Death of a Whaler (15 page)

‘Flinch, love!' she cries when she sees him. The basket at her feet full of Macca's sopping wet underwear, singlets with yellow stains under the arms. ‘Pet, how are you?'

‘Yeah, good, Mrs Mac,' he says.

‘And how's the leg?' She says
leg
in a whisper, screwing up her nose a little.

‘It's fine, no trouble.'

‘Oh, that's good to hear. We haven't seen you over here for so long. Are you going to stay for lunch? I've got sausages. Plenty of them.'

It is a hot morning and she is sweating. Flinch imagines her perspiration dripping into the frying pan, sizzling in the oil with the sausages.

‘Thanks, Mrs Mac, but I can't. I've got to get on my way. I'm going on a trip.'

‘Oh, how lovely! Where are you off to?'

‘Queensland.'

‘Now won't that be nice. I've heard there are some nice hotels up there.' She is sounding old, Flinch thinks. It has been a long time. Her hair is rinsed a purple-blue. Flinch can see grey roots and glimpses of her pink scalp underneath.

‘Er, yeah,' says Flinch. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if I could leave my ute here until I get back. I'm catching the bus and it's easier for me to walk from your place.'

‘Of course, of course!' says Mrs McTavish. ‘Anything we can do for you, love. You know, your mother was like a sister to me.' She pauses. ‘Or maybe a cousin. We always said we'd look out for you.' Her smile contains the small trace of a grimace. She busies herself with hanging a singlet. Flinch knows Mrs Mac couldn't stand his mother. Audrey didn't make a lot of friends. But they kept up appearances, these women, clucked and cooed at each other like aviary birds when they walked past each other in the street, then hissed judgments to each other over weak cups of tea or afternoon nips of sherry. When Flinch came on the scene, though, Audrey discovered that the other women softened a little and so she brought him along to town fairs and picnics, propelling him in front of her as if he were her pass, her free ticket.

‘Poor little angel,' the women would say. Stroke his hair.

‘It's a handful, really, but you love them all the same, don't you? In fact, these ones need it even more,' Audrey would say, voice thick and syrupy with the tone of the martyr.

The women would nod. Invite her for tea and cake. But eventually her bitter streak got the better of her and the invitations ceased, and not even Flinch looking pitiful in his leather and metal brace could convince the ladies to start offering them again.

The bus stop is near the train station. The trains from Sydney grind to a stop here. None continue into Queensland. Different states, different systems. Flinch has heard the width of the tracks isn't even the same size. Brisbane is closer to the bay than Sydney, but it's a disjointed bloody country, the roads out from the capital cities in every state look like rays from a sun. Nothing connects. The colonisers never imagined the roads ever would over such a vast dry land.

He sits on his suitcase in the shade of a fig tree. The dust around him rises when a car rattles past, but otherwise it is still. Across the road and down at the Great Northern, the television blares out racing commentary. Through the open veranda doors, as he walked past, Flinch had seen a couple of blokes perched on stools near the bar, beers and elbows resting on soggy towelling mats. They're in navy singlets and faded shorts that sag around their hips, revealing their bum cracks when they lean forward to put out their cigarettes in the ashtray. It's almost a uniform, in summer, for the working men around here. Flannelette shirts are about the only variation for winter. It's an hour until his bus departs, and Flinch is tempted to cross the road and down a schooner or two himself, but he is nervous about missing his ride; the bus might turn up early and leave without him, and he can't afford another ticket.

But the bus is late. When it finally shudders to a dusty halt at the side of the road, Flinch's buttocks are numb from sitting on his suitcase. He stands as the bus stops, and the driver snatches the case from him and throws it into the storage compartment with a thud. Flinch is grateful he didn't pack anything breakable.

‘You need a hand getting on, mate?' the driver says when he notices Flinch hobbling towards the door.

‘No, I'm right thanks, mate,' says Flinch. He takes extra care to lift his short leg high onto the bus steps, clings to the handrail.

The driver watches him in the rear-vision mirror. Waits until he's seated before taking off, the bus exhaling as the brake releases.

There are other passengers already on the bus. Must have come up from Sydney, Flinch decides. They've probably been crammed into their seats for over twelve hours. They don't pay any attention to him. Most of them have taken off their shoes, spread jackets over the seats next to them. Empty chip packets trapped against windows flutter and a soft drink bottle rolls around on the aisle floor. Some of the travellers are asleep. Most look dishevelled. Flinch tries to settle in. At times like this, he's glad he's a small man. Nate, lanky and lean, would have had to fold himself twice over in a seat this size. Flinch wonders if he came to the bay this way, his knees jutting into the seat in front of him, his hair tangling in his sleep, waking whenever the bus braked.

The trip to Brisbane takes a few hours. The bus labours up over the hills, through the rainforest and farming communities, places with names like Mooball and Murwillumbah. They have a rest stop at the Gold Coast, at a terminal in Surfers Paradise. Flinch stretches his legs, instinctively walks towards the ocean. A cluster of shiny high-rises shadow the beach. It is late afternoon, but the sunbakers are still out, stretched bronze and oily on pastel towels. They look like plastic figurines. The whole place looks plastic, lurid aqua and pink painted buildings, lights and advertisements. Like a movie set, Flinch thinks. Somewhere designed to look bigger and brighter than itself, so that visitors can act however they want when they get here, because it's all fake, there's no connection to their real lives. He hurries back to the bus.

When they arrive in Brisbane, it is dark. Flinch hasn't been to the city. Any city. He asks the bus driver if he knows of a cheap hotel nearby. The bus driver snorts.

‘They're all cheap around this part of town, son. The nicer ones are in the centre. Cost you a few bucks in a cab if you want to head in there.'

