Gatherers and Hunters Read online

  As the white car drew past him Charlie took a close look. They were moving slowly, obviously seeking a place to park. He realised that if they wanted, they could take his spot, so he called out and indicated with his outstretched key ring. The car paused, right in the middle of the road. Nobody took much notice, the traffic was so packed any manoeuvring was both inevitable and laborious. Charlie hastened towards his own vehicle.

  But as he brought himself awkwardly into the driver’s seat (these modern cars! No design sense at all! Not practicable for older people!) and turned on the ignition, some shadow of recognition suddenly struck him.

  He wound down the window and tried to twist backwards to look more closely at the occupants of the other car. Its driver gave him a wide wave, then signalled for him to move out and off.

  Before he could really gather his thoughts Charlie had done just that. The white sportscar made a neat and very tight jiggle into his old place. Charlie was honked at by another six or seven vehicles piled up behind. He was out and onto the homeward downhill road before he could really consider any alternative.

  But the girl in the white car, sitting beside the driver. She had that same black hair, that glowing round face and – this was it, this was the give away – she had Beatrice’s wide smile, the teeth and the naturally red lips that seemed almost to push out with her expressive enjoyment.

  +++++

  When he reached the Westaway Towers Charlie had slowed down, but instead of turning his car into the driveway he paused, reversed, and slowly took the vehicle southwards towards the village. He drove down onto the esplanade of Bulcock Beach, but then he took a further turn and he was back on the road which would lead him to Buderim again. He could not explain. He realised, with perfect clarity, that this was unreasonable. There was not the slightest possibility that the white tourer with its young occupants might still be up there. It must be a good half hour since he left and they would most probably only have stopped for ten minutes, time to poke around, buy a souvenir bottle of something, and whiz on. They were in beach attire and the latter afternoon, after a hot day like this, would have made a plunge in the surf almost obligatory.

  By the time he reached the parking position and the area neighbour to the ginger sales centre, much of the heavy traffic had departed. A young woman was wiping down one of the outdoor tables, and there were sparrows impudently pecking at crumbs under her feet.

  She looked up and gave him a wave. ‘Did you leave something behind?’ she said, and he realised he had been noticed. Miriam had sometimes called him Peter Ustinov, something he found not at all amusing.

  ‘Ah … I thought of someone else I needed to buy something for.’ There was, of course, not a single soul he could think of to give a jar of ginger to; indeed, he had a deep suspicion that the jar he had already acquired would languish on some back shelf.

  ‘Well, you’re just in time. Did you know what you were looking for?’

  The question hovered in the air, and Charlie paused an instant, before moving towards the glass display case.

  He found himself with another jar, and no momentum. How stupid can you get?

  That girl in the car just possibly may have been Beatrice’s daughter. Her granddaughter.

  They say the likeness is most often something that appears after a missed generation. It would be an interesting speculation.

  It was something other than speculation; it was a sort of seismic disturbance, quite unconnected to logic or explanations or generational genetics.

  It was as if he had caught sight of Beatrice herself, back then.

  The disturbance of the idea settled in with him in the car as he drove slowly back to Caloundra. It was a concept he might almost play with, enjoy for its delicate fantasy and its nostalgia.

  Nostalgia was a deplorable indulgence. He had managed very effectively not to fall into the pit of self-reflection and self-pity. Nostalgia was simply not to be allowed in his vocabulary. Keep busy, move forward, do not settle into sentimental platitudes. Nothing can restore the past. ‘And just as well.’ If he had somehow conjured up Miriam at various moments, that was the natural process of association and reflection. You do not banish these things. But you do not soak in them, you do not sink into the fantasyland of might-have-been. But Beatrice?

  This time he brought the car purposefully to the undercover parking area, he locked the doors and moved to the lobby and the lift well, carrying the two packets and his Gregory’s road map and a couple of brochures that he had collected or that had somehow attached themselves to his hands.

  That laughing face superimposed itself upon the newsreader on television. He turned the instrument off. He was left with his own thoughts.

