Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe Page 6

  Michael drew me into the kitchen. The sound of Layland’s voice had brought Dave to the window again. Michael pointed at his watch as if to say: It won’t be long—and Dave disappeared again. Michael leaned against the kitchen bench. Well, Bram, he said, the story is this. They want to demolish ur. They’re planning another Estate, bigger and better they say, fifty kilometres northwest of us. The freeway, they say, is finally coming. But here’s the joke: it’s going to pass straight through us, six lanes wide, and link up with this new estate—a satellite town they’re calling it. We’re being offered homes and the old petrol subsidies again if we want to move there, but the fact is, whether we take up this offer or not, ur is going to be destroyed. You were right about the tip, the shire was trying to get rid of us. They’d been putting pressure on the government for years but when the tip didn’t move us, well, they turned the screws a little harder and now it looks like the government has finally buckled. I think it’s all a trick, of course. There’ll be no freeway, no satellite town, we’ll all be ‘temporarily housed’ while ur is demolished and then we’ll all be forgotten again. But I’m not trying to influence you one way or the other. I’ve already told everyone outside what’s going on and we all have to make up our own minds about it. I’m sure you know where I stand. And just to get something clear: he knocked on my door first, you were in town. I said we’d never seen any such letter and then got the news out of him anyway. I asked him to wait while the others were told—in case they had any questions. He was getting all uptight and wanted to go. I told him he had to wait for you and Craig to get back from town. He made a run for it and fell off the front porch, there was nothing more to it than that. I’ve told him he can stay here the night and, if he likes, someone can drive him back tomorrow. You talk to him if you want, and make up your own mind. I’m sure the others have told Craig by now, I’ll go out and see how he’s taking it.

  I went back into the lounge room and took a chair opposite Layland. You must understand Mr…he said. Bram, I said. You must understand, Bram, Layland began, that I’ve only been sent here to go over the details. This has been a very trying time for me—and he reached down and touched his ankle as if to indicate what he meant. He seemed to have relaxed a little, he’d taken off his suit jacket and put his handkerchief away but the ankle was obviously still giving him trouble: he shifted his leg and readjusted the makeshift icepack, now soggy and unfrozen. I could hear the low murmur of voices outside. Layland, apparently conscious of them, was speaking almost in a whisper. But now that it’s fallen to me to break the news myself, he said, I think I should make a few points very clear. You seem like a sensible person, Bram—he glanced towards the window where the curtains were still drawn as if to draw some not-too-subtle comparison between myself and the others—and I don’t think my words will be wasted. The fact is, this has to be seen as a very favourable turn of events for you all. I can tell you now, honestly, that the government has felt very bad about the planning mistakes that were made here in the first place and has been searching for years now for a way to correct them and in some way compensate you all for the distress these mistakes have caused. What you have here is an extremely generous offer. I’ve seen the plans for this satellite town and, I’m not just saying this, I’ve already discussed it with my wife—I will be the first person standing in line for a house there, you can rest assured on that. This place here was an experiment, granted, and I think you would also grant that it has been a terrible failure. But what use is an experiment if we can’t learn from it? The new development has been thoroughly thought out, thanks in the main to a close and careful study of the mistakes made here and a determination not to have them repeated. You will own your own home, petrol subsidies will be provided, there will be business and employment opportunities aplenty. I’ve seen the plans, I assure you. And, well, to be perfectly frank, I’m a little surprised at the reception I’ve got here. You would think I was the bearer of bad news rather than good. It surprises me, I have to say…Just then, as if on cue, the screen door slammed and Dave entered with a bottle of beer and two frosty glasses on a tray. He placed it on the coffee table beside Layland’s foot and quietly left again. I poured a glass each. Well, yes, Bram, continued Layland, all I can say is that if you have any influence here at all, and I suspect you might, I would urge you to use this influence on the others. This is a very generous offer. Of course, as you know, your homes here will be demolished. But it makes perfect sense, I’m sure you’ll agree, that the tract of land already purchased for the original freeway should be used, and that by bringing it through here and then diverting it slightly north-west along the new fifty-kilometre tract of land we are in the process of purchasing we can deliver it to the new satellite town at very little additional cost. But I don’t need to explain all that to you, I’m sure. The fact is that the old estate here will have to go anyway, and we might as well kill two birds with one stone. And, really, I know this must all be something of a shock to you now but, a year from now, say, will anyone be shedding any tears? Brick walls, barbed-wire gates, vandalised houses, leaking sewage, a rubbish tip on your doorstep; you may feel some attachment to it at the moment but I don’t think you’ll be feeling too nostalgic about it when it’s gone. There’s no hurry, of course, we’re not asking you to pack up and move overnight but I need hardly remind you that, having learned from our mistakes as I was mentioning before, a firm decision has already been made to build the freeway first this time before embarking on the development at the other end, so, well, as you can see, your time is limited to some extent and in the meantime I would urge you to use what influence…

