True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  ‘I suppose Nick Newbone didn’t either.’

  ‘We were coming to see you.’

  ‘Bullshit, as your chums out there would say.’

  ‘All right. So I wanted to hear what you were going to say to them. As it happens you said nothing.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say yet.’

  ‘About what? Mining rights. Unemployment? There never is.’

  ‘There’s a whole raft of proposals in the melting pot. Things are on track.’

  ‘Jargon, gobbledegook.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘The truth. In newspeak, it’s a scam, it’s all a bloody scam.’

  ‘I’ve got to be in Gamble’s office in five minutes.’

  ‘I get the message, don’t talk about anything nasty. Where’s Matt?’

  ‘Talking to Smart.’

  ‘Oh boy, so much for the non-alignment pact. You lot don’t know what time of day it is, do you?’

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’ He raised his hand. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. No, I still don’t want to talk about the delicate state of our marriage, thanks very much.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you that I think I know who’s been bugging me all this time. Nick’s been helping me.’

  His curiosity flickered to life. ‘Who?’

  ‘Teddy O’Meara.’

  ‘Not the cop you talked to?’

  ‘One of them.’

  He slumped. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Jesus, Rose, you’ve got to be sure before you say things like that.’

  ‘I am, I know. It’s a long story for now, but I just know I’m right.’

  He swivelled in his chair. The window looked out on to a concrete wall. ‘It makes sense,’ he said eventually. ‘A pity we’ll have to sit on it.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m going to blow it right open.’

  He turned back to her, put his elbows on the desk, and leaned on his cupped hands. ‘Don’t you see anything? I stand for law and order. We can’t go round knocking the cops. The Opposition would have a field day.’ He shifted before her uncomprehending gaze. ‘Think of what Banks and Meurant would do to us,’ he added.

  ‘You and I know about the cops.’

  ‘There’s some good ones around these days. Things have changed.’

  ‘Maybe, but you can’t guarantee there’s no bad ones. Kit, Teddy O’Meara makes perfect sense, because he knew I’d never suspect him. Even after ‘81, we’re the kind of people who still go on trusting the police.’

  ‘So what do you propose to do?’

  ‘I have to think about it. Maybe actually go to the police. Jeffrey Campbell might be all I’ve got.’

  ‘Do you think he knows?’

  ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Surely not.’ But she really didn’t know.

  ‘Drop it, Rose. The whole thing is most politically unsound.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Live with it? It’s gone too far for that.’

  He was silent.

  Finally, she said, ‘I think you’re still suffering from jet lag.’

  He glanced at his watch and then at Sharna. ‘I’ve got a babysitter organised for her. For Gamble’s party.’ It was the first time he had acknowledged Sharna’s presence. Then, as he passed her, he spoke with unexpected gentleness: ‘I know you loved Larissa, Rose. I know.’

  She could have sworn there were tears in his eyes, but her own were so close to the surface again that she couldn’t see him well enough to be certain.

  ‘The bitch came and took her away.’ Larissa’s face was screwed up with fury. ‘That’s what people like that do to you. I always said she was rotten.’ She’d been drinking for hours.

  ‘Then why d’you go running after her? If you’d listened to me. You never listen to nobody.’

  Gary’s shaven head gleamed in the caravan’s light. He had had a skull and crossbones tattooed on it while Larissa was away. A slight inflammation flared around the fresh needlework. ‘Ought to give you a fuckin’ good hiding, taking off like that.’

  ‘Just you try it. I can do anything. I can drive cars. Tell you, this geezer let me drive all the way across the desert. Amazing. I’m going for my licence.’

  ‘The fuck you are.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m gunna get that kid back. She can’t go round pinching kids like that.’

  Gary spat, laughed. ‘They’d get her off you in five minutes.’

  ‘Told you,’ Jason said, pushing his eyelids into shape with his finger and thumb, ‘told you what the cop said I was to tell you, Larissa.’

  ‘What cop? You been talking behind my back, eh?’ Gary bunched his knuckles.

