Dome of Death - 5. Chapter 5 Jon

Mad’s inclusion of me as one of the family lay warm in my head and heart all the way back to the coast. I’ve never had a real family. Mother’s too busy with ‘good works’ and Dad’s sole claim to fame is an endless supply of home-brew in the basement where he spends every free minute watching TV sport. I don’t recall having a conversation with either of them, nor spending more than half a dozen evenings together. We almost never ate as a family, either Mum was out, or Dad had an important game to watch. As a kid I loved tennis, athletics and swimming, read a lot, drew pictures, fantasised about the family I should have been born into, and yearned for love.

I’d been driving without concentrating and the sudden view of the gallery dumped me back in the present. Frances, surrounded by shopping, waved as I pulled up.

‘Peter! What a bit of luck. Give us a hand with these.’

I trailed her up the stairs to the kitchen, lugging a couple of supermarket bags and two boxes. She slumped into a chair.

‘Sorry I left you alone so long.’ Her voice was loud and gestures skittish. ‘I’ve been with this amazing man - and one thing led to another - and suddenly it was Tuesday morning!’ She giggled inanely. ‘He has this wacky house made of plastic and canvas and bits of tubing perched up in the hills. Great view, great…. everything!’ She chuckled lewdly. ‘By the way, we saw the advertisements in the paper and I noticed the signs in the window when I drove up. They’re excellent! You’ve been working your little butt off.’ She paused for a breath that permitted no interruption. ‘I’m glad you took Max’s wagon. Your old bomb’s no advertisement for a successful business. The lawyer must have contacted you. I told him you’d be here, beavering away.’

I opened my mouth but she held up her hand and gave vent to a wolf-whistle. ‘You look great! I didn’t notice it at first. Been to the body shop?’ She grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. ‘So that’s where you were this morning. It’s stunning. You look ten years younger. All the old biddies will fall in love, and in Max’s clothes you’ll be the perfect gallery director. It’s good he left all his things to you. I didn’t know until Simpson rang. And when I phoned, you weren’t here. Now I know why.’ The over loud monologue stopped abruptly and she looked around as though lost before adding vaguely, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

Before I could answer she ruffled her hand through my bristles, pecked me on the cheek and shut herself in her room.

I dumped the shopping on the floor and took several deep breaths. When the urge to throttle her had subsided I poked my head around the bedroom door, congratulated her on a successful long weekend and asked if she would arrange the wine and snacks for Wednesday’s function. She would, but first wanted to spruce up.

Back in my/Max’s bedroom I took out Mad’s drawing, stood it on the table beside the window and stared. It was as perfect as before. Sadness still gripped my chest but I was no longer in danger of leaking tears. Instead, I felt peaceful, free to take a new tack, try new things - even a new relationship if one came along. Hope and anticipation hovered timidly at the edge of thought.

Downstairs, nothing had changed. Mad’s drawings still nestled in their drawers waiting for mounts and frames. Before starting on them I checked for correspondence. There was only one message on the answer phone, a request from what sounded like a twelve year old girl to telephone Simpson, Simpson and Grey as soon as convenient.

After an interminable muzak-filled wait I was connected to a brusque voice informing me I would be required to sign a couple of forms in connection with my inheritance within the next few days, but meanwhile it would be permissible to use the goods in question. I thanked him and promised to call in soon.

It was already ten-thirty, Bill Smith hadn’t turned up and I was starting to panic. Myself I can trust, but if my organisation is dependent on others, I’m always certain I’ll be let down. At least Frances was arranging supper. But was she? I trudged back upstairs to check. She had forgotten, flared into a rage, shouted I was harassing her, and told me to do it myself. A woman of rapid mood swings.

The file labelled “Refreshments” told me everything I needed to know, so I telephoned the caterers and ordered a repeat performance. I’d just replaced the receiver when Bill Smith backed into the gallery dragging a shopping trolley piled with parcels. He straightened, massaged his spine, nodded and looked around as if searching for someone. As I walked towards him he peered from under thatched grey eyebrows, frowned and grunted, ‘Ah. Didn’t recognise you. Can you fetch the rest of the stuff from the car?’

I made six trips while Bill unwrapped and carefully folded all his packing paper before placing it neatly in a suitcase ready to be used again.

