On Cringila Hill (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

Jimmy rides up to the surf club carpark, dismounts his pushbike, leans it against some chain fencing. Feizel is inside his old Volvo, looking down at the rolling surface of the sea. Jimmy opens a car door and slides inside. After a while, Feizel says, ‘When you gonna learn to drive? Bit embarrassing, you know. I come to this meeting with my key man, he turns up on a pushbike.'

‘I like it, on the bike. Feel the fresh air, you know, feel the hills beneath ya, where they're steep, all that shit. Pass someone you know, got time to say hello properly.'

Through the windscreen they watch the weather. There's low, dark cloud rushing above on a south-east wind. The sea is boiling up, under the wind. Thick, pale green waves roll up with lines of spray across their upper edges, tumble over themselves, burst into foam that runs up onto the beach.

Quietly, Jimmy says, ‘I used to come down here when I was little, come down with my grandfather. He used to walk me down.' He frowns through the windscreen. ‘When we got down from over the hill we'd get the salt-smell of the air. Used to get the heat-prickle of how the air felt over ya, with the salt in the air, and the humidity in summer. Sort of excitin', the way it smelled and felt, down on the beach, how the sea sounded, beatin' in. I'd look at the sea, you know, what it was doin'. We used to search up to see what was up in the little water pools up in the rocks, little fish, crabs, little finch birds in the bushes near where the beach started. Yeah. Was magic to me.'

‘That right? How's it look to ya now?'

Jimmy sniffs. ‘Now? Looks like skinny line of sand wit' water on one side, some trees on the other.'

‘There ya go. Somethin' ya wanted to talk about?'

‘Sure.'

‘Okay. But before we start, what the fuck
happen
'
to you? God you look terrible. Like you're dead but no one told ya.'

‘Not sleepin' too well. Not sleepin' at
all
. Somethin' happen'. Got it on my mind in a big way.'

‘Anythin' ya wanna talk about?'

‘Nah. My thing. Live it through.'

‘So …'

‘That stuff we talked about in Queensland, that cousin you got up there … that still goin'?'

Feizel turns to watch his friend. ‘Sure. Last I heard. I can check but I think so, yeah. What, I take it you could be interested now?'

‘Jus' run me through it again, the way things would be.'

‘He needs a new face can mix in with kids up there. He needs someone the police never seen before. An' maybe not jus' the police. So you go in while things is quieter, learn the place, find you way. Then we get to late spring, the place goes mad with school kids turnin' up, want the gear. This new person knows his way aroun' by then, got the connections, make lots and lots of money real quick.'

‘An' if I go,
my
end?'

‘Bus ticket get ya up there. Get your own flat, back a bit from the highway. Put food in the flat, get ya started. Thousand a week. Then there's this, which is sort of the point to it all. My cousin sees a chance move up into the plannin' an' the gettin' stuff manufactured, get out of the level he's at now. Gets the right person, he moves, you do what he's doin' now, you'd be off the street. Jim, this is a real big chance to get into a good spot. It's all about gettin' someone with brains, someone won't fold up under a bit of pressure. This is stuff he don't think he's got available to him up there just now. He wanted me to go but I carn.'

‘An' if it don' work out so well. What then? S'pose them coppers ain't so stupid like we think, get onta me sellin' the stuff your cousin's got. Where I'm at then?'

‘Depends on how much ya got on ya. If is late, ya not got too much, maybe they jus' gonna get a take on who ya are, say don't be so naughty. Get ya early, you loaded up … well, maybe could be not so good. Ain't lyin' to ya. Chance ya take. Chance we take, down here. Always a chance things can go wrong.'

‘So, what then? Gonna do time in jail?'

‘On the cards with us, way we live, what we do.'

‘What then?'

‘Cousin's gonna get ya good lawyer.'

‘That help?'

‘Aw, shit. It help alright. Big difference. Not sayin' he got someone can get you off every time, but good lawyer's gonna be a help. Then, in your case, you gonna be so
sorry
what you done, so
'
s
hame
'. Carn believe the pain you caused your old mama. Tha's called expressin' remorse. Judge gonna write that down, ya expressed remorse, someone gonna look at that when they thinkin' should they parole ya.'

‘Yeah. Expressin' remorse.'

‘Then, when ya in, every course there is you gonna sign on for.'

‘Courses?'

‘Yeah. “Pointlessness of crime”, all that sorta shit.'