  ‘Told you, Campbell came round, with a message for Larissa. I told you, didden I, she’s bringing the kid back here tomorrow. Your auntie rang. That’s what Campbell said.’

  ‘See,’ said Gary, ‘I told you, you’re nothing but friggin’ trouble. Friggin’ trouble, Larissa. I told you not to get the cops on my back. Miss Goody Two-Shoes, eh. Ought to smack you in, really should.’ He drank some more beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  ‘Shut your mouth, Gary.’ Jason leaned his head between his knees, and then threw it back in a desperate effort to clear it. Through the awning he could see the weight of the stars on the world. He had been reading about wormholes in the galaxies and how superior beings could tunnel through them to get to other universes. The stump of his leg ached and he hated with renewed passion the artificial limb which kept him bound to this caravan site, to the interminable days which followed one after the other.

  Aloud, he said, ‘We’re oppressed.’

  ‘Pass a tube, mate,’ said Gary. ‘You piking?’

  Jason didn’t answer. On reflection, he couldn’t think of anything he particularly wanted to do, had never known any alternative but singing tyres beneath him, which were now denied him. He might have liked to be a farmer, perhaps. He chuckled softly to himself. A gentleman farmer with a crutch. If he and Larissa could break free; maybe there was something they could do together. If she would love him. It came to him that Larissa might go away sometime soon, that her trip to Wellington and the crazy dude in the car had shown her a route out of Weyville. The thought swept him, changing his mood to one of desolation while at the same time he exulted for her, if it were to come true.

  ‘We got too much time on our hands here,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and whose fault is that?’ Gary was getting ready to have another go at Larissa. ‘We had a sweet little number going and she led that bastard straight to us.’

  ‘Campbell was following O’Meara,’ Jason said.

  ‘No fucking way. He was following her.’

  ‘Anyway, we got out in time. Unless you got something going I don’t know about, Gary.’

  Gary ignored this last comment. ‘He makes me uneasy, very uneasy, does Campbell,’ he ruminated instead.

  ‘He can watch Verschoelt. Hear he’s growing a bit of stuff in his packing sheds.’

  ‘Horticulture, yeah. Ol’ Larry’s spending up, I hear.’

  ‘What’s O’Meara got going with you anyway?’ Larissa had relaxed her guard. ‘D’you give him a rake-off?’

  ‘Told you not to ask questions like that Larissa.’

  ‘But I want to know. Protection, why? Why you?’

  ‘The ultimate shit,’ said Jason dreamily, lapsing into space again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You watch it.’ The edge of danger in Gary’s voice hardened.

  ‘Some things,’ Jason said, ‘some things O’Meara would do to your aunt, and some things he couldn’t quite bring himself to do. Like crap in her sitting room.’

  ‘Bastard.’ But it was Larissa whose arm Gary twisted up behind her back.

  ‘Why? Tell me.’ Larissa’s voice rose, shrill with pain, but unable to stop asking.

  ‘And the biggest crap, just taking the mickey. What a laugh, her own family, near as nothing, sitting t
here growing dope in her backyard. And Gary, our bro, feeding out all the story on Auntie Rose as it happened. Well, that’s what O’Meara thought. Pity you fell out with her, Larissa.’

  Larissa looked from one to another.

  ‘Besides, Gary doesn’t trust women. You’d have thought O’Meara would have worked that one out.’

  He ducked, seeing Gary’s fist flying at his face and his boot hitting Larissa all at the same time. The next time Gary hit him he tried to fight back, but he was never much good, with or without his leg.

  ‘Friggin’ puffball.’ Gary stood over him and kicked his ribs. Jason’s consciousness faded and then swelled briefly, long enough for him to hear Larissa whimpering, before it faded again.

  The holiday brochures mocked Campbell. The twinkling blue seas shone with an unnatural glitter, the white sand winked at him.

  ‘Why did you invite Gabby and Denise to come with us?’ He had asked his wife three times now.

  Each time she had looked at him with puzzled eyes, as if he was coming down with the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s, he thought.

  ‘They’re company,’ Lola explained patiently. ‘We need a few people.’