  Michael had walked back into the room and Layland suddenly fell silent. It was barely a glance that Michael threw at me but I knew straight away that in his opinion I’d already spent too long with Layland. I turned and walked back out into the sunshine, squinting my eyes against the light. As I stood on the porch, with my neighbours arrayed on the lawn in front of me, it was the sight of Marie-Claire with her head on Craig’s shoulder, weeping, that affected me most. All the way from Paris, for this. I went down onto the lawn to share a beer with them all and eat the snacks that Nanna had prepared. The memory of Inauguration Day and the opening gala came back to me: the drinks, the savouries, the fresh hopeful faces, the speeches, and that small crowd, almost replicated here, who stayed on under the marquee as the shadows lengthened to joke and laugh and form the first tentative friendships against the uncertainties to come. And yes, here we were again, this time on Michael’s front lawn as the afternoon faded and the last crumbs were picked from the plates. I put my arm around Marie-Claire and gently patted her shoulder. Très bon, I said, knowing no other French, and she smiled up at me through her tears. I walked over to Jodie and drew her aside. I was going to leave, I said, and ask you to come with me. But it looks like that plan might have to be shelved. She smiled at me. Why would you want to leave now? she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm: the freeway is coming; isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for? Maybe the park will be next…She lingered a moment, with a glint in her eye, then turned and went inside.

  Layland stayed that night; Jodie made up a bed for him on the lounge-room floor. A few remained drinking out on the lawn well after the sun had set and that night Dave’s remained closed for the first time since its former owner’s departure. I took my evening stroll around the ring road, checking the wall here and there, stopping to tap at a loose-looking course of bricks or to kick around at the base to see that the foundations were secure. How my evening stroll had changed from those evenings long ago! Around the entire perimeter the wall rose up beside me; no more vistas of paddocks, grazing cows and horses, rabbits hopping among the gorse in the last of the evening light. Thirty courses of house bricks, hastily laid, and beyond a world fading from memory with the fading of the light. I stopped at the gate and peered through the barbed wire. A cow lowed long and far away. In the faint orange glow from the drum outside his hut I could just make out A
lex standing, rubbing his hands and then offering them to the fire. As if accepting a gift, he then claimed it by rubbing. The bulldozer looked like some strange enormous animal, jaw open, teeth bared, waiting to strike. What days ahead! What little sense I had of them as I stood at the gate that night.

  eight

  I have to record, now, that no-one left ur and no-one arrived for the next two hundred and twenty-three days. That’s how long it went on. It began in the most quiet and subtle way, as I suppose all these things do. Layland’s ankle was bad: by the following day it had swelled to almost three times its normal size; there was no question of him moving. The following morning his car was brought in off the access road and parked inside the East Wall. Something had changed in him during the night, I imagine he’d hardly slept and had gone over a good many things in his mind; he now seemed to accept the fact of his confinement with equanimity. He hardly had cause for complaint. Jodie fluffed up his pillows and renewed the icepack, Nanna brought him a tray of freshly baked biscuits and the room was filled with flowers. I visited him that lunchtime and he greeted me with an almost apologetic smile. I asked would he like us to call someone for him, his wife perhaps, Craig could take the car and use the phone box in town. He waved his hand as if waving the very idea out of the room: he was not on good terms with his wife, she’d hardly miss him and if she did, well and good, let her worry, it won’t do her any harm at all, perhaps she might see through that cuckold and in his, Layland’s, absence begin to understand again what a good and faithful husband he’d been. I pursued the matter no further. I asked him if he was comfortable—to which he replied: Yes, very—and suggested that we leave any further discussion of yesterday’s business until he was feeling better. He was welcome to stay, as long as was needed; he would not find us lacking in hospitality. On the outside, I said—I had to allow myself this—we might look like a hard-bitten bunch but you would never find us throwing a guest out on the street. He dismissed the very idea. He’d had plenty of time to think during the night, he said—the ankle had kept him awake—and had changed his mind about many things. He would accept our hospitality, with gratitude. I let him know with a nod of my head that this was undoubtedly the wisest course of action and left him alone to rest.

  Michael was like a man on hot coals and it took all my best efforts to calm him down. He had called a meeting at Dave’s that morning and insisted that no-one was leaving until someone superior in Layland’s department provided a written guarantee of the compensation he was offering. We’ve heard enough hot-air promises already, Michael said: either they give it to us in writing or we won’t be moving an inch. No-one dared argue with him, indeed, there was, if anything, complete agreement with the stand he was proposing to take (it was hard to believe in any kind of offer any more, let alone one as generous as this) but nor do I think anyone knew at the time where this ultimatum would lead us. Everyone nodded their heads, but on every face I could see a furrowed brow.

