The Broken Shore (5 page)

At the fence, there was a path, overgrown. He had walked it often as a boy, it was the direct way to the creek. In childhood memory, the creek was more like a river—broader, deeper, thrillingly dangerous in flood. The dogs were behind him when he made his way through the vegetation, crossed the puddles. On the other side, he whistled for them and they rushed by and led the way up the slope to the old Corrigan house.

Trespassing, Cashin thought.

The dogs had their heads down, a new place, new scents, interested-puzzled flicks of tails. He walked around the house, looked through the windows. Doors, skirting boards, floorboards, mantelpieces, tiles—all seemed intact. The place hadn’t been looted like Tommy Cashin’s ruined house. If there were new owners, they wouldn’t need to spend much to get it liveable.

They walked through the yellow grass as far as Den Millane’s fence, went down. Above the creek, Cashin found the remains of a fence, rusted wire, a few grey and riven posts lying down, possibly the boundary Den talked about. It was around two hundred metres, a bit more perhaps.

Did he want to claim this line?

Ya keep what’s bloody yours.

Yes, he did want to claim it.

He walked across the creek, down the narrow twisting path through the poplars, into the rabbit grounds, then turned for home. It was fully light when they approached the house, but still an hour before the sun would burn off the mist. He was thinking about Kendall. What did being raped do to you? A male cop, off-duty, had been grabbed by three men in Sydney, out in the western suburbs, taken to an old drive-in. They handcuffed him to a screen pylon, cut off his jeans with a Stanley knife, carved swastikas into his buttocks, his back.

Then they raped him.

A cop called Gerard told Cashin the story one night, in the car. They were parked, eating kebabs.

The bloke never came back to work. Went to Darwin. They say he topped himself up there.

Gerard, dark-faced and handsome, dead-black hair, a mole on his cheek.

Got the cunts but. Done it through a ring, big fucking stupid lead thing, homemade ring. Melted sinkers. The cop could draw it.

What’d they get?

Death penalty. The one drowned in the river. Homebush. Other two, murder-suicide. Very ugly scene.

Gerard had smiled. When he smiled he showed some inner-lip, an intimate colour, vaginal.

Before Cashin did, the dogs saw Rebb sitting on the old garden bench. They charged.

Rebb was smoking a hand-rolled, flat, as much paper as tobacco. He was shaven, hair damp.

The dogs were all wag and twist, they liked Rebb, but then they liked most people.

‘Put stuff in the wash machine,’ Rebb said, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a big hand for each dog. ‘That okay?’

‘Any time,’ said Cashin. ‘Up early?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll make some breakfast when I’ve showered.’

‘Got food,’ said Rebb. He didn’t look at Cashin, he was intent on the dogs. He had said the same thing the night before.

‘Scrambled eggs,’ said Cashin. ‘You make it for one, might as well make it for ten.’

When he was clean and dressed, he put cutlery, bread and butter, Vegemite, jam, on the table, cooked the food, found Rebb outside with the dogs. Rebb didn’t eat like a swaggie. He kept his elbows at his sides, ate with his mouth closed, slowly, ate every morsel.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Fill up on the bread.’

Rebb cut a thick slice. He spread butter, put on a coal-dark seam of Vegemite.

‘You can stay here if you like,’ Cashin said. ‘Won’t cost you. Ten minutes’ walk to the cow job.’

Rebb looked at him, nothing, black eyes. He nodded. ‘Do that then.’

They drove around to Den Millane’s, not a word spoken. Den heard them coming, he was at the gate. He shook hands with Rebb.

‘Pay’s nothin fancy,’ he said. ‘Do it myself, bloody knee wasn’t crook. Know cows?’

‘A bit, yeah.’

Cashin left them, drove to his mother’s house, twenty minutes. The roads were thin strips of pot-holed bitumen, lacy at the edges, room for one vehicle, someone had to give way, put two wheels on the rutted verge. But, generally, both vehicles did, and local drivers raised their hands to each other. He passed potato fields and dairy farms where the sliding-jawed animals turned soft eyes. From Beacon Hill, the land sloped to the sea, peaty soil the colour of chocolate when ploughed, lying naked before the south-westerly wind and the wild winter gales off the Southern Ocean. Early settlers planted cypress trees and hedges as windbreaks around their houses. It worked to some extent but the displaced wind took its revenge. Trees, shrubs, sheds, tanks, windmills, dunnies, dog kennels, chickenhouses, old car bodies—everything in its path sloped to leeward.

