Gatherers and Hunters (22 page)

‘Someone's granddaughter. That gives you no excuse to stand perving on my girlfriend while she is tanning herself.'

‘I thought you said …'

‘Off! I mean it this time. Off.'

‘You're not the one Peter said had been sitting with ­binoculars up the beach there wetting himself to perve on all the girls? That's disgusting.'

‘That was not me. This is the first time I have even come onto this beach.'

‘I've seen him everywhere. After that first time, I've kept an eye out, we don't like people like you hanging around taking advantage.'

‘Just let him go, Peter. I'll come up with you for that ice cream, this one's ruined.' And she threw it without a thought over the crest of the dune, among marram grass, and dragged him away. As they went off she said to Peter, ‘My grandmother? Can you believe it, Grannie's a hundred and the only thing Grannie looks like is the Simpson Desert! And Grannie lives in Gladstone anyway.'

Charlie was already back on bitumen. His face was flushed and he found himself erratic, he had to hold onto things. From here the route back to his flat was steeply uphill.

+++++

Anger is a complicated process, it finds its target but the target moves and becomes displaced, or it stays rigid while your feelings swirl like tides through the narrow channel, scouring a new passage and churning up everything in its way, cutting and distorting while at the same time seemingly intent on absolute directness.

Charlie took a long time to cool down. His apartment was like a prison and for the first time he felt the invisible bars. He paced the length of it, from the back bedroom past the two other bedrooms, none of them used, out to the living area and to the kitchen as if food or refrigeration might deflect some of his turbulence.

A dozen times he must have done this before he pulled himself up. He was drenched. He ripped off his clothes and marched to the shower.

He dabbed himself dry and strode to the bedroom to find himself something. Everything he looked at seemed to have the sly look of old men who sat with binoculars behind the wheels of expensive cars and studied the nubile young bodies so flagrantly conspicuous everywhere.

They flaunt themselves on purpose!

But he corrected himself. He found a plain white shirt, remnant of the Melbourne years.

There was enough food in the place to last several days. He felt a huge reluctance to go outside.

At a certain stage he conceded that the young man, Peter, was probably acting nobly, protectively. It was simply that he was utterly wrong. And Charlie realised that there was no way he could prove that. These things do not depend upon facts, they depend upon feelings.

The anger became self-directed, then it became surly and Peter, Trish, everyone he could think of became his enemies. And of course, inevitably, he began to question why he had come to Caloundra, this haunted place, as a way of remaking his life.

‘You don't have to take it lying down. Where's that old canniness …?' His own words seemed to sneer back at him. What was the alternative? Melbourne? Hadn't he gone to all the effort of cleaning out everything there? He couldn't go back. He just had to be patient. He could not afford to upset himself over trifles. Think of it that way: trifles.

Two days.

Finally, he had to make the decision: This was ridiculous! Why allow himself to be bullied in this way? He found his sun hat and decided to walk down to the village. He had not even bought his regular newspaper. He would, almost defiantly, have a coffee and croissant in the little café where he had started to become a regular.

He paused in the foyer and then reached for his car keys. He drove down.

And it did feel better, getting out and about. The young Italian waiter was not there. Why should that be a sort of relief? Bronco had been no threat – he had even shown a willingness to help. It was Charlie's own fault that he had felt rubbed up the wrong way. Young people were all like that. It was not Bronco particularly. All of them.

Charlie was served by a middle-aged soul with vivid red hair and sagging, freckly skin, a sure candidate for skin cancer, he thought. He vaguely recalled her at other tables. Not appealing. But he had his coffee and even the croissant, greasy with butter and thawed, flaky pastry which nevertheless seemed rubbery. Raisin toast was no longer a possibility.

He looked around. There, down the end of the street, was the picnic table where he had encountered Bernie O'Connor.

The girl, Trish, could not possibly be related to that red-neck old bully, surely? Look at him there, arrogant and proprietorial, shoving his jaundiced views down the craws of everybody in hearing distance. Her Uncle? And of course he had to admit such a thing could be possible.

