It was the final quarter in the first finals game, months after Miles had confronted Mrs. Turner over the email system. Now Miles had forgotten everything except the fact that his team was three goals plus a couple of points behind a bunch of Southern Sydney low-lifes who called themselves Botany, and who had the temerity to challenge the Lovett Bayers on their home turf. And look like winning. After a mixed season with the side still raw, Lovett Bay had pushed and shoved its way into the draw for the finals. Now it seemed they might be pushed straight back out again by losing the first game.
Playing in bright September sunshine Lovett Bay fought hard after the final quarter bounce, but with initially little result. Then the ball dribbled over the boundary on the Lovett Bay half forward flank, near Miles’ stamping ground at center half forward, where he had played most of the season. His opponent, a taciturn man with a red beard and arms covered with tattoos, trailed along suspiciously as Miles edged nearer the action. He and his opponent had been having quite a duel. The Botany half back was not as fast as Miles but he was a hard man to beat in contests for the ball. Tackling him, so Miles thought, was akin to tacking on a front-end loader. He had tackled him anyway, but in the preceding three quarters had not managed to get an edge.
The boundary umpire – as it was a final the game had a full complement of umpires – threw the ball in. Jake, as ruck man, contested the hit out and won, knocking it squarely to Ben, the rover. Ben had to take two steps to catch the ball and that momentum sustained him for several more seconds amid a pack of opponents, while he looked around for a constructive way to get rid of it. Seeing his chance, Miles jerked away from his opponent and ran towards the boundary line. Ben spotted him and handballed cleanly, aiming it so that the reporter could take it on the run. Miles turned, saw a lead from a forward pocket player, and booted the ball so that it landed squarely on his team mate’s chest, just before his own opponent caught up to him. As he was turning Miles glimpsed a flash of white by the ground’s fence but forgot about it as the forward pocket player scored a goal. The crowd, mainly wives and girlfriends of the players but a fair number of curious, or idle, cheered.
Something clicked with the Bayers. A psychological switch – something any coach wishes he knew how to turn on – clicked. Previously they had played as a team of individuals, not quite connecting. Now they starting to connect. At the center bounce following the goal, both ruck man got their hands to the ball but by chance it fell at the feet of the Lovett center who soccered it off the ground to Ben. The rover had little time to do anything but kick it low, to one side of Miles. The reporter and his opponent dived for the ball but Miles wrestled it clear and rolled to his feet a few heartbeats ahead of the Botany player. That was enough of a break for him to turn and kick it long to the goal square, and hope for the best. Their full forward, Josh, took a screaming mark in the goal square then kicked it in and, this time, the crowd really did roar. Just one goal the difference. The game had come alive. The coach looked down at his clipboard, shook his head tossed it away and screamed “’c’mon Bayers”.
Miles did not know why he played so hard. The prize for winning was just to do it all again in the semi-finals the next week. Perhaps he was blowing off frustrations over Ros. Or perhaps he just liked the game. Botany fought back but the next time it came Miles’ way he grabbed it, handballed past two Botanites who wished him harm, then ran on and took the ball back from the same player he had passed it to while the Botanites were still turning – a move worthy of the League itself – then he had a clear run at an open goal and scored. They were just points behind.
The rest of the game was a blur. He took marks, sharked balls from packs, smothered one kick, which was painful, flew high twice and scored a second goal from a snap shot out of a pack. At the final whistle with the score one goal and one point in Lovett Bay’s favour Miles sank to grass. He did not feel as if he could make it to the boundary. His opponent trotted by but stopped for a moment.
“Game, mate!” he said, holding out his hand.
“Oh yeah! G’d game,” said Miles, shaking hands, not to be outdone in courtesy. “You’re a hard man, mate. Next season, eh!”
His opponent nodded, smiled briefly, gave the thumbs up and trotted off to his wife and child waiting by the fence. Jake came by and pulled Miles off the ground, although he could barely walk himself.
“What do philosophers have to say about football?” asked Miles as they lurched off the field. His vision was swimming.
