Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (35 page)

‘He wouldn't have gone to all that trouble of shooting himself to hang around for that,' Noel had said afterwards in a bitter voice.

There was an uncomfortable little wake in the tea-room at St Catherine's, and of course that was where the different forms of speculation began to surface. The general consensus was that Ron couldn't live on without Min, and Sweet William for one, as chief mourner and the person the police had called to identify the body, definitely put it down to that. But a few people muttered other things, there were questions apparently about his prostate, and the real estate agencies were putting him under pressure to sell his land. Who knows what other factors were in play? Ron had been such a private man, he could have been dying of a brain tumour for all anyone knew. Of course, if Dr Feast had been able to attend the funeral they could have asked. But he hadn't, he sent a note of apology to the post office.

Dom Khouri was at both the funeral and the wake, however, and about ten days afterwards, having got Darren Traherne's phone number from the builder Dave Buckley, he rang Darren, wondering if they could get together and have a chat about Ron.

Darren knew Dom Khouri by sight, having worked on his house, but had never actually spoken to him. They met at the cafe down in the valley. Dom Khouri thanked Darren for coming and began by asking if it was true there was a rumour circulating that he'd pressured Ron to get off his land. Darren agreed he'd heard something about Dom Khouri and the Brinbeal shire teaming up to develop the clifftop along with the new marine park and the climate museum. Dom Khouri shook his head and said that the very idea that he would've done such a thing was insulting and wrong. He described the rumour as
barbaric
, and Darren was struck by the force of the word. To help clear things up, Dom Khouri explained how the shire had approached him to fund an extension to the clifftop walk out in front of his and Ron's houses, but that in the end he had not only
declined but fought against it, due to his own desire for privacy and the fact that they were demanding the old bench Len McCoy had built for the soldiers be removed for reasons of public liability.

‘They said it was unsafe,' Dom Khouri told Darren, ‘which was absurd, because, as I pointed out to them, the seat had survived for nearly a century right in the path of the weather. It's as solid now as it's ever been. There could be no greater test of whether it was safe or not.'

So Dom Khouri hadn't co-operated with the shire plans for the clifftop walk extension, and the marine park infrastructure was to be focused around the climate museum and at the carpark overlooking Horseshoe Cove. Darren could only agree wholeheartedly with his reasons.

‘I liked Ron a lot,' Dom Khouri told Darren sadly. ‘He reminded me of people back in Tripoli, in Lebanon, where I was born. And he, I think, respected me.'

Dom Khouri seemed so genuinely sad about what had happened that Darren immediately warmed to him. He thought how easy it was for small-minded people around town to demonise Dom Khouri purely because he was rich and Lebanese.

Dom Khouri then moved on to say that he had an idea, given how awful things had become surrounding Ron, with the way he died and all the speculation, that there should be some kind of public acknowledgment of what Ron had meant to Mangowak. Even in the grim atmosphere at the wake after Ron's funeral Dom Khouri had got a powerful sense of the helplessness everyone was feeling with the death. He asked Darren if it wasn't true that Ron McCoy was almost the soul of Mangowak. Darren agreed. Dom Khouri said then that he thought it was important that something occurred, some action or monument or something, to acknowledge Ron. ‘It need only be a small thing,' Dom said, ‘Ron would not be comfortable with anything more. But something at least, don't you think, Darren?'

Darren said he'd have a think about it and ask a few people what they reckoned. He was sure Ron himself would've hated the idea but he was touched by how Dom Khouri described Ron's importance to the town. ‘The soul of this place is shy, marsupial shy,' his father Norm had said to him once, and it did seem true that Ron himself was a bit like that.

Dom Khouri assured Darren that if everyone thought it was a good idea, he'd pay for whatever they decided upon. And if they didn't think it was a good idea after all, then so be it. The two men parted on good terms and Darren ran his idea past family and friends in the days following.

When Darren discussed it with Noel Lea, it wasn't long before the two of them had taken to Dom Khouri's idea as if it had been their own. They went immediately into a clandestine conference in Noel's barn, to work out what they could do. At 9 pm they went to visit Sweet William at his home to see what he thought of the ideas they'd come up with and to choose one that he thought fitting.

