Gatherers and Hunters (12 page)

Later, Bernard looked up the
World Book Encyclopaedia
that had not been touched since the kids, and could find nothing that might classify their fossil. It was a tree, they decided, not a shrub or a grass or a creeper. But that was only because it reminded him so much of the kauri leaves. That night he stayed up unusually late and they talked about the news which had broken upon him earlier. He finally was able to broach that with his wife.

He had not mentioned the telephone call two days before. He had lived with that contained in his procedures and his habits. He had rationed himself carefully. It had remained inside. It had fermented.

When it did come out, finally, in the long talk around the table as the gravy grew cold and the steak bones were declaring themselves and the slivers of fat were congealing on the sides of their plates, Bernard was quite open; he almost made it a joke, though he did not call himself an old fossil and he did not actually utter the word ‘retirement'. Jean realised that Port Douglas was out of the question. She had always felt they were living on credit.

But it was possible to discuss their future. That was like a burden lifted, like a long weight of clay that over the past two days had weighed down this news upon him. He did not speak of himself at all, really; he spoke about the town and the economic effects of the bank's closure. He joked that the only person to benefit would be the Shell service station. Everyone would have to drive into Somerset to do their banking. And their shopping. Fuel usage would increase. ‘That's if anyone can afford to pay for their petrol,' he added, and they both laughed as if that were a joke. Shut-down. Closure. Even as they discussed it they could not believe it.

‘What will happen to the records?' Jean asked.

‘They will go into archives,' Bernard answered, but that did not encompass the history of the whole town as expressed in those figures, lists and records. It would be submerged and forgotten.

The fossil had been washed of its clay, very carefully. It sat on one of the Noritake platters for most of the meal, and after the long talk and the almost delighted realisation that they had missed the TV news and the
7.30 Report
as well as
Quantum
, Bernard had picked it up yet again. Why did he feel so elated? Why did a commonplace thing like an unearthed fossil – in a district well known for its fossil potential, hadn't the University sent students here for decades? – why did it leave him feeling – what?

Positive, was the only word that came to him, but it was other than that, more than that. He could not explain it, even to himself, but it made him feel curiously connected.

‘Now I know what a scientist feels,' he quipped to his wife, as he did the drying up. ‘Or an explorer. Or a discoverer. Silly, isn't it? But I will take you up, dear, and phone the Museum tomorrow. Though it is probably nothing valuable.'

‘It's valuable to you, though. To us.' And Jean passed him the Noritake platter, which he handled carefully, though his thoughts were elsewhere.

The person at the museum was cautious but just a little responsive. Could he bring it in for identification? Was he ever in Brisbane? Very well, the week after next, then.

Bernard was just a little regretful when the Museum took it from him. ‘You've heard of the Wollemi pine? The one they discovered in Wollemi National Park a few years back, that they thought extinct for millennia? Related to the bunya and the hoop pine and the kauri. It was known only from fossils. Well, I'm not saying this is a fossil of a Wollemi pine but we'd like to do tests. Tell you the truth, Bernard (why were these public servant types always so familiar?) I'm just a little bit excited myself. It must be exciting for you, too, if you have uncovered something really interesting?'

But the excitement had been subsumed by the ordinary events of living and confronting his future and his customers who had all been sympathetic though quietly angry. Bernard had forgotten the moment of discovery and that long animated conversation at the dining room table, when he and Jean had been close in a way that both seemed almost to have forgotten.

He had even forgotten to gather up the freshly harvested potatoes until the next evening. They had enjoyed them, though, and they were not really surprised that Bernard poked further, but had turned up no new fossils.

The Museum never returned the treasure, and, indeed, Bernard never discovered what they finally made of it. When his garden bed had been dug up and thoroughly prepared a second time, Bernard planned to grow legumes. Then, the following year, it would again be potatoes.

The day that the bank closed its doors, finally, he decided to make it a picnic, under the Kauri pine in the Town Gardens. Bernard's potato salad would be remembered. Nobody had turned up yet from Head Office to look after the official bank archives, which Bernard had labelled, tabulated and prepared according to a system that had already been forgotten in the big offices in the city.

But at the last minute Bernard knew he had a final duty to his customers. All his scrupulous personal notes and annotations on every bank client over his entire career at this branch – a veritable history of the town – had been kept in the red filing cabinet in his office. How could he allow all that to be consigned to some dusty vault or even a shredding machine in an anonymous basement?

Bernard carefully conveyed his alphabetical files to the little back sewing room which he now made into an office in his own home. For the first month after the bank premises had been locked and the building stood empty and dusty Bernard went through all these files and memos, discarding a few, reorganising others. He would dress in his suit and business tie each morning and even, for a little while, made his ritual local visits – the weekly barber, the newsagent, morning coffee every second day in Whiteheads Cafe with the postmaster and the solicitor and the local police inspector. But his records claimed him, finally.

Much later, after he had done everything possible to tabulate and finalise all his records, he was watching
The Gardening Show
with his wife one evening and was intrigued by a demonstration of composting that used wads of old papers. They disintegrated with surprising speed under a mulch or a load of good heavy earth. The demonstration featured how a clay patch had been rendered malleable and suitable for roses.

The next morning Bernard went out early, in his old gardening clothes so that even his wife was surprised. He spent an hour digging and preparing. Then he went to the little sewing room and came out with the first of the dun-coloured manilla folders. Carefully he layered them, one by one, in alphabetical order. Then he applied the half broken-up clods of clay interspersed with some rough sand from the ancient children's playpit. He covered it all with what he could find of mulch from the compost heap. He rubbed his hands together and went indoors.

The next morning again he dressed in his gardening shirt and the old saggy tweeds. Without thinking of the effect he wandered down at 10.15 to the cafe.

It was the day for morning tea.

Furry Animals

Pity is the most dangerous of passions. Sympathy is almost as bad. You think you are strong, in control, and generous when you pity someone or something. You are at your most vulnerable.

Take yesterday. The heart can be sickened, I tell you. It's like indecent exposure – it's not the visual demonstration of miscellaneous body parts, but the willingness of it all. It repels. Similarly, yesterday's display made me cringe. It was outside Flinders Street Station, on those steps where hardened druggies lounge and have commerce with teenage rebels who pretend that black leather and lots of decorative chains make them, too, hardened. You know the scene.

Yesterday midday. Shopping crowds, lunchtime crowds. The regulars had taken their positions and so hardly moved to let the ordinaries pass through. The vendor of news­papers and plastic-covered girlie magazines was taking the sun while it was there. Two policepersons strolled through like ­familiars, checking out or lining up or seeing who's new. Every now and then a dusty, gusty wind wiped its sleeve across people's eyes to make them sting with the grittiness of the place.

And the trams continued to rattle jerkily by, clumps of them like goats stopping for water, and then long periods when not a one jostled into view.

Weekday ordinary. It's precisely that sort of time when you start to shove your elbows out and your briefcase in the battering-ram position. And yesterday morning had been more than usually fraught. Moira had phoned. Worse; she had threatened to come in. So of course it was inevitable that I decided it was necessary to take the train out to Hawthorn for that audit job I had been putting off. The train, because I could check through the files on the way. Trains are always more relaxing. Relaxation is important. Relaxation, in my job, is essential. Moira is not good for personal relaxation. Moira is not good for anything, except reminding me of the children's expenses. Don't get me wrong, I love my children. But to have an ex-wife who was my senior in the other accountancy practice is not inducive of relaxation. She even adds-in postage stamps and itemised lolly-wrappers when she presents her monthly Statement of The Children's Expenses. She is a lolly-wrapper person herself and I know the dental bills, in due course, will be higher than the laundry lists. On the weekends when I have access I empty out their pockets and their back-packs on arrival (though I return the confiscated confectionary on departure. I am scrupulous in this as in other things.). As I cleared a space outside Young and Jacksons, waiting for the green light, I tried to put Moira out of mind, and to focus on the last Hawthorn audit when, as I recall, there was a matter of a ninety cent shortfall in the Petty Cash register.

I allowed myself to become engrossed in the problem, even though I knew that as soon as I got into the carriage I could verify from my notes (was it ninety cents or ninety-five cents?). I almost missed the green light.

It was in that sort of slightly inconvenient but sufficiently distracting lunchtime buzz of activity that I knew thoughts of Moira might happily be replaced by more realistic priorities: such as, would I have to wait more than ten minutes for the Belgrave or Lilydale train? And, if so, would I cost-in that travelling time onto the client cards? Or would I be generous, and take out my raisin-and-vegemite sandwich, in which case it would be not travelling time but lunchtime?

It was in the midst of such a fine nuance of considerations, on the very steps of Flinders Street Station, that the giant furry koalas appeared.

Big, person-size koalas. Koalas of the appropriate grey colour with big white ears and carrying plastic buckets which they rattled.

I guessed these grey koalas were Greens.

I was not close enough to see if they had banners, or leaflets to distribute, or even if they had
SAVE THE WILDERNESS
stencilled on their koala chests. I suspect they did not carry in their pouches receipt books with the appropriate authorisations allowing donations of over $2 as concessional deductions under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 As Amended. I also suspect they were not
GST
Exempt.

None of this, it seems, had daunted them. They were not timid little pets or Protected Species at that particular moment. They were soliciting in public.

That, really, was when I realised that we are victims of our juices of pity, captive to our own sympathetic drives. We fashion our own passion into unguarded vulnerability. I was glad I did not have Amelia and Louise with me. It is not good to see your own father wanting to run away from such a koala onslaught.

Those yellow plastic buckets were weighing the koalas down with gifts. Maintaining with dignity a deliberate pace I did notice that not even the two policepersons had queried the operations of those creatures.

More. Those two furry creatures stood in front of the most hardened toughs, not speaking, not waving, and I actually witnessed how those defensively snarling faces broke into soft lines around the mouth and eyes and an altogether different cast of jaw. Grandmothers would have said, ‘I knew there was some good in Ted or Tess,' and fathers would have wiped a brawny forearm across their eyes to stop the tear dropping into their beer. They would have mumbled, ‘Course I kicked 'em out, they was getting out of hand. Shoulda seen 'em when they was kids but. Jeez, shoulda seen 'em.' Fathers, mothers also, walking towards the January sales in Myers shoved into purse or pocket for a coin when the Giant Cuddly Bears stepped in front of them. I was right to feel under pressure. Thank God the children were not with me, I would have committed unpardonable acts of generosity. As it was, I even saw one of the policepersons throw a $2 coin. It was with some relief that I noticed the other policeperson look the other way. Vulnerability takes all of us at unexpected moments.

It was clear that the second policeperson had been caught by furry creatures once too often. That one had no time for pity. But I caught myself imagining (as I saw her standing arms akimbo while she waited for her gullible male partner) that she was speculating whether the furry bear whose yellow bucket was still thrust forward invitingly would be male or female. She was a clearly an officer of the law after my own heart. A sort of Honorary Auditor. I imagined her demanding a public unzip.

No, nothing like that happened. I am, after all, a responsible citizen. Any public exposure is, after all, indecent. As it was, I was feeling particularly exposed. I hoped that nobody had recognised me, though one of the advantages of using public transport for small audit jobs is that measure of anonymity. Nobody suspects you. And you often hear the most revealing conversations. I have a friend in the Tax Audit Branch who enjoys my confidences. The furry bears went on their way towards the Saved Forest. The skinheads wiped the sweat off their shorn features and remembered what they were here for. The newspaper vendor remained inviolate. The two policepersons plied their trade. Another tram came into sight up near the War Memorial.

Yes, pity makes you vulnerable. You open up and you open out. You give, when you damn well know this is the Year of Take. You want to be generous, when the decorums of Meeja Greed know better than you what you need.

The newspaper vendor is not bluffed. The newspaper vendor has the strength of an ikon. The newspaper vendor is as cynical as a journalist.

It is only people like us, in the middle to lower ranks of the social pecking order (as Moira was always telling me, from her superior perch two rungs up the ladder) who are part of the furry koala give and take.

Or who might be in danger of being.

Perhaps those koalas were not really cadging for Rainforest Preservation, Endangered Animals, or what's left of the Right Whale. Perhaps they were part of a campaign for a new line in Koala-skin Muffs or Emu Pies or the South Australian invasion of Kangaroo Chops?

I know that I'm making this up now. I'm aware I'm being over-defensive. I can see how others side with them, the Big Koalas. Of course I can. I know I'm outnumbered and outvoted. And of course I realise that auditors themselves are a despised species. Oh, Moira was right when she told me ‘Move into financial management. That's where the future is.' As well she proved. And yet, I have to confess it, there is something about the work of an auditor that I enjoy. I feel truly at home sniffing for errors and snouting out the little tricks and deceits of the junior clerks. Big corporate frauds, of course, are beyond me, I refer them to Upstairs. But give me a day with stocktaking registers, or – as in the Hawthorn case – weighing up flour delivery quantities with production output of bread, cakes and confections, and a calculator can uncover wonderful discrepancies. I am in my element.

