Now and Then, Amen

by Jon Cleary

  “Are you here to join the union?” His humour could be sardonic.

  “No, I’m here to talk progress, Mr. Norway.”

  The union boss suspected anyone who called him Mr. Norway; only the enemy, the other bosses, the capitalists, called him that. “Who do you represent, Mr. Tewsday?”

  “Ballyduff Properties.”

  “Fingal Hourigan’s lot? Get out! You’re wasting my time.”

  Tewsday didn’t move. The union boss’s office was a cubbyhole, made even smaller by the piles of pamphlets stacked in each corner: Norway was notorious as the most prolific pamphlet-writer since St. Paul, a comparison he found odious. The walls were decorated with posters, all of them threatening: non-Communists were made to feel they were being attacked from all sides. Tewsday, no coward, was undaunted. The pursuit of money has created as many heroes as patriotism.

  “Mr. Hourigan has nothing to do with this. This is my baby.” His vowels had rounded again. “I want you to withdraw your support for the tenants and squatters over at North Sydney. In return we’ll make a substantial donation to your union’s funds.”

  “We? I thought you said Fingal Hourigan had nothing to do with this? You look as if you couldn’t make a donation to the church plate. If you go to church . . .”

  Tewsday didn’t. “I’m not a church-goer, Mr. Norway. I’m a man of the world, like you. Those people over at North Sydney can’t stand in the way of progress. We wouldn’t be getting rid of them if we weren’t sure they could get accommodation elsewhere.”

  “Where, for instance?”

  “There’ll soon be plenty available out west. Mount Druitt is being developed, lots of cheap housing—”

  “Out in the bloody backblocks? Would you move out there, get your arse frozen off in winter and the top of your head burnt off in summer? No bloody fear, you wouldn’t! Get out, you young arsehole, and shove your money up it! Your old man must be spinning in his grave, no matter what day it is!”

  “You’re making a mistake you’ll regret, Norway—”

  The union boss got up from behind his desk, moving with surprising speed, came round and grabbed Tewsday by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants. It was an old-fashioned technique, the headlock had not yet come into style, but it was effective. Tewsday, before he could struggle, was tossed out the office door and landed on his hands and knees in the narrow dusty hallway in front of four hefty wharfies come to pay their dues.

  “He was trying to sell me a subscription to the Catholic Weekly,” Norway told them.

  “Never!” said the wharfies and threw up their hands in horror; they were taking Workers’ Education lessons in drama. “Shall we throw him down the stairs?”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Norway, grinning. “Not head first, but. He might chip the woodwork.”

  So Tewsday finished up down in the street, battered, bruised and bewildered as to what to do next. Things, over the next couple of weeks, went from bad to worse. Norway, who had friends amongst the older industrial reporters on the city’s newspapers, got the right sort of publicity for his campaign on behalf of the tenants and squatters: the little Aussie battlers who were being tossed out on to the streets in the name of Progress. Television had not yet arrived in Australia, that would not come till next year, so there were no two-headed demons to record the banners and the parading pickets and the squatters perched on the roofs of their houses like pugnacious pigeons.

  Tewsday stayed out of Fingal’s way, meanwhile planning his own campaign. He had never gone in for thuggery; real-estate deals, up till now, had never required more than slick words and envelopes under the table. But the situation, or rather his own, was now becoming desperate. He went to certain rugby union clubs where, even though union was in their title, he knew there was no love for trade unions. He enlisted a dozen rugby front-row forwards, all of them famous for their thuggery on the field, everyone a capitalist or hoping to be, and sent them over to North Sydney to confront the wharfies who were now picketing the houses. They lost the match twelve-nil: there was no referee and they hadn’t expected to be met by pick-handles. The tenants and squatters sat on their front verandas or stood on their rooftops and cheered as the battle went on. Next day the Daily Telegraph, contradicting its industrial reporter, ran an editorial on union brutality. All the rugby league, soccer, Australian Rules, tennis and cricket-following readers nodded their heads in agreement, mistaking the union blamed.

  Tewsday was now at his wits’ end; which, since his wits ran in circles, was not as desperate as it sounds. He went to a night club in King’s Cross and spoke to the bouncer on the door. The Cross in those days was not a focus for sleaze and junkies and drug-ridden prostitutes. There were prostitutes, but they were all female, mostly clean and just trying to make an honest living; there were spivs and crooks, but they didn’t mug one in the street; and there were the odd one or two professional killers who didn’t charge an exorbitant fee. The night-club bouncer, a giant named Jack Paxit, was not a killer but had a friend who was.

  “Who you want done? Him? Jesus, sport, that’s asking for trouble. It’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “It’ll take two blokes, I reckon. So me mate’ll have to get a helper. Six hundred quid.” A fair price: inflation was not a worry in those days.

  “Five hundred.” Tewsday could not forget his real-estate training, it was natural for him to bargain.

  “Six hundred, sport, take it or leave it. I gotta get my cut.”

  “Can I trust you to forget I ever came to you?”

  “Sport, you’re the Invisible Man. You ever see that fillum with Claude Rains? I was just a kid . . . I never seen you, sport, never heard your name. When you want it done?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Two days later Nev Norway disappeared and to this day nobody knows where he went.

