by Robert Gott
She turned to me then, took in my broken arm and the cuts and bruises on my face, and said, ‘Oh, Will,’ but more in disappointment than sympathy.
‘I have quite a story to tell,’ I said quickly. She cheered up at that.
‘I want to hear it all,’ she said, laying her hand on my good arm. ‘And don’t spare me the gruesome details. Darlene, could you make us some tea? And perhaps you could sacrifice this week’s fruitcake. I’m sure Brian and Will would love a piece. Darlene bakes a fruitcake each week,’ she said to me, ‘and sends it to the troops. It’s awash with brandy, so whoever ends up with it will go into battle with a smile on his face.’
Darlene retreated to the kitchen and Mother steered us into the front room — a room well furnished and dominated by its beautiful bay window. The window framed a view of Princes Park opposite, its surface scarred by wide trenches dug to provide residents with some form of protection should Japanese bombs begin raining down on Princes Hill. After the bombing of Darwin and the Jap subs in Sydney Harbour, this possibility didn’t seem at all remote. I couldn’t imagine my mother, though, hurling herself into a trench, a cork clamped between her teeth against the jarring shock waves produced by explosives. Nevertheless, a coat hung permanently near the front door, an object of clothing she referred to as her ‘trench coat’.
‘Now, Will,’ she said, ‘I’m cross that Brian had to get caught up in your affairs, but I am glad you’re safe and well and able to tell me everything that happened. It sounds frightening and terribly interesting. And I don’t want you to think that you can get away with leaving out the sex — unless there wasn’t any, of course. It cost quite a bit of money getting Brian up to Maryborough and, frankly, I’m looking to get some value for it.’
I was used to my mother speaking like this, and so was Brian, so neither of us batted an eyelid. Indeed, I would have been shocked by any demonstration of discretion. While Darlene was still out of the room I rapidly sketched in the outlines of my recent history, confident that Mother would press for more and more details over the ensuing days. I didn’t leach the colour out of the more lurid incidents. To do so would have been to agitate in my mother a suspicion that I was holding back, and this in turn would excite fierce questioning. I learned early in my childhood that my mother responded better to the embellished than to the undecorated truth. She liked, she said, a well-dressed story.
Darlene’s fruitcake was, it pains me to say, excellent, although she looked at me as I was eating it as if I was depriving a soldier somewhere of his last meal. She didn’t look at Brian in this way. He was able to eat his slice under the benevolent assumption that it had been well earned — which, given that he shared Darlene’s bed, I suppose it had.
After tea and more cake, both Mother and Darlene donned hats and gloves and set off for the city where Darlene was to be fitted for flattering (unlikely) maternity wear. I knew they wouldn’t be purchasing anything made of the scratchy, government-approved cloth called ‘shoddy’. Instead they would buy unconscionable silk and linen. Mother’s seamstress had access to expensive reserves of pre-war material and, despite the papers railing against extravagance, my mother’s philosophy not only accommodated such extravagance but insisted that it was, in fact, a sort of defiant patriotism.
After they left, Brian went upstairs to sleep, and I walked around Princes Park. Before I’d gone very far I’d determined that I would find alternative digs as soon as possible. I could not share a roof with Darlene for any longer than was strictly necessary.
On my way home I bought a copy of The Age, ignored the grim news on the front page about Stalingrad and an attack on Tobruk, and turned to the personal columns. My eye was drawn to a small advertisement for shared accommodation in Parkville, just a stone’s throw from my mother’s house:
‘Bachelor (32) with furnished house and housekeeper. Parkville. Desires gentleman to share same. Apprx. cost £3 per week.’
The rent was steep, way above the twenty shillings I had been thinking of as my limit. But obviously this was a good house, and the bachelor, whoever he was, was probably wealthy and possibly well-connected. Poor people did not employ housekeepers. Even rich people had released most of their staff for war jobs. Perhaps I could negotiate a reduction in the rent somehow. I had access to some funds, my father having left money in trust for each of us. I had drained most of mine, but there remained more than enough to pay for several week’s rent in advance to create an illusion in my landlord’s mind of my having a comfortable income.
I telephoned The Age when I reached home, obtained the details that had been withheld from the advertisement and connected to the number I had been given. A woman answered and identified herself as Mr Clutterbuck’s housekeeper. He wasn’t at home, she told me, but would be back at six o’clock, when she was sure he would be pleased to see me. There had been no other callers, the three pounds rent acting as a natural filter against the hoi polloi.
I knocked on Clutterbuck’s door at precisely six o’clock, punctuality being the courtesy of kings. The Edwardian house was very large (double-storeyed), and occupied the corner of Park Drive and Bayles Street. Its windows were disfigured by the ubiquitous anti-shatter precaution of cross-tape. The gate sat between two splendid square columns and it opened soundlessly, its hinges well oiled. Five steps led down to a tiled path that led, in turn, to the front door. The small garden had not been turned over to the growing of vegetables, despite the government’s frequent exhortations that it was the duty of every citizen to eschew the frivolity of flowers and plant vegetables in their place.