Cashin parked in the driveway, went around the back, saw his mother through the kitchen window. When he opened the back door,
Sybil said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you, living in that ruin. After what we put in with you kids, your dad and me.’

She was arranging flowers in a large squarish pottery jug, brown and purple. ‘That vase,’ Cashin said. ‘Could that be a rejected prototype for storing nuclear waste?’

His mother ignored the question. Outside, his stepfather appeared from the shed, wearing white overalls, gloves, a full-face mask, a tank on his back. He began spraying the rose arbour. Mist drifted.

‘Do the roses like Harry bombing them with Agent Orange?’ Cashin said.

She stood back to admire her work, a small, trim woman, strong swept-back hair. All the size genes in Cashin and his brother, Michael, came from their father, Mick Cashin.

‘Charles Bourgoyne,’ she said. ‘What are you doing about that?’

‘Doing what can be done.’

‘I’ll never understand humans. Why didn’t they just take what they wanted? Why did they have to bash an old man? What could he do to resist them?’

‘I’ve giving up on the understanding part,’ said Cashin. ‘The question you want answered isn’t why, it’s who.’

His mother shook her head. ‘Well, on another matter,’ she said, eyes on the arrangement, moving her fingers. ‘Michael’s bought a unit in Melbourne. Docklands. On the water. Two bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms.’

‘A clean person, Michael,’ said Cashin. ‘Very clean. What do you do in the half bathroom?’

‘Pour the tea,’ she said. ‘Just made.’

He poured tea into handmade mugs that tilted when at rest. His mother bought things at outdoor markets: terrible watercolour paintings, salt and pepper cellars in the shape of toadstools, placemats woven from plastic grocery bags, hats made of felted dog hair.

‘Michael’s in Melbourne so much he says he might as well have somewhere to keep his clothes,’ she said.

‘The spare set of clothes that would be.’

His mother sighed. ‘Give credit where it’s due, that’s what you haven’t learned, Joseph.’

‘Take credit where it’s offered, I’ve learned that. Why do roses need that chemical shit Harry’s spraying?’

‘You never swore. Michael picked it up at school, the first day, came home and said a swearword. I went down there, gave that Killeen man a few words of my own. Never trusted him and proved right. Mother’s instinct.’

‘I should have learned to swear early,’ said Cashin. ‘By now I might have half a bathroom at Docklands. I’m going to fix up the house.’

‘Are you mad? Why?’

‘To live in. As a step up from living in a ruin.’

‘It’s haunted.’ She shuddered in a theatrical way. ‘Built by a madman. Leave it alone. You should sell it.’

‘I like the place. I’m going to clear up the garden.’

‘I thought this was temporary? For you to get better.’

Cashin finished his tea. ‘Life’s pretty temporary. How’s uni?’

‘Don’t change the subject. I should have gone earlier. Wasted years.’

‘Wasted how?’

She came to the kitchen table and patted his cheek twice, gave it a final sharp slap. ‘I only want the best for you,’ she said. ‘You set your sights so low. The police force, I ask you. Stay here a moment longer than you need to, you’ll be stuck forever. Game over.’

‘Where do you get that from?’

‘What?’

‘Game over?’

‘Old before your time,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you sign up for a course at uni? Be among young people. Stay fresh.’

‘I’ll kill myself first,’ Cashin said.

Sybil put fingers to his mouth. ‘Don’t say that. The closed mind. It’s the older generation’s supposed to have that.’

‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘Be among young people. Arrest them.’

‘Turn it into a joke, you get that from your father, that’s pure Cashin. Even a tragedy’s only a tragedy for five minutes, then it’s a joke.’

They went out. Harry was misting the arbour, the cattle dog standing behind him, looking up, faithfully breathing in the fumes.

‘So the dog’s expendable?’ said Cashin. ‘Collateral damage.’

At the gate, his mother said, ‘It’s a pity you don’t have children, Joseph. Children settle people down.’

The sentences stopped Cashin in his tracks, filled him with wonder. How could she of all people say that?

‘How do you know I don’t have children?’ he said.

‘Oh, you.’ She held his arms and he bent to kiss her on the cheek. For many years, he could not kiss her.

‘Did I ever tell you I thought you were going to be the bright one?’ she said.

‘I am the bright one,’ he said. ‘You’re confusing me with the rich one. One of Bern’s boys is in trouble in Melbourne.’

‘It’ll be that Sam, right?’

‘Right.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Theft from a parked car. Him and two others.’

‘What can you do?’

‘Nothing probably.’

‘The Doogues. I always thank the Lord I’ve got no ties with them.’

‘You’re a Doogue. Bern is your nephew. He’s your brother’s son. How can you not have ties with them?’

‘Ties, dear, ties. I don’t have any ties with them.’

‘Game over,’ said Cashin. ‘Bye, Syb.’

‘Bye, darling.’

Harry waved a gloved hand at him, slowly, like a polar explorer saying a final sad goodbye.

DRIVING TO Port Monro on a cold day, overcast, Cashin thought about his mother in the caravan, saw her sitting at a fold-down table topped with marbled green Formica edged with an aluminium strip. She had a plastic glass in one hand, yellow wine in it, a cigarette in the other hand, a filter cigarette held close to her fingernails, which were painted pink, chipped. Her nose was peeling from sunburn. There were blonde sunstreaks in her hair and it was heavy with salt from swimming, pieces fallen apart, he could see her scalp. She drank from the glass and liquid ran out of her mouth, down her chin, fell on her teeshirt. She wiped her chest with her cigarette hand and the cigarette touched her face, the glowing tip dislodged, stuck to her shirt. She looked down at the burn opening like a flower. She seemed to wait forever, then she carefully tilted her glass, poured wine over it. He remembered the smells of burnt cotton and burnt skin and wine filling the small space and how he felt sick, went out into the sub-tropical night.

Some time after Cashin’s father’s death, he didn’t know how long, his mother had packed two suitcases and they left the farm outside Kenmare. He was twelve. His brother was at university on his scholarship. At the first stop for petrol, his mother told him to call her Sybil. He didn’t know what to say. People didn’t call their mothers by their names.

They spent the next three years on the road, never staying anywhere for long. When he thought about those times later, Cashin realised that in the first year Sybil must have had money: they stayed
in hotels and motels, in a holiday shack near the beach for a few months. Then she started taking jobs in pubs, roadhouses, all sorts of places, and they lived in rented rooms, granny flats in people’s backyards, on-site caravans. In his memory, she always seemed to be drinking, always either laughing or crying. Sometimes she forgot to buy food and some nights she didn’t come home till long after midnight. He remembered lying awake, hearing noises outside, trying not to be frightened.

The turn-off to Port Monro. Light rain falling.

Cashin’s shift started at noon, there was time for coffee. He bought the paper at the service station, parked outside the Dublin, hadn’t been there for a while. You couldn’t go to the same place too often, people noticed.

The narrow room was empty, summer over, the long cold peace on the town. ‘Medium black for the cop who pays,’ said the man sitting behind the counter. ‘My customer of the day.’

His name was Leon Gadney, a dentist from Adelaide whose male lover had been found knifed to death in a park near the river, possibly killed by one of the sexual crazies for which Adelaide was famous, possibly killed by policemen who thought the crazies were doing a public service when they killed homosexuals.

‘You could close in winter,’ said Cashin. ‘Save on electricity.’

‘What would I do?’ said Leon.

‘Go to Noosa, chat to other rich retired dentists. It’s warm up there.’

‘Fuck warm. And I’d like to go on record that I’m not a retired dentist. Ex-dentist, former dentist, now impoverished barista and short-order cook.’

He delivered the coffee. ‘Want a nice almond bickie?’

‘No, thanks. Watching the weight.’

Leon returned to his seat, lit a cigarette. ‘In a certain light, you’re not bad looking,’ he said. ‘And here we are, virile single men marooned on an island of old women in sandals.’

Cashin didn’t look up. He was reading about police corruption in the city, in the drug squad. The members had been selling drugs they’d confiscated. They had originally supplied the ingredients to make the
drugs. ‘You’re very distinguished, Leon,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got too much going on, I couldn’t concentrate.’

‘Well, think about it,’ said Leon. ‘I’ve got good teeth.’

Cashin went to work, dealt with a complaint from a man about a neighbour’s tree, a report of a vandalised bench in the wetlands. A woman with a black eye came in—she wanted Cashin to warn her husband. At 2.15, the primary school rang to say a mother had seen someone lurking on the block across the road.