Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (17 page)

N
ot once in eighteen months did Min ever go over to the boundary between Dom Khouri's land and hers to have a closer look at the progress taking place on the building site. Ron thought perhaps it might upset her if she did but, in fact, Min would not have been upset, neither by the extent of the building nor by the men who were clambering about on their former land. She kept her own oblique eye on things from the window above the sink in the kitchen where she found herself lingering over dishes or potatoes that needed peeling, often leaning on her stick now to get a better view. Depending on where certain tradesmen had parked their utes, she could see the progress of the glaziers by how far along the eastern face of the building their Thermoses were placed, and the progress of the stonemasons by watching the oddly shaped blocks of the limestone they were cutting creeping ever higher towards their long string lines. She could also watch the man in charge, Dave Buckley, discussing various things with this or that tradesman, pointing to the roofline or glass sheets or
discussing wiring with Joe Conebush, and by watching things closely over the following couple of days she could deduce some of what their discussions might have been about. She couldn't hear the specifics, but as the months went by she had begun to develop her own version of how things were being done, and why, and how or what was hindering progress and who or what was helping it flow.

Ron and she never discussed what was going on next door, or if they did, the references they made to the new construction were always in the negative, one or the other of them cursing the ‘blasted racket' coming from the boom-box, or Ron complaining that some pair of anonymous carpet-layers from Melbourne had taken it upon themselves to park on his lawn. But it was some unspoken code between them that any fascination they felt about the extraordinary nature of Dom Khouri's house should be kept to themselves. At the heart of this tacit agreement lay the enormity of the sum they'd been paid for the block of land, an amount far beyond the humble constancy of their universe until, suddenly, they found that that was what their land was worth. Perhaps due to the fact that it was Ron's father who'd forked out the six pounds for the land in the first place, and who both of them were sure would've strenuously criticised the goings-on next door as being ‘far too flash', both Min and Ron felt it indiscreet to gabble on about it to each other.

Complicating this mild embarrassment that Ron and Min felt was Ron's rather childlike excitement at the kudos that Dom Khouri's proximity had brought into his life. The Khouri house was resolutely material but akin nevertheless to a grandeur Ron frequented in his imagination. It was all right over a game of cards to talk ad infinitum to Sweet William about Dom Khouri's choices and charm, but with his mother it was a different story. Min was a mirror in which he was revealed to himself and judged with an indisputable common sense. As his spirit flitted excitedly over the
things that Dom Khouri had said or done, as he brimmed with the unlikely harmony between the outward showing of the Khouri house and the imaginative richness he experienced internally, in the presence of Min he was immediately, and without a word being uttered, made to feel plain silly, and in the grip of some ridiculous form of uppityness.

Min spent more time in the house now than she ever had. Where previously she might have been in the garden training the passion-fruit, planting vegetables or erecting a new trellis for her broad beans, repotting pelargoniums or weeding, now she was on a stick and only ventured out to hang the washing on the line or to bring it in. It suited her to stay indoors, for she found that increasingly the blustery air around the house tended to let a chill down deep in her crook lung, where the congestion would sit and ache unbearably. By way of substitutes for her outdoor activities she took to pickling again, and would have liked to reupholster the dining room chairs she'd brought with her from Clifton Hill when she came to the cliff. But she felt she just didn't have the energy. So she read poetry in the daytime, and not only before she went to bed at night. She had no intention of becoming an invalid – she'd throw herself off the cliff, she always said, before she'd let anyone feed her with a child's spoon – so she figured that staying indoors was as good a way as any to preserve her health. And it wasn't as if she hadn't any fresh air, she always left the west-facing window in the front room an inch or so ajar and Ron was always coming in and out. Plus the laundry window was open permanently as well. So she could feel the breezes circulating in the house rather than it growing heavy and stale. And as long as she could get about and do at least some of her chores, she was happy and a hindrance to no-one.

As Dom Khouri's house was finally drawing to its completion she and Ron spent the nights in an almost identical fashion to how they had since Len had died all those years before. Ron would bring in
the wood at around four, either to light the Rayburn or, in winter, to keep it going, and then he'd disappear, invariably to the pub and then to the shed to wait for Sweet William to appear with his BYO bag for the game of cards. At seven the meal would be on the table and they'd eat together, Ron with a glass of stout by his plate and Min usually with a frosted glass of tank water, though sometimes she'd have a drop of stout herself in one of the six-ounce pony glasses that Martin Elliot had given them when people stopped asking for them at the hotel. Ron would eat in virtual silence, apart from the smacking of his lips and the crack of the food under his teeth, but Min would read him snippets from the local paper, which she'd have open on the table by her right elbow. Then, following the meal, Ron would do the dishes, disappear back to his shed and she'd hear him playing the organ as she sat in her chair. There were certain tunes she knew he played for her benefit: ‘We Had A Good Day Today', for instance, and ‘Dolly Grey', which was the tune of the Collingwood Football Club theme song, but at other times she could hear his own absorption in a music she didn't recognise, the music that was his solitary pleasure.

Since the shed had been moved closer to the house she didn't have to go out, as she occasionally used to do, just to sit and hear him play in amongst the sound of the waves down below and with the smells of oil and tools and the night world. She could hear him perfectly from the Papa Mahoney loungeroom chair. That was one of the beauties of life, Min felt: a dreaded change often had an unexpected advantage, such as had occurred with the organ and the shed. It'll let you down but never for long, she often reckoned of life to herself.

