So why in this moment did I rock and nothing happened? My tongue licked along my gums and teeth but not a word emerged from the warm wet effort. I was silent. I was empty. I coughed to clear the blockage as if phlegm was to blame. I squeezed my eyes shut for extra concentration. But nothing, not a syllable was freed from my system. My hairline prickled and itched. I tried not to panic but Cat’s Piss kept jabbering.
‘Words, you all right? You look funny. You want a doctor?’
‘I do not want a doctor. I’m not fucking sick—I’m just thinking.’
He apologised.
‘Don’t stare at me,’ I said. ‘I can’t think with your staring.’
Just go, I waved. I’m more intellectual in private.
‘The creative temperament,’ Pockets said, voice hushed to respect my sensitive presence.
With the two of them gone I tried deep breaths and putting my head between my knees. I touched my calendar in case it was not perfectly straight. My pen too, my battered old dictionary. My chair was the cradle that it should be, grooved in each correct area. There was no excuse to be wordless. But still I was.
On hands and knees I flipped through the vintage files. Today they seemed stale. I’d reused the best lines over and over. I’d copied myself too much, was that the problem?
I called to Cat’s Piss, ‘I’m not giving you my lines. You write them yourself. It’s your story. You tell it as you lived it.’
My vintage files had such fade-brown faces. I restacked them into their tilting piles. Floppy ears of eroding paper. Christ, don’t tell me my best work was behind me!
The desk phone rang. I answered Hello instead of my usual Yup. The Yup of arrogant challenge which this moment was weakened. If I didn’t sit down quickly I might stumble like an old man. I’m no old man, I said to the spinning ceiling. I’m me.
‘Mr Smith, it’s Pastor Shaw here. Can you spare a minute?’
My professional reflex was always no. No is a wall of a word. Stay behind it, stay vigilant. The longer you hold out before saying yes makes the yes more a privilege for the listener.
‘If you’re quick,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d resolved our matter.’
‘I just wanted to say that we’ve found the poor woman. Alice. We combed every street and thank God we’ve tracked her down. We’ve fed her. She’s seen doctors and has safe accommodation. You mentioned a feature, a good story. Surely we’ve got one now.’
‘That’s perfect,’ I said. I tried to sound interested. ‘Like I told you, I’ll call you when I’m ready to.’
‘I see. I’m not harping. It’s just, well, Alice says one thing which leaves me a little unsettled. She says money was given to her that evening, in regards to our church. Inducement to beg and cause a disturbance.’
I cursed fuck but not loudly. He wouldn’t have heard me at all. A fuck of surprise like that was more grunted than spoken. One breath for composure before I said That so? drolly.
‘That’s what she told us.’
‘Really.’
‘I’ll be blunt, if you don’t mind, Mr Smith. Did this money come from pry?’
‘From pry?’
‘As an inducement.’
‘Pastor Shaw, this is a bizarre thing you’re saying. It’s offensive and it’s no way to make friends with us.’
‘She had almost one hundred dollars on her when we found her.’
‘So what?’
‘That’s a lot for somebody living on the street.’
‘We’re a charitable city. People hand out money.’
‘Alice spoke of a woman and two men she befriended. And a bus ticket they gave her to America. Was that woman your journalist, the Katie Brooks by-line?’
‘Pastor Shaw, I’m going to end this conversation. You’ve got this poor girl, this Alice, an obvious crackpot, and she’s making up these tales. And you’re gullible, frankly. I had planned to do a story in your church’s favour. But here you are with these distasteful insinuations. All based on the ravings of someone mentally ill.’
‘I think, Mr Smith, we can do without your favours. Your favours are like sham blessings from the Pharisees, that’s my belief.’
‘I vaguely recall who the Pharisees were and I’m sure they didn’t like being badmouthed any more than I do. Particularly on a day when one of my staff was almost murdered. Had a gun poked in his face—and you want to make insinuations! You’re the one being distasteful. You want to pray? You pray for guns to be taken off our streets. I’m sorry if I’ve lost my temper but I’m talking life and death here.’