  Fingal had conveniently taken himself out of the country during all this. He had gone to Hong Kong, renewed acquaintance with some of his old gold-smuggling contacts who, like himself, were now looking for less dangerous pursuits. In partnership with them he started buying up what little land remained in Hong Kong. From there he had gone to Japan, but the Japanese had defeated him with their bland politeness and smiling masks. He liked to recognize the taste for larceny in the eyes of those he took as partners, but the Japanese had the gaze of neither larcenous nor honest men: blank eyes seemed to look right through him. He came back to Sydney convinced that they would some day rule the world. They had lost only the shortest of wars, the military one.

  On his first day back at the office he was driven into the company garage in his three-year-old Jaguar Mark VII. As he got out of the car he saw Jonathan Tewsday drive in in a Jaguar XK 120. He dismissed his chauffeur, then walked the length of the garage to accost Tewsday.

  “Is that car yours? How can you afford it?”

  “It’s second-hand, Mr. Hourigan. I’m paying it off.”

  “Get rid of it. If my shareholders find out you’re driving something like that, they’ll think I’m over-paying you.” Since his holding company owned 40 per cent of all his public companies, he had no respect for his shareholders, but, like tradition, they occasionally had their uses. “See me in my office at ten sharp.”

  Tewsday, brimming with resentment but keeping the lid on, presented himself to Fingal sharp at ten o’clock. Was he going to be sacked? Already he was thinking of other companies where he could present himself. He was not yet a general but he had the makings of one: he went into nothing without making sure of a good line of retreat.

  Fingal wasted no time in preliminaries: “What’s happened to Nev Norway?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” said Tewsday and succeeded for a moment in assuming a cherubic look, albeit that of a fallen one.

  “You didn’t arrange his disappearance?”

  “No, sir. He had plenty of enemies, including the Government down in Canberra.”

  “You think Menzies had him got rid of
?” Fingal laughed, a sound as dry as a bedouin’s cough. “The Prime Minister doesn’t have people bumped off. He’s subtler than that. They get postings to Washington or somewhere. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “The Prime Minister?”

  “Don’t be a smart-arse, son. You’ll never hold your own with me. Norway.”

  Tewsday hesitated, then nodded. He knew he was on a cliff-edge and for the first time he felt the vertigo of the unconfident. “I’ve heard that, sir.”

  “Where’d you hear it?”

  He lied, “From one or two reporters on the papers, industrial roundsmen. And a crime reporter.”

  Fingal looked at him shrewdly. He knew this young man was crooked, but he would never have suspected him of arranging a murder. All the young, and old, murderers he had known back in Chicago had been as obvious as if they had worn badges or had been cast in their roles by Hollywood. Since coming to Australia he had had to employ murderers only once and his go-between then had been a lawyer who had looked as murderous as some of the clients he had defended. The lawyer had since conveniently died and Fingal now felt safe from any connection with the murder. He would have to watch any possible connection with the disappearance of Nev Norway.

  “Have the police been to question you?”

  “Yes, sir. I could tell them nothing.”

  “Were they satisfied with that?”

  “I think so.” Tewsday was beginning to feel a little easier. If he had been about to be sacked, it would have been over by now. Fingal Hourigan would never slow down the guillotine.

  “Have you got rid of the tenants and squatters?”

  “Not yet. I think I can arrange that in a week or two.”

  “Don’t kick „em out in the street. Buy up some cheap flats somewhere and move them there at our expense.”

  “Do we need to go to that expense, sir? It’s only a matter of a few days—they’ve lost the guts to fight since Norway disappeared—”

  “You’d better learn something about public relations if you want to keep working for me.” Fingal had never worried before about public relations, particularly in business; all of a sudden he had been bitten by that most debilitating of bugs, an urge for respectability. Or anyway to be outside of any police questioning. “Buy the flats and move them. Talk to Borsolino about writing „em off against tax—he’ll find a way. No publicity, if you can avoid it. Let this whole thing die down as soon as possible.”

  “What about the houses? How soon do you want them knocked down?”

  “Leave it as long as you can. The papers won’t come back to the story. Let the architects get all the plans for the new building done and then we’ll knock the houses down.”

  Tewsday stood up, knowing he was safe. “I’m sure all this will turn out satisfactorily, Mr. Hourigan.” He sounded smug, a tone no employer should ever condone.

  Fingal didn’t. “Get rid of your car, get a Holden or something.”

  “Of course, sir.” Tewsday swapped smugness for obsequiousness, another mistake. Only kings, presidents and prime ministers can suffer it.

  “Don’t crawl,” said Fingal. “And in future, no murders, understand? This is a reputable company.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tewsday, this time neither smug nor obsequious, just afraid. This tough old bastard would always have the edge on him.

  Next day Tewsday sold his XK 120, at a profit. A month later Fingal took delivery of his first Rolls-Royce, a black Silver Cloud. It made him more conspicuous than he wanted to be, but, he told himself, he had to have a car worthy of the castle he was having built at Vaucluse. It certainly put all the other cars in the Ballyduff garage in their place.

