Floodtide

by Judy Nunn

  'And the furnishings are very much in keeping with the style,' she said, plonking herself briefly in one of the large wicker armchairs. She'd been deeply disappointed when he'd told her the place was furnished; she'd so longed to go shopping with him.

  His mother's approval was a huge relief to Ian. The place hadn't actually been furnished at all, but the thought of shopping with Cynthia had been such a nightmare that he'd called in a firm of interior decorators. Thank God they'd got it right. If they hadn't, she would have insisted on replacing everything.

  Cynthia gave the kitchen area a full going-over, turning on the taps, opening cupboards and drawers. 'My goodness, you've laid in china and cutlery already.'

  Again she was disappointed. She'd wanted to be part of the whole process of decoration and selection, but he'd been very mysterious, and now she was finding that everything had been done.

  She disguised her hurt at having been so excluded and disappeared to explore the two bedrooms, dismayed to discover that he'd also purchased linen. Then she examined, in minute detail, the separate dining room, the study and the bathroom.

  'But are you sure you can afford it, dear?' she asked fifteen minutes later when the inspection was over and they'd stepped out onto the balcony to admire the view. The apartment was a highly valuable piece of real estate, she thought, and, lovely though it was, surely it was a little extravagant for a pied-à-terre. 'I mean, you've been working less than a year – you don't want to get yourself too heavily in debt so early in your career. I really do think you should avail yourself of your father's offer.'

  Her concern was tinged with annoyance. Although Ian was unaware of it, his father's 'offer' had been a major cause of disagreement between Cynthia and her husband. Gordon had been outraged when she'd suggested they purchase an apartment for their son. 'It could be our Christmas present,' she'd said hopefully.

  'Don't be ridiculous.' He dismissed the idea out of hand. 'If the boy needs assistance then he can have an interest-free loan for the amount of the deposit.' Gordon considered the offer most generous. 'He has to make it on his own. I did. No hand-outs, he understands that.'

  Ian did understand, and he'd delighted his father by refusing the offer. 'Thanks, Dad,' he'd said, 'but I'd rather go it alone.' He'd known it was what his father wanted to hear.

  Gordon had basked in his son's display of independence, but Cynthia had been annoyed. She'd given Ian a thousand dollars. 'A little pre-Christmas present, pet,' she'd said, 'just between us,' and Ian had had no compunction what-soever about accepting the gift. So much for Gordon's stuffy, old-fashioned principles, Cynthia had thought. Her son had far too much common sense to let pride stand in his way.

  If Cynthia Pemberton could have bought an apartment for her son herself, without causing major ructions in her marriage, she most certainly would have. And now she was concerned.

  'Don't worry, Mum,' Ian said, 'I can afford it. I'm only footing half the cost.'

  She looked at him blankly. 'How come?'

  'It's an investment. I have a partner in the purchase.'

  'Oh.' This was the first she'd heard of it – why hadn't he told her? He'd behaved most mysteriously throughout the whole business, she thought. But she felt a little relieved nonetheless.

  'And who is this partner?'

  'You'll see in a minute – he's out buying champagne to celebrate.'

  Ian pulled up a chair for his mother and they sat at the balcony's small wrought-iron table.

  'We think it'll really escalate in value,' he continued enthusiastically. 'It's such a great property – the building itself, the view,' he gestured at the river, 'the situation. It's virtually in the heart of the city – a minute's walk up the hill and you're in St Georges Terrace. It's a really good capital investment.'

  'Well, you certainly have things all worked out,' Cynthia said approvingly. How very enterprising of Ian, she thought, her worries disappearing.

  The front door opened.

  'Hello, dear, I'm ho-ome,' a male voice sang out. Then there was the rattle of kitchen cupboards, the clink of glasses, and Spud appeared on the balcony with a bottle and three champagne flutes.

  'Here he is,' Ian said, 'my new business partner.'

  Oh, Cynthia thought, it's that awful little thug.

  'G'day, Mrs Pemberton.' Spud dumped the bottle and glasses on the table and thrust out his hand. 'Long time, no see.'

  Ian cursed him. Spud could have played it with finesse if he'd wished, but he either couldn't be bothered or he was making a statement. How bloody typical.

  'Yes,' Cynthia said, forcing a smile as they shook. 'Ian's twenty-first, I believe.' Taken aback though she was, she made a quick adjustment. She could accept a thug as a financial associate – over the years she and Gordon had had any number of dubious connections. 'Um ...' She racked her brains for the name. 'Patrick ... am I right?'

  'No ... Spud.' He grinned amiably – he didn't mean any offence, he just wanted to get things straight, and if she couldn't handle it, then tough. And if Pembo, who doted on his mother, found his behaviour insulting, then that was too bad as well. Pembo needed him, and both mother and son would just have to learn. 'Spud Farrell.'

