Inheriting Jack

by Kris Webb

  ‘Fine, just fine,’ I lied, not wanting to scare him any more than he was already.

  ‘Okay.’ He visibly braced himself, pen poised over the paper. ‘Give me the drill.’

  ‘All right,’ I replied. ‘Here’s the deal. I’m going to put him into bed with a bottle now. He should go to sleep and, with a bit of luck, sleep for an hour or so.’ I decided not to tell him that I wouldn’t be putting large sums of money on this chain of events actually occurring.

  ‘Uh huh.’ Patrick nodded while making notes. He looked up from the pad. ‘What then?’

  ‘Pick him up and put him out on the deck. Don’t leave him in any other room, he’ll tear it apart and find every life-threatening object within thirty seconds. He should just play out there. You can give him some fairy bread if you think he’s hungry.’ I paused to let Patrick finish scribbling.

  ‘What do I do if he cries?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you can pick him up,’ I suggested half-heartedly, given my limited success.

  Reading upside down, I saw him scrawl the words ‘Crying – pick up’.

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Jiggle him or something. Say nice things . . . maybe sing him a nursery rhyme?’

  ‘Nursery rhymes . . .’ Patrick mused, trying to bring one to mind.

  ‘You know, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Humpty Dumpty, something like that,’ I supplied helpfully, naming the only two I could recall.

  Patrick read back what he’d written and nodded. ‘All right. I’m with you so far. What about,’ he swallowed, ‘nappies?’

  I’d thought about this earlier that morning. ‘Just leave them,’ I said decisively. ‘You can ignore his nappy until I get home.’

  A look of relief swept across Patrick’s face. ‘Right then,’ he said with forced bravado. ‘We’ll be fine then, Jack, won’t we?’ he asked, bending down and talking to him.

  Jack burst into tears.

  Patrick took two steps back and I picked up Jack quickly.

  ‘He’s just tired, Patrick,’ I assured him. I had no idea whether this was true or not but sensed that I was in serious danger of losing my babysitter down the front steps. ‘I’ll put him into bed and then get moving.’

  I grabbed Jack’s bottle and bent down to pick Harold up off the floor, but he slipped out of my hand and slid down the front of my jacket. His claws caught in my pantyhose and he hung there, one wart-studded leg on each of my knees.

  Jack shrieked and lunged out of my arms. I only just managed to prevent him falling headfirst to the floor.

  ‘Ah, Patrick, could I have a bit of help here?’ I asked, trying to remain calm.

  Patrick looked at me, obviously unsure as to what to do.

  ‘Can you pick the toad off my legs?’ I asked, as if it was a normal request.

  Patrick squatted in front of me and pulled at Harold.

  ‘Gently!’ I yelled. ‘These are my last pair of pantyhose.’

  Patrick gingerly gripped Harold and lifted him up. My pantyhose rose in little peaks with the claws and Patrick looked up at me enquiringly. Jack peered down, enthralled by the devastation that Harold was causing.

  ‘Can you just push the material off?’ I asked, holding my breath.

  Transferring Harold to his right hand, Patrick pushed at the fabric caught on the left claw, which slid off and sprang back onto my leg.

  ‘Excellent,’ I breathed.

  Patrick didn’t look up. He moved Harold slowly to his left hand and then tried to repeat the manoeuvre on the other side.

  ‘It’s stuck,’ he said.

  ‘Push a bit harder,’ I instructed.

  As he did, I felt the material give way and the ladder race from my knee to my calf.

  ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ I exclaimed.

  Another look at my watch showed it was 9.05. Definitely no time for a change, but I didn’t have an option. Snatching Harold from Patrick, I raced to my bedroom. I flung the cupboard door open and deposited Jack at the bottom. Too stunned to move, he sat there surrounded by shoes as I ripped off my clothes and replaced them with a pair of navy trousers and a matching jacket.

  I grabbed Jack and whirled into his room. Dropping him into his cot, I shoved the bottle into his mouth and wedged Harold in beside him. Pulling the door shut behind me, I flung my handbag over my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve really got to go, Patrick. I’ll see you in about two hours.’

