‘Look, Jones, I’m only doing my job. I received a complaint about you—I have to follow up on it.’ Gerard had called Clementine to his office on ‘urgent club business’. She sat opposite him now, scarcely able to believe what she was hearing.
‘Just because his name’s Jones doesn’t mean we’re related, for Christ’s sake! Surely I don’t need to tell you that?’
‘I know, I know. I’m not—’
‘And he’s had a blinding season in the reserves, kicked twenty-eight goals. He’s the obvious choice to cover for Maloney so Maloney can take Clancy’s place in the midfield.’
‘Clementine, calm down. It’s perfectly understandable. The Plains community are hurting. Clancy’s gone, and they’ve lost their champion. They desperately want to be part of the success of the team—God, the whole town wants to be part of it—it’s no surprise they’re disappointed. They want another champion on board and carrying their flag.’
Clementine blinked, took a sharp breath. It pained her that Gerard had commandeered the moral high ground—she wasn’t used to it. She stared at the painting of the wild geese flying away from the lake behind Gerard’s head. Black geese with white wing tips.
‘You know, I’ve often thought about a quota system, Jones. Diversity’s more than just a buzzword, you know. There’s real proof that it brings significant benefit to an organisation. We could have a certain number of places for Indigenous players at each level.’
Clementine sighed. ‘You’re not going to cave to this bullshit complaint, are you, Gerard? There’s absolutely no substance to it, and to introduce a quota system now would totally cock everything up. We can’t do it, not with the finals knocking on the door.’
‘Hold your horses, sunshine. I’m in complete agreement. It’d be next year if we were to do anything like that. Now, take a deep breath, and I’ll tell you how we deal with this.’ He clasped his hands together on the desk and leaned forward.
Don’t call me sunshine.
‘You’re going to write a report for the monthly committee meeting next Monday night, detailing the selection process you followed to find a replacement for Clancy. You will fully describe the proposed reshuffle and Richie Jones’ suitability for the vacant role up front. You will also explain that you are not, in any way, related to Richie or his family.’
Clementine snorted—was she supposed to provide a complete family tree going back to the Old Country?
‘I will support you,’ said Gerard, ignoring her disdain. ‘The committee will find the complaint unjustified, and your selection will be endorsed. The last thing any of us want is a bloody anti-discrimination case.’
She couldn’t help herself. ‘Simple defence on the facts…’ she muttered. As soon as it was out she regretted it.
‘Eh?’ Gerard was staring at her intently. ‘My goodness, Jones, you do seem to know a lot about the law. Unfair dismissal, discrimination claims…’ Gerard paused, waiting for Clementine to react. She didn’t. He moved on, but the information was out there and she could never take it back.
‘So,’ Gerard continued, still appraising her closely, ‘I’ll move a motion to have another position added to the committee: a diversity officer, with responsibility for developing a diversity policy and implementing it next season.’
She couldn’t deny this was a good plan—she understood now how Gerard had worked his way up the ranks within CTS, something of a ‘fixer’. ‘Okay, fine,’ she said, rising from her chair, ‘I’ll write the report.’
‘Please sit down, Jones—I haven’t finished.’
She sighed and slumped back down in the seat.
‘About Clancy. I hear you’ve been poking around, stirring up trouble.’
It was a simple statement, but it immediately sent her mind racing back to the note on the door, No more questions BITCH. Was Gerard responsible for the note?
‘What trouble?’
‘Well, that’s where this whole complaint came from, didn’t it? You sticking your nose in out at the Plains? They say you were out there harassing Clancy’s wife, asking all sorts of questions, and then left in a hurry driving like a lunatic, and smashed into someone further up the road. People are going to start doubting your judgement if you keep carrying on like that.’
How did he know about the crash? She’d well and truly left the Plains before she’d hit Rowan’s van—no one there could have seen it. Who had started the story circulating? Not Rowan, surely? Maybe the old guy who’d stopped to ask if they were okay. Suspicion leaked into her mind like a drop of ink in water.
‘Frank was upset too. Came to see me. Said you’d accused him of some sort of cover-up.’
Clementine didn’t miss the opportunity. ‘Is there a cover-up, Gerard?’
Those eyes. Blue. Blank. Nothing at all.
‘Jones, you know as much as I do. The kid stole from the company. Simple as that. There’s no cover-up.’ He sighed and reached for a file in the cabinet behind the desk. ‘Here, see for yourself.’ He slapped the file down in front of her.
She opened it to find a series of photographs. A red hatchback, its registration plate visible, parked in the warehouse car park. A shot of the interior of the car, the back seat laden with boxes. A close-up of the boxes, angle grinders and drills. Another photograph, the front passenger’s side door open, showing Clancy’s footy boots and training gear on the floor. The next showed the opened boxes, revealing an array of shiny new power tools still in their plastic packaging.
The last three photographs showed the inside of the warehouse, grainy and dark. A shadowy figure was walking out with an armful of boxes. Clementine remembered Wakely saying that the footage from inside the warehouse didn’t show anything.
