White Throat

by Sarah Thornton

  CHAPTER 10

  Checking her emails the next morning there was a reply from Burns Crowther.

  We’re delighted you’re considering our offer and very much hope we can conclude terms. Attached is a draft press release. Of course, we wouldn’t issue any publicity without your prior approval but we think it will help to give you an idea of the sort of market resonance you can hope to achieve here at Burns Crowther.

  We also attach a draft contract with a revised offer and would appreciate your confirmation of acceptance at your earliest convenience. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any concerns or queries about the details of the offer. We are keen to tailor the final arrangement to suit your needs.

  The last sentence was code for ‘willing to enhance the offer’. She read the press release—‘someone of the calibre of…’, ‘deep knowledge of the requirements for clubs and players alike…’, ‘match-winning skills…’, ‘hard-headed negotiator, able to take your contracts to the next level…’—and it made her feel vaguely ill. She opened the draft contract to find they’d upped the offer by forty thousand. Geez, they were keen. They shouldn’t have done that, she thought. Too eager. She tapped out a reply, edited it to tone it down.

  The dogs were going berserk in the front yard. An outpouring of indignation at the postman who’d dared to stop at the ramshackle wooden mailbox. Rare to have mail at the shanty. She looked out the window. The postie looked calm enough, satisfied with the sturdy fence standing between him and the fangs. The fence was about the only thing Noel kept in a state of good repair around here, for obvious reasons, she thought.

  She reread her draft email:

  Appreciate the adjustment…very encouraging for our future working relationship…we should agree on an allowance for living expenses given I would be moving into the city.

  She hadn’t received a city living allowance in Sydney personally, but she knew they were common, at around twenty thousand per annum. The firm would be aware of that too—she need not be so crass as to actually mention the figure.

  A slight flutter buzzed in her stomach as she hovered the cursor over the send button—the familiar nerves that came with audacity. But they would expect her to bargain. They’d be surprised if she didn’t. She clicked and a notification appeared: Message sent.

  She began thinking of cars. New cars. The ones in the ads that kept popping up whenever she was online. One of those Fiat Spider whatsits perhaps? White with black trim. Maybe she’d need something less showy, more professional?

  She didn’t know Melbourne well but an apartment in Fitzroy or Southbank might work. She imagined creamy carpet, modern appliances, extravagant art and a cleaner. Oh God, a cleaner. Her thoughts swung back to the damp, draughty old cottage in Katinga with the curling lino and the crumbling cornices and the impossible-to-clean mould. She couldn’t afford to renovate it. But in some ways, she hadn’t really wanted to. In her mind she’d formed a connection with the previous owner, who she imagined as a widow, with lots of pets. Then the thoughts turned to the yard, the towering mountain gum, the old shed she planned to fix up and have actual chooks in—real live chooks laying fresh, warm eggs.

  Pah. A pipe dream. She’d never get around to it.

  Pocket came charging through the dog door, tongue flopping to the far corner of his mouth, a certain pride in his gait at having averted the postman invasion. Sarge lumbered in after, squeezing his big shoulders through, approaching her with a substantial dollop of drool making its way south from his jaws.

  ‘Good dogs, good dogs,’ she said, patting them both to avoid any jealousies. ‘You scared the nasty man away. You showed him!’

  She topped up their water bowls and went out to check the mail box.

  It was a handwritten envelope, her name and the address in wobbly copperplate. She turned it over in her hand, feeling its soft sheen. The return address:

  Mrs E. Lemmon

  10 Roberts Road

  Katinga VIC 3996

  Dear old Mrs Lemmon. Her husband had been a life member of the Katinga Cats football club. After he was wounded in Vietnam, Clem was told, he could no longer play, so he’d just volunteered his heart out till the day he died. He saw the 1954 premiership win as a boy—then nothing since. Mrs Lemmon carried on his memory, turning up to training sessions, manning stalls at club fetes and knitting beanies in Cats red and black.

  Clementine went back inside, poured herself a water, snapped out a couple of cubes of ice from the ancient freezer and dropped them in the glass. As she sat at the table she slipped her thumb under the seal and unfolded the pale pink notepaper.