  ‘I hardly know them.’

  ‘But you’ll like them. Denise has got style.’

  The renegade solution of just calling the whole thing off tempted him. But at what cost? A vision of them going on and on like this with no let-up, and her silences, appalled him. She would get over it in time, but the need for change, rest, respite would go unsatisfied.

  She would be shamed, too, and he knew he couldn’t bear that. Different they might be, but she deserved better than to be made foolish in the town where she lived.

  Maybe she had read his thoughts, for when he looked up again, resigned, ready to capitulate, her irritation with him had been replaced by a look of pleading.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun.’

  Her smile was as instant as a camera click. ‘I nearly forgot,’ she said. ‘There was a message. It came while you were on your way home. Some chap called Daniels, ringing from Wellington. Said he’d remembered something.’ She handed him a slip of paper with a car registration number jotted down. ‘He reckoned you’d know what it was.’

  Studying it, he thought, another piece, and checked it out in his notebook. It was almost all together now. The Studebaker had been the following car that forced Daniels off the road, and in the oncoming car was another person who did not want Daniels in town. That was Teddy O’Meara. One more piece of evidence and he would be ready to move. It was where to find it that eluded him. He felt totally alone and longed to confide in someone. His wife had begun to buff her fingernails with a little chamois pad. In his mind’s eye, he saw the circle of laughing young men at the station, Teddy’s friends. There was not one whom he could be certain was not a confidant or mate. He should have told the bosses long before it came to this, but he had kept on hoping he was wrong, that it was he who had made the mistake. The men stuck together. Us and them. Not Teddy, please, not any of them behaving like this. Teddy might be an abrasive young bastard, and he was already under a certain amount of suspicion, but let him not have got into this. There was a difference between those who succumbed to temptation and the deliverance of evil.

  Well, he could see it was past that. But there was one more thing that he wanted before he blew the whistle. Early in the day Rose had told him by phone that the mysterious caller was at work again.

  The link he needed was Rose Kendall.

  13

  Somehow everyone finished up going to Rex Gamble’s party. Or at least all that remained of the old party faithful from Weyville.

  Nick had ended up going with Matt and Harry though he hadn’t meant to. Just as they were saying awkward goodnights to Kit at Parliament, Gamble had appeared as if from nowhere, magnanimous and smiling.

  ‘Of course you’re all coming,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have a good time. Let me tell you how to get to my house, okay? Go up to the top of Kelburn Parade, take a sharp turn right into Glasgow Street, there’s a parking bay on the left-hand side: to the right there’s a new green garage with a bubble roof. At the bottom of that you’ll find the numbers. Go to the top, on the left you’ll see a white house, then a green house with a barrel roof, the house behind that’s got a trampoline in front of that. Keep going till you see a bramble hedge, very nicely cut I might add, and no I didn’t do it myself, with lights on either side of the gate, and there’re ten steps up to my front door. Can’t miss it. All right, what’s y’names, Harry? Nick?’

  They repeated the address back to him like dutiful schoolboys, in the process committing themselves to the invitation.

  Rose returned to the House, after putting Sharna to bed back at the flat. An efficient young woman had arrived, laden with an armful of books. ‘I can stay the night if you like,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be back soon,’ Rose said, promising herself early release from the party.

  The group from Weyville squeezed into the lift, clanking down to the chequered floor of the lobby. Rose crossed it as if in a dream, looking for something but she couldn’t think what it was. As she pushed through the revolving door, she remembered that it was a marble table top.

  They spilled out into the night, Parliament looming behind them. Light fell across the shadowy trees in the grounds. At the top of the long flight of steps that led to the courtyard, Rose paused. She had stood here so often, breathing power. She had forgotten, in the long months of distrust and dismay and the terror that had overtaken her, how it had all been, back at the beginning. There had been many nights like this, the country on fire, electric with promise. When the House rose, Government supporters had raced, joyous, out of the debating chamber, laughing and planning, set to deliver the promise of accord.

  The phrases were tired. People talked about pragmatism and the real world these days.

