by Gregory Day
For Liz, however, the nuns of the convent were admir able, even if she felt a little sorry for them. As she watched them in the garden they did at times look wan and hollowed out and Liz couldn’t help but think about their lack of sexual activity, but on other days as she watched them closely tending the plants, they looked to be leading a life that was enviable for its simplicity and devotion. Things were similar at the Vrindarvan centre too. Of course, celibacy wasn’t an issue when it came to yoga, but nevertheless Liz found that the small group of teachers at Vrindarvan could at times seem pallid and barren from their discipline and practice. But then, as with the nuns, on other days, most days in fact, the yoga teachers were supremely healthy and flexible, compassionate, relaxed and good-humoured as well. Increasingly Liz felt some of that insight and contentment was beginning to rub off on her. It had taken a while to understand, and a fair bit of anguish, but now it was as clear as a bell – those ants in her sandal had done her no harm at all.
TWENTY-TWO
BATTY THE TRESPASSER
The bottle-green Forester headed up the cypress-lined hill in the middle of the night. The sky was brindled; when the moon couldn’t be seen from behind the cloud the yellowing ring around the moon still could.
At the top of the hill the Forester turned right into Merna Street but as soon as it had, as if changing its mind, it turned around again and moved slowly back in the opposite direction. With the creeping speed of stealth it dipped off the bitumen and continued on the gravel, the crunching sound carrying right across the hill and down past the Dick Lake to the riverflat.
At the little carpark above the steps running down to Horseshoe Cove the driver slowed the car even further and stopped it off to one side under some overhanging wattles. In the darkness it could hardly be seen. Putting on a beanie he got out and softly closed the door. He began to walk back towards Merna Street, his rubber soles hardly making a sound on the gravel until it ended for the bitumen where his feet made no sound at all.
It was only fifty or so metres to Ron McCoy’s place and, when he arrived at the Belvedere sign, he paused at the break in the fence where the driveway was and peered towards the house. There was no light and no sound from within. He looked down at his watch. It was 1 am.
He stepped onto the property and carefully made his way across the driveway, to a spot where he was hidden under trees. He inched along, dodging odds and ends of cast-iron and other lumpen objects, dozens of freestanding concrete pots, keeping one eye on the house and one on what lay in front of him. There was no wind but as he emerged from the trees and into the clearing beside the large vege table patch, he felt the breeze from the ocean immediately cover his face with a light salty chill. Feeling exposed now, with the moon in a clearing of whorling black sky, he pressed on beside the broad bean trellis, soundlessly, until he tripped on a coiled black plastic hose that lay camouflaged in the grass a few feet to the right of a tank stand. He landed flat and square on his hands and muffled his curse. His heart thumped in his chest. He stood up again, and waited. He looked at the house. It lay low and dark, motionless in straight lines across the eastern side of the block. No reaction.
He stepped forward again, walked across the mown clearing. Now the pounding surf below reached his ears and he wondered how he hadn’t heard it earlier. It was so loud. A constant hiss punctuated with swelling and crashing as the cresters wrapped around the offshore rocks way below him.
He could see the woodpile now. The dark orderly shape interspaced with wedges and divots of lighter coloured driftwood and cypress. It was exactly where he’d remembered it being, which was a relief. He wasn’t taking the risk for nothing. His eyes adjusting to the lack of light, he stepped around a garden tap. After a few more metres of mown grass, he was there.
Immediately he realised what the problem would be. The gate. That would be the sound that would give him away. He bent down in front of it, resting his hand on the edge of the woodpile which ran away towards the blink of the navigational light beyond the fenceline. He inspected the set-up. It was a tea-tree gate with three braided strands of jute for a latch. Its hinges were also made of jute but they didn’t feel as flexible or coarse, obviously they’d been dipped in a glue to strengthen them before they were used. He concluded that the only problem the jute could pose was a knocking sound if it was carelessly hung back on its post. The hinges of the gate itself shouldn’t squeal or creak. That was good.
Very delicately he lifted the braided loop up over the fencepost with his left hand whilst holding the rest of the gate steady with his right. He slowly pulled the gate open, waiting for the buckle in the arc that would make a sound. But there was nothing. He let it rest in its natural position, leaning slightly askew against the edge of the woodpile. Then he took a large hemisphere of timber from the top of the pile and secured it tightly against the gate so it wouldn’t move in the breeze. Occasionally a buffet would rise up over the lip of the cliff. He had to be sure it wouldn’t disturb the swung gate.
He stood up straight again and looked towards the house. He was way out in the wide open now. All anyone had to do was look and they would see him. All they had to do was listen and they may even sense him. Briskly, therefore, he set to his task. He gathered three large cypress wedges and an ironbark divot from the woodpile and stepped through the gate and onto the open cliff. Treading carefully he moved towards the edge and when he got within four or five feet of it he stopped. Down below he could see the glowing crests frilling the rocks. He could sense their in-between cruising, with an elegant iridescence, towards the beach.
