Frederick had a fair idea what Patty would say when he told her of the arrangement over breakfast the next morning so he threw into the deal the family’s harbourside apartment in the city. Knowing he was unlikely to win, he tried to avoid arguments with his opinionated wife where possible. James and Nina could live rent-free in the Elizabeth Bay apartment.
The two men shook hands in confirmation of their agreement. It was nearly 1 o’clock in the morning but only then did Frederick bring out a much-prized bottle from the dwindling stock of Frederick’s First, put his arm around his son’s shoulders and tell him he was pleased to have him home. It may have been the effects of the evening’s wine, appreciation of the magnificent aged shiraz or just the end of a long and tiring day, but there were genuine tears in the old man’s eyes when he said it.
*
Those first six months had been the toughest. James spent his time setting up his office and visiting restaurants and hotels to introduce himself to the purchasing managers and sommeliers, as well as courting the writers of all the wine magazines. It meant visiting restaurants and bars in the evening, getting to know who was who in Sydney’s ever-changing hospitality industry and keeping Wilde Wines prominent in the minds of those who mattered. He was acutely aware that he had little to show for the long hours and hard work he put in. But he stayed optimistic. He knew he could make a difference. He was confident that his ideas would work over the long term.
Setting up the Burman Suite with his old schoolmates had turned out to be an extraordinary stroke of luck, though James preferred to think of it as genius. As well as his best mate Felix, sharing the suite was David, who specialised in event management. He was building up a reputation as the man to organise a party, wedding, cocktail function or corporate launch. When he wasn’t seeking out nude parachutists to land in the middle of an elite outdoor soiree on a harbour home lawn, he was kissing the tightly stretched cheeks of the city’s society matrons. And at almost every function, whether it was groovy, hip and street-smart or reeking of old money, the guests sipped Wilde Wines in glasses etched with the WW logo. It didn’t hurt David’s business and it was enormously useful in helping James establish his.
Felix was helpful in other ways. His family were Sydney blue bloods and part of the squattocracy. He was a member of the Australia Club and London’s Army and Navy Club and had entree to most of the hallowed boardrooms across Australia.
Felix was a money whiz. He bought his first apartment while he was still in his final year at school. He taught his schoolmates more about financial management than their economics master, Mr Van Der Pol, ever could. At school Felix hadn’t wasted his generous monthly allowance on cigarettes and car magazines. He had loaned it out to the other boys at a hefty interest rate. Then he had charged them to do their mathematics and economics assignments. The money he accumulated he invested in the stock market. By the time he left school, well before he received his inheritance, Felix was financially independent. After school he moved into his two-bedroom flat near Sydney University, where he was studying for his Bachelor of Economics, then Master of Economics. He rented out the second bedroom to his best mate James.
Felix called himself an accountant but he was much more than that. He ran the business affairs of a number of wealthy clients, ranging from a millionaire jockey to the Australian interests of an actress who spent most of her time overseas. They trusted him completely and in return for their trust he orchestrated some highly original deals, breathtaking in their audacity, which made them all a lot of money. Felix was, quite simply, the most financially savvy man James had ever met and was ever likely to meet. He was also a great drinking buddy.
James had been so deep in thought, he hadn’t realised Felix was still in the room. Now James watched his friend as he shuffled about the room, weaving around the crates of wine, picking up artwork for posters and putting them back on top of the table.
‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’ James asked.
Felix dropped the poster back on the table. ‘Sorry, mate.’ He slumped down in the chair in front of James’s desk. ‘Actually, I need to talk to you.’
James looked over the papers in his hand to his friend. He noticed the way Felix drank his wine, throwing it back as if it were water. ‘What’s up?’
Felix opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Now that James was looking at him, he wasn’t sure where to start. And he was tired. It had been a shit of a day. One of the worst. He wished with every ounce of his remaining energy that he didn’t have to have this conversation.