  Yet she’d never get over the place, its suggestion of freedom and a touch of grandeur. It had been so easy to believe in it.

  Gamble’s ministerial residence was a recent acquisition, which he had had a hand in choosing. It was a small architectural masterpiece, built like a tower on a narrow section, rising floor by floor to odd pointed ceilings; each room was painted stark white, the dull red brick floors were inset with turquoise mosaics on every level. The paintings which adorned his Beehive walls paled beside those which hung here.

  Rose and Kit arrived shortly behind Gamble, but already twenty or so people packed the second level near the entrance. Most of them had been to another function; they were nearly all smashed. Rose found herself looking anxiously over her shoulder for the others. Nick was to drive Harry and Matt up from Parliament. Rose and Kit had just squeezed into a park in the line-up of Alfa Romeos and Porsches. Probably it would take them awhile to park and find their way to the tortuous address. She realised that she had no idea what the party was for. Perhaps Gamble was one of those people who simply gave parties.

  An osteopath who had been treating Gamble for a back injury was mixing Pimms at the bar, adding greenery and elaborate twists of lemon. ‘Pimms, my God, we drank that when we were kids.’

  ‘Ssh, it’s back in fashion,’ Kit muttered.

  A young woman with blue eyes and a hyper-tan stood close to Gamble, staring into his eyes. He caressed her bare back and her bottom with one hand, while with the other he held a glass and sipped from it. She was Gamble’s fourth woman friend since his last wife left him and the third this year. The rumour going the rounds was that the woman’s parents had been on campus at Kent State when the shootings happened there in ’68, and emigrated; she had been back-packed out of the line of fire and lived in seclusion with them ‘down the West Coast’ for twenty years. That was the story, but nobody had been tactless enough to ask if it was true.

  She didn’t look like a flower child, Rose decided.

  At the door, Matt, Harry and Nick hesitated. Gamble released his girlfriend and gav
e an amiable wave, welcoming them in. They clustered uneasily near Rose and Kit.

  Across the room a woman with brown eyes and heavy make-up stared fixedly at Kit. He glanced, and started. Rose knew it must be Violet.

  ‘Bit of a bastard, your mate,’ Rose said to Kit, raising her voice slightly, meaning Gamble to hear her, only he had disappeared. The noise throughout the house was rising. Dancing had broken out on one of the lower levels.

  ‘Keep your voice down. I didn’t know she’d be here.’

  ‘Who?’

  Kit looked miserable, seeing the trap she had laid for him.

  ‘I think I’ll go.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ he said.

  ‘Rose.’ Gamble emerged from the kitchen with a distracted air, clutching bowls stacked with packets of potato crisps and nuts. He put them on a table and began tearing the bags open. ‘You’re just the person who can save this party.’

  ‘It seems a great success already.’

  ‘I’ve got a problem.’

  ‘And you want me to do the dance of the seven veils? I’d say you had plenty of takers for that.’

  ‘Now now. Rose, don’t be like that, baby.’

  ‘Don’t call me baby, I’m one of the grown-ups,’ she snapped, in a voice she hardly recognised.

  He raised his hand, a conciliatory gesture. ‘Could you cook something?’

  ‘Me? You’re not serious.’

  ‘You can cook, can’t you?’

  ‘No, Kit and the children ate grass.’

  ‘Balls. Look, I promised food and the caterers have let me down. I haven’t got a cracker ready.’ He contemplated the chips with distaste.

  ‘So you want me to butter crackers?’

  ‘Could you be an angel and throw some pasta together or something? There’s plenty of everything in the kitchen. I’m hopeless.’

  Behind him, Kit was mouthing something that looked like ‘sorry’. She couldn’t decide whether it was on account of Gamble, or if he was still on about Violet.

  ‘What about your friend?’

  ‘I loused it up, I’ve got a friend who cooks but I didn’t invite her. Anyway, tell her what to do, she’ll help. Her name’s Stella.’ He gestured towards the girl from Kent State in the backless black dress. ‘Please,’ he implored. ‘Everyone else is too plastered to do a thing.’