‘No,' says Flinch. ‘Something round here is fine. I have to be on a train tomorrow.'

‘Righto, then. Try the Grandview across the road. They usually have a good rate going for travellers.'

Flinch takes his case from the bus and drags it down the stairs. The hotel is directly across the road from the bus centre so it's easy for him to get to, though as he stands at its entrance he wonders why they named it the Grandview. It's not grand, would never have been, and the only view is of the road and the grey stucco side of another building. The lobby smells of old cigarettes and mouldy carpet. Behind the reception desk, a large copper clock ticks loudly, the time on it wrong.

The room is much the same. There had been only smoking rooms left, and Flinch can smell the years of accumulated exhalations on the blankets and the upholstered headboard. The stale ghosts of other travellers.

He doesn't venture into the city. For dinner he orders a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich, which costs him four times as much as it usually does and arrives cool and soggy with a wilted piece of parsley on the side. He unlocks his case and takes out his pyjamas. Crawls into the bed exhausted, but can't get to sleep. He takes out the crumpled piece of paper with Nate's address on it, and flattens it between his palms, fingering it for clues as to how he will find Nate's mother. If she is still there, in Duchess. If she's still alive.

Eventually he falls asleep with the bedside lamp on, the piece of paper crunched in his fist.

He arrives two hours early for his train, the wait before him on the empty platform stretching out interminably like a blank page, but he had been forced to check out of his room at the Grandview and he didn't trust the desk clerk enough to leave his suitcase at the reception and venture into town for what the clerk described as ‘a little look around'. Even from a distance, Flinch is overwhelmed by the gleaming high-rise office buildings, the cars jammed nose to tail at red lights, the commuters that stream out of the train station with dark, shiny suits and hard eyes.

The train slides into the station with a metallic hiss. Flinch, aboard, is relieved to find the seats more spacious than on the bus. He settles himself into one. Exhausted, with nowhere that he has to be for the next twelve or so hours, he sleeps.

When he wakes, it is dusk. The train rockets through fields of sugar cane, the setting sun turning the tips of the stalks pink. A food trolley is on its way up the carriage, and he buys himself a cup of milky tea and ham sandwiches that taste bland and stale. He feels suddenly homesick for the bay, and wonders what is happening at the little pastel house now. He left a bowl of water out for the goats. A little unnecessary, he knows, they're hardy and resourceful and would survive regardless, but he wanted to connect himself to something there. To something living, something that would remember him. Barrelling along through this foreign landscape, he feels as if his ties to the bay are being stretched too far. He anticipates the snap, the flick and the sharp recoil of them breaking and he huddles in his seat.

There is a dinner service on the train. Meals served in rectangular aluminium containers. He peels the cardboard lid off to reveal stringy grey meat swimming in watery gravy. A few hard whitish peas and a potato. He isn't hungry but he eats it all anyway. It's something to do. He stays awake until late. If he presses his forehead against the window he can see the outline of mountains, the silhouettes of trees like dark figures lurking. If he sits back he sees only his reflection, distorted, pale and worried, a face he doesn't recognise as his own. When he falls asleep, the rocking movement of the train results in dreams of being on a boat, of washing up on a shore lined with broken bottles, all of which contain notes with the names of men lost at sea and their last words, the things they wanted to say to lovers, mothers, brothers. He finds himself again at the lighthouse, and again he is not alone. He turns this time to see the lighthouse keeper filling his pipe. He smells the rich scent of tobacco. The lighthouse keeper points at the lighthouse and it flashes a brilliant white light.

Flinch wakes with a jolt.

The train has stopped.

‘Nothing to be concerned about,' the conductor is saying, walking up and down the carriage like an army major. ‘Just a routine stop. You're not going anywhere yet.'

Flinch covers himself with a blanket and goes back to sleep.

At Townsville, there is more waiting. Six hours in the middle of the day. The air is heavy with humidity. Tastes salty. Flinch imagines that if he stretched his hands out in front of him and wrung them, water would fall at his feet. He sweats constantly. He can smell his own body odour. He fumbles around in his suitcase for a while before he finds his deodorant, spends half an hour in the men's toilets with his shirt off, trying to freshen up, but even the cold tap runs hot.

He buys a magazine on boating and fishing at the station kiosk. It's out of date by a month. He reads an article on man-made lures. Makes a note to try to make one when he returns to the bay, maybe ask Macca to try it out when he goes deep-sea fishing. There are advertisements for speedboats and yachts, women in bikinis sprawled across the bows, sipping champagne. Flinch wonders if such a world exists anywhere. Or if people are so easily sold on the concept of paradise. He thinks of the commune and wonders how they are managing, whether they have recreated their Eden. He remembers Karma saying it was paradise, but he didn't see it himself. And he was glad. If he discovered a paradise, he'd distrust it, something so one-dimensional, just as he distrusted Surfers Paradise with its lurid colours and flashy neon promises. He wonders why she wants it to be that way so desperately. There are people at the commune who are palpably happy. Joyous, even. They look relaxed and fulfilled, brimming with their convictions. They see the commune as an alternative to a life crammed behind a picket fence in the suburbs, only talking to their neighbours when there's been a crime in the street. They're the ones who have already spent a bit of time hanging around on the beaches in Goa, smoking dope and dressing in saris. The commune is just the way they have decided to live. They accept that it has its limitations and its triumphs.

But Karma, Flinch has noticed, isn't one of them. She looks like she's arrived there to get away from something else, not drawn to the commune but chased in. Hiding in the orange glow of her tent, feverish to heal. Or to be healed. He wants to believe she is interested in his company but suspects with an instinct for truth that her insistence on healing him is just another distraction from whatever is going on inside her.