James watched Felix try to smooth back his hair with his fingers. Felix had a number-two buzz cut leaving very little hair to smooth. The gesture was entirely a nervous habit. Every few seconds he would stop and clasp his hands together in his lap, then they would fly apart and he would try to smooth his hair again.
James wondered if he was having trouble with David. They often got snappy with each other. Or maybe the trouble was with his girlfriend Miranda. She was a flighty thing, always in a tizz about something. Did he want to borrow money? No. Felix was the one you went to when you needed cash. Short term, long term, lots or a little. He was your man.
‘What is it, Felix?’ asked James.
Felix shook his head. ‘I’ve just come from a meeting about Lloyd’s … It’s a disaster … Asbestos claims have brought it unstuck … The unthinkable has happened … James, I don’t know how to tell you …’
The words spilled out of Felix’s mouth. He was talking too fast and the thoughts were disconnected. It made little sense but James caught enough to place his papers slowly and carefully onto his desk and give his full attention to Felix.
‘What about Lloyd’s?’
Felix took a deep breath, trying to bring his own panic under control, and looked his friend squarely in the eye. ‘James, it’s a disaster. They owe billions. They are calling in the names.’
Calling in the names. James felt a chasm open beneath him. It was the day Felix had said would never come.
*
Leo melted happily back into the taxi seat as the small dark figure that was Nina let herself into the building’s foyer. Did she look back? He rather fancied that she did. That last moment, just before she disappeared completely from view, she seemed to stop for the smallest amount of time and look back in this direction, at him. The rain was falling in sheets around the car rendering everything a blur, but Leo was convinced. She had. She had taken one last peek at him. In the same way and at the same time that he was leaning forward, peering through the rain trying to keep sight of her, she had wanted one last glimpse of him and had turned for the merest fraction of a second. It was almost imperceptible, but he had seen it, Leo told himself.
He sighed deeply, feeling the warmth spread right through his body. He felt elated, euphoric. It was as if something in him had woken up. He felt he was a different man from the one who had fled that boring meeting just … how long ago was that? He checked his watch. Three-quarters of an hour. Just 45 minutes. That was all it had been. And in that short space of time the world had completely and irretrievably been transformed.
The taxi driver chuckled loudly, eyeing Leo in his rear vision mirror. ‘I didn’t pick you as the Fred Astaire type.’
Leo smiled and shrugged.
‘You make a good couple,’ continued the driver. He clearly wanted to engage Leo in conversation but Leo wasn’t about to be drawn.
He wrapped his joy tightly around himself, hugging it close. He wanted to savour the little ripples of delight that were running through him. He didn’t want to share any of it. He made a sound that was half grunt and half laugh and turned back to the window.
Who was that woman? That delightful girl-woman with the brown eyes that looked bewildered one minute and brimmed with gentle laughter the next. And that lovely, lilting, soft Canadian accent. It was as if her voice bubbled. Leo laughed as a snippet of their conversation floated into his mind. Spider-Man. Huh!
Leo had
experienced a few heart-stopping instances of clarity in his life. Rare and precious moments that pinned him to the spot with their sheer perfection. The feel of Nina’s warm, wet skin when he held her in his arms with the rain falling softly and silently about them was one of them. He relived the feeling, trying to recapture its joyous intensity, but already that intensity was fading, leaving in its wake a faint but delicious yearning.
Leo paid the driver and splashed his way to his apartment block, no longer caring that the dirty water was turning his trouser cuffs brown.
Ah, what serendipity that he had found that taxi rank. It had been just a whim that propelled him out of the meeting at that moment, and down that particular street to that corner. He hadn’t known there would be a taxi rank. It was a part of town he seldom visited.
