12. On the run
The cold hit her as soon as she opened the door, and, not for the first time, Ann wondered why she had moved to Canberra.
Life as an assistant at Manly Books in Sydney had been close to perfect. An even climate, beaches, the harbour, the excitement of the big city. Even in midwinter, a jog around Tania Park, just up from her “granny flat” in Balgowlah Heights, was no hardship at all. A t-shirt and sweatshirt, Bella bounding along at her heels, a navy ship heading out into the Tasman Sea if she cared to look to her left – and she did – the air clean and salty, other runners nodding greetings.
Here in Canberra, Tuesday’s dawn was still a way off, it was below zero, the grass was frosted and her breath was mist in the crisp air. It took everything she had to start off up Monash Drive. Heading up the hill. Work. Get the body warm.
The Grateful Dead helped. Truckin’ on the iPod.
Moving to Canberra had been a lifestyle change. An inheritance had paid for the shop, the stock and a small townhouse in the Harry Seidler units where Monash Drive crossed Blamey Crescent. The alternative was back to California, where she had been born and grown up, but after nearly twenty years in Australia, she preferred it here.
Perhaps she’d grown too used to comfort, too used to staying inside on a cold morning or evening. She was so out of condition!
Breathing deep on the freezing air, the cold like knives in her throat, the rising incline picking out muscles unused for months. She’d feel it tomorrow, but that was the best time to make progress. This morning was only a beginning.
Up she went, passing the duplexes, entering the territory of the big houses. Big houses, huge front gardens. Some of them were listed in architectural registers, tall blocky piles that must have seemed like something out of science fiction in the early Sixties.
At last the houses were behind her, and she was on the verge of Fairbairn Avenue, turning left, the slope easing, levelling out and falling towards the west. Different leg muscles made their complaints now, but it was easier going, and her breathing settled into a better rhythmn.
A small mob of kangaroos, startled by her approach, bounded across the road, heading back into the bushland of Mount Ainslie through the lawns of the War Memorial.
Left again and the broad axis of Anzac Parade opened out. This was the view the tourists paused for, the ceremonial parade route between lines of eucalypts and memorials, its line continuing across Lake Burley Griffin, through the smile of Commonwealth Place, on past the white wedding cake of Old Parliament House, and up to the boomerang lawns, stepped walls and pyramid flagpole of the new Parliament House topping Capital Hill.
It was a prospect in the dawn’s level light that never failed to move her. Here was the heart of Australia, the heroes and common people represented and remembered. In summer there were concerts, waving flags and television singers celebrating Christmas, Australia Day, Canberra Day. Firework displays at night, coloured reflections on the lake’s dark water. National Library, High Court and National Gallery floodlit in splendour.
Canberra was a city like no other in the world. Maybe the Mall in Washington DC or the Champs Elysees in Paris could provide a similar vista, but Canberra went on and on, wide avenues and motorways passing through parkland and garden suburbs, the streets in elegant symmetry or swirling mandalas.
At Constitution Avenue she turned left again, but here the parkland came to an end halfway along. The site of the ASIO building had been enclosed in chainlink fencing, shrouded in blue plastic, and hung with “DANGER KEEP OUT” signs.
Ann slowed to a walk. She was about done in now. She was perspiring under her sweatshirt, her body warm and glowing, burning fat. The remaining distance home would cool her down for a shower and breakfast. A light, healthy breakfast.
Almost all the trees on the ASIO site had gone now. Earth movement had begun, yellow-painted digging equipment grouped in a muddy circle. Magpies and currawongs warbled from vantage points of fenceposts, rubble piles and backhoe roofs. They stalked on the fresh earth, searching worms and grubs. They were everywhere, black and white feathers against the brown earth and green grass.
Then it hit her. The birds had always been there, guarding their territories, but hidden in the trees. Magpies didn’t flock, yet here they were, twenty or thirty at once.
Their trees were gone, and with them their shelter. There would be no nests this season, yet the birds were locked into their old territories, unable to displace the existing avian residents of backyards and street trees.
Ann walked sternly on, turning the corner into Monash Drive. There was a figure visible in the upstairs corner flat. Quint’s flat. She waved to him, but he didn’t react.
The street tilted uphill and Ann jogged for a hundred metres or so, before giving it away entirely. She’d be doing the whole course at a run within a week, best not to strain anything on the first day.
Her shower was bliss, the hot water warming her chilled extremes, washing away the sweat, and encouraging her to linger longer.
Grace the cat demanded breakfast before Ann could sit down herself.
Cup of tea and a bowl of cereal – just one bowl today, Ann! – and she clicked the laptop on to check her mail.
Nothing from Tom, though he’d updated his Facebook page to show a location of American Samoa. Ann sighed.
An email from BookCrossing.com – one of her books had been found!
The journal entry cheered her up. It was always nice when somebody found a book and went to the website to make a comment. This person had even joined the site and their profile page promised that they would get further involved. A paragraph about the book – a murder mystery – and a few words apparently aimed at her:
A loose book from a generous person. What will she give away next?
Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay