Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (6 page)

The minutes passed and as the sun kept dropping the waves kept coming, and so did the songs. He sang ‘Losing My Religion' by REM and ‘Little Wonder' by Augie March, and then a couple of Neil Young songs, including his favourite, ‘Change Your Mind'. In the sealed cabin it all sounded great and he tapped along with his foot, making a nice thud against the gearbox console. By the time the disc of the sun was half eclipsed by the hills across the water,
he had transported himself through a whole jam session and felt totally relaxed. Thawed out after work, with the music in him.

But then he thought about going home, and suddenly, for the first time ever in his life with Liz, he became aware that he was bored at the prospect. He placed his hand on the keys in the ignition and slowly leant forward over the steering wheel. He'd just scared himself.

‘Fuck,' he whispered, his breath misting the windscreen. He wasn't so relaxed anymore. Instead of imagining a band in his bottom room now he saw Libby standing at the toaster, scowling, and his wife sitting at the Mambo bench with a calculator, punching in numbers, budgeting for the coming month. And little Reef, sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching
The Simpsons
. There was no music in that image.

He tried to correct himself. It was all fine, it just wasn't . . . well,
electric
. The problem was that it was over two and a half years since they'd got out of the city and Liz and the kids were virtually the only people, outside work and the occasional drink with Colin Batty, that he spent any time with. Apart from visits by old friends from Melbourne. But that's exactly what those friends were becoming since the move. Old friends. When they came down it was still a case of, ‘Wow, what a great lifestyle you and Liz have got,' but it felt now that they were always going to be like that, cordoned off by a cliché of half-felt admiration. How admiring were those friends, really? Life on the coast was a fantasy to them but in the end they were still living in the city and after a few days they'd always get a bit itchy to return. And was this coastal life anything to admire, anyway? How long could a guy enjoy surfing on his own and never becoming a hallowed ‘local'?

‘Fuck local,' Craig suddenly said out loud and kicked the floor of the car.

He'd shocked himself again. This had been building within him
and he'd been unaware. Now, by the quickly evaporating blurt of breath on the windscreen, he realised that he was deeply pissed off. He didn't want to think of his life in categories. He didn't want to use the terms ‘home life' and ‘social life' but if he did he realised now that in his case they both felt bleak. Looking out the window, the dusk seemed bland. And the greyish waves just kept coming into the shore, irrespective of their shape or quality.

Craig was fit from surfing and strong, though prematurely balding, and now he started to sweat a bit, even though the evening temperature was dropping. Out of nowhere he had suddenly plummeted under the surface of things. Everything appeared to be as good as it could be, he couldn't imagine doing things better, raising a family in a better way, but at heart things had gone dead.

He pursed his lips. He could hardly believe the thoughts passing through his head. He and Liz weren't blueing or anything, but he felt different about her. Fact was, since the ant bites
she
was different. She wasn't as relaxed, she didn't seem to be particularly enjoying the space all around her like she did when they'd first arrived, she wasn't walking anywhere near as much, she rolled away from him in bed at night, she was putting on weight. He was unchanged but she was someone else. And he had to go back and forth between Colin Batty at work and her at home. He was carving it up at work but it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He'd become a good real estate agent. Craig Wilson the real estate agent. So what. In truth he preferred working in hospitality like he used to.

Craig knew he was a good man, a warm man with a heart, but the world wouldn't necessarily look after him. He was a social creature but now it was just him, in the gold 4WD with a mishmash sea and night approaching. The road was empty, everyone tucked away in their houses like creatures in their burrows.

Maybe I should get some recording gear, he thought to himself.