All at once he threw his whole upper body forward and the blocks of wood were heaved into the air and over the edge. He didn’t hear them land. Of course not. But he had wondered. It all depended on the immediate gradation of the cliff. Right there it was sheer.
He turned around and made his way back through the opened gate to the woodpile. Once again he looked over at the house and this time he noticed the dark form of the open shed off at the cliff-side edge of it. Like the house, the shed was still as well. There was a sense of machinery gone to sleep. A ticking stopped. Activity abated. That shed was Ron McCoy’s lair, his storehouse, he was sure of that.
He gathered more wood from the pile, bundling it up in his arms. Still with his heart rapping at his bones, he made his way through the gate and once again paused in front of the cliff. He squared his feet on the ground beneath him and lurched forward again, the blocks of wood flying into the air and disappearing over the edge. As if into nothing. Without a sound they vanished.
He kept at it for over half an hour, sweating under his beanie and his black polar fleece jacket. Twice his throws went awry and blocks of wood landed with a thud. On one occasion with a shelly tink on the ground. But no-one stirred. And with his foot he carefully kicked them off the edge, tumbling them all the way down the high cliff to the rocks below.
He concentrated on a part of the woodpile in the centre, so as to make an impression. After an hour what had been an even pile at hip-height now had a big gap in its upper levels. No-one could miss it. He must’ve removed nearly one hundred pieces of wood.
The job done, he bent on his haunches again and carefully closed the gate. It went without a hitch. He placed the large block that he’d used to secure the gate back onto the pile and for a moment stood in the night looking out. Beyond the huge Two Pointer Rocks the sea went endlessly on and away from him, and rose back interminably in its swell towards the land. He threw his head back to an eerie moon, its wide luminous ring penetrating the cloud almost more than the moon itself. Then, with a quick glance at the house and the open shed and the looming pine trees beyond, he turned and began to pick his way back through the yard, concentrating as he went, determined to extricate himself without a folly.
He reached the road in no time, warmed up now by all the exercise of throwing the wood. Once on the bitumen and off the McCoy land he could feel the adrenalin shooting through him like a drug. He broke into a r
un, his body twitching from excitement, from that pure energetic substance coursing through him. If he’d been caught the ramifications would have been huge. Way beyond the paltry crime of stealing wood. People would ask why and whether or not he was quite mad or plain evil. Either way he would no longer be trusted. He would be done for.
But he made it. Back in the car he took a deep swig from a bottle of V8 he’d wedged between the seat and the handbrake before starting the engine. He turned the Forester out from under the wattles and drove quickly away, down the hill, across the main road and back up to his house on the western side of the riverflat. He parked in his carport, disturbing no-one.
Once inside his house, he changed out of his sweaty gear and had a quick shower. Then, in his tracksuit, he flicked on the radio and heated up the huge pot of pasta on the stove. Tomato and chilli. He survived on it. Between girlfriends it was easiest. He had a pot on the go continually. In a few minutes it was ready and he slopped it into a bowl with the claw ladle. He sat at his dining room table and ate and breathed deeply through his nose.
He guzzled down the bright red pasta and soaked up the remains in the bowl with a piece of thawing bread. He looked around the big room. Timber lined, slate tiled, a mezzanine with the potbelly flue soaring up through the gable. For some reason, probably because it was the middle of the night, the room looked particularly big and empty. He belched and then thought he felt a little bit sick. He gulped down some water and then realised he needed a shit. Sitting on the toilet he could hear the possums in the eaves and an owl calling mopoke mopoke further off down the road.
TWENTY-THREE
AUCTION AT ‘THE ORCHARD’
When Craig, Liz, Reef, Carla, Paul and Marisa arrived at ‘The Orchard’ for the auction on Saturday morning their stomachs were full with a cooked breakfast and the sun was shining out of a mottled, violet coloured sky. Because Libby had gone off horse riding with a friend, the Wilsons’ big Tribute jeep was not quite full, with Craig and Liz in the front, Carla and her kids in the back and Reef alone in the tail seat, giving Paul backward high-fives and calling out ‘Whoa!’ loudly every time. Paul giggled as their hands met, and little Marisa threw her tiny, fine-boned hands up in an attempt to get in on the fun. Although she was only five, Marisa was already frustrated at the way people, especially her brother, excluded her from things. It had occurred to her that all people over the age of six, her mother included, were cruel and quite selfish.
Craig parked the car on the freshly laid Lilydale toppings of the parking bay right in front of the main house. He was dressed formally for work, unlike the rest of the gang in the car, but whereas normally he would’ve worn a nice suit to an auction, today he’d chosen the moleskins his mother had given him the previous Christmas, an earth coloured Abelard business shirt and a Harris tweed jacket which Liz had bought from Henry Bucks in Melbourne, complete with dark olive leather patches on the never worn elbows. As he got out of the car and looked at the gleaming white picture-frame windows of the solid house above the beds of azaleas and hydrangeas, he felt as if he’d got it right with his choice of clothes.
‘The Orchard’ was an old Western District summerhouse, a bastion of landedness, and that’s how they were planning to sell it this time. ‘Forget the “sanctuary on the Riviera” stuff,’ Colin had said on his mobile to Craig in the morning. ‘It’s all horses and hounds today, mate.’
Already there were a few cars parked, both back out on the road and within the property, but Colin Batty himself was nowhere to be seen. Craig looked briefly up at the sky and then made his way along the corduroy path that split the flowerbeds, and knocked on the door.
Inge Svensson greeted him with a curt hello and stood aside to allow him to enter. Her once blonde hair now had a pewterish sheen to it, and her pale blue eyes were full of an icy beauty. Craig was polite, in a deferential kind of way. He knew the Svenssons were convinced that by living at ‘The Orchard’ they had surrounded themselves with rednecks and morons.
Inge Svensson ushered Craig down the wide and airy hallway. They stepped into the large living area, which looked out the northern side of the house through French doors onto a swimming pool that had been over-chlorinated. The colour of the water reminded Craig of Gatorade.
As they entered the room, Lars Svensson stood beside the French doors near the TV with the remote control in his hand. He was dressed in a bright red pair of golf slacks and a white Pringle crew-neck jumper and was half watching the BBC World News. He told Craig, in a thick Scandinavian accent: ‘Your boss is taking a microsleep.’
‘He’s what?’ asked Craig, scrunching up his face in friendly amusement.
‘He said he was nervous before an auction, always he said, and that a small sleep in the car would help. He said you’d be here soon and would manage the inspections. Do you remember it was you who showed us through the place on the day we bought it?’
‘Of course. Yes, I’ll show everyone through.’
‘Good then. Mr Batty knows what our expectations are.’
Lars Svensson flicked off the TV and for a few moments Craig stood with the vendors in a silence that only he seemed to find awkward. He recognised an intense European inscrutability on their faces, and as he turned and walked alone back down the hallway to the front door he saw himself again on Boulevard St Michel as a twenty-two year old, feeling like a simpleton as he talked to students he’d met from the Sorbonne about life and politics and morality. In 1988 he’d interpreted that inscrutability as honesty, and a lofty indifference to social graces, but now with the Svenssons he knew it meant more. With them the silence was full of disdain.
The auction was scheduled for 11 am and at ten past, having shown people through the house and around the grounds and prepared the stage on the lawn next to the parking bay, Craig had still not set eyes on Colin. Not even on his car. Then, as the crowd started to mill about and tap their brochures impatiently on their palms, the Minapre locals happily chatty but the genuine buyers getting edgy, the auctioneer appeared, walking up the driveway eating a nashi apple he’d picked from a tree near the gate.
Like Craig, Colin Batty had on a pair of moleskins, along with a tweed jacket and a chambray shirt, but he also wore a brand new camel-coloured Akubra hat with a red Legacy pin in it. He arrived amidst the crowd like a politician, smiling, recommending the apple, winking at people he knew, and eventually at Craig, who he then went over to and said, ‘Geez, that friend of your better half’s a good sort.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Craig realised he was talking about Carla and couldn’t help but laugh and agree.
‘I think all these people want an auction to start, Col,’ he told his boss.
Colin took a last and demonstrably savoured bite of his apple, threw the core into a nearby gardenia bush, referred to his notes and, with a quick glance at the Svenssons, who were now sitting on stainless-steel outdoor chairs on the granite patio near the front door, idly flicking through the weekend papers, proceeded to the lawn and cleared his throat.
Tipping his Akubra slightly back from his forehead he began proceedings by greeting the assembled crowd, which by now had grown to nearly one hundred people, all standing in a deep semicircle on the still dewy lawn around him.
‘Thanks for coming this morning, ladies and gents, and welcome on this lovely spring day to “The Orchard”. Before I start I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the prior ownership of this land by the Katubanut people.’
Straight away then he laughed and spread his arms wide, turning his body through a 270-degree arc which ended in the direction of the main house behind him and to his right.
‘It’s a delicate thing, this property,’ he said charismatically, and with a tone of disclosure. ‘It’s a treasure that requires not just someone to live here but someone to love living here, to handle it well.’ He gazed directly at the assembled throng, paused briefly, and continued: ‘But take a look, ladies and gents. For whoever the lucky person is at the end of to
day, I’m sure you’ll all agree that learning to love “The Orchard”, 234 Minapre Road, is hardly going to be difficult.’
In the late morning sun, ‘The Orchard’ did look magnificent. The house was clean and elegant, the flowerbeds ablaze, the bed and breakfast studios and cabins dotted around the place looked like well-established bowers in a larger haven.
‘Everything moves so fast these days,’ Colin Batty continued, tipping his hat further back on his head. ‘Things change in front of our eyes and we love, amidst all the change, to shape our properties so that they express who we are. I love my fellow Australians for that. I think it’s great that we have that kind of DIY initiative. But occasionally, ladies and gents, and perhaps more and more often these days, we’re beginning to desire something that we won’t need to shape or renovate, something solid and unchanging, something with a bit of old world integrity to help us brace our lives against the pace of modern life.
