But I’ve caught on now. Because mostly in Lorne there’s only one trick needed. Mostly in Lorne we’re selling beach houses to middle-aged couples who are hot to buy a beach house and call it their getaway. And mostly at Lorne Realty we only have to judge which of the middle-aged couple is wearing the pants. So we tour them through town on our velour-covered back seats pointing out civic features and taking note of who’s ending whose sentences back there. We listen for who gets to be offended by mild disagreement and for who needs to do the making up after the mild disagreement. We’re interested to hear who gets to make the snide comments about the other’s habits and we’re interested to hear who has an opportunity for snide comment but doesn’t take it. It’s not hard to tell who’s got the pants on. After a few years you can pretty much tell a marital-pants-wearer by just tone of voice. And once we’ve identified the marital-pants-wearer we gang up with them to defeat and ridicule the desires of the partner who doesn’t wear the pants and that way we sell the house.
Geoff Yeomans Senior swears he doesn’t even bother listening in on his clients’ semi-private back-seat banter any more. Has reached such an advanced stage of sensitivity toward clients he can identify a marital-pants-wearer by hairdo alone, he says. Can tell who’s boss just by power-coif f, he maintains.
Which is why he lost the sale on what we call the Doll House up in Erskine Street to that gay couple from Kyneton with their identical crew-cuts and their identical moustaches. Because peruse them as he might in his rear-view mirror while they sat on his velour-covered back seat and ranted about how outright sylvan the gully was and how Hansel and how Gretel the Doll House was he couldn’t decide just who the pants-wearer was in a relationship of identical hair-dos and in the end, when it came time to talk money, just twisted around in his seat and laid his arm along the seat back and laid his chin on top of his bicep and asked them straight out, ‘Who’s on top here?’
Michael Halpin is no marital-pants-wearer. So I tell him, ‘Mr Halpin, Lorne has no arse-end. The arse-end of Lorne is Sunday night when you’ve got to pack up the car and drive back to Melbourne. Lorne’s nationally recognised for its out-and-out beauty. Nationally recognised for these windless gullies. This temperate rain forest that comes right down onto the beach. I don’t know what this talk of arse-end is.’
‘I like a view,’ he says. ‘When does the sun get in here, for instance?’
‘Everyone starts out liking the view, Mr Halpin. Then everyone ends up staying inside out of the wind coming off the view. I’m sorry but I have to agree with Mrs Halpin. These trees … these tree ferns … this is a getaway environment unique in the whole state … whole country.’
‘Just what I’ve been saying, Michael. Unique. Smell the eucalyptus here.’ She runs my automatic window down and sniffs deep and aahhs theatrical.
He points down off the road at the bright yellow weatherboard that I know I can sell his wife. ‘That’s not what I had in mind at all. The floors aren’t even level in there. It’s a bulldozer job,’ he says.
‘Let’s have another look.’ I get out of the car. ‘See, I think what you’re looking for in a house like this is not actual features as much as possibilities. And I see this house as being full of possibilities.’ They follow me down the winding path to the house. ‘This house would renovate stunningly,’ I tell them.
‘Exactly,’ she tells him. ‘We could put our own stamp on it.’ She’s likes the idea of renovation.
‘Your stamp on it,’ he says.
‘Our stamp on it I said,’ she snaps.
He shrugs and admits, ‘Our stamp, then.’
I ask them have they seen that some of the younger architects along the coast are incorporating actual living trees into their houses now? Having their trunks right up through their dining rooms like Greek pillars or something?
She’s in love with the idea of trees growing through her getaway. Says it’s a spiritual and a beautiful idea.
In the kitchen he starts showing how chronic the gradient of the floor is by walking slowly north up to the stove and then retracing his steps south downhill, picking up speed all the way and crashing into the sink and announcing the stumps are gone. I defend the stumps in general, saying it’s probably only a stump.
