but which was enclosed by a slatted wood fence seven feet high. On the inside, it was hung with pretty planters, and stained a warm, dark colour. Hazel guessed the fence hadn’t been in the original plans.
Patrons and guests enjoying a late lunch in the shadow of this fence looked up at the appearance of so many uniforms. Givens was instructing the waiters to busy themselves with their customers. He led the search party to a locked gate in the fence, but Hazel stepped onto a wooden bench partway there and peered over. It was a wasteland beyond, with unstained versions of this same fence creating an unbroken border around about three-quarters of the development. To her right, houses ranged up along the15th Sideroad (now Pebble Beach Boulevard). The completed ten holes were to her right as well, and looking to the north, there was a mix of trees and bramble where the earthmovers had stopped carving out the final eight holes of the first course. From where she stood it was forty football fields of neglected land hemmed in by fences that were designed to keep it from view. “Pretty country,” she said.
“If you’d rather not jump over,” Brendan Givens replied dolefully, “you can come through this gate.”
She stepped down and took one of Renald’s cases from him. “Don’t lock it behind us. No telling what might happen.”
“I know what’s going to happen,” said Givens, downcast, but he said nothing else. They passed through the gate onto the field’s verge.
“Someone’s worried about his job,” said Renald. Behind him, sixteen more uniforms flowed out into the afternoon sun.
They spread out, twenty metres apart, and began to sweep. Their sticks moved back and forth in front of them through the wet stubble, lifting the sodden corn stalks up and tossing them aside. Rotted corncobs were mashed underfoot. There hadn’t been live corn in this field for at least two summers: they were walking on a layer of compost. It smelled like sweet, wet mould.
Every fifty metres, the SOCOs pushed a red plastic marker into the earth and looped a yellow ribbon into the open catch at the top. Each officer performed their task alone, only dimly aware of the others moving at a stately pace up the field. When they got midway, Hazel looked behind herself and saw some of the patio diners looking over the fence. She imagined Givens was drinking in his office by now. She would be.
They kept to a special channel and reported their finds. Sergeant Costamides found some broken glass. One of the Mayfair team called in a condom, another found a shoe. They trekked forward like a slow-moving wave, examining every bit of ground in front of them. In three hours, they reached where the houses on Fuzzy Zoeller Way stopped and the land went all the way up to the empty boys’ home and Concession Road 7. When they got to the road, they shifted five metres to the east and started back down.
Hazel looked over her shoulder at the back of the old Dublin Home for Boys. It sat heavily on its plot, its gateless front pillars still facing Concession Road 7, aka Augusta Avenue. The orphanage was made of blocks of grey, local stone. Cheap when it had been built eighty years ago, it now had a fashionable brutalism to it that would make it an interesting building to convert into the promised second clubhouse, in front of which the world’s second-largest wave pool was to be installed, also as promised.
Orphanages like Dublin Home no longer existed. There were no Victorian workhouses like the ones she’d read about in school. The places like the one her brother had spent the first decade of his life in were now demolished or abandoned, but they still bred secrets. Society doesn’t like to talk about its abandoned children. Behind every orphan or homeless kid is a hard story: a dead parent, an addicted parent, a poor parent, a rape victim, an act of passion or carelessness, a story of abuse. Imagine being a child in that world, she thought, passed
Patrons and guests enjoying a late lunch in the shadow of this fence looked up at the appearance of so many uniforms. Givens was instructing the waiters to busy themselves with their customers. He led the search party to a locked gate in the fence, but Hazel stepped onto a wooden bench partway there and peered over. It was a wasteland beyond, with unstained versions of this same fence creating an unbroken border around about three-quarters of the development. To her right, houses ranged up along the15th Sideroad (now Pebble Beach Boulevard). The completed ten holes were to her right as well, and looking to the north, there was a mix of trees and bramble where the earthmovers had stopped carving out the final eight holes of the first course. From where she stood it was forty football fields of neglected land hemmed in by fences that were designed to keep it from view. “Pretty country,” she said.
“If you’d rather not jump over,” Brendan Givens replied dolefully, “you can come through this gate.”
She stepped down and took one of Renald’s cases from him. “Don’t lock it behind us. No telling what might happen.”
“I know what’s going to happen,” said Givens, downcast, but he said nothing else. They passed through the gate onto the field’s verge.
“Someone’s worried about his job,” said Renald. Behind him, sixteen more uniforms flowed out into the afternoon sun.
They spread out, twenty metres apart, and began to sweep. Their sticks moved back and forth in front of them through the wet stubble, lifting the sodden corn stalks up and tossing them aside. Rotted corncobs were mashed underfoot. There hadn’t been live corn in this field for at least two summers: they were walking on a layer of compost. It smelled like sweet, wet mould.
Every fifty metres, the SOCOs pushed a red plastic marker into the earth and looped a yellow ribbon into the open catch at the top. Each officer performed their task alone, only dimly aware of the others moving at a stately pace up the field. When they got midway, Hazel looked behind herself and saw some of the patio diners looking over the fence. She imagined Givens was drinking in his office by now. She would be.
They kept to a special channel and reported their finds. Sergeant Costamides found some broken glass. One of the Mayfair team called in a condom, another found a shoe. They trekked forward like a slow-moving wave, examining every bit of ground in front of them. In three hours, they reached where the houses on Fuzzy Zoeller Way stopped and the land went all the way up to the empty boys’ home and Concession Road 7. When they got to the road, they shifted five metres to the east and started back down.
Hazel looked over her shoulder at the back of the old Dublin Home for Boys. It sat heavily on its plot, its gateless front pillars still facing Concession Road 7, aka Augusta Avenue. The orphanage was made of blocks of grey, local stone. Cheap when it had been built eighty years ago, it now had a fashionable brutalism to it that would make it an interesting building to convert into the promised second clubhouse, in front of which the world’s second-largest wave pool was to be installed, also as promised.
Orphanages like Dublin Home no longer existed. There were no Victorian workhouses like the ones she’d read about in school. The places like the one her brother had spent the first decade of his life in were now demolished or abandoned, but they still bred secrets. Society doesn’t like to talk about its abandoned children. Behind every orphan or homeless kid is a hard story: a dead parent, an addicted parent, a poor parent, a rape victim, an act of passion or carelessness, a story of abuse. Imagine being a child in that world, she thought, passed
Similar Books
It's Always Darkest Before the Fridge Door Opens: Enjoying the Fruits of Middle Age
Phil Callaway, Martha O. Bolton
