Gatherers and Hunters (17 page)

He decided not to make his own breakfast, but to walk down to the village and see what was available. A beachside resort had to have something one off, and he had no intention of walking all the way down to McDonalds.

In twenty minutes he was sitting outside that modern little café on the ground floor of one of the recent high-rise apartments just up from Bulcock Beach, the Stillwater. It was an amiable view in the freshness of early morning. He was suddenly reminded of those very early mornings when some of them would come down here, though there was only a little milkbar and grocery in those days. It was the fresh ripple under his shirt that reminded him. It tightened his nipples, even now.

But whether he wished it or not, the other memories did come nudging in. It was on a morning just like that Charlie had first realised how Beatrice and Alan had become flirtatious. ‘Flirtatious' was the term he had used, in his mind back then. Alan was just through his first year uni and had always been, in his younger brother's mind, bossy, even surly. Alan had built his own laboratory under the house and Charlie had been banned from it, right from the outset. Alan allowed only one or two of his schoolfriends entry and though Charlie had (of course) invaded it secretly, it was just chemistry things and dry-as-dust smells. His older brother had become a little more tolerant of him once Alan started at St Lucia, though the tram and bus meant he seemed hardly ever home. Alan was saving up buy his own car.

The only activity the brothers shared, really, was tennis. Alan played for keeps. His stinging serve was formidable but thanks to the Saturday contests Charlie's own game had improved out of hand and he had been awarded a half-pocket at school. Alan's other redeeming feature was his loud laugh. It was infectious, and Alan did have a mad sense of humour. He seemed to be able to memorise limericks endlessly, clean and dirty ones depending on the company. It was, he confided to Charlie in a moment of weakness between matches when they all relaxed in the shade of the hire courts they had booked for every Saturday, a way to make conversation with the girls and to break the ice at parties. Alan had started regularly going to parties, in various suburbs.

Alan had suggested the hire court for tennis during that vacation. Great idea. Beatrice paired him in the first mixed doubles. Her game was terrific. It was clear that Alan was impressed: you could tell that by the way he began his string of limericks, which had them in stitches even though Charlie and Jane had heard them all before. Well, most of them.

And then, for Christmas, Beatrice had presented Alan with a book of comic poems,
The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery
. Alan was over the roof. ‘Ogden Nash is
THE
comic genius!' he had exclaimed. And all my pals at uni drool over him.' Alan even recited an Ogden Nash poem he had already memorised from one of those uni parties. Before the week was out he had them all by heart also. Beatrice had been transformed from being one of the friends of his kid brother into a smart, sporting type, who was, incidentally, very pretty. Jane had pointed out to the rather dejected Charlie that girls that age – fifteen and sixteen – always had their eye out for older boys, and never, but never, those their own age.

Beatrice still joined Charlie in all his walks and activities, but he did notice how she kept up with Alan now, and was not even quite so close to Jane – who was quite happy to return to her own reading and her habit of designing imaginary garments for some future grand occasion.

No, he had not been jealous of his brother. He knew that Alan would be back with his university friends in a few weeks and this little summer diversion would be forgotten. He, himself, had been awakened sufficiently by Beatrice, who cuddled him all the way back in the car to Brisbane and gave him a very affectionate goodbye kiss at the end, whereas by this stage she gave Jane a peck and Alan a VERY long smile but only a sort of sisterly kiss, like Jane.

Charlie had not understood the nature of all that, and he had not really encountered Beatrice again, except in the distance when he partnered someone (who?) in the Debutante Ball two years later. By this time Beatrice was a truly radiant beauty and was surrounded by admirers. Charlie had waved, and for an instant her smile back had spurred him, but the men around her were so much older and he remembered Jane's warning. She had passed out of his life.

Now, sitting over his second cup of coffee and the brick-like raisin toast that he had allowed to spoil, he found himself stirring more sugar, and he gave a harrumph and pulled himself out of the slouching position. The young Italian hovered while he paid the bill. He took a brisk walk along the esplanade, already familiar in its new way and with almost no shadow of the old shape it had those years back.