In the living room he’s keen to demonstrate the gradient again. Walks bent with mock effort west up the slope of the floor to the inner wall and turns and gathers momentum down toward the window with its view of some sea but mostly trees where he makes a show of pulling up fast so as not to pitch out the window and down the hill. ‘Just the one stump you think? Just the one?’ he asks.
Gloria Halpin can’t even see the house for the renovations now. Is predicting what will go where and how maybe if they go out this way they can incorporate that splendid giant there in the new dining room and if we were to go out the other way we could wrap the decking around that splendid giant there and maybe if we were to go both ways the two splendid incorporated giants would balance each other. He says good balance is certainly what’s needed in here. She tells him, ‘Oh Michael, you’re not going to go on about the stumps are you? Didn’t the young man explain it was just one stump?’
My mobile rings and I say excuse me a minute and step down the slope to the window and look out and tell whoever has rung me, ‘Jack Furphy’
‘Hello, Jack. Margot Dwyer. How are you?’
‘Yeah, good, all right. I’m with clients.’
‘Should I ring back later?’
‘No, they’re in negotiation. What do you want? I already told Richard I wasn’t going to do anything about my mother for now.’
‘Jack … I’m ringing as a friend,’ she wants me to know. ‘Not as a BBK employee.’
‘Yeees?’ I ask.
‘But I am ringing about your mum.’
‘Yeees?’ I ask again.
‘I want to tell you something that I shouldn’t tell you. If I tell you something I shouldn’t tell you will you promise not to tell anyone I told you? Will you do that?’
‘I suppose so. Yeah. Tell me what?’
‘Okay … well … the brief version. Richard, and everyone, lost faith in you ever coming to the party, so to speak. And one thing led to another, and, you know, BBK’s a pretty big part of the economy of this state. And the state government. is eager we get a super-level playing field over here because they’re scared our head office might relocate to Sydney or Melbourne.’ She pauses long enough for me to ask Yes? again.
And we stood to lose a lot if your mother changed the whole nature of mining leases by normal old ground becoming sacred ground to our employees all of a sudden.’
‘Not too all of a sudden,’ I tell her. ‘But go on.’
I hear what might be a sigh down the phone. ‘Anyway, in a late-night sitting of the Western Australian parliament in about a fortnight from now, when no one’s watching and no one’s awake and no one gives a shit, the Mental Health Act bill of 1972 will be amended so the state can commit people for their own well-being even against the will of their next of kin. Even non-dangerous types.’
‘You’re just going to go ahead and commit her?’
‘Not us. No. That’s the point. The state’ll do it for us. Nothing to do with BBK. It’ll come as quite a surprise to us in a few weeks when some government-employed shrink decides she’s a menace to herself and has her locked up. We might even protest and make some statement about how she’s a valued ex-employee … or something.’
‘Do you think you will? Protest?’
‘Probably not. No. But I can’t tell. It might look good if we did.’
‘So anyway … you’ve solved your problem.’
‘Don’t say “you’ve solved your problem” like it was me solving my problem. It’s not me, Jack.’
The whole weatherboard getaway is shaking and booming. I tell Margot to hang on a second. Behind me Michael Halpin is jumping up and down showing his wife how the whole weatherboard getaway will shake and boom if he jumps up and down. ‘On
e stump?’ he’s asking. ‘One stump? Every stump in the whole bloody joint is rotten.’
I tell him, ‘Please, Mr Halpin. I’ll only be a second.’ He stops jumping and says to me, ‘Every fucking stump.’
I look out the window again at the trees and the pieces of sea that don’t constitute a view. ‘Okay, Margot. I’m back. Why are you telling me this?’
‘Well … you can still short-circuit the whole process by committing her yourself. I know the company would rather you do it than the government do it. They don’t want to ask the government for favours if they don’t have to.’
‘Yeah? Why would I do your dirty work for you?’ I ask.
‘Jack, don’t say “your dirty work for you”, like it’s me. I told you it’s not me.’
‘Why would I?’
