White Throat Read online

  It was suddenly obvious and immediately urgent, as Jonathon’s car passed by and slowed for the exit, that she needed to speak with him, make an impression. She could pull out later if she changed her mind, but this opportunity would not come again.

  She thumped her palm down on the horn, three short pips and jumped out of the car, running with the rain like pistons driving into her face. His brake lights were still on. She started yelling and waving. Had he seen her in the mirror?

  She made it to the SUV’s passenger side, the koala decal eyeing her warily, grabbed the handle and threw herself in, slamming the door behind her. Her hair was plastered to her head, water dripped down her nose and arms and all over the seat.

  Jonathon looked across, a soundless O forming in his mouth.

  ‘Hi Jonathon, I’m Clementine Jones. The lawyer that was helping Helen save the turtles,’ she said, panting from the run across the carpark. ‘Your speech—inspiring! So inspiring.’

  Inspiration turned out to be the right line to take with Jonathon the Great, who was duly impressed by her passion. He made some encouraging remarks, gave a few tips for her submission to the foundation to continue the funding under her leadership and recommended she write to him as soon as possible.

  Which was why his email a week later was a slap in the face.

  Clementine sat at the kitchen table, facing the rusty old fridge with the backyard and the beach to her left, the morning heat ramping up on its way to uncomfortable but not yet overbearing, the phone at her ear.

  ‘Look, I understand it’s a decision of the Foundation Committee’—because, typically, he’d laid the blame at the feet of some faceless non-individual—‘but I guess I’d just like to understand the basis for the committee’s decision,’ she said. Her frustration meter was pushing up into the red zone.

  ‘As I said, Ms Jones, it’s just that you didn’t fit the criteria.’ Jonathon’s voice was beginning to sound impatient. He’d given her the company line, now he just wanted to get off the call.

  ‘Yes, you said that, but what exactly are the criteria?’

  ‘Well, there’s a number of factors but I don’t think—’

  ‘Take me through the factors.’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual. Experience, relevant knowledge and such.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I’m an experienced leader of people and I know the legislation backwards, as well as every single page of the company’s development submission. Every weakness, every angle.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m sure they took that all into account, but the committee also retains a discretion in making these decisions.’

  The words hung in the air for a moment as Clem felt her face set into a stony hardness. ‘Ah, I see,’ she said, through her teeth. ‘A discretion. And that would be to filter out unsavoury types, would it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure that’s how I’d put it, Ms Jones. But this is a private foundation, as you know, and governance is critical. It’s very important to ensure foundation funds are in the right hands.’

  ‘Jonathon, I’m a corporate lawyer and a governance professional. I’m a safe pair of hands.’ She sensed Jonathon recoiling. He probably wasn’t used to aggression. Why would he be, in his cushy nepotistic job?

  ‘Look, I really can’t discuss it any further, and I do have some rather important things to attend to…’

  ‘Well then, could you just answer me one question please, Jonathon. Has anyone else put up their hand to lead the campaign?’

  Clem had looked at WAGSS’ latest accounts. Without the Galimore Foundation, their effectiveness would be severely curtailed. They needed money for mail-outs, advertising, research, travel for meetings and legal fees. All of these things would buy influence and an audience with decision-makers. Without them, WAGSS would be fobbed off.

  ‘Well, I’m not at liberty—’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no. Which means the foundation is officially abandoning the white-throated snapping turtle.’

  ‘I can’t disclose—’

  ‘Jonathon, you owe it to the people who’ve put so much into this to give me an answer.’

  ‘There are many other deserving projects…’

  There was a long pause as Clem felt the blow: the door slamming on years of dedication from Helen and her team.

  ‘Well. Thank you, at least, for making that clear,’ she said. ‘But tell me why, Jonathon. For Helen’s sake, and for those who are carrying on the fight, tell me why the foundation is throwing away the significant investment it’s made in this campaign and into this biological wonder—a cloacal ventilating turtle!—and allowing it to shuffle off into oblivion?’

  Crickets.

  She sensed it straight away, in the embarrassed pause. She’d been expecting it, but nevertheless it was always a shock to be reminded of this thing she wore, this cloak that covered everything.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘If you must know, the foundation can’t be associated with an organisation led by the drunk driver who killed a poor little girl’s mother.’

  A flame had flared inside, her frustration exploding in anger.

  ‘Listen to me, Jonathon’—she was pointing in the air as she spoke—‘you can go back to your committee and tell them this is a big mistake. I am capable, experienced and passionate and if anyone can win this fight it’s me. Helen literally begged me to be more involved, did you know that?’

  ‘Ms Jones, I really must—’

  ‘And something else you can tell the goddamned committee: I’m preparing the press release now. Galimore Foundation Fails Turtle, it’ll say—and you can bet your life I’ll be including a paragraph on your own arsehole-breathing capabilities too.’

  She was walking the dogs an hour later when the phone rang.

  ‘So how’s the turtle wars going? Smashed those fuckers yet?’

  Not even a greeting. Yelling down the phone like he had to clear the sound of fifteen chainsaws was Matthew Torrens: ruckman for the Katinga Cats and now champion meat boner at the Earlville Abattoir. He’d been ringing her every week since she left.

  ‘Nope. Think it might be over, mate,’ she said, holding the phone away from her ear.

  ‘No way!’ he shouted.

  ‘Afraid so. The turtles will have to fend for themselves.’ The words didn’t come easy. A disrespect to Helen and what she’d stood for. She stopped on the beach path. Sergeant took a seat on her foot.

  ‘Eh? What the fuck? You need some muscle up there? Cos I can be there, Jonesy, just say the word.’

  Torrens had been a standover man, very successfully, before his meat-boning career. He’d only recently been released from Loddon prison when he turned up at training, asking for a run. She’d taken him on—at six foot six, built like a heavyweight boxer, who wouldn’t? She’d given him extra conditioning sessions to build his fitness. He’d become critical to the team’s success and something of a hero around town when they won the drought-breaking grand final.

  ‘No, Torrens. It’s not muscle I need. The foundation’s pulled the pin, which means no more money to do anything meaningful. And now Helen’s gone, there’s no leadership, just a bunch of ferals with posters.’

  ‘I got money. How much do you need?’ he said.

  Clem smiled, ‘Yeah, nice of you, mate, but we’re talking quite a lot of dough here.’ More than a meat-boner makes.

  ‘Yeah, well…I probably shouldn’t say this on the phone—dunno who might be listening…’

  ‘Hang on, Torrens, hold it right there. I don’t want to hear anything untoward.’ Meaning ‘criminal’.

  ‘Nah, nah, it’s all above board, Jonesy…see, I came into some money the other day.’

  ‘Lotto?’

  ‘Let’s just say it was an inheritance.’

  ‘You have a rich aunt too?’ said Clementine, thinking of Jonathon and just for a second trying to imagine Matthew Torrens in a designer suit. It didn’t work, all she could see was his muddied Cats jersey with the parachute-sized shorts, soc
ks bunched around his ankles.

  ‘More like an uncle, actually. Remember I told you about Sinbin?’

  Oh dear. Clem recalled Sinbin very well. In the stories Torrens had told her about the colourful characters in his past, Sid ‘Sinbin’ Schenko had loomed large. A rural drug boss making a fortune corrupting country kids, hiring Torrens as his local muscle in Katinga when he was just fifteen. She even remembered the detail: Sinbin loved cigars, had a collection of blue-tongue lizards and, apparently, thought the world of Torrens. Especially his competence with boltcutters and crowbars.

  ‘Um, not sure that’s the sort of money I want.’

  ‘Aw, don’t be like that Jonesy. Sid was a good man.’

  Clem pinched her forehead together with her fingers, eyes closed.

  ‘Anyway, that’s why I’m calling, see—I need to lay low for a while.’

  ‘Hang on, I thought you were going straight?’

