Silk Chaser

by Peter Klein

  ‘Well, according to the papers,’ said Myles, ‘she didn’t. She split up and moved out on him some months ago. He’s been up on assault charges with her before. She even took out an AVO on him. So she did all the right things. But it still didn’t stop the bastard.’

  I’d read all the grizzly details myself, of course. ‘Jumps jockey charged with brutal murder’ and ‘Strapper slain as she slept’ screamed the headlines. Apparently Mad Charlie Dawson, nicknamed for the complete disregard he had for his own life jumping horses over fences, had taken another in a fit of jealous pique. His victim was a former girlfriend, Julie Summers, who had worked as a strapper for Flemington trainer Colin Lovell.

  David nodded emphatically. ‘He actually rang the cops from her flat. Said he’d found her like that. They reckon he was paranoid about her seeing other guys. He couldn’t stand it when she broke off with him. When the police picked him up, they reckon the stupid git was that blind drunk he couldn’t even remember what happened.’

  ‘That’s his defence, is it? The weak dog,’ said Tiny. ‘I wished I’d have been there to help out. I can’t understand guys who turn on their women like that.’

  At the bar I said g’day to Simon. As usual, he was fixing drinks and organising tables while playing blitz chess with some hapless wood pusher. Simon supplemented his income by playing chess with anyone who cared to take him on at five minutes on the clock. They got five minutes, but Simon’s handicap was that his clock kept ticking down if customers came to the bar and had to be served. Didn’t seem to worry him whether he had five minutes or thirty seconds left on his clock, he always seemed to find the right move to beat his opponent. He clunked a piece confidently down on the board, hit the clock and smiled when he saw me.

  ‘G’day, Punter. Fellas.’ He nodded at us. ‘The usual table?’

  ‘Unless there’s one with more pockets.’

  Simon fixed us up with a set of balls, a wooden triangle and cues, served us the obligatory cold beers and went back to his game. As we walked off to our table, I heard him announce checkmate to his opponent. Don’t know how he does it.

  Tuesday night wasn’t what you’d call busy. A smattering of uni students and a few locals sinking balls over a quiet beer in the semi-darkness. It was still stiflingly hot; had been since the weekend. We were on the top floor and the building’s tin roof radiated heat like a slow-cooking oven. At least Simon had opened every window in the place to catch the hint of an evening breeze. I wished to hell the wind would make up its mind instead of teasing us. It was easily thirty degrees in this makeshift sauna.

  The place had about forty full-sized billiard tables spread out comfortably over its massive wooden floor. We walked over to the corner where table twenty-three held pride of place. It was a beautifully crafted, full-length slate job, over a hundred years old according to its Harry Evans & Sons brass plate. It was the best table in the saloon because of its private location in the corner and the deck of half a dozen chairs on a raised platform looking down onto it. After you took your shot, you could sit back, sip your beer and enjoy the atmosphere. The seats were old and tattered and smelt of mildew, and there was no dress code as such. But we always had a good time shooting the balls and kicking around any racetrack gossip we’d heard during the week.

  David racked up the balls as I flipped a dollar coin onto the cloth to pick sides. I chose Myles, leaving David with Tiny for a best of three rounds.

  David lined up his cue ready to break, the tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration. He drew the cue backwards and forwards several times in meticulous preparation that had Tiny chomping at the bit.

  ‘Oh, for gawd’s sake, Dave, hit the thing, will you? We’ll be here all night!’

  Typical David. Methodical and prepared. Took no chances and went by the book. Perhaps that’s why he got on so well with Dad. David was only three years older than me, but already looked a middle-aged man. He’d started going bald a while ago. Thank goodness for the shaved look, which was how he wore his hair. He had a perennially worried expression on his face, moulded by the constant strain of running a big stable for my demanding father. Every time he’d look into a horse’s box he’d be half expecting to see a swollen joint or a bowed tendon. I’d been with him on his stable rounds often enough and in a perverse sort of a way, he only seemed happy when he found something wrong with the horses. Tiny also knew about this trait of his and we shared a secret delight in winding him up. I caught Tiny’s eye and started the ball rolling.