  ‘Yes, okay then,’ he replied. His face bore a twisted expression which I assumed had been intended as a smile.

  Miraculously the car started first go. One benefit of being late was that I had missed the morning rush and had a clear run into town. I stepped out of the lift at 9.29 and took a deep breath, trying to find some semblance of calm.

  ‘Hi Ellen,’ I greeted the receptionist.

  ‘Hi Julia. Mr Farley is in conference room two.’

  ‘Right.’

  After a quick detour to pick up his file from my desk, I walked into the large conference room. Gordon was standing at the window, looking at the view over the river.

  ‘Hello Julia,’ he smiled, extending his hand.

  ‘Nice to see you, Gordon.’

  Gordon Farley was the chief executive officer of a huge manufacturing corporation. I’d met him the previous year when I’d advised him on the company’s takeover of one of its competitors. For some reason, obvious to no one but himself, he had decided I was a genius. When he’d decided he needed some legal help on a personal matter, he had decreed that I was the only one to handle it.

  There were two major disadvantages to this. The first was that the personal matter involved a neighbour, a tree branch and Gordon’s Tuscan statue. While the $10,000 claim was a pittance to someone as wealthy as Gordon, he had lost all sense of perspective and was nothing short of obsessive about it.

  The second disadvantage was that Jonathon Earl was watching the process every step of the way and had made it very clear that an adverse result would be very bad for my career. The partners I worked with had agreed earlier in the year to put me forward for partnership in July. The indications so far were that I had a strong chance of being accepted, but a bad word from Jonathon could change that in a flash.

  The situation was a source of great amusement to my colleagues who did their utmost to have absolutely nothing to do with the whole thing. Many theories as to why I was Gordon’s golden-haired child abounded, the obvious being quickly discarded as he was widely rumoured to be gay.

  To make matters worse, I knew almost nothing about litigation, a fact Gordon had dismissed with a wave of his hand and an assertion of my legal genius.

  ‘So what’s new?’ Gordon asked as he sat down.

  I sat opposite him and opened the file, despite the fact that I knew the contents backwards.

  ‘The original statement from Enrico Guilo has arrived. Other than that, no, there’s nothing new.’

  We had a trial date in the Magistrates’ Court, which was the lowest court in the state system, in just over a month. Most people appearing in the Magistrates’ Court represented themselves on small debt or drink-driving claims. We were going to march in there with a senior barrister and a trolley full of documents. If this matter weren’t quite so career-threatening, it would have been embarrassing.

  The case was between Gordon and his neighbour, Leonie Baker. We were claiming that Leonie had been negligent in not removing a tree on her property. Our argument was that this negligence had resulted in a branch dropping over the fence onto a very expensive statue, which Gordon had bought on a recent trip to Italy.

  To add insult to injury, the hand of the statue, which was a replica of Michelangelo’s David, had fallen into the pool. By the time Gordon saw it there two weeks later, it had stained the bottom of the pool.

  Leonie had pulled in her own legal entourage and arguments about the validity of the claim had been flying back and forth for the last six months. The amount spent by both sides had already far exceeded the amount of the claim
. Its scope had even gone beyond Australia and the latest statement I’d obtained was from an art buyer in Venice.

  I took a deep breath. If I didn’t explain to Gordon why I was out of the office, I’d have Jonathon Earl on my back every two days.

  ‘Ah, Gordon, I have had to take leave for the next two weeks. It’s a, uh, personal matter.’ My choice of words had been deliberate. As I’d expected, Gordon looked away, clearly worried that a request for any further details would result in a lurid description of a terrible female medical complaint.

  ‘Right. Well as long as I can rely on you to stay on top of everything.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, with more conviction than I felt.

  ‘Is there anything more we should be doing?’ he asked, a question I’d heard more than once.

  We’d still been unable to obtain clear evidence that the tree had been dying, or that Leonie was aware of the statue’s presence, two problems that had given me some sleepless nights.

