Fishing for Stars (3 page)

Marg completed her speech by saying:
‘As the twentieth century totters to a close, one despotic oil-producing Arab nation has attacked another equally deficient in human rights. The organisation sponsoring this conference went to the defence of one of them in order to protect the flow of oil from the Middle East.

‘Despite the pious rhetoric, this was the cynical protection of a cheap source of the material appropriately named “crude” that is destroying our planet. The road to Basra
is not only littered with Iraqi dead but also with the hastily forsaken principles of nations whose politicians claim to care. This self-serving rescue mission is a clear indication of what the so-called forces for good will do to protect their right to continue to pollute the world in the name of progress.

‘It is time to reclaim a world once beautiful but now slowly dying as we stand by and let these internal combustion bullies have their way with our planet. May they burn in a hellfire fuelled by an everlasting oil well!

‘Green is a silent force; it is not a nation, it is you and it is me. It is every individual who loves and cares about the future of our planet. Our only weapons are our voices, but we will be heard! You cannot destroy, in the name of human progress, what God provided as necessary for all life on earth.

‘Thank you.’

I don’t suppose that anything Marg said was new or hadn’t been said by others. But the passion with which this seventy-six-year-old woman stated her convictions carried the audience. A minister in the federal Labor government brandishing a copy of the
Sydney Morning Herald
containing her speech called it a disgraceful diatribe by an ageing ex-Greens agitator who in her day was known to be a mischief-maker. To the general mirth of the House, a member of the Queensland National Party brought it up in Question Time, where he referred to Marg’s speech as a direct attack on democratic rule and a threat to the ANZUS Treaty.

If I am beginning to sound like a fellow traveller, then I must confess that my conversion, like that of so many others, is only very recent. Anna’s world had no time for the climate debate and, to be fair, I gave the subject almost no thought until the advent of the Earth Summit.

I guess we were all simply too busy kicking and clawing our way up the ladder to question our ambition or the morality of our actions. We may never have used a phrase such as ‘Greed is good’, but we also never questioned our right to have what we wanted, whatever the cost. While I loved Marg Hamilton, I thought her views a bit far-fetched at times, in fact most of the time, while Anna simply dismissed her as a raving fucking fanatic.

I guess I’d always accepted that humans are by nature greedy and that altruism is rare in our species; enough is never enough and we cannot be too rich. Or, as Anna would say with an impatient sigh, or a naughty giggle, ‘Nicholas, if I don’t, someone else will.’

If Marg saw the Iraq–Kuwait war as a disaster, Anna had very different views. In the early stages of her cancer, when she wasn’t so ill from the chemotherapy, she and I watched the bombing and the carnage on the road to Basra as American aircraft bombed the retreating Iraqi soldiers. I recall her saying with a shrug, ‘Well, at least it is good for my oil shares.’

‘Isn’t it rather a risky time to be investing in oil?’ I suggested. While she never consulted me on money matters, and often dealt in big numbers, I was shocked when she told me the size of this particular transaction – a million dollars US.

‘No, the price of oil was bound to go up,’ she said calmly.

‘Was it worth risking so much?’ I asked.

‘Nicholas, I was lucky to get them in the scramble to buy on the New York and London stock exchanges.’

‘But surely the greater the price of raw material, of crude, the less profit to the buyer?’

Anna laughed. ‘Not with oil; without it the world would grind to a halt.’

Anna loved explaining the intricacies of a financial system that had made her perhaps the richest woman in the southern hemisphere. ‘They buy the crude from the supplier country and then add a percentage, predicated on all the costs they incur right up to the moment you use the bowsers, and with a good solid profit margin included.’

‘Sure, that’s what we all do. I do in the shipping business. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, but you don’t own the docks, the cranes, the passengers or the freight you carry, the terminal at your destination, the transport to the retailers or the retail outlet itself, as the oil companies do.’

‘They own everything? I’ve never thought of it like that.’

