Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (22 page)

In a region deeper than such insecurities, however, she sensed a perfection in the convent garden, with the limestone rising high towards the black eaves across the lawn in front of her. She would rest her eyes, inhale, exhale, simply be happy. She would allow every thing that seemed complex in her life to gently simplify. The tensions of her family life, the town, the people she knew, even the actual physical spaces of her house, seemed at times a long way away. And then it would all zoom back into the foreground of her thoughts and she would find herself with a re-energised perspective on the life that she and Craig had created. She would see clearly the gift they were giving to their children, amongst all the usual diffculties and indecision of a marriage, by their love and hard work, and particularly by their decision to bring them out of the city to the coast. Libby and Reef were having a rare childhood, something
special when you considered the million less fortunate ways that people lived. The challenge now, of course, was to let the abundance flower further, so that when they came of age and wanted to start their own families they could afford, if they chose, to soar as high and far as they liked, or to simply buy a place in the town which they called home.

Everything seemed possible as Liz sat there, and she had no doubt that the trick was to allow things to be, to let good fortune come to you. She needed to trust more, and let things develop. She saw, in a string of tangential but epiphanic scenes from her life, how much she liked to control events and how destructive her fear could be. Amidst the light horticultural chatter of the nuns and the perfume of the wisteria in the convent garden she felt the logic of allowing seeds to grow. To nurture, to water, but not to implore or to expect or to demand.

Unwittingly Liz had created for herself a little pilgrimage by this visit to St Catherine's once a week, and so precious to her was the nature of her solitude in that church and garden that she told none of her friends about it. Already she had invited Carla to yoga on numerous occasions but this was different. She kept the convent walk for herself.

She realised now that it was all due, of course, to the ants. If she'd never been bitten so severely by that bunch of dynamos her life would never have taken this wonderful turn. She would never have become a regular at Vrindarvan, let alone the convent garden. She would also never have experienced the terror of being expropriated from the very land she lived on. Privately Liz thanked the ants. It was as if they were spirit messengers from the intrinsic culture of the land itself, come to stop her in her tracks and deepen her understanding. If she hadn't been a walker, if she hadn't gone out day after day with her dumbbells, such a conversion might have never taken place, but now that it had she saw profoundly
that Mangowak was a gift she could give to her children but never entirely to herself.

As she walked back through the bush from her visits to the convent she would peer through the screen of trees on either side of the Evan's Tip track and feel something latent all about her. Something from the core of things. The forest was still and inscrutable, with garnet sap frozen on the husks of the ironbarks, a pair of bush doves blank-eyed in the leaf litter, the air full of echoes about to sound, astringent and mysterious. She had been deluded, she realised, to ever think it was otherwise, to ever view the bush as open, or merely as ‘the great outdoors'. Perhaps for someone who had grown up amongst it it could be that, but she would never know it as she knew the footpaths and playing fields of the suburbs. The ironic thing was that with this new acceptance, she could walk quite confidently amongst it, knowing that for her children its resonance would have no end.

Libby thought her mother was hopeless, a cot-case, that she was floundering about in a region close to nutsville. She had friends at school whose mothers were into yoga but none, absolutely none, who combined it with time-consuming visits to an old Catholic convent! It was spooky and stupid and the nuns were weird, Libby thought. She'd seen them walking in little clusters down the Dray Road on their Tuesday trek into town, in their shapeless garb, and she rolled her eyes with the rest of her friends. She'd spoken to two of them once and had to admit they were quite sweet, but what she remembered most was the tour they'd been given in her last year at primary school. It was conducted by an old nun with a little morsel of banana on her chin, presumably stuck there from her breakfast. Of course no-one, not even Mr Bannister the teacher, had had the courage to alert the nun to the fact and as soon as the tour was over and they were back in the minibus, they all, Mr Bannister included, cracked up. From that day on the mere mention of Sister Banana was enough to double every one over. Occasionally in class, if Mr
Bannister was in a good mood, he would refer to Sister Banana in the middle of a lesson and everyone would share the joke. It was funny after all, and there weren't many jokes a teacher and students could share. It was good for camaraderie.

