Fat, Fifty & F<li><li><li>ed!

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  ‘Yasu,’ Faith said.

  ‘Yasu,’ Diana replied.

  ‘That’s pretty much the extent of my Greek,’ Faith said. ‘Except for souvlaki and tsatziki. And retsina, of course.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Diana said, ‘which is a real bugger when I go back to Greece to visit the rellies.’

  They sat in a booth and Diana brought them menus, reproductions of the original Minerva menu and proudly boasting in bold type: ‘Only our Prices have Changed’.

  ‘I know it’s late, but any chance I can still order breakfast?’ Martin asked apologetically.

  ‘No worries. As long as there’s an egg and a frying pan in the kitchen, you can have breakfast. You want the full disaster, with the lamb’s fry and the steak and the chop?’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Faith said, patting Martin’s hand, ‘you’ll have him in tears in a minute.’

  Martin ordered his eggs sunny side up, his bacon crispy, and put himself in the chef’s hands for the rest. Diana scribbled busily on her order pad. She looked at Faith.

  ‘I’ll go with lunch. What do you reckon, the mixed grill or your Big Bloke’s Burger with the works?’

  ‘Well, the mixed grill’s awesome, but unless you intend driving a big rig right through the night, or digging a few ditches, I’d go with the burger.’

  ‘The burger it is. So tell me,’ Faith asked, ‘what’s a nice Greek girl like you doing in the bush anyway?’

  ‘My great-grandad built this place in the late 1920s, and my grandad and dad ran it after him,’ Diana explained. ‘The old man closed up one evening a couple of years back, sat down in a chair and died. Mum passed away a few years earlier. I was in Sydney trying to be an actress and waitressing in a cafe where my boyfriend was the chef. We drove up here one weekend to close the joint and sell it, and somehow we never left. Place sort of grows on you.’

  ‘You resisted the urge to renovate?’ Faith said.

  ‘Barely. We had an architect friend come up from Sydney and he took one look and fell in love.’

  ‘I can see why,’ Faith said.

  ‘He reckoned touching one bit of the place would be sacrilege. So we just tarted the old girl up a smidge and kept the doors open.’

  Diana headed for the kitchen. Martin was examining a chrome jukebox selector on the wall at the end of their table.

  ‘Wow, I haven’t seen one of these for years,’ he said. ‘Got a twenty-cent coin?’

  Faith flipped through the metal-framed pages behind the glass cover. ‘Looks like they converted them to decimal in the early ’70s,’ she said, ‘and that was the last time they changed the record selection. Whoa, Elvis doing “Blue Suede Shoes”. Are we in a country town or what?’ She looked at Martin. ‘So what’s it to be, sweet thang? My treat. “Galveston” by Mr Glen Campbell? How about Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey”? Some early Joe Cocker from the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour? Leon Russell tickling those ivories on “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”? Don’t tell me, Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue”?’

  ‘Hey, look, they do hot fudge sundaes here!’ Martin said, in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

  ‘Don’t be ashamed to admit it,’ Faith laughed. ‘There was a time when every second household in the country had the Hot August Night LP on their turntable.’

  Martin adopted a mock-serious tone. ‘It’s like drugs, Faith. Just because everybody’s doing it doesn’t make it right.’

  Faith beamed at him. ‘Right on!’ she said.

  ‘Boy,’ Martin laughed. ‘LP, turntable and “right on”. That really dates us.’

  She dropped a coin in the slot and pressed two buttons on the selector. There was a long pause and then music blasted out of the speakers at the far end of the cafe. Diana poked her head out of the kitchen and Faith pointed an accusing finger at Martin. Diana shook her head sadly.

  ‘ELO?’ Martin said.

  ‘The Electric Light Orchestra performing “Livin’ Thing” for your listening pleasure,’ Faith said. ‘Just a shot in the dark.’

  Martin looked at her and slowly smiled, his head starting to bop with the music.

  ‘Sing along if you want, Mr Carter.’

  So he did.

  twenty-one

  The next day they clocked up 200 k’s by mid-morning and the highway rest stop looked inviting. There were toilets, barbecue facilities, panoramic views of the distant coastline, and, best of all, no other vehicles in sight. Martin parked the van near the safety fence and Faith took out her camera.

