The Best Australian Stories (11 page)

As for the road-ragers, it had jolted him for a moment to think they might be financially wounded shareholders, retirees who'd lost their life savings, small mum-and-dad investors like his own
Anya
and
Apa
. Lifelong hard workers and money-savers.
Little people
, some media hacks had suggested. That thought didn't bear considering for long. No, he assured himself. They wouldn't be chasing him. He had a silent telephone number; he wasn't on the local electoral roll. Probably just impatient tradesmen – testy plumbers or electricians in a hurry to the next job or the pub. Whoever they were, most of these journeys ended with their angry horn blasts and aggressive two-finger salutes.

Nevertheless – and this was a hard-to-break habit from his swimming training of thirty years ago, an urge to become a regular Australian, a suntanned sporting champion – he hadn't given up trying to adapt to his surroundings. Early on he'd grown a beard and shelved his conservative city casual-wear of polo shirts and deck shoes for work boots, jeans and heavy hemp shirts bought from a hinterland shop called Don't Tell Mama. (The labels warned:
Do Not Consume
.) However, the change of image – the green and khaki hemp, the boots, the greying whiskers – hadn't prevented a raddled old hippy from accosting him in public.

This was in the main street during his Saturday-morning shopping. Out of a weedy nook between shopfronts leapt this shoeless scarecrow, ragged and bony as
Treasure Island
's Ben Gunn. As if some dervish-releasing button had been activated, he began whirling about on the pavement, dusty dreadlocks spinning, flailing veiny arms and kicking the air. At first Leon K. thought he was having a fit. But when the assailant swung a wild punch at him, shouting, ‘Fuckin' yuppy wog! Go back home, wanker!' he had to duck. He reeled back in surprise.

‘Take it easy, mate.'

People peered out from doorways and cafés. ‘C'mon, I'll do ya!' The aggressor launched another childish haymaker that swiped his shoulder. Who was this lunatic? Leon K. was twice his size, with enough pent-up tension of his own to knock him back into his cave or swamp. What he did was hold him off, his pulse pounding in his ears, while he wondered what to do next. Punch him to the ground? (Self-defence, plenty of witnesses.) In another second he imagined what a delicious time the Sydney scandal sheets would have of that. (At least half of the witnesses would have camera-phones.)

Leon K. brushed him aside again as the man's nonsensical obscenities mugged the gentle weekend air (
Shithead-poofter-wog! City-dickhead!
)

‘Steady, tiger, I'm a local,' he protested, mildly enough in the circumstances. Inviting the onlookers' sympathy, he forced out an indulgent laugh.

Suddenly he craved sympathy, just as he ached to broadcast the fact that this nutcase, the whole community, everyone, had got him wrong. ‘My mother sewed piecework in Surry Hills,' he wanted to yell. And his father, gallant and exhausted
Apam
, a civil engineer back in Hungary, a respected
kulturmernok
, had worked two jobs round the clock in Australia – tyre re-treader in Granville, nightwatchman in Parramatta – driving his son to his daily 5 a.m. swimming training between shifts. ‘He never had time to swim himself. Never even had time to learn how,' he could tell them. This is what he wanted to share with the onlookers: his family's noble struggle and how he was absolutely his parents' son.

But disapproval flooded the street, and it wasn't aimed at the punchy scarecrow. ‘Now, Sonny,' a middle-aged woman murmured. ‘Don't get yourself het up, darl.' So this reeking Sonny was that protected species, a local character. Fizzing with adrenaline, Leon K. dodged his wind-milling fists and pushed past him. Sonny was still dancing on his cracked and crusty feet like a manic flyweight. His clothes and bouncing dreadlocks gave off aggressive, pungent odours of smoke and sweat. ‘Big-city wanker! I'll be dealing with you!'

Rather than the altercation itself, it was the unfairness of the presumption behind it that shocked him that Saturday morning. How could this feral junky whose stink now impregnated his own clothes think he represented the city and all it stood for? He was an interloper there as well. The city – the city! – that wished not merely to punish him but to knock him out of existence.

For better or worse, he'd chosen the country. Moreover, he'd tried to experience its essence. The annual district rodeo at the showground had seemed the place to start. But if he'd expected to see Outback Australia on show he'd mistaken the event. It was more American Western. Hollywood Western. Country-and-Western Western. Everyone – men, women and tiny children – in Wrangler jeans and pearl-buttoned shirts, in boots and cowboy hats, those country-singer Stetsons that looked three sizes too big. All of them dressed to the nines in order to see cows and horses discomfiting people in a flamboyantly painful way.