  ‘No, Adrian is very comfortable about how things are progressing.’ I mentioned the barrister’s name in what I knew was a fruitless attempt to spread responsibility.

  ‘That’s fine then,’ Gordon replied, springing up and heading for the door. ‘Please just let me know if there are any developments.’

  ‘Certainly, no problem, Gordon,’ I said to the door after it closed behind him. Why, I wondered, thinking of the chaos this meeting had caused in my life, couldn’t that little update have been conducted in a five-minute phone call?

  SIX

  I drained the last drop of coffee from my cup and looked down at Jack playing happily at my feet on the deck. He was completely absorbed by the set of drink coasters I had given him half an hour earlier and the quiet coffee had done wonders for my state of mind.

  It was Saturday – day six. Jack seemed to have accepted that I was the provider of his needs. I put him into and took him out of bed, fed him fairy bread, gave him bottles of milk and made sure Harold was always within arm’s reach. Beyond that he wasn’t interested. He continued to reject any form of comfort from me and when he became upset, the best I could do was to stand nearby and talk to him.

  He hadn’t cried much since he’d woken that morning and the previous night had been good, relatively speaking. And it was Saturday, so I wasn’t looking at an endless string of hours to get through by myself. Things were definitely looking up.

  Patrick dropped the weekend papers on the table. For the first time since I left uni, I reached for the employment section of the Courier Mail before anything else.

  ‘Well let’s just hope that fabulous part-time nannies all over Brisbane are flipping through the job advertisements right now.’ I was only half joking. This was a serious business.

  About the only thing I’d managed to achieve since Jack’s arrival was to be knocked back by every daycare centre this side of Cairns. Each centre was very helpful, telling me at great length about the philosophy of the centre and the staff-to-child ratio, but they all had trouble hiding their amusement when I asked if there were any places available straightaway.

  In desperation I had even begun to call the same places I had started with, hoping some kind of miracle had occurred. I was now finding it very difficult to be put through to anyone more senior than the cleaner and was convinced that more than one of the people I’d been calling were screening their calls to avoid me.

  It seemed pretty clear that without his mother putting in a seriously good word upstairs, Jack wasn’t going to get a place in a daycare centre before I had to go back to work. So I had high hopes for the advertisement for a nanny I’d put in today’s paper.

  ‘Can I see the ad?’ Patrick asked.

  I flicked to the place where it should have been. Should have been, but wasn’t. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach.

  ‘No! How can they have done this to me? Patrick, it’s not there!’

  My peaceful state of mind disappeared. Saturday was the day for job ads and I was already woefully late to find someone available to start in a week’s time. Next Saturday would be hopeless.

  ‘Hang on. Maybe it’s somewhere else.’ Patrick took the paper from me and paged through it slowly. ‘Okay, you’re right. It’s not there. But don’t panic,’ he added fruitlessly.

  ‘How can this have happened?’ I thundered. ‘I sent the email well before the deadline . . .’

  My voice trailed off and I ran into the study. I logged onto the computer, pacing the room in agitation as it loaded up. Finally my email program came up and I clicked on the sent box. There was no email to the newspaper. Even before I looked in the draft emails I knew what had happened.

  On Thursday morning I’d been reading the ad one last time when I spotted Jack climbing on top of the coffee table. Saving the email as a draft, I’d pulled him off and taken him for yet another walk in the stroller. And completely forgotten to do anything more about it.

  ‘Didn’t send it?’ Patrick was looking over my shoulder.

  ‘No.’ Anything else I could think to say wasn’t fit for Jack’s, and probably not even Patrick’s, ears.

  This was a disaster. A complete and unmitigated disaster. My work was being spread among a number of other lawyers for the two weeks I was away. But everyone was already flat out and there was no way I could ask them to manage the load for any longer. Without anyone to look after Jack, though, I didn’t have a lot of options.

  What was wrong with me? I worked with deadlines for a living and had never forgotten one before.

  ‘Julia, it will be all right. We’ll figure something out.’

