Gatherers and Hunters (19 page)

The phone was ringing.

By the time he got inside, unloaded the first batch, and reached for the instrument it ceased. Why had he not arranged an answerphone? Now he would spend the afternoon wondering who on earth could be ringing him here? He had not yet got round to preparing a change-of-address circular.

She had been wearing shorts – a sort of pale lemon – and a white top. Her body had grown that little more filled out, almost voluptuous. And she carried herself with that same straight spine and upright bearing – his mother had always been so approving of Beatrice's ‘carriage' as she called it. Alan had been a constant stooper in his early years of adolescence, Mum had always been reprimanding him. As he got older of course he reached his full height, which was nearly a foot greater than Charlie (and was one of his sources of envy!). By that stage Alan was getting proud of his height and flaunted it.

With that upright bearing, she had been fluid, not stiff or stilted. Like Alan, in fact, this girl was clearly assured in her bearing. Was she aware that also uplifted the thrust of her breasts? She was a girl maturing quickly into womanhood, and quite at home in her comeliness. Lucky boy, whoever he was!

Well, it hadn't been imagination. That first glimpse, and it had been no more than that, had been entirely accurate. This time he had something like a full minute to look at the girl and assess her. Astonishingly like. But then he started thinking: was she wearing sandals? Or thongs, what the Brits (and Miriam) called flip-flops?

How treacherous memory is. You think you have noted everything, but as soon as you begin to go over the details you discover just how little you really did take in, after all.

Next time, he would make a point of being more precise, more specific in his observations.

If there was a next time.

But of course, the range of probabilities had been considerably strengthened, with this second sighting. It meant she was still in the area. More, it meant she was more likely to be in the specific Caloundra area, it eliminated all that long stretch of the Sunshine Coast, surely? It meant that from now on Charlie might keep his eyes open, might become more alert. It gave him some excuse to get out of the flat.

That already filled him with energy. Yes, it gave him a purpose.

+++++

The old codger was Bernie O'Connor and he had a little bait business over in Golden Beach. Charlie was sitting for the third morning in a row at the little café-bar on the road down towards the Passage. The young man who served him opened the conversation.

‘Usual coffee this morning, sir? I note you got the usual earful from old Bernie yesterday, should have warned you but he's harmless, he's got this thing about foreigners, never sets a foot in this place, too modern for him, all this Italian coffee and the like. He still calls me wog boy but you get used to that, it's like me mother always going at me for saying fuckin' this fuckin' that, means nothing, now you'll have the raisin toast again this morning? or the crumpets? Or is it the bacon and eggs?'

Charlie beamed. ‘You know how to make a person feel welcome.'

‘That's my job sir. But it's the best job in Caloundra. I just love it. Get to meet everybody, and get to wear a smart outfit too. Well kinda smart. Not grunge, know what I mean? An outfit to be proud of.'

Charlie let him talk on, and then ventured a few observations about the scene since he had settled here. ‘Strange how some things seem to remain fixed forever. There's still Henzell's Real Estate on the corner. Other things have been transformed. Who'd have imagined those weeping figs up the main street? Not everything's changed for the better, though.'

‘Ah, living in Caloundra, is it? I'd put you down as a summer tourist only, sorry sir. Lots of them come up from the South to retire, but the summer usually knocks them about a bit, this place here has done a good turnover in preloved apartments as we like to say. What did you say your name was, sir?'

‘Well, I haven't but it's Charlie Brosnan, and I picked up a very satisfactory three room flat over in Westaway Towers, so I'm not in the market for anything else, just in case you thought you might have a spotter's fee in mind.' He laughed, but made sure the young man hovered round a bit longer.

‘It's a pleasure to hear a young person conscious of the way they dress. Must say, it suits you, too, the white shirt and black trousers.'

‘If you want daggy, you get daggy. If you want class, I tell you in this place you can pick and choose.' He gave Charlie a bold wink, which left the older man momentarily puzzled but he nodded for another coffee.