When prospective buyers at the agency asked him what the
community was like in the area, he would always say something along the lines of, ‘It's great, everyone looks out for each other,' but increasingly he knew that was just lip-service. Maybe when a bush-fire came through everyone looked after each other but what about between times? Initially he would never have guessed it from the easy-going style of the guys around town but now he knew there was something inscrutable about that casual manner of theirs. They'd chat and smile, say, ‘Too easy,' but scratch any deeper and you'd find a hole. An echo. Like there was some inner sanctum you couldn't touch, some secret cove you didn't know about. He heard a different tone in the way they talked to each other in the water between sets. They were a tribe. In the end, even after nearly three years, it was unwelcoming. Of course, the women were different. Liz found it easier on that level. But for Craig, the town was locked up. Laconic to the point of exclusivity.

He had always been open, friendly. That's why he'd been so good in hospitality and why Colin Batty had picked him out as a potential estate agent. But all his openness and friendliness did for him on the coast was make him money. The irony of that didn't escape Craig. ‘You can be miserable anywhere,' an old guy in a youth hostel in Toulouse had told him once, ‘and happiness is the same.' Craig had understood the logic of that at the time but now he knew, as the old guy had back in Toulouse, the fundamental truth of the remark.

A truck went by too close in the silvery gloom and the Tribute shuddered where it stood beside the road. He got a little fright. The loop of his thoughts was broken. He started the car, flicked on the headlights and chose CD 4 from his six-stacker. He turned it up and took off towards the last vestiges of light behind the hills. The deep slur of Johnny Cash's voice filled the vehicle through all four speakers. The old rebel raged through ‘The Mercy Seat' and Craig put his foot down. The Tribute had a load of grunt. He'd always joked with Liz that it'd be a good car for a heist.

Two big kangaroos were silhouetted on the evening ridge. He sped past the big pines towards Turtle Head and contemplated going all the way to Minapre, to get a drink at The Corniche. Maybe get pissed. But when he got to the makeshift carpark at the top of Turtle Head he took his foot off the pedal, pulled over, and turned the car around. He turned the stereo down, heard the tyres on the gravel. He looked out over the dimming ocean and thought he felt a little better. He changed Johnny Cash to Vika and Linda. He drove home at a legal speed and put his heart behind him.

W
hen he got home, Liz and Libby and Reef were all laughing at an episode of
The Muppets
on Foxtel. Craig loved the Muppets, it was one of the main reasons why he was prepared to spend the extra money to get the satellite service. He had watched it when he was a kid and, unlike
Gilligan's Island
or
Hogan's Heroes
,
The Muppets
was one show that seemed to get funnier as the years went by. If you weren't laughing at the actual puppets you could always have a good chortle at the bouffants of the real-life celebrity guests when they came on. Billy Joel's was a doozey, the worst he'd seen. Craig grabbed a stubby from the fridge and sat at the Mambo bench in the kitchen to watch. He took a sip and gathered from the empty plates on the coffee table that he'd missed dinner.

‘They're
so
funny,' squealed Libby, her knees bunched up under a doona on the couch.

Craig could see in his stepdaughter's profile a younger version of herself, chubby and smiling, before the first signs of womanhood had come to arrest her. He considered riffling through all
the other episodes of
The Muppets
he knew and telling her about them but realised that just about anything he said would pretty soon wipe that beautiful smile off her face. So he didn't say a word, other than a hello to Liz and Reef when the current sketch finally finished.

When Liz had organised to have the Mambo bench done for him he couldn't believe his eyes. He'd loved Mambo for a couple of years by then, especially Reg Mombassa's designs. Now as he glanced at the novelty of the bench it occurred to him that it would be at its best in around twenty years, when it was old and faded a little – a genuine retro classic. Looking at the bench in the 2020s would be like pulling up lino in an old house and finding newspapers underneath with headlines about the end of World War II or the Petrov affair. Except this way the historical interest would be on the actual lino itself. And the humour would be intentional.

As Kermit launched into an effusive and spluttering introduction of a very unstable looking Karen Black, his eye fell on a section of the bench to the right of where he'd put his stubby down. On it was an image in crimsons and reds showing the Mombassa character Australian Jesus, dressed in a Mormon's pale blue polyester suit, turning a fire hose on a very grumpy looking devil, cast as some kind of fat bouncer type with horns, whose head was just poking out of the ground. In the background, fires burned amongst the red-roofed suburban houses and the brown rectangular factories.