  ‘Sun’s still a little too high but I might find a nice angle,’ she said.

  They walked over to the lookout and she put the camera to her eye. A moment later she took it down. ‘Nah, doesn’t do anything for me.’

  They both turned at the noise from behind. A low-flying helicopter was heading rapidly towards them, rotor blades flashing as they caught the afternoon sunlight. Faith had the camera to her eye again and she was shooting as the chopper flew over them and headed down towards the coast.

  ‘Police?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Wasn’t marked,’ Faith said, ‘and they usually have one of those big spotlights mounted underneath.’

  ‘He sure was in a hurry to get somewhere,’ Martin said.

  Faith packed up her camera. ‘Well, we’re not, so do you fancy a cup of tea?’

  Ten minutes later, Faith stepped out of the camper with a teapot and cups on a tray. Martin set up two folding aluminium chairs he’d discovered in a locker in the van.

  ‘Bring back memories, Faith?’ he asked. ‘Those holidays from hell of your childhood?’

  ‘God, yes,’ she agreed. ‘We used to go to Jackson’s Inlet and camp on the foreshore. Same spot, same neighbours, same cheesy carnival, same New Year’s Eve fireworks, same pimply boys trying to grope me, same bloody dreary holiday every year.’

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Nope, I was the classic only child. What about you?’

  ‘Couple of brothers,’ he said. ‘Malcolm’s a plumber and Morris is a signwriter.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Faith said. ‘Malcolm, Morris and Martin. How cute. Melanie was no doubt earmarked for any little girl that might show up. Close family?’

  Martin sipped his tea. ‘Not really. We just sort of tolerated each other until we drifted apart. No animosity, just nothingness.’

  ‘I know that feeling,’ she said.

  ‘But we all had nice, safe, secure jobs,’ Martin continued, ‘just like Mum wanted, and we all got married to nice pregnant girls and everything worked out for the best.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Well, Malcolm kept getting divorced when his wives figured out all those after-hours calls weren’t about blocked drains. Old Mal gave the plumber’s snake a bit of a bad name, I’m afraid. And Morris paints signs all day and drinks cask wine all night because he’d rather be in Paris on the Left Bank with an easel and a beret, but the five kids and the mortgage make that a little impractical.’ Martin threw up his hands. ‘I guess I’m the success story of the Carter family, and that truly shocking statement about sums it up.’

  Faith sat up straight. ‘Well, this is a grim little turn in the conversation. Subject change, I think. Tell me about the mad major.’

  Martin relaxed back into his chair. ‘Not a lot to tell, really. We met in second year at high school. I guess we were both a bit sensitive for Box Forest Boys High. And I don’t mean the love-which-dares-not-speak-its-name kind of sensitive.’

  ‘You’re starting to read my mind, Mr Carter.’

  Martin looked at her. He really loved the sound of that voice. Why hadn’t anyone ever told him you could feel like this about another person? he wondered.

  ‘Anyway, I was a bit weedy back then and used to get picked on. We had some real dickheads at our school. Jack and I didn’t fit in for different reasons, so we sort of gravitated to each other. That stopped the bullying pretty quick. He had a great left hook. We kind of watched each other’s ba
cks after that.’

  ‘Why didn’t he fit in?’ Faith asked.

  ‘Reffo,’ Martin said. ‘Jack Stark was the shortened version of his name. He was actually born Iliya Jakob Starkovsky. We Australianised it for him one day.’

  ‘Did it help?’

  Martin shook his head. ‘Not a lot. You know what kids are like. His grandparents were Russian; they’d lived in Harbin in Manchuria. Jack’s dad was born in Harbin. He moved to Shanghai when he was eighteen, spent the war there under Japanese occupation, got turfed out when Mao’s communists took over China in ’49, went to Hong Kong and finally wound up in Australia.’

  Faith was intrigued. ‘Russia to China to Hong Kong to Melbourne. Now, that’s a hell of a journey.’

  ‘His old man told us some incredible stories, usually after a few vodkas. Sometimes, when his parents were out, Jack used to open up this steel trunk in the attic and pull out the most amazing stuff. Knives, medals, flags, dirty postcards, a hand grenade, and even this funny-looking Mauser pistol with a round wooden grip.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Faith said, ‘sounds like you two should have been able to take care of the school bullies with an arsenal like that. Those old broomhandle Mauser automatics were supposed to be very persuasive.’