  Two months later the houses in North Sydney were knocked down. The event made none of the newspapers, not even any of the trades unions’ news bulletins. Occasionally, when news was dead, references would be made to the disappearance of Nev Norway, but nothing ever came of them. In the atmosphere of that period a dead Commo, even a murdered one, got no more sympathy than a live one. Fragments of what might have been a red cardigan had been picked up in their nets by fishermen off Coogee beach, but they didn’t report it to the police; people were always tossing their garbage and old clothes into the sea. The tenants and squatters who, no matter how indirectly, had been the cause of Norway’s disappearance, settled down in their new flats, went on being little Aussie battlers, though one or two turned traitor by having a good word to say about Ballyduff Properties.

  A year later Jonathan Tewsday was running his own small development division in Ballyduff. He had sold his secondhand Holden and ventured to buy a new Rover; Fingal made no comment. The two met only once a month, when Fingal presided over a management meeting, but Tewsday was now just one of the team. The only contest between the two men was their search for respectability.

  Then in September 1956, at the launching of Fingal’s new television station, Tewsday met the Hourigan siblings, Kerry and Brigid, for the first time.

  II

  Television had just been introduced to Australia and Fingal, putting together a consortium of merchant bankers, industrialists, radio executives, plus two writers, two producers and two elderly actors to add a touch of the arts, had applied for a television licence and been granted one. Within two years he would have disposed of all his partners, the artists getting the chop first, and then would have, as a newspaper owned by a failed rival bidder would say, a licence to print his own money.

  Television was such a new toy that the launching of the new station enticed Kerry along to one of his father’s business functions. He got leave from the seminary and, picked up by Brigid in her new MG, was driven out to Carlingford in the western suburbs to the new complex.

  “How’s the Jesus business going?”

  Brigid was now almost seventeen, looked twenty and had had no trouble getting her driver’s licence. She was beautiful, sexy-looking enough to have had Picasso, had he seen her, dropping his brushes and his pants at first sight of her. She had just started art classes with an old local artist who had once been as gamey as Picasso but no longer had any lead in his pencil.

  “I hope you don’t talk like that about me to your friends.” Kerry was now twenty-one, big, beefy and handsome, ideal clay for the cardinal he still hoped to be.

  “I’ll never understand you, Kerry. You’re no more religious than I am. Oh, you may not go in for sin and all that, but you don’t have a true vocation.”

  She had inherited her father’s shrewd appraisal of men. She had also, unfortunately, inherited her mother’s passion for them; or, rather, what they offered her. She had been expelled from the Rose Bay Convent after being found in a garden shed with one of the young gardeners; that suburban Mellors had been the first of half a dozen lovers as the junior Lady Chatterley had moved on up the social scale. She was a sinner, but she would never be repentant, least of all to her brother the trainee priest.

  “Are you running away from the world?”

  “No.” He would have to be patient with her; she had guessed the truth, or anyway the half-truth, of him. Already he knew that he would never be able to suffer the duties of a parish curate or priest; the hoi-polloi flock would have to look for another shepherd. “It’s useless trying to explain a vocation to someone who doesn’t have it. It’s not the same as understanding your predilection for sin—I understand that.”

  “My predilection for sin! God, you’re already talking like an archbishop!”

  She couldn’t have given him higher praise. “Keep your eye on the road. I don’t want to have to give the two of us Extreme Unction.” At the seminary they taught him to think in Capitals, as if God were a grammarian.

  “God,” she said, though He was only a very casual acquaintance nowadays, “how could I have had you as a brother?”

  Fingal, spending the consortium’s money, had spared none of it to make the television complex the best in the country. Huge and lavish, it seemed like an affront to the small fibro and timber cottages that
surrounded it, the homes of the little Aussie battlers who would look to it for their escape from their drudgery and their debt worries. Fingal knew the venture could not fail; better to spend the money now while the pound still had value. Nowhere in the world were television station owners going broke. BHN Channel 8 was a gold mine standing in landscaped gardens.

  As they drew into the parking lot Kerry heard the music coming from a nearby building. “What on earth is that?”

  “They’re putting on a separate party for the staff who are going to work here. None of them know anything, but they’ll all be experts within a week.” She was repeating her father’s opinion.

  “No, I mean that awful music.”

  “Oh God, what sort of stuff do you hear in the seminary? That’s rock and roll, the new music. It sounds like Bill Haley and „Rock Around the Clock.’”

  Kerry shook his head in wonder. “Whatever’s going to happen to Guy Lombardo?”

  The party for the executives was more sedate. The only music was the humming of praise for the opportunities that lay ahead. Jonathan Tewsday, the most junior executive there, stood in a corner and sipped champagne, Australian, of course, since Fingal, seeing further opportunities, had just gone into vineyards. When the sexy-looking pretty girl came in with the young novice priest, Tewsday knew she had to be saved.

  When the priest left the girl, Tewsday went up to her, taking two glasses of champagne with him. “To help you relax.”

  “Oh, I’m relaxed, all right. But my father won’t let me drink alcohol in public.”

  “Who’s your father?”

  “The chairman, Mr. Hourigan.”