‘That would be so good of you, Peeko.’
‘One does these things for friends. You and me are cut from the same cloth.
‘You and I.’
‘You and I. We’re in the bastardry business. It’s not often I can relax with a fellow operator. I’d like to relax more with you.’
‘Oh Peeko,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You wouldn’t want to relax with me. I have been an unfaithful husband. I am not an admirable man.’
That sort of admission is meant to put women off. One is never ever forgiven by spouses. Small sins, yes. But not the big soul-sin of cheating. Other women are meant to side with them and reel back in disdain. Not Peeko. Her hand remained upon mine and was getting hotter.
‘I hoped we might have been brought closer together, my wife and I. Apparently infidelity doesn’t do that. It is not a growth experience for a couple.’
Peeko had her tongue between her buckled-brown teeth. ‘You are priceless. Naive or arrogant, I don’t know which. Both. I like you even more for that.’
‘I at least deserve recrimination,’ I said.
‘It’s not my job to do that. I’m no angel. You’re no angel.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Her other hand came up and she put it under my hand and started stroking with those orange nails.
‘I like this contact,’ she said.
‘I like it too.’ Which was not all a lie. ‘I wish I didn’t have to run. I’m onto this big story. I think I might have a pure original. Not sure. Don’t want to go the early crow. But I’m onto something.’
She stroked more firmly. ‘Of course. No rush. I know the business. I’m pleased that we’ve got this far. Talking this way. I’m fond of you, Words. As you can tell. I’m no oil painting but I know how to handle a man’s…libido.’
‘I’m flattered. I’m fond of you too.’ (A lie, but I did enjoy that libido sentence.)
‘You are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cut from the same cloth, like I said.’
‘Too true. Such a pity I have to go. I feel like a heel—you doing a favour for me and me going work, work, work.’
‘That’s no problem. We’ve broken the ice. We’ve got tomorrow. Next day. Whenever.’
‘Gives you a chance to do the favour tonight.’
‘If you like. What’s her number?’
‘Her name’s Tiffany and her number is here.’
I placed a slip of paper into her palm.
‘It’ll be done.’
‘You’re a darling, Peeko.’
We stood and she kissed me on the mouth and I let her. Not a long kiss but long enough in the context of that libido sentence. Words, walk away. No erotic experiments, not with Peeko Mellich.
24
I was lonesome for home and drove past the place three times to see the lights on in the lounge and the kitchen and in Ollie’s room. Lights off in Emma’s and mine, and no front-door light meaning no visitors expected. So tempting to ring the bell, to ask to come in and be welcome. But the fear was in me, I couldn’t risk aggravation.
I went back to my coffee-shop cubby and drank three fingers. Another three. Then a two, a bit tipsy. Peeko texted ‘Done. PkoXX’ and I was too full of drink to stop me. I texted ‘You darling.’ And added two XXs of my own.
That’s when Mai Tran rang and she was crying. She was retching the way you do when there’s nothing left in the stomach.
‘I’m at a drag race, Words.’
‘The illegal races?’
‘A car crashed. Two boys killed right in front of me. The steering wheel split a body open. I can’t look anymore. Can I call Katie to do the story and not me?’
Of course, I said. Katie Brooks would be ecstatic.
‘You take yourself off and lie down or something. I’ll get Katie there. You don’t have to look at dead bodies if you don’t want to.’
‘Thank you, Words.’
‘Perfectly all right.’
‘It’s so horrible.’
‘I understand.’
She retched again.
‘Mai. While I’ve got you. The infanticide mum. You were going to get me the details?’
More retching.
‘As soon as you can, please. Address and details.’
She apologised and said she’d get them to me pronto. I said pronto would be preferable to its antonym.
Silence.
‘Preferable to sluggishly.’
I’d cured her retching. She texted the details ten minutes later.
Soon enough Katie sent through gruesome photos of the car wreck. I published them next day with the faces blacked out in the interest of taste. My by-line, not hers.
