The Turning (25 page)

They trust you, then.

Yes.

Why you?

The question affronted him but the old man seemed determined not to take offence.

Well, because I don’t drink. Because . . . because I’m trustworthy.

Honest Bob, I murmured, ashamed at the bitterness in my voice. But it was hard to sit there and see him after so long, in the wake of such disappointment and creeping shame. I’d had years
of boyhood bewilderment and then, once I was old enough to see it, a decade of fury at how my mother suffered. In the end there was only a closed-down resignation, the adult making-do that
I’d grown into. And now I had to sit with him and hear him declare himself trustworthy.

Once upon a time it had been true. Honest Bob. He was straight as a die and what you saw was what you got. I believed in him. He was Godlike. His fall from grace was so slow as to be
imperceptible, a long puzzling decline. Even during that time he was never rough or deliberately unkind. If he had been it would have been easier to shut off from him. He just disappeared by
degrees before our eyes, subsiding into a secret disillusionment I never understood, hiding the drink from my mother who, when she discovered it, hid it from me in turn for fear I would lose
respect for him. She turned herself inside out to protect him and then me. And at such cost. All for nothing. He ran away. Left us. I grew up in a hurry.

I was, my wife says, an old man at twenty-five. I felt poisoned by lies. So many subtle tiny doses over the years that something in me gave out. I was no longer capable of forgiveness. If Gail,
my wife, hadn’t come along, I wonder what would have become of me. She has such a capacity to forgive. I doubt I could have reinvented myself by sheer force of will, though that would be my
natural tendency. I have stumbled upon a good life. But my mother was too stubborn, too loyal, to move on. And now she was dying in that same state, fierce with hopeless love, and I was a breath
away from screaming it all back in the old man’s face.

He drank his tea and the afternoon light slanted across the table between us. After a time he cleared his throat.

I have to see some people, he murmured. Before I leave. In case there’s any misunderstanding.

You want me to drive you?

Well, it would be quicker. It’s too mucky for the pushbike.

Alright, then. We’ll go now.

He brought me an old pair of Blundstones. They were soft with use and felt strange on my feet. The insoles were indented by his toes and sunk at the heel. We left the dog behind and slewed up
muddy tracks for an hour or more, stopping well clear of humpies and dongas in the long shadows of diggings and ruins while the old man went in to consult people who were never more than
silhouettes to my eye. Their dwellings were scraptin and ragwall. One bloke lived in an orange school bus that had sprouted lean-tos and outbuildings. While my father was in the bus with him I
walked out through trenches and disused shafts to an abandoned hut. I was fed up waiting in the car, and the old place had caught my eye. On the dirt floor was a rusty bedstead. The hessian lining
of the walls had come away to pool on the dirt. The single room was stacked with empty bottles and the tin fireplace was overflowing with ash that had set white and hard in the rain. On one bare
pole a postcard was tacked. It featured a map of the state with the word SECEDE! superimposed on it in faded yellow. A man’s pants hung rotting on a chair. I’d been in some desolate
rooms in my time but I never saw anything so melancholy.

We finished our rounds at dusk. I was completely lost and only my father’s directions got us home.

You hear about the royal commission? I asked as I drove.

Someone said it was on.

All their names are in code.

The old man said nothing.

You’re not curious?

It’s a long time ago, he murmured. It’s a shame to get this car dirty.

When we reached his place the dog came hurtling from the dark, sudden as memory.

The night was surprisingly cold. It took some time for the stove to warm the room to the point where it was comfortable, but when it was we sat in the light of two hurricane
lamps and ate the stew the old man ladled from a cast-iron pot.

This is good, I said.

Goat, he murmured.

You shoot them? I couldn’t help but smile.

Now and then. What? he asked.

Nothing, I said. It’s just like . . . I dunno . . . stepping back in time. Out here, I mean.

He shook his head, said nothing.

The smell of that wood, I said. What is it?

Desert pine.

Smells like cypress.

He nodded.

The Yanks have taken Baghdad.

I don’t have an opinion on it.

Fair enough.

We ate in silence for a time. The dog sprawled before the stove swooning in the warmth.

I hear you’re a lawyer now.

Yeah.

What kind?