That dealt with him. He apologised: he was not accusing me or sermonising, he promised. Just displaying a duty of care to the girl. What pastor would he be if he didn’t do that? As for violence, his prayers were always out there in the ether. He said he’d give thanks to God that my staff member was safe. The phone call ended there. A polite goodbye and no commitment to a feature. No more Pastor Shaw, I mumbled, and rocked back in my chair.
‘Hey, Theodore,’ I called. ‘Come here. I think I’ve got something.’
I told him to sit down, shut up and take dictation.
I had his opener—a sudden word stream. I closed my eyes like a trance of language:
First thing I saw was his trigger finger. It hooked the gun and the muzzle pointed at me, at my head. I should be dead but I don’t remember fighting. I’m a hero, they say. My name’s Theo. I’m twenty-three.
‘Short sentences like that—bim bam boom!’
I suggested he might change his humorous surname. ‘Katsipis lends itself to unfortunate variations.’
He said his parents wouldn’t tolerate change. They’re proud, traditional. He’d keep Katsipis.
‘Besides,’ he said. ‘My nickname’s The Cat now. I’ve outgrown Cat’s Piss.’
The Cat, as in being ‘ready to pounce’. I had planned to give Katie Brooks that honour. For my using in secret, not around her. Female sobriquets are hard to make perfect. Male ones never feel offensive to the person. You can’t create a female nickname and it not sound barbed to them.
16
My hibiscus become yellow in the buds and wind breaks them off. Not all, just the weakest. The rest flourish up high: velvet blooms red and wide as my spread hand. Inside them a penis of dusty pollen.
I began my Saturday ritual clearing the dead buds and aiming water under the mulch to keep the soil stewing. Our gunman story was a boon to pry’s figures. Pockets spent Friday taking in ads. Subscriptions also had a bumper day. TV and radio love journalist tough guys: The Cat did interviews, no mention of fingers. The gunman and his weapon got bigger in each telling. I’d said ‘tone the yarn down’ but he’d get carried away. He believed himself now, to the point of sincerity.
7.30 a.m. Paths had green hairdos of wet spikes for spring. I ran the mower over them and sprayed the moss on the steps. The closest I’ll ever get to praying, kneeling eye level with ants and chirping blue wrens. Should have done this for a living, gardening, if it wasn’t so ordinary. I didn’t hear Ollie until he whispered my name. Dad. Dad. Answer me.
‘Why the whisper, son?’
‘Shh. Pretend you don’t hear me.’
‘Why?’
He’d unlocked the side door and crawled behind vines. He parted the bougainvillea so I’d have sight of him.
‘What you doing behind there?’
‘Mum thinks I’m in bed still. I crept down the stairs. I don’t want her to think I’m tipping you off.’
‘About what?’
‘She’s been crying. She was crying last night. She said, “Don’t tell your father.” And I said, “I won’t.” Because I thought it was just a one-off thing. She said it was hay fever. But it’s not hay fever. She’s at it again.’
‘Now?’
‘This morning. And a bit through the night.’
‘Crying about what?’
‘It’s to do with that old guy.’
‘The Gordon dickhead?’
‘He’s like, um, i
n trouble. I listened in on a call. There’s journalists been ringing him, he said. Bigwig business ones, he said. To do with his money and his companies. To do with his tax. He’s like: “I’ve done nothing wrong.” And Mum’s like: “Are you sure?” She’s like: “If you say so, Gordon.” And he’s like: “You don’t sound as if you have faith in me.”’
‘And?’ I said, walking to Ollie on my knees.
‘That’s all I heard. They didn’t say much more ’cause he was like angry at her. And she got angry ’cause he’d raised his voice. He got angrier ’cause she said, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” He got really angry then ’cause she wouldn’t budge on it. She wouldn’t one hundred per cent say she believed him. She said it was “a legacy of Callum”. What’d she mean by that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. People say things when they’re worked up.’
I cupped the back of his neck with my hand.