‘That’s criminal,’ Katie whinged. ‘Such great pictures. Shit, not fair.’
I had to agree but I didn’t say so. I was asserting my authority: let her learn the word humble. Let her learn who is boss and who is not boss but junior.
That’s right, I published them. Jenny wouldn’t have done it but Jenny wasn’t there. Jenny had got the boot by Pockets that morning. Or rather Mrs Pockets sacked her, face to face, with foul-mouthed slurs. Right there in Jenny’s office. Fist held up to hit her if she tried to talk back. At one stage she drove Jenny onto the footpath, lion-taming-like, with a chair.
‘Someone rang my home, Words. A woman. Who would do such a thing? Why?’
Pockets had his head down, hair clenched in his fingers.
He made me turn his office lamps off so he could sit there with the blinds down and cry.
‘Women gang up on men who go cheating. Someone would have seen you out smooching with Jenny. You think they won’t but there are eyes everywhere.’
‘Has the staff left?’ he asked.
‘Yip, they’ve filed their stories and gone to Intercourse.’
‘They saw it all, Words.’
He sobbed and groaned, muttered wet curses through teardrops and spittle.
‘I’ve spoken to them. “Domestic troubles are part of this complicated thing called life,” I said. “This might happen to you one day,” I told them. “Don’t judge lest ye be judged.”’
‘That’s beautiful,’ Pockets said with a sniffle.
He held out his arm as if he wanted a hug.
I’m not of the tactile breed towards weeping adults. I prefer soothing by talking, kid them along in a good-humoured tone. He kept waving me forward to kneel and comfort him. Yes, I’d had my moments of being attracted to this man but only the secret frisson of imagination. Physical contact, especially in his state—so weak and so whining—was repellent.
I did it anyway. A half-hearted holding and patting his back, not embracing to the point you’d call hugging someone.
‘Thank you, Words.’
‘Like the poet said, is it wise to eat a peach? Well, you ate a peach. Eating peaches can kill you.’
He looked up at me, trying to comprehend this talk of peaches.
‘All I’ll say is this: you’re a lucky man. For a woman to come and fight for you like that, you’re someone to be envied. My wife, she went looking for fresh meat when I cheated.’
‘She’s no doormat, Tiffany.’
‘She is something.’
‘She is too. I thought she’d punch Jenny in the face. I’d never seen that side of her. Almost makes me wish I’d cheated earlier.’
He was trying to muster bravado.
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said.
‘It’s what our marriage needed.’
‘Bit of a shake-up.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘You go home and win that woman over.’
‘To be honest with you, she scares me now.’
‘Oh, stop. You’re a man who is about to help make history. You tell her that. You tell her you had a crisis of the soul and that crisis has now passed. It has re-aroused your love for her. And has turned your mind to a cause.’
‘What cause?’
I stood up and flicked his spittle-tears from my collar. ‘The big story. No one’s seen the likes of it. We’re pioneers. You tell her that.’
I made it sound as though he was the brave one—risking jail with me for being publisher of my pure original. I made him feel like a freedom fighter. It provided the chance to remind him of my employment contract, the part that states I’m indemnified for all fines and legal costs.
‘Fully indemnified,’ I said.
He was beaming and mouthing pioneering and prison.
‘Reuniting a mother with her baby,’ he kept repeating.
I said Yes and Isn’t that a worthy cause?
He said his Tiffany would like it—‘Her husband, the reuniter. The activist hero.’
I told him to take her on a trip away. Overseas. I did not want him going to jelly over the story. I couldn’t trust him to disobey the law like me. Best he be nations away from the office.
25
Ollie is like his father in his disobeying rules. His mother had forbidden him to contact me but he did so anyway. Good boy. He did it from school premises, which of course was also forbidden.
It was not the usual hello call or wanting money or reporting on Emma’s movements. My usual How’s things, son? His usual automatic Sweet. This time there was an effusion of out-of-breath words.
‘Mr Gumm said my answers were close enough and that there was “excellent logic behind my attempts” and he gave me a pass mark. An actual pass mark.’
‘Well done, son. Have you told your mother?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Don’t tell her you called me while we’re having our disagreements. Let her call me herself.’
‘Sweet.’
‘Promise?’
‘Sweet.’
And call me she did. That evening. Accusingly.
‘Up to your tricks, weren’t you, Callum. What good does it do the boy to get false marks?’
‘I don’t have a clue what you mean, sweetheart.’
‘Callum, you do. Pressuring the teacher. I know you did. I can smell it.’
‘The only conversations I’ve had are about confidence. Giving our son confidence. Instead of always marking him down, give him encouragement by giving him hope.’
‘Pressuring.’
‘Influencing. And it’s worked.’
Here was proof her husband was a man of influence and yet there was no praise for my accomplishment.
‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she said.
‘You rang me.’
‘I’ve had my say and now I’m hanging up. Just one more thing. Your keys to this house. I’ll have them, please. I do not want you swanning in and out.’
‘I’m not giving up my key rights. Who’s going to tend the garden?’
‘I’ll hire someone.’
Giving up key rights! To my own half-owned house?
‘I can’t argue properly at the moment. I have blurred vision in the eye where you hit me,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the doctor.’
In fact, a doctor appointment was an inspired idea. To have on record that I’d been assaulted.
‘What sort of blurred vision?’ One of his fakes—it was in her tone. A sing-song sigh of suspicion.
‘I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. It’s probably nothing but it needs looking at. Especially now that I’m on the big one, a pure original. No one’s seen the likes of it. And I’ll tell you this. It feels good to have a pure original, and it’s not just a story to me. It’s a cause. Reuniting a mother with her baby.’
‘You, with a cause other than yourself?’
That tone of hers again.
I gave her a summary but she kept up that sing-song sarcasm.
‘Are you telling me you’re an activist now?’
‘I am. And I resent that you don’t respect me for it. Just as you didn’t respect my eye when you took a swing at it.’
Silence.
‘I’m sorry about your eye. I should not have done that. Just as you should not have pressured teachers. You should not have betrayed me. You should not have used Ollie for spying on his own mother. You should not have tried to ruin a man by making false claims to the tax department.’
‘Not false, as it turned out.’
‘That’s beside the point.’
‘You’ll defend a tax cheat before having a kind word for me.’
‘Callum Smith, the hero. I have to hand it to you, you’ve got a nerve.’
At least I got through the phone call with no more key-rights mentions.
Part III
26
Kelli O’Bough. There could not in this world be a more trustworthy name. The innocent charm of an Irish peasant girl. Not a child-killing note in the soft rolling syllables. You think the grim opposite with Arabic or Slav, all those clusters of expectorant consonants. With Kelli O’Bough, you saw sun in her valley of vowels.
She’d spent months in a psych ward on suicide watch but now was trusted to her parents’ care. Father an electrician—a solid job, a tradesman who lights our city. He’d built their faux-fancy home himself—two stone-pillared storeys in the Georgian style. His wife kept the rental books for a North Meadows realtor. Model citizens of our aspirational age. Proof for my story of Kelli’s loving roots, her decent, suburban normality.
Which did pose a problem when I knocked on their door. Such people are no fools when cold-called. ‘No, thank you, not interested,’ they declaim without opening the door. There was a sign beside the knocker: No Jehovah’s or similar. We’re already taken. Good day to you.
‘I’m not a Jehovah,’ I said. I poked open the mail slot. ‘I’m not like that, nor selling double glazing or insurance. My name is Callum Smith and I think I can help you.’
‘What help?’ said a woman. ‘Are you the man from the council?’
I was tempted to say yes to get the door open.
‘The council?’ I said.
‘About the tree roots in the footpath.’
‘No. I’m here to apologise for my profession.’
‘What profession?’