What really infuriated me about those canvassing koalas at the station yesterday was I, too, almost weakened. My fingers almost went straight to the coin pocket. It was only that ridiculous policeman saved me, in the end. The moment I saw him fumble, and throw his $2 coin, I was filled with contempt. I felt for my green pen, instead, and repositioned it in my shirt pocket, next to my heart.

Don't get me wrong. I do keep receipts for Tax Deductible Gifts Over $2. I have supported charities. Look, I am a simple auditor. I do not have a plastic-coated identification card proclaiming me a Tax Inspector (though sometimes I have aspirations). I have learned to live with myself. And with the two girls on alternate weekends. I have taught them chess and Scrabble. I live a very ordinary life, not like Moira with her Opening Nights and her Musica Viva. I am a very contented person. Auditors know the satisfaction of a job well done. I'm not a member of the Mafia intent on elbowing into the act. I have no subscription to the Loggers Association or the Pulp Mill Manufacturers Monopoly. Look, I even like cuddly, furry koala bears.

That, of course, is the trouble. Koala bears are not cuddly and furry, they have very sharp claws and if cornered they come out fighting like any one of us godless bastards. Koala bears are immune to pity. How could anyone believe they fall for sympathy? I would put it that they keep to themselves and are territorial. Have you ever seen a real koala bear traipsing round with a plastic bucket asking for handouts? I rest my case. The moment you give way to pity, you're undone.

But what really gets me is the way those skinheads and young thugs began talking to each other and even some of the old mums on the steps, right after. It was as if they thought they were onto something. Generosity, perhaps? A Good Cause?

They wouldn't even know what a rainforest is. On the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets there's not a single eucalypt in sight.

If I had not been forced to fumble for change at the ticket office I would have seen none of this. This aftershock. But, having seen, I carried it like a file of unexamined documents in a manilla folder, onto the platform, where I did have to wait all of ten minutes, and in all that time, when I could have been going through the Hawthorn file in preparation, or when I could even have re-examined Moira's earlier documentation of the children's costs just in case there was a mathematical error or some dubious inventory item that could have been classified as partly her own (I am ever the optimist), no. I found myself thinking, still, of those lumbering koalas. It was as if they roused some hidden response mechanism in me, as if they were making a claim deeper than that even of the children (who rejected teddy bears in favour of Barbie dolls years back). It was that hidden claim which was the real hurt, the potential exposure. Pity is the most dangerous of passions. Self-pity is unforgiveable. I found myself writhing on that station platform. And for no reason that I could clearly allocate.

It was only as the train was pulling into the Hawthorn platform, with its 1890s fashionableness come full circle, that I realised where and why the koalas had inspired me with such instinctive love and anger. Yes, love. Fortunately, anger is more permanent.

My brother, Bellamey, would have called my initial reaction pure cupidity. He was always defending his teddy bear from my clutches. That was his way of saying it. But I loved his teddy bear with pure ardour. It wasn't avarice, not at all. It had purity. And when I did take the scissors that time and then carefully unstitched every seam (it is a moment I recall with great clarity and satisfaction) I think it was a sort of delight, as well as the dismay I so loudly voiced, that brought our mother running. There I was, tossing the stuffing all over Bellamey's bed and his teddy bear was truly dissected. That was the incipient auditor in me, even then.

It was because I had no teddy bear at all. Not one. I had been given a gollywog, despicable creature. Bellamey's teddy bear was my first true love. Love, as we all know, does not bear analysis. After, I swore I would never be vulnerable again. But we are taken by surprise each time. When I told Moira the story of the giant koalas yesterday afternoon, in Laurents where we usually have our Progress Reports and Interim Settlements (by which time I had it already polished) I intended it as a sort of shield against further demands. But Bellamey's bear slipped into the conversation. I was deeply surprised when she leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. It was the first time in two years. That was when I fully realised that pity is the most dangerous of passions. I felt as vulnerable as some junior clerk when the auditor's arrival is announced. I could not afford to let Moira know this. When she settled down again I said to her, I hope lightly: ‘Well, what would you have done in my position?'

‘I would have saved up and bought my own teddy bear,' she said instantly. ‘Oh, you mean about the Flinders Street money-bears? Arthur, I think I could have easily offered them a ten dollar note.'

I was shocked.

I didn't say it, but I thought: ‘That's my money!' I had just given her the cheque for the children's allowance. And yet, in my heart, I knew how we differed so utterly. She would have bought her own teddy bear. There was only one teddy bear in the world. And it was Bellamey's.