Now someone, on this boat, where he was a guest, complicit in a way in this barbarous act, was shooting at a pelican. There it was for a third time-another crack, another missile into the water. It was originating from somewhere above him. He looked up. There was a figure holding a rifle. He called out, ‘Hey!’
The figure turned in surprise. ‘Hey yourself. Didn’t know anyone was up and about. Come up and have a whack. I hear you’re pretty good at this.’
Jack squinted into the sun, panting from his dash down the deck, confused by his panic for the bird. The voice was unmistakeably that of his host, but what was that he was holding? As Jack scaled the gleaming ladder he could see it wasn’t a rifle the man was swinging, but a stick of some kind.
‘This is the new Taylor Made. Big bastard, isn’t it? Had it flown in from the States, just arrived yesterday. Pretty good weapon.’
Jack peered at the golf club held out to him, still slightly out of breath, unsure how to respond.
‘Here, have a crack. You need to warm up for later. We’ll have the longest drive competition after breakfast, so might as well get a head start on the others. Not that I think the rest of them amount to much. But you’re pretty hot I gather. Single-figure handicap, hey? Anyway, we’ll see. Have a couple of swings.’
Again the club was pushed at him. Jack took it, looking around. There was a rack of golf clubs like a billiard cue rack standing nearby and a huge plastic tub of new golf balls, individually boxed, into which Mac was dipping his sizeable mitt. ‘Were you… were you…’ Jack began hesitantly. ‘Were you aiming at the pelican?’
Mac started. ‘Good God no. That’d be worse than killing an albatross at sea and they reckon that’s the worst luck around.
Who was that bloke?’
‘Ah, the Ancient Mariner I think.’
‘Never read it, but heard about it. I don’t read stuff like that. No time. I don’t read anything, to tell the truth, unless it can be put on one page. Winston Churchill was like that-put it on one page or forget it.’
‘But I saw your magnificent library on the lower deck.’ Mac chuckled. ‘People like books, I have books. People like pictures, I have the best. But you needn’t worry about guns; there’s no shooting anything on this boat, all fish are tagged and released, all foods organic, all juices fresh-especially mine.’ The last comment was delivered with a cross between a wink and a leer that should have been repulsive but, for some, was strangely endearing. ‘The only time any of my shots goes near anything is purely accidental, but I hit them a bloody long way and on a river that’s what counts. No greens, no fairways to hit, just whack it as far as you can. Have a go.’ Jack took the proffered club and swung it easily in the smooth arc of a gifted player. ‘Nice swing. I see you’ll be a problem. Still, there’s no run out here for your top spin, it’s all carry. Mac’s the reigning champion and not about to give up the belt without a fight, so let’s see your form.’
Jack removed the ball from the box, placed it on the artificial grass pad with a built-in plastic tee and, in one easy motion, swept the missile fifty yards past where the last explosions had landed and fifty yards to the right of the pelican. Mac drew his breath in through his nostrils.
‘Hmm. That’ll do you. No more practice. You don’t want to tire yourself out. Come and have breakfast.’
He led Jack by the elbow in a direction the younger man’s nose was already following. ‘Jack, this is Ernest, the best omelette-maker in the world. Aren’t you, Ernest? Of course you are. He gets them almost crisp on the outside but still fluffy and moist inside. Unbelievable. I sound like a damn ad or something, but you’ve got to have one, Jack. What are you going to make for Mr Beaumont, hey Ernest? Spanish, mushroom-what’s your poison, Jack?’
When they were finally seated after a seemingly endless inquisition on number of eggs, whether crisp bacon should be served on the side, whether guava juice should be added to the fresh orange, whether sourdough toast was better than jam and black bread, Mac gazed appreciatively at Jack’s full plate.
‘It’s great to see someone enjoy their tucker. Know what I mean? Enjoy life, really. People who don’t eat don’t really enjoy anything much I reckon. But you seem to have a bit of fun.’
