Harry Curry: Rats and Mice

by Stuart Littlemore

  The weekend was a great success. Harry had read up and prepared his strategies for David Surrey’s list of summary offences by Friday afternoon, and would be ready to fight them all on Monday morning. No pleas of guilty, he’d decided, whatever Surrey might have told his clients. On Saturday morning, he and Arabella traversed the little farm, she expressing wonder at the blossom breaking out on the fruit trees and the wisteria, and in the afternoon they weeded the vegetable garden and spread mulch around the new Jerusalem artichoke seedlings. Late in the afternoon, Harry took her over to meet the neighbours across the creek, who regarded the elegant young woman with fascination. The retired couple invited them to stay for tea (she would have called it supper, but was learning the language). Family photos were shown and there was a guided tour of the immaculate house. When Harry and Arabella left with a borrowed torch to negotiate the darkness, the women kissed each other goodbye.

  On Sunday, the Surrey family arrived at noon for a property inspection and barbecue. Arabella was introduced to the three Surrey women (Nancy and her and David’s daughters, Chloe and Lily), and David and Harry went off immediately to scout up some loose bricks and an old refrigerator shelf, and used them to build a makeshift barbecue over Nancy Surrey’s good-natured protests that the ratty chrome plating was going to flake off the metal bars and poison them all. Harry fetched and laid aluminium foil over the shelf, and the complaints subsided. While the steaks and sausages were waiting for the fire to die down to coals, Harry showed the Surrey girls how to drive his ride-on mower and left them to it. The adults sat on the verandah, drinking white wine (mineral water in Arabella’s case) and talking politics, while the mower charged in erratic patterns around the bottom paddock a hundred metres away, girlish squeals and cries of ‘It’s my turn — Dad, tell her it’s my turn’ reaching them from time to time.

  Surrey and Nancy, a primary school headmistress in Goulburn, resumed their are-we-going-to-move-down-here debate, this time in front of an audience that both of them apparently expected to take sides, or at least offer advice. Surrey was renting a flat in Merimbula, and stayed there three nights a week unless he had a trial, while Nancy and the girls remained in the family home in Goulburn. Arabella tended to support Nancy’s argument that the girls’ schooling would suffer, and that they shouldn’t be expected to move away from their friends. Harry had no thoughts on the subject, and stayed out of it, despite Surrey’s frequent sideways looks that seemed to seek endorsement of his protests that they were clever girls who’d always made friends easily. There was discussion of the merits of a church school at Bega.

  While the women retired to the kitchen to make the salad, and then to set the table on the wide verandah, Surrey watched Harry barbecue the meat. A new bottle of Marlborough sauvignon blanc was opened, and propped in the grass by the fence until it was needed by the cooks.

  ‘How’s your old man, Harry? I keep meaning to ask.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks, Dave. That’s one drawback of living down here. Before, I used to drive up there every weekend, or every weekend I was in Sydney. You’re making me feel guilty.’

  ‘But hale and hearty, is he?’

  ‘Yes and no. I don’t know if it’s Alzheimer’s or just common-or-garden senility — I suppose there’s still a difference — but it’s getting worse. Still you’ve got to admire his will. He’s always done up like a North Shore Tory in a collar and tie, shoes shone, unfailingly courteous — even if he doesn’t know who you are.’

  ‘Who you are, I assume you mean.’

  ‘Indeed. It hurts me more than it does him, I suppose. He’s not eighty yet, you know.’

  They stood in silence for a while, Harry spearing sausages and turning steaks and rearranging them on the foil. He topped up their glasses. Chickens and guinea fowl ran around in the long grass, making querulous noises as they pecked for insects.

  ‘Better muster the chooks up before the girls mow them into feathers, Harry.’

  ‘They seem to be enjoying themselves, Dave.’

  ‘Don’t they just? Maybe they’ll persuade their mother that living on some acres would be fun. Nance wouldn’t have any problem in transferring to a school down here. Maybe it’s leaving her friends that she’s really worried about. We’ve been in Goulburn a long time, and she’s deeply committed to the women’s thing up there.’

  ‘You’re speaking of matters beyond my ken, Dave.’

