19. What's it all about?

Quint looked from his window at the afternoon activity on the site. He held the copper penny, polishing it again and again as he thought of a girl and her merry companions having adventures there in the days when the city was young. Picnics in the afternoon, campfires at night, telling tales as the rabbits hopped in the shifting moonshadows.

He needed his thinking place, now more than ever. The trees had gone, felled three days since, chopped and chipped. The growing excavations had not yet reached out to engulf the fire circle.

There was still time, if he dared.

For the time being, his view was expanded, glimpses of the lake revealed through the remaining trees. The aisles of oaks were to stay, signs declaring “Tree Protection Area” hanging from the fence. The limbs were still bare, but in a month or so the fresh green of spring’s growth would close in his prospect again.

Quint worked on, listing the books from the morning’s purchase, entering the details onto a spreadsheet. He looked up the titles on sites such as ABE or Biblioquest to see what similar copies were going for, and for each one he found he made a private note. Of course he couldn’t get those prices himself, not without going into business, and fussing around with postage and invoices and customers, but he liked to check against what Ann and other book dealers paid him.

There were some pristine first editions from the Sixties. Probably read once or twice and then filed away on the shelves. He had to be careful. Book club editions pretended that they were first editions, but of course they weren’t, and the price difference could be huge.

Some history books and biographies that might have a specialist market. You developed a feel for these things after a while, but every now and then you got your fingers burnt. Quint remembered a detailed study on fishing methods in Welsh rivers that had seemed just the thing to attract niche buyers. Coracles and fishtraps. But the few copies on the net were way down in price. Five dollars or so.

This was no good. Quint put aside the books, unscrewed his camera, slipped it into his pocket, put on his walking boots and a jacket.

Outside there was a hint of drizzle in the air. Misty textures off against Red Hill. Quint pulled a cap from a peg from the door.

Rightaways at the fence, photographing a length every twenty-five paces. There was one point which seemed promising, the line dipping down to follow a swale.

Higher views as he climbed up onto the side of Parkes Way. Here he could see right over the top of the fence, the whole site exposed to the fleeting gaze of passing motorists.

He counted his paces all along the side of the motorway. It was a main traffic artery, part of the freeway-boom of the Seventies, when the central suburbs were linked to the growing satellite town centres. Woden and Belconnen to begin with, Tuggeranong and Weston Creek to follow. By the time Gungahlin had begun building, the tide had changed, and something in local government hated motor cars.

Around the corner through the Defence parking. ASIO was a continuation of a trend, erecting offices on carkarks. The original open spaces vanished, replaced by underground areas protected by boom gates and access cards, but never enough to cater for the added workers.

And the final corner, where the main gate area took a bite out of the Blamey Cresent intersection. Here a yellow-jacketed guard stood foursquare beside the gate. Quint took a photograph of the area, but he had no hopes in this direction. A guardhouse was manned around the clock and it was floodlit at night.

A few more lengths along Constitution Avenue and he would be back at the start point.

“Hey!”

The guard, calling him over.

“What are you doing?” he wanted to know. Quint explained about the colours and the lines of the fence under the bare trees, how it made an abstract composition. Quint had a Lyonel Feininger print of an old church hanging at home, and he loved the lines and planes of the painting, the human figures shrunken to a dwarven gathering at the door,

“You want to be careful,” the guard warned, “what you do with those photographs. For personal use, are they?”

“Of course.”

“If you were to put them on the internet, for example, you’d have to be careful of copyright.”

This made sense. “Of course,” Quint agreed. “Copyright retains in the author, and must be assigned specifically.”

“You need to be careful of taking photographs here. This is the Commonwealth New Building Project, and it’s a secure area. You could have your camera seized.”

This was interesting. “What legislation?”

“The Defence Act. You could be called in for an interview.”

“Thank you.”

Privately, Quint wasn’t so sure of the guard’s grip on the law, but this was no time for legal debate.

Once home, he gave his Feininger print a look before adding the pictures to his files, the computer loading them up, giving them sequential file names, and storing information such as date and time, exposure settings and focal length. It was a good, well-thought-out system.

And in a way he couldn’t really explain, the Feininger picture resonated. It wasn’t the real world, but it could be, stripped of details, the essential shapes laid out and colourcoded.

Night time, and he found a torch in the laundry. Flicked it on to test the beam. In the cupboard he kept some gardening implements for his tiny plot. A trowel, kept oiled against the rust of the idle months, but soon he’d be turning over the earth for his spring flowers.

The swale was the place, of course, and with some firm work he could lift up the wire and trowel away some of the earth beneath. The dip in the ground gave him a shadow to crouch in as he worked. When it was large enough, he wriggled through the hole.

His thinking place was scattered stones now, holes where the trees had stood, but the old fireplace could be made out. It resonated with Quint. He sat down for a few minutes, listening to the feel of the night. Dark here, and quiet.

The trowel made small scraping sounds as he dug down into the old ash. Objects came to light, and he put them in his green bag. His torch beam showed up a jagged shape, and he worked at it, freeing it from the soil.

Suddenly another torch flicked on, lighting up the scene, blinding him.

“Don’t move!”

But Quint flung up his arm against the light. Two men, both in uniform, one holding a torch, the other a gun.

This was not good. He picked up the trowel, launched it at the man with the gun, grabbed his bag and ran for his life.

 

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay