Jesus try and save me

Well I wish I could look before I leap
I been trying hard to get some sleep
I went lookin' for the devil, he said you gotta wait in line
I went walkin' into a liquor store
My girlfriend collapsed upon the floor
Have you come here for forgiveness, or to praise the dead?
Oh Jesus, try and save me
Jesus, try and save me from myself
- Dan Brodie and the Broken Arrows, 2002

And on the way back to Jeff and Rebecca’s: the silent treatment.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I finally said. “I started teaching. I taught at a bunch of schools. I started getting some work at Dunwich High on Straddie, which was my aim in the first place since it was the closest school. I met Bethany the week she was finishing up there to go and start at the new Christian school her old man was principal of. We got spectacularly drunk together at her going-away party, fell madly in lust and had incredible thunderstorm sex in the orchid house in her parents’ garden. Use it, quote me verbatim, further fuck up my relationship, see if I care.”

“For someone who reckons they’ve dealt with their drinking problem,” she observed acerbically, “you sure seem to be spectacularly drunk awfully often.”

“I had a drinking problem,” I said. “I don’t have a drinking problem. And I’m certainly not a fucking alcoholic. So you can fuck that inference right off - you suggest that anywhere in print and you will have legal problems in your future. That understood?”

“If you say so,” she said.

“Fuck’s sake, Lena, that’s low. I’ve been drunk more often this weekend than I’ve been the rest of this year combined. And whose doing was that, I wonder? Just because I still enjoy the occasional beer doesn’t mean I have a drinking problem. Prohibition is bollocks. Self-control works perfectly well. I didn’t need a twelve-step program - I had a two step program. One, acknowledge you have a problem with drinking so much. Two, stop drinking so much. The end.”

“Fine,” she noted.

“Don’t fucking patronise me,” I muttered.

She laughed. A brief, ironic laugh, at herself as much as at me.

“What?”

“You sound like him,” she said. We both knew who she was referring to.

A bit more silence. Hello, Pacific Highway turnoff.

“I can’t believe you actually think…” She stopped herself.

Silence through to Bangalow.

“What, that I don’t trust you?” I replied.

All quiet until somewhere north of Lennox.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I can’t believe you think I’d use personal stuff in my work. How about a bit of trust here?”

By the outskirts of Ballina I’d worked out a way to address the biggest, ugliest issue.

“You’ll need to be honest with yourself first,” I said. “What are you trying to do here? What’s the point of all this? Closure? Redemption? A hatchet-job?”

“I come to bury McCarthy, not to praise him,” she quipped. “Look, I’m just trying to get paid. Nothing more involved than that.”

“So that reaction when we brought up McCarthy’s next port of call after you, what was that about?”

“What reaction?”

“You were basically screaming shut the fuck up, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Yeah, because you were deliberately making a massive fucking issue out of it!”

“You can’t dodge Chastity as an issue,” I said. “She was more representative of him losing the plot and descending into decadence than anything else that happened. I mean, Chastity was the dirtiest, nastiest little girl you could ever imagine…”

“I get the point,” she said. “She was a skanky ho.”

“Not so much a skanky ho,” I corrected. “At least not in appearance. She was very well presented. Fashion model looks, maybe aside from the fake tan and tits. She just happened to conduct herself like a skanky ho. We called her Charity, because we figured that was the only reason she was with him. By that stage he was completely obnoxious to be around, more so after you left. Anyway it gave new meaning to the idea of a Charity fuck.”

“You mean he became even more obnoxious after me?” she queried. “Surely not.”

“Yeah, we didn’t thank you for that,” I said.

A pause. Not a silence, they were longer (usually about five kilometres at present.)

“You’re not really over him, are you.”

“What was it you said earlier?” she replied. “Not relevant to the article?”

I’d said that with reference to the pharmaceutical distribution antics of deusexmachina’s Brady Priddle - about which the less said the better, I felt.

