Beach Walker – Chapter 7
Revelations
I didn’t know what to expect – but I didn’t expect this. I’d imagined my friend living in a small modern unit or an old fibro beach shack.
I followed the phone’s instructions blindly as it led me out of town. Pulling into a gravel drive, I stopped. Surely the wrong address? No, this really was it.
Leonard’s property wasn’t grand, but good grief – it was big. The drive curved between sheokes and eucalypts, past paddocks dotted with sheep and black Angus cattle, until the house came into view.
It was modest for all that land. Just a simple farmhouse, barely distinguishable from a Seventies suburban home: a double-fronted, single-storey brick dwelling with a cement-tiled roof. To the right stood a corrugated metal garage, big enough for two or maybe three vehicles.
Leonard emerged from a side door of the garage as I drew up, shutting it behind him. He was wearing grimy blue overalls with a big rip at the thigh, almost indecently close to the crotch. I was careful not to look. He wiped his oily hands on an equally grimy rag.
‘Found it then,’ he grinned. ‘Bit out of the way, here. Come on into the house, I’ll get the coffee on.’ He paused. ‘Unless you want the grand tour first?’
‘Looks like that might take a while.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t be fooled. The land’s mostly leased to the neighbours. All I’ve got to myself is the house and yard. And the horse paddock and stable out back.’
‘You own horses?’
‘Nah. They own me. Come and say G’day.’
I followed Leonard round the back of the house. Nervously: I’d been around horses on my grandparents’ farm as a child. Enough to know that we didn’t get along. Half a tonne of muscle and bone, with teeth to bite, hooves to stomp and kick – and the high-strung nerves of a much smaller animal. To be admired from afar, in my view.
The back yard was much like the front: neat enough but unloved, just a utilitarian rectangle of grass with the inevitable Hills Hoist and a small veggie patch.
‘How come?’ I spread my arms, palms upturned, to indicate the sweep of the land which, unaccountably, belonged to Leonard, a guy who only seemed to have two sets of clothes, neither of them suitable for polite company. And that hat.
‘Long story short: it was my uncle’s farm. Left it to me when he died, few years back. Only one in the family who’d have a bar of me, after I came out.’
I didn’t know how to take that. Did he mean ‘was released from prison’ or ‘came “out” out’?
My face must have been an open book. He snorted a laugh. ‘Both the things you’re thinking, Grace. Came out of prison knowing exactly who I am. And not giving a rat’s. Anyone got a problem with that? Their problem.’
There were two horses in the paddock: a tall black mare with a striking white blaze and a roan gelding, slightly shorter but chunkier.
‘Lexy.’ He pointed at the mare, which was trotting up and down the far fence. ‘She’s a bit stand-offish around strangers.’
‘And this fella is Barty.’ He indicated the roan, which had sidled up. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he held up his empty, oil-smeared hands. ‘Got nothin’ for ya.’
Odd names for horses, I thought. As we walked back to the house, I expressed my enthusiasm for the admittedly fine animals.
‘Don’t like horses, then?’
Well, that was a success.
‘It’s more that they don’t like me.’
‘The fear, see? They pick up on it. We could work on that, if you’d like?’
‘Mm. Maybe.’
‘Ah. That’ll be a “no”, then. Fair ’nough.’
He opened the back door and held it for me to enter the kitchen. ‘Welcome to my humble abode, as they say. It ain’t much.’
He busied himself with the old-fashioned aluminium espresso pot. Then, while it was on the stove, he gave me the rest of ‘the tour’.
That was a string of revelations, but posed more questions than it answered. This was due to my guide’s habit of opening a door, mumbling something into the room, then moving me along before I’d had time to have a proper look around.
I wondered whether he was already regretting his hospitality. It can’t have been easy for this private man to let me into his life.
As domestic as the house looked on the outside – on the inside, it had more the appearance of a laboratory. One run by a small but industrious research team with wayward interests and untidy habits.
The front rooms – what had probably been the lounge and dining room – were taken up with several fish tanks bubbling away, seeming to contain nothing but algae. In one room there was also a desk with a reading lamp and a modern computer. A long plastic table bore microscopes and other scientific paraphernalia. Boxes and plastic crates were stacked in the corners.
On the walls hung framed and labelled samples of seaweed behind glass, between large marine charts showing depth contours, peppered with coloured dots, and hand-drawn lists and tables with arcane abbreviations and symbols. A large swordfish skeleton dangled from the ceiling.
The bathroom contained scuba and snorkelling gear. A wetsuit hung over the bath.
One ‘bedroom’ was entirely taken up with books – in bookcases, on the floor, on top of the wardrobe – and an overstuffed filing cabinet. Certificates from various universities and institutions hung on the walls. There was a framed photo of a younger Leonard in an academic gown shaking hands with a professorial-looking woman while others looked on.
Opening the door to the other bedroom revealed what appeared to be a motorcycle engine, dismantled on the floor next to the one – single – bed.
‘Bit of a mess, I know,’ he shrugged, as he poured our coffee. ‘I should have a proper tidy up, but who has time for that?’
‘Play fair, Leonard. You can’t show me all this and not explain what’s going on.’
‘Told ya before. My life’s work.’ As if this explained everything.
‘Seaweed?’
He grimaced. ‘I prefer “marine algae and vascular plants”, but yeah.’ He paused, peered into his coffee mug, considered, evidently decided that this wasn’t enough of an explanation.
‘While I was inside, I caught up on my schooling. Bugger all else to do. Finished year twelve. Took classes at Melbourne Uni and James Cook. Distance learning, of course …’
‘Marine biology?’
‘Correct. Then a Masters in marine botany.’
‘Nice. Why those subjects?’
‘Escape. Walls and steel doors can keep your body in. Can’t stop your mind from travelling. Running away to sea seemed the ultimate freedom.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t go for veterinary science, with the horses.’
‘Too bloody painful.’ His lip quivered and he quickly raised his coffee mug to mask it. ‘Knowing I’d never race again. Twenty-one years … It’s a long time, Grace.’
‘Sorry.’
‘S’okay.’ He smiled. ‘I can talk about it these days … It really helps me – y’know?’
I raised my eyebrows in enquiry.
‘Talking to you. Doesn’t come easy, but.’
‘I know.’
‘Course you do. Probably feel like that, too – about your Geoff, I mean.’
I nodded. It was all that the lump in my throat would allow me to do.
Next week in Beach Walker:
Chapter 8: Fears and Desires
Leonard makes Grace an offer, but she’s unsure whether to accept.