by Susan Duncan
Mulvaney loses his temper and roughly pushes the kid aside. Jimmy stumbles, recovers. Draws himself to his full scrawny height, shakes his head at the politician: ‘Me mum says it’s rude to push people and right now, I’m findin’ it hard not ta give ya a good talkin’ to about manners. But ya need to brush up on ’em, ya know? Or you’ll never get anywhere in life, so me mum says.’ The reporter can’t keep a straight face. The cameraman gets a full frame shot of Jimmy’s disappointment. Sam stands back with his arms folded across his chest, and a look that spells gotcha.
The story makes the six-o’clock bulletin. Prime time. Sam’s phone runs hot after it goes to air. Everyone’s chuffed. The kid’s a natural and turning into a Grade A arsonist. Who would have guessed it, eh?
Sam’s mobile goes off for the umpteenth time. He checks the caller ID. The number comes up but he doesn’t recognise it. He takes the call. ‘Mr Scully? I understand you represent Jimmy MacFarlane.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Sam says.
‘I’m a reporter with Woman Magazine. We’d like to talk to him and his mother about the relevance of good manners in a techno world.’
Sam sighs. ‘I don’t want to sound mercenary but I’ve been instructed to turn down any requests unless there’s a fee. The kid’s got an eye on building a decent superannuation fund for his old age.’
The reporter dodges the question and talks about the beneficial influence a story like this could have on parents all over Australia.
‘You reckon a single kid can change the manners of a generation, eh?’
‘Well . . .’
‘I don’t want to sound cynical, but playing the ego card is a cheap way to try to nudge him over the line for free. Unless you’re willing to pay a fee for his time, there’s no deal.’ Jeez, Sam thinks, he just might be getting the hang of the dark side of the media business.
‘I’d have to check with the editor,’ the reporter says, the cosiness gone from her voice.
‘What’s your gut feeling?’ Sam asks.
‘Well, Jimmy’s not a celebrity . . .’
‘Can’t agree with you there,’ he says, and he – politely – declines the offer.
Just on dusk, Sam gets three calls in a row. All he hears on the end of the line is heavy breathing. It leaves him feeling chilled to the bone.
Before he can decide what to do, Siobhan calls. ‘Nice work at Parliament House but Mulvaney’s going to feel like a rat in a corner,’ she warns. ‘Jimmy made a fool of him. We’ve got to seriously watch ourselves now. We’re starting to look and sound like winners and he’s got a lot of money at stake. Think of it, Sam. If the man was handed half a million before the project started, what’s it worth to him when it’s finished?’
‘I’ve a bottle of your favourite Riesling in the fridge if you feel like dropping around for a drink,’ Sam says.
‘What’s on your mind then?’
‘I’m worried they’ll target Jimmy.’
‘Polish a glass and I’ll be there before it’s halfway filled.’
They sit on Sam’s mouldy canvas chairs on the deck with the slatted timber table between them. Sam slips his beer into a thermal glove to keep it cold. Siobhan takes a small, considered sip of her wine. She tilts her head in approval. ‘A lovely, light drop. Those heavy-wooded chardonnays, they’d put hair on a young girl’s chest.’
On the water, with the light falling fast, a couple of kids paddle surfboards from a standing position. No lights, Sam worries. He watches until they make it safely to soggy mudflats on a low tide where sand hills rise and fall like tiny islands. The sky is deep pink behind blue hills, the air ripe with damp earth and the tang of brine and wet sand. Nearly every commuter tinny is high and dry. Frankie will enjoy a small boom replacing props over the next few days. One man’s luck is another man’s misfortune, as his father used to say. The two paddlers lift their boards and hoof it to shore. ‘The kid,’ Sam says, ‘how are we going to protect the kid?’
*
Sam and Siobhan talk late into the night. Alerting the whole community, they agree, could start a panic. Alerting only Amelia would be sure to start a panic. ‘How quickly crumble the foundations,’ Siobhan says. ‘It’s a sad day when we can’t feel safe in our environment.’
In the end Siobhan resolves there’s nothing to do short of sending Jimmy and his mother on an extended holiday.
‘Jimmy won’t leave while the park is in danger of being razed to the ground,’ Sam says. ‘So we’re back to square one.’
