REAL TROUBLE
Stephen sat for a minute thinking over the implications of what he had just read. Then he went to the phone and called Graham. “Graham, have you finished your history assignment on the French Revolution yet?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” Graham answered.
“Would you be able to lend me your notes so I can write my essay tonight?” Stephen asked. What he really meant was come over and talk to me.
“Sure,” Graham replied. “I’ll just check with Mum.”
When Graham returned to say he was allowed Stephen added, “Please bring any maps you have so I can include one in the assignment.”
“It will have to be after tea. I might be a while. I will go via Pete’s,” Graham replied.
“Bring him with you,” Stephen answered, trying to sound off-hand.
That done Stephen sat and watched the TV news, the HDD once again ready to record. Tom joined him. As he had hoped there was a brief article on Mr Potts. He was visiting the NQEA shipyard at Portsmith to look at a new naval patrol vessel under construction there. But the questions from the news reporters were all about politics. This time Stephen listened. To his surprise he learned that the Prime Minister was so sick that it was thought likely he would have to resign from ill-health and Mr Potts was obviously one of the main contenders to replace him.
‘This could get heavy,’ he thought. The idea of causing trouble to the Prime Minister, and thus to himself and his friends was enough to make him feel queasy in the stomach.
It was only after the TV news article that Stephen noted Mr Potts’ name and photo on the front page of the newspaper his father was reading. ‘LOCAL BOY MAY BE NEXT PM’ read the headline. Now Stephen began to understand why the local media were making such a big deal of him. There had never been a North Queensland Prime Minister before.
“There won’t ever be if what you think is right and we let the cat out of the bag,” Peter commented an hour later.
Graham nodded. “We would need to be very sure of ourselves before we say anything,” he agreed.
Tom agreed. “Too right. We could get into real trouble,” he added.
“I was thinking of the justice of the case,” Graham replied. “If Potts is innocent a rumour like this at such a moment could do him great harm. It would be very unfair.”
Peter agreed. “It wasn’t him after all. He wasn’t even born at the time.”
“We could get taken to court for scandal couldn’t we?” Tom added.
“Slander I think you mean,” Stephen corrected.
“Or is it libel?” Graham asked.
Peter answered. “Slander is when you say something that harms another person’s reputation, libel is when you print it,” he explained.
“And we don’t have any real proof,” Stephen agreed. He was feeling quite uneasy about the situation and wondered if they shouldn’t just drop the whole thing. But curiosity still nagged at him. “Did you bring your maps Graham?”
The four boys were sitting around Stephen’s room. Graham nodded and opened his school bag. “I wasn’t sure which one you wanted so I brought the lot,” he replied. Stephen knew Graham had an extensive collection of military topographic maps on several scales. “Which one did you want?” Graham asked.
“I don’t know,” Stephen replied. “I want to find where ‘Hayden Park’ station is.”
“Any idea of its approximate location?” Graham asked.
“Somewhere off the headwaters of the Mitchell River, near the Hodgekinson goldfield,” Stephen replied.
Graham muttered to himself as he named maps and shuffled through the bundle. Then he passed a 1:100 000 scale map to Stephen. “Try that one.”
It was the map of Mt Mulligan. The Hodgekinson valley ran diagonally across it to join the Mitchell River on the northern edge. Five minutes of study caused Stephen to shake his head in frustration. “Give me the next one to the east. The station was near the old coach roads from Port Douglas to the Hodgekinson.”
Graham tossed several maps aside, then selected one and handed it to him. Stephen saw that it was the Rumula Map they had been using on Black Mountain. He spread it flat and they all leaned over to scan it. The blue lines marking the Mitchell River at once caught his attention and he followed these, quickly scanning the tributaries running south. Within seconds his eyes picked up the words ‘Hayden Park’. The cattle station homestead was set in a valley about fifteen kilometres long by five wide. The valley was wedged into very rugged country west of the Hann Tableland. More steep, jumbled mountain country blocked it off from the west where the headwaters of the Hodgekinson River were marked.
Then Stephen gave a quick intake of breath as his eyes picked out what he had been seeking, but now half hoping not to find.