‘Well, if you were to commit her she’d still end up well cared for. Everything the company promised would still be laid on. Top level care in a private nursing home … all the little niceties.’
‘All those niceties, eh?’
‘But if the government were to commit her … well … out of our hands. My understanding is she’d go into a state institution. And I don’t even want to discuss what some of those are like.’
‘And you’re ringing as a friend?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she tells me. ‘Yes I am.’
‘Not to broker a deal or to blackmail me?’
‘Listen, Jack …’
‘And you’re alone there wherever you’re ringing from, are you?’
There’s a long pause down the line. Michael Halpin is jumping up and down in one of the bedrooms. The house is shaking and booming again.
‘I’m sitting by myself at an outside table at the North Cottesloe Cafe in Perth. There are about twenty other people here having breakfast. None of whom I know.’ I can hardly hear her for the shaking and booming.
I tell her hang on a second. Put my hand over the phone and shout down the hall, ‘Will you lay off those fucking stumps for a minute.’
I hear his wife tell him, ‘Yes, Michael. You’ve never mentioned stumps in all our years together. I don’t believe you know a thing about stumps. Where did you get stump knowledge?’
I hear him coming for me. Gaining momentum with the run of the hallway. He stands up on the high side of the room and pokes his finger down the slope at me and tells me, ‘Right.’ Tells me, ‘That’s it. That’s way unprofessional. I’m not copping that from the likes of you. I’m reporting you.’ Then he turns up the hall again and stamps his way out the back of the house. Gloria Halpin comes into the room. She’s calm, like whatever’s just happened between her husband and me doesn’t matter at all. She’s a marital-pants-wearer. She asks what I think it will bring at auction, this house? This getaway I tell her, won’t even reach three hundred in my opinion. And she says, Not even three hundred. Fantastic. And she follows her husband up through the house and out the back door.
I slowly put the phone back to my ear. ‘So … anyway … basically I can call her mad and she’ll get locked up and surrounded by all the niceties … or you’ll get the government to call her mad and she’ll get locked up in squalor. Shit on the walls, et cetera. That’s the offer?’ I ask.
‘It’s not an offer, Jack. It’s what they’re going to do unless you jump in first. I’ve rung you to warn you.’
‘Well, I’m warned. Or blackmailed. Or whatevered.’
‘Listen, I feel dreadfully, dreadfully sorry for the woman, Jack. I’d hate to see her at the mercy of the state. Personally I don’t even know if she’s mad. So I don’t want to see her go into one of those state-run joints if it can be prevented.’
‘She’s mad all right,’ I tell her. ‘Can I speak to a waitress or a waiter of the cafe you’re in?’
‘You want to speak to the waiter? What for?’
‘I just want to speak to him. Put him on.’
I hear her calling excuse-mes at the waiter. He’s a hard one to catch. It takes her an embarrassing amount of excuse-mes before she gets his attention. Finally she tells me he’s coming. I hear them negotiate for him to get on the phone.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘You’re calling from Victoria? I used to live in Ballarat. Welcome to the North Cott Cafe.’
‘Is the woman who gave you the phone eating alone or with someone else?’ I ask him.
‘What? Are you a jealous husband?’ he wants to know.
‘No. I’m her parole officer. Is she alone, or not?’
‘She’s alone,’ he tells me. But as he hands the phone back to her I hear him tell her diplomacy’s just one of his skills, and I don’t know whether he said it for her or for me. So I’m back where I started with her maybe being alone or maybe sitting there with Richard Finnes across the table from her smiling and nodding at her good work.
‘I told you I was alone,’ she says.
‘You’re a compassionate woman, Margot. Just off your own bat wanting all the niceties for my mother like you do. I’d be a prick of a son not to want those niceties too. Wouldn’t I?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘Don’t you think?’ I ask.
‘I’m just trying to do the best for her that can be done,’ she says.
‘Yeah … well give me a couple of days. I’ll get back to you.’
‘Bye,’ she tells me.
‘Yeah,’ I tell her.
