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Foley followed. She couldn’t remember whose turn it was. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I saw the way you looked at him.” Nat had her head in the fridge. “Hell, I was looking at him that way too.” She reappeared with chicken breasts. “Clean him up, put some decent clobber on him and that man is something else, even if he’s a stammering idiot.”
“He’s not.”
“See, infatuated.”
“I’m not.” But Nat’s assumption was like the flame she lit under the pan, it licked too close to the truth for comfort. “And if for a second I was, I’m over it.” Foley left the kitchen to ring Hugh. “So over it.”
12: Overwhelmed
Drum watched the workmen pack the sculptures away. He’d spent hours walking amongst them and would miss them, particularly his favourites: a full size but entirely melted Mr Whippy ice-cream van, a fake iceberg complete with penguins made out of old porcelain electric jugs with open lids for beaks, and a mammoth made from recycled computer monitors, keyboards and cables.
Tonight he’d sleep with the sounds of the sea in his head. He’d stayed away for eighteen restless nights. Each harder than the one before it for all the
temptation in his grasp, but now he was home and it would be easier to colour inside the lines.
It wasn’t till the last truck pulled out that they came. Ten of them, a scattering of dogs, one baby in a pram. They weren’t a welcome committee. He watched as they arranged themselves on the walkway roughly above the cave. They pinned a sign to the railing that said, Protect Public Property for the Good of All Residents. They wore hats and carried bottles of water; they were going to settle in.
It’d be amusing except it was infuriating. This was Foley’s action group, men in ill-fitting shorts with knobbly knees and women in straw hats and sensible shoes. Earnest and active, and fucking with him. He could reach the cave the back way and they’d never know, but he didn’t want to risk it. In a little while there were more of them, twenty maybe. People using the path to walk or run had to manoeuvre around them, had to stop and talk with them or wave them off.
Drum watched from his perch in the park as they milled about, mostly talking to each other. When the photographer arrived the real event started. So that’s what this was. It had less to do with preventing him going back to the cave than it did with the politics of getting their picture in the paper.
He left the bench and went to stand behind the photographer and a woman with a toddler who’d stopped to watch. He wanted to hear what they had to say. There was an obvious spokesperson. The only man in long pants and a business shirt without the tie. He wore a big-brimmed straw gardening hat.
He spoke to a woman with a notepad while the photographer arranged people against the sign, some standing, some squatting. The woman was Foley’s flatmate. Drum was careful to stay behind her.
The leader pontificated. “The park, the cliff, the beach belong to every resident, every rate payer. That’s why we started the petition to have the man, this Drum person, moved on. We simply can’t allow people to camp here. Imagine if everyone wanted to do that. It’d be a nightmare of sanitation and lawlessness.”
“Do you think everyone would?” Foley’s flatmate said.
“One man is enough to start a trend.”
The one-man trend amused himself by staring at the one man rabblerouser and his cappuccino set, hat-wearing rabble with the knowledge these folk had no idea who he was.
“But he’s been here for some time and others haven’t followed.”
“And isn’t that lucky. The poor man needs our compassion. He needs more than a cave to live in.”
“I understood he’d moved on.”
The man took his hat off; he had a sweaty comb-over. “Now, we both know, Natalie, The Courier started an alternative petition and has been stirring sympathy for this character, suggesting he be allowed to stay. I say it’s an admirable thing you’re doing, championing the rights of those who can’t help themselves, but in all seriousness, this man is a danger, both to himself and to others.”
Drum had seen that story. It’d been carefully done, responsible journalism that had kept his identity from being exposed. Without that he couldn’t stand here and risk being spotted.
“Are you saying he’s in more danger now than for the previous months he lived in the cave?” Natalie wasn’t taking too many notes, but then the man wasn’t saying anything worth much.
“Oh, I absolutely am. It has to stop and our group is here to make sure it does.”
“How is he a danger to others?”
“He’s clearly a trouble magnet. It goes without saying, Natalie.” It went with multiple taps of his hat against his leg, as if they could make it so.
“But there’s been no report of trouble associated with him, and he doesn’t have a police record.”
“It’s surely only a matter of time.” That went with face raised heavenwards and a succession of make it so hat waves.
“What’s the group’s plan, Walter?”
