Demons Read online

  PRAISE FOR WAYNE MACAULEY

  THE COOK

  ‘Each time you think you’ve reached the limits of this thought-provoking and brilliant novel, it just gets deeper.’ Guardian

  ‘Irresistible—The Cook reminds us just how exciting it is to read a wonderful and original novel.’ Lloyd Jones

  ‘The orgiastic pretentiousness of high-end cuisine is a world that’s ripe for satire, and that’s just the starting point for this original, ambitious and disturbing Australian novel…What begins as a succinct skewering of culinary pompousness...turns into a scathing commentary into the failings of consumerism… [a] focused, rapier-like attack.’ Glasgow Herald

  ‘A writer who is quintessentially of his place and time…The Cook, a darkly satirical reply to Australia’s MasterChef-driven reality cooking show obsession, was one of the most surprising and vivid fictions of the year.’ Australian

  ‘A compelling read…as tightly structured as a thriller… hilarious…consistently entertaining, often shocking…a serious critique of the moral vacuum at the core of a society that values money and novelty above all else.’ Irish Examiner

  BLUEPRINTS FOR A BARBED-WIRE CANOE

  ‘Wayne Macauley has the soul of a poet and his surreal novella is stunningly written…It is a satire of exquisite poise and confidence…If more Australian literature was of this calibre, we’d be laughing.’ Age

  ‘Tapping the hidden heart of a different Australia…this is original Australian writing at its best.’ Courier-Mail

  ‘A salutary fable about the horrors awaiting our disaffected modern citizenry…lasting visual images and resonant symbolism.’ Sydney Morning Herald

  CARAVAN STORY

  ‘In an age of corporate excess, of truth distorted by commercial demands, of the triumph of utilitarianism, Macauley’s warning, albeit in satirical form, sounds a clarion call.’ Sunday Star Times

  ‘Wayne Macauley’s first novel, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, showed that a real talent had arrived and his second confirms the promise.’ Age

  ‘Mixing elegy and whimsy, satire and black humour, language becomes pliant under Macauley’s command.’ Australian Book Review

  ‘A lament but also a call to arms, Caravan Story is a thrilling piece of satire, a compulsively readable, extremely well-wrought Orwellian fable that I believe announces the arrival of Macauley as a major Australian writer.’ Readings Monthly

  Wayne Macauley is the author of three highly acclaimed novels: Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and, most recently, The Cook, which was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. He lives in Melbourne. waynemacauley.com

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Wayne Macauley

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2014 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover and page design by W. H. Chong

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  The quotes from Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard are from Peter Carson’s translations in Anton Chekhov: Plays (Penguin, 2002); quotes from Dostoevsky’s Demons from the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage, 2006); and the epigraph from a letter written by Kleist to Wilhelmine von Zenge, November 16, 1800. The translation is by Peter Wortsman, from his Afterword to Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist (Archipelago, 2010).

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an Accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004

  Environmental Management System printer

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Author: Macauley, Wayne

  Title: Demons / by Wayne Macauley.

  ISBN: 9781922147363 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922148391 (ebook)

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  For my sisters

  It holds, I replied, because all the stones want to cave in at once…

  Heinrich von Kleist, on observing an arch at Würzburg

  FRIDAY

  They were going to tell stories. Let’s go away for the weekend, said Megan, and leave our phones behind and turn off the computers and the television and stop time because time is moving too fast and soon we’ll all be saying where the hell did our lives go? We’ll cook some food and drink some wine and each tell a story.

  There would be no kids. No pets. No devices. The house belonged to Megan and Leon’s younger sister, Lucy—she and her husband, Tom, had moved to Sydney for work. A two-storey perched high on a hill overlooking the sea, just off the Great Ocean Road. A steep driveway, a carport at the top, three bedrooms up and one down. Same road in and out. A cantilevered balcony looking over the trees.

  Megan and Evan got down about four, Adam and Lauren just after half past, Leon and Hannah a bit after that. They were living in the bush near Halls Gap now, in the stone cottage Leon built. By five o’clock the smell of slow-braised lamb already filled the house and the wood heater was blazing.

  It was the middle of winter, and the forecast was for rain.

  Megan was a filmmaker, documentaries mostly. Strong-boned, olive skin, no makeup, short brown hair. She’d been working with the communities up in the Territory, interviewing old people, editing down the footage and sending out group emails about how amazing it was to watch people tell their stories like that. We don’t know how to listen any more, she said. Well? What do you say? We’ll go down Friday night, come back Sunday. Maybe a couple of days together will be enough to get back to something real.

