The Big Whatever

by Peter Doyle

  Shirl kept staring at me, reluctant to let me change the subject so easily. The frown stayed. She turned to Denise. “He needs a lot more than he lets on, this one.”

  Denise nodded seriously, said nothing.

  “Ah, just like everyone else, Shirl,” I said.

  She turned back to me, and after a few seconds she relaxed, took her hand back, lit a cig. “Our Max. Yep. Only one oar in the water, poor old thing. But he really is a bit psychic, you know.”

  “Psycho, more like,’ I said.

  “Not all that different.” She sighed. “When he was here, I saw him, he saw me, we said hello. We didn’t talk that much. He’s on the gear, the bad stuff, you know that?”

  “I know. What about the mob he was travelling with?”

  “The group? They were called something like ‘Dorothy McKay and the,’ ah – no, maybe Doris something. ‘Doris McCloud and her Silver Linings.’ That was it. Like I said, they weren’t great.”

  In the distance a brown Holden Kingswood appeared on the dirt road leading into the property and drove carefully along the rough track towards us. It slowly came to a stop at the closed gate down by the dam, a hundred yards from where we sat. Just the driver, no one else in the car that I could see.

  We’d stopped talking.

  “A mate of yours?” I said to Shirl.

  She shook her head, staring at the car. “Sometimes they drive out to look at the hippies.”

  I stood up and walked down the path towards the gate.

  When I was halfway there, the car reversed smartly, did a three-point turn and was gone. I turned and headed back. My panel van was parked next to Shirl’s house, plainly visible from the gate.

  Back on the verandah, I said to Shirl, “A favour.”

  “Yes?” Warily.

  “Can we do a car swap? Let us take your VW, we’ll leave you the panel van. I’ll swap it back in a few days.”

  “All right, but look after my little car, won’t you?”

  “Yeah. And leave the panel van where it can be seen from the road. A mate of mine named Terry will be down some time to collect it, okay?”

  She nodded. “Will you leave in the morning?”

  “Tonight.”

  “But you’ll have some curry first.”

  We left late. Shirl gave Denise a hug, a warm one, then the icy tones again. “I meant what I said, sweetheart. You leave me right out of whatever it is you’re writing.”

  We stayed in a caravan park in Queanbeyan, the next big town along the road. In the morning I bought an old Holden ute from a car yard in the main street. It had a couple of small dings, but only 100,000 miles on the clock, and the dull grey duco was pretty clean. Had a tonneau cover on the back as well, with no rips in it. Just like thousands of cars on the bush roads, could belong to an old cockie, a tradie, or any sort of rural worker. I left Shirl’s car parked outside the Coles, and we took off.

  Denise had been pretty quiet since Shirl’s parting words, but once we got on the road out of Queanbeyan, it was like the hoodoo wore off, and she loosened up again. After twenty minutes driving she said, “So what do you make of that car last night?”

  “Don’t know what to make of it,” I said.

  She looked at me. “You have a theory?”

  I had a couple of them, but I shook my head, kept them to myself.

  That night, we were at the RSL Club in Goulburn, two hours away, but that was far enough. The dining room was a quarter-full with country town nobodies, half-drunk sales reps, wool classers, a few cockies. But they were cheerful enough, and a rowdy racket was spilling in from the pokies in the next room.

  Denise was more conservatively dressed tonight. Green woollen frock, silver and turquoise necklace, hair pinned back. No one looked twice at us. We each had a plate of steak and chips and a drink – gin for her, beer for me – in front of us.

  Denise asked me again about the brown Kingswood. It had looked every bit a cop car, and the distant glimpse I got of the driver – red neck, grey suit – supported that. But it could as easily have been a surveyor or a real estate agent. Even the noxious weeds inspector.

  “But who in the world could have known we were at Shirl’s?” Denise asked. “That’s what I can’t figure.”

  She continued, thinking aloud more than anything. “How about this: Your mate Multi is in with the cops. Local. Maybe Melbourne detectives too. Maybe Armed Robbery Squad.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But just say. He could’ve tipped them off, and now they’re following you. Us.”