For Liz, however, the nuns of the convent were admir able, even if she felt a little sorry for them. As she watched them in the garden they did at times look wan and hollowed out and Liz couldn't help but think about their lack of sexual activity, but on other days as she watched them closely tending the plants, they looked to be leading a life that was enviable for its simplicity and devotion. Things were similar at the Vrindarvan centre too. Of course, celibacy wasn't an issue when it came to yoga, but nevertheless Liz found that the small group of teachers at Vrindarvan could at times seem pallid and barren from their discipline and practice. But then, as with the nuns, on other days, most days in fact, the yoga teachers were supremely healthy and flexible, compassionate, relaxed and good-humoured as well. Increasingly Liz felt some of that insight and contentment was beginning to rub off on her. It had taken a while to understand, and a fair bit of anguish, but now it was as clear as a bell – those ants in her sandal had done her no harm at all.

T
he bottle-green Forester headed up the cypress-lined hill in the middle of the night. The sky was brindled; when the moon couldn't be seen from behind the cloud the yellowing ring around the moon still could.

At the top of the hill the Forester turned right into Merna Street but as soon as it had, as if changing its mind, it turned around again and moved slowly back in the opposite direction. With the creeping speed of stealth it dipped off the bitumen and continued on the gravel, the crunching sound carrying right across the hill and down past the Dick Lake to the riverflat.

At the little carpark above the steps running down to Horseshoe Cove the driver slowed the car even further and stopped it off to one side under some overhanging wattles. In the darkness it could hardly be seen. Putting on a beanie he got out and softly closed the door. He began to walk back towards Merna Street, his rubber soles hardly making a sound on the gravel until it ended for the bitumen where his feet made no sound at all.

It was only fifty or so metres to Ron McCoy's place and, when he arrived at the Belvedere sign, he paused at the break in the fence where the driveway was and peered towards the house. There was no light and no sound from within. He looked down at his watch. It was 1 am.

He stepped onto the property and carefully made his way across the driveway, to a spot where he was hidden under trees. He inched along, dodging odds and ends of cast-iron and other lumpen objects, dozens of freestanding concrete pots, keeping one eye on the house and one on what lay in front of him. There was no wind but as he emerged from the trees and into the clearing beside the large vege table patch, he felt the breeze from the ocean immediately cover his face with a light salty chill. Feeling exposed now, with the moon in a clearing of whorling black sky, he pressed on beside the broad bean trellis, soundlessly, until he tripped on a coiled black plastic hose that lay camouflaged in the grass a few feet to the right of a tank stand. He landed flat and square on his hands and muffled his curse. His heart thumped in his chest. He stood up again, and waited. He looked at the house. It lay low and dark, motionless in straight lines across the eastern side of the block. No reaction.

He stepped forward again, walked across the mown clearing. Now the pounding surf below reached his ears and he wondered how he hadn't heard it earlier. It was so loud. A constant hiss punctuated with swelling and crashing as the cresters wrapped around the offshore rocks way below him.

He could see the woodpile now. The dark orderly shape interspaced with wedges and divots of lighter coloured driftwood and cypress. It was exactly where he'd remembered it being, which was a relief. He wasn't taking the risk for nothing. His eyes adjusting to the lack of light, he stepped around a garden tap. After a few more metres of mown grass, he was there.

Immediately he realised what the problem would be. The gate. That would be the sound that would give him away. He bent down in front of it, resting his hand on the edge of the woodpile which ran away towards the blink of the navigational light beyond the fenceline. He inspected the set-up. It was a tea-tree gate with three braided strands of jute for a latch. Its hinges were also made of jute but they didn't feel as flexible or coarse, obviously they'd been dipped in a glue to strengthen them before they were used. He concluded that the only problem the jute could pose was a knocking sound if it was carelessly hung back on its post. The hinges of the gate itself shouldn't squeal or creak. That was good.