‘Yup, the entire distribution system, the six or seven stages it takes to go from a barrel of crude to the petrol pump, and each of these stages is a separate profit centre.’

‘You mean they’ve already made a profit on the first stage, buying the crude and adding their mark-up, then they add an additional profit at each stage? Seven stages, seven additional profits . . . Wow!’

She grinned. ‘Nicholas, you’re improving. I’ll make a financier out of you yet.’

‘But that’s double dipping, it’s cheating the customer!’ I exclaimed.

‘Cheating? If it is, it’s legitimate cheating. It’s capitalism and the joy of profit centres.’ Anna sighed heavily. ‘Nicholas, whatever is going to happen when I’m gone? These days you’re sounding more and more like the Green Bitch.’

‘Steady on, darling. I won’t have you calling Marg that!’ I reproached her.

Anna sniffed, ignoring my reprimand. Faced with a possibly terminal illness, she didn’t give a shit and the gloves were off between the two women. She openly called Marg the ‘Green Bitch’ and Marg in turn referred to her as ‘Princess Plunder’. I knew there wasn’t going to be any reconciliation.

‘Nicholas, if I’m not here when the price of oil drops below twenty dollars a barrel, you must sell immediately,’ Anna instructed me.

I recall laughing and protesting, ‘Darling, I’m in the shipping business. If it doesn’t drop soon the company will probably go broke – diesel fuel is our greatest expense.’

‘Try to understand, the higher the price of a barrel of crude the greater the profit to the oil companies.’

Anna pointed to the screen, where as far as the camera eye could see, thousands of mangled trucks and piles of ordnance lay scattered along the road to Basra. The dead lay sprawled in their thousands in the fierce Arabian desert sun, many roasted and blackened, or grotesquely welded together in the back of still smouldering Iraqi army trucks. ‘This little war is eventually going to make me a lot of money, Nicholas,’ Anna asserted. She’d seen too much death and destruction in her life to take much notice of what was happening on the television screen.

I shrugged, deeply saddened by her desire to make a killing in the market, because all the money in the world wouldn’t save my beloved Anna, yet she couldn’t let go.

I guess Marg Hamilton represents the new, emerging, untried and inexperienced
good
of the new century soon to be upon us while Anna typifies the careless greed of the one coming to its end.

I still think the odds are probably stacked against Marg as the wealthy countries maintain their voracious appetites for profit despite the cost to the plundered planet and the emerging nations become increasingly industrialised and demand their share of the goodies. But try telling Marg this. She, like Anna, is a poor loser, determined, even if single-handedly, to pry our tottering planet from the clutches of greed, capitalism and pollution which are causing the extinction of so many species that have no immediate economic value to humans.

‘The last generation belongs to Princess Plunder, the next generation to our young people and their children,’ Marg claims optimistically. I hope she’s right. I lived through the sixties when flower power was going to change everything. I can only hope green power is more effective.

As I sit ruminating over the Misses Yin and Yang, Princess Plunder and the Green Bitch, each possessed of the same fanatical desire to destroy the values of the other, I am unaware that Saffron has walked onto the verandah until she coughs politely to catch my attention.

‘Where will you take your lunch, Uncle Nick?’ she asks.

I remind myself that while she didn’t mention it earlier she represents yet another female issue I have to contend with. Saffron wants permission to get a tattoo, a butterfly on the point of her shoulder. Joe Popkin, her grandfather and my partner in the shipping company, has refused his permission and she’s working on me to convince him.

Joe Popkin, who runs the Port Moresby shipping office, is a Black American married to a Tahitian woman, the delightful Lela. Their son, Joe Junior, married yet another, the fiery and beautiful Frances. The gorgeous Saffron, who has recently completed a Bachelor of Economics at Sydney University, is the result. ‘Would you kindly fetch me a Scotch and water, please, darling?’ I ask.

She nods. ‘Uncle Nick, have you spoken to Grandfather Joe?’ Her eyes remind me of a starry night at sea.

