Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in
writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater,
to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes
provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given
a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
the houses and unit blocks cascading at illegal angles down the cliff
faces, the six-storey apartment tower teetering on pillars shrouded in
scaffolding for concrete cancer surgeons to cut out the corruption of
bygone bad habits.
How did they get away with that?
We ask it of the rough-as-guts males barnacled to the rocks, the
melanoma farmers practising their military surf club march-past on
the sand, the hard men out on their big boards, working-class relics
in a high-end landscape.
How do they keep getting away with it?
A question, like a fire, needs a provocation, and Bluebird’s raised
middle finger to the monuments to greed and folly and rapacious
optimism is one structure that clings to the sandstone cliff in the
southern corner, defying gravity, connected to the world by a pair
of wooden staircases, one leading up via four zigzags and a narrow
pass between two duplexes to the street, the other thirty-three steps
down to a jump rock onto the sand; staircases like rope ladders on
which the building is paralysed, unable to climb or descend. A gob
of bleached driftwood and cement render thrown against the cliff
face, surely it must slip into the sea. This house is not an answer but
a question: absolute beachfront yet virtually inaccessible, sitting on
premium real estate that is somehow not real estate at all, a historic
abuse protected by custom.
How the fuck did they get away with that?
That is The Lodge, and if you have to ask what The Lodge is,
you’re not a Bluebirder.
Gordon and Kelly Grimes are living there now. They used to rent
an ex-housing commission cottage near the high school, but separated
after Kelly fucked Gordon’s best mate. As separations go, theirs was
unorthodox: Kelly and their sixteen-year-old son Ben moved out of
the broken family home and into The Lodge, followed by Gordon
himself, thanks to the manipulations of Kelly’s widowed wicked
stepmother, who, for good measure, claimed the queen room. Kelly
has the double, separated by half an inch of asbestos sheeting from the
bunk room, which is occupied by Gordon, his twenty-two-year-old
goddaughter Lou, and Ben.
Lodge and family: held together by the gravity of their fractures.
What have they got away with? As the godless say, pull up a pew.
Long story.
ON T H E DE CK OF T H E L OD GE , G OR D ON GR IM E S S CR E E N E D H IS
eyes. The sun was playing peek-a-boo over a bank of clouds that
would soon burn off, summer continuing its insurgency against
the season formerly known as spring.
Hearing a whistle from his left, Gordon turned to see his
bearded young neighbour waving cheerfully. David Archer’s
humble grin spoke of disbelief at their shared good fortune.
Gordon, on edge due to both an ongoing dispute with Archer
and the underlying fact that Archer’s fortune was built on a more
solid economic base than his, raised his hand tentatively, torn
between the suspicion that Archer was taking the piss and the
greater anxiety that his friendliness was genuine. Archer cupped
his hands worshipfully to the sky. In their single mediation session
before the dispute was given a court date, Archer had referred to
this headland as Bluebird’s ‘dress circle’, which Gordon took to
mean that the people down below must be actors.
10
11
their snubs and made for The Lodge, the rest following him
with their eyes as he crossed the grass down to the corner of
the beach. He stepped from the jump rock onto the staircase.
He cock-sparrowed up the wooden stairs, straining his ribcage
to flatten his man boobs, marshalling energy against age. He
paused on the middle landing so he wouldn’t sound puffed-out
on arrival, while pretending to appraise the house clinging to the
rock face. As a property lawyer, Dog perceived The Lodge as a
list of litigation risks. Something had to be done.
Did it? From the inside looking out, possession was nine-
tenths of the law and eleven-tenths of fuck-you. For Gordon, The
Lodge was a monument to the glorious and improbable reign
of nothing: a manifestation of the human will to resist change,
a temple dedicated to miracles within miracles. Weather-beaten
couches, tables and other furniture of the ‘found’ variety, including
two queen beds and a double bunk, had been human-chained
down the staircase from Cliff Street into The Lodge, not a soul
could remember how. For Gordon, The Lodge was a mighty
ruin, a castle redoubt worth the last drop of its defenders’ blood.