  Dear Miss Jones

  I hope you’re well and not too hot up there—hotter than Hades I expect but not as hot as the inside of an armoured vehicle in Nui Dat! My Tom always said that about Queensland. We’ve had good rain here and the gardens around Katinga are thriving. You would love my gardenias. I think it’s their best year!

  There’s a young man in my street. His name is Jason Tookley, Bob Tookley’s boy. Well he mentioned to me only two weeks ago he wants to play for the Cats this season. So I said, Well son you’ll have to have a beanie then. He’s not a big chap so perhaps you’ll try him out in a pocket or some such. Oh goodness, listen to me now! Telling the coach what position he should play! High time you came home and that won’t be soon enough!

  Well, anyway, I told this young Jason you were the best thing to happen in Katinga since the war ended. Young lads like him would have been conscripted, like my Tom was. It’s funny how the world works. And he agreed. In fact he said he wasn’t sure how he’d go with all the training and he’d heard you were a hard taskmaster. Well, I said, that’s half the secret isn’t it! I believe football is making men out of these youngsters Miss Jones, and it’s thanks to you. It’s a joy for an old lady to know our town’s menfolk are stepping up.

  I wasn’t going to give young Jason his beanie until he turned up for training three weeks in a row and I told him so. But oh well! I finished it last week and it just seemed a tease to keep it from him. Well, he was so happy to see it, you’d have thought him six years old and getting his first new bicycle for Christmas. It gave me such pleasure to see his face, I can tell you. Next thing I know he’s turned up to mow my lawns! You could have knocked me over with a feather. And didn’t they need a good mow too! The transformation of the young men in this town. Well, it’s all because of you, my dear, though I know you won’t hear of it. I’m just thankful I lived to see it.

  I’m looking forward to the first training session, cheering the boys on. I expect there’ll be a good turn up. In fact I’ve started another beanie for any other new lads. Do let me know the date. I couldn’t bear to miss a minute of it!

  Warmest regards

  Elspeth Lemmon

  Clementine put the letter on the table in front of her, held her head in her hands and scrunched her eyes tight shut.

  Clem and Torrens drove through the outskirts of Barnforth and past the giant banyan tree near the war memorial. The town was quiet but for the roar of the wind buffeting palm trees into frantic dances, sending scraps of litter swirling across the street. She was wearing her black outfit again, but hadn’t been able to find a balaclava in Target—there wasn’t much call for them in the middle of a Queensland summer. Knowing there would be serious security at the marina, she’d searched the shanty for boot polish. No luck. So she smeared her face with Vegemite and Torrens had nearly pissed himself laughing. With her hoodie over her head, she hoped all the security cameras would show was a short human, possibly female, possibly black.

  Torrens had attempted a bikie disguise with a black skull scarf tied tight around his bearded face and a baseball cap tipped low over his eyes.

  They’d picked up the swipe card for the marina from Brady’s place earlier on. It was the first time Clem had been there and it was exactly as she had imagined. A tiny hut in the hills, barely holding back the crowding forest, a hammock slung between tw
o trees in the front, free-roaming chooks pecking at the scrub beneath it and a beehive lying on its side with moss greening one leg. And everything crept-upon, draped-upon by creeping tendrils of vine and fern. Brady had said Candles had been happy to help in exchange for a modest bag of weed.

  ‘Why do they call him Candles anyway?’ asked Torrens as they drove off.

  ‘No idea. Burns at both ends maybe?’

  ‘What, like a hot curry?’ Torrens snorted with laughter.

  They parked away from the cameras, dodging a huge branch that had split from its trunk in the gale and crashed to the ground at the entrance to the marina. Torrens was on watch—if anyone turned up or any alarms went off at the office, he was to call her. She’d have time to hide and make her way back to the car. With the high security standards at the marina, Clem had factored in back up as an essential.