‘Well, these look pretty inconclusive—that could be anyone. How about you show me the CCTV footage of the car park?’
‘You know it’s not available, Jones. Frank and Wakely told you that.’ So he had spoken to them both. Her mind started running faster.
‘But where is it, Gerard? Haven’t you tracked it down yet? I’d like to see it—set my mind at rest.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, Jones, but it seems you’re not going to let it go unless I do.’ He paused, looked her straight in the eye. ‘Clancy confessed.’
The words hit her like a slap, took her breath away. She’d assumed the allegations against Clancy were false. She’d imagined him fiercely denying them.
She stared at the black geese again, at the graceful arc of their flight. It calmed her. Come on, Jones—did a confession change things? It might have been coerced. If they had something over him, he might have had no choice. Or maybe Gerard was lying. These were all possibilities, but doubt had crawled in now. Maybe she didn’t really know Clancy after all. Maybe he was a thief.
She dropped her head, a look of defeat plastered across her face. ‘Okay, okay, I’m out. I’m done with Clancy,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’ll have the report on your desk by Thursday.’
Gerard knew better than to speak. He had conquered. He rose to see her out.
She’d put herself out there, risked her low-profile existence, and now people were complaining about her. It had seemed a simple plan—hide, be anonymous, be someone else or nobody, anyone other than that person she was—but it was proving awfully difficult to execute. Definitely time to pull her head in, go to ground again, think of herself for a change.
She looked up, her gaze holding Gerard there as he stood behind his desk. ‘Gerard, I’d like a finals bonus.’
‘You what?’
‘A finals bonus. A five-hundred-dollar game fee for the first final, and then keep doubling it for each one after that if we win.’
‘Where has this come from?’ Gerard looked dumbfounded. She was glad. She wanted him to feel her power as well as her submission.
‘The fundraiser was a breakthrough success—we’re up three times on our annual revenues. It’s the first time in thirty-four years Katinga has come close to actually making the finals, and I’m responsible for both these miracles. I deserve it.’
Gerard threw back his head and laughed. ‘Ha! That’s the shot, Jones! This is what I keep telling people about you. Aggression, insisting on success, demanding it. No doubt about you.’
‘And?’
‘I’ll recommend it to the committee, but fifty per cent of it should be contingent on you signing on for another year.’
He was already bargaining—this deal was done. ‘Sounds reasonable. Thank you, Gerard.’
She stood up to walk away, knowing she would sign the contract, and knowing also that she would walk away from it as soon as the season was over and the money in her account. So sue me, sunshine.
The winter air came from Clementine’s lungs in short, steamy puffs as she closed the gate behind her and walked across the paddock. The white trunks of the mountain gums to the east of the bush near the cottage were resplendent as the sun emerged from the top of the hill. Clementine stopped to run her hand along a silky trunk.
Twenty minutes later and she’d made it to the top of the rise. Standing on a rocky ledge, she gazed down at her cottage in the saddle between the two ridges, Jim’s sheep dotting the fields next door. The mint-green weatherboard looked peaceful beneath its corrugated-iron roof, patchy with rust. The mountain gum in the backyard looked much bigger from this angle, the green of its leaves obscuring the corner of the house above her bedroom. A pair of black cockatoos screeched below her, emerging from the treetops, their tails long and straight behind them. The black minority in the cockatoo world.
She knew the pursuit was over. It was dragging her deeper into territory she did not want to occupy. As much as she was suspicious of Gerard and Cranfield and the Wakelys, the community was now getting suspicious. If someone found out about her…She shivered. She would have to leave if it came to that, but leaving seemed out of the question. She wanted to stay for the finals.
For now, she must do what Gerard asked to keep him off her case, fade back into the background. Just the coach, nothing more.
How had she ended up in this predicament anyway? She thought about the Tuesday nights she’d put in at the Community Legal Centre in Redfern that last summer before the incident. She’d advised a few Indigenous clients, pro bono, in her own time. Didn’t that count for something? No, be honest with yourself, Jones, you were only doing it to impress the partners back at the firm, advance another rung in the race up the partnership ladder.
She sat down in the dirt, her legs stretched out, boots hanging over the ledge. A kookaburra landed in the tree to her right, cocked its head, staring at her for a moment, then swooped low to the base of the tree to her left and grabbed at a caterpillar with its beak, pounding it into the dirt. That could be me later today when Tiny Spencer calls, she thought—an insect, writhing in his beak. The bird tossed its head back and she watched the caterpillar disappear down its throat.
And really, how could she claim to understand? She sneered at herself, realising how remote she’d been, in her glittering tower in Potts Point, how insulated from the cut and thrust of black and white in real life. And now she could see the two hundred plus years since colonisation stretching out in front of her, a yawning divide in which suspicion and bitterness grew, spawning distrust and violence. She was on the wrong side of that divide, and all the good intentions in the world were irrelevant.