‘What, ya mean like school?'

‘Well, sorta, but they gonna take it for granted, ya can read or write so they jus' gonna talk things over with ya. You sit there,
look sincere, look like you takin' it all in. Shit, ya'd be a
genius
at it.'

‘It come down ta this, what's the time gonna be like?'

‘Get ta this my cousin's gonna ask his fren's, tie ya up with some people inside. Ya Macedonian, so that's good. No one got nothin' against the Macedonians. Well, maybe the Greeks do but I dunno there's too many Greeks in jail. You gonna have you people, maybe play some cards, play some softball, build you body up a little bit. Then, ya get out, all ya had comin' all that time gonna be waitin' for ya.'

‘Yeah? How I can be sure 'bout that?'

‘I tol' him who you are. You come out, he been shittin' ya, you gonna get angry, go lookin' for him. He don' want that. He don' want that in a really big way.'

‘Okay.'

Jimmy thinks for a while. ‘S'pose I got a girlfriend. What about her?'

‘Jim, you know how we are with women. Any woman of yours, you run inta trouble, care gonna be taken for her, she gonna be treated with respeck, all her needs gonna be met, food for her, bitta money, nice lady comes talks to her. Needs help get back to her own people for a while, tha's gonna be there.'

Jimmy watches the sea. He says, ‘Sound's like a plan been thought out.'

‘Way is gotta be. We gonna hit, some of us, time to time. Gotta hold together, get through these times. Though, let me tell ya, way things are right now, I'd really miss ya if ya went. Not tryin' to talk ya inta nothin'. Just telling ya the way things would be, if ya hit a problem.'

‘If your cousin hits trouble, you gonna be a part of doin' this sorta stuff for him?'

‘Yeah, I am. Still, like I say, I'd miss ya. Things tight for me right now.'

‘I'm goin' anyway, Feizel. Carn stay roun' here. Too heavy for me.'

‘Yeah? Well, then, this the next best thing for me, have you with family.'

‘An' if still it's there an' I take it, I can be sure is gonna be what you said?'

‘Jim, this my cousin. Been with each other since babies. He tell me this is it, is the way is gonna be.'

‘Make your call. Still there, have him send down a ticket. Give me a coupla days. I'll go.'

‘Yeah? Big move.'

‘What the fuck. Don' work out I can always come back.'

When Jimmy gets back home, Piggy is waiting for him on the porch. Jimmy stores the bike, strides up the stairs. The boys sit on the verandah floor, backs against the front wall.

Piggy says, ‘I hear you're goin' to Queensland.'

Jimmy stares at Piggy for a long time. Eventually he says, ‘Oh, fuck me.' He waves a finger in the direction of Warrawong. ‘I've just now left talkin' to Feizel. Even here, even on Cringila Hill, news carn travel that fast.'

‘Yeah, well, maybe I put two an' two, and now I see I was right. Someone said somethin' bad happen between you an Lupce out on the harbour, an' you look terrible.'

‘Thanks a million.'

‘Well, I guess he thought he was talkin' to people he could trust, but then, you know how people are.'

‘I do.'

‘An' I knew what Feizel said to ya 'bout Queensland, so I thought, well, maybe this is it, maybe Jimmy's gonna go back, talk to him.'

‘Yeah?'

‘So. If you go to Queensland, Jim. Can I come?'

Jimmy looks over the Hill, down into the works. He can see people moving, seeming slow. He wonders how often he'll see this scene in the future. It comes to him that he knows this world very well, and he feels at once sad, and a little frightened. He says, ‘Pig, true, I don' see how I can make that work. I gotta find my
own
way, carn be worryin' 'bout you. An' Pig, no disrespeck, certain ways, you stand out, which might not be too good a deal, this new scene I'm goin' inta. Can get away wit' that down here where we know the scene. Maybe a bit hard to handle up there in a new place.'

They sit together, looking at different things. After a while, Piggy says, ‘Well, then, somethin's different. Feizel's gonna need someone at your level. Put inna word? Put inna word for me?'

‘Sorta the same deal. One thing you hidin' in a dog kennel, pass out little bags of weed. 'Nother thing you out on the street sellin'. I'm not sayin' there's nothin' fancy 'bout us, Feizel an' me, cos there ain't. But there's gotta be
some
basic standard.'

Piggy doesn't meet Jimmy's gaze.