  +++++

  The next morning he had decided to continue his routine, establish it, as it were, as a system, so he walked along and down to the village, purchased the Australian and then went further until he came to the little café under the high-rise tower. The waiter recognised him and had his coffee by his elbow almost before Charlie had sat down and organised the disposal of his paraphernalia.

  After finishing his bacon and eggs he skimmed through the pages, hovering on the finance section, and then, because there was nothing to do, he folded it over upon the crossword puzzles and drew out his ballpoint. The Quick was so simple he felt ashamed of himself for even bothering, but the Times Crossword was altogether too devious and he resented the time it would take to worry out the patronising clues and their altogether too prissy hints and winks.

  He folded the paper again and replaced his biro. Feeling slightly exasperated, he looked around at the other tables, perhaps to see if anyone else had succumbed to the crossword virus, as Miriam had called it. Two slightly overdressed women were leaning towards each other and chatting. A man-and-wife sprawled away from their breakfast things and seemed to be dozing, their faces up to the sun. Charlie instantly thought ‘Southerners’ with a long-forgotten Queensland proprietorship. It made him smile to himself, but it also made him feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. He picked up his things and made again for the pathway under the old Norfolk Island pines.

  As yesterday, he walked all the way down to the end and back again. Once there had been sheds and fishermen’s storage spaces, now it was another high rise and restaurant. The smell of long dead fish seemed to hang about that area but Charlie knew he was imagining things.

  He strolled along to the little knobby headland and took another seat on a bench, placing his paper and things on the picnic table the bench supported. There was another elderly gent sitting on the other side of the table, fiddling with his pipe and muttering to himself. Charlie looked him over before speculatively casting his eyes to the rip in the channel and the sandy reaches of Bribie. A hang glider was floating over the passage and he followed its movement as if this was the entire reason for his being there.

  ‘Bloody reffo bastards,’ the other man suddenly exclaimed. Charlie had not heard the word ‘reffo’ for, was it, forty years. ‘Queue jumpers. Afghan terrorists. Send the lot of them back!’ he continued.

  Charlie ignored him. The man had swivelled around to face Charlie by this time. He had discovered an ear.

  ‘I tell you, mate, them bastards undercut me, went behind me back and snatched the whole block, cash in full, no worries, paid the lot out and I had already signed the contract. Signed the contract, mind you, and was heading for the bank to line up the finance. Think that mattered a damn? Not on your life! Not on your life, mate, they was in and cash on the dot. By the time I got back the deal was done. The bloody salesman was grinning he was so jack cocky with himself. Bloody Afghanis or Asians or whatever, they skinned me hollow, and they knew it.’

  Charlie did not meet his eye. That made no difference.

  ‘You! What do you think of the refugee business? Do you stand up to them? Do you let them come sneaking in and then taking over? How do you think I feel, having ’em come sneaking in and under my nose? – Under my very nose mind you – u
nder my nose outbidding me with cash on the dot, cash on the dot. I would’ve started up a nice little fish-and-chips on that rundown site, needed a lot but the position, mate, the position. And what do you think they’ve done to the place? Go on, what do you suppose they’ve made of it? A kebab house. A bloody kebab house and you can bet your days it will be stinking and un­hygienic. I wouldn’t bet on it passing any inspection but you know they bribe the health officers, they’ve got the departments in the palm of their hands, they come in here saying they’ve got nothing but I tell you, before you can say Jack Robinson, there they are outbidding you and marching in bold as brass. Bold as brass!’ He spat, vehemently.

  ‘Where did you say this place is?’ Charlie asked, and he knew instantly that he had made a terrible mistake. There would be no stopping, now.

  The man thumped the table and stared Charlie in the face. ‘Bloody Alexander Headland, you’d have to be mad to start up a bloody kebab place there, they’ll be lucky to last a month. Kebabs! Only a fish-and-chips’d have a ghost of a chance and then only if we got some decent weekends after the holiday season. But I had a plan to develop the site, I’m no chicken behind the ears, I’m not wet there. Six blocks I woulda squeezed onto that site before the regulations made it uneconomical, the fish-and-chips was only a front you know what I mean. But the site is worth it. Was worth it.

  ‘And these people who bought it …?’

  ‘Who stole it, that’s what it was, mate; theft. Bloody fuckin’ Afghani illegals, terrorists …’

  ‘Hold on a bit. What makes you think they might be ­terrorists, Afghan or whatever?’

  ‘Don’t ya read the papers?’ He thrust out a hand and rumpled the Australian on the wooden bench. ‘Don’tcha watch TV? Didn’tcha listen to the talkback radio before the last election? Or are you one of their supporters? Sympathisers? Are you one of the bloody wimps that is calling for more immigration, more migrants, more Afghan terrorists to come and take over the country? You know that they are planning to build mosques right here, in Caloundra? You know that? You heard what they’re planning to do with Christians? That’s right. It’s in their book, they promise to destroy the infidel – that’s us, matey – and they have a Holy Jihad against America and if you haven’t heard it yet, matey, as far as they’re concerned America and Australia might as well be identical. Bloody oath!’

  Charlie had picked up his papers and the sun hat. He began moving off, but the older man came round and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I tell you this, mate. It’s people like you who’ll let them all walk over us, who’ll let anyone get in and do what they like. God it makes me blood boil. No guts, no backbone, I know your sort. You know what I call your sort: bloody Chinese Takeaways. That’s what you lot are. I can see it in your face, mate, don’t try to fool me, bloody teachers and intellectuals, fuckin’ left-wing bastards, commo sympathisers. Off ya go, crawl off, I’ve got your measure. Ya live in one of them tower things, I know it, up from Melbourne is it? Come to lord it over us locals? Well, you can go right home to where you come from. We don’t need you here.’

  He called out to Charlie’s retreating figure, ‘Bloody felafel eaters, fuckin’ kebab cunts!’

  Why hadn’t Charlie stood up to him? Why not give him back a bit of his own medicine? The thought was only momentarily appealing. He knew perfectly well there was no point in taking up the cudgels with every passing redneck in Queensland.

  Redneck.

  The word was out and another realisation had seeped into his consciousness. Had he really forgotten why he had left this state, all those many years before?

  It was like stepping back through a mirror. Even the sort of clothing that old idiot had been wearing, it could have come from Henzells Store on Bulcock Street in 1951: flannelette check shirt, the rayon-blend short trousers almost to the knee, the thick, safe belt. Even the hat, no modish Akubra but a sweat-stained brown Trilby, with its indented crown. Pathetic really.

  The sting, though, caught in his craw. The old anger.

  And to walk away from it. God! That old bigot must be crowing to himself, he must be energised for the whole day with his sense of triumph and self-conviction. Charlie might at least have thrown in a spanner or two to unbalance the old idiot’s blind arrogance and spitefulness.

  He knew there was nothing he could have said. Not to that one. To anyone? Was this just Queensland? What had he come back to?

  +++++

  Righteous indignation is all very well but it is a solo thing. Me against you. Us against them. Miriam would have shared every nuance of Charlie’s fury, but she no doubt would have come out with some quick repartee. She would have stared the old codger down and laughed loudly at him as he shambled off, tail between his legs, to complain of women and foreigners. Though sometimes Miriam walked away from a confrontation – there was that time with a policeman when she seemed positively abject, Charlie would have bristled! – but, as she later explained, there is no point in wasting your energy when the other party is set in concrete. Still, it rankled. It was the old ‘anything for a quiet life’ routine.

  It was the fly in the balm of his new-found paradise.

  And it was true: despite all the little niggles and complaints, he had begun to feel this move, so impulsive, had begun to reveal its own logic. He had been prepared to think of this as being as close to paradise as was gettable. Despite the heat and the insects. Though he remembered real plagues of insects back in the early visits. Sandflies over on Bribie Island, mozzies – the black saltwater mozzies – at dusk, and blowflies in the kitchen. Those big stinging flies out on the sand beaches. Apart from a few mozzies, they had all more or less disappeared. He would not think about how this was achieved, though aerial spraying had begun over the mangrove swamps forty years back.