Sweet William had been ravaged by the sight of Ron's body and had developed a tremor in his hands since. He welcomed them in but with a hardness in his eyes and an uncharacteristically clipped manner. They talked things over. When it came time to leave, Eve assured the two younger men that they'd cheered Sweet William up and that they should be proud of what they were doing. ‘And all I would say is ask yourself what Min would have liked,' she said to them on the painted brick step as they said goodbye.

That same night they settled on an idea they thought they could manage, and Darren relayed the news to Dom Khouri, who seemed delighted. He gave Darren his mobile phone number and told him to call whenever they needed something.

Noel set aside the paintings he'd been doing and, with Darren, concentrated on the job at hand. They figured it was going to take a good three months to accomplish and in that time the two of them
worked with a purpose they'd never before known. Day and night, from within the walls of Noel's barn, passers-by could hear them hammering and planing, with Tim Buckley or Will Oldham or Neil Young or Radiohead blaring out of the stereo and rocking the barn walls. No-one in the town suspected what they were doing but everyone knew that they were up to something in there.

One night at about nine thirty there was a knock on the barn door and they heard a stranger's voice, a man, call hello. Pulling the big doors slightly ajar and looking out, Noel saw, under the hood of a red oilskin coat, the face of the guy who used to work for Colin Batty, Craig Wilson. He was the guy who had found Ron's body. He was standing next to the vegetable garden lattice in the light rain, looking very uncomfortable. Noel, of course, wasn't about to let him into the barn to see what they were doing.

‘G'day. I'm Craig Wilson. I keep hearing the music as I'm going by and, well, I wouldn't mind a chat with you guys.'

In the barn Darren turned the music down so he could hear.

‘Sorry, mate, what was that?' Noel said, his face barely poking out through the gap in the barn doors.

Craig stepped forward. ‘G'day,' he said. ‘You're Noel, aren't you?'

He put his hand out and through the doors Noel thrust his hand out and shook it. ‘I'm Craig Wilson. I was saying, I keep hearing the music as I'm passing by. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind a chat.'

Craig had been working up the gall to do this for days but now he felt like a complete idiot. Noel Lea wouldn't even open the door more than a few inches, let alone welcome him inside. Noel, in fact, felt rude standing there looking out through the crack like an old crone but he didn't have a choice. I should never have answered the door, he thought. Eventually, all he could manage to say was: ‘Not many people walk around here at night. I didn't hear a car, did I?'

‘No, no. I'm walking,' Craig replied gently. ‘Clears my head a bit.'

Noel fidgeted behind the doors. He had to talk to Darren. ‘Yair, well, um, I'm sorry but can you just hold on a minute, mate.' He closed the gap in the barn doors, retreating back inside.

‘Who is it?' Darren asked.

‘Craig Wilson's out there.'

‘What does he want?'

‘He said he heard the music and wants to have a chat.'

Darren opened his arms wide and gestured incredulously at the contents of the room. Noel nodded. It felt a bit callous but he'd have to put the guy off.

After Ron's death, Darren and Noel had learnt all about Craig Wilson from Sweet William and from Angela, Colin Batty's receptionist, with whom they went way back. Sweet William had met Craig on the day they had found the body and, in fact, the two of them, apart from the police and the like, were the only people who actually saw Ron McCoy dead. It wasn't a pretty sight. Craig Wilson had visited Sweet William from time to time in the weeks since to talk about it. Sweet William thought he was a decent bloke and had told Darren that he should be invited to the unveiling of Dom Khouri's bequest, when the time arrived.

Angela from the estate agency, also a big fan of Craig Wilson's, had actually helped him find the job managing the cafe in Minapre when he quit working for Colin Batty straight after Ron's death. She'd told Noel and Darren that Craig was in an awful mess about Ron and that if it wasn't for his wife he'd probably be suicidal himself. Angela said he'd described to her briefly what he'd seen down in the cave that day and that he'd also said that Colin Batty was an ‘evil bastard'. According to Craig, Batty had struck a deal with someone to buy Ron's place if it went on the market, with a view to building a restaurant and apartments. Craig Wilson hadn't waited
for this piece of information before he'd quit, though. He'd gone in a blur to Colin Batty's office on the very day he'd found Ron, with the vomit stains still on his clothing, and told him it was all over. Angela had watched him as he passed through reception, leaving sticky clay footprints all the way down the passageway to Colin's office. She had heard the conversation from the front desk. She said Colin Batty hadn't argued.

