by Peter Temple
At the office, I rang the last number I had for D. J. Olivier in Sydney. He was capable of reaching the places Simone Bendsten couldn’t reach. A voice said, ‘You have called a number that is no longer connected.’
I sat in the chair and did some drowsing, looking at the ceiling. No cobwebs. In a room dusted once in six years? I got up and inspected the room. Nothing. Spiders hung out their nets in air currents, they fished where there was life, where the air moved, where there were living things. In this room, there were no flows, nothing could live here except me.
The phone rang. It was D. J.’s assistant with the ruling-class voice. I wished I could think of a way to get her to say fuck, she gave the word an extra vowel. She put me onto the man.
‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Turning into a regular.’
‘Given the last bill,’ I said, ‘you don’t need many regulars to keep afloat.’
D. J. Olivier laughed, a man comfortable in the knowledge that he owned the only pub in town. ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ he said. ‘My late dad used to say that.’
‘Your late dad and the late St Luke. I’ve got a name.’
‘Spell.’
I gave him Mickey.
‘And ramifications?’
‘Ramify,’ I said. ‘Ramify to buggery.’
I shut up shop and walked around to Taub’s Joinery, let myself in with my key and felt, as I had from the beginning, that this was my proper place of work.
Charlie was at one of the massive redgum benches, his back to me.
‘So, Mr Busy,’ he said, not looking around. He claimed that his hearing was bad. If this was true, another sense, unknown to medical science, had developed to compensate.
I walked across and stood beside him. ‘Just mucking around?’ I said. ‘No work to do?’
He said nothing, chiselled with precision and economy, a thumb the size of a doorknob guiding the blade. I knew what he was doing. He was making dovetail blocks to attach the big desk’s top to its frame.
‘No one will see those, you know,’ I said. ‘And if they do, they won’t understand. And if they do understand, they won’t care.’
How best to attach tops to bottoms. The crude use screws. But wood moves – it shrinks as it dries, and it also moves with the humidity levels. The wider the surface, the bigger the movement. Something has to give. Since the screws won’t, the tabletop cracks. Less crude woodworkers use metal fasteners that allow for movement. Not Charlie. Charlie scorned metal. He solved the problem in the most difficult way: dovetail-shaped pieces attached to the top slid into dovetail blocks on the rails.
Charlie pushed half-a-dozen blocks my way, a sweep of a hand. ‘I can hear on the wireless nonsense,’ he said. ‘You want to be useful or talk rubbish?’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘You should be a talkback host on the ABC, drawing things out of people, sympathetic.’
I went to the chisel cupboard and chose one. All the tools were sharp. In this workshop, following some ancient European work discipline, blades were sharpened after use, wiped with oil and put away. Those chisels prone to rust had their little oily socks to wear.
At the bench, I held a male piece against a block and marked the angles with a knife. ‘A router,’ I said. ‘This is what routers were invented for. We’re like printers rejecting the Linotype machine.’
Charlie finished a block, removed the dead cheroot from his mouth and blew down the precise channel in the wood. ‘You can teach an idiot,’ he said, ‘but you cannot make him learn. Grosskopf said that.’
‘And we’re all indebted to him. On the money every time was Grosskopf. Didn’t go to his head either. What’s the bowls news? Still thrashing the pishers?’
‘Four on the ladder,’ said Charlie, holding up massive fingers. ‘Good thing for them I don’t start earlier. Before they were born. The fathers, some of them.’
We worked side by side, finished the blocks, testing the slide of each one, they couldn’t be too tight. Then we set about fixing them to the short rails of the desk, gluing them into housings Charlie had chiselled out. After that we made buttons for the long rails.
When I looked up, the light was almost gone from the high and dusty northern windows. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Beer time.’
We sharpened chisels, burnishing on leather strops. I swept, coaxed Charlie out of the front door, slightly easier this evening because there was nothing being glued, no clamps to fiddle with.
On the way to the Prince, walking down wet streets lined with Golfs and Civics, here and there a bump in the line made by a four-wheel-drive, Charlie said, ‘They want me to give it up.’