  She was with Evan, a musician; short, lean, fit-looking but lately gone a bit to seed. He used to make his money as a cash-in-hand builder but was now doing up and selling. He was younger than Megan, forty-two, and still had all his hair. They had five kids between them, late teens to early twenties, including a daughter, Aria, from Evan’s first marriage.

  Adam and Lauren had three kids. Their oldest, Oliver, a problem child, was in his last year of school. Adam was a lawyer, intellectual property, specialising in litigation. He wore his grey hair swept fashionably back, was pale, medium height, with not much fat on him. Clients commented on his pianist’s fingers. Lauren was in advocacy and travelled a lot; short, compact, dyed red hair and red lipstick. She went to the gym four nights a week no matter what city she was in. She wore rings and bangles, sensible shoes, h
ad a pointed energy about her and a clipped way of speaking. They’d been together since uni.

  Next there was Leon, Megan’s younger brother, stocky with a round face that had in its time been ravaged by drink but was now showing good signs of recovery. A journalist, retired. He was bald on top and what was left around the sides was razored to a shadow. There was something a bit distant about Leon. He’d beaten the grog with naturopathy, meditation and yoga and the cure had clung to him almost as persistently as the disease. Hannah, his girlfriend, his new girlfriend, was the youngest. She had long legs, Hannah, a long torso and long red hair. She was either wistful or stupid, depending where you stood. She wore a bit of dark around the eyes and a smear of gloss on the lips. They had no kids, together or apart.

  The last of that group to agree to put aside that cold weekend in winter were Marshall and his wife, Jackie. Marshall was a politician, newly-elected; Jackie worked in events promotion. But by eight o’clock they still hadn’t showed.

  Megan and Evan took the main bedroom, with the view of the sea. The other rooms were down the hallway past the bathroom with a view up through the trees. The latecomers got the bedroom downstairs. After everyone had unloaded their stuff and dropped the bags of food and drink in a row on the kitchen floor, Megan suggested a walk. The dark was coming down. She and Lauren, then Leon and Hannah, put on their hats and coats and scarves. Put the meat in the fridge! said Lauren, from the bottom of the stairs.

  Evan found the cooler bag with the beer in it and twisted the top off two. Are you into this? he said. Adam put his beer on the bench and started unpacking the meat. I reckon we should have themes, said Evan, like politics or the environment or technology or love or something, otherwise everyone’s just going to rabbit on about any old crap. We should write down half-a-dozen and put them in a hat then someone chooses one and we tell stories about that. Then, if we’ve got the energy, we choose another one later.

  They unloaded the shopping and went into the living room. It was warm in there now. At one end was a big set of windows and a sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony that looked out over the treetops to the sea. Two couches, four big armchairs and in the centre a low table of sea-worn timber with a stack of magazines and picture books on it.

  Adam stood by the fire. On the wall behind was a painting in pastel tones of sky, sea and dune, the paint dripping from the border of one into the body of the other. Out in the real world, beyond the glass, the ocean was gunmetal grey with a violet sheen and a silver ripple and above it a sunset sky already deepening into dark. Adam slid the door back. The sea was loud, you could feel the thud of the waves. Rosellas screeched in the treetops, flew up, wheeled, then hurtled down the hill.

  What do I think? said Adam, belatedly. I think the idea of having themes and taking turns is stupid. This weekend we should throw away the rule book, let time stretch out before us. A different kind of time. Story time.

  Story time! said Evan.

  Yeah, said Adam, closing the door, because that’s the kind of time we’ve lost; everything now is frantic time, desperate time, snatched time. So this weekend we lie on the couch, smoke our pipes, let the pot bubble on the stove.

  Evan nodded but he wasn’t listening. He was looking back through the living room to the rest of the house.