Mr Clutterbuck’s front garden was a formal grid of gorgeous blooms. So intent was I in admiring it (I had turned my back to the door to do so) that I didn’t hear the door open. A voice at my elbow startled me by saying, ‘The Yanks get drunk and piss in the front yards up and down the street. If you ever get invited to dinner at one of these places, don’t eat the greens. The name’s Paul Clutterbuck.’
He held out his hand and I shook it. I had him quickly tagged as the kind of man women find attractive, with his very short, tightly waved brown hair brushed back severely from a high forehead to reveal a discreet widow’s peak. His eyes were blue-grey, but sufficiently deep in colour to escape that weird, unsettling look that very pale eyes give a face. I was suspicious of him at once. It has been my experience that people who look like Paul Clutterbuck have spent most of their lives getting away with things, and freely exercising the prerogative they think they have been given to treat lesser mortals with disdain. I found the carefully controlled wattage of his smile just a little too self-conscious to be entirely convincing.
‘Why do Yanks piss in people’s gardens?’ I asked.
‘Over there,’ he said, waving towards Royal Park, the edge of which was visible from his corner. ‘That’s Camp Pell, the Yank army camp. There are still a lot of them there, even if MacArthur has gone to Brisbane.’
His tone indicated that perhaps I ought to have known this.
‘I’ve been away,’ I said, ‘since before the Americans arrived. I’ve lost touch with what’s been happening down here, apart from Leonski, of course. I know about him.’
Leonski, an American soldier, had killed three women in Melbourne and had thrown the city into a panic. The possibility that Melbourne had been nurturing its very own Jack the Ripper was sufficiently titillating to be carried in newspapers around the country. Leonski had been caught, tried and sentenced to death — a sentence that was due to be carried out quite soon. The Americans were obviously anxious to dispose of that particular public relations disaster as swiftly as possible.
‘I met Leonski,’ Paul Clutterbuck said. ‘It was the night he killed his last victim in fact. He was at the Parkville Hotel. He was drunk. Nasty drunk. Belligerent. A blond punk. I didn’t know it was him until afterwards, of course. He fell against me and I pushed him away. He wanted to argue about it, but he
was in no condition to take me on. I left. He must have killed that woman a short time later. Apparently she met him in the street, by accident. Never seen him before. She rented a room a few houses down.’
‘She was killed in this street?’ I asked, with sudden dubiousness as to its desirability.
Clutterbuck laughed.
‘No, not this street. She lived here, but she was killed around the corner.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ I said.
‘You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
‘No. But I was looking for a quiet place.’
‘You can’t get much quieter than being dead,’ he said. ‘Come inside and we’ll discuss the room.’
Inside Clutterbuck’s house all was restrained and expensive good taste. The furnishings were sleek and new. I must have registered a reaction because he said, ‘All this is my ex-wife’s taste, not mine. I prefer decent armchairs. Furniture was just one of the things we disagreed about. The divorce documents fairly comprehensively catalogue the others.’
‘I like it,’ I said.
‘It’s awful to sit on, but I held on to it out of spite, and that’s the ugly truth. I had a better lawyer than she had. She left with the clothes she stood up in, and that’s about all.’
‘I take it it wasn’t an amicable divorce, then.’
Clutterbuck chortled.
‘No. It was unpleasant and vicious, but as those are Anna’s defining qualities, that’s hardly a surprise. Whisky?’
Clutterbuck poured two generous, single-malt whiskies, and we sat opposite each other in elegant but uncomfortable seats.
‘So, who are you?’ he asked.
The question, so bluntly put, froze the delivery of the whisky to my mouth. I introduced myself, explained where I had been and what I did for a living. The conversation took an extraordinary turn when he asked me how I had broken my arm. I’d deduced from his own frank admissions that he wouldn’t be alarmed by the truth, or some of it.
‘I was involved in a murder investigation up in Maryborough. It came out of that. Indirectly.’
‘Really? Were you being investigated?’
‘Peripherally, but mostly because my own investigation crossed paths with the police investigation.’
‘So you’re what … a sort of private inquiry agent as well as an actor? Is that your cover?’
Here, I should have disabused him. Instead, I put my foot on a very slippery slope and said, ‘Yes. In a way, yes.’
‘Are you licensed?’
‘No. I’m afraid I’m rather dilettantish about it. It’s more of a sideline.’
I thought Clutterbuck looked disappointed, so I added, ‘But I’ve had a good deal of success. My instincts are good and I don’t scare easily.’
He sipped his whisky, unleashed a magnificent smile, and said, ‘You’re perfect. The room is yours. Oh, and I’ve got a job for you.’
I should have left the house in Park Drive at that moment. Instead, without even looking at the room, I agreed to move in the following day, and left feeling elated that after only a few hours in Melbourne I had secured accommodation and a job. How could the future be other than rosy? How indeed.
Over dinner that night — a meal of vegetable curry, using mostly produce from the garden Brian and Darlene had planted, but introduced by smoked salmon which Mother had paid too much for at King and Godfree — I announced my immediate plans, omitting my acceptance of Clutterbuck’s job offer. There were expressions of surprise at the speed with which I had moved, but no one howled me down or discouraged the shift.