“Not much, mate. While they’re arguing about whether the ball exists or try to place the game within the currents of western philosophical thought, the other team’s guys will bugger off with it and everyone start screaming that the philosopher has to get it back. It’s too anchored in reality. It ruins you for philosophy – just like journalism.”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with journalism and philosophy?”
“Tom’s always after me to write stories that people can read. I mean, I ask you. No philosopher writes stuff that the public can understand. The less understandable it is, the more they think the writer must know his stuff.” Jake shook his head. “Mate, I’m just ruined for philosophy.”
“Miles! Great game! You played really well.” It was Anne at the boundary rail, with Tomasina.
“Thanks – wow!” Both were in tennis costume with short skirts. He was tired but not that tired. The two tennis dresses together were the flash of white Miles had occasionally seen during the game. “Like the dresses, ladies,” he said looking both Anne and then Tomasina in the eye. “I’m gunna have to start watching tennis.” Anne picked up her covered racket and flicked it at Miles’s head, making him step back. “But I hate to tell you, this is a football oval.”
“We’re playing district doubles at the courts here in 20 minutes if you think you have time to watch, Mr. Black,” said Anne. There were a set of tennis courts next to the field.
“For those dresses I’ll make time.”
“Another guy who really appreciates the skill of women’s tennis,” said Tomasina dryly, although she was by no means displeased. “Just what the game needs Annie.”
“I’m a guy, I’m shameless. Summer’s coming - you girls into beach volleyball?”
The girls were rolling their eyes over that one when Allen walked up in spotless cream trousers, a blue shirt with the name of his law firm monogrammed in gold on the breast pocket, and a brown, zip up jacket.
“So is Grace here, Miles?” asked Anne, hastily changing the subject. Miles was dating Grace.
“Never tried to get her to a football match,” said Miles before he was pulled away by Jake. Anne watched him go for a few moments before turning to Allen.
“I tell you that Allen guy drives me loopy,” said Jake.
“Yeah? What’s wrong?” Miles had kept well away from the lawyer but Anne and Tomasina occasionally did things together which meant that their respective boyfriends saw a lot of each other.
“Always carrying on about some bulldust or other. If it’s not getting a better car” (Tomasina had a modest hatchback) “it’s about how there are really expensive flats available, or about the state of the property market, or about him arranging trusts for millions of dollar’s worth of assets.”
“All useful stuff,” observed Miles, keeping a straight face.
“Its all total shite that’s what it is. Anyway, what’s happening with Grace.”
“Not much. Seeing her tonight but I don’t reckon it’s a go. Reckon she’s put off by the ute.”
“Yeah? Bloody useful vehicle that. Color’s a bit off and a few dents,” Jake said, judiciously. “But it gets you around, what more do the chicks want?”
Miles had helped Jake and Tomasina move flats recently with his utility doing the heavy shifting. As that had saved Jake the cost of hiring a truck for the day he was now an admirer of the Milesmobile. It was during that move Miles made the mistake of calling Tomasina, “Thommo”.
“Excuse me,” she said, folding her arms, “my name is not Thommo – I hate that - it is Tomasina.”
Miles was about to protest that he had even heard Tomasina’s sister call her Thommo, not to mention Jake, but swerved at the last moment. “Then what’s your second name?”
“Jane.”
“If you want the full name I should call you Tomasina Jane.”
“That will do,” she said and smiled.
That exchange later prompted Tomasina to do a little quiet lobbying on Miles behalf to Anne. She had her own motives. Initially she thought her friend had done well for herself in taking up with Allen but would now be happy if she never saw the lawyer again.
“I think Miles is a gentleman,” she said to Anne after the move.
“I think he is.”
“Maybe, interesting?”
Anne shrugged. “.. Guess. I hope he meets someone nice, but he’s not for me.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with Miles.
“A reporter on the Koala Bay Bugle! Think what my dad would say if I had started dating him.”
“Who has to go out with him – your dad or you?”
“No one has to go out with him – although I hope someone does – I’m going out with Allen.”
