1: House Hunting
Nowhere in Foley’s job description did it say lean over a railing on top of a scary cliff to talk a homeless hermit squatter into living somewhere else.
Community relations managers didn’t do spelunking as a rule, nor did they force evictions in the face of pending public outrage.
Foley’s job description said sensible, definitive, measurable things that you could put a key performance indicator against and bank a salary on. It said present the public face of council with integrity and professionalism. It was about recreation, community engagement and the environment. It was parks and beaches, family, historical and cultural events.
It wasn’t sweating and squinting in the February heat haze with her stomach whirling and her palms so slippery the railing might as well have been made of butter while she yodelled off into space.
“Hello, are you there?”
The midday sun burned her forehead as she tried again. “Hello, I’m Foley Barnes. I’m from council. I’d like to talk to you if you’ve got the time.”
Got the time. Idiot. He was an unemployed squatter, what could he possibly be doing but deliberately avoiding her. This would be funny if it wasn’t something Gabriella wanted her to fail at.
Foley wiped her hands on her pants, put them back on the railing and leaned a little further over. She couldn’t see the man’s camp site. That’s how he’d managed to live on the cliff face undetected for so long. He was tucked away in a cave that must extend back under the rock ledge, perhaps even beneath the walkway and Marks Park, where she stood.
Of course, now she’d said she was from council he’d probably think he was in trouble and he’d stay hidden away down there, so that was another dumb move.
“Hello, you’re not in trouble or anything. I want to introduce myself.”
Oh yeah, sure. That was going to work. He’d be sitting down there laughing his homeless head off.
She sighed. Even in this she was Frustrated Foley. Nat was going to love it.
“Okay, I’ll come down to you.”
There were two ways she could go and they both involved the railing: under or over. That’s why the pants suit and the sensible shoes, instead of a lightweight dress and heels. If she had to be a billy goat on work time, she’d be a practically dressed one.
She clamped her back teeth together and ducked under the metal rail, stepping out on the rock ledge. One of the world’s most famous beaches was spread out in front of her, along with a good deal of the coastline. It was blue on blue where the sky met the sea and it sparkled; blindingly awe-inspiring, spectacular, and though she saw it often, the beauty of it never got old. Now it was especially breathtaking, but for all the worst reasons. From the wrong side of the safety railing it was simply bigger, more ferociously beautiful and potentially deadly.
She took a steadying lungful. She’d wanted a life less ordinary. She could’ve been in her comfortable air-conditioned office, at her ergonomically sound desk, working on the Beach Film Festival or the Winter Wonderland, or she could walk along the coast, a very safe distance from the edge, and check Sereno, the heritage-listed house she was trying to save from greedy agents and developers, but no, here she was, back to the wall, thrill-seeking on a rock ledge.
Nat was going to piss herself laughing.
From here Foley could see the ledge had two tiers. The one she was standing on and another that jutted out beneath. The cave must be between them. The edge and the drop off into the ocean was a good car length away, but it was still the edge to a sheer cliff and no next birthday. Sensible shoes or not, her knees locked.
“Hello, are you there?”
She bent forward and tried to peer along the ledge and was rewarded with the sight of a blue tarp. But no hermit squatter man. He couldn’t keep avoiding her, and surely he’d be able to hear her, unless he was sleeping. If he was sleeping she should let him be. It wasn’t smart to sneak up on a sleeping hermit on a cliff face. Who knows what he might do? They knew so little about him anyway. But you had to surmise what they knew didn’t suggest model citizen. He was an unemployed, bearded street person, who’d made a permanent camp site on a cliff face.
“Hello, Mr Drum. Are you there? My name is Foley and I’d like to visit you.”
Was that his surname, Drum? The lifesavers and the park rangers called him that. It was probably a nickname. They all spoke favourably about the man. A good bloke. Maybe some mental health problems, but he didn’t appear to be dangerous and was always ready to help out. There was probably truth in that, given he’d been living in the cave for about a year now and there’d been no reports of trouble.
“Mr Drum. If you’re there, I need to talk to you.”
And he needed to talk to her like he needed … Hell, he must need a lot of things. A hot shower and a home-cooked meal. A shave, haircut and a job. A proper bed to sleep on and some form of counselling. And walls. The man must need walls, at night, when there was only the moon and the stars to see by and it
was windy or cold, or just plain frightening to be living on the edge of the world with nothing to stop you falling off.
A shudder started in her thighs and rippled through her body, leaving a trail of goosebumps. Imagine being here during a storm. It could rip you out of this life and hurl you into the forgotten. No one would even know it had happened, unless a body washed up. Oh God. What if he sleepwalked? What if he was hurt or sick or already dead in his camp site?
Or he really was dangerous and they didn’t know it yet.
Gabriella had suggested she take a ranger or a lifesaver from the beach with her, but no, Foley argued that might scare the man, and they didn’t want that. They wanted this to be a peaceful eviction. Not something the local press would write up. Which was true, but it was also Foley being stubborn about doing it her own way, because two months on she wasn’t over losing the department director job to Gabriella, and was thoroughly infected with an overwhelming desire to stick one up her by being the singularly most competent person on the entire planet.
And for all that bravado, the man, the whole idea of him—which in air-conditioned comfort, within solid walls, was entirely benign, in a we’re more scary than he is, and it’ll be no trouble for me to manage way—was freaking her the fuck out.
The singularly most competent person on the entire planet probably didn’t have rubber knees.
That, and the knowledge she’d have to go down to the lower ledge to find Drum, or go back to the office and admit defeat. Not an option. But neither was moving her legs. Her feet stuck like sea snails to the rock, slimy suckers growing from the soles of her sensible, before you considered rock climbing in them, shoes and sticking like wet on water.
She looked around for anything resembling steps naturally carved in the rock face. It wasn’t that she was scared of heights. She wasn’t besties with them, but she wasn’t normally frightened rigid of them, or spiders, or snakes, or the Doberman in the house next door to her unit block that tried to leap the fence to eat her every time she walked past. Those were decent, solid, ordinary fears, but not her fears.
“Mr Drum, are you there?”
She should’ve thought to bring a bribe. A sandwich, a coffee, a cash donation. With her bag strapped over her body, she could still do the latter, but was it smart to yell out come and get it, when the getting it meant opening her wallet in front of a quantity unknown, unemployed, homeless man?