‘You’re not offended?’ I asked, giving each of them an opportunity to at least pretend that my absence might punch a small hole in the fabric of their daily lives.
‘Oh, no dear,’ Mother said. ‘I’m sure you’d find living here far too humdrum. We have a quiet life.’
‘At any rate,’ I said, ‘I’m not going far. Just across the park, so I’ll call in regularly, of course.’
‘Lovely,’ Mother said, making a feint at sincerity and very nearly succeeding.
Over coffee and brandy I was given as much information as Mother had about my youngest brother, Fulton. Mail in and out of Darwin was irregular, and some of his letters had arrived with most of their contents excised, the military censor having decided that whatever he had written posed an unacceptable threat to national security. He was, Mother said, attached to some hush-hush unit up there, and her anxiety about him kept her awake at night.
‘I write every day and send it off. I have no idea how many he actually gets, but it calms me down and makes me think that I’m talking to him. I told him all about your troubles, Will. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it would cheer him up, take his mind off the bombs.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I tried to make it amusing.’
Only the fact that her eyes suddenly filled with tears prevented me from expressing my irritation that the most traumatic incidents of my life had been turned into comedy for the amusement of my little brother.
I retired to my old room. It had been repainted and redecorated, and there was no evidence that I had occupied this space until the age of twenty-two. I lay in the dark, but I couldn’t sleep. Not unreasonably, I was troubled by the lie I had told Paul Clutterbuck regarding my credentials. He had hired me to investigate some matter on the understanding that I was in fact competent to do so. Well, I thought, how difficult can it be? Perhaps he wants me to follow someone. Any fool could do that. He was obviously a respectable man, so whatever it was I doubted it was criminal in nature. No. As I began to doze I settled on the idea that it was most likely to be of a delicate, personal nature. Cherchez la femme were the last words that ran through my mind before sleep finally overtook me.
The next sound I heard was the cliché of a piercing scream, followed by the inevitable crash of tumbling chinaware. Let me assure you, though, that the real thing can make your hair stand on end, cliché or not. I pitched into the darkness of the hall and heard Brian yelling from the top of the stairs, ‘Darlene! Darlene!’, and in such an hysterical, chilling manner that my heart almost stopped. I suddenly felt very cold. I followed him downstairs — he fell down them rather than ran down them — and entered the kitchen a few seconds behind him. I switched on the light. Brian was standing, wearing only his pyjama bottoms, his mouth agape. Broken plates and cups lay strewn on the floor and a smear of blood headed out the open back door. Mother came into the kitchen.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, her voice taut.
Brian numbly replied, ‘Darlene came down to get some milk’ — as if this explained anything.
I ran out the back door. There was very little moonlight but it was obvious that nobody was in the garden. The gate which gave access to the cobbled lane behind the house was ajar, but there was no sign of anyone to the left or right. I returned to the kitchen to find Brian sitting at the table, his head in his hands, and with our mother standing behind him. He looked at me, his face contorted by panic.
‘Darlene’s been kidnapped,’ he said.
‘Why would anyone kidnap Darlene?’
Brian, with despair yowling in every syllable, said, ‘That letter you got on the train. It wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for me.’
‘You’re fucking joking.’
‘Please don’t swear, Will,’ my mother said.
Chapter Three
a fine mess
THE CLOSEST POLICE STATION was only a few blocks away in Fenwick Street, but after alerting the coppers to what had happened it was three quarters of an hour before an officer knocked on the door. While we were waiting, Mother and I heard a confession from a severely, almost catatonically, agitated Brian that was so bizarre and unexpected that I couldn’t marry it with the brother I
thought I knew. At first Brian sat in silence — not sullen silence, but stunned silence. I suppose that he was aware that when he began speaking nothing would ever be the same for him again.
‘So the letter was meant for you,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘And the person who hit you? That wasn’t a case of mistaken identity?’
He shook his head.
I folded my arms and allowed a small rush of self-righteousness to wash away the anxiety I should have been feeling about Darlene’s safety. Just for a delicious moment. Our mother, with practised acuity, said, ‘You had an affair with someone in Maryborough.’
Brian looked at her as if she were clairvoyant.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Was it a man or a woman?’
Even from my mother, this struck me as an astonishing question. It jolted Brian out of the fug of his confused emotions.
‘It was a woman, of course,’ he said sharply.
‘I’ve lived long enough to know that there’s no such thing as “of course”, Brian,’ she said. ‘If I’d asked you this morning whether you’d always been faithful to Darlene you would have said, “of course”.’
‘My God,’ I said. ‘You were only in Maryborough for a few days. Who was she?’
‘Stop firing questions at me,’ he said, ‘I can’t think.’
‘All right,’ Mother said. ‘Take your time.’
‘Her name is Sarah Goodenough. I went for a walk on the first night I arrived up there, just to clear my head. I ended up at the Royal Hotel. It’s a nice place. I met a woman there. Sarah. We had an immediate connection. I can’t explain it. It just took me over. We had a few drinks and it seemed perfectly natural that we should go up to her room. She was staying there. Her husband was in New Guinea. He was an officer in the militia, not one of the chocos.’
‘What on earth is a choco?’ asked Mother.