It’s not a day to pass comment on. Weatherwise. Not total blue and pulsing with sun to make you want to broadcast something cliched about it being great to be alive. And not wet and driven to make you want to damn the climate on this part of the coast and the micro-climate on the windward side of this range in particular. It’s a series of darkenings and lightenings. Clouds rolling through, then the blue rolling through with its pulse of sun, a drift of wind, some passing drizzle. The usual here. Nothing to comment on.
Jean looks all around and comments, It’s a funny day.
I say, It is, it is. You wouldn’t know what’d happen next on a day like today.
She says, It’s typical. Typical late summer weather. Just so typical of here.
Yeah, a bit of this and a bit of that, I tell her. Looks like the sun might break through again any minute.
Broken up into patchwork by the competing elements, she says.
Yeah. Not really T-shirt weather.
We’re sitting outside on our deck in jeans and T-shirts. We’re talking about weather typical enough not to talk about because I’ve just told Jean I’m going to have my mother committed. Thrown into a fucking nut house, I’ve told her. And after telling me back, ‘Oh … Jack,’ she hasn’t known what else to say. And I haven’t known what else to say. So we’ve sat watching the weather for some minutes. Then started talking about it.
I lean back in my chair and look straight up. ‘Stratocumulus is my guess,’ I tell her.
She looks at the clouds and looks at me and laughs at my joke about how deep we are into the weather all of a sudden. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say. It’s in the hard times you find out what an inadequate life-partner I am.’ She comes over and puts her arms around me and hangs onto me and kisses me. Then puts her tongue in my ear, which I tell her is inappropriate as an act of condolence, and she says, ‘See?’
She asks me don’t I think we should tell Thaw about this as he’s Belle’s golden-haired boy and anyway he might have something to offer by way of common sense. I tell her, ‘Yeah, get him up here. He’s probably got some views on climatic change or cloud formation or would probably like to lick my ears or something.’
She goes in through the open door and picks up the silhouette negro standing there in butler’s livery with his arms outstretched holding an ashtray, takes hold of him by his curly wooden hair and bangs on the floor three times with him jumping his Marlboro butts and his Stuyvesant butts out onto the floorboards.
Thaw comes up from his digs down below where he’s been working on the same old story about a bloke pretending to be a lesbian trapped in a male b
ody and thereby travelling what he calls ‘endless journeys’ of unused vagina.
He asks us what’s up. Jean gets us all a beer and tells me to tell him what it is that’s up. So I tell him I’m having my mother committed … to a fucking nut house. And I tell him why. How there’s no choice. How, if I want her to have all the niceties, I’ve got to do it. How the company have me backed into a corner. How the company is using Margot Dwyer to say Do It … Or Else … Or Else No Niceties … Or Else Shit-Smeared Walls.
He looks at his beer can and looks at the jumped negro butler standing in his spray of butts and ash and says, ‘Yeah? Fair enough, too. Why shouldn’t they apply a little muscle? They’ll have people putting down roots all over the place unless they nip this shit in the bud. Don’t tell me you didn’t expect it? You might have known a multinational wasn’t going to sit back beaten by her … by you … by you and her. A multinational is the strongest distillation of all thousand-and-five varieties of arsehole that make up the human race. Did you really think they were going to sit back and let you decide if she was sane? If she could stay or not?
‘It’s no big deal,’ he tells me. ‘All of us, apart from the Greeks and Italians and such who haven’t got the hang of the twentieth century at all, all of us have to confine our parents in some place of confinement when they’re shutting down. I know it’s your mother and all but, hey … she is on someone else’s land. And she is being cutting-edge colonial out there.’
He tells me don’t feel bad about it. Okay, yeah, you’re between a rock and a hard place, he says. But only the same rock and the same hard place we all get between some time or another. Just go ahead and bite the bullet and do it. Get her the niceties. You owe her the fucking niceties, Thaw says.
I tell him thanks for the fucking support.
Silences Long Gone Page 23