“There!” he said, placing his finger tip below the feature. “Pink Lily Lagoon.”
“My word yes,” Graham agreed. “That looks big enough for a floatplane to land on.”
“Nearly two kilometres long,” Peter said, measuring it against the grid squares.
“There had to be a lake for the floatplane to land on,” Stephen said, feeling suddenly apprehensive and wishing his mind would stop.
The boys looked at each other and Stephen felt a sense of deepening anxiety. “Perhaps we should just drop this and let sleeping dogs lie?” he suggested.
Tom shook his head vigorously. “No. I want to know what happened to my Great Grandfather.”
“But what good could it do?” Stephen argued. “Think of all the people it might hurt.”
“Us for starters,” Peter commented with a wry grin.
Graham looked doubtful. “Oh what can they do?” he commented.
“I don’t know,” Peter replied, “But if there is murder to cover up it could be nasty.”
That caused a silence that seemed to stretch for minutes. Peter broke it by saying, “Anyway, they would need to know it was us.”
At that a horrible suspicion formed in Stephen’s mind. He mentally berated himself for not thinking of it earlier. Rather than speak aloud he snatched a pad off his desk and wrote: ‘Don’t speak. The room may be bugged.’
The others read it and looked aghast. Stephen tore the page out and said, “I need to go to the shop to buy some milk. Who wants to come?”
They all did of course. As a group they made their way to the door. Stephen’s father looked up from his work and asked where they were off to. “Just to the shop,” Stephen replied. “We won’t be long.”
As the group walked along the footpath Stephen explained his suspicions that someone had been in his house that afternoon. Graham confirmed this. Peter was inclined to disbelieve him and said so. “You are getting paranoid Steve. We aren’t that important.”
“We are if we can wreck the career of a Prime Minister,” Stephen said. “They must have bugged your telephone don’t forget, or how did they know to come to Wangetti Beach the other night?”
That certainly caused Peter to rethink. “Then we need to be very careful what we say and when,” he said.
“And who to,” Stephen added.
The boys stood in the darkness near the shop and discussed whether they were in fact under surveillance and how this might be done. At length Peter said, “We must assume we are and act accordingly.”
“That means pretending we aren’t suspicious,” Stephen added.
“Strewth! That is going to be hard,” Graham cried, “trying to remember what is bluff and what is double-bluff!”
For ten more minutes they discussed their tactics before moving on to the shop. Here they purchased soft drinks and ice creams and walked slowly back to Stephen’s. When they returned Stephen was surprised to find Judy and her friend Sheila sitting in the lounge room. Stephen’s mother seemed pleased to see the girls and said, “See who’s come to visit. Now, who would like tea or coffee?”
Stephen secretly fumed because that ended the strategy session. Even so he was also pleased. He sat near Judy and smiled. ‘She is nice,’ he decided. ‘I like the way her hair glistens in the lamplight, and she has very nice eyes.’
The teenagers began to gossip about school and about the swimming carnival now only days away. Judy noted that this left Tom out of the conversation and steered the talk to asking him about his school and Victoria. Within minutes Tom and Judy were engaged in an animated conversation and Tom had her laughing. To Stephen’s surprise he discovered he was annoyed and it took some honesty on his part to recognize that he was actually jealous.
Even so it was a pleasant hour before the girls were picked up by Sheila’s father. At that stage Peter and Graham also took their leave. Stephen saw them out, then retired to his room, ostensibly to do his homework, but actually to mull over the days findings.
It was a very thoughtful boy who dropped off to sleep late that night. With the morning came no resolution to the moral dilemma. To cause harm to a total stranger for something he had not done went against Stephen’s notions of right and wrong and he mentally prepared himself to convince Tom to drop the whole thing. “It will do us no good, and may cause a lot of harm,” he said.
To his relief a tired looking Tom nodded and agreed. “I’ve been thinking about it all night and I think you are right. I will just give it up,” Tom said.
“What will you do now?” Stephen asked.
“Arrange to go back to Victoria I suppose,” Tom replied. “Although I don’t really want to.”
“Why not?” Stephen asked.
Tom coloured and shrugged then said, “Because I think Judy is wonderful.”