  Clementine picked her way along the shoreline in the shadows and swiped Candles’ access card at the gate while Torrens waited in the car. She hustled quickly past the office, no light on inside but the lawn and pathways around it lit up like a football field, cameras on every pole. Still, she told herself, she’d entered with a valid access card; no alarms and no reason for anyone to scrutinise the CCTV.

  She walked towards the boats. The wind screeched in the rigging—a violin-shrill rasping across the wire stays and the whip crack of halyards slapping hard against masts. She pulled the drawstring on her hoodie tight under her chin, licking some stray Vegemite off her fingers, and started down Pier B, making her way along the timbered pontoon as the boats bobbed wildly to her left and right.

  Blair Fullerton’s boat, the Success, was at the very end of the pier just as Candles had said. Boat? More like a ship. An even bigger vessel, a sailing yacht called Hermes, too big for the marina berths, was perched behind it at the end of the pier. The blades of its anchor protruded through the opening in its bow and hung ominously above Clementine’s head as she stood on the pontoon near the stern of the Success. The wind was tearing up the river mouth, sending waves into sharp pinnacles, peaks collapsing, flashing white froth in the moonlight. Fifty feet of powerboat rearing like a horse and smashing to the water, great sausage-shaped fenders along its flanks shunting into the pontoon, screaming rubber shrieks as they squeezed up and down.

  She hadn’t foreseen this. She watched for a moment, heart rate climbing as she imagined herself attempting to mount this bucking beast. A boat this size heaving and plunging in the slop as if pushed around by a giant invisible thumb. But she was a strong swimmer. She’d trained after school week in, week out for years at her father’s bidding, before the boredom drove her nuts and she refused to go anymore. If she went in, surely she’d have no trouble making it to the pontoon?

  She took a step closer. The Success’s teak duckboard plunged beneath the inky green then sprang back up, water gushing through the slats as it rose high above the surface. She tried to measure the interval between waves, the time between gusts, hoping to find a pattern. Her eyes were swept dry as she watched and counted in the wind. The biggest gusts were followed by the longest breaks…? Wait for the boat to climb up and out, then settle: that was the moment to jump. She steadied herself, one foot forward, one back to push off, rocking like a child waiting to enter the jump-rope circle. A screaming banshee of a gust tore across the marina, flags cracked, the Success reared with the waves then crashed down, the weight of its bows sending spray over the pontoon and a great wash of water sloughing across the rising duckboard.

  The wind held its breath for a split second and Clem leapt. She was airborne, right leg fully extended just as a trough opened up in the green depths, sucking the duckboard down, her left foot finding nothing, then plunging knee deep in water, foot sliding, right hand flailing for the rail, the wind shrieking with outraged fury. The tip of her fingers touched the cold metal of the rail and slid along the wet surface. She was falling backward, hitting her head on the duckboard, salt water sloshing over her face. The bow flung upwards again, thrusting her under and rolling her right off. She sank, fully clothed and heavy, tried to swim up, reassuring herself it was only a metre or so, darkness above, then her head cracking into something hard. The Success—she was under it.

  She forced her head down, her butt up. Diving, pulling down with her arms, feeling her feet against the hull, kicking, then heaving against the water with her arms, diving, and with her lungs bursting, turning up towards the surface, her head hitting the hull again. Floundering, unwieldy and slow in the dead weight of her clothing. Lungs burning. Calm down. Refuse the panic. The clothes will help you sink. She stopped struggling and allowed gravity to take effect, willing it faster. Deep enough now? Must be, go across, out from underneath. Air, need air. But which way? Everything black. Which way is up?

  Is this what it feels like? Is this drowning?

  Light and froth above, a metre away. She thrust up urgently, kicking her legs like a demon. Head emerging, she gasped a desperate gulp. A wave hit her face, a mix of air and salt water rushing down her throat. The back of her head smashed into something sharp that ripped at her hair. She turned, thrust her hand up, grasping—something rigid but pliant, covered in serrations. A tyre, encrusted with barnacles, on a pylon, behind the Success, the duckboard lurching to her right. She hung on, gasping at the air in between waves, the barnacles like sharpened gravel under her hand, sawing through skin.