“You want the truth?” she said finally. “I’m not. I’m not over him. I want to hate him for turning into a complete fucking arsehole, for making me feel worse than at any time in my fucking life. But I can’t. Because I used to love him, before he turned into a complete fucking arsehole. And because he’s fucking dead.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Oh really?” she replied, he voice breaking angrily. “Where do you think he is, then? You tell me? You join the dots. Follow the curve. The sort of shit he was getting up to, with drugs and women and underworld shit and fuckin’ police chases and whatever else. You tell me what you think happened to him, if he hasn’t ended up dead by now.”

“In jail?”

“He’s not in jail,” she replied. “I’ve looked.”

“Even some dodgy Indo jail cos he was found with someone's bodyboard bag full of gear?”

“I’ve looked,” she repeated, not particularly appreciating my attempt at humour.

I reflected on her comments, and put forward the considered viewpoint that all things considered, there was a pretty good chance he wasn’t not dead. Particularly considering she’d left before he REALLY started to act up.

“Then again,” I said, “maybe he cleaned up and found Jesus.”

She looked at me darkly.

“I think I’d prefer it if he was dead,” she replied.

“So would he,” I said.

Lena offered a wry smile by way of agreeance. I knew I could crack that sulk she had on.

“Look, you could talk with his folks,” I suggested. “They always liked you.” They actually thought the sun shone out of her fundament, I declined to add - in fact he hadn’t actually had the bottle to tell them he’d broken up with Lena, until photos of him and Chastity started appearing in the gossip mags his mum read. Not sure how Lena missed those at the time, though I figured she would have been trying pretty hard to.

“I did think of that,” she said. “I’m having trouble getting hold of them too.”

“Don’t tell me they’re in jail for smuggling gear as well…”

“I’m figuring, given their age, they’re doing the grey nomad thing,” she volunteered, which was a much more sensible suggestion. “They were always very big on travel - they’re probably out seeing the world. And Anne’s married now, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, to that Kiwi bloke, Dan I think his name was. Grandchildren as well, I suppose, and they’ll need to be spoiled rotten in true grandparent tradition, so they’re probably over there a lot… Yeah, they could be anywhere. Brilliant plan, Angus. Talk to his folks. Anything else, genius?” I wondered. She laughed. “So what’s the rest of your plan?”

“Back to Sydney Monday morning,” she said, “and back onto Marty’s people to plead my case for that interview. I could get away with talking to three out of the four of you,” she said, “if needs be, but two out of the four isn’t going to look particularly impressive, on paper or otherwise.”

“Marty has to speak with you,” I maintained. “He’s on Exocet, isn’t he? Surely there’s some sort of label obligation there…”

“Not according to his better half,” she replied sourly. “Richie's tried that angle. He suggests it would show goodwill on his part, she points out there’s nothing in the contract that says he’s required to.”

“You might have more luck exhuming McCarthy,” I offered.

She smiled wryly. After her earlier emotional outburst, she’d rescinded a bit, located her sense of humour again.

“Yeah, even dead, he’d be a better interview. At least he’d be uncensored…”


So much for the beer budget. I’d already well and truly blown my month’s allocation of standard drinks this weekend, and The Bloody Jeff (to give him his full title, named after the former Victorian reichfuhrer) wasn’t helping, greeting me on our return with a schooner of a copper-coloured foaming ale of his own design, and a set of barbeque tongs. He pointed at the BBQ and instructed me to make myself useful. The folks, he reported, were on their way back from the fish co-op in Ballina with an eskyful of king prawns, some snapper fillets and half a dozen squid tubes for calamari. I suggested a sweet chilli and lime marinade for the calamari before crumbing, with a dash of ginger and some cracked black pepper. He pointed out I’d been hired for brute force and ignorance rather than creative input. I hit him on the head with the BBQ tongs, and told him his beer tasted like it’d been strained through his work socks. He told me not to give away his trade secrets, it might affect his business. I love families. So we settled in for a Saturday night feast of barbequed seafood, cold beer and good company. Yes, even my family are capable of being good company under the right circumstances.

“Jeez, that’s not bad,” remarked the old man. “What did we do with this one again, Jeff?”