‘I’d ask our local member of parliament to warn Mulvaney to call off the dogs but our relationship is a tad testy.’
Sam raises his eyebrows.
‘I felt compelled to correct her press releases, which, as it turned out, were written by her husband. He told me I was creating marital disharmony by interfering. Eejit. I was only trying to make them grammatical. Bad grammar is offensive, don’t you think? Like someone singing off-key.’
Sam grins: ‘Guess contacting her is not an option, then.’
Siobhan sighs with mock innocence. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I should employ a little more diplomacy . . .’
‘Nah. Life’s too short to mess around.’ They both grin.
‘We’re in need of another spot of arson to keep the media ball rolling. Got any ideas?’ she asks.
‘How about a hot air balloon over Macquarie Street?’
Siobhan’s eyes light up. ‘Would the balloon be able to hoist the cockatoo, do you think?’
‘Might be a bit heavy.’
‘Ah well, it would be a shame for it to smash through the roof of Parliament House by mistake. A lot of effort went into creating that monster bird. I’m quite fond of it by now, you know.’
The next day, in an interview in the Daily Telegraph, Mulvaney unwisely refers to Garrawi Park as the local garbage dump. He hurl insults at the locals, calling them ‘uneducated, drug-taking ferals who need assistance to flush a toilet’. He goes on to mention the ‘handicapped’ child being callously exploited by members of the community who are too cowardly to step up to the front line.
The Islanders go into uproar. Siobhan, who is incensed Mulvaney isn’t even savvy enough to use the more politically correct term of ‘disabled’ – which certainly doesn’t apply to Jimmy – sends out a message: ‘He’s insulting Jimmy to destroy the kid’s credibility. Don’t react. Don’t say a word. The bastard is looking to fatten his personal bank account.’
Sam takes Jimmy aside and shows him the story. ‘Remember how I said people might call you names? This is how it happens.’
Jimmy glances at the picture of Mulvaney. ‘Jeez, Sam, I told ya the bloke had no manners.’ And the slur rolls off Jimmy like water off a duck’s back. ‘I’m off if ya don’t need me. The heat’s stressin’ me worms somethin’ terrible. I gotta hose ’em down every hour or they’ll cark it.’
‘You seen anyone dodgy hanging around your house lately, Jimmy?’
‘Nah. Only Kerry. But he comes and goes.’
‘Kerry?’
‘Me big goanna. Think he might be eyein’ me worms. I’m keepin’ an eye on ’im, though. Me worms are like family so I’d come down hard on Kerry if he ’ad a go at ’em.’
‘Right,’ Sam says. ‘Anyway, if you see anything weird, call me, OK? Anything at all, I want to know, Jimmy. It’s important, mate. So don’t go it alone if you reckon something’s not quite up to scratch. Deal?’
‘Yeah sure, Sam. Anythin’ weird, eh?’
Sam suddenly realises the many possible connotations for weird. ‘Er, I’m not talking Island weird. Just weird, weird, OK?’
‘Orright.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
The fundraising art auction takes place on the third Saturday evening in March in the heart of Sydney’s posh eastern suburbs. The works adorn the stark white walls of a cavernous echoi
ng gallery owned by Michael Barnes, a very rotund, very volatile, completely passionate curator with big bushy hair; he’s affectionately known as the Wombat. The weather is freakish. Stinking hot – forty degrees even with the sun well and truly set. The moon is huge. The kind of night in ancient times that men went mad and women hid. As if to prove the point, a hundred noisy rabble-rousers are gathered with placards denouncing Cutter Islanders as silvertailed toffs trying to prevent others from enjoying their god-given delights.
‘Who sent you?’ Sam asks the heavily sweating bloke who appears to be in charge.
‘Mulvaney,’ he responds without hesitating. ‘You wouldn’t have a cold drink anywhere, would you, mate?’
Sam goes off. The protesters begin chanting: ‘Down with NIMBY bastards.’ He returns with a large bottle of water. The leader glugs most of it before passing it around. Figuring he owes Sam a favour, he says: ‘Just so you know, mate, we’ve been told to smash the place. You might want to keep your head down. Nothing personal, you understand. Just earning a dollar here.’