Noel went back to the barn door now, but this time he stepped outside into the misty rain to talk with Craig. He was apologetic. They stood there beside the vegetables, both of them with their eyes trained on Noel's palomino, who was nuzzling the chickenwire of the disused bird aviary where the chaff was kept. For a few brief moments they talked about, of all things, Neil Young, who they could still hear singing inside the barn. It was, at least, a topic with which Noel could assure Craig Wilson that he bore him no ill feeling. As soon as he could, he excused himself and went back inside, leaving Craig to wander off in his red coat, to walk the beaches at night, as he had been doing, on Liz's recommendation, ever since finding Ron McCoy like a nightmare in the cave.

At first she loved him tenderly, and he wept in her arms and trembled. After a fortnight, though, she decided that enough was enough and that he had to pull himself together, even just for the kids, who were freaked out at his state. It was beginning to spook them.

But Craig was helpless. He didn't sleep at night, or, if he did, he'd wake out of breath from having revisited the scene. Liz recommended counselling, given all the time he had on his hands at first, but he refused point blank so then she suggested he take over her little pilgrimage and walk to St Catherine's every day. Desperate, he tried this for three or four days until Angela rang about the job in the cafe her friend was opening in Minapre and his walks during the day had to cease.

He hadn't felt up to starting a new job, and when Liz told him a few days earlier that Jamie Niall was opening his own real estate office in the old kiosk building at Boat Creek, he'd refused even to go and see him. He knew that Liz was right when she said that Jamie would run a good clean business but he just couldn't face it. When the cafe job in Minapre came up though, he felt different. Liz convinced him it was the right thing to do and he hadn't regretted it. Even in the midst of his difficulty, managing a cafe seemed so much simpler after what he'd been through. He could hardly believe now that he'd ended up selling property at all.

Often in the middle of things, however, he'd have to rush out the back and wash dishes for a while, away from the public, to deal privately with flashbacks that came upon him in seemingly random moments. He was fragile in a way that he had never conceived of, his body felt different, his mind seemed to work in splinters and fragments rather than with its usual logical flow. But, much to his own amazement, talking to people still seemed to be a thing that he was capable of, and the practice of leaning on the coffee machine for a chat, a posture he'd adopted for years before he'd moved out of Melbourne, came back to him a bit like an old skin. Because they hadn't known him beforehand no-one in the cafe seemed to notice how haunted he was, which, although scary in itself, was just as well. He only had to wait, Liz assured him, and get on with things. The trauma would slowly pass. He found this hard to believe, though, precisely because he knew his guilt would never pass. It was there for keeps, for as long as Ron McCoy lay dead.

An unexpected consolation during this time was his improved relations with Libby. Now that the family trip to Prague was out of the question financially, her trip to Japan was very much a possibility. Once Craig had been at the cafe for six weeks and it looked as though it was going to work out long term, he told Libby that Japan was a goer. She was overjoyed and ever since had been a lot
easier to get on with. Craig found himself stealing into her room after his walks at night, where she would play him the music she was into and he'd explain to her, laughingly, why it was rubbish. He found her room comforting, her posters on the walls, her litter of well-loved knick-knacks everywhere, and although he wondered at times if their getting on better was solely to do with her getting what she wanted, he often found it hard to drag himself away and return to his own room and the difficulty of going to sleep.

In his suffering he felt constant waves of compassion, for the sick or injured he saw on the news, for roadkill as he drove along the Ocean Road to work. He couldn't help but reflect on how he hadn't felt these things in the past. The pain and insensitivity of the world was so obvious once you saw it, it was as real as the grass at your feet. He realised just by talking to Libby about any old nonsense that she herself had suffered more than he knew by losing contact with her biological dad. He'd understood this in theory but he now felt it in his heart and, as he returned from Minapre at the end of each day, it was his stepdaughter, more so than Liz or Reef, that Craig was looking forward to seeing at home. She'd always carried a secret pain in her own home, and in a way now he did too. The images would keep flashing through his head, and particularly the recurring memory he had of playing the organ in the open shed, while at the bottom of the headland Ron was lying dead in the cave. The very thought of that would flood him with remorse.