Jack looked up quickly to see whether this was an oblique reference to his indiscretion of the previous evening, but Mac was concentrating with great intensity on the slicing of a kangaroo sausage, ‘killed on the old place’. He felt the need to respond to his host’s enthusiasm for breakfast, sport, life, toast, kangaroos, all that lived and breathed and was cooked.
‘Well, I’ve always loved sport and activity and a good feed afterwards, although I don’t often eat a breakfast like this.’
‘Nor do I. You wouldn’t believe the stuff Bonny gets into me. Fruits you’ve never heard of all blended up with wheat germ and soya beans and curdled goat’s milk or whatever. It feels like she pours it down me with a spout. No enemas needed in this household, I can tell you.’
Jack laughed uncertainly. ‘Yes, we go the healthy organic route most of the time.’ He paused for another mouthful of his four-egg omelette with three types of mushrooms and chorizo sausage on the side. ‘Incidentally, you mentioned I had a low golf handicap, how do you know that?’
Mac looked up with a half-smile. ‘I like to know about my guests, know what they like, what to avoid. Just common courtesy, hey?’
There was silence and serious eating. Finally, Mac pushed away his plate and it was instantly whisked from the table. ‘So, you’ve had a great run in property, I hear?’
‘Yes, the last few years have been remarkable. We’ve sold just about everything off the plan, which is unheard of.’
Mac poured coffee from the plunger. ‘Do you have a formula? The one-sheet-of-paper idea?’
‘Pretty much. Always a harbour view or waterfront, always big rooms, huge bathroom somewhere, usually a fireplace, a home cinema, a concierge in the building, forget the gym and the swimming pool since no one ever uses them, always an enormous price. And we never bargain. It seems to work.’
Mac laughed. ‘They made you chairman of the Property Council and you were on the shortlist for Businessman of the Year. It seems to work all right. And you love it, do you? It still gets the adrenalin running? You’ve got to have that, haven’t you?’
Jack eased back and looked out across the rail to the river of his youth. He played with his sugar spoon, tapped it on the cup, placed it carefully in the saucer. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, it has lost an edge for me lately.’ He paused. He barely knew this man and he hadn’t spoken of his feelings to anyone, not even Louise. But no one else had asked, and Mac was leaning forward, genuinely interested in him and his life, and he was sated with the warmth of coddled cholesterol and New Guinea Highlands coffee and the memory of… what was her name? He would have to find out discreetly before she came up for breakfast. Mac said nothing. He knew the art of a good listener.
‘I like what I do and I guess I’m good at it, judging by the results. I suppose this sounds incredibly arrogant, but it’s just become too easy. We design those things, I dream up some absurd price, jack it up another twenty per cent and they generally snap them up before they’re even built. In a way, I enjoyed it more when we had to struggle.’
‘Who’s we? You have partners?’ Mac’s voice was quiet now.
The staff had slid away, they needed no signal.
‘No, I’m a lone wolf, I guess. Louise, my wife, used to be my partner. She’s still my partner, but not in the business. We have two kids so that’s pretty full time.’
‘You like it that way?’ Jack looked up. ‘Being your own boss?’ Mac poured more coffee into both cups. The pelican flew quietly away as the boat eased up on the anchor chain. The tide was turning and the Pacific Ocean was running in to meet the fresh waters of the Nepean and the Colo and the Hawkesbury, running down from the Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands. With the salt water came the schools of red bream and taylor, flathead, sometimes black fish, and the predators that followed-the Port Jackson sharks, the hammerheads, the ferocious bull sharks. The sharks were all saltwater creatures and yet they’d been found more than thirty miles upstream, way into fresh water, and once, when Jack was only about eighteen, a waterskier had been taken at Sackville, which was thought to be impossible. He had hoped all the waterskiers would be frightened off this river. He’d hated their destruction of the tranquillity even when he was a boy.
He chewed at the question. Did he like it that way? Being his own boss, working with the same circle, half- circle, of colleagues and contractors, lunching regularly with the group, using the same ideas he’d lived on for twenty years, dining out on the same stories he’d told for too long. He hated it when Louise said, ‘I think we might have heard that one, Jack’, but it was always true.