  ‘That filly of Dad’s won well on Saturday.’

  ‘Princess Upstart?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s won what, two out of three starts now? She’s a goer.’

  David thought about it while he was lining up the break. ‘Trouble is she’ll get too much weight from now on. Going to make it difficult to place her.’

  I winked at Tiny. Glass half full.

  ‘C’mon!’ said Tiny. ‘Can you break, for Christ sake? If I came back here next Tuesday I still wouldn’t have missed anything.’

  David finally drove his cue and bounced the ball softly off the back cushion to just kiss the triangle of red balls and leave me with absolutely nothing to go for.

  ‘Thanks, David.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  I took my shot, missed. Made way for Tiny. He too was in a stirring mood tonight and it was clear he’d been saving something up for me.

  ‘Tell you what else looked a goer,’ he said, leaning over the table and summing up the angle, ‘the filly leading Princess Upstart around.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Myles.

  ‘Punter’s new woman, Maxine Henshaw. Surprised you didn’t see her photo with Punter in the Sunday gossip columns.’

  Tiny walked around to the corner pocket, giving me a look which said he knew he’d scored a point off me without even sinking a ball. ‘By the way, nice photo, Punter. Or should that be mystery beau?’

  The others laughed. Bastards.

  I’d been dreading that picture and hoping against hope that none of my racing acquaintances would see it. Fat chance. Maxine had dragged me along to some trendy new bar opening last week where a gossip columnist had taken a photo with her hanging off my arm. The caption in the Sunday paper had read: Maxine Henshaw with her latest mystery beau.

  I chalked my tip and assumed a nonchalant gaze at the table.

  ‘Is that Henshaw, the radio announcer’s daughter?’ asked Myles. ‘I thought I recognised her leading your father’s horse around. She certainly . . . stands out in the crowd.’

  ‘Stands out?’ said Tiny, sporting a huge grin. ‘There weren’t too many blokes watching the horses walk around the yard, I can tell you that.’

  Tiny winked at me and slammed a red into the corner pocket. ‘In fact I’m surprised you’ve got a leave pass to come here tonight, Punter.’

  Maxine was interstate for a couple of days, busy with a new client she was doing some public relations work for. That hadn’t stopped us calling each other like a couple of love sick teenagers. It was the first time apart we’d had since we’d met, but I certainly wasn’t going to admit it to this company of bozos.

  ‘I don’t need a leave pass to go anywhere,’ I said defiantly. ‘If I want to go out with my mates, then that’s what I’ll do,’ I added with swaggering bravado.

  ‘Yeah. Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Tiny lined up the pink and put it away just as easily as he had the red ball.

  ‘I hear she’s a livewire.’

  ‘That’s what people keep telling me.’

  Tiny sighed a heavy sigh like a concerned parent. ‘It’s just that we’ve never seen you dedicate as much time to a woman as you do to a formguide.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You have been.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Do, don’t. Have, haven’t.’ He turned to David. ‘You’re his brother, David, tell ’im he’s in denial.’

  Davi
d nodded dogmatically. ‘It’s true. I’ve never seen him under the thumb like this before.’

  ‘See,’ said Tiny, potting another red. I wished he’d miss – shut the smug lair up and give us a shot. ‘Even your own brother reckons you’re gone.’

  ‘I’m not gone,’ I said exasperatedly. ‘I have my own time and space and so does Maxine.’

  With uncanny timing my mobile rang. Guess who?

  ‘Hi Maxine . . . No, just out with the boys playing snooker. What? . . . Of course I miss you.’ I turned away from Tiny when I said that, but I could feel his smirk burn a gaping hole in my back. ‘Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Okay, I will. I love you, too.’ Last words said in a muffled whisper to avoid the embarrassment of the guys hearing. But judging from the guffaws I could hear behind me, they hadn’t missed a thing. ‘. . . No, course not. You’re not causing me any trouble. Okay, I’ll see you then.’

