It had been the contamination of the soil in the area from decades of dusty, noxious fallout from the zinc works that had contributed to the affordability of the place. Of course for the young couple, content in the confines of their own love bubble, it was nothing short of their patch of paradise on earth.
‘We’ll get a truckload of nourishing manure. We can put in raised beds for the veggies, broad beans first. They’ll put some nitrogen back into the soil. And we can start a worm farm too,’ Melinda had enthused, even though inside she knew the task of giving life to soil that had suffered a slow death by poison would be a painstaking one. But she wasn’t going to let a little thing like the sickness of the planet discourage her. Besides she had the dogeared copy of her mother’s self published ‘Love that Dirt’ booklet, all about re establishing and nurturing damaged soils, and the benefit of her mother’s gardening passion falling about her all her life like soft rain in a herb garden.
‘Our example of what’s possible will catch on around the suburb; we’ll take our prize winning pumpkins to the Royal Hobart Show, and eventually property prices will soar,’ she had quipped, half serious.
Mungo hugged her. ‘And the neighbourhood will be enveloped in social harmony, spreading far and wide, infecting the State, then the rest of the country and finally the world, with so much love and peace and a desire to make love and grow nutritious pumpkins that … ’
‘Even the Obamas will want to come and live next door,’ Melinda laughed. ‘Then we can start making babies.’
But they didn’t wait. They chortled like naughty kids, scampering into the house to have unprotected sex on the most comfortable patch of flooring they could find.
Chapter Five
A gleaming, sizzling sun bathed the morning city in radiant warmth. Local radio stations sent out panicky alarms about melanomas and Tasmania’s depleted ozone layer, forewarning listeners that it would most likely hit the high twenties by midday.
Porridge and sliced banana breakfast was being prepared, eaten, and put away at Four Luck Avenue in Lutana. Rosie was skittish with anticipation because it was the homecare lady Yetta Gorski’s day to look after her, a workday for both Melinda and Mungo.
Harbourside on the other side of town, Kant had already showered. He was anticipating his first day back at work with a modicum of joy and a second coffee.
Breakfast had been guava juice and a croissant with leatherwood honey. He’d stopped buying newspapers, getting most of his news from canteen griping at the station. It had been too much to expect that the reporting in the local rag might contain something close to intellectual rigour. Besides, every other page was bloated with advertisements from prime sausages to pimple cream, and he’d stopped buying the weighty Age because his new home had no garden to be weed suppressed.
The Audi purred like an adoring feline as it sashayed out into the Monday morning traffic, his car a bubble of calm reflection, floating through the torrent of busyness and self obsessed humanity as he made his way north through the city centre and out the other side. The Frank Sinatra Greatest Hits CD was up loud enough to hold at bay the rest of the world’s clamour until he arrived at Nerve Two.
After many consultations over the years with Vince MacLean about the walking wounded he’d observed around the city in his searches for contestants, Kant began to imagine that he too could detect subtle behavioural disparities amongst the congestion in the streets.
‘It’s a particular unhurried, aimless step you notice after a while, eyes fixed on a vague middle distance, no apparent objective other than the next tread on an endless pavement. Eye contact with the rest of humanity almost non existent, protected within the confines of their own debilitating solitude,’ MacLean had told Kant after his first year of scouring the city.
As the car left the city centre behind, Kant gave Sinatra’s song more volume. “ … As free as the wind blows … ”
‘Unlike the damn traffic,’ he complained to Frank. ‘Flowing like tepid trea … cle,’ he sang.
Kant was feeling lightheaded when he arrived and parked at Nerve Two, allowing Old Blue Eyes to crescendo the final words of his rousing anthem, “ … And I did it … myyyyyy way” before stepping tentatively out into the car park.
Kant passed through the automatic doors into reception, gave a nod to the new face at the front desk, a Kiwi, Vince had informed him yesterday.
‘Good morning. Janine, I believe?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ the young, tightly clothed receptionist replied.
Janine twisted in her seat to check out the new arrival, her blatant cleavage a revelation to anybody who approached her for assistance. Kant nodded awkwardly, trying to keep his eyes on her face. The girl swivelled back to her task of buffing her nails to a shiny opaline finish. Her auburn hair was firmly pulled back into a ponytail, leaving just enough short strands for a spray stiff cockatoo fringe at the front.
The formal reception area of Nerve Two, with its sound muting carpet, burnt orange with blue squiggly pattern repeat prints of the docks and Mount Wellington by local watercolourists dotting the wall spaces, was more a deception area. Once through the swing doors that led to the studios, sound booths and offices, the buzz of anarchy prevailed. It appeared to be partially a warehouse for innumerable boxes of stuff, which were everywhere. Kant had often wondered if there was anyone who actually knew what was in them. Lounge suites seemed to have been randomly air dropped around. There was seldom relief from hectic schedules so no one ever reclined in them. They were habitually congested with discarded bits and pieces anyway. Struggling big leafed pot plants, mulched with paper scraps, rubber bands, screwed up gaffertape and anything that needed a quick ‘filing’ seemed to be more in the way than giving any aesthetic relief. The high walls containing this plangent momentum had never quite received their final top coat. Every deadline was overlapped by the next. Nothing had changed in the week Kant had been away.
‘Morning Damon.’
One of the cameramen scurried towards Kant, a coil of heavy, black cable slung over his shoulder. He could have been going rock climbing.
‘G’day Barry. Bet you’re glad to be back,’ he snorted through a sardonic smirk.
‘I didn’t realise I’d been away.’
‘Huh, you tell that to bloody Mackerel.’
Kant began to feel assailed by the hyperactivity and pervasive urgency. It was like everyone was on speed.
Not so when he entered his own office. Even the size of his name on the door became calmly diminished to BK. Kant’s office was one area of the station that had been completed, the final coat of paint being a warm, light tone of sun soaked Tuscan orange. Barry had personalised the space. It could have been one of the rooms in the old cottage. Objects collected with Sarah on various adventures abroad, discouraged by Gaye Salmon from congesting the rigorous minimalism of his apartment, were casually cluttered around. Ms Design Fascist Salmon had no authority here.
In fact, clogging up the spatial clarity was exactly the theme Kant had aimed for in his office. Books on fishing and travel, magazines and journals were intentionally sprawled on a bench. Two wicker baskets housing collections of shells, seed pods and other random items collected on walks with Sarah were strategically placed so he could feel the memories at a glance, and a series of small woven tapestries of the Kimberley in Western Australia hung in a row above his desk. And on the opposite wall a large traditional dot painting he had been given by an Aboriginal friend in Alice Springs, and two cherished Cretan embroideries he’d bought with Sarah in Knossos over thirty years ago, were transfusions of joy each time he rested his eyes on them.
Indoor plants, well fertilised and watered, softened one corner of the room where a circle of four old armchairs were set up for interviewing prospective contestants for the show. A claret coloured Afghan rug on the floor, faded Balinese throws draped over the chairs all added