ran forward, yelling only one word. No. Running in and the bar coming down. As if the momentum of it had just been too strong to stop. As if everything up until then had been moving too fast and too hard for there to be time for it to stop. As if she’d been running towards this exact moment for years.

  eighteen

  Nick

  Nick was already at the hospital when the paramedics called it in. TBI, probable fracture, severe bleeding. GCS 7, E2 V1 M4, at 0:57. Female, late thirties. They didn’t say a name.

  He’d been there for a couple of hours with Helen Lamprey. She’d suffered a relapse, alone at her house, somehow managing to call him before passing out. Major organ failure. The end in sight. He was writing up the report when the charge nurse stuck her head around the door to tell him an ambulance was on its way, pleased she didn’t have to try to raise a doctor at that time of night for a trauma patient, a feeling he could only partly share. He would need to be back at the hospital again before seven for his rounds, would have preferred to go back to bed and not be woken again. Going out to meet the big Mercedes as it came under the portico. Stepping up inside to see the patient, lying on her side, strapped into the stretcher to impede movement but turned away from him, the paramedic holding an oxygen mask to her face because, due to the nature of the wound, he couldn’t attach it to her head.

&nbs
p; Asking for details of what she’d been given so far, getting a glimpse of the injury and instructing the nurse to contact Brisbane.

  ‘We’ll need the chopper,’ he said. ‘They won’t be able to deal with this on the coast.’

  Not taking his eyes off the patient but addressing the paramedics. ‘I’m going to confirm the GCS. What happened here?’

  ‘Hit with an iron bar.’

  ‘I’ll need to get around the other side.’

  There being some awful familiarity to the woman’s hair. Even with the gore. Slipping backwards. Losing his balance. Almost falling out of the ambulance. Collapsing onto the other gurney, bumping against the paramedic beside him.

  ‘You all right sir?’ the man said.

  His colleague standing on the ground at the back of the van. Her face at head height to him. Short blonde hair. Blue eyes. Ambulance fatigues. Blue and green should never be seen. Shirt sleeves rolled up. A strong-looking young nurse. Reaching forward to take his pulse. He couldn’t form words.

  By the time the helicopter arrived he’d pulled himself together enough to arrange passage to Royal Brisbane alongside her. Pulling rank. Familiar enough with the symptoms of shock to know that he wasn’t much use to anyone. Embarrassed before the paramedics. I’m so sorry. I know this person. We had lunch together today. If you could call it that. Taking nourishment in each other. Not going to explain how he knew her, but not going to be separated from her either. By that time several other people had arrived at the hospital, some of whom he vaguely recognised. Marcus Barker. No sign of the wife whose name he couldn’t recall. Eugenie had mentioned them as friends. No sign, either, of the husband, but then there wouldn’t be, would there? At the mines.

  He shook the man’s hand. ‘There are children? Two daughters? Is someone taking care of them?’ he asked.

  ‘Lindl’s taking care of them. They’re asleep.’ Patting him on the shoulder as if he, Nick, had reason to be in shock. Nobody was supposed to know about them. She’d made him take the back roads around the town so they wouldn’t be seen.