When those in detention were clients I had the satisfaction of someone who knows that while what they are doing might not be changing an entire system, they are at least doing what they can. It was frustrating work because the lawyer’s role in a refugee application is limited and largely passive. I could sit in on interviews, make submissions and lodge appeals, but at the end of the day it all depended on whether the Immigration Department officer assessing the application believed the client, and whether what the client said was consistent with the information the department had from our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about their country.
I wasn’t an advocate in the same way a lawyer running a criminal case was, I was an advisor and hand-holder. I rarely, if ever, felt I had influenced the outcome of a case. After two years I wanted to do more combative court work. I applied and got a job with legal aid based at a local court in Blacktown, where every day I was in court, on my feet, representing people charged with anything from shoplifting to murder to drug supply.
That was what I wanted to do. It was adrenalin rush from go to whoa and I quickly forgot about the detainees. Almost. As the years went by it remained an issue I cared about. But I never really did anything big. I never committed. There was no hiding from the fact that I had put my own self-interest ahead of fighting for a cause. I had ducked it and settled for comfort. Was that so bad? Sitting in the car watching Lucy walk toward the gate, I wondered what I should have done.
Then, when a little while later she came back, we drove away and I guess I must have started to think about something else.
fourteen
trimmed sideburns
The next day the renderers arrived at number eighteen. The house had been tied up with scaffolding, which made it look even bigger than it was, which was no mean feat. The renderers were crazy men who shouted all day. I say crazy, but they may have just been incredibly witty. All I know was that they shouted at each other in a language I didn’t understand as if they were fighting, and just at the moment they seemed to have worked themselves up to such a pitch that I thought it was about to come to blows and knife fights, they would all burst out laughing hysterically. This happened in five-minute cycles all day. Loud, louder, louder, LOUDER, LOUDEST, laughing hysterically.
When they talked it was as loud as shouting. When they shouted it was so loud it peeled their rendering off the walls and they had to start again.
Rendering a house consists of madly flinging a concretey render mix vaguely in the house’s direction until everything in the vicinity is covered in it, then smoothing down the render that has actually hit its target and trying to clean up all the rest that hasn’t. Somehow, the render that misses manages to get not just on the ground directly under the wall being rendered, but also on the roof above it, the house next to it, the fence in between the two and pretty much everywhere else within shouting distance except—miraculously—the renderers. One thing they do learn at rendering school is to keep themselves clean.
Rendering is like painting: no matter how meticulously you try to cover up to ensure no paint can possibly get on the floor, table or grandparent you’re trying to protect, once you remove all the layers of old sheets, newspapers, blankets, magazines, doonas, books and pillows you’ve been using as protection you will inevitably find that which you’ve been trying to protect has been spattered with paint. Even though it’s impossible.
The renderers wrapped up Ivan’s house in a giant tennis net so thoroughly that Christo would have been proud. It appeared impossible for any render to escape the netting. Their messy product was in a controlled environment and the only way any could have got over our side of the fence was if we’d snuck over and surreptitiously grabbed a handful while they were having a smoko. And yet for weeks after they had finished we kept finding little puddles of the stuff on the side of our house, on the ground, on our windows, even once in a coffee cup at the back of the cupboard.
‘Did you sneak over and surreptitiously grab a handful while they were having a smoko?’ I asked Lucy.
‘No,’ she said, and I believed her. It wasn’t her. And it wasn’t the builders’ fault. Render, like paint, is just sneaky.
I went alone to Kings Cross, mainly because I wasn’t sure that it would be a great place to bring a one-year-old. It was 1 p.m. when I got off the train. I rose up the escalators and, via a long arcade, emerged into Darlinghurst Road about midday.