‘Waste not want not?’ I asked.

‘If I act as though I’m expecting to take everything home again, the gods will make sure everything is sold,’ he grunted. There was obviously a fey side to this gruff Aussie male.

‘But now you’ve told me, they’ll know it’s just a bluff.’

‘Huh! They think they know everything, so never listen to mere mortals.’

It was one o’clock before we had agreed on the sequence, position, and height of each painting. I checked them off against his list, noted the details, wrote receipts, and promised they would all be hanging before nightfall. He would return the following morning to see if there’d been any problems and to check the catalogue’s accuracy.

I had just decided there wasn’t time for lunch when Frances arrived with meat-patties nestling among slices of fresh bread and papaya on two of her best plates. She brewed coffee in the workroom and we shared a companionable snack. A difficult woman to pigeonhole.

‘Still happy with the gallery, Peter?’

‘It’s brilliant, but I can’t help thinking it’s too beautiful a building to waste on a side street two blocks back from the beach. It should be on a promontory overlooking the sea.’

‘I was referring to the job, not the building,’ she laughed. ‘But you’re not half-witted; Max designed the gallery for exactly that sort of spot.’ She smiled at my look of disbelief. ‘No, it’s true. While we were looking for a site we had an affair with an egghead from the Department of Marine Resources. Like a lot of skinny intellectuals he took his pleasures seriously and enjoyed a bit of give and take. Max was happy to give, and I took.’ She looked up for my reaction but I wasn’t giving any.

‘Anyway, Tony had been surveying this bit of coast; the rivers, drainage, land-forms, tidal bars, frequency and levels of storm surges - that sort of thing. Talking about work was his idea of scintillating après sex conversation. I usually fell asleep but Max was riveted. After analysing all the relevant data, Tony predicted that if we ever had a king tide accompanied by unusually high rainfall in the coastal ranges, coinciding with cyclonic winds from the sea, or something like that, then the canals would burst and join the river systems, drained land would revert to swamp, and silt would create a sandbar parallel to the coast, causing the river to sweep south and scour out the beach in front of us here. However, this block of land and several on each side would remain, because we’re on a granite outcrop, not sand dunes like most of the coast.’

I nodded doubtfully. ‘That’s three things that have to synchronise. What are the chances?’

‘That’s what Max asked.’ She yawned ‘I forget the answer, but he had all worked it out. He was a real brain-box.’

‘Well I won’t hold my breath waiting for the gallery to become a monument on the coast.’

‘Nor me. He couldn’t convince the Council either. But you did ask why we built here. The land was relatively cheap and when the builder dug the foundations, he reached granite only a metre below the sand. So Tony was right about one thing at least.’ She laughed, collected the plates and drifted back upstairs, leaving me to get on with my work.

Max had resurrected peg-board. It had good acoustic properties and added to the intriguing textural quality of the walls, but the main benefit was ease of hanging. It only took a couple of hours to slip in the pre-formed security hooks and hang the paintings at the precise locations required by their creator.

Mad’s frames were in a pile on the workroom floor and I had just spread out her drawings when someone knocked loudly on the glass doors at the front. Irritated, I switched off the alarm, slid back the security locks and opened the main door. A cautious pair of grey eyes stared from under a wide, anorak-shrouded forehead. His square jaw and strong nose should have been a recipe for good looks, but deep frown-lines and hunched shoulders inspired pity rather than homage. Jeans, anorak and scuffed trainers suggested the legions of unemployed drifting up and down the coast. He dropped his eyes and stared at his feet, hugging his chest.

‘Can I see Max?’

The unexpected question unnerved me.

‘Max had an accident and died a couple of weeks ago.’ I sounded brusque, unfriendly even, but didn’t want to risk over-reacting.

Lifting haggard eyes in disbelief, the young man’s frame crumpled even further in on itself and he turned away with a mumbled, ‘Sorry. Sorry to bother you.’

He looked so pathetic I felt rotten and called, ‘Hang on, don’t rush away. Can I do anything?’

He shook his head without looking back and scuffed off around the corner. I was about to go back inside when curiosity overtook me. Pulling the door so it looked closed, I followed him. He was moving faster than I’d expected and by the time I’d rounded the corner was already a block away, crossing the Esplanade. I jogged towards the beach and watched as he clambered over the low concrete wall and dropped out of sight onto the beach.

It was cold and windy. Towering thunderheads were building out to sea and an oppressive, brassy radiance saturated air, clouds and swelling breakers. It was not going to be a good night to spend on the beach. I jogged to the wall and peered over in time to see the bloke’s backside disappear into one of the large storm-water drains that empty the city’s dog-shit, litter and roadside debris on to the sand every time it rains. Rather him than me.

I stood for a minute gazing at the looming sky. Who was he? He’d been upset about Max’s death. A friend? I should’ve invited him in; shown him Mad’s drawing of Max. Mad’s drawings! They were spread over the floor of the unlocked gallery! A stark vision of my desecrated studio and cottage sent me into a panic. Maybe the bloke had been sent to lure me away so his mates could smash the place up! Heart thumping in neck and ears I cursed, ground out a prayer to Bill Smith’s gods and, gagging at the thought of those exquisite masterpieces ending up like my studio, raced back like a bat out of hell, threw open the door and raced across to Mad’s drawings.

Relief! The place was as I’d left it. After re-locking the doors I brewed one of Mad’s pick-me-ups to quell the shakes. Peace and warm whisky stilled the tremors and by seven o’clock all drawings were securely framed and hanging on the walls, alarms had been set and checked, and I was preparing a lonely meal. Frances had gone out again.

My bedroom window faced east, towards the sea, but the view was of the backs of holiday apartments and Fast Food outlets on the Esplanade. Lightning flickering through ochreous clouds, sent me onto the roof. I’ve always been fascinated by electrical storms. The sea, greyly sullen beneath a yellow strip of sky, seemed crushed beneath the accumulating blackness. Sheet lightning set cloud interiors pinkly aglow. The air was utterly still, only a low grumbling from the heavens warned.

Suddenly, a searing line of fire gashed across the blackness. The shock set my hair on end – literally. Instinctively, I pressed my back against the stairhead as sheets of blinding light followed by gigantic, garish networks of discharge hurled themselves across the sky. Grumbling thunder swelled to a deafening clamour and darkness was banished by continuous billion-volt energy blasts arcing across the firmament, tearing the ether to shreds. Transfixed by the awesome power, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the ever changing onslaught, nor close my ears to the unrelenting roar that swelled, crackled, crashed, sank into a rumbling roll only to burst forth again and again in chest-crushing thunder. Compared to this, fireworks, no matter how many millions of dollars are spent, are mere pretty diversions.

After about an hour, a bank of clouds rolling in from the ocean reduced the display to reflected sheets of brilliance. As I turned towards the stairs, a bolt of lightning struck earth about fifty metres away and the instantaneous thunderclap knocked me to my knees. Stunned, deaf and blind, I reeled downstairs to the illusion of safety.

That last, staggering crescendo heralded the rain. But what rain! I had no idea so much water could fall from the sky. Within minutes the car park was flooded, drains failed to cope and, at the edge of the road, a street-lamp illuminated a fountain of storm-water gushing metres into the air as overloaded drains from higher up forced their burden out the first available exit. The beach would be scoured.

The beach! The bloke who had called in earlier! Surely he wasn’t still in the drain? He’d be swept out to sea! None of my business. But of course it was. My spying had violated his privacy so I was obliged to act. I threw off everything except my shorts, zipped my keys into the pocket, grabbed a waterproof torch, made sure the outside door to upstairs was locked and, wishing I’d worn a raincoat, forced my way to the beach against howling needles of rain, branches, leaves and all the detritus Aeolus the demon wind-god could snatch up.

Too late. The tide was coming in. Breakers were already swirling up to the mouth of the drain and anyone fool enough to go down there was going to get trapped. I wasn’t a fool, but neither could I leave the poor bastard to his fate. It was a three metre vertical drop from the footpath to the drain, so I followed where he had gone a few hours earlier, clambered over the wall twenty metres to the north and slid down the rocks.

The water swirled round my knees and sucked at my feet, but became shallower as I approached the drain. In my hurry I slipped and skinned an ankle on a submerged rock. A wave caught me from behind and rolled me over. Drenched and cold I struggled to my knees and threw myself into the drain. It was larger than I’d realised; high enough to stand. The wind didn’t penetrate much past the entrance and the roar of the sea was muffled. I splashed torchlight around the interior. It was empty and there was only a trickle of water. That didn’t make sense, unless other drains were taking the flow. The bloke obviously wasn’t as half-witted as he’d looked and had cleared out. Relieved, I was about to turn back when I realised that if I’d planned on sleeping there myself I’d have gone about ten metres further, around the bend.

Swallowing rising panic I ran forward and looked. A sand-spattered shape. I flashed the light on him but he curled into a ball and growled. I grabbed his shoulder and shook it hard. ‘You’ve got to get out!’ I was shouting, although there was no need to yell in the uncanny calm. He shrugged me off and curled up tighter. I grabbed a handful of hair and pulled him to his knees. He swung a weak punch in the direction of my stomach and snarled, ‘Leave me a-fucking-lone. I’m not hurting anyone. Why can’t you cunts leave a guy in peace. Fucking rules and regulations.’

‘There’s a storm raging outside! You’re going to get washed out!’ I was screaming, imagining the wall of water that was surely going to burst upon us at any moment.

‘Fuck off!’ He started to throw another punch so I slammed him in the guts, grabbed him in a fireman’s lift and staggered to the exit, banging his head on the curving walls. Served him right. The mouth of the drain glowed fitfully and I’d only just crossed the threshold when I slipped, dumping him face down in surging water up to my waist. He copped a mouthful, spluttered, panicked and grabbed at me, pulling me off balance again. I held him firmly against my chest until he stopped struggling, then dragged him by the hand in the direction of the rocks. It was impossible. The further we got from the drain, the deeper the water. A metre gained when waves receded was lost when they returned and thrust us back. I jettisoned the torch but it made no difference. Cold was dissolving strength and will. We clung together, buffeted, numb, frightened.

Suddenly, above the noise of wind and waves, a thunderous roar and the mouth of the drain exploded. A blockage in the pipe further up must have been swept away, releasing the full torrent. I swung round in horror as tons of water, branches, cans, bottles - you name it, smashed into us. The other bloke’s fingers slipped from mine and I was alone, battered, choking on muck, swept like flotsam. I held my breath and swam desperately in what I hoped was the right direction, touched bottom briefly, then was seized again by the current.

Where was he? I lunged around feeling with numbed fingers, but I’d lost him. Energy drained with body warmth. Blindly, coughing up half the ocean, I trod water in the dark, letting the flow take me. Luckily, the opposing forces of storm-water and waves pushed me towards the shore. When I could stand I floundered to the rocks, hauled myself from the water and stared out through the howling darkness, willing my eyes to penetrate, to see him. Rain bucketed blackly. Occasional flashes of lightning threw everything into stark relief. A body swirled past. I flung myself at it. A log.

A cry. A whimper a couple of metres to my left. Waist deep in surf, the backwash sucking sand from under my feet, I bumped into legs. I still don’t know how, but dredging up reserves from somewhere I managed to tow him to the rocks, manhandle him out of reach of the waves, grab his ankles and heave his feet higher than his head. I held my hand under his mouth and felt water trickle. Almost insane with anger and cold, I thumped on his back, twisted his head and blew into his mouth, forcing him to breathe. Above the howling wind I could hear his hacking cough, so continued pummelling, screaming and slapping him around until he’d dragged himself up the boulders to the wall. I bundled him over and followed.

In the relative calm I relaxed, so exhausted I forgot I was freezing. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. A violent fit of shivers rattled sense into my head and it seemed pretty stupid to give up after all the effort. Leaving my semi-conscious but breathing companion in the slight protection of the wall, I let myself be blown to the gallery.

It was dangerous driving back to the beach against the wind and its flailing cargo of debris, but at least there were no other idiots on the road. I gathered up the shivering, wet heap of clothes and dumped him in the back of the wagon. At the Gallery I was so cold I couldn’t make myself get out of the car, so turned the heater up full blast and kept the engine running. After about ten minutes the worst of my shakes had stopped, and coughing and sounds of movement were coming from the back. I slithered over the seats and curled beside him.

‘Can you move?’

A grunt, followed by a slight nod.