  My eyes filled with tears and I nodded wordlessly.

  ‘What about bribery – maybe if you slip the owner of one of the centres a couple of hundred dollars in small bills?’ Patrick was obviously concerned that he would find himself pulled in for some heavy-duty babysitting if we didn’t find a solution. ‘Or we could start a rumour that one of the centres is on the site of an old asbestos factory. Bet that’d cut down the demand.’

  I made a mental note to make sure Patrick didn’t have anything to do with Jack’s ongoing education. If these were his solutions to get Jack into daycare, I was terrified to think what lengths he would go to to secure him a university place.

  Patrick was suddenly serious. ‘Look, Julia, you need some help. If you won’t tell Mum and Dad, I will.’

  I had received two messages from our parents since Jack’s arrival. Both times I’d replied quickly with no mention of Jack.

  Mum was great with babies and kids and the thought of her arriving and sorting this mess out was like a blissful dream. But I had to be realistic. Mum worked full time, so even if I asked her to come home, she would only be able to help until she’d used up all the holidays she’d saved for this trip. She and Dad lived on the Sunshine Coast, which was over an hour’s drive away, so it wasn’t like she could just pop in when I was having a bad day.

  No matter which way I looked at it, this was my problem.

  ‘Leave it a bit longer. I had a text message from them this morning. Apparently they’re about to start the Milford Track walk and will be out of mobile range for a few days. Let’s wait until they get back. If things are still bad then, I’ll ask them to come home, I promise.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘Okay – for now. But we’ve got to sort something out.’ He paused. ‘Jack’s going to have a sleep now, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I replied, looking at my watch.

  ‘You need a break. Why don’t you put him to bed and then head out for an hour or so – I’ll stay here while he sleeps.’

  Patrick’s confidence was obviously still high after Wednesday’s babysitting success. I’d arrived home after my meeting to find a still-sleeping Jack and a very happy Patrick.

  ‘You’re not telling me he’s slept the whole time I’ve been away?’ I asked disbelievingly.

  ‘Yep,’ Patrick replied proudly, as if he’d managed the event himself.


  ‘You didn’t slip some rum into his mouth just to make sure, did you?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Julia, as if I’d do something like that!’ His tone of righteous indignation made me feel as if I’d questioned Mary Poppins’ spoonful of sugar remedy.

  Jack hadn’t slept again the entire day, but I’d figured it was a small price to pay for the huge boost it had given Patrick’s child-minding confidence.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he replied.

  ‘That would be fantastic. Thanks.’

  Maybe some exercise would help clear my head. After settling Jack, Harold and a bottle in the cot, I opened my cupboard and pulled out a pair of black lycra leggings and a matching purple and black gym top.

  The Healthworks gym was on the river about a kilometre away, theoretically the perfect distance for a warm-up jog. After a momentary hesitation I picked up the car keys, telling myself I needed to drive in case I had to get home quickly.

  The gym was two-thirds empty, which seemed strange until I realised it was only nine and normal people would still be fast asleep in bed.

  I stepped onto the closest running machine and threw my towel and backpack on the floor. The machine flashed at me, asking me to enter my weight. My hand hovered over the control panel uncertainly. I always felt the urge to lie to running machines. The desire to lie about my weight was not unfamiliar. But what was odd here was that I was torn between subtracting a few kilos – my natural reaction – and adding a few extra – which would mean that the automatic calorie counter would tell me I had burned more than I really had. After checking that no one was watching, I added an extra five kilograms to my true weight.

  Time was a strange thing, I reflected philosophically as I increased the speed and moved into the shuffle I liked to call a jog. Twenty minutes spent over a cup of coffee with Maggie and Tanya went by in the blink of an eye, while twenty minutes on a running machine felt like an eternity.

  Eventually the machine proclaimed that I’d reached the end of the workout. I slowed to a walk, glad of the pounding music that masked my gasping breath. Resisting the urge to call it a day and head home, I pointed my shambling wreck of a body in the direction of the weights corner.