  She thrust her left hand inside the donut, clutching the rim of the tyre, tearing lines in her palm, pulled herself up, kicked with her other leg and shoved her knee in. It lodged firm and she hooked her right elbow over, hugging the tyre with every sinew.

  Breathing air. Oh God, breathing.

  She hauled herself up onto the pontoon, on her hands and knees dragging in hungry breaths.

  Cold, wet, bleeding, she made her way back to the car. The mission was over.

  Torrens looked horrified at the blood streaming from her scalp down her neck and her hands, red with saw-toothed lines of open flesh. As they drove back to the shanty, she reached a trembling hand inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a sodden package. She unwrapped it and flicked the switch: a crackle, barely audible, then nothing.

  At the shanty, after she’d washed and treated her wounds, she had Torrens take the listening device into the bedroom, door closed, while she went to the other end of the house and switched on the app.

  No sound.

  ‘Are you talking?’ she called.

  ‘Yeah,’ yelled Torrens.

  Nothing.

  Operating the laptop was difficult. The bruising in the heel of her hands meant she had to keep them up, away from the keyboard. Stretching her fingers to the top row sent a stinging pain up her elbow.

  She found the website she’d used earlier and ordered replacements, along with two of a different kind—waterproof, which was good, but unfortunately without the ability to transmit to an app—and selected ‘express delivery’. They would arrive by Friday, for installation that night. Just in time, hopefully: the Success, with Blair the Mayor and the Hyphen aboard, would be heading out the next day.

  She clicked open her email. Something from Burns Crowther.

  Revised contract attached with additional $20,000 pa city living allowance.

  The kettle whistled. Smiling to herself she got up and busted a move there at the kitchen sink. She dropped a tea bag into a cup, so engrossed with her own brilliance she didn’t hear Torrens approach behind her and plonk himself down in front of the laptop.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said.

  She spun around, her mouth dropping and lunged for the laptop lid. Torrens was ready, fending her arm away.

  ‘Hey, get out of my private mail!’

  Torrens eyes flicked across the screen, reading the emails, absorbing the contents.

  ‘This is no joke, get away from my computer!’ She pulled at his arm. He brushed her off like a fly, eyes tracking down to the bottom of the email thread, her message asking for more money. His mouth wa
s flattening tight under the bush of black beard.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘Melbourne, hey?’ Voice gravelly, eyes set hard. ‘Sounds like bloody good money. Twenty grand extra.’

  ‘It’s just an offer. I haven’t accepted it.’

  ‘You just asked them for more money! Sounds pretty fucking accepted to me.’

  ‘It’s what you do when someone offers you a job. You negotiate. Doesn’t mean you’re going to take it.’

  Torrens laid his hand on the trackpad, scrolled down to the earlier emails.

  ‘Says here you’re “seriously considering it”,’ his voice like granite now. ‘Oh, and look at the date. Right about when you told me you were coming home to Katinga.’

  ‘Oh God, Matthew, it’s complicated.’ Weak. Struggling with the deceit; losing the battle.

  He slammed his open hand down onto the table. ‘You’re fucking complicating it!’ he yelled. ‘You need to come home, you need to do the right thing by the boys. By me, for Christ’s sake. How much simpler can it be?’ Shouting, standing, throwing the wooden chair back with a screech, a furious blast of red-hot energy filling the room.

  She backed away, her hand went up to her neck. The kitchen suddenly seemed too small.

  ‘You just can’t understand how hard—’

  ‘Oh, come on. You had a car accident. A woman died. Everyone knows. Get the hell over it.’

  She dropped her head. Torrens was stomping a heavy, maddening circle around the kitchen, filling it completely until the cupboards, the ceiling started to close in. The pain in her shredded hands was a pulse, zinging up her arms. She could think of nothing, absolutely nothing to say. The monstrous lie she had fed Torrens to get him to help her was like a beast in the room, a presence of itself.

  He took two steps towards her, grabbed her shoulders and twisted her around to face him. In his eyes she could see the rage but there was something else. Disbelief. Betrayal. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and stared at her.