Prohibited Zone (13 page)

‘I think we lost them when we took the first left,' I repeated. ‘We've done a lot of extra driving for nothing.'

‘Maybe, maybe not. But at least we're clear now.'

‘It was probably nothing. Just a bit of paranoia.'

‘Yeah, well, you were the one who said we were being followed in the first place. So you can shove your paranoia.' Her voice had lost its tension but not its sharpness. I looked at her again. She was using her hands to bunch her hair behind her neck, her head tipped slightly forward and her lips apart.

‘Get laid last night?' I asked, just to provoke her.

‘None of your business. Did you?'

‘None of
your
business.'

‘You are
so
childish,' she said. There was a pause. ‘Is your brother as grown up as you are?'

‘Not nearly.'

‘My God. I'm starting to wonder why I called you.'

‘I'm starting to wonder why I called you back.'

We passed a middle-aged couple walking a dog.

‘Does
everyone
in Adelaide have grey hair?' asked Kara.

‘No, some of them are bald.'

Time was drifting. I felt tired.

‘You've got a few grey hairs yourself, by the way,' she said, peering at my head.

‘I have not.'

‘Yes you have.'

‘I have not.'

‘Yes you have. I can see them from here.'

‘Well, you're going bald.'

She snorted. ‘Honestly, you're so juvenile.' But I noticed she felt the top of her head. She was silent for a moment, then she started stabbing buttons on the car radio, tuning into every AM and FM station in the city for a burst of two seconds each. Having pushed all possible buttons she turned the radio off again.

‘You certainly won that argument,' she said.

We were heading across town. I turned left onto Main South Road towards Renown Park, but the prospect of spending a hot, sweaty afternoon in Luke's pigsty had no appeal and I passed the turn-off to his house without slowing.

‘Feel like a swim?' I asked.

‘Sure, why not?'

12

S
ELLICKS IS AT
A
DELAIDE
'
S SOUTHERN EXTREMITY
and we were still north of the city centre. We battled our way down Main South Road as far as Flinders University, where we hopped onto the Southern Expressway. This was one of the oddest stretches of road in the country: it only went one way at a time. On weekday mornings it opened at the southern end for commuters from Noarlunga, Christie's Beach, Aldinga, Sellicks and even Victor Harbor, a hundred kilometres to the south, to zip into the city. At about two p.m. it closed for an hour and then re-opened from the other end, so that the exit became the entrance. Then the same commuters would scoot home on it in the evening. On weekends the timing was reversed: city folk could use it to get to the southern beaches in the morning and to return home in the evenings. It cut fifteen minutes off the trip, so it was worth timing your run to get it. We caught it just before it changed direction and followed it over O'Halloran's Hill and through the gentle brown hills at the back of Reynella and Morphett Vale, catching glimpses of flashy new suburbs to the west. At Old Noarlunga we re-joined Main South Road and followed it at a slower pace all the way to Sellicks.

The plain narrowed as it extended southward, a bald spur of the Mount Lofty Ranges cutting it off by curving to the west. Sellicks Beach sat at the foot of a series of round, brown hills where they met the sea, marking not only the southernmost limit of the plain but also the official termination of Adelaide's urban area. The rolling hills descended to the sea via a short, fat alluvial fan that fronted the ocean in an abrupt, stony, thirty-metre-high cliff, which had been furrowed and gouged by the sea, the wind and the rain. For decades the top of the cliff had been decorated only by a few crude shacks, a general store, saltbush, and a large bell that hung from a wooden stand and was used to alert swimmers when a shark was spotted. But as Adelaide had grown and the roads improved the area had come within reach of property developers and holiday-makers. The bell and most of the shacks had disappeared – although the general store somehow survived – and now the cliff top was lined with dozens of glittering double-storey beach houses with tinted windows looking westward to the ocean. Luke liked to bring Bozo here because it was one of the few beaches on the plain where dogs were allowed off the leash during the day; Bozo wasn't the kind of dog that liked to be restrained and Luke wasn't the kind of bloke who could restrain him anyway.

