happens, I woke with questions in my head. This time they were what happened to Oscar Bach’s business and who wound up his affairs? Probably some solicitor in Newcastle. I reproached myself-I could have been doing something useful instead of sleeping. I took my notebook and the Gregory’s for Newcastle and environs and set out for Dudley.
I became aware of the car following me soon after making the turn off from the highway to Kahiba. Bad move, to leave the main road when you’re the subject of possible hostile attention, but there it was. The tail was a dark, anonymous-looking sedan-a bad sign. Amateurs follow people and commit crimes in red Alfas, people who know what they’re about, don’t. I drove along the narrow road with the forest on either side, speeding up just a bit to make sure I was the subject. I was. The dark car stayed with me. I slowed down and two other cars pulled out and passed me and the tail. Now it was just us and I wasn’t in the mood. I gunned the motor and decided to make a race of it through this section to Whitebridge where it looked as if there might be more people around.
The Falcon was in good order and speedy. I was pulling away from what I decided was a Toyota when I saw the level crossing ahead. My reaction was purely instinctive. I hit the brakes and went into the sort of skidding slide that slows down time. When I was young there were a lot of these crossings around Sydney and people got killed at them regularly. I could remember front-page newspaper pictures of the tangled wrecks and blood-daubed victims. These pictures-were going through my head as I fought the skid, strained my ears for the sound of a train and kept my eyes on the rear vision mirror.
I stopped the skid and the car just before the crossing and needed a fraction of a second to be sure that the line was clear. I didn’t get it. The Toyota slewed past me in a controlled glide and stopped with its front bumper inches away from mine. Another movement from either vehicle and the road would be littered with broken glass and plastic. For no good reason, something Helen Broadway had once said came into my head, ‘Bourgeois love of property affects all classes.’ I swore and rammed the gear shift into first, ready to plough forward, when I felt and heard the window by my right ear shatter. Glass showered in on me as I threw myself across to the other side of the bench seat. The Falcon stalled and so did I.
I could feel the blood on my face, just like those victims of thirty years before. I scrabbled for the Colt I kept in a clip under the dashboard before I remembered that I didn’t have it there anymore. It was in the cupboard under the stairs in Glebe. New car, the quiet life. My Smith amp; Wesson was in the glove box. I heaved myself back at the driver’s side door, determined to do something.
‘Fuck you,’ a voice said. ‘I’ve got your fuckin’ blood all over me.’
He was big, carrying what looked like a short crowbar and leaning against the door. I glared at him-big, broad face, drooping moustache, weight-lifter’s neck, white T shirt-all flecked with blood.
‘Fuck you, too,’ I said. ‘Open the door and I’ll bend that crowbar across your head.’
He was calm. He was good. He was very good. He said, ‘The message is, watch yourself, smartarse.’ He reached through the broken window and tapped me delicately on the right temple with the crowbar. The warm, bright afternoon turned to midnight.
7
I must have been out for a minute only or even less. I was aware of a face at the broken window and a voice not directed at me.
‘He’s alive.’
‘I’m all right,’ I said.
‘He says he’s all right.’
Another voice said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here, then.’
Young voices. Young men. Long hair, jeans and sneakers. I turned my head and saw them jump back into a Holden Commodore with several hundredweight of chrome trim. The engine roared and the Commodore took off in the direction of Whitebridge. Its rear end bucked as it jolted across the tracks. Not hard to work out-stolen car; kids with just enough conscience to take a look. I still had the tracks to cross and I wondered if I could do it.
The Falcon had stalled, so the first move wasn’t too hard. Turn the key off and on again. I did that and the motor caught first time. Regular servicing, nothing like it. Then I tried getting into first gear. That worked all right so I was encouraged to attempt to straighten the wheels and drive across the railway line. No problems, although the jolting was something I could have done without. I was beginning to admire the guy with the crowbar. An artist. I was coming out of the fogjast with just a headache and a ringing in my ears to remember him by.
I drove super-cautiously to Whitebridge, always ready for the road to suddenly turn into a big dipper or end in the middle of a football ground. I’d been concussed enough times to know the tricks the brain can play. But nothing like that happened. The traffic both ways was light, the way it gets in the country when you leave the main road, and I blessed the fact. One oncoming headlight, unnecessary anyway in the evening glow and on high beam, hit me between the eyes like a stungun.
I made it to Whitebridge and turned onto Dudley Road running along the crest of the headland. There was sparkling, dark blue water in the distance on both sides and I felt as if I was driving along a highway that would take me all the way out to sea, maybe to Lord Howe Island. I stopped under a light, realising that the tap on the temple had affected me more than I’d thought. I consulted the Gregory’s and reckoned I could set a course for Bombala Road. Why not? It wasn’t nearly as far as Lord Howe Island.
I drove past the turn-off to Redhead, promising myself a look at the beach where thirty years before I’d ridden a surfboard and tried to convince a local girl to come and have a holiday in Sydney with me. Dudley has two pubs which seems at least one too many for such a small place. Both pubs had cars pulled up outside them and small groups of drinkers sucking it down quietly along with the fresh sea air. Ocean Street cut the headland in two. I tried to remember the number of Oscar Bach’s cottage and couldn’t. Well, that’s what note-taking is for. Dudley, this part of it at least, had closed down for the night. Men in singlets were watering lawns and the few elderly people sitting out on their front porches looked about ready to go in and switch on the TV. Almost every house sprouted a high mast and a set of complex antennae.
I turned into Bombala Street and saw the land fall away and the ocean spread itself out in front of me. Lights blinked on land in the far distance but I was too disoriented to know where those lights were shinin’. I was beginning to hear music in my head and I felt surprise when the car began to go faster of its own accord. I felt like saying ‘Stop’ but I had enough sense left to touch the brake. I stop-started down the steep street towards thick bush with the water beyond. A casual observer might have wanted to see my learner’s permit; a cop would have wanted me to blow in a bag.
I stopped outside the last house in the street on the left side by jamming the car’s wheels into the kerb. I got out and heard the surf crashing not too far away. The air smelled of eucalyptus and salt and cicadas started singing as soon as I slammed the car door. I walked across a wide nature strip towards a letter box that had the number 7 written on it in luminous paint. My kind of house number. I must have made it down the steps to the wide deck and all the way to the front door, but it wasn’t something I was aware of at the time.
I recognised Horrie Jacobs’ voice, although it was coming from far away. Then his diminuitive shape was close by and I heard a female make a noise between a gasp and a groan. Then I was sitting down somewhere quiet and warm and my head was being sponged. The female was doing the work and her hands were incredibly gentle. For some reason I preferred to keep my eyes closed.
‘Mrs Jacobs?’ I said.
‘May. Hold steady. There’s a bit of glass here wants getting out.’
I didn’t feel a thing. ‘You’re good at this.’
‘Horrie was a miner. Do you think he didn’t come home with cuts and bruises under all that coal dust? You bet he did. And who fixed him up? Me, that’s who.’
Horrie’s voice was coming from the same hemisphere as everyone else now. ‘You’re right, Cliff. She is good at it.’
‘You’ve got to be. How many times did Ralph come in after games with bits of skin hanging off him? And was Suzie all that much better?’
‘Our son and second daughter,’ Horrie said. ‘A tomboy that Suzie.’
I nodded and regretted it. ‘Did I bleed on anything?’
