V tottered up the mulchy path to the beach shack, opened the power-box on the outside wall, and poked a finger through a spiderweb to the electricity switch.
Click!
She then stumbled a couple more meters and unlocked the front door. With a last burst of energy V slid her overnight bag across the floor into the bedroom and flopped backwards onto the bed uttering a low groan. The outside world was moonless, hot breath of rain on the breeze. For a few minutes V lay awake in the dark in her clothes listening to waves caressing an invisible beach across the road. Then with a reluctant toe, she shuffled her runners off, and they fell plonk, plonk to the floor.
In the bush garden, a midnight magpie tootled quietly.
Wave foam hissed on the sand.
*
V had weathered the worst week of her work life, as the departmental “sherpa” guiding a giant National Security bill through the Senate.
“You’re our sherpa!” Minister Burgoyne had announced. “Let’s get this bill to the mountain top!” He meant to the final vote.
The mountain had been spectacularly high and slippery, even for the experienced V, who was a Senate Parliamentary Liaison Officer (and never a sherpa)
Buffeting winds on the way to the peak including one hundred and twelve painful amendments which featured a bunch of last-minute government changes from the slack-arsed Home Affairs Minister. Every amendment was listed on V’s horrendous 3D legislation run sheet – pages and pages of words covered in ticks and crosses, and every wording change she’d pencilled in after negotiations and the final votes.
A beastly business. Through Wednesday and Thursday, the argy-bargy and voting divisions went on until 2am when finally the bill passed and the chamber adjourned. Then after five hours sleep, V spent Friday in the department reconciling those hairsplitting changes, so the redrafted bill could return to the House of Representatives on Monday morning for a further acrid “law and order” debate and the final vote into law before the politicians went home for the festive season.
By 6pm on Friday, tired of the office and more like a bone-weary midwife than either a sherpa or a PLO, V rang Robyn to let her know she needed weekend beach-time and drove from Canberra down to the coast listening in a half-daze to Beyonce.
Now, lying in the dark shack, cold pillow against her neck, V’s brain was completely fused. The words: “Beach-time,” and “Christmas break” rattled through her mind, over and over again.
V then slipped into a dead sleep, still dressed.
*
Much, much later, she woke and found her face pressed down on wet wooden boards.
Hard boards. Clothes were soaked through and her head pounded like the worst ever hangover – except she hadn’t been drinking. Wet and frozen and still dark, where was she? Why was she here? She felt sore, frightened and discombobulated.
With a moan, V pushed up on an elbow and slid her back against a post. A dim light inside the house helped her recognize the layout of the shack. Fear and confusion retreated – she was propped up on the wooden boardwalk which led to the outside toilet. Rain fell gently – on her. The cold and pain rattled her into further wakefulness, and for some reason, while she gazed into the black of the garden, amendment 32 (b) floated into her head, on removing the need for a warrant to detain a terrorist suspect. Her addled brain was full of such confounding shit. Unwarranted thoughts. What was that about?
“Ah gah,” V mumbled.
She was really, really cold. V couldn’t remember how she’d got there, so had to guess that in the middle of the night, a call of nature had jabbed at her bladder.
She must have turned on the bedroom light, headed for the toilet at the other end of the boardwalk, and either missed the step or slipped on wet leaves and face-planted. She touched the area on her head and cheek where the pain throbbed. Yuk! She felt sticky blood on her fingertip. V slowly turned onto her knees, pulled the post to stand up, and then wobbled to the toilet where she shivered, pissed, and sat tight to muster some energy while watching a daddy-long-legs shimmy on the toilet door.
Then slowly, with the light illuminating the boardwalk like a landing strip, she wobbled inside and stripped off her wet work suit, blouse, bra and undies, dried herself with a towel and put on a floppy T shirt of Robyn’s that said:
THE FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT I GOTTA WEAR SHADES.
Still shivering, she wrapped a blanket round herself.