  I shook my head. “This is out of their league. Too clever by half.”

  She looked at me with unconcealed doubt now.

  “Your real question is, am I being a paranoid ratbag?” I said.

  “If you prefer.” She smiled nicely. Her face was bright.

  “Sometimes I can’t tell, to be honest. But I was dead sure I didn’t want to stay at Shirl’s after seeing that moreton in the Kingswood.”

  “‘Moreton’?”

  “Snoop. Tattle-tale. As in ‘Moreton Bay fig.’ As in ‘gig’.”

  “’Gig’?”

  “Equals ‘snoop,’ ‘tattle-tale.’ Like I said.”

  She nodded.

  “For the book?” I said.

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “Remember what Shirl said to you?” I said.

  “Yeah?” Slowly.

  “I’d sort of assumed that since you’d hung around with Stan and Jimmy, and you’d seen the inside of a jail, you’d understand without having to be told.”

  Smile gone, suddenly all business, Denise leaned forward. “Keep my mouth shut?”

  “Yep.”

  She leaned back briskly. “Of course. Betray no secrets. But a little mix’n’match. You have to do that, otherwise no books would ever get written. Okay, say I leave Multi and Vi right out – probably will, actually. But what if I made up a whole other character who was kind of a combination of Shirl and Vi?”

  “Then they’d both have the shits with you.”

  Denise finished her plate and pushed it to one side. She lit a cigarette, leaned back, elbow propped on her other hand, ciggy near her mouth.

  “People are going to have the shits anyway. Actually, the way I’m thinking, my book’s going to be more centred on the main character, a young bookish woman who gets way out of her depth with outlaws and drug addicts and stuff. But she’s so taken with the romance of it she can’t tear herself away.”

  “Romance?”

  “Criminal chic.”

  “Like that conversation in Max’s book, you and him?” I said.

  “Oh please.”

  “Made you out to be sort of—”

  “Naïve and stupid.”

  “And built.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, the blond uni girl with the tits. It’s been a long time since I was at uni. And as for the Bardot tits . . .”

  “He meant it as a compliment. He’s a Jayne Mansfield– Marilyn Monroe man from way back.”

  She laughed again, and stood up.

  I reached out and held her hand. “The ones you’ve got are more than fine.”

  She did a little mock-shy curtsy.

  We paid up, drifted over to the banks of pokies. Denise dropped five bucks in the Aztecs, then won ten, then lost seven, won another ten.

  “You’re as lit up as that machine,” I said.

  “This is fun,” she said. “Very Sydney.”

  “We’re nowhere near Sydney.”

  “You know what I mean. Not Melbourne.”

  She stopped playing, turned to face me.

  “You ever rort these?”

  “Tried a few times. Some hardheads can work the handle on the old one-armed bandit type. You sort of half crank it, jiggle each wheel into place one at a time. But it’s harder than fly-casting. I never got the hang of it. Best way is to have someone inside to help you. If a machine goes off more than once an hour they shut it down, get the mechan
ic in. They’ve probably got a bloke here full-time.”

  She shook her head, smiling, said more to herself than to me, “So Sydney.”

  We left after an hour, went back to our room in the Tattersall’s Hotel, the third best berth the pub had.

  By now there was no sneak-into-bed-after-lights-out stuff. Denise took her clothes off as casually and unselfconsciously as if we’d been together for months. I sat on the bed watching her. She got down to just her panties, turned to face me. Put her arms out and did a quick shimmy. Then turned sideways, legs straight, bum out, bending forward, girlie-mag style.

  “Not Marilyn, huh?” She was smiling.

  “You’re real,” I said.

  She straightened up, lit a cig, then slumped on the end of the bed, her arm resting on her raised knee. “I did some photo modelling once. The poses they had you make, no woman in the history of the world ever stood like that of her own free will.”