  ‘You’ll learn, old mate.’ He took a drink. ‘Any yabbies in your river?’

  ‘Never tried. We could send the kids down after lunch to see if they can catch some. Do you know how?’

  ‘You just tie a bit of raw meat on the end of a string, drop it in under an overhang and wait for them to grab hold of it. Then you pull it up gently, and scoop them up.’

  ‘We haven’t got a net.’

  ‘You can do it with a kitchen strainer or a colander. You’ve got those, haven’t you?’

  ‘Okay. Yabbies this arvo, after lunch.’ They smiled at each other and spoke approvingly for a while about the wine. Harry said he was thinking of planting some grapes.

  Surrey threw some dry sticks on the fire. ‘I hear we’ll have a relieving magistrate tomorrow — some new bloke, just appointed in Sydney. You’ve got to feel sorry for him: no sooner given the job than he’s sent out on the road to clean up other people’s messes.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard that. What happened to our resident beak?’

  ‘Just vacation. She’ll be back in three weeks. The new bloke’s name’s Button. Something like that.’

  ‘Never heard of him. I just hope he understands who’s running the court.’

  Surrey put on a solemn expression. ‘They usually pick up on that fairly quickly, to my observation.’

  In the kitchen, the women’s work was almost completed and they had started talking about babies.

  ‘In the country,’ Nancy laughed, ‘the received wisdom is that the women are on one side of the room, talking about babies, and the men are on the other side, talking about tractors.’

  ‘I think those two are talking shop,’ Arabella said. ‘They’re smiling a lot.’

  ‘Shop, then. Not tractors.’ Nancy tossed the salad, working in the vinaigrette she’d mixed up. ‘Are you going to come and live down here, once the baby’s born?’

  ‘That’s a very big question, Nancy … but you don’t need me to tell you that.’

  Nancy smiled and picked up the salad bowl to carry it out to the verandah. ‘We have a lot to think about, haven’t we?’

  Surrey called the girls, and the fifteen-year-old piloted the mower back towards the house with the thirteen-year-old running beside it. Their cheeks were flushed, their jeans were covered in grass cuttings and burrs, and they were grinning widely. If the election had been held at that moment, they would have voted to move to a farm near the coast. Harry held up his palm in a stop signal, and the mower halted at the house paddock gate, sparing the poultry’s lives for another day. Nancy sent her daughters off to wash their hands, and the adults sat and waited while Harry dealt out the meat. Surrey produced a shiraz and Arabella went inside to fetch two of Harry’s limonati for the girls. The meal was a great success, including the host’s rhubarb crumble (the rhubarb picked and stewed that morning), and they all luxuriated in the spring sunshine until the girls asked to be excused, and disappeared to the river, having been equipped by Harry and their father with string, a lamb chop and a plastic strainer, and instructed in the art of yabbying.

  Harry offered the adults tea or coffee, and went inside to boil the kettle.

  ‘I’d certainly find it easier to leave Sydney if I thought we’d have you here as our friends,’ Arabella told the Surreys.

  A loud bark from Nancy. ‘Talk about moral suasion!’

  Arabella was embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Nancy. I shouldn’t have said that. But you are very sympathetic people, you two.’

  Surrey leaned over and touched her hand. ‘Be careful what you wish
for, Bella. Nancy would have you chaining yourself to the old-growth forest.’ Arabella frowned, uncomprehending. ‘This here’s an unreconstructed green feminist leftie. A museum piece.’ Nancy made a fist and showed it to him. ‘Known for her violent tendencies.’

  The girls burst onto the verandah, running, and threw themselves down, out of breath. No yabbies.

  ‘Chloe lost the strainer!’ the fifteen-year-old blurted.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ protested Chloe. ‘Lily knocked it out of my hand. The water’s too deep there, and I couldn’t reach it without getting my pants wet.’

  ‘You’ll just have to buy Mr Curry a new one,’ their father said.

  ‘Oh, Dad! We’re sorry.’

  ‘Sorry, are you?

  The howls and groans of pain and grief,

  The accents of remorse,

  Extracted from a puddin’-thief

  Are all put on, of course’

  he recited. Groans and eye-rolling from his daughters.

