Read Online The Broken Shore by Peter Temple - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Temple
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said Mick Cashin. ‘You mean the royal family? Prince Rainier?’
‘Don’t be rude, Mick,’ said Cashin’s mother, tapping his father’s cheek. ‘It’s pronounced pree, Michael. It means prize.’
Every year there had been more city kids on the beach. You knew city kids because of their haircuts and their clothes and because the older ones, boys and girls, wore neck chains and smoked, didn’t much care who saw them.
Cashin thought about the winter Saturday morning they had driven up to their shack and Macca’s Shacca next door was gone, vanished, nothing there except disturbed sand to show where the low bleached building had stood, gently leaning backwards.
He had walked around, marvelling at the shack’s absence. There were marker pegs in the ground, and the next time they came a house was half-built on a cement slab.
That summer was the last in their shack, the last summer before his dad’s death. Years later, he asked his mother what became of the place.
‘I had to sell it,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t any money.’
Now you would have to be more than just rich to own a place in the teatree scrub on the Bar and no shacks broke the skyline above Open Beach; on the once worthless dunes stood a solid line of houses and units with wooden decks and plateglass windows. Nothing under six hundred grand.
A fishing boat was coming in, heading for the entrance.
Cashin knew the boat. It belonged to a friend of Bern’s who had a dodgy brother, an abalone poacher. Just six boats still fished out of Port Monro, bringing in crayfish and a few boxes of fish, but it was the town’s only industry apart from a casein factory. Its only industry if you didn’t count six restaurants, five cafes, three clothing boutiques, two antique shops, a bookshop, four masseurs, an aromatherapist, three hairdressers, dozens of bed-and-breakfast establishments, the maze and the doll museum.
He finished his coffee and went to work the long way, through Muttonbird Rocks, no one in the streets, most of the holiday houses empty. He drove along two sides of the business block, past the two supermarkets, the three real-estate agents, three doctors, two law firms, the newsagent, the sports shop, the Shannon Hotel on the corner of Liffey and Lucas Streets.
In the late 1990s, a city drug dealer and property developer had bought the boarded-up, gull-crapped Shannon. People still talked about a bar fight there in 1969 that needed two ambulances from Cromarty to take the injured to hospital. The new owner spent more than two million dollars on the Shannon. Tradesmen took on apprentices, bought new utes, gave their wives new kitchens—the German appliances, the granite benchtops.
Two men in beanies were coming out of the Orion, Port’s surviving bloodhouse, still waiting for its developer. In Cashin’s first week in charge, three English backpackers drinking there at lunchtime gave some local hoons cheek. The one took a king hit, went down and stayed down, copped a few boots. The others, skinny kids from Leeds, were headbutters and kickers and they got into a corner and took out several locals before Cashin and his offsider got there.
The bigger man on the pavement was giving Cashin the eye. Ronnie Barrett had various convictions—assault, drink-driving, driving while suspended. Now he was on the dole, picking up some cash-in-hand at an auto wreckers in Cromarty. His ex-wife had an intervention order against him, granted after he extended his wrecking skills to the former marital home.
Cashin parked outside the station, sat for a while, looking at the wind testing the pines. Winter setting in. He thought about summer, the town full of spoilt-rotten city children, their blonde mothers, flabby fathers in boat shoes. The Cruisers and Mercs and Beemers took all the main street parking. The men sat in and outside the cafes, stood in the shops, hands to heads, barking into their mobiles, pulling faces.
But the year had turned, May had come,
‘Don’t be rude, Mick,’ said Cashin’s mother, tapping his father’s cheek. ‘It’s pronounced pree, Michael. It means prize.’
Every year there had been more city kids on the beach. You knew city kids because of their haircuts and their clothes and because the older ones, boys and girls, wore neck chains and smoked, didn’t much care who saw them.
Cashin thought about the winter Saturday morning they had driven up to their shack and Macca’s Shacca next door was gone, vanished, nothing there except disturbed sand to show where the low bleached building had stood, gently leaning backwards.
He had walked around, marvelling at the shack’s absence. There were marker pegs in the ground, and the next time they came a house was half-built on a cement slab.
That summer was the last in their shack, the last summer before his dad’s death. Years later, he asked his mother what became of the place.
‘I had to sell it,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t any money.’
Now you would have to be more than just rich to own a place in the teatree scrub on the Bar and no shacks broke the skyline above Open Beach; on the once worthless dunes stood a solid line of houses and units with wooden decks and plateglass windows. Nothing under six hundred grand.
A fishing boat was coming in, heading for the entrance.
Cashin knew the boat. It belonged to a friend of Bern’s who had a dodgy brother, an abalone poacher. Just six boats still fished out of Port Monro, bringing in crayfish and a few boxes of fish, but it was the town’s only industry apart from a casein factory. Its only industry if you didn’t count six restaurants, five cafes, three clothing boutiques, two antique shops, a bookshop, four masseurs, an aromatherapist, three hairdressers, dozens of bed-and-breakfast establishments, the maze and the doll museum.
He finished his coffee and went to work the long way, through Muttonbird Rocks, no one in the streets, most of the holiday houses empty. He drove along two sides of the business block, past the two supermarkets, the three real-estate agents, three doctors, two law firms, the newsagent, the sports shop, the Shannon Hotel on the corner of Liffey and Lucas Streets.
In the late 1990s, a city drug dealer and property developer had bought the boarded-up, gull-crapped Shannon. People still talked about a bar fight there in 1969 that needed two ambulances from Cromarty to take the injured to hospital. The new owner spent more than two million dollars on the Shannon. Tradesmen took on apprentices, bought new utes, gave their wives new kitchens—the German appliances, the granite benchtops.
Two men in beanies were coming out of the Orion, Port’s surviving bloodhouse, still waiting for its developer. In Cashin’s first week in charge, three English backpackers drinking there at lunchtime gave some local hoons cheek. The one took a king hit, went down and stayed down, copped a few boots. The others, skinny kids from Leeds, were headbutters and kickers and they got into a corner and took out several locals before Cashin and his offsider got there.
The bigger man on the pavement was giving Cashin the eye. Ronnie Barrett had various convictions—assault, drink-driving, driving while suspended. Now he was on the dole, picking up some cash-in-hand at an auto wreckers in Cromarty. His ex-wife had an intervention order against him, granted after he extended his wrecking skills to the former marital home.
Cashin parked outside the station, sat for a while, looking at the wind testing the pines. Winter setting in. He thought about summer, the town full of spoilt-rotten city children, their blonde mothers, flabby fathers in boat shoes. The Cruisers and Mercs and Beemers took all the main street parking. The men sat in and outside the cafes, stood in the shops, hands to heads, barking into their mobiles, pulling faces.
But the year had turned, May had come,
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