  Breakfast next morning at the Paragon Café. Denise had the denim jacket on, a different blouse underneath. Pale silk, with a twenties man’s knitted vest over that. We were sitting in an old walnut-veneered booth. The place was busy.

  “So . . .” Denise, elbows on the table, holding a steaming cup of tea in two hands, eyeing me very closely. “Something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So far, you’ve very conspicuously not mentioned a couple of important cast members in this little melodrama of ours.” She took a sip of tea, enjoying herself here. “And I’m wondering why.”

  “About whom might you be wondering the most?” I said.

  “For starters, the character Max calls ‘Barry.’ Who would be in real life rather like—”

  “Barry Geddins,” I said. “Standover yob. Did you know him?”

  Suddenly quite sober, smile gone. “He was there at the double-cross. The shootout in South Melbourne. It happened pretty much the way Max describes it. But, you know, Max didn’t quite capture how freaky that guy really is.” She actually shuddered.

  “And he somehow turned up at the crash scene, according to Max.” I said.

  She looked at me meaningfully, but I wasn’t quite sure what her meaning might be. “What Shirl said about the psycho–psychic connection? That was true of him. He had . . . powers.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Heroin is evil,” she said. “I mean, it’s supernaturally evil and it attracts evil people. He was evil.”

  She was silent for a moment, then snapped out of it. “But see, this is what gets me. You haven’t once asked me if I know where he is now, what he might be up to.”

  Again, too quick by half.

  “I know him,” I said. “And I’ve had dealings with him. Recently.”

  She tilted her head a fraction, waiting for me to go on. Then she said, “Barry works for the Combine?”

  I nodded.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And nothing. He’s Barry Geddins, loony. Current whereabouts unknown.”

  She waited for a moment then lit a cigarette. “So, where to today, cap’n?”

  “First the department store up the road.”

  We went to the Dimmeys in the main street, then the disposal store opposite, ended up with a small but sturdy tent, a double sleeping bag, a billy and a primus, a Tilley lamp, groundsheets, a tomahawk, a couple of jerry cans, a thermos. Takeaway sandwiches from the Paragon, and we were off.

  It was inexpensive stuff I’d bought, but it cut deep into my remaining road money. I did my best not to think about what would happen if I was to run right out.

  Driving north from Goulburn, we saw in the distance the ancient jail Stan had busted out of way back when. Neither of us made any comment. At the edge of town I hung a left onto a back road that took us through thirty miles of rolling pasture to Taralga, a sleepy little town with a main street of old stone buildings. Another of the nice ones. You could imagine bushrangers like Ben Hall and Frankie Gardiner, or Captain Thunderbolt, taking the town hostage, gathering the entire population in the pub, standing drinks for all, roasting a side of beef, with a fiddler playing all day and all night.

  Or maybe the locals were scared shitless, couldn’t wait for the outlaws to be on their way. Maybe the outlaws were more like Barry Geddins.

  The road turned to gravel, went uphill for ten miles or so. The temperature dropped. The pastures gave way to scrubby eucalyptus forest, which became more stunted the higher we got.

  The sound of the car’s motor went from a quiet hum to a solid throb to a near-roar. Whatever bog they’d put in the muffler had fallen out. I’d long since concluded it was much longer in the tooth than the 100,000 on the clock.

  But the driving was nice with Denise sitting next to me, her window half-open, hair flying. The countryside was your typical New South Wales Central Highlands – scrappy pastures, falling-down fences, the occasional rundown house with wrecked cars and tractors strewn about, lumpy brooding hills. Mobs of crows and galahs browsing by the roadside. Very little traffic. Denise chatted happily for a while, then we both went quiet, enjoying the movement.

  On the other side, a long, steep, scary downhill drive. The Holden handled like a dining table on roller skates. We crossed a river at the bottom. Halfway up a hill, a truck going way too fast nearly took us out. Then at the top, a flat plateau, open pasture again. We stopped at a sunny spot protected by ancient pines, fired up the primus and boiled the billy. Other than the truck, we hadn’t seen another vehicle for the past hour.

