The Brothers Read online

  DEDICATION

  For W. B. Hinton.

  One more day.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  The coast was breathing out like a runner after a marathon, the long summer break over. Hordes of recharged tourists had packed up and returned to city lives, returned to jobs and schools and grinding routines. Jake had seen the exodus many times and had seen the last diehard campers leaving Lorne caravan park yesterday as he passed in the opposite direction towards Tom’s house; to put him in the ground.

  Tom. His brother. It seemed every time Jake came back to the coast it was to carry a coffin. First his parents. Now Tom.

  Tom’s house was made of pleated black metal and glass, and rusty Otway stone. It spread across a small clearing in the middle of ten acres that climbed away from the sea, dense with gums and acacias and banksias and grasses, same as all the plots along that secluded strip of the country’s edge just west of Lorne, on Victoria’s south-west coast; an old, never-to-be-repeated crown-land subdivision.

  Ali, Jake’s sister, was finishing a phone conversation with her husband, David, as she drove Jake up the long, unmade driveway to the house. David’s grandmother had suffered a stroke earlier in the day, and he’d returned to Melbourne after Tom’s funeral service to be with her.

  They pulled up to the low front landing and Jake made for the door, unlocked, and pushed inside. He felt something shift, a vague disturbance passing through the room like a dust eddy. He sensed it on his skin but had no trust in his own perception. So much was happening in his mind since Tom’s death, both real and not, and he couldn’t distinguish the two anymore.

  Hollowed out was what he was – off the weary scale into the numb. Even the ever-present pain from his injuries had moved to the background, as though someone had taken the party two doors down for the night. He could still hear the heavy bass beat, but the walls had stopped vibrating.

  ‘Interest you in a hot drink?’ Ali asked, closing the door behind them.

  ‘Might pass,’ Jake said, continuing across to the hall. Focused on getting where he wanted to go. ‘Need to get off my leg. See you in the morning.’

  In Tom’s bedroom, he shucked off his jacket, prised off his boots heel to toe, sat on the end of the bed and struggled with his socks. He stared at his dusky coloured foot, huffed without conviction.

  He tossed his clothes on the chair and pulled back the bed covers. He straightened, frowned. There was something in his bed – small and precise, bold white against storm-grey sheets – and it certainly hadn’t been there when he’d made the bed that morning.

  He reached down, picked up the sturdy card, maybe twelve centimetres square, neither side blank. He turned and sat on the bed, looked at the card, felt something cold slither down his back.

  On one side, three words were stencilled in black:

  WELCOME HOME, JAKE.

  On the other side, someone had glued a cutting from a page of ADF honour award recipients. The cutting said:

  Special Forces Soldier Sergeant H was awarded the Star of Gallantry ‘For acts of conspicuous gallantry in action in circumstances of great peril’ while serving with the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan.

  A familiar blurb that didn’t deliver much of an impact, unlike the message on the other side. The casual nature of those three words tugged his melancholy from its mount. Innocuous words that didn’t feel innocuous, unsigned, secreted in his bed the same day as his brother’s funeral. There was menace in that.

  The toilet flushed in the next room. Jake opened the bedside drawer, posted the card inside and closed it again. Then he slipped under the covers, breathed slow and, before he could think on it anymore, was bludgeoned by sleep.

  Hours later, a jolt smacked through Jake like he’d hit the ground from a great height. He could see hard, bearded faces with eyes like hunters. And flames – there were always flames. His book of dreams. His eyes went wide and he dragged in air. The sound of his own heart in his ears, hair wet and clinging.

  In the soft yellow light of the bathroom, he drank from the tap, ducked his head and let cool water massage the back of his neck, let it flow until the images left him.

  He pulled on clothes and stripped the sheets, made coffee and carried it out to the front deck, its weathered handrail springing under his forearms. Squid boat lights bleached the horizon like day. They’d been out there every night since he’d been back. Gruelling work, tough crews, like his stint on Sea Warrior, winching cray pots from ledges under the Indian Ocean in listing swell and howling south-easterly wind every day.

  Salt and eucalyptus wafted around him, and the calming rhythm of waves played nearby, certain and grounding, but that wasn’t what he was straining to hear.

  He was listening for sounds that didn’t fit: a heavy snap of a twig, the brushing of fabric against scratchy bush, the slow roll of footsteps. There came a disturbance in the gum tree at the end of the deck, the pushing aside of leaves and branches. He turned to a flash of red eyes. Possum.

  The sliding door behind him opened, and timbers creaked as Ali made her way to his side. ‘It’s a wonder there’re any squid left out there,’ she said, pulling a blanket tighter around her shoulders.

  A wonder indeed. Jake took a mouthful of coffee. ‘Sorry I woke you.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s cold. You should go back to bed.’

  ‘I’ve got some sleepers if you want one?’

  ‘Thanks, I’m fine.’

  She looked back at the squid lights. ‘It was a nice farewell. Tom would’ve approved. And the vibe of the wake was up, without getting messy.’

  ‘Didn’t stay ’til stumps.’

  She shivered. ‘You’re right, it’s cold. Come back inside.’

  Jake drained his coffee. ‘In a minute.’

  ‘Jake . . .’ He waited, crickets scoring, and wondered which of his current problems she was about to address – she was spoiled for choice. ‘You couldn’t have prevented it.’

  ‘Ali, it’s four in the morning.’

  ‘Come back inside.’

  The soft hiss of a passing car climbed the three-hundred metres from Great Ocean Road below, headlights worming through the treetops.

  ‘Think I’ll go for a run,’ he said, tossing the dregs over the handrail.

  ‘Now? It’s pitch black!’

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘I’ll wear my headlamp.’

  *

  The new day was tinting the eastern horizon ice blue when Jake left the beach after his run and took the sandy track back up to Great Ocean Road, lanky silver spear grass bowing in the dunes.

  The rhythmic thuds on the shore faded as he climbed, footing firmer in tea trees near the road. He crossed to the drive, stuck to the right-hand tread. It was smoother there – not suitable for patrolling though, that got you killed.

  The ache in his hip had worsened, but he didn’t really mind, almost welcomed it. Pain had a consuming way of handling other troubles – shrunk them to grains. It didn’t extinguish the white card though. Welcome home, Jake? That was a boulder plonked in the middle of his mind.

  A flash of colour from a gum startled him. Wings beat the air. The toe of his running shoe caught on an exposed tree root and jarred his hip. He winced and stopped, shifted his weight until the pain subsided.

  Ali looked up from her phone as he came through the door, and her eyes followed him across the room. ‘You’re limping. A long run, Jake. Is that smart?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing new about the limp, and you’re not my doctor,’ he said in a biting tone he hadn’t planned on using.

  ‘I’m your sister and a doctor, doubly qualified, and I could take an educated guess at what your specialist might say.’

  Jake dropped his headlamp onto the kitchen bench, filled a glass with tap water and watched her as he drank. Didn’t think it mattered which specialist in particular she was referring to – he’d had a few ‘You’re a gasser —’

  ‘Anaesthetist.’

  ‘— and I was given the all-clear over six months ago.’

  ‘For a three-hour run?’

  He
refilled his glass. ‘Walk mostly,’ he said.

  Ali’s body slumped, whether in exasperation of his denial or acceptance of his need for some degree of normality, he didn’t know. She uncurled from the armchair and made her way over. ‘Your body’s been through so much. You need to take it slowly.’

  Jake upturned his glass on the drainer. ‘How’s David’s grandmother this morning?’ he asked, watching her adjust to the change in topic.

  ‘So-so . . . Jake —’

  ‘Ali, I’m fine. Try to relax.’ He turned for the bathroom and heard her sigh.

  ‘Want to go into Lorne for breakfast before I head back to Melbourne? Menzies maybe?’ she said.

  He gave a thumbs-up over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Brace yourself, my man,’ Stocky said to Jake as they climbed the front deck at Menzies two nights later. ‘Don’t expect funeral etiquette this time round. Not from this fucking crowd.’

  Jake’s insides tightened a notch.

  Menzies was a popular modern-fusion restaurant situated on the promenade in the small beachside hamlet of Lorne. It was a sizeable building, augmented for the gradient with views across grassy reserve to the ocean bay in front. The owners, Mal and Suzy Bradshaw, were bona fide locals, both born and raised in the area.

  Jake had been at school with Mal, but they’d moved in different circles. Mal had been a ‘Nipper’ and then a ‘Clubby’ at Lorne Surf Life Saving Club, and had bullied his way through adolescence. Suzy was the younger sister of one of Mal’s clubby mates, the beauty queen of the beach set, leggy and blonde. They’d married young, and together bought Menzies a few years back to divert their attention from their childless and somewhat strained union, or so Jake had heard from reliable locals. He’d also heard that they often had vicious fights and didn’t care where they erupted. He hadn’t been around the two of them enough to know whether that was true or not, but he supposed a modicum of truth existed. Growing up, both had been thorny, volatile. It had been Suzy who’d issued tonight’s invitation to see the band after tonight’s dinner service.

  Jake could hear the band now, and Stocky had been right when he’d said they sounded like The Beach Boys gone rockabilly.

  Stocky, real name Dylan Stockwell, had been Tom’s oldest and closest friend. They’d done everything together all their lives, even bought adjoining plots of land and built houses together. Stocky stood tall and relaxed, six feet of ecowarrior, long sun-bleached dreadlocks, shoulders honed by a lifetime of paddling in surf for vocation and pleasure. A kind soul who trusted easily and believed in the inherent goodness of others. Stocky was comfortable with his life and proud of how he lived it.

  ‘Tom told me some of what you went through in Afghanistan,’ Stocky said, pulling open Menzies’ front door. ‘Piece of piss compared to this.’

  Jake’s laugh cut across the dining area.

  A few clusters of people lingered over coffee and liqueur inside, ceiling fans slow-turning above their heads, but the bulk of the crowd was out in the courtyard. Jake and Stocky stepped through the bifolds into the courtyard, and gazes swung onto Jake like spotlights. He had a vague sense of being in enemy territory, which wasn’t right. He breathed down the urge to find cover, remembered Ali telling him, You’ve withdrawn a long way, Jake. You can’t hide forever.

  He didn’t consider it hiding – more like lying low out of necessity – and, as much he might enjoy catching up with some of the people he grew up with, the process was bound to come with an obligation to talk about what happened, and that was a significant counterpoise. What had swayed him to come in the end had been the white card. He didn’t know if the card had anything to do with anyone at Menzies that night, but there was only one way to find out.

  The band had set up in a raised back corner and were giving it their all. A handful of people up dancing. The outside bar was open and busy, and lanterns strung above gave an air of mellow sophistication. But if past performances were anything to go by, there’d be little sophistication on display once the alcohol kicked in. Jake didn’t plan on staying that long though, which was why he’d offered to drive.

  It took a while to get to the bar, what with the steady flow of sympathy, commiserations and congratulations, cheek kisses, shoulder-slaps and handshakes. Stocky insisted on buying and, as they waited, Jake felt eyes on his back. Not the curious local variety. Something weightier. He looked past Stocky and began a slow scan of the area.

  ‘Welcome home, Jake,’ came a booming voice from the side.

  Jake stiffened, recalling the wording of the note left in Tom’s bed. A solid slap to his back sent a blade of pain into his hip. He turned and looked into the wintry eyes of Graham Smith, the local real estate shark. Not a harmless man.

  There wasn’t an ethical, honourable bone in Smith’s well-fed body, and he took it upon himself to push the line on every law on the planet as a matter of civic duty. A skilled manipulator, Smith collected IOUs like a mortgage broker collected loan signatures, and he was shameless about calling them in for maximum results – always in his favour. His face reminded Jake of a giant thumb: flat broad features under a curved protruding forehead. Before turning his hand to real estate, Smith had sold second-hand cars.

  ‘Graham,’ Jake said, shaking the offered hand and resisting an itch to run his palm down his thigh afterwards.

  Stocky nudged Jake and handed him his whisky. ‘Enjoy, mate,’ he muttered, then moved away.

  ‘How many years has it been?’ Smith asked.

  ‘A bundle.’

  ‘Sorry about Tom. Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. And sorry I didn’t make the funeral. Had a Real Estate Institute meeting in Melbourne.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jake said, relaxing his grip on his glass. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ As if that wasn’t a fucking lie.

  Smith laughed like he’d just heard the most hilarious joke ever told. ‘Life’s too short,’ he said, and did a small jolt. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.’

  ‘None taken.’ Jake could feel the heavy eyes on his back again.

  A young woman with long dark hair weaved past, wearing tight mustard pants and a thin white shirt knotted under her breasts. Jake watched the rim of Smith’s tongue come to rest on his top lip and his eyes follow her as though hooked.

  The woman was swallowed by the crowd, and Smith turned back with a flick of his head, closed his mouth, did several blinks. ‘Memories,’ he said. ‘So, Star of Gallantry, eh? Who’d have thought?’

  Jake tasted his whisky, savoured peat and oak on his tongue and warmth in his throat. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked, and thought Smith looked mildly panicked as he dug around his annals for an acceptable reason for his comment.

  ‘Well, I don’t reckon Lorne’s ever had a war hero of your stature before,’ he said, finding one.

  ‘Generous of you, Graham, but not sure that’s right,’ Jake said. ‘Anyway, going to keep moving. Lot of people to catch up with. Excuse me.’

  Jake moved off towards a group from his football days who were gesturing for his attention. He glanced around for the owner of the weighty glare as he went. A man was standing in a shadowy corner near a collection of potted trees: he was tall and muscular, with close-cut hair and what looked like a security ID on a lanyard around his neck. Jake had a sense the man was deliberately not looking his way.

  ‘Harlow!’ someone said. Another slap on the back, another blade of pain. Jake turned to see Andrew Dobson, aka Dobber, take his arm from around a girl who didn’t look old enough to be out this late. He stuck his hand towards Jake. ‘Fuck, long time. How ya doin’ ya bastard?’

  Jake smiled, shook Dobber’s hand – or rather, held on through the vigour of it – and said he was fine. Dobber’s face turned serious. ‘Sorry about Tom, mate. Totally fucked, makes no sense. The coast isn’t the same without him. And sorry I didn’t make the funeral. Got stuck in Sydney. Bloody fog.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’ve taken a few hits, but ya look pretty fucking decent. What’re ya drinkin’?’

  Jake lifted his glass. ‘Thanks, mate. I’m good.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Dobber said, and sniffed Jake’s glass. ‘Whisky, right? Straight up?’

  Jake gave a nod, and Dobber took off for the bar mumbling something about doubles. Jake was thinking it was a long walk home.

  ‘Hi, I’m Tessa,’ said the very young woman.