“Yes,” said Tomasina and left it at that for the moment, although she noted that Anne had not said Allen’s name with any conviction. She thought that later she would casually mention how useful Miles’ utility had been, despite its appearance. Girls should not bother themselves over what sort of car guys drive, she told herself, but it might be best to soften up Anne.
Miles’s love life in the months preceding the football game could best be described as checkered. The first item of note was his association with Ursula. He met her when Karen, the second reporter at Lovett Bay, had left to take up the ABC radio job in Karratha, joyously shaking the dust of the Bugle Group from her feet forever, or so she hoped. The departure of a reporter was a frequent excuse for the others to socialise, and the usual after work drinks turned into a marathon which ended up at Karen’s flat. Ursula was a flatmate of Karen. By the time he left – Karen gave him a farewell kiss on the cheek, although Miles was not sure what he had done to deserve such an honour – he had Ursula’s phone number.
The problem was that he was forever crashing into her ideological barriers. Going out on Saturday to play football, for example, was a “reaffirmation of gender stereotypes”.
(Jake’s reaction: “Mate, I thought we wuz just playing footy.”)
She insisted on going to vegetarian restaurants and was horrified when Miles – tiring of tofu – suggested that they go somewhere she could order salad and he could eat meat. It seemed that she simply did not know anyone who ate meat and did not care to be associated with any person who did such an unnatural thing. That crisis was smoothed over, only to be replaced with another far more serious one. Of all things it was over the general principle of rich countries forgiving poor countries their debts, which came up in a general conversation at a party they attended. A youth in the second year of an arts degree, one of Ursula’s circle of friends, was holding forth about third world countries being forgiven their mountain of debts.
“Why doesn’t the country concerned just refuse to pay?” asked Miles. This was not Miles opinion but one he had read recently in a newspaper, and thought he understood.
“Huh?” said the youth. “They can’t do that.” He never read newspapers on the grounds that they were “biased and inaccurate”. Instead he occasionally hopped on the Internet to glance at blogs which reinforced his own opinions. That meant he had never previously heard the argument Miles put forward. Having survived a whole first year course in politics, however, the youth believed his level of political understanding to be several steps above a mere suburban journalist. “They can’t refuse the debts.”
“Yes they can,” said Miles. “They can walk away any time. Just refuse to pay – ‘n there’s nothing anyone can do about it, except invade or not lend’em any more money.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” said the youth triumphantly, “no one will lend them more money. How will they develop if no one lends them money?”
“They didn’t develop before when they were lent the money. The idea behind the loan is to build stuff that helps repay the money. The elites pocketed a lot of it and the rest went on stupid projects pushed by multinational corporations that turned into disasters. No more money no more disasters.” Miles then remembered some more of the newspaper article. “Or what the lender countries could do is tie forgiving the loan to the borrowers adopting rule of law and cleaning up corruption.”
“That imperialistic,” said the youth, “you can’t dictate to them how they should run their country. They have their own cultures.”
“Mate, if they’ve borrowed several billion bucks then they’ve borrowed a heap of Western culture – subtle stuff about bankers wanting their money back.”
This was at least a defensible argument, but it was not one that the youth wanted to hear. He called Miles a fascist. The reporter laughed and told the youth he should pay more attention in lectures. But later he was confronted by Ursula, white-lipped with fury, also saying that he was a “fascist”, that he had “embarrassed her in front of her friends” and for those crimes he was “dropped”. Miles did not bother to defend himself. Instead he went home, heated up a frozen meat pie and ate it with relish. He would stay dropped.
Then there was Grace, who said she had been named after the actress Grace Kelly, and looked a little like her namesake. Jake reckoned she was “a sort”. They both met Grace, as did Tomasina, when she and a girlfriend turned up at a party connected with the football team, trailing along behind a girlfriend. Miles decided to try his luck by ringing where she worked as a librarian.
He discovered that Grace’s idea of a night out was a performance of Moldavian folk dancing, alternate theatre, recitals of obscure classical music pieces, or showings of French art films of the 1950s. This was initially interesting to Miles who thought it might be cultured and urbane to acquire an interest in such subjects but he quickly discovered that most of the material was obscure because it had little interest for the general public, which included Miles.