The Jeff considered his beer, holding it up to the light from the verandah. “I think it was light liquid malt, that Coopers Sparking Ale kit, Cascade and Goldings hops…”

That combination sounded familiar. “That’s an old Chateau Dodgy recipe,” I recalled. “Of course ours had a more rounded and earthy taste, on account of using tap water, not filtered poofter water like you prima donnas…”

“I knew there was such a thing as wine wankers,” remarked Lena, “but home brew wankers?...”

“It’s like any hobby,” Beck said, by way of defending us.

“Yeah,” Jeff concurred.

“Home brewing, stamp collecting, train spotting - they all attract sad little men in anoraks who get obsessed by trivial details only they notice or care about.”

The Jeff stopped concurring at that point.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I asked.

“You’re coming for a surf,” the Jeff declared.

“Well that’s me told then,” I said. “Anyone else?”

“I’m flying out on Monday morning,” Lena reluctantly offered, “so I’ll…” She glanced at me. “We’ll?… have to head back to Brisbane in the afternoon.”

“We’ll,” I confirmed. “What, you want me to walk back to Brisbane?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Lena smirked.

“I suppose you’ll be expecting the use of my spare bed again?” I added in the most put-upon voice I could conjur.

“Actually, no… sorry to break your heart. 9am flight, there’s no way I’d be able to get to the airport from your place by then, not with needing a boat and everything to get in contact with civilization. I was hoping though,” she added, glancing hopefully at Beck, “that I could borrow your broadband and book something on the net?”

Beck said sure, and they disappeared back into the house.

“So,” began the old man after a pause, “what does young Bethany think of all of this?”

“All of what?”

“Well gee Angus, I dunno,” remarked Jeff. “You taking off for a dirty weekend with some tall dark-haired Nigella Lawson lookalike? You think she’d notice?”

“You’re thinking Nigella Lawson?” I shook my head. “Nah. Lena can’t cook for shit.”

“I’m serious. Did you think about how she’d react? How did she react?”

“Not too sure,” I replied. “Haven’t actually spoken to her since…”

The old man shook his head. “Better tell your mother,” he remarked laconically. “She’ll be disappointed. Would have liked more grandkids...”

“What?”

“He’s right,” the Jeff chortled. “You're in a world of hurt, sunshine. I mean, let’s be fair - she’s not got the greatest sense of humour as it is, so she’s hardly going to see the funny side…”

“Hey,” I growled.

“Sorry,” he said, recognising he’d overstepped. Steve Bucknor had the arm out at the pavilion end. “But seriously, you’ll need to do some bloody fast talking.”

“Jeffrey Young,” I told him, “I’ve been around this planet a little while, and I’ve had my share of romantic liaisons with women from all walks of life, and yes, some of them do still want to kill me… but the day I start taking relationship advice from someone who learned his trade at the Gatton College of Animal Molestation, where the pick up line of choice is ‘Your ute or mine darlin’ or ‘Nice Blundies, wanna root’, is the day I join a monastery.”

Any chance I had of getting a lie-in on Sunday morning were again thwarted, not only by the same crack team of insurgents as yesterday morning, but their old man, announcing that the sun was shining, Chinamans was pumping and I was wasting my life in bed. That’s your perspective, I told him, and you’re entitled to it. Now bugger off. No such luck. I found myself thrown into the back of the Forester, boards on the roof, Jeff and Lena in the front. I’d ended up with the oldest, most dinged board in history - Jeff had inherited it from old mate Duncan Duff, now that the latter was based in the centre of Melbourne and was a good hundred kays from the nearest break - and it was probably a bit short for me as well.

“That’s because you’re too fat,” Jeff pointed out. His material was just getting fresher by the day.

There were a couple of decent breaks around Evans. As youngsters we’d spent most of our time at South Wall or Chinamans, given their proximity to McCarthy’s place in South Evans Head - I should explain that the Evans River runs through the middle of town, with most of Evans Head township on the north side of the river, and the national park, plus some of the nicer houses across the bridge on the southern headland of the river mouth. There’s extensive breakwalls either side of the river mouth so the trawler fleet doesn’t get smashed every time they steam out; the fish co-op where most of the fleet is based is just on the southern side of the bridge. McCarthy’s folks lived on Ocean Drive, which was up on the headland near the lookout which faces back up to the north, over town, the river mouth and along up the coast towards Airforce Beach, named for the RAAF bombing range up thattaway. The McCarthys had bought into the area years back when it was cheap as buggery, and must have been sitting on some fairly valuable dirt these days.