I paid five dollars to drive down the paved ramp onto the beach. It was low tide and the beach was a hundred metres wide. It was well patronised. Families sitting under canvas beach tents or playing beach cricket, white people worried about turning red in the sun. Pale youths in dark cars, dark sunglasses and dark expressions sitting within reach of ice chests full of beer and girls in immodest bikinis, letting alcohol and the sun work them into stupors from which they were unlikely to recover until autumn and maybe not even then, maybe never. Older men with floppy hats and overhanging bellies, who were once pale youths with dark expressions. Women with bottoms that didn't quite fit inside their one-piece swimsuits.

We drove south at a snail's pace along the beach until we reached a line of orange bunting, beyond which cars were not permitted, and parked on the sand next to a black panel van. The water was as flat as stale champagne and as blue as an Aryan eye.

‘I forgot my bikini,' said Kara.

‘So did I. You can swim in your knickers, if you're wearing any.' I was scanning the beach beyond the bunting for Luke. I spotted him a few hundred metres to the south, picking his way across rocks that had been exposed by the low tide. Bozo was leaping through the water nearby, wagging his tail at a million miles an hour and barking at the tiny waves that lapped around him. We sauntered along the beach but stopped short of the shallow reef because we wanted to swim. The sand was hot underfoot. We chose a spot at random to kick off our shoes and throw down our sunglasses. I stripped quickly to my boxer shorts and ran into the sea, diving under to get the cold shock out of the way. The boxers slipped to my ankles and I had to restore them to their rightful position before standing up. Then I turned to watch Kara. She had taken her shorts off and was walking casually to the water in her red shirt and a pair of pale pink undies, the kind that are like boxers for girls but are snug around the crotch. Her hips moved in a matter-of-fact, sharp sort of way that for some reason made me smile. Her legs were brown to a line about mid-thigh and fair thereafter. She waded into the water and dived in without making too much of a splash and without her undies slipping down. She swam underwater towards me, a dapple of red and pink and olive, emerging nearby and running her hands through her wet hair and hooking some of it behind her ear.

‘Fuck that feels good.' The water was still and clear; tiny, almost transparent fish – whitebait – nipped along the sand in small schools. Out to sea, two jet skis ploughed the water, using their wakes to create waves for each other. Luke was walking along the beach in our direction, Bozo jumping up and down beside him. I nodded towards them.

‘There's my brother. And his dog, Bozo.'

Kara turned to look. ‘Cute dog. Your brother looks cute, too.'

‘Yeah, they're a cute couple.'

‘He looks a lot younger than you.'

‘Just over ten years. We're half-brothers, actually.'

Luke was walking with a lazy gait, not fast or smart or even purposeful. It was a student's gait. He was wearing some sort of bizarre dressing gown and sandals and carrying a large beach towel. I yelled to him and he turned and studied the water for a while. Then he waved.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked when I joined him on the beach.

‘I brought Kara down.' I nodded to where she was still swimming just beyond the first line of gentle breakers, then looked at him. ‘What's that ridiculous costume you're wearing?'

He grinned and ran his hand through his long, black, curly hair. He had an earring in his left ear and was still unshaven. ‘It's called a gallabaya. And it's not ridiculous; it's called fashion.'

‘Maybe it was fashion two thousand years ago. But not since then, surely.'

He was looking out at Kara, who had moved into deeper water and was now just a black dot.

‘Bit of alright, is she?'

I shrugged. ‘Make your own mind up. She would take some managing, I imagine. Might be tough getting in past the razor wire.'

We sat on his beach towel, which he had spread on the sand next to our pile of clothes, while Bozo raced around herding seagulls. The sun was still trying to fry us, but a knot of dark clouds had breached the horizon. To our right, a family game of beach cricket was in full swing. A man was bowling to a little girl who was probably his daughter; eight or nine fielders were spread across the beach, including one wading ankle-deep in the water. They were using a tennis ball and a plastic bat. After a while, Kara emerged from the water and walked towards us.

Luke was checking her out. ‘Not bad. But I've seen better.'