  ‘Yeah, I am! This is legit—it was Sid’s stash, he earned it and no copper took it off ’im, no court neither, so he can give it to whoever he wants. You should know that, Jonesy, you’re a bloody lawyer!’

  Clem grimaced. It was no use arguing.

  ‘Sid wanted me to have it—said I was like a son to him,’ said Torrens, his voice dropping a few decibels. ‘Sat me down one night—this was after he got the big C a few years back, see—he said, Mattie, he said, when I’m gone it’s yours. I thought he meant the land down Tallowbark Creek way at first, but he left that to his ex and their daughter. The Old Cow and the Suckling Pig he called them. Ha! But that’s Sid all over, looking after his kid, never mind the mother was a money-grabbing parasite.’

  All these characters—she’d heard the names before, it was like a pantomime.

  ‘You still there, Jonesy?’

  ‘Yep. Still here.’

  ‘No one around?’

  ‘Just me and the dogs and the life-giving mangroves.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, his voice hushed. ‘So then Sinbin says, Stand under the bloodwood and line up the notch in the mountain, the top of the shed at the back and the dunny. Then dig. Couldn’t believe me ears! I didn’t even know there was a stash!’ There was a pause and Torrens’ voice caught in his throat. ‘Yeah well, anyways, he’s gone now, old Sid. Cancer got ’im.’

  ‘So sorry, mate. I know how much he meant to you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He let out a long exhale. There was a silence for a moment while they both paid their respects.

  ‘You know what, Jonesy? I told him about how you helped me. I reckon he’d want you to have some of this money for the turtle.’

  Oh dear. Clem recoiled at the thought of funding the campaign with the proceeds of crime. ‘Um, that’s very generous of you, mate’—and it was—‘but I couldn’t accept it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, philosophically. Torrens might not be fully on board with the concept of dirty money, but he had pride. ‘Maybe I’ll start me own turtle society. Matty’s Butt-Breathers,’ guffawing at his own joke. ‘Or maybe the Turtle Fart Society. Oh gawd, I could get the Queen onto it. Right up her alley with her Horrible Anus.’ He could barely get the words out, snorting with laughter.

  ‘Annus horribilis. It’s Latin, you clown,’ she said, chuckling.

  ‘Whatever. You shouldn’t be quitting. Take a teaspoon of cement and harden up! That’s what Sinbin would’ve said.’

  She sighed, kicking at a dried-up coconut husk in the sand. Pocket trotted over to the outer limits of his lead and gave it a sniff, looked up with questioning eyes. Was she a quitter? She’d quit Katinga. Now she was quitting Helen after the first setback. Yes, a quitter for sure.

  ‘Anyways, what I rang for, Jonesy, was to ask a small favour…’

  Here it comes, she thought: he wants a bloody lawyer—me—to help him launder his wretched cash.

  ‘…need somewhere to lie low for a bit, you know, just till the heat dies down.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting you come up here, are you?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’

  ‘But it’s not even my house.’

  ‘Even better. Less likely they’ll find me by connecting me with you.’

  ‘They? Who’s they?’

  ‘There’s talk…you know, about Sinbin having a stash…plenty of bastards on the prowl.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Torrens.’

  ‘Nah, but that’s it see, that’s why it’d be great if I could hide up there with you.’

  She let out what she thought was an inaudible groan.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He sounded hurt, surprised. ‘A little holiday in the tropics. No harm in it for ya, is there?’

  Ping went her conscience, like an ant bite inside her head. Torrens had helped her out in Katinga, helped her keep her secret, steadied her when she’d wobbled. He’d even organised a homemade bomb to get her out of a sticky situation, despite being on parole at the time.

  But harbouring an ex-con in possession of unlawfully obtained monies? She would never have dreamt that she’d be standing here now, underneath a palm tree, contemplating that very thing. And yet, in the wounded tone of Torrens’ voice, in the connection they’d built up and the gratitude for what they’d done for each other… Somehow it seemed right.