‘It’s arrogant of me to call it a profession. One doesn’t need to train and get qualified like an electrician or a doctor. That’s where the problem starts. That’s what leads to this mistreatment of people like you.’
The door suddenly opened, an air-conditioned draught gusting out to me from the hallway. A bristle of manliness stood there, squat and bald, in his fifties. Lean-limbed in a working-fellow’s way—no showy gym bulges but tight-skinned, with veined arms. He had bare feet and I saw his toes flexing, flinching his calves as if defensively ready. Ready like a boxer for springing. He motioned with his thumb for the woman to get behind him.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you.’
I offered my hand for shaking. He did not offer his.
‘May I enquire, are you Mr O’Bough?’
His jawbone clenched, the bones and sinews grinding.
‘Kelli’s father? And you, would you be Kelli’s mother? I believe the most important word in the world is sorry, Mrs O’Bough. I’m ashamed to say I’m just a mere journalist and I am sorry on behalf of us all.’
He was closing the door.
‘Please listen,’ I said.
I dropped my satchel. I aimed the drop so it jammed the door from shutting. I’d unlatched it so the contents spilt in the doorway. Notepads and pens falling inside near his feet. I reached my arm to retrieve them, deliberately fumbling. I was on my knees cursing my clumsiness. He pushed the door and my arm got stuck. I pulled my arm out making sure there were still notepads inside. I rubbed my elbow and stayed kneeling.
They were arguing about the state of my injury. She was worried he’d assaulted me—‘He might call the police, Danny.’
‘I couldn’t give a rat’s. Serves the bastard right,’ he said. He called me a parasite.
She made him open the door and kick my stuff out. She asked if I was damaged. I sa
id no, just a little. I now had enough of an upper hand to keep her talking.
‘It’s my elbow.’
‘Danny’s sick of journalists.’
‘Fucking oath I am.’
‘Leave him, Danny.’
The tough bugger was on the front step, his fingers curling into fists.
‘I’m sick of scum like you. What you lot wrote about my daughter. As if she was a common murderer instead of ill in the mind. You wouldn’t listen to us. I swore to her and I swore to God I would punch the next journalist in the fucking teeth.’
‘I thoroughly understand, Mr O’Bough. Danny. I’m a father myself. I’d want to do the same.’
‘And now the lawyers tell me we can’t tell our side of things.’
‘That’s the problem we have here. When her case was going through the criminal courts journos could slant things their way in the reporting. Now it’s like you’ve been gagged, you and your daughter. The Children’s Court condemns you to silence.’
‘Exactly.’
‘That’s the reason I came here today. I can give you your voice back. Silence is an injustice. Your Kelli has been used to make stories for entertainment. Now the system says Shut up. I say to hell with the system. Help me, Danny. Help me to help you. You and Kelli.’
I thought I had him. His fingers slackened open. He gave up his fighter’s stance, let his heels rest down to the ground. What I did to spoil this softening I couldn’t say. Perhaps too desperate a beseeching, knelt like a supplicant before him instead of an equal, respectable man. Up he went on his toes and he pointed the way to the footpath.
‘Get off my place.’
The door shut on me. I heard a chain slide across like an extra shutting.
I met Peeko again at the Pub on Pier. I know I shouldn’t have but I hadn’t finished with her. I wasn’t leading her on…Well, yes, I was but wasn’t acting on it. I wasn’t genuine in my affection towards her. She must have realised it. She was enjoying herself. I was good for her, giving her self-image a boost. I was enjoying it too but only in that experimental way.
I confided my pure original to her. I know what I’ve said about Peeko before: her being a double agent, selling stories on to others; the type of person in whom you’d never have faith. But that was the beauty of this pure original. Deliberately wanting prison—what other journo would do it? She called me a genius. I demurred with a wave of my fingers. ‘Sui generis perhaps,’ I conceded. I had to explain the expression. She wrote it down in her notebook for future use. She’d never known anyone like me, she said. I was bound for fame, for glory. I would reach the summit of my profession, she predicted.
Off the Record Page 17
