Highways to a War (3 page)

The item ended; another began; Lockhart got up and switched off the set. He turned, standing in front of it with his hands behind his back, contemplating us both. His mustache twitched; he cleared his throat, but said nothing.

Diana was frowning at the gray, extinct television screen, her hands still locked in her lap; she seemed to expect some further image to spring into life there that would change what had gone before. Then she drew in a breath, and shook her head. “No. Not Mike. He’ll be all right,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “If he wasn‘t, I’d know,” she said.

“Would you, Di? Yes, I suppose you would.” Lockhart surveyed her with an expression that resembled sympathy; but something in his face made me uncomfortable, and wish to draw his attention away from her.

“There must still be a reasonable chance,” I said. “Surely.”

He looked at me quickly. “A chance? There’s always a chance, mate. But it’s as simple as this, I’m afraid: he’d have to have high-level contacts with the Khmer Rouge to survive there for five minutes. And since they’re said to arrest anyone with Western connections, that seems a bit unlikely, doesn’t it? So we have to hope he didn’t fall into Khmer Rouge hands. Because if he did, he’s now in prison, or dead.”

“Michael’s not dead,” Diana said.

“I hope you’re right,” Lockhart said. “But I was trained to take facts into account.”

Diana stood up. “Bugger your facts,” she said. Her tone remained calm, but her face had grown paler than usual. “Excuse me,” she said, and walked out of the room.

Lockhart was still standing in front of the TV set, eyebrows raised. “She’s a bit emotional,” he said to me.

“I should be going,” I said. “Mike survived for so long—I don’t want to believe this either, Locko. Will you let me know if you hear anything?”

“Hang on a moment, Raymond: don’t rush off,” he said. “I’ll see that Di’s all right.”

Left alone in the living room, I sat in my armchair and studied the picture of the Lancaster, and the group outside the hotel in Singapore. The clock ticked loudly.

I sat for a considerable time, hearing the distant murmur of their voices, probably from a bedroom. They weren’t raised; their tone seemed even; muffled. Eventually the voices stopped, and I heard the bang of the back door.

I lost patience, and went out through the dim, carpeted hall with its dark-stained timber paneling and framed colonial prints. One or both of the Lockharts had gone into the garden; the situation was growing awkward, and I intended to find whoever was there and take my leave.

The house at the back looked out across the Tamar to the ranges in the east: I could make out their black outlines against gray and mauve sky. There was still no wind, stars were out, and the air now was cold and astringent. I made my way across the unmown lawn, tripping over a barrow in the darkness. There was a low back gate in the jasmine-covered paling fence at the bottom of the garden, and I made for that.

He was here, a dim figure in a white shirt, leaning on the gate, smoking. I came up and stood next to him, but he gave no sign of knowing I was here. He must have been cold without his jacket, but he didn’t show it. Below us were wide, distant vacancies and lights: those of the town, and the channel beacons out in the Tamar, casting blurred reflections. When Lockhart spoke, he kept his face in profile.

“The funny thing is, Raymond, that they fooled me so well for so long. Really quite amusing, mate. It’s always been a subject for jokes.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Nobody knew.
I
didn’t know. But that’s not quite true, of course. I knew and didn’t want to know. When I found out for certain, he’d gone. And now he’s gone again, hasn’t he? The ultimate departure.”

“You really think he’s dead,” I said.

“Of course he’s bloody dead, short of a miracle.” He removed the cigarette from his mouth and swung around on me suddenly, presenting me with a face the color of porridge. His eyes were red-rimmed, and I stiffened; I’d never seen Lockhart weep. “Now he can
really
be a hero and a saint,” he said. “And what a lot of people will make him into one, won’t they?”

“When did it start?” I asked.

“When?” He turned back to his contemplation of the dark, drawing once on his cigarette before flicking it away, its spark briefly joining the other lights. “That’s where they were so romantic, Raymond: it apparently didn’t start.”

“Then I don’t understand,” I said.

“The three of us were always together, when Mike was on the
Courier,”
he said. “All those years. I used to be pleased he was so fond of Diana. And he had no shortage of women, did he? Football stars are well supplied with female groupies. Then he got the job in Melbourne, and that was that.”

