Sunday lunch came around again. It was coming around way too often. But I went, the dutiful daughter. I had thought that coming home, the work would be the thing. But of course it wasn’t. Family was the real thing. Sometimes I am more stupid than anyone I know.
We propped Mother up on the couch and plied her with champagne, which wasn’t recommended, but she assured us it helped with the nausea.
‘I’d rather be pickled with this than whatever they give me at the hospital,’ she said. ‘And those wafers that are meant to stop me vomiting, they make me feel like a horse has kicked me.’
‘Would you like me to come with you this week?’ I asked.
‘I can’t imagine you’ll find time,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will. What day?’ I looked to Phillip.
‘Wednesday,’ he said. ‘Nine am.’
‘I’ll pick her up.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Mother announced to everyone. ‘I must be dying. Astrid is actually making time to take me to the hospital.’
Stephanie said, ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Mum. You know we all love you. Astrid’s working very hard. Now, for those of us who would like to sit at the table, lunch is ready.’
We all sat up, even Mother. As we settled in to roast chicken and gravy, roast vegetables, cauliflower cheese and peas, our father declared, ‘Love sought is good, but given unsought better.’
‘I know that one,’ I said to Ella, who was sitting beside me. ‘It’s from Twelfth Night. Olivia and Sebastian are twins. They get separated in a storm and each of them thinks the other is dead. Dad used to read it to your dad and me. It’s the play that has the quote: If music be the food of love, play on.’
‘Ah,’ said Ella, quickly writing all this in her phone notes. ‘You don’t look alike, you and Dad.’
‘That’s because we’re not identical twins,’ I said. ‘And because he got so fat,’ I added quietly.
Ella giggled and then looked slightly mortified that she had laughed at her father. ‘Can we play tennis this afternoon, Aunty Ace?’
‘If music be the food of love, play on!’ Ella said theatrically, and raised her glass to the table.
‘Don’t you start,’ said Mother.
And everyone laughed.
JC strolled out onto the deck after lunch. He was carrying two glasses of whisky. He handed one to me. The dead worker from last week was a silence between us. It had to remain a silence between us.
‘I have to play tennis with Ella,’ I said.
‘I’m Ella’s secret weapon,’ he said. ‘A nip or two for Aunty Ace and she’s gonna beat you.’
‘Very likely,’ I said.
‘How are you doing, Ace?’
‘You know this will ruin it,’ I said to JC. ‘Bruny might be the one last place in the world where almost nothing happens. Pretty quiet by day, dead quiet at night. People down there, and up here, they’re sad about the bridge. Not everyone, but a lot of people. They feel … bulldozed.’
‘Paradise lost,’ he said. His gaze was curiously tender as he looked across the Derwent River.
‘Why did it have to happen, JC?’
‘Because this place needs progress, Ace. And that bridge is part of a brighter future.’
‘Why would a bridge to nowhere make a brighter future?’
‘Ah, Ace, you know I’d never build a bridge to nowhere.’
‘So what are you doing?’
‘The thing everyone is missing is Antarctica. The Chinese have already expressed interest at the highest levels at exploiting whatever is under the ice there. I know it’s not allowed. But when the treaty is up in 2040, they are going to need a serious base. That could be Argentina or Chile. But we’re the closest. There’s enormous money involved. After 2040, it may become another place to mine. There will be harbour fees for their Antarctic vessels and runway fees. The Chinese in Antarctica are going to need food, machinery, fuel. I’m thinking long term. Something politicians are not meant to do, Ace. We’ve got to make these alliances good and strong, and a long way out. It’s a win-win.’
‘And it’s not Antarctica, is it, JC?’
He chuckled. ‘Tasmanians like to imagine that it will stay this way. And it would be nice if it did. But let’s face it, Ace, Tasmania is, at most, two generations away from high-rises on all the best beaches. Mining in the middle. Fish farms in every estuary and around the coastline. There’ll be a few wilderness theme parks for the greenies. The rest of it is going to be supporting three times our current population, if not ten. Climate change will do that. All sorts of people are looking for what’s here, and they’ll come. They’re already coming. That’s the way it is, whether you and I like it or not. So, while I can, I’m going to take care of Tasmanians. And that’s why I have you, sister, to ensure we deliver as smoothly and quietly as possible.’