After one experience of an experimental art film he suggested a popular romance film, but that suggestion horrified Grace. In fact, anything that could be considered mainstream, commercial or even mildly entertaining she seemed to find repulsive. How could anyone want to watch the nonsense that Hollywood turned out? What was wrong with Iranian films about camel herders suffering in the desert? People simply had no taste.
Miles found the folk dancing, in particular, an ordeal. He paid for extremely expensive tickets – at least Ursula had insisted on splitting everything – then drove for what seemed like hours through the suburbs to an old, unheated town hall. There he sat through a series of dull, indistinguishable routines, executed by dancers in faultlessly correct peasant costumes. Miles wished he could sneak off to a pub. Grace was absorbed. At the end of the performance she enthused over it with some people she knew in the audience, mainly older ladies. A couple of the ladies insisted on being introduced but otherwise Miles was left out of the conversation. At the end of all of this he returned Grace to her flat, only to have her leap out of the ute, smile sweetly, wave goodbye and walk away. He had to get out to close the wonky passenger side door properly, and by the time he did that she was out of sight. After driving for so long, Miles thought that it would have been courteous to invite him in. Coffee, at least, would have been a nice gesture.
Despite coming to almost dread their evenings out Miles persisted with Grace until he sprained his ankle. He did it in the third quarter of the semi-final against the Pennant Hills side, jumping for a contested mark. He took it but on his way down the shifting pack pushed his leg to one side. His foot hit the ground at the wrong angle and his ankle exploded with pain. For the next minute or so all Miles could do was writhe on the ground, fighting an urge to vomit, as his team mates clustered around asking if he was “alright”. He wasn’t. Eventually he was helped off where the girlfriend of the center half back who was a nurse, told him it was most likely badly sprained, but he had better get it X-rayed on Monday. That was the end of the season for him, but his team mates were also out of the season shortly afterwards when Lovett Bay lost by two goals. Well, they had made it to the semis.
Miles was driven home in his ute by Jake, who took him to a chemist to buy a constriction bandage and an ice pack, and to rent a single crutch – he did not need doctors to tell him how to treat a sprain. When they reached home, Miles hobbled around painfully having his shower and changing. Jake helped by drinking some beer he had found in the fridge.
“You wanna play that up for Grace,” he said, as Miles hobbled past.
“Mate we were booked to see Persian folk dancing down near the harbour somewhere. The sprain’s almost worth it to get out of it.”
“What’s wrong with Persian folk dancing?”
“You’ve gotta sit through it to really not appreciate it.” Miles had to think for a moment for the right comparison. “It’s like seeing home videos of weddings.”
“Oh right!”
“Except that with the home movies at least you c’n get up and get a beer.”
Tomasina came to pick up Jake, but came bearing a Pizza and insisted on making a fuss over Miles – settling him the couch with his foot up on cushions and the remote control to hand. That was what he needed, Miles decided, a bit of sympathy. A bonus was that Tomasina was in her tennis dress again.
“Is this yours?” she asked holding up a book that had been on the coffee table.
“P. G. Woodehouse, sure!”
“Minor classic,” said Jake, almost dismissively. Having read several of the works of the French philosopher Derrida, he had decided that reading for pleasure was for wimps.
“Annie reads him.”
“She does?” said Miles. “It sorta amuses me – for the Bertie Wooster character not dressing for dinner is the same as going bush for three days. He does absolutely bugger all except get himself into stupid scrapes in grand old English houses and change fiancés like he changes socks.”
“You should talk to Annie.”
“Sure..”
After Tomasina and Jake had gone he faced up to the job of phoning Grace to tell her the evening was off, at least as far as he was concerned.
She was not in the slightest sympathetic.
“What do you mean you can’t drive?” she asked.
“I mean my right angle is sprained. Moving my foot is painful. If I pile on lots of ice and constrict it maybe I c’n drive to work on Monday or maybe it’s a bus for the first two days, if I can hobble to the bus stop.”
“So you can’t come?”