  'Yes, I remember now,' she said, trying not to sound tight. 'Spud. How very nice to see you again.'

  Spud picked up the bottle and held it out to her, displaying the label like a waiter. 'Taittinger,' he said in his best posh voice. 'Vintage. I trust this meets with Madame's approval?' He winked broadly at Pembo. Pembo had told him what to get.

  'Oh.' Noticing the wink and deciding to play along, Cynthia gave a girlish laugh. 'How lovely.'

  Ian relaxed a little.

  'No ice bucket, I'm afraid,' Spud said, 'but it just means we'll have to drink it quickly, doesn't it?' He smiled winningly at Cynthia. 'And there's another bottle in the fridge.'

  'Oh my goodness,' she said.

  'There you go, Pembo.' Spud dumped the bottle in front of Ian. 'You do the bubbles while I do the tucker.' And he went off to the kitchen.

  Cynthia breathed an inward sigh. The boy seemed nice enough, but he really was so common, and Pembo . . . Oh well, she supposed she'd just have to live with it.

  'It was Spud who found the flat,' Ian said as he opened the champagne. 'He told me the sooner I invested in real estate the better – he owns two other properties himself.'

  'Really? At his age.' How very interesting, Cynthia thought.

  'Yes, he has offices in Dalkeith and an investment property in West Perth.'

  Spud had told Ian about the Sun Majestic several months previously – he'd been unable to resist – and Ian now wondered how his mother would react to his newly acquired business associate's investment in a brothel.

  'What an enterprising young man,' Cynthia said.

  Ian poured the champagne and Spud returned with an imported Brie, olives and a smoked salmon pâté.

  'How lovely.'

  They toasted the new apartment.

  'Ian tells me you have two other properties, Spud,' Cynthia remarked, and he nodded. 'So what exactly is it that you do?'

  Ian waited for Spud to say 'I'm a bookie and I own a brothel.' Surely he wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity to shock.

  But after a moment's consideration, Spud said, 'I'm an entrepreneur.' He wasn't being evasive – it was the absolute truth, and he liked the word. Why pin a label on himself? There was no business venture he wasn't prepared to tackle.

  'An entrepreneur?' Cynthia raised a quizzical eyebrow. It was a term that could cover all forms of nefarious activity, she thought. But then that really was none of her concern. 'How very adventurous,' she said.

  Three properties and he was only Ian's age – this brash young man was on the way up. She'd known many like him – useful business associates, so long as one distanced oneself from them socially. She found herself reassessing her opinion of Spud Farrell.

  Ian could see the glint of admiration in his mother's eyes and he guessed what she was thinking.
She probably wouldn't be shocked at all if she knew of Spud's business activities, he thought. His mother was unshockable when it came to the governing factor of her life – money.

  They talked about investment properties for a while, then the conversation turned to stocks and shares. Spud had acquired a modest portfolio, he told Cynthia, mainly blue chip investments: he was playing it safe to start with. 'But I'll be keeping an eye open for the main chance,' he said. He was showing off now, aware that he was making an impression.

  'Well, with a son in the business, I shall certainly be keeping my eye on the mining market,' Cynthia said.

  'Come off it, Mum,' Ian laughed. 'There's such a thing as insider trading, you know.'

  'Yes, yes, dear,' she gave a frivolous wave of her hand, 'I was joking.'

  She hadn't been and Spud knew it. He was recognising the hard-nosed businesswoman beneath the girlish façade. Cynthia Pemberton wasn't stupid at all, he thought.

  'I'll get the other bottle, shall I?' He rose from the table.

  'Dear me, Spud, I believe you're out to get me tipsy,' she said, wiggling a flirtatiously admonishing finger at him.

  'That's the general idea,' Spud grinned. They were getting on like a house on fire.

  There was a slight hiccup in the proceedings when he returned with the champagne, however.

  'And where do you live, Spud?' Cynthia asked.

  A moment's pause while Spud looked blank. 'Here,' he said. Where the hell did she think he lived?

  'Here?' She looked around at the balcony and through to the lounge room. Did he mean here in Ian's flat?

  'Yes, here – or at least I will be. I'm moving my gear in tomorrow.' He poured the champagne.

  Oh, she thought, a flatmate. That put a different complexion on things, surely. But then perhaps not, she told herself. Young Spud Farrell was destined for success, and the rough edges were bound to smooth over as he moved up in the world.

  'Thank you, dear,' she said as she accepted the glass.

  Two glasses later, Cynthia took her leave.

  'You naughty boy, Spud, you really have got me tipsy,' she said. He hadn't. She'd built up a strong resistance to Taittinger over the years, and although she imbibed quite a deal of it, she rarely showed the effects.

  They both saw her to the front door, and she shook Spud's hand before offering her cheek to her son.

  'I'll see you tomorrow when you collect your things, pet, and I must say I can't wait for Christmas.'