‘If you think you can manage it, we’ll go inside.’

No response.

‘I’ll make coffee and rustle up a bite to eat.’

He looked at me warily and coughed. ‘You a cop?’

‘No, mate, just a bloody idiot who likes to go swanning around waist deep in the ocean during a storm. Well, I’m going up. You can stay here as long as you like, but I’m turning the engine off and you’ll soon get fucking cold.’

I climbed out, locked the front doors, opened the rear gate and helped him out. Even in the lee of the building we were buffeted, and it was such a relief to slam the outside door that I sank onto the stairs, shaking with exhaustion. He slumped beside me.

‘Just up these stairs and we’re home,’ I muttered, more for my own encouragement than his. We supported each other up the remaining few metres and sagged onto the kitchen floor. I turned on the heater, stripped off my shorts and towelled circulation back into blue limbs. While he was doing the same, I brought both doonas from the bed. After coffee and eggs on toast we felt better. Battered, but recognisably human.

‘You saved my life.’

‘Probably.’

‘Why?’

‘Something to do.’

‘Shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘I’m regretting it already. More coffee?’

He grunted acceptance.

A long silence as we both relived the previous half hour.

‘Shower and bed?’

His answer was lost in a fit of coughing.

After hot showers and splashings of antiseptic on copious grazes, we were asleep within minutes. My guest’s coughing, occasional whimpers and frequent twitching barely registering on my own fitful dreams.

The alarm woke me. I leaped from bed and threw open sun-bright curtains to be greeted by the uninspiring back views of apartment blocks and takeaway outlets. We were still a street away from the beach. It was obviously going to take more than last night’s tempest to provide the gallery with a prime sea-front position.

My visitor, at seven in the morning, looked pinched and suffering. Ignoring his grumbles I wrapped him in a bathrobe and forced him to eat breakfast with me in the kitchen. Bed’s no place for eating - encourages mice.

After a coffee and one slice of toast and marmalade, he looked warily across. ‘I’m full.’

‘I’m Peter Corringe.’

Suspicious slits avoided my eyes. ‘Jonathan... Jon… Jon Moore.’

‘More to eat?’

He pulled a face, neither amused nor ready to talk.

‘Did you lose much?’

‘Always keep my wallet in a plastic bag zipped in my pocket.’

‘Lucky – no, sensible.’ I gathered up the dishes and dumped them in the sink. ‘I’ve a busy day ahead setting up the gallery for an opening tonight. D’you want to help?’

A grunt.

‘Fine, get the dishes done, shove your clothes in the washer, help yourself to something to wear from the bedroom and join me downstairs.’ I took my wallet, no point in leaving temptation. Frances always locked her door when away, so that was safe.

The wind had dropped and a pale yellow sun struggled wetly. An extraordinary roaring was coming from the direction of the beach, so before getting down to work I jogged down to check it out. Gone was the wall over which we had clambered, gone were the trees, flowers, shrubs and grass of the twenty-metre-wide nature strip. Present were hundreds of gawking sightseers.

I peered from the edge of cracked and crumbling road-seal, ignoring warning shouts from police and council workers. The tide was out, and about thirty metres of Jon’s drain were now visible, lying on top of the tidal flats. The mouth was the source of all the noise. A pile of detritus and sand had built up in front and was diverting the still raging storm water upward in a gigantic, thundering fan.

Fifty metres beyond that, trees, rocks, sand, smashed barbecue shelters, the crumpled remains of the new toilet block, park benches, several cars, and just about everything else you could think of had been dumped in a long ridge, like a sea wall, and what looked suspiciously like a river was flowing swiftly southwards on the landward side of this new ‘island’, parallel to the coast. Impossible, because the river mouth was a kilometre to the north!

Wherever it came from, if the water continued to rip past like that until the next high tide, the Esplanade wasn’t going to last long. The roadway was already undermined. Police and emergency workers in red overalls were standing around while one spoke into a mobile phone. Their immediate problem was sightseers. Temporary barriers had been erected and people were being herded away from dangerous edges. I wondered if the versatile Tony’s predictions were being realised.