Jimmy says, ‘Tell ya what. We're gonna go down, join you up a member at the yacht club.'

‘The
y
acht club!'

‘Yeah, the junior one, the one for kids wanna learn ta sail. I tell ya what they got in there – they got
showers
in there. An' I can imagine, your place, the bathroom, the shape it's in ain't too flash.'

‘You got
that
right.'

‘An' we gonna go buy you soap an' hair shampoo. An' some new shirts an' jeans. Then you gonna go have showers at the yacht club, wash your hair, put on your new clothes, go in Wollongong, go to an Italian barber in there, opposite Liquorland, got a barber pole an' everythin' outside his shop, an' he gonna give ya an Italian haircut. Things go the way I think, I'm gonna be gone in a coupla days, so we need to move. Then we'll go talk to Feizel. An' I'll stan' up for ya. See what happens. But, Pig, ya gotta think about this – things can get rough out there. You
seen
that. You gotta wonder are ya maybe cut out for that stuff.'

‘Thought about that. Maybe there's a thing I can
do
about that. Maybe I can help Feizel that way too.'

Jimmy looks at Piggy doubtfully. ‘Oh, well,' he says. ‘We'll see.'

Chapter Twenty-four

They've moved a hard-backed chair from the kitchen so that Gordon can use it while watching television – easy to get onto, easy to get out of, firm support for his back while he's seated. With May nearby he watches the state news bulletin. Then the local news comes on and the anchor gives the camera a hard-eyed look. ‘Heading tonight's bulletin – evidence of serious misuse of police equipment for personal purposes at Port Kembla command.'

The Winters sit silent, waiting. A list of further headlines is recited, then they hear, ‘Serious allegations exist that police equipment has been placed at the use of a senior officer at Port Kembla. Our reporter, Ian Battle, has the details.'

Gordon hears the details, announced with portentous solemnity by the young man dressed in a new suit that doesn't fit very well, though he gazes confidently into the camera, states calmly, without notes – a police car has been deployed to act as the personal taxi for the female partner of head of unit Edna Carruthers. The officers involved refuse to comment, but others ‘to whom this reporter has spoken' are outraged at what their colleagues have been required to do. There are shots of a plump, matronly lady looking flustered as she walks into a home unit block, looking embarrassed and ill-at-ease while she declines to comment.

‘Oh, Gordon,' May says. ‘Edna looks so
guilty
.'

‘People do, when they're suddenly on camera and they're not used to it.'

The item is brief and soon the program switches to the erection of a new outdoor learning area in a primary school playground.

‘Well,' May says. ‘Perhaps you're not going to have for too much longer this audience you currently enjoy.'

‘Perhaps,' Gordon says. ‘That's very possible.'

That night, in bed, Gordon eventually abandons any hope of sleep. He finds a position in which pain seems least and lies as still as he can. A spasm comes, so sharp and uncompromising that it goes beyond anything he's ever known. He whimpers, unsure if he can endure the level of agony, and then accepts that there is no alternative. He balls sheeting, presses it into his mouth, bites into it. Eventually the hot stab falls back into a throbbing ache.

Thoughts occur to him compulsively: Edna may soon be re­assigned and he'll lose his audience. He recalls his last conversation with Jimmy Valeski, whose father is gone, lost, vanished, unheard of; he's heard the question, what if there was another murder? He hears Lupce Valeski saying, ‘Who said there was a murder?' And, ‘I sorted that out with the other detective.' Gordon thinks about Detective Laecey.

‘You mean Detective Laecey?'

‘Yeah. Him. Man with long face, not much hair.'

Another murder. He sorted it out with Detective Laecey.

Hours pass. Eventually he's sure that, if he stays in bed, he'll wake up May. Gordon takes several stages to ease himself out of bed, put on his dressing gown, locate his cane in the dark. His first destination is their lounge room, where he turns on a lamp. In the kitchen he takes a double dose of painkiller – committed to an operation he believes the amount he consumes is now an irrelevance. The tablets down, he gathers up a cordless telephone and the little leather-bound phone book he keeps on a table. With a gait that slides his feet along the floor he makes his way out onto the verandah, eases into a wooden chair.