  Although it was only early November, they'd discussed Christmas at length – or rather Cynthia had. Ian would have a full ten days in Perth and they'd make Christmas Day a real family affair – lunch at Kings Park Restaurant – just as they did every year and had done throughout his childhood.

  'Oh, and Spud,' Cynthia said, as if the idea had just occurred, which it hadn't, 'why don't you join us for our Boxing Day party? It's quite an annual event, I'm sure you'd enjoy it.'

  The Pembertons' Boxing Day party at Peppermint Grove was more than an annual event, it was a line-up of who's who in Perth society, and Spud jumped at the chance.

  'Thanks, Mrs Pemberton, that'd be great.'

  She left wondering whether, now that he was a business associate of her son's, she might perhaps ask him to call her Cynthia.

  After Cynthia had gone, the boys rang Mike as they'd promised they would.

  'Family business over,' Ian said. 'We'll meet you at the hospital in half an hour.'

  They were off to see Muzza. Mike and Spud visited him regularly, but they considered it an added morale booster when Pembo was in town and the three of them could front up together.

  'He needs the old gang,' Spud said. 'Hell, face it, the poor bastard needs all the help he can get.'

  Muzza was back from Vietnam. He'd been back for over two months now. But he wasn't the same. Muzza had been wounded in the most ferocious conflict the Australians had yet experienced, and were ever to experience, during the long years of the Vietnam War – the conflict that had already become known as the Battle of Long Tan.

  During the late afternoon of 18 August 1966, the members of D Company, 6 RAR had faced an enemy force of some two and a half thousand North Vietnam army regulars and Vietcong guerrillas in the Long Tan rubber plantation of Phuoc Tuy Province. The troops of D Company, 6 RAR, led by a number of army regulars, had been, for the most part, young national servicemen. As dusk had descended they'd fought on bravely amidst the pelting rain and mud and shattered trees of the plantation, and the damage inflicted upon the enemy had been significant. But the Australians had paid a price. Eighteen of their troops had lost their lives. The youngest had been nineteen years of age, the oldest twenty-two.

  Many of the wounded had to lie in the mud and rain all night, waiting for dawn when help would arrive. Murray Hatfield had been one of them.

  'I didn't know who'd get me first,' he'd told his mates several weeks after his return, when he was deemed fit enough to receive visitors, 'the Vietcong or our own bloody artillery that was still coming in. Then, when things settled down and I waited for morning, I thought, what the hell, it's not going to be either – I'm going to die of thirst. But I didn't, and hey, I'm still here.'

  He'd spoken quite openly and with a touch of bravado, or so it had appeared. Actually, it had been desperation. Perhaps, Muzza had thought, if he talked about it to his mates, it might help keep the nightmares away.

  He'd copped it early on, he'd told them. The whole thing had started out as a routine patrol. There'd been some mortars fired in, and the unit was to discover where they'd been fired from.

  'I was hoping we wouldn't be out there too long,' he'd said. 'I didn't want to miss out on the concert. Col Joye and Little Pattie were performing that night. Then, when we were only a few kilometres from the base, they came at us from nowhere. The whole world suddenly started blowing up around me. I don't remember anything after that.'

  When he'd come to, he'd been unable to move, and he'd lain there all night with a raging thirst while the battle continued.

  'Still, I made it,' he'd said, 'and all in one piece – unlike some of the other poor bastards.'

  Muzza didn't talk like that any more, because he wasn't in one piece. Another month down the track, he was a whole bunch of fractured pieces now that he knew he'd never walk again.

  'I'm one of the lucky ones, aren't I?' he said these days when his mates visited him. 'Hell, yeah! A lot of people with busted spines end up quadriplegics, so they tell me. I just get to lose the use of my legs. Jesus Christ, how lucky's that!'

  Mike, Pembo and Spud were sad to discover that today was the same as usual. They'd hoped that Muzza's spirits might have lifted – he was due to leave hospital next week.

  'You'll be with your family soon, mate,' Mike said encouragingly. Muzza's was a close-knit family – his parents and his two younger brothers and sister were at the hospital all hours of the day. 'I bet they're looking forward to having you home.'

  'Yeah, I'll just bet they are. A cripple! You really need one of those around the house, don't you!'

  The boys exchanged a look and Spud rolled his eyes. Jesus Christ, he thought, Muz was worse than ever.

  'I'm sorry,' Muzza said. It was good of his mates to visit him, and he regretted having come on so strong – the words had just slipped out. He gave a shrug to suggest that he hadn't really meant it. But he had. He bloody well had! He was dreading going home, having his siblings, whom he adored, waiting on him hand and foot, treating him like an invalid instead of the hero he used to be. He couldn't bear the thought of living twenty-four hours a day with his parents' pain, feeling their sympathy and their own sense of uselessness.