Uncle Bernie O'Connor? The old man was dressed in his habitual gear and, sure enough he had a small crowd of young people around him. He was holding forth so loudly Charlie could catch some of the exclamations from here. The listeners were laughing and it almost seemed they were good-heartedly teasing him. Urging him, rather. For just one second Charlie felt a surge of protective annoyance at them, the young baiting the old, but it passed. Perhaps they had a better technique to defuse the old man's assertiveness? Perhaps they were not really listening at all, merely indulging him, making him a toy to their all too self-confident superiority.

He was so engrossed in the spectacle – there were three young women, all with large straw hats and protective long sleeves –that he let his coffee grow cold. As he turned round to catch the eye of the waitress he saw, standing quite close behind him, the muscular young man, Peter. He was ­glowering.

There was a pause. Both seemed taken aback, Charlie at being so blatantly the subject of such intent gaze; Peter at being caught out before he had worked out his tactics.

‘I'm watching. I'm keeping an eye on you,' Peter said, in a hoarse whisper, as he picked up his knapsack from between his feet and walked down the concrete verge, past Charlie and towards the end of the street.

‘Don't you threaten me,' said Charlie before he so much as thought. ‘I have a perfect right …'

‘What's that?' Peter turned round and took a pace back. ‘What's that you say? You're the one needs to understand what threatening means. You're a stalker. And I've got my eyes on you. Don't think you can stalk Trish, or anybody else for that matter. You don't stalk people round here with impunity.' He swung the haversack as if it would make a useful weapon. ‘You're being watched, Stalker. You understand that? You're being watched every time you poke your nose outside the Westaway Towers.'

Even his home was tagged? Charlie half rose, but sensibly decided on silence. He had his rights. He did not have to quarrel with some young thug about those. If necessary, he would go to the police himself, lay a complaint.

The young man had marched off, shoulders almost pathetically straight so that Charlie was reminded of Young British Chaps of Impossible Virtue. Except that this young man had a broad accent and the matter of virtue was probably something he didn't even understand. He had lied before. He had dented his own credibility pretty powerfully, then. He had … but there was no point in pursuing the subject, all the self-justifying speeches counted for nothing, in the event.

As he gathered up his newspaper and his hat, Charlie did look down towards the Front. The virtuous Peter was standing, one foot on one of the park benches, and with his hand on the shoulder of one of the young women listening to the monologue of that old bigot O'Connor. Just as he looked more closely at her she took off the hat. Beatrice. Trish. Whoever.

It was the first time for two days that the name ‘Beatrice', in its specific resonance, had crossed his mind. It had been displaced so that ‘Trish' now occupied that territory where once so much sweet and painful memory had gathered itself. Trish, who threw ice cream containers thoughtlessly onto the sandhill and who laughed, he recalled, with a sort of implicit spite and carelessness that belonged to herself entirely, of that he was certain. More than certain. Oh yes. The niece.

It was not exorcism. But it was the tatters of anger, without regret or conditions. Anger, even in its dregs, carries its own sense of virtue about it. It is the most untrustworthy of ­passions.

+++++

To get to his car he would have to walk down to Bulcock Street and pass that little coven of witches and wizards. They looked settled for a long sitting, from the way their laughter and joking continued. Charlie tried to prevent himself, but he was pretty sure he was in their firing line, as well as any passing refugees or non-Irish strangers.

This was impossible. He couldn't allow himself to be tyranised by nonsense of that sort. But he did not move. He ordered another coffee.

These standover tactics were Hollywood movie, not normal Caloundra laissez-faire and goodwill. Oh, if they really thought he had been stalking, it was the sort of thing that had been in the news down in Melbourne only recently, yes he could understand a sort of rancour, but what he had done was entirely innocent, it was ridiculous to compare it with that sort of business. Though what really rankled was the realisation that she clearly had no intention of letting him approach her again. Not to mention her watchdog, that Peter. He had to relinquish the thought of ever uncovering the mystery and coincidence of her uncanny resemblance. Though, as he had been realising more and more clearly, this Trish, close up, was not at all like Beatrice, not the voice, not the texture of her skin, not the real colour of her eyes. It was just a more general sense of shape, of hair – that still uncannily reminded him of her – the youthful bounciness of her body in action. Even the way Trish had grabbed at Peter's arm as they raced off to the kiosk, that had echoes. But they now had become ironic, almost parodies.