When the waiter returned Charlie gave him a smile and sounded him out. This was virtually his first conversation all week and if anyone knew the possible lie of the land this confident young man was it.

‘I suppose you get to know pretty well everyone around here, working at this place? What did you say your own name was, might I add?'

‘Bronco, call me Bronco. Nobody calls me by my proper name.'

‘Which is?'

The waiter's accent moved from flattened nasal diphthongs to fully rounded vowels and firm consonants. ‘Umberto, Umberto Gioacchino Olivieri. Gioacchino is because of Gioacchino Rossini the composer, me dad was a nut for Italian opera.'

‘Bravo. Where does your family come from, Umberto?'

‘Bronco. A little place near Fiesole, but I'm third generation Aussie and proud of it. Me grandfather fell foul of the Fascisti, but my lot, we all speak Italian at home, just to make a point of it. My father says the Tuscan accent is the purest, have you heard the Venetian twang? Far out.'

Charlie, as he took a sip, looked at the young man more closely. There was something good-natured in his professionalism. Yes. He might be able to help.

‘Caloundra has a fair passing trade then, d'you say? I guess you note all the talent? You know, the pretty girls?'

‘Nothing moves in this village but I've got it tabbed, Mr … er what did you say your name was'

‘Brosnan. Charlie.'

‘Right Charlie, sorry about that, usually pretty good, but you looking around for some pussy I can put you on to a few obliging ladies, friends of mine. Don't handle any of the jail-bait but. Gotta look after me good name and all that.'

Charlie was aware his polite smile had become more rigid. He put his dark glasses on, but then removed them. His eyes swivelled away from Bronco – from Umberto.

‘No I was not digging for holiday sex, and, good Lord, you yourself said that in this town everybody knows every­thing about everyone, so I take your point on that. No, I was just wondering about a young lady I've seen these last couple of days. She looks stunningly like someone I knew some fifty years ago – long before your time, boy. I was wondering if she might be a relative or something. Of my old friend. It's funny, you know, coming back after all this time, suddenly to be reminded, to see this young girl like the spitting image …'

But he paused there. Already he had given away too much.

Caution. Remember caution in unfamiliar contact. This place had a bizarre near-familiarity.

‘Mate, you'll have to tell me more than that stuff about ‘young lady' to give me some sort of clue. You're keeping it all in your mind. You know? All in your head, mate, none of it out in the open. What does she look like, this chick? Can you describe her for me?'

All in your mind. Yes, that was true. Charlie regretted how stupidly and willingly he had almost opened up to this smooth-faced gigolo with his crisp white shirt and his confiding voice. That one must hoard a treasury of gossip and blackmail, he must be like a fingerprint catalogue of the whole town. Already Charlie had spoken too much. Miriam had always said he was too gullible with strangers. She could be easily polite but distant. He was either too bottled-up or too prone to chatter, she had warned him.

He made the gestures of clearing his things from the small table. You couldn't be too standoffish or you'd discover nothing.

‘The girl I saw was medium height, perhaps tall I guess, something your height in fact, and she has black hair, she's very pretty.'

Despite himself, he knew his voice conveyed a certain ardour. He rammed his hat on.

‘Of course, dad. Sorry, Mr Brosnan. You've just described about every second lady in the whole area from Golden Beach to Noosa. You've got to be a bit more precise. What colour eyes? What sort of boobs?'

No need to feel proprietorial. No need to feel that his very thoughts were being fingered.

‘Ah, well.' Charlie got up. He was aware of the young man looking at him, at his stiffening limbs. ‘Next time I must take a note. If I see her again. She may have simply been down for the weekend.'

Bronco hovered attentively still and his smile was still broad, white toothed. Not threatening. Or possibly not.

‘It was just an off chance. But she did remind me of someone I knew, all that time ago.'

Bronco moved Charlie's chair for him and began rattling crockery. ‘See ya tomorrow then. Like to see someone make a habit of it. I can set the clock by old Bernie O'Connor. Down each morning, nine o'clock sharp. Never puts his nose into this joint, but. Thank God. Grumbling to himself half the time. But strict as clockwork, the old Bernie. I suppose routine is the big thing, your age?'

‘Keeps you going,' Charlie replied curtly. He was not going to be completely bullied by this young oaf. Fiesole indeed! More likely the valley of the Po. Or even Calabria. He was almost swarthy enough. But not quite. Simply confident with the confidence of his own good looks and his youth and no doubt he turned the heads of every young visitor in town.

Do not become a grumpy old man. Do not.

Think of the ennui of a waiter's life. Especially here … the off season must be dullish, but perhaps Bronco went back to university to finish his Computer Graphics degree or his Business Management course. A name like that, he would play soccer like a devil, boasting of every move.

If Charlie were to become settled here, he must be prepared for the ups and downs.

There was no need to feel so possessive. Beatrice was hardly Charlie's private property. She had never been that. She had never been more than a childhood friend, no need to imagine at this stage anything more important.

But the image of Bronco hovering over her as she sat at one of the little metal tables, slyly noting her warm breasts, forcing her to smile back at him: no, he must not delude himself.

On his way up the hill he found himself looking out, turning his head, peering beyond shop windows into the darkened spaces within. Imagining possibilities.

Three

It was not so much a dream as something that came to him in that half waking, half somnolent state before dawn. It was a time when Charlie was, these days, restless and impatient with himself, half deciding to get up and half inclined to see if some sleep might return to release him for a couple more hours yet. Sometimes he turned on the radio, and listened to the five o'clock news, the six o'clock news, the seven o'clock. Sometimes he put on his headphones and listened to a CD. And this, often as not, worked: he woke up with his ears crushed and aching and no noise coming forth.

But this time, it was a month since he had begun to carve out a niche for himself in Caloundra and establish his patterns there, the images came more or less as a visitation. Yes, something out of the past, the early Caloundra past of course, but it was also something quite specific and intense in its reality for him. As if Charlie were still that adolescent boy with his blue jeans and his Hawaiian shirt feeling his oats and his possibilities. It was a nocturnal scene.

Curiously, he could not remember it. It had not been something that lodged in the memory bank and could be pulled out on whatever necessary occasion – looking over those old photographs, chatting with Alan about the old days, describing to his daughter the innocence of those holidays. His dream had been an unexpectedly vivid pageant of the mind, startling in its precision, utterly right but also utterly different. It was an evening over on the surf beach at the tip of Bribie Island.

A group of them, all teenagers. Dusk. They had been gathering a whole pile of driftwood from the wrack above the tideline. It had been piled to make a bonfire. As the shadow was pulled up from the east, over the waters, a grey-blue dustiness slowly colouring the whole sky, there was a sense of sudden urgency to get the job done and the fire actually started. That was the point at which the vision locked into precision. Charlie could feel his own combination of elation and anxiety as he dragged a particularly long, heavy log down from the dunes a couple of hundred yards south of the byre. He was calling out to the others to wait until he got it back there before they actually lit the whole shebang. He wanted to be in at the start of everything.

The night drops quite quickly in the sub-tropics. Ten minutes after the sun had set the beach was dark. The surf and the constant washes of fingering wavelets gave a sort of illumination, but now the fire had taken, and they were all sitting, on sandy blankets and towels, a safe distance from the flames. When the wigwam of the logs had collapsed into a glowing core, they would venture closer and begin their rough and ready sort of barbecue, with billy tea, potatoes in the embers and sausages stuck on twigs to be singed and blackened and then shoved between slices of bread and drenched with tomato sauce. There would be toast and a few of the braver souls had brought chops.

Someone regretted they had not thought to wrap a pig in banana leaves and place it under the fire to cook in its own juices. General cries of regret and envy.

No alcohol. He was certain of that; those were the years of truly simple pleasures. There were bottles of creaming soda and ginger ale and Helidon lemonade. It was not even the time of Coca Cola. Hot sweet tea out of the blackened billies was perhaps one of the unifying factors of the evening.