Wilberforce shooting. His condition was unchanged; the police still wanted to interview the driver of a Falcon seen in St Marks Road some time before the shooting. I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror as I climbed back into the Cruiser. My hair was wild and I had a heavy growth of dark beard sprinkled with grey. I sneezed, swore and wiped my nose savagely. My eyes were red and wet-looking.
‘You’re getting too old for this,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ A woman crossing the road looked at me oddly and I realised that I had spoken aloud.
I sneezed and grinned at her, no doubt a horrible sight. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Talking to myself.’
She gave me a tentative smile and very deliberately moved a little further away as she passed. I didn’t blame her. I was parked outside the Post Office at nine o’clock on the dot. It was an old building set on a rise above the highway with the Imperial Hotel and the Bells Road turn-off opposite. There was a general store a little further along and an ‘old wares’ shop. The Post Office opened at five past nine, but business was slow. A woman from the antique shop took in a few parcels; a couple of elderly people made heavy weather of the climb but emerged with envelopes and contented expressions. I sat behind my paper, sneezing and feeling conspicuous. Balmain had won an interstate night game; Wimbledon was shaping like an all-European final, again; rail fares were up, air fares were down.
Patrick Lamberte drove up and parked behind me. I used the last of my pocket pack of tissues as he walked into the Post Office. He was an impressive figure-185 centimetres or so and trim. He’d changed his sweater, otherwise he looked pretty much as he had when I’d first seen him except that he was wearing a satisfied, just- had-a-great-fuck look. For a man supposedly facing bankruptcy, he seemed remarkably chipper. When he came out of the Post Office he was carrying a couple of letters and a parcel, about the size of a paperback book, wrapped in brown paper. He tossed it up once and caught it deftly before he swung himself inside the Land Rover. I wiped my running nose on the sleeve of my parka and hated him. He jumped in and gunned the Land Rover up the hill towards Mt York Road. I followed sedately, wishing that I’d bought more tissues, and cold tablets and Strepsils and rum. I had learned absolutely nothing from Lamberte’s manner. My tentative judgement was that his air of self-satisfaction was probably so strong and so constant that it would always be hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling. He drove fast, bullying a couple of slower cars and changing into the right-turn lane at precisely the moment calculated to cause most consternation behind him. I followed until I was sure that he was headed towards Salisbury Road without any stops along the way and then turned off to take my alternative route into the valley.
The head cold was making my ears ring and my throat felt like velcro. I was coughing and sniffling when I reached the bottom of the stack of rocks that ascended to my vantage point.
‘Twenty-four-hour cold, Cliff,’ I said. ‘Treatment, exercise, vitamin C and alcohol.’
I was talking to myself again and beginning to feel light-headed. I grabbed the glasses and the whisky and began to climb the rocks. Sweat broke out on me almost at once; it ran into my eyes and I had to stop to wipe them. I took off the parka and tied its sleeves around my waist. I suppressed a giant sneeze and went on with the climb. My thin city socks weren’t right for the boots and I could feel blisters building on each heel. I made it to the ledge and rewarded myself with a swig on the Johnny Walker. It seemed to clear my head. I moved forward, lifted the glasses and peered at the cabin. The Land Rover was sitting in its spot by the woodpile. Smoke was drifting lazily from the chimney. They’re probably having coffee, I thought, and getting ready for a rematch, no holds barred. I lowered the glasses. At that instant there was a roar like a low-flying jet and the back of the cabin burst into flames. I dropped the binoculars, jumped across a metre of open space to a big rock, scrambled over that and took off towards flatter ground that would take me to the house. I ran, jumped and scrambled, pushing through low bushes and slipping and sliding on damp grass. A window cracked and the flames roared from it, withdrew, then shot out more fiercely than before. I kicked at the back door until it splintered but the flames flared around the broken panels and drove me back. There was a hose running from the water tank. I turned it on and played it around the door but it had no effect. I ran around the side of the house, looking for another way in or out, but the windows were all set high in the timber walls which were already smoking.
I untied the parka, soaked it and held it over my head as I rushed along the front deck where the heat was less fierce. I kicked in a window and went through it into a big room that was filled with acrid, lung-searing smoke. I saw movement over towards a half-open door and lunged forward. The woman was in the full regalia-black neck ribbon, bra, suspender belt and stockings and all of it, like her cloud of blonde hair, was on fire. I grabbed her, beat at the flames with the wet parka, but she pushed me away.
‘Patrick!’ she screamed. She moved towards the door which was gushing smoke and fire.
‘Don’t.’ My chest filled with smoke as I yelled and I almost collapsed. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the door. She fought me. She was frantic and incredibly strong. Her mouth was open and she was gulping down smoke as she sobbed and screamed. The roof beams were on fire above our heads, steaming and spitting out hot liquid, and the seagrass matting was burning under our feet. I clubbed her with a roundhouse swing and she went limp. I extinguished the last of the burning hair and dragged her towards the window and the deck. She was big and a dead weight. Things were exploding into flames around me. I took a blow across the neck and something seared my right shoulder.
The deck was burning. Its paint was blistering into bubbles and spurting little yellow and red flames. I dragged her through the fire and smoke and staggered blindly down the steps onto firm ground. The heat coming from the house was like a huge, white hot brick wall, threatening to fall on me. I couldn’t see or breathe. I coughed and felt that I had expelled my lungs. Somehow I got to the running hose and sprayed water over the woman and myself. The shirt was burning on my back and I screamed as I felt the flesh being grilled. The water cleared my vision. The hose came away from the tap and I rolled under the gushing water, wallowing in the mud.
The woman lay on her back. She was naked now with bits of smouldering fabric sticking to her. Her eyes were closed. My hands were raw and felt useless as if I was wearing giant, flapping rubber gloves. The burnt skin on my fingers was splitting. I tried to move her arms, to expand her chest. My strength was going and I could scarcely move my limbs, let alone hers. I willed myself to do it-lift and open, lift and open. I thought about giving her the kiss of life but her mouth was wide open, locked in a rictus of agony.
I flapped her arms and felt the burnt skin on my back peel and tear. She moaned and jerked, then went still.
I could hear the flames roaring in the trees around the front of the house. I looked up; a light wind was fanning the blaze and the fire leapt from the house and caught on the canopy of the Land Rover. The interior of the vehicle filled with a bright red glow. I tugged at the woman and slid her through the mud, trying to get some shelter from the water tank. The Land Rover went up like an incendiary mine. Bits of metal clanged against the water tank and flew past me into the bush. The heat blast drove the air from my lungs, deafened and blinded me. I felt my hands slide from the woman’s arm, the ground dissolved under me and I disappeared into the middle of a blazing sun.
10
I drifted around timelessly in a country full of pain but devoid of responsibility. Only sensations registered- warmth and cold, dryness and damp, sound and quiet, hard and soft. I was acutely aware of my body, of its shape and size, its texture, and nothing else actually mattered. There were visions-faces, voices and vague feelings of happiness or distress- but they were nothing to do with me, not really. I was out of it all, floating. Sometimes it seemed that I might be going to land and the pain in every part of my body would rise to an unbearable level and I would feel outraged that this could be happening. Not to me, not to the floating man. Then I would go aloft again, up into the stratosphere where everything was clean and cool and soft.
‘Cliff, Cliff, darling. Can you hear me?’
It was Cyn’s voice; no, Ailsa’s; no, Ann’s. No. It was Helen Broadway, and I hated her because she was pulling me in like a hooked fish. I wanted to stay out there in the cool cottonwool country, where nothing hurt and