That staggered Stephen. It also annoyed him but he knew he had been deliberately giving the impression that he wasn’t interested in her. ‘I’ve only myself to blame,’ he thought, ‘but what ever does she see in a dopey looking bugger like Tom?’
So Stephen headed off to school determined to wipe the mystery of the crashed floatplane from his mind and to devote his efforts to impressing Judy. Much harder, he thought, would be the effort needed to convince Graham and Peter to give up the investigation.
It was hard, but mainly because they had difficulty being alone long enough to discuss it. There always seemed to be some other people within earshot. But both Peter and Graham did agree that it was wrong to wreck a man’s career just on supposition and rumour.
“I mean, we’ve got no real proof,” Stephen said.
“And not likely to get any now either,” Peter commented.
Graham frowned. “What about the thing you took from the wreck?” he asked.
Stephen shook his head. “It is proof, of a sort, but it can’t be pinned on any individual.”
“So that’s it then? The end of the mystery in the clouds,” Graham said. “Now it will chew at me for the rest of my life. Every time I see Black Mountain I will think about it.”
“What about poor old Tom?” Peter added. “He will lie awake wondering for the rest of his life.”
“He already does,” Stephen said, “But he agrees it isn’t right to harm innocent people.”
“So the guilty go free?” Graham asked.
Stephen nodded. “If they are still alive, yes.”
“What if it wasn’t Potts’ father? What if it was that Jorgenson fellow’s father, the one with the bulldozer? Would that hurt an innocent man?” Graham asked.
“Jorgenson might not know anything about what his father or grandfather might have done,” Stephen replied. “Do you know all your father’s dark secrets?”
“My dad doesn’t have any dark secrets,” Graham replied. “He’s just a grumpy old bugger who’s boring.”
“How do you know?” Peter asked. He grinned and added, “If they were secrets you wouldn’t know them would you?”
“Well Jorgenson knows something,” Graham persisted. “Why else has he made such an effort to get those documents in that briefcase, and why has he gone to such trouble to search around the wreck, and then chase us all over the country?”
That was an uncomfortable thought but Stephen still shook his head. “We still don’t have any proof and I’d rather we dropped it.”
“Ok, if that’s how you want it,” Peter agreed. “Now let’s go and practice for the swimming carnival.”
They left it at that but Stephen sensed it hadn’t really been settled. He wasn’t happy with the decision himself but tried his hardest to put the matter out of his mind. Instead he concentrated on Judy. During swimming practice he noted that she had a very trim and shapely figure. ‘Boobs aren’t all that big but she’s got a nice bum and lovely thighs,’ he observed.
So he put on all his charm and spent more time chatting and telling silly jokes than he did swimming, despite repeated injunctions by the PE teacher to get on with it. Stephen even began contemplating asking her for a date and hinted at various places it might be nice to go. She responded so well that he felt very pleased with his efforts. ‘I think I’m going to win here,’ he thought happily.
After school was cadets. It was a normal Wednesday afternoon Home Training parade. It was a routine cadet training parade. For Stephen the most memorable thing was having four new recruits added to his platoon so that it began to look like something respectable on parade. Most of his time and energy was taken up by ensuring the NCOs looked after the new cadets, explaining how things worked and ensuring they knew how to wear their uniform.
After cadets Stephen rode home, thinking deeply about the mystery and whether to let it all drop. It was 6:30 pm by the time he got home and he got another shock. As he went along the hall he met Tom coming out of the bathroom. Tom was brushing his hair and was dressed in good clothes: long trousers and long-sleeved shirt.
“You going out Tom?” he asked.
“Yes. Judy and I are going to the movies,” Tom replied.
Stephen was so surprised that he was unable to think of an immediate response. What he was aware of, as he reached the privacy of his own room, was that it hurt. That put him in a bad mood but he knew he had only himself to blame for being so off-hand with Judy. He also wondered if his hurt was jealousy or injured pride.
When he came back out from changing Stephen sat near Tom in the lounge. “We have talked about dropping the investigation,” he said. “We are going to.”
Tom nodded. “That’s good. I know it will be hard to do, but I don’t want to hurt innocent people.”
