Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (8 page)

Ron was disarmed by how ordinary Dom Khouri looked. For a start, he'd expected a man in a suit. Instead, Dom Khouri wore a cabled v-neck jumper with maroon trousers. He looked like he'd
just got out of his favourite chair to come and visit. He seemed friendly, and not too friendly either.

For his part, Dom Khouri found a small, round-faced man in his seventies, balding a little on top, obviously ill at ease with the social graces. Ron reminded Dom Khouri immediately of a man they'd called
Il Shmandar
in the Dabbaghar district in Tripoli.
Il Shmandar
was a shy hermit who lived by his wits but blushed when spoken to. ‘Il shmandar' literally meant ‘the beetroot', and as a child, Dom Khouri and his friends, whenever they saw
Il Shmandar
coming, would call out to him just to experience the predictability of his reaction, the same every time, red as a beetroot. Now this small man in front of him in the kitchen, with a round head and fleshy lips just like
Il Shmandar
, was blushing as he stood there, welcoming his guest and looking sideways to see if his mother had poured him a cup of tea.

The two men sat down at the kitchen table and Min talked from where she stood at the Rayburn. From instinct she was shielding her son from the difficulties of having to make conversation with the important man, as it was too early yet to begin to talk about the land. Min asked Dom Khouri if he followed the football and when he said he barracked for Essendon she replied that his team seemed like ‘a nice group of boys', but that she never shed a tear when her beloved Collingwood beat them for the pennant in 1990. Then she told him that the best game of football she had ever seen was the 1937 Grand Final between Geelong and Collingwood.

‘And that,' she turned around to say with a look of mock seriousness, ‘is even despite the fact we got trounced.'

‘And what about you, Ron?' Dom Khouri said, turning on his chair but not so much that he would embarrass anyone. ‘Are you a Magpie lover too?'

Ron broke into a large smile and threatened to laugh. ‘No fear,' he said. ‘I've always been a Bulldogs man, like my father.'

‘Yes, but Ron's never taken much interest in the footy,' Min told their guest. ‘And nor did his father. But I grew up in the thick of it. My father used to cut the players' hair. We never missed a game.'

She made a clicking sound in her gums as she pulled a dish out of the oven. ‘Fancy me marrying a Bulldogs fan from Winchelsea,' she said, smiling. ‘Wonders'll never cease!'

Min had prepared her fish pie because from experience she guessed Dom Khouri would appreciate it. The pie was famous locally. And appreciate it he did. Trevally caught between the Two Pointers, King George whiting from further round in Snook Bay, smoked trout from the catchment dam, crab from the rock pools at Boat Creek, yabbies from the Poorool dam, a cheese and parsley roux, topped with mashed potato. They got to talking about fish and Ron found that the millionaire from Brunswick knew a thing or two. He listened with interest as Dom Khouri told them of the fishing culture he'd grown up amongst, how they used to dive precariously deep for sponges, and how the seas were being ruined for his friends back in the Mediterranean. Ron had heard about the perils of modern fishing methods, but was interested to talk to someone who had experienced it almost first hand. They agreed that these days it was often an unfair battle between man and fish.

‘The hook and drop-net is as far as man should go,' Ron said.

‘I agree,' said Dom Khouri, leaning forward with passion, ‘otherwise it's like shooting into a barrel.'

As they ate and drank tea and talked fish, Dom Khouri avoided asking about the local area and its fishing potential. He remembered when rich people from France had bought properties in Tripoli when he was a young man. He recalled how elegant most of them had been but how careless they remained of the relationship between the coast and its people. It was not just that the locals of Tripoli had lived there for centuries, it was more that they were part of the land itself, like the olive trees or the rocks at the shore,
or the cedars which sat as witnesses in the mountains behind them. No questioning or seeking information could reveal more than what could be felt just by being in Ron and Min's company. He could see it in their eyes. If he had stayed in Lebanon he might eventually have gathered the same atmosphere about him but now he felt he lived with the two knowledges: of deep belonging on one hand, and of being a stranger on the other. It was a life of juxtaposition and from the enormous energy its tension had given him he had made his substantial fortune.