While the animals took their revenge, he'd shared a bench with some rum-and-Coke-drinking rodeo wives and their squabbling children. The crowd
ooh
ed as a steer threw a rider heavily against the barrier and then trampled him. Attempting to distract the steer from the prone cowboy, the rodeo clown also caught a horn in the bum, which lifted him two metres in the air. Watching him thud to earth like a polka-dotted sack of potatoes, the smallest rodeo offspring, a boy of about five, announced grimly, ‘I'm never going to ride those cows.'

Embarrassed in this company, his mother shrieked, ‘Don't be a girl, Chad! I'm gonna put a dress on ya!' Her friends sniggered. Chad's mother went on, ‘I'm gonna put a bra and panties on ya!' Raucous laughter from the other rodeo mothers. She was on a roll now: ‘You'll be sitting down to wee next!'

This was obviously another side to the country. He seemed doomed to be confused here. Best to keep his head down. He stayed away from potential hot spots like bars and clubs to prevent any more Sonny-type blow-ups. For serenity's sake he even gave up the city newspapers and read only the local rag. Better its bluff mixture of shire jottings, vandalism round-ups, New Age guff and Beef Queen updates than feline financial gossip and always seeing his name maligned.

The countryside might have become his choice, but he hadn't chosen to live there
alone
. While he'd submerged himself in the country and his wife and daughters had remained in the city, he still clung to the belief that he and Kate weren't
separated
in the pre-divorce sense of the word. It was just that she chose not to live here – and this was where her husband had to be. She'd cited the difficulty of their daughters' schooling, plus (he could still see her pacing up and down the kitchen as she delivered this particular body blow) she needed time to ‘adjust' to the scandal, and so on. And so on, and so on, all the way back down the tortuous bends of the Pacific Highway in the BMW with Jessica and Madeleine to Sydney. So his family remained in the Vaucluse house transferred to Kate's name. Her acceptably Anglo-and-incognito maiden name, to which she'd reverted with far more readiness than he'd anticipated. Yet another knife in the gut.

Now he rarely went down to Sydney. In any case, his movements were circumscribed by his bail conditions. His only regular travel these days (he'd had to surrender his passport) was the 100-kilometre round trip twice a week to report to the nearest police station. Standing at the station counter certainly killed some more time; never less than an hour, sometimes two. All he needed to do was sign the bail-appearance form and walk out. Five minutes maximum. But in six months that had never happened, the cops being such specialists at ignoring him, acting busy and strolling about purposefully with their takeaway coffees and Big Macs. Or insisting that the relevant officer was off-duty, or that the bail-appearance forms had gone astray. Even the spottiest, most self-conscious probationary constable stared right through him. Why not? He was that most invisible of felons, the white-collar criminal. The class-loathing was palpable. Give them a local wife-basher or gang-banger any day.

In the meantime his only contact with the city and the trial was Gareth Wyntuhl. But ‘Wyntuhl of My Discontent', as he thought of him, was definitely contact enough, bowling up in his hire car every Thursday morning after slumming it on Regional Express's one-class 8.10 a.m. flight from Sydney. ‘A plane with propellers!' Wyntuhl never failed to exclaim, amazed at his own crazy courage.

Did Leon K. welcome the company? Not at all. Having another man in the house was unbearable. Even such a relatively hygienic urban-middle-class specimen as Wyntuhl was an intrusion. Six months' solitude must have oversensitised him, Leon K. thought. Before Wyntuhl's visits he'd never noticed male breath or male hormonal whiffs, nor middle-aged male nostrils and ears, over-loud male laughter – and, whenever Wyntuhl did laugh, that superior nasal snort and white-coffee tongue.

Male habits made a disgusting list. The deep indentations their buttocks left in the sofa, the everlasting stink in the bathroom, the eggy detritus of their breakfast plates. Representing his gender, irritating and unaware, Wyntuhl had a lot to answer for. Men were so rooted to the ground, over-earthed and overbearing. Like Wyntuhl, they were forever
at large
. They took up all the space in a room, like one over-stuffed armchair too many. Christ, Leon K. wondered, how did women put up with them?

