Peter Carey - Amnesia

“She hasn’t pulled any carving knives on you?”

“She did you? When?”

He paused, considering. “When we were all young she was fucking amazing, the stunts she’d pull. But now … Is she OK, really? She looks shaky.”

“Anxious, I’d say.”

“But isn’t this a very fucking strange place for an anxious woman to have a house? She’s got professional car thieves as neighbours up the road. Did you see that? The used cars scattered through the scrub. That’s what we used to call a hide-out. Her road’s all grown over. I had to leave the Merc at the bottom of the hill.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.”

“A Mercedes-Benz S500. Do you have any idea what that is?”

The Mercedes-Benz S500 is the four-door sedan preferred by Chinese businessmen, wealthy Americans and Third World dictators. “No,” I said. “What is it?”

“You don’t drive? This one will drive for you. It’s got three computers. This is the Merc for you, mate. It’s got ‘Lane Keeping Assist.’ You could use that, for sure.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder and we walked a way together and it was difficult to resist the old habits of mockery and affection. “It’s got bluetooth,” he said, “and Sirius and HD radio, USB and SD ports, you’re not listening. All right, I understand. We’ll save her idiot daughter if we can. I’m more concerned about mumsy. Has she compromised herself, Felix? Has she placed herself in any danger that you know of?”

“She does have a black eye, mate.”

Of course that gave him pause and his mouth entered one of those unstable states, never predictable in their conclusion, which resolved, on this occasion, when he took my hand companionably. “We need her cooperation, you get it don’t you? Harbouring is a crime.”

“I’m confused.”

He blinked as if considering my “confusion” from different angles. Then, suddenly, he was off walking earnestly towards the east, head down, thrashing passionately at the dogwood bushes. I had no way to turn him. “How does she get her food?” he demanded. “You never noticed that mailbox up on the road?” He blew his nose. “Why is it so big? And when a great mad bushfire comes exploding across the tree tops, what does she do then? Why would she live somewhere so extreme?”

Then, certainly without me planning it—I did not even know it existed—we arrived at a forestry dugout. You cannot get a better fire defence than a dugout. This one had been driven directly into a hill like a mineshaft, with heavy wood framing around the entrance, tons of earth supported by a rough-adzed tree trunk. A dirty canvas curtain was set back a few feet from the doorway.

We stood together gazing at it and it was then I felt his massive stillness.

“So you’re the country boy,” he said. “Then tell me: why wouldn’t a big fire burn all the oxygen inside?”

“That’s a curtain. They wet it down. The tunnel will be L-shaped.”

“Ah, you’ve been in there?” I recognised a peculiar poker face from those long-lost days when I was agonising over my plans for Drivetime Radio and we played cards and drank all through the night.

“Why would I do that?”

He grinned as he took me by my upper arm and locked me tight. I thought, the Angel is in there. I’ll get my interview.

“I should feel sorry for you,” he said, dragging me bodily towards the entrance. Suddenly I was afraid. I kicked at his knee and almost put my back out, and it was at that moment—just as the faint light of his flashlight reached the rusty canvas—that the magpie swooped. It hit as the white-backed males always do, with a rush of wings, a loud thwack, landing with sufficient momentum to jolt Woody’s head a good eight centimetres forward. A moment later the assassin was back up his tree, indistinguishable from his brothers and sisters, safe from the passions he had unleashed below.

I have suffered the brutality of magpies all my life. In England, I am told, their magpie is a gentle creature. In Bacchus Marsh, in magpie season, kids would return from their run to the outside lavatory, heads streaming with blood, most of them in tears, while the more timid remained in the classroom, shitting in their pants rather than suffer the terrors of assault.

But lord, I never witnessed anything like this: Woody Townes, a hundred and thirty kilograms of meat, fell to his knees. Blood washed his forehead and filled his eyes he bawled like a heifer in a barbwire fence.

It is amazing, I thought, how such a large strong man, a beast electrified by his own barely suppressed violence, has so little tolerance for pain. He was left like the blinded Cyclops, his fluorescent feet all dusty, swinging his fat fist at what must have been my shadow.

Celine, of course, came running, 100 percent in character, black-eyed, barefoot, swinging her first-aid kit.

“Be still,” she told the fallen man.

There was a war between kookaburras and magpies above our heads. I could hear the clacking of their beaks. Celine drew on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves and separated the strands of Woody’s hair.

He bellowed. Celine raised her hands.

I glimpsed a deep meaty gouge from crown to brow.

Celine said: “All I’ve got is methylated spirits.” And she was pouring it, straight from the bottle, drenching his scalp before he had a chance to stop her.

“Shit. Lay off will you?”

“You need stitches.”

“Piss off.” He wiped his eyes and left his wrist a bloody mess. “It’s just a magpie.”

“Listen my love,” Celine said, way too tenderly. “You are losing too much blood.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yes, but let’s get you to the car.”

The argument was interrupted by Dobbo and his gang and their impatient boots, their long investigative noses, their professional judgements: “That’s not a magpie wound.”

“All due respect, Sergeant, but allow me to know what hit me. It was a bloody magpie. I got swooped.”

“Was it carrying a hammer and chisel?” said Dobbo. “It must have been.”

“Come on Sergeant,” Celine said urgently. “Help me please.” She had her hands under Woody’s armpits and was attempting to help him to his feet.

“I can do it myself,” cried the patient. “My legs still work.” At which his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed on the dirt.

“Sergeant,” cried Celine, which was the first moment I began to think about the mother plover, the habit of dragging her wing as if wounded.

Dobbo stood with his hands on his hips looking at Celine with unsympathetic amusement. “You know why we can’t even get the car up here, Mrs. Baillieux. Because you’ve broken the law.”

It was at this point, I marked later, that Celine became completely manic. “You have to help,” she said.

I thought, why is she antagonising him like this? She dug her hands under Woody’s armpits again and showed herself ineffectual to an alarming degree.

“All right, darling,” Dobbo said, “get out of the way.”

“No,” said Celine.

“Go on,” said Dobbo. “Off.”

I did not think, not for a moment, that I was dealing with an actress, so I was alarmed to see her panic, to follow the fraught procession through the paperbarks, down into the blackberries, across the creek to Woody’s computerised Mercedes-Benz. He regained consciousness for long enough to refuse to let anyone else drive, but when he was safely in the back seat Celine took a paper towel and wiped his indignant eyes and held a wad of red tissue against his wound. It was not pleasant, to see this tenderness invested in a man who had hurt her. The engine fired, and the black monster lumbered slowly down the corrugated road. Celine waved, although I doubt anyone was looking.