What a pleasure it was to meet a rich man who could put you at your ease, Min was thinking as they polished off the pie. Look at him. He wouldn't be out of place in the shed with Ron and Sweet William.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?' Dom Khouri asked and Min waved her hand and got up to fetch him an ashtray.

Ron had sworn to himself that the most important issue in meeting Dom Khouri was to find out whether or not he could live next door to him. He needed to gauge if he was a trustworthy man, or some kind of stickybeak who'd be checking up on his often illegal hunting habits and dobbing him in to the authorities. He wanted to know if Dom Khouri was buying the land for an investment, for show, or for a better reason. He was not going to sell his father's land to someone who was going to start up some gimmick for tourists right next door.

After an hour and a half over lunch, the rain that had been hammering the roof of the warm kitchen as they ate was finally backing off and Ron felt surprisingly confident on all fronts. Through the sink window, Dom Khouri could see a rainbow stalk out to sea in front of the Meteorological Station. Ron noticed his eyes widen as he saw it.

‘You'd see as many rainbows up here as you would anywhere,' he ventured to their guest.

‘It's beautiful. With the old chimneys there and the whitecaps,' Dom Khouri replied.

‘My father told me that when he first bought this land, the sheep used to notice the rainbows. If you'd known him you'd know he wasn't one for making things up.'

‘It's true,' Min said.

‘He'd say,' Ron continued, ‘people think sheep are stupid, boy, and they are, so long as you reckon it's stupid to stick together and watch rainbows go by.'

‘We're all animal lovers here,' Min explained to Dom Khouri.

‘Yair,' said Ron, suppressing a giggle. ‘I kill 'em. I kill fish, and eels and rabbits and foxes and ducks and yabbies and that. Anything that moves.' He made a conciliatory gesture with the back of his hand, unsure if the foreigner would cotton on to the tone of his joke. ‘But I'm honest about it. That's fair. I don't touch any of them when they're breedin' or failin' and I don't take too many.'

‘That's wise,' said Dom Khouri.

‘Mushrooms are a different story, of course,' Ron smiled. ‘If there's a paddock of field mushies I'll take 'em all, won't I, Mum? Bloody beautiful for breakfast with a bit of Gellibrand butter.'

Dom Khouri nodded and smiled, thinking of the flavourless mushrooms he bought at his local grocery in Melbourne.

‘And raspberries,' Ron went on. ‘Same. Can't resist when they're on. Mum makes a top raspberry jam. Take a jar before you go.'

‘I'd like that.'

Min placed a hot silver pot of tea on the table and poured. As she leant over the table she shook her head in quiet amazement. By her son's uncharacteristic chattiness she could tell that things would work out.

Although he was showing no sign of hurrying, Ron knew that Dom Khouri was a busy man and that he couldn't stay all afternoon. Looking to his left out the window, where the morning's squalls had
finally passed, he suggested that maybe he and Dom Khouri take a walk around the place so he could show him a thing or two.

They stepped out the porch door and into the day. The cold hit them, they'd been so warm in the kitchen with Min's fire in the Rayburn. Ron led Dom Khouri through the yard, past the nectarine trees and the stacked palings from a fence he'd helped dismantle down in the valley, and up to the woodpile.

‘This is where your land would start. This would be our boundary.'

Then he pointed along the cliff towards his open shed. ‘You'd have all this along to my shed over there and all the way back to the flowering gums near the road. It's three acres.'

Dom Khouri followed Ron's pointing hand but was having a hard time concentrating on the land because of the view over to the Two Pointers immediately to their south. The cormorants were on the top of the rocks, which stood there like fabulous eyries straight out of his childhood. Between the rocks the turquoise blush had come back into the heaving banks of water after the wind and rain. Dom Khouri felt a shiver down his spine.

Ron stepped forward and Dom Khouri followed. Ron could feel the rich man's awe but didn't begrudge him it. He knew he'd pay a good price. As they clicked through the melaleuca gate, Ron felt again the excitement he'd always known the cliff to arouse in people. He was its keeper. He knew Dom Khouri realised that. He led him to the bench his father had built, where they sat down. It was Dom Khouri's turn to speak.