  ‘What was that?’ Arabella asked.

  ‘Norman Lindsay,’ Nancy said. ‘David’s favourite work of literature. He used to teach English.’

  ‘There’s a copy in there,’ Harry said, jerking his head in the direction of the living room bookshelves. ‘The Magic Pudding. No Australian child should grow up without it.’

  ‘Including yours, Harry?’ Surrey asked.

  ‘Including ours.’

  Nancy sent the girls off, with Harry’s approval, to collect the chickens’ eggs. ‘You’ve never done that before, have you?’ They shook their heads, their fair hair swinging.

  ‘Do they bite, Mum?’ the younger one asked, mock-afraid.

  The adults laughed as the girls left the verandah. Arabella reached for Harry’s hand. ‘So it’s The Magic Pudding and The Magic Flute? Everything you need in Australia for culture?’

  ‘You know the difference between Australia and a pot of yoghurt?’ Nancy asked Arabella.

  ‘Heard that.’ Arabella smiled. ‘You Australians have the greatest capacity for self-deprecation, don’t you? Much more than we Poms.’

  ‘Not all of us, Arabella,’ Nancy said. ‘Not the ones with the Southern Cross tattoos, and the blockheaded athletes who drape themselves in the flag. Televangelists, Channel Nine, the National Party …’

  ‘Why leave out the Libs?’ Surrey wanted to know.

  Nancy stood. ‘This is where we came in — we started with politics, so it’s got to be time to go. The girls’ve got school tomorrow, and it’s a long way back to Goulburn.’

  The others stood too. ‘Thanks for asking us.’ Surrey shook Harry’s hand and kissed Arabella’s cheek. ‘See you in court, counsel. Don’t be late.’

  Nancy embraced Arabella. ‘Give me a call. Any time. I’ve probably forgotten everything you’ll want to know about babies, but I know where to look it up.’ She kissed Harry’s cheek. ‘Great to see you, Mr Curry.’

  The girls, called back by Nancy, proudly handed Arabella a basket of eggs to which tiny feathers and a few bits of poultry manure were stuck. ‘They’re still warm,’ Chloe said, excited. ‘You could have them for tea.’

  ‘Harry’s a whiz with omelettes,’ Arabella assured them. ‘Thanks.’

  The family climbed into the Falcon, arms were waved out of windows, and the car lurched and wallowed up the uneven drive, disappearing out the open gate with a toot of the horn. Harry put his arm around Arabella’s shoulders.

  ‘Thank Christ you’re staying tonight.’

  She kissed him.

  ‘Because there’s a lot of washing up.’

  She punched him, but not too hard.

  On Monday morning, Harry dropped Arabella at Merimbula Airport on his way north to the Bega Local Court. Not much had been said on the journey. Without egregiously exceeding the applicable speed limits, the LandCruiser then made good time from the airport up the highway to Bega, and having parked in a spot reserved for police vehicles, alongside a big Moto Guzzi motorcycle, Harry carried his bag of briefs (no wig or gown in the magistrates’ jurisdiction) to the legal profession room, already occupied by Surrey. The courthouse in the old dairy town was an attractive sandstone building, Victorian, with a short elevated verandah across its front, facing Carp Street. Around the corner on the Princes Highway a modern extension had been built, ruining (in Harry’s opinion) the entire character and quality of the building. Semi-trailers thundered past all day, their engines audible in the courtrooms, even the original one, panelled in cedar and indistinguishable from a score of such that had sprung up throughout the State in the late 1800s. The local courthouse was an essential part of the fabric of every self-respecting country town, even for those who dreaded the idea of having to appear there.

  The lawyers had an hour in which to speak to their clients before court sat, and Harry gave each of his an in-a-nutshell assessment of the issues in their cases, and what he believed were their prospects of succeeding in defending their cases. All but the first of Surrey’s clients in the court’s list were then sent away with instructions to stay in the vicinity and check back at the courthouse on the hour every hour for progress reports.