He thought once more of the way Trish had tossed that ice cream container. Something about it both irritated him, and intrigued him. It was like an echo of something forgotten. Had Beatrice ever done something like that, on the beach, up along the dunes? In those days they were pretty careless about littering. No. Nothing he could recall.

His second coffee was finished and out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the picnic bench was now empty. Thank God. Was he to spend the rest of his life skirting and evading? No way.

He reached for his belongings and eased himself of the metal chair. Halfway down the footpath he was hailed loudly by that Camberwell woman, Thelma Jennings. She was still here.

‘Charles Brosnan, over here. Yoo Hoo. I'm so glad I caught up with you again Charles. I have been coming down to this café with its dreadful coffee and absolutely despicable croissants every day just in the hope of seeing you. Look. Look what I've got, I had to hand it to you I knew you would be thrilled.' And she scrabbled amongst the things in her capacious purse and drew out a coloured photograph, studio size. It was of Miriam and herself, in some rather grand function judging by the table decorations. They were hugging each other and both of them laughing boisterously.

‘See! That's me, in my Thai silk. Miriam always said she envied me that. And isn't Miriam so gorgeous? Simply gorgeous! Miriam was a star. But of course you know it. You knew it. Look, I've had a copy so you can keep this one. I just thought you must have it. It is the best one of Miriam, of both of us. Here, I'll wrap it in a Kleenex so it doesn't get smeared. Now go, run off, my duty is done, promise delivered. I am not going to detain you, I know you are busy. And after our meeting the other week, well I was weepy all afternoon, and that does nothing for my skin texture I can tell you. A big kiss and a hug, then? Ah, Charles, Charlie. Now go.'

In the hot inner bubble of his car Charlie did study the photograph.

Everything had become activated by hidden trip wires. The Miriam in the photograph was at most a stranger. She was a Miriam from another life. A Miriam with another life. The self seemed to stretch endlessly

When Miriam smiled for the camera with Charlie, she always took off her glasses and composed her features, it was a habit. Here, her spectacles made a sort of mask of her face. Except this mask wore a different expression. Unburdened. No, that was not the word. He looked at it again, and then carefully placed it in the seat beside himself, and drove off.

Westaway Towers was the only place to return to.

When he opened the door he was looking into a tomb.

+++++

There are routines to keep you busy. Why be ashamed of that?

He had considered taking the
Australian
down to some shady spot, though not in the O'Connor territory. Now he found himself back in his flat, with the glossy photograph of Miriam demanding careful handling, no salt or sand thank you. It had lost its initial affront. He placed it flat on the neat dining table next to his paper, and once he had made himself the requisite coffee (yet another! He would have to watch it) he opened the paper out and began browsing in his usual headline-skimming way.

Miriam would quiz him when she emerged, bleary eyed: ‘What news today? What are the main reports?' He could usually parrot the banners but Miriam, that relentless reader of full reports, was never satisfied. She remembered the names of even remote political figures, be it some Egyptian Foreign Minister or the Head of the Army in Pakistan (‘He is also their Prime Minister') and Charlie's vagueness once it got to details infuriated Miriam. ‘You neglect to get the names right. Names are important.'

Names have no importance. None whatsoever. That is something he had only recently discovered, and with some pain.

He turned the first page, then stopped. He folded it back and conscientiously read every word of all the lead articles. The photograph merely revealed Miriam's public, extrovert smile, so wholehearted. Nothing else. That quality seemed painful now, it was the necessary quality Charlie knew he lacked. The paper hardly seemed worth reading, without the thought of Miriam there to report to. The photograph became, increasingly, an entire mask. Who might know what lies behind the mask? What lay behind?