Dom Khouri hunched his shoulders forward and turned his hooded eyes to face Ron McCoy. Ron's lips were pursed, not for any other reason than to keep a lid on a sudden upwelling of emotion.

‘If you would like to sell your land to me, Ron, I would like to buy it,' Dom Khouri began, speaking formally. ‘In the case of such a piece of land as this, no money can be the measure of it. And for
me, money is not an issue. But it is money that must pass between us. I would like you to name the amount. I will pay whatever you feel is appropriate.' He paused. ‘For me this place reminds me of where I grew up, Ron. And it's the picture my old uncle painted of this country when he came and found me. What is the point of all my wealth if I can't go home? Do you understand?'

As he spoke, Dom Khouri's voice grew strong with emotion and Ron could recognise a hint of what must've been his original accent, something he'd not noticed earlier.

‘I have driven with my wife past your place to the Meteorological Station before. And never noticed. But from here, with no bitumen or powerlines or people . . . it is a haven.'

Ron's gaze turned from the black birds with their wings spread on top of King Cormorant Rock to Dom Khouri.

‘Do you like music?' he asked.

Dom Khouri was taken aback by the question. ‘I love music,' he replied, quickly.

Ron opened his mouth and breathed in. ‘I believe that when I was born, I had no music in me. If I had lived anywhere else I would never have played music. It's this place.' For a moment he thought he was going to tell this man he'd only just met about the sea of diamonds, but he didn't. He stopped there.

‘You play music?' Dom Khouri asked, surprised. The shy man next to him had just offered a piece of his soul.

‘I play the pump organ,' Ron replied. ‘In my shed over there.'

‘The pump organ?'

‘Yairs. Priests call it a harmonium. Never played a piano.'

The wind was dropping now, the whitecaps disappearing. Dom Khouri leant back on the bench and said, laughing: ‘If I had lived here all my life, Ron, I think I could sing like Beniamino Gigli.'

Ron smiled a little along with him. His disclosure had not been wasted.

‘Do you know Gigli?' Dom Khouri asked.

Ron pursed his lips again, this time in nervousness. Opera intimidated him a little.

‘A friend used to play Gigli on his gramophone for me,' Ron managed to get out. And then: ‘It was like seein' a big whale. Bit overwhelming.'

Dom Khouri looked out to sea. He wanted to say to Ron that once he'd built his house on the land the two of them could listen to Gigli together.

‘I'll have to move my shed,' Ron said.

‘Can it be moved?'

Dom Khouri could tell by the way Ron said ‘my shed' that this structure was more than just a storehouse.

‘Well, yes. I'll have to take it apart and maybe reassemble it. It's a bit rusted through. Been there the best part of a century. But yair, I'll have to get that off first thing.'

‘Where will you put it, Ron?'

‘Oh, I've got a place in mind, over there a bit.'

He pointed towards the far side of the house, at the pine tree boundary where the little headstone they'd erected for his father sat amongst the unmarked graves of his working dogs.

‘It's not too close to the house there, is it?'

‘Yairs, but she'll be right. Come and I'll show you where your entrance will be.'

They walked back through the melaleuca gate and over the closely mown section of the block towards the road. Now Dom Khouri began to steal glances towards what would become his land. He liked what he saw. As they reached the three flowering gums near the road, Ron showed Dom Khouri the potential entrance through the old post and rail ironbark fence.

‘I've had a chat with the estate agents and they reckon it's worth a fair bit,' he said. He waited for a response.

‘I reckon it is too,' Dom Khouri said, patiently.

‘It's just that the mother's getting crook,' Ron said.

Dom Khouri waited. He thought of
Il Shmandar
again as Ron blushed bright red in front of him.

‘Well, they said a million and a half for the land but I say a bit less. One million three hundred thousand.'

Dom Khouri smiled. He'd expected to pay more.

‘What about one point four, Ron, and you keep your shed where it is. It's no skin off my nose. As it is it'd be on the far corner of my land.'

‘No, it might block your view.'

Dom Khouri put a gentle hand on Ron's shoulder. ‘I must tell you, Ron, that I will build a very large house here, very large and very high. Your shed will not block the view.'