Geoffrey Cousins - The Butcherbird

‘Mr Beaumont? Mr Jack Beaumont?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a subpoena for you, sir. And Mrs Beaumont, is it? One for you also, madam.’ He disappeared into the night as quickly as he’d emerged and they were left staring blankly at the documents in the half-light.

The whales had left the bays and coves of the eastern harbour now and were swimming slowly outside the shipping lane towards the heads. The mother nudged the calf gently to one side if it strayed towards the marker buoys. They felt the currents of the incoming tide and pushed on into the open sea, turning to the north to join the migration to warmer waters. Just five hundred yards from the shore, but well outside the surf line, they made their way past Manly and Harbord, edged out to sea to clear Long Reef, resumed their line by Mona Vale and Bilgola and Whale Beach, and then swam through the punctuated flashes of the Barrenjoey Lighthouse, leaving Sydney and its sleeping citizens well behind.

Maroubra set the cruise control on the steering column and let his mind, too, slip on to autopilot as the heavy frame of the four-wheel drive ploughed into the air currents. The course was set for Bowral, more than an hour’s drive south-west of Sydney, a place he’d never visited before or even considered for a wet weekend. He thought of it vaguely, if at all, as the retreat of those who rode horses early in the morning-or at least wore clothes that looked as if they rode horses-and then spent the remainder of the day in vast gardens cluttered with daffodils and other colourful objects that sprang unexpectedly from bare ground. Maroubra disliked horses, at least horses that were groomed and cosseted and pranced about in arenas, ridden by people in tight jackets and ridiculous helmets. If they were afraid of falling off, why did they get on? He felt he might appreciate wild horses if he saw a herd of brumbies thundering down a gorge, but this wasn’t an experience that had passed his way.

Yet here he was in the land of leather-patched elbows, searching for a name on a gate. At least you couldn’t miss the gates here. They were all enormous structures of stone and wood or wrought iron, with English names emblazoned on them that sounded as if the Duke of Barwick Feld had slipped away to the colonies for a short break and was taking tea, and a muscular serving wench, just up the garden path. He pushed the accelerator down hard as the engine struggled up the thousand-foot climb through the dense eucalypt forest on the slopes of Mount Gibraltar. The towns of Bowral and Mittagong lay below, but Maroubra’s eyes were searching for the name BLACKBUTT LODGE on a fence or gatepost.

It had been a curious, disturbing call that had brought him here. Late at night, on his home phone, his wife asleep, him dozing, asleep but awake as he often was now, jerked into consciousness by the night call that always rang of disaster. He hadn’t recognised the voice at first. He was attuned to voices, always knew if a friend was sick or troubled from the voice, or if a lie was sliding down the line, or a hand reaching into his pocket. And there were few words to decipher; just ‘Come tomorrow. Bowral, on the mountain, look for Blackbutt Lodge. Be there at eleven.’ But it was the Pope’s voice, flat and strangled and lifeless, nothing like the steady, calm tone he’d heard for so many years-there was no mistaking the timbre underlining the half-whispered instructions.

He saw it now, the name, not on a pretentious assemblage of inappropriate grandeur, but on the cross-pole of a simple frame of undressed trunks. He drove slowly down the steep road of crushed granite and parked in a turning area. No buildings were visible but he could make out strange shapes hiding in the dense copses, organic shapes or twisted, contorted metallic-looking objects. The view through the clearing was a hundred kilometres or more across to a hazy mountain range with honey-coloured escarpments. He stopped to drink in the colours and shapes. Suddenly he realised he was looking through the Jamison Valley to the Blue Mountains, without a structure or a road or any sign of human presence, other than the ghosts lurking in the trees, to interrupt his view.

He didn’t hear or see the spare figure step from behind the tree until the voice startled him. ‘You can look a long time.

There’s a lot to see.’

Maroubra turned at the familiar voice, stronger than it had been in the dark hours, and saw the lean face, lined with tension. ‘Yes. It’s a surprise after all the clipped grass and rose gardens.’

The Pope attempted a smile, but it was thin and unconvincing. He was dressed more warmly than seemed necessary, in a thick woollen jacket and knitted cap, although Maroubra realised the breeze carried a sharp chill here on the mountain. ‘Let’s walk. I’ll show you some sculptures. We won’t go to the lodge, if you don’t mind. I’d rather we weren’t seen together.’

He led the way through the tall, straight trunks, rising thirty feet before the first leaves kissed a branch. Maroubra could see the shapes more clearly now, decipher the forms of something he might expect in an art gallery, if he ever went to an art gallery. They stopped in front of a commanding piece, claiming its right in the centre of a wide clearing, a bronze mask atop a tall wooden totem staring out into the mists of the valley. The base was a roughly cut block of granite, but where the stone met the wood even Maroubra’s untrained eye could discern the skill in the fitting together of the two. The Pope stood back, waiting for a response.

‘It’s a wonderful thing. I don’t know anything about sculpture, but even I can feel its presence.’ Maroubra reached down to rub the joining places with his bare hands. ‘And this work, it’s alive somehow, the way this is done.’

Now the Pope’s face broke into a wide smile as he came forward. ‘It’s morticed, you see. The stone is cut almost like the joints in a fine drawer. And look here at the pinning. They’re cast bronze, cast to fit exactly.’ He also knelt to place his gloved hands on the cold stone. Maroubra raised his brows inquiringly. ‘It’s my son’s. It’s his best piece so far. And he’ll do better things yet. He’s in his stride now, works all day from before breakfast till the light’s gone. He’s mastered the technical skills, now it’s all the images springing up, all the emotion emerging through the hands into the wood and the stone and the bronze.’ He rose and turned to Maroubra. ‘You’re right. They’re alive. And so is he.’

It was the longest speech Maroubra had ever heard from the Pope, almost feverish in its intensity. He felt there was nothing to say, so he rose quietly and they both stared at the sculpture. He could hear the wind in the high trees but there was no other sound, not even a bird call, as the two men stood, almost like carved figures themselves, on the sloping ground.

Finally the Pope shook himself, as if emerging from hibernation, and took a folded envelope from his coat pocket. ‘Here. Take this. Use it for Jack and Louise.’

Maroubra opened the envelope. He could see it was the corporate filing for a company, listing its headquarters, directors, assets and liabilities, but the name was unfamiliar to him. ‘What is this?’

‘Just take it. I saw they were charged.’ Maroubra examined the document more closely. ‘Your name is here as a director.’ He read on and looked up at the Pope in surprise. ‘And that Trudeaux woman. What in God’s name would you be doing on a company board with her?’

The Pope held up one hand. ‘No questions. You take that and you follow wherever it leads you. Whether you’ll find the person you want in a way that will pin him to the wall, I don’t know. It’s the best I can do.’

Maroubra watched his face as he spoke and read the strain. ‘And what will happen to you if I do pursue it to the end?’