  Within two weeks Layland was up and walking again, on a pair of crutches improvised by Craig. He sometimes drank with us in the afternoon at Dave’s and was in the most discreet way possible including himself gradually in the new village life. His presence was tolerated to a fair extent and I think many of us were grateful in a way to have him there; he seemed to offer us protection of some sort. So long as he remained our guest we could hope no moves would be made against us. But no such excuses for Layland were forthcoming from Michael; he could not stand the sight of the man, so deeply had the news affected him, and through all that time I did not see him once look Layland in the eye. This simmering tension had to come to a head—and sooner than expected, it did. Michael was drunk, that has to be taken into account: he had been drinking at Dave’s all afternoon. Layland came in late that evening and asked Dave for two bottles to take home with him, a harmless request in itself. But Michael suddenly exploded. He accused Layland of being a leech, of sucking the blood from the very thing he would have soon destroyed completely. In an instant Layland reverted to the awkward visitor we’d seen sitting in Michael’s lounge room with his leg propped up on the coffee table that hot day three weeks before. His cheeks grew flushed, he broke out in a sweat, he gestured vaguely and stammered but no words came from his mouth. Michael went on: what right did he have, an agent of our enemies, to come here and eat our food and drink our beer while back in the office where he was probably no more than a trifling functionary, an unreliable drunkard who had been passed over for promotion a hundred times, back there in that office shut off from the realities of life where they were at this very moment preparing the plans for our destruction, what right did he have, a grovelling worm, to assume the status of guest as if it were his God-given right? Layland stepped back, and stammered again. He paused, then turned on his heels, walked out the door and crossed the square towards his car parked over by the East Wall. Let him go, said Michael, still seated at his table. Some of us walked to the door. Layland reached his car, threw himself into the driver’s seat and turned the key: the motor whined but it wouldn’t start. The battery’s flat, said Craig at my shoulder: it’s been sitting too long. Layland got out again, slammed the door behind him and walked towards the gate. I heard the scrape of a chair behind me. Layland fumbled with the lock on the gate but he couldn’t open it; he started to scramble up, we heard his trousers tear, then the sound of a shot ringing out. Layland stopped—everything stopped—then, more desperately now, he tried to climb up over the gate again. Down the road at the tip, we heard Alex’s bulldozer start up and saw its lights come on. Michael was now striding across the square, a rifle in his hand. Layland flung himself from the top of the gate but as he hit the ground on the other side his weak ankle went on him again and in the lights of the approaching bulldozer we could see him hopping around in a circle, one trouser leg flapping. He looked down the road, caught like a frightened rabbit in the lights, then hobbled off across the wasteland outside the wall where the rubble from the demolished houses of South-East Court still lay. Michael reached the gate, poked the rifle through it, took aim and fired.

  It was only a flesh wound, the other leg this time, but Layland was unable to take another step. He was carried back to Michael’s house, Craig and Alex forming a fireman’s cradle, and laid out on his bed in the lounge room. Marie-Claire quickly cleaned and bandaged the wound, and Jodie renewed the icepack on his ankle, as each of us shuffled softly into the room and stood around the walls. The room was eerily quiet. Michael entered, still carrying his rifle, and Layland visibly stiffened as he crossed to the vacant armchair opposite and sat cradling it in his lap. I was about to speak, still unsure of what I was going to say, when suddenly the room went dark. What’s happened? said someone in the darkness. Someone else lit a match: The lights have gone, they’ve cut the power.

  Two hundred and twenty-three days is a long time, by anyone’s reckoning, and we thought they’d never end. The world beyond the wall receded even further from us, birds flew high above; we occasionally heard the distant sound of an engine and sometimes even a voice carried like a wisp on the wind, but throughout that time it’s the silence inside ur I’ll always remember most. We stayed in our houses or if we went out at all we did so in our slippers, afraid to break the spell of silence with the clumsy sounds of footfall. The autumn rains came; we watched them fall from our kitchen windows or together, in silence, at Dave’s. No-one would be leaving, that much was certain, but under these circumstances and in the depths of our hearts no-one knew any more what it meant to stay.

  In the midst of all this silence the most silent of all was Layland. It was as if he’d been struck dumb. He wrote out his requests on slips of paper that he handed to Jodie (he would have nothing to do with Michael, not even via this elliptic form of communication). He lay on the lounge-room floor all day with the blinds drawn, unable to move. Jodie brought him his food, Marie-Claire cleaned his wound and changed the bandage and Layland suffered these daily rituals in silence. He was a terrible sight, and
as much as we may have resented him and all he had come to stand for, at the same time we couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for his plight. He’d obviously been a great talker in his day, had been sent to ur precisely on that account (the great talkers always get the dirtiest jobs), and to see him now wrapped in silence, pale, feeble and a shadow of himself, couldn’t fail to move even the stoniest heart to pity. For this reason he was allowed some liberties which might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. His wound and consequent immobility hadn’t dulled his appetite and the great majority of his request slips were for food. Against our better judgment we invariably acceded to them. It wasn’t easy; had the sight of him not stirred up a kind of collective guilt for what Michael had done we’d gladly have seen him starve. We ourselves were facing this disturbing prospect and it grew more disturbing by the day.