Kings Cross in daylight is like a drag queen without makeup. All the flaws the night hides are exposed. It’s dirty and scummy. The footpaths have been nicely paved but there are cigarette butts all over them, and a smell of hungover morning-after garbage, as if last night there was a huge party. And last night was a Monday, the quietest night of the week. On Darlinghurst Road are bars, strip clubs, 24-hour convenience stores and fast-food joints with the odd chemist and newsagent thrown in to try to give the impression that it’s a nice normal street, really. Although there is a library, bravely and uncomfortably nestled in between Porky’s Nite Spot and the Risqué Adult Shop. Then McDonald’s, of course, is full of people you suspect don’t have their own kitchens, and who would never even give a moment’s thought to trying one of the McSalads.
‘Hey matey, can you lend me 40 cents?’ A scrappily dressed fortyish man with a beard croaked at me.
‘No, sorry,’ I said hurrying past.
I objected to the word ‘lend’. What repayment scheme was he proposing? Eight monthly repayments of five cents plus interest calculated by reference to commercial lending rates? I don’t think so. I wondered how many times that day he would ask the question, and with what success rate.
On the streets were nervous-looking tourists searching for the quickest way out and probably wishing they had opted to stay in Homebush after all, backpackers wondering whether being ‘right in the centre of the action’ was really all it was cracked up to be and tossing up whether to leg it for that other hostel at Bondi, sailors whose gleaming white uniforms stood out as pretty much the only things that were bright and clean in the Cross, and, in the majority, the shabby. The shabby walked as if they were at sea, or on a trampoline—unsteadily—dressed in whatever they had and with a look on their faces that indicated that everything was pretty much fucked. As I wandered about Kings Cross I saw the same faces again and again. They all seemed to be walking in circles.
They were adamant, too, about everything. Across the road two men and a woman argued. They talked too loudly and gestured wildly. One of them flung his arm back behind him to point somewhere and nearly knocked himself off his feet. He threw out a leg to recover, staggered back a step, then shambled forward again, still just as adamant about whatever it was.
The fountain at Kings Cross is quite beautiful. The water billows out in all directions to form a sphere, but a fountain can’t save Kings Cross; rather, you feel sorry for it, trapped in the grot. Down an alley from the fountain is a bookshop, but Kings Cross has had an influence: the front window is filled with porn magazines. Inside, War and Peace glances uneasily at the stack of Penthouse magazines next to him and hopes against hope that one day soon someone will buy him to get him the hell out of there. He still feels bitter about the man who picked him up and thumbed through his pages a few days before, then just as hope was brimming put him back down and grabbed a stack of pornos.
Outside a man on a streetsweeper vehicle drove past. Good luck, but just like cleaning up leaves in autumn, no matter how much you pick up there’ll be just as much mess tomorrow.
Past the fountain and down the hill there are less shops and more apartments as Darlinghurst Road gets to the point where it turns into Macleay Street and Kings Cross becomes Potts Point. The personnel changes in this area, and a succession of fit-looking young men with arty bits of facial hair and wearing tucked-in tank tops, trendy pants and sandals passed me carrying their shopping or washing. There are hotels full of Japanese tourists, money changers, gourmet delis and posh restaurants, but the streets are still grey and drab.<
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I turned and headed back to the Cross, past the Wayside Chapel. The guy who’d asked me for 40 cents walked past again.
‘Hey matey, can you lend me 40 cents?’ If he recognised me from fifteen minutes before he showed no sign of it.
‘No, sorry.’
He staggered off down the road.
An alley leads from the Wayside Chapel back to Darlinghurst Road. There are lots of alleys in the Cross, and I felt nervous walking down them even in broad daylight. I saw an autobank which reminded me of something stupid I did a few years ago, withdrawing $200 from an autobank in the Cross at two in the morning. Still, most people who are at the Cross at two in the morning do something stupid.
The alley had a computer and electrical shop that must have had very secure locks or else it would have been empty, and next to it a tattoo and engraving parlour. I hoped they never got their two functions mixed up.
Back up Darlinghurst Road, the way I had come, was a woman not really getting into the spirit of fast food as she sat in Hungry Jack’s slowly sipping a drink and writing a letter.
A fake London double-decker bus drove by, with the bottom floor empty and the three people up top looking indifferent. It seemed to fit.