‘Good boy. That’s good. That’s my boy. That’s more than I could hope for. Good boy. You go back to your room.’
‘You won’t say I told you.’
‘Never.’
‘It’s just, I feel guilty if I do tell you and guilty if I don’t.’
‘Don’t feel guilty. You’ve acted with me and your mum at heart. You don’t want her mixing with the wrong kind of people, do you? People with journalists ringing them because of their taxes? People who raise their voice to your mother?’
Of course not. He smiled.
‘I’ll tell you what. I want you happy and guilt-free. No more being my eyes and ears. Okay? Job done with distinction. An A-plus for my apprentice. Wipe any guilt from your memory. Learn to do that in life. A clean slate for your conscience, otherwise you dwell on things.’
Go upstairs, I told him. Begin Saturday again, lazy-slow as normal.
‘I’ll make your mum breakfast. Make her happy and well-fed.’
I’m always nervous when I have a success. Some people bask in it, chest puffed, a bounce in their step. They revel where I prefer to be undetectable. It’s safer that way, that’s my superstition. Success has opposite forces attracted by strutting: ‘Cut him down to size,’ I can hear the wind saying. ‘He thinks he’s king shit, so let’s go fuck with him.’
I stopped on the stairs and steadied my breathing. The fillings in my back teeth ached from biting my grin away. The pace of my pulse like applause on my wrist. I called: ‘Your breakfast, madam’ and ‘It’s a fine sunny day.’ I balanced the tray on one hand for opening the door, expecting to flow into the bedroom like a warm human breeze.
The door was locked. The tray tipped. I saved it from falling but the orange juice half emptied. I sucked the splashes from my arm and waited. Should I knock? Perhaps she was sleeping. Or dressing, or brooding about Gordon or me, the whole pandemonium of men.
If she was crying, embarrassed by these Gordon developments, it was too late now for me to call off Peeko. Crying is a good thing, like empting your being’s bowels. You cry and it clears the way for fresh hope and cheer. I felt better for thinking that—I’m not all dead glitter. Emma in tears always took me past my limit. There was guilt in me, a queasy churn of it. But as I said to Ollie, you have to clean your slate-memory. How would nature, red in tooth and claw, ever live past birth if qualms had a say in it?
‘You awake?’
I put my ear to the door. Lots of shuffling about in there, the way bare feet chafe across carpet. The wardrobe being opened and closed. The rubbery bang it makes when rollers hit stoppers.
‘I said—’
‘Yes, I heard you, Callum. Can I dress in peace?’
‘Got your breakfast as usual.’
‘I’m not hungry. But thank you.’
Crying clears your system but it can make you too damned fresh. Leave you self-reliant to the point of shunning loved ones. After fifteen years I was surely still that to Emma, her loved one. Of all the shame and loneliness I’d ever felt this was the worst, locked out of that bedroom, an outsider inside my house.
My mother had a trick she used when she needed more attention. ‘I’m sick,’ she’d say and fall into an armchair. ‘I think the world hates me. It’s trying to kill me with this pain.’
The pain was different each time—her chest, her head, her kneecap, her feet. I decided on my stomach hurting. Headache sounded effeminate. Chest pain would make me sound old.
‘I’ll see you,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel well. I’ll leave your tray beside the door and go.’
I groaned. Not a loud groan. More a not-too-long sharp Oww. I repeated it as I reached the landing. Oww and Jesus. I leant against the balustrade and cursed Dodgy takeaway. Important not to overact it or else Emma would say, ‘Just one of your fakes.’ I sat at the top of the stairs, forehead on knees, oww-ing louder now so there was no doubt she could hear. Ollie was the first one out.
‘You right, Dad?’
He called, ‘Dad’s sick. He’s sick, Mum.’
That made Emma interested. I grimaced and groaned.
‘I’m fine. Just off-colour. I’ve had it all night. Bad Chinese.’
‘You sure?’ she said. ‘No chest pains?’
‘No. It’s my stomach.’
Ollie, my sweet boy, was touching my shoulder now.