  She felt a wave of realisation. It had changed her. All of it had changed her—the accident, the conviction, the shame, the humiliation of incarceration, the weeks living out of her car, the sanctuary of a dilapidated old cottage in the hills, the small-town jubilation over something as simple as a footy premiership and the country friendships that smouldered and glowed, slow and steady, in a way she hadn’t known in the city.

  ‘Jonesy?’

  She shuffled her thong across the top of the sand, smoothing where her weight had made an impression and heard herself say, ‘Split the food sixty-forty.’ He could damn well pay for his hairy mammoth-sized appetite.

  ‘Ripper! But I reckon I should put in more than forty, I like a good feed.’

  She reached the end of the walk and turned the dogs back towards the shanty. A regiment of mangrove shoots thrust up through the grey sand to her left, then plains of salted caramel and the shimmering remains of the tide, mirror-still, ankle-deep. A lone pelican stood at the shore’s edge inspecting the shallows. And to her right, the shade of sheoaks, pandanus and a frangipani in full flower.

  She reflected on what Torrens had said about quitting; did battle with the thought for a moment, but the truth of it was hard to budge.

  Something caught her eye in the long grass, fluorescent green but fading in the sun. A large water pistol, shaped like a machine gun and caked with dirty sand. Bloody plastic everywhere. She picked it up, brushed off the nozzle and squeezed the trigger. A jet of water cannoned into a tree, Pocket straining to chase it.

  Her phone rang again. She stared at the name for a few rings. Rowan again. He’d called her several times. He’d only once asked her when she was coming back but he didn’t have to. Each call was a question, a proposal, a request.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘G’day.’

  They did the usual thing. Small talk, how was she, the weather…

  ‘Nice day,’ he said. ‘Too hot but. Cooler up here at yours.’

  Her little cottage was half an hour out of town, up a winding road in a saddle between two ridges. The breezes would hustle and gust through the bush and march across the yard, never allowing the heat to get a grip. But down in the valley at the height of summer, the town of Katinga was canned hell, a vice-like heat trap.

  What was he doing up there? Mowing the lawn?

  ‘Oh well, make yourself at home…don’t mind me,’ she said, recalling his words as she was leaving, asking her not to go, telling her she’d be okay, that he’d help her get through it. She’d kept jamming stuff into the car, still crying. As she rolled out, he’d yelled, ‘At least show me where the bloody spare keys are so I can keep an eye on the place!’

  Definitely mowing the lawn.

  She hadn’t
told him she might not be coming back. The prospect of the new job in Melbourne had taken hold since she left, spreading and lodging itself in her mind. Wealth, sophistication and, best of all, anonymity among the bustling thousands. She should tell him now, early, spare him the sudden shock.

  ‘Your fridge is empty,’ he said.

  ‘Pretty sure there were beers in there when I left. You been cooling off up there often?’

  ‘Forty degrees in Katinga.’

  ‘Are you in the backyard? Try the swim-up bar in the pool.’

  He chuckled. The cottage was ramshackle at best. That’s how come she’d got to know Rowan. A handyman could make a decent living from a place like hers.

  ‘Didn’t bring my bathers.’

  It was a game and, as much as she knew she should tell him, she wanted to play. She wanted to sneak away from the burden of turtles and mining and Helen. ‘Secluded up there, Rowan. No one around for miles.’

  ‘Maybe I could get my daks off and get under the hose. Test the water pressure for you.’

  The dogs were slumped in the shade, resting. She hooked the leads on a branch, wandered over into a knot of trees, the ground soft and padded with fallen leaves and a mat of sheoak fronds.

  ‘Well, it is bushfire season. Good preparation,’ she said.

  She’d only known him in the cooler months, imagined him now in the heat—same work jeans but shirtless maybe, the lean torso, tanned and sweaty from mowing, pants hanging low on those snake-hips. He was so beautiful, Rowan. Inside and out. She felt her skin prickling. She was supposed to be telling him about Melbourne.

  She heard his phone thump down on the ground, a rustling of clothing, felt a thrill across her shoulders. Then the phone in his hands again.

  ‘Cooler already.’