That’s why I hate Liberals. It’s all money and power. I hate Labor as well, because they’ll sell out on anything—workers, refugees, artists, freedoms—just to get power. Look at what Labor signed off on with the Liberals back in 2018 to bring in those counterespionage laws. Once the fine print emerged, Australians discovered that no-one was free to reveal government secrets either—even if they were whistleblowing. It was also a crime to assist foreign spies working in Australia. Which suddenly made any chance of working with the CIA or British intelligence, or any of our old allies, a crime that carried life imprisonment. That had made a lot of jobs a whole lot harder.
I don’t want to hate my brother. I don’t want to hate my sister. I love them. But the whole world is getting conservative and governments are getting more authoritarian. It isn’t religion that’s the opiate of the masses in the twenty-first century. It’s fear. Fear is the new opioid. It makes us dull, paranoid, selfish and jittery, and we’re fed it on the front of every newspaper, all day long on radio and TV and any online news. Whether you’ve got ten million dollars or ten cents, these days fear drives everything. It was grinding me down. A tiny handful of people are getting so rich. And they’re squeezing the rest of us dry. I see it everywhere. Even in northern Europe, and they’ve been about the best at caring for people.
JC kept turning the whisky in his large hand. ‘I just want to get the thing finished, Ace. And don’t feel too sad for the locals. Property down there has trebled in value in the past four years. You, in particular, ought to appreciate that.’
‘Not Maggie Lennox’s retreat.’
‘Maggie Lennox does very nicely out of this government. Did she tell you we put half a million into Solitude? We market it everywhere for her. Maggie Lennox understands development. She just didn’t see this coming. And when she did, she couldn’t stop it. That’s what she’s upset about.’
‘And once the road is open, it won’t be Solitude anymore.’
‘Well, maybe she’ll have to change the name. Proximity, or something like that.’
‘And the boutique operators who’ll be squeezed out by big hotels and big retailers?’
‘The price of progress,’ he said. ‘Let them all compete.’
‘Whatever it is you’re doing, do the benefits outweigh the costs?’ I asked. ‘You just let a foreign government run roughshod over our rules and regulations.’
‘Ace, in the end it was my call. China doesn’t intervene in the affairs of other nations. When Edward Snowdon got out of the US, he went to Hong Kong. China let him pass through to Russia. They didn’t interfere. With a project this size, there were always going to be contingencies.’
‘A life is not a contingency. And a way of life is not a contingency, either,’ I said, finishing my whisky. ‘You don’t understand how mad the world has got out there, JC. We are a hair’s breadth away from World War Three on any given day.’
‘You’re not going soft on me, are you, Ace? Look, there’s a lunch tomorrow with a couple of investors. Come and meet a few people. You still with me?’
I sighed and nodded.
He walked back inside. ‘I’ll tell Ella to come whip your arse.’
‘I’ll go get changed,’ I said.
As I ran downstairs to the apartment, I thought of what our dad used to say whenever me and JC began fighting. ‘We came into the world like sister and brother, and now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.’ He adjusted it a little for the circumstances, seeing that we were sister and brother, not brother and brother. But still, it was a rule of sorts, long before Shakespeare was our father’s only form of communication.
It was from The Comedy of Errors.
I was hand in hand with JC again. I wondered what Dad would make of us now.
On the tennis court my niece was a good player in the making. She had a mean serve and an awesome backhand.
It took my height and strength to keep the score level. But she wanted victory more than me, and I wanted it for her. Still we slugged it out, 7/6, 6/7 …
It was a warm afternoon with a sea breeze coming in across the Derwent, twenty-six degrees and hardly a cloud in the sky. From up here, we looked down on a river arrayed with sailing craft of every size and variety, from dinghies to maxis. Some were racing, others were just pleasure craft. The harbour, the Derwent, the channel, it was all a sailing paradise.