And he had so nearly stayed for the rest of the meeting, just because he knew Felix wanted him to. But Leo had been unable to concentrate on what was going on inside the boardroom twenty floors above the city. He had paid little attention to what was being explained to the assembled group in such sombre tones. He had looked straight past the lawyer who was doing most of the talking, to the sky and the approaching storm. It was Friday night sailing and his boat was in top condition, ready for the evening’s races. Tonight was the night he and his crew were going to win. While the lawyer droned on about asbestosis and cash calls and worst case scenarios, Leo had kept an anxious eye on the storm clouds. They wouldn’t stop the race. Not unless the weather bureau predicted the wind would be over 25 knots and it didn’t look like that to Leo. He watched the approach, over the lawyer’s left shoulder, of the distinctive cigar-shaped cloud coming up the coast. The southerly buster would bring rain and a welcome drop in temperatures but not so much wind it would stop the races.
The boardroom was stuffy and airless. Leo could feel his energy starting to flag and his eyes were feeling dry and scratchy from the air-conditioning. It would suit him to arrive early at the Cruising Yacht Club in Rushcutters Bay. He could talk through the evening’s race with Nick, the crew member who always arrived first, ready to prepare the boat.
While the meeting went on around him, Leo rationalised that it was a waste of everyone’s time for him to stay, given the scant amount of attention he was paying. He would find out from Felix later what it had all been about and what it meant to Leo’s business affairs. That was why you had accountants – to attend boring meetings on your behalf, not to make you sit through them too.
It took just a few seconds for Leo to justify the thought in his own mind and the next thing he knew he was on his feet and halfway out the door, excusing himself as he went. Leo pretended he had just received an urgent message on his pager. Felix hardly noticed him leave. He was engrossed in what the lawyer was saying. Leo had seen that look before. All the women in the room could have taken off their clothes and Felix wouldn’t have flickered an eyelid.
And so Leo had raced out into the rain, hoping to stop a passing taxi and get home as soon as possible. Then he had spotted that bedraggled figure huddled against the wall.
Leo wandered through his apartment smiling to himself, turning on lights and gathering together his sailing gear. Within minutes he was splashing through Rushcutters Bay Park towards the Cruising Yacht Club, where his boat and crew waited. Tonight was the night Bessie was going to beat its arch rival, Pure Indulgence. Bessie was a bit older and heavier. She would have the advantage in strong winds. All the conditions were right. Leo would wipe the smile off the face of that cocky building developer and his crew. He was feeling lucky.
*
The switchboard light on the front reception desk in the Burman Suite flashed again. It was James’s line. The receptionist had flicked it over to nightswitch when she left four hours earlier. James couldn’t hear it, and, from his current vantage point face down on his desk blotter, he was unlikely to see it.
James’s eyes were open, staring unseeing at a doodle he had drawn on the blotter. It was lots of lines and sharp angles scribbled in heavy black biro. It filled his vision.
It had taken Felix over an hour to explain it fully to James. Felix had just come from a meeting in the city where all the ghastly truth had been revealed. He had explained to James exactly how much of a mess James was in, they were all in, and then he had gone home to fret in different surroundings, leaving James alone with the echo of that phrase.
They are calling in the names.
The cleaning staff, a hard-working young Taiwanese couple who spoke no English, had been in and vacuumed the carpet, shifting the hose around James’s feet and emptying his wastepaper bin from under his desk. They smiled and nodded as they moved purposefully about the office. They were used to him working late. The storm had long ago passed and after the couple had moved on to another floor, everything about him was quiet.
They are calling in the names.
James wished he had the energy to go home. All the life had seeped out of him. He forced himself to stand, leaning heavily against the table. He stood there for a minute, collecting himself. His head swam and he felt rising nausea. His mouth was dry. His hunger had curdled in the acidic pit of his stomach. He felt wretched. Exhausted. He left the order on his desk unfinished, picked up his briefcase and made his way through the deserted building to the carpark.