Very delicately he lifted the braided loop up over the fencepost with his left hand whilst holding the rest of the gate steady with his right. He slowly pulled the gate open, waiting for the buckle in the arc that would make a sound. But there was nothing. He let it rest in its natural position, leaning slightly askew against the edge of the woodpile. Then he took a large hemisphere of timber from the top of the pile and secured it tightly against the gate so it wouldn't move in the breeze. Occasionally a buffet would rise up over the lip of the cliff. He had to be sure it wouldn't disturb the swung gate.

He stood up straight again and looked towards the house. He was way out in the wide open now. All anyone had to do was look and they would see him. All they had to do was listen and they may even sense him. Briskly, therefore, he set to his task. He gathered three large cypress wedges and an ironbark divot from the woodpile and stepped through the gate and onto the open cliff. Treading carefully he moved towards the edge and when he got within four or five feet of it he stopped. Down below he could see the glowing crests frilling the rocks. He could sense their in-between cruising, with an elegant iridescence, towards the beach.

All at once he threw his whole upper body forward and the blocks
of wood were heaved into the air and over the edge. He didn't hear them land. Of course not. But he had wondered. It all depended on the immediate gradation of the cliff. Right there it was sheer.

He turned around and made his way back through the opened gate to the woodpile. Once again he looked over at the house and this time he noticed the dark form of the open shed off at the cliff-side edge of it. Like the house, the shed was still as well. There was a sense of machinery gone to sleep. A ticking stopped. Activity abated. That shed was Ron McCoy's lair, his storehouse, he was sure of that.

He gathered more wood from the pile, bundling it up in his arms. Still with his heart rapping at his bones, he made his way through the gate and once again paused in front of the cliff. He squared his feet on the ground beneath him and lurched forward again, the blocks of wood flying into the air and disappearing over the edge. As if into nothing. Without a sound they vanished.

He kept at it for over half an hour, sweating under his beanie and his black polar fleece jacket. Twice his throws went awry and blocks of wood landed with a thud. On one occasion with a shelly tink on the ground. But no-one stirred. And with his foot he carefully kicked them off the edge, tumbling them all the way down the high cliff to the rocks below.

He concentrated on a part of the woodpile in the centre, so as to make an impression. After an hour what had been an even pile at hip-height now had a big gap in its upper levels. No-one could miss it. He must've removed nearly one hundred pieces of wood.

The job done, he bent on his haunches again and carefully closed the gate. It went without a hitch. He placed the large block that he'd used to secure the gate back onto the pile and for a moment stood in the night looking out. Beyond the huge Two Pointer Rocks the sea went endlessly on and away from him, and rose back interminably in its swell towards the land. He threw his head back to an eerie
moon, its wide luminous ring penetrating the cloud almost more than the moon itself. Then, with a quick glance at the house and the open shed and the looming pine trees beyond, he turned and began to pick his way back through the yard, concentrating as he went, determined to extricate himself without a folly.

He reached the road in no time, warmed up now by all the exercise of throwing the wood. Once on the bitumen and off the McCoy land he could feel the adrenalin shooting through him like a drug. He broke into a run, his body twitching from excitement, from that pure energetic substance coursing through him. If he'd been caught the ramifications would have been huge. Way beyond the paltry crime of stealing wood. People would ask why and whether or not he was quite mad or plain evil. Either way he would no longer be trusted. He would be done for.

But he made it. Back in the car he took a deep swig from a bottle of V8 he'd wedged between the seat and the handbrake before starting the engine. He turned the Forester out from under the wattles and drove quickly away, down the hill, across the main road and back up to his house on the western side of the riverflat. He parked in his carport, disturbing no-one.

Once inside his house, he changed out of his sweaty gear and had a quick shower. Then, in his tracksuit, he flicked on the radio and heated up the huge pot of pasta on the stove. Tomato and chilli. He survived on it. Between girlfriends it was easiest. He had a pot on the go continually. In a few minutes it was ready and he slopped it into a bowl with the claw ladle. He sat at his dining room table and ate and breathed deeply through his nose.