But Dog was a can-do guy. A semi-retired practitioner who
ran his own race and much else, Dog lived with his wife Sally
in the penthouse of the newest unit block behind the surf club,
their kids having moved to interstate universities. As an empty-
nester needs a hobby, Dog’s hobby was Gordon’s wife. When that
had begun to go off like yesterday’s milk, Dog had refocused his
attention on Gordon, his stated project to fix up his best mate’s
life and stop it from going so badly wrong again.
Gordon went inside and knocked an agreed double-rap code
on Kelly’s door. Moments later she was a blur up the steps to
Cliff Street, clothes bunched under her arm. Gordon preferred
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
rights. Kelly had inherited her share of The Lodge twenty years
earlier from her father Noel Chidgey, but, under the terms of his
will, was prevented from monetising it without Leonie’s approval.
Six months ago, after cheating on Gordon, when she would have
loved to sell her share and start up somewhere else, Kelly had
asked Leonie for that approval, but Leonie had refused. So Kelly
moved into The Lodge with Ben. Her restricted financial condition
might force her to wear, as she called, a ‘fixed chagrin’, but Kelly,
who hated the house she had grown up in nearly as much as she
hated her stepmother, had no intention of staying in The Lodge
long-term. The Lodge was merely a stepping stone on her path
to escape. She would find a way around Leonie. She had rejoined
the workforce, managing an aromatic candle emporium in the
tourist hub of Capri (‘Seven miles from the city, a million miles
from care’, but, if you asked Bluebirders, too fucking close, thanks
very much), to make ends meet while waiting for that happy day
when some change in circumstance, such as Ben finishing school,
or Leonie falling from a cruise ship or suffering a fatal pedicure
mishap, freed her from the hideous tumbling-down house and
this miserable beach.
‘I have,’ Gordon said. ‘But I’m not like you.’
‘Employable.’
He lowered his head.
‘You’re not that useless, Gordon. There must be something out
there that isn’t customer-facing.’
But customer-facing was all that was left, and Kelly, attractive,
fit and trim, able to play any convivial role in exchange for her
needs being met, was speaking from the higher status of one whose
very appearance did not trigger customer complaints. Gordon
was a shambling ruin, his scant resources of social conformity
20
21
22
best face beneath the decay and mould and water damage and
structural unsoundness. He saw the architectural intent behind the
‘feature wall’ of diagonal pine veneer placed randomly beneath the
breakfast bar. He saw the creativity in the brown macramé curtain
over the kitchen window, enabling him to spy on incoming visitors
without being seen. He relived the 1970s in the design of naked
women in the black-and-white downstairs shower curtain. Where
most houses tended to be refurbished in one fell swoop, dated like
layers of geological catastrophe in sedimentary rock, The Lodge
was a permanent work in process, bits improved at whim, and
with its haphazard ageing Gordon felt a true kinship. They were
made for each other, Gordon and this building that had fallen so
miraculously into his hands. The one thing he had loved his whole
life, without any reservation, free of the capacity to disappoint,
was The Lodge. The community, like the newspaper and the
old Bluebird Literary Institute (now an organic food store), like
Bluebird High School and the post office and the police station,
had been submerged beneath the Ponzi scheme of real estate
tumbling down the headlands. The Lodge was the last remnant
of what Gordon considered civilisation. He would save it. As each
house was knocked down and the world ‘discovered’ Bluebird,
Gordon’s love for The Lodge had hardened into something akin
to a mission. Chance had made him the protector of Bluebird,
the steward of history.
And yet, maintaining The Lodge required such daunting
upkeep. Gordon was exhausted from being so daunted. At four
o’clock each morning, he was dragged out of his thin watery sleep
by the list of what he needed to do to save The Lodge that very
day: more maintenance, more begging. As with a prisoner who
wakes from the freedom of his dreams to find himself in his cell,
23
24
25
26
27