Sam rushes to inform the Wombat, or Barnesie, as he prefers to call him. Wearing a sleek black suit, red-framed sunglasses and vermillion-painted lips that are bleeding into the perspiration running down his face, he’s installed in a kissing booth at the entrance. ‘Gimme a kiss, lovelies,’ he says, mock smooching. ‘Five dollars a kiss.’ Siobhan, who’s dressed in the same glad rags she wore to the black-tie fundraiser and who looks as glamorous as Maureen O’Hara in her Hollywood heyday, gets it instantly. ‘He’s sending up John James,’ she says. ‘Sending up the cult.’ She parts with her money and leans over. Instead of kissing him, she half-whispers in his ear. ‘I will love you forever for this.’
The fake guru gives her a fake blessing and showers her with fake money. The Eastern Suburbs matrons, thrilled to find themselves in the midst of exciting bedlam instead of boring chitchat, line up like over-heated, fluffed-up chooks.
‘Those blokes outside. They’re going to bust the place, Barnesie. What do you want to do?’
‘Ooooh,’ he twitters, rubbing his hands in delight. ‘I smell a front page. In the art world, all publicity is good publicity. It ramps up prices faster than a freshly dead painter.’
In the midst of what is fast turning into a riot, Jack Mundey steps off a bus and even the protesters go quiet, parting like the Red Sea to let the great man make his way into the gallery, where he’s due to make a speech. Soon as he’s through the doors, Barnesie bolts inside, shoots the lock and gets on with the show under the happy influence of a noisy air-conditioner running flat out. The rent-a-crowd of hooligans, their moment of reverence for Mundey – whose fame is more apocryphal than real to them – is quickly forgotten. They try to smash their way in. Barnesie calls the media, then waits ten minutes before calling the cops.
Mundey is unruffled and Barnesie leads him to the podium like a precious jewel. Mundey gets straight to the point: ‘Parks are for people,’ he says. ‘To turn public spaces over to private estates for the very rich is unconscionable. We must not allow this to occur. Will neither of our major political parties act to save this beautiful piece of coastline?’
The room erupts in cheers. The art auction raises a whopping fifty-seven grand from the sale of thirty paintings by the Island artists and seventeen works donated by friends of the curator (‘I didn’t even have to threaten to drop them from my list’). ‘At this rate,’ Sam jokes, ‘we’ll be able to buy the park ourselves.’
Siobhan gives him a thoughtful, almost cunning look through narrowed eyes. ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ she says.
Later in the week, Barnesie, who’s found his inner thespian and is hell-bent on making the most of his newfound role, repeats his performance on the pavement outside Mulvaney’s office, tossing fake banknotes into the air with gleeful abandon. ‘No resort. No bridge. Save Garrawi, bless you, bless you,’ he chants until his voice gives out. One or two passers-by pounce on the money, thinking it is real, before striding off in disgust. Ben Butler calls Sam to give a full and frank account of the reaction of the Minister for Housing and Development to the energetic art dealer. ‘He went totally ballistic. Ape-shit,’ he reports, ‘Completely nuts.’
The following day, the goons descend on the Square. They hang around for hours. Pointing fingers, like guns, at passing Islanders: ‘Boom,’ they say. ‘Boom, boom. Boom. Love your dog? Boom. Love your cat? Boom.’
The Islanders swallow their rage and instead, laugh in the vacant faces. ‘Love your outfits, boys – off to a funeral, are you?’ ‘Bit old for cowboy games, aren’t you?’ ‘Could you help carry the shopping, loves? There’s more in the boot. No, love, I’ll take the light bags. How about you carry the three slabs of beer and two cases of wine?’ And on it goes until the Misses Skettle, who are collecting signatures in the shade of the giant cockatoo, which has been returned to its customary perch, finally have enough. Arms linked, brows furrowed, they march in their kitten-heel shoes to the pair of dark glasses they’ve decided is the leader. Pounding one arthritic old finger each against a gym-toned chest, they utter in perfect unison: ‘Bugger off. And take your simpletons with you.’