  ‘I have to say, we considered it,’ Martin said. ‘But we just stuck it out until we got our Leaving Certificates, then I joined the bank as a junior. Jack seemed a bit lost until the Vietnam conscription ballot got him. His dad was rabidly anti-communist, which is understandable, so Jack getting called up wasn’t the worst thing in the world from the family’s point of view. I heard he was doing really well in training, and then we lost contact. Just different worlds, I guess.’

  ‘So we’re heading north to meet someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in over twenty-five years?’ Faith asked.

  Martin nodded. ‘Seems a bit pathetic,’ he said, ‘but I really don’t have anywhere else to go. Things haven’t quite worked out the way I thought. And the last fifty years don’t seem to have added up to a hell of a lot.’

  ‘There’s still time, Martin,’ Faith said. ‘Don’t rush it. Samuel Johnson said, “Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labour of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.” ’

  ‘Not even at Kmart?’ Martin raised a cheeky eyebrow.

  ‘Not even on their mark-down days,’ Faith laughed.

  ‘You’re a funny bugger, Faith. I haven’t talked to anyone like this for as long as I can remember. Maybe never. It feels great. I think everything that’s happened in the last few days just caught up with me. What’s really weird is that it felt like the right thing to do, and meeting you has made it seem complete. Very confusing.’

  Faith rested her hand on his. ‘After my diagnosis, I was in shock, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I took a ride on that bloody awful monorail in Sydney, which is something I wouldn’t usually do in a fit. There were two elderly couples – retired, I guess – in my carriage. The men looked out the window and droned on and on about the virtues of leaf-blowers. The women just stared ahead, and the look on both their faces really horrified me. They were in shock, like me, I decided. We were all facing death. Mine possibly had a specific timeframe attached, but theirs was indeterminate. In our own ways, we were all thinking, What the fuck happened to my life? They’d probably spent fifty years married to these men, living their lives through them, and didn’t even really know them. Now they had to live out the twilight of their lives with them.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly cheered me up, Faith,’ Martin said. ‘Good work. Any chance there’s a bottle of hemlock in the pantry?’

  She laughed. ‘I just mean, win or lose, we’ve both made a choice and a change. I don’t know where this road is leading, but I like the ride. I’m glad I made the choice I did.’

  ‘Me too,’ Martin said.

  *

  A large sign at the border read: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING QUEENSLAND. Underneath, someone had spraypainted: PLEASE TURN CLOCKS BACK 20 YEARS.

  ‘They really should work on their material,’ Faith said. ‘They’ve been painting the same graffiti for twenty years.’

  Just past the sign, they overtook an old man walking along the road. He was wearing threadbare track pants, a flannelette shirt over a faded T-shirt, ugh boots, and a red and black football beanie over his wispy white hair. His arm was extended and his thumb was up.

  ‘Why don’t we give the old bloke a lift?’ Faith suggested. ‘I wouldn’t want my old man wandering along the road way out here.’

  Martin slowed and backed up and Faith wound down her window. ‘You okay?’ she asked. ‘Need a lift?’

  ‘That’d be great, darl,’ the old man said. He clambered onto the bench seat and Faith slid closer to Martin.

  ‘Name’s Len,’ said the old man, shaking their hands. ‘Thanks for stopping. The car carked it on a side road. You heading to the coast?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Martin pulling back onto the roadway.

  ‘Want us to have a look at the car?’ asked Faith. ‘Might be something simple.’

  The old man scratched his bristly five-o’clock shadow. ‘Nah, thanks anyway,’ he said. ‘I think the bloody turbo’s cactus. Teach me to buy a dago car.’

  Faith flashed Martin a look of mild amusement.

  ‘You two on a second honeymoon then?’ Len asked after a while.

  ‘Something along those lines,’ Faith said and she squeezed Martin’s knee.

  ‘I’m hoping to catch up with an old friend from high school a ways up the coast,’ Martin said. ‘Sort of a surprise visit. Haven’t seen him for thirty years.’

  The old man grunted. ‘Not a big fan of the surprise visit myself. Sometimes they don’t pan out the way you hoped.’