The mirror in the closet revealed wet blonde hair, bloody and matted, across her forehead, and another small cut garnishing a red bruise round her right eye. Ow. She looked really old – skin grey-blue. V knew the bruise around her cheek and eye would blacken. Yuk.
Still blanket-wrapped, V washed the cuts at the bathroom sink and tried to clean her hair. If she was concussed, going to sleep was a very bad idea, so she boiled the kettle and made hot tea. Panadols were in the cupboard and the tea was warming.
V lay motionless on the couch looking up and saw a pathetic piece of green tinsel from last year’s summer party still dangling from a thumb tack above the panadol cupboard. Panadol packet green. She and Robyn had been so busy they hadn’t dealt with the remains of last year’ decorations, let alone prepared for this year’s festivities.
“Oooh.”
Again, V gingerly touched her face and tried to stay awake. But her “stay awake” concussion instincts were defeated by a week’s worth of exhaustion, and she drowsed off on the couch.
*
Deep in the dream she was sitting beside her boss, the Departmental Secretary, in the Senate adviser’s box situated next to the animated Senators in their seats. The Senators were hooting and yelling at one another, as the Senate President shouted “Order!” Her Secretary looked weird until she remembered that in the beach shack’s lounge there was an entirely frustrating jigsaw puzzle of a Bavarian village with all its ill-fitting bits, and her Secretary’s face seemed to replicate the puzzle. Jigsaw pieces slid round crazily, sometimes he had a blue eye, sometimes a fancy pink chalet for hair, at one point his nose was a church spire.
The Minister, by contrast, was a huge yellow-toothed hippo in a pin-striped business suit. Senator Hippo was leaning over the side of the advisors’ box barking instructions at her, almost to the point of intimidation. In the wood panelled advisors’ box with its plush red cushions and tiny desk, she brandished a long tick list of the amendments saying look, look, look – we’re almost there! But as she shook the page the list started to disintegrate from the top as she was pointing towards the bottom, her ticks flew off the paper like moths up to the glass roof of the Senate which was bathed in bright sunlight making the walls and seats glow pink.
*
V woke to the dawn and the sound of a little wattlebird on the verandah rail screeching “chip-taco, chip-taco” over and over, like some urgent alarm. She sat up and the bird took fright and disappeared.
Ocean smells of seaweed and the salt-spray were strong. Reaching out from the couch to the coffee table, she fumbled her phone into her hand and rang Robyn who answered in a sleepy voice.
“You okay, V?”
“Not really, I’ve had a fall.”
“You’re not old enough to “have a fall”.” Sharper voice. “You fell over? Where?”
“Boardwalk on the way to the toilet in the middle of the … not sure when. Was sleepy and bleary. I think I slipped off the wet step and knocked myself out.”
“Oh shit. Are you okay?” Robyn’s tone suddenly urgent.
“Horrible head-ache. Then I fell asleep again and fat shamed old Senator Burgoyne. I dreamt he was a hippo. Of all things.”
“You’ve raving.”
“He was! He was big fat Minister Hippo in a suit! And the Secretary was a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Stop it! Have you had Panadol?”
V switched on facetime and showed Robyn the cuts and bruises across her eye and temple.
Robyn’s tiny smart-phone-face looked startled. She said: “If you cracked your face, you need to get yourself to the hospital.”
“Cut’s not as bad as it looks,” mumbled V.
“Shit, that’s going to be a bad black eye. I don’t want anyone to think I walloped you.”
“No-one will think you walloped me,” said V thinking, how ridiculous. The aptly named, bird-like Robyn with her kind hazel eyes couldn’t wallop anyone.
“But you’re my partner. The partner’s always the prime suspect,” said Robyn sounding distressed.
“You read far too much crime,” V mumbled. There was a pause as she gathered her thoughts.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I feel terrible.”
Robyn’s sweet face-time face bunched with concern.
“You go to the hospital right now to get checked out, but don’t drive! Get a taxi to come from Moruya. And I’ll be down by lunchtime.”