‘Might have to bring you over to New York and get you a coach there,’ I said, as we finished up and I took a long slug from a water bottle.
‘Thanks, Aunty Ace, but no thanks. I like it here.’
This made me think JC and Stephanie might already have suggested it to her.
‘There are good places beyond Tasmania, Ella. And lots of opportunities if you’re willing to take a few risks. You know, I left here for uni when I was eighteen on a scholarship.’
‘My friends talk about where they’re going to go when they leave here, but I don’t want to go anywhere. Not for long, anyway.’
‘What if you could be a really great player? If you went overseas to school?’
‘That might be fun, but I’m just not sure it would make me happy.’
I looked at her and smiled. This was why I liked teenagers. They weren’t yet full of everyone else’s ideas.
‘What do you think success looks like, Ella?’ I asked as we wandered back through the rhododendrons to the house. It was always the great unasked question. If people got whatever they wanted, what would it look like? I used it often in my one-on-one sessions with clients and the answers always surprised them. It wasn’t obvious, but when they unearthed it, it changed their ideas about life. So often it wasn’t being in charge, having the best weapons or the greatest wealth. It was something simple. Holding a long-anticipated grandchild. Taking a trip. Dying without any regrets.
‘Being with the people you love, I guess,’ Ella said. ‘And being here,’ she added.
‘What do you love about Tasmania?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just home.’
Then she said, ‘What would success look like to you, Aunty Ace?’
I stopped. I pushed my racquet into the toe of my shoe and thought. ‘You know, the first thing that comes to mind is sitting on my balcony at Bruny, watching the sunset over the channel.’
‘When the bridge is finished, we can go from our place to your place in half an hour, Dad says.’
‘I guess that’s true,’ I said.
‘Aunty Ace, one of my friends says that the Chinese are going to take over Bruny Island. Is that true?’ Ella asked.
‘Not as far as I know. Does your friend’s family have a shack there?’
‘Her family lives there. She’s a boarder. Her dad says there’s all this land clearing going on out of sight.’
‘Really?’ I asked.
Ella nodded. ‘Do you think my Dad is taking care of Tasmania?’
‘That’s a big question, Ella. Why do you ask?’
‘People at school say things.’
‘That can’t be easy,’ I said. ‘What’s the thing that most gets to you?’
‘Calling me a princess. Saying the Colemans think they’re the king and queen of Tasmania. Aunty Max and Dad.’
‘What! Nothing about me?’
She smiled. ‘My friend Millie says you’re here to spy on us all.’
‘How did she know?’ I said, laughing.
‘Sometimes I just don’t understand, Aunty Ace,’ she said.
‘Me neither, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘None of us really do. You know what Grandad used to tell me and Aunty Max and your dad when we were small?’
‘What?’ she said.
I sat down with her at the table on the deck.
‘If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise …’
And I remembered it all, right down to:
‘If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—
‘But,’ I said, ‘I changed the last line for my kids. I like to say, “And—which is more—you’ll be content, my love.” My kids have always loved that poem.’
‘Are they coming for Christmas this year?’
I shook my head. ‘We decided it was going to be such a busy time with the bridge and all. But soon.’
‘I want Tavvy to teach me how to bead my hair.’
‘I can show you that,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Really. Where do you think she learned in the first place?’
Ella giggled. ‘People think I have the coolest cousins.’
‘You do,’ I said. ‘And they do, too. They’re both so busy with their work, and in America most people only get two weeks’ holidays each year, so it’s hard to come all this way.’
She nodded.
‘I’ll get a copy of If for your bedroom wall. That’s how I learned it. We had it on the back of the toilet door when we were children.’
‘Thanks, Aunty Ace. That’d be cool.’
‘Beaded hair and Kipling. You’ll be ready for anything,’ I said.
Then we went inside.