Industrial relations.

On whose side?

The little bloke.

That’s good, he said. That’s good. Gotta look after the little bloke.

Well, that’s the theory.

He pushed his plate away and sat back.

Your mother, he said. She’s sick?

Yes.

He closed his eyes a moment and nodded and it struck me that he was disappointed, hurt even.

How sick?

She’s dying.

He sighed and looked at his hands. He shook his head sadly. He looked at the dog.

Well. It . . . it hasn’t been for nothing then.

What hasn’t?

Sobering up. I couldn’t have gone drunk.

I don’t think she cares anymore, I said bitterly.

I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have gone drunk.

That’s irrelevant.

I wouldn’t have gone, he said with feeling. It’s not irrelevant to me.

Jesus, you’ve been dry fifteen years anyway, it turns out.

Every day. Every day in readiness.

For what, seeing her?

Not seeing her. Facing her.

I sighed in exasperation.

Even another fifteen years would have been worth the wait.

It’s not really about you, I said. I’m doing it for her.

I know that, he said hotly. But who’s
she
doing it for?

I’m buggered if I know, I said in disgust, but even as I said it I realized what it was. This whole expedition. It was her way of bringing the two of us face to face.

Have you written to her?

Not since I’ve been straight.

Why not?

He shrugged. Shame, I spose. And I didn’t want to get in her way.

She’s still married to you!

So I believe.

I sighed. It’s good that you’re sober.

I’m proud of it, he murmured, with tears in his eyes. You won’t understand. But it’s all I have.

I sat there and hated myself, hated him too for making me the dour bastard I am, forged in shame and disappointment, consoled only by order. Childless. Resigned.

I’m sorry, he said, wiping his face. I wish I could undo it.

But you can’t.

No.

So what the hell was it, Dad?

I lost my way, he said.

Yes, well, we’re across that already. You lost your way and we all got lost with you. But you never said. You’d never tell us. It’s like this cloud, this dark thing had found
you and you wouldn’t say what it was. The job. There was something you did.

No, he said. Is that what you think? You think I’m sitting here waiting to be named in the inquiry?

I’ve wondered, I said without pleasure. I’m sorry.

I saw things, he said miserably. Well, I half saw things. Things I didn’t really understand at the time. Don’t even really understand now. But it was the surprise of it, knowing that
I was on the outside. It was like wheels within wheels and once I sniffed something crook I saw there was no one safe to tell. I was stuck, stranded.

Nobody at all?

For a while I thought I was going nuts, he murmured, his face turned from the murky lamplight. Didn’t trust myself. Thought I was imagining it. But then there was this kid I remember.
Smalltime petty crim. Had his legs broken out on Thunder Beach. You remember that place?

I nodded. I remembered the beach vividly and now I knew who he was talking about.

People said he got into a car with detectives, I said. That same afternoon.

That’s it, said the old man. Two of the demons were down from the city.

What was it about?

Drugs, I spose. Never really understood it. Just that he’d fallen foul of em. And any question, any witness account died on the vine, didn’t matter who it came to. Felt like,
whatever was going on I was the only bloke not in on it. And the city blokes were in on it; it was bigger than that little town, that’s for sure. So who do you talk to? Even if you’ve
got the balls, who can you trust? It ate me alive. Ulcers, everything. I should have quit but I didn’t even have the courage to do that. Would have saved us all a lot of pain. But it’s
all I ever wanted to do, you see, be a cop. And I hung on till there was nothing left of me, nothing left of any of us. Cowardice, it’s a way of life. It’s not natural, you learn
it.

He got up and collected the plates and cutlery. He took a lamp from the table and hung it on the wall over the sink where he tipped in water from the kettle. With his back to me and his head
down in the rising steam he looked like a figure from another time, a woodcutter from a fairytale, a stranger without a face, an idea as much as a man. I wanted to get up and help but I sat there
behind him while the stove clucked and hissed and the dog snored.

I believed him. I couldn’t help myself. What he said gave some shape to the misgivings of my youth, the sense that things were not alright around me. And I felt pity for him, for the trap
he’d found his way into, but none of it changed what we’d lived through, my mother and I. It would take another lifetime to forgive him that. Even then I knew it might not be fair to
blame him for her cancer but none of me was about to release him from it. From his very posture there at the sink, the quiet, cautious way he handled the pieces that he washed, you could see that
he sensed it.

So you’re not curious about the royal commission? I said at last.

They won’t be losing much sleep, he said.

When he had wiped up and put the gear on the spartan shelves we went outside and stood at the edge of the verandah to see the hugeness of the sky and the blizzard of stars upon us. The cold
night air had the cypress tang of woodsmoke.

So how did you get off the booze? I asked him.

Went to a meeting in Kal.

Just the one?

Only the one.

And what? I said with a dry little laugh.

It was looking at them, he murmured. The others. They disgusted me.

What, you didn’t feel sympathy?

Any more than you’re feeling now, you mean? No. It was like looking in the mirror and all their whining faces were mine. I’d had enough self-pity.

So?

I was living behind the pub then. The Golden Barrow. Had a donga out the back, called meself a yardman but basically I was an alcoholic sweeping floors for drinks. Came out here, walked it with
the dog. And hid. Had a humpy way back off the track. Think I was tryin to work up the nerve to kill meself. Lots of shafts out here, no shortage of means. Spent months plotting and planning. Went
mad, I spose. Nobody left alive anymore to tell those tales on me. And then I realized that I’d been six months without a drink. There was none to be had. Woke up one morning, it was winter,
and the sun was on this fallen tree, this dead grey tree, and there was steam rising off the dead wood. And I felt . . . new. Had this feeling that the world was inviting me in . . . like, luring
me towards something. Life, I dunno.

I didn’t expect it to be beautiful here, I said for no reason other than not knowing what to say. The cold burned my face and, whenever I moved, the chill of my jeans branded my legs.

Just the sight of those bottle stacks outside the old blokes’ huts used to make me thirsty. But it fades.

You read a lot, I see.

Yes. It’s an education. But my eyes are going.

We’ll get you some glasses, I said. What time d’you want to leave? Oh, first thing. Fair enough.

He gave me his bed that night and unrolled a battered swag on the floor in front of the stove where he slept with the dog, each of them snoring quietly through cycles of
synchronization, while I lay awake rattled by the smell of his body in the blankets about me and the strangeness of the hut with its animal sounds and sudden silences. I wondered how my mother
would receive him, how she would react to the knowledge that he’d salvaged himself, and that she’d found him too late. And when she was gone, what then, what would I do about him? I lay
there for hours on the narrow iron bunk like a frightened boy and late in the night I covered my face with the pillow which smelled of him and cried at the thought of my mother.

When I woke, the old man was sitting by the stove, shaved and dressed in the lamplight. It was early morning. His swag was rolled and on his knee was a battered cashbox which he held like a man
entrusted.

L
ANG PULLED OVE R BY THE CREEK
. He parked in a wedge of sunlight between trees and switched off the ignition. He listened to the soughing wind and the
static surf of the two-way. The van stank of sweat and puke and Pine-O-Cleen. He hoisted his belt where the handcuffs snagged against the upholstery of the seat. Burrowing in his tunic for an
antacid, he looked out across the sodden September paddocks. His mouth was chalky. His guts felt like hell.

On the seat beside him lay the last court summons of the day. Delivering them was work for a junior. It was another slight, a message to pull his head in, and maybe even a way to get him out of
town for a while. At least it was time alone, a bit of respite. If he spaced it right he’d be back for the change of shift and home for tea. Ten minutes to himself, no harm in that. Trouble
was, there’d been a lot of ten-minute breaks lately and some of those had run to an hour or more. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t used to be this way.

Lang had only been in town a year. Ten months, to be exact. It was a plum posting, something to be excited about. A quiet country town on the coast. Pretty harbour, decent school, miles of white
beaches. Compared to the strife-torn desert communities he could have faced, it was a gift. But within weeks of his arrival he began to feel uneasy. It wasn’t the town. It was the blokes in
the job. Conversations dried up as he came into the crib room. Glances were exchanged. He sensed that there were arrangements and alliances he wasn’t privy to. He wondered if it was his
reputation as a bit of a straight arrow. Within months he’d gone from being uneasy to feeling unsafe.