Peter Corris - Aftershock

‘I’ll be putting all this in my notebook,’ she said.

‘Only right and proper. Me, too.’

She gave me her address in Whitebridge and I agreed to meet her there at 6 p.m. That left me with eight hours to occupy. The day was perfect; bright sun with a little high cloud; a light wind to stir the trees and lift the waves. I promised myself a piece of it after I’d done something to earn it and used the phone energetically for half an hour. People splashed noisily in the pool, seizing the hour.

My calls to Sydney and then to Newcastle had put me in touch, through the journalists’ circumlocutory network, with Barrett Breen, crime writer on the Newcastle Herald. We made the usual deal-I could scratch his back for information and he could scratch mine for a story if one materialised. I drove into the city and was inside Breen’s cubicle in the busy office, shaking his hand, before eleven o’clock-there’s something to be said for not living in the big smoke. Breen was a big man with the shoulders of a swimmer and the belly of beer drinker who doesn’t swim much anymore. His grip was powerful.

‘Mate of Harry Tickener’s, eh?’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to write him a piece for ages. Some good stories up here.’

‘You know Harry,’ I said. ‘He’ll say it’s shit, tell you to re-write it and say it’s still shit. But he’ll print it if it’s any good.’

He was suddenly a bit less sure of himself and I got the feeling he didn’t have stories to burn. ‘Mm. Well, I got those cuts for you. On the desk there. Good local angle to this?’

I nodded and sat down at the desk. Breen looked as if he hoped for more from me but I kept my head down and he made a quick phone call and left. Early lunch was my guess.

The abduction of Greta Coleman and the trial of Werner Schmidt had got more media coverage than usual because the girl’s father was a prominent citizen-businessman and churchgoer-who’d called for the death penalty. The Wran government was in reformist mode at the time, emphasising the social context for crime, the need for counselling, rehabilitation. None of that was worth a rat’s tail to Rory Coleman. He denounced the fifteen year sentence as ‘weak-minded capitulation to the forces that are cancering our society’. Cancering, that was nice. He called for Schmidt to be executed along with all other such offenders. He had a fall-back position-if the weak-kneed, communist-leaning government wasn’t prepared to put animals like Schmidt into the lime, it should at least have the courage to make them suffer physically. ‘Werner Schmidt should receive one hundred lashes of the cat o’nine tails,’ Mr Coleman was quoted as saying, ‘and I would be happy to wield the whip myself.’

Coleman organised a ‘fathers of rape victims committee’. It met in Heathcote and issued statements to the press. He turned up every day at the Glebe court where Schmidt was tried. At first he behaved circumspectly, but as the trial went on, particularly when the defence introduced medical evidence on Schmidt’s mental state, he became agitated, shouted and had to be ejected. He created a major disturbance outside the court after the sentence was handed down and narrowly missed being charged with assaulting police and instigating a riot. He had a lot of supporters.

This was the material that had been blacked out in Oscar Bach’s clippings. The cuts contained a few follow-up stories. One carried photographs of Greta before and after the assault. She had been a pretty girl, blonde, carefree-looking. The later picture showed a face from which every trace of character and promise had been wiped away. Rory Coleman hadn’t shied away from the camera; there were shots of him holding placards, shaking his fist, looking distraught. He was balding, wide-faced, belligerent in expression and body language. If the quotes were accurate, he was articulate, with a good grasp of conservative arguments on the issues of law and order and the punishment of sexual offenders. He owned and operated a number of carpet warehouses. He looked as if he’d like to do his own TV ads, shouting abuse at the opposition.

I read the clippings through carefully and made photocopies of several, printing Breen’s name on the user list attached to the photocopier. I left a note of thanks on his desk and one of my cards. My hands were dirty from handling the distributor cap earlier and from the newsprint, so the card wasn’t the cleanest. I hoped Barrett would be able to cope with that after lunch.

I bought a sandwich and an apple and some mineral water and drove to Redhead Beach. Kahiba was on the way and, just out of curiosity, I drove past the Costi house. It was set on a five-acre block, surrounded by forest; it looked like an old squatter’s mansion restored to its former glory. Nice place-long verandahs all around, widow’s walk on the upper storey, bay windows. There were several cars inside the gate, sitting around like discarded toys, and a big, black, stripped-down, high handlebarred motor bike. The Costi brothers sounded like an odd bunch-Mario, businessman and earthquake victim; Bruno, wimp; and Ronny.

The day had warmed up and people had taken advantage of it. There seemed to be more kids on the beach than was natural for a schoolday in October, but I suppose a lot of them could have had sore throats or upset stomachs. The older ones might have been in the study period running up to the HSC. If so, they were seeking inspiration in the natural world rather than in books.

I parked near the clubhouse which carried a sign saying that the Redhead Surf Livesaving Club dated from 1910. There was just one relic of that period around-a wooden lookout seat mounted on the rocks. Otherwise, the place was a model of the well-tended modern beach. The dunes were protected behind wire fences and were being re-grassed; there were plenty of litter bins and signs insisting on their use. The kiosk served food in paper bags and coffee in returnable mugs.

I changed in the shed and went onto the beach in shorts and T shirt feeling too old, too pale and too Sydney to really fit in. But once I was on the sand those feelings fell away. The sun was high and hot and the waves were curling and crashing about a hundred metres out. It would’ve been close on thirty years before that I’d surfed there. I remembered the massive, pink bluff that gives the place its name and the sweep of the sand all the way south for nine miles to the lake entrance.

Just like thirty years ago, it was swimmers to the left of the rocks, surfers to the right. No boogey boards then, plenty of them now. I joined the swimmers. The water was cold and clear. I waded out, slid under a wave and swam out to where they were breaking. The wind came back a few years after I stopped smoking, although the body strength has ebbed. I kicked hard in the old-fashioned way and chopped into the water, ducking under the waves that broke fiercely and threatened to push me back. I made it to the right spot with plenty of breath and strength to spare and noted where a small rip was running, off to the right. Be easier to get out in that next time.

After two misses, due to my bad timing, I caught the third one that came along, a high-curling, surging monster that broke behind me after I had some momentum up, collected me and propelled me forward like a missile. I reared up, hunched my shoulders and saw the red bluff away to my left and the land, green and misty through the spray, and then I was locked into the world of blue and white water, jetting ahead with everything around me tight and controlled and beautiful.

I used the rip to get out and caught a few good waves, but none to equal that first one. I lay on the beach and ate the food and drank the mineral water. Although I didn’t really want coffee, I had a cup just to support that sound environmental policy. A harsh Aussie voice over the PA system called for “Wayne Lucas’ and Adam Amato’ and ‘Brenda Kimonides’ to call at the kiosk. I drifted off to sleep with Lonesome Dove as a pillow and the Falcon’s distributor cap tucked away, dirtying my T shirt.