So back in the day, heading out for our post-school surf from Sam’s place, we had a choice of quality versus apathy: Chinamans Beach (named in less-PC gold rush times) had the best surf, with left- and right-handed beach breaks depending on swell direction plus a handy right off the reef further out, but was a good couple of kays away; South Wall was often a bucket of slop but was only a short wander down the street. As such South Wall was our regular after-school surfgrounds, because we were lazy; Chinamans was our weekend break. This being the weekend, to paraphrase the mantra of the Australian Masters golf coverage, the tradition continued. Position ‘A’, Sandy.

Chinamans wasn’t too crowded, and the atmosphere was more relaxed than even up at Point Lookout, where the tourist onslaught has made most of the locals ridiculously territorial, even by typical feral surfer standards. Down here, even though I couldn’t call myself a local any more, I still felt at home. Jeff and I paddled out, while Lena sat on the beach with her sunglasses, laptop and Alpines.

“City girls, huh?” I observed as we waited out in the lineup for something to happen, like maybe a wave to develop, for instance. If Chinamans was ‘pumping’, I’d hate to have seen how flat it was anywhere else.

“Melbourne girls,” Jeff emphasised. “My city girl doesn’t bring her laptop to the beach.”

“Yeah, but your city girl used to be a nipper at Avalon.” Beck was actually still a member of the Evans Head SLSC, which gave her reciprocal membership at Point Lookout when she was up.

“Lena’s just not a beach person. Didn’t bring her togs, she says.”

“She could have borrowed Beck’s…”

“Not gonna work, for two reasons. One. Would you knowingly wear my jocks? Or the Duffer’s?”

“Fuck no.”

“Exactly. It’s a bit intimate, yeah. And two, do you seriously think that your wife’s swimwear would actually fit Lena? She’d be busting out all over the place.”

I waited, and waited. And he finally said it.

“Still,” he remarked, “be interesting to watch.”

I grinned. That’s my seedy little brother.

“Actually… hang on, I’m on this… ah no I’m not,” I recognised, as the wave overtook me and broke in front of me. On catching up with Jeff again, I continued, “Actually, her official excuse was that her bikini line was in no condition to be exhibited to the general public. So unless you’re into that sort of thing - the au naturale look…”

Jeff thought for a moment. You could hear the cogs moving.

“She’s not seeing anyone then, is she?”

“Seems not… you’re thinking that she’d be taking more care over grounds maintenance if she was?”

He nodded. “And I’m thinking,” he added wryly, “that given her lack of other options, you might be on, mate… I mean you’ll need some sort of backup plan after Bethany chucks you out…”

Naturally I tried to grab hold of him to smack him over the head and possibly drown him a bit, but the little bastard was too fast for me.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” I declared.

But I got my revenge. He only managed three rides all morning, and I dropped in on the little bastard on each of them. The fat man wins on points.


The RSL for lunch was Jeff’s suggestion, and it sounded a good one. On the way back towards town aiming for same I asked if he could take a detour around the headland, for mine and Lena’s benefit.

“Pretty sure they’re not around,” he said, reading our intent. But he turned right into Ocean Drive anyway, and we wound around the headland up to the McCarthy’s place.

Chez McCarthy was at the eastern end of Ocean Drive, surrounded by a stand of melaleucas (paperbarks to you and me.) Given that Peter McCarthy ran a nursery, or had done until he sold up a few years back and retired, it was no surprise that the place was awash with greenery. I stood in the driveway as the nostalgia washed over me like the salt spray that still tingled in my eyes, nose and on my skin. So much of my childhood, or at least my adolescence, was tied up in this place. Things looked a little tardier than I remembered, a little more overgrown and in need of a prune, which leant weight to the ‘Grey Nomad’ theory - likewise, all the windows looked to be shut, even though it was a warm mid-October day (the 19th, for those keeping score at home) with a refreshing sea breeze rising over the headland, which suggested noone was home. If there were still any doubts, the new ‘Holiday Letting’ sign from the local LJ Hookers agency seemed to confirm that the owners planned a long-term absence from the premises.

“Told you,” remarked Jeff.

“Yeah, well, we figured it wasn’t that likely,” I said breezily. “Maybe they’ve taken him with them. Old-school family vacation. Like when they went around Australia when he was eight.”
Lena gave me a look that said I really don’t think that’s likely, in case I hadn’t figured that out for myself.

“Well… what now?”

“I don’t know,” she said. I was taken by the thought that she too would have had memories of this place - different to mine, of course, but just as positive, things like the Christmas she spent here with the McCarthy’s a few years back when the rest of her family went skiing in Switzerland with Yuliya and her husband - and was probably fighting off waves of nostalgia herself. “I wonder if we can get in touch with them?

“Presumably the agents have their contact details,” Jeff suggested, pointing to the ‘Holiday Letting’ sign. It was the best idea he’d had in approximately ten years.

“I don’t think we’re quite that desperate,” Lena replied. Which was encouraging; I figured the royal ‘we’, meaning herself, was what she meant. Presumably she had something up her sleeve.

Now it was my turn to have the best idea I’d had in, well, a while anyway. I even did a point and click, Kretin-style, at Jeff. “Who lives next door these days?”

“Do I look like Mr Neighbourhood Watch?” he replied.

“Come on. Small town. You’ll have heard.”

He nodded. “I think the old Jones place [on our left, as we faced Chez McCarthy] went last year for some ludicrous amount of money, seven or eight hundred grand.” Considering the old Jones place was not much more than a fibro shanty, that said a lot about the insane prices that big city eejits were prepared to pay for a beachside holiday shack. “But I think the Merivales are still here,” he finished, pointing at the house to the right of the McCarthy’s.

I remembered the Merivales reasonably well. I remembered old man Merivale used to get cranky every time we belted tennis balls into his yard playing backyard cricket, given that there was a perfectly good, flat and empty grassed vacant block down the street - which was now a super-trendy double-story A-frame big-name-architect-designed beach house constructed out of steel girders, pine panelling and hundreds of square foot of glass. I remembered Mrs Merivale because she worked as a receptionist/teachers aide at our school and was terribly nice, and I particularly remembered their daughter Sally, partly because she was a friend and contemporary of Anne McCarthy’s, but mostly because I thought she was hot (in a girl next door kinda way, literally), and because one time I saw her getting changed through her window from McCarthy’s place, and I actually saw, like, girl bits and stuff. Like, for real. On such fleeting glances adolescent dreams are founded…

Anyway the Merivales got on well with the McCarthy’s, and it wouldn’t take a strenuous leap of faith to suggest that if you were looking for someone to, say, keep an eye on your house, collect your mail and so on while you were off on your grey nomadic adventures, the Merivales would be the sort of people you’d ask.

Damn I’m smart.

Mrs Merivale answered the door and was very shocked and surprised (pleasantly I'd add) to see us - yes, she recognised me, remembered Jeff, and pretty clearly didn't remember Lena but my word she was happy to meet her. She insisted we all come in for a cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. Dennis, she apologised, was on the Gold Coast helping Mark build a retaining wall at his new family home. Mark was their eldest - he’d been year 12 and school captain when we’d started year 7, as well as five-eighth for the footy team, making him that generation’s equivalent of Brendan Tunks, though obviously not quite as much of a cockhead. Dennis, of course, was the old man, with the allergy to having tennis balls lobbed through his rhododendrons.