Another tattoo shop was right next to a glossy souvenir joint with its front window full of shiny didgeridoos. No one seemed to be inside either one. Across the road a woman was sprawled across the wide steps of an adult shop, frantically going through her handbag. At least I assumed it was hers. I walked past a strip club and a 20-year-old girl smothered in make-up whistled twice at me as the black-panted and t-shirted 30-year-old man beside her put his hand out in front of me and said ‘Come on, someone, come on’. Gee it was tempting. The way he put his hand out, almost grabbing my arm, seemed particularly desperate and depressing. And pointless. Did he really think that that was going to change my mind? ‘No, I won’t go into the strip club. Hang on, he’s got his arm out blocking my path. That must mean it’s really good in there. Okay. I’m sold.’
Ten metres later I was propositioned again, this time by a smiley backpacker offering me a leaflet. To be consistent I declined again. Porky’s Nite Spot was next. It was closed but loud music blared out of it and on the steps a middle-aged woman swayed from side to side, dancing. I didn’t even get an invitation from her.
I saw snippets of lots of little dramas in the Cross that made me want to stop and watch what would happen next but I felt too conspicuous to do so. I got the feeling that if I looked too nosy someone might get a bit annoyed with me. Halfway back up Darlinghurst Road I did stop and leant against a tree to jot a few notes down in my notebook.
‘Excuse me,’ said a male voice. I looked up. Asian. Male. Thirty-something, clearly a drug lord. The triads were here. I was in trouble. Behind him another one, his number two. He’d be the one that did the dirty work and dumped my body in the harbour.
‘Um, yes,’ I said. Tried a smile.
‘Are you wri-ing me a parking tick-e?’ Behind him were two parked taxis. ‘It is not a taxi stan, but me and ma frien were just havin a quick dri.’
‘Oh. No. Sorry. No.’
‘Okay.’
I hurried on, relieved to be alive, but perturbed that I looked enough like a parking inspector to be mistaken for one.
I turned left up Bayswater Road, and outside a pub saw two young men, both with shaved heads, t-shirts, backwards baseball caps and trackie-pants.
‘I wanted to fuck him up, man. Fuck him up. He wouldn’t fuckin’ stand up to me. The fuckin’ gutless prick. Fuckin’ gutless, man.’
‘Fuckin’.’
‘Gutless fuckin’ prick man. I woulda fucked him up.’
‘Fuckin’.’
All very adamant. Who knows what it meant. I certainly didn’t feel that either asking them to expand or staying to listen would have been a good move, but it was a fascinating tip of some iceberg.
I wound around to Kellett Street, which is the only part of the Cross that looks good in daytime. Cafés run down the street and trees on each side lean over and embrace above the middle. It should really be called an avenue.
Another flotsam-looking man walked past having an adamant conversation on his mobile phone. Except he didn’t have a mobile phone. I snaked through more alleys back to Darlinghurst Road and while it was broad daylight and I was probably perfectly safe I didn’t feel perfectly safe.
I was glad I hadn’t brought Bibi. In fact I hadn’t seen any kids at all in the Cross.
As I headed out of the Cross, south along Darlinghurst Road, a man staggered past me, heading without joy into the Cross. He stopped, fumbled in his pocket and dropped his wallet on the ground. He reached over to pick it up and nearly fell over. He then straightened, and as he tried to put the wallet back into his pocket he dropped it again. ‘BLOODY STUPID WALLET!’ he shouted. It’s what you expect in the Cross. Everything seems slightly incompetent, bumbling. I had learnt this several years ago as a criminal lawyer when I represented Bob Lane.
Bob Lane lived in the Cross. He was a native of the Cross. He was a tall, wary man, thin and hungry looking and 31 years of age, but he looked 45. Bob had been a heroin user for years and had a criminal record to match. For someone who had made a career out of crime, he was very bad at it. His incompetence would have driven him out of any other industry. His record was 14 pages long and had 26 entries. There’s a common misconception that those with long criminal records are the dangerous ones. In fact, they’re the hopeless ones; they’re the ones who keep getting caught.