‘No.’ My bloody memory isn’t what it used to be. But then I suppose nothing is, in particular the area immediately below the belt line. One of the tragedies of growing old is that pretty is still pretty, the roving eye still takes in what it sees and the imagination is just as active, but alas, for most of us the one-eyed snake can no longer raise its head. I guess in theory this makes me a dirty old man.

‘Will you?’

‘No. Your grandfather is right; you’ll only live to regret it.’

Saffron pouts and makes no move to get my whisky.

‘Put one of those studs through your tongue instead,’ I suggest. ‘At least it goes largely unseen and you can remove it when you’re mature enough to realise that you’re a beautiful woman and don’t need any of that trendy crap.’

She looks shocked. ‘Uncle Nick!’ she exclaims, dark eyes as wide as saucers.

‘What?’

‘Do you know what those are for?’

I don’t, but instantly realise I’m in some sort of trouble.

‘Fellatio,’ she says calmly and starts to giggle.

‘Oh, gawd!’ I laugh to hide my embarrassment. It seems only yesterday she was a little girl holding my hand as we visited nature’s fairy lanterns, the ripe persimmons hanging from the bare branches of the trees lining my driveway.

Her one-word explanation of the stimulatory use of a tongue stud together with her giggling has completely stolen my resolve. She knows I’m done for, mere putty, an old-man pushover. ‘Very well, I’ll have a word with Joe,’ I say gruffly. ‘But I suggest you think about it carefully; tattoos don’t rub off.’

Saffron pecks me happily on the cheek, turns and wiggles her tight little bum triumphantly as she leaves to make my drink. ‘It’s called a tongue bar and there’s even a version that vibrates,’ she calls back, laughing. ‘I’ll bring your lunch out on a tray.’

I don’t ask her how she knows all this. The kids these days seem to know everything and nothing very useful.

Next evening Marg Hamilton calls. I’m relaxed, two stiff glasses of Scotch under my belt. I tell myself it’s an evening call, so no harm can come.

‘Nick darling, I’m worried about you.’

‘That’s very nice to hear but quite unnecessary,’ I laugh. ‘Saffron and I have been out on
Madam Butterfly
; it’s been a lovely day, good strong breeze, I feel ten years younger.’ Saffron’s a damn good sailor and does the hard work on board while allowing me to appear to be the skipper.

‘I mean generally,’ Marg replies, not listening. ‘When we last talked you didn’t sound yourself. What’s wrong?’

I’ve been unable to keep anything from her for as long as I can remember. It’s something about her tone of voice and the strength of her character. Even a casual question demands an answer. Maybe it’s because she listens with her eyes, and despite this being the telephone, I can sense her gaze fixed upon me. I clear my throat. ‘Old man’s dreams, nothing more,’ I reply, attempting to make light of the matter. ‘And I’m up and down all night.’

‘Well, have you had a prostate examination lately?’ she asks in her practical way.

‘No.’

‘When was the last time?’

‘Never. Marg, stop fussing!’

‘And the dreams . . . What kind of dreams? Good ones? No, they couldn’t be, or you wouldn’t be complaining. I read recently that ex-servicemen often start having dreams as they grow older. They may feel guilt—’

‘I’m
not
complaining!’

‘Well of course not, not directly. But I can sense you’re distracted. Something’s wrong. What is it? The war? Anna?’

‘Both,’ I reply lamely, knowing she isn’t going to let go.

‘You’re grieving, Nick. Hardly surprising,’ she adds in a rare albeit offhand acknowledgement of her departed rival. ‘These war dreams . . . 
do
you feel guilty?’

I sigh. ‘God knows I have reason enough to feel guilty. Though probably least of all over what happened in the war. The Japs had it coming to them and I’ve never felt any remorse. Although I don’t suppose one ever quite gets over the business of killing.’

‘Ah, then it’s
Anna
,’ Marg announces, as usual coming down hard on the name. ‘Is she in your dreams, these war dreams?’