  We sat on a rock, drinking our mugs of tea.

  I said to Denise, “How do you rate Max’s work?”

  She looked at me, unsure.

  “His music?”

  “I already know about that. He can play anything, so long as it’s in the key of C. No, I meant his writing. You being a professional.”

  “No need to be snarky.” She thought a moment. “It’s very . . .”

  “Sydney?”

  “It’s very Max. It has voice.”

  “Voice?”

  “And he does the unreliable narrator thing really quite well.”

  “He’s certainly proved himself unreliable over many years.”

  “No, it’s a formal term. I mean like the bit at the party where he hallucinates the cops hidden in the trees?”

  “Did it really happen?”

  She shrugged. “Could’ve.”

  “What about the you and Cathy lesbian thing?”

  “What about it?”

  “Bob Gould thought the book needed more of that. But, I mean, was that bit true?”

  She actually looked away.

  “Aha,” I said. “A rare moment of shyness.”

  She turned. “Yeah? Well what about your ‘you and Cathy thing’? Cathy being the other person you’ve conspicuously not mentioned.”

  “There was a thing, but it wasn’t much of a thing. And it was long over by the time Max and Cathy did the drug rip. That was Max spicing up the story. You know, the unreliable narrator.”

  She took that in, looked off into the distance.

  “Cathy was Cathy,” she said quietly. “She did whatever she wanted, more than anyone I’ve ever known. She was a force of nature.” She turned to me. “She was hard to resist.”

  “Is your book about you, or her?”

  She was silent for a few seconds. “Neither. Both. I don’t know yet.”

  “Because people think that photo of her, robbing the petrol station, and the movie film, they now think that’s you, the heiress. They lose the fact that you took the pictures.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a simple marketing, public relations advantage right there. The advice we’ve had is to go with what the public already knows, or thinks it knows, even if that’s arse-up.”

  We drove on. Dirty grey clouds came over, the bush lost colour. We were silent for a long stretch. We dodged Oberon, headed west off the plateau and pulled into a cold and misty Bathurst at four o’clock.

  I slowly drove the lengt
h of the main street, then back again, until I saw what I was looking for. I parked, turned to Denise, and said, “You better sit this one out.”

  “I won’t say a fucking thing,” crossing her heart and presumably hoping to die.

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. This one most likely won’t even acknowledge me. And if you’re there . . .”

  “Okay,” she said brightly.

  I walked back down the street to a shop with “Bathurst Furniture Bazaar” above the awning. Smaller signs read, “Antiques Bought and Sold,” “Curios,” “Tools,” “Colonial Bric a Brac.” Over the door another small sign: “Licensed Dealer G. Conroy.”

  The inside was a long, wide space with a high pressed-metal ceiling. To the left were rows of tightly arranged tables and chairs, old lounge suites, cabinet radios. On the right were lamps, luggage, upholstered chairs, smoker’s companions, ugly paintings, frames, mantel radios, fish tanks, golf sticks, dusty fishing rods, tool boxes, a couple of banjo-mandolins and an Italian guitar with three strings.

  No one to be seen. I called out hello, but there was no answer.

  I waited a few minutes. Nothing. I went to the back of the shop, where there was a desk with piles of papers, an ashtray, tools. I kept going, through a cramped passageway, past a messy kitchen and toilet, out the back door. To my right the building extended back another thirty feet, an old stone warehouse or maybe a former blacksmith’s, with a loading dock. It had a heavy double door with a solid padlock on it. An old Morris van was parked in the back driveway.

  I went back into the shop, out the front door, and walked slowly down the street, away from where the car was parked. I turned into a side street, circled all the way round to the back lane and into the yard where the Morris was parked, then tiptoed through the back door.

  A gnomish, cranky-looking man of indeterminate age, with a scrunched-up face and a shock of brown and grey hair, dressed in dusty trousers and work shirt, was standing in the shop’s front doorway, peering suspiciously down the street.

  “I’m here, George.”