He was definitely guilty. No ifs, no buts, no reasonable doubts. He did it. His guilt was as plain as the nose on his face. Plainer in fact, as it was a small, gentle, unobtrusive nose, one that looked somewhat ill at ease and out of place in the middle of the hard features that surrounded it. It was the sort of nose that looked like it would have much preferred a quiet life in the country to one full of petty and incompetent crime. A pity for it, then, that it was attached to Bob Lane’s face.
Criminal defence lawyers lose a lot of cases. Some you know you’re going to lose before you start, and in fact that takes the pressure off a bit and gives you a chance to hone your cross-examining skills for another day when they might actually make a difference. But Bob Lane’s case was so hopeless that running it was just plain embarrassing.
He’d been charged with shoplifting from a hardware shop near Kings Cross. He had actually got the power drill out of the shop, but when the store’s security video had been examined the police had simply recognised him. They had arrested him and later sent us a series of still pictures from the security video. The photos clearly showed a person slipping a power drill into their pants. It would not be accurate to say that the photos showed someone who looked like Bob Lane. To say that would be a gross understatement, like saying that the sandy area that divides the land from the ocean looked like a beach. It didn’t look like a beach. It was a beach. The figure in those photos didn’t look like Bob Lane; it was Bob Lane. Undoubtedly. Somehow he had managed to get so close to the camera that there were eleven well-lit frontal shots of him taken from less than three metres away. He couldn’t have got more clearly in shot if he’d been professionally posed. He was even smiling. In one he looked like he was mouthing the word ‘cheese’.
‘Mr Lane,’ I said as delicately as I could, ‘the person in these photos looks a lot like you.’
He scrutinised them. ‘Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.’
I let the silence hang. Eventually he broke it. ‘But it’s not, but.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, ’course I’m sure. I mean, like, I swear to God.’
‘You know if you plead guilty you’ll get a lesser sentence than if you plead not guilty and then get found guilty.’
‘Yeah. I know that, of course I do.’ He looked at the photo again. ‘How much less?’
‘About a quarter.’
He kept looking at the photos. ‘Only a quarter?’
‘Yep.’
‘Not, like a half?’
‘No, a quarter.’
He sighed. ‘I can’t, but.’Cos I never done it. How can I plead guilty to something I never done? ’Sides, I never plead guilty.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about how we’re going to run your defence then. Have you thought any more about where you were when it happened? September 16th, evening.’
‘Yeah, yeah I have,’ Bob replied.
‘And . . .’
‘Well I would have been around, ya know.’
‘Around where?’
‘Well, I live up the Cross, so around there.’
‘Around the area where the photo of the person who looks exactly like you committing the crime was taken?’
‘Well yeah, but it wasn’t me, but. Like I said.’
‘But you’re not sure where you were on that particular day?’
‘Well, I would have been around. You know,’ he said as if he was spelling it out for someone who was a bit thick. That was obviously as good as it got. I imagined Lane winning a criminal law award for Worst Attempt at a Watertight Alibi.
‘Is there anyone who you may have been with?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Loads of people.’ A pause.
‘Right. Like who?’
‘I mean I don’t know exactly who, obviously, but people, yeah. I’m always with people.’
‘People who could come to court and say you were with them?’
‘Um, well, I don’t think so, not really. Not really those sort of people.’
‘Okay. Well,we’ll see how we go then.’ I tried to sound simultaneously optimistic and realistic, which in this case was impossible.
‘So what are my chances, then?’
Shithouse. A snowflake’s in hell, a fire’s in Antarctica, a beer’s at a bucks’ party was what I wanted to say, but settled for, ‘Not great, but we’ll do our best.’
As I waited in court for the case to start I considered Bob Lane’s facial hair. The photos showed a man with a goatee beard that was connected to the rest of his hair by two thin sideburns that ran along his face. On the day of the hearing, three months later, Lane’s beard and sideburns were exactly the same shape and length. You’d think you’d at least make some attempt to look different.
A Month of Sundays Page 15