‘It’s not serious?’ he asked his mother. There were cracks of tearfulness in his voice.
I lessened the groaning and told him don’t worry. Emma knelt down and said, ‘Maybe it’s kidney stones.’
Kidney stones? How many times did I have to tell her? Stomach. Stomach. Kidney stones sounded geriatric.
It was time to make a full recovery.
‘It’s easing now. It comes and goes. It’s in the go phase.’
‘You need to put something healthy in your tummy,’ said Emma. ‘There’s chicken soup in the freezer. I’ll microwave it.’
I couldn’t believe it was that easy—I’d won her sympathy. She must have sized up the Gordon ledger and switched ticks from his name to be alongside mine.
‘Some of your soup would be heaven. But I don’t want you to fuss.’
‘It’s no trouble. It’ll take five minutes.’
‘Thank you.’
I leant back into Ollie’s arms.
Emma put her hand to her eyes. They were tears-red and swollen. She pretended her lids itched.
‘Hay fever,’ she said.
‘It’s the time of year for it.’
This was more than soup. It was a peace offering, I was sure of it. She’d learnt plenty about me these past fifteen years but I’d learnt her ways as well, and this was a peace offering. Her silent standing by the microwave while the soup defrosted: a peace offering. Her asking, ‘How would you like it? Boiling temperature or warm to hot?’ Her saying ‘excuse me’ while she set the table—the placemat, the napkin in its silver bangle: the gentle animation of a peace offering. She polished the spoon with a paper towel, said ‘excuse me’ again when placing it down.
My response was ‘thank you’ but nothing bolder. No adding ‘sweetheart’ or a touch of hand on her hip. I winked at Ollie that I was well now but still recovering. Here was me, a weakened man, or playing weak and ailing, yet I wished I’d tried this petty power before. It tests the hold you have over others and whether you matter to them to the point of warranting such attention.
Part II
17
I first visited Myrtleford to cover a child murder and fell in love with the place. The misted hilltops, the chilly forest sun. I could retire in this pretty country town, I thought. No, I couldn’t. It was just a purifying fantasy. I felt cleaner for thinking it, then got dirty again filing copy.
That was ten years ago—now they had more murder to write about. The best weird kind: two wives in a black-magic ritual. I’d have gone myself but it was a three-hour drive towards the New South Wales border and there was the office to manage and Ollie’s big school occasion, the parent–teacher night. I sent Katie—‘You never know,’ I said. ‘You might clap eyes on that co
rpse you’ve been hoping for.’
I dry-cleaned my black pinstripe suit, polished my black shoes till they shimmer-shined. School gates make a grown man feel inferior. You could be prime minister but once you’re on school turf they’re in charge, you’re bound by their rules like children. My black pinstripe would assert some authority.
*
There were famous fathers in this school—TV actors, comedians, a talk-show medico. Dads that gave their sons status among the boys. I felt sorry for Ollie that I was not one of them.
‘How does your old man look?’
I clicked my heels for inspection. I didn’t mean to embarrass him, have other kids hear, but school corridors echo and the voices travel.
‘Do I look important?’ I said.
He nodded and winced. He kept his head down.
‘We don’t have to be pissant comedians and medicos to be important. I’m dealing with life and death every day. I just sent someone to cover a double murder. If I’m important to you that’s all that matters to me. And I’m important to you, am I not?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there some doubt?’
‘No.’
‘Then let’s start this parent–teacher business with you standing closer to me. I’m proud of you and I want to put my hand on your shoulder when we walk along. Show people we’re together. We’re us.’
He was meant to be the nervous one but I too was being judged in this ceremony. Pass judgment on a man’s son and you judge the man as well.
The teachers were polite enough but should have encouraged the boy, not been critical: they praised his quietness and his manners, obedient air, then dug up dirt about poor work rhythms. His off-and-on attitude to home assignments. Slow to focus. Quick to lose concentration. ‘Slow’ had insulting mental connotations. Twenty thousand a year in fees and they’d made my son ‘slow’.
Off the Record Page 11