  Let the old codger go, he probably would not run into him again. Or, if he did, he would know to avoid him.

  But the idea of crossing the road, in this small village where within weeks he would recognise the regulars, was unpalatable. Perhaps the old man was simply a weekend visitor.

  Not likely.

  Those young people were where the future lay. It was something of a relief to cast his mind back to the sporty white car and the happy group inside it. They must be looking forward with energy and ebullience, they were the new breath of fresh air in this state. The sour old codger would find his mouth stuffed with cotton wool in their presence, he would slink off and vent his spleen amongst others of his ilk in some tiled public bar or geriatric bowling club.

  Charlie had not aged like that. Indeed, if that was old age, he had never succumbed to such defensive plaints and ­prejudices.

  Beatrice looked more than fifteen. Eighteen at the least. Though he remembered how she seemed to grow up suddenly as soon as she and Alan latched on together, at the end of those holidays. She had certainly been, like Charlie, one of the gang, one of the holiday kids at the beginning. That long drive home: Beatrice had sat in the back seat with Alan and there had been that element of maturity about her. They had talked quietly about cinema and compared performances, whereas driving up she had been like the others and only called for the hit songs of the latest movies. The Howard Keel and Cathryn Grayson numbers had been tortured to death. Going home, it had been deep talk about James Mason and Laurence Olivier, Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh. Why was it that false memories of Beatrice snuggling up with him in the back seat of his father’s car on that return to Brisbane had initially superimposed themselves on his memory?

  But the thought of Beatrice now as an eighteen year old had a warm, fuzzy feel about it, as he would have said with a smirk to Miriam.

  Miriam had never even heard of Beatrice.

  +++++

  It was a week and a half later that he saw her again.

  He was just clambering into his car at the back of the little laneway behind the old picture theatre. There was an arcade of shops, hoping for the rush of custom that would be building up in the forthcoming holiday
season. He had driven the car down this far in order to carry the groceries and fruit he had decided to stock up on. He was about to put the key into the ignition when he looked up and there, right before his very eyes, she was striding, hand in hand with the sporty young man. They were laughing together and she tossed her black hair. It was exactly the same mannerism Beatrice had developed once she had her hair cut shorter in those weeks of holidays, back in 1951.

  Charlie gave a start, took off his glasses and rubbed them, and then quickly got out of the car, forgetting to lock it with its conspicuous brown bundles of groceries.

  By the time he had followed them round the corner they were nowhere in sight. He imagined they might have gone into the picture theatre, but he abandoned the idea of following them in. It was a coincidence. He was not tracking her.

  But he did look into the real estate agency and the fruit store and a couple of other places, just in case.

  He was perhaps a quarter of an hour at most. When he returned to the car his goods were safe, though he suddenly worried about the tub of ice-cream, a rather idiotic choice but it was mango flavour and ancient spices tingled his memory, so he gave in. Likely as not it was half melted. Well, he could throw it out.

  She was very much the height he remembered her, and that toss of the head, amazing how suddenly it all returned! That laughing smile, of course, nobody else could have the same expression: the mouth is one of the most idiosyncratic parts of the body.

  It would be fascinating to discover her name. There must be some sort of consanguinity, though direct ancestry had to be a real possibility. The real Beatrice, the one he knew, was almost certainly still alive. She may even be living in some sort of proximity? Perhaps this girl was staying with her, in her retirement cottage, in her home unit?

  There is no harm in asking a simple question.

  He unpacked his goodies and laboriously trudged with them – all in one go, why bother making two journeys of it, that little set of stairs with their iron rail leading up to the foyer level had already announced themselves as a bit of a hurdle. Then with one desperate finger he managed to press the up button on the lift without losing anything. Getting off at his floor, he had to place them all down before searching for the right key. He would make two journeys this time, in bringing them all in to the kitchen.