  I switched my phone off and turned back around to face them. Tiny was shaking his head in a told-you-so way. David was biting his lip trying not to laugh. Even Myles was grinning.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ I said threateningly. ‘Not one word.’

  Tiny squinted down his cue, lining up another shot. ‘Gone,’ he said.

  Next morning I was woken up at five thirty by my usual early-morning call. The call is ultra reliable and on the dot every day of the week. The downside is that the time never varies. If ever I want a sleep-in it’s too bad, because the wake-up call comes from Che, who has it in his mind that it’s time the big cat should get out of bed and feed the little cat his breakfast. And if the big cat doesn’t get the message, well then his job is to scratch and meow at the door until I do. It was no use hiding under the blankets and hoping he’d lose interest. I’d tried that. He’d only become more insistent and louder, like he was on this occasion.

  Meow. Scratch, scratch.

  ‘All right already. I’m coming.’ I turned over and snatched a look at the clock. 5.33 a.m. Che was silent for a moment before he started up his pawing again. Obviously didn’t believe me.

  ‘I said, I’m coming.’

  Meow.

  ‘Oh, for Christ sake. Ridiculous creature.’

  I got out of bed cursing, pulled on a dressing gown and gave Che some dried biscuity things for his breakfast. He’d taken a shine to some expensive, gourmet stuff called Fussy Feline, which cost at least twenty per cent more than the home brand equivalent. And I was silly enough to keep buying it for him. While he ate his breakfast, I stumbled around making a pot of coffee and getting myself dressed. That afternoon there was a Mornington race meeting on with a couple of races that looked playable. My plan was to go down for an early surf on the east coast with a mate before heading off to the races in the afternoon.

  A little over an hour later I was atop the cliffs overlooking Big Lefts at Flinders. There looked to be a nice little swell running and I could see that Billco was already out in the water along with a couple of other board riders. He’s a wave ski rider like me. We sit on a ski about the size of a surfboard, strap ourselves in with a seatbelt and use a paddle to catch waves. There’s not many of us around these days; it’s easier to learn to ride a mal than master an eskimo roll. And young kids wouldn’t be seen dead on anything other than a shortboard. But the few of us who have stubbornly clung to our craft over the years all know one another and try to surf with each other when we can.

  Big Lefts always looks smaller until you paddle out the half kilometre or so to the break and realise it’s twice the size you thought it was. What looks from atop the cliffs to be friendly lines marching harmlessly in turns into giant grey slabs determined to rear up and crush you on the reefs once you get out there. I pulled into my first wave about twenty minutes later. Billco waved and hollered at me as I took the drop on a curling boomer and surfed past him. That set the pattern for us both. Catch a screamer, work it hard for as long as you could, then drop back over the shoulder and paddle back out to the line-up. Bit of chitchat about this and that while waiting for waves, then do it all again. After two hours I was wet, stoked and sated. I’d had my surfing fix. I was also famished and in need of fuel, another reason to call it a day.

  ‘Going in,’ I mouthed at Billco, and pointed with my hand to the cliffs.

  He nodded. ‘Next wave,’ he said.

  We caught the next one together, sharing the wave all the way into the shallow waters sheltering the rock pools and kelp beds before picking up our skis and clambering over the seaweed-covered boulders leading to the path up the cliff.

  ‘How did you go with the Christmas thing?’ I said. I’d run by him an idea I had about Christmas decorations for Gino’s.

  ‘It’s done. I played around with the brushes on Sunday afternoon. I don’t know if it’s what you’re after, but you might as well come back for a bite to eat and take a look.’