Beatrice, and the memories of Beatrice, had served some sort of purpose, he recognised. They were happy memories. Yes, they had given him back some sort of joviality of spirit, as it were. Some lightness out of the past; even, if he were honest, some sense of his early erotic sensibility, when everything was expectation, anticipation.

Before everything happened.

No, he would not brood. Alan: now how much of all that would Alan possibly remember? Alan had been living in London for thirty years now and his children were prune-voiced little snobs. When Charlie was in London he sometimes – not always – gave Alan a tinkle but it was tacitly agreed he would not go up to Hampstead. Cynthia and Charlie had fallen out rather badly once, when Miriam was ‘a new number' as Alan so patronisingly put it in those worst big-brother tones. Cynthia referred to Miriam as ‘another Jewish Princess'. Charlie had never forgiven her, and in fact it had been two years before he even made contact with Alan again, though Alan was not the one who had made slurs.

Oh, water under the bridge.

Though he did attempt to reinvoke memories of Beatrice again, as he walked slowly back to his flat, it was suddenly difficult. Alan, as ever, seemed to spoil things, simply by being there.

The sun was getting hotter, very hot in fact. Why had he not thought to bring a shade hat? Trudging along the high crest of the road at last, and looking down at the always soothing expanse of water, sand and the long sweep of the island, Charlie found himself repeating one of the Ogden Nash ‘trasheries':

I give you now Professor Twist,

A conscientious scientist.

Trustees said ‘He never bungles'

And sent him off to distant jungles.

There, by the tropic riverside

One day he missed his charming bride.

She was, a native told him later,

Eaten by an alligator.

Professor Twist could not but smile;

‘You mean', he said, ‘a crocodile'.

No no. Had he got it all right? But Charlie grinned to himself and recalled the very laughter both Beatrice and Alan bestowed upon him, back then, when he had picked up the new book and read out the first thing that came to hand.

+++++

Three p.m. he judged a good time to make his first small tourist excursion into the hinterland. Buderim was a tiny ­settlement on one of the volcanic hills that bumped into the ocean just beyond Maroochydore. It had once been a place of small steep banana plantations and small market ­gardeners, and a few retirees who enjoyed its remnants of rainforest jungle and the amazingly fertile deep red soil, which had proved excellent for hibiscus and dahlias, fruit trees and custard apples. Those little wooden cottages (one or two still with sweltering attics) were worth gold now. When the family first went up there in 1950, 1951, they could not give them away. The ginger had been started as a makeshift alternative to the bananas, when market gluts threatened to kill the market. The farmers had tried coffee between the rows of bananas, with some success, but the ginger turned out to be the winner. It was the only ginger factory outside China, someone had told them. Back then, a few neighbourhood homes, with their big sprawling blocks, had thickets of ginger and these were sometimes dug up and the roots placed on airing trays (usually corrugated iron sheets) to dry and be used, later, in cooking experiments, though Charlie had never actually witnessed their consumption. Ginger was one of the few exotics you might see in a Queensland kitchen, but generally as a Christmas gift, crystallised and in Oriental bowls, syrupy in bottles.

The ginger factory was a makeshift thing in those days. It was now, Charlie discovered, the full production number. Marketing and merchandising had moved in and everything from drinks to dried was available. Busloads of tourists were thronging through. Postcards and photographers were lined up to tackle the visitor.

Nearby a plant nursery displayed hibiscus in pastel shades, large as dinner plates, in token of the area's fecundity. BMWs and Mercedes crowded the lanes and were already dusted with the red imprint of the area.

Driving past the little primary school with its Arbour Day plantation of hoop pines, Charlie caught a reminder of times past, but sumptuous villas preened above the still breathtaking views, either southward to the long line of beaches, or north overlooking the steep hillside down to the Maroochy River right below and the developing or developed real estate beyond. It was all real estate now.