‘Give what up?’
He waved a hand. ‘The work.’
The early autumn evening colder now, felt on the face. ‘Who wants?’
‘The family.’
We parted around a puddle, came back together, touched for an instant, my twenty-year-old raincoat from Henry Buck’s brushing an overcoat that John Curtin might have worn.
‘All of them?’ I said.
Charlie had three children, all female, and six grandchildren.
We turned the corner, the pub was in sight, a lick of light on the pavement, two people leaving, parting, heads together for a few seconds, more than just friends.
‘Most,’ Charlie said.
‘And Gus?’
Gus was a grand-daughter, a trade union executive. Charlie thought she was the brains of the family, his true heir.
‘No, not Gus.’
‘I’m glad to hear that.’ I was partial to Gus. ‘So what do you tell them?’
Charlie looked at me. ‘What do you think? I tell them, they find me not breathing, they can know I’ve given it up.’
‘Sensible retirement plan,’ I said, returning to breathing.
The pub was busy, Stan’s scalp glistening. Charlie headed for the bowls cabal. The Youth Club was in its corner, animated, an argument in progress, situation normal. Wilbur Ong, sitting against the wall, saw me coming in the dim, freckled mirror that had seen my father and my grandfather coming.
‘Jack,’ said Wilbur, ‘listen, they’re offerin $3.25 on the Sainters tomorrow. These blokes don’t want to be in it.’
‘Is that so?’ I said, trying to catch Stan’s eye. ‘Not a vote of no confidence in the team on the eve of the first game, is it?’
Norm O’Neill shook his head, raised his eyes to the ceiling, shifted his glasses with a thumb, adding another smudge. ‘Sometimes I wonder,’ he said.
We waited. Stan looked my way. I signalled a round.
‘Some people,’ said Norm, looking at Wilbur, ‘you ask yourself how they get through the day, don’t walk in front of a bloody tram, think the drain cleaner’s the bicarb.’
‘Sometimes you wonder why some people got a team at all,’ said Wilbur.
‘There’s your team,’ said Norm. ‘You stand by em, thick and thin, team’s like family, can’t walk away from the family. Course there’s always the odd few mongrels in a family, more in some than others I can reliably say. Yes, indeed, lend em a quid, you can bloody write that off, then there’s …’
‘Goin somewhere?’ said Wilbur. ‘Or just rantin about the brother-in-law, what’s his name? The fat one. Dropped off in Coles, lookin at the meat.’
Norm lowered his chin, looked at Wilbur, at me, at Eric Tanner. ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘you don’t go bettin on the buggers just cause they’re your own buggers. You wait till they’ve got some form. Common bloody sense’ll tell you that. Had any.’
Things went on like this for a good while, broadening to take in such issues as disloyal remarks allegedly made before a Fitzroy–Richmond game in 1973, the relative merits of Kevin Murray and Ragsy Goold as defenders, and the fact that Wilbur’s nephew had once stood for the Melbourne Football Club committee.
Through the thicket of pub noise, I heard the dot-dot-dash hoots. I collected Charlie and we went into the vaporous night, mist around the streetlights.
Gus was double-parked
in a new car, a smallish four-wheel-drive. When Charlie was in, I said, ‘Paid for by the sweat of the workers, this stylish machine?’
She leaned forward to look at me, a face of planes and angles under a sharp haircut. ‘Bestowed upon me by the oppressed in gratitude for my sleepless vigilance on their behalf,’ she said.
‘Need any help with a vigil,’ I said, ‘come around. My door is always unlocked.’
‘I’d have thought all the sawing would have seen you nodding off by 9 pm,’ she said.
‘I can find strength when the need arises.’
‘You’d be horrified if I took you up on that.’
‘An assertion that should be tested,’ I said.
‘Enough talk,’ said Charlie. ‘Take me home, I’m hungry.’
We looked at each other for an instant longer than we ever had, his grand-daughter and I. Then they were off, turned the corner, huge indicator flashing.