He was tired now, even too tired to become properly absorbed in
The Muppets
, where Miss Piggy was now holding court. He went over to the stove-top and found the fried-rice leftovers. Not bothering to heat it up he tipped it into a black Japanese bowl and went outside onto the verandah with his beer. The other three hardly looked up as he passed through the sliding door.

The rice was good, just the ticket. As he ate he felt some energy returning. He sighed, through his nose, with his mouth full. The
night was quiet, but for the moths buzzing around the outside light under the eaves. ‘Fucking eaves,' he said quietly to himself.

Earlier in the day he'd looked over a property with a carpenter at Woody's Junction; it was a good solid house but the paint job was terrible and the eaves were mission brown. No hobby farmer from Melbourne was going to want mission brown eaves, he said, and the chippie had agreed. Not to mention turquoise primer trim around the windows. Now he noticed that his own eaves could do with a touch-up, the paint was flaking a bit. That's only two and a half years of wear and tear, he thought. He took another sip of beer and another forkful of fried rice.

As he finished the food the energy drained out of him again, he felt exhausted. Still, tomorrow was nothing much, a couple of properties in Minapre in the morning and then the afternoon in the office tying up loose ends. As long as Colin was in a good mood it should be fine. And Colin seemed to have calmed down since going ballistic after they missed Ron McCoy's property.

From inside the house he heard
The Muppets
ending and felt momentarily guilty about his thoughts in the car earlier on. She's a good mother, they're good kids, he reminded himself.

A few minutes later, Liz came out and joined him with a cup of peppermint tea. Her hair was down, bunching at shoulder length, and in Levis and a white t-shirt she looked good in the verandah light. She sat on the rail and asked him if the food had been all right. Then she told him how Carla's petition about letting the dogs on the beach had been rebuffed by the council, despite her getting on talkback radio.

‘You're fucking joking?' he said passionately.

‘No. They knocked it back. They said it was too late, the signs were all up and to try again next year.'

‘What, do the signs fall apart in twelve months?'

‘I don't know,' Liz sighed.

She could feel a bit of extra aggression in Craig's responses. She hadn't even known that he cared about the dog issue.

‘They're fucking hopeless at that shire,' Craig said. ‘You ask Colin. He's dealing with them all the time. I mean,
really
, what's a bit of dog shit on the beach?'

‘Well, it does get stinky when there's a lot of it. Sometimes in January you can't get down the Heatherbrae steps without standing in it. That's a bit much.'

‘What? Are you with Carla or against her?'

‘Oh, I'm with Carla, but that's her point. She just wants them allowed on the beach at the beginning and the end of the days. That way you avoid the overkill and everyone's happy.'

‘Yeah, right.' Craig shook his head.

‘What?' Liz said. ‘What's wrong?'

He shook his head again, and exhaled loudly through his nose. She waited.

‘Well?' she finally said.

‘Well, it sounds to me like you've got something against dog shit on the beach too! Fuck, Liz, it's not the dogs who muck things up, it's the people.' Now he began to shout. ‘And fucking city people like us come down here and fuck the coast up. You should go and live in Albert Park, or Sydney, if you wanna get around with little doggy-poo bags when you go for a walk on the beach. It's crazy!'

Liz's body had straightened against the rail as Craig's volume rose. This was right out of the blue. It wasn't fair.

‘We're not fucking up this coast,' she said angrily. ‘I love this coast.'

‘Well, the dogs love it too.'

‘Oh come on, Craig, they're dogs, they're not people! I mean, I like dogs, but come on.'

‘You don't get it, do you? It's not the dogs, it's the fucking attitude.'

‘Stop swearing, would you. Reef will hear.'

‘Oh yeah, he's never heard a swear word before, has he? Never heard a fuck or a shit.'

‘Did you have a bad day or something?' Liz asked him.

‘No. Not particularly.'