Shortly after I’d let myself back into the gallery, Jon came down the internal stairs, shaved and presentable in blue tracksuit and trainers, still feeble-looking, but not so hunched. His body was obviously hurting, but like me he was doing his best not to let it show. We adjusted the lighting, checked the position of the paintings, ran the polisher over the floor, cleaned the windows and made the place fit for a glamour public opening.

Bill Smith and his wife, a craggy, large-boned woman wearing beige hair coiled in plaited discs over her ears and a stone-splitting glint in her eye, arrived to check the display and the entries in the catalogue. They wandered around in silence.

‘This is a very busy street,’ she eventually muttered to Jon.

‘All the Esplanade traffic has been diverted past the gallery,’ I explained.

She continued to face Jon. ‘Will that be bad for the exhibition?’

‘Probably good,’ I said to the back of her head. ‘More people in the area, more people to see the signs, more customers,’

My golden bristles must have unnerved her because she nodded sagely, shook Jon’s hand, took a firm grip on her silent spouse’s upper arm and led him away, grudgingly satisfied.

The forward planning necessary before the advent of computers and printers makes my mind boggle. Within three hours we had produced a professional-looking coloured catalogue complete with biographical notes and rave reviews from a “well-known Art critic” - me. The mere thought that in the past we’d have had to get all that stuff to the printers weeks in advance, was a nightmare too awful to contemplate.

I had thrown a few casual questions at Jon during the morning, which he fielded automatically. He looked honest enough, but I couldn’t afford to have a felon living in the gallery, so was persistent. He wasn’t, as it turned out, particularly secretive, merely cautious and unwilling to burden others with his problems. Bit by bit I learned that his life had been in turns dull, eventful, and sad.

Devoutly Old Testament parents and three brothers lived on a sheep-station somewhere out the back of Longreach. Jon was the second son. Life had consisted of Distance Schooling by radio, never-ending farm work, family church services and an occasional outing with the family. At twenty-one he had been persuaded to become engaged to a young woman he’d met at a Bible studies camp; the daughter of a roofing contractor in town. They were to marry and live on his parents’ farm.

A week before his wedding he had suffered a vision of his life to come, and that night took all the cash in the house and a change of clothes and rode away on his farm-bike. Three days later he arrived at the coast and had his first, never-to-be-forgotten view of the ocean. Money ran out and someone stole his bike, so he joined a gaggle of street-kids, begged for meals and tried for jobs.

Nearly starving, too frightened to ask for help in case there was a warrant out for his arrest, he traipsed round building sites asking for work. There had been a number of thefts from a new block of flats designed and partly owned by Max, who, luckily for Jon, was on site and persuaded the foreman to take him on as night watchman.

During the day he did odd jobs, catching up on sleep in the corner of the mobile canteen, until Max had a small caravan delivered to the site. He had no money, no driver’s licence, no bank account, no tax-file number – no document to prove he existed. With Max’s help these omissions were rectified, a letter with no return address was sent to reassure his parents, and eventually he saved money, bought another bike and, proving himself useful in a variety of ways, moved from site to site with his caravan.

Over the next three years Max took an interest in his young protégé and sometimes called in of an evening for a game of chess and a chat, sharing his dream of one day designing and building the best Art Gallery in the State.

On one of her rare visits to a building site, Frances’s eye fell on Jon, and the same evening she presented herself at his caravan door. His protests had been silenced by threats of the sack and she had her way with him, several times. Afterwards, sick with shame at having cuckolded his best and only friend, he fled to Brisbane, where life was difficult and cruel. Having first been sheltered by parents, then protected by Max, he was still an innocent.

Money and bike disappeared along with self-respect. The dole, when he was forced to claim it, reinforced his sense of worthlessness and he slithered into a reasonably deep depression. No proper or regular job, no prospects, no home, no money, no friends and perhaps worst of all, apart from his rape by Frances, still a virgin.

After a year in this wilderness of the soul he decided to face his problems and seek Max’s pardon. Two weeks too late. He told his story simply, accepting full responsibility for his life.

To offer sympathy would have been an insult. Instead, I told him I liked the way he had knuckled down to work and showed initiative. He blushed and grunted something that sounded like thanks. After lunch, he too checked out the damage to the foreshore, returning deeply thoughtful, sweating, and coughing. I sent him to bed. It would be surprising if he hadn’t caught a chill after drinking half the ocean the previous night.