Home in Linda’s car, along slick streets, cushioned from cold and noise, thinking about her in London. I missed being with her, hearing her warm, quizzical, sceptical voice on the radio. I missed knowing that she might ring late at night to talk, might arrive on my doorstep at any time with a bottle of Bollinger and make unambiguous suggestions while I was opening it.
I parked under the first tree, leaves still holding, there was a pocket of warmth around the gardens in autumn, we had our own climate here. Home. Sit for a while in front of the old brick building, the streetlight catching drops rolling off the leaves, turning them to silver tears.
A car drew up beside me, only centimetres away. Its passenger window came down. A big pale face looked at me. I pressed the button and my window descended.
‘Mr Irish.’
He was middle-aged, lined brow, moustache, probably grown in youth to look an age he had now long passed.
‘The Red Shield Appeal night campaign,’ I said. ‘I never refuse the Salvos. I’ll need a receipt for tax purposes.’
‘Mickey Franklin,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll give you a name.’
‘A name?’
‘Janene Ballich.’
‘How do you spell that?’
He spelled Ballich.
‘Names are useful,’ I said. ‘Come in and see my collected phone books.’
He ran a lingering finger over his top lip. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘this is serious shit, mate. Goodnight.’
The car reversed and was gone in seconds.
I was in the bath on Sunday morning, drinking tea, soaking away the aches and pains that an afternoon at the football can cause, when the cordless phone rang.
‘Youth Club survive the excitement?’ said Linda.
‘It was they who supported me from the arena,’ I said. ‘One under each arm, one prodding me from behind. How do you know anyway?’
‘I am in the communication hub of the world,’ she said. ‘We know everything, even the results of football matches at the far end of one of our spokes. Lesser spokes.’
‘You can’t have lesser spokes. All spokes are equal.’
‘Believe me, we have lesser spokes. And lesser spokespeople.’
‘We is it? Five minutes and it’s we. Attack dog to corgi. What took you so long to call?’
‘Things to do,’ said Linda. ‘Settle into my Thames-side apartment, stock up at Harrods, testdrive a few rentboys, that sort of thing. I’ve missed you a bit.’
‘You too have been in my thoughts whenever I get behind the wheel of your car. Don’t hurry back. How long is this nonsense going to last anyhow?’
I was turning the hot water tap with a big toe. It gushed.
‘What’s that sound?’ said Linda.
‘Just a friend in the shower. Came by needing a shower.’
‘You bastard. Hold on a sec. Nigel, open another bottle, darling.’
‘So. How long?’
‘It’s going well,’ she said. ‘As far as I can tell. Management’s happy, they say they’re happy. Full board of callers. Hard work though. Umpteen bloody papers to read, magazines, trying to crack the code. There’s too much fucking nuance in this country, I can tell you.’
‘The men like to be spanked, the women are happy to oblige. They both like uniforms. How hard can that be to grasp?’
Linda laughed. ‘Maybe you could come over and produce me.’
‘Come over and do something for you. I’m not too hot at production.’
We talked, the autumn sunlight moved across the room, it was almost midnight in London when we said goodbye. I dressed and made breakfast but even Angel Cardoso’s sublime jambon from Geelong and thoughts of the Saints’ seven-goal last quarter couldn’t cancel the sense of loss. I walked to Gorb’s and bought the papers, read them sitting on a bench in the park, starting with the sports section.
SAINTS OVERPOWER CARLTON. That made me feel better. It was a beginning, a clean start to the season.
At home, a message from my sister on the machine. I rang.
‘Jesus,’ said Rosa. ‘What’s happening? Is this a time warp? The response time just shortened by twelve days.’
‘We are constantly tuning our operating procedures,’ I said.
I crossed the Yarra in Linda’s Alfa and we ate in a place that was uncertain whether it wanted to be a restaurant or a house party that charged. Then we toured the art galleries of South Yarra, the soft-shirted owners treating Rosa the way casinos treat highrollers. In the last one, I left her talking to the smooth young art pimp and wandered around. The smallest chamber was given over to four large canvases dotted with crude animals and symbols that appeared to be lifted directly from the art of the Nupe in northern Nigeria.