  Billco used to work as a set designer for a TV station. He was about sixty, although you wouldn’t have picked it the way he handled himself in the surf. He was around the same height and weight as me, sported a greying beard and had a gentle nature; in fact I couldn’t recall him ever losing his temper in all the years I’d known him. He’d taken a redundancy package after his company went through a downsizing and now seemed to have found the perfect retirement: painting and surfing. He lived off one of the main tourist roads heading back towards

  Red Hill, his rambling old house and gardens doubling as a gallery on weekends, attracting the tourists who drove down from Melbourne to the peninsula. The sign out the front said: Flinders Art Gallery – surf art, landscapes and portraits.

  Every time I walked into Billco’s house, I was reminded of how talented an artist he was. He took me around the back through his work shed. Dozens of canvasses and paintings were stacked against the walls. A half-finished painting of a surfer catching a wave hung on an easel. It was a beautiful picture and seemed to capture the moment in time perfectly.

  ‘That’s where we were surfing. Big Lefts looking back towards the cliffs, isn’t it?’ I asked.

  Billco nodded. ‘Mmm, that’s right. A longboarder’s girlfriend commissioned me to paint it for his birthday. I’m about halfway through.’

  We walked into the hallway of his house, where more sketches and drawings hung on the walls.

  ‘What was this done with, Billco? Pencil?’

  We stood in front of a sketch of an old man staring at us intently. Intelligence seemed to jump out of his eyes. The wrinkled and lined face, although weathered and spent, fairly dripped with a bright and enquiring mind. It stopped me dead in my tracks, demanding an explanation.

  ‘Charcoal, actually,’ said Billco.

  ‘Who is it?’

  He looked fondly at it for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘A client wanted a sketch drawn of her husband who’d recently passed away. He was a professor at Melbourne University.’

  ‘I knew it! I mean, I knew the guy was clever. You’ve caught the intelligence in his eyes. You really must have copied his likeness.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t copy anything, I drew him blind.’

  ‘Blind?’ I didn’t follow and my puzzled look must have been obvious. Billco explained.

  ‘His widow came in and said she wanted me to draw a likeness of her husband as she remembered him. She came in several times and described him to me while I sketched him. I’d ask her about him and from her description, I imagined what he might have been like. He was a professor and not one to suffer fools easily, so I gave him a sharp, probing stare that I think would have reduced his students to instant silence. And his untidy mane of hair, long and unkempt, a nuisance item that I figured he tolerated, but probably never spent time grooming. The widow actually gave me a photo of the old professor after I’d completed my sketches. I ended up doing three for her and kept this one, a sort of mock-up. Here’s the photo, I keep it behind the sketch.’

  Billco reached up and lifted the sketch off the wall. Behind the frame was a colour photo which he pa
ssed to me. I studied it for a moment, looking from the photo to the sketch and back again.

  ‘I can’t believe the likeness,’ I said. ‘You really sketched that from her description?’

  Billco nodded modestly. ‘I’ve done others like that too. It used to be a party trick of mine. People describing someone they knew, like their boss, and I’d sketch them.’

  ‘You’re amazing.’

  Billco laughed. ‘No, I just enjoy painting or drawing and hopefully getting a cheque from the client when I’ve completed the thing. I’ve still got to eat and pay the bills.’

  I looked at the price tags on some of the paintings and sketches hanging in the hallway. Five hundred for this, three hundred for that. I reckoned he was undercharging. But Billco’s expenses wouldn’t amount to much. I figured he’d probably only have to sell a couple of items each month to keep the wolf from the door. And turning out quality work like he did, I doubt if he’d ever have a shortage of buyers.

  ‘Come out to the garage and have a look at what I’ve done for your friend.’

  Billco led me out to his garage-cum-workshop. In spite of the obvious roominess in the old house and grounds, he seemed to have filled every available space with paintings and works in progress, so much so that he’d had to convert the garage into another studio.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said, gesturing to a large drawing. ‘I didn’t really know what to do, so I just sort of played around. If your friend doesn’t like it, I can always try something else.’