Tommy learned to sail after he arrived in Darwin. After he went looking for a beer and ended up being a member of the Sailing Club. After he got to know the barman called John and learned the diverse uses of the word ‘fuck’.
I wasn’t a sailor, and Ambrosia wasn’t either. Tommy said we should learn. He said living by the sea and not knowing how to sail was wrong.
We went to Sydney to look at boats. We sailed a lot of different boats on Middle Harbour and out of Rushcutters.
Tommy was happy with the one we sailed last, and I suppose that was why it was the one we sailed last. Like always finding the thing you’re looking for in the last place you looked. Tommy was happy with it, so Ambrosia and I were happy with it too. After Tommy bought it, ‘it’ became ‘her’ and ‘it’ became ‘she’. ‘She’ was called The Maid. Tommy said he was going to rename her Molly. If you read our first book, you’ll know why. He wanted her to be white and to have the face of a beautiful redhead facing the bow. Her ginger hair blowing in the wind.
The owner said changing her name would be unlucky, and Tommy told him he didn’t believe in the tooth-fairy either.
We needed her to be sailed by just the three of us. Tommy wasn’t interested in racing. He said if we wanted to race, we would need a spinnaker and then we’d need more crew. I knew he didn’t want that. He arranged for the winches to be changed and to have a self-furling headsail. The modifications would take time and then she would be ‘shipped’ to Darwin overland. ‘Shipped’ on a low-loader. We weren’t going to sail her home. We were enthusiasts, not stupid.
Twenty-Two
Were the Hendersons going to be enough for me? Part of me wanted them to be. Part of me didn’t. I suspected they wouldn’t be. Revenge can be complicated stuff.
The voice that spoke loudest was the voice that wanted more. It was the voice that said I needed more. That I needed it for Annie. That I needed it for all the decent people in the world. That it was time the bad people started to suffer. Just as we suffered.
The voice spoke on and on. The Hendersons were the tool, only the tool. I needed the hand that wielded the tool. I needed the brain, that controlled the hand that wielded the tool. Revenge can be complicated stuff.
I wanted revenge, back at the start of things. I wanted the Major, I wanted Prouse, I wanted Annie, I wanted what I wanted before. I wanted what I wanted when I found out what they did to me. When they framed me. When I was arrested. When I thought I was going to jail. When I thought it was Annie who did it. When I thought it was Annie I hated.
Back then, it was her pain, her crying and her whimpering I wanted most of all. How I couldn’t believe what she did to me. How I couldn’t believe why she did it to me. How she betrayed me to my enemy, my only enemy. How I planned to destroy the last vestige of her disgusting and degenerate life. How I planned to leave her friendless, fortuneless and futureless. How I planned to leave her naked, cold and shivering in the knowledge of her own splintered soul. Then, when Annie was crucified for saving me, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
Then I fell in love again. You may know about that already.
But I still wanted revenge. A part of me said I did.
I knew Annie didn’t want revenge. I knew she didn’t want me to want it. I knew Ambrosia didn’t either. So I tried not to want it. I tried to listen to what they told me, and to the reasons they had for telling me the things they told me. I tried to agree with what they told me. A part of me listened to them. A part of me didn’t. That part won.
Would vengeance help me? Would it make things better? Could things be any better than they were? I had everything I ever wanted. More than I ever expected. Would the need for vengeance throw all that away? Risk the things I had? Lose me the things I had? Yes it would, but not in the way I expected. It wouldn’t be my need for vengeance that did those things to me. I didn’t know that then. If I did, was there something I could have done to avoid those things? Probably, but it’s hard to be sure. Even in hindsight, it’s hard to be sure.
Because of vengeance, I lost all the things I had, but it wasn’t my vengeance that lost me those things.