Rosa and the gallerista came up behind me.
‘Excellent investments,’ said the man. ‘I’m afraid Gary’s got a terminal smack habit. This’s the work of two years. Could be the last.’
I looked at a signature. Gary Webber. I thought of the walk at Macedon. Sir Colin had spat the name. People the Long-mores touched didn’t seem to lead lucky lives.
‘Well,’ said Cyril Wootton, ‘that’s not very good, is it? Have to do better than that, won’t you? Clients on premium rates expect premium results, don’t they?’
Replete after the long-awaited breakfast of soft-poached eggs with the lot at Enzio’s, I was sitting in a client’s chair in Wootton’s office, a chamber appointed like the Writing Room on the first-class deck of a P & O liner. Cyril was behind his large desk, small, plump hands folded on the leather inlay, his head cocked, very much the bank manager with a defaulting borrower, say, a farmer whose livestock, crops and homestead had been destroyed by a freak hailstorm.
‘Cyril,’ I said, ‘I suggest you go easy on the terminal interrogative phrases.’
‘What?’ he said, coming upright in his chair, alarm in his eyes, eyebrows risen. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘Interrogatives again,’ I said. ‘To business. The person’s phone calls for a month or so.’
Wootton sat back, adjusted his tie, smoothed his oiled hair, sniffed. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think you forget who is employer and whom is employed.’
‘Always uppermost in my mind, Cyril,’ I said. ‘That and grammar.’
‘It’ll take a day or two,’ he said. ‘It’s become more difficult. Apparently every Tom, Dick and Harry wants this sensitive information now.’
‘It is annoying when the agencies of law enforcement jump the queue,’ I said. ‘Speaking of which, is that records clerk dog of yours still in place?’
Wootton had suborned a civilian in the police force, a grudge-bearer of some kind, the public service was full of them – evolutionary losers in the Darwinian in-fights, political suck-ups beached a mile inland by the tsunamis of change in government, ordinary incompetents embittered by being ignored for promotion. These people needed little encouragement to defame their superiors. A few long lunches, a day at the races, dinner with a prepaid harlot or two, and they were groomed and ready for service.
‘I assume so,’ said Wootton.
I reached across for one of his pads and wrote the name Janene Ballich.
Cyril put on his new glasses, round and gold-rimmed. ‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘Some connection with the deceased. She may be in the jacks’ database.’
Cyril gave me his banker’s look again. ‘One conserves one’s resources for the truly important,’ he said. ‘One begins with the newspaper files.’
I’d had enough prudent bank manager. ‘Really? One could also easily find oneself bereft of one’s only employee remotely capable of dealing with one’s titled clientele. With me, sunshine?’
‘I’ll make the request,’ he said, not happy.
‘An answer today would be nice.’
‘That is not within my control.’
‘Pull on the chokechain,’ I said. ‘What’s the point of having dogs if you can’t command them?’
A knock on the door.
‘Enter,’ said Cyril.
I turned. It was Mrs Davenport, Wootton’s receptionist. In the innocent pre-AIDS days, she had been the front-of-house person for a specialist in social complaints who ministered to the big end of town. It was perfect training for her job with Cyril. Through his parlour too passed people burdened with painful and embarrassing afflictions which they did not wish to become common knowledge. Mrs Davenport treated these clients as she had her earlier ones – with an air of frigid disdain.
‘Your next appointee will be here in fifteen minutes, Mr Wootton,’ she said. ‘As you know, the person does not wish to be kept waiting.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wootton.
She withdrew.
‘If I get anything, I’ll send it around,’ said Wootton. ‘To which of the places you flit among?’
‘Between, Cyril. I flit between. It’s thieves I’m among.’
His eyebrows rose again.
‘Charlie’s,’ I said. ‘Put it in the box at Charlie’s.’
In the reception room, I said goodbye to Mrs Davenport. ‘I can’t promise when I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘Can you endure that uncertainty?’
She gazed at me, unblinking, no emotion disturbing her white marble countenance. I longed to reach out and touch her hair, disturb its frozen waves like an icebreaker piercing the Arctic sea.
