Gatherers and Hunters (23 page)

He tossed the paper away from him. He picked up the photograph and was surprised that the anger was so palpable. It was not against Miriam. It was something within himself.

This was all becoming impossible. He picked up his car keys and headed out once again. This time, after cruising with a sort of aimlessness round and round the main streets of the compact village, he found a parking spot. It was outside the chemist so he went in. Looking around, he picked up a pair of wraparound sunglasses, very dark. He tried them on. The perfect disguise. Then he skimmed through the adjacent rack of sun hats. Chemists these days sell everything. He took one of those deplorable things called, he thinks, golf caps. He tried it on also. Utterly non-Charles Brosnan, it made him look like some tennis clone. He bought them both and then, to complete the picture, he added a pair of black thongs, the sort of thing Miriam abhors. Abhorred. He, also. He walked out with a sense of grim satisfaction.

Wait. Something else caught his eye as he was leaving the Pharmacy. A pair of binoculars. That, too.

With a fierce pleasure he threw them onto the front seat and drove off, rather too abruptly so that a woman with her whole week's groceries looked as if he intended to skittle her. ‘Sorry!' he called out loudly, giving her a wave but not ­stopping.

He found himself, almost without thought, down on the flat along King's Beach. It was near where the incident with Peter happened yesterday at around this time. He found a place to park the car, closer to the main surfing area. He sat for several minutes, casing out the joint. He laboriously took off his shoes and then the long grey socks which had become his uniform up here, if he were not wearing full length trousers. His feet looked white, exposed. The black thongs increased this sense of nakedness.

He was wearing the very dark glasses. The cap was in place. He dragged himself out of the front seat and walked towards the sand. The area was crowded with sunbathers and families under beach umbrellas or other shelter. He walked among them, for the first time feeling hidden by his new camouflage. He selected a hillock of sand, loosely strewn with marram grass, and took a long, steady look.

From this position he could get a sense of the total beach area. On the northern side, quite close, the basalt rocks and the artificial rock pool were crowded with kids. A few pandanus palms that he remembered from old times still seemed to have grown not at all in the intervening fifty years. He looked in the southern direction. It was along there a little way that Beatrice – Trish – had taken off her bikini top. He stood up to get a better view.

As he did so he noticed a young man – a lad merely – who was sprawled out in a dip in the sand. He was asleep. But his body had betrayed him. A strong erection had lifted the front of his Speedo trunks with obvious results. Charlie moved off, feeling indignant. Why? Nobody else seemed even to have noticed. It is almost as if he, himself, were complicit.

Everywhere he looked, a sort of carnal energy pervading everything. Even asleep, we are betrayed by it. And we are betrayed by the hidden excitements that are part of the body.

Admit it. There is a trace of the voyeur in everybody.

He had not noticed, before, that set of home units almost right on the sand, towering above this section of the beach. What sort of council regulations have been flaunted, who has been bribed, to secure such a frontage? It is surely not only illegal but downright dangerous, should a cyclone come sweeping along this coast, not at all an unlikely prospect.

He pulled out his new binoculars from their case, already sand-smudged. His first practical application of their use was to scrutinise those units. On the third floor one balcony had a gaudy sign. No doubt
TO LET
and probably with the additional information
HOLIDAY VACANCY
. Rates doubled or trebled for the Christmas rush, it must be at a particularly high rental not to be snapped up already. He noted the name of the agent, Ray White Caloundra.

On the beach below those units he saw another group of young people – teenage girls, squirming almost out of their costumes. Animated, so unconsciously sexual.

This is madness. Replacing the binoculars, Charlie already knew what was required of him. His anger had been converted into a sort of excitement. One week. Only one week, but think of the possibilities. Quite apart from the sense of the hunter and the quarry, there was the feeling of liberation, of intent. There was also the sense that he had outwitted that musclebound oaf Peter. And, when he finally admitted it, there was the sense of opportunity. He would be able to gaze, unhindered, for as long as he liked upon the youthful nudity of Trish or whoever, and nobody would interrupt him, he would be safe, legally, on his own private territory, at least for one week, and they could do nothing about it.

All the furies that have been seething within him are replaced by some sort of chemical process into this excitement, this location, this eagerness.

+++++

Before he returned to Westaway Towers the deed was done. He is quite animated and only now half admits to himself what a hairbrained plan this is. Yes, it might be hairbrained but it is also strangely releasing. He feels in power again, in command. The object is almost only a secondary consideration; he keeps deferring the delicate pleasure he has set in store for himself, almost as if that were not the real consideration. He will be able to soak into that all in good time.

One week rental, a truly ridiculous rental and an even more spectacular deposit but things like that are not the point, they are the necessary hurdles. He gets the key tomorrow at 10 a.m.

There is the rest of the day to fill in. Charlie takes his car out again, there is a restlessness that now has a proper focus. He feels not only safe behind his new dark glasses but also invulnerable. So this is why disguises are so irresistible? He had sometimes ragged Miriam about her cosmetics, her ­‘disguises' he had called them. ‘You don't need all that make-up, you are wonderful just the way you are,' he had always said, and meant it. Her tolerant smile had become one of their little secret exchanges.

+++++

Where to? After a few minutes thought Charlie decided to drive over to Dicky Beach, where the ancient wreck still protruded out of the sand, or at least he imagined it did. It was a quieter beach, less popular with children and family groups because the surf there was rather more treacherous, sudden rips and dragging tides. At Moffatt Beach, just along the way, a small creek crossed the sand and that had always been a popular children's play area.

Dicky Beach was, as he anticipated, only inhabited by a scatter of people. The weather had turned overcast, which probably made the sand less attractive, and the surf looked positively treacherous. He walked some distance in his chafing thongs and the golf cap. He carried only the binocular case over his shoulder, no towel, no other accessories.

Pushing through the sand roused old, adolescent memories, even impulses. He ran a few paces, then paused and caught his breath. He was almost inclined to yodel into the wind, which dried his lips with a salty tang. How long since he had felt this sort of eagerness? This silly anticipation?

He saw them, half hidden in the high dunes, only when he was almost on top of them. A group of half a dozen. They were all completely naked, the men as well as the women. Charlie paused.

Too late. He had been sighted.

The three young men sprang up and in a rush were upon him, faces made ugly with threat and vehemence. Creatures in their prime, Charlie thought, even as they came upon him and surrounded him.

‘It's him again!' Peter shouted, ‘It's the Stalker!' And they had him by the arms, the shoulders, before he could begin to think such things as self-defence.

‘He deserves the lot!'

‘He should be knackered, I'll get my Swiss Army knife.'

‘No way. Might give the girls ideas!' And they shouted their laughter over him, ignoring his own voice, concerned only with heaving him bodily towards the brown-tinged surf.

He could not see what the girls were doing. Had they remained on the dunes? Laughing and jeering? Were they perhaps even frightened? He was roughly shoved and dragged over the sand. He lost one thong. He began shouting. He did not realise there was such indignation in him. Such anger.

They carried him out to the surf, despite his protests. They were laughing and jostling him now. There was also the hard thump at his kidneys and the tearing off of his spectacles. He was clutching the binocular case but that was not their interest. They had surged right out into the swirl of surf so that the first big wave broke over them and they ducked and spluttered but still gripped him hard. It was only in very recent times that Charlie had become aware how his skin had lost its pliability, it broke too easily, it bruised and gave him visible marks with almost any pressure.

Like a sack they dragged him further out into the salty surf. Like a bundle of rubbish, an old car tyre. He could not move his arms.

These youths were treating his body like plastic. He shouted out and protested. He threatened, but they ignored him completely.

‘Right out,' one of them said. It was horseplay and he would have to endure it, there were no nearby witnesses, it was a change room gang up. He gave up his efforts.

A further spill of surf engulfed them all, they were ducked underneath, but none of them let go. Charlie felt himself being pushed underwater. He struggled now, more vehemently. He felt his arms straining to get free. The binocular case was no longer clutched to his chest, he was struggling with panic now to find air, to break surface.

Drowning was not possible. He had not considered drowning. Water and sand abraded his face, his eyes. It was not possible. It was not possible. When you lose balance you lose everything. The pressure was from above. They were drowning him.

He must have fainted. There was no recollection of them releasing their brutal grip, no sense of how or when he had been released. He found himself half-in half-out of the tideline, in a mess of smelly seaweed. It was a minute before he could open his eyes properly, and his throat felt scalded. Nobody came to his rescue.

He did not know how long. He only knew he had not swallowed anything. His mouth had remained clasped. They had not beaten him. They had beaten him thoroughly with the carelessness of youth, with impunity. The stiffness was beginning.

Two seagulls poked towards him on the sand. They skirted him and continued prodding and pecking. He half-rose, finally, and then sank back. Another weak surge of wave half-lifted him up but that was all.

When thought returned, he would be ropeable. Not yet.

+++++

He spent some while, later, searching for the binoculars. He did find one black thong. His clothing was still drenched and by now it was chafing him. The skin of his body felt as if rasped by sandpaper.

They were nowhere in sight. Did he expect they would be?

When he finally trudged back to the car his first, sudden, thought was: car keys? They were still attached by the little clip to his belt. At least that humiliation was avoided.

When he did reach the vehicle, however, it took him a few moments, after starting the motor, to realise what was wrong.

All four tyres had been flattened and the air valves were missing.

It took him quite a while before he worked out that the next thing to do was to phone the RACQ.

While awaiting their arrival he felt for his wallet. It, fortunately, was also still there, perhaps miraculously, all things considered.

He must be starting to feel better, to be able to feel relieved over that.

Inside, with his money (how fortunate that the new plastic currency seemed unsoakable) was also a very sodden piece of paper. It was the receipt from Ray White Caloundra for one week's rental of the third floor home unit on Kings Beach.

That was when, finally, he vomited.

+++++

Miriam had raced ahead into the surf. Her naked flanks pale in the hot sun but she turned and urged him on. Charlie, on the edge, clumsily balanced from foot to foot as he dragged his underpants off. The long beach was empty, except for the thread of seawrack so typical of Bribie Island. When he caught up with her they sprayed each other and laughed till he embraced her and they flopped down in the shallow water, gasping. Another roller loomed over them and they were dunked. He grabbed her arm and held for dear life as he felt her being dragged from him. Later, he realised that there were dangerous rips along that part of the coast. Anything might have happened.

To wake in the night, suddenly, with the scalding fear that Miriam had been tugged out to sea while he remained, helpless and quite naked on the shore, their so-young bodies, only a moment before, exulting in everything that surrounded them: that was a horror which should not return and return. Is nothing ever ended?