Twenty-Three
Annie talked to Pip. Pip talked to Annie. Annie talked to me. Pip and J. Maz wanted to get married in the garden, our garden, just like we did. So Pip and J. Maz got married in the garden, our garden, just like we did. Pip was once my lover, our lover, Annie’s lover and J. Maz was my friend. He started as my confrère. Then he became my friend. He was fifteen years older than me. He was smarter than me. Smarter in every way than me. Smarter in every way there was of being smarter than someone else. I employed him, but I was never his ‘employer’. He was my friend.
I knew I was ‘sort of’ smart at some things. I knew I was ‘sort of’ dumb at some things too. I knew there were holes in my brain where holes shouldn’t be. But I knew I was smart in some things. I knew it since the SOTH. The time when I came top in exams without ever expecting to. But I was as hopeless, at all the important things, as it was possible for a person to be. I knew I was smart in patches, academic patches, but not in ‘things to do with life’ patches. I knew I was smart with things to do with words. The speech problem stopped me saying them properly, but words were still my friends. I loved them. I had favourite words that I loved most of all. You may know that the favourite of all my favourites was ‘haberdasher’, haberdasher, HABERDASHER, HABERDASHER. I loved that word. I still do. Annie cured me of a lot of things, but not of that. I know I’m still weird. Not as weird as I used to be. Just a bit weird now.
I was smart with words, but not so smart with numbers. I wasn’t dumb with numbers. I just wasn’t smart with them, not like I was with words. J. Maz was smart with numbers. He loved them, like I loved words. He understood numbers. They were like his children. I never asked him if he had a favourite number. I couldn’t imagine anyone having a favourite number, not like having a favourite word.
Steve, the bone surgeon, had a favourite number. He said it was ‘a hundred and eighty-seven’. He didn’t know why. You may remember Steve. He fixed Annie’s broken leg after the crucifixion. There was nothing weird about Steve, apart from the ‘a hundred and eighty-seven’, of course.
There was nothing weird about J. Maz. He understood numbers and he understood people. Most of all, he understood people with money. He understood the insecurity money brought with it. He understood that ‘some money’ brought more insecurity than ‘no money’. He said that when you had ‘no money’, you weren’t insecure. He said that when you had ‘no money’ you had more things to worry about than insecurity.
J. Maz understood what people with ‘some money’ would do to not lose their ‘some money’ and to make it into ‘more money’. He knew about greed and fear. He knew something else too. He knew about the herds people belonged to. Liked to belong to. The herds people didn’t want to be outside of. The electronic herd of the stock market. He knew what markets would do, because he knew what people would do. He knew how they thought. He was smart with numbers. He was smart with people.
He understood institutions. He knew what institutions would do to protect their money. Protect it and make it more. He knew how they thought. He tried to explain to me how institutions thought. I, sort of, understood, but not really. J. Maz understood. That was the important thing. It was enough for me.
In understanding money, he made money. He made money for the Trust.
I suppose, in a funny sort of way, it would be better for me if he wasn’t so good at making money for the Trust. The aim of the Trust was to get rid of the money, not to make it more. J. Maz understood what I wanted. He knew I wanted to be rid of the money. The money that my avaricious, bullying, murdering bastard of a father spent his life accumulating. I didn’t like my father; you know that already.
I hated my father and I hated him as much in death as I did in life. I hated him because he was a bad, mean, nasty, ugly and hor
rible human being.
Mother knew Father was a bad person too. A bad, mean, nasty, ugly and horrible person too. She knew he would never ‘get off my back’, ‘get off our backs’. Not after he found out about Mother and me. About how much we loved one another, and were in love with one another, in that funny sort of way that we were ‘sort of’ in love with one another. Not after he found out about what Mother and I did, when he and brother Bob were away shooting things and killing things, and turning beauty into ugliness. Not for as long as he lived, would he forgive either of us for what we did. It was part of why she killed him. She killed him to protect me. But, to kill him, she had to kill herself. She knew my brother Bob was a bad person too, and it was why she killed them both. But, to kill them both, she had to kill herself. I think that’s why she did it. I’ve never been sure.