So we whiled away a pleasant half-hour chatting about this and that and whether Jeff’s kids were at school yet and whether I was married and how Sally and Mark were getting on. We’ll skip the small talk and just give you the edited highlights:

- Peter and Mary McCarthy had bought a campervan, one of those Toyota Hiace things with the pop-top roof, and were gradually making their way around Australia. They’d headed off late last year - she and Dennis had received a postcard in March from Kakadu and last year’s Christmas card had come from the Flinders Ranges, so presumably they were somewhere in Western Australia by now, as they were planning to go ‘up the middle, around the outside and back again’ (according to Peter’s apt geographical description.) They’d left an email address and a mobile number for contact purposes, but Peter being as much of an anti-cellphone Luddite as me, he never switched the thing on, and as for the email… well, Mrs M admitted, she didn’t really know about that, it really wasn’t her thing. Dennis knew how to get on the internet and check his email letterbox thing, but it was a bit beyond her…

- Anne was, as we knew, living in the South Island with her husband Dan, who was Rather Well Off, and their kids.

- No idea whatsoever where Sam was.

- Sally lived in Brisbane and was newly single, having separated from her husband.

Hmmm. Not relevant to the article.


Local North Coast band Floyd Vincent and the Childbrides once wrote a song, which we liked very much and even recorded as an intended B-side one time (though Richie declined to let us release it) entitled Eight Dollar Steak And Chips At The Ballina RSL. They wrote it about ten years ago now, and once corrected for inflation to 2008 as well as having to truck the ingredients further down the highway meant that steak and chips at the Evans Head RSL was $14.50. Still seemed a bargain to me, compared with eating out on Straddie. Jeff, as he was driving, sampled a schooner of Hahn Premium Light; despite having used up all my beer credits I’d opted for a Tooheys Old, because I hadn’t had one off tap in NSW for a bloody long time, and because Bethany wasn’t around to guilt-trip me. Pathetic, I realise.

“So you’ve got the mobile number, and Mrs M is gonna get Mr M to send you the email address… so why do you look like the lead character in a country and western song?”

“Huh?”

“Your wife’s run off with your best mate in your ute, and your dog’s died,” Jeff explained through mouthfuls of salad. I was impressed he was even eating salad. Beck had worked wonders getting him off his previous diet, which consisted of ‘meat, garnished with meat, with a side of meat’. Made Atkins look like a hard-core vegan. Furthermore, not to put too fine a point on it, he used to stink like an exploded heifer.

Lena sipped her Diet Coke. “The problem is… I mean, what do we say? Phone them up and ask, ‘Hi Peter and Mary, sorry to bother you, but is your son dead?’”

“Nah,” said Jeff, “it’d be more like, ‘Hi Peter and Mary, it’s Sam’s ex here, is he dead or JUST AVOIDING ME?’”

“'No, he’s just avoiding you,'” I giggled, “'piss off.' I think you left out ‘bitter and twisted ex-girlfriend’ as well,” I added, as Lena gave me a filthy look - a ‘I’m-going-to-kill-you’ filthy look rather than a ‘Lauren’ filthy look. I liked the ‘Lauren’ kind better, to be honest, though I didn't see much of that sort of thing any more.

“Thanks for your support,” she muttered.

“Take your point,” Jeff conceded. “Not the easiest of questions to ask. Might be more appropriate as an email. Just say you’re trying to get in touch with him for a band thing - tell the truth, say it’s about the best-of - and ask if they have any contact details for him. I wouldn’t even ask what shape he’s in, just assume he’s OK and if he’s not, presumably they’ll tell you. I think from an etiquette point of view, an email would be more acceptable than calling them out of the blue.”

“From an etiquette point of view?” I replied. “Who the hell are you, June Dally Fuckin’ Watkins?”

“I guess so,” Lena agreed – to the idea of an email, not the idea of Jeff being June Dally (Fuckin’) Watkins. “An email they can reply to when they see fit, I suppose… I don’t know. It’s all a bit awkward. I’m not likely to get an answer anytime soon, am I? I guess they’re relying on internet cafés and things for checking email.”

“Look, they liked you. A lot. For Christ’s sake, he was too embarrassed to tell them he’d split up with you because he knew they’d be disappointed in him. His mum only found out through reading Who Weekly,” I said. “The point is, they thought the world of you - if he’s around, they’d want you to get in touch. And,” I added, a little cautiously, “if he isn’t around anymore… well, I’d think they’d respect you enough to give you an answer one way or another.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”