  It’s a dog’s breakfast this place, isn’t it? Ad? He was pointing with the neck of his stubby. The kitchen’s all wrong for a start; they should have incorporated it into the living area and orientated it towards the view so while you’re cooking you can still talk to your guests and they can see out the windows. You’ve got more natural light then, too. I’d knock out that wall, he said, and run the bench and cupboards along there, turn that space into a walk-in pantry and take the dining room out through there. And it’s stupid having the fourth bedroom downstairs, that should be the recreation area, then you incorporate the downstairs bathroom into it so you can have showers and dump your sandy things when you get back from the beach. Then in the open area there you have your table tennis table and so on. Then up here, you extend the whole joint out that way—he pointed again—at the end of the hall, to create the fourth bedroom. That’s just wasted space back there, behind the house, with the washing line and that. Then I’d knock down the carport and turn it into outdoor entertaining, take in the new wet area, reroute the driveway so the cars go round the back and plant it all out, all that area along the fence and up the embankment, with low to medium local natives so it becomes the intermediate space between beach and house and the upstairs part, the big space here, becomes more like a chill-out zone for eating, drinking, reading, watching telly, listening to music. Then I’d pull down that balcony—it looks like the fuckin’ prow of the Titanic—and put up something quarter-size so you actually take full advantage of the view.

  The downstairs door opened and the walking party made their way upstairs. Lauren’s got one! said Megan. Suicide, or attempted suicide.

  Is that a theme? said Evan.

  Megan took off her scarf. Is that your second? she said.

  The lamb was brilliant: slow-braised in a big Chasseur with a side serve of Leon’s kale. He’d brought broccoli too, and spinach. The wines were top-notch. That’s the Heathcote, said Evan: Ad, try that, that’s the Heathcote. Everyone except Leon tried the Heathcote.

  Evan reckons they should knock down that wall, said Adam, and make all this kitchen and living; move the fourth bedroom up here, knock down the carport, turn downstairs into recreation and open it out onto a landscaped barbecue area with natives.

  I can see that, said Lauren. Not in summer though, said Leon; that’s a fire hazard, that. They started eating. Because of what Leon said Lauren told a story she’d heard from a friend about a volunteer firefighter who was actually the arsonist who’d started the fire that burned down his town, including his house. The friend was there when the arsonist made his confession. That’s called impulse-control disorder, said Adam. Leon told a story he’d heard when he was still a journo about a social worker who was found molesting her young male clients and that set off a discussion about facades and secrets that took them through to the end of the meal. They cleared the dishes. Megan told one about her and Leon’s cousin who got mixed up with another cousin, a girl called Philomena, and how it was discovered by—it took Megan forever to explain this—their uncle, but, she said, not the father of Philomena or the cousin but the father of a different cousin again, Megan and Leon’s mother’s younger sister’s husband. Leon said Hannah had a similar story, and she told it.

  It was generally agreed, then, after that first round of impromptu stories, that when the real storytelling began they would try not to make them all about family and forbidden sex.

  All right, said Lauren, once everyone was seated in the living room. The sky had darkened and a full moon was rising over the water. The sea was loud, but faraway loud. All right, she said, I’m going to start. My story is called Woman Killed By Falling Man.

  Are we going to give them titles? said Evan.

  Adam, said Hannah, do you think we should give them titles?

  Titles are good, said Adam.

  Wait, said Megan. She handed Lauren the piece of driftwood she’d brought back from the beach. The story stick, she said.

  Well, said Lauren, I heard this story from a fri
end of my sister’s. (Adam, don’t spoil it.) It was about this friend of hers. Her name was Carly, Carly Ashburton, she worked in cultural programs for local government. My sister’s friend worked in council too. An awful story: do you want to hear it?

  Everyone nodded.

  Well, she said, it seemed Carly Ashburton was going through some sort of marriage crisis. They should have been happy, this couple: the children had left and were happy, a son in Europe, a daughter in America. But they’d been married a long time and they weren’t happy, that’s the truth. The husband was on sleeping pills and anti-depressants and had actually tried to kill himself. He’d spent the last year in therapy.

  Wait, said Evan; the couple, the couple. Has the other half got a name? Tim, said Adam. Tim, said Lauren—he ran a consultancy business in the city, contracts with state government, getting infrastructure into new housing projects. Can I go on?

  So, anyway, said Lauren, the husband, Tim, had got it into his head that the main cause of his depression was the quiet of the suburbs (they had a house in Auburn). He wanted to buy a city apartment—he was making bucketloads, after all—and be closer to work. He wanted to live the city life—cafés, bars, restaurants, movies, theatre—and he wanted Carly to live it with him. But Carly wanted different. She wanted to get away from the rat-race, not closer to it. She wanted a treechange.

  Well, eventually she wore Tim down; he could see it was going to get messy otherwise. They found a country place out past Sunbury, an old bluestone church on a couple of hectares tucked in off the road in a stand of cypress trees. They picked it up for a song, gutted it, and started rebuilding: a big open-plan living area and kitchen downstairs, mezzanine bedroom upstairs. But does real estate bring happiness? Really?