I sometimes wonder what Mother’s last thoughts were, as she flew the helicopter into the hill above the Cascapedia. The hill across from Bullseye. I think her last thoughts would have been of me, and how much we were in love. Of how much we liked touching one another, and lying side by side. Of nights on the Ryabaga, nights in Florence, nights in Cambridge, nights anywhere we could be together.
We needed to be rid of the money, but not fritter it away. It would be easy to give it away to whoever asked for it, but that wasn’t J. Maz’s way and it wasn’t my way either. It wasn’t my way, after J. Maz told me what his way was. After he told me what his way was, it became my way too.
J. Maz would turn what we had into more, if he saw a way of doing it. That was his nature. I could never change that. Not even if I wanted to. I didn’t want to.
To J. Maz the Trust was a living thing. It needed nurture. It needed care. It needed to be stroked and groomed. It needed to be robust. As robust as he could make it.
When I inherited the money, I hated it. I wanted to throw it as far away from me as I could. Everything about it stank of Father. I hated Father, and because I hated Father, I hated his money too. That was illogical. I came to realise that. You can’t hate inanimate things. You can only hate people.
J. Maz taught me to love the inanimate Trust. To love it as a living thing. To love it for what it might do. To love what it could do. To love the things we could do with it, if we cared for it, moulded it, and sent it down the paths we wanted. The Laroche-Lodge fortune was made in the darkness of greed, always greed, nothing but greed. Made in the darkness, by dark and greedy men. Men like my father. That was Father’s way, Grandfather’s way. The way of all the fathers and grandfathers going deep into the history of avarice, brutality and uncaringness that was the history of my family.
They made guns to beat Napoleon. They were proud of that. They mined copper in Bolivia and diamonds in Africa. They were proud of that. They used people as animals. They treated people as animals. They did what it took to make a profit. Their profit was someone else’s loss. Always someone else’s loss. They cared not. They trod heavily upon the earth.
I came to love the Trust, but only in a funny sort of way. In a funny sort of way, I came to love the things we were going to do with it. I hated the men who made it. I loved what we were going to do with it. Strange? Maybe not.
Do we only give money away, so that we can feel better about ourselves? If giving is to mean anything, should the giving hurt? I don’t know. I’ve never known. I wonder about it sometimes. It doesn’t worry me. I still wonder about it.
Does it matter that the ‘giver-awayerer’ gets pleasure out of being a ‘giver-awayerer’? And if it does matter, why does it, to who does it, to whom does it? I suspect it matters to people who would like to have money enough to be ‘giver-awayerers’, but then wouldn’t, not even if they could.
So J. Maz and Pip got married in the garden. It was a happy time. It was the best of times. The worst of times were yet to come. None of us knew that. Not then.
Annie and Ambrosia were bridesmaids. Everyone we knew was there. There were even some we didn’t. Well, I didn’t.
Annie wore her eyepatch and a circle of flowers in her hair. She wore one of her white dresses. She had two. They were the only dresses she owned. You may know that already. She looked like she did at our own wedding.
We could see they were in love. Everyone could. I knew Pip was smart. I knew she was Dr Philippa Fletcher with a PhD in maths. Her thesis was on ‘Complex numbers and negative roots’. She gave it to me to read, and I couldn’t understand it. Not any of it. I couldn’t understand the summary. I couldn’t even understand the title. Annie tried to read it years before. She couldn’t understand it either. “How can you have the square root of minus one?” Our brains worked in different ways.
Pip wasn’t beautiful. Not in the way Annie was. Not in the way she was when I first met her. In the way she was before the destruction of her face. Annie was still beautiful, in a destroyed sort of way. She would always be beautiful to me, whatever might happen in the future. Thank God I was right about that. I’m not religious.
Pip was handsome. Her smartness was in her eyes. Her white hair, her tanned skin were unusual. People looked at her in the street. It was the same as it was with Mother. The same as it was with Annie.