“Nope! Its out of the question.”
“But I’m expected!”
“There’s still time to call people, or get a lift. And I can give you the ticket numbers. You can talk your way past the ticket guys. You seemed to know them last time.”
“Umph! This is very late notice to say you can’t come out. There are lots of other men I could’ve gone out with tonight.”
“Then ring ‘em back and say there’s an opening. They’ll even have better cars.”
“Umph! And you got this sprain at this football game thing.”
“’Fraid so.”
“Then I’ll just have to make other arrangements.”
“Whatever. Do you want the ticket numbers?”
“Ohh – sod the tickets!” She hung up.
Miles put the phone down with a sense of relief. After that reaction he was under no obligation to call again. He looked at the films he had stored on the pay TV service. One was billed as a “hi-octane action thriller” set in Los Angeles and promising lots of gratuitous martial arts scenes. In other words, the sort of entertainment which would have sent Grace into convulsions. He watched it with relish.
In the following weeks the weather started warming up. Daylight saving came and Miles abruptly found himself going home with plenty of sunshine left over. The grim task of finding stories in Koala Bay continued, Ros and Bronwyn had given up trying to bully the high countryman, Justin never called or came near Koala Bay and Angela was a bad memory. About the only direct contact he had with head office was the occasional call from the sub editors. This complete lack of supervision also meant that he never had to attend staff or internal meetings of any kind, which was a blessing he did not appreciate at the time. Sometimes when he rang contacts he would be told they were “in a meeting” and, after leaving a message, he found himself wondering what people did in meetings. A football team mate once mentioned that he had undergone a performance review, and Miles asked what it was. The team mate just laughed and said it was “a form of corporate torture”. As one women who left newspapers for a time put it, when she returned gasping: “there are some people in companies whose job is just to hassle you.”
When he was contacted by anyone from South Forest, apart from the sub editors, it was for the most bizarre reasons, such as the call he took some weeks after he had sprained his ankle.
“It’s the pay office here,” said a man’s voice, “I was trying to contact Angela Feldman.”
“Good luck to you – I haven’t seen her in months.”
“But she hasn’t been working there?”
“Nope. She upped and left with her boyfriend, one step ahead of the cops yonks ago.”
“But she’s still on the payroll.”
Miles laughed. He thought that if he left then his pay would be cut off the moment he walked out the door. Angela seemed to be in a different category. He discovered later that the pay office relied on Justin to tell them if someone in the outer offices went, but the editor in chief never told them about Angela initially. He had his own reasons for hoping that she would reappear. Then he simply forgot to tell them. The pay officer only found out that a staff member had been missing for months through casual office gossip, but that was life at the bugle Group.
“You can always pay me her money. I’m doing what she did here.”
“Humph!” The pay officer was not amused. “We need a resignation letter.”
“Uh huh!”
“We need it straight away, dated from the time she left.”
“Uh huh.”
“So when can we get it?”
“You’d have to ask her – if you can find her.”
“You will have to ask her immediately!”
“Me! I’m not asking her anything! As far as I know she’s in Hong Kong but I dunno where, and its nothing to do with me. So good luck sorting it out. Anything else you wanted.”
“But just a minute! You were her boss there?”
“Nope. Justin specifically said that I was to have nothing to do with her. I had no authority over her at all.” The editor-in-chief’s outburst earlier in the year was now proving very useful. “You have to go to either Justin or Ros Charles, the office manager here. I’d go for Justin as he might make some sense.”
The pay officer was not happy with this advice. “This is most irregular.”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean sorting it out after all this time.”
“Uh huh.”
“We have to pay out her holidays. Even take legal action.”
“Uh huh.”
“You have no idea where she’s gone?”
“As I said, overseas somewhere. Why don’t you try her family? You must have the number for next of kin in your records.”
“Can’t you ring her family?”
“I told you, I was told specifically to have nothing to do with her. Anyway, you have the number on record, I don’t.” (Actually Miles did have the number, although he was not about to tell the pay officer that, and had tried the family a week after Angela had gone. They had known that she was alright and that she was with Steve but little more beyond that. Miles’ uncharitable thought at the time was that incompetence ran in families.)