A couple of occasions come into his thinking as flashbacks. They come to him now as he waits in the blustery dark for the relief and sense of well-being the drugs will deliver. He sees, for a moment, Michael Laecey narrowing an eye while regarding him, saying, ‘I think you're being too tough on yourself there,' and, ‘I think you did that vey well, better than most could do it.' He recalls what those endorsements had meant to him. He thinks of May, remembering her experiments with affection for the Laeceys, experiments with trust, growing through the period of their young married years from a hopeful, doubtful teenager to a poised and confident woman. Gordon traces through his memory the pattern of decisions and events that have led to him finding himself sitting on this particular verandah as the dark night passes.

Painfully he changes position. Darkness lifts a little. He watches the shapes of massed gum foliage twist and shake under the wind. He listens to the wind, and the boom of surf breaking on the beach at the bottom of the hill. He reflects on what he sees as the extraordinary good fortune, which has come to him through his life and considers, appalled, the terrible risks he's taken with some of the things most valuable to him. He thinks of his daughter sleeping in the bedroom of her inner-city dwelling. He hopes that she is warm and at peace, and imagines that, probably, she is. He thinks with gratitude of the generous, principled, charming woman who at present is slumbering in the bed they share. And he allows himself to wonder, for the first time, if in fact May's life would be simpler, pleasanter were she free of him and his compulsions. Without experiencing emotion, he ponders whether May might ever decide to leave him. The air over his face chills, the wind drops – soon it will be dawn. The sky has lightened to be a pale grey out across the sea where the horizon is.

He thinks about Michael Laecey, and what, at last, he's come to fear is the truth. He tries to reconsider snippets he's heard, to get himself to believe an alternative explanation but eventually must return, snared, to the same interpretation. He tries to remember the values he'd once liked to believe he'd held, tries to understand the nature of the ones he now finds himself trapped with. He decides on a course of action. He ruminates for a while over the terrible costs it may carry. For the first time he regrets that he has become a policeman.

Cloud has blown away out on the eastern horizon. Soon Gordon can see a band of light grey along the far edge of the sea, then a pastel-coloured rose-glow beneath it. He hears the alarm come on to wake May. In time he hears the muffled sounds of her moving in the house. He sees the first crimson curve of the rising sun. The flywire door swings open and she is there, wearing slippers and a dressing gown. ‘There you are,' she says. ‘I thought I'd lost you. Have you been out here for long?'

‘I think so. It isn't easy for me to tell.'

‘Are you in a lot of pain?'

‘Not so much now. I took some painkiller. I'll need some more shortly.'

‘Shall I bring you some coffee?'

‘That would be wonderful.'

‘I'm going to fry an egg and put it on toast. Would you like that too?'

‘Yes, please. And May …'

‘Yes?'

‘I was just thinking before how lucky I am that I've shared my life with you. I love you very much. I'm sorry that sometimes I feel I need to do things that make a difficult time worse for you. I'm still struggling with some things I should have sorted out years ago. I think I'm going to get better at not making your life tougher. It's good it's your term break. I hope you'll be able to rest.'

May watches him for a while, then says, ‘Yes, I'm so grateful it's the mid-winter holiday. It will be good to get some rest.'

There's a new, sharp chill in the air. A small motor car comes along their street, pauses before their house. An arm emerges through a window, the newspaper turns in the air, smacks onto the dewy lawn.

Gordon lifts his telephone book from his lap, opens it at ‘B', taps on numbers on his phone.

After a wait, he hears ‘Leon'.

‘It's Gordon Winter.'

‘What, couldn't you sleep?'

‘No, in fact I couldn't. But that's not why I rang. Can you give me a quick minute?'

‘Sure, I'm up. I've got an early time at the first tee. How can I help?'

‘Jimmy Valeski.'

‘Yes.'

‘His father. His father's not around.'

‘You are correct. He is not.'

‘How long now?'

‘I can't be all that precise, Chilly. He was gone before I started at Warrawong, in fact before
Jimmy
started at Warrawong, as I understand it. Way back. What, ten years, twelve years?'

‘And the father just left the home, this is what you believe?'

‘That, as I understand it, is the family's version of events.'

‘And is there
another version of events?'

He listens to a long silence while Leon thinks things over. ‘Gordon, I'm dressed for golf. I've got a piece of half-eaten toast in my hand.'

‘Is there
another
version of events?'

‘I'd be passing on gossip, which I try hard not to do. Understand this – I have absolutely no idea what happened, no way of having an opinion. I'm sure that the police looked into it and reached their decisions. That's their job, not mine.'

‘What's the other version of events?'