‘Luke, you've seen nothing.'

I thought she looked alright. Her shirt clung to her body and her skin looked like it had been rubbed with olive oil. Maybe her hips were slightly too big, her stride a little too purposeful and her ears somewhat over-size with her hair slicked back by the sea. But still she looked alright to me.

‘Getting a good eyeful?' she said to Luke as she came near. She was staring fiercely at him, but I noticed she was also blushing. Luke looked at her face, possibly for the first time, and turned on a disarming smile.

‘Hi, I'm Luke.'

Her face softened a little. ‘So I gathered,' she said. ‘May I borrow your towel?'

He leapt up with pathetic haste, pulled the towel from under me, shook it out so that the sand went on me, and handed it to her. She used it on her hair and then turned her back to us, somehow managing with the help of the towel to remove her shirt and bra without showing us anything more than her shoulders. Then she tucked the towel around her to make a short wraparound dress. With her arms free she folded her bra inside her wet shirt.

‘We might get a cool change,' I said, eyeing the clouds on the horizon.

She didn't appear to care much about that and just stood for a while, then turned back to us.

‘What next?' she asked.

‘Then it'll probably get hot again.'

‘No, I mean now. What do we do now? Sit here roasting our arses off?'

‘I thought now might be a good time for you to tell me – us – what this is all about.'

She sat down next to me, and Luke sat next to her. She drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. The olive oil was gone from her shoulders, replaced by a fine layer of salt.

‘I don't think it's a good idea that I say anything while your brother is here.'

‘You'll be staying with him. He should know what he's letting himself in for. Anyway, I've already told him everything I know.'

‘Have you?' She got her hard kryptonite stare going. ‘Who else have you told? The town crier?'

‘Nah. Couldn't find him.'

Bozo had come to check out Kara, which he did thoroughly and with enthusiasm. Then he trotted off, his nose to the ground and his tail in the air.

‘Why do dogs walk around with their tails up like that so that everyone can see their arseholes?' asked Luke.

‘You just answered your own question, didn't you?' I said.

Kara snorted. It was almost a laugh.

‘Come on, spit it out,' I said. ‘Tell us what this whole Saira thing is about.'

‘What do you want to know?'

‘Everything.'

‘I couldn't possibly tell you everything. There isn't time, and I don't want the entire City of Adelaide to know.'

‘Start, anyway. We made a deal.'

‘I suppose we did.' As if she didn't much care about keeping deals. ‘Can you keep it to yourself this time?'

‘Sure.'

‘Can you, Luke?'

‘Sure, why not?'

She gave me a long, hard look. ‘I'm so reassured by you both. Not.'

I liked her turn of phrase. ‘That worries me. Not.'

‘You're hilarious, West. Not.'

‘It's so good to finally have a grown-up conversation with you, Kara. Not.'

‘Aw, cut it out, you two,' said Luke. ‘What a couple of twats you are.'

‘Me twat? Not,' I said.

‘Steve, you're more of a twat than she is.'

She smiled at him. ‘That's what I've been saying all along.'

‘So what makes you so interested in the refugee thing?' he asked.

She grabbed her sunglasses from the small pile of clothes she had made and slotted them into place. She treated him to another smile. ‘Ever heard of
Tampa
?'

‘Yes, of course.' The MV
Tampa
was a Norwegian cargo ship that had rescued more than four hundred Afghan refugees from a sinking ship off the Australian coast in August 2001. The Australian government had refused to allow the
Tampa
to land the refugees on Australian territory for medical treatment. There had been a stand-off for weeks. The government of Norway reported Australia to the United Nations for failing to meet its obligations under international law but the government didn't budge and the refugees eventually ended up in New Zealand.

‘What really pissed me off was that we, the Australian people, fell for it,' said Kara. ‘The popularity of the government went up after
Tampa
. It actually went
up
after we refused to allow four hundred starving and desperate people to put one foot on our precious fucking soil. What does that say about our country and what it has become?' She sighed and fell silent and we all looked out to sea.