“Well then, Locko,” I said. “Where’s the harm?”

He had placed both hands on the gate, and spoke to the darkness. “No great harm,” he said. “Especially if you’re the sort who believes what he wants to believe. But three years later, he came back on holiday. He’d resigned from the Age, remember? A month later, he was in Singapore.”

“Yes,” I said. “I remember that visit. I got in a lunch with him—that was all. That was the last time I ever saw him. God, Rex, it’s nearly eleven years ago.”

“I didn’t have a meeting at all,” Lockhart said. “I remember being disappointed by that—even hurt.” He gave a laugh like a cough; he was attempting his tone of irony, but the jerkiness of pain had taken over. “Had to come home in the lunch hour one day. Diana was here; she hadn’t gone in to the shop, I forget why. I went into the kitchen and there was a cigarette smoking in an ashtray: still alight.” He stopped; then went on. “Di’s never smoked. I asked her whose it was, and she said Mike had just called and had gone a few minutes ago. Still he didn’t contact me, after that; I didn’t see him again. I kept seeing his cigarette in the ashtray; it came back into my mind years later. Still smoking. He’d dwindled to a cigarette, you might say.”

“You could be wrong,” I said.

But he ignored this. “I was so bloody fond of him,” he said. “That’s the joke of it. But I never really knew him, I realize that now. Kind; generous: do anything for a mate. That’s the Langford legend, isn’t it? It’s bullshit. It’s what he wanted people to believe: he spent a lot of time working on that image. None of us knew him—and now we never will.”

“It’s such a long time ago, Locko.”

This was the best I could do, and I knew it wasn’t much. I began, shamefully, to want to escape.

“Wrong, Raymond. Nothing like that’s a long time ago.” He sounded as though he were being deprived of breath. “I still feel used,” he said.

The package from Bangkok reached me in the week following the dinner with the Lockharts. I postponed examining its contents until nearly midnight, on the day it came. Then I sat in my study with everything spread out in front of me, in the light of the desk lamp.

After a time, the air through the half-open window began to chill the room. I got up to close it, and a faint, almost imaginary hum of traffic drifted up out of the valley. The sharp hoot of a train came from the railway yards a mile away: icy across icy spaces. There was a fog that hadn’t risen as high as the ridge of West Launceston: the town was invisible, under a quilted white lid. I came back to the desk, switched off the lamp and put on the cassette tape again, sitting in the dark.

There was a large collection of other tapes, and I’d only had time to sample a few. This one had been addressed to me as a letter: something Mike had often done, over the years. It was now the third time I’d listened to it. There was a faint hiss as it revolved in the Japanese cassette player. I watched the spindles turning, unraveling this brittle clew that stretched between death and life.

—Tape recorded in Bangkok on April Fools’ Day, 1976.

When the quiet voice suddenly spoke, it was as though Mike had materialized in the dark. The recording was of high quality. His calm country drawl was still intact, but with a bland overlay: a journalist’s voice.

—Hello, mate. It’s been a fair time since I sent you a letter or a tape; things have been busy. I’ve got a few important things to say. Important to me, that is.

A pause followed: the yawn of an eternal absence.

-Ray: I’m going to do something a bit tricky in a few days’ time. I’m going over into Cambodia without permission. I should be out again within forty-eight hours: that is, by the fifth. But I reckon you know the current situation in Cambodia: not exactly a place you slip in and out of with no worries. I want you to do me a favor: I want you to be my executor, if I don’t get back. If you’re listening to this tape, that’ll probably be the situation: I won’t have made it. In which case, unless I’m merely in a lockup, this is a fond goodbye.

 

Another pause; then a small, matter-of-fact, throat-clearing noise. The faintly humorous delivery hadn’t changed; it gave no indication that his “fond good-bye” was something he took seriously. I reached for the button; then leaned back instead. I was compelled to listen to everything again.

 

—I’m asking Jim Feng to send these personal things on to you if I don’t get back by the tenth. He’d have to assume then that I haven’t made it. Jim’s now bureau chief for British Telenews here in Bangkok, and is one of my oldest mates: we’ve been through a lot together. I hope you’ll meet him someday. He’ll get the package to the Australian embassy, and they’ll send it in the diplomatic bag to Foreign Affairs in Canberra, who’ll send it on to you.

—I’ve made a will, and a copy’s included in the package. I don’t have much to leave. What’s important are my cassette tapes, papers and photographs. I want you to have sole responsibility for them, and to deal with them as you think best. There are unpublished photographs that might be worth another book—my publishers will possibly be interested.

—I was never too keen on writing things down, as you know—that’s why I’ve generally sent you tapes instead of letters—and over the years, I’ve kept a diary on tape. I sometimes think of writing up some memoirs from them, now that the war’s over. I hope of course that you’ll never get to listen to them—no one ever has—but if you do, they may be of interest. You always were fond of history.

 

Another pause.

 

—I’ve written to my brother Marcus. If I don’t come back, he’s to give you some family heirlooms was going to inherit. Marcus and Cliff couldn’t care less about the stuff; it’s earmarked for me, and they’re happy for you to have it. You’d have to go down to the farm to collect it: that should stir up some boyhood memories, mate. We had some good times, didn’t we? When I wasn’t shooting at you, that is. So long, Ray.

 

I punched the tape off. Spooled back.

 

—... hope of course that you’ll never get to listen to them—no one ever has—but if you do, they may be of interest. You always were fond of history.

 

There was a touch of gently mocking amusement in the voice, at this point. At my expense? At his own? I switched off the machine, and sat back.

It’s true I’m fond of history: it’s an amateur interest that’s grown. The book I published some years ago on Launceston’s first years of settlement was well received in academic circles, and in the national press. Since then, and since my divorce, I’ve given more and more of my private time to researching the history of colonial Tasmania. Roy Wilson, my partner in our legal practice, is tolerant of this; he thinks it makes me an expert on early buildings, and thus on property values in Launceston’s central business district.

I fell in love with my native place in my mid-twenties. Before that (like Mike Langford, and like so many others here), I wanted to leave the island. But after the usual pilgrimage to Europe, I came to realize that for me this would only mean unrest; and except for odd trips interstate and overseas, I seldom leave Tasmania or the town. People from elsewhere say it’s a place where . nothing happens. I say a hundred and fifty years have happened; but there’s a sense in which they’re right. Battles, revolutions, concentration camps, bombing raids and the many other consequences of history are far off in another hemisphere; the town remains untouched, dozing among its hills.

This is the sanctuary that Michael Langford long ago left behind. He was the one who got away.

Diana put her coffee cup down, staring through the plate-glass window of Quigley’s coffee shop into the Quadrant: the crescent at the center of town. The leaves of the birches were turning yellow, and lay scattered under the feet of midafternoon shoppers.

“If he’d ever have come back here in all these years, it wouldn’t be so bad,” she said. “But we all get old, Ray, and he doesn’t. And now he’s disappeared. Why does he have to be so bloody haunting?”

She attempted a smile, head tilted back, long-sighted eyes drained of most of their blue by the afternoon light. When she was happy, they held the mild flirtatiousness that was part of the armory of women of her generation, alternating with a humorous, analytical glint. The analytical glint was there now, oddly mixed with her distress. Her well-cut tweed suit was stiffly protective, and she’d applied her lipstick with unusual emphasis.

“I’m sorry about the other night, Ray,” she said. “And sorry to have dragged you from your office. But I had to; I need to talk about him, and there’s no one else I can talk to. Yes, I know: it’s pointless. Especially since he’s stopped being real.” Then, unconsciously echoing Lockhart, she said: “Mike never was quite real.”

I decided to be blunt. “You never thought of leaving Rex, back then?”

She shook her head. “No. But never love a drinker, Ray: the rages, the illness, the persecution mania. Have you ever wondered why a journalist as good as Lockhart was would come back here? Why we came back from Southeast Asia, all those years ago? We were never supposed to come back. But after five years, the grog thing got out of hand. There I was in Singapore with two small daughters, and he’d disappear for a week at a time. I’d know he could be anywhere, from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong—but always in a bar. And eventually his paper fired him, and we came back home. He can manage, on that stupid little rag. It’s easy being news editor here; people cover for him. And he’s tapered off, in the last few years.”