  Harry and Surrey took the first of their nervous clients into the courtroom, and Harry showed her where she would sit, the witness box from which she might be required to give evidence, and the general layout of the place. Who was who, and where they would be. Harry had learned from his father (one of the very few pointers Wallace Curry QC had been able to give of any relevance to a criminal defender starting out) that he should in every case do all he could to familiarise his witnesses with the courtroom environment and dramatis personae, explaining that even the most self-assured captain of industry will enter a courtroom afraid and disoriented. ‘It might be just your workplace,’ Harry’s father had said, ‘but to them it’s as foreign as Samarkand, and twice as frightening.’

  At ten o’clock, the magistrate emerged and took his place on the bench. A surprisingly young man, he wore what looked like a very new suit under his black gown (of which innovation Harry and the Bar Council were, for once, in furious agreement — a stupid idea provoked by American television). He’d added a bright tie, and lots of dazzling shirt cuff was showing. He had a personable grin on his face, and a fresh haircut, and looked almost schoolboyish. Harry turned to Surrey, surprised. ‘It’s John Bettens,’ he said. ‘I know him.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘He instructed me in a big murder not all that long ago. I didn’t even know he’d been appointed.’

  ‘Did you win the murder?’

  ‘Bloody oath we did. He’s a smart operator.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. For Christ’s sake, Harry, don’t bully him.’

  Mr Bettens, brand-new Local Court magistrate and soon-to-be occasional coroner, looked over the courtroom. He took in the handful of police in uniform standing around the prosecutor, carrying their exhibits, solicitors in their own uniforms, an unsmiling young police prosecutor (courtesy title ‘sergeant’) seated at the Bar table with a foot-high stack of papers, and a gaggle of defendants, all of them inappropriately dressed for court in hoodies (hoods down) labelled prominently with the brands and logos of surfing wear and boxing equipment, and the obligatory jeans and trainers or thongs. Harry, the only member of the Bar in attendance, made eye contact with the tyro beak and elicited the most minuscule of facial acknowledgments.

  ‘I’ll just call through the list,’ the magistrate said, and proceeded to leaf through and announce the defendants’ names from a stack of folders that had been placed on the bench by the clerk of the court before it opened for business. Hugo, the solicitor from Eden, for whom Harry had run a few small cases, gave his name and announced his appearance for the first three defendants in the day’s proceedings (‘Three PCAs, your Honour — two low-range and one mid-range — and a negligent driving’), and advised that each of them wished to plead guilty and place testimonial letters before the magistrate supporting their appeals for leniency. Then it
was Harry’s turn to announce his own appearance and run through David Surrey’s list of clients.

  ‘May it please your Honour, I’m instructed by Mr Surrey, solicitor, to appear for the defendants in the next five matters in your list. The first four of those will be defended, may it please you. The last of those matters is the completion of the formal evidence in a coronial inquest.’

  ‘Very good to see you, Mr Curry. I think we’d better put it on the record that you appear — Mr Curry of counsel. I have to say that I wasn’t aware you’re practising in this part of the world.’

  ‘Oh, for some time now, your Honour.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll be grateful for your assistance for the next few days. Are you in a position to estimate the length of the first couple of matters, Mr Curry, for the benefit of those waiting?’

  ‘I would anticipate, with respect, that none of them will be lengthy, by which I mean a maximum of a half-day each matter. There are obvious issues in each case, and I’ll do my best to avoid any areas that are not genuinely to be disputed. It might be of assistance, your Honour, if I could have half an hour with my friend the sergeant to shorten the witness lists.’

  ‘That sounds sensible, sergeant, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The Crown has no objection, your Honour.’

  Bettens frowned. ‘Sorry — what did you just call yourself?’

  ‘The Crown, your Honour.’ The young prosecutor smoothed his tie. He was not in uniform. The practice in the New South Wales local courts was that trained, but not legally qualified, policemen were given leave to appear in summary matters. Committals and more serious proceedings were conducted by the State or Commonwealth Directors of Public Prosecutions. Crown prosecutors, in other words.

  ‘I intend no disrespect to you, sergeant, but may I gently point out that you do not, in fact, represent the Crown. You are an employee of the New South Wales Police Force, not the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. You ought never to refer to yourself as the Crown.’

  ‘With respect, we always say that.’