*
Nina stared at the fish. She had been sitting in the dining chair looking at it for the best part of an hour. At first she had admired it, how good it looked with its garnish of chervil and thinly sliced spanish onion. But after some minutes congratulating herself for her good purchase, she had started to feel guilty that she had spent so much. Then she had started to worry that it would spoil before James got home. Where the hell was he? Why didn’t he answer his telephone? Why wasn’t he home? Then she had started to hate the fish for sitting there staring back at her. A fly buzzed around and landed on it, poking into the succulent pink flesh. Nina made no attempt to brush it away. She glared at the glassy, milky eye for one more long moment.
Then she picked up the plate and the bottle of wine she had half finished, and walked out her front door and onto the walkway that connected the apartments. With the plate in one hand and the wine bottle in the other, she walked unsteadily past old Mr Hilton in number 656, Mrs Biggs in 657 and the newlyweds in 658. At the end of the row of apartments, she took the lift down as far as it would go, and let herself out into the garden and the fresh, post-storm night air.
Swaying slightly she carried the plate across the manicured lawns of the private garden to the harbour’s edge and looked out over Rushcutters Bay. She stood watching the water lap against the brick wall just centimetres beneath her feet. Then she tossed the fish, plate and all, as high as she could in the air. The fish flew off the plate, disappearing with a small plop into the still water. The plate, with its tidbits of onion and garnish, skimmed the surface then slipped into the inky darkness below.
Long after it had sunk from view Nina gazed at the surface of the water. Then she sat down heavily on the lawn. It was damp from the evening’s rain. She didn’t care. She took a swig of wine.
The sound of music and merriment drifted across the water from a party at the Cruising Yacht Club. She raised the bottle towards them in a toast and took another swig. Above her in an upstairs apartment she heard a door close and muffled voices. That would be her neighbours. Huh! She didn’t know any of them really. They were friendly enough, she supposed, but not what her family would call ‘farm friendly’. Not like the neighbours where she grew up. The nearest one could be a couple of blocks away but you could knock on their door at any time of the day or night and know you would be welcome. She couldn’t imagine knocking on anyone’s door at this time of night and saying ‘Hi, I’m lonely. Want a drink?’ It seemed to Nina that the closer people lived physically, the further away they really were. It made her unbearably sad. She looked in the direction she thought Canada might be and sobbed.
CHAPTER 4
Saturday, 19 January 1
991
Nina sat and watched James across the table as he read the Saturday morning newspaper. He knew she was watching him and she knew he knew. It heightened the tension that seemed to resonate between them. Nina wondered if he would read anything out to her. Usually on Saturday mornings they read the newspaper together, dividing the sections and reading out stories that took their fancy. Nina took news, lifestyle and employment while James liked sport, which he usually read first, business and the comics. The classified sections – cars and real estate – were dumped in the recycle bin as soon as they were picked up off the mat by the front door, where the paper boy left them at 6 am every morning.
The only sound in the apartment was James turning the pages. He started on the business section this morning, Nina noted, scanning each page as if looking for something in particular. He held the newspaper high so that Nina couldn’t see his face. It was a perfectly reasonable way to read the newspaper, but Nina saw it as an irritatingly effective way of screening her out. He had retreated somewhere she couldn’t reach him. She felt dismissed, disregarded, unimportant. She seethed silently, turning back to the front page laid out on the table before her.
She tried to focus on the printed page as James’s words from the night before reverberated in her head. Sorry, love. Held up at work. And that was it. He had announced this to her when he finally came home at 11 pm. Then he had gone into the bedroom. Nina had thought he was changing out of his suit and would rejoin her in the living room, where he would explain what life-threatening emergency could possibly have kept him from their Friday night together. He would be profusely apologetic. She had waited and waited, sitting on the couch, her feet folded beneath her. When finally it seemed as if too long had passed, she had gone into the bedroom. James was lying on the bed, his face to one side. He had managed to remove his shoes, tie and jacket before collapsing on top of the bed. The unmistakable smell of wine emanated from his open mouth.
The Affair Page 4