Gordon listens to another silence. ‘I'll tell you what I've heard, without any suggestion that I know the truth of the matter. I'm totally agnostic when it comes to the matter of Jimmy Valeski's father.'

‘You're just passing on the gossip to me, Leon. I'm not going to tell anyone what you said. No one's going to sue you.'

‘I'll tell you what some people on the staff have heard. Some of the oldtimers. We've got people have been here since the school opened. They're the ones know a lot about the Hill.'

‘Yes?'

‘They'll tell you that Jimmy Valeski's father was a drunk who beat Jimmy, beat Jimmy's mother. And they'll say there's people on the Hill believe that Jimmy's grandfather killed Jimmy's father. Killed him or had him killed. But, what we know about Lupce, probably, if it happened, he'd have done it himself rather than pass the job on to anyone else.'

‘I see.'

‘This is a part of the folklore. I'm sure the police had plenty of chances to look into it. Besides I educate kids, I'm not a policeman.'

‘The teachers who told you this … rumour. What do they believe?'

‘They don't believe anything, in particular. These things get said, what the history of the place is. What's true? What's fanciful, a myth? We have no way to know and, probably, it's none of our business, but I'll tell you what I know from personal experience – it's a strange place, the world. Bloody strange place.'

‘Sure. Before I go, Jimmy's real name. It isn't Valeski, is it? That's the name that was adopted after the … loss of the father.'

‘I can tell you the original name because I took the matter up with Legal Branch, not long after I came, what should we call him officially, what should we, for example, put on report cards. I was told, whatever the mother calls herself and him, whatever he can live with, call him that, but the father, no question, was called Rodriguez, Tonio Rodriguez.'

‘Ah.'

‘And now, Gordon, I'm going to hang up, finish my cold toast and get out to the course in time to have fifteen minutes on the practice green.'

‘Sure, Leon. You've been very helpful. Thanks.'

Gordon and May breakfast together, commenting, as they do, on the weather, the view, speculating on what their daughter might be up to over the weekend. When May returns inside to clear up, Gordon dials another telephone number.

‘David. Are you on duty?'

‘I will be shortly.'

‘Come and get me. I need to go to the station.'

After a long pause, Gordon hears, ‘Fine.'

When May returns he asks her, ‘Would you be kind enough to bring me slippers, some socks and a tracksuit?'

‘Out here.'

‘Yes.'

‘What for?'

‘I'm going to put them on.'

‘What – are you cold?'

‘No. I'm going to the station. To Port Kembla.'

There's a time, then, of them standing together, watching the tossing of the trees, hearing the sound of wind, the surf below their hill.

May says, ‘There's a lot of things I could say. One has to do with you appearing in public in your pyjamas and slippers with a track-suit on over the top, but as there's so much else I'll let that pass. And I'll let it pass because I'm tired. Very tired. There's also this …
obsession
of yours. Gordon, it's not very easy to live with someone who's got all his deepest needs away off somewhere, away from you, away from his family. If I thought you could be reached I'd point out that what you've got is a job. You are not responsible for equity in the world. There will be many things that you can't control. And if you're ill, desperately ill, there will be other people to take up whatever it is you have in your mind to work on.'

‘This isn't like the other thing, May. This is a personal matter, something that means the world to me. No one else could do what I'm about to do because no one else would understand what it meant, or why it matters. Please, get my tracksuit. David Lawrence is going to fetch me. And I know you have your thing you do of a Saturday.'

By the time Lawrence arrives Gordon has made his way to the driveway, so as not to delay things. May has already left. They head south. Partway, David breaks the silence by saying, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you may be insane?'

‘I haven't given that a lot of thought, David, to be truthful. I'm sure May's thought about it quite a bit.'

Inside the station, Gordon notes that there's not much interest in his dress. His colleagues have seen it all. He speaks to Henry, controller of files. ‘Who should I talk to about records of missing persons?'

‘What date?'

‘A long time. Ten years, twelve years.'

‘Ah. The computer records haven't been backdated that far. If there's a file it will be in the stacks, filed alphabetically. But there may be nothing there. Every five years, the policy goes, someone has to check a missing person's file to see if it should stay current. Otherwise we'd have files back to the nineteenth century. Maybe not such a problem when they're all on computer, but you can imagine what the size of the file room would have to be if it's all on paper. If someone thinks a file should be closed another officer has to read it, and agree. So the file might be there or not, depending what decisions have been made.'