“You don’t have to come. I’ll get there. S’all right.” Through the pain-haze V remembered Robyn had a weekend etching workshop so she needed to stay in town. “Your etchings. I’ll come up and see them sometime.”
“Don’t drive!!” commanded Robyn again in her worried tone.
“Ok. I promise, I won’t. As long as you don’t drive down! I’ll be alright.”
Chip-taco!
*
At Moruya base hospital, the Emergency Department wasn’t busy. Two hours later, after a young Indian doctor had carried out a gentle fingertip check on the bones around V’s eye and they’d x-rayed her skull for cracks, V was back at the beach shack with a cold and sloppy chicken burger she’d bought in town. The taxi driver had forbidden her to eat the burger in his cab, but to his credit had looked at the black eye and in a solemn voice asked: “is everything okay at home?”
She’d felt cared for, so wasn’t too mad with the driver and his sloppy burger-phobia. Still, the implied question also made her feel strangely upset for Robyn.
After swallowing stronger hospital painkillers (to be taken with food) she demolished the burger. V wandered out to the shed and half pulled her wetsuit round her legs but as she reached for the longboard on the rack, changed her mind – firstly, because she felt a bit dizzy and secondly because she asked herself: “what if I blacked out in the surf and just … drowned?”
So instead, she removed the wetsuit, threw on a pair of shorts and went for a walk on the beach.
V cut across the path through the banksia heath and over the dune feeling she’d done the responsible thing. Although still feeling woozy, she felt revived by the smell of hot sand and vegetation. The blue sky squatted heavily on the headland and the ocean was glassy. At half-tide along the shoreline, the waves were cooking at medium-rare and just enough for kids to boogie-board in the wash. A few people were out with happy dogs chasing balls into the surf. V picked her way over the multiple clumps of glistening brown seaweed.
As she walked, Robyn rang again.
“And???” was all Robyn said, the question hanging.
“Sorry. Sorry. I should have rung. I had to eat something. They X-rayed my conk. No fractures. Take Panadeine Forte. Rest for a couple of days. Come back if you have any unwarranted dizziness, drowsiness or blurry vision and if the pain persists etc etc.”
“Do you remember falling?” Robyn asked. Now a sociology professor, Robyn had started life as a nurse, so there was professional heft to her questions.
“No. I can’t even remember getting up to go to the loo. I was so, so tired. I must have been sleepwalking, or almost sleepwalking. I only remember waking up flat on my face on the deck. In the rain.”
“You work too hard, V. It’s a miracle you didn’t crack your skull.”
“A blessing, really,” said V with a wan smile.
“Ha! I’ll be there tonight, okay.”
“No Robyn. Go to your etching workshop. I’m going to be reviewing the bill tomorrow anyway and I’ll be boring.” V didn’t want Robyn to come just because she’d been exhausted, clumsy and stupid.
“I mean it,” V added.
Robyn just said, “Bye. Love you.”
Chip-taco! Another wattlebird in a nearby banksia bush.
V kept walking to the café for a cappuccino and a piece of cake, then walked home, though her legs felt like lead. At the big teak table on the deck, she opened her laptop and sat back looking at the view. V could just see the glint of the ocean’s horizon through the banksias and to the south, the island. Even through the pain, the view made her happy.
Reluctantly, she looked down and started comparing the stupid draft bill against her grid of amendments, but after a while the words turned into a blurry mush, which was frightening. Then a couple of the amendments welled into her mind from a deep place, like silver fish.
96 (b) The Act will contain a sunset clause for full review after 5 years of operation.
A sunset! She could see the sunset was just starting as the horizon turned orangey-red, tho’ it was a bit early for either a sunset or a 5-year sunset clause. The other amendment Minister Hippo got most anguished over was:
66 (a) mandating the presence of a lawyer for the terrorist suspect before any interview.
