We walked down the crackling path. A cold day, autumn on the north slope of the hill of Macedon. The hill had early provided Melbourne’s rich with relief from the town in its septic delta, the rivers fouled with tallow and tannin and excrement, the air sallow from the smoke of mills and foundries and smelling of the steam of tanneries and tobacco factories. The Dandenongs, the other hills, the hillocks, were an alternative but the properly rich favoured Macedon. England was home and every kind of European tree their gardeners planted thrived at Macedon — oak, elm, plane, ash, chestnut, holly, medlar, quince, crab apple, linden, hornbeam, hazel, birch, beech, box — box clipped into hedges and box allowed to be trees. It was also the case that you couldn’t get trees to produce their best autumn display in the Dandenongs, the sea was too close, there was a humidity. You needed a crueller climate, one that would make the sugar in the maple and liquidambar leaves turn to fire, convert it to blood in the perfectly heart-shaped leaves of the katsura.
‘A difficult woman, Sarah,’ said Longmore. ‘She was an impossible girl. Nothing like it in her mother. Sweetest nature, her mother.’
‘Impossible how?’ I said.
He seemed not to hear me, walked shaking his head. Then he said, ‘She’s been in trouble. I suppose she’s told you that.’
‘Not the details.’
‘Terrible temper, even when she was little, nine, ten. Then one day she had this… well, not a temper, it’s a madness, a fit. We had her seen by the psychiatrists. Professor Whatsis-name, Bently, Benleigh, something like that, at the university, supposed to be an expert — they’re all supposed to be experts, charlatans, wouldn’t have a clue. Dreams, bloody nonsense, looking for something to blame. Bred in the marrow, that’s what it is. Her mother’s brother had it too.’
The spaniel came between us, speeding, galvanised for a few dozen paces. Then it stopped and started again, plodding.
‘What happened?’ I said.
Longmore looked at me.
‘When she was in trouble.’
Silence. There was something calming about being confined by tall trees, walking down a narrow path towards a gateway that could be an exit or an entrance to some other confinement.
‘Well, they were living like pigs,’ said Longmore. ‘Take that back, I’ve got some regard for pigs. We had pigs here once, my father thought it would be nice to grow your own bacon, ham, that sort of thing. Not at all dirty, pigs. Humans make them dirty. Bugger up everything, humans, a disgrace, don’t deserve the planet.’
We were nearing the end of the allee. A building could now be seen through the wrought-iron gates, a small two-storey stone building with its steep roof sheathed in copper that was green with verdigris. It stood at the centre of a brick-paved square, perhaps an acre in area, bordered by high clipped hedges. Around it was a narrow moat, stone-edged, brimming with dark water.
‘Lovely little thing, isn’t it?’ said Longmore. ‘Come down here every day, twice in summer.’ He coughed. ‘Just as well, given the limited number of summers left.’
It was a lovely thing, not little but small, perfectly proportioned, with bluestone foundations, walls of dressed sandstone, and sills and arches of granite. It would stand unchanged and beautiful when everyone now alive was dead and forgotten.
We crossed the moat by a short iron bridge. Longmore opened the front door and saw me in: one big square room, the floor of polished pink stone, the slabs butted so tight, the cutting so clean that in places no edges could be seen. In the centre of the room, surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe-shaped bench, a mahogany staircase rose in a tight spiral. I walked to one of the narrow gothic-arched windows on the west wall. A shallow alcove between the windows held a stone cup full of wax. A wick had burnt to the bottom and died.
‘Peaceful place,’ said Longmore. He was standing at the single back window, hands in his pockets.
I joined him. We were looking directly at a long stone rill that fed the moat, a dark line drawn across the paving to the hedge.
‘My mother designed this,’ he said. ‘When she was little, Sarah used to sit upstairs for hours reading. You never think at that age they’ll ever bring you pain.’
‘The trouble Sarah was in,’ I said.
‘They had to take the chap to hospital. Head injuries, collarbone broken, they said he was like someone who’d been in a motor accident.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Damn near killed him. They’d been taking drugs. He said she gave him no warning. Broke a bottle over his head. Full bottle of wine. Hit him with other things.’
Longmore had a coughing bout, recovered. ‘Her mother was always nervous after that if the phone rang, couldn’t answer the telephone.’
I gave up on the victim’s identity. ‘How old was Sarah then?’
He eyed his pipe bowl without pleasure. ‘About eighteen,’ he said. ‘Walked out on school when she was sixteen. We were in the Toorak house. The school was delighted, I can tell you.’
‘She was living at home when it happened?’
‘No. She’d cleared off, met this crowd in Fitzroy, they called themselves artists, just smeared paint around like babies, took drugs. Of course, the public galleries bought the rubbish, they weren’t actually after paintings. Young bum, that’s what they were buying. Taxpayer-subsidised sodomites.’
The spaniel plodded around the corner. It walked to the rill, looked at it hopelessly, turned and looked at us, head on one side, sad. Then it sat down, a slow going down, always looking at us, a sinking of an old bum.
‘Won’t cross the bridge,’ said Longmore. ‘Doesn’t like bridges. A bit like me.’
‘He was one of the artists?’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘The man Sarah attacked.’
‘Oh. Hopeless bugger, not an ounce of talent. Gary Webber. I could have understood beating him up on aesthetic grounds.’
He got out the lighter and applied it to the pipe, sucking, sucking, his eyes on the bowl. Then they turned on me, thoughtful.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘yes, the point of this.’
I followed him out of the front door, the only door. He turned right and we went around the building, inside the moat. On the north flank, the dog side, he stopped and pointed at the wall below the window.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s the point.’
He moved on, gave me room. I bent and looked. On a bluestone foundation block, a thin strip was polished to tombstone smoothness. Letters and numbers were chiselled into it. Unless pointed out, you would not notice the inscription. It said:
J. I. Irish. AD 1936.
‘Built this,’ said Longmore. ‘Six of them on the job for the masonry, he was the master. I came here every day, got here early, before them most days, stayed all day. I brought my own sandwiches, tried to help. Got in the way, I suppose. They were rough the young ones, said things I didn’t understand until years later. Still, they tolerated me.’
‘The employer’s son,’ I said and regretted it.
He didn’t look at me, chewed his pipe stem. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Be a fool not to consider that. Anyway, they were kind to me and I was happy.’
The spaniel barked at us, aggrieved, cut off from his friend by a border he could not cross.
We walked around the building.
‘Always happiest here,’ said Longmore. ‘We had all the summer holidays here, my mother and I. My father came up sometimes. She didn’t like the sea, not a sea person. Nor am I.’
‘Do you remember him?’ I said.
‘My father?’
‘No. The stonemason.’
Longmore took the blunt elbow joint out of his mouth. ‘There’s a photograph my mother took,’ he said. ‘A big man. Big shoulders, big hands.’
We left the beautiful building anchored in its calm quadrangle and walked back down the avenue of trees, the spaniel holding station behind us. A breeze had come up, it was worrying the poplars, challenging the tenacity of the last leaves.
‘Was Sarah charged for the assault?’ I said.