Pip wasn’t looked at because she was beautiful, but because she was unusual. All the women I’ve gone to bed with were either beautiful and/or unusual. Annie was both. There was nothing unusual about Mother.
I wondered sometimes whether Pip told J. Maz about her night in Sydney, the night with Annie and me. About the night when we did everything it was possible to do, and it was fun. Did she tell him about our night, just our night, together in Sydney, when Annie was recovering in St V’s? How we made love all night. Then stood on the balcony holding hands. How we watched the dawn become morning. How she told me I was still in love with Annie, even when I thought I wasn’t. How she told me how important it was, for all of us, that I get it sorted out in my head. That if I didn’t get it sorted out in my head, we were going to get hurt. All of us going to get hurt. “You know, lots.” I didn’t know. I’ve never asked.
When the A’s told me that J. Maz was in love, I was surprised. I didn’t pick it. It was the holes in my brain where holes weren’t meant to be. It was the biggest of the holes inside me. The hole that stopped me from knowing and understanding about how people felt and how their minds worked. I wanted to understand about people, and about how they felt and about how their minds worked, but I couldn’t. That was something that was missing inside me.
So it was a happy thing, when J. Maz and Pip got married. All weddings are happy things.
Twenty-Four
Tommy was excited when Molly arrived. She looked beautiful, and the face of Molly was the face of his mother. I knew the face from the photograph he kept in his Private Place. It was the photograph I asked to see, and asked him to fetch from his Private Place. He was surprised that I knew he had the photograph, and he was surprised that I knew he had a Private Place. What is it about men? How have men ruled the planet for so long, when all they know about it, is the science of it, the mechanics of it, and the numbers of it? They don’t know any of the important things about it.
We weren’t interested in racing her, just sailing her, and just being together was what we liked most of all.
Every Saturday afternoon, we sailed across the harbour to the Mondarah Hotel and ate lunch. The girls collected shells on the beach, and then we sailed back.
That day, we furled the foresail, dropped the main and motored into the jetty.
There was a sign at the end of the jetty that said the hotel was closed. They were doing renovations. That was annoying. We would miss out on our usual lunch and I knew Tommy didn’t like to miss out on usual things. It was a part of his OCD.
He stood staring at the sign with a blank expression. I said we should sail into the City and have lunch on Stokes Hill. He didn’t say anything. He just kept staring at the sign. I knew it was more than just
missing lunch. I looked at the sign again.
In small print in the bottom right-hand corner was written: THE WENTWORTH DEVELOPMENT COMPANY.
For those of you who haven’t read the first book, or for those of you who’ve forgotten, the ‘Wentworth Development Company’ was the holding company for Sir Peter Prouse’s business interests in Australia.
Twenty-Five
We, at Munroe & Sons, knew about what was happening in Darwin. We’d known about it for some time. Our senior vice-president, Duncan, my eldest son, thought we should tell Tom. Iain disagreed and, at the time, I thought he was right. I’d given the Laroche-Lodge file to Iain and I knew he was keen to show me how well he could do with it. He knew I would be keeping an interest in things out there. He knew he could talk to me if he had any problems.
They had done well in the Caribbean, all of them. I knew it must have been a stressful time. I knew Tom needed a rest after his time in Cambridge. I knew this matter might disturb the happiness he had.
I worried about them and wanted the best for them. Iain knew how I felt, and, because of that, he wanted the best for them too. I wouldn’t have given him the file unless I thought he could do the job. The safety of Tom and his family was important to me, but, unlike with any of our other clients, their happiness had become important to me too
Iain and I didn’t want them told, not unless something more transpired. Not unless it turned out to be more than just a hotel renovation and simply a commercial matter. If it was no more than that, then they wouldn’t need to know. If we told them, it would worry them, whatever it turned out to be. Perhaps, if we didn’t tell them, and it did turn out to be no more than a simple commercial matter, then we would have done them a favour. That was our thinking at the time.
A Judgement on a Life Page 9
