‘Quick,’ Stan said.
‘What’s the line of the wall?’
‘North-south,’ David said. He pointed. ‘In line with that post.’
‘Take it slow and tip ’em out down the line,’ I said to the driver. ‘You don’t want any piles. Do that?’
‘At the limit of the technology,’ the man said. We got out of the way and he went into action.
‘The right stone,’ I said. ‘Finding it’s the problem. Much easier if they’re spread out.’
‘What about the footing?’ said Stan.
‘How high’s the wall supposed to be?’
‘Not high,’ said David. ‘Metre and half.’
‘High enough,’ I said. ‘Needs a trench about half a metre deep, metre and a quarter wide. Then you taper the wall to about fifty centimetres at the top. Put a bit of cement in the bottom layers. Purists don’t like that.’
‘Purists be buggered,’ Stan said. ‘Get the machinery, lad.’
I got gloves out of the Land Rover, put on boots. David ripped the footing in half an hour. We shovelled out the earth, hard work, and then we got the strings up. I showed Stan how to arrange the bottom rocks, then David and I carried and Stan laid. It was punishing work, moving heavy objects not created with human hands in mind.
‘Wanted to give the women a surprise,’ Stan said. ‘Gone to Melbourne. To shop. What kind of bloody activity is that?’
‘I could learn to shop,’ I said. ‘Can’t be that hard.’
I was glad to be there, glad that there was somewhere I could be, glad to be doing something that prevented me from thinking about Ned. I desperately didn’t want to think about Ned.
We stopped when the light was almost gone, cold biting the face.
‘I think I see a drink in your future,’ Stan said, patting my shoulder. ‘Thought metal was the area of expertise. Now you turn out to know a bit about stone.’
We sat in Stan’s office next to the low whitewashed brick house he had built in the lee of the hill. A fire was burning in a Ned Kelly drum stove. David drank his beer and went off to feed the chooks. Stan took two more bottles of Boag out of the small fridge in the corner and opened them.
‘Something on your mind,’ he said.
I drank some beer out of the glass mug and looked at a botanical print on the wall. ‘Heard a story about Ned today,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He was lighting his pipe with a big kitchen match.
I told him what Marcia had said.
Stan blew out smoke, drank beer, put the mug and pipe down. He didn’t show any sign of shock.
‘Ned. Drugs. Sex with teenage girls.’ He looked at me over the big hairy knuckles of his clasped hands. ‘Go to my grave not believing it.’
‘Who’d invent something like that?’ I said.
‘You believe it?’
‘Rather not think about it. Wouldn’t have had to think about if I hadn’t gone poking about.’
‘What poking about?’
I told him about Ned’s visit to Kinross Hall, how my questioning of Marcia Carrier had led to her finding of Daryl Hopman’s report.
‘Just her word for it, then,’ Stan said. ‘Could be trying to shift the blame from the doctor to Ned.’
‘Then why mention the doctor at all?’
We sat in silence, Stan generating smoke. For a moment I had been going to tell him about the other things that haunted me: the skeleton in the mine shaft, Melanie Pavitt naked in Colson’s Road, Ned’s visit to Ian Barbie in Footscray. But Daryl Hopman’s report offered an explanation for all of them that was too chilling to speak about.
‘Better get moving,’ I said, getting up. ‘Boy’s at home without food.’
‘Boys find food,’ Stan said. He walked to the vehicle with me. When I’d started it, he said: ‘Learned a lot about men in the war. Scoundrels and saints, met ’em both. Don’t believe this about Ned, so it’s not going to change anything.’
We looked at each other, united in our desire to hold on to the Ned we knew.
‘Another thing, Mac,’ said Stan.
I could barely see his face.
‘Ned was like a brother to your father. Something like this, he would have known. See you tomorrow.’
As I drove away, I thought perhaps my father did know. Perhaps that was what he wanted to tell me on the night he shot himself.
We’d put in five hours in the grounds of Harkness Park- me, Stan Harrop, Lew and Flannery-before Francis Keany’s Discovery murmured down the driveway. What we were trying to do was uncover paths, using a large-scale plan Stan and I had drawn from exploration and aerial photographs and the old photographs I’d found.
‘They’re bloody there,’ Stan said. ‘Get the paths, we’ve got the garden.’
It was hard going: the place was one big muddy thicket. The elms in particular had embarked on world conquest, sending out armies of suckers, densely colonising large areas. Some of the suckers were mature trees, now spawning empires of their own.
‘Dutch elm disease might be the answer,’ Stan said. ‘Nature’s way of saying fuck off.’
Stan had assembled us at 8.30. We were armed with two chainsaws and a new thing, a brushcutter with a circular chainsaw blade. Flannery liked the idea very much.
‘Tremble, jungle,’ he said.
I said, ‘The point is, Flannery, we apply the technology with some purpose in mind. We don’t apply it simply because we like laying waste to large areas of nature and seeing big things fall over.’
‘Wimp,’ said Flannery.
Stan went for a long walk through the muddy paddocks around the house. We were on smoko, sitting on Flannery’s ute, when he came back. ‘Major thing,’ he said, hitching his buttocks onto the tray, ‘major thing is, gardens like this, they’re designed for vistas. Looking
‘So you got it worked out,’ Flannery said. He was eating a pie. A viscous fluid the colour of liquid fertiliser was leaking down his unshaven chin. This and the Geelong beanie pulled down to a centimetre above his eyebrows gave him a particularly fetching appearance.
‘More or less,’ Stan said. At that moment, Francis Keany’s vehicle came into view.
Francis got out, the picture of an English country gentleman. He nodded to the peasants and said to Stan: ‘Good morning, Stan. So what do we now know? Enough research to write an entry in the
Francis had clearly been working on his opening lines during the drive from Melbourne.
Stan was patting pockets for his pipe. ‘Not much,’ he said, sadly.
Francis’s face went tight. He pursed his full lips, lifted his chin and slowly turned his face away from us until he was in full profile. This was a mistake. Stan had a clipping of a magazine article in which Francis’s profile was described as that of a Roman senator on a coin.
‘What Roman senator do you think that magazine twat had in mind?’ Stan said in a musing tone. ‘Pompus? Was there a Priapus? What about Fartus?’
Francis came back into full face. He blinked several times, willing himself to remain composed. ‘In a few minutes,’ he said, voice edging on the tremulous, ‘Mr and Mrs Karsh are going to drive. Through that gate. I’d like to have something to tell them. If that’s at all possible.’ Pause. ‘Stan.’
Stan found the battered and blackened object resembling a piece of root rescued from a bonfire. He applied a yellow plastic lighter with an awesome flame. Smoke gathered around him until he looked like a smouldering scarecrow. Francis took two paces backwards to get away and was starting to speak when a black Mercedes