As Charlie moved back towards his own car, parked rather further away than he had expected, he paused as he was about to cross the road to allow an open topped sports car to glide past. It was filled with several young people, animated and all singing together. The sight of that made him grin, it was so, almost, old-fashioned in its sense of innocence and delight. Did young people engage in community singing any more? Was it perhaps a small church group, and they might be singing New Age religious songs? No, they were in bright colours with lots of brown or tawny flesh, they looked too healthy for that.

As the white car drew past him Charlie took a close look. They were moving slowly, obviously seeking a place to park. He realised that if they wanted, they could take his spot, so he called out and indicated with his outstretched key ring. The car paused, right in the middle of the road. Nobody took much notice, the traffic was so packed any manoeuvring was both inevitable and laborious. Charlie hastened towards his own vehicle.

But as he brought himself awkwardly into the driver's seat (these modern cars! No design sense at all! Not practicable for older people!) and turned on the ignition, some shadow of recognition suddenly struck him.

He wound down the window and tried to twist backwards to look more closely at the occupants of the other car. Its driver gave him a wide wave, then signalled for him to move out and off.

Before he could really gather his thoughts Charlie had done just that. The white sportscar made a neat and very tight jiggle into his old place. Charlie was honked at by another six or seven vehicles piled up behind. He was out and onto the homeward downhill road before he could really consider any alternative.

But the girl in the white car, sitting beside the driver. She had that same black hair, that glowing round face and – this was it, this was the give away – she had Beatrice's wide smile, the teeth and the naturally red lips that seemed almost to push out with her expressive enjoyment.

+++++

When he reached the Westaway Towers Charlie had slowed down, but instead of turning his car into the driveway he paused, reversed, and slowly took the vehicle southwards towards the village. He drove down onto the esplanade of Bulcock Beach, but then he took a further turn and he was back on the road which would lead him to Buderim again. He could not explain. He realised, with perfect clarity, that this was unreasonable. There was not the slightest possibility that the white tourer with its young occupants might still be up there. It must be a good half hour since he left and they would most probably only have stopped for ten minutes, time to poke around, buy a souvenir bottle of something, and whiz on. They were in beach attire and the latter afternoon, after a hot day like this, would have made a plunge in the surf almost obligatory.

By the time he reached the parking position and the area neighbour to the ginger sales centre, much of the heavy traffic had departed. A young woman was wiping down one of the outdoor tables, and there were sparrows impudently pecking at crumbs under her feet.

She looked up and gave him a wave. ‘Did you leave something behind?' she said, and he realised he had been noticed. Miriam had sometimes called him Peter Ustinov, something he found not at all amusing.

‘Ah … I thought of someone else I needed to buy something for.' There was, of course, not a single soul he could think of to give a jar of ginger to; indeed, he had a deep suspicion that the jar he had already acquired would languish on some back shelf.

‘Well, you're just in time. Did you know what you were looking for?'

The question hovered in the air, and Charlie paused an instant, before moving towards the glass display case.

He found himself with another jar, and no momentum. How stupid can you get?

That girl in the car just possibly may have been Beatrice's daughter. Her granddaughter.

They say the likeness is most often something that appears after a missed generation. It would be an interesting speculation.

It was something other than speculation; it was a sort of seismic disturbance, quite unconnected to logic or explanations or generational genetics.

It was as if he had caught sight of Beatrice herself, back then.

The disturbance of the idea settled in with him in the car as he drove slowly back to Caloundra. It was a concept he might almost play with, enjoy for its delicate fantasy and its nostalgia.

Nostalgia was a deplorable indulgence. He had managed very effectively not to fall into the pit of self-reflection and self-pity. Nostalgia was simply not to be allowed in his vocabulary. Keep busy, move forward, do not settle into sentimental platitudes. Nothing can restore the past. ‘And just as well.' If he had somehow conjured up Miriam at various moments, that was the natural process of association and reflection. You do not banish these things. But you do not soak in them, you do not sink into the fantasyland of might-have-been. But Beatrice?