“Who said you were to have nothing to do with her?”
“Justin.”
“Oh!”
Finally, the pay officer hung up.
The phone rang again and, thinking that the idiot pay officer had come back, Miles picked it up as if he was at home, without putting his headphones on, and snapped “Miles Black!”
“Oh! Have I called at a bad time?” It was Anne.
“Um, no, no! Caught me at a bad moment. That’s all. How are you?”
“Fine.. good! How are you?”
“When I’m not arguing with people in admin here, pretty good.”
“I’m in admin.”
“If you were in admin here I’d never argue with you.”
“Why wouldn’t you argue with me?”
“Um – because I’d just know you’d be in the right. I’m from the bush, so I know this – it’s an instinct we have.”
“Miles, that’s a good instinct. I’m glad you realised I’m always right, it saves a lot of time. But I should be angry with you?”
“What have I done?”
“You never came to see me play tennis. I saw you play football that time, but you didn’t come to the tennis.”
“I did too.”
“You did not.”
“Did too.. I watched almost a whole set of you and Tomasina playing against the blonde and big red haired girl.”
“Humph! She wasn’t that big, and the other one was barely blonde.”
Miles had actually meant that the red haired girl had been big breasted but thought it best to change the subject.
“You played well. You two were two games up when I left.”
“Why didn’t you stay?”
Allen had shown signs of being sufficiently bored to want to speak to Miles, so he had decamped.
“Had to go,” was all he said.
They spoke for a few more minutes, with Anne saying she understood he liked the author Woodehouse. Flattered that she remembered that detail, passed on by Tomasina, Miles told himself he would read all he could of the man. Then she wanted to know why he had argued with administration.
“So the drop dead gorgeous witch was still being paid.”
“Seems so.”
“You even have an office manager, and still took all this time for them to work it out, and then they still wanted you to get a resignation letter out of her - which they don‘t need by the way.”
“Loopy isn’t it. We didn’t talk at all even when she was in the next desk. Mind you, they could’ve sent me to Hong Kong to talk to her if they wanted.”
“Is that where she is?”
“Think so, but I dunno where in Hong Kong. Could’ve stayed there for weeks, on expenses, looking for her.“
Anne giggled and came around to the point. “Miles, the reason I’m calling is that I have a bigggg favour to ask.”
“You do?” Miles was now curious to know where this conversation was going.
“Jake said you were trained as a fire fighter in Victoria.”
“I was a volunteer in the CFA down there. ‘Lot of people do that down my way. Got called out to fires a couple of times. Um, why?”
“Well, see, you know it’s coming to bushfire season.”
“Yes.” In fact, Miles had recently done a front page story on fire authorities warning about how the area was at risk of bushfires.
“I’m house sitting for my aunt, a bit further North from here, along the coast and, well, it backs right onto bush.”
“Oh!”
“I was hoping you could come out to have a look at the place.”
“Me as a bush fire expert? You’ve got the wrong bloke.”
”It’s just that I don’t know anyone else who knows much about fires. I could stand outside with a hose if a fire comes.”
“You’re better off inside the house. Fires are dangerous. Can’t your aunt fight the fires? It’s her house.”
“She’s in a Buddhist retreat in Tibet.”
“She’s meditating and her house is in the bushfire front line?”
“Well, yes…”
“Um, well I’m happy to take a look at the place if you want if you want, but I’m not sure how much I can help.” If Anne asked him, he would be there.
“Oh good. I was going to invite Tomasina and Jake .. and Allen.”
Would that man never go away?
“Are they bushfire experts too? I thought I was the only one.”
“No. I just thought I’d make a social event of it. Why don’t you bring Grace.”
“I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“So that’s all over is it?”
“I can’t say it ever got started.”
“There was an Ursula wasn’t there?“
“Yep, also gone.”
“And a fiance.”
“Yep! Lost one of those too.”
“You don’t seem to have much luck holding onto women.”
“True. So what’s your opinion as a