Ron, however, was worried about his mother and one night found himself with tears running down his face and onto his overalls as he played the simple chord cycle of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water' on the pump organ. The tears caught him by complete surprise,
and scared him a little, the thought of Min's passing having accumulated with the chords, creeping up on him as he played. Before he knew it he was fighting amidst the music to stem morbid speculations. All of a sudden it seemed her death was imminent, given her age and her lung. He'd thought of her going before, of course, many times, but rather automatically, the way he might think of the eventual onset of winter, or of his own death, as an abstract thing that only the future could make real to him. But as he pedalled his way through the chords by the light of the kerosene lamp, there was no escaping it anymore. He felt Min's passing like a deep sundering inside him, as he descended from the F sharp down through the E major and the D, and his tears were heavy and thick on his lips and he shook his head slowly from side to side as he played to the night in his working clothes.

Who knows what the rabbits felt, or what the thrushes heard in their nests, he thought later, as he came away from the emotion, walking back to the kitchen for his cup of tea. Who knows where the diamonds of the sea go when the night falls that black upon the water.

‘D
o you think the marmalade is too runny?' Min asked Ron over the breakfast table during this time.

Ron pursed his lips and nodded. ‘It's not your best,' he said, his mouth full of toast.

Min looked across at the Everitt & Seeley Stock Agents calendar on the wall near the porch door. It showed a snowy hill in the Gippsland high country, with a herd of healthy looking cattle on it. She'd marvelled all year long at how those big steers kept themselves warm in such conditions. The air looked so cold it was blue. They must have had quite a hide.

She lowered her eyes, replaced her finger on the line she was reading in the newspaper and adjusted her glasses. When she finished the article she said: ‘Well, I think I'm going to give the jam away. I just don't have the knack anymore.'

Ron looked at her. Silently he sipped his tea. That was fair enough.

‘Nan Burns makes enough for an army from her fruit,' he said.
‘She doesn't do a marmalade but she does just about anything else. She'll keep us going.'

Later that morning Ron spoke to Dom Khouri over a cup of coffee from the building site urn. They sat together on the rose-gold knoll of the clifftop out in front of their properties, feeding bits of coffee scroll to the bristlebirds who would venture into the open from under the bushes near the old clifftop track, unable to resist the icing and the raisins.

When Dom asked him about Min's health, Ron told him what he'd told Sweet William: ‘She's fine for now. But her chest is worse. She won't go outside, she says the gusts get into her crook lung. I'm thinking that it might be an idea to move her down onto the riverflat. Down near the Leas. It's sheltered down there. It can be blowin' up here but you wouldn't know it, not down there.'

Dom Khouri said: ‘But the sea air up here must be good for her also. It's got her this far.'

‘I don't know,' Ron replied. ‘I reckon the mother could've lived to this age no matter where she was. With her it's what's inside that counts, not outside.'

Dom Khouri laughed. Then looked at Ron with fondness. ‘Well,' he said. ‘It's a delight to be here with you, Ron. Away from the big smoke. It's delicate, I know, but if you decide to sell I can make it all simple for you. Just like the first time.'

Ron was surprised. He and Min weren't short of money any longer. He'd thought if they moved that perhaps they'd just rent something down near the Leas. But he looked across at Dom Khouri and nodded gratefully. Then a silence fell between them.

‘There's no pressure, Ron. You know that.'

Ron kept nodding.

‘I'd hate you to think that I was just here waiting to pounce, you
know. It's not a deal I'm seeking. No. It's an offer concerning only your needs. Not mine. OK?'

There was another silence then and a little awkwardness between the two men, due to their mutual awareness of the sensitive nature of what they were discussing. Dom Khouri regretted having said anything.

‘If I decide to sell,' Ron said eventually, ‘it'll be yours if you want it.' Then he slurped on his coffee and threw what was left of his coffee scroll to the bristlebirds.

‘What will be, will be,' said Dom Khouri. ‘The priority is Min at this stage.' He put his hand on Ron's shoulder.

They were interrupted then by the architect, a thickset man in a navy blue turtle-neck jumper and rimless spectacles who intimidated Ron a little. Seeing that Ron and Dom Khouri were in the middle of something, the architect was quite deferential. Ron noticed this and enjoyed the fact.

The architect did want to speak to Dom Khouri, however, he would have to go soon, he said, he was due back in Melbourne by midafternoon. So the two men got up with their polystyrene cups from where they were sitting on the knoll above the sea and brushed themselves down. Ron shook Dom Khouri's hand and excused himself, and Dom smiled apologetically at him as he went.

The architect looked down at the ground and held his head at that angle for exactly six paces. Then, looking up at the twelve-metre-high stone wall which would give Dom Khouri's home its panoramic views of the ocean, he began to discuss with the experienced glazier the problem they were having with the window housings and the thickness of the glass.

N
ovember brought heavy rains to Mangowak, the river was swollen and ready to burst back through to the sea as it had in September. All the remnant water tanks, which had once been the town's sole water supply, were full to overflowing. Loose water lay about in the paddocks in huge sheets that picked up the sky's reflection, and crisscrossing the riverflat the desire lines of the agisted cattle, worn deep by constant treading to and from the concrete wells placed for their benefit in drier times, looked from the height of the ridges on either side like an intentional reticulation scheme designed by nature itself.

Colin Batty and Craig Wilson were driving back through the sideways rain in Colin's bottle-green Forester after heading out into the hills between Minapre and Woody's Junction to talk to the Finnish owners of ‘The Orchard', a large B&B homestay property that looked like coming onto the market again only two years since it had last sold. ‘The Borgs', as Colin liked to call the middle-aged couple who owned ‘The Orchard', despite the fact that they weren't
Swedish like the tennis player and that their name was Svensson, had already grown impatient with the wet mists and long winters on the property and had decided to pack up while they were still young enough to move north to something warmer. Money wasn't an issue with ‘The Borgs', as Inge Svensson's father was the founder and head of the second largest company in Finland. They were keen now to sell ‘The Orchard' quickly rather than wait around for the right price.