*
The slobbery Senator Hippo face was grim. “A huuuge danger to national security letting a ratbag, human-rights, soft-cock, wanker-solicitor without any clearances become party to the interrogation,” he’d fumed, his hippo peg-teeth grinding, “These are classified investigations! We must change Amendment 66 to a lawyer with top secret security clearance! We can’t let a lefty lawyers free-for-all go through! Can we?”
His continued use of “we” made her wince in pain – V was, after all, a neutral public servant and not part of the decision making. The Hippo’s spittle rained down on the advisers’ box which started to fill up to her ankles with saliva. The Hippo continued to dribble-rave and the saliva level rose quickly to her waist, scaring her even more.
*
Chip-taco! Chip-Taco!
V woke up with a start and it was still bright daylight, not sunset at all. The wattlebird was on the deck rail, staring at her. The horizon was still there, a blur of white and green. The pain in her skull felt knife-like and overwhelming, and she was startled into a sudden wave of terror. V scrabbled her hand towards the phone thinking: “what’s the ambulance number again?” but as both the pain and her flat panic danced together, the number muddled and she couldn’t remember.
A rushing noise filled her head, as the amendments churned through a huge printing press, rattling round and flying off the end into the blue sky. One to 112, plus the Greens motion to kill the bill at the third reading, all there. On top of this gush of paper amendments both she and Senator Hippo, still in his pin striped suit, surfed the wave of paperwork towards a distant beach. The wave had an easy face of documents and she was in the zone on a nice right hand break. Next to her, Senator Hippo was planted on a sleek shortboard doing swooshes and tricks. V could see Robyn waving in her pretty blue one-piece swimsuit, jumping and waving with both arms, like some warning.
Senator Hippo slid down the face of the paper wave and then performed an elegant cut-back over the crest, sending paper froth into the sky. “Bravo,” V shouted. She was nicely balanced on her longboard, the warm paperwork sloshing around the back of her ankles. Robyn was still very distant – even further away – and still waving wildly. As V surfed forward on the beach break, both the shore and Robyn kept retreating, but she wasn’t too worried – it meant a longer ride! V looked back towards the horizon and saw golden dolphins leaping from the white paper wake.
Then V woke with a start again. And while totally discombobulated, the pain was mostly gone. The room she lay in was dim and the bed was comfortable but foreign. There were sharp noises behind her head and it wasn’t chip-taco. It was the beep of a heartbeat monitor. A drip was inserted into her right arm and she groaned. She could feel bandage between her head and a nice warm pillow but couldn’t lift her arm.
“Vivien,” said a quiet voice.
Robyn! Robyn was sitting beside her. “You okay?”
She felt a hand on her arm.
“Head,” said V. “Sore.”
“I’ll get the doctor,” and a door behind her clicked.
Robyn had clearly ignored her command, ditched the etching lessons after their beach-side convo and had driven straight to the shack.
“You were acting weird. Saying weird stuff about hippos. Your voice was badly slurred. Then I couldn’t get through. I was so worried.” Robyn held a straw to V’s mouth and she sipped some tepid coffee.
On the drive down Robyn tried calling several times without success, so rang an ambulance, and drove like a maniac, breaking several speed limits. The para-medics and Robyn found V slumped on her laptop, like a lump of wet brown seaweed, washed up on the beach.
The doctor then told V about the bad brain swelling under the skull: “The sort of thing professional boxers or footy players cop,” she said. “You really did yourself a damage. We’ve had to operate just to fix the pressure in the skull and bring you some relief.”
“Operate? I need to go and finalise the terrorism bill,” V squawked.
“The bill passed Parliament yesterday,” Robin said. “They choppered you back to Canberra for surgery. You’ve been asleep for four days in an induced coma.”
V couldn’t find words.
“Your Senator Hippo thanked you for your sterling efforts. All recorded in Hansard. He said a key piece of security architecture is now in place to protect every Australian.” Robyn added, with an eye roll. Robyn’s ironic eye rolls were very special. “But my lovely,” she added, “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“Touch wood,” added V. She lifted her hand gingerly and pressed her shaky knuckle against her not-so-sore head.