For the second time in her recent life, Ettie Brookbank, who’s been keeping an eye on the women all day, nearly has to be resuscitated. Five minutes later, to everyone’s amazement including the Misses Skettle, the goons depart in a cloud of stinking, burning rubber. ‘Losers!’ shout the Misses Skettle, raising clenched fists high. Ettie reaches for the Thermos and swigs straight from the mouth. ‘We knew they’d run,’ the Misses Skettle explain. ‘Bullies can’t handle old ladies. We remind them of their mothers.’
Siobhan O’Shaughnessy literally pops a shirt button when Ettie gives an account of the stoush between two sparrow-like genteel old ladies and six towering muscle-bound goons. ‘Oh bejaysus, I wish I’d been there,’ she says, wiping tears of laughter. ‘They took off like startled crows, you say?’ And she bends double, laughing until her stomach hurts.
Then suddenly, everything goes quiet. Lowdon, who’s been holed up in his house with a broken foot, disappears. Mulvaney’s almost constant presence in the daily press ends. There’s not a goon to be seen. Sam tries to call Delaney for a chat. He’s no longer surprised when the call goes straight to message bank.
March drifts into April. The heats finally starts to lose its ferocity although the sea is still so warm the fish are sluggish and pathetically easy to hook. Anglers feel like they’re cheating and go after bigger game fish to keep the thrill of the challenge intact. Nights are blessedly cooler. A single cotton blanket appears on beds to ward off the chill that creeps in an hour before the kookaburras sound the morning reveille.
The chef cooks like a maniac: fish, fish and more fish. Sushi, sashimi, whole, baked, curried, stewed, grilled and dishes of lemon-cured ceviche. Ettie swears she’s on the verge of transforming into a mermaid. The chef smiles with delight: ‘You will always be my siren,’ he declares gallantly.
Yes, but for how long? Ettie thinks, understanding the time for denial is over. Theirs is not a relationship built on love, children, grandchildren, the richness of family and history, the iron grip of decades of support through good and bad times. She is menopausal. No amount of the Misses Skettles’ sweet-potato cream, evening primrose oil or even hormone replacement therapy can hold back aging forever. Her libido, already erratic, will drop. (Never mind the stories octogenarians tell documentary makers about their rampant sex life – fantasy or lies if her own experience is typical and she has no reason to think it isn’t.) Her ability to function sexually will diminish. Their relationship will be forced to embrace a new reality. Or end. Squaring her shoulders, she asks for a snifter of cognac that she tells Marcus she would like to sip while she dangles her feet in the bath-warm water at the end of the jetty. Will he join her?
He returns, hands her a brandy balloon and drops to her side with a small grunt. With a pang, she tak
es in his smooth, tanned legs, where not a single vein has bled into a small blue badge to mark the years. The difference between the way men and women age is a cruel joke, she thinks. Surely, in a fairer world, their diminishing capacities – or does she mean capabilities – would be shared more evenly.
Before she has time to lose her courage, she spells out the future – her future and therefore their future – if they have one after she finishes – in terms that are blunt and even a little exaggerated. She wants him to be under no illusions. It is like taking a knife to her heart and slicing it in thin slivers before tossing it in a smoking-hot frying pan and burning it to a cinder.
The chef listens closely, seriously. He doesn’t squirm or fidget. Nor does he try to dismiss Ettie’s worries and fears as a momentary bout of female hysteria. He understands precisely the cost to her of these intimate revelations. Who, man or woman, can easily bear to admit they have reached a stage where there is no cure and no going back?
When she is done, he reaches across the short distance between them for her hand. Has he not learned already that to sit too close causes her body heat to soar, brings on discomfort and distress?
‘This is about sex, no? Not love?’
She nods.
He is earnest, grappling with words so that when he speaks, they cannot do harm or lead to misunderstanding. ‘Sex is a hunger that is never satisfied.’ He feels her stiffen. Knows he’s already floundering. Rushes to explain. ‘Love, Ettie, love sustains us. Not sex. Never sex. It is a side effect, yes, if this is the word. Disappointing, often, unless it is part of love. Do you agree with this?’
She nods.
‘If I may explain?’
She nods again.
‘When we are together, the world shines. When we are apart, it is like the lights have been turned off. For me, this is love. This doesn’t die. Sex, well, of course if you ask, I will never say no. But this is not –’
