I wanted to do better with Gaby, she said. The situation was not unredeemable. She liked the new school after all. She brought her projects home to me. Would you believe it? Cardboard boxes, an alternative education built on supermarket leftovers, projects on the history, geography, biology, chemistry, ecology of Coburg, Pentridge, Merri Creek. She was happy, even when she was drawing cancer maps. They were so pretty, pink and yellow empires, like pâté en croûte, with delicate black lines and annotations. Then Frederic came back to Melbourne.
When he turned up at Patterson Street, Sando greeted him, apparently not knowing who he was.
Hello mate, the young man had said.
Hello mate, said the local member of parliament.
Mind if I come in, mate?
When Celine got home from rehearsals the visitor was well ensconced, his long legs stretched out in front of him. She did not recognise him any more than her husband had. The buzz cut tricked her, the lack of makeup. Only the lashes finally alerted her: they almost, but not quite, obscured his bright insistent eyes. It was that single glimmer (that living being inside the burrow) which would always be, for her, the most disturbing feature of his face.
Celine dropped her heavy groceries on the counter top. She poured herself a glass of wine and observed her strangely tranquil daughter, sitting on one end of the long sofa facing the young man, her lovely strong brown legs folded beneath her skirt.
The visitor tilted his head and Celine saw him hiding there, the fey prancey child who had preferred old fur coats and eye shadow. He wore a checked flannel shirt from Kmart like a working man. Dear Jesus, she said. (Deeeer Jaysssus, said the tape.) He had come to destroy my girl.
Gaby sipped a beer. (Since when was she allowed to drink?)
Frederic? Celine asked.
He grinned. She offered her hand and found his rough and dry.
Hello, Celine.
He had never called me by my name before, she said. (Dear God he expected to be hugged.)
Sit, Celine cried. What have you been doing? she cried. My God, how old are you? she asked, shocked by the man’s body she had felt against her own. The creature began to tell her what he had been doing and of course he knew she did not want him here, unravelling all her good results.
You’ve both been through so much, Celine said (waiting to see if he even knew what had happened to Gaby because of him, but nothing, not a thing).
She asked what school he was going to. How he answered she could not remember, except he didn’t tell the truth. As a result, she could not understand the triumph on her daughter’s face. She thought, don’t you, don’t you, don’t you dare throw your life away, my girl.
If it’s not one thing it’s another. Soon they went off to her room and they must be having sex, but no: Celine heard that Apple noise and was not smart enough to be afraid. The computer had been a waste of money. Gaby never used it. As far as Celine knew she had transferred all her cybermania to the reclamation of Merri Creek. The new school encouraged this from the first day. Her study group planted trees and hunted carp on Saturday afternoons. They used the school PC to make charts of invasive species and native birds. That was enough. Who would have alerted her to Agrikem? Frederic? How would he know?
No, Celine said, Mervyn Aisen introduced Gaby to Agrikem. This was pure malice. He “proved” to her that MetWat had issued Agrikem a secret licence to release “limited quantities” of dioxin. Gaby was Gaby. She was immediately outraged. Mervyn wound her up and she rushed off to attack her daddy.
Sando had to be the good guy, Celine said. It was what his life was for. He could not bear it that his daughter would think otherwise. Of course Gaby knew that, and she was totally relentless. She took him to visit dying gardens in the little houses on McBryde Street. She nagged at him until he actually raised the issue in parliament. This did nothing to calm his daughter and he was mocked by the minister who was the one, presumably, who arranged for a “reliable source” to leak him a chemical analysis of Agrikem’s effluent which showed no trace of dioxin at all.
He was a politician, Celine said, as the semitrailers shrieked, so therefore he must be corrupt. But the poor darling could be completely unworldly and when he was fed bad information from the left faction, he believed it utterly. He sat Gaby down at the kitchen table and went through the printout with her. He gave his solemn word that there was no dioxin in the Agrikem effluent.
I wasn’t there, Celine said. I can imagine: how it must have hurt to confront his daughter’s grey and hostile eyes.
Pause. Rewind. Play.
What if you wished to obliterate the corporatists? the Angel said.
29
WHEN TWO HEADLIGHTS ARRIVED directly outside his window Felix snapped awake and stumbled towards the white-quartz glare, naked arm held across his red-rimmed eyes, but nothing else to ensure his modesty.
There came a violent thumping on the connecting door behind him.
He drew one of the curtains and saw, through the mountain fog, a tall windowless van with a high old-fashioned radiator which he would later learn had the singular virtue of being unburdened by computer operating systems. For now, however, the thumping on the door took precedence.
At other times he had pressed his ear against this door, sometimes his back. Sometimes he had heard laughter, sometimes television. No-one had ever knocked on it before. Who’s there, in the name of Beelzebub? He had, until that very moment, assumed that those on the other side like the woman who had driven him from Newcastle, the boy who delivered him upriver, that whole tribe of river rats and dry drunks who had kept him supplied with food and drink, the crew of surf lifesavers, all these people had a benevolent intention towards him. He knew them to be brave individuals who revered his occupation and would place themselves at risk to ensure the story was told in all its complexity, no matter what pistol-wielding thug might try to stop it.
What? he asked the door.
A white paper napkin slid in over the carpet, its message clearly visible.
KEEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOW.
He retreated to the vicinity of the bed and donned a pair of boxer shorts.
He imagined he could hear newcomers entering the next room of the suite. There were sounds of distress, although they possibly had been produced by a television soundtrack. Someone coughed. He thrust his papers, tapes and batteries under the mattress and remade the bed. Then, with his heart beating loudly in his ears, he slipped beneath the iridescent quilt. He waited. He faced the door with his knees drawn up. He embraced his pillow like the child of divorcing parents. He threw off the blanket and pulled his trousers on. He took three steps to the connecting door which, being of the hollow-core variety such as can be purchased at Mitre 10 for less than $50, was no serious barrier to anything. Perhaps he might have kicked it down.