  They rounded a corner half an hour later and came to the edge of an escarpment looking down over the Pacific Ocean. Sparkling blue water, miles of golden sand, and towering high-rise buildings stretching towards the horizon.

  ‘You know,’ the old man said, ‘when I first came up here after the war, there was bloody nothing and no-one. Just empty beaches, palm trees, and maybe a small fibro fisherman’s shack every five or ten miles.’

  Martin looked at the hotels and apartment buildings stacked ten and fifteen deep back from the beach. ‘God, what a tragedy,’ he said.

  ‘Too fuckin’ right, it was,’ the old man said. ‘Clearing contractors hooked up huge chains between pairs of bulldozers and ripped bloody great swathes through the scrub. A couple of blokes could clear fifty acres on a good day. Just look at it now. Isn’t she a beautiful sight?’

  ‘Yeah, just look at it now,’ Faith said, her voice heavy with irony.

  ‘You two are coming to my place for tea,’ Len suddenly announced. ‘We can carbonise some chops on the barbie. I think there’s probably a couple of bottles of half-decent plonk somewhere in the kitchen. Red okay?’

  Faith looked at Martin for confirmation. He nodded.

  ‘Sounds good, I guess,’ she said. ‘We’re up for it.’

  They cruised down the escarpment and on into a thriving suburbia. Wide, divided roadways took them past expensive low-rise housing, some of it on a network of manmade canals. Closer to the beach it was all high-rise apartment canyons, the massive structures already casting dark shadows across each other and the sand in the early afternoon light. Martin wasn’t sure exactly what Len’s place would look like, but he wasn’t expecting a high-walled compound occupying several blocks of waterfront.

  ‘Hang a hard left just down here,’ the old man ordered, pulling a small remote-control from his pocket.

  High steel gates swung open. Speechless, Martin negotiated the circular driveway up to the main entrance of a two-storey Italianate mansion. A tall man in an elegant suit opened the van door on Len’s side.

  ‘Car trouble, Mr Barton?’ he asked.

  Len grunted as he climbed out. ‘Fucking Testarossa,’ he said. ‘Redhead is right; bloody acts like one. That Ferrari deale
r’s gunna have a red arse when I get through with kicking it.’ He headed up the steps to the front door, yelling back over his shoulder, ‘That’s Albris. Leave the keys and he’ll park the van and give it a bit of a wash if you like. Tea’s at six. You’ll stay the night. Stick ’em in the Agung wing, Albris.’

  Martin and Faith stared at Len’s back disappearing through the carved double wooden doors.

  ‘So that’s Arthur Leonard Barton,’ Martin said. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’

  ‘I thought he looked vaguely familiar,’ Faith said.

  Albris was sizing up Martin. ‘About a thirty-six regular, sir?’ he asked.

  Martin looked blank. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

  Albris steered them towards the house. ‘Dinner, if a touch early, is always formal,’ he explained. ‘Mr Barton can be somewhat eccentric in his entertaining, so we have a variety of dinner wear on hand for his guests.’ He studied Martin again. ‘Something double-breasted, I think.’

  A slight, golden-skinned woman in a sarong and kebaya appeared in the doorway. She bowed elegantly.

  ‘This is Tamila, ma’am,’ Albris said to Faith. ‘She will assist you with anything you need. Perhaps a classic Dior sheath?’ he suggested to Tamila, who nodded in agreement.

  As Albris led them down a cool, dark, marble hallway, Martin and Faith exchanged looks behind his back. Martin raised an eyebrow as if to say, What’s going on here? Faith shrugged.

  At the end of the hallway Albris paused and opened a set of double doors, revealing an exquisite suite of rooms. ‘The architect’s brief here was something airy with a Balinese influence,’ he announced, sliding open two wall panels and allowing the golden afternoon light of the Pacific to flood the room. ‘There are interconnecting doors to an identically appointed suite, should you wish individual privacy.’

  On the terrace outside their suite were two swimming pools shaded by frangipanis. The pool to the right, Albris explained, was heated. If swimming costumes were required, they were in the walk-in wardrobes. Though, as he pointed out, the pools were screened from view and completely private.

  ‘We were originally somewhat overshadowed by the main tower of the old Breakers Hotel,’ Albris said. ‘Mr Barton had it removed for his guests’ comfort and convenience.’