“When are you going home?” Stephen asked.
“I’d like to stay,” Tom replied, “But I’d better go on Saturday or Sunday. I’ll see if I can book a seat tomorrow.”
“Good,” Stephen hissed between teeth that had involuntarily clenched themselves. “Don’t you hurt Judy.”
Tom looked at him in surprise. “Oh! Oh I say, sorry! I didn’t think you liked her. No, don’t worry. I won’t hurt her, but who she likes and goes out with is up to her.”
The challenge was offered softly and Stephen chose to ignore it. ‘Why fight?’ he thought ‘Tom will be gone in a day or two and any romance will then wither.’
But it still pained him to see Tom walk out and get into the car driven by Judy’s mother half an hour later. To twist the knife Judy did not come in but waved from the car and favoured Tom with a dazzling smile as he walked across the lawn to the car. That put Stephen in a grumpy mood and he went to his room and sat trying to write an English essay.
That was hard work too, because his mind kept straying back to the mystery of the floatplane. He went back to the lounge to watch TV and his father commented on his surly attitude. Stephen went back to his room and sulked, trying not to think of Tom kissing Judy, or of them doing anything more. ‘No,’ he tried to console himself. ‘Judy isn’t like that. She wouldn’t let Tom do anything. Besides, he’s so wet behind the ears he probably wouldn’t know what to do anyway!’
Even that wasn’t very convincing because the niggling thought kept bursting through: when had Tom managed to ask Judy for a date? ‘The bugger must be a smooth talker,’ he thought morosely.
By the time Tom came home Stephen was in bed and he pretended to be asleep. But sleep would not come. Nagging thoughts of Tom and Judy together mixed with ‘what ifs?’ about the crashed floatplane. The end result was a horrible nightmare in which Stephen found himself being chased by a rotting corpse that rose out of a rusty car body. In his frantic attempts to escape he climbed into a floatplane. To his intense relief the engine started and he tried to take off. But somehow the floatplane vanished and he found himself floundering in a swampy lake. Then a green hand, all coated with weeds and slime, thrust up out of the black water to grasp at him!
When he woke on Thursday morning Stephen felt washed out. He was in a bad mood but made an effort to hide his curiosity about how Tom and Judy had made out. He was careful to avoid any reference to it, to the extent of hardly speaking to Tom at all.
It was a very grumpy boy who set out for school on his bicycle at 8:15. As he pedalled along Stephen went over in his mind all the reasons for dropping the investigation into the crashed floatplane. These seemed to be still valid so he sighted with regret and turned his mind to Judy, and how to win her attention and affection.
As he rode past the corner store half way to school Stephen suddenly remembered that he needed a new pen. It was a small thing but he remembered it quite clearly later as one of those things that seems so insignificant but which ultimately turns out to be very important. Knowing he had enough small change in his pocket he glanced to check for traffic and then swung his bike around. The only car had been half a block behind and it just went on past. Stephen got off his bike and went into the shop, purchased the pen, then came out and continued his journey.
It was half way along the next block he noticed the white car which had passed him before. It had pulled over and was parked beside the road. The driver sat in it reading a newspaper. Because Stephen had to slow down to allow two cars to pass before he pulled out to go round the white car he was forced to notice it. He even glanced at the driver as he did and was intrigued to note that the driver, whose eyes he had glimpsed in the side mirror, was now looking away.
A peculiar feeling crept over Stephen but he kept on pedalling. ‘I’m imagining things,’ he thought. He rounded the next curve and then, on an impulse, swung his bike over to the footpath and got off, standing behind a parked car and one of the trees that lined the street. A few moments later the white car appeared at the corner. Stephen saw the driver look in both directions, far more carefully than he would have to merely observe traffic.
‘He’s looking for something,’ Stephen thought. He watched the car as it swung right and came down the street the same way. The car accelerated. As it went racing past the driver glanced towards Stephen. That he was seen was obvious from the momentary look in the driver’s eyes. Then the man looked away and drove on. To Stephen that moment of eye contact was like being struck by a bucket of ice water.
“That man is following me!” he muttered with shocked realization.