Indeed, Wyntuhl's presence pointed up the painful absence of women. More than ever, Leon K. longed for a woman's ministrations and company, an affectionate female touch. A sympathetic kiss. But even loneliness was preferable to another male on the premises. Each Friday evening more than the last, he counted down the minutes until Wyntuhl packed up his bag and briefcase, until his airport-bound Avis car accelerated down the driveway and was absorbed by the tunnel of verdant foliage and the gagging cries of crows.

The lawyer's last visit had brought from the city not only his cold germs (Wyntuhl couldn't stop sneezing and coughing) but news of recently increased penalties for corporate misconduct. ‘In your case, we're talking maximum five years inside and a $250,000 fine,' Wyntuhl had informed him. ‘Not counting the tax problems. But let's not go there right now.' He emptied his lungs into a Kleenex. ‘Listen, how are those pet cows of yours? I was listening to the
Country Hour
on the car radio. Beef prices are going through the roof. Red meat's back in a big way. By the way, I've been meaning to say, do yourself a favour. Lose the beard.'

‘Five years! Only criminals get five years!' Sometimes, nowadays, Leon K. didn't realise he'd spoken aloud.

‘Yeah, well. Five at the most. My guess is probably less.'

*

Finding it hard to fall asleep, then unwilling to wake, Leon K. cursed his bladder for forcing the issue, rousing him most mornings before dawn. This was the time of day – the aftermath of lustful, anxious dreams – when he most missed a woman. He missed Kate. More precisely, Kate as she used to be, the Kate of their shared youthful struggles, dreamy summers, poverty, fun and ambition. It was hard now to recall that sensual and reckless Kate. These grey pre-mornings better suited the current cold and impassive Kate, the socially humiliated Kate. The Kate who'd sobbed just before she left, ‘They'll all think I'm corrupt as well.' How readily she'd fit into this landscape, where ocean and sky were often indistinguishable these autumn days and the dawn mist turned every hollow between the farm and the sea into a lake of ash. There was no horizon and the grey air was tense and heavy with frustration. But in any case she wasn't here.

Already slick with dew, the tennis court was also sheeted with snowy egret droppings. This particular dawn he was sitting on the veranda steps watching the egrets' court performance. The birds paced the surface for frogs and bugs, every so often interrupting their hunt to mate noisily and aggressively. In this bucking-and-dodging dance of food and sex, one male bird was more raucous and demanding than the others. And when the first rays speared across the court it was the rowdy fornicator who led the flock in obedient V-formation into the rising mist.

In the pale early sunshine, Leon K. trudged down to the ponies' paddock to change their rugs and throw them some hay. Out of sentimental love for his daughters he bought the horses a bale of lucerne hay every week. Increasingly forlorn nevertheless, the shaggy old Shetland had taken to obsessively scratching its hindquarters against a particular fence post. The pony's hairy rump reminded him of a fur coat, a particular woman's garment from long ago, from the days of camphor-lined wardrobes, but whose fur, or where he saw it, he couldn't recall. His mother's? Grandmother's? He remembered a real fox-head peering out of a shoulder – sparkling-eyed and eerily genuine. These days he had his own resident fox. Some dawns he spotted it crossing the lawn into the lantana-bougainvillea-blackberry thicket, like a guilty teenager sneaking home late, head down, ginger pelt dishevelled from the night's anarchy.

An air of suspense always hung over his next task: to clean the pool of its overnight denizens. What would it be this morning? The surface usually whirled with floundering creatures that had fallen in overnight, each one paddling in its own panicky circle. With the pool net he might scoop up spiders, moths, frogs, beetles, worms, cane toads; once or twice a bush rat or a half-drowned possum. Next, even more suspenseful, the check of the filter box for unwelcome occupiers. Then, the pool cleared of its bigger interlopers (only the inevitable gnats remaining), and as the sun headed higher over the first line of camphor laurels, Leon K. would step out of his clothes and mud-reddened boots and, naked and shivering, jump into the water.

However, on this late-autumn morning he was feeling off-colour (bloody Wyntuhl's cold?) and the southerly breeze seemed to pierce his lungs. Scooping up the obvious floating creatures, and weighing up whether it was sensible to swim (he hated missing that first morning kilometre), he glimpsed a ripple of activity at the deep end. Squirming from the shadow of the wall was a darker ripple, a ripple that suddenly took the form of a torn strip of tyre on the highway verge. But only for a moment. The sliver of black rubber straightened, moved assert ively forward, raised its head and surged towards the shallow end. Impressively and